By JOHN AVANT
Guest Columnist
Senior Pastor, New Hope Baptist Church

I'm glad to live in Fayetteville! It's good to be in a city where we can discuss issues and attempt to build an even better city together, though we sometimes disagree.

Thanks to The Citizen for providing a forum to share views and thanks to our city government, who from the mayor to the Planning Commission members have been helpful and open to concerns expressed about Hooters restaurant. Thanks also to Billy Murphy who gave me a good laugh with his column. I believe in being serious about serious issues, but it also never hurts to see some humor along the way. With the direction our culture has been going, sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying!

As the senior pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, I thought it might be helpful to share a little bit of why so many of our members and those of many other churches and no church at all object to Hooters coming to town.

First of all, we are simply exercising our rights as citizens in a free land to use persuasion or any other legal means to make a difference in the kind of city our children grow up in. It never ceases to amaze me these days that it is politically correct for anyone to do this except evangelical Christians!

We are expected to keep safely behind our stained-glass windows and not do anything that would disturb the status quo. That's not the active faith Jesus taught. He said that we should be “salt and light” in the culture in which we live. To every biblical Christian that is a mandate, not an option.

When we do step into this arena, we are told to go back and “address real-world problems” as if all we do with our time is stand around and oppose Hooters!

Anyone who spends any time in our church or just about any of our churches knows that we spend countless hours helping people with every conceivable kind of problem, from depression to marital conflict to financial problems.

The bottom line is that many of us believe our community will be better off without a sexually-oriented business that only hires women who dress provocatively.

Imagine what would happen if we told female school teachers or businesswomen that they had to dress this way in order to get a job. Why, the ruckus raised would be beyond compare! Why do we agree with this in a restaurant in our own community?

Anyone who questions that Hooters is a sexually-oriented business is fooling themselves. They virtually claim it for themselves on their website! They admit they use “sex appeal to sell,” that their name refers to a part of a female anatomy, and they compare themselves to the way “daytime talk shows” use sexuality! They admit that they cannot be “characterized as a family restaurant” and their website contains a pictorial of “hooter girls” in provocative poses.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a business like this in Fayetteville.

One letter to The Citizen was correct in stating that we do not oppose everything else that is immoral in our city. It is true that we cannot fight every battle. But we can try to stop a new direction that has never existed here before it starts. That is our right, just as it is anyone else's right to support Hooters if they choose.

All of us are a part of deciding what kind of community we live in. All of us should have a voice. Would it not seem, however, that our priorities are out of line if we are freely willing to “limit freedom” to control traffic or density, but unwilling to consider it when it comes to the values of our community?

Sometimes the logic of this debate amazes me! One writer to The Citizen suggested that the best thing to do is to have more places like Hooters so Christians can reach them. By this rationale, we need to recruit every strip club, prostitute and child-molester we can find to set up shop here! I don't think that is what Jesus calls us to or our community wants.

The same writer makes the assumption that because we oppose Hooters, we don't love people or minister to people in sinful lifestyles. This is politically correct nonsense!

At New Hope, as in most of our churches, we are in the business of seeing lives transformed! We are a hospital for the wounded, full of people from every possible lifestyle. We spend countless hours (as well as thousands of dollars) caring, crying and praying together with shattered people.

We would not however, support their effort to set up shop and sell their sin to our community! As a 10-year-old boy said at the Planning Commission meeting, “I don't need anything else to tempt me as I grow up.” Enough said for me!

Whatever anyone thinks about the Hooters issue, one thing is certainly clear. Just a few decades ago, a business like this would have had no chance at all of opening in our community or most communities of America. We have most certainly changed — at the very core of our heart and soul.

I must ask — are we happy with the fruit of this new culture — with the violence, the complete breakdown of the family, the drug and alcohol culture, rampant teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases? If not, do we really expect it to change if we do nothing?

As for me and many people I know, we will choose to stand for what we believe is clearly right for our community — win or lose. We will do it in love, not hate, and with calm resolve, not shouting and picketing. But we will do it.

And at the same time we will call all of our city and our nation to the ultimate answer that has always been before us - “If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land,” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

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