Church juice was poisoned, police say(Connecticut )

[RedEarth]

DARIEN -- The grape juice that sickened 40 people at a Darien church Sunday was intentionally poisoned, police said yesterday.

"We have a crime. We just don't know what the motive is," Darien Police Capt. Fred Komm said. He said the juice was likely poisoned at the church.

Members of the congregation reported a burning sensation in their throats after drinking less than a half-ounce near the end of the Calvary Baptist Church's 11 a.m. service. Five people who became nauseated and started vomiting were taken to area hospitals. No one was seriously injured.

A deacon purchased the 64-ounce container of Welch's purple grape juice Saturday at the CVS Pharmacy, a few doors down from the church at 988 Post Road.

Preliminary test results revealed the contaminant was foreign to the manufacturing process, ruling out that it could have entered the bottle at the Welch's factory in Massachusetts, Komm said.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-grapejuice2feb10,0,660370,print.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines

[trogdor]

1. Kool-aid?

I...am...going...to...hell. :evilgrin:

[Igel]

2. The Baptists are certainly getting the short end of the stick

these days, aren't they?

First Alabama. Then Alabama. Now Mass. Massachusetts, that is.

[Warpy]

9. Something weird is happening among the Baptists

that sounds like a power struggle and internal feud to me.

I like Bill Moyers Baptists, Jimmy Carter Baptists. This sounds like the work of the type of Baptists who hate everybody and vote GOP.

[bobbieinok]

15. right wing took over southern baptists from 60s to 80s..see chronology

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/HowDominionistsTookOverSBCChronology.html

some of the more recent events

....

1990 -- Southern Seminary Board of Trustees became controlled by fundamentalists. Trustees gave students permission to openly tape classes. Trustee Jerry Johnson of Colorado accused Southern Seminary President Roy Honeycutt and many faculty of heresy. Baptist Press editors Al Shackleford and Dan Martin were fired by the SBC Executive Committee due to their reporting on the fundamentalist takeover effort and their refusal to cease writing such stories. Associated Baptist Press was formed in order to maintain a free press for Baptist news. Daniel Vestal called a national level meeting of moderate Baptists in Atlanta. 3,000 people showed up and vowed to meet again the following year. This was the birth of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF).

1991 -- Southeastern Seminary published a new statement of purpose and the doctrine of inerrancy became official policy. Moderate Sunday School Board President Lloyd Elder was forced to resign due to a hostile board of trustees. Fundamentalist leader Jimmy Draper became President of the Sunday School Board. FMB voted to defund Rushlikon Seminary in Europe because of moderate professors. 6,000 Baptists in Atlanta formally organized the CBF. Moderates no longer offered an alternative candidate for President of the SBC.

1992 -- Paige Patterson became President of Southeastern Seminary. Career missionary and President of the FMB, Keith Parks, resigned in protest against a hostile fundamentalist board of trustees. Parks became missions director for the CBF.

1993 -- President of Southern Seminary, Roy Honeycutt, resigned due to a hostile fundamentalist board of trustees. Al Mohler, a leading fundamentalist, became President of Southern Seminary. SBC voted to cease giving funds to the Baptist Joint Committee for Public Affairs because it would not cooperate with the fundamentalist agenda to restore publicly-led prayer in schools, government vouchers to attend religious schools and other right wing political and religious goals. Fundamentalists attempted to refuse seating for messengers from the church where President Clinton had his church membership. SBC affirmed a report critical of membership in Freemasons. Gary Leazer was fired from the HMB for explaining the meaning of that vote to Masons at a Masonic meeting.

more....

[Critters2]

21. These probably weren't SBC

It's possible, but Baptists in Connecticut are more likely to be American Baptists--the spiritual descendants of Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and a proponent of freedom of religion and separation of church and state. The ABC is still relatively strong in New England. I attended an ABC seminary near Boston.

[Critters2]

24. Just checked--neither SBC nor ABC

Their website lists them as members of the American Association of Conservative Baptists. Hmmm...another Baptist group. These folks sure can't seem to get along.

[bobbieinok]

26. you're probably right.....American Baptists are liberal

raised in SBC in OK and TX, I attended American Baptist churches in CA and IA after graduation from college

edited to add

but Bill Moyers and Jimmy Carter (mentioned in post I replied to) were Southern Baptists.... Moyers attended Southwestern Seminary (SBC)

http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=932

....

. In 1957 he entered the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary, earning a divinity degree and becoming an ordained minister in 1959. By then he had worked as a minister and preacher, and he briefly accepted a lectureship in Christian ethics at Baylor University.

"I thought it was a call to the ministry," Moyers later told one interviewer, "but actually it was a wrong number."

more....

[dubya_dubya_III]

32. Religious Fascism

Violent, criminal intolerance arising from evilly hateful gross misinterpretation of fundamentalist dogma are horrific forces to quell, but we must or all is lost. The Confederacy taught us all a lesson about how elite. noble, pious proselytizers would gladly kill millions to support and maintain bald faced tyranny with the corrupt approval of a distorted abuse of one sentence of happenstance clipped from a dusty corner of the ragged old menu of Christian Socialism....


Slaves obey thy master

[fishwax]

3. now if they were catholic, they would be drinking the blood of christ

instead of welch's grape juice, and I'm sure the process of transubstantiation would have rid the liquid of any poisons.

But seriously, this is a weird story. I'm glad nobody was seriously injured, and I hope they find out who did it.

I'm starting to get a wee suspicious about all these incidents which right-wing fundamentalists can try to spin as hate crimes against Christians.

[booksenkatz]

7. Was Parlock in the area at the time? nt

[fishwax]

8. haha! good question. I'd forgotten about him n/t

[zbdent]

4. Are they sure this isn't the church where the Wendy's lawsuit

people were members of? Hmmm . . . sounds like they want a "frivolous" lawsuit . . . :sarcasm:

[ClintonTyree]

5. Oh, I thought they were squeezing churches for their juice now......

mmmmm...church juice.

[SquireJons]

27. Thanks Heavens for the Church of the FSM

There can be only One.

[Ben Ceremos]

28. On doctrinal grounds

I wish to offer the insight that the FSM, (Peace be Under Her/Him), is actually 2 "gender-identified" creative tendencies, as the Mother of the FSM(PBUH) had always been before the religion of blood-drinkers and cannibalism and god-sacrifice performed genital mutilation on the "holy" concept, reducing humanity to the worship of violence and hatred. Luckily, with the return of the Word to the people of the earth, we now know that the true nature of the FSM (PBUH) is sceptical love and inquiry after facts. I offer this in the name of our one true lord, the Sun that shines high in the sky, bringing light and warmth to us all in the dark night of our being. A Man/A Woman. Ben

[Igel]

39. But that's beside the point. Think "bumpersticker":

"The FSM has balls."

[Der Blaue Engel]

6. A badly orchestrated Jim Jones? n/t

[MADem]

10. OK, now I am starting to wonder if someone or some group is targeting

BAPTISTS?????

I realize they are large in number, but it seems like that particular brand of Christianity is getting whacked pretty damn regularly, lately.

[Lars39]

14. It could still wind up being someone in the congregation.

I remember a case profiled on tv where they had narrowed a poisoning situation down to someone in the congregation.
I don't think they ever did figure out who did it.

[rodeodance]

11. The substance is not life-threatening, he said.--but whow. this is serious

Police have also ruled out common poisons such as cyanide and arsenic. The substance is difficult to identify because it is made of multiple ingredients, Komm said. A sample is undergoing additional testing at the state police toxicology lab.

The substance is not life-threatening, he said.

"Welch's is not involved. We're certain of that," Komm said. "We've got two venues. We've got CVS and we've got the church, and I think it's more probable that it happened at the church."

Police have no suspects and say no threats have been made against the church.

[formercia]

12. Darien is in Connecticut.

lots of rich folks live there.

[wordpix2]

37. wealthy town

[goforit]

41. Darien, a small town, next to Stamford where Lieberman is from, and

next to Greenwich where the entire Bush family is originally from.
Believe me when I say these towns are small....real small!
Conn, has been one of my past territories and it amazes me all
the crimes that has spawn from this area.

[951-Riverside]

13. The deacon did it to get his Church "on the map" case closed

...oh wait "men of God" are never capable of doing such things.

[Critters2]

22. Baptists don't have "a deacon"

They have a whole Board of Deacons. I suppose they could've done it.

[Maddy McCall]

31. Yeah, but usually one deacon prepares the bread and juice.

I know that, in the church in which I was raised, the juice and wafers were easily accessible to anyone who wanted access to them--they were just in an unlocked cabinet in the church kitchen.

When I was a kid, I helped my dad prepare the platters of juice cups and wafers several times.

[Blue_Tires]

16. it's probably just a brat kid playing a prank or a dare

nothing more, nothing less....

[goforit]

42. Nah!!!......This definitely looks like some in-fighting to me.

[KansDem]

17. Isn't this terrorism using a chemical weapon?

Just wondering... :shrug:

[politicat]

18. Sounds like eyedrop poisoning....

It's a popular urban legend that it will cause diarrhea (not true) but little more than that (also not true.)

I wonder if this, too, is a primarily black church.

[connecticut yankee]

19. Not in Darien

That town is about as white as you can get.

[formercia]

23. I grew up there

the town listed 24 persons of color in 1960, all domestics. My sister went to Girl Scouts with Jackie Robinson's daughter. She found out from the family that Mr. Robinson tried to buy a house in Darien in the early 60's but every time he became interested in a property, something always came up to prevent the sale. The Robinsons finally purchased a house in Stamford. I'm sure it's different now, hell, they even allow Baptists.

[ticapnews]

20. Ann Coulter seems to have taken an interest in poisoning people...

Maybe the police should interview him.

[0007]

34. I think you're on to something big!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

25. Forty counts of attempted murder

I wonder if they will think it was worth it after they're caught.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

29. Jesus Juice?

Damn that Michael Jackson! :)

[Psephos]

30. lol n/t

[CreekDog]

33. Why Are They Using Grape Juice?!

"The church buys a new bottle of juice before its monthly communion service to guarantee its freshness."

Sheesh!

The Last Supper had wine, there was no "fresh juice" in the spring and in fact there was no fresh juice within days after it was made. It was wine. Grape juice was invented in the 1800's and thanks to the urgings of the Women's Christian Temperance Movement and its founder Frances Willard, was put into use in some American christian churches for communion. Egads.

The drives me crazy about the Baptists. I know, I attended a Baptist church.

The Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Episcopalians and Lutherans use wine because they actually believe that that Communion is more than symbolic and seek to practice it in the way it was done at the Last Supper.

Okay, my digression is done. :o)

[Igel]

40. There's still the argumentation that what was

used wasn't really fermented grape juice, but condensed grape juice produced from grapes that had been exposed to sulfur fumes (a handy fungicide). Apparently such a thing actually existed.

Personally, I rather like the idea of wine at the service. It's just a pity that it's usually doled out in small quantities. Then again, the church I was with did the wine/bread business once a year, and used really good wine.

[pitohui]

43. agreed grape juice is pure blasphemy

if they know better than jesus why bother to pretend they worship him?

[Pathwalker]

44. Baptists do not believe in drinking alcohol - it is considered a sin.

n/t

[pitohui]

45. yes they know better than jesus and THAT is a sin

the first miracle at cana was changing water into wine

sorry if a person calls himself a christian and yet claims to know better than jesus, who in the christian religion is GOD and knows better than we feeble humans the right and wrong of things, then that person is damned and they are a sinnah

i don't advocate poisoning baptists over the issue but the cold fact remains by their own bible they are going to burn in hell and their claims to be all holier-than-thou are pure-dee horse-puckey

[Maine-ah]

35. something similar happened up here

a couple of years ago (arsenic in the coffee)

A church member put poison in a coffee pot, authorities believe, and later committed suicide over the incident, in which a fellow church member died from drinking the coffee. Authorities continue to investigate whether others were involved in the crime, and are also trying to determine if possible disputes or tensions within the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church in New Sweden, were a factor in the crime. The church is a member congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the nation's biggest Lutheran body. The church has been in the process of searching for a new pastor, the ELCA News Service reported.

The victim of the poisoning, Walter Reid Morrill, 78, died on April 28, the day after he and other members of the church enjoyed a typical Sunday afternoon social-hour snack of coffee, sandwiches and cake.

Police said a suicide note left by fellow church member Daniel Bondeson--found dead at his home on 2 May, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound--appeared to link him to the incident, in which 15 others were poisoned, though none of them fatally. Bondeson, a potato farmer who did not attend church the day of the poisonings, killed himself after authorities publicly announced that the poisonings were a deliberate act, though perhaps meant to look like a natural event, as the groundwater in rural Maine often has traces of arsenic.

The incident has severely shaken the small congregation and drawn New Sweden, population of 162, unwanted national and international attention. The New York Times likened the case to a television murder mystery, and for days, the small town found itself besieged with reporters.
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_18278_ENG_HTM.htm

[Toucano]

36. It's supposed to be WINE, you sanctimonious twits.

Jesus DID NOT drink grape juice. You have brought on his wrath!!

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

38. I've heard of spiking the punch...