ATLANTA (WXIA) – 11Alive's Matt Pearl sat down Thursday afternoon with the pastor of a Carroll County church at the center of a media firestorm – the church behind the mass baptism that took place at Villa Rica High School last month.
Pastor Kevin Williams contacted Pearl Thursday and said he was happy to talk about the football team's decision to do the mass baptism on the football field with a coach involved. He defended the event, and then went on to say that he would have done some things differently.
"How did this baptism – this event -- come about?" Pearl asked.
"We were talking about baptism, and doing it at the church. Well Coach wanted to know -- because of his love for football, his passion, he wanted to know, 'Could we do it on the field?'" Williams said.
He said if he had it to do over again, he might have done one major thing differently -- "I'd have probably talked to the school board, because they had no idea this was happening."
"The question about this story has never been whether these children should have been baptized," Williams said. "The question is, should it have been done where it was done, with specifically the coach's involvement, which typically the courts don't hold a very high impression of.
"We tried to have it at a calculated time when it wouldn't be against any policies that we knew of, and that's just kind of what happened. And there was never any intent to cause a problem."
"When the coach gets involved, though, that seems to be the biggest red flag here," Pearl said. "Was that ever discussed?"
"Not really -- there was just a lot of excitement," Williams said. "A lot of people were just super excited for him."
"The courts are pretty clear that a school employee on school grounds cannot partake in religious activities with students," Pearl said. "Is this a case where your personal feelings don't coincide with what the courts are saying?"
"Oh, definitely -- I don't agree with that at all," Williams replied. "I mean, that may be some rule that they have, but that's not any rule I go by. I go by the Bible; that's what I follow. That's my guidelines. I want to respect the law of the land, I do -- but I have a higher power that I answer to."
"Would you do this differently if you went through with this again?" Pearl asked.
"If I had talked to the school board or anybody from the school – 'cause I know all those guys. If they asked me not to do it, I would have obliged not to do it. But it was asked, and we obliged, and we did it -- and I don't regret it."
Pearl and the pastor spoke on camera for nearly 20 minutes about a variety of topics – which, of course, falls outside the scope of what can be covered in a single newscast. You can watch Matt's full conversation with Williams here.
