The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Opinions on this article please?

I too, see the relevance Prof… thank you!

Love and blessings,
Bret

Hi both – and lovely to hear from you :smiley:

Glad I did a good turn there :stuck_out_tongue: – and thanks to Eric for bringing the good Doc’s post to our attention.

Yes its a very challenging narrative – unless we file it away with the ‘little dogs’ explanation which doesn’t do it justice (and I’ve seen many who agree with Ched Myers on this – and I’m not even sure that he was the first person to make this point).

I guess this narrative is also about ‘scandal’ – it seems that the woman’s request at first scandalises Jesus (as if she presumptuously making equal claims to God’s love – and therefore she is making a rival claim against Jewish exclusiveness). If we believe in the Incarnation we also believe that Jesus was limited by his human context – and this admits the possibility of spiritual growth in grace and truth in Jesus. Perhaps that is what is happening here; although Jesus is initially scandalised by the gentile woman- she is not scandalised by him (she could have responded to the name calling by saying – ‘Well I shouldn’t have expected any more from a male Jew’).She states her claim with ‘logic and fairness’ showing a faith beyond resentment – and it is this faith beyond scandal that is part of the healing.

Oh I think that Doc Beck probably crossed the line sometime ago. There is actually a tow part article on sexuality on his blog, and the first part deals with the first chapter of Romans in some detail (in a way that we would find interesting – and it might be good to look at his arguments here on this thread). Also I note that in his Powers blogs Doc. Beck give swarm tribute to William Stringfellow – a gay Episcopalian theologian in the 1960s.

All other regulars please read Doc Beck’s post – copied into this thread four posts ago – and tell us ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ about its relevance. :slight_smile:

By the way – there’s no reason why everyone should know that ‘midrash’ does not refer to a spotty belly :laughing: . Rather it is a form of Jewish Rabbinical interpretation of scripture that seeks to make a text of scripture relevant to pressing issues in the present day.

Midrash places the focus on the reader and the personal struggle of the reader to reach an acceptable moral application of the text. While it is always governed by the wording of the text, it allows for the reader to project his or her inner struggle into the text.

This relates to a discussion Sass and Johnny were having earlier in the thread.

Blessings

Dick

We may be reaching the end of this discussion. However, I’ll try and keep this going for a bit longer (I’d certainly like to have a good look at James Alison’s article on Romans Chapter 1-2 before I’m through because this is the article dear Rev Drew cited once to a less receptive audience. It’s a very thought provoking article but perhaps needs some commentary for a Protestant audience).

Anyway for now I’m going to copy Doc. Beck’s post looking at the terms ‘natural’ and unnatural’ in Paul. It very relevant to our discussion and you can find the original at -

experimentaltheology.blogspot.co … art-1.html

***Last week I finished Eugene Rogers’ book Sexuality and the Christian Body. I thought I’d devote a few posts to some of the main ideas in the book for any who are interested.

The book is a theological argument advocating for the inclusion of same-sex marriages into the Christian communion. Consequently, I don’t expect everyone to agree with Rogers’ argument. Regardless, what I found encouraging in Sexuality and the Christian Body was a vision of marriage that inspired me in my own marriage to Jana. More, Rogers offers a view of marriage that also lifts up singleness and celibacy. In short, regardless as to what you think about Rogers’ views on same-sex marriage, his theological treatment of marriage is, from a theological perspective, very inspiring. Or at least I found it so.

A key notion in Rogers’ book is that the vast majority of Christians need to recover their identity as Gentiles. This is important for a few different reasons. First, this recovery highlights the fact that we are not “by nature” children of God. We’ve been chosen and adopted. In the language of Paul we’ve been “grafted into” the tree of Israel. Second, this action of God, grafting in the Gentiles, highlights how the grace and election of God determines the people of God. We are not God’s children because of nature. We are God’s children because of election. This places election at the center of Christian notions of marriage (and celibacy) rather than a Darwinian focus on procreation. Marriage is grace, not biology. Finally, a recovery of our identity as Gentiles helps us understand why God’s actions toward the Gentiles was such a shock and offense to the Jews (both Christian and non-Christian). Importantly, this shock was very much focused on issues of holiness and morality.

Early in the book Rogers has us consider what he calls “the standard argument.” The argument is standard because it has been used throughout history, at various times and places, to argue for the moral inferiority of a marginalized class of people. Gender and race have been common targets. And a common example of this moral inferiority is evidence of sexual licentiousness. Thus, in the Middle East today we see the standard argument applied to women. Women are sexually promiscuous and, thus, require a variety of social restraints to keep them in check. This is also why women are blamed for adultery. The woman’s lust for the married man causes him to falter. A woman is a Jezebel, a temptress.

The standard argument was also applied to blacks in the American South during slavery and segregation. In particular, the black male had a voracious sexual appetite for white women. And blacks generally were considered to be more promiscuous than whites.

In both cases we see how immorality generally, and sexual licentiousness in particular, get attributed to natural kinds (e.g., race, gender). In the Old and New Testaments this same reasoning was applied to the Gentiles. As a natural kind the Gentiles were considered to be naturally prone to immorality and sexual deviance. Paul gives us the standard Jewish view of the morality of Gentiles in Romans 1:
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
The important thing to note in this passage is that this is a description of the Gentiles as a natural kind. They are naturally depraved and deviant. Consequently, they engage in acts that are “contrary to nature.” In all this we see another example of the standard argument, an argument that has been applied to all sorts of despised groups. Women. Blacks. Jews. And homosexuals in our time. What is important to note in all this is that it’s not just that Gentiles do unnatural things. It is, rather, that they are morally inferior by nature.

This understanding helps us recover the moral shock of God’s excessive grace in Galatians 3.28:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
We tend to read this passage as a condemnation of slavery and as a call for egalitarian gender relations. No doubt that is a part of the story. But what Rogers argues is that what we are seeing in Gal. 3.28 is a fusion of natural kinds. More, we are seeing a fusion of the morally inferior with the morally superior. In the 1st Century slaves, women and Gentiles were all considered to be morally inferior to the highest natural kind: The male Jew. For example, each group was characterized by the sexual perversions we’ve seen Paul describe in Romans 1.

So what we are witnessing in Gal. 3:28 is something really quite shocking. Galatians 3:28 isn’t about slavery or gender relations. It’s about morality and holiness. More, it’s about God’s fusion in Jesus Christ of natural kinds, kinds that were believed to represent either holiness or depravity.

And the shock of God’s actions goes even deeper. Later in Romans the phrase para phusin (“contrary to nature”) reemerges. Only this time it is applied not to homosexuality but to God! In Romans 11.24 Paul describes the action of God in grafting in the Gentiles to the tree of Israel (the vision of Galatians 3.28):
After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
Does Paul know what he’s doing here? Is he intentionally pulling para phusin from Romans 1 to make a parallel to God’s grace in Jesus Christ? The Gentiles behave “unnaturally” and God, in his grace, does something just as “unnatural,” he overrides the category of natural moral kinds to create one body in Christ. Surely the readers of Romans would have heard the overtones between Romans 1 and Romans 11, that their biases about what is “natural” or “unnatural” have been unnaturally reconfigured in the Kingdom of God.

How does Paul’s argument apply to the case of modern day homosexuality? Rogers is clear that Paul is not offering his arguments in Romans to legitimize same-sex unions in the church. But what he does argue for is that Paul’s arguments in Romans 1, Romans 11 and Galatians 3 are broadly isomorphic with the arguments offered to exclude same-sex unions from the church. That the arguments being made by the Jews to exclude the Gentiles are the same arguments being used to exclude same-sex couples from the life of the church.

In light of this, what we see in Paul is how the grace of God undermines the standard argument, an argument that there are kinds of people who are, by nature, morally inferior. And that these morally inferior natures cannot be “grafted into” in the church.

This is by no means the end of the discussion, but it does suggest that God does some very strange things when it comes to “nature.” In fact, God himself often acts “contrary to nature” to erase our judgments about what is or is not natural or unnatural. This suggests that in the same-sex union debates we may have to rethink “nature” in light of God’s election. God has chosen the Gentiles, by nature homosexuals and perverts, and has grafted them into the tree of Israel. God overrides the standard argument in the minds of the Jews and, in doing so, also acts “contrary to nature.” Such actions on the part of God should give us moderns pause when we reason about “nature” in the same-sex attraction debates.

How can you be certain of what is natural or unnatural worshiping a God who acts para phusin?***

Does this make sense/speak to anyone’s condition?

Hi All –

Well this thread seems to have dried up. However, I have had private communications from my American Universalist cousins about it – and it’s all been very fair minded and pleasant to my ears across the pond :smiley: .

I think the heart of these communications has to do with a shared abhorrence of homophobia, and an affirmation of compassion towards gay people, but with a qualification that some more space needs to be dedicated to reviewing the Biblical evidence on this thread now. ‘How problematic/unclear is this evidence?’ Even more difficult is the question, ‘If the Bible doesn’t actually condemned what we call a gay relationship today then is it not a problem that it doesn’t seem to affirm these either?’

Some of these issues have already been looked at on this thread in a diffuse/soft focus way– but I think it completely fair that we look at them in a more concentrated way before this thread is ‘cooked’. I propose that we take a couple of weeks off and during this time I will post some materials on the supplementary articles thread that I think are relevant (and anyone else can do the same). Then we can come back refreshed and have a focussed discussion to draw the threads together (because the number of readers of this thread suggests that many on this site see it as an important or a perplexing issue). Then we can agree and agree to differ in clarity and with charity. What d’ya think?

The two articles I’ve posted on the supplementary thread that I think are relevant are the Wikipedia ones on homosexuality and the Bible. Have a look/scan at -

Hope it whets your appetite and that you’ll look at the original. The articles are not perfect but at least they look at the lexical issues systematically and try to give balance in giving conservative and liberal arguments. It’s the best resource that I – a complete non-expert -have been able to find at the moment

Also I recommend the Philip Yancey interview; especially to American Christians perplexed by this debate (Eric and Andy have both shown appreciation of this). Philip Yancey doesn’t hide his difficulties but he also manages to be very compassionate/loving towards gay people (Philip Yancey is an editor of the mainstream Evangelical publication ‘Christianity Today’ – so he has impeccable credentials of mainstream respectability). I’ve posted the article here at -

Dick

I don’t think we’ve run out of steam just yet, old bean. We - or I, at least - need a bit more time to properly digest all that has been said so far. I’d agree that we haven’t yet finished the collective exegesis on supposed NT references to homosexuality.

As for the Bible not affirming gay relationships, would it be mischievous to bring up David and Jonathan again? :smiley:

Peace and love

Johnny

Hi Johnny -

How nice to hear from you. No of course it wouldn’t be mischevious of you. Tis’ a perfectly legitimate question - and I understand people are divided about the answer - as ever :confused: . Och well, we can but do our best.

Hi Dick

Don’t know if you caught the discussion on Radio 4’s *Today *programme yesterday about gay marriage, which really brought the issue into sharp relief for me. They had on a top guy from the Quakers and a Canon who represented a pressure group calling itself Anglican Mainstream – although I suspect they are anything but.

The Quaker guy made an eloquent case for having a mechanism – ie Christian marriage - for gay couples to affirm faithful, committed same sex relationships in a properly spiritual way, something civil partnerships don’t achieve. The Anglican Mainstream guy trotted out the tired line, with no evidence, by the way, that the Christian scriptures “clearly state” that homosexual relationships are not on a par with heterosexual ones, hence no organisation calling itself Christian ought to have the right to conduct gay marriages.

What struck me was the openness, inclusiveness and tolerance of the Quaker guy, contrasted with the narrow-minded self-righteous exclusivity of the Anglican guy. Not only did he (the Anglican guy) think it was wrong for gay people to get married in a church, he wanted to impose that opinion on all other people and church groups. In so doing he epitomised what I – along, I suspect, with a sizeable majority of the British population, at least – find most insufferable about ‘religious’ folk: this obsessive desire to impose their own personal view of life on the rest of us. They base this view on their own interpretations of scripture, and blithely affirm that it is the only correct, ‘orthodox’ or ‘biblical’ view – often going so far as to condemn anybody who disagrees with them as a liberal at best, or a heretic at worst.

By far their biggest hobby horses are, as you’d expect, homosexuality and abortion. A cursory exploration of their website gives you the distinct impression that they are a single issue organisation – that single issue being to promote the ‘traditional’, ‘orthodox’ view of marriage, and to oppose equality for gay people.

They’re basically a bunch of homophobes, in my opinion, although the guy on the radio was careful not to say anything overtly homophobic.

Here it is, in the words of another website they link directly to and clearly endorse (my emphases):

This is the sort of entrenched anti-gay sentiment we are fighting against. We may have won a few skirmishes, but as long as this sort of offensive propaganda continues to be broadcast in the name of the Anglican Church, and the real Anglican Church does nothing to dispel it, the war is very far from being won.

Cheers

Johnny

Hi Johnny –

You are right; the Quakers in the UK have been in the foreground of promoting tolerance and affirmation for gay people. They published a booklet in 1963 ‘Towards a Quaker View of Sex’ while the findings of the Wolfenden report were still under discussion: in this they were the first Christian denomination in the UK to have a representative group affirm gay relationships. See the following links for further information (one of the representatives on the Wolfenden committee was a Canon in the Church of England):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenden_report

religioustolerance.org/hom_quak.htm/

The view of the UK Quakers about gay relationships and gay partnerships is not shared by Quakers worldwide – especially elements within the Evangelicals Quakers in America and Africa – Evangelical friends are often hard to differentiate from ordinary evangelicals and have the same variety of fundamentalist, conservative, and progressive/liberal elements within them. The Early Friends did not express any view on gay relationships that I know of (it wasn’t an issues for open discussion at the time). However, I would argue – as would many British Quakers – that the current stance of UK Quakers about gay issue is in line with the early witness of the Society of Friends against slavery and for full equality of women (as people and as ‘priests’).

I know that Quakers in the UK have allowed Quaker ‘marriage’ for gay people for a tem now. Quakers in the UK – in line with the early Firmed – do not have priests/pastors. In a UK Quaker marriage, at some time in a meeting for worship the couple to be married will get up and take each other in marriage – and everyone who attends the meeting has to sign the marriage certificate as witnesses. I think it’s status is a purely civil one – because Quakers believe that everything is sacred so distinctions between civil and religious, sacred and profane are irrelevant.

‘Anglican Mainstream’ is, as you say, a pressure group within the Anglican Church (a small but noisy one). The ‘Mainstream’ bit begs many questions – they don’t represent the mainstream broad Church. The name is a marketing ploy by a group of extreme conservative Anglicans – probably aligned to the Anglican Church in Nigeria for all I know. They are key exponents of gay cure therapy

There is also a very strong movement supportive of gay relationships within the Church of England – certainly not afraid to speak out. See the following link

inclusive-church.org.uk/about

I think Anglican Mainstream and other extreme conservative pressure groups in the Church of England are not on a par with evangelical Christians – in the Church of England and in other denominations worldwide - of real goodwill towards gay people who are uncertain of how to square this with their Biblical faith. I think there is a huge difference.
Oh - and I’ve put an article about David and Jonathan on the resources thread.

Tiddly pom

Dick

P.S. There is some informative stuff on the Ekkleisa site about Anglican Mainstream (so called). For example –

***Dr Lisa Severine Nolland has written on the Anglican Mainstream website comparing gay Christians to the BNP.
Her argument in a nutshell is that the Greenbelt arts festival wouldn’t give a platform to the racist party’s views, so why is it giving Christians who believe in the inclusion of gay and lesbian people a platform?

The argument clearly falls apart as soon as you consider it. The churches have with one voice rejected the hate-filled messages of the BNP [the BNP are the racist fascist party in England – that thankfully have only a minority following currently] whilst there are many in the churches who affirm gay and lesbian people.

But my main concern is that she seems completely blind to the kind of message that such a comparison between gay Christians and the BNP sends out about the churches attitude to LGBT people.

At least I hope she is blind to it, and this is just a terrible error of judgement. If she is in fact aware of the impact that such a comparison might have, she is doing something that I think even most conservatives within the church would consider a step too far.***

Also see the following two Ekklesia links about gay cure therapies and the ‘Anglican Mainstream’ (so called)

ekklesia.co.uk/node/11075

ekklesia.co.uk/node/11219

Hi Johnny,

I didn’t hear that discussion but I’m not at all surprised at the line taken by the Anglican Mainstream spokesman. It is a pressure group which was formed to oppose the appointment of Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading (in 2002 I think). I joined them initially and signed the petition against John’s appointment. I held the conservative evangelical party view on homosexuality myself back in those days. I remember attending a meeting at a church in Reading (Greyfriars I think) at which the main speaker was Greg Venables, Bishop of the Southern Cone. The meeting was like a highly charged political rally and that’s when I started to wonder if I was on the right side of the issue. Over the following months I became more and more uncomfortable with the harsh, pharasaical tone of propaganda coming out of Anglican Mainstream. Their articles, actions, private and public comments seemed to me neither christlike nor biblical and I eventually cut myself off from them and started to explore alternatives.

There are some good people in Anglican Mainstream and many of its members are compassionate and well motivated Christians. However it is basically a single issue pressure group, with all the weaknesses that entails. Use of the word mainstream is rather wishful thinking. The C of E has a knack for ironic titles - Forward in Faith and Reform are two of my other favourites. All jolly polite and well intentioned I’m sure, but sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Blessings to all, Drew

Hi Drew -

Thank goodness you are back :smiley: !!! Lovely to see (pic)/hear you again!!! (I get confused by all of the different pressure groups within the C. of E. - not being inlvoved in the politics in a big way). And it’s good to hear that Anglican Mainstream also has some well intentioned people in them (although their leaders are not serving these people well).

Dick

I was just thinking how difficult it is to discuss any controversial fairly – even when it is very important to discuss the issue (and discuss it fairly). ‘Truth is the first casualty in war’ as they say – and that’s also true of wars of ‘mental fight’.

It might seem that , in an earlier post, I was lionising the UK Quakers for humane attitudes towards gay partnerships, and for being uniquely well in advance of their times. Well they do tend to be ahead in initially unpopular matters that concern compassion. However, in the UK the Quakers are relatively thin on the ground/small in number, tend to be well educated and employed in education and the caring professions these days, and tend to be ‘Arts and Crafts’ in outlook (gross caricature but fairly accurate). So in social attitudes they belong to a wider group in UK society – including sectors in the Church of England – that are open to the idea that change can be progressive and can sometimes be grace filled (even when change entails challenging the letter of sacred tradition and scripture in the name of the spirit ).

The Church of England is huge – and has every variety of everything under the sun within it!!! The Anglican Communion is even larger. It’s impossible to make any big generalisations about it. At the moment this huge group of Christians are still talking – just about; but the conversation is difficult, and becoming increasingly so.

By the way Johnny; if you want to have a chat specifically about David and Jonathan, I think I’ve now got some sort of view on this - for what it’s worth (although I’d not thought about it much before). You kick off old china –

Dick :slight_smile:

Hi Dick

Am currently off work, feeling ill and extremely sorry for myself. Both my wife and I have been laid low by a flu-ey type virus. She’s still in bed, but I’ve got up to make myself a cup of tea and have a quick look on the forum.

I read the article you posted the other day on David and Jonathan. My honest response is that I think the author goes too far in asserting that the Bible definitely affirms their homosexual relationship. But I don’t know enough about Jewish culture of the time to know for sure. Can you fill me on some context, perhaps?

All the very best from a sickly, self-pitying Brit :frowning: :slight_smile:

Johnny

Johnny - sorry about that. Wish you speedy recovery. Have to go out to work now - btu will get back to you. :slight_smile:

Well Johnny –

Yes I’ve seen an American Rainbow Alliance website page that breezily gives the passages from Kings about the love of David and Jonathan as incontrovertible proof that they were a gay couple (presumably in the modern sense). I speak as a complete non-expert, but think like you that I can safely say that this is pressing things a bit too far.

However, from the Wiki article that I posted I note that the contrary argument is that David and Jonathan’s love was ‘purely Platonic’. This is to use the term ‘Platonic love’ very loosely. The term comes from Plato’s Symposium where the Eros/desire born of ‘poverty and hunger’ that is celebrated is homoerotic. It begins in the love of one man for the physical beauty of another and then the desire transcends it immediate object as it awakens a desire for the Eternal Form of Beauty in a Platonic heaven. Now the desire that David and Jonathan express for each other certainly seems of an intensity that is rooted in erotic longing – whether or not it was physically consummated or not is impossible to say; but its erotic basis seems clear to me and this does not seem to embarrass the author of Kings. As far as I know the only sin of the flesh for which David is really held accountable is the indirect murder of Uriah the Hittite so that he can have access to Uriah’s wife. Otherwise David’s sensuality is not censured, including the tragic-comic detail of Abishag the Shulamite maid snuggling up to the ageing King to revivify him – although sadly he is impotent and near death. Of course, in the rewrite of this history, in the Book of Chronicles, David’s sensual abandon is toned down (and Abishag is written out of the story).
It seems to me that the author of Kings is not embarrassed to speak of homoerotic passions that centre on honour and the loyalty of comrades in arms (that are not hard to come by in the poetry of warriors in most cultures). I can’t imagine any puritan fundamentalist today celebrating the love of comrades in such terms – because they would fear being in breach of Leviticus and of standing under the judgement of Sodom.

Some will argue that this is to misunderstand the cultural context – in these times men were far more comfortable showing emotion together. Well that’s true in a way, and it’s still true in the middle east today (and in other cultures that are strong on machismo)– where men kiss each other full on the mouth as a greeting in some countries, and walk down the road hand in hand together without thinking they are gay. But in cultures where women are confined to the private sphere – as David’s wives and concubines would have been – the whole concept of homosexuality is different it seems. Men who do have physical relationships don’t necessarily consider they are gay – so long as they are married (and don’t consider themselves in breach of Divine command, so long as they don’t have full sex – everything else is OK).

I once read an essay by James Alison in which he claimed that the modern concept of the gay man – out of the closet –has much to do with the feminisation of the work place. Now women are in the public sphere they use their ‘gaydar’ intuition to discern men’s sexuality by weighing up the response of individual men to them as women. Perhaps he’s got a point – this may well be a big reason for the shift towards openness and emotional intelligence regarding gay relationships.

Yes, I can see why gay men could see the love of David and Jonathan as affirmation of the love they have together (however different the context may be). I can see that the fact that the love of David and Jonathan is bonded in loyalty and honour might also be important as an affirmation.

Any thoughts? (and hope you are feeling a bit less groggy)

Dick

Just to say that trying to see both/all sides of this one is hard for me too. I’ve looked dilligently at information giving different perspectives on the issue. And some of the stuff really gets me down. I know that at least one very intelligent and gentle Christian in the Church of England – Richard Holloway former Bishop of Edinburgh – actually lost his faith though too much exposure to Christian rage against gay people; and I can understand this having looked at the following site today on which some Christians give their responses to some thoughts of ex-President Jimmy Carter’s -

theblaze.com/stories/jimmy-c … -about-it/

Greetings, Dick

The Blaze is run by one Glenn Beck, an ultra-conservative media personality who proved to be too whacked in the head even for the FOX News Channel of Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes. He is a darling only of the most extreme of the extreme American right. IMO, hatred, innuendo and even outright falsehood are virtually the only currencies he trades in and are the sole source of his fame and fortune, such as it is. He is widely considered a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac of the first degree.

Sadly, the views expressed by commenters on that website are indeed representative of a small segment of our population. Yet, happily, the vile commentary you see there is, I believe, profoundly offensive and definitively repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including most Christians who would label themselves as conservative.

I know it is heartbreaking to read such vitriol emanating from some who claim to have Jesus Christ living within them. It just bears remembering that the Internet has a deceptive way of amplifying even the faintest sounds.

Blessings to you, friend!

Andy

I personally don’t give a flip what a ‘organized religion that calls itself a church’ thinks about Homosexual marriages, it doesn’t matter because those are men’s opinions just like anyone else. They are not an authority, never will be any longer to those who recognize what is true in Grace and Love.

Hurm… looks like this thread has gone dormant… :neutral_face:

I was gonna say, I recently came across a couple books that you guys might find interesting…

The first is called Wonderfully, Fearfully Made by Fr. Robert L. Aprin, a gay Catholic priest who contracted AIDS…

The second is called Pastor, I Am Gay by Howard Bass, an American Baptist minister who is open and accepting of gays…

Just thought you guys (i.e. Prof) may want to give them a look. :slight_smile:

Blessings and hopefully we can get this thread going again, if it’s meant to. :slight_smile:

Matt

Hi Matt - I’m just having a bit of a summer break from posting (apart from anything else I’ve got very strained eyes :open_mouth: at the moment so want to go easy on them :unamused:). Will return soon and wish you and all here (Bret, Eric, Sass, Andy, Anthony etc - in no particular order - a wonderful summer (I do have some more stuff to post here later which may get the conversation started again)

love

Dick (The Pseudo Prof) :slight_smile:

P.S. I heard a good Jewish joke the other day…