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Christian Issues

Breaking Down Southern Baptist Rhetoric Against Same-Sex Marriage

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues, Current Events

While Southern Baptists have been vocally repenting of their support for slavery and Jim Crow since 1995, they have done virtually nothing to actually make amends. One of their own members, an African American pastor, noted that if the SBC was serious they would champion policies that would actually make a difference, such as criminal justice reform, education reform, and the alleviation of child poverty (and we could add others like immigration reform and confronting voter suppression laws).

So, did Southern Baptists make any attempt to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance when they met in Columbus for their annual meeting (the hate killing of the Emanuel Nine took place after their convention)? Oh no, it was oppositional energy that fueled the fire, not a vision for the common good.

Instead they passed a resolution against same-sex marriage asserting that traditional marriage is the clear teaching of Scripture. In a statement supporting the resolution issued by current SBC President Ronnie Floyd and signed by 16 past presidents they affirmed, among other things,
What the Bible says about marriage is clear, definitive, and unchanging. We affirm biblical, traditional, natural marriage as the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant for a lifetime. The Scriptures’ teaching on marriage is not negotiable.
Ronnie Floyd, addressing the Convention said,
Our first commitment is to God and his word – nothing else and no one else. And I want to remind everyone today, humbly,… [Read more…] about Breaking Down Southern Baptist Rhetoric Against Same-Sex Marriage

Will Someone Please Tell Christians That the LGBT War Is Over?

by in Christian Issues, Current Events, LGBT

View image | gettyimages.com

On March 9, 1974, Hiroo Onoda, a Lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army, at the behest of his former commanding officer, turned over his sword and rifle and formally surrendered to authorities, thus ending his 30-year holdout in the Philippines where he had continued to fight in a war that he refused to believe was over. He was one of the last Japanese holdouts, soldiers who, due to poor communications or misguided loyalty, continued to fight for months and years after Japan’s surrender.

On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court, in its decision on Obergefell v. Hodges, declared that same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states. But Christians across the country refuse to accept the implications of that decision. Like the Japanese holdouts after Word War II, they continue to fight on, seemingly oblivious to the political, social and theological realities around them.

Here are a few excerpts (reproduced verbatim) from some of the emails received by the NALT Christians Project in just the last 3 days from Christians who have hunkered down in their theological bunkers and continue to take pot shots at anyone who poses a challenge to their beliefs:

While the bible does not mention homosexuality in the majority of scripture, the fact that is in mentioned and clearly defined as sin, is enough.

—————————————————-

u err, and teach others to do the same. which makes u a… [Read more…] about Will Someone Please Tell Christians That the LGBT War Is Over?

A Transgender Christian Loses Her Church but Keeps Her Faith

by Brettany Renee Blatchley in Christian Issues, LGBT

This is a long and difficult road for many of us — queer and straight…

When the “other” kind of person turns out to be someone who is respected, liked, and loved, then who that person is will collide with who that person is assumed to be. This is a God-moment when seeds of reconciliation or rejection are sown.

…God has been leading me to connect with various Christian congregations in my area, growing and developing a godly, sisterly relationship with them. Because I live “simply open” about who and what I am, at some point when our relationship deepens, the fact that I am a married Christian woman of transgender experience will become apparent in natural, relaxed, and even winsome ways — in God’s time…

…Last Wednesday, at an “agape” potluck and Bible study, it was “time” — my status and authority as a transgender person became very relevant to the discussion and I gently made my disclosure, acting in great vulnerability from a position of spiritual strength…

…This Sunday at church was a good time of worship. Much was preached, sung and prayed about how this church, this part of Christ’s Body, was especially attuned and welcoming to people on the margins, the people “other churches” reject. We were admonished that “they will come here for Jesus’ love: be prepared!” They didn’t realize that I had already been among them as an “unpresentable” part of The Body. I was cautiously optimistic…

…Last evening, I again joined the “agape” group with my spouse. We… [Read more…] about A Transgender Christian Loses Her Church but Keeps Her Faith

A Christian Response to the Transgender Discussion

by in Christian Issues, LGBT

Caitlyn Jenner’s public transformation on the cover of Vanity Fair last week forcefully pulled the “T” from the end of “LGBT” and placed it squarely at the forefront of public discourse.

This past weekend at least nine newspapers around the country published front-page stories profiling local transgender residents. On Monday Christianity Today published a seven page story on “Understanding the Transgender Phenomenon.”

As stories about Jenner and other transgender people piled up in my news feed, spread across my television screen and seeped into everyday conversation with friends and coworkers, I realized that something extraordinary was happening.

People were actually talking about transgender issues. A subject previously considered taboo in many circles and the source of awkward jokes in others was now being discussed forthrightly. Honest questions were being asked, challenging issues were being brought out into the open.

Of course the commentary on Jenner ran the gamut that one might expect.

Conservative Christians spewed their typical vitriol:
“For the very reason that homosexual practice is wrong, transsexualism is all the more wrong because it is an even greater complaint against God for the way that one is made.” — Robert Gagnon


“What he [Jenner] most closely resembles is a mentally disordered man who is being manipulated by disingenuous liberals and self-obsessed gay activists.”
 — Matt Walsh


Other Christians planted their flag in… [Read more…] about A Christian Response to the Transgender Discussion

The Duggars: Privilege and Personal Irresponsibility

by Don M. Burrows in Christian Issues, Current Events, Fundamentalism

View image | gettyimages.com

Nothing has laid bare how obviously conservatives’ own privilege trumps the “personal responsibility” they demand of everyone else than the ongoing saga regarding Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s oldest progeny and his apparent teenage preoccupation with molesting young girls.

On the one hand, the Duggars are so committed to sexual responsibility that they adhere to a rigid gender and procreative ideology that eschews all sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage, birth control (even within said marriage), and of course abortion, to the point that they will blithely imply that anyone who falls outside their sexual orthodoxy is prone to molest and prey on children.

On the other hand is their son Josh Duggar, who we now know made it a recurring habit as a youngster to not only molest females while they slept, but to do so to his own sisters, who were as young as 5 years old, annihilating pretty much every sexual taboo across cultures worldwide.

Yet of course, the Duggars are the true victims, as they told Fox News Wednesday night, because:

Liberals have it in for them, because they’re “Christian.” Actually, if liberals have it in for the Duggars, it’s because of the very public campaigns they’ve waged against equal rights for gays and lesbians throughout the years. Liberals don’t have a problem with “Christians” overall. Many liberals are Christians.
The wicked Springdale Police Department released a report via the… [Read more…] about The Duggars: Privilege and Personal Irresponsibility

Again: Raping Angels and Being Gay Are Not the Same Thing

by Don M. Burrows in Christian Issues, LGBT

There is perhaps no more abused passage in the Bible for condemning gays and lesbians than the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. We’ve discussed other major anti-gay clobber passages on this blog multiple times, including the ambiguous Romans 1 with its mysterious interlocutor, and the equally perplexing 1 Corinthians 6:9 with its invented terms for sexuality.

But fundamentalists return time and again to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, routinely dismissing the conclusions of informed critical analysis and instead presenting this text as a definitive warning of the impending destruction that awaits those who embrace the homosexual “lifestyle.”

They argue for this understanding despite the plain and literal definition of the sin of Sodom in Ezekiel 16:49:
This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
In light of Ezekiel’s explication, it should go without question that hostile, wandering townsfolk violating the ancient premise of xenia, or hospitality, by demanding to rape the guests in your home is in no way analogous to two men wanting to share a last name and a life-insurance policy — yet the absurdity persists.

It persists despite the fact that Lot, held up as Sodom’s model citizen, offers his daughters to the rapists and yet is still spared by the Lord.

It persists despite the fact that there are parallel hospitality myths from antiquity of gods who take the form… [Read more…] about Again: Raping Angels and Being Gay Are Not the Same Thing

Welcome to the Duggar's world of Independent Fundamental Baptists

by in Christian Issues

[This is an updated version of a post which originally appeared on my blog.]

The Duggar family, so much in the news lately, are Independent Fundamental Baptists (IFB), a loosely affiliated, singularly cultish denomination of Christian fundamentalists.

According to the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life there are approximately 7.85 million IFB members in America. It’s unlikely there isn’t an IFB church within a half-hour drive from your house.

Some of the beliefs and practices characteristic of Independent Fundamental Baptists are:

→ The King James Version is the only true Word of God; all other translations of the Bible are the work of the devil. Meant to be taken literally, the KJV is inspired, inerrant, infallible, and the supreme and final authority in all things. It is therefore literally true that, for instance, God created the world in six 24-hour days; Satan is real, the enemy of God, and the instigator of all false religions; the theory of evolution is unscriptural and therefore without merit; and hell is a real place where all who die without having accepted Christ as their Savior suffer consciously being roasted alive for eternity.

→ Each IFB church is wholly autonomous and free from any outside governance. Its pastor is divinely appointed and accountable to no earthly authority. He speaks for God, and God alone may judge him. To question the sovereignty of the pastor is to disturb God’s order and invite upon oneself separation from the church, and… [Read more…] about Welcome to the Duggar's world of Independent Fundamental Baptists

Southern Baptists, Racism, and Biblical Inerrancy

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues

Writing in The Atlantic, Emma Green attempts (and does so quite admirably) to navigate the turbulent history of Southern Baptists’ previous support of racism to their now vocal opposition. She notes that since 1995 the SBC has been publicly repenting of its history of racial discrimination, which marks a decisive turn from the denomination’s beginnings when it “helped define the history of American racism.”

Southern Baptists who defended slavery and then later segregation appealed to an inerrant scripture for their justification. Ironically, when Green spoke with pastors and church leaders in Nashville, most cited scripture as their justification for opposing racism.

While Southern Baptists believe that scripture is “truth without any mixture of error” it is obvious that Southern Baptists do not read the Bible without any mixture of error. Southern Baptists, along with everyone else, read the Bible as fallible, error-prone human beings who are about as likely to get things wrong as right.

Green also observes how Southern Baptists read the text with an emphasis on the individual. She spoke with SBC African American pastor Thabiti Anyabwile, who said,

Most of my African American brothers and sisters, we’ve had a group experience. Our experience in this country has been defined first and foremost by this pigment that we share. So when we have these conversations about how to make progress, African Americans go to group experience pretty quickly. We speak in “we”.… [Read more…] about Southern Baptists, Racism, and Biblical Inerrancy

To Christians who support RFRA laws: Grow Up!

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues

Are you as weary as I am in hearing all these well-to-do, materially prosperous and secure American Christians whining about being religiously persecuted because they cannot act on their exclusive theology in the marketplace and deny services to our LGBT sisters and brothers?

To all my financially secure, well-off persecuted Christian friends: Please, let it go. Give it up!

It doesn’t matter what your worldview is, or what your religious beliefs are: in the public arena, you have to treat everyone equally. This is not rocket science. It’s the best of our democracy.

Everyone seems to know this except sexists, racists, and conservative Christians (and maybe a few Supreme Court judges).

Besides, even if you do think same-sex marriage or partnership is wrong, shouldn’t you still welcome and accept everyone, the way Jesus did? He didn’t require prostitutes and tax collectors to stop doing what they were doing before he fed them and accepted them at the table.

“Come one and all,” said Jesus.

Shouldn’t Christians be saying, “Serve one and serve all”?

When the disciples argued with one another about who was the greatest, Jesus told them to stop acting like persons of power and prominence who liked to “lord” it over others; rather, they were to be servants of all (Mark 10:42-44).  

A contemporary application of Jesus’ teaching might be: “Certain persons in the world like to assert their power over those they do not like – denying them… [Read more…] about To Christians who support RFRA laws: Grow Up!

This Is How Bigotry Dies (To Thunderous Tantrums)

by Don M. Burrows in Christian Issues

What is with conservatives quoting Star Wars so often in their political discourse?

I’m referring, of course, to the line in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, where Natalie Portman’s character utters, in response to dictatorial powers being given to Chancellor Palpatine (the erstwhile Sith Lord), that “this is how liberty dies … to thunderous applause.”

I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen this applied with a straight face to President Obama’s democratic election, or his congressionally passed health-care mandate. Conservatives everywhere seem to think active-state liberalism is analogous to an intergalactic weakening of the representational monarchies of the Old Republic.

The latest to do so is (our favorite!) Albert Mohler, the Southern Baptist Convention’s resident pseudo-intellectual. I’ve written about Mohler before. Many times. So I’ve been anxiously awaiting his response to the kerfuffle in Indiana over that state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and this week, he didn’t disappoint.

Mohler, in a post titled “This is How Religious Liberty Dies,” complains about the “secular left,” a frequent boogeyman of right-wing nightmares, which sunk Indiana’s RFRA after it was revealed that it could be used to green-light discrimination against LGBT folks.

Mohler indicts the law’s detractors for misconstruing it, all the while leaving his readers under the mistaken impression that the Indiana law is simply a mirror to the federal one signed by Bill… [Read more…] about This Is How Bigotry Dies (To Thunderous Tantrums)