James 1:27 — Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
“Mainstream” (i.e., Big) religion continues to provide examples of why they have become irrelevant.
But, in the 7th inning stretch, I bet he stands for “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
I was a methodist until they became an evil church of satan. I AM NOW AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN A CHRISTIAN! I will NEVER be a methodist again.
LLS
The mistakes in this attitude are
1) belief that there is a lack of a standard to make an objective evaluation of cultures
2) acceptance of cultural relativism
How man succeeds in relation to the physical world provides an objective standard by which to judge the value of cultures.Man's survival, well being,and happiness, and life proper to a rational being depend on man's being able to gain and keep values such as knowledge and wealth.America is a culture where one is able to gain these real goods better than other cultures, and so deserves to be blessed by God.
A Methodist minister doesn’t believe in God?
Or he thinks that we don’t have the right to express OUR belief in God?
He has a problem.
You forgot the “douche-bag” alert.
I’m not sure I understand Mr. Marsh here.
His Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination before God. It further says that marriage is between a man and a woman (Jesus said that, actually).
Yet, saying a public prayer all together at a ball game - that’s over the line.
What isn’t over the line, of course, is unprotected anal sex between two men. Smoking in the same ball park, that won’t work, however. Smoking is bad for you. Smoking a pole that’s been in some dude’s hole, well that’s just another version of normal.
I’m going to pay more for insurance if I smoke. My friend Biff, however, he’s a non-smoker, but he pulls the train down at The Lavender Fist every Friday night. He’s a vegan, you see, and he pays a lower rate.
Mr. Marsh is about the same speed as a lot of ELCA pastors I’ve run into. I don’t know a lot of Methodists.
Bible study is fun in the ELCA, if you know which aisles of the store to avoid. In my church, a Lot is what you are supposed to give to the collection plate, not the name of a guy who was willing to offer his daughters up to be gang raped in order to protect the angels in his home from a bunch of buggerers.
Because I’m a minister, it might seem odd for me not to stand for “God Bless America,” too.
No, not odd. Not for his reasons (his verbiage is that of the theological liberal), but I find it entirely appropriate, especially for a servant of the word, to avoid mass displays of civil religion. Invoking God is serious business, and not to be done in a trifling way.
"I imagine that the God I believe in isn’t interested in dispensing special nationalistic blessings. "
Not now. The era of the Mosaic covenant and the ancient Israelite theocracy is definitively over. Contra the dispensationalists, it was typological and is now obsolete, and won't be coming back.
bunch of nonsense.
The guy is a psychologist who hasn’t worked as a minister for over ten years.
And my “progressive” friends are using this to demonize the Christian right, in the same way some Anti American Brits wrote similar tirades against the song after 911
What makes all of this ironic is that the song was written by Irving Berlin in 1917...he was a Jewish refugee from the anti Semetic pogroms of the czar....