Posted on 08/17/2013 6:46:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A true Christian will be optimistic no matter what.
Russell Moore has only been in office a few months. I will read more about him and, for now, give him the benefit of the doubt. His comments about the Boy Scouts on the very day they made the decision to accept open homosexual youth members are printed below. Personally, I found his words troubling, i.e., mealy-mouth.
5/23/2013 – Boy Scouts overturn ban on gay members
(http://www.baptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=40372
… Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee President Frank Page, who had met with Scouting leaders and had urged them to maintain the current policy, said he was "deeply saddened" that the BSA overturned its "constitutionally protected expressive message that homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout Oath and Scout Law.
"We know that the pressures exerted against the voting members of the 1,400 chartered organizations by homosexual activist groups have been unrelenting," Page said. "We are grateful for each voting member who voted in the minority; but our sadness for the Scouting organization as a whole cannot be overstated."
Page said the vote "ushers in a sea-change in the credibility of the Boy Scouts of America as a viable boys' organization for millions of Americans who believe strongly in the principles of biblical morality. To claim that the Boys Scouts is the nation's foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training suddenly rings hollow."
"We continue to pray for our country. We believe we are in desperate need of a genuine spiritual awakening that will transform lives through the power of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," Page said.
Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land predicted a mass exodus of religious groups from the organization.
"Frankly, I can't imagine a Southern Baptist pastor who would continue to allow his church to sponsor a Boy Scout troop under these new rules," said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "I predict there will be a mass exodus of Southern Baptists and other conservative Christians from the Boy Scouts."
The "supposed compromise" satisfies no one and signals the BSA will only become more inclusive of gays, Land said.
"The supposed compromise takes away their best defense. In the year 2000, the Supreme Court ruled the Boy Scouts did not have to have homosexual Scout masters because the homosexual lifestyle was contrary to the core values of Scouts. If you're going to allow opening gay Scouts to participate in Scouting, then it's no longer a core value," Land said. "And so what we're going to see now is a flood of litigation by pro-homosexual groups arguing that the continuing ban on gay Scout Masters is … prejudice and they will win. They will win, because the Boy Scouts have stripped themselves of their defense the Supreme Court used."
Land advised Southern Baptist churches to withdraw their support of Scout troops and support the Royal Ambassadors ministry to boys.
The statement from the BSA leadership said the new membership policy is effective Jan. 1, 2014, allowing the organization enough time to implement the policy and communicate it to its 116,000 units. The statement also said the organization would not be distracted from its mission by a "single, divisive and unresolved societal issue." Leaders said there are no plans to review the issue further.
Russell Moore, president-elect of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said the decision lands the "sexual revolution's onward march" square in the middle of Scouting.
"Few, if any, are suggesting the Boy Scouts kick out boys based on their particular temptations. We don't, and shouldn't do that in our churches, much less in the Scouts," Moore told Baptist Press. "But this change is more than this. It doesn't speak in terms of temptations but in terms of the claiming of a sexually politicized identity as morally neutral."
Local Scouting troops sponsored by evangelical, Roman Catholic or Latter-day Saints congregations, Moore said, "will be pressured to mute a definition of 'morally straight' that includes a sexuality intended only for the lifelong one-flesh union of a man and a woman in marriage."
"Depending on how radically the BSA applies this new policy to local troops, I suspect many will be seeking an alternative to the Boy Scouts to train up boys toward a life of virtue," Moore said.
The revision of the membership policy "highlights how important it is for churches to speak clearly of both our love for all people, including our gay and lesbian neighbors, and the importance of God's design for human sexuality for human flourishing," Moore said. "The Gospel doesn't define us, as the culture does, in terms of our wants and desires. The Gospel addresses us, all of us, as sinners and calls us to a life of freedom and cross-bearing sacrifice."
The culture is confused, Moore said, as it always is in a fallen world.
"Our voluntary associations, even the most venerable of them, are increasingly ambiguous about what it means to live a good life rooted in the permanent things," Moore said. "Our churches cannot, and will not, share that ambiguity." …
I’m southern baptist
Not crazy about this guy
Wasnt he himself a culture war pick
We have lost the war nationally
Here in Dixie we haven’t lost diddly
In fact were winning mostly in spite of Satan’s romp
I don’t like this guy...wasnt crazy on Land either
Keep it up I’ll have to go COC
I disagree with this. The Bible Belt hasn’t collapsed at all. The south as a block is still solidly against gay marriage and abortion. It is true some of the south like VA have shifted but outside of the North East and the West Coast most of America is still fairly evenly split on social issues. There is no need to surrender when you still hold huge swaths of ground. The key is to figure out ways to get around the MSM and get conservative media to be conservative which it is not. You can’t have liberal News Media running 24x7 promoting left wing social issues and have “conservative” media ignoring or down playing them and not expect to get what we are seeing.
Buchanan, 1999:
“Politics is the last contested battlefield of our culture war, for only through politics can the new cult, a militant and intolerant secularist faith that will abide no other, impose its values on us.
But how, then, does it avail us to withdraw from politics, to retreat, to give up? Where do we go? What shall we do?
We cannot quit. We can no more walk away from the culture war than we could walk away from the Cold War. For the culture war is at its heart a religious war about whether God or man shall be exalted, whose moral beliefs shall be enshrined in law, and what children shall be taught to value and abhor. With those stakes, to walk away is to abandon your post in time of war. “
Never heard of Semiramis before. You’ve added to my vocabulary, but as they say ‘Semiramis’ is not in the bible.
This is probably what you're looking for.
When the people in one of the 13 old Confederate States vote in sodomite “marriage” we can say that the Bible Belt has started to collapse. That’s not going to be any time soon.
When the people in one of the 13 old Confederate States vote in sodomite “marriage” we can say that the Bible Belt has started to collapse. That’s not going to be any time soon.
He is definitely pushing a new tone for this generation of evangelicals. “This is the end of ‘slouching toward Gomorrah,’ ” he says. Not only is the doomsaying not winning Christians any popularity contests, but he doesn’t think it’s religiously appropriate either. “We were never promised that the culture would embrace us.”
This guy is not the solution...He clearly is the problem...
No we don't. The Gospel works. The Holy Spirit is active. It is not what WE do that matters. It is what HE does. We just need to get in synch with Him!
We'll never succeed by putting our trust in "horses from Egypt"...
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