Posted on 01/13/2009 8:31:47 AM PST by This Just In
Sex and the Seminary?
Posted: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 6:08 am ET
The release of a report entitled "Sex and the Seminary" is certain to attract attention -- which is no doubt why the report was produced in the first place. In this case, the report is an attempt to push the sexual revolution through institutions designed for the training of ministers. As "Sex and the Seminary" makes clear, many liberal institutions joined the sexual revolution long ago.
The report was released January 8, 2009 by the "Sexuality Education for the Formation of Religious Professionals and Clergy" project, which is jointly sponsored by Union Theological Seminary in New York City and the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing in Connecticut. As might be expected, the report calls for an overhaul of how issues of sexuality are treated within the seminary curriculum.
"At the time when many denominations and faith communities are embroiled in sexuality issues, there is an urgent need for leaders who understand the connections between religion and sexuality," the report announces.
Then:
Seminaries are not providing future religious leaders with sufficient opportunities for study, self-assessment, and ministry formation in sexuality. They are also not providing seminarians with the skills they need to minister to their congregants and communities, or to become effective advocates where sexuality issues are concerned.
As a reading of the report reveals, the entire project is really about turning seminaries into agencies for a liberal and revisionist sexual agenda. As the analysis in the report demonstrates, some of these schools embraced those agendas long ago -- and in a big way.
The study was conducted by Kate M. Ott, study director for the project, with assistance from many others. Among those most frequently acknowledged is Rev. Debra W. Haffner, director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing. Debra Haffner's name will be recognized immediately by anyone involved in issues of sexual controversy in recent decades. She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, but previously she served as chief executive officer of SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, and, among other positions, as an official with Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. She has been pushing a radical sexual agenda for a long time.
Thirty-six seminaries cooperated with the study -- almost all on the liberal side of the theological divide. These schools were measured in light of the "Criteria for a Sexually Healthy and Responsible Seminary" document that had been "developed by a multifaith group of seminary educators, administrators, and sexuality educators."
The report found virtually all of the seminaries deficient to some degree. The report lamented the fact that half of the schools "do not have policies for full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons" and over 60% "do not have full inclusion policies for transgender persons."
While the report calls for a thorough restructuring of seminary education, it also calls upon the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada [ATS], the main accrediting agency for theological schools to require accredited schools to make sexuality issues (in terms of "sexual justice") standards for accreditation. The Religious Institute also pledged to "work with ATS member schools as they advocate for changes in and contribute to revisions of the ATS Standards for Accreditation scheduled for 2012."
Well, we have been warned.
The report makes for riveting reading. Almost half of the schools queried indicated that worship experiences in chapel at least occasionally focused on gay, lesbian, or bisexual experiences. Seven of the 36 schools also offered worship focused on transgender issues.
Consider this section of the recommendations:
Seminaries also must assure a supportive environment for sexuality-related issues. Seminaries must have anti-discrimination, sexual harassment, and full inclusion policies that reflect sexual and gender diversities. It was a welcome surprise that almost 9 out of the 10 seminaries have anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation, and half have such policies for transgender students, staff, and faculty; other seminaries, unless prohibited by their faith traditions, should implement such policies. In addition, seminaries must provide opportunities for worship and advocacy that reflect the diversity of sexuality issues students will encounter in their ministry.
All this adds up to a huge effort to redefine what is normative in theological education, but the larger agenda is to remove the churches as obstacles to the deconstruction of biblical sexual morality.
Obviously, many of these schools have already joined that bandwagon. They long ago abandoned biblical authority and the Gospel and transformed Christianity into a form of sexualized paganism. The "worship" practices revealed in the report suffice to establish that point.
If nothing else, this report underlines the great divide that now exists among America's theological schools. There is good reason to ask whether any shared basis of accreditation is possible, given the depth and significance of this divide. Time will tell, but the aim is clear -- to put seminaries committed to a normative biblical morality on notice that such schools may for a time be tolerated, but the standards will push schools toward "inclusion" of "sexual and gender diversities" among students, staff, and faculty.
The moment regional accrediting agencies or the ATS moves in that direction, the writing on the wall will be clear. Sanity may yet prevail, but "Sex and the Seminary" is a sign of where the liberal schools want to see theological education, the church, and the society go.
No doubt, schools committed to biblical authority and confessional integrity must do a better job of preparing ministers to understand the issues of sexuality. But the goal must be to inculcate knowledge of and commitment to a biblical model of human sexuality centered in the glory of God and obedience to God's Word. We must also train pastors to be compassionate in teaching and applying God's revealed truth. These goals are not, however, the goals or recommendations of "Sex and the Seminary."
"Together," the report concludes, "we can assure that future religious leaders will indeed be pastors for sexual health and prophets for sexual justice." If you understand what those words mean, you will see that statement for the threat that it is.
Artificial seminary doesn’t require sex at all, does it?
Unfortunately, it’s the artificial ones that seek to.
No longer refer to them as sodomites.
No longer condemn adultery.
The sex positive agenda seeks to end ALL moral judgement over sexual pairings. They seek to smash monogamy.
They are opposed to religious teachings on morality.
They are not a positive influence on the seminaries; they have an agenda COUNTER to the influence of religion.
Sodomites?
I thought they were inseminarians.
“...they have an agenda COUNTER to the influence of religion”
Yes, and here is their agenda. Note #’s 26, 27, 28, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41:
Communist Goals (1963)
Documention below
Congressional Record—Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:
[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [”]united force[”] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
He (Bill Ayers) also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to ''smash monogamy.'' The Weathermen were ''an army of lovers,'' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.
Google:
Results... of about 302,000 for “sex positive”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive
The sex-positive movement does not in general make moral or ethical distinctions between heterosexual or homosexual sex, or indeed masturbation for people who are otherwise celibate, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference. Some sex-positive positions include acceptance of BDSM, asexuality, polyamory, transsexuality, transgenderism, and other forms of gender transgression in general.Most elements of the sex-positive movement advocate comprehensive and accurate sex education as part of its campaign.
One definition of sex-positivity, from:
Sex-positive, a term that’s coming into cultural awareness, isn’t a dippy love-child celebration of orgone – it’s a simple yet radical affirmation that we each grow our own passions on a different medium, that instead of having two or three or even half a dozen sexual orientations, we should be thinking in terms of millions. “Sex-positive” respects each of our unique sexual profiles, even as we acknowledge that some of us have been damaged by a culture that tries to eradicate sexual difference and possibility.[1]Some advocates of sex-positivity define their philosophy in contrast to sex-negativity, which they identify as the dominant view of sex in Western culture. According to these advocates, traditional Christian views of human sexuality define traditional Western values in relation to this subject. Thus, such proponents of sex-positivity claim that under the Western, Christian tradition, sex is seen as a destructive force except when it is redeemed by the saving grace of procreation, and sexual pleasure is seen as sinful. Sexual acts are ranked hierarchically, with marital heterosexuality at the top of the hierarchy and masturbation, homosexuality, and other sexualities that deviate from societal norms closer to the bottom.[2] Medicine and psychiatry are said to have also contributed to sex-negativity, as they may, from time to time, designate some forms of sexuality that appear on the bottom of this hierarchy as being pathological (see Mental illness).[2] However, Western societies which predate Christian influence, such as ancient Greece, have often endorsed forms of sexuality that strongly conflict with Christian beliefs.
In short, they seek to end all moral judgements over ALL sexual pairings (regardless of sex, age, relation, marital status, number, or species of partner(s)).
On the one hand, I can see that ministers should understand sex issues. They may be ministering to people with sexual problems.
On the other hand, why does the “education” of clergy have to come from the liberal point of view? The ministers can be fully educated in all manner of sex behavior, desires, etc. and still hold to conservative positions, such as sex belonging within marriage. It’s ok, in my opinion, that a minister understand that men are driven towards adultery, but he should still counsel them against adultery.
Any such sex education for ministers should be within the context of traditional morality, in my opinion.
“Any such sex education for ministers should be within the context of traditional morality...”
This entire idea that ministers must receive “sex education” in the first place is absurd. “Sex education”, as we have been taught after the Sexual Revolution, in founded in a perverted understanding of intimacy in the first place. After all, Dr. Kinsey, the father of modern sex education, was a pervert himself, and by no means a conservative on moral issues.
An orthodox theologian will have a thorough understanding of procreation and the function of sexual intimacy in society. The Bible contains teaching and examples of Godly sexual relationships as well as unhealthy relations.
list?
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