Headline: The Rev. V. Gene Robinson began his ministry as the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop on Sunday by saying he wants to bring the message of God's love to "those on the margins."
I suppose it should know.
Posted on 11/09/2003 2:25:14 PM PST by kattracks
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. (AP) — The Rev. V. Gene Robinson began his ministry as the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop on Sunday by saying he wants to bring the message of God's love to "those on the margins."He also said the church should speak out on issues of social justice, including the lack of access to health care for many Americans.
"How dare we in this country spend $87 billion on war when 44 million people have no health insurance?" he said in his sermon. "It's up to the church to lead on some of these moral issues."
After the service at All Saints Church, where he was married to his former wife, Robinson said he hopes that people who disagree with his confirmation will remain within the Episcopal Church, instead of breaking away.
"A church founded on unhappiness and anger is not going to go very far," he said.
New Hampshire's Episcopalians elected Robinson as bishop in June, and his selection was approved at the convention of the Episcopal Church USA in August. But his consecration a week ago has threatened to divide the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism.
On Nov. 3, overseas bishops who said they represented 50 million of the world's 77 million Anglicans jointly announced they were in a "state of impaired communion" with the Episcopal Church — a step short of declaring a full schism.
In addition, conservatives within the U.S. church have asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, to authorize a separate Anglican province for them in North America.
In his sermon, Robinson said Jesus spent most of his time with women, taxpayers and foreigners, not with the rabbis and wealthy members of the temple.
Jesus "looked at the religious establishment of his day and realized they had closed their eyes to those on the margins," he said.
"Think of all the kinds of blindness right outside this door: not seeing people in need, or turning the other way when we do," he said.
Robinson told a story about three American soldiers in World War I whose fellow soldier was killed in combat, then was buried just outside the fence of a French churchyard because the priest didn't know whether the soldier had been baptized. When the Americans returned to pay their respects, they couldn't find his grave outside the fence.
The priest explained to them, "I realized I'd followed the rules, but I hadn't done the right thing — so I moved the fence," Robinson said.
"You and I in Jesus' name are called to move the fence ... as far away from us as possible," Robinson said.
At a reception for the bishop following the service, churchgoer Jack Jones said he was "all for" Robinson.
"He's a real brave man, and intelligent, and if people don't want to come to church for him, let them go somewhere else," said Jones, 64.
Elsewhere in the state, about half the members of the Episcopal parish in Rochester walked out of Sunday services to protest the dismissal of their interim minister, who opposes Robinson's appointment.
Bishop Douglas Theuner of the Diocese of New Hampshire removed the Rev. Donald Wilson on Friday for insubordination when Wilson refused to come to Concord to meet with Theuner on the matter. Robinson will automatically succeed Theuner when the bishop retires next year.
Lisa Ball, a member of the group that left, said the protest has nothing to do with homophobia, and "it has nothing to do with gay bashing."
Theuner "decided to take our priest away from us and didn't even ask us," Ball said.
David Tyler, the junior warden of the church and one of those who remained inside, said the parish "has a disagreement. We are trying to work this out."
I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!
This could be HUGH!
I'm really being series
I wonder what this revisionist dunce thinks the PROTESTant Reformation was initially fueled by? Was Martin Luthor smiling when he nailed that sheet of vellum to the church door, you think? There is such thing as righteous anger, as modeled by Jesus taking to task the merchants in the temple.
I don't know, but rather doubt it.
All Saints Episcopal is the establishment church in Peterborough. Peterborough's a town of "beautiful people" and home to the McDowell Colony, an artist colony.
I expect that most of the congregation is delighted at Robinson's elevation. It's kinda chic, in some circles, to have social contact with a homosexual. It guarantees your bona fides as a liberal thinker, a tolerant and progressive person.
Headline: The Rev. V. Gene Robinson began his ministry as the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop on Sunday by saying he wants to bring the message of God's love to "those on the margins."
I suppose it should know.
How dare you preach on moral issues, adulterer and sodomizer. If I were anywhere near you when you spoke these words, you'd have more than a penis in your mouth, you'd be spitting teeth....(is that too harsh for me to say?...ok...I take them back...)
FMCDH
New Hampshire Supreme Court: Gay Sex Not Adultery (Dumbing down deviancy!)
It's nothing new. In the early 80s, as a delegate to the convention of the Diocese of San Joaquin, I saw a number of libs pressing for the diocese to sign on to the Nuclear Freeze Initiative and unilateral disarmament. My protest (I couldn't help it, I was young and naive) that these were not issues for the church to be taking a corporate stance upon were brushed aside. I was shocked to see much of the clergy, including ministers I had respected, vote for this thing. (As I recall it lost, though barely.)
Some homosexuals HAVE started their own churches, and they are a reflection of their community:
Sex, torture and erotic electrification in America's 'gay' churches
About the Metropolitan Community Church: Was Jesus 'gay'?
"Instead, they are actively trying to drive traditionalists from the church so that they can control the money for their own causes."
Indeed, control of the money and properties is one of their goals. However, it goes beyond that. The homosexual community's infiltration of the church, in order to undermine and destroy its authority, has been part of a well planned and well funded campaign that has been going on for years. And they made it known that they were coming for the Church:
An excerpt from: The Overhauling of Straight America:
"While public opinion is one primary source of mainstream values, religious authority is the other. When conservative churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to confound the homophobia of true believers.
First, we can use talk to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing support for gays by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred and inconsistency.
Second, we can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology.
Against the mighty pull of institutional Religion one must set the mightier draw of Science and Public Opinion (the shield and word of that accursed “secular humanism”). Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before, on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work again here..."
The homosexual community's focus will now shift to the destruction of marriage:
An excerpt from: In Their Own Words: The Homosexual Agenda:
"Homosexual activist Michelangelo Signorile, who writes periodically for The New York Times, summarizes the agenda in OUT magazine:
...to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes, but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution... The most subversive action lesbian and gay men can undertake --and one that would perhaps benefit all of society--is to transform the notion of family entirely." "Its the final tool with which to dismantle all sodomy statues, get education about homosexuality and AIDS into the public schools and in short to usher in a sea change in how society views and treats us."
And consider the following:
An excerpt from Culture of Vice:
"The homosexual cause has moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest. As Robert Reilly notes a society can withstand any number of person who try to advance their own moral disorders as public policy. But it cannot survive once it adopts the justifications for whose moral disorders as its own. This is what is at stake in the culture war...
For any individual, moral failure is hard to live with because of the rebuke of conscience. Habitual moral failure, what used to be called vice, can be lived with only by obliterating conscience through rationalization. When we rationalize, we convince ourselves that heretofore forbidden desires are permissible. We advance the reality of the desires over the reality of the moral order to which the desires should be subordinated. In our minds we replace the reality of moral order with something more congenial to the activity we are excusing. In short, we assert that bad is good...
It is often difficult to detect rationalizations when one is living directly under their influence, and so historical examples are useful. One of the clearest was offered at the Nuremberg trials by Dr. Karl Brandt, who had been in charge of the Nazi regime's Aktion T-4 euthanasia program. He said in his defense: “...when I said `yes' to euthanasia I did so with the deepest conviction, just as it is my conviction today, that it was right. Death can mean deliverance. Death is life.”
Unlike Dr. Brandt, most people recover from their rationalizations when remorse and reality set back in. But when morally disordered acts become the defining centerpiece of one's life, vice can permanently pervert reason. Entrenched moral aberrations then impel people to rationalize vice not only to themselves but to others as well. Thus rationalizations become an engine for revolutionary change that will affect society as a whole.
The power of rationalization drives the culture war, gives it its particular revolutionary character, and makes its advocates indefatigable. It may draw its energy from desperation, but it is all the more powerful for that. Since failed rationalization means self-recrimination, it must be avoided at all cost. For this reason, the differences over which the culture war is being fought are not subject to reasoned discourse. Persons protecting themselves by rationalizing are interested not in finding the truth, but in maintaining the illusion that allows them to continue their behavior. For them to succeed in this, everyone must accede to their rationalization. This is why revolutionary change is required. The necessity for self-justification requires the complicity of the whole culture. Holdouts cannot be tolerated because they are potential rebukes. The self-hatred, anger, and guilt that a person possessed of a functioning conscience would normally feel from doing wrong are redirected by the rationalization and projected upon society as a whole (if the society is healthy), or upon those in society who do not accept the rationalization.
The homosexual movement's rationalization is far more widely advanced in its claims. According to Jeffrey Levi, former executive director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, “We (homosexuals)_ are no longer seeking just a right to privacy and a right to protection from wrong. We have a right - as heterosexuals have already - to see government and society affirm our lives.” Since only the act of sodomy differentiates an active homosexual from a heterosexual, homosexuals want “government and society” to affirm that sodomy is morally equivalent to the marital act. “Coming out of the closet” can only mean an assent on the level of moral principle to what would otherwise be considered morally disordered.
And so it must be. If you are going to center your public life on the private act of sodomy, you had better transform sodomy into a highly moral act. If sodomy is a moral disorder, it cannot be legitimately advanced on the legal or civil level. On the other hand, if it is a highly moral act, it should serve as the basis for marriage, family (adoption), and community. As a moral act, sodomy should be normative. If it is normative, it should be taught in our schools as a standard. In fact, homosexuality should be hieratic: active homosexuals should be ordained as priests. All of this is happening. It was predictable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest. How successful that conquest has been can be seen in the poverty of the rhetoric of its opponents. In supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, the best one congressman could do was to say, “America is not yet ready for homosexual marriage,” as if we simply need a decent interval to adjust ourselves to its inevitable arrival.
The homosexual rationalization is so successful that even the campaign against AIDS is part of it, with its message that “everyone is at risk.” If everyone is at risk, the disease cannot be related to specific behavior. Yet homosexual acts are the single greatest risk factor in catching AIDS. This unpleasant fact invites unwelcome attention to the nature of homosexual acts, so it must be ignored..."
"The homosexual movement has a history of trying to claw its way into places its agenda doesn’t belong, not for the betterment of mankind, but simply to legitimize and normalize perverse behavior. This is apparent in the all-too-common need of homosexuals to declare their sexuality rather than simply do the job they sign on to do.
This is extremely detrimental - first, it creates conflict with others as most believe homosexuality to be wrong, and it shows that the full efforts of the employed homosexual are not going towards performing the task at hand but largely to declaring their lifestyle. When it comes to serious concerns such as the Church, schools, and the Boy Scouts that involve our children, we can’t take the risk of giving them this power to destroy the values we as parents try to instill, nor can we put our country’s welfare at stake by turning these pivotal foundational institutions and our military into homosexual social experiments.
The homosexual movement is marked by two major tendencies: the tendency to continually infiltrate all good aspects of society; and once they have achieved that, the tendency to destroy this good. Public education, the Boy Scouts, the military, and now the Catholic Church have been targeted, and all have been hurt by the effects of homosexuality. The media and the Church must break its silence towards this enemy. If they do not, the people themselves must rise up and expose it..."
-- Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Homosexual Priests: A Time for Truth, The Washington Dispatch, May 6, 2002
In Judy Garland drag.
Alas, I presume most Episcopalians in his church will love it.
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