Posted on 06/22/2006 2:42:57 AM PDT by beaversmom
What do I have to do to join the American Episcopal Church? It sounds great now that it has a woman, the Bishop of Nevada, the Rt Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, in charge and an openly gay bishop in Gene Robinson. That, for me, encapsulates all the best Christian virtues of tolerance, diversity and acceptance.
A woman at the head of a Church! Who would have thought it? All we need now is a female Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Oh, and a President too, but that may not take too long either.
I may cheer, yet all the talk of schism in the Anglican Communion rests on the premise that what the Americans have been doing is unacceptable. In fact, there are plenty of us who think it is wholly admirable. It’s just that we tend to be less vocal and less harsh in our language than the conservatives.
Here is the conservative Bishop of Pittsburgh, for instance, who said this week: “For the Anglican Communion worldwide, this election reveals the continuing insensitivity and disregard of the Episcopal Church for the present dynamics of our global fellowship.”
The idea that electing a woman is provocative is highly insulting to those of us with XX chromosomes. How would men feel if we refused to accept their authority, if we begged the Archbishop of Canterbury to be our leader instead because she (yes, doesn’t that sound odd?) didn’t have a beard?
You have only to look at it that way round to see how insensitive, how deeply unChristian, such views sound.
And, yes, I know it’s not exactly the same for gays, as there is some scripture in the Old Testament (though not in Christ’s teachings) that forbids homosexuality. Yet there is some pretty rum stuff in the Old Testament, Leviticus in particular.
Are women still to be deemed “unclean”, “impure” and untouchable for seven days in every month? Are priests with a physical disability to be banned? After all, God instructed Moses to tell Aaron: “No man among your descendants for all time who has any physical defect is to come and present the food of his God. No man with a defect is to come, whether a blind man, a lame man, a man stunted or overgrown, a man deformed in foot or hand, or with misshapen brows or a film over his eye or a discharge from it, a man who has a scab or eruption or has had a testicle ruptured.”
I bet there is a bishop or two in the Anglican Communion with misshapen brows or filmy eyes.
Leviticus also prohibits tattoos, beards with the edges shaved, and garments woven with two kinds of yarn. That puts paid to polycotton vestments then. We should not eat meat that has any blood in it, or any meat from camels, rock-badgers, hares or pigs. Shellfish are out too, but locusts are fine.
It is all very well for conservatives to say that we liberals cannot pick and choose what teachings we follow from the Bible. But they do the same. How many of them abjure prawn cocktails? Do they refuse to take out a mortgage or put money on deposit because of the injunction against usury? Do they wear no clothes with added Lycra?
Many thousands of years since Leviticus was written, we live our lives very differently. We are no longer nomadic tribesmen, herding our sheep, goats and camels. What should endure from the Bible are the eternal messages, those that can apply to all societies at all times.
We no longer make burnt offerings of oxen to the Lord. But we can all still try to love our neighbours as ourselves. And that fundamental stricture should apply whether our neighbour is male or female, gay or straight — even if he has misshapen eyebrows.
Beings Mary Ann seemingly views XX chromosomes as the sole qualification for either office allow me to suggest Condi Rice as President and Ann "kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" Coulter as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
You can't read it? Pettifogger wrote (and I quote) "." Look closely and you can see it. Not quite sure of the meaning, but that's what was written. :-)
No, the problem is that SCRIPTURE has something to say about church leadership.
I'd imagine that the Scriptures that condemn homosexual behavior would have something to say about homosexuals serving in leadership. Scripture also says something about women serving in certain positions of leadership -- not politically correct to point that out, but then again Scripture has never been politically correct.
Our feelings about how the Church should be run are irrelevant. Church should be run as the Lord prescribed.
For some reason, I have a feeling that's not who Mary Ann has in mind. Sounds good to me, though.
It is no coincidence Islamic pagans hate Israel, Jews, Christians and Western Civilization. The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law, something both the Neo-Pagan Left and the pagan Islamic thugs cannot abide and wish to destroy.
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of an eartly monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
Historically, this is proven over and over again with the successive conflicts between the forces of paganism and the Judaic culture. (This includes the idolatry of cultural Marxist paganism.)
A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy. They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct in human behavior. Today, "morals" are a religious pagan philosophy of esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.
Mosaic Law (of which the Ten Commandments is just a part) is the foundation of Western Civilization. Genesis is the primary focus of the Declaration of Independence, from where our Constitutional rights are derived. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our judicial system.
Moses wrote Genesis. This is why such people will jump up and down screaming when the Ten Commandments are displayed or the Creationist idea of monogamy from the book of Genesis is introduced.
The latter (Genesis) also ruins the illogical and non-biological arguments of homosexual monogamy. In a secular sense, homosexuality is an idolatry of perversion. It is in no way an anatomical function of the human organism, but a phantasmagoric creation from within the mentally disturbed human mind, a social psychosis, naked and on full exhibitionist display.
This is the whole crux (pun intended) of their attack on creationism - - they are really frustrated by Genesis, but cannot destroy the axiomatic state of procreant human biology, it does not fit their religious agenda.
Homosexual monogamy advocates seek ceremonious sanctification of their anatomical perversions and esoteric absolution for their guilt-ridden, impoverished egos. Neither of those will satisfy their universal dissatisfaction with mortality or connect them to something eternal. With pantheons of fantasies as their medium of infinitization, they still have nothing in them of reality, any more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream.
Homosexual deviancy is really a pagan practice (and a self-induced social psychosis) at war with the Judaic culture over what is written in the book of Genesis (1:27, 2:18).
This is exactly what the National Socialists were at war with (consider their eugenic breeding programs)... so, when someone uses the terms "Gaystapo" or "Feminazi" they might not realize how close to the truth they really are.
Many will seek ceremonious sanctification and esoteric absolution in some type of marriage rite, but that still fails to give them a connection to the eternal in both a religious and temporal, procreant sense - - the union does not produce offspring.
Dissatisfaction with inevitable mortality only feeds the impoverishment of the ego further. Homosexuals really hate human life; their whole desire is rooted in the destruction of it...
Abortion is akin to slavery... life to be bought and sold...
Contemplate the religious fervor associated with the pro-abortion advocacy. The societal practice of abortion is ritual mass murder upon the altars of conceit dedicated to idolatrous vanities, a collective human sacrifice before pagan idols.
It has a similitude to the Teutonic paganism of Adolph Hitler (whose idolatry was the idea of a "master race," among other things). In effect, these genocides are a mass human sacrifice to those pagan idols. The abortionists, like the National Socialists, incinerate the remains of their victims.
Aleister Crowley, who openly supported the National Socialists, was affiliated with Ordo Templi Orientis, A.A. (Order of the Silver Star) and other such occult lodges all across Germany. Crowley engaged in all manner of deviancy, homoeroticism, sadomasochism and murder. Much of the occultism in National Socialism is derived directly from there. Crowley envisioned himself as the Great Beast (To Mega Therion), just as der Fuhrer made himself in that image. Hitler's life as a struggling, inept artist was where that association blossomed.
Crowley's creed, "Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the Law," (which is actually from Francois Rabelais) and used by Neo-Pagan nutcases without attribution for obvious politically correct reasons, is with certainty no different than the National Socialist "will to power," or their ubermensch mentality.
It is also no accident Nietzsche's "over-man" and nihilist philosophy and resulting insanity from venereal disease closely mirrors the insanity of der Fuhrer.
These occult orders, sex and drug cults still survive today, as do the Neo-pagan, Neo-Nazi groups, black supremacist Rastafarian potheads, prison gangs and other related filth.
[Crowley occultism is also from where L. Ron Hubbard emerges with Scientology. Note the NAZI symbolism of that kooky cult of weirdos. Germany cracked down hard on the Scientologists for that reason and because they are using similar mind control techniques...]
Ah, Hollywood! The fountain of fantastical images, perverts and hypocrisies! It is by no accident the Cultural Marxists of Hollywood are flaming haters of America, Israel and Christendom, and who advocate the most bizarre and psychotic.
Since when were tolerance (of unrepentant sin), diversity (in part, acceptance of unrepentant sin) and acceptance (of unrepentant sin) Christian values?
Haven't you heretics realized that the Bible is a "living document" just like the US Constitution? Geez, get with the program already!
(Sarcasm off)
Oh man, I feel like such an idiot...spent a minute or so trying to take that dang spot off my laptop screen.
I'd say one for the list. I wish I had time to read it and join the fray.
a very interesting read....come over to the faith based forum on slate when you get a chance...go to Slate.com...'discuss'...faith based....get ready to roll.....it ain't like anything else you've seen.....
I too feel Mary Ann obliquely touts She Who Must Not Be Named.
You should write a book.
I'd love for the author to show me where in the bible it says the church is supposed to tolerate sin in its midst. Of course, she can't.
The bible says that if someone in the church is in sin, you are to confront them. If they repeatedly refuse to repent, then you are to put them out of the church.
I only have "two words" to say about this article. Ca Ca.
On judgment day, these people are going to fall over backwards--straight into hell. Sad, really sad.
Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming.
The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-12
The new commandment: If is feels good, do it.
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
-- 2 Timothy 4:2-4
Biblically speaking, a church member who is in sin, should be confronted. If that individual refuses to repent, he/she is to be put out of the church.
So, if homosexuals were always there, were open about it so people knew, were members of the church and no one confronted them about it, then the church leadership as a whole sinned.
"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded."
~Bishop Fulton Sheen, "A Plea for Intolerance", 1931
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