Posted on 03/05/2008 12:33:48 PM PST by kiriath_jearim
In a stump speech at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, on Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama said his support for same-sex unions is rooted in the New Testament's Sermon on the Mount, as reported by Cybercast News Service.
But theologians and other experts don't agree on what Obama's biblical reference meant.
"If he's finding support for same-sex marriage from the Sermon on the Mount, he's reading a different Bible than I've ever read," Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy with the Christian Focus on the Family, told Cybercast News Service.
"I think Obama needs to grapple with the words of Jesus on the meaning of marriage," Minnery said.
"Hasn't he ever read Matthew 19:4 that the creator made the male and female? In other words, you cannot believe what Jesus said in Matthew and that Jesus endorsed same-sex marriage. It's inconsistent," Minnery said.
Rev. Jesse Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), told Cybercast News Service that it may be more a case of politics than theology that inspired Obama's comments.
"When I first heard Obama comment on the Sermon on the Mount and homosexuality I couldn't grasp any relationship between the two," Peterson said.
"There is no correlation at all. The Sermon on the Mount is for the saints, and it explains their suffering and their reward as a result of suffering for what is right for Christ's sake. It doesn't give blessings or approval to homosexual unions," he said.
"I think maybe Senator Obama came up with the wrong passage," Peterson said. "Unless he is just trying to deceive the people. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he could be so desperate to win he'll just say anything."
But Tony Campolo - professor emeritus at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, ordained minister, spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton, and founder of the liberal Christian group, Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education - told Cybercast News Service that he thinks Obama's reference to the Sermon on the Mount was meant to highlight the core message of the Christian faith.
"He's saying, very carefully, that I personally believe that gay marriage is contrary to the teaching of Scripture," said Campolo. "He's very clear about that.
"He takes Paul (Romans 1:27) seriously, but he is saying 'in my own ideology,' Jesus is speaking to the needs of the poor, standing up against violence, opposing war, standing up against capital punishment. These are values that are pervasive in the Sermon on the Mount and in my politics, this is what I want to emphasize," he said.
Minnery said he is familiar with Campolo and his Red Letter Christians, who put more stock in Christ's teaching than the other teachings in the Bible, but biblical interpretation can only go so far, he said.
"I think (Obama) is taking one aspect of the Christian faith and going to ridiculous ends with it," Minnery said. "Plainly, Jesus evoked one man and one woman as the meaning of marriage, and Tony Campolo and Barack Obama are trying to have it both ways.
"For example, Barack Obama says he's for traditional marriage and yet he stands against the very thing that will preserve it, which is the Defense of Marriage Act," said Minnery.
Kiera McCaffrey, director of communications for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said it is a mistake for Obama to look to the Bible as a playbook for his political aspirations.
"It seems pretty bogus using (the Bible) to justify civil unions," McCaffrey told Cybercast News Service. "He should be using secular reasons to back it up.
"He can search the whole Bible and not find anything that justifies gay marriage or same-sex unions," she said.
sorry, but that isn't correct. ALL people aren't God's children by virtue of simply being alive.
because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Romans 8:14)
Jesus speaking to sinners called satan their father :
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. - (John 8:44)
so "all" are not "children of Christ"
Campolo (Clinton’s personal pastor) and a LIBERAL, suggests (lies) that Obama REALLY meant to say that the scripture opposes gay marriage...Obama said 180% the opposite.
Campolo digs the hole deeper by suggesting that Romans 1:27 has the Apostle Paul oppossing war and capital punishment.
Here is the verse and you will see how TWISTED is Campolo’s interpretion:
27. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30. slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31. they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Liberals find WORDS in the BIBLE that DO NO EXIST...just as they do with the Constitution.
Is it 1984 yet?
“Think Obama doesn’t know much about the Christian faith because he’s a Muslim pretending to be a Christian.”
I guess that remains to be proven, but the interaction I’ve had with Muslims on the subject of Christ has revealed that they are deeply deceived.
One I know was speaking to me about “God’s great prophet” and I stopped him and said, “I don’t want you to waste your time. I am a believer in Jesus Christ and for me he is the ONLY way to a relationship with God.” He then proceeded to try and give me reassurances by talking as if he was cool with Christ, too. With caveats, of course!
He explained to me that the New Testament was CHANGED, and that’s why we don’t understand. I’m thinking, “Mind your own business, Muslim! The Scriptures are family business, and you aren’t family (yet!).”
The folly of this very common argument against being able to understand the Scriptures is that The New Testament is far and away THE MOST ACCURATE ANCIENT TEXT, with the most manuscript support of any ancient document, ever, period.
This is new age stuff.
If you forgive everything, sin just disappears.
It’s the “neither do I condemn thee, without the “go and sin no more.”
It’s the “Ye are the sons of God”, without the “Jesus is the way the truth and the light”
It’s realizing you are your own master without the submission to Jesus Christ.
It’s really just going back to the original lie/temptation of Satan which was “If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God”
“Ye shall not surely die”
One problem with that.
“It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgement.”
Well said.
What does the Koran say about gay marriage? (/sarc)
They are dealing with a new age god here.
Obama al-Husseini: The anti-family candidate.
He didn’t justify it, really.
He made some oblique reference to the Sermon and said that you had to support gay marriage if you believe what was said there.
This is along the lines of the libs current favorite [partial] verse “Do not Judge”.
And, anyone who doesn't live his teachings does so by their own peril.
You cannot be a murderer, a thief, a racist or bigot, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, etc. while simultaneously being a Christian
And, for any nitwit to post back that I'm homophobic... NOT... Read The New Testament. I live my religion.
“And of course the Bible itself contains no internal inconsistencies.”
Please, point them out for us.....
Well, we could start in Genesis.
Genesis 1:25-26
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Genesis 2:18-19
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
So which came first, beasts or man?
(I have about five hundred of these.)
Bingo!!
One can interpret Scripture coherently or incoherently. One who interprets it incoherently is naturally going to dismiss all of it as only coincidentally persuasive.
Obama, on the other hand, starts from a presumption of coherence, in that he claims to believe Scripture has authority. If that is the case, then one doesn’t get to pick and choose willy-nilly the parts one likes. He needs to show how the parts he likes trump the parts he doesn’t, or he needs to drop the argument.
Dismissing the first chapter of Romans as obscure is not a good way to begin that explanation, if he means for his argument to be taken seriously.
Those looking for any fig leaf to justify what they’ve already decided, though, will take it and run.
Moral Absolutes/Homosexual Agenda Ping
The UCC is very liberal and has almost no dogma. It’s only a step away from Unitarianism.
On what basis would a Unitarian be kicked out of a UCC congregation?
They’re only separated by their history and the fact that the UCC has inherited nicer buildings from their explicitly Christian forebearers. Doctrinally they are effectively indistinguishable.
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