Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself Unless He's Gay

The BBQ Pit
1

It’s official, folks. My home diocese has voted to split with the Episcopal Church of the United States of America over the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man. Here’s a link.

I’m afraid I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. The number were about 3:1 in favor of the split. I am sorry. I am sorry that people support denying one of the most fundamental rights and privileges to one subset of people because of whom them love. I am sorry that discrimination against people who are “not like us” continues. I am sorry that this one sin, if sin it is, out of all the sins named explicitly and repeatedly in both the Old Testament and New, should prove such a tremendous stumbling block.

I have seen a devout, anti-homosexual Christian commit slander on this board, yet she counts herself a better Christian than homosexuals. I’ve heard far more outcry over Madonna and Britney Spears kiss than I have over J. Lo’s 2nd (?) wedding. The Episcopal Church managed not to split over slavery. Why, then, is our bishop driving us to schism over this?

I’m sick with a headcold, and I’m tired of making this argument over and over again, though that doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing so. How can two adults coming together out of honorable love and respect be a sin? How can we enforce celibacy on one segment of the population when we don’t even insist our priests practice it? How can we deny someone the pleasure of coming home to someone who loves them simply because both people are of the same sex? How can we tell someone that for them to want such basic human needs as sex and affection is wrong? I’m prone to rage and tempted to gossip and malice, all of which are sins, yet somehow I get the impression that there are far too many people who would see those temptations as somewhat lesser ones than homosexuality. I’m afraid I’ve also spent too much time hanging around this message board to buy the “The Bible condemns homosexuality” business any more.

Christ told us (Christians) what’s important. He told us what all the law and the prophets hang on. I’ve been called “liberal”. How is seeking to do what Christ told us is most important “liberal”? Oh yes, it’s because we haven’t always done it that way.

Today, I was going to go to brunch, not church anyway, and I don’t think anyone wants to take communion from someone who’s coughing and sniffling, anyway. I’m not sure which way my home parish is going on this, but I’ve been considering leaving for a year now, anyway, and there is a parish closer to home which opposes our Bishop. I respect those who disagree with me, believe it or not, but I cannot make their beliefs mine. I must do what I am led to do, or I can no longer call myself a servant of Christ. I will also be resigning my membership on the Diocesan Commission on Racism. Right now, it feels far too hypocritical.

Thanks for letting me ramble,
CJ

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My wife’s church got booted from the Southern Baptist Association because they hired, gasp! a FEMALE preacher!

The HORROR!

Whew, glad I’m an athiest.

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Siege, I think leaving your church in favor of a new one is exactly the right thing for you. You go to church to be spiritually fulfilled. You cannot be spirituall fulfilled by a church that, in your view (and FWIW, I agree with you) is hypocritical.

To me, the crux of the issue is not whether homosexuality is a sin, but rather the hypocrisy of a church which see some biblical sins (re-marriage, gossip, adultery, slander) as allowable, and other sins (homosexuality) as not allowable.

Go find a church that fulfills your spiritual needs!

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Or wears mixed fibers. Or happens to be a shellfish.

:frowning:

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God, Seige, I just read that on my news page this morning. Of course it would be Texas and good old redneck backasswards Pennsylvania that were the first to show their intolerance. Somehow I’ve never managed to convince myself that agreeing with Texas on social issues was a good thing…

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IMHO, this goes far beyond their rightness or wrongness on the question of blessing gay unions, or ordaining priests who are involved in gay relationships.

This has to do with their willingness to raise the stakes of a disagreement, to seize the moment that people are riled up about it to bring about a greater division, rather than to wait on the Lord, and to know the truth of the Episcopal Church’s recent decisions by their fruits.

Speaking of fruits, the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control.

How those fruits are present in this action by your diocese, Siege, is beyond my understanding. I think they’re just spoiling for a fight.

It’s a sad day for your diocese.

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OK, fine, I’ll hit the hanging curve ball…

It’s a lot easier to love your neighbor as yourself if you are gay.

Heh, a little play on words involving scripture. I’m a barrel of monkeys!

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Eloquent OP. I agree, completely, and that’s the best statement about the issue that I’ve read.

I’m a new Christian, and certainly no expert on the topic. But I thought the whole idea was love for one’s fellow humans… Isn’t that what Jesus did?

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Well, they might at least have waited till after the Archbishop’s meeting of primates in London next month. Didn’t he ask everybody to sit tight at least until then? Timing the split for before that meeting looks like grandstanding to me.

And I suppose the (former) Diocese of Pittsburgh wants to set up a brand-new body, calling itself the “real” Anglicans in America? The thing is, there’s a hundred or more not-in-the-communion provinces already, some of which have existed since the 1960s. Why don’t they join up with an existing traditional group, if they must? I don’t understand the need to create more and more schism. We’re going to wind up with hundreds and hundreds of unrelated provinces, none in communion with each other. Schism from sea to shining sea. It’s an embarrassment and a scandal.

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the problem with churches are that they are being run like a business and wont do anything that will affect their bottom line

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I am a Canadian Anglican, and I never really gave much thought to the global Anglican Church’s stand on various issues. My family has attended a parish headed by a woman so respected in the Anglican community, both here and abroad, that she has earned the honorific “The Venerable” before her “Reverend.” That being so, and having come to adulthood in her parish and exposed to her ideology, I was disturbed to see how greatly the Anglican Church differed from other churches on various issues, when I went away to University.

Now I see how greatly we differ amongst ourselves, and I am saddened.

I saw a movie recently, in which an RC priest was sent to investigate an archaelogical dig in Jerusalem. Good movie, but I digress. At the end, disgusted with the machinations of church and state, this man resigns his position in the Church to become more truly a Man of God.

The more I watch organized religious bodies struggle with who may love whom, and who may be ordained, etc., the more I think that man had the right idea. Serve God. Let the churches wallow in their own frustrations.

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If they honestly believe that it is sinful to be in homosexual union with another, and that it deliberately impedes one’s walk with Christ, it is imperative that they disassociate themselves from those who would consider it acceptable for one in a non-celibate homosexual relationship with another to be in a role of church leadership. What else can they do? They must also do as they are led to do in Christ.

No, but the Baptists split over it, and look at which faction came out stronger in the end. Also, is Bishop Robinson being an effective spiritual leader if he’s driving his denomination to schism?

On the other hand, if they believe that naming a man to bishop who is in a homosexual union is wrong, I would believe that they should most assuredly not wait, and should disassociate themselves from such an action as promptly as possible, to take a stand for what they are led to believe and not wait for current opinion to die down. Likewise, so should those who do not believe that there is anything sinful in homosexual union, as they are led to believe.

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Do you have a link to this?
The committing of slander and where she (whoever she is) says she is better than homosexuals?

thank you.

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If your ever in Denver let me know. The Church of Universal Love will be opening soon. I’d be glad to welcome you with open arms. I think it’s pitiful that churches/christians can’t get over themselves and stop thinking they are better or more moral than everyone else. :frowning:

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If you don’t like it, you can go. Sounds like you were leaving anyway. You have no more right to cram your version of religion down other’s throats than they do to you. Free country and all that.

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Don’t go there. I beg of you.

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“My church has taken a stand that I believe is wrong. Therefore I must disassociate myself from it.”

If every Christian signed on to this agenda, we would all be worshipping alone.

We who love and serve the Lord are no more perfect than the rest of humankind, and we are going to get it wrong with great regularity. Christ forgave sinners rather than condemning them. We should try the same approach, even when the sinners in question are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

This will necessarily involve worshipping together with persons who we disagree with on nontrivial matters of faith. If we cannot do this, and must break from one another at the first provocation, we don’t have a light to go hiding under bushels.

“I give you a new commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so are you to love one another. If there is this love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples.” (John 13:34-35, NEB.)

If we shall know them by the fruits they bear, as Jesus says in Matt. 7: 17-20, there is a very clear reason for not being urgent, but exercising patience instead. That is that the recent decisions of the Episcopal Church need time to bear fruit, for good or ill. If it should happen that these decisions bear bad fruit, then there is plenty of time to leave then. But as a Christian, one of my chronic faith experiences has been that of being wrong about matters where I had no doubt of my rightness - and it has been a blessing when I have not hastened into actions that would have proved hard to undo.

This would be such an action. This is why I counsel patience - completely aside from its being one of the fruits of the Spirit.

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He is not driving his denomination to schism. Anti-gay bigots are driving his denomination to schism. And before you come back at me for calling them bigots, bigotry dressed up in the garb of religion is no less bigotry for the claim of God’s imprimatur.

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My sympathy for Siege in feeling this schism with the local hierarchy. It’s hard; it’s always hard.

One of the fundamentals of my faith is . . . [ please pardon if this comes out stilted, I’m trying to bring it out of my religious language into something more generally accessible ] . . . that that which is in accord with divine harmony brings people together into communities.

I know the doubt of wondering which side of a schism is the one that’s breaking the community, the one that’s out of touch with the gods. I know the choices that have to be made to be true to what I hear of the harmony, and knowing the breaches those make elsewhere.

It’s always hard.

May your God stay with you, CJ, and may you never lose the hearing of the harmonies.

RTFirefly, though I know you weren’t talking to me, thanks for the Galatians line (I hope I spelt that right). I’m always happy to find points of communion between faiths, and that sounds like a good summing-up of parts of mine. Shall have to dig up the context and see.

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Madonna kissed Britney Spears? I’d love to see that! :smiley:

I heard he believed in reincarnation too. Something about John being Elijah come back or something? (I’m not a Christian so please do correct me if I’m all wet.) Today’s Christians are for the most part, not followers of their very own religious icon. Many strike me as closed minded hypocrites, for example the diocese mentioned in the OP.