Saturday, July 3, 2010

Interesting thoughts...

"I think that we have in recent years entered a 'New Dark Age' in the Western world. It is marked by the rise of religious systems that seek to build security by encouraging prejudice against a designated victim. Both evangelical fundamentalism and the kind of ultra-conservative Roman Catholicism that is at present installed in the Vatican are publicly defined by their visceral and uninformed hostility toward homosexual persons. What the heretic was in the Middle Ages, the black in the days of slavery and segregation, and the Jew in Nazi Germany, the homosexual has become in the religious hysteria of our day. This kind of behavior is always a response to fear and to a rapidly changing world. Security-providing religion, which always requires a victim, is like a drug that carries us over the rough places of life. It is certainly not the wave of the Christian future....Beyond that I think we ought to recognize that truth and unity cannot ever be built on identifying a victim that creates the illusion of unity because there is a common enemy. When these institutions say that God hates the same things that the worshiper hates, everyone should be very suspicious.

Dark Ages do not last forever. Ten years from now this phase of our religious history will surely be over. The contemporary scientific and medical data that suggests that homosexuality is a perfectly normal but minority aspect of our humanity, that it is a given and not a chosen aspect of life, will have challenged these prejudices so deeply as to make them seem not only quaint but ignorant. Remember that less than one hundred years ago we were still persecuting left-handed people as evil, deviant and unnatural. In the meantime I share your enormous embarrassment that the Christian church is today the major voice in the Western World in the persecution of those members of our society whose only 'sin' is that they were born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. Someday we will be terribly ashamed of the Christian leaders in our generation."

John S. Spong

5 comments:

  1. I tend to be ashamed of most of our so-called "Christian," so-called "Leaders" already.

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  2. If you haven't heard this sermon before, I'd encourage it. It's not a message presented out of hate, but it is done simply as part of a series on the book of Romans: The Pastor is preaching it because it proceeds the previous verses, and precedes the following verses... It's been very helpful to me.

    If you get time, listen to them, then tell me what you think of them.

    (part 1)
    http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/1053/Audio/

    (part 2)
    http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/1054/Audio/

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  3. Great blog...I read it all the time, but rarely take the time to comment.

    I'm a little confused. I mean, I know you're more liberal than I am at the outset, so forgive this comment...but Spong holds virtually no Christian beliefs...none that I'm aware of. He doesn't seem to have any sort of notion of Christ as is painted in the Scriptures he claims to take seriously. He doesn't trust in Christ for the forgiveness of his sins.

    Now, based on what I've read...and maybe I'm wrong here...but it would seem that YOU do trust in Christ. You and I might disagree on a lot, but you seem very concerned with how your life plays out in reference to Christ. Spong, on the other hand, does not share that sort of concern and is on record as such.

    Now, I say all of this, not so much as to create a you&me vs. HIM situation, but to point out that people he puts in the "Christian Leader" category won't necessarily be the same people you or I would put there.

    Anyway, I've rambled on enough. I'm just down the road in St. Louis and would love the opportunity to meet sometime and shoot the breeze over coffee. Really jealous you have this cool summer job where you can get a tan. :-) Take care! Keep up the great writing.

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  4. Ahhh..I get it now. Sorry, was a bit confused the first time I read the comments.

    I still think this man is spot on on his description of the demonizing and persecution of the homosexual.

    I have read the literature, and heard the sermons from such "men of God" and they truly hate me. The people that follow them take this one step further...

    I don't know what to think now.

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