"Religion is a hypothesis about the world: the hypothesis that things are the way they are, at least in part, because of supernatural entities or forces acting on the natural world. And there's no good reason to treat it any differently from any other hypothesis. Which includes pointing out its flaws and inconsistencies, asking its adherents to back it up with solid evidence, making jokes about it when it's just being silly, offering arguments and evidence for our own competing hypotheses...and trying to persuade people out of it if we think it's mistaken. It's persuasion. It's the marketplace of ideas. Why should religion get a free ride"

Greta Christina

Tuesday, 24 July 2012

GLBTQ, Christian and in holy orders, why?


One of the things that never fail to amaze me is that some GLBTQ individuals not only subscribe to Christianity (and Islam), they also want to be ministers in the Church. But in order to do this they must adopt such an extremely liberal interpretation of Biblical teaching as to make their beliefs completely at odds with the institution they belong to.
Dr Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans is a case in point. An openly gay clergyman living in a celibate same sex relationship, who has been twice denied ordination as a Bishop due to his sexuality, believes that the Anglican Church is mistaken in its opposition to gay marriage and has even considered suing them for discrimination, he still obviously wants to represent an institution that cannot, doctrinally, represent him. Dr John says on the Out4Marriage website…
"If you are gay, please don’t judge God by the Church. “The official Church doesn’t speak with integrity on this issue and so, frankly, doesn’t deserve to be listened to […]. If you are gay, then please understand that God made you as you are, and loves you as you are, and if you invite him into your relationship, then of course he will bless you and sustain your love just as much as he blesses and sustains any other marriage.
This of course is the reasonable position; the attitude of the loving God liberal Christians would like to believe exists. It is not however the God of Abraham’s position either in the Old or New Testaments as is easily demonstrated. Liberal Christians will point to the new covenant as established by St Paul who says that Christians have no need to follow the old laws, although Jesus himself is supposed to have had other ideas. Even so, Paul himself condemns homosexual acts specifically in his letters to the Romans.
Of course I am not pointing this out to suggest that the bible is morally correct in this: quite the opposite. Dr John is morally streets ahead of the Bible and the Church he represents, but he is deluded if he thinks that the Christian God is on his side. Personally if I found myself working for an institution so fundamentally at odds with my worldview and lifestyle I would leave it. Setting aside that there is no rational reason to believe in deities of any description, why endorse a church that worships one as bigoted as Yahweh?
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