TEC NYC Gay Disco Mass

Discussion in 'Anglican and Christian News' started by Celtic1, Jul 2, 2013.

  1. Celtic1

    Celtic1 Well-Known Member

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  2. Admin

    Admin Administrator Staff Member Typist Anglican

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    Do you have anything constructive to add? Simply posting something in a gnashing of teeth is not productive or helps anyone.
     
  3. Celtic1

    Celtic1 Well-Known Member

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    I was waiting for replies before I responded.

    Yes, I have a solution: People who can't support something like this should point their feet and pocketbooks elsewhere. ACNA and AMiA are good options.
     
  4. The Dark Knight

    The Dark Knight Active Member

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    Agreed
     
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  5. Ogygopsis

    Ogygopsis Active Member

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    I would have suggested going to maybe a gay jazz mass if disco isn't your thing. ;)

    Perhaps I might ask how ACNA and AMiA would suggest ministering positively to gay people? Mostly their message seems a little negative. (I get that the statements about the specific event are inapt and inept).
     
  6. Robert

    Robert Active Member

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    As far as I can tell they have no positive ministry to the LGBT community. As far as I can tell they are anti-gay, it is part of their identity. The reason for their schism and existence. Of course that is my take of it. others may disagree.
     
  7. Spherelink

    Spherelink Active Member

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    this issue affects us deeply so I think I'll be more forthcoming with how I really feel. What sort of positive ministry to the LGBT did St. Paul have when he wrote:

    Romans 1.26-27

    Is that the kind of positive ministry you deem as appropriate and God-sanctioned? If so, that is the kind of positive ministry orthodox Episcopalians have been giving out all this time over in contrast to the errant liberals in leadership positions.
     
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  8. Celtic1

    Celtic1 Well-Known Member

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    As do I.
     
  9. Ogygopsis

    Ogygopsis Active Member

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    If we're going to proof text, what did Paul mean when he followed that with this?

    Romans 2:1-3



    I actually think we're better trying to solve problems in the real world than walloping segments of humanity with selected bible verses. I think most reasonably literate people, biblical literalists aside, understand that there is a context for reading such passages, such as the original Greek and the intended audience for Paul's letters; neither do we go along with slavery.

    I go with CS Lewis on this one, there are worse things. And further, I don't have a personal iron in the fire, only the one that recognizes pain and suffering that afflicts anyone. It really is incumbent on the organizations that reject to the point of clobbering with scripture to say how they will really minister to people who, through no fault of their own, found that they never knew themselves as other than gay or lesbian. I might ask "at what age did you know you were heterosexual?", which was the question that I had to answer "I have always been", and understood that for some, they must have either been damned from birth - perhaps at the moment of conception, or there is something more complicated that the sheep and goats separation of groups of humans.

    Personally, I would find the disco a little distracting.
     
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  10. Robert

    Robert Active Member

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    And this is exactly how not to read Scripture. Cherry picking verses. This verse makes no sense out of the context of the entire text which deals heavily with idolatry.
     
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  11. Celtic1

    Celtic1 Well-Known Member

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    Oh, please, enough already with trying to compare slavery with sodomy.

    And there is not one shred of evidence that homosexuals are "born that way". No gay gene has ever been found -- except for Gene Robinson, pardon the pun.

    I am a theological moderate and certainly not a "biblical literalist", as you disparagingly say, but the Bible is unequivocally clear about homosexual behavior. And that is where the divide is, and it is a great divide that can never be breached. The refusal to call sin what it is is what separates and will always separate.
     
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  12. Spherelink

    Spherelink Active Member

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    Perhaps I am missing something, but St. Paul here condemns those who pass judgment yet engage in whatever they condemn. He condemns hypocrites, not those who follow the Word of God to the condemnation of those who sin.

    Unless you would like to say that I am a homosexual who condemns homosexuality, I don't see the application of those verses to this topic.


    Interesting how you sought to diminish, if not altogether disparage, the word of God as your first move. We as Christians are called to follow the Revelation from God. We literally have no other reason for being. If anyone wishes to follow another gospel than the one taught in the scriptures, let him be accursed and damned forever, says St. Paul.[/quote]
     
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  13. Ogygopsis

    Ogygopsis Active Member

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    This is a misunderstanding of genetics. No gene codes for proteins that directly affects any human behavioural characteristic. Nor do genes as a rule (there are a few exceptions) code 1 for 1 for anything. I have found many people who say things like haven't a clue how genetics works, nor evolution. I'm not the one who tried to use a bible passage to make a point where it doesn't work. There is rather good evidence from ethology or comparative psychology that other species have diversity in their sexuality. I have no idea why God thought it good to have barnacles change from one sex to another, why some fish do the same, and how it is that jellyfish are both colonies of individual cells (known as polyp persons) as well as a unitary animal. And why many primates engage in what we have called homosexual behaviour only since Havelock Ellis invented the term.

    The bible does not tell anyone so, and if you think it does, you are indeed well toward the end of the continuum of fundamentalism and literalism. But let us rise above this. The argument and discussion about such issues creates an unresolvable preoccupation for people who cannot agree. The best approach I have found, since the 1970s when my church began to discuss these issues in earnest, is to understand in advance that the issues cannot and will not be resolved. That certain people - such as yourself as stated in your reply immediately above - will maintain the view of sexual sin as particularly important, that others will as enthusiastically will maintain the opposite view, and that a good measure of the rest of us will refuse to join either side. Over time, I have found that I move slightly toward the human suffering side of this, and thus support your side slightly less. Because it is about ideas. And the person is not suffering in front of me with an idea.

    I get that you are sincere, like the many I've discussed this with before. Just don't attempt to convince. It is not worth it and from an introductory discussion, I have learned that this forum may have become quiet due to such. We may be Christian, and we may also disagree, and we may also find ourselves at the communion rail waiting for the life that sustains us. I can live with not agreeing with you, and also with not flogging the dead horse that this arguement usually is. You may say the bible is clear, I may not, and we can only agree that we don't agree. Can that be good enough for you?
     
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  14. Ogygopsis

    Ogygopsis Active Member

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    Not at all. We must consider scripture (revelation) with our reason, as Hooker instructed us Anglicans. The bible is a story of faith not a rule book. It does not consider biology accurately. It does not know about the modern gifts from science.

    But if we're on it, I follow Jesus. I am not a follower of Paul, nor of the bible, nor of anyone or anything else. The word is Christian. Anglicanism works because it requires scripture to be but one of the 3 legs which hold the stool on which we sit.
     
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  15. Spherelink

    Spherelink Active Member

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    Is he god-like?



    Again that's not correct. The Apostle says that we must never adopt anything other than the Gospel he has delivered to us. Christ says that he shall never abandon us and be ever present with us. He issues moral demands that we must keep. His Resurrection is a fact of history and not a mere story.

    Again I observe denigration of scripture.

    The only way that you can know of Christ, along with his words, is from the rest of Scripture. Consequently by being a follower of Christ you are required to extol the Word of God, which speaks of Christ on every page starting from Genesis 1-3, where Father creates the world via Christ, the Word, and His Spirit hovers over the Waters. The entire Scripture is Christ-centered and Christian and we are not allowed to be gnostics by picking what we follow and rejecting the written word for some sort of inner vision.
     
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  16. Ogygopsis

    Ogygopsis Active Member

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    No. We have brains. We should use them. It is not about denigration of the bible. It is following the traditions and using our reason. When you ask if Hooker is God, you are being disingenuous and unfair. Neither is Paul God, and neither of these people claimed to be.

    Please show us where Jesus talked about sex at all, and specifically about homosexuality. What's the Greek word Paul used for homosexual again? We must do much better than this

    Please tell me how saying the bible is not informed of science is denigration. The Genesis creations stories have the sequence of development of the world and life wrong. It's is simply a fact, and it neither detracts nor supports the beauty of the scripture that it does. I love the language and its cadences of phrase. But, I could equally ask why you denigrate Anglicanism and its middle way, refusal to come to easy answers when the questions are difficult.

    Again, please know we will not convince each other, and perhaps it is best to keep away from flaws in argumentation, such as making the points made more extreme than they were made in responses. Such as Hooker being god like.
     
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  17. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Whoa wait a second, where did Hooker mean it anywhere near like what you're doing? You will have to do a lot more than merely drop his name.

    Where has he taught that Scripture can be overridden by higher authorities? To him Scripture was the highest authority and you know this so your invocation was at least misleading, if nothing else.

    And if you like nature and reason, homosexuality is about as natural as six fingers, so your argument fails on that account.
     
  18. Ogygopsis

    Ogygopsis Active Member

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    Homosexual behaviour in animals
    http://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/10/23/20718.aspx
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal.html

    Show me where Hooker proof texted and flogged people with it. Proof texting is where this part of the discussion got derailed. The bible is not a sex manual, a science textbook, nor a legal code. It's the story of faith, and of the people of God.

    About six fingers. We are evolutionarily descended from tetrapodal, five fingered ancestral animals. But not all vertebrates are. Stephen Jay Gould's book Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History might help understand a little more about how it is that we have 5 fingers, and introduce you to animals that have more: "Details are all that matters: God dwells there, and you never get to see Him if you don't struggle to get them right" (from the book). I would recommend reading natural history to anyone who aspires to argue from biology. Just as biologists (e.g. Dawkins) make lousy theologians, so do theologians make lousy biologists.

    We need to follow Hooker into the full flower of his ideas: to use the tools of science cum reason to overturn narrowmindedness and pedantry. I am not asking that anyone accept anything - a motive I detect with some of the other posters to this topic - rather that you lighten up and understand only that the repetition of arguments found all over the internet and pre-internet are not about to persuade anyone.

    If pastoral care to gay people is to tell them they are hell-bound, well, it doesn't work. Neither does telling them to avoid companionship, sexual satisfaction and self fulfillment, which is what the 20th century shifted us to, from the age-old marriage and family being a necessary economic unit, with happiness not the goal.
     
  19. Celtic1

    Celtic1 Well-Known Member

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    LOL! If you could read my website, you would not say that I am a fundamentalist. My views on hell alone would disqualify me. I got kicked off a fundie Baptist forum because of my theological views.

    However, morally and ethically, I am a traditionalist who believes what the Bible says about such issues. And the Bible is unequivocal and clear about homosexual sex. No amount of postmodern, cultural relativist scripture-mangling can change that.

    Further, you can say that I don't understand genetics all you want. The scientific facts are clear: No biological basis for homosexuality has been found, and no homosexual gene has been found.

    Homosexual sex is sin. Like every other sin, it must be repented of and not practiced. There can be no compromise between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and false gospels which deny the scriptures, call evil good, and celebrate it.
     
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  20. Celtic1

    Celtic1 Well-Known Member

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    Wrong. In Anglicanism, scripture is the primary and final authority. That is clear from the Articles. You are trying to re-invent Anglicanism.

    You say you follow Jesus. Well, the only place to know about Jesus and His teachings is the Bible!!
     
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