ATTENTION ROMAN CATHOLICS, EASTERN ORTHODOX, ANGLICANS OR OTHER CHRISTIANS WHO WORSHIP THE LORD THEIR GOD IN ELABORATE OR EXPENSIVELY-DECORATED CHURCHES AND WHOSE MINISTERS WEAR EXPENSIVE VESTMENTS
Don’t get comfortable:
If anyone wants to argue that the same government currently forcing religious institutions to purchase the abortion pill through ObamaCare will not eventually use civil rights violations in order to attempt to force the Church to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies — good luck with that.
But this would have been unthinkable five years ago.
It was just three months ago that the White House and media piled on a reverend for preaching the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. The result was his invitation to speak at Obama’s inauguration being rescinded.
This would have been unthinkable five years ago.
With the election of Pope Francis, we have news anchors openly clamoring that the Church is out of step on same-sex marriage.
This would have been unthinkable five years ago.
Fifteen years ago, the same leftists and media assuring us today that same-sex marriage won’t be imposed on the Church were telling us that civil unions (which I’ve always supported) would never lead to gay marriage.
With all that in mind, am I really supposed to buy that, within five years (maybe five days), the left and the media won’t be incessantly asking this question: “If the Church cannot legally refuse to marry an interracial couple, how can it legally refuse same-sex couples?”
There are many good and well-intentioned people who believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Much of the support from the right comes from our “live and let live” philosophy, which I share. But another liberty is on the line, and that is religious liberty. This push from the media has never been about allowing gay couples to marry; it’s about the left’s lifelong crusade to destroy the Church.
One of the reasons why I’ve never been a high-church liturgy kind of a guy has nothing to do with theology. Psalm 96:9 tell us to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” so if an elaborate liturgy and costly vestments and church decorations bring you closer to God, then, by all means, do even more of it.
For my part, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so to me, a small, bare, Puritan chapel is just as beautiful as St. Peter’s Basilica. But if you want to maintain your integrity and your Christian witness, even that might eventually have to be tossed aside.
By itself, establishing a “right” to homosexual marriage means nothing. If your state wants to establish such a “right,” your state has, under the American system of governance, the perfect right to establish it. But contra John Nolte, I think that any Supreme Court ruling establishing such a “right” does not aim so much at forcing churches to allow same-sex marriages as delegitimizing opposition to them.
Remember, we’re dealing with a group of people who possess one character above all. Patience. It took homosexuals decades to take over the Episcopal Organization but they eventually achieved their goal. If they manage to make opposition to homosexual “marriage” into an extremist position, akin, in the public mind, to racism, they make it that much easier for the public to accept legally forcing churches to perform such “marriages.”
At which point, I bail out for the wilderness, even if I’m all alone. I will not be a part of any allegedly-Christian church that performs homosexual “marriages” even if those churches are legally coerced into doing so. There is no excuse for any church to deliberately commit what it knows to be a sin. None.
Once to every man and nation, as the hymn puts it.
If anyone wants to argue that the same government currently forcing religious institutions to purchase the abortion pill through ObamaCare will not eventually use civil rights violations in order to attempt to force the Church to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies — good luck with that.
But this would have been unthinkable five years ago.
It was just three months ago that the White House and media piled on a reverend for preaching the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. The result was his invitation to speak at Obama’s inauguration being rescinded.
This would have been unthinkable five years ago.
With the election of Pope Francis, we have news anchors openly clamoring that the Church is out of step on same-sex marriage.
This would have been unthinkable five years ago.
Fifteen years ago, the same leftists and media assuring us today that same-sex marriage won’t be imposed on the Church were telling us that civil unions (which I’ve always supported) would never lead to gay marriage.
With all that in mind, am I really supposed to buy that, within five years (maybe five days), the left and the media won’t be incessantly asking this question: “If the Church cannot legally refuse to marry an interracial couple, how can it legally refuse same-sex couples?”
There are many good and well-intentioned people who believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Much of the support from the right comes from our “live and let live” philosophy, which I share. But another liberty is on the line, and that is religious liberty. This push from the media has never been about allowing gay couples to marry; it’s about the left’s lifelong crusade to destroy the Church.
One of the reasons why I’ve never been a high-church liturgy kind of a guy has nothing to do with theology. Psalm 96:9 tell us to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” so if an elaborate liturgy and costly vestments and church decorations bring you closer to God, then, by all means, do even more of it.
For my part, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so to me, a small, bare, Puritan chapel is just as beautiful as St. Peter’s Basilica. But if you want to maintain your integrity and your Christian witness, even that might eventually have to be tossed aside.
By itself, establishing a “right” to homosexual marriage means nothing. If your state wants to establish such a “right,” your state has, under the American system of governance, the perfect right to establish it. But contra John Nolte, I think that any Supreme Court ruling establishing such a “right” does not aim so much at forcing churches to allow same-sex marriages as delegitimizing opposition to them.
Remember, we’re dealing with a group of people who possess one character above all. Patience. It took homosexuals decades to take over the Episcopal Organization but they eventually achieved their goal. If they manage to make opposition to homosexual “marriage” into an extremist position, akin, in the public mind, to racism, they make it that much easier for the public to accept legally forcing churches to perform such “marriages.”
At which point, I bail out for the wilderness, even if I’m all alone. I will not be a part of any allegedly-Christian church that performs homosexual “marriages” even if those churches are legally coerced into doing so. There is no excuse for any church to deliberately commit what it knows to be a sin. None.
Once to every man and nation, as the hymn puts it.
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