Thanks Roger.
I don’t know how to do embedded code on this site.
Hi Lucy,
Try this :
To ‘link’ when you are posting a reply, you click on the 7th box ( ‘a’ ) ( the one with sideways ‘v’s ) and then post the link and the title. Hope this helps.
Why? Because it highlights the societal benefits of marriage, and the detremental effects, particularly to minorities and the poor, when marriage is downgraded.
“Are we saved? This is a poor question to ask. A better question is “Are we committed to the process of human flourishing?” If yes, then we are saved.”
By which measure, a devotee of atheisic humanist philosophy who is seeking the betterment of humanity ends up being saved into an eternal relationship (which he or she doesn’t accept exists) with God (whom he or she doesn’t accept exits). Marvellous stuff.
The more I read of the theology of the Perth Archdiocese, the less guilty I feel about walking out of the only service I ever attended there (though it was for a different reason).
I’m sure that I’m not the only person who feels deeply sorry for the people of Perth who are being fed this stuff, and don’t know that it isn’t true.
We’re having a cracking discussion on the same post over at Stand Firm where Pete Broadbent has entered.
Pete is an area bishop in London who sits on the council of the CEEC and yet fully supports women bishops in the CofE (although he has fought hard for legislated protection for dissenters - he’s copping it from both sides).
He is, to my mind, another good example of this shift in definition.
Christmas doesn’t offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social program. It’s a story - the record of an event that began to change the entire framework in which we think about human life, so the unique value of every life came to be affirmed and assumed.
Rowan Williams seems a little bit airy fairy about what is the purpose of the “Christmas story” and how it represents the ultimate salvation for mankind. In fact his appeal to consider the human cost, does not sound indifferent from many socially aware individuals who hold no religous beliefs at all.
This column from Anne Summers definitely needs a response:
Need for more than great speeches and symbolism
Essentially it’s a whinge about Obama not being liberal enough. But amongst it is the following paragraph:
Then there was Obama’s decision that staunchly anti-gay preacher Reverend Rick Warren perform the invocation at his inauguration. No matter that he is to be “balanced” by Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights campaigner and pro-gay rights advocate, performing the benediction. Gay groups have to accommodate themselves to Obama reaching out to a man who repudiates their very existence.Would Obama reach out in the same way to the Ku Klux Klan? Aren’t there limits to tolerance and inclusion?
As far as I can tell, from my quick search of Saddleback’s website,
Saddleback - Bible Questions & Answers
Rick Warren’s views are mainline Evangelical on the subject - that is, all sexual activity outside of marriage, not just homosexuality, is a sin. Anybody is welcome to attend his church, but they can’t become members unless they’re committed to living in accordance with the Bible’s teaching on this, and any other, topic. Not much evidence of a man who would repudiates gay’s very existence.
Recently Carl Trueman, writing on the Reformation21 blog, made the following comment:
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the day is probably not far off when those who regard homosexual practice as wrong will be consistently presented as the moral, cultural and intellectual equivalents of white supremacists.
Here’s my response to Anne Summer’s comments on Rick Warren:
In her Saturday (10/1/09) opinion piece, Anne Summers states that Rick Warren “repudiates their (gays) very existence”. In my search of Rick Warren’s churches’ website, I can find no evidence of this. Instead, I find orthodox Christian teaching on homosexuality. While Dr Summers is entitled to disagree with what Rick Warren teaches on homosexuality, that doesn’t entitle her to mislead the Herald’s readers about what Rick Warren’s stance on the subject.
Don’t know if it was a good, bad or indifferent response, only that it didn’t get published.
Here’s a letter that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning (19/1/09):
The inauguration of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States will be for black Americans, and also for many white Americans, the amazing fulfilment of Martin Luther King jnr’s dream that people will be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
In a world that is so divided on racial lines, Obama’s inauguration carries the eternal hope that whatever unites us will ultimately defeat the relentless forces of hatred, enmity and suspicion that divide us. This is a hope that is the bedrock of our democratic governance, and without such a belief in the intrinsic worth of our common humanity, civilisation is doomed to a destiny devoid of peace.
So while Obama’s inauguration will mark a defining moment for race relations in America, it will be inevitably clouded by the horrific state of affairs in Gaza. Despite this concurrence, however, the fact remains that there is a common link between the two. The historic injustices felt by generations of black Americans have proven to be exactly of the same order as those felt by the Islamic world towards the colonising forces of the Judaeo-Christian West.
At his inauguration, Obama needs to therefore make perfectly clear that the forces of democracy must not only extend to uniting the world’s races, but they must also extend to uniting the world’s three great monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
This is a task that constitutes what is perhaps the most monumental challenge to face the Obama administration. It will ultimately help bring to an end the Bush Administration’s “war on terror”, and it will bear further testimony to these immortal words of the American Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal.”
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin Rivett (ACT)
Apparently my reply will be published in the SMH tomorrow.
While the second calls on the Federal Government to overturn the Howard government’s decision to ban spending government aid money on reproductive health, especially funding abortions:
Government denies choice to women in developing countries
