This website has done us all the favor of providing a definitive (but slightly off-color) description of what it means to be a Lutheran.
Except they forgot to mention compulsive coffee drinking.
Archive for December, 2004
And Now For Something Completely Different…
Friday, December 31st, 2004Site Upgrade Underway Completed
Wednesday, December 29th, 2004
I am migrating the content to an open source blog software package, WordPress. I realize other software such as Moveable Type are more popular, have more functionality, and are also free (at least for a base package), but I’m partial to the open source model.
I am currently migrating the postings, and will then worry about look and feel. So, it may take me a few days, but eventually I’ll get things back to where they were.
And no more complaints about the lack of permalinks.
Update: It’s pretty much there, although I’ll be tweaking it for awhile. The site now supports user registration and comments, so feel free to log in and let us all know what you think.
Asia Relief Efforts
Tuesday, December 28th, 2004Intelligent Design vs. Evolution
Tuesday, December 28th, 2004And now for a change of pace, there has been a lot of activity in the blogosphere lately about the Intelligent Design theory of the origin of humanity. The Washington Post ran an article about yet another battle to water down the teaching of evolution in Dover, PA. Hugh Hewitt blogged a critique of the article with links to Intelligent Design apologists here and here. Of course, there are many sources for the opposing viewpoint; one I still find well-argued is from Skeptics Magazine. (more…)
Concerned Women for America
Monday, December 27th, 2004The LA Times ran a below-the-fold front page story on Concerned Women for America, an extremely conservative organization run by Beverly LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, the author of the “Left Behind” series. One excerpt caught my eye:
The organization also has been a leader in the attack on “Kinsey,” the movie about the life of sex-research pioneer Alfred C. Kinsey. The “ultimate goal” of Kinsey and his followers, the group’s website says, has been “to normalize pedophilia, or ‘adult-child sex.’ ”
In the group’s view, Kinsey and the movie reflect much of what is deplorable in contemporary American life.
“The agenda of the left is to make religion strictly private and pornography public,” [Robert] Knight [director of CWFA's in-house think tank] said. “And the people behind this agenda, more often than not, are homosexual activists.”
I have been feeling that there is too great a focus on gay rights to the exclusion of other areas of concern to Christians, say, homelessness, hunger, war and disease. But it’s statements like those above that show that gay rights is the current front in the fight against prejudice and hatred. While I commented recently that conservative language against gays is reminiscent of the segregationist language of the past, this quote sounds eerily like the anti-Semitic language regarding the supposed Jewish control of world finance or the media. Apparently the CWFA thinks that the courts’ legal decisions regarding the Establishment Clause and free speech rights vis-a-vis pornography are all engineered by a conspiracy of homosexual activists bent on making the world safe for pedophilia.
Once again, the reason conservatives are accused of being bigoted towards gays is because they sound bigoted.
Methodist Minister Appealing Defrocking
Monday, December 27th, 2004Elizabeth Stroud, the Methodist minister that went public with her lesbian relationship with her partner, is appealing the church court decision removing her from the ministry. The MSNBC story shed an interesting light on the ambivalence of the judge in the church trial:
[R]etired Bishop Joseph Yeakel, the judge who presided at her church trial…told Stroud “the day will come when the church apologizes for this decision.”
<snip>
At the trial, Yeakel barred testimony from six Stroud witnesses who oppose the Methodist ban [on actively gay clergy], citing both legal and theological arguments.
I believe that Bishop Yeakel is representative of many in the church today – believing that things will be very different in twenty or thirty years, but for now, feeling constrained by the historical stands of the church.
Merry Christmas
Friday, December 24th, 2004As we celebrate the miraculous arrival in our world of God in human form as our Lord and Savior, I hope that you and your family and friends have a blessed Christmas.
Merry Christmahannukwanzaa
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004ELCA Sexuality Task Force to Take a Stand
Tuesday, December 21st, 2004The ELCA has announced that the recommendations of it’s Sexuality task force on homosexuality will be made public on January 13th. The task force has gone through a very methodical process of listening to all points of view within the church and then presenting these points of view in two study guides (Part 1 and Part 2.) These study guides have not taken sides, but seem to have been intended to show that all points of view have been heard and respected. (more…)
Deconstructing Richard Viguerie
Wednesday, December 15th, 2004Terry Gross, host of NPR’s Fresh Air program“>program, interviewed Richard Viguerie, the inventor of much of the conservatives’ media and fund-raising tactics over the last forty years and the so-called “funding father” of the conservative movement. Mr. Viguerie is promoting his new book, “America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power.” Here are a few quotes (transcription is mine from the audio)”>audio) and my reactions. (more…)
He is a Christian Too
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004Just for fun, I googled “I am a Christian too”, and the first hit was this opinion piece by John Sugg entitled, not surprisingly, “I am a Christian, too”. Okay, so it looks like I wasn’t the first to come up with this counter-conservative slogan. It also looks like I am not the only Christian that objects to the religious right on theological as well as political grounds (more…)
An Open Letter to Bob Jones
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004Time and Newsweek Do Christmas
Monday, December 6th, 2004Time and Newsweek are running their cover stories on Christmas this week. Maybe I’m too cynical, but these obligatory Christmas and Easter stories always strike me as transparent attempts to drive newsstand sales while not actually providing any real news. They all follow the same formula: talk about the historical Jesus, quote a conservative evangelical, quote the Jesus Seminar and the liberal academics, bring up the Gnostics, remind us that most Americans are believers, and close with a reassuring statement about faith. Newsweek has stuck to the formula this week, but Time breaks out of a bit, which is why it’s a much better article. (more…)
More on the UCC ad…
Sunday, December 5th, 2004The UCC Shows Some Real Courage
Friday, December 3rd, 2004Much has been made of the broadcast networks’ refusal to run this UCC ad. But I think the real amazing story here is the courage of the UCC to run an ad campaign targeting gay Christians. The ad shows people of color, the disabled, and gays being denied admittance to a church while wealthy whites are welcomed. While I’m sure many minorities and disabled are made to feel unwelcome in some churches, as a group they don’t have anywhere near the trouble being accepted in a church that openly gay couples do. What stands out to me (and I’m sure the major networks) is the male gay couple holding hands as they approach the church, and the lesbian couple in the closing shot. I have to believe that the UCC made an explicit decision to reach out to gays. Implicit in this is a confidence that the congregations of UCC churches will have no problems with the commercial, and will in fact be welcoming towards any gays taking them up on their offer. This is a brave and admirable move, especially as we begin another four years of the Rove era.
The other mainline protestant denominations (I’m a long-time member of an ELCA church) won’t even think about openly inviting gays to their churches. While many of the leaders of other denominations would like to follow the UCC’s example, they can’t risk having their congregations rise up in revolt. The ECUSA is battling schism, the ELCA is carefully handling their own potential timebomb while already dealing with conservatives making veiled threats, and the UMC has defrocked a lesbian minister. The UCC’s courage should make the rest of us mainline protestants feel a bit chagrined at how far we have to go.
Donations
Wednesday, December 1st, 2004Jesus Needs Your Money!
…but I don’t. All expenses for this site, minimal as they are, I gladly pay for myself. However, there are programs sponsored by mainline protestant denominations that need financial support to continue and expand their ministries. Each of these links provides a wealth of worthy ministries. Find one that looks good to you, and please help them as you are able:
Why This Blog?
Wednesday, December 1st, 2004The national media has summarized the results of the 2004 presidential election as “Christians voted for Bush and the Republicans, and non-believers voted for Kerry and the Democrats.” A Bush voter was quoted saying that he “voted for Christ”. Richard Viguerie, a conservative fund-raiser, is counting on Bush to pursue his “pro-Christian agenda”. According to Bill Schneider at CNN, the best predictor for who voted Republican is whether they attend church on a weekly basis. (more…)
What I Believe
Wednesday, December 1st, 2004Others may disagree, but my religious beliefs are pretty mundane. I believe in pretty much anything found in the Lutheran Book of Worship. While I am a life-long Lutheran, if I found myself in a neighborhood with no ELCA church, I know I would be very comfortable attending an Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist or UCC church. This is not to say that there aren’t real theological differences among these churches, but they aren’t nearly as important as what they have in common: a belief in our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and God’s call to us to follow him. (more…)