by gskern » August 22nd, 2005, 9:56 pm
As soon as I saw the word "Episcopal" and the title "New York Times", I knew immediately what was in the article by (former) Senator Danforth...
... and I was not disappointed. The very term "Moderate" has political overtones, and I was somewhat amused that Danforth denegrated the efforts in politics of "conservative Christians" and then turned right around in his article and stumped for his own side of several political issues, under the banner of "Moderate Christian"...
And just HOW the myth of "separation of Church and State" has risen to cult status in this country is beyond me... The closest thing to it is a statement in the Bill of Rights about there not being any "state religion"...
While Danforth is correct in his round-about way of saying that we should not manipulate the laws of the State to force God on people, he uses the "lay down your weapons" plea in the article to then (in my reading of it) soften the Divine disgust over things like Homosexuality, Euthenasia, and Abortion.
He's right: Love God and Love your Neighbor ARE indeed the central themes of Christianity; but when you're loving GOD, you (by definition) are also hating the things He hates.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with having enough COURAGE to stand up and say, humbly, "I'm sorry, but Homosex is an abomination to God". I'm not sure why a constitutional ammendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman would, quote, "humiliate" homosexuals (their sexual practices should be doing that already), but I do agree that something like that is a silly practice of Constitutional law...
The only trouble with "Love the Sinner but Hate the Sin" is that most sinful human beings (such as myself) are, naturally, terrible at the first part and great at the second... but that doesn't make the second therefore "wrong" or ill-advised... We just need to do BOTH, and in that order... I don't see the value in assigning the term "Moderate" to Christians who see a real need to get that right...