The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters
Religion is a frequent topic on this blog, and should not be confused with Christianity.
Right now, it’s pretty hard to decide who to give our Douche-bat of the Day Award. There are just so many people vying for the honor, with lots of pastors leading the pack. Some awful things have been said in “Jesus’ name,” and we’ll get to those, but I decided to pull out Franklin Graham from that deck first.
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This is something of a stream of thought on my impressions after the Orlando Shooting this weekend. It may not make much sense, and likely isn’t my last word on the subject. But to be clear, this is not some part of international Jihad or terrorism. This is homophobia at it worst, nothing more nor less, and we need to call it that.
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I spend too much time on Facebook following a conservative United Methodist page. I often post articles which I know will elicit strong responses, and I have to laugh at some of the mental gymnastics some of these people (many clergy) go through to justify their “Bible-believing” positions. A recent exchange serves as a good example of why we can’t take the Bible literal, and why discernment is critical when you try to use the Bible to support a position.
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A relative finished up high school at Carmel Christian Academy this past weekend. I attended without knowing they had the Benham Brothers as the graduation speakers. I considered walking out, but my other sister was right to remind me it was my nephew’s day, not mine. So I decided to make the best of it, and see what they had to say.
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As some of you may know, the United Methodist Church is holding their quadrennial General Conference in Portland, Oregon this week. As has been the case for the past several General Conference’s (GC), a major topic is the full inclusion of LGBT people (or as the conservatives call us, “the self-avowed practicing homosexuals”) in the life of the church. My prediction is that little will change in regard to those issues.
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This is a short conclusion to Bishop Lowry’s series. He claims, “signs of new life all around.” This is his clinging to the belief that it will be the orthodox church (his definition of orthodoxy) that survives and thrives, all evidence to the contrary.
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United Methodist Bishop, J. Michael Lowry of the Central Texas Conference, recently addressed a gathering of the United Methodist Scholars for Christian Orthodoxy Conference at Armstrong Chapel United Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has put his address, “In a Mirror Dimly”: The Future of the United Methodist Church”© on his website (http://www.bishopmikelowry.com/) as a four part posting. This is part 3.
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United Methodist Bishop, J. Michael Lowry of the Central Texas Conference, recently addressed a gathering of the United Methodist Scholars for Christian Orthodoxy Conference at Armstrong Chapel United Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has put his address, “In a Mirror Dimly”: The Future of the United Methodist Church”© on his website as a four part posting. This is Part 2 of a four part series.
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United Methodist Bishop, J. Michael Lowry of the Central Texas Conference, recently addressed a gathering of the United Methodist Scholars for Christian Orthodoxy Conference at Armstrong Chapel United Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has put his address, “In a Mirror Dimly”: The Future of the United Methodist Church”© on his website as a four part posting. This is my response to those articles.
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I’ve talked before about a conservative United Methodist page I follow. I recently posted a Facebook meme merely because I found the sentiment somewhat heartwarming and thoughtful, but boy did I get taken to the woodshed. A few of them just flew into a rage that I should dare call on conservative United Methodists to express kindness…well, at least of the variety they seem to believe the Dalai Lama expresses.
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So, by now everyone knows that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died over the weekend. As is usual, everyone is rushing to the airwaves to talk about what a nice and brilliant person he was. Of course I don’t know him personally, but certainly his public personae were not so nice, and I don’t think his legal reasoning, considered by many to be smart and original (pun intended), was all that brilliant. It was merely partisan and theocratic. Scalia was not really interested in the original intent of the framers. He was interested in creating a facade of intellectualism around his rulings. His genius was not in a new form of thought around the Constitution, but in a way to package his rulings so that people thought they had a grand origin.
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