Is the Obama presidency the final nail in the coffin for the Religious Right? Don’t count on it. For one thing, political movements like the Religious Right don’t need a “god” to succeed, but they do need a devil. Nothing builds allegiances among a coalition like a common enemy.
It’s important to remember that we have never had this level of public support for marriage equality before. In eight years in California alone, the majority in favor of banning marriage equality has gone from 61 to 52 percent. Meanwhile, California’s legislature has voted for it, 18,000 couples are legally married in California, and legally comparable (if still unequal) domestic partnerships are available. Very soon, thousands of gay couples will be able to marry in Connecticut. The one state with a history of marriage equality, Massachusetts, is showing how good and positive a reform it is. New York recognizes Massachusetts’ civil marriages.
War, Religion, and the Reliquaries of Al Farrow
Beyond Relevance tells a modern day parable about church marketing. What if Starbucks used church marketing?
Why are so many Christians uncomfortable with the Second Coming? I think it is because in the past five centuries, the mainline churches of western Europe and North America have largely lost the sense of the transcendent. Sophisticated, modern people no longer take for granted the existence of a reality beyond what can be touched, measured, and managed by human ingenuity.
Annie Britton was preparing for ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church when she came out to the congregation she was leading in Southwestern Massachusetts; she had been keeping her wedding ring hidden because she was married to a woman. The announcement left her ineligible to continue her ministry at that church and ended her ordination process, or so she thought.
The Houston Chronicle has a piece on the phenomenon of professional musicians who serve multiple houses of worship–even if the houses of worship are of different faiths: “At Congregation Emanu El and Congregation Beth Israel, the city’s two large Reform synagogues, an unexpected combination has proved successful and nurturing for decades. At both, the organist and most of the paid singers are Christians, some of whom also work at big churches.”
Stonewall, a U.K.-based LGBT advocacy organization, has recognized Bishop Gene Robinson with its Hero of the Year award for 2008. The award is voted on by Stonewall supporters and was presented to him at a ceremony in London Thursday night. In a release about the award, Stonewall cited that Robinson “has bravely endured sustained personal attacks in recent months, as church debate on homosexuality has intensified, [and was] recently barred from Lambeth conference.”
At the beginning of the week a statement by the Primates and Standing Committee of CAPA (the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa) released a statement from their meeting in Nairobi back in early September. There was also an article detailing the views of some of the leadership in GAFCON with the ongoing Anglican Covenant process. Read together, the two statements indicate that there are different groups headed in different directions.
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