Christianity is paying an enormous price for its numbers who fixate on the few scriptural passages that address sexual behavior in an ancient, oppressively patriarchal culture. This fixation diminishes Christ’s life. It erodes the moral authority of Christianity, and that in turn, does harm to a wider society that needs all the moral authority it can get.
Among the decisions coming out of those reflections was a unanimous decision to cancel next year’s usual meeting of the Provincial Council and instead dedicate the $40,000 budgeted for it to the organization of an event “that will further God’s mission.”
One congregation in Chitungwiza had just completed building a church in Unit M when two weeks ago police with “orders from above” pounced. They ordered the congregants to leave the church and Bishop Nolbert Kunonga possessed it. Now he has given one of his followers the right to the property.
UPDATE: The Café’s own Torey Lightcap comments
Public debate builds trust. Stitch ups breed cynicism. ~~Bishop Alan Wilson
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What I take away from Niehbuhr is the fundamental conviction that there is no culture that either has, does, or will embody the Gospel teachings. Just as all humans sin and fall short of God’s loving hope for us, our cultures will as well. A true proclamation of the Gospel must always and inevitably include a condemnation for the ways that the Gospel is perverted in that culture.
A great fullness of spiritual comfort and joy in God comes into the hearts of those who recite or devoutly intone the psalms as an act of praise to Jesus Christ. They drop sweetness in men’s souls and pour delight into their thoughts and kindle their wills with the fire of love, making them hot and burning within, and beautiful and lovely in Christ’s eyes. And those who persevere in their devotion he raises up to the life of meditation and, on many occasions, he exalts them to the melody and celebrations of heaven.