The AP reports that the Iowa Supreme Court says the state’s same-sex marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples.
The Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality has released reports that will come before the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, August 17-23, 2009, in Minneapolis. If the four resolutions pass, it will effectively give Lutherans a local option as to same sex blessings and the ordination partnered gay ordinands.
As reported, last week the Blue Book for General Convention 2009 became available. Among the many public documents is one from the House of Deputies
If Earth Hour happens only once a year, and for one hour, then it is a huge failure. Worse than that, the whole feel-good propaganda around it distracts many people from the serious danger the environment is in. It is almost like giving a placebo to a very sick patient. It is a medication that does nothing concrete, but takes away fears from people’s minds and allows them to go back to their daily environmental unfriendly activities, once the Earth Hour is over.
Day by day, dear Lord, of you three things I pray: to see you more clearly, love you more dearly, follow you more nearly, day by day.
The year is 1907. The month is October. There is a run the banks. What does most influential financier of the day do? Spend 30 days at General Convention which was the celebrating 300 years of Anglicanism in the USA.
The pivotal assumption on my part is the centrality of the Incarnation – the God-man, Jesus Christ. Here, my Incarnation theology is more in the tradition of the Wisdom literature of the Scriptures, the
Church Fathers and the Orthodox tradition (in contrast to that of Anselm). The Incarnation is the
very reason for creation, so that God might graciously share the Divine life with the “other”.
Here’s the reality check. Before you accuse someone of being a “centrist” and use that as code for lack of faith commitment, ask these questions: Does it matter at all where the center is? Does it matter at all where the center could and should be?
That’s the thing about therapy: It’s about real people, and they don’t necessarily fit your grand theory or mine. Conservative evangelists are arrogant and wrong to assume that therapy can alter a patient’s sexuality. Don’t repeat their mistake by insisting that it can’t. — William Saleton in Slate.
God has placed the US church in a situation of enormous risk brought on mostly because of policies and attitudes rooted in a conviction of exceptionalism. Two by-products of the resulting anxiety, denial and despair, have resulted in a variety of strategies aimed at exclusionary absolutism, based on the fearful assumption that elimination of the “other” will ease that anxiety and bring well-being and security.