Is Rudeness a Christian Value?
The Minutemen United web site provides the following purpose:
Minutemen United is a group of men and women dedicated to creating an environment where Christian thoughts, ideals and leaders can get traction in the marketplace of ideas. We hail from New York to California and are headquartered in Ohio ” the heart of it all”.
But according to the Columbus Dispatch, their way of getting “traction in the marketplace” for their particular brand of “Christian” ideas is to be rude and to disrupt other folks’ church services.
On one of the first Sundays, six people came to the church’s 11 a.m. service and addressed the congregation during a time designated for prayer requests and comments.
Hurt said a man, who introduced himself as a minister from the New Beginnings Church in Warsaw, Ohio, started to give a sermon about how the church was acting against God’s word by accepting homosexuals.
Members of Minutemen United also visited King Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbus that same morning, said the Rev. John Keeny.
“They rebuked me as a pastor for preaching that God’s love is for everyone,” Keeny said.
Interesting approach. I note that their is named “New Beginnings” and is thus neither First Baptist nor King Avenue United Methodist Church, a point they seem to have missed when deciding where to park their sermons.
The churches would have every right to have the police throw these trespassers out. I congratulate both congregations for displaying a more Christ-like attitude than I likely would have.
HT: Pandagon.
I’ve known “Coach” Daubenmire and some of his troops for years. He’s a genuine theocratic loon.
BTW, your link is to Energion Publications. The Minutemen United site is here.
Thanks for the catch. I also missed the Columbus Dispatch link, but I’ve fixed both.
I genuinely don’t understand why you are so annoyed at the actions of these “Minutemen” in their condemnation of the church’s accommodation of homosexuals. No-one can deny that the Bible, and by inference God himself, is violently opposed to (male) homosexuality (despite the fact that, by creating Man, he must also have created homosexuals.)
Are not these Minutemen simply obeying God’s proclamations, and is it not hypocritical of you and other Christians to pick and choose which parts of the Bible you wish to observe and which you will sideline? Surely, God’s word is absolute, and if he wished his rules to be modified or muted for the modern world he would have let you know?
Although I find the anti-gay sentiments of the Christian fundamentalists quite obscene, I have some grudging respect for their willingness to stick to their guns, where you and others like you try to weasle out of what your God actually said, and invent your own version of sanitised Christianity.
The question is, “Which church’s condemnation of homosexuality?” They have a church that does, but the two churches they are protesting disagree.
No one can deny? That’s interesting, because it appears that there are at least two churches in Columbus, OH, who apparently do deny it. There are several disconnects. First, that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong. There are certainly people who deny this. Second, that by inference, if something is stated in the Bible, it must also be what God thinks. There are those who believe that and those who don’t.
One of the differences between streams in Christianity is whether theology is founded solely on scripture. The larger portion of the Christian faith does not hold to a purely scriptural foundation.
There is nobody, and I repeat, nobody who actually obeys all the commands of scripture. It would be hypocritical of me to claim that I kept all the commands of scripture and then not to do so. It would be hypocritical of me to accuse someone else of failing to obey scripture, while failing to obey it myself, but since I have done none of those things.
The charge of hypocrisy must be based on my claimed beliefs. That I fail to live up to someone else’s standards is not a basis for a charge of hypocrisy.
And why is it that God’s word, in this case as reflected (if they are) in the Bible, must be absolute? Further, why should my understanding of them be absolute?
It’s quite silly of you, who are not a Christian, to decide what should be my authentic faith. Apparently you have decided that only Biblical literalists who teach “sola scriptura” are to be regarded as authentic Christians. I will assure you that is not so. But more importantly, I follow my faith as I understand it, not as the fundamentalists understand it, nor as you understand it.
And, if it matters to you, the issue I raised was one of courtesy. Even believing that homosexuality is evil does not give people the right to invade other people’s worship service and disrupt it.
You ask Which churchs condemnation
I mean, the Church that bases its teachings on the Bible, which I take as the basic definition of Christian.
Yes, you are correct, I do take the view that only Biblical literalists who teach sola scriptura are to be regarded as authentic Christians. How else can one make a definition of Christian, considering that the very name derives from a character in the book? Consider this – what would be the tenets of your faith if there were no Bible? You may well believe in some kind of creator God, who listens to prayers, performs miracles and grants an afterlife to those she deems worthy. But you would have no knowledge of Jesus Christ, or his resurrection, or the Ten Commandments or any of the other Bible stories that sustain your faith. No different, really, to the thousands of other religions around the world, past and present, who believe(d) in similar gods. What distinguishes the Christian faith from all others is its unique holy book, the Bible. This book is where the Christian faith originates; this book defines Christianity.
For centuries, up to and including this day, the Bible has been promoted by the religious establishment as being the inerrant word of God (or some similar phrase), meaning that the Bible ALL the Bible is sanctioned by God. Those who wish to dispute this, and argue that certain passages are untrue or irrelevant, should, in my opinion, find a new name for their belief set, and then explain the origins of this new religion.
You say there are questions over whether theology is founded solely on scripture, and that the larger portion of the Christian faith does not hold to a purely scriptural foundation. I dispute this, unless you are talking purely of the Christian intelligentsia (who number probably less than 1% of the total). I submit that the average Christian believer, sitting in a pew in Biloxi, or Rio, or Rome , or Seoul, believes 100% that Christianity is founded solely on scripture. However, it as a very restricted subset of scripture that they are exposed to, and a very pervasive and oppressive system that has drummed it into them probably from childhood, carefully skirting over any parts that might give rise to doubts.
Returning to the central point of the original post, the two churches in Ohio that you mention do not deny that the Bible and God are opposed to homosexuality they cant, because its there in black and white for anyone to read (“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Lev 20:13). They simply try to ignore it, and try to deflect criticism by emphasising other Bible passages that promote love for all. But the elephant in the room will not go away.
In closing, I would say that I would not presume to decide for you what should be your faith that is a personal matter for you. And I do agree that rudeness is never to be condoned, no matter what ones beliefs.
One more point I forgot to make:
You ask: Which churchs condemnation of homosexuality?
You mean there’s more than one Church?? Why?
Henry –
You strike me as a very decent, honourable and reasonable person (albeit a devout Christian). I would be happy to have an off-line discussion with you. You have my e-mail address – please contact me if you are willing.
Barry Jones – TVA
I’ll contact you. The extent of our disagreements has kept responses to your latest notes on the back burner just because they will take time.
I’m sorry to see the conversation go private, as I expect it would be enlightening.
I’m happy to keep it public. I just didn’t want to abuse Henry’s blog hospitality by filling it up with a single conversation.
The only problem I see with conducting the conversation on the blog is that comment threads can get inconvenient.
I see a couple of options. One would be that I host the major elements of the conversation as blog entries. You could e-mail me entries or post them as comments whichever is most convenient and I would post them/promote them to main entries. Then I can answer in a separate entry.
Alternatively, if you have a blog of your own you could reply there, and each of us would commit to link to the replies on the other blog. There would be some convenience in having all of the discussion in one place.
As for hogging the blog, that’s no great problem. I just looked at your web site and found a number of things that I would consider valid points of discussion on which I could write blog entries, so why not pull this all together?
Hopefully in combination we could get both atheist and Christian involvement in further comments.
I would simply note what I did in my e-mail. In order to avoid giving you “you’re wrong” responses, i.e. to do at least some minimal documentation, I would need the conversation to proceed slowly. I don’t care how fast you reply, just so you’re not impatient when I take a little bit of time. If you need to respond slowly as well, that’s also fine and helps me.
Let me know what works for you.
We’ll work on a way to do this publicly.
I’ll continue to reply into your blog. I don’t have one of my own.