Posted on 07/16/2012 6:29:36 PM PDT by scottjewell
There is no way, short of a miraculous and full-scale changing of hearts and minds, for North American denominations to survive the homosexuality crisis. Denominations like the PCUSA, ELCA, RCA, UMC, and Episcopal Church will continue.
They won't fold their tents and join the Southern Baptists (though wouldn't that be interesting!). I'm not suggesting most of our old, mainline denominations will disappear. But I do not see how any of these once flourishing denominations will make it through the present crisis intact.
And the sooner denominations admit this sobering reality the better.
Every denomination is different. The percentages on both sides of the issue and the official positions are not identical. But the basic contours of the problem are quite similar.
On one side you have liberals who want to see the church open its doors to the GLBT agenda. They want homosexual behavior welcomed and affirmed. They want to perform gay marriages. They want gays and lesbians to be ordained to church office. Liberals (or "progressives" or whatever-I'm trying to use neutral labels) see this as a justice issue.
They believe conservatives are simply on the wrong side of history and that one day we will look at our traditional attitudes toward gays and lesbians like we look at old attitudes toward African Americans or our old attitudes toward women's ordination. We will be embarrassed to see that we could have been so blind and bigoted for so long.
On the other side you have conservatives who want to see the church maintain purity and biblical fidelity. They want homosexuals to be loved and treated with respect.
But they believe the behavior cannot be tolerated as Christian behavior. They see this as a gospel issue. They believe liberals are simply on the wrong side of the Bible and one day will be embarrassed to see how much we dishonored God by capitulating to our culture. To cave on this issue is not only to reject the plain teaching of Scripture, affirmed for two millennia of church history, but it says to people "peace, peace" where there is no peace.
n the middle are those who want both sides to get along. Maybe these third way folks are liberals willing to let conservatives keep doing their thing for awhile because they believe today's conservatives will slowly evolve or die off. Maybe they are institutional loyalists who want to preserve the denomination at all costs. Maybe they consider homosexuality a relatively minor issue, one not worth fighting over and dividing the church over. Or maybe, as is often the case, those advocating for a third way are conservatives who don't want to be the meanies who put up a fight.
These are the three main parties in this controversy-left, right, and center-and there is no way to make each of them happy. There is no way for mainline denominations to broker a compromise that everyone can live with.
Read more @:
http://www.christianpost.com/news/why-no-denomination-will-survive-the-homosexuality-crisis-78296/
Father Donald B. Cozzens' book "The Changing Face of the Priesthood" conservatively places the percentage of Catholic priests who are homosexual from a minimum low of 23 to a high of 58% - and even that upper number may be low.
You should add that Cozzens is a liberal, who has no problem with homosexuals in the priesthood and pals around with Voice of the Faithful, a notorious modernist organization which has been explicitly condemned by, e.g., the bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska.
You should also add that Cozzens' book was published in 2000. This is not a statistic based on some cutting-edge research that was just published.
Neither the article, nor the response from Sky Pilot had to do with abuse. The question is how Christian churches deal with the presence and acceptance of homosexuals and their agenda.
As I understand his point, whether it is right or wrong, is that there is an attitude of looking the other way in the case of the RC priesthood that is simply one way of dealing with the problem.
One of the problems I have with "legitimate" bible scholars is that they twist and spin in all sorts of uncomfortable ways in order to deny what the black words on the white page say.
Leviticus (KJV)
18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is
abomination.
—
Is that difficult to understand?
perhaps, just perhaps, the protestant revolution was not a good idea after all....???
actually, the episcopal church is being saved....as more and more of them return to Catholicism, more and more of them will be saved !!!!
I guess you've never read solid bible commentaries then...there are plenty. While there certainly are poor, manipulative, dishonest Bible scholars--there are many who are terrific. What sounds odd in an English translation--isn't so odd in Greek. It isn't un-Christian or un-Conservative to really study the bible--relying on the good, not the trashy, scholarship.
I gave you a solid, easy to understand argument already too--Paul explains salvation in many places--and ALWAYS its the same for men and women. It's just plain silly to imagine suddenly, as an aside, he's saying women gain salvation by having babies--rather than believing and following Christ.
In this passage Paul isn't explaining salvation anyway--he's talking about leadership in the Church...
Not a very complicated passage to understand--in its plain meaning, unless, you want to be confused.
It is recorded that Jesus delegated His authority to the Apostles--who actually wrote the New Testament--telling us about Jesus.
Paul's letters in the New Testament have the authority of the Apostles--which is to say--they have the authority of Christ.
The Church from the earliest days recognized the writings of the New Testament as having exactly the same highest authority as the words of Jesus Himself. This is why Christians call the Bible "God's Word."
(In fact there aren't even any quotation marks in the original Greek texts of the Gospels--delineating exactly which were Jesus' words, as opposed to the writer's words...quotation marks are a translators' educated guess)
The Church is built on the authority of the Apostles--as found in the New Testament--there is no Christian Church without regarding Paul's (and Peter's and James' and John's etc.) words in the New Testament as having the same authority--as delegated by Christ--of Christ Himself.
To try to separate out Jesus words out of the Bible as somehow more authoritative--than the work of the authors who first told us about Jesus (the Bible)....is to invite chaos and destruction into the Church.
Who are you, or me, or anyone, to question Jesus's Apostle, Paul?
Right, we could have just purchased an indulgence for forgiveness of sins and been golden?????? Dang it, missed the indulgence boat.
Paul never met Jesus, as I’m sure you know.
What? Saul (Paul) meets Jesus on the road near Damascus in Acts 9:3-6.
I read it all, now twice. And it still doesn’t talk about abuse, but about numbers of homosexuals in the ranks of RC priests.
I believe that you are (perhaps justifiably) reading other conversations you have had with Sky Pilot into what he is saying.
Where?
St. Paul, Friend or Enemy of Women?
excerpt
There was probably no moment in early Christianity where women were totally included as equals with men. Christianity was born and developed in the context of patriarchal social structures in both the Jewish and Hellenistic worlds. But there were radical ideas floating around in early Christianity that suggested that gender hierarchy had been dissolved through baptism into Christ for a new humanity beyond gender. This is expressed in the baptismal formula used by St. Paul in Galatians 3:27-8: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
This baptismal formula was not invented by Paul, but belonged to the Hellenistic Jewish-Christian church that he joined upon his conversion. This church included women and men, slaves or former slaves, and freed men and women from Greek and Jewish backgrounds. This baptismal creed assured them that all the hierarchies between these different social statuses had been dissolved in Christ, that they all shared a new oneness in Christ. The gender part of this formula was probably linked from its beginning with celibacy. Women became equal with men by dissolving their traditional relations with men as wives. Thereby they were also freed to teach and preach in local assemblies and as traveling evangelists.
Although he accepted the practice that women could speak in church worship assemblies, Paul demanded that they should do so with veiled heads to indicate their continued secondary status in the order of creation (I Cor. 11:5). But the passage in I Corinthians 14: 33b-35--where it is said that women should not speak at all--is generally conceded by scholars today to have been an interpolation from the next generation after Paul. It was not part of the original text.
In the generation following Paul, Christian churches that looked to Paul as their founding evangelist became split on these teachings about women's role. Some groups in these second-generation Pauline churches continued and expanded the view that gender hierarchy was overcome through baptism. In Christ there was no more male and female. This also meant that reborn Christians should transcend marital relations and anticipate the Kingdom of God in which there will be no more marrying and giving in marriage (Luke 20:35). These Pauline Christians wrote texts, such as the "Acts of Paul and Thecla," which celebrates the story of a woman converted by Paul who rejects her fiancé, adopts men's clothing, and travels as an evangelist. Persecuted by the agents of family and state, she is vindicated by God through miraculous protection from harm. Paul reappears at the end of the story to affirm her role and commission her to preach in her hometown.
Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2004/03/St-Paul-Friend-Or-Enemy-Of-Women.aspx?p=2#ixzz20rPlNjXu
Yet Paul is credited for spreading the Christian faith.
The Church s NOT experiencing changes in belief, tenets, or organization ande don’t pick up and move our papers to some other church because our church governing body has voted to change what something in the bible means or says or what a pastor or synod chooses to ignore or re-interpret. Essentially, everyone is not his own self sufficient authority and church and does not flit about from pastor to pastor looking for one who fits one’s own preferred outlook or is more socially compatible.
This can be resolved by realizing that all of Paul's authority is derivative: he receives it from Christ as a special favor, and received also the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Probably the greatest proof is found in 2 Peter 3:15-16. There Peter refers to Paul as "our beloved brother." He explains that Paul wrote "according to the wisdom given him." Finally, Peter refers to (apparently) a collection of Paul's letters evaluated them as being in the same class as "the rest of the Scriptures," thus giving a clear indication that Paul's writings are indeed truthful and authoritative.
Paul himself says repeatedly it isn't anything personal having to do with his merit. He knows it all rests on what Jesus promised: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). The apostles would thus be divinely guided by the Holy Spirit in their teaching and writing.
I think you don't know what an "overwhelming majority" is. Your misuse of that term degrades the credibility of whatever point it is that you're trying to make.
Your post ends up looking like just another lame way of saying "Rome is evil. All else is irrelevant". That's a sad, sick, stupid, and false message ... but if it's what you're trying to say, you don't need three paragraphs to say it. Two sentences will do ... and be a lot more honest.
But in no. California visiting family, and this past Sunday morning we noticed no fewer than a dozen "sandwich board" signs placed at intersections giving notice of new congregations starting up in homes and rented facilities.
So, I asked some questions around.
A lot of people leaving main-line churches and starting independent, autonomous local churches.
Exercising "republicanism" -- decentralization -- leaving the centralized church governments behind. This is great.
If they are biblicist, then this returns to the Lord Jesus as Head and the Holy Spirit as Administrator of the the Church of God.
I am always baffled how that "conservatives" who claim to believe in decentralization of civil government, can promote the centralization of church government.
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