Confronting Religious Denial of Gay Marriage

Confronting Religious Denial of Gay Marriage PDF Author: Catherine M. Wallace
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498225411
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
Writing in part for secular humanists, non-Christians, and ex-Christians, Wallace locates the beginning of religious vilification of LBGTQ Americans: these attacks recycle earlier, equally reactionary political opposition to racial desegregation and equal rights for women. Then, step by step, she lays out three major flaws in the religious argument against gay marriage. First, it derives from Plato and Greco-Roman sexual anxieties, not from Jesus. Second, opposition to gay marriage takes Bible verses out of context, ignoring their roots in Iron Age biology, sexual politics in the classic era, and pagan ritual practices. Third and most importantly, this opposition reflects an inadequate moral theology based on a denial of contemporary science and social science. Then and only then does she offer her own concept of marriage as a morally rooted, creative process, laying out common ground easily shared by Christian humanists and secular humanists alike. Her nimble, accessible account, richly leavened by personal stories, will facilitate new conversations and alliances among all those, believers and nonbelievers alike, who affirm the moral dignity of gay marriage.

Confronting Religious Denial of Gay Marriage

Confronting Religious Denial of Gay Marriage PDF Author: Catherine M. Wallace
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498225411
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Get Book Here

Book Description
Writing in part for secular humanists, non-Christians, and ex-Christians, Wallace locates the beginning of religious vilification of LBGTQ Americans: these attacks recycle earlier, equally reactionary political opposition to racial desegregation and equal rights for women. Then, step by step, she lays out three major flaws in the religious argument against gay marriage. First, it derives from Plato and Greco-Roman sexual anxieties, not from Jesus. Second, opposition to gay marriage takes Bible verses out of context, ignoring their roots in Iron Age biology, sexual politics in the classic era, and pagan ritual practices. Third and most importantly, this opposition reflects an inadequate moral theology based on a denial of contemporary science and social science. Then and only then does she offer her own concept of marriage as a morally rooted, creative process, laying out common ground easily shared by Christian humanists and secular humanists alike. Her nimble, accessible account, richly leavened by personal stories, will facilitate new conversations and alliances among all those, believers and nonbelievers alike, who affirm the moral dignity of gay marriage.

God Believes in Love

God Believes in Love PDF Author: Gene Robinson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948099
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
From the IX Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church, the first openly gay person elected to the episcopate and the world’s leading religious spokesperson for gay rights and gay marriage—a groundbreaking book that persuasively makes the case for same-sex marriage using a commonsense, reasoned, religious argument. Robinson holds the religious text of the Bible to be holy and sacred and the ensuing two millennia of church history to be relevant to the discussion. He is equally familiar with the secular and political debate about gay marriage going on in America today, and is someone for whom same-sex marriage is a personal issue; Robinson was married to a woman for fourteen years and is a father of two children and has been married to a man for the last four years of a twenty-five-year relationship. Robinson has a knack for taking complex and controversial issues and addressing them in plain direct language, without using polemics or ideology, putting forth his argument for gay marriage, and bringing together sacred and secular points of view.

Confronting Religious Judgmentalism

Confronting Religious Judgmentalism PDF Author: Catherine M. Wallace
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498228887
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Come to church or go to hell. That's religious bullying. It's judgmentalism. And it's a theological distortion, a distortion insisting that shame and self-loathing are morally appropriate. In Christian humanist tradition, God is not some cosmic judge eager to smite all of us for our sinfulness. God is compassion. We are cherished by God beyond our wildest imagining. We are called to radical hospitality, not to crass judgmentalism. So where does this religious judgmentalism come from? It is the heritage of medieval theocracy: a violent, vindictive God of command and control was far more useful politically than a God of compassion, hospitality, and forgiveness. It comes from literal-minded misreading of the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit, a story about shame, not disobedience. And it comes from political success in exploiting deep-seated liabilities in the American soul: we spend our lives trying to "prove ourselves," a hopeless task. There's an alternative. In the Christian humanist tradition, authentic moral judgment is rooted in conscience as a creative process. Morality is an art demanding both rigorous consideration of the facts and thoughtful introspection. Conscience properly understood and thoughtfully practiced is an antidote to shame, incessant self-criticism, and chronic self-doubt.

Confronting Religious Absolutism

Confronting Religious Absolutism PDF Author: Catherine M. Wallace
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498228844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy provide the conceptual foundations of theocracy, which is to say religiously-based totalitarianism. These absolutist doctrines emerge for the very first time among the Victorians: they are not ancient beliefs at all. They appear in the 19th century, right alongside secular varieties totalitarian thought, and in response to all the same cultural anxieties. Reactionary religious leaders used these doctrines to oppose scholarly conclusions in geology and evolutionary biology. That much everyone knows. What's not as well known is the fact that their principal target was Christian-humanist biblical scholarship, an unbroken 500-year tradition of inquiry undertaken primarily by Christian clergy and seminary faculty. The alternative to faith-based totalitarianism is faith based upon the imagination, our most sophisticated cognitive skill. Faith rooted in the moral imagination does not depend upon abject deference to an array of rigid doctrines and improbable claims. Wallace contends that faith is best understood as a creative process, and religion is best understood as a multi-media art (and originally the Mother of all arts). The arts convince, they do not command. They persuade, they do not prove. The arts provide humane resources whereby we grapple with life's deepest mysteries. Symbolism, like quantum mathematics, is a tool for grappling with inescapable paradox at the heart of reality. It is an ancient strategy for articulating what we discover at the elusive mind-body interface. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

Confronting a Controlling God

Confronting a Controlling God PDF Author: Catherine M. Wallace
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498228933
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Christianity has lost control of its brand. That matters even for nonbelievers because Christian symbolism permeates Western culture. It shapes the source code for how we think about ourselves and what we expect from one another. If God is all-controlling, then human control is divinely sanctioned. Our efforts to control one another have cosmic legitimacy--the legitimacy claimed by fundamentalists pursuing a political agenda that has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. But if God is defined as compassion and loving-kindness, then Christianity calls the faithful to compassion and radical hospitality. Wallace traces the backstory of this vitally important tension all the way back to competing translations of Moses's argument with the burning bush, arguing for a "Copernican turn" in which the spiritual encounter with compassionate Presence lies at the heart of Christianity. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

The Truth About Same-Sex Marriage

The Truth About Same-Sex Marriage PDF Author: Erwin W. Lutzer
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 1575675218
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
HEADLINE: Is it really that big of a deal? A May 2009 Gallup poll revealed that fifty-seven percent of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, while only forty percent are in favor of it (down from forty-six percent in 2007). This short, easy-to-read book helps shed light on what so many people believe, and why they ought not be at a loss about what to do now. The headlines only tell part of the story. In this revised and updated version of his bestselling book, Dr. Erwin Lutzer clearly and accurately depicts the truth about what is at stake here. By asking the right questions and by pinpointing the very real ramifications of same-sex marriage this handbook will help guide reality back to Truth. Dr. Lutzer expertly answers the questions that so many individuals, parents, friends, and families are asking: -How did we get to this point? -Why is marriage, as God intended it, better—and healthier? -How can I talk to my kids about this? -How do I responsibly read, watch, and filter the news? -Is there still hope? Let no one say that we have to choose between loving homosexuals and opposing same-sex marriages. Biblically, love is defined not as license to legitimatize sinful behavior of any kind, but love helps us see that there is a better way. Obviously, we must be as concerned about our own sins as we are about the sins of the homosexual community. We must be concerned enough to speak out about any action, heterosexual or homosexual, that violates God’s intended plan for marriage and the family. This simple, straightforward look at the issue of same-sex marriage will equip you to know what is really happening and, most importantly, why it matters for you.

When a Nation Forgets God

When a Nation Forgets God PDF Author: Erwin W. Lutzer
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 0802493319
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
This excellent book is so important. It clearly and powerfully explains what the parallels are between Germany's fall from grace and the beginning of our own fall. - Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy In When A Nation Forgets God, Erwin Lutzer studies seven similarities between Nazi Germany and America today—some of them chilling—and cautions us to respond accordingly. Engaging, well-researched, and easy to understand, Lutzer’s writing is that of a realist, one alarmed but unafraid. Amidst describing the messes of our nation’s government, economy, legal pitfalls, propaganda, and more, Lutzer points to the God who always has a plan. At the beginning of the twentieth Century, Nazi Germany didn’t look like a country on the brink of world-shaking terrors. It looked like America today. When a Nation Forgets God uses history to warn us of a future that none of us wants to see. It urges us to be ordinary heroes who speak up and take action.

Holy Terror

Holy Terror PDF Author: Mel White
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936833092
Category : Evangelicalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Holy Terror" documents the 30-year war that fundamentalist Christians have waged against gays and lesbians and offers dramatic, heartbreaking evidence that fundamentalist leaders are waging nothing less than a "holy war" against sexual minorities.

Speaking of Faith

Speaking of Faith PDF Author: Krista Tippett
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
A thought-provoking, original appraisal of the meaning of religion by the host of public radio's On Being Krista Tippett, widely becoming known as the Bill Moyers of radio, is one of the country's most intelligent and insightful commentators on religion, ethics, and the human spirit. With this book, she draws on her own life story and her intimate conversations with both ordinary and famous figures, including Elie Wiesel, Karen Armstrong, and Thich Nhat Hanh, to explore complex subjects like science, love, virtue, and violence within the context of spirituality and everyday life. Her way of speaking about the mysteries of life-and of listening with care to those who endeavor to understand those mysteries--is nothing short of revolutionary.

Gay Marriage

Gay Marriage PDF Author: Jonathan Rauch
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429936746
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
A leading Washington journalist argues that gay marriage is the best way to preserve and protect society's most essential institution Two people meet and fall in love. They get married, they become upstanding members of their community, they care for each other when one falls ill, they grow old together. What's wrong with this picture? Nothing, says Jonathan Rauch, and that's the point. If the two people are of the same sex, why should this chain of events be any less desirable? Marriage is more than a bond between individuals; it also links them to the community at large. Excluding some people from the prospect of marriage not only is harmful to them, but is also corrosive of the institution itself. The controversy over gay marriage has reached a critical point in American political life as liberals and conservatives have begun to mobilize around this issue, pro and con. But no one has come forward with a compelling, comprehensive, and readable case for gay marriage-until now. Jonathan Rauch, one of our most original and incisive social commentators, has written a clear and honest manifesto explaining why gay marriage is important-even crucial-to the health of marriage in America today. Rauch grounds his argument in commonsense, mainstream values and confronting the social conservatives on their own turf. Gay marriage, he shows, is a "win-win-win" for strengthening the bonds that tie us together and for remaining true to our national heritage of fairness and humaneness toward all.