Marriage is under threat, we hear from some church leaders. Not by heterosexuals with an ever-increasing divorce rate, but by gay and lesbian people who want to express their religious faith in their civil partnership ceremonies.
Some leaders in my own church, the Church of England, as well as the Roman Catholic church have described this as an assault on religious liberty ”“ and no doubt there is an aggressive secularist agenda to embarrass the churches, though aggressive secularists should note that we are pretty good at doing that ourselves without their help.
Fortunately, feminist campaigners like Judith Maltby are employed by universities, rather than churches, which would soon be closed by them.
She’s got it all backward – civil partners should repent, submit their lives to GOD, conform to His will/word/way and this will bless and transform their hearts, minds and relationships.
Poor Judith can’t cope with the fact that orthodox Christians will not accept her ideas about marriage. She will no doubt keep on writing articles like this, and then one day it will dawn on her that she hasn’t convinced anyone except those who were already convinced. And then she will cry and lament at how unfair life is. Its happened before, and it will happen again.
At the end of this long article, we just come back to the fundamental truth: Marriage is between a man and a woman only.
But her side is winning the war so far, isn’t it? It is hard to disagree with victories. But why is it all going her way? Larry
[blockquote]So why does the liberty to introduce God into civil partnership ceremonies devalue marriage? It would appear that there just isn’t enough of God to go around. One cannot, apparently, honour and bless one pattern of living a faithful and committed life, without somehow devaluing another. It is the theological equivalent of printing too much money.[/blockquote]
Introducible into ceremonies?
Enough to go around?
Behold the [url=http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_at_Bernie’s]Weekend at Bernie’s[/url] god: a god conveniently bereft of will and intellect. A portable god with no consequences, no continuity, no preferences, and which makes no claims on us or our actions. A god that is conveniently shaped, distributed, and infused. A factor input for the efficient manufacture of stability, love, faithfulness, and commitment. (Qualities found in some pretty counter-intuitive places during the middle of the 20th century, I might add.)
O creator, redeemer, sustainer, you’ve never looked so relaxed!
By the way, am I the only one that could not find the ‘marriage as custom’ quote anywhere in Luther’s [url=http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/tabletalk.titlepage.html]Table Talk[/url]?
Larry,
All I can see that they might be winning is a battle for property.
Don’t get me wrong – I do think that is important. But its not the main focus. The orthodox will win this “war” by breeding their way to victory – not in a biological sense, but in making disciples.
Liberals can’t make disciples. They can’t plant churches and (unless its in an extremely liberal area) they can’t even add new converts. The orthodox can plant churches, and they can make new disciples. Those disciples in turn supply the income that pays for priests and buildings. Once established, the orthodox church grows another one, and so on. ACNA/AMiA have 110 new church plants on their Anglican1000 web-site, and those 110 are not the only ACNA/AMiA plants. Then there are other Anglican groups outside ACNA. Even within TEC, the few congregations or dioceeses that are growing appear to be those that emphatically disagree with 815.
The orthodox will certainly win this war – its just a matter of how long it takes.