“The voting results surprised me,” [Jack] Marcum, of the denomination’s Research Services. “After more than three decades of disagreements over homosexuality and ordination, I hadn’t seen any trends suggesting that 2011 would be the decisive year.”
The denomination’s researchers have been tracking opinion on the subject for decades. While they’ve phrased the question differently over time, the trend line is clear: From the 1970s through 2001, a majority of pastors, elders and members opposed gay ordination, according to Marcum.
But the margins narrowed over time, particularly among pastors.
Why the big edge from the pastors? Or is it the case that there are a good many homosexuals among the pastors who are just twitching to come out of the closet? (Doesn’t it seem to you that holy orders somehow seems to draw an inordinate number of homosexuals? It isn’t just the Romans, is it.) Larry
No, the problem in the Protestant mainlines is that so many of the clergy come from a Sixties background.
First, for males, it was a substantial number of draft evaders that realized that going to seminary was an easy way to get out of going to Vietnam. So the seminaries attracted a lot of folks who had no calling to follow God, but simply were there and then realized it was an easy career path (at that time) to get a job where you could spend every Sunday pontificating about various liberal ideas.
Then most of the seminaries became liberalized and stopped teaching the Gospel, and instead made their curricula about social justice, feminism and gay rights in the church.
Second is the problem of allowing women to become clergy. Again, many of them didn’t have a calling for following God, but were simply in it to implement the feminist agenda in the church. (While I am not opposed per se to women serving as pastors, I will say that my conclusion, based on personal experience, is that a substantial majority of women clergy are doing it for reasons other than being called by God and should not be pastors).
Third, you now have substantial number of people (older Boomers), who are basically liberal types that have decided to make a second career out of being “in ministry.”
Fourth, the liberal denominations have largely been taken over by “specialized clergy,” who essentially are the large numbers of graduates who come out of liberal seminaries that have no real desire to pastor a congregation, but instead go into some sort of “social justice” ministry. Although they have no experience in real Christian life, they have an inordinate say in the denomination.
All of this is a recipe for disaster.
Social Justice it is. Well, good luck with that. They ruined my church. Goodbye TEC. Hello Reformed Church. What a bunch of idiots. Won’t anyone stop these fools?
But HOW does anyone stop them? No one answers that question – including me, for I have no answers any more. Momentum is real, a zeitgeist is real. One does not change their force or direction. They SEEM to use up the kinetic energy available to them and then they die – but why and how? Larry
One stops them by refuting the message given to us in my stewardship/lenten class when a TEC priest had us read that “any Christian serious about stewardship must be committed to redistribution of wealth.” I challenged that and it became a scene out of the invasion of the body snatchers. The next Sunday was my last. It was the straw. The marxist messages were just too much. The gay-fascist-marxist-women’s rights-govt is good-capitalism is bad-crap was just too much. No gospel, no Bible. No one at TEC is qualified to teach Bible. A couple of years in seminary after another job and they get a parish. All losers from the last century who want to “transform” Amerika, just like our beloved pres. Walk out, tell them why you’re walking out, find a real church, tithe, fight big govt. They are all related. All the garbage coming out of our treasoness Washington officials is part of this. They have destroyed the economy in one generation – $14 TRILLION.
By the by – the $2 billion that Florida said no thanks to for high speed rail – was just handed out to 15 other states – not used to pay down the debt. Debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.
Federal (yours and mine) debt costs $48,000 per second.