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November 30, 2004

Comments

bls

I have to say I've become utterly and completely sick of hearing about who "approves of the homosexual lifestyle" or doesn't.

It's not your place to approve or disapprove of my "lifestyle", Mr. John Stott. It has nothing whatsoever to do with you, and I suggest that the remedy for your "disapproval" is just exactly what our mothers told us it was: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Stop being busybodies about other peoples' personal lives, how about it, evangelicals? It's our families you're talking about here, and them's fightin' words, bud. As I'm sure you'd be the first to agree with.

We don't sniff at your "lifestyle"; we'd appreciate the same in return.

(There. Now I feel better. Thanks, QC.)

David Huff

We don't sniff at your "lifestyle"; we'd appreciate the same in return.

Ahhh...but confessing the "sins" of others, whether they asked you to or not, is one of the central memeplexes of the religious right. They could no more stop "sniff[ing] at your "lifestyle"" than they could become Unitarians ;)

bls

You might be right, David. And maybe that's the whole basis of this, too, now that I think of it. I've always thought that gay people are mainly a fundraising tool for certain religious right organizations. Nothing else explains the hysteria of the past 30 years.

In fact, when these people - Dobson and Falwell and Robertson - were kids, in the 40s and 50s, homosexuality was the worst possible sin a person could commit. It was "the love that dare not speak its name" - that's how bad a thing it was. And this must be completely ingrained in their thoughts.

Maybe they thought it was catching back then. Or maybe it was the McCarthy era. But no doubt, the gay rights movement came along just in time to give the religious right a big boost. Now they have lots of money to use to confess the sins of others....

bls

Actually, there is much more to this story, apparently, than meets the eye. John Stott seems to be at the very center of the evangelical storm we're seeing today; this movement has been around for over half a century, and has had very specific goals. Here's a post on my own blog that refers to a letter Andrew Sullivan posted on his. Here's a quote from that letter: "The Evangelical Pope is also the unseen general of a vast army whose soldiers have faithfully executed a long-ago (1947) defined strategy to assert a muscular evagelicalism that would not not only "bring millions to Christ", but also re-shape the very cultural fabric of nations."

Here's another: "The absolute uniqueness of Christ's salvific efficacy, the substitutionary nature of the atonement, the complete and untarnished inspiration of the entire Bible, a quasi-literalist hermeneutic, traditional sexual ethics...John Stott has put his imprimatur on all of these, and his followers have followed suit (among whom are many, if not all, of the key figures in global Anglicanism who have recently used homosexuality as *the* issue on which the hinges the future unity of the church - the Bishop of Sydney and his brother, Michael Nazir-Ali, etc.)"

Anglicanism has been at the heart of this issue for a lot longer than Spong and the General Convention of 2003. I'm amazed.

bls

Actually, there is much more to this story, apparently, than meets the eye. John Stott seems to be at the very center of the evangelical storm we're seeing today; this movement has been around for over half a century, and has had very specific goals. Here's a post on my own blog that refers to a letter Andrew Sullivan posted on his. Here's a quote from that letter: "The Evangelical Pope is also the unseen general of a vast army whose soldiers have faithfully executed a long-ago (1947) defined strategy to assert a muscular evagelicalism that would not not only "bring millions to Christ", but also re-shape the very cultural fabric of nations."

Here's another: "The absolute uniqueness of Christ's salvific efficacy, the substitutionary nature of the atonement, the complete and untarnished inspiration of the entire Bible, a quasi-literalist hermeneutic, traditional sexual ethics...John Stott has put his imprimatur on all of these, and his followers have followed suit (among whom are many, if not all, of the key figures in global Anglicanism who have recently used homosexuality as *the* issue on which the hinges the future unity of the church - the Bishop of Sydney and his brother, Michael Nazir-Ali, etc.)"

Anglicanism has been at the heart of this issue for a lot longer than Spong and the General Convention of 2003. I'm amazed.

bls

(Sorry 'bout that. Please feel free to delete one of those posts if you'd like!)

bls

(Sorry 'bout that. Please feel free to delete one of those posts if you'd like!)

bls

(And one (or both) of those, too! Sorry again. That last one was due to the quick re-post denial feature.)

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