Written: 2/13/2012
I’ve been thinking about religion a lot lately. One of my best friends called the other day, we went to school together and have had lots of conversations about faith. We also have a great joking relationship going with it, which I appreciate it, because if you can’t laugh at religion, you’re doing it wrong.
He thought he had offended me (long series of events barring me from getting to my phone, sorry), his wife and him were discussing gay rights in the Church and how many churches relate to the LGBT community and how they should relate to the LGBT community. And I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, it was great, we came to the conclusion that we were all right, he described how churches should relate, while his wife commented on how most do.
Which brings me to the asshatery of Virginia:
The Virginia Senate today advanced a bill which passed the House last week that allows private adoption agencies to discriminate based on religious or moral beliefs
Which again, would not be a problem, except that this includes adoption agencies that take tax payer money. So once again, we’re all paying for discrimination.
However, there is some good news out of Maryland where the Bishop of the Episcopal Church said this in a recent op-ed:
However you interpret the seven texts used to argue against marriage equality, they pale in comparison to the over-arching biblical imperatives to love one another, work for justice, and recognize that each of us is created in the image and likeness of God. Jesus, for Christians, is God incarnate. He not only shows us how to live, but reveals to us that God loves us unconditionally. Indeed, gay and lesbian Christians often speak of the overwhelming experience of being assured that they are loved by God as they are
No matter how devoted to the scriptures of our faith we may be, few of us shape our moral opinion based on holy texts alone. If God is at work in the world, then our experience is a kind of scripture, and we must pay careful attention to what it is teaching us.
Jesus said, “you will know people by their fruits.” St. Paul wrote: “The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Many of us in the Episcopal Church, which I serve as a bishop, know same-sex couples whose relationships can only be described as holy, and thus we have come to support the blessing of such unions. They stand in stark contrast with many exploitative and casual patterns of sexuality that both heterosexual and homosexual Christians are right to reject.
It’s always nice to see rational thought applied to faith, which is one of the tenets of the Episcopal Church.
All my best,
The King of Spades
