>Jim speaks of "moral authority," but the authority of
>most Christians (and others) 150 years ago said people of
>dark skin were 2nd class. The arguments were based on
>scripture.
Excuse me, but if you do any reading at all on the history of the abolition
movement, you will find that the abolition movement was *DRIVEN* by
Christians acting out of their conviction that slavery was wrong.
Several major denominations (e.g., Baptists) were split asunder by
this conviction because those who felt slavery was an evil felt so strongly
they were willing to take it to that.
Yes, some Christians in the South defended slavery, and some even used
Scripture to do so. But if you look at Scripture, you will find that slavery
is by no means defended. Statements re doing the best you can under slavery
were written in a culture where there WAS no freedom a hundred or so miles away.
If you were an escaped slave in the Roman empire, you really had no refuge to
go to, unless you were imported from some faraway land -- then you had to get
to it. These people also ignore the passage where Paul said that if you
can get out of slavery, you should do so. The Southerners were
justifying themselves by selectively interpreting Scripture.
>
>Today some (not by any means all) Christians assert that
>people with different sexual tendencies and practices are also
>2nd class -- again, scripture is involved. My own reading & studying
>does not support those arguments -- at least not all Christians will agree
>on this!
I assume you are referring to homosexuality. Are you justifying your own
acts by selectively interpreting Scripture? Those who would re-interpret
Scripture to say homosexuality is OK are, like the Southern Christians,
using flawed exegetical techniques which, if applied to the rest of the Bible,
would cause the whole thing to fall apart. If you look at all of the
relevant passages, and also read what the Church Fathers and Jewish writers
had to say on the subject during the first few centuries, the view of
homosexuality as sin is quite clear.
In your paragraph you make an interpretive error -- the notion that
homosexuals are second class. They are not. They are real, human
beings with feelings and a soul and all the imbued Constitutional rights
and gifts that God gives us all. They are also sinners. In that sense, they
are no better or no worse than others who are engaging in sexual sin; they get
as much attention as they do because the homosexual lobbies are actively
working on tearing apart our society, and have moved from asking for tolerance
to demanding full approval -- or else.
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