Category Archives: Religion Has Failed

How Religion Fails us- Covenant Marriage

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This post may seem politicaly based, but I decided to post it here due to the religious motivations behind the law being discussed in this linked blog.

This is a story about something called Covenant Marriage, a type of legal marriage began as an attempt to stem divorce rates, begun in Lousiana, but now available in several states. My purpose in writing about it is to illustrate the ways in which conservatives apply a double standard when it suits them.

You can follow te link at the bottom to the full story. I have pulled out some stuff, and it is displayed as quoted text, and the rest are my comments/text.

The Definition of Marriage may not be re-defined!

The first line of attack towards same-sex marriage is that it would be redefining marriage, as if the definition of marriage has never been re-defined. Covenant Marriage is one example of a redefinition of marriage. While it remains a marriage between a man and a woman, it is still a different definition and type of marraige. If there can already be 2 types of marriage with 2 different sets of rules or qualities how would adding another destroy the definition of marriage?

The definition of marriage is biblical and may not be altered!

There are 2 sets of scripture often used to justify marriage as between a man and a woman. Adam and Eve as the original husband and wife (even though I’m not sure the Bible ever says they were married), and the words of Jesus. Jesus was actually talking abot divorce, and the passage ends with te idea that who God has joined no one may tear apart. Interestingly, even though the Bible says there can be no divorce, Covenant Marriage allows for divorce.

Ending a marriage is still possible, though no-fault divorce is eliminated, and grounds for divorce are limited. They include physical or sexual abuse (of either a spouse or child), infidelity, a felony conviction or abandonment.

Note, that sexual abuse is an acceptable reason for divorce, and yet rape is not an acceptable reason for abortion (according to some such as Governor Jindal of Louisiana). where conservatives draw the lines varies even where the Bibler does not. Why must the Bible be followed literally at times and at others it can be modified?

Don’t use the government to advance social change!

When legislation is advanced that gives GLBT people more rights, it is attacked as an attempt to force social change upon people- or blamed on activist judges. Covenant Marriage was developed by a professor at a law school and a congress person. The purpose? To advance a social agenda.

…an attempt to strengthen the family and protect children.

Critics called it a potentially dangerous injection of religious belief into a civil commitment…

The sky will fall!

Conservatives have a very hard time predicting the results. They are sure that if same-sex couples can marry, that all hell will break loose. They were also sure that Covenant Marriage would take off big time, and it has totally not happened. It hasn’t done what it set out to do, and has not been embraced by the american people, even in some of the most religious states.

Then-Rep. Tony Perkins, R-Baker, predicted, “I think in about a year a majority of couples will make it [covenancy] part of their marriage plans.” Today, nearly 12 years later, the total has edged closer to 2 percent. Nor has covenant marriage reduced general divorce rates. In 1997, when covenant marriage became law, 13,836 divorces were granted in Louisiana. In 2003 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), the divorce total was 15,230.

Gays want special rights!

“Louisiana has elected to confer special benefits on covenant marriages, such as a 10 percent cut in auto insurance rates,” wrote Pat Buchanan…

So it is OK to provide special benefits to some but not others. How hyocritical is that?

Being gay is a choice!

If gays can marry, then there will be no limits, anything goes!

According to our opponents, being gay is a choice and therefor, we do not deserve to be a protected class. But the truth is, choice makes a difference. Straight couples who chose Covenant Marriage, had a lower divorce rate. These are couples who actively chose to define their relationship as special and more than just being together.

Though covenant marriage has had little effect on divorce as a whole, those who opt for it do have lower divorce rates.

But so many of the gay and lesbian couples seeking marriage are already in a committed relationship. They are chosing to define their relationship as more than just being together.

For gay and lesbians don’t mean it! They are only doing it for the show!

…then-Gov. Mike Huckabee ­— who, though he was an ordained Baptist minister, did not “upgrade” his own marriage at the time. And Bush and his wife Laura chose not to upgrade their own. Later, Huckabee did in a very public way. Columnist Margaret Carlson saw the $65,000 spectacle as a political ploy: “If moral values helped President Bush win the White House, why not Gov. Huckabee?

Don’t force tour ways on the American people!

Though the 2008 Republican Party platform made no mention of covenant marriage, the Texas GOP platform called for it, along with the complete abolishment of no-fault divorce, as well as making it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple ­— this despite the fact that during the 2007 Texas legislative session, a proposed covenant marriage bill failed to clear the state house.

Covenant Marriage is an idea that some want to push on the American people, who have shown that it is not their choice. And even though it has been shown not to create the desired results, andhas not been embraced, even in religious states, conservatives don’t give up.

But Perkins says he has not given up. “When the Jindal administration gets through some of these challenging times,” he says, “I hope they’ll focus on some of these family laws.”

The Independent – I Don’t

Commentary on Dobson and Focus on the Family

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While I usually post this type of stuff to my other blog, thomascwaters.com, I thought this was really appropriate here.  Focus on the Family bases its message on christian values and the Bible. How easy it is (or is it?) to lose track of one’s original message and go off on some side path, that seems connected but maybe doesn’t have the same value in the end?

If Christians want to uphold the Family and strengthen Family Values, they can do that by focusing on families, not by trying to keep others from having rights.

When groups like “Focus” take the focus away from the family, everyone loses out. The real issues that are destroying the family become lost in the shuffle as the attention s turned towards other things. The problems facing our society  and the traditional family unit will not change if same sex couples can get married, or if GLBT people have equal rights.

I’m all for strengthening families, including traditional families, and if people find the power for that in the Bible, that is fine by me. I’m even OK, of traditional family types do not want to accept that “Family” can mean different things to different people. But, as long as there are reports of sexual abuse in heterosexual households, and drugs and violence, and physical abuse, and a lack of good communication and love, then you folks have enough to worry about. You don’t need to turn your focus to gay people.

IndyStar.com | Thou Shalt | The Indianapolis Star.

Some Hope for the Catholic Church ?

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I saw a post to Twitter about the Catholic Church and Dawrin’s theory of evolution. The twitterer is an evangelical- sometimes extreme- christian blog, where members can post. Everytime I start to wonder why I’m following it, something like this comes up and I am glad that I am.

Now the blogger gets some of it right and some of it… not so much.

While the blogger found the article on 2/27/09, telegraph.co.uk actually ran the story on 2/11.2009. The idea of the Vatican rejecting Christ? Well, that is the blogger’s assertion. Could be a desire for a provocative headline, or a little anti-catholic bigotry?

So how about the basis of the story? Yes, it seems the Vatican, along with some other demonimations, si seeking to mend part of the divide between Religion and Science, and say that Darwin’s theories  can be compatible with religious tradition. Perhaps the church is trying to  learn from its mistakes (remember Gallileo) or possibly they are trying to sort out ways to keep the flood of people who are leaving the chuch. The battle line between Religion and Science has never been a win/win situation, especially for the church. The only potential outcome where the church triumphs would be another middle ages where science is forgotten.

I don’t have any meaningful reply for the blogger in terms of his interpretation and conclusion. He cirtes a few scripture to support his position. Isn’t that the way with scripture? You can always find a passage to prove you are correct? The first passage is I Timothy, where Paul encourages the young apostle to hold fast to the doctrine that Paul has provided to him. This doctrine is all about the second coming of Jesus. But here, the blogger expands that doctrine to much more. Then he uses a passage from Matthew, which is really about divorce, to promote a creationist view.

The Vatican’s position is that what we need is to seek out ways of understanding how Science, and specifically Darwin’s theory can be seen as aligned  with church teaching. Not to take just one or the other alone.

What I find most ludicrous is how the blogger’s position dumbs-down God and the fullness of God’s plan. Or more accurately inflates  a human’s undewrstanding of the whole. For me0- if we can explain the whole of al that exists in the Bible, then God and al that has been created isn’t all that amazing. I don’t need Faith. If on the other hand, I can’t make all the pieces fit nicely like a puzzle. If I am left unclear how these two things can both be real, THEN, I need Faith. Thenn, I see myself as human instead of all-knowing, and I have the opportunity to grasp a bigger understanding of all that is.

The Christian Blog: VATICAN REJECTS CHRIST IN FAVOUR OF DARWIN

The actual article:

The Vatican claims Darwin’s theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity – Telegraph.

Do Family Values Lead to Family Violence?

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Wanted to post think link here, as so much of the arguments raised or discussed are biblical.  A long article well worth the time to read it.

Matthew Herbst : Do Family Values Lead to Family Violence?: A consideration of the idea of family – Quodlibet Journal.

GOD.LOVES.GAYS.COM

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Came across this link today as gays.com began to follow me on Twitter. I certainly no fan of Westboro Baptist Church, but I’m wondering.. what will this accomplish? Fred Phelps and his loonies are a fringe element- very fringe even for most conservative evangelicals. So we have a very real and very big battle looming those who seek to oppress us with the Bible.  What do we need to accomplish more: this interaction with a fringe cult or real dialogue and discourse addressed towards the majority of Christians?

GOD.LOVES.GAYS.COM.

Seeing the Full Moon… and Religion

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Saw this on Twitter:

On this Friday (the 12th of December), you’ll see the biggest, brightest full moon of 2008. http://bit.ly/FSW7

Seems to me Religion serves many purposes, but one of them, and maybe the most important, although often first forgotten, is to remind us of our place in the whole of existance.  Help us orient ourselves within the cosmos.  We are amazing complex creatures but within the biggest picture extremely tiny specks…

I think that is one reason why God is so often understood or imaged as human-like with super powers. We make god in our image instead of the other way around.  But if we stop and allow ourselves to be amazed at the whole of it all, and in the same total complexcity of it all.. and then set a path of exploration to see and explore and recognize how much we don’t know.

To pit Science as against Religion is an attempt to circumvent this recognition of how much we don’t know.  To name all of it as a part of God’s plan, or intellegent design is a way to shut down the exploration, and label ourselves as in control.

Wow.  Not sure this post will make a ton of sense.  Just a few quick thoughts before heading off to work.  Leave me your comments. Okay?

Thoughts about Black Friday. Has Religion Failed Us?

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For a while, a series of posts about how religion has failed has been brewing in my mind.  How religion has failed… oh- how provocative! So I’ll admit, right off the bat, that I don’t think religion can either win or fail.  It (as if it were a thing) is a construct, or a tag we place upon all things done by people in the name of their religious expression. So, people can succeed or fail, but not some construct we use to name things.

That said, isn’t one of the primary purposes of religion as we know it, to teach people a base level of moral behavior? Do unto others as you would have people do unto you… that kind of thing?

And so I’m trying to wrap my head around how two events that transpired on Black Friday could have happened.   The first, being the Walmart employee who was trampled to death by a stampede of christmas shoppers at 5AM on November 28th. A story about it can be found in the Huffington Post and the Daily News: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/02/walmart-stampede-worker-d_n_147733.html.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

A set of video stills captured the events and if it doesn’t sound horrific enough, the images are really bothering.

Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like “savages.”

The second incident seems to me less horrific- mostly because there were fewer people involved, but in reality it is every bit as incomprehensible, and troubling. At a Toys R Us store in Palm DEsert CA, two men shot and killed each other. This from the CBS New web site:

“Some people got into a fight,” said Splain, who spoke with some of the customers. “One of the guys here thought it was over a toy, but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots.” 

Other news reports suggest that this was a personal dispute between two groups of people, and was not a fight over a toy, but that is sketchy at this point. One account says that two women starting arguing, and this erupted into the one man pulling his gun, and then followed by the other.In the phone call to 911, it sounds as if one of the guys is slumped over, dead- over the cash register.  If this dispute started in one of the aisles, and ended at the cash register- how is that? 

Both stories demonstrate some of our worst as a culture.  Both highlight a lack of respect for life, and a placement on personal gain or need above all else.  Both reverberate with an insensitivity to others.  Imagine the children who were in the Toys R Us at the time of the shootings?  I was only a few yards away from a shooting when I was a 15.  It was terrifying.

So were none of these people even in a church?  Did they never hear a sermon or a Sunday School class about loving others? Or does religion fail to get these messages through to people in ways that matter? It is easier to comprehend the shootings… but the stampede? I can not even begin to get it. I can not find a way to put myself in the shoes or the mindset of anyone involved in that event.

And what seems even more troubling is the lack of coverage it has received, and the lack of discussion it has generated.  It is almost as if “we” as a culture are not sure what to do with it- what to say, s let’s just quietly let it pass by. A blogger on The Point asks what causes people to lose their decency? But even most blog accounts are just a rehash of the news-like facts. The Kvetcher blames this on sales reps who use advertising to lure people into the store with advertised unbelievably low prices. I guess everyone is looking for the bad guy.  Except isn’t the bad guy all of us collectively as a culture? and where did the messages come from that we bought into so easily, and why were these the prevailing messages?  Why were we not more inundated with messages about respect for others, and that sort of thing?