It Gets Better: Bishop Mark Hanson, ELCA

Ya know, guys, I'm very distressed with some of the well-known bloggers and other supposed representatives of the "gay community" whom I've noticed over the last several years have fallen into a pattern of bad-mouthing all Christians and all religion, often in highly profane and digusting ways. They do not speak for me, and I hope not for you.

By broadly lumping all believers into one class, without discriminating between the fantatics and the reasonable people of faith, these purported representatives of our cause are making themselves morally no better than the wild-eyed demagogues and bigots of the opposing side. They show themselves to be just as bigoted and just as tyrannical as their opponents, which disgusts me. The long, tragic history of humankind has shown times without number that it is but one small step from being oppressed to being an oppressor.

Religion is a human institution of many forms and varieties; and like all things human, is a mixture of good and evil. So are you and I, my friends. That is the human condition. It is up to us, individually and collectively, to discern the difference and to keep choosing the good whenever we can. Religion is and has been a great help to many, many millions of people in that way. Religion can also be misused as a weapon of oppression and ignorance, and should rightly be rebuked and condemned when it is; but the fanatical commenters amongst us do a great wrong when they ignore the power of faith to make people better human beings.

I could go on at some length here, but I think this video made by Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America makes the point - for those who have ears to hear.

Obama on Faith and Reason

Part of the Time magazine excerpt from Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, which I'm reading now and recommend highly:

What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy demands is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason. . . .

For those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do, such rules of engagement may seem just one more example of the tyranny of the secular and material worlds over the sacred and eternal. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Almost by definition, faith and reason operate in different domains and involve different paths to discerning truth.

The story of Abraham and Isaac offers a simple but powerful example. According to the Bible, Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his "only son, Isaac, whom you love," as a burnt offering. Without argument, Abraham takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded. Of course, we know the happy ending—God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute. Abraham has passed God's test of devotion. He becomes a model of fidelity to God, and his great faith is rewarded through future generations.

And yet it is fair to say that if any of us saw a 21st century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle him down; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we would expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse. We would do so because God doesn't reveal Himself or His angels to all of us in a single moment. We do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to
know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true—as individuals or communities of faith—will be true for us alone.

This is not to say that I'm unanchored in my faith. There are some things that I'm absolutely sure about—the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity, humility and grace.