"O god of our many understandings..."

Here is Eugene Robinson's prayer from yesterday's inaugural festivities. Given HBO's programming history, it's rather interesting that the channel chose not to include the prayer in yesterday's broadcast. Is HBO afraid of a gay planet?

But let's go back to the prayer itself. Timmy Brister has something to say:

Notice that, in the four minute prayer, nothing is said of the nature of this god, and nothing is asked in reference of him doing what only a god could do. The prayer is fundamentally ethical, not theological. It reflects not a desire to know the one true God and conform our lives to His will, but a prayer for God to understand us and conform his will to our ways. The requests for deliverance is not against sin, Satan, and self but rather social evils. While it may be true that billions exist with less than a dollar a day, every human exists without forgiveness of sin apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ. But that’s not the point. Mr. Robinson is “horrified” by the Christian prayers of the past and seeks to buck the trend by advocating “religious tolerance” for everyone who has a god of their own understanding. Having said that, anyone who prays to a God who has defined Himself, who is eternally self-existent, eternal, and self-sufficient, well, that will not be tolerated. Your prayers should be renounced and your God must not be addressed. We don’t need to know and understand the God who has spoken and whose words shape reality; we need to self-actualize and shape our own realities with greater moral fortitude and faith in the supposed inherent goodness of man. We are all victims, and so is the god of our
many understandings.

"I always wanted to be a June bride."

You may or may not have heard about the Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson. He was in the news in 2003 because he didn't become just any kind of bishop in the Episcopal Church USA, but the first openly homosexual bishop. A divorced father, Robinson has been with his partner Mark Andrew for two decades. He recently spoke to students at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

"I always wanted to be a June bride," said Bishop Gene Robinson at a talk on Nov. 27 at Nova Southeastern University."It may take many years for religious institutions to add their blessing for same-sex marriages and no church, mosque or synagogue should be forced to do so. But that should not slow down progress for the full civil right to marry," Robinson said. "Because New Hampshire will have legal unions beginning in January, my partner of 20 years and I will enter into such a legal union next June."

Robinson had his chance to be a June groom when he married his wife, but now he wants to wear the other shoe, or gown, or whatever. Can we presume that the bishop knows that the word bride has always been in reference to a woman? Perhaps since he is such a proponent of change, he desires to change the meaning of that word, too.

"Homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender."

The U.S. Episcopal Church has elected a new leader in Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. Evidently, she has realized that it's quite a thing to be both a leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church and a woman at the same time, so she has made statements that would raise the eyebrows of only the most Puritanical of persons.

Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.

"I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.

"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."

Oops. Okay. Maybe she has made statements that would raise more eyebrows than just those of the most Puritanical.

More on Jefferts Schori's election here.

Gays in the church seems to be a popular thing right now:

A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national assembly voted Tuesday to create some leeway for gay clergy and lay officers to serve local congregations, despite a denominational ban on partnered gay ministers.

A measure approved 298-221 by a Presbyterian national assembly keeps in place a church law that says clergy and lay elders and deacons must limit sexual relations to man-woman marriage. But the new legislation says local congregations and regional presbyteries can exercise some flexibility when choosing clergy and lay officers of local congregations if sexual orientation or other issues arise. (Christian Post)

Sharp words from Mark LaRoi regarding Jefferts Schori: "Her teachings are a cancer eating away the life that remains in that church, and if she remains as it's head, those who follow her will follow her to destruction." Ouch!!