{"id":16557,"date":"2012-05-25T16:43:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T20:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=16557"},"modified":"2012-05-25T16:43:50","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T20:43:50","slug":"how-not-to-speak-about-homosexuality-from-the-pulpit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/how-not-to-speak-about-homosexuality-from-the-pulpit\/","title":{"rendered":"How not to speak about homosexuality from the pulpit"},"content":{"rendered":"

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

RALEIGH, North Carolina \u2014 A North Carolina group said it plans to hold a public protest on Sunday to denounce a Baptist minister\u2019s anti-gay and lesbian sermon that has drawn hundreds of thousands of views on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Pastor Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina told his congregation during a May 13 sermon that the Bible and God opposed homosexuality and that gay and lesbian people should be put in concentration camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuild a great big large fence 50 or 100 miles long,\u201d Worley said according to the video posted on YouTube. \u201cPut all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can\u2019t get out. You know what, in a few years, they\u2019ll die out. You know why? They can\u2019t reproduce.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would like to make a few points about this:<\/p>\n

First, Pastor Charles Worley seems to have missed one of the main features of Christianity: God loves everyone<\/em> so much that he sent his only Son to die on the cross to atone for our sins. That includes the sin of homosexual sex.<\/p>\n

Second, we as Christians are called to love as God loves; that includes homosexuals who indulge in same-sex activities. Loving a person means befriending them, accepting them, caring for them, treating them with dignity and wishing the best for them. At the same time, loving a person is not to condone \u2013 or bless \u2013 something that we believe is sinful; that is because repeated sin for which there has been no repentance destroys a person. How can you claim to love someone while approving of what will be their eternal undoing?<\/p>\n

Third, if sinners are to be corralled behind an electric fence, we will all find ourselves there since we are all sinners. This is a basic tenet of Christianity; how a pastor can miss it is beyond me. Homosexual sex may be distasteful to heterosexuals but as a sin<\/em> it is no more or less abhorrent that a whole catalogue of other sins, a catalogue that includes envy, greed, idolatry, gossip, jealousy, heterosexual fornication and so on. C. S. Lewis made the point (exactly where escapes me for the moment) that the most pernicious sins are the less visible internal ones that are thoroughly ingrained in our souls \u2013 like pride. Pastor Charles Worley could benefit by ruminating on that.<\/p>\n

Fourth, the Bible tells us that homosexual acts are sinful. It does not tell us that being attracted<\/em> to someone of the same sex is sinful any more than it tells us being attracted to someone of the opposite sex to whom we are not married is. Sinfulness is existential: it all depends on what you do <\/em>with the attraction, whether you resist temptation or cave in to it.<\/p>\n

Fifth, pastors like Charles Worley give Christianity a bad name and are an embarrassment to Christians whose intellect is still intact.<\/p>\n

Here is the clip that has caused all the fuss:<\/p>\n