Christian Fundamentalists and American Christianity are afraid of people like Rob Bell and Carlton Pearson because they threaten the status quo. They threaten their livelihoods and their income. They also threaten their influence to create people in their image and not God’s. It’s fear, ignorance of Church history, arrogance and pride that causes this.
It’s important and I would say vital that people understand that they don’t have to conform or believe what their church teaches because they’re not the only game in town. They don’t have to be afraid and intimidated by family, friends, and clergy by insinuations that they’re going to “Hell” or being “influenced by the devil.”
The Christian Fundamentalism and Conservative Evangelical beliefs are not and have never been the complete and unaltered history and beliefs of the Church since it’s founding.
The Early Church predominantly held the idea of Ransom Theory. That is, Christ came to overthrow principalities and powers that bound humanity to sin. Eternal Torment, a wrathful God that needed to kill his son, or Original Sin was seen in the Early Church until thousands of years later. These doctrines are foreign to the Early Church and need not be held or believed because they are contrary to the very Love of God and the Love Code. Love your enemies, I desire mercy not sacrifice, the Kingdom of God is within your grasp, I never commanded sacrifices. These verses directly contradict the doctrines of Conservative Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism and are not in sync with the Jewish understanding of God of which Christianity arose.
There are other alternatives to Conservative Evangelicalism. The Anglican Communion/Episcopal, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Presbyterian Church, Lutheran Church, United Church of Christ, Unitarian, Society of Friends (Quaker), Roman Catholicism etc.
“Our tribe is the right one. Our religion is the correct one. Our God is the right God. Accept us or we’ll kick your ass!” -The Heretic
Hell is not a place where God sends you to be tortured. It’s a consequence of disordered love. It’s a state of being. Loving thoughts and actions bring life, apathetic and hateful thoughts and actions bring death.
This isn’t heresy, its history. This isn’t heresy it’s mercy. This isnt heresy its Divine Love. Embrace it and be set free.
Christ came to save mankind from deadly actions and mentalities in order that we may be resurrected to new life.
You are not depraved or degrading. You are blessed, holy, exalted, divinely favored and loved. Don’t buy into the lies, but be encouraged and filled with joy. God loves you unconditionally and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Atheism is a Holy response to a wrathful God, but don’t stay there. – Inspired by Rob Bell
The power of words. Words can uplift people or tear them down. They can cause wars or initiate peace. This is important for you to understand because words have the power to give life and to take it away and for this reason it is imperative that your words are utilized with great care.
Example:
This behavior can be traced back to Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy where he explained in an interview how to relay racial messages to conservative audiences without explicitly using racially charged language.
Former President Barack Obama also used powerful words and oratory skills to address many issues in our nation. In his speech entitled A More Perfect Union Obama attempted to address the complexity of the ongoing problems with race and how people of color feel about how this nation has treated them. He addressed how the nation is seen thru the eyes of his white grandmother while also giving his perspective on how he and other African American’s saw America. He also address the true equality and how hope and unity was important in bringing our nation together to make it a stronger and more perfect union. Here are some of the words spoken by President Obama at his first inauguration. Hear the words and discern them…
“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
Pakistan’s gender relations are founded upon two perceptions of the role of the sexes. The first is that women are obligated to obey and be under the jurisdiction of men and that a man’s honor is determined by how the women in his family behave. Because of these perceptions women are seen as the protectors of the family’s honor. The society in Pakistan, similar to Turkey, restricts women’s freedom to travel, restricts their behavior and activities, and affords them only a certain amount of relations with men.
Men and women in Pakistan have relationships to the space that they hold. It is used and given out differently depending upon sex. Pakistan believes that the veiling of women must be done for their protection and respectability. So states tradition. This does not solely apply to veiling, but also the separation of women from men. They must be separated both physically and symbolically from the activities of men. Thus, different worlds and means of being are constructed for each group of individuals based on their sex. Women primarily stay within the parameters of the home and are only allowed to go further for serious reasons or if permitted. Outside of the home, the social lives of men are generally revolved around the activities of men. In most of the country women and their families are seen as shameless of the women are granted free mobility.
Purdah, the concept of a curtain that is physical as well as symbolic between men and women, is observed in a variety of ways. This depends on the traditions of the family, the region that they reside in, their class, and their rural and urban residency. However, in none of these cases do men and women integrate by choice. The restrictions on women’s mobility can be seen in the North-West Fronteier Province as well as Balochistan. These women are never allowed to leave their homes and when they do they do so to get married. They never mingle with unrelated men. They may not even be allowed to come in contact with their male cousins on their mothers side. They are seen as not being true relatives within this patrilineal society. With the men they are allowed to meet they are only allowed to do so formerly.
Women who are poor and live in rural areas are afforded more mobility and allowed to mix with the opposite gender. In these areas they are allowed such freedom because they are in charge of transplanting rice seedlings, weeding crops, raising chickens and selling eggs, and stuffing wool or cotton into comforters. Whenever a family becomes more affluent rises in their stature, the restrictions of women become the first thing to make stricter.
Poor urban women who reside in close-knit communities primarily wear either a burqa or a chador which is a nonrestrictive cotton cloth that is placed over the head and the body. These are worn upon leaving the house. In areas that are more sparsely populated there are less restrictions on a woman’s mobility.
According to the BBC documentary, How Gay Is Pakistan? The LGBT community is an underground community. People who are part of this community must hide it from friends and family until they can find someone to trust. They are not afforded an outlet to express themselves in public so they must do so in secret. There are gay underground clubs and secret gatherings that take place and people meet other people in their community that way.
Gender relations in Iran are combative and unstable. There is immense difficulty in providing an all encompassing understanding of the ideology concerning gender in Islam or within Iran itself. Religious communities are no different. There have been various interpretations of “women in Islam” because they have been interpreted and influenced by individual’s specific historical circumstances as well as considerations. Koranic axioms and Hadith narratives also contribute to this. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became infuriated in 1961 because of the enfranchisement of women in society. However, in 1979 he embraced the political role of women and asked for their vote in establishing an Islamic republic. The reasoning behind these different reactions to different events is found in Islamic principles. Different times and circumstances was the reasoning behind this shift. This understanding made different conflicting interpretations possible.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded after decades of alterations in gender relations. Though they were limited, the role’s of women in culture, politics, as well as the economy had at the time increased steadily before the revolution took hold. At this time, men’s power was diminished within the family. More so in terms of the rights for him to remarry in regards to polygamous marriage. Men also lost their power to arbitrarily divorce their wives.
There has been pressure to conform to the religious moral codes of the nation, however this has not always worked out the way that the Islamists had hoped. Even though it has been more than two decades since the Islamic fundamentalists success in Iran, they have not been successful in suppressing the aspirations, expectations, and lifestyles of women completely.
A similar situation can be seen observed in the Islamic country of Iran where transgenderism is accepted, but homosexuality is condemned and criminalized. There are many people who would be surprised to know that Iran is the global leader in gender reassignment surgery in the Middle East, even surpassing Western countries. One would think that Iran, being such a religiously conservative theocratic country, would scoff at the idea and that transgenderism would be extremely taboo and forbidden by Islamic law. This is not the case, however. The justification for allowing transgenderism in this religiously conservative nation comes from the fact that the Islamic holy book, the Quran, says nothing explicitly about transgendered individuals. In 1967 Ayatollah Khomeini published a fatwa, while living as a political dissident in Iraq, supporting the medical practice of sex reassignment surgery. However, at the time his fatwa had no influence in the political or medical field of Iran at the time. He reissued it in 1985 and this allowed for a strong surge in support and increase in surgeries. Classical Islamic conversations talked about the body and soul as being distinctly male or distinctly female, but they also left room for hermaphrodites or gender ambiguous people whose sex could not be determined. This provided a sort of dilemma until the possibility of sex reassignment surgery came into the picture. Before that it was assumed that the soul was misaligned with the body and a realignment needed to take place. Sex reassignment surgery now allowed for such a possibility. This surgery is not required if diagnosed as transsexual, but it is recommended if the person diagnosed is religiously observant and fears falling into sin. Some see it as a “wonder of God’s creation” now that its acceptance is more pervasive in society.
Imperialism and Neocolonialism have had a profoundly dramatic effect on how people perceive themselves and the world around them. They have determined and dictated how man has treated one another, even within their own communities ever since conquering empires set foot on foreign soil. Ancient civilizations and cultures have always gone through changes to their societies. As new conquering empires came and disrupted the established culture they replaced the current thinking with the thinking of the emerging one. An example of this is the Emperor Constantine merging Christian belief and practices with the pagan religions around them in order for a much smoother transition from paganism to Christianity to take place. As a result, the Egyptian goddess ISIS became Mary, the winter Solstice became Christmas, and so on. When observing the rights of what the Western World has taken to calling LGBT people the same pattern can be observed.
Before we discuss sexuality in Turkey we must explore how both sexes are viewed within society. Gender inequality is a fact of life in Turkey. High status careers such as business, the military, and government are dominated by men. Legally both men and women are supposed to be paid an equal wage for their work. In practice, however this does not happen. Researchers have discovered that the gender/wage gap expands when you account for age and education. As a result, it is immensely more difficult for women to enter positions of high stature and respectability as well as receive equal pay for their work.
Women are also expected and obligated to refrain from speaking with men who are not their spouses or relatives. This is done in order to prevent premarital relations or the temptation of such relationships.
This friendly relationship between the Ottoman Empire and homosexuality was drastically reversed when the Ottomans came in contact with European travelers and diplomats. According to Dror Ze’evi’s work Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle-East, European setters regarded male to male sexual relations as a “timeless degeneracy of the East.” This caused Ottomans to adopt the heteronormative sexual paradigm as normal and the only relations allowed by individuals in society. The article from Delice notes that the marginalization of male to male sexual relations led to shame. As a result, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century this activity was marginalized and it was only in the reformation period known as the Tanzimat that homosexuality was decriminalized. In the years between 1839 to 1858 religious and customary laws were replaced by European secular laws. Even though it gained legal status it had lost the cultural and social acceptance that it once had.
In Turkey 98.9% of the population is Muslim. The nation has had debates on how much of the religion to allow to affect social preferences. These preferences influence the interpretations of the Quran and its various passages as well as the Hadith. However, to the members of traditional Islam homosexuality is still frowned upon and seen as a deviant sin and worthy of criminal prosecution. They point to the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah. The interpretation is that the city and its inhabitants were punished because of their homosexuality. The interpretation of this story thus justifies their positions.
The Protestant Reformation took place 500 years ago on Oct. 31, 1517. That day Martin Luther nailed 95 Thesis to the Wittenberg Castle church in Germany. Thus, began centuries of war between the Catholic and Protestant churches which ultimately faded out.
“It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him.”
These personal Reformations are being felt and experienced by many different people of various backgrounds. The state of the American Church seems to be shifting as we have seen with the SBC convention’s reluctance to accept the resolution condemning the alt-right, divisions in the church on social issues, etc. These Reformations will no doubt continue into the future and religious landscapes are sure to be altered in the future.
On Thurs. Sept. 21, Trump made a statement during a rally in Alabama for a Senate runoff candidate stating that, ‘Wouldn’t you like to see one of our NFL owners, when somebody disrespects the flag, say, ‘Get that son of a b*tch off the field,’”.
He also stated in a video posted to his show UNINTERRUPTED, ” This guy that we’ve put in charge has tried to divide us once again. You look at him asking NFL owners to get rid of players for exercising their rights and that’s not right.” and that, “Jamel Hill and Colin Kaepernick and all these people are speaking out and it’s for a greater cause. We as American people need to come together even more strongly.”
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