Not all baptists are crazy

[boddhi]

This is one of the most thoughtful set of remarks that I have ever found regarding gay and lesbian unions:

http://www.mpbconline.org/2005%20Sermons/071705.htm

sorry it's so long - the article is much longer - I just didn't feel I could edit out any of it - it is so cogent:

<snip>
Recent Sermon from
Myers Park Baptist Church

COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, ROGER WILLIAMS AND US
Texts: Deuteronomy 1:13, 16-17; 10:17-19;
Jeremiah 29:7; Matthew 18:10-14

... I was there to speak as a minister in favor of a motion that protected gay and lesbian persons from discrimination in county hiring practices. I suspected there would be plenty of Christians and Christian ministers lined up on the other side.

When I arrived the room was packed: Gay and lesbian persons there in support of the motion; conservative and fundamentalist Christians there to oppose it.

Chairman Parks Helms first allowed each Commissioner to speak. Commissioner Bill James, who carries the fundamentalist torch in our city, read extensively from the Bible, ... <snip>

<snip>
... directly behind me was a sizable section of gay and lesbian persons. I had watched as Bill James read the Bible at them, dishing out condemnation and wielding the Bible as a sword. I saw the shock and pain on their faces. I had felt the blows as in my own body. Now I, a Christian minister of the Baptist persuasion, was speaking on their behalf. Here is what I said:

Mr. Chairman, County Commissioners, I am Steve Shoemaker, Senior Minister of Myers Park Baptist Church. I thank you for this opportunity to speak and wish to voice my personal support for the motion to expand the category of protection against discrimination to include “sexual orientation.”

We are struggling as a community and a nation with the age-old issue of how to be both virtuous and free. Virtue and freedom need each other. There is no true virtue that is not freely chosen; and freedom will not long endure without the virtues of its citizens.

When Roger Williams, the father of the Baptist movement in America, was banished from the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630's, he founded Rhode Island as a colony of religious toleration. The issues involved had to do with what he called “soul liberty” and the limited sovereignty of government, that is, what we call “the separation of church and state.” He also defended the land rights of Native Americans, which did not endear himself to the colonists who believed that God had given them this new land.

Rhode Island became a haven for Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, Jews, Roman Catholics and other persecuted minorities. Williams wrote that the “ship of state” should protect alike “Papists, and Protestants, Jews and Turks.” Thus it became an important feeder stream of American democracy.

What does Charlotte wish to be? A community driven by religious politics and politicized religion which tries to encode certain interpretations of scripture? Or will we be a thriving democracy which values both virtue and freedom?

I have deep respect for religious leaders and congregations who interpret scripture differently than I on the issue of homosexuality. We differ in my own congregation. Can we liberal, conservative, Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, Jew and Muslim agree not to encode our biblical interpretations into civil law thus turning the state into a church?

Homosexual persons indeed belong to those described in our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. . . Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

There are those who would scoff at the expanding list of those protected from discrimination as a parody of an already disdained political correctness. It is in fact a roll call of honor, the ongoing human attempt of a community to act honorably and equitably toward all its citizens.

Thank you for this time to speak.

Happily, the motion passed six to three.
<snip>

[mzteris]

1. I loved the next line.....

"I had tried to temper my remarks, not wanting to add to the already tense and heated atmosphere. What I said to myself was, “Well, this is interesting. The magistrates are reading the Bible to me and I’m reading the Declaration of Independence to them!”"

People like this give religion a good name. You can rest assured they are NOT members of the Southern Baptist Convention!

[MidnightWind]

2. Some Baptists do actually try to read the Bible and understand

the principles in it instead of merely using it to bash others over the head with it!

[mzteris]

3. I figured it out

Church is located across the street from Queens University of Charlotte! :rofl:

[TomClash]

4. Exhibit 1 in support of your argument

Jimmy Carter.