But what about a non-sexual romantic relationship between two people of the same sex? Does the Bible say anything explicit about such relationships? What about implicit? Any ideas?
]]>]]>Some troubled by ‘Christian fundamentalist’ label for Norwegian shooter
By Bob Allen Tuesday, July 26, 2011
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (ABP) – Religious conservatives in the United States went on the defensive after media described the suspect in last week’s shooting rampage in Norway as a Christian fundamentalist.
Christian Broadcasting Network veteran Dale Hurd called usage of religious terms to identify confessed murderer Anders Behring Breivik “really sloppy and probably opportunistic journalism by the left-wing media.”
“I have covered the so-called far right all across Europe and it is full of people who call themselves Christians who never go to church, clearly do not have a personal relationship [with] Christ, and they call themselves a Christian almost in a patriotic sense that they stand with their country in the way that it was founded,” Hurd said…........
“It is absolutely critical that Christians not turn away from the Christian theological elements in such religiously inspired terrorism,” she said. “We must acknowledge these elements in Christianity and forthrightly reject these extremist interpretations of our religion. How can we ask Muslims to do the same with Islam, if we won’t confront extremists distorting Christianity ?”......
Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research .................. wondered about the media’s quick embrace of the “Christian fundamentalist” label for the Norwegian terrorist. “I know some Christian fundamentalists, but I have never met one that sounds anything like Breivik,” Stetzer said. “Perhaps ‘fundamentalist’ means something else in Norway, but I don’t know any ‘Christian fundamentalist’ that has connections to Freemasonry, watches True Blood on HBO and thinks the church should return ‘back’ to Roman Catholicism.”
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I’m all for human rights, who isn’t? But what is the best mechanism to protect human rights in a country? Is it a Bill of Rights, or some other mechanism?
1. A Bill of Rights is stuck in an ivory tower and is not specific or real!
We are all for right to privacy, agreed? As long as we stay in the abstract like this we are happy. I want my privacy, you want yours — if that’s all we had to say about it we can all agree. Let’s just sign the Bill and be done with it. Pass the champagne.
Not so fast. Let’s get specific here. I can easily imagine situations where I gladly give up my right to privacy, and would ask others to do the same!
Some time ago I described the Australian Police practice of RBT (Random Breath Testing) to an American friend, and he gasped in horror! “What about your right to privacy?” he protested, as if I had said something unthinkable. This was some time ago. I could not think. I wish I had answered, “But what about my right to life, to not being killed by a drunk driver, to living in a society that has statistically less drink driving because they know they are pulled over at any moment and tested at any moment?”
Once we get specific the battle lines are drawn up. That’s when people disagree. And when people disagree, decisions must be made. How are we going to do that? As ‘Big Ideas’ said:
The language of human rights is arguably the dominant language of moral discussions in today’s world, but does this language alter a State’s scope for action?
According to today’s guest yes it does.
He argues that the language of human rights can achieve a sort of bogus consensus because it deals in moral abstractions that are so abstract and so couched in emotively appealing connotations and generalisations that just about everyone can sign up to it. And that the definitions of human rights are contestable and contested, debatable and debated every day and all of the time.
Canadian Professor James Allen
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/stories/2011/3210017.htm
2. A Bill of rights will make unelected Judges the interpreters of our rights, not our elected Politicians who are often trained in the statistics of social policy and public mood.
Does RBT infringe on my right to privacy or help protect my right to life? Will society judge that my right to privacy is violated if a cop pulls me over and asks me to blow into a tube, or will society decide my right to protection from drunken idiots wielding a ton of steel at a hundred kilometers an hour is more important?
When we break down notions of human rights into specific questions we can see that they become divisive. It’s just like watching the ABC’s Q&A, you can see the audience drawing up their battle lines and feel the tension in the air. Educated, nice people will just disagree because of their own life experiences and baggage. For instance, if I have had a ban run in with the authorities as a youth, and naturally feel suspicious about giving the police extra powers, I would no doubt want to ban RBT. It’s just too open to abuse! But if — on the other hand — I had watched my dear father die in the twisted metal of a car wreck, then I might be more likely to want strong action against drink drivers.
Lawyers and judges have had training to interpret the law, not decide social issues for us. Who are lawyers to interpret multi-disciplinary issues that might involve Australian society, culture, psychology, architecture and infrastructure? Human rights can affect everything, from how we design a train station with access for the disabled to how we run the public transport system as a whole. Rights questions are asked of employment programs and military training, running a school and how you walk to school. Are a bunch of wealthy lawyers going to make better decisions than engineers and teachers and bus drivers on these matters? Are they somehow more qualified to debate the issues and rights and wrongs of the best ways to protect Australian citizens living in the real world with real problems?
I say no. I say — as imperfect as it is — that we keep our human rights where they are. We keep them under Parliamentary Law. For our Parliaments, whether Federal or State, are subject to the ebb and flow of contemporary wisdom and common sense. Politicians should adapt the laws to the concerns of the day. Every year brings new social problems, scientific concerns, technological innovations, infrastructure concerns and public health crisis. Laws travel in one direction for a while and society learns from experience. Then — when the situation changes and public pressure builds — laws can move back again. That is a good thing!
Social policies should be decided by science and statistics and sociology and psychology and, if all else fails, elections! Surely, in a specific question like the RBT laws, we want the public to decide. Surely we want controversial policies like banning the Burqa or pub curfews or teenage driving laws decided by statistics and social sciences and public opinion, not dusty old texts written by our grandfathers. For make no mistake — a Bill of Rights will age. Even more so in this era of technological acceleration.
3. A Bill of Rights will politicize the judiciary
Lawyers and judges are unelected, unaccountable, and unsuited to interpret a bill of rights in the thousands of very real, very practical questions that could be put to them. A bill of rights turns judges into high priests of social policy. This politicizes the judiciary. Just watch American politics the next time a new judge is appointed to the Supreme Court.
4. A Bill of Rights will encode the silly prejudices and blind spots of our generation forever!
Policies can be right for one generation and wrong for another. RBT might be necessary in this generation of drinking and driving. But if robot cars arrive over the next ten years, driving may become a thing of the past — let alone drink driving. So if RBT’s become irrelevant, the laws and policies can easily be changed. They are not enshrined in some interpretation of the Bill of rights — a hallowed parchment up there with our Constitution!
The problem with these Bills is they cannot predict the thousands of new social policies we will need for each situation. The ivory tower doesn’t always understand life on the street. A bill of rights attempts to condense weighty and complex issues into trite summaries. Do we really want these things encoded for all time?
Bills of rights promote an absolute formula of ‘rights’ as interpreted by our generation, and make them absolute for all time. However they should more accurately be described as social policies and Parliamentary laws held to account by the political process and democratic discussion of the day. Instead of ensuring our rights through some abstract, ivory tower parchment codified for all time, we should protect them through a strong democratic process. It will reflect the silly prejudices and blind spots of our day.
Instead let’s protect our human rights by protecting the free press and good government and integrity of our elections and all the other foundations of a good democracy. Let’s stay vigilant in protecting the processes of effective democracy, for this best protects the integrity of the conversation of the day. Not some piece of paper stuck behind glass in a museum.
5. A Bill of Rights will enshrine selfishness over the good of the community
I would have sworn the Australian Christian Lobby would have been for a bill of human rights. Of course they are for human rights, but surprisingly they are against a bill of rights! Instead, Brigadier Jim Wallace, AM, (Ret’d) Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby said something to the effect that “Bills of rights enshrine selfishness over the rights of the community”, which helped me remember my conversation with my American friend about RBT. For is it really that big a deal to pull over and blow through a little tube once a year, if that? Is it really affecting my privacy that much, especially if I am a law abiding citizen and have nothing to fear? In other words, YES, I support RBT! I think it is a valuable tool for getting the idiots off the road. Drink driving is death on wheels. I have trouble imagining a society that would refuse this powerful tool for curbing a very real problem. But my American friend gasped in revulsion at the concept. He saw view it as an attack on his freedom because he was taught about his ‘right to privacy’ from a very young age. But that’s not really the lesson Americans seem to learn. Instead, in this and so many other areas, they learn that the individual matters more than the community, that selfishness is good. I find that appalling.
Please, “Don’t leave us with the bill!” Download the podcast here.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/stories/2009/2596855.htm
Some believe the text should be read literally, as a history book; others believe the stories are of an allegorical style. People who believe in the latter view include early theologians
Wikipedia - Allegorical interpretations
An allegorical interpretation of Genesis is a symbolic, rather than literal, reading of the biblical Book of Genesis. An allegorical interpretation does not necessarily preclude a literal interpretation; interpreters such as Origen of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo maintained that the Bible is true on multiple levels at the same time.
Saint Augustine, one of the most influential theologians of the Catholic Church, suggested that the Biblical text should not be interpreted literally if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason.
The literalist reading of some contemporary Christians maligns the allegorical or mythical interpretation of Genesis as a belated attempt to reconcile science with the biblical account. They maintain that the story of origins had always been interpreted literally until science (and, specifically, biological evolution) arose and challenged it. This view is not the consensus view, however…....
According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: “[For] most of the history of the Christianity there’s been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time.[1]
Some religious historians consider that Biblical literalism came about with the rise of Protestantism; before the Reformation, the Bible was not usually interpreted in a completely literal way.
The earliest recorded Christian allegorical interpretation of a passage in Genesis is found in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians in the New Testament. Paul writes:
“For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. The child of the slave was born according to the flesh; the child of the free woman was born through the promise. Now this is being allegorized: for these women are two covenants. One, indeed, is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. This is Hagar, for Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is a slave with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother.” Galatians 4:22-26
The wording of the phrase, “this is being allegorized,” indicates that Paul sees the passage as being true both literally and allegorically.
Another interesting link on the subject:
]]>Philo’s masterwork, On Allegory, explores the deeper messages buried in the Biblical text and transforms Moses from a political and religious leader into a philosopher. Philo, in On Allegory, rejected simple and literalistic interpretations of the Bible, including the creation story as told in Genesis 1. “It is quite foolish,” Philo wrote, “to think that the world was created in the space of six days or in a space of time at all.” Six, as he saw it, represented to Moses (Philo assumed Moses to be the author of Genesis) not a number of days, but “a perfect number” signifying the perfection of God’s creation.
]]>Last Updated: Saturday, January 15, 2011 | 12:26 PM PT Comments77Recommend20.
The Canadian Press
Breakaway members of Anglican churches in B.C. opposed to same-sex blessings want to take their battle over church buildings and bank accounts to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Earlier this week, the group filed an application for leave to appeal to the high court.The group has lost at the two lower court levels in British Columbia, but its lawyer, Cheryl Chang, said there remain many questions for the Supreme Court to answer.
“If any congregation splits over theological differences, the question that we’re raising for the Supreme Court of Canada is, what do you do in this post-modern, secularized environment?” Chang said.
“Does the court say always that you have to pick a winner or loser? Or does the court have the ability to … go in and basically divide the assets as you would in any divorce situation?”
Chang represents four Vancouver-area churches that split with the mainstream church mainly over the issue of same-sex blessings.
The clergy in the four churches in court — three in Vancouver and one in suburban Abbotsford — resigned from the Anglican Church of Canada, but have remained in their parishes ministering to their congregations.Battle forces church to cut back
In a ruling last November, the B.C. Court of Appeal agreed with a lower court that the dissidents couldn’t take over ownership of their buildings and bank accounts.After the ruling, the Diocese of New Westminster indicated the clergy would have to vacate the buildings, though Bishop Michael Ingham has been careful to note that no parishioners have been asked to leave.
In a statement released Friday, Ingham said he was “saddened” by the decision to appeal.
He said the “unnecessary dispute” has forced the church to cut back its work with patients at Vancouver hospitals and in the North.
Ingham urged the church trustees and leaders of the four congregations to meet with him.
Chang said her group is not prepared to discuss the replacement of their clergy, and accused Ingham of wanting to “appoint clergy that will be loyal to him.”
However, the diocese hasn’t moved to get an injunction to kick the dissidents out and the dissidents haven’t asked for a court injunction to prevent the diocese from doing so.
Chang said that if the Supreme Court refuses to hear the dissidents’ appeal or if the group loses its appeal, then the fight is over and the clergy will vacate the buildings.
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Four Lower Mainland Anglican churches have split with the mainstream church over the issue of same-sex blessings. (Canadian Press)
I’m in a situation where some bad news needs to be broken to my church. The bad news is of the ‘potentially-hurtful-if-done-badly’ sort. Just wondering what people’s experiences of how it is done badly/done well are?
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