No pun intended (as in “Army Boots”). This Southern Baptist Church is participating in the abomination of desolation. (the story source here) I found this intitial link via Mike James, and then saw that it had created discussion on Daily Kos

With the Southern Baptists tendency to “kick out” Churches who they consider to be “renegade” (ie. the Churches that show a tendency to accept gays as members ands , horrors, ministers.) Now here, we have a Church involved in the worship of the military. But will there be trouble from the Southern Baptsit Convention? I don’t think so.

Just another indication of the way the Southern Baptists– (again, not all, but certainly their leadership of the denomination, and a disturbing majority of their Churches and members— dare I say 99%? It seems so— have forsaken the Christ of Scripture for a cultural faith, that places national loyalty before loyalty to a God who is the creator of THE WORLD. The fact that I have to write this, and suggest that this is blasphemy pure and simple only underscores how blinded the Southern Baptists have become. That this kind of thing is not a source of outrage among Southern Baptists (the leadership , I mean. Surely, there will be scores of offended Southern Baptists, but many of those will urge us to “take it with a grain of salt”; that it’s simply nationalistic enthusiasm taken a bit too far.

No. Absolutely not. It’s the natural growth of an unchecked move toward a betrayal of the faith. This Porter Memorial Baptist Church is already there.

If I believed that to be gay was a sin (which I’m not convinced of*), I insist that it is in no way, shape , or form, something with the destructive power and spiritual corruption of the kind of military force shown by this administration in this war on Iraq, (and really not such a large departure from other episodes in religious history, beginning with the era of bombing of civilians in WW2).

* Read on for further comments on this (and some further observations about the “selective interpretations” that allow the Church to focus on these “side issues” while ignoring the larger issues of peace)

If I were to cede that point, and consider gay-ness a sin, then I place it in the category alongside the “less than God’s best” , and urge that this is a matter of psycho-spiritual struggle, but one that is not of the level of “betrayal” anymore than to say that persons who over-eat, or don’t care for their bodies, or watch too much TV, are committing sins that are cause for banishment from Church. INdeed, we don’t consider people who are “materialistic” to be unfit to teach or lead or pastor, but much of the Church does consider gays unfit to do so. I would rather peace-loving, non-materialistic, simple living gay people teach my son or daughter or me, than people of the sort in tnis Porter Memorial Baptist Church who are teaching darkness and compromise with the powers that be.

Yet, I am not even “there” (“there” being the point of considering homosexuality a sin) and here’s why. I have asked several people who are most admamant about their “anti-gay” stance, if they consider that it would be right to banish menstruating women to outside the city gates (OT Law), or to forbid women to “speak” in Church (Paul), the two sources of “Biblical” justification for anti-homeosexual attitudes. Someone recently objected that I am asking them to apply what are “clearly culturally relative proscriptions”; and so I ask, and so how is it that the “anti-homosexual” passages you use are not also a part of this “culturally bound” issues; that they are a product of a pre-scientific, pre-sociology, pre-psychoanalytic age. The gay people I know seem to have an even deeper capacity for standing against the culture and FOR Chrisitan values such as reconciliation and peace and sanctity of life, than do the “anti-gay” folks. This is cause to ask “so what is more damaging spiritually? Where has it gotten them? Again, I question , due to something like the considerations above, whether we are talking “sin” with regards to homeosexuality, or another case of “preModern” socio-psychological understandings being used to advance a discriminatory behavior. And of course, back to “if it WERE sin”, what about “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”; and then, whether or not the few and sparse references that ARE in the Bible are worthy of such emphasis, while the HUNDREDS of passages about justice and caring for the outcasts, and Jesus’ very clear words to “love your enemies” can be so mysteriously ignored?

It’s not such a mystery. It’s “selective” interpretation, and its a centuries old spiritual affliction. The slaveowners who were Church goers used scripture to justify slavery. This shouldbe warning enough. A People’s History of the United States has been an eye opener, and cause for further reflection on the dire spiritual danger in which we citizens of the Empire find ourselves. The temptations to reshape and recast theological heritage, and pass on to our children and proclaim ot the world a “faith” that looks increasingly like that of a nationalism that has reached the level and sanctity of dogma itself. It is like to be dissenters is a more insidious heresy than to equate and associate militarism and Christ. The fact that “words of a president” can be allowed to shape our assements of this leader as “God’s man” regardless of his actions as commander in chief that jusitfy the bombing and the deaths of tens of thousands, most likely more than 100,000. This is outrageous to me. This is , for me, a crisis of epic spirtual proportions. It is stuff worthy of Revelation-stuff (as in the Book of Revelation); indeed, the apocalyptic message of that book directly ties with times such as these. This is when “Anti-Christ” has taken the reigns. (LIke I have said before, I do not belive in the “Left6 Behind” scenarios, where there is ONE specific AntiChrist, and so I do not believe that Bush is THE AntiChrist. I believe that he is a willing participant in a FORCE that is AN ANTICHRIST. One of those. An example of those; of the “Principalities and Powers”. And the Church in our day has lost its ability to self-question; and to be prophetic. Sure, there are some speaking up. But the Church is not rallying around this. It is not a topic of conversation. It is the great darkness engulfing us, and we are not being a light.