Systemic racism charges

If your pastor or priest or rabbi solemnly intones the myth of "systemic racism" from the safe and sanitary virtual pulpit, please write or call him immediately and offer to be his/her confessor for all the racist acts and thoughts he/she personally has made in the last week, or month or year as part of the system.

The system which is

their community,

their congregation,

their church,

their theological school,

their alumni association,

their PTA,

their pension plan,

their fair housing group,

their gated community,

their social clubs,

their children and parents,

where they eat

where they shop or

where they vacation.

That's just a small start because in a myth that vague and all encompassing which moves on storm waves of fairy tales of microaggression and unconscious bias, everything is part of the system. That sets the bar so high, no one will ever be pure and it can be funded FOREVER by foundations, corporate guilt, taxes and reparations.

Yet it is so vague, the accuser can be blameless. She can post signs and make jokes about politicians or a party not to her liking. So demand some answers. Why would you, who doesn't believe the myth of systemic racism, have to listen to charges of criminality, hate crimes and sin without proof of participation and then be expected to drop money in the virtual collection plate (please click on the screen, and follow directions, etc.) ?

And ask your black friends--and I mean real friends, not the gardener you hire for the church lawn or the academic colleague working on a grant application--please ask them what in the USA or your denomination is holding them back--today, yesterday this past month

Ask them if they've been a victim of a violent or property crime and who was the offender.

Ask them if they were denied a promotion because of racism. Ask them if they were denied service in a store or restaurant. Ask them if they were turned away from medical care (other than during the pandemic).

If they can't think of anything, then please step away and work on your own issues. If they can, ask them what government program not already in place will improve their life. If they do have something to contribute, set about changing yourself.

The PR spin on the sex abuse scandal

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/dan-burke/must-watch-video-how-to-recognize-judas-in-your-midst

An excellent sermon, but I don’t think many are listening.

Some clergy don’t have enough to do

More than 60 clergy of the Washington, DC area have signed a letter to the NFL and Washington team owner Dan Snyder calling for D.C.’s football team to change its name (Washington Redskins). I wonder if they could get 60 DC clergy to protest abortions in Washington, which is about 30/1000 compared to 19.6/1000 in the rest of the nation. I wonder if 60 clergy join in the March for Life that is held every year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Which kills more people--a sports name (also used by American Indian schools as a mascot name) or dismembering and decapitating living babies in utero. Have they protested this: "Multiple individual plans available on the D.C. health-insurance exchange specifically cover elective abortion but not hearing aids, routine foot-care, and routine eye-care." Where's the outrage about 40% of the abortions in DC are for low-income minority women?

Those aren’t footballs in those bellies.

Fewer children adopted after equality rules force agencies to shut

Many Lutherans are misled about the end result of the push for equality for all things homosexual. Our congregation, UALC, has recently left the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which had decided to impose on its 10,000 congregations the minority belief that God will bless non-celebate gay clergy. As one Lutheran writer (not of that synod) noted, it is a form of secular fundamentalism, whereby the prevailing culture must be obeyed or you are not a loving, giving congregation. When I say misled it's because, 1) most of those 10,000 congregations never even got a chance to vote, or were unaware that the task force after of 20 years of failing kept rewriting and nudging and finally won in August 2009, and 2) this isn't the end of the story.

In the UK, there are adoptable children going without parents because Christian agencies closed rather than place children against their Biblical principles of married couples. In Canada, which has recognized gay marriage for some years and discussion of it negatively from church pulpits is hate speech, the courts are now reviewing polygamy, polyandry and polyamory for legal status and inclusion in employee benefits.

In the U.S. the definition of hate crimes was expanded in 2010 (and the word FAMILY was redefined for employee benefits) in the Defense Appropriations Act, and it's not a stretch to see that it will go from bodily harm to speech causing mental or spiritual distress. In the U.S., the most vulnerable population is not the unborn who can be sliced and diced and ripped from the womb with approval of our President, but an extremely small special demographic with the highest income and education.

So, even if a Christian agency or a Christian church decides to "go along to get along" with the culture, they will then have to face the next hurdle. I'm sure the next ELCA task force on sexuality is already meeting. If a gay couple in a loving stable relationship is acceptable, why not a family where wife #4 hasn't been able to conceive and wants an infant of her own to share with the sister-wives, or why not a woman with four boy-toys who decides she wants to raise a toddler and she can provide a more economically secure home with five incomes instead of one or two, than a married couple with one?

Fewer children adopted after equality rules force agencies to shut - Telegraph

Polyamorists decry anti-polygamy law - The Globe and Mail

Read The Bill: H.R. 2647 - GovTrack.us

The differences between men and women

Reading a church newsletter (not my church--we don't have women pastors) about a clergy women's retreat, I was reminded of what I wrote about 2 years ago on this topic:



1) In a Protestant denomination that ordains both men and women, the men wouldn't be allowed to have a retreat limited to only men.

2) But if they could find enough guys to pull it off (women are outnumbering men in many seminaries), chocolate wouldn't be a featured part of the programming.