There's been an amazing liberalizing trend in American churches in recent decades, nowhere more noticeable than in the "marriage" debate. [photo credit: Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry]
At the last convening of the Constitutional Convention at the Mass. State House on Nov. 9, the wacky pseudo-Christians were out in force with their religious symbols and clerically dressed spiritual leaders to oppose the marriage amendment. (See Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry photos.)
On our side, we're all wondering what these people really believe. How truly bizarre this paganization of American religion is becomes clear in this report from Peter Jones of "Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet." (Thanks to Mission America for posting "Sexual outlaws, neopagans rule at prestigious theology meeting.") This sort of queer-theory, pagan insanity dominates our college campuses -- and now our legislative bodies? -- which helps explain the huge number of young people at the State House demos!
Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet
NewsCWiPP #32, Letter from the Front
From Dr. Peter Jones
(c) 2006 CWiPP
Having spent three days with 11,000 professors of religion and Bible at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Washington DC., I'm glad to be back in the peace of my Californian study. Every year, in the academy, orthodox biblical Christianity decreases in representation, while radical liberalism increases. ...
Since 1991 I have witnessed the radical agenda stretch the liberal envelope to unimaginable extremes. I have deliberately attended the "cutting edge" seminars, since what the "cutting edge" conceives soon becomes acceptable to the liberal majority. Here is a sampling of this year's offerings:
--In her plenary address, Diana Eck, president of AAR and professor at Harvard, introduced herself as a Montanan, a Methodist and a Massachusetts-recently-married gay -- to enthusiastic applause. Her great contribution is the promotion of religious pluralism in America, but religious pluralism is often accompanied by sexual pluralism; [Eck and her lesbian live-in companion are "co-masters" at Harvard's Lowell House -- a true disgrace.]
--In The Contemporary Pagan Studies Consultation, academic witches and warlocks conferred on the spiritual power of "fire circle drumming," in which fire represents "hardly contained desire." The audience heard about "Paganistan," the thriving Wiccan community in Minnesota, and a lecture entitled "The Pagan Explosion," documented that paganism has grown 38 fold in the USA in the last eleven years and 250-fold in Australia in the last five years;
--In The Theology and Religion Section: Jim Wallis' God's Politics, Wallis reduced the Christian message to a modern version of a social gospel for the Democratic party. An "evangelical feminist" railed against the genocidal foundation of America and called for the deconstruction of "normative heteropatriarchy." One small but bright light came from a Canadian scholar who accused Wallis of nationalistic idolatry for making America, rather than the church, the source of Gospel action;
--In a review session of Christ and the Single Savior, Yale professor Dale B. Martin's homoerotic interpretation of the New Testament teaching on sexuality began with a professor from Harvard Divinity School introducing herself by saying: "I do not know where I am in relation to Christianity." Such confusion was hardly lifted when a Yale professor of theology asked Martin where Jesus had gay sex. Martin replied: "In the park, which is what the gospel writers meant by 'garden.' " This trivialization and eroticization of Jesus Gethsemane suffering elicited not a single objection from the numerous theology professors in attendance;
--In The Queer Theory and LGBT Studies in Religion Consultation a paper "showed" the deep theological meaning of homosexual bathroom graffiti. With the verbal verve of a rap artist, gross sexual perversion was transformed into a noble response to "the dominant hegemonic power-structures of white, heterosexual, capitalistic society." Another gay theologian argued that there was no genetic "binary template" (male/female) so we are all sexually becoming whatever we wish to be;
These professors constitute an armada of brain-power deployed on our campuses to form the thinking of the rising generation. They are succeeding.... [Read more...]
