Christians ought to do more in this debate

[question everything]

This guy is so wrong, it is hard to decide where to start in rebutting him.

startribune.com

Charles H. Darrell: Christians ought to do more in this debate

Published June 12, 2005

(snip)

In our pluralistic society Christians must make every attempt to translate biblical truth into secular arguments. For instance, Brian Fahling of the American Family Association states that to become effective, Christians "need to develop the intellectual capacity to argue for moral solutions that are not explicitly rooted in theology."

Yet we are unlikely to see a marriage protection amendment without returning to our spiritual foundations. That is because, as Joel Belz writes in "Leaving Out the Lord," without our theology we don't have enough secular arguments that work.

(snip)

The truth is that secularists have stolen the moral high ground from Christians through some ingenious rhetorical manipulation. Marrying the "civil rights" argument for same-sex partners with the unfounded insistence of "separation of church and state," they have succeeded in intimidating and confusing many Christians on the issue of same-sex marriage. Equipping themselves with the equally phony "helmet of open-mindedness" and "breastplate of tolerance," these secular ideologues have silenced a core of the Church with charges of "intolerance" and "hatred" toward homosexuals. Nowhere is that silence more deafening than on Sunday morning.

(snip)

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) estimates that there are some 50 million eligible, evangelical voters, but less than half of them vote -- and very few contribute insightful political analysis. In his study "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," Mark A. Noll writes that evangelicals have replaced concern for political involvement with "an almost exclusive focus on personal evangelism" and, replaced "political analysis and reflection" with interpretation of "current events as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy."

(snip)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5451064.html

Charles H. Darrell is a Woodbury freelance writer and financial consultant now acting as communications director for Minnesota for Marriage.

[wtmusic]

1. I like one part

Christians "need to develop the intellectual capacity to argue for moral solutions that are not explicitly rooted in theology."

Now, when we get to defining "moral solutions"...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Woodbury--one of the most Republicanite suburbs of St. Paul

Figures.

[Justice]

3. Funny, you only hear this argument when its marriage or abortion

guys like Darrell don't seem to have read the Bible passages about helping the poor, the sick and the needy. There is far more in the Bible about helping the underdog than there is about who you marry.

[Lerkfish]

4. and never about torture and sodomizing young boys in front of their

mothers to get them to confess, or genocide or flattening of entire villages in retribution, or using a variant of napalm or any other of a host of war crimes committed by this administration...

I guess there's no moral imperative for christians to stand up to senseless abuse and killing.


:eyes:

[question everything]

5. The same chapter(s) of the Bible that prohibit male homosexuality

(but nothing about female) also prohibits eating pork, shellfish, for women to wear trousers and to wear clothes made of blend of threads, like wool-cotton, yet, no doubt these "Bible followers" do not observe these prohibitions.