WOW! There was really a time when the Churches weren't calling for LGBT destruction

[xfundy]

http://www.lgbtran.org/Exhibits/CRH/Room.aspx?RID=4&CID=19

Of course, it was in Sin Fransodom, but still, it gives one pause.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. And for many churches, that time is NOW

See the mainline church delegations marching in Gay Pride parades.

See the mainline clergy performing wedding ceremonies (whether legally recognized or not) for same-sex couples.

See the mainline denominations authorizing the ordination of GLBT clergy, including bishops.

Or going back about twenty years, see the formation of People of Faith Against Bigotry in Oregon, formed to fight the first attempt at anti-gay legislation.

[xfundy]

3. What I don't see

... is mainline churches standing up and speaking loudly against the self-proclaimed "christian leaders" who spread hate, misinformation and fear, christian = republican nonsense, screw-the-poor I-got-mine-so-screw-you wave that has been spread by "christians" all over the nation.

I just don't see it, haven't seen it, it's not there.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. It's there, but as I've mentioned in other threads,

they can't BUY press coverage.

The picture looks really different from the inside than it does to the outside observer.

[darkstar3]

4. Why don't you tell me what you mean by "mainline", because to me, it means "majority view."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. "Mainline" is the standard term for the non-fundamentalist churches, the

traditional denominations: United Methodists, UCC, Presbyterians, ELCA Lutherans, Episcopalians, American Baptists. They're called "mainline" because the non-denominational churches, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals broke off from them.

[darkstar3]

7. The American Baptists are "non-fundamentalist"?

Having grown up with them, that's really news to me.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. The ones I know are

The American Baptists (as opposed to the Southern Baptists, who are concentrated in but not confined to the South) tend to be a lot less dogmatic (and found mostly in northern states). I taught at an American Baptist college in a town where the American Baptist church was the largest congregation, and those folks were Liberal with a capital L. The Southern Baptist church was always ragging on them for it, especially when the minister of the American Baptist church presided at a wedding ceremony for two men.

Before I accepted the job at the American Baptist college, I checked with the current faculty members to make sure that I wouldn't have to sign a fundamentalist Statement of Faith (as some of the Southern Baptist colleges require) and that the college wouldn't monitor my private life. They assured me that the people who ran the college weren't THAT kind of Baptist.

[Trajan]

2. It would be a mistake to ascribe a monolithic attribute ...

to the manifold arms of the christian faith .... There will ALWAYS be conservatives and liberals that run the gamut to each extreme ...

There is never consistent 100% agreement on any one subject ....