Comments

I think this shows great character, to praise certain good aspects of Obama, while bringing to attention other aspects, such as his entire political policy and agenda.

In other words, the SBC is for "racial reconciliation," but obviously not for civil rights and equality for all as it couldn't even go a few sentences without displaying rank bigotry towards its current favorite scapegoat group. They're so morally and intellectually blind that they can't even get through a short resolution without a showing of rank bigotry, jealous greed and ill will towards the "other." Shame on them.

"Racial reconciliation" can be a racist phrase in itself, especially when it comes from an institution with the SBC's founding and core constituency.

That alleged apology for slavery was as shabby as those things get. That so called apology was written in a theological way of reading the Bible that the SBC has always rejected, and continues to reject for everything else except in it's slavery apology...as its "Great Commission Resurgence" declarations illustrate. Aren't they ashamed yet, to keep on crowing about such a shameless attempt to deflect institutional responsibility and true repentance?

"Racial reconciliation" implies that there was a time in American history when the "races" were in a state of right relations.

Of course, only an unrepentant racist would say such a thing. There never has been, in American history, a golden age of "racial relations" except to the most morally debased "white" racist.

Coming from an institution that never had moral legitimacy on matters of equality under the law, and of which they are still demonstrating their deep contempt for that ideal as the above article illustrates quite nakedly, there is little reason to think their Obama resolution is anything but a shabby effort to fool the carefully or congenitally naive into thinking that the SBC isn't what it's always been, an organization to minister to the delicate sensibilities of the privileged, to distract and silence the oppressed, and to maintain a handy supply of scapegoats for the first two purposes.

Interestingly, my two security words are 'sneakboxes' and 'gatsby'

Their praise of Obama shows many things about their state of salvation and their ignorance.

Reconcile: 1.to win over to friendliness; cause to become amicable: to reconcile hostile persons.
2.to compose or settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc.).
3.to bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent: to reconcile differing statements; to reconcile accounts.

Gregory Peterson's comment is nonsense. The idea of racial reconciliation is not opposed to civil rights, in fact it even goes beyond it. All races have full civil rights today, but if there are people of different races who still don't get along or have much to do with each other (outside the scope of law or government), they aren't yet reconciled. There's no justification for Peterson's unreasonable tirade over a praiseworthy action.

Your definitions illuminate my points quit well. I don't know how they makes my comment nonsense.

The Black community was not equal as "hostile" persons to the institutions of white privilege. Black people weren't a hostile party to be "reconciled" with white privilege.

Neither are Gay people equal to anti-"homosexualist" shameless hatemongers like the SBC and the rest of the religious right movement, who've only had since the 1840's to perfect propaganda, theological and legal weapons of oppression to others...except, some of us have long memories and/or basic research skills.

The resolution is quite racist-like towards Gay people, while undeservedly faux-humble congratulating itself on its lack of racism, showing that the SBC hasn't actually repented and accepted responsibility. It's a shameful display of hypocrisy.

I went to a small Bible Belt college in the middle Seventies. I know what the smoke and mirror racism of this sort looks like, having seen it constructed and deconstructed, even if the "homosexual" hysteria is not about race, whatever that is today, itself...hence, racist-like. Only the name of the scapegoat has really changed.

As the great civil rights strategist/activist, Bayard Rustin, had pointed out, racism isn't just about black and white. As a Gay man himself, he knew that quite well.

The SBC slavery apology looked bogus, looks even more so today...by design and intent, aimed to deflect the light of justice. It is something to be ashamed of, to do again, this time correctly. That's not likely to happen.

The SBC is an embarrassment to the country, therefore, and has no moral legitimacy; didn't have any at its founding either. It should be dissolved before it destroys more lives with its unrepentant history of manipulative kitsch and bad taste, pseudo intellectualism that's actually anti-intellectualism, twisted neo-Calvinism, the downright evil idolatry of Bible literalism and dubious historical revisionism.

Most of the major denominations in American, disgracefully split over slavery, but the SBC is the only pro-slavery one that I can think of, off hand, that never "reconciled" with anti-slavery institutions.

You have got to be kidding!! Race has nothing to with our outrage at this president, how can you speak out of one side of your mouth and say you disagree with killing babies but agree with him keeping our country safe. Quantanamo Bay???? Reduction in military presance in Iraq, Afganastan ???

The white house spoke out against killing an abortion dr( by the way I do not agree with his killing and I belive the person who did this should be brought to trial) however the white house did not speak out againt a radical muslim that shot 2 american soldiers, killed one. Mr Obama gained everything he has from a county that opens doors to anyone who wants to try and yet he is trying to destroy the very thing that made him who he is. WHY?

The Southern Baptist need to take a better look at the man and what he stands for and not the color of his skin.

The nonsense begins when, without justification, you say that reconciliation implies a previous race relations golden age, which is why I cited the definitions.

A murderer and his victim's family can be reconciled. That doesn't mean that there was ever a right or equal relationship between them before- there may have been no relationship whatsoever.

Racial reconciliation = having races be brought into a right relationship (NOT a return to pre-civil rights days). I don't see how you can say that supporting that is racist. Wanting to solve a problem in no way says that problem didn't and doesn't still exist.

And by simple definition, racism can't be about something other than race.

Race is a social construct. That the resolution immediately launches a racist-like attack on Gay people strongly indicates that the SBC hasn't learned anything with their alleged apologies for slavery and such. Nothing at all. Those resolutions were meaningless....to manipulate the do-goody suckers like the resolution in the article was clearly crafted to do.

If the SBC had repented, it wouldn't be attacking a minority with the racist tactics that made the Bible Belt a sink of crimes against humanity...aided and abetted by the rest of country which had little to be proud of after the collapse of Reconstruction until very recently...and still not near enough, at that.

That the SBC was split from its anti-slavery parent mostly to perpetuate white supremacism, is not controversial. Many other pro-slavery factions also split, though they later became "reconciled" back into the institutions they left, more or less.

The SBC, however, did not. Therefore, there is good reason to think that the SBC doesn't actually do reconciliation.

Institutions change, evolve, and that's a good thing when the institution was founded on theological racism, enslavement, oppression, caste system legitimization and white supremacism, and never sought "reconciliation" with its anti-slavery parent institutions. But, there is little reason to think that the SBC has actually evolved all that much...but instead, just manipulates social constructs to maintain a privileged caste system.

The SBC still anchors its theology in the language of pro-slavery Bible literal interpretation...it can't change without denouncing its theological and intellectual integrity, which it should have, a long time ago. It must either reject what I think is biblio-idolatry, or it's still working for race supremacism, as race supremacism is today.

If you remember that "race" isn't just about black and white, as Bayard Rustin pointed out...remember that race is a flexible social construct, and think, as I saw Kenneth Copeland do twice, of "the glorious, supernatural, born again race," you can understand why the SBC can seem to denounce white supremacism, yet not repent of white supremacism...it's just repackaged it's founding "mission" into working for the supernatural, born again race...in a "spiritual" race war against the unregenerate...to wage "spiritual" genocide against its presumed enemies.

That's exactly what its trying to do to the Gay community, along with other religious right organizations; a soft "spiritual" ethnic cleansing of an inferior spiritual race.

"The separation illusion: a lawyer examines the first amendment" by the Rutherford Institute's John W. Whitehead, makes that spiritual-race warfare argument quite explicitly. (I hope he's renounced and repented of that mid Seventies "youthful indiscretion." He has, hasn't he?) It's truly depraved, I've read it...and it's an underground "classic" in the neo-confederate movement, I've heard, along with other Christian Reconstruction arrogant conceits.

The SBC did not stand up for Black people when standing up for Black people would have been courageous. A couple of mealy mouthed resolutions, rare and decades and decades late, were just ...well, when I was in the military, we had an acronym for that kind of thing.

Therefore, as it's an idolatrous (in my mind anyway) institution, an abomination (as that's what the word was usually used to flag things thought to be idolatrous), there is no reason to believe for a minute that it still isn't about white privilege, as white privilege has evolved into today.

Which is apparently, onservative religious hegemony, God's royal race, God's Regents, divinely ordained by God to prevail in this allegedly Christian nation, with the power to segregate and oppress any minority community it sees fit, apparently by spewing Bible verses immorally twisted into verbal machine gun bullets in it's never ending supernatural-race warfare.

Today, it's definitely "homosexuals" getting its traditional pro-slavery-like literal interpretation/state's rights attack, tomorrow, whatever unfortunate scapegoat it feels it needs to further its unseemly greed and lust for illegitimately attained power, to likely be unwisely exercised as it was in the recent past.

I"m going to bed. Thinking about the religious right is like looking at a car accident...grimly fascinating, even educational if you're looking with the right mindset, but ultimately, it takes its toll on you.

Interestingly, my security words are dilemmas and Unitarians. Are Unitarians considered to be Christians by the religious right in general?

I for one grew up in an SBC church in the South that was on record opposing slavery well before the country abolished slavery. Slaves were admitted as members and buried in the same cemetery as the white members. True this was unique among many churches in the South, SBC, Methodist, Presbyterian or anyone else. However, all the ranting about institutional bigotry is a load of barnyard fertilizer. Being apart of SBC ministries, I've worked in the inner cities of places like Oakland, been apart of hispanic SBC churches. In fact today you would be hard pressed to find a more ethnically diverse denomination.

Now for the rant about bigotry and hatred of homosexuals. First to equate homosexuality with racism is intellectually inept at best. Never is a persons color of skin condemned in the Bible. However, Old Testament and New Testament scriptures condemn homosexuality as a sin. As Southern Baptist we read the bible and let God use the bible to interpret social issues for us. If something is called a sin in the bible we must accept it and change ourselves and call others to repentance. Yes, we believe homosexuality is a sin because it is defined as such in the scriptures. We refuse to let shifting social attitudes interpret scripture for us. If we allowed social attitudes to interpret scripture then my home church would have been on the wrong side of the slavery issue.

"Never is a persons color of skin condemned in the Bible. However, Old Testament and New Testament scriptures condemn homosexuality as a sin."

The former is not what was being preached, as "innerant" Bible truth, in many conservative evangelical organizations when I was a kid, and not just in SBC churches. For mere starters, there was the popular "Curse of Ham" argument, condemning all people of African descent to perpetual servitude and moral and intellectual inferiority for alleged inherited sin. In other words, while people of African descent could do good works, they couldn't actually BE good people. Only the blessed "Caucasians" could be that.

Black people who objected to that, were even accused of "unnatural" desires, of going against their God given nature of being content with being as God created them.

For the latter, only fairly recent Bible translations and paraphrases use and abuse, for a pernicious agenda of hate mongering, the word "homosexual." Not surprising as "homosexuality" is an obsolete, Victorian theory, and a word not much used until the last century.

Your Bible may condemn "homosexuals," but my Bible doesn't. My Bible condemns idolatry, which would include biblio-idolatry. It's uncontroversial in legitimate scholarly circles that the "homosexual" clobber verses, of which there are very few to start with, are about what was thought to be idolatrous activity and threats to patriarchy.

The reason "homosexuality" is obsolete theory is that it lacks strength in the area of human identify. Gay is more than sexual desire, sexual preference; just as not-Gay is more than sexual desire and sexual preference. These are ways of being, variations on the theme of human identity, of being as one is, to try to live in integrity, to try to practice the Golden Rule as best one can (and which I will I admit I could use work, myself.)

My Bible does not condemn "homosexuals." That, just like all the 'innerant' clobber verses that were said to condemn "people of color" when I was a kid, are social constructs that abuse Bible authority, instead of illuminate Bible wisdom...that encourage greed, hatred and exploitation of neighbor instead of love of neighbor.

You are correct many people did argue the curse of Ham to sooth their conscience of an engrained bigotry. However, the argument that "legitimate scholarly circles" is referring to idolatrous activity doesn't hold much water with serious bible students. If a person chooses to believe that God didn't give us a bible free of errors and it's all up to our own individual interpretation then there's not much point in continuing the discussion because interpretations will change. As a guy that lived in San Francisco for many years I am very familiar with what homosexuality is an isn't. It amazes me that every time someone says that homosexuality is a sin they are considered to be displaying hatred of some sort. My son has lied to me three times today, and I corrected him and told him it was a sin. However, my love for him didn't change. I'm not into biblio-idolatry. I simply believe the Bible is God's Word and that God is powerful enough to deliver the message that he intended without error. That may not place me in some peoples "legitimate scholarly circles" but I never liked running around in circles. You get tired and you've gone no where.

The Bible does not say that what didn't exist then, 'homosexuality,' and what is long obsolete sexology theory today, is a "sin." If your Bible says that 'homosexuality' is a sin, take it back to wherever you got it and exchange it for a Bible that wasn't put together by people with an obvious contemporary agenda of greed, oppression and hate mongering.

People who insist on using the word "homosexual" in the pejorative, racist-like way that CT and the religious right in general use the word, shouldn't expect the respect they seem to think is their God given due.

The Bible may be without error, though that looks like an unsupported, mere declaration when it comes from religious right activists. It's a socially constructed, word-weapon invented to use to beat over the heads of those fellow Christians which pro-slavery apologists wanted to 'reconcile' to Bible condoned slavery...during my great grandfather's youth in the 1840's.

And again, to make people 'reconcile' to patriarchal dominance and against woman's suffrage in my Grandfather's day.

And in my youth, to drive people to 'reconcile' with white privilege, rather than move towards real, rather than illusionary, equality under the law.

And yet again today, to manipulate people to 'reconcile' to the "glorious, supernatural, born again race (Kenneth Copeland)" God ordained privilege and hegemony in the grandchildren's youth.

A ruling privilege which includes excluding American citizens, once again, by deeply immoral state constitutional amendments excluding them from their First Amendment rights to petition their governments and courts for redress of their grievances on marriage....to begin again to feather afresh Jim Crow for a new age, and against a new community of alleged inferiors.

Regardless of whether the Bible is without error or not, that is a dubious claim when it comes from religious conservatives; suggesting of arrogance combine with insecurity and a need to bully; of no real repentance and thought about what racism was and is, and without a doubt, a shabby legitimization for an agenda with a large element of petulant jealousy and deep seated greed in it. "How dare those morally inferior homosexuals think that they're the equal of someone such as myself, a member of the glorious, supernatural, born-again Jesus race?"

A reader of the Bible is definitely with error, which certainly applies to myself. However, as I was taught to be a conservative Christian, I think that I've demonstrated that at the least, I read the Bible differently now, in a different light, and get different understandings than that which I was told this verse or that unalterably meant.

Rather than read the Bible as verses of fixed prescriptions and proscriptions with which I can't ask for explanation and context, because God said it and I must believe it, I read the Bible with an eye to the my burden of responsibility, a somewhat liberal Methodist way of Bible Bible reading, I think. I read the Bible through the lenses of the Golden Rule (however inconsistently I may practice what I preach), and my life and education as a person of this age and my place, as Paul apparently did in his age, with his education and his place.

Paul's age and place is now a very foreign country, where it's sometimes difficult to tell who the protagonists and antagonists are, but an intensely interesting country all the same. Judging from the uses that pro-slavery, anti-feminist, white privilege apologists and anti-homosexualists have made of him; maybe Paul really is without redemption...that moral people should do as a former enslaved woman allegedly did after the Civil War, and rip Paul out of the Bible altogether. (Dr. Peter Gomes anecdote. and he definitely doesn't recommend doing that.)

Or, we can read him as Paul, a man of his age and place, the proto-Christian, who's work is likely the earliest known, reliable (with exceptions which are generally not recognized by religious conservatives) writings on the Messiah Jesus. A man from which we can learn from, as a fellow human, rather than abuse as an "inerrant" authority for our greedy, puffed up, racist and racist-like authoritarian desires, as has been done in our American past...and other people's pasts as well.

American history has shown that American religious conservatives, usually Protestant lead, have demonstrated time and time again the kind of Bible reading errors they're prone to make, and which they are obviously recapitulating again, as they're not doing anything different in their gay bashing than what they have done before when they were Black bashing and woman bashing. They, in general, are still insisting on the alleged moral inferiority of their neighbors, still justifying the oppression, exploitation and segregation of their neighbors.

Fool me once, maybe you were innocently mistaken...try to fool me again and again, and you shouldn't expect to be trusted and respected.

If what American religious conservatives were doing during my youth in justifying white privilege had no Biblical foundation, as we apparently agree, why, when religious conservatives are doing pretty much the same thing today to a different (and overlapping) community, they suddenly now have Biblical authority and legitimacy? If Gay is different, the response to Gay should have been different, but I don't see 'different.'

"Homosexuality" isn't a sin, as it's not really something people actually do. There aren't homosexuals practicing homosexuality. We're far more complex than an obsolete, Victorian era sexology theory suggests.

And certainly far more complex than what the religious right in general, with naked greed and pathetic desperation, has always wanted in "the other." ...A group of inferior beings who are immoral in their simple, simply abominable ways. A simple group just begging to be dominated, exploited, segregated, scapegoated, bullied and abused at will...with the inerrant approval of God through His apparently mindless spokesperson, Paul.

'Hate the sin, love the sinner' is apparently just about hating to love one's neighbor, and the alleged sin has nothing to do with that, except as a convenient excuse to be smarmy, superior and condescending.

As I remember someone pointing out...Jesus gave us a few simple rules meant for complex people, instead of complex rules to keep people simple.

Paul in 2Tim 3:16 said” All scripture is given by inspiration of God…”

Clearly this isn’t true. And a simple analysis will show you this. For example, all of Paul’s writings were simply letters written to different people. They were not in any shape or form considered scriptures until canonized. And canonization doesn’t make them God inspired. Even Paul said in 1Cor 7:5 that he was given his opinion and that what he was saying was not inspired from God.

2 Tim 4:19-21: " Greet Priscilla and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus. Do your best to get here before winter." Doesn't sound like inspired words from God to me. Instead simply a man writing a letter to a friend.

Further John 14:13-14 Jesus said “ And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. You and I know clearly this isn’t quite the case.

John 3:13. "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” This is not quite true is it? For the bible clearly says that Elijah and Enoch both ascended into heaven.

Then we have the issue with Paul, Peter, John and James all stating that the Lord’s return was imminent even right at hand. It’s been 2000 years later…and still nothing. If this was inspired by God then God made a mistake. And God making a mistake doesn’t work for me. So the only other alternative is...
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Dwight: “…If a person chooses to believe that God didn't give us a bible free of errors and it's all up to our own individual interpretation then there's not much point in continuing the discussion because interpretations will change…”

How would you know if your Bible is free of errors? If your Bible has "homosexual" words in it, it's not only needlessly with error, it's suspect.

My jaundiced observation is that people who make a big deal in insisting to me that the Bible is free of error and contradiction, want me to think that it's they who are free of error and contradiction.

It can be fun to discover that I'm wrong...it's a good challenge to find something more reliable. I hope that I'm not only skeptical about what you say, but also about what I say.

But when someone makes source claims of absolutes, of being without error and such...fail, as the young people say these days. You're not God, you can't know...and you're likely not a person I can respect and trust...but you probably don't care about that anyway. I'm wrong, you're right; it must be so.

Of course, you might actually be right...and I'm almost certainly wrong, I hope in minor ways.

As I think Albert Camus may have said, more or less, if ancient memory serves: "I'd rather be wrong, than right and standing in a pool of other people's blood."

And Camus quote sites have: "The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind."

Of course, Camus said a great many things. some of them unfortunate.

I can respect and follow a legitimate authority. The Bible is that, but it's not authoritarian. Who could trust that? A great many people, I guess, but I don't trust them.

Because Gregory Peterson

If people can get you to buy into the claim that the bible is the inerrant word of God and if it is sola scriptura; then all the crap that it has been used for and continue to be used for can be laid squarely at the feet of God. After all He would have been the one who said so. And after all they are only carrying out his mandates - they would argue.

Yes, Justin, the old, "I was only following orders" excuse." I've heard that from so many 'I'm not a racist, but...' people, and now, "I love homosexuals, but...'

"God said it, I believe it, case closed." and "I didn't say it, God said it."

Of course, God may have said it, or not, but whatever is written in the Bible, was written within a context, and must be interpreted within that context, and within our understandings, and misunderstandings, of today.

We know a lot that the ancients didn't, and much has been lost and forgotten that we wish we could know, but likely can't. One thing we know today, is that the more you can reliably know, the more questions with integrity you can ask.

I don't think in terms of "truth" much anymore, but in terms of reliability as best we can determine at this time, imperfectly understood context, provenance that may be faked or misunderstood, and probability that may befalse correlations. That stuff makes life fun, to strive towards greater integrity of information...but sometimes, overwhelming.

Truth may be real, but for us imperfect humans, it's an ideal to strive to attain, not our reality to take for granted.

So, when in doubt, try the old Golden Rule...though don't expect to succeed with it. You may not know what success really is...or that it's a desirable outcome for every situation.

Why can't people get their facts straight? Obama is NOT African-American or black; he is mulatto. That is, half black and HALF WHITE!

Because Peter

White America came up with the rule that if you have one drop of black blood you are black. Have you never heard of the 1/16 rule?
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Why can't people get their facts straight? Obama is NOT African-American or black; he is mulatto. That is, half black and HALF WHITE!

If having an African father can't make you African American, what can? I have a Norwegian American father, and that's what I am as well, under the informal rules of where I grew up...though my mother wasn't born Norwegian American. (But, what if she had been African American?)

"Mulatto" is an obsolete word now, pretentious, affected, not the best of the Victorian feeling, likely with pejorative roots in Spanish and Portuguese. We don't say octoroon either, and certainly not some ends in '-ess' words.

Identity isn't necessarily the same thing as official labels would have it.

If the President says he's Black, his father was African, his wife is Black, his children are Black...who are you to define him? If he says he identifies as Black, the Black community's consensus is that he's Black, the man is Black...with a mother who wasn't, for legal purposes, Black. So what?

But, I say, whatever you are, you're also whatever you love...and she loved an African man, her child by that African man and she was American...so, she became part African American. She had one beloved African American "blood" relative after all, even after her marriage dissolved, her son.

People aren't recipes, part this part that, bake for nine months. There is no "half" a person. A person is made from two wholes, and is a whole person in its own right.

This is America, post modern America. We are as we are as we are, to steal from dear old Gertrude.

Oops, entertaining, but I have to go.

Hello,
Thank you. It is really nice information. It can be fun to discover that I'm wrong...it's a good challenge to find something more reliable.

Southern Baptists Express is make good media role in election and doing their best in election and get pride award for that.Obama was gave great speech when he was won and we have to make pride for them.