Houston Mayor Wants to Censor Pastor's Sermons

Houston Mayor Annise Parker is fulfilling Christians’ prophetic warnings of past years regarding homosexual political gains, categorizing denunciations of homosexual behavior as hate speech.  In an unbelieveable and outrageous power grab, Mayor Parker, the city’s first openly lesbian mayor, has demanded that pastors turn over copies of their sermons that deal with homosexuality.  And she has done so, via legal subpoenas. 

It is doubtful this breach of the American principles of separation between church and state and free speech will survive the legal challenges.  But it will not be the last challenge.  And slowly, but surely, Americans will cede ground on this pivotal issue.

Could we imagine Jonas Clark submitting his sermons against the Stamp Act to King George III?  Or asking permission to train militia? It was his house to which the patriot firebrands Samuel Adams and John Hancock had gone to discuss strategies for the Revolution.  That is where Paul Revere rode the night of April 18, 1775 to find them.  And it was many parishioners from Pastor Clark’s church who opposed the British regulars the next day at what history would call the Battle of Lexington.

What of the Reverend Dr. Mayhew and Reverend Dr. Cooper, who John Adams said were the “most conspicuous, the most ardent, and influential [in the] awakening and revival of American principles and feeling.”?  Who could imagine them submitting manuscripts to that state for approval?

Or consider the Reverend John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg.  A devout pastor and ardent patriot.  He actually pastured two churches, an English speaking Episcopalian church and a German speaking Lutheran church.   He also served as a member of the Virginia legislature.   On January 24, 1776 Reverend Muhlenberg preached a sermon out of the book of Ecclesiastes, a time of peace and a time for war.  Afterwards, he flung off his clerical robe revealing his militia uniform and asked for men to follow him to war against the ‘tyrants’. He assembled 300 men from his church that became the 8th Virginia Regiment.

The power hungry lesbian mayor of Houston will lose her insane legal overreach.  But she has sounded the first shot in a long battle to silence Christ’s church on moral issues to which the state does not concur.  And judging from the measured, calculated response from the churches and Christians of Houston, the state will succeed.

Long gone is the view of Thomas Jefferson who said:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

The fight is on.

Duck Dynasty, Free Speech, and Biblical Authority

Thanks to some alluring marketing by Yahoo pop up ads, I found my way over to a little internet screed on the Duck Dynasty flap, You know, the one that’s been going on for a couple of weeks about Phil Robertson sharing his views in a GQ interview that homosexuality is wrong behavior and condemned by the Bible.

Well, over at the Huffington Post blog today, some actor, writer, radio host guy equated Robertson’s views with hate speech, entitling his tirade "Duck Dynasty, the Bible and Justification of Hatred". It’s the same old mantra that’s been going around for awhile. If you say anything against homosexuality, you’re hateful. You can’t have a viewpoint different from the Huffington Post Blog guy and every other person who believes homosexuality is an ok behavior. If you do happen to have a different viewpoint, and dare to make it known (even if an interviewer asks you a question for a magazine article) you are "spouting hateful speech".

The Huffington Post blog writer-actor-radio host guy doesn’t hate the Bible, of course. He can share a viewpoint different from a majority of Americans and disparage a deeply held religious tenet of millions of Christians (the Bible is a source of moral authority) and not be hateful. Because, of course, "hate speech" only works one way. Besides, he gets his "moral direction" from a "higher power" – his gut. I’m not quite sure what he does on pizza night, when the somewhat digested pepperoni and cheese go to war with the Pepsi and cheese cake. Maybe his gut is more just reliable than mine.

Of course, we won’t talk about Joseph Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh and the hundreds of thousands of others down through the ages who have followed their own "guts" only to do dastardly deeds. I’m sure the Huffington Post blog writer-actor-radio host guy doesn’t really believe in everyone following their "gut". The Nazis did that in the 1930s and 40s and the results were horribly sinister. He just doesn’t like the idea of a Sacred Book and accountability to a Creator God.

Somehow, having a viewpoint different than his is "believing and saying hateful things about entire groups of people" although he never says what Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson said that was hateful.

I wonder what the Huffington Post blog writer-actor-radio host guy would say about Nazis, arsonists, drunk drivers, child molesters, the Taliban, and other such "entire groups of people". And I wonder if he would call expressing a viewpoint different from those within those groups "hateful"? If his fulmination against the Bible and its adherents is any example, I don’t think he’d be the least bit shy about haranguing any "entire groups of people" with whom he disagreed. He is after all, just following "his gut" --those good, ole trusty, reliable innards.

The problem with following your gut—your innermost visceral response, as any gastro-intestinalogist (or criminologist for that matter) will tell you, is that not all guts are created equal. There’s your gut, my gut, that Huffington Post blog writer-actor-radio host guy’s gut, and of course, there’s Phil Robertson’s gut. I reckon when he was talking to GQ about sin, he was just following his own gut. So, if that’s the higher power, what’s the problem?

Of course, our "gut" hardly trumps the Bible. It is an eternal, external, objective moral standard; not the transient, internal, subjective standard advocated by the Huffington Post blog writer-actor-radio host guy. It was not hateful for God to give us His Word, and it is not hateful for us to declare it to others, even if they recoil at its message.