In a newspaper clipping from a friend in the States, Father Anthony Ugolink says:<\/p>\n
\nI am an Eastern Orthodox priest. My church marries only people of different genders.<\/p>\n
A few passages in Scripture provide our justification. To find those quotes, you have to sift through thousands of passages which preach a bold advocacy for the poor and the condemnation of the rich who don’t help them out. They’re not often in letters to the editor. Perhaps they look too much like ‘class warfare.’<\/p>\n
But Christians can’t be selective in their choice of revelation. God no doubt repeats the messages to which the stubborn are most resistant. It’s easy to amend documents forbidding sins we see in others. It’s harder to spend real money (yes, even tax money) to alleviate human suffering. <\/p>\n
So I don’t marry gays. But oddly enough, whether Massachusetts marries gays or not doesn’t cause a stir in my congregation. You see, I have parishioners
\nwithout health insurance.<\/p>\nI have retirees whose health benefits have been slashed by former employers whose headquarters have fled abroad. I have working mothers who can’t get their teeth fixed and who can’t find day care. We are praying for one uninsured friend who has a tumor which prevents him from speaking. He has to wheeze through a tracheal tube and beg for chemo-therapy treatments, the cost of which will ruin him and his small business. (The president could have made his ‘small business’ speech from his front porch.)<\/p>\n
So what stirs the church to action? Same sex marriage (and lots of campaign money).<\/p>\n
What I see growing here in Lancaster County is not Christianity, it’s a cult of civil religion that defiles the church by making it a base for a political party. The cult infects and it corrupts. It feels good to be congratulated for your ‘values,’ especially when you have to do so little to prove them.<\/p>\n
I pray the church here will not sell its soul. The Democrats have no monopoly on sin. No party is perfect—especially any party which promises you quick and easy virtue in return for your vote.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a newspaper clipping from a friend in the States, Father Anthony Ugolink says: I am an Eastern Orthodox priest. My church marries only people of different genders. A few passages in Scripture provide our justification. To find those quotes, you have to sift through thousands of passages which preach a bold advocacy for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mhjb.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}