The United Methodist Church has appointed a transgender deacon

[Sy_Noe]

Absurd.
If Richard Hooker were alive today, he wouldn’t be part of a Church of England that is flirting with the same apostasy as the Churches of Scotland, Canada, TEC etc.

The orthodox African churches will leave the Anglican Communion. And that will be a blessing.

Are you a medium?

 

[Faithdancer]

I simply know enough about Richard Hooker to know he wouldn’t be caught dead in a “church” that celebrates homosexuality. Any opinion to the contrary runs completely counter to the facts about Richard Hooker and is absurd, revisionist fantasy.

 

[Sy_Noe]

I simply know enough about Richard Hooker to know he wouldn’t be caught dead in a “church” that celebrates homosexuality. Any opinion to the contrary runs completely counter to the facts about Richard Hooker and is absurd, revisionist fantasy.

You seem to be overlooking what ComplineSanFran said about if he were our contemporary. So actually, no you do not in reality know that it’s absurd and fantasy.

 

[Faithdancer]

In other words, if Richard Hooker was alive today, but was not Richard Hooker.
No absurdity there.

 

[Sy_Noe]

In other words, if Richard Hooker was alive today, but was not Richard Hooker.
No absurdity there.

Nope none since you don’t know with such certainty, even though you may think and believe you do, the man Richard Hooker would be today to be able to call it absurd. I certainly know I am not the same person I was at an earlier time. People and their understandings do grow and develop and change and progress.

 

[Lenten_ashes]

Any church that “ordains” homosexuals or “transgenders” or performs same sex “marriages” is no longer a church of Jesus Christ.
'Nuff said.

Agreed.

They are social gatherings where people try and justify their sin by rationalizing it away over pot luck dinners and what not.

Truth is not determined by democratic vote - yet that is what these apostate denominations are attempting to do. Call the truth a lie and create their own truth.

Jesus spoke of hell fire like 3 times as much as he did heaven. Sin must be pretty serious to Him.

And If our consciences are telling us that all that stuff you listed is ok, then we have essentially murdered our own consciences.

I’m former Anglican as well so I’m familiar with the internal struggle they have there. You know the interesting thing is, it always seems to start with female ordination. Then once that is universally accepted, other heresies creep in.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

You know the interesting thing is, it always seems to start with female ordination. Then once that is universally accepted, other heresies creep in.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’m certain that Luther had other things in mind when he nailed those theses on the door. There has always been something that triggers upset and re-examination of the traditions, and sometimes breakaways. Always. From the very beginning of the church.

In our time it’s about family and sexuality and gender.

It will be interesting, by the way, to see what Phyllis Zagano and her committee on women and the diaconate comes up with. Will it be the start of ‘other heresies?’ I’m waiting with baited breath.

 

[Thorolfr]

You know the interesting thing is, it always seems to start with female ordination. Then once that is universally accepted, other heresies creep in.

It’s all the women’s fault just like it was Eve’s fault that Adam ate from the apple.

 

[GKC]

Nope none since you don’t know with such certainty, even though you may think and believe you do, the man Richard Hooker would be today to be able to call it absurd. I certainly know I am not the same person I was at an earlier time. People and their understandings do grow and develop and change and progress.

Reminds me of the closing portion of Chapter V in THE GREAT DIVORCE. “He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he’d lived… What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature”.

 

[Sy_Noe]

Reminds me of the closing portion of Chapter V in THE GREAT DIVORCE. “He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he’d lived… What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature”.

Get back with me when you know for sure that any of us humans with finite minds were infallible since the Founder. And I don’t mean know by faith or believe you know or think you know. But truly know. And none of us truly will until if in faith the Founder comes again or we meet face to face beforehand. Til that time what we have is faith. I understand that is something hard to grasp for some. But when finite human beings try to tell me they know for sure, that raises a red flag with me.

 

[GKC]

Get back with me when you know for sure that any of us humans were infallible since the Founder. And I don’t mean know by faith or believe you know or think you know. But truly know.

I’ll do that.

And sure, Hooker might have become a Muslim, by now. Who truly knows? So any contemporary group can make as much claim to him as any other. If only he had lived in our time.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

I’ll do that.

And sure, Hooker might have become a Muslim, by now. Who truly knows? So any contemporary group can make as much claim to him as any other. If only he had lived in our time.

We don’t have many Richard Hookers in the Church these days, do we? I kind of miss the era of Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, and Karl Rahner.

 

[Faithdancer]

I’m former Anglican as well so I’m familiar with the internal struggle they have there. You know the interesting thing is, it always seems to start with female ordination. Then once that is universally accepted, other heresies creep in.

Indeed. As soon as “gender equality” becomes an issue in ministry, “sexual orientation equality in ministry” follows, sooner or later… followed by pagan syncretism, etc. a la Grace Cathedral. The ACNA will find that out.
I’m happy to be part of a jurisdiction that has no interest in snuggling up to heterodox Canterbury.

 

[Faithdancer]

Nope none since you don’t know with such certainty, even though you may think and believe you do, the man Richard Hooker would be today to be able to call it absurd. I certainly know I am not the same person I was at an earlier time. People and their understandings do grow and develop and change and progress.

So do you believe that “ordaining” a “transgender deacon” is “progress?”

 

[thephilosopher6]

So do you believe that “ordaining” a “transgender deacon” is “progress?”

Ordaining transgenders sets us back. Christ came to defeat sin, and he did. Now, these churches are sending us right back into it.

 

[GKC]

We don’t have many Richard Hookers in the Church these days, do we? I kind of miss the era of Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, and Karl Rahner.

No, not many Hookers. I’d be satisfied with an infusion of Mascalls, overlaid with a layer of Lewises.

 

[Sy_Noe]

So do you believe that “ordaining” a “transgender deacon” is “progress?”

According to this from the UMC news service which I found on UMC.org, the UMC has no official position on the ordination of transgender individuals and has ordained transgender clergy before.

umc.org/news-and-media/transgender-person-commissioned-as-deacon

Perhaps a trans deacon can help provide outreach and pastoral care to other trans people as well as to others who find the pastoral care helpful to them along their faith walks amidst their own personal experiences. And whom God may choose at any given time to use to spread the message of hope, of love, of mercy to a broken world is not for me to decide.
And in such a world that we live in today, a world filled with so much hate and distrust and discrimination, anytime the good news of Jesus Christ, this good news of his love and of his mercy is spread, yes indeed I very much believe that can be nothing but progress.