The Goat Pen

Professor Tiger wrote:Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10).

For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due. (Romans 1:26-27)

For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine... (1 Tim 1:10)

sardis wrote:"For that matter, divorce is considered biblically wrong too, isn't it? And yet half the people that get married end up getting divorced, and nobody seems to mind at all."

There are Biblical reasons for divorce. This is one instance where Jesus took a tougher stance than Old Testament law:

"Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

hedge wrote: So you would think that people who claim to truly believe in the bible would be at least as upset and vocal about divorce and bring their voices and opinions to bear on the politics of divorce as they seem to do when it comes to homosexuality. But yet they don't do this. Why do you think this is?

Seems to me, the history of the past few centuries has been that where religion is in error, society has been slowly correcting their wrong notions.

hedge wrote:Funny how you don't see many religious types getting so obsessed about adulterers, drunkards, "the greedy", etc, as they do about homos. Do you have any theory as to why that is the case?

sardis wrote:but the Bible still says what it says and there are those who still follow its tenets though they may get smaller in number. The Bible ain't going away. It will always be around despite man's hostility towards it.

The main point, however, although one I suspect you are loath to admit, is that one needn't be a christian to be opposed to slavery.

Of course, non-Christians were also involved in both these necessary corrections. But give the Christians credit for the critical leadership role they played in both.

Neither Emerson nor Thoreau were christians, yet they were abolitionists. I'm sure there were many others. So no, you don't get to credit "christianity" with the abolitionist movement...

The white abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers, especially William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society; writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism

At the age of 25, Garrison joined the anti-slavery movement, later crediting the 1826 book of Presbyterian Reverend John Rankin, Letters on Slavery, for attracting him to the cause.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lloyd_Garrison

John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Greenleaf_Whittier

During a communion service at the college chapel, Stowe had a vision of a dying slave, which inspired her to write his story. Shortly after, in June 1851, when she was 40, the first installment of her Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in serial form in the newspaper National Era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe

When Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly Sunday school. As word spread, the interest among slaves in learning to read was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

hedge wrote:You sound bitter about that. But Jesus himself told his followers that they should expect to be ridiculed for their beliefs, b/c they would appear as such (ridiculous) to most people. As Christopher Hitchens pointed out on the death of Jerry Falwell, that idea (the idea that christians should expect to be ridiculed for their beliefs) is true even of the most serious and devout christians. But for charlatans and huxters like Falwell and his ilk (and they are legion), it is a manifest duty to do so...

we may need persecution to revive us like it did in Roman times, Middle Ages, and currently in China and Middle East.