I’m sorry, but they just aren’t.
A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.
Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.
“It’s a slap in the face. It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re sorry he died, but he’s gay so we can’t help you,’” she said Friday.
They hate and they destroy and they undermine real Christianity and its believers.
Thank you. I have been telling this to people for years. You don’t cast someone’s funeral out just because of something like that. I think that is very un-Christian. I think that Christians need to stick to our beliefs and standards, but alienating people based on fear is not going to help anyone. In fact, in this case, it’s worse than it appears. They were ok with hosting the service of a gay man as long as his lifestyle was a secret. That’s greed. They are getting paid for that funeral service, I would assume, and the money was enough that they would look past their fears, so long as no one knew. Forget conservative values and all that, I think this just shows a lack of integrity and character on the part of whoever is in charge.
Ah, the compassionate nature of modern Christianity rears its ugly head again.
Dude,
It looks like what stopped the service was the video tribute for the deceased that had a bunch of guys kissing each other. Like have some class, don’t show that stuff in church. There is the very real possibility that the pastoral staff didn’t want that kind of crap happening in their reception hall.
A sinner going to his repose is one thing but showing that kind of video in a church is another.
Yeah, Nick! You tell ‘im!
Because if the slideshows of the departed showed interracial kissing that would be inappropriate in the House Of The Lord.
Nick, two weeks ago today I was in a performance of “Rocky Horror” in a Methodist church. With all of its R-rated, transvestite, transexual, bisexual trappings. Everybody loved it.
So you can just STFU.
Q: What’s the criteria for who deserves a memorial service?
A: Any human being who will be missed by family, friends, whoever. No matter what.
So let’s take a bunch of giant leaps from there into Pinheaded Judgmental Land where these Megachurchers see anyone not quite up to par as a sinner. I don’t know the Bible as well as some, but it seems Jesus got ticked off at money grubbers and those who abused their authority, but he had compassion for anyone who ailed in body, mind or spirit.
These people could even be judgmental AND compassionate—we disapprove of his lifestyle but are here for the family—but they can’t even manage that. They don’t understand and can’t follow the teachings of the the man their church was founded for.
But, Oliver, this *is* real Christianity! Please do realize they could not possibly have done this service as they are expressly forbidden by Scripture… in fact, they committed a horrible sin just by offering to in the first place.
Christianity, as most religions in the world, is an irrational process of non-thought based on Bronze-Age ignorance and mythology, which fosters racism, bigotry, continued exaltation of ignorance as a virtue, hate toward those different from you…
If you are a Real Christian(R), you cannot just take out the parts of the Bible you don’t like. For example, those Christians who do not drag their disobedient children to a wall outside the city and stone them to death as mandated by the Old Testament are not Real Christians(TM). Religion demmands complete surrender of one’s reason and thought to made-up fantasies.
Now, having said that, I have know a fair number of individuals who, *in spite* of being extremely religious, had hearts made of pure gold… people who did not think twice about taking off their shirt to give it to you if you are cold. People who were not only misguided in their beliefs themselves, but who also erroenously thought the goodness in their hearts was a result of their faith, not of a pure, loving nature, and an upbringing full of love and support.
“Like have some class, don’t show that stuff in church. There is the very real possibility that the pastoral staff didn’t want that kind of crap happening in their reception hall.”
Yeah, like, totally. Two people expressing their love and affection for each other is like so totally gross and it totally makes baby jesus cry …
Nick, you’re a fucking idiot.
Denying a Christian service for an enlisted man is wrong in two ways.
It’s anti-troops.
It’s anti-Christ.
These so called Christians crucify the Christ every time they deny Him and His command that we (His Disciples) love one another.
Using religion to justify racism, homophobia, xenophobia, contempt for the poor, etc. is the hallmark of the right-winger.
Frank, you are a kook.
If there were “objectionable” photos in a slideshow (I groan as I write this, having just sat through a slideshow at a funeral of a friend, thinking it was incredibly cheesy) then the church media rep or a pastor should have discussed this with the family.
This is a weird intersection between the “God Bless America/We support Our Troops” stand of fundagelical Christianity and its inherent homophobia. The church made the worst two possible decisions it could have made, offering to host the funeral of a soldier no one knew (probably just because he was a soldier) and then chickening out and dumping the family on the street.
How embarrassing.
Uh, Mike?
Did you read Frank’s entire post? I don’t think this is the same Frank who used to post here a lot.
Indeed I am not the same Frank, sir. Although I have been accused of being a kook on occasion, I am the *other* Frank, the good-looking, extremely smart and low in cholesterol Frank.
This church would surely also deny services for Dubya who had nighttime White House visits from his homosexual prostitute Gannon/Guckert.
Hate the Sin, love the Sinner. Well, except for fags. Obviously.
two weeks ago today I was in a performance of “Rocky Horror” in a Methodist church.
Yeah, well, freakin’ Methodists, man, I mean come on.
Maybe they are the real deal. Maybe this hatred is the core, and only the liberal idealists are confused. Christian civilization has been bloody with cruelty for a very long time; no big deal to stick its heel in the face of a dead patriot to score a holiness point or two.
It wasn’t the Quakers and Anabaptists who filled the battlefields of five continents with piles of dead over two millennia. Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Treblinka, Majdanek, Oranienburg, Sobibor, Mauthausen, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen and Chelmno were staffed by three kinds of people: Protestant Christians, Catholic Christians and rarely Orthodox Christians, often bearing on their belt buckle a hateful atheist message:
“Gott Mit Uns.” Similarly, it was not a group of hateful, disgusting, depraved atheists who elided slavery into Jim Crow and Lynch law, but rather the most religious Christians in the United States, the more secular horrid heathens being more likely resident in the Pacific Northwest or in physics departments anywhere else. The spiritual offspring of those good Christians plague us today, and shamed themselves while trying to shame this patriot. But Oliver, they are indeed good Christians, not good people.
The bulk of Christian history and civilization screams with insanely hideous contempt at those who would, naively, look to the Christian world for rules of decency. Much of the progress of Western civilization has involved removing the tools of oppression, violence and restraint from the hands of good Christians who know bloody well what’s good for us and who will give it to us hard if we let them. Case in point: the decidedly non-atheist Republican Party of 2006. The task of removing jail keys, fangs and bullets from the hands of good Christians is not complete; they hold separation of church and state in contempt because of COURSE they want Christianity to rule the hell-bound maggots until the Devil calls his own home. They know their opponent; respectfully, do you know yours?
A church sticking its heel into the face of a dead patriot and his closest friend and lover is really no big deal, from a historical standpoint. Of COURSE they will do this. If they wanted to be kind to people, they would just do that. But it’s Christianity, not kindness, that they want and bloody well will make sure they get.
To the patriot who died, R.I.P.
Jesus loves me this I know,
although High Point Church doesn’t agree.
I wonder who is right!
http://www.HighPointHatesFags.com