Re: [asa] Sin, animals, and salvation

On 11/19/08, gordon brown <Gordon.Brown@colorado.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, John Burgeson (ASA member) wrote:
>>
> I am not sure what you mean by being part of Christianity. Because some
> Christians tried to justify the mistreatment of nonwhites that was common
> in their culture by twisting Scripture, does that make it part of
> Christianity?

Sadly, yes.

I have read some of the sermons and essays by the clergy written in
the 1850s which justified slavery. At least one I remember disliked
slavery a lot but had to choose between opposing it, thereby opposin
God, and favoring it, thereby following God.

It was part of us.

I also lived in the South during Jim Crow days. The only orthodox
"Christian" stance was "segregation now, segregation forever." Mixed
marriages were clearly a grievious sin. It is to my discredit that I
did nothing about it until I was an adult over 30.

The plain fact is thatthe historical evidence shows that, over and
over, some (many) conscientious, committed, Bible-believing, praying,
devout Christians have been wrong. Dead wrong. Tragically wrong.
Stupidly wrong. Sinfully wrong.

That's part of our heiritage. We must live with it. We must examine --
and re-examine - ourselves constantly to see where WE might be
following in their footsteps.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Nov 20 09:58:02 2008