Sometimes great issues grab Americans and will not let go. In 1811, after
Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, a young preacher named Lyman Beecher made the whole nation debate until dueling was no longer
acceptable. His daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote UNCLE TOM'S CABIN and  the nation fought a war about slavery. Carrie Nation and her
temperance ladies stormed saloons and made it hard not to hate the dark
side of alcohol.

Nowadays our moral center is flying apart. We no longer have the luxury of
probing at leisure one and only one supreme national moral issue at a time.
Within our lifetime the U.S. Supreme Court rules that "separate but equal"
is wrong in public education. Rosa Parks and others blow away compulsory
segregation in buses, lunch counters and private housing. Ralph Nader
thunders against unsafe automobiles. Millions  battle abortion of womb-protected humans who have done no wrong. We are invited to abolish the death penalty, end air pollution, stop smoking in public places and to secularize our churches. It is more than we can digest.

In some churches homosexual behavior is suddenly seen as leading to God. We are now  invited to reinterpret Scripture in order to make a new virtue from a once upon a time vice. Last June 22  David Hopes wrote a symptomatic letter to the Asheville CITIZEN-TIMES about the excommunication of writer Lewis Green by All Souls Episcopal Church. Mr Hopes asserted, "no one  ever will be excommunicated from All Souls for their beliefs." Oh? Was this not about a belief  that Scripture forbids Christians to engage in homosexual behavior?

What worse can be said about a church than that it does not matter what
Christians believe? Proclaiming TRUTH is what belief and churches are
about.  Untrue beliefs will not  guide men to God.  False beliefs are marks
of a false God.

In the June 1st [2000] MENNONITE WEEKLY REVIEW (www. mennoweekly.org), John Kempel wrote a long letter about homosexual lifestyles and their compatibility with Christian practice.  He builds a rhetorical straw man: "I am troubled by the choice of homosexuality as THE  issue above all others by which the Church's and the Christian's faithfulness to the gospel is measured." Have you met a single person who considers "homosexuality THE issue above all others." No? Neither have I.

But Kempel helpfully invites us to explore two deeper issues. The first is
why are American Christians, by and large, so weakly instructed as to what
behavior is sinful, what actions are positively good and what deeds are
morally indifferent? Parochial schools were and still are great places for
straight talk to the young about morals. Catechisms help. Ditto great
teachers in Sunday schools. Ditto vacation Bible camps. But do Sunday
sermons still teach morality across the board?  In my youth I learned a lot
about sins from the pulpit during regular Sunday church services. What sins
were.  What made them evil. Techniques for avoiding exposure to or
temptation by them. Have I heard any such sermons in the past twenty years. Have you?

Kempel's second attention-grabber is that there is more than one sin. Hmm.
Remember when there were Seven Deadly Sins? St Augustine  ranked lying a greater sin than same sex fornication. But Augustine did not deny that there are plenty of other sins as well. If only there were but one sin! But
it is not so. Hillaire Belloc put it this way in  "The Pelagian Drinking
Song":

The bad news is that the devil has many other sins to tempt us with besides
homosexual misbehavior. The gates of heaven are narrow and most paths lead somewhere else. We are right to challenge preachers to describe homosexual behavior as objectively sinful. At the same time we should also demand that they also denounce our own personally cultivated sins, whatever they are. Perhaps we drive recklessly. Perhaps we cheat on our income taxes. Perhaps we do little or nothing for relatives in need.

You, too, should write letters to editors! Phone in your calls to talk
radio. Make a difference. Fear not to call sins by their names--all sins.

-OOO-

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