missouri

Sexuality/Gender

Missouri Pastor Goes Viral on Gawker: “Separation of Church and Hate”

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“First of all, I’d like to say thank you. Secondly, I’d like to say I’m sorry. I’d like to thank you because of your support and affirmation. And I’d like to say I’m sorry because of the ways that Christianity is far too often used as a tool of exclusion rather than inclusion. I’d also like to say that there are many other pastors and people of faith who share views such as my own. My speech just happened to go viral on the internet, but I have a ton of colleagues doing similar things all across the U.S. on a regular basis. We may not receive as much publicity as the highly-funded voices on the religious right, but I am hardly a lone voice.”

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(A)theologies

Tornado Hits the Heartland: Is God Punishing Us?

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Many of these weather events actually are a kind of “punishment”—not in the conservative-theological sense of tit-for-tat justice meted out by an Abusive Father on High, but in the more progressive-theological sense of unforeseen consequences of reckless human actions. Climate scientists have said for years that global climate change will lead to increased severe weather events, and now they appear to be here; along with droughts and poor harvests caused by shifting climatic belts. On a planetary basis, we are reaping what we have sown for two hundred years.

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