Is gay marriage a crisis for the black church?

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/is-gay-marriage-a-crisis-for-the-black-church/2012/05/18/gIQAP3gHZU_blog.html

Posted at 05:07 PM ET, 05/18/2012
Is gay marriage a crisis for the black church?
By Rahiel Tesfamariam


Earlier this week, when Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson and author Sophia Nelson verbally sparred on The Ed Show over Dyson’s claim that President Obama’s recent endorsement of marriage equality has brought out "sexual rednecks" from within the black church, it brought to head the passionate debate raging in black America over gay marriage. The intense theological climate that the same-sex marriage debate has stirred begs the question: What’s at stake for the black church on this issue?

Jamal Harrison-Bryant, pastor of the Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore, Md., has been one of the most vocal voices on this front.

“This is a season where doctrine has had a collision with opinion and the carnage has yet to be calculated,” he told me when I asked what he believes is at stake in the debate. “I suspect same sex marriage will signal a civil war amongst congregations over societal influence and scriptural allegiance.”

Bryant, like other black clergy who share his view, safeguards the marriage institution as a tradition of the church, rather than as a civil or human right.

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[Warren Stupidity]

1. Well the right sure hopes so. Luckily there is no "black church".

There are many, a plethora, of predominately African American churches, each finding their own path through bronze and iron age mistranslated moral codes in a post industrial world.

[TrogL]

2. That's the problem with non-aligned churches

They lack theological rigor because there is nobody minding the fort. Most engage in basic heresy including Arianism. They have no concept of Christianity beyond simple Bible stories we all learned in Sunday school and Levitican carry-overs driving their homophobia sexism racism and child abuse.

They revel in the simple and familiar and hence are resistant to any sort of change. This would require the sort of self-examination that they are trying to avoid by joining one of these churches in the first place.

[laconicsax]

3. That really depends on whether it's a crisis for the white church. n/t

[AlbertCat]

4. So what if it is?

Reality is a crisis for all churches.

[cbayer]

5. Because there has been evidence to support the theory that some black congregations

have been active in the passage of anti-GLBT civil rights legislations.

The fact that this is causing something of a crisis is important because we may see the tide turn here.

[laconicsax]

6. There's plenty of evidence to support the theory that some white congregations

have been active in the passage anti-civil rights legislation.

Why is that not considered to be creating a crisis for the "white church?"