Thursday, April 21, 2016

an unanswered letter

Rev. Albert Mohler, President
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 2825 Lexington Rd.
Louisville, KY 40280
Dear Brothers in Christ,
Rev. Mark Labberton, President Fuller Theological Seminary 135 N. Oakland Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91101
I come to you with an honest question that I cannot answer. As a grandmother I have children to guide. As a Christian in the World, I must show the love of Our Lord to non- believers. My question is compelling because of my love for the Church Temporal in all of her sorrows and historical sins. Why, Dear Sirs, does the Evangelical aspect of the Protestant Church obsess about homosexuality?
Evangelical is a loose term because all Christians are called to evangelism. Conservative as a term for your schools doesn’t make much sense to me. Great scholarship is done at both of your institutions. But the attention of Evangelicals to one of the 617 Laws of Kashrut confuses me greatly. I have seen both of your photos online. Neither of you wear facial hair (Lev. 19:27) and you seem in those pictures to be wearing blended fabric (Deut. 22:11). So what is it about Lev. 18:22? Gentlemen, I just don’t get it.
The obsession with homosexuality is not limited to the Protestant Church. The Roman and Greek churches have been terrified by man love since their inception. (No one mentions woman love in our Scriptures.) But I am asking this question of you because it is the Evangelical aspect of the Protestant Church that is making all of the noise against marriage equality. Rome has too many other problems and does not like to explain. The Greek/Russian/Syrian churches are, I hate to say it, moribund. They are not my concern as I live in this blessed land whose Constitution enshrines the separation of Church and State. But it breaks my old liberal heart to see the Church Temporal held up to ridicule. Sometimes I am left to saying, “You can’t choose your family,” because I simply don’t understand. I can’t fight the argument because it has never been clearly explained to me.
You, both being scholars far beyond my ken, know the hard history of our faith. In this great land we have had to break through the theological supports of slavery and of the subjugation of women. Those supports were canards and deserved to be broken. How is marriage equality different? The laws of marriage in the Hebrew Scriptures have nothing to do with one man and one woman. Please explain to me, by the mercy of Christ, why this particular Hebrew law is more important than all others.
I do understand, my brothers, that you will not respond to me directly; you are the leaders of great seminaries. But I do hope that you delegate my question to someone who can give me an answer.
facebokan unanswered quesionYours in Christ,

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