29\u00a0February, 2016<\/p>\n
The Wilmington News Journal<\/em> (Wilmington, Ohio)\u00a0has been featuring sermons from four pastors from as many churches in town swapping pastors among themselves: Wilmington Church of Christ,\u00a0 Dove,\u00a0 Church of God (A-Street), and Faith Family Church.<\/p>\n The topic was marriage and the unspoken impetus was the decree regarding marriage recently issued by the U.S. Supremes\u00a0 which decriminalized sodomy and then pronounced said abomination in all civilizations from age to age to suddenly be thereafter – legal.\u00a0 And yet this elephant in the sanctuary was not ONCE named by any of our homilists.\u00a0 They denied our ears that simple legal and biblical term: sodomy.<\/p>\n No one could have expected to hear the raucously accurate but politically disallowed “queer.”\u00a0 But neither did the parishioner hear the cool secular term, “homosexual” nor even the popularly euphemistic expression, “gay.”\u00a0 All references to the issue at hand went completely and peacefully unspoken and the preachers preached on about “holy marriage.”<\/p>\n And does the regular puzzled Christian really wonder why the nation is in such moral chaos?<\/p>\n One might imagine that the preachers, in writing their editorials, toned down the usual jeremiads to make their message more palatable to a modern, barbarian, news-devouring public, unable to abide such heavy doctrine on sexual restraint.\u00a0\u00a0 Got to spoon feed the un-churched with warm and inviting fare;\u00a0 don’t want “turn off the unsaved” with all that hard line teaching about holy living.\u00a0 They can only handle so much, you know.\u00a0 Bring ’em along “a little at a time.”<\/p>\n Sometimes it just seems like a real<\/em> little<\/em> at a time.<\/p>\n No, you can’t put all the blame for the sin of the people on the pastors and the churches.\u00a0 They carry, if under a bushel, the only light out there!\u00a0 Dim as it may be.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if it is the job of the Church to bring light out from under the bushel and into the darkness,\u00a0 then an indictment might be legitimately drawn up against her.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a problem in a nation with milk-toast preaching and sheep who keep eating.<\/p>\n And all are punished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 29\u00a0February, 2016 The Wilmington News Journal (Wilmington, Ohio)\u00a0has been featuring sermons from four pastors from as many churches in town swapping pastors among themselves: Wilmington Church of Christ,\u00a0 Dove,\u00a0 Church of God (A-Street), and Faith Family Church. The topic was marriage and the unspoken impetus was the decree regarding marriage recently issued by the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-ministry-of-the-churches-of-god","category-wilmington-ohio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2025,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/2025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}