"GOD" is still speaking?

One of my first essays at Contratimes was titled, "The god of love." It is worth quoting the opening sentences of that essay here, as they still ring true, though perhaps for very different reasons than when I first penned them.

Permit me to announce my rejection of Christ. For if Christianity is as the United Church of Christ (UCC) suggests in its recent TV commercial, then I have no interest in being a Christian. Such religiosity is anathema to me; and I'm anathema to it.

I have indeed renounced the Christ that is not the Christ, if you will. For I do not recognize as divine the voice of the Christ presented in the various churches I used to frequent. So I not only renounce that voice, I denounce it in total. It is to me an ugly voice.

Why, on this April Fools' Day, should I return to the United Church of Christ and its rather ugly message? Well, perhaps I do so for two reasons. The first is because the "Christ" voice I hear in the UCC is remarkably similar to the voice I hear in the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire (I am an Episcopalian in exile), which is identical to the voice I hear in the Unitarian Universalist society which I often frequented, which is identical to the voice I hear daily in the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It is, in the end, a political voice, not a divine one, and not even a truly religious one.

But most important, I mention this UCC voice because my hypocrisy alarm has sounded. Again.

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Let it be known that the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ is Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Let it also be known that said church is the largest fiscal donor to the United Church of Christ's "Wider Mission." (see UCC press release here)

In other words, the church in which the revered though wildly controversial Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. presided is the capstone congregation of the United Church of Christ. It is in this church, one that sits atop a particularly liberal religious denomination, where Barack Obama worshiped for 20 years. It is also the church to which Mr. Obama gave over $20,000 -- no casual sum -- in 2006.

But where is the hypocrisy in all of this? Well, perhaps it all begins years ago (1993) in the UCC's denunciation of the Boy Scouts of America (many BSA troops once used UCC church facilities). One can read the UCC's resolution, found here in PDF form, which pronounces judgment on the independent and private Boy Scouts of America's position on homosexuality.

What perplexes me, as it probably perplexes you, is how a Christian denomination could ban from its function rooms and basement dining halls, a private club known for doing good works that also happens to take a traditional view about sexuality and marriage; and yet, that same denomination has no problem accepting funds from it largest single congregation wherein is propagated blatantly racist and anti-Semitic junk -- all in the name of "the Bible." The Boy Scouts of America hardly make a peep about sexual morality; they are curiously silent, by and large, about homosexuality in particular. It's not Boy Scouts marching against gay marriage; the Scout Oath says nothing about denying gays the right to protection under law.

And yet from its most esteemed and successful pulpit, the UCC has accepted, without blushing, the sort of pornography that has come to be known as the Gospel. Bill Clinton was "ridin' dirrrrrty" on black people; Hillary Clinton ain't never been called a "n------r!"; whites rule the United States of KKK America; it was whites who killed the black Jesus (actually, it was the "garlic-nosed" Italians who did it); AIDS was invented by the white man to kill blacks. THIS is the Gospel presented in the flagship pulpit of the United Church of Christ. You know, the very church that bans Boy Scouts for their quiet discrimination.

Of course, it only gets worse when we think of the tolerance of those great men of faith lauded by the UCC's gemstone pulpit, men like Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (a quick web search shows that Mr. Farrakhan holds some very "intolerant" views on sexuality). The Trinity United Church of Christ even published in its church newsletter an op-ed (see page 8ff here) by a man demonstrably anti-Semitic; he accused Israel of having worked with the "white supremacists" of South Africa, detonating nuclear bombs on a whim off the South African coast, and developing a bomb that would kill Arabs and blacks.

All this makes sense in a perverted way when we admit into our discussion the UCC's motto, "God is still speaking." And our reply to this God, I am sorry to say, should really be "Please, shut up." For this sort of stuff pouring from the pulpits of the UCC is not God's voice at all.

Amazingly, the UCC itself is hardly mentioned in media accounts and analysis of Reverend Wright's work (and those who echo his angry and racist beliefs). But the UCC should be held to account.

Consider this my meager start.


Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.