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Jesus too open-minded for TV networks
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cakmpls for this one.
The UCC (the United Church of Christ) tried to air a spot announcing that, like Jesus, they welcome everyone. Some networks consider that too controversial.
http://www.ucc.org/news/u113004a.htm
Edited to add:king_tirian pondered aloud a bit whether the problem the UCC identified with other churches was actually a real problem. Are people really turned away from churches? Based on this news story, and this followup, among others, I'd say that it is.
cakmpls for this one.The UCC (the United Church of Christ) tried to air a spot announcing that, like Jesus, they welcome everyone. Some networks consider that too controversial.
http://www.ucc.org/news/u113004a.htm
Edited to add:
king_tirian pondered aloud a bit whether the problem the UCC identified with other churches was actually a real problem. Are people really turned away from churches? Based on this news story, and this followup, among others, I'd say that it is.
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"We find it disturbing that the networks in question seem to have no problem exploiting gay persons through mindless comedies or titillating dramas, but when it comes to a church's loving welcome of committed gay couples, that's where they draw the line," says the Rev. Robert Chase, director of the UCC's communication ministry.
WORD. Someone give this man a cookie. Love and tolerance is really only acceptable in the form of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy apparently. Cause that's actually, you know, FUNNY. < /sarcasm>
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The debut 30-second commercial features two muscle-bound "bouncers" standing guard outside a symbolic, picturesque church and selecting which persons are permitted to attend Sunday services. Written text interrupts the scene, announcing, "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we."
I'm a progressive Christian and I suppose still on the rolls of a UCC church, and I still think that's a cheap shot. You'd be hard-pressed to find any (US) church where people are turned away. But Jesus also demanded that people renounce their sins and choose a new path after following him.
Different churches have different attitudes on what those sins are: is it just emotions like pride and anger, or does it include behaviors like recreational drug use and fornication? And the cherry on that sundae, of course, is whether homosexuality is a behavior or an integral part of the character like your fingerprint or your blood type. But I don't think that there is anyone in the American Christian tradition who will say "Get out, you're too sinful for us to congregate with."
That being said, I think that the UCC definitely should have the right to brand itself in television ads, since probably few people know that they're the home for free-thinking Christians and those who got thrown out of the Unitarian Church for saying "Jesus" too much. And a bunch of Baptist television station owners shouldn't be refusing that message just because it doesn't paint conservative Christendom in a good light.
Hmm...
Re: Hmm...
In fifty years when all of this has been sorted out and gayness is a respected freedom in our land, I think that there will be an established sexual morality for Christian GLB-folk. Sex outside the boundaries of a committed relationship, sex with someone who is committed to someone else, sex between people who are unable or unwilling to give consent -- these are temptations to GLB-Christians as much as they are to heterosexual Christians, and I suspect that they are expected to master those temptations in the same manner.
Re: Hmm...
Re: Hmm...
Even if this was a close moral call (and it is not), a broadcast television station has no place in choosing to censor the message or a major religious denomination, any more than if they chose to block Chevrolet ads because the network's board of directors prefer Fords.
If there is good news, it is that the stink that this is raising will undoubtedly provide more exposure of the UCCs Open and Affirming principles than if the ads had been broadcast and been forgotten.
And thank you so much for putting my mind to rest in another matter. I had been searching for a few days now to see what ETA stood for in blog-ese. :)
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No, actually that really does happen. It happened to my grandfather, who was excommunicated from a Southern Baptist church for daring to suggest such radical ideas as that the Devil doesn't literally exist and Mary might not really have been a virgin.
And I know several gay and lesbian people who were quite literally thrown out of their churches. And even when it doesn't happen quite so explicitly, what the ad depicts happens very often symbolically, where the collective behavior of the church and its members is so overwhelmingly hostile that a member who isn't in accord with them feels no choice but to leave. It's all very well and good to talk about "Love the sinner, hate the sin," but can a gay person possibly feel welcome in a church where their sexuality is condemned from the pulpit, they aren't allowed to teach Sunday School and all of the fellow congregants who will talk to them do so only to try to turn them from their sinful ways? If the gay person were to quite sensibly leave that church for a less hostile religious environment, you couldn't say they were literally thrown out, but they were symbolically barred from ever really being a part of the church.
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Wow!
Maybe it's just because I was raised Baptist, but gads, the website seemed pretty loopy. Baptisim being invalidated because the priest didn't say, "Father, Son, & Holy Ghost"(that was mentioned a couple articles down from the one about St. Paul's)? Seems to me that'd be like making a fuss over using "Jesus" rather than "Christ"...
But what can you expect from someone whose church used Welch's Grape Juice & Bunny Bread for communion... ;D