You can read the whole thing here. Here are a couple parts that jumped out at me:
The cause for alarm goes far beyond abortion. The draft opinion argues that rights not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution are protected only if they are “deeply rooted” in American history. This history, as we know, was significantly shaped by all-white, all-male electorates that chose all-white, all-male executives, legislatures and judges. (emphasis mine)
And this:
As Episcopalians, we have a particular obligation to stand against Christians who seek to destroy our multicultural democracy and recast the United States as an idol to the cruel and distorted Christianity they advocate. (emphasis mine)
Wow. Not sure what religion her church is part of, but it ain't mine. I mean, talk about seething hatred, contempt, bigotry, and arrogance. Not to mention the lies. All in service of the right to abort pregnancies by the millions in order to sustain our AIDS era sex culture.
Oh, and when we're faced with the equivalent of Nazi-hate, it's OK to call them out on it. I see little difference in her attitude toward whites and men and the attitude of Goebbels toward Jews.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a woman soweth, that shall she also reap.
Galatians 6.7
AFAICT, the "Rev." Gay Clark Jennings has never been a working parish priestette, so at least the pewsitters have been spared her. (Evidently her husband is a working clergyman of some sort). She's long married, but has a regrettably truncated life at this point. She was 24 when she was married, but had just the two children. Their son is at age 36 unmarried and childless. Their daughter died 12 years ago in what appears to have been some sort of accident or misadventure.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about her, much less about her family. I just know bigotry and race-hate when I see it.
DeleteOh, you could call it that, though I think that's misdirected. See David Mills remarks on the Episcopal Church as he knew it (employed as a technician at one of their divinity schools). In his view, most Episcopal bishops are deeply mediocre men who are clueless about how little their presence and counsel matters to pew sitters. This woman is a denominational apparatchik who has never been working clergy. Maybe she helps her husband and maybe she doesn't. You can tell from her remarks that there is nothing distinctly Christian about her understanding of how life is lived. She sounds like a generic NGO employee who took a degree at Colgate University. Colgate students vary some, but the modal type are children of the professional-managerial class leavened on either side by the children of the wealthy and / or influential and the children of the common and garden bourgeoisie. Very few youths from wage-earning backgrounds. She believes in self-actualization. Affluent women of my mother's generation did not; if they ever did, the day to day experience of being married and having children beat it out of them. This Boomer dingbat never got the memo. While people from every stratum of society vary, I think if you question a large sample carefully, you're going to discover that people from wage-earner backgrounds tend to be skeptical of or fuddled by the notion that your choices shouldn't face constraints and certainly by the notion that you can plan your life. You'll encounter wage-earners at Colgate. They work there.
DeleteAll of which is to say that she isn't a serious person and that her actual accomplishments are in the private sphere (which is enough for most people but not denominational apparatchiks). She's contemplating the work of serious men who had real accomplishment. She doesn't have any real intellectual engagement with anything they did or said. She just trashes them for being white and male. It's positively high school. What you see is arrested development. She's a loser, but no one tells her that to her face.
DeleteI sometimes think that's the problem today. Too many with too little to show can only lift themselves up by tearing down everyone who built the civilization they're able to exploit in order to do just that.
Delete"Coming of age with access to safe and legal reproductive health care, including birth control and abortion, shaped my life and the lives of many women of my generation."
ReplyDeleteIf the above shaped her life then it totally explains this: " I mean, talk about seething hatred, contempt, bigotry, and arrogance. Not to mention the lies."
She is a spiritually sick woman who is in need of many prayers.
Yes, those who wade in sin and evil will typically see the world through those lenses. Prayers are typically the best resort in such cases.
Delete"Not sure what religion her church is part of, but it ain't mine." Exactly. And that's what matters. If the BBC wants to "re-imagine" Doctor Who as a woman, or a black man, or as something other than a Time Lord, it may be bad story-telling, but it's fiction anyway, so that's kind of OK. If D.C. decides that Batman is not Bruce Wayne and Superman is not Clark Kent, that may be undesirable, but it's fiction anyway. If CBS decides that Spock had a half-sister all along, that may be stupid, but it's fiction, and all "canon", including "head canon", is equally valid. But when you talk about REALITY -- visible or invisible -- there are limits to what you can say without it being an outright lie.
ReplyDeleteThere are many people wearing clerical collars and even miters who believe, deep down, that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are as subject to change as the Hulk's origin story. Those people are not Christians, at least not in a functional sense, even though they may be in an ontological sense due to a valid baptism.
Though I have to wonder how many people wearing clerical collars and even miters no longer believe that the Sacred Scriptures are anything other than an ancient version of Batman or Dr. Strange in terms of reality. That might answer many of our questions about how things have gotten to where they are.
DeleteHonestly, it is hard to justify "the Episcopal Church". First they became Anglicans by accepting that the king of England was the head of their church, then they dumped him at the American Revolution because of politics. Always sucking up to political power is a hard habit to break, but not one that reflects well on them.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I came into the Church there was a joke about the Catholic Church built on the Rock of Peter versus what the Anglican Church was built on. But that was always its glaring problem. At least Luther and other Reformers revolted over theological and doctrinal issues. The Anglicans, from the beginning, cared not a lick for doctrine but existed purely due to political and worldly wrangling. I find it odd, therefore, that of all the Protestant clergy who become Catholic, the ones most openly welcomed into the Church in terms of access to continued ministry are often from the Episcopal/Anglican tradition.
DeleteCircumstances of birth. People who are born into a religious tradition have not only to see its faults, but also to see that another tradition is better. If they do not, it is meritorious for them to trust that their parents and grandparents were holier than they are and must have understood things better than they do.
DeletePerhaps. Though in our modern era I fear the assumption that our parents and grandparents and anyone who came before were inferior reprobates is leading some to ignore the good, see only the bad, and be blind to any negatives anywhere else.
DeleteSo the negation of a meritorious action is a discreditable one? Who could have guessed.
DeleteDon't think meritorious action is discredited, as much as it has been reframed to celebrate the once unthinkable, and condemn the once honorable.
Delete