Zondervan purchases BibleGateway.com, Taylor closes its branch, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) rules in favor of a minister.
posted 11/17/2008 09:45AM
Zondervan has purchased BibleGateway.com, an online reference of searchable Bible translations and one of the most popular Christian websites. The site's previous owner, Gospel Communications International (previously Gospel Films), shuttered its Internet division and website-hosting ministry this fall after back-to-back years of significant financial losses. Zondervan will also acquire Gospel.com, which has offered website hosting to more than 300 ministries (including several Christian publishers). An internal Zondervan memo indicated the company plans to allow Bible Gateway to offer Bible translations and resources from a variety of publishers.
Obviously this clerical court has no sense of the place of symbols in human discourse. Janet Edwards' act of officiating a "wedding" was a symbolic act full of meaning, even if it was not a real wedding by definition. By the same logic go ahead and wave the confederate flag, because it's not the real flag of any country! It makes one fear for the real symbols of the Christian faith. Do they mean anything?
Anna
Posted: November 17, 2008 8:40 PM
The issue is not the "offense" of the Constitutiion. The issue is that the pastors performed what they assumed to be a marriage, they signed a marriage certificate didn't they. What was their point in doing the marriage rite in the Church if they didn't assume they were committing a marriage. Can the lawyers explain that. The pastors should be removed as pastors of this particular church since this Church is assuming and teaches that pastors are to assume a marriage is between a man and a woman. They belong in a Church that has beliefs they believe in. The Church's Constitution apparently now needs to specify marriage as between a man and a woman and the pastors, the leaders and teachers of the Church should actually verbally state that they believe this "truth" when they are ordained. Today's pastors need to get it through their heads when they speak or represent a belief that they actually have to follow the belief they represent.
William Price
Posted: November 17, 2008 8:03 PM
The PC(USA) is more focused on sexuality than on Jesus Christ. That is why I left the PC(USA) for the PCA.
G. Parker Lawton
Posted: November 17, 2008 7:09 PM
Sure the fate of this cleric was preordained :)
P.
Posted: November 17, 2008 6:41 PM
This is why a lot of Presbyterian churches are leaving the PCUSA and joining the EPC.
Rick Cordell
Posted: November 17, 2008 4:04 PM
What gutless nonsense from the "court," typical of "lawyer-speak" that completely avoids the heart of the issue at hand. By such absurd "logic," would a cleric be exonerated as not violating a church constitution for performing a wedding between and human and a warthog? Or a mailbox? Such reasoning makes a mockery of Scripture, not to mention the ecclesiastical structures and systems involved. Those who employ such hermeneutics (if it can even be called that) have been "educated" far beyond the level of their intellectual or moral capacities. It's high time to name the idiocy, and return to the "foolishness" of God which is infinitely wiser. I fear that Monty Python was prophetic in its reference to a church named "St. Looney of the Cream Bun and Jam."
Mike
Posted: November 17, 2008 3:56 PM
Oh if Whitfield, Edwards, Hodge, Warfield and Machen could see the estate of their church now. How sad when sin is not even recognized in the sacred assembly.
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