Reply #199: This notion of a liberal church doesn't make a lot of sense - any more than a

[Joe Chi Minh]

conservative one does.

I expect you mean a sexually liberal church. There isn't one that Christ would recognise as compliant with his teachings and those of his disciples. Similarly, an economically conservative Christian church is an oxymoron.

It is the Church's job to preach the Gospel in accordance with the scriptures and its mainstream tradition. Where tradition conflicted with the teachings of the New Testament - and it has been no stranger to that, evidently - insofar, it was anything but Christian.

The only thing the political right has ever got right is that you don't change the apostolic tradition to suit current prevailing tenets of belief/non-belief. Unfortunately, instead of using that effectively, they have traduced it by using it as a front for economic extortion - just as the Pharisees did in Christ's day. Although I'm sure there are plenty of sincere and devout Christians in "Liberal" Christian churches.

The abolition of slavery came from an evolution, not a change. Even in the Old Testament, enslavement of fellow Hebrews was anathematised by Yahweh. It suited slave-owners in the US to teach "their" slaves Christianity. It was also their Christian duty to do so - thereby, of course, falling under the anathema.

Moreover, while the Apsotle, Paul, preached a very stoical acceptance of slavery, it seems to have been a far different kind of slavery enjoined on Christians (as, incidentally, it had been for the Jews). The notion of mutilating them to prevent their absconding would have been an absolute no-no.

Be grateful for small mercies. Those people are giving their time, free of charge, to help their fellow human beings in dire neeed. They should enact anti-deiphobe legislation and anti-heterophobe legislation, the way the pendulum has swung, with a powerful minority imposing its will on the majority - in the UK just now to the extent of denying the grandparents of two young children the right to take over caring for them, while their daughter was being treated for drug-addiction - in favour of two homosexual men.

Four sheriffs found in favour of the grandparents, but still the Edinburgh social services fought their rulings. The elderly couple could no longer afford to contest the matter. Now a group of wealthy Catholic businessmen have taken up their cause. The social services' legal cost have, of course, been borne by the tax-payer. There were also three heterosexual couples waiting to adopt. The harm these militants do to their fellows with these kinds of hate crimes of their own are incalculable. Hatred begets hatred.

Incidentally, by far the most sinister aspect of it all, was that the social services chief warned the grandparents that because they had talked to the media about it, they would not be allowed to see the children again! Pending resolution of the matter, the children have been in foster care. As one journalist put it, being family is now a vice that dare not speak its name. This, despite experts concluding - what was in any case obvious - that children suffer more problems later in life, without a father and mother. Now, a Scots Nationalist MSP, himself an adoptive parent, is looking into the matter.

In today's paper, a nurse has been suspended for asking a patient if she would lie her to pray for her - "failing to show commitment to equality and diversity". As J K Galbraith put it: "Truth is not the average of right and wrong;" and G K Chesterton: "the purpose of an open mind is to close on the truth." Christian don't believe that one belief is as good as another, irrespective of its content, simply because it it is held by another human being.