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June is Pride month. It dates officially to 1999 but has roots back to 1969.
Pride month is about presenting LGBTQ people in a way that counters social stigma, which at one time characterized much of society’s response to these lifestyles and the people who adopt them.
I have no problem affirming that LGBTQ individuals are made in the image of God just like everyone else, that they are unique and eternally significant, worthy of respect, and someone for whom Christ sacrificed his life on the cross to provide a way of redemption. I think LGBTQ individuals should always enjoy and be afforded their basic civil rights as Americans.
This does not mean I endorse or believe their lifestyle choices are anything but choices—I do not believe one is born gay—or that I believe a choice to pursue LGBTQ lifestyles is a moral activity, any more than I believe heterosexual individuals choosing to engage in adultery are acting morally.
I do not believe homosexual, or LGBTQ, sexual behavior that rejects God’s moral teachings in Scripture are “worse” or somehow a different kind of sin than heterosexuals participating in immoral activity enjoined by Scripture. Sin is sin in God’s eyes.
Because I disagree with LGBTQ lifestyle choices or sexual expression does not mean ipso facto that I hate them or that I am a bigot, as LGBTQ activists and often now the media like to contend. No, it simply means I disagree with their beliefs and/or activities. I believe in freedom of speech, for me and them, so I do not support and indeed react strongly to cancel culture attempts to silence viewpoints that do not affirm LGBTQ lifestyles.
Pride month has become much more than a statement about destigmatizing a people group. It is about promoting a whole range of lifestyle choices the Bible calls immoral.
Consequently, I cannot support Pride month and I am weary of the corporate virtue signaling that assaults me in media, wherein innumerable businesses now rush to proclaim their active support for “inclusion” and “accepting” everyone, e.g., the NFL’s “Football is gay.” Big corporations are coloring their logos rainbow.
There was a time when corporate America stayed out of politics, at least publicly and otherwise during business transactions. The business of America was business, and no business wanted to take sides on issues in a way that might divide its customer base. Now, corporations are falling over themselves pell-mell to embrace the latest political correctness, whether Pride or BLM.
Why corporate rush to display LGBTQ bona-fides?
1-Virtue signaling
2-Fear of litigation or online generated bullying
3-Fear loss of customers
4-Belief they are groundbreakers
Mostly, though, corporations are virtue signaling on Pride because they believe it’s what the public wants so they want to claim they are “with it,” trustworthy enterprises where America should shop. It’s still about the bottom line.
As I write, Pride month is nearly over. I don’t think it helped LGBTQ people. It’s just more marketing noise.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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Christian organizations, including churches, have long worked with doctrinal statements clarifying their theological positions. Some also developed lifestyle statements or covenants for employees.
More recently, Christian organizations, especially churches or denominations, have felt the need to develop position papers or policy statements about specific issues, both to make public how they believe their biblical understanding applies to the issue and also, depending upon the concern, to put their perspectives in print regarding controversial issues to try to protect the Christian organization legally.
Examples of the former might be topics like use of alcoholic beverages during Christian organization activities or policies regarding green environmental stewardship.
Examples of the latter include child protection policies or whether a church will conduct marriages for same-sex couples.
Issues like abortion, LGBTQ, “woke” ideas about race, for example, existed in the past but not many people engaged in these behaviors or not many in the general public advanced them. Consequently, in a sense, these issues did not rise to a level requiring a Christian organization to address them in some formal statement.
This is what has changed. Now it seems a host of controversial “new” issues—several of them involving sexuality or the politics of race—are being embraced not simply by the public but by Christian organization personnel or church or denomination members. The more these issues are promoted, the more the Christian organization feels pressure to speak, to put some kind of position paper or policy statement in print.
A Christian organization’s doctrinal statement is still its most important expression of belief, and a Christian organization need not necessarily publish a statement or assume some “side” on every issue. But the politicization trend in American culture is increasing pressure upon Christian organizations to speak up in order to delineate their beliefs and to attempt to protect themselves.
In "Christian Organization Statements--Doctrinal, Lifestyle, Position--Then and Now," I address two of the most significant new concerns: SOGI, sexual orientation and gender identity, and CRT, critical race theory.
These issues divide--families and friends, churches, Christian organizations, country and culture. It behooves anyone who cares about living out a Christian worldview to become informed and to help the Christian organizations in which they are involved to prepare to speak the truth in love into contemporary culture.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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I am blessed with freedom.
1–Political freedom because I was born in this country. I did nothing to earn it. Thousands sacrificed their lives so I could experience this freedom.
2–Spiritual freedom because I was born again. I did nothing to earn it. One Savior sacrificed his life so I could come to know him and experience temporal and eternal freedom.
Freedom is a profound gift, for which I am more grateful each year on earth. In this fallen world, freedom is not free but paid in blood. This is not morbid philosophy. It is truth...that can set you free.
Celebrating this Memorial Day is perhaps more important than any in recent memory.
Reason is we’re coming off months of centripetal forces, trends that push away from the center and tear us apart. We don’t just disagree. We’re questioning our national identity, history, and fundamental values.
We lived these centripetal forces: lockdowns, government overreach, racial and civil unrest, unemployment, Big Tech elitism, uncertainty regarding election integrity, nasty politicians, politicization of sports, medicine, and about everything else. The division has been brutal.
So pausing to celebrate e Pluribus Unum, to be grateful for our timeless ideals, to express patriotic appreciation for the great gift of opportunity all Americans have been given is a balm our nation needs.
What Lincoln said at Gettysburg applies today:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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Memorial Day is coming, a time for remembering those who sacrificed for freedom.
Patriotism is one of the world’s most powerful emotions. It comes from the Greek word patrios, “of one’s father,” meaning love of one’s home or fatherland.
I was blessed to be born an American, am red, white, and blue patriotic, and deeply appreciate the founding ideals that defined America, i.e., life, liberty, freedom of religion, speech, mobility, enterprise.
But my love for my country does not mean I believe Americans are better than people from other countries, that we’ve always done everything right, or that our leaders past and present were always right. Critique is part of freedom of conscience and thought.
For me, celebrating Memorial Day is a form of gratitude. Freedom is a most precious gift, one easily lost.
Sadly, in the past eighteen months or so in our country, people have critiqued, or rather I should say attacked, not just policy but the country’s founding ideals, i.e., they have questioned the country’s very legitimacy, and even besmirched the names and legacies of those who sacrificed for the freedom we now enjoy and the potential available to all including those who dismiss it.
This full-on rancor directed toward America’s founding and ideals has been difficult to endure, and it presents some great dangers going forward if the pendulum does not swing back in a corrective fashion.
Calling for racial reform and progress are one thing. Calling for the institution of racist ideas and practices in the name of “anti-racism” is another. So, too, is arguing America’s founding was not about freedom but about slavery and white supremacy and that new “woke” ways of dealing with human beings (“critical race theory”) must be instituted in every aspect of American life before racial progress can be made. These arguments are not only inaccurate and ahistorical, they are pernicious.
Calling for “equity” rather than “equality” before the law is a bait and switch that demands sameness, taking from those who have earned and giving to those who have not, suppression of creativity, and a new definition of tolerance and inclusiveness to mean anything goes, especially if it is racialized.
Then, too, we’ve endured months of government overreach in the name of public health, restrictions on personal freedoms, even efforts to undermine the freedoms guaranteed to Americans in the First Amendment. Thankfully, some of this is beginning not only to abate but to be retracted.
So, in the face of all this it becomes both more difficult – sad and disillusioning – to celebrate Memorial Day patriotism, and it becomes all the more important to celebrate Memorial Day patriotism because the ideals, the fundamental freedoms and those who sacrificed for them, that this day commemorates are as important as ever.
Thank you, those who gave the last full measure. Long may freedom reign.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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Religious freedom is experiencing a global crisis.
Restrictions on the freedom to choose a religion or to choose no religion at all are under serious threat or are already restricted. So, also, is the free exercise of religion in manifest worship or practice, not only in autocratic regimes like North Korea, China, or several Middle Eastern countries, but increasingly also in Western democracies.
Globally, “40 percent of world countries suffer high restrictions to religious freedom or freedom of belief. Since many of them are populous nations, however, this adds up to 5.9 billion of the world population.” And among Christians, “more than 300 people are murdered monthly throughout the world because of their religious faith.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Christianity is “the most persecuted religion in the world.” Some 215 million Christians are being persecuted due to their faith, according to Open Doors, about 1 in 12 Christians worldwide.
While Christians may be the most persecuted religion in the world, they are followed closely by Muslims, Jews, and other religious minorities.
In the U.S., “according to Pew Research, more than a third of all Americans born after 1980 identify with no religion. That is the highest percentage ever. In a recent Gallup Poll, only 47% of American adults said they were members of a church, mosque or synagogue. It was the first time since Gallup began asking Americans about religious membership in the 1930s that a majority of Americans said they were not members of a church, mosque or synagogue.” What this means for the future of religious freedom in the US is uncertain, but it does not appear to be a positive trend.
Religious freedom in the West, or what we call “free societies,” is becoming politicized. Now, religious freedom or religious liberty are even being denigrated as just code words, or worse, “dog whistles.” For example, in 2016 the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, created by Congress to protect the civil rights of all Americans, issued the following statement: “[t]he phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ [are…] code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, [and] Christian supremacy….” Such attitudes would have been unheard of just a few short years ago.
America’s Founders considered the fact of and practice of religion the best means of maintaining personal responsibility, social order, and self-government. Without the moral compass religion provides, they believed, there is no restraint. Men and women do what’s right in their own eyes, which is to say, chaos.
So, the need to protect the precious God-given unalienable right is not just something to worry about in authoritarian countries elsewhere in the world but right here at home.
Recently it was my privilege to host a webinar for SAT-7 called “Collaboration for HOPE: Religious Freedom, the Most Precious God-given Right.” Our guests were Shirin Taber, Director of Empower Women Media, Rita El-Mounayer and Phil Hilditch, both of SAT-7 International. It was an enjoyable learning experience and can be accessed here:
Religious freedom is the bedrock freedom. To lose religious freedom is to lose our foundation and potential as a free and open society. Without religious freedom, the liberty to think, decide, worship as one’s convictions direct, how can we say we are truly free?
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.