Civil Religion Why Does Religion matter in the Right for Gay Civil Rights? Is religion an appropriate role in public discord? How do people know if they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual? According to current scientific and professional understanding, the core attractions that form the basis for adult sexual orientation typically emerge between middle childhood and early adolescence. These patterns of emotional, romantic, and sexual attraction may arise without any prior sexual experience.People can be celibate and still know their sexual orientation-–be it lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual. Different lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have very different experiences regarding their sexual orientation. Some people know that they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual for a long time before they actually pursue relationships with other people. Some people engage in sexual activity (with same-sex and/or other sex partners) before assigning a clear label to their sexual orientation.
Prejudice and discrimination make it difficult for many people to come to terms with their sexual orientation identities, so claiming a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity may be a slow process. I am trying to find out about civil religion and symbols as it refers to the Gay community and their right to worship God without interference from the Pope, who after all, is only a man. Long before the bible was even written there was no such thing as homosexually. The Egyptians had no word for religion because it was an inseparable element of existence in the world they lived.
Greek gods can be traced back to the 8th century BC. The Greek gods were created by man to explain the world around them, act as a means of exploration, provide legitimacy and authority to ancient Greek aristocracy, many city-states erected temples to their particular gods, Greeks did not believe in absolute truth as practiced by modern faiths such as Christianity and Judaism. On the other hand we have the Religious humanists who regard the universe as self-existing and not created. They believe that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process.The quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams that he has within himself the power for its achievement.
He must set his intelligence and will to the task. Then we have those who believe God was and will always be. The one Supreme Force, The Creator which had send to earth his only son Jesus . Jesus died for our sins so we can live the “good life” here on earth and eternally, if we follow the Ten Commandments. In my own experience I went to catholic school and was taught the loving- fearful God.
On one hand you will go to heaven if you do well in this life and go to hell if you do badly. But God is a forgiving God so if you confess your sins you will be forgiven. I have come to a new perspective of this. Yes God will forgive you, but, you must try and not do it again.
I don’t think you’re forgiven just because you tell a priest your sins; you must change the actions in the future. I have had a “spiritual Awakening” on a retreat I attended. There was a healing priest at the retreat I was newly sober and was trying to change my life after 30 years of drinking and drugging.The priest heal a mass to heal us and after the mass we stood in a line where he prayed over us and some people were (for lack of a better work passing out) you know like you see on TV, well he got to me placed His hand on my chest and I began to go back.
Only I didn’t have enough faith, the feeling inside of me was indescribable, peaceful, tranquil, serine, I know God excised I felt his presence. That is the moment my life transformed I was convinced there is one God and He does care about people. There is nothing that can change my mind about that. If one is to believe but has their doubt.If He is all powerful, all knowing, what makes me think with my peanut brain that I can figure out why he does the things he does! I don’t know why people suffer or why babies die but surely he must have a reason. Either He everything or He is nothing, you have to choose.
That day I chose to believe He is everything. In today’s world we hear a lot about what God wants from people in political positions, George Bush tells us “God wants all people to be free”. Wouldn’t that include homosexuals, free to worship God, to be married, to have equal rights when it comes to health insurance for their partner?November 19, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg Address said: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. He goes on in this same speech to add “under God, shall have a new birth of freedom”. Yet Prejudice and discrimination have a social and personal impact. On the social level, prejudice and discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are reflected in the everyday stereotypes of members of these groups.
These stereotypes persist even though they are not supported by evidence, and they are often used to excuse unequal treatment of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. For example, limitations on job opportunities, parenting, and relationship recognition are often justified by stereotypic assumptions about lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. . Some 30 years ago no one knew of any homosexuals, but had known an uncle that never married or a friend who was fifty-five years old and had never been with a date at any affairs, or the two nice women that lived together down the street.Now 39 years later everyone knows a gay person both in the work place, school, and family and even in the church.
The real shift occurred with the private admission of sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. With this came a different kind of acceptance. Coming out is the most political thing you can do! Your world view and something happened and you’re thrown into chaos. Mothers and fathers of gay sons and daughters who once viewed homosexuals as sick, misguided and immoral know their children didn’t fit into that category, now the world as they know it has changed.
Today we hear of priest having homosexual affairs with other gay men even the Roman Catholic Church needs to look into it polices regarding homosexually. Within the church there is much room for a general and complete overhaul of the church's understanding of sexuality. “Father Donald Cozzens, an author, psychologist, and Catholic seminary president says that there is such a high percentage of gay priests in the church that he is concerned that’ “the priesthood is or is becoming a gay profession. In his book, "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," -- published in the year 2000 -- he estimates that 50% of Roman Catholic priests have a homosexual orientation. A NBC report on chastity and the clergy found that "anywhere from 23 percent to 58 percent" of the Catholic clergy have a homosexual orientation.
Author and sociologist James G. Wolfe estimated that 48. 5% of priests were gay. In a lecture giving by Reverend V.
Gene Roberson Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire at Emory University's School of Law in March 2009. According to Reverend Roberson Jesus may not be the soul revelation.In a lecture giving by Reverend V. Gene Roberson Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire at Emory University's School of Law in March 2009. According to Reverend Roberson Jesus may not be the soul revelation Civil religion, In the 1960s a number of sociologists (including Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils, and Robert Bellah) distinguished civil religion from institutional (church-based) religion, arguing that societies such as modern America were attaching scared qualities to certain of their institutional arrangements and historical events.
Thus, in the case of the United States, the extensive immigration from Europe was analogous to the Jewish Exodus and the Civil War a rebirth through bloodshed and expiration of old sins. The theme of American civil religion was therefore one of Americans as the new Chosen People. In a famous (and much criticized) article on the monarchy in Britain, Edward Shils and Michael Young identified what they argued were religious aspects of the apparently secular rituals surrounding the coronation (‘The Meaning of the Coronation’, Sociological Review, 19530).The basic idea behind these and other variants of the ‘civil religion thesis’ is that in advanced industrial societies, which are increasingly secular in terms of institutional religions, civic religions (such as the celebration of the state or civil society now serve the same functions of prescribing the overall values of society, providing social cohesion, and facilitating emotional expression.In other words, civil religions offer a ‘functional equivalent’ or ‘functional alternative’ to institutional religions, since they meet the same needs within the social system Both arguments (about civil religion in particular and functional alternatives in general) were subject to the charges of evolutionism, teleology, tautology and empirical untestability laid against normative functionalism as a whole.
