Today (the day after mass murders were committed in Aurora Colorado) Ann Fontaine published on the blog Episcopal Café a commentary on gun ownership. Kevin Matthews and I have both challenged her about the pastoral inappropriateness
of her commentary and I have republished my comments below.
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Ann, like Kevin Matthews I take exception to your post and
must challenge your comments and as pastorally inappropriate. Regardless of one's position on the issue on
the ownership of firearms, using the pain and suffering of others as a sounding
board is wrong. Our focus should be on the
suffering of the victims and the healing that we can share through Christ.
I have a second point on which I take exception to your post
and I would like to ask everyone in the Episcopal Church who reads this thread
to look closely at the latest work of Diana Butler Bass: Christianity after
Religion. In this book she draws on statistical information from several
studies that investigated the relationship, and tension, between the general
American public and organized religion. A significantly large number of the
American population, I believe the number was close to 50%, identify themselves
as spiritual but not religious. When this group was surveyed about their
dis-taste for major denominational churches one of the top responses was an
objection to putting political agendas ahead of faith.
Ann I am very confident that you are well intended in your
post but your unintended consequences are to again discredit us in the eyes of
those people to whom we should be reaching out. Both those victims to whom we
should be reaching out in pastoral care and those persons seeking a spiritual
home, who might otherwise have seen the Episcopal Church as a faith community
worthy of their membership.
Please Ann, prayerfully rethink your position and your
methodology.
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