In many cities, towns, villages and hamlets, churches and synagogues display some form of rainbow flags. If the congregation and pastor is really “woke,” the top color stripe is black; otherwise ‘red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple, too…’ is enough to advertise how welcoming that church and congregation is to, well, any one. It is a friendly intention, throwing wide the arms of, umm… it’s not clear, Christianity(?)… to the world.
Among Christianity’s strengths is its history of reformation. The best known is the protestant reformation of Martin Luther. His 95 Theses exposed the sloppiness and politicization of the Catholic Church, it’s corruption and ties to wealthy bankers and corrupt royal families. There followed a reformation of Christianity, but not of the Catholic Church, particularly. The world forced “the Church” to adapt, but it always appeared to follow, not lead. Despite its self-proclaimed heritage direct from Simon Peter, Holy Mother Church retained its worldly flaws and intrigues, descending into sexuality most foul, ruining thousands of lives and families. It appears incapable of reforming itself.
Rampant homosexuality and pedophilia has caused a reformation never intended, where droves of the faithful washed their hands and feet of the Church, losing trust in the priesthood. The written and spoken liturgy and the artful back-story Catholics have recited and agreed with for centuries is still the same, but the trust is different. Despite its self-immolation of recent decades, the Catholic Church is still a pillar of Western civilization – worth our defending. One hopes the Church will come clean and preach the truth; its power to do and to guide good, is still immense. It is incapable of defending Christianity, itself, just now, especially in the face of Islam and other anti-Christian forces arrayed against it. Catholic parishes don’t need to fly the rainbow banner.
“Protestantism” reforms itself by subdividing. Each new sect, even each new congregation within some sects, keys in on certain tenets of the Bible as the best lessons to learn for how to live a “Christian” life, raise your children and increase charity in the world. To the degree that each is honestly led, each has a divine function to fulfill. Everyone is not at the same point in their evolution – evolution of the soul, that is – and each will find the teacher whose teaching he or she is ready to receive. Each should also be ready to move upwards when it is time for a more profound teacher along the path toward truth.
Lately, however, Protestants are racing to not be the exception in the Rainbow Revolution. Every church has one: Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Churches of Christ, liberal Baptists, even a handful of reform Synagogues. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists appear immune to the blandishments of Rainbows, as are Quakers. The latter three are not caught up with filling the pews for no reason or for any reason.
If the Rainbow symbol were created to bring more people into adherence to Divine Law, it would be a wonderful, actual, reformation. Church “Reform” ought to improve human distillation of the Word insofar as we have tried to learn and understand it. If a widespread movement serves, instead, to DEform churches and their ability to spread the Word, then Christians ought to question it, starting with ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis, bishops and deacons. That’s not happening… not that a Prudent observer can detect.
What do interested people believe that banner says?
The first and primary message, beyond all claims of “inclusivity” or unity with those discriminated against racially, is that same-sex activities are equally valid to those of heterosexuals. Every other meaning of the other 5, 6 or 7 colors, occasionally adding white, is simply claiming identity with every use and delight in the ‘rainbow,’ particularly for children. If unicorns are made happy by rainbows then so are we, so to speak. The rainbow flag, originally a symbol of racial inclusiveness, from the late fifties and sixties, is a clever appropriation of thoughtless human sympathies for the unhappy.
Consequently, the banner has become ubiquitous during “Pride” month, which is not ever a celebration of the Word of God, nor does it reflect prayerful meditation on the innate beauty of God’s creation of humankind. It is a collective demand… against heterosexuality, since true gays and lesbians will never enjoy it or the incredible joy of motherhood and fatherhood and of the nurturing of offspring; and against God and anyone who claims to speak for Him. The demand translates, both for other humans and for ecclesiastics, that non-heterosexuals deserve both attention and respect based on their different sexuality, unusual emotions and desires, and discordant habits. Imagine: a group of humans who are not happy with their emotional make-up, so much so that they will flaunt their intention and practice of breaking… no, denigrating, religious dogma and, to the faithful, the Holy Word of God.
In the chance of there being a God, sneering at His Law and rules for righteousness is a very arrogant move, a Prudent observer might think. Unfortunately, economics being what they are, churches have been tempering their messages for decades, hoping to fill the pews with charitable attendees. That is a path along which it is virtually impossible to reverse direction. Accepting the rainbow flag as a church’s statement of acceptance is to ignore the shift that has occurred in the legal status of the self-proclaimed “LGBTQ” “community.”
One might Prudently inquire of a member of a rainbow-endowed church… or even of a clergy-person, just what he or she means to say with the flag. Without a doubt the answer would include something about “anti-discrimination” or “inclusiveness” and “all are God’s children,’ and the like. None would suggest that they displayed the flag with the message that 1) Christians must forsake scripture so that non-heterosexuals won’t feel challenged in their pleasures or beliefs; and 2) By extension, all laws and customs that follow the inherent message of Judeo-Christian scripture regarding same-sex relations and sex activities, must be set aside by law, no matter the damage to our society or civilization. No, no, no. “We love everyone,” they might say.
Yet, somehow, their love does not seem to extend to everyone’s beliefs in equal measure. That is, they have no banners celebrating the strictures and scriptures of the Word of God that underlies the very existence of their church, physically and spiritually. Adding the rainbow banner to the physical existence of their church would indicate that what the followers of that banner believe is not only equal to the beliefs that built and maintain the church, physically and congregationally, but, to some degree, greater than those of the founders of that church. “Oh, no,” comes the distressed reply, “we are simply saying they are welcome no matter what they believe right now. The magic of Christianity will infuse their hearts and cause them to renounce their forbidden practices and join more fully with our beliefs!” Okaaaay.
That last is a Prudent speculation but doesn’t actually work out in fact. In fact, the presence of the rainbow flag acknowledges that non-heterosexuals are consistently demanding full “equality” with religious heterosexuals, including full marriage equality, as one example. Resignedly, most “rainbowed” churches advertise their willingness to perform, and therefore endorse, same-sex “marriages.” This is a public replacement of parts of scripture that undergirded the creation of their churchly existences. At this point, parishioners and clerics alike are advertising their desire to accept emotions felt by non-heterosexuals as equal or even superior to their previously revered scriptures, teachings and beliefs. Extraordinary. By erecting the rainbow banner, all of these have foresworn their existence as churches, in favor of a new existence as social or fraternal clubs, of whose continued existence the countdown to disappearance has begun. For shame.
Much the same is happening in secular circles, and in government. Secular society is being forced, jump by jump, to accept a new basis of family, of children and of life’s purposes. Government, much like churches seeking contributions in their collection plates, is racing to get in front of this heritage-replacing movement so that it might consider itself still the leader of society (in the persons of craven politicians). Consequently we have commenced to codify the self-declared feelings of non-heterosexuals such that public education and personal privacy have been transformed in the space of two decades, to the point where individuals may be punished by severe professional and economic loss for failing to treat self-declared feelings, even self-declared sexual identities as the equal of reality. This is a dangerous weapon aimed at rationality, heretofore the glue of our cooperative society.
Creating laws that grant or reveal new civil rights that can change on an individual basis at individual whim, is extremely sketchy. Punishing people for failing to respond according to some shifting, individually prescribed way, to the individual declarations of unproveable personal feelings, marks the descent into anarchy, and the end of reason, as well as the end of social cohesiveness: the tyranny of a tiny minority over the vast majority, backed by police powers. May God save us from folly.