A prominent Cleveland minister told social activists Wednesday that the pace of progress toward equality is slow, sometimes maddeningly so, and that organized religion is often to blame.
The Rev. Kenneth Chalker said he became convinced of that view in May 2000, when Cleveland hosted a national gathering of Methodist leaders. At the General Conference, church leaders issued a formal apology for their part in the “sin of racism” but also ratified church policies against homosexuality and same- sex marriages
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“We’ll be apologizing for that, too, 50 years from now,” said Chalker, the senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Cleveland. “Much has changed in our world, but many things have not changed at all. Many people are still denied justice and protection because of ancient prejudices and fears.”
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He is right about one thing. Most organized religions do slow down equality. That is the equality where man sees himself as being equal to God. The false idea of progress where as time goes on you can determine what is now moral is the age old presumption against God. Adam and Eve tried to know good and evil and through pride determining what was good and evil. That morality and truth have a fourth dimension of time. It is bad enough when the secular culture posits such things, doubly worse when a minister does.
