The liberals in the USA have moved beyond their colleagues in the Commonwealth. The PCANZ — Kiwi Presbyterians — has just ruled that any minister of the church cannot marry a gay couple in any capacity, as many ministers are also registered as celebrants. But this has been made illegal… In Idaho?

City officials told Donald Knapp that he and his wife Evelyn, both ordained ministers who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city claims its “non-discrimination” ordinance requires the Knapps to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies now that the courts have overridden Idaho’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

“The government should not force ordained ministers to act contrary to their faith under threat of jail time and criminal fines,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “Many have denied that pastors would ever be forced to perform ceremonies that are completely at odds with their faith, but that’s what is happening here – and it’s happened this quickly. The city is on seriously flawed legal ground, and our lawsuit intends to ensure that this couple’s freedom to adhere to their own faith as pastors is protected just as the First Amendment intended.”

Homosexual marriage is legal in NZ: we do have human rights rules, and this has forced the church to teach more clearly. The PCANZ allows eldership in two conditions (a) the Godly Celibate and (b) faithful and loving marriage between a man and woman. That is it: the rest of us can sit in the pews, where we belong. Not all are called to leadership: there are qualifications, and managing your wife and family well is one of the requirements if you are married.

And if we are told we must allow our buildings or ministers to marry — we will refuse: the local elders will only allow our church buildings to be used for marriage by a bona fide minister of religion, and (although some congregations are overtly disobeying the assembly on this) we have not as much interference and restriction on our freedom as occurs in the fascist anarchy that the USA seems to be descending into.

The Wintry Knight comments.

I think that the type of Christianity taught by parents and pastors is also to blame. They keep telling us that Christianity is about God helping you to feel good, and be nice to other people, so they like you. Everything is about feeling good here and now. Feelings. Compassion. Non-judgmentalism. Irrationality. Nothing is about truth, nothing is about facts, nothing is about conflict. We have witnessed the feminization of the church, and as a result, nobody has any response to the rhetoric of the gay rights people. If Christianity is about being nice, being liked and feeling good, then we have no resistance to the gay rights movement’s rhetoric which urges us to “be nice” so we can be liked, and feel good.

Declaring that morally wrong practices are actually morally good is only a virtue to those who want to be liked above all. And that’s what the church has become. We are more concerned about appearing nice to others that we are about finding ways to make what the Bible teaches make sense to non-Christians. We want to be liked more than we want to tell the truth, and debate it.

One of those inconvenient truths is that we are not liked by this world. We will not be liked by this world. The world is opposed to us: we have the truth, and the world does not want people to hear it or see it.

We can be Godly and truthful. We can be faithful. We can not afford to be nice: Christ was not nice, and neither should we be.