Cultural Thursday

A view from my desk while my students watched Rick Warren

This is a picture from my class today. It is cultural thursday, and on cultural thursday we discuss things going on in the culture. We watch videos, read articles, discuss important issues, and so on. Today, to kick off the new semester I thought I would bring up an issue that I knew would get my students going. Today we discussed the issue of Rick Warren praying at the Inagauration of President Elect Barak Obama. If you haven’t heard, this has been a major deal. People on both sides, Christians and the Gay Community are up in arms about this decision. Why, I really don’t know. Maybe because Christians are still stuck in the mindset of promoting one candidate based on the issue of abortion. Maybe the Gay communit because they feel threated by the views of Christians and think that Obama doesn’t support them. A popular blogger said that “if you think that Obama is for the rights of the gay community then you better sober up.” No matter where you fall on the issue the discussion and news stories have been rather interesting.

First let me show you a couple of things that we viewed and read about before we discussed this issue. If you want to take the time to watch these videos it is worth the time. Very interesting, especially the CNN story. If you only want to view one, check out the Melissa Ethridge blog (thank you Lee for this). Great story.

CNN Story on Warren:
Rick Warren’s Address to his congregation:
Article by Melissa Ethridge (famous songwriter/singer)
Obama Speaks out article:

After viewing all of these and reading the articles I asked my students what they thought. Here is what they said:

“I struggle with the idea of giving them (gay/lesbians) freedom of choice in marriage and life style” “Why would he (warren) support Prop 8 and gay rights if he was a christian?” “Is it right for Christians to tke away their choice?” “Are we founded on Christian Principles? Why would these other religions and other beliefs come here if we are a christian nation? They should stay out.” “Why are these people so passionate about this?” “Let people believe what they want and we believe what we want to believe. Keep our business to ourselves and worry about ourselves.”

These were all great questions and the responses were great as well. We were still discussing when the bell rang and I agreed to carry this conversation over to tomorrow. If anything else is said interesting I will share it with you.

I am sure that you have a lot of thoughts and responses to these questions. I would love to hear what you would say to these questions or for that matter what you think about all of this.

*kyle