Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sodomy:


Dr. Jerry Maneker is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at California State University, Chico. At his internet biography page, which may be found here: http://www.radicalchristianity.net/page18.html, Dr. Maneker says: "For many years, I have had a weekly column in the Sacramento Valley Mirror entitled 'Christianity and Society,' where I deal with a variety of social issues from a biblical and sociological perspective. I've also written many articles dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and progressive Christianity for the webzine, 'Speak From The Heart.' I also contribute regularly to the online magazine, 'Whosoever,' that deals with topics of relevance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians and their allies, and I have a blog entitled, 'A Christian Voice For Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Rights'...The major thrust of my ministry is to help rescue the Bible and Christianity itself from those who pervert the only Gospel to be found in Christianity: the Gospel of grace, faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness. So many 'religious' leaders preach a false gospel of legalism and perfectionism that has the effect, beyond financial and/or psychological and/or social gain, of excluding, and even demonizing, others."

And who does Dr. Maneker have in mind when he speaks of those who "pervert the only Gospel found in Christianity?" In an interview which may be found here: http://livelovelearn247.blogspot.com/2006/09/interview-with-rev-dr-jerry-maneker.html, Dr. Maneker says:

"I'm an evangelical, dammit! And I won't allow purveyors of a false gospel, about whom the Apostle Paul felt so strongly that he wrote, "God damn them" (Galatians 1:8-9), to pervert the beauty of the Gospel of liberation into their twisted notions of God, the Bible, themselves, and other people, thereby seeking to put yokes of bondage on people, the very yokes of bondage from which Jesus came to set us free. These legalists and biblical literalists have thrown God's grace back in His face, and are seeking to lead gullible, vulnerable, biblically iliterate people away from the only Gospel to be found in Christianity. And for that grievous sin, as well as for the sin of wittingly or unwittingly helping to create and "legitimate" the shame, self-loathing, suicides, bashings and murders of LGBT people, they are to be assiduously confronted and told in no uncertain terms that they are not speaking for God, the Bible, or for the Gospel!"

There you have it. For Dr. Maneker, a "progressive Christianity" must continually oppose the "false gospel" of "legalists" and "biblical literalists" who accept what Sacred Scripture has to say regarding homosexual acts. And when Christians accept what the Holy Spirit says through St. Paul in Romans Chapter 1, namely that males who give up "natural relations with females" and "burn with lust for one another" are engaging in "perversity" (v. 27) and that "the just decree of God" is that "all who practice such things deserve death," (v. 32) such people are following a "false gospel." For Dr. Maneker, Christians who accept what God's Word reveals in 1 Corinthians Chapter 6: "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor practicing homosexuals nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God" (v. 9-10), are really "purveyors of a false gospel" who are 'seeking to put yokes of bondage on people."

We shouldn't be surprised that there are people like Dr. Maneker in this world who oppose God's Holy Word and attempt to deceive us. We read in 2 John v. 7-9 that: "Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh; such is the deceitful one and the antichrist. Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive a full recompense. Anyone who is so 'progressive' as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son."

The Latin of the Vulgate is "Omnis, qui ultra procedit et non manet in doctrina Christi, Deum non habet." This might be translated literally thusly: "Every one who proceeds beyond and does not remain in the teaching..." Isn't it ironic that Dr. Maneker would label his own peculiar brand of Christianity as "progressive Christianity?" Isn't it true that he has become so progressive as to not remain in the teaching of Christ?

Again, we read in Jude (v. 5-7):

"I wish to remind you, although you know all things, that [the] Lord who once saved a people from the land of Egypt later destroyed those who did not believe. The angels too, who did not keep to their own domain but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains, in gloom, for the judgment of the great day. Likewise, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding towns, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual promiscuity and unnatural vice, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."