Wisconsin Synod atheists?
The Rev. Mason Beecroft of Grace Lutheran Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma joined the Tulsa Atheists Online Meeting Group to open a dialog not long ago.
They threw him out.
Now, a case can be made that a Lutheran minister doesn't belong in an atheist discussion group, of course. The problem is that if one is going to make that case, one cannot very well turn around and suggest that people of convictions alien to to those of the Lutheran Reformation (or any other specific religious tradition) have any inherent right to belong to congregations which subscribe to them, either- or to commune at their altars.
There is no right to be admitted, or to be allowed to remain within, any religious or political group with whose rationale and purposes one disagrees. Depending on the group and the circumstances, of course, such a group may (or may not) choose to waive its inherent right to its own internal homogeneity of purpose and conviction. But that's their call, and nobody has any business calling them "narrow minded" or less than "inclusive" if they insist on the inherent right any group of like-minded people to require that one be like-minded in order to belong to it.
Unless, of course, one is willing to charge the Tulsa atheists with being discriminatory in giving the boot to Pastor Beecroft.
They threw him out.
Now, a case can be made that a Lutheran minister doesn't belong in an atheist discussion group, of course. The problem is that if one is going to make that case, one cannot very well turn around and suggest that people of convictions alien to to those of the Lutheran Reformation (or any other specific religious tradition) have any inherent right to belong to congregations which subscribe to them, either- or to commune at their altars.
There is no right to be admitted, or to be allowed to remain within, any religious or political group with whose rationale and purposes one disagrees. Depending on the group and the circumstances, of course, such a group may (or may not) choose to waive its inherent right to its own internal homogeneity of purpose and conviction. But that's their call, and nobody has any business calling them "narrow minded" or less than "inclusive" if they insist on the inherent right any group of like-minded people to require that one be like-minded in order to belong to it.
Unless, of course, one is willing to charge the Tulsa atheists with being discriminatory in giving the boot to Pastor Beecroft.
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