Your family’s experience is an excellent argument for gay people to come out and not engage in sham marriages out of fear.

As for being derogatory – I suggest you reread some of your own posts.

Caleb: Nazarenes do not exclude ‘women ministers’ some of the first were of the the Nazarene faith. The Nazarene faith will not ordain a minister–male or female if they do not adhere to the faith’s guidelines –no smoking, drinking, gambling are part of those beliefs.If all religions held to their beliefs and actually stood for something we would all have less problems in the world. While I do not agree with the Mormon’s view/beliefs I greatly admire Mr. David Duke for so patiently standing up so righteously for his beliefs.

Perplexed: No we don’t know what we are getting anymore–all the more reason to be diligent and not to ordain those so quickly. There is a reason why they were called “elders”. Even in the Bible–the priests could not enter the priesthood before the age of thirty, Moses was 80 when he led the children out of Egypt; yes, God still used Moses even though he murdered the Egyptian, but we forget that because Moses could not overcome his anger he was denied entry into the promised land.
My point that I am trying to state is that we have become a nation that has lost faith in God to properly provide those He chooses and take upon ourselves to justify our own selfish actions.

Now, we ordain women, and have no hat-wearing rules. We do go to horse races, though.

The author(s) of Timothy and Titus could only have been referring to people’s reputations post-conversion, otherwise they are rejecting the Gospel as such. To say that you can’t be a minister if you had scandal in your past prior to your conversion would disqualify the many of the people successfully ministering today. And no, just because you go to church doesn’t mean you should be a minister. There have to be higher qualifications for that. Whether Hourigan meets them or not, I have no idea. But I certainly know people in ministry who had criminal backgrounds prior to their conversion – that hasn’t in any way prevented them from ministry.

And even when it comes to sex offenses, can we really say there are no former prostitutes? No former porn stars or pornographers in the ministry? I think there are probably plenty.

My personal feeling is that if we drive sex offenders back into hiding, we are only endangering ourselves and society all over again.

No doubt all movements go through a stage where they become institutionalized, but few seem to have lost as much of the soul of the original as Christianity did. Certainly Jesus’ apostles were not blameless or above reproach; Jesus got so mad at Peter that he referred to him as Satan, and we know the whole Thomas story (no doubt trumped up by the opponents of the so-called Gospel of Thomas, who wanted to put Thomas in a bad light). Matthew was a tax collector, which in Roman times was half a step at most above being a street criminal, and there is at least some suggestion that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.

I often wonder how a modern church, including my own, would deal with a group of people like Jesus’ disciples today. No doubt we would NEVER ordain any of them (well, they didn’t go to seminary for one thing, and their references didn’t quite check out), and we probably wouldn’t much want them hanging around at coffee time, because not to put too fine a point on it, it’s unlikely that they dressed or smelled quite right for Sunday morning.

But these folks, imperfect as they were, are the backbone of our church, and the beginning of the apostolic succession down to the present day (or at least so we say).

I have long argued that the church should… with care… reach out to sex offenders. However, to echo what peach says, this is not a question about “can people with felonies go to church”… when you make this leap, you are essentially arguing that anyone who goes to church is fit to be an ordained pastor automatically. I would disagree with this on many levels.

The first would rather pragmatic: just as you would not want a tone deaf person to be the main soloist in your choir, so too should the church discern whether the gifts, talents, and attributes of a candidate for ministry match those needed in ordained ministry. God blesses us all with gifts, but not everyone is given every gift in equal measure. A talented singer might hate preaching, and vice-versa. Clearly, there are issues here that hamper the ability for this man to be a trusted public leader- and moral example- both necessary attributes in a minister.

I too question the theological support for this ordination… as St. James says “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Not everyone is called to be a minister.

On the other hand, maybe this will be a powerful example of grace and forgiveness of a sex offender… during time when there is little grace, forgiveness or even mercy show to people who have been so designated. Not knowing anything more than this article, it is difficult for us to make a judgement.

I knew of a church in a a struggling area of a large city that called as pastor a man who committed murder as a teenager… every time I drove past this church in the years that followed, they were adding another wing. Maybe things will work out well for this congregation and this pastor- God does not call perfect people, after all. However, I think it’s going overboard for you to suggest that those of us who strongly question such ordinations also seek to exclude people from the life of the church.

I am not advocating throwing stones,this is what forgivness and the church is about; but I also do not believe that it is okay to ordain people with such backgrounds as ministers–this is my personal opinion.