Earlier today, Office of Public Witness
Director, J. Herbert Nelson, published an editorial, Discrimination
in the Name of Jesus: How “religious liberty” is becoming Discrimination by
Another Name, that he co-authored with the Reverend James C. Perkins,
President-elect of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, founded in 1961
to advance Rev. Martin Luther King’s vision for civil rights.
Tomorrow, Mississippi will vote on legislation
similar to the bill vetoed
by Governor Jan Brewer in Arizona and abandoned in other states. This law
would allow businesses to discriminate against the gay community and others on
the basis of religion. You can read more about this here.
The voices of Christian leaders are needed to
send a strong message that discrimination is unacceptable under the guise of religious
liberty.
If you would like to raise your voice to counter
this campaign of religion-justified discrimination, please join our partners by
adding your name to this letter: http://tinyurl.com/ClergyAgainstDiscrimination
The letter concludes, “when we seek to codify
legislation that discriminates against any class of people—no matter our
diverse theological beliefs about marriage—we tarnish the treasure of religious
freedom and the highest ideals of our democracy. Most of all, we are complicit
in violating the Golden Rule that unites us as Christians—to love God and our
neighbor as we love ourselves.”
