PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Council of Churches and the University of Southern Maine Interfaith Chaplaincy will present “Civil Discourse on Same Sex Marriage,” an ecumenical conversation with four Maine religious leaders, at 7 p.m. Thursday at Luther Bonney Hall on the USM campus on Bedford Street.
Panelists will be the Rt. Rev. Stephen Lane, Episcopal bishop of Maine; the Rev. Joseph Daniels, pastor of Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Parish in Waterville and contributor to Bishop Richard Malone’s pastoral letter on marriage; the Rev. Susan Craig, United Church of Christ Associate Conference Minister; and the Rev. Michael Davis, United Methodist Church Tri-State superintendent.
The Rev. Sage Currie, pastor of the New Church in Fryeburg and a Maine Council of Churches board member, will host the event.
In 2009, the Maine Council of Churches created a Covenant for Civil Discourse in response to the negative tone in political campaigns.
“The covenant is simple — it’s a set of promises to regulate oneself, to behave in ways that we want others to behave toward us, with no exceptions for political discourse.” said the Rev. Jill Saxby, the Maine Council of Churches’ executive director.
Since then, more than 80 Maine candidates running for elective office have
signed the covenant as a promise to act respectfully toward opponents, refrain from personal attacks, refuse to make untrue statements in defense of a position, value civility and expect those working for their election campaigns to do the same. Maine’s Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ, United Methodist, Episcopal and Unitarian Universalist denominations as well as several Quaker meetings also have signed the covenant.
The purpose of “Civil Discourse on Same Sex Marriage” is to show that people of faith, who may strongly disagree with each other, can talk to each other in a respectful and civil manner.
Thursday night’s event will focus each faith leader’s response to members of their communities on Ballot Question 1 in Maine’s Nov. 6 election, “Do you want to allow the State of Maine to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples?”
The Covenant for Civil Discourse and more information about the event is available at www.mainecouncilofchurches.org.
I hope this civil discourse is free of dishonesty. No lies about gays recruiting people, no lies about gays wanting to destroy society and force churches to marry them.
The church won’t have room to make all these “lies” after gays make being Christian a hate crime.
Just for clarification are you saying that gays or anyone who supports SSM are anti Christian?
I don’t believe it’s gay people who are using their rights to infringe on the rights of others. Besides, there are many religious gay people and many gay Christians even. You need to get real.
I fail to see the reason for your snotty reply. First off I was not asking the question of you I was asking the question of Dillingerfox. Perhaps you are the one who needs to get real or at least learn how to comprehend what someone post before you blindly attack. I assure you I am quite real.
Marriage isn’t a “right”, and the notion of “Christian Gays” seems like an oxy-moron to me. guess they must have skipped the deal about Soddom and Gamorrah in Bible School. Let them have a legal “civil partnership” so they can get some of the finacial and social benifits, but please don’t call it “marriage”.
They’re asking for civil marriage, not religious marriage. Also, I realize you’re a busybody and want to make choices for others, but a person determines their own religion for themselves. It’s not up to you.
Hmmmm…… Think voting the way I see fit on Question One IS up to me, so looks like I’ll just cancel your vote out.
Nah, you’re just a busybody. Your marriage is really impacted by strangers you don’t even know? Get real.
Marriage equality should not be up for debate — civil or uncivil.
Well, the article IS about an interfaith attempt to cut down on the hostilities a lot of religious and otherwise people showed last time. I imagined they found it pretty embarrassing, since most of it smacked of judgment and hypocrisy – not really what you’d call “Christian” values.
Then there’s all the people just leaving their churches over the issue, without even trying to talk reason to anybody about it – churches don’t much like it when they have to close because their financial supporters quit and went somewhere else, or stopped going to church altogether.
“The covenant is simple — it’s a set of promises to regulate oneself, to behave in ways that we want others to behave toward us, with no exceptions for political discourse.”
See, the self proclaimed religious people are the first to ditch the golden rule when it comes to this issue; they always resort to lying about gay people and making them out to be sub human monsters, and pretend their behavior is biblically justified. It’s embarrassing for the churches that actually want to have congregations to preach to.
It’s kind of obvious the people often anonymously representing the religious folks don’t go to church anyway.