Open the Gates
“We must obey God rather than any human authority.” Today's lesson from the Acts of the Apostles is a story about speech, about the authorities trying to hush it up and the Apostles speaking anyway. Their civil disobedience could come with a high price, as Stephen was soon to discover. Yet they kept on speaking, accusing the powers that be of doing away with an innocent man and asserting that this man was the Messiah, the Son of God, and that he had returned from the dead. Human authority these days is also trying to muzzle dissent, ordering scholars not to express any opinions contrary to what the current administration wants to hear. Our authorities will imprison or deport people for their words. It will hold research hostage for promoting inclusion. It will even delete any mention of diversity or the climate from its own websites so as to pretend that discrimination and global warming don’t exist. A college friend of mine, Queer Theology professor Peter Carlson wrote this ...