By Mark Tooley
Colorado is voting in November on whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use. It’s already permissible for ostensible medical reasons. Naturally many traditional religious leaders are opposing Amendment 64. But the Huffington Post quotes a United Methodist minister who supports a pot friendly Colorado.
“How we punish people and what we punish them for are central moral questions,” explained Rev. Bill Kirton, who is identified by HuffPo as being with Denver’s United Methodist church, though the article doesn’t explain which one. “If a punishment policy fails to meet its objectives and causes harms to humans, I believe we have a moral obligation to support change.”
Building on his argument that legalizing marijuana is a moral cause meriting clergy support, Rev. Kirton declared: “Our laws punishing marijuana use have caused more harm than good to our society and that is why I am supporting replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of strict regulation with sensible safeguards.”
And Rev. Kirton sermonized: “As we seek to teach compassion and love, it seems inconsistent to support, in cases of private personal adult marijuana possession, the use of police, guns, and courts.” After all, he said, “The faith community, parents, peers, and educators are the appropriate institutions in society to address this kind of personal behavior.”
Read more here.
Comment by Dan Trabue on October 19, 2012 at 11:36 am
I always wonder on what rational basis “conservative” folk would support criminalization of marijuana.
1. Marijuana is never condemned in the Bible. It is an entirely silent topic in the Bible.
2. The Bible does warn of being drunk, but it does not forbid drinking alcohol (Paul even encourages Timothy to drink some), so it’s not like a religious conservative could argue that God hates drugs.
3. This seems to be the sort of big gov’t intervening in affairs that it has no Constitutional authority to do.
The drug “war” is a failure and just not rational. It is big gov’t extremism at some of its worst.
By all means, legislate rules about HARMFUL effects from drug usage – impaired driving, for instance. But what people do in their own homes with their own bodies, what business is it of any one else?
It seems today’s “conservatives” are “small gov’t” advocates. Except when they’re not.
Comment by J P Logan on October 20, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Funny, whatever mainliners do, they always cloak it in “compassion and love.”
I’m so glad this Rev. Kirton wants there to be “sensible safeguards” for marijuana use. I picture the churches establishing caloric guidelines for those who get the munchies after toking.
Comment by Dan Trabue on October 20, 2012 at 4:37 pm
So, JP, you consider smoking a joint to be “sinful…”? On what basis? The bible never mentions it. Do you consider it sinful even if it’s for medical reasons?
Even if you do think it’s sinful, do you really think it’s gov’t’s business to go around telling people what they can and can’t ingest? Doesn’t that strike you of “Big Brother-ism…”?
Comment by Tim Vernon on October 20, 2012 at 5:17 pm
I fled the United Methodist church circa 1980 (me and several thousand others) and haven’t bothered to monitor their trendy nonsense too closely (prefer to focus on my own church, which does good things). From reading articles on this site in the past few months, I’ve learned that the UMs are for:
1) woman killing their unborn children,
2) men copulating with men, and
3) potheads.
Is it just me, or . . . ?
Comment by Dan Trabue on October 20, 2012 at 11:44 pm
You left off that UMs are for raping puppies and eating kittens.
Comment by Eric Lytle on October 21, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Tim, the common thread is: church endorses hedonism, which, if I remember the NT, isn’t really what Christians are called to do. Having endorsed sex and drugs, I look for their next policy statement to address rock-n-roll.
John Wesley must be spinning in his grave. He rode thousands of miles on horseback to spread the gospel, saying his aim was to “spread scriptural holiness throughout the land,” and here’s his church today – Pro-abortion! Pro-gay! Pro-pot!
Funny thing though, he preached sin, hell, and salvation and made thousands of converts. I wonder if the UMs expect their new Hedonist Gospel to cause a stampede into their half-empty churches.