{"id":2835,"date":"2020-07-31T12:27:18","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T17:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/?p=2835"},"modified":"2020-07-31T12:27:18","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T17:27:18","slug":"black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html","title":{"rendered":"Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Often people assume that because i am a \u201cMan of God\u201d (their words not mine) I therefore must have a certain political affiliation. And therefore a certain opinion on things that matter to them, like environmental protection and LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is, that as a Christian, I think it is extremely important to not let my political affiliation become my religion. To not let my political affiliation decide how I feel about important issues. I have to be Christian first, and partisan\u2026ninth\u2026 or later. I do have opinions, but they\u2019re informed by the Bible, and not by which team or which tribe happened to agree with me last time.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s talk about BLM<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6QMbkhHyyFY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Often people assume that because i am a \u201cMan of God\u201d (their words not mine) I therefore must have a certain political affiliation. And therefore a certain opinion on things that matter to them, like environmental protection and LGBTQ rights. The truth is, that as a Christian, I think it is extremely important to not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Often people assume that because i am a \u201cMan of God\u201d (their words not mine) I therefore must have a certain political affiliation. And therefore a certain opinion on things that matter to them, like environmental protection and LGBTQ rights. The truth is, that as a Christian, I think it is extremely important to not&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-07-31T17:27:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"rgaffney\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor - A Fear of Whales","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor - A Fear of Whales","og_description":"Often people assume that because i am a \u201cMan of God\u201d (their words not mine) I therefore must have a certain political affiliation. And therefore a certain opinion on things that matter to them, like environmental protection and LGBTQ rights. The truth is, that as a Christian, I think it is extremely important to not&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html","og_site_name":"A Fear of Whales","article_published_time":"2020-07-31T17:27:18+00:00","author":"rgaffney","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html","name":"Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor - A Fear of Whales","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#website"},"datePublished":"2020-07-31T17:27:18+00:00","dateModified":"2020-07-31T17:27:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#\/schema\/person\/d1517242690f3eb7970adfa3b8e1a567"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2020\/07\/black-lives-matter-ask-the-pastor.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Black Lives Matter | Ask The Pastor"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/","name":"A Fear of Whales","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Ryan Gaffney","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#\/schema\/person\/d1517242690f3eb7970adfa3b8e1a567","name":"rgaffney","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/author\/rgaffney"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2838,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2835\/revisions\/2838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}