It's the day after Easter. The chocolate Easter bunnies have given up their retail space to Mother's Day cards and purple vestments are tucked away in church closets. Easter lilies and cymbidium corsages* may see another week of life but most of the trappings of Easter must wait resurrection in the coming year. Easter, the very soul of Christianity, its raison d'etre, will be stored away like Christmas ornaments.
Today's Christianity, the one we see on television, the one posted relentlessly on YouTube, the one touted endlessly in GOP campaign speeches, however, will not be tucked away for future use. Its vehement chest-pounding was seen in Pastor Dennis Terry's introduction of the "Jesus Candidate" Rick Santorum.** It's hypocrisy was seen in Pastor Terry's back-peddling response to criticism in the ubiquitous "...but we LOVE everyone!"
Andrew Sullivan's recent views on today's Christianity certainly brought home the fact that Christianity has been ruined by the last 50years' worth of televangelists, moralizers, priests, politicians... and people like Terry.
"There's so much bad religion right now in this country that I felt it was important as a Christian to say, 'This is not what I believe. This is not what many of my fellow Catholics believe. We want to return to the message of Jesus and the gospels, not these obsessive battles over contraception or gay marriage or these other, I think, political issues, where Jesus really, really avoided politics at all costs," Sullivan said.
And the "Bad Religion" Sullivan speaks of is reeking havoc on everyone: last Friday, Lou Engle rewrote Scripture in calling upon women to emulate Queen Esther in fasting and prayer, demanding that they humiliate themselves for all the abortions they had. And Pastor DL ("Down Low") Foster insinuated that gays are worthy of death while advertising his "retreat" for men fighting same-sex attractions.
POLICING THEIR OWN
It's all well and good for some conservative and progressive Christians to say "They're not one of us! They don't speak for us!" but such response is ...lame. And while we realize that freedom of religion restrains the "other" Christians from pummeling their righteously arrogant brothers, stronger means of chastisement are called for. But what? Excommunication? Hardly. Take, for example, the situation with today's Southern Baptist Convention and its steadfast 14th century views about women, gays and sex. Then look at its stranglehold on Tennessee. In order to bring Tennessee back into the 21st century, we would have to virtually eradicate the Southern Baptist denomination in that state altogether. True, Southern Baptist churches claim autonomy, but autonomy is a mythical beast trotted out once in a while to cover up the fact that churches who stray from the SBC agenda are severely chastised - financially as well as socially.
So if they can't chastise the Christian Right, can't curtail the charlatans, the Fundamentalists, the Religio-political Establishment, what is the rest of Christianity to do? Can Christianity be saved?
More to the point, is Christianity worth saving? This is where qualifiers come in: Christianity may be worth saving, but today's Christianity may not be worth the effort.
Maybe it's time to scrap everything and start all over again.
* My mother loved cymbidium orchid corsages because she could put them in the refrigerator and they'd last until the next Sunday. I loved them too because they were easier on my allowance. **Terry's now infamous speech framed the Christian Right's hatred of dissenters with two words heard over the internet: "Get Out!!"
When did I get "The Call"? I don't know. The only call I ever really heeded in my life was the call my mother gave me when I was overdue in drying the dishes. "They aren't gonna dry themselves! And you aren't foolin' me by stayin' in the bathroom like that!" Of course, she didn't know that I was seriously cultivating a love affair with my body as well as avoiding housework.
Getting "The Call" always seemed to me to be the oddest of euphemisms: why did God have to "call" you to do anything? If He needed you to do something and had to tell you to do it, He wasn't very omnipotent. "The Call" is always posited as some kind of awakening akin to a bolt of lightening or a kick in the head. The way I figured it, when you realized that you wanted to help people on both a spiritual and physical level, that's when you got "The Call." So there were no sudden flashes of enlightenment or inspiration, no burst of deep feelings or concern for my neighbor's soul. No. To me, it was just the realization that it was the time I should help someone else, in some way, somewhere.
After writing about the ridiculous tyranny and fascism of today's Christian Right for the better part of seven years, the attendant realization came in the last several months: someone had to to take a stance against the hypocrites, liars, and bigots who were piling up, starting to look like vermin swarming over a piece of human flesh. In those months I saw countless men like "Bishop" Eddie Long abusing their power, righteous lobbyists like Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer denying religion's role in teen suicides, one power-hungry but otherwise unimportant preacher holding an entire country hostage with threats to burn another religion's scriptures, and the Southern Poverty Law Center adding Christian Right-wing churches and organizations to their list of hate groups. I also saw how the Christian Right is exporting hate in countries like Uganda and how a semi-literate storefront preacher named Steven Anderson received publicity by flaunting his ministry's "badge-of-honor" listing by the SPLC: "Well, then, if that makes us a hate group, then I guess we're a hate group."
So I decided to become an ordained minister. Oh, not just any minister, but one who could blast away at the Christian Right with an unrestrained passion, with a sense of irony, with a sense of purpose in exposing hypocrites whether clerical or lay, political or Machiavellian. A minister who could help save people from the clutches of obsessive proselytizing and provide a forum for open discussion of the spiritual.
And I found a vehicle with which to become ordained with the beliefs I hold dear to me and which I hope will pay respect to a higher power.
The vehicle is the online spiritual diploma mill, The Universal Life Church. Along with ordination, I am able to marry, baptize and even bury people in most states. It's legal. With my ordination I am able to command as much blind respect as all Christian Right-wing ministers (probably more earned respect, once their cloak of hypocrisy is stripped away). The ULC's main precept for it's ordination recipients is "To Live and Help Live." It commands no more than that. It does not command me to bludgeon anyone else over the head with it; in other words, it doesn't demand proselytizing. It doesn't demand automatic respect. It doesn't demand the entertainment of its followers through rituals and homilies. It doesn't demand to be the only precept, dogma, or religion.
"To Live and Help Live."
It seems so right to me: I believe we were put on this earth to survive as best as possible. We should make the most of our humanity, our human-ness, and help everyone else survive. Living up to one's human potential is at the pinnacle of praising man's creator. And lest the reader think that I'm espousing some kumbaya way of life, I think help can just as easily come from activism as it can from linking arms and singing songs of love and world peace.
And activism may be the key to avoiding the dangers of today's sinister proselytism: extreme factions of the Christian Right are pressing hard against humanity, oppressing educators, demonizing societies and politicizing compassion. Today we are bombarded by people who are audacious enough to reconstruct the past in order to redirect our future, taking to heart Rick Warren's motto: "Whatever it takes." In a sense, we could be entering an age in which a new kind of forced conversion would take hold from an opiate blend of nationalism, politics and pseudo-theology.
Oh, as an educated gay man who's lived through America's Age of AIDS, some might scoff and say that I am too biased, too inclined to left-leaning, bleeding-heart liberalism. And their point? "And He so loved the world that He gave over His only begotten Son." Hypocrites. If people expect me to strive for balance and be more objective, I say striving for balance is not the issue, whereas exposing hypocrisy is, because only by exposing hypocrisy can we cut off the head of the beast.
But isn't it rather flippant of me to take on such a serious sobriquet as "Reverend"? Not necessarily. There are some "men of the cloth" whom I can best in a debate about theology and Christianity's history. I may not be a savant in terms of spouting chapter and verse, but my intent may be more honorable than theirs, for I too can use the title as a weapon...for good as well as evil. For example: how could someone like "Rev." Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church air his hatred of homosexuals on national television, while someone who's studied more theology can't be heard to counter his blind stupidity? Answer: I didn't have the all-important "Rev." in front of my name.
I won't get into a detailed definition about what Christianity is, so let's just say that it is the organization that supposedly follows the teaching of Jesus the Christ of Nazareth as set down in the four Gospels of the Bible's New Testament. Anything more than that should be left to Biblical textual critics like Bart Ehrman and scholars of religious philosophy like Karen Armstrong. Yes, I respect these people very much, but the truth is that they haven't been allowed to make any real headway in teaching today's Christians about their own religion and about their own Bible.
Maybe their works will be published in the form of coloring books someday.
Hey, everyone knows I have to take a snipe at today's mass of "faithful." O.K., so I'll qualify myself: most (but not all) of today's Christians don't have the slightest knowledge of their own religion. They know nothing of early Christianity except the part about Romans and lions. They know nothing about Christianity's founders past a ragtag group of apostles whom most cannot name. They think that the Bible was always composed of the same number of books from day one (Christ's birth on December 25th). They're in the dark about the Dark Ages. They may have heard about Martin Luther and his split from Rome, but about popes even Catholics know very little. They know that some Christians in history were a bit anti-Semitic, but that's where their knowledge of Jewish persecution ends. They may have heard about the Crusades and how brave, chivalrous knights tried to sweep away Muslims from the Holy Land, but they don't know that the roots of Christianity and Islam come from the same source and that, like Judasim, they are Abrahamic religions. Witch burnings and the like, of course, they save for Halloween and Hell Houses. Read Gary Laderman's account of Christianity throughout America's history. Lederman is the Director of Religion Dispatches and Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Religion at Emory University. He really gives a case for Christianity being a dangerous religion.
Neveretheless, today's Christians DO know that - whatever it is - Christianity is the ONLY, TRUE religion. That's what puts them a notch higher than everyone else. Whatever Christians did in the past, there was a Divine Reason. The TRUE religion doesn't have to apologize for anything. The TRUE religion is always right in whatever it believes. God loves Christians and has (at most) a kind of benign contempt for everyone else.
But don't all of those vagaries give today's Christians a rather skewed vision of their own religion? Of course. It could then be argued that the more narrow and self-righteous view a people have of their own religion, the better it is to control them. As with the contradictions and complexity of the Bible, a simple but very narrow, very definitive construct is the best way to keep control: today's Southern Baptist preacher, for example, would never encourage scholarship in any form from his congregation. To do so would mean answering questions which threaten to make Christianity look less unique. Instead, tell them that the Bible is the exact word of God and tell them to forget all that history stuff.
In other words, keep 'em stupid.
Glenn Beck's recent Restore Honor rally gave a wake-up call to some Christian leaders, however: maybe they've let Christians in America become too stupid.
It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.
The point that Rev. Moore touches on (but marginally) is what I've said in several past articles: America has made a religion out of entertainment and an entertainment out of religion. And in being dumbed down, today's masses of the Christian Right look more like Coliseum Romans being entertained at the sight of other people being denied rights or discriminated against. Francis Schaeffer's own own, Frank Schaeffer has soundly denounced today's Christian Right:
"In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are."
Different perceptions.
So what was our Founding Father's perception of Christianity? Glenn Beck's "historian", David Barton, insists that their view was the same as today's, but, alas, it was much different: they were men who were educated in the European Enlightenment tradition. They knew about Plato and Aristotle as well as Erasmus. Many of them were actually educated in England. They had to be, if they wanted to have any standing at all, even in the "outback" of the colonies. They strove (as was the educated lifestyle of the time) to be "Renaissance" men and to know as much as possible about all things. Jefferson and Franklin were both practitioners of science, literature, mechanics, physics and even (horrors) metaphysics. Some were Freemasons. They did not envision a democracy as we see it, but a plutocracy run by men of education and property. This last precept is the reason why the populace were not invited to vote for senators nor were they allowed to vote for President.
The Founding Fathers had also known of the disastrous coupling of government and religion and not just from England: by that time, Europe had seen some 400 wars in less than 350 years and religion had its hand in every one of them. They knew about the Salem Witch trials and knew that many Native Americans had the fatal contempt of local "Christians" who even fought with themselves (Puritans, vs. Baptists vs Anabaptists vs Holy Rollers, etc. etc.). They certainly wanted everyone to worship as he pleased, but not to the detriment of everyone else. They would never have approved of the kind of yoke Constantine imposed upon the Romans.
In many ways, it was a wonder that the Founding Fathers would align themselves with Christianity at all! It's fortunate for men like Francis Schaeffer that the Founding Fathers considered religion something very personal, very local: if Christian leaders did not try to impose any of their (often petty) dogma on everyone else (i.e. the rest of the country), then the government would not interfere with their churches. They did not count, of course, on the churches becoming so large, so political ... and so entertaining.
So now we have apologists in the form of Glenn Beck telling us that every Founding Father was a practicing Christian , that he placed Jesus Christ above everything and everyone else in his life, that he formed the Constitution of the United States while, like the Bible, he was inspired by a Christian God, that he cared little about Christian history. And that he despised all other religions. After all, the First Amendment's "Freedom of Religion" clause clearly meant "Freedom of Denomination."
Two visions of Christianity with only one nation "under God". Is it possible that, in their Deism, the Founding Fathers were closer to the truth? After all, they prayed to be delivered from the bonds of colonialism for many years
The infamous author of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice, has tried Christianity and found it wanting.
"...following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”
Indeed, Many of Rice's followers wondered when - or if - she would eventually come to reason.
It is a testament of true spirituality that Anne Rice, the woman who almost singlehandedly rescued the occult/horror genre from the clutches of the Moral Majority, has decided that today's form of American Christianity is not for her. As the above quote points out, placement of Christ and His teachings ABOVE today's Perkins-Warren-Engle version of Christianity is what really matters.
It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”
It's obvious that the recent gay-bashing and Obama-hating by the Christian Right helped Rice in her decision, but it's also interesting that the tipping point may have come with the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, a nun and hospital administrator who had approved an abortion for a woman whose life was in danger. Within the last several years, the "anti's" kept piling up: anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-science,even anti-Democrat. And while the Christian Right constantly commits to being "pro-life," their real stance - devoid of compassion regarding a woman's life - was beyond the pale.
I met Anne Rice just after The Vampire Lestat came out (and before her S&M fantasies - The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, etc. - were known). Back then she and her husband, the poet Stan Rice, lived in San Francisco's gay Castro District and she frequented Walt Whitman Books. Once, we had the LONGEST telephone conversation about gay S&M versus straight S&M. I thought that hers was the most voracious intellect about the physical as well as the metaphysical. The death of her first child (6-year-old Michelle) led to a deep depression that was quelled by writing her own version of the vampire saga, transmogrifying the conventional (hence, very immoral) evil of Dracula into the anti-hero Lestat.
The Christian Right never forgave her.
Rice's concepts of good and evil transcended the black and white versions from the pulpit. Her characters paved the way for the series, Twilight, which Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition is now trying to ban:
"We can let our voices be heard, and anytime you do that you have an effect one way or another," [Roberta] Combs says. "These Twilight books are very disturbing books for family values. Teen marriage is not the standard, but the part that is more troubling is the vampire. It's just not normal for young people to idolize a vampire."
This coming from a minion of Ralph Reed who once said:
I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag.
No doubt people on the CR side are calling Rice an evil apostate who never really was a "Christian". Her remarks attacked the core of today's political Christianity, their frankness and lucidity telling American youth that whatever they hear from the pulpit may not be truly "Christian" or even "humane." And she will be again relegated to the "evil" left.
Good to see you back in the battle, Anne. We need you. What you unleashed over 34 years ago will continue to bite Christianists not in the neck, but somewhere lower down.
It is unfortunate that although not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim. - Anonymous
WARNING: Today's climate is not good for defending Muslims. And while the article does not defend acts by Muslim terrorists, the fact is that anyone in line with prejudiced voices within the Christian Right will think me extremely anti-Christian and totally un-American.
There are many, many wonderful Christians in this world. They go about doing and fostering good works and do not think it necessary to proselytize. They just do the work that's needed, then go to the next group in need. To these people, I say a sincere "thank you". You are worthy of praise and not condemnation.
There are also some people who have distorted basic Christian beliefs and have pushed their own agenda while saying that it is God's. To these people I say "Go ahead, be insulted" for if only a small fraction of what I'm writing about is true, then you deserve to own up to your sins. And those sins involve avarice, pride, arrogance, maliciousness and yes, murder.
Islamophobia: the fashionable phobia for right-wingers this year.
"While Christianity is a religion of peace, founded by the Prince of Peace, Islam is a religion of war and violence, founded by a man who routinely chopped the heads off his enemies, had sex with nine-year old girls, and made his wealth plundering merchant caravans."
- Bryan Fischer, the one-time head of the Idaho Values Alliance who got called up to the big leagues earlier this year when he became the American Family Association's Director of Issue Analysis.
"Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you"
- Former Attorney General John Ashcroft
"Islam is a very evil religion. All the values that we as a nation hold dear, they don't share those same values at all ... these countries that have the majority of Muslims."
- Franklin Graham
"This man [Muhammad] was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic, he was a robber and a brigand. And to say that these terrorists distort Islam ... they are carrying out Islam. I mean: This man [Muhammed] was a killer and to think that this is a peaceful religion is fraudulent."
- Pat Robertson
[At a Pro-Israel rally] "This not a war between Arabs and the Jews, this is between God and the devil.
- Benny Hinn
There are also some people who have distorted basic Christian beliefs and have pushed their own agenda. And it makes no difference to today's Islamophobes that Jesus Christ is mentioned more than Mohammed in the Q'uran and that Christ is considered Islam's most important prophet (after Mohammed).
(Remember) When the angels said O Mary! Allah Gives thee Good News of a son through a Word from Him! His name shall be the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, honoured in this world and in the next, and of those who Are Granted Nearness to Allah! (3.45) And he shall speak to the people in the cradle, and when of middle age, and he shall be of The Righteous (3.46)
Qur'an 2:136–136 "Say: we believe in God and that which is revealed unto us, and that which was revealed unto Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered."
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The following is only a small portion of the entire activity of people who have called themselves "Christian" in history. I have been compiling notes and statistics for 6 years. Many people will refute even these meager numbers and events. While I don't wish to overtly offend anyone, because, as I've said above in this article, there are many wonderful Christians in this world, there are people who don't want this kind of information to be exchanged. They now call it "revisionist" history. However, these statistics and featured events are culled from a myriad number of sources, all written long before religious "revisionist" theories were contemplated. In order to give you a taste of what philosophies have been tolerated under the name of Christianity, the following is taken from The Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction:
“…I do further promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition, and that will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women, and crush their infant's heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly I will secretly use the poisonous cup, the strangulation cord, the steel of the poniard, or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity or authority of the persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agents of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Father of the Society of Jesus.”
Christian "Crime Line"
There are crimes…and then there are CRIMES. The following is really just a partial list of all the historical events Christians just won’t own up to. Notable statements plus resulting casualties are highlighted in red. If you're a devout Christian, ask your local pastor about these points. If he or she can't answer them, then do some research. Research by yourself the development of your own religion. If even a tenth of the profile presented in these points are true, there may be something your pastor or religious mentor does not want to discuss, even in your Bible study class.
40 - St. Stephen becomes the first Christian martyr - Note: most persecutions were carried out on a local level -Death Toll: Up to 100,000 During 275-year period
48 - First Christian Council convenes Apostles meet in Jerusalem to determine if Gentiles need to become Jews first, then Christians. Gentiles do not have to undergo circumcision, nor are they obliged to keep Jewish ritual and purity laws
314 - Christians begin to massacre pagans in Egypt and Palestine .Persecution tables have now turned
325 - Council of Nicea is convened by Constantine to discuss date of Easter and deal with Arian Heresy. Approx. 300 bishops attended (out of 1800 in the entire empire, most of whom were in north Africa) – Note: Constantine threatened bishops with exile unless they agreed to the Nicene Creed. Arius and two others were exiled.
325 - Pagans are killed immediately after the Council of Nicea - Death Toll: 3,000
326 - Constantine first executes his son Chrispus in belief that he had sex with his step-mother, Fausta After Constantine finds out that Fausta lied about the affair, he has her boiled in her bathtub
336 - Arian Christians are persecuted - Death Toll: Approx. 10,000
350 - Riot between Arians and Christians - Death Toll: 3,150
580 - Christians arrest a group of Gentiles in a secret temple - Major Irony: the gentiles were fed to lions, but the lions refused to eat them. They were then crucified instead
590 - After Pope Gregory I decrees celibacy for the clergy, infants are murdered - Death Toll: 6000
782 - Charlemagne orders the beheading of pagans - Death Toll: 4500
850 - Eastern Orthodox Empress Theodora orders execution of Paulicans (heretics?) - Death Toll: 100,000
1095 - Pope Urban II calls for a “Holy War” to reclaim the “tomb of Christ from the heathen” - “Kingdom of Jerusalem” is established - Death Toll: 200,000
1096 - During the People’s Crusade (as in all nine Crusades) Jews are killed en route - Death Toll: 10,000
1144 - First “Blood Libel” used against Jews in England - “Blood Libel”: Jews accused of kidnapping Christian children, bleeding them, then killing them for ritualistic purposes –(Note: This ideology continued until 1915)
1209 Albigensian Crusade - First recorded genocide in Western Civilization. The Cathars (or Albigenses) were considered heretics and against the papacy - Death Toll: Over 100,000
1209 - The Inquisition as institution of Christianity is officially established - Inquisition continues under the title of Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and its chief goal is to root out heresy as in the thirteenth century. Present Pope Benedict XVI was head of this institution before becoming pope.
1348 - Jews, believed to be the cause of the Black Death were massacred in Mainz, Germany - Death Toll: 16,000
1400 - Approximate time witch hunts occurred - Note: while women were the majority executed, men and children were as well - Death Toll: Approx. 100,000
1420 - Hussite Wars - First organized wars of Christians (Catholic) killing Christians (Protestants) - Death Toll: 80,000
1470 - Start of the Spanish Inquisition - Death Toll: 350,000
1492 - Colonization of the Americas – Christianity vs. Indigenous beliefs Unconverted “heathens” are persecuted for the next 500 years
1540 - Persecution of the Waldensians - Death Toll: 900,000
1572 - St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre - French Protestant Huegenots murdered in one day - Death Toll: 70,000
1631 - The Thirty Years War - Ultimate Death Toll: aprox.11,500,000
1648 - Cossak rebellion against Jews in Poland - Death Toll; 100,000
1648 - Cromwell’s Puritan Revolution in England and Ireland - Massacres of thousands of Catholics - Death Toll: 868,000
1850 - Taiping Rebellion - “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace” is founded by Christian heretic Hong Xiuqan who preached that he was the brother of The Messiah - Death Toll: 20,000,000
1913 - The “Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction” is entered into the Congressional Record
1940 - FBI raids the offices of Christian Front. J. Edgar Hoover stated that it was the intent of the Front to murder Jews, communists and at least 12 congressmen - The Christian Front was founded by Father Edward Coughlin, “The Father of Hate Radio”
1993 - Magdalene Laundry Scandal erupts in Ireland - Brutal conditions and treatment in the “fallen women” Magdalene Laundries run by Catholic nuns are exposed - The identification of 130 bodies in a mass grave are still coming to light
1995 - The Lord’s Resistance Army massacres villagers in Uganda - Death toll: 750
As we stated above, this information was given not to insult good Christians., but to give a perspective to the reader when Christofascists such as Rick Warren, Pat Robertson and Rod Parsley tell us that Christianity has always been a religion of peace. Islamophobia is now creeping into tour lives. Christian "leaders" are calling for serious ramifications for Muslims. They are telling each of us non-Muslims that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion. And they are doing so in order to paint themselves as supporters of Christianity - a "peaceful" religion they think is beleguered with anti-Christian sentiment.
Go outside. Walk for a while and stop every time you see a (so you think) slightly Christian symbol. Count them. Look around you, then ask yourselves how persecuted Christians are these days in the US. Look around you and count the number of Christian symbols in your house - your neighborhood, your town, your state. Christianity has grown so large as to permeate the fabric of being American. And that stupendous growth was based on one ideal: freedom of religion.
America now ranks as the nation with the least amount of restrictions on religion. It also ranks among the most religious nations in the world. So where's the persecution?
The Christian Right has arrogantly come up with their own Nicene Creed. However, the Nicene Creed only states a belief of God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost, while the Manhattan Declaration states a whole host of beliefs not the least of which is that the holiest of all actions is hypocrisy. I'm certain that better writers and more intelligent people have attacked it by now as a blathering piece of BFD. So this post is, by its timing, anti-climactic.
But it is this kind of bloviating sanctimoniousness that drives people to respond anyway, because after reading it, one is prompted to react with "Do Something!"
So here is my take, such as it is. Sorry about the length, but when dealing enormous amounts of hot air, it takes an equal length of writing to respond to them.
Preamble
Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.
While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages [In other words, they don’t intend to address the topic of pedophile priests or ministers], we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues [Like the onslaught of AIDS?], and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.
After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. [And for almost 1000 years, kept them all for themselves.] It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. [American Christians, however, were rather split at the time, weren’t they?] Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.
In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. [Of course, Christians allowed Europeans a breather after 782 wars in 800 years – all sanctioned by Christians] And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. [And that, my friends, is the last you will read about women's rights in this polemic] The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class. [Take that, Southern Baptists!]
This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination. [Their “devotion to human dignity” skipped 1981 to 1999 simply because people with AIDS were anathema. Period.]
Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.
Declaration
We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason [Quite a jump from Scripture to “natural human reason”] (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.
While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies: [Well, at least they admit we’re fashionable!] that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.
Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image . [This means freedom to be Christian ONLY.]
We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences. to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. [“ecclesial differences” – Why is it that organized religion only bonds together when hey are AGAINST something? They can agree on base generalities like “peace,” but when dogma – the absolute heart of the church – is necessary, they agree to disagree – and hope that the bottom won’t fall out from underneath their congregation’s base.] We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.
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Life So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. [Whether or not they like it, people are paying for abortions through their insurance premiums. The “taxpayer expense” is really a singular jab at Planned Parenthood.] Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the “need” for abortion—a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. [“Pro-life” is a misnomer. It should be “pro-birth.” Would pro-lifers ever put their money where their mouth is and help to SUPPORT those children after birth? There are still a few “maternity hospitals” left (I was born in one), but they are not adequately supported by any faith-based organizations. One solution: provide a box to check on the taxpayer’s 1040 that states: “I stand pro-life. I want my tax return to benefit (fill in blank with name of legitimate social non-profit) so that a child may be fed, sheltered, clothed and educated according to the standards set by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.” ] Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as “the culture of death.” We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.
A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable.[ No such word, but it has probably been used time and again on “birther”\“teabagger” signs.] As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. [Only recently did Christians value the life of a child born out of wedlock: it was until about 1920 that birth certificates of such children were stamped “illegitimate.”] For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called “therapeutic cloning.” This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. [Now the conspiracy theories start. This statement is wild supposition of the Pat Robertson kind. And science fiction has absolutely no place in a manifesto such as this.] At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. [This invites a wild analogy: so many of us have our pets “put to sleep” because we don’t want them to suffer anymore. Yet good “Christians” will force our loved ones to suffer and have no say at all about the continuance of their lives.] The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”
We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need . and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. [While the incident may have involved another country, I feel I must remind Chuck Colson that the last Magdalene Laundry was closed in the early 1990s. He’s portraying all Christians as self-effacing saints.] Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.
A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. [Equating the Bible with reason?] We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.
Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. [You won’t do it with “abstinence only” programs.] We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.
Marriage
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24
This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33
In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society—indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as “holy matrimony” to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. [Including everyone and every culture is totally false: out of 1300 cultures studied, only about 250 were based on one-man-one-woman marriage. The rest were polygamous. And only in the last 300 years or so has the idea of love as a basis for marriage been recognized. Past cultures almost exclusively supported arranged marriages based on money, property and other assets.] Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits—the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling—and alarming—indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society—and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average—is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. [Personal note: I was born in Chicago at St. Vincent’s Infant Asylum and Maternity Hospital and put up for adoption from birth. I was illegitimate. Ann Coulter(geist) has brazenly (and stupidly) characterized and generalized ALL children born out of wedlock as drug addicts and criminals.I must be the odd one out.] Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.
We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same. [Too little, too late and too lame.]
To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. [Tell that to battered wives. One in particular pleaded with Pastor Rick Warren to counsel her after a brutal beating. His answer: divorce is not an option – after all, “he only hit you once. Only after you can prove that he’s beating you consistently, after counseling, then you should just leave him. But no divorce.”] We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.
The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. [There's a contradiction in there somewhere.] In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.
We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; [In a struggle to see their POV, I have come up numerous times frustrated and empty-handed as far as any kind of believability: their past behavior towards gays and lesbians shows them to have no respect and certainly no compassion. The Age of AIDS (1982-2002 – approx.) proved what harm hypocritical self-righteousness can do. True compassion existed only in pockets of the country and AIDS agencies were all (gasp!) secular.] and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. [This is, at best, disingenuous. The most radical idea Christ espoused was to love your enemies. He knew that this went against human nature. Most Christian preachers know that this sentiment will never be taken to heart, but they spout it occasionally to look benevolent.] For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to “a more excellent way.” As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.
We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being—the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual—on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation. [This is a grand attempt to make the institution of marriage holy, untouchable and mystical beyond which we mortals can comprehend. The union of two people in love and who fervently attempt to sustain that union with physical and emotional gestures are totally discounted because in the mind of a “true believer” the two people MUST be of the opposite sex and have the intention at all times of procreation. Anyone who thinks otherwise is also a sinner.]
We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being “married.” It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential. [To insinuate that a minority such a gays is “powerful and influential” is absurd: can societal outcasts – deemed outcasts because they are sinners – be “powerful and influential? And to infer that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope to polygamy and incest is sanctimonious demonizing.]No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality—a covenantal union of husband and wife—that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. [Religious liberty is never compromised if that liberty does not demand that everyone else must have the same frame of mind.] Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as “marriages” sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. [Which rights would he rather abuse, the parent or child? Children have an intrinsic right to know that other philosophies and cultures exist and exactly what they are. If they are not given the entire spectrum of beliefs, they unnecessarily doomed to become bigots.] Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.
And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”) that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. [Mr. Colson assumes to speak for the rest of Christendom and that is a grave mistake. He is authorized to speak only for the ones who have signed the Declaration.] How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.
Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21
The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.
Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.[Yet we are compelled to embrace Christianity every day in every way: “Our forefathers were Christian.” “America is a Christian nation!” “Secularists are atheists!” The Christian religion is the ONLY worthwhile religion” “I knew my God was better than his god.” “Keep the Christ in Christmas"]
It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard [ “Persecution!!”] of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.
We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. [Maybe the government has to dictate morality because “righteous” people WOULD discriminate, fire and ruin the lives of people in the name of “conscience.”] After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here. [Do Biblical “norms” include the insulting and incendiary speeches of Fred Phelps?]
In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of. Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny. [This assumes that Christians are always “civil”]
As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. [That is why Christian clergy are calling for the death of the President.] We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.
Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. [One could create a wild “slippery slope” from this: not biding by the law of non-discrimination against gays could eventually lead to “Kill a Queer for Christ.” Seriously, this manifesto could validate “birthers” and “teabaggers.”] There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. [Proselytizing your version of the truth is one thing, while pummeling people with the Bible, cherry-picked verse by cherry-picked verse is another.] We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.
Thus this “Declaration” ends leading us towards a puzzling but crucial question:
Who gets to decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain
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