"We are to fear and love God so that in matters of sex our words and conduct are pure and honorable, and husband and wife love and respect each other."
As a youth I learned this as the answer to the question, "What does this mean: 'You shall not commit adultery.'" Lutherans will recognize it a being from The Small Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther, which in my Sunday School text books was subtitled, "A Handbook of Basic Christian Instruction for the Family and the Congregation."
But there's hardly anything unique here to Luther, or even Christians for that matter. Alas, you'd not know that from catching the news media. Or, for that matter, the entertainment media. All of which have been busy, for a long time now, with another message.
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Friday, November 17, 2017
Saturday, August 11, 2012
"...but they assume ... not create the nature of marriage"
Continuing a theme I've been, okay, harping on for several years: the Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, OMI, recently offered some "Reflections on 'Chicago values'." Notice where this Christian teacher's reflection on marriage begins:
Leroy Huizenga used this on Thursday over at First Things' "On the Square" to offer a cautionary word to both those of us who desire to conserve marriage in our culture and those who desire to re-cast it into something new:
Hat tip to Joe Carter at "Mere Comments," the Touchstone blog.
It might be good to put aside any religious teaching and any state laws and start from scratch, from nature itself, when talking about marriage. Marriage existed before Christ called together his first disciples two thousand years ago and well before the United States of America was formed two hundred and thirty six years ago. Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.Read it all here at the Catholic Chicago Blog.
Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes: male and female. The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women. Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and “gender-free marriage” is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.
Both Church and state do, however, have an interest in regulating marriage. It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a public institution in both Church and state. The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens. The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society....
People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage....
Leroy Huizenga used this on Thursday over at First Things' "On the Square" to offer a cautionary word to both those of us who desire to conserve marriage in our culture and those who desire to re-cast it into something new:
Because of the harmony of faith and reason, thoughtful Christians can speak of marriage in terms of both categories. And we sometimes confuse categories, and that proves confusing to the general public. But make no mistake: Our defense of marriage is no act of legerdemain, in which we try to force what we know solely by revelation on the public. (Observe no one is pushing laws forcing participation in the sacraments or forbidding participation in a particular faith.) Rather, we are concerned for the common good, a rational concern motivated by our very faith. Convinced that reason and nature teach us the truth about marriage, we will continue to make arguments in the public square about the public goods of marriage, for no society or person can long thrive kicking against the goads of reason and nature.Read it all here in Huizenga's post, "Opposing Gay Marriage Is Rational, Not Religious." And note that I've linked a definition for "legerdemain" in that quote.
Hat tip to Joe Carter at "Mere Comments," the Touchstone blog.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Marriage and Religious Freedom: An Open Letter
The following statement, Marriage and Religious Freedom, was issued today by leaders of some of the largest religious communities in the US, joining together in an open letter to all Americans to voice their shared concern for marriage and religious freedom. Signatories include leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Lutheran, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities in the United States. (The Lutherans are LCMS President Matthew Harrison and NALC Bishop John Bradowski.) Below the signatures to this fine letter I'm posting the "Executive Summary." Pastor Zip
Hat tip to James Gale at ALPB Forum Online.
pdf verson here
An Open Letter
from Religious Leaders in the United States
to All Americans
Released January 12, 2012
Dear Friends:
The promotion and protection of marriage—the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife—is a matter of the common good and serves the wellbeing of the couple, of children, of civil society and all people. The meaning and value of marriage precedes and transcends any particular society, government, or religious community. It is a universal good and the foundational institution of all societies. It is bound up with the nature of the human person as male and female, and with the essential task of bearing and nurturing children.
As religious leaders across a wide variety of faith communities, we join together to affirm that marriage in its true definition must be protected for its own sake and for the good of society. We also recognize the grave consequences of altering this definition. One of these consequences—the interference with the religious freedom of those who continue to affirm the true definition of "marriage"—warrants special attention within our faith communities and throughout society as a whole. For this reason, we come together with one voice in this letter.
Some posit that the principal threat to religious freedom posed by same-sex "marriage" is the possibility of government’s forcing religious ministers to preside over such "weddings," on pain of civil or criminal liability. While we cannot rule out this possibility entirely, we believe that the First Amendment creates a very high bar to such attempts.
Instead, we believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations—throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct. There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result.
These conflicts bear serious consequences. They will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of "marriage" does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once. By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital status—such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation—will change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministries—including running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others.
So, for example, religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married couples would be required by law to place children with persons of the same sex who are civilly "married." Religious marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex "married" relationships. Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law to extend those benefits to same-sex "spouses." Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse employment action—no matter how modest—against an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil "marriage" with a member of the same sex. This is not idle speculation, as these sorts of situations have already come to pass.
Even where religious people and groups succeed in avoiding civil liability in cases like these, they would face other government sanctions—the targeted withdrawal of government co-operation, grants, or other benefits.
For example, in New Jersey, the state cancelled the tax-exempt status of a Methodist-run boardwalk pavilion used for religious services because the religious organization would not host a same-sex "wedding" there. San Francisco dropped its $3.5 million in social service contracts with the Salvation Army because it refused to recognize same-sex "domestic partnerships" in its employee benefits policies. Similarly, Portland, Maine, required Catholic Charities to extend spousal employee benefits to same-sex "domestic partners" as a condition of receiving city housing and community development funds.
In short, the refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots, subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures reserved for racists. These punishments will only grow more frequent and more severe if civil "marriage" is redefined in additional jurisdictions. For then, government will compel special recognition of relationships that we the undersigned religious leaders and the communities of faith that we represent cannot, in conscience, affirm. Because law and government not only coerce and incentivize but also teach, these sanctions would lend greater moral legitimacy to private efforts to punish those who defend marriage.
Therefore, we encourage all people of good will to protect marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and to consider carefully the far-reaching consequences for the religious freedom of all Americans if marriage is redefined. We especially urge those entrusted with the public good to support laws that uphold the time-honored definition of marriage, and so avoid threatening the religious freedom of countless institutions and citizens in this country. Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the fabric of this nation.
May we all work together to strengthen and preserve the unique meaning of marriage and the precious gift of religious freedom.
Sincerely Yours:
Executive Summary:
We, as representatives of a broad array of faiths, join together to affirm that marriage, the union of one man and one woman, must be promoted and protected for its own sake and for the common good. We also agree that redefining marriage will incur grave consequences, including a deleterious impact on religious liberty. Altering the definition of marriage will change not just one law but hundreds, even thousands, of laws. There will be government mandates, requiring the recognition and accommodation of so-called same-sex "marriages," that pose a critical threat to institutions and individuals who for reasons of faith and conscience will resist the law’s compulsion. Cases involving criminal and civil penalties and the denial of grants and other government benefits are already occurring and will only increase in number and severity if more jurisdictions redefine marriage. The law not only will coerce and impose disincentives, but will also teach that religious objectors must be marked as if they were bigots. We encourage all people of good will to protect marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and to consider carefully the far-reaching consequences for the religious freedom of all Americans if marriage is redefined. May all of us work together to strengthen and preserve the unique meaning of marriage and the precious gift of religious liberty.
Signatories come from the following communities:
Hat tip to James Gale at ALPB Forum Online.
Marriage and Religious Freedom:
Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Togetherpdf verson here
An Open Letter
from Religious Leaders in the United States
to All Americans
Released January 12, 2012
Dear Friends:
The promotion and protection of marriage—the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife—is a matter of the common good and serves the wellbeing of the couple, of children, of civil society and all people. The meaning and value of marriage precedes and transcends any particular society, government, or religious community. It is a universal good and the foundational institution of all societies. It is bound up with the nature of the human person as male and female, and with the essential task of bearing and nurturing children.
As religious leaders across a wide variety of faith communities, we join together to affirm that marriage in its true definition must be protected for its own sake and for the good of society. We also recognize the grave consequences of altering this definition. One of these consequences—the interference with the religious freedom of those who continue to affirm the true definition of "marriage"—warrants special attention within our faith communities and throughout society as a whole. For this reason, we come together with one voice in this letter.
Some posit that the principal threat to religious freedom posed by same-sex "marriage" is the possibility of government’s forcing religious ministers to preside over such "weddings," on pain of civil or criminal liability. While we cannot rule out this possibility entirely, we believe that the First Amendment creates a very high bar to such attempts.
Instead, we believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations—throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct. There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result.
These conflicts bear serious consequences. They will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of "marriage" does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once. By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital status—such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation—will change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministries—including running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others.
So, for example, religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married couples would be required by law to place children with persons of the same sex who are civilly "married." Religious marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex "married" relationships. Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law to extend those benefits to same-sex "spouses." Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse employment action—no matter how modest—against an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil "marriage" with a member of the same sex. This is not idle speculation, as these sorts of situations have already come to pass.
Even where religious people and groups succeed in avoiding civil liability in cases like these, they would face other government sanctions—the targeted withdrawal of government co-operation, grants, or other benefits.
For example, in New Jersey, the state cancelled the tax-exempt status of a Methodist-run boardwalk pavilion used for religious services because the religious organization would not host a same-sex "wedding" there. San Francisco dropped its $3.5 million in social service contracts with the Salvation Army because it refused to recognize same-sex "domestic partnerships" in its employee benefits policies. Similarly, Portland, Maine, required Catholic Charities to extend spousal employee benefits to same-sex "domestic partners" as a condition of receiving city housing and community development funds.
In short, the refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots, subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures reserved for racists. These punishments will only grow more frequent and more severe if civil "marriage" is redefined in additional jurisdictions. For then, government will compel special recognition of relationships that we the undersigned religious leaders and the communities of faith that we represent cannot, in conscience, affirm. Because law and government not only coerce and incentivize but also teach, these sanctions would lend greater moral legitimacy to private efforts to punish those who defend marriage.
Therefore, we encourage all people of good will to protect marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and to consider carefully the far-reaching consequences for the religious freedom of all Americans if marriage is redefined. We especially urge those entrusted with the public good to support laws that uphold the time-honored definition of marriage, and so avoid threatening the religious freedom of countless institutions and citizens in this country. Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the fabric of this nation.
May we all work together to strengthen and preserve the unique meaning of marriage and the precious gift of religious freedom.
Sincerely Yours:
| Rev. Leith Anderson President National Association of Evangelicals Johann Christoph Arnold Senior Pastor Bruderhof Communities Randall A. Bach President Open Bible Churches Dr. Gary M. Benedict President The Christian and Missionary Alliance The Rev. John F. Bradosky Bishop North American Lutheran Church Glenn Burris, Jr. President The Foursquare Church Bishop H. David Burton Presiding Bishop The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Dr. Ronald W. Carpenter, Sr. Presiding Bishop International Pentecostal Holiness Church Rabbi Abba Cohen Vice President for Federal Affairs Washington Director Agudath Israel of America Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone Bishop of Oakland Chairman, USCCB Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage Nathan J. Diament Executive Director for Public Policy Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Dr. Barrett Duke Vice President for Public Policy and Research Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission The Most Rev. Robert Duncan Archbishop, Anglican Church in North America Bishop, Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh Rev. Jim Eschenbrenner Executive Pastor General Council of Christian Union Churches Dr. William J. Hamel President Evangelical Free Church of America Rev. Dr. Ron Hamilton Conference Minister Conservative Congregational Christian Conference Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison President Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod John Hopler Director Great Commission Churches | Dr. Bill Hossler President Missionary Church, Inc. Clyde M. Hughes General Overseer International Pentecostal Church of Christ Rev. Kenneth D. Hunn Executive Director The Brethren Church David W. Kendall Bishop Free Methodist Church USA Dr. Richard Land President Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission Most Rev. William E. Lori Bishop of Bridgeport Chairman, USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty Dr. Jo Anne Lyon Chair Board of General Superintendents The Wesleyan Church James W. Murray Executive Director General Association of General Baptists Most Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades Bishop of Ft. Wayne - South Bend Chairman, USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth Commissioner William A. Roberts National Commander The Salvation Army Rocky Rocholl President Fellowship of Evangelical Churches Rev. Samuel Rodriguez President National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference David T. Roller Bishop Free Methodist Church USA Matthew A. Thomas Bishop Free Methodist Church USA Dr. Joseph Tkach President & Pastor General Grace Communion International Berten A. Waggoner National Director Vineyard USA W. Phillip Whipple Bishop United Brethren in Christ Church, USA Dr. John P. Williams, Jr. Regional Director Evangelical Friends Church, North America David P. Wilson General Secretary Church of the Nazarene Dr. George O. Wood General Superintendent Assemblies of God |
Executive Summary:
We, as representatives of a broad array of faiths, join together to affirm that marriage, the union of one man and one woman, must be promoted and protected for its own sake and for the common good. We also agree that redefining marriage will incur grave consequences, including a deleterious impact on religious liberty. Altering the definition of marriage will change not just one law but hundreds, even thousands, of laws. There will be government mandates, requiring the recognition and accommodation of so-called same-sex "marriages," that pose a critical threat to institutions and individuals who for reasons of faith and conscience will resist the law’s compulsion. Cases involving criminal and civil penalties and the denial of grants and other government benefits are already occurring and will only increase in number and severity if more jurisdictions redefine marriage. The law not only will coerce and impose disincentives, but will also teach that religious objectors must be marked as if they were bigots. We encourage all people of good will to protect marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and to consider carefully the far-reaching consequences for the religious freedom of all Americans if marriage is redefined. May all of us work together to strengthen and preserve the unique meaning of marriage and the precious gift of religious liberty.
Signatories come from the following communities:
| Agudath Israel of America Anglican Church in North America Assemblies of God The Brethren Church Bruderhof Communities The Christian & Missionary Alliance The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church of the Nazarene Conservative Congregational Christian Conference Evangelical Free Church of America Evangelical Friends Church, North America Fellowship of Evangelical Churches The Foursquare Church Free Methodist Church USA General Association of General Baptists General Council of Christian Union Churches Grace Communion International | Great Commission Churches International Pentecostal Church of Christ International Pentecostal Holiness Church Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod Missionary Church, Inc. National Association of Evangelicals National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference North American Lutheran Church Open Bible Churches The Salvation Army Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission United Brethren in Christ Church, USA United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America Vineyard USA The Wesleyan Church |
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Repost: Marriage and Our Culture
Retired ELCA Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom has chimed in on the "same-sex marriage" debate in Minnesota via an op-ed in the Minneapolis StarTribune in the form of a fraternal letter to the Catholic Bishops in Minnesota. I've posted on this matter a few times in this blog -- click the Catagory Label for "Marriage" that appears down the right column of this blog to find all my posts related to the subject.
I invite you to check them out, particularly J. Budziszewski's "So-Called Marriage" and Religion, Reason, and Same-Sex Marriage. There are others, too, but the most important one I'm reposting -- again -- below.
Secularists and "progressive" Christians (like Bishop Chilstrom) would have us to believe that this is solely a "religious" issue being imposed on our society. It is not. Rather (as I wrote the first time I re-posted this), their claim
Talking about Marriage and our Culture
I meant to post this several months ago, but in the light of the California Supreme Court's redefinition of "marriage" this week and the conversation it is eliciting in some segments of the Church, it seemed more urgent to transcribe this portion of an interview with John Witte, Jr., from a recent edition of Mars Hill Audio. In the interview, which draws upon his book God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans, 2006), Prof. Witte addresses why law needs to be understood in the context of its relation with other practices and disciplines, including religion.
Ken Meyers' last question in the interview is:
"One of the areas in which there's a lot of contention about morality and law right now are marriage laws. I know you've spent a lot of time studying marriage and family -- history of marriage and family. It seems that in some circles there's a reluctance to assert that our laws concerning family, what constitutes a family, what constitutes a marriage, should be based in some moral vision, that that itself is seen as a transgression of the Social Contract for a kind of pluralism. You think that it’s entirely possible to make moral arguments in the construction of laws governing family."
Witte responds:
"I think those are absolutely imperative to offer as alternatives in the discourse.
"It’s important to remember that the architects of our understanding of a social and government Contract (people like John Locke or Jean Jacques Rousseau and some of their American followers and contemporaries) had as their First Contract -- before the contract of society and the contract of government -- the First Contract was the Contract of Marriage. In Locke’s First and Second Treatise that’s presupposed. In Jean Jacques Rousseau’s work that’s presupposed. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both presupposed that as well.
"The Marital Contract is the First Contract. It's the First School of Justice. It's the first chrysalis in which nurture, education, and habits of citizenship are encouraged in the population. It's only on the strength of that contract, from atavistic individuals in nature to this first institution, that we can then begin to build a notion of a Social Contract and, beyond that, a Government Contract.
"And that's an ancient insight that goes all the way back to Aristotle, that goes back to his "Politics" in Nicomachean Ethics, where he said the first institution of the polis is the family.
"So if that is the presupposition in Western understandings of how we organize our polities, it seems to me that it is a non-starter for us to be debating the essentials of marital and family norms, and procedures and policies, and exclude from that discourse all of the rich cultural, philosophical, and theological traditions that have helped to cultivate our understanding of marriage and family, and how it works within the broader polity.
"And religious communities that bracket their theological discourse, that choose to forego a deep reflection on the goods and the goals of what marriage and family life are all about in an attempt to be politically correct, or an attempt to avoid a political fence -- or in an attempt to First Amendment-ize themselves per the caricature of the separation of Church and State -- in my view, both are engaging in theological bracketing and trimming that's unnecessary. What they're ultimately engaging in [is] an omission from the discourse that's going to harm the polity in the long term.
"And that’s not to say that there's a preordained result about how these marriage and family debates are going to work out at the State level. But it is to say that, if we're going to have a real, serious discourse about changing 2500-year-old patterns about how marriage and family life come together in the West, we better do that with full ventilation of all of the philosophical, theological, moral, economic, sociological issues at stake."
Thus far, I see few signs of a "real, serious discourse" in my "religious community."
John Witte, Jr., is the Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics at Emory Universty, where he is also serves as Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. You can download or purchase the entire interview here. While you're at it, subscribe to Mars Hill Audio.
I invite you to check them out, particularly J. Budziszewski's "So-Called Marriage" and Religion, Reason, and Same-Sex Marriage. There are others, too, but the most important one I'm reposting -- again -- below.
Secularists and "progressive" Christians (like Bishop Chilstrom) would have us to believe that this is solely a "religious" issue being imposed on our society. It is not. Rather (as I wrote the first time I re-posted this), their claim
relies (and apparently successfully) on the common ignorance of the history of Western Civilization and American law.Marriage is important to our society. Here you will get a reminder of just how key it is.
Talking about Marriage and our Culture
(originally posted 17 May 2008, with links updated 5 May 2019)
I meant to post this several months ago, but in the light of the California Supreme Court's redefinition of "marriage" this week and the conversation it is eliciting in some segments of the Church, it seemed more urgent to transcribe this portion of an interview with John Witte, Jr., from a recent edition of Mars Hill Audio. In the interview, which draws upon his book God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans, 2006), Prof. Witte addresses why law needs to be understood in the context of its relation with other practices and disciplines, including religion.
Ken Meyers' last question in the interview is:
"One of the areas in which there's a lot of contention about morality and law right now are marriage laws. I know you've spent a lot of time studying marriage and family -- history of marriage and family. It seems that in some circles there's a reluctance to assert that our laws concerning family, what constitutes a family, what constitutes a marriage, should be based in some moral vision, that that itself is seen as a transgression of the Social Contract for a kind of pluralism. You think that it’s entirely possible to make moral arguments in the construction of laws governing family."
Witte responds:
"I think those are absolutely imperative to offer as alternatives in the discourse.
"It’s important to remember that the architects of our understanding of a social and government Contract (people like John Locke or Jean Jacques Rousseau and some of their American followers and contemporaries) had as their First Contract -- before the contract of society and the contract of government -- the First Contract was the Contract of Marriage. In Locke’s First and Second Treatise that’s presupposed. In Jean Jacques Rousseau’s work that’s presupposed. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both presupposed that as well.
"The Marital Contract is the First Contract. It's the First School of Justice. It's the first chrysalis in which nurture, education, and habits of citizenship are encouraged in the population. It's only on the strength of that contract, from atavistic individuals in nature to this first institution, that we can then begin to build a notion of a Social Contract and, beyond that, a Government Contract.
"And that's an ancient insight that goes all the way back to Aristotle, that goes back to his "Politics" in Nicomachean Ethics, where he said the first institution of the polis is the family.
"So if that is the presupposition in Western understandings of how we organize our polities, it seems to me that it is a non-starter for us to be debating the essentials of marital and family norms, and procedures and policies, and exclude from that discourse all of the rich cultural, philosophical, and theological traditions that have helped to cultivate our understanding of marriage and family, and how it works within the broader polity.
"And religious communities that bracket their theological discourse, that choose to forego a deep reflection on the goods and the goals of what marriage and family life are all about in an attempt to be politically correct, or an attempt to avoid a political fence -- or in an attempt to First Amendment-ize themselves per the caricature of the separation of Church and State -- in my view, both are engaging in theological bracketing and trimming that's unnecessary. What they're ultimately engaging in [is] an omission from the discourse that's going to harm the polity in the long term.
"And that’s not to say that there's a preordained result about how these marriage and family debates are going to work out at the State level. But it is to say that, if we're going to have a real, serious discourse about changing 2500-year-old patterns about how marriage and family life come together in the West, we better do that with full ventilation of all of the philosophical, theological, moral, economic, sociological issues at stake."
Thus far, I see few signs of a "real, serious discourse" in my "religious community."
John Witte, Jr., is the Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics at Emory Universty, where he is also serves as Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. You can download or purchase the entire interview here. While you're at it, subscribe to Mars Hill Audio.
Monday, July 11, 2011
"Yes, we have a big catechetical challenge..."
The Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, reflects on further on the New York legislature's re-definition of marriage in his blog, The Gospel in the Digital Age. Note especially his reminder of something the media and proponents of this change keep steering us away from, that marriage is "at the very foundation of civilization, which the state has the duty to defend and protect, not to mutate." That sort of statement ought not surprise any of my readers. Archbishop Dolan says a lot more, and I encourage you to ponder his words -- all of them.
Hat tip to Touchstone's Mere Comments.
Almost two weeks ago — hauntingly, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, whom King Herod would behead because the saint dared to defend the God-given truth about marriage — our state sadly attempted a re-definition of marriage. Is there anything left to say?
Yes.
For one, thanks to those courageous millions who valiantly fought this unfortunate project of social engineering. You can hold your heads high. Sanely, civilly, thoughtfully, vigorously . . . you did not cave-in. The forces on the other side were a Goliath indeed — with tons of money, “glitterati” from entertainment circles, political powerbrokers, and the media — but you proved a worthy David.
You will understand my special word of gratitude to people of faith — evangelicals, Mennonites, Jews, Moslem, Catholics, Amish, and so many more, led often by African-American and Latino believers — who simply believe that marriage is a given, at the very foundation of civilization, which the state has the duty to defend and protect, not to mutate.
My brother bishops of New York were particularly prophetic. When I arrived here a little over two-years ago, they told me realistically that we faced a looming battle over the defense of marriage. They advised me that the odds were not in our favor, and that some experts were even suggesting that we give-in and not put up a fight.
But they were also resolute in their conviction that such would have been a dereliction of duty. As Blessed John Paul II often commented, the Church is “counter-cultural,” like Jesus, often at odds with what passes as chic, enlightened, and progressive. In their writings, sermons, personal lobbying, interviews, and our common statements — backed up by indefatigable efforts by our New York State Catholic Conference, bolstered by ecumenical and inter-religious cooperation, and, especially, supported by countless thousands of our faithful Catholic people (one legislator told me he received 47,000 e-mails against the measure from the Catholic Advocacy Network) — the bishops were on the frontiers. We have been bloodied, and bruised, and, yes, for the moment, we have been defeated. But, we’re used to that. So was the Founder of our Church.
Two, the Church neither has nor wants political “clout.” As Cardinal John O’Connor commented, “The only ‘clout’ the Church really has is God’s Truth, the assurance of His grace, and the simple yet sincere conviction of our people.” Blessed John Paul II again reminds us that “The Church never imposes, she only proposes.” And as our current Holy Father has often observed, all the Church wants is its freedom to serve humanity by bringing the light of the gospel to the world.
But, three, we do worry indeed about this freedom of religion. Editorials already call for the removal of guarantees of religious liberty, with crusaders calling for people of faith to be coerced to acceptance of this redefinition. If the experience of those few other states and countries where this is already law is any indication, the churches, and believers, will soon be harassed, threatened, and hauled into court for their conviction that marriage is between one man, one woman, forever, bringing children into the world.
Four, the real forces of “intolerance” were unmasked here. The caricature, of course, is that those defending traditional marriage were the right-wing bigots and bullies. However, as one out-of-state journalist, who was following the debate closely, commented to me, “From my read of the columns, blogs, and rhetoric, it’s not your side that’s lobbing the grenades.” A Catholic who wrote to criticize me for my defense of marriage still conceded, “But I must confess that I am sickened by the amount of anti-Catholic venom that has surfaced in this debate.” As one respected columnist has observed, the problem is not homophobia but theophobia — a hatred by some of God, faith, religion, and the Church.
Five, though, if we did hurt anybody in our defense of marriage, I apologize. We tried our best to insist from the start that our goal was pro-marriage, never anti-gay. But, I’m afraid some within the gay community were offended. As I replied recently to a reporter who asked if I had any message to the gay community, “Yes: I love you. Each morning I pray with and for you and your true happiness and well-being. I am honored that so many of you are at home within our Catholic family, where, like the rest of us, we try, with the help of God’s grace and mercy, to conform our lives to Jesus and His message. If I have offended any of you in my strenuous defense of marriage, I apologize, and assure you it was unintentional.
Point six, the Church has always stood-up for marriage — one man and one woman, united in lifelong and faithful love, leading to new life in children – whenever and wherever it was in danger. Veterans my age and over can remember sixty years ago when we fought widespread, no-fault divorce, convinced it would lead to a cheapening of the marriage bond and harm our kids (as, of course, scholarly studies now report has, indeed, happened). Recall how the Church resisted the “contraceptive mentality,” fearing it would rupture the sacred bond between love and the procreation of children. Then, remember how the Church sounded the alarm over rising rates of promiscuity, adultery, pre-marital sex, and cohabitation prior to or instead of marriage. And now we ring the steeple bell again at this latest dilution of the authentic understanding of marriage, worried that the next step will be another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity. If you think I’m exaggerating, within days of the passage of this bill, one major newspaper ran a flattering profile of a proponent of what was called “nonmonogamy.” Apparently, “nonmonogamy” is the idea that society is unrealistic to think that one man and one woman should remain faithful in marriage, and that openness to some infidelity should be the norm!
Let me say it again. None of this is anti-anybody, but simply pro marriage.
(By the way, as Professor Robert George at Princeton University eloquently points out, in warning about promiscuity, divorce, cohabitation instead of marriage, adultery, and “same-sex marriage,” the Church is hardly some shrill, bitter, reactionary, naysaying prude, but actually prophetically right-on-target. Recent studies by people such as Myron Magnet and Kay Hymowitz show that the weakening of stable marriage and families is the cause of most social and cultural woes, especially burdensome on poor women and children.)
Finally, last point, for us in the Church, not much changes. We continue to hold fast to the God-given definition of marriage, and acknowledge that no unfortunate legislative attempt can alter reality and morality. Yes, we have a big catechetical challenge, in that we have to admit that quite a few people no longer hold to this timeless moral truth. (Although I still believe most people do; thus the fear of a referendum on the issue by those who still claim this is a “grassroots movement” sweeping the nation.) Yes, we do have our work cut out for us, as even some Catholics, and, scandalously, even political leaders who claim to be Catholic, tell us the Church is “out of it,” and has no claim on truth.
So, we try our best to witness to the truth, encouraging our married couples and their kids to be loving, radiant, “lights to the world.” We acknowledge that, as St. Augustine taught, if something is wrong, even if everybody else is doing it, it’s still wrong; and, if something is right, even if nobody else is doing it anymore, it’s still right. Like St. Thomas More, we’re willing to take the heat and even lose our head from following a conscience properly formed by God’s revelation and the teaching of His Church, even if it is politically incorrect, and clashes with the King’s demands to re-define marriage.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Thank you, Archbishop Dolan, for your continued forthright teaching.
Hat tip to Touchstone's Mere Comments.
Some Afterthoughts
Almost two weeks ago — hauntingly, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, whom King Herod would behead because the saint dared to defend the God-given truth about marriage — our state sadly attempted a re-definition of marriage. Is there anything left to say?
Yes.
For one, thanks to those courageous millions who valiantly fought this unfortunate project of social engineering. You can hold your heads high. Sanely, civilly, thoughtfully, vigorously . . . you did not cave-in. The forces on the other side were a Goliath indeed — with tons of money, “glitterati” from entertainment circles, political powerbrokers, and the media — but you proved a worthy David.
You will understand my special word of gratitude to people of faith — evangelicals, Mennonites, Jews, Moslem, Catholics, Amish, and so many more, led often by African-American and Latino believers — who simply believe that marriage is a given, at the very foundation of civilization, which the state has the duty to defend and protect, not to mutate.
My brother bishops of New York were particularly prophetic. When I arrived here a little over two-years ago, they told me realistically that we faced a looming battle over the defense of marriage. They advised me that the odds were not in our favor, and that some experts were even suggesting that we give-in and not put up a fight.
But they were also resolute in their conviction that such would have been a dereliction of duty. As Blessed John Paul II often commented, the Church is “counter-cultural,” like Jesus, often at odds with what passes as chic, enlightened, and progressive. In their writings, sermons, personal lobbying, interviews, and our common statements — backed up by indefatigable efforts by our New York State Catholic Conference, bolstered by ecumenical and inter-religious cooperation, and, especially, supported by countless thousands of our faithful Catholic people (one legislator told me he received 47,000 e-mails against the measure from the Catholic Advocacy Network) — the bishops were on the frontiers. We have been bloodied, and bruised, and, yes, for the moment, we have been defeated. But, we’re used to that. So was the Founder of our Church.
Two, the Church neither has nor wants political “clout.” As Cardinal John O’Connor commented, “The only ‘clout’ the Church really has is God’s Truth, the assurance of His grace, and the simple yet sincere conviction of our people.” Blessed John Paul II again reminds us that “The Church never imposes, she only proposes.” And as our current Holy Father has often observed, all the Church wants is its freedom to serve humanity by bringing the light of the gospel to the world.
But, three, we do worry indeed about this freedom of religion. Editorials already call for the removal of guarantees of religious liberty, with crusaders calling for people of faith to be coerced to acceptance of this redefinition. If the experience of those few other states and countries where this is already law is any indication, the churches, and believers, will soon be harassed, threatened, and hauled into court for their conviction that marriage is between one man, one woman, forever, bringing children into the world.
Four, the real forces of “intolerance” were unmasked here. The caricature, of course, is that those defending traditional marriage were the right-wing bigots and bullies. However, as one out-of-state journalist, who was following the debate closely, commented to me, “From my read of the columns, blogs, and rhetoric, it’s not your side that’s lobbing the grenades.” A Catholic who wrote to criticize me for my defense of marriage still conceded, “But I must confess that I am sickened by the amount of anti-Catholic venom that has surfaced in this debate.” As one respected columnist has observed, the problem is not homophobia but theophobia — a hatred by some of God, faith, religion, and the Church.
Five, though, if we did hurt anybody in our defense of marriage, I apologize. We tried our best to insist from the start that our goal was pro-marriage, never anti-gay. But, I’m afraid some within the gay community were offended. As I replied recently to a reporter who asked if I had any message to the gay community, “Yes: I love you. Each morning I pray with and for you and your true happiness and well-being. I am honored that so many of you are at home within our Catholic family, where, like the rest of us, we try, with the help of God’s grace and mercy, to conform our lives to Jesus and His message. If I have offended any of you in my strenuous defense of marriage, I apologize, and assure you it was unintentional.
Point six, the Church has always stood-up for marriage — one man and one woman, united in lifelong and faithful love, leading to new life in children – whenever and wherever it was in danger. Veterans my age and over can remember sixty years ago when we fought widespread, no-fault divorce, convinced it would lead to a cheapening of the marriage bond and harm our kids (as, of course, scholarly studies now report has, indeed, happened). Recall how the Church resisted the “contraceptive mentality,” fearing it would rupture the sacred bond between love and the procreation of children. Then, remember how the Church sounded the alarm over rising rates of promiscuity, adultery, pre-marital sex, and cohabitation prior to or instead of marriage. And now we ring the steeple bell again at this latest dilution of the authentic understanding of marriage, worried that the next step will be another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity. If you think I’m exaggerating, within days of the passage of this bill, one major newspaper ran a flattering profile of a proponent of what was called “nonmonogamy.” Apparently, “nonmonogamy” is the idea that society is unrealistic to think that one man and one woman should remain faithful in marriage, and that openness to some infidelity should be the norm!
Let me say it again. None of this is anti-anybody, but simply pro marriage.
(By the way, as Professor Robert George at Princeton University eloquently points out, in warning about promiscuity, divorce, cohabitation instead of marriage, adultery, and “same-sex marriage,” the Church is hardly some shrill, bitter, reactionary, naysaying prude, but actually prophetically right-on-target. Recent studies by people such as Myron Magnet and Kay Hymowitz show that the weakening of stable marriage and families is the cause of most social and cultural woes, especially burdensome on poor women and children.)
Finally, last point, for us in the Church, not much changes. We continue to hold fast to the God-given definition of marriage, and acknowledge that no unfortunate legislative attempt can alter reality and morality. Yes, we have a big catechetical challenge, in that we have to admit that quite a few people no longer hold to this timeless moral truth. (Although I still believe most people do; thus the fear of a referendum on the issue by those who still claim this is a “grassroots movement” sweeping the nation.) Yes, we do have our work cut out for us, as even some Catholics, and, scandalously, even political leaders who claim to be Catholic, tell us the Church is “out of it,” and has no claim on truth.
So, we try our best to witness to the truth, encouraging our married couples and their kids to be loving, radiant, “lights to the world.” We acknowledge that, as St. Augustine taught, if something is wrong, even if everybody else is doing it, it’s still wrong; and, if something is right, even if nobody else is doing it anymore, it’s still right. Like St. Thomas More, we’re willing to take the heat and even lose our head from following a conscience properly formed by God’s revelation and the teaching of His Church, even if it is politically incorrect, and clashes with the King’s demands to re-define marriage.
on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Thank you, Archbishop Dolan, for your continued forthright teaching.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
New York Bishops' Statement
I've seen and heard lots of comments about what happened in New York State yesterday. This is one of the few to which I'd offer my assent. zip+
Statement of the Bishops of
The passage by the Legislature of a bill to alter radically and forever humanity's historic understanding of marriage leaves us deeply disappointed and troubled.
We strongly uphold the Catholic Church's clear teaching that we always treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with respect, dignity and love. But we just as strongly affirm that marriage is the joining of one man and one woman in a lifelong, loving union that is open to children, ordered for the good of those children and the spouses themselves. This definition cannot change, though we realize that our beliefs about the nature of marriage will continue to be ridiculed, and that some will even now attempt to enact government sanctions against churches and religious organizations that preach these timeless truths.
We worry that both marriage and the family will be undermined by this tragic presumption of government in passing this legislation that attempts to redefine these cornerstones of civilization.
Our society must regain what it appears to have lost – a true understanding of the meaning and the place of marriage, as revealed by God, grounded in nature, and respected by America's foundational principles.
+Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York
+Howard J. Hubbard
Bishop of Albany
+Nicholas DiMarzio
Bishop of Brooklyn
+Edward U. Kmiec
Bishop of Buffalo
+Terry R. LaValley
Bishop of Ogdensburg
+Matthew H. Clark
Bishop of Rochester
+William F. Murphy
Bishop of Rockville Centre
+Robert J. Cunningham
Bishop of Syracuse
Hat tip to Canon Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine.
Statement of the Bishops of
New York State
The passage by the Legislature of a bill to alter radically and forever humanity's historic understanding of marriage leaves us deeply disappointed and troubled.
We strongly uphold the Catholic Church's clear teaching that we always treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with respect, dignity and love. But we just as strongly affirm that marriage is the joining of one man and one woman in a lifelong, loving union that is open to children, ordered for the good of those children and the spouses themselves. This definition cannot change, though we realize that our beliefs about the nature of marriage will continue to be ridiculed, and that some will even now attempt to enact government sanctions against churches and religious organizations that preach these timeless truths.
We worry that both marriage and the family will be undermined by this tragic presumption of government in passing this legislation that attempts to redefine these cornerstones of civilization.
Our society must regain what it appears to have lost – a true understanding of the meaning and the place of marriage, as revealed by God, grounded in nature, and respected by America's foundational principles.
Archbishop of New York
+Howard J. Hubbard
Bishop of Albany
+Nicholas DiMarzio
Bishop of Brooklyn
+Edward U. Kmiec
Bishop of Buffalo
+Terry R. LaValley
Bishop of Ogdensburg
+Matthew H. Clark
Bishop of Rochester
+William F. Murphy
Bishop of Rockville Centre
+Robert J. Cunningham
Bishop of Syracuse
Hat tip to Canon Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
R. R. Reno: The Preferential Option for the Poor
Following is the middle section of R. R. Reno's opening essay in "The Public Square" section of the latest (June/July 2011) issue of First Things. In it, Prof. Reno addresses the question of just who are "the poor" in America, and how is it that they are poor. spt+
Today, there is certainly material want in America. People who have lost their jobs can’t pay rent. Unmarried young women who have courageously refused to abort their children struggle to make ends meet. Illegal immigrants are exploited; the homeless need shelter; the hungry, food.
Some say the best way to meet these needs involves adopting tax policies designed to stimulate economic growth, along with redoubled efforts of private charity. Others emphasize public programs and increased government intervention. It’s an argument worth having, of course, and to a great degree our contemporary political debates turn on these issues. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there is a unifying consensus: The moral character of a nation is measured to a large degree by its concern for the poor.
On this point I agree with many friends on the left who argue that America doesn’t have a proper concern for the poor. Our failure, however, is not merely economic. In fact, it’s not even mostly economic. A visit to the poorest neighborhoods of New York City or the most impoverished towns of rural Iowa immediately reveals poverty more profound and more pervasive than simple material want. Drugs, crime, sexual exploitation, the collapse of marriage—the sheer brutality and ugliness of the lives of many of the poor in America is shocking. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, poverty is not only material; it is also moral, cultural, and religious (CCC 2444), and just these sorts of poverty are painfully evident today. Increasing the minimum wage or the earned-income tax credit won’t help alleviate this impoverishment.
We can’t restore a culture of marriage, for example, by spending more money on it. A recent report on marriage in America from the National Marriage Project under the leadership of W. Bradford Wilcox, When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America, paints a grim picture. The lower you are on the social scale, the more likely you are to be divorced, to cohabit while unmarried, to have more sexual partners, and to commit adultery. One of the most arresting statistics concerns children born out of wedlock. In the late 2000s, among women fifteen to forty-four years old who have dropped out of high school, more than half of those who give birth do so while unmarried. And this is true not only of those at the bottom. Among high-school graduates and women with technical training—in other words, the struggling middle class—nearly half of the women who give birth are unmarried.
A friend of mine who works as a nurse’s aide recently observed that his coworkers careen from personal crisis to personal crisis. As he told me, “Only yesterday I had to hear the complaints of one woman who was fighting with both her husband and her boyfriend.” It’s this atmosphere of personal disintegration and not the drudgery of the job—which is by no means negligible for a nurse’s aide—that he finds demoralizing.
Teachers can tell similar tales. The wife of another friend told me that her middle-school students in a small town in Iowa were perplexed by Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter: “What’s the big deal about Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale gettin’ it on?” It was a sentiment that she wearily told me was of a piece with the meth labs, malt liquor, teen pregnancies, and a general atmosphere of social collapse.
Preferential option for the poor. A Christian who hopes to follow the teachings of Jesus needs to reckon with a singular fact about American poverty: Its deepest and most debilitating deficits are moral, not financial; the most serious deprivations are cultural, not economic. Many people living at the bottom of American society have cell phones, flat-screen TVs, and some of the other goodies of consumer culture. But their lives are a mess.
And why? It’s a complicated question that I can’t convincingly answer here. But I want to end with a suggestion, if not an argument.
Read it all here (no subscription necessary). This is the first issue of First Things under the editorship of Rusty Reno, a lay theologian at Creighton University and former Episcopalian who was received into the Catholic Church as few years ago. And it's articles and essays like this that made FT a "must read" under founding editor Richard John Neuhaus.
Today, there is certainly material want in America. People who have lost their jobs can’t pay rent. Unmarried young women who have courageously refused to abort their children struggle to make ends meet. Illegal immigrants are exploited; the homeless need shelter; the hungry, food.
Some say the best way to meet these needs involves adopting tax policies designed to stimulate economic growth, along with redoubled efforts of private charity. Others emphasize public programs and increased government intervention. It’s an argument worth having, of course, and to a great degree our contemporary political debates turn on these issues. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there is a unifying consensus: The moral character of a nation is measured to a large degree by its concern for the poor.
On this point I agree with many friends on the left who argue that America doesn’t have a proper concern for the poor. Our failure, however, is not merely economic. In fact, it’s not even mostly economic. A visit to the poorest neighborhoods of New York City or the most impoverished towns of rural Iowa immediately reveals poverty more profound and more pervasive than simple material want. Drugs, crime, sexual exploitation, the collapse of marriage—the sheer brutality and ugliness of the lives of many of the poor in America is shocking. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, poverty is not only material; it is also moral, cultural, and religious (CCC 2444), and just these sorts of poverty are painfully evident today. Increasing the minimum wage or the earned-income tax credit won’t help alleviate this impoverishment.
We can’t restore a culture of marriage, for example, by spending more money on it. A recent report on marriage in America from the National Marriage Project under the leadership of W. Bradford Wilcox, When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America, paints a grim picture. The lower you are on the social scale, the more likely you are to be divorced, to cohabit while unmarried, to have more sexual partners, and to commit adultery. One of the most arresting statistics concerns children born out of wedlock. In the late 2000s, among women fifteen to forty-four years old who have dropped out of high school, more than half of those who give birth do so while unmarried. And this is true not only of those at the bottom. Among high-school graduates and women with technical training—in other words, the struggling middle class—nearly half of the women who give birth are unmarried.
A friend of mine who works as a nurse’s aide recently observed that his coworkers careen from personal crisis to personal crisis. As he told me, “Only yesterday I had to hear the complaints of one woman who was fighting with both her husband and her boyfriend.” It’s this atmosphere of personal disintegration and not the drudgery of the job—which is by no means negligible for a nurse’s aide—that he finds demoralizing.
Teachers can tell similar tales. The wife of another friend told me that her middle-school students in a small town in Iowa were perplexed by Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter: “What’s the big deal about Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale gettin’ it on?” It was a sentiment that she wearily told me was of a piece with the meth labs, malt liquor, teen pregnancies, and a general atmosphere of social collapse.
Preferential option for the poor. A Christian who hopes to follow the teachings of Jesus needs to reckon with a singular fact about American poverty: Its deepest and most debilitating deficits are moral, not financial; the most serious deprivations are cultural, not economic. Many people living at the bottom of American society have cell phones, flat-screen TVs, and some of the other goodies of consumer culture. But their lives are a mess.
And why? It’s a complicated question that I can’t convincingly answer here. But I want to end with a suggestion, if not an argument.
Read it all here (no subscription necessary). This is the first issue of First Things under the editorship of Rusty Reno, a lay theologian at Creighton University and former Episcopalian who was received into the Catholic Church as few years ago. And it's articles and essays like this that made FT a "must read" under founding editor Richard John Neuhaus.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Religion, Reason, and Same-Sex Marriage
Following up on his December 2010 Washington Post article, "On Gay Marriage, Stop Playing the Hate Card," Matthew J. Franck writes in the current (May 2011) issue of First Things:
In briefly rehearsing well-known defenses of conjugal marriage that others have elaborated elsewhere, I noted in the Post that marriage "has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that children will have mothers and fathers" and that same-sex unions are "not an expansion but a dismantling of the institution." The response of some readers was not merely that I had not fully fleshed out this argument (which I could readily admit) but that such statements did not even bear the marks of rationality—that they were so obviously wrong that only those in the grip of unreasoning hatred or bigotry could put them forward.
Some of our high public officials, unfortunately, have encouraged this kind of flattening and coarsening of our public discussion. Judge Joseph Tauro, of the federal district court in Boston, in ruling against the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (which defines marriage as between one man and one woman for the purposes of federal law), said last July that the difference between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples is a "distinction without meaning." How he claimed to know this, since he did not explain it, is anyone's guess, but it was enough for him to conclude that Congress, in passing DOMA, had acted on an "animus" that "targets" people on the basis of a "sexual orientation" of which Congress "disapproves." But DOMA was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, and signed by a Democratic president, for the express purpose of defending the right of the people in each state to govern themselves on the question of marriage. It would never even have been proposed in Congress but for the existence of a movement determined to make an end-run around the institutions of democratic decision-making—determined, that is, to persuade judges like Joseph Tauro to bend the Constitution to suit the purposes of a political agenda. DOMA is just what its title says it is—a defense of marriage against assault by a court-centered strategy. Given the feebleness of his arguments, it's a fair question just what "animus" the judge himself has toward people who disagree with him.
In late February, Judge Tauro's view was essentially adopted by the Obama administration, which announced that the Justice Department would no longer defend the constitutionality of section 3 of DOMA but would instead take the opposite position in federal courts. It is perfectly legitimate for presidents to assert their independent judgment about the constitutionality of the laws that govern us. But what passed for judgment in the administration's analysis was shockingly thin. The most substantial point made in Attorney General Eric Holder's letter to House Speaker John Boehner was that, during the 1996 debate on DOMA, some members of Congress had expressed "moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships—precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against."
The disapproval of "moral disapproval": This moves us closer to the heart of the matter. Not long after Judge Tauro's decision last summer came the ruling of Judge Vaughn Walker, of the federal district court in San Francisco, striking down California's Proposition 8, itself a defensive measure passed by a majority of the state's voters in 2008 after the state's supreme court invented a right of same-sex marriage under the California constitution. Judge Walker declared that there was no "rational basis" for Prop. 8. "Tradition alone," he wrote, "cannot form a rational basis for a law." Tradition normally has a presumption in its favor in such inquiries, but not for Judge Walker. He sniffed out what was really going on, declaring that "moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples." The law unavoidably speaks in the name of a community's moral vision, so to what did the judge really object? He called opposition to same-sex marriage a "private moral choice," with "private" meaning it was not entitled to enactment as public morality. Clearly, for Judge Walker, the reason for this conclusion lay in the second term of the phrase of his, "moral and religious views." In the most telling passage of his opinion, he claimed—as a "finding of fact," no less—that "religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful . . . harm gays and lesbians."
There we have it. Marriage only between a man and a woman is a mere "tradition" with no claim on our attention when a claim of "discrimination" is made on the other side. All that this tradition has going for it is the "moral and religious views" of its supporters. But the law embodies moral choices, so why is this moral viewpoint illegitimate as the basis of a law? The problem is that it is driven too much by the religious commitments of those who hold it—and so it must be dismissed from public life and relegated to the realm of "private moral choice," disallowed from enactment as the view of the majority in a democratic society. So toxic is it to hold certain religious views that merely believing them works a "harm" to other people. Those who hold these views must not only be prevented from enacting those views as the will of the democratic majority; they must, to the extent possible, be silenced in the public square. They must . . . shut up.
Read it all here. Prof. Franck is director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey.
In briefly rehearsing well-known defenses of conjugal marriage that others have elaborated elsewhere, I noted in the Post that marriage "has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that children will have mothers and fathers" and that same-sex unions are "not an expansion but a dismantling of the institution." The response of some readers was not merely that I had not fully fleshed out this argument (which I could readily admit) but that such statements did not even bear the marks of rationality—that they were so obviously wrong that only those in the grip of unreasoning hatred or bigotry could put them forward.
Some of our high public officials, unfortunately, have encouraged this kind of flattening and coarsening of our public discussion. Judge Joseph Tauro, of the federal district court in Boston, in ruling against the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (which defines marriage as between one man and one woman for the purposes of federal law), said last July that the difference between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples is a "distinction without meaning." How he claimed to know this, since he did not explain it, is anyone's guess, but it was enough for him to conclude that Congress, in passing DOMA, had acted on an "animus" that "targets" people on the basis of a "sexual orientation" of which Congress "disapproves." But DOMA was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, and signed by a Democratic president, for the express purpose of defending the right of the people in each state to govern themselves on the question of marriage. It would never even have been proposed in Congress but for the existence of a movement determined to make an end-run around the institutions of democratic decision-making—determined, that is, to persuade judges like Joseph Tauro to bend the Constitution to suit the purposes of a political agenda. DOMA is just what its title says it is—a defense of marriage against assault by a court-centered strategy. Given the feebleness of his arguments, it's a fair question just what "animus" the judge himself has toward people who disagree with him.
In late February, Judge Tauro's view was essentially adopted by the Obama administration, which announced that the Justice Department would no longer defend the constitutionality of section 3 of DOMA but would instead take the opposite position in federal courts. It is perfectly legitimate for presidents to assert their independent judgment about the constitutionality of the laws that govern us. But what passed for judgment in the administration's analysis was shockingly thin. The most substantial point made in Attorney General Eric Holder's letter to House Speaker John Boehner was that, during the 1996 debate on DOMA, some members of Congress had expressed "moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships—precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against."
The disapproval of "moral disapproval": This moves us closer to the heart of the matter. Not long after Judge Tauro's decision last summer came the ruling of Judge Vaughn Walker, of the federal district court in San Francisco, striking down California's Proposition 8, itself a defensive measure passed by a majority of the state's voters in 2008 after the state's supreme court invented a right of same-sex marriage under the California constitution. Judge Walker declared that there was no "rational basis" for Prop. 8. "Tradition alone," he wrote, "cannot form a rational basis for a law." Tradition normally has a presumption in its favor in such inquiries, but not for Judge Walker. He sniffed out what was really going on, declaring that "moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples." The law unavoidably speaks in the name of a community's moral vision, so to what did the judge really object? He called opposition to same-sex marriage a "private moral choice," with "private" meaning it was not entitled to enactment as public morality. Clearly, for Judge Walker, the reason for this conclusion lay in the second term of the phrase of his, "moral and religious views." In the most telling passage of his opinion, he claimed—as a "finding of fact," no less—that "religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful . . . harm gays and lesbians."
There we have it. Marriage only between a man and a woman is a mere "tradition" with no claim on our attention when a claim of "discrimination" is made on the other side. All that this tradition has going for it is the "moral and religious views" of its supporters. But the law embodies moral choices, so why is this moral viewpoint illegitimate as the basis of a law? The problem is that it is driven too much by the religious commitments of those who hold it—and so it must be dismissed from public life and relegated to the realm of "private moral choice," disallowed from enactment as the view of the majority in a democratic society. So toxic is it to hold certain religious views that merely believing them works a "harm" to other people. Those who hold these views must not only be prevented from enacting those views as the will of the democratic majority; they must, to the extent possible, be silenced in the public square. They must . . . shut up.
Read it all here. Prof. Franck is director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Times, They Are A-Changin'
Today has been my 52nd birthday.
It was also the day I presided at wedding for a young couple. They knew it was my birthday, but it seemed good to them that they get married on St. Patrick's Day and I am their pastor. And the groom's parents thought it was good that, as part of the post-wedding festivites that they treat me to a "birthday dinner" as the wedding party continued their celebration at one of the local Irish taverns. Peoria does St. Patrick's Day well. Very well.
The wedding was not at the church, so after the ceremony and the cake and punch, the wedding party undecorated the setting and then departed for Kelleher's, where there was a huge crowd. It's St. Patrick's Day, after all. The bride and groom, as often happens, had some things to take care of before they were able to join the rest of the people at this part of the post-wedding celebrations. But the father of the groom and I were able to find a place to sit and eat way in the back of the tavern with some other people who had nothing to do with the wedding at all. Because of the crowds, no formal reserved seating was possible, and people were sitting wherever there was room. But the women who had graciously let us sit at their table departed, and we knew that the bride and groom were about to arrive -- and we were able to hold those seats, telling people who walked inquiring about those seats that we were part of a wedding party and the couple was on their way.
Getting through the crowd of the tavern was not easy -- wall-to-wall people -- and the groom, still in his tux, arrived a couple of minutes before his bride, who was trying to negotiate in her wedding gown. Everyone else there had changed into more comfortable clothes, but I was attired in my suit with black shirt -- though I had removed my clerical collar.
As the groom was walking to the table, another patron asked one of our party if the seats across from us at the table were taken. "Yes," came the response, "they're for the rest of our wedding party."
And seeing the groom walking towards us in his tux, the patron looked directly at me and said, "Congratuations!"
It was also the day I presided at wedding for a young couple. They knew it was my birthday, but it seemed good to them that they get married on St. Patrick's Day and I am their pastor. And the groom's parents thought it was good that, as part of the post-wedding festivites that they treat me to a "birthday dinner" as the wedding party continued their celebration at one of the local Irish taverns. Peoria does St. Patrick's Day well. Very well.
The wedding was not at the church, so after the ceremony and the cake and punch, the wedding party undecorated the setting and then departed for Kelleher's, where there was a huge crowd. It's St. Patrick's Day, after all. The bride and groom, as often happens, had some things to take care of before they were able to join the rest of the people at this part of the post-wedding celebrations. But the father of the groom and I were able to find a place to sit and eat way in the back of the tavern with some other people who had nothing to do with the wedding at all. Because of the crowds, no formal reserved seating was possible, and people were sitting wherever there was room. But the women who had graciously let us sit at their table departed, and we knew that the bride and groom were about to arrive -- and we were able to hold those seats, telling people who walked inquiring about those seats that we were part of a wedding party and the couple was on their way.
Getting through the crowd of the tavern was not easy -- wall-to-wall people -- and the groom, still in his tux, arrived a couple of minutes before his bride, who was trying to negotiate in her wedding gown. Everyone else there had changed into more comfortable clothes, but I was attired in my suit with black shirt -- though I had removed my clerical collar.
As the groom was walking to the table, another patron asked one of our party if the seats across from us at the table were taken. "Yes," came the response, "they're for the rest of our wedding party."
And seeing the groom walking towards us in his tux, the patron looked directly at me and said, "Congratuations!"
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Mohler: "Why Proposition 8 Decision Matters"
Over at Christianity Today, Albert Mohler has an good commentary entitled "Why the Proposition 8 Decision Matters." He begins:
And note that last phrase in the quote: "thousands of years of human wisdom were discarded as irrational" — which fits well with what I've written here several times, such as on my "Marriage and Culture" repost, where I wrote:
Destroying a culture's foundation is not likely to be good for that culture, no? But we'll see what happens, won't we.
The importance of the decision handed down yesterday by U. S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker in California's Proposition 8 trial will be difficult to exaggerate. Proponents of same-sex marriage immediately declared a major victory—and for good reason. The editorial board of The New York Times declared the verdict "an instant landmark in American legal history," and so it is, even if later reversed upon appeal.Read it all here at CT or here on his own blog.
Judge Walker's decision is sweeping and comprehensive, basically affirming every argument and claim put forth by those demanding that California's Proposition 8 be declared unconstitutional. That proposition, affirmed by a clear majority of California voters, amended the state's constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In one brazen act of judicial energy, California's voters were told that they had no right to define marriage, and thousands of years of human wisdom were discarded as irrational.
And note that last phrase in the quote: "thousands of years of human wisdom were discarded as irrational" — which fits well with what I've written here several times, such as on my "Marriage and Culture" repost, where I wrote:
The claim by homosexual "advocates" is that the male-female distinction in marriage is only part of the "religious institution" of marriage, and thus ought not continue to be enshrined in civil law. It is a claim that relies (and apparently successfully) on the common ignorance of the history of Western Civilization and American law.and a thrust you'll find through several my posts with the category labels law and marriage. Unlike Mohler, I still hold some hope that the Supreme Court could reverse this baseless decision in a way that might also begin to turn the tide away from the catastrophic cultural conclusion that marriage — a matter at the very foundation of Western civilation — in the US is now permanently redefined.
Destroying a culture's foundation is not likely to be good for that culture, no? But we'll see what happens, won't we.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
J. Budziszewski's "So-Called Marriage"
I discovered J. Budziszewski reading First Things and I've never regretted it. Six years ago he wrote "So-Called Marriage" for Boundless Webzine, "An Online Magazine for Christian Singles and Young Adults" from Focus on the Family.
One recurring theme of Pastor Zip's Blog is that the arguments to uphold marriage in the West as between a man and a woman are not primarily religious or biblical -- and that Christians must know this. In this article, Prof. Budziszewski takes us to a conversation during office hours between a professor and a student who tried defending traditional marriage in class.
Hat tip to TitusOneNine.
One recurring theme of Pastor Zip's Blog is that the arguments to uphold marriage in the West as between a man and a woman are not primarily religious or biblical -- and that Christians must know this. In this article, Prof. Budziszewski takes us to a conversation during office hours between a professor and a student who tried defending traditional marriage in class.
"Could I just lay out my argument step by step?" she asked. "As soon as you spot a problem, you can say 'Stop' and I'll stop."Why should government protect marriage as a publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous relationship between a man and a woman? Read it all here.
I smiled. "Just what I was about to suggest."
"Okay. Homosexual acts are morally wrong because — "
"Stop."
"Already?"
"Yes. I agree that they're morally wrong, but that's not the place to start. You probably don't need to make that case at all."
"Why not?"
"Because the question on the table concerns enacted law — marriage law drawn up and enforced by the government — not moral law."
"Shouldn't they be related?"
"Certainly, but not in the way you're thinking. It's not a moral requirement that everything immoral should be illegal."
Hat tip to TitusOneNine.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Baltic Lutheran Bishops Send Message
MESSAGE FROM THE MEETING OF THE BALTIC LUTHERAN BISHOPS
The leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia and Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania met in Tallinn on the 3rd and 4th of November, 2009 to strengthen the long experience of unity of the Lutheran churches in the Baltic countries and to pray for the fellowship among Christians of the whole world, recognizing that in our time the ties among and within Christian communities in many places are put to the test. Bishops also discussed tasks and responsibilities of their churches looking for better ways of co-operation in the future. Christian faith means living with Christ and serving one another.
Especially at times of the economic difficulties when so many people have lost their external foothold and inner peace, we invite our compatriots to expand their appreciation of their Christian roots and to utilize all the spiritual wealth that is revealed in the Holy Scripture and offered to everyone who turns to God and puts their trust on Christ. The present crisis in the world economy is a fruit of a long term failure to act accordingly the principles which God has laid in the foundations of His creation. Consumerism and individualism of the modern society have taken their toll. To look for solution only by means of mending economy would mean to repeat the same mistake. A spiritual renewal must come first, a renewed sense of balance between rights and obligations, communion empathy, solidarity, and mutual support. We believe that the most convincing inner motivation for that change is found in an encounter of a person with the living Christ. To facilitate that encounter by word and deed is the first and foremost calling of the Christian church. Jesus Christ said: “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” (Matt.28:19-20)
The Christian community as a part of the society is not separated from issues related to the natural and human environment both locally and globally. Justice in the society and life quality of the people or protection of our Baltic Sea against the state negligence and corporate exploitation are some of the critical examples of this area of concern. As communities gathered around the Word of God and the keepers of Christian ethos our churches must address the spiritual root-causes of the contemporary problems. The churches must remember that the main instrument entrusted to them by God is His word – the law and the gospel - and the service to the neighbour in charity.
We also invite our political powers to realize more clearly the spiritual dimension of the human life and the good fruits of a positive co-operation between state, municipalities, schools and the church. Teaching and implementing Christian principles strenghthen the family as well as the whole community. Liberty of conscience and freedom of speech belong to the values of society defining religious life not only as a private but also as a public social right which has to be fostered. Religious education and religious studies form an inseparable part of this right.
At the present time a common witness of churches is vitally important, therefore we express our deepest concern about modern tendencies that weaken the fellowship among Christians and cause divisions in and among churches. The recent decisions made by some member churches of the Lutheran World Federation to approve of religious matrimony for couples of the same gender and to equate such conjugal life with marriage or to ordain non celibate homosexual persons for pastoral or episcopal office epitomize these tendencies that are tearing apart fellowhip among Christians. We affirm that the marriage is the conjugal life between a man and a woman and that a homosexual activity is incompatible with the discipleship of Christ. We believe that in following the modern trends, churches are departing from the apostolic doctrine of human sexuality and marriage. We see the Lutheran communion and eccumenical efforts endangered by such decisions and actions because they lead to a situation where the Lutheran churches, members of the Lutheran World Federation are not able to fully recognize each others ecclesiastical offices, to exchange the ministries and to participate together in preaching the Word and celebrating the sacraments.
We call upon our Lutheran sisters and brothers to unity and co-operation based upon the foundation of Holy Scripture and loyalty to the Lutheran confessions. Contemporary challenges demand a firm stand based upon timeless truths and values. The common understanding of the Gospel by churches is a treasure we cannot afford to lose and it needs to be passed on to the current and future generations. Our mission is to be faithful in that which we have received, God’s mercy. We are to serve our Lord and our neighbours thus until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God (Eph. 4:13)
Archbishop of Riga Janis Vanags
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Bishop of Daugavpils Einars Alpe
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Bishop of Liepaja Pavils Bruvers
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania
Archbishop Andres Põder
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Archbishop emeritus Kuno Pajula
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Bishop Einar Soone
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
The leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia and Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania met in Tallinn on the 3rd and 4th of November, 2009 to strengthen the long experience of unity of the Lutheran churches in the Baltic countries and to pray for the fellowship among Christians of the whole world, recognizing that in our time the ties among and within Christian communities in many places are put to the test. Bishops also discussed tasks and responsibilities of their churches looking for better ways of co-operation in the future. Christian faith means living with Christ and serving one another.
Especially at times of the economic difficulties when so many people have lost their external foothold and inner peace, we invite our compatriots to expand their appreciation of their Christian roots and to utilize all the spiritual wealth that is revealed in the Holy Scripture and offered to everyone who turns to God and puts their trust on Christ. The present crisis in the world economy is a fruit of a long term failure to act accordingly the principles which God has laid in the foundations of His creation. Consumerism and individualism of the modern society have taken their toll. To look for solution only by means of mending economy would mean to repeat the same mistake. A spiritual renewal must come first, a renewed sense of balance between rights and obligations, communion empathy, solidarity, and mutual support. We believe that the most convincing inner motivation for that change is found in an encounter of a person with the living Christ. To facilitate that encounter by word and deed is the first and foremost calling of the Christian church. Jesus Christ said: “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” (Matt.28:19-20)
The Christian community as a part of the society is not separated from issues related to the natural and human environment both locally and globally. Justice in the society and life quality of the people or protection of our Baltic Sea against the state negligence and corporate exploitation are some of the critical examples of this area of concern. As communities gathered around the Word of God and the keepers of Christian ethos our churches must address the spiritual root-causes of the contemporary problems. The churches must remember that the main instrument entrusted to them by God is His word – the law and the gospel - and the service to the neighbour in charity.
We also invite our political powers to realize more clearly the spiritual dimension of the human life and the good fruits of a positive co-operation between state, municipalities, schools and the church. Teaching and implementing Christian principles strenghthen the family as well as the whole community. Liberty of conscience and freedom of speech belong to the values of society defining religious life not only as a private but also as a public social right which has to be fostered. Religious education and religious studies form an inseparable part of this right.
At the present time a common witness of churches is vitally important, therefore we express our deepest concern about modern tendencies that weaken the fellowship among Christians and cause divisions in and among churches. The recent decisions made by some member churches of the Lutheran World Federation to approve of religious matrimony for couples of the same gender and to equate such conjugal life with marriage or to ordain non celibate homosexual persons for pastoral or episcopal office epitomize these tendencies that are tearing apart fellowhip among Christians. We affirm that the marriage is the conjugal life between a man and a woman and that a homosexual activity is incompatible with the discipleship of Christ. We believe that in following the modern trends, churches are departing from the apostolic doctrine of human sexuality and marriage. We see the Lutheran communion and eccumenical efforts endangered by such decisions and actions because they lead to a situation where the Lutheran churches, members of the Lutheran World Federation are not able to fully recognize each others ecclesiastical offices, to exchange the ministries and to participate together in preaching the Word and celebrating the sacraments.
We call upon our Lutheran sisters and brothers to unity and co-operation based upon the foundation of Holy Scripture and loyalty to the Lutheran confessions. Contemporary challenges demand a firm stand based upon timeless truths and values. The common understanding of the Gospel by churches is a treasure we cannot afford to lose and it needs to be passed on to the current and future generations. Our mission is to be faithful in that which we have received, God’s mercy. We are to serve our Lord and our neighbours thus until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God (Eph. 4:13)
Archbishop of Riga Janis Vanags
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Bishop of Daugavpils Einars Alpe
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Bishop of Liepaja Pavils Bruvers
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania
Archbishop Andres Põder
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Archbishop emeritus Kuno Pajula
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Bishop Einar Soone
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Saturday, October 24, 2009
An ELCA Confessional Crisis?
The adoption of Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust (the link here is to a pdf file of the Statement as it was adopted by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and not the version linked at this moment on the ELCA web page entitled "Adopted Social Statement") has precipitated a confessional crisis in our church, if my brother in the Holy Ministry and friend, Pastor Marshall Hahn, STS, is correct. I first saw this on ALPB Forum Online, but he also presented it at the most recent gathering of Call to Faithfulness, the Northeast Iowa Synod reform movement.
I think he's correct. But I'm wondering if the ELCA is capable of recognizing the possibility of a confessional crisis. Read it and weep.
The decisions surrounding human sexuality made at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have created a confessional crisis within the ELCA. The controversy over these decisions is not simply a disagreement over a social issue concerning how to treat homosexual relations in the church. These decisions touch upon the issues of the authority of Scripture and the role of the Lutheran Confessions in the life of the church.
The crisis these decisions have created can be shown by examining two crucial passages from the Social Statement, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. In Part IV (lines 620 - 628 in the Pre-Assembly Report) this statement reads:
These actions are contrary to and done in violation of the ELCA Confession of Faith, which reads, in part:
Given the confessional and constitutional commitment of the ELCA to the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions noted above, once a position is identified as that of the Confessions and the Christian tradition based on Scripture, there should be only two options for a Social Statement of the ELCA:
Such actions are in violation of our Confession of Faith. The ELCA ought to repent of these actions, take steps to render them ineffectual, and overturn them at the first opportunity. The synods and congregations of the ELCA ought to reject these actions and refuse to abide by them on the basis of our own and identical Confession of Faith. Each pastor in the ELCA ought to oppose these actions and decisions on the basis of the vows taken at ordination to teach and preach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and in light of the Lutheran Confessions.
If such actions are not taken, it leaves those who oppose the actions of the Churchwide Assembly in a state of confessional resistance to the ELCA, and possibly to the synods of which they are members. Appeals to unity and "churchmanship" are of secondary importance to the confessional commitment which undergirds this opposition. Even if one were to make a compelling argument from Scripture and the Confessions in support of the changes in ministry policies at this point, such an argument must also acknowledge and repent of the violation of our Confession of Faith which the actions of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have committed. If these actions are allowed to stand, it will undermine the very Confession of Faith by which we are united.
Pastor Marshall Hahn
St. Olaf Lutheran Parish - Marion & Norway Lutheran Churches
St. Olaf, Iowa
NE Iowa Synod, ELCA
I think he's correct. But I'm wondering if the ELCA is capable of recognizing the possibility of a confessional crisis. Read it and weep.
The Confessional Crisis Created by the Decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly
The decisions surrounding human sexuality made at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have created a confessional crisis within the ELCA. The controversy over these decisions is not simply a disagreement over a social issue concerning how to treat homosexual relations in the church. These decisions touch upon the issues of the authority of Scripture and the role of the Lutheran Confessions in the life of the church.
The crisis these decisions have created can be shown by examining two crucial passages from the Social Statement, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. In Part IV (lines 620 - 628 in the Pre-Assembly Report) this statement reads:
The historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, reflecting Mark 10: 6-9: "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one put asunder." (Jesus here recalls Genesis 1:27; 2:23-24.)On the next page of the statement, (lines 740 - 744, as amended) it reads:
Recognizing that this conclusion differs from the historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions, some people, though not all, in this church and within the larger Christian community, conclude that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong monogamous relationships.The statement then goes on to treat these two positions and the variants within them as of equal validity, on the basis of the "conscience-bound beliefs" of those who hold them (lines 809 - 868). Moreover, it is on this same basis of the "conscience-bound lack of consensus in this church" (lines 452 - 453 of the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies) that the resolutions on ministry policies were recommended and adopted.
These actions are contrary to and done in violation of the ELCA Confession of Faith, which reads, in part:
Chapter 2The Social Statement and the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies present the two positions mentioned above as of equal validity in the church, even though it is admitted that the first position - namely, that marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman - is the position supported by Christian tradition, the Lutheran Confessions, and Scripture; and that the second position - namely, that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong monogamous relationships - differs from the historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions.
CONFESSION OF FAITH
.
.
2.03 This church accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm or its proclamation, faith, and life.
2.04 This church accepts the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as true declarations of the faith of this church.
2.05 This church accepts the Unaltered Augsburg Confession as a true witness to the Gospel, acknowledges as one with it in faith and doctrine all churches that likewise accept the teachings of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.
2.06 This church accepts the other confessional writings in the Book of Concord, namely, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise, the Small Catechism, the Large Catechism, and the Formula of Concord, as further valid interpretations of the faith of the Church.
Given the confessional and constitutional commitment of the ELCA to the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions noted above, once a position is identified as that of the Confessions and the Christian tradition based on Scripture, there should be only two options for a Social Statement of the ELCA:
- State that such is the position of the ELCA, based on our Confession of Faith, which commits us to the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Lutheran Confessions; or,
- Demonstrate, by an appeal to Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions and with the aid of sound reason, that such a position ought to be abandoned or, at the least, present evidence enough to raise serious questions about that position.
- Reject such a position on the basis of our Confession of Faith, which commits us to following the witness of the Lutheran Confessions; or,
- Demonstrate, by an appeal to Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions and with the aid of sound reason, that such a position ought to be adopted or, at the least, present evidence enough to argue that it ought to be considered a valid position within the Lutheran Church.
Such actions are in violation of our Confession of Faith. The ELCA ought to repent of these actions, take steps to render them ineffectual, and overturn them at the first opportunity. The synods and congregations of the ELCA ought to reject these actions and refuse to abide by them on the basis of our own and identical Confession of Faith. Each pastor in the ELCA ought to oppose these actions and decisions on the basis of the vows taken at ordination to teach and preach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and in light of the Lutheran Confessions.
If such actions are not taken, it leaves those who oppose the actions of the Churchwide Assembly in a state of confessional resistance to the ELCA, and possibly to the synods of which they are members. Appeals to unity and "churchmanship" are of secondary importance to the confessional commitment which undergirds this opposition. Even if one were to make a compelling argument from Scripture and the Confessions in support of the changes in ministry policies at this point, such an argument must also acknowledge and repent of the violation of our Confession of Faith which the actions of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have committed. If these actions are allowed to stand, it will undermine the very Confession of Faith by which we are united.
Pastor Marshall Hahn
St. Olaf Lutheran Parish - Marion & Norway Lutheran Churches
St. Olaf, Iowa
NE Iowa Synod, ELCA
Friday, September 11, 2009
R. R. Reno: "Marriage, Morality, and Culture"
The always thoughtful lay theologian Rusty Reno posted the following on Wednesday over at First Things: On the Square.
The tide is going out. Words like fornication have a musty, antiquated ring. Unwed mothers no longer suffer social stigma. Divorce has become common. The large, complicated human reality of sexual desire, mating, romance, and childrearing no longer finds itself ruled by elaborate and widely accepted social norms. And now, of course, we are in the midst of a drive toward same-sex marriage.
I’m not surprised by the latest development. In my years as an Episcopalian, I came to see that homosexuality plays in important role in the much larger phenomenon of changed social mores in the area of sex, family, and marriage. The image of two men or two women kissing gives a dramatic immediacy to the many aspects of sexual revolution: real people, genuinely felt desires, new possibilities, the courage to transgress old norms, and the hope for the lasting happiness based on love’s unifying power.
In other words, homosexuality richly suggests freedom from an old, restrictive moral order, freedom from the inhibiting power of shame, freedom from the burdens of judgment, censure, and condemnation. And it evokes the promise of existential freedom, the inner release from inhibition and fear of social censure.
The allure of existential freedom is not new. In 1859, John Stuart Mill published On Liberty, an argument for expanding the scope of human freedom beyond the realm of the political narrowly understood. In order to undertake what Mill famously called “experiments in living,” we need to be able to escape from “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.”
Mill was correct. We are social animals. Hardwired to want to fit in, all of us feel the soft coercion of cultural norms. As a result, a deep freedom to live as we please requires more than political rights. We need something like “social rights” that give us leverage over and against inherited culture.
To a very great extent, the cultural history of the twentieth century can be understood as the gradual acceptance of “social rights.” In America, a long dominant Protestant and bourgeois ethos eroded—and then in the 1960s collapsed. In a short decade, divorce went from something dangerously shameful to socially acceptable. Premarital sex and cohabitation followed the same trajectory. Acceptance of out-of-wedlock childbearing came more slowly, as did same-sex relationships. But the end result is now the same. Gay couples now have a social right to live their personal lives free from social censure.
Our courts tend to reflect social reality. In 1965, the Supreme Court was faced with a case (Griswold v. Connecticut) that challenged a law against contraceptives. In its majority decision, the Court identified a right to privacy. As a legal right narrowly understood, it means that the government has no business policing bedrooms. However, it has become more expansive, most notoriously to include right to abortion. Today, the right to privacy pretty much accords with Mill’s notion of freedom from “prevailing opinion and feeling.” It amounts to a right to conduct one’s personal life as one wishes, unhindered by other people’s ideas of right and wrong.
This expansive legal right has been reinforced by a new social consensus. Today, it is singularly gauche to announce that you regard someone’s marital, sexual, or parental choices to be “wrong” or “immoral.” Indeed, the very fact that I put scare quotes around “wrong” and “immoral” is telling. We are now heavily socialized to be tolerant and non-judgmental—with the exception, of course, of refusing to tolerate the intolerant and quick to judge the judgmental. But there is no contradiction. Both the tolerance and intolerance serve to provide and reinforce the now dominant culture, one that believes we should be able to live as we wish.
The controversial question of same-sex marriage is so interesting and important because it marks decisive new phase in our cultural drive toward an every deeper freedom to live as one pleases. Freedom from censure is no longer sufficient. Today, we see an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsement.
Some months ago, the Supreme Court of Connecticut handed down a decision that required the state legislature to make provisions for same sex marriage. The most interesting part of the opinion concerns the alternative of civil unions. As the Court recognizes, the artifice of “civil union” is a bloodless affair designed to remove the legal disadvantages that adhere to the private choices of same-sex lovers: matters of inheritance, health coverage, and so forth. The Connecticut judges deemed civil unions separate but unequal, and their reasoning is telling. Civil unions are unsatisfactory, because they lack the “transcendent historical, cultural, and social significance” of traditional marriage.
Gays and lesbians, by this way of thinking, have a right to a full range of cultural resources for defining their lives together, including the rich symbolic legacy of traditional norms for marriage. Privacy is not enough. It is unfair to deny public endorsement and quasi-sacred sanction to personal choices.
Therein lies the final act of the sexual revolution that has defined Western culture for the last fifty years. A traditional culture constrains and limits desire, especially the volatile complexities of sexual desire. The reasoning behind the drive toward same-sex marriage reverses the direction of authority. Our secular elite culture believes that desires—as long as they do not directly harm others—should command and shape culture. We should be able to make of marriage what we wish.
Result: the emerging postmodern Empire of Desire. In the past, the instruments of political power (e.g., the right to privacy) have been used to tear down official forms of limitation and censure so that desires can find their satisfactions. The soft power of culture has followed the same path. Our present and widespread social censure of moral censure inculcates and reinforces a non-judgmental ethos. Now we are embarking on a much more aggressive program. Everybody should have access to the cultural symbols of affirmation. Everybody has a right to feel normal.
This right to normalcy is very different from the right to privacy. Indeed, they can seem antithetical, since the former requires mobilizing the power of the state to redesign social institutions that we all must live with, while the later is focused on minimizing the role of government in people’s personal lives. Yet I think the right to normalcy follows from the logic of John Stuart Mill’s insights.
As social animals we don’t just want to be free from censure. We are not rugged individualists. We want to feel like we are part of the pack, and as everybody knows, feeling marginal can be very painful, even if everybody is smiling and nodding and uttering reassuring platitudes of acceptance. Therefore, if we really believe that human beings are most happy when they design their own lives, then eventually we will come around to the view that culture as a whole should be turned over to serve our desires. Moral traditions must be available for personal tailoring.
Thus, whatever one thinks of homosexuality, one can see that the judges in Connecticut framed the issue clearly. Same-sex marriage is about achieving a social or cultural equality for everyone, regardless of their experiments in living. It’s about our need to feel normal, and it’s about giving everybody access to institutions that confer feelings of normalcy and legitimacy. In the Empire of Desire, everybody gets ceremonies and ribbons and prizes and their fifteen minutes of fame.
But we cannot turn culture into the equivalent of a public access channel. As Aristotle explained in his account of moral formation and human flourishing, culture humanizes us by demanding our obedience. Happiness does not come from living according to your desires. It comes from desiring to live according to demanding and disciplining social norms that transcend individual desires.
The judges in Connecticut and elsewhere, as well as the larger same-sex marriage movement, are entertaining a fantasy. It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the later.
We cannot make culture serve our desires—or our ideals for that matter. We cannot turn traditional modes of moral discipline such as marriage into a ready resource for conferring feelings of normalcy or equality. To consciously modify the moral norms of moral institutions such as marriage turns them into something else: existential decoration, imaginary seriousness, or an engineered garment of meaning that cannot help but feel plastic and artificial. A bespoke “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” is ephemeral and short lived.
R.R. Reno is features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University.
Marriage, Morality, and Culture
R. R. RenoThe tide is going out. Words like fornication have a musty, antiquated ring. Unwed mothers no longer suffer social stigma. Divorce has become common. The large, complicated human reality of sexual desire, mating, romance, and childrearing no longer finds itself ruled by elaborate and widely accepted social norms. And now, of course, we are in the midst of a drive toward same-sex marriage.
I’m not surprised by the latest development. In my years as an Episcopalian, I came to see that homosexuality plays in important role in the much larger phenomenon of changed social mores in the area of sex, family, and marriage. The image of two men or two women kissing gives a dramatic immediacy to the many aspects of sexual revolution: real people, genuinely felt desires, new possibilities, the courage to transgress old norms, and the hope for the lasting happiness based on love’s unifying power.
In other words, homosexuality richly suggests freedom from an old, restrictive moral order, freedom from the inhibiting power of shame, freedom from the burdens of judgment, censure, and condemnation. And it evokes the promise of existential freedom, the inner release from inhibition and fear of social censure.
The allure of existential freedom is not new. In 1859, John Stuart Mill published On Liberty, an argument for expanding the scope of human freedom beyond the realm of the political narrowly understood. In order to undertake what Mill famously called “experiments in living,” we need to be able to escape from “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.”
Mill was correct. We are social animals. Hardwired to want to fit in, all of us feel the soft coercion of cultural norms. As a result, a deep freedom to live as we please requires more than political rights. We need something like “social rights” that give us leverage over and against inherited culture.
To a very great extent, the cultural history of the twentieth century can be understood as the gradual acceptance of “social rights.” In America, a long dominant Protestant and bourgeois ethos eroded—and then in the 1960s collapsed. In a short decade, divorce went from something dangerously shameful to socially acceptable. Premarital sex and cohabitation followed the same trajectory. Acceptance of out-of-wedlock childbearing came more slowly, as did same-sex relationships. But the end result is now the same. Gay couples now have a social right to live their personal lives free from social censure.
Our courts tend to reflect social reality. In 1965, the Supreme Court was faced with a case (Griswold v. Connecticut) that challenged a law against contraceptives. In its majority decision, the Court identified a right to privacy. As a legal right narrowly understood, it means that the government has no business policing bedrooms. However, it has become more expansive, most notoriously to include right to abortion. Today, the right to privacy pretty much accords with Mill’s notion of freedom from “prevailing opinion and feeling.” It amounts to a right to conduct one’s personal life as one wishes, unhindered by other people’s ideas of right and wrong.
This expansive legal right has been reinforced by a new social consensus. Today, it is singularly gauche to announce that you regard someone’s marital, sexual, or parental choices to be “wrong” or “immoral.” Indeed, the very fact that I put scare quotes around “wrong” and “immoral” is telling. We are now heavily socialized to be tolerant and non-judgmental—with the exception, of course, of refusing to tolerate the intolerant and quick to judge the judgmental. But there is no contradiction. Both the tolerance and intolerance serve to provide and reinforce the now dominant culture, one that believes we should be able to live as we wish.
The controversial question of same-sex marriage is so interesting and important because it marks decisive new phase in our cultural drive toward an every deeper freedom to live as one pleases. Freedom from censure is no longer sufficient. Today, we see an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsement.
Some months ago, the Supreme Court of Connecticut handed down a decision that required the state legislature to make provisions for same sex marriage. The most interesting part of the opinion concerns the alternative of civil unions. As the Court recognizes, the artifice of “civil union” is a bloodless affair designed to remove the legal disadvantages that adhere to the private choices of same-sex lovers: matters of inheritance, health coverage, and so forth. The Connecticut judges deemed civil unions separate but unequal, and their reasoning is telling. Civil unions are unsatisfactory, because they lack the “transcendent historical, cultural, and social significance” of traditional marriage.
Gays and lesbians, by this way of thinking, have a right to a full range of cultural resources for defining their lives together, including the rich symbolic legacy of traditional norms for marriage. Privacy is not enough. It is unfair to deny public endorsement and quasi-sacred sanction to personal choices.
Therein lies the final act of the sexual revolution that has defined Western culture for the last fifty years. A traditional culture constrains and limits desire, especially the volatile complexities of sexual desire. The reasoning behind the drive toward same-sex marriage reverses the direction of authority. Our secular elite culture believes that desires—as long as they do not directly harm others—should command and shape culture. We should be able to make of marriage what we wish.
Result: the emerging postmodern Empire of Desire. In the past, the instruments of political power (e.g., the right to privacy) have been used to tear down official forms of limitation and censure so that desires can find their satisfactions. The soft power of culture has followed the same path. Our present and widespread social censure of moral censure inculcates and reinforces a non-judgmental ethos. Now we are embarking on a much more aggressive program. Everybody should have access to the cultural symbols of affirmation. Everybody has a right to feel normal.
This right to normalcy is very different from the right to privacy. Indeed, they can seem antithetical, since the former requires mobilizing the power of the state to redesign social institutions that we all must live with, while the later is focused on minimizing the role of government in people’s personal lives. Yet I think the right to normalcy follows from the logic of John Stuart Mill’s insights.
As social animals we don’t just want to be free from censure. We are not rugged individualists. We want to feel like we are part of the pack, and as everybody knows, feeling marginal can be very painful, even if everybody is smiling and nodding and uttering reassuring platitudes of acceptance. Therefore, if we really believe that human beings are most happy when they design their own lives, then eventually we will come around to the view that culture as a whole should be turned over to serve our desires. Moral traditions must be available for personal tailoring.
Thus, whatever one thinks of homosexuality, one can see that the judges in Connecticut framed the issue clearly. Same-sex marriage is about achieving a social or cultural equality for everyone, regardless of their experiments in living. It’s about our need to feel normal, and it’s about giving everybody access to institutions that confer feelings of normalcy and legitimacy. In the Empire of Desire, everybody gets ceremonies and ribbons and prizes and their fifteen minutes of fame.
But we cannot turn culture into the equivalent of a public access channel. As Aristotle explained in his account of moral formation and human flourishing, culture humanizes us by demanding our obedience. Happiness does not come from living according to your desires. It comes from desiring to live according to demanding and disciplining social norms that transcend individual desires.
The judges in Connecticut and elsewhere, as well as the larger same-sex marriage movement, are entertaining a fantasy. It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the later.
We cannot make culture serve our desires—or our ideals for that matter. We cannot turn traditional modes of moral discipline such as marriage into a ready resource for conferring feelings of normalcy or equality. To consciously modify the moral norms of moral institutions such as marriage turns them into something else: existential decoration, imaginary seriousness, or an engineered garment of meaning that cannot help but feel plastic and artificial. A bespoke “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” is ephemeral and short lived.
R.R. Reno is features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Oh, This Is So Cool!!
A few minutes ago I discovered that Zion has been cited in a book! Yes, a real book published by Church Publishing (which is affiliated with the Episcopal Church) earlier this year. The book is Cohabiting Couples & Cold Feet: A Practical Marriage-Preparation Guide for Clergy by Robert W. Pritchard, professor of church history and pastoral theology at Virginia Theological Seminary.
I have no idea how good the book actually is, but it is one that will actually be bought and read by seminarians, priests, and others in the Episcopal and other mainline churches. Okay, that's a shrinking market that's not nearly as significant as it would have been 40 years ago. But still...
Granted, the author is just using a line from our wedding policy that he found via on the web for an example. And actually the example is pretty much boiler-plate wedding policy for a church with a member of the American Guild of Organists (I'm the chaplain for the local chapter).
Still, I typed it up and put it on our web site. And now it's in a book!
Wow!
I have no idea how good the book actually is, but it is one that will actually be bought and read by seminarians, priests, and others in the Episcopal and other mainline churches. Okay, that's a shrinking market that's not nearly as significant as it would have been 40 years ago. But still...
Granted, the author is just using a line from our wedding policy that he found via on the web for an example. And actually the example is pretty much boiler-plate wedding policy for a church with a member of the American Guild of Organists (I'm the chaplain for the local chapter).
Still, I typed it up and put it on our web site. And now it's in a book!
Wow!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Message to My Flock
The following was read to the congregation assembled at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peoria near the end of the worship service there this last Sunday morning:
To the Church at Zion,
From Steven, your Pastor.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace and all good!
I have been told that, in reports on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly's actions this past Friday, Headline News included a clear shot focussed on me sitting in the Congregational Observer's section. What I do not know, apart from the local headlines and conversations in the streets, is the content of reports you may have seen or heard, especially in Peoria.
In normal circumstances I would have waited until I could speak with you in person about what happened at this Assembly. But I think it important that, since some of you have likely heard in one way or another of the most controversial votes in Minneapolis, you also hear something of my initial response to them.
There have been, of course, many important matters to deal with. And a Churchwide Assembly is always a joyous opportunity for the reunion of friends and colleagues from across the Church. In some respects I have enjoyed this week greatly.
However, on Wednesday the Assembly approved, by exactly the 2/3rds vote required, a seriously flawed Social Statement on Human Sexuality. And by Friday evening, the Assembly had by very strong majorities approved new policies to permit, as the teaching and practice of the ELCA and its congregations, the blessing of committed homosexual unions and removed the impediments to those in such unions from serving in the ELCA as Pastors and rostered lay ministers.
By these actions, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's teaching and practice on marriage, family, and sexuality has not only departed from the faith and teaching of the Holy Scriptures and nearly 2000 years of Christian teaching, it is proclaiming what the Apostle Paul calls "another gospel."
One of the things that I was taught from a young age and have grown to experience more and more over the years is that a Lutheran pastor relates to the denomination differently than the laity and congregations. When I was ordained, the ELCA became my church. On Friday afternoon, I lost my church.
I intend to remain your pastor. I intend to remain a pastor in the ELCA and in our Central/Southern Illinois Synod, to be a voice -- with other pastors and laity throughout the ELCA -- for the ELCA's repentance and restoration into the Faith. Many of you already know that I have been part of groups of pastors and others, in our Synod and across the ELCA, that have been working for this already. These efforts will continue, beginning with a national gathering near Indianapolis on September 25-26.
While some pastors and congregations have already left the ELCA and more will, including several in our own Synod, I do not believe it would be wise for Zion to start thinking about this. I have not given up completely on the ELCA or the faithfulness of its people.
Furthermore Zion's mission and ministry from the South Side, to the prisons, and beyond are closely linked with sister ELCA congregations. We do not need to immediately change those links. We have time to figure out how to best respond to the Churchwide Assembly's actions.
Please pray for me. Please pray for our Bishop Warren Freiheit and the Pastors and leaders of our Synod. Please pray for ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and all in the ELCA in these dark days for our church.
And do not forget that even in this, our Lord is a gracious God. In today's Gospel St. Peter says what we sing every Sunday: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." That proclamation will continue for Zion as long as we are here. For that, praise the Lord.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
To the Church at Zion,
From Steven, your Pastor.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace and all good!
I have been told that, in reports on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly's actions this past Friday, Headline News included a clear shot focussed on me sitting in the Congregational Observer's section. What I do not know, apart from the local headlines and conversations in the streets, is the content of reports you may have seen or heard, especially in Peoria.
In normal circumstances I would have waited until I could speak with you in person about what happened at this Assembly. But I think it important that, since some of you have likely heard in one way or another of the most controversial votes in Minneapolis, you also hear something of my initial response to them.
There have been, of course, many important matters to deal with. And a Churchwide Assembly is always a joyous opportunity for the reunion of friends and colleagues from across the Church. In some respects I have enjoyed this week greatly.
However, on Wednesday the Assembly approved, by exactly the 2/3rds vote required, a seriously flawed Social Statement on Human Sexuality. And by Friday evening, the Assembly had by very strong majorities approved new policies to permit, as the teaching and practice of the ELCA and its congregations, the blessing of committed homosexual unions and removed the impediments to those in such unions from serving in the ELCA as Pastors and rostered lay ministers.
By these actions, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's teaching and practice on marriage, family, and sexuality has not only departed from the faith and teaching of the Holy Scriptures and nearly 2000 years of Christian teaching, it is proclaiming what the Apostle Paul calls "another gospel."
One of the things that I was taught from a young age and have grown to experience more and more over the years is that a Lutheran pastor relates to the denomination differently than the laity and congregations. When I was ordained, the ELCA became my church. On Friday afternoon, I lost my church.
I intend to remain your pastor. I intend to remain a pastor in the ELCA and in our Central/Southern Illinois Synod, to be a voice -- with other pastors and laity throughout the ELCA -- for the ELCA's repentance and restoration into the Faith. Many of you already know that I have been part of groups of pastors and others, in our Synod and across the ELCA, that have been working for this already. These efforts will continue, beginning with a national gathering near Indianapolis on September 25-26.
While some pastors and congregations have already left the ELCA and more will, including several in our own Synod, I do not believe it would be wise for Zion to start thinking about this. I have not given up completely on the ELCA or the faithfulness of its people.
Furthermore Zion's mission and ministry from the South Side, to the prisons, and beyond are closely linked with sister ELCA congregations. We do not need to immediately change those links. We have time to figure out how to best respond to the Churchwide Assembly's actions.
Please pray for me. Please pray for our Bishop Warren Freiheit and the Pastors and leaders of our Synod. Please pray for ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and all in the ELCA in these dark days for our church.
And do not forget that even in this, our Lord is a gracious God. In today's Gospel St. Peter says what we sing every Sunday: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." That proclamation will continue for Zion as long as we are here. For that, praise the Lord.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Church Coalition on Gay Marriage Proposal
Fr. Yngve Kalin of the Kyrklig samling kring bibeln och bekännelsen (the Church Coalition for the Bible and Confession) within the Church of Sweden has issued a:
click title for pdf version,
click here for Swedish pdf version
The Governing Body of the Church of Sweden proposes that the Church of Sweden General Synod should adopt an order of marriage that allows two people of the same sex to contract a marriage in the church. In this way the Church of Sweden will adapt its teaching to the values that constitute the majority view in the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen).
This is actually not surprising. The Church of Sweden is permeated by the same political parties that constitute the parliament. The majority of the members of the Church of Sweden Governing Body have party labels, as have those who are members of the Church of Sweden General Synod, and they usually follow their party lines on decisive issues. Theology has been transformed into an ideology and the church’s own institutions happily provide theological post-constructions to the latest opinions and whims of the world.
For the church, this is devastating. The faith, confession and teaching of the Church of Sweden can never rest on political majorities or on the currently fancy views of the world, but only on the revealed Word of God and on the confessional foundation that over the centuries have been formulated in the confessional documents of the church.
The decision now taken by the Church of Sweden Governing Body shows that those who have power in the Church of Sweden are effectively cutting off the church from its roots. The Church of Sweden will now be transformed into a congregational denomination, whose teaching is formulated by simple majority decisions, and where the Bible is being used arbitrarily or even entirely removed in order to legitimize the decisions taken.
A small denomination in the North now chooses its own way and redefines the teaching about marriage that the universal church has given up until now, supported by God’s good order in creation and which is revealed through the word of the Bible and confirmed by the confession of the church. Those who have power in the Church of Sweden have chosen a dangerous road and they now run the risk of leading her out into complete ecumenical isolation.
The issue has however yet another dimension. For each and every one who wants to stand firm on the foundation of the traditional teaching, the matter is not brought to a head, whether or not the Church of Sweden is still a useful tool for God when His word is reinterpreted and, as the Archbishop of Uppsala recently put it, ”extended” and given an entirely new meaning. I therefore appeal to everyone for perseverance in prayer that the members of the Church of Sweden General Synod may come to their senses. Contact them, write letters to them, appeal to them and exhort them! Write to the Archbishop and to the Bishops!
The next few weeks and months will be crucial in many ways. There are many signs that the current church system is being eroded and is falling apart through a rapid loss of substance. Do we really appreciate that all that we possess and still have, we only have by the grace of God? It is in the power of God to break down and to build up whatever He has planted. God’s possibilities are not exhausted. He will show us what we should do if the situation becomes untenable.
”Watch over the flock to make sure that nobody goes astray from the grace of God and that no bitter root will make shoots and become a devastation that affects many.” (Hebr 12:15)
Hyssna, 16 June 2009
Yngve Kalin, Chairman,
The Church Coalition for the Bible and the Confession.
Translation: Sr Gerd Swensson, Te Deum
The Church Coalition for the Bible and Confession
Chairman: Yngve Kalin, Hålsjövägen 32 , 511 68 Hyssna, Sweden
Tel: +46320-38000 yngve.kalin@kyrkligsamling.se
Statement on the Proposal for a new Order of Marriage for the Church of Sweden
click here for Swedish pdf version
The Governing Body of the Church of Sweden proposes that the Church of Sweden General Synod should adopt an order of marriage that allows two people of the same sex to contract a marriage in the church. In this way the Church of Sweden will adapt its teaching to the values that constitute the majority view in the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen).
This is actually not surprising. The Church of Sweden is permeated by the same political parties that constitute the parliament. The majority of the members of the Church of Sweden Governing Body have party labels, as have those who are members of the Church of Sweden General Synod, and they usually follow their party lines on decisive issues. Theology has been transformed into an ideology and the church’s own institutions happily provide theological post-constructions to the latest opinions and whims of the world.
For the church, this is devastating. The faith, confession and teaching of the Church of Sweden can never rest on political majorities or on the currently fancy views of the world, but only on the revealed Word of God and on the confessional foundation that over the centuries have been formulated in the confessional documents of the church.
The decision now taken by the Church of Sweden Governing Body shows that those who have power in the Church of Sweden are effectively cutting off the church from its roots. The Church of Sweden will now be transformed into a congregational denomination, whose teaching is formulated by simple majority decisions, and where the Bible is being used arbitrarily or even entirely removed in order to legitimize the decisions taken.
A small denomination in the North now chooses its own way and redefines the teaching about marriage that the universal church has given up until now, supported by God’s good order in creation and which is revealed through the word of the Bible and confirmed by the confession of the church. Those who have power in the Church of Sweden have chosen a dangerous road and they now run the risk of leading her out into complete ecumenical isolation.
The issue has however yet another dimension. For each and every one who wants to stand firm on the foundation of the traditional teaching, the matter is not brought to a head, whether or not the Church of Sweden is still a useful tool for God when His word is reinterpreted and, as the Archbishop of Uppsala recently put it, ”extended” and given an entirely new meaning. I therefore appeal to everyone for perseverance in prayer that the members of the Church of Sweden General Synod may come to their senses. Contact them, write letters to them, appeal to them and exhort them! Write to the Archbishop and to the Bishops!
The next few weeks and months will be crucial in many ways. There are many signs that the current church system is being eroded and is falling apart through a rapid loss of substance. Do we really appreciate that all that we possess and still have, we only have by the grace of God? It is in the power of God to break down and to build up whatever He has planted. God’s possibilities are not exhausted. He will show us what we should do if the situation becomes untenable.
”Watch over the flock to make sure that nobody goes astray from the grace of God and that no bitter root will make shoots and become a devastation that affects many.” (Hebr 12:15)
Hyssna, 16 June 2009
Yngve Kalin, Chairman,
The Church Coalition for the Bible and the Confession.
Translation: Sr Gerd Swensson, Te Deum
The Church Coalition for the Bible and Confession
Chairman: Yngve Kalin, Hålsjövägen 32 , 511 68 Hyssna, Sweden
Tel: +46320-38000 yngve.kalin@kyrkligsamling.se
Monday, June 08, 2009
Schifrin: Delight, Design, and Destiny
I don't recall what I was expecting from Amy Schfrin, then the campus pastor (or recently departed campus pastor) at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, when she was announced as a speaker for ALPB's Conference on Sexuality in Kansas City in October 2002. I do know that her Ritualizing Life or Ritualizing Death blew me away -- and you can read it in Christian Sexuality: Normative & Pastoral Principles -- and my response to her opened up some interesting conversations between the two of us since then when we've met on occasion over the years.
The latest issue of Let's Talk, the independent theological journal of the ELCA's Metropolitan Chicago Synod, offers several responses to Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust and Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies. And once again, Pastor Schifrin blows me away with Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality. Here it is in its entirety.
(From Let's Talk : Pentecost 2009 : Volume 14, Issue 1)
By Amy C. Schifrin
The cosmetic separation of ethics from doxology is a frequent problem when Christians take human response and action as the starting point in determining how they are to live. The proposed ELCA Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" is not unusual in this approach, but such a move determines the misguided course of the nature of the "Report and Recommendations on Ministry Policies" that will follow.
The Social Statement asks what can be considered a sort of third-use-of-the-law type of question, "How do we understand human sexuality within the context of Jesus' invitation to love God and love our neighbor?" The 'how' of this question applies to what sort of actions we, as Christians, will take once we understand what Jesus "invites" us to do.
The framing of the question is a thin veneer for its theological underpinnings, for within its introductory statement command is turned to invitation, and obedience into pretense. In a few short moves love will become tolerance, sincerity will replace truth, and the bound conscience will no longer be bound to Holy Scripture but to its own Old Adamic interpretation of human experience apart from the One whose Word speaks us into life.
A prior question to the one proposed in the document might be, "How does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor?" If we do not trust that His creation of us as male and female — complementary; other; made for love — is good. . . if we do not trust His design, or that He delights in His design, or that His design is connected to the destiny He intends for His good creation, our questions are rooted in a suspicion that will only lead to our own death.
The social sciences have many things to tell us, but they seek meaning empirically, not doxologically. When it comes to understanding sacramentality, whether it be the sacramentality of the design of God's creation or the sacramentality of word and water, bread and wine, their suspicions leave them bereft. The gifts that come from God's steadfast love direct us to His heart — He who is the author and giver of all life (Gen. 2:7); He who draws all people to Himself (John 12:32); He who is preparing us to meet Him as one prepares a bride to meet her beloved husband (Rev. 19:7).
If the 'experts' in our secular society observe the wanton behavior of people and find it common, or even normative, they are not bound to speak both law and gospel for the sake of their neighbors.[1] The Church, however, the body shaped in the cruciform body of her Lord, is so bound. The Church born in the sacramental love of the Triune God, and which has no life apart from Him is His herald, one which calls all people to worship Him — in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23); with their own bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1); with His law written on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33); and with His praise on their lips (Psalm 100).
Our consciences are bound here and nowhere else, and as unpopular or counter-cultural as it might be, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — has promised to sustain us until Christ comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We are bound to care for our neighbors, and we are called to do so within the sacred frame of God's holy and never-ending love. People may claim in all sincerity to be acting in good conscience, but if their conscience is misinformed, can it be good in the sense that what is good is also what is true?
The elevated value of 'tolerance' that accompanies the ELCA documents with regard to the bound conscience is an attempt to silence what has been passed on as the deposit of faith. Rather, it is the apostolic witness that should be privileged. In saying that we must respect all the voices, the solas of the faith are reduced to one voice among many. The voices that are given equal weight come from those whose interpretation of raw experience apart from the apostolic witness, like all such interpretation, is inevitably self-serving — for the self is, indeed, turned in upon the self.[2]
The social statement and ensuing recommendations ask us to believe that these proposed changes are for the sake of the neighbor. In some way, we and all of our neighbors seek the companionship of human community. In some way, whether appropriately ordered or destructively disordered, all people desire love, touch, a place to rest and comfort. To hold out that they can receive God's intention for us to have such goodness in a same-sex union is the equivalent of false advertising.
We need to distinguish between the need and a distortion of the need. For no matter how much we might pretend that it were not so, the complementarity between the one who cries "this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" and the one whose creation was designed for unity with him, can never come to fulfillment or fruition between two members of the same sex. The gift of the fullness of erotic love can be simulated, but like all disordered loving, at the same time that it offers momentary pleasure, it also diminishes who God has intended each one to be.
Neither document examines the multiplicity of reasons or experiences that could lead an individual to come to the self-identification of homosexual. Anything from familial abuse, or the bullying that exacerbates a young person's variations from the media's images of masculinity and femininity, or resentment, or the use of one's body to make a political statement may shape such self-identification. To regularize such an identity (which in its development may be quite fluid) and then bind one to that identity in a relationship blessed by the church is to lock someone into a state that God never intended.
Monogamy and longevity, public accountability and commitment will never turn a same-gendered partner into a sexual other, one whose complementarity allows for the fullness of love written into the creation. Since we are called to care for our neighbor, placing such a barrier to the neighbor's spiritual and relational growth is the opposite of the healing that comes when one is living in the freedom of God's goodness.
While the state may regulate, it is the Church, speaking and acting in trust of the promise of the Triune God that blesses such unions of man and woman. State laws can change with the vote of the people, a bill in a legislature, or a court decision, but the blessing of God comes through faithful apostolic witness, proclaimed in the assembly and enacted in ritual designed to mirror God's intentions.[3]
Marriage rites are not simply about our commitments to each other, but about God's commitment to us. And God in His wisdom uses this union of man and woman as an eschatological sign of how intimate his love is for us — a love stronger than death, for the Bridegroom will love his Bride, the church, eternally.
If same-sex unions are placed on a par with marriage — and they will have to be if the ELCA adopts the structurally flexible option (How can pastors who are homosexual in their self-understanding be in publicly accountable monogamous relationships without such rites?), the significance of a marriage and the marriage rite will be summarily reduced. If one commitment is just as good and right and valid as another, the eschatological sign written deeply into the creation is lost to the church . . . and if lost to the church, where will it be spoken?
This is the place where the egregious nature of the recommendations is exposed. A series of changes to the standards for the life of clergy ("rostered leaders") is proposed with an oft repeated refrain to "find a way" to accomplish the changes, while at the same time there is an explicit restriction against speaking of changes or additions to the rites of the church.
Did the majority of the task force think that there would be any other way for pastoral candidates who are homosexual in their self-understanding (i.e., whose homoerotic affections and inclinations speak more loudly to them than any other voices) to live a "life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationship" without a public ritual that celebrates, protects and blesses such a union? The reason given[4] that a Rite of Same-Sex blessing is to not be proposed does not ring true, because the changes in the standards would precipitate an official rite in order that there be public and ecclesial accountability.
New worlds are made in ritual enactment. We weren't there when the world was made, we weren't there when the world was made new in the bursting of the tomb, and we may not be there when life on this earth as we know it comes to an end. However, in our ritual life, these events are made ours as we are drawn into the resurrected life of our Lord, He who was there when the waters were formed and who will call our names when crystal fountain flows.
In our ritual, liturgical life we enter into the mystery of His passion. In our liturgical assembly, the life of faith is given us in word and sign, and our maturity in this same faith is also expressed and confirmed in the rites of transition that surround birth, death, and marriage. These rites are epiphanic, that is, through them we at last see what God intends for us to see in faith.
The rite of marriage is an event in which we act out what we believe about our creation, and we discover even more about the One in whom we believe — He who has created us for love. With the eyes of faith, we see why God gave us the sexual differentiation of male and female — we were made to love each other. And now this love will serve as yet another reminder of the all-consuming love that Christ, our Lord, has for His church.[5]
The rites of the church are God's way of giving us a means to live to the praise of His glory. The designing of a rite that binds two people of the same gender together for this life is without this epiphanic dimension, for the binding together of two people of the same gender will leave them with themselves, untransformed.
The Report and Recommendations sets before us two positions, one of continuity and one of change, and it seeks to set these positions before the assembly as equally valid. Here, as it consistently uses the term "same-gender" with regard to particular "orientations" and "relationships," it claims a distinctive identity for those who want the church to approve of their homoerotic desires and inclinations as being natural, right, and fitting.
The social statement has made a clear case for the superiority, appropriateness, and emotional and spiritual health of lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships (which hitherto have been reserved for a male-female relationship) as opposed to transient and/or cohabiting arrangements where the potential for pain is ever immanent. Now the recommendations will use that information as they present the "new" position of affirming life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationships, because if its good for male-female relationships, how can we deny that it would be good for male-male or female-female relationships, if indeed same-gendered "relationships" are just as pleasing to God?
Without the key piece — i.e., the doxological expression that shapes our faith — one can follow this line of logic all the way up to claiming the church's institution of a Same-Sex Blessing and the ordination of folks who seek life-long, monogamous, same-gendered relationships to be acts of justice, of civil rights; but the ground upon which this argument is built is where the fallacy lies. Males and females were not given the gifts of sexual expression for such homoerotic activity.
The Holy Scriptures have no word of blessing for acts of homoeroticism — regardless of relational contexts, and the church's attempt to sacralize such pairings would work against the health of the neighbor now and for generations to come.[6] Lex supplicandi legem stauat credendi![7] Such 'ecclesiastical' rites would work to change the beliefs all those who participate in them.
Because the proposed social statement starts in the wrong place, the recommendations end in the wrong place, modeling themselves on democratic rather than Biblical justice. True justice and righteousness are rooted in God's steadfast love, so that when our lives reflect His righteousness we are doing what He has made us to do.
So indeed, how does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor? Because He has made us in such a way, fitting, complementary, opposite, and paired, He gives us the holy estate of marriage in which lovemaking is an act of faith that He has provided a beloved spouse as a sign of His eternal goodness. For such goodness we give Him praise and from the strength of our homes we work together to care for all in need.
God has made us in such a way that sexual expression and spiritual identity are closely bound, for in His establishment of marriage the nakedness of heart and the nakedness of the body flourish in a covenant of trust and love — and the lovemaking of a husband and wife, with all its joy, delight, tenderness, and passion are among the dearest of His gifts.
For those who receive such a great gift, loving a spouse within God's covenant is both an expression of obedience and a sign to the world of how deeply He loves us all. Trusting that it is He who provided this earthly other for us, trusting that His establishment of marriage for men and women is good, our everyday actions of caring for a spouse become a living doxology, and incarnate ethics of praise.
The Rev. Dr. Amy C. Schifrin
Intentional Interim Pastor, Lower Susquehanna Synod, ELCA
Currently serving Holy Trinity, Hershey, Pennsylvania
- - - - - - - - -
Endnotes
[1] They may use common sense, but they're not even bound to do that.
[2] If this can happen with the sexuality issue, why not with any other issue? In this way the sexuality issue is a symptom that reveals a far greater problem in the ELCA, where popular culture's ways of reading scripture and designing rites become the great shapers of how the Church prays when we gather in Christ's name.
[3] Even in Luther's 1529 "Order of Marriage for Common Pastors" (LW 53:111), vows were exchanged at the church door, but the words and gesture of blessing occurred in front of the altar, where the pastor, with hands raised, spoke the words of Genesis 2:18, 21-24, which then served "as a kind of words of institution for marriage." Philip H. Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship: Lutheran Liturgy in Its Ecumenical Context (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 459.
[4] The Report and Recommendations acknowledges that "this church does not have biblical or theological consensus on the matter," so that at this time, ritual matters will be left to local congregations (lines 319-325). A chaotic proposal at best, idiosyncratic rather than ecclesial, it may mirror the worst of the wider culture's influence on the design of the church's rites for marriage, so that the emphasis of the rite is on the couple's "personality," not on the faithfulness of God.
[5] "Lord Jesus Christ, as you freely give yourself to your bride the Church, grant that the mystery of the union of man and woman in marriage may reveal to the world the self-giving love which you have for your church; and to you with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen" Post-Communion Prayer for Marriage, LBW, Minister's Desk Edition, 192.
[6] It would also work against the life of the church because how one deals with the issue of blessing the unions of self-identified homosexuals will become the litmus test within the call process.
[7] "The law of prayer determines the law of belief." Prosper of Aquitaine.
- - - - - - - - -
Permission is granted for reprint and distribution of Let’s Talk in part or in its entirety, provided the journal title, issue date, and author(s) are cited on all copies.
The latest issue of Let's Talk, the independent theological journal of the ELCA's Metropolitan Chicago Synod, offers several responses to Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust and Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies. And once again, Pastor Schifrin blows me away with Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality. Here it is in its entirety.
Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality
A Critique of the ELCA Human Sexuality Statement and the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies, 2009(From Let's Talk : Pentecost 2009 : Volume 14, Issue 1)
By Amy C. Schifrin
The cosmetic separation of ethics from doxology is a frequent problem when Christians take human response and action as the starting point in determining how they are to live. The proposed ELCA Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" is not unusual in this approach, but such a move determines the misguided course of the nature of the "Report and Recommendations on Ministry Policies" that will follow.
The Social Statement asks what can be considered a sort of third-use-of-the-law type of question, "How do we understand human sexuality within the context of Jesus' invitation to love God and love our neighbor?" The 'how' of this question applies to what sort of actions we, as Christians, will take once we understand what Jesus "invites" us to do.
The framing of the question is a thin veneer for its theological underpinnings, for within its introductory statement command is turned to invitation, and obedience into pretense. In a few short moves love will become tolerance, sincerity will replace truth, and the bound conscience will no longer be bound to Holy Scripture but to its own Old Adamic interpretation of human experience apart from the One whose Word speaks us into life.
A prior question to the one proposed in the document might be, "How does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor?" If we do not trust that His creation of us as male and female — complementary; other; made for love — is good. . . if we do not trust His design, or that He delights in His design, or that His design is connected to the destiny He intends for His good creation, our questions are rooted in a suspicion that will only lead to our own death.
The social sciences have many things to tell us, but they seek meaning empirically, not doxologically. When it comes to understanding sacramentality, whether it be the sacramentality of the design of God's creation or the sacramentality of word and water, bread and wine, their suspicions leave them bereft. The gifts that come from God's steadfast love direct us to His heart — He who is the author and giver of all life (Gen. 2:7); He who draws all people to Himself (John 12:32); He who is preparing us to meet Him as one prepares a bride to meet her beloved husband (Rev. 19:7).
If the 'experts' in our secular society observe the wanton behavior of people and find it common, or even normative, they are not bound to speak both law and gospel for the sake of their neighbors.[1] The Church, however, the body shaped in the cruciform body of her Lord, is so bound. The Church born in the sacramental love of the Triune God, and which has no life apart from Him is His herald, one which calls all people to worship Him — in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23); with their own bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1); with His law written on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33); and with His praise on their lips (Psalm 100).
Our consciences are bound here and nowhere else, and as unpopular or counter-cultural as it might be, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — has promised to sustain us until Christ comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We are bound to care for our neighbors, and we are called to do so within the sacred frame of God's holy and never-ending love. People may claim in all sincerity to be acting in good conscience, but if their conscience is misinformed, can it be good in the sense that what is good is also what is true?
The elevated value of 'tolerance' that accompanies the ELCA documents with regard to the bound conscience is an attempt to silence what has been passed on as the deposit of faith. Rather, it is the apostolic witness that should be privileged. In saying that we must respect all the voices, the solas of the faith are reduced to one voice among many. The voices that are given equal weight come from those whose interpretation of raw experience apart from the apostolic witness, like all such interpretation, is inevitably self-serving — for the self is, indeed, turned in upon the self.[2]
The social statement and ensuing recommendations ask us to believe that these proposed changes are for the sake of the neighbor. In some way, we and all of our neighbors seek the companionship of human community. In some way, whether appropriately ordered or destructively disordered, all people desire love, touch, a place to rest and comfort. To hold out that they can receive God's intention for us to have such goodness in a same-sex union is the equivalent of false advertising.
We need to distinguish between the need and a distortion of the need. For no matter how much we might pretend that it were not so, the complementarity between the one who cries "this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" and the one whose creation was designed for unity with him, can never come to fulfillment or fruition between two members of the same sex. The gift of the fullness of erotic love can be simulated, but like all disordered loving, at the same time that it offers momentary pleasure, it also diminishes who God has intended each one to be.
Neither document examines the multiplicity of reasons or experiences that could lead an individual to come to the self-identification of homosexual. Anything from familial abuse, or the bullying that exacerbates a young person's variations from the media's images of masculinity and femininity, or resentment, or the use of one's body to make a political statement may shape such self-identification. To regularize such an identity (which in its development may be quite fluid) and then bind one to that identity in a relationship blessed by the church is to lock someone into a state that God never intended.
Monogamy and longevity, public accountability and commitment will never turn a same-gendered partner into a sexual other, one whose complementarity allows for the fullness of love written into the creation. Since we are called to care for our neighbor, placing such a barrier to the neighbor's spiritual and relational growth is the opposite of the healing that comes when one is living in the freedom of God's goodness.
While the state may regulate, it is the Church, speaking and acting in trust of the promise of the Triune God that blesses such unions of man and woman. State laws can change with the vote of the people, a bill in a legislature, or a court decision, but the blessing of God comes through faithful apostolic witness, proclaimed in the assembly and enacted in ritual designed to mirror God's intentions.[3]
Marriage rites are not simply about our commitments to each other, but about God's commitment to us. And God in His wisdom uses this union of man and woman as an eschatological sign of how intimate his love is for us — a love stronger than death, for the Bridegroom will love his Bride, the church, eternally.
If same-sex unions are placed on a par with marriage — and they will have to be if the ELCA adopts the structurally flexible option (How can pastors who are homosexual in their self-understanding be in publicly accountable monogamous relationships without such rites?), the significance of a marriage and the marriage rite will be summarily reduced. If one commitment is just as good and right and valid as another, the eschatological sign written deeply into the creation is lost to the church . . . and if lost to the church, where will it be spoken?
This is the place where the egregious nature of the recommendations is exposed. A series of changes to the standards for the life of clergy ("rostered leaders") is proposed with an oft repeated refrain to "find a way" to accomplish the changes, while at the same time there is an explicit restriction against speaking of changes or additions to the rites of the church.
Did the majority of the task force think that there would be any other way for pastoral candidates who are homosexual in their self-understanding (i.e., whose homoerotic affections and inclinations speak more loudly to them than any other voices) to live a "life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationship" without a public ritual that celebrates, protects and blesses such a union? The reason given[4] that a Rite of Same-Sex blessing is to not be proposed does not ring true, because the changes in the standards would precipitate an official rite in order that there be public and ecclesial accountability.
New worlds are made in ritual enactment. We weren't there when the world was made, we weren't there when the world was made new in the bursting of the tomb, and we may not be there when life on this earth as we know it comes to an end. However, in our ritual life, these events are made ours as we are drawn into the resurrected life of our Lord, He who was there when the waters were formed and who will call our names when crystal fountain flows.
In our ritual, liturgical life we enter into the mystery of His passion. In our liturgical assembly, the life of faith is given us in word and sign, and our maturity in this same faith is also expressed and confirmed in the rites of transition that surround birth, death, and marriage. These rites are epiphanic, that is, through them we at last see what God intends for us to see in faith.
The rite of marriage is an event in which we act out what we believe about our creation, and we discover even more about the One in whom we believe — He who has created us for love. With the eyes of faith, we see why God gave us the sexual differentiation of male and female — we were made to love each other. And now this love will serve as yet another reminder of the all-consuming love that Christ, our Lord, has for His church.[5]
The rites of the church are God's way of giving us a means to live to the praise of His glory. The designing of a rite that binds two people of the same gender together for this life is without this epiphanic dimension, for the binding together of two people of the same gender will leave them with themselves, untransformed.
The Report and Recommendations sets before us two positions, one of continuity and one of change, and it seeks to set these positions before the assembly as equally valid. Here, as it consistently uses the term "same-gender" with regard to particular "orientations" and "relationships," it claims a distinctive identity for those who want the church to approve of their homoerotic desires and inclinations as being natural, right, and fitting.
The social statement has made a clear case for the superiority, appropriateness, and emotional and spiritual health of lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships (which hitherto have been reserved for a male-female relationship) as opposed to transient and/or cohabiting arrangements where the potential for pain is ever immanent. Now the recommendations will use that information as they present the "new" position of affirming life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationships, because if its good for male-female relationships, how can we deny that it would be good for male-male or female-female relationships, if indeed same-gendered "relationships" are just as pleasing to God?
Without the key piece — i.e., the doxological expression that shapes our faith — one can follow this line of logic all the way up to claiming the church's institution of a Same-Sex Blessing and the ordination of folks who seek life-long, monogamous, same-gendered relationships to be acts of justice, of civil rights; but the ground upon which this argument is built is where the fallacy lies. Males and females were not given the gifts of sexual expression for such homoerotic activity.
The Holy Scriptures have no word of blessing for acts of homoeroticism — regardless of relational contexts, and the church's attempt to sacralize such pairings would work against the health of the neighbor now and for generations to come.[6] Lex supplicandi legem stauat credendi![7] Such 'ecclesiastical' rites would work to change the beliefs all those who participate in them.
Because the proposed social statement starts in the wrong place, the recommendations end in the wrong place, modeling themselves on democratic rather than Biblical justice. True justice and righteousness are rooted in God's steadfast love, so that when our lives reflect His righteousness we are doing what He has made us to do.
So indeed, how does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor? Because He has made us in such a way, fitting, complementary, opposite, and paired, He gives us the holy estate of marriage in which lovemaking is an act of faith that He has provided a beloved spouse as a sign of His eternal goodness. For such goodness we give Him praise and from the strength of our homes we work together to care for all in need.
God has made us in such a way that sexual expression and spiritual identity are closely bound, for in His establishment of marriage the nakedness of heart and the nakedness of the body flourish in a covenant of trust and love — and the lovemaking of a husband and wife, with all its joy, delight, tenderness, and passion are among the dearest of His gifts.
For those who receive such a great gift, loving a spouse within God's covenant is both an expression of obedience and a sign to the world of how deeply He loves us all. Trusting that it is He who provided this earthly other for us, trusting that His establishment of marriage for men and women is good, our everyday actions of caring for a spouse become a living doxology, and incarnate ethics of praise.
The Rev. Dr. Amy C. Schifrin
Intentional Interim Pastor, Lower Susquehanna Synod, ELCA
Currently serving Holy Trinity, Hershey, Pennsylvania
- - - - - - - - -
Endnotes
[1] They may use common sense, but they're not even bound to do that.
[2] If this can happen with the sexuality issue, why not with any other issue? In this way the sexuality issue is a symptom that reveals a far greater problem in the ELCA, where popular culture's ways of reading scripture and designing rites become the great shapers of how the Church prays when we gather in Christ's name.
[3] Even in Luther's 1529 "Order of Marriage for Common Pastors" (LW 53:111), vows were exchanged at the church door, but the words and gesture of blessing occurred in front of the altar, where the pastor, with hands raised, spoke the words of Genesis 2:18, 21-24, which then served "as a kind of words of institution for marriage." Philip H. Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship: Lutheran Liturgy in Its Ecumenical Context (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 459.
[4] The Report and Recommendations acknowledges that "this church does not have biblical or theological consensus on the matter," so that at this time, ritual matters will be left to local congregations (lines 319-325). A chaotic proposal at best, idiosyncratic rather than ecclesial, it may mirror the worst of the wider culture's influence on the design of the church's rites for marriage, so that the emphasis of the rite is on the couple's "personality," not on the faithfulness of God.
[5] "Lord Jesus Christ, as you freely give yourself to your bride the Church, grant that the mystery of the union of man and woman in marriage may reveal to the world the self-giving love which you have for your church; and to you with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen" Post-Communion Prayer for Marriage, LBW, Minister's Desk Edition, 192.
[6] It would also work against the life of the church because how one deals with the issue of blessing the unions of self-identified homosexuals will become the litmus test within the call process.
[7] "The law of prayer determines the law of belief." Prosper of Aquitaine.
- - - - - - - - -
Permission is granted for reprint and distribution of Let’s Talk in part or in its entirety, provided the journal title, issue date, and author(s) are cited on all copies.
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