The Reformed Pastor

There’s always something kind of weird about Unitarians talking about Jesus, sort of like when vegetarians talk about how to prepare steak or football players talk about baseball. As Fats Waller once said about jazz, if you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

But that doesn’t stop Unitarian minister Erik Wikstrom from taking to the pages of the Washington Post to tell us what Jesus would have thought about California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage:

It’s official – for now. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has issued his ruling that California’s controversial Proposition 8, which defined marriage in California as being only between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional. Proponents of the Proposition are already appealing the judge’s ruling. Coming largely from the ranks of the Christian right, they see their crusade as a moral responsibility.

I’m sure it would come as a surprise to the millions of African-Americans and Hispanics who voted for Prop 8 that they are now members of the “Christian right.” But I guess they have to be labeled somehow, right?

I can understand why. According to the Gospels the site of Jesus’ first miracle was a wedding, so it makes sense to think that he has a horse in this race. And yet the Gospels also record Jesus taking a stand against looking only at the surface of things – at their outer forms – teaching us to look instead at their inner content.

In one rather graphic passage (Matthew 23:27) he chastises the “teachers of the law” – and here he’s really referring to those who prefer a legalistic adherence to the letter of the law rather than a more fluid understanding of its spirit. He calls them “whitewashed sepulchers,” tombs, and says that they look beautiful and clean on the outside but on the inside they’re full of rotting corpses. As I said, a graphic metaphor.

“A more fluid understanding of its spirit”–that’s Unitarianese for “words mean exactly what I say they do, nothing more or less.” Yes, Jesus condemned His opponents for their legalism, but not so that the moral law could mean anything we want, but to direct them back to the intention of God.

It’s so much easier to pay attention to the forms of things. You can see forms. You can legislate forms. Marriage should be between a man and a woman, for example. That’s clear. That’s simple. That’s legal. But I don’t think that would cut it as a definition for Jesus.

At which point Wikstrom heads off to a fairy land of his own creation, and leaves Jesus far behind. Jesus, of course, never says anything that would remotely suggest that He thought marriage was anything other than between a man and a woman, and at no point suggests that the sexual morality embodied in the Old Testament law was anything other than God’s design for sexuality. To the extent that He criticizes His opponents on the subject, it is to make clear that they had become too lax in their view of marriage and divorce (Matthew 19:1-12).

Perhaps a more spiritual definition of marriage is the union of two people [why just two?--seems awfully narrow and legalistic to me--DF] who love one another, are committed to one another, and whose love is dedicated not just to the growth of each individual but to both as a couple and, then, sharing that love in the wider world?

“A more spiritual definition,” which is to say Wikstrom’s, not Jesus’. Our Lord recognized that there is more to marriage that just love and commitment, as important as those are. Most especially, His concern was for the original intention of God for marriage to be honored and upheld. Views such as Wikstrom’s are not those of God, but of a culture that thinks it knows better than He.

Gee, what a surprise: the federal judge who sought to turn the Prop 8 case over which he presided into a show trial/propaganda forum for gay rights activists, only to be rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court, strikes down California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage. Who’d have thought it? According to the Associated Press:

A federal judge overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if gays have a constitutional right to marry in America.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume immediately. Judge Walker said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents of the ban pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Right. The chances of Walker granting the proponents’ request is roughly the same as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chances of winning the next Miss Universe pageant. Ditto for the proponents’ chances with the Ninth Circuit. This one’s going to the U.S. Supreme Court, and nothing before it will mean much.

UPDATE: I got the “opponents” of Prop 8 and the “proponents” mixed up. That’s been corrected.

UPDATE: The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United weighed in predictably:

This is a tremendous step forward for individual freedom and church-state separation. Aggressive and well-funded religious groups conspired to take away the civil marriage rights of same-sex couples in California. That was wrong, and I am delighted that the court has ruled the way it has.

Got that? A political campaign that garnered millions of votes to overturn the fiat of an unelected judiciary is a “conspiracy.” So much for the meaning of words.

In a November 2008 referendum, voters narrowly approved Proposition 8, a ballot measure that removed the right of same-sex couples to obtain civil marriages. The referendum was dominated by lavishly funded political front groups representing the Roman Catholic bishops, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and fundamentalist Protestant churches.

Actually, spending by the two sides of Prop 8 was almost even. But the proponents never should have been allowed to campaign, because they are theocratic poopyheads with the temerity to disagree with AU on a public policy issue.

Lynn said powerful religious interest groups should never have been allowed to change civil marriage laws to reflect their doctrinal teachings.

They weren’t. That was done by the voters of California after hearing the arguments presented by both sides of the Prop 8 campaign, including the United Church of Christ and Episcopal Church in opposition. But that wasn’t the outcome Rev. Lynn favored, so that means his opponents must have been engaged in a “conspiracy” to overturn a brand-new, judicially-mandated “right.”

National Public Radio presents an interesting story regarding the experience of religious conservatives in academia. There’s some interesting survey data, and one laugh-out-loud moment:

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a “closeted faith.”

“They just do not want to bring up that they are religious in an academic discussion. There’s somewhat of almost a culture of suppression surrounding discussions of religion at these kinds of academic institutions,” Ecklund says.

She says the scientists worried that their colleagues would believe they were politically conservative — or worse, subscribed to the theory of intelligent design. Ecklund says they all insisted on anonymity.

Without seeing the poll, it’s impossible to say for sure, but the interesting thing here is that there’s no indication that the half of respondents who say they’re “religious” are actually conservative or orthodox believers. They may all be Reform Jews or members of the United Church of Christ. It sounds as if the prejudice isn’t against conservative religious, but those who claim faith of any kind, at least if the NPR report is accurate. But the next item nails it down a bit better:

And it appears that climate may extend beyond science departments. A poll of 1,200 academics by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found that more than half said they have unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians.

Aryeh Weinberg, who co-authored the study, says one reason for this is that there are relatively few evangelicals in academia.

I guess it’s easier to dislike those with whom you have nothing to do, and know little about.

“The question is, why? Do they self-select out, and if they do, why are they self-selecting out? Are they actually not hired? Are they trying to get hired but not getting hired? Are they getting hired then being forced out, not getting tenure?” Weinberg asks.

I expect the answer to her questions is, “all of the above.” As to why evangelicals self-select out, it only makes sense that most people do not want to jump into a work environment where they know most of their colleagues will dislike them simply because they are traditionally religious. The level of vitriol–often ignorant, often personal–aimed at evangelicals on college campuses is not something a lot of people would willingly subject themselves to if they had alternative.

Next came the LOL:

Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Columbia University and an Episcopal priest, disagrees.

“I haven’t encountered that hostility at all,” Balmer says. “I’ve been a visiting professor at places like Emory and Northwestern and Yale and Princeton and other places. And I simply have not encountered that sort of hostility to my claims of faith or my professions of faith.”

Of course Balmer has never experienced hostility. His outspoken political liberalism, combined with his revisionist Episcopalianism, make him a completely non-controversial, non-threatening trophy prof (“look, see, we don’t discriminate against religious academics!”) The fact that he has repeatedly attacked evangelicals in print makes him just that much more presentable within the monolithic university.

Anyway, there’s more worth looking at. Check it out.

(Via T19.)

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is throwing a tantrum. The RCRC thought that its allies in the administration had put a fast one (in the form of getting the Stupak Amendment shelved in favor of a promised executive order that would be quietly ignored) over on members of Congress who voted for health care reform in the belief that no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions except under the conditions permitted by the Hyde Amendment. The administration, with RCRC cheerleading on the sidelines, tried to pull an end run, got caught, and has now backtracked. And RCRC isn’t going to take it:

As people of faith, we are morally outraged that the Obama administration has issued an interim final rule to ban insurance coverage for abortion for some of the most medically vulnerable women in the United States.

On July 30, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released interim final regulations for the new high-risk pools, which are designed to provide health coverage to people who have been denied access to private health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Abortion coverage will be banned in these temporary health-insurance pools that will transition us into the new healthcare system. This is unacceptable!

We fought against this kind of restriction in the Stupak Amendment and we cannot accept it now.

Presumably that means that Carlton Veazey will soon be marching into the Oval Office and, well, you know:

I have to admit that when I saw this on Stand Firm today, I just about fell out of my seat it’s so funny. It’s from last year, and I don’t know the context, but you have got to check this out:

Former seminary president turned Democratic Party activist Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite takes to the pages of the Washington Post to present as tendentious and ludicrous a thesis as has ever found its way into that august journal. It is captured by the title: “Is fear of Islam the new McCarthyism?” She writes:

Religious freedom and the right of free expression are the strongest source of power Americans have for combating radicals who use Islam as the excuse for their violent extremism.

You can see where this is going from the first sentence. She doesn’t hesitate to say in another column that evangelical Christianity leads to wife beating, but she refuses to acknowledge that fundamentalist Islam might have anything to do with “radicals” who, by some freak of nature or monumental coincidence, just happen to be Muslims.

Instead, however, conservatives such as Newt Gingrich want us to reject not only violent extremists, but also Islamic ideas, especially ideas on religious law, that is, Sharia law.

And your complaint with that is…what, exactly? Later in the piece she specifically says that sharia shouldn’t be adopted in democracies, so what’s her problem with Gingrich? He doesn’t say Islam should be banned in the U.S., or that Muslims shouldn’t be free to live as they choose. His problem is with a specific ideology that he calls “Islamism” that seeks to turn the U.S. (and every other nation) into an Islamic republic based on sharia. Again, what’s her problem?

Gingrich believes that Americans are “at risk” as a nation, not only from the violence of a “militant Islam,” but also from the cultural integration of Muslims in the West. The latter he calls “stealth jihadists.”

This is Thistlethwaite’s spin, and it doesn’t come close to being even an honest interpretation of Gingrich’s message. His objection is not to Muslims who genuinely assimilate into Western democracies, which is to say those who accept the norms of a free society such as freedom of religion, speech, and assembly. He is referring to those who sometimes try to sound like they support those principles, but who in fact use them to carry out an agenda aimed at destroying them and imposing sharia. On an international level, think of the members of the UN Human Rights Council who, in the name of “freedom of religion,” seek to truncate freedom of speech to prevent all criticism of Islam. At home, think of organizations such as the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), which uses freedom of speech to denounce any criticism of Islam or Muslims as a violation of human rights. CAIR, it might be remembered, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case that unveiled a host of financial links between certain American Muslims and Middle East terrorist outfits like Hamas. Those are the people whom Gingrich refers to as “stealth jihadists,” not the ordinary Muslims in hundreds of communities across America who are doing a splendid job of fitting in with their neighbors. This is how the AEI summarized Gingrich’s address:

Almost nine years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States has yet to confront the threat posed by the extremist and irreconcilable wing of Islam. Former Speaker of the House and AEI senior fellow Newt Gingrich will warn that now is the time to awaken from self-deception about the nature of our enemies and rebuild a bipartisan commitment, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to defend America. Drawing on the lessons of Camus and Orwell, Gingrich will describe the dangers of a wartime government that uses language and misleading labels to obscure reality. He will explain why we need a debate about this larger war against the irreconcilable wing of Islam—which mortally threatens America’s way of life, freedom, and rule of law—and how it relates to the nuclear threat from Iran and the various other risks posed to America’s very existence. Most importantly, Gingrich will argue that America will remain at risk until it confronts this willful blindness about the nature of its enemies and the nature of the war in which it is engaged.

Andrew McCarthy adds this by way of explaining the term “stealth jihadists”:

The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic,  and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome.

Think Sami Al-Arian. Think Muslim Student Association. Think Mahdi Bray. Think Muslim American Society. These are people who Thistlethwaite apparently wants to turn a blind eye to, even while she levels ridiculous accusations at those who seek to point out the danger that Islamism presents.

A close historical parallel, Gingrich argued in a lengthy address to the American Enterprise Institute entitled America at Risk: Camus, National Security and Afghanistan, where he is now a senior fellow, is the struggle with aommunism [sic].

Almost, but not quite. The total approach Gingrich is proposing has a better historical parallel in McCarthyism. McCarthyism has come to mean making charges of disloyalty or even subversion without regard for adequate evidence. [Emphasis added.]

Right. There is no evidence that radical Islamists are seeking to attack the United States, engage in terrorist activities, or bring countries under the sway of sharia law. The first attack on the World Trade Center, and the trial that exposed the bombers links to Middle East Islamists, never happened. September 11 was a figment of our imaginations. Bali, London, Madrid, innumerable attacks across the Middle East–just common criminals at work. The Holy Land Foundation trial, which demonstrated the ties between Islamist terrorists, political organizations, and their American supporters–nothing to see here, just move along.

Here’s the length to which Thistlethwaite would deny what is right in front of her face:

But to make what is a debate over ideas into a dangerous threat posed by Islam to the West, instead of focusing on violent extremism, is to make Islam itself a vague and yet all-pervasive threat in very much the same way that McCarthy made even general leftist ideas into a threat to national security.

Leave aside the fact that Gingrich doesn’t do that. Ask yourself this: what exactly is “violent extremism”? By acting as though radical Islamic ideas and goals aren’t involved, pretty much anyone–lone nuts who kill abortion doctors, Israeli settlers, Basque separatists, the Tamil Tigers, Nepalese Maoists, the Shining Path, the Earth Liberation Front, maybe even Mexican and Columbian drug gangs–can be lumped under the heading. At that point the conflict with radical and unashamedly violent Shia and Wahhabi Muslims–global in reach, imperialist in ambition, funded by Iranian and Saudi oil money, and with sympathizers throughout the West–can be dismissed as just one problem among many. After all, it’s just as important to prevent the next Tiller as to prevent the next 9/11.

The truth is that Thistlethwaite needs to look in the mirror. The only instance of McCarthyism going on here is the bogus, evidence-free, debate-stopping, pseudo-psychotherapeutic charge of “Islamophobia” that people like her trot out any time anyone suggests that there is any conceivable link between radical Islam and those who attack America and Americans.