Month: April 2015

Tipping Point

Does the continuation of civility and moral community require that we maintain the American imperium? Via Rod Dreher:

Father Patrick Reardon, pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, has just released the following statement:

Because the State of Illinois, through its legislature and governor’s office, have now re-defined marriage, marriage licenses issued by agencies of the State of Illinois will no longer be required (or signed) for weddings here at All Saints in Chicago.

Those seeking marriage in this parish will be counseled on the point.

Father Pat

No longer be required or signed. No recognition of the state’s authority over marriage. One is reminded of Alasdair Macintyre’s famous remark about the decline of the Western Roman Empire:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like the pastor of All Saints parish has concluded that the continuation of civility and moral community no longer has anything to do with shoring up the American civil order, and in fact depends on repudiating it in the matter of marriage.

A Benedict Option has been embraced by an Orthodox parish in Chicago. Who’s next?

Father Pat has never been bashful about playfully expressing provocative opinions. He’s quite involved in the conservative ecumenical journal, Touchstone, as Senior Editor. He is widely respected and influential beyond Orthodox circles. Though I had not stopped to guess who would be the first fairly-high-profile pastor or denomination to announce such a policy, he probably would not have been in my top ten list. There are much hotter heads and more strident, quick tongues than his. His precedent has gravitas.

The comments to Dreher’s blog add to my conviction that we’ve reached a tipping point. First, the story proved a sort of Rorschach test. Perceptions of Father Pat’s intentions were all over the spectrum, as initially were perceptions of Rod’s approval or disapproval. There were many who thought this was some sort of protest, intended to influence Illinois to reverse its course, which is the same idiotic treatment mainstream media give every move of the Catholic hierarchy: it’s all about power and politics.

We just don’t even understand each other any more. I see little hope of regaining that in the short run. Some power has come down and confused our tongues.

But there were those who saw and endorsed more or less what I saw (my 100% endorsement of any of the following is uncertain):

Brian: My oldest daughter goes to a Christian school, and one of the things they do is recite the pledge of allegiance regularly. As someone who served in the military and grew up disposed to see God’s providence involved in the creation and sustaining of this country, I was surprised the negative reaction that the pledge elicited in me. Why should my kids pledge allegiance to a state that holds them in contempt? Why should we pledge allegiance to anything other than the Kingdom?

VikingLS: The point isn’t to prevent the acceptance of gay marriage, it’s to opt out out of the system.

Cascadia: This is the best news I’ve heard in weeks. Drawing a bright line between civil and religious marriage should have been done long ago. It would have saved much spilled ink.

Hans: I think that’s long overdue.

Until the last 50 years or so, US marriage laws (or at least NY laws,where I live) were more or less consistent with the Christian understanding of marriage. But the laws have been changes to something that in no way resembles Christian marriage. All civil marriages are now “gay marriages.” There is no recognition at all of reproduction obligations, and what is left is a series af tax benefits, inheritance and other rights, and access to various subsidized social benefits, like employer sponsored family health insurance ….

ck: The point is that the pastors of the church are no longer complicit in state licensure. By not signing the state license, this protects the church from civil rights claims made against them. And seeing that religious liberty will no longer be a defense, the best the Church may be able to do is stop being complicit in granting state marriage licenses.

Michael K: The US might become like Europe and Latin American countries with a Napoleonic Law Code. There are two marriage ceremonies. The first is the legal signing of the marriage license at the gov’t office and the second is the religious ceremony. A religious minister in these countries do not sign the state marriage license as is the practice in the US and I would guess most of the Anglosphere. This Orthodox church is de facto adopting the Continental practice. If you want to get married at this church and have the marriage legally recognized you need the two ceremonies.

rr: This is a great move! Kudos to Fr. Reardon. My brother is a Protestant pastor and is considering the same thing. From what I can tell, many other clergy are as well.

Civic marriage has been a farce since the advent of no-fault divorce. Same-sex marriage will only make it more of a joke. The time is overdue for the church to distance itself from the state’s nonsense on marriage.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take. This isn’t a political protest. It isn’t grandstanding (Father Pat’s too good a writer to let it go with a terse announcement to an e-mail list if he wanted to grandstand).

It’s a sorrowful recognition that what the state calls “marriage” has lost a critical mass of commonality with what the Church knows marriage to be, so that Father Pat as a clergyman wants no part of the civil counterfeit (kinda like a conscientious baker, but you can’t lay a glove on the Padre, neener, neener!). It’s a statement that it is a matter of indifference to Father Pat whether a couple is civilly married as long as they’re sacramentally religiously married (I venture a guess that any future convert couples from Evangelical churches that forewent the state license for similar reasons will be received as married though their religious marriages were not sacramental). I very much doubt that Father Pat will discourage couples from getting civilly “married,” aware of the place at the government trough that status assures them.

More deeply, I think Rod nails it with his Macintyre quote: Father Pat has “ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of [the American] imperium.”

But I would hope that the counseling Fr. Pat provides or arranges for others to provide would include:

  1. Recognition that being “married” civilly (essentially, a domestic partnership or civil union with the state arrogating the name “marriage” because of it’s cachet) confers a lot of financial and other governmental benefits.
  2. That two high-wage spouses might benefit on income tax by not being married, filing as single.
  3. That no civil marriage means no civil divorce. I know of a crack-pot (or was he a visionary?) who forewent civil marriage in favor of an oddly-named Christian Reconstructionist ceremony – but went to court years later to get out (the court not learning for a very long time that these idiots were seeking relief to which they weren’t entitled; theirs was no better legally than a Marvin v Marvin palimony case).

There are others suggestions I considered in lawyerly fashion but have omitted. Antenuptial agreements if you’re not going to marry civilly, for instance. In Catholic Canon Law, it’s my understanding, such an agreement on how to divide property in the event of separation is just about conclusive proof that you don’t even really intend to be married as the Church knows marriage.

Longer-term, this may signal the turning of the popular tide against government benefits for the mere status of “married” in the government’s debased sense. This should have come up when “child-free” marriage became the oxymoronic rage. Now perhaps we’ll tie some of those benefits to the presence of dependent children in the home rather than to “marriage” per se.

But if I’m right, Father Pat’s a bellewether, however this plays out.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Bake for them two?

It turns out that I wasn’t the only one to note the problems with Bake for them two, which had a number of my friends purring approval and, as I admitted, getting an initial approval from me. Some of the other caveats are pretty harsh:

But this one, from an organization formally committed to opposing SSM to the bitter end (via a Declaration I subscribed), had worthy moments, starting with acknowledging (mansplaining?) a good impulse behind the bad exegesis:

Kantrowitz, a free-lance editor and part-time nanny, penned a blog that went viral, competing with the reach of those of us who do religious liberty for a living. That’s noteworthy for two reasons:

First, and foremost, it tells me Christians are desperate to communicate love to LGBT people. Indeed, many Christians are willing to ignore biblical principles they know to be true to avoid the appearance of judgment or rejection. This reality stands in stark contrast to the popular misconception of Christians as ignorant bigots. As influential activists in the LGBT movement further this misconception, Christians grow more fearful of embodying the caricature. The result is a spiral of silence among Christians, and historic gains for LGBT activists.

The spiral of silence is evidence of the second lesson: the widespread failure of pastors and other church leaders to properly equip everyday Christians to respond to the culture wars.

In the first half of the next sentence, though, I personally think he goes off the rails:

Christians don’t know what the Bible says, and lack heroes who model both grace and truth.

Maybe I’m reading too much into “don’t know what the Bible says.” In my experience, Bible proof-texts are ever on their lips, be it “go the second mile” or some clobber verse. The first has cultural purchase because it sounds nice when applied to wedding cakes; the latter is almost always worse than a failure in public discourse.

The Declaration I subscribed cited more than the Bible:

We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person.

Then comes the real surprise. “Go the second mile” wasn’t even “nice” when uttered. Kantrowitz’s proof-text is at least as out-of-context as any clobber verse:

Now, finally, we come to Matthew 5: 41. Does this section apply to the current clash over religious freedom and LGBT rights, and, if so, how?

Here is the section in full:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:38-48)

… At the time of Jesus, Roman citizens held immense power over Jews, who had few rights. Jesus is instructing believers how to respond to coercive acts in an systemically unjust system. He is not affirming that system. This is similar to the instruction Paul offers slaves to obey their earthly masters (Ephesians 6). Such an admonition is not an endorsement of the slavery system, but a guide to faithful living in the midst of a broken cultural reality.

…

Furthermore, Jesus’ instruction is a means to preserve one’s dignity in a situation where humanity is being denied. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, to turn to him the other also is a display of power. If someone sues you for your tunic, to willingly offer your cloak also relocates the false pretense of power embodied in an unjust system to the shoulders of the one whose dignity is grounded in something else entirely.

Matthew 5 is a subversive text ….

I assume Bake for them two will become the squishy Christian clobber verse against troglodytes like me. But for my money, more in the original spirit of “go the second mile” is this Note from Creator Cakes:

Though we’ve never been asked to service a same-sex wedding, and though it looks increasingly that we someday will, we want to notify our customers of a policy that Creator Cakes will pursue. We’ve decided that if asked, we will provide a cake at a same-sex wedding ceremony. But we will take every dollar from that sale and donate it to an organization fighting to protect and advance religious liberty—organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, Manhattan Declaration, or the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

No organization, company or person should be compelled to participate in events or speech that conflict with their convictions. This is a basic freedom we thought was afforded under our constitution. But our culture is beginning to turn its back on its rich legacy of protecting dissenting viewpoints. If Caesar insists that bakers must be made to bake cakes or else close up shop, we’re going to see to it that Caesar’s edicts get undermined by channeling resources designed to fight Caesar.

So, we will serve same-sex wedding services. We will do so unhappily and with a bothered conscience. But if we must do so with a bothered conscience, we reserve the right as a condition of the marketplace to bother others’ consciences as well. If we are coerced into baking for events we disagree with, we will return the favor and use the funds of those we disagree with to fund the organizations they disagree with. If you are unhappy with this new policy or it conflicts with your own convictions about marriage, we invite you to take your business elsewhere.

If you need proof-texts for that, let’s look further into Romans than 1:27, to 12:18 and 13:1.

Care to fault my exegesis on that?

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“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

RFRA revisited – an irenic set of hypotheticals

As the scorching heat has begun to reduce, the energy over Indiana RFRA has begun to manifest as light.

Today’s newspaper, and Twitter and Facebook, have continued my RFRA thinking. Someone I’ve known for 50+ years pushed back a bit on something I wrote, and for some reason his very brief comment “clicked” with me.

So I’m relenting from RFRA Wind-Down and offering one more, that’s likely to lead to others. I don’t intend to have this posted on social media until after my Holy Week, though, since that’s where most people seem to read and react. This is more of a Journal entry until then.

I’ve come to understand (if not to agree with) the reaction against the law because of the personalities and interest groups behind it, and how poorly politicians articulated the need for it. That makes left conspiracy theorists salivate, as it would those on the right were the roles reversed. (Nota bene: I’ve never seen the press demand a list of concrete problems necessitating any left-leaning Bill. Just sayin’.)

And I’ve come to appreciate that those shouting past each other (“Bigot!” and “God-hater!”, roughly) may have different cases in mind.

With that, I offer seven hypothetical or paradigmatic cases that I consider more or less arranged by increasing justification for the recalcitrant baker:

  1. Customer walks into bakery. Customer says, pointing, “I’d like to buy a dozen of those cookies.” Baker hands him a questionnaire, including “sexual orientation” and refuses to sell because the answer is “Gay.” “We don’t serve your kind. Get out of here!”
  2. Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, exactly as pictured. I’ll pick it up before noon, May 27.” Baker hands him a questionnaire, including “who’s getting married?”, and refuses to sell because the answer is “Adam and Fred.”
  3. Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, exactly as pictured. Deliver it to Metropolitan Community Church by noon, May 27.” Baker says: “Whoa! Not so fast! Metropolitan Community Church? Who is getting married? This isn’t a gay wedding is it? I won’t do the cake if it is.”
  4. Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, but with two men on top. Deliver it to Metropolitan Community Church by noon, May 27.” Baker says: “Whoa! Not so fast! I won’t put two men on two women on a wedding cake because that’s not what marriage is.”
  5. Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’d like to see your portfolio.” Baker says “No need to bother. I won’t do that kind of wedding, even if you just want something straight out of the portfolio.”
  6. Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’d like to see your portfolio.” After looking at the portfolio, guys say “We’d like #3, but with two men on top.” Baker says “I’ll do #3 without any figures on top, but not with two men or two women. That’s not what I believe marriage is.”
  7. Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’ve seen your work and like it. But we don’t need to see your portfolio. SSM is new and exciting, and your designs are pretty traditional. Make us something new, exciting, one-of-a-kind, and celebrative of our union.” Baker says: “I’m sorry. I don’t have the artistic vocabulary for celebrating SSM. You’d be better off going to someone who’s excited by this new thing.” Customer says “You’re just saying that because you’re a Christianist bigot. We want you to do a custom cake and we’ll see you in court if you refuse.”

With enough time, I could probably come up with extra gradations.

If the people yelling “Bigot!” have case 1 in mind, I’m with them. Case 1 is outrageous, but many, many comment boxes were filled with suggestions that such a thing was exactly what would come from RFRA. They’re wrong about what RFRA would produce, but they’re right that in Case 1, the baker’s wrong. (Got that?)

If they have case 7 in mind, I’m inclined to yell back <hyperbole>”God-hater!”</hyperbole>

One writer has proposed a scriptural proof-text for what to do: “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” (Matthew 5:41) She writes a winsome “Bake for them two.” Some of my friends are quite smitten with that article, but after an initial flush of good will, I’m not smitten with it at all. I’m not sure what kind of case she and they have in mind, but it appears to be in the 6-7 range from how she set it up.

If she has numbers 6 or 7 in mind, I’d suggest that the apt Bible principle, for those who want chapter and verse, is I Corinthians 10:18-28, but especially 25-26, 28:

Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” … But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake.

Or, being translated, “bake anything without looking for trouble, but if trouble comes looking for you, don’t dodge it.”

I’m not really interested in debate over which proof-text fits better. I left battling proof-texts behind when I saw the 40,000 denominations (and counting) it has spawned. I’m just saying “bake for them two” is an arbitrary choice, and probably not the best. It’s certainly not the only relevant one.

Translated to other trades, like photography, it seems to me that there are no portfolios a photographer could replicate exactly, and that every commission is unique. They’re all “number 7s.” It’s not “looking for trouble” to ask details about the time, place, spouses, etc. in preparation for taking the job, and if it is a same-sex wedding, that will invariably come out in the course of that preliminary work.

I hope case 7 sheds light on why I’ve been adamant about the need for exceptions to non-discrimination laws. Case number 7 has been, roughly, the case I’ve had in mind. Number 7 clearly calls for the baker to draw on creativity and imagination to celebrate a same-sex wedding that, for whatever reason, she’s not prepared to celebrate. That’s got both “free speech” and “free exercise” violation written all over it if government compels such expression.

A RFRA is about as narrow an exception as I can imagine: you get your day in court, trying to prove that your religious/conscience/free speech exemption claim outweighs the need for 100% enforcement of an anti-discrimination law or ordinance and the other guy gets to say “no, anti-discrimination is a compelling government interest and anything less than 100% guts that whole interest.” (Again, RFRA is about far more than discrimination claims between merchant and customer, but that’s the hot button issue.)

Thoughts? This is meant to prompt dialog.

I hope soon to attempt an analysis of whether it’s advisable for a Christian to acquiesce in cases like 6 and 7, or whether perhaps it’s very wrong to do so, analyzing via some tools from moral theology, such as formal participation, material participation and their variants.

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

RFRA wind-down

With that hopeful title, and with Orthodox Holy Week coming, I offer what I intend as my last word on Indiana’s RFRA battles of the last two weeks. I may even go on a “media fast” to avoid sullying Holy Week with agitation and ill-feelings like those of this week in particular. If you’re wondering whether you should sully your Holy Week by reading further, be assured that I’ve tried to be objective and irenic.

With that intention, I offer as my closing thoughts an edited version of something that someone put up on Facebook Saturday morning, in response to his brother-in-law. It remarkably reproduces my sentiments exactly, at least as those sentiments have been honed by the occasionally enlightening (rather than inflaming) discussions of late.

* * * * *

I’m so out of politics, I had no idea a RFRA was being forwarded in Indiana until the furor hit; then I had to take a crash course on what the Indiana iteration said, and how it supposedly differed from those in other states.

What I missed in focusing on what the law said and thus what it did (silly me, thinking like a lawyer instead of a PR guy or a powerbroker) – and what I still think the press gave too much sinister significance to – is who were the “interest groups” that pushed for it: notably, 3 Religious Right groups/figures in the state, with the most odious of the three leading the charge, perhaps misrepresenting the law to his own followers. (I can’t bear sliming myself by going to his website/blog/etc to see how he may have been selling it.)

Mark Movesian at First Things warned the, oh, three or four people in the cosmos who want to deny bubble gum and baseball cards to gays and lesbians, that Indiana RFRA did not give them a right to do so, even before Thursday’s “fix.” It might have given them a defense to raise, but the defense was no slam dunk when it came to simple “I don’t want to deal with These People” bigotry. (I’m prescinding the question of whether we’ve labeled too many entities “public accommodations” that mustn’t “discriminate.”)
But no significant constituency in Indiana planned mass boycotts of gay dollars or “straight only” signs on their doors. This is news only to those who distrust their fellow Americans even more than I do.

A distinct case is posed by the artisan bakers, photographers, florists (and counting) who for reasons of conscience won’t create a custom product or do custom services in celebration of same-sex weddings. I was going to call it a “tougher case,” but for me it’s not: if sincere (and why would they turn down business and risk bad PR if they aren’t?), they shouldn’t be compelled to express what they don’t believe. Your mileage may vary from that, but I think my opinion is better rooted in fundamental American law – assuming the law still has something to do with court outcomes, and it’s not all power plays and irrational “distortion factors.”

So far, the courts have been unable to distinguish the two, and my position has lost. But the Saint Patrick’s Day paraders in Boston (who rejected an Irish GLBTetcetera group) lost repeatedly, too, enduring even mockery from Judges, until they won unanimously in the Supreme Court, not on religious grounds, but on free speech grounds. “One important manifestation of the principle of free speech is that one who chooses to speak may also decide what not to say.” That was the notoriously right-wing fundamentalist David Souter writing, by the way.

* * * * *

Sorry. One more comment. I don’t think I had yet commended Rod Dreher’s extended quote from his reader “Raskolnik.” I do so now.

Raskolnik offers the sociologist (or was she “anthropologist”?) Mary Douglas’ idea of a “condensed symbol” – certain practices or ideas that become a kind of shorthand for a whole worldview. Same-sex marriage may have become a condensed symbol, in the WEIRD world, of Christian resistance to secularism writ large,  participation as equivalent to worshipping a false God with the proverbial “pinch of incense.”

Advocacy of same-sex marriage, of course, is a condensed symbol of the hagiographical version of Selma, with recusants in the role of Bull Conner.

So I’m likely to be back after Holy Week, but RFRA per se may have faded by then, and Indiana’s alignment with the zeitgeist may have been completed. Sigh.

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.