Jon Meacham wrote a less provocative piece than its title for the magazine he edits on “The End of Christian America.” Reactions have been mixed even if it is hard to argue either with the data that prompted the article or Meacham’s Augustinian conclusion:
The columnist Cal Thomas was an early figure in the Moral Majority who came to see the Christian American movement as fatally flawed in theological terms. “No country can be truly ‘Christian’,” Thomas says. “Only people can. God is above all nations, and, in fact, Isaiah says that ‘All nations are to him a drop in the bucket and less than nothing’.” Thinking back across the decades, Thomas recalls the hope—and the failure. “We were going through organizing like-minded people to ‘return’ America to a time of greater morality. Of course, this was to be done through politicians who had a difficult time imposing morality on themselves!”
Two years ago in the epages of Ordained Servant, T. David Gordon reached a similar conclusion, and he didn’t need to quote a columnist:
Indeed, if there is any real evidence of the decline of Christianity in the West, the evidence resides precisely in the eagerness of so many professing Christians to employ the state to advance the Christian religion. That is, if Ellul’s theory is right, the evidence of the decline of Christianity resides not in the presence of other religions (including secularism) in our culture, but in the Judge Moores, the hand-wringing over “under God” in the pledge of allegiance, and the whining about the “war on Christmas.” If professing Christians believe our religion is advanced by the power of the state rather than by the power of the Spirit, by coercion rather than by example and moral suasion, then perhaps Christianity is indeed in decline. If we can no longer say, with the apostle Paul, “the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly,” then perhaps Christianity is indeed in significant decline. If we believe we need Christian presidents, legislators, and judges in order for our faith to advance, then we ourselves no longer believe in Christianity, and it has declined. Christianity does not rise or fall on the basis of governmental activity; it rises or falls on the basis of true ecclesiastical activity. What Christianity needs is competent ministers, not Christian judges, legislators, or executive officers.
Sometimes when the church is really the church she even beats journalists to the real story.
Old Life 
“What Christianity needs is competent ministers, not Christian judges, legislators, or executive officers.” Absolutely, and what part of the past Christian America do theonomists want to return to?
Is it slavery,including Christian slave owners; segregation, including segregated Christian churches, Indian massacres for land theft? Countries cannot be Christian, only people can.
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I sincerely appreciate TDG’s aversion to professing Christians believ[ing] our religion is advanced by the power of the state rather than by the power of the Spirit, by coercion rather than by example and moral suasion.
That said, there is also the WCF’s see the Scriptures teaching that “it is lawful for Christians to hold public office when called to it,” and “in such office they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth.” Moreover, “as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief.” Further, they say, “It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.”
In this light, how would you think that the Westminister divines would respond to TDG’s remarks? Or better yet, what would the Westminter divines say we are to do in our day?
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Sorry for the typographical bobbles in my comment.
The second paragraph of my comment above should have begun, “That said, the Westminster divines see the Scriptures teaching …”
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Granted that Christian faith is not advanced by the power the state, and granted that too many Christians don’t understand this. Yet this argument is something of a straw man. What it fails to address is the concern of many of us who do not wish to resort to law to coerce belief but who are concerned that law is being misused to coerce non-belief or to penalize Christian belief and practice — and that such will escalate in coming years. The power of the state is vast. And the record of governments on this earth punishing Christian belief and practice should be sufficient to give rise to alarm on the part of Christians who witness the ever expanding power of the state, its ever growing claims to regulate areas heretofore left to private conscience, its growing intolerance of dissent from its prescribed public policy.
I appreciate the two kingdoms distinction, but when the civil kingdom is want to invade the spiritual kingdom, those who are members of the spiritual kingdom will lose the freedom to proclaim the gospel if they are not vigilent. For example, we are naive to fail to grasp that the end game of the radical gay marriage lobby is evisceration of many freedoms that Christians now enjoy and take for granted. Once gay marriage is given positive sanction by law, it becomes the official public policy of the state. The force of public policy and laws of general application will mow down many civil freedoms that religious persons now enjoy. The Law Reviews and legal commentators are quite explcit about their aims and objectives. Thus, a conscientious Christian 2K advocate can oppose gay marriage publicly for reasons other than seeking to enforce Christian morality on a pagan nation, namely, to preserve the freedoms of Christians to speak and to practice our faith without the penalties that would attach if gay marriage achieves widespread acceptance. The failure of many 2K enthusiasts to grasp this point shows a dangerous naivete.
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CVanDyke
Same sex marriage is the official policy of the state in my country, with same sex marriage having been in effect for nearly 6 years in my Province and nearly 4 years throughout the country. Civil marriage is still the responsibility of the state as it always was, and religious marriage is still the responsibility of churches. Christian marriage has not changed. Christians are still free to speak and practice our faith without penalties. Yes, there have been a few cases of “christians” being charged with hatred under human rights laws, but the hatred they expressed can hardly be considered Christian. Dictating Christian morality to non-believers does not work. Render unto caesar etc.
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CVD,
That’s a curious argument: oppose something like gay marriage because it threatens religious freedom? Sounds a bit creative and not a little paranoid. How about opposing it because homosexuality is opposed by creational norms? That might have a better fighting chance in the real world instead of suggesting cloak-and-dagger arguments. After all, those really are the arguments of the other side, namely that homosexuality is perfectly morally acceptable.
Even so, does anyone recall a little thing called Prohibition, you know, advancing the Good Society by punishing drunkards who abused God’s good creation? How is the push to make sure Adam and Steve remain permanantly single, under the rubric of being pursuant to creational norms, that much unlike the Prohibition debacle? Does Prohibition bother Presbyterians merely because they like beer (good reason but not enough), or because it was theonomic/transformative? But to suggest the push to legalize gay marriage has something to do with stripping us of our religious freedoms always just strikes me as the last attempts by those who know they are quite beat, but instead of admitting it resprt to the classic devices of the desperate: fear and loathing.
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Have to agree with Wout on this one. Although I oppose Homosexual lifestyles from Biblical and Natural Law it is not the end of Christianity if civil unions or gay marriage was legalized by the Feds or the State. Why? Because the Church is to be concerned with the Spiritual Kingdom and as long as we are not asked to violate our beliefs by marrying Homosexuals than we shouldn’t act as if the world is coming to an end if it is legalized for the State to do so.
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Prohibition was all about drinking, which is lawful, not drunkeness. There is absolutely no comparison to Adam and Steve’s sin against nature, which is how often times the practice used to be referred to in the unbelieving world. (IOW layoff the kool-aid. The specious objection is getting old)
And speaking of marital rights for sodomites, what next? Generally a culture ends up on the trash heap of history if it becomes the rule and not the exception. But that is exactly what they want, tolerance as the exception until they can become the intolerant rule. I don’t know about anybody else, but I am not really interested in living in that kind of world. You can’t christianize the world, but the law is supposed to be a restraint, not a license.
Further “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people (Prov. 14:34)”. Or do we stand with Everett (Chicken) Koop (according to Gary Y2K North) in playing the Surgeon General to ALL Americans and advocate ‘safe sin’; condoms, but not – God forbid – a commandment? But I thought in America, even the civil magistrate could exercise his faith and he was generally elected with that understanding. People elected Christians and weren’t surprised when they acted like it after being sworn in.
Yeah, I know. Not cool, in the brave new 2K world. But if we know that the Scripture saith the natural man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, just what exactly does he do to the natural law, which we have also been told is the true law? Seriously.
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Bob Suden, does any righteousness exalt a nation? What is a passing grade? Does the U.S. get any credit for punishing pirates or fathers who sell their daughters?
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And speaking of marital rights for sodomites, what next? Generally a culture ends up on the trash heap of history if it becomes the rule and not the exception. But that is exactly what they want, tolerance as the exception until they can become the intolerant rule. I don’t know about anybody else, but I am not really interested in living in that kind of world. You can’t christianize the world, but the law is supposed to be a restraint, not a license.
Yes, the law is a restraint and not a license. But it’s also not a billy club. Can you at least admit that is a possibility, or would that be to give too much away?
So no lessons to be learned from Prohibition then? I suppose not if you are seriously suggesting that it was about not wanting anyone to be able to have a night cap instead of cleaning up the streets.
And do you make any distinction between politics and morality, or are you good with moralized politics and politicized religion? I’m not. Where’d I put my Kool-Aid? “Oh YEAH!!”
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Zrim, CVD has alleged that “law reviews and legal commentators are quite explicit about their aims and objectives.” Granted that he hasn’t produced any documents, still, it appears that he is prepared to do so.
Why then do you dismiss his point as a paranoid conspiracy theory?
In the case of our church, we have had to reconsider our policy of allowing the public to use our building for events in light of this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/09/AR2009040904063.html
Granted that we might still want to “take a chance” and keep our building open, still — what makes you so sure that the “gay agenda” is not part of a larger push to eliminate Christians from the public square?
JRC
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Zrim,
I think it a little naive not to believe that current pagan, fascist administration would like to wipe out distinctive Christianity for a liberal version of merely ethical Christianity (as they define it). So no lessons learned from the Netherlands and Canada where merely opposing gay marriage is a hate crime. So the new natural law is that freedom of expression is alright as long as one doesn’t use that freedom to oppose anything except to oppose those who oppose anything. At what point are we to render unto ceasar everything?
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igasx,
I’d rather conceive of my naivete as being not naturally given to paranoia. It sounds so much better. But I don’t deny there are kooks who want to wipe out Christianity via law and governance (I just watched Christopher Hitchens interviewed on C-Span, yeow, talk about counter-fundamentalism; and it ranks up there with Bill Mahar’s strident Constaninianism). That would be naive, you’re right. After all, governance nailed us to the tree and made us candlesticks in the gardens of Nero.
But the fear and loathing on the parts of believers is unbecoming to say the very least. it’s actually quite embarrassing. Whatever esle it implies, it’s almost as if believers really do think their security comes from the hand of Caesar instead of the Most High.
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Not to mention from believers who are not imprisoned for worship. Have folks in N. America ever considered African politics?
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Zrim,
So where are the distinctions? Can we defend natural law? Personally I could give a rats a$$ what the government believes is moral as long as they do their due diligence in preventing harm against others but I will not attend their pagan temples to worship the enviroment and social engineering.
Sure, there are Christians who want social engineering from the other side that are embarrassing but does that mean I need to render unto caesar his form of worship without opposition?
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igasx,
It might be that the distinction is between obeying Caesar and worshipping him, which I don’t know that I intuit in some of your response. If I pay the deposit on my cans (soda, not beer) does that mean I am “attend[ing] their pagan temples to worship the enviroment,” or just being an obedient citizen by paying my bills? And if I vote “no” on Prop 8 does that mean I think homosexuality is moral, or am I sticking it to those are politically punishing those they don’t like under the pretense of “pursuing creational norms”? (But mine would likely be to abstain from voting since I don’t think homosexuality is moral, nor do I like the spirit of theonomy any better.)
I’ve no problem defending natural law. I’m just not convinced that that is what is always going on.
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Word up (see, I can rap, too).
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Hear the voice of Neville Chamberlain in this thread. And the rationalizations of the frog slowly boiling to death. Oh, and the being ashamed of the name Christ. I particularly enjoy the examples from Europe and Canada about how little harm these secular attacks on Christianity really amount to. And the ever more popular appeal to Africa as the *real* thing when it comes to Christian persecution (black people are so real…and noble…they’re not like white people…I feel so good when I write that!!). Can’t we all just get along and sit in our offices and contemplate new books to write for the *lay people*? Why cause trouble? And did America *really* have a Christian foundation? Does God *really* favor our nation because of our foundational Christian belief? Really, this isn’t taught anymore. Not anywhere I know of. No *accredited* institutions are teaching such a thing. And that Judge Roy Moore guy. How stupid to think the Ten Commandments have anything to do with our culture and system of law. It’s embarrassing.
By the way, thanks to all the theonomists for giving the wobblies another justification to bend over for the secularists. Not that they needed it.
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Christian, is there any particular reason why the charge of embarrassment of Christ can not be turned back on you? After all, you’re not being very content with the governments that God has ordained. And you’re acting like you actually know better than our Lord what is the right thing to do.
In other words, I’d be careful about impugning motives. It’s not very Christian.
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The radical 2K proponents I most frequently meet argue that Christians should not oppose gay marriage because such opposition is a misguided attempt to impose Christian morality upon the civil realm. If the pagan world wants gay marriage, it is wrong in principle for Christians to stand against it. Our creation norms are biblically derived, and it is wrong in principle for us to utilize Scipture as a basis for any argument.
My answer to these well meaning folk is that there are many reasons why a Christian might oppose same-sex marriage that have nothing to do with a misguided attempt to impose Christian morality upon a pagan nation. And chief among the many reasons is preservation of freedom of religion, and constitutional lawyers well understand this even if lay Christians do not. Within this nation, our constitutional order, as the Supreme Court has interpreted it, allows any law of general application to apply to religious persons and their actions and speech. The Law Reviews from prestige law schools in this nation, within the last 8 years, are replete with scholarly analyses of how the historic understanding of the First Amendment — that government has no power to decide which ideas are true or false and must permit all to be expressed except within about 7 limited categories — should be re-formulated to say that there are some ideas that are so hurtful and patently false and offensive that government has the duty to suppress and punish tshem. And among the mahy ideas that government, according to this new view, has the power to suppress or punish is the expression of the idea that homosexuality is wrong or aberrant. An example given by one judge, writing in the Yale Law Journal, is the publication of a speech or book that condemns homosexuality or opposes gay marriage. He cites an example of a billboard that quoted from Leviticus and Romans as speech that should subject the speaker to criminal sanction. According to this judge, all that is needed to provide the legal predicate for such action is the broad acceptance among the states of gay marriage. Typically, the federal courts and Supreme Court are a few years behind the Law Reviews in accepting new legal perspectives in Constitutional Law. Those of us who teach constitutional law and practice it in the courts as lawyers understand that there is nothing far-fetched about this scenario at all; all the legal materials are already at hand, and the courts are moving already in this direction.
This is merely one example of why Christians can have legitimate motives and reasons to engage in “culture wars”, if you will, wholly apart from any motivation to impose Christian morality in an illigitimate way in the manner of the Christian Right. Simply put, the law of unintended consequenses can result in a contraction of the freedom of religious persons to speak and act when the accepted public policy of the states stands stoutly against Christian norms. When our moral norms threaten the agenda of the non-Christian society, the legal means to punish or suppress us exist. It is dangerously naive to fail to grasp this.
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I hear the voice of Harry Emerson Fosdick in this comment. But what you miss, Christian, is that a Christian secularist is different from a Christian culturalist. Respectively, one is typically embarrassed by the foolishness of Christians, the other by the foolishness of Christ; one understand that Christ’s kingdom really isn’t of the world, the other speaks of “the world setting the church’s agenda” in one way or another.
There are boiling frogs, and then there are frogs boiling.
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Zrim,
Your example of the deposit law on cans is not applicable since you receive your money back and the Prop 8 example you equivocated to the point of conceding.
Western Culture has raised covetousness and egalitarianism as the greatest public good. We can oppose that on both a Natural Law and Revealed Law basis.
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CVanDyke,
Here, Here!
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It should go without saying, but excellent comment, Mr. VanDyke.
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>Christian, is there any particular reason why the charge of embarrassment of Christ can not be turned back on you? After all, you’re not being very content with the governments that God has ordained. And you’re acting like you actually know better than our Lord what is the right thing to do.
Very kismet of you.
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CVD,
As one not entirely convinced that the current pushback by culture warriors (be they secular or sacred) is on the up-and-up, AKA a “radical 2Ker,” I’ll do you one better: creational norms are not “biblically derived,” they are creationally derived. Nobody needs the Bible to know that homosexuality is contrary to nature. Nobody needs the Bible to know what is right, true and good. Sinners only need the Bible to reveal gospel. But law is natural.
I’m hesitant to argue that “Christians should not oppose gay marriage because such opposition is a misguided attempt to impose Christian morality upon the civil realm.” To the extent that the theonomic spirit wants to convert from the outside-in (a la TDG), there is some value to the argument, I admit. But one of the problems with it is that plenty of Christ-hating pagans agree that homosexuality is not located in creation and should not enjoy the sanction of marriage. That’s because such is not biblically derived but naturally derived.
I agree with you that Christians have every right to engage in culture war. I’m as much a pacifist as I am theonomist. But there is such a category called wisdom. It comports as well in creational norms. Wisdom gets a lot of short-shrift at the expense of the “it’s all about creational norms” arguments. Is not wisdom a Christian virtue, too? What is actually dangerously naive not to grasp is the NT charge to live quietly, mind your own business and be at peace with the powers that be. All is lawful but not all is profitable. If it’s religious freedom you are arguing for, have you ever considered that those you are working so hard against might someday remember how you strove to make them second class citizens and return a tooth for a tooth? I’m not at all persuaded by this erroneous argument of religious freedom (no matter how many presitgious law reviews you cite). But as long as you want it on the table, what do you do with the possibility that this could come back and bite you in the proverbial arse?
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And very evasive of you.
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How so? Westminster Confession of Faith is very enlightening on the subject:
“Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; so that there is not anything befalls any by chance, or without his providence; yet by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.”
What you described was the Muslim understanding. Kismet.
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CVanDyke, Christian, igasx
It looks like you will never understand that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. We are in the world, but not of the world. It really appears that you are more interested in your version of what was national Israel under the Mosaic law to be recreated in your country, than the Kingdom.
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Oh, well why didn’t you say that?
I guess that leaves the Muslim view of the state to you.
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What percentage of His time did our Lord spend opposing:
1. Slavery
2. Capital Punishment
3. The oppression of women
4. Racial discrimination
Particularly when compared to:
1. The holiness of God
2. The lostness of man
3. Unbelief
4. Hypocrisy
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Wout,
you write the words “in this world” but it seems to have no meaning except mere existence. I’m not gnostic so I think God still finds value in this world and expects his people to continue to steward it.
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The replies from Mr. Hart and his blocker Mr. Zrim have hardly been impressive. Unfortunately this is the state of modern day Reformed seminary education.
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Christian, your inferences also leave much to be desired. You hurl at me that I’m embarrassed of Christ. I suggest that they objection could boomerang back on you. You return the volley with a Muslim reference, which again could come back to bite your own views in the backside.
And then you infer that Reformed theological education is in a bad way because of my and Zrim’s views. Huh? Neither Zrim nor I teach at a Reformed seminary. Maybe your estimate of American politics is as shoddy as your evaluation of Reformed seminaries? Or could it be another instance of your rush to judgment? Come now, own up to your name.
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Wow.
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Wow – refers to the comment on the state of Reformed seminary education.
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“Wow,” is right, Bruce. Which reminds me, do we still have a date this summer whilst you’re here for synod? Despite what Christian implies, the last time I was at CTS was about twelve years ago as a struggling NT student (Greek is a mathematics, not a language course). Wait, that’s not true, I was there a couple weeks ago to drop off a book and take a gander at the new chapel. Muller’s office is still a sty.
Christian, you seem angry. About lots of stuff. I am not sure why. Most of the posters here more or less share your views, which, if we’re all about prognosticating about the state of things, this seems like a micro-example of the macro-situation: American religion is mostly evangelical, even the Presbyterians. If anyone has reason to be out of sorts it’s the likes of DGH and myself. Why is it you need the deep breath? Talk about intuition and counter-intuiton.
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Hmm. Did you just now learn about secondary causes? From the above exchange it seems so. Go back up there and look for yourself. Anybody else can do the same.
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Yes sir, we do. Just not officially yet. I’ll be there in three weeks from today.
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I hope my students (non-seminarians btw) are not reading this. Otherwise they will appeal to secondary causes to overcome faulty reasoning. But since you, Xian, bring up secondary causes, have you not considered that flawed governments are secondary causes by which God executes his decree. Sounds to me like you’ll only recognize primary causes as legitimately Christian ones. So again, the boomerang comes back to hit you in the backside.
I’ll supply it for you — doh!
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Zrim, this is not facebook. Find your own darned technological means for finding “friends.”
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You are a mass of confusion here which tells you you are indeed learning about Reformed teaching on secondary causes for the first time.
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Christian, you would not be the first to think I’m confused. My wife tells me this all the time. But if you are not confused, you are poorly informed, possibly ignorant. Above you wrote: “And did America *really* have a Christian foundation? Does God *really* favor our nation because of our foundational Christian belief? Really, this isn’t taught anymore. Not anywhere I know of. No *accredited* institutions are teaching such a thing. And that Judge Roy Moore guy. How stupid to think the Ten Commandments have anything to do with our culture and system of law. It’s embarrassing.”
In point of fact, there is an accredited Reformed seminary where the president believes (and has written on) the orthodoxy of our first president, George Washington. That school won’t let me teach. So you’re wrong about my involvement in Reformed seminaries, wrong about Reformed theological education, wrong about accreditation, and (I think) wrong about America’s Christian founding. You are, in the words of Jay Santos, “a big bowl of wrong.” But I love you so dearly.
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>Christian, you would not be the first to think I’m confused. My wife tells me this all the time. But if you are not confused, you are poorly informed, possibly ignorant. Above you wrote: “And did America *really* have a Christian foundation? Does God *really* favor our nation because of our foundational Christian belief? Really, this isn’t taught anymore. Not anywhere I know of. No *accredited* institutions are teaching such a thing. And that Judge Roy Moore guy. How stupid to think the Ten Commandments have anything to do with our culture and system of law. It’s embarrassing.â€
So you have to pretend to not read irony to make points now? I was obviously speaking sarcastically in the voice of the various posters in this thread previous to my post. But do I really have to state that obviousness?
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You mean I really do teach at a Reformed seminary? What an answer to prayer.
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What’s “facebook”? And would one find Robert Jackson Christian there?
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Andrew Jackson? Yes. Stonewall Jackson? Maybe. But I’m unfamiliar with any Jacksons who are Christian.
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Dr. Hart,
My comment from May 1 is still awaiting moderation. Perhaps that means that it’s waiting for me to re-write it to make it more moderate? But given the state of play, I think it means something else. 😉
JRC
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I’d like to see this more clearly.
DGH and Zrim: on your account, nature itself teaches us that homosexuality is wrong. Therefore, in the public square, we can and should be able to argue that homosexual marriage is wrong because it’s unnatural. And whether the argument wins or loses, the Church does not stand or fall — because the two kingdoms are separate.
OK.
First, I think there is ground for some agreement. Can everyone here agree that God’s Law as written on the conscience tells every person that “abandoning the natural function” is wrong?
But now, there are two questions of wisdom to be answered.
(1) Is it the case that society listens to arguments from natural law anymore?
I would argue a qualified “no.” The conscience hasn’t been completely suppressed (after all, more Americans oppose gay marriage than actually believe in the authority of the Bible, so some percentage of people are operating on residual conscience).
However, within our law-making and law-adjudicating corridors, the notion of ethical norm has been replaced by in large with the utilitarian meta-ethic: satisfying the greatest good for the greatest number, where “good” is often identified with “satisfied preference.” Zrim and DGH, I mentioned this before but didn’t develop it. Here’s the payoff: in our current environment, arguments from moral absolutes (“it’s just wrong and you know it!”) and arguments from Scripture are equally dismissed.
This is what Obama means when he says he wants to replace Souter with a judge that has “proven compassion for the downtrodden” — he wants someone for whom rule of law will be secondary to the greatest good for the greatest number.
In that environment, is it wiser for Christians to appeal to natural law or to Scripture? On the one hand, one might argue that appealing to natural law is more likely to be successful because of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. But in fact, neither one is particularly successful, so that’s a wash.
The other consideration is that natural law is only a proxy for what we really think: that homosexuality is wrong because God created gender for a purpose. So the argument from natural law is in some sense disingenuous — it masks our true beliefs. Is that wise? Is it right? I doubt it.
(2) Is it wise to overlook threats to the Church on the grounds that God uses both good rulers and bad to accomplish His will? This appears to be your position in ignoring the implications and motives of the pro-gay arguments.
I would argue “no.” Esther appealed to the king. So did Daniel. Christians in history appealed to kings. The Confession allows it.
I would argue that we should take heed to the winds blowing, not in order to preserve a Christendom of some sort, but to protect the Church against positive restrictions against her mission.
The “equal rights for gays” movement, while laudable on some fronts, includes elements that directly conflict with freedom of expression and practice of religion. This is intentional.
I would ask CV Dyke to provide more specific documentation of what he’s talking about. My comment from May 1 provides some general evidence along these lines.
JRC
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Jeff,
1.) Short answer: yes, society still listens to natural law.
Extended answer: It seems to me that you may have a very particular notion of natural law that is somehow distinct and complicated from the “utilitarian meta-ethic.†But when I say “natural law†I mean something very simple and universal that transcends the so-called “traditions of men†where we see parceled out all sorts of special social theories. Natural law is simply that which is inscribed on the human heart: love God and neighbor more than self. So, to my mind, it is odd to suggest that “nobody listens to natural law anymore.†How can nobody listen to that which is inscribed indelibly on the heart? And if nobody listens to it anymore we’re all up a creek because there is nothing else that keeps the social fabric together. Now, there are plenty of examples of where natural law is ignored or done poorly. And one complication is that some who have neglected the plain reading of human sexuality still know how to treat fellow human beings well; and some who have been faithful to the plain reading of human sexuality haven’t a clue how to treat other human beings. It’s a mess. But it always has been. The sub-text of some that the world is careening of the edge isn’t very new either.
2.) I am just not convinced that the “pro-gay movement†is a real threat to the church. I realize others are and think that to not be convinced is sheer stupidity. But, again, if one wants to argue that resisting the advances of such things is a chess-like move to protect the church it seems pretty counter-intuitive to me: If, as the proponents of these theories are right and it’s all a veiled effort to depose religionists (I’ll leave the inherent paranoia alone for the moment), and if these movements have the sort of majority-morality momentum these theorists suggest (which is not so paranoid), then fighting fire with fire seems only to invite persecution and a way at self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, how smart is it to hit a guy in the nose because you think he wants to smack you around if he gets the chance? When you hit a guy he’s probably going to hit you back. That’s also natural law; so if you want to play by the NL rules it may be wise to take into account things like revenge. Again, I am not given to paranoia, but as long as a paranoid theory is the operating principle here, do we really want to go down as the people who sought the disenfranchisement of a group sure to gain cultural power? Why not be satisfied to simply dissent on the question of creational norms (i.e. homosexuality is contrary to nature and ought not to enjoy the sanction of marriage) and yet abstain from those worldly and law-laden efforts to make sure certain people are culturally disenfranchised?
Besides, the problem isn’t “the gays†seeking to keep the church from her mission, or any other outside force for that matter. It’s actually, as always down through redemptive history, the wolves from within who do the greatest damage. Seems to me wisdom has something to say about that as well.
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dgh does any righteousness exalt a nation? What is a passing grade? Does the U.S. get any credit for punishing pirates or fathers who sell their daughters?
Re. the last, I am sure it does, but 1. the debate seems to center on homosexuality which if legalized in the US has nothing to do with the US church pro or con according to 2k doctrine as it seems to be espoused here.
2. the parallel is urged between prohibition of spirits and sexual perversion as if there is no difference of degree at all in sin or crimes.
3. There seems to be no middle ground between competent, if not Christian, judges and legislators and none at all.
But if marriage and the sabbath are creation ordinances/matters of the natural law binding on all men, there might seem to be no way around the fact that Christianity has something – not nothing – to say to the magistrate, much more on marriage and the sabbath, though it is hardly all it has to say concerning the gospel.
The civil law does not save, but it restrains evil. After all, the magistrate is a minister of God for good in the NT, so Rom.13. I get the impression though that that is immaterial to 2k dogma.
Thank you.
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Jeff, I don’t see any comments pending by you. I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
As to the point, I don’t have much to add to what Zrim said except that in the current climate a much wiser strategy seems to be to appeal to the American tradition of civil liberty and limited government such that homosexual rights need to be negotiated with the liberties of other institutions. That argument still has great appeal in the university where the Foucault Professor of Queer Theory is going to be pretty jealous of his perogatives and the independence of the university from the state. So what Christians may need to do is explain how certain policies will restrict their own activities rather than the other strategy of making everyone conform to Christian norms.
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DGH, it’s fixed now. Go figure.
JRC
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“So no lessons learned from the Netherlands and Canada where merely opposing gay marriage is a hate crime.”
I don’t know anything about Canada, but here in the Netherlands it isn’t a hate crime to be against gay marriage. We have two political party’s who do oppose it (one of them is currently in the cabinet coalition) and most confessional churches don’t bless gay marriages and can do so without any problem.
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Machiavelli, you don’t understand. We Yanks get to tell the rest of the world how things are. It’s called being large and in charge (even if it means we Americans are generally ignorant).
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So sexual orientation isn’t included in the Netherlands hate crime laws? Hmm, I guess I need to brush up on my reading skills.
Hart, if that Professorship doesn’t come along I think you have a bright future in a leadership position in the Democratic party with your blame America rhetoric. You could help push through HR 1913.
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Oh Norman Vincent Peale-like one, please instruct me in the ways of positive upbeat thinking about the United States. Near as I can tell you think we’re going to hell in a hand basket. I happen to think there are some positive things about liberal democracy, republicanism, and free markets. Have a nice day indeed.
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Mr. Cagle: In response to your request for more specifics regarding the implicaitons of gay marriage upon religious freedom, the nub of the problem is the equation of opposition to same-sex marriage to racial discrimination. Legalizing same-sex marriage is not a stand-alone pollicy. Once the law asserts taht same-sex unions are marriage, the law must defend and enforce a whole host of other social changes. These changes affect other liberties that we take for granted, such as religious freedom and property rights. Some examples:
1. After the May 2008 decision by the California Supreme Court in In Re Marriage Cases holding that laws excluding same-sex couples from marriage were unconstitutional, I and other attorneys for major California school districts issued opinions to our school district clients that the Education Code required sex education classes and “Life Skills” classes must teach about marriage in a “gay friendly” manner. And in light of the newly announced state policy, those classes now must teach that marriage included same-sex unions, and that the classes must inculcate the view that same-sex marriage is acceptable and healthy. Further, parents may not opt their children out of these classes on moral or religious grounds. Our client school districts began to implement these opinions. Conflict with parents ensued. Many pulled their children out of the Life Skills and sex ed classes, resulting in parents and children being penalized. In several instances, in the large school district I represent, Christian (and other religious) parents refused to have their children write essays demonstrating their “toleration” of same-sex marriage by affirming it as legitimate, normal, and as healthy as traditional marriage. The students were given failing grades for refusing to turn in the assignment or for giving the “wrong” answer. The parents sued in federal court seeking a TRO against enforcement of this policy, and our school district prevailed, the judge ruling that religious scruples were not a valid excuse for a student’s failure to complete an assignment that reflected the public policy of the state as affirmed by our highest court. Other Christian parents, unable to execmpt thier kids from marriage instruction, pulled their kids out of school altogether. At that point the district reported them to truancy officers. Child Protective Services began investigating the parents.
2. In Massachusets, where judges imposed same-sex marriage years ago, Catholic Charities was sordered to accept gay couples as candidates for adoption. If they refused, they could be jailed or fined or both. Rather than comply with an order that would be harmful to children and violate religious scruples, Catholic Charities closed its adoption program for the first time in 100 years.
3. Two evangelical Christian physicians have been sued for acting in accord with their religious beleifs and not artificially inseminating a lesbian couple. The case is pending before the CA Supreme Court.
4. A California Lutheran high school was sued for expelling two girls who engaged in “homosexual conduct” on campus in violation of the school’s morals code. The school had to pay damages.
5. In Vermont a lesbian couple successfully sued under the state’s public accommodations law against a Roman Catholic couple who ran a small inn as a religious retreat for Catholics and their children on the ground that they refused to allow same-sex couples from participating in the Catholic retreat at the inn and for refusing to allow civil-union ceremonies at the inn.
6. Eharmony.com, an internet dating service founded in 2000 by an evangelical Christian psychologist with strong ties to Focus on the Family, was successfully sued for refusing to offer its dating services to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals on the ground this was a violation of the state’s Unrigh Civil Rights Act.
7. The Attorney Generals of Mass. and Vermont have issued opinions that religious bodies such as churches that refuse to allow same-sex couples to the same accommodations, rights and privileges as heterosexual couples (e.g., refusal to admit to officer status, refusal to consider in good standing, refusal to perform marriage ceremonies) are in violation of state laws forbidding tax exempt oranizations from violating civil rights and should lose tax exempt status. The AG of Vermont opined as well that though churches must be permitted to teach what they want, their actions are not exempt. Therefore, “public accommodations” laws that forbid discrimination can be applied to these churches for various discriminatory activities, which could lead to civil liability or loss of business licenses to operate.
8. A federal district court held that a student’s religious speech opposing school support of homosexuality could be banned as such “injurious remarks” “intrude[] upon… the rights of other students” to be free from psychic injury, intimidation, and hurtful speech. See Harper v. Poway Unified Sch. Dist.
9. A social-work student at Missouri State University was charged with violating the school’s “Standards of Essential Functioning in Social Work Education.” One of her professors accused her of violating the standards after he assigned a project that required the entire class to write and each sign a letter to the Missouri Legislature in support of gay adoption. Brooker asserted that her Christian beliefs required her to abstain from signing the letter. She sued the school and won for a violation of her First Amendment rights. However, the court stated that a different result would be compelled if the state were to sanction same-sex marriage as then the public policy of the state would require social workers to support the policy. Religious scruple would provide no defense because a law of general application applied even handedly based on a state public policy does not infringe the right to free exercise of religion.
10. A Methodist camp, Ocean Grove Camp Ground, lost its state tax exempt status for not hosting a same-sex union in its marriage pavillion in Oct. 2007.
11. In Virginia, in April 2006, a government commission ordered the proprietor of a video duplicator business to duplicate brochures and other papers proffered by a lesbian activist that included distrubing photos of lesbian sexual activities. He had refused out of religious conscience that he did not want to promote homosexual behavior or expose his youthful workers to the photographs.
12. Elite law school law reviews now publish scholarly journal articles by professors of Constitutional Law opining that the courts should re-consider traditional First Amendment principles and reject the idea, announced in the Mosley case, that above all tshe First Amendment means that govenment has no right to declare some ideas false, and that the marketplace of ideas should allow each view to advocate its position and rise or fall on the strength of its advocacy. Instead, they now insist that some ideas are so inimical to a just society and to the concept of ordered liberty and human rights that the govenment has the power to declare them false and hurtful and thus to punish such speech by civil damage awards or criminal sanction. The examples they offer include many ideas that some Christians believe and speak about, including that homosexual practice is sinful, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that women should be subject to their husbands, etc.
There are, unfortunately, many other such examples that could be offered. Some of my radical 2K friends have no problems with this list. They’re willing to tolerate a contractual of traditional religious liberty and free speech as the necessary price to be paid for upholding a vital distinction between the two kingdoms. I respectfully dissent from that view. In my view, individual Christians, in their capacity as private citizens, hhave the right to speak out against same-sex marriage and to engage in political and legal action to oppose it — not to Christianize America — but for many other reasons,
including its harm to society, its harm to children, its violation of creational norms,
and the preservation of religious liberty.
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Mr. Van Dyke,
Thank your for your detailed response.
JRC
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Oh man, that’s like You’ve Got Mail — “No, thank your!”
I meant, “Thank you.”
JRC
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CVanDyke, Thanks for the response. A couple of thoughts occur while reading it, would the world be worse off without sex education, EHarmony, or in vitro fertilization? And what would happen if the state was not so obtrusive to stick its hands into many matters that are delicate, not to mention violating constitutional protections of free speech.
But when you write: “In my view, individual Christians, in their capacity as private citizens, hhave the right to speak out against same-sex marriage and to engage in political and legal action to oppose it — not to Christianize America — but for many other reasons, including its harm to society, its harm to children, its violation of creational norms, and the preservation of religious liberty,” I don’t know of an 2ker that would disagree.
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Not gonna happen. The U.S. is, historically, one of the least obtrusive governments; but under the regime of utilitarian ethics (you would say “2nd Great Awakening progressivism”), everything is the government’s business, with the moral stamp of “I’m Doing the Greatest Good!”
So in my view, the only way to return to a kind of Jeffersonian limited government ideal (which is what you want, yes?) is to return to a Christian-influenced view of what is “good” — namely, covenantal faithfulness rather than “greatest good.” Simply cutting the church away from the state won’t do the trick; the progressives have long ago severed any connection between themselves and the church, and they want the state to do the same.
Just MHO.
JRC
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DGH, thanks for your reply. I would in fact prefer a state that is far less intrusive, far less ambitious. But the majority in this nation and most Western nations think otherwise, and so we have a pell mell rush to collectivism. I am happy to hear you agree with my assertion that a Christian can, consistent with the 2k view (which I also share), affirmatively work in opposition to same-sex marriage on a host of grounds other than imposing Christian norms on a pagan civil realm. My experience, however, is that most 2k friends and colleagues feel strongly that any opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, or other secular hobbyhorses by Christians in their private capacity as citizens is always and ncessarily illegitimate becaue it is inherently and intrinsically the wrongheaded attempt to impose Christian norms on the civil realm in violation of the doctrrine of the 2Ks. I am always told by 2K advocates that, if the pagan society wants same-sex marriage, we ought not to stand in the way because to do so is to violate the the 2K. For example, when I was on the Consistory of a Reformed church, my fellow elders threatened to bring me up on charges on the ground that I was on the board of directors of a Christian lobbying organization. They reasoned that political engagement in cultural and political affairs, any political lobbying of any kind by Christians, was a violation of the 2K principle. When I worked for the passage of Prop 8, I was sternly warned that advocacy of Prop 8 constituted “confusion of the two kingdoms; Christians should not seek to impose our Christian norms on the civil realm.” Support for same-sex unions seems to be the radical Reformed chic, in the circles I inhabit.
From my experience, the greater number of 2K advocates among lay people misunderstand or misapply this doctrine, and their arguments strike me as simply fallacious. They seem to assume that opposition to same-sex marriage can only be based on or motivated by a desire to impose a theocracy, or to “take back America for Christ,” or to “impose Christian norms on the civil realm.” They fail to understand, it seems to me, that there can be many legitimate reasons, other than an attempt to Christianize America, that could both animate and legitimatize individual Christian opposition to same-sex marriage or abortion. One of the posters above, knowing nothing about my motivation, needed only to hear that I warned about a contraction of religious freedom if the public policy of the state endorses same-sex marriage, and he/she rushed to the angry conclusion that I must desire a return to Moses. This seems to me a stunning non-sequitor, but par for the course among my fellow 2Kers. In short, in our attempt to distance ourselves from the Christian right, we may, I’d suggest, be over-reacting in our reflexive opposition to any opposition to the secular Left. And my plea is that we have our eyes wide open to the reality that acceptance of same-sex marriage in law in this country runs the very grave risk that the political and legal machinery of public policy will run over us like a steamroller.
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Your experience strikes me as a real-life example of Objection 1 — REPT (perhaps in extreme form?) restricts the freedom of Christians to operate in the public sphere.
JRC
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If 2kers react this way, it is largely because they don’t know the arguments and language of natural law, light of nature, common sense. They don’t know how to argue for a public good apart from Scripture. That is why David VanDrunen’s work is so important. And Jeff, this is why 2k and natural law go together, and also why your first objection to REPT is really an objection to a polity that does not take seriously arguments from the Bible. A holder of the 2k view would not say that a person making Christian American arguments is morally wrong. He would say that such arguments are unwise and unnecessary, and if proposed at “the” Christian view, then they are wrong in misapplying Scripture.
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Jeff, huh? You’ve identified Jeffersonian politics with covenant faithfulness? In point of fact, the Enlightenment-inspired United States (not to mention the Greek and Roman republican inspired United States) was based on a utilitarian ethic and it could have a small governmnent. What changed dramatically was when “Honest” Abe and “Devout” Woodrow turned America into a total war machine.
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No, I’ve identified Covenant Faithfulness as an ethical system that permits Jeffersonian democracy; utilitarianism does not. You’ve confused “permits” with “is the same as.”
Was the US Republic based on utilitarianism? No way. It was based on freedom, which was a different concept in Mill and substantially different in Locke from “the Greatest Good.” Not to mention that the guaranteed freedoms were held to be endowed by the Creator, and hence absolute.
In utilitarian thought, no norms are absolute.
Why is utilitarianism incompatible with Jeffersonian democracy? Simple: the “greatest number” is the entire nation — or entire world. Over time, utilitarianism swallows all.
JRC
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DGH, that’s a reasonable defense. Real 2K-ers, goes the defense, don’t do that sort of thing because the Natural Law is really just the Decalogue written on the human heart. We can’t force Christians to deny the Decalogue in their public involvement.
But will you concede that if your system gets misconstrued or tweaked slightly, it could easily head in the direction of CVD’s consistory?
JRC
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I also agree that it is very unwise to stake out “the” Christian view on things that are not rock-solid from Scripture.
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I would suggest that the reason that the majority of lay 2k advocates have a mistaken view of their (our) own doctrine is that the professionals/scholars who promote it publicly err by failing to make necessary, nuanced qualifications in their condemnation of erroneous “Christian right” views. DGH’s concession to individual Christian political action of the right kind and motivation is only the second time in years I’ve heard such a sane view put forth. Nearly in every case, we are treated to sweeping condemnations of “culture wars” as illigetimate. I hear no nuance. No qualification that the individual Christian in his/her capacity as a citizen is at liberty to do what the church qua church must not do. No qualification that political action by Christians can be legitimate when animated by proper principles and understanding. The impression is left that no political/cultural engagement is proper at all. I had a Reformed elder explain to me that voting by the Christian may not be proper, but could be if the Christian didn’t talk about it to anyone. If so many are confused, I would submit that our churches’ teaching on this doctrine has been less than clear.
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CVD,
I’d agree that the scenario you describe as yours is unfortunate and misguided, since the point of 2k is really one that seems to want to make the careful distinctions between the efforts of the institutional church and her members and private citizens.
In a word, it sounds like your liberty was trampled. The church as church is to remain silent, but that doesn’t mean you can’t participate on certain lobbying boards. But, by the same token, you might find another church member on a lobbying board that fights you. And by the very same token, both of you should afford me my liberty to dissent from the wisdom of lobbying boards and stick with a voting booth. And all three of us come to the communion table at peace.
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Zrim, I think what you’re suggesting is that we allow our Christian faith to inform our public sphere involvement, yet while withholding the label “Christian”, which implies “thus saith the Lord”, from our particular stances (unless perhaps those stances are good and necessary consequence from Scripture?).
I would really welcome that interpretation of 2K.
JRC
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Jeff, I’m less willing to defend a utilitarian ethic than I am the Enlightenment origins of America. And I do seem to recall you had problems with the American founding because of Enlightenment ideas.
Either way, what you haven’t acknowledged is that ideas may matter less to the size of American government than a military industrial complex that allows us to the be superpowered City on a friggin Continent.
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CVD, I’m glad to know there are so many 2kers. But then I wonder. In fact, I suspect you may be applying the 2k doctrine to people who know nothing about the spirituality of the church, sphere sovereignty, or the different purposes of church and state. No 2ker I know believes in failing to be a good citizen. Just look at Machen.
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Sorry DGH, I hadn’t noticed the “industrial military complex” portion of the thread (?!).
I’m not happy about that either. Why did you think I was?
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And no Framean I know advocates theonomy or anything close to it. It’s a big small world after all.
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Zrim, I think what you’re suggesting is that we allow our Christian faith to inform our public sphere involvement, yet while withholding the label “Christianâ€, which implies “thus saith the Lordâ€, from our particular stances (unless perhaps those stances are good and necessary consequence from Scripture?).
Bada bing, Jeff.
I know its corny, but recall my tipping analogy (I like it, so shut up). I leave a prudent tip, you leave a generous one. Both prudence and generosity are biblical virtues, but neither one of us is particularly “Christian” in either case (Darryl may even choose not to leave a tip at all). What neither of us may do, and what each should hold the other accountable for, is skip out on the bill.
So much of what seems to happen is the equivalent of you or me chastizing the other for his choice to be prudent or generous and being careless to suggest that said choices rise to the level of stealing a meal.
CVD,
I’d agree with DGH. I’d suggest that you can’t blame 2k for having bad adherents, or even the better ones for not always speaking clearly and being sane. I’d also caution against the idea that fellow 2Kers can’t disagree with each other. It’s not too unlike pagans saying we Christians seem to be sinful, thus Christianity must be damaged goods.
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Dr. Hart, here’s a crystalline example of utilitarianism swallowing all. Note that I disagree with the family, but there it is…
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=706678&catid=2
JRC
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I doubt the judge was guilty of reading Mill. It looks more to me like humanitarianism swallowing up a sense of jurisdictional limits. Sort of like biblicism swallowing up the regulative principle.
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Zrim and dgh, thank you for your replies. Your comments are beside the point, or perhaps I was not clear enough. Contrary to your assertion, I said nothing to suggest any criticism of the doctrine of the 2K. On the contary, I affirm it. My critique is solely with many of its adherants, who fail to understand it or apply it logically or thoughtfully. And my suggestion is that the reason for that confusion is that often the scholars and pastors who advocate it are not clear. They self-evidently are so determined to oppose and root out Christian activism that is motivated by bad theology that they throw the baby out with the bathwater by reflexively condemning any Christian activism no matter the motivation or theological principle that actuates it. One popular Reformed writer wrote a book condemning “culture wars” and left the impression that all Christian activism is a confusion of the two kingdoms per se. The author, rightly desiring to correct bad theology on the right, succeeded in leaving the impression, by what was not said, that all activism is illigitimate. Some of us oppose abortion on demand or same-sex marriage because we think it is destructive or harmful to human beings made in God’s image. We do not seek to impose Christian values or enact the Ten Commandments as the Penal Code of the state. We simply want to be good citizens. Yet, at the very mention of political activism, before a word is said about motive or theology driving our activism, the assumption of many 2k proponents — including some posters on this site — is that we must intend to return to Moses, or that we must be guilty of illigitimately trying to “tansform” the civil sphere into the church, or that we have misplaced our hope on political action. Many 2k proponents, such as Machen, were quite active in the political sphere (e.g., his efforts to oppose public education) for reasons unrelated to Christianizing America.
Since I share your theological principles re 2k, it is curious to me that you have a reflexive hostility toward Christian activism in the civil sphere. Could you perhaps be guilty of the fallacy of false dichotomy — either Christians attend to Word and Sacrament, Law & Gospel, OR political activism? Is that not a false choice? Rather than either/or, what in the nature of 2k dogma prevents both/and? (Please understand that I am not suggesting political activism actuated by a desire to “Christianize America” or “take America back for Christ” or “impose Christian values on the civil sphere” nor do we harbor any illusions about transforming the civil sphere. We just want to improve it according to natural law principles.) Why is such action viewed with deep suspicion if not hostility?
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CVanDyke, how do you know anything about my own views on politics, or my opposition to Christian activism? While I am tired of predictable Christian activism — the politics of sex — I have never said that the concern to protect life is a bad thing or that Christians should not become engaged in politics. In fact, my recommendation of Front Porch Republic suggests an interest in a certain kind of political activism, one that is defined more by politics (localism, agrarianism, frugality) than by faith.
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CVD,
Depending on what one means by the term “activism,†I for one find it pretty contrary to what might be understood as an institutional ethic (I think activism has way more in common with a theology of glory than the cross and actually undermines instead of nurtures that which can sum up the Christian life in one word: obedience). So, whether it’s sacred or secular, I am highly skeptical of the wisdom of activism. There’s being active, and there’s being activistic. (It can be a fuzzy line, but, like porn, I know the latter when I see it and I don’t much care for it.)
You might notice that while I take great issue with activism I don’t begrudge believers who want to participate in it. I just ask that they be open to my own questioning of it without thinking I’m saying “activism is illegitimate.†In other words, you can have your activism if I can have my dissent from it. I’d settle for an admission that whatever else Christian activism might be it is the politics of sex and that nobility is mixed in with some ignobility.
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Dr. Hart, have you read anything by Peter Singer? I ask because his book “Practical Ethics” is standard fare in ethics classes. Prior to Singer, Joe Fletcher’s “Situation Ethics” was the standard. My wife even had to read it for one of her med school classes.
JRC
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While we’re thinking about ways to misconstrue 2K theology, let’s recall Lee Irons. I have a lot of respect for Lee and Misty, whose blog is amazingly gracious and charitable. Nevertheless, Lee’s version of 2K led him to conclude that Christians ought to support gay marriage because it would be an application of “do unto others” and because nothing was lost thereby.
If a genuinely smart man like Mr. Irons, one who is arguably a Kline expert, can take 2K in this direction, what hope is there for average folk like me to adopt the REPT system and “get it right”?
JRC
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Jeff, there is not a lot of hope that you’ll get REPT right if you insist that it’s proponents all agree on matters outside the covenant community. But that’s the point of REPT, you don’t have to agree.
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Jeff,
…Lee’s version of 2K led him to conclude that Christians ought to support gay marriage because it would be an application of “do unto others†and because nothing was lost thereby.
I’d much rather the end of Irons (let them marry) than the end of Bonhoeffer (plot to kill God’s appointed magistrate). I’m not persuaded by Irons’ argument (I’d abstain from prop 8), but I am pierced through by Bonhoeffer.
But I think you lay a finger on at least one aspect of Irons I find problematic: “Christians ought…†Liberty alert. Maybe it’s his/her insistence on “being evangelical first†that causes fighting fire with fire, but it puts this confessionalist quite off. I hear CVD telling me gay marriage results in the loss of religious freedom, then I hear Irons telling me it will ensure it. Though CVD’s argument seems a tad more paranoid, either way, I’m not clear on what stake conservative Calvinists have in preserving religious freedom (though I admit I quite enjoy it). I can’t help thinking it’s a sophisticated appeal to civil felt needs. If evangelicals can’t make such appeals when it comes to trivial life then we can’t do it when it comes to more enduring questions.
Nevertheless, I’d “word†dgh’s reply to you. It’s a point I’ve also tried to make to CVD. Plus, what’s intelligence have to do with any of this?
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Brothers, as I understand Mr. Zrim’s 2K ideology, Christian activism is unwise or inappropriate and a Calvinist has no stake in preserving religious liberty from state encroachments. I know other radical 2K proponents with similar views. While I find these views unbiblical and unwise, they are matters on which reasonable minds can differ and I respect them. However, the view that it is “paranoid” to raise the warning that same-sex marriage runs a serious and substantial risk of a contraction of religious liberty is another matter. That risk is beyond reasonable dispute, as even non-Christians concede. Ample evidence of such a contraction already exists, and most states have not yet gone as far as Massachusets or California’s abortive fling with same-sex marraige. I would respectfully submit that those without training or experience in the law lack the intellectual equipment with which to make this evaluation, and thus in wisdom and humility it might be appropriate to defer to those who have been trained and work in this area. If 2K adherants are not concerned by the loss of religious liberty, this is a topic beyond their interest, but I’d submit that we ought at least have a concern to be accurate about the facts.
I would commend to those who are concerned about preserving religious liberty a lengthy paper on this subject published in the Harvard Journal Of Law & Public Policy in June 2007 entitled “Or For Poorer? How Same-Sex Marriage Threatens Religious Liberty. In this paper, the Harvard journal discusses, inter alia, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision forcing Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriage:
“The conflict between gay rights and religious liberty over marriage seems inevitable because of four concurrent phenomena. First, marriage, as a uniform concept, pervades the law; (6) second, religious institutions are regulated, both directly and indirectly, by laws that turn on the definition of marriage; third, religion has a historic public relationship with marriage that resists radical change as a deep matter of conscience; and fourth, gay marriage proponents are similarly resistant to compromise since many believe, with the Goodridge concurrence, that “[s]imple principles of decency dictate that we extend to [same-sex couples], and to their new status, full acceptance, tolerance, and respect.” (7)
“Although it is difficult to predict with certainty the long-term effects of this profound change in the law, it is clear that the effects will be far-reaching. The legal definition of marriage does not exist in isolation; changing it alters many areas of the law. For example, the definition of marriage plays an important role in the law of adoption, education, employee benefits, employment discrimination, government contracts and subsidies, taxation, tort law, and trusts and estates. In turn, these legal regimes directly govern the ongoing daily operations of religious organizations of all stripes, including parishes, schools, temples, hospitals, orphanages, retreat centers, soup kitchens, and universities. Moreover, current law provides little room for non-uniform definitions of marriage within a state and even across states because of difficult questions like child custody. (8) The high stakes reinforce the uncompromising posture of the contending sides.
***
“Religious institutions will soon face serious legal risks that include the substantial possibility of civil liability and targeted exclusion from government benefits. Whether that risk translates into legal penalties will depend upon the outcome of a whole cascade of litigation; this Article aims merely to point out the contours of the emerging conflicts rather than predict the prevailing parties in each particular case. But, after much careful study, two results seem certain if same-sex marriage becomes generally accepted in law. First, neither side should be so confident of its legal position as to expect victory in every or almost every category of litigation described in this Article. Second, the inevitable litigation will be protracted, costly, and result in widespread legal confusion resulting in pervasive church-state conflict and a substantial chilling of religious expression.
***
“If other courts follow the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s lead and declare a right to same-sex marriage, (141) laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or marital status will have new power. Courts will be much more likely to find severe burdens on religious expression justified by a new compelling reason–the eliminating of sexual orientation discrimination. It will then be much more likely that religious institutions will be required by law to extend many of the benefits and services listed above to homosexual “spouses,” or lose the ability to provide them at all.
***
“Religious institutions that refuse to treat same-sex spouses as equivalent to traditional spouses may face staggering financial losses if state or federal authorities revoke their tax exemption because of their “discrimination.”
Severino’s paper should be widely distributed and studied because it clearly outlines the grim future we face because of the onslaught of sexual orientation laws and same-sex marriage rulings. In Canada, religious freedom has essentially died because of homosexual activism. A Vanderbilt University paper published in 2005 describes how homosexuality has trumped religious freedom in Canada. The same trend is occurring in America. The First Amendment is being destroyed by those who practice sodomy.
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I apologize for inadvertantly including the last few lines within the quote of the journal article. Those lines are not part of the Harvard journal article and also are not mine. BTW, the journal article can be accessed at Harvard’s public policy center site. I regret the confusion. CVD
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CVD,
I am not sure why you are holding me to a standard it is impossible for me to meet. All I’m saying is that I have a view on these things. I’m not saying it’s some sort of expert view. I know my place, and I defer to experts all the time (my wife is the bootstraps anti-establishmentarian). That doesn’t mean I’ll agree with them. I mean, sheesh, I’m the one pushing institutionalism over activism here. But should we dispense with juries of peers since the court is filled with law experts?
If it helps, I’ll take back “paranoid†and say “far-fetched.†I can overstate things, too.
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Support for same-sex unions seems to be the radical Reformed chic, in the circles I inhabit.
MrVanDyke,
Very well put. Unfortunately. As opposed to the politics of sex or worse, fetal politics.
The law does not save, but it does restrain and if I didn’t know any better, the lawless mindset of our day is wearing off on the church. God forbid we should hear a peep out of Christians opposed to two particularly heinous violations of the natural law, homosexuality and abortion.
Thank you.
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I wonder if you’ve considered that homosexual unions are the 9/11 retaliation against “family values” politics. If Christians had not promooted their own virtues — “Mooral Majority”? — and had not used their morality as the main criteria by which to evaluate candidates, maybe the other side would not be as in your face about their “family values.” Of course, it is all conjecture. But politics breeds backlash. And as much as I oppose same-sex marriage, I can’t help but think that Christians are getting part of what they sent around.
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Bob,
Homosexuality is immoral and an invalid sexual expression. It cannot be located in creation and ought not to be given the sanction of marriage. And one segment of the human population ought not to have sway over the life and death, at will or whim, of another segment of the human population merely because the former “houses†the latter.
How’s that for a peep?
But I abstain from proposition 8 and my political devotions lie with states to have rights instead of feti or females. In other words, the anti-gay and pro-life movements have at least as much to do with the self-righteousness of religionists (of all stripes, no less Christian) as they do about what is right, true and good. In my opinion, much more.
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DGH, having spent about 25 years in courtrooms with ACLU lawyers (and other leftist public interest advocacy groups), I can attest that there is a grain of merit to your speculation, but on the whole the Christian Right arrived late to the party and was a reaction agaisnt Leftist advocacy, not the cause of it. The Christian Right’s strident and sometimes ill advised moves may have accelerated some of the progress of leftist groups, including same-sex marriage advocates, by creating paranoia on the left that stimulated financial donations to advocacy groups. With larger warchests, they could fight on more fronts.
But I don’t think you can sustain the proposition that the Moral Majority (or the religious right generally) is the cause of the trajectory of same-sex marriage or homosexual unions or most other Leftist advoacy. Most of the progress the Left achieved in winning acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex unions came through the courts, and to a lesser extent, through administrative agencies enforcing political correctness on employers and schools. This train was chugging far down the tracks before Jerry Falwell ever stepped into the public square. The true genesis of the Leftist success in these areas lies with importing the Sixties agenda into the Supreme Court’s privacy law. When the Court “found” a “right of privacy” in the Constitution (i.e., a right of personal autonomy), it arose in the context of 4th Amendment search and seizure cases, not social/religious cases, and then moved to contraception. Having invented that doctrine, it used it as a scythe to mow down state morals legislation, until in Lawrence v. Texas (the decision that mowed down state anti-sodomy laws) the Court overturned 150 years of constitutional law by holding that the upholding of morality is no longer a legitimate state interest that can be used to support state morals laws. Thus all morals legislation now lacks a rational basis and is per se unconstitutional.
In other words, I believe the historical record, from the law side, is that the Left was in full revolt against traditional Judeo-Christian morality in a host of areas, sex being one, for reasons that reflect the cultural drift of the country but are not specifically associated with the rise of the Christian Right. The Christian Right arose in reaction to an aggressive Leftist assault on the culture through the courts, not the other way around. E.g., all of the Christian political advocacy groups and public interst law firms were formed well after the ACLU and the bevy of Leftist political groups, and their mission statements make clear that they were formed as a defensive reaction against the cultural left, not as an offensive assault on the Left.
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Mr. Zrim: I think you and we all of us are able to rise to the standard of refraining from publicly offering opinions on subjects about which we are ill informed and ill equipped to evaluate. When even secular, non-Christian legal scholars and judges warn (in secular journals like the esteemed Harvard one I site) that same-sex marriage is likely to lead to a contraction of religious freedoms, when I offer specific, substantial evidence that such has already occured, on what basis do you offer a breezy, glib dismissal of it in a public blog as “paranoid” or “far-fetched?” What equips you to make that evaluation? Have you interacted with these authorities? Your comments are emblematic of the kind of rhetoric I hear from too many of my fellow 2K proponents, callow young men who pronounce solemn nonsense on public policy matters they know little or nothing about.
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CVD,
Whatever I am quite confident you do have a grasp on (and I am), I am not sure you as yet fully understand just what a blog is. It is not something like a learned journal that rightfully keeps out the specially under-tutored. Rather, by its very nature a blog is “breezy and glib.†It’s not supposed to behave by the terms of another medium. You may be falling for the siren song in blogdom: taking yourself more seriously than your ideas.
I think you may still be just put out that I don’t agree with everything you are saying. So what?
Speaking of ideas, as to your most recent comment, you almost make it sound as if the religious right is more justifiable than explainable. But it is simply the other side of skewed evangelical coin. Jerry Falwell was famously silent in the 50s/60s when questions about civil rights arose, sounding quite 2K-ish (“Don’t ask me if they should be able to vote, that’s not the church’s role.â€). But the Moral Majority revealed he was no 2Ker, he was a guy for whom the SOTC worked when things were culturally going your way. When the status quo boat got rocked the pseudo-SOTC went right out the window. In other words, he was a closet liberal. If he were a real 2Ker, the move wouldn’t be to push back as hard as he was culturally shoved by creating the MM. It would be to get that much more churchly.
I suppose you can legislatively explain the MM, but the real trick is to ecclesiastically justify it. Or I am being too young and callow for you?
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Mr. Zrim, thanks for your response. I care not at all whether you agree with me. Nor do I believe that blogs are subject to rigorous standards of accuracy, as they self-evidently do not. But I do care that you may be misleading impressionable young readers, who seem to credit your remarks, on a matter of great importance under the pretense of thoughtful or learned opinions that are reckless, irresponsible, and uninformed. I’m deeply troubled that the small 2K world already suffers from too much confusion.
I neither stated nor implied that I agree with any portion of the “Christian Right” insofar as concerns their political action or polemics. Had you bothered to read my post with due attention, you would have noted that I characterized “the Christian Right” as making “strident and sometimes ill advised moves” that produced fear on the Left. That hardly qualifies as a defense. The late Jerry Falwell was not and never purported to be a 2K advocate, so far as I know. Although I assume he was a fine man and pastor in many ways, so far as I am aware he was a “take back America for Christ” proponent and had a flawed ecclesiology. Nothing I wrote implied a defense of Rev. Falwell or his ecclesiology, so how you divined that is a mystery. Let me make my point clear: The Christian right, though sometimes flawed in theology and tactics, is not fundamentally the cause of the Left’s attacks upon biblical morality. The Left began its attacks before the rise of the Christian right and would have continued apace even if Rev. Falwell and other members of the Christian right had never uttered a peep of opposition.
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CVD,
I am trying here, but I seem to be failing to understand just what your concern with me is. I understand we may see things differently. But I don’t know what to means that I am “misleading impressionable young readers.†(I thought I was the callow young man?) If I am “pretending to be thoughtful and learned†(yeow) but am in fact “reckless, irresponsible and uninformed†(double yeow) I suppose it should fall to you to protect them? Again, though, I can’t help but think you’re simply overstating some things. It’s just a blog. Can we be done with this part?
Hitherto, you have been pretty clear that the religious right is not beyond criticism. For that I am grateful. But I don’t think the point to which you were last responding was that the RR was the “sole cause†for what could be construed as the cultural pushback of the last 40-some years. I think the point was that, somewhere in the swirl, there were some bad seed sown. I appreciate that you are offering a legislative perspective, and it is quite worth considering. But there are others explanations as well. Isn’t this what it means to be human, that our projects are complicated and not easily sorted out?
What I read as something of a soft apologetic for the RR was:
“In other words, I believe the historical record, from the law side, is that the Left was in full revolt against traditional Judeo-Christian morality in a host of areas, sex being one, for reasons that reflect the cultural drift of the country but are not specifically associated with the rise of the Christian Right. The Christian Right arose in reaction to an aggressive Leftist assault on the culture through the courts, not the other way around.â€
This sounds a lot like, “There never would have been a RR if it weren’t for the aggressive Leftist assault.†But you have to understand that the argument is much broader than that, that the spirit of the RR has always been in the DNA of American religion “ever since Whitherspoon landed.†It didn’t just fall out of the sky 40-some years ago, it simply morphed itself into a certain manifestation. It’s the way P&W wasn’t born in the 70s, it had its antecedent in the show tunes and lullabies of the nineteenth century and earlier. The RR can be seen in the New School Presbyterians of the 19th century. The big, bad Leftists certainly play a role, but to lay it all there is to miss huge, helpful chunks of religious history in America. And if you don’t have a category for any of this, and you think with a very abridged historical view, you can end up sounding like you’re making a defense of the RR, like it or not.
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Z,
I don’t understand how you can oppose homosexuality and abortion, but have a problem with Prop. 8 which if I understand it correctly was a Cal. state initiative to ban homosexual marriages, which the civil magistrate should do if it is such an egregious violation of the natural law. You oppose but.
DGH,
One could I suppose consider homosexual unions a 9/11 reaction to “family values”, but I am wondering where the fraud and pervert Kinsey fit in in all of this in that he preceded FV and laid the basis for that which followed. Neither do I find Rom 1 a retaliation to FV politics.
While there is much to deplore in arminian and self righteous political activism, particularly since politics is only a symptom of deeper religious and moral beliefs, I can’t help thinking that as confused as the RR is, they oppose something worse.
And the alternative to the RR is? Sit tight in our churches and preach and evangelize, never mind the politics. We know it’s not the church’s business, but Z in proclaiming his own neutrality, seems to frown pretty hard at other Christians who differ on the point.
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Bob,
As I understand it, Prop 8 was about taking away rights already mistakenly granted. To my mind, the question wasn’t, “Can homosexuality be given sanction in marriage,†(to which I say no), the project was, “Let’s institutionally punish some particular sinners and call it enforcing creational norms.â€
The reason I can have the moral persuasions that I do and the political views I do is that, at least in part, I am trying to make a distinction between morality and politics. Our age is one that has moralized politics and politicized religion. As such, it has a very hard time, I think, making more careful distinctions between these things. Politics isn’t really as much about “enforcing creational norms†as it is a device to get us from day to day in an orderly fashion. It’s about compromise, losing some and winning some. It can also be about power and influence. What pilgrims and sojourners have to do with power and influence I really don’t know.
And, BTW, I fail to see how I am at all “neutral†in any of this. Neutral implies apathy. Does it really sound like I don’t care about these things? I think the charge is a version of, “If you don’t care like me, you don’t care.†Fubar.
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I agree that it cannot be located in the conscience, but you may (or not?) have noticed that one of the current arguments for the validity of homosexual relationships is the discovery that species other than man can display homosexual tendencies.
link
This is the difficulty of arguing from the Natural Law: while we come with a built-in moral sense, we don’t come with a built-in moral parser that enables us to read ethics out of nature.
JRC
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Prop 8 was about correcting a legal error. If you believe that “gay marriage” is a contradiction in terms, then the right to it cannot be granted except on paper, just as “the right to own a dragon” cannot be granted except on paper. So Prop 8 was correcting the law to reflect reality, not taking something away.
If you don’t believe that, if you believe that gay marriage can actually be granted as a real right, then you have to ask yourself, “Why would I oppose granting that right to others?”
JRC
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Jeff,
That certainly is one way to explain Prop 8. And it has merit. But my point, again, is that, given the complexities of human beings and by extension their projects, it isn’t the only way to explain it. When Utah wasn’t granted union unless or until bigamy was outlawed one way to explain it is that those on the right side of natural law were merely seeking to uphold it. But it seems a bit naive not to allow that it may also have been a way for orthodox Protestants to stick it to false religionists.
Should Roe be overturned, and states granted their rights back (which I favor), should those states who maintain choice politics (which I don’t favor) be booted from the union? I say no.
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Jeff,
That’s an old argument and one with which I am familiar. It makes little sense to me. Monkeys also kill each other. I fail to see why deviant things observed in the animal kingdom justify deviancies in human kingdoms.
But huh? If the law is written on the human heart, how do you conclude that “we don’t come with a built-in moral parser that enables us to read ethics out of nature”? How do you explain Abraham being confronted for not being forthright about his relationship to Sarah? How do you explain the Code of Hammurabi?
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Yeah, I thought that might be confusing. Here’s what I mean, by analogy.
The planaria has a light-sensitive spot. Thus, it has a sense of light. BUT, it lacks parsing equipment: frequency-sensitive cones in the retina, a lens to focus by, etc. As a result, it can only tell “light or dark”, without having any clearer sense of image.
Likewise, on my reading of Romans 2, man has by nature a moral sense. He intuitively understands that there is a meaning to “right” and “wrong”; he understands that this points him to a determiner of right and wrong (slogan: “If there is no referee, there is no score.”); he even understands in a general way that certain actions are right and others are wrong.
BUT
His moral sense is sufficiently broken so that it does not reliably restrain him from actually doing evil. Nor does it allow him to reason correctly in the moral realm: he has no moral parser.
The moral sense is like the light spot in the planaria: it lacks sufficient accuracy and precision to be a real guide.
As a result, the conscience of the Gentile “alternately condemns and excuses him”, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly.
As evidence, consider the ethical systems that people come up with under their own steam. First and foremost: get rid of God as the basis for ethics. We pass over this as a simple expression of secularization, but in fact it’s an issue of brokenness.
So if it’s less confusing, “We have a moral sense, but it doesn’t work for anything more than rudimentary applications.”
JRC
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Ah, but that’s because you’re a good Calvinist. If you were Arminian like most of America, you would realize that “I was born that way!” means “It’s not a sin because I don’t have a choice about it.”
Homosexuality in the animal realm then serves to support the thesis that homosexual orientation is innate, and thus not culpable.
JRC
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Ah, but that’s because you’re a good Calvinist. If you were Arminian like most of America, you would realize that “I was born that way!†means “It’s not a sin because I don’t have a choice about it.â€
I see no reason that Calvinism should fear the innate reality of homosexuality. I think too many Calvinists behave like Arminian moralists when they allow for sexuality to be the only element of the human condition to escape the fall. I can allow for folks to be “born that way.” So what? Just because others erroneously want to use that as a justification is no reason to sell off huge chunks of total depravity, unless your real aim is to be a moralist.
It’s not an issue of choice, but that doesn’t diminish the burden of culpability. There is a choice about how one responds to his nature, but the idea that one’s nature is chosen seems equally erroneous to me.
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I’m sure you can trace confusion of the two kingdoms back to Constantine and the early Bishops of Rome — or back to the Garden. But to locate causation there becomes speculative and absurd. I was responding to one postser’s “speculation” that the Left’s homosexual rights and same-sex marriage agenda is a reaction to the Right’s attempt to legisltate Christian morality. Radical 2K types, who often hate the right and especially the Christian right, often have a “blame Christians first” point of view: “Leftists hate Christians because Christians hated them first.” If Christians would just stay in the holy huddle and leave politics alone, we’d be fine. They argue that Christians trying to oppose the Left are like the kid who poked a stick in the bear’s cave and awoke the sleeping bear. When the bear tears him limb from limb, he gets what he deserves.
I don’t think the evidence supports that thesis, and the Bible does not. A review of the historical record confirms that the aggressors were the secular left, not the Christian Right. Traditional marriage was not invented two year ago. It was the secular Left that wanted to overturn 2000 years of tradition, spurred on by the courts, not Christians. Abortion was illegal in all 50 states and had been forever.
It was the secular Left that pushed for abortion, not Christians who opposed it. Christians should not be pacifists in the culture wars, but as good citizens should oppose evil and work for the common good. They should not fail to stand for good out of fear that they will provoke the sleeping bear. The fallacy in the 2K argument is that the bear is not sleeping anyway. He is active and actively opposing God and his order becaue he hates God (Rom. 8:7). I agree we should work for good without being needlessly provocative; we should work with an irenic spirit, and we should love and do good to all, even to the ACLU lawyer. But work we must.
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Mr. Suden, well said. I’m the first to condemn the exceses of the Christian Right, but I like the way they work for the common good in the political sphere better than the way the radical 2K don’t. The radical 2K seem to throw stones from inside their holy huddle only at the Christian Right, and can’t seem to find their voice to publicly oppose the radical secular Left. The Christian Right is right to oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, and radical 2Ks are wrong not to. But I applaud the Christian Right for these positions even if some are motivated by flawed theology and flawed ecclesiology. It’s a fallen world; few of us get it all right. I applaud members of other faiths for standing for the good and the right even if their theology is flawed. I worked side by side at phone banks with Mormons, Jews, Catholics, and unbelievers in making calls on behalf of Prop 8. None of these men and women were motivated by a desire to Christianize America or take back America for Jesus. Most weren’t Christians. But they had the light of nature, the law written on the conscience, and knew that same-sex marriage was wrong and harmful for the society they loved.
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Here is a test case. True case. The Alameda County Board of Education has mandated that 4th and 5th graders be taught “tolerance” and not to bully through a curriculum that includes reading a book about two gay penguins that adopt a baby penguin. The burden of the book and the curriculum, which I’ve reviewed, is that the practice of homosexuality is normal and healthy and children should accept it; and that same-sex marriage is normal and health as an alternative lifestyle, and children should accept it. The school district’s board of education has advised that parents may not opt their children out of the classes on freedom of religion grounds.
Question: Should Christian parents do anything about this? (File a civil rights suit? Lobby the school board? Oragnize a campaign in the media to draw attention to this and pressure the school board? Oragnize a recall petition on the school board members?) Or should they just send their kids to these indoctrination classes and hope for the best?
A radical 2K proponent, opposing all activism and holding that Christians should be culture-war pacifists, would argue, I suspect, that the school board’s position is Jerry Falwell’s fault, and that they should do nothing, that any poliitcal action would be unwise and would provoke the Beast. Just lead a quiet life and mind your own business (even though the state is not minding its business). A Christian Right view would oppose the school board hammer and tong out of motivation to take the school back for Jesus.
Is there a middle way? Perhaps engage in legal and political action to oppose this on First Amendment grounds, and on grounds that it is a matter of personal conscience of each parent and not for the government to decide, not out of a misguided effort to take the school back for Jesus, but to stand up for their civil rights and the best interests of their kids.
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Zrim, you misunderstood — I agree with you. As a Calvinist, I have no problem saying that we are sinners by nature, and that we are culpable for what we are and not merely for what we do.
It’s just that Arminian America has a problem with that. (I don’t know about Armenian America 🙂 ). They believe that sin is all about making a choice. Hence, they take “what I am by nature” as an excuse.
You disagree with them; I disagree with them; I’m just pointing out that homosexuality is an instance where Natural Law by itself and without input from Scripture gets confused.
JRC
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Zrim and DGH have been working through 2k questions longer than me and are more gifted besides, so if I’m incoherent, ignore me. But I see plenty of good, common sphere reasons to argue that compulsory taxation to support 4th and 5th graders reading penguin stories, however those penguins are oriented, is silly. But the argument is constructed without appeal to Leviticus or the “and such were some of you” of 1 Cor. 6- the problem isn’t that of the church, and it’s not even strictly a moral question, but one of educational prudence.
So you might have people within the church who find for whatever reason that the school best fits their children’s needs and they address the penguins on their own time. Others might be disgusted and educate their children elsewhere. Some might be offended that they’re taxed to support such education and speak out accordingly. The only intersection any of this has with 2k is that none of these responses are viewed as the canonical or orthodox one. If your suggested radical 2kers exist, I’ve not met them.
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Jeff,
I wasn’t diagreeing with you, I was reponding to something we both agree on.
..until you suggest that “homosexuality is an instance where Natural Law by itself and without input from Scripture gets confused.” Nobody needs the Bible to know that homosexuality is a sexual deviancy. Why do you think the rules change for this one? The ancient far east knew this. How much further from the Bible can one get?
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Mike K., I don’t think you’re incoherent at all. I agree that there are many “common sphere” reasons to oppose compulsory Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual (“LGTB”) Lesson Plans. Many Christian and non-Christian parents object that their children will be compelled to give the “correct” answers to this course (that LBTB lifestyles are normal and healthy) on the grounds it violates parental rights and religlious freedom to teach otherwise. Most will not be able to afford to education their kids in private school, so they will be compelled to submit their kids to this curriculum. I see no valid 2k objection to political or legal action to oppose this by resort to the courts, lobbying, or other political action. Yet some of the posters on this site, like some of my 2K friends, have argued a version of 2K that would seem to find such political/legal action objectionable when done by Christians: (i) Christian activism is unwise; (ii) Christians should seek to lead a quiet life and concentrate on Word and Sacrament and not politics; (iii) political action to correct moral wrongs in the civil sphere is a misguided attempt to Christianize the civil sphere; (iv) opposing the secular Left is unwise and will aggravate them and make them more aggressive, etc. Perhaps I’ve mistakenly taken their broad generalities too literally and they would have no objection to Christians opposing the Alameda school board’s action by poliitical/legal means. The curricula information can be accessed at:
http://groundspark.org/our-films-and-campaigns/thatfamily and http://www.eqforall.com/proposed-lgbt-curriculum.html.
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CVD,
As a “radical 2Ker†I don’t find myself in your speculated response to this test case. My 2K has nothing against any parent of any persuasion doing anything that is lawful. It also has no problem with fellow believers sitting at phone banks. (Remember, it’s all about liberty.)
But, for one thing, the problem is that you are testing things based upon an outlier, which is like going by exceptions instead of rules. Stripping parents of rights is certainly not my experience in public education (as a student, teacher or parent).
And, for another, I’d rather teach my kids that that they have to learn how to negotiate their way through the complications of a world with a set of beliefs that can be quite antithetical to theirs. I’d rather they figure out how one has to at once knows what he believes and why and sorts out living with those who simply do not. I’d rather not teach them to try and manipulate the world to fit them so that they might be more comfortable. I’d rather teach them that sometimes one wins, but often one loses and that there is no shame in losing. In other words, I’d rather they learn how to be pilgrims than warriors. I don’t know how their father sitting at a phone bank, filing law suits or organizing petition drives does that. My opposition to culture warriorizing, soft or hard, sacred or secular, has nothing to do with some limp-wristed fear about “provoking any Beasts.†I just don’t see what stake we pilgrims have in worldly wars.
So where some might lobby to protect their kids, my aim would be to rear them. To be quite honest, what I think is at work in your view is this odd, modern notion that children are precious beings that need to be protected instead of sinners who need to be made. And I like to make mine the old fashioned way.
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Mr. Zrim, this is helpful. Thanks. A few observations:
1. It seems to me, with respect, that you’re speaking out both sides of your mouth — er, typing on both sides of your keyboard, as it were. On the one hand, you claim you “have nothing against” a parent who does anything lawful, which presumably includes a little culture warrioring on behalf of thier kids against the school district in this actual case. But on the other hand, you say you say you oppose all culture war activity, referring to “[m]y opposition to culture warrioriizing, soft or hard, sacred or secular ….” Then you proceed to argue that parents would do better to submit their kids to this school’s mandaory LGBT curriculum than to organize a petition or file a lawsuit. You then conclude that Christian pilgrims have no stake in worldly wars. So it seems to me you do fall squarely within the hypothesized radical 2K person I mentioned, no? In other words, you concede that Christians have liberty to be culture warriors or not, but you make clear you think culture war activity is unwise, imprudent, or there is something not right about it. Why that is is not explained.
2. While you or I might be content to exercise our liberty to submit our kids to a mandatory LGBT curriculum, in your case to teach them to be “pilgrims,” do you understand that many (perhaps most) Christian parents would make other choices? And isn’t the point, not what you would do, but that Christian parents should have the liberty to make their own choices? Here that liberty is being deprived by this school district, an arm of the government. Can you concede that a Christian parent who is not as sanguine as you about allowing their children of tender years to be required to state on school tests/essays that they approve of LGBT lifestyles as normal and healthy, and that persons who oppose LGBT are intolerant and narrow-minded, that such Christian parents may engage in a bit of culture warrioring without your disapproval, indeed with your hearty encouragement?
4. The Christian parents at Alameda school district would be surprised to hear from you that they “have no stake” in this particular “worldly war” [your term]. I suspect they think that their role as parents gives them a major stake. How would you explain that to them?
5. You imply that this case is an “outlier” (I gather you mean that in a statistical sense), i.e., unusual. This is where you are a victim of your naivete, with all due respect. The Alameda school district case is hardly unique or unusual. This curriculum is in play in the school district I represent, which serves 132,000 students; in two other large school districts in my state; in school districts throughout the nation, particularly in the East Coast. In most of these schools, parents are not permitted to opt their children out.
6. I wonder how many cases of contraction of religious liberty you must encounter before you concede Christians have a “stake” in standing for their rights, even Calvinist Christians like you and me.
3.
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CVD,
In other words, you concede that Christians have liberty to be culture warriors or not, but you make clear you think culture war activity is unwise, imprudent, or there is something not right about it…
Everything is lawful, but not everything is profitable.
While you or I might be content to exercise our liberty to submit our kids to a mandatory LGBT curriculum, in your case to teach them to be “pilgrims,†do you understand that many (perhaps most) Christian parents would make other choices? And isn’t the point, not what you would do, but that Christian parents should have the liberty to make their own choices? Can you concede that a Christian parent who is not as sanguine as you about allowing their children of tender years to be required to state on school tests/essays that they approve of LGBT lifestyles as normal and healthy, and that persons who oppose LGBT are intolerant and narrow-minded, that such Christian parents may engage in a bit of culture warrioring without your disapproval, indeed with your hearty encouragement?
Yes, yes and nobody needs my approval to do anything for which they are conscientiously compelled.
The Christian parents at Alameda school district would be surprised to hear from you that they “have no stake†in this particular “worldly war†[your term]. I suspect they think that their role as parents gives them a major stake. How would you explain that to them?
I would encourage them to think and do as they see fit, just like I thin and do as I see fit.
The Alameda school district case is hardly unique or unusual. This curriculum is in play in the school district I represent, which serves 132,000 students; in two other large school districts in my state; in school districts throughout the nation, particularly in the East Coast. In most of these schools, parents are not permitted to opt their children out.
That is highly unfortunate. Seems Constantinianism comes in all flavors, even secularist. But I’m still unmoved by the activistic tactic that exceptions are rules. Sometimes, CVD, people and the institutions they inhabit just do really dumb things and other people get hurt. But where I come from one was taught to endure injury with a measured dignity. That is not the same thing as rolling over, despite what many believe. Rather, to endure injury with dignity has more to do with knowing when to speak and knowing when to be quiet, and the former has very little to do with filing lawsuits and “standing up for one’s rights.†It has a grasp of what is right, true and good but also knows the foibles of being litigious.
I wonder how many cases of contraction of religious liberty you must encounter before you concede Christians have a “stake†in standing for their rights, even Calvinist Christians like you and me.
And I wonder just how far Paul (or any other NT writer for that matter) would’ve gotten if the emphasis was on his religious liberties and fighting for his rights instead of Christ and him crucified or that he might decrease so that Jesus might increase. To my reckless mind, what you seem so preoccupied with does everything in its power to diminish suffering and finally render pilgrimage foolish. It is not entirely obvious to me how your project isn’t more friendly with a theology of glory instead of the cross. I have little to no idea how your concerns make any abiding sense of what it means to live quietly, mind one’s own business and seek the peace and prosperity of the city. At best, it probably only means to be innocuously civil and courteous and polite while one looks for ways to not be tread upon. What is your answer when you lose? Is it that the bad guys won and the good guys were scandalized?
I am curious. Are you interested in working to protect all American citizens or just fighting for Christian American rights?
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OK, prove that. Homosexual behavior has been in and out of fashion in various forms throughout history. link
(not that the Wiki is a substitute for serious research, but just to get the ball rolling).
JRC
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Jeff,
Lots of things “go in and out of fashion.†That has little to do with what everyone knows is right, true and good. And the first paragraph under “History†in your link provides enough data to suggest that general revelation teaches its deviancy.
But the assumption of your challenge seems similar to those who fear admitting that sexual deviancy comes by way of nature at least as much as by the will: one has a problem with general revelation being quite enough to teach what is right, true and good, the other cannot fathom that ALL facets of human nature, including sexuality, are subject to sin and depravity. You both seem to hold out that somehow the rules are different when the subject is taboo sex. It must be true what they say, that sex does weird things to people.
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No — it’s a relevant example. If we lived in the 19th century, I would be talking about slavery.
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Jeff,
And what would you be saying about slavery? Would you also then be referencing the Bible? If so, how would you ever hope to persuade those who have little to no use for it?
Pardon the impiety, but my sense is that when believers feel threatened or somehow desperate or that an argument might be lost (‘cause losing just won’t do) the “God-glass†gets broken and the Bible pulled out. The irony here is that the effort to be pious actually evidences less faith, not more.
God is the maker and sustainer of all things visible and invisible. He has saw fit to rule his creation through providence and natural law. General revelation does not need special revelation to come to its aid, ever. These rules don’t change when the subject is taboo sex or slavery. And they don’t care if those who have a better grasp on what is right, true and good will lose. That’s not their problem.
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Mr. Zrim:
I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful reply, and it’s evident that you attempt to live a pious life. I do think that you have confused many things and failed to provide a persuasive or coherent argument against Christians defending their civil liberty or that of others.
1. You cite 1 Cor. 10:23 for reasons that are not clear, as this text seems inapposite to the point I made. I think you have not considered yet that there is an inherent and fatal incoherence at the heart of your position. You want to appear to respect the Christian liberty of believers who choose to engage in Christian activism (“I would encourage them to think and do as they see fit, as I think and do as I see fit…”), which should lead to the conclusion that you have no criticism of their actions, nor any right to criticise their choices. Yet you very much do criticize their choices, which you see as unwise, not edifying, a violation of 1 Thess. 4:11 (“lead a quiet life”), a “theology of glory,” and inconsistent with your version of 2k. I think your position would be more intellectually honest if you didn’t try to have it both ways. (As Calvin taught in his development of Christian liberty, liberty exercised in an inappropriate way is a pretense of liberty and is sin. So I take it you see Christian activists as exerciseing a pretense of Christian libety but actually engaging in sinful or otherwise unbiblical practice.) Since you stoutly oppose Christians engaging in “activism,” even to protect the freedom to expound the gospel, even to protect the unborn, even to protect their own young, Christian children from state-compelled indoctrination into sexual deviation, you fall foursquare into the camp of radical 2k advocates who want to convince Christians to be pacifists in the culture wars. You have the right to that position, of course, but I don’t know why you want to distance yourself from it. I’m doing my best to understand your position, so if I have misunderstood you, please forgive me.
2. You have not explained why parents of 4th and 5th graders at Alameda school district do not “have a stake” (your term) in the school indoctrinating their children in LGBT practices and lifetyles as normal and healthy. You contend that you don’ts see “what stake we pilgrims have in worldly wars.” I submit that I have presented you with a compelling case for Christians having a vital stake in “worldly wars” because they directly implicate our duties as Christian parents. It’s not clear to me why you deem it “wiser” or more virtuous for Christian parents to suffer thier children being indoctrinated by the state into LGBT ideology against an intransigent school board (that will not cease and desist without a court order or removal from office) than to ask a judge to rule their actions violative of their First Amendment rights. What do you see as the harm to anyone of the parents of Alameda 4th and 5th graders going to a judge?
3. I gather you believe it more virtuous or “wise” for Christians to “endure injury with dignity” rather than to defend themselves or others. This is indeed a pacifist position. If an intruder entered your home with a gun aimed at your wife and children, would your ethic compel you to “endure injury with dignity” in that circumstance rather? I find no biblical support for such an ethic, but recall Jesus’ command to obtain a sword. If the magistrate is violating the state’s own laws that assure Christians the freedom to exercise religious freedom and to raise our children without interference, Christians are free to oppose those efforts. In our system, that opposition occurs through the courts, legislators, and appeals to public officials.
4. It seems to me that you’re correct that the primary focus of the NT is not on the goal of improving general society (the civil sphere), but concerns relations of love within the covenant community and the church as a society of Word and Sacrament. And as pilgrim our primary focus must be on setting our minds on heavenly things, but as long as our actions don’t detract from the gospel, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. The early Christians didn’t have the power to impact the culture of the Roman empire, but that doesn’t mean that they did not show love and mercy toward all persons (e.g., they rescued babies who had been left to die and brought them into their homes). Our Lord also taught the disciples to minister to people without regard to ethnicity, national origin, or creed (Lk. 10:25-37). Jesus sums up the law with a command to love our neighbor (Mt. 22), which requires us to consult and pursue their welfare, regardless of religion, ethnicity or creed. Paul urged Christians to do good “especially” to the household of faith, but not exclusively there. None of these deeds of love are intended to “transform” the cultural realm into the sacred realm, nor to impose Christian values on the civil realm. They are merely love to neighbor, even our pagan neighbor. Christ will bring his Kingdom in due time, and we are not to confuse the kingdom of this world with that kingdom. But nothing in 2k theology rules out Christian attempts to improve society, the cultural sphere, where we can, from advancing the welfare of our neighbors within the civil sphere where we can, from pursuing justice for our neighborsin our role as citizens. Christians should be the best citizens in the civil realm, but remaining the holy huddle, refraining from taking appropriate action to help improve the culture where we can, out of a misplaced reading of Christ’s doctrine of the two kingdoms or fear of embracing a “theology of glory,” is a misapplicaiton of the 2K doctrine.
Accordingly, I think the 2K doctrine does not rule out political or legal action by individual Christians to protect the environment, pursue justice, protect the unborn, alleviate poverty, and help the wounded and helpless. Not to Christianize America, not to transform the culture, but to alleviate suffering, remove evil a little bit for a time, and to help God’s image bearers. You think it unwise, imprudent, or wrong, but you have failed to offer any case to support that radical conclusion.
5. Christian politial and legal action has done a great deal of good to further the gospel and promote evangelism in areas where the state has tried to stop us. For example, I have litigated many religious freedom cases that have won for high school and college students the right to organize religious clubs and Bible studies on campus. These groups have allowed Christians to evangelize unbelievers at thier school, and the kids are excited about the number of unbelievers who end up coming to church and being converted as a result. How can it be wrong to protect our freedom to present the gospel? I’ve also worked with lobbying organizations to get Congress to pass the federal Equal Access Act. That has required schools and universities to allow Christian studetns the same freedoms allowed other groups, to the end that the gospel is presented in places that would otherwise be closed to it. How can that be wrong? Ought we not hold the Magistrate responsible to follow its own laws and not violate them to our disadvantage?
6. Yes, I am working to protect all American citizens. I’m now representing an Orthodox Jewish high school, pro bono largely, in protecting it from injustice and governmental interference. I have worked to support poverty relief centers and environmental groups.
I respect your attempt to be faithful to the biblical doctrine of the 2K, but I fear that your zeal has led to a very imbalanced and unsalutary extremism. I appreciate the dialogue.
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CVD,
I understand the apparent conundrum of at once allowing believers their liberty and having a rather hard critique of what they do with it. But I do not feel as compelled to have to solve such a tension. One might as well be asked to resolve how it is that God’s sovereignty can co-exist with human responsibility. But if conventional Calvinism does not seek to relieve this mystery, but instead live with it, I see no reason why the tension I am suggesting should be rendered “inherently and fatally incoherent.†No, I do not see Christian activists as behaving “sinfully or unbiblically,†but rather very unwisely. It’s no sin to be foolish.
I am not aiming to trivialize the situation of any parent who is being trampled as a citizen in our republic. I am not suggesting that Christian Americans delete their citizenship. Rather, I am suggesting that parents who are Christians consider what it means to be a Christian first and an American second.
If you want to hang the pacifist frame, feel free. But I see nothing in the NT that warrants anything even remotely similar to the idea of believers “standing up for their rights.†It is an alien concept to Scripture. I see plenty of warrant for an intolerant religion, for bowing only to the one true God. An intruder to my home is not the same as persecution. The former is creation, the latter is redemption. Jesus did indeed issue swords to his disciples, but he also rebuked one of them for using it to protect the interests of the Kingdom of God. The swords were issued for their creational needs, not their redemptive ones. Real pacifists generally don’t know what to make of the swords because they tend to confuse the creational and redemptive categories. When it comes to creation, I’m not pacifist. But when it comes to redemption, well, I suppose that’s one word for it. But you’re going to have to show me how Jesus ever once relied on the ways of the world to further his kingdom before you can issue such disdain for it.
But nothing in 2k theology rules out Christian attempts to improve society, the cultural sphere, where we can, from advancing the welfare of our neighbors within the civil sphere where we can, from pursuing justice for our neighbors in our role as citizens.
Quite agreed. However the harder question to my mind is not that we are to be participants in the common sphere, but rather how. And this is where we differ, I suspect. I don’t see how advancing the welfare of fellow citizens translates into standing up for our own rights or even our particular ideologies (especially when they can and do differ, which adds an impossible wrinkle). I see that we advance the welfare of our neighbors by both minding our own households well and meeting with our neighbors in living rooms, board rooms and classrooms rather than court rooms. There is a place for the holy huddle, but it’s only one day a week. The other six should be neck-deep in society. But while we’re there I am convinced the posture should be one that is more engaging and participatory than embattled.
Consider that evangelism might happen better where there is less privilege and more persecution. I’m not so naïve as to not be aware of the potential for Pollyanna, and this certainly isn’t to suggest that God cannot work in privileged environs. But can we say with confidence that the American experiment, where all efforts are to sustain a creaturely comfort and ease, has really yielded a church that does the gospel very well? Are things well with the soul of American Christianity? I don’t think so. I think things are pretty shameful. And I’m not so sure that nurturing privilege amongst those whose faith was born by persecution and martyrdom has not been grounds for deep skepticism. Whatever else it may mean, the biblical data simply does not support the idea that ease and comfort are good for growing believers and making disciples. I’ll admit, though, I really like it.
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I don’t think you see how deep the problem goes yet.
REPT refuses to provide answers on the grounds that advice would take away freedom. BUT, you as an REPT-er have provided hard critique of Alameda Co. parents. You quote 1 Cor, “All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.”
How do you know what is profitable?
That’s the problem. Somehow, you have a “magic procedure” that allows you to judge others’ actions as unprofitable. But you refuse to share it with us because REPT forbids giving advice like that.
There’s the incoherence. REPT doesn’t give answers or even a method for finding answers; but REPT-ers do have a magic method for “knowing” when someone else has done something unprofitable, or has improperly mixed the two kingdoms — in other words, when someone has given the wrong answer.
Likewise, REPT-ers provide no method for reading ethics out of Natural Law; but you somehow know that homosexual behavior is contrary to the Natural Law. How?
So ‘fess up! How do you know that the Alameda parents have done something unprofitable? How does one tell when one has improperly mixed the kingdoms? How does one know what the Natural Law teaches?
JRC
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Jeff,
I can’t seem to win for losing with you. You begin by interpreting 2K to be saying that certain efforts are unlawful (i.e. pointing to special revelation to do general revelation’s job). It is then clarified for you that all that is meant is that this may not be the wisest move. You seem pleased enough. But then the appeal to wisdom gets questioned, and I have to objectively prove something that is a subjective enterprise. But how does one actually do that? Wisdom, unlike intelligence, by its nature is not as subject to objective proofs. Judging by your “magic procedure†quip, I ‘m sure this is now a form of “secret knowledge†Gnosticism. But when I tell my daughter it isn’t wise to play in the street I don’t think I’m tapping into any great, inaccessible mystery. I’ve tried to explain why I don’t think it is wise. It doesn’t seem good enough for you (or others). I guess you just disagree.
But I really don’t see what the problem is in telling someone he is perfectly free to do something but that I decline because I am unconvinced of its wisdom. People do this everywhere everyday in the world. Once again, Jeff, I think you may be over-thinking something to the point where I doubt your theory lines up with your real-world practice. Unless you really are in the habit of asking everyone around you to justify the larger balance of their actions each day.
I’m no good at magic, and apparently I’m not much better at old-fashioned explaining. But let me try again. I don’t intend on taking anything away from the parents of the 4th and 5th graders at Alameda school district or anyone else who is on the losing side of really asinine policy execution. My intention is not to be simplistic or convey that there is any easy answer to admittedly complicated situations. I cannot say that I wouldn’t be as fuming as these parents whose ordination as parents seems to be clearly trampled (which, by the way, is the real issue here, not the loss of religious liberty), nor even that I wouldn’t take legal steps.
But what I am here doing is trying to suggest that there might another way of looking at things. If we are called to be pilgrims does that mean only when things are going in our favor (real or perceived)? Or is the better test of pilgrimage how we comport ourselves when they are not going our way? Consider Jesus’ own comportment as he endured his plight. He learned obedience to the point of the cross. I think this is very hard for we Americans to grasp, as we are nurtured in a polity that expects, encourages and even rewards dissent and individual rights. It is secretly (and not so secretly) disgusted with notions of contentment and endurance. I realize we are in the drilled habit of thanking heaven ceaselessly for our earthly advantages and benefits (i.e. “God bless America!â€). Is it possible that our spiritual piety is an affront to our civil polity and vice versa?
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Mr. Zrim, your attempt to have it both ways leaves your position incoherent and disingenous at its core, and all your conclusions that flow from that are therefore fundamentally flawed. You say the parents of 4th-5th graders of Alameda school district are unwise or violating your version of 2k to petition the school board, recall the board members, ask a judge to enjoin the violation of thier First Amendment Free Exercise rights, or take any other action to prevent their kids from being indoctrinated into sinful practices, but you graciously allow that such is within their “Christian liberty.” You build from there to the grander, sweeiping, universal proposition that most Christian political-legal activity in the common grace sphere is “unwise”, a confusion of the kingdoms, unprofitable, unsavory, and evidences a serious lack of understanding about how Christians are called to live a quiet life, mind their own business, and submit to injustices and violations committed upon them. What you don’t seem to see is that you are laying down a broad-based norm of general application, a universal norm for Christians, in your condemnation of most of what passes for “Christian activism.” You make clear that you think Christians would be wiser and would adhere closer to biblical norms if they stayed home and worshipped on Sunday and stayed clear of courtrooms and legislatures and the media. You are not making a single, case-specific judgment of what for you would be wise or unwise, you are enjoining your view of “wisdom” on all Christians, and in more than a single case (i.e, most forms of Christian activism). You posit that Christians should be pacifists and not oppose government interference with their religious rights nor seek to change unjust laws that victimize Christians and non-Christians. When I was in seminary studying Christian ethics we were taught that a norm of general and universal application, that purports to rest on an application of biblically derived ethics, is mandatory not permissive. A Christian would not be at liberty to act otherwise or he/she would be guilty of a sinful abuse of Christian liberty. The act is no longer neutral. I am not at liberty to eat meat sacrificed to idols in the face of the weaker brother whom I know is scandalized by the act, and to do so is sin. I’m at liberty to play the piano or not play the piano, but if Scripture says, by good and necessary consequense, that it is sinful to play the piano at 3:00 a.m. and disturb my neighbor, it is no longer adiophora and it is sinful to play the piano at 3:00 a.m. when my neighbor is sleeping.
It’s by this reasoning that my fellow elders at the URC church sought to bring me up on charges for being on the board of a Christian lobbying organization and for representing Christian parents in religious freedom cases. They explained that Christian activism violates 2K, is unwise in most cases, and this lack of wisdom per se evidences an elder’s lack of fitness for office and a general member’s disobedience to biblical norms. They were honest that ethically they saw the prohibition on Christian activism as a biblically derived norm of universal application to Christians, and therefore not within Christian liberty. I argued it was within Christian liberty, and they said no, beceause it is a generally applicable norm. It seems to me they were at least being honest to thier convictions as they recognized that that which is posited as a norm of general application to Christians, on all cases similarly situated, is outside Christian liberty. They and our Classis agreed that if activism were within Christian liberty, they would have no biblical right to criticize it as unwise because the very criticism that the action is “unwise” would improperly bind the conscience where Scripture affords Christian liberty. Therefore, for you to say that Christian political action and litigation is as a general rule unwise and unprofitable, that wisdom compels Christian pacificm in culture wars and the suffering of a depriviation of our liberty, is necessarily a norm of general application. Having thereby removed activism from the domain of neutrality and liberty, you are binding the conscience.
That brings us to the unanswered question of why, on your principles, it would be “unwise” or “unprofitable” for the Alameda parents to protect their children from the magistrate’s abuse of his authority. Why is it “wiser” for them to allow their children to be taught by the magistrate ethical norms that violate Christian conscience? (Incidentally, contrary to your assertion that you don’t see a religious freedom case here, these cases are recognized by the courts as First Amendment Free Exericise of Religion cases. The Supreme Court has held that within the religious rights of parents is the right to control what religious teachings their children receive, and courts have found mandatory teaching of gay-lesbian-transgender-transexual activity volative of Free Exercise rights.) It seems to me self-evidently foolish.
If the magistrate were to come arrest you, your pastor, and your fellow Christians for preaching that homosexuality is a sin or something else that the state doesn’t like, I take it that Christian “wisdom” compels them to be pacifists and submit to the deprivation of their liberty. Why is this wiser?
When lobbying to enact the federal Equal Access Act,and litigation to enforce it, led to the freedom for Christian Good News clubs and other Christians to exercise the same liberties that their fellow secularists enjoy, why was that unwise? When that lobbying won for Christians the right to present the gospel to thousands of unbelievers, and as a result many thousands of unbelieving high school and college students were converted by hearing the gospel (a demonstrable fact), why was it unwise to do what led to the gospel converting thousands? When political action and legal actions by Christians led to striking down municipality’s abuse of local zoning ordinances to prevent any churches from being built in their municipality, and when that lobbyin led to the enactment of RLUIPA that forced local governments from discriminating against churches and individual Christians, why was that “unwise”? You can spin abstract theories in a seminar or blog all day condemning activism, but in the real world when Christians act to hold the magistrate accountable, they win freedom for the gospel to go forth.
The Westminster Standards distinguish between the lawful power of the magistrate and the lawful exercise of that power. When the magistrate abuses his power, he may be held accountable by appropriate legal action. In a representaive democracy governeed by the rule of law, Christians image God in his governing by their participation in the political process. That is part of what it means to be a citizen of the earthly kingdom. It seems to me that your version of 2K is closer to a “1K” doctrine where Christians are mandated (despite Christian liberty) to withdraw from the political and cultural sheres into their homes and churches. This is closer to the Amish and Mennonites than classical Reformed theology and the biblical doctrine of the two kingdoms.
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A footnote to above, for sake of understanding. Hypo: X sends his children to public school. Minister/theologian Y writes a book jand gives speeches judging and condemning the practice of Christians sending their children to public school on the grounds that biblical norms mandate that fathers must be responsible for their children’s education, must raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and must protect their children from harmful and ungodly influences found in the public schools. He argues that it is exceptionally unwise and unprofitable to send kids to public schools, and that when the biblical teaching on child raising is properly understood, a responsible and godly parent would and must send their kids to Christian day schools (or home school). Mr. X argues that he has Christian liberty to send his kids to public school and that Y is improperly seeking to bind his conscience on a disputable matter by judging and criticizing him. Who is right, X or Y? Why?
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CVD,
I haven’t told the parents of 4th-5th graders of Alameda school district anything. I have tried to convey to you my own hesitations about activism of whatever stripe and variety. I will freely admit that the line between being active and activism is fuzzy. I have also conceded to you (by way of Jeff) that I can find some sympathy for parents who are being run over by a public institution. But being “litigious for Jesus†is something I find quite odd.
(The weaker brother is not he who is scandalized by but he who is unconvinced in his mind of a thing indifferent. When the weaker brother is understood in the former is when things become tyrannical.)
As I already told you, it sounds to me like your experience was one in which your own liberty was trampled. And now you are taking it out on anyone who shares your general 2K but not every application. I appreciate that you have a vested interest in the Alameda case, but just because I zig when you zag doesn’t mean I am “condemning†these parents or you. It’s closer to two 2Kers who disagree and one who is particularly sensitive about it.
If the magistrate were to come arrest you, your pastor, and your fellow Christians for preaching that homosexuality is a sin or something else that the state doesn’t like, I take it that Christian “wisdom†compels them to be pacifists and submit to the deprivation of their liberty. Why is this wiser?</i.
Your tone is consistently one of martyrdom and persecution. But the task of proper martyrdom and persecution is obedience and faithfulness, not self-protection and assertion. The Christian response to persecution is to remain obedient and faithful (i.e. maintain the sin of sexual deviancy), whereas the American response to persecution is to be litigious. I think this can be hard to negotiate for Christian Americans, and I don’t pretend it is easy. But I think there is something to be said for distinguishing between a biblical response to persecution and an American one.
Re your hypothetical, I am a public school advocate in theory and practice. I am told regularly my views and practices are unwise, etc. I consider the URC’s Article 14 to be a very soft form of educational legalism (see the “Between a Millstone and a Mandate†post here). I am, in fact, Mr. X and consider that Y is improperly seeking to bind my conscience on a disputable matter by judging and criticizing me. He’ll never admit it, but that is what his formal language in 14 and informal rhetoric is doing. But I also think your liberty was trampled by fellow 2Kers who, evidently, did a poor job at executing 2K doctrine. I think parents should be free to publicly, parochially or home school their children, and I think members should be free to do activistic work or not. And I think all should be free to openly criticize each other without getting church sanction to back them up one way or another. Activism and education are adiaphora. It is interesting to me how educational legalism is way more tolerated and sanctioned and activism is championed in our ranks.
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…let me try that with proper italics…
CVD,
I haven’t told the parents of 4th-5th graders of Alameda school district anything. I have tried to convey to you my own hesitations about activism of whatever stripe and variety. I will freely admit that the line between being active and activism is fuzzy. I have also conceded to you (by way of Jeff) that I can find some sympathy for parents who are being run over by a public institution. But being “litigious for Jesus†is something I find quite odd.
(The weaker brother is not he who is scandalized by but he who is unconvinced in his mind of a thing indifferent. When the weaker brother is understood in the former is when things become tyrannical.)
As I already told you, it sounds to me like your experience was one in which your own liberty was trampled. And now you are taking it out on anyone who shares your general 2K but not every application. I appreciate that you have a vested interest in the Alameda case, but just because I zig when you zag doesn’t mean I am “condemning†these parents or you. It’s closer to two 2Kers who disagree and one who is particularly sensitive about it.
If the magistrate were to come arrest you, your pastor, and your fellow Christians for preaching that homosexuality is a sin or something else that the state doesn’t like, I take it that Christian “wisdom†compels them to be pacifists and submit to the deprivation of their liberty. Why is this wiser?.
Your tone is consistently one of martyrdom and persecution. But the task of proper martyrdom and persecution is obedience and faithfulness, not self-protection and assertion. The Christian response to persecution is to remain obedient and faithful (i.e. maintain the sin of sexual deviancy), whereas the American response to persecution is to be litigious. I think this can be hard to negotiate for Christian Americans, and I don’t pretend it is easy. But I think there is something to be said for distinguishing between a biblical response to persecution and an American one.
Re your hypothetical, I am a public school advocate in theory and practice. I am told regularly my views and practices are unwise, etc. I consider the URC’s Article 14 to be a very soft form of educational legalism (see the “Between a Millstone and a Mandate†post here). I am, in fact, Mr. X and consider that Y is improperly seeking to bind my conscience on a disputable matter by judging and criticizing me. He’ll never admit it, but that is what his formal language in 14 and informal rhetoric is doing. But I also think your liberty was trampled by fellow 2Kers who, evidently, did a poor job at executing 2K doctrine. I think parents should be free to publicly, parochially or home school their children, and I think members should be free to do activistic work or not. And I think all should be free to openly criticize each other without getting church sanction to back them up one way or another. Activism and education are adiaphora. It is interesting to me how educational legalism is way more tolerated and sanctioned and activism is championed in our ranks.
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The term “Christian activism” is moot from a 2k standpoint. A Christian’s decision to teach or do math or plumb or activise does not beget a definitively Christian method of doing those things. Arguing for the Christian liberty to establish such a method anyway is befuddling, reminiscent of unions claiming the right of free contract law to force all hires to go through organized labor.
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That’s a good point, Mike. I suppose it’s been assumed on my part.
But I have found that some who would agree that “there is no redemptive version of any creational enterprise” also can tend to draw a curious line at something, usually whatever they may be particularly invested in, and suspend the 2K rules to lesser or greater degrees. Then all of a sudden, instead of Christians doing politics or education, there really are Christian politics or education. But either Jesus only lived and died for his people, or he mostly lived and died for his people and sorta lived and died for these (perfectly legitimate and “very good”) things. I’m waiting for a 2Ker really into knitting to do this.
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Mr. Zrim, thanks for the response. I share your view re Article 14 and those Reformed who condemn parents who send their kids to public school (“child abuse”). It is binding the conscience. I represent public schools and know them well, and many Christian parents can find them a suitable platform for their kids, especially where the parents are doing their job of Christian nurture at home. Some parents realistically have no other choice in any event.
My point in raising it is, of course, to demonstrate that many of our more well-known 2K Reformed advocates (scholars, pastors) in books, magazine submissions, talks, blogs, and in the classroom issue similar broad-based condemnations, under a biblical 2K rubric, of Christians who engage in forms of activism (by Christian activism I mean not an activism of a distinctly Christian flavor but Christians who are active in seeking to elevate the culture where they can and do good to their neighbor through culture, politics, and the courts). In so doing these speakers are likewise invading Christian liberty while, curiously, pleading for Christian liberty in the area of schooling. What’s interesting, and what disturbs me, is that most with whom I’ve discussed this don’t see Christians engaging the culture through politics as within Christian liberty, including a professor at my seminary, acknowledges that he would be improperly binding the conscience if Christian activism were within Christian liberty. He solves the Christian-liberty problem by asserting that Christian activism is not within Christian liberty because it violates biblical 2K doctrine.
My agenda and plea is modest: that Reformed 2k scholars and pastors would cease and desist from condemning the many Christians, Reformed or evangelical or otherwise, who seek to do good through activism means in their individual capacity as citizens. If you personally feel it unwise, fine. I concede you liberty to take that view. Just don’t publicly communicate it. I only wish my fellow 2Kers would grant the same to Christians who feel called to the political and cultural spheres by refraining from publicly condemning us.
For the record, your speculation that I’m motivated by hurt feelings over my liberty being trampled in the past misses the mark. In fact, I long ago reconciled with my fellow elders and remain good friends with all of them (all but one of whom has changed his views!). My motivation is simply a sense of calling and a desire to motivate Christian citizens to be salt in light in proper ways and for theologically right reasons.
In addition, you misundersand me if you sense a “tone” of persecution and victimhood. I’m blessed to suffer no persecution or victimhood. What you sense is a constitutional civil rights lawyer’s sensitivity to upholding First Amendment freedoms for any and all citizens of all creeds, including Christians. Justic Oliver Wendell Holmes said it some years ago: “A denial of one man’s free speech imperils us all until it is rectified.” We’re blessed with incredible liberty to worship and proclaim the gospel in this nations, but the liberty you enjoy to blog was one by activists, and preserving that liberty requires constant vigilence — it is lawsuits by civil rights groups that prevent more abuse than exists.
I had hoped that you would offer some exegetical argument or reasoned argument in explaining your position that most Christian activism is “unwise” or “unprofitable.” I had hoped to take the discussion out of the clouds of glittering generalities and seminary-like palaver down the street level. If you don’t want to belabor the point, fine. But unanswered are:
(1) When lobbying by Christians to enact the federal Equal Access Act and litigation to enforce it led to the freedom for Christian Good News clubs and hundreds of thousands of other Christians throught the nations to exercise the same liberties that their fellow secularists enjoy, why was that unwise? When that lobbying won for Christians the right to present the gospel to thousands of unbelievers, and as a result many thousands of unbelieving high school and college students were converted by hearing the gospel (a demonstrable fact), why was it unwise to do what led to the gospel converting thousands?
(2) When political action and legal actions by Christians led to striking down municipality’s abuse of local zoning ordinances that were used to prevent any churches from being built in their municipality, and when that lobbying led to the enactment of RLUIPA that forced local governments from barring churches and individual Christians, and also prevented government units from barring churches from use of sacramental wine in Communion, why was that “unwiseâ€?
(3) Why is holding the magistrate accountable to obey the laws of the land unwise if it will win freedom for the gospel to go forth?
(4) Why is it unwise for individual Christians to lobby for regulations to protect the unborn and to prevent government funding for human embryonic stem cell research?
(5) Why do the Alameda parents have no “stake” in actions to protect their own youngsters from being compelled to write essays explaining that they approve of gay, lesbian, transexual and transgender lifestyles which conflicts with the biblical morality parents are trying to teach them?
You can denigrate it as “litigating for Jesus,” but I’d call it protecting the unborn, innocent, and preserving freedom for gospel proclamation.
Thanks for the dialogue.
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CVD,
I’m not an exegete, a theologian, a historian, a constitutionalist or an apologist and I try not to pretend to be any of those. You’re going to have to take what you can get. I do.
We are getting repetitive, so let me be brief and try to say something relatively new. I think there is a difference between politics/state-crafting and activism. I realize it’s not always a clear distinction given our civil polity, etc., but generally speaking I find activism to undermine the things of authority and institution. Activism = individualism, moralism, youth, impatience, exact justice, intolerance. Institutionalism = collectivism, truth, age, wisdom, patience, proximate justice, tolerance. Institutional posture is Jack McCoy, activism is Jack Bauer. Sam Waterston’s leather briefcase and Scotch beats Kiefer Sutherland’s cloth man-bag and Red Bull.
Your series of questions seem to assume something I find troubling: the gospel is to greater or lesser degrees dependent upon the powers that be to go forth. The gospel doesn’t need to be lobbied for “to win the right to go forth.†How quizzical. It also implies a less than churchly understanding of how the gospel is actually to be closely tied to more institutional contours. And I’m not a pro-lifer (nor pro-choicer), so appealing to my presumed pro-life views won’t help you.
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Thanks, Mr. Zrim. We do disagree at a fundamental level, perhaps being the products of our experience.
I agree the gospel is effective by the Spirit and not by our human efforts, but I think you’re pitting God’s sovereignty against human responsibility in evangelism. For the Spirit to work through the preaching of the Gospel in a church setting, you have to get the unbeliever to come to church to hear it — unless you posit some magical osmosis. That is what the school-site Bible study clubs do. The thousands of conversions that have been recorded occured, in the main I’m told, when unbelievers were invited to church and continued coming and heard the Gospel week by week. But some conversions occured on a school site, following which new believers came to church. While I agree that the Spirit works primarily through Gospel preaching on the Lord’s Day worship, I wouldn’t limit Him and say Gospel proclamation can’t produce effectual calling outside the “institutional” setting.
Nuff said. Blessings.
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…I think you’re pitting God’s sovereignty against human responsibility in evangelism. For the Spirit to work through the preaching of the Gospel in a church setting, you have to get the unbeliever to come to church to hear it — unless you posit some magical osmosis.
I agree (hyper-Calvinism is but one reason I’m not Protestant Reformed). But it isn’t obvious to me why not looking gleefully to lobbyists and courts to get unbelievers to church translates into “pitting God’s sovereignty against human responsibility.†Huh? And since when did worldly permission figure into churchly evangelism? Isn’t evangelism a command? You ironically (and incorrectly) have me backing down when Caesar says stop, but you seem to think a “go†from him means something. I don’t care if he says go or stop; evangelism is a command. So much for pitting sovereignty against responsibility.
Is it really so awful to think that un-ordained laypersons should be encouraged to first cultivate authentic human relationships with pagans because such relationships are “very good†even if “unredeemed,†THEN invite them to church, and keep said relationships even if they remain “unredeemed� So much for the holy huddle. I realize this may not yield the big numbers Campus Crusade does, but, well, you know (I hope).
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Mr. Zrim, I’m afraid I can’t understand your post. You wrote: “But it isn’t obvious to me why not looking gleefully to lobbyists and courts to get unbelievers to church translates into “pitting God’s sovereignty against human responsibility.†Huh? And since when did worldly permission figure into churchly evangelism? Isn’t evangelism a command?” This is a straw man.
I did not write that we are looking to lobbyists and courts to get unbelievers to church. We’re looking to lobbysist and courts to remove unlawful restrictions on Gospel proclamation. It should be self-evident that a law that forbids building a church in Grove City (because the city council doesn’t like churches and wants Costco instead becaue it will put more dollars in the coffer) prevents the church in Grove City from preaching the gospel because it isn’t allowed to be built. I think it better that there be a church in Grove City than not. Moreover, if all cities within a 50 mile radius likewise refuse to grant building permits for churches (after they see Grove City got away with it), there will be no churches within a 50 mile radius, which could expand to a 100 mile radius, which could expand to who knows what. And when the cities begin enacting zoning laws to make it impossible for existing churches to operate (e.g., unreasonable parking restrictions), and they succeed in getting them to close their doors (which has happened more than once), and other cities see they can get away with it, there may be no churches within a 500 mile radius. I take that to be a bad thing. If these zoning laws are properly ruled unconstitutional, Grove City Church will be built and the Gospel will be preached in Grove City. And other cities will be deterred from likewise attempting to forbid churches from being built and also deterred from making their lives difficult until they close their doors. If a law forbids Christians from holding Gospel or Bible study meetings at Grove City High, than meetings will not be held and the Gospel will not be proclaimed openly to unbelievers on that school site. I take it that the more opportunties for proclaiming the Gospel in the midst of large concentrations of unbelievers the better. But if you like laws precluding Gospel proclamation or church building or churches being messed with until they can’t park their congregations, we disagree.
Of course Christians will evangelize outside the school site, but with the school site off limits an important opportunity for evangelism is lost. I take it that is a bad thing. Of course a sovereign God will get the Gospel out come hither or yon, but the means He may have decreed is that an open door in a public high school or university be opened.
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San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home.
The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.
“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”
The pastor’s wife answered yes.
REAL WORLD ALERT: I prefer concrete situations from the street rather than abstract seminary rhetoric. A pastor in San Diego and his wife, who were holding a home Bible study in their home, apparently as a prelude to a churhc plant, was ordered by county officials that they must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars. And if they fail to pay for the MUP, the county official reportedly warned, the couple will be charged escalating fines beginning at $100, then $200, $500, $1000, “and then it will get ugly.” A Christian public interest law firm is going to defend the pastor and his wife under RLUIPA (obtained through Christian lobbying) and the First Amendment.
I regard freedom to hold a home Bible study as a means to plant a church (the main way most Reformed church plants begin) is a good thing, and that freedom will not exist without taking legal or political action to secure it. You will disagree and, I gather, regard the pastor and his wife as “unwise” to resist the tyrannical county officials. Better they give up the home Bible study and the church plant because, on your principles, suffering and submission to tyranny allows them to live a quiet life, avoid unseemly litigating for Jesus and a theology of glory. Score one for the Beast.
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CVD,
It should be self-evident that a law that forbids building a church in Grove City (because the city council doesn’t like churches and wants Costco instead because it will put more dollars in the coffer) prevents the church in Grove City from preaching the gospel because it isn’t allowed to be built… I regard freedom to hold a home Bible study as a means to plant a church (the main way most Reformed church plants begin) is a good thing, and that freedom will not exist without taking legal or political action to secure it. You will disagree and, I gather, regard the pastor and his wife as “unwise†to resist the tyrannical county officials. Better they give up the home Bible study and the church plant because, on your principles, suffering and submission to tyranny allows them to live a quiet life, avoid unseemly litigating for Jesus and a theology of glory. Score one for the Beast.
Sometimes it really is just about so much space available and somebody has to be told no. But let’s say this is really is persecution.
Again, I appreciate the intuitional pragmatism of your argument. It’s not easy to have a church when it is disallowed. But this is the point: the gospel is characterized by counter-intuition. Isn’t that what catacombs were all about? Why not hold church secretly in a living room? Is that too lowly? On your view we should either turn away because we haven’t been given worldly permission or fight persecution, both of which make little biblical sense. I’m saying that the appropriate response to persecution is obedience and faithfulness to God—the church goes forward in catacomb like fashion. In other words, no, I would not say the pastor and his wife tuck tail and go home. Quite the opposite: they resist the persecution, but not by the worldly way of litigation. This is what I think it means to be counter-cultural.
I like religious liberty, too, but how would the early church have ever survived with your assumptions of rights and freedoms in relation to the church?
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CVD, I’ve been sitting back and watching, but I wonder how you respond to the remark that you sound paranoid, as if any thing that goes against what Christians want is a sign of outright hostility to the gospel. Granted, the antithesis exists and there are powers out there hostile to the cross. But the example of Grove City is very befuddling. Grove City is packed with churches. It’s not as if a Costco — which I would oppose on economic grounds not on religious ones — is a Mosque or a Masonic Lodge. The point is that you take so many things as assaults on the faith, when they may be the sorts of comprises required of Christians living among non-Christians.
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Mr. Zrim,
I suppose the pastor in San Diego could ask the county bureaucrats politely to please please don’t impose a $1000 per day fine on my Bible study, but I haven’t found that to be very effective with County bureaocrats. It’s too bad San Diego has no catacombs. There is never a catacomb when you need one.
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CVD,
It’s too bad San Diego has no catacombs. There is never a catacomb when you need one.
Who has the money to build catacombs when you have lawyers on retainer and lobbyists’ kids’ mouths to feed (and pizza to buy for the public school Bible groups)? Funny how we fund resistence.
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DGH,
I addressed above the remark that I sound “paranoid” in response to Mr. Zrim and won’t rehearse that here. Suffice to say that the remark reflects a lack of understanding about the civil rights bar. Constitutional lawyers and judges use the term “constant vigilence.” Holmes-Brandeis, in thier celebrated opinions, constantly reminded us that “constant vigilence against every encroachment of First Amendment rights, large or small, is the price we pay for liberty.” I join hands and arms with my ACLU friends in being vigilent on behalf of all citizens because we understand that every encroachment of a First Amendment freedom threatens us all. That’s the way the government works. You hear us call fellow citizens to the barricades in stentorian tones because we want to waken the somnolent to the threats to their liberties. To the lay person, this all sounds over the top and overstated. Until the layperson finds the magistrate encroaching his/her rights or appearing at the door with an ill founded warrant.
To attorneys who practice in this area, we are all too aware of how government and law operate. Government will take a mile if given an inch. Not because bureaucrats are necessarily hostile to faith or hostile to anything. Sometimes they’re just ignorant and unthinking. But it’s the nature of the beast. Power begets more power. It’s in the nature of bureaucrats and officials to seek more power at the expense of the citizen. It has to be checked at the first encroachment or they will feel free to go on. Experience bears that out. As for the law, law works on stare decisis, or precedent. If a precedent is established that the state may encroach on civil liberties of one person in a given situation, government lawyers will adise their bureaucrate clients that they are free to encroach on the liberties of everyone similarly situated. If a precedent is established that the state’s will violates a constitutional right or is otherwise unlawful in one situation and for one litigant, that precedent will avail itself to all future litigants similarly situated, and the precedent itself will deter officials from acting in this fashion in the future. Hence, “constant vigilence.” That’s not paranoia, that’s the way the world works. Hence I teach law students to be alert to the smallest infraction by government and make the magistrate accountable to the law. Be alert. The finest exemplar of this is the way the ACLU works. I don’t agree with all of their political agenda that sometimes motivates their actions, and on occasion I’ve been on the other side of them, but on the whole they do a fine job of carrying out this vigilence program in earnest and with high competence.
I’ve offered up some real world examples. The San Diego pastor case is instructive. I doubt frankly that the county bureaucrates harbor any anti-Christian bias (though the may). It seems to me likely that they’re just applying a law of general application in a way that shows a lack of common sense. But the attempt has to be thwarted immediately. If they succeed in requiring permits for home Bible studies, it will have what lawyers and judges call a “chilling effect” upon the exercise of protected First Amendment liberties. I suspect the ACLU would be willing to take this case, though I’m advised that a Christian public interest law firm is taking it. The pastor’s lawyers will send a cease and desist letter to the bureacrates threatening legal action under RLUIPA (a federal statute that was the fruit of Christian lobbyists) that forbids unreasonable applications of land use laws upon the exericise of protected religious activity. If the county persists, a judge will issue a TRO and preliminary injunction. If they still persist, the case will proceed to trial and the county should lose and have to pay damages. At that point, the county will stop harassing home Bible studies. Threat averted. The church plant may proceed without resort to the catacombs.
To take the Grove City zoning hypothetical, this is based on several actual cases around the country. I doubt that municipal city councils necessarily harbor ill will toward the cross (though some may); they usually just want tax revenues from Costco or some major anchor tenant that a church will not throw off because it’s tax exempt. A number of municipatlities around the country affirmatively began what they called “test cases.” They decided to begin to deny zoning permits to build churches in their city — all churches. If they were able to get away with it, their plan was to deny all zoning permits for all churches in their city. They got away with it. These were new developments that had no churches built in their city limits. And they were determined to keep them out. Seeing that one or two cities got away with it, neighboring cities began to follow suit. In a couple of years, all the cities within an approximately 50 mile radius had effectively banned churches through manipulation of zoning ordinances. Having realized the good fortune if these cities,(their intentions were unmasked in discovery in the litigations), other members of the League of Municipalities that had existing churches hit upon a strategy to incresase their revenues by driving older existing churches out of business through manipulation of zoning and parking ordinances in such a way that these churches, most in cities and some in suburbs, no longer could park more than a handful of their congregants on Sundays and never during the week. Membership dropped off, the churches couldn’t continue to operate, and they were forced to hire lawyers. This was the drive behind the passage of RLUIPA, which was enacted by Congress to preclude this kind of manipulation of land use laws in a way to violate the rights of houses of worship and religious people. Armed with RLUIPA and the Free Exercise clause, Christian lawyers were able to stop this kind of abuse by municipalities, and today I know of no cases like this. The courts recognized that these actions unconstitutionally burdended the exercixse of fundamental First Amendment rights, and a city had to justify its acitons by showing that their actions was required by a “compelling state interest” and that that interest could be accomplished in no less burdensome alterantive. This is a powerful precedent that will protect all churches and Christians in the nation, as well as Jews, Muslims, and other faiths.
Sometimes the state’s goal is hostile to faith. I’ve represented public school districts for years. The default setting of my school clients is always to forbid any Christian prayer, meetings, clubs, or protected activities because they find religious faith foolish and not good for students’ welfare. So they try to apply “establishment clause” arguments to forbid these activities. I spend hours each week talking them down off those cliffs, explaining that the students’ activities don’t offend the Establishment Clause and that ample case law, developed through litigation by Christian lawyers such as myself, protects the rights of students under the First Amendment and the Equal Access Act (enacted through lobbying by a Christian lobbying organization I’m on the board of) to hold Bible studies and religious club meetings on campus in unused classrooms during non-instructional hours.
In short, while I agree that Christians, like all citizens of the common sphere, must and do make all sorts of compromises living with all sorts of people. But neither Christians nor non-Christians should, in my view, tolerate the abridgment of protected constitutional rights by government. The magistrate should be compelled to obey the law and respect the rights of all citizens, including Christians. As a Christian lawyer, I feel an obligation to protect the rights of Christians when the freedom to proclaim the gospel is eclipsed. And any good civil rights lawyer will be “constantly vigilent” to rise to the defense of every victim, of every infringement, large or small, to prevent government from gaining a foothold and establishing a corrosive precedent that could be used for greater mischief.
I hope that helps clarify.
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CVD, I appreciate your reply. But up above you wrote: ” I think it better that there be a church in Grove City than not. Moreover, if all cities within a 50 mile radius likewise refuse to grant building permits for churches (after they see Grove City got away with it), there will be no churches within a 50 mile radius, which could expand to a 100 mile radius, which could expand to who knows what. And when the cities begin enacting zoning laws to make it impossible for existing churches to operate (e.g., unreasonable parking restrictions), and they succeed in getting them to close their doors (which has happened more than once), and other cities see they can get away with it, there may be no churches within a 500 mile radius. I take that to be a bad thing. If these zoning laws are properly ruled unconstitutional, Grove City Church will be built and the Gospel will be preached in Grove City.”
That makes it sound like the state is hostile to the church. What is going on is the state is hostile to all churches and non-profit institutions. When you put it that way, it becomes less a religious and more a political problem. You do seem to veer between a religious and a legal voice and it is not always coherent.
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Mr. Zrim,
You should be aware that many of the lawyers who fight to protect your First Amendment freedoms are not “on retainer.” Many of us work pro bono. I’ve never been paid a cent for the religious freedom cases I worked on. Many Christian public interest law firms work for free, funded by token donations from Christians or foundations, but the lawyers on staff earn well below market rates and could make much more money working for a private law firm. They choose to do this work because they believe in protecting liberties. Likewise, the lobbyists for Christian organizations I’ve worked with typically donate their time or make token change. Your statement is most unfair and offensive.
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DGH, often the state’s actions have broad impact and only sweep churches and Christians into their net by happenstance and indirection. Motivation is a complex thing and difficult to ferret out, particularly with government actors. Seldom do government actors admit religious bias. Quite frankly, I don’t care what the motivation is; it’s the effect of an infringment of First Amendment rights that is the nub of the legal case. Sometimes motivation is relevant under governing law. If I can show that a government actor was animated by hostility to religion, that can trigger other violations or remedies or at least add color and atmospherics that will tweak a judge’s interest. And quite often I do find in discovery quite naked hostility to Christianity on the part of state actors, but often it’s just money or power that drives the action. Sometimes it’s just foolishness. Public schools and public and private universities and grad schools, which I represent, are almost always motivated by hatred for religion generally, and for Christianity in particular — or more specifically by the feeling that religion is is so pre-modern, a hindrance to enlightened thinking, an encumbrance upon a political agenda they cherish, and something that the world would be better off without. To fully appreciat it, you have to sit on the faculty and administrator meetings where, assuming that I’m a fellow true secularist, they ask me to draft speech codes targeted at silencing Christians. The guffaws and derision heaped upon Christians makes plain their contempt. That’s always an interesting conversation. So it’s a mixed bag. But where my client is a church or Christian group, it’s the religious interest that of course is being advocated.
I was writing in response to Mr. Zrim’s assertion that Christians should not avail themselves of legal remedies but rather suffer infringement of their righs at the hand of the magistrate for reasons that are in his mind somehow derived from the doctrine of 2K or certain biblical passages vaguely alluded to. He was sanguine about that because he seemed to take comfort in the thought that the threat is overstated and the impact minimal and something Christians should and can bear with equanimity with little true impact upon them. I appreciate the sentiment, but my point, in case it was missed, is that we need to bear in mind the way the system works. The political/legal/religious spheres intersect at this point. The effect of any group being passive in the face of state infringement of civil liberties is loss of liberty, and if Christians don’t advocate for their freedom, who will? Sometimes the ACLU, fortunately, but they can only do so much. The way the system works, as I explained, infringement begets more infringement until in time, you had the spectre of no churches within 50 miles and existing churches being driven out of town. Not a good thing, as I see it. I gather he believes it would have been “wiser” for those churches to have allowed the government to shut them down and drive them out and go into catacombs. That strikes me as breathtakingly foolish, not “wise.”
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CVD,
You should be aware that…Many Christian public interest law firms work for free, funded by token donations from Christians or foundations, but the lawyers on staff earn well below market rates and could make much more money working for a private law firm. They choose to do this work because they believe in protecting liberties. Likewise, the lobbyists for Christian organizations I’ve worked with typically donate their time or make token change. Your statement is most unfair and offensive.
My point wasn’t that lawyers’ pockets are being unduly lined, but that money is still going out from churches to do this work. Lawyers may be doing it pro bono, but if churches are still donatiing whatever meager amounts it’s still an odd way to me to fund resistence. In other words, I’m not so much questioning you but the churches who seem to think using worldly weaponry is, at best, acceptable. You at least have to admit I have a point, can’t you, even if you disagree?
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Mr. Zrim, I would not support a church donating tithes and offerings to a lawyer or public interest law firm or lobbying organization. I’ve never taken money from a church for legal work, and I don’t know any civil rights lawyer who has. I suppose one may exist somewhere. Also the lobbying organization I support does not take money from churches. It takes money from individual donors (few in number and amount) and from foundations. The churches I know that have hired lawyers have third-party payor arrangements where someone else pays the lawyer or, more often, the lawyers donate their time. You may find exceptions, but I don’t know of any.
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CVD,
I don’t think my point is landing here. I’m not talking about who has ever given or accepted money, etc. I’m talking about using worldly weaponry. My question still stands even if money isn’t being exchanged. If we can’t take each other to court to settle our disputes, why is it all right to use (free) litigation against Caesar?
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Mr. Zrim, the burden is not on my but on you. What biblical passage or theological principle forbids a church from definding its property rights from unlawful action by the government?
You used the 2K buzz word “worldly weapons,” suggesting you’re back to black and white thinking. You might add a drop of nuance to your Wheaties in the morning. I think you’re maing a category mistake.
I take it that churches, in thier capacity as visible churches, should not under 2K principles seek to use worldly weapons to advance redemptive ends. Nor seek to interfere with the state’s sphere, except in cases extraordinary.
But a church defending itself against unlawful property law restrictions is not seeking to advance redemptive ends; its acting as a corporate citizen, like any other citizen of the kingdom of man, to protect property rights in the creational realm. It is acting defensively, not offensively. Churches as corporate citizens are intertwined with the state and other worldly organizations in a number of ways. Churche corporations necessarily have worldly connections and interests and obligaitons and rights. Churches have to file Articles with the Secretary of State; they have to pay the light and water bill; they have to obey zoning and noise ordinances; they have to pay insurance premiums; and they have to obey state employment laws. The visible church is not an etherial entity that exists in a spiritual realm. It has bricks and mortor and sits on dirt. Just as the visible church has to abide by the government’s laws, the government must abide by its laws too, and under our system the church corporation is the real party in interest that must take action viz a viz the state’s erroneous application of zoning laws.
I take it you refer to 1 Cor. 6:1-2. That passage is inapposite to this case. The state is not a fellow Christian.
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CVD,
You keep invoking words on my part like “forbid.†Again, I’m not looking to forbid anything, just ask some questions (oh, all right, and to suggest a few things). I’m not saying that there is never a time to use legal paths. Sometimes it really is just a civil grievance of one body against another. But if a church is “acting as a corporate citizen,†which is to say, it’s not being persecuted, why does your language sound so often martyristic (talk of “the Beast,†etc.)? I mean, when I suggest another response to persecution than litigation you suggest I am making the world safe for the Beast (how pressing forward with a home church when the state says stop is playing to the Beast, I don’t know). It must be that you really think that nine times of ten what is going on is persecution. And the answer seems to be (defensive) litigation.
And so far I don’t see any concession on your part that something like litigation could be construed as the use of worldly weaponry. Is that possible? If not, what would employing such weapons look like to you? Or is worldly weaponry something extreme, like blowing up buildings, or can the line be crossed in much more socially acceptable ways?
My point about 1 Cor 6 wasn’t that we treat Caesar the same as brethren. Rather, it was how we understand (sorry, here it comes again) worldly weapons. We certainly don’t use them against each other, and my suggestion here is that maybe we, when acting as citizens of the KoG, ought not use them against Caesar even if he invites us to. (I’m being serious. Is justifying the use of worldly weapons against Caesar because he encourages it not too unlike saying adultery is justified because the parties willingly take part?) When we are citizens of the KoM we can use them all we please against Caesar and his citizens, like when the nutcase mows down our daughter’s classroom. I’m no Anabaptist who asks the judge to suspend justice when that happens.
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Mr. Zrim, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I have tried to explain my view as clearly as I can and at length. I don’t know what more I can add, but as one final note I’ll offer this.
I think you have been reading me through a rigid 2k theological grid and finding things between the lines that aren’t there. I think you have used “persecution.” (I agree with Kline that the state is ordained by God as good and as his agent, but that it has a tendency to become Beast like. But it can do that with mixed motives and it can do that with confused motives, and it can do that to persons of any faith or no faith. I want to restrain the state and hold it accountable.) I’m speaking as a civil rights lawyer and a Christian. I don’t know in any given case whether the state actors intend to “persecute” Christians or have some other motive. I don’t care except insofar as it’s releveant to the legal claim or remedy. I don’t care whether the state intends to persecute Christians for their faith or whether it is being venal or foolish or making an unwise political choice. The constitutional infringement is the same, and it must be stopped in its tracks whether infringing the rights of Christians or Jews or atheists. My plea as a Christian and a lawyer is that Christians act to protect the rights of Christians to do what only we do (propound the gospel) because no one else will. Even my ACLU friends see that, and they’re not Christians. Yes, that requires “worldly weapons” like litigation, but we’re using them in the worldly kingdom of man. We’re not suing someone because he/she denied the gospel; we’re not suing to force a conversion. And litigation is not the first resort but the last. I much prefer gentle persuasion. Every day. I call and talk on the phone with government officials and lawyers. I write letters. I sit down over coffee with them. I have a great track record of success using these means and resolving disputes amicably without litigation. But it’s the threat of litigaiton that compels the resolution, not my smiling face. But at the end of the day, there often comes a point when litigation is the only means that they respect and that will stop them from violating my client’s rights, including my Christian clients.
As I will say one more time, I know of no principle or biblical teaching (and you have not offered one) that suggests/requires that Christians, alone among all other citizens of the kingdom of man, must or should (to be “wise”) suffer some unique gag order or restriction that disables us from from acting as citizens of the kingdom of man to protect our constitutional liberties or rights under statute in the kingdom of man or from doing kindly and neighborly things for our fellow men and women. I know of no principle that requires/suggests that we must (or should be to be “wise) be pacifists, that we cannot work as citizens of the kingdom of man in the political/cultural sphere to alleviate poverty and suffering and protect the environment work for civil rights for all and protect the unborn and help achieve justice for all and protect our own rights as citizens and preserve creational norms so that the culture doesn’t become putrified, just as any other citizen of the kingdom of man. Since we are called to be salt light in a dark world, and to do good to all, especially in the houshold of faith but not limited to the household of faith, don’t we have a more powerful calling to do good than our atheist neighbors? It’s at this point that I part company with radical 2K extremists whose fixation with this doctrine paralyzes them into inaction as citizens and prevents them from seeing what even ACLU lawyers see. We’re citizens of TWO kingdoms, not just ONE.
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Mr. Zrim, it occured to me this might be a shorter way to say it. The fact we’re citizens of the KOG does not mean we cease to be citizens of the KOM. As citizens of the KOM, we may act to protect our rights as citizens of the KOM, and the fact that a given action may incidentally also protect our right to present the gospel or worship doesn’t convert a KOM-action into a KOG-action. It doesn’t confuse the kingdoms. It doesn’t take away from our right to act as citizens of the KOM using worldly means. Because we are citizens of the world. Of course we must act in godly ways even as we act in the KOM. I think the radical 2K extremist-pacifist is the one confusing the kingdoms — confusing the KOM with the KOG.
I don’t know how much clearer I can be. If that doesn’t help, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
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The political/legal/religious spheres intersect at this point. The effect of any group being passive in the face of state infringement of civil liberties is loss of liberty, and if Christians don’t advocate for their freedom, who will? Sometimes the ACLU, fortunately, but they can only do so much. The way the system works, as I explained, infringement begets more infringement until in time, you had the spectre of no churches within 50 miles and existing churches being driven out of town. Not a good thing, as I see it. I gather he believes it would have been “wiser†for those churches to have allowed the government to shut them down and drive them out and go into catacombs. That strikes me as breathtakingly foolish, not “wise.â€.
I want to be clear that I appreciate the complexities you articulate so well, CVD. But this is really also part of the point in my exchange here. Like you, I am not saying that the “shutting down and driving out of churches†is a good thing either. What I am questioning are the presuppositions which seem suggest that civil liberty and freedom is our right as Christians.
I’m not asking whether we like our liberty, because that is obvious, and I won’t pretend I don’t. I am asking where do we get the idea that we even have these things? How do children of light come to expect the children of darkness to cut some slack? Are we at war with the world or is it just a lively spat? Likely you think I am thinking in black and white again. But, whatever else it means, doesn’t the death of Jesus indicate that a more realistic disposition might be that ours is indeed an out-and-out war, with real consequences not easily solved by Constitutions or Bills of Rights or any other traditions of men? How seriously do we take the war and, indeed, what caused it in the first place and what remedy it took to mend it? If we think civil polity can make a way for children of light to get along with children of darkness, I suspect not quite as seriously as Jesus’ own death suggests.
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I would not say that civil liberty and freedom is our right as Christians (that’s a category mistake). I’d say it’s our right as citizens of a free land under a Constituion that guarantees civil liberties for all, and not just for non-Christians.
The balance of your discussion conflates the two kingdoms, and that is the source of your confusion, it seems to me. Of course there is an antithesis, or a “war” – Gen. 3. But that is in the spiritual realm, with spillover into the KOM, but it’s no part of my argument. I grant the reality of spiritual warfare, of course, and behind some of the conflict there may be spiritual warfare. And nothing in the KOM can change that. But the state was ordained by God to restrain evil in the KOM, and as citizens of the KOM, we can act in the KOM to restrain evil and do good. As citizens of the KOM, not KOG. And none of our actions in the KOM have a thimble full of redemptive significance. We’re not going to win the spiritual war with worldly weapons. But we can make proximate improvements on the margins, we can achieve proxmimate justice, we can to a small degree here and there help this or that hungry person eat even though millions starve. We can do a little good. And that’s all we can do. But that’s what we must do.
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CVD,
If spiritual warfare “spills over” into the KoM but is not a part of your argument then why is my view rendered as helping the beast? But my thought is that you are under-realizing just what spiritual warfare is, as if it happens somewhere in ethereal world with little impact in the here and now. (I suppose that is what you mean by my conflating of the kingdoms.) But it seems to me that such an arm’s length notion of spiritual warfare could only be possible in a time and place that works so hard to tame Christianity and its claims in so many diverse ways (not just in terms of civil polity).
Yes, I quite agree that the state was ordained by God to restrain evil in the KOM, and as citizens of the KOM, we can act in the KOM to restrain evil and do good. And I’m a huge fan of proximate justice. But I tend to think much more ordinarily than extraordinarily. Putting food on my family’s table is my idea of all this, not a few feeding hungry people. Don’t you recall the point of “Easy to be Hard” from the musical “Hair”? I would contend that the typical American religionist is very long on sentimental ideal but quite short on ordinary piety. Ironically, in his proneness to “care about strangers, to care about evil and social injustice†he actually ends up risking the neglect of those who are actually ordained into his reach who are close, known and entrusted to him. Much as it might irritate, the truth is that each of us really only affects our more immediate environment, and even then only imperfectly. Even those who are afar off must be brought near and made ours first before having any lasting consequence upon them. And it just might be that a superior advocacy could actually be more ordinary, organic, local and familiar than extraordinary, panoramic, distinct and remarkable. I realize such a notion may be far from exciting. But when one considers the fact that the solution to humanity’s problem was played out in relative obscurity and disparagement that also may be the very point.
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I applaud much of what you say, especially about ordinary piety (caring about those who are close at hand first such as family and neighbor). Very well put.
I think God calls each of us to different places. Some he makes lawyers to represent the victimized. So I naturally spend my days dealing with civil rights issues and representing the aggrieved and hurting and hungry and abused and victimized. That’s my calling. Others He places in quieter places. We each of us have a calling. But sometimes he places in our path opportunities to help improve the lot of others in little or large ways. I have Christian clients and friends whom God has blessed with great wealth and power. To their credit, they try to use their wealth and power and influence to do good as they have opportunity. They can do more than I, and I perhaps more than those less blessed.
I agree spiritual warfare can impact each of us, and in the KOM. But my understanding is that we triumph through standing firm in faith in the finished work of Christ and his imputed rightousness. To the degree there is spill over in the KOM, we are fortunate to live in a nation with a Constituion and rule of law that can mitigate some of the harsher effects of spiritual warfare where it manifess itself in opposition to Christians and the gospel. As common citizens of a free land, we can work side by side with non-Christians on matters of mutual concern, including preservation of liberty and civil rights and justice. And the rule of law preserves and protects, to a degree, more blatant persecution of Christians. Compared to Christians in China and other nations, we know almost no substantial persecution here. But the lawyer in me wants to remind us of the need for constant vigilence and warn of the “slippery slope” and how easily civil rights can be lost by a somnolent citizenry.
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CVD,
Now there’s a post I can, more or less, live with. I still think there are some things very much worth considering when it comes to how our spiritual faith relates to our civil polity, and I gather we’d still have zigging to the other’s zagging. But to my radical and extremist mind, these differences are precisely the thing 2K means to protect. At the risk of confusing my kingdoms, one might even say it’s not too unlike the American experiment itself. It takes all kinds. Assuming we’re done, all the best in your endeavors.
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Mr. Zrim, thanks for the good discussion. Hope our paths cross sometime. All the best.
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Dear Brother Grimm,
I have been away from the computer (and this discussion has moved on) since my last of May 22, to which you replied above promptly, not only informing me that your position had been mischaracterized, but also because of that, closing with a foul (sic) lettered euphemistic acronym common to the armed forces. Obviously there is no such thing as “Christian†education – or even “Christian†sportsmanship or gentlemen these days. Thanks so much for the reminder.
Yet contrary to your parting eloquence, your position on the Alameda parents and LGBT evangelization is seriously confused and compromised. Neither was it sufficiently addressed. Hence the less than brief reply of the following propositions.
Homosexuality (and abortion) are such egregious violations of the natural law that consequently any parent has:
1. A NL right to object to their children being indoctrinated by the LGBT goon squad – which is far from being “accidental or mistaken†as some would naively tell us, the LGBT literature to the contrary.
2. An American constitutional right. This is not N. Korea and it is not a ‘measured dignity’ or an ethereal super spirituality, never mind an erroneous appeal to 2K doctrine to pretend that it is. Rather it is an absurd anabaptist, pseudo pious kenotic reply. (If those who lecture us so confidently, don’t know what the latter is, they may look it up in order to keep up the pretense of an omniscient and radical reformed chic.)
3. Much more Christian parents have a duty, right and responsibility. While they are not preaching the gospel, nor is that their calling, they are to be about raising their children in the nurture of the Lord. Somehow, however we care to confuse or obscure it, LGBT ain’t it. Neither are Christ’s little ones to be stumbled on the account of a “measured dignity†or prudence. Nor is it part of ‘going about our ordinary piety’.The Scripture after all does say something about millstones.
Granted, an objection shouldn’t have to rise to litigation, a quick trip to the principal’s office, informing them that one’s children are to be categorically exempt from such activities without being singled out and made an example of by the school, should suffice. Note: should, but very well might not these days. But maybe then, the govt. schools really aren’t public schools and maybe as a rule Christians shouldn’t be patronizing them, a can of worms we’ll save for another day. Never mind that a school which lets such slop in the door in the first place can’t be much of a school. But hey, it’s all pro forma. Just a pinch of incense in front of the idol. Christians need to go along to get along because ‘you really really can learn something in shop class. And it helps you get a job in the real world later’. Next question, does it profit a man or his children to gain the world, but . . . .
If things have deteriorated to the point of Sodom and Gomorrha, the Book of Judges and First OPC in San Francisco that the righteous must keep their head down and be quiet, then that’s a point of prudence, not principle and only temporary, the obvious and more eminently prudent thing being to get Christ’s little ones out of the “neutral†government schools post haste.
Neither is a recourse to litigation necessarily a theology of glory. Rather what we have here is the modern lukewarm suburban bourgeois yuppie mentality that is offended by the scandal of the cross, the scandal of the gospel. Christ died for sinners who actually sinned and yes, Virginia, there really is such a thing as sin however ecclesiastically incorrect it might be to hold those views in opposition to a radical 2K theology which compartmentalizes the Christian witness and testimony to the point of schizophrenia. One example again would be where we are naively told that LGBT propaganda is accidental or mistaken, a take which is clearly contrary to Rom. 1.
The conclusion? We are bold to say that any Christian parent that would willingly submit to, acquiesce in or tolerate their children being indoctrinated in LGBTism, should be considered delinquent by any Christian consistory worthy of the name.
But that’s just one of the problems with the compromised CRC wasting its patrimony. ‘We’re all such well meaning and genuinely hip reformed Christians, we listen to NPR religiously, grace is common, why can’t we all just get along with worldliness? There is no need to condemn or oppose it or even refrain from its vocabulary.’ IOW compromised beyond all recognition of a reasonable reformed Christian witness or testimony.
IOW when the blind lead the blind, in the ditch is where we find them in body, tongue and mind. My apologies, but I won’t be joining you, your erroneous arguments and gutterspeech to the contrary.
Thank you.
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Bob,
Ouch. This must be what it feels like to be politically incorrect.
But, in response to your request, you’ll recall what I said were my conservative political views on abortion, as well as my conservative moral views on homosexuality. I suppose the distinction I was trying to make between politics and morality didn’t land. I shouldn’t be surprised since political correctness seldom sees this.
And I believe I was clear that the Alemeda case, to my mind, is really about more parental rights than “goon squads.†Sometimes institutions just do some really dumb things, and I am sympathetic to those who are injured by it, including the parents in Alemeda. Maybe what agitates you, Bob, like most indebted to political correctness, is that I have views instead of agendas. And I don’t mind if someone who disagrees with my views exists. If I worried about losing as much as you do I have no idea how I’d get through each day. I lose a lot. Those with agendas, well, get really keyed up. You seem keyed up.
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Nope, Bro Grimm, you can’t make yourself clear to others as well as you think you can, though you have gotten better in the exchanges with CVD. If you want to pretend you are a hip and clever Luther and talk trash, go ahead, but some of us aren’t fooled. The issues remain regarding what LGBT really is in light of Scripture and natural law for that matter, the true nature of public “neutral” education and the role of the state, much more kenotic anabaptism.
This is not 3rd century Rome however spiritual superior you might think it is that we should live in catacombs if we are to be truly consistent with our reformed beliefs. Neither are we to insist on our rights per se, but Calvin for one dynamited the whole never go to law business.
Thanks again,
cordially
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Bob,
This is not 3rd century Rome however spiritual superior you might think it is that we should live in catacombs if we are to be truly consistent with our reformed beliefs. Neither are we to insist on our rights per se, but Calvin for one dynamited the whole never go to law business.
Who said “never go to lawâ€? I just went there recently when my credit cards were stolen, tooth sweet. I’m no pacifist. Recently a friend of mine who teaches at the local Christian school was struck by a troubled student. The principal refused to adequately punish him on the grounds that “we’re all about forgiveness†(further aggravated by speculation that the boy “has a demon.†Fubar, the kid doesn’t have a demon, he has an absentee father, but that’s another story). The evil government school my kids attend would’ve roundly expelled that rapscallion. Ironic who gets law/gospel and who doesn’t.
But Calvinism, to the extent that it is shorthand for the biblical witness, places its accent on grace, Bob. As such, it is unclear to me how those who claim Calvinism take up law to defend themselves in civil/spiritual disputes. Civil/civil disputes are completely different. I know, Paul appealed to Caesar. But the bulk of the NT witness seems to suggest that Jesus’ rebuke of Peter is what should characterize our ordinary experience.
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There we go again, Grimm, as confused and foulmouthed as ever.
Or is it that Calvinistic accent on grace?
How hip. How liberal/progressive.
Yet your choice of terms/euphemisms says more about you and your position than anything else. After all you did counsel refraining from litigation in re. to LGBTism, not spiritual/civil matters, if not that at one time you considered it to be a spiritual issue, hence I ‘spose your objection.
Whatever.
Have a nice day.
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Mr. Zrim,
Your acknowledgement that it is proper for Christians to resort to the magistrate’s system of law when your credits cards were stolen, but not for Christians to remind the magistrate that it too must obey the law of the land when the magisrate tramples Christians’ constitutional and other legal rights, seems to be an oddly selective invocation of your principle of “grace” in the civil sphere. You are confusing categories and kingdoms again. Grace is a category in the redemptive sphere, not the civil. If you mean Christians should be gracious people generally, I agree, but not to the magistrate. The legal system within the magistrate’s civil sphere is a covenant of works not a covenant of grace. It’s every citizen’s duty and every Christian’s duty to remind and rebuke the magistrate when it violates the rule of law. (See Belgic Conf., art. 36).
I would agree that many Christians, especially on the religous right, have employed unduly harsh rhetoric and unwise means in some of their efforts. We have to remember that even when we are within our rights (biblicall and civilly) to act, we remain Christians and should comport ourselves in an appropriate manner. But I dissent from the principle you would lay down, that it is per se unwise for Christians to resort to civil courts, even after all attempts at informal settlement fail, to restrain the magistrate’s violation of law.
Luke 22 (Jesus’ rebuke of Peter’s violence against the soldier) is not to the contrary. This passage, which you often cite, does not stand for the broad propositions for which you cite it. As Calvin explained in his commentaries on this passage and the parallel gospel passages, Peter’s offense that elicited our Lord’s rebuke was that his violence was an unlawful action against lawful, divinely ordered authority, not that all resistance to the magistrate — even lawful resistance — is denied to Christians (or “unwise” to use your term). Peter was also seeking to prevent the cross. None of these considerations apply to Christian resorting to lawful authority to hold the magistrate accountable. Indeed, the Reformed tradition has a strong resistance theory, and Calvin acknowledge the rights of lesser magistrates to forefully resist tyrannical rulers. The “wisdom rule” you seek to enjoin on Christians — eschewing even lawful resort to courts to restrain a tyrannical magistrate — thus goes well beyond anything recongized in the mainstream of the Reformed tradition.
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CVD,
I guess what you are saying is that Peter’s rebuke is quite irrelevant to our ordinary American existence as citizens. What I am trying to say is that Paul’s appeal has relevance but for extraordinary experience, and Peter’s rebuke, to the extent that it seems much more characteristic with the rest of the biblical data, is relevant to our ordinary experience.
I don’t have anything against “reminding†Caesar that to persecute God’s church is wrong. I just want to know what we are supposed to do when he doesn’t heed our reminders. And it sounds to me like you are suggesting by-passing confessional reminders (which really seem to have more to say to the faithful than the unconverted) for pre-emptive bats so that we might not have to deal with these more difficult and vexing questions. One thing I don’t see in your view is any corrective that helps distinguish defensive action from offensive action. When does the former become the latter?
If instead of continuing to meet you want to get a lawyer when our worship service is erroneously broken up by the civil powers, go ahead. But I still don’t see why we shouldn’t better spend our time pressing forward (as in not forsaking the assembly). I know Americans are supposed to have it all, but my money’s tight these days and I’d rather pay my pastor for his faithfulness than that plus a lawyer to make sure he can. I know, I’m naïve, short-sighted, foul-mouthed, kenotic and confused.
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I think you have to be very fact-specific in dealing with these situations. High-flying rhetoric like “ordinary experience” and “extraordinary experience” is too vague. Theology fans like to fly over real-world territory at 35,000 feet and deal in vague “principles” and generalities and such. Useless. Not until we get on the ground and deal with specific cases and specific facts do we really think clearly and carefully about application to the real world.
Peter’s rebuke applies to confused Christians who want to blow up abortion centers or murder abortion doctors. But Paul’s appeal to Caesar, standing on his rights in the civil sphere in defending an injustice committed by a lesser magistrate, applies to Christians who send cease and desist demands and file lawsuits to protect their rights as citizens under a Constituion. You have to exegete specific texts in context, and address real-world situations in specificity. Taking refuge in 35,000-foot rhetoric is an invitation to confusion. I don’t know what you mean by “confessional remedies.” Which confession, which article, in what context?
Your comment about paying lawyers is a red herring. As I mentioned before, no church or Christian denied his or her First Amendment rights in America needs to pay a lawyer because Christian lawyers and public-interest law firms do this work without charge to the client.
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CVD,
Like I said before, I am not a theologian or exegete. I don’t know why you want to hold me to being something I’m not. Like my wife, you’re going to have to take what you can get out of me.
That said, thanks for being clear and to the point about Peter’s rebuke. It is what I always suspected. So, it only applies to fringe elements like the uber-violent. So, it has nothing to say to the sanguine like me. So, I can ignore the whole thing as only applying to really bad sinners like Jim Jones or the nutcase who just gunned down Dr. Tiller. There’s scripture for the socially upright (Paul’s appeal) and scripture for the socially maladjusted (Peter’s rebuke). That sounds really tempting, to say that a piece of scripture doesn’t apply to me or that everyone has their own text that uniquely applies to their disposition. Not only that, but that there are sinners whose sin goes deeper than mine.
But, in addition to sounding like an urban-legend line of reasoning, that sounds like a doctrine flowing from a sort of stylized utter depravity instead of total depravity. But aren’t we all equally given to sinful behaviors? Aren’t we all tempted to draw our swords, even as we conceive of ourselves as a Paul instead of a Peter? Doesn’t all scripture have something to say to all of us at all times? Are you saying Peter’s rebuke never has anything to say to you as you litigate on behalf of the faithful, that there can’t possibly (well, possibly, but not very likely) be a line you could cross simply because you use a pen instead of a bomb?
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All Scripture has something to say to us, but what it says depends on proper interpretation and applicaiton. There’s nothing new or controversial about biblical exegesis. You intepret a text in context and make legitimate applications. Calvin and most Reformed exegetes intepret Jesus’ rebuke of Peter and his use of the sword as grounded in Peter’s use of an illegal act of violence against lawful, divinely instituted authority. If you want to broaden the interpretation or the application (such as by “good and necessary consequence”), you have to make a reasoned exegetical case and demonstrate that it applies to a specific cases in a reasonable way. You suggest “we’re all tempted to draw our own swords.” In what context? You might be tempted to draw your sword at lawyers (officers of the court, lawful officials) who annoy you, and that would be an unlawful act. That would strike me as a legitimate application of the text. Or you could apply the text to an attempt by Christians to overthrow lawful government without just cause in order to set up a “Christian state.”
But to apply the Lord’s rebuke of Peter to a lawyer filing a brief in the interest of protecting the constitutional rights of Christians to worship or proclaim the gospel? On what exegetical ground? You haven’t offered one, and you concede you lack the ability to do so. But I think you’re being too humble because you are bold enough to venture an application that flies in the face of Reformed tradition, so you must have in your head some exegetical argument you aren’t sharing. How do you know that Christians who protect their legal rights in the city of man, as Paul did by appealing to Caesar, are the moral equivalent of Peter drawing the sword to cut off the soldier’s ear? You haven’t told us, and before you publicly propound such a startling conclusion don’t you have a moral duty to have some biblical basis for it?
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All Scripture has something to say to us, but what it says depends on proper interpretation and applicaiton. There’s nothing new or controversial about biblical exegesis. You intepret a text in context and make legitimate applications. Calvin and most Reformed exegetes intepret Jesus’ rebuke of Peter and his use of the sword as grounded in Peter’s use of an illegal act of violence against lawful, divinely instituted authority. If you want to broaden the interpretation or the application (such as by “good and necessary consequence”), you have to make a reasoned exegetical case and demonstrate that it applies to specific cases in a reasonable way. You suggest “we’re all tempted to draw our own swords.” In what context? You might be tempted to draw your sword at lawyers (officers of the court, lawful officials) who annoy you, and that would be an unlawful act. That would strike me as a legitimate application of the text. Or you could apply the text to an attempt by Christians to overthrow lawful government without just cause in order to set up a “Christian state.”
But to apply the Lord’s rebuke of Peter to a lawyer filing a brief in the interest of protecting the constitutional rights of Christians to worship or proclaim the gospel? On what exegetical ground? You haven’t offered one, and you concede you lack the ability to do so. But I think you’re being too humble because you are bold enough to venture an application that flies in the face of Reformed tradition, so you must have in your head some exegetical argument you aren’t sharing. How do you know that Christians who protect their legal rights in the city of man, as Paul did by appealing to Caesar, are the moral equivalent of Peter drawing the sword to cut off the soldier’s ear? You haven’t told us, and before you publicly propound such a startling conclusion don’t you have a moral duty to have some biblical basis for it?
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CVD,
How do you know that Christians who protect their legal rights in the city of man, as Paul did by appealing to Caesar, are the moral equivalent of Peter drawing the sword to cut off the soldier’s ear?
I’m not pitting Peter’s rebuke against Paul’s appeal. What I am saying is that, instead of one being for the socially maladjusted and one for the socially fit, both seem to have something to say to all of us. I’m saying that it seems more complicated than you seem to be allowing.
I don’t have problems with filing a brief in the interest of protecting constitutional rights per se, but when does Paul’s appeal become Peter’s reach for a sword, or is that somehow impossible in our civil polity? Yes, it seems obvious that we mayn’t be grossly unlawful in our actions; we mayn’t blow up buildings and plot to kill our leaders. Not only might that render Bonhoeffer less a hero and more a lawbreaker to be rebuked, my own sympathies to Bonhoeffer as a 21st century American might suggest I am not as many hops away from Peter as I’d like to think. In other words, I’m not so sure Peter’s rebuke has virtually nothing to say to me.
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You’re loosely and carelessly conflating texts and contexts again without any consideration whatsoever to the meaning of the texts to which you allude in their context. To sustain your argument that Jesus’ rebuke of Peter for the sword has some application to a Christian defending his or her civil rights you have to at least attempt to make a biblical argument, and you haven’t offered one. This is not a legitimate or helpful way to develop theology.
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CVD,
To sustain your argument that Jesus’ rebuke of Peter for the sword has some application to a Christian defending his or her civil rights you have to at least attempt to make a biblical argument, and you haven’t offered one.
But what you have said is that Peter’s rebuke has no application to a Christian defending his or her civil rights, that it only applies to fringe or extreme behaviors. What grounds do you have for the large majority of us being able to consider a biblical text as appreciably irrelevant?
And, again, just to be clear, a believer defending his/her civil rights as a citizen in the KoM is one thing, defending said rights as a citizen of the KoG seems like another. The whole of the biblical data just doesn’t seem nearly as concerned for individual or civil rights of believers as it does for the categories of faithfulness and obedience, as well as expecting these latter categories to be better tested in light of the former categories being violated. My questioning is meant to try and highlight the tensions and ambiguities dual citizens seem to have. So far, it seems pretty cut and dried for you. But it seems to me that, by definition, dual citizenship begets more tension than resolution.
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Mr. Zrim,
You’re not hearing me. This is not an argument for either a biblical interpretation of application. I already gave you a summary of my argument for interpreting the Lord’s rebuke of Peter consistent with Calvin and the vast majority of Reformed and other Protestant exegetes. Since it is you who want to insist on a novel interpretation contraryt to the greater weight of interpretive authority, and since that verse appears pivotal to your 2k project, the burden is on you to offer a contrary argument. And you haven’t done so. I would simply again caution you that your method of reasoning, as evidenced in your posts, is problematic. If you want to analyze the “tensions and ambiguities”, as you say, you can’t do that with 35,000-foot clever hit-and-run tags. Phrases like “the whole of biblical data” are too vague. You need to parse individual passages and make a case for your interpretation if you want to sustain your burden. Otherwise it’s just blog palaver. You’ve also reversed your position on Christians defending their civil rights; you previously said it was “unwise.” My entire argument, to which you’ve been objecting, is that Christians are citizens of two kingdoms at the same time, and when they defend their rights under law, they are necessarily acting in the KoM. And as citizens of the KoM, they have the same rights as unbelievers and should not be disqualified by resort to vague nostroms like “worldly weopons,” “swords,” and the like. Hence all your arguments about “unwise” kingdom activity (“the Lord’s rebuke of Peter”) are inapposite in the KoM. If we agree, I’m happy.
I agree that dual citizenship can cause “tension” between the kingdoms unless we think clearly about which kingdom hat a Christian is wearing. And that requires nuance and clarity, which have been sorely lacking in most discussions of 2K issues, at least in my corner of the world and in the books and magazine articles I read. My first posts made this point: way too many 2K proponents, including popular authors, fail to make these distinctions and issue broad-based condemnations of Christians who act in the KoM using KoG arguments. This results in, effectively, denying that Christians are truly citizens of the KoM, citizens of the civil sphere, because we must suffer disabling restrictions on our political/legal/cultural activity. By the same token, much of the RR is ignorant of the KoG/KoM distinction and tries to further the KoG using KoM means — they effectively see the KoM as the KoG. That is also a category mistake and a confusion of the kingdoms. But the remedy for the RR’s confusion of the kingdoms is not for professing 2K advocates to also confuse the kingdoms — seeing Christians as only KoG citizens who must be muzzled/restricted when acting in the KoM.
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CVD,
You’ve also reversed your position on Christians defending their civil rights; you previously said it was “unwise. My entire argument, to which you’ve been objecting, is that Christians are citizens of two kingdoms at the same time, and when they defend their rights under law, they are necessarily acting in the KoM.â€
Actually, what kicked the whole thing off had more to do with activism and forms of culture war than it had to do with defending individual rights. I think you wanted me to believe that sitting at a phone bank telling people to make sure Adam and Steve remain permanently single was a way of making sure we get to keep our religious liberties. And while I am sure you still object, I think behavior like that only obscures what the principled difference is between the worldly citizens of heaven (good thing) and just another glorified special interest group wanting to win an ideological battle (bad thing). (Do I think homosexuality should enjoy the sanction of marriage? Nope. But I can’t imagine sitting on a phone telling others that. I guess it takes a whole different breed.)
It also makes one wonder just what you have against the religious right (or left, don’t forget the left). Since you keep bringing it up with me, I wonder if it is just a matter of civility than principle. That is to say, maybe all you have against religious ideologues is how particularly obnoxious, self-righteous and smug they can be. That surely bothers. But for me it’s more a matter of principle. I don’t believe that true religion has direct bearing on or obvious implication for the cares of this world. Even as it is truly and utterly world-affirming it is also entirely and unequivocally otherworldly. Even as it conceives of the “very goodness†of creation it also sees this world as temporal and fleeting. I’m sure this is just more “blog pavaler,†but I really am trying to get something across to you.
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Mr. Zrim, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. We do have a fundamental disagreement, and a strong one. Where we agree is a principled objection to much of the RR — their effort to “Christianize” the civil sphere, to see a geo-political nation state as God’s kingdom, is a confusion of the two kingdoms.
But your exaggerated “other-worldly” ethos, I believe, is the common ethos among so many 2K proponents, though they may not have self-consciously thought it through or articulated it as well as you have. You exhibit a general disregard for pursuing justice and goodness in this world on the misguided notion that pilgrims, because they are passing through, should be mere tourists who aren’t invested in the place they live or the people they interact with. I do believe that your view is unbiblical and a gross and dangerous distortion of the doctrine of 2K and “pilgrim” theology.
Your money statement is “I don’t believe that true religion has direct bearing on or obvious implicaiton for the cares of this world.” That statement is demonstrably false. Indeed it’s contradicted by your next sentence: “Even as it is truly and utterly world-affirming.” If “true religion” is “entirely otherworldly,” as you say, it cannot be world affirming. You are selective in what “this-world” elements you affirm and in an unprincipled way. Like many confused 2K proponents, have derived this without genuine, careful exegetical support. Your reasoning processes, as you’ve demonstrated them, don’t evidence any careful dealing with specific texts and the theological themes that tie them. There is too much sloganeering and vague generalities for my taste, and I think your (and their) flawed conclusions are the product of this flawed reasoning and lack of careful dealing with specific texts. You can only sustain this other-worldly perspective by ignoring or suppressing or distorting specific biblical texts, which make clear that the Lord has great concern for this world, even the civil sphere, and great concern for even unbelievers, great concern that natural law and creatonal norms be preserved and observed, and concern that Christians have an important role to play in this project. Even though this world is “fleeting and temporal.”
I love clarity more than agreement, and we’ve identified clearly the point of disagreement.
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CVD,
Yes, we have struck pay-dirt I think.
Yours is more or less the same response I receive from my self-described neo-kuyperian transformationalists when I pass on signing the petition to close the local strip joint or vote to refuse pro-life literature to be displayed in the narthex (the latter was a vote, to my delight, in the majority). But if the gospel is even a hair relevant to the immediate concerns and traditions of men it is wholly relevant, and there are lengthy letters of apologies to be written the liberals and evangelicals. At the end of the day, what your view really ends up saying to the religious right and left (and all stops in between) is, “I can do cultural relevancy because I’m me, but you can’t because you’re you.†It’s a variation on the classic narcissistic syllogism that, translated for our discussion, says, “I’m Reformed; I think X; therefore X is Reformed.†But being relevant on man’s terms is being relevant on man’s terms, no matter what tradition anyone ostensibly claims.
While understandable and common, your implicit accusation of antinomianism and apathy never ceases to strike me as finally quite odd. Why is a satisfaction with proximate justice not good enough? “Not invested in the place I live or the people with whom I interactâ€? I have no need to prove how untrue that is of me to some dude on a blog, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. None.
Instead of being “contradictory†I rather conceive the at once brutally world-affirming and utter otherworldly piety to be precisely what it means to live in tension. It is the same sense of tension and duality that prompted Calvin to say that “we go to our deathbed with a sinner yet resident within.†It is the same duality that prompted Luther to understand what it means to be at once sinner and saint. It is what confesses that our good works are but dirty rags, that the holiest amongst us make only but the slightest advance in this life. It is the genius of Reformed Protestantism. Yes, we are passing through, but we are also full citizens. This is what it means to be “resident aliens.†You seem to fault those of us who would put the accent on the “aliens†part of that understanding. I don’t know why, since Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world, told Peter to get behind him, refused the devil in the wilderness and to come down from the cross.
One thing does seem for sure: your view is the prevailing and dominant view of western religionists, true and false. Religion is relevant in one way or another, whether it’s a trivial concern, like losing weight, or a more substantive one, like preserving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I don’t think it is relevant at all, at least not on terms natural to us. It is relevant on God’s terms, namely, how to be right with God and enjoy him forever, in life and in death, in body and in soul.
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Mr. Zrim, thanks for the useful exchange. It has helped crystallize the points of difference and, I respectfully submit, revealed that your radical 2K view (shared by too many 2K proponents) is well outside the Reformed, Protestant position, is utterly without any exegetical cr confessional support, is logically incoherent, can only be advanced through vague generalities and bromides, through the complete absence of any careful exegesis of even a single biblical text, through distortion and misinterpretation of the only biblical text alluded to, through straw men, and through formal fallacies. You have assidously resisted dealing in specific factual cases or specific texts, and for good reason. When analzyed, your view doesn’t withstand biblical scrutiny and is revealed to produce absurdities.
None of the texts to which you allude above support the wholly “other-worldly” stance you embrace. Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, told Peter to get behind him, refused the devil in the wilderness, and refused to come down from the cross. By what parody of reasoning can you extract from these texts the proposition that Christians should be as detached from the civil sphere as a tourist is detached from the Motel 6 he spends the night at, and should not even defend their constitutional rights? Of course the KoG is not of this world, and Jesus’ mission was redemptive. But it’a a non-sequitor to say on the basis of these texts that Christians should be almost entirely detached from the world in which they live and even pacifists. Christ may rule the civil sphere differently from the redemptive sphere, but He still rules it. And we are called to do good to our neighbor and to all in the civil sphere.
I agree wholeheartedly that the best we can get in this civil sphere in this world is proxmiate justice. But your pacifist stance, that Christians who are illegally barred by a county bureacrat from holding a home Bible study should go into catacombs rather than stand on the constitutional rights, that Christians should not defend their legal rights through litigation because that’s too worldly, is not proximate justice; it’s manifest injustice. Your pacifist stance condemns even Paul for asserting his rights as a citizen. When confronted with this specific biblical precedent for Christians asserting rights in the KoM, you ignore it, as of course you must since it’s fatal to your whole house of cards.
On your principle, pilgrims and “resident aliens” should not (you flip/flop between sweeping univerals negatives and modest “wisdom” suggestions)be invested in this world or its people (should not try to improve the civil sphere by actively working to improve the moral tone or even defend their own liberties from governmental encoachments through the courts) because they have no “stake” in this world (your word). That pushes “pilgrim theology” to “tourist theology.” It is rebutted by huge swaths of biblical texts, which of course you don’t deal with because you cannot safely come down from the Olympian heights of abstract bromides and slogans hurled down from 35,000 feet. Your view is a form of neo-pietism that is foreign to the Scriptures and confessionally Reformed theology. You have the right to it, I only hoped you would attempt a defense of it.
I of course agree with the tension between “the already/not yet,” and the tension of living in two kingdoms. I’ve written about it here frequently. But a tension is not a contradiction. Nothing in Luther or Calvin embraced contradiction. Paradox (Luther), and tension (Calvin), but never contradiction. If the faith is “entirely other-worldly” (your word), it cannot be partially “this-worldly.” To embrace contradiciton is neo-orthodox and Barthain, not confessionally Reformed or even orthodox. In truth, your statements make clear you embrace only one pole of the contradiction — you are entirely (or 99 44/100%) “other worldly.” You can only argue that by ignoring or misinterpeting biblical texts.
The Scriptures are not “relevant” to “losing weight” (another straw man of yours), but they are “relevant” to preserving life, natural law, upholding creational norms, and otherwise acting in the KoM. Again, thanks for the helpful exchange that has elucidated the core point of difference. I think your piety is commendable if misplaced and ill-founded. Kind regards.
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CVD, I’ve been sitting back to watch this debate and finally need to interject because you have tightened my jaws. What biblical text can you cite in support of going to a city council to protest restrictions on home bible studies? (The early church didn’t have Bibles, and no case emerges where even for prayer meetings the church leaders went to civil authorities for protection of religious exercises.)
I think the problem goes beyond other-vs.-this worldly views. It seems to me that you view Zrim’s views as pacifist and other-worldly because they don’t match yours. It doesn’t seem possible for you to conceive of an average Christian, going about his duties as a worker and worshiper, not interpreting zoning laws as plots by secularists, and not feeling compelled to do more than cast an annual vote in the local elections. Fine if you want to be an activist and best of blessings doing so on 2k convictions — which is not the firmest of foundations for doing so. But please don’t turn those who fail to follow your example or interpretations of the signs of the times into worshiping idiots.
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DGH, thanks for the helpful clarificaiton. I hope I can relax your jaw. To be clear, I never said and don’t believe that everyone is called to be an activist (I said some of us are by occupation), and I have no problem with the humble Christian who works and worships and casts an annual vote in the local elections. That would be most Christians I know. I would also have no objection if Mr. Zrim or anyone else said pacifism was merely their personal preference, whether due to temperament or busyness or lack of interest. We’re all different, fortunately, and have liberty to be activist or not. But Mr. Zrim said more than that, and it seems to me his view necessarily binds the conscience. He spoke of a “principle” binding on all Christians. I demurrer when Mr. Zrim (who is a stand-in for many I know) denigrate under color of universal “principle” (whether “wisdom” grounds or 2K grounds or theological grounds) those who are activists. Or who assert on what he calls a “principle” (not just his personal preference) that biblical principle asserts that Christians “should” flee to catocombs rather than avail themselves of a legal remedy as Paul did. Each case has to be judged individually, of course, with recognition that what is wise under one factual scenario may not be wise under another, and with sensitivity that reasonable Christians may disagree about what is wise in a give case. There may be times when a soft word spoken will get the magistrate to back off. But when I hear that Christians should as a matter of principle prefer catacombs to confrontration I don’t hear personal preference or nuance; I hear a universal declaration that binds all Christians and condemns those who disagree as acting unbiblically. This discussion is emblematic of a lot of what I read from fellow 2K adherants – an effort to persuade Christians to cease and desist from activism of all stripes on the grounds they are acting unbiblically. In light of their manifest intention to promote pacifism against acitivsm, it strikes me as frankly disengenuous of some to pretend that they are merely stating a personal preference for themselves.
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CVD,
Despite articulating some key differences, I think we’re mor or less back to where we were a bit ago.
Look, I don’t recognize myself in any of your (mis)characterizations. I think this may have at least as much to do with certain zigs and zags as with the fact that you were on the losing end of some misguided 2K thinking in real life. And you are taking it out on me here in this little, bitty comboxes. I told you way above that it sounded to me as if your liberty was trampled by your own church. That is highly unfortunate. But I am not convinced this “puts me at odds with the entire Reformed tradition.” Perhaps the same switch has been thrown on that one that was thrown to suggest that certain marriage laws threaten religious liberty. But like I said before, do as your own conscience (lawfully) compells you, just don’t blame me for not being as compelled or having principled reasons to dissent from your views and practices. Again, that’s what 2K is all about. Well, mostly about. Well, a lot about.
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Mr. Zrim, thanks for your reply. I’ve accurately represented your views, often with your own words, and I respectfully suggest that you’re just as uncomfortable as I with the logical ends to which they lead. But with that said, you’re entirely within your rights to hold to your position, and I respect you for your sincerely held convictions. We’ll have to agree to disagree. Think this has been a helpful exchange, and I appreciate it. Best regards.
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CVD, why do you persist in calling Zrim’s position pacifist? Sorry, but this seems to characterize your mental composition. Even when someone denies a position, you still attribute it to them because in your mind it adds up that way. But I don’t see why a Christian who would bop over the head a would-be burgler is a pacifist if he also complies with the city board of governors who say that his home Bible-study has acceded zoning restrictions.
The point here — not to make this too personal — is your propensity to assign the worst meaning to actions or words. You do so — in my opinion — both with Zrim’s own arguments and with the actions of California magistrates. For what it’s worth, I’d advise caution about connecting the dots between implications and explications.
Granted, you may be right about the totalitarianism that is just around the corner in places like California. And paying attention to trends is part of wisdom. But so is having some historical awareness. American Protestantism is not without many examples of those who have said the sky is falling and turned out to be wrong.
An even bigger question is whether the sky can fall, as in, can America become as bad as its critics allege. Believe, I think America is bad, by the standards of the Articles of Confederation. But the question is how do we measure American badness? Is our standard a Christian one or a “secular” one? In which case, the sky may have fallen in 1776 and some Christians are still wondering what all the debris on the ground is doing there.
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DGH, thanks for your post. You can be assured that I am by legal training and habit very careful about characterizing my opponent’s positions, and I have not mischaracterized Mr. Zrim’s as “pacifist” because that is the term he assigned to it. In a prior post, he expressly acknowledged that “hanging the pacifist frame” (his term) around his position on resisting the magistrate’s encroachment on Christians’ religious liberties was fair. Accordingly, that the term aptly characterizes his position on Christian resistance to civil liberties violations is undisputed, at least by him. Since that admission, the term has served as a useful shorthand in our exchanges for his view that Christians ought not offer lawful resistance through legal process when the magistrate violates a Christian’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment or other provision of law, but rather should suffer the encroachment as a means to live “the NT charge to live quietly, mind your own business and be at peace with the powers that be” and to “suffer injury with dignity.” Catocombs over courts. To his credit, Mr. Zrim righly acknowledged that as a “pacifist” position in the civil liberties realm, as candor compelled him to do. He’s entitled to his view, but I respectfully disagree that it can be mandated on all Christians as a “NT charge.” (His words.)
I don’t know where I have “assigned the worst meaning” to a California magistrate’s actions or words. Neither I nor the law have any concern with a magistrate’s purpose or motive, except insofar as it may be relevant to an element of a cause of action. I am concerned with the effect of the actions, whether actuated by mistake or malice. Where those actions abridge protected constitutional or statutory rights I’m concerned as a lawyer and a citizen; where they have the effect of constricting freedom to advance the gospel I’m concerned as a Christian. Most of the time, at least in my experience, local officials’ actions are simply the product of mistake or folly rather than a gambit of dark villainy aimed at Christians (though sometimes they are). Either way the violation of law is the same.
I don’t know whether the sky is falling in America or fell long ago. My concern is that there has been a contraciton of religious liberties and free speech, and not merely for Christians. This is not disputed among most lawyers (at least among the law faculties with whom I associate and in the law journals I read). It is owing to a shift in the Left’s thinking about free speech. Those on the Left formerly were champions of the First Amendment, to their credit. That has changed for the most part. Scholarly thought now questions whether boundless free speech is the moral good or the utilitarian good previoulsy thought. We used to think government had no right to meddle in the marketplace of ideas except as a referee. Now much scholarly opinion thinks otherwise, and they are ready to free the hand of government to punish speech that formerly was protected. I don’t know whether this means the sky is falling, but it is a major shift that bodes ill for civil liberties, in my opinion, since courts historically follow scholarly opinion. And since much of the speech that is being stripped of protection is speech from the pens and mouths of religious people of all faiths, that is troubling. The job of a civil liberties lawyer–professor–advocate is to advocate for free speech — not becaue we think the sky is falling, not because we are “paranoid” — but because persuasive advocacy at the trial court and appellate court level and in scholalry law reviews is the means to prevent the sky from falling, i.e., the serious eclipse of important liberties, not least of all for Christians.
Is America bad? I think it’s more useful to be more specific. From a civil liberties perspective, in my opinion America remains the freeest nation; our constitutional liberties are more expansive than those of any other nation. I think that’s good civilly and good for Christian freedom to worship and proclaim the gospel. From an economics perspective, that depends on one’s political persuasion. From a Christian perspective, I think it’s generally a wicked society in rebellion against God. From a churchly pespective, I personally think it’s very, very bad.
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A footnote. I should have addressed your specific case of the San Diego pastor’s home Bible study. Mr. Zrim argued that pastor should have submitted to the County zoning bureacrat’s contention that he needed a Major Use Permit to host a Bible study rather than contest it through a lawyer. It’s important to understand — because the case is instructive — that the lower official’s position was acknowledge to be in error by a higher County official, who rescinded the citation. The official did so acknowledging that applying a zoning ordinance whose language fails First Amendment standards (established in the case law) on “substantial overbreath” and “void for vaguness” would violate free speech and free exercise guarantees. Here is a case where a lesser magistrate erred, and the pressure brought to bear upon the County by a laywer facilitated an overturning of the lower magistrate’s decision. This is the kind of thing I face very day. In my opinion, it was wise and proper for the pastor to resist an admittedly unconstitutional violation of his liberty. I see much good that came of his decision. The Bible study went on, the church plant may go forward, other Bible studies are not threatened, and all citizens’ rights are protected from governmental abuse. I see no good and much harm that could have flowed from a contrary decision to accede to a violation. Because the law works through precedent, one violation would beget others.
I assume a civil-rights pacifist (if you don’t like that word, choose another), having the legal landscape explained to him, would still stand by his decision that the pastor erred biblically and acted unwisely. I’m not sure the reasoning that would support that position. Perhaps the pacifist doesn’t agree with the position that a constitutional right was being infringed (and disagrees with the County’s admission that it had overstepped). I would then asks what is your legal reasoning, because the violation is clear under law. Perhaps the pacifist feels that a greater spiritual good would be achieved in the long run even if the pastor and all other Bible study leaders in the County refrained from arguing with and threatening the County with a lawsuit even if it came at the expense of silencing the pastor and many other Bible study leaders in San Diego County. I don’t know what that good would be. Perhaps the pacifist has another reason for his or her contention. I haven’t heard one articulated by Mr. Zrim or others.
I raised a specific case because — forgive me — I’m a lawyer, and we train students to think through issues by applying general legal propositions to concrete, actual cases and hypotheticals rather than to abstract propositions. That at least works for me in clarifying issues, testing theories, and reasoning to sound conclusions. Other disciplines have other habits of mind, but that is ours for better or worse.
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CVD,
Granted, just what “activism†is can be fuzzy, especially since there is a difference between “being active†and “being activistic†(sort of like the difference between simplicity and being simplistic). But I have suggested to fellow 2Kers the very same things about their activism (or sympathies for it) as I do to you, but I don’t ever recall being interpreted the way you are. I recall principled disagreement. But I don’t recall being heard to “denigrate†or champion “a universal declaration that binds all Christians and condemns those who disagree as acting unbiblically.†Yeow. That sounds like an activist to me. I wonder if you realize that you are actually enjoying the benefits of my views on liberty and dissent generally from the spirit of activism. Were I that rabid I might have your address by now, so to speak.
Again, I think you’re mistaking me for those who trampled you. But it also might be that one hears activism in another precisely because that is how he negotiates his own world. I have great respect for your vocation and your work. I just think that it isn’t quite as invulnerable to criticism as you seem to assume. I realize my points are very unpopular. But I do find it very hard to understand those who would claim a conservative Calvinism to be so resistant to the idea that their own projects can cross over into trespass. (Just once I’d like to hear a pro-lifer say, “Yeah, you know, maybe I shouldn’t daily make easy comparisons to the Third Reich.â€)
Re this business about pacifism, I conceded to the term to make a point, not to say my views are pacifist. And the point was that we are told to turn the other cheek and not to resist being persecuted. If you want to call that “pacifist,†go ahead. But I think that would be to misconstrue what it means to be obedient. Moreover, just as bravery necessarily assumes a measure of fear, obedience presumes an impulse of disobedience. In other words, fear and disobedience are our natural dispositions and to counter it is actually hard work. It’s not as if I don’t understand wanting to defend myself against persecution, and I’m not beyond admitting that I could be inconsistent one day and take up arms against my oppressor. But I don’t think that diminishes the fact that we’re called to something better.
And making the point that we are called to something better just isn’t the same as “a universal declaration that binds all Christians and condemns those who disagree as acting unbiblically.†Or don’t you think there is a difference between binding and exhorting? It seems to me that the only way you can interpret me to be binding anyone is to not distinguish between brow-beating and beseeching. Frankly, your complaint does not seem too unlike my children telling me I am an “unfair meanie-head†when all I am trying to do is suggest that when on the playground they don’t retort in kind when taunted for going to church.
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Mr. Zrim, I’m not sure quarrels over semantics are very helpful. You led me to think the “pacifist” metaphor was acceptable to you as a shorthand for your non-resistance ethic in the civil rights sphere. It seems to me an apt metaphor, but since you find it cloying, I’m happy to use another term — but one word is easier to type than 10. I didn’t mean to offend — is “non-resistance” acceptable? You choose the term.
I don’t think you understand my point. You keep defaulting to “persecution” as if you see me seeing persecution-boogeymen under every rock. I don’t. I haven’t been speaking of persecution for the most part at all. Rather, as I’ve said before, often — perhaps most of the timne — government actors intend no “persecution”; they’re just foolish or mistaken. The San Diego zoning bureacrat, I’m guessing, had no anti-Christian bias and intended no persecution. Maybe he did. But’s it’s legally irrelevant. If he’s wrong, he’s wrong. It sometimes just takes a letter and phone call to his superior or a threat of a lawsuit to reverse the decision. I personally don’t think your “something better” is achieved by caving to a legal violation. But you do. Fine.
I sincerely think what we have here is a clash of cultures. I don’t know yours, but it obviously isn’t the legal culture. Most would say that’s a point in your favor.:) In my culture, we are trained to run arguments to logical conclusions, to press witnesses and advocates to see the effect of their positions, to help judges and others recognize the buried fallacies in their arguments or reasoning proceses by forcing them to see the logical effect of their position. They usually don’t like that. You don’t. Fine. I don’t either. But it helps improve clarity and thinkinbg. No, I don’t see in you my former tormentors. I see in you an eloquent advocate of a popular (in my corners) position among some Reformed and Lutheran pastors, sem students, professors, authors, and theologians. I wrote papers on this subject and find it of interest. And I at least find it helpful to dialogue with a bright and articulate advocate of a position I don’t agree with. It’s not personal, and I hope you’re not offended. We lawyers can be too strident at times, and don’t mean to offend. If I did, I apologize.
One substantive point. I do believe you are advocating a position that you commend to all Christians as more consistent with sound theology. I don’t hear you saying, “Activism, defending Christian liberty by lawyers and courts is not my choice, but I’m speaking only for me. Far be it from me to suggest this is a better view for you. If it’s your choice, you can lobby Congress and city hall and act to pass Prop 8 and file lawsuits all day and be as consistent with biblical and theological principles and Christ’s call as I.” Rather, I hear you saying what some popular authors say: “All Christians are called to live as pilgrims just passing through, and if they understood Christ’s calling better, they would not oppose government oppression or persecution or work for Prop 8 or whatever.” That’s what I understand you saying, in effect. If I’m wrong, and you want to put a finer point on it, go ahead. But that’s the way many speak and write. But if that is what you’re saying, or close to it, it will not do, when someone disagrees with you, to take a dive and say, “O no, that’s just my opinion and I’m not expressing a principle that should be followed by all Christians.” You call your task “exhorting” or “beseeching.” But based on a theological principle you’ve devined about our “calling” to non-resistance, and a “call” to Christians is not a call to just you. (In my opinion, you’ve miscontrued “turn the other cheek”, especially as to government. Our tradition has a strong resistance theory, and I personally agree with the “lesser magistrate” teaching of Calvin. It’s your right to venture outside the tradition, but good to be aware of it.) If the “call” you speak of is a call to me, then I’m in error or disobedient to ignore it, no? And aren’t you binding the conscience where Scripture leaves us free? If I exhort a brother to stop drinking beer because assertedly God is calling us to be alcohol-free, and because it would be more consistent with biblical principle to be alcohol free, am I binding the conscience? If I exhort or beseech a sister to stop watching R-rated movies because God calls us to pure thoughts and minds, and you would be acting more consistently with biblical principles if you watched only Christian movies you purchase at the local Christian bookstore, am I binding the conscience?
I spend time on this point about resistance because your view, while a minority among all Christians, has gained traction due to some popular writers and speakers within the small Reformed pond. It has led to great confusion and divided people at churches. I regret that and have worked to change minds where I can. I can’t change yours, but I appreciate the diaglouge anyway.
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CVD, I think what may be throwing Zrim and me off is the difference between the second two paragraphs in your latest comment. On the one hand, San Diego officials may simply be mistaken and harbor no anti-Christian bias. On the other hand, there is a culture/worldview war going on out there, at least in the legal profession. I’m not sure how to reconcile those two tones in between which your comments seem to veer. So you are not paranoid the way (I think) the religious right is, but then you have your Jay Sekulo moment.
It’s the Jay Sekulo stuff that has me worried.
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DGH, LOL. I don’t want to say anything negative about Mr. Sekulo as he’s an effective advocate much of the time and a decent guy, but I’ll just say that I would not share a lot of his political or theological convictions.
Maybe this is the best way to go at it: I personally don’t find it useful to attribute to my opponents demonic inspiration or ill will. Usually they’re doing what they think is right. And I don’t worry too much about what may be their pscyhological or theological motivation. I love working with and against ACLU lawyers and other public interest law firm types because, while they’re pretty hostile to religious faith of all kinds and Christianity in parituclar, they’re very smart and capable advocates for the First Amendment and other constitutional rights. They do good work for a lot of disadvantaged people. I think they are useful in holding government to account. Sometimes they are wrong. But I get along better with them and can enjoy a beer with them if I don’t see them as wearing red tights and holding a pitchfork.
So a lot of the culture war RHETORIC and such is not helpful, in my opinion. It unnecesarily scares the secularists who just want to be free from religious oppression so they can live a secular lifestyle and enjoy prosmiscuity and the gay life and the movies they want and such. I agree tshey should be legally free to do so, and we do ourselves no favors by rhetoric that makes them think we hate them.
I want to protect civil rights of all persons, and I think that also helps preserve rights for all Christians to worship and do what only we can do. As I understand 2K (and I’m influenced by Kline), one of the functions of the civil sphere and the legal realm within it is to preserve a platform within which God can accomplish his KoG purposes and the gospel may go forth. That stable platform is preserved better if the government is held in check and we iive peacefully with all our neighbors. Most of the government actors I deal with are just foolish, not malicious. Just drunk with power, not hatred of Christians. Some are, but not most.
With that said, within the legal realm there started back in the 70s a movement to re-formulate First Amendment doctrine. I know the men and women who speerhead that project. And they are motivated by two things: a desire to protect women from being demeaned by pornography (so they want to remove protection for disseminating images that demean and offend women) and a hatred of Christianity because, I believe, they see it as holding to principles that are not congenial to their political agenda. They want get rid of the fundamental, core First Amendment conviction expressed in Mosley: “Above all, the First Amendment means that government has no power to declare any idea false or wrong.” They don’t like the marketplace of ideas metaphor that has been the reigning ideology in constituional law throughout most of the 20th century. They want to allow government to declare some ideas so pernicious that they very uttering of them should render their speakers/authors vulnerable to lawsuits or criminal or regulatory sanction as “hate speech.” The Left has picked up on this idea that came from the Critical Legal Studies movement at Harvard originally, and it is now in the popular media. I know one Democratic senator who routines calls “Fox News” “hate speech.” He is a lawyer who loves the CLS movement. (There may be much to hate about Fox News, but be aware that to affix the label “hater” on Fox News comes straight from the CLS playbook and behind it is the desire to silence all who oppose the agenda by affixing civil and criminal and regulatory sanctions to those who hold the politically incorrect view. Whether you share the political views of this movement or not (some of their ideas I agree with), I find the movement to silence those with whom we disagree alarming. What makes it alarming is it is no longer a narrow fringe movement, it has moved to the law reviews and some of the federal bench.
I don’t think they get up in the morning and say they want to go after Christ and his sheep. But they want breathing room for their agenda. When they were the opposition culture in the 60s, they championed free speech. But now that many of them are part of a majority culture, free speech is not so essential to their project and can be an obstacle to it. Some of Many of my ACLU friends share that view, most, though coming from the Left, are as alarmed about this movement to re-define core constituional doctrine as I. I don’t think this movement’s advocates are demonic or necesarily hate Christ as such, but some of them hate our theology, Bible, and all religion (except the vague spiritual kind that has no threats to it) because, as they say over a beer, religion oppresses people, misleads people into false thinking, and leads them to do wrong things like oppose the gay lifestyle or gay marriage or whatever. Many of them — fortunately not many ACLU friends — think they are doing a service to the world by silencing religious voices by imposing sanctions on the expression of religious views or political views that are motivated by religious conviction. While not all hate religion, this is a growing number. Since this radical re-thinking of consitutional protections at has gathered steam and been accepted by many district court judges, lawyers advising school districts and government, and such, it is alarming.
So is there a culture war/worldview war going on out there? I don’t know if that’s the best way to put it. I sometimes use “culture war” as a shorhand becaue people get what it means and to offer the above nuanced explanaiton takes too many words. I’d prefer not to demonize anyone and work with them to protect civil liberties for all. Yet there is a conflict between competing political agendas, and some on the Left, now that they have the power that the old Establishment used to have, are as tempted as the old Right-wing Establishemnt to use Law to silence their opponents.
The motivations of the legal Left are very mixed, and it’s too simplistic to say they are demonic or Christ-haters. Some of their ideas are good, some bad. But it’s not healthy to the body politic or the church to allow them the legal power to silence opponents that they crave. I wouldn’t give that power to the Left or Right.
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DGH, it occured to me that you misunderstood my statement to Zrim “we have a clash of cultures. I didn’t mean that in the “culture war” sense, but in the sense that lawyers have a culture that conflicts with whatever culture Mr. Zrim hails from.
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CVD,
Yes, amongst some fundamental differences we’ve established, I do think this may be a clash of cultures. Along with not being a theologian or exegete I am also not a lawyer. But I fail to see why that should diminish any of the points I am trying to make here. I’m an elitist, too, but blogs don’t seem to play by those same rules. Can you make an effort to take off your lawyer cap and just enagage as a fellow believer?
There is a lot you provoke in your last several posts. I don’t want to address all of it, since it would be repetitive as well as a bit unfocused for me. But there is one thing I am interested in. I’m still choking on the notion that Peter’s rebuke only applies to the fringe and thereby being virtually irrelevant to most of us (if it had been Simon the zealot I think you’d have a much better case).
Now you say I have misunderstood what it means to turn the other cheek or not resist our persecutors. While I could’ve fairly easily predicted the business of Peter’s rebuke only being for extremism, I’m stumped as to what you think turn the other cheek means. Does it mean to play nice? If so, I learned that from my mother; I don’t need the Bible to tell me anything that can be derived from both nature and nurture. I need it to tell me what I don’t know or what doesn’t come naturally to me. The gospel itself offends my natural sensibilities. I don’t understand “turn the other cheek†the way Anabaptists do, which is to say pacifistically. Like DGH suggests, I have no problem bopping erstwhile thieves on the head. I have a sweet mini-Louisville slugger under my bed. But I understand turning the other cheek to be gospel, not law.
I freely admit it is complicated when self-defense becomes resisting our persecutors or disobedience to our Lord’s command to turn the other cheek. But I think it does at some point. What I don’t see from you as any acknowledgment of that. I see a lawyer defending his vocation, which is really quite admirable—more power to you. But I think what I want to see is a Christian acknowledging that we are called to turn the other cheek, even if we may diverge about when that happens or how best to negotiate obedience to that command (so much for your sustained complaint that I am legalistically binding your conscience). I take great exception to your notion that Peter’s rebuke is for extremism. I hope you won’t spirit away the command to turn the other cheek in a similar way: does turning the other cheek apply to all of us? If so, how do you think it might apply to lawyers defending the civil rights of believers?
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CVD, Thanks. That’s helpful and explains your work and perspective. It leaves me wondering if you think Christians are derelict who choose not to protect their civil rights. Because you see a trend in the legal field, it would seem that you could argue that believers have a responsibility to go to court if they perceive their religion has been ill-treated. Otherwise, it sets back the protection of civil rights. Sort of like the family which decides not to pursue charges against a burglar — I could see how a cop or DA would prefer a family to go after the law breaker.
So is that part of the dynamic between you and Zrim?
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DGH, yes, that is part of the dynamic. If all Christians accept the categorical imperative not to protect their civil rights, the government power grab accelerates, and the worse for Christians and for all citizens. I think all citizens should or perhaps have a civic duty to do what they reasonably can to challenge serious government abuse. We’re all better off for it. The old ACLU lawyers like to recite the old saw about how after the dictator has come after my enemies and silenced them, he’ll come after me. So I stand up against government when it wants to silence the Nazi’s right to march in Skokie becuase though I hate them the same powr to silence the Nazis will allow the government to silence me. That’s basic FA doctrine — or has been since the post-McCarthy era. It’s now in jeopardy.
If all citizens have a “civic duty” to protect our freedoms, it seems to me Christians are part of the body politic as citizens of the KoM and aren’t exempt from that moral duty. And as Christians, why prefer self-flaggelation? Out of self-interest if not the interest of preserving our freedom to worship and speak as conscience compels, it would seem the kind thing and neighborly thing to do to do what we can to protect our liberties? The beneficiaries will be not only Christians, but all citizens. Of course I’m realistic. Not every Christian has the same amount of time, resources, temperament, and emotional resources to stand up to government bullies, but some do and there are resources available to help. I wouldn’t say a Christian mom who chooses to allow the school board to silence her Johnnie’s right to say “Jesus” is committing a sin. Every Christian has to decide these things using wisdom, it seems to me. I’d just like to not have fellow Christians telling other Christians that categorically Christians are in principle wrongheaded to go talk to the principal or school board or, in a worse case scenario, call a lawyer, but instead should generally just keep their head down and head to the catacombs.
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CVD,
I can see your points. But mine is still simply that I don’t see it naturally arising from scripture that our default setting is to stand up for ourselves. In fact, I see the opposite. If we are to stand up for anyone it sure seems like it’s supposed to be for others. But ourselves? I can see where something like the Constitution compels citizens to “have a civic duty to do what they reasonably can to challenge serious government abuse,” but I don’t see where scripture compels believers to rise up and slap Caesar’s wrists. That sure doesn’t seem what Mark 12 teaches.
My DA may want me to pursue my daughter’s killer, and I would. But shouldn’t my pastor tell me to resist my persecutor?
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Er, that is, “My DA may want me to pursue my daughter’s killer, and I would. But shouldn’t my pastor tell me to NOT resist my persecutor?”
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Mr. Zrim, you raise a very large subject. I’ve written on this from a legal and Christian point before and will have to post to this when I have more time to think how to boil down a concise answer to a large and complicated subject.
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Mr. Zrim, put out of your mind the Caesar and the Christians to the lions images. What if the government isn’t persecuting you for your faith per se, just grabbing for power? I stand up for Nazis and Communists. I even stand up for Christians. In that way I and you help preserve liberty for Nazis, Communists, Muslims and even Christians. The system we live under is designed this way. Is it ok for me to stand up for Nazi’s rights to spew hatred of Jews but wrong for me to stand up for Christian’s rights to preach the Gospel?
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Mr.Zrim, is it ok for the ACLU to stand up for the civil rights of a Christian? If so, is it wrong for the Christian to stand up for his or her rights? What if the ACLU lawyer becomes a Christian during the case. Should he/she resign?
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Mr. Zrim, I wonder how far you carry the non-resistance ethic or what criteria you use for judging. Many Christians of course operate in the business world. Suppose a Christian owns a business. His family depends on the income. He has 20 employees who depend on the business to pay them a salary. The Christian’s business, John Smith & Co., has a dispute with its main supplier (Supplier, Inc.) and the city (Tyrannical Falls), which are both unjustly making it impossible for the business to operate. The business needs to bring a lawsuit against his supplier and the city to obtain injunctive relief or it will fail within 60 days. John Smith goes to his URC pastor seeking advice. Should his pastor advise him it’s acceptable to sue or discourage him from suing?
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CVD,
Mr. Zrim, put out of your mind the Caesar and the Christians to the lions images. What if the government isn’t persecuting you for your faith per se, just grabbing for power? I stand up for Nazis and Communists. I even stand up for Christians. In that way I and you help preserve liberty for Nazis, Communists, Muslims and even Christians. The system we live under is designed this way. Is it ok for me to stand up for Nazi’s rights to spew hatred of Jews but wrong for me to stand up for Christian’s rights to preach the Gospel?… is it ok for the ACLU to stand up for the civil rights of a Christian? If so, is it wrong for the Christian to stand up for his or her rights? What if the ACLU lawyer becomes a Christian during the case. Should he/she resign?
I’m not much for telling people what to do, nor declaring what is right or wrong.
But here is my concern: where in scripture are we told we have a “right†to preach the gospel? I only see the categories of “command,†as in, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.†I don’t see things like “…and make sure the powers that be leave you unhampered to do what I command you.â€
We are commanded to be faithful and obedient to God to preach the gospel. “Rights†seem to imply that the preaching of the gospel is somehow for us to enjoy for our sake instead of to obediently do for the sake of others. If that is true, I don’t see what difference it makes if you are representing me or the ACLU, because my concern isn’t so much whether I have a right to my beliefs and practices (and that they are being protected) but rather if I am being faithful and obedient to what God has commanded. Do you see the difference?
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Mr. Zrim, I never said we have a “right” under Scripture to proclaim the gospel. Of course it’s our calling and privilege. I said we have a right under American law.
I’m disappointed you avoided my hypotheticals. I would tell you what I tell law students. Dealing with concrete cases produces clarity. Only by doing the hard work of thinking through concrete cases and hypotheticals can we test the limits and boundaries of our general principles, think through their application, and produce clarity. By sticking with vaporous generalities our thinking remains mushy.
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CVD,
I never said we have a “right†under Scripture to proclaim the gospel. Of course it’s our calling and privilege. I said we have a right under American law.
But this is my point. As dual citizens, we have two books that seem to be saying two different things. A command to do something isn’t the same as a right to do it. And if our supreme allegiance is to scripture instead of the traditions of men then shouldn’t the accent be placed on the former? Shouldn’t we be worried about our faithfulness to the Great Commission rather than our right to carry it out?
But it seems to me that the default mode of the western Christian is just the opposite. When there is a challenge to our right to proclaim (real or perceived) it seems as though the first response is not to ask how we can continue to be obedient and faithful in the midst of it, but rather how we might circumvent—even pre-empt—the challenge.
Re my avoidance of your hypotheticals, perhaps this is our clash of cultures. My culture is education where we ask a lot of questions and traffic in “vaporous generalities at 35K feet.†I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not.
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Mr. Zrim,
With respect, your reasoning here seems incoherent. I think you’re unaware of the fallacies in your reasoning because you haven’t thought through your argument by testing it against either any real world facts or any exegesis of Scripture. I’ve found taht students always try to flutter out of conceptual dilemmas or steer clear of arguments that refute their theories by continuing to fly high at 35,000 with vaporous generalities that never expose the weaknesses of their arguments. It matters not to me what you believe, but since you’re so invested in this, doesn’t intellectual honesty require you to deal with some facts on the ground? Or some specific texts?
I can’t adequately address in a blog your “turn the other cheek” or “rebuke of Peter” texts to which you vaguely allude, as these are very large subjects. I would just recommend that, since they appear to by the linchpin of your resistance theory, you speak with your CRC pastor about these texts or, if you have access to them, read 3 or four good Reformed commentaries on Matthew, including Calvin. Your view appears much closer to the “two kingdoms” theory of the Mennonites and Anabaptists. I think you would find that, while the interpreation of these texts has been widely disputed in the history of interpretation, most Reformed commentators take roughly this view: Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is set within the context of the Sermon on the Mount. He was seeking to dispel a mistaken view that the lex talionis of the OT, which was intended to limit judicial punishment to punishment that fit the crime, could be used as a justification for personal vengeance in personal relations. His disciples were to be marked by love and forebearance in their personal relations and not to exact personal retaliation or vengeance, but leave that to God and his servant, the State. I know of no commentator outside the Anabaptist and Mennonite traditions that argues that the text can be pushed so far as to commend nonresistance to magistrates that overstep the law’s bounds. The Anabaptists/Mennonites do, and for that reason argued that Christians should generally withdraw from most worldly affairs. In addition, Jesus is here setting forth eschatalogial kingdom ethics and showing that he has fulfilled the OT law’s civil prescripts. Your attempt to push the square peg of this passage (vengeance in personal relations) into the round hole of your other-worldly, non-resistance-to-government theory seems quite clearly misguided and without support in the Reformed tradition. Moreover, since God ordained the government and courts and set Christians within the civil sphere and commanded them generally to be subject to the authorities (which includes obeying the law where it directs us to uphold civil liberties), it would take very clear Scriptural mandate to overcome the powerful inference that Christians should and may, like Paul’s appeal to Caesar, abide by the law by invoking legal process where the law directs. Since you stake so much on Matt. 5, I might suggest you consider making a careful study of the passage and the history of interpretation of it or consult your pastor.
The rebuke of Peter is explained by most Reformed commentators roughly as follows: Peter was seeking to prevent Jesus from going to the cross, which Jesus had come into the world to do. Jesus saw it as a temptation by Satan and rebuked Peter accordingly. Further, Peter’s use of unlawful force against lawful authority was not justified. I know of no Reformed commentator that tries to extract from this passage an inference that Christians should never use lawful process to resist unlawful state action. Indeed, if we had no other text, Paul’s appeal to Ceasar of the ruling of a lesser magistrate on the grounds that the judgment against him was without legal warrant is sufficient scriptural authority to countenance Christians resort to lawful process to redress unlawful state action.
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Mr. Zrim, I should add your statement that you’re not about advising others what to do is self-refuting as your whole project is to lay down a non-resistance ethic for …. not just you, but for Christians. You’re in the area of Christian ethics here. Ethical imperatives and norms are of the essence of ethics.
In addition, I never said the filing lawsuits should be our “default setting.” I agree that Americans are generally too quick on the lawsuit trigger, too insistent on “rights.” My practice, as I’ve said, is to try first to amicably resolve disputes or find alternative ways for a client to achieve its objectives without litigation. But as a last resort, sometimes there is no other way to prevent manifest injustice. If you want to say “there is a line” beyond which Christians should not go, it behooves you to specify that line with factual particularity. What criteria would you recommend be used to draw that line? You asked rhetorically whether your pastor shouldn’t advise you not to seek your daughter’s killer? Why? What should a pastor advise his parishioner who comes to him seeking to know what evaluative criteria should guide his decision about when it’s appropriate or not to offer up resistance? Never? If ever, when? Where? How? Deal with some concrete fact.
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I should add your statement that you’re not about advising others what to do is self-refuting as your whole project is to lay down a non-resistance ethic for …. not just you, but for Christians. You’re in the area of Christian ethics here. Ethical imperatives and norms are of the essence of ethics.
I know this is your subsuming concern. But, actually, given that I’m about as withdrawn-pacifist-Mennonite as Denis Leary, I don’t see it quite that radical of a project, CVD. I’m just asking some questions of those who, to me, don’t seem to think Peter’s rebuke applies to all of us instead of just the kookier elements. I mean, I’m wondering if Jesus’ commands have more to say than, “Don’t blow people up, honestly pay your taxes and live with love and forbearance.†That seems awfully obvious. Sort of the way, “Don’t lie, cheat or steal†isn’t exactly profound without a covenant theology.
But if, for example, Mark 12 is about a counter-intuitive obedience instead of merely filing honest tax returns then the latter will certainly be a piece of cake. And if Peter’s rebuke is about not resisting persecution then not blowing up buildings is gravy. (I understand Peter’s rebuke to be ultimately about keeping Jesus from his cross, just as Peter’s keeping Jesus from going up to Jerusalem where he earned a similar, harsher rebuke. But it doesn’t seem at all problematic to suggest that resisting persecution is a way to circumvent the cross. In the same way, then, resisting our own persecution is a way of not taking up our own cross as we are commanded.)
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You persist in invoking “persecution” when I’ve suggested that most governmental actors whose actions oppress Christians or churches intend no persecution. If the government is not persecuting, should a Christian’s pastor still counsel non-resistance to the government? (On your principles, since accepting persecution is enduring the cross, if no cross is intended is it still a theology of glory to resist?) Suppose the County Tax Assessor mistakenly assesses a property tax levy upon church property and threatens forclosure for nonpayment within 30 days? Should the church resist or allow the church property to be seized?
If the Lord’s rebuke of Peter is to be seen as standing for the broad proposition that Christians should not resist persecution, you need to supply some biblical evidence that that interpretation can be gleaned from it. What is the exegetical evidence?
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CVD,
I persist because I begin by suggesting that sometimes it’s more governmental institutions doing some really dumb things, e.g. telling parents they can’t opt kids out of a highly values-laced school program, a la Alameda. But then this is when you veer into what seems like “persecution†mode, saying my view “scores one for the beast.†For my part, I’m inclined to think Alameda is more dumb government than persecution. So then I suggest enduring an imperfect world, and all of a sudden I’m making the world safe for antichrist.
So I assume we are in persecution territory. Granted, like DGH suggested, it seems to be something of a moving target with you as we go in and out of dumb governmental action and persecution.
But, as long as we are here in persecutionville, since when does “intention†persecution make? I suppose you have an attorney’s way of defining this. But can I say I never intended to sin last week, thus I will refrain from confessing during the confession portion of the liturgy? I think this language of intention may work fine in certain legislative venues, but it seems much harder in theological ones. After all, did Peter really think he was doing what Jesus said he was doing? It could be that a court of law Peter could be proven innocent of trying to prevent the cross. But scripture isn’t having it.
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You’re simply not reading carefully. I never “veered” in and out of persecution, but on the contrary insisted most government contraction of religious liberty is not the result of persecution. You are reading in what you want to see because it sets up your straw man. You want to see theologies of glory where they don’t exist so you can play the theology of the cross and suffering in this age cards. You have not dealt with reality. Your entire argument is from stem to stern, from beginnign to end, predicated upon an imaginary construct of your own mind. One last time: Suppose the County Tax Assessor mistakenly assesses a property tax levy upon church property and threatens forclosure for nonpayment within 30 days? Should the church resist or allow the church property to be seized? What should the pastor advise?
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Suppose the County Tax Assessor mistakenly assesses a property tax levy upon church property and threatens forclosure for nonpayment within 30 days? Should the church resist or allow the church property to be seized? What should the pastor advise?
Neither. They should try to straighten out a misunderstanding between entities. I don’t see what’s wrong with fixing a mistake.
Now you: Is there ever a time a church (or believer) should not resist? If so, what would that look like?
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You get an F for the day — you can’t change the hypo. This was a reality for my church. We met with the County, explained the mistake, our lawyer sent letters. Did no good. The bureaucrats didn’t care. The church had to file a lawsuit and seek a TRO and preliminary injunction from a judge. Got one and the judge excoriated the County Tax Assessor. But without the judge, we would have lost the property. Happens all over the place all the time. You don’t admit into your consciousness facts that are not congenial to your make-believe world.
Yes, a church should not resist lawful ordinances or statutes. A believer when insulted by a neighbor should not retaliate.
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CVD,
You get an F for the day…
Doh. I had a feeling I’d step in it, serves me right. So the question was really more like, “Guess what number I am thinking of.†And I said, “Whatever numbers you aren’t thinking of.â€
Yes, a church should not resist lawful ordinances or statutes. A believer when insulted by a neighbor should not retaliate.
Quite agreed. But what I am wondering is this: isn’t there a sophisticated version of an unsophisticated example? In other words, if my daughter is ridiculed and ostracized on the playground for going to church there must be a way for a church to be bullied by a government. If we can tell my daughter to refrain from retaliating isn’t there a way to tell a church to do the same?
I can see why an American school psychologist would advise that playground bullying is never something to tolerate. In the same way, I can see why an American lawyer would say that government bullying is never something to tolerate. Trust me, I get that. But to both of you I would suggest that Christianity just isn’t that intuitive. It isn’t designed to increase creaturely comfort and ease. Though, I do wish it did.
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There are enough examples drawn from everyday life in which Christians and churches must submit to the authorities and refrain from unseemly retaliation and vengeance. We all have provocations every day, don’t we? If we all stood on our “rights” to self-respect and to be treated as we wish, we’d be holering all day long, especially at an unbelieving world. Christians can do a much better job of being less abrasive and hostile when dealing with unbelievers, and when insulted could do a better job keeping mum rather than hitting back with strident, accusatory rhetoric. We can treat them with respect and dignity even if we dislike their lifestyles or politics. Churches should withdraw from politics all-together. They should obey the magistrate’s zoning laws, noise ordinances, and be good neighbors who try to minimize adverse parking impact to the fullest extent practicable. Most large churches with parking issues do that.
But once in a while the government oversteps and violates the law. It isn’t always about us. It’s not “persecution” always. But all citizens, including Christians, have a civil duty to preserve civil rights, liberties, and hold excess government power in check. Why would be be exempted? Why should the ACLU care more for your civil rights than you?
Granted most of Christianity is other worldly — the promises and living hope are not in this world. The Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about the details of living as a citizen of this world qua citizen of the KoM — about how to fix my car engine or build a house or fashion a style of government or what is the best kind. It assumes that believers will use native intelligence to navigate their way through the KoM. It assumes I’ll figure out how to plant a garden and fix my car, and it assumes I’ll figure out a system of government that works well enough and how to make it work. It assumes I’ll use common sense to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove to figure out that it takes a legal brief to correct a manifest and unjust government abuse. It might even be the goo-neighborly thing to do to defend my rights for the benefit of my non-Christian neighbor. I might be nice if I stand with my pagan neighbor to prevent injustice to him/her when he/she is a victim of racial discrimination or poverty, and my ACLU pagan neighbor may even stand by me when my rights to speak about Christ are eclipsed. It’s just the way the KoM operates. I dont’ find in Scripture any unique disability on Christians from acting in the KoM.
On what principled basis do you draw such lines of disabling restrictions? I think you just make it up as you go, and that’s the problem. That’s what I’ve been pushing you to see. Non-resistance when and how? Are we to be so a-political we don’t vote? I have 2K friends who go there: they see believers as so other-worldly that they should not vote, though one allows voting if the Christian doesn’t talk about it. Once you start down this path, it becomes very legalistic. Why not just say, the faith is mainly about a living hope, the gospel, Word and Sacrament, and doesn’t have much to say about this world, and leave the KoM affairs to be worked out on KoM principles without interjecting KoG principles (like non-resistance principles applied to government) where they don’t belong?
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CVD,
Much to applaud there.
But all citizens, including Christians, have a civil duty to preserve civil rights, liberties, and hold excess government power in check. Why would be be exempted? Why should the ACLU care more for your civil rights than you?
But this is where I knit my brow. I think it’s easy to tell believers who are Americans that it is not only their civil duty to do these things but also their spiritual burden. But I just don’t see anything in scripture that demands we keep western virtues afloat. What are believers in China supposed to do if Christianity demands they “preserve civil rights, liberties, and hold excess government power in checkâ€? But Christianity only demands obedience to God, not the traditions of men. It lets one participate in the latter, but warns against conflating the two.
Are we to be so a-political we don’t vote? I have 2K friends who go there: they see believers as so other-worldly that they should not vote, though one allows voting if the Christian doesn’t talk about it. Once you start down this path, it becomes very legalistic. Why not just say, the faith is mainly about a living hope, the gospel, Word and Sacrament, and doesn’t have much to say about this world, and leave the KoM affairs to be worked out on KoM principles without interjecting KoG principles (like non-resistance principles applied to government) where they don’t belong?
I agree. To my mind, abstaining from political involvement (e.g. voting) on such grounds has much more in common with the Anabaptist ethic. That isn’t what I am saying. But I know believers who are cynical because politics have been so over-realized. Predictably, utopia doesn’t follow and the high expectations crash, leaving people more disillusioned than anything. I’d bow out, too, if I started with notions of exact justice instead of proximate ones. I’d rather see someone abstain because s/he isn’t particularly interested. I don’t knit because I don’t care about knitting. Contrary to popular opinion, I do think our polity protects even those who are apathetic. I’m not one of them, though. I’m much more a skeptic than a cynic.
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I’ll settle for Christians stepping up the their civic duty if not a “spiritual duty.” Nothing in Scripture that says we keep Western values afloat – I agree. A lot of Western values (materialism, self-centeredness) I’d rather sink. But nothing in Scripture about defending the innocent or doing good to neighbor? How about “love your neighbor as yourself”? My pre-born neighbors need help, among others.
Since you love 2K, you may be interested in Luther’s views on resistance (since he was a 2K architect). In Luther’s lengthly commentary The Sermon on the Mount (written in 1530, and published 1532), Luther argued an individual Christian was forbidden to defend himself. A Christian could not defend himself with a sword, and he could not even defend himself by going to court. (Calvin and the Reformed had a different view.) You’d applaud. But Luther seemed to change his mind when he developed his “Chrisitan-in-relation” doctrine, which was an exception that swollowed up his initial “rule.”
In contrast to the Christian as individual, Luther later wrote, there was the “Christian-in-relation” who had an “obligation” to “some other person, whether under him or over him or even alongside him, like a lord or a lady, a wife or children or neighbors, whom he is obliged, if possible, to defend, guard, and protect.” For the Christian-in-relation, it was “ridiculous” to say “turn the other cheek”—like “the crazy saint who let lice nibble at him and refused to kill any of them on account of this text, maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil.”
A superior’s duty to the people under him or her came from “the imperial or the territorial law.” Only a “crazy mother” would not defend her child from a dog or a wolf. Christ “did not abrogate this duty, but rather confirmed it.” He also wrote: “Similarly, if a pious citizen sees violence and harm being done to his neighbor, he should help to defend and protect him. This is secular business, all of which Christ has not forbidden but confirmed.”
In short, Luther did not imagine, at least in earthly world before the end of time, some utopia free of injustice or violence. To the contrary, he recognized that violence (from wolves and from human predators) existed, and he insisted that good Christians had a duty to defend neighbor, even through force to defend their neighbors. This is resistance on steroids.
Because of Luther’s underestanding of human sin, he was also an advocate of Just War. Directly rebutting pacifists, Luther wrote “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved” in 1526, and answered in the affirmitive: “But what are you going to do about the fact that people will not keep the peace, but rob, steal, kill, outrage women and children, and take away property and honor? The small lack of peace called war or the sword must set to limit, to this universal, worldwide lack of peace which would destroy everyone.”
Much more reluctantly, Luther eventually endorsed the right of revolution against tyranny, in extreme circumstances. In the 1531 “Warning to His Dear German People,” Luther encouraged armed resistance to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was attempting to extinguish the Reformation by armed force::
“…when the murderers and bloodhounds wish to wage war and murder, it is in truth no insurrection to rise against them and defend oneself….Likewise, I do not want to leave the conscience of the people burdened by the concern and worry that their self-defense might be rebellious…. …self-defense against the blood-hounds cannot be rebellious.”
I wonder whether Luther’s writings on resistance in 1531–which presumed that the right of self-defense was obvious–represented a step away from his 1530 text denying that Christians could defend themselves. Some say so. But what is indisputable about Luther is his belief that good Christians sometimes had an affirmtive duty to do good, defend others, and eve nuse violence–in defense of others, in just wars, and in resistance to tyranny.
Food for thought.
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I’ll settle for Christians stepping up the their civic duty if not a “spiritual duty.” Nothing in Scripture that says we keep Western values afloat – I agree. A lot of Western values (materialism, self-centeredness) I’d rather sink. But nothing in Scripture about defending the innocent or doing good to neighbor? How about “love your neighbor as yourself”? My pre-born neighbors need help, among others.
Since you love 2K, you may be interested in Luther’s views on resistance (since he was a 2K architect). In Luther’s lengthly commentary The Sermon on the Mount (written in 1530, and published 1532), Luther argued an individual Christian was forbidden to defend himself. A Christian could not defend himself with a sword, and he could not even defend himself by going to court. (Calvin and the Reformed had a different view.) You’d applaud. But Luther seemed to change his mind when he developed his “Chrisitan-in-relation” doctrine, which was an exception that swollowed up his initial “rule.”
In contrast to the Christian as individual, Luther later wrote, there was the “Christian-in-relation” who had an “obligation” to “some other person, whether under him or over him or even alongside him, like a lord or a lady, a wife or children or neighbors, whom he is obliged, if possible, to defend, guard, and protect.” For the Christian-in-relation, it was “ridiculous” to say “turn the other cheek”—like “the crazy saint who let lice nibble at him and refused to kill any of them on account of this text, maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil.”
A superior’s duty to the people under him or her came from “the imperial or the territorial law.” Only a “crazy mother” would not defend her child from a dog or a wolf. Christ “did not abrogate this duty, but rather confirmed it.” He also wrote: “Similarly, if a pious citizen sees violence and harm being done to his neighbor, he should help to defend and protect him. This is secular business, all of which Christ has not forbidden but confirmed.”
In short, Luther did not imagine, at least in earthly world before the end of time, some utopia free of injustice or violence. To the contrary, he recognized that violence (from wolves and from human predators) existed, and he insisted that good Christians had a duty to defend neighbor, even through force to defend their neighbors. This is resistance on steroids.
Because of Luther’s underestanding of human sin, he was also an advocate of Just War. Directly rebutting pacifists, Luther wrote “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved” in 1526, and answered in the affirmitive: “But what are you going to do about the fact that people will not keep the peace, but rob, steal, kill, outrage women and children, and take away property and honor? The small lack of peace called war or the sword must set to limit, to this universal, worldwide lack of peace which would destroy everyone.”
Much more reluctantly, Luther eventually endorsed the right of revolution against tyranny, in extreme circumstances. In the 1531 “Warning to His Dear German People,” Luther encouraged armed resistance to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was attempting to extinguish the Reformation by armed force::
“…when the murderers and bloodhounds wish to wage war and murder, it is in truth no insurrection to rise against them and defend oneself….Likewise, I do not want to leave the conscience of the people burdened by the concern and worry that their self-defense might be rebellious…. …self-defense against the blood-hounds cannot be rebellious.”
I wonder whether Luther’s writings on resistance in 1531–which presumed that the right of self-defense was obvious–represented a step away from his 1530 text denying that Christians could defend themselves. Some say so. But what is indisputable about Luther is his belief that good Christians sometimes had an affirmtive duty to do good, defend others, and eve nuse violence–in defense of others, in just wars, and in resistance to tyranny.
Food for thought.
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CVD,
Believe it or not, I quite gravitate to the Christian-in-relation version of Luther (have you forgotten my Louisville slugger under my bed and pressing charges against my daughter’s killer instead of asking the judge to suspend justice like the confused Anabaptists do?). But, at the same time, I am truly left wondering if there weren’t some pretty important questions left lingering unanswered in his previous views.
I also wonder why, when it comes to our relation to others, 1) nine times out of ten it seems to have to be those further removed from our ordained circle of influence, e.g. that vast and impersonal population called “the unborn” (“innocent†is always a curious term for a Calvinist to describe these folks, BTW) instead of those both in and ex vitro at our own dinner tables, work places and school rooms. Why is our neighbor presumed to be those over whom we really have very little influence instead of those we come into contact all the time? Why is our neighbor across the nation instead of next door? Why is it such a Wal-mart piety instead of a Prevo’s Family Market one?
And 2) why, when it comes to those further removed, since they indeed do count too, different answers to these questions aren’t well tolerated? You’re hinting that this all might translates into what is commonly called a pro-life viewpoint. But what about those of us perfectly politically happy with states’ rights over either autonomous fetus- or female-rights? What if some of us think the best way to politically serve our neighbor is for him/her to be governed more locally, no matter what the decision may be? I know, another very unpopular suggestion in the land of moral federalists fighting each other. But I have no problem loving my neighbor—I just think there are diverse ways of doing it.
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If you’re willing to stipulate to Luther’s “Christian-in-relation” doctrine allowing Christians to defend, guard, protect and promote the good of others through resistance, we’ve made the same progress Luther made away from his earlier across-the-board non-resistance doctrine. This is where I’ve been all along.
Our neighbor is usually closer at hand than we admit, isn’t he? I agree. Harder to defend the person next door than the unborn I don’t know. But it’s a false dichotomy to say I have to choose. In a shrinking world of technology and inter-locking relationships, and in a democratic republic, the circle of my neighbor is broader than it was in the 16th century. And in a democratic republic where I can influence that circle of neighbor through lawful democratic means, it’s at least not unbiblical, and may be a duty, to use democratic means to love my neighbor and promote the common good. It’s at least a civic KoM duty. Cranfield has a good paper on this, arguing from Romans 12-16.
I take it you’re “perfectly happy” if states had the right to authorize abortion. Of course they don’t under Roe. But I would be most unhappy. And would try to persuade my fellow voters to change their vote and think it my moral duty to do so. I don’t subsribe to the radical Reformed chic 2K view that is sanguine about immoral slaughter as long as it’s carried out through proper legal procedures.
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To clarify: I meant to say I would be unhappy if my fellow state voters voted to continue abortion on demand (I’d be happy if the courts returned the issue to the states by overturning Roe).
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This is where I’ve been all along.
And I share that general position. But I think there are some challenges to our shared position. Protestantism is nothing if not able to question its adherents.
But it’s a false dichotomy to say I have to choose.
I’m not saying we have to choose, as if one comes in from the cold and the other is shut out (that’s why I said those afar off count too). I am suggesting that the usual accent placed on the one afar off seems misplaced, versus placing it on the one near. It seems to me that those with a covenant theology actually have a legacy on this sort of priority. It may be the difference between a catechizing ethic and an evangelizing one.
I take it you’re “perfectly happy†if states had the right to authorize abortion…
My larger point was that believers can disagree about ideological, political, social, moral and cultural issues—yet we don’t seem to really behave as if that’s true. (But, yes, I’d be content if states had that right. And if, after the proper question of “who gets to decide†is answered correctly by a states’ rights doctrine, my state representative asked me as a constituent if “she may or mayn’t,†I’d say she mayn’t. Moreover, unlike most pro-lifers, I don’t even make provision for sexual assault [just life of mother]. I consider my view pretty conservative. But if two other constituents think otherwise and win the day, so be it. Politics is about compromise, winning some and losing some.)
I don’t subscribe to the radical Reformed chic 2K view that is sanguine about immoral slaughter as long as it’s carried out through proper legal procedures.
To my knowledge, we radicals haven’t issued the official R2K doctrine on this particular issue, explicitly or implicitly (unlike the wink-wink pro-life political correctness of most conservative Christian circles). It just doesn’t come with the territory. So, really, what you aren’t subscribing to is simply my political view on this issue. You’re free to invoke the language of a moralized politics (“immoral slaughterâ€), but I think all that does is turn political conversation into screed mode.
Your activist slip is showing, which brings us back to the original point in all this: activism is an extraordinary way of doing an ordinary task. It is used by those who think everything is finally a moral question and don’t like losing. It’s about being on the right side of righteousness. It’s about over-realizing the assignment of statecraft. It is marked with an impatience for imperfect systems and the people who inhabit them. It’s about glory.
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Mr. Zrim, welcome to the “Christian in relation” camp. But to be a member in good standing you have to stop finding something wrong with those who act on that belief. You’re not of an activist temperament. I have no problem with that; I’m not pushing you out of the sidelines and onto the field. My plea is that you stop finding something inordinate about “activism” and those who feel called to one form of it or another.
I wonder if you’re not trying to be holier than thou, as it were, by finding a theology of glory where Luther, who coined the term, did not. As you can see, he found Christians could have a political and a spiritual duty to defend or serve their neighbor, oppose the magistrate, and as a last resort, even overthrow the magistrate. Calvin agreed and went further.
My last and final plea: stop uttering banal generalities and deal in specific cases. The devil is in the details. Just as Luther’s “general rule” or preference had to yield to the exceptional “Christian in relation” case. I think you’d find when you leave the clouds and descend to the ground that the “ordinary” sometimes must likewise yied to the extraordinary. Ordinarily government does its job. The school board orders books and pays the light bill just fine. But sometimes the government, in an extraordinary case, enacts unjust laws that discriminate against people due to skin color or creed and tries to silence those whose views it doesn’t like. Sometimes government fails to protect the vulnerable. Sometimes extraordinary action is required by the citizen and Christian in relation. I’m happy for those ordinary people who in extraordinary cases are willing to step up and do extraordinary things, like protect your and my freedom to blog about such arcane matters as whether people who protect our freedom are doing the right thing.
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One could argue both against the use of the state to endorse or oppose gay marriage on the basis of a violation of the classic Kuyperian idea of sphere sovereignty. This view aligns well with Augustine’s crucial observation.
One might desire that that state not stick its nose into it at all, the issue of marriage that is, given that marriage belongs within the sphere of the family, not the state. One might see this issue as of a piece with the trajedy of public schooling, another result of a nasty intrusion of the state into the family’s sphere.
In other words, what has the state to do with marriage anyway? Don’t get tricked into voting for or against a marriage proposition, for that presupposes that the state has something valid to say about it, which it doesn’t. We don’t want to feed the Beast after all. Politely then, respectfully, tell your elected representatives to step off.
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mcotta,
I’m all for the Kuyperian idea of sphere sovereignty. Speaking of schooling, it’s very useful to argue against that the theonomist/transformationalist notion that school is an extension of the family (instead of an institution that overlaps with the family and church). To the extent that it lends out ordination to an un-ordained institution, it is in fact arguable that the trans/theon view can be an ironic undermining of a high view of the family. After all, if nobody wants their public school to be transformationalist (I don’t), then on what grounds can parochial school be said to be “shaping worldviews and making human beingsâ€? Isn’t that a project reserved only for the family, for better or ill?
Nevertheless, the state does have something valid to say about marriage, because the institution of marriage is entirely grounded in creation, not redemption. Those who want marriage “re-defined†at least understand that much, even if they wrongly conceive of it defined as anything other than between one man and one woman. Nobody is married unless the state says so. The state might get it wrong, but that is no warrant to undermine its authority and ordination. The state is God’s left hand.
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Zrim,
I’m not sure if I follow your logic or the exegetical warrant for such a incredible claim. How is it that just because something is a creation ordinance it necessarily falls under the authority of the state? I get that God instituted the state (after the fall, that is), but just because the state has presumed to assume to itself the authority to say who gets married doesn’t necessarily imply that such authority was given her in her divine charter. Does ‘is’ always imply ‘ought’?
Where in scripture do you see such a vast unbrella of authority, encompassing all save for the church, given to the state? Just because the Beast assumes and appropriates such dominion, coercively of course, and always manifests the ungoldly attitude that all creation is its footstool, does in no way imply that a divine sanction lies behind it all.
P.S. I’m obviously selectively borrowing from Kuyper’s sphere sovereignty scheme.
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mcotta,
Incredible claim? That the state issues marriage licenses?
If you’re right then I don’t know how my own marriage is valid (which I’d prefer, and not just for tax purposes). My wife’s father married us, but that was because the state vested its power in him as a pastor to do so, not because he was her father. How is that an incredible example?
It seems to me your suggestion, which I have heard plenty of times before, is a creative way to circumvent hard decisions. But if we don’t have our licenses signed by the state, by whom are they signed? Can’t be the church, since marriage isn’t a redemptive ordinance. Or perhaps we need those “pieces of paperâ€? Maybe shacked-up fornicators are right, maybe all we need is to be “married in our hearts†because we say we are? Maybe the legitimacy of God’s left hand only counts when we agree with the decisions?
But if Jesus said to render unto (that maniac who thought he was deity and trampled the individual rights of God’s people) Caesar his due, and if Paul says that our authorities (who make all sorts of mistakes, up to and including our persecution) were given us for our good, does it really follow that there is anyone else who finally marries us?
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It seems to me that the administration and oversight of marriage falls quintessentially into that common grace sphere occupied by the state. It couldn’t be solely within the sphere of the church because unbelievers are not in the church. It couldn’t be solely within the domain of each family, believer and unbeliever, as the orderliness and stability of family life depends on laws that bind spouses, regulate property, and oversee the health, safety and welfare of children in a fallen world. The linchpin of those laws is a marriage license. Without a marriage license and laws governing and protecting families, anarchy would ensue, which it is a God-ordained purpose of the state to prevent.
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I respectfully disagree with you both.
Zrim, the fact that we are called to obey civil magistrates does not in any way affirm that all the authority they have assumed is by God-given charter. It doesn’t mean that whatever they do and command under the sun is justly their to do and command. It might be true that God allows them to assume power not originally assigned by Him, but that again is not eqivalent with charter. What’s more, I cannot understand why you are ready to agree with me on state instrusion into the family sphere when it comes to children, but not to spouses.
CVanDyke, you’re argument has the appearance of self-evident truth only because of our historical myopia. It simply is not true that marriage has always been regulated by the state, nor is it true that the state has always been the only means by which property rights were managed, health and welfare maintained, and contracts (a special instance of which would be the contract of marriage) enforced. The west wasn’t as wild as your state sponsored public school history text would have us believe.
Before, and even after the rise of the modern nation-state, many cultures and societies managed themselves quite well in terms of marriage and many other aspects of life, apart from state interference and micromanaging, without falling into anarchy (if by anarchy is meant chaos).
You both might find it interesting to learn that for the better part of Western history marriage contracts were defined and regulated by common law, and that state issued marriage licenses did not appear in England until the fourteenth century. Why did they appear then? Well, why else? Aggrandisement, power-lust, and, as always, revenue.
State issued marriage licenses in the US are also a relatively recent development. It seems that some beaurocrat got the idea that marriages should fall under the auspices of the Dept. of Health. Genuis. Nice job they’ve done with it since then…
Law is needed, CVD, but not necessarily state law or legislated law. Common law worked quite well for many, many peoples for many, many centuries.
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mcotta, thanks for your message. In a complex and largely pagan society the state’s role in regulation of marriage and the incidents of marriage (children, property, family) is more necessary rather than less, in my view. The non-Christian society is far more morally perverse today than tenth century England or Europe. Inner city America is near anarchy now, and without state regulation and child protective services life for millions of children would be worse than it is today. In the tenth century, a sparsely populated, agrarian society where the church was dominant and mores were influenced by Christendom, you might avoid anarchy. Moreover, even if common law marraige prevailed (and I’m not sure your dates (14th century) for English common law marriage are correct after consulting Maitland on English history), even then common law was enforced by the state through the Courts of Chancery (equity) and by writs to the courts of law. Common law did not mean no state regulation. Many statutes regulated dower, duties of wives to obey husbands, marital property rights, and where statutes did not govern the common law courts did.
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mcotta,
But before the modern nation-state someone in creational authority had to tell a man and a woman they were married. The point is that there are all sorts of ways across time and place to do this. I happen to live in a time and place where it’s the state. Romantically pining for another time and place to be patched onto mine, while perhaps interesting, finally doesn’t solve anything in the real world. I still need to know who says I’m my wife’s husband and she’s my wife in 21st century America. (If the state makes a few bucks, I don’t care.)
I have heard progressives argue the same thing you basically are; I have a distant relative who pastors in a liberal denomination that blesses same-sex unions. They also want marriage privatized. The common fear you both seem to have is that the state will make a decision you don’t like (Adam and Steve may marry, or they mayn’t). And instead of having to live with something you don’t like the idea is to circumvent, even undermine, ordained authority. I fail to see how this is any different from my daughter suggesting a decision I have made she doesn’t like means I have overstepped my parental bounds, pointing to another dad down the street who decided otherwise for his kids. Yes, I am suggesting what you are arguing is pretty adolescent and sophomoric.
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CVanDyke,
I appreciate your reply. Let me approach things this way: as I read scripture I find that the state is a post-fall, common grace institution whose existence presupposes violent agression (crime) (e.g. Gen. 4:14-15; 9:6). It was put into place by God with the authority to punish criminals (the sword), and by so doing promote just behavior (Rom. 13:3-4). Corresponding to this it would then have authority to judge in disputes between parties in a contract where a breach of contract is claimed to have been committed (a breach which would defraud one of the parties of his personal property). Theft too is unjust aggression.
What biblical conclusions can we draw thus far?
1. Marriage and the state have not always co-existed. In principle then marriage can and did exist apart from the sanction of the state.
2. The state’s function is remedial, retaliatory, and punitive by charter. The biblical charter for the state is even more limited than our Constitution’s (which, by the way, does not grant authority to the state to regulate marriage either).
3. Anyone who would ascribe to the state the right to tell me who I can marry and/or how many children I can have would have a very difficult time exegetically supporting such a position, even harder than arguing that the state has the God-given authority to make cars.
By my understanding then I would agree with you that the state can and should play a role with regard to family affairs insofar as a crime were being committed (crime = unjust aggression against person or property, ala the biblical passages noted above). Saying that it must or should be involved at the outset of a marriage is simply saying more than the text of scripture.
Lastly, I recognize that the Lord has allowed the state to become a Beast, to transgress its boundaries and assume to itself godlike power and authority, and that as a Christian I am to submit even to unjust magistrates (save for when I must obey God rather than men). So that is not an issue here. The discussion is purely theorhetical, logical, historical, and exegetical. I am not advocating rebellion…I am just taking note of how large the Beast has grown.
Your points on the practical necessity of state intervention into these matters are noted, but again, I respectfully disagree. I would simply rejoin that much of the blame for the state of the family in the inner cities can be laid at the feet of government intervention (much like the current financial crisis). Less intervention by the state, not more, would be a better starting point when seeking to address the breakdown of inner city families.
I realize that we live in the era of the nanny state and so find it difficult to imagine life without Big Brother involved in everything we do. I also recognize that many Christians indulge a de facto messianc view of the state, looking to it as the all-powerful manager of human affairs, the benelovent provider of all solutions to social, economic, familial, national, and cultural woes. My comments thus come across to some thus conditioned as “adolesent and sophomoric.” Nevertheless, dream as I may, once and a while it is nice to dream. Sheesh, its’ just plain nice to think.
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mcotta, I appreciate your attention to exegetical concerns and to derive your conclusions from exegesis rather than from theological abstractions divorced from scripture. I also appreciate your concern that the state has become Beastlike and bloated. I am a strong believer in a smaller, less ambitions state. I also agree that many social and economic problems can be traced to state intervenion. Government, in my view, does few things well, and when it acts it tends to make a hash of things. I’m concerned that government has arrogated unto itself too many powers, and that its powers are corrosive to liberty.
With that said, I’m not sure that exegetically I can derive from scripture a precise form of government that is biblically mandated or a precise agenda for government that would allow me to say, biblically, that government has exceeded its proper, ordained role. The Gen. 4, 9, and NT passages are quite sparse and, I think, can’t be pushed to establish a full biblically prescribed political science. I see little in scripture that mandates the practicalities of government’s limits. I do think you can make a case for protection of private property and free markets from scripture, and so cast doubt upon the validity of a full throated socialism, as a professor at WSC does. But apart from that, I make the case for limited government on common grace, political and economic grounds rather than scriptural grounds. Getting to cases, I think the case for state licensing of marriage is a rather strong pragmatic case in today’s world. While the welfare state largely created the inner city breakdown of families, the solution it seems to me is at this point not withdrawal of the state from regulating these affairs. And the licensing of marriage does not harm and some good. If I were persuaded on exegetical grounds that the state exceeds its God-given authority in licensing marriage, I would agree with you.
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Thanks CVanDyke. Appreciate the back and forth.
Yours in true liberty,
Matt
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Matt,
My comments thus come across to some thus conditioned as “adolesent and sophomoric.†Nevertheless, dream as I may, once and a while it is nice to dream. Sheesh, its’ just plain nice to think.
Granted, that was pretty snarky. Sorry. I like to think and dream, too.
But my point is that in something like Mark 11 we seem to see something being said about authority and submission that applies to all times and places. It is an interesting question whether Caesar could tax the Jews, etc. and so on and so forth. But that doesn’t seem to be what Jesus is interested in. He seems more interested in the fact that Caesar is God’s left hand, despite all sorts of other concerns, and that .
Personally, I really don’t think we 21st century Americans grasp well what the Bible seems to convey about things like authority, submission and obedience. We American-Christians seems to think more like Americans than Christians (I heard that, CVD). We question and speculate more than we submit and obey. We like authority when we agree with it or it goes our way. I know CVD has a fear of heights, but obedience is better than sacrifice, and obedience is what actually won our salvation.
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Zrim, forget about it. I get your concern. I really do. I suppose in some ways I find myself asking the questions the scribes and pharisees were concerned with. Obedience is also not my native inclination. Jesus’ words there always make me repent of an overly this-worldly concern. Jesus, as ever, gave the answer that was needed, not necessarily the one that was desired.
At the end of the day, its not that I am not going to obey Caesar. I will. I will pray for him, respect him, and serve him as pleasing God, not men. As I noted in another post above, we are called even to humbly serve unjust masters. It is the nature and extent of his authority that I am curious about. I’d like to have it clear in my mind when my earthly masters are being unjust is all. Surely you agree that God did not write the state a blank check. The state obviously overreaches. What are the boundary lines? It seems to me that, providentially, we are in a historical moment where such questions are very pertinent.
Blessings,
Matt
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