Missio Alliance: On Women, Questions, a Place for “People Like Us” and Kirsten Powers

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement. Ronald Reagan link

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=31710&picture=questions-1

Questions

Some church do not like people who ask questions and crave answers.

A few years ago, SGM Survivors posted Wallace's Story in which the family of an abuse victim was allegedly told by leadership that they were

sinfully craving answers.

The American Jesus website posted a Mark Driscoll video and summarized it as follows:

So to recap: critics are lazy sinners who just complain all the time. Real Christians follow their leader and don’t ask questions

TWW has posted story after story about Christians asking questions of church leadership and then being told  that they are "causing trouble." Some long time church members have even been escorted out of their church by police for asking thoughtful questions. In the post dealing with the epic fail of an Acts 29 church assumption at Countryside Christian Church here, a couple along with their handicapped son were summarily dismissed from the church for asking too many question,.

We could not know when that Police Officer escorted us out of our church home it would turn out that  morning was the worst and the best thing that ever happened to us, God brought us out of Egypt kicking and screaming with tears on our faces.

Let me show you how questions cause us to look deeper than our knee jerk assumptions. As most of our readers know, Dee is Side B when it comes to the issue of same sex attraction. For those of you who do not understand what that is, please read about it here. Recently, there has been a lot of press about a wedding cake baker who refused to bake a cake for a same sex wedding due to his beliefs that gay marriage is wrong. 

The Jonathan Merritt, Andy Stanley, and Kirsten Powers controversy

Christians Jonathan Merritt here,  Kirsten Powers here and Andy Stanley (quoted in the Powers post) have been getting some heavy pushback for their views on the news story from folks like Denny Burk here because they believe that Martin Luther King Jr would disagree with the baker's conclusions.Here is a quote from Merritt's post.

It was into this context that King argued a public business owner cannot choose to serve certain customers and not others, regardless of religious convictions. He believed a public business must serve the entire public—period. It is not a far leap to see how King’s arguments coincide to our current situation. King’s logic can be boiled down to this: if a business is public, it must be totally public 

I am going to be transparent with you. I went into this debate strongly favoring the rights of the baker to make this decision. However, I decided to carefully read all of the opinions on both sides. Suddenly, at about noon today, I had a lot more questions than answers. Let me be quick to add that I have not arrived at any conclusion. Here are a few of those questions. For the sake of the argument, assume you know these personal issues to be true.

  • Should Christian bakers refuse to make a cake for the fourth wedding of a bride?
  • Should the baker refuse to make a cake for a customer celebrating 20 years of employment in an abortion facility?
  • Should he make a cake to celebrate a great fiscal year for a company that dumps garbage into local lakes?
  • What about making a cake celebrating the election of a state legislator who sponsored a bill to legalize same sex marriages?
  • What about a cake for an undocumented worker who is celebrating passing his ESL course?
  • What about an anniversary cake for a domestic abuser?
  • What about making a birthday cake for a pedophile who just got out of jail?

Then I thought about the baker.

  • What if he had made the cake and became friends with the couple?
  • What if he occasionally made them some cupcakes and brought them to the couple through the years? 

You get the picture. My initial knee jerk "It's his right to refuse" was being challenged. Again, I have NOT reached a conclusion. I do know this. Asking questions makes things a little less boiler plate, doesn't it?

As I read the Missio Alliance website, I was impressed with their willingness to consider the questions. The problem that I see with the Calvinista crowd is that they give us lots of answers and ask relatively few questions. In fact, as I explained in the Wednesday post, they have such good answers that they have built brick walls which John Piper wants to keep up.

Missio Alliance: The Focus of Their Work link

Now this is why I like this group. They ask questions and my guess is that they allow for some leeway in the answers unlike some of the hard nosed Calvinista groups. I am going to list a few of the questions here and encourage you all to visit their website to do some thinking. (Note the use of his/her pronouns.)

  • What is God’s salvation in Christ in the world and how might we understand it in a way that honors substitutionary atonement yet places it within the whole context of God’s work to set the world right? We commit to working out what this means for conversion and sanctification of the individual believer as well as his/her participation in the Mission of God in the whole world.
  • What does it mean to say the Bible is true and possesses ultimate authority for the church and the believer? We seek an understanding of how that authority is played out in both the church and its relation to the world.
  • What does it mean to engage culture in a manner that seeks the transformation of the city, our neighborhoods and our local context whatever that might look like? We seek a robust understanding of the church’s relation to culture for the practice of demonstrating and proclaiming the full gospel in each context we live.
  • What does it mean to offer the redemption of God in Christ to the sexual brokenness of our age? We seek to understand the complexities presented by the new sexual identities of our culture within the understanding that God has come in Christ to sanctify, transform and redeem marriage, sexuality and life in the body towards His ‘Kingdom purposes’ in the world.

Missio Alliance and the role of women in the church.

Here is the question they ask link

What does it mean to say women are full participants in the ministry of the church alongside men? We seek to understand the New Testament elevation of women to full authority in the church.

In the previous post, we learned that Missio Alliance subscribes to the Cape Town Commitment which grew out of the Lausanne Movement. Here is a great link dealing with the empowerment of women and men.

Empowering Women and Men to Use Their Gifts Together in Advancing the Gospel
Occasional Paper No. 53 Produced by the Issue Group on this topic at the 2004 Forum hosted by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization  In Pattaya, Thailand, September 29 to October 5, 2004

“A New Vision, a New Heart and a Renewed Call” 

This document recognizes that this is a contentious issue. However, this Alliance is dedicated to making a place for both sides in this debate. In other words, all are welcome unlike other coalitions.

In spite of the fact that history is heavily influenced by patriarchal cultures and has buried the stories of great women leaders, women emerge in leadership in every stage of the church’s history. New Testament house church leaders like Lydia and Phoebe reveal the important role women played. Paul greets 29 church leaders in Romans 16 — ten of whom are women, including Junia whom Origen himself honoured as a woman apostle. The twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen admonished her audiences to look to the Scriptures as their authority and to Christ, not the priests, for salvation. She was a woman before her time. And we haven’t even begun to mention strong women leaders in modern times like author and teacher, Elizabeth Elliot, (a complementarian), or pastor and college president, Dr. Roberta Hestenes (an egalitarian.) 

I realize how emotional this issue has become for me as I teared up when reading the above statement. I believe that there is a place for all of us at the Missio Alliance table. We will not always agree with one another but we can break bread together instead of hiding behind Piper's brick walls.  

Many of us have walked away from authoritarian churches, sometimes questioning our self worth and our faith. Finally, there is a group that is willing to talk it out. In fact, it is a place for "people like us."

We will be quoting from Missio Alliance material from this point forward.

Lydia's Corner: Jeremiah 23:21-25:38 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 Psalm 84:1-12 Proverbs 25:15

Comments

Missio Alliance: On Women, Questions, a Place for “People Like Us” and Kirsten Powers — 281 Comments

  1. Dee quoted from the Cape Town Commitment: “Paul greets 29 church leaders in Romans 16 — ten of whom are women, including Junia whom Origen himself honoured as a woman apostle.”

    It struck me, Now there’s a whole different kind of Action 29 in church planting … If Paul had ever been one of those “bloody nose” Pharisees who walked with their head down and so frequently bumped right into walls, to avoid inadvertently being tempted from seeing a woman on the street, he sure had come a long way by the time he wrote to the Romans.

  2. FWIW … I am third generation of pioneer families on both sides, all of whom settled on the Western frontier in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The women in these generations demonstrated as much fortitude of character, creativity, and skills as the men, and they forged a life together. So, I picked up on the equal value of both men and women by cultural osmosis – it was in my family’s history (and I heard our stories over and over) and home environment, in my home town, in my home state. Also, in my formative years, I saw women being as active as men in church settings. Though not pastors, women were still integrally involved in all kinds of ways throughout church life.

    The main point being, when there is a healthy environment of all people being valued equally, it is probably far harder to end up gravitating toward a form of “gender elitism.” Of course, unhealthy environments can lead to all kinds of separations and isolations between genders. Anyway, I see Missio Alliance as having strong potential to establish that kind of gender-valuing cultural-theological osmosis environment long term.

  3. I was also thinking about this today, particularly in light of the Arizona “religious freedom” bill that was just passed (not yet signed) and which sounds vague enough that it could permit business owners to refuse customers based on many factors, not just sexual orientation.

    So I originally came at this from another angle, wondering if a hypothetical baker in Arizona would refuse to serve me, as an agnostic. What about someone who is Jewish, or an atheist? A Muslim? Anyone outside of his or her sphere of religious or moral beliefs? Such a business owner could find themselves with a rapidly vanishing customer base. And that’s where I came full circle and found myself thinking about the same kinds of things you noted, Dee. From my perspective, it’s sobering and ridiculous at the same time.

  4. @ lemonaidfizz:
    Why do we put up barriers? I love to meet and dialogue with people who are different from me. i actually thought about the religious angle to it. I would love to go to a wedding of two agnostics, for example and see how they work out their vows and their relationship. It would be enriching to me and help to see how people who think differently than me handle issues like that.

    Then i thought about how far it could go. Could a White Supremacist refuse to bake a cake for an interracial marriage? What about an Occupy Wall Street baker refusing to serve a Tea Party celebration?

    Why does everything have to be the hill that we die on? Why do we build brick walls?

    I am so glad that dueling is against the law. The way things are going there would be a lot of dead bodies.

  5. @ dee:
    Also, I think it might behoove some Christians to seek out the CVs of the people that Jesus dined with. Somehow I think he celebrated his dinners with some pretty shady individuals.

  6. Well, I used to be very much in the kneejerk clan (re. “it’s his right to refuse”), but at this point, I am very much on the “back the freakin’ cake already!” side of things.

    It’s a cake. Not only that, it’s a wedding cake – not something to be used at a decadent party of some kind. You know, if a straight person known for throwing decadent (drunken, drugged-up, possibly s*xed up) parties had ordered a cake, would this guy (and those who support him) even think twice? But maybe, just maybe, this couple that wanted him to make a wedding cake are very, *very* committed to each other; maybe they have their heads screwed on going into this marriage in a way that many straight people don’t.

    Maybe kneejerk reactions aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

    If we start parsing all of the possible circumstances in which we *might* be doing things that *might* be morally compromised, we would never even be able to get out of bed in the a.m. We’d be paralyzed.

  7. @ dee:

    I wouldn’t be surprised if there were all kinds of people, who so-called Christians today would not approve of nor interact with, amongst the 5,000 who Jesus fed one day! He didn’t poll the group and kick most of them out because of their answers!

  8. Dee,

    Based on my religious beliefs, including my belief that discrimination is a sin:

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any legislator who votes in favor of discrimination.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any business person who refuses to serve people who are different than that business person.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone from a state that has a “stand your ground” law.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any person who advocates for the death penalty.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any legislator who opposes full day pre-k and other educational improvements that will help poor children succeed.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any pastor who preaches against the equality of women.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any pastor who controls the business operations of a church.

    All of those are based on my religious convictions.

  9. @ An Attorney:

    Unless of course, I get the opportunity to try to convince them of the error of their ways, by being nice to them, as commanded by our Lord.

  10. dee wrote:

    Why do we put up barriers? I love to meet and dialogue with people who are different from me.

    I’ve been working on similar questions for a long time, and writing a lot about it in the last months that I’ve been mostly absent from blogging. (Hopefully, I’m back for a while, taking a brief break before I have to submerge again to finish training curriculum projects that are close to completion!) Anyway, I’ve suffered under leaders and systems which categorized everything and everyone, and created conflict through this divisiveness. It was traumatizing! Thinking through those has helped sharpen my questions and my search for frameworks that answer them.

    The key concept I’ve landed on with these issues of interrelationships is called transculturalism. This is typically a step or two beyond where many/most people are at, in terms of their interactions with other people, but I think those who are close to being transcultural in their attitude about others will immediately resonate with it and get it. Here’s how I see the spectrum going:

    Monocultural = we don’t like or trust the differences between us, so either we isolate from others who are unlike us, or we attempt to dominate them and make them conform to the norm of me/us.

    Multiple-cultural = we all share the same geographic space, but basically stay in our separate cultural spaces, but are cordial with one another when we connect (or our cultures happen to intersect).

    Multicultural = we acknowledge the cultural differences and can appreciate there are some good things there, we enjoy the differences, and we relate cross-culturally.

    Intercultural = we see the cultural differences and think “I need that!” to fill in my/our own gaps or file off the excesses, so we apply the differences, and relate collegially as peers.

    Transcultural = we see the need for “the other” and realize if we do not embrace them and learn from them, we (and they) *cannot* become all that we were designed to be, either individually or corporately.

    The term transcultural has been around a couple decades at least, but has been used far more often to mean being culturally sensitive or “contextualizing” in the midst of cross-cultural situations. But transcultural studies in the sense I’m using the term is an emerging academic field that is highly interdisciplinary. As far as I’ve been able to find out, only the University of Heidelberg has advanced degree programs in this perspective at this time.

    http://www.transcultural.uni-hd.de/

    So this is why I think this “interaction spectrum” is exceptionally relevant for the questions you’re posing, Dee, and your puzzlement at and/or critiques of Christians who don’t share a value on “embracing the other.” Monocultural isolation or colonization is the modus vivendi of Christendom; transcultural integration is the modus operandi of the Kingdom. In my opinion, transcultural interactions and integrations do not denigrate the differences by minimizing them; they elevate them by validating them as a unique resource for “creating common ground for the common good.” (That phrase is part of the subtitle for the book I’m working on.)

    I believe the roots to cultural isolation and colonization go deeper than just theological beliefs or values. I see them as grounded in the deepest parts of our paradigm system, anchored in the ways we process information, our epistemology. If we hold to Greek thinking/dualism and only an either/or mental model that analyzes everything and splits it apart, then of course all that inherently comes from that demonstrates elements of division, elitism, and hierarchy. If we hold to Hebraic thinking/holism, we find ways to acknowledge differences but keep the connections intact.

    Sadly, I suspect that segmentation and separation are about all we can expect from Christians at the far Christendom end of the cultural interaction spectrum. Regardless, they are part of “the other” as well, and our challenge is to persevere with these saints as much as with those not within the circle of Church but not outside the reach of the Kingdom. In all of them and us, the Triune God is at work in drawing all people toward Himself.

    Hope that makes sense and is helpful.

  11. A true story:

    About 25 years ago there was a church in a well known college town on the East Coast. The church itself had gone through a split and the remnants would meet every Monday morning for prayer, hoping to restart the congregation again. They kept up the prayer meetings for several months. Around the same time, an adult bookstore opened nearby. The prayer group started discussing what they could do to close the store. They considered picketing the store and trying to take legal action against the store. None of these options were agreed upon. What they decided to do was to pray for a week and see if God supplied them with an answer. The next Monday, one of the prayer group members said that God had spoke to him. He owned a landscaping business, the bookstore was having landscaping done by another company. He would approach the bookstore owner and offer to do his landscaping at half the competitor’s rate. The only proviso was that the landscaper would not enter the store for payment he would only do business in the parking lot. Needless to say, the store owner agreed. The Monday morning prayer group prayed for the bookstore owner every meeting. After a while, the owner turned his life to Christ, and a short time later the store closed.

    That is why if I owned a bakery, I would definitely have baked the wedding cake. We worry way too much about what other people think rather than what God thinks.

  12. Correct me here if I am wrong. I thought that the laws about protected groups were designed to help with this issue. Like, you cannot discriminate on the basis of race, but you can discriminate on the basis of, let’s say. choice of clothing (perhaps no jeans allowed in this store or such.) Isn’t that why these laws keep changing?

    Not that I plan to discriminate. That was one thing that I liked about health care. If you get shot and they take you to the ER you get treated whether you are the criminal or the cop.

  13. @ An Attorney:

    I’m really trying to get my head around this, because I agree with you wholeheartedly–but I’ve been accused of intolerance/discrimination myself for not condoning certain behaviors or beliefs. If I refuse to associate with those who in my view seem to be acting in a hateful way, that can also appear to be hateful or narrow-minded, and I don’t want to be an intolerant person. Yet I don’t want to be the person who stands by silently while bad things (in my opinion) happen, either.

    I suspect this is a holdover from growing up in a religious cult, with extremely black-and-white thinking, and it’s a little embarrassing that as an adult I’m still unsure how to defend my beliefs in a rational manner. I would really appreciate others’ perspectives on this. Where do you draw the line? At what point do individual rights trump compassion and tolerance?

  14. I start from the position that economic and religious freedoms are the most important freedoms for human beings.

    Those freedoms may be exercised in a short cited or ignorant way, but what’s important is that the person taking the economic risk to start and run a business is the one who gets to make that decision.

    You have asked some good questions about whom bakers should bake cakes. I have answers, but my answers are not important. The people who bake those cakes get to have the last say.

    The free market works all of this out. Even the bus boycott in Montgomery was the free market working, and it created changes.

    I can be persuaded that some scenarios may warrant government action. The unique history of African American people in this country was one of those, and that created a unique scenario for race in this country.

    I suspect that within the Christian, Mormon, and Muslim communities there are going to be a range of responses to these questions, as there should be.

    I get very queesy at the prospect of the government telling business owners whom they have to serve. Business owners will figure that out. And with the diversity in this country, it’s going to be very hard to convince me that people can’t find bakeries to bake cakes. Come on. This is on the absurd extreme of deprivation to a public accommodation. “Let them eat cake!”

    Now, this does not apply to government run facilities or businesses. With the way our history is progressing, it may be in 20 years or so all cake bakers will work for the government. We will only be able to buy cakes at government bakeries.

  15. From the OP (slightly off topic to the overall theme of the present post, but the original post is no longer accepting comments):

    As most of our readers know, Dee is Side B when it comes to the issue of same sex attraction. For those of you who do not understand what that is, please read about it here… [the post discusses a Christian, homosexual celibate person]

    I am a life long celibate (hetero).

    Over the past several years, I’d say about 95% of the American church / Christianity does assume that all hetero singles past the age of 20/25 are having pre-marital sex. (Not just homosexuals, they assume this is true of heteros too.)

    It’s to the point I now see preachers and lay persons telling Christians to stop supporting sexual purity and sexual purity teachings and instead over-emphasize God’s forgiveness towards sexual sins.

    Virgins such as me, who have remained true to biblical values regarding sex, get clobbered and put down by other Christians, both liberal and conservative.

    Virginity and celibacy also get put down or brushed off as being unimportant, repressive, or as being impossible standards or as antiquated – and by Christians. I expect Non-Christians to harbor those views, but it’s pretty eye opening to see self professing Christians espouse that stuff.

    So people (even a lot of Christians) make crazy, unfounded assumptions about hetero singles and their sex lives, not just homosexual people. Married Christians are assuming that hetero singles are fornicating every other day with 435,348 partners.

    It’s an assumption that also pops up every time someone like Al Mohler or preacher Mark Driscoll open their mouths to tell Christian singles to marry by the time they are 21 to avoid sexual sin, because they have no conception that anyone can be disciplined enough to abstain, even though everyone can.

    Regarding this comment from the other post:
    Or are gay Christians called to lifelong celibacy?

    Yep. Heterosexuals are also to remain lifelong celibates if they never marry. I’m living it out, as are other adult Christian virgins I’ve bumped into online the last few years.

    I sometimes see a very strange double standard by some post-evangelicals, liberal Christians, and even some conservatives, where they ‘give the green light’ to homosexuals to have pre-marital sex, but heterosexuals are still expected by them to remain celibate.

    I’m in my 40s now and may never marry, so saying I ‘have shot at marriage’ doesn’t solve the double standard position going on with this view.

    Anyway, it sounds like celibate hetero people (and Christians) have some of the same problems and stereotypes to deal with from Christian culture as celibate homosexuals do.

  16. Why do so many fundamentalists need people to hate? And why are the targets of this hatred among the most marginalized in society? Why not the greedy? Why are so many of them silent on sexual abuse in churches? Where are they (SBC among others) when action is needed to help stop sexual abuse in churches? Why don’t they care about the harm some of their brethren are inflicting on church members in the name of God?

    Too much hate, not nearly enough love. Love of God and love of neighbor is what one needs to be a Christian, being gay does not violate either, yet so many want to persecute them in the name of God.

  17. So to recap: critics are lazy sinners who just complain all the time. Real Christians follow their leader and don’t ask questions.

    The NSDAP called this “Kadavergehorsham” — “Corpse Obedience” (though “Zombie Obedience” might be a better translation) with as much individuality and personality as a dead man.

    “Ich habe nur meine Befehle ausgefert.”
    (“I was only following Orders.”)

  18. Daisy wrote:

    Yep. Heterosexuals are also to remain lifelong celibates if they never marry. I’m living it out, as are other adult Christian virgins I’ve bumped into online the last few years.

    I prefer to be a bit less flippant about throwing around Side B views. Hopefully, you can see the difference between telling a 16 year old straight kid and a 16 year old LGBT kid that they should wait until they get [heterosexually] married. The one has hope, while the other has very little, unless they happen to be one of the few whose orientation is fluid enough that a straight marriage works for them. Given that there’s a not insignificant chance that their conservative Christian community will distance themselves from them even while they remain celibate, where’s the hope in that?

    (I’m not going to play the “who has it worse” game, but given the wholly untrue stereotypes about disease, promiscuity, and pedophilia that some Christians embrace, celibate LGBT people can have a very hard go of it if they want to be honest about their feelings in some churches.)

  19. @ dee:

    “I would love to go to a wedding of two agnostics, for example and see how they work out their vows and their relationship. It would be enriching to me and help to see how people who think differently than me handle issues like that.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++

    it is a complete falsehood that Christians have a corner on integrity, faithfulness, and commitment in marriage relationships.

    I have many friends & relatives who have no religion. It is my observation that they all highly value and honor their marriages. They respect each other, are kind to each other, make that relationship a priority (much more than I do). They are very happy people.

    but the most striking thing about it is they do it with absolute freedom. Because they want to. Because they simply love each other and place a high value on their relationship.

    watching their relationships in action is quite different from watching marriages in action at my church. The latter has an air about it of trying to live up to something, trying to make a good impression. Trying to fit into a suit of sorts, whether it fits or not. Some husbands’ expressions of “loving their wives” feels & appears quite forced, like an act. Behavior they are putting on like a coat.

    **they seem to be copying Mark Driscoll’s hyper-contrived smothering attentiveness over Grace in that video clip when they were onstage talking about husband love/wife submit.**

    They are clueless but I am embarrassed for them.

    Identifying with the wife, I begin to feel claustrophobic & short of breath just thinking about it.

    The weddings of my 2 cousins come to mind. They have no religion whatsoever. My older cousin had a rather traditional wedding (minus religious imagery). He and his wife were married by one of his friends who loves the concept of marriage so much that he got a license to marry people. He is no minister, no clergy, he has no religion. He just places a very high value on marriage and wants to enable it. The ceremony was absolutely lovely — all about the gift of committed love that 2 people give to each other.

    My younger cousin and his wife were married by a woman who is licensed to perform marriages but does not practice any religion. She just values marriage and wants to play a part in making it happen. That wedding, too, was lovely and all about commitment, love, appreciating each other, honoring their relationship.

  20. From the OP

    Empowering Women and Men to Use Their Gifts Together in Advancing the Gospel

    That’s good. I wish more churches and denominations looked past gender and marital status to let people who are qualified to serve where ever they felt led.

  21. Have we thought about the difference in the situation between the decision-maker and the participant? If the baker owns the business, then he is the decision maker except in those cases where the laws of the land require him to do, or refrain from doing, something. This baker has the moral responsibility of his decisions right along with the business responsibilities of the bakery. But if the baker is an employee of a bakery owned by someone else (say in a large grocery store, for example) then he is exempt from the moral responsibility of decision-making right along with exemption for various business decisions. So one baker is held accountable for these kinds of decisions, and the other is not, even though each one may bake the same cake.

    So the baker in his own business, who wants to remain a baker but not have to make decisions contrary to his religious beliefs, can sell the business and go get a job as an employee elsewhere. Actually, I see no reason why he should not be willing to accept whatever difficulties there may be for himself in order to comply with his strongly held convictions. He has removed himself one step from moral culpability in this case, if he feels that there is a moral issue involved.

    There was a case once in a church where we were, when one person refused to work on Sunday, and was therefore unemployed for several months. Apparently either he or some of the church leadership thought that the church should support that family during the unemployment since the absence of a job was due to religious compunctions. Others in the church disagreed, as you might imagine.

    Now, let’s get closer to home. At one point I was ordered to do things that were clearly unethical, but I could have done it and gotten away with it. And there was money to be made in the process. I was told that if I did not do it, “they” would find somebody who would. That is to say, fire me and replace me with somebody who would do it. I found another job. If you believe something, this sort of thing is bound to happen. When possible, I highly advise loading up one’s camels and moving on to the next oasis. Some battles cannot be won, and often are not worth the fight. But it is necessary to maintain one’s own self-respect, even if others may not agree about the issue(s).

  22. An Attorney wrote:

    Based on my religious beliefs, including my belief that discrimination is a sin:

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any legislator who votes in favor of discrimination.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any business person who refuses to serve people who are different than that business person.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone from a state that has a “stand your ground” law.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any person who advocates for the death penalty.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any legislator who opposes full day pre-k and other educational improvements that will help poor children succeed.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any pastor who preaches against the equality of women.

    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any pastor who controls the business operations of a church.

    All of those are based on my religious convictions.

    That just needed to be reposted. Yes!

  23. lemonaidfizz wrote:

    So I originally came at this from another angle, wondering if a hypothetical baker in Arizona would refuse to serve me, as an agnostic

    I’m kind of struggling with the Christian faith these days, so I’m somewhat of an agnostic myself (not 100%, but partially), but I figure there are several ways to approach it.

    Assuming my cake is not specifically for an agnostic party or celebration, I wouldn’t even bother telling the religious baker that I’m (semi) agnostic, so it wouldn’t be an issue to start with.

    If I knew the baker was of ‘Religion X,’ some of whose members have moral reservations about baking specifically Agnostic Cakes for Agnostics, I wouldn’t even bother. I’d find another bakery who doesn’t advertise they are “Religion X” in their ads.

    If I went to a baker who sprung on me, “Sorry, we are Religion X, we don’t feel comfortable making a cake for an Agnostic party,” I’d say ‘okay,’ leave, and look around for a shop that does make them, or go to a Wal-Mart deli and get a cake there and buy a tube of icing to write ‘Agnostic’ on the cake myself.

    I’m not totally made up on the bakery controversy myself, but I have a really hard time siding with homosexual couples who seem to make a point, a concerted effort, of deliberately choosing a Christian bakery whose owners they feel may turn them down precisely so that they can raise a fuss. I think some of them do this in order to stir up controversy out of the situation.

    I’ve read that after these stories break, that these bakers who refuse to bake a cake get inundated with the most vile, hate-filled or threatening mail and phone calls from people. They endure a lot of harassment, which I don’t feel is right. One baker was driven totally out of business over it.

  24. @ lemonaidfizz:

    Another interesting way of thinking about this. I was at a political blog a few days ago where people were talking about this. Someone threw out this example.

    Suppose a Christian person approaches a bakery that advertises as, or is known for, being pro-homosexual marriage.

    Suppose that the Christian patron asks the bakers at the pro homosexual bakery to make an anti-homosexuality marriage cake for a Christian, anti-homosexuality marriage rally. Should the pro homosexual marriage bakery be forced to bake such a cake?

    People on the other blog came up with a few other counter examples similar to that.

  25. @ Steve D:

    “if I owned a bakery, I would definitely have baked the wedding cake. We worry way too much about what other people think rather than what God thinks.”
    ++++++++++++++

    yes.

    this whole kerfuffle & everyone in it about not baking a cake for those 2 people getting married…. (from here on out, i’m not addressing you, Steve, but the nameless, faceless cake baker and allies)

    “Hate the sin but love the sinner”. do you, now.

    what about simply affirming their humanity??? you couldn’t even do that? what about being happy for them that they have found love and joy and acceptance with skin on…. have any clue how much hateful rejection is in their wake?? how many times someone has refused to shake their hand when it was extended?
    and you had to turn your back, & make sure they know that you find their love–“finally, at last, I am loved”– that you find it… repulsive.

    come on now, cake baker….. “love the sinner”… what kind of cold-blooded love is that??

    you are a love-fail.

  26. Josh wrote:

    The one has hope, while the other has very little,

    I already addressed that in the post you were replying to: I may never marry. I’m in my 40s. I may never marry, and I am hetero.

    I know hetero men in their 50s (and have seen a few testimonies by hetero singles online in their 50s and 60s) who never married, yet they wanted to marry and to have sex, yet they remained celibate.

    The Bible doesn’t make exceptions on sexual morality based upon sexual proclivities, it doesn’t say homosexuals get a free pass to indulge because they are homosexual. The Bible doesn’t give heterosexuals a free pass at pre marital sex, either.

  27. Josh wrote:

    (I’m not going to play the “who has it worse” game, but given the wholly untrue stereotypes about disease, promiscuity, and pedophilia that some Christians embrace, celibate LGBT people can have a very hard go of it if they want to be honest about their feelings in some churches.)

    P.S.
    Hetero celibates are often assumed by conservative Christians to either be promiscuous, or they are assumed to be lesbian or homosexual.

    If you are a hetero adult over 30, especially over 40 (such as myself) and have never married, you are suspected of being homosexual by some Christians.

    In yet other stereotypes, hetero celibate adult Christians are assumed to be asexual, it is assumed that God completely took our sex drives away, so that being celibate is very easy for us (which is false).

  28. I have a P.S. post to Josh above that is in moderation, so if Josh is here, you may want to visit the page again later to see that reply.

    Nancy wrote:

    as ordered to do things that were clearly unethical, but I could have done it and gotten away with it. And there was money to be made in the process. I was told that if I did not do it, “they” would find somebody who would. That is to say, fire me and replace me with somebody who would do it. I found another job. If you believe something, this sort of thing is bound to happen. When possible, I highly advise loading up one’s camels and moving on to the next oasis. Some battles cannot be won, and often are not worth the fight. But it is necessary to maintain one’s own self-respect, even if other

    They should apply at “Chick Fil A,” I think they close every Sunday. 😆

    I have a family member who is hung up on the Sunday thing. He found out I do my dirty laundry on Sundays, and gave me grief for it. Even though Paul wrote, Romans 14:5,

    One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.

  29. @ Daisy:

    I meant to quote this from Nancy, not the part that showed up in my post:

    There was a case once in a church where we were, when one person refused to work on Sunday, and was therefore unemployed for several months

    That’s who I was referring to when I said he/she should consider working at Chick Fil A.
    t

  30. @ Daisy:

    Having been there and done that, I can see why that got stuck in moderation. 😉

    I wouldn’t have raised the issue if I thought you had addressed it. While you, and any other given straight celibate person may feel your situation to be hopeless, this does not change the fact that it is a different – that is to say, not the same – situation from the hopelessness of telling someone that they are disallowed marriage up front, forever, from whenever they first realize that they’re gay – which may be as early as 12 to 14. You can say that Scripture Is Clear™ about it all you want, but the human dimension of the question compels me to have some sensitivity to how proclamations I might potentially make will be perceived by the LGBT youth with whom I work in my own church environment.

  31. @ Josh: as in, “You, on the other hand, will *never* be allowed to marry (or enter into anything halfway approaching marriage), because God hates homosexual relationships. So you get to experience all the joys of lifelong celibacy, whether you want it or not! God has *not* given you a choice about this!” (Etc., so forth, ad nauseam.)

    For all that I’m being sarcastic, this really IS what gay people are told.

  32. @ Daisy: oh, a lot of people who are entirely outside the evangelical world also assume that unmarried/unpartnered people over a certain age are gay by default. At least, that’s been my experience.

  33. I side with the idea the business owner must be free to follow conscience. Of course, that may mean no one buys any of his or her cakes at all. That is a risk that must be assumed. And I side with those business owners who will simply close the business rather than violate their beliefs.

    Scripture tells me whatever is not of faith is sin. So it really doesn’t matter if you or I or the president thinks they should bake the cake. Their choice. Their conscience.

    Those that support them will buy from them, those that don’t are just as free not to shop with them. Really, if we force them to bake the cake shouldn’t we force those that oppose them to continue to buy from them?

    What think ye of the justices in two counties of NM that now refuse to do any weddings at all? Their consciences forbidding doing them for same sex couples, and refusing to discriminate, they simply do them for no one.

    I can see bakeries, florists, etc who oppose same sex coupling taking the hit financially and simply doing no weddings at all. Should they not have the right to live as they believe?

  34. If I were a baker, then I would bake cakes for any customer, delicious, beautiful cakes. The only thing I would not do is put hateful and profane messages on them, regardless of who wanted them. No discrimination, just an across the board policy. I wouldn’t invite a white supremacist to my home but if one comes into my bakery to pick up a cake, I would sell it to him as a business woman. I may support candidate A in an election, but if candidate B wins and orders a celebration cake, I would make it.

    I do not think the Bible is all that clear on homosexuality. It doesn’t make sense that some people would be born with an attraction to the same sex and that it would be sinful for someone to form a loving and committed relationship with a consenting adult partner of the same gender who feels the same way. Who is hurt? Not my heterosexual marriage! Why should two people who want to be together be told to stay apart and be lonely for their whole lives? What purpose does it serve?

  35. Yes, a baker should be able to refuse in any of the scenarios you mentioned! This should not even be in question. Powers, Stanley, and Merritt are wrong.

  36. On the gay thing.

    My first, middle and last question on this is: what is the Spirit saying to the churches today?

    For many branches of professing Christendom, Scribsher has been the third person of the trinity for so long that the question has no meaning for them.

    And no, I can’t definitively answer my own question. I don’t speak for the whole of the Body of Christ, nor would God ever entrust his whole counsel to me alone. I can contribute to the debate. (But not now, because it’s finally stopped raining and there’s a shedload of stuff to do outside before it starts again!)

  37. There are many who claim that scripture says that women should be homebodies and only homebodies. Should a business person be allowed to deny service to a woman?

    There were many who claimed that their racism was based on their religion. Should they be allowed to deny service to people based on their ethnicity?

    There are many who claim that those with disabilities must have sinned or they would not be disabled. Should they be allowed to discriminate against those with disabilities?

    There was a time when people believed that their faith allowed them to not serve any who did not share their faith, and Catholics were discriminated against on a religious basis. Should that be allowed?

    In some parts of the U.S., property laws allowed for provisions that would prevent non-Christians and non-whites from owning property (btw, non-white included those of Irish, Italian, Asian, African, etc. ancestry). Should that discrimination be allowed?

    What is established law in the U.S. is that, if you are in a business and offer services to the public, you are generally required to sell those same services at the same prices to all comers.

    BTW, what if my religion said that short people, under 5′ 8″ tall are obviously under God’s condemnation, should I be allowed to discriminate? “Short people got no . . ..”

    Allowing discrimination based on the religious beliefs of a business owner can result in a lot of issues that we have fought through as a society. I do not think that thinking people want to go back to the unequal and unjust mistakes that were made in this country that were contrary to the founding principal of equality of rights for all.

  38. An Attorney wrote:

    Dee,
    Based on my religious beliefs, including my belief that discrimination is a sin:
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any legislator who votes in favor of discrimination.
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any business person who refuses to serve people who are different than that business person.
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone from a state that has a “stand your ground” law.
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any person who advocates for the death penalty.
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any legislator who opposes full day pre-k and other educational improvements that will help poor children succeed.
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any pastor who preaches against the equality of women.
    I reserve the right to refuse to serve any pastor who controls the business operations of a church.
    All of those are based on my religious convictions.

    @ Erik:

    An Attorney’s comments need to be re-posted a third time. As I live 8 hours ahead of you all on the East coast of the U.S. hopefully you’ll wake up to read his excellent post again.

  39. linda wrote:

    What think ye of the justices in two counties of NM that now refuse to do any weddings at all? Their consciences forbidding doing them for same sex couples, and refusing to discriminate, they simply do them for no one.

    I believe this narrative requires some clarification, as there are 2 separate issues in NM:

    1) In the middle of 2013, several county clerks (not justices) started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Over the next few months, some clerks in some counties followed suit and issued licenses to gay couples, while other clerks decided not to issue any licenses to any couples, as they were seeking legal clarification via a pending ruling by the State Supreme Court.

    The clerks who stopped issuing any licenses did so out of liability concerns due to the confusion caused by lower court rulings allowing the issuance of licenses to same sex couples in some counties – NOT out of religious convictions.

    From a NY Post article:

    Historically, county clerks in New Mexico have denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples because state statutes include a marriage license application with sections for male and female applicants.

    On 19 December, 2013 the NM State Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to bar same-sex couples from getting marriage licenses. End of subject, as far as NM was concerned.

    2) The following day Roosevelt County, NM Clerk and her Deputy Clerk resigned. According to the press accounts, they made no comment as to the reason for their resignation, though several County Commissioners indicated it was in protest to the NM Supreme Court ruling.

    As for #2 above, the clerk and her deputy have every right to quit their jobs in protest. Just as the county has every right to hire a new clerk and deputy who will uphold state law.

  40. Rafiki wrote:

    1) In the middle of 2013, several county clerks (not justices) started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

    To clarify, these clerks started issuing licenses in response to lower-court rulings.

  41. Aren’t there some legal precedents here? Was it not dealt with at some level about catholic pharmacists and the dispensing of the morning after pill? Seems like I read about that. Maybe “an attorney” can give us some information on that.

    Then there has been the issue as to whether OB-GYN residents should be required to do x number of abortions during residency in order to qualify to take their board exams.

    What I am saying is twofold: (1) there are some real issues that really are established beliefs in actually recognized religions (as opposed to individual idiosyncratic opinions) and (2) if there is court precedent for decision making in this country in these instances it would be good to know where we stand as a country at this point.

    And one more time let me say: I am not a catholic, but there are things about catholicism which I respect. One of the things I respect is their willingness to take a stand and tell anybody who wants to listen “no, and you can’t make me.” I respect that even when I disagree with their conclusions about when to do that. And yes, I too come from pioneer stock some of whom were French catholics who fled France at the time of the revolution, back in the day when the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi were still wild and wooly. And proud of it/them.

  42. One more thing. Apparently some muslims (some branches of islam?) do not want their women to be treated by male physicians. Should the hospitals be forced to have available at all times female physicians because of this, or should these muslims be forced to accept male physicians or do without?

    Think carefully here, because as recently as when I was in school there was real prejudice against Jewish doctors. Where I went to medical school there were quite a few Jewish students from elsewhere, because the school had a policy/reputation of not discriminating against Jews. That’s now blatant it was.

    These are two different issues, in my opinion. One is religion (the muslims) and one was religious bias (against the Jews.) But how do we make laws to cover both kinds of issues while not doing some injustice to somebody?

  43. Why should we be able to discriminate against someone because of how God created them?

    I think it’s firmly established that being gay is not a lifestyle choice but what they are when they are born in the same way that one is born male or female, black, Asian, white, etc. given that, what gives us the right to believe that any of them are, because of that, not worthy of being accepted as an equal member of the human race created in the image of God and, therefore, something less than human and creates a world of oppression.

    To rob someone of their human dignity based solely on their birth is to violate God’s commandment to love one’s neighbor.

  44. Rafiki wrote:

    As for #2 above, the clerk and her deputy have every right to quit their jobs in protest. Just as the county has every right to hire a new clerk and deputy who will uphold state law.

    Good point. For example, i would never, ever go to work for an abortion clinic. If I worked for a clinic that decided to do abortions, I would quit. When we work for the government, we must be prepared to go the way of the government or quit.

    Interesting aside- I was visiting my friends in Norway when gay marriage became the law of the land. As you know, their is a state church in Norway. Shortly after the law passed, the King, who rarely speaks on the matter, issued a statement that he would not impose the necessity to marry a same sex couple on the state pastor if the pastor objected to the new law. I do not know if that has changed.

  45. linda wrote:

    I side with the idea the business owner must be free to follow conscience. Of course, that may mean no one buys any of his or her cakes at all

    Nicholas wrote:

    Yes, a baker should be able to refuse in any of the scenarios you mentioned!

    Perhaps I did not make myself clear. My argument is not from the government imposing laws upon people. My argument is from my perspective as a Christian, not being forced to do anything. I am looking at this through the eyes of a Christian being presented with this opportunity.

    Let me put it this way. When Martin Luther King Jr was protesting discrimination, the law of the land was Jim Crow. I would not have been legally forced to serve an African American. But, the question for me back then would have been, should I, as a Christian, serve an African American. Given my rather pugnacious attitude, I would have and born the consequences.

  46. Nicholas wrote:

    Powers, Stanley, and Merritt are wrong.

    I find this interesting. you believe they are wrong. Is it because of personal convictions or political convictions that you feel this way?

    How would you feel about a white supremacist refusing to serve a Hispanic individual?

  47. Nancy wrote:

    What I am saying is twofold: (1) there are some real issues that really are established beliefs in actually recognized religions (as opposed to individual idiosyncratic opinions) and (2) if there is court precedent for decision making in this country in these instances it would be good to know where we stand as a country at this point.

    I have written several articles for another blog on the Rights of Conscience for health care professionals. Christian Medical Dental Association has taken up this cause and is navigating the tricky minefields associated with issues such a provision of abortion by doctors and provision of abortifacients by pharmacists. I support the lawsuits that are being brought in order to define the issue.

    An interesting story along those lines: My daughter, who is a nurse , was applying for a nursing internship at Vanderbilt a couple of years ago. There is a law that a hospital cannot force health professional to participate in abortions. My daughter showed me a paper that she was required to sign in order to apply. It stated something along the lines that she should be willing to fully participate in all women’s health care (she was applying for an OB/GYN internship) including pregnancy terminations.

    I told her that such a statement was against the agreements that hospitals had made with the government. She called the hospital and they said she didn’t have to sign it. She ended up not applying.

    A few weeks later, another nursing student in Texas applying for that job brought the sheet to a lawyer because she was fearful that they would force her to assist in abortions. Vanderbilt had to do a quick back track.

    http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/12/vanderbilt-abandons-policy-forcing-nursing-students-to-do-abortions/

    I believe that these issues should be debated in the public square and in the courts. And many attorney organizations will take on these fights pro bono. I believe in the debate. I also believe that people should not be forced to perform same sex marriages or abortions since both of those are actual provision of direct service.

    As a Christian, however, I believe that there are many ways to deal with the issues surrounding the actual act. For example, should a Christian florist be forced to bring flowers to a woman who just had an abortion? I don’t like “forced.” But wouldn’t it be good if a florist could take that opportunity to enter into the life of that woman and seek to understand her?

    Also, on the issue of forced-when should the government step in? What about issues of race, gender, etc. This is all very complex and not for the faint of heart.

    Enough rambling by me.

  48. @ Anonymous:
    See my answer to Nancy here@ dee:

    I wasn’t arguing this from the perspective of forced law. I, too, don’t like it but, as you know, sometimes the law must be changed in order to stop destructive policies such as Jim Crow.

    My argument came from “me as a Christian” dealing with this issue. Christians have chosen same sex marriages as their cause du jour but often overlook other sins because ..whatever.

    My guess is this baker has made wedding cakes for multiple divorced individuals getting married for the umpteenth time. How does one pick and choose when to “stand up.” Also, on the standing up issue, that couple if going to get married-cake or no cake. In fact, as time goes on, I believe same sex marriages will be allowed in all 50 states. Do we just protest each and every marriage and refuse to serve them or do we enter into their lives and show love and care.

    I bet Jesus “celebrated” dinners with all sorts of people who were doing things “wrong.” Yet His wonderful grace was presented to them in the context of food and wine.

    Truly, I am not making an argument from laws. I am arguing from love.

  49. Couple of points of clarification:

    Justices, not court clerks, in Eddy and Chaves county NM now do not do weddings, not about issuing licenses. They do so based on their personal convictions. They do not discriminate, as they do not do hetero or homo sexual unions in order not to be required to do the homo unions.

    And questions of law are not questions of “should” a florist or baker do this or that as a believer. Point is should they be forced to do so against their convictions? Relatives in NM are actually hearing rumors (hope they are just that, rumors) that those with the convictions who choose to do no form of weddings at all and take the financial hit (bakers, florists, bed and breakfasts, etc) will not be allowed to make that choice. If you did them in the past you must continue. Would you support that idea?

  50. @ brad/futuristguy:
    Brad is there some kind of beginners guide to this kind of systems analysis? I learn SO much from your comments here & feel it is a way of perceiving a wider range of aspects of a situation than I can currently manage. I also feel it’s really important to help those caught in seemingly watertight religious systems, as some of them seem impenetrable to normal means.

    Any ideas for some introductory reading? I feel this will also be useful to me in my current Master’s programme, Youth Work (British sense) & Community Learning & Development.

    Thank you for all your fantastic (& kind) comments here. You wield your immense learning like a feather, not a cudgel.

  51. @ Nancy:

    Nancy, I would expect all the godly bakers and photographers and florists who are refusing to provide services to some members of the general public to stand side by side, strongly and proudly, with the group of Salafist Somali cabdrivers in Minneapolis who refused to take any passengers carrying duty-free alcohol purchases.

    Surely they’d all be on board with such an ecumenical initiative by people of faith, right? (sound of crickets chirping …)

  52. I think when you make the choice to offer a service to the public, you also make the choice to serve all members of the public who come to your place of business to purchase that service, without regard to their personal characteristics. Otherwise, find something else to do for a living.

    As a Christian, I would take the opportunity to share a message of love with the clientele. E.g., my sign off on the telephone to clients: Remember that God loves you.

  53. @ numo:

    ‘Tis still early in the day, numo, and this place is filled with interesting folk. 🙂

    Such as the continuum put forth by Brad from mono-cultural to trans-cultural. Think of the implications for so many spheres of human endeavour:

    brad/futuristguy wrote:

    Transcultural = we see the need for “the other” and realize if we do not embrace them and learn from them, we (and they) *cannot* become all that we were designed to be, either individually or corporately.
    The term transcultural has been around a couple decades at least, but has been used far more often to mean being culturally sensitive or “contextualizing” in the midst of cross-cultural situations. But transcultural studies in the sense I’m using the term is an emerging academic field that is highly interdisciplinary. As far as I’ve been able to find out, only the University of Heidelberg has advanced degree programs in this perspective at this time.
    http://www.transcultural.uni-hd.de/

  54. My faith says that overeating is a sin. If I am a baker, can I refuse to sell cakes to an obese person?

    My faith says that overindulgence in worldly goods is a sin. Can I refuse to provide building related services for Steven Furtick’s new mansion? Can I refuse to provide services to a man who shows up in a $100,000 plus sports car?

    The point is, people are not responding to the fact of someone sinning, even visibly, but to a particular sin (?sin du jour?). They are discriminating against some kinds of sin but not others. It is a pharisaic sort of behavior, not a Christian one.

  55. Beakerj wrote:

    Brad is there some kind of beginners guide to this kind of systems analysis?

    Thanks for your kind comment, Beakerj … much of what I learn comes out of questions that emerge from real-world experiences (many of them my mistakes and mess-ups!) rather than academic thought exercises. So, it’s good to hear that some of that “externalizing” of my thought processes connects and was helpful.

    With introductory systems thinking, two books come to mind. The first is the theory, the second applies the theory to ecology and gives a great example that shows how to build concept upon concept in ways that keep the links between different layers/elements intact (which is a key aspect of systems).

    Stepping in Wholes: Introduction to Complex Systems, by Jim Ollhoff and Michael Walcheski. ISBN 0971930406.

    http://www.amazon.com/Stepping-Wholes-Introduction-Complex-Systems/dp/0971930406/

    Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment, by Center for Ecoliteracy, foreword by Michael Pollan. ISBN 9780981840901.

    http://www.acornnaturalists.com/store/BIG-IDEAS-Linking-Food-Culture-Health-and-the-Environment-Center-for-Ecoliteracy-P6009C0.aspx

    For getting perspective on theology and how some WESTERN theological systems are analytic/dividing, and some more paradoxical, Robert Webber is one of the best. Two books that he wrote or edited are helpful. First one tracks ancient, medieval, and Reformation/modern examples from church history on four different systems where the Reformation versions would be: Calvinism, Lutheran, Anabaptist, and then Webber’s holistic-integrative theological approach.

    The Secular Saint: A Case for Evangelical Social Responsibility, by Robert Webber. ISBN 1592446302.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Secular-Saint-Evangelical-Responsibility/dp/1592446302/

    Second one is a volume of essays from the 1970s from a holistic perspective that doesn’t split personal salvation from social ministry. These were the essays that fleshed out “The Chicago Call” on the subject of reforging a holistic evangelicalism. My copy is hiding in a box somewhere in my office, so as best I can remember, this was their riff on some key issues in the Lausanne Covenant — so it would be fascinating to get a copy and compare what is there to the more recent Cape Town Commitment documents that Dee referred to!

    The Orthodox Evangelicals: Who They Are and What They Are Saying, edited by Robert Webber. ISBN 0840756542.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Orthodox-Evangelicals-Robert-Webber/dp/0840756542/

    Since you’re in youth work and community learning/development, I think this set would be the best combination of recommendations that probably tie in well with your passion and giftings. Hope these suggestions are of help …

    More in next comment.

  56. An Attorney wrote:

    If I am a baker, can I refuse to sell cakes to an obese person?

    Off topic…

    I remember a stand-up comic years ago suggesting an analogy between barmen and restaurant waiters. Since a barman has a responsibility to refuse to serve someone who is already drunk (and in some places it is illegal for him to do so), the comic wondered whether one should attach the same responsibilities to waiters. So: if a really overweight person enters a restaurant, should the waiter tell him, I’m sorry, sir – I think you’ve had enough ?

  57. CONTINUED Beakerj wrote:

    Brad is there some kind of beginners guide to this kind of systems analysis?

    … meanwhile, on all that transcultural stuff, I don’t know of any entry-level books yet. What I’m working on is close to that, and it puts it in the context of social entrepreneurship and establishing projects and programs that keep a “quadruple bottom line” [QBL] intact with doing good plus doing no harm to people/community, planet/ecology, profits/economy, and personal and social transformation/spirituality. It also will address how to create a safe environment for teamwork, which includes a lot of what I’ve learned from reflections on being a survivor of spiritual abuse. For more about QBL, which is a systems approach to ministry goals, see this tutorial:

    http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/tutorial-01/

    The book is almost the equivalent of a training manual for discipling among post-Christendom people groups in the “none” category — consider themselves spiritual, but no specific religious affiliation — by working together on community development/charitable cause endeavors that make a difference in our world. Instead of my writing a book for ministry outreach and then translating it for a community audience, I decided to just do one book for the general audience, which translates the concepts for church planters and Christian social entrepreneurs.

    Anyway, you being from the UK, Beakerj, you might be especially interested to know that I’m using Band Aid, Live Aid, and We Are The World as a major case study for how to implement projects with a composited team that includes people with different sets of informational, organizational, and relational skills — which I see as a systems approach to team-building. I’ll analyze how they functioned as a team, how they accepted critiques and made course corrections, and how together they changed the default on charitable giving in the West. Coming up on the 30th anniversaries of these, and some of the projects they catalyzed in Africa are still going. For tutorials on learning styles and how they relate to transformational teamwork, and different approaches to “unity” see:

    http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/tutorial-11/ [learning styles]

    http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/tutorial-12/ [transformational teamwork]

    http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/tutorial-16/ [collaboration/unity, which gives clues to some key differences among theological approaches about who wants to isolate, who wants to control others, and who wants to welcome others.]

    The good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t freeze due to the “polar vortex” thing, this curriculum book should be available in a few months. After that, then I get to do what I’ve been waiting for like five years to get to — a book on diagnosing destructive/toxic/spiritually abusive systems and (re)constructing transformative/healthy/spiritually safe systems.

  58. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    An Attorney wrote:

    If I am a baker, can I refuse to sell cakes to an obese person?

    Off topic…

    I remember a stand-up comic years ago suggesting an analogy between barmen and restaurant waiters. Since a barman has a responsibility to refuse to serve someone who is already drunk (and in some places it is illegal for him to do so), the comic wondered whether one should attach the same responsibilities to waiters. So: if a really overweight person enters a restaurant, should the waiter tell him, I’m sorry, sir – I think you’ve had enough ?

    To be honest, Nick, the overdrinker is refused because we don’t want him to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and possibly do harm to others. It’s unlikely that an overeater would do immediate harm behind a wheel. ‘I’ would want both to think about what they are doing to themselves as well, but one I would definitely and forcefully stop.

  59. @ Nick Bulbeck:

    Here in the states we just went through a hassle about changes in the school lunch programs because the federal government thought that there was too much childhood obesity. The way they solved it was to feed everybody less (fewer calories.) It did not go too well. Lots of ridicule and jokes about the food police.

  60. @ Beakerj:

    Have you gone to his website? Tap his moniker or use the link on the right side of TWW home page. I have looked a bit over there, but haven’t gone to the depths 🙂

  61. An Attorney wrote:

    As a Christian, I would take the opportunity to share a message of love with the clientele. E.g., my sign off on the telephone to clients: Remember that God loves you.

    In my former line of work, there would be two serious limitations to that approach. First, not everybody likes having religious comments aimed in their direction. And second, there is some feeling that people who “rely on” religion instead of expertise in the workplace, probably are not very good at what they do.

    But, perhaps it might work in some lines of work. Setting up a litmus test for people based on how “religiously” they deal with their client and/or patient base would be a bad idea however.

  62. An Attorney wrote:

    @ An Attorney:
    Unless of course, I get the opportunity to try to convince them of the error of their ways, by being nice to them, as commanded by our Lord.

    I’ve never argued with a lawyer before and will probably love to regret this, but:
    Jesus never told us to be “nice” to people, He told us, and also demonstrated it btw, to love them, and speak the Truth in Love. Not quite the same thing as being “nice”.

  63. Beakerj wrote:

    @ brad/futuristguy:
    Brad is there some kind of beginners guide to this kind of systems analysis?

    Hi Beakerj … I got some suggestions together and posted two comments. They’re in moderation at the moment due to having multiple links in them, but watch for ’em. B-

  64. Nancy wrote:

    But, perhaps it might work in some lines of work. Setting up a litmus test for people based on how “religiously” they deal with their client and/or patient base would be a bad idea however.

    You’d end up comparing JJPMs: Jesus Jukes per Minute.

  65. @ Rafiki: When I read his comment last night, I realized that I am pretty much in the “transcultural” camp. There are times that I have difficulty communicating what I see, given that my perspective is a wee bit out of synch with most other folks”. Though truth to tell, I haven’t spent much time outside of the US (or even in different regions of this country), so in lots of ways, I’m probably very much “monocultural” as well.

  66. dee wrote:

    My argument came from “me as a Christian” dealing with this issue. Christians have chosen same sex marriages as their cause du jour but often overlook other sins because ..whatever.

    Because Homosexuality(TM) is the OTHER Guys SIN, not your own.
    THEM, Not US.
    Amirite, Ted Haggard?

  67. linda wrote:

    Justices, not court clerks, in Eddy and Chaves county NM now do not do weddings, not about issuing licenses.

    I just read that as “Ed, Edd, Eddy, and Chavez County NM.”

    (I’m not supposed to be wiped out like that until late in the day…)

  68. @ An Attorney: I would never be able to sign off on the phone that way unless I knew the client pretty well. Not a criticism, btw – just something that is probably a cultural difference as much as anything else. (Am from the Mid-Atlantic states, in an area where evangelicalism is around but is not a dominant force.)

  69. NarrowistheWay wrote:

    Jesus never told us to be “nice” to people, He told us, and also demonstrated it btw, to love them, and speak the Truth in Love. Not quite the same thing as being “nice”.

    That is correct. That is what He said. I believe that with all my heart. We ought to do that.

    At the same time He never demonstrated gratuitous rudeness or incivility. The thing is, He never gave any specific instructions as to when and how to speak the truth, in love or otherwise. There is some teaching and some practice among some fundamentalists (have I said “some” enough?) that being in-your-face obnoxious for Jesus is the way to do. They teach that eliciting anger is better than being ignored, and so go verbally slap somebody up side the head every chance you get. It is a sad and serious thing to take the words of Jesus, which He did say, and then misapply them in such a way as to misrepresent the heart of Jesus.

    I am not saying that is what you are saying. Not at all. I am saying that there are some who do, and it is not OK what and how they do.

  70. Daisy wrote:

    It’s an assumption that also pops up every time someone like Al Mohler or preacher Mark Driscoll open their mouths to tell Christian singles to marry by the time they are 21 to avoid sexual sin, because they have no conception that anyone can be disciplined enough to abstain, even though everyone can.

    Re Mark “Bee Jay” Driscoll, I don’t think that guy’s capable of even thinking of abstaining from sex (at least for more than one or two days), so in his case it may be “I have Problem X, SO ALL OF YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM!”

    I sometimes see a very strange double standard by some post-evangelicals, liberal Christians, and even some conservatives, where they ‘give the green light’ to homosexuals to have pre-marital sex, but heterosexuals are still expected by them to remain celibate.

    But celibacy and virginity are what those Romish Papists do!
    (Or does that even enter into the picture these days, over 400 years down the road from the Great Reformation?)

    Anyway, it sounds like celibate hetero people (and Christians) have some of the same problems and stereotypes to deal with from Christian culture as celibate homosexuals do.

    Compounded if you’re “different” in other ways from Christianese culture. Not just never-married singleness, but additionally preferring Dee & Dee (the FRP game, not the TWW bloggers) to Bible Study and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (and its vast outpouring of secondary fan-generated content) to Left Behind.

  71. dee wrote:

    Enough rambling by me.

    You are not rambling at all Dee. We are a vast society based on the pluralism our founders did their best to accommodate. How do we move forward with their vision? How do we guarantee the rights of the few when they are in conflict with the rights of the many? There are no easy answers.

  72. @ numo:

    Numo, I think I am transcultural at heart myself, although will admit to perhaps being utilitarian about it, in the way that Brad describes:

    The term transcultural has been around a couple decades at least, but has been used far more often to mean being culturally sensitive or “contextualizing” in the midst of cross-cultural situations.

    But of late I too have been thinking about the concept as it relates to issues of faith and governance. Again, as Brad describes it: “we see the need for “the other” and realize if we do not embrace them and learn from them, we (and they) *cannot* become all that we were designed to be, either individually or corporately.”

  73. brad/futuristguy wrote:

    Beakerj wrote:

    @ brad/futuristguy:
    Brad is there some kind of beginners guide to this kind of systems analysis?

    Hi Beakerj … I got some suggestions together and posted two comments. They’re in moderation at the moment due to having multiple links in them, but watch for ‘em. B-

    Thank you so much for these Brad! I have been to your site but currently with a big reading list it’s easier for me to have some specific things to concentrate on because I’m basically interested in everything. It’s all so fascinating & enlightening.

    More power to your pen/cursor/pixel!

  74. Glad that framework on cultures has been useful. I thought I’d written something somewhere about the meanings sometimes used of transcultural. Turns out it’s on my blog. I’d forgotten that I’d posted this. It’s in the center section of this article:

    http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/getting-the-big-picture-part-2/

    Cut-and-pasted here:

    What Does “Transcultural” Mean?

    After some recent research, at last I finally figured out that the particular interdisciplinary field I work in is called “transcultural studies.” It all came together when I ran across this quote:

    **In this book, transcultural is defined as a form of culture created not from within separate spheres, but in the holistic forms of diverse cultures. It is based on the principle that a single culture, in and of itself, is incomplete and requires interaction and dialogue with other cultures.”** [Back cover, Transcultural Realities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Relations.]

    Transcultural studies is an emerging academic discipline that uses an integrative, interdisciplinary approach. As of 2013, it looks like only the University of Heidelberg has advanced degrees in it. However, my research showed that the term transcultural still has not settled into just one clear definition.

    Transcultural is used by some – mostly international nursing professionals – for what cross-cultural workers would call cultural contextualization. This involves listening to people in your host culture carefully, avoiding language and behaviors they find offensive, and serving with ways and means that they find appropriate. It puts the weight of responsibility on us as guests to transcend our own cultural assumptions and norms in order to be of service to our hosts. It makes sense that nurses would be sensitive to these kinds of cultural concerns, because they relate so personally and intimately with medical patients, their families, and their communities. Cultural missteps by nurses could set off a chain of events that proves fatal to their patients.

    Meanwhile, for workers in politics, business, or economics, transcultural is sometimes interchangeable with the term transnational. This involves issues or organizations that affect audiences beyond the usual geopolitical boundaries.

    I focus on the integrative processes and practices involved with strength-based teamwork and collaborating, where some other individual, group, or culture has a strength that covers my/our limitations, and vice versa. That is closest to the quote in the Transcultural Realities book. It’s just not the same as multiple cultures co-existing (merely sharing the same geographical space), or multiculturalism (appreciating differences between cultures), or interculturalism (actively communicating, learning, and working together).

    My kind of transculturalism is a deeper form of compositing than any of these. It revolves around a spirit of hospitality, and I believe that welcoming attitude lends itself to a stronger emphasis on respectful and productive dialog. And so, it really seems to fit best with activities that integrate personal and social transformation. When we connect with people who are different from ourselves, and embrace those differences as ultimately positive, there is much we can learn relationally to fill in the gaps and file off the excesses in our personal paradigm.

    [END CLIP]

    I also think we’ll find some fuel for reflection on Dee’s initial question [“Why do we put up barriers? I love to meet and dialogue with people who are different from me.”] from Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator (MBTI) and the J/P — Judge/Perceive — continuum. Black-and-white thinking isn’t just about either/or and analysis and dividing this from that, it’s also about the speed and permanence of coming to closure on our thinking processes. J/Judge is more about coming to closure more quickly and firmly; P/Perceive is about keeping more “open minded” i.e., not coming to closure, seeking more information, seeing what else unfolds before making a (final) decision.

    Each has its own potentially toxic tendency: J/Judge to be hardcore judgmental, not hear more evidence, not give people a second chance. P/Perceive to be addicted to “the seek” and not about “the find.” (This is something we tended to see among some people where I live, who rotated to and through different seeker-sensitive churches plus other spirituality groups.)

  75. NarrowistheWay wrote:

    An Attorney wrote:

    @ An Attorney:
    Unless of course, I get the opportunity to try to convince them of the error of their ways, by being nice to them, as commanded by our Lord.

    I’ve never argued with a lawyer before and will probably love to regret this, but:
    Jesus never told us to be “nice” to people, He told us, and also demonstrated it btw, to love them, and speak the Truth in Love. Not quite the same thing as being “nice”.

    However, he did tell us to be both gentle & kind, which along with being loving, does pretty much mean that we will be pleasant to them, not ranters. Unless of course you subscribe to the fundi dictionary where everything that ‘sounds’ pleasant, such as kindness, is redefined to mean a form of harsh ‘nasty tasting medicinal’ religiousness, instead of anything we would normally recognise by those words.

  76. Sorry if I’m interrupting here but I wanted to share that I left a comment this afternoon at sgmsurvivors.com which immediately went into moderation, and then vanished.

    Usually when a comment is in moderation you can still see it there and on your computer. Mine appears to have been removed and deleted altogether, which happened within seconds after it was submitted, but not before I was able to capture the screenshot.

    If you go and look at the sgmsurvivors.com site, the comments have stopped at #57 as of the time of this writing. My comment was #58 and like I said – it’s gone. Poof! It’s unlikely but possible that my comment was moved out of moderation and deleted by accident, but I have my doubts only because this has happened several times to me before there in the past.

    I took a screenshot because I suspected it would be removed and blocked from being posted and it appears I was right.

    I was one of the first commenters on the sgmsurvivors.com site when it launched in Nov. of 2007.

    If interested you can read my comment under the “My Comment Was Deleted” Section.

    Thanks.

    http://thewartburgwatch.com/my-comment-was-deleted/

  77. Someone else has posted a comment at sgmsurvivors.com and it’s been given #58, so that confirms it.

  78. An Attorney wrote:

    I think when you make the choice to offer a service to the public, you also make the choice to serve all members of the public who come to your place of business to purchase that service, without regard to their personal characteristics. Otherwise, find something else to do for a living.

    Interesting comment. How would you apply it to your practice as an attorney in the following hypothetical situation.

    An individual wants to open say a sex shop that sells pornographic movies and to do so needs a zoning variance from the city. If the individual can’t obtain a zoning variance, the sex shop won’t open in the city.

    You, as an attorney, have established a specialized practice in real estate, have extensive experience in advising clients applying for zoning variances, are highly respected as the most capable attorney in the area of zoning variances, and are very successful in obtaining zoning variances for your clients.

    What do you do?

    Tell the individual that you won’t take the work because of your personal religious belief regarding sex shops?
    Tell the individual that you won’t take the work without an explanation?
    Tell the individual there are other attorneys that can do the work, but that would not be truthful because the other attorneys have referred the individual to you because your expertise.
    Take the work and do a poor job which ensures that the client won’t get the required zoning variance. But doing a poor job would be deceiving your client because the client is expecting your best.

    Thoughts?

  79. @ Joe:

    The computer cut me off before I could include the following,

    Take the work and do an outstanding job which provides your client the greatest probability of obtaining a zoning variance. If the zoning variance is issued, consider you did a job well done – even though the sex shop sells pornographic movies, and may feature live naked women dancing, all of which are not in accord with your religious beliefs.

  80. @ Joe:

    If I choose to not represent the person, it would be for reasons other than my personal religious commitments.

    First, the activity is quite likely not legal, either in general, in the community or in the location. I am not obliged to represent someone seeking to establish an business location to perform an illegal activity.

    Second, that business would not be consistent with the interests of the public and the community would be advanced by this particular business, and I have a professional ethical commitment to the good of the community. BTW, I would not represent a number of industries seeking variances in my community if I did not perceive them to be in the interest of the community, including waste disposal and transportation, many chemical plants, private prisons, etc.

    Third, obtaining variances for the porn industry is not a service that I offer, never have, never will. It is like criminal defense — I don’t do it, not out of anything but I limit my practice to areas with expertise and I have none in criminal defense. I also have none with respect to the porn industry, and I know there are special issues that affect those seeking variances for that use that I have not studied and do not know well enough to be an effective representative.

    And I think that to represent such a business, a lawyer needs to be from outside the locality. As I practice in a county with circa 200,000 people and not in a larger one, it would be a poor business decision for me to represent that business. But if asked, I would make a referral to an out of town law firm that has represented those industries in the past.

    I do not offer representation regarding issues that I am not confident of my capability to perform or do not have experience that I believe necessary to perform. As an example, I refer all civil rights cases, all criminal cases, bankruptcies, large estate planning (I do those under $3,000,000, but not over). I do not represent abusers in family law cases, but do represent victims of abuse. I do not represent wealthy persons in divorce cases, and I do not represent people in family law cases where the other party is represented by one of several “win at all costs” attorneys, as opposed to those seeking equitable and fair outcomes.

  81. @ Joe:

    I work hard to achieve a good outcome for all of my clients and usually refuse when I do not see how I can do that. I will not take money to do something that I do not believe I can actually accomplish or that I do not believe to be in the best interest of the prospective client.

  82. Correction:

    Second, that business would not be consistent with the interests of the public and the community would NOT be advanced by this particular business, and I have a professional ethical commitment to the good of the community.

  83. @ NarrowistheWay:

    “Jesus never told us to be “nice” to people, He told us, and also demonstrated it btw, to love them, and speak the Truth in Love. Not quite the same thing as being “nice”.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++

    Narrowistheway, in Christian culture “love” means everything from sugar syrup to acid. all manner of manipulation is cloaked in “a desire to care for” and “a desire to love you” (a la Brad House of Mars Hill infamy — i’ll never get over that one).

    since Christian culture has redefined “love” beyond all recognition, your statement sounds good but actually means nothing.

    please explain what you mean by “love”.

  84. If I am not a nice person to them, it is hard to see how they would perceive that as loving.

  85. elastigirl wrote:

    Christian culture has redefined “love” beyond all recognition, your statement sounds good but actually means nothing.

    Darn straight. Now love means to discipline them for their sins, with emphasis on the word “their.” They always choose sins with which they are not troubled unless they are desperately trying to hide that they do have problems kind of like Ted Haggard.

  86. dee wrote:

    Darn straight. Now love means to discipline them for their sins, with emphasis on the word “their.”

    “Mommie Dearest is doing all this to you because she loves you — AAAAAAUGH!!!! I SAID NO WIRE COATHANGERS!!!!!!!!!”

  87. An Attorney wrote:

    And I think that to represent such a business, a lawyer needs to be from outside the locality. As I practice in a county with circa 200,000 people and not in a larger one, it would be a poor business decision for me to represent that business.

    As in “I gotta live in this town afterwards.”

    Now rig for flak about your cowardice and lukewarmness and apostasy, with chapter-and-verse proof texts from “To Kill a Mockingbird”. All from those who DON’T have to live in this town.

  88. Muff Potter wrote:

    You are not rambling at all Dee. We are a vast society based on the pluralism our founders did their best to accommodate.

    Which presents a problem for all the “Hooray, Hooray for the ONE TRUE WAY!” types.

  89. @ Josh (if you’re still reading):

    Off topic (and I really don’t want this to turn into a threadjack because it has the potential to be a VERY hot button), since you obviously have more experience with LGBT issues than I do, do you have any pointers as to where I can go to start researching various Christian views on transgender issues/gender dysphoria? Does Side A and Side B have any relevance here or is that just for gay issues? Please forgive any massive ignorance on my part.

    I need this for an IRL situation that I’m not sure I have clearance from the person in question to talk about here.

  90. Anonymous wrote:

    The people who bake those cakes get to have the last say.

    It seems the rest of your argument is about the shop owner and his or her religious rights, but here you are talking about the religious rights of the workers (“the people who bake the cakes”), correct? But I doubt the people who actually bake the cakes have the last say.

  91. I think the problem here is that we are talking about what kind of people we are selling our services to rather than focussing on what kind of products or services we are selling.

    Jesus said that proof of our sonship is being like the Father who rains on the just and the unjust, meaning he does good to all.

    So, I believe that we all have a right to sell or serve certain things but we do not have a right as Christians to pick who we serve those to.

    I believe that the local pharmacy here in town had every right to refuse to sell abortifacients or any drug for that matter. If the company who manufactures it wants to set up a pharmacy right next door they have the right to.
    I do not believe that they should be able to discriminate who they sell the birth control pill to if they choose to sell it.

    And for a lawyer, if they sell services regarding zoning laws need to stick to the laws regarding them but should also be free tell the would be client just what they think about their business and also alert all the watch groups and neighbors in the area so they can fight against it. That would be how a lawyer should take a financial hit.

    My husband and I own a commercial painting business. We pick and choose certain projects that we will paint but we don’t pick the people who we paint for. That is our business ethics.

  92. @ An Attorney:
    So, kind of going along with my thinking, I want to understand what you said. Are you saying that you would not serve these kinds of people with any of your services or only if the service they are requiring has something to do with those beliefs. I mean like if someone who believes in the death penalty just needs to have a will drawn.

  93. @ Patti:

    Like the kosher deli which would not sell ham, but would not refuse roast beef to the goyim? Sounds like good business practice.

    When I was a child there was a Jewish bookstore in our town, one which my father and I visited often. The owner would not talk to or do business with women, but his daughter in law worked in the store also and dealt with the women for him. Dad said it was some religious thing.

    I think that both business owners on the one hand, and customers on the other hand, have to be willing to accommodate each other is such situations. If the business owner is not willing to do that, then he can suffer the business consequences such as they may be. And if the customer is not willing to do that, then he can shop elsewhere.

  94. @ Nancy:

    Nothing of what I am saying is intended to apply to essential services, like police and fire and emergency med etc, etc. But cakes? Really? Legal paper? Lawyers are pretty thick on the ground. “An attorney” ought to be free to do whatever he thinks he needs to. The doctor, however, should not be allowed to let people die if it can be helped.

    Summary: not all the same rules apply to everybody.

  95. I also believe that any sellers of education should not deny courses to anyone either.
    On the simplest level I still hold a grudge against my high school for not allowing me to take shop and a guy friend who was not allowed to take home economics due to our genders.

  96. @ Nancy:
    I still think that it’s the business owner that should take the hit, not the customer. The Jewish bookstore owner takes one financial hit by hiring a female to help him keep his legalism and another by having to close his shop if she calls in sick. If he is open for selling books then he should sell to anyone and treat everyone with the same courtesy. Just my opinion.
    I see nothing wrong with entrepreneurs targeting certain clientele that they would like to see most of their business come from. They can move into already established areas or create atmospheres that they know certain people types of people like. I think of apartment building owners. I don’t think we should discriminate there either.
    I just can’t imagine that Jesus, being a carpenter would have denied building a house for someone

  97. @ Patti:

    Yeah, that was dumb. Sorry that happened to you all. In my high school class my senior year there were three of us girls who signed up for physics. The rest were boys, not saying that it was a tiny class. Anyhow the teacher refused to have girls in his physics class. Physics? What the? So the father of one of the girls went to the principal and they had “words” of some vigorous sort. And that is how we all got to take physics that year. BTW, we graduated with the top three grade positions in the class. A little opposition can be huge motivation, I guess.

    Years later, when I was about to graduate from college, and it became known to the school that I had signed up for the MCAT, the Dean of Women called me in and tried her best to tell me what a tragic mistake I was about to make with my life. After all, “nice” girls just did not go to med school. And truth be told, back then, not many girls of any kind did. Anyhow, I about had to bite my tongue off to get out of her office without saying way too much.

    The educational process has tried to bite a hunk out of a lot of people at one time or another.

  98. I am not really sure where I stand on the issue with the baker and cake for the homosexual couple. If a law is created stating we have to serve everyone regardless…what happens when the satanist goes into the christian book store and wants them to carry the satanic bible? Can the muslim go into the corner deli and force them to carry halal foods? I know that sounds a bit extreme, but this whole issue could turn into a very slippery slope.

  99. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/manhattanproject/2014/02/biblical-case-for-freedom-of-conscience/

    Not wishing to wade in too deeply on this controversial but topical subject,in following the debate between Kirstin Powers and Erickson on the Daily Beast etc, I was directed the the ‘Manhattan Project’ signed in 2007 signed by many but notably the late Charles Colson..on the Biblical case for Freedom of Conscience..

    Knowing that the Dr.Martin Luther King was quoted on one side of the debate, I thought that the following quote may ‘even up the playing field’

    There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience.”

    King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

    Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

    Whatever the outcome of the present debate,trivial as it may seem to some, it surely is an harbinger of things to come..If not now-when? If not this? what..?

  100. Grace71 wrote:

    Can the muslim go into the corner deli and force them to carry halal foods? I know that sounds a bit extreme, but this whole issue could turn into a very slippery slope.

    Let me explain myself on this matter. I am not arguing this point from the role of government and laws. I have some political views but I try to keep those separate from the blog.

    I am looking at this through the eyes of Christian who wants to be a witness to the world through sharing the love of Jesus. I am not saying there is a right or wrong answer but let me take a stab at this.

    If I was a Christian selling food and there was a Muslim who wanted me to supply Halal foods, I could say no but…there could be another answer? What if I wanted to share the love of Jesus with this population? By sacrificing to carry such foods, perhaps I could show them that I care about them and that I want to help them. Maybe then they might look at me as a decent human who gives a hoot. Perhaps that would open up some doors for us to get to know each other.

    Her demand for Halal may be God letting me know that there is a neighbor who needs something. So many people spend a lot of money going on short term missions. What if there was a long term mission in my own neighborhood?

    Pete Briscoe once said that he believed that God was sending lots of immigrants (documented and undocumented) because most of us have not gotten off our duffs and cared about the world. So God is bringing the world to us.

  101. Here is another point of view:

    What if I were Orthodox Jewish, and ran a kosher deli? Suppose a Christian comes in, wanting me to cater their wedding and the main dish is a pork dish? Surely we would not expect that, given the blowtorching the oven, the difficulties in restoring the kitchen to kosher status before any other person could served.

    Should a Christian be expected to participate in anyway in what they believe to be a sin, just to keep patrons happy or make people love us? Should a convenience store owned by someone in a holiness denomination that promises not to participate in gambling be forced to close the store or carry lottery tickets, as the folks in the neighborhood want to gamble?

    Why not allow business owners to make those decisions for themselves? Why not let those who’s consciences allow participate, and those who cannot do so without believing they incur sin not participate? Why not let the free market have a chance to either support or close the business?

    It really isn’t the issue the Jim Crow laws raise. To not serve a coke to someone based on race is wrong. To refuse to serve a coke and rum if you believe that to be sin is not wrong. This issue is more in the latter area.

    It isn’t a matter of the business owner discriminating. It IS a matter of them refusing to do something they believe is a sin.

  102. dee wrote:

    f I was a Christian selling food and there was a Muslim who wanted me to supply Halal foods, I could say no but…there could be another answer? What if I wanted to share the love of Jesus with this population? By sacrificing to carry such foods, perhaps I could show them that I care about them and that I want to help them. Maybe then they might look at me as a decent human who gives a hoot. Perhaps that would open up some doors for us to get to know each other. 

     

    Surely Dee..the difference is in selling or not selling Halal food.. you are the one making the choice..There is no law that compels you to do or not do this…Your motives for doing so would be a matter between you and God.. To compel you to sell Halal or Kosher and accuse you of discrimination for not doing so is another matter… I don't believe the 2 examples are the same.. If the Christian Baker refuses to make a cake against their conscience and breaks what many see as an unjust law then like Dietrech Bonhoffer,they should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions….

  103. Grace71 wrote:

    I am not really sure where I stand on the issue with the baker and cake for the homosexual couple. If a law is created stating we have to serve everyone regardless…what happens when the satanist goes into the christian book store and wants them to carry the satanic bible? Can the muslim go into the corner deli and force them to carry halal foods? I know that sounds a bit extreme, but this whole issue could turn into a very slippery slope.

    I don’t think we would ever get to the point where the government would require stores to carry certain products to please certain customers. A comparable issue to the wedding cake example (since the baker already was selling wedding cakes) would be whether the Christian bookstore owner would sell a Bible to a Satanist. I fervently hope that Satanists will decide to read the Bible and that store owners will sell it to them!

  104. @ Rusty:
    Please see my answer to Grace. i am not arguing this from the law. In fact, I have written extensively on the right of conscience for a medical group. I am arguing this fully from a personal Christian perspective. I do not say there is one way to respond. I am against forcing people to do anything.

    However, I want to make a really strong point. Christians are very good at overlooking lots of sins (especially the ones that they are guilty of) and pointing out the one or two that they don’t struggle with.

    I would be far more impressed if a Christian baker applied their concerns over morals to refusing to serve churches and pastors who cover up pedophile situations or churches that honor businessmen who are know for playing hardball business games that hurt people. Today, the only immorality that Christian seem to speak out against is homosexuality and that is usually spoken out against by those who do not struggle in this area.

    For my part, the more I think about this, the more I wonder if I, as a Christian baker, could be kind and reach out to that couple who is getting married. I am not pronouncing the vows, I am merely serving people. I do not think it is a sin to care about those who do not toe our biblical lines.

    Baking a cake is not the same thing as pronouncing the vows. Jesus hung with all sorts of sinners and was looked down for doing so. He ate dinners with sinners and I bet He provided fish for them on occasions.Did you know that he ate in the presence of prostitutes? I wonder if He spent some money to provide food for them prior to their repentance?

    He even let a woman of local ill repute get him a glass of water and He drank it, probably to the disgust of those who knew how to be properly righteous.Can you imagine-she was still living with someone when He reached out to her?! Maybe he should have waited until she got it together?

    This is not a treatise on the law. I am talking about my thoughts as a Christian who is not compelled by law but by love. Do not worry. I am not starting a campaign to force people to serve sinners.

  105. @ linda:
    I wrote this not as an Orthodox Jew still living under the Law but as a Christian who follows Jesus in the law of love. I have been very clear that I do not believe I should force anyone to do anything. I am not approaching this from a legal perspective either. You might be surprised what I believe in that regard but I don’t do politics on this blog.

    My basic point: I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like they should serve sinners.

    Please see my responses to both Rusty and Grace 71.

  106. @ Nancy:
    Are you familiar with the Christian Medical Dental Association? My husband is the state rep for that group and is doing some pretty neat things in North Carolina.

  107. @ Rusty:
    I have said time and time again that I am not forcing anyone to do anything. This is NOT a treatise on laws. I have opinions on that but I am not doing politics on this blog. Rusty wrote:

    To compel you to sell Halal or Kosher and accuse you of discrimination for not doing so is another matter

    And if i was compelled by the law, I would have two choices. One would be to go to jail as a political stand. The other might be to think and pray about what Jesus would do. He often approached things from a different perspective.

    Once again, don’t worry. I am not forcing anyone to do anything. i am talking about what I think about.

  108. @ dee: a lot of things commonly stocked by grocery stores are kosher and marked as such on the packages. The *one* time of year that is a real concern in Passover, when foods and drinks must be specifically made/labeled as “kosher for Passover.” (No leavening of any kind is permitted.)

  109. @ dee:
    Dee.. understand completely..I came late to this argument anyway… My only point was to say that we have a choice whether we sell Halal or Kosher,no law that I know compels any food merchant to sell either..’
    The point I was trying to make,albeit clumsily that it is the law of the land that confronts a baker who declines to make a cake for a gay couple.. The baker has no choice unless he wishes to be prosecuted for discrimination.. The question is not one of not showing love to others but one of acting out of ones conscience… You are right Jesus often approached things from a different perspective… My problem is just where and what and how do I draw the line… of resistance…If I was still a Pastor, could I be compelled to conduct Gay weddings and under your criteria,if I refuse, am i unloving to people… [there must be other examples] but I cannot think of them..

  110. dee wrote:

    I would be far more impressed if a Christian baker applied their concerns over morals to refusing to serve churches and pastors who cover up pedophile situations or churches that honor businessmen who are know for playing hardball business games that hurt people. Today, the only immorality that Christian seem to speak out against is homosexuality and that is usually spoken out against by those who do not struggle in this area.

    Again you are correct Dee… It does seem that homosexuality is an obsession with some Christians but in the example you quoted, the difference again is that no law compels you to serve a known peodophile or dishonest businessman.. They would not turn around and sue you.. what we are talking about is not an example of unloving Christians but Christians being challenged by the law of the land to violate their conscience [however silly the example may be] As I said,if not this..what.. if not now..when… Christian charities and organizations are facing these sort of challenges on a daily basis.. not about homosexuality but abortion, among other things.. It is just not the case that we are fixated on homosexuality,the truth is that up and down this land and in other countries ,Christians are facing opposition to their belief and lifestyle…
    Wow..Dee.. I only write on this board about every 6 months. I have overstayed my welcome..

  111. Rusty wrote:

    If I was still a Pastor, could I be compelled to conduct Gay weddings and under your criteria,if I refuse, am i unloving to people

    If you read my comments, you will see that I made a distinction between the actual presiding over the event and having them repeat the vows and the baking of a cake. They are truly two different thing. I also discussed the King of Norway who intervened when Norway passed the gay marriage bill and said that he would not make any state employed pastor who objected to gay marriage perform the marriage.

    There is a distinct difference. When I assist a Muslim woman in obtaining her special food, i am not condoning Islam. I am being kind. I have no problem with anyone eating Halal food.

    However, if i was forced to provide a drug to commit euthanasia, I would not kill a person. I would go to jail first. But, I would try to be a kind neighbor and bring that individual who wished to commit suicide some love and concern and try to find support, counseling, etc.

  112. @ Headless Unicorn Guy:

    NO,I have a business interest that I need to protect. I have taken on unpopular issues, but there are some that I refer out b/c no responsible attorney would take them. You don’t sue doctors in the town where you live unless it is very large, like 1,000,000 plus, cause if you do you won’t get medical care.

  113. @dee
    I will close my comments on this subject by quoting from the Manhattan Declaration that I referred to in my previous comments.. You can make of it what you will.

    he struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness…, for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason

    Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.
    It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.
    We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti- discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.
    In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of. Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.
    As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

  114. Rusty wrote:

    ,Christians are facing opposition to their belief and lifestyle…

    You know, when that happened in the Roman empire, Christian went to their deaths singing in the Coliseum. They bravely faced death, shared the love of Christ with their persecutors and their witness caused the faith to change a world. Persecution is the lifeblood of the church.

    Our opposition today is not in the same league. We don’t go to the Coliseums. We fuss and moan about our rights a whole lot. Look at the heros of the faith in Hebrews 11 and see what kind of life they had.

    And guess what? For all of our harping on rights, etc. attendance in churches are down and many people are fleeing the faith. Maybe we Christians don’t look any different than any other special interests group in this world. Maybe we don’t offer people anything radical like those early Christians. Those people expressed love as they served as torches for Nero’s garden parties.

    We should welcome the opportunity to lovingly express our opposition to euthanasia, etc but understand that how we express our opposition will help others to see how Christians respond to rejection.Look at how King expressed his concerns. He was a man of peace and gentleness.

    As Brother Andrew, Voice of the Martyrs, said When you crush a flower, it rewards you by giving you its perfume. When you crush a Christian, he rewards you by giving you his love.

  115. dee wrote:

    Our opposition today is not in the same league. We don’t go to the Coliseums. We fuss and moan about our rights a whole lot. Look at the heros of the faith in Hebrews 11 and see what kind of life they had.

    Cant argue with you there Dee…
    However I was born during a time when the Jews were being exterminated in Germany and people like Bonhoffer could not be silent when this was taking place.
    Of course we don’t know ‘persecution’ as the early church knew it, or as the Jews knew it and as some Christians in the 20th Century and in this century know it… You are right.

    Does that mean that we should accept moral outrages like abortion, and not protest against discrimination against Christians,or is that just a figment of our imagination and we should not let our Christianity be vocal but just be passive.
    Like you I decry my ineffectiveness and shallowness in expressing my faith.. and only too well realize the manner of our opposition should be better expressed… Yet is there no place for moral outrage towards the death of millions of unborn children.. Are we to do what many people in the 2 nd world war did when the news of extermination camps was known.. I lived in England at that time Dee. I sheltered as many children did from the bombs but I later learned that our leaders and others turned the other cheek to the news of Belsen and other places.

    We should act individually towards each other in love and kindness to every one irrespective of their lifestyle but there comes a time when the voices of the Christians in the land need to be heard. Maybe not over a ‘cake’ but over other more pressing concerns…

  116. Rusty wrote:

    We should act individually towards each other in love and kindness to every one irrespective of their lifestyle but there comes a time when the voices of the Christians in the land need to be heard. Maybe not over a ‘cake’ but over other more pressing concerns…

    Yes. Yes to “kindness” and yes to “a time when…Christians …need to be heard…over pressing issues.” Freedom of conscience is one of those issues. Provided, of course, that one is actually dealing with a matter of conscience and not just some individual preference.

  117. @ dee:

    “For my part, the more I think about this, the more I wonder if I, as a Christian baker, could be kind and reach out to that couple who is getting married.”
    +++++++++++

    dee — forgive me for any presumption… I feel that this is already settled with you. that of course you would bake the cake, and wish them joy.

    you certainly wouldn’t wish them misery. you’re to good and kind for that. you certainly wouldn’t look at your feet and avoid eye contact should they approach you in person inquiring about a cake. I daresay you would even feel their joy, as contagious as a yawn passed from one person to the next. again, you’re too good and kind, fair-minded and desiring balance to suppress it. in the presence of such pure joy, it is completely illogical to me that you would respond with anything other than “i am very happy for you. White, chocolate, or carrot?”

  118. Rusty wrote:

    However I was born during a time when the Jews were being exterminated in Germany and people like Bonhoffer could not be silent when this was taking place.

    The killing of a group of people is a moral outrage of all civilized people and I would have been in the internment camp with Bonheoffer. Bless you for caring for the children.

    Justin Lee of the Gay Christian Network and I had a great talk when I went to interview him. I have written about this on the blog. As I looked at him, I realized I wanted to hear from him how Christians sound to the LGBT crowd. He said something I will never forget.

    He said that every LGBT person in America knows just how evangelical view them. They know they are viewed as sinners. He said he had a good idea how I felt before I came and he said he was glad that I asked him about evangelicals for a change.

    You views are being heard. They are cogently known by those who disagree with you and me. Yet we feel the first thing we have to do is tell them exactly how we feel about their sin. They know. We are heard about our opposition to them ad nauseum. Most people in American could tell us what we believe if you chose the subject. We are just another loud point of view and, as things seem to be going, having precious little effect on the culture.

    And I wonder if the culture is what we are supposed to be changing. I remember a woman asking me why Christian were opposed to abortion. I told her it would be difficult for her to understand if she did not believe that there was a Creator God who created immortal souls who He loves deeply.

    So we talked about Jesus. A few months later she became a Christian. She called me and asked me to explain about abortion in her new understanding. Today she works at a Pregnancy Support Center in the NE.

    As a non-Christian she knew what Christian believed about abortion. She saw the protests, the explanation, the legal maneuvering, etc. Yet, she didn’t get it because she needed to know the Father to get it.

    I have become less enamored of changing culture. Instead I want to introduce the people I meet to the God who loves them dearly. Once they get that, other things will change.

    How do you expect anyone to get Christianity and our beliefs unless they are believers? Yet we are out in the world, yelping about our rights and expecting people to get it and frustrated when they do not. Why should they understand? They are not us.

    I am becoming less enamored of the culture war and instead want to learn more about how Jesus did it without changing the Roman culture to respect Christian beliefs. He succeeded in the shadow of paganism. Why was that? Why didn’t He seek to change laws in Rome? Goodness knows that there was wild and crazy stuff going on there-even worse than our culture today. Yet He didn’t seem to focus on it.

    He preached a different salvation.

    And I am in process.

  119. @ elastigirl:
    I am trying to be gentle in my approach to those who only see that the solution is one of fighting the culture. For them, what I say is somewhat different and can be challenging. I have been there.
    And I love Red Velvet with White Chocolate frosting.

  120. @ elastigirl:
    I think you would get this. Does it ever impress you that the Calvinistas who are totally into total depravity are the ones who yelp and moan that people don’t listen to their cultural solutions?

    So, are they supposed to be totally depraved except when the “leaders” tell them to support their causes and they are suddenly supposed to be infused with some light in their doomed depravity to say “Oh yes, now I get it?”

    Just another one of those things I don’t get.

  121. @ dee:
    Agree.Dee.that you have to catch fish before you clean them…..
    However even you can agree that there is a time to try and change unjust laws..Euthanasia and Abortion come to mind…
    I see the difference between seeking to influence share the love of God with n individual as you did in your example and the need to persuade society to change its laws.

  122. dee wrote:

    I have become less enamored of changing culture. Instead I want to introduce the people I meet to the God who loves them dearly. Once they get that, other things will change.

    That’s it. We spend time changing “culture” when we should be changing lives. In the scheme of things, people need to be introduced to Jesus. Chnge culture and you still have unbelievers.

  123. @ linda:

    The people of the South believed that the Bible authorized discrimination and enacted that discrimination in the Jim Crow laws. It was based on their religious beliefs.

  124. @ dee:

    thanks for your reply. I obviously have strong feelings on the subject.

    when you say “For them, what I say is somewhat different and can be challenging” — do you mean “here’s a new way of looking at things, which you might not like but give it a chance,”?

    in the context of this conversation, could you say a bit more about your 2nd comment (the irony of totally depraved leaders expecting their totally depraved followers to be able to follow their insightful lead)?

    sorry, I must be slow tonight.

    what is the significance? (other than said Calvinistas who embrace such nonsense would of necessity need a very s-l-o-w breakdown of other valid perspectives, such as those you’re been giving.)

  125. @ dee:

    so… I suppose now is as good as time as any: why is red dye # whatever necessary for a tasty cake? I don’t get it.

  126. I will respect people’s beliefs against homosexuals marrying and that becoming a basis to deny service when they do the same for other sins. Until then it is just the political posture of the evangelical right trying to build up a political party by challenging the rights of a disadvantaged group. First it was the unpropertied, then the blacks, then the divorced, always women, then LBGT folk. Somewhere in there we have the Muslims and the Jews, for centuries.

    All of the discrimination in this country was originally based on someone’s religious beliefs and it still is. And always the sins that Jesus spoke most often against are ignored by those yelling about sin and conscience and practiced by many of their co-religionists. Economic sins in particular. The Bible says it is a sin to charge usurious interest rates, so we have diluted the law to allow 29% plus interest by credit card companies and 500% annual interest by payday and car title lenders. The Bible says it is a sin to pick the field clean, but to leave some for the poor and hungry, and the one cut in the Farm bill takes $50.00 a month from poor families trying to feed their children. The Bible speaks against the accumulation of wealth, but in this country, the average CEO of a company in the largest 500 is almost 500 times the average pay, including that of executives, let alone the pay of the lowest paid employee.

    And we have pastors who build mansions, have private jets, and get tax exemptions for their housing allowance and private jet costs, while people in those areas are unemployed and go hungry.

    SIN is not the issue in the freedom of conscience argument. If it were, then more sins than one would be on the table. The baker would also refuse to bake the cake for all non-virgin brides!!!!!!!! See how long he would be in business if he refused the 70+ percent of brides that are not virgins.

    And, quite frankly, if a couple came to me wanting me to sue the baker, I would offer to make the cake that they need for their celebration.

  127. @ elastigirl:
    The Calvinista leader Russell Moore who considers himself an ethicist is the President of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. In this role he is committed to change the laws and advise the culture on how to better reflect what He believes are God’s priorities . He is a “culture warrior.” He basically says the US is going to hell in a handbasket and he is dedicated to fighting that slide.

    Now, in order for him to change the American culture, he must convince a broad cross section of the American public which is not tipped heavily in favor of the American “Christian” or should I say as Moore would define Christian. He is, in fact, a believer in the doctrine of total depravity which is the “T” in TULIP.

    Believers in total depravity (of which I am not) would claim that man is a complete mess and cannot comprehend the things of God until they are regenerated -Calvin style. Those of us who are not clued into things are suspect Christians or as RC Sproul says barely Christians.

    So, if they believe that then why do they get all bent out of shape trying to get everyone to agree with them and then decry the decline in our culture. By their own definition, unless you are saved and are therefore given a new understanding of the ways of God as they define it, you cannot accept their “solution” for the world. God has somehow not elected them to be blessed with regeneration.

    So why do they fight since they can’t force people who are unregenerate to see things as they do? It just all seems a little strange to me as one who views that from outside of the cozy Calvinista circles.

  128. elastigirl wrote:

    why is red dye # whatever necessary for a tasty cake?

    I was just reflecting on my daughter’s wedding. She and her husband picked a wedding cake which was 2/3 white and 1/3 red velvet cake. They both claim the taste of red velvet is better than pure white.

    You would like my daughter. She has just become a vegetarian because she believes it is best for the environment. She and her husband also refused any wedding gifts and asked for people to donate to Heifer International because she is concerned about hunger in third world countries.

    So, I remember thinking how interesting it was that she wanted Red Velvet cake. Go figure…

  129. An Attorney wrote:

    All of the discrimination in this country was originally based on someone’s religious beliefs and it still is.

    That is sadly so true.

  130. Steve D wrote:

    Chnge culture and you still have unbelievers

    Also, even when you change from unbelief into belief, you are still a sinner. And that sin will continue to influence the culture and pain will still be present.

    One only has to look at the churches we write about here which are filled with Christians. Yet there is arrogance, pedophile coverup, authoritarianism, anger, strife, abuse, and on and on. Wait until you see some stories that we hope to write bout in the next week. They are shocking and these are churches that are evangelical and hold themselves up as examples to society.

    That is why there must be a final solution-the Return of our Lord. Left on our own , even as Christians, we still screw it up.

  131. @ dee:

    I’m sure I’d really like your daughter. Great idea about the wedding gifts. I like red velvet cake, and have had my stomach lining dyed red like everyone else. I’m just surprised at all of us — I thought we as human beings had gotten beyond being swayed by brightly colored food.

  132. @ dee:

    In reality, they want to FORCE Christianity and Christian belief’s on the masses. They haven’t yet figured out that Christ can’t be forced on anyone. Besides, they speak out of both sides of their mouths.

  133. Rusty, of course the voices of Christians need to be heard – this is a democracy – but if you think that the perspectives of Christians are superior, then which Christians should prevail?

    The Catholic Church and apparently some Protestant congregations (a surprise to me) oppose birth control. I do not and my husband and I used it for family planning. The Catholic Church also opposes the death penalty. So do I, a Protestant. Other Christians support it; my husband for one.

    Today I read a comment on another blog that made a reference to an article on the website of a Christian foundation that I am unfamiliar with. I went to the website to read the article but also saw an incredibly nasty article about Rev. Billy Graham, criticizing him for his non-Calvinist beliefs and associating with Catholics and contending that his ‘theological errors’ weren’t sincere beliefs but a result of a desire to be more popular. It made my heart hurt. No wonder people are turning away from Christianity when they see that sincere and respected Christians being attacked by other Christians over all sorts of theological differences. Where is Jesus in all this?

    Frankly, I don’t even want to be told that any political position or idea is the ‘Christian’ approach. I want to hear arguments about morality, common values, effectiveness, and efficiency and not about anyone’s particular brand of religion. I do not assume that people whose religion differs from mine or agnostics, or atheists are not moral people.

  134. @ elastigirl:

    I don’t know. My daughter swears that those butter cookies that come out of the twist top cookie press taste way better when the Christmas tree’s are green and the poinsettia flowers are red. I tried to go with no color this year and it didn’t fly.

  135. @ Bridget:

    it’s hysterical — I love food I consider healthy. I think doughnuts are ridiculous. HOWEVER, if they are made available to me, I’m sure I would have one. I promise you, the ones with sprinkles taste better than the ones without. And the ones with pink, red, and white sprinkles taste much better than any of the other sprinkles.

  136. @ dee:

    She and her husband picked a wedding cake which was 2/3 white and 1/3 red velvet cake.

    Hey, if after all this politically charged talk of cake you need to lighten the mood, you can always be glad your daughter’s wedding cake (presumably) turned out better than these. 😉

  137. @ elastigirl: what about red, green and yellow peppers, beets, spinach, sweet potatoes, saffron rice, etc.? I duuno about you, but I think red cake is kinda cute. I like it with slightly tart icing. (Am blanking on the main ingredient..)

  138. @ numo: also: sushi rolls, tuna and salmon sushi/sashimi. Personally, I think color is pretty important per presentation (the visual aspect).

  139. @ Bridget: they also think that society = “the world.” And that xtianity *must* be diametrically opposed to society at large, when in reality society is a mosaic of many different people and wildly varying opinions and values. They also tend to pick extreme examples when condemning those with whom they don’t agree.

    Society is (imo) made up of people whose interdependence is, to a greater or lesser extent, a given. To avoid society, one would have to flee to a remote part of the Yukon, or maybe Antarctica – and even then, interdependence would be a necessity for those who wish to stay alive!

  140. @ numo:

    I meant artificial color. as in maraschino cherries that are 1st bleached so they can then be dyed fire engine red to enhance their cherry-ness. velveeta dyed orange. colors added to crackers & cereal to make them look wheatier and riceier and toastier. brilliant blue added to marshmallows and cream products to make the white brighter. all to make people feel better about eating them.

  141. dee wrote:

    final solution

    I have no doubt you used this expression perfectly innocently, but translating German to English there is more than one German expression that could be translated this way perfectly correctly from a linguistic point of view, but due to its historical connections we are always careful to avoid it. Definitive solution gets round the problem quite nicely.

  142. You know, arggghh, this whole topic. I am not entirely against people being allowed to refuse things like work on a religious basis but let me show you where it goes. In Canada, when they opened marriage to gays they enshrined religious freedom so people could be exempt from having to support things they disagreed with. So, with our liberal religious exemption laws, Muslim taxi drivers began to refuse customers with guide dogs – because, according to them, dogs are an unclean animal and it would defile their taxi. The courts ruled in the driver’s favour – they now have to wait with the passenger for another taxi to come get them (but it rains a lot here, that can’t be fun for the passenger).

    And then I am sort of against people being allowed to refuse things like work on a religious basis. Because, a vague religious basis is too open to everyone’s own interpretation of their religion. So, suddenly blind people are stranded on the side of a road, women in shorts in July are refused service and so on.

  143. I once did some training for a chemical company. Their biggest incident up to that time was a 55 gallon drum of blue dye that was washed away from a storage area in a flood. The chemical, when dilute, was not hazardous. But that drum would have dyed a sizable lake navy blue for years, along with anyone swimming in it or a boat floated on it.

  144. I also consulted with a hospital about spill response plan. We worked out to color code the chemicals (not directly given to patients — cleaners, chems used in the chillers) and the response. Dyes are available that with one drop, a 55 gallon drum can be brightly colored.

  145. Marsha wrote:

    I went to the website to read the article but also saw an incredibly nasty article about Rev. Billy Graham, criticizing him for his non-Calvinist beliefs and associating with Catholics and contending that his ‘theological errors’ weren’t sincere beliefs but a result of a desire to be more popular.

    You have no idea how many times I have seen that on various posts in the NeoCalvinist world. It rips me every time: He’s no good. NT Wright is no good. Roger Olson is no good. Only people like CJ Mahaney are good—makes lots of sense, right?

  146. elastigirl wrote:

    the ones with sprinkles taste better than the ones without.

    I agree so i do not visit donut stores. When I was in Scottsdale, my hotel store had little donut pops-covered with pink frosting with multi-colored sprinkles on top. Since they were small, I am sure it was alright that I ate about 3….

  147. @ Ken:
    Never, ever try to discuss things in depth on a Sunday evening when you had insomnia from the night before. i thought that phrase sounded a bit off when I wrote it and you are correct-bad terminology. Darn….sorry.

  148. Bridget wrote:

    They haven’t yet figured out that Christ can’t be forced on anyone.

    of course. And the Calvinistas, with their doctrine of election, should know that double time. Yet, they seem not to be able to apply that belief in the public square. Why get mad at people who they believe are predestined for hell? #thingsIdon’tgetaboutCalvinistas

  149. numo wrote:

    Society is (imo) made up of people whose interdependence

    I think we miss this a lot. We live in society which means we must learn to relate and work within our society.

    I find it interesting that Jesus taught right and wrong to people. Yet, He did not try to influence change in the Roman government. If political action is an important activity, then why did Jesus never engage the Romans?

    Also, he spent a lot of time feeding people-including sinners. Betcha He served a fish or two to some actively sinning people.

  150. @ Val:
    You make very good points. Many moons ago, I had a nurses aid who refused to work on Sundays so I fired her. I also gave her a lecture about Jesus who healed on the Sabbath.

  151. @ An Attorney:

    Perhaps for some it may have been, but IMO the “religious beliefs” were often just an excuse to maintain an underclass. And the maintaining of an underclass happens in lots of cultures for lots of reasons. There are, after all, economic advantages (for some folks) to the maintaing of an underclass. And just think of the advantage if that underclass is defined by race. In defining it by race one is assured of having at least a proportion of the designated underclass as intelligent productive people who can be ripped off in lots of ways due to race alone. On the other hand If the underclass is defined by ability, then one does not have these capable people who can be “hired cheap.”

    And if one is to maintain an underclass, then that group must be reminded again and again, until they believe it, that their position in the society is right and just for whatever reason. Otherwise, they will rebel. Public humiliation is one tool for control. “Religion” is another. Poverty. Disdain. Etc.

    I just do not think that everyone who cries “religion, religion” is doing whatever for religious reasons. Kind of like what Jesus said about “not everybody who says ‘Lord, Lord.’ “

  152. Marsha wrote:

    but if you think that the perspectives of Christians are superior, then which Christians should prevail?

    Marsha…
    where did that come from..?.I don’t believe for one minute that ‘perspectives of Christians are superior’ !! superior to what…?
    If you have read my posts -you will know that what i wish for is ‘a level playing field’ one in which opinions of people. are not discounted,be they Christian or not.
    The question is not ‘what kind of Christian’ as you put it.. for instance you do not have to be Catholic or Protestant to be pro-life,Calvanistic or Armenian to favor or disfavor Birth control.
    I am sorry that the site you visited attacked Billy Graham…It shows that every blog these days
    has its bias.. even this one!! [ouch Dee]
    I don’t know about you but my convictions about “morality, common values, effectiveness, and efficiency” as you put it.. come out of my Christian faith and I do not decry anyone..be they a ‘baker’ or candlestick-maker for acting according to any Theological belief but out of their conscience…
    Thats all I have to say on this subject..its getting too personal for me and becoming a debate centered upon attacking other Christians rather than the exchanges of ideas that this controversy started with…

  153. I love this discussion. I agree that there is no “culture war”. There is an entirely different kingdom that Christians are given access to, and Christians have an entirely different King, namely King Jesus. Jesus explained that clearly when He said that his “kingdom is not of this world”.

    So, this changes everything! Americans are so confused to think that their moralism reflects Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus revealed to humanity that righteousness cannot be attained outwardly. It just cannot. The Kingdom of God is an inside out transformation, where supernatural love is a result of the living God actually indwelling a person. Nothing can ever legislate that, and no law can ever prevent or encourage it.

    Now, I do believe as citizens of Heaven, that there are actions that we are in conflict if we participate. But, I believe we must be very careful how we define “participate”. For example, I am U.S. citizen, and a foreign nation could very well bomb my home as a retaliation for U.S. government actions. While I may personally vehemently disagree with U.S. foreign policy, I am still a citizen here. I don’t want to leave the U.S.A. However, I will never join the military, and I will vote for officials that might closely represent my views.

    If I provide a good or product, I cannot control how they use that product. I don’t see how that can be seen as an affirmation. Neither do I see how eating at a Chick Fil A is any kind of affirmation of Christianity. Those are inanimate objects, and a cake or photograph, or sandwich have no souls!

    Finally, I just want to add that I’ve gone to a gay wedding of a close friend of mine once. I felt at that time it was the most loving response I could have given to her invitation. But, I’ve also declined an invitation recently to participate in a gay wedding. My wife and I both felt that was the most loving response we could have given to that specific couple. Both decisions still haunt me, for different reasons, and I am sure I will wrestle with them for many more years.

  154. On the “questions” thing…

    For me the key to proper bible interpretation lies in remembering at all times that I am better than you. My motives are pure, but yours are mixed. I search the scriptures for truth; you search the scriptures for loopholes. Though I’m humble and recognise my fallibility, my ultimate desire is always to serve God and glorify him; your ultimate desire is to pleasure yourself and advance your own glory.

    OK – that’s quite enough of that! I think most of us here realise that just about any verse of Biblescripture can be contradicted with a different verse from a different context. We all interpret the Bible as best we can, much as we may like to tell ourselves how obvious it is that the Bible agrees with us and not with them. So the real key to the proper use of scripture is not to deceive ourselves, but to acknowledge that we are interpreting it and to take responsibility before God for our decisions.

    By and large, the important questions Christians need to grapple with are not the ones about the nature of God. (That was finally revealed at the cross: YHWH was the Lamb all along.) They are the ones dealing with how we behave towards other people, and since we live in very different settings to those in which the many books of the Bible were written, it is all the more important that we take responsibility for how we apply them. I don’t believe the Body of Christ is at liberty to hide behind tradition; we have a responsibility to pray and confer until we can say, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.

  155. dee wrote:

    And the Calvinistas, with their doctrine of election, should know that double time. Yet, they seem not to be able to apply that belief in the public square. Why get mad at people who they believe are predestined for hell? #thingsIdon’tgetaboutCalvinistas

    But you forget that forcing Calvinism down everyone else’s throats is God’s Omnipotent Will, Predestined Before The Creation of the World. “IN’SHAL’LAH…”

  156. @ Nancy:

    There is a blog about Baptists and the Civil War http://www.civilwarbaptists.com/ that includes sermon excerpts, letters, publications, etc. The SBC preachers of the day preached from the pulpit that the abolitionists were in sin for going against the word of God (Bible) in opposing slavery that was divinely ordained. And that because they obeyed God, the South would win the war.

  157. @ Nick Bulbeck:

    You mean like the first followers of Christ did after his death and before they had scriptures or priests to tell them, woodenly, what to do? Not too long ago an elder began praying in small meeting and he began with, “Lord, as we gather around your scripture . . .” I was disappointed and discouraged. He didn’t seem to even realise what he was saying or implying.

  158. One thing I will say for some of the folks in question in NM: they are willing to put their money where their mouths are. That is, if they believe it would be sin for them to participate by baking the cake for a gay wedding, or issuing the license, or officiating, or whatever, they are willing to put their jobs on the line or close up shop rather than disobey God.

    I admire that. It matters not whether you or I would bake the dang cake. It matters that they are convinced they would sin in doing so, and refuse to be forced to sin.

    I would strenuously oppose a law that says if “If you did wedding cakes in the past for straight couples, and in refusing to do them for gay couples have simply decided your bakery will do no more weddings of any kind, you are subject to fine or penalty.” That would seem excessive, and is actually what some advocate. The idea that one cannot simply stop offering a service to all rather than offer it to some is beyond the pale.

    Are we going to move to the idea that once you start a business you can never close it? Never modify it?

    I would think we must accept the idea that we simply cannot force a person to do that which they believe to be a sin. I watched in play out in ND. No matter what laws were passed or courts ruled regarding availability of abortions, there was no way to force doctors and nurses who believed it a sin to perform them. None. You can bring in out of staters to the one clinic in Grand Forks. And you can complain about the distance women seeking abortion have to travel. But there is simply no way to force someone in say Williston to perform an abortion.

    What about photographers? Many of them believe porn to be a sin. Are we going to tell them that they can no longer refuse to do porn for customers that come in and request it? That society has moved on, no longer considers it a sin, and after all they might be able to reach out in love, befriend, get to know the porn stars and show the love of Christ by filming or shooting the filth?

    This seems a very slippery slope, this business of not allowing business owners the right to refuse to provide a service when they believe they sin by doing so. Who gets to judge whether or not they would be sinning? Are the business owners beliefs somehow of less value than someone elses?

  159. An Attorney wrote:

    The SBC preachers of the day preached from the pulpit that the abolitionists were in sin for going against the word of God (Bible) in opposing slavery that was divinely ordained. And that because they obeyed God, the South would win the war.

    And Reverend Penetrate/Colonize/Conquer/Plant in his cult compound in Idaho continues that tradition of upholding the Confederate States of America and their Peculiar Institution regarding Animate Property by Divine Right.

  160. Erik wrote:

    Finally, I just want to add that I’ve gone to a gay wedding of a close friend of mine once. I felt at that time it was the most loving response I could have given to her invitation. But, I’ve also declined an invitation recently to participate in a gay wedding. My wife and I both felt that was the most loving response we could have given to that specific couple.

    Erik – though I don’t know either circumstance, I’m really interested in the fact that you dealt with each case on its merits. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but we may well be barking up the same hymn-sheet; insofar as my own answer to a question like Do you agree with gay marriage? is usually “Whose gay marriage?”.

    Last year (November 2013, should posterity ever read this) the Scottish parliament debated an Assisted Suicide Bill, of which any who are interested can read details here. Opposition to it was almost universal among Christian groups, and most of them assumed that all Christians had to oppose the bill as a matter of faith. Leaflets were handed out among Christians urging us to stand up and be counted in defeating this terrible ungodly bill. Except that I’m a Christian, and I did not oppose it. That is, I am in principle in favour of assisted suicide.

  161. @ dee:
    I’m glad you didn’t think I was having a go at you, that’s the last thing I had in mind.

    On the gay cake issue, doesn’t Paul give us advice on this? We cannot disassociate ourselves from the sinful world around us, or we would need to leave the world altogether. But he did say not so associate with supposed fellow believers if they were living a lifestyle blatantly at odds with the faith once for all delivered. You’ll know the bit in 1 Cor 5 second half. He ends by saying we should judge those inside the church rather than those outside it. That hadn’t struck so powerfully until reading it just now.

    These sorts of issues can raise dilemmas that need careful thought, but I don’t think we can claim the NT writers have given us no guidance on the basic idea of what to do.

  162. dee wrote:

    Bridget wrote:

    They haven’t yet figured out that Christ can’t be forced on anyone.

    of course. And the Calvinistas, with their doctrine of election, should know that double time. Yet, they seem not to be able to apply that belief in the public square. Why get mad at people who they believe are predestined for hell? #thingsIdon’tgetaboutCalvinistas

    And here’s another one you can add to your list Dee – the whole purpose of double predestination seems to be so that God’s glory in judgement & justice can be shown to the Universe. So does that mean that Christ’s death on calvary was not the prefect sacrifice & the perfect demonstration of God’s justice & mercy? There needs to be something additional to this for God to show his character perfectly? Really?

  163. @ An Attorney:

    I am aware of that. They were hired mouths, like many pastors today, who found a way to give the people what they wanted to hear, for other reasons mostly, and still maintain their positions in the church. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because somebody says something from the pulpit that somehow the guys on the pew wrote the sermon. Wrote a book? Paper never refuses ink.

    But your post talked about segregation. You said Jim Crow laws. Been there and done that. Don’t fail to notice that hoards of white people agreed with desegregation and made it work. The fact that the media ignored that did not make it untrue. Do you think that there was some great religious revival with massive repentance on the part of whites at that time? If so, how come we never heard of it. No. What there was were lots of whites who never did believe in or feel comfortable with the Jim Crow world, but were too cowardly to speak up. These people did not change their religious beliefs. They changed their behavior.

  164. @ Bridget:

    “Not too long ago an elder began praying in small meeting and he began with, “Lord, as we gather around your scripture . . .””
    +++++++++++++++

    doesn’t that just say it all. I kind of feel sorry for holy spirit. always there, sometimes more than at other times, so ready to communicate something and energize something. and I do think completely ignored much of the time, if not barricaded out with all this yellow caution tape wound around inner selves.

    I can imagine a very funny skit starring holy spirit and Christians. something like a skit I once saw with Carol Burnett and Dick Van Dyke as a married couple. he is a nice guy who is simply blind and deaf to her & ignores her in his stereotypical man-ness. she ends up doing all these wild things to get his attention, swinging from the chandelier, to get him to listen to her. he still goes on his merry way completely oblivious to her.

  165. @ Nancy:
    My original point was that all discrimination arises from religious belief or is justified by calls to religion, by at least a large percentage of those who practice it or fail to oppose it. Whether the religious belief is in error or not is a different issue, as I believe that religion never is a proper or sufficient justification for differential treatment by the government or in business.

  166. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    insofar as my own answer to a question like Do you agree with gay marriage? is usually “Whose gay marriage?”.

    As usual, you point out the heart of a matter. I would ask this same question about marriage in general. There are some heterosexual marriages that I might be more inclined to consider it a bad choice, or maybe even “sinful”, like one arranged for monetary gain or citizenship.

    Honestly, I don’t really have any certainty about the “meaning of marriage”. It is a temporary earthly thing. Maybe it does have profound influences on a society. Maybe it does it some ways reflect God’s covenant with humanity. Or, maybe it is just something God allows some humans to do to make this time on Earth more bearable. I just don’t know for sure anymore.

  167. A little off topic, and before “an attorney” and I drown each other in flying spittle, let me make you guys aware of a book (two books actually) that I am reading and preparing to present to a group at my church.

    “The Insanity of God” by Nik Ripkin (a pseudonymn) with Barry Strickler
    “The Insanity of Obedience” by Nik Ripkin (a pseudonym) with Gregg Lewis

    The subject(s) are how does faith survive under horrendous circumstances; how does faith prevail under unspeakable persecution; what and how do the persecuted church think and believe that enables them to remain faithful to the death; and what does that say about what we as safe and wealthy as we are can or should do about either ourselves or them in the light of this man’s research into the problem.

    It kind of puts lots and lots of the things we are concerned about into a different light.

  168. linda wrote:

    What if I were Orthodox Jewish, and ran a kosher deli? Suppose a Christian comes in, wanting me to cater their wedding and the main dish is a pork dish?

    I don’t think this, and other examples given, are equivalent to the situation. The gay couple wanting a wedding cake is more like a Christian going into a kosher deli and wanting a beef on rye, but the Orthodox Jew says no, I don’t agree with the fact that you cut your sideburns and don’t wear a hat.” It’s not a case of asking the owner to alter their services or add to the product line. They are wanting to buy the product that bakers already provide.

    (I’m catching up on comments after a busy weekend, so forgive me if I’m out-of-the-loop on the discussion here.)

  169. Beakerj wrote:

    And here’s another one you can add to your list Dee – the whole purpose of double predestination seems to be so that God’s glory in judgement & justice can be shown to the Universe.

    This is one of the main ideas that Austin Fisher challenged in his book, “Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed”. Fisher argues that God is actually more deliberate about revealing LOVE to the world, rather than glory. God is not a “black hole of infinite inward energy, but a mangled Lamb of infinite outward energy”. Jesus reveals that God is not self-obsessed with all creation fearing His name. While, that of course is one response to God, the most consistently revealed nature of God is LOVE. Jesus even came to Earth to be murdered! We cannot even define the word “love” without referencing God’s definition of it.

  170. Through a glass darkly wrote:

    The gay couple wanting a wedding cake is more like a Christian going into a kosher deli and wanting a beef on rye, but the Orthodox Jew says no, I don’t agree with the fact that you cut your sideburns and don’t wear a hat.”

    I love that analogy!

  171. Through a glass darkly wrote:

    The gay couple wanting a wedding cake is more like a Christian going into a kosher deli and wanting a beef on rye, but the Orthodox Jew says no, I don’t agree with the fact that you cut your sideburns and don’t wear a hat.” It’s not a case of asking the owner to alter their services or add to the product line. They are wanting to buy the product that bakers already provide.

    That is a great example that I’m going to appropriate

  172. @ Nick Bulbeck: I’m with you on assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses, especially when pain is unbearable and cannot really be touched by available meds. With all our tech, it seems we are *too* good at extending life (at times) for too long. That said, I am very much in favor of careful case-by-case basis evaluation plus involvement of good health and psych professionals, both with the person who is suffering and with family/other loved ones.

    As for being in a wedding party, there are plenty of straight people whose weddings I wouldn’t want to be involved in!!!

  173. dee wrote:

    So why do they fight since they can’t force people who are unregenerate to see things as they do?

    Geneva may hold the key. if you cannot persuade an unregenerate mind, the only logical thing left is to compel compliance. After all, the spiritual leader has the enlightenment to know what is truly best, and it is in the best interest of the community for them all to comply. Hence, some kind of theocratic hegemony is a necessary civil structure.

  174. An Attorney wrote:

    . But that drum would have dyed a sizable lake navy blue for years, along with anyone swimming in it or a boat floated on it.

    When I was a child visiting Yellowstone, someone dumped red dye into Old Faithful. It geysed bright pink for the next 2 days! I think I have a pic somewhere.

  175. @ numo:

    Let me pick up that thought for just a moment–about fleeing the mainstream of society whether or not they consider it “the world.” Some just consider it dangerous, or alien to them, for example. There are the political and religious conservative survivalists who go to Montana. There are/were the Mormons who went to Utah. There are the people who ride around in horse drawn carriages on public roads. There are the other-than-English language groups who tend to cluster together in some particular part of some town, and sometimes in the newspaper one reads about what seem to be rather strange cultural festivals and such which they practice among themselves. These few examples include “separation” for multiple reasons, not just religion, and perhaps not religion at all but rather language, for example.

    Here is what I am saying. If our mainstream society wants to celebrate diversity, then that celebrating of diversity ought to include religious diversity. What sense does it make, or would it make, to say that it is OK to be different just so long as that difference is not due to one’s religion? What sense would it make to say that if the artistic types want to gather together in one place, and have their own subculture of sorts, and determine what is “in” as far as clothing is concerned and such, that is OK because art and artists are doing it for secular reasons. But if religious persons, and even Christians, do the same sort of thing based on wanting to avoid “the world” then that is wrong because they do it for religious reasons?

    Disclaimer: I don’t see that “Go ye…into all the world” means “huddle together in some corner.” I do think, though, that having differing societal rules for the same sorts of behavior based on whether or not that behavior is faith based is societal hypocrisy.

  176. @ Daisy:
    Daisy, you have touched a nerve or ‘hotspot’ in the Christian sub-culture, that is why everyone can’t fathom a decent response. Let’s use a less controversial scenario:

    Say there was a young woman who went to collage and a young woman who got married. The married woman ended up, through no circumstance of her doing, divorced in the next 4 years (he left her, beat her, robbed her bank account to buy drugs, then had the dealers beat her up <- true story btw). Now, the collage attender is expected to remain celibate. Let's say she is very academically gifted and feels the call to keep pursing her studies, but can't both marry and do her PhD (some intense program with all travel and no time). The married woman, who didn't have kids, is socially permitted to remarry. The church even marries her. The church however sees no irony in insisting on celibacy for the never married woman and remarriage (called adultery) for the divorced women.

    The huge problem with this is the pick and choose nature of applying Biblical instructions to our modern lives. The Bible does permit divorce in certain circumstances, but it always equates remarriage with sin. Why? because celibacy was the ideal in the early church. There were provisions for those who were already married and those who really felt they needed to be, but if life handed one lemons (spouse left or died), then one was to remain celibate and focus on God.

    Today we only partially apply the teachings of chastity. We demand virgins till wait until marriage, but seem to shrug if a non-virgin re-marries. We demand gays remain celibate, while permitting couples to remarry. We have totally bought into the culture of "love marriages" as they were called in South Asia (and condemned from the church pulpit in South Asia) – we feel people need to pursue romance to be whole and show the blessing of God. But, this is counter to everything Paul lays out in the New Testament. Human desire is second best for Christians, a concession.

    All Roman citizens had wives. They could also be "gay" (although the idea of a identifying with their sexuality would have repulsed the Roman-Grecko citizens who looked at carnal desires as a baser form and souls as an 'enlightene' form of essence) and have a lover in an apartment, but they were all married. These marriages were arranged and solely for the production of legitimate offspring. Many men lived in other cities than their family villas, leaving their wives with their parents to raise their children.

    Paul comes along and says 'go love your wife like your lover, go be satisfied with her'. That would have received a similar reaction to telling youth today that if they only have homosexual desires, they must remain celibate. Paul respects the law, he respects the culture and it's views on family. But he doesn't care about our sexual needs the way we think he does. For him, the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to overcome our fleshly desires. In our culture it is not. So today's preachers can't fathom celibacy and abstinence because they don't have the Spirit to offer anyone. It is really harsh to say this, but it is a glaring hole in Evangelical Christianity. The Holy Spirit is absent, so we behave more like Old Testament believers who create rules to satisfy our human needs (Jesus said the only reason divorce was permitted was because their hearts were hard).

    Why is remarriage permitted today, yet Paul's other words taken as Torah? You stand before the church and commit to a person for life, then break that vow and want to stand before your fellow believers and claim it again? Look, I am all for ending bad marriages. Your safety and even financial health may call for that, but if we are going to use Paul's advice as today's law for some things, then we better use all of it: That means it is you on your own after divorce, not you with another person. Does the church even get this? Do they realize how many people they need to support if they are to truly use Paul's first-century marital advice today? because the church also supported the unmarried back then. Something like 55% of couples divorce today, does the church have any scope of the deluge it needs to help financially carry in order to remain faithful to the NT teachings?

    No, this whole Christian purity culture is all about picking and choosing from the Bible to fit our modern day expectations, shaped by our romance-obsessed culture. And Daisy you are right, people responding here aren't addressing why it is OK to tell someone to remain a virgin until marriage but not tell a gay person they must remain a virgin their whole life.

    Hope, we need to offer marriage as hope??? Hope is in Christ, friend, not in guarantees in life. I am so sick of people using marriage as a reward, bauble or token of "being faithful" – it goes to places like telling women to submit more so she can have a better marriage, telling women to be attractive and not self-assertive if she wants to find a husband, etc. It sets women, especially, up to believe their whole purpose in life is to get married and raise kids. It shuns gays because they just can't fit them into the church's reward schemes for being faithful. But in Christ, we are called to follow God first, to have him on our mind more than who we will marry or how well our kids are going to turn out. In the Roman times Christian women were martyred by the thousands for refusing to be married to whom their father's arranged for them, in the Middle Ages women left their families (in the hands of relatives) and went into Convents to pursue God (Julian of Norwich, for example). By todays standards these woman are wicked, yet they are some of the greatest movers and shakers of church history. Marriage and family were not originally a Christian's place or goal. If you find Christianity hopeless without worldly promises, you may have a bigger problem than your sexuality.

    Now, I get the majority of Christians will not go off and live a Mother-Theresa type life. But if we think Christ came to give us a comfortable middle-class suburban lifestyle, we may want to reassess who is really a Christian. Perhaps it isn't about filling seats, but about counting costs? We shouldn't be surprised if people don't want to follow Christ if it means giving up marriage or the potential for giving up marriage. That is OK, if we can't offer them the truly powerful Holy Spirit Paul had in abundance, maybe we should let them go and concentrate on how to get that Power back in the church, because a Spirit-filled church would draw anyone back to it – it would be about far more than middle class marriage.

    And, my feelings are; in a generation or so, homosexual marriages will be largely accepted in churches, as remarriages are today. Some detractors, but largely accepted. In four or five generations, however, I suspect a celibate tide will wash over the church. But, that will be long past my time. History repeats itself, marriage, divorced from it's intended purpose of raising children will lose it's strong societal appeal and popular support. Then, people will realize they need it, so the pendulum will swing back.

  177. @ Val:

    On a loosely related note…

    The council of Jerusalem, described in Acts 15, made the momentous decision not to impose circumcision on Gentile believers. (I don’t think we realise today quite how big a deal that was.) What they did say was that

    … it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication.

    Of those four essentials, food sacrificed to idols isn’t really an issue where most of us live. But abstaining from blood is no longer considered an essential, certainly. Consider, though; what if we’d kept “blood” and thrown out “fornication” as an essential?

  178. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    I’ve always thought that “double predestination” sounds like a way of handling floating point variables.
    I hope this is helpful.

    That’s a good one! I’ve always felt like a variant type myself… 😀

  179. Hester wrote:

    @ Josh (if you’re still reading):
    Off topic (and I really don’t want this to turn into a threadjack because it has the potential to be a VERY hot button), since you obviously have more experience with LGBT issues than I do, do you have any pointers as to where I can go to start researching various Christian views on transgender issues/gender dysphoria? Does Side A and Side B have any relevance here or is that just for gay issues? Please forgive any massive ignorance on my part.
    I need this for an IRL situation that I’m not sure I have clearance from the person in question to talk about here.

    I’m out of my element when the topic expands beyond the L/G realm. I do remember seeing an excellent interview by Rachel Held Evans of Lisa Salazar. Lisa has other resources, including a blog and a book (the latter of which I’ve not read) that may be helpful. Unfortunately, that’s all I can offer right now.

    http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-a-transgender-christian-response

  180. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    Consider, though; what if we’d kept “blood” and thrown out “fornication” as an essential?

    Steak would be tough and unappetizing. Mmmm, steak… 😛

  181. dee wrote:

    Russell Moore

    Yesterday on his Moore to the Point he responded to Merritt and Powers. I think he did a good job of explaining his position EXCEPT: “How should a Christian think about his own decision about whether to use his creative gifts in a way that might, he believes, celebrate something he believes will result in eternal harm to others.”
    What sort of eternal harm? And just what results in it? (Bad marriages, apparently.)

  182. @ Val: one small point: Julian of Norwich was an anchoress (a particular type of hermit; she lived in a cell). Women like Hildegard von Bingen and St. Teresa of Avila were in convents. (Both were abbesses, and Hildegard served as counselor to nobility and was celebrated for her learning and creativity.) During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, convents and monasteries were the only place that a “common” person could go in order to learn to read and write; books and manuscript copying were central to the life of many convents and monasteries – and were just about the only place that intelligent, literate, educated women could expect to thrive. The bad part: all nuns were cloistered during these times and not permitted to leave the convent for any reason. I wonder, though, if that was viewed (overall) as a hardship, given that they were much safer physically than they probably would have been out in the larger world. (Also given that most aristocratic women had *many* constraints on their lives, and that death in or due to the complications of childbirth was a constant for married women.)

  183. @ Nancy: there are plenty of Amish people driving buggies and wagons around here. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult for cars and trucks to share the road with horse-drawn vehicles, and there are many accidents (especially in winter, what with short daylight hours, narrow and twisty roads, and very inadequate use of kiughting and defectors by the Amish here – you can be on top of a buggy and unable to stop or swerve because it simply wasn’t visible until too late). As you can imagine, it is the folks in the buggies who tend to be most seriously injured or killed.

  184. @ Josh:

    Thanks. I will look at that. I can testify that the phrase “wrap your brain around it” that Salazar used was well-chosen.

    I can say that the situation I’m dealing with is not nearly as extreme (so far) as what Salazar described in her interview. There has been no abuse (was some bullying though), my friend is not depressed, suicidal, etc. I’m beginning to suspect she’s one of the lucky ones in that regard.

  185. Off topic: anyone know what’s up with Internet Monk? All I’m getting is some weird page that looks like that domain name is for sale.

  186. @ Beakerj:

    I was reading over there this morning. I did read in one article which states that they were doing some behind the scenes work at some point. My guess is they have encountered a glitch.

  187. My spidy sense is sensing another TWW post shortly. This better not happen while I start my long commute home on 495!! 😛

  188. @ Nick Bulbeck:
    Yes, and I am not saying we should all be celibate – that had many pitfalls too, creating a two-tired system in the medieval church between celibate clergy and married lay people.

    My two points are 1) we are so quick to reject celibacy for people, which is interesting,because the Books we are using to guide our sexuality are actually endorsing celibacy.
    …and, 2), we are only partially applying New Testament teachings on sex and marriage if we are focused on the pre-marital sex as wrong but are ignoring the post-marital sex via remarriage. It amazes me how many people read the NT, notice there are instances where divorce is permitted, but then don’t read that niggling point that remarriage is, in fact, adultery. We seem to think that a legitimate reason for divorce = a legitimate reason for remarriage. It doesn’t.

    It is the miss-mash of rules I protest to. Daisy is an example of the unthought-out consequences these rules create. We are fine, and somewhat flippant, telling her she has to wait, while changing church policies to accommodate divorced people and now, gay people. That is a double standard in the opposite direction now. You can’t tell one group to abstain and allow the next group to engage and claim to be following your religion. Our religion is not very helpful when it comes to free expressions of our sexuality. Society says it is part of who we are, but we could also say extreme violence when attacked is also part of who we are; however, in Christ we aren’t to have our identity in the flesh, we are to give up our sexual impulses and violent tendencies. It is a cost counting issue. A question once given to me was: “what are you going to give up for Christ” – it is true. What are going to give up? Less and less it seems.

  189. You are quite passionate about your understanding of what the churches ought to do in various sexual situations. You also need to know that there are serious scripture-based arguments arising from theologians in some major protestant groups (not just individuals sitting down reading the Bible) that come to different conclusions than your conclusions. You also need to know that evangelicals basically do not consider tradition as a legitimate argument about anything. The evangelical position has been, at least officially sola scriptura. Protestantism as a whole, and absolutely evangelicalism tends to not think that convents and monasteries are a good idea, nor that such asceticism is taught in scripture. Perhaps, as numo has stated it served a purpose for women at a certain period in history, but that “perhaps” is based on social and political expediency, not religious mandate, looked at from the evangelical viewpoint.

    I understand the fact that you feel strongly that your understanding of these things is correct, but I question whether it does much good for your position if you try to convince protestants by using historical/catholic arguments.

    I also want to say that just a whole whole lot of folks have a sexual history that they might not want published in the morning newspaper. There is nothing in scripture that would even suggest that Jesus let that interfere with his forming relationships with people. Quit the contrary, in fact. He vigorously defended himself against his critics for his openness with those who had even really bad sexual histories, like sex for hire. I would really hate to see the church today give the impression that it/we would not have the same attitude Jesus did about people.

  190. The above comment, which should have also said @val, also should have said “Quite the contrary, not quit the contrary.”

    I need to get some sleep, obviously.

  191. Nancy wrote:

    Quit the contrary, in fact. He vigorously defended himself against his critics for his openness with those who had even really bad sexual histories, like sex for hire. I would really hate to see the church today give the impression that it/we would not have the same attitude Jesus did about people.

    I did see this and wanted to say, it’s the total opposite in evangelicalism and some other churches today, which is just as wrong.

    Celibacy, virginity, and adult singleness are ridiculed in some Christian quarters now, and committing sexual sin is now widely embraced among Christians, because everyone (they say and preach) is doing it.

    So, Christians have swung the pendulum very far in the opposite direction, of being far too accepting of various forms of sexual sin.

    Nobody has a good answer as to why I should continue waiting until marriage to have sex (that the Bible says so – and I agree, yes, it condemns pre marital sex, but that is no longer a sufficient reason for me), as it looks as though I shall never marry, and I see no penalty for going ahead and fooling around.

    Christians today certainly wouldn’t hold me accountable should I fool around, being unmarried as I am.

  192. numo wrote:

    @ Dave A A:gah, stupid Android keyboard!

    Well, it gave me a good chuckle! I even imagined Amish defectors being rounded up by the Amish Mafia and sent to reeducation camps!

  193. I’m off to bed Deebs. I have the tingle that a new post was coming. But I am beat!! Night!! zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……………zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  194. @ Nancy:
    Nancy, I should clarify a few things:

    1) I am an Evangelical Protestant (Charismatic also, the Vineyard movement in the 90s was the closest I ever knew that bridged the Charismatic/Evangelical divide – before ‘Health and Welfare’ had become the norm in Charismatic circles, or at least the ones I knew of).

    2) I think I am sola Holy Spirit these days 🙂 – well I obviously use the church and Bible to understand the Holy Spirit, but that is, I consider the church as a whole, not just the last 500 years in Western Europe.

    3) I actually don’t really have a “view” on celibacy per se. But I have an awareness of how the original audience received the scriptures (through historical documents I have looked at, not the Catholic Church’s teachings on it) and it was definitely celibacy focused. There was opposition to celibacy too. Later on, some Christians tried to prove Christ was married to justify abandoning celibacy for ordained members. However, the response of the church to Paul’s letters lead to a tradition of celibacy in the early church that lasted long past the times of persecution as people began to see a great benefit to celibacy.

    4) I am not using all this info to say: “See, this is how we must do this”

    So, why do I do it? Because I think with the huge splits in the Church – first the Great Schism with severed relations between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholics and then the Reformation – with all it’s persecutions of Anabaptists considered – we lose something when trying to make decisions while not knowing “our” (church universal) past.

    What do we lose? We lose a sense of the huge role celibacy has played in our collective Christian history. We lose a sense of why Christians have rejected homosexuality even when the Bible verses look a little out-dated (Paul was likely referring to male prostitutes, and there was no concept of gay marriage, or even “gay” in the early church’s understanding of sexuality in general).

    I push back hard on this topic because the knee jerk reaction of most Evangelicals is to say ” the Apostle Paul endorses my view on the (my) nuclear family as important enough that I need to take a stand against anyone who threatens it”

    Does St. Paul view the Evangelical’s modern-day quest and pursuit of Marriage as a special act that society must endorse above all other acts as the most important life-long mission? As something to risk your business over? Or, would he call people to an even great act of celibacy – with its cons, but also, with it’s pros? If not, why did he call for this in his lifetime?

    I get that Luther and Calvin felt the whole pursuit of celibacy was not beneficial to Christians. In their day there was a two tiered Christian communion. Those who were celibate were perceived as ‘more holy’ and those who were married and perceived as ‘less holy’. It was causing division in the unity of Christ, so they threw it out. But, I think we may want to look at why celibacy was around at all in the church. It is something few Protestants look at, but it makes it easy to pull the rug out from under them when tough issues like re-marriage or homosexual marriage come up. The Baby may have been thrown out with the bathwater on this topic.

    Even if the baby wasn’t thrown out with the bathwater, knowing Church history gives us a sense of where we came from. Many Evangelicals feel the Bible is perfectly clear and if we read it the way our random favourite preacher reads it, then we “get it right” for once and all. But, the Christian faith is not a puzzle with a solution we need to solve – there is no magic way to ‘follow’ Christ. Take the Early Christians: They felt the most important test of true faith was to never deny Jesus. Some Christians, in the heat of persecution, did deny him. The solution to the divisions this caused was private confession with a bishop/elder (who was sworn to confidentiality). This is where confession comes from. The idea of keeping the church unified, and not at each others throats made people re-think how they confessed their sins. It a) kept confession of sins and b) kept unity. Two valuable practices in the early church. It later became a requirement, a legal hurdle, but the intent was good. Reformers therw out confession as a “work” and just do it in private with God. Was the early church wrong to do that way. Why? Have we lost something by throwing out confession? or gained something? Is there a “right” way to confess our sins? Should a Protestant leader’s view automatically trump an ancient Apostle’s view? I am not suggesting one way to do confession, but it helps to understand why Catholics now do it this way. However, confession is not a hot potato right now.

    I think Protestants need a larger picture of the whole depth and breath of Christianity. I don’t think we will ever get back to the early church or the “right way to do church” since I don’t believe there is one right way for all places and times. But it would help when we come up against a double standard – making virgins remain chaste and celibate while tearing down parameters for divorced Christians – to at least look back through history and see if there is anything of value in life-long monogamy.

    Interestingly, Paul’s world was much more sexually licentious than our own. Jesus and Paul ministered to people with all kinds of sexual pasts, true, true. Did they say “oh well, keep on living that way? ” or “we better change our expectations because they don’t want the tight confines of a monogamous, heterosexual marriage?” The answer is, of course, no. I have NEVER said peoples’ background should determine their fitness to participate in church. My question is: how do we move forward? The past is the past, all sins are forgiven.

    What now, though? What was the early church’s practices in light of Jesus and Paul’s teachings? I am not dragging out Catholic or E.O. history and Catechism here. I am looking at how the audiences of the Pauline letters responded to Paul’s letters. Most of the recipients “had a past”, so it wasn’t an issue of being a virgin or not. It was a “how do we practice what this letter teaches us”? That I am after. Since they were the original intended audience, and the letters were addressed to them in their language, how they structured their fellowship in light of Paul’s advice gives us better insight into what Paul was really saying. The Church then was the recipient of the first audience’s understanding of those letters. So, looking at how the first and second century church practiced marriage, celibacy, etc. gives us a far better insight into what Paul was writing about than our 1,500 year later Renaissance-era theologians could ever do.

    Do I say we drop all our later history and do whatever the early church did? No. But I do think we need to see the Bible for what it really says, not what we want it to say (and by “we” I mean us modern-day Evangelicals, famous pastors or not). I have driven home from work listening to sermon after sermon on “how the Bible is clear” about modern day nuclear-family marriages. Arrrrrrgggghhhh! They (nuclear families) didn’t even exist in Apostle Paul’s day!!! So I bring this fact to the discussion and say – what about this? It needs to be considered. I don’t go “oh, Luther and Calvin are mini-gods and whatever they said about marriage must be followed by all Evangelicals and all former Church tradition must be ignored.” I say the Bible (which means ‘library’) has some books in it’s covers by a man who has heavily influenced western Christianity. We claim that this zealot for Christ, who preached celibacy, actually preached modern marriage. But, Christians may be surprised to know, Paul didn’t, Reformation writers just wished he did.

    Finally, there is quite a movement in Evangelicalism right now and it is called the Ancient Future church. It isn’t about looking for salvation in a different format of service, it is about recognizing the huge volume of Christian wisdom and knowledge from all the Saints (Christians) from the beginning until today. It is about utilizing them and their wisdom in our spiritual growth. It is big in certain Protestant circles. I am not a part of it, in any legitimate form, but I am explaining that many Protestants are developing a real appreciation for church history and the writings of the church Fathers and Mothers.

    Otherwise, we end up sounding like a bunch of hypocrites who on one hand forbid unmarried people and gays to have sex, yet permit divorced people to remarry. The bible is easily accessible on line. People, especially younger adults, are becoming aware of just how much picking and choosing is going on with Evangelical moral stances these days. We have, in recent history, turned homosexuality into the boogieman, the worst-sin-ever. It is backfiring now, as younger people question our motives. And, in their defence, we don’t have well thought out motives for being so knee-jerk anti-gay. The Bible says people shouldn’t participate in homosexual acts (yes, which ‘acts’ can be debated – prostitution and fortification or all homosexual relations), but it doesn’t single homosexual acts out as any special kind of fornication in the New Testament. Paul simply says, don’t do it. Along with slander and lying.

    Christians are now questioning if we can stop people from fornication. The view is, gays can’t change, so we have to. People can’t remain celibate after divorce, so we need to allow remarriage. The Bible’s words don’t hold much weight on these issues, because most Christians know a few people who are leaders in churches who have remarried. My take is, hold it! Paul actually preaches celibacy. He preaches things our western mindset refuses to acknowledge. First, he doesn’t see our sexuality, in any way shape or form being our identity. He sees our identity in Christ. In modern parlance, we could say, we can’t help being Christlike we were (re)-born this way. Secondly, the Kingdom is open to everyone, yes, people with pasts are welcome. The whole idea of becoming a new person means everyone can become an equal participate in the new Kingdom, generation after generation. However, Paul doesn’t view our desire for intimacy as a good enough reason to permit sexual unions beyond legalized marriage. In Paul’s day, people came to the church from all sorts of backgrounds, many slaves were actually prostitutes. They became Christians and were told to live in a new way (if they could as slaves). Part of that new way was celibacy. Slaves couldn’t just run out and marry – it wasn’t their right. Others were married to spouses they hadn’t seen in years or decades. They are told to love only their wives. Men often left their family villa to work in other areas of the Roman Empire. They would take mistresses and male lovers in these cities. SOme wouldn’t return to their homes for years and years. When they did, they weren’t in love with their wives. They had arranged marriages solely for procreation of legitimate offspring. Paul comes to them and says love your wife as your lover! They didn’t even know her, now she is supposed to fulfil that intimacy they got from their lovers?! Yep. And even if she doesn’t love you back, love her anyways Paul says. So, in summary, there is no earthly Romantic provision in the Bible for our actions. I get that people have intimacy needs, and sexual identities in our culture, but we are immigrants who have left our home cultures to join a new Kingdom (country). In this far off land we are not seen as our sexual identity, nor are our fleshly need considered reasons for certain behaviours. “When in Rome…” could be twisted to say “when in the New Kingdom do as the New Kingdomers do” I get that back home (our culture) telling people they can no longer have sex is akin to us falling mentally ill, but our new culture doesn’t see it this way. They see all physical desires are things to be mastered, and they believe it is possible with CHrist’s help.

    Look, I honestly am not advocating a two tiered system that judges what people have done in their pasts, it is all forgiven, I care where we are going as a church. Are we going to throw out all of Paul’s teachings and open up marriage to homosexuals also? One could well argue there was no option for gays to marry in ancient Rome, but there is now, so that makes it fine because it is all about love. Was it? What was Paul saying about sexual desire? Pursue it or abandon it? We need to know. If we get this wrong, we are being very cruel to homosexuals, binding up unnecessary burdens on them. I am advocating we start to figure out what was being taught in the scriptures, not in the Protestant or Catholic traditions that you claim are the basis for all Protestant guidance, about a plethora of issues in the early church before we apply them to today’s church. We just don’t do a good job of this. We condemn some things (gays) and permit others (remarriage). We, at best, ignore, and worse reject celibacy. We claim the Bible guides us. Does it? Even when it says something inconvenient?

    You claim great scholars see Paul as teaching marriage over celibacy, can you name a few? I would be curious to hear how they come to that conclusion. Most scholars I know, avoid the subject, or ignore Paul’s teachings on it. That is not a well thought out response to Daisy. That is some theologian just fluffing their Evangelical and/or Reformation pillow.

  195. @ Val:

    My main point was along similar lines to yours; that the list of things we consider essential is not the same as that of the early church (though it may overlap); it’s an inconsistency for which I feel we should collectively take more responsibility rather than just pretend the bible obviously agrees with us.

    What also strikes me about the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 is that a big part of what drove the decision was the desire not to burden people more than was necessary. (And although they had Paul among them, they didn’t have his letter to the church in Rome as canonised scripture.) I think we have lost sight of this. For one thing, if you aren’t pursuing relationship with the Father through day-to-day relationship with a risen Person (as distinct from, through the scribshers), then no amount of christianised Torah-observance makes you a believer. On the other hand, if you are walking with that risen Person, and his influence is evident in your life, then there should not be obstacles in your way, but only the challenges he personally sets you.

  196. @ Daisy:
    I would take this response:
    Christians are now questioning if we can stop people from fornication. The view is, gays can’t change, so we have to. People can’t remain celibate after divorce, so we need to allow remarriage. The Bible’s words don’t hold much weight on these issues, because most Christians know a few people who are leaders in churches who have remarried. My take is, hold it! Paul actually preaches celibacy. He preaches things our western mindset refuses to acknowledge. First, he doesn’t see our sexuality, in any way shape or form being our identity. He sees our identity in Christ. In modern parlance, we could say, we can’t help being Christlike we were (re)-born this way. Secondly, the Kingdom is open to everyone, yes, people with pasts are welcome. The whole idea of becoming a new person means everyone can become an equal participate in the new Kingdom, generation after generation. However, Paul doesn’t view our desire for intimacy as a good enough reason to permit sexual unions beyond legalized marriage. In Paul’s day, people came to the church from all sorts of backgrounds, many slaves were actually prostitutes. They became Christians and were told to live in a new way (if they could as slaves). Part of that new way was celibacy. Slaves couldn’t just run out and marry – it wasn’t their right. Others were married to spouses they hadn’t seen in years or decades. They are told to love only their wives. Men often left their family villa to work in other areas of the Roman Empire. They would take mistresses and male lovers in these cities. SOme wouldn’t return to their homes for years and years. When they did, they weren’t in love with their wives. They had arranged marriages solely for procreation of legitimate offspring. Paul comes to them and says love your wife as your lover! They didn’t even know her, now she is supposed to fulfil that intimacy they got from their lovers?! Yep. And even if she doesn’t love you back, love her anyways Paul says. So, in summary, there is no earthly Romantic provision in the Bible for our actions. I get that people have intimacy needs, and sexual identities in our culture, but we are immigrants who have left our home cultures to join a new Kingdom (country). In this far off land we are not seen as our sexual identity, nor are our fleshly need considered reasons for certain behaviours. “When in Rome…” could be twisted to say “when in the New Kingdom do as the New Kingdomers do” I get that back home (our culture) telling people they can no longer have sex is akin to us falling mentally ill, but our new culture doesn’t see it this way. They see all physical desires are things to be mastered, and they believe it is possible with CHrist’s help.

    I would say our (Evangelical’s) views on sex now are akin to moving to a new country, with a different culture, in order to start life over, but then, upon arrival, finding people form the old country and only hanging out with them. Ignoring the new culture and clinging to the old culture by never leaving your cultural ghetto. We moved to God’s Kingdom, yet we refuse to embrace it, instead, we try and make the New Kingdom’s laws and ways fit into our old ways of thinking. We hide in our ghetto and won’t come out to look around the New Kingdom. We ignore the new Kingdom’s ways of marriage or lack of it, and instead, cling to our culture’s nuclear family model. Sure, it isn’t illegal in this new country, but there is a lot more here. We don’t trust the new country, unless it looks like our old country. If it doesn’t look like our old country, it is radicalism or zealotry, and is shunned by our community. So, remaining celibate is a common practice in our new Kingdom, but in our ghetto, that is considered radicalism and is frowned upon. It is also considered very rude to point out to others that our new country praises celibacy above marriage. We are supposed to be very proud of our family-based heritage and not lost that value in the new Kingdom, the elders of our ghetto make sure we don’t forget this value every Sunday.

    The analogy aside, I think it is worth looking at the value life-long celibacy has given you. You have a stronger character, you have learned to live on your own and are not co-dependant. You know the church is headed in a bad direction when you managed to remain celibate but it doesn’t think people like you exist. You can be a voice for the unmarried, an ever growing number of our population.

    You may not get immediate praise, but you are cherished by God for your dedication to following him and he knows the great personal cost to you this walk has been.

    I would encourage you to keep on walking the way you were taught to follow God and ignore this crop of controlling preachers. Faith is being certain of the unseen, you have shown you have strong faith, by following when you couldn’t see where it was leading. I think it is a powerful testimony, and really sticks it to a lot of sex-obsessed preachers.

    It is up to you which way you choose to go, but I admire your journey Daisy, and your courage to question where life has taken you on a public form. You may well be benefiting others who don’t comment much.

  197. If celibacy became the norm, the problems of the church would all be solved within one generation.

    Val – I agree with some of what you say, especially where a segment of the evangelical church is fired up with what the bible says when it comes to gays outside of its doors, but quietly ignores the rule (divorce plus remarriage = adultery) when this would become too uncomfortable with church members.

    I don’t think you could say that of all evangelicals though. There are some who try to be consistent.

    I also think you are in danger of missing Paul’s advocating celibacy in view of impending presecution. He later said prohibition from marriage was a mark of doctrines of demons, and I don’t think he would contradict himself.

    And I’ll add my voice to yours in encouraging Daisy. I hope despite the discouragement she does not succumb to temptation. It is so refreshing to find someone different from those who simply want the benefits of salvation but don’t expect it to change the way they behave or to cost anything.

  198. numo wrote:

    @ Dave A A:
    Flat it gave you a laugh! Btw, shows like Amish Mafia are totally phony…

    I taught you meany “flat out gave you a laugh”! 🙂 (thought you meant)
    What!!! not real???? nooooooo!!! Maybe it’s really a herd of Sasquatches disguised in plain clothing and hats, patrolling the Pennsylvania countryside in defectorless buggies.

  199. @ numo:

    I am 🙂 if we are going to use the NT as our guide.

    A question we should ask, though, is; as Nick said, is it important? If it isn’t, then we could brush it off as culturally relevant advice, but, I would hope we would consider that would mean ALL ideas of fornication, not just for divorced or gay people.

    If we are going to decide Paul is correct in his views, then that would mean celibacy for divorcees and gays. An acceptance that that is the call rather than a patchwork of rules, this for that group, that for this group, etc.

    I just can’t ever say that on forms with out laying out all of history because the general response is: celibacy is terrible/wrong/not taught in the NT, only for certain people, etc.

  200. @ Nick Bulbeck:
    It’s interesting you say most of it is no longer applicable:
    … it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication.

    I learned, perhaps from legalistic Christians, early in my walk, to avoid blood (my response was, that’s easy, who would eat that?) I don’t think I considered steak the same thing as eating blood. I certainly learned about pre-marital sex from every youth leader ever and the fact a few of the youth group girls got pregnant. Then, I went and lived in India and Nepal, guess what Christians don’t do over there? Eat meat sacrificed to idols. The temples run restaurants that serve the meat to customers in Nepal.

    Not sure about your experiences as a youth, but those things still seem to be practiced today. Not arguing they should be, but I don’t think they’ve changed, the list may have gotten longer, but I think evangelicals still preach against pre-marital sex, at least have for quite a while. We don’t culturally eat blood and there aren’t a lot of temples that are allowed to sell their food to the public in the west, so most of it is a non-issue, but I am sure if the temples did show up again, we would hear about Acts 15.

    No, I’m not arguing we should follow all that, and culturally, we aren’t considered pagan if we did eat sacrificed meat, but I am pretty sure those rules are still considered alive and well to many Evangelicals, they just have more “essentials” now.

    Yes, agreed, we need to read the real message from Paul and not keep adding burdens, but I struggle with the patch work applications we are doing right now. No to pre-marital sex, yes to remarriage, no to gays, and then people begin to flip flop all these rules around. The thinking, though, isn’t ‘lets not put on burdens’, the thinking is: no one can remain celibate. That is annoying to me. That shouldn’t be our reasoning. That just doesn’t make sense. Celibacy is something the church expects from people from time to time in their lives (or their whole life). We could say; “lets not make fornication such an issue, since it isn’t part of our culture” but I suspect we aren’t there yet as a church. Churches will still randomly apply who gets “grace” and who doesn’t in this realm, while insisting a) they’re following the Bible and b) continue to overreact to homosexuality as tearing at the social fabric of the Nation because they don’t end up in traditional marriages, ignoring the fact that nor did early Christians.

    OK, gotta run 🙂

  201. @ Nancy:
    I did, and I want to know which theologians whom you are referring to who have “serious scripture-based arguments arising from theologians in some major protestant groups (not just individuals sitting down reading the Bible) that come to different conclusions than your conclusions.”

    I think you are struggling with my conclusions to a degree. I am not saying we should have monasteries or convents in Protestantism, I am saying celibacy has a long history (in various forms, clearly).

    I also think it is naive to say Protestants don’t consider an appeal to church history in our decisions. Of course we do. We just narrow the band to the first 70 -100 years after Christ’s birth. We read, study and examine greek culture and language to determine how the original audience received the message (what I have been doing). We often fail and add our own cultural lens to the readings, but we are still weighing their view of the world and considering it authoritative. Consider women in church leadership, we appeal to that fact men are described as elders, not women. we appeal to it a ‘Biblical’ because it is in the Bible, but ignore the head-covering rule as cultural (mostly).

    No, I don’t think there is any theologian who would claim Paul was not for celibacy (different from asceticism, which wasn’t included in my overall point, just randomly mentioned as a contrast to our view). I am curious to know whom you are referring.

  202. We have to be careful with Paul’s letters for several reasons. First, we do not have the letters or communications to which he was responding. Second, he some of the best scholars of his writing believe that Paul used a form of argumentation that involves showing the absurd result of some position taken by the church to which he was writing. The head covering thing appears to be one of those. If circumcision is not important, why a big deal over head covering, as an example. Third, we have a bold statement that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, that seems to fit best with the behavior of Jesus and seems contradicted by some of Paul’s writing. Fourth, at least some of the things attributed to Paul may not be from him but from someone claiming to be him. Fifth, scholars believe that fragments of letters were put together, and that there are four distinct pieces in 1 and 2 Corinthians that suggest four different times of writing, for example.

    So we need to be careful with Paul!

    And we need to be careful with translations that, since the KJV and perhaps before, and continuing to today, add words in English that are not in the Greek, that convey ideas that the Greek does not of necessity convey. Such are the “offices” in the church, the word submit in Ephesians regarding “wives to your own husband”, and the actual meaning of the word translated elsewhere as “submit”.

    We need to tread very lightly!!!

  203. Dee:

    I understand that you believe it would be better for the baker to bake the cake for the gay wedding out of love, even though he doesn’t agree with the idea of a gay wedding. I totally understand that perspective.

    But I cannot get past the idea that this baker’s rights were violated. The law should protect his rights.

    Once that happens, I can get to the part about what response might be the truest illustration of Christian expression.

    My point was that with the diversity of opinion in religious communities, there are going to be a range of responses on this question. All people are not going to think alike or this or other issues.

    Given that simple recognition, we are going to have situations like this within all sorts of religions over all sorts of issues.

    For me, rather than staking out what is or should be THE Christian response, my response is I can see a case being made for either side.

    I understand that in Canada and some parts of Western Europe now it may be more difficult to preach against sins like engaging in homosexual acts. I don’t know how true that is, but we can substitute some other topic.

    The old saw of “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it” applies here.

    I may not agree with the way a preacher from a particular religion may decide to address homosexuality.

    But I think that the issue of first importance is to defend his right to say what he believes. Then I can work on convincing him what I believe may be the best way to address the issue.

    I am not critical of you for your position.

    But for me, I cannot look past the awful violation of this baker’s rights to get to the point of telling him what he should do or how he should run this business. I just can’t.

    I believe that the taking of a person’s property or liberty is the most serious aspect of this story.

    Discipling this baker, and others like him, is important. But making sure he can make a free decision about what to do is a primary question.

  204. @ Dave A A:
    Well, we *do* have legends up here in the Alleghenies about mysterious critters, but no Sasquatches that I know of. I think that this area (despite the many state forests and some protected wilderness areas) is a lot less “wild” than some of the western states/wilderness areas. Settlers 1st came here in the mid-1700s, and the valleys have been prime farming territory ever since. Lots and lots of dairy farms around here, and we *did* have a giant cow statue that marked a local business. That’s the closest thing to a monster that I’ve ever seen!

    Per reflectors, the Amish in Lancaster County and other parts of southeastern PA are very careful to use lots of them on their buggies. Many even have battery-powered flashers (they keep the battery under the dashboard). The Amish up this way are *very* conservative, and don’t go in for these types of safety measures – unfortunately.

  205. @ Val: for many, many centuries celibacy was portrayed as an ideal state for those inclined toward spiritual pursuits, with married life a distant second. In the West, this was so until after Vatican II. The nuns I knew and lived with had grown up being told that you couldn’t serve God all that well if you were married. To do it right, you had to either become a priest (or unordained monk) or a nun. Period.

    They used Paul’s words as a proof text.

    In other words, there are ancient arguments on both sides of this. In the East (and then in the West) there was a move toward fairly extreme monastic practices after the 300s. Celibacy was only one of the things that figured in a harsh asceticism that was practiced by many, and still is practiced by some Orthodox and Catholics.

    Your comments are interesting, but I think you might want to look a little more closely at the history that you invoke. It’s not nearly as clear-cut as you’re making it out to be.

    Fwiw, I am single and have been celibate for a long time. (Longer than I care to mention in a public post.) I always felt like asecond-class citizen while in the evangelical world. But look, my experience is not that relevant here. History is, and part of that, involves the history of textual interpretation, which was and is anything but static. Social/cultural history are very much part of it as well. (Check some info on who went through marriage ceremonies – and *when* they went through them – prior to the Renaissance, and prepare to be surprised.)

  206. @ An Attorney: indeed. He used irony and rather “sneaky” rhetorical devices to turn the tables on his hearers, too – cf. the main body of Romans chs. 1 and 2, where the gentiles are portrayed as absolutely depraved, with each word piling on top of the last. and *then*, once he’s got his Jewish listeners affirming what he’s saying… He says “And such were some of you.” It’s very intense exaggeration, not a laundry list of commandments, going on there. But too many people read his letters as if they were instruction manuals. 🙁

  207. @ Anonymous: but the couple didn’t ask that he officiate at their wedding – they asked him to make a cake.

    I cannot see how the baker’s beliefs or rights were in any way violated. It is a civil rights issue for all parties, and all too similar to Jim Crow laws (in refusing service and more) for comfort.

  208. When ‘leave us alone’ became ‘bake us a cake!’ by Matt K Lewis

    A passage from the page:

    At some point, however, “leave us alone” became “bake us a cake. Or else!”

    And that’s a very different thing, altogether.

    The reason conservative Christians are fighting this fight today is because it’s a firewall. The real danger, of course, is that Christian pastors and preachers will eventually be coerced into performing same-sex marriages.

    (Note: It is entirely possible for someone to believe gay marriage is fine, and to still oppose forcing people who hold strong religious convictions to participate — but I suspect that is where we are heading.)

  209. Through a glass darkly wrote:

    I don’t think this, and other examples given, are equivalent to the situation. The gay couple wanting a wedding cake

    Why should a Christian who is opposed to homosexuality or homosexual marriage have to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual wedding?

    Most of them (Christians opposed to homosexual marriage) would probably be fine with making a birthday cake for a homosexual person, or a retirement cake or graduation cake.

    Why can’t the homosexual couple find a pro-homosexuality cake baker? I think some of the more militant ones specifically seek out Christian ones to drum up attention, controversy and law suits.

  210. Anonymous wrote:

    The old saw of “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it” applies here.

    First, I am believe in free speech. I am willing to hold my nose at a bunch of garbage because I believe in that right. I am a blogger, after all. 🙂

    A long time ago, we decided not to make this blog about political positions. I believe that people of good will can deeply disagree about the effectiveness or the desirability of certain laws. That does not mean that I do not have political positions although in the last few years I have become less enchanted with the ability of the political system to drive towards a just society.

    As an aside, I have been watching House of Cards on Netflix. I am startled by the number of Washington insiders on both sides of the fence who believe the show accurately portrays the depravity of Washington. That is scary.

    Instead, I want to focus on Christian responses to the situation. As you know, Jesus rarely addressed political intervention. I am focusing on things that are more interesting to me-like the issues of the heart and how do we witness our faith to a watching world-law or no law.

    However, I am watching how the Florida SBC handles the lawsuit. As time goes on, i think more and more lawsuits are going to be seen against denominations who do not provide due diligence in exposing child sex abuse.

  211. Daisy wrote:

    Christian pastors and preachers will eventually be coerced into performing same-sex marriages.

    I do not believe that this will happen in the US in the near future.

  212. @ dee:

    Maybe not by the government, but as you know I am a Methodist, and the issue of what Methodist pastors are allowed or permitted or required to do is a recurring issue from year to year. Homosexual marriage ceremonies have been discussed, and some folks want to change the rules about it. That has not happened at this point. I do not think that we will ever be in the position of disobeying the laws of the land, but if it were to be that churches were required to permit gay marriage ceremonies (based on some federal civil rights legislation) there would be those who would want our elders to be required to do it. I am not remotely saying that will happen. Not at all. But I am saying that it could happen.

  213. Due to the first amendment, civil rights laws do not apply to churches regarding religious functions. However, when churches accept federal money for social services, that part of the organization that is providing those services will be governed by the laws. An example: If a church is accepting money for prisoner re-entry programs, it cannot discriminate in hiring staff except for program related capabilities. E.g., no gender, racial, etc. discrimination in hiring people to be paid with federal money. Other than that, the anti-discrimination laws have never applied to churches, which is one of the reasons that Sunday services are generally essentially of one race or another.

  214. @ Nancy: In this conference, there are many who would not be comfortable marrying same-sex couples, and I honestly cannot imagine that anyone would make it a requirement that all ordained Methodist ministers *must* conduct these ceremonies.

    You are generalizing, based, I think, on your personal convictions. I have no problem with you having opinions, but please don’t lash out at those of us who have encountered abuse by evangelical/charismatic churches and/or see demographic patterns that really *are* there!

  215. @ numo: Meant to say something along the lines of “having those specific opinions.” Not sure I’m wording anything correctly right now, and need to take a break.

  216. Val wrote:

    I learned, perhaps from legalistic Christians, early in my walk, to avoid blood (my response was, that’s easy, who would eat that?) I don’t think I considered steak the same thing as eating blood.

    I’m still catching up on the thread, but to comment in passing, I have been under the impression that some followers of Judaism will not eat their stake anything less than well done for this reason. I have also been under the impression that the red juice that comes out of a nicely cooked (medium rare for me, thanks!) steak is not actually blood. But I grew up around fundies, and I know better than to let facts get in the way of reading the letter of the law!

  217. Josh wrote:

    I have also been under the impression that the red juice that comes out of a nicely cooked (medium rare for me, thanks!) steak is not actually blood.

    And you’re quite right. It’s myoglobin.

  218. @ dee:

    Pastors and preachers are acting as agents for the state or government in performing a marriage ceremony. It’s the marriage license that’s important to the state and not the religious ceremony. Don’t pastors and preachers say something like, “By the power vested in me by the State of —– I now pronounce you —–” Couldn’t the state rescind that power by requiring pastors and preachers to perform gay marriages or perform no marriages at all? If that were to happen, then the marriage ceremony would be strictly religious and the couple would need to get married before a justice of the peace, etc. to satisfy the law.

  219. Numo:

    I know he was not asked to officiate the wedding.

    But the baker has a sincerely held religious conviction that he believes.

    I may not agree with him but I will support his right to believe differently than I may.

    And am not talking about fear mongering. I believe that the baker in this instance was fined or punished for violating the law of the state where he lived, as interepreted by an administrative agency.

  220. Dee:

    Understood.

    On the Florida lawsuit thing, I believe the FBC is in trouble. The State Convention planted the church and recommended the pastor for the church plant.

    The State Convention was involved.

    If the State Convention had not been involved at all, it would be fine. But if the State selects and recommends the pastor for the church plant, and they don’t do due diligence, that is a recipe for trouble.

    The SBC doesn’t plant churches.

    That lawsuit is a map for less involvement in ministerial recommendation and not more.

  221. @ Joe:
    First, I do not think something like that will happen for a long time to come in the US.

    However, I am not sure that pastors should be functioning as agents for the state. I think they should not even accept such a designation. In some countries, a Christian couple who is getting married does two things. They go down to the city hall (we already have to go for the marriage license anyway in the US) and the state the recognizes the union. Then the couple goes to the church and has the church ceremony, making their commitment before God. The state keeps their hands off the church part.

    I think such an arrangement makes sense and gets churches out from under the government. CS Lewis also believed that the church and the state should not mix in the marriage deal.

    The quote

    “There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not (p.112).” Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

  222. @ dee:

    I do not think something like that will happen for a long time to come in the US.

    Case in point: no one has forced anyone to perform interracial marriages, even though it’s been legal for decades and pretty much everyone regards pastors who refuse to perform one as backwards fools. It’s funny how quickly people forget that.

  223. dee wrote:

    I do not believe that this [corecion] will happen in the US in the near future.

    There are plenty in Europe who think that as well, but I am far from convinced. The homosexual lobby, together with their secular and atheist allies, don’t give a monkeys about anyone’s sincerely held religious convictions, nor about their conscience, and would not hesitate to use the power of the State (Ceasar) to get what they want, given the chance. What they want is acceptance and positive affirmation, not marriage as such.

    Ironically, they argue that discrimination is an absolute moral wrong, and therefore there can be no exceptions from it. Religious people of all people, not having Science and Reason and being a throw-back to unenlightened times with their ridiculous superstitions and imaginary friend, should not be allowed to practise their bigotry.

    In the UK Peter Tatchell, a homosexual activist, has started warning homosexuals that they are in danger of becoming the intolerant mirror image of what they used to oppose, but he strikes me as being a lone voice.

  224. @ Ken:
    However, I do not believe that Europe/UK exactly reflect the US. The US did not go with a state run church. That separation works to our advantage.

    In fact, I would like to see the church totally separate from the government. I do not like pastors functioning as agents for the civil authorities in issues such as marriage. I am not pleased about certain deductions that the government gives to the church like the pastors housing deduction.

    We have so many pastors living a rich lifestyle and thumbing their nose at anyone who raises a concern. I believe that their ill behavior, along with their fellow pastors who are not rich but who keep their mouths closed, will force, at some point the government to slash that benefit. And well they should. I

    Also, there are state’s rights in the US and one only has to look at the goings on in Arizona to realize that Arizona is not Oregon.

    The American people are fiercely independent, be it in our churches or in our state politics. I do not believe that the US will resemble Europe in the area of free speech, etc for the foreseeable future.

  225. And I would add that the homosexual community in the U.S. is not monolithic either, and never has been! The marriage rights movement was based in long-time faithful relationships between people. But a lot of the issues around AIDS and parades comes from the “bath house” culture, which was short term interactions with various people without a relationship commitment. Of course, there is a wide mix, and some people from both ends support the others.

    I have acquaintances that have been in long term relationships that would value the opportunity to marry but do not wish to do anything that attracts notice, and I know a few who are as “out” as one can get, on facebook, for example.

    So it is important to not generalize across people and issues.

  226. dee wrote:

    In fact, I would like to see the church totally separate from the government.

    The irony today, would you not agree, is that those who most loudly protest at the separation of church and state are now moving in the direction of using the power of the State to limit religious freedom. That is hardly separation of church and state!

    I think the ‘true church’ made up of real believers is separate from the State. The established churches of Europe (and I think you will find in the early days some of the States in the US had established churches, the idea of a ‘separation clause’ is being read back into the constitution) are largely only there to provide some religious pomp and ceremony for state occasions e.g. a royal wedding. It’s an institutional hangover from the past.

  227. Ken wrote:

    In the UK Peter Tatchell, a homosexual activist, has started warning homosexuals that they are in danger of becoming the intolerant mirror image of what they used to oppose, but he strikes me as being a lone voice.

    Peter Tatchell is an interesting chap. Last year he actually campaigned alongside a Christian over the latter’s being disciplined by his employer (local government) over a Facetube comment he’d posted to the effect that the state shouldn’t compel churches to conduct gay marriages. Can’t remember the Christian’s name, but the point is that he is not opposed to gay marriage. His Facetube comment was something like, If the State wants to conduct gay marriages, that’s up to them; but they shouldn’t force churches to do it when they believe they shouldn’t. I agree with him on both counts, actually. So did Peter Tatchell, feeling that this was actually an issue of basic freedom.

  228. Ken wrote:

    In the UK Peter Tatchell, a homosexual activist, has started warning homosexuals that they are in danger of becoming the intolerant mirror image of what they used to oppose, but he strikes me as being a lone voice.

    As a veteran of a fannish community with a HEAVY homosexual presence (SoCal Furry Fandom), I can attest from experience that gays are just as likely as straights to Throw Their Weight Around against The Other when they are the ones calling the shots. Possibly even more so, as being on the Bottom for so long adds the Payback Factor when they find themselves on top.

  229. @ An Attorney: very much appreciated, and very much worth keeping in the forefront of this discussion.

    Ken, I wonder if you’ve spent much time with gay people? Seriously – am not meaning to bait you. People are people, regardless of sexual orientation or ethnicity.

  230. @ dee: so “fiercely independent” that we often resist pulling together, imo. I could go on at length, but it would inevitably become political and I know you don’t want that here. Suffice it to say that I wonder if you’re being entirely fair to those who live in Europe? I mean, it’s got quite a spread of nationalities and languages and local cultures – more like a crazy quilt than anything else. What is true in England isn’t necessarily *at all* the same in Scotland – or from one part of England to another.

  231. @ Ken:
    About the separation clause: nope, you are off there. Please check the history of the original 13 colonies and see how diverse they were in terms of religion. Fwiw, I’m from PA, which was foundedf by Quaker William Penn, and which was no pen to people who were fleeing intolerance and persecution in Europe. Moravians, Amish, Mennonites and more came here to settle very early on, and there was no single dominant church/denomination. By contrast, there’s the Massachusetts Bay Colony (rigidly Puritan), the elite of VA – who were/are Episcopalian; tere’s Maryland, which was settled by Lord Baltimore and the Calvert family – one of the only havens for English Catholics in the New World – etc etc etc.

    Please don’t make *us* out to be monolithic. We are not and never have been.

  232. Ken wrote:

    the idea of a ‘separation clause’ is being read back into the constitution)

    This is straight up wrong.

    Separation of church and state was from the beginning. It was another reaction of the Colonists against the divine right of kings. Instead of having to be a ‘subject’ and submit to whatever religion the king was the defender of… they wanted to be citizens and have sovereignty over their own lives and chose their own religion.

  233. numo wrote:

    People are people, regardless of sexual orientation or ethnicity.

    Yes I agree. I would add the proviso that homosexual acts are chosen, whereas ethnicity is not. Whether or not you can have an unwanted orientation I’m not convinced. I would treat others as I would like to be treated, but it doesn’t mean I approve of their sexual immorality, whether homosexual or say adultery. In everyday life no-one checks up on this anyway.

    I did manage a long and respectful interaction with a homosexual (and others) on a secular forum without garnering the epithet ‘homophobic bigot’, which I think is not a bad achievement these days. Homophobia (so-called) is becoming the unforgivable sin in the sight of those who otherwise don’t believe in the idea of sin.

  234. @ Emmaline:

    The question I would have for Evans is IF homosexuality is physically harmful, psychologically harmful, and spiritually harmful (it being the expression of rebellion against God), is it ‘loving’ to promote it? She is heavy on love, but light on righteousness, a more important biblical word (not that these two are alternatives, they belong together).

    Regarding the Russians and the Ugandans, something that she does not appear to have noticed is that these countries do not want to be bullied or dictated to by the West in general and America in particular into what morality they should or should not support. In both cases this is imo for historical reasons,lingering cold war antipathy in the case of Russia – who still sees the West as decadent, and an unwillingness, having been released from British sovereignty in the case of Uganda, to see American (cultural) imperialism imposed by Obama. They want “to demonstrate Uganda’s independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation”.

    Now the NT does not mandate the State to make homosexuality a punishable criminal offence, and I agree with Evans that no-one should be treated cruelly because of it. The church at Corinth had repentant homosexuals among its members, grace triumphing over the condemnation of the OT law. However, her clear approval of it, in the light of Rom 1 : 32 and its context, makes me wonder just where she really stands. Hardly evangelical.

    I don’t agree with homosexuals having to live in fear of their life, but neither do I agree that other countries have an obligation to regard it as the best thing since sliced bread just because this is the current fashion amongst the western elite – and elite that is foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

  235. @ Ken: have you followed the actual train of events re. ultraconservative American evangelicals’ very real influence (financially and culturally) in Uganda? If not, I strongly suggest you do some research! Crazies like Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively (who believes that German fascist were gay and that the Holocaust was a direct result of how gay people supposedly think and act) have had a HUGE presence and influence there.

    I know some of this 1sthand, as I used to be a member of a D.C. charismatic church that had close ties to Uganda.

    RHE is correct in what she says about both Africa and Russia. A hell of a lot of American $$$ and missionaries for this cause are active in Africa in general, as well as in Russia. Uganda was their testing ground. (By the bye, Uganda has a lot of untapped mineral wealth. It’s about money, from this end, for sure, as well as support for a dictator who is amenable to the potential $$$ these people say they’ll bring to him and his cronies.)

  236. @ numo:
    Since you asked a fair question, no, I have not followed the involvement of American evanglicals in either Uganda or Russia, though I am aware this goes on. The kind of evangelicals is what bothers me, and I cringe when the reasonable amount of religious freedom that has arisen in eastern Europe, for example, is (ab)used by the likes of Benny Hinn for his worldly ambitions dressed up as Christianty.

    My point is that the liberal/left in the West, who for years condemned the imperialism of the West, are now hypcrites in criticising Russia and Uganda when they stand up to the secular left’s love affair (as it were) with homosexuality. Gay imperialism is just fine.