What Emanuel AME Church has to teach us about the way forward

Now that same-sex marriage is woven into the national legal fabric of the US, Christians and their communities of faith are considering how to respond. Some are angry, decrying the imminent demise of the nation; others are celebrating this progressive move.

This isn’t the first time that churches in the US have had to deal with changes in legal requirements that relate to marriage. Up until the 1970’s there had to be some provable violation of the bonds of marriage for a divorce to be granted. Since the creation of no-fault divorce, however, the process has been streamlined and made easier for everyone (except, of course, the children).

This was a challenge for people of faith, who trusted the authority of that part of the wedding ceremony that proclaimed,

“What God has joined together, let no one separate.” (A quote from Jesus, to be clear)

The State made a ruling on divorce, and churches had to live with it. How did many churches respond? Many realized that marginalizing or excluding divorced people from their fellowships was not the way of Jesus. Divorce recovery ministries sprang up. There was even a growing acceptance of those who divorced and remarried. Most didn’t do a particularly good job of exploring the theology of it all, but there was still a response that resulted in acts of ministry.

Now the State has made a ruling on marriage, and churches have to live with that as well.

So, now what?

I think that the good people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, have helped us with the way forward.

After nine worshippers were gunned down in their church, the members of Emanuel probably recognized that the rest of the world would sympathize with them if they called for retributive justice—the death of the perpetrator that might somehow set things rights. They might have called for a violent response from their community.

Instead, they sent the world a message. They said, in effect,

“In times of pain, sorrow, and grief, we begin with worship, and then we forgive. That’s how we do it.” And the world, including the media, marveled.

And now, the Supreme Court has laid claim to a time-honored tradition for religious folks of all kinds: Marriage. And, as a majority, the citizens of our nation are on board with that change. The times, indeed, are a-changin’.

So, my Christian brothers and sisters, how do we do it?

Do we spew vitriol on the Internet, drawing lines and investing ourselves in the polarized screaming matches that have too long characterized people in our society? Do we simply embrace the decision of the court and cheer for what we’ve thought was right all along?

Or, do we stop, take a breath, and consider who we are. We who follow Jesus are not called to be ideologues that live or die based on the rulings of the Court or the preferences of our culture. We are called to be God’s people for the sake and blessing of the world.

The most appropriate response to the drama of this week is, I believe, to come together in worship. I think the noble people at Emanuel AME have shown us the power of such a response. Regardless of our views about the Court’s decision, we should intentionally and vulnerably place ourselves in a posture that demonstrates the lordship of Jesus Christ and recognizes that the church in America is a church in exile.

And then we open our eyes and ears and ask ourselves: What does the ministry of Jesus look like in this time and place? In challenging times, how is the love of God made known? I’m pretty sure it won’t be made known in political posturing and venomous denunciations.

So, how will we do it? The world is watching.

The Supreme Court and Same-Sex Marriage

The Facebook posts regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to declare the legality of same-sex marriage across the US have been predictably interesting. Like many others, I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite some time, and I am going to weigh in with my own observation and recommendations, at least for those who operate in the realm of the Christian community.

For a very long time, clergy have officiated at weddings in a dual representative capacity. On the one hand, they represent the Christian church; on the other hand they represent the State (as in , The Government). We often provide evidence of this dual representation by closing the ceremony with words like these:

“By the power invested in me by the church of Jesus Christ and the State of XXX, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Whether those words are spoken exactly that way or not, the dual agency is real.

I’ve officiated at quite a few weddings, all in the state of California. It is humbling to me that when I say the words that declare the marriage of the two people standing before me, it has the power of law. Upon my word, at that moment in time, those people are married to each other. The Church and State both back me on this.

This is a powerful reality because I sign the marriage license sometime later in the day, mail it off a few days later, and the County Recorder enters it into some computer within the following weeks. Nevertheless, those folks were married the second I said they were married. The Church and State both grant me that authority.

Church and State in the US have had this complicit relationship for many years and everyone’s been pretty much okay about it.

Until now.

We religious folks have long believed that marriage is our business. That is, we see marriage as a sacred bond and, therefore, part of our turf. Up until recently, Church and State have been in agreement about what constitutes a marriage (we have had some conflict with the State about what constitutes a divorce, but we somehow got comfortable with that one).

As of this morning, the Federal government has sent all religious people—regardless of their views on same-sex marriage—this message:

“We own marriage. You do not.”

And, apparently, they are right.

So maybe this is an opportunity for Christian leaders to reflect in some new ways about our relationship with the State and with the culture at large. Perhaps we’ve been complicit with the State when it suits us, but have expressed outrage when the State reveals its true character as the dominant power structure in the US.

So here’s what I’m thinking. Consider these words of Jesus:

“ . . . if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” (Matthew 5:40)

I know this text is addressing the issue of retaliation, but perhaps we can allow it to inform our thinking on the issue of marriage. The State has taken our coat—the definition of marriage—as its own. Maybe its time for us to hand the State our cloak as well—that is, our role as agents of the State in the performance of marriages.

In other words, maybe we need to get out of the marriage business.

The State already owns that business. People have long been able to go the courthouse, pay for a license, and have a court deputy perform a brief ceremony, resulting in a legal marriage. It’s quicker, easier, and a lot less expensive than a big, fancy church wedding with a reception.

Maybe it’s time for us to look at what a train wreck marriage has been over the years in this country, and rethink what we do to solemnify and bless this union that we have traditionally referred to as “marriage.” Maybe we need to revisit the concepts of covenant and faithfulness and reframe them under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and let the State do its job of deciding who gets married and who doesn’t.

We can be for or against this Supreme Court decision, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. Religious groups in general and Christians in particular don’t own marriage. That coat has been taken.

It might be time for us to weave a new cloak.

Kermit Gosnell and the Normalcy of Evil

Yesterday Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder, found guilty of killing three babies following botched late-term abortions. Prosecutors called Gosnell’s clinic a house of horrors. There will surely follow a great deal of debate about definitions of viable life, the standards of regulation of abortion clinics, and so on.

Will clearer definitions and better regulations really remove the possibility of the butchery uncovered in the Gosnell case? It took Gosnell’s employees quite some time to decide that working in filth, storing fetal body parts in jars and empty cat food cans, and snipping the spines of tiny, squirming, crying babies were bad ideas (one man claims to have done over a hundred snippings himself before his conscience felt compromised). Would a clearer understanding of legal requirements have stopped them before they obeyed their employer?

How does such evil flourish? How can it emerge in the context of a practice that has become, in our culture, so normal—or as Hannah Arendt, in her reflections on the Nazi executioner Adolph Eichmann, suggested: How can evil be so banal?

Over the last forty years or so, activism, science, and government—in a kind of legislative ménage à trois—have successfully spawned a cultural perception of normality when it comes to abortion. Sure, there are protestors in front of clinics, but the word abortion has become more ideological than a description of something real. It is the political dividing line between those claiming loyalty to the yet-to-be born, and those standing for rights of the ones who would have to give birth. It is word that is now included in our growing list of inalienable rights.

And then Gosnell shows up and makes it all real.

But we don’t want it to be real (is that why the press seemed so light on the story over the last two and a half years? Was everyone running around asking, “Is it real? Is it real?”). We have worked so hard in protecting our sensibilities by limiting our in-utero descriptions of life to terms like zygote and fetus, but certainly not baby. We seem to have agreed, overall, that it isn’t viable life until we say it is, and that would be somewhere around 21 weeks after conception.

So quit looking at that sonogram. Stop counting those fingers and toes. Ignore that fluttering butterfly that the technician said was a heartbeat. It’s not a living being. It’s not. It’s not. It’s not.

Unless someone like Dr. Gosnell successfully pulls a few fetuses into the light of day and their labels are magically changed to babies.

Kermit Gosnell is such a benign name. It isn’t a Hannibal Lector name that would automatically conjure of images of horror. It’s almost a warm and fuzzy name because it is shared with one of our favorite frogs. It’s very, very normal, just like the word scissors. With scissors we cut out paper dolls and remove tightly-wound strands of ribbons from wrapped gifts. We also use them, it appears, to sever the spines of tiny babies. After all, seconds earlier, they were only fetuses. Is there a 5-second rule on this?

Critics of Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, argue that evil does not spring from passive, ignorant people blindly following the orders of their evil leaders; they say it comes from regular, everyday people becoming immersed in evil ideologies, and then acting in accord with those ideologies. Perhaps they are correct.

The Gosnell case has caused me to think anew about how we determine good and evil. If it is by legislation, then we can act morally (does that word even have a definition?) only to the degree that our legislators and judges inform us. At what point do we look around and examine our normals and discover that we’ve adopted a received morality and have slowly cooked in its cultural juices, like little Kermits in a kettle?

There are certain clues that should tip us off here. When various groups begin redefining our terminologies for us, we should put up our anttenae of suspicion. When pressure on legislators results in our lines of morality being shifted, we should ask a few questions.

In the 19th century, there were a number of state and federal supreme court cases related to slavery, several of which declared imported Africans to be under full control of their owners. One case denied protection under the constitution for those slaves and any of their descendants.

We’re all probably happy that someone challenged those views of normalcy. What the law seemed incapable of doing was ultimately accomplished by people with a moral compass.

Sometimes, when our courts rule and slaves are freed, women given equal legal status with men and so on, we might find that our so-called normals really did need to be shifted. But not always. And never without examination.

I’ve referenced this text of Scripture before, but I feel compelled to do it again:

Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you . . .” (Matthew 20:25-26)

When our leaders and the powerful lobbies that influence them inform us about what is good and right and legal, is the conversation over for we who follow Jesus? And I’m not only speaking of abortion (clearly that debate has never abated), but of questions regarding immigration, human trafficking, economic policies, and a number of others. Or, is there a point where we look beyond the lines of legislation and declare,

It will not be so among us.

More on Marriage and Rights

Attentive reader and friend Brian (see his comment on my post of September 8) rightly points out that the Supreme Court of the US has indeed declared marriage to be a basic civil right. That is true, and probably will provide the basis for the eventual approval of same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

But my question is this: For we people of faith—Christian faith in particular—does the Supreme Court (or any judicial or legislative body of the state) have the ability to declare how we view reality within the contrast society we call the church? In other words, if the Supreme Court says that marriage is a civil right, does that provide us the only basis for talking about marriage?

I found the following at a University of Missouri website:

“Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 hotly debated the issue of slavery. George Mason of Virginia argued eloquently against slavery, warning his fellow delegates:

‘Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, providence punishes national sins by national calamities.’

Southern delegates, on the other hand, argued strenuously that the new government should not be allowed to interfere with the institution of slavery. Delegate John Rutledge of South Carolina, for example, told delegates that ‘religion and humanity have nothing to do with the questions’ of whether the Constitution should protect slavery—it was simply a question of property rights.

“The Supreme Court, in its infamous decision in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), ruled that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. In so doing, Scott v Sandford invited slave owners to pour into the territories and pass pro-slavery constitutions.”

At one time in US history, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of slavery, making the forced labor of human beings an act that was considered legal and the right of slaveholders. Others declared that what the Court had ruled, while a social and economic reality, was a fundamental violation of human dignity.

Just because the Court says its so doesn’t make it so. It might be the law of the land, but it doesn’t necessarily create the only boundaries within which followers of Jesus form their thinking and practice.

I’m not advocating lawlessness, nor am I, in this posting, advocating one way or the other regarding same-sex marriage. What I am saying is that we people of faith have to process these kinds of issues from a standpoint that assumes something bigger than the Court can rule upon.