Posted on 07/04/2014 6:17:34 PM PDT by ReformationFan
As a Christian lawyer — even when I was engaged in the “commercial” practice of law rather than the nonprofit, constitutional work I do now — I always drew moral lines around my representations decisions. I was not going to use whatever meager talents God gave me to advance or celebrate causes or principles I knew to be wrong. In other words, I discriminated. But not on the basis of race, gender, disability, or sexual orientation, but rather on the basis of the action or legal principle the case would advance. I’d happily represent anyone, gay or straight, in a commercial contract dispute. I would not represent anyone, gay or straight, who wanted to sue to make divorce easier or broaden the definition of marriage beyond the union of one man and one woman. I’d represent an adulterous cad if the state violated his rights to free speech, but I wouldn’t lift a finger to help him divorce his wife.
This distinction, between status and acts, or between and among different acts themselves, used to be a matter of common sense. And it certainly still is amongst lawyers. No one (yet) is telling me that to maintain my law license I have to represent anyone who asks for help, no matter the case or cause. But if I have artistic talent, now the rule is different: My talents are the community’s talents, or I’m “seceding” from society. So the Christian baker, who’s more than willing to bake a cake for anyone, gay or straight, man or woman, black or white, for — say — a birthday party or an office celebration, is now seceding from society if they’re unwilling to help celebrate a gay wedding.
That’s the contention of Jonathan Rauch, a guy I’ve long respected and whose book, The Kindly Inquisitors, is a must-read for anyone who questions the value of free speech in a pluralistic society. Unfortunately, his latest essay in The Atlantic, gets things exactly backwards. Accusing Christians of a “great secession,” of “walling themselves off from secular society,” he says this:
Culturally conservative Christians are taking a pronounced turn toward social secession: asserting both the right and the intent to sequester themselves from secular culture and norms, including the norm of nondiscrimination. This is not a good idea. When religion isolates itself from secular society, both sides lose, but religion loses more.
I’d counter with a different construct: Ideologically aggressive government and its cultural allies are taking a pronounced turn toward social aggression: expanding the reach of government into decisions that American culture and norms have traditionally left to the private sphere. That is not a good idea. When government power intrudes upon Christian conscience, both sides lose, but government ultimately loses more.
We just ended a news cycle when the Left and its allies in the federal government (and the front-runner in the next presidential race) had an absolutely hysterical over-reaction to the news that a Christian family business couldn’t be forced to pay for pills that could kill children. The fact that this same Christian family will provide, free of charge, 16 different contraceptives to its female employees was apparently immaterial. Christians were “hurting” women. Rather than viewing the undemocratic expansion of Obamacare (remember, the HHS mandate was regulatory, not statutory) as an aggressive government action, the alleged aggressors were Christians who weren’t willing to sacrifice their liberty and their conscience. But here’s Rauch on the Christian desire to be left alone:
Still, the desire to be left alone takes on a pretty aggressive cast when it involves slamming the door of a commercial enterprise on people you don’t approve of. The idea that serving as a vendor for, say, a gay commitment ceremony is tantamount to “endorsing” homosexuality, as the new religious-liberty advocates now assert, is a far-reaching proposition, one with few apparent outer boundaries in a densely interwoven mercantile society. It suggests a hair-trigger defensiveness about religious identity that would have seemed odd just a few years ago. As far as I know, during the divorce revolution it never occurred to, say, Catholic bakers to tell remarrying customers, “Your so-called second marriage is a lie, so take your business elsewhere.” That would have seemed not so much principled as bizarre.
I’d respectfully suggest that Rauch doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about here. Down in the Evangelical South, where I grew up, and in the Evangelical culture where I’ve lived my entire life, we’ve got a long tradition of refusing to participate in immoral acts. I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked to Christian business owners who’ve drawn lines around their businesses, but none of those events made news because they didn’t involve a legally or culturally favored identity-group.
A prime example of this phenomenon is the academic world’s treatment of Christian student groups. For generation after generation Christian groups have taken disciplinary action against leaders who engage in heterosexual sin. Whether they’re “hooking up” or cohabiting, Christian student groups have long asked straight students to step down from leadership when they’ve crossed moral lines, especially when they’re unrepentant. They operated for decades on campus without controversy. But now they’re exposed to a massive assault on their most basic rights of free association, about to face expulsion from the entire Cal State system, for example, unless they allow their leaders to engage in homosexual sexual activity.
There is no “hair trigger defensiveness” from Christians. There is no desire to “secede” — unless our democracy has devolved so much that the quest to maintain historically-protected religious liberty rights is now “secession.” In his closing, Rauch declares the following:
This much I can guarantee: the First Church of Discrimination will find few adherents in 21st-century America. Polls find that, year by year, Americans are growing more secular. The trend is particularly pronounced among the young, many of whom have come to equate religion with intolerance. Social secession will only exacerbate that trend.
I’d respond with my own guarantee. The best way to destroy a faith is to abandon it. Just ask mainline Protestants. They’re no longer recognizably Christian, they’re prone (like the PCUSA) to embrace vile evils like abortion and anti-Semitism, and they conform to the culture and lose adherents by the hundreds of thousands. After all, why go to church when you can get the same sermon from the Sunday New York Times?
Rauch may be correct in the short term that orthodox Christians may find themselves further isolated. But we’re not seceding. Far from it. In fact, we’re embracing the nation’s founding principles — principles designed from the beginning to protect minority viewpoints. When it comes to determining which values are more fundamentally American, more consistent with our history and culture, I’ll take the First Amendment over a university diversity policy. In fact, I’d say that if anyone is “seceding” from the Land of Liberty, it’s those who would use the power of government to deny citizens their “unalienable rights” — even if the oppressors believe their cause is just and their intentions are pure.
"I’d respond with my own guarantee. The best way to destroy a faith is to abandon it. Just ask mainline Protestants. They’re no longer recognizably Christian, they’re prone (like the PCUSA) to embrace vile evils like abortion and anti-Semitism, and they conform to the culture and lose adherents by the hundreds of thousands. After all, why go to church when you can get the same sermon from the Sunday New York Times?"
Exactly.
This is an excellent article.
The irrationality that is so prevalent today is frightening.
It is difficult to have the patience to address it in such a manner as French has here.
M4L
Why do we as Christians so easily give up our beliefs to be a part of the culture? God did not say to be double minded or to walk on both sides of the fence. We became a problem when we stopped saying no. We accept anything the schools hand down, we avoid worship to watch football, we accept the fare on television and at the theatres, and generally go along with the culture.
This distinction, between status and acts, or between and among different acts themselves, used to be a matter of common sense. And it certainly still is amongst lawyers. No one (yet) is telling me that to maintain my law license I have to represent anyone who asks for help, no matter the case or cause. But if I have artistic talent, now the rule is different: My talents are the community’s talents, or I’m “seceding” from society. So the Christian baker, who’s more than willing to bake a cake for anyone, gay or straight, man or woman, black or white, for — say — a birthday party or an office celebration, is now seceding from society if they’re unwilling to help celebrate a gay wedding.
That’s the contention of Jonathan Rauch, a guy I’ve long respected and whose book, The Kindly Inquisitors, is a must-read for anyone who questions the value of free speech in a pluralistic society. Unfortunately, his latest essay in The Atlantic, gets things exactly backwards. Accusing Christians of a “great secession,” of “walling themselves off from secular society,” he says this:
"Culturally conservative Christians are taking a pronounced turn toward social secession: asserting both the right and the intent to sequester themselves from secular culture and norms, including the norm of nondiscrimination. This is not a good idea. When religion isolates itself from secular society, both sides lose, but religion loses more. "
PFL
No wonder. Christians have abandoned the culture in the USA and we lost it to evil.
This is because Christians bought a demonic lie sold to them from those working to create a hedonistic secular oligarchy over us: don’t judge.
Because Christians in America by and large have grown biblically ignorant, it was easy for the Secular Hedonists to use the scriptures, out of context - against them.
A society that would not be governed by God and His Laws - will be ruled by the tyranny of men, and theirs.
And it always results in men rejecting God’s Laws and biblical morality and imposing their own morality upon their subjects.
Here we are.
>>Some mainline Protestants have walked away from their Christianity, not all. For every mainline protestant branch where an organization has walked away from God (and is decreasing in size dramatically as a result) there is another organization who has stayed true to the Gospel and is increasing at a much faster rate.
Exactly. The ELCA has caused Lutherans to move to the WELS and LCMS. The PCUSA has caused Presbyterians to move to the PCA. The members of the UMC who are faithful to the bible are talking about splitting the denomination. For every apostate denomination in mainline Protestantism, there is a mirror denomination. And the SBC and various non-denoms are picking up the rest of the faithful.
True Christian Churches will increase under persecution. Up until now it has been a time of withering. Only recently are people being directly attacked because of their faith. The Church has always grown under persecution - the difference between the world and the Church becomes so more stark and the Church becomes the haven for those who no longer have a fence to sit on!
Doesn't "Mainline" (or "Mainstream" Or "Oldline" or even "Sideline") refer to those denominations which belong to the NCC and the WCC, who are theologically liberal, and who are abandoning the faith and morals of historic Christianity?
That would be, roughly, the UMC, the ELCA, the PCUSA, the Episcopal Church (EC), the American Baptist Churches (ABC), the United Church of Christ (UCC), and, I guess, the Disciples of Christ, and Reformed Church in America.
I think, though, that the relatively new, renewed, faithfully Christian organizations which are growing --- the WELS, the LCMS, the PCA, the various Episcopal/Anglican exiles and offshoots --- are not referred to, and do not call themselves, "mainline" Protestants.
So, yeah, the LCMS is Lutheran, but it isn't "mainline" Lutheran. The "mainline" Lutherans, ELCA, are the ones down the street with the rainbow banners, living on endowments from people now interred in the Lutheran graveyard.
Now I'm no expert on this type of taxonomy, so if I am wrong, please correct me.
You nailed it spot on.
>>I think, though, that the relatively new, renewed, faithfully Christian organizations which are growing -— the WELS, the LCMS, the PCA, the various Episcopal/Anglican exiles and offshoots -— are not referred to, and do not call themselves, “mainline” Protestants.
That’s what I was saying, that the mainline denominations are spawning a non-mainline/non-progressive version of themselves. When they do, the old mainline version goes into steep decline while the new, non-mainline version grows.
You got it right, Mrs. Don-o.
Also, call it what it is -- An attempt by the ruling class to expel certain people from the common culture.
“As far as I know, during the divorce revolution it never occurred to, say, Catholic bakers to tell remarrying customers, “Your so-called second marriage is a lie, so take your business elsewhere.” That would have seemed not so much principled as bizarre.”
Maybe if they had, nobody would be shocked today when Christians refuse to recognize ‘gay marriage’ or whatever other impossibility the state decides to call marriage at the time.
FReegards
In the Religion forum, on a thread titled Are Christians in the Midst of a ‘Social Secession?’, SoConPubbie wrote:
Some mainline Protestants have walked away from their Christianity, not all. For every mainline protestant branch where an organization has walked away from God (and is decreasing in size dramatically as a result) there is another organization who has stayed true to the Gospel and is increasing at a much faster rate.
In the Religion forum, on a thread titled Conservatives on the Supreme Court: All Catholic (vanity), verga wrote:
...you should also understand that here are almost no formal conservative evangelical/protestant churches. With the “decentralized authority” that you all so proudly tout when it is convenient it should be no surprise.
Catholicism has a stated position consistent with Conservatism. Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans all support gay marriage. Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians have women pastors. The list of inconsistencies with the Bible and Conservatism goes on and on...
Individual members may be Conservative to one degree or another, but none of the churches have an enforceable manifesto against abortion, Gay marriage, Euthanasia, etc....You all want the church of “Que sera sera” now live with the consequences.
(Minor corrections made by me.)
We could have different definitions of mainline. Mainline does NOT include Baptists, assemblies of God, etc.
Mainline Protestantism pretty much came out of the protestant reformation or were first generation progeny. We’re talking Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian and their immediate progeny.
The only Baptist denomination that would be considered “Mainline” that I know of would be the American Baptist Churches for their affiliation with the NCC and the WCC.
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