Tag: Religion

Is the Alabama embryo ruling pro-life or pro control?

Posted on by Scott

That’s the title of this op-ed by Solomon Missouri, pastor of a rural church in eastern North Carolina and an Alabama native. While he is perhaps best known for a viral Twitter thread about modern romance, he was as serious as a heart attack in his discussion of the many flaws in the concurring opinion of Chief Justice Tom Parker–both in theology and in science. Pastor Missouri concludes (and I agree) that the ruling is pro control–just like the Dobbs decision from the Supreme Court which preceded it.

This paragraph in particular calls out his home state for its hypocrisy regarding the sanctity of the lives of children:

Alabama has the highest rates of maternal mortality among Southern states. Alabama 1 in 5 children live in poverty. Alabama ranks 48th in education, and 45th in children’s overall wellbeing. In January, the state rejected $65 million in federal funds which would have been used to feed children this summer. These systemic failures do not reflect love, compassion, or even sympathy. When so many systems fail children in Alabama it speaks to an underlying apathy and resentment.

Pastor Solomon Missouri, Is the Alabama embryo ruling pro-life or pro control?, February 29, 2024

The whole piece is well-worth your time to read in full, and share far and wide. These questions he ends his piece with are aimed directly at Christians:

[W]hy is cruelty the singular currency of your faith? Can a Gospel that breeds such hostility and animus towards its neighbors be considered good? Is it a “faith” if the state forces you to do it? And why are people who don’t share your faith required to follow your tenets under threat of prosecution?

Pastor Solomon Missouri, Is the Alabama embryo ruling pro-life or pro control?, February 29, 2024

The very first of the freedoms enumerated in Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” Yet so-called conservatives both in state legislatures, state courts, and federal courts seem bound and determined to compel adherence to a Christianity that bears no resemblance to the example of Christ.

Religious Freedom is a Poor Cloak for Prejudice

Posted on by Scott

One thing I have noticed in the rightward lurch of the federal judiciary over the years, especially the Supreme Court (and rulings that appear intended to repeal the entirety of the 20th century), is how often they grant relief to plaintiffs using religious freedom as their rationale. Such cases used to be about believers being able to observe their religious practice as they chose without being prevented from doing so by the government, or by secular employers, with accommodations being made where possible. At the very start of my career in IT, my employer tried to compel me to work on Saturdays (my day of worship as a practicing Seventh-day Adventist), and I ultimately quit that company rather than yield to the pressure (or pursue a court case).

Now religious freedom in the United States has been distorted to any and every expression of Christian faith in any context, aided and abetted by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, as an exemption to the laws everyone else in this country must adhere to. The latest example of this is the case 303 Creative v Elenis, recently decided 6-3 in favor of 303 Creative. Despite the proprietor of 303 Creative never actually being contracted by a gay couple to create a wedding website, and despite not even having expanded her business to offer wedding website services, “she brought a pre-enforcement challenge to the Colorado law, worried, as Gorsuch wrote, “the State will force her to convey messages inconsistent with her belief that marriage should be reserved to unions between one man and one woman,” according to the Washington Post. So the very prospect of a same-sex couple asking a public business to accept their money in exchange for a service was so alarming that the plaintiff chose to file lawsuits to prevent it. And after numerous losses in lower courts finally received a ruling in her favor from our nation’s highest court.

This idea that engaging in a business transaction constitutes an endorsement of a practice someone deems sinful seems to me either a well-intentioned but significant misunderstanding and misreading of scripture, or a deliberate distortion intended to justify ones pre-existing prejudices. When I think about where in the Bible a Christian might look in order to guide their decisions in a matter like this, I think of the works of the Apostle Paul.

After these events Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. He came to them, 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them, and they worked together, for they were tent-makers by trade. 4 And Paul was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

Acts 18:1-4

Tent-making was how Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla earned money to support themselves as they pursued their main goal of spreading the Gospel. If any evidence exists that any of them refused to make or sell tents for Corinthians who were sinners, I haven’t read it in the Bible. If any evidence exists that selling tents was somehow an endorsement of whatever lifestyle Jews or Greeks or anyone else in Corinth was engaged in, I have not read it in Acts 18 or anywhere else in Acts. So how exactly does a Christian in the United States come to the conclusion that making a website for money (or a cake) if the customers are a same-sex couple is an endorsement of same-sex marriage? Are we to believe that the modern Christian in the United States somehow has less religious freedom than Aquila and Priscilla, who were in Corinth after leaving Rome because Jews were being persecuted by the Emperor Claudius? Reading further in Acts, we find Paul engaging with both Jews and Greeks in Ephesus, Macedonia, as well as in Greece.

Given previous rulings by the Supreme Court, I’m not surprised by the ruling in her favor. What was surprising was this article in The New Republic, which suggests that the plaintiff or her lawyers fabricated a gay couple attempting to violate her religious freedom. If true, the owner of 303 Creative built this entire case on a lie.

The start of a thread by Rev. Solomon Missouri

Rev. Missouri, senior pastor at Invitation AME Zion Church in Snow Hill, NC is refreshingly blunt in his perspective regarding the dishonesty of 303 Creative’s position. But the questions he ends the threads with are the most important for anyone who points to their Christian faith as the rationale for their actions:

What gospel ethic—what value is communicated in this? Where is the divine in this?

Rev. Solomon Missouri tweets

While Rev. Missouri asks the question of Christian evangelicals in general, it should be asked specifically of white evangelicals. What gospel ethic is communicated by prevailing upon a secular court to sanction your desire to reject the provision of a service to people who haven’t asked you to provide it? A similar question could be asked of the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop. Contrast their example with that of the Apostle Paul, and how he engaged with both Jews and Greeks—both in his trade as a tent maker, and in his ministry work. Christianity spread throughout the Asia of Paul’s day, while many of the membership rolls in Christian churches in the U.S. are shrinking. Numerous Christian denominations (including my own) are still fighting over whether or not women should hold pastoral roles despite claiming to believe in a Bible with numerous examples of women in leadership in both the Old and New Testaments. The same Aquila and Priscilla of Acts 18:1-4 can be found later (in Acts 18:26) explaining the way of God more accurately to the evangelist Apollos. Rev. Missouri’s question bears repeating in this context: what gospel ethic–what value is communicated in denying particular titles to women in the service of God? Is the gospel well-served by putting incompetent and/or untutored men in the office of pastor over women to whom God grants the same spiritual gifts as men?

A friend of mine shared this interesting Substack post with me which asserts that religion has become a luxury good. This quote toward the end of the piece is an unfortunately accurate picture of the state of Christianity in the United States today:

Increasingly religion has become the enclave for those who have lived a “proper” life. College degree, middle class income, married with children. If you check all those boxes, the likelihood of you regularly attending church is about double the rate of folks who don’t.

This is also troublesome for American democracy, as well. Religion, at it’s best, is a place where people from a variety of economic, social, racial, and political backgrounds can find common ground around a shared faith. It’s place to build bridges to folks who are different than you. Unfortunately, it looks like American religion is not at its best.

Instead, it’s become a hospital for the healthy. An echo chamber for folks who did everything “right”, which means that is seeming less and less inviting to those who did life another way.

https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/religion-has-become-a-luxury-good

Christianity as practiced in the U.S. today is definitely not inviting to those who did life another way, and increasingly not even to those inside the enclave.

Is American Christianity Due for a Revival?

Posted on by Scott

Timothy Keller believes renewal is possible. He laments the decline in church membership and the closure & repurposing of former churches he first encountered in New York has spread nationwide. He then describes five factors as necessary for renewal and acknowledges that even those five will not be enough on their own. But only fairly late in the piece does he fully acknowledge the nature of political engagement of the white evangelical American Christian church:

American evangelicals have largely responded to the decline of the Church by turning to a political project of regaining power in order to expel secular people from places of cultural influence.

Keller, Tim. “American Christianity is Due for a Revival”. The Atlantic, February 5, 2023

More than “turning to a political project”, Christian churches have been violating the law regarding endorsement in elections, and only retained their tax-exempt status by virtue of the IRS abdicating its enforcement responsibilities.

As a Christian, and not withstanding the recent revival at Asbury University that began just days after Keller’s piece ran and continued for weeks, I have serious doubts about the prospects for a broader revival of Christianity in this country anytime soon. Keller cites Émile Durkheim and Jonathan Haidt as secular social theorists who “who how religion makes contributions to society that cannot be readily supplied by other sources.” But entirely absent from Keller’s piece is any acknowledgment of the ways in which the Christian church as an institution, and those who lead certain individual congregations, has not only failed to be a positive exemplar of how to treat its members, but has reflected and reinforced some of the worst practices of the secular world in its treatment of women, children, and those who are part of marginalized communities. This goes beyond the sex abuse scandal of the Southern Baptist Convention, or similar cases in the Catholic Church going back decades, to the arguments we are somehow still having even today over whether or not women should be ordained and function as pastors.

Twenty-seven countries are currently led by a woman in the role of president, prime minister, or chief executive, and dozens of countries have elected women as leaders since 1960, nearly 10 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 were led by women CEOs as of 2021, but some Christian churches have decided that only men should exercise their spiritual gifts in the office of pastor–regardless of our claim to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing God who has granted the same spiritual gifts to women as well as men. Our churches claim to believe in a Bible that depicts women as prophets, political leaders, business leaders, and ministers in the days of antiquity but denies their evident spiritual gifts in the present-day. These are not the actions of institutions in a faith ready for revival.

About that rapture thing

Posted on by Scott

It’s May 21, and we’re all still here. Not that I expected a different outcome, but there’d been a lot of buzz in the press lately about the latest prediction of the end of the world.

The rapture was even a topic at work on Friday–in jest at first, but more and more serious as the conversation went on. A few of us (two of us Christian, one a sort of agnostic) talked about the crucifixion, the resurrection, the last supper, even Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.

Today at church, our pastor spoke at length on the reactions he’d heard to those who believed the world was ending today–most of them negative. He didn’t agree with their theology, but respected their willingness and seriousness in acting on their faith and sharing it with others. As Seventh-day Adventists (a denomination that came out of a movement that believed Christ would return in 1844), he reminded us that we should be more sympathetic to those with beliefs different than ours.

A Leap of Faith

Posted on by Scott

I had a chat with a former co-worker at Ciena Corporation yesterday. I was surprised to discover that since one of the layoffs there, he and his family recently moved to Israel. When I asked him where, he said north of Jerusalem. As it turns out, they moved to Kochav Yaakov, in the West Bank. There was a big feature in the Baltimore Sun about it last month.

It certainly puts that conflict in a new light for me, now that someone I know is over there. I respect Glenn for his courage and pray that he keeps safe.

Battle on Teaching Evolution Sharpens

Posted on by Scott

I first read about the Discovery Institute in a Wired magazine article last October. At the time, I considered the piece rather alarmist. Seeing this piece in the Post months later prompted me to consider the issue more fully. One quote from a minister in the story stands out:

A prominent effort is underway in Kansas, where the state Board of Education intends to revise teaching standards. That would be progress, Southern Baptist minister Terry Fox said, because “most people in Kansas don’t think we came from monkeys.”

This is entirely the wrong reason to revise teaching standards. Even though I’m a Christian, and have faith that God created everything, the idea that what gets taught in science class should be decided by majority rule is a disturbing one. The intent is not to create better students, or develop their critical thinking skills, but to use political power to impose beliefs. When Christians get into these battles over what should be taught, it seems to me that faith is left out of the equation. For all the doubts that Terry Fox and others have about evolution, the proposition that God created heaven and earth is even more difficult to prove. I’m not even sure that such a thing should be provable, otherwise, what need would we have for faith? People who pursue these kinds of curriculum changes seem not to understand that science and theology have fundamentally different goals.

This quote from a mother in Wichita, Kansas was interesting:

“If students only have one thing to consider, one option, that’s really more brainwashing,” said Duckett, who sent her children to Christian schools because of her frustration. Students should be exposed to the Big Bang, evolution, intelligent design “and, beyond that, any other belief that a kid in class has. It should all be okay.”

Beyond the feeling of some people who aren’t Christians that Christian schools are a form of brainwashing, there are other problems with her statement. Schools don’t have infinite amounts of time to teach any idea that comes down the pike about the origins of life. Our schools need to teach the things that will turn out thoughtful, functional individuals. Teaching a bunch of other stuff chosen by popular consensus (instead of validated through a process that imposes some objective standards) simply doesn’t accomplish that goal.

The passage I found most disturbing in the piece was this one:

Fox — pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in the Midwest, drawing 6,000 worshipers a week to his Wichita church — said the compromise is an important tactic. “The strategy this time is not to go for the whole enchilada. We’re trying to be a little more subtle,” he said.

It disappointed me that a pastor with this kind of following would openly acknowledge the intellectual dishonesty of his approach. If he wants creationism to be taught in school, he should spend his efforts building and supporting private Christian schools that will do it. This stealth approach of trying to force it into public schools is wrong. Christianity should not be compulsory.

I appreciate the approach of the Christian schools my parents sent me to from elementary school through high school. In each one, my classmates and I learned evolution in our science classes. We had Bible classes for learning about God, creation, and other theological issues. Before we could graduate from high school, we all had to take a course in world religions, so we wouldn’t be ignorant of faith traditions outside our own. I think that sort of division is necessary and appropriate. Those classmates of mine who went on to graduate studies in biology and chemistry, medical school, and professional lab work or medical practice are great at what they do because of that division. It certainly hasn’t made them less Christian, or less sure of their faith.

When I went to a public university, this kind of upbringing made me better able to share what I believe with others, made others more comfortable sharing their beliefs with me and asking me more about them. I didn’t feel any pressure to compromise what I believed in (and still believe in). I wish more Christian schools would take that approach.