“An Awful Crown Of Thorns”: Oppressed Christians And Second-Class Citizenship
With all this talk of gay people marrying one another, some people on the right are starting to bleat about how they’re being oppressed for their Christian beliefs—so oppressed, in fact, that they’re starting to feel like “second-class citizens.” Here’s CBN’s David Brody lamenting the sorrows of Kirk Cameron and Tim Tebow. Here’s Red State’s Erik Erikson predicting the coming pogrom (“Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan.”). Here’s Fox News commentator Todd Starnes on the oppression that has already begun (“it’s as if we’re second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage”). And how is this second-class citizenship being thrust upon them back in the real world? Well, people are … strongly disagreeing with their position on an issue of public concern! It’s awful, I tell ya.
The impulse to jam that crown of thorns down on your head is a powerful one in politics. It means you’ve achieved the moral superiority of the victim, and the other side must be the victimizer. The problem is that these folks don’t seem to have much of a grasp on what second-class citizenship actually looks like. Last time I checked, nobody was forbidden to vote because they’re a Christian, or not allowed to eat in their choice of restaurants, or forced to use separate water fountains, or even be forbidden by the state to marry the person of their choice. That’s what second-class citizenship is. Having somebody on television call your views retrograde may not be fun, but it doesn’t make you a second-class citizen.
Of course, they say, “Just you wait.” But these fantasies of oppression are just that, fantasies. One of their favorite scare stories is that before you know it, Christian ministers are going to be hauled off to jail or have their churches lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to marry gay people. Right, just like at the moment a Jewish synagogue will lose its tax-exempt status if the rabbi won’t preside over a Pentecostal wedding. And as for the florist who refuses to sell flowers to a gay couple, what he’s asking for is not a right but a privilege, the privilege to discriminate based on sexual orientation. It’s no different than if he refused to sell flowers to an interracial couple. But somehow, if he finds justification for that discriminatory practice in his faith, that’s supposed to make it a fundamental right.
I’m more than happy to admit that in certain circles, it’s more acceptable to be gay than to be an evangelical Christian. That’s what Chief Justice Roberts was getting at when he noted during the oral arguments about DOMA that “political figures are falling all over themselves” to endorse gay marriage, and thus gay people don’t qualify as a disfavored minority. But what we’re talking about here isn’t attendance at fashionable Upper West Side parties, it’s discrimination under the law. That’s what makes you a second-class citizen. It’s what gay people live with now, and it’s something that is never, ever going to happen to Christians, no matter how bad some of them may feel when people tell them they’re wrong.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 27, 2013
“Ineffable Arrogance”: The Christian Right Climbs Up On The Cross
What with all the adverse trends (even to a small extent among its own bought-and-paid-for Republican Party) on public opinion about same-sex marriage, it’s not surprising that the recent habit of Christian Right stalwarts to proclaim themselves persecuted has intensified. As is often the case, CBN’s David Brody speaks for his tribe:
In the media’s narrative, you would think that homosexuals are the poor souls who have been banished by society like ugly stepchildren and are now rising to overcome incredible odds.
But what about today? Let’s be honest: If you are a conservative evangelical who believes in the biblical definition of traditional marriage then guess what? You are one of the following: An outcast, a bigot, narrow-minded, a “hater” or all of the above. It’s a different type of ridicule but it’s still ridicule.
Before I say “cry me a river,” I’ll acknowledge that Brody does make the rather important point that such alleged victims of persecution as Tim Tebow and Dan Cathy don’t exactly stand out in the history of Christian martyrdom, a tradition that calls for a bit less whining and a bit more fortitude than we usually hear from such quarters. And he does condemn Christian Conservative gay-baiting and hatred, though it has often emanated from leaders, secular and political, he seems to consider part of The Team. If he’d go on to note that “ridicule” is the least of the disabilities GLBT folk have had to put up with, I’d be inclined to cut Brody some slack in begging for “tolerance.”
What I’d really prefer to a stiff upper lip, however, is even a vague glimmer of humility from conservative evangelicals like Brody on this subject. He thinks it’s obvious any “Bible-believing evangelical” has to take a stand against marriage equality. I think there’s significant evidence that a lot of conservative evangelical folk consistently confuse the Bible with the patriarchal culture they grew up with, and/or use the Bible to justify utterly secular political positions that have little or nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe Brody’s right, but then I’m not the one pretending to have a monopoly on truth. Christians who do should not only expect some pushback from those they would cast into the outer darkness, but yes, some ridicule and scorn for their ineffable arrogance and the use of the Lord’s name in vain. I would recommend reflection on this possibility two days before the commemoration of the true Cross, just as I intend to reflect on my responsibility to feel a stronger sense of Christian fellowship with David Brody.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Editor, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 27, 2013
“Guns And Babies”: What Newtown Does Not Teach Us
I began the week of December 10th with the horrible news that one of my former students, Brandon Woodward, had been gunned down on the streets of New York City. I ended the week with even more unbelievable news: that 20 children, six teachers and their shooter were dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Between those deaths, another shooter killed two people at an Oregon shopping mall.
There are no words for the horror parents must have felt yesterday, especially parents in Newtown. To bury a child is the worst fate imaginable. To bury anyone you love is an awful, soul-gutting task. When that death comes at the point of a gun, the last thing grieving parents and the loved ones of the deceased need to hear are clergy members and religious pundits prattling on with a false moral equivalence that goes like this: if God and guns are allowed back in our schools, tragedies like Sandy Hook will not happen again.
Who would say such a thing? For a start, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, Fox News’ Mike Huckabee and David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s The Brody File. Since yesterday’s awful news, each has claimed that God’s absence from our schools and the lack of concealed gun carry permits for teachers and school administrators allowed this carnage to happen. I am sure there will be others who decide to preach sermons along this line from pulpits around the country this Sunday.
In their quest to give pat answers, these men and others once again blame tragedy on what they perceive as the absence of God in public places. In their attempt to provide a remedy, they suggest that the very tool of destruction used in this massacre—guns—be allowed into the classroom alongside God, as a deterrent (no matter that the gunman’s weapons belonged to his mother). Their logical fallacy is stunning, and reveals the absoluteness of their punitive—and puny—belief.
One of my Twitter followers, Brent Sirota, said it best: “The louder and more vituperative the theism invoked at any given social or political problem, the emptier the conservative prescription.”
If there was any moment where God must have been present, it would have been in a classroom of young children, some just five years old, who were probably praying and crying for their parents as a disturbed young man took aim at them with a gun.
The time has come to confront, without reservation and unceasingly, the type of theological evil that emerges from figures like Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer—who after yesterday seem little different from the Westboro hatemongers. It is not about “reaping and sowing,” David Brody. The nation reaped this whirlwind not because of God’s absence, but because of an absence of limits on the power of the NRA and its particular interpretation of the Second Amendment. That group and its ideology have become an omnipotent force that holds a gun, fixing its sights on all of us as a nation. God is not lobbying on Capitol Hill about guns. God isn’t making state laws more lenient for concealed carry. God is not selling assault rifles at gun shows without so much as a three-day waiting period.
God did not give David an AK-47 to tackle Goliath, but a slingshot.
Listen up, evangelicals and conservative Christians. You can’t say that because God isn’t in a classroom, that we as a nation have reaped what we’ve sown—and then ask for guns in schools at the same time. Those children and teachers were innocent. You can’t compare this to abortion. It’s a false equivalence. If you continue to allow these theological hacks to speak for you, or if you as clergy repeat this asinine excuse to your congregation this Advent season, you lead your people astray, and you have blood on your hands as well.
I don’t currently identify as an evangelical, but in my time at Fuller Seminary I learned some great theology from people I still respect. In one of my classes, theology professor Ray Anderson said something very simple yet very profound that I have carried with me since. Even in the most horrible moments, he said, God is present with us. God is not absent. It’s a statement that flies in the face of the kind of theology that Mike Huckabee is peddling: a presupposition that we must give homage to a god that wants fake sacrifices and piety to appease his divine wrath. What Anderson taught me is the kind of belief that can sustain people through terrible tragedies.
In times like these, I find more in common with the atheist, agnostic, and the seeker. They either don’t care for god in any shape, name or form, or have the good sense to leave god out if it.
People, mentally ill or not, are responsible for their actions. Actions have consequences. We must be willing to address the fact that as a nation we are sick. We are hopped up, angry, ready for a fight every day, and we live in an apocalyptic aura of fear that makes all of us uneasy and unstable. Our moral core, our American Exceptionalism is not about freedom—it’s about violence. We’ve anointed the Second Amendment as sacred scripture and a charter of freedom: the right to bear arms, so that we can kill. We are a vicious, violent nation. And these days it’s our violence most of all that makes us stand out.
Americans must begin to assess our humanity, and view each other as human beings, rather than target practice. Violence and promoting a violent Christian God does not solve the nation’s problems. It creates more of them.
For those like Brody, Huckabee, and Fischer who see tragedy and want to prescribe more violence and proclaim the glories of a violent, punitive God, please do us all a favor: shut up. Let us grieve these children and their teachers’ lost lives in peace. Now is not the time for your brutal apocalyptic beliefs.
By: Anthea Butler, Religion Dispatches, December 15, 2012
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