On 8-21-09, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, America’s largest Lutheran denomination, voted to allow ‘monogamous’ gays to become ordained as pastors.
And yet, per the New York Times, 10-20-09: ‘The Vatican announced Tuesday it was making it easier for Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism -- a surprise move designed to entice traditionalists opposed to women priests, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.’
On 8-21-09, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, America’s largest Lutheran denomination, voted to allow ‘monogamous’ gays to become ordained as pastors. While I applaud the activists who helped make this possible, and the delegates who found the good sense and courage to take this step away from the darkness of bigotry, I have to scratch my head about something.
Mainly, I am puzzled as to why there are any gay folks still left in the church after so many years of second (or possibly 3rd) class citizenship. It wasn’t that long ago that the church decided that openly gay persons could retain their membership at all, and even fewer years ago that the church condescended to allow ‘celebate’ gays to become ordained clergy.
Even now, the church announcing that ‘monogamous’ gays can become pastors maintains a double standard. My own father was an ELCA minister who did not maintain a monogamous status, yet he retained his credentials throughout his extramarital affair and for the rest of his life.
Another source of puzzlement for me: why does any enlightened person want to be a member of an organization that actively discriminates? I tend to view the mere fact that an organization is still willing to construct a rationalization to discriminate as being strong evidence that this organization is not worthy of my efforts and/or beyond all reasonable hope. Especially when the purported goal of the organization is allegedly of a higher purpose than, say, the VFW or the Elks Club.
The counterargument seems to be that the church has many positive aspects, and these positives outweigh the discriminatory aspects, and that the best hope of reform is by working within the system.
Yet many years ago I talked with a member of a the Klu Klux Klan who, while refusing to admit that his organization practiced discrimination, did acknowledge the imperfection of the organization but said that the organization’s positives outweighed the negatives. This Klansman cited sense of community and purpose as examples of the positives. Also, said this person, the violence and abuses all happened in the past, the modern Klan operates peacefully. Despite these arguments, I cannot make myself believe that these things would ever justify my membership in the Klan.
Just to make it clear: I am not trying to equate Christianity with the KKK. The badness of the KKK far outweighs its virtues. If indeed there are any virtues of the KKK, which has yet to be proven.
Nonetheless, the Christian church, or secular authorities working on its behalf, tortured and killed accused heretics and witches from the time of the late Roman Empire until at least the 19th century.
My own religious upbringing was Lutheran, and as a pastor’s son, I missed none of the church’s educational requirements. Yet I was surprised, recently, to stumble upon an old book written by Martin Luther entitled On the Jews and Their Lies.
Here’s a good quote from this book:
"Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them."
And here’s something really juicy:
"My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire...
"Second, that all their books-- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible-- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted...
"Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country..."
The fact that a 16th German would be anti-semitic is old news. What is interesting is that these churches, which venerate Luther to a degree just short of sainthood, are mostly silent regarding their founder’s bigotry. But the Lutherans do, in their own way, acknowledge it somewhat, on their respective websites.
The Missouri Synod one of the 2 largest Lutheran denominations, , comments in these terms: ‘In light of the many positive and caring statements concerning the Jews made by Luther throughout his lifetime, it would not be fair on the basis of these few regrettable (and uncharacteristic) negative statements, to characterize the reformer as "a rabid anti-Semite." ‘(From the Missouri Synod Website.)
This statement is at best a distortion. It is true that Luther made many evangelical overtures to Jews, but when he learned that most Jews were content with their own religion, Luther had no use for them. Certainly Martin Luther was a brilliant man and meant well, but, no offense to the Lutherans, a man who advocated burning of the synagogues and death to any Jew brash enough to mention God’s name, is most definitely an anti-Semite.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is more candid in their statement regarding this subject. From their website: ‘In the spirit of that truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther's anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews.’
But there the discussion ends. For a person who grew up with all the requisite religious education for this church, it fascinates me that Luther’s anti-Semiticism was never a topic in Sunday school. Nor does it appear to be a topic now, even for adults. I asked my mother, a life-long Lutheran, if she knew that Martin Luther advocated the burning of synagogues; she did not. Nor did the other Lutherans I quizzed. Not a scientific survey, but good enough for this essay.
I cannot help but wonder: if Martin Luther’s raw and irrational bigotry had been exposed to them in their youth, perhaps they would have been less resistant to modern efforts to bring about equality between people. If they had learned that the greatest of their mortal teachers had used the methodology of theology and God’s own word to justify his irrational hate, would it have been easier for the Lutherans to correct some of their own institutional bigotry?
The Lutherans are not alone in their desire to conceal unpleasant facts regarding their heroes. Other denominations are guilty of this, as are U.S. history books. In religion the tendency to white-wash heroes represents a special danger, due to the tendency of humans to conflate religion with morality.
While most religions claim to be moral, and most offer at least some positive moral instruction, religion and morality are ultimately different things. One can easily be one, without being the other. Yet in the U.S., there is a particular national tendency to conflate Christianity with morality.
On the one hand, Americans are aware of that religiosity does not equal morality. They acknowledge this fact every time a high profile church leader is in the media spotlight for a scandal involving infidelity, pedophilia, mind-altering substances, and/or related issues. They use this knowledge to claim that the crimes of the sinner do not reflect on the church as a whole, and by this device hold the church blameless.
On the other hand, membership in certain churches tends to give an otherwise unknown or untested person the advantage of being perceived as moral. Moreover, publicized appearances at church are one of the first stops for many public figures during their post-scandal rehabilitation tour. Bill Clinton made many well-publicized church visits after the Lewinksi debacle.
And George W. Bush, despite a previous conviction for insider-trading and despite having an admitted history of using alcohol to excess up to age 39 1/2 , was nonetheless appointed and later elected to the U.S. presidency, largely on the basis of the Christianity which prominently and always adorned his sleeve.
So, in the mind of modern America, it would appear that Christianity has a kind of magical ability to remain untarnished by the worst offenses of its membership, and yet still retain the ability to confer some virtue upon the most tarnished members of humanity.
But the scandals involving licentious clerics and public sinners are at least, officially, aberrational. The tendency of churches to discriminate, however, is not. Discrimination has been a part of Christianity since the beginning.
St. Paul, who was probably more influential in the church than Christ himself established separate dress and conduct codes for women the first Christian century. St. Paul expressly stated that women should always be subordinate to men.
Not long after Roman emperors became Christianized around the 4th century, the formerly cosmopolitan Rome became more and more intolerant of other faiths. The Roman church eventually waged wars against and developed extensive torture methods for heretics and non-Christians.
In 1208 Christian armed forces attacked the town of Beziers, France slaughtering 20,000 men, women and children accused of heresy. When the commanding legate, Arnaud, was asked how to tell the heretics from the believers he answered, 'Kill them all, let God sort them out.'"
After the Roman Empire crumbled, nation states became the dominant unit of human organization and power. Nonetheless, the Catholic states sought and generally obtained the blessing of the Pope so they could make war under the blessing of the church. Likewise did protestant clerics bless protestant armies.
According to whatever denomination the respective monarchs claimed, numerous European nations engaged in suppression, repression and sometimes outright suppression of those outside the preferred group. In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews; from England, Puritans, Quakers and others left the island nation in hopes that they might form their own government in North America, so as to gain the right to persecute others.
The defense contractor formerly known as Blackwater Inc., recently re-christened Xe, has made many billions from the U.S. military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, is headed by the famously Christian industrialist Erik Prince. This corporation is currently under investigation due to the untimely deaths of several corporate whistleblowers, and one of the interesting revelations has been Erik Prince’s authorship of memos expressing his theory that God sanctions the extermination of Muslims.
The United States was formed with the intent of being either a secular or fundamentally Christian nation, depending on who you talk to. And when the nation was legally established in the late 18th century, slavery was institutionalized. Christian historians will tell you that most of those who fought to end legal slavery were inspired by Judeo-Christian values, and they would be right to do so.
But it should also be pointed that many of those who fought to maintain legal slavery cited the Christian Bible, which contains many passages supporting slavery. [In the spirit of accuracy, I will point out the much of the text supporting slavery is found in Leviticus, a book which was not created by Christians, but by the Hebrews. Nonetheless, modern Christians universally claim that the entire Bible is their primary source material, and have had over 2 thousand years to delete Leviticus if they disagreed with it.]
Speaking of the Bible, here is a swell quote: "Jesus said: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’" [John 14:6]
This verse is one of the most central tenets of Christianity. Salvation is available only via Christ. Salvation as in not going to Hell.
‘No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’ Jesus did not add anything about Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, Confucious, L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, Reverend Moon, or David Koresh being means to cometh unto the Father.
I have spoken to many Christians over the years regarding this. Lay Christians often dispute the meaning of this passage, and I have met many of them who say that they suspect that Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and perhaps even Mormons might receive Salvation or at least be spared Eternal Damnation. But I have never heard from or read a Christian cleric or theologian who would go on record to state that non-Christians might go to Heaven.
Christianity is, in its essence, discriminatory. Suppose for some strange, inexplicable reason, there is born a person who is not persuaded, despite the ubiquitous and pervasive Christian messages in our culture, and despite the overwhelming evidence in Christ’s favor as related in the Christian Bible...suppose, just suppose, there is born a person who is not persuaded to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour? According to orthodox Christianity God discriminates: the Hindu or Atheist is not a person who will be accepted into Heaven.
Perhaps this is why so many Christian denominations like to hold onto their prejudices: If congregations can be occupied by questions regarding why gays simply won’t repent their ways or at least won’t just be celibate, then there is less time to question why God permits children be indoctrinated into Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, or any other of the many sure and certain paths to hell.
Or, conversely: if Christians could simply cease, once and for all, their efforts to contain gay people within the psychic gulag of second class citizenship, think of the spiritual energies that would be available for use in saving all the poor souls currently in the thralls of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, or any other of the many sure and certain paths to hell.
And yet, per the New York Times, 10-20-09: ‘The Vatican announced Tuesday it was making it easier for Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism -- a surprise move designed to entice traditionalists opposed to women priests, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.’
[And with truly Orwellian eloquence, spokesman Cardinal William Levada, added: ''The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows."]
Yes, in a brilliant move, the Pope has moved to embrace those poor souls burdened a heavy prejudice, while still refusing to embrace the victims of that prejudice.
The beat goes on, and begs the question: Is an institution that has engaged in war, torture, oppression, segregation, miscogeny, and that still openly practices discrimination worthy of its role as the universal Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card of American society and politics? Will Christianity retain its Teflon? And will anyone fool enough to broach this topic not be tarred and feathered?