On July 17 on the Patheos blog Unfundamentalist Christians,
a blog dedicated to repackaging Christianity for greater feminist and LGBT
friendliness, guest contributor April Kelsey’s
bio proclaims her goal to be “to put the final nail in fundamentalist
Christianity”. Well, everyone should have a goal in life, although it’s far
more probable that progressive Christians like Kelsey will cease to be
Christians even in name long before fundamentalist Christians cease to be
fundamentalist.
However, Kelsey is unaware that she, too, is a
fundamentalist, albeit one who skews her reading of the Bible leftward rather
than to the right. Indeed, the last line of her post “Your
‘Deeply-Held Belief’ Isn’t Biblical” — “… [I]f it isn’t in the Bible, I don’t
have to believe it” — is the most common expression of one of the “two pillars”
of Christian fundamentalism: sola
scriptura, “only Scripture”.[*]
I too would like to see the end of Christian fundamentalism, because I’d like
to see the end of Christian disunity, which sola
scriptura helps to propagate.
Now, if you want to stop being a fundamentalist, you have to
reject sola scriptura (and there
are many reasons you should do so). There are really only three ways to accomplish
this. One is to stop being Christian altogether. The second is to regard the
Bible as fallible and make Christ your ideological sock puppet, like Jimmy
Carter. The third is to become Catholic, or at least Eastern Orthodox, and
let the apostolic tradition guide your understanding of Scripture. Whichever
way you do it, you can’t say, “I only believe what I read in the Bible,” and
still pretend you’re not a fundamentalist. Fundamentalist
does not equal politically conservative.
Kelsey’s article is about refusing to participate in gay
weddings as a merchant or service provider. “The more I hear the words ‘deeply
held religious belief,’” Kelsey writes, “the more uneasy I feel. I wasn’t sure
why until I had read through the umpteenth article on the subject. And that’s
when I realized that the so-called ‘beliefs’ being defended aren’t actually
rooted in scripture.”
Kelsey’s focus is on Romans 1:32, which she says is the
verse “nearly all of these Christians cite in support of their behavior”. Her
first rebuttal, that “there is absolutely nothing in the Bible
that says selling someone a product in the course of legal business shows
approval of the buyer’s lifestyle or behavior”, is a little more difficult to
treat, so let me get the weaker argument out of the way first.
Let’s look at Romans 1:28-32 NIV:
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. [Bold font mine.—ASL]
Kelsey’s first conclusion? “So these verses are only
describing one group of people: those who commit the sin are also the ones
approving of the sin.” This is not just wrong; it’s difficult to believe she
offers such a construction with a straight face (*ahem!*). Saint Paul is not saying that only people who commit
Sin S approve of Sin S; rather, he is saying that a sinful
people — the Gentiles — both commit sins themselves and approve others’ sins.
There’s no hint of specificity here, no implication that only gossips like gossip,
or that only the malign indulge the malign.
Kelsey’s next angle is to portray Romans 1:32 as taken out
of context. And she rightly points out that Romans
2 goes on to put the Jews, who have the Law of Moses, on a similar footing
to the Law-less Gentiles. The problem is not that her interpretation of Romans
2 is wrong, but rather that her conclusion — “So Romans 1 is about hypocritical
judgment, not ‘passive approval’” — isn’t justified by her argument. Or,
rather, it takes nothing away from the force of St. Paul’s statement in Romans
1:32; the implication is still validly there that it’s evil to approve of evil done by others, even if you’re not directly
participating in the evil yourself.
Kelsey’s fourth angle is to bring up Jesus’ teaching of
returning good for evil, in Matthew
5:38-42, which she hooks up with St. Paul’s elaboration in Romans 12:20.
Very well, let us turn and offer our left cheek when our right cheek is struck;
let us give food and drink to an enemy who is starving and thirsty. Cudgel my
brain how I might, though, I fail to see how the commandments to do these
things become a commandment to, say, offer a room in my motel for a pedophile
to molest a child, or to cheerfully sell a gun to a woman openly stating her
intent to shoot her lying, cheating dog of a husband. And, for the life of me,
I can’t see how selling a cake for a gay wedding can possibly constitute an act
of mercy in any meaningful sense.
In secular criminal law, people who willingly give material
assistance to a perpetrator in the commission of his crime are considered accessories or accomplices, and can face significant jail time themselves: to help
someone to commit a crime is itself to commit a crime. The same has held true
throughout Christian history: cooperation in sin is itself a sin.
For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person — such a person is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. (Ephesians 5:5-13 NIV; bold type mine)
Indeed, I’m surprised that anyone would need a “proof text”
to know that to approve of or assist with a sin is to sin, even in the context
of the marketplace, which should never be considered a “values-free zone”. This
is just so much common sense. To read Scripture like a Mafia consigliere looking for legal loopholes
to exploit is to work against the spirit and intent of the gospel message.
In fact, it’s Kelsey’s apologia for unforced submission to
the Zeitgeist that’s unscriptural.
Nothing in Christianity requires a full investigation into each customer’s
background and lifestyle to make simple transactions possible; so the hysteria
of her penultimate paragraph is unwarranted. But while a motel owner might not suspect
a man taking his “son” into his motel room, while a gun shop owner need not
inquire too closely about a woman’s stated desire to go “hunting” with a new
shotgun, putting two men or two women on top of a five-tier, white-frosted
wedding cake is blatantly in-your-face. You are not being deceived; you are not
left in vincible ignorance; you know full well in what you’re asked to assist.
At that point, is “Business is business” any different from “Dienst ist Dienst”?[†]
[*] The other pillar is sola fides, “only faith”; i.e., only
faith is necessary for salvation. Some would say Kelsey’s stance is an extreme
version, known to Evangelicals as “solo scriptura”,
because of her rejection of tradition. However, besides being bad Latin, it’s
not “extreme” so much as it is the logical end of sola scriptura.
[†] “Duty is duty”, a common
expression or defense employed by participants in the Nazi atrocities. My point
here is not that gay marriage is as
morally reprehensible as genocide, but rather that business is no more of an
excuse for participating in evil than is duty.
