The Growing Divide

Four related items caught my eye last week.

The first was the decision of the Presbyterian church to take no action of ministers bless same-sex unions. The AP article said that a regional commission determined Rev. Jane Spahr had a right of conscience to perform such a ceremony, using amazing double-speak to justify its ruling:

Because the section of the faith's constitution that reserves marriage for a man and a woman "is a definition, not a directive," Spahr was "acting within her right of conscience in performing marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples." ...The judicial commission appeared to accept that reasoning, writing that the Bible proclaims "a message of inclusiveness, reconciliation, and the breaking down of barriers that separate humans from each other."

From a related story in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review

"'Determining where the boundaries lie for same-sex couples is difficult,' said the Rev. Daniel Merry, Pittsburgh Presbytery acting pastor. 'There are interpretations all over the book on that one, and that's why we're doing an investigation -- to decide where that stands,' Merry said.

Many interpretations. Predictably, the issue is not what scripture says, but how it is interpreted that matters...

The second story relates to Gay rights groups targeting Christian Colleges. Christianity Today refers to a seven-week bus tour, called "Equality Ride" taking 35 gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and straight 18- to 28-year-olds to colleges with behavior codes that are felt to be discriminatory.

Equality Ride leader Jacob Reitan is quoted as saying, "We also hope to send out a clear message to gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender students that God loves them as they are. Today, it's gay and lesbian people who are the outcasts of the church, and later the church will have to repent from it." He added more interpretation, "When Paul was writing in the New Testament, he didn't have an understanding of homosexuality as we know it today," he said. "We believe that Christ is our best defense, because the message of Christ was always to embrace people and love them."

Christian colleges are responding in a variety of ways, some quietly trying to ignore the whole thing, others engaging with the activists. From CT,

"Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, is filling the Equality Ride's April 18 visit with events. Plans are tentative, but the school has agreed to allow Soulforce to distribute information near post office boxes, visit classes on invitations, perform a dramatic presentation, and hold a forum with Bethel.

Bethel President George Brushaber said he thinks Soulforce is using the Equality Ride as a media stunt, but that the riders are sincere people.

"I think these are people who are very, very wise in the use of media and have chosen many of the schools because of the potential for media prominence," he said. "I do think they're people who genuinely think they can bring about change in position or in attitude."

I'm not sure what the Bethel President means by "sincere". But just like the mainline churhes have discovered, if the issue is Biblical authority, then interpretation becomes a way to circumvent it.

I found this third item of interest in this regard. At the World Council of Churches, an Orthodox bishop is suggesting that the only way to reverse the loss of values that seems to be worldwide is the formation of an Orthodox Catholic Alliance, suggested by Russian Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev.

"We (Orthodox and Catholics) are on the same side of the divide. Traditional Christianity's very survival is in jeopardy. We have no right to delay this strategic alliance, because in 20-40 years it will be too late."

"His comments echoed ideas supported by Roman Catholic Pope Benedict, who has said closer ties with Orthodox churches are a top priority of his papacy. "
What are the threats he sees? "warrior secularism, warrior Islam or warrior liberalism present in Protestantism."

Three big "warrior" enemies. Secularism, Islam, and Liberalism Present in Protestantism. The article continued,

"The Russian Orthodox Church recently broke off relations with the Lutheran Church of Sweden after it established an official ceremony to bless same-sex marriages, he said.
Alfeyev said Russian theologians thought decades ago to "establish full Eucharistic contact" with the Anglican church. In the past years, it has become clear that it is completely impossible – dogmatically, ideologically and from the point of view of moral teaching, as the Anglican church shifted very far away from Orthodox dogma," he said.

I just find it interesting that this Bishop sees the only way to prevent complete moral collapse to be an alliance with Rome and sees Protestantism an insidious threat. I find it interesting that the Roman and Eastern churches have not, (in spite of sins of individual priests) succumbed to altering official church teaching to accommodate modern sexual opinions the way mainline churches have.

There is something of a hedge against sudden seismic shifts in those churches where tradition plays a role. The long consensus helps prevent the sudden change in direction. If tradition is seen as a common interpretation of written scripture, then radical re-interpretation is harder to pass off as authentic. (The converse is that some traditions may not be what the apostles originally taught.) Again the issue is, what is the right interpretation of scripture, modern ideas or a long consensus?

Which leads to story number four. A group of renegade moralists from Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, decided a good way to protest America's rapid embracing of gay lifestyles as normal, was to dance at the funeral of U.S Soldiers killed in Iraq. Church founder Fred Phelps, apparently believes the individual deaths of U.S. Soldiers is somehow God's judgment on the nation for being "fags and fag enablers". He has apparently taken it upon himself to interpret scripture according to his own absolutely disgusting hermeneutic. And unfortunately, many will see all Christians defined by his unconscionable arrogance.

Let's be clear. If terrorism is attacking the innocent to make a political point, this was no less than terrorism. Whatever one feels about homosexuality, the families of soldiers killed in battle, many of whom may well be very upright people and orthodox believers for all we know, cannot be seen as the direct cause. Phelps says even 9-11 is God's judgment on this country. But he practices precisely the same tactic as the terrorists of that day - targeting the innocent to avenge a God he claims to be a unique spokesman for.

Christianity is not about Christians taking retribution into their own hands. It is, unlike Islam, a faith that stands for truth and morality while at the same time offering compassion and forgiveness.

I guess some could say that's just my interpretation. I don't think so. It is what I have learned from both the written text and a common understanding of it. It is what the majority of Christians have always understood from the words of scripture and the long history of biblical teachers across twenty centuries.

There is a chasm. A growing divide, not only in culture at large, but in the organizational bodies of American Christianity. The good news is it is easier to tell the wheat from the tares. The bad news is we don't have a good way of forming and maintaining alliances between Christians of different heritages. And how desperately we need alliances in these times.