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Category Archives: America
Think for yourself – Selective Fundamentalism
The biblical texts a church chooses by which to govern its life say more about the church than the texts it selects.
Critics of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s policy of full inclusion of GLBT members – and its newly adopted definition of marriage as between “two people” – quote biblical texts they claim declare homosexuality itself as sinful.
An anonymous comment by a Views from the Edge reader advised people to read the Bible and think for themselves. “I think anyone reading the comments from Mr. Stewart should read the Bible and think for themselves. For example read 1 Timonthy 8-11.”
We don’t usually reply to anonymous sources, but this one deserves consideration because it asks us to do both things: read the text and think for ourselves.
Here’s the text about which the writer invites us to think for ourselves:
“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me” [I Timothy 8-11]. Color added by VFTE for emphasis
Texts such as I Timothy are used to identify same-sex relations as sin, albeit in a longer list that names liars and perjurers, among others. But “sodomites” are not consensual lovers; they are rapists so named from the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah from which we get the words ‘sodomy’ and ‘sodomize’.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about sexuality. It’s about assault, violence and humiliation. The tragedy of Sodom and Gomorrah was not consensual sexual relations. It was gang rape by a group of men intruding into Lot’s house to have their way with Lot’s house guests. Such male behavior was not unfamiliar to the partriarchal world of Hebrew Scripture when victorious soldiers humiliated their vanquished enemies by treating them like females.
While conservative evangelical and fundamentalist biblical interpreters condemn consensual love between two members of the same gender, they ignore the much clearer biblical position on adultery and divorce.
On divorce: “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” [Luke 16:18); and “if [a wife] divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” [Mark 10:12].
On adultery: “You shall not commit adultery” [Exodus 20:14]; and “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel [Deuteronomy 22:22].
Many conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians and churches say they do not interpret Scripture. They obey it. But they don’t. They can’t. Because every reader has to think. One always has to decide which biblical texts take primacy over others. Presumably we would all agree – orthodox, conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist, liberal, and progressive – that Jesus’ command to the men who had encircled the woman “caught in adultery” to drop their stones takes primacy over a harsher approach to divorce and adultery.
But that’s a conclusion of interpretation, of selective primacy. For conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christian churches to remain true to their objection to all biblical interpretation as undermining biblical authority, they should exclude all divorced persons from positions of leadership. That would exclude 50% of the American marital population.
We all think for ourselves. Conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are as selective as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and others they declare have forsaken biblical authority.
For the sake of “the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to [Timothy and us],” may the Spirit guide us and conform us all according to the rule of love.
– Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, Honorably Retired, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Chaska, MN, March 21, 2015.
An Open Letter to Franklin Graham
INTRODUCTION TO THE OPEN LETTER
“We don’t know what prompted Rev. Franklin Graham to log onto Facebook and pound out the words that lit a firestorm last week. But within one day, tens of thousands of his faithful followers liked and shared his short, patronizing post that called “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” to “Listen up” and tune in to his take on why so many black people have died at the hands of police officers recently. According to Graham, the problem is “simple.” It can be reduced to their lack of obedience and bad parenting.
“By Monday morning, more than 80,000 people shared the post and almost 200,000 liked it. Sojourners’ Jim Wallis penned a strong response.” – Sojourners.
Views from the Edge’s hosts signed the letter today.
An Open Letter to Reverend Franklin Graham
Dear Rev. Graham,
We write to you in the spirit of Matthew 18: we aim to reconcile with you. You have sinned against us, fellow members of the body of Christ. While your comments on March 12 were just a Facebook post, your post was shared by more than 83,000 people and liked by nearly 200,000 as of Monday morning, March 14, 2015. Your words hurt and influenced thousands. Therefore, we must respond publicly so that those you hurt might know you have received a reply and the hundreds of thousands you influenced might know that following your lead on this issue will break the body of Christ further.
Frankly, Rev. Graham, your insistence that “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” “Listen up,” was crude, insensitive, and paternalistic. Your comments betrayed the confidence that your brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those of color, have afforded your father’s ministry for decades. Your instructions oversimplified a complex and critical problem facing the nation and minimized the testimonies and wisdom of people of color and experts of every hue, including six police commissioners that served on the president’s task force on policing reform.
In the nadir of your commentary, you tell everyone to “OBEY” any instruction from authorities and suggest that the recent shootings of unarmed citizens “might have been avoided” if the victims had submitted to authority.
And you bluntly insist, “It’s as simple as that.”
It is not that simple. As a leader in the church, you are called to be an ambassador of reconciliation. The fact that you identify a widely acknowledged social injustice as “simple” reveals your lack of empathy and understanding of the depth of sin that some in the body have suffered under the weight of our broken justice system. It also reveals a cavalier disregard for the enduring impacts and outcomes of the legal regimes that enslaved and oppressed people of color, made in the image of God — from Native American genocide and containment, to colonial and antebellum slavery, through Jim Crow and peonage, to our current system of mass incarceration and criminalization.
As your brothers and sisters in Christ, who are also called to lead the body, we are disappointed and grieved by your abuse of the Holy Scriptures. You lifted Hebrews 13:17 out of its biblical context and misappropriated it in a way that encourages believers to acquiesce to an injustice that God hates. That text refers to church leadership, not the secular leadership of Caesar.
Are you also aware that your commentary resonates with the types of misinterpretations and rhetoric echoed by many in the antebellum church? Are you aware that the southern slavocracy validated the systematic subjugation of human beings made in the image of God by instructing these enslaved human beings to “obey their masters because the Bible instructed them to do so?”
Your blanket insistence on obedience in every situation exposes an ignorance of church history. God called Moses to resist and disobey unjust authority. Joseph and Mary were led by the Spirit to seek asylum in Egypt, disobeying the unjust decrees passed down by authority figures in order to ensure the safety of Jesus. And Paul himself resisted authority and ultimately wrote Romans 13 from jail.
In modern times, Christian brothers and sisters abided by Paul’s command to the persecuted Roman church. They presented their bodies as living sacrifices. They refused to conform to the oppressive patterns of this world. Rather, they were transformed by the renewing of their minds. (Romans 12:1-2) Throughout the Jim Crow South, in El Salvador, and in the townships and cities of South Africa Jesus followers disobeyed civil authority as an act of obedience to God — the ultimate authority, the Lord, who loves and demands justice (Psalm 146:5-9, Isaiah 58, Isaiah 61, Micah 4:1-5, all the prophets, Luke 4:16-21, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 25:31-46, Galatians 3:27-28). Likewise, Christians who marched in Ferguson, Mo., New York City, and Madison, Wis., follow in the holy footsteps of their faithful predecessors.
As one who understands human depravity, your statement demonstrates a profound disregard for the impact of sinful individuals when given power to craft systems and structures that govern millions. The outcome is oppression and impoverishment — in a word, injustice.
Finally, if you insist on blind obedience, then you must also insist that officers of the justice system obey the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right of all to equal protection under the law. Yet, reports confirm unconscious racial biases in policing, booking, sentencing, and in return produce racially disparate outcomes within our broken justice system.
Likewise, you must also call on officers to honor their sworn duty to protect and serve without partiality. The Federal Bureau of Investigations director, James B. Comey, acknowledges that law enforcement has fallen short of this mandate : “First, all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty. At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”
Let us be clear: We love, support, and pray for our police officers. We understand that many are doing an excellent job under extremely trying circumstances. We also understand that many officers are burdened by systems that routinely mete out inequitable racialized outcomes.
For the past nine months, many of your fellow Christian clergy have been engaged in sorrowful lament, prayerful protest, spirit-led conversations, and careful scriptural study to discern a Godly response to these inequitable racialized outcomes within America’s justice system. We have wrestled with God like Jacob, begging God to bless us with peace in our streets and justice in our courts.
Rev. Graham, as our brother in Christ and as a leader in the church, we forgive you and we pray that one day you will recognize and understand the enduring legacy of the institution of race in our nation.
Now is the time for you to humbly listen to the cries of lamentation rising nationwide. We do not expect you to be an expert in racial issues, police brutality, or even the many factors that go in to our complicated and unjust criminal system. We do, however, expect you to follow the example of leaders and followers of Jesus throughout the scriptures and modern history. We expect you to seek wise counsel and guidance first from those who bear the weight of the injustice and second from other experts in the field.
Ultimately, we invite you to join us in the ongoing work of the ministry of reconciliation.
In Jesus,
Onleilove Alston
Executive Director
Faith in New York
Dr. Brian Bantum
Associate Professor of Theology
Seattle Pacific University
Rev. Leroy Barber
Global Executive Director, Word Made Flesh
Chair of the Board, Christian Community Development Association
Rev. Phil Bowling Dyer
National Director, Black Campus Ministries
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
Austin Channing Brown
Resident Director and Multicultural Liaison
Calvin College
Dr. Mae Elise Cannon
Author, Social Justice Handbook and Just Spirituality
Co-author, Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith
Dr. Christena Cleveland
Associate Professor of Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University
Rev. Dr. Orlando Crespo
Latino Leadership Circle
Board Member, National Latino Evangelical Coalition
Rev. Léonce B. Crump Jr.
Lead Pastor
Renovation Church
Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung
Executive Director
Community Renewal Society
Rachel Held Evans
Author, Blogger, Advocate
Rev. Dominique Gilliard
Executive Pastor
New Hope Covenant Church in Oakland, CA
Josh Harper
National Director for Urban Programs
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship
Lisa Sharon Harper
Chief Church Engagement Officer
Sojourners
Dr. Troy Jackson
Director, The AMOS Project
Co-author, Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith
Micky ScottBey Jones
Director of Training and Program Development
Transform Network
Kathy Khang
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship
Steve Knight
Co-founder
Transform Network
Rev. Michael McBride
Pastor
The Way Christian Center in Berkeley, CA
Jimmy McGee
CEO and President
The Impact Movement
Rev. Soong-Chan Rah
Milton B. Engebretson Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism
North Park Theological Seminary
Rev. Alexia Salvatierra
Coordinator of Welcoming Congregations Network
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Dr. Andrea Smith
Board Member
North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies
Rev. Efrem Smith
President and CEO
World Impact
Rev. Gail Song Bantum
Executive Pastor
Quest Church
Alexie Torres-Fleming
Organizer, Advocate, Speaker
Jonathan Walton
Blogger, College Student Organizer, Poet
Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove
Director
School for Conversion
Jim Wallis
President and Founder
Sojourners
Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner
President, Skinner Leadership Institute
Co-Chair, National African American Clergy Network
Ken Wytsma
President
Kilns College
NOTE: Affiliations included for identification purposes only. Signatures do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of the institution.
– Republished here by Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, Honorably Retired, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Chaska, MN, March 20, 2015. Click HERE to add your name to the letter.
Gay Marriage according to Franklin Graham
I never pay attention to Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. After Jim Wallis of Sojourners called attention to one of Graham’s FaceBook postings, we found Graham’s more recent posting chastising the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s newly announced constitutional amendment redefining marriage. Said Franklin Graham:
“In His Word, the Bible, God has already defined marriage, as well as sin, and we should obey that rather than looking for ways to redefine it according to the desires of our culture. Marriage is defined as between a man and a woman—end of discussion. Anything else is a sin against God, and He will judge all sin one day.”
As of this moment, 107,850 Graham FaceBook followers “Like” it and 12,373 have “shared” it. I posted this comment on the FaceBook post.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you have yet to do your homework, and your statement “End of discussion” separates you from the more humble approach of the father whose name you proudly bear. Without interpretation and re-interpretation those who take the Bible at face value should also hold steadfast to the cosmology of a flat earth.
As a Presbyterian (USA) pastor since 1967, I have watched and heard the debates about the nature of human sexuality since 1979. The discussion within the church have not been without rancor or turmoil, but I’m proud that my church has had the courage to look at human sexuality and biblical hermeneutics through the lens of “the rule of love” not hate, separation, exclusion, or one’s own righteousness.
As a pastor who began hearing the stories of gay church members many years ago, I sensed that the prevailing view of homosexuality as a sickness and/or sin was off the mark and damaging to the heterosexual majority no less than the homosexual minority. There is no distinction at the baptismal font. No distinction allowed at the Lord’s table. And, at long last, I am now free, according to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to make no such distinction at the kneeling bench before the altar.
– Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, H.R., Chaska, MN, March 19, 2015
GUEST POST: I went to Gordon College and My Roommate was Gay
Haddayr Copley-Woods posted this on her blog. Haddayr is a writer published by many venues, including aired commentaries on Minnesota Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” program. In light of Views from the Edge’s recent posts on the topic of religion and sexuality, we’re glad to share this first-person story of a student’s dilemma at Gordon College.
American Religion and LGBT Rights
Common Good News, an online publication of Faith in Public Life and Convergence, re-published and interesting piece today from ThinkProgress. Click The Rise of LGBT Rights is an Existential Threat to Conservative Religious Groups for a thoughtful read following the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s re-definiton of marriage and news of the election of a Lesbian Rabbi to lead the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Church approves gay marriage
Yesterday the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved an amendment to its Constitution that re-defines marriage as a covenant between two people.
As a Presbyterian pastor since 1967, this debate has been a matter of long-suffering disappointment, prayer, and hope. At long last, the church opened its heart to all of its members. Questions of how to move forward in ways that do not disparage the conscience of dissenters and how to prevent further withdrawal of dissenting PC(USA) congregations provide no ready answers. Perhaps the fifth of the PC(USA)’s Historic Principles of Church Order (approved at the founding General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1789) may yet guide the church today and in days to come.
…[W]e… believe that there are truths and forms with respect to which people of good characters and principles may differ. And, in all these we think it the duty both of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance towards each other. [Book of Order, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Forbearance is an increasingly foreign attribute in the church, the nation, and the world. One prays and hopes that forbearance would prevail as we work our way through the thistles and nettles of the spiritual, ethical, national, and geopolitical issues of conscience that trouble and divide us.
– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 18, 2015
Marriage – a covenant between…
Yesterday the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – PC(USA) – approved amending its constitution to define marriage as “a covenant between two people.”
Click THIS LINK for the New York Times story, “Largest Presbyterian Denomination Gives Final Approval for Same-Sex Marriage”.
Many, such as I, welcome this change after many years spent in local and national discussion and debate over the nature of biblical authority, biblical interpretation, and the nature of human sexuality. This morning passersby on State Highway 41 and Engler Boulevard in Chaska, MN will see two flags flying high at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church: the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) flag and, beneath it, a rainbow flag signifying God’s welcome of all.
The church’s re-definition of marriage adds one more enlarging freedom to the Apostle Paul’s list in the Epistle to the Galatians:
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, [gay or straight]; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.“- Galatians 3:8 {NRSV].
Thanks be to God.
– Rev. Mr. Gordon C. Stewart, Honorably Retired, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Chaska, MN; March 17, 2015.
Our Lady of the Crusades Redux
Crusader Madonna and Child courtesy of Via Lucis Photography (Dennis Aubrey and P.J. McKey)How differently people of different times view life is masterfully illustrated by Dennis Aubrey’s post . .Dennis Aubrey’s post .
Dennis Aubrey’s post The Throne of Wisdom demonstrates how peoples’ views of life are shaped by their times in history.
During the Crusades, Mary and the Jesus of the Gospels become the authorization for killing Muslims. The executed Jesus of Nazareth becomes the Knight Templar, angrily taking up the sword against the unbelievers. Mary, the iconic “Mother of God” of Catholic and Orthodox Christian veneration, is turned into the Mother of Christian Jihad.
Pictured below is an altogether different Madonna (12th Century from Notre Dame de Vauclair, Église de Molompize, Molompize [Cantal] Photo by Dennis Aubrey) who seems to be looking with horror at what is happening.
Notre Dame de Vauclair, Église de Molompize, Molompize (Cantal) Photo by Dennis Aubrey
There is a great struggle today over which Madonna to enthrone. Our Lady of the Crusades is back. For example, click HERE for Sen. Tom Cotton, author of the letter to Iran signed by 47 U.S. Senators, interviewed by CBS host Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation.
Thanks to Dennis and P.J. for prompting this post. When we look carefully at where we come from, we sometimes see the darkness today in the clearer light.
Verse – John 3:16
Steve’s contribution today is on a well-known, often memorized verse of Christian Scripture.
John could have said God loved only
the Hebrews, or, like him, those who
were followers of Jesus. He,
instead, said, God loves not the few,
but the whole world–how can it be?*
(*This insight comes from the Rev. Jim Montgomery, Decatur, Illinois, who is in no way responsible for any errors in this poem.)
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 17, 2015
Views from the Edge 