Tag: Church & State

Yes Pastor Floyd, America Needs a Spiritual Breakthrough. But Not the One You Imagine

Ronnie Floyd, senior pastor of Cross Church in NW Arkansas, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and president of the National Day of Prayer, has written an editorial for CBNNews (claiming to offer THE Christian Perspective on today’s affairs) under the headline “America Needs a Spiritual Breakthrough.”  Here are a few excerpts from pastor Ronnie’s missive:

“America is broken and in deep need of a spiritual breakthrough. Division and hatefulness are abounding as none of us would ever imagine. Our greatest hope is a spiritual breakthrough in America…

“We are facing one of the most dangerous times across the globe in our lifetime. While encouragement occurs from time to time, we remain in fragile moments globally…

 “The churches in America are in need of a spiritual visitation by the Holy Spirit that will call them out of their lukewarm status and cause them to return to the power of the gospel. Jesus is still the greatest hope in every town, city, and region in America…

 “Politically, America is in trouble. The disappointment of our political leaders not working together for the common good of our nation has Americans filled with all sorts of emotions, many of which are not healthy. This partisan decision making is hurting the progress and future of our nation greatly.”

Alas, what hope is there for American evangelicalism when such poisonous, spiritual gruel passes for prophetic witness and is guzzled like cool-aid by the average church-goer?

How can God’s people hope to see clearly when their leaders are so willfully blind?  How will the people hear truth when their preachers are deaf to any words but their own?  How can the church mature when her teachers think and act (and write) like ignorant children?

When pastors like Ronnie persist in leading their congregations ‘round and ‘round in circles, I am not surprised that so much of the church remains confused, dizzy and socially ineffective.

The pastor of Cross Church is at cross purposes with himself, for he represents the most common theological confusions of American evangelicals, all of which I disentangle in my book,  I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).  At the heart of this confusion is his mashing together of church and state which is then sifted through the grotesque assumption that God is a Republican who voted for Donald Trump.

Let’s not be so naïve as to think that Ronnie’s lament over “division and hatefulness” while facing “the most dangerous times across the globe,” dealing with “the disappointment of our political leaders not working together for the common good” is anything other than the predictably partisan judgments of a Trump-loyalist.  For people like Ronnie, healing national divisions for the common good means falling into lock-step behind an obscene, racist, malignantly narcissistic president and then following him anywhere like dumb lemmings running to the cliff.

But these political errors are the easy-to-see, low-hanging fruit.

Let’s move on to grab hold of the more substantial core of Ronnie’s theological errors.  Errors that identify him as only one more false prophet in the American pantheon of wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing defrauding God’s flock.

The tell-tale sign that Ronnie is up to no good appears with his blatantly utilitarian view of the gospel.  Notice that his ultimate objective for preaching the good news of Jesus Christ is not to glorify God or to expand God’s kingdom.  Those are merely penultimate goals.  Excellent goals, certainly, but not the final goal.

No, the final objective for Ronnie and his misguided kinfolk is the unification of America’s body-politic behind the president and his policies.  (Again, we will leave aside how shockingly immoral many of Trump’s policies are.)  What evidence will finally tell us that America’s “spiritual breakthrough” has arrived?  Well, we will see (1) a renewed political scene that is (2) free of partisanship (3) with “political leaders working together for the common good of our nation.”

When these things happen, then we can know that the America church has “received a spiritual visitation by the Holy Spirit” (what other kind of visitation would the Holy Spirit make?) that has “called it out of its lukewarm status.”  So the Holy Spirit will work in America as in ancient Israel.  The Spirit’s task is to unite the nation.  The church and the gospel are tools for achieving that greater end.

But Ronnie’s vision confuses the church with the world and the world with the church.  God’s people are called to become strangers and aliens within American society.  Proclaiming the saving work of Jesus’ death and resurrection recruits new citizens into God’s kingdom who will demonstrate their newfound redemption by their own transformation into strangers and aliens.

Declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ honestly will highlight the stark contrasts between the church and this fallen world.  It will never bring them closer together.  Gospel preaching is nothing if not a heavenly bombardment that destroys our flesh-pot idols of civil religion, nationalism, and salvation by politics.  Genuine followers of Jesus are not deceived by this ancient, beastly triumvirate of bogus, copy-cat Christianity.

Yet, this three-headed monster spewing out recycled false religion like “a dog returning to its vomit” (2 Peter 2:22) is exactly what Pastor Ronnie – and the bulk of evangelical leaders sharing his devotion to American redemption by politics – is offering both the readers of CBNNews and those attending his multi-campus megachurch.

Ironically, the true evidence that American evangelicalism is more than satisfied with its damnably “lukewarm status,” with no intention of confessing its sins or repenting of its many offenses against the Lord Jesus and his kingdom, is its blind, self-satisfied allegiance to such atrociously false teachers as Ronnie Floyd.

Yes, American evangelicalism desperately needs a spiritual breakthrough.  But it’s not the one pastor Ronnie is looking for.  We will know that the real breakthrough has arrived when Ronnie Floyd and others like him publicly renounce their idolatrous Christian nationalism, confess that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with American politics, repent of their adulteration of the gospel with the bile of civil religion, and then call their congregations to sell their excessive belongings, giving the proceeds to the poor.

Now, that would be a breakthrough.

Wedding Cakes, the New Testament and Ethics in the Public Square

Not long after the Supreme Court decision on the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, I wrote an article examining the issues involved from the perspective of New Testament interpretation.  I quickly sent it off to a popular Christian publication hoping to enter into the public debate.

Well, I am now 0 for 3 at article submissions being accepted by this brand of magazine.  Or maybe I should say that I am 3 and 0 at being rejected.  Alas, such are the trials of a would-be popular author.

So, rather than submit myself to another 4 – 6 week waiting period, I have decided to make the article available here on my blog.  I hope you will find it informative and stimulating as we all continue to think about the best ways to display our kingdom citizenship to the watching world.

Wedding Cakes, the New Testament and Ethics in the Public Square

by David Crump © July 2018

 

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Masterpiece Cake Shop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case has pumped equal amounts of fervor into both sides of the latest battle in America’s culture wars. The court admitted that it was making a narrow, not a landmark, ruling which offers little in the way of precedent for future civil rights vs. religious liberty cases.  Consequently, cheerleaders on both sides – evangelical Christians applauding for Masterpiece Cake Shop and civil liberties activists lamenting the ruling’s implications for gay rights – are getting ahead of themselves as to what this decision means for similar battles in the future.

As Eugene Volokh, law professor at UCLA, wrote on the day of the decision, it “leaves almost all the big questions unresolved” (Reason. 6/4/18).

Mr. Phillips claimed that decorating a cake intended for a gay wedding would violate his Christian conscience.  His opponents recall the systematic, racial discrimination of Jim Crow laws that only started to be overturned during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.  That post-Civil War era of legalized racism was commonly justified on religious grounds.  White southerners opened their Bibles, too, and cited proof-texts demonstrating that desegregation would violate their Christian faith.

Only two days after the Supreme Court decision was announced, South Dakota state representative Michael Clark (R.) was already waving the banner of a segregationist revival – though he later recanted.  “He [Mr. Phillips] should have the opportunity to run his business the way he wants. If he wants to turn away people of color, then that’s his choice,” said Rep. Clark (Dakota Free Press).

Jeff Amyx of Grainger County, Tennessee has posted a “NO GAYS ALLOWED” sign in the window of his hardware store for the past 3 years.  He argues that discriminating against homosexuals is integral to his Christian faith and witness.  In response to the Supreme Court decision, Mr. Amyx told local reporters, “Christianity is under attack. This is a great win…”

Even though the Supreme Court’s ruling explicitly disavows any attempt to make it a justifying precedent for future discrimination cases, the logical possibilities are clear.  At least, they seem clear to people like Michael Clark and Jeff Amyx.  We will have to wait and see how the courts eventually sort out these questions.

In the meantime, the evangelical church should stop and take some time to examine whether or not there is a solid scriptural foundation beneath Mr. Phillips’ appeal to religious conviction.  Is there, in fact, a sound Biblical argument under-girding the claim that decorating the cake for a gay wedding violates Christian morality?  To put it more broadly, do Christian business people compromise or deny some part of their faith in Jesus Christ when they provide personal services to others outside the church who are entrenched in lifestyles that the church considers sinful?

I believe the answer to that question is a resounding no.  Mr. Phillip’s scruples in this case are not a model for others to follow.  Just the opposite.

Let’s examine the issues one step at a time.

The apostle Paul put a premium on maintaining a clear conscience.  Mr. Phillips appears to understand that.  Paul’s discussion of whether or not Christians can eat meat originally sacrificed to idols (pagan temples were the most common butcher shops at the time) reveals that believers are sometimes free to disagree.  At times, personal consciences may vary (1 Cor. 8:7-15).  What is right for one person may not be right for another.  But everyone is expected to maintain an unsullied conscience free of guilt. So, Paul says in Romans 14, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind…If anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean…and everything that does not come from faith is sin” (verses 5, 14, 23).  In other words, don’t do things that you believe are wrong, things that will leave you nursing a guilty conscience.

Mr. Phillips says that he was resolving this very debate within himself when he declined to decorate a wedding cake for David Mullins and Charlie Craig.  Doing otherwise, he said, would have violated his Christian values.   So, he chose to safeguard his conscience, and the Supreme Court affirmed Mr. Phillips’ freedom to make that decision – particularly in light of the open hostility expressed towards his faith by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

However, the apostle’s acknowledgement that church members in Corinth and Rome were able to eat meat sacrificed to idols without violating their consciences, if they chose to do so, suggests that Mr. Phillips’ decision need not apply to anyone besides himself.  The pressing question is:  does offering services to a gay wedding fall into the same category of moral ambivalence as eating meat sacrificed to idols?  Was Mr. Phillips’ conscientious objection a paradigmatic stance required of all Christians or was it an idiosyncratic opinion binding only on Mr. Phillips?

 

We should recall that, when it comes to matters of ethical debate, Paul describes the narrower conscience, the more easily offended conscience, as “the weaker” one revealing a more feeble faith (Rom. 14:1-2; 15:1; 1 Cor. 8:7, 9-12).  Paul gives no indication that he valued the maintenance of a weak conscience.  In fact, his description indicates that a weaker faith ought to mature.  I suspect that this is why Paul previews his pastoral advice with an explanation as to why those exhibiting a stronger conscience are theologically correct (1 Cor. 8:4-6).

The implication is clear.

Those exhibiting a weaker conscience by refusing to eat meat sacrificed to idols would do well to absorb Paul’s theological explanation, for it reveals how their position derives from a misunderstanding. Disciples showing signs of a weaker conscience would therefore benefit from the advice of a mature mentor, someone who could offer patient instruction and sound Biblical instruction to clarify where, how and why outgrowing a weak conscience is preferable to remaining offended over debatable matters.

If decorating a cake for a gay wedding is comparable to eating meat sacrificed to idols, then Mr. Phillips has earned a few lines in the annals of religious liberty litigation, but he is not a model of how mature disciples should navigate the cross-currents of Christianity’s relationship with society.

Which leads us back to our original question.  Do Christian business people – or any Christian, for that matter – compromise or deny some part of their faith in Jesus Christ by providing personal services to people outside the church who are entrenched in lifestyles that the church calls sinful?

Remember, this is not a question about the morality of homosexual activity or gay marriage.  On this, I believe that we all ought to agree with Mr. Phillips.  I am convinced that the New Testament defines a gay lifestyle as immoral, including monogamous gay marriage.  Followers of Jesus Christ are forbidden to live that way, along with many other prohibited lifestyles (1 Cor. 6:9-11; 1 Tim. 1:9-10).  Homosexual activity is condemned alongside greed, drunkenness, slander, theft, murder, adultery and lying, among other evils.  But having said this, there is no indication that homosexuality is considered the supreme sin, worse than all others.  It is simply listed as one among many unacceptable ways for Christians to live.

Which makes me wonder if Mr. Phillips has ever decorated wedding cakes for people whose lives were shackled by greed, dishonesty, selfishness, theft or fornication, to mention only a few of the other lifestyles condemned by Paul.  Of course, those issues are much harder to detect during a brief conversation in a cake shop, but that does not make them any less problematic for someone fearful that providing his professional services would tacitly endorse sin in another person’s life.

Romans 1:26-27 does describe homosexuality as paradigmatic of the way sin has disordered God’s orderly creation.  But this section of Paul’s argument comes after his description of idolatry as the quintessential example of human sinfulness (verses 18-25).  In light of Romans 1, then, it hardly seems likely that sharing a meal with your neighbors where the main dish came straight out the back door of Zeus’ temple after it was butchered by pagan priests as the offering in an idolatrous ceremony, would be any less problematic for Paul than decorating the cake for a gay wedding.  In the words of Jesus, reaching that conclusion would be a bit like straining at gnats while swallowing camels (Matt. 23:24).  I suspect that Paul would agree.

If a healthy, mature Christian conscience has no trouble eating meat butchered in idolatrous sacrifices with the neighbors next-door, then decorating a gay wedding cake for people outside the church should be an easy afternoon stroll through the green grass of Christian morality, by comparison.

We know that Paul supported himself by making tents (Acts 18:3), a skilled craft every bit as personalized as cake decorating.  The apostle would set out his tent-maker’s stall in the public marketplace and take orders for the assorted types of tents his customers wanted.  Paul’s business relations with the milling crowds of unredeemed humanity looking to buy and sell in the 1st century, Greco-Roman agora would have seen him pressing the flesh with the full spectrum of unwashed, pagan masses.  Idolaters, magicians, pederasts, adulterers, and every stripe of common criminal were all potential customers.  Homosexuality was extremely common in this Greco-Roman world, including long-term relationships comparable to gay marriage.

We cannot say for certain how Paul handled these interactions while conducting his business. But I very much doubt that he interviewed each potential customer before taking their order so as to ensure that he only made tents for people who agreed with his Christian, moral sensibilities and promised beforehand that they would never use his tents for activities he did not approve of.  That would make a great recipe for watching the competition take away all of your business.  Paul could not have supported himself for very long.  Although I admit to making an argument from silence here, I am confident that it is a sound argument, especially in light of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13.  He says:

 

“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.  What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”

 

Apparently, some members of the Corinthian church had misunderstood Paul’s previous advice on maintaining church discipline.  His warning about not associating with “sinners,” which would include refusing to do business with them, was strictly an internal affair concerning personal relationships within the Christian community.  Paul could not have stated his ethical position more clearly: “Judging those outside of Christ’s church is none of my business.  It’s God’s business, not mine.  So, I won’t do it.”

Applying the community standards of Christian church discipline to the believer’s social or business relationships outside of the church is an obvious example of something called a category mistake.  For instance, I am guilty of a category mistake when I offer a detailed description of elephants to the blind person who asked me to describe a goldfish.  It doesn’t make sense.

To the misfortune of both the church and American society, moralistic category confusions have become a distinguishing feature of the Religious Right.  TV and radio preachers popularize these confusions day in and day out as they rally their followers over the airwaves to defend Christian America from the deadly advances of secular humanism.

I suspect that it was within this hothouse of popular confusion that Mr. Phillips’ solidified his views about Christian ethics.  No one’s moral compass is calibrated in a vacuum.  I very much doubt that Mr. Phillips settled on preserving his weakened conscience all by himself.  He represents – as the Christian media frenzy applauding his victory shows – the largest part of American evangelicalism today, churchgoers with nothing more than a superficial grasp of scripture who view themselves as culture-warriors holding the line against a godless society.

Here we reach the animating force behind Mr. Phillips’ stance insofar as he represents evangelicalism’s current captivity to the unending melodrama of its so-called “culture wars.”  Worries over Christianity’s fight-to-the-death with secularism undoubtedly motivate hardware-store owner Jeff Amyx’s fretful lament that “Christianity is under attack.”  To his mind, and others like him, fighting against godlessness transforms a hideously ungodly “NO GAYS ALLOWED” sign into a battle standard for religious liberty.

Yet, how exactly does recognizing that unredeemed sinners will continue to sin ever threaten the church?  (After all, don’t even redeemed sinners within the church continue to sin?)

How does doing business in the public square with other sinners for whom Jesus died ever threaten my freedom to follow Jesus?  How does doing business with folks who do not (yet) want to conform their lives to Jesus’ example threaten my decision to be like Jesus, the same Jesus who partied with tax-collectors, prostitutes and other sinners?

It doesn’t.

The problem today – as I discuss at length in my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018) – is that large portions of the American church have turned their backs on Jesus’ model of suffering servanthood in order to fight for control over the secular levers of social, political power and control. Evangelicalism has exchanged the gospel of grace for an idolatrous nostalgia over something that never was – an American Christendom.

Christendom seeks to erase the border between church and state. Christendom confuses the body of Christ with society at large, with damaging results for all parties. Its propagandists demand that Christianity “reclaim” its place as America’s de facto state religion.  Among Christendom’s many mistakes, perhaps the most egregious is this wish to impose the norms of church discipline upon everyone else in society, regardless of their own religious affiliation.

In this way, the rhetoric of Christendom sounds much like the preacher who insisted on telling a herd of elephants that they must all live like goldfish.

Mr. Phillips’ case is only the beginning in this latest round of religious freedom/civil rights litigation.  Sadly, having forgotten that God’s kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), American evangelicals have decided to exchange their suffering Savior and his New Testament teaching for front row seats on the White House lawn and amicus briefs utterly irrelevant to the Kingdom of God.

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 1 #christianityandpolitics

Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech at the Southern Baptist Convention, thankfully, sparked a debate over whether he should be welcomed or disinvited.  Pence’s defenders predictably quote Romans 13:1 as their argument for welcoming a political speech at the convention.

In Romans 13 the apostle Paul says:  “let everyone submit to the governing authorities.”  So, that means Pence needs to be given the time normally allotted for group prayer in order to deliver a partisan, political speech?

In light of this current debate, I thought I’d post a few serialized excerpts from my book, I Pledge Allegiance, that looks carefully at what Paul actually says in Romans 13:1-7.  The complete excerpt is from pages 56-62.  Here goes:

“Paul had specific concerns in mind as he wrote his letter to the Roman church and describing a comprehensive political theology of church-state relations was not one of them. Recalling the church’s precarious standing with the local government in a time of tax revolt is far more illuminating of Paul’s argument in this chapter. The early church lived within an authoritarian state. There was no expectation that the average person could exert any meaningful influence in bringing about broad-based, systemic social or political change. Neither Paul nor his readers had any conception of participatory democracy. Modern strategies for popular political and social transformation through civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance were inconceivable at the time. Naturally, this does not mean that Paul was devoid of political opinions or that he might not write something of universal political significance for the church, regardless of its particular location in time and space, but it does mean that properly understanding Romans 13:1–7 requires that we keep the actual historical situation foremost in our mind.

Observing God’s Order

“Several details in Romans 13 need elaboration for Paul’s ethical instruction to become clear for the modern reader. The chapter’s opening sentences twice affirm that government authority is put in place by God (v. 1). God has established a hierarchy of civil authority to regulate the otherwise strong tendency toward unruliness in human society. Anyone who rebels against this ordering of authority, therefore, is rebelling against God’s design (v. 2). Two details of Paul’s vocabulary clarify his point.

“First, Paul describes civil authority as part of the way God “orders” the world. This idea of God’s ordering, organizing, appointing or arranging is central to the passage, with several derivatives of the verbal root “to order” appearing five times in three verses (vv. 1 [twice], 2 [twice], 5 [once]). It is clearly Paul’s key concept. God “establishes/orders/institutes governing authorities” (v. 1) not by bringing any particular leader to power—though he may at times also do that—but by providentially creating structures of governing authority that exercise responsibilities delegated by God. When Paul says that “there is no authority except that which God has established” (v. 1), he is not claiming that divine providence places all rulers in their specific positions of power. He is saying that the various stations of authority that make up civil government are put in place by God’s providential ordering of human society.

“Understanding Paul’s use of “ordering” vocabulary helps to answer long- standing questions about Christian obedience to tyrannical rulers. The problematic logic, based on Romans 13, usually goes like this: If every governing authority is put in place by God, so that disobeying the authority is the equivalent of disobeying God, then even a man like Adolf Hitler must have been put in place by God, and disobeying even Hitler becomes the equivalent of disobeying God. This was, in fact, the logic used by many German Christians who swore allegiance to Hitler, the “divinely appointed” Führer.

“Though some additional arguments will be advanced below for addressing the question of obeying Hitler, Paul’s emphasis on ordering rather than personnel makes it clear that God establishes positions of authority, positions that are occupied at different times by different leaders of greater or lesser ability, wisdom, and moral fiber. Paul does not make God responsible for ordaining every leader who ever fills an office. Christians are obligated to respect the role of government per se in their lives, but that is a far cry from being obligated to obey, much less enthusiastically endorse, every wretched leader braying for national allegiance to his every foolish decision.

Subordination vs. Obedience

“A second—equally important—matter of vocabulary arises once we notice that Paul does not command believers always “to obey” the governing authorities (Rom.13:1). Translations that render Romans 13:1 along the lines of “obey the government” (Living Bible, Contemporary English Version, Good News Translation, Worldwide English) seriously misrepresent Paul’s words. Instead of commanding obedience, Paul tells the church “to be subject/to submit” to the way God has “ordered” governing authority. If Paul had intended for the church always to obey the government, he could have used the common word hupokouō (obey) to make his point. But he doesn’t do that; instead, Paul stays with the “order” word group and directs believers to be “subordinate (vv. 1, 5) to the authorities that “have been ordered” by God. In effect, he is reiterating the need for believers to cooperate with God’s design in ordering human society.

“Following the logic of verse 3 is crucial for understanding the full significance of Paul’s refusal to tell the church that they must always obey the government. Notice that Paul’s description of civil authority is utterly idealistic, in so far as he assumes that the church can always count on the government to faithfully enforce God’s expectations. “Rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong. If you don’t want to be afraid of the one in authority, do what is right and the authority will praise you” (my translation). Had Paul intended to deliver a lesson on Christian obedience, he missed a perfect opportunity to do so. Notice that he does not say, “Shed your fear of authority by doing what you are told; be obedient.” Instead, Paul counsels the church to free itself from any fear of authority by always “doing what is right.”

“At least two assumptions are at work in this statement. First, Paul’s argument assumes that government authorities will never be corrupt. Their judgments will always faithfully reflect God’s judgments concerning what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. But we all know better. The claim that “rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong” is not always true, and Paul knew it. The civil rights demonstrators who walked across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 were excoriated by the state’s governor, condemned by the local sheriff, and beaten with clubs by the local police. It is no secret to us or to Paul that rulers can easily reward those who do wrong and become a terror to those who do what is right, but Paul is describing the ideal, the way things are supposed to be, for the sake of his argument.

“Paul’s second assumption is that when government functions as it should, citizens never need to be afraid about doing what is right because “the right” is always what governing authorities will want from their citizens. Those who do what is right can be confident in their Christian obedience because they are simultaneously being submissive to authority, as God requires. In an ideal world, a believer’s act of submission will be synonymous with obedience because the perfect, incorruptible government will never ask its citizens to disobey God.

“Unpacking these assumptions at the root of Paul’s idealization of earthly authority also exposes the prick hidden in his argument. Paul knows that the Roman government does not measure up to this ideal. He cannot possibly in- struct the Roman church always to obey a government that made public sacrifice

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

to the Roman pantheon a civic responsibility; but he can tell them always to do what is right. When Christians act on what they know is right and those actions coincide with the government’s expectations, Paul’s argument predicts the happy outcome—“do what is right and the authorities will praise you.” But when doing what is right puts the believer on a collision course with government expectations, Paul’s instructions take on even greater significance: “Still do what is right.”

“God’s own perfect government awaits the coming age, when Christ is seated on his earthly throne. As long as Jesus’s disciples live in this world, however, they must anticipate times when the governing authorities will not praise them for doing what they believe is right in the sight of God. So Paul diplomatically commends the Roman government as much as he is able to in his description of the ideal, but he also assiduously avoids giving the church advice that could eventually lead it to compromise with the ungodly designs of a government that is out of step with God’s vision of truth and justice.

“Christians are not commanded always to obey their government or its laws. The church is told to be submissive and always do what is right. Obedience is one way of showing submission to authority, but submission and obedience are not synonymous. In some circumstances the submission God requires will work itself out as disobedience to governing authority. When a government expects believers to do things that the latter believe are wrong, things that will compromise their relationship with Christ, things that will violate their kingdom citizenship, then godly adherence to what is right demands conscientious disobedience against the government. At that point, faithful disciples remain submissive to misguided governmental authority, not by compromising their Christian conscience, but by freely submitting themselves to whatever punishment the authorities threaten to impose for disobedience. Living out the values of the kingdom of God always comes first for the followers of Jesus.”

A Good Sojourners Article about the History of School Prayer

Here is an excerpt from a good article entitled “Why School Prayer is so Divisive” in Sojourners magazine.  The author, Frank Ravitch, discusses the history of mandated prayer in our public schools.  It is well worth reading:

“In the 1840s and throughout much of the 19th century, school prayer and Bible reading were used in an attempt to discriminate against Catholics and other religious groups.

“There are examples of Catholic students being whipped and harassed and priests being tarred and feathered and ridden on rails, which involved parading someone around on a wooden rail. Catholics were even killed when they refused to participate in prayer and Bible reading in the common schools.

“READ: Battle Over Religion in Public Schools Waged in One of America’s Fastest-Growing Cities

Much of this violence was about more than just prayer. A lot of it was fostered by resistance to Irish immigration, anti-Catholicism, and perceived job competition. Yet, school prayer and Bible reading issues often served as significant fuel for this anti-immigrant fire.

“During the 19th and early 20th centuries, school prayer was challenged in court by some citizens affected by it for violating state constitutions. These early cases often found that state-mandated school prayer violated the constitution of the state in question. One of these landmark cases, decided in 1872, is “Board of Education of Cincinnati v. Minor.”

“In that case, Judge Alphonzo Taft, former President William Howard Taft’s father and an Ohio Superior Court judge, upheld a school policy prohibiting school prayer and Bible reading in the already religiously diverse Cincinnati public schools.

It was the unanimous opinion of the Ohio Supreme Court upholding Judge Taft’s decision, which made a strong argument for separation of church and state. Justice John Welch, writing for the court, noted:

“When Christianity asks the aid of government beyond mere impartial protection, it denies itself. Its laws are divine, and not human. Its essential interests lie beyond the reach and range of human governments. United with government, religion never rises above the merest superstition; united with religion, government never rises above the merest despotism; and all history shows us that the more widely and completely they are separated, the better it is for both.”

“Interestingly, some of the religious groups that support school prayer today opposed it only 40 years ago, often for the same reasons suggested by Justice Welch. Some Southern Baptists and evangelicals, for example, viewed public school prayer as an affront to God.”

Sorry, I Don’t Need Government Sanction for My Prayer Life

The loss of special privilege is not persecution.

Let me say it again: The loss of special privilege is not persecution.

Furthermore, the loss of religious privilege is neither religious persecution nor an infringement of religious liberty.  Rather, it is an honoring of the American ideal that no religion will receive special government patronage.

Unfortunately, this failure of basic logic is a major source for confusion and poor political posturing among the conservative block of America Christianity.

It also is symptomatic of the way in which too many Christian leaders hunger for dominance over our public life, believe that they know what’s best for everyone, and don’t really trust the Holy Spirit’s ability to hold his own on a level playing field.

All of these political, spiritual, and logical shenanigans were on full-blown, gory display in the Rose Garden on Thursday when president Trump read his Proclamation on the National Day of Prayer and then signed his Executive Order on the Establishment of a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative.

According to the Religious News Service, Trump’s executive order “aims to give faith groups a stronger voice within the federal government and serve as a watchdog for government overreach on religious liberty issues.” 

What’s wrong with that? Well, a number of things:

First, let’s recall that we have traveled this road several times before, and it has never turned out well.  Required reading for all of today’s faith-based enthusiasts should be David Kuo’s book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.  Kuo was the Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President George W. Bush.  He offers a moving confession of political seduction and “a heartfelt plea for a Christian reexamination of political and spiritual priorities.”

Washington D. C. has not changed, and I very much doubt if anyone in the Rose Garden last Thursday either remembers David Kuo or has read his book of confessions.

Furthermore, the current crop of evangelical advisers — the “court evangelicals,” as Professor John Fea aptly labels them — appear even more eager than their predecessors (if that were possible) to sell their ever-lovin’ souls for that much coveted “access” to the devil’s own hallowed halls of power.

Get ready to watch history repeat itself and the Christian church be publicly shamed again and again.

Second, if you have read Trump’s Proclamation, or if you listened to his speech, I hope you noticed that it had as much to do with Jesus Christ, the gospel message, or the kingdom of God as a tea-teetotaler at an Irish wake.

There was absolutely nothing particularly Christian about any of the glad-handing, obsequious antics going on at that pompous affair.  A sure sign of things to come.

In fact, it was a full-out, no-holds-barred display of America’s false gospel of civil religion, pure and simple.  Followers of Jesus Christ have no business signing on to such spiritual quackery, much less “praising the Lord” and polluting the Body of Christ with its deceitful promises. (I unpack all of this anti-Christian messaging in my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America).

Of course, I recognize that the best way to safeguard any religious expression in America is to protect all religious expression in America.  So such Executive Orders must be generic.  I enthusiastically applaud religious freedom for everyone — including those who choose not to believe — in our country.

But that is not my problem.  My objection is two-fold.

First, I believe that evangelical lament about religious persecution is a Trojan Horse being used to promote their agenda of evangelical superiority and control over  public policy (more on this in a future post).

Second, as a Christian, and an evangelical one at that, I believe that the public embrace — which is a public endorsement! — of civil religion is a form of idolatry.  It is a betrayal of the good news of Jesus Christ.

As an American, I applaud the reaffirmation of religious liberty for all religious groups in this country.

But, as a citizen of God’s kingdom, I have no interest in confirming others in the validity of their prayers to a deity other than the heavenly Father of our crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus.

THIS is what followers of Jesus Christ ought to care about most deeply!

Neither Trump’s Proclamation nor his Executive Order will provide a diddly-damn’s worth of influence towards advancing the kingdom of God in this world.

So why are “Christian” leaders applauding presidential edicts sanctioning policies and actions that could deceive the very people who may actually be  searching for the answers that only Jesus Christ can provide?

Power and privilege.  It is all about the acquisition of power and privilege.

Finally, we return to where I started — the disentangling of religious privilege and the perceived threat of religious persecution.

Christian radio and television have managed to brainwash many evangelicals into thinking that if Christianity is not sitting at the head of a government table, then their religious freedom will be violated.  (Read my earlier post on this subject).

For instance, take the long-standing debate about prayer in our public schools.  Evangelicals have long insisted that, unless there is a specific law sanctioning their prayers in public schools, then they are experiencing oppression at the hands of government.

We might call this the cry-baby approach to religious liberty in America.

I grew up in public schools, and no one ever stopped me from praying inside the building whenever I chose to. In fact, I have never needed a law specifically sanctioning my approach to personal spirituality anywhere in public. (My children also attended school in a nation with mandatory religious instruction.  I had to deprogram them after each indoctrination session).

But, then, religious freedom is not really the point of the prayer debate.

The real point is that evangelicals want a bigger piece of the public policy pie, which they will use to wield greater power over what is acceptable and unacceptable in public discourse.

President Donald Trump, surrounded my members of the clergy, signed the Executive Order on Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, in the Rose Garden of the White House, On Thursday, May 4, 2017. (Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

I fear that this is the motivation behind a portion of Trump’s Executive Order which says its purpose is “to reduce…burdens on the exercise of religious convictions and legislative, regulatory, and other barriers to the full and active engagement of faith-based and community organizations in Government-funded or Government-conducted activities and programs.”

In other words, the point, in

CHICAGO, IL – JUNE 30: Sister Caroline attends a rally with other supporters of religious freedom to praise the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby, contraception coverage requirement case on June 30, 2014 in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

part, is to make it easier for future Hobbie Lobby-type companies to force their employees into abiding by the employer’s religious convictions.  In the case of Hobby Lobby, it was to deny female employees the sort of health care coverage that would pay for their choice of contraception, despite the fact that these employees are not necessarily Roman Catholic.

Folks, it is all about power and privilege.  Power and Privilege.

Other illustrations could be listed, but this one must suffice.  (I also suspect that this new Executive Order is another feature of the long-term Republican strategy to dismantle the New Deal by starving public programs like Social Security, Medicare, affordable public housing, and more.  But that argument must wait for another day).

Honestly, I felt a bit depressed last Thursday after watching men and women who should have known better, so-called Christian leaders accountable to the Church, scurrying around the Rose Garden like a gaggle of glad-handing geese gobbling up the stale crumbs of white bread thrown to them by the White House.

There is an old saying (that I just made up) which goes — when the monks come calling be sure to hide the wine.

Well, look out public policy!  The Religious Right is coming. And they ain’t necessarily working for you.

The Church Fights for a Seat at the Head of the Table, An Excerpt from “I Pledge Allegiance”

Jesus warns his followers that when they live as he lived and invite others to inhabit the kingdom of God as he did, they would experience opposition.  In the Sermon on the Mount, he encourages them by saying, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

American Christianity has horribly twisted Jesus’ teaching.

White evangelicals regularly complain about the persecution they face because of their Christian faith.  This perception of anti-Christian hostility was a large piece of the cultural backdrop to last Thursday’s Rose Garden ceremony where president Trump issued a Proclamation on the National Day of Prayer and then signed his Executive Order on the Establishment of a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative.

The church leaders standing beside the president actually thought that he was doing something to relieve the Christian church of religious oppression in America.  Many of these people actually believe that Christians suffer more discrimination than black people in the USA.  White evangelicals are “more likely to see discrimination against themselves than against minority groups, [saying] oh, no, we’re the ones being persecuted”(emphasis mine).

Such is the power of spiritual delusion, of suffering with the blindness of white privilege, of embracing the liturgies of American civil religion, and of investing more energy into protecting oneself than into actually living like Jesus.

This white evangelical pity-party might be laughable were it not so spiritually crippling.

 I confront this spider web of problems in the following excerpt from chapter 11 of my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America. The chapter title, “Blessed Are Those Who Are Persecuted Because of Me,” is lifted from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:11).

“When it comes to the prospects of suffering for the gospel, the American church commits two mistakes that distort a proper understanding of its role in this world: first, Christians wish to occupy a privileged place in society; second,Christians want to live ‘triumphantly’ here and now, immediately possessing all the power and authority exhibited in Christ’s resurrection.

“The first error is most clearly seen in the so-called culture wars supposedly waged between what passes for a Christian worldview and secular humanism. What this obsession with spiritual warfare reveals, however, is not secularism’s efforts to extinguish Christianity, but the church’s assumption that Christianity has a right to unchallenged preeminence in the public square. This cultural conflict is not evidence of a cosmic struggle between light and darkness as the televangelists proclaim. Its roots are much more mundane and secular, for this so-called culture war is actually the last gasp of an antiquated confusion between church and state once referred to as Christendom, that is, the merging of Christianity with a nation’s social, political, and cultural life such that the church and its teachings dominate public affairs, confusing Christian discipleship
with state citizenship. The current cultural combat is not concerned with
a genuine defense of Christian faith, but is fomented by the church’s misplaced desire to assert social and political dominance over society at large. Personally,I cannot blame nonbelievers for resisting these efforts.

“How curious it is, then, to observe that neither Jesus nor Paul (or any of
the other New Testament writers, for that matter) ever expresses the least bit of concern about seeing the church assert control over the social, cultural, or political landscape in their own day and age. The apostle Paul was surrounded by an utterly pagan Greco-Roman society awash in idolatry, immorality, and bloodthirsty political maneuvering; yet he never so much as hints at the need for his communities to devise a strategy for taking over Rome’s politics, social customs, arts, or mores. In this respect, Paul was following his master, for as Christopher Bryan correctly notes, Jesus did not show any interest in changing, much less controlling, the temporal forms of political power in his day either. Instead, Jesus and Paul focused on creating a new, alternative community that would shine as a light to the world, showing the spiritually curious where they might discover the kingdom of God in the midst of this world’s corruption.

“In a pluralistic society such as America’s, why should Christian prayers,
holidays, and ceremonies be prioritized above those of other religions? Why
should displays of the Ten Commandments, crucifixes, and nativity scenes
receive pride of place on state lands and facilities without equal representation from Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu symbols? The honest answer is that there is no reason for Christian ceremonies or insignia to receive any state-sponsored preferential treatment. And being denied such prioritized benefits does not constitute discrimination, much less persecution. The fact that many Americans believe otherwise, and are willing to fight tooth and nail over small-minded concerns like manger scenes and Christian prayer in public schools, merely demonstrates how the American church is still trying to capitalize on the historical momentum generated by past centuries of Western Christendom, even as that momentum grinds to a halt. This explains the oddity of a country like the United States, which has never had an established state church and hence never officially participated in Christendom, nevertheless experiencing a culture war where Christian people assume that they are justified in imposing their religiously based moral code, spiritual sensibilities, and religious symbols on the rest of the nation.

“We should not be the least bit surprised when non-Christian people resist the church’s efforts to exercise such power over them. Unfortunately, when the predictable resistance appears, the church typically responds by crying “persecution,” “discrimination,” and “anti-Christian bias” when, in fact, prejudice and suppression are working the other way around. The church frequently behaves like the worst sort of petulant child, crying “foul!” when Christians are the ones kicking every other player in the shins…

“…In fact, the truth of the gospel and the upside-downness of Jesus’s kingdom values appear to have nothing at all to do with the high level of hostility many Americans feel toward the Christian faith. The monumental national and ecclesial tragedy crying out for recognition is that the Religious Right has managed to obscure the central message of the crucified, resurrected Jesus beneath a never-ending soundtrack of over-heated partisan rhetoric lamenting the dangers of “secular humanism” and “liberal politics.” They have pursued a no-holds-barred strategy to reach their partisan goals and have successfully accomplished what can only be described as a demonic victory. They have blacked out the good news of God’s kingdom from public perception like a hellish eclipse of the Son. Such betrayers of God’s kingdom have no business complaining about their bogus ‘persecution.’”

Trump’s Proclamation on the National Day of Prayer, 2018 Was an Exercise in Idolatry and Faithlessness, as It Has Always Been

Rarely have I seen such a sorry sight as the rows of obsequious, evangelical sycophants lined up on either side of president Trump in the Rose Garden last Thursday.  Basking in the bogus allure of Oval Office access, partisan grins stretched from cheek to cheek, they all had deceived themselves into believed they were actually doing something for the kingdom of God.

Such is the delusion of the American, conservative church today.

Trump’s 2018 Proclamation for the National Day of Prayer is a typically bland pronouncement of nationalistic, idolatrous platitudes.  It is a tasteless porridge perfectly pronouncing the half-baked ideologies of American exceptionalism, nationalism, patriotism and civil religion that erects a spiritual wall of partition, separating so many from the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel of American greatness is a false gospel. Its monuments are pagan altars where U.S. soldiers are sacrificed to the American Baal.  Watching the mindless smiles of these evangelical “leaders,” betraying their gospel responsibilities, fawning shamelessly over the man we call “president” reminded me of the apostate people described in Daniel 11:32:

“With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.”

How much more corrupted can people like Paula White, Pat Robertson, Robert Jeffress, Johnnie Moore and James Dobson become as they continue to violate the new covenant morality of God’s kingdom exemplified by the Lord Jesus?

When did Jesus ever loosen his grip on his Father’s scruples in exchange for political privilege?  Recall that Jesus faced this very offer as a demonic temptation. Yet, Jesus scorned the Oval Office, saying,

“Away from me Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

For too much of the world “making America great again” translates into “keeping them oppressed again,” oppressed by right wing dictatorships propped up by U.S. dollars; oppressed by American-made bombs killing poor, innocent civilians living in poor, desolate countries; oppressed by resource exploitation and environmental pollution at the hands of insatiable American corporations; and oppressed by heartless, economic manipulation as entire nations wriggle under the thumb of more World Bank “austerity measures.”

America has become the Whore of Babylon to much of the world and should be seen this way by all right-thinking disciples.  We are the

“…woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls.  She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.  This title was written on her forehead:

MYSTERY

BABYLON THE GREAT

THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES

AND THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

(Revelation 17:3-5)

FADA Will Legalize Religiously-Based Bigotry

22 Republican senators (including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Orrin Hatch), led by Mike Lee (R-Utah), are trying for a 3rd time to shepherd the “First Amendment Defense Act” (FADA) through Congress.

Using the 1st amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion, FADA would codify legal discrimination against members of the LGBT community, as well as anyone having sex outside of marriage.

It is an “anti-discrimination” law that would legalize discrimination.

The bill’s language is classically Orwellian.  It states that FADA will “ensure that the Federal Government shall not take any discriminatory action” against those who excuse their own discriminatory actions as a requirement of their religious faith.

In other words, under the guise of “protecting opponents of same-sex marriage,” FADA will legalize discrimination against LGBT people, including heterosexuals guilty of fornication.

There are so many things wrong with this effort, both in its motivation and execution, it is hard to know where to begin.

Not too many years ago, identical “religious liberty” arguments were the foundation stones supporting racist Jim Crow laws throughout this country.  Business owners could legally refuse service to black people and get away with it, because their discrimination expressed a “deeply held” religious conviction.

The passage of time has not improved the fatally flawed logic behind FADA.  Nor has it sweetened the discriminatory stench clinging to its proponents.

Neither can it hide the blatant avarice lying at the root of this legislation.  For it is largely motivated by the love of money.

Reading the bill reveals that, without exception, every example of potential, government “discriminatory action” – the threats to religious freedom that FADA aims to defend against – concerns maintaining an organization’s tax exempt status or other government financial benefits.

In other words, the goal of FADA is to ensure that no one will lose their religiously-based tax breaks, while exercising their right to indulge in religiously-based discrimination.

What hypocrites religious people can be, especially when fighting to protect the preferential status granted by a government tax exemption.

Such people, who insist on defending their place at the public trough, should be expected to keep the same public rules as everyone else.  If they don’t like it, there is a simple solution:  surrender your tax exemption.

Furthermore, the renewed push for FADA is another example of the Religious Right’s persistent lust for social and political power.  It is a quest for control.  Not simply to have a place in the public square, but to control access to the public square.

It is another chapter in the Right’s continuing desire for a new age of Christendom.  In Christendom, the Christian church holds sway over who is in, who is out, and who plays by which rules.  As expressed by FADA, Christians would implement a bizarre misapplication of church discipline to those living outside the church. (I know, my theological slip is showing.  I do believe that the ancient, and entirely Biblical, prohibition against same-sex intimacy is correct and remains legitimate.)

Granted, the courts will continue to have difficult debates on the legal status of the numerous, and highly variable, religious freedom claims brought before them.  But there is no Biblical foundation to the claim being made by certain Christians that faith in Jesus requires them to have no business dealings with LGBT people.

That is a self-righteous distortion of Christian witness.

The apostle Paul confronted this very misapplication of church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13.  Some members of the church misunderstood Paul’s earlier warning to remain separate from “sexually immoral people.” They mistook him to mean that they couldn’t do business or associate with people outside the church who lived at variance with Paul’s ethical teaching.

However, every Greco-Roman city in Paul’s day was filled with people living any number of alternative, “immoral” lifestyles (as defined by Christian teaching). It was virtually impossible to conduct any type of successful business, including Paul’s own ventures as a traveling tent-maker, without striking deals with such “immoral” customers.

Here is Paul’s correction to the Corinthian mistake:

I did not mean for you to stop associating with the people of this world who are immoral…In that case you would have to leave this world…What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.

Only a racist, discriminatory, judgmental religion fears compromising its moral values by allowing the faithful to rub shoulders and do business with those unlike themselves.

The 1st amendment already protects that sort of religious bigotry.  There is no law against being a religious white supremacist.  But neither should there be a law guaranteeing the tax-exempt status of religious bigots who trample on the laws protecting equal access to the public square for everyone else.