{"id":7818,"date":"2013-05-06T10:03:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T14:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=7818"},"modified":"2013-05-06T10:04:29","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T14:04:29","slug":"what-should-churches-do-if-the-fight-over-gay-rights-is-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/05\/06\/what-should-churches-do-if-the-fight-over-gay-rights-is-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"What should churches do if the fight against gay rights is lost?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

This is one social movement that most Christian churches oppose, but Americans are getting on board anyway (Source: Pew)<\/p><\/div>\n

A few days ago, I heard a fascinating interview on one of NPR’s news programs with a liberal Christian pastor.\u00a0 (I’d link to it, but after a long search I can’t find the conversation.)<\/p>\n

During the exchange, the minister made a powerful assertion.\u00a0 He argued that no meaningful social transformation has occurred in American society without the direct and passionate engagement of churches.<\/p>\n

The obvious example, which he cited, is the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

Black churches in the South were a catalyst for change, a beacon of courage.\u00a0 If I’m not mistaken, Martin Luther King Jr. is the one religious figure who enjoys a Federal holiday in America.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that Christians have been front and center in a dozen other major movements, from abolitionism in the 1800s to the fight against deep poverty in the 1930s to the anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s.<\/p>\n

Christians also energized the anti-abortion movement that began in the 1980s, a movement that many believers view as a fight for the rights of unborn children.<\/p>\n

Which may be why the battle over civil rights and equality for gays and lesbians looks and feels so starkly different.<\/p>\n

This time around, American society is changing with remarkable speed, and the vast majority of Christian organizations are in a very different role.<\/p>\n

Rather than leading the fight for change, they stand adamant in opposition, throwing vast amounts of political, cultural and economic weight into efforts to block issues like marriage equality, same-sex adoption, and full labor equality for gays.<\/p>\n

Last week, as Rhode Island was emerging as the tenth US state to legalize same-sex marriage, that state’s Bishop Thomas Tobin drew yet another line in the sand.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this moment of cultural change, it is important to affirm the teaching of the Church, based on God\u2019s word, that \u2018homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,\u2019 and always sinful,\u201d Bishop Tobin argued.<\/p>\n

He went on to call same-sex marriage “objectively sinful” and urged Catholics to avoid attending marriages involving friends, family and co-workers who are gay.\u00a0 “[T]o do so might harm their relationship with God and cause significant scandal to others,” he noted.<\/p>\n

Most Americans would take deep umbrage at a clergyman’s suggestion that their adult relationships are “disordered” or “sinful” or that having a family-member at their wedding would harm anyone’s relationship with God.<\/p>\n

But in the context of Christian activism on this issue, Bishop Tobin’s language is fairly temperate.\u00a0 While driving this week in the Midwest, I listened carefully to Christian radio, where opposition to gay rights is a key issue for discussion and debate.<\/p>\n

On program after program, I heard homosexuality described as\u00a0 “unclean” and an “abomination.”<\/p>\n

To be clear, there are progressive churches that have embraced and worked to advance homosexual rights.\u00a0 The issue has divided the Episcopal church in the US, for example, which went so far as to ordain a gay bishop.<\/p>\n

But in the US, the vast, overwhelming opposition to this movement grows out of Protest, Mormon and Roman Catholic churches.<\/p>\n

Leaders of those faith-groups point confidently to passages in the Christian Bible that appear to condemn homosexuality in blunt terms.<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, is that a majority of Americans now reject those views; and even many rank-and-file Christians no longer believe or acknowledge the primacy of those passages of Scripture.<\/p>\n

\u201cA historic realignment is happening all around us, as Americans from all walks of life realize that [legalizing same sex marriage] is the right thing to do,\u201d said Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee, a long-time Republican who now identifies himself as an independent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is occurring both inside and outside of politics, through conversations at the office and over kitchen tables, and at different speeds in different parts of the country,” Gov. Chaffee wrote in a commentary for the New York Times.<\/p>\n

As recently as 2009, support for gay marriage stood at just 41 percent.\u00a0 Now, some 53 percent of Americans support the idea of same-sex marriage, according to an NBC\/Wall Street Journal poll.<\/p>\n

Two-thirds of Americans think the Federal government should recognize same same-sex marriages performed in the states where they are already legal.<\/p>\n

Support for gay rights is even stronger among young people.\u00a0 A separate poll by Washington Post\/ABC found that 73% of Americans age 18-49 support gay marriage; and that includes 52% support among Republicans in that age group.<\/p>\n

One final statistic is worth pointing to here.\u00a0 Americans tend to think of themselves as highly polarized, entrenched, partisans in a take-no-prisoners culture war.<\/p>\n

But a Pew study released this spring found that a whopping 16 percent of us have changed our minds about gay marriage — almost all of them, 14 percent, moving in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no putting this genie back in the bottle,\u201d Florida-based Republican strategist Ana Navarro said in an interview on CNN. \u201cThis is now undeniable. The shift is here. We\u2019re not going back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing in the Washington Post, political writer Chris Cillizza put it even bluntly: “The political debate over gay marriage is over.”<\/p>\n

The question for people of faith — and their leaders — is What do you do if the train is leaving the station and you’re not on board?\u00a0 What if society is changing (or has changed) fundamentally and you’re not part of it?<\/em><\/p>\n

In the past, Christian groups have sometimes capitulated in circumstances like these\u00a0 Most religious groups now tacitly (if grudgingly) accept marital divorce, for example, which is condemned in stark terms in the Bible.<\/p>\n

Other faiths have adopted a kind of de facto don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach, such as the Roman Catholic posture toward contraception, which is widely condemned by the Vatican and widely practiced by the faithful.<\/p>\n

The rhetoric on gay rights and same-sex marriage strikes me as more intractable, however, and less open to that kind of massaging or tweaking.<\/p>\n

So let me end with a series of questions:\u00a0 Do you think it’s too late for Christian groups who want to contain the spread of gay right in the US?\u00a0 Or can developments like same-sex marriage be contained and rolled back?<\/p>\n

And what do you think happens if the gay rights movement ultimately prevails — winning the kind of widespread acceptance that racial tolerance enjoys today — but the churches are left behind?<\/p>\n

And what does this mean for the future of social change in America?\u00a0 Will churches continue to be pivotal institutions?\u00a0 Or will we see more movements growing without, or in spite of, Christian activism?<\/p>\n

Your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I heard a fascinating interview on one of NPR’s news programs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}