Why Christian Business Owners And Others Should Provide Services To Same-Sex Weddings

I am really tired of writing about this subject. What subject is that? It is same-sex marriage.

For many decades, if not centuries, those from the LGBT community have been marginalized through discrimination and job loss, violence and even death,  social stigmatization,  and incarceration for acting on their sexual orientations.  In addition, they have been given the double message of the importance of monogamy along with legal prohibitions against same-sex marriage in society. And one of the leading groups that promotes and enables this marginalization of those from the LGBT community are many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians. 

But it isn't as if the past marginalizing of those from the LGBT community was enough.  While waging a losing battle to keep same-sex marriage illegal, some of my religiously conservative Christians proposed Jim Crow type discrimination laws targeting those from the LGBT community in general and same-sex weddings in particular. And now that that attempt has failed to leave the ground, individual Christians are tempting fate by individual acts of civil disobedience meant to interfere with those from the LGBT community from enjoying their now legal right to engage in same-sex marriage.

The latest attempt to interfere with joining of couples in same-sex marriages by some of my fellow religiously conservative Christian brothers and sisters took the form of a country clerk from Kentucky named Kim Davis. She refused to dispense marriage licenses to any couple because she was trying to prevent same-sex couples from obtaining such licenses. And many a conservative Christian voiced the opinion that Kentucky was legally obligated to accommodate Davis' faith-based actions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

To partially answer the dilemma that Davis' defiance of a court order brings, we need to go back a little bit in time when such civil disobedience was being carried out by my fellow religiously conservative Christians from the private sector. And that brings us to the subject of this blogpost. Here, we are reviewing an article written by Jonathan Merritt on Christian business owners who portray themselves as embattled preachers because of the legal ramifications that resulted from their failing to provide goods and services to same-sex weddings (click here for the article).

The part of Merritt's article that applies to the Davis case is sandwiched between some reluctant approval of a biblical interpretation made by Denny Burk on the identity of the 'least of these brothers and sisters of mine' from Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats. In that parable, Jesus teaches us that those who ministered to the least of the these were rewarded with eternal life in heaven while those who didn't were sent to eternal punishment. Burk makes the claim that the least of these brothers and sisters of mine referred to followers of Jesus only and that in America today, the least of these applies to those Christians who are being persecuted for taking stands like the ones taken by those Christian business owners who refuse to sell goods and services to same-sex weddings.

And though Merritt finds merit in Burk's interpretation of the identity of the least of these as being Christians who are vulnerable, he thoroughly disagrees with Burk that the least of these includes Christian business owners who are drawing a line in the sand by refusing to do business with same-sex weddings. The highlight of Merritt's article is found in why he disagrees with how Burk here. After that, Merritt appeals to authority by citing prominent theologians who challenged Burk's application of the parable. This appeal to authority was really unnecessary and took away from Merritt's opportunity to expand on why these persecuted Christian business owners cannot be counted as the least of these.

So let's get to the highlight of Merritt's article here. It's a quote that comes from a judge who was speaking to a Christian business owner about his obligations to provide services to a same-sex couple:

You’re being fined because the law is clear that public businesses must serve the whole public.

There are a couple concepts here which we cannot afford to miss. First, the job of any Christian business owner is the same job as any business owner: to 'serve the whole public.' Such is not just the unwritten contract that is involved with running a business, but is the law according to the judge. Too many times, we Christians enter the business world in ignorance because we are only thinking about the role we would like to choose for ourselves. In part we can choose certain roles for ourselves when we run a business, but that is only in part. Sure we can use whatever business we own to evangelize, but there are other roles that are foreordained any public business. We cannot unchoose them because if we run a business, we operate within a system that involves the public rather than on a island where those who visit are by invitation only.

Second, we don't think of the ramifications of what being able to select which part of whole public we will serve. And by that, I don't mean that we don't have any choice in whom we will serve by the products we provide. Rather, we don't have the right to say to people who do desire buy our products in order to use them in legal activities that we don't have to do business with them simply because of the group they belong to. In fact, the law protects certain groups that have been or are still marginalized from such discrimination. 

To allow such discrimination is to allow a part of the kind of discrimination Blacks faced during Jim Crow. And while some of my conservative Christian brothers and sisters might protest by saying that practicing homosexual acts, unlike belonging to a particular race, is sin, practicing such sin still does not warrant the mistreatment from society that comes with discrimination and the marginalization that follows.

But what about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the requirement that both public and private employees provide accommodation for religious practices. Here we should note that such is the case if providing such accommodations does not cause undue hardship on the employer. As a Daily Kos article pointed out (click here), some jobs and faiths cannot be reconciled. An example of such an irreconcilable couple is being a Quaker and serving in the Marines. Though I am not sure if the Marines have any Quakers, I am sure that there are certain job positions in the Marines to which Quakers should never apply. So too is the pairing of a government position such as county clerk and a Christian, Kim Davis to be specific, who sees the legal giving of marriage licenses to same-sex couples as being irreconcilable to how she wishes to apply the Scriptures.

For just as business owners are obligated to serve the whole public, so too government officials are obligated to protect the legal rights of all who require their services. And if Davis finds that both doing her job and living her faith are contradictory, then she should not hold the position of county clerk seeing that she can only serve part of the law, not all of the law.

Merritt's quoting of the statement made by the judge to a particular Christian business owner is the highlight made in his article. I do wish that he would have spent more time discussing that statement rather than trying to quote Christian authority figures in an effort to contradict how Denny Burk was applying the parable of the sheep and the goats and, in particular, claiming how we must help the least of these brothers and sisters of Jesus includes helping Christian business owners who refuse to do business with same-sex couples looking to be married.

And now I return to my original point. I am tired of discussing this subject. Why? For one thing, though equality with heterosexuals in society is good and necessary, achieving that equality does not bring any structural changes to society.  Also, we should note that every thing that could be said of same-sex marriage has been. The talking that goes on afterwards is simply posturing.

Everybody Else Does Tribalism

I really didn't want to write another blogpost on tribalism but when I saw a reformed blogpost defending it, I felt that a response was required. D. G. Hart wrote such a defense on a blog he shares with John R. Muether called Old Life (click here for info about the blog and D. G. Hart). The post itself is called Didn't God Want The Israelites To Be Tribal? His post was a response to an article written by Jonathan Merritt on the Neo Calvinists in which he accuses them of being isolationists and tribalistic amongst other things (click here for the article). Here, Hart both defends the tribalism practiced by the Neo Calvinists as well as attacks Merritt for making the accusations. This blogpost will be based on both Hart's blogpost as well as the comments that accompany his post.

Hart deals with Merritt's challenge to Neo Calvinists for separating themselves from worldly influences. Merritt had complained that Neo Calvinist birds of a feather flock together when it comes getting input. They read Calvinist blogs and books while attending Calvinist conferences and churches. In contrast to this intellectual monastic approach to the world, Merritt suggests that Neo Calvinists would do better to imitate his move from Atlanta to New York City and leave their spiritual ghetto to live in a heterogeneous environment. 

Hart sharply criticizes Merritt on both points. First, Hart uses the Israelites as an example of how God's people were to separate themselves from the nations around them. But then recognizing how the New Testament changed things, Hart goes on to say that that same spirit of separateness was followed by the New Testament Church. Thus, according to Hart, though Merritt might be able to handle the interaction with nonChristians, ministers need to think of all who are in the flock including those whose faith might be compromised by mutual exchanges with nonChristians.

But Hart misses some points here. First, the physical separation practiced by the Israelites in the Old Testament was explicitly commanded by and carried out within a specific redemptive-historical context that does not apply today. In addition, Hart is simply wrong in how he thinks Christians are called to separate themselves from the world. We only need to refer to the Great Commission and the Paul's distinction on which immoral people Christians should shun (click here). In both cases we are called to go out into the world and be with the heterogeneous population that makes up the world.

But perhaps the biggest problem with Hart's criticisms of Merritt here is Paul's life. In Book of Acts, Paul goes to a Greek temple to preach the Gospel (click here). His sermon reflects a significant exposure to Greek thought. And though we could say this supports Hart's view that some Christians could handle pagan Paul was a leader, realize that we are all called to fulfill the Great Commission, not just our leaders. With the relevancy of Christianity dropping in our Post-Modern world, interaction with the world seems necessary for all Christians. 

With regard to tribalism, we should first pay attention to a proper definition of the word. The working definition of tribalism used by this blog is that tribalism occurs when loyalty to a group trumps commitment to principles and morals. The end effect of tribalism is that of adopting a gang mentality that says right and wrong depends on who does what to whom. Here self-restraint flies out the window as avarice, ambition, and/or fear frees one from the fetters of moral self-control. I use this definition because the actual definition of tribalism revolves around the high degree of loyalty one has to one's group (click here).

Now we should note that the news of theologians losing self-restraint does not stir the same fear in people as when political or military leaders do, but it does maintain the precedent set by those with wealth and power and it disqualifies one from challenging the tribalism of others. Here we get to the core of Hart's objections to Merritt's accusations against the Neo Calvinists. How Hart responds to Merritt here is to say in effect, so what! According to Hart, not only does everybody employ tribalism, it is the lifeblood of every group. And not only that, Hart states that God sanctions it seeing that the Israelites employed it during Old Testament times.

Therefore, according to Hart, those who accuse others of tribalism are being both trivial and hypocritical. But is Hart correct in saying that everybody employs tribalism? And is he correct in saying that since it is such a part of the human experience, it is wrong to criticize tribalism in others? The answer to both questions must be no.

Yes, we all belong to groups. But tribalism is more than just belonging to a group. It involves maintaining a degree of loyalty that is so high that supporting the group takes precedence over other commitments such as to principles, morals, and we could include God. Thus, remaining silent regarding the sins of one's own group shows tribalism. But such silence also shows complicity. This is what German citizens who were forced to tour Hitler's extermination camps by Allied forces during WW II discovered. When our own group is wrong or sins, then there are times when we have a choice of showing whether we are ashamed of Christ and His words as stated in Luke 9:26.

Any loyalty to a group which competes with our principles, morals, and commitment to God should appear to be unbiblical to the casual observer let alone the committed Christian. But something else must be said about Hart's reaction to Merritt's article. That something else deals with the authoritarianism that is thriving in today's world. This authoritarianism is making George Orwell's book, 1984 (click here for quotes) prophetic. We could easily define authoritarianism as occurring when truth is determined by the credentials of the source of some content rather than the facts and logic of the content itself. So when people are encouraged to flock to a certain group of speakers and writers because of their credentials, we have the beginning of authoritarianism.

But a disturbing part of authoritarianism can possibly occur when those same people are discouraged from listening to or reading those outside the group because only the strong can listen to or read outsiders without becoming corrupted. It is disturbing because such isolates people from the rest of society. And those who tend isolate people whom they rule over all too often do so because they are involved in running abusive relationships or cults. The isolation from outside sources facilitates the loss of accountability for the leaders and helplessness for the rest.

Of course, there is a milder negative result to the isolation Hart supports and this has been mentioned before. That milder result is that those who have so isolated themselves lose the ability to relate to those outside their group. Thus, their message to their peers becomes irrelevant.

I don't think Hart fits in the category of being a Neo Calvinist. And if I am right about that, we still should not be surprised to see him defend self-isolation and tribalism of Neo Calvinists. Why? Because Hart's own groups favor self-isolation and tribalism.  Tragically, it has become part of the Conservative Christian culture in America. Thus to admit Merritt is right about the Neo Calvinists, Hart would have to admit that his own groups are wrong too.

For all of our handwringing about the growing secularism in our nation, perhaps we need to pay more attention to our own faults. People like Jonathan Merritt, however imperfectly, are trying to point out some of those faults. Our faults just might be one of the reasons why the world is passing us by.

But before finishing, there is something we need to add to the context of Hart's analysis of Merritt here. If we are going to be Biblical, we will admit to having more relationships involving one party exercising authority over another than those not following the Bible. If we are going to interact with the world, we need to be careful not to be corrupted by what the Apostle John called "lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." In addition, we are called to come out from the ungodly as Israel did from Egypt. But our calling says that we are to come out from them by being different. So anyone who is going to fully address these subjects from a Biblical perspective has a delicate balancing act to perform. So perhaps one can say that Merritt erred some on laxness in terms of balancing the issues. But it is without a doubt that Hart erred on the other side of laxness so that not only does the Conservative Christian faith more closely resembles a cult by what he defended in the Neo Calvinists, it becomes less and less relevant to those living in the world. In addition, when we declare that we have nothing to learn from those outside our group, we show that we need to hear Martin Luther King's analysis of the West regarding its participation in the Vietnam War (click here for the source):

The western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. 

Powers And Merritt Got It Right But Could Have Said More

In an article (click here) that put the panties of many of us Conservative Christians in a bunch, Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt got it right regarding Christian businesspeople who refuse to provide public services for same-sex weddings. How did they get it right? They got it right by pointing out that businesses that provide services for same-sex weddings are not necessarily "affirming" those weddings and they got it right when they showed the hypocrisy of Christian businesspeople who refuse to provide public services for same-sex weddings but provide the same services for other unbiblical weddings. 

But why did they have to address this subject in the first place? This blog has pointed out that Christians have been waging war against gays (click here). In addition, Christians, in trying to point out the seriousness of the sin of homosexuality, have exaggerated the differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals (click here) and this fuels Christian animosity toward gays. At the same time, Christians are rather silent about larger sins such as our nation's wars and interventions, the wealth disparity and exploitation that comes from our economic system and classism, and America's part in destroying the environment and condemning  future generations to much suffering. 

So, why are the Christians who so vociferously oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriages so silent about past and present actions that either take, threaten, or harm millions of lives in this country and around the world? There are multiple answers, some of which are complex, and one of which says it is because they benefit from that which they should protest.

There is another point to be made here about the Conservative Christian reaction to the article written by Powers and Merritt. The way these Conservative Christians are approaching this issue shows that they are suffering from a Mr. Magoo degree of myopia (click here). They can only see themselves; they cannot see the effects of their decisions on others. They are blind to the ramifications of denying public services to a specified group. These consequences, when applied outside of weddings as consistency would demand and which are pointed out by Powers and Merritt, would lead to another Jim Crow and we have enough of them already (click here).

The cause for this spiritual myopia so often found in Conservative Christians is the emphasis they put on their own personal holiness. What follows this attention is a hyper-vigilance on one's own spiritual state. At the same time how one's actions affects others is hardly noticed. In addition, social sins, which are sins committed by groups, barely receive any attention. We could liken all of the self-focus on one's own personal holiness to a mirror at which one constantly stares to check for flaws. The more one focuses on one's own holiness and purity or zeros in on one's own spiritual flaws, the bigger the mirror becomes. But as the mirror grows, the more it obstructs one's view of the world around them. Thus, eventually, one cannot even see one's neighbor let alone love them. This is why Christians misinterpret the expected push back from gays as either persecution or attempts at control. This is also partially why Christians can have such strong reactions to the sexual sins of their neighbors while maintaining a laissez-faire attitude to the sins of one's own nation, political party, economic class, race, or even religion. For the Conservative Christian, it is all about one's own spiritual state. 

Some of the reactions of Conservative Christians to homosexuals and same-sex marriages serve as further confirmation to the suspicion of some that Conservative Christians are backwards thinking people. Those, who harbor this suspicion, add that part of the puzzle to how some of us insist that the world is merely a few thousand years old to our belief that our consumerism and lifestyle could never possibly harm the environment in order to take a snapshot of us. And that picture is not only repulsive, it shows that we have the potential of posing a threat to others. 

It is time for us to realize that many of the criticisms we receive are not instances of persecution or rejection of the Gospel. Rather, they are the world's way of trying to hold a non-magical mirror in front of us so we can see what we really look like. Powers and Merritt are doing just that by taking on the refusal of Christian businesspeople to provide services for same-sex weddings while demonstrating no qualms over providing the same services for other unbiblical weddings.