Posted on by Bernie Nord

But It Does Take Theology

Saturday’s story in the LA Times reporting on how support for Mitt Romney has grown among Christian evangelicals says “It doesn’t take a theologian…to figure out which presidential candidate is closer in line with biblical principles as (evangelical pastor Barry Farah) describes them – principles that translate into opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and support for school choice and limited government.”

It occurs to me the challenge progressive faith communities have these days is to say that it does take theology (and theologians) to help us understand that the most important biblical principles translate into support for Roe v. Wade, marriage that works for all loving relationships, support for increasingly effective public education, and government that protects and advances the rights and privileges of all who are governed.

Take the institution of marriage as it’s popularly understood these days, for example. The back page of Section A of Sunday’s Raleigh News & Observer was a full-page ad by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association containing a photo of Dr. Graham and his message urging Americans to support “biblical values” and “to vote for those who…support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman.” Christian evangelicals are very good at re-framing (or maybe just initially “framing”) the discussion we’re having at the moment in this country about marriage and who qualifies to have it as a conversation about a biblical principle or value.

But, in fact, marriage isn’t either of those. Rather, marriage is a social institution by which societies – almost all societies, almost throughout all human history — have ordered themselves and provided protection to individuals within a society’s communities and families, it seems to me. Indeed, our own Presbyterian hero John Calvin saw marriage as a good gift of God that is best certified and attended to by the state, which he also understood as God’s good and necessary gift.

Marriage is a phenomenon that precedes and predates even the most ancient religions, even those in the Bible. Marriage is an institution of cultures and has various forms and definitions. For evangelicals to claim that only the form and definition that they experience as good and useful – the form of being between one man and one woman and only one of each – is the only useful form there is, is simply wrong. Marriage’s purpose is to give protection and hold commitments firm even when the makers of commitments give in to sin, weakness, or just change. And that sort of protection is needed in every society, community, and household, whether straight, gay, or multiple in the number of participants.

Just as progressive Christians must re-frame the Jesus only discussion that evangelicals would like to force on us to something that reflects a broader understanding of God’s love, we’ve also got to more successfully and boldly affirm another understanding of what marriage is, one that emerges from the purest and most important biblical principle of all – love. Jesus is calling us to do that, I’m pretty sure.

Posted on by Bernie Nord · 4 Comments

Madder & Madder

As I sit here thinking about tonight’s debate between the two Presidential candidates and about their respective campaigns to be elected to office, I find myself distracted by thoughts of one of the vice presidential candidates, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and his visit, together with his wife and children, to a soup kitchen for homeless and hungry people in Youngstown, OH yesterday. In case you didn’t see it on the news last night or this morning, the congressman apparently arrived quite late at the St. Vincent de Paul hunger shelter — after the shelter’s clients had already had their meals and left, in fact, and the dishes had been washed and kitchen cleaned up. But Mr. Ryan made a pretense of “volunteering” anyway by putting aprons on everybody and re-washing and re-drying a few pots and pans, all for the sake  of the photographers and television cameras. Gaaaak!!!

And this afternoon I find myself obsessing on it when I’d far rather be thinking about tonight’s debate between President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, which is a matter of far greater importance, for Heaven’s sake. And I find myself getting madder and madder at Paul Ryan and his handlers. So I want to talk about it…with you. Hope you don’t mind.

My anger, I think, has three components. Let me list and briefly describe them:

First, I’m pissed that Mr. Ryan would do what he did in a place and among people who I care about, people in Youngstown, which is the neighborhood where I grew up and is where people who I care a lot about still live. Some of them would be among the 30% of Americans that Mr. Ryan has described as “takers” and among the 47% of Americans that Ryan’s running mate, Mr. Romney, has described as “paying no taxes” and “not taking responsibility for their lives” because they are supported by federal or state “entitlement” programs. They’re talking about a dear 91-year-old aunt in Youngstown who, I presume, receives Social Security pension checks, as I  now do because I have worked hard and paid plenty over the years to earn them, just as she and her late husband, Uncle Chuck, did. She is one of the most “responsible” people I have ever known.

Messrs. Ryan and Romney are also talking about a cousin, Donna, who is a cancer survivor but nevertheless constantly battles cancer or cancer treatment-related illnesses and is currently hospitalized and on life-support. Because of the cancer, Donna hasn’t worked in recent years, and, I suppose, may well have had to rely on “entitlement program” benefits in order to live. So I’m pissed that Paul Ryan would dare to come in to Youngstown  to pretend to be individually compassionate. Maybe he is; but I’d far prefer that he do his pretending in  Janesville (Wisconsin).

Second, I think my anger has something to do with his having used a food kitchen that serves predominantly homeless persons to do his pretending. I suspect he thinks, as Mr. Romney seems to think, that homeless persons wouldn’t be that way if they just chose to take responsibility for their own lives. If that’s so, then he has another thought coming. The fact of the matter is that a great preponderance of the “homeless” persons in this country aren’t that way because they’ve made bad choices or refuse to “take responsibility.” Rather, they’re in the situation they’re in because they suffer from mental illness. Neither Mr. Romney nor Mr. Ryan seem to understand  that or acknowledge it. But it’s a fact, one of the many facts both men seem to ignore. Pretending to volunteer in a soup kitchen won’t help. But accepting the facts and then using their power and intellects to build a proper response to mental illness and homelessness would, it seems to me.

Third, it steams me to think that Paul Ryan would use his own children in yesterday’s sham compassion performance. Mrs. Ryan, I can understand. She’s an adult, after all, and could have said no. (Wouldn’t that have been wonderful.) Of course, she didn’t. But the kids? Well, that’s a different matter altogether. What kind of object lesson were the elder Ryan’s teaching their children? That, in politics, all is fair? That any means, even pretending to be or do something you aren’t or didn’t do, is justified by the end, i.e., getting elected? I hope not. Because even kids are smart enough to ask why would you then change afterward.

Thanks for listening. I’d love to know what you think.