A hat tip to Walter Olson, who pointed me to this development at World Vision International, the evangelical overseas charity, announcing it will now hire Christians in same-sex marriages (but expects all unmarried employees to abstain from sex outside of marriage).
Walter noted it’s a sign that same-sex marriage is rapidly being integrated into sectors of American culture heretofore unrelentingly resistant. Progressive secularists will scuff and demean this change among those they view as benighted, but those of us who want equal treatment, and not to force our worldview on others, should cheer.
More. Rachel Held Evans writes On the World Vision Reaction: Some Bad News, Some Good News, and Some Ideas:
The good news—and I want those of you who are discouraged to hear this—is that things are changing. As loud as these legalistic voices may seem right now, you will notice that they are often the same voices, over and over again. What I hear every day on the road and in my office is something different. It’s a freedom song, and it’s coming from thousands of pastors, writers, parents, teachers, and Christ-followers from all walks of life from all around the country and world. My desk is cluttered with books arguing for a more compassionate and inclusive way forward. Where I once scoured the internet for articles in support of women’s equality and LGBT equality, they are now plentiful, overwhelming. Letters detailing changed hearts and minds clog up my inbox. Things are changing. Hearts are softening. People are listening to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and engaging Scripture in fresh, yet faithful, ways.
Furthermore. World Vision reversed its decision after an uproar for the religious literalist establishment. But you can’t hold back the changing attitudes among younger evangelicals; you can only delay the inevitable.
33 Comments for “Cracks in the Resistance”
posted by Mike in Houston on
Jeebus Stephen — Did a Democrat dump you in the past?
It’s the only explanation for not simply noting the development — which like the Boy Scouts’s policy change and Dan Cathy’s change in tenor — is largely a recognition that the economics of discrimination has shifted.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Jeebus Stephen — Did a Democrat dump you in the past?
The more likely explanation is that Stephen will not post anything without conjuring up a way to spin it into an attack on left/liberal/progressive gays and lesbians.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Walter noted it’s a sign that same-sex marriage is rapidly being integrated into sectors of American culture heretofore unrelentingly resistant.
I’m suspect that “rapidly” is optimistic, but it is certainly happening faster than I thought it would. Several smaller conservative religious charities have taken similar steps in recent years, but World Vision is the most prominent — it actually made the news. It is a good sign all around.
Progressive secularists will scuff and demean this change among those they view as benighted, but those of us who want equal treatment, and not to force our worldview on others, should cheer.
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future, so I guess we will just have to wait until “progressive secularists” start reacting before we can confirm the “scuff”.
My guess is that the change in policy will be welcomed by “progressive secularists”, but your guess is as good as mine. Just remember that both of us are guessing without facts, Stephen, and it might be a good idea to keep that in mind before going on the warpath. You might find that you are the only person on the warpath.
We have not had to wait long for the conservative religious reaction, though, and that’s a fact. Talk about “scuffing”:
Russell Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, responded:
Franklin Graham said this: “World Vision maintains that their decision is based on unifying the church – which I find offensive – as if supporting sin and sinful behavior can unite the church.”
Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, weighed in with:
Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel was quoted in OneNewsNow as saying:
Bryan Fischer:
The AFA was slightly more restrained:
You get the picture. My reaction to all this is not to “scuff”, but instead to applaud World Vision International. I just wish that the Republican Party were as open to change.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Stephen, quoting Rachel Held Evans: As loud as these legalistic voices may seem right now, you will notice that they are often the same voices, over and over again. What I hear every day on the road and in my office is something different. It’s a freedom song, and it’s coming from thousands of pastors, writers, parents, teachers, and Christ-followers from all walks of life from all around the country and world.
If this is true, and I have no doubt that it is, it is very good news indeed.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Rachel Held Evans just updated her blog post with:
It sounds like the Christian equivalent of the Gay Patriot crowd discovered the post, and I’m sorry to hear it.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
An update from Rachel Held Evans:
posted by Jimmy on
“Walter noted it’s a sign that same-sex marriage is rapidly being integrated into sectors of American culture heretofore unrelentingly resistant.”
It should also be noted that this is due to the work of those who would not accept the status quo, but got out there and forced the issue on the societal level. These cultural changes are not the result of some spontaneous phenomena or stroke of good luck.
posted by Mike in Houston on
pssst… don’t tell Stephen that those nasty progressives actually worked to make this happen… after all, they only did it to make the uber- silent, won’t lift a finger, Republican gays look bad.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The Atlantic has an article commenting on the evolution going on within the Republican Party. For the reasons we discussed in another thread, I think that the article’s treatment of “Republican judges” is sophomoric, but the article also points to the actions of a number of Republican governors.
posted by Jorge on
(From Ms. Evans’ piece): “Let me repeat that sequence of events:
…
It’s as ridiculous as it sounds.”
Yeah, I did catch that.
“And it puts into stark, unsettling relief just how out-of-control the evangelical obsession with homosexuality has become.”
An inescapable conclusion, that is quite true.
“I’m always careful not to equate opposition to gay marriage with hate. But the singling out and scapegoating of gay and lesbian people that’s happening here is deeply troubling to me. When Christians declare that they would rather withhold aid from people who need it than serve alongside gay and lesbian people helping to provide that aid, something’s very, very wrong. It might not be hate, but it is a nefarious sort of stigmatizing, and it’s wrong.”
The rest of the piece is good, too.
Now, then.
“There’s an entire corps of people out there who make their living off of evangelicals but who are wanting to “evolve” on the sexuality issue without alienating their base.”
Hmm. That’s a dangerous enough accusation to be a kill attempt, and needs to be taken seriously even though it’s more likely enough to miss. It cuts pretty near to one of my own questions as well.
This World Vision claims it is doing this change for no other reasons than 1) To prevent the issue from tearing WorldVision apart, 2) Not in response to any outside pressures, and 3) To defer to the authority of local churches of very different theologies.
So it’s in response to internal pressures. The problem I have with this claim is that #s 1 and 3 don’t make sense together. #1 implies preemption. But if it is trying to follow the wishes of the churches, they would not be able to act until half of the churches recognize same sex marriage, or at least tone down their opposition to it.
(Nope, I’m misinterpreting it. #3 isn’t a reason. It’s a rationale for why this isn’t a bad thing. World Vision says it will *not* follow the wishes of its contributing churches. It will say to the churches, do *your* job and preach.)
Hmm.
See, all these people who are reacting so quickly are idiots. But it would have helped if the churches could have seen it coming–like that months-long buildup to the Boy Scouts of America thing, in which 2 out of the 3 big churches were against it, but 2 out of 3 accepted it. Then again maybe not.
posted by Jorge on
You know, being that I’m just totally biased in favor of my own religion, I would be very interested to find out what the Catholic Church and its many satellites are going to do when it comes to employees in same sex marriages. Oh, I’m sure the issue has come up in other countries already.
In this country, many Catholic-affiliated organizations do not have the ability to discriminate, or am I wrong? I know Catholic schools will fire pregnant single women, which is generally illegal, but the justification thatjustifies that practice doesn’t go farther than any place that does ministry. Certainly, most if not all Catholic-affiliated non-profit organizations would either have to hire married gay couples or go to court. But they wouldn’t win in most cases, because they are already hiring non-Catholics. If there is a reason those Catholic employers will lose their lawsuit on contraception, it will come from this direction.
posted by Roxy on
The Catholic Church will fire you if you get married to a same-sex partner. In fact, they will first suggest that you could keep your job if you get an immediate divorce. It has already happened to a Vice Principle of a Catholic school in Seattle.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ousted-gay-vice-principal-fighting-back-catholic-school-fired-article-1.1715326
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I suspect that Stephen and I were both wrong about the reaction of “progressive secularists” to World Vision’s change in policy.
Stephen’s predicted “scuff and demean” reaction has not materialized, nor has my predicted positive reaction.
It looks more likely that there will be no public reaction at all, that “progressive secularists” will be content to let the debate be confined to the Christian circles that World Vision serves, primarily conservative Protestant denominations.
Within Christian circles, I think that I’m seeing the same thing that Rachel Held Evans is seeing — despite the blast and thunder coming from conservative Christian “leaders”, a significant number of pew Christians seem to be supporting the change. I’m basing that tentative conclusion on a few Facebook pages, like AskDrBrown, in which the topic is being discussed. The discussion is interesting.
I wonder if we are beginning to see movement in conservative Christian denominations toward a situation similar to the one in the Catholic Church, in which denominational leadership blasts and damns any movement toward civil law equality, but the rank and file quietly demurs.
If so, perhaps we can look forward to the day when young conservative Christians begin to fight to diminish the influence and power of the troglodytes within the conservative Christian denominations, as at least some young Republicans are starting to do within party circles.
posted by Jim Michaud on
My concern Tom is that in both GOP and Christian circles, the hardliners feel themselves under siege. Hopefully, they won’t lash out and demand crackdowns and purges. It is heartening to see positive changes in these milieus, but I’m afraid the whackos won’t take all this lying down.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
My concern Tom is that in both GOP and Christian circles, the hardliners feel themselves under siege. Hopefully, they won’t lash out and demand crackdowns and purges.
I think that it is inevitable that the hard core will lash out and demand crackdowns and purges.
The lashing out has already been intense, and growing rumblings for crackdowns and purges have been evident (think about the calls for Republicans to refuse to endorse gay and lesbian candidates, the demands that the Republican Party continue to be the party of anti-equality or face desertion by social conservatives, the conservative Christian intent to destroy World Vision, and even the threatened boycott of Chick-fil-A) if not yet effective.
I think that the Republican Party will change as a result of a gradual coming to grips with reality over the next two or three election cycles.
When marriage equality has become a fact on the ground, I think that we will move into a massive resistance period of about a decade, and then equality will no longer be an issue for the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans. The Republican change will come post facto, to be sure, but it will come.
But I also know that change by convulsion is a strong possibility, that social conservatives will force the Republican Party to tear itself apart as part of the process of accepting reality. I suspect that the conservative Christian mindset, so attuned to visions of apocalypse and end times, seeing itself as God’s warriors in the final battle, will push the issue as far as it can, creating a stumbling block for gradualism within the party.
We are just going to have to see what happens, and do what we can to support change.
posted by Jimmy on
“I think that the Republican Party will change as a result of a gradual coming to grips with reality over the next two or three election cycles.”
I dunno. They’re still mystified by supply-side economics, and certain that regressive taxation promotes general prosperity.
posted by Don on
You’re being too generous, Jimmy. Griswold was a huge mistake in the 1960s that they think should be repealed; The New Deal of the 1930s destroyed America, especially with creation of social security; the 16th Amendment (1913) creating income tax; and liberalizing divorce laws that destroyed the family. If you want to go with enhanced interrogation techniques, and the suspension of habeas corpus (1305) with Guantanamo detainees, you’ll have to go back pre-Magna Carta (1215).
I don’t think there will ever be a time in our past, no matter how dark and backward, where at least some sliver of far-right conservatives won’t wish we could return to. I sure woulda thought the Magna Carta was unassailable. But I was wrong. Apparently kings can still grab you off the street and put you in jail without charges indefinitely.
I long for the days when the ideas we should return to were good ones.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I would be very interested to find out what the Catholic Church and its many satellites are going to do when it comes to employees in same sex marriages.
World Vision fought and won an important 9th Circuit decision in 2010, a decision that was appealed to the Supreme Court, but not taken up by the Court.
In the decision, which speaks to the questions Jorge raises, three employees of the organization, all self-professed Christians, were fired because they did not believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and a member of the Trinity. At the time, Steve McFarland, chief legal officer for World Vision, summed it up by saying: “The employees were discharged because they no longer met an essential job prerequisite: that they genuinely affirm their belief in a statement of orthodox Christian faith as understood by the World Vision board.”
The parties did not dispute that World Vision required that potential employees sign a “statement of faith” (essentially, the Apostles’ Creed, as I understand it) and that the organization considered continued adherence to that statement of faith an essential job requirement. Nor did the parties dispute that World Vision held itself out as a Christian organization, an organization dedicated to spreading the Gospel. The dispute, essentially, was whether World Vision was essentially a religious, or essentially a humanitarian, organization.
The 9th Circuit Court ruled that an organization is religious if it has a self-identified religious purpose, acts consistently with those purposes, and promotes itself publicly as religious. But the court did not rule on whether World Vision’s humanitarian work is religious: “Making that determination runs counter to the core of the constitutional guarantee against religious establishment.”
New Vision’s recent change in policy suggests that the organization does not consider opposition to homosexuality an essential tenet of Christian faith rising to the level of the Apostles’ Creed. I suspect that is what has conservative Christian leadership so upset and angry.
posted by Don on
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. they cannot fathom any other interpretation other than their own. Anything else has to be “the prince of lies.”
But this is what fundamentalism does in all religions. Purity tests get harder and harder to pass. And the hard-liners insist even harder that everyone get on board or face dire consequences from God. And then even more people disembark their movement.
posted by Lori Heine on
Fundamentalists tend to be self-worshiping frauds. Many are actually gods unto themselves, hijacking Jesus as a figurehead.
If they actually read the Bible they keep babbling about, they’d learn that fundamentalism of this sort — rigid legalism, obsessed with the power and control of leadership — was actually what crucified Christ.
For centuries, Jews were unjustly and barbarically blamed for that crime, but it was fundamentalism and legalism that were really to blame for it. Just as the fundamentalists and legalists tried to shift the blame by scapegoating Jews.
Now they’re trying to do pretty much the same thing to gays. We know how dangerous these people are. We know they’ll target anybody they think they can get away with trying to destroy. Anybody at World Vision with an ounce of common sense will also come to see this, now that they’re getting the treatment.
The rank and file in conservative Protestant churches are indeed coming around, just as lay Catholics are coming around. This is happening not only despite what their leadership says, but in many ways because the leaders are making such utter fools of themselves — and so blatantly showing their true colors.
posted by Doug on
“Fundamentalists tend to be self-worshiping frauds. Many are actually gods unto themselves, hijacking Jesus as a figurehead.”
This is precisely why they want an exemption to discriminate only against LGBT folks but not other ‘sinners’.
posted by Jorge on
World Vision fought and won an important 9th Circuit decision in 2010, a decision that was appealed to the Supreme Court, but not taken up by the Court.
Well, there’s the 2012 Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in which the Supreme Court took an easier question and recognized a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination law (in this case the ADA). The issue was a terminated teacher in a religious school who had been employed as an “ordained” teacher. The Court reasoned that religious organizaitons have the authority to determine who its members and leaders are.
My thing is, not everyone employed by every religion is going to be a “minister”. Are they?
I found your link to the Dr. Whomsoever discussion more depressing than encouraging. An adult discussion, sure, more about personal decisions than activism, okay, but radicals! Fake-Christian savages!
posted by Kosh III on
“Republican Party to tear itself apart”
Bring it on!
Perhaps then the adults in the room can form a rational party. I never thought I’d miss Republicans like Dirksen, Kassenbaum, Chafee, Javits or Margaret Chase Smith.
As it currently exists, it’s little more than Dixiecrats under a new name.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Anyone who doesn’t miss Everett Dirksen never heard him speak. He had more harmonics in his voice than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
posted by Mark on
Are the “progressive secularists” permitted to criticize the organization’s craven reversal?
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/world_vision_reportedly_reverses_decision
posted by Tom Scharbach on
You’re shitting me. No, I guess you’re not:
I think we should give World Vision credit for trying to do the right thing, even if it ended badly.
Frankly, I think that the organization made the right decision in rescinding. When the Southern Baptists pulled out, the organization probably had no way to remain viable unless it did. The work it does is important, and I can’t see the point in letting kids starve just because conservative Christians place a higher value on denying the reality of gay, married, committed Christians than on feeding children.
It is sad all around.
posted by Doug on
“. . . it’s a sign that same-sex marriage is rapidly being integrated into sectors of American culture. . . ”
Kind of blows that argument all to hell doesn’t it. Damn those progressives they screwed things up for conservatives again isn’t that right Stephen.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
“… it’s a sign that same-sex marriage is rapidly being integrated into sectors of American culture …”
As my husband pointed out over dinner, the tide is coming in, don’t sweat the ripples. I agree with him, but this situation is very, very sad.
The sad thing about the New Vision fiasco is that it signals that conservative Christian leadership will not accept the path to equality that Jon Rauch and others posited early in the attempt to dialog with social conservatives — hold everyone to identical standards of morality/fidelity.
The New Vision policy did just that. Gays/lesbians and straights were all expected to be celibate if single, and faithful if married. It was a high standard, but it is consistent with Christian teaching, and it was fair. The policy held marriage out as the gold standard.
The conservative Christian leadership that is now crowing over their “victory” couldn’t handle the application of Christian morality to gays and lesbians, forced New Vision into a choice between retraction or destruction, and lost a great opportunity to hold up marriage as required for couples living together in a sexual relationship, and enhance Christian standards of morality/fidelity.
It was no victory. It was a defeat, in the long run. Not only is the value of marriage demeaned, but conservative Christian leadership could not have sent a clearer message that gays and lesbians are not welcome in the Christian religion. As that message sinks in, more and more young Christians, gay and straight alike, will become convinced that there is no place for them in Christianity.
The fact is that young Christians, even of a literalist bent, are more accepting of equality than their elders — equality in civil law and equality in the moral demands made upon them by their religion. Stephen is not wrong about the “inroads”.
But this move alienates young Christians from the churches and denominations that rolled New Vision, and will set back the process.
posted by Lori Heine on
Your prognosis is unfortunate, but I’m afraid you’re right.
Conservative Christians like to criticize liberal Christians for not “evangelizing” enough. Meaning that we don’t spend our time telling everybody who thinks differently than we do that they’re going to Hell or that God loves us better.
But because of the ungodly mess conservative Christians spend so much of their time making, our evangelism mainly consists of following in their trail with a pooper-scooper and a dydee-wipe.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
As an outsider to your faith, Lori, all I can do is commend your efforts, and the efforts of other Christians who do not share the views of conservative Christians, to remain true to the Gospel as you understand it.
Perhaps that is the evangelizing that needs to be done at this point in Christian history. I think so, anyway.
As Rachel Held Evans put it in her update: “I confess I had not realized the true extent of the disdain evangelicals have for our LGBT people …
The “disdain” (a mild way to describe outright, unreasoned hostility) communicates itself to the kids being raised in fundamentalist churches, and does great harm to them, psychologically and in terms of faith.
Living in a rural area where so-called “Bible churches” are plentiful, working with young men from that tradition who have become addicted to alcohol and other drugs, I see the wreckage visited by fundamentalist Christians upon their own children, day by day.
I saw it when I lived in Chicago, before coming back home to retire a decade ago, working with the young men who were kicked out of their fundamentalist Christian homes and ended up in Chicago as teenagers.
I saw it right before my eyes a few weeks ago, when my fundamentalist Christian neighbor said, in front of his teenage son (who is straight, as far as I know) that families needed to “cut out” children who posed a danger to Christian values for the good of the family.
I am an outsider, but I encourage you to dust off and keep fighting.
I am very much a believer in “God as you understand God” — that is, to each his own when it comes to religious values — so I try to meet my fundamentalist neighbors and friends on the ground they choose to inhabit when I talk with them.
But there are limits. The negative obsession with homosexuality in the modern fundamentalist tradition is toxic. When I hear toxic talk, I share my experience with the people talking toxic. But that only goes so far, because I am an outsider.
If the message is to change, Christians who do not share the fundamentalist worldview will have to work hard to change the message, or at least offer the counter-message loudly and clearly enough so that kids trapped in the fundamentalist matrix can see that God does not hold them in disdain.
I know you well enough from this list, and from reading your blog from time to time, to know that you do what you can. I hope that you know that you are doing G-d’s work.
posted by Jorge on
“and we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners.”
Yeah, I was worried about that.
My, my, this is the first time I’ve successfully called a kill attempt. Win-by-defaults are by definition difficult to pull off. But they’re usually worth swinging for.
I think we should give World Vision credit for trying to do the right thing, even if it ended badly.
Frankly, I think that the organization made the right decision in rescinding. When the Southern Baptists pulled out, the organization probably had no way to remain viable unless it did.
Ehhhh. Let me take your second point first.
As I alluded to earlier, the Southern Baptist Convention’s constituent churches stated an intent to pull out of sponsoring the Boy Scouts (I believe they left the decision to individual churches). Boy Scouts of American knew of this future intent in advance of the decision to permit gay youth to enter scouting. It was well discussed with the Southern Baptists as well as the Mormon and Catholic religions both privately and publicly in advance of the key vote. That obviously didn’t happen here. If it had, and they truly couldn’t afford to lose the Southern Baptists, then by your standards the World Vision Board would have never voted the way they did in the first place.
As to doing the right thing. There were several comments on the Dr. Somebody discussion that World Vision has long been a “liberal” organization and has now fallen to its true colors. I also expressed concerns about the quote you cited from Russell Moore. If World Vision wanted to express a liberal or progressive view, or “do the right thing”, on its own authority, then it should have been upfront about that. Instead, World Vision alleged that it made its decision so as not to divide its constituent churches; and not in response to external pressures, which I believe most likely translates to, it was in response to internal pressures. World Vision failed on both fronts.
It also claimed the decision was intended to delegate a decision on theology to its individual constituent churches. The churches resisted this, and I can well see why. Even the Catholic Church says about gay marriage, that in places where it is legal, “clear and consistent opposition is a duty”. If BSA had permitted same-sex married people as scout leaders, I think even the Catholic Church would be very hard pressed to remain as sponsors.
So Tom I do not think it is sensible to give World Vision credit for “trying to do the right thing.” That credit belongs to the losers: those constituent churches that either seek to respect the emerging constitutional and moral consensus on same-sex marriage in civil law, or that themselves recognize same sex marriage theologically.
posted by Jim Michaud on
Some commenter at Towleroad alluded to this: this could have been just a set-up to have soc cons being seen as still having power and giving them a “victory” after a string of courtroom defeats. I don’t know about this theory, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I wouldn’t put anything past the anti-marriage crowd since NOM’s “set the gays/lesbians and the African-Americans off against each other” strategy was uncovered, but this theory sounds as paranoid as Stephen’s “LGBT groups controlled by the White House” theory.