For those of you who think my ideas about religion and government are a product of the 70s, I have the following passage from Soren Kierkegaard's Attack Upon 'Christendom', written in the 1850s:
"But when Christianity is served by human fear, by mediocrity, by temporal interests--yes, then it makes a rather different appearance, then it really may seem as if Christianity (which with that sort of service had gradually become spavined, knock-kneed, and lame in the shoulder, a pitiful 'critter') might be exceedingly glad to be protected by the State and thus brought to honor."
To reiterate what I said before, I'm not actively in favor of gay marriage. I think it's a sad state of affairs when people start asking for it. But I'm also not in favor of taking measures like adding an amendment to the Constitution to prevent it. I don't think that its legalization in any way changes or hurts the Christian sacrament of marriage. If the law could alter truth and real faith, Christianity wouldn't have lasted 20 minutes. Christ was crucified as a criminal, after all. It says a lot about the way Christians look our own faith and beliefs that we are dead set upon using a constitutional amendment of dubious legality to prop up Christian doctrine.
Posted by waltondammerung at May 29, 2004 6:54 PMSorry to be contentious, but the Kierkegaard quote begs the question entirely. Without question, no one in the cultural debates is asking for a state sponsored church, about which Kierkegaard wrote. Few, if any, and certainly none that I am aware of, are interested in defending marriage because they don't think the church can withstand persecution.
However, as I noted in my post to your April 21 post, "In the USA, we are in the historically unique position of being able to change our laws for the good, to reflect, as much as possible, God’s design for the home, for the protection of innocent, vulnerable future generations." Like Esther, we may have been born in such a time so that we might exercise those rights on behalf of others.
Were free speech, or free exercise of religion the obvious targets of this debate, I am confident that you would be on the forefront of the charge to stop the erosion of our rights. Whether we like it or not, in fact this battle is also about the erosion of those rights. We have only to look across our northern border into Canada to find clear evidence that those rights (as in, the right to call homosexual behavior a sin) will be under attack as soon as homosexual marriage becomes legal.
As I noted before, we must be salt and light. Certainly the Spirit can empower us to be both in any culture, as Christian history demonstrates. Having said that, I would encourage your readers to reflect on the propagation of the gospel around the world that has taken place precisely because our culture of freedom has allowed great missionary movements to flourish. When our religious freedom is lost, as it inevitably will be in the culture to come, we are closing the door for millions who have not yet heard. We must work quickly and whole-heartedly while the door remains open. And, I contend, we must struggle to keep the door open while we can.
Posted by: Mom at June 1, 2004 8:33 AM