It comes as no surprise that the Washington, DC-based Christian Right lobby — Family Research Council (FRC) has a difficult time respecting other people’s religious traditions. It was the FRC that declared that those who oppose President George Bush’s nominees for federal judgeships are “against people of faith” in connection with the Christian Right’s widely denounced “Justice Sunday” event in April.
Anyway, this week, in response to the United Church of Christ’s stand endorsing marriage equality in the church and in the nation, the FRC unsurprisingly took exception. What was surprising was their line of argument and thier failure to harshly denounce the decision in the way they normally denounce homosexuality in general and marriage equality in particular:
“Ironically, this historic Congregationalist denomination, whose New England churches played a role in the American Revolution, also violated their democratic traditions in the vote of their 884-member General Synod. ‘If we had put it to a vote of the people in the pews, it would have failed overwhelmingly,’ declared the Rev. Brett Becker, a spokesman for more conservative churches in the UCC.”
And what does Becker’s opinion (Becker was a sponsor of a competing, losing resolution) have to do with democracy? The United Church of Christ’s General Synod voted for this resolution by about 80%. The delegates to this body are elected. Whats more, the resolution they passed is not binding on individual congregations because the polity of the UCC respects the right to difference. Had the Synod passed Becker’s resolution would the FRC claim that the vote was a violation of the denomination’s democratic tradition? Not likely.
Let’s look a the question of democracy in Christian denominations a little further. When was the last time any of the pronouncements of Southern Baptist Convention or the Catholic Church were put to a vote of the entire membership? (How, for example, do we think that the Pope’s encyclical on birth control would fare in a plebiscite? How about the Southen Baptist Convention’s doctrine that women are to be in submission to thier husbands?) In fact, there is no Christian denomination — or any major religious grouping I can think of that puts such matters to a vote of their national membership.
The UCC, as the Family Research Council acknowledges, has a democratic polity. What they don’t mention is that the UCC has none of the doctrinal police tactics conservatives use in other denominations to enforce their views.
What stands out to me in all this is how muted the Christian Right has been in response to the UCC’s clear and strong stand in favor of marriage equality. From where I sit, I see two related reasons for the Christian Right’s overall silence on this, and for the FRC’s strained and ineffectual response.
One is that the UCC’s endorsement of marriage equality demonstrates that there are many Christians who support this, and that the UCC’s institutional weight and moral authority is more considerable than many may think. You can hear the fear in the FRC’s statement.
Indeed, the descendants of the of the Pilgrims and the Puritans have a long history not only of democracy, but of advances in social justice that were ahead of their time — such as ordaining the first African-American as a minister in 1785; and ordaining the first openly gay minister in 1972.
And as the UCC writes in its list of “firsts,” in 1853 Antoinette Brown was “the first woman since New Testament times ordained as a Christian minister, and perhaps the first woman in history elected to serve a Christian congregation as pastor. At her ordination a friend, Methodist minister Luther Lee, defends ‘a woman’s right to preach the Gospel.’ He quotes the New Testament: ‘There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'”
The other reason the Christian Right is uncharacteristically silent in the face of this historic development is that they do not want to draw any additional media attention to the UCC and UCC president Rev. John Thomas — because they want to define Christianity as representing only their point of view. Quick to denounce marriage equality and homosexuality in general, they are afraid to take on the authentic voice of the oldest Christian tradition in America, a tradition that profoundly informed the development of democracy and representative government in the United States.
This is a significant retreat by the Christian Right. Just as their claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation is bogus, they have no standing to criticize the democratic polity of the United Church of Christ. And in the wake of the overwhelming vote of the General Synod and unequivocal language of resolution, the silence of the Christian Right suggests that they understand the weakness of thier position in the face of strong, clear and credible Christian opposition.
[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com and Talk to Action.
We often hype the strengths of the Christian Right, and completely miss the weaknesses.
This episode reveals a very signficant weakness. We have much learn from this.
Well, for all the times that I have bitched that good and decent Christians don’t speak out against Christian extremism, I feel obliged to say the UCC has done a good job and deserve recognition and acknowledgment for it. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a trend.
I feel the same way! The more that the liberal church people speak out, the better.
for bringing forth, that mainstream, moderates, who are christian, can and will support a human rights issue, even if the reichwing extremists attack them. What I find most interesting is that FRC is not in attack mode and as you pointed out, maybe feeling quite fearful of a backlash from the majority of christians that do not adhere to their far reaching extremist beliefs.
I can only hope that more moderate christians will stand up the these fascist psuedo christians that tarnish the entire culture of christianity.
Antoinette Brown may have been an important milestone, but there were perhaps a thousand Quaker women who empowered by their congregations to preach and prophesize in the 18th Century Colonial Era in England and America. I recall this quite clearly from a book I reviewed about 6 years ago, “Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775”.
interesting. sounds like apples and oranges. Whether there were female quaker preachers does not alter the UCC’s point about being the first Christian denomination to elect a woman as a minister, and thereby being way ahead of the other mainline and evangelical churches.
I don’t believe that the Quakers have the role of minister, at least not in the same sense as the mainline protestant churches.
is a definite aim of some of them. It’s been some 30 years since I began encountering the self-labelled non-denomination “Christian” churches and campus organizations.
As far as I can tell, they’re really southern Baptist. It gives me every sign of a franchise operation–and by refusing to take a denominational name, there’s nothing left to call them except “Christian.”
Becker is almost certainly wrong in his “If it were put to the general congregations it would lose overwhelmingly” comment. It might lose and it might not; there are a lot of UCC churches that are “liberal” on this topic and the UCC community is split about 50:50.
One other interesting historical point is that the first marriage in the New World was specifically set up as a secular event, because the Puritans (and today’s UCC) didn’t consider marriage a sacrament.
http://www.www.pflag-nb.org/marriage/gomes.pdf
Last year, the day before the General Court sat in Constitutional Convention to debate taking the rights of same-sex couples to marry away, the Reverend Professor Gomes spoke at a rally in the Statehouse. There’s a quiet dignity and passion in his speaking; it’s quite powerful. At one point, he placed the Goodridge decision within the context of Massachusetts’ history…the Puritans, the Revolutionary Movement, the Abolitionist Movement…he started to get going and ended with, “People will say that this decision puts Massachusetts outside the mainstream. I say, ‘Thank God for that!’ Massachusetts isn’t in the mainstream, we set the mainstream.”
It’s hard to look at either the history of Massachusetts or the history of the UCC without seeing the other.
And this wasn’t just one individual. Furthermore, in Colonial America, people would often go hear preachers from other denominations. So the first experience of women preachers for many non-Quakers was also of Quaker preachers.
Thank you. Really appreciate your post (and your blog)! Had been wondering what the reaction from the Right would be and hoping for just such a response.
It’s been terribly frustrating to see the Dobsons of the world define Christianity and gain more and more power while moderate and liberal denominations remained mute. Although the moderate/left has begun to get organized, there’s been a lot of talking and “values framing” (sort of like the Democrats) and not much action. I was heartened by the response – at least on the blogosphere – to the UCC ad campaign and their deft handling of the Dobson “Sponge Bob” debacle. The passing of the Synod resolution on gay marriage seemed another step in the right direction.
Guess my bias is: If you know what your values are, don’t just talk about them and don’t be intimidated – act on them and take the lead. Seems as though the UCC is doing that.
Thanks. And I agree. The UCC is emerging as an example to everyone about the importance of standing up for what you believe, and doing so with dignity, grace, and political smarts.
The UCC has set out to grow, even as they moved in the direction of what they call thier “prophetic” stance on marriage equality, and being publicly inclusive and welcoming of all people.
The media has focused on how some conservatives are leaving or threatening to leave over all this. but what they do not report is that the UCC has added 100 new churches this year because of thier outreach efforts.
Sounds a lot like the United Church of Canada. They must be doing something right, as about 10% of Canadians self-identify as members of the United Church even though less than 250,000 people regularly attend services. (I’m in that group myself) They were one of the big supporters of the Federal same-sex marriage legislation we recently passed.
The key is that they let individual congregations throw out or add bits of doctrine without penalty. They accept that faith is one of those things that changes, and which can change between people. Most other Christian churches seem to insist on a One True Way.
I think there’s another way of looking at this: To the right-wing Christian, no “real” religion is democratic. People are sinners by nature, and God speaks only through His chosen prophets. Therefore, any church that is based on democracy is a church that’s based on sin.
Conversely, a church run hierarchically is a church that might, just might, be tapped in to the true Word of God. Having a small, elite band of leaders means there’s a chance that their leadership has the Holy Spirit in their hearts. (As we all know, there just isn’t enough Holy Spirit around to fill the souls of a single congregation, let alone all of the church’s congregations. I guess we reached Peak Holy Spirit a few thousand years ago, and the well’s been running ever drier since then.)
Now, the folks at FRC can’t come out and say this; it would irritate too many folks in too many places. But they can do the next-best thing, which is to try to undermine any democratically-reached decisions that they don’t agree with.
Still, they need to be more careful than they were here. They’re coming dangerously close to suggesting that if it ain’t direct democracy, it ain’t right. That might raise a few hacles on Capitol Hill.