Kim Davis

[GregConstantine]

I'm bothered by the rush to come to this person's defense, even to the point of making her out to be some sort of martyr for the faith. What is even more bothersome is that there are Orthodox people doing this, and plastering it all over FB.

Here are two main reasons why this is bothering me:

1) Kim Davis, not to judge her standing before God, is not an Orthodox Christian. Declaring someone a martyr for the faith or for Christ is only reserved for Orthodox Christians. For those who are not, but take some kind of a stand or is killed for whatever faith they have, we reserve judgment of both kinds, refraining from saying they are or they are not a martyr.

2) This woman was under no duress to do what she did. She was not forced to be in her position of county clerk, she was not forced under some kind of duress to give out marriage certificates. No one threaten her with bodily or financial harm if she didn't do her job. This is absolutely not like the early days of the Church, when we were persecuted. We were forced to bow down to idols and burn incense to Ceasar. Kim Davis was not. How dare people say Kim Davis' situation and the martyrs of the early Church is the same! Shame on them!

This woman should have resigned from her position.

 

[rusmeister]

1.We admit that they are not Orthodox martyrs or confessors. You seem to be defining "martyr" as "only Orthodox".
But she is certainly confessing Christ. There are non-Orthodox martyrs and confessors for Christ. Sure, we don't formally recognize them. But only an arrogant person would deny that they are sacrificing something for their faith in the Christian God.

2. She was elected by her people to a certain position to do a certain job, and only those people have a right to remove her. If they choose to do so, that is their choice. They have not done so, to the best of my knowledge. No one, as far as I know, claims she was forced, in general, to give out marriage certificates. The forcing is specifically in regard to something none of us may recognize. Looks like you're beating on a straw man there. Sometimes we mix up straw men with reductio ad absurdam. Frankly, a situation of being ordered to commit a moral act or be punished looks like persecution to me.

Nobody is saying she's Orthodox, nobody is saying she is being tortured or murdered. Let's set aside those ideas right away. I'd say she is a heterodox confessor of Christ and God's law. Give credit where credit is due. Do you think "resigning" (and "voluntarily" (how is that not duress?) losing your job) is not punishment? You try being fired sometime and see what it feels like. Do you think paying fines is not punishment? She wants to do her job in peace, in accordance with moral law, and is being punished for it. Whether she loses her job and pays fines, or goes to prison, it's still suffering in the name of the Christian God. It is right to refuse to acknowledge immoral law, and wrong to insist on upholding such law, and it's a damned shame, in the most direct theological sense of the word, that I should have to say that here.

 

[GregConstantine]

You really are something else Rusmeister. You don't even know me and you hurl judgmental assumptions at me. How do you know if I've been fired from a job or not? Well, how do you know? Please directly answer that question.

Your conservative meanness really shows in your response.

We're citizens of the Kingdom of God, not of any political persuasions, ideologies, or parties.

 

[rusmeister]

Well, I am sorry. I guess my tone was kind of harsh. I'm feeling sad at the moment. A close relative who had beaten back cancer has it back, my wife is angry with me, I can't seem to ever finish the translation of my life.

I was fired. Once. It was ridiculous, being overheard joking about the minimum wage at a two-day temp job. The temp agency fired me when the client complained to them. I was a desperate student with a wife and kid and no income. There's a mildly amusing story how I went back the next day to the place to confront the employer, I was wearing my Navy raincoat, which looks like a trenchcoat, I had a beard, and the client probably thought I had a shotgun under my coat. She told people to call security in a panicky voice, but nobody moved, because I wasn't being aggressive. I just quietly said, in front of everyone, the result of her complaint and my situation, and walked out. But that was a very dark time in my life.

Anyway, I'm just saying that we don't have to be Orthodox to suffer for Christ, or for Christian beliefs.

 

[GregConstantine]

I am not saying it is not possible. But to put her on the same level as the martyrs is taking it too far. The martyrs literally had no choice, and the martyrs currently being slaughtered by ISIS literally have no choice. Kim Davis on the other hand, does. She chose to be a clerk, and she can chose to not be one anymore. No one is forcing her to be in that position.

Please tell me why this distinction is lost on so many people? I have to think that it is their political ideology that is clouding their minds to see this distinction clearly.

Putting her in the same category as the true martyrs of the past and present is quite frankly, insulting to their memory and to those currently being slaughtered.

And now we have a serious refugee problem, that anyone with a half a brain could figure out was going to happen due to our lackluster response to ISIS. And Kim Davis is what everyone is getting upset about.

What a shame...

 

[Antony in Tx]

I would side with Rus, that while we might not venerate this woman as an Orthodox Saint, she is indeed suffering persecution for her standing fast in a confession of Christ. Was the thief at Golgotha not worthy of our remembrance since he was not "Orthodox". Christ told him "you will be with me in Heaven". Though never officially canonized a saint by the Church, he is generally regarded as a saint because of Christ's proclomation. Our designation of sainthood is our best guess at what only God knows. How God will treat this woman's suffering in His name is not ours to know.

 

[GregConstantine]

what part of "not being forced" do you not understand?

You're going to compare her to someone crucified?

 

[rusmeister]

I feel like you haven't understood me. Being offered the choice of losing your job is NOT martyrdom; I hope I've said that plainly enough. But to imply that it is not persecution, as you really seem to be doing, is equally unreasonable.

I'm sure you are aware of other statuses defined in the Church for Orthodox Christians (my knowledge of the Russian terms is better than that of English terms, due to where I live) than martyrs. Confessors, passion-bearers, etc, I spoke of the concept of being a heterodox confessor; if a person chose to accept death specifically because of a belief in Allah or Nirvana, they would rightly be called martyrs or confessors for their own faith, surely all the more one who accepts suffering and punishment rather than approve godlessness n the name of Christ? It's not martyrdom, but it's not nothing, and she had no alternatives that were not punishment.

 

[rusmeister]

I would side with Rus, that while we might not venerate this woman as an Orthodox Saint, she is indeed suffering persecution for her standing fast in a confession of Christ. Was the thief at Golgotha not worthy of our remembrance since he was not "Orthodox". Christ told him "you will be with me in Heaven". Though never officially canonized a saint by the Church, he is generally regarded as a saint because of Christ's proclomation. Our designation of sainthood is our best guess at what only God knows. How God will treat this woman's suffering in His name is not ours to know.

I dunno, we have an icon of the Good Thief, big and large, on the left door of the iconostasis of my church...

 

[GregConstantine]

no Rumeister I did not misunderstand you. I disagree with you. Just because someone disagrees with you, it does not mean they misunderstood you. You do that all the time. Please stop.

I said others are making that claim, not me, not you. This is proof that my assessment that people are not reading post here carefully is accurate.

I'm happy to have a discussion but we must respect each other, take each other at face value, and actually read what is being posted. Otherwise, this is a waste of time.

 

[rusmeister]

So you seriously think that a Catholic, or Protestant, or other who suffers in the name of Jesus Christ is NOT a (non-Orthodox) confessor of Christ? How in the heck can you even disagree with me?
That's what I am honestly reading from you, with all respect.

 

[GregConstantine]

It is obvious you are not reading what I am writing, so I'm done discussing Kim Davis with you. I'm happy to discuss it with anyone else.

 

[dzheremi]

I don't really want to get involved in the argument that Rus and Greg are having here, I just want to say that "refusing to do her job when it involves marrying gay people since gay marriage is legally a thing now" is a mighty low standard for declaring someone a martyr in any sense. Not in a world where Palestinian Christians are brutalized by Israeli police and settlers, Egyptian Christians' churches and homes are bombed, Iraqi and Syrian Christians are murdered or kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, Nigerian Christians' churches are bombed, etc. Forgive me, but I find it really difficult to work up the sufficient level of outrage on behalf of this woman that many Christians here in America seem to take as a litmus test of other peoples' Christian faith.

I'm not saying that this lady is not a Christian or that she is not doing what she feels is right according to her belief. I am saying that wedge issue religion is an Evangelical canard and I don't want to add to that. Like all this stuff surrounding wedding cakes and such. My old parish in NM had six families (under 40 people total), and we still had homemade cakes made by the arch-grandma of the congregation for peoples' birthdays, because we needed them to be in compliance with our fasting regulations. We don't have to get swept up in America's political religion with a Christian veneer. We really don't. And personally I think it is unwise to, whether you think this woman to be courageous and preaching Christ or not (I personally think not, but that's neither here nor there).

 

[GregConstantine]

thank you dzheremi!

It's not an argument, just statements being made that are not being read carefully. Therefore, no dialogue is taking place.

 

[rusmeister]

I have read your statements VERY carefully, Greg, despite your claims to the contrary.

I agree that calling her a martyr is hyperbole; implying that she is an Orthodox martyr is false and not sane. But saying that she is not taking a stand for faith in Jesus Christ, or that she has an alternative to suffering for it, is equally unreasonable.

 

[GregConstantine]

what does wedge issue religion mean?

 

[GregConstantine]

"But saying that she is not taking a stand for faith in Jesus Christ" No one is saying this.

"she has an alternative to suffering for it, is equally unreasonable." That is debatable. Please read what dzheremi said.

 

[gzt]

What she specifically could have done is recused herself from the issue of signing the certificates and allowed the deputies to sign them if they wished. Instead, she put a stop to the whole thing.

 

[dzheremi]

what does wedge issue religion mean?

What I meant by that is that many people in America seem to define their Christianity according to the same limited number of political 'wedge issues' by which people who are not even religious likewise define their politics. That's why the two are so often conflated, when really they don't have to be and shouldn't be. Nobody's Christianity should be in question for refusing to immediately come to the support of this woman, and since it is primarily Evangelical Christians who abhor most of what Orthodoxy stands for who set the tone for what is considered the proper 'Christian' political stance on everything in America, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot to blindly follow their marching orders, instead of properly setting ourselves apart by expanding upon the kernel of truth that this lady is clinging to to make it seem like her response is the Christian way bar none to handle the new political reality of gay marriage in this country (yes, gay marriage is not legitimate to traditional Christians, but why? What makes us different than this woman and the hoards of Evangelicals ready to donate to her cause, or that Indiana pizza shop's cause, or whatever next week's cause celebre will be?).

I have tried to explain this before to non-religious friends of mine by pointing out that in Egypt, those pushing for a more open and secular society include the Christian minority, because the Christians in Egypt know well enough how much it sucks to live under someone else's interpretation of religion and law following from it (Islamic Shari'a). The sad thing is that America's left-right dichotomy is so thoroughly mapped onto a "Christian = Republican = gay hating; anything non-Christian = Democrat = progressive" matrix in the minds of most people my age (mid-30s) that they act like I'm making it up, or somehow downplaying what must really be a nefarious influence on the part of Christians to further subjugate people, because that's how they see Christianity functioning in American society (and I guess Americans are notoriously bad at understanding that some places really just don't function like America does).

Guess which view people like this Kim Davis woman and her supporters help strengthen in the minds of people today?

 

[GregConstantine]

Yes! you and I are in the same age bracket and I cannot for the life of me get people to understand that! Most of them are baby boomers.