Kim Davis

I agree with gzt, she said she did not want a gay marriage issue to have her name on it. so she easily could have stepped aside.

What I'm reading here, Dzheremi, is an assumption that a stand against supporting immorality in the public square is necessarily representative of a political, or Protestant movement, as well as one that a "secular" society - one that insists that religious beliefs should be private and not expressed in public day-to-day life - is best, because of plurality of beliefs.

I reject both of those ideas.

ArmyMatt said:

I agree with gzt, she said she did not want a gay marriage issue to have her name on it. so she easily could have stepped aside.

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Matt, "Step aside" means "be fired", however one tries to prettify it.

rusmeister said:

Matt, "Step aside" means "be fired", however one tries to prettify it.

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as one who got a marriage license in NY, if she did not want to sign the license, there would have been someone else there who would. she could have gotten someone else to do it is my point. so she might NOT have been fired and still stood for the Truth.

In this context, we were saying "step aside" to mean "recuse herself and let deputies do it" - and deputies do exist, they are the ones signing the licenses right now. Previously, she was not allowing that to happen.

ArmyMatt said:

as one who got a marriage license in NY, if she did not want to sign the license, there would have been someone else there who would. she could have gotten someone else to do it is my point. so she might NOT have been fired and still stood for the Truth.

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Good grief, Matt, if I get someone else to do an evil for me, it's NOT "standing for the Truth".

If I "recuse myself" from performing an abortion, and stand by ( when I am the chief officer present) am I "standing for the Truth"?

I can't believe I have to say this here.

rusmeister said:

What I'm reading here, Dzheremi, is an assumption that a stand against supporting immorality in the public square is necessarily representative of a political, or Protestant movement, as well as one that a "secular" society - one that insists that religious beliefs should be private and not expressed in public day-to-day life - is best, because of plurality of beliefs.

I reject both of those ideas.

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What you're reading is wrong. What I'm saying is that people who have actually been persecuted for being Christians know better than to die on someone else's hill, as though getting fired for not doing your job and being martyred are comparable. Again, this woman is not wrong to object to gay marriage on Christian grounds; the way she is doing it, however, feeds into the Evangelical victim mentality that is actually hurting Christians around the world. That was my point in bringing up how different things are in Egypt and young people my age not being willing to believe it or care precisely because Christianity as they know it is negative, hateful, politically regressive, etc. And why is it that way? Because of people like Kim Davis and the whole lot who make Christianity into a set of political positions on hot-button issues. No Presbyter or Abouna in either of our churches is making the news for preaching traditional Christian morality because it's kind of hard to make that into a fight against the big, bad Obama anti-Christ and his army of Executive Homos or whatever. And if you don't think that that's relevent, then obviously you have not checked in on the Roman Catholic politics board of this very website lately. For some people in America, religion is politics by another name, whereas in other countries, Christians have either never been politically enfranchised (as in India, where the Syriac Christians have never been anything close to a decisive voting bloc), or have been under the thumb of foreign, non-secular government (as in the Middle East's Arab/Persian Islamic governments) for so long that this idea that their faith ought to be tied to or reflected by the government seems like a recipe for disaster given the demographics of their countries (and the fact that even when they're only 8-10% of a given country, they're still the subject of conspiracy and rumor that gets people killed and churches, monasteries and even individual homes destroyed). So I guess I could say that I also don't believe that secular government is the answer to all our problems, but I do have more than enough examples where religion-based government didn't make anything easier. And, no, it has nothing to do with the plurality of beliefs. If I had my way, you'd all be praying the agpeya 7 times a day and commemorating our holy patriarchs St. Severus and St. Dioscoros in your diptychs. I'm not about to refuse to do my job over the fact that reality is otherwise, though.

And yes, it is a Protestant movement. Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon of the Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago has taken the exact same step as this woman has (refusing to sign marriage licenses for his state due to IL recognizing gay marriage), but I have not heard nary a peep from our Evangelical friends in support of him, since he ties his rejection to the idea of the sacramentality of the marriage itself, and the vast majority of Evangelical Protestants think that is Roman Catholic anti-Biblical hooey. And I'm talking about after I've pointed it out to them, too. "Yes, gay marriage is un-biblical, he's right, but you don't need all this other stuff to tell you that. Just read the Bible." You know how easy it is to ignore "just read the Bible" when it comes to light that this Kim Davis person has been married 4 times already? It makes us all look like hypocrites, even when my own church doesn't do divorces or second marriages. Good luck explaining these kinds of differences to people while also appearing to defend her.

So let's not muddy the waters for the sake appearing to be anti-secular society. Islam is also against the idea of secular society; that doesn't make Islam worth supporting. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

GregConstantine said:

are you for real Rusmeister?

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Are you, Greg?
I got pretty real, telling you where I'm at. What do you need to get that I am not kidding?

dzheremi said:

What you're reading is wrong. What I'm saying is that people who have actually been persecuted for being Christians know better than to die on someone else's hill, as though getting fired for not doing your job and being martyred are comparable. Again, this woman is not wrong to object to gay marriage on Christian grounds; the way she is doing it, however, feeds into the Evangelical victim mentality that is actually hurting Christians around the world. That was my point in bringing up how different things are in Egypt and young people my age not being willing to believe it or care precisely because Christianity as they know it is negative, hateful, politically regressive, etc. And why is it that way? Because of people like Kim Davis and the whole lot who make Christianity into a set of political positions on hot-button issues. No Presbyter or Abouna in either of our churches is making the news for preaching traditional Christian morality because it's kind of hard to make that into a fight against the big, bad Obama anti-Christ and his army of Executive Homos or whatever. And if you don't think that that's relevent, then obviously you have not checked in on the Roman Catholic politics board of this very website lately. For some people in America, religion is politics by another name, whereas in other countries, Christians have either never been politically enfranchised (as in India, where the Syriac Christians have never been anything close to a decisive voting bloc), or have been under the thumb of foreign, non-secular government (as in the Middle East's Arab/Persian Islamic governments) for so long that this idea that their faith ought to be tied to or reflected by the government seems like a recipe for disaster given the demographics of their countries (and the fact that even when they're only 8-10% of a given country, they're still the subject of conspiracy and rumor that gets people killed and churches, monasteries and even individual homes destroyed). So I guess I could say that I also don't believe that secular government is the answer to all our problems, but I do have more than enough examples where religion-based government didn't make anything easier. And, no, it has nothing to do with the plurality of beliefs. If I had my way, you'd all be praying the agpeya 7 times a day and commemorating our holy patriarchs St. Severus and St. Dioscoros in your diptychs. I'm not about to refuse to do my job over the fact that reality is otherwise, though.

And yes, it is a Protestant movement. Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon of the Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago has taken the exact same step as this woman has (refusing to sign marriage licenses for his state due to IL recognizing gay marriage), but I have not heard nary a peep from our Evangelical friends in support of him, since he ties his rejection to the idea of the sacramentality of the marriage itself, and the vast majority of Evangelical Protestants think that is Roman Catholic anti-Biblical hooey. And I'm talking about after I've pointed it out to them, too. "Yes, gay marriage is un-biblical, he's right, but you don't need all this other stuff to tell you that. Just read the Bible." You know how easy it is to ignore "just read the Bible" when it comes to light that this Kim Davis person has been married 4 times already? It makes us all look like hypocrites, even when my own church doesn't do divorces or second marriages. Good luck explaining these kinds of differences to people while also appearing to defend her.

So let's not muddy the waters for the sake appearing to be anti-secular society. Islam is also against the idea of secular society; that doesn't make Islam worth supporting. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

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Now hear this: getting fired and getting killed are NOT the same thing!!! I KNOW this! Stop saying that I am saying they are the same! I am not saying that!

This woman is getting jailed on her own hill, though. Good grief, it's not about "making Christianity into a political position on a hot-button issue". It's about having someone walk into your life and demand your validation of their immorality. It's not about politics at all, except insofar as your own life is "politics". You are the one casting the whole thing as political. I was an American public school teacher and I can tell you for a fact that tomorrow, or the next day, a teacher somewhere will be required to make the same choice. There's nothing "Protestant" about it. They are equally after any serious
Protestants, Catholics or Orthodox trying to hold on to the traditions they have been given. You would have us wait until people ARE being killed, until it is too late to cry out.

“The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.”

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Just agree to disagree. Is all this tension really helping anything?

Actually, the abortion situation does happen. There are too many precise details to go over for me to accurately recount them, as I am not a law talking guy, but in some situations in some jurisdictions a minor desiring an abortion requires a judicial order to obtain it. A Catholic or some other types of Christian judges cannot in good conscience do so, so in situations where they would be in line to hear the case, what do they do? Do they hear the case and refuse to let it happen? No, they recuse themselves from the case and have another judge hear it.

.

rusmeister said:

Now hear this: getting fired and getting killed are NOT the same thing!!! I KNOW this! Stop saying that I am saying they are the same! I am not saying that!

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Where did I say that you said that? Why are you yelling over something I didn't say? Nothing in my post had anything to do with you other than correcting your false understanding of what I had written. I did not address your personal beliefs, but rather those of the largely Evangelical supporters of this woman.

This woman is getting jailed on her own hill, though. Good grief, it's not about "making Christianity into a political position on a hot-button issue".

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Not about that to you, sure, but I don't think that's good enough.

It's about having someone walk into your life and demand your validation of their immorality.

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Into her life? You mean her job, right? I would think that if couples were showing up at her home demanding that she somehow bless their relationships, she would be more than within her rights to tell them no. But her government job is...well, a government job. And the government already sanctioned their immorality by making gay marriage legal in the first place. They're just using her hand to stamp the ticket, so to speak.

It's not about politics at all, except insofar as your own life is "politics". You are the one casting the whole thing as political.

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Uh huh. That must be why gay marriage was won in the courts.

I was an American public school teacher and I can tell you for a fact that tomorrow, or the next day, a teacher somewhere will be required to make the same choice. There's nothing "Protestant" about it. They are equally after any serious Protestants, Catholics or Orthodox trying to hold on to the traditions they have been given.

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I agree. It is already against some portion of the California law code (can't remember which off the top of my head) to not vindicate homosexuality in public schools.

You would have us wait until people ARE being killed, until it is too late to cry out.

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No I wouldn't. I would say that the Evangelicals who have represented America's peculiar brand of political Christianity since at least the days of the "Moral Majority" back in the 1980s (you know, those who follow/ed Falwell, Robertson, Dr. James Dobson, and the like) have so completely poisoned American Christianity with their "hate all the same things and people we hate or else you're not Christian" mentality that they or their descendants should not be shocked in the slightest to find the number of Christians in this country shrinking in recent years, since thanks to their persistent association of their political views with Christianity, Christianity itself is viewed as part and parcel of certain political philosophies. You can still cry out against injustice without having to bolster the very same forces that are turning your religion into a joke in the eyes of the majority of people in America under 70 (thanks to Greg pointing out that this attitude is prominent among Baby Boomers, too).

I am rather surprised to read your assertion that I would have us wait until people are being killed, as though I'm not thinking of the future of the Church. The reality is that in an American context, what we are seeing is massive numbers of disassociated people who want nothing to do with Christianity in any form, who therefore assume (as all Western secularists assume) that since religion does not matter to them, it ought not matter to anyone else, either. This is not so much an out and out persecution of the church or individual Christians, but a sidelining of them or compartmentalization of them into their own sphere away from public life. So I don't think we are likely to see a lot of actual martyrs in America within my lifetime (except perhaps in places where Muslims and Christians live side by side; there was a case in NJ a few years ago when Muslims targeted and killed some Coptic Christians, though that is not typical of the USA; usually they just yell at us and tell us we aren't welcome in their businesses and such), but we will see a decline into irrelevancy (and perhaps along the way the imposition of heretofore uncollected taxes on churches) precisely because the growing unaffiliated youth see Christian churches and individual Christians trying to play at being the arbiters of the law without having to face consequences (i.e., Kim Davis), or assuming that it should be easy to claim religious exemptions to things than it actually is (i.e., bakers who make no effort to express their Christian faith until a gay couple wants a cake and then are shocked when they lose RFRA cases dependent on an observable history of running their businesses in accordance with that faith). They don't want to be a part of that, and yet somehow you are saying that it is I who is reducing Christianity to politics, when I am arguing that our best bet is to separate ourselves and let the aggressive secularists and aggressive Evangelicals fight the war according to the two poles that they have created? It is not EO or OO who have made themselves into political lightning rods, and there is more mercy shown in the blessings said for the people in recognition of our sins in one liturgy than there will ever be in these kinds of discussions. If you (the general you, not you Rusmeister) care about the future of the Church, shouldn't you be trying to elevate it above our highly politically polarized society so as to show those who have been worn out by decades of culture wars that Christianity is not what self-righteous loudmouths make it out to be, and that there is a way to praise God without hypocrisy, and that this way is found in your confession which is not affected by the news cycle?

Kim Davis is being hauled off to jail, and tomorrow or next week or next month or whenever there will be someone who is offended by hearing someone say (or not say) "God bless you" outside of a Cinnabon in some mall somewhere, and the respective packs will be off to the races over this newest example of pro-/anti-Christianity fostered by the evil forces of XYZ. Calls will be made, online petitions will be signed, and in the end the areligious future majority will laugh and think it is silly that such a bunch of people will argue over imaginary beings and fairy tales.

Or, y'know, we could actually get our hands dirty with the real work of re-Christianizing society, which is much more likely to be a personal and low-key affair (in the sense that they say 100% of the people who you bring to church will be in church; not low-key as in "don't speak up about your faith"). We've always sent priests from Africa around the world in my church [], but now the RCC and others are openly declaring the West to be missionary territory, too, and priests from Nigeria, Iraq, Tanzania, etc. and other places where being religious isn't particularly weird or shorthand for "Republican" are helping to revitalize parishes and bring Christianity to the new generation, which is certainly facing new and ever-evolving challenges to that faith. This is what I am interested in, not whatever the newest Evangelical outrage is. That is the stuff of Facebook posts ("like/share if you agree!" -- the one and only commandment of the Gospel of Zuckerburg), not the bread of life.

rusmeister said:

Good grief, Matt, if I get someone else to do an evil for me, it's NOT "standing for the Truth".

If I "recuse myself" from performing an abortion, and stand by ( when I am the chief officer present) am I "standing for the Truth"?

I can't believe I have to say this here.

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then if she were fired, as a Christian, it should not matter. I only said that because she did not necessarily need to be fired, and you said that her stepping aside/down/whatever was a euphemism for it. I was only pointing out that is not necessarily the case. if you signed up for a job where you did not perform an abortion, and then the law forced your hand so to speak, you should not have an issue quitting or being fired. I know I wouldn't.