For decades, conservative Christians who oppose LGBT equality have singled out the federal government or secular atheists as their preferred enemy in public settings, blasting both groups for supposedly attacking “traditional marriage” or infringing on their religious liberty. Yet in the months surrounding the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage across the country, right-wing Christians have become increasingly willing to cast blame — seemingly hypocritically — on a group they have often dismissed or outright ignored: Progressive Christians, especially those who support marriage equality…. “The good thing about the progressive movement is it gives people a clear choice. The ironic thing about progressive Christianity is that it is neither!”…. “Saying what’s right is necessary, but it’s not enough. Pastors need to be willing to say that other churches [that support marriage equality] are wrong, and dangerously so.”
I’ve often said that I find it highly entertaining to watch Republicans eat their young, and the 2016 primary season promises a surplus of cheap mirth and good times. Watching Christians do it to one another is, sadly, not nearly as much fun. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision legalizing marriage equality, Conservative Christians have been looking to vent their considerable righteous anger…and they’ve chosen to take it out on fellow Christians they’ve determined to be insufficiently hateful and homophobic. It’s distressing, but when you look at what’s happened in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants and in the Middle East between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, you understand this isn’t breaking new ground. The idea that co-religionists could be willing to kill one another over theological differences seems sad and pathetic. Thankfully, while that seems unlikely to happen in this country, I suspect there are those who’d be more than happy to take up arms against those they consider infidels and traitors to the faith.
It’s interesting that both Conservative and Progressive Christians claim to follow a loving, benevolent God. Conservatives have taken to attacking Progressives for being “wrong, and dangerously so,” which seems to me to be about the most arrogant thing possible. How dare someone elevate their faith above those of others? How dare they insist that their flavor of Christianity is the One, True, and ONLY faith? If I was a Christian and someone came to me to tell me my faith was wrong, misguided, and/or insufficient, my response would be a polite, loving, and very Christ-like translation of “#$&@ you…AND the horse you rode in on.”
Granted, conservative Christian denunciation of people who hold different beliefs than they do isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Organizations such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which has spent years lobbying against LGBT equality from within several Christian denominations, have long sought the eradication of liberal theology. Right-leaning Catholics and evangelical Christian leaders such as Franklin Graham have repeatedly made sweeping claims as to what “Christians” believe, implying that people of faith who don’t share their views are not, in fact, Christians. What’s more, faith communities — conservative or otherwise — have lashed out at each other almost since their inception, so it’s not necessarily surprising that conservative Christians, having lost legal battles over LGBT issues, are now sliding into a theological debate with fellow believers.
Yet the newest push against liberal Christianity appears hypocritical, as it coincides with a massive campaign waged by various right-wing Christians to insist that the political left respect their “religious liberty” — namely, the right to deny jobs and services to LGBT people in the public sphere, private business, and in Christian schools by invoking faith. Within hours of the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, Andrew Walker, Director of Policy Studies at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, began insisting that the decision will only lead to the erosion of religious liberty — for evangelical Christians.
This saddens me from the standpoint that I actually admire people who endeavor to live their beliefs and lead Christ-like lives. It’s been my experience that the people most likely to do this are the ones who fall into what might be described as the Liberal/Progressive camp. Conservatives are too often fixated on condemning others for their perceived shortcomings to focus on what they themselves are doing.
Unfortunately, things like intolerance, self-superiority, and self-righteousness are too often hallmarks of a Conservative mindset. The idea that one’s ideology/theology/philosophy is superior merely because of the fact of holding it is as arrogant and abhorrent as it is unChristian. I may not believe in God, but I remember enough from my Lutheran Sunday School days to remember that Jesus Christ preached love, tolerance, and inclusion…exactly the opposite of what Conservative Christians tend to believe.
Concepts like “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” and even “sincerely-held religious belief” are to Conservatives means of enforcing their narrow, fear-based moral agenda. Their attitude and expectations have little if any basis in the teachings of the Jesus Christ they purport to revere. It’s a pathetic, transparent attempt at forcing their authoritarian agenda upon all Americans. Those who don’t fall into line quickly become the targets of considerable Conservative wrath.
A few conservative writers have even sought to cast progressive Christians as bullies unto themselves, calling them “heretic hunters” for speaking up for LGBT people.
Bullies? For doing exactly what Jesus would have done by standing up for the persecuted among us? Perhaps Conservatives lack the self-awareness to recognize projection, but if they’re looking for bullies, they’d be well-advised to take a good long look in the mirror.
If the goal is to persuade the faithful masses back to traditional marriage, however, then conservatives may be too late. A poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in April revealed that majorities of almost every major religious group in America now support marriage equality, including members of traditions that officially condemn homosexual acts, such as Catholicism. Only white evangelical Protestants and black Protestants disapproved of same-sex marriage in the poll, but African-American pastors — unlike many white theological conservatives — appear far less willing to tout their religious beliefs as justification for policies that discriminate against LGBT people.
Denying the “right” to discriminate against others who happen not to share your narrow belief system and moral agenda is not the definition of curtailing religious freedom. There is no right to discriminate against a class of people because they choose to live, believe, and/or love in a manner you find to be “icky” and abhorrent. You have every right to govern your own life by your own moral standards; whether you call it “Christian” or something else is up to you. What you don’t get to do is assume that your moral code is incontrovertibly superior and conveys upon you the absolute right to demand that others live by it or suffer the consequences. That anyone could actually go through life believing that is indicative of a degree of arrogance beyond anything I might have thought possible.
It’s not a stretch to believe there’s nothing “Christian” about Conservative Christians who hold those they deem insufficiently hateful in disdain. Jesus Christ didn’t preach hatred, intolerance, and exclusion. He didn’t teach that Christians should hold themselves above other they deem “less than.” And He certainly didn’t sanction treating other Christians as heretics because they’re insufficiently hateful and homophobic. Then again, Conservatives only really seem to be happy when they can hold themselves to be superior to those they deem to be “less than.”
It’s what bullies do.
