June
26, 2015
With Thursday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v.
Hodges, same sex marriage became legal in all states. Today,
conservative white pulpits across America are lit up with both
angry, fist-shaking rhetoric, scriptural distortion, weeping,
and, of course, vows to continue to seek a by wasting tithes
and offerings—biblically mandated to serve the poor and in
need—on fruitless pursuit of a political solution. This is what
conservative white churches routinely do: engage society’s ills
by means of politics. It is completely out of step with the
personal example of Jesus Christ, Who walked the earth under the
shadow of the Roman Empire, among the most perversely corrupt
pagan societies the world had ever seen. Homosexuality was
freely and openly practiced in Jesus’ day, as were gross displays
of depraved sexual conduct of all orientations—hence the term
“Roman Orgy.” Yet, there is no record of Jesus ever once having
mounted any campaign or having spent the donations of the
faithful in some fruitless effort to rail against the empire.
Since the rise of Jerry Falwell, the white conservative
fundamentalist church in America has been woefully out of step
with that example, often railing in unbridled hatred towards
those it deemed immoral. Jesus spoke little of morality and did
not wrongfully comingle morality and spirituality.
By contrast, the conservative black church will be largely
silent. This is what the black church in America routinely does: nothing.
Current events are rarely spoken of from the pulpit, and the
black church—of all persuasions—has been caught in the crossfire
between biblical truth and the moral imperative of civil rights
for more than a century. Our doctrinal beliefs concerning
homosexuality are a matter both separate and apart from our
fundamental belief in the equality of all people. In that light,
we must defend the bigot’s right to preach hate if we are to be
free to preach love. Which is not to ever equate sexual
orientation with fascism but to separate whatever your
particular peccadilloes concerning homosexuality are from the
basic right of all men and women to be free and equal members of
society, entitled to all of the dignity and equal protection
that view entails.
I imagine nearly all black churches will be discussing the
massacre in Charleston more so than the Supreme Court same-sex
marriage ruling or even the Supremes saving Obamacare by some
very hairy twisted logic. However, much like our fundamental
right to free speech, the court’s ruling on LGBT marriage
extends well beyond the scope of the immediate question and has
profound significance for all of American society—the black
church most especially.
Had the Court failed or even declined to rule on Obergefell, the
power of the Fourteenth Amendment—which provides specific and
notable protections for African Americans—would have been
diminished. As angry as the conservatives, including an
increasingly unhinged Justice Scalia, may be, I agree that what
was at issue was not the morality of homosexual marriage or even
the rights of states to regulate marriage, but the power of the
U.S. Constitution to guarantee our basic freedoms under the law.
Civil rights cannot and must not be determined by a majority
vote or ballot amendment. This was the fundamental argument of
the Civil Rights movement: we can’t wait for America to become
more enlightened and vote to give us rights and protections the
Constitution guarantees us; the Constitution either works or it
doesn’t. It’s fairly convenient for Black America to embrace
that concept where our interests are concerned while turning a
deaf ear to other constituencies.
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, emphasized that
rights under the Constitution weren’t restricted to those
granted in the voting booth. He clarified that “[t]he issue
before the court here is the legal question whether the
Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry.”
Justice Kennedy noted that that court action is an appropriate
forum to answer the question because “individuals who are harmed
need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental
right.” The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment, “…requires
a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex
and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex
when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed
out-of-State.”
In his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts stressed that only a
handful of states had recognized same sex marriages with laws
made in voting booths and legislatures. It wasn’t political
process that made same sex legal but court rulings, a move that
he found concerning. Justice Scalia agreed, writing that the
case was a “threat to American democracy.”
With all due respect to Justice Scalia, the greater threat to
American Democracy is to weaken the U.S. Constitution by
selectively applying its values and protections. Similarly, the
church must look not to the U.S. Constitution, nor to the
Levitical Holiness Code, nor even to The Apostle Paul. Conservative white churches and nearly all black churches I have
experienced in my life tend to teach this false Old Testament
doctrine, this Pauline doctrine. Memo to the church, white and
black: Jesus Outranks Paul. In the final analysis, all of the
liturgical complexity boils down to this: the church, white,
black, Asian or what have you—must look to Jesus. This is what
we routinely do not do, placing emphasis on Paul or Moses or
whomever else, and using their words to supersede or overlay
those of The Master. We routinely turn away from Christ, to
Paul, to Moses, when we cannot find ammunition for our hatred
and loathing within the Gospels. We look beyond Jesus because,
obviously, Jesus is not enough for us. We’ve formed our opinion
and keep flipping pages until we find some line of scripture we
can rip out of context to justify behaving like idiots.
Beloved: if you call yourself a Christian, you must look to
Jesus. The trite phrase has lost none of its truthfulness: What
Would Jesus Do? What is the example? What is in the record? Stop
putting Paul ahead of Jesus. Stop flipping back to an ancient
Law we are no longer under.
Following Jesus requires courage. Learning to love, to get past
our flesh to discover love, to practice love, requires courage.
It’s easy to shake your fist and to go along with the go-along.
I invite each of us to stand up, if not specially for same-sex
marriage or even the U.S. Constitution, but stand up for Jesus.
Jesus said not one recorded word about homosexuality, about gay
marriage, about any of the stuff the white conservative church
spends billions on politicizing—money much better spent housing
the homeless and feeding the hungry. These politically-focused
“churches” and “pastors” are actually neither. In straying so
far from the model Christ left us, they are practicing a
deceived religion rather than an active faith, which makes these
places much more like witch’s covens than houses of worship
because Christ is not actually glorified there. The pastor takes
to the pulpit and rails against Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama. The
spend outrageous sums contributing to political groups and
printing pamphlets and flyers in advocacy of treating entire
segments of society like second-class citizens.
Beloved: that is not a church. The Church’s mission is not to create God’s Kingdom here on earth, nor to enforce God’s “Law” upon people by political means. The mission of the Church is simple: to tell people about Jesus. This is rarely done. Past all the rhetoric and pulpit thumping, the actual telling-people-about-Jesus part is an afterthought, tossed in before the benediction. We can fistfight over gay marriage all day if you want to, the bigger threat facing America is a church that refuses to follow Christ.
