We are not Freaks

This weekend I was in a different city, and spent my usual time walking in a mall, because of rain. The community I encountered was ethnically diverse, and as is often the case in malls, represented a fair cross section of class, physical ability, and even degrees and types of aging. When you have a Target, a Nordstroms, and a movie theater opposite a major hospital complex all kinds of people are there.

All kinds of very normal people. People like all the people I meet on the university campus where I work, at the church where I worship, and the boat club where I waste my time. Or engage in worthwhile recreation as you wish.

I didn’t meet a single freak. I don’t think I’ve ever met a freak.

But when I turn on the TV, or read the Washington Post, or the Dallas Morning News, or look at Facebook I see freaks. Pop-eyed men and women with contorted faces. Red-faced bawlers, robo-cops with steel covered faces, bizarre avatars, shadows branded by political tattoos, distorted limbs carrying hollow cheeks with hollow stares. Hour after hour, page after page of freaks. Right wing freaks, left wing freaks, conservative freaks, progressive freaks, evangelical freaks, Pentecostal freaks, freaks in clerical collars, freaks in suits, freaks in haute couture, freaks in kitchens. Supermodel freaks, super ugly freaks. But still freaks.

All the normal people I meet every day never seem to be make it to either the major media outlets or even their alternative doppelgängers. All those people in the malls, the churches, the clubs, the civic service groups, the schools: they don’t seem to make the news or social media reposts. Or maybe its just that face to face no human is a freak.

Now its easy to blame the media for this, accusing them of running a freak show. But they wouldn’t run the freak show if we didn’t line up to step inside the tent. And at least on social media we, the facebookers, instagramers, tweeters, whatsappers are running the show.

Its an interesting question why we want to represent ourselves as Americans to ourselves as Americans this way. Why, given our vast normalcy, normalcy in many shapes and forms and interests and loves and fears for sure, but still normal, do we focus on the extremists and the extreme moments?

Part of this may be human nature. We have evolved to notice extremes because this is where danger and need are greatest. Turn someone into a freak and it gets our attention, like violence, and thus draws us in to the places where products are being sold.

But Christian preachers have played their own role. I was raised on gospel preaching that consistently raised the emotional temperature by calling on the human extremes. It reveled in the conversion of murderers, adulterers, drug addicts, and gang members. It rejoiced in the pathos when the physically disabled were displayed for healing. The spectacle of tortured souls in hell, twisted with their well-deserved pain was always on call as a warning to the unrepentant, as were vividly described scenes of a violent and sudden death that might transport even the youngest straight to those fires.

And I was raised in the Methodist and then UMC. But in the South that old time religion, that feeling-fueled effort to get an equally emotional response, was everywhere, including Methodist churches.

Preaching, especially revival preaching was frequently its own kind of freak show. And it helped create, maybe still creates, the cultural taste for freaks that the media feeds. Certainly it validates it.

Its time for Christians to put a stop to that, indeed to resist from all sides the media/social media freak show. I’ve started in my own little way. Does the TV news lead with a freak? I turn it off. Does someone repost a freak on facebook? I turn them off (30 days first, then permanently). Does the Post, or the Times, or the DMN show humans contorted with outrage or anguish or grief? I skip to the next story. I don’t need bludgeoned in order to know that there are injustices to be righted and hearts to be healed. People don't need to be displayed as freaks for us to get it. They don't need to be dehumanized to inspire us to be humane.

And then I walk out of my house, out of my office, out of my car and look around at the mall, the church, the scout troop, the boat club, the library.

Because that is where we are and who we are.

Recently I’ve been block-walking to get out the vote for local political candidate. Made me nervous because I’ve heard so much about our “highly charged” political environment. But guess what? I've now talked to more than 100 people, and knocked on way more doors. I meet some supporters of my candidate. I meet a few who support the other guy. No one has shouted at me, yelled obscenities, or even objected to my knocking at their door. Last week three supporters of our opponent thanked me for my service to democracy.

We are not freaks.

A Birth Certificate Shouldn't Be Your Destiny

Who decides who you will be? 

The other day I needed to find some documents, so I delved into the family file with all the legal stuff. There I found both my birth certificate and that of my wife Lilian.

Mine is a pretty standard official copy of a Texas birth certificate, detailing where I was born, when, sex, parents names, etc. 

My wife’s was a very different document. Long and narrow, with a coat of arms and a note that it is created according to the 1951 ordinance for registration of births and deaths. It shows she was born in Sarikei, Sarawak and gives the names of her parents (both born in China), as well as the registrar of births and deaths. The country in which she was born, Sarawak, appears in no official US government database. She was born in end times of the last "white raja" of Borneo, Viner Brooke. It wasn’t modern Malaysia. And it wasn’t a British colony, and strictly speaking it wasn’t quite a country, since Raja Brooke was sort of under the Sultan or Brunei. Sort of. Still, there it was, an official government document from a government that no longer exists. (And let me tell you, trying to talk to the Social Security Administration about a country that doesn’t exist is a pain.) 

Now I’ve been to my wife's hometown of Sarikei, but I don’t remember the house in which I was born because we moved when I was just over a year old. And suddenly here I had the address. Which I instantly recognized. It is just a block from where Lilian and I have lived for the last 14 years. How about that. After 50 years away, and 20 overseas, and parent’s long passed, I moved back to within a block of my birthplace, which I pass every day while out walking.

Destiny? No. A series of choices we made about the kind of house we could afford close to the lake and SMU. 

In another drawer there is another stack of documents. Our passports. With all those years abroad we both have many, most now punched or mutilated to indicate they are no longer valid, but had still valid visas we needed.  

The two most recent passports for Lilian and I are both blue, both US passports, and both have the same address just a block from my birth place. All her older passports are red, and came from Malaysia. From before she was a naturalized US citizen.

Destiny? No, choices that she was free to make about the country she would call her home. 

If there was anything clear at the founding of the United States, and its subsequent history, it is that your birth certificate is not your destiny. It can tell you who you were. It cannot tell you who you will become, where you will live, and what you will do with your life.

Deeply embedded in the vision of humanity at the core of our country is this simple idea: We as individuals, and as a nation, choose our destiny. It isn’t handed to us by the “old country” with its ancient religious bigotry and fawning subservience to fading political structures. A new nation is a chance for a new identity, new friends and acquaintances, new political parties, new professions. And always at the root is personal choice. No one can tell you what religion you have to follow, what job you have to do, who you have to vote for, which party you should join, where you have to live, who you can visit, and on and on. You can even choose your ethnicity if you don’t like the choices you are given on the form.

(I think about this sometimes, since my granddaughters have a Euro-American grandfather of mixed European heritage, An Austro-Hungarian Jewish grandfather with a little English mixed in, a Chinese grandmother, and a Ukrainian Jewish grandmother whose family may have come out of Iran. Their mother and father already stretch the ethnic label boundaries, and thus what are they? Here's an answer: humans.)

When I told some Austrians I'd worked with for years that I was moving back to the US one said, "Amerikaneren sind wurzzelos." Americans are rootless. She was right, and its the best thing about us. 

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post about a different kind of roots. It spurred some of these observations: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/27/feature/seeking-a-scientific-explanation-for-trans-identity-could-do-more-harm-than-good/

It ends by noting that the matter of sexual identity is determined by the individual as they discover who they are and want to be. It isn’t determined by science, and it isn’t determined by their birth certificate. Regardless of the influence of biology or genetics it is their choice. And it is a choice they fully have a right to make. And in our country, in the United States, it is a choice that we should all respect. Because our nation is founded on that fundamental idea that individuals decide who they are and whose they are. 

None of us should have to carry our birth certificate around, much less wear it like a ball and chain.

Except that’s whats some politicians want, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton here in Texas in particular. They are demanding a law that people can only go to the bathroom that matches their birth certificate. And more than that, that all bathrooms be gendered as well! They are demanding that a birth certificate also be a destiny.

As others are demanding, in another way, of all those who want to come to the United States and make us their nation. "Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched masses yearning to breath free" has become "Stay out and stay home. Your birth certificate is your destiny, and you are destined to oppression, violence, poverty, and war."

Those of us who believe in the vision on which the United States was founded need to oppose these enemies of our values every step of the way, whether they are in public office or hidden behind the facades of PACs . They need to be voted out of office as quickly as possible so that we can return to being a state, and nation, in which words on a document filed at your birth never determine who you are, or what you dream about becoming.

The Outrage Factories

Get their raw materials from you and me.

We all have psychological pain within us. It is part of the human condition - what the Buddha called dukkha. Dukkha is often translated “suffering,” but I think a better definition is the condition of permanent dissatisfaction with the world, arising from the fact that it is transient. It is our abiding sense that happiness is fleeting while disease, decrepitude, and death are inevitable. It is suffering in the sense that suffering is the anticipation that pain will not end.

Now one would think that dukkha is something we all want to escape, and that anyone with a conscience would want to help us escape it. But we don’t and they won’t help. Because this permanent state of dissatisfaction is an itch we love to scratch, and a terrific resource for those seeking power and wealth. We’ll buy almost any thing or any idea, we’ll follow almost any course of action that promises us some relief from dukkha. 

One way to monetize dukkha is to tap into lust, which is the desire for distraction that takes our minds off dissatisfaction. Lust is the inevitable psychological accompaniment to dukkha, its flip side really. To be human is to be either desiring or to be dissatisfied, and you know which feels better. 

Advertisers have understood the power of lust for a very long time. If you can attach lust to a specific object or action people will buy and buy again. Because even as they experience the exhilaration of being distracted from their dissatisfaction they are dragging it along behind them like a ball and chain. 

Distraction is the meal that makes you hungry instead of full. 

But there is much more insidious use of the dukkha. If you can tap into the primal dissatisfaction in all humans, and attach that dissatisfaction, that suffering to an object or idea or event, then you can create outrage. You create a burning psychological pain that focuses a lifetime of suffering in one place and time on one thing. And once the rage is out, you can put it to use. 

To do that all you have to do is offer release, a way out of the dissatisfaction, and end to the suffering. Not realrelease of course, then you don’t have anything to manipulate. But you can promise release, you can promise that the pain will go away. And people will buy. 

The promise of release from the pain of outrage can take many forms, since we humans have a whole range of built in mechanisms for escaping psychological pain. Distraction is illusory but common. Drugs and alcohol have been around a long time. 

Then there is violence directed at whatever we’ve been taught it outrageous. Making other people suffer, or even causing yourself pain, is a great way of taking your mind off of dukkha. And of course that can run the range from harassment, to verbal abuse, to  physical violence. Turning dissatisfaction to outrage, and outrage to violence is one of the oldest political tools for those seeking power. We see it deployed daily worldwide and in the US.

Another possibility is to incite actions that will supposedly create an imagined future. The energy of present outrage can be directed into activities, like talking to this therapist, taking this medicine, voting for this party, marching for this cause, or donating to this charity or advocacy group will drain off the outrage and quiet the persistent pain of dissatisfaction.

It won’t, although it may change things for the better for others. The danger here is that the persistent pain will require stronger and stronger medicine. The danger is that frustration with the failure to reach impossible goals can eventually fuel the flame of violence. We’ve seen it again and again.   

The manufacturers of outrage and the promised relief are no different from the manufacturers of any good or service that objectifies our suffering then promises to relief from the pain. They want something in return for the relief they offer. It may be political power. It may be money, or less directly book sales. It may be eyeballs on ads. It may be celebrity as they pursue their own futile efforts at escape from dukkha.

Ultimately what they want is for you to lose freedom, becoming chained to whatever object they’ve convinced you causes your suffering, and whatever drug is on offer to cure the pain. Because they want to control your life, not you. 

Whether its HuffPo or Fox, the DCCCP or the GOP, (or many a religious group) the goal is to keep you and your outrage chained to their cause and their promise of relief, in exchange for dollars and power. 

This does’t mean they are necessarily bad people, although some are. The deeper problem is that this exchange, this psychological and economic transaction, is the root transaction of all human relationships not built on love. 

There is a better path to an end of dukkha, permanent dissatisfaction, and indeed the end of the suffering of our fellow humans and all creatures. It is the path that begins with self-realization, through acknowledging the dissatisfaction at our core. It leads to giving up all naiveté about ways to relieve it, understanding that only the silenced mind, the detached self, is unburdened by suffering. And it ends in cultivating compassion, a love for others that leads directly to acting in their interests without a detour through outrage. To put it in Christian terms, it is to abandon either law or punishment as a resolution of sin, and embrace God’s grace given freely in Jesus Christ. And then to act out of that grace.

Because only when we are set free can we do what is right for others, and not merely what gives temporary relief to our own suffering. 

Sticks and Stones

May break my bones, but words will never hurt me. 

I was taught as a small boy to say this in answer to the inevitable bullying and insults that are part of growing up. I suppose it was a kind of psychological defense if you were too scrawny (or in my case fat) to mount a more physical defense. 

Once I was older I realized it is complete BS, a bizarre post-Enlightenment gnosticism in which the mind is totally under the control of the will, and the body is irrelevant. It works, but at a high cost in self-dehumanization. 

Actually, as the Bible makes clear, words cause plenty of good and plenty of real harm. Some of it is direct, damaging permanently people’s minds and hearts. Much of it is indirect, providing the emotional and even intellectual rational for actual physical violence against others. 

Unfortunately the current core of American political ethics can be summed up in two words: plausible deniability. You can say anything you want, however hateful and inflammatory, as long as you go on and say, “but don’t hurt anyone,” or “no violence,” or “but I love them anyway,” or “that’s just a joke", or "locker room talk", or “a little hyperbole for effect,” or “its just politics,” or even “they deserve it.” After all, "sticks and stones. . ." and man-up and all that. 

So you get to fire your words out there like arrows, to use a Biblical image, and then quickly throw away the bow and deny you meant any harm. 

Well I call BS on that too. Are you shouting in someone’s face, using demeaning language, launching verbal attacks, lying, insulting or marginalizing some group of people (Muslims, journalists, liberals, conservatives, Jews, men, women, gays, transgendered, Republicans, Democrats, the poor, the rich, etc)?  Well you are causing real harm, real hurt, and you are engendering real violence even if you never personally lift a finger.

Jesus said, (Luke 6 for all those Christians from left to right who seem to have forgotten the Bible.) “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

I don't recall Jesus saying, "unless you are really offended, frightened, angry, or hurt." or "unless it is a useful political strategy."

Attributed to Gandhi is an appropriate comment for our times. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Jesus' words are the secret to remaining human in dehumanizing times, they are the secret for keeping our vision in a world gone blind. And we have never needed humans with vision more than now. 

"Government of the people, by the people,

and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”

Lately it seems that some Christians believe that once something is legal, or constitutional, enacting it becomes moral, and that our lawmakers, and executive rise above moral responsibility when they act within the law. This is dangerous non-sense. 

Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg pose the most ethically challenging description of a democracy in the modern era. They underscore this simple fact: In the United States the people, the voters, bear direct moral responsibility for the actions undertaken on their behalf by the government. They created the government and they have to own its actions. 

Of course the term “government” is misleading. It isn’t just the voters who are responsible for government. The government itself is made up of elected individuals. Because legislators have the power to create, change, and end laws they individually bear moral responsibility for their actions as law makers. 

And even the executive branch cannot evade moral responsibility in its enforcement of the law, because the legislators have given the executive branch wide latitude in exercising its judgment in how to best enforce the law.

In short, and to repeat, there is no such thing as “government.” It is a meaningless abstraction. There are morally responsible (or irresponsible) people making and enforcing laws.No one of voting age in the United States and no one elected or appointed to office can reasonably speak of the behavior of "the government," or "the law," as something separate from their personal moral behavior and responsibility.

I make this point as we focus our attention on the present situation with migration and immigration. Legislators are personally morally responsible for their failure over decades to pass reasonable legislation addressing the challenge of economic migrants and asylum seekers in relation to American aspirations to be a moral nation. Because the laws they pass affect many countries outside the US, they bear moral responsibility for having helped create the need for economic migration and asylum on countries outside the US, and for America’s economic need for workers. 

At the same time the executive branch is morally responsible for the policies it has created as the chief agent of foreign policy and their negative impact on people outside the US. And it bears responsibility for implementation of recognizably problematic immigration laws, particularly in areas where it has the power to determine when, how many, and under which circumstances to issue visas or deportations.

And yes, that is as true of the past voters, legislatures and administrations as it is true of those currently in office. 

But finally it is you and I, the voters, who are morally responsible for what is happening on the border. We elected our legislators and our president, we have access to them to influence their decision making, and we will vote to change them. 

Nor does our moral responsibility end just because we didn’t vote for the winning person or party. None of us is a moral island who hasn’t influenced and been influenced by our neighbors. We are responsible for the sins and righteousness of our society even if we didn’t directly commit the former or encourage the latter. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. . . .” Its worth looking up. 

I suggest that instead of moaning and pointing fingers of blame at “the government” or even a particular political party, (and parties are also a moral fiction hiding individual responsibility,) we get to work changing things. Protest if that’s your thing, write letters to the editor, call your congressman, volunteer for any of the groups that aid migrants and their families, do business in Latin America in a way that resolves rather than creating social problems if you have the capacity, run for office yourself. But most of all VOTE and encourage your neighbors to vote.  

Responsibility, Blame, and the Criminalization of Need

We're responsible even when we’re not to blame.

As our nation considers the question of who, when, and how we’ll allow immigrants to come into the US, and our president leads with his well known moral constancy, it is worthwhile to consider what Christians believe about the relationship between responsibility and blame. 

The answer is easy. The life of Christ, and the parable of the Good Samaritan make the same point: We are responsible for the welfare of others even when we are not to blame for their suffering. And as Christ showed on the cross, it isn’t just a matter of innocent victims. As he took responsibility for us because of our entirely self-inflicted sin, so we have responsibility even for those who brought their problems on themselves. 

The problem we face living out a Christ-like life is that we have multiple overwhelming and conflicting responsibilities for the welfare of our neighbors and family. They are overwhelming because no amount of personal time and energy will solve even one of these problems. I know a woman who has given her life, every minute of every day, to promoting the welfare of orphaned children. Still, there are more and more orphans every year. The list goes on of those types of individuals to whom any one of us or our whole community could give everything without solving their problems. 

Even Jesus could not cure all the diseases of his Galilean world, or feed all the hungry in his neighborhood. Even in the first century a meal for 5,000 was a drop in the bucket of hunger. 

Then there are the conflicting needs. The victim on the side of the road calls for a Good Samaritan, but the person who passes by may have a sick child at home, a dying mother, or just a job that will be lost if he’s late again. The moral demands on our time and energy never offer simple choices.

So we are all caught up in the complex ethical problems created by overwhelming need and competing goods. And we have no choice but to make difficult choices about how we’ll use our personal and social time and resources to take responsibility for our neighbors, regardless of their blame.

And that is as it should be if we are followers of Christ. The unease, the psychological pressure from making moral choices, helps us grasp God’s love for us. It cuts off our self-righteousness at the roots, and leads us to fully embrace God’s gracious judgment on our lives; far more gracious the that of our neighbors or than the judgment we so regularly render on others.

Unfortunately we’ve found a way to avoid those moral choices. It relieves our psychological pressure. And ultimately it relieves us of reliance on God. We’ve found a way to maintain and even increase our human self-centeredness and the autonomy to which Sin continually calls us. 

We’ve discovered the criminalization of need. 

By making human need a crime we’ve alleviated ourselves of responsibility for it. After all, what decent Christian person should support crime? Drug addiction, alcoholism? Make either the addict a criminal or the behaviors that follow a crime and you don’t have to help addicts get sober.  You just thrown them in jail. Poverty? Make debt a crime, whether it an inability to pay traffic fines, for example, or failure to pay taxes, and you can safely and quickly toss poor people out of their homes as a prelude to putting them in jail and never take responsibility for helping them out of poverty. 

And what if children are being murdered by gangs, refugees are fleeing from from war, or pregnant women are starving to death? Make migration across national borders a crime and you can shuttle them into pens, or let them die in the desert of thirst, or just shoot them down when they run. Because Christians in a Christian nation don’t have to take responsibility for criminals. 

Jesus knew something about the criminalization of need. Hungry on the sabbath? Too bad, eating is a crime. Sick? Whoops, healing on the sabbath is a crime. Did you happen to get mugged on the road? Well being unclean is a crime and I don’t have my rubber gloves to help you up. Blind? Yeah, that’s a crime too - your parent’s if not yours. Maybe you need to pay your tithe, but got your salary in the emperor’s coin? Well its a crime to use that money. 

The enemies of the gospel have always maintained their righteousness and ignored their responsibility for the welfare of their neighbors by criminalizing need. Its the oldest trick in the book. So it is surprising that Christians who actually have that book, and claim to know its author, and accept the validity of his rebuke of those who use this trick, have used it themselves. Indeed Christians in Congress and in the Whitehouse, fully supported by their Christian constituencies across the US are still using it: a nation of whitewashed tombs.  

Is America a Secular Nation?

No. 

The term “secular,” in terms of a public realm absent all religion or reference to transcendent values didn’t exist in the time of the founding of the United States. The founders of the United States were careful to exclude both religion generally, and distinctly Christian expressions specifically, from the constituting of the US as a nation. And of course the First Amendment forbids the government from establishing a religion. 

Yet references to transcendent values that are assumed to guide the public are foundational to the beginnings of the United States. Take the Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Here "Nature's God" is given equal place to the "Laws of Nature" in entitling people to their political rights, as it is their Creator who endows them with unalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. 

Since that time the public practice of religion by politicians and even political bodies has never been forbidden by the courts so long as it does not “establish” religion or deny anyone’s religious freedom. Legislatures have chaplains and open with prayer, so long as they are non-sectarian and non-exclusive. And however relatively new and controversial we have the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on our currency. 

So religion is neither excluded from the public realm or even from the specifically political realm. Indeed religion is a critical player in public discourse as the founding fathers no doubt anticipated.  

As I noted in the last blog this doesn’t mean the United States is a Christian, or even religious nation. 

The United States is rather a nation with no established religion but which in offering freedom of religion makes room for religion in the public and political realm. This creates an intentionally religiously plural public environment. 

The birth of the United States would eventually give birth to what has become the most difficult problem for contemporary Christian life: sharing the public space as a realm of religious witness. 

As the United States has become more complex, and as it is now in the midst of de-Christianization, we find ourselves in an environment in which the claims of the gospel must be heard amidst other, and sometimes contradictory claims about God, God’s self-revelation, and God’s love. More can be said of this evangelistic context, but I’ll assert here that to be taken seriously in our cultural context our witness to Christ must explicitly recognize the right of other religions to the public space. In this cultural space we can neither ignore them nor deny them them a place without denying the basis of our own religious freedom of witness. And it seems to me that we both assert our right and theirs best by engaging in dialogue over matters of mutual interest. 

Secondly, all political theology in the public space must become inter-religious theology. We cannot separate out what it means to be a faithful Christians in our political actions from what it means to be joined in the common democratic work with people of other religions.

And finally, as our public space has become more religiously complex, and thus not dominated by a single religion, it has left room for those who are not religious or who are even anti-religious. And that has been affirmed by the Supreme Court as a natural result of the establishment clause of the constitution. This forces us to consider a public political theology that recognizes and cooperates with committed political engagement not based on religious principles. 

This challenges us in a good way, for it forces us to ask with renewed clarity about how God's providence is alive beyond the boundaries of not only our religion, but all religions, and thus to proclaim a God whose engagement with our social world is comprehensive enough to be worthy of worship.  

Is America a Christian Nation?

No. Although it is a nation with a lot of Christians.  

Recently Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, as well as many other evangelicals have sought to assert that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Their arguments are a tissue of half-truths and misrepresentations, but need to be addressed. 

https://ptv.org/america-is-a-christian-nation/ will give you as much insight as you wish into the way in which Jeffress frames his argument.

Assertion 1: "52 out of the 55 signers of the constitution, the framers of the constitution, were evangelical believers.”Clearly this argument turns on the anachronistic application of the modern term “evangelical” to men who lived over 200 years ago, before the term was ever used. So what about the founding fathers in context? If we turn to Encyclopedia Britannica we find a more nuanced answer that is far from Jeffress’ assertions. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214. And for scholarly depth one could go to The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, by David Holmes, which finds the majority to had been influenced by or were openly Diests. Those looking for a vigorously conservative view see a Heritage Foundation article at: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/did-america-have-christian-founding. 

Adherants.com gives us the definitive answer by listing the religious affiliations of the 55 signers:  

• Episcopalian/Anglican.      57.1%.  32
• Congregationalist               23.2%.  13      
• Presbyterian                        21.4%.  12
• Quaker                                  3.6%.   2
• Unitarian/Universalist          3.6%    2
• Catholic.                               1.8%.   1

Now Jeffress himself has said that Catholics are not Christians. Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ, so they aren’t in. And Quakers were executed for heresy in Puritan Boston, so its hard to see them being “Evangelical Christians.” Already we have 5 non-evangelical Christians. Of those remaining we know at least a few were openly Deist. So by the most general possible count Jeffress is dead wrong. If we consider that the evangelical revivals of the period were precisely intended to convert Anglicans to true Christianity his assertion becomes even more dubious. And after all, Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians would become the bulwark for liberal protestantism. One can see that there are no Baptists, Pentacostals, Independent Evangelicals and etc. None of the groups we associate with modern Evangelicalism were present for the founding of the United States. 

Jeffress' claim is completely bogus. 

Assertion 2: The establishment clause of the US constitution isn’t intended to prevent a the government from establishing a religion, it is intended to prevent it from establishing  “a denomination.” Or to quote Jeffress directly concerning Thomas Jefferson’s writing in 1802, "Jefferson was referring to an establishment of a denomination, not a religion."

First we must note that this isn’t what either the 1st Amendment or Thomas Jefferson says. The clause, which Jefferson quotes, says “religion.” A good literalist like Jeffress should recognize that you can’t just willy nilly say that a word means something different from what it says. 

Secondly, and more importantly for those interested in the truth instead of plausible lies, is that the word “denomination” is first used to refer to a particular religious sect is 1716. That is more than 50 years before the Declaration of Independence. So if the founding fathers meant “denomination” they certainly had the word available to them. And indeed, the US Congress specifically REJECTED using the terms “denomination” and “sect” in early versions of the Bill of Rights. So Jeffress’ assertion here is completely specious. 

Why, one wonders at this point in history, is a knowledgeable religious leader asserting that “America is a Christian Nation” and then offering bogus evidence he attributes to its founding fathers and founding document? One is tempted to ascribe political motives, but with a Supreme Court made entirely of Catholics and Jews, who are excluded by Jeffress from being included in our “Christian Nation,” that seems far-fetched. Its not likely efforts to twist the constitution toward theocracy will get past them, and one wonders what Jeffress and his allies make of the fact that the Supreme Court of a "Christian Nation" doesn't have a single person they regard as a Christian. 

The more likely explanation is far more tragic. Jeffress and his constituents sense that their long standing fable of America as a preserve of evangelical Christian power is rapidly being exposed as a fantasy. The sermons and videos are an effort to reassure the nervous faithful. And the religio-patriotic mega-rallies, billboards, political prayer meetings, and increasingly bombastic self-assertion are the last colorful gasp of a dying religious star. They are a fireworks finale soon to fade into drifting smoke behind their smoke and mirrors leader. 

Fortunately what will remain will be the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ. It will be much diminished in political and cultural power, and far more like salt and light. 

Guns in Cultural Context

The Dallas Morning News ran an article on the recent school shooting in Sante Fe, Texas. It noted that in the aftermath of the shooting not only explicitly religious responses, but religion (almost entirely Christian) in the school itself was increasing. The instinctive response of this East Texas community was to turn to God for both answers and solace. Prayer meetings, vigils, memorials, and now Bible studies and prayer groups are an outcome far more visible than Texas governor Gregg Abbott’s three hastily called meetings with lawmakers and community leaders. We don’t know which will be more consequential,  but its clear nothing will happen quickly in the realm of public policy.

This is a stark contrast to the responses following the shooting at the Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. That shooting led almost instantly to student outrage turned to political action. And consequential political action. The state of Florida quickly changed some of its gun laws and the students went on to Washington DC. For weeks there was hardly a day that activism for gun control wasn’t in the news thanks largely to these students and their parents. 

In these two very different responses to very similar events we see cultural differences that are a fundamental part of contemporary American society. What we do in a crisis is a good indicator of how our culture understands the human person in relation to both society and the larger and largely unseen forces at large in the world. It indicates how we both realize and express our collective identity and solidarity. And it tells us where we find a connection with past and future.

One American culture places humans most immediately in the context of both Divine love and concern, and in the context of unseen and largely unmanageable forces that govern personal behavior. For Governor Abbot and his supporters the solution to school shootings is essentially defensive, more guards and more guns. 

The other American culture places humans most immediately in the context of the social and political networks that make up the common life. And those are manageable through tougher laws controlling gun ownership and use and identification and treatment of mental illness. From within this American culture prayers are, if not totally pointless, at least desperately misguided. If you want to change things you talk to your legislators, not to God.  

If we are wise we recognize that ours is a culturally plural society, and that this cultural pluralism isn’t just a result of ethnic or religious identity. Thus accomplishing any desirable goal will require dialogue and negotiation. Such dialogue and negotiation is tiresome if you are an activist who wants to change things immediately. And its tiresome if you happen to control the majority of the votes in a City Council, State Legislature, or Congress.  Yet without such dialogue and negotiation we accomplish nothing and find ourselves in the hands of those best able to negotiate and manipulate cultural difference. The current president of the United States is proving to be masterful at this. He met the Parkland students and talked about gun control then prayed with the families at Santa Fe and denied what he had said earlier.  In both cases he gained political credibility without committing to any political action.

And in the meantime? We Christians continue to fight the culture wars. The recent Supreme Court decision on the baker who didn't do a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage was essentially a rebuke to a government agency that refused to take the religious commitments of the baker seriously. But progressives, instead of actually learning something about religion and religious freedom have continued to post their teardrop emojis on Facebook and denigrate the religious beliefs of everyone who doesn't agree with them as irrelevant in relation to the need of LGBTQ persons to be affirmed in the public realm. And conservatives continue to act as if religious freedom is the preserve of evangelical Christians - trumpeting America as a Christian nation and looking for new ways to oppress Muslims (not to mention Jews and Mormons and yes, LGBTQ persons.) Small wonder that Christianity is declining; who wants to sign up for an ecclesial extension of a civil war?  

The founders of the United States understood that the new nation was multi-cultural. They set up mechanisms to both respect cultural difference and find a common good. As it happens cultural difference at that time was primarily mapped to geography, and thus a political system balancing geographically defined states in relation to the federal government made sense. Today while geography remains important, there are other markers of cultural difference, most obviously urban versus rural but others as well. It remains to be seen whether the leaders we elect whether in our government or in our churches (and we are ultimately responsible for them) are able to reshape our political systems for the diversity we are experiencing in the 21st century.

In Defense of Paige Patterson

What!!!!! 

But wait. It might be worthwhile to consider the man. 

Because if the reports are true you can say this about Paige Patterson: his behavior over his career as a pastor was completely consistent, and completely consistent with an unwavering commitment to the teaching of scripture. 

After all, what would Paul do? Would Paul ever counsel a woman to divorce an abusive husband? That wouldn’t have even been a possibility in Paul’s time. He would have told the man to behave better. That is clear. So would Dr. Patterson.  

What about reporting sexual abuse to the authorities. Well Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, as well as Paul were pretty clear that conflicts between Christians, not least husbands and wives, need to be resolved inside the Christian community, with excommunication as a last resort. (And I note, that doesn’t do much for the woman.) And this was completely consistent with 1st century Jewish, and indeed subsequent Rabbinic Jewish teaching. When you live under military occupation you don’t go to the occupiers for justice. 

And it doesn’t take much to see that from the time Patterson helped lead the Southern Baptists into their fundamentalist desert that they weren’t going back to the fleshpots of contemporary American culture for either sustenance or justice. 

What I’ve noted above about scripture is hardly news. Dr. Patterson’s problem wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t lived so long. Anytime up to the 1980’s or even 1990’s  his advice would have been the consensus among conservative Christians. It probably remains the consensus in many churches outside the US. Indeed I know first hand it is the consensus among some Methodist Christians. Go back a century it would have been the consensus of all Christians. 

What changed wasn’t Paige Patterson, what changed was Western society and its understanding of the personhood of men and women, and thus how they should relate to one another. Grant girls and women their own autonomous personhood apart from fathers, brothers, and husbands, and everything changes about both their rights (to not be treated like objects) and their responsibilities (to care for their their own well being even if it means turning their husband in to the police.) 

Now I know you are thinking that the Bible says that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between male and female. In fact if you look there is a lot in the Bible to suggest that the traditional patriarchy was misguided in relation to the gift and demand of God Reign in Jesus Christ. But at least for 1900 years no one saw that in the Bible. 

What changed, and this is the problem for all who look for security and stability in the authority of scripture, was the social context. The Bible did not teach us that women were full human persons independent of the patriarchy. We Christians learned it only through the interchange between the Church and our rapidly changing culture - sparked by new ideas about humanity forged out of the Enlightenment. Only then could we see in the Bible what had been there all along. 

If we are serious about our theology of revelation and inspiration we must recognize that the distinction between natural revelation and special revelation isn’t adequate. Revelation isn’t just present in nature and the scriptures. It is present in society and culture.The Holy Spirit doesn’t just speak through magnificent sunsets, towering mountains, and the words of prophets and apostles. She speaks through ever-deepening insights about what it means to be human that arise in the evolution of human culture. 

Until we get that we’ll find that instead of being led by the Spirit into a greater understanding of Christ’s Reign we’ll be kicked by the Spirit, one Paige Patterson at a time, into God’s Reign. 

There is an interesting case study unfolding at this very moment in a Irving Bible Church. The elders of the church were pushed to reexamine the question of whether women could be elders in the church. (http://s3.amazonaws.com/ibcmedia/media/docs/women_ministry_IBC.pdf?mtime=20151124213203) They were conscious and honest (more than most conservative Christians) that in its efforts to be faithful to scripture the church had erred over the centuries in its understanding of God’s Reign. So they carefully studied the question of women in leadership and concluded: “the New Testament seems to imply that eldership is reserved for men.” 

I love that word “seems.” It is (or would be) a tectonic shift the thinking for most conservative Christian groups. It is the recognition that Christians might make mistakes when it comes to interpreting scripture. That indeed they mighthear the voice of the Holy Spirit in some place other than a group of men (or even men and women) huddled over their “textus receptus” discussing for the ten thousandth time the meaning of “the original Greek.” They might hear the Holy Spirit in the vast movements of human liberation that have emerged outside the Church, but are every bit as much a realm of revelation as scripture or nature. 

Would that every statement emerging in the ongoing United Methodist debates began with “it seems.” That might just be the measure of humility and openness to the leading of the Spirit that we need. 

Nationalism is a Good Thing.

In 1989, my fifth year in Malaysia, there was a telling confluence of events. 

The German Ambassador held a party on the occasion of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunion of East and West Germany. At that party he gave a speech in which he said, in English and I quote exactly, “Nationalism is the greatest evil of the 20th century.”

At the same time you could still see the Malaysian national slogan on billboards and handbills: “Nasionalisme Teras Perpaduan.” Nationalism is the core of unity. The use of the English loan word was intentional. The other Malay word translated nationalism is kebangsaan, a contested word that can call to mind ethnicity. 

So how is it that the greatest evil of the 20th century becomes the national slogan for Malaysia? Because the word has different meanings in different historical contexts. 

What the German ambassador meant by nationalism was ethic nationalism, the belief in the intrinsic rights of one ethnic group against others. In Europe that led to war and genocide from the beginning of the 20th century to its end. What the Malaysians meant by nationalism was loyalty to the shared concept of a multi-ethnic state in which each ethnic group had a right to its own mother tongue, religion, and culture but shared a single, unified, political system.

Americans, or at least American progressive Christians, seem to find this distinction confusing. We seem to believe that chauvinistic ethno-nationalism is definitive while forgetting what an incredible advance over previous systems of political identity multi-ethnic, multi-religious nations and their distinctive nationalism really became in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

We might start, of course, with the United States and the nationalism that developed among the colonists and eventually led to the American Revolution. Out of that nationalism there came concepts like freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination based on ethnicity and ultimately gender and even sexuality. It was a nationalism expressed in the sentiment “give me your tired, your poor, your wretched masses yearning to breath free” It was the nationalist ideal that Dr. King demanded be finally realized for all Americans. 

Over in Europe it was this new idea of a nation and the nationalism accompanying it that led to the emancipation of the Jews, and their becoming citizens of states rather than prisoners of ghettos. It was the nationalism of a form of nationhood in which Protestants and Catholics and Jews and Muslims to live together in Germany and France and England.

It remains the nationalism of a new concept of nation that has gradually displaced all older polities and in the process has made life better for more people than any period in human history since the Fall.  

Of course this form of nationalism constantly struggles against older forms of religious and ethnic bigotry. We saw that with the Nazis. Only a couple of years after the Berlin Wall the good nationalism that unifies people of different ethnic and religious groups would fail in Yugoslavia and bad nationalism would lead to genocide. We see it rising with Putin’s Russian chauvinism. We see it our own body politic with the revival of white supremacy. The old chauvinistic nationalism remains a potent reminder of how difficult the process of transforming culture really is. 

Because the idea that a citizen is a person born in a country, or naturalized (think about the meaning of that word) into it, rather than being a person limited to identifying with a particular ethnic group or religion has taken a long time to be realized, and isn’t yet realized. Still the idea of a citizen whose nationalism is tied to a continually affirmed and chosen affinity with people of many different religions and ethnicities far exceeds in worth all that came before. Without it my Malaysian wife of Chinese descent could never become an American. And you wouldn’t have a Muslim mayor of London. And you wouldn’t have an African American president. 

I sometimes think that  Christian Progressives share with Evangelicals a basic pessimism about humanity, and in particular our fellow Christians. We claim to want things to get better, but the slightest bump in the road, much less a major setback, and somehow we think our nation is sliding back down some Deuteronomistic slope into unrighteousness. We need to get a grip quit tearing down that which is good just because it falls short of the best of some imagined eschatological future. 

And oh yes, the reason we have Memorial Day? To remember those who died fighting for exactly for the original American nationalist ideal not only in the Union armies 180 years ago, but throughout the 20th century and on into our own time. They were not killed by American nationalism, they gave their lives for the kind of nation it represents. Were both soldiers and all victims of war sometimes used and abused because of folly, corruption, selfishness, economic interests? Yes, but it wasn’t nationalism that caused their deaths, it was the failure of nationalism and a retreat into factionalism and chauvinism.

Because nasionalisme teras perpaduan. 

How Big is Your Hamster Wheel?

What if instead of asking what we have to say we also asked what we have to learn? What if instead of defending the truth we attack our own ignorance? 

I was struck by a recent article in Scientific American reporting on the latest findings in astronomy based on the coordination of individual experiments designed to measure gravity waves, neutrinos, X-rays, gamma rays, and visible light. This coordination has led to the observation of never-before seen astronomical events of consequence in testing certain theories of the nature of reality and the origins of the universe. 

The excitement in the article, and in the responses of literally 10’s of thousands of scientists to these observations, is palpable. Indeed, hundreds of academic articles are the result of each observation. That excitement seems to stem from a sense of limitless possibilities for continuing discovery about a universe whose unbounded complexity and infinite reach gives humans never ending possibilities for growth in understanding and self-understanding. It is the excitement at the core of the modern scientific endeavor. 

And to tell the truth it make a lot of what Christians do seem pretty dreary. Oh, I know we think we are cutting edge in our engagement with the intense social issues of our day. But do we expect to actually learn anything new about God? Or are we simply offering a contemporary application of what we’ve always known about God. 

And I know that at some of us are at the cutting edge of epistemological and philosophical questions, exploring the enormous complexity of making truth claims in our contemporary culture. But do we expect to learn anything new about God? Or are we simply engaged in the apologetic task of making what has always and everywhere been known by the Church available in a credible and coherent fashion to whatever small segment of society will listen to us? 

And I know that some of us (including myself) are engaged in an intense exploration of non-Christian theologies, seeking to understand better what Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and others say about transcendent reality. But do we expect to learn anything new about God? Or are we simply engaged in identifying long-existing similarities and differences before a break for refreshments and some vague kind of spiritual fellowship?

None of the endeavors above is bad. In fact they are critical parts of what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ. But do any of them bring the distinctively Christian experience of faith in Christ to bear on discovering something new, something unanticipated about reality? Or are we leaving that to scientists while we concentrate on timeless truths which by their very nature are also antique? Are we going somewhere in our theology? Or are we on a hamster wheel, moving fast but running over and over the same ground?

Back when I was in seminary I remember a professor who said there were only four essential heresies. I think the point was logical, but I remember thinking that when I was studying astronomy I was exploring previously unknown dimensions to reality and when I joined the seminary I was with people who after 2000 years couldn't even come up with a new heresy. 

I’ve just been re-reading Leslie Newbigin’s work, and reflections on it after nearly three decades. And I’ve realized that a great deal of both theological and missiological reflection in the last half century and more has focused on a single question: Do Christians have anything distinctive to say in the context of modern culture, and if so how do they say it? And these questions lead us into endlessly self-referential circles around the content of the Gospel and what it might “mean” in a modern/post-modern/secular context. 

What if instead of asking what we have to say in the context of modernity we also asked what we have to learn? What if instead of defending the truth we attack our own ignorance? 

While driving through Richardson Texas I saw a bumper sticker. It said. “All Truth is in the Quran.” Now I’ve studied Islam and know that whoever had that bumper sticker didn’t know the religion. Because Islam has a robust belief in both natural revelation and revelations outside the Quran. But I also knew that many Christians, and indeed many of my students in the seminary would say the same thing about the Bible, at least with regard to knowledge of God. 

And that is a fallacy. Christians have always believed (as Paul states clearly in Romans 1) that God reveals God’s self in God’s creation. And on a specifically Christian level this means that nature is a revelation of the nature of Christ, the creating Word of God. 

But I find there is no rarer bird in a theological seminary, or indeed most churches, than a person who shows any interest in what scientists are learning about the natural world, and thus God (if they looked) every day. Sure, we are interested in the aesthetics of nature and the emotions to which they give rise. That is our inheritance from Romanticism. But that is not the meaning of natural revelation.

In an culture both obsessed with and drawing massive human benefits from its knowledge of the natural world fidelity to the gospel demands more than asserting the historical fact that Jesus Christ was raised from dead (although making that claim is central to our witness.) Fidelity to the gospel demands that we join scientists in their study of nature with the intention of discovering what it reveals about God. 

Put another way, contextualization of the gospel isn’t accommodation to modernity, it is the recognition of that we who live in the context of modernity share a common commitment to finding the truth. To find that common commitment to truth we as Christians have work to do.

First we need to get over our hurt feelings of rejection by various anti-religious forces in contemporary society. Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk have always been around in some form, running in their own materialist hamster wheels. Let them run. Making claims about who has the better hamster wheel isn’t likely to advance the preaching of the gospel. 

Secondly we need to get over our jealousy of all the attention our culture showers on the so called “STEM” subjects in schools and universities. Ever since Adam and Eve left the garden the chief concern of humans has been how to shape their environment to meet their human needs. When Jesus said that “the sabbath was made for humans and not humans made for the sabbath” he spoke a central truth theologians too readily forget: humans are natural scientists and leisure time theologians. The fact that our society has become so rich that some of us can pursue theology full time shouldn’t fool us into thinking its the most important thing humans do. At any given moment any rational society will put a theologian to work planting the fields before they put a farmer to work doing theology. 

Third we need to become curious about the world again. In a recent conversation with a bishop I was told: “In 90% of the pastor’s offices I visited I could tell the year they graduated from seminary by the books on their shelves.” The primary characteristic of modern culture is curiosity and the desire to discover new things and venture into new realms. But too many of us graduate from seminary and immediately jump onto an ecclesial hamster wheel in which, if we do read anything at all, we read about the wheel and not the world outside it.

Finally we need to become problem solvers.  Because that is the second major characteristic of modern culture; an orientation toward finding solutions to immediate human problems and questions. Nothing puts us more out of touch with our cultural context than our continual rumination on our context. The nature of modern culture is to be a platform for finding solutions to human problems, not to be an object of study. 

Modernity begins as a means of solving the problem of how humans can be free: intellectually, politically, socially, economically, and in every other dimension of human existence. Its key markers are not Kant and Schleiermacher, or Barth or Hauerwas. Its key markers are new churches, new nations, political and scientific revolutions, the United Nations, the Geneva Convention, and a host of new technologies that meet real human needs. Nothing is less contextual than our obsession with describing and contesting our context.

As one atheist responded to one of my blogs, “You keep looking for your lost God, we’ll get on with  curing diseases, feeding the world, and sending rockets into space."  

And that’s what I like about Newbigin. He didn’t see modernity so much as an intellectual puzzle as a missiological context. He described it only to clarify what it means to proclaim the gospel within it. But we need to move beyond that as well. 

The Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said that the “stage” revealed by science was too big for the story told by Christians. In part that’s because we haven’t done a good job telling our story. He simply hadn’t heard all of it. But in part its because we haven’t explored the stage enough to grasp fully the story that God is trying to tell in Jesus Christ. The stage isn’t too big for God's story, but its way too big for our story. Maybe if we’d join the scientists in exploring its furthest parameters we’d find ourselves out of the hamster wheel and running free. 

Without Anthropology there is No Theology

If we can't see what happens, its because we've blinded ourself to cultural difference.

Let’s start with a short quote from Rev. Dr. Jerry Kulah P. Kulah, Dean of the UMC’s Gbanga School of Theology in Liberia.

Referencing the first of five recent amendments to the UM Book of Discipline he affirms the intention of equality, but 

"we strongly opposed the reference that“it is contrary to Scripture and to logic” to acknowledge or claim the maleness or fatherhood of God.The Scripture is replete with references to God as Father. When Jesus taught his disciples, (and, by implication, us) how to pray, he taught them to call God “Our Father” (Matt. 6:9; Luke 11:2); throughout his teaching and preaching ministry, Jesus often referred to God as “Father” (Matt. 5:16; 6:9,26; 11:27; Luke 2:9; John 2:16; 4:21; 10:17,30; 14:6-11; 15:9). When he prayed, while carrying the sin of the entire world on the cross, he addressed God as his Father (Luke 23:34). After Jesus’ resurrection, he informed his disciples that he was returning to his Father and their Father (John 20:17). In addition, the Apostles referred to God as “our Heavenly Father” (Romans 8:15; Phil. 2:11; 1 John 1:3; 2:15, 22-23). Furthermore, to accept this inclusion, “The United Methodist Church recognizes it is contrary to Scripture and to logic to say that God is male or female, as maleness and femaleness are characteristics of human bodies and cultures, not characteristics of the divine”would undermine the doctrine of the Trinity, nullify our affirmation of faith (Apostle Creed), and portions of the Bible as non-scripture. Therefore, we voted “NO” to this proposed amendment with a “no” vote of 956; a “yes” vote of 0; and abstention vote of 0.

What is noteworthy here is a comparison of the texts I’ve place in bold italics. The first is a paraphrase of the amendment, the second is the actual amendment.

Dr. Kulah and his conference associate the fatherhood of God with maleness. There is no apparent distinction in their minds between sex and a gender role. Hence to undermine a claim about God’s maleness is to undermine the clear scriptural references to God as Father.

Going further Dr. Kulah even sees this as undermining the doctrine of the Trinity - a position one finds in Orthodox and Catholic theology as well. It isn’t hard to imagine that the Liberian Conference isn’t comfortable with the idea of a Divine Parent substituting for a Divine Father for liturgical purposes. 

Its not my intention here to delve into these theological issues. What needs to be pointed out is simple: The differentiation of sex, gender, and sexuality that has become a common part of Western, post-modern, ways of understanding humans in their social roles IS NOT part of the anthropology of all societies everywhere. Or even most. 

Another example comes from the Philippines, which overwhelmingly supported the amendment above. There it was, and I believe still is, common to refer to gay men as “third sex,” placing a particular way of being human sexually not in terms of sexuality (homosexual) but of sex. A very different way of imaging the human than is found in Africa, but also very different from what is found in the U.S.

What is blindingly clear, so blindingly clear that the United Methodist leaders and indeed virtually the entire UMC in the US are blind to it, is that culture makes a real difference in these matters. And every culture has a different anthropology. If one cannot, or in the case of the UMC refuses to take this into account then the result will not only be division in the church, but increasingly incoherent theologies built on a failure to discuss anthropology. 

++++++++++++Additional Notes

In Chinese metaphysics the distinction between the male and female principles is essential to the relationship of the Tao to creation. Indeed the Tao is the ever-vital relationship between yin (female) and yang (male.) Out of that ever changing relationship comes the creation of the elementals and finally "the myriad of things." In the metaphysics of the Subcontinent we find that Brahman (undifferentiated Being) cannot be grasped without recognizing that Shiva must have a consort, Devi (Kali) if there is to be creation. The idea of a world without male and female is unimaginable. One only need look at the iconography of Shiva (a lingam in a yoni - check your greek on this Sanskrit meanings) to see this. Only in the west do we believe that by distinguishing sex from gender and sexuality that we can actually create a differentiation between the three. Perhaps we should thus question our cultural assumptions rather than belittling others.