Transformation and the St. Patrick's Day Parade...

A lot of beer distributors pulled out of NYC’s St. Patrick’s Day parade because the organizers won’t allow LGBT groups to carry signs.

Now y’all know I’m the progressive Christian in the room and gay rights isn’t even an issue for me.  But I don’t see this as being about gay rights.  Granted, St. Patrick’s Day, like Christmas, Easter, and All Souls Day, has become increasingly secularized.  I don’t know who organizes the parade (the 5^th Avenue one, not the Queens alternative that allows LGBT people to march), but I’ma go out on a limb and say that it’s an Irish Catholic group.

But here’s the thing:  Catholicism, like the rest of Christendom, has traditionally displayed lots of bias.  There were biases against non-Christians, against women, against gays, etc.  These biases were simply a result of the way people read and interpreted their Holy Scriptures -- most bias is a result of our social and cultural location.  I'll come back to that in a minute.

The First Amendment to our Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  I’m no Constitutional lawyer, but to me that says we get to practice our religion as we see fit.  Despite the gay-affirming leanings of the present Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church, much like my own denomination and much of organized Christendom, holds that homosexual behavior is sinful. If that’s your religious belief, you get to practice that.  You have the right to say, “I believe homosexual behavior is sinful and for that reason I decline to allow people who affirm their homosexuality to march in the parade I’ve organized to honor a religious figure.”

I don’t get why all these beer companies are boycotting the parade.  I get it that they may not agree with the parade organizers’ decision, but why is everything in this country always about some form of economic or material coercion?  First off, who gives a flying fig if Heineken and Sam Adams and all the other supporters of Drunk White People Day don’t support it?  It’s not like there’s going to be any less vomit in the subways.  People will still drink, they’ll just find other alcohol.  And people will still support the St. Patrick’s Day Parade; they’ll just be more conservative.

I have a couple of issues with this.  One is the secularization of religious holidays and then the attempt to force those religious holidays into a secular mold.  Stop it.  Just have a Drunk White People’s Day and stop pretending it’s about St. Patrick or Irish or anything else except getting drunk and acting a fool. 

The second issue I have is shifting standards. How come we want to beat up on the St. Patrick’s Day people for sticking to their beliefs? We are not called or compelled to agree with those beliefs, and we are not called or compelled to support or even to acknowledge St. Patrick or his day.  When we have the anniversary of Israel, I don’t see people getting upset or boycotting their parade because they are a nation that systematically discriminates against people of color.  They have their parade, they go rah rah for the IDF, they do what they want and nobody really cares except people with a vested interest in Israel – we all have a vested interest in human rights, but when celebrating Israel, that’s not the focus – Israel’s independence is the focus.  Why is the standard different for St. Patrick’s Day?  Is it because we have effectively secularized the once-religious and are now upset that that which was religious is not completely secular?  

As a female preacher, I’m not surprised by yet another expression of religious bigotry in any church; certainly not in the Roman Catholic church.  Based on their interpretation of Scripture, the Catholic church would prohibit me from proclaiming the Gospel.  They’re allowed to discriminate that way; sadly, they’re also allowed to discriminate against the LGBT community.  I don’t think it’s appropriate to attempt to punish the church or its adherents for their religious beliefs; I think a more productive course of action (I’m Methodist) is to hold those beliefs up to an honest and thorough examination through the lenses of Scripture, Experience, Tradition, and Reason.  The place for that dialogue is not in the midst of a publicized controversy, not at the effect of the latest hot-button social concern, but in sustained, reasoned dialogue.  Human rights are not a lobbying chip or publicity stunt for an alcohol distributor.  How many people honestly think the beer folk didn't do a P/L calculation before deciding to pull out of the parade?

Now for the bit on bias and socio-cultural location.  There are those who will argue that an evolution in the theological position of homosexual behavior as inconsistent with Christian teaching amounts to Christians becoming “too worldly,” and/or that such a position is unBiblical.  That’s a continuation of the train of thought that we Christians shouldn’t mix too much with “the world,” lest we become “contaminated” by it.  It seems to be a riff on the Pauline admonition to not conform to “this world.”  Except that admonition goes on to issue a directive, which is that we are to be TRANSFORMED by the RENEWING of our MINDS.

Maybe it’s me, but I believe that if God still speaks, then maybe I don’t know everything.  (I wrote more about that here).  Maybe I could learn more about some of the things I think I know.  When I say this, people invariably respond "but where are the standards?  Where does it all end?"  It ends and begins with Jesus Christ, who came to show us the Way, who IS the Way and the Truth and the Life.  We need always look to Christ, and not to those attitudes and beliefs we think we hold.  The other night in Church History we were reminded that the lens through which we look at Christianity can cause all kinds of distortions, because history often looks natural.  It’s the boiling frog syndrome -- we are in the midst of it, so it looks and feels natural to us.

And part of what we do as Christian theologians (or church historians) is to disturb that comfort.  We were reminded that 100-150 years ago there was another issue threatening to divide world Christianity, and it wasn’t slavery.  A little more than a century ago, most Christians on the face of the earth, being led by Rome, would have said the notion of an elected government was blasphemous because the Bible calls for kings. Authority comes from on high through kings, not through the people.  The notion that you could ELECT a government was considered blasphemous and unChristian. The Bible does not speak about constitutional government, the Bible says all authority is given by God through kings, who rule (side note:  the Bible also speaks about Covenantal authority which, while usually in the form of a covenant between a more powerful and a less powerful entity, was never a democratic covenant).  But that was the issue 100 or so years ago: "What was the proper state for a Christian to support?"

 No one before the modern period would have said “you will elect your officials.” 

What happened was not necessarily that the church became more worldly, but that people who actually lived through democratic revolutions began to read their Bibles and say “oh, that was an older cultural tradition…”  or some people made it into a language thing, or an eschatological issue “When God comes again He’ll be king, but right now we have elected officials. “ 

The point is that our lens and consequently our perceptions change.  God’s Word doesn’t; God's Way doesn't change, and God's Truth doesn't change.  Our ability to understand and apply them is what changes.  We need to perhaps set aside some of our smug self-assuredness and realize that we can't get to Jesus without going through the lens of history.  Then we need to unpack that history.  Really unpack that history (which is impossible, because history is usually only recorded through the lens of the victors),

With the possible exception of some ultraconservative fringes, no one considers it unchristian to vote, or says that if you vote you are participating in a worldly system that’s antiBiblical.  On the contrary; imagine trying to move people from a constitutional government and re-establish a monarchy!!!  What has happened over the last century and a half has been a realization that history has TRANSFORMED how we read the Bible.  It didn’t transform the truth of the Bible, only our ability to understand it.  Eventually Rome even gave up the teaching that an elected constitutional state is wrong.

The concept of “State” went through a TRANSFORMATION in the modern period.  We are now looking at our understandings of “marriage,” or “family,” or “sexuality” going through similar transformations.  But it’s a TRANSFORMATIVE process, not necessarily a revolutionary one.  However you feel about the transformation, whatever you think about marriage, or family, or religious expression, they all deserve much more than to be a side note on someone’s beer bottle or pawns of the St. Patrick's Day Parade.