Sarah Mullally as the Archbishop of Canterbury

On January 28, 2026, Sarah Mullally became the first woman to occupy the seat of the archbishop of Canterbury, which is the spiritual leader of the Church of England under its governor, the British King (or Queen) and of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church. The King (or Queen) being above the archbishop in the Church of England is in line with Thomas Hobbes’ seventeenth-century theory that the sovereign should be in charge of church and state lest civil war break out (again). Just as a British king is a man and a queen is a woman, so too, as of 2026, the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a man or a woman. This of course set the Anglicans even further off from the Roman Catholic Church, where only men can be priests and bishops, including that of Rome (i.e., the Pope). I contend that the intransigence on this point is due to a logical error involving a category mistake just for added fun.

The Confirmation of Election service out of which Mullaly became the Archbishop of Canterbury “marks a milestone for the Church of England, which ordained its first female priests in 1994 and its first female bishop in 2015.”[1] That was not long before 2026, so progressives in that Church had reason to be astounded as the swiftness of the change. In no small measure, the relative progressive stance of King Charles after his conservative mother, Queen Elizabeth, enabled the first woman to occupy the position in just a decade after the first woman was made a bishop in the Church of England. The tremendous change in the societal role of woman in the West since the early 1970s and the effect of this change on how all of Jesus’s disciples being men in the Gospels has been perceived differently can also be said to be factors in Mulally’s confirmation as the archbishop. Seeing in the contemporary world that women are perfectly capable of leading large organizations and even governments, Christians would be more likely to view the all-male discipleship in the Gospels as reflecting the societal context of Jesus or the writers of the Gospels and thus as not bearing for the contemporary world. Additionally, the point that just because Jesus selects only men in the Gospels doesn’t in itself mean that only men could be disciples could back up the historical-context argument.

Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say that only men can be disciples; were that line in the stories, then adjusting to the modern context would be more difficult from a theological standpoint. One of the problems with the notion of scripture is that everything in it must be taken as truth, so distinguishing, for example, between Paul’s personal opinion on women as leaders and a theological point that women should not be leaders in the Church is unfortunately difficult to do, if not utterly forbidden. That Paul’s stance on female leaders is so obviously his opinion, likely reflective of the world in which he lived, raises the thornier problem of including letters written to churches as part of scripture. Once a document has been declared to be scriptural, separating the wheat from the chaff becomes very difficult if not impossible from a theological standpoint. This is reflected in the opposition to Mullally’s appointment.

“Gafcon, a global organization of conservative Anglicans, says Mullally’s appointment is divisive because a majority of the Anglican Communion still believes only men should be bishops.”[2] In the Gospels, however, Jesus does not say, “Only men should be bishops,” and that he chooses only men is descriptive rather than normative. Hume’s naturalist fallacy holds that you can’t get normativity from a statement that is only descriptive. In other words, you can’t get “ought” out of “is”; something more is needed to say that what is, should be. If, for example, Jesus is to say, “only men should be my disciples” in the Gospels, the readers would expect a justification to also be stated as to why only men should be in the religious role. If there is a theological justification, readers would naturally expect Jesus to state it.

These problems aside, that the Roman Catholic Church had come to recognize Mary Magdalene as the Apostle to the Apostles may undercut that sect’s insistence that only men can (and should) be priests and bishops, especially since the discovery of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene in which she occupies a significant place in Jesus’s ministry. So perhaps more stunning than the swift change in the Church of England in the appointment of Mullally is the utter stubbornness of social-religious conservatives in that Church as well as in the Church of Rome.

Moreover, that matters given scant if any attention in the Gospels (hence excluding Paul’s personal letters to his congregations) have been so easily blown out of proportion many centuries after the Gospels were written, such as homosexuality, gender and the priesthood, and even abortion, demonstrates the vulnerability of the human mind’s self-check mechanism in the domain of religion (and politics). Religion loses its core element of transcendence and is instead so easily filled with personal ideology, in which is none other than self-love as self-idolatry. Rather than having compassion for “thy enemies,” ideological worship of oneself belies Jesus’s message in the Gospels on how to enter the Kingdom of God. Ironically, compassion even to the marginalized is in line with Paul’s dictum not to cause one’s brother (or sister) to stumble.

Lest this be viewed as an unabashedly progressive stance, it should be observed that feminist interpretations of the Gospels’ contents can easily replace theology with (feminist) ideology, such that the religion that results is in the very image of the feminists themselves. The same can be said of remaking Christianity according to queer theory. Such extravagances are just as damaging as reducing Christianity to opposition to abortion and homosexuality even though those two topics are not mentioned scarcely at all directly in the Gospels, and blowing one’s inferences out of proportion such that the religious text is distended beyond recognition is itself a manifestation of self-idolatrous ideology. 

I contend that were Christian sects to actually follow Jesus’s principles, conservative clergy would be oriented to serving the groups despised rather than fighting against them, and feminist and gay laity would serve conservative men in the clergy in respect to their humane needs. The last are first, and many of the first are actually last unless they put themselves after those whom they loath. Therefore, the conservative Anglican clergymen who opposed Mullally’s appointment were actually obliged as Christians to become servants of the female Archbishop of Canterbury, essentially washing her feet rather than castigating her as if being a female bishop rendered her as the Anti-Christ. Compassion for one’s detractors and those whom one dislikes does not imply agreement; rather, it is to begin the chore of expanding human nature to become a bridge of sorts to the Kingdom of God already in this world.

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1. Danica Kirka, “Sarah Mullally Confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury, First Woman to Lead the Church of England,” APnews.com, January 28, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Iran’s Theocracy: An Uneasy Fusion of Religion and Political Economy

As mass protests erupted in Iran during the second week of January, 2026, Iran’s theocracy was on edge. That the protests stemmed from the dire economic conditions facing the people amid staggering inflation, including on basic food staples, rather than from foreign affairs, raises the question of whether religious clergy, including the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are competent in making economic policy. Without the ongoing political pressure that can come from constituents in a representative democracy, or republic, it is no surprise that the protests in Iran quickly became mass riots. In other words, bad economic policy by religious clerics in power in an autocracy can easily result in popular protests abruptly erupting into rioting. The overreaching of functionaries based in the domain of religion into politics (including economic policy), such that the distinctiveness of the two domains is ignored or obfuscated, can be distinguished from the problems that go with autocracy.

The full essay is at "Iran's Theocracy."

Divine Presence in Liturgy and Compassion

The medium of film can treat organizational, societal, and global ethical problems either from one standpoint, which is appropriate if the assignment of blame for immoral conduct is clear (e.g., the Nazis), or by presenting both sides of an argument so to prompt the viewers to think about the ethically complex problem. This second approach is useful if it is not clear whether a character or a given conduct is unethical. When it is obvious which characters or actions are unethical, a film can still stimulate ethical reasoning and judgment by drawing attention to unethical systems as distinct from individuals and their respective conduct in the film. The film, Spotlight (2015), which is a true story, takes the position that Roman Catholic priests who molested and raped children in the Boston Archdiocese in Massachusetts behaved ethically. The dramatic tension in the film is set up when the chief editor of the Boston Globe, Liev Schreiber, tells the paper’s investigative “spotlight” managers that the story will not go to press until the system that enabled Cardinal Law and others to cover up many child-rapist priests by transferring them to other parishes is investigated. “We’re going after the system,” Liev says in keeping the story under wraps until the entire informal system that has enabled the rapists to continue to lead parishes.  

The full essay is at "Spotlight."

The Vatican on the Brink of Bankruptcy: The Missing Piece

During at least its first millennium, Christianity—with the notable exception of Clement of Alexandria—held that greed is tightly coupled to profit-seeking and wealth. Amid the increased trade, and profits, during the Commercial Revolution in the Middle Age in Europe, Aquinas began the trend severing the coupling to allow for greedless moderate profits, and thus wealth. Also in Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church allowed monasteries to have collective wealth (including land) without being subject to having to go through the eye of a needle to enter the Kingdom of God.[1] With it supply of gold and real estate, the Vatican could be considered rich in the twenty-first century. When the exemption for collective wealth justifies those holdings from the stain of greed is one question; here I look at reports in 2024 that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, and why, for at least in one media report, one major reason is curiously left out even though that reason may have been making all the difference, and may even be considered just, whether in terms of divine or human justice.

Pope Francis admitted that the Vatican was in trouble financially. “The current system is unable to guarantee in the medium-term compliance with pension obligations for future generations.”[2] According to the Daily Express in late 2024, the Vatican’s “unprecedented financial crisis as of late . . . was caused by a decline in donations.”[3] In 2023, “the Vatican reported an operating deficit of $87 million,” and a larger deficit was the case in 2024 as of mid-December.[4] The question is why.

The Vatican had been “embroiled in debt after the European recession in 2012 and once again during the [coronavirus] pandemic in 2021.”[5] Also, the price of gold decreased in the early 2020s. Some conservative Catholics blamed Pope Francis’ “progressive” policies as “causing a decrease in donation.”[6] But on conservatives’ hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality, the pope had reaffirmed the Church’s magisterium (i.e., teaching) that both are sins, and opposing climate change was not an unpopular position globally by 2024. As for emphasizing the poor, Jesus in the Gospel narratives does as much, so the pope was by no means an outlier in that respect. In fact, it could be counter-argued that the conservative, theologically excluding policies of the preceding pope, Joe Ratzinger, had caused church attendance, and thus donations, to decline. A church that views itself as more like a hospital than a club of saints will, everything else equal, enjoy larger attendance.

Entirely omitted, however, is the decreased attendance due to the Roman Catholic priests who had been molesting and even raping children for decades without being defrocked—Joe Ratzinger being among the many sordid bishops who reassigned rather than defrocked pedophile priests for the good of the reputation of the universal Church. The lack of accountability within the Vatican, such as in the ceremonial role in the Vatican being given to Cardinal Law by Pope John Paul II, who would be canonized as a saint by the Church he led, after news had surfaced of Archbishop Law having protected nearly 100 pedophile priests in Boston at the expense of 550 victims and with court judgments “that eventually topped $85 million.”[7] Even though the Boston Archdiocese was responsible for paying out the judgments, the hit to the credibility of the Roman Church from not only there being so many pedophile priests (and bishops), but also there being so little accountability—not even a resulting change at the top due to the serial unaccountability from Rome—led to a marked decline in church attendance. Besides this meaning less in donations, surely a significant number of the laity decided not to contribute financially to a religious organization in which employees thereof had been molesting and even raping children over decades. In any democratic state, a government covering up and even harboring so many rapists and their superiors would have faced a no-confidence vote, yet neither Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI was pushed out or resigned for that reason, although it may be that the International Criminal Court made a deal with the latter pope, Joe Ratzinger, that would drop the charges pending against him in exchange for that conservative pope breaking with tradition and resigning, as well as being confined to Vatican City for the rest of his life. Even efforts inside the Vatican to hide this deal would be consistent with the efforts to cover-up cases of pedophile priests and their clerical protectors, such as Archbishop Law of Boston.

In short, no one should be surprised that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, though were the Vatican to sell some of its real-estate and gold the organization’s pensioners might not have had to fear being left high and dry in a worldly rather than heavenly sense. Although such fear would not be just for innocent priests and bishops, the extent of orchestrated covering up by the Vatican since at least 2002 and even the possible culpability psychologically of clerical celibacy as a church tradition from the Middle Age regarding the molestation and raping of children as a result of dysfunctional repression means that in addition to guilty priests and bishops being defrocked, the Roman Catholic Church was facing natural and perhaps even divine justice in being on the brink of bankruptcy. That is a powerful statement—much more so than one blaming the Vatican’s weak financial condition of Pope Francis, as if his policies were progressive, and if they really were so, blameworthy too.  

To be sure, religion does not reduce to morality; Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is more concerned with being worshipped exclusively and thus in covenant, than in sticking to human ethical principles. But it is God, rather than Popes and other bishops (and priests), who has license to trump ethics when needed for theological purposes. When us mere mortals decide unilaterally to trump the dictates of justice by inflicting harm on other people and by enabling the perpetrators who are aggressive especially against the weak, then we can expect that our own suffering is just. Therefore, it is just that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy at the end of 2024.

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1. See my books, Godliness and Greed, and God’s Gold, the latter text reflecting my further thought on the topic, especially on how Christianity can be held off from the increasing susceptibility to greed theologically.
2. Alana Loftus, “Vatican ‘On the Brink of Bankruptcy’ Due to Dramatic Decline in Global Donations Under Pope Francis’ Leadership,” MSN.com, December 17, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Phillip Martin, “The Pope Promises Accountability to Victims Abused by the Church. Where is Cardinal Law?” The World, August 3, 2015.

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

The full essay is at "Living Ritual."

True Confessions

The film True Confessions (1981) centers around a priest who is the heir-apparent and assistant of the cardinal of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California. Even though the priest is a precise bureaucrat and liturgist, I contend that he lapses in what can be said to be the true mission of a Christian priest, and thus in the essence of Christianity. Moreover, the film is deficient in not making this point explicit.

The full essay is at "True Confessions."

The Exorcist Extrapolated: Ministering to the Devil as "Love Thy Enemies."

One of the most iconic films of the horror-film genre, The Exorcist (1973) focuses on the duality of good and evil that the film’s director, William Friedkin, maintained is in a constant struggle in all of us. The dialogue between the two priests performing the exorcism on the one side and the Devil possessing Regan on the other not only reveal the duality, but also the essence of evil itself. Once this essence is grasped, interesting questions can be asked that are distinctly theological, as distinct from modernity’s trope of evil portrayed in terms of, and even reduced to, supernatural movements of physical objects. The decadent materialist version of the theological domain stems from modernity’s bias in favor of materialism and empiricism. In other words, highlighting supernatural physics as being foremost in representing the religious realm is how secularity sidelines religion, rather than how religion itself is. The bias of modern society is very clear in the film as the “professionals” go through alternative explanations first from the field of medicine, privileging the somatic (physical) and then the psychological domains of medicine. In other words, the narrative establishes (or reflects) a hierarchy of three qualitatively different levels of descending validity: the somatic is primary, and only then the psychological, and, if the first two do not furnish an explanation, then, and only then, are we to turn to the theological as metaphysically (i.e., supernaturally) real primarily shown by physical objects defying the laws of physics. Science, rather than religion, is thus still in the driver’s seat. The bias in favor of materialism is in the assumption that only after feasible hypotheses from modern medicine are nullified can theological explanations be considered (as credible). In this way, the film reflects the hegemony of materialism that has taken hold since the Enlightenment, and the relegation of the theological as “magical” supernaturalism, as in a bed levitating of objects flying around Regan’s bedroom. The essence of evil is instead interior. If religion is a matter of the heart, then how could evil be otherwise?

The full essay is at "The Exorcist."

Behind the Prejudice Against Educated Clergy

Among Quakers (many congregations of which refuse to record ministers), some evangelical congregations, and other faiths such as Baha'i (which does not have a clergy), there seems to be an underlying anti-intellectual bias regarding ministers educated in theology and ministry. I think the prejudice is out of anger, whose root is the errant assumption that knowledge, even in faith seeking understanding, causes the educated person to think he or she is better than others. Relatedly, expertise is assumed, falsely again, to bring with it a more general elitism.These flawed assumptions give rise to the prejudice that being educated in theology and ministry are not of much value, as being uneducated or self-educated in the field are actually preferred qualities in cases in which ministers are used (e.g., many evangelical congregations). All this is a slap on the face to those of faith who have spent years of their lives in seminary or university, and such passive aggression goes against Jesus's message on how to treat others.

No one would suggest that the expertise of a physician from study at university is something to be spurned. No one would say that a lay healer has as much medical knowledge, at least when the person himself is ill, and yet once some people turn to the religious domain, expertise is out, even fair game for insults, in favor of the false notion of equality that affirms that it is at odds with the inequalities in expertise. I'm so used to deferring to the expertise of others whose knowledge I don't have that the refusal seems foreign to me. I do not of course deny that ministerial gifts can be outside the "faith seeking understanding" that takes place in a seminary or university. So I do not suffer from clerical exclusivity, but it is not true that the only alternative is throwing the rascals out, for their knowledge goes with them. A good cleric values his or her theological knowledge/education without being an elitist (yet while fully admitting that not everyone has such an education).

What I shake my head at in utter astonishment is how some Quakers, in refusing to record ministers even to Quakers who have studied for ministry, thereby limit the theological expertise available to Quakers. The assumption in Baha'iism is that every member is an expert; this assumption, however, does not follow from "the priesthood of all believers." Evangelical Christian congregations that prefer uneducated applicants (even those who can speak well) lose the benefits that would come from having educated ministers who can preach well.

People who have studied for years to be a minister should go elsewhere, where people would not only stand to benefit from their theological and ministerial knowledge, but would appreciate rather than feel threatened by the knowledge. Of course we are all the same relative to God, but this does not mean that we don't have different specialized knowledge areas and that some people have more knowledge than others within a field. In fact, to prefer uneducated clergy as a general preference risks a congregation being held captive by ignorance that cannot be wrong. The assumption that stifling accountability comes only from educated clergy is severely faulty; in fact, to the extent that seminarians and divinity students are taught negative theology, which holds that God is in essence unknowable, more not less humility is likely in speaking of God as well as in guiding people.

To say we all have the same expertise demands psychological rather than religious explanation, and to say that knowledge learned from scholars is not of value (in any field, even in religion) reflects a very prejudiced attitude that has all the disrespect and arrogance that is presumed to be in educated people. To be sure, theological and parish ministry knowledge is not the only beneficial ingredient; it does not guarantee good pastoral care even though the schooling includes this area too. To be more educated in religion does not mean that a person has a more compassionate heart. So, again, I am not claiming that only people educated in theology and ministry should be ministers. Rather, I am arguing that the preference, borne out of prejudice and resentment, for uneducated (or self-educated) clergy, all else equal, is unwise.

Pope Benedict and Pope Francis: Power and Papacy

Power is seductive, even within religious organizations. It is like a drug in that denial can accompany an instinctual urge for immediate power even at the expense of the person’s own credibility. Put another way, self-discipline can easily succumb to the urge for power, even if the person has previously foreswore acting on that urge. Warped discernment between minor and major issues can also occur from the gravity of the instinctual urge. For example, a cleric may choose to break his or her decision to disavow acting on the urge in part because he or she incorrectly views the issue at hand to be a major one, when in fact it is not, at least as far as the religion is concerned. As in the case of a drug, perception, judgment and cognition may be impaired, or warped, by the urge itself. The Roman Catholic ex-Pope Joe Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is a case in point.

When Pope Benedict resigned in 2013, “some experts believed he should go back to being simply ‘Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,” his previous title and given name, to emphasize that he no longer held any papal authority and to reduce the chance he might be seen as a rival point of reference to his successor.”[1] For his part, Ratzinger vowed to remain “hidden from the world.”[2] This decision was particularly important because just the fact that he continued to wear papal attire could lead people to view him as having such authority. In fact, bearing the likeness of a pope could have tempted him to leverage his appearance in order to challenge the current pope, presumably on a controversy central to the Roman Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, the former pope was not able to keep himself hidden from the world. In From the Depths of Our Hearts, published in 2020, he “argues in favor of the centuries-old tradition of celibacy within the church.”[3] In the introduction, he wrote, “We can say: ‘Silere non possum! I cannot remain silent!”[4] He could not remain silent, hidden from the world, on the matter of a tradition. His change of heart on remaining silent would have been more justifiable had a major theological doctrine, such as the divinity of Christ, been the controversy, yet he inveighed on a tradition, which a pope could change.

Indeed, the former pope broke his silence on a matter then before the current pope, challenging Francis’s statement that sometimes other factors had to be considered.  In this case, the exception had to do with whether to relax the celibacy rule pertaining only to the Amazon region in South America and only to whether elderly men could be ordained to relieve the shortage of priests. No priest would be getting married. So the controversy was actually quite minor because it was not only on a tradition, but even more damning, on a regional exception that still would not allow priests to get married (the elderly men in the Amazon being already married).

In short, the former pope chose to challenge the sitting pope on an exception to a tradition. Yet Ratzinger perceived the matter to be very important indeed. He wrote that he believed that celibacy carries “great significance” and is “truly essential.”[5] In fact, “(t)he call to follow Jesus is not possible without this sign of freedom and of renunciation of all commitments,” he wrote.[6] With its requirements, celibacy must penetrate “all of the attitudes of existence.”[7] Leaving the matter of whether it is or is not possible to follow a Christian religious calling without being celibate aside, I submit that the former pope overreacted to Pope Francis’s assertion that sometimes other factors should be considered as to whether specific exceptions should be made. The former pope chose to break his silence in order to use his papal influence to challenge the sitting pope on a minor matter.

Even if celibacy is as important to the Church as Ratzinger asserted, challenging the current pope when the latter agrees with the former pope on the principle represents a misjudgment in which, I contend, the urge for power was salient. Ratzinger felt an irresistible urge to speak up, violating his own terms of being hidden from the world, on an exception to a general rule. By implication, he compromised not only his own credibility, but also the viability of the office of an emeritus pope. I submit that whatever influence he achieved on whether an exception should be made to the celibacy rule was not worth the costs to not only him, but also his Church as unified rather than divided.

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1. Amy Woodyatt, Vasco Cotovio, and Hada Messia, “Ex-Pope Benedict Undercuts Francis on Priests and Celibacy,” CNN.com, January 13, 2020. (accessed same day)

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

Boy Erased

The film, Boy Erased (2018), is a drama that deals in a serious  way with the question of whether homosexuality is a choice, and thus whether conversion therapy is effective or an ideological ruse under the subterfuge of psychology and religion. Directed and adapted to the screen by Joel Edgerton, he could have dived deeper in writing the screenplay by making explicit the contending assumptions and ideas. Surprisingly, nowhere in the film do any of the biblically-oriented religionists quote the applicable verses in the Old Testament or in Paul's letters, or engage in a theological debate. The film could have gone further intellectually than the relatively superficial emphasis on the dramatic narrative. 

The full essay is at "Boy Erased."

Behind the Prejudice Against Educated Clergy

Among Quakers (many congregations of which refuse to record ministers), some evangelical congregations, and other faiths such as Baha'i (which does not have a clergy), there seems to be an underlying anti-intellectual bias regarding ministers educated in theology and ministry. I think the prejudice is out of anger, whose root is the errant assumption that knowledge, even in faith seeking understanding, causes the educated person to think he or she is better than others. Relatedly, expertise is assumed, falsely again, to bring with it a more general elitism.These flawed assumptions give rise to the prejudice that being educated in theology and ministry are not of much value, as being uneducated or self-educated in the field are actually preferred qualities in cases in which ministers are used (e.g., many evangelical congregations). All this is a slap on the face to those of faith who have spent years of their lives in seminary or university, and such passive aggression goes against Jesus's message on how to treat others.

The full essay is at "Prejudice against Educated Clergy

Transcending the United Methodist Vote to Retain Prohibitions on Gay Clergy and Weddings

Delegates meeting at a special session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted on February 26, 2019 to retain the denomination’s ban on gay clergy and same-sex weddings. The alternative plan would have permitted individual congregations to decide for themselves. Clearly, Methodism is not Congregationalism.  The debate was heated on both sides.[1] Transcending them, we may ask whether the heat was overblown. Pope Francis had urged his fellow Roman Catholic bishops and other clergy not to focus so much on that issue and abortion. That urging was itself controversial, which in itself can be read as confirmation that the two issues were getting too much attention and energy. Unlike the case of the Pope’s urging, the vote at the Methodists’ General Conference threatened to split that Church. Can this too be taken as an indication that the emphasis on the issue was disproportionate to its religious importance?

Just how important is homosexuality as a religious issue in Christianity? Jesus does not speak of it in the Gospels, so the issue must boil down to God’s referring to two men lying together as an abomination, which means “disliked by God.” Relatively small things are also disliked by God, including eating things that crawl on the bottom of the sea. So rather displeasing to God does not necessarily translate into a huge sin. How important is the displeasing itself, whether about something that we now take as arbitrary or important? In other words, is it really bad to do something that is displeasing to God. If a person does something that is displeasing to you, that is hardly worse than something that you hate or even detest. Even so, doing a displeasing thing is not a good thing, especially as concerns God, which is to be glorified rather than annoyed. This is perhaps what the issue hinges on in Judaism as well as Christianity, only the latter has the additional question of how much attention ought to be paid to the Old Testament prohibitions. That the issue of homosexuality, like that of abortion, easily gets heated makes it more difficult to get through these questions.

At root, the Methodist delegates disagreed on the importance of the abominations in Leviticus for Christians as well as the importance of “displeasing to God” in itself. Within the disagreement could also have included how much, if at all, to weigh the cultural imprint of the ancient Hebrews in the Biblical naming of specific dislikes of God. Perhaps these questions should have been debated first, so the delegates could have grasped how much basic disagreement existed. The question of whether differences on them are sufficiently important as to justify ecclesiastical separation could have debated too. To be sure, these questions are not easy, and it could be that the sheer distance between answers could justify separation. Religious interpretation by nature allows for a lot of daylight between individual or group interpretations, and people to whom religion is important are likely to find themselves investing a lot of emotional energy into that daylight.

Hence, in the history of a given religion, whether Buddhism, Judaism, or Christianity, splits and splits of the splits have been the norm. Perhaps this is natural, but it also possible that the religious person tends to go over-board in failing to restrict his or her emotions and accepting the fact that a religious institution is not going to perfectly align with any individual therein.  A loss of perspective, including emotional and cognitive, can easily go with homo religiosis—our species when it gets religious. In other words, the real problem may lie with homo sapiens (i.e., our species). The problem is that the loss of perspective flies in the face of the core religious nature of transcendence. As St. Denis of the sixth century wrote, transcendence involves going beyond the limits of human perception and cognition (and sensibility, or emotion). So if these are too intense, we can assume too little attention is being payed to valuing and experiencing transcendence, which if I am correct is the basis and distinguishing mark of religion as a unique phenomenon or domain. In theory at least, if religious transcendence is regarded as foremost, less emotional investment would go into even the basic questions discussed above. If Joseph Campbell was correct, even the masks of eternity must be transcended so as not to obstruct a person’s religious experience, whose referent-point lies inherently beyond perception, cognition, and sensibility.

For more on transcending the ethical in religion, see Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical, available at Amazon. 

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1. Bill Chappell, “United Methodist Church Votes to Keep Bans on Same-Sex Weddings, LGBTQ Clergy,” NPR, February 26, 2019.

The Ministerial Exception: A Religious Right to Discriminate

In early 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized, for the first time ever, a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference. In his written opinion, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “The Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] prevents the government from appointing ministers, and the Free Exercise Clause prevents it from interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own.” The wrench in the works here concerns the matter of delimiting the exception, given the inflation in what constitutes “ministerial” in terms of tasks.

As for what positions in a religious organization constitute ministers, the court was “reluctant to adopt a rigid formula.” In his concurrent opinion, Justice Thomas highlights the inherent difficulty that the government would face in delimiting the ministerial exception by trying to define the ministerial role. “The question whether an employee is a minister is itself religious in nature, and the answer will vary widely,” he wrote. “Judicial attempts to fashion a civil definition of ‘minister’ through a bright-line test or multifactor analysis risk disadvantaging those religious groups whose beliefs, practices and membership are outside of the ‘mainstream’ or unpalatable to some.” In other words, the state, just in determining what constitutes a minister, violates the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses in entering the realm of institutional religion.

For all the problems that a judicial or governmental definition of “minister” would entail both constitutionally and for the religious organizations, there is also the risk that the latter could take advantage of the leeway and define virtually all of their jobs as ministerial. Already as of the date of the court’s decision, Christian churches had been busy expanding “ministerial” to include chores like weeding garden areas, preparing food, and even serving as security to protect church property. In other words, church officials had discovered that attaching “minister” to a task can attract potential volunteers for what are actually pretty mundane tasks. I would not be surprised to find a “taking out the trash” ministry at some church—praying, perhaps, over the decaying food for its prompt removal.

I see the same mentality behind the tendency of people to consider themselves to be professionals. Among the most notorious are the self-described experts in leadership who refer to themselves (and each other) as “coaches.” In other words, I suspect that “minister” serves a similar marketing purpose as “coach.” As a result, religious organizations may get away with being able to discriminate in filling (or replacing) virtually any of their jobs, even those of an office manager and accounting clerk.

Sensing the possibility that Roberts’ opinion could be exploited, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, argues in a concurrent opinion that the exception “should apply to any ‘employee’ who leads a religious organization, conducts worship services or important religious ceremonies or rituals, or serves as a messenger or teacher of its faith.” Weeding a garden or protecting the property does not involve being a messenger of a religious institution’s particular faith. Even in parochial schools, the court’s decision “appears to encompass, for instance, at least those teachers in religious schools with formal religious training who are charged with instructing students about religious matters,” according to the New York Times. Even so, I suspect that religious organizations will continue to expand “ministerial” tasks for marketing purposes yet suddenly taking the designations seriously when discrimination needs a defense.

Accordingly, I foresee the need for a few more court decisions to test the limits, hopefully without the courts getting too involved in what can be a religious (or marketing) question. Perhaps the underlying, utter unresolvable problem is that while religious officials and administrators are involved in a transcendent-based enterprise governing by divine law, those people are also human, all too human, and thus necessarily subject to civil law. Therefore, the matter of delimiting the ministerial exception is not as clear as Thomas suggests. The court’s decision is therefore likely not the end of the story.

Source:

Adam Liptak, “Religious Groups Given ‘Exception’ to Work Bias Law,” The New York Times, January 12, 2012.