Turning a Church into an Ideological Billboard

By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.

A Unitarian-Universalist "Church" wherein a few causes of political activism take pride of place, replacing religious faith and choking off tolerance. 

Perhaps it is only natural to prefer that other people line up with one’s own beliefs, whether religious or political/ideological. The presumptions of inerrancy and completeness, or truth, typically undergird this self-centered perspective. It is easy to conflate one’s own ideological stance on partisan “social issues,” such as abortion, gay marriage, and even stem-cell research, with religious truth even though the latter transcends human ideology. In other words, whereas truth has the property of wholeness, ideological positions are partial, hence partisan politically. Conflating the two, a congregation can even usurp its distinctly religious message by focusing on political issues of the so-called American “culture wars.” Beyond taking up space in sermons, ideological positions can become totalitarian, even in turning a church building into a billboard advertising the partisan stance on a privileged social issue.

A Methodist church smothered in ideological political causes that punctuate even the liturgy and constrain church membership. The photos below are of the same church.

In Christian churches, the emphasis on partisan stances can bring with it a certain intolerance, and even hostility if resentment of an opposing partisan position is fueling the importance being placed on the favored stance. Sometimes the hostility can be quite simple, as the partisans often are so fine-tuned to picking up on subtle cues on whether another person is in the same ideological camp. Even the words a person uses can be picked up by others who are bent on judging for themselves. By 2023, the politically-correct camp had been dubbed “woke,” and an “anti-woke” opposition had become more vocal in some American cultures. This in turn may have intensified efforts by “woke” congregations to go so far as to turn their church buildings into billboards.

In visiting one church, of the Methodist sect (or denomination) of Christianity, that had so many gay flags in the social hall that their sheer number seemed to imply an ideological vehemence: You had better agree with us! The excessiveness itself sent a message. The rainbow colors were literally wrapped around stone pillars on the exterior of the building, and during June several gay flags were flying on the church grounds. Again, the excessiveness itself sent a message, but at this level the message was as much psychological as it was ideological and partisan. The liturgy was not exempt, as the prospect of building up to a religious experience was broken up by commercials. One announced, “We are all in favor of reparations” going to a church of an unmentioned denomination whose members were Black Americans. How does the speaker know that everyone in the sanctuary agreed on that controversial, political issue? I was not surprised that most of the seats were empty. This is the true religious cost, which economists would call an opportunity cost: the benefit foregone by making a choice.

The choice to privilege partisan political issues comes at a cost in religious terms. People who might otherwise visit or even regularly attend a church whose liturgy, rooms, and building are placed in the service of particular political stances on “social issues” will bypass the church if those stances are not ideologically palatable, especially if the sense is that they are being “shoved down their throats.”

Presumably a faith message is important at Christian churches, and it does not reach those people who happen to hold the contrary partisan stance on a privileged social issue. Congregations that succumb to the hegemony (i.e., dominance) of partisan political issues unwittingly self-weaken faith-outreach. To believe that people must have the “correct” partisan stance on ideological issues to be saved by Jesus Christ is to use an exogenous litmus test, or “gate,” to arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) limit the saving of souls because in the Gospels Jesus does not specify that people must have certain ideological stances to be saved. In fact, Jesus distances himself from the zealots, who incorrectly interpret Jesus’ version of the Kingdom of God as coming forth externally, through conflict, rather than in individual transformations of the heart.

Because an orientation to contentious ideological issues tends to involve hostility towards people who disagree, and even anger simply because some people do disagree, a congregation oriented to partisan positions may not be conducive to the spread of the Kingdom of God. At most, the kindness or compassion of a partisan is usually limited to ideological compatriots, whereas Jesus preaches that kindness, and even love, be extended to a person’s detractors and even enemies. This is the true cost when a Christian congregation becomes unduly and overwhelmingly partisan, whether on the “right” or “left” of the ideological political spectrum. Partisan “love” is partial, whereas neighbor love is wholistic, as is truth itself.

Sure enough, after a month of being in the choir of a very ideological Methodist church, I ceased my association with that church. I had found that there were too many bosses in that choir, one of which apparently didn’t like me, for he said before we were to sing on a Palm Sunday, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I countered that perhaps someone should tell me that I don’t talk enough when something needs to be said. He then ordered me to “line up” even though the choir was not yet lining up at the back of the sanctuary. That that member of the choir literally had keys to the building—but not to the Kingdom!—meant that I would be facing an uphill battle, and are Christian churches really the place for battles anyway? So I kicked the “dirt off my sandals,” upzipped my robe, and went grocery shopping rather than sang that Sunday. I had previously picked up on hostility from some other members, including two in the choir who had scolded me for not standing on a certain step during a practice. “You stand there!” one pointed. It was barely a step. That congregation was not fertile ground for a mustard seed to take root—too much stone draped in ideological flags.

At least for the Methodists the claim can be made that matters of faith can be distinguished from a social ideology, so there is hope that the adoption of a transcendent reference point could be used from which to view the dominant ideology and the related political activism as partial, and even as human, all too human. The litmus test for inclusion could therefore be based in religious faith rather than on a position on a “social issue.” One of the benefits of a faith-perspective is that human artifacts cannot be placed that the center of our existence. Humility can thus replace arrogance. This is not possible where the transcendent nature of distinctly religious faith has been vacated and replaced with the ideological content of political activism.

The Unitarian Universalist “religion” accomplished such a transition in the twentieth century. Originally, Unitarianism, as preached by Emerson, was a rejection of the Christian Trinity from within that religion. By 1980, humanism had become the dominant strain in Unitarian-Universalist societies. My parents were such humanists, and my limited exposure to a UU congregation as a teenager left me with the perplexing question of how a religious organization could survive without being religious. My mother later told me that I used to protest the hypocrisy as a young teenager. Later in life, when visiting UU congregations, I found that the rejection of religion had taken hold, and in its place, the human ideology of political correctness (or “woke”) had pride of place. One UU minister insisted that religious Unitarianism was in vogue. Unfortunately, he mistook the term religious. For example, he insisted that egalitarian economic systems are sacred. He quickly closed himself off from being open-minded when I suggested that to regard a human construction as sacred is self-idolatrous. This is the message of Moses when in returning from the mount he discovers the worship of a golden calf. So too, a person who “knows” that one’s political ideology on social issues is nothing short of truth is essentially engaging in self-worship. The evisceration of a transcendent dimension cuts off a means by which such a person can be humble with respect to one’s own ideology and thus open to the possibility that a person can be wrong, and is at most partial and fallible. In succumbing to temptation, the UU organization closed down a place for Christians who believe in Jesus’ preaching yet do not accept that he is the Son of God.

By 2023, much had been written about the ideological polarization of the American people. That divide had reached congregations on the “right” and “left,” just as segregation had taken hold. Religious faith is not reduceable to an ideological position; rather, the former transcends the latter. To the extent that ideological advocacy is salient in religious congregations, especially spread across their respective buildings, a dearth of religious faith can be assumed. In the most extreme cases, the ideological positions masquerade as the proper content of religious faith. The “faithful” become like gods on Earth, and the societal bipolarity becomes even more difficult to smooth over in reconciliation. 

Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity

Taylor Swift, an American singer and cultural icon in 2023, spoke “out against anti-queer legislation” during a concert in early June. “We can’t talk about Pride Month without talking about pain. There have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put [gay people] at risk. It’s painful for everyone. Every ally. Every loved one . . . ,” she said.[1] So much hurt. The level of intensity on both sides of the moral, political, and religious issue motivated me to go to a parade to see for myself. When I arrived at the one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the morning, I thought the issue was mostly political; by the time the parade began, religion had clearly trumped the political. A small but vocal group of evangelical Christians and a larger group of young women wearing and carrying gay flags (in part to hide the Christians) were shouting at each other in utter futility of noise. What if people would use religion to dissolve the religious and political anger and even tension instead of stoking them? I contend that both sides missed an opportunity for interpersonal peace that could have grown like a mustard seed to take hold among combatants in a variety of contentious issues in the world.

The tension in the "culture wars" had been building in the United States and by 2023 was palpable. The U.S. Supreme Court’s returning the matter of abortion to the States had given Republican legislators in conservative states the confidence to pass anti-gay laws. In early March, 2023, for example, the Tennessee legislature passed and the governor signed a law prohibiting “male or female impersonators” from performing on public property or where the performances can be seen by children.[2] They are too impressionable, so the assumption went, to see men wearing dresses. One concern voiced by opponents of the law was that the content of drag shows, in which gay men (typically) dress as women and sing and tell jokes as performers, was being labeled as sexual. This raises the question of whether men wearing dresses is sexual in nature. A prepubescent child would perhaps view the dresses as costumes rather than conveying anything sexual, for we adults are the ones so preoccupied with sex. Transsexuals were afraid that police might “enforce the law against transgender people walking around in public, falsely painting them as ‘male or female impersonators.’”[3] It was not this concern that caused a federal judge to temporarily put the Tennessee law on hold, however, or that drag shows are not necessarily sexual, but, rather, that the legal language, locations viewable by children, is too vague and broad, especially given the contrasting free-speech interest of the drag-show performers. Doubtless drag performers in Tennessee felt misunderstood, hurt, frightened, and even dirty.

Also hurt was a fifth-grade teacher in Florida who was fired after being accused of promoting homosexuality because the Disney film she showed her class has a gay character. That a gay character is in a film does not in itself mean that the film promotes homosexuality or constitutes the instruction of certain gay topics, which Florida law banned.[4] The teacher felt unfairly treated, not only because the film does not promote homosexuality, but also because she had received signed permission slips from a parent of each student in the class. Furthermore, Florida's government had not instituted a process by which films could be assessed. Nonetheless, the new teacher was fired. 

Meanwhile, some Roman Catholics, even priests, were castigating the gay charity group, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, as anti-Catholic and even Satanic. That the gay men who were in the charity group had been wearing the robes, or habits, of nuns is understandably prime facie insulting to Catholics. Unfortunately, the human, all too human urge to lash out without getting more information blocked the reason why the gay sisters were wearing the nun’s habit. Wearing the habits was actually a compliment. After the parade, one of the local leaders of the gay Sisters told me that the use of the nun’s attire was not to humiliate the Church, but, rather, because, she told me, “We do a nun’s work. We take care of sick people and feed the hungry. We value that.” It is a stamp of approval of what nuns do! The gay Sisters not only valued what Catholic nuns do in charity, but also actually did what nuns do. "We do what they do, so we wear their habit," the leader told me. The gay sisters were not anti-Christian even though they believed that criticism of the Church was warranted. Hypocrisy is fair game to be called out, such as in priests raping children and bishops, including Joe Ratzinger before he was a pope, covering up the crimes to protect the universal Church, and in hating one’s enemy (e.g., gays) instead of showing kindness and compassion as Jesus in the New Testament would. He is compassionate to a prostitute even though he views her job as a sin. He keeps her from being stoned, so would he not protect the gays from shouting evangelical Christians at a gay parade. Just as he goes to the home of a tax collector, he might even go to a gay parade even as his disciples shake their heads in utter disbelief. Would not Jesus volunteer to help the gay Sisters in caring for others, again at the consternation of his disciples? 

For their part, from a Christian point of view, the gay sisters could have gone "the extra mile" in not only doing a nun's work, but also caring for Catholic nuns, such in nursing homes. Catholic nuns, brothers, and priests for their part could have shown up at the charity events of the gay sisters to help them and do charitable work. To be sure, volunteering to work at charities only goes so far from a Christian perspective if enemies are hated and attacked rather than loved. For unless you have love (i.e., the root of charity is caritas, or sublimated love raised high), your faith is for naught, so writes Paul, and love of enemy, such as by helping and otherwise serving one’s enemy (and detractors as well as people one doesn’t like) is the highest manifestation of love, and the most difficult. For anyone naturally finds it easy to love one’s friends and thus volunteer to help them.

Were Catholic monastics and clergy willing to help the gay sisters—to be sure, without necessarily accepting the sisters’ use of the nun’s uniform—and the gay sisters willing to care for elderly nuns and volunteer at Catholic charities, the conflict would be transcended and both ends of the dispute might be able to sense God’s presence. This is none other than the Kingdom of God as described by Jesus in the Gospels. It is the goal, and it is open to be had now rather than only after death. It is clear that both parties to a dispute are not in God's presence when both sides felt insulted and hurt, especially when they are shouting at each other at the onset of a gay Pride parade. 

I did not participate in such a parade in 2023 because I agree with everything in the "gay agenda" and culture, but, rather, because gays in the U.S. felt attacked by the words and legislative deeds of conservatives in some of the American governments. Transsexuals and drag queens in particular seemed to feel hunted, and thus no longer welcome in some of the American States. 

To be sure, I have some reservations about the transexual ideological agenda, such as the use of the plural pronoun they for a singular antecedent, and the banishment of the words man and woman from public discourse. Flashes of anger meant to punish "infractions" and impose an ideological agenda are inappropriate and reflect a certain arrogance, for no human being has a monopoly on truth and ideology of whatever stripe falls short. The extreme lack of tolerance for ideological disagreement, as reflected in the flashes of anger reflect the wholesale dismissal of an ideological position that is not in lock-step with the political correctness, which goes well beyond the transexual agenda. 

The hateful claims that transsexuals are freaks of nature or even Satanic are in my view not justified by the transsexual ideological agenda with respect to language. Moreover, the claims detract from legitimate concerns that have not been given deserved attention. For example, I contend that a conflict of interest exists in cases in which the brain, or mind, is tasked with deciding whether that itself or the person's body expresses the person's authentic gender (i.e., whether the person is a man or a woman). This qualm is not limited to cases in which the person is mentally ill. The human mind is not unbiased with respect to itself. The assumption that the mind cannot be wrong in general or more specifically about its own thinking is false. Not even logic is objective, as certain assumptions are built-in. The assumption of objectivity or infallibility is, moreover, impious because only God is all-knowing (omniscent) and infallible. The assumption of human ideological infallibility is particularly egregious. The human mind is hardly an impartial decider between itself and the body, especially in a culture in which a mind-body dualism is held to be possible and perhaps even laudable. I've raised the point of the mind's conflict of interest with some transsexuals, who either dismiss the point or were stumped. These reactions give me reason to suspect that the conflict of interest has been exploited in a significant number of cases. Even so, I defend the freedom of transsexuals to express themselves and as they say, be the persons they are. To be sure, even the assumption that one's gender captures who one is may be reductionistic, if indeed several of one's roles go into one's identity. By the way, the singular pronoun one is gender neutral, and, if used, can obviate the problem of reduced linguistic clarity that comes with using a plural pronoun for both plural and singular nouns. 

I suspect that part of the struggle for transexuals is that societal notions of masculinity and femininity at least in America are too narrow. A man may assume that he is really a woman in part because some of his attributes fall outside of what society tells us are masculine. A young man with long straight hair might assume that he is feminine and thus not really a man in part because long hair is traditionally associated with women, or a man with a high-pitch voice might think that he is really a woman. Once while visiting a university, I said to such a man that the societal norms of masculinity are too narrow. “If that is your natural voice, and you have male reproductive organs, then that voice is masculine.” He smiled and I could see relieve fall over his face and down his long hair. Male lions, after all, have manes. Short hair may in fact emasculate a man (and who wants to see a person's skull).

In spite of my reservations, which I do not inflict on binary and transsexual people as they are insecure enough in American society, I have befriended some transsexuals in order to expressly convey empathy. I have found that they crave or at least greatly appreciate emotional support, as they have come to feel so hated and afraid due to the verbal attacks and legislation of conservatives. 

So on the afternoon of Easter Sunday in 2023, I stopped in at a gay bar to say hello to a transexual bartender whom I had met at a grocery store. Upon seeing me, she was so happy she gave me a hug. This told me that emotional acceptance was very much needed. It was not an easy visit for me, as young gay guys there made a point of giving me more than a cold shoulder because I was old. As I was leaving, one of them even said to his friends, "Oh good, he's leaving" so I would hear it. 

Again, while waiting to take my place in the gay parade’s line-up a few months later, I seized upon the spontaneous opportunity to minister to a transsexual, whose evangelical Christian parents had forbid him to take estrogen (i.e., the female hormone) and required him to undergo years of conversion therapy wherein he had been instructed to repress his gay instinctual impulses. He told me he felt isolated generally, and even fearful that he might be physically attacked attacked while walking in the parade. My opinion on transsexuality was not relevant; compassion does not hinge on ideological agreement. The professor in me did point out, however, that "they" is not a singular pronoun, and he went after that like a dog to a bone. At least our academic discussion got his mind off his fear. As we were talking, however, a small group of evangelical Christians walked through, announcing that everyone there was a slut and would go to hell. The clear message was that gay people are worthless. It did not take long for some of the gay young adults to reach a boiling point and start shouting at the so-called “Christians,” who fecklessly departed to across a street to take up their position. It did not take long for gay women especially to take their position directly in front of the "Christians." The battleline was set, and the lone policeman became visibly nervous and called for backup.

Shouting insults at one’s enemies is not loving them as if for their own good; such a rationale is extremely arrogant, and even self-idolatrous. Without love, especially where it is least convenient, faith is for naught. The evangelical Christians surely presumed that they were saved even as they hurled insults into the crowd rather than being kind and compassionate—yet without agreeing with the gay ideology or approving of gay sex. Perhaps people who consider themselves to be Christians hesitate to be kind and compassionate to adversaries in part out of fear that agreement would be assumed. Of course it is difficult to set the anger aside.

Attending to human needs even and especially of detractors or enemies can help a society transcend seemingly intractable conflicts of contending values. Attending to another person’s physiological needs, as well as the emotional needs from being emotionally hurt or afraid, can do wonders in relegating, or transcending, even very heated conflicts. Attending to pain-caused represents such a different orientation from the typical castigating of an enemy that a transformation of heart capable of moving such a mountain would be meteoric in its importance and power. 

At the location where the gay parade was set up, the shouting match between the “Christians” and the gay people could not be missed. I tried to model the silence that perhaps the divine is in shouting matches between groups contending for truth. I stood on stretch of raised cement and held the gay flag high while I silently faced the aggressors (i.e., the “Christians). Had bottles of water been for sale nearby, I would have purchased some and used one hand to give them to the “Christians” while holding a gay flag with the other hand. Rather than waving the flag to provoke anger, I would have sought quite humbly to attend to the thirst needs of the “Christians,” who were undoubtedly thirsty after having yelled so much on a hot day. I would have been modeling this to the gay women as much as being compassionate to people with whom I disagree ideologically.

I hope I would have said to the young gay women that only by helping one’s enemy can one get past the sting of the harsh words and thus the pain and anger. “Don’t you get tired of holding onto all that anger?” Jesus says in the film, Mary Magdalene to a woman angered by the physical abuse that women endured from their respective husbands. In that movie, Mary Magdalene not only is the first witness to the resurrected Jesus, but also understands that the Kingdom of God is a matter of transformed hearts rather than a military victory, a more just political or economic system, or something that will not happen until the end of time. Gandhi, who was very much influenced by Jesus’ preaching and serving others in the New Testament, grasped the nature of the transformation.

In the film Gandhi, a Hindu man whose son had been killed by a Muslim man in the religious conflict just prior to the independence of India killed a Muslim boy. There is a way out of hell, Gandhi tells the distraught man: Pick a Muslim boy whose parents have been killed in the conflict and raise him—only raise him to be a Muslim. This does not mean that the man must embrace or agree with Islam; rather, Gandhi’s message is that only by helping people deemed the enemy can a person be free from the hell that one has constructed around oneself by hating one’s enemy.

Without changing their interpretations of the Bible, the “Christians” at the parade could have helped the gays and their allies to get properly situated as to where to stand in the line-up. The reactions of at least some of the gay people being helped would probably have been a muted or stunned bewilderment, yet not to preclude a subtle willingness to be helped by people having a very different opinion on homosexuality. If the gays would have been too intolerant or proud to accept the help, the fault would have been in themselves rather than the Christians. Similarly, some of the “Christians” would likely have shown muted signs of appreciation for receiving cool water from a man, whom they would presume to be gay, holding a gay flag.

In shouting that gay people are worthless rather than helping them on a human level, the “Christians” missed an opportunity to preach to the gays. Destructive and short-sighted values and behaviors, rather than being gay per se, are rarely seen outside of the gay "community," which itself may be more of a wish than a fact given the salience of individualistic values that exclude that of other-concern. I’ve heard enough from gay men on how they treat each other and the bases on which they value each other to know that they really need some sermons on love thy neighbor as oneself. Obviously this does not apply to every homosexual, but my claim is significant enough that it characterizes the American gay culture (and perhaps those cultures in other countries). Rather than using a blanket Old Testament abomination approach in which homosexuality itself is deemed sinful, the conservative “Christian” preachers could urge gays to be more Christlike in how they esteem and treat each other. For in this respect gay culture had become ripe for constructive criticism by 2023. 

In the “dating” (really looking-for-sex) online sites, for example, gay men can be quite brutal to guys who are deemed old or ugly. How dare such an inferior even message “hi” to one of the self-determined gods on earth. The criteria for being of greater value include being thin, muscular, and "hung," which means having a big penis. Even though physical attributes can be expected to be given a lot of weight when the purpose is limited to sex, the hypertrophic emphasis can be seen in how gay men with more attractive physical attributes regard and treat other, inferior gays. Bluntly telling guys that they are ugly without provocation or that "fat" or "guys over 40" will be blocked just for messaging "hello" points to anger and extreme disrespect based on physical attributes. How dare you contact me! You should be contacting guys on your level. From the standpoint of kindness, the first are actually last. Furthermore, the obsession on seeing nude photos, especially of dicks, and the attached ultimatums on gay sex sites can also be good fodder for preaching. So too are profile statements such as, "No black men; just a preference." To be sure, I've been told that some black men have statements excluding Caucasian men. I've also been told that it is not uncommon for gay men under 35 to demand payment for sex from men over 50. The passive-aggression in demanding payment from men presumed to be out of shape or simply older is insulting to the latter. Perhaps guys who are into older men should be charged too. When the men actually meet for sex, after having "met" online, how a guy rejects another based totally on appearance can be brutal. A man might see the man walking to the door and refuse even to open it, pretending not to be home and instantly blocking the guy online and by phone number. The choice is as feckless as it is needlessly cruel. Alternatively, the host could open the door and say that he is sorry for the other's inconvenience the other isn't his type after all. 

The willingness to be unnecessarily cruel is a salient feature of American gay culture. This squalid quality should be isolated for criticism rather than flown over, whether in blanket condemnations of homosexuality as itself being a sin or in wholesale ideological defenses of homosexuality by conservative and liberal clergy, respectively. 

The cruelty itself is startling. In “threesomes,” for example, in which three guys meet to have sex, if two of the guys are more attracted to each other than to the third, the two feel no compunction to make sure the third is not treated as the “third wheel” (i.e., the odd man out). In fact, the two men may be just fine with not even touching the other man, even if he is the boyfriend or even husband of one of the two! In the song, Luck Be a Lady Tonight, Frank Sinatra sings that a lady doesn't "wander all over the room, blowing on some other guy's dice." I had a girlfriend once who did that, and I refused to marry her because of it. "Let's keep the party polite," Sinatra sings. It is not polite when two gay guys in a threesome text to each other while the third guy is in the room in order to plan out how to trick the third guy into thinking that the session is over. Tell him you’re leaving, then leave, and he will leave. Then come back. I've heard of cases in which a man will even participate in such a secret scheme to get his boyfriend out. 

Incredibly, no guilt seems to accompany such betrayal because the physical attraction of the moment is all that matters in that value-set. Such indifference to hurting another human being is nothing short of pathological; at the very least, such cruelty reflects a malignant egism or self-centeredness and the lack of a conscience. This is good fodder for sermonizing. 

I’ve also been told that on the sex sites, and presumably at gay bars too, it is common for boyfriends and even husbands to cheat on their partners. The gay men who have told me of the sheer extent of this behavior admitted that it is probably more prevalent among gays than straight couples. I suspect, moreover, that the importance of what the other gay guy provides sexually is elevated in the selection of a boyfriend and husband. A gay man in San Francisco said once told me that a gay guy typically does not return to the same guy for sex because it is generally believed in that gay culture that there are so many gay men that there is probably someone who satisfies more items on one's list of sexual "likes" list. Another gay man, who was married, told me that that city is not good for gay couples, as there is more temptation to cheat for the same reason. This can be expected in cultures in which sexual attraction is allowed to be be so important even in relationships. To be sure, there are exceptions. A good friend of mine from college told me decades later that sex is about 10 percent of his relationship with his partner. So I am describing a dysfunctional (i.e., superficial and too cruel) culture. 

Relative to heterosexual relationships, I believe that there are proportionally more “open” relationships, meaning that both men in a relationship agree that they can have sex separately with other men. Still other couples want to "play together" by bringing in a third man. The gay culture approves of both arrangements. I contend that it does so because of the overwhelming importance of sex in gay relationships generally. Given the importance given to sexual gratification, such separate sex risks the boyfriend or husband going to the other man. Gay men in couples whom I have spoken with seem not to understand why emotional intimacy is weakened in cases in which either man has sex with other men separately. Even in sharing a man, feelings can easily get hurt if the third man is more interested in one of the boyfriends or husbands and the latter lets himself ignore his partner during the session. Preaching is indeed needed and would be of great value to gay men in open relationships, as the perils thereof seem not to be known or respected among gays.  

One gay man told me that a man’s sex drive is such that expectations of monogamy are not realistic. I suspect that this opinion is widely held by gay men. An open relationship and even cheating have to be accepted, realistically. I beg to differ; the loss of emotional intimacy and the potential for hurting the other person are too great. I've been told it is common for gay couples to “play together” with a third guy. Astoundingly, a couple (e.g., boyfriends) might go to a third guy’s home, and one of the boyfriends may even participate with the third guy in excluding the other boyfriend from the action and even collaborate in secret with the third guy to get rid of the other boyfriend! At least in America, the gay "community" can be fairly criticized for being too comfortable with the infliction of emotional harm and even betrayal without any taint of guilt. Clearly there is a lot of room for preaching from a Christian standpoint wherein God is love, which manifests between people. Such preaching is not going to be done by conservative clergy who ironically miss the arrogance and meanness in the gay "community" by merely making the blanket statement that homosexuality itself is a sin, or by liberal clergy who refuse to criticize internal gay culture because those clergy are primarily ideological defenders of diversity.

How might conservative clergy reach gay men? Perhaps by volunteering in a HIV clinic, for instance, or at a gay parade or event, insight could be gained on where preaching is really needed from the standpoint of loving rather than betraying one’s neighbor. Furthermore, perhaps in showing compassion toward gay men, conservative clergy might come to value compassion to one another and thus not be so mean and hurtful. Perhaps feeling the kindness of Christian clergy (and laity) might rub off on the gay men who are so callous towards each other and so single-minded on immediate sexual gratification. 

Perhaps clergy who view themselves as allies of the gay community might divert their attention from ideology to religious experience. Such a pivot could provide a basis on which to assess the gay community critically and challenge it. Such clergy would urge gay people who are very compassionate to lead the way in extending their kindness to people with whom they strongly disagree. Perhaps at a gay Pride parade, for example, such gay people might be oriented to satisfying the thirst of even a shouting "Christian" on a hot day. 

At the gay Pride parade that I attended in 2023, the young gay women and their allies could have shown the “Christians” that gays are not all bad, worthless, or dirty. Perhaps the "Christians" would have discovered that in being cared for by the lesbians that sexual conduct does not exhaust the soul, and thus how God judges it. Perhaps the young gays could have acted in charity, whose value is greatly increased when the intended beneficiaries are people whom the young gays don't like or agree with. Seeing by example how the the way of Jesus could be applied, the angry "Christians" could perhaps have been healed, and thus been in peace rather than anger and arrogance. In the Gospels, Jesus accepts Matthew even though he is one of the hated tax-collectors, and Jesus goes to the house of the Roman Centurion, whose faith, Jesus says, has cured the man’s slave. It is significant that Jesus does not rail against Matthew or the centurion as being evil or impure; instead, he serves them even though they are outsiders, for even they are capable of being loved. Sometimes this has to be experienced in baby-steps, such as in offering water. It is water, after all, that often symbolizes purity or renewal in religion. Like a mustard seed, small acts of human-to-human kindness can have large impacts, whereas two contending parties voicing conflicting values are typically static rather than dynamic.

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1. Shruti Rajkumar, “Taylor Swift Breaks Silence And Condemns Anti-LGBTQ Bills During Eras Tour,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2023.

2. Matt Lavietes, “Tennessee Governor Signs First-Of-Its-Kind Bill Restricting Drag Shows,” NBC News, March 2, 2023.

3. Ibid.

4. Isabel Rosales and Jaide Garcia, “Florida School System Has Closed Investigation Into Teacher Who Showed Disney Movie With Gay Character,” CNN.com, May 23, 2023.

A Republican Catholic Bishop Violated God In Blocking Freedom Of Conscience

A salient aspect of the U.S. Constitution is the separation of church and state. A government cannot establish or show preference for a religion or sect thereof. Although church clerics can state a politically partisan preference, they risk their religious organization’s tax-exempt status. In the presidential election of 1960, John F. Kennedy was under sufficient popular pressure to publicly assure the American electorate that he would, if elected to America’s highest governmental office, let himself be an agent for the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome. So, when Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck, North Dakota urged his flock to vote for the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012, Maureen Fiedler, a Sister of Loretto and a holder of a doctorate in government from Georgetown University, wrote, (I)t is flatly unacceptable for a bishop to be giving voting instructions to his flock.”[1] Interestingly, the instructions trump even the primacy of an informed individual conscience.

In 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota Attorney General, beat Republic Rick Berg by just 0.9 percent. During the campaign, the Republican Party ran an ad referring to Heitkamp as likeable. David Kagan picked up on that adjective in writing a letter with instructions that it be read at all Masses to urge the laity not to vote for the more likeable candidate. Maureen Fiedler claimed in an article that such a de facto endorsement of Berg put the Catholic Diocese’s tax-exempt status at risk.

Fiedler points out that the partisan, or partial, orientation of the bishop is evident in his letter in that he “zeroes in on social issues.”[2] Specifically, Bishop Kagan states that the following should never be allowed legally: “abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and not regarding the unique and special role of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”[3] Fiedler points out that the letter does not mention “poverty, economic justice, immigration, peace in the world or human rights.”[4] Therefore, Kagan’s ideology cannot claim to embrace wholeness, and his partial orientation naturally invites ideological opposition. As is common in churches explicitly “on the left” or “on the right” politically/ideologically, whether in demanding that people “use their pronouns” or “oppose abortion (in order to receive communion),” people who might otherwise benefit in terms of religious faith by going to church don’t go. To willow the gateway using nonreligious criteria is dogmatic (i.e., arbitrary) from a religious standpoint. It is not good for a church in taking up monetary collections either.

In regard to Bishop Kagan, his exclusion of issues such as poverty detracts from his political and even religious credibility. Making matters worse for himself, he erroneously claims in his letter that informed consciences must conform to the magisterium (i.e., teachings of the Church), and thus to his partisan letter. Kagan declares that a “properly formed Catholic conscience will never contradict the Church’s teachings in matters of faith and morals.”[5] His statement contradicts the Roman Catholic Church’s Cathechism and the Second Vatican Council. The 1992 volume of the Cathechism states, “Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions.”[6] That freedom is denied if a conscience must never contradict the Church’s magisterium. The Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae makes it clear that a person “must not be forced to act contrary to [one’s] conscience. Nor must [one] be prevented from acting according to [one’s] conscience, especially in religious matters.”[7] This does not mean that the magisterium (teachings) of the Church can be dismissed, for, the same document goes on to say, “the faithful must pay careful attention to the sacred and certain teachings of the church.”[8] To pay attention to something is to include it in the process of discernment of one’s informed conscience, rather than having to abide by the external teachings as if they were edicts that must circumscribe a conscience.

Bishop Kagan’s view of the relationship between conscience and ecclesiastical moral teachings on contemporary issues was erroneous, according to Tim Mathern, a Catholic and a senator in North Dakota’s legislature when Kagan was telling people in his churches to vote for the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. Mathern issued a press release, which states in part, “A Catholic owes a duty to listen thoughtfully to the bishop, but if in ‘good conscience’ he or she cannot give assent, the Catholic must be free to follow his or her own conscience, which is the true moral responsibility.”[9] Even as God alone is the source that transcends even the magisterium in forming a person’s conscience, moral responsibility—that which a conscience discerns is a morally responsible position on particular contemporary political (i.e., partisan) issues is part of the created realm, rather than being sacred. That is to say, a person’s moral position on “social issues,” which may inform selecting whom to vote for, cannot be assumed to be God’s position, as if God takes sides. For a stance on a partisan issue as a matter of moral responsibility is a human construction, and God’s nature, and thus omnipotence (power), cannot be constrained by human artifacts, including moral principles. In fact, God transcends our conceptions of moral responsibility.  

The so-called “conservative” Roman Catholic clergy who have placed such emphasis on their moral stances on a few select social issues are guilty of conceptualizing God in their own images, and, as Pope Francis said, of a sort of misordered concupiscence: the placing of a lower good above a higher one. In this case, the error lies in placing a few social issues, and even particular positions on those issues, above focusing primarily on preaching the Gospel. The particular social issues being obsessed over are not even mentioned by Jesus in the Gospels! Not only have those “conservative” clergy members severely diverted their attention, but also, as stated above, some souls that could have been saved undoubtedly stopped going to church because those people had opposing political ideologies and positions on the vaunted social issues and perhaps even antithetical notions of moral responsibility. No one likes to feel like an outsider; in fact, in a Christian context, serving rather than attacking outsiders is at the very least valued. In the religious sphere, moreover, partisan political issues and even a person’s notion of moral responsibility are transcended rather than allowed to be become sticking points or road-blocks.

Interestingly, the “conservative” Pope who made Kagan a bishop was a follower of Cardinal John Henry Newman. Unfortunately for Kagan, Newman wrote, “I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards. . . . Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”[10] So Kagan could not even appeal to the patron saint of “conservative” Catholic clergy in validating the attempt to prevent Catholics from exercising freedom of conscience. To be sure, Kagan could have appealed to his own conscience in going against the Church’s position on conscience, but then so he would have been a walking contradiction. As such Kagan’s stance was unethical according to the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory (the first formulation of his categorical imperative). Kant must have hated logical contradictions. Furthermore, it would be the height of arrogance were Kagan to have believed that only his conscience matters—that those of other people, especially the laity, are inferior and thus don’t deserve to be free.

Even more seriously, in attempting to violate the consciences of the laity in his bishopric by artificially and exogenously blocking the innate freedom, which is given by God, Kagan violated God. Another Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, states, “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. For a man has in his heart a law inscribed by God . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”[11] A person’s conscience is formed by a sacred source, and yet David Kagan felt the need, and indeed presumption, to tie a person’s most sacred core to a partisan position on social issues. I wonder if the bishop at least respects himself. To violate a person’s sanctuary, where a person is alone with God (and David Kagan), is a violation not unlike molesting a child due to a dysfunctional wholesale repression of an intrinsic and basic instinctual urge—a violation that more than one bishop has covered up.

In the spring of 2013, for instance, news broke that the Catholic Church of Illinois, where Kagan had been a pastor at a church and, before that, an administrative assistant to a bishop, had underreported instances of priests molesting children. As far as I know, Kagan was not accused of being involved in the cover-up; my only point is that he would have been at home in an organization in which violations of the fundamental, God-given dignity of people get covered up. While the archbishop of Munich, Joe Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI and elevate Kagan to a bishopric, had written a letter refusing to defrock a pedophile priest because the scandal would hurt the reputation of the “universal Church.” So, Ratzinger directed that the priest be transferred to another parish, where the priest was allowed to be the youth minister.

Shortly before Kagan was appointed as a bishop, he had told his congregation in a homily on the Assumption of Mary holy day of obligation (i.e., the Virgin Mary goes to heaven bodily as well as soul) that if any of the four mysteries of Mary are difficult to understand, you should “just obey.” Included in his congregation were business executives, lawyers, and physicians. Just obey must have gone down like a lead pipe even though the congregation had the reputation of being “very Republican.”  Kagan should have been quite popular there rather than an insult, and yet he was elevated to a bishopric in another state. As of 2023, more than a decade since Kagan had become a bishop, Pope Francis has not promoted Kagan; the bishop is still in North Dakota.

On ethical leadership: "Ethical Leadership" 

On spiritual leadership: "Spiritual Leadership in Business" 

On Christian leadership (in terms of stewardship, shephardship, and servanthood): "Christianized Ethical Leadership in Business"

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[1] Maureen Fiedler, “Catholic Senator in North Dakota Challenges Bishop’s Election Letter,” National Catholic Reporter, October 25, 2012

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Patsy McGarry, “Conscience Takes Priority Over Church Teaching, Says Catholic Catechism,” Irish Times, June 3, 2018.

[7] Ibid., italics added.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Maureen Fiedler, “Catholic Senator in North Dakota Challenges Bishop’s Election Letter.”

[10] Patsy McGarry, “Conscience Takes Priority Over Church Teaching, Says Catholic Catechism.”

[11] Ibid.

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.

Religion as a Credible Academic Field of Study

What is religion? What does the domain of religion cover? What is excluded? Does opinion eclipse knowledge in marking the boundaries? Should we allow empirical self-identification claims from self-proclaimed religionists to veto any offending established knowledge of what the religion is? I contend that an atheist who claims he is nonetheless a practitioner of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam does not alter the fact that the three Abrahamic religions are monotheist. Atheist Judaism, for instance, is an oxymoron born of an arrogant subjectivity that offends reason itself and therefore cannot be valid. 

An opinion of a religious practitioner as to what core beliefs a religion should include does not mean that the knowledge we have of that religion is obliged to truncate itself or make room as if the opinion counts as much as the knowledge. For one thing, knowledge has more to back it up than does opinion. Knowledge of Christianity as a religion from Christian Scripture, for example, need not make room for a practitioner’s opinion that Christianity includes atheism, for that view is diametrically opposed to the existence of a deity in the scripture. An opinion seeking to remake or turn a religion against itself may insist on being recognized as valid, but this does not mean that the knowledge we have of Christianity (i.e., what it is as a religion) need be altered or contradicted.

Surely knowledge of something is not on par with opinions, for the basis of knowledge is not an aggregation of subjectivities. Rather, knowledge has a basis that is not so flimsy, so knowledge can serve as an anchor by which subjectivities can situate their respective opinions. For example, Christianity is classified as a monotheist religion. This theological classification does not come from subjectivity, but, rather, what the Old and New Testaments state, even if they are not considered to be the inerrant Word of God. That there is one god is a major theme rather than the offspring of an interpretation. Even though an interpretation can be said to be an opinion, even an informed one, the knowledge we have of Christianity is too certain to be a bunch of opinions shared by even many people. It follows that starting from the assumption that every opinion is valid with respect to knowledge is problematic. We are indeed an impious lot with regard to our religious opinions, supposing them to trump that which is known. Such arrogance belies any claim of being a monotheist.

I submit that knowledge in the religious-studies discipline is vulnerable to the presumptuous onslaught of religious ideologues who wrongly view knowledge of a religion to be subordinate to their individual self-identifications, ethnographically. Moreover, the problem is that some practitioners give ethnography a veto over other sources of knowledge of religions. They may even claim that the very term religion is up for grabs even though the fact that a discipline exists is predicated on there being some idea of what religion means (i.e., of what counts as religious).

Also, knowledge of a religion may be transmitted by biased scholars who allow their own respective religious opinions to overrun the duty to teach knowledge unfettered. We may even ask: Does knowledge of religion (and particular religions) exist, or have scholars of religion merely been spouting their own opinions through the lenses of reason? I submit that although scholarly subjectivity has played a role in the accumulated knowledge of religion, this pathogen can be constrained by the academic methodologies on how knowledge can legitimately be acquired.

For example, a scholar who is Christian may want a survey to show that a lot of a city’s residents are Christian, but that same scholar would be obliged to use random sampling and calculate  “N,” the sample size using a method that cannot be bent by the scholar’s own preferences. Such a survey could thus be replicated by other scholars. The scholar may be ideologically in favor of the self-identification of a respondent as an atheist Christian, but other scholars could invalidate that data-point because the knowledge we do have of the Christian religion includes that it is monotheist, and therefore a person who self-identifies as an atheist cannot be classified as a Christian. 

What about the teaching of religion? At seminaries and even some divinity schools, the study of Christian tends to be skewed in a sectarian direction. At Yale’s school of divinity, for example, an evangelical Christian assistant professor (who did not get tenure) told students who were asking questions that they professor deemed exogenous (i.e., outside the contours of the dogma) that only students with a good character receive the school’s masters of divinity degree. To be sure, that degree is chiefly though not exclusively ministry-oriented, but Yale itself was by that time not a Christian university. It was originally founded in 1703 by Congregational ministers who resented the Unitarian influence in Harvard’s divinity school (that influence has its own biases, often at the expense of religion itself). In fact, when I attended Yale, the president, Rick Levin, was Jewish. At one point, he attempted to move the divinity school closer to the main campus from being located on top of a hill—a city on a hill. One opposing divinity student said in a seminar, “But they are relativists” at the bottom of the hill, and “Hitler was a relativist!” Suffice it to say that the Divinity School was able to remain on the fringes of Yale’s campus. Perhaps this continued to thwart Yale’s administration from being able to act as a check on its divinity school’s academic bias. That the department of religious studies was located at the heart of the main campus meant that academic standards could be protected in the study of religion from non-sectarian standpoints.

Yet scholars in departments of religious studies are hardly objective; we are, after all, subjective beings, and we all have our biases, whether religious or political. Many years after I had graduated from Yale, a retired instructor from Arizona State University’s department of religious studies fraudulently misrepresented himself to me as a scholar even though he did not have a doctorate in the field. I became suspicious because he contended that how people “self-identify” themselves in religious terms trumps how a particular religion is classified theologically. According to the man with a masters in church history, ethnographic surveys decide the content and contours of a given religion even in regard to how it is classified theologically. “The theology doesn’t matter,” he told me. So if someone self-identifies as an agnostic practitioner of Judaism (i.e., a religious Jew), then scholars are obliged to consider agnostic Judaism to be a part of Judaism rather than as Jews with a weak religious faith.

I told the pretend-scholar that Judaism is classified as a monotheistic religion. “That’s just your opinion,” he relied dismissively. Just as he had dismissed the fact that scholars in the liberal arts have doctorates, he dismissed theology even as regards a theological classification! Why, I wondered, would he stoop to misrepresent himself as a scholar how little he respected actual scholars and knowledge itself. He was an ideologue who wanted to defend people who feel oppressed by religion. God forbid that a scholar might reply, “agnosticism is exogenous to Judaism rather than a type of it.” Like Socrates’ interlocutor Euthyphro, the modern-day interloper suddenly decided he no longer wanted to talk to me and said, “I’ve never approached you” in the café where we met. He had also said at the end of one of our conversations, “After the ten minutes I gave you, the rest was charity.” Such must be the arrogance of non-scholars at Arizona State University that even authentic scholars are considered lower.

That a university would allow an ideologue who relegates inconvenient knowledge as subservient to opinion even just to teach caught me by surprise, though admittedly Yale had been allowing Christian scholar-ministers to teach at that university’s divinity school in a way that delimited questions to those that fit within those professors’ own interpretations of Christian scripture. The difference is perhaps that those scholarly priests respected knowledge, for the pretended scholar from Arizona State University so obviously did not. “Some religious Jews self-identify as atheist Jews, so there is a type of Judaism that is not monotheist,” he told me once. He bristled at my reply that such Jews could be wrong. To the pretend scholar, it was the knowledge that would be wrong if confronted with a conflicting self-identification.

The knowledge we have of a religion should not bow to a convenient self-identification by a practitioner because knowledge trumps opinion. That is to say, we can legitimately have more confidence in knowledge within the academic field than in the opinions of non-academic practitioners. Scholars do not throw out knowledge simply because it runs against an ideology, especially if the ideologue is not a scholar in the field. The pretend-scholar I met had no problem misrepresenting himself as a scholar because he had no respect for the knowledge in the field. What mattered to him was that no one could refute a self-identification as incorrect from the standpoint of what we know of the religion based on itself rather than any other religion.

Were self-identifications permitted to set the contours of a religion, it could change beyond all recognition into another religion even as it retains its sacred texts, symbols, and rituals. A religion could be turned on its head. This has in fact occurred. The General Conference of Friends (Quakers), which covers the Northeast of the United States, has declared itself not to be Christian because enough Quakers there do not self-identify as Christians. From my visits at those Meetings while I studied at Yale, I suspect that the ideological opinion that Christianity has historically been dogmatic and oppressive to heretics and other religions was a factor in a significant number of the self-identifications at odds with Quakerism being a Christian denomination/sect.  In contrast, Quaker Meetings west of the Mississippi River tend to be evangelical Christian. Friends there doubtlessly do not recognize the faiths of the Friends in the General Conference. Indeed, Quakerism as paganism is not recognizable, for the reason that self-identifications of especially new practitioners have been allowed to be determinative for what Quakerism is.

What if enough religious Jews were to self-identify as atheists? Would there be such a thing as atheist Judaism—Judaism without God? An ideological stance wherein Yahweh is deemed to be oppressive and even cruel to people of other religions could prompt some religious Jews to self-identify as atheist observant Jews (i.e., practitioners of Judaism). Would scholars be obliged to reclassify Judaism from being monotheistic in spite of the Hebrew Scriptures? I submit that the answer is no because ideology, as highly subjective, is not sufficient to trump knowledge, especially if the latter is based on the religion itself rather than being from a comparative classification scheme that ignores the knowledge we have of the religions themselves.

This is not to say that scholars are objective founts of knowledge. Because the knowledge learned by scholars of religion does not reduce to opinions, those of the scholars themselves should not bias the knowledge, just as self-identifications by practitioners of a religion should not. Universities, whether Yale or Arizona State University, are responsible for seeing to it that scholars and especially non-doctoral instructors do not treat knowledge as mere opinion in order to privilege certain opinions that are not in keeping with the knowledge.

It may be that religious practitioners generally are vulnerable to this propensity to disvalue knowledge when it contradicts a religious belief or interpretation. For example, some evangelical Christians claim that Christianity is not a religion, whereas all other religions are. In the academic field of religious studies, Christianity is indeed classified as a religion nevertheless. It would be sad indeed were scholarship to serve the interests of the religious ideologues rather than serve existing knowledge and reason seeking greater understanding.

The man from ASU who misrepresented himself as a scholar (i.e., holding a doctorate in the field) reflected the culture in Arizona wherein "book" knowledge is not respected generally and especially when it runs afoul of ideological opinions. For instance, many riders of the light rail could be seen not wearing a mask as protection against the coronavirus in 2020. Also, the ideological claim that climate change does not really exist so the scientists are wrong has had considerable currency there. Scholarship can be easily dismissed if it is at odds with an ideological stance even when a theology is funneled to serve an ideology or as a defense-mechanism to protect the ego. 

Religion (including theology) can indeed be regarded as a credible field in academia, for the constraints in scientific methodology and logic can both be used to resist the encroachments of ideological bias and other exogenous agendas that can admittedly easily warp the pursuit of knowledge.  My only degree in the field is the Masters of Divinity, which is really a bachelors degree (just as the MD and JD are actually bachelors) because it is the first degree in a school (e.g., Divinity). So I cannot regard myself as a scholar of religion. Even so, I greatly value knowledge that has not been warped by ideologies or other vested interests even of scholars of religion, and I disvalue the intellectual dishonesty that is involved in claiming as knowledge that which is really an instinctual urge to promote one's own worldview. 

Preaching, for instance, should not be done under the explicit auspices of scholarly inquiry. Schools such as Yale's divinity school whose mission includes educating scholarly ministers and priests should take pains to distinguish the two pursuits while holding that both are of value. Professors of divinity who are themselves ministers or priests need to be especially self-aware so as not to yield to the temptations to 1) restrict academic discourse to the ideologically comfortable confines of their preachments, and 2) present those preachments as though they satisfy the criteria for academic knowledge. It is quite common, for example, for Christians to conflate the faith-belief that Jesus of the New Testament was a historical (empirical) person in the ancient Middle East with historical knowledge that comes from historical accounts rather than faith narratives. The latter prioritizes theological points, and thus can ethically adapt (rather than merely adopt) historical events to make such points. 

The synoptic gospels differ on which night of Passover the Last Supper was on; putting that event on the second night serves the theological metaphor of Jesus as the lamb to be slaughtered for the forgiveness of sins. The writer would not have been bothered in the least had he known that the event actually taken place on the first night because he would have known that he was not writing a historical account. This is not to say that the field of theology is not as credible as a field of knowledge than is history. It is to say that the two fields have different criteria (and source-types) and thus should not be conflated. A historian would look for historical accounts that are as objective as possible (e.g., not from the disciples) to answer the question of whether the Last Supper actually took place (and, if so, on which night), whereas a theologian would assess the fit of the metaphor to soteriology (i.e., Jesus Christ as Savior). 

Lay Christians and even many preachers may be surprised to learn that the only historical reference to Jesus, that which the Jewish historian Josephus made, is suspect as it regards Jesus as having preached the truth. Rather than being written by a Jewish person, the sentence was more likely inserted by a Christian copyist. Historians know to look at the credibility of a source that is presumably a historical account, for slyness is not a small part of human nature.

In conclusion, religious studies as an academic discipline can be distinguished from that of history and the ministerial profession of preaching.  Moreover, academic pursuits should not succumb to the lure of ideology or preaching. Given the omnipresent desire that others adopt one's ideology or religious faith, the towers of knowledge that we construct should be subject to critique on a regular basis and by people of different vantage-points. 

The Coronation of King Charles III: A Case of Elitist Leadership

 Is elitism ethical when it seeks to portray itself as favoring racial diversity after having been accused from within of being racist against black people—and even a multiracial member of the leadership cadre? Moreover, can elitism itself be ethical? Furthermore, can it be Christian? By elitist, I have in mind the motive to exclude. In attending Yale University, I was surprised when I discovered that exclusion was practiced within the university among and by the students. It was not enough to have been selected to attend the highly-selective university; some students felt the instinctual urge once within to exclude other students. I discovered this when the chairman of the political party in the Yale Political Union that I had joined lied to me that if I would come to a Friday night party held in the Yale clock tower that I would be tapped to join the secret society owned by the party. That chairman and his surrounding inner cadre misled party members into coming. After all, what good is tapping friends if there are not other people watching and thus to be excluded? Regarding the coronation of King Charles (Winsor) in Britain in 2023, I contend that at the very least, the royal planners can be charted with multiple levels of exclusion in Westminster Abbey. Furthermore, I strongly believe that “the Palace” employed a public relations firm, a significant part of whose strategy it was to combat Prince Harry’s charges of racism. This can be inferred from extent of “photo ops” highlighting good “product placement.” Specifically, people of the “Black” race were, intentionally, I submit, situated around the royal family both in the coronation itself and at the related concert in the royal box. This tactic played off the commonly mistaken inference that if someone is seen next to people of a given group, he or she could not possibly harbor ill-feelings toward that group. Although beyond the argument covered here, I suspect that this cognitive fallacy is commonly taken advantage of by public-relations firms the world over.  As applied to leadership, the tactic is geared to softening the hard corners of elitism as evinced in leadership roles. I turn first to the blatant, yet strangely unspoken layers of exclusion permitted and exasperated in the coronation itself, then I shall turn to the matter of ideological product placement, which, by the way, can be distinguished from the ethic of diversity in terms of participation. Claims of encouraging diversity can easily be used as a subterfuge to cover the real motive—that of product placement used to redress any hits to a person’s or institution’s reputation (i.e., reputational capital). I come to the conclusion beyond the ethical dimension that the passive aggression of exclusion is antithetical to Christian leadership, such as could be expected from the titular head of the Anglican Church.

The full essay is at "Elitist Leadership."

For more on ethical leadership: "Ethical Leadership"

For more on Christian leadership: "Christianized Ethical Leadership"

For more on spiritual leadership: "Spiritual Leadership in Business"

On the Rushed Sainthood of Pope John Paul II: Metaphysics and Ideology Triumphant

Just days after the death of Pope John Paul II, “cardinals eager to uphold his conservative policies had already begun discussing putting him on a fast track to sainthood.”[1] This alone could have alerted religionists as to the possible sanctification of an ideology within the Roman Catholic Church. The force of an ideology to its partisans can render them deaf to other considerations. The church ideologues clamoring for the ages-old process of canonization to be disregarded—hardly a conservative demand—chose not to hear the “notes of caution from survivors of sexual abuse and historians that John Paul had persistently turned a blind eye to the crimes in his church.”[2] Fifteen years later, the Vatican itself admitted that the former pope had known of the crimes of Archbishop (of New York) Theodore McCarrick yet refused to put a stop to them. “The investigation, commissioned by Pope Francis, who canonized John Paul in 2014, revealed how John Paul chose not to believe longstanding accusations of sexual abuse against [McCarrick], including pedophilia, allowing him to climb the hierarchy’s ladder.”[3] Rather than being a mere mistake in judgment, as some conservatives would argue, the decision to look the other way resulted in great evil. The foreseeable consequences meant that John Paul II allowed more rapes to happen. Besides the rather obvious point that a saint would not have done so, and thus the canonization of John Paul II was erroneous, this case suggests that the “two miracles” requirement for canonization is itself flawed. 
The claim for canonization was that in at least two cases, people prayed to John Paul II and subsequently were healed. The conclusion that the former pope intervened with God to cure the petitioners suffers from the fact that positive correlation does not in itself constitute causation. Moreover, the emphasis on a metaphysical requirement takes the attention off the real question: Was the candidate’s life saintly? To say that a cleric was a religious man is not sufficient, for that goes with the territory. In fact, the possibility of “insider trading” and “hierarchical favoritism” should trigger extra safeguards in cases in which the candidates were clerics in the hierarchy. Put another way, canonization has more credibility in cases in which the candidates were not bishops, cardinals, or popes.
The metaphysical/life distinction is relevant to the Catholic Church beyond the issue of canonization. If a lay person believes in transubstantiation and ingests the body and blood of Christ after the consecration in the Mass and yet does not reach out to help detractors and even enemies when they are in need, of what good is the metaphysical belief, practically speaking? Valuing Christ’s teachings and trying to live by his example must be met even if the liturgical consecration is revered. The faith is that the two go together, but if they don’t, the matter of valuing Christ’s teachings for how to get into the Kingdom of God by how others are treated must be decisive. Similarly in canonization proceedings, the matter of a candidate’s life is decisive.

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1. Jason Horowitz, “Sainted Too Soon? Vatican Report Cast John Paul II in Harsh New Light,” The New York Times, November 14, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.