Faith in Context

Pastors Caught in the Middle over Gay Marriage

by Loren Seibold

As we watch the political muddle of states trying to sort out policy on gay marriage, spare a thought for a group caught in the middle: the clergy.

I recently wrote on another blog about a Seventh-day Adventist pastor who was dismissed from his position as a Bible teacher because he signed the legal (for Washington state) license for his stepdaughter's marriage to another woman. But what was legal for the state wasn't legal for Brett Hadley. In the authoritarian Seventh-day Adventist church, Hadley was quickly fired.

The Methodist church handles the matter by holding trials for pastors accused of marrying gay couples. Frank Schaefer, a United Methodist minister of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was in November found guilty of violating UMC's Book of Discipline by officiating (back in 2007) at the wedding of his son to another man. Schaefer subsequently had his credentials revoked. (Underlining the similarity to a civil court: Schaefer is appealing the decision.) According to Religious News Service, four other Methodist clergy trials may be convened soon.

To some, the matter may seem simple: if your denomination prohibits marrying gay couples, then don't do it, no matter what state law permits. But in a profession known for organizational compliance, there are still some pastors motivated by conscience and belief more than by polity. A pastor once said to me, "God called me to minister. The denomination I landed in was an accident." As gay marriage is recognized by a growing number of states, it should hardly be surprising that some pastors who hold views that differ from the denomination or congregation they work for will perform weddings for gay couples.

It's hard to know what to make of the UMC's clergy trials. On one hand, they are indicative of defined process and, one hopes, justice. Yet the mere mention of pastors "on trial," especially over something that many regard as a matter of justice to a long-persecuted subgroup, sounds vaguely persecutory itself. (Some Methodist leaders are demanding a discussion of the matter, earlier than the denomination's next General Conference in 2016, perhaps hoping to mitigate PR-damaging situations like Schaefer's.)

We are far from a consensus. Churches are divided. So are citizens. With SCOTUS's passing up the chance to ban gay marriage, state courts are opponents' last chance, and they've generally been supportive of gay marriage. (More likely: renewed challenges to gay marriage bans.) A popular HuffPo piece contrasts Pope Francis' comments on homosexuality with those that got “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson suspended from the popular A&E reality show. Never mind the number of ways the comparison between the two men is absurd: it's one more demonstration of how polarized we are. 

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"Porn on the Brain": What Is a Moral Argument?

by Loren Seibold

BBC4's recent documentary "Porn on the Brain" (still available on youTube) generated a lot of ink in the UK and the US. Indeed, it was remarkable in several ways. First, that it originated in secular Britain, a country with low regard for the standards of sexual morality that are still given lip service in Christian America. Second, it was hosted by Martin Daubney, best know as the ex-editor of "lads mag" Loaded, which gives it the allure of witnessing an enlightment and conversion of sorts. (Lads mags aren't hardcore porn, but unquestionably fall in the "boys will be boys" objectification of women genre. A popular American example is Maxim.) Third, and most important, it's a popularized acknowledgement that ready availability of pornography might have serious psychological ramifications, particularly for those whose brains are still forming. This is from Daubney's accompanying piece in the Daily Mail: 

"I'd been invited to sit in on a forward-thinking class led by sex education consultant Jonny Hunt, who is regularly asked into schools to discuss sex and relationships. To establish what these kids knew about sex - including pornography - he had asked the children to write an A-Z list of the sexual terms they knew, no matter how extreme. Most of these children had just hit puberty and some were clearly still children: wide-eyed, nervous, with high-pitched voices. Some of the girls were beginning their first forays into make-up. Several wore braces on their teeth. Everybody was smartly turned out in school uniform, and the most anti-authority statement in the room was a tie worn deliberately short.… These were clearly good children, from good homes. So far, so very, very ordinary. 

"But when Jonny pinned their lists on the board … the first word every single boy and girl in the group put on their list was 'anal'. When questioned, they had all - every child in a class of 20 - seen sodomy acted out in porn videos. I was stunned they even knew about it - I certainly hadn't heard of it at that age - let alone had watched it and as a result may even have wanted to try it. One 15-year-old girl said, 'Boys expect porn sex in real life'. And one boy - to choruses of approval - spoke of his revulsion for pubic hair, which he called a 'gorilla'. When Jonny pointed out that pubic hair was normal in real life, the boys scoffed, but some of the girls were angry that the boys' template of what to expect from real girls had clearly already been set by porn. 

"By the end of the hour-long class - and three others that followed with other children - I was profoundly saddened by what I had witnessed. While teenage boys will always be fascinated by, and curious about, sex, what's now considered 'normal' by under-18s is an entirely distorted view of intercourse and the way relationships should be conducted."

"Porn on the Brain" hasn't the journalistic seriousness of, say, Frontline, but it's pretty sobering, and probably right for the audience it aims at. Daubney presents evidence that exposure to pornography in the young is addictive, and messes with development, mental health, sexual performance and relationships. 

A thought that struck me watching it is how different this is from what we used to handle under the heading of "morality". "Porn on the Brain" is about what is or isn't good for you. Is that moral argument, or merely an observation about health, like tobacco use will give you cancer or exercise helps you live longer? 

A quick and dirty definition of morality is that it's the study of right and wrong. Certainly "Porn on the Brain" isn't Christian morality (though some have used this documentary to back a Christian view.) Yet there is here no sense that a sexual act is wrong because of some innate sexual morality that can be described with concepts like adultery, sin, or purity. Daubney assumes the existence of porn and rampant masturbation; he merely mourns for the innocent porn of his youth, smiling topless girls you had to sneak around to find, as opposed to porn made by "sexual psychopaths" and available at a click. 

In spite of the slightness of its moral component, "Porn on the Brain" may have opened a conversation with a group that is used to pornography being talked about as legal or illegal, but haven't understood why it might be bad. It occurs to me that this may be the future of all discussion of sexual morality in a secular and libertarian world: to talk about what may or may not be healthy. The problem, of course, is that it is then subject to whatever scientific studies one wants to cite, and there are others quite willing to argue the other side of this issue.  

 

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Why Matt Walsh Is Wrong About Porn

In Digital Dating, Love Might Not Be All You Need

by Loren Seibold

My friend lost his wife to cancer about a year ago. His children are grown and gone, and the house is stiflingly quiet. "Just a house," he sighs. "Not a home anymore." So after being alone for a respectable amount of time, he signed up for an online dating site. He didn't want to do it. He feared that dating sites would throw him in with people so desperate and dysfunctional that they couldn't meet others in the normal course of life. But being an introverted person himself who after 30 years of happy marriage wasn't practiced at meeting women, plus living in a low-population area, and because of his conservative faith uncomfortable in traditional meeting places like bars, he didn't know where else to turn.

A new Pew Research study suggests that the stigma against online dating is declining. Thirty-eight percent of Americans who categorize themselves as "single and looking" have used an online or mobile dating service, which translates into 11% of American adults. And fewer feel like the people they meet online are "desperate"—a descriptor that means, apparently, scraping the bottom of the barrel and willing to do anything to get a spouse. Compared with a 2005 study, more are going on dates with those they meet on line, and 23% of online daters said online dating had led to a marriage or significant relationship.

My friend opted for a niche dating site: in his case, one that matches up members of the conservative Seventh-day Adventist church. While there are big players in the online dating market like eHarmony and Match.com, targeted dating services narrow the field for those looking for something quite particular. There are sites just for Catholics, Jews, farmers, smokers, body-builders, deaf people, and fans of the cartoon "My Little Pony".

At least one Christian dating service presumes on God's good graces to suggest that finding love with them is Divine destiny. Christian Mingle's overconfident slogan, "Find God's match for you," led one tweeter to quip, "How did Christians meet before God invented the internet?"

But even with all potential love interests qualifying on one significant point—in my friend's case, all Seventh-day Adventists—he found the process more draining than he expected. He's not alone. Talk to online daters, and you'll hear stories of white lies and exaggerations, or of investments emotionally and financially that don't pay off. Sometimes, the truth is the problem: when my friend was contacted by women who were looking for their sixth marriage, or who opened the conversation with health or financial problems that they wanted him to solve, just having a faith in common wasn't enough. "The odds are good," he observed, "but the goods are odd." From female friends I've heard of men introducing themselves with boasts of their sexual prowess, which says loads about the quirky dynamics of internet self-identity: it's hard to imagine them doing that in person.

At its best, online dating works. But it's different from the old way of dating. First, the pool is larger—generally a good thing. But second, not living together in a community (the way most of us met one another when we were young) and instead forming our impressions in the artificial world of the internet, means there's a danger of being deceived. I can't imagine going into a mid-life marriage nowadays without legal protections like credit, criminal and identity checks, backed up by prenuptial agreements.

That sacrifice of romance to practicality may be the cost of dating in the digital age.

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So Just Because You're Gay, Do You Have to Act Gay?

by Loren Seibold

Most of my Christian friends, even some of the very conservative ones, understand that homosexual people didn't choose to be homosexual. Still, many of us think, "But why must they act on it?" We interpret Scripture to say that heterosexual people should refrain from sexual intercourse if they are unmarried. Can't the same legitimately be expected of people with a homosexual orientation?

I was recently sent a link to this presentation by Matthew Vines, a gay Christian scholar, given at a church in Wichita in 2012. I've heard others give similar interpretations of these six anti-homosexuality passages, though Matthew presents them with a clarity and humility that makes them a pleasure to hear again. Whatever you think about the larger question, this is well-crafted apologetics.

One section in his introduction particularly caught my attention. It's an exegesis that was new to me, and it made me think again about the celibacy question. This is a transcript from Matthew's presentation.

"In the first two chapters of Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth, plants, animals, man, and everything in the earth. And He declares everything in creation to be either good or very good – except for one thing. In Genesis 2:18, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” And yes, the suitable helper or partner that God makes for Adam is Eve, a woman. And a woman is a suitable partner for the vast majority of men – for straight men. But for gay men, that isn’t the case. For them, a woman is not a suitable partner. And in all of the ways that a woman is a suitable partner for straight men—for gay men, it’s another gay man who is a suitable partner. And the same is true for lesbian women. For them, it is another lesbian woman who is a suitable partner. But the necessary consequence of the traditional teaching on homosexuality is that, even though gay people have suitable partners, they must reject them, and they must live alone for their whole lives, without a spouse or a family of their own. We are now declaring good the very first thing in Scripture that God declared not good: for the man to be forced to be alone. And the fruit that this teaching has borne has been deeply wounding and destructive.

"This is a major problem. By holding to the traditional interpretation, we are now contradicting the Bible’s own teachings: the Bible teaches that it is not good for the man to be forced to be alone, and yet now, we are teaching that it is."

You might find it helpful to hear this 1-hour presentation, if not to be convinced, at least to hear from a thoughtful gay Christian who respects the Bible. Matthew also has a website that includes the transcript of the presentation.

The Dark Side of Virginity

by Loren Seibold

Growing up in a conservative church I learned that Scripture demanded perfect sexual purity before marriage. The way the subject was framed even made it seem a virtue to be ignorant and naive. Implied (and sometimes said) was that sexual interest couldn't coexist with faith. Consequently some left the church precisely when they needed a church family most. Others stayed and learned hypocrisy.

Some Christian commentators are questioning the high place we've given virginity. In the Christian press Sarah Bessey, Elizabeth Esther, Rachel Held Evans, Jen Pollock Michel and Carolyn Custis James have all taken on the subject. Writes Bessey in "I Am Damaged Goods", "I was nineteen years old and crazy in love with Jesus when that preacher told an auditorium I was 'damaged goods' because of my sexual past. He was making every effort to encourage this crowd of young adults to 'stay pure for marriage.' He was passionate, yes, well-intentioned, and he was a good speaker, very convincing indeed. And he stood up there and shamed me, over and over and over again."

We Christians pride ourselves on a sterner morality: "thus saith the Lord" trumps any other reason for being good. Yet inseparable from—ideally, homogenized into—a specifically Christian morality is something that we don't always mention: Divine grace as a guarantee of forgiveness and restoration.

In practice, the line between acceptable Christian behavior and forgiveness for misbehavior is a shifty one. The church has had a tough time finding the balance between discouraging sin and encouraging sinners. The reformed sinner back from a life of addiction and debauchery may be a hero, making the rounds of the Christian lecture circuit to show what God can do. At the same time the young Christian trying to make early adult decisions is protectively shamed and scolded and left to believe there won’t be a way back."Your life will be ruined if you lose your virginity" is self-fulfilling: it gets ruined at least in part because we said it would be. And admitting there’s forgiveness isn't giving permission. 

Understandably, Christian leaders don’t want young people to do what they’d later regret. There’s plenty to fear about the effects of promiscuity: unwanted children, STDs, exploitation and psychological damage. I think you can make a good argument that fewer of these things would happen if there were any way for the church to talk about sex except "Don’t!" 

Given what is apparently permitted under the seventh commandment (concubines, multiple wives, women as chattel, adolescent marriage, child-bearing slaves), it’s hard to see how it can make the case for the judgemental purity preached from many pulpits. The New Testament is clearer on adultery and marriage, but it still doesn’t come up to the standard of conservative churches—a standard Elizabeth Esther calls our "new and improved" virginity. "Ultimately" she says, "we implied that a woman’s inherent worth and dignity could be measured by whether or not a man has touched her."

Perhaps that's why where the church is leading, few are following. A 2009 study  by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy concluded that 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) admitted to having had sex. (See more here.) Another study shows that the Christian purity movement has been a crashing failure: "Teens who took a virginity pledge have sexual relationships that are nearly identical to those of similar teens who did not make such a pledge. The one area in which the pledge does make an impact is negative: Teens who took a virginity pledge and did have sex were less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control."

There must be more effective ways to help young people grow up to have happy Christian families.

 

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Being a virgin

Wealth Inequality and Charitable Giving

By Loren Seibold

Pew Research has just released a study that says that the recovery of the past couple of years has largely benefited the wealthiest 7%, while the lower 93% of Americans have seen net worth decline. Wealthier households hold their value in stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments that have rallied in value. But for the majority of Americans who have little or no investment in these markets—whose net worth is in their now-less-valuable family home—net worth has declined by 4%.

What will this mean for churches and the institutions associated with them? Most congregations rely exclusively on contributions, but many educational institutions are also heavily dependent upon gifts. Those who have in their constituency a concentration of these wealth holders will undoubtedly be in a better position to ride out the next few years.

That assumes that wealthy Christians are willing to contribute. Ken Stern writes in a recent Atlantic article that the wealthiest families give an average of 1.3% to charity, while the poorest give 3.2%. Stern suggests that “the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be inconsistent with the idea of communal support”, and he quotes Berkeley research psychologist Paul Piff that “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.” The reason, he believes, is isolation: the wealthy are simply less aware than others of the needs around them. “Wealthy people who lived in homogeneously affluent areas—areas where more than 40 percent of households earned at least $200,000 a year—were less generous than comparably wealthy people who lived in more socioeconomically diverse surroundings.

The rich also contribute differently than the poor. “The poor” says Stern “tend to give to religious organizations and social-service charities, while the wealthy prefer to support colleges and universities, arts organizations, and museums.” So small churches and schools, especially those located in declining industrial and rural areas, may continue to decline, while universities and large congregations, especially those in wealthy suburbs that are most likely to have well-off alumni and members, might even thrive.

Given the increase in income inequality, that 1.3% can be massive. Charting the path ahead for ministry providers will require institutions to get the attention of those relatively isolated wealth-holders for less “sexy” projects than museums and self-named new college buildings—and that might not be easy.

The Divorce Rate is Down

There are still preachers proclaiming that the divorce rate is up, but all the data say otherwise. This week the United States Census released a new report entitled "Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces" (P70-125). It provides several important facts:

The divorce rate peaked in the cohort that was born in the 1950s and got married in the 1970s. From 1996 to 2009, the percentage of divorced people has gone up for Americans over 50 years of age, while it has gone down for those younger than 50. In fact more than 80 percent of married couples today are still in their first marriage. It appears that the divorce surge was particular to one generation, the early wave of Baby Boomers.

But, the decrease in divorces may simply be the result of a change in patterns about getting married. The age at which Americans get married has increased significantly in recent decades. Most now get married in their late 20s and early 30s, instead of in their late teens and early 20s. The majority are married by the time they are 35; two-thirds of men and three quarters of women. (Yes, women are more likely to marry than are men.) The percentage of women still unmarried at age 30 has nearly doubled since 1986.

There has been a large increase in the percentage of inter-ethnic marriages. The portion of Americans in a marriage where each partner is of a different race or ethnicity has more than tripled in the last four decades.

What Does This Mean?

Divorce is less of a problem, but a much larger percentage of young adults are delaying marriage and living together as if they were married for several years before the wedding. Even in conservative, Evangelical churches, two-thirds or more of church-member young adults engage in sex before marriage. (Although a much smaller percentage actually cohabit before the wedding.) This has become such a well-established pattern that most pastors now say privately they are afraid to ask couples who come to them to prepare for a wedding about their situation in terms of sexual activity. Those religions that have historically taught that sex is reserved for married couples must now face a new reality among their own members, furthermore among nonbelievers. Sexuality, family and faith are such basic things in the lives of almost all people that this is not a situation can simply be ignored.

How the Recession Impacts Families

No issue creates more tension in marriages these days than does money. A recent survey commissioned by American Express shows that it is the number one topic that couples fight about. It was cited three times as often as the next two items on the list, sex and children. More than 90 percent of the respondents said that they try to avoid talking about family finances with their spouse. Nearly a third say they have lied to their spouse about how much they spent on a purchase. (Research Alert, July 2, 2010)

Pastors can tell you that the economy puts a lot of wear and tear on marriages. It is another way in which the materialistic culture of America is at war with the followers of Jesus. And Princeton economist Paul Krugman reported last week that because national governments are giving in to political pressures, this is likely to become a long depression, the third significant Depression in the history of the last few hundred years. It will be more like the Long Depression that started in 1873 and lasted for more than a decade than the Great Depression of the 1930s, he says. He predicts that "tens of millions of unemployed workers ... will go jobless for years, and some ... will never work again." (New York Times, June 28, 2010)

What Does This Mean for Your Ministry?

Pastors and congregations need to be prepared for a long spell of both increased demand for help and decreased resources. We need more bold, Biblical teaching to help people straighten out their values relative to finances. It is essential that churches find expanded ways to help families suffering from the down economy. Those who ignore it, who cut back on social services and family life education while investing more in other areas are revealing through their corporate body language a message that is unChristlike and defames the character of God at a time when more and more people are turning to faith for answers. This is a moment of missional opportunity for those who care enough to deal with the real needs of families.

Why Do Pastors' Kids Leave the Church?

It is a heart-wrenching thing to spend one's life in ministry and then have one's children leave the faith when they become adults. Yet, pastors' kids often see the least attractive features of church life and are exposed to the greatest amount of cynicism and doubt.

My friend Martin Weber has completed research for his doctoral dissertation (which won't be defended until May) on this topic, the result of interviews and a survey of 113 clergy with adult children in a Midwest judicatory of the Adventist denomination. He finds that the most significant factors in avoiding adult children of clergy leaving the faith are (1) being able to discuss church problems in the parsonage while also (2) managing to sustain joy and togetherness in the family circle and (3) giving teens the freedom to develop their own faith experience without the expectation of being super-saints because they live in a parsonage.

Some other interesting findings:

• Parents who are conservative about lifestyle is not statistically significant in predicting dropouts.
• Legalism regarding soteriology is moderately significant.
• Legalism regarding practicing the principles of the gospel is highly significant.
• Clergy parents who hold their children to a higher behavioral standard is one of the most significant correlations with dropouts.
• Lack of relationality in the clergy family is the most significant correlation with dropouts. Pastors with the highest retention rate among their own adult children managed to provide the most positive and fun family experience and were close enough to talk about anything in an atmosphere of freedom that allowed their children and teens latitude in developing their own faith.
• Closely related with family relationality is the freedom and trust to discuss controversial issues. A major cause of dropouts is to attempt to shield the children of clergy from or resist discussing with them conflicts in the congregation or the denomination.
• The most significant predictor of adult children of pastors who are still in the faith is whether the child took initiative in approaching a clergy parent to discuss spiritual things.
• When members of the congregation criticize the children of the pastor, they are contributing to the future lack of faith on the part of those children.

Keep your eyes open for more good information. Weber tells me that he's been asked to write an article about his research for Adventist World and Jim Gilley, the new president of the Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN) has asked him to tape a short series. I hope that 3ABN will produce that in DVD. Of course, his complete dissertation will be available from University Microfilms by the end of the year. Weber is a pastor and communication director for the Mid-America Union Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church with offices in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Christian Parents & Popular Media

There is a profound tension between the wish of Christian and other parents to teach values to their children (especially teens) and the tremendous power of the popular media to insinuate itself into the privacy of the home and manipulate immature minds. Never before in history have human beings been so exposed and unprotected from the manipulations of faceless, unscrupulous promoters and producers. How can parents relate to this without seeking to either discourage art or disconnect their children from the real world in ways that may end up being crippling?

A survey recently released by the Barna Group sheds some light on how difficult this is for the average Christian family. Four out of five Christian parents buy DVDs of popular movies for their children and 26 percent are not happy with what is on the DVDs they buy. Six in ten buy music CDs for their children and 33 percent are worried about these CDs. Half of them buy video games for their kids and 39 percent are concerned about these games. Half buy popular magazines for their young people and 31 percent worry about the content of these publications. A third get computer software for their kids and 24 percent are not comfortable with the content. In each case you can see that the majority of the parents who do purchase popular media for their children are really worried about the things they are getting for their kids, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Why?

Parents are completely manipulated by the publishers. These things are promoted directly to the children. The strategies are designed to get word-of-mouth and peer pressure going among children and teens, and the parents realize that if they take try to impose a total ban, then the older children will simply get access to these materials through covert methods.

There are a couple of strategies that can be used to counter this manipulation, but Barna didn't ask about these nor try to measure how widespread their use is or the perceptions of their effectiveness. One is for parents to view content with their children and help the child develop critical skills and make choices based on the values that the parents want the child to develop. Another is to find publishers that provide materials consistent with your values and support them buy purchasing those materials for your children. The free market can work if parents will work it.