Bulldozing the Religious Ghetto? On the “Voluntary Reconsidering” of Christian Truth

In union with Jesus, we’ve become strangers and exiles, albeit exiles who steadfastly seek to enter the City of Man, aflame and filled with suffering, to bless it and help it.

David Gushee just published a RNS piece calling for evangelicals to come to heel before the sexual revolution in its late stages. It’s time for Christians and other religious groups who support heterosexual marriage to “reconsider their position voluntarily,” in his Orwellian phrasing. Christians who do not “reconsider” in this way encourage “discrimination” against individuals who embrace a LGBT lifestyle and identity, according to Gushee.

Gushee presents himself as a tough-talking angel of peace, coming to broker a settlement. His prose, however, more closely resembles an authoritarian police-state czar venturing into the religious ghetto to warn its stubborn residents of their impending doom. At the close of his piece, he cranks the rhetoric up to 11:

“Openly discriminatory religious schools and parachurch organizations will feel the pinch first. Any entity that requires government accreditation or touches government dollars will be in the immediate line of fire. Some organizations will face the choice either to abandon discriminatory policies or risk potential closure. Others will simply face increasing social marginalization.”

He then labels this break-your-back kind of social momentum “progress”: “Sometimes society changes and it marks decadence. Other times society changes and it marks progress. Those who believe LGBT equality marks decadence are being left behind.” This is perhaps the most chilling piece of public discourse on the sexual revolution I’ve read. Gushee, at one time an ethicist at Union University, shows a desire to outpace even the secular progressive crowd in his condemnation of marriage advocates. Like newspapers that write obituaries of famous people well in advance, he seems eager to pen the early epitaph of religious conservatives.

Take note of the sweeping effect of The World as Gushee Would Have It: all Jews who hold to traditional marriage must experience “social marginalization.” All African-American churches that dare to retain belief in biblical marriage should be “left behind.” The thriving storefront congregations led by Hispanic charismatics need to be placed “in the line of fire.” The rich American tapestry of Catholic congregations, those with historic Polish, Irish, and Italian roots, need to be shuttered. The Islamic sects that seek to ply their faith peaceably across America need their religious liberty revoked. The hundreds and thousands of marriage-supporting schools that offer religious instruction to America’s rising generation should be shut down. The charities driven by a religious worldview that includes the cornerstone principle of society, the union of one man and one woman that undergirds the family and protects children, need iron bars over their windows.

This is a noxious, anti-American, Politburo-like proposal by Gushee. It represents the evisceration of freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and rational public discourse. In his rush to align himself with the late stages of the sexual revolution, Gushee has unwittingly sounded tones reminiscent of revolutionary France, 1920s Russia, and 1960s Communist China. He has turned belief in and defense of the foundational institution of life and flourishing, marriage, into the marker of hatred and oppression.

This proposal is indeed bold, but it is nothing more than the same tune played by anti-bourgeois libertines for more than a century now. In this worldview, the Judeo-Christian ethic, with its nurture of the family and its care for children, is what is holding society back. The pagan ethic, disconnected from traditional morality, is what will free the people. Down with the family; down with male leadership; down with closeting views of lifelong marriage; down with moral instruction of children, which is brainwashing; down with the church, which enshrines and ennobles repression.

The sexual revolution is underwritten by a doctrine of salvation. You need to be saved from the petit bourgeois and their straitjacket views. You can be rescued from your religion-induced shame by sexual permissiveness and personal experimentation. Better to let your lusts run free, embrace the wild impulses coursing through you, and truly live. This pagan ethic is not new. It is as old as the serpent’s hiss. It is the promise of freedom in the denial of God and his design for humanity. More deeply than we all realize, we have pagan blood coursing in our veins. We instinctively want to rebel against God, reject his design, and remake the earth in our primal image.

Paganism is neither personally expedient nor societally wise. So no, religious conservatives will not be “reconsidering our position voluntarily.” We will be holding fast to our convictions. This is true of evangelicals, and this is true of many neighbors and friends besides. Without hate of anyone, we will happily and joyfully stand for marriage, the family, the goodness of manhood and womanhood, and the value of peaceful religious groups. We stand for these things first and foremost because of the revelatory wisdom of God in Christ, but we know that many others join us in these convictions. We are glad to be numbered with them, from the Mormon community to the Jewish synagogue to the fair-minded agnostic and beyond. Religious liberty, after all, is not a fiat-granted gift from the high priests of the sexual revolution, revocable at any instant. It is the very core of American identity, burned into the American heart, chiseled into America’s founding documents.

We see in sum that Gushee’s proposal is anti-American, anti-Christian, and deeply anti-human. I have reason to hope it will not come to fruition, and that the core of our society will hold. But if religious groups do face coming persecution for their support of marriage and the family, we will stay where we stand. We cannot endorse sin. We know that it only brings pain and more sin. Think of the enduring witness of the Old Testament: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34). When we take this text into account with teachings like the second greatest commandment–to love our neighbor as ourself–we recognize that gospel-driven neighbor-love means, in part, seeking what is best for those around us, which necessarily entails doing all we can to support wisdom, morality, and the good of children in our land. 

We’re not going anywhere. What Gushee may not know is that as evangelicals, we’ve left the highway to respectability. Like many before us, we’re walking the way of the cross. While we do our utmost to be all things to all men, and to live at peace in the world, we’ve already given up on worldly applause. In union with Jesus, we’ve become strangers and exiles, albeit exiles who steadfastly seek to enter the City of Man, aflame and filled with suffering, to bless it and help it.

If the ghetto is to be bulldozed, and Dr. Gushee is determined to be on the first tank to smash the walls of religious liberty that yet protect the diverse, many-colored, multi-ethnic, society-strengthening religious communities of America, then by all means: bulldoze away. But mark this: there will be no voluntary surrender of our convictions. We will not come to heel before the sexual revolution. We may lose our rights, our property, our homes, and more.

But we will never lose Christ, and we will never give up his truth.