ourbrainhurts

In reading this Atlantic article, I couldn’t help think of the emergent church:

More damning is the conclusion produced by a careful reading of this often fine-grained semi-sociological analysis: a good deal of the progressives’ attitudes, preferences, and sense of identity are ingrained in an unlovely disdain for those outside their charmed circle… [M]uch of their self-satisfaction derives from consumption—and much [it] is motivated by a desire to differentiate themselves from the benighted. Sushi, for instance, is ‘everything [White People] want: foreign culture, expensive, healthy, and hated by the “uneducated.” ’ And whatever its goals, the ACLU is beloved by White People, … because it protects them ‘from having to look at things they don’t like. At the top of this list is anything that has to do with Christianity’—an aversion … rooted not in religious enmity but in taste (Christianity is ‘a little trashy’), formed largely by class and education.

I was asked why I wasn’t keen in actively supporting California’s Prop 8, the “Marriage Protection” proposition, and this is what I wrote:

I don’t know that I’m so much against Prop 8 as I am not for it.

I’m against the government invading our religious and personal lives. I think there are duties that belong to the Church, and duties that belong to the Civil Magistrate. (I think the revisions made to Westminster Confession of Faith 23.3 that appear in the PCA’s standards are wise.)

To be brief, I think Christians allowed (and even mandated) the government to become involved in areas only the church has jurisdiction, and this is most evident in education, marriage, and the family. Where we have tried to instill our values and concerns in society using “the power of the sword” it has only been turned back on us. (Read Neil Postman’s Building a Bridge to the 18th Century for the example of protestants creating the public school system.)

My understanding is that not until the mid-1800s were marriage licenses issued by the state; until then marriages were a church and private matter. My layman’s reading of history is that marriages increasingly became licensed to prohibit inter-racial marriages and to criminalize polygamy (especialy among Mormons). The real invasion by the government in regulating marriages was in income taxes and government social programs.

We continue to tie ourselves tighter to the government as we want more tax deductions for marriage, for children, and so on. We have dined with the devil, and we’re surprised the meal has been poisoned.