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As a Christian lawyer \u2014 even when I was engaged in the \u201ccommercial\u201d practice of law rather than the nonprofit, constitutional work I do now \u2014 I always drew moral lines around my representations decisions.I was not going to use whatever meager talents God gave me to advance or celebrate causes or principles I knew to be wrong. In other words, I discriminated. But not on the basis of race, gender, disability, or sexual orientation, but rather on the basis of the action or legal principle the case would advance. I\u2019d happily represent anyone, gay or straight, in a commercial contract dispute. I would not represent anyone, gay or straight, who wanted to sue to make divorce easier or broaden the definition of marriage beyond the union of one man and one woman. I\u2019d represent an adulterous cad if the state violated his rights to free speech, but I wouldn\u2019t lift a finger to help him divorce his wife.<\/p>\n
This distinction, between status and acts, or between and among different acts themselves, used to be a matter of common sense. And it certainly still is amongst lawyers. No one (yet) is telling me that to maintain my law license I have to represent anyone who asks for help, no matter the case or cause. But if I have artistic talent, now the rule is different: My talents are the community\u2019s talents, or I\u2019m \u201cseceding\u201d from society. So the Christian baker, who\u2019s more than willing to bake a cake for anyone, gay or straight, man or woman, black or white, for \u2014 say \u2014 a birthday party or an office celebration, is now seceding from society if they\u2019re unwilling to help celebrate a gay wedding.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the\u00a0contention of Jonathan Rauch<\/a>, a guy I\u2019ve long respected and whose book,\u00a0The Kindly Inquisitors<\/em><\/a>, is a must-read for anyone who questions the value of free speech in a pluralistic society. Unfortunately, his latest essay in\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, gets things exactly backwards. Accusing\u00a0Christians of a \u201cgreat secession,\u201d of \u201cwalling themselves off from secular society,\u201d he says this:<\/p>\n Culturally conservative Christians are taking a pronounced turn toward social secession: asserting both the right and the intent to sequester themselves from secular culture and norms, including the norm of nondiscrimination. This is not a good idea. When religion isolates itself from secular society, both sides lose, but religion loses more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019d counter with a different construct: Ideologically aggressive government and its cultural allies are taking a pronounced turn toward social aggression: expanding the reach of government into decisions that American culture and norms have traditionally left to the private sphere. That is not a good idea. When government power intrudes upon Christian conscience, both sides lose, but government ultimately loses more.<\/p>\n We just ended a news cycle when the Left and its allies in the federal government (and the front-runner in the next presidential race) had an absolutely hysterical over-reaction to the news that a Christian family business couldn\u2019t be forced to pay for pills that could kill children. The fact that this same Christian family will provide, free of charge, 16 different contraceptives to its female employees was apparently immaterial. Christians were \u201churting\u201d women. Rather than viewing the undemocratic expansion of Obamacare (remember, the HHS\u00a0mandate was regulatory, not statutory) as an aggressive government action, the alleged aggressors were Christians who weren\u2019t willing to sacrifice their liberty and their conscience. But here\u2019s Rauch on the Christian desire to be left alone:<\/p>\n Still, the desire to be left alone takes on a pretty aggressive cast when it involves slamming the door of a commercial enterprise on people you don\u2019t approve of. The idea that serving as a vendor for, say, a gay commitment ceremony is tantamount to \u201cendorsing\u201d homosexuality, as the new religious-liberty advocates now assert, is a far-reaching proposition, one with few apparent outer boundaries in a densely interwoven mercantile society. It suggests a hair-trigger defensiveness about religious identity that would have seemed odd just a few years ago. As far as I know, during the divorce revolution it never occurred to, say, Catholic bakers to tell remarrying customers, \u201cYour so-called second marriage is a lie, so take your business elsewhere.\u201d That would have seemed not so much principled as bizarre.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019d respectfully suggest that Rauch doesn\u2019t quite know what he\u2019s talking about here. Down in the Evangelical South, where I grew up, and in the Evangelical culture where I\u2019ve lived my entire life, we\u2019ve got a long tradition of refusing to participate in immoral acts. I can\u2019t count the number of times I\u2019ve talked to Christian business owners who\u2019ve drawn lines around their businesses, but none of those events made news because they didn\u2019t involve a legally or culturally favored identity-group.<\/p>\n A prime example of this phenomenon is the academic world\u2019s treatment of Christian student groups. For generation after generation Christian groups have taken disciplinary action against leaders\u00a0who engage in heterosexual sin. Whether they\u2019re \u201chooking up\u201d or cohabiting, Christian student groups have long asked straight students to step down from leadership when they\u2019ve crossed moral lines, especially when they\u2019re unrepentant. They operated for decades on campus without controversy. But now they\u2019re exposed to a massive assault on their most basic rights of free association,\u00a0about to face expulsion<\/a>\u00a0from the entire Cal State system, for example,\u00a0unless they allow their leaders to engage in homosexual sexual activity.<\/p>\n There is no \u201chair trigger defensiveness\u201d from Christians. There is no desire to \u201csecede\u201d \u2014 unless our democracy has devolved so much that the quest to maintain historically-protected religious liberty rights is now \u201csecession.\u201d In his closing, Rauch\u00a0declares the following:<\/p>\n This much I can guarantee: the First Church of Discrimination will find few adherents in 21st-century America. Polls find that, year by year, Americans are growing more secular. The trend is particularly pronounced among the young, many of whom have come to equate religion with intolerance. Social secession will only exacerbate that trend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019d respond with my own guarantee. The best way to destroy a faith is to abandon it. Just ask mainline Protestants. They\u2019re no longer recognizably Christian, they\u2019re\u00a0prone (like the\u00a0<\/a>PCUSA<\/a>)\u00a0to embrace vile evils like abortion and anti-Semitism, and\u00a0they conform to the culture and lose adherents by the hundreds of thousands. After all, why go to church when you can get the same sermon from the Sunday\u00a0New York Times<\/em>?<\/p>\n Rauch may be correct in the short term that orthodox Christians may find themselves further isolated. But we\u2019re not seceding. Far from it. In fact, we\u2019re embracing the nation\u2019s founding principles \u2014 principles designed from the beginning to protect minority viewpoints. When it comes to determining which values are more fundamentally American, more consistent with our history and culture, I\u2019ll take the First Amendment over a university diversity policy. In fact, I\u2019d say that if anyone is \u201cseceding\u201d from the Land of Liberty, it\u2019s those who would use the power of government to deny citizens their \u201cunalienable rights\u201d \u2014 even if the oppressors believe their cause is just and their intentions are pure.<\/p>\n Read more on the\u00a0Patheos Faith and Family Channel<\/a>\u00a0and follow\u00a0David on Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are Christians walling themselves off from secular society?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1209,1233,1232,18],"class_list":["post-7527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cal-state","tag-christian-student-groups","tag-jonathan-rauch","tag-religious-liberty"],"yoast_head":"\n