How Sleazy Am I? Let’s Find Out

A fellow Patheos blogger in the Progressive Christian Channel, Fred Clark, writes that I am being “sleazy” (and “passive-aggressive”, after passively-aggressively accusing me of racist innuendo) in a column I wrote for The Week on the historic understanding of Christianity.

Am I a sleazeball? Well, I am certainly marred by concupiscence and a disordered will as a result of original sin, so I can’t exclude the possibility. Just how sleazy am I? Let’s try to find out.

In the piece, I note that a significant element from the progressive coalition, much of which is based in coastal urban areas of the United States, is trying to coerce Christian institutions into affirming same sex-marriage, by attempting to make expressions of traditional Christian sexuality seem as bigoted as racism.

Here is what Clark writes:

He goes on to say that this nefariously “urban and progressive” movement “is based on a misreading of history,” and then launches into what he regards as a corrective lecture on the proper understanding of history.
Count me as a bit skeptical about Gobry’s ability to provide a correct understanding of history. He’s just now characterized racism as something confined to the “margins of society” and a relic of the dusty past. (And he did so in the same paragraph in which he also employed “urban” as an adjective intended to connote something suspicious, alien and dangerous.)
But before we get to Gobry’s history lesson, let’s first examine all of the specific examples he provides of the “variety of social and governmental means of coercion to force gay-marriage opponents to the margins of society” and “to force Christianity to affirm same-sex marriage.”
… Let’s see … um …
Oh. He doesn’t provide even a single example of this nasty coercive, shoving-down-the-throat, manipulative forcing to obey that has him so upset.

So, a couple things here.

First of all, yes, I will defend the proposition that overt expressions of racism as a public figure will, in most cases, get you banished to the margins of society in the contemporary United States. And, of course, this is, by and large, something we should be proud of and something we should celebrate. This is not the same thing as denying the existence of what is generally called structural racism, which is the existence of structures of oppression as a result of the legacy of racism. If I did not believe that structural racism exists, for example, I would not have penned a column titled “The Christian case for reparations“, also for The Week. But one gets the sense that Clark did not take the time to get very acquainted with my corpus before making the most uncharitable possible reading of what I wrote and accusing me of moral idiocy, ignorance and bad faith.

Secondly, it is simply preposterous to read what I wrote in its context and think that I used the word “urban” to describe progressives, as Clark implies, as a code for “black people,” when anybody who’s even remotely familiar with the political and cultural context of the contemporary United States would know very well that I am talking about a movement which is largely made up of upper-middle-class, city-dwelling and, let’s face it, white people. This obviously does not describe every single progressive, but as an in-passing description of the sociological makeup of the core of the contemporary progressive movement, this is obviously reasonable. One might be forgiven for thinking that Clark, who throws around words like “sleazy” and “passive-aggressive” is here deploying a passive-aggressive and wholly unsubstantiated accusation of racism against me, an instance of the fallacy known as poisoning the well.

Thirdly, Clark writes that I did not provide in my column an example of coercion of Christian institutions as a result of support for traditional Christian sexual ethics. This is true. This is because the genre of the piece that Clark is lambasting is the “column” genre, which has significant constraints in terms of length. The meat of my column is a discussion of the history of Christian sexual ethics. It is frequent for columns to begin with what is called a “news hook”, a reference to recent events which hopefully grabs the reader’s attention before the author pivots off that event to a more general theme. Because of the aforementioned length constraints of the column genre, in a good column the treatment of this news hook must be necessarily short.

Instead of making this rather logical inference, which would come readily if one were to presume good faith on the part of the person one is reading, Clark has a much readier explanation at hand:

It almost seems as though he’s chosen to mischaracterize […] It almost seems like he’s offering a bad-faith argument based on baseless insinuation and a dick-ish refusal to listen to others or to engage what they are actually saying. Hmmm.

Willful mischaracterization? Bad faith? Dick-ishness? It sounds like we have here an instance of what psychologists commonly refer to as projection. (If Clark had read more than one thing I wrote, he’d know that “aggressive-aggressive” is more my style than “passive-aggressive.”)

For the record, are there such examples of the use of legal and quasi-legal coercion against expressions of traditional Christian ethics? How about one from just this week?

Here is the liberal and secularist writer Damon Linker, just yesterday:

Gordon College, a small Christian school north of Boston, is facing the possibility of having its accreditation revoked by the higher education commission of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, according to an article in the Boston Business Journal. Since accreditation determines a school’s eligibility to participate in federal and state financial aid programs, and the eligibility of its students to be accepted into graduate programs and to meet requirements for professional licensure, revoking a school’s accreditation is a big deal — and can even be a death sentence.

What has Gordon College done to jeopardize its accreditation? It has chosen to enforce a “life and conduct statement” that forbids “homosexual practice” on campus.

As Linker goes on to note, this event is significant for an important reason: this move is based on the premise that Gordon College’s proclamation of traditional Christian sexual ethics is the result of, in the words of Supreme Court jurisprudence, “irrational animus,” in other words that it is a form of bigotry that must be expunged from public life by the use of, in part, legal means. No, the Feds aren’t sending in a SWAT team to arrest everyone at Gordon but, as Linker notes, removing accreditation from an institution of higher education is essentially to kneecap it financially and institutionally.

Of course, there is a precedent for this: Bob Jones University was sued by the Federal government to have its tax-exempt status revoked because it did not admit unmarried black students, and Bob Jones University had to give in.

In other words, we have the same rhetoric (“bigotry”, “irrational animus”) and the same apparatus (social anathema, legal and judicial processes that though not leading up to arrest and imprisonment are nonetheless quite coercive) used to combat traditional Christian sexual ethics as were and are used to combat expressions of racism.

Another interesting facet of this incident is that, on my reading, this move is precisely based on the implicit premise that my column was critiquing: that traditional Christians will give up on heteronormativity if they are bullied into it just like Southern Evangelical Christians gave up on racist rhetoric because it is ultimately incidental, and not central, to Christianity. After all, after some heat was applied, BJU (and rightly so!) gave up on its racist policies. I don’t think the good people who see things in the same way as the “New England Association of Schools and Colleges” want to remove accreditation from, say, every Catholic university and school in the country. I think their implicit (but nonetheless real) view is that if you take a few traditional Christians and throw them against the wall pour encourager les autres the others will get the message and either rethink or just mute their understanding of Christian sexual ethics. The point of my column was to say that there is a very strong historical case that this premise is false, because historically Christianity has understood its particular understanding of sexual ethics as key to its worldview.

That is, in a nutshell, the case my column makes. Maybe it’s wrong! History is, of its very essence, debatable. But at no point in his post does Clark actually engage with my argument.

I would further point out to Clark that I have this thing called Twitter and that I do, frequently, interact with progressives, and that I have found the broad outline of the view I described here and in my column to be there in many of them. Linker’s piece is called “Why do so many liberals despise Christianity?”; after he posted it, a number of outraged liberals said that this is simply not true; one of them had been mocking Christianity as ridiculous and its views on sexuality as tantamount to slavery apologia to a fellow liberal just a few hours beforehand.

There are, of course, many other examples one might choose, like the closure of the Catholic adoption agency in Massachussetts many years ago, down to this employer refusing to hire Christians because they’re bigots, again, just this week. But you know, I’m just making shit up. Sleazily.

Moving on… What other criticisms does Clark have?

He flags three “lies” (not just errors or misrepresentations, lies) in just one paragraph of my column, which he calls “a steaming pile of passive-aggressive insinuation.” By the way: in colloquial modern English, the phrase “steaming pile” evokes the word “shit.” If you want to say I wrote shit, say it, don’t passive-aggressively insinuate it.

So, here are my lies:

All criticism of the condemnation of “homosexuality” comes from outside Christianity. That paragraph purports to be a summary of the argument of this criticism, and look at every use of the word “Christianity” there. It’s all coming from the outside — from people and perspectives that are not a part of the “Christianity” Gobry is discussing. His argument will not allow him to admit that there is disagreement within Christianity, so he characterizes all such disagreement as between “Christianity” and some nefarious group of unnamed others.

The claim that there is no disagreement among Christians is objectively, demonstrably false.

This purported restatement of what I wrote completely disregards what I actually wrote. In the paragraph that Clark cites, I ascribe heteronormativity to Christianity “as a historical social phenomenon“. My column is about the history of sexual ethics. I am well aware that today there are many Christians who reject traditional Christian ethics, often earnestly, and intelligently, and lovingly, and so on. Historically, however, you will not find approval of homosexual behavior by any respected teacher of the faith from any tradition before the 20th century, or if yo do, you will certainly not find, historically, this idea gaining traction anywhere. There is today not unanimity among all Christians about sexual ethics (when is there unanimity among all Christians about anything?), but in Christianity “as a historical social phenomenon” there is certainly this unanimity.

Now, maybe Christians were wrong about sexual ethics for 19 centuries and doctrine needs to develop. Maybe! I have enough friends who are devout Christians and proponents of progressive sexual ethics that I recognize that this is a discussion that must be taken very seriously, and without a priori. However, as a historical matter, my case is pretty much incontrovertible. This is not to passive-aggressively “imply” anything, it is because history is the subject of my column.

So when Clark writes that this is a “nasty insult”, really, to stay at his level, I must say that I’m rubber and he’s glue. Clark clearly did not take the time to try to understand what I actually wrote, because that would detract from the animus he clearly feels he must have against me.

Okay, what’s my second “lie”?

Any questioning, qualification or criticism of the views of Christianity as defined by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is tantamount to “bullying.”

This is so self-evidently bunk that I have nothing to say to this. “Questioning, qualification or criticism of the views of [traditional] Christianity” is, as I have just said, and as any progressive Christian who has engaged with me in good faith on this topic will report, totally fine by me. More than fine. Removing a college’s accreditation, or forcing an adoption agency to shut down, is not the same thing, and can certainly be called bullying with justification.

Clark unfolds his theme:

Exegetical questions about the meaning of specific texts in Leviticus or Romans? Bullying. A hermeneutic based on the ongoing work begun at Pentecost? Bullying. A pauline appeal to the gospel of reconciliation? Bullying. Making any distinction between sectarian ethics and the establishment of sectarian ethics as civil law applied to everyone? Bullying. Asking for any shred of evidence that civil rights for LGBT people harms anyone, anywhere, in any way? Bullying.

Of course, I do not address any of these topics in my column, so the only way that Clark is able to ascribe those views to me is through sheer fantasy.

And the reason I do not address them is because that’s not what my column was about. Not because I’m afraid to discuss these issues, but because they have been covered ad infinitum in other places, whereas the specific point I made in the column (and remember, it. is. a. column., not the Summa Sexualitica) is one that (or so I thought anyway) is not often made.

As a matter of fact, I have indeed addressed some of these issues in the past in other venues, and I don’t recall ever calling them bullying. Maybe Clark can get off his proverbial ass and fire up The Google and learn something about what in the heck is going on before he spews, what was that phrase again, oh yeah, “nasty insult[s]”. (As I said, I’m more an “aggressive-aggressive” kinda guy.)

(The most hilarious part of this completely unhinged passage by Clark is the utterly gratuitous addition of a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. Guess whose side he would be on today??? (Never mind that no one can know.) I guess that makes me Bull Connor. No nastiness or sleaze here, for sure. The added soupçon of ridiculousness here is that you’ll recall that Clark began his rant by alleging that there is no evidence that progressives view traditional Christian ethics as tantamount to racism, in the same breath as he weaves a (passive-aggressive, but unmistakeable) motif of his opponents as tantamount to racists. The caption of the photo starts with “Urban progressives”? Get it? I used the word “urban” therefore I’m a racist therefore Clark is MLK. Or something. That’s some real airtight logic there, pardner.)

Ok, lie number 3:

Hermeneutics are at best, irrelevant, and at worst an evasive, lawyerly attempt to escape the self-evident meaning of the Bible, which is an anthology of clear commandments given for all of history (and mostly regarding sex).

Now this is the clearest indication that Clark is just wholly inhabiting a fantasy of his own invention that has no relationship to anything which might be called reality. I simply challenge anyone who is rational to read my column and tell me where and how this could possibly describe anything remotely like what I wrote.

I believe that “hermeneutics” is irrelevant? What? I believe in “the self-evident meaning of the Bible, which is an anthology of clear commandments”. Yeah, and also in penal substitutionary atonement and the assurance of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. I am totally depraved, and Christ’s righteousness was imputed on me because I was predestined to be one of God’s elect. Because I am an Evangelical Protestant. Which is why you are reading this on the Catholic Channel at Patheos.  Here it has become incontrovertible that Clark is doing battle with a cartoon character that exists only in his head and to whom he has given my name by random chance.

(And the Bible’s commandments are “mostly regarding sex”? Frankly, that is an outrageously false and, well, “nasty” mischaracterization of even the dimmer “My Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” sort of believer.)

Of course, he might have taken a hint from the fact that nowhere in my column do I cite proof-texts from the Bible regarding homosexual conduct. And the reason is, again, that my column is about the history of the Christian worldview and of Christian sexual ethics and not at all with the Bible as such. (And secondarily that, as anyone who’s read my work knows, I despise proof-texting and thoughtless hermeneutics in general.)

And that’s where Gobry seems to lose track of his game of insinuation. His call to defy such bullying and to resist a repetition of such shameful cultural accommodation requires that he affirm and confirm the explanation he attributes to those outsiders. The argument he accuses them of making becomes his own argument, and he winds up suggesting that “Christians today” shamefully “find ways to lawyer their way out of … verses in the Bible … that allow slavery.”
I don’t think this is where Gobry wanted to end up, yet this is where he arrives — telling us that “Christians won’t back down on gay marriage” the way they once allowed outsiders to bully them into backing down on slavery.

I really invite Clark to actually read my column, perhaps after taking a few deep breaths.

First of all, my column does not issue any “call” to “defy” bullying, or anything else for that matter, it is a historical assessment of the likelihood of whether Christianity’s sexual ethics will change.

Second of all, and I can’t believe that I have to even point this out, but when I write that Christians “find ways to lawyer their way out of … verses in the Bible … that allow slavery” it is abundantly clear that I am describing a view prevalent among secular progressives of how Christianity works, not describing my own view of how it works (let alone of whether this how it should work). This is a failure to read at an 8th grade level, mistaking an author describing somebody else’s view for his expounding his own view.

As an aside, I do think that it’s really hard to lawyer your way out of an accommodation of slavery with a “plain sense,” “Bible alone” view of Scripture. This is one of many reasons why I despise this view.

What, then, to say?

On the whole, the following: Clark at no point successfully makes contact with any argument I’ve made; however, he incessantly mischaracterizes what I wrote, makes all sorts of unsubstantiated personal accusations against me, reads me exclusively with bad faith, has made absolutely no effort to find out whether what he thinks I am saying could actually be what I meant, paints me in the most negative light, passive-aggressively engages in implicit character assassination, and repeatedly insults me venomously.

He writes about “display[ing] sleazy ethics.” I guess he’s an expert.

How’s that for passive-aggressive?