Boy Scouts and Bad Arguments

I was not going to say much about the decision to allow gay youth to participate in the Boy Scouts.  I was never a scout.  I have no connection with the organization other than knowing a few people who have participated.  My attention has been elsewhere, even as I was glad others were putting in the time to keep gay youth from being barred from the organization.

However, this past week I’ve seen two articles about some of the backlash the Boy Scouts have received.  For instance, churches are deciding not to host/sponsor the scouts, and parents are pulling their sons out of the organization for religious reasons.  While the scouts are outside of my experience, the Church, Christianity, and religion are not.  I will pull a few things from these articles that I find to be problematic: the winning-out of what I call “fear, caste, and cooties” and the matter of for what—and for whom—the Church exists. 

[I will not address homosexuality and Christianity directly here.  Time and space make such a detailed argument unwieldy for a blog post.  But through the study of scripture, theology, and history, as well as my experience of Christianity with LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ, I find the categorical condemnation of homosexuality as sin to be deeply flawed.  This is not to say that there is no such thing as sin in relationships or the use of sex.  I simply locate the moral locus in what people believe and do (or leave undone) instead of who they are as a person created in the image of God, and so possessing an essential dignity worthy to be recognized.]

First, some general observations from the first article.  One pastor defended his decision, saying "we don’t hate anybody...we’re not doing it out of hatred. The teachings of the scripture are very clear on this. We’re doing it because it violates the clear teaching of scripture."

There is a fascinating paragraph in which the pastor of one of the churches says 

"The Boy Scout Leadership has handed down a decision that none of the children in Helena or elsewhere associate with why they are Boy Scouts. This is a decision that was made by adults that may or may not reflect the opinions of any Boy Scout in the troop that we host. I hold the Helena Boy Scout troop with no fault whatsoever."

This is an odd sort of Christian love.  The first pastor is saying that they are not motivated by hate, but near-apathy and unequivocal separation are necessary and acceptable. The second pastor is guaranteeing that all scouts are all equally ostracized from his church for a decision he acknowledges they had no control over and may not agree with.  Personally, I find this to be closer to "fear, caste, and cooties" than Christianity.

The concern I want to explore in some depth is the matter of for what and for whom the Church exists.  Such questions about gate-keeping help to clarify when Christians step into the role of 'judge' that is supposed to be left to God.  A rather telling exchange occurs between a father and son in the second of the above articles:         

Mike A. Miller, a union electrician in Mount Holly, N.C., who said he was pulling his 9-year-old son, Cody, out of the Cub Scouts and would step down as assistant den leader of Pack 45. Monday will be his son's advancement ceremony to Webelos – as far as he will go with the organization

“It was hard to explain to a 9-year-old the complexities of why I was telling him that we had to quit,” Miller said. “He told me, 'Daddy, it should be like church. Everybody should be welcome.'”

Miller said he then told Cody that the point of going to church is to seek forgiveness — not for being all-inclusive.

“I said, 'These people aren’t asking for your forgiveness,'” Miller, 51, told NBC News in a telephone interview. “What they're doing is saying, 'this is what I am and you have to accept me like I am. I'm not coming to try to change.'

It should be mentioned that this story is told by the father, mediated by the reporter.  Let us however take it at face value--that we have an accurate account of the father's conversation with his son. The father and the son are talking about two different things.  The son makes the claim that everyone should be welcome at church.  That is a statement about who the Church is for.  The father countered with the claim that the point of going to church is to seek forgiveness.  That is a statement of what people do at church.

The father conflates these two issues--of what the Church is for and who is invited--and so creates a false dichotomy.  For ease, let's call the issue of who is invited to the Church "welcome" and the issue of what the Church is for--forgiveness, according to the father-- "sanctification."  Sanctification means "to sanctify" or "make holy."  It is a term that can cover a range of moral and religious concepts that include recognizing sin, asking forgiveness, repentance, and seeking greater holiness. These two issues that the father conflates, when separated, should read like this:

1. Either the Church welcomes everyone or the Church sets barriers on who may participate.
2. Either the Church accepts everything about a person and makes no moral claims on a person or the Church recommends the seeking of forgiveness for sin.

The father is assuming that mere welcome implies that no claims are made upon those who are welcomed.   He instead begins his reasoning by arguing about what people do at Church and arrives at the conclusion that the Church cannot welcome all. 

The child's assertion comes closer to good theology than the father's.  This is partly because the son avoids the conflation.  And I should be clear that I am not arguing for a morally nihilistic community with no sense of critical engagement with the lives of members, nonmembers, and the larger world.  What I mean to say is that the child is more correct about for whom the Church exists, and the father displays a presumptuous right to judge others.

Let's look at the son's statement.  There is plenty of scriptural evidence that the Church exists to welcome all.  The arc of Luke-Acts (and the other Gospels) is the opening of God's redemption to all.  Paul argues throughout his letters that through the work of Christ, redemption is open to all across boundaries that formerly divided people (including race, gender, and economic status (see Galatians 3, Colossians 3, Romans 3 and 10)).  And contrary to the father's assertion, the mission of the Church is to be inclusive, so that all things are brought to God's loving rule (1Cor 15:28).  In this way, his son is correct.  For the father to deny this would set the father outside of the bounds of orthodox scriptural interpretation on questions as basic as "for whom did Christ die and rise, and who may be saved?"

Now, the father would probably agree with the assertion of universal redemption in the abstract. He seems like he might take the Bible seriously.  But the way the father sets up his false dichotomy seems to say that there are people who are not welcome in the Church.  He conflates unconditional "welcome" into the Body of Christ through which salvation is granted with rejecting the work of recognizing sin, asking forgiveness, and seeking greater moral perfection.  (Also, the father's assertion that "the point of going to church is to seek forgiveness" is too small of a vision for the Church.  There is much more to the Church than that.)

It is at this point where an inappropriate judgment comes into action.  The father is so convinced that LGBT folks are resistant to change that he sees it as better to bar them from participating in the church.  [I should note that the change I think the father would want is for LGBT people to conform to hetero-normative standards of behavior.  When I speak of change, I mean the processes of sanctification that help one seek the holy in all relationships, gay or straight, romantic and otherwise.]  This position the father takes, which assumes some are resisitant to--or beyond all--redemption, goes beyond the moral critique that Christians are (necessarily) called to do, and enters the territory of judgment.  'Judgment,' that action Christians are to forgo because it is the purview of God,  is "not an injunction to spineless acceptance but a caution against peremptory legalisms that leave no space for acts of compassion and witness (see Mt 7:1, Jn 7:53-8:11).”  The father's willingness to speak with finality about the moral status of anyone--and so preemptively bar them from the community of God--is then an inappropriate judgment, motivated by fear and stereotype. 

It is also a judgment God has the power to thwart.  I believe that we will be surprised to see how God continues to work at extending love into places where we lesser beings thought we would never find such grace.  My hope is that Christians continue to seek that love wherever it shows itself.