A black eye for faith

I drove to Indiana last year for a speech. Long drive but good people and a nice state. So what happened recently with their legislation supposedly based on protecting freedom of religion was rather shocking. Flummery and packaging aside, the heart of the bill was about allowing Christians to refuse to provide work or support to same-sex weddings. In other words, a Christian — and it’s not yet been an issue for orthodox Muslims, Jews or anyone else — can refuse to cater, sell a dress, take photographs if the event is the marriage of two people of the same gender. So it’s a law to allow discrimination.

Now let’s make this abundantly clear from the start. No church should have to marry a same-sex couple, no private person should be forced to attend a same-sex wedding and nobody has to support same-sex marriage. But the Indiana move, and Arkansas and other states are considering something similar, was about the rights of a citizen to be served and a business to withhold service.

That’s where it becomes a little tricky.

There have been test cases in several countries but particularly in the United States, and it’s certainly true that sometimes Christians have been unfairly targeted and treated. But we also have to be balanced on this and ask some pertinent questions.
Would, for example, the Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding also refuse to do so for a couple living together before they were married? Would the Christian dressmaker who refused to sell a wedding dress to a lesbian for her wedding do the same to a heterosexual women she knew intended to have an “open” marriage or who used contraceptives or fully supported abortion?

The point is that some Christians do seem to embrace a hierarchy on what they see as sinful and that gay people are placed at the very top.

More than this, though, is the degree of support implicit in a business transaction. If someone is a baker, or for that matter butcher or candlestick maker, their job is to sell cakes, meat and candles and not to choose between which customers they choose to oblige. Loath as I am to use the comparison, it was not so long ago that stores refused to serve people because of their skin colour or ethnicity. Alas, inter-racial couples were refused service and often the reason given was religion.

What happened after Indiana introduced the legislation was a disaster for the public face of Christianity. There was widespread condemnation, then a clumsy apology and then the anger of the Christian right over what they see as persecution and an attack on religious freedom. Persecution? How dare they! The same week all this was unfolding dozens of young Kenyan Christians were singled out because of their faith by Islamist terrorists and murdered. The juxtaposition was, frankly, sickening. Having recently published an entire book about Islam’s persecution of Christians I have little patience for comfortable North Americans claiming that they suffer for their faith.

The term “Big Gay” was even coined to describe the backlash against Indiana, which sounds to me like a bouncer at a pub I used to drink in just outside Belfast. This was unintended self-parody at its worst. Of course there was a counter campaign of boycott but that shouldn’t surprise us. And let’s be candid here: conservative Christians have themselves organized highly successful boycotts over the years. In this case there were even threats of violence and that is entirely unacceptable; a view echoed by most mainstream leaders of the gay community.

I have written this before and I proudly say it again. The entire debate and conversation around the gay community has to change and the vocabulary has to be soaked in gentleness, grace, Christian love and a pristine sense of empathy. Christianity is not about refusing service, ostracizing and aggressively judging but about witnessing to others the joy and certainty of Christ and salvation.

So, another black eye for the faith when our vision should in reality be crystal clear. We have to get this one right because it will be the prism through which people observe Christianity. Not easy of course but then commitment to Him isn’t supposed to be.

(Coren’s new book is Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity. His web site is www.michaelcoren.com.)