Year: 2013

Fr. Andrew Damick – A Conversion Story: Leaving Westboro Baptist

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Source: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy | By Fr. Andrew Damick

(KWCH Eyewitness News) They’re known worldwide as the group from Kansas that protests at soldiers’ funerals, and says God hates America because it allows homosexuality. Now, Westboro Baptist Church is reacting to the defection of a key member.

“She just decided she did not want to obey God,” spokesman Steve Drain says. “She did not want to obey scripture.”

She is Megan Phelps-Roper. The 27-year-old had risen to become a leader in the family church founded her grandfather.

In a blog post from Megan Phelps-Roper entitled “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise” it was announced to the world yesterday that a leading member in the execrable Westboro Baptist Church had, along with her younger sister, in the words of the news story linked above, “defected” and “apologized” for their actions as members of WBC.

What the news story (and probably other news stories in the days to come) doesn’t seem to get is that this isn’t just a “defection.” Reading Megan’s own words, as well as an excellent essay by a reporter who was privy to Megan’s choice to leave WBC, it’s clear that this moment is no less than a conversion. Here’s Megan:

In a city in a state in the center of a country lives a group of people who believe they are the center of the universe; they know Right and Wrong, and they are Right. They work hard and go to school and get married and have kids who they take to church and teach that continually protesting the lives, deaths, and daily activities of The World is the only genuine statement of compassion that a God-loving human can sincerely make. As parents, they are attentive and engaged, and the children learn their lessons well.

This is my framework.

Until very recently, this is what I lived, breathed, studied, believed, preached – loudly, daily, and for nearly 27 years.

I never thought it would change. I never wanted it to.

Then suddenly: it did.

This is what conversion is—to have one’s whole framework for living and thinking and understanding, which all seems perfectly normal and rational, called into question and finally left behind. I don’t think this point can really be stressed enough. So often when we look at people whose beliefs contradict our own, we usually write them off as stupid, ignorant or evil. And they may well be any or all of those things. But when the only data you have for understanding the world is a matrix of judgment and wrath from God, then it makes perfect sense to work tirelessly to extend that exact same judgment and wrath to the world.

But even then, even if one has a lot more data, that doesn’t mean that people who look at that same data will come to the same conclusions. I often wonder how someone can look at all the same data I have and not become an Orthodox Christian. I really don’t understand it. I wish I did. But I know plenty of people smarter than I, better informed than I and more sincere than I who have indeed looked at that data and not made the same choice I did.

I don’t think the media gets this, though, because the popular culture makes the assumption (despite it being proved so obviously wrong so very often) that anyone who is educated will of course hold a particular belief. “Education is the key,” etc. But sometimes it’s not. In fact, most of the time, it’s not. The media will understand this essentially as a defection based on a couple of young women finally learning some things they didn’t know before. But Megan was a major user of social media and a constant media face for WBC. She was exposed to all kinds of things that contradicted WBC doctrine yet she remained not only in the fold but an enthusiastic leader within it.

What happened? She converted. Further evidence for this is what always happens after conversion—the world seems new, unfamiliar and somewhat confusing. Megan writes: “Where do you go from there? I don’t know, exactly. My sister Grace is with me, though. We’re trying to figure it out together.” There is a freshness and a sense of possibility even in the midst of the confusion. And her Father Grace is with her, too.

Conversion also requires making sense of one’s past life, trying to incorporate all those previous experiences into the new vision of the world that has arisen. This process is normal to converts and usually lasts for years. I can only imagine what kind of processing a former member of WBC will have to undertake:

We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.

I hope the world will sit up and take notice, not to a “defection” story about the triumph of exposure to media and information, but rather to a story about redemption, about spiritual conversion. That’s the real story here. One moment, she was Megan Phelps-Roper, Hater of Fags, and the next, she was something else.

Redemption. It’s possible.

The Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick is pastor of St. Paul Orthodox Church of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, author of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (Conciliar Press, 2011), and host of the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy and Roads from Emmaus podcasts.

The Super Bowl and Morality

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– Source: Fr. Peter Preble Blog | By Fr. Peter Preble

In my last post, I wrote about my favorite commercial from the Super Bowl, And God Made a Farmer. However, there were some pretty disturbing commercials as well as the entire half time show that I think needs to be addressed.

Now I realize that each generation moves along a spectrum, and the previous generation does not always agree. I was reminded on Facebook that Elvis raised some eyebrows in his day with his gyrating hips and what not. But, as I remarked, Elvis kept his clothes on.

The first exhibition of how low America has sunk into the moral gutter was the GoDaddy dot com commercial. GoDaddy spokesperson, and race car driver Danica Patrick talks about the merging of the sexy with the technical. The camera moves to a scantily clad woman and, what I would describe, as a geek. The two them start to kiss and the sounds are just stomach turning, and this goes on for what seemed like hours.

Next we come to the half time show. I will set aside the fact that I just do not understand modern music, I will address, or rather ask a question, why do we believe it necessary for women to take off their clothes and prance around a stage? I just don’t get it, and maybe I am showing my age, but to it bordered on the pornographic! A few years ago the world went crazy with the “wardrobe malfunction” but we seem to be okay with everything just short of nudity, but I am sure that is not too far behind.

We were then subjected to a display by the two actresses from the show “Two Broke Girls.” Now, I have never watched the program, but I have seen enough of the ads to understand this program is one step above the gutter itself. The show glorifies fornication and other such things, and in the commercial the girls removed their waitress uniforms and began a pole dance. Again I just don’t get it. Things like this used to be only available wrapped in a plain brown wrapper behind the counter at the corner store.

Now maybe I am a prude, but I don’t care. As an Orthodox Christian, I find this downturn of our morals to be disturbing. We have sexualized everything in this country now to include internet website domain names. I do appreciate the creativity it takes to do that, but when are we going to be outraged?

Women in America have made significant strides in the movement for equality, and I do not understand why there is not more outrage from women when advertisers reduce them to nothing but objects. The human body is a beautiful thing, and all of humanity is created in the image a likeness of God, but when it is reduced to an object, that is an abuse of that creation. Women prancing around the stage, or swinging from a pole denigrates women. I asked the question on Facebook last night, Is this what you want your daughters doing? Pornography is on the rise, and this does nothing but feed directly into that dark world.

Beyonce is an exceptionally talented young lady, why she felt the need to prance around the stage last night in her underwear I will never understand. What would have been wrong with just coming out on the stage and singing your music? As much as I disagreed with the rendition of the National Anthem by Alicia Keys, at least she dressed appropriately for the occasion. Beyonce was dressed more for the beach than she was for the International Stage.

America, when are we going to wake up? When are we going to realize that we are on a slippery slope into the gutter and try to turn the tide and return to a sense of decency. As I stated before in the essay, the human body is a beautiful creation and should be celebrated, not reduced to an object for entertainment. When we sexualize young girls and women on television it reduces them to objects, and it takes the wind out of the sails of anything women are trying to do. Modesty has been stricken from the lexicon of the day, or at least it has been redefined and not in a good way.

Read Fr. Peter Preble’s blog.

Acton Blog: Dunn, Oikonomia, and Assault Weapons: Misappropriating a Principle?

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For better or for worse (probably better) discussion of Orthodox teaching to cultural issues and every day life takes place more often on public blogs than anywhere else. Some critics deride the development of a virtual public square but how does it differ from essays written on paper except that delivery is faster?

Moreover, the quality of the writing is often good and sometimes excellent. The communications revolution is changing the Church as it has every other institution. Sharpening ideas by offering them for public critique is a good thing overall. People engaged in public life who know that ideas are important have been doing it for centuries.

Below is a response to David J. Dunn’s essay An Eastern Orthodox Case for Banning Assault Weapons by Dylan Pahman published on the Acton Institute Power Blog.

Fr. Gregory Jensen also crafted a response to Dunn that published immediately below this post.

David J. Dunn yesterday wrote an interesting piece arguing for a ban on assault weapons from an Orthodox Christian perspective (here). First of all, I am happy to see any timely Orthodox engagement with contemporary social issues and applaud the effort. Furthermore, I respect his humility, as his bio statement reads: “his views reflect the diversity of Orthodox opinion on this issue, not any ‘official’ position of the church.” The same applies to my views as well.

I take issue with Dunn, in particular, in his use of the Orthodox principle of oikonomia. As he frames it, it would appear that he has not taken the time to understand it in historical context, distorting his application of the principle to the debate of firearm regulation. Indeed, he appears to have entirely misappropriated this principle, applying it in precisely the opposite manner in which it is traditionally intended.

When it comes to government intervention in the market, I tend to err on the side of freedom, as I have recently expressed with regards to the issue of smoking (here). Now, to be clear, my point in that post was that I was unsure what good any further regulations on smoking would bring, not that we ought to lift all that are already in place. The central question in that case, I stated, is “to what extent should the state be able to intervene into the market when a company’s or industry’s product can and tends to, but does not necessarily, endanger our natural rights?”

Now, when it comes to firearms, I think this is an even stickier situation. Many people own and operate firearms perfectly safely, whereas most people who smoke at least endanger their own health, not to mention the health of others through second hand smoke.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that firearms are actually made to kill, calling to question whether the state has a role, for the sake of protecting the right to life of its citizens, to regulate—or perhaps to promote, as some would argue—the availability of different types of firearms. All that is to say, this is a difficult question of ethics, economics, and constitutional law and not as simple as some may want it to be.

Dunn argues for banning “assault weapons” (a rather ambiguous legal term) on the basis of the Orthodox principle of oikonomia. In response to Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, he writes,

Wayne LaPierre needs a little oikonomia because oikonomia demands we value people more than ideology. The “letter of the law” in the NRA is to oppose any regulation on the sale and manufacture of firearms. But holding fast to one’s ideals can make a person blind to their human cost, leading to irrational behavior. Thus, in the wake of shootings like Sandy Hook Elementary, LaPierre refuses to admit the obvious fact that a shooter with a smaller clip can kill fewer children. Instead he says that we should focus on the root causes of the problem. But the root causes are not always the ones that need to be addressed. In the Orthodox Church, oikonomia is a kind of spiritual triage: First save the patient! ButLaPierre is like a doctor, who comes across a person in cardiac arrest, and scolds her about proper diet and exercise.

What I take issue with here is Dunn’s understanding of the principle of oikonomia. He defines it as follows:

Oikonomia comes from the word oikos, which means “household” or “family.” When it comes to the canons, oikonomia means that, just as parents do not enforce the rules in every situation, neither do priests. The canons are what the Orthodox theologian, Fr. John McGuckin, calls a “pastoral instrument.” If a priest knows someone is sinning, the canons might dictate a particular course of action, and the priest might choose to ignore it. The letter of the law is subordinate to the needs of the soul. If enforcing a canon is going to make someone feel ashamed, despair, or leave the church, the most responsible thing the priest can do is to suspend the “letter of the law” for the sake of the immediate need.

While this is more or less true, what Dunn does not explore, and what clouds his application, is when and for what reason a priest may act out of oikonomia.

Historically, with regards to the canons, at least, the principle of oikonomia can be summarized by Canon 74 of St. Basil the Great:

[The one] that has the power of binding and loosing, may lessen the time of penance, to an earnest penitent.

Now notice that, as Dunn has recorded, the canons do allow for oikonomia, an overlooking of a canon in a special circumstance. But what is that special circumstance? The good behavior of the one under the sentence of the canon.

While I am not even so sure that expanding this principle to the ideology of the NRA is appropriate at all, if one wishes to do so, as does Dunn, it would seem that the above point would be crucial. Dunn wants LaPierre to relax the NRA’s principles because of the bad behavior of people who tragically misuse firearms. This would appear to be precisely the opposite of oikonomia.

Ironically, the NRA’s position of less regulation would fit oikonomia far better (though I am not too fond of comparing NRA members or legislators to priests and bishops). They want less of the law, not more of it.

No, whatever merits Dunn’s position may have, his application of this Orthodox principle seems entirely backwards. My advice would be that oikonomia is simply a non-starter for engagement with this issue from an Orthodox perspective.

As for how best to address it, well, I admit I am still personally working that out. However, when it comes to such a practical matter, there is something at the root of oikonomia that is much needed: the virtue of prudence. And I do not see how anyone can hope to act in prudence in this matter without engaging the issue from all sides and, importantly, considering any relevant data regarding the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of limiting the market in any way for the purpose of achieving a desired moral end, as well as minding the unintended consequences that surely will result as well—something that Dunn regrettably neglects to do.

Fr. Gregory Jensen – Canons and Guns: An Eastern Orthodox Response to a HuffPo Writer

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Source: Acton Institute Power Blog | Fr. Gregory Jensen

Several of my friends on Facebook pages posted a link to David Dunn’s Huffington Post essay on gun control (An Eastern Orthodox Case for Banning Assault Weapons). As Dylan Pahman posted earlier today, Dunn, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, is to be commended for bringing the tradition of the Orthodox Church into conversation with contemporary issues such as gun control. As a technical matter, to say nothing for the credibility of his argument, it would be helpful if he understood the weapons he wants to ban. Contrary to what he thinks, semi-automatic weapons can’t “fire a dozen shots before a fallen deer even hits the ground.” Like many he confuses machine guns (which are illegal anyway) and semi-automatic weapons (not “assault weapons”). Putting this aside I have a couple of objections to his application of a principle from the canonical tradition of the Orthodox Church, economia, to the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms.

Dunn is correct in his assertion that economia says that the “letter of the law is subordinate to the needs of the soul.” But (and again, Dylan pointed this out) Dunn is a more than bit off when he says that a priest “might choose to ignore” the canonical tradition if “enforcing a canon is going to make someone feel ashamed, despair, or leave the church.” While there are times when a priest might tolerate a sin, what Dunn describes in his essay seems closer to moral expedience than pastoral prudence. Sin is still sin and while a priest might at times take a more indirect or a lenient approach to a person struggling with a particular sin, this is a matter of pastoral prudence in the case of an individual. Dunn fundamentally misunderstands, and so misapplies, the canonical tradition to his topic. And he does so because he blurs the difference between pastoral prudence and public policy. Contrary to what radical feminism would have us believe, the personal is not political and this is evidently something that Dunn fails to realize.

Putting aside the difference between the personal and the political, Dunn makes a number of substantive anthropological errors. First of all economia is always exercised in the service of personal freedom. It is about lifting a restriction or dispensing from what is ordinarily required, so that the person is better able to respond to the prompting of divine grace. What economia doesn’t do is impose new restrictions on the person. So, a defensible “economical” reading of the Second Amendment could, I think, argue that we need to make gun ownership easier not harder. Rather than the new restrictions that Dunn wants, the application of economia might lead us to expand the pool of gun owners, the circumstances where and when they could carry and use their weapons and maybe even the weapons that people could own.

(So there’s no mistake, I’m not making an argument for either less or more restrictive gun laws. I’m only pointing out that Dunn’s understanding of the canonical principle of economia is one-sided at best and flawed at worse.)

As I said above, I am very sympathetic with Dunn’s desire to apply the tradition of the Orthodox Church to contemporary social problems. He should be commended for this because the Christian tradition in general, including the tradition of the Orthodox Church, has something valuable and essential to say to us today as we struggle to build a just society. Unfortunately, I think Dunn has misunderstood and misapplied the tradition. His argument is not theological but ideological. This is clearest when, contrary to the tradition of the Church, he says that “the root problem is not the one that needs fixing.” If there is an Eastern Orthodox case to be made for stricter gun control laws, Dunn hasn’t made it. Far worse, however, is his failure to consider human sinfulness. Failing to do so is a disservice to the Church’s moral witness.

Yes, we live in a violent culture and while Dunn is right to condemn such violence it is disappointing that he fails to consider that in a fallen world human violence is a constant. This is why practically and theologically he is simply wrong when he say that we will “need decades to fix the root causes” of the culture of death. We don’t need decades, we need the Eschaton; we need Jesus to return in glory as “the Judge of the living and the dead” (Nicene Creed). This doesn’t mean that we can do nothing to minimize human violence but even just laws, crafted by wise legislators and applied by good (and even wiser) judges can only go so far. The Orthodox response to violence, dare I say the truly “economical” response, is personal repentance and ascetical effort. While among Orthodox Christians there is certainly, and rightly, a diversity of policy opinions about gun violence and a wide range of social problems, there is no diversity on personal repentance and ascetical struggle as essential to human flourishing and as the necessary first step to a more just, and so less violent, society.

Fr. Gregory Jensen blog at Koinonia.

Homosexual Marriage at the Dusk of Liberty

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– By Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

To define homosexual coupling as marriage violates natural law. It takes one male and one female to create a child and constitute a family. A male-to-male or female-to-female coupling is naturally sterile; biologically closed to the creation of new life. A homosexual “family” then, is necessarily an artificial creation.

Marriage is not a creation of the State; it predates the rise of the State. When the State codifies heterosexual marriage, it simply affirms what already exists in nature. However, when the State decrees that a homosexual coupling is a morally licit marriage, it arrogates unto itself an authority to define human relationships that do not exist in nature and thus violates natural law.

The State codification of same-sex couplings as a marriage means that moral relativism is being crafted into law. This creates a new conflict. A society cannot live with the tension between the State and nature and thus is left with two available choices: 1) deny the arrogation of authority by the State, or 2) destroy the definition of natural marriage altogether. The first is the choice of anyone who believes that the moral tradition and/or natural law references an authority higher than the State. The second will be favored by those who see the State as both the source and judge of morally licit human relationships.

President Obama has declared that “gay rights” is a centerpiece of his second term agenda. This is a dangerous development. The arrogation of authority by the State to define what kind of relationships are morally licit as well as the employment of the machinery of the State to enforce the polices that flow from it will justify an encroachment into personal life seldom seen in human history.

Furthermore, the ground is being tilled for the persecution of Christianity because Christians, by the mere fact that they believe in God, testify allegiance to an authority to which even the State must be subject. The State will necessarily refuse that reasoning because it strikes at the heart of its arrogation of moral authority (see my essay: The Artist as Vandal: Culture and the Desecration of Religious Symbols).

In the long run, Christians won’t be prosecuted for objecting to homosexual marriage as such. They will be prosecuted for denying that the State has the power to define what is morally licit under the legal rubric of civil rights. The drafters of the Manhattan Declaration understand this.

We are one step closer to the catacombs. Bishops and priests need to take special note because they will become the first targets of the coming hostility in order to demoralize the faithful. Clergy who today still hope for compromise with the homosexual cultural agenda must recommit to the moral tradition and bear the scorn that comes with defending it. If they don’t, they will fall from the faith and lead others with them. Clergy who are practicing homosexuals need to be removed from office because their internal confusion fosters greater moral confusion in the Church at a time when more moral clarity is needed.

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