But the word marriage has become a misnomer for society, as it refers only to the religious aspect of the union and its original meaning. The word has gained a multitude of more meanings and the individuals involved have gained EXTRA CIVIL RIGHTS (which the church should have no authority over, the church is not of this world but of the next, Render unto Caesar…). All Marriages done in the church are both a marriage (the proper meaning) and a civil union (after its been affirmed by the state).

Case in point: why does a “marriage” done outside of the church in a civil court, have to be later “redone” in the church? (I had a friend who had to do that) Or: A divorced couple outside of the church are still married in the church. The answer is obvious, they are two separate things altogether! The error is to refer to both as “marriage”.

What I believe Fr. Lazar is talking about is the fact that we cannot take claim to the word “Marriage” as it is erroneously, vaguely and popularly used. He is not subverting marriage (the sacrament) in the church. I feel he is reaffirming it. That can only be done by clearly delineating between the terms marriage and civil union, as the two have become dangerously intermingled. The church should not interfere in matters that are of the civil world and the civil authorities must not interfere in the matters of the church. This has been the status quo, and always should be.

Confusion in regards to the term “marriage” will only lead to sanctions on the church. What the church should champion in the coming future should be clarity in regards to the popular usage of the term “marriage”, vague terminology is the most pressing and dangerous challenge to this most holy sacrament of the church.

Had he said it, I think his supposed support for same-sex marriage would be scandalous because I cannot imagine one who holds any sound Christian anthropology thinking that SSM contributes to human thriving.

I’ve listened to a number of his commentaries online: he seems to have a deep respect for Scripture and orthodox Christianity (I don’t see him as a “loose cannon”, as one poster described him). He does this while avoiding an overt politicization (liberal or conservative) of the Gospel, which in the end serves as a more authentic witness, in my humble opinion.

I hadn’t intended to re-enter this discussion, but since I’ve been invoked by name, by Fr. Johannes himself, I guess I’m obliged. (Father Jonannes was one of my cyber-mentors on my road to Orthodoxy via the old eo-list.)

James is roughly right about the meaning of “protected class” – too close to quibble at present. But the government creates a protected class for “religion,” not for “Jews or Catholics.” And rightly or wrongly, it was perceived that there had been considerable discrimination on the basis of religion that led to some religious groups being significantly disadvantaged. Ditto “race” and “national origin.”

Apropos of Comment 31, I’m not sure I agree with Paleocon, but I’m almost positive that that James is oversimplifying with his musings about the legal ramifications of some religions forbidding what others allow.

Apart from a relatively few things the law used to call mala prohibita (wrong because it’s forbidden; e.g., which side of the road will it be decreed that people drive on?) , most of the law deals with things perceived as malum in se (wrong in and of themselves). That’s ethics, and it’s pretty silly – no, make that pernicious – to insist that religious people, and only religious people, are required to set aside their deepest convictions about reality and synthesize an alternative public ethic based on something “secular.” As someone once put it, secularists can take public positions based on John Dewey, but Christians can’t take public positions based on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. (I would prefer “John Dewey’s anthropology” versus “Christian anthropology” as a better formulation, but that’s not how I recall it being phrased.)

We can legitimately ask of religious people, in my opinion, that they not impose their particular sectarian disciplines on the whole society. Thus, if the Orthodox were a majority, we should not ban the sale of meat, fish, dairy and oil during the great fasts. But the “law of the land,” as decreed by The Supremes in Employment Division v. Smith, is essentially that a law is not unconstitutional on free exercise grounds, either on its face or as applied to a particular religious group, if it is applied across the board. So it would be legitimate to forbid all gambling, even if it constrained a Catholic Church and School fundraisers, if the law contained no exemptions for anyone else.

That has not been nearly as bad in practice as I feared it would be, since thus far, the efforts to mau-mau particular unpopular religions (e.g., Santeria) have been undone by the carving out of exceptions for more mainstream groups – as when Hialeah Florida forbade ritual animal sacrifice but exempted Kosher butchery.

May I now suggest that we’ve gone awfully far afield from Abp. Lazar Puhalo’s reported remarks at a college in Maine?

You are correct in putting the cart before the horse. That said, how do Christians speak to the culture and how does their Christianity affect their participation in the governance of the polis?

Short of the second coming, not everyone will be Christian before my death. So what do I do in the meantime with the above questions?

Also, since Christians are in various “states” or “stages” of working out their own salvation (and thus are not fully “Christian” in the sense you appear to mean it), what are we to do with the above questions?

Simply retreating into the “Christian ghetto” is one answer, but not one I agree with or is even possible if the government/culture won’t let you do it (history shows they usually don’t for very long), so again what does one do with the above questions?

Members of a protected class may or may not have historically been on the receiving end of institutionalized discrimination. (I cannot recall reading of a particular period when Jews or Catholics found difficulty acquiring work, for example, at least in this country.)

Is this not correct?

On the one hand, I think employers need to be given some leniency for selecting people they think will be a fit for their particular organization, and this often includes many intangibles. I reject the use of quotas. I also don’t think that being a member of any protected class should grant any person special privileges: if one’s religious beliefs or sexual preference (or whatever) somehow causes discord at the workplace or otherwise impedes one’s or others’ ability to do their jobs, it should not make that employee immune from dismissal or other disciplinary action.

On the other hand, I think employees need to be judged on their performance and ability to collaborate with the rest of their co-workers only, and that it would be unjust to dismiss someone because of their lawful choices in exercising their personal beliefs and freedoms, whatever they may happen to be.

Is it not rather that the culure and the government reflect the spiritual state of people (or lack thereof)? Government and culture reflect the orientation of the people.

So, the hedonistic orientation of today’s culture reflects the hedonism of us, especially those of us who profess Christ.

Our laws will reflect a Christian understanding when we are Chrisitan, not before.

James, you were told by Roger Bennett you don’t understand some of the concepts you employ. Instead of continuing the argument, ask him what you don’t understand.

To what extent is the Church going to guide legislation, and how is it going to do so?

There are a couple problems:
a) the Church in America is not just the Orthodox, or Roman Catholics. Of just the Christian varieties, we have Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, evangelicals and other Protestant flavors. Each group has its own ideas of theology and doctrine, and each sect has its own varying set of beliefs on morality. On many things, there seem to be matters over which reasonable people can disagree: the sale of contraception to married couples (or unmarried couples), gambling, the sale of tobacco and alcohol, laws that restrict the types of commerce that can occur on the Sabbath, immigration, gun control, health care, etc.

If the underlying principle of our civil legislation is enforcing a specific code of ethics, whose beliefs and morals do we utilize?

b) at what point do such laws infringe on the very freedoms that our Founders set forth as being inalienable rights?

c) depending on who enacts these laws, some of them may actually impinge on the freedoms of various Churches. Some find gambling of any kind to be a sin: what would outlawing the practice entirely and denying religious exemptions do to Catholic churches and/or schools who use it in some trivial form for fundraising efforts?

Perhaps these concerns would never come to fruition, I don’t know. However, it seems prudent to limit the scope of how religious ideals alone serve as the guiding principle for civil legislation.

James:

Religion as a protected class as an analogy to sexual orientation as a protected class is an interesting question. But it is of little use to discuss it with someone who doesn’t understand what protected class status means – and I’m not sure you do, as you have paraphrased this term of art incorrectly.

My assessment that sexual orientation should not be given protected class status has never been based on any assessment of the relative wickedness of sodomy versus rejecting Christ. It is not based on anything that should be viewed as “religious” at all.

It is based, first, on my perception, after listening to hours of testimony, that businesses are not discriminating against well-behaved gays and lesbians (presumably because money is green, not lavender or pink).

It is based, second, on the reality that protected class status for sexual orientation is sought as a badge of moral approval by government – or at least as a sign that sexual behavior is as far beyond government cognizance as is, for instance, religious conviction. As a Burkean sort of conservative, I’m not yet ready to make or endorse such a sweeping and potentially corrosive proposition.

Your belief that the Founders’ “ideals in terms of governing were to allow for the most freedom and autonomy for the individual” is more mainstream than my curmudgeonly views, essentially having been adopted by the Supreme Court some 16 years ago and acted upon in several cases since. But I still reject it. And if you’re right, I consider it a flaw in the Founders, not a strength.

Roger, do you believe that any protective status should be given to anyone for their religious beliefs (whether it be Jewish, Mormon, Buddhist, Catholic or Orthodox)? Matters of faith seem to be even more critical distinctions than one’s sexual behavior, and both are lifestyle choices: in terms of morality, I’m not sure that fornication or homosesxual conduct is more wicked than rejecting the divinity of Christ (which all non-Christians do). Yet, the protections in housing and employment remain for them. Is this wrong?

I know this is an Orthodox blog (I’m more of an RCC in terms of spiritual and moral theology but more Protestant in terms of doctrine), but I’m trying to find out from other believers what degree of influence their religious beliefs should have on civil law. My own idea is that, while our nations founders were influenced heavily by Christian morality as well as philosophical ideals emerging form the Enlightenment, their ideals in terms of governing were to allow for the most freedom and autonomy for the individual.

Me, too. I am just a bit south of 50 and experience has tended to surprise me. Most folks have generally failed to live up to the ideals I had the privilege of growing up with. At the same time I have often found surprising virtue in unexpected places. That said, the person who has most disappointed me is me. Despite growing awareness of the depth of my own sinfulness, the saints I have known continue to give me reason for hope. At this point, no textbook, ideal, program or theory – however compelling – could do that; just another reason lived sanctity is so vital – not just to the saint but to those around him or her.

It seems to me that speaking to a group of college students is entirely appropriate, and much of the Archbishop’s message – assuming the Reporter got at least that part right – powerfully contrasted Orthodoxy to some distorted and incomplete religious traditions that surround us.

I strongly suspect, for instance, that there are spiritually sensitive people, powerfully drawn to the person of Jesus Christ, but unchurched because they are repelled by such things as theories of the atonement that portray Christ’s agonizing crucifixion and death as something that mollified the anger of God the Father. (“He took a lickin’ so that we could keep tickin’,” for those who remember John Cameron Swayzie’s Timex watch ads.) Those folks, as much as Ecclesiology-starved Evangelicals, and probably even more than disgruntled Episcopalians and Lutherans, are good candidates for Orthodoxy. Some of the Archbishop’s comments apparently addressed them.

Others may be turned off by what sociologist Christopher Smith (I think) called out as “moralistic therapeutic deism” – roughly, that being good is the most important thing, that you can’t be good without God as a sort of booster for the moral immune system – or by the abuse of religion in political causes. Both of these are huge problems (once I heard the brilliant phrase “moralistic therapeutic deism,” I began noticing it everywhere), symptomatic of a secularist worldview in Western Christendom, and it is a good thing, is it not, to let people know that Orthodoxy does not readily lend itself to such distortions?

You can’t keep reporters from coming to a public meeting that has piqued their interest. But maybe you need to be intentional about collecting the following news reports and correcting misrepresentations or misleading summaries.