- Update 12/10/08 - The Family Research Council offers a point-by-point logical and theological rebuttal to Lisa Miller's Newsweek cover story. The FRC's response may be the most definitive, detailed, and helpful of all responses.
- Update #1 12/8/08: Mollie Hemingway offers a blistering attack on Lisa Miller's Newsweek piece. (HT: Between Two Worlds)
- Update #2 12/8/08: Al Mohler offers a detailed response well worth reading.
- Update #3 12/8/08: Robert Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, has an internet video that one can view titled: "What Does the Bible Teach About Homosexuality?" He answers Neil Elliot, quoted in the Newsweek piece, here. Gagnon is a Biblical expert. Many of his scholarly articles can be accessed here. He also argues six points from a secular point of view against the cultural endorsement of homosexual behavior.
- (Original Post) - Mark Hemingway over at National Review Online's Corner quotes the lede from Newsweek's cover story this week on "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage." Afterwards he offers some choice words in rebuttal. First the Newsweek quote:
Let's try for a minute to take the
religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible
does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his
servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to
Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and
their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah
and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New
Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single
and preached an
indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?
Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.
And here's Hemingway's response:
So should I be surprised that Lisa Miller, Newsweek's religion reporter natch, can't even get through the first paragraph of her story without evincing an understanding of Christianity and its basic texts that is grossly oversimplified and distorted, filtered through an almost exclusively liberal political lens, not to mention catty and downright insulting?
I love that "let's try for a minute to take religious conservatives at their word..." intro, right before she plows ahead, proving she has no clue what they do in fact believe. Now I could pick apart every sentence above and expose it as a sloppy bit of prestidigitation designed to unfairly caricature "religious conservatives," whoever they are. But what really galled me was that Miller actually writes "Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family." Let's just quote Matthew 19:4-6 for her benefit: 'And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."'
Yup, sounds like Jesus was really indifferent on marriage and family question — but hey, thanks for trying to take his followers "at their word." Marriage is one of the central metaphors of the New Testament, for crying out loud. It's generally a Christian precept to put the best construction on what a speaker is saying. However, the best I can do here is vacillate between whether or not it's possible for a religion reporter to be this ignorant or wonder to what extent Miller's personal politics have made her so willfully uncharitable in describing what a large majority of American Christians believe regarding marriage.
Me: Well said, Mark Hemingway! The contempt for Christian faith, and a willingness to mock and distort its teachings, has risen to new heights in America. A new, aggressive anti-Christian wave is now being promoted by the media which bodes ill for the future.
As to "supposed secular" tolerance and fair-mindedness and civil conduct, Glenn Stanton (a Christian who debates same-sex issues with a homosexual friend on college campuses), raised an interesting question when he wrote in a Christianity Today piece:
We have wondered what it would be like to have a journalist follow us to three iconic secular and three conservative Christian campuses to note the differences. Where would we be more likely to find the most thoughtful engagement? Which events would demonstrate a healthy democracy? Would there be a difference? John and I gather we would find that "fundamentalists" don't come in one wrapper—that an event at even Bob Jones University might turn out to be more civil than, say, the tolerant University of Wisconsin, Madison.
It's an interesting question, and I am pretty sure I know the answer. Not a betting man myself, I would nevertheless be severely tempted to bet a significant amount of money that the Christian campus would be the more respectful, polite, and "tolerant" of an opponent's position.
- On the general issue of homosexuality, see also Edith M. Humphrey's, "What God Hath Not Joined Together,' an article published a few years ago in Christianity Today magazine.
Update 12/10/08 - For what it's worth, I might mention that Mark Hemingway suggested today that Newsweek should be called "Opinionweek" since it abandoned the objective standards of a news magazine and opted instead to be an explicitly ideological magazine. Jon Meacham, the editor, made that clear when he signed on to the cover story by Lisa Miller. Unclear to me and to Hemingway is how becoming an ideological organ can possibly help stem Newsweek's rapidly declining circulation.