Civil Commotion

Golly … what if we all visualized a really-really–really–REALLY  big nuclear bomb exploding in the hurricane eye? Would that make Dorian go away entirely, not merely turn its direction?

A Mississippi wedding venue has refused to rent to an interracial couple, citing religious belief.

An event venue in Mississippi has issued an apology after its owner was shown on video saying that her “Christian belief” led her to decline hosting a wedding ceremony for an interracial couple.

The video of the incident, which went viral over the weekend, shows an exchange between a woman later identified as the venue owner and a black woman named LaKambria Welch. In an interview with digital news outlet Deep South Voice, Welch says that she went to Boone’s Camp Event Hall In Booneville to clarify why it had recently said that “because of [the company’s] beliefs” it would not host a wedding ceremony for her brother, who is black, and his fiancée, who is white.

Generally, a church can refuse to conduct an interracial wedding for religious reasons, but Fred’s For-profit Banquet Hall cannot refuse to rent to an interracial couple.

But, Mississippi enacted a law a few years back which permits privately owned companies to discriminate for religious reasons.

As the venue owner attempts to minimize the fallout and backlash to her business, the incident has also called new attention to a 2016 Mississippi law that protects “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” about same-sex marriages, premarital sex, and gender identity. The law does not allow a person to discriminate based on race.

It was the Southern Baptist Convention which constructed a theological rationale for slavery, and that teaching is alive and well all over the south, though rarely spoken aloud nowadays. It’s a sad pointer to the ignorance and backwardness of much of the country — still — and a sad reminder of the real harm of religion. It is not a benign eccentricity; it is an affirmative evil.

Well … you know how it is: When you run a seminary, you have to pretend that theology is an actual branch of knowledge, even if the cost of that legerdemain is counted in human misery.

The problem with Christian theology is that it doesn’t do the hard work of establishing its premises. It can’t prove the existence of supernatural beings, it can’t prove those supernatural beings have an interest in us, and it can’t prove that the Bible tells us anything about the wishes of those supernatural beings (whose existence and interests, remember, it can’t prove). So it sweeps all those failures under the rug and grandly presupposes that all those things are true.

And then theologians get busy conjugating obscure Greek verbs and telling everybody what to do — and, believe it or not, theologians have been getting away with that scam for 2-millennia.

Contrast that with engineering, which in scarcely more than 300-years has gone from Isaac Newton being bonked on the head by an apple … to walking on the moon. Definitely, theology is where the C-teamers seek their fortune.

I have mentioned more times than I can count that the Southern Baptists don’t actually believe in marriage, that what they believe in is animal husbandry, and I have often quoted Albert the Pious to make the point. But, usually, you have to reason to that conclusion from his remarks; I don’t know of any other occasion when he has explicitly said “… to be human is to be a parent ….”

Again: Southern Baptists believe in procreation, and strenuously condemn letting your wedding vows interfere with the slavish submission Our Invisible Friend expects. On their view, the point of marriage is to make babies and glorify The Creator Of The Whole Big Universe, period — not to build satisfying lives together.

Alas, the Oracle of Louisville is getting some pushback.

Numerous Twitter users blasted Mohler’s comments as insensitive to couples who are struggling conceive and disrespectful to single adults.

“The Bible has a word for the way many conservative evangelicals treat marriage and family as the pinnacle of human existence and spiritual fidelity: idolatry,” observed Jonathan Merritt, a writer on religion, culture and politics and son of a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. “It is an anthropological and theological framework more consistent with ‘The Bachelor’ than the Bible.”

In 2003 Mohler said that married couples who decide to remain childless are guilty of “moral rebellion” against God.

Thousands of children will be conceived, all around the world, on this very day. Humanity is in no danger of perishing if a relative handful of people choose not to have children.

OK, I love T.S. Eliot and adore the Four Quartets, but I can’t tell a good poem from a lewd sea chanty; in fact, I incline to think there’s a lot of overlap. I know what I like, though, and I applaud the young woman who wrote these lines:

“You are depraved!” is missing, too.
Worthy-of-eternal-torment-for-being-born no longer the mantra
Berating me over and over
And over.
Not even a murmur declaring me
Evil, sinful, wicked, debased, weak, less-than.
Every condemnation for merely being human is muted.

Read the rest at Bruce Gerencser’s blog, and those of you who have sensed the malice and degradation at the heart of Christian thought will recognize her words.