Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity

Taylor Swift, an American singer and cultural icon in 2023, spoke “out against anti-queer legislation” during a concert in early June. “We can’t talk about Pride Month without talking about pain. There have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put [gay people] at risk. It’s painful for everyone. Every ally. Every loved one . . . ,” she said[1]. So much hurt. This motivated me to volunteer to carry a full-size gay flag in a gay Pride parade until the end of the route even though I am not gay. When I arrived in the morning, I thought the issue was political; by the time the parade began, religion had trumped the political. A small but vocal group of evangelical Christians and a larger group of young women wearing and carrying gay flags (in part to hide the Christians) were shouting at each other in utter futility of noise. What if people would use religion to dissolve the religious and political anger and even tension instead of stoking them? Both sides missed an opportunity.

The full essay is at "Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity."

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1. Shruti Rajkumar, “Taylor Swift Breaks Silence And Condemns Anti-LGBTQ Bills During Eras Tour,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2023.

On the Ethics of Business Donations and Saving Souls

In the film, Major Barbara (1941), Barbara, a Major in the Salvation Army, has been raised with her sister and brother by their mother. She is legally separated or divorced from the father, Andrew Undershaft, who nonetheless finances the lavish lifestyle of his family. Even Barbara, the idealist Christian evangelical, lives on her father’s armaments wealth. Yet when she meets him after several years, she leaves the Salvation Army after Andrew and an alcohol producer donate large sums. Although Barbara recognizes that the Army in London needs the money, she believes that the Army has sold out because providing weapons of death and alcohol are sinful. “What price salvation, now?” a customer at the Army’s soup kitchen asks Barbara after she had taken off her Army pin and given it to her father. Barbara is not willing to continue with the Christian organization because in her mind it has sold out even though it admittedly needs the donations to survive. But has the Army sold out? Furthermore, does Barbara sold out in using her father's business to convert workers. Ironically, that may be more ethical than the Army's approach to saving souls. 

The full essay is at "Major Barbara."

Politics and Religion: President Trump at a National Prayer Breakfast

Politics and religion intermeshed can be a nasty business. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, witnessed every venue of his planned tour in Europe cancel because Franklin had “called Islam ‘evil,’ attacked laws increasing rights for transgender people, and told his followers that the legalization of same-sex marriage was orchestrated by Satan.”[1] Although criticizing another religion is religious in nature, turning to laws renders the attack political too. Although Franklin Graham may have assumed that many of his co-religionists would agree with him both in religious and political terms, wading into controversial political matters risks alienating people who are or would otherwise be religious followers. Even the willingness to traverse into the political realm may not be liked by some religionists, whether followers or not, especially if the incursion is into a controversy. Some co-religionists may agree with the distinctly religious belief, yet hold dissimilar political views. Such distance created between religionists can weaken a religious leader’s credibility and even following in the religious domain. Politicians dragging their respective religious faiths into the political domain can also be problematic, though authentic applications can pay off even if there is a cost politically. The incursion of Christianity at the end of U.S. President Trump’s trial in the Senate and as he took a victory lap can demonstrate the complexities of religion distended into another domain.

The full essay is at "Politics and Religion: President Trump."

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[1] Rob Picheta, “Evangelist Preacher Franklin Graham Planned a Seven-City UK Tour. All Seven Venues Have Dropped Him,” CNN.com, February 6, 2020(accessed same day).

Boy Erased

The film, Boy Erased (2018), is a drama that deals in a serious  way with the question of whether homosexuality is a choice, and thus whether conversion therapy is effective or an ideological ruse under the subterfuge of psychology and religion. Directed and adapted to the screen by Joel Edgerton, he could have dived deeper in writing the screenplay by making explicit the contending assumptions and ideas. Surprisingly, nowhere in the film do any of the biblically-oriented religionists quote the applicable verses in the Old Testament or in Paul's letters, or engage in a theological debate. The film could have gone further intellectually than the relatively superficial emphasis on the dramatic narrative.

The full essay is at "Boy Erased."

Christianity and the Non-Affiliated in America: A Changing Mix

The 2018 General Social Survey found the proportions of Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and people not affiliated with any institutional religion to each being within the margin of error around 23 percent of the American population. To be sure, to claim no institutional religion does not necessarily mean not being religious, or at least spiritual. Where the heart is concerned, religious institutions, or organizations, do not monopolize religious or spiritual sensibilities or sensitivities. In fact, I contend that a spiritual or even religious instinct exists in humans that can differ among individuals in salience or force. To be sure, people in whom the instinct is pressing may tend to belong to religious organizations, but this is not to say that the latter are necessary for feeling and manifesting the instinct. This is particularly true, I submit, where programmed worship is unwittingly formulated in a way that actually interrupts or thwarts outright the experience of transcendence, whether in sustained prayer, worship, communion, or meditation.

The full essay is at "Christianity and the Non-Affiliated in America."

The Seminarian

A closeted gay student at an evangelical seminary is a contrast with a rather obvious clashing point, with the predicted ending being that the student is kicked out and must find or come into his own identity free of exterior constraints. Yet The Seminarian (2010) smartly avoids that road well-traveled. Instead, the screenwriter risks giving theology a prominent, and perhaps even central place in the film. The venture is at odds with the bottom-feeder mentality of Hollywood represented in the film, De-Lovely (2004), in which Cole Porter’s bisexuality occupies center-stage. Comparing these two films, irony drips off the screen as De-Lovely, which is patterned after a theatrical musical, looks down on Hollywood and yet has a common theme, while The Seminarian is a film through and through and yet takes the high road by supposing that the viewers can and will stay through some substantive theology, which transcends social issues and even the dramatic.

The full essay is at "The Seminarian."

Was U.S. President Obama the Antichrist?

In the twentieth century, Christian apocalypticism thought it saw the end of days in the midst of baleful signs, including historical biblical criticism, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, evolutionary science, and the United Nations. In the United States, the consolidation of power in the federal government at the expense of federalism (and, theoretically, liberty as well) was apocalyptically taken as a precursor to the end. According to Matt Sutton, “As the government grew in response to industrialization, fundamentalists concluded that the rapture was approaching.” The trajectory, in other words, was viewed as headed toward a global super-state under the thumb of a seemingly benevolent ruler. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “consolidation of power across more than three terms in the White House, his efforts to undermine the autonomy of the Supreme Court, his dream of a global United Nations and especially his rapid expansion of the government confirmed what many fundamentalists had feared: the United States was lining up with Europe in preparation for a new world dictator. This “leader would ultimately prove to be the Antichrist, who, after the so-called rapture of true saints to heaven, would lead humanity through a great tribulation culminating in the second coming and Armageddon.”

The full essay is at "Was Obama the Antichrist?"

Church Scandals in a Secularizing World

A religious institution can least afford scandal involving highly unethical and illegal activity when the world is secularizing; the headwind alone requires a lot of energy just to stay in place, let alone move forward. The trail of child-rape scandals and cover-ups had by 2018 made a dent in the number of Roman Catholics in Latin America, yet other factors also accounted for the declines in church membership, and thus obfuscated estimates of the fallout in particular.  I contend that the gravity of the sexual abuse and related cover-ups by clergy warrants more than just being reckoned as one of several factors, even though the actual exodus was muted relative to the severity of the crimes. 

The full essay is at "Church Scandals"

A Megachurch Pastor and Sexual Assault: A Compromised Christian Leader

“A Memphis megachurch pastor received standing ovation during a church service on Sunday after he admitted that he had engaged in a ‘sexual incident’ with a high school student 20 years ago in Texas.”[1] That the woman had made the man’s prior misdeeds public just days before throws into doubt whether the pastor deserved the ovation by his loyal flock. Prompted by the firing of Matt Lauer, the anchor of NBC’s “Today” show, the woman emailed the pastor more than a month before his public acknowledgement at his church; he had not responded to the woman’s email to apologize. Letting his flock in on the secret hardly added much value to the man’s character, for damage-control is not laudatory. The standing ovation connoted not only praise on the man and a revalidation of the pastor’s continuance as a religious leader. That a Christian leader could be validated as such, rather than invalidated and thus shown the door, throws into question the integrity of religious leadership itself.

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1. Matthew Haag, “Megachurch Pastor Admits to Illicit ‘Sexual Incident’,” The New York Times, January 10, 2018.

The full essay is at "A Megachurch Pastor as a Christian Leader."

Secular Films with Religious Meaning: Film as a Potentially Deep Medium

A film need not be explicitly religious to proffer spiritual meaning. In fact, gritty stories that wrestle with thorny problems that people have faced or may face in everyday life can be more gripping even theologically than stories based on religious idealism, such as The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Ten Commandments.  

Hidden Figures, for example, “has no obvious religious message. Rather, it is a feel-good drama about unsung black heroines in the NASA space race of the 1960s.”[1] Yet this didn’t stop Fox from hiring Wit PR to market the film to churches. Wit PR invited several “opinion-leader” pastors to watch filming, one cleric remarking, “I came away really interested in using film to explore faith.”[2] The “aspirational story about women who have faith in themselves” could be used as fodder in a sermon on the Christian theological virtues of faith and hope—the key being to keep having faith in spite of insufferable obstacles.

Yet just as secular films such as Hidden Figures need not have an explicit religious leitmotif or thesis in order to be conveyers of deep meaning, so too such meaning in such films need not be evoked in a religious context. That is to say, even secular films can bypass the religious organizations altogether to bring principles with religious import to people directly.

The Matrix, for example, prompted much discussion not only about philosophical solipsism, but also Neo as the One. Although non-Christian Plotinus utilized this term to mean God in the second century, the Christological reference would not be lost on many Christians. In the film, Morpheus is convinced that Neo is the One who would go on to save humanity from the clutches of the machines. Morpheus’s faith, even in spite of the apparent impossibility in Neo’s death, never wavers. Christian viewers would hardly need a sermon to drive the point home. For non-Christians, the critical question of whether the assumption that one person should save humanity isn’t artificial was debated far outside of explicit religious circles. 

Film is indeed an incredible medium in being able to render even ubiquitous assumptions transparent and thus able to be critiqued and discussed. That even a secular film can put religious assumptions in a new, and thus transparent, light—whether the implications are critical or affirming for a particular religion or religion itself!—brings cinema into the business of engaging deep meaning. In fact, with such meaning at the subterranean level in a secular film, assumptions can all the more readily come to light. It is a paradox that religious meaning from the pulpit is typically readily apparent and thus the undergirding assumptions are rarely exposed to the open air.

To be sure, assumptional analysis of religious beliefs can be explicit on-screen. In The Da Vinci Code, for example, Robert Langdon and his former colleague debate the theological import of whether Jesus had a child—unknowingly right in front of the last descendant of Jesus Christ. The debate is actually about whether the historical Jesus is the Son of God: the One (not in Plotinus’s sense of the word). Such an on-screen exercise is of great value too—to Christians and even non-Christians. Again, the value lies in rendering religious assumptions transparent so they may be realized and even thought over. Film is indeed a valuable medium in that it can flush out truth (and untruth) hidden in clear view.

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[1] Brooks Barnes, “Secular Hollywood Quietly Courts the Faithful,” The New York Times, December 24, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

Gay Marriage: God’s Law, Legal Reasoning, and Ideology

Mixing religion, jurisprudence, and ideology together is one potent drink. Ingestion can cause palpable heart-burn as well as migraine headaches. In the case of gay marriage in the U.S., sorting out and evaluating the three elements can be rife with controversy and thus confusion. In this essay, I discuss the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to grant marriage licenses to gay couples because doing so would violate God’s law and thus betray Jesus. Her religious rationale makes for interesting legal reasoning. I then look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s gay-marriage decision. I contend that a natural-right (and thus human right) basis clashes with ideological anger. Human nature itself is on display throughout, particularly as it wades into religion, legal reasoning, and ideology.

The complete essay is at “Gay Marriage: God’s Law, Legal Reasoning, and Ideology.”

On the Entitlement to Exceptionalism

John Blake of CNN asks, “Have you ‘walked the aisle’ to ‘pray the prayer?’ Did you ever ‘name and claim’ something and, after getting it, announce, ‘I’m highly blessed and favored?’ . . . If this is you, some Christian pastors and scholars have some bad news: You may not know what you’re talking about. They say that many contemporary Christians have become pious parrots onstantly repeating Christian phrases that they don’t understand or distort.”[1] Unfortunately, the epistemological brain-freeze extends beyond religion onto business, thanks to marketers. 

The full essay is at "Entitlement to Exceptionalism."

1. John Blake, “Do You Speak Christian?” CNN, July 31, 2011.