by Keith Bassham
Two months ago, the Tribune published a response to the Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage throughout all the states. Among the observations, I indicated that those of us who hold to a traditional view of marriage were disappointed because until relatively recently the surrounding culture seemed to agree with us on the matter. We were not so naïve to believe that all marriages were idyllic, or that divorce did not happen, or that people would not commit all sorts of sexual acts outside marriage. We certainly knew many people had no allegiance to the Bible as the Word of God, but we had always thought government was an ally of sorts to keep the lid on immorality that was going to inevitably take place. The Supreme Court decision pretty well smashed that assumption.
Many saw the news as a usurpation of religious freedom, a direct challenge to the churches who declare that any cogent definition of marriage includes gender diversity. In his minority opinion in the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts noted the traditional one man/one woman view was universal “for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs.” Even presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 said marriage was a union of one man and one woman when asked for his definition in a public forum. I do not recall anyone at the time angrily accusing the future President of ignorance and bigotry, let alone calling for his imprisonment or death.
Others saw the court’s opinion as a declaration of war against Christ and His people by the government after years of an assumed alliance. Let’s face it. When churches display their nation’s flag in sanctuaries and sing the national anthem and other patriotic songs in worship services connected with national holidays, surely some type of amity is assumed. In a nation with no officially sanctioned religion, I wonder why we consider those practices the norm and not the outlier in the history of civil government and Christianity.
The point I wish to make here is that if as a conservative Christian you pine for a time when things were normal, a historic normal for Christians is not what we experienced in the United States until recent decades. We were used to the idea that our views on morality were generally supported by our culture, and in fact sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other. That experience, unfortunately, is the historical exception and not the rule.
It is what I meant when I wrote in the Tribune response to the Supreme Court ruling in the earlier issue, “Keep the perspective that millions of Christians have gone before us, living and dying and winning people to Christ, most without the advantages we have had living in this country with its freedoms and generally favorable treatment of the people of God since its founding.”
Thank God for what we have enjoyed, and hang on. I believe a different experience is on its way.