The fires of our Christian persecution complex are being stoked this week by those who warned as all (and boy, did they tell us) that the same sex marriage vote was about more than marriage.
These fires are burning brighter with the news that the magazine, White, will be shuttering after an activist campaign saw advertisers desert their platform because the owners, a Christian couple, adopted an editorial policy consistent with their personal views.
It was a year this week since the postal survey results were announced; and the doomsday prophets have formed a line behind Lyle Shelton to announce that they ‘told us so’, because this was never just about marriage, and now we have a bona fide story of martyrdom. Here. On our shores. It’s not just bakers in the UK. There’s nothing I like more than reading think pieces beating that same ‘told you so’ drum as a ‘hot take’ on current events. So here’s mine.
I’m sure the couple in question are lovely, faithful, people – I’m sure they’ve been caught up in the modern ethical minefield, a minefield produced by the rapid shifting of the ground beneath our feet. I’m sure that you can draw a straight line between the existence of same sex marriage and the position they find themselves in. I’m sure they agonised about their editorial policy, and whether to go public in the face of pressure. I’m sure their position has caused them real pain. I’m sad for them, it seems tragic to watch the business they spent years building disintegrate. I’m not sure how I’d feel about the amount of free publicity they’ll now receive, because they’re a political football, coming after this commercial decision.
I’m not sure it’s the editorial policy I’d take, even though I share their views on the definition of marriage. I’m not sure it represents a hospitable or generous pluralism; but it is absolutely their call to make — what they do with their platform, and what they promote. I’m equally sure, that at this point, they aren’t facing legal consequences for the position they took.
Their experience is not an experience that religious freedom laws would protect while we also operate in a free market (and to be honest, the free market is a bigger idol than sexuality in our culture, and it’s one where most Christians are happy to participate in the temples and cultic practices of our economy, where we aren’t when it comes to the cult of sexuality, sexual identity, and expressive individualism). Exactly the same principles that give this couple the right to hold on to, and act according to their convictions — the same religious freedom, or freedom of speech, give rise to the rights of those who put pressure on their advertisers to line up with their own convictions. It seems certain that some of the ‘free speech’ directed at this couple was hateful, and crossed a line, into threats and bullying — and yet, what they’re experiencing is the cost of doing business in a fractured, pluralist, world — where each side plays a zero sum game. They were, perhaps, naive to think they could play the game in any other way — that they could continue operating according to a now obsolete status quo — that they could ignore the hashtag campaign and that it would go away. It seems to me they had three zero sum options — ‘capitulate,’ close down, or pitch for financial support from institutions and businesses who share their values (and so become a pawn in the ideologically driven culture war). If 40% of Aussies share the definition of marriage of these editors, including the religious establishment, we churches could put our money where our mouths are and take out advertising space. We could make this magazine part of our strategy for burnishing and promoting traditional ‘white’ weddings between a man and a woman so that they shine brightly among the alternatives. But we won’t. Because we have no imagination — and we prefer the alternative of sitting on the sidelines, proclaiming ourselves prophets, and distancing ourselves more and more from the hearts and minds of the average Aussie punter while participating in the culture wars. I suspect there’s a fourth — the option of hospitality, where they made their views known, consistently and editorially, but adopted an inclusive editorial policy as an act of generous pluralism that refused the ‘zero sum’ options on the table.
We’re quick to say ‘told you so’ and slow to say ‘tell you what’ — we offer no alternative vision, just an apocalypse — and we have learned nothing from the apocalyptic moments of the last few years — like the Coopers’ Brewery fiasco — when it comes to shaping our public posture. As I’ve often pointed out in these posts, the word ‘apocalypse’ really just means ‘revelation.’ And so we, again, are having not just the state of the world revealed — but the ‘hope-less’ state of the church and our engagement with the world around us.
While some see the legalisation of same sex marriage as a ‘precipice’ that we jumped from, and we’re now plummeting off wondering if we packed a parachute, I’m more inclined to challenge that narrative on two fronts — firstly, the political debate was about the political reality, so it was really about marriage — and the result of the postal survey and subsequent legalisation of same sex marriage only impacts this magazine decision because it introduced same sex weddings (and thus, a new market in the wedding industry), which is explicitly the same thing the political campaign was about. And secondly, politics is downstream from culture — and the cultural horse bolted on this issue long before the postal survey. This moment was coming with the cultural winds that saw most commercial interests in Australia line up behind the ‘yes’ vote, because before it was a political reality the hearts and minds of the average Aussie were won by the narrative of progress and equality. There’s no precipice, the marriage vote was the last domino to fall in a long line of other legal issues (that, in honesty, did need to fall — like the criminalisation of homosexuality, and the ‘gay panic’ defence for killing somebody if you thought they were gay and trying to have their way with you).
This, incidentally, is why the official ‘no’ campaign did us a terrible disservice in making it about consequences and not at all about anything positive about traditional marriage and why we’d want to keep it as a social and cultural good, and keep it exclusively for heterosexual couples. Perhaps they knew that would be an impossible sell…
So here’s a hope-full suggestion.
It’s time we Christians poured our effort into showing why our vision of marriage — God’s vision — is compelling, and not just for straight people. It’s compelling because marriage is a ‘created thing’ that reveals something about God and his love, and ultimately about his plans and love for us.
It’s time we realised that in the era of the Royal Commission, and in the wake of not just the postal survey but years of the gay community in Australia campaigning against unjust laws that were justified as ‘Judeo-Christian’ — we have no social capital.
If we’re going to burn actual capital it’s time to stop spending it trying to prop up a status quo that no longer exists; we should spend it first in making recompense for those times our institutions have failed, then we should devote our significant human and social capital to positive and hopeful contributions to the public conversation.
We should throw our weight — in volunteer hours, energy, attention, and dollar terms — into improving the lot of our LGBTIQA+ neighbours, in anti-bullying campaigns, in creating safe spaces where they can explore and develop their identity in conversation with Christians rather than across picket lines or ideological boundaries, we should spend time listening to minority voices in our community (and in our churches). This would start rebuilding some of the capital we’ve done our best to pour into the toilet, one $1 million donation to the ‘no campaign,’ or campaign against bullying programs, or letter about the right to expel gay kids and fire gay teachers at a time (not that it started with any of these).
We should invest capital in telling stories of our own — stories about marriage and what it means — not about why others are wrong, but about why God’s way is good, true, and beautiful. We should realise that making media — whether online, in print, or on television — comes at a cost; a cost proportionate with how beautiful it is. And we should start investing in a long term campaign for hearts and minds. For many years the church was a significant part of ‘the wedding industry’ in Australia; we’ve lost our monopoly, but it still raises revenue for many churches (and ministers). We could direct a proportion of that income to promoting marriage, and having good material to distribute when preparing a couple for marriage seems a no brained. White looked like it had a cracking aesthetic. We should back it; perhaps to model an inclusive conversation about love and marriage, funded by Christians, or perhaps as an ideological contribution to the public conversation funded by Christians.
We should stop writing prophetic, apocalyptic, think-pieces that offer no solutions, only commentary — and bad commentary at that — and start turning to the pages of our own divinely inspired apocalyptic text — a text all about what life looks like for faithful witnesses of king Jesus, the bridegroom, in the world that executed him on a device designed to bring maximum public humiliation. A text about our hope in the ruins. A text about a white wedding. The wedding of the lamb, whose bride is the church (Ephesians 5).
“Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.” — Revelation 19:6-8
We should stop saying ‘I told you so’ — stop feeling hopeless and aggrieved — stop playing the victim — stop being doomsday prophets with no map for turning back — and start living as the hopeful bride of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. Dressed in white.
Our hope does not rest in a redirection of the public narrative, or a return to ‘Christian values’ — our hope doesn’t rest in religious freedom, or our unfettered access to the free market on a level playing field. Our hope doesn’t rest in marriage here and now. This future with Jesus is our hope. Nobody in this world can stifle it. It’s time that hope re-captured our hearts and imaginations (and that we spent less time worrying whether other people think we’re pretty enough).