I’ve read and re-read Cal Thomas’s July 11 column. It seems Thomas has swallowed a specious and a spurious fantasy: America was founded as a Christian nation, and thus manifested American exceptionalism.
I’m a Christian believer and a minister, who found Thomas’s anemic, westernized, weak-kneed pity party for Christianity an affront, which required a rebuttal.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Colorado baker who refused to prepare a cake for a same-sex ceremony was justified — based on his religious beliefs. Whereas, the same august body remanded a similar case back to the Washington State Supreme Court. It involved Barronelle Stutzman, a flower shop owner, who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex couple’s ceremony.
Stutzman objected because Scripture declares that marriage involves a man and a woman.
One court ruled Stutzman either provide the flowers or face penalties. In his magnum opus, “A Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King asserted that when a person’s conscience informs them that a law is unjust, they must oppose it openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. King said had he lived in a Communist country that suppressed Christian principles dear to the Christian faith, he would have openly advocated disobeying those anti-religious laws. Just like he opposed American apartheid.
I shake my head at Thomas’ incredulity. He’s baffled and bewildered that the Supreme Court manifested such inconsistency, wonders if these legal decisions contain a higher political purpose, and conjectures that these decisions are determined to sack so-called traditional values?
Huh. Where’s he been? The court has proved consistent in its inconsistency.
Thomas asserted that people who reject the status quo will be considered criminals if they apply their faith in the public square. Wow. It’s always been that way. The apostles’ God consciousness compelled them to preach Christ, which violated the law. Magistrates flayed them and cast them into a cold and dank prison. Nevertheless, the apostles rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake.
In 1521, the Imperial Diet, the deliberative body of the Holy Roman Empire, ordered Martin Luther to recant, and beseech his majesty’s pardon. Luther thundered, “I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience . . . ”
When the monarchy, the government, was restored in England, John Bunyan joined a nonconformist group, and was ordered to stop preaching. “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience,” thundered Bunyan. Therefore, he served a 12-year prison stint.
Authentic Christianity requires courage.
Marc Greenwood, Camp Hill, Alabama
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