As you know by now, Oklahoma senator Sally Kern’s comments provoked a raging controversy, and the inanities spouted from opponents and supporters alike have only thrown fuel on the flames.In her address, Kern posed a brace of questions:
But if I were to ask you what is the one thing that has made America great, that makes us unique, what would it be? And then if I were to ask you what is the one thing that is actually destroying this nation, what would be your answer?
Her answers, of course, were mindlessly predictable: no one would even ask this set of question who wasn’t creating an occasion to assert a certain set of opinions. The questions, and all questions like them, ought to be dismissed for their complete lack of merit; no intellectually honest person (as if one could be honest without being intellectually honest!) would think to put pseudo-questions like these to h/erself or to others. By failing to accomplish the fundamental purpose of questions, which is to make it possible for thinkers to think more clearly and more imaginatively about an issue, it actually erodes the minds of both the asker and asked. When these types of questions become common fare, it is proof of intellectual depravity; they are tombstones marking the graves of deceased minds.
Before I go on, let me stop to make a few prefacing comments.
First, I don’t know Sally Kern, and I have no reason to doubt she is a sincere Christian who also takes her political responsibility seriously. That being said, her comments deeply trouble me and I take the most extreme exception to them. Sincerity has little to do with being a good Christian, at the end of the day. One either knows Jesus Christ and and understands what the euangelion means for one’s everyday living – or one doesn’t. Kern clearly does not know Jesus well, and she demonstrates a frightening lack of understanding about how the Christian life is to be lived.
I know many of you who read this post will more or less agree with at least some of Senator Kern’s assertions. Insofar as that is the case, you will find my response confusing, at best, and infuriating, at worst. I hope you believe me when I say I’m trying to be as irenic as possible under these circumstances. But I admit I am angry. Angry that this passes for Christian witness. Angry that (“conservative”) Christians in the public square have no better sense than to speak and act in ways comparable to Kern’s. Also, I’m not disagreeing with Kern about the morality of homosexual acts or lifestyle, although I do think the issue is much, much more complicated than she allows, or, apparently, knows. This post isn’t about whether or not homosexuality is morally permissible. It is about Kern – and those who would stand with her – and her misappropriation of God and the Scriptures for absolutely unChristian speech and action.
Now, let’s return to her set of “questions.” If one thinks about it even momentarily, problems begin to emerge with their framing, problems that render the questions invalid.
First, the question unwarrantably assumes America’s “greatness” (what, after all, could this possibly mean?) and uniqueness (how could one possibly determine this?). Obviously, Kern, like the others who would (ab)use these kind of “questions,” propounds a view of America as divinely privileged, as “blessed” and “favored” by God. It (almost) goes without saying, but no one committed to serious thought on the matter would dare such an assumption that is nothing less than sentimental non-sense. More importantly, it is Christianly unthinkable that God would show preferential treatment to a group of people simply because of their nationality; it is no exaggeration to say such a view borders on blasphemy. (Of course, many of those who cherish this view of America are dispensationalists who hold that God, in fact, privileges two nations as such: the United States and Israel! Some would argue that God favors the U.S. in part because of its support of Israel. But I can’t deal with any of this now. It must suffice to say this view is biblically untenable, theologically perverse, historically false, and morally objectionable, and all for myriad reasons. The euangelion, at its core, is about, inter alia, the dissolution of national and racial boundaries. Or hasn’t Kern read Galatians and Romans?)
Second, the question unwarrantably assumes America is being destroyed. As if the “making” of America and its “un-making” were mutually exclusive processes! As if there were an identifiable turning point in American history one could mark as the beginning of the un-making! This, too, is nonsensical, and would be laughable if its effects in this instance and in the larger discourse weren’t so tragic.
Third, the question unwarrantably assumes, or least countenances the possibility, that only “one thing” lay behind America’s “making” and another “one thing” lies behind America’s destruction. With perverse questions like these how could anyone expect anything other than a perverse answer?
The “one thing” unmaking America, Kern believes, is the de-Christianizing of American values accomplished in no small part, in her opinion, by the agenda of the gay community. In her words,
We are crumbling from within because of the bankruptcy that we have in the moral fiber of this nation and leaving the principles of our founding fathers.
(Let me pause to point out that Kern’s diction betrays a profound lack of thought. If you doubt me, take a moment and try to compose a statement of comparative length that makes use of as many cliches.)
The “bankruptcy” of our “moral fiber” – a bizarrely mixed metaphor – results at least in large part from homosexuals and their “agenda.”
Okay, and I’m not ‘anti’, I’m not gay bashing, but according to God’s word that is not the right kind of lifestyle. It has deadly consequences for those people involved in it. They have more suicides and they’re more discouraged, there’s more illness, their life spans are shorter. You know, it’s not a lifestyle that is good for this nation. Matter of fact, studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it’s the death knell for this country. I honestly think it’s the biggest threat even, that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat, okay.
A few elements require illumination.
First, I’m curious which studies show the cataclysmic demise of societies that “totally embrace homosexuality”? I suppose ancient Greco-Roman society doesn’t qualify, presumably because it didn’t “totally embrace” homosexuality? Of course, there aren’t any such studies, which means either she is lying, a possibility I think unlikely, or she is ignorant. Either way, the consequences are the same for those of us who have to live with the matter of her words.
Second, I wonder what threat Islam as a religion poses to America, apart from those forms of Islam sponsoring and practicing terrorism.
Third, I wonder what the “right kind of lifestyle” is. Does Kern believe it’s enough for a society to “totally embrace” heterosexuality? Does she believe that produces the enrichment of the moral fiber? Perhaps she would agree with those whose leading concern for Ted Haggard was that he would learn to exhibit heterosexual desires!
In conclusion, then, I don’t mean this as a jeremiad. Although it is something very much like that. If there’s “one thing” wrong with America it isn’t the de-Christianizing of moral values. In spite of what Kern thinks, American values from the beginning have been conflicted, at best. America’s making was at the same time its unmaking, as is the case with all nation-states. To cite but two examples, there wouldn’t be a nation landed “from sea to shining sea” without the horrors of prolonged and systemic ethnic cleansing; and American wealth has come at the expense of the harrowing of the land itself. As Wendell Berry writes, “We came with vision but not with sight./We came with visions of former places but not the sight to see where we are.” The settling of America was, at the same time, the “un-settling of America.”
No, if there’s one thing wrong with America it is that most American Christians, in this case unhappily exemplified by Senator Kern, do not know how to be Christians in any way authentically and intelligibly shaped by the faith. Moreover, their unChristian thinking, speaking, and acting wreaks havoc in society and renders the faith unintelligible. The Christian church in America, for the most part, is impotent because inarticulate, and inarticulate because ignorant of Jesus and the way of life required and engendered by the good news that he is Lord.
