Hilton Head Island, SC – August 28, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Amos 5:18-24; Matthew 23:25-31
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” – Matthew 23:28 (RSV)
Religion contains many factors worthy of commendation. As a nonprofit movement among all other nonprofit movements, it has probably always been the most highly successful and useful of all such institutions.
Nevertheless, religion can promote too much allegiance to itself and not enough allegiance to what it is supposed to promote, namely, commitment to God. Too often various forms of religion insist that everyone must subscribe to what they believe or think, and that if that doesn’t happen, they declare that the non-subscribers shall be consigned to the lowest depths of the unredeemed.
An example of that tendency is what came to be known in the late nineteenth century as “The Five Points of Fundamentalism.” They were: 1) the verbal inerrancy of scripture, 2) the deity of Jesus, 3) the virgin birth, 4) the substitutionary atonement of Jesus on the cross, and 5) the physical resurrection and the bodily return of Jesus at the end of days. If you did not give assent to all five of those ideas, it was decreed that you were a goner.
Many Christians thought and still think that list of requirements is too narrow and exclusionary, although there are still many Christian fundamentalists who demand adherence to those doctrines. Nowadays, however, many Christian extremists focus less on doctrinal matters and more on cultural issues, such as opposition to abortion, the freedom to pray in public schools and in other public places, opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and the movement to prevent anyone from deciding to change their sexual orientation by surgery or any other means.
It is certainly acceptable for fundamentalists to be fundamentalists and for evangelicals to be evangelicals. Furthermore, many fundamentalists are not extremists, and most evangelicals are not extremists. But when any Christians of any sort or any adherents to any other religions become extremists, it is not acceptable. No one should ever try to force their views, opinions, or beliefs on anyone else. That is especially true when those views are clearly mistaken.
The question of abortion has become an enormous issue in America because of the Supreme Court decision which overturned the previous Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade. Roe allowed every American woman to seek an abortion under certain proscribed conditions, especially at what stage of the pregnancy the abortion might be performed. By a 6-3 decision, the current Supreme Court said the federal government cannot make laws determining that; only states can do it, they said. Five of the six justices who overthrew Roe v. Wade are Roman Catholics, and the other one was raised Roman Catholic but is now an Episcopalian.
Any judge or justice in America is free to think or believe whatever they choose about abortion, but they are not free to impose their beliefs on other people. Although all six justices would strongly deny it, their decision in this pivotal case was heavily based on their religious beliefs, and not on judicial or legal opinions. In effect, they took away the freedom of women, simply because they are women, to make personal choices regarding their own bodies. That is an obvious example of religious extremism, even though, as I said, all six would deny that their vote on the issue had anything to do with religion. It truth it had everything to do with religion, because the right to an abortion is a legal matter, and it becomes a religious matter only to those who subscribe to particular tenets of particular kinds of religion. However, a strong majority of other religious people favor the right to abortion, and do not think laws should be passed which prevent abortions, especially when those laws forbid it under all circumstances, which is what some state laws have declared since the Supreme Court decision was announced.
In Kansas, voters by 59 to 41% defeated a conservative referendum to remove abortion rights from the state constitution. After that vote, a USA Today/Ipsos poll said 70% of the respondents said they would like abortion to be voted up or down by the populace, rather than decided by extremist politicians or judges. Such a move was favored by 77% of Republicans, 73% of Democrats, and 67% of independents. Nevertheless, the Texas legislature has threatened to prosecute all corporations which pay the expenses for their female employees to get abortions in other states, because Texas decreed that no Texas woman could get an abortion anywhere. A more egregious example of extremism than that may not exist.
Some of the most vehement denunciations of religious extremism are found in the Bible. The prophet Amos, for example, castigated the most zealous people in Israel for their excessive zeal. When Amos lived, a concept known as “the day of the Lord” was in wide circulation. On that day, it was thought, God would come and destroy all the bad people (who were people who didn’t believe what the excessively zealous believed), and He would show His favor toward the good people (who were --- who would guessed it? --- the excessively religious.)
Colntrary to the prfevailing notion, Amos said that on the day of the Lord, the self-righteous would be struck down. Speaking on behalf of God, Amos said, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies….Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21,23,24).
Sometimes those who think themselves to be the most pleasing to God may be the most displeasing to Him. Sometimes those who imagine themselves to be the most admirably-minded are the most vexing to the Holy One of Israel. It isn’t religion itself which matters to God; it is the nature of religious expression which matters to Him. Is religion inclusive or exclusive, accepting of the basic humanity of everyone or rejecting of most people because they don’t think the way religious extremists think?
Recently on television we watched a movie entitled Belfast. It depicted life on a one-block street in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during what then was referred to as “The Troubles.” In the 1970s and 80s, Protestants and Roman Catholics were killing one another in Ulster, all on behalf of their extremist views of religion. Both Catholics and Protestants lived on the cinematic street. It featured one family of moderate Protestants in particular. The father wanted to move to England for the sake of safety, but the mother wanted to stay, because that street was home to her and to her parents. When Protestants ransacked the neighborhood grocery store which was owned by Catholics, the family decided they had no choice but to flee the fanatical mayhem that had taken control of Belfast. The last scene in the movie is a white caption surrounded by a totally black screen. It said, “For the ones who left and for the ones who were lost.”
There have always been Christian zealots in our nation who twisted Christian truths into excessive acts of prohibition or violence. But now they have joined forces with political leaders to thrust their views onto everyone. It started back in the 1980s with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the so-called Moral Majority, and it has grown into a powerful legal determinant of what it considers American culture should be. In the process, the Religious Right and one of our two major political parties have united to try to legislate their ideas onto the entire nation.
If white supremacists are religious, and many of them are, they gravitate toward very conservative fundamentalist Christianity. The Gospel they preach is one of separation of the races and social exclusivity. If they avoid compassion and justice, which they do, what is their understanding of the Gospel? Where is the Good News in what they say and do?
For years there have been allegations of sexual abuse of teenagers and women by pastors and other leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, but they have been swept under the rug year after year at the annual meeting of the denomination. Male domination has been a key factor among Southern Baptists for generations. This year by a wide margin the delegates to the annual convention insisted on making public a report of the complaints of the survivors of these assaults which theretofore had been suppressed. The denomination reluctantly owned up to its neglect by finally confronting this issue. Now the matter is out in the open, and, as in the Roman Catholic Church, restitution will be paid to the victims, who have suffered in church-enforced silence for far too long.
Various independent polls have shown that the primary religious support for very conservative politics comes from very conservative evangelical Christians. No one has benefitted from that segment of voters more than Donald Trump, and only those who have intentionally blinded themselves to reality would imagine him to be a serious Christian. But other politicians such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, and Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas have also become the darlings of the evangelicals. Excessively conservative religion usually gravitates toward excessively conservative politics.
Pope Francis was named the archbishop of the Buenos Aires archdiocese in 1998. At the time a man named Carlos Menem was the president of Argentina. During his term in office, thousands of Argentines opposed to his dictatorial regime became “the disappeared ones,” the desaparecidos. These people were rounded up by the government secret police to be taken away and executed, and their families never knew what happened to them.
A few months after becoming the archbishop, Jorge Bergoglio delivered a sermon in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires, with President Menem in attendance. Referring to the longstanding tensions between those who supported autocracy and those who strove for democracy, the future pope said, “History bets on the superior truth, on recalling what unites and builds us, on the achievements more than the failures. And, looking toward pain and failure, may our memory be used to bet on peace and rights…and if we look at the hatred and violent fratricides, let our memory guide us so that the common interest prevails” (Quoted in Francis, a Pope for Our Time, by Luis Rosales and Daniel Olivera, p. 87).
On another such occasion, with the new president Nestor Kirchner present, along his wife, who later became president herself, Cardinal Bergoglio condemned both the government and the Catholic Church for their ill-treatment of the poor and dispossessed. Obliquely referring to President Menem’s bloody term in office, the cardinal said, with incredible courage, “Copying the tyrant and murderer’s hate and violence is the best way to become his heir” (Ibid, p. 90). The Kirchners were so upset by his broadside that they never allowed the annual national Te Deum service to be held again in the Buenos Aires cathedral. Few prophets have the fortitude to say what Pope Francis has said, especially in the presence of the very people upon whom his prophetic wrath so pointedly fell.
During his brief three-year ministry, which was cruelly cut short by his crucifixion, Jesus frequently locked horns with the scribes and Pharisees. These powerful conservative figures were among the leading lights of first-century Jewish religion. The entire 23rd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is devoted to an unrelenting denunciation of the worst tendencies of those practitioners of religious extremism. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the plate and of the cup, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity…Woe to you!…For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets” (Mt. 23:25,29-31). If Jesus actually said those words, he also was probably obliquely talking about his own crucifixion, which he had come to believe was imminent. The scribes and Pharisees were partners with the Roman government in sending Jesus to the cross.
As admirable as religion usually is, when it becomes extremist, it can be an unjust and deadly force. Both Amos and Jesus vehemently spoke out against a formerly honored type of religion which had somehow gone wrong in their own lifetimes.
The most important single activity that occurs for people who live in democracies is when they cast their votes for the candidates they think will best fulfill their desire for justice and equity among all citizens. The thing about 21st century American religious extremists is this: more than any other group of Americans, they are the most likely to vote. The thing about all other American potential voters is this: they may or may not exercise their obligation as informed and dedicated citizens to vote. Thus the zealots may win, and the merely interested but insufficiently motivated may find themselves engulfed by governmental policies they despise, but not enough to prevent the election of those who espouse restrictive policies.
On November 8, there will be a national and state election. In South Carolina, we have known for several weeks who our candidates will be. To be as well informed as you can be, between now and then read whatever any of them says. You can also watch on television what they say, but it is more important to read what they say in order to get the whole picture, to the degree any of them allows us to get the whole picture. It is especially important that you listen to candidates associated with the type of Christianity which declares itself to be the only proper kind, and insists that the rest of us Christians are all the wrong kind. And, as Jesus also said, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Some Christians and some politicians are as innocent as venomous serpents and are as wise as air-headed doves. When candidates are elected, it is vital to know which is which and who is who. So read, listen, and think.