In his book The Gay Science German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared “God is dead.”
He didn’t mean this literally, of course. Rather his point was that modern science and philosophy had rendered Christianity impotent in the face of competing cultural and intellectual forces. There is no one point where religion suddenly lost its grip on the Western mind as the dominant mode of understanding the nature of the world; rather, the nature of modern thought itself undermined the notion that things are as they are because God willed it.
Nietzsche wasn’t asserting that God didn’t exist, although I think we can be confident that Nietzsche didn’t believe in the Christian God. He was simply observing that Christendom was spent as a cultural reality. Human beings have been set morally adrift.
Thousands of books, essays, lectures, and courses have been written and taught discussing the idea, but at a fundamental level, the observation is obviously true. We used to argue–even engage in wars–over fine theological distinctions; today we argue about whether men whipping each other in public is a good thing for kids to see, and those who argue “No” are currently losing the cultural battle.
Christianity still exists, but for the most part, it is subordinate to the larger culture rather than driving it. Catholicism, more by its nature as the world’s oldest bureaucracy and its centralization than through stubbornness and adherence to the Word, remains countercultural to some extent. Protestant churches–not all, but vast numbers–are now gathering places for the “spiritually woke.”
This is a gross generalization, and not a knock on Protestantism as an idea. It is, however, true that Protestant churches have much greater theological flexibility because Luther argued that every man is his own priest. Doctrine is a slippery idea without a bureaucracy to back it up.
This is a growing fad in mainline churches, penned during Pride 2021 by queer UCC minister Rachel Small-Stokes pic.twitter.com/tl2h5fEIgW
— Woke Preacher Clips (@WokePreacherTV) June 27, 2023
Many Protestant churches have jumped headfirst into the world of woke, so it shouldn’t surprise me that the “Sparkle Creed” is making its way into the Liturgy.
However I still have the ability to be shocked, and shocked I was to discover that a Lutheran Church just a few miles from my home is embracing the Queer God theory.
Now as a Christian, I do believe that we are all God’s children, and I bear no ill will toward people for their personal choices as long as they remain personal. What clothes you wear or who you have sex with are not my business as long as you don’t demand I exclaim approval or demand my participation in any way. Or evangelize to others’ children. Have at it, and God will judge your choices.
Further, I need not like other people or approve of their choices in order to love them as fellow human beings worthy of respect. The love, perhaps, is abstract because I am human and not divinely capable of truly and deeply loving people to whom I am not directly attached, but the respect for humanity is quite real.
But none of that is at issue here. All the arguments we are having are about how people are behaving toward others in social settings, and to a greater extent about the nature of objective reality. And, apparently, about the meaning of Christianity.
What is happening here, to steal an idea from the alphabet people, is the “colonization” of Christianity, or in Nietzsche’s words the “revaluation of all values.”
There are lots of things one can argue about theologically, but I think we can confidently state that at no point in the 2000 years of Christian theology has the idea of a Queer God been contemplated until 5 minutes ago.
It is, to be clear, an appalling attack on Christianity in the way that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are. As David Burge would say, it is the movement to mock a respected institution, kill it, and wear its carcass like a skin suit while claiming the legitimacy of the once-living and vital institution.
If the people at Edina Community Lutheran Church want to worship a Queer God, they can. It is disgusting, though, that they claim to be Christians.
Mocking others’ religion is disgusting, and this counts as mockery in my eyes.
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