Strange Theodicy

A guy claiming to be a reverend, a certain Fred Phelps, is taking protests to funerals with the argument that bad things happen to good peolpe because America tolerates homosexuality. The Jefferson City News Tribune has an editorial condeming these protests, which gives a little background on the story. Missouri and other states have imposed a content neutral ban on demonstrations within an hour of a funeral. Here is a News Tribune news account of the legislation's passage. Two days earlier there was a story when the House passed the legislation.

Tom Scharbach over at Purple Scarf has found a source that suggests Phelps is actually an agent provocateur to discredit Biblically based opposition to any gay-friendly agenda. While its certainly possible that Phelps is an agent provocateur, I think its just as likely that he and his supporters are just nuts, and have no clue how much opposition they will get from the Right. By pitting a conservative warm regard for the military against a conservative hostility to any gay-friendly agenda, Phelps will inevitably split conservatives. By employing such an unpleasant tactic, its also inevitable that the weight of opinion will be against Phelps.

I am told that Phelp's people are praying outside the Missouri State capitol this morning, and have been given information about how Phelps and his protestors disrupted Lutheran services during discussion of the ELCA's position on homosexuality which involved serious injuries to a minister who approached the protestors to ask that they withdraw and allow the service to procede without disruption. Attacking clergy in the name of God certainly has to fall into the catagory of "things that will alienate your natural constituancy." Dennis Prager has identified that the Commandment against "taking the Lord's name in vein" means to attach God's name to a cause which is not Godly, and has nothing to do with swearing. In the current situation globally, this often refers to Islamicists who use terror in the name of Allah. It would seem that Phelps' efforts likewise qualify as a distinctly unGodly set of tactics (and perhaps purposes) dressed up under a Godly banner.

As I have posted once or twice, I don't think the Bible issues general condemnations of homosexuality. I do think the Bible frequently issues condemnations against the adoption of practices of neighboring people. This rejection of cultural assimilation has allowed Jews to maintain a distinct identity despite three thousand years of hardships, domination, and oppression. If a neighboring people engaged in distinctly different sexual practices, its to be expected that the Bible would condemn them as foriegn. If people ate distinctly different foods, that too would be forbidden. And if they worshiped different gods, that also is forbidden. The condemnations in the Bible reject assimilation to neighboring lifeways as a means of preserving a distinct identity, not because any of the prohibited actions (whether style of dress, foods, family arrangements, or sexual practices) are neccesarily bad. Of course there are prohibitions on some bad acts, whether medically (some of the dietary laws are good health advice), or because it is meant to invoke some attention to moral issues (such as the proscription of ways of killing an animal to be as humane as possible, or the injunction of an eye for an eye as a prohibition of demanding a life for an eye, or the slaughter of a family for an eye).

Distinguishing between universal claims of a text and simple descriptions of a particular set of conditions requires a level of text criticism which apparently eludes Fred Phelps. No doubt he reads the injunctions against bathing not to refer to Greek or Roman style bathing, but as a universal prohibition on bathing. Whether Phelps is an agent provocateur or just an idiot, its clear that his efforts do undermine his cause.