Church Alive - Theological Digest & Outlook

Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the dangers in Canada’s new social experiment

ed. Daniel Cere and Douglas Farrow. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Pp. 193. Paperback.

Graham A.D. Scott

A certain country’s government decided to change the public meaning of marriage. The government policies included no-fault divorce, ending distinctions between cohabitation and marriage, universalizing abortion, and establishing universal daycare. Sound familiar? Do you think I’m referring to Canada? But the country I’m thinking of is the Soviet Union in the 1920's.

By the mid-1930's the USSR was experiencing serious consequences from these "progressive" policies. Family life was destabilized, divorce rates were rising, temporary cohabitation was more prevalent, birth rates were declining and children often ended up on the streets. In 1936 the Soviet Government began reversing some of its marriage policies.

About 75 years later the courts and Government of Canada are repeating the mistakes of the USSR in the 1920's. The obvious lesson from history is that people–even our highly educated and very clever elites--don’t learn from history.

What the courts and the Martin Government are currently doing is to redefine marriage as between two persons rather than between a man and a woman. This makes marriage all about adult satisfaction. This divorces marriage from its second great purpose of procreation. What both courts and recent Governments are failing to see is that marriage is about children. Their policies about marriage have hurt, are hurting and will continue to hurt children. Children need both a mother and a father. Marriage is the time-tested institution that best serves the interests of children and therefore of society as a whole.

McGill-Queen’s University Press has recently published a serious contribution to clarity in the current debate: Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the dangers in Canada’s new social experiment ($17.47 at www.amazon.ca ). Edited by Daniel Cere of the Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law and Culture, and by Professor Douglas Farrow of McGill, this diverse collection of essays examines the legal, political and social aspects of marriage and its proposed redefinition.

The diversity is illustrated by the two authors of an essay who introduced themselves as one a Jew, the other a gentile, one gay, the other straight. "Neither of us opposes gay relationships or civil unions for gay people." They contend that we know now "that families with both mothers and fathers are generally better for children than those with only mothers or only fathers." Their joint conclusion? Marriage "has always been associated primarily with the needs of children...and the needs of society." "Canadians should think twice, therefore, before redefining marriage."

Right now it’s not Canadians but Parliament that’s being asked to redefine marriage. How many Members of Parliament and Senators read Divorcing Marriage? How many judges have even heard of it? Not long ago a Parliamentary Committee was asking Canadians what they thought about redefining marriage. The then Minister of Justice shut the Committee down. Now Prime Minister Martin won’t let the Cabinet and parliamentary secretaries vote according to their conscience. I congratulate all our Niagara area Members of Parliament, who intend to vote against redefining marriage. We should support them in this. I hope they will prevail.

Daniel Cere offers more hope. He says that "precise polling tells us that 67 per cent of Canadians want the existing definition of marriage maintained." And he reports that "88 per cent of youth still want marriage for life." Like the great majority of Canadians, these youths "still regard life-long marriage as the ideal." With this kind of groundswell, perhaps Enshrine Marriage Canada (www.enshrinemarriage.ca) will one day get the Constitution amended to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

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Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society: Essays in pluralism, religion, and public policy

McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Pp 201. Paperback.

SECULARISM OR SECULARITY?

Fr. Dn. David Scott

Secularity has a biblical basis that secularism does not have. Secularity recognizes that the state has its own commission from God. The biblical basis for this recognition is twofold. First, Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s" (Mark 12:17). Clearly some things belong to the state in this life. But ultimately all things belong to God.

Second, St Paul said, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God" (Romans 13:1). In other words God has instituted human government for the temporal good of the human race, given as we are to disorder, crime and war. St Paul calls us to be law-abiding citizens.

But if the state tells the Christian to worship its head--in Christ’s ministry on earth, Tiberius Caesar--then St Peter and the other apostles say, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29; 4:19). In other words, the state has an important but limited mandate.

Secularity means that the Church is not to take on the mandate of the state. The Church has every right to influence the state (both John the Baptist and Paul preached to rulers) and to influence the electorate today. But the Church is not meant to run the state, any more than the state is instituted to run the Church. That is what "separation of church and state" is historically all about.

The Church has its own task from God, which is to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Holy Trinity and teaching them to observe all Christ’s commandments (Matthew 28:19-20). Until Constantine Caesar issued his edict of toleration, the Church was persecuted for obeying Christ’s commands.

Under Nazi rule faithful German Christians were expected to give equal loyalty to Christ and to Hitler. Faithful Christians under the leadership of Swiss theologian Karl Barth responded in the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which said, "We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church’s vocation as well."

The ideology of secularism would ban Christian influence and symbolism from every aspect of public life, confining it to one’s private closet. Secularism is not Naziism nor is it Communism, but like every "ism," secularism has no tolerance for limitations or for the public witness of the Church or synagogue. Secularism in Canada is suggested by Chief Justice Beverley McLaughlin’s essay, "Freedom of Religion and the Rule of Law." The Chief Justice definitely believes in freedom of religion, but she also believes that "the rule of law exerts an authoritative claim upon all aspects of selfhood and experience in a liberal democratic society." This second belief in the all-comprehending claims of law clears the way for the comprehensive ideology of secularism.

The Chief Justice’s essay is in the recently published book, Recognizing Religioin in a Secular Society (McGill-Queen’s UP), edited by Douglas Farrow. Other essays in the book argue for limited government and for secularity rather than secularism. I recommend this book as a major contribution to the on-going debate on whether or not religion has any place at all in the Canadian public square. The book’s authors, including the Chief Justice, say there is such a place. But many other voices in Canada would not agree, and even want, for example, to cut out the reference to God in the Charter’s preamble that states that "Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."

I hope that Canada will not slide into totalitarian secularism, but will instead accept that secularity and limited government will serve the nation well and allow freedom of religion to support all the other freedoms that the Charter would guarantee.

Authors in Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society, besides the editor and the Chief Justice, include the following: H.R.H. Prince El Hassan Bin Talal (Jordan), William Galston, Rabbi David Novak, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Iain T. Benson, Margaret Somerville, and H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. The book contains some of the papers given at the 2002 Montreal Conference on "Pluralism, Religion and Public Policy."

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Published in April 2002 by Evangel Publishing House,
2000 Evangel Way,
P.O. Box 189,
NAPPANEE, Indiana 46550
(1-800-253-9315)

Foreword, vii
Acknowledgements, xi
Contributors, xiii
Introduction (Andrew Stirling), xv

Part I: The Trinity in the Scriptures
1. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: The Trinity in the Old Testament, John N. Oswalt, 21
2. The New Testament and the Trinity, Allen D. Churchill, 31

Part II: The Trinity in Church History-Two Key Areas
3. The Foundation of the Doctrine of the Trinity: The Early Church, Graham Scott, 101
4. The Trinity in the Nineteenth Century, Kenneth Hamilton, 131

PART III: THE TRINITY QUESTIONED-THE CHALLENGE TODAY
5. The Church Challenged: The Trinity and Modern Culture, Andrew Stirling, 149
6. The Trinity Against the Spirit of Unitarianism, Victor A. Shepherd, 171

PART IV: THE TRINITY AND PRACTICAL ISSUES FOR THE CHURCH
7. Called To Be One: Worshiping the Triune God Together, Edith Humphrey, 189
8. The Trinity and Liturgical Renewal, Daniel Meeter, 207
9. The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Renewal of the Church, David Curry, 233
10. The Trinity As Our Guide: The Centrality of the Trinity in Social Ethics, Donald Faris, 273

To order this 302 page softcover book, see your bookstore, or telephone:

Timothy Eaton Memorial United Church, 416 925-5977 (Price $29 including GST)

One of today’s fashionable trends is assertive atheism. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and even philosopher Daniel Dennett have written screeds againstfaith in God, and their books have sold well.

But in his Atheist Delusions David Bentley Hart argues that compared to Celsus, Porphory, Hume and Nietzsche, these popular writers are light weights. They have not taken the time to study what Christian faith really is, nor have they considered the facts of history.

For example the New York Times quotes Peter Watson as saying that humanity’s worst invention without question is ethical monotheism. Hart admits that devotees of the “one true God” have certainly had their share of blood on their hands, but the vast majority of history’s wars have been fought for profits or conquest or power, for territory, national or racial destiny.

Hart notes that polytheists, monotheists, and atheists kill, and that this last class is especially homicidal, if the evidence of the twentieth century is to be consulted. The truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

The fashionable atheists know so little about human nature that they imagine that a society “liberated” from Christ would love justice, truth, beauty, compassion or even life. It won’t. The Christian view of humanity is that we are both the image of the divine, fashioned for infinite love and imperishable glory, and also an almost inexhaustible wellspring of vindictiveness, greed, and brutality.

As for the Christian view of God, we worship the One who does not merely take the part of the victims of human violence, but who was himself a victim, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society.

This, says Hart, is the most subversive claim ever made in the history of the human race.

And this claim is underwritten by the victorious resurrection of the crucified Christ and by his continuing gift of the Holy Spirit to those who have ears to hear and hearts to obey his commandments of love.

Christ’s Body the Church has experienced many centuries of being out of fashion and some centuries of being in fashion. But what matters is not fashion but truth.

Hart believes that Christians must continue to believe in the power of the good news to transform the human will from an engine of cruelty, sentimentality, and selfishness into a vessel of divine grace, capable of union with God and love of one’s neighbor.

Hart takes the time to set the historical record straight from the burning of the great library at Alexandria to Galileo and on. The breadth and depth of knowledge shared in this book is either an education in itself or a welcome refresher course for the reader.