Church Shopping, Again

Barney Quick

Barney Quick writes for various magazines and website, plays jazz guitar in various configurations, and teaches jazz history and rock and roll history at Indiana University. He blogs at Late in the Day and writes longer essays at Precipice, his Substack newsletter.

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47 Responses

  1. Pinky says:

    I’m a Catholic. We’ve got the full range of worship variety. Two thousand years of watching the State has left us not-surprised-but-disappointed with government, and always nudging things to get better. You might find yourself comfortable attending a Catholic church if you avoid the folk Masses, but we’re not Protestants, and if you’re looking for Protestant beliefs we’re not that.

    If you’re looking for something high-church, then Anglicans are an obvious choice, although I doubt you’d be happy with their social agenda. Missouri Synod Lutherans used to have a reputation for conservatism; as far as I know they may still, but I just don’t have many Lutheran connections. I don’t know where you’re located, but there are some older denominations in the US – I’m thinking of names like Friends and Brethren — that probably never got caught up in the mainline rise and fall. I’d even bet some of the smaller offshoots of Lutherans and Anglicans haven’t gotten into pop music and progressivism.

    My main advice is to do it. You’ll take your lumps; just don’t walk away angry when you don’t find a perfect match. You’re looking for communal prayer, and prayer is about God, not you. You’re better off actually attending a service and grumbling (or offering it up to God) during the tambourine songs than just telling yourself you should get around to it. Best of luck.Report

  2. Chip Daniels says:

    Reading this, I’m struck by how modern it sounds, how the author feels entirely free from the heavy hand of Church and State.
    Free to discover the truth of the world based entirely on his own intuition and reason, free to accept or reject the authority of any entity outside of his own conscience.

    Which makes it all the more ironic getting to the final paragraphs and discovering that what he is “shopping” for is something that would deny Rick Rubin the same freedom.

    I’m seeing a lot of this, people labeling themselves various flavors of “conservative” or “traditional” or whatever, who are nonetheless entirely modern in their being, modern in thought, modern in their worldview asserting their freedom to pursue their own truth regardless of authority.

    This isn’t a criticism necessarily. I renounce Modern Architecture and all its evil works in favor of neo-traditional forms of expression.

    But I know that the word “Neo” is so important here. The way I look at the world is fundamentally incomprehensible to a 16th century architect. Even if we arrive at the same shape of building, we are separated by an unbridgeable gulf.

    What we are seeing in essays like this is a Neo-Traditionalism, one that has an affinity for tradition, but rejects its core worldview. If the author actually lived in the 16th century for example, an essay like this would result in torture or execution.

    There was an effort throughout the 20th century to reconcile this, to create a new form of thinking which was evolutionary where modernism was revolutionary. A way of thinking which kept the best of the old and embraced what was good about the freedom of the present.

    In the art and architecture world, this is being done by artists using representational art with modern themes, or buildings evoking traditional forms but adapting new technology and proportions.

    I’m not seeing much of this in the self-described “Traditionalists”.Report

    • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      The letter kills but the spirit gives life.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Church hopping is modern in the sense of being post-Treaty of Westphalia, but there have always been differences in practice between individual parishes, so a 12th century Florentine would have had the option too. I don’t know who Rick Rubin is offhand, but is he barred from finding communal worship he agrees with? I think even most prisons in the US offer some variety.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

        The last link in the essay explains that Rick Rubin is obliterating the architecture of creation.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          His name is Dave, not Rick. The link doesn’t accuse him of obliterating the architecture of creation. It isn’t about religion. Rubin is free to worship however he wants. The only point you got right is that Quick failed to distinguish between obliteration of a structure and obliteration of the traditional formulations about that structure.Report

  3. Jennifer Worrel says:

    I hear you, and I see you.

    I am happy to recommend a traditional service at your local ELCA Lutheran Church. ELCA stands for Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but its not the kind of *evangelical* you may be recoiling from upon reading that.

    We have open communion, will ordain practicing gay ministers, and the last two senior pastors I’ve had have been female. We also have organ music, robes, and real wine at communion.Report

  4. fillyjonk says:

    I’m about 10 years younger than you, I think. Grew up in Disciples of Christ churches, where individual congregations vary a lot in how “open” they are (officially the denomination itself is “open and affirming” as regards LGBTQ issues and same-sex marriage; individual small congregations, especially in the South, sometimes differ).

    But one comment you made struck me: “I guess the days of organs, robes and old-school hymns are fading fast. ” This is the church I grew up with. The one I belong to now is more traditional in the forms of worship than many, but even it has gone more to praise songs (for simplicity, I guess) than what I ideally like. I miss the old hymns and the more-liturgical patterns. I get that maybe we need to go more “casual” for those who are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the more high-church trappings. But I want something DIFFERENT from day to day life when I attend church – I still dress up, I still like a little formality.

    The church I belong to now – and have since I moved here – is shrinking; people are dying off at an alarming rate and we have few new members joining. If we fold, I’m not sure what I will do – I absolutely do not want a prosperity-gospel place, or a place that has hitched its wagon to certain political movements, or a megachurch. I guess the Presbyterian church here is still pretty old-school and also “stay in our lane,” but I fear they won’t outlive the congregation I’m in, since they’re in similar straits to us.

    I don’t know. I know I need a church: I don’t have a family (never married, never had kids), “work doesn’t love you,” and there are really no local hobbyist groups I could be a part of; church is pretty much the only place these days I find “my people” and the thought of losing that terrifies me.Report

  5. DavidTC says:

    I wrote my master’s thesis on mainline Protestantism’s leftward drift as a major cause of its denominations’ bleeding members since the 1960s. It turned out to be a sprawling mess, because it had to pass muster with faculty advisors who were not sympathetic to my take.

    You didn’t quite say when you wrote this, but it’s a thing that could possibly be argued in 1992, but…in retrospect, it seems like a poor reason.

    Here’s a graph: https://religioninpublicblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/reltrad_long_gss_repel.png?w=723

    You’ll notice some interesting things there. There’s a timespan where it’s possible to argue that evangelical denominations are poaching from mainline…it’s 1970-1992, where the percentages of the two basically switched places. In fact, if you look, you can see zip-zags that often exactly mirror each other. Clearly the two groups are trading with each other.

    And….just as clearly, that stopped in 1992, when Christianity just started hemorrhaging people to ‘No Faith’. Heck, after that point, there’s still some places where evangelicals popped upward for a very short span because mainline dropped down, but any gains get steadily ground away.

    What is actually happening is that mainline protestants (and to a less extent evangelicals) are not looking for better churches…they’re not looking for churches at all. They’re just walking out, apparently.

    Now, have evangelical churches drifted leftward since 1993? That really seems unlikely, and if that’s not the reason for _their_ decline, we really have to question if we should consider it the reason for anyone else’s.

    …there’s actually an even better question here: Why do we think the levels in 1970 were ‘normal’? Cause the 1960s were actually a high point in religion.

    In fact, what do we even mean by the levels? It’s an interesting paradox: While the number of people who report themselves as a member of a religion has declined, the amount of people _who attend church regularly_ has not really declined. (Pre-pandemic, I mean.) In fact, it’s been fairly constant for a long time.

    So it appears what’s happened is that some percentage of people who did not really attend have stopped considering themselves members of denominations. (And maybe even some who do!)

    I actually have my own theory about this, and it’s basically the same reason many people don’t want to call themselves Republicans as any more: Moderates used to be willing to identify as a member of a Christian denomination, even if they didn’t really care, and now they aren’t willing thanks to decades of the media allowing evangelicals and fundamentalists to pretend that they were the only representatives of Christianity.Report

  6. cam says:

    Let me preface this by saying that having read this I think we have such different views on what makes a good church that I could not recommend one to you. However, having moved frequently and therefore had to go through the ‘church shopping’ thing a number of times, I do sympathize, so let me offer something general:

    No church is going to be a 100% match, so decide what matter most to you.

    Is it traditional music and services? Is it being centered on the Eucharist rather than the sermon (or vice versa)? Is it a friendly welcoming community? Or, since you mention this a couple times, is it a community explicitly unwelcoming to gay or transgender people? In broader terms, how politically aligned with you do you need a church to be in order to view it as a comfortable place to worship? (This is a legitimate question from my pov. I’m fine with a fairly broad mix of liberal and conservative, but I’ve literally walked out of churches preaching ‘vote this way or go to hell’ from both sides of the political spectrum). What specific points of theology beyond the basic statements of the Apostles Creed are important to you? (for instance, does a particular stance on communion, or adult vs baby baptism, or predestination matter a lot to you?) How much does outreach/mission/service to the community matter to you, and if so, what expressions of those do you care most about?

    Have an idea going in as to what would make a church worth visiting again and what would instantly cross them off your list. Some of that you can figure out by looking at their website or a church bulletin, but for a lot of it you just have to go visit in person and actually talk to people there. The only shortcut I can suggest is that if there’s a charity you especially care about, get to know people involved in that and find out where they go to church. That’s often a good lead on a place to find a church home.Report

  7. DavidTC says:

    …the sheer amount of people who think the author is looking for a place accepting of LGBT people instead of looking for a place not accepting of LGBT people boggles me.

    Seriously, everyone, read the last paragraph, please. He does not want a church that is happy with gay people, or however he’d want to phrase that.Report

    • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

      The sheer number appears to be 1. If that.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to Pinky says:

        cam did.
        Jennifer Worrel did.
        fillyjonk did, I think, because advising him to join a regressive church in a denomination that is officially ‘open and affirming’ is extremely silly advice (Especially since that church is liable to change in a direction he doesn’t want!), and her comment seems to be ‘This denomination is officially what you want although individual churches might differ’, when it is in fact the other way around.

        Half the top-level comments on this got it wrong and exactly backwards. (And one of the ones that got it right was me, which I don’t really count when judging how correct this site is getting things.)

        Hell, even if we go by all posters, five of us, including me, got right, and three got it wrong. I think that is a pretty large amount, proportionally, of people.Report

        • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

          Actually, cam’s first sentence states clearly that he doesn’t agree with the author enough to recommend a particular church, but discusses the process of finding a church in general. And Fillyjonk explains something similar, saying that while grew up in a more open and affirming church than the author would like, one thing about worship (not doctrine) resonated with her. Jennifer may well have been recommending her church for the liturgy and the non-evangelicalness, with a warning about sexual mores.

          ETA: Also noteworthy that those commenters and I replied in the spirit of the original article, which was looking for recommendations rather than a debate about what he should want in a church.Report

          • DavidTC in reply to Pinky says:

            I’ll give you cam, I misread that post, but…no, the other two posters are talking about LGBT stuff in a completely backwards direction that makes very little sense for someone trying to find a place that _isn’t_ okay with them.Report

            • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

              Hey, as a Catholic, I think he’s probably going to choose a church I’d disagree with, but the point of the original article was to discuss and solicit advice on finding a church, not to debate what a church should believe in. It’s possible to give advice to someone that you don’t agree with completely. If fillyjonk and Jennifer misread the article, they’re guilty of the mirror image of what you did with cam’s post, but they weren’t trying to make a stink over it. I guess I have to wonder why you went all “it’s made of people” over this.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Pinky says:

                You thinking that me saying ‘He does not want a church that is happy with gay people, or however he’d want to phrase that.’ means I am debating what church he should attend with is some SERIOUS reading comprehension failure on your part.

                It is me trying to clearly and objectively state (So much I’m carefully saying ‘I am not sure how he would phrase this’.) what he wants in a church. I made no judgment whatsoever, I’ve actually not made any judgement in this entire thing of any sort of religious beliefs, and trust, I have _very_ strong opinions about anti-LGBT Christians, but I don’t really think this post is the place for it.

                And I am ‘making a stink’ of it because it’s a pretty jackass thing to give backward recommendations. Even if done accidentally, it’s pretty crappy to just leave a page full of accidental backward recommendations and no actual forward one.

                And thus the reason I pointed it out was TO TRY TO GET SOMEONE TO MAKE A REAL RECOMMENDATION FOR HIM.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to DavidTC says:

                And I’m explaining this like you don’t know this, but my actual response to you is pretty damn clear that my complaint was not ‘How dare this guy have these religious beliefs’, but is literally ‘We are giving really bad recommendations here because a large chunk of us misread his request. Everyone needs to go and reread it’.

                So it’s not even poor reading comprehension, it’s just a weird assumption you made that I was condemning him and then kept in spite of obvious other evidence.Report

              • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

                Well, your first comment on the thread was a tangent rather than a suggestion, then you joined in on pillsy’s “you should change your mind” subthread. So maybe you really felt the need to shout “hey, he doesn’t like gay people, so we should give better suggestions” and just forgot to say the second part. Also the way you phrased it made it clear that you objected to the author’s views.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Pinky says:

                Well, your first comment on the thread was a tangent rather than a suggestion

                I have no suggestions. Many of us won’t have suggestions for this.

                then you joined in on pillsy’s “you should change your mind” subthread.

                …ah, yes, the ‘blame me for the thread I joined instead of what I said in it’ trick.

                It’s weird how you got ‘rubbed the wrong way’ by my original comment and felt the need to respond to it _before_ I posted in that other thread, though.

                But in that thread, you may have noticed that my comments were, in fact, entirely about an article proporting to be about ‘gay conservatives’, and not anyone’s choice of church. Just because someone else said something doesn’t mean I did.

                And my first comment is, in fact, not a tangent, but something directly mentioned in the article. It’s not the the _request_, which again I cannot help with, but it is not off-topic.

                And I feel it’s sorta funny you’re complaining about things being offtopic when, uh, I made a pretty serious attempt to get people _on_ topic (and am really the only person who tried that) and you decided to surreally argue with that attempt!

                So maybe you really felt the need to shout “hey, he doesn’t like gay people, so we should give better suggestions” and just forgot to say the second part.

                I don’t have to say the second part, saying ‘Everyone is doing this wrong and they need to reread the thing we’re supposed to be doing’ _implies_ ‘Everyone should do it that way instead’.

                The boss: Hey, a lot of people are filing things in this current job by their last name, but please reread the requiresment of this client…they want it sorted by first names.

                You, later: The boss didn’t explicitly _ask_ us to sort by the first name. He complained about how we were doing it wrong and told us to reread the requirement and told us what it said, but he didn’t _literally_ say ‘So do it that way’. He must have instead secretly been stating his dislike for sort of sorting!

                Also the way you phrased it made it clear that you objected to the author’s views.

                No, I stated it pretty neutrally, it’s just that not being accepting of gay people is generally not considered a good thing, so me merely stating the truth comes off as negative. That isn’t really anything I can do anything about.

                But since you seem to think I failed, it’s odd how _you_ used a euphemism of ‘the author’s views’ instead of stating of what those views were in this obvious neutral way you think must exist.

                So let’s hear it. How _exactly_ should I have stated it? Please describe the sort of church he looking for WRT their views of LGBT people.Report

              • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

                I thought cam and fillyjonk did it politely but clearly. As for whether people understood that you were asking for better suggestions rather than criticism, do you think people have heeded your call?Report

      • Greg In Ak in reply to Pinky says:

        Urm…after reading it he clearly does not want a church that is comfy with LGBT. So more than one and the others that were mentioned below.Report

    • JS in reply to DavidTC says:

      Yes “We’ve jettisoned the basic sexual dichotomy of the human species – indeed, the entire animal kingdom – and the institutions – think marriage – that enshrine that.” is pretty much the entire reason I’ve not commented on this piece.

      I think any churches I’d have to recommend the author would find a poor fit.

      Pretty clearly anti-gay and anti-trans, but most of the sort of church he’s after — the old-style Protestants and such, have been very accepting of the LGBTQ community for a very, very long time.

      I do like the nice little implication that it’s not just religion, those fools are rejecting the REAL SCIENCE too in that statement.Report

    • cam in reply to DavidTC says:

      Um, cam actually said “…Or, since you mention this a couple times, is it a community explicitly unwelcoming to gay or transgender people?…” So, actually did assume they were looking for a place not comfortable with LGBT people.

      However much I personally would avoid a church that was explicitly unwelcoming, my advice was sincere in offering a way to find a church. In my opinion a person is more likely to grow in grace within a community than isolated.Report

  8. pillsy says:

    If the communities I was comfortable with consistently alienated me by having positions on a political controversy that I disagree with, I would definitely reconsider my position, on the grounds that it’s in tension with my other values.

    Maybe not change. Maybe it’s my other values that are wrong.

    But I wouldn’t sit back and assume it.Report

    • pillsy in reply to pillsy says:

      That said, if the communities where I felt comfortable had values that were in conflict with the ones expressed in the linked article, I would absolutely jettison the values expressed in the linked article, because they are extremely silly.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to pillsy says:

        Hilariously, I disagree with almost nothing in that article besides the implicit conclusion that ‘conservativism’ is something we should aim for instead of it being obvious patriarchal nonsense. Listen to this:

        The moral vision here is that whatever makes the modern man or woman happy and which technology makes possible must be good. That may be the spirit of the age, but it is not the spirit of conservatism.

        That’s the actual quote centered on the page, that’s the supposed _takeway_ of this article.

        Conservativism is apparently now just Puritanism, “the haunting fear that someone somewhere is having a good time.” Heaven forbid a political philosophy try to make people happy in any manner!

        And I like he gives this paragraph:

        What is modern conservatism? Is it the “Christian nationalism” that haunts the nightmares of so many evangelical elites? Is it working-class populism that pits itself against the claims of the privileged panjandrums of the progressive political class? Is it just code for a rejection of any notion of progress? Is it a radical libertarianism? Or is it the vision, now an increasingly forlorn hope, that was set forth in book after book by the late great Roger Scruton and inspired so many of us over the years? The answer, I suspect, is that all of the above are considered by somebody somewhere to be “conservatism.”

        …and then doesn’t really answer it, because his answer is actually just ‘the patriarchy’ and his concern that teh gays threaten said patriarchy, what with their undermining of gender roles.

        Seriously, I have bookmarked this and will be giving it out as a link to any gay or feminist conservatives I run across. He manages to just perfectly summarize everything, all while being certain that people will be upset something isn’t respecting the ‘sex difference of parents’. And for all I know, that is the audience of his, but it really is masks off for everyone else.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to DavidTC says:

          I mentioned on another thread why we need to come up with actual arguments as to why fascism is bad, rather than Holocaust references.
          Because there is a large and growing body of people for whom liberalism and tolerance are no longer universally beyond debate, but merely one side to be considered.Report

          • DavidTC in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            We can’t, because they do not actually listen to reasons of things.

            Here on the political internet, we’re used to saying ‘X is would help people so is a good thing’ and having the other side say ‘X would actually injure people in complicated and obscure ways so is a bad thing’.

            And, yes, this is often nonsense, but conservatives at least felt the need to explain _why_ gay marriage would be harmful, for example. That it might look good in the moment, but it would undermine traditional marriage in some manner.

            The problem is that, since conservativism locked into place in the 90s and isn’t allowed to change, all their arguments sorta stopped holding water. Like, normally, they’d just sorta update and hope everyone forgot, but they aren’t allowed to do that any more. Like, gay people being accepted has had basically no impact on society in any manner outside of that.

            But… they’ve recently discovered a secret: No one actually cared about their bogus arguments to start with. They were always excuses.

            What a large portion of their supporters want to do is hurt the right people.

            As I’ve mentioned before, I became massively disillusioned in conservativism because of Trump…which sounds weird for someone who wasn’t a conservative at the time, but I thought a lot of them really did believe dumb things that caused them to come to bad conclusions that sorta incidentally harmed people, and Republican leadership took advantage of that to pass laws their actual constituency (the wealthy) wanted.

            And with Trump throwing a good chunk of that stuff out the window, it became extremely clear the actual point was, and had always been, to hurt people, and if anything the Republican leadership had been keeping them in check.

            I think the idea of ‘explaining how fascism is inherently evil and not merely _accidentally_ evil in recent history’ is a workable concept, because a large chunk of the right is perfectly on board with doing the sorts of things we’d be explaining fascism is evil for having.Report

            • DavidTC in reply to DavidTC says:

              Sorry, I mean I think it’s *not* a workable concept.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to DavidTC says:

              I agree on all points save one, that I believe there is value in having a clear and loud and unequivocal defense of human dignity, even if it doesn’t turn the tide or win a lot of converts.
              Like Sophie Scholl bravely and futility handing out antiNotsee pamphlets, having a clarity in our own minds can help retain our sanity.

              Like how in the present moment we are being urged to think of ourselves as grooming children, it isn’t enough for authoritarians that you bend the knee, but you must also recite the creed.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I don’t know why I’m taking this so personally, but it’s shocking to me that you guys did this on the “Church Shopping, Again” comments section. Maybe it’s because this is the most intolerant display I’ve seen in a while. Like there was one corner that didn’t conform to The Agenda, so you had to go there and spread it.Report

              • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

                I would not take it seriously. You and I disagree on the politics of (some of) this issue and for all I know I’m right down the pew from you. At least if you’re ever part of the Saturday evening crowd.Report

              • Pinky in reply to InMD says:

                I dunno, man. Maybe it’s that we’ve been talking about this site and cancelling and that stuff lately. DavidTC’s comment was like some kind of parody of the worst impulse in human behaviour when it thinks it’s in a homogenous group. -Stop, why are you people talking to him, he’s not one of us!- And I just love that cam replied with a yeah, of course I talked to him, I’m not a jerk. I don’t normally react viscerally to gross comments, but David’s just hit me.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Pinky says:

                I dunno, man. Maybe it’s that we’ve been talking about this site and cancelling and that stuff lately. DavidTC’s comment was like some kind of parody of the worst impulse in human behaviour when it thinks it’s in a homogenous group. -Stop, why are you people talking to him, he’s not one of us!- And I just love that cam replied with a yeah, of course I talked to him, I’m not a jerk. I don’t normally react viscerally to gross comments, but David’s just hit me.

                Holy shit, way to completely misinterpet my comment in the most negative possible way.

                The actual reason I brought up that people had it wrong is that he had asked for help and people had apparently interpreted in exactly the opposite way.

                Or, were just possibly purposefully ignoring his request and answering backwards, which is a pretty shitty thing to do. But I didn’t want to accuse anyone of doing that on purpose so I just sorta called it out indirectly by saying ‘Uh, people, the actual request was the other way around’.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to DavidTC says:

                Forget it, DavidTC. When Pinky goes into Hall Monitor mode, there’s no reasoning with him.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                We take it seriously as well.
                Here is the Republican Senator from Florida:

                The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science.

                The fanatical left seeks to devalue and redefine the traditional family, as they undermine parents and attempt to replace them with government programs. We will not allow Socialism to place the needs of the state ahead of the family.

                So yeah, if there was one guy saying this stuff we would chuckle and turn the page.

                But there I’d a very large portion of America which has not made its peace with multiculturalism or tolerance and is fighting very hard to impose its will on the majority.Report

              • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I’m going to tell you something that will blow your mind, Chip. Did you know that Joe Biden goes to a church every Sunday that does not allow gay marriage, or even condone gay relationships?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

                And?Report

              • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

                President Biden has also made it quite plain, as a matter of secular policy, where he disagrees with that church.Report

              • JS in reply to InMD says:

                Do you think we’re unaware he’s Catholic or what?

                He was also one the one pushing Obama to be pro-gay marriage, and has made his public positions on LGBTQ issues, abortion, and a host of other cultural issues quite clear.

                What next, are you going to blow our minds with the fact that Lincoln was a Republican?Report

              • Philip H in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I believe there is value in having a clear and loud and unequivocal defense of human dignity, even if it doesn’t turn the tide or win a lot of converts.

                I do too, and Christ’s actual teachings in the Four Gospel’s are quite consistent on His view that humans were all God’s creation and thus deserving of HIs love.Report

  9. Philip H says:

    We’ve jettisoned the basic sexual dichotomy of the human species – indeed, the entire animal kingdom – and the institutions – think marriage – that enshrine that.

    Scientifically, there are at least 6 genders in the human genome:

    The six biological karyotype sexes that do not result in death to the fetus are:

    X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s )
    XX – Most common form of female
    XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter)
    XY – Most common form of male
    XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people
    XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births

    https://www.joshuakennon.com/the-six-common-biological-sexes-in-humans/

    Its also false, scientifically, to say that the animal kingdom was or is or ever will be “heterosexual” as humans define it:

    For a very long time, scientists have known that animals engage in sexual behavior with individuals of the same sex. Such same-sex sexual behavior (SSB)* can include, for example, mounting, courting through songs and other signals, genital licking or releasing sperm, and has been observed in over 1,500 animal species, from primates to sea stars, bats to damselflies, snakes to nematode worms. (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-is-same-sex-sexual-behavior-so-common-in-animals/)

    Which means that yes, we have jettisoned what we knew about human gender because we know new things. We are also coming to know that – again based on genetics – human sexuality is complex and has at least as many expressions as does gender. Animal sexuality is equally complex.

    Is that disruptive to human institutions like religions? You bet. Except Christians have a clear path on this, should we choose to seek it:

    36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

    37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

    Loving your neighbor as yourself of necessity means extending love, compassion, grace, forgiveness and humility to every person made in God’s image. The Science says God made us richly diverse in myriad ways. Any church worth its salt will tell you that too.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

      People with Turner syndrome present as female; people with Klinefelter, XYY and XXXY present as male. They can live their lives without ever being diagnosed. They represent, by your numbers, .3% of the population at most. There are also malformations of the genitalia that can make sexual determination at birth more difficult. If we’re talking about LGBT or LGBTQ, these conditions are unrelated, and if we’re talking about LGBTQIA, then these people represent a tiny fraction. I have nothing against them.

      But you didn’t bring them up to clarify anything; you brought them up to obscure the topic. And no, there aren’t six genders in the human genome, because by definition gender isn’t physical. I have nothing against people who aren’t masculine heterosexual men or feminine heterosexual women, either. None of that changes the definition of marriage.Report