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Wednesday, February 09, 2011

2k duplicity


One of the oddities of the 2k debate is the spectacle of 2k ministers lecturing the laity on church/state separation. But if they really believe in church/state separation, why don’t 2k ministers stay within the boundaries of their own “kingdom”?

How does that apply to the laity? Even if ministers are not supposed to stray into politics, laymen aren’t ministers. Aren’t the laity free to politicize social issues to their heart’s content?

Why are 2k ministers trying to “bind the conscience” of laymen by lecturing them on their proper role in the public square? Why do k2 ministers trespass their own boundaries while attempting to treat the laity as if they were the clergy? They presume to draw lines for laymen while they step over their own lines. 

3 comments:

  1. Aren’t the laity free to politicize social issues to their heart’s content?

    I think that Zrim has written that the laity have "political liberty."

    I think what the R2K proponents are saying is that ministers/pastors and churches are not to speak out on moral issues in the Public Square.

    If they do, then they are condemned by R2K proponents like Zrim, Darryl Hart, and others.

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  2. This is what Zrim wrote on the "New Warrior Children" thread at Green Baggins:

    "TUAD, 2k makes a distinction between the church qua church and her individual members, between institution and individual. When it comes to the institution, 2k says that the church should only speak in line with what she has been commissioned. She hasn’t been commissioned to protest abortion clinics. When it comes to individuals, 2k also distinguishes between extra- and ordinary members. The extraordinary have a burden on them that the ordinary simply don’t, namely to speak in accordance with the church as institution. They may certainly have their socio-political convictions, but they must be much more cautious about how they speak than ordinary individuals. It works both ways, by the way, ordinary members aren’t called to evangelize (witness, yes), as in every member ministry."

    (continued)

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  3. This is another comment that Zrim wrote to me on that same thread:

    "TUAD (#474), that’s right. And on top of those distinctions about what the church is commissioned to speak to as well as the distinction between extra/ordinary members, I come from the quarter of 2k that takes an agnostic view of the power of politics and legislation to nurture the right, true and good (and a dim view of social and political activism). I’m much more inclined to look to the institutions of the family and church than the halls of justice for that.

    So as opposed as I am to homosexuality enjoying the sanction of marriage, I am also equally skeptical about efforts to socially and political disenfranchise a certain group of sinners and having Christianity aligned with such disenfranchising efforts. That’s not a very good way to easily solve certain social and political issues, and it earns a variety of marginalizing descriptions, from idiosyncratic to pacifist. But I happen to think that sinners are complicated and so are their projects. So, figuratively speaking, my vote for Prop 8 is to abstain, since I don’t think such questions easily boil down to “yes” or “no.” This is the part where you go ape."

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