I find it very interesting, though, that, if Ms Davis were a Muslim limiting marriages because they do or don't fit a certain reading of the Qur'an, nearly every Kentucky resident would be looking to lynch her. American Christians (by which I mean folks who are more American than Christian) demand to be so entitled. That's the opposite of Jesus' way.The background, lest anyone has been out of the news cycle this week: Kim Davis, Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, has been jailed for her defiance of a court order to process marriage licenses for same-sex couples. Her view is that, by refusing to process any marriage license for anyone, she is engaging in an act of civil disobedience based on a position of Christian conscience.
That seems like a modern American stance to take, more so than a Christian one.
Ms Davis' decision to close her office door to LGBT citizens (and, soon after, to all couples seeking licenses) reflects her personal theological position, but it fails to honor the position of the government she serves. She forgets that she herself does not issue licenses. The licenses do bear her signature -- indicating that the paperwork was properly processed -- but at the top of the license is not her name, but the words "Commonwealth of Kentucky". States issue marriage licenses; county clerks do not. Ms Davis' stubborn refusal to follow a federal judge's order is indicative of two mistaken views that have become entrenched in much of conservative Christian culture: Radical moral individualism and the establishment of Christianity as the de facto established religion of the land. But, again, both of those are more American than Christian.
Ms Davis has declared that she is acting on "God's authority" and that her decision to issue marriage licenses is a choice between "heaven or hell". Creedal statements, to her way of thinking, are an individual matter, between the believer and God. Those who profess correct beliefs earn God's favor, but those who differ risk damnation. There's little sense, in her public remarks, that creedal formulations are products of a Christian community. In this uniquely American view, individual believers are charged with maintaining their own personal creeds, participating only in congregations whose collective creed jibes with their own personal standard of orthodoxy. Ms Davis is transferring this outlook to her work as an elected public official. One has to wonder what -- as a divorced-and-remarried person herself -- she would make of a devoutly Roman Catholic county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to divorced citizens. Or, as I indicated in my comments, what Kentuckians would think of a devout fundamentalist Muslim who thinks a particularly fundamentalistic reading of the Qur'an who refuses marriage to divorced persons.
This intellectual sleight of hand arises from Ms Davis' second mistaken viewpoint. She clearly regards Christianity as the de facto national religion, despite the First Amendment to the Constitution and numerous judicial cases founded upon it. This wild assumption has become a popular meme in conservative media. Right-wing Christians have become a regular feature on newscasts, loudly decrying their persecution by a godless government, one that prevents them from imposing their personal moral convictions on society at large. Ms Davis is making good use of her fifteen minutes of fame to raise similar complaints.
These same folks fail to realize that the Declaration of the United States and its Constitution are both, themselves, godless documents.
On Christian grounds, I oppose calling America a "Christian country". That's been true for free-church folks (among whom I gladly take company) at least since the Danbury Association of Baptists in Virginia.
I haven't heard of any earthquakes in Kentucky lately, but there's little doubt to my mind that Ms Davis fully expects to be freed on the "merits" of her religious conscientious objector arguments, much like Paul and Silas in Acts 16. But in truth, the only earthquake that's probably rocked her world since her self-righteous perp walk is the quiet news that her Assistant Clerks, in the absence of their boss, have started issuing marriage licenses again, some of them to same-sex couples.