The bobbies – the name given to the Metropolitan Police – were created in 1829 by Home Secretary Robert Peel at a time when the military was feared. The police force, at its core, was, and still is, seen to serve the community and fight crime by consent, rather than to serve the state. That’s why bobbies were given a smart blue uniform, not red, the color of the militia’s. Even today, they can be seen in Prussian helmets carrying, notably, batons not guns.The threat of terrorism, not to mention the number of guns flourishing on the black market, has sparked a recurring national debate about whether Britain’s police should begin to carry firearms. But the police themselves have been the first to oppose such a move, even in the heat of the London bombings in 2005. A survey by the Police Federation in 2006, the latest available, found that 82 percent of its 47,238 members did not want officers to be routinely armed on duty, despite almost half saying their lives had been “in serious jeopardy” during the previous three years.
“Having police officers patrolling neighborhoods and being routinely armed could be seen as a more military type of police service, which is unlikely to be supported by either the police or the public,” says Steve White, a former firearms officer and chair of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers.
I don’t know exactly what Benedict Option evangelism might look like. I don’t know what kind of diminished numbers of converts we might see in the coming decades as a result of the collapse of American “Christendom.” But I do imagine that if Christians decide to do what Griffiths recommended in his blog post—if we begin to polish and attend afresh to our own practices of discipleship and faithfulness—we may end up seeing many more people embrace what the church teaches about marriage as both comprehensible and convincing. It has happened already for some, and it will go on happening, please God.
Wesley Hill. I think this is true, but I want also to suggest that Wesley may be thinking about these matters in ways that are not fully compatible with the BenOp idea, at least as I understand it. I think these reservations apply also to Leah Libresco’s recent reflections.
Both Wesley and Leah write about the BenOp as something that could be attractive right here and right now, especially to people of their generation. And that may well be true. But the emphasis of the BenOp, as I understand it, is to focus our attention on very long-term strategies: how can people devoted to serious, authentic, deeply traditional Christian living (faith, thought, action) be shepherded through a culture that acts as a powerful corrosive upon that form of living? — a culture in which almost no one will think that form of living attractive, because they have been catechized into another and very different way of life?
I’m groping for the right metaphor here, but I think that Wesley and Leah are wondering how we orthodox Christians will do in the cultural Olympics, and I’m saying that we can’t think about that now because we need to dress our many wounds.
frequently unobserved distinctions
(a) Approving the outcome of a judicial decision
(b) Accepting as valid the legal reasoning in support of that outcome
(a) Believing in the need to enshrine in law a great social good
(b) Believing that that social good is already enshrined in the Constitution
(a) Believing in traditional Christian teaching on a given subject
(b) Believing that that teaching needs to be enshrined in secular law
(a) Wishing to commend to the whole society the excellence of Christian teaching
(b) Believing that legislation is the best way to do that
[gallery columns=“1” size=“full” ids=“18040”]
Miller Bros. 101 Ranch. Wild West Show. Daily review : program, 1929.Houghton Library, Harvard University
The issue of gay marriage has come up a lot since the Massachusetts court decision. Tell me what you think about it. Why do evangelicals care so much about this in particular?Evangelicals care about gay marriage because they care about Christian marriage. The tradition of Christian marriage has been uniform throughout the history of the church. It is a monogamous and permanent union between one man and one woman. That’s the way that it has always been. Anything other than that has been seen as deficient, at best.
For instance, there are cases in which Jesus authorizes divorce, but he thinks of divorce as always a tragedy, as always something that is deeply regrettable. Then other deviations from that norm, that standard, are typically presented as being sinful.
Evangelical Christians care about Christian marriage, therefore they care about marriage as it is understood by the state. My own view is more a non-view than it is a view. I feel that the church is so confused about what sexuality is and is so confused about what marriage is that … all of my energies have been devoted to trying to increase the church’s understanding of what sexuality is, and what the biblical and historically Christian picture of marriage is. I haven’t had any time left over to worry about what the state thinks that marriage is.
But you’re speaking about your church, right? The Episcopalian Church?
Well, I think there is obviously a crisis right now in the Episcopal Church over what are the appropriate expressions of human sexuality and what Christian marriage is or should be. But that just happens to be the denomination that’s at the center of the controversy right now.
I think throughout the church, and including even in evangelical churches, there is a lot of confusion and a limited understanding of what the biblical picture of sexuality and marriage is. So I focus my interest on that. Perhaps I should be more interested in what the state thinks that marriage is. But that seems to me to be very much secondary for a Christian to the question of what the church thinks that marriage is.
Interviews - Alan Jacobs | The Jesus Factor | FRONTLINE | PBS. I gave that interview — the questioner is my friend Wen Stephenson, by the way — in 2003, and honestly, things haven’t changed much for me since then. I note this because I’ve been feeling guilty for asking other people’s views on SSM without offering my own.
I read Andrew Sullivan’s conservative case for gay marriage when it came out in 1989 and thought, This makes a lot of sense to me. Is there some principled reason that I should disagree? And after some reflection I decided that any serious answer would depend on what the state thinks marriage is, and is for. However, I could never find any general agreement on that point, and still can’t. Justice Kennedy’s words yesterday about how marriage “embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family” are self-consciously noble, but don’t address that question except to suggest that the state somehow has an interest in specifically erotic commitments. (I’m not sure why lifelong friends who live together would be excluded from the state’s approbation just because they don’t have sex with each other.)
Perhaps I am soft on sin, or otherwise deficient in serious Christian formation — actually, it’s certain that I am — but in any case I could not help being moved by many of the scenes yesterday of gay people getting married, even right here in Texas. I hope that many American gays and lesbians choose marriage over promiscuity, and I hope those who marry stay married, and flourish. Beyond that, I still have no clear idea what the American political order thinks marriage is, and I do not expect to receive any clarity about that. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll now go back to thinking about what marriage is in the eyes of the Church — and of how to sustain religious liberty in the new dispensation.
[gallery] Clementa Pinckney’s memorial service is being held in Charleston today. Well done, good and faithful servant. May you rest in peace and rise in glory.
Simply put, mutual responsibility towards offspring naturally demands a long-term commitment (at least 18 years) while mutual attraction and erotic desire does not. What we see in the modern world is the fracturing of a very lofty ideal of marriage back into two different kinds of relationships: those which are primarily focused on children, and those which are primarily focused on erotic love. The battle over the institution of marriage is basically a battle over whether which of these two purposes of marriage ought to have primacy.The answer that the Supreme Court has given by ruling in favour of same-sex marriage is basically a ruling in favour of erotic love. This should surprise no one. It’s the more culturally popular option, and it’s the view of marriage that the vast majority of heterosexuals already subscribe to. It’s also, in practice, the definition that we’ve been using for a long time. The truth is that most of the material and social supports that exist to help parents with the task of raising children are no longer associated with the institution of marriage in any way – and unfortunately, the pro-family groups that could be providing financial, emotional and practical support to people who are choosing traditional marriage tend to waste their resources fighting fruitless political battles instead.
Today’s decision … will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. E.g., ante, at 11–13. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.
[gallery] Those who have: happy. Those who have not: sad.
