Here is something that has been circulating for a while. I have never posted the link before, but since someone sent it to me today and the Maryland legislature is doing its thing, I thought I would share.
Follow the link above for the site. Follow the extended link for the text here if you are curious.
BAPTIST PASTOR TESTIFIES IN SOUTH CAROLINA
The Rev. Dr. Robert Shrum, Pastor, Oakland Baptist Church, Rock Hill SC Remarks Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing On the Proposed Constitutional Amendment Barring Gay Marriage
Room 306, Senate Office Building (Gressette Building)
March 31, 2005 (1:30 p.m.)
By the Rev. Dr. Robert Dale Shrum
Greetings Chairman Ford, Senator Hawkins, Senator Cleary and Senator Hutto:
Good afternoon, and thank you for hearing me today. I am Bob Shrum, and I am a resident of Rock Hill where I have been the pastor of the Oakland Baptist Church for over 22 years. I have served two other Baptist congregations in Sumter and Pendleton. My pastoral service to Baptist churches in South Carolina has spanned more than 34 consecutive years. I grew up in Florence, and graduated from the University of South Carolina. I have deep roots here, and I love this state of ours. I am Sandlapper to the core. My remarks to you this afternoon grow, basically, out of two loves: my love of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and what I have learned through the years of him, and my love of this wonderful state where most of my almost 60 years have been spent. Please hear them in that light.
First of all, let me tell you that I speak for myself. I do not speak for the Oakland Baptist Church in Rock Hill or any other group or individual. If any of you are Baptist, you know that Baptists do not speak for each other. We're funny that way. We like our independence and resent it when others pretend to speak for us. Additionally, you should know that I am not gay, nor do I have---to my knowledge--- any family members who are gay. Quite simply, my remarks to you grow from conscience and deeply held convictions informed by Christian faith and over 40 years study of the Scriptures.
Let me tell you a story. When I was a little boy growing up in Florence, my Daddy was the manager of the Goodyear Tire Store on Irby St. He was good at what he did. Everybody admired him, and so did I. He was a Deacon in the First Baptist Church where we were members. One night---long after we had gone to bed---the telephone rang. It was from one of the men who worked back in his service department. He was in jail over in Marion and needed somebody to come get him out, so he called my Daddy. His crime? He was black and driving around after midnight, and it was in the 1950's. They arrested him on the pretense of suspicious behavior. In the wee hours of the morning my Daddy climbed into his '56 Ford with a T Bird engine and flew over to Marion. Not only did he get his employee out of jail that night, but the local sheriff got a real large piece of my Daddy's mind when he tried to laugh it all off and say "no harm done." I asked him about it the next night. I was 12 years old, and I wanted to know why he went to all the trouble. His explanation, "Bobby, it just wasn't right." I learned a lesson from my Daddy that night that I carry into this room today: IT'S JUST PLAIN NOT RIGHT TO TREAT FOLKS LIKE THEY DON'T COUNT---LIKE THEY'RE NOT REAL PEOPLE.
But there's something else I bring into this room today. I have to believe it's a big part of what my Daddy took to that jail in Marion that night. It's the life, influence and example of Jesus, himself. Now, if you're not a Christian, maybe that's not all that important to you. But I am a Christian, and it's real important to me, so I have to speak out of what, in my heart, is foundational. And, for me, it's Jesus. It's not Leviticus. It's not even Paul because sometimes Paul sends mixed signals. It's not the Pope. It's not denominational headquarters. It's not the religious figures who speak so loudly and authoritatively so as to drown out all those who would differ. I look to Jesus when I am puzzled and don't have all the answers like I wish I had. I had a teacher in seminary. Old Testament teacher. Clyde Francisco was his name. Dr. Francisco used to tell us, "Now boys, remember this: whenever you get stumped trying to understand the meaning of something in the Bible, just let Jesus be your interpreter. Let the spirit of Christ be your guide, and you won't go wrong."
And that's what I try to do. And, to tell the truth, it's not always so easy. It's not easy because lots of times I would rather let my prejudices guide me. After all, I've lived long enough to know what's right and what's wrong, and I'd like to think that most of the time I'm right, and those who don't agree with me are wrong. That's why I have to try real hard to let the spirit of Christ be my guide. And whenever I've been successful at pulling that off, I never go wrong. And I commend that to you today if you're in a quandary about what to do with this big, big question you're dealing with. If you approach it with the spirit of Christ, you won't go wrong.
So, what does the spirit of Christ look like? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? It's a bunch of blue collar fishermen. It's a despised tax collector. It's a colony of lepers. It's a hated Roman soldier with a sick son. It's hungry people being fed. It's the children who they tried to keep quiet and out of sight. It's a woman married five times that he made feel worthy. It's another woman caught in adultery that the religious establishment wanted to execute, but he set her free. It's a Samaritan man who the church people hated, but Jesus made him a hero. It was a little old lady so poor that she only had a few pennies for the offering plate, and Jesus held her up as an example for the ages. It was a woman of the streets who became one of his best friends. It was a thief on a cross that he took home with him. You see, the religious experts of his time called him a drunk and a glutton because he went to parties with them, and they despised him because he hung out
with the folks who were on the margins of respectable society---the disenfranchised ones---the ones they called the dregs of society. And they killed him for it. BUT THAT WAS HIS SPIRIT. And it was a spirit that ultimately would not, could not go wrong. Last Sunday---Easter---amidst all our "Hallelujahs, He is risen" we reminded ourselves that it is that kind of spirit that will always, always prevail. Easter tells us that God will not allow the spirit of Christ to be defeated. We may try to kill it with our hateful attitudes, but at the end of the day, it will be our hateful attitudes toward "the least of these" that will go down to defeat.
Can't we see it? Jesus refused to marginalize any segment of society. They were all God's children and therefore brothers and sisters to each other. And he only reserved his harshest word for the religious/ political establishment which had become quite adept at fixing their constitutions to separate the decent folk from the different folk. He said they were like tombstones---pretty and white on the outside, but dead and empty on the inside.
So, I appeal to you today. Let the Spirit of Christ guide you even if you are not a Christian. You won't go wrong if you do. Do not use the Constitution of our beloved state to marginalize a segment of our citizenry. Do not listen to the fear-mongers. They have always been among us throughout our history trying to scare us with their doomsday scenarios, trying to marginalize one segment of society and then another. And, they have always been proven wrong at the end of the day. Trust the spirit of Christ. Trust Easter. Or as my Daddy might have said, "IT'S JUST PLAIN NOT RIGHT TO TREAT FOLKS LIKE THEY DON'T COUNT."
Thank you for your time.
wow. thanks for sharing. wow.
Tripp:
Unlike sister Susie, and presumably yourself, I find the testimony extremely troubling. Not because the pastor legitimately calls into question whether a staple of Christian moral belief can be enacted into law (though I do not think the prohibition of same sex behavior--with which gay marriage is inextricably connected--is only justified in terms of divine revelation), but that he justifies his appeal by way of a leading of the same Spirit that wrote the very same Scriptural texts he specifically asks them to ignore.
Of course, it's also true that this same non-marginalizing Jesus to whom the pastor appeals for the force of his testimony is the same Jesus who marginalizes divorced people, rich people, Jewish rabbis, and (depending on which Gospel we're looking at) ethnic groups and foreigners.
Worst of all, all those peole he didn't marginalize (prostitutes, women caught in the act of adultery, his women disciples, etc.) he failed to accept them as they were but told them to start acting differently--or, most egregious, failed to make them officials in his organization, it was an all-male management team.
I can't even summon myself to appreciate the pastor's sentiment here, because it's so skewed it's pathetic. It's definitely not the gospel. He should be sued for clergy malpractice.
Tripp:
Help me understand: How is it a Baptist principle of hermeneutics that one can blatantly disregard what Scripture actually says so as to do something it says not to do?
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 14, 2005 05:53 PMI'm interested as well in this question of hermeneutics. When it comes to this particular sermon, I see a pastor using what he interprets the force of a certain narrative thread in the Gospels to be to enforce his point. Perhaps he has a great foundation of exegetical work to back up what he has preached, but the sermon itself proclaims a message based on a presupposed exegesis of Scripture not contained within the sermon text. So as I see it, there is a very valid objection to raise to the presuppositions of exegesis underlying this sermon.
So, Tripp, do you mean to be saying that some Baptists come to a different interpretation of this strand of narrative in the Gospels than Orthodox Christians? Or do you mean that the way that the text is approached in Baptist homiletics is fundamentally different in some way from Orthodoxy?
Posted by: Bryan Peters at April 14, 2005 09:55 PMBryan:
There is no singular Baptist hermeneutic. Thus, some of us will find points of disagreement within Baptist tradition itself and with other Christian traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy. If our hermeneutic were all the same, Baptists would all be sacramental, pray with icons and baptize infants. This is completely based on interpretation and hermeneutics.
Cliff:
This Baptist suggests that the Bible is a record of Christian though and practice handed to us by our Christian brothers and sisters. It is not internally consistant, nor is it meant to be. Thus, the OT conflicts with the NT. We cnnot be literalists, for example, otherwise all Christians would keep the dietary laws. But this also means that the Pauline epistles, for example, are not necessarily a singular systematic piece. They were never meant to be. They are one man's reflections on pastoral concerns in the church. They reflect his own struggles and growth. Thus they reflect the internal changes within the Church.
Do I expect you to agree with this? No. Of course not. Neither am I trying to convince you to change your mind. God clearly has led you to the EOC. No doubt about it. God has not led me there. I believe God put us in one another's life to be Christ to one another in spite of it all.
Thus, I love this wee speech. In spite of the confusion, conflation and general misunderstandings, the idea that we are to be Christ to one another is paramount. Paul struggled with this. We struggle with this. The Church struggles with its vocation.
How is this surprising?
Posted by: Tripp at April 15, 2005 09:33 AMTripp:
But nothing that he said is specifically Christian, nor can anything he says be construed as true. Do we follow the Spirit of Christ who wrote the Scriptures or the Spirit of Christ who contradicts the Scriptures? Hmm. Must not be the Spirit of Christ in either case, since the Scriptures cannot contain any trustworthy truth, they contradict themselves so much, or even if they don't we have complete freedom to replace them with our own contradictions. No, the presuppositions which underlie his testimony are distinctly anti-Christian: Jesus would never ignore that which his Spirit had already established was sin, nor would his Spirit contradict what he himself had already established marriage was.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 15, 2005 10:37 AMI must say I am more with Cliff here than Tripp, even if I appreciate the sentiment this pastor speaks of.
I only know the Spirit of Christ Through the Scriptures. It seems to me that an emphasis on the Spirit of Christ separated out from the Biblical text, is a Gnosticizing tendency that elevates indvidual interpretation over Scripture itself, and even over Christ.
I am aware that I am not always the best judge of whether or not I am following Christ or interpreting Scriptures accoding to the Spirit of Christ.
But then my pietist upbrinign is more communal. I would have not hesitancy speaking for my congregation as a Covenant Pastor, it's part of my calling and responcibility to speak the Gospel which is not individual faith but the faith of the community centere on Christ and the Scriptures.
I agree with the sentitment but like Cliff, uneasy about the hermeneutics. And I am nto Baptist but I do wonder if this aspect of being baptist leaves little ablity to speak anything but individualized interpretations. If I meet this text on its own hermeneutic terms we only have our interpretations of the Spirit of Christ without being able to test that Spirit except by our subjective understanding.
As you show Tripp by not addressing that the Gospels own accounts of Jesus action don't quite meet up with this pastors tolerant Jesus. Jesus is compassionate in the Gospels but not very tollerant.
Larry said:
I only know the Spirit of Christ Through the Scriptures. It seems to me that an emphasis on the Spirit of Christ separated out from the Biblical text, is a Gnosticizing tendency that elevates indvidual interpretation over Scripture itself, and even over Christ.And through the scriptures we are encouraged to go to God on our own...in prayer, meditation reflection etc. The gnostics are not the only ones who may claim that God speaks to them. The gnostics attempted to own that word as their own privatized revelation. I suggest no such thing. "Individual" and "private" are not the same. Nor is "personal" an issue as long as we have not personalized jesus, monogramed him with our initials.
And, just to be clear, I am a bit of an individualist. No doubting that.
Was Jesus compassionate or tolerant? Is intollerance and compassion separable? I don't know. That is an interesting question. Jesus laid down the law. Yes. He was a tough guy in many ways, and could be intollerant according to scriptures. But the end was always compassion and healing. It was setting things right and allowing people room to wrestle and not tossing them out for their wrestling.
He was not establishing a purity cult. Are there rules and distinctions? You bet. The responses were what was most intersting to me. "Sin no more" was never coupled with "or we'll toss you in jail and remove you from the community." You can bring Matthew into this if you wish. We can treat them like prostitutes and tax collectors. And this is where my individual interpretation will not be accepted by Cliff. What does Jesus do with tax collectors and prostitues in Matthew? He loves them into the Kingdom. He never gives up hope. He may get mad. He may get frustrated. He may condemn behavior, but he never gives up.
I read the initial post as suggesting that the SC government is giving up on its own. It is letting them live as second class citizens. This is problematic to say the very least. Jesus would never have done such a thing.
And, even if one believe that there is a purity line of some kind in the church, should this issue of purity be one for the Government? The Government and the church are not the same and they neve should be even if they stand in opposition to one another. We cannot conflate the two.
Posted by: Tripp at April 15, 2005 11:32 AMCliff:
You bring up our usual round robin in your response. Is scripture inspired? Yes. Is the Spirit of Jesus within it? You bet. Is it consistant? No. Why? Because human beings are trying to convey their experiences. Thus it is flawed and struggling like the people who wrote it and compiled it.
I, personally, have no need to seek some consistancy within scripture. I find no comfort in it. That you can and you do is fine with me. I am not particularly put out by that. I see your position as no less or more true than my own. That you think differently and believe differently is clear. And with that I have no trouble.
Again, I am not looking for your agreement. Why you seem to seek mine is still a puzzle for me.
Posted by: Tripp at April 15, 2005 11:36 AMTripp:
You mistake a search for truth as a search for your agreement. I would like your agreement, not with me, but with truth. And not for my sake.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 15, 2005 12:01 PMAnd I simply do not think that heaven will ever successfully articulate a monolithic revelation of God to the world.
Posted by: Tripp at April 15, 2005 12:03 PMTo carefully articulate what I suspect Mr. Healy will agree with as well...
God has not articulated an exhaustive revelation of Himself to the world. But I do believe that what He has communicated is true.
Truth may contain antinomies but does not contain contradictions.
Posted by: Bryan Peters at April 15, 2005 01:54 PMCliff may agree. He'd have to speak to that. I imagine he's a little more monolithic. He's Orthodox after all. ;-)
You and I will have to disagree, Bryan. I'm a contextual relativist. I have room for your interpretation even if you have no room for mine. It's just how I am wired. I've tried to shake it, can't seem to.
Posted by: Tripp at April 16, 2005 07:01 AMBTW, I see our positions as antinomies, a paradox of sorts...and not contradictions. They are paradoxical because the revelation is not exhaustive. The things we do not know may explain the multiplicity of vision. Truth may wish to be monolithic with us, the Word revealed in the Son of Man, and yet it is not...we are many denominations...clearly not one body.
Posted by: Tripp at April 16, 2005 07:04 AM