“The Triumph of Theology Over Tradition” by Dennis Wheeler, The Web site of the Georgia Council of Conservative Citizens, November 3, 1999.
“Rather off his Rocker: Calculating every little innuendo to make abnormal seem normal” by Joel Belz, World, January 22, 2000.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
In the recent media flap over Bob Jones University’s alleged racism and hatred of Catholics, it went curiously unreported that BJU has been accepting students of all races (including students in interracial marriages), that the student body president is biracial, that university president Bob Jones III had called for removal of the Confederate flag flying over his state’s Capitol since the 1960’s, that Bob Jones IV earned his MA at Notre Dame, and the fact that BJU nursing students supply a Catholic hospital. Still, BJU’s said to be too far to the Right. Of course, others contend it’s too far to the Left!
As chairman of the Council of Conservative Citizens, Wheeler is outraged over Jones’ siding “against his ancestors and their noble cause, as well as siding with the enemies of Christianity,” calling it “a sad day in the history of Christendom [and] the triumph of theology over tradition.” He says Jones “has turned his back on [the] teaching of the Bible, [for] The Bible tells us: `Remove not the ancient landmarks.’” He says “the crux of [Jones’] error” is his granting that “Slavery is indefensible” since his versions of Jesus and Paul defend slavery as “God-ordained.” He blames 1960’s black civil rights legislation for “a sharp rise in homosexuality and lesbianism.” It’s ironic that Afrocentric academics also oppose interracial marriage and homosexuality. Romaticizing “African tradition” as the “epitome of civilization,” they rant that “western Europe lived in savagery and barbarity, filth, sexual disease, incest, homosexuality, [and] bestiality,” to quote Baba Zak Kondo, a teacher at Bowie State University.
In Wheeler’s lamenting the loss of his tradition, he’s reversed the Jesus tradition. Self-styled traditionalists complained that Jesus’ disciples had exchanged traditions for “filthy” and “unbiblical” behavior. Jesus rebuked these “traditionalists” for abandoning the basic things of God in favor of social conventions. He called them “hypocrites” who nullified the word of God for their own “traditional values.”
Belz is the CEO of World, a North Carolina-based “Time magazine” wannabe on the Religious Right. He uses the controversy over pitcher John Rocker to launch yet another antigay assault. He’s upset over Dan Rather’s focus on Rocker’s insulting “gays and other minorities.” Belz argues that Rather implies that “Rocker’s slur against homosexuals was the only one that really mattered. The other insults (against weirdos with purple hair, for example) … didn’t merit a mention.” Belz is sure this is all by “design, beyond any doubt … to demonstrate that the real moral failure belongs not to those who practice homosexuality, but to those who see such practice as wrong.” But violent antigay rap gets a free ride in the same media: “I’ll be lacin’ em, hollow tips, I be wastin’ em. That’s what you faggots get.” [Mase] Belz predicts that if support for same-sex relationships “becomes the assumption of our society, forget every other kind of moral standard.” When have we heard that kind of fear-baiting before?
Belz argues a three-pronged attack. First, he explains that “anyone who’s played with tinkertoys for five minutes” should be able to see “what would happen to the human race if … homosexual behavior were to start dictating reproductive patterns.” Tinkertoys? But nobody is pushing homosexual behavior for heterosexuals. Even if someone did, surely he doesn’t think heterosexuals would jump at the chance to switch! And doesn’t he know better than to suggest that purposes of heterosexuality are exhausted in impregnation?
In his second argument, he callously thrusts the thin edge of the wedge into the hearts of gay men and lesbians. His cruel joke is that if homosexuals are allowed to marry each other, we’d soon see “the blissful union of a man and a goat [or] a St. Bernard, in his own unsaintly way, … mate with a human female.” Belz refuses to see that some men and women are just as naturally drawn to a person of the same gender and can be just as committed to that person as anyone at World is involved with his or her spouse.
Belz bills his third argument as “God’s creation plan.” He thumps Genesis (“male and female He created them!”) and states: “It’s high time for people who say they trust God’s word to sink their roots deeper than they ever have before into His earliest words on these matters.” But Christians read the “earliest words” in light of later words in the Holy Spirit’s unfolding revelation of the New Testament. If Belz were to do this, he’d find that someone else once cited this same verse from Genesis – in order to revise its focus: “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, no `male and female.’” Paul here states plainly that there is now no Christian significance in any human category or cultural status, including the “male and female” reference the Apostle lifts from Genesis.
In an earlier antigay column, Belz reported that a woman canceled her World subscription “because we had used the term gay in a headline rather than sticking to our more usual homosexual.” He’s heard of people who were threatening to pull out of a church because the pastor won’t refer to homosexuals as sodomites. When it comes to “tradition” – Right or Left – there’s never a shortage of “faithfulness.”