I suspect that when the Prophet Amos let loose on certain people in Israel by calling them “Cows of Basham,” he was excised a bit in spirit, and his description was ill-appreciated. That kind of spirit rose in me as I read the federal district court’s decision holding Tennessee’s new law trying to protect minors from public drag shows unconstitutional. 

Trigger Warning for Woke Christians

Sometimes God needs to get the attention of His people. And I suspect Amos, the unknown herdsman and fig farmer, got the attention of folks by calling them “cows.” If that offends you, this email is not for you. I do not want to step in anyone’s egotistical self-righteous piety cow patty.

What the Judge Said That “Triggered” Me

Here is the spirit-of-Amos provoking quote in the judge’s opinion, which I will follow with a paraphrase (the quote is exact, but reformatted for readability):
 
The judge was effectively saying something like this: Now that society has redefined what it means to be human such that male and female don’t matter even in the context of marriage, and now that gender has logically been divorced from meaningless sex categories, how can you lump drag performers in with strippers?  

Ergo, stripping is still bad (to some degree), but the sex-gender division and gender fluidity are the new normal. Denying the latter is now discrimination.

How the Christian Cattle Got Hustled Off to Transgender Town

If Christians want to point fingers, the fault for this situation lies with them – and, in my opinion, predominantly with professional ministers. 

Based on my experience with a number of these ministers and the leaders of their churches since the Obergefell same-sex “marriage” decision in 2015, I believe far too many, though not all, emphasize individual piety to the detriment if not exclusion of teaching and proclaiming any meaningful public theology. Consequently, society, on the whole, no longer knows what it means to be human. 

It seems to me that too many ministers think they should speak only inside the institutional church or to Christian-defined and confined audiences, apart from speaking to individuals privately about individual salvation. 

Christianity is not an institution, and it is not private; it is congregational and public. Privatized, cloistered Christianity is un-salty.

And that’s the problem as I see it: the salt has lost its saltiness (savor) in our society. 

I believe it has been lost because, in my experience, too few ministers put much direct and clear emphasis on the fundamental issues that define both Christianity and the nature of the cosmos in which we live: (1) knowledge of what the eternal transcendent and immanent triune God means and the implications of that meaning for everything and (2) the relation of that God (not God in the abstract) to creation (ex nihilo) and to human beings (imago Dei).

Jesus said that when salt loses its fundamental property—saltiness—it is thrown out and trod under men’s feet. Matthew 5:13. And that’s what happened last week in federal court.

Switching Analogies: The Minister That Got My Goat

What provoked me as I read the above-quote language from the court’s decision was the memory of a call I got last summer from the minister of a significant, respected, charismatic congregation in Jackson. He wanted to know what could be done to stop the drag show planned for that city’s park.

Two years previously I had gone to his church office to ask him to join about ten other ministers from around the state in a quasi-legal (administrative law) proceeding to ask the governor’s office who had re-written Tennessee’s male-female marriage licensing statute. The goal, I told him, was to eventually mount a challenge to the legal effect of the Obergefell decision on state marriage licensing laws. 

He said he would speak to his leaders that evening at the Wednesday night supper and get back to me. Several calls and emails from me thereafter were never answered. 

But now that the fruit of Obergefell had been dumped in his city’s park, he wanted to do something. 

He got trod under foot in last week’s decision, along with all the other unresponsive ministers I’ve visited, emailed, and called on in recent years about joining an effort to challenge Obergefell. 

Why I Am Calling a Cow a Cow Now

I once would not have written a commentary like this. I thought I needed to be mindful of offending ministers because they could play a valuable role in helping enact the Marital Contract Recording Act. Surely, I thought, they would engage, because even lawyers supportive of same-sex “marriage” have said the Act “sets up the stage for Obergefell being rendered meaningless.”¹ 

I naively thought evangelical ministers and leaders would flock to such an effort. I was wrong. 

A few ministers I have communicated with over the last eight years, and more recently about the Act, have cared and done something (they know who they are, and I thank and praise God for them). Most haven’t. 

What I Have Come to Believe About Ministers

I believe those ministers who won’t repent of being indifferent to the dishonor and reproach cast on God by our nation’s highest tribunal redefining the creaturely relationship that most perfectly reveals the glory of God are un-salty.  

Ministers who will get offended by this, not examine themselves, and repent of putting some “church project” above the public reproach cast on the glory of God by our High Court were not and are not going to be allies in this effort.  

I have heard ministers talk about the need for Christians to live out what they believe before a watching world. Well, if such ministers have done nothing about Obergefell or have only talked to the faithful about it in the cozy confines of a sanctuary (i.e., a refuge from having to deal with the world publicly), they missed their opportunity to practice what they preach.  

Live streaming a sermon or putting it on a church website does not count as proclaiming to a watching world a public theology.

My Confession and Repentance: Taking God’s Name in Vain

However, I can hold no animosity toward any ministers as God will do what is just and righteous as regards them. 

I also know that but for God’s provocation of me eight years ago and His unrelenting insistence that I do all He leads me to do to uphold the glory of God in marriage, I would be no different. I would be repenting of indolence and apathy toward the glory of God.

Yet I have had to further examine myself. I have assumed that God could not work among His everyday people to move the bill forward. Worse yet, I have assumed that God could not work around professional ministers who don’t want any part of standing publicly, or even before their congregations, against the prophets of Baal who have redefined marriage in our society. 

It was dishonoring to God for me to think He was somehow dependent on “official” ministers to accomplish His purposes. This kind of thinking is taking the name of God on my lips in vain. I had to repent.

But if God does not do such work, then I will bow my head before Him and confess that his judgment in allowing the current trend to continue is just and there is no unrighteousness in Him.

However, that doesn’t mean that God forbids me from expressly publicly as Amos did my fatigue from hearing the bell cows of Basham in evangelical pulpits low and moo while the rest of the herd and their young calves are being led to the slaughter.

An Action Point For Ministers

If you are a minister and want to repent—even if it is for not finding out over the last eight years what you might do to resist the Obergefell decisions publicly—or, like me, for thinking there is nothing God can do—call or email me. Amos, at the end of his prophecy, extended a word of grace and hope, and I will greet such a communication in the same way. Your name will be safe with me.

Together we can ask our legislators to enact the Marital Contract Recording Act next session, and trust God to dispose of it as He sees fit for the sake of His glory.

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¹ https://www.salon.com/2022/04/06/tennessees-child-marriage-bill-pushes-another-purpose-gutting-same-marriage/