Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin – REVIEW

By | | Christian History, Current Thought, Filmmaking, History, Philosophy and Critical Thinking, Theology, Uncategorized
Comments Off on Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin – REVIEW

by John Jackman

Movies are not academic documentaries; they are storytelling and drama.  Filmmakers must always take some license to fit a complex story into two hours, and indeed is it hard not to add embellishments that make for better cinema: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story” said Mark Twain.  Making a movie about a revered historical religious figure is a daunting challenge; someone will always be unhappy with the way you tell the story of their favorite religious leader.

I say this because I’ve done it; for my 2009 movie Wesley we struggled to compress just a few years of John Wesley’s complex story into two hours.  Many lauded the film, others hated it – often scholars who complained that their favorite hobby horse had been overlooked.  So I approach reviewing Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin with some caution, particularly because I have strong opinions about Bonhoeffer, who I studied extensively in seminary, and whose writings profoundly affected my own theology.

The timing of the release of Bonhoeffer is part of the problem, though the filmmakers might have foreseen that.  Eric Metaxas’ book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2011) has been lambasted by scholars, and has been used by the Christian Right to support violent action.  Metaxas himself has deepened the controversy by seeming to call for violent bloodshed to defend Donald Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, and his advocacy of what sounds like a totalitarian takeover.

Recently, a large group of scholars and the descendants of the Bonhoeffer family publicly decried the misuse of Bonhoeffer’s name and thought to support Christian Nationalism (links at end of article).  They condemned Metaxas’ book and the new movie – though unfortunately none of them had been able to preview the movie at the time.  The similarity of titles was a mistake, and poor decisions by Angel Films in the early promotion (showing Bonhoeffer holding a pistol, or wearing an explosive vest for instance) made it seem that the movie was based on Metaxas’ book.  A special preview at the Museum of the Bible in Washington last month stirred that pot even more, since Eric Metaxas was the speaker and host.

Todd Komarnicki

The film’s writer and director Todd Komarnicki (the writer of Sully and producer of Elf) denied any association. Komarnicki recently told podcaster Tripp Fuller that the movie was not based on Metaxas’ work at all. He seemed offended by the idea, maintaining that the movie was his personal interpretation of Bonhoeffer.  “I’m not trying to say this is the definitive Bonhoeffer,” he said, “but rather, this is the man that I encountered in his writing, and how it touched me as an artist and as a Christian.”  But this is the problem: despite his extensive writings, Bonhoeffer is at times a tabula rasa on which readers can project their own opinions. And I am willing to bet that Komarnacki read the Metaxas book before doing other research.

The timing of the release is also interesting because it happens just after an election that some feel marks the beginning of the end of the great American Experiment.  A man who openly admires authoritarian rulers, who keeps a copy of Hitler’s speeches on his bedstand, has now been elected president for the second time – but this time with many traditional guard rails removed.  Hitler was also regarded by the right as a “savior sent by God” and many German churches were swayed to not only acquiesce to Hitler, but to regard him as God’s agent and hand.  Nazi Bibles were published with revisions, including a couple of extra commandments.  Now, all this is shown clearly in Komarnicki’s movie; and most people watching the movie will note the similarities to recent events. 

I went to see Bonhoeffer at a preview just before the official wide release.   I felt that I had to see the movie for myself before passing any judgment.  First, let me address Bonhoeffer just as a movie; then I will look at where Komarnicki fails to capture the complex subject of his film.

The movie is actually pretty well done, especially when compared to the normal “faith film” of the past.  Production values are excellent, the acting is generally quite good, and the direction is mostly good.  Jonas Dassler (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) is compelling in many scenes, though there are places where the acting and the writing seem clichéd.  The film uses a “flashback” structure (from Bonhoeffer in prison) to collapse the time, but in online reviews many people found this confusing – some because they didn’t know the story, and other because they did know the story and were confused by liberties taken.

Historically, the script is pretty accurate for a film of this nature – but that’s quite a low standard!    Komarnicki takes many historical liberties that were not needed for condensing the story.  The film does show Bonhoeffer’s time at Union Seminary in New York and his friendships in Harlem with the Abyssinian Baptist Church.  This is mostly fictionized, however, and while it shows his exposure to American racism, it falls short in conveying the strong pacifist resistance to racism that Bonhoeffer witnessed, which was a huge shaping influence on his theology.

So here’s where the film goes astray: Bonhoeffer was a profound pacifist, and I have the feeling that (like many people), Komarnicki doesn’t adequately understand pacifism.  Bonhoeffer had been in touch with Mahatma Gandhi in the early 1930s, and learned more from the saints at Abbysinian Baptist Church (MLK didn’t invent peaceful resistance).  Adam Clayton Powell Sr. has been credited with teaching Bonhoeffer about love of enemies, resisting systems of injustice, Christ’s presence with the poor, and the idea of “cheap grace”. Like Gandhi, Bonhoeffer believed “There are many causes that I am prepared to die for, but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”  In the movie, Bonhoeffer enthusiastically abandons that position, and the complex, carefully thought out theology he had espoused, and participates actively in the plot to kill Hitler. Komarnicki’s Bonhoeffer talks about the necessity to have “dirty hands,” an ethical concept that the real Bonhoeffer never used or referred to that I can find.  Miles Werntz writes in Christianity Today,

Rather than depicting a man of deep theological convictions and subtle intellect, Bonhoeffer tells the story of a man for whom moral convictions are a flexible and useful tool, a man whose actions are determined not by concerns for the church’s witness but by perceived historical necessity. It is the story of a Bonhoeffer willing to do anything—including disavow the teachings of Jesus as he understood them—to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Christianity Today


Victoria Barnett, the editor of Bonhoeffer’s collected works, describes the movie “as a very romanticized ‘Christian hero’ fantasy.”

[Bonhoeffer’s] legacy is actually a very critical one of the failures of his church in Christianity. How would we read him if we were not looking for a hero story, but reading him for insight and guidance into how to be a good person in this world? It’s a fantasy. They’ve made lots of things up to actually contradict who he was and what he did.”

The Forward


But – didn’t Dietrich Bonhoeffer actively participate in the plot to kill Hitler?  That’s the popular view.  His brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi did.  But much of the popular myth of Bonhoeffer is imagination, people filling in blanks.  Scholars today point out that there is no evidence that Dietrich actually helped or actively participated in the plot.  He probably knew about it, but even that is speculation.  He was active in the resistance, and knew many people involved in the plot, but he certainly did not abandon his own theology, as he seems to in the movie.  Instead, he confirmed his continued belief in pacifism in letters from prison.  Bonhoeffer’s own actions of Christian resistance—spreading information to international contacts, and assisting with sending Jews to Switzerland—were consistent with his long-standing convictions.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer: Preacher, Spy, Assassin does not seem to promote Christian nationalism (as some feared), and does indeed get many things right.  However, it fails to hit the mark in significant ways, in particular understanding how profound Bonhoeffer’s bravery was.  Like Jan Hus, he stood publicly and courageously against the might of empire, knowing that he would likely pay the ultimate price. He proclaimed truth in the face of fascism.  Miles Werntz, writing in Christianity Today, concludes:

What we needed was a film about a man concerned with how God might be calling the church to be steadfast amid the great temptation to mold our faith to our politics.

Christianity Today

Warren Throckmorton voices a slightly different perspective:

It is good that the movie is triggering discussion about how to respond to a totalitarian regime. We are now living in the shadow of that possibility. This is new ground for American Christians and we need to deal with it.

The Throckmorton Initiative


I would encourage church groups to see the movie, but to be forearmed with solid information and an awareness of the inaccuracies  — and use it as a springboard for conversation.  I can see some very fruitful discussions happening on difficult topics, especially in our current times.  I would also encourage Christians to read Bonhoeffer’s actual writings rather than third-party interpretations.  In our time, the Church needs to wrestle with his profound thought in a significant way.

___________________________________________________

John Jackman is pastor of Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, NC and organizer of the Debt Jubilee Project.  He wrote and directed Wesley (2009) and Newton’s Grace (2013) as well as numerous documentaries.  He studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings under Dr. Charles Hargis at Moravian Theological Seminary.

___________________________________________________

LINKS

Letter from the Bonhoeffer Family:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SIKs7_yO3nbPFjRb4FV8wi-WKwghBvUP/view

Letter from Bonhoeffer Scholars:
https://bonhoeffersociety.org/2024/10/16/sign-our-petition-stop-misusing-dietrich-bonhoeffer-to-support-political-violence-and-christian-nationalism/

Lead Actors of Movie Condemn Christian Nationalism:
https://bonhoeffersociety.org/2024/11/04/statement-lead-actors-in-bonhoeffer-spy-pastor-assassin-speak-out-together-against-the-misuse-of-bonhoeffers-legacy/

There’s No Such Thing As A Bonhoeffer Moment – Victoria Barnett

___________________________________________________

Recommended Reading:

Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, Daniel P. Umbel (Baker Academic)

Dietrich Bonheoffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge (Fortress Press)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel by Renate Wind (Eeerdman)

Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Christiane Tietz (Fortress Press)

Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. By Charles Marsh (Knopf Doubleday Publishing)

Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance by Reggie Williams (Baylor University Press)

___________________________________________________

Recommended Viewing:

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister a documentary by Martin Doblmeier.

The Refiner’s Fire

By | | Current Thought, Economy, History, Philosophy and Critical Thinking, Uncategorized
2 Comments

This morning I preached on Malachi 3:1-20, a passage made famous to moderns by the aria in Handel’s The Messiah:

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

Listen to the aria: http://youtu.be/g8RmuvkwGrI?t=1m27s
This video is a recording of Mark Wesley Brax, 23, of Columbia, S.C. who died tragically in an auto accident in Ripley County, Indiana on April 14, 2012.  He was a student at the University of Cincinnati.

But as with a great many Old Testament prophecies, we are quick to ignore the call for justice that follows:

Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.

If I were to ask the average man or woman on the street how this Old Testament judgment applies to our world today, most of the working people would be quick to draw a connection to the evisceration of the middle class by the super-wealthy.  This is a very real part of the “major fail” trajectory of our nation, hastened by the sad access the super-wealthy have to manipulate laws, regulation, and control the media.

Consider for a moment these graphs, which are based on easily verified data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Over the last thirty years, the super-wealthy have found a variety of ways to use their connections, influence, and power to game the system, to create an environment where they can corner the market on money.

In the same year that corporations have announced record profits, they are still seeking to cut back on basic benefits and wages for the average worker, begging fictional poverty and inevitable market forces.  But these are not inevitable at all; they are artificially created by the very people whom they benefit.  The strategy of the last couple of decades has been to bear down on the average worker, to cut benefits, pensions, and wages so that enormous profits can be taken by vulture capitalists and market manipulators.  The amazing thing to me is that these folks, with their stranglehold on the media, have been able to convince so many “rank-and-file” of the fundamental lie that if the super-wealthy are not allowed to have everything they want, the jobs will go away.  They have perfected the art of the spin, of playing on fears, of distracting with Honey Boo-Boo.

This is fundamentally a structure imposed by the methodology of Wall Street, which demands artificial increases in share price from publicly traded companies in a manner which most economists will readily admit is unsustainable – and which is based on a completely amoral and short-sighted philosophy.  One CEO I used to work with had come to the conclusion over a decade ago that the only way to run an ethical company in the 21st century was to keep it private; publicly traded companies were automatically subject to a system that was fundamentally amoral and in its practical application became immoral.  When we play this game and participate in this system without challenging its “winner-take-all” crony capital rules, we continue to further a system that God has outlined for judgment.  Again from Malachi:

I will be swift to bear witness… against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

I do not believe in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”  But I do believe that God judges our nation, and in my read of the Scriptures I do not think God’s judgment is based (as some say) on a couple of isolated passages in Deuteronomy or on whether or not life begins at conception, an idea which the Bible does not actually support at all.  Instead, if we count the number of statements made by the prophets, we will be judged instead on our treatment of the poor, the downtrodden, the powerless, the widow, the orphan.

How that judgment will come I cannot say.  It may come through the natural process of labor rising in numbers against oppression, as happened a century ago at the end of the “Golden Age.”  It may come through the ultimate failure of an economy and political system that has long since lost touch with ethics and sustainability.  The collapse of the economy in 2008 may only be a warning shot; and the continuing inability of our politicians to behave like rational adults instead of posturing bullies does not bode well for our nation.

In a recent Washington Post editorial, Ruth Marcus reminded us that the originally temporary tax cuts currently being argued over were created prior to 9/11 because there was a projected budget surplus!  Now that we are dealing with massive deficits, that fact has been conveniently forgotten and we are so in love with low taxes that we will invent new and spurious reasons why the temporary measure must stay in place long after it was intended to expire, and even longer after it had outlived its original intent.  When 9/11 happened and the nation decided (whether rightly or wrongly) to go to war, I was asking then, “Where is the war tax?”  How were we going to pay for the massively expensive war?  More tax cuts and more plastic at the mall?  I ask those who were alive in World War II to tell their children stories about War Bonds, to explain rationing, to remind us how the war against fascism was paid for sixty years ago – by pulling together, by sacrifice, by hard work.  Anyone today own any war bonds?  Nope, I didn’t think so!  Whether you were in favor of the longest duration war America has ever fought or against it, one thing is sure: it was really expensive and we passed the cost off to our children rather than shouldering the burden ourselves.

Another lesson from history: capitalists today would do well to read up on the period from 1895 to 1930, for they will catch a prediction of what will happen if the poor and the middle class are squeezed harder while the überclass continues to revel publicly in more than Oriental splendor.  People have forgotten that there were bombings, riots, blood spilled.  There is only so much that the common worker in a supposedly democratic society will put up with before rebelling.  We are not far away from repeats of incidents like the bombing of the LA Times in 1910.  As a Moravian pacifist, I always oppose such violence, but I recognize that when people are pushed too far, violence will happen.  I‘d love to see it not happen!

The Conservatives are right: the deficit is a looming monster which will destroy us.  But their willingness to fall on their swords in defense of continued tax cuts for the wealthiest betrays that they aren’t really that concerned about the deficit, only about “keeping theirs.”  The Liberals are right: we can’t let the economy be balanced on the backs of the poorest while the rich jet off to check on their bank balances in the Cayman Islands.  But their unwillingness to confront the deficit and reveals a lack of understanding that the current system of entitlements is unsustainable.

Most Americans recognize that the truth is somewhere in the middle.  A society that continues to live on borrowed time, money, and environmental damage is not a Biblical society at all.  The nasty fundamentalist Christian “hot-button” issues of the last thirty years ignore the genuine, clear clarion call of the Bible to sustainable, responsible life that does not leave our children and grandchildren with a ruined planet and financial burdens of unpaid debt.

 

 

Not So Elementary, CBS

By | | Filmmaking, Just Fun, Television, Uncategorized
Comments Off on Not So Elementary, CBS

First, a confession: I am a Holmes fundamentalist. I’ve been a rabid fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective for most of my life, and I don’t think the quirky consulting detective needs to be improved. After all, there is a reason why fascination with this character has continued over a century after his creation, and the chances that hacks in Hollywood will do better than ACD did are pretty slim. (By the way, I don’t think Doctor Seuss or Winnie the Pooh need improving, either!)

But the rule in American movies and television today is imitation, and it was inevitable that Steven Moffat’s amazingly creative Sherlock should be cloned by American TV, and stateside executives would feel compelled to put their thumbprint on the piece, no matter that they were putting smudges on a masterpiece and decreasing its value in the process. As in most cases, mostly what they do is either dumb down the concept, simply misunderstand it, or add an extra coat of mediocrity. This is the process that gave us Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros, 2009) a formulaic costume action movie that bears almost no resemblance to Doyle’s character, and which I could only watch through the subterfuge of pretending that it wasn’t even supposed to be Sherlock Holmes.

So here is CBS’ Elementary, with the engaging Lucy Liu as “Dr. Joan Watson” and Jonny Lee Miller as semi-recovering addict Sherlock Holmes. The show is actually better than I expected, but that’s just because I expected so little. The trades view it as “a stylish, if kind of boring, procedural.” And that’s spot on. The mysteries themselves are about as good as a decent Columbo, but with the high-concept exaggerated persona of Holmes and Watson sometime aiding, sometimes getting in the way of the story.

Elementary casts Holmes as a semi-recovering addict whose father has hired Watson (a failed and self-tortured surgeon) as a 24/7 live-in recovery minder. The A.A. meetings that Watson forces Holmes to attend are hackneyed caricatures of the real thing. Holmes is slightly more than two-dimensional, but not much. Where Moffat (who clearly “gets” Holmes) uses the classic Holmesian details with new twists in the 21st century, Robert Doherty tosses in the violin, the addiction, and other touches in with a bit of a heavy-handed thud.

Rarely, there is someone who not only “gets” Holmes but writes with great creativity.  Steven Moffat is in that small league.

Holmes pastiches have been around for most of the last century, and mostly they fall into two categories: either pretty good or embarrassingly bad. The writer who “gets” Holmes and can write in character may do a workmanlike job of spinning another Holmes tale for the genre. Once in a while, rarely, there is someone who not only “gets” Holmes but writes with great creativity, and creates a new niche of Holmesiana. Carole Nelson Douglas did this with the Irene Adler novels, and the amazing Laurie King has done this stupendously well with the wonderful Mary Russell novels. Steven Moffat is clearly in this small league of extraordinary writers.  But a great many pastiches are simply flops. Anne Perry, a marvelous writer, penned a perfectly awful Holmes short story that I could just barely finish. I love her William Monk and Thomas Pitt novels, both set in the same period of Victorian England, but she missed the mark utterly when trying to write Holmes. Perhaps that reveals how hard it is to do this!

By the way, the quintessential portrayal of the classic Holmes on television has to be the incomparable Jeremy Brett (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1984-1994 Granada Television series), whose abrupt, quirky characterization accurately captured the tension and complexity of the Holmes of the classic stories in a way few others have done. This is an area of huge competition, since the cast of other actors who have had a stab at Holmes is amazing, ranging from John Barrymore and Peter Cushing to Christopher Lee and Peter O’Toole. Read the LIST OF ACTORS WHO HAVE PORTRAYED SHERLOCK HOLMES.

If you’re a die-hard Holmes lover like me, then Steven Moffat’s Sherlock , with Holmes portrayed by actor Benedict Cummerbatch, is required viewing. Moffat is probably the most creative writer in television today, a man who has actually come up with some truly new and never-before-thought-of twists in a genre mostly filled with hackneyed imitation. He grasps the essential core of the characters of Holmes and Watson, takes those fully and completely and aggressively into the year 2012, and goes to town. Elementary, on the other hand, is a fairly ordinary police procedural dressed up in Holmes clothing, something I will watch if I have nothing more urgent to do, but it is clearly not “destination television.”

Meh.

Season 3 of BBC Sherlock, starring Benedict Cummerbatch,
will air on Masterpiece Theatre sometime in 2013.

Book Review: “Crazy For God:”

By | | Christian History, Current Thought, Philosophy and Critical Thinking, Theology, Uncategorized
1 Comment

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

by Frank Schaeffer

Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press Pbk. Ed edition (September 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0306817500ISBN-13: 978-0306817502

Frank Schaeffer is the son of conservative theologian Francis Schaeffer (How Shall We Then Live?, The God Who Is There) regarded by many as the intellectual defender of fundamentalism in the 70’s and 80’s.  Francis Schaeffer’s ideas, combined with the films of his son Frank, helped spark the rise of the Christian Right in the United States and were strongly influenced by him. Among them are Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the 700 Club’s Pat Robertson, Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colson, columnist Cal Thomas, preacher and author Tim LaHaye, and Liberty University and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell .

Frank, almost by accident, stumbled into the world of Christian filmmaking, producing the film series How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976) with his father and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979).  Father and son became obsessed with the anti-abortion movement, and Frank in particular was sucked into the big-money world of Christian broadcasting and worked hard to create the hyper-politicized Christian Right.

But Schaeffer ended up in a genuine moral and spiritual crisis in the mid-eighties when he realized that the money-driven right wing machine he had been a part of forming was out of control and had little to do with true spiritual life.  He left the movement and had to rebuild his life from scratch.  In 1990 he joined the Greek Orthodox Church, and  today “embraces paradox and mystery.”

The book is part autobiography, part tribute to his parents, and part a political commentary on the movement he abandoned.  He is uncommonly blunt in his behind-the-scenes storytelling about Dobson, Falwell, and Robertson.  Many conservative Christians will find this book to be either very disturbing or a betrayal; more moderate Christians will learn more about how the Religious Right came to be the pervasive and disturbing political influence that it is today.  Having had some contact with this world over the years, I have little doubt that Schaeffer’s most cynical and negative stories are quite close to reality.

Schaeffer’s narrative is brutally honest about his own weaknesses, his father’s struggle with bipolar illness, and the hypocrisy of the Christian broadcasting market where too much money and warped celebrity worship create a world disconnected from most people’s experience and reality.

On a personal level, I connected deeply to Schaeffer’s description of dealing with the mood swings of his father and their impact on the family (my father was bipolar) and also to the strange world of religious celebrity. Crazy for God is an unflinchingly honest, if imperfect, book.  Schaeffer himself would not say that he is an objective witness in any way; but his story is worth reading and worth understanding as we wrestle with the damage the movement he left has done to our society and to the Church of Christ itself.

Unintended Consequences

By | | Uncategorized
1 Comment

Grouchy Curmudgeon

Anyone who has served on a committee with me or been at a Moravian Church synod with me knows that I am a grouchy curmudgeon about unintended consequences of bad legislation.  That’s because I’ve lived long enough to have to deal with the effluvium of poorly thought out and poorly worded proposals which didn’t end up doing what was intended and had far-reaching and unplanned effects.
North Carolina’s Amendment One is right smack in that zone.  Intended to prevent the state from ever allowing gay marriages (something that is already illegal in NC) the act overreaches fantastically beyond the announced scope.
If approved, the proposed measure would amend Article 14 of the North Carolina Constitution by adding a new section:
Sec. 6. Marriage.
Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.
Despite huffy assurances from proponents that the amendment will only affect the intended target (gay marriage), the legal sources I have checked into unanimously say that there will be far-reaching implications for the many unmarried heterosexual families in the state.  There will also be significant consequences for elderly unmarried couples, who are in many cases living as a couple but without getting married to avoid the unintended consequences of some other poorly thought out laws that cut their already meager income if they are legally married. One thing that opponents have claimed that is probably not true is that the amendment will impact protection orders.  But other concerns seem to be well-founded.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big proponent of marriage when it’s done well!  After all, I’m the guy in the robes who does the ceremony and pronounces the couple man and wife.  I am deeply saddened every time I hear of a widow and widower who fall in love but can’t take that legal step of getting married because of the impact it would have on their health care or income.  I’m horrified when I run into a case (one just recently) where an elderly couple with limited income gets divorced in order for one to qualify for needed long-term care — bet you didn’t know that was going on!

County-by-County Consequences

Unfortunately, the blunderbuss wording of this amendment will indeed affect children of unmarried parents, elderly in certain financial straits, and in fact many other situations beyond the intended scope.  The exact extent may not be known for years, since some of the consequences will only appear as specific circumstances are reviewed by courts. But worse than that, the consequences will play out on a county by county basis, entirely dependent on the whims of county judges! Bad, bad move and sloppy policy.
No matter what one thinks of gay marriage, this poorly written amendment is a foolish idea either way.  It will have unintended consequences for many existing heterosexual couples in the state, thousands of children who have nothing to say about their situation, and it won’t make any positive difference that I can see.
My libertarian friends point out that constitutional amendments should protect the rights of the individual rather than expanding the role of government, and most of them will be voting against this amendment for that reason.
I’ve really annoyed some of my best friends and colleagues by railing against poorly written legislation at church Synods.  But the fact of the matter is that badly worded, ill-considered legislation can have damaging impact for years to come, damages that are easy to inflict and hard to undo.  When serious concerns exist about the impact of such legislation, I go back to the oath that doctors must take:

First, do no harm.

Even if you are ambivalent about the amendment, I think you should get out and vote against it so that we don’t all have to deal with undoing the damage the amendament will cause.  Just my opinion. Thanks for listening.

Update

Well, as those concerned already know, Amendment One passed.  Only time will tell whether my concerns about the unintended consequences was correct; but it is certain that the amendment will now cost the State millions in lawsuits that are already underway.

The last Constitutional amendment that was passed in this state was in 1875, the anti-mescegenation amendment which declared that “all marriages between a white person and a Negro or between a white person and a person of Negro descent to the third generation inclusive are, hereby, forever prohibited.”  This unenlightened law was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1967, but remained part of our state charter until a new constitution was adopted in 1971.

I will be very surprised if Amendment One is not repealed within a decade.