When refusing to participate in legal behavior that they regard as sinful, Christians may rely on more than Biblical principles.
That does not mean, of course, that any earthly principle carries authority higher than the Bible. But it does mean that Christians and non-Christians alike should assent to one centuries-old principle on grounds of simple justice.
According to Fox Business, a swarm of LGBT activists and assorted leftists online castigated the Christian owners of the wood-fired pizza eatery Pizzeria Cortile in Chattanooga, Tennessee, upon learning that those owners, Justin and Amanda Jo Bennett, had refused to cater a same-sex wedding.
The controversy began Monday on multiple social media platforms.
For instance, the progressive news website The Chattanooga Holler posted on social media platform X a screenshot of an inquiry sent to Pizzeria Cortile, followed by the business’s reply: “Hi … thank you for reaching out for clarification, we do not cater same sex weddings.”
Then, also on Monday, Pizza Cortile responded with a lengthy post on Facebook.
“Recently, we made the difficult decision not to cater a wedding due to our personal beliefs,” the post read. “This belief comes from a place of personal conviction, one we know is not shared by everyone, and it is one we hold without judgment toward others.”
Monday’s post made no direct mention of the owners’ Christian faith.
Would you eat at Pizzeria Cortile if you lived nearby?
Past Facebook posts and Amanda’s Instagram account, however, made that faith clear.
The negative comments on Monday’s Facebook post, compiled by Fox Business, sounded as vile and self-righteous as one would expect.
“There aren’t two reasonable sides here. Nobody asked you to be gay. Or promote any kind of message. They asked for pizza. And bigots refused. That’s the whole story. It isn’t any deeper. It is black and white discrimination,” one Facebook user wrote.
Meanwhile, according to WRCB-TV in Chattanooga, Elizabeth Haley, Executive Director of the pro-LGBT Seed Theatre, expressed surprise.
“I was really shocked that they just put it out there like that,” she said. “Because such a simple comment and such a simple statement has rocked Chattanooga.”
Haley also insisted that the entire issue amounts to live-and-let-live.
“It’s just exhausting because we work really hard to exist in our own spaces, to be happy and healthy. That’s it. The gay agenda is to live. That’s it,” she said.
Christians, of course, have every reason to rally around the Bennetts and Pizzeria Cortile. In fact, all decent and freedom-loving citizens in southeast Tennessee and northwest Georgia should support the couple and their business.
PizzeriaCortile. Chattanooga. 2 locations pic.twitter.com/4mHFDDdNnK
— ✝️🇺🇸🇮🇱RockyTopPop (@Poppy_G_in_TN) December 18, 2024
But we also should wrestle with some facts and then decide what to do about them.
For instance, an average of all 2023 Gallup polling showed that 68 percent of Americans call themselves Christians.
At the same time, a Gallup poll conducted in May showed that 69 percent of Americans support legal same-sex marriage.
That leads to an important question. Namely, how should the dissenting 31 percent of Americans, many of them presumably Christians, conduct themselves with regard to a legal practice that most of their neighbors, including many who also call themselves Christians, find unobjectionable?
Legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis addressed this question to a certain extent.
In “Mere Christianity,” Lewis asked how far Christians, “if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage” on the majority of Britons who did subscribe to the Christian faith. In that case, Lewis referred to divorce laws, but the question remains relevant.
“A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine,” Lewis wrote.
In other words, Christians may object to a widely accepted practice without trying to criminalize it. The Bennetts have done exactly that.
This is an important point, for it reminds us that we are dealing with “personal conviction,” not force of law.
And that brings us to the centuries-old principle mentioned at the outset.
With their usual mercilessness, pro-LGBT voices depicted themselves as victims and castigated the Bennetts as bigots.
In reality, however, insisting that the Bennetts must cater a same-sex wedding in violation of faith-based convictions that millions of people happen to share qualifies as tyrannical. It amounts, in fact, to a kind of conscription.
In congressional debates over a militia bill, conducted two days before Christmas 1790, future president James Madison argued that conscientious objectors should receive an “exemption” from militia service, provided they “pay an equivalent in money.”
Then, shortly after the War of 1812, President Madison pardoned seven Quakers in Baltimore, Maryland, who had neither served in the militia nor paid the fee.
In other words, Madison regarded religious liberty as so essential that he excused conscientious objectors from serving even in wartime. He would not conscript them even to help defend the country from a British invasion.
In like manner, the majority of Americans who support same-sex marriage must not attempt to conscript conscientious objectors. And forcing the Bennetts to cater a same-sex wedding would do precisely that.
In sum, when they refuse to participate in behavior they abhor, the Bennetts and other like-minded Christians may cite the Bible, but they may also rely on an anti-conscription principle laid down by Madison, father of the Constitution.
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