Misunderstanding Prejudice

One thing that I notice from such bodies as the Progressive Christian Network and Modern Church is their willingness to denounce Church Doctrines on Ordination and Marriage, and the Immorality of Extramarital Sex as sexist, homophobic, misogynist, transphobic and discriminatory. It occurs to me that those who hold to Church Doctrine (whom, for the sake of argument, we shall call Traditional Christians) are not understanding the language of Progressive Christians (whom, for the sake of argument, we shall allow their preferred epithet). To this end, I think we need to investigate each of the terms as the Progressive element would want us to understand them.

Let's understand a few definitions:

Homophobia: dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people.

Misogyny: dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

Discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

A key word here, is the word prejudice. How do Progressives understand that?

Prejudice: preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

Yet we have to be careful here, what is meant by the noun "homosexual"?

Homosexual (noun): a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex.

According to the Progressive Christian Network and Modern Church, Traditional Christian belief is based on either dislike of women and homosexuals, and/or on prejudice against them. 

This is the claim. In order to prove the claim, they have to show that Traditional Christianity either dislikes women or homosexuals or have a preconceived opinion about them that is not based on reason or actual experience.

What evidence do they give to support their claim? Answer: four old chestnuts.

1) Traditional Christian belief states that women cannot be ordained.
2) Traditional Christian belief states that homosexual sexual activity is a sin.
3) Traditional Christian belief states that marriage is between a man and a woman.
4) Traditional Christian belief states that men and women cannot change their sex.

Apparently, (1) displays a dislike of, or a prejudice against women and, by being discrimination against women because of their sex, Traditional Christian belief is both sexist and misogynist. If we replace in (1) the word "woman" with the word "black", Traditional Christian belief would be racist.

Apparently, (2) displays a dislike of, or a prejudice against homosexuals and is therefore homophobic.

Apparently, (3) displays an unjust prejudice against homosexuals, and is therefore discriminatory.

Apparently, (4) displays a dislike of, or a prejudice against transgender/transsexual people, and is therefore transphobic.

First, let us just tackle the minor issue of replacing "women" with "black". This really is a false analogy because it assumes that one social "minority" (to use WATCH's definition of the term) is the same as another. This surely is not valid because in human terms, race is not the same as sex: a community of a single race can grow naturally; a community of a single sex will naturally die. While both do indeed suffer prejudice, that prejudice is not the same, though its effects are truly horrible. Nonetheless, any moral reasoning about race cannot be the same as moral reasoning about sex because it assumes that all social "minorities" are equivalent: they are not and to say so displays a utilitarian ignorance of their peculiar struggles and their peculiar martyrs.

Secondly, all of these accusations require the demonstration of prejudice and that involves demonstrating that Traditional Christian belief is a preconceived opinion not based on reason or actual experience.

First of all, on what is Traditional Christianity based? It's based on a properly basic belief which means that it is a reasonable position to hold without any further requirement of proof. There are lots of properly basic beliefs such as the belief that the person you are talking to really has a mind in the same way you do. If belief in God is properly basic, then reason dictates His revelation of Himself to us. Christianity is the belief that the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth is this revelation, and it is backed up by eyewitness testimony - this testimony can be found in the Gospels. If Christians belief what this Jesus of Nazareth says, then we have to hold fast to the morality defined by God and attested to in the Bible and in the Church.

Of course, whether or not people share this belief isn't the issue. It's whether Tradition Christian morality is based on reason from properly basic premises: it is. Our morality is therefore based on God and not upon the determination of a majority viewpoint.

We know that majority viewpoint is insufficient for determining morals given that there have been instances of majorities performing an ethnic cleansing of minorities, even in the Twentieth Centuries. Morality transcends number.

We also know that there are objective moral values and duties and these are evidence for God. Is there ever a situation in which the torture of a child is morally acceptable? Jonathan Clatworthy seems to suggest that there is.

Traditional Christian belief has always defended its position on the ordination of women, the immorality of extramarital sex, the uniqueness of heterosexual marriage and the immutability of a person's sex based upon what it has received from the revelations from God in Scripture, Tradition and Reason. However, these revelations are called into question by those from without the system, or those who believe that it is only fair to reason from without the system. What needs to be shown here is whether the morals of the current society are indeed superior to Traditional Christianity. On what basis is this morality superior?

Of course, if Traditional Christian belief is true, and I believe it to be, then it must necessarily be superior to all other moral systems because it is based on the being of God Himself. In believing in God, it would be a denial of that belief for me to suppose that another moral system is better than the one that I have received from Him.

Traditional Christian belief is formed from reason from the actual experience of the Church beginning with the Apostles and the Prophets and the properly basic belief in God. To say that this amounts to prejudice is an indictment of the moral systems that are based otherwise. If Traditional Christian belief is prejudicial, then so is the secular belief and indeed any other moral system. It seems quite reasonable, then, that the Traditional Church, in holding to a timeless morality (i.e. based on the existence of God and thus immutably revealed in Scripture, Tradition and Reason) is as innocent of the charges of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination as the morality that would condemn it.