Some curious thoughts about Kim Davis

If fame is only supposed to last fifteen minutes, Kim Davis seems to have stayed slightly longer in the limelight than is necessary. The Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing marriage licenses to gay couples has now been with us for that number of days and the media interest is only just beginning to wane. 

I have found her case interesting for a number of reasons. She is not a neat poster girl for her cause. Married four times, a life-long and highly committed Democrat, she may not be the religious right's ideal standard bearer in their fight. 

But one issue particularly strikes me, in terms of "Christian culture." Davis is a fairly recent convert to her church - about four years - and it is the nature of that church which fascinates. 

She is a member of Solid Rock Apostolic Church. Splitting from other Pentecostal groupings back near the beginnings of the movement, this particular "apostolic church" does not believe in the Trinity and regards speaking in tongues as necessary to salvation. On both those grounds it is clearly not a Christian church - although, as with other confused and heretical groups, it is not our place to assess the possibility or probability of personal faith among its members. 

What intrigues me is the speed with which some Christians have identified with this "Christian" lady. Would support have been as swift if she had been a denier of the trinity who went to the Kingdom Hall and thought that evangelistic door knocking was essential for salvation? Would the evangelical right have been as warm if she had denied the trinity, worn a burkha and just come back from the hajj? 

And the support from like-minded Christians has been uniform in taking Kim Davis to be one of them. In an era of instant reactions, of shallow knee-jerking, of single-issue blinkeredness, of lack of theological awareness, haven't we been reduced to the point where doctrinal definition is irrelevant? If a woman is white and doesn't like gay marriage, she must be sound, right? 

I'm not commenting on Kim Davis' conscience. Nor the rights and wrongs of her specific concern - not to have her name on those certificates. Nor the fact that she (inadvertently, and because of media spin, perhaps) seems to have done more to spur on public acceptance of SSM in the U.S. than any other single individual. I'm just saying that her case highlights the low point we have reached in understanding our own faith. When the choice is between bright and loving but fuzzy liberals, and unattractive evangelicals who have lost touch with the basic contours of their own faith, no wonder it is the atheists and the Moslems who are laughing. 

A brief thought from the Founder...

“We believe in the old-fashioned salvation. We have not developed and improved into Universalism, Unitarianism, or Nothingarianism, or any other form of infidelity, and we don’t expect to. Ours is just the same salvation taught in the Bible, proclaimed by prophets and apostles, preached by Luther and Wesley and Whitfield, sealed by the blood of martyrs – the very same salvation which was purchased by the sufferings and agony and Blood of the Son of God.”


William Booth, The Founder Speaks Again: A Selection of the Writings of William Booth ed. Cyril J. Barnes (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1960), 45 – 6.

The God of Christians and the God of Islam

I was challenged by a friend regarding the slightly muddled way in which I stated my trinitarian faith in the blog post on the Charlie Hebdo massacre. In conversation it struck home that it is precisely our trinitarianism which makes the distinction between the God of Islam and the God of Christians so vast. And it is a common lack of appreciation of the Trinity in our daily Christian lives that makes it possible to see God in such a way as verges on the Islamic.

The God who reveals himself in scripture is never a lonely Monad. Even in the Old Testament we may be mentally teased by the mystery of the plural in the word Elohim, the revelation of self consciousness and internal communication in Gen 1, or the strange multi-person and yet single person theophany of Gen 18. These and many more prepare the way for the dazzling New Testament light on the nature of God as Three-and-One. The OT doesn't teach the Trinity per se, but some things sure make sense once we have the NT revelation!

From all eternity, Father, Son and Spirit have existed in perfect, loving relationship. The Creation did not occur because God was lonely; our creation as relational beings is rather the echo of an eternal relationship. Our own experience of relationship, starting in the family, is to be understood as an analogue for our approach to God as we are invited to call him Father. Obviously, all earthly fathers fall short of ideal, some very grievously so, but even in saying that, we reveal a common consciousness of what fathers ought to be like. With all compassion for those whose fathers were appalling, by calling God "Father" and inviting us to do the same, the Bible appeals to that common consciousness. And what a father should be, God is. Perfectly. 

The world was made by and for the Son; from the start the plan of God was that a divine Man would rule over his creation, and so it has been. If Adam, the first man, brought failure and shame into our story, the second and last Man was and is and will be all that Adam should have been and more. 

In the Incarnation, the eternal Son, without ceasing to be what he eternally was, became what he eternally was not. In his death on the cross the price for the redemption of rebel human beings was, at its heart, the hellish abandonment of the Divine Man by his Father; our sin so serious that it took a breach in the Eternal Fellowship to right it. In his resurrection, Jesus, the Man, is proclaimed to be both Eternal Son and the true Man, worthy and qualified to judge all human beings at the last day as Creator of and representative-yet-perfect member of the human race. In his glorification the dust of the earth - a living Man - is now sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 

Through that victorious, Spirit-led progress of the Son through incarnation, ministry, arrest, torture, assassination, resurrection and glorification, the right has been won for all who are "in him" to have fellowship with God by the Holy Spirit. The initial joy of knowing God as one who is "close by" - the joy that Adam knew at the start - has been restored. Even though our own state of sinlessness is still future, God is with us in the present by his Spirit. His Spirit shows us Jesus at the start of our Christian life, the Spirit makes us aware of our own sinfulness, the Spirit draws us to faith, the Spirit helps in prayer, the Spirit prompts us to be more like Jesus, the Spirit works through us in the lives of others, the Spirit makes us useful with his gifts, the Spirit guarantees a future where we will be face to face with God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. We would be nowhere without the Holy Spirit. 

That is just a brief outline of some of the elements of Trinitarian faith. The Trinity - the fact that God is One, in Three persons - is not describable using human analogies, still less explicable using human logic. But the truth of the Trinity does pervade everything in the Christian life. That which is not Trinitarian is not Christian. And the concept of God within Islam is a very long way away. 

That is not to say that in conversation with Muslims it is necessarily unhelpful to say, "Let's talk about God" without pressing the distinction right at the start. But the distinction is there - as soon as we start to think seriously about Christian doctrine there is a chasm. We worship different Gods. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * 

As a relative newcomer to the Salvation Army, my views are very much first impressions. But it seems to me that the Doctrines of the SA in general, and the Trinitarian one in particular, need to be remeembraced at a fresh level. At present there seems to be an almost self-conscious distance between personal belief and commitment to the doctrines. The Doctrine of the Trinity is affirmed at a formal level, but it doesn't dominate in general discourse, in our meetings for adoration or in what comes across of personal faith. It is only possible to even begin to swallow the "we follow the same God" line because in practice we are more Unitarian than Trinitarian. Some of what I have written above regarding the Trinity may even sound very odd, and yet it is pretty standard Christianity, if couched in provocative language! 

Our Doctrine is not to be a theoretical statement which we affirm on becoming soldiers or officers but which makes no practical difference. It is our faith - it is a brief description of actual truth about our actual God, and is to inform our gospel, our worship, our joy and our hope.