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This sad spectacle would never have happened if Gene Rivers was still alive

This sad spectacle would never have happened if Gene Rivers was still alive

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:00 pm by Fred Clark

This sad spectacle would never have happened if Gene Rivers was still alive 2015-06-30T19:00:31-04:00 Fred Clark

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I used to know Gene Rivers pretty well. Brilliant guy. Fierce, funny, passionate, prophetic.

The Gene Rivers I used to know would have shredded the buffoonery of this guy using his name to recycle disingenuous Chuck-Colson-wannabe, persecuted-hegemon nonsense:

Hey, didn’t you used to be Gene Rivers? (RNS photo by Lauren Markoe)

Rivers made clear that he holds differing beliefs, and draws the line of tolerance in a different place. “What the guy said on the radio … there’s actually evidence for the argument that in certain cases young women, in this case we’re talking about lesbians, have come to that orientation as a function of abuse.”

“The radio guy may have simply overstated the case,” continued Rivers, pastor of Boston’s Azusa Christian Community and senior policy adviser to the Church of God in Christ’s presiding bishop. …

Rivers said his tolerance ends where people force him to accept anything beyond what he knows as biblical truth, or when opponents threaten his tax-exempt status because of his beliefs. He said he would be willing to go to jail to defend his religious views.

“If you mess with the Bible, I’m going to jail,” he told the crowd, to an enthusiastic round of applause.

I don’t know what that cheesy, plagiarized applause line is supposed to mean any more than Gene does, but we both know it doesn’t mean anything true or real. It’s the bluster and braggadocio of the Münchhausen martyrs of the Manhattan Declaration. It’s a pose. A laughably dishonest pose.

It’s a pose that Gene Rivers, ca. 1995, would never have let anyone get away with.

This is deeply disappointing. Gene Rivers used to have a talent for deflating this kind of fatuous, hollow statement.

Gene Rivers also used to believe that things like poverty, racism, mass incarceration, violence, militarization, and Social Darwinism were all things that “mess with the Bible.”

But now, for Gene Rivers, ca. 2013, it’s apparently just lesbians.

And Gene Rivers, ca. 2013, wants you to know he’s defiantly willing to risk jail if the only alternative were not being able to bear false witness against lesbians.

I suppose such a bold stance might be impressive if, you know, anyone, anywhere was in any way threatening to send him to jail for disliking lesbians.

But they’re not. Which makes this bold stance not at all bold.

If obsequiously sucking up to the dominant, privileged religious majority were a crime, then Gene Rivers would, indeed, be guilty. But that’s never been against the law. It was Micaiah who was sent to prison. The apple-polisher Zedekiah remained a free man. So Gene Rivers knows he doesn’t have any reason to worry about “going to jail.”

Loudly announcing one’s bravery in the face of nonexistent threats doesn’t convince others that you’re brave and good. It convinces others that you’re desperately unconvinced of your own capacity for courage or goodness. It inspires pity, not admiration.

Fred Phelps, Gene. Fred Phelps is a free man. That proves you’re being a silly man.

So please stop. This hurts to watch.

And this silly, disingenuous posturing is messing with the Bible. You’re harming its reputation nearly as much as you’re harming your own.

“If you mess with the Bible, I’m going to jail,” he told the crowd, to an enthusiastic round of applause.

Sweet Holy Moses, Gene. If anybody else had said something that pompously vacuous 20 years ago, you’d still be making fun of them for it.

Whatever happened to that guy? Where did he go?

Update: Let me put it this way. The Gene Rivers I knew back in the 1990s did have a tendency to throw some wild punches. But back then he always punched up. Now he’s punching down. And that’s a huge difference. That’s the difference between a prophet and a bully. That’s the difference between heaven and hell.

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