When should religions change their beliefs or practices?

Every religion that is in some way institutional, or structured, sets rules that have to do with belief and practice. And every religion makes exclusivist claims that help to differentiate it from other faith traditions.

The question that is useful to ask periodically is how each religion decides what is a necessary belief or practice for members and what is optional. This internal debate is almost always and everywhere happening within religions, though such discussions and conclusions only occasionally make news outside of the faith tradition wrestling with such matters.

Generally, news coverage of religions happens when internal decisions affect the broader culture or in some way relate to behavioral or belief standards within the wider society. Thus, for instance, a lot of attention has been paid in recent years to the schism in the United Methodist Church over LGBTQ+ matters.

Recently news stories also have started to appear related to an internal debate in Reform Judaism about whether its rabbinical students can be in a marital or otherwise-committed relationship with someone outside of Reform Judaism.

It's been an intriguing and instructive development that once again has raised the old question of how religions decide what they believe and what rules they require for membership.

This Jewish Telegraph Agency story describes the Reform movement's recent change that finally will allow intermarried rabbis to be ordained.

As the story reports, "Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s rabbinical seminary, will begin admitting and ordaining students who are in relationships with non-Jews, following a decision by its board to drop a longstanding ban on interfaith relationships for rabbinical students.

"The decision brings the rules for rabbinical and cantorial students at HUC in line with norms across the Reform movement, where intermarriage is prevalent."

At the same time, a different branch of Judaism, the Conservative movement, has decided to continue to prevent its rabbis from participating in interfaith marriages.

As this story in The Forward explains, "Despite growing pressure on the Conservative movement to allow its rabbis to preside at weddings between Jews and non-Jews, the ban will remain — for now.

"Leaders from the Rabbinical Assembly’s standards committee, which makes policy recommendations for the movement, conveyed as much to rabbis (last August) in a closed webinar, a partial transcript of which was obtained by the Forward and verified by a rabbi who was on the call. Also left intact: the penalty of expulsion for rabbis who defy the 50-year-old prohibition."

Such decisions may have a bearing on whether people will want to join this or that religious tradition, but religions generally are free to make such choices, barring, of course, choices that are illegal, such as -- oh, I don't know -- permitting white members to enslave Black members.

In my Presbyterian tradition, people joining churches are required to affirm publicly certain beliefs about Christianity. Beyond that, our elected officers (elders or deacons) are required to answer exactly the same ordination questions required of people being ordained to the pastorate -- with one exception, which has to do with officiating at the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, duties assigned to clergy but not to elders or deacons except in rare circumstances. (I have taken these vows twice, one on becoming a deacon and once on becoming an elder.)

The vows are a measure of how seriously the church takes election to office.

The point of raising all this is to remind ourselves of the freedom religions have -- and should have -- to set their own rules but also to remind religions that people outside the faith are free to make judgments about those religions and whether their internal rules are attractive to them or whether they send them running in the other direction.

In the last half a century or more in the U.S., many people have left faith communities while others have refused to join -- and many of those decisions no doubt are rooted in the internal practices and beliefs those religions proclaim and promote. To recognize that is also to recognize the need to have an open and free process for discussing and debating what rules and practices might need to be adjusted and what are not negotiable.

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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR

As such states as Louisiana and Oklahoma move to make religious texts mandatory reading in public schools, this analysis suggests, that could result in the secularization of sacred writing. As Lauren Horn Griffin, who teaches at Louisiana State University, writes, "Referring to religious texts in terms of patriotism and history may prove effective in inserting them into classrooms. But the argument that they are like any other aspect of American culture could backfire, paving the way for Christian texts and symbols to actually be treated that way." That's one reason that I've long been against putting manger scenes in holiday displays on public land. Doing that puts the Holy Family on the same level with Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I'll pass on that option.

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P.S.: For some years now I have kept on my blog this essay about the history of anti-Judaism in Christianity. So I was pleased the other day to run across this essay on the same subject by Richard J. Clifford, a Catholic priest and author, in America Magazine, a Jesuit publication. Fr. Clifford and I are in substantial agreement. And his essay is well worth your time.

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ANOTHER P.S.: My latest Flatland column -- about chaplains who help people through grief when their pets die -- now is online here.