The Sparkle Creed

A small data point caught my eye last week: A viral video of a pastor at Edina Community Lutheran Church in Minneapolis reciting the Sparkle Creed has left netizens enraged. In part, this was because as a dedicated Fringe fan, the only other place named Edina I'm aware of appeared in Season 2, Episode 11 of that marvelous show, which starred, among others, the late Lance Reddick.

The original title of the episode was to have been "Edina City Limits", and it took place in the fictitious town of Edina, NY, which was home to a phenomenon called "the Edina hum". According to the Wikipedia link, the hum was the result of an experiment

done by the army in the late 1970s to test how electromagnetic pulses can camouflage soldiers and was conducted on the townspeople; the army was unaware of the long-term effects of the study until it was too late, and the people were stuck in a deformed state. The "hum" hides their deformities from the human eye through a massive electromagnetic pulse that runs through the town, and once they leave and are out of the pulse's reach, their true deformities show.

Thus does life imitate art. The deformed people at Edina Community Church recite the Sparkle Creed, which apparently seems normal to them, but reveals their deformity to those outside, or something like that. But the Sparkle Creed has some bearing on the 303 Creative LLC v. Eleni case on which the US Supreme Court ruled Friday, when it held that a Christian website designer couldn't be complelled to make wedding websites for same-sex couples.

And this in turn reflects the trend of same-sex affirmation: a movement that began in a spirit of live-and-let-live in the 1960s attempted to hitchhike on the natural-law foundation of civil rights for the descendants of African slaves, but it has always faced the contradiction that same-sex conduct is against natural law. In spite of that -- or I would suggest, actually because of that -- same-sex affirmation has always needed to move into prescriptive territory. It can never be live-and-let-live, because it involves conscience, which derives from natural law. This requires an "Edina hum" to distract attention from the problem.

It isn't enough that citizens tolerate same-sex attraction or discount it as a factor in, say, hiring decisions. Instead, citizens must positively endorse it, for instance by sponsoring drag queen story hours at local libraries, or include positive portrayals in grade school curricula. That a main line Protestant denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, should add a creed endorsing same-sex lifestyles to its liturgy is simpy a reflection of this trend. The Edina Lutheran Community Church

is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and has been a part of the denomination’s Reconciling in Christ initiative, which seeks to foster “the full welcome, inclusion, and equity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual/aromantic (LGBTQIA+) Lutherans,” since 1985.

According to the link, "The “Sparkle Creed” was originally penned in 2021 by Rev. Rachel Small Stokes, pastor of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky." The UCC is another main line Protestant denomination. Oddly, I can't find any reference to the Sparkle Creed on the web from Episcopalian parishes or clergy, even though The Episcopal Church is thought to be the most same-sex-accepting. Certainly inserting the "Sparkle Creed" into the Eucharistic rites in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer could cause complaints to the local bishop, but it's likely there would be no repercussions.

And it's worth pointing out that various observers have called the Sparkle Creed "heretical", but the formal definition of heresy is "theological doctrine or system rejected as false by ecclesiastical authority". Martin Luther was a heretic insofar as he specifically opposed Catholic dogma, was recognized as opposing same by the Church, was offered the opportunity to recant, and rejected the opportnity. Anything short of that isn't "heresy", and here, Protestants are basically out of luck, especially since the early 1900s.

Any structures by which main line Protestant denominations can escalate heterodox practices like inserting the Sparkle Creed into the liturgy toward formal disciplinary proceedings have simply fallen into desuetude, and they would generate controversies that those denominations would prefer to avoid.

The problem that remains is the question of authentic Christianity as a credal religion. The Nicene Creed, for instance, has nothing to say about same-sex attraction or AIDS quilts. On the other hand, it does say, "I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible," which carries a strong connotation of natural law, which in turn is elaborated in the Ten Commandments, which in turn in the case of Roman Catholicism are elaborated in the John Paul II Catechism, which does define same-sex attraction as objectively disordered.

But this brings me to the central problem of same-sex affirmation that I've elaborated above: in asserting things like "trans rights are human rights", it masquerades same-sex affirmation as a narural-law issue equivalent to civil rights, when both same-sex attraction and transsexualism are against natural law.

But we have an additional problem, as St John Henry Newman pointed out, that God created humans with a conscience, a natural faculty that works from natural law. Not only can you not get around natural law, but conscience won't let you do it -- or more accurately, conscience will give you a hard time if you try. And I think the whole purpose of same-sex affirmation as we've come to experience it has been an attempt to discount or somehow erase conscience as a factor, because I think what happens with the same-sex lifestyle is that it troubles the conscience.

The Sparkle Creed is an effort to distance religious observance from conscience by inserting syncretistic elements that somehow transfer divine authority to same-sex conduct. I don't think this will work any better than efforts, for instance with COVID lockdown restrictions, to abolish religion entirely. It isn't, strictly speaking, "heretical", especially because the most visible Protestant denominations won't impose formal discipline over its use. But it's here and it's queer. We should at least recognize it for what it is.