Nadia Bolz-Weber is the former pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints (which the church body refers to as an acronym – HFASS – and they pronounce it “half-ass”). She recently resigned her position there to take up a full-time itinerant ministry, as she has grown in wild popularity on the lecture circuit. The tall, overly-pierced and manish woman refers to herself as a “dyke” even though she is married. Bolz-Weber’s most prominent feature is not her uncanny resemblance to a partially shaven sasquatch, but her prolific potty mouth. Bolz-Weber’s books and social media statuses are replete with four-letter words, which she uses to attract a following of lost people who are “spiritual but not religious.” Her replacement at HFASS is a gay man married to a “drag queen.” She said earlier this year that she would like to melt down all purity rings and form them into a vagina statue in honor of Gloria Steinem. Although the ELCA minister’s appeal is little more than showcasing how depraved someone can be while simultaneously claiming Christ, Bolz-Weber continually surprises the world regarding how low she can go.
Most recently, Bolz-Weber argued that no one should feel shame for what she calls “ethically sourced porn.”
No, really. She argued this.
In an interview with Out in New Jersey, a homosexual newspaper, Bolz-Weber said:
A chapter I rewrote many times in my new book was about pleasure and pornography. I refused to pick the low-hanging “Moral Outrage Fruit” of Liberals and Conservatives about porn. Now, there are issues of justice and exploitation within the porn industry, no question, but it doesn’t mean consumption of pornography should be shamed. There is ethically sourced porn. There are people who say it’s sexual immorality, but if you take Liberals and Conservatives who show outrage and made a Venn diagram of those who consume pornography, you’d see a huge overlap.
Bolz-Weber’s argument from the emboldened line above seems to be that if people who say pornography is immoral who still use pornography, it must not be immoral. The logic here, of course, is tragically flawed. Hypocrisy doesn’t make something intrinsically sinful or not. What makes something sinful or not is God’s opinion, as found in God’s Word. Considering Bolz-Weber doesn’t believe in the plenary inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, what the Bible says – for her – is probably a moot point.
This also leaves the question as to what is “ethically sourced porn.” While Bolz-Weber mentions “issues of justice and exploitation,” the pornography industry is one of the few industries where women universally earn more than their male counterparts (and significantly more). Is Bolz-Weber concerned about the pay inequality between men and women in the adult film industry? Who exactly is being exploited? Do you ethically source porn the same way you ethically source coffee? Is this a “fair trade” scenario?
She continues:
There are people who consume pornography in a shame based way, it would be horrible if people know because they are those who are morally outraged as Liberals or Conservatives. That’s a lonely place to exist, let’s take that part out of it. I’m not going to shame people when they already feel ashamed. People have viewed erotic imagery since we could scratch it on the inside of caves. To see erotic images or hear someone in the cave next to you, your body reacts as an empathic response. We respond empathetically when we hear a baby crying! Our bodies are wired to have empathic responses to others, and it includes erotic ones. To say you should have shame for that is problematic.
If people already feel shamed, Nadia Bolz-Weber does not appear to be one of them. Shame, she seems not to know. Again, her logic seems flawed. In this case, Bolz-Weber seems to suggest that the age of pornography – in her view, back to the stone age – makes it somehow less sinful. Other sins that are as old as cavemen include murder and rape. Their age of invention does not excuse their atrociousness.
Bolz-Weber also used the opportunity to defend Rob Bell, the Universalist who wrote Love Wins:
Rob Bell came out with a book Love Wins in 2011. People were furious. They voted him off the Christian island. Why? Because he said, “I don’t know if non-Christians are going to hell. I don’t really think hell exists, or that a loving God desires for people to go.” And everyone’s like, ‘Come on, if Christianity isn’t about anyone who differs from us burning in eternal torment then what’s the point?” How sad. When religion taps into the worst instincts in humanity and acts as thou God is cosigning on those instincts, toxic things happen. They go to the Bible to justify their [retracted]. ‘Oh look, uh, the fact that men should be dominating women, that’s not my opinion, that’s “God’s” opinion.’ [Retracted]! The person saying that happens to be the person benefiting from that system. You can’t benefit from a system of dominance, then point to the Creator of the Universe as the ‘reason.’”
When asked if the Bible is clear about things, Bolz-Weber responded, “The Bible’s not clear about [s%#^]!”
Bolz-Weber is still a minister in good standing with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
