Sunday Sermon: "Christian Circumcision" or "Jesus Hates Genital Mutilation"

There is an alarming trend in the U.S. that I think should not go unnoticed in my writings. As of my writing this, the best data available states that 79% of all males in the U.S. are circumcised. Further - although the rate of circumcision is decreasing - 55.9% of male newborns in the U.S. are circumcised each year as of 2008. Based on the assumption that 79% of males are circumcised, and the 2010 census, we can estimate that there are approximately 119,907,247 circumcised males in the U.S. at this very moment.

Now, I hope that it will not be a point of much contention that the majority of these cases of circumcision are undertaken for religious reasons. Sure circumcision may have originally come back in vogue in the 1800s as a failed attempt to curb masturbation; and I'm also sure that plenty of people may have an anecdote about how their religious parents chose not to circumcise them, or how their non-religious parents did. Regardless I hope that there is no debate that the most staunch defenders of circumcision in the U.S. are those followers of the Abrahamic religions who believe it to be a mandate of Heaven that they should cut the prepuce off of their baby boy's penis.

According to the Pew Research Center, there are currently 3.48 million Muslims, less than 12 million Jews (in light of the various definitions of what it means to be a "Jew", the exact number is difficult to pinpoint), and 246.78 million Christians in the U.S. If we consider only males who ascribe to these religions (assuming that the percentage of religious males is the roughly the same as the total percentage of males in the U.S.) that comes to 1.71 million male Muslims, less than 5.9 million male Jews, and 121.52 million male Christians. If we further assume that every male Muslim and Jew in the U.S. is circumcised, that means that roughly 112.3 million Christians males (92.4% of all Christian males in the U.S.) are also circumcised.

Now, my questions to any Christians who may be reading this, are as follows: Why would you ever get circumcised or allow your son to be circumcised? Why are there 112 million circumcised Christians running around the U.S.?

To help understand my question, it might be helpful to understand what the Bible actually teaches about circumcision.

"For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain." ~ Titus 1:10-11 

"Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." ~ Galatians 5:2-4

While Yhwh repeatedly told the Jews to be circumcised throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament just as unequivocally teaches that any male who is circumcised has been forever "alienated from Christ". If you're a circumcised male who Bible clearly and unwaveringly states that you cannot be "saved", but must obey the entire Old Testament law. What's more, the Bible says that anyone (even an angel from heaven) who tells you otherwise will be cursed by Yhwh. In fact, Paul (arguably) goes even further than that when he says,

"So then, what about troublemakers who try to get others to be circumcised? I wish they would go the whole way! I wish they would cut off everything that marks them as men!" ~ Galatians 5:12 So to all of the Christian guys who may be reading this, if you're thinking of some day having a child, and you're thinking about having the child circumcised, the Bible says you should sooner have yourself castrated than allow your child to be circumcised.

[As an aside, in the interest of absolute fairness, I have to give Paul some credit for recognizing circumcision for the hideous and barbaric practice that it is.]


So, now that we've established that circumcised males need to obey the entire Old Testament Law, why don't we take just a brief look at what that entails:

1. No eating any sort of pig product (ham, pork, bacon, etc), and no touching the carcass of any pig (the jury is still out on the issue of whether this applies to footballs or not, but I would be strongly averse to playing football, just to be safe). ~ Leviticus 11:6, 26
2. No lobster, no clams, no crabs, no oysters, no shrimp. If it lives in the water, and it doesn't have fins or scales, then it's enough to send you to hell. ~ Leviticus 11:10
3. If you're more of an insectivore, Yhwh forbids eating any flying insect except for the locust, katydid, grasshopper, or cricket. Of course, there's a loophole in this law, as Yhwh (in his infinite wisdom as the creator) only expressly forbids eating flying insects with FOUR legs. ~ Leviticus 11:22-23
4. All of your clothes must be made from only one type of fabric. No cotton/polyester blends for you! (The jury is still out as to whether you can wear an all cotton shirt, with a wool sweater... but just to be on the safe side, you should probably just get an entire wardrobe made out of one type of fabric.) ~ Leviticus 19:19
5. No shaving your beard, and no trimming the hair on the sides of your head. ~ Leviticus 19:27
6. If any person (even your closest family member of friend) asks you to consider a different religion, or even tries to convince you that your deity is fictitious and doesn't really exist, you are under obligation to bring all of the people in the town together to kill this person. You must, strike the first blow yourself. ~ Deuteronomy 13:6-10
7. If any person in any town worships a different god (or no god at all), you must put everyone in the town to death, including all of the animals. You must then gather all of the property into the center of town and burn it. Finally, burn the entire town to the ground and ensure that it is never rebuilt. ~ Deuteronomy 13:12-16
8. You must sacrifice a lamb when your first male child is born, or when any animal belonging to you gives birth to its first male offspring. ~ Exodus 34:19-20

This seems simultaneously outrageous and petty, and yet it barely constitutes a cursory overview of the Old Testament law.

Remember that - according to the Bible - if you're a circumcised male, then you are morally obligated by mandate of heaven, to obey these commands. If you refuse to carry out any of these commands (say, for example, because you think that murdering an entire city because people have different religions is morally abhorrent) you will be considered a hell-bound sinner in the eyes of your deity. All of this, because Yhwh couldn't decide whether he approved or disapproved of genital mutilation.

So Christians, remember not to circumcise your children. Not only is it a disgusting and barbaric practice, but if you actually believe that the Bible is true, then you have to believe that circumcising your male child will forever cut him off from his "savior".