Faith Rising

On Good Friday, some 55 days ago, I argued (quite effectively, I think) that God is dead. The dark post seemed fitting for the day. And then it just lingered. I promised myself that I would follow up with a strong affirmation of Easter faith. I even put the promise in writing. My parents began to fret. My priest began to pray (and maybe my bishop too–I learned a couple weeks back that he too had read it. Good thing they passed over me for that high profile position in the diocese…). For some reason I have struggled to write this post; perhaps that struggle will be a topic for another day. But today, with the flame of Pentecost still burning, the Spirit is moving (or at least I am motivated enough to try to write something halfway faithful).

To start, I will affirm that I think the issues that I raised in the previous post are very real problems that cannot be easily explained away. This post is not an attempt to reply to those concerns because I have no answer for them. You may have an answer, and I welcome your insight. I wish that the questions did not haunt me. I continue to seek in spite of the text, the tradition, and reason , not because of them.

One way around the problems is to follow Karl Barth as he takes a Kierkegaardian leap into the void. As Barth writes in his Epistle to the Romans (which is very useful for understanding Barth but not so useful for understanding Romans), “Faith is not a foundation upon which [human beings] can emplace themselves; not an atmosphere in which they can breathe; not a system under which they can arrange their lives.” (ER, 110)  The very discomfort I express is the place where faith can happen. It is only after the system has been completely dismantled that we can see clearly that faith “for all alike it is a scandal, a hazard, a ‘Nevertheless’; to all it presents the same embarrassment and the same promise; for all it is a leap into the void. And it is possible for all, only because for all it is equally impossible.” (ER, 99).  Kierkegaard writes similarly, “Without risk, there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so that in the objective uncertainty I am out ‘upon seventy thousand fathoms of water,’ and yet believe.” (Unscientific Postscript)

I am curious how you deal with the tensions. Have you, dear reader, found a better way?

No room to talk

In the wake of Mark Sanford’s (re) election to congress I hastily tweeted that conservatives have no credibility when it comes to moral questions. I was (and still am) disgusted that men like Sanford can be so blatantly hypocritical about the “sanctity of marriage” or “family values” and yet still be popularly elected. It is embarrassing (and maddening).

I also find it annoying that his “redemption” is framed in some sort of Christian piety. Sanford humbly proclaimed at his victory party, ”I am one imperfect man saved by God’s grace.” This morning he compared his return the Lazarus rising from the grave. And this is somehow OK? Patriarchal and misogynist religious institutions are so quick to decry the evils of same sex marriage and equally quick to forgive men who shatter lives (I’m looking at you, Roman Catholic Bishops) and wreck marriages (hello Mr. Sanford and Mr. Gingrich) with their penises.

My immediate reaction was to make this a conservative problem. Then I started thinking about my own political leanings and the people who represent them. It is true that liberals have similar indiscretions and recover from them (Anthony Weiner for Mayor!). The difference is that they don’t run on a platform to protect marriage or decry the evils of our secular world. What they do focus on is the need to strengthen social networks to protect poor, marginalized, and vulnerable people. Here’s the rub–liberal leaders suck at that too. The recent scandals that have rocked Albany, New York, the incredible dysfunction and cronyism of the Chicago machine (and Illinois in general), the failure of the Senate to pass background check legislation, and on.

This is how I see it–conservatives focus on individual responsibility and thus by definition flout social responsibility. But it is not like they are living individually responsible lives either. Liberals, on the other hand, focus on social responsibility and therefore pay less attention to individual culpability. And at the same time they behave in ways that wreak havoc on social support systems. Both sides blatantly disregard all forms of morality, all the while pointing out the flaws in the other sides’ values. What. The. Fuck.

I am sure that this needs to be more carefully nuanced. I also think that this critique could be extended non-political folk (I already mentioned the church). Why do we struggle so deeply to live in healthy, constructive relationships with one another? Why is it so hard to do the right thing, whether as individuals or as a society? Finally, in the midst of all this, is there such a thing as transformative grace?

I guess Qohelet was right

There really is nothing new under the sun. Exhibit A: The opening paragraph to Abraham Heschel’s God in Search of Man, written in 1955 (!).

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion–its message becomes meaningless.

I think I am going to like this book.

 

I Am a Christian Terrorist. And Likely You Are Too.

And now, thanks to this post, I am on an FBI watchlist. I should not be, and maybe I won’t be. My terrorism is the good kind. The Christian kind.

As the details around the religious background of the Tsarnaev brothers come clearer into focus a familiar narrative is emerging–that dangerous and violent religion, Islam, motivated these men to terrorize the city of Boston. And despite the valiant efforts of the good folks at The Atlantic (“The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?”) and  The Huffington Post (“Even if It Was a Muslim, So What?” and “Boston Bombing Suspects’ Muslim Identity Provides Few Clues to Motivation for Bombing”), who question the relevance of the men’s religion to the question of motives, this hackneyed narrative is taking hold. In this post I do not wish to argue out how the ghastly acts of the Tsarnaevs are reprehensible to the vast majority of Muslims (though this is true–this fascinating study demonstrates that American Muslims are far more likely to condemn violence against civilians than any other religious group, including Atheists). I also do not wish to argue out how we in the United States are participating in the radicalization of Muslims (this article makes makes many important observations on this front). Finally, I will simply let this piece demonstrate that although we in the U.S. are obscenely violent, we only see outsiders as the real monsters. Rather, in what follows, I hope to show that, too often, Christianity, far from a benign force for good, is dripping in the blood of the innocents.

IN THE BEGINNING
Christianity from the start was rowdy and seditious. If we are to take studies on Empire seriously, its founder, Jesus, was an apocalyptic prophet who put God’s kingdom at odds with Rome. This should be no surprise, the inhabitants of Judea were incredibly restive in the first century and just over 30 short years after Jesus’ death engaged in a full revolt against Rome. Jesus’ assault the religious establishment (which was supported by and supportive of Rome) proved to be the catalyst for Jesus crucifixion (a penalty reserved for brigands and rebels). There is some question as to whether some of Jesus’ earliest followers could have been affiliated with the Sicarii (knife wielding terrorists—see Josephus’ Jewish War, 7.253-74; on the usefulness of a sword, see the enigmatic Luke 22:36-38 and the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 98) or the Zealots (see Luke 6:13-16 and Acts 1:13).

After Jesus’ death, the first followers of “the way” continued to cause trouble. In 49 C.E., some 16 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the emperor Claudius was moved to expel all the Jews from Rome, on account of Jews making “disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus” (see Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars 5.4; the episode is also mentioned in passing in Acts 18:2). Scholars are in general agreement that Chrestus is a variant of Christus. The conflict about Jesus had apparently become a nuisance to the populace. Some 15 or so years later, Tacitus (Annals 15.46) tells us that Nero was convincingly able to blame Christians for a towering inferno that consumed nearly the whole of the city (Tacitus, Annals 15.40, reports that only four of the fourteen districts were untouched). Tacitus is clear that Nero started the fire. What is compelling to me is that Christians could be plausibly identified as the culprits. It is only after they are mercilessly punished and put on display that pity from the general populace arises.

It is perhaps in the wake of the horrible failure of the Jewish revolt against Rome that Christians realized that rebellion and sedition were not the way to bring God’s kingdom. It is after the Jewish revolt that the New Testament is written. (I will have more to say on this in a moment.)

Now this historical reconstruction may not be plausible to you (I honestly am a little nervous to put it out there). Perhaps the first followers of Jesus were simply a persecuted minority who held beliefs contrary to the majority, who also held absolute power. Perhaps this fact led to suspicions and outright bigotry and persecution (sound like something happening today?). In this case, we can turn to the earliest Christian articulations of belief which are equally horrific. They nearly universally suggest the bloodlust of a Father who kills his Son to atone for the wrongs committed by humanity. Language of sacrifice is ubiquitous. Christians celebrate this good Father by ritually drinking the blood of the Son and, in the words of the Gospel of John, munching on his flesh (see John 6:54). Violence is the way in which God “redeems” the world.

THE WORD WAS GOD
We turn now to the biblical text. Now, I would never equate the Bible with God (though some do, if not in belief, in practice). But the biblical text has authority in Christian communities and it is littered with divine sanctions of violence. As a part of the contentious dispute about whether or not homosexuality as we know it is clearly condemned in the Bible (in my opinion, it is not), Dr. Robert Cargill has recently been writing on those uncomfortable parts of the Christian Bible. We can add violence to his list of things the Bible explicitly condones and even encourages.

The first followers of Jesus, as good Jews, turned to the Jewish scriptures for inspiration. The first Bible (that some will quickly dismiss as “Old”) that Christians of all stripes used speaks of God’s deliverance by way of the divine annihilation of the firstborn children of the Egyptians. Later, in the Exodus, those Hebrews who stray from the path are ruthlessly cut down. As the people enter and occupy the “Promised Land” they are commanded to kill everything—man, woman, and child. In fact, according to Judges, the problems that the fledgling nation faces are the result of their failure to do just that. In an earlier post, I discussed how 1 Samuel 15 continues to affirm this practice into the monarchy (and the New Testament book Hebrews implicitly condones the act too!). In Psalm 137:9, the writer laments the loss of Jerusalem and declares, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” The joyous tale of Esther (whose inclusion in the canon at this time is debatable) delights in the massacre of Persians. Many early Christian Bibles included the Apocrypha with all its sordid tales of rebellion and violence (read 1 Maccabees for a good sampling).

The New Testament is not immune. In spite of the failure of violent overthrow of the Roman Empire, Christians still penned gruesome images that tacitly endorse violence. We have already looked briefly at the way in which Jesus’ death is interpreted. We can also point to Paul’s wish that those of the circumcision party in Galatians 5:12 would go ahead just lop the whole thing off! The bloodbath that is the Revelation to John graphically describes for us how God will finally bring God’s kingdom.

THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH
The text as it was received and then written thus endorses and even encourages violence. This is the text that was ultimately adopted and became canon. And the violence that is sanctioned in the Bible becomes the norm for Christian behavior. We can perhaps point to Constantine as the villain here (he was, after all, the first to make the cross, a symbol of death, the emblem of Christianity and of the Roman Empire).  The cross went before him and led him to victory.

I suggest, however, that violence was already inherent in the faith (witness all of the above, as well as the preoccupation with “martyrdom”—on this, see the important newish book by Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution). The vitriol that is reserved for those who are not of the emerging early catholic faith is astonishing (and the road goes both ways… and I suppose some things never change). Spend some time with the Letters of John (late 1^st-early 2^nd century) or with Tertullian. These are not exactly paragons of pacifism. Moving closer to Constantine, it is well documented that Jolly Ol’ St. Nick punched a fellow bishop over a disagreement at Nicaea. Bishops on the losing side of the debate were banished and exiled (poor Athanasius… who himself could be a bit of a prick). Violence and mutual disdain is the norm in early Christianity.

The subsequent history of Christianity is littered with religiously sanctioned violence. The Crusades (some eight [?] of them). The Great Western Schism. The Reformation. The Counter Reformation. The Inquisition. The 30 Years War. Bloody Mary. Even bloodier Elizabeth. Colonization. Manifest Destiny. Nazism. KKK. Westboro Baptist Church. And on.

AND TENTED AMONG US
To this day many breeds of Christianity sanction violence (thank you Brethen, Quakers, and others for showing us another way). And if you are the United States, and you pay your taxes, you participate in acts of terror. Secret drone attacks (I am still twistedly enamored by this piece that argues from a Christian perspective that drone attacks are moral). Israel’s occupation (motivated by absurd Christian Zionism). Colombia’s war on drugs. The predictable marriage between Christians and gun rights. I have not even mentioned our complicity in propping dictatorships in the interest of “national security” and the imposition of policies that keep people here and abroad hungry and impoverished.  And, perhaps most pertinent to this post, senseless acts of violence against Muslims (or people who look like Muslims) who are our neighbors and friends.

Why then do we point out the religion of these two men? Why is their faith highlighted as the violent one?  Why do we not look to the religiously tinted language that pervades the notes of Timothy McVeigh? As Mark Juergensmeyer has argued, violence is inherent in many religions, and Christianity is not immune (see his book, Terror in the Mind of God or listen to this excellent podcast, courtesy of Per Smith). Islam is no more inherently violent that other faiths, and certainly not more than Christianity (Dr. Dawkins, please hang up your bigoted screed).

I am a terrorist and my faith is bloodied, just like the Tsarnaevs.

I am sorry. God is still dead.

I really am. It is a travesty that I have let my last post linger through the better part of Easter. I had hoped to take a fabulous Kierkegaardian turn on Easter Sunday… but I was too busy. Then the end of the term happened. And now two publishing deadlines are looming. And in the middle of the night I woke up with this brilliance percolating. I hope to talk about faith rising by around Orthodox Easter (May 5 this year). It will be worth the wait. I hope. Until then, enjoy my latest hope-filled post, “I am a Christian Terrorist.” Cheers!

Good Friday. God Is Dead.

In my introductory theology courses I organize the syllabus around the three legged stool of Anglicanism. Good theology, I tell my students, will engage text, tradition, and reason (which seems to me to be very closely related to experience). On any given question each must be given its proper due, lest the stool wobble and ultimately fail. This Lent, however, I have been reflecting on the fact that each of the legs themselves are incredibly unstable. The stool, it turns out, does not stand up to scrutiny.

TEXT
Let’s look at the text first (here I have been deeply influenced by Robin Scroggs little article, “The Bible as Foundational Document”). Despite fundamentalist cries to the contrary, the authority of the text has been thoroughly deconstructed.

1) More than 5,000 Greek witnesses and more 10,000 Latin witnesses (to say nothing of the other important early versions) do not allow for any sense of the purity of the text. At best we can reconstruct a 2d-3d century approximation of the New Testament.

2) The historical accuracy of the text presents serious issues. Leaving internal contradictions and questions about the miraculous aside, many events described in the bible simply do not line up with the archaeological and historical record. An Exodus of hundreds of thousands of slaves at the height of Egyptian power? Not likely. A sudden and total destruction of Jericho? No evidence of any such event. A mass arrival of a foreign people into Palestine? No material artifacts supporting the claim. In the New Testament, no massacre of babies by Herod and no census under Quirinius present the same challenge.

3) Some may argue that these historical problems are insignificant since the bible is primarily a theological and moral document. And yet, the theological and moral claims of the text have been found wanting as well. Again, we can point to the conflicting visions present within the text itself (Are there many gods or just one? Is divorce permissible or not?). We could also look to places where the text is relatively consistent and see that the vision of God and notions of morality are lacking as well. The prophet Samuel’s anger with Saul in 1 Samuel 15 is a good example here. God, through Samuel, commands Saul to attack and “utterly destroy” the Amalekites, not sparing man, woman, child, infant, or animal. When Saul fails to obey the command (which is abhorrent to us today and raises serious problems with respect to God’s justice), God strips the kingdom from him. Astonishingly, the author of Hebrews finds this story instructive in his argument for fidelity to God.

In short then, the purity of the text, the historical accuracy of the text, and the theological and moral claims of the text each undermine any claims to the authority of the the text.

TRADITION
We (or at least I) find similar problems with the tradition. Tradition can be conceived broadly as the history of the church and more narrowly as the creeds, dogma, and doctrine received. With respect to the former, the history of the church is nothing to be emulated. The great tradition is marred with petty infighting, greed, power grabs, blatant racism and sexism, and violent upheaval (both within and without). We whitewash it to to tell the great story of the triumph of the church, but really it looks a whole lot like any other empire in history.

The church today looks the same. Church folk boycott gay rights while covering up for pedophiles. They drop 50,000 eggs from a helicopter on Easter Sunday but are unresponsive to global poverty. Too often Christianity is little more than an identity marker, a club in which to claim membership. Church attendance has become little more than a weekly reminder of the impotence of the Gospel.

As to creeds, they suffer from many of the issues that plague the broader history of the movement. They are political compromises that represent who held the power at the time. The Nicene Creed, a form of which is faithfully repeated in many churches every Sunday, originally contained a series of curses for any Christians who thought differently. The insistence on papal infallibility was in response to the challenges of the Enlightenment. The perpetual virginity of Mary arose out in the midst of historical-critical challenges to the bible that were discussed above. (Why the men in power were so concerned with her holy vagina is still a mystery to me. Wait, no it’s not… men in power always objectify the virgin and the whore.) Lutheran insistence on sola scriptura, in addition to displaying incredible naivete with regards to the role of the reader and the reader’s culture in interpretation, was little more than a convenient way to distance itself from the Roman Catholic Church.

Political forces aside, the creeds and dogmas, with all their venerable tradition, are largely irrelevant. First they are historical documents reflecting concerns from an earlier time. We are no longer Neoplatonists concerned with how Jesus is fully God and fully human. The question is just not too pressing for us. Good Lutheran theologians recognize the impossibility of sola scriptura and have moved on to the bigger questions that confront us today. (Men in power in the Roman Catholic Church still adore Mary’s unpopped cherry.)  Second, creeds, dogmas, and doctrines are primarily concerned with belief, and the belief has been framed in terms of intellectual assent. We can debate how valuable we find orthodoxy (certainly some do, I’d venture to guess that many more do not) but we cannot deny that there are more compelling ways of thinking about how the world works. After the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution affirming many creeds requires suspension of judgment that many cannot bear.

REASON (AND EXPERIENCE)
The two previous legs have been undercut by reason, but reason itself is not infallible. The modern conviction (dare I say belief?) that science and reason can explain the great mysteries of life and existence is misguided. First of all, and this is because I probably read Peter Berger when I was too young and delicate, I understand any epistemology to be shaped and defined by culture. In other words, there is no absolute way to know anything, all understanding is limited by the scope of one’s worldview. Sure, science and reason make great sense to me (I’m a fan!) but I am also a post-Enlightenment product of the Global North who has spent way to much time in the academy. And there are places where a scientific ethos may be of help. I’ll take my anti-malarials before I visit a shaman in a remote African village. That said, there are limits to what science can answer. There are times when life is irrational.

Second, reason is also grounded in experience. The collective wisdom of a tribe determines the limits of what can be known and I as an individual interact with the world as constructed. I choose which parts of the ethos makes sense and which can be abandoned. These choices will be somewhat arbitrary based on my nature and my nurture (but mostly the latter . Here I come back to the Masters of Suspicion, who, as I understand them, invite me to apply a radical hermeneutic of suspicion to everything I think I know. The world that I construct is fraught with neurosis, self-medication, and will to power. My experience must be relentlessly tested. And whenever I honestly apply that hermeneutic, I find that I am not a very reliable interpreter of the meaning of life.

WHERE TO NOW?
So there you have it–my argument that the stool upon which we sit when we do theology is horribly unsteady. No matter how careful we are in our deliberations, the work is little more than individual and societal projections on material that is more or less archaic and irrelevant. Theology may be helpful for critical self-reflection but I am not sure about much else. However, the big problem is not for theology as a discipline. There is still much to be examined and dissected–histories to reconstruct, ideas to be unpacked, theologies to be contextualized. What is scarier to me are the implications of this post (and they do scare me). I am not just talking about the limits of our understanding but also how we encounter and understand the divine. If text, tradition, and reason/experience are unreliable guides, where then shall we turn?

The big question for me as the sun sets on Good Friday is whether or not I should be waiting for a resurrection. God is dead. Can God rise?

I am sure that there are many points that can be refuted, corrected, or nuanced. I would love to have your feedback. Let the conversation begin!

Pornography and the peasant revolt

This term I have been toying with active engagement in social media to see if it could create additional dialog outside of the classroom. So far the results have been marginal. But that is another post. At present I want to put forth what I have seen as I have delved into the dark underworld that is the Twitterverse. I want to then suggest what this may mean for the future. As usual, critical feedback is invited.

First, I want to affirm the value that many find in social media. Twitter allows for the rapid sharing of ideas. You can learn a whole lot from many different perspectives very quickly. On both Twitter and Facebook you can find like-minded people and build an online community. Following a continuous stream of ideas and interactions can be intoxicating. The snark is unmatched.  In spite of these strengths, I want to draw attention to some of the weaknesses I have observed in my short time breaking in. 

First, there is a radical democratization. This is not a bad thing per se. The more voices at the table, the better. And there are certainly some voices that have historically not been heard and now need a hearing. That said, and perhaps this is particularly true in my field of religion, there are some pretty crazy ideas out there and it seems to me that some of the least qualified people have the largest audiences. While this is true of our society in general, it seems to be particularly true on social media. Maybe I am too ensconced in an archaic and hierarchical ethos, but it seems to me that credentials should matter. Right?

Second, and related, ignorance is offered and extolled in spades. In one blog, housed on a generally reputable website, I learned that the NT understanding of Satan and Hell were derived from the Jewish historian Josephus (I offered what I think is a better explanation, but did not hear a peep from the author or any of his readers). In another blog I learned that it was a waste of time to read the bible from cover to cover because someone might let it go to their head. Rick Warren (whose Purpose Driven Life is second to only the Bible in worldwide sales–YIKES!) helpfully tweeted a litany of inane comments disparaging academic theology… to nearly a million followers. These are just a few encounters but I would say that such seems to be the norm.

Third, and also related, the ignorance is dispensed viciously. Yes, it is easy to get sucked in, but the objectification that happens is frightening. There is no dialog as atheists disparage religious people, religious people damn secularists, conservatives vilify liberals, and liberals excoriate conservatives. (A whole post could be devoted to tribalism.) We are often left with quick nasty quips (the dark side of snark) that don’t really help us understand the issues. (There was a fascinating article posted just today on the effectiveness of nasty comments from internet trolls). We are not challenged to move beyond where we find ourselves.

This is where I find the rub. Face to face interaction is in decline. Yahoo continues to take heat for its decision to make its employees come to the office to work.  The brick and mortar shops in which we used to congregate are slowly being replaced by amazon.com or their own online outlets. Online college degrees are touted as the future of education. Regular participation in church is in decline. Are we moving towards a place where social media is our primary mode of interaction with other people? Is the radical democratization, general ignorance, and tribal ad hominem that runs rampant on social media the future?

The situation reminds me in some ways of Europe during the Reformation. New ideas were bringing a certain democracy and people had to figure out how to use their newly discovered freedom for good and leaders had to learn how to govern people who had learned that they had a whole lot more power  than previously realized. It was a tumultuous and violent time out of which a new way of being and doing emerged. Might we be living in a similar time? Is this our peasant revolt that too will one day pass? Is this an adolescence that we will grow out of?

There is much to nuance from this post. Perhaps I have painted an unfair picture? Maybe your experience is different? Maybe you think I am spot on and have some suggestions to make the internet a better place. I’d love to hear your thoughts.