Category: Christian Living/Church Related

Evangelicals Must Stop Cherry-Picking Their “Prolife” Arguments

I am currently reading a good book by Daniel K. Williams entitled The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship (Eerdmans, 2021).

I suspect that I will eventually post a more thorough review of this work at some point in the future. But given my recent encounters with several books and articles examining the lustful, nationalistic ties that have long bound American Christianity to the nation’s callous, military bloodletting around the world, I wanted to write a short note on Dr. Williams’ defense of the pro-life movement.

Williams looks at four political issues that tend to divide Americans along party lines: abortion, marriage and sexuality, race, and wealth and poverty.

His goal is to show that all four of these concerns should equally animate all Christians into a bipartisan – or better yet, nonpartisan – alliance that would work together towards a wholistic “politics of the cross.”

If you have read my book, I Pledge Allegiance, you won’t be surprised to learn that I couldn’t help but notice that war and peace (unsurprisingly) don’t make it onto Dr. Williams’ list of important Christian political issues.

This absence was underscored as I read his biblical/theological arguments against abortion. He naturally begins with the early Christian apologists and church fathers who condemned abortion in the ancient world. Their arguments are important and powerful, laying the groundwork for Christianity’s longstanding opposition to abortion. [This point requires elaboration, but I won’t do that here.]

However, these same ancient, Christian leaders used similar arguments to oppose all Christian involvement with violence, warfare, and the military. The same men who condemned abortion and defended unborn children were equally adamant in insisting that all Christians must be pacifists who condemned all forms of violence.

Unfortunately, Dr. Williams continues the evangelical habit of cherry-picking the “prolife” evidence.

For the early Christians, the reasons we must oppose abortion (while simultaneously providing all the supportive social services required by a newborn) are the same reasons we must oppose war and refuse to be involved in violence.

You can’t claim one part of the argument while denying the other.

Ron Sider has produced an excellent book on this subject, gathering all the ancient evidence together for the modern reader. It’s called The Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment (Baker Academic, 2012). It’s well worth reading.

So, if abortion is wrong, all violence and warfare are wrong, too. Yet, precious few Christians in either the Republican or the Democratic (yes, that is the proper adjective) party openly advocate for a national “peace/antiwar” policy in this country.

And that’s a tragedy.

For, if you believe that abortion-providers deserve to be picketed and closed down, then so do military bases, nuclear weapons facilities, war colleges, ROTC programs, weapons manufacturers, and the Pentagon.

As the earliest Christian teachers and apologists all insisted, IF Christians should not get abortions, THEN neither should they join the military, serve in the police force, or work in the judiciary, because all these roles demand an association with or the execution of violence and dehumanization.

We can’t cherry-pick the Biblical evidence, folks.

A Book Review of “The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy,” by J. Russell Hawkins

I recently finished reading the new book from J. Russell Hawkins, historian of American evangelicalism. His book is titled The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (Oxford, 2021).

The cover image from Hawkins’ book

Professor Hawkins carefully examines the various anti-desegregation strategies deployed by the Southern Baptist and Methodist churches in South Carolina following the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954. Together with the vast majority of Southern evangelicals at the time, these two Christian denominations were vociferously opposed to the civil rights movement, including the efforts to end racial segregation.

This evangelical fight against racial integration broke out on two fronts. One was motivated by white outrage over the desegregation of public schools. The private, Christian school movement (at least, in the south) was a direct result of this anti-integrationist campaign.

The second wing of the battle was aimed at fighting off the threat of integrated churches. Black people were NOT going to be allowed into their white congregations.

I had intended to review Hawkins’ book myself, but since I recently discovered a good review by Christopher Cantwell at Religion Dispatches, I will excerpt his review here and save myself the trouble. [Click on the link above.]

In the light of current controversies surrounding Critical Race Theory (CRT), however, I do want to note the origins of one particular argument that remains very relevant today. In fact, we hear it all the time. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention continues to rely on this argue in its recent, public rejection of Critical Race Theory (now forbidden in its seminaries and churches.)

As the civil rights controversy slowly moved from the 1950s into the 1970s, evangelical racists (yes, we must use this word very intentionally here) were aware that the entire country’s atmosphere was changing. While continuing to use their old, racist arguments in private, they saw the need to adopt a more family-friendly, publicly acceptable line of argument in public conversation.

This new line of dissent emphasized the need for a “color blind” society that could only be achieved through “personal transformation” and “spiritual renewal.”

This is a prominent argument appearing throughout the recent anti-CRT best-seller by Voddie Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Regnery, 2021). [I may post my review of this lamentable book in the weeks ahead. At the moment, I am circulating it for publication elsewhere.]

Falling back on the Christian emphasis upon personal, spiritual renewal, Southern evangelical racists abandoned the overt fight against race-mingling and shifted their fight to emphasize the futility of legislating morality.

Talking about race and racism only stirred the pot and aggravated racial tensions, they said.

Instead, what was needed was internal, personal, spiritual transformation. Racism was a sin problem, we were told, and no public policy could ever change a sinful heart.

Here was a new abuse of Christian theology that many continue to find serviceable. Southern Baptists and other opponents of CRT are still making such logically mangled claims to this day.

The fact that public policy is not intended to change human hearts or personal feelings but to ensure acceptable public behavior was a very deliberate bait-and-switch tactic for the originators of this pro-segregationist argument. They were hoping that no one would notice the illogical non sequitur buried in the heart of their claims. And it seems that most southerners didn’t.

Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. also promoted the hope of a color-blind society, where little children “would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

However, Dr. King never left it at that. He knew how to hold two different but related concepts in his mind at the same time.

So, he dreamed of a day when personal transformation would eliminate all racism and discrimination from this world. But, in the meantime, he marched; he agitated; he sought to change the laws of the land. He campaigned for new legislation like the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because he understood that in public, as well as in personal behavior, acting differently often precedes (and generates) new feelings.

New anti-racist behaviors can help to erase old racist dispositions long before the racist prayer meetings pleading for evangelical “revival” will ever feel a fart from the Holy Spirit.

Below is an excerpt from the review by Christopher Cantwell:

Last month, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention became national news after Ed Litton defeated Mike Stone for the convention’s presidency. For months the conservative evangelical denomination had been embroiled in both scandal and controversy after noted Black minister Dwight McKissic removed his 1,600 member congregation from the Texas state convention over the organization’s outspoken repudiation of critical race theory. But McKissic’s departure would become the first of many desertions from the SBC after noted Bible teacher Beth Moore and ethicist Russell Moore resigned from the denomination over its mishandling of sexual abuse allegations and tolerance for white supremacists.

Stone, a hard-right, Trump-supporting minister from Georgia, had spearheaded the denunciation of critical race theory and intersectionality. Litton, meanwhile, was a winsome preacher from Alabama who recently had made racial reconciliation a centerpiece of his ministry. To some, the two candidates represented a referendum on the Trump era, with Litton’s victory serving as something of a reckoning. 

But as a new book by historian J. Russell Hawkins suggests, Litton’s election might just be a new chapter in the SBC’s long and sordid history on matters of race. 

In The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, Hawkins places debates like those taking place in the SBC in a much larger frame. Focusing on the denominational workings of both the Southern Baptist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, Hawkins unflinchingly shows how segregationist Christians drew from their faith in opposing the modern civil rights movement. But in the book’s reflection upon the relationship between race and religion in modern America, Hawkins also has a lot to teach us about our own moment as well. 

You can read the rest of this review here.

The Dangers of Absolute Truth

  • I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a serious dilemma for conservative Christians.

One of the messier lessons to be learned – or to be reminded of – by the rise of Trumpism in America is the powerful allure of authoritarianism to conservative Christians.

American evangelicals are especially susceptible to falling in love with authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump. It’s true that this tendency hasn’t been limited to the Christian church. In fact, the majority of registered Republicans, whether religious or not, remain loyal to Trump and still believe that he won the November election.

This rigidly predictable overlap between conservative politics and conservative religion (I am hesitant to call it theology) has long been the crippling, besetting sin of the evangelical wing in the American church. We have always had great difficulty in separating our social, economic, cultural preferences – dare I call them prejudices? – from our conceptions of God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the gospel of God’s kingdom.

We should never underestimate the preemptive power of human socialization to squelch the development of a distinctly Christian conscience. Believers beware…

Sadly, there is nothing surprising about this coincidence of secular and religious allegiances, for there is really nothing coincidental about any of it. This alliance in outlooks is no accident. As the linguist and cognitive scientist, George Lakoff (at UC Berkeley), explains in his several books on neuroscience and political decision-making, conservative personalities tend to view the world through a binary framework: there is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, with little if any room for the grayish hues of nuance, ambiguity, or uncertainty.

The conservative view of human relationships also places an authoritative father-figure at the top of this binary framework. Thus, authority figures are always to be obeyed, whether that figure is the father in the home, the police officer pulling you over, or the president in the White House. These authority figures are the ones who get to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Sure, the authority figure will insist that he/she is merely the human face of some ultimate law or code that stands above everyone regulating all of our behavior. But it takes very little life experience to learn that these “codes” rarely apply to authority figures in the same way that they apply to regular folks.

There is a good reason that Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd was hailed as an all-too-rare victory in the fight against the excessive use of force, especially against people of color, by American police officers.

One would hope that the Christian’s habitation by the Holy Spirit would provide abundant testimony to a Christian counter-culture winding its way throughout secular society, infiltrating, subverting, weakening, overturning, even strangling secular ways of thinking and behaving among God’s people and the rest of society.

It does happen, but not nearly enough.

I do believe the Holy Spirit is alive and that he transforms disciples of Jesus into counter-cultural people. But not everyone who calls him/herself a Christian is a disciple. As Jesus predicted, those numbers are small and only “a few” walk the path of discipleship faithfully.

Furthermore, as if the challenge of brain chemistry were not enough of a problem, I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a unique complication for conservative, religious personalities (which, remember, seems to describe the majority of evangelicals).

When I believe in absolute truth, I will become an absolutist, at least in those areas of life that I believe are touched upon by that truth.

Don’t misunderstand.

There is nothing inherently wrong with absolutism. If only Nazi Germany had contained more humane, Christian absolutists willing publicly to decry Nazi crimes against humanity, standing firm to the point of death in defending all their fellow citizens. Being absolutely committed to following Jesus is the Christian ideal. So, no, religious absolutism per se is not the problem defacing American evangelicalism.

Rather, our problem appears in the fusion of our belief in absolute truth with our innate tendency to seek out and identify with authority figures who will enforce those absolutes (as we perceive them) in this world. After all, we all want the world to work for us.

Many habits of the Christian church are easily exploited by both (a) those who are eager to exercise authority over others as well as (b) those happy to remain subject to another’s authority. Thus, preachers who elevate themselves as God’s singular mouthpiece may often discourage (or never encourage) small group Bible studies throughout the congregation where others can learn from God’s word for themselves, without the pastor’s immediate input.

The popular confusion of church with society – a lingering ghost of western Christendom that continues to haunt US evangelicalism – leads conservative Christians to support leaders, whether Christian or not, who would make selected points of conventional, Christian morality equally authoritative for everyone else in the world, regardless of their attitude towards Jesus.

We want the world to be convenient for us.

The more authoritatively a public figure insists on universal conformity to his/her view of ethics, the more popular that authoritarian will become in evangelical circles.

When I was a teenager, one of the poster children for fundamentalist authoritarianism was Bill Gothard whose Institute for Basic Life Principles filled sporting arenas to overflowing with Christian devotees searching for someone to tell them how to live their lives. Holding Gothard’s thick IBLP binder open on their laps, the ultimate religious father-figure would direct them through the tiniest details of what a proper Christian life should look like.

I suspect that Jordan Peterson’s rapid rise to fame in evangelical circles provides a more contemporary example of the same conservative urge to seek out and surrender to an authority figure.

Frankly, every public figure I have ever listened to representing the Religious Right has struck me as an authoritarian personality. I am thinking particularly of people like Tony Perkins, Gary Baur, James Dobson, and Ralph Reed, to name only a few — all avid Trump supporters, by the way.

The allure of Donald Trump was like a pan of beer laid out for a garden full of slugs. Irresistible to evangelicals.

Never mind that he told the graduating class at Liberty University that they ought to throw out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. His commencement advice was “to get even” with very sharp elbows. Stab your competitors in the back. That’s what Trump advised an auditorium of right-wing, Christian graduates. But it was all ok. After all, Trump is a strong authoritarian who implied that he meant to impose conservative Christian values onto the rest of society, whether they liked it or not.

Fortunately, brain chemistry is not destiny, although far too many conservative Christians appear unaware of that fact. The work of the Holy Spirit, combined with the life and teaching of Jesus, mediated to us through the New Testament (and especially the four gospels) can mold a Spirit directed life, as opposed to an authoritarian directed life.

Lovers of authoritarianism who remain enamored with enforcing Absolute Truth forget that the Christian’s absolute truth is not a law or a code. It is not contained in a manual or a binder.

For the one and only Absolute Truth in this universe is our Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Our Absolute Truth is a Person – or a Trinity of equally divine Persons.

We don’t learn about absolute truth by memorizing the minutiae of a legal code.

We don’t honor absolute truth by riding herd over society’s degenerate, wayward cattle.

We only know Absolute Truth by surrendering ourselves to Jesus Christ. For he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And Jesus never manipulates, coerces, bullies, or publicly shames anyone, especially not for his own advantage.

The Absolute Truth of Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant; the one who “came to serve, not to be served;” the one who gave his life and was crucified as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of my sins; this is the only Absolute Truth for real disciples.

Jesus has little patience, I suspect, for evangelical authoritarians.

Michelle Goldberg on The Decline of the Religious Right

“The Religious Right is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It,” is the title of Michelle Goldberg’s recent article at The New York Times.

Michelle Goldberg, author and journalist

Ms. Goldberg has been following the Religious Right for some time. I recommend her insightful book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2007) for more of her analysis on white evangelicalism in this country.

Her current article in the NYT underlines the central, animating principle of American evangelicalism in the 21st century: the preservation of Christian cultural supremacy and entitlement.

If you don’t believe me, try this exercise the next time you hear another white, Christian “culture warrior” decrying the latest political act of “anti-Christian” oppression. Ask yourself, “Can I imagine the apostle Paul complaining about this social/cultural disagreement as a threat to the Christian faith or the church?”

Where did Paul ever insist that Greco-Roman society must abandon its idolatry in order for the church to thrive?

When did he insist that Christian organizations were being persecuted unless they were granted tax exempt status?

How often does he announce that the surrounding pagans must change their ways and conform to Christian moral principles in order that Christians may live more comfortably?

The answers are obvious.

Below is Ms. Goldberg’s article. She hits the nail on the head:

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”

Back then, much of the public sided with the religious right on the key culture war issue of gay marriage. “In 2004, if you had said, ‘We’re the majority, we oppose gay rights, we oppose marriage equality, and the majority of Americans is with us,’ that would have been true,” Jones told me. Youthful megachurches were thriving. It was common for conservatives to gloat that they were going to outbreed the left.

Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.

But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.

One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.

In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.

White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.

From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.

QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.

“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.

As Jones notes, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 after splitting with abolitionist Northern Baptists. He described it as a “remarkable arc”: a denomination founded on the defense of slavery “denouncing a critical read of history that might put a spotlight on that story.”

Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

Thinking About (Christian) Nationalism

Following my invitation to participate in the upcoming NEME webinar, Two Chosen Peoples? Two Promised Lands?, focusing on the intersection of Christian and Jewish Nationalism in the United States and Israel, I have been expanding my horizons in the ocean of literature exploring the history and contours of modern nationalism.

You know, I always appreciate another reason to read a few more good books!

Some of you may recall that I touched on the subject of American nationalism, and the related issue of civil religion, in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).

The more I learn about the history and developments of this mind-set called “nationalism,” the more convinced I become that it is hostile to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and inevitably corrosive to faithful citizenship in the kingdom of God.

Fortunately, more and more Christian leaders are speaking out to warn God’s people against the dangers of what I consider the worst form of nationalism, that is “Christian Nationalism.”

For example, check out the resources provided by the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

Christian nationalism insists that The Nation is bound together by a corporate commitment to the Christian religion, born of a Christian history and Christian culture. Being Christian people (however that is defined) becomes the centerpiece of national identity.

Christian nationalism goes hand in hand with a belief in the nation’s “chosenness.” The Christian nation is God’s unique, elect people with a special, divine calling to perform His will in this world.

Historically, such national callings have generally been implemented, at least in part, through warfare, colonialism, bloodshed, discrimination, and even ethnic cleansing.

Christian Nationalism creates a secularized ecclesiology [ecclesiology is the doctrine of the Church], offering a worldly, bogus doctrine of a “national church” for seriously misguided people.

It even creates alternative, secular liturgies, symbols, rituals, and vocabulary for national “devotion.” Nationalism becomes a religious exercise memorializing the nation’s holy history.

But disciples of Jesus Christ are called to find their personal identity in union with the peaceable, crucified Savior. Clinging to the idolatrous badge of identity provided by a warmongering nation-state is a betrayal of genuine Christian values.

“Christian Nations” (so called) can never embody anything other than the secularized fellowship of false identities carved out by the egotism of those who are distorted by their own peculiar ethic, regional, cultural, linguistic superiority complexes.

There ain’t nothin’ Christian about any of that.

Here is a short excerpt from a good book on nationalism entitled, National Identity (Penguin 1991) by Anthony D. Smith. (All emphases are mine):

The nation is called upon to provide a social bond between individuals and classes by providing repertoires of shared values, symbols and traditions. By the use of symbols – flags, coinage, anthems, uniforms, monuments and ceremonies – members are reminded of their common heritage and cultural kindship . . . The nation becomes a faith achievement group . . . Finally, a sense of national identity provides a powerful means of defining and locating individual selves in the world, through the prism of the collective personality and its distinctive culture. It is through a shared, unique culture that we are enabled to know ‘who we are’ in the contemporary world. By rediscovering that culture we ‘rediscover’ ourselves, the ‘authentic self’, or so it has appeared to many divided and disoriented individuals who have had to contend with the vast changes and uncertainties of the modern world. This process of self-definition and location is in many ways the key to national identity. . .

 Nationalism, the doctrine that makes the nation the object of every political endeavour and national identity the measure of every human value, has since the French Revolution challenged the whole idea of a single humanity, of a world community and its moral unity. Instead, nationalism offers a narrow, conflict-laden legitimation for political community, which inevitably pits culture-communities against each other and . . . can only drag humanity into a political Charybdis. [Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. Greek mythology turned it into a sea monster.]

True followers of Jesus Christ find their eternal community in union with the Lord Jesus and, thus, other members of the Body of Christ. That Body is an international, multi-ethnic, trans-territorial community of the faithful.

The disciple’s personal identity is developed through obedience to the Lord Jesus, becoming more and more like him as we share in the fellowship of his suffering. Self-denial, humility, mercy, including service to those who are most unlike us, form the core bundle of Christ-like character traits marking those who follow Jesus.

There is no room for the perversions of Nationalism, much less “Christian Nationalism,” among God’s people on this earth.

Join the Webinar: “Two Chosen People? Two Promised Lands? Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism Under Trump and Biden”

Not long ago I was invited to participate in an online webinar happening May 18th, 12:00 pm (Eastern Time) sponsored by the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME).

The discussion will focus on the different ways Americans and Israelis view themselves as “exceptional nations,” both fulfilling a unique, divinely ordained mission to world history.

The presidency of Donald Trump gave voice to evangelicalism’s (i.e., conservative Christianity’s) bellicose commitment to both Christian Nationalism (the belief that America is a Christian nation) and Christian Zionism (the belief that Christians must support the state of Israel).

Israel puts itself at the center of Jewish Nationalism.

How do these political beliefs relate to each other?

What does the Bible say about such things?

How should the Christian church relate to Israel and its continuing conflict with the Palestinian people?

I will share this conversation with Lisa Sharon Harper (founder and president of Freedom Road) and L. Daniel Hawk (Ashland Theological Seminary).

I hope you will join us for what, I am convinced, will be a fascinating conversation. For those who can’t make it, the webinar will be recorded and made available at the NEME website.

You can register online here.

What the Church Can Learn from Eugene Debs

Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was an American politician who became an important early leader in the labor union movement. He condemned

Labor activist Eugene V. Debs speaks at the Hippodrome in New York City in 1910

corporate greed, was a vocal proponent on behalf of American workers, helped to lead numerous strikes, and fought for genuine democracy in the workplace.

Naturally, figures like Debs are a thorn in the side of entrenched, establishment power, so he made many enemies in high places. President Woodrow Wilson had him imprisoned for speaking out against the US entry into World War I. [No, folks, “cancel culture” is hardly new!]

In my view, Debs is a true American hero who has been largely forgotten by mainstream America.

Ed Quish has an interesting article about Deb’s life and legacy at Jacobin magazine. It’s entitled “The Cold War is Over. It’s Time to Appreciate that Eugene Debs Was a Marxist.”

Whenever a learn something new about a figure like Eugene Debs (or a man like Henry Wallace, another person I admire for similar reasons) I can’t help but ask myself, “Where were his Christian counterparts?”

Though he didn’t claim to be a Christian (to my knowledge) in the

Eugene Debs

evangelical sense, his politics, ideology, and actions demonstrate a more profound appreciation for the nature of the kingdom of God and the demands that kingdom makes upon its citizens than is shown by the evangelical church today.

Below is an excerpt:

Throughout his life, Eugene Debs was smeared as an enemy of the American nation. During the 1894 Pullman strike, Harper’s Weekly attacked Debs’s leadership of the uprising as equivalent to Southern secession, claiming that in “suppressing such a blackmailing conspiracy as the boycott of Pullman cars by the American Railway Union, the nation is fighting for its own existence.” Thirty years later, when Debs was imprisoned for speaking against World War I, President Woodrow Wilson denied requests to pardon him, refusing to show mercy to “a traitor to his country.”

Debs’s sympathizers have often defended him against allegations of treason by highlighting his authentic Americanism. Rather than a traitor, they claim, Debs was a true patriot who stood up for nationally shared ideals like freedom and democracy while imbuing them with socialist values. Historian Nick Salvatore, for instance, argues in his landmark 1982 biography that Debs’s life “was a profound refutation of the belief that critical dissent is somehow un-American or unpatriotic.” Inspired by Debs’s example, socialists today might occupy the left flank of a progressive patriotism, pushing the United States to make good on its democratic promise in a way that liberals and centrists cannot do on their own.

Despite some intuitive appeal, this nationalist strategy is a dead end. . . At a basic level, democratic nationalism presents the nation as bound by a shared identity and shared interests, uniting different classes behind a common project domestically and internationally. In the United States, this project has only ever been a variant of capitalist empire that, even when grafted to the cause of democracy. . . 

In his own time, Debs rejected that kind of nationalist project, making his politics more than the radical edge of common sense “Americanism.” When Debs called out the absurdity of the wartime view that patriotism means dying overseas for capitalist profits while treason consists in defending workers everywhere, he showed us the proper response to nationalist ideology: not to try to hijack it for progressive ends, but to liberate us from its obfuscations.

Click here to read the complete article.

Who are the Sheep and the Goats on Judgment Day? Reading Matthew 25:31-46 in Context

In a previous post, I reviewed the book, Decolonizing Christianity. I mentioned that the author, Dr. de la Torre, roots his critique of “white Christianity” in an ancient, but completely erroneous, interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46).

Here is the follow-up post that I promised where I will explain the proper interpretation of Jesus’ parable. Yes, there are right and wrong ways to read scripture.

According to the interpretive tradition of the sheep and the goats followed by Dr. de la Torre, the exalted Jesus will determine who is and who is not received into his eternal kingdom according to the good works they performed for the poor, the needy, and the imprisoned (see verses 35-36). Here Jesus identifies himself with the disenfranchised:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

The sheep respond by asking, “When did we ever do such things for you, Lord?” (verses 37-39).

Jesus offers this famous response:

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

The message is clear, or so it appears: the resurrected Jesus identifies himself so completely with those who suffer in this world that whatever we do for them we also do for Jesus.

Jesus frequently taught that his true followers will be recognized “by their fruit” (Matt. 3:10; 7:16-20; 12:33); that is, the obedience they demonstrate to Jesus’ teachings (the parable about judgment in Matt. 7:24-27 is comparable to Matt. 25 in this way). So, it is conceivable that the message of Matthew 25:40 could be integrated into this “faith without works is dead” perspective that characterizes Jesus’ teaching.

However, when taken on its own – which is typically what happens when people read the gospels – this interpretation suggests that the major criteria for eternal judgment are our works of charity. Period.

This conclusion is curious, however, since there is nothing else comparable to it in the gospel of Matthew. Furthermore, nowhere else does Jesus make such an immediate, personal identification with the poor qua poor.

What should we make of this?

If we read the entire gospel of Matthew attentively and consider this parable in Matthew 25 as part of the book’s concluding episode, then several items will catch our attention and resonate with earlier episodes.

[Sadly, too many Christians read the Bible as if it were a collection of Hallmark greeting cards. When we do that, we blind ourselves to understanding the Bible correctly and grasping the depth of any book’s intended message. We must learn to read each book as a whole, literary unit. Every passage must be interpreted within its larger context.]

The key phrases and issues to notice are:

Who are the “brothers (and sisters) of mine” with whom Jesus identifies?

Where else has Jesus suggested that doing things for someone else is the same as doing things for him?

Are there other places where Jesus identifies with people who are imprisoned, are strangers, or hungry and thirsty?

I will give you a hint about where this is going. In Matthew’s gospel all of these traits and relationships apply only to Jesus’ disciples. Jesus is telling us that he will eventually judge the world on the basis of how it has treated his followers, the church.

Note that this outcome is the very opposite of the way Mother Teresa, de la Torre, and many others have read the parable.

Here are the crucial observations to make while reading Matthew’s gospel:

First, Jesus radically redefines family relationships. His brothers, sisters, mother, and family members are exclusively those who accept and follow him as their messiah. No one else is ever called a brother or sister in Matthew. Jesus explains this shocking redefinition of family in 12:46-50 where the context makes it clear that “doing the will of the Father” means allegiance to Jesus (also see 28:10):

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Second, when Jesus commissions the Twelve to preach his gospel to others throughout Israel, he warns them that many will treat them with hostility. In fact, he admits that he is sending them out “as sheep among wolves” (10:16). Righteous people will open their doors, receive the gospel, and care for the needy disciples. But many others will reject them and even ensure that they are imprisoned (10:11-20).

By implication, only those who received Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom, and have become disciples themselves, will be interested in helping Jesus’ missionaries by feeding them and visiting them in jail.

In fact, while warning his missionary-followers about the rigors of discipleship, Jesus also comforts them by describing his essential, intimate identification with those who suffer on his behalf:

Whoever acknowledges me before others [while on trial], I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others [to save their own skin], I will disown before my Father in heaven. (10:32-33)

Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” (10:40-42)

On the basis of this literary evidence, I am convinced that the long-standing interpretation promoted by Dr. de la Torre and many others, including Mother Teresa, is the last thing in the world this parable could mean. It is wrong because it does not read Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats in its literary context.

Jesus’ parable envisions the Final Judgment when all humanity is called before God’s throne. The goats are all those who ranged from politely indifferent to openly hostile to the gospel of Jesus. Their antagonism was expressed by failing to assist Jesus’ disciples when they needed help in fulfilling their mission.

The sheep, on the other hand, are all those who opened their doors, hosted, believed, and assisted Jesus’ disciples as they endured the hardships of testifying to the gospel in this hostile world.

Typically, it is only fellow believers who are willing to visit their imprisoned brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. I have heard more than one story about entire churches ending up in prison together as members persisted in visiting those who had been arrested.

When read within its Matthean context “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” can only refer to one group of people: the disciples of Jesus who are suffering for their faithful witness.

I realize that those who embrace the “social gospel” alternative interpretation of this parable are likely to be offended by the church-community reading I am advancing here. They will see it as an abandonment of the church’s calling to care for society’s poor and needy. They will see it as an expression of privileged and chauvinistic religion, promoting in-group, religious believers above all others.

But then, a great deal of Jesus’ teaching is rejected by people for one reason or another – even by those who profess to be disciples. It is not my place, or anyone else’s, to rewrite Jesus’ teaching. Allow me to make a few counter arguments:

  1. Matthew 25 is not the sole basis of the Christian church’s teaching on social responsibility. This is a prominent theme throughout all of scripture which does not stand or fall on the basis of this one passage alone.
  2. The need for Christians to prioritize their care and concern for fellow believers is another important theme throughout the New Testament. Jesus is beginning an emphasis that will be continued by the apostle Paul (Gal. 6:10; 1 Tim. 5:17).
  3. Jesus assumes that suffering for the cause of the gospel, and finding oneself in need of kindness and generosity from others, will be a common experience for his disciples. Reflecting of this issue and its relevance to our own lives is an ever-present challenge for anyone calling him/herself a Christian.
  4. Nothing in this alternative reading limits the scope or the diversity of those who become Jesus’ brothers and sisters. By the time a reader gets to Matthew 25, the gospel mission has opened up to include those Gentiles and Samaritans who were previously excluded. In fact, Jesus’ final words in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-25) anticipate an inter-racial, multi-ethnic, international community of brothers and sisters from all classes and walks of life prioritizing their devotion to each other as Jesus’ exemplary New Humanity.

Pastor Raymond Chang on Why the Church Needs “Race-Conscious Discipleship”

This morning we learned about a mass shooting in Atlanta, GA. Eight people, most of them Asian women, were shot dead by a 21 year Southern Baptist man.

Raymond Chang is a campus pastor at the evangelical Christian school, Wheaton College and a leader in the Asian American Christian Collaborative organization. His article at the Religion News Service is entitled “The Atlanta massacre is yet another reminder we desperately need race-conscious discipleship.”

Below is an excerpt. All emphases are mine:

. . . Just like we address sin by targeting it in specific ways, we can’t lean on the mantra of “just preach the gospel” as though that hasn’t produced Christians who are also deeply racist. What we are learning about the Atlanta massacre suspect is that he was raised in a white evangelical, Southern Baptist Church and had described himself as “loving guns and God.” When you see these things together, you can often conclude white Christian nationalism is close by. 

Don’t hear me saying that we shouldn’t preach the gospel. Yes, preach the gospel in and out of season, but make sure you also shepherd people out of the patterns of the world (especially the patterns that perpetuate the racial hierarchies we see). You cannot treat every illness by giving it a chemotherapy treatment. In the same way, “just preaching the gospel” will not address the specific illnesses sin has caused. We also need to disciple people through and out of certain things.

In light of what we are seeing with the massacre in Atlanta, mourn with Asian Americans (and those from other communities), grieve with us, lament with us, pray with us and pray for us. For those who have their ears to the ground, these events weigh heavily on us. I am grateful for friends who have reached out as soon as they saw what happened. It was particularly special when they came from outside the Asian American community.

Preach to hearts and minds that need to get out of thinking that leaves them complacent when tragedies impact those they might not be proximate to. Call out racism whenever it rears its ugly head. Support churches and organizations doing holistic, race-conscious discipleship. Offer classes to help people learn about how the sin of racism uniquely manifests across different racial lines. Stand with us whenever you see injustice.

Racialization and racism impact different racial groups in different ways. Along the Black-white binary, racism against Asians and Latinos does not often register. It doesn’t register because we (Asians and Latinos) are racialized differently from white and Black people. If we want to address the sin of racism, however, we have to understand how it works. We have to understand that it often manifests differently for different communities.

In the ways we address specific sins with the gospel by discipling people through those sins, we need to do the same with racism. As long as the racial hierarchy of the world is unchecked in the church, we will see the same issues of the world in the church and lose our moral credibility as ambassadors for the eternal king, Jesus.

Is Christian Financial Advisor Dave Ramsey a “Jerk” or is He Just “Helping People Stay in Line”?

Several investigations into Christian finance guru Dave Ramsey’s leadership style and business practices hit the Christian press last January.

If you haven’t heard about them, here is an excerpt from Bob Smeitana’s article at the Religion News Service. It’s called “Is Dave Ramsey’s empire ‘the best place to work in America’? Say No and you’re out.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Dave Ramsey has spent the past three decades trying to build what he calls the best place to work in America.

From his headquarters south of Nashville, the evangelical Christian personal finance guru runs a media and live events empire that includes a popular national talk radio show. Tickets to workshops on topics such as “EntreLeadership”  run from $3,000 to $10,000.

Thousands of churches around the country, meanwhile, host Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University,” a 9-week program built around his principles for handling money “God’s way.”

. . . Ramsey’s intolerance for dissent has created what former employees call a cultlike environment, where leaders proclaim their love for staff and then fire people at a moment’s notice. . . 

At a staff meeting in July, Ramsey railed at his staff after an employee sued Ramsey Solutions for firing her for having premarital sex, which is against company policy, and said he would pay the price to protect what he had built out of love for his employees.

“I am sick of dealing with all this stuff,” Ramsey bellowed, according to a recording obtained by Religion News Service. “I’m so tired of being falsely accused of being a jerk when all I’m doing is trying to help people stay in line.”

. . . Ramsey’s return to in-person work frustrated Heather Fulk. She has asthma, which puts her at higher risk if infected with COVID-19. After learning employees were being called back to headquarters, she made what she thought was an innocuous comment in a private Facebook post.

“Jon’s company wants to bring all 900 employees back asap when a majority can do their work from home,” she wrote on April 20. “I do *not* understand how people don’t see we are setting ourselves up for a huge second wave. Ugh, people make me so angry.”

Before long, Jon got a call from his supervisor who said a co-worker had reported Heather’s comment. They had a screenshot of the post, sent by the co-worker’s spouse.

A few weeks later, Jon was fired. In his exit interview, Armando Lopez, head of human resources at Ramsey, confirmed that the cause was his wife’s social media comment, according to a recording of the meeting.