Tag: Christianity and Politics

Munther Amira’s Statement after Prison Release #Palestinians #Israelioccupation

I am happy to say that my friend, Munther Amira, was released from an Israeli military prison about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Munther released a thank you statement on Facebook yesterday, and I want to share it with any of my readers who may have participated in the “free Munther” actions I posted here.

Recall that Munther was arrested for quietly, non-violently protesting Israel’s policy of imprisoning children in its military prisons. He was peacefully walking down the street in his own neighborhood holding up a picture of the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who remains in prison for the “crime” of slapping one of the soldiers who shot her young cousin in the head.

Here is Munther’s letter:

JUN 17, 2018 — My dear friends,

I would like to start my message “post” by thanking each and every woman, man, organization, union, and group for your tremendous support and solidarity. My imprisonment is no more than one small event in the series of the long lasting occupation’s violations of human rights. Since the beginning of occupation 70 years ago, the violations of human rights never stopped. They just varied in shape from cold blood killing, to injuring or imprisoning. They included land confiscation, home demolitions, road blockage, siege, exile, individual and public punishments, all of which contribute to a system of ethnic cleansing. All of which destroy human lives, deprive freedom, erase dignity, end lives, kill hope, and steal childhoods.

My short, but tough and humiliating, six month imprisonment empowered me and strengthened my convictions. Since the beginning I knew that the nonviolence approach I adopted to defend Palestinians human rights, dignity, and freedom will be difficult. This is still true and was confirmed by the violence of the Israeli occupation’s response to my, and many other activists, nonviolent resistance. Your solidarity and support makes it easier for me and others like me to lead this every day fight.

This support will empower the nonviolence movement in Palestine in this long-term endeavor. I hope this support will continue and grow in scale and forms.
During my imprisonment I met with comrades, spending, 36, 30, 28 or 26 years in Israeli political prisons. A lifetime of prison is their fate on this earth. Each of them has their own heartbreaking and incredibly strong story. I listened to them tell me about their dreams, feelings, and hopes for freedom. I learned from their enthusiasm and was stunned by their positive, ongoing energy. They have an incredible discipline and are eager to learn and to teach each other. In prison, I attended lectures discussing global sustainable environments, social sciences, human rights, and international humanitarian laws. It was not – and is still not – easy for me to grasp the source of their hope, their energy, and their ability to think about things like economics and the environment, all while living in a 9 square meter cell.

I saw them touch the glass separating them and their mothers during the monthly visits, imagining they could actually feel them.
I admire their spirit, and hope that one day, sooner rather than later, they will wake up outside, next to their loved ones. As a human rights defender, activist, social worker, father, and most importantly as a human, I and many others in and outside of Palestine will continue our peaceful fight for justice, dignity, freedom and a brighter future.

Finally, I would to like to thank you all again, and to extend my gratitude to all your tremendous support during my time in Israel’s kangaroo courts, which fail to meet the basic standards of fair trial and due process.
These military courts are designed to criminalize Palestinian rejection of the occupation and punish Palestinians for demanding their basic human and national rights. They are a conveyor belt of convictions and injustice that prosecute between 500 and 700 Palestinian children every year, with a near 100 percent conviction rate.

I would like to thank all who demonstrated in the streets, and those who were punished for it. Thank you to the 15,000 people who signed the petition for my freedom. I wish I could thank them all one by one. Thank you to all human rights defenders, unions, human rights NGOs, grassroots NGOs, journalist, bloggers, individuals and groups.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family who has stood by me in this dangerous endeavor from the very first day.

Munther Amira
Aida Refugee Camp
Occupied Palestinian Territories

(Posted on Facebook on 17 June 2018)

Israel, the Great Western Narrative and the Kingdom of God #zionism #jonathancook

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.  You can find his biography and CV, including his many books, here.

I read Mr. Cook’s blog regularly. I also check out any of his articles or books whenever I come across them.

Yesterday, The Greenville Post (another excellent website I read regularly) published a Cook article entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave Us to a World of Illusions.” Cook describes the slow evolution of his own social, political and historical consciousness as his work in journalism taught him to recognize something he calls the “Great Western Narrative.”

I hope you will take the time to read Cook’s article.  He is extremely insightful.  I have posted an excerpt below with a link to the entire article.

Cook’s analysis can be particularly challenging for Christians. He not only diagnoses the ways in which western Christians succumb to establishment propaganda, just like everyone else — no, brothers and sisters, we are not immune to the dangers of brainwashing —

But Cook’s advice for breaking free of the “Great Western Narrative” and learning to understand and engage in this world from a more humane perspective, is very similar to the argument I tried to make for Christian readers in my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Christian disciples can only perceive this world aright, that is, from a New Testament, heavenly perspective, when we learn to replace the Great Western Narrative with Jesus’ own Narrative of the Kingdom of God.

That should be a lifetime goal for every follower of Jesus.  Yet, it is so much easier to live as loyal Americans than it is to be faithful citizens of God’s kingdom on earth.

This, in a nutshell, is the goal of my blog. Everything I write at HumanityRenewed, is something (I hope) that will help us to peel off the worldly consciousness — the Great Western Narrative — that works overtime to hold us captive and cripple our ability to live out God’s Kingdom citizenship in the here and now.

Nowhere is the evangelical church’s idolatry of the Great Western Narrative, coupled with its abandonment of Jesus’ Narrative of the Kingdom of God, more evident than in its blind devotion to Christian Zionism and the state of Israel, whatever its crimes.

Here is the excerpt:

“Israel is enthusiastically embraced by the Great Western Narrative: it is supposedly a liberal democracy, many of its inhabitants dress and sound like us, its cities look rather like our cities, its TV shows are given a makeover and become hits on our TV screens. If you don’t stand too close, Israel could be Britain or the US.

“But there are clues galore, for those who bother to look a little beyond superficialities, that there is something profoundly amiss about Israel. A few miles from their homes, the sons of those western-looking families regularly train their gun sights on unarmed demonstrators, on children, on women, on journalists, on medics, and pull the trigger with barely any compunction.

“They do so not because they are monsters, but because they are exactly like us, exactly like our sons. That is the true horror of Israel. We have a chance to see ourselves in Israel – because it is not exactly us, because most of us have some physical and emotional distance from it, because it still looks a little strange despite the best efforts of the western media, and because its own local narrative – justifying its actions – is even more extreme, even more entitled, even more racist towards the Other than the Great Western Narrative.

“It is that shocking realisation – that we could be Israelis, that we could be those snipers – that both opens the door and prevents many from stepping through to see what is on the other side. Or, more troubling still, halting at the threshhold of the doorway, glimpsing a partial truth without understanding its full ramifications.”

You can read Cook’s entire article here.

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 2 #christianityandpolitics

I am absolutely convinced that both Scripture and church history demonstrate the necessity of Christian civil disobedience whenever the ethics of God’s kingdom conflicts with the expectations of the state.

Romans 13:1-7 is the standard text cited by those who confuse faithful Christianity with obedience to state power. My book, I Pledge Allegiance,  focuses considerable attention on disentangling the many confusions behind this popular misunderstanding.  For, as the commentator J. C. O’Neill once wrote,

“These seven… verses have caused more unhappiness and misery… than any other seven verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants, and the support for tyrants the church has felt called on to offer.”

In and of itself, O’Neill’s observation does not necessarily prove or disprove anyone’s preferred way of reading Romans 13.  But I believe that the investigation offered here and in Part 1 of this study, will make the point clear.

This excerpt is from pages 59-62:

“Civil Disobedience”

“We are now at a point where we can recognize three components of Paul’s instructions that offer a solid foundation for the legitimacy of Christian civil disobedience.

“First, by explaining God’s role in ordering the place of government in human relations, Paul subordinates all civil authorities under God, and not just any god,

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

but Paul’s God, the Father of Jesus Christ. In effect, Paul has desacralized the Roman state and its emperor, both of which regularly received sacrifices from its citizens. Caesar is being told (were he ever to read the book of Romans) that he serves at the pleasure of the Christian God, a revolutionary claim. Rather than propping up the arrogant authoritarianism of Roman rule— or anyone else’s rule, for that matter—Paul is actually taking his theological ax to its woody trunk and chopping it down to proper size. It is difficult for us today to fully grasp the provocative and subversive nature of Paul’s words. He twice describes civil authorities, including the emperor, as “God’s servant” (Rom. 13:4), not because they predictably execute God’s desires as a good servant should, nor because God promises to back up their every decision, whatever it may be, but because they function in a capacity that was “ordered” for them by the God who brings world redemption through the Son, Jesus Christ. Paul is dramatically leveling the playing field between rulers and the ruled. More than that, he has switched the parameters of the Roman playing field for another one entirely. Roman officials thought they stood on political grounds that were established by the gods Mars and Jupiter. To that fantasy Paul’s says, “Not on your life!” Actually, though they do not know it, Roman officials stood on a playing field created and marked out by the Christian God. On that playing field everyone is equal, and all people, no matter their station in this life, will eventually be judged in the same way, by the same standard, by this same God.

“Second, there is a subtle turn to Paul’s teaching strategy that is quite pro- found. Overtly, he is instructing believers to remain cooperative, submissive members of society. Yet, even as he offers this highly conventional message, he is implicitly underscoring the church’s supreme allegiance to the King of Kings above and beyond all other authority figures. The force of this reminder is to enable every Christian citizen to ask a crucial question: Are government authorities behaving like God’s obedient servants in asking me to perform this action? And if I do what the government asks, will I be doing something that I believe is right and acceptable before God? Paul is implicitly reminding the church that obedience to Christ supersedes all other responsibilities. We obey the government when such obedience coincides with obedience to God; otherwise, we submit to governing authority by virtue of our disobedience, accepting the negative consequences, including suffering, of our higher obedience to the King of Kings. Standing alongside the apostle Peter as he defied a direct order from the Sanhedrin, Christians testify with their lives that they “must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29; also 4:19).

Christian pacifists held in an internment camp during World War 2

“Third, the thoughtful disciple is now left to deal with questions of personal conscience, a matter that Paul raises himself in verse 5: “It is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.” Paul’s argument is that government officials (ideally) ask citizens to do what is right and then (only) punish those who do what is wrong—not wrong as defined by an arbitrary authority, but wrong as defined by God and our God-given conscience. Paul obviously does not believe that paying taxes, even to unscrupulous tax collectors, is either disobedient to God or a violation of Christian conscience, so he emphatically concludes, “This is why you pay taxes” (v. 6). But that conclusion hardly constitutes a blank check for necessarily prioritizing every government policy over Christian conscience per se. “Because of conscience” is a crucial declaration in its own right, especially when we remember that the real world does not operate in the way Paul describes governing authorities throughout this passage. “Because of conscience” becomes the church’s inevitable explanation for its civil disobedience whenever the governing authorities come to believe their own mythology about extraordinary powers, providential selection, and divine right. The long and bloody history of Christian martyrs who died for their faith while defying local government should remind every disciple of the nonnegotiable priority of Paul’s warning—“because of conscience.”

“Several issues of conscience arise when we take chapters 12 and 13 together, as they should be. Paul, in Romans 12:14, 17, and 19, insists that believers must never retaliate, seek vengeance, or resort to violence, but must always leave judgment to God’s wrath. Paul then goes on (in Rom. 13:4) to grant the governing authorities responsibility for exercising the very functions that Christians are commanded to leave with God. Consequently, there are certain government activities that must forever remain alien to the followers of Jesus. Whatever “bearing the sword” may mean, whether it is the power of law enforcement, imposing capital punishment, or sending men to war, it involves some degree of violence and some acts of punishment, all of which must be foreign territory to the Christian.

“Early Christian leaders understood this to mean, at the very least, that Christians could not join the military (see chapter 10) or serve as judges. Aside from the fact that men in these positions were required to participate in any number of idolatrous Roman rituals, soldiers had to be ready to use force in law enforcement; more important, they could be ordered to kill at any time. Similarly, judges were responsible to punish, imprison, and impose the death penalty; but Christians were forbidden to involve themselves in any of these things. A typical discussion appears in On Idolatry (17.2–3) by Tertullian (AD 160–ca. 225). When answering the suggestion that Christians should seek positions of official authority—such as becoming a judge—in order to influence government positively, Tertullian points out that a man would have to find some way “to avoid the functions of his office . . . without passing judgment on a man’s life [i.e., imposing capital punishment] or honor . . . without condemning or forejudging, without putting anybody in chains or prison or torturing.”  In other words, a Christian could only take the job after first deciding never actually to do the job, an obviously impossible scenario.

“In a similar vein, one version of the Apostolic Constitutions 16.10 (ca. AD 375–380) makes an allusion to Romans 13:4 while insisting that “anyone who has the power of the sword, or who is a civil magistrate wearing the purple, either let him cease (i.e., resign his post in government) or be cast out (i.e., excommunicated from the church).” The only way a Christian could honestly serve in the Roman government (and a post-Constantine government, at that!) was by deliberately avoiding all of his major responsibilities. It is apparent that early Christian leaders were not interpreting Romans 13 in light of a two-kingdoms theology, in which a temporal realm and a spiritual realm make parallel claims on the Christian’s attention. Instead, the disciple was a citizen of only one kingdom, the kingdom of God, which is now invading a fallen world. John Howard Yoder explains that “these two aspects of God’s work are not distinguished by God’s having created two realms but by the actual rebelliousness of men.”

“Martin Luther’s two-kingdoms theology allowed him to recommend that Christians volunteer for the civic roles of hangman and executioner because “it is not man, but God, who hangs, tortures, beheads, kills and fights” when the state punishes criminals and goes to war. Unfortunately, Luther merely demonstrates how blind he was to both the role of conscience and the priority of God’s kingdom for every believer. God may well be the ultimate executioner standing behind a judge’s guilty verdict, but that does not change the fact that the Father forbids his children from having anything to do with a process that kills, demeans, tortures, or seeks vengeance against another human being. Government authority is God’s remedial measure to preserve some semblance of order among sinful human beings. Luther was correct to say that God is the one who punishes when a just, properly functioning judiciary renders a guilty verdict; but he was sorely mistaken in assuming that the divine Judge invites members of the church to share in his work of punishment.”

The Catastrophe in Yemen Continues to Worsen Because of US #yemen

The folks at Just Foreign Policy are sending a petition to Congress and attempting to rally popular support in order to end American support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

Yemeni children are dying of malnutrition and cholera.

Please take the time to read the excerpt posted below from their appeal.  Check out the embedded sources.  Reread my past blog posts about the tragedy unfolding in Yemen (here, here and here).

And remember…this is not a natural catastrophe.  It is an entirely man-made disaster.  

Recalling the Old Testament story of Nathan the prophet confronting King David:  The prophet today points his finger in the face of America and Saudi Arabia saying, “You are the nation.”  WE are the culprits condemning innocent Yemeni people to starvation and disease.

The guilt and responsibility is ours, America.  And we have the power to end it whenever we choose.  Here is the excerpt:

“The long-feared U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida, where four-fifths of Yemen’s food imports enter, has begun. ABC News reports: “Assault on Yemen’s largest port threatens to increase mass starvation.” Aid experts warned that an assault on the city could immediately threaten the lives of 250,000 people and put millions more at risk of starving to death. The U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE war against Yemen’s indigenous Houthi rebels has already created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, leaving 60% of the population – 17.8 million Yemenis – food insecure, and 8.4 million a step away from famine.
 
“ABC noted that the U.S. is providing “vital guidance and supplies” for the Saudi-UAE attack on Hodeida. The Wall Street Journal was more explicit: “The U.S. military is providing its Gulf allies with intelligence to fine-tune their list of airstrike targets in Yemen’s most important port, one sign of the Trump administration’s deepening role in a looming assault that the United Nations says could trigger a massive humanitarian crisis.”
 
“33 Representatives tried to stop the attack by threatening the Trump Administration with a vote invoking the War Powers Resolution to force an end to U.S. participation in the war. They were: Mark Pocan, Justin Amash, Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, Barbara Lee, Walter Jones, Ted Lieu, James McGovern, Tulsi Gabbard, Yvette Clarke, Pramila Jayapal, Peter DeFazio, Debbie Dingell, Earl Blumenauer, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Gwen Moore, Adriano Espaillat, Judy Chu, Bobby Rush, Keith Ellison, Jan Schakowsky, Raúl Grijalva, Jamie Raskin, Donald Beyer, Karen Bass, Frank Pallone, Beto O’Rourke, Alan Lowenthal, Betty McCollum, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Huffman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and Hank Johnson.
 
“The Members wrote: “We urge you to use all available means to avert a catastrophic military assault on Yemen’s major port city of Hodeida by the Saudi-led coalition…We remind you that three years into the conflict, active U.S. participation in Saudi-led hostilities against Yemen’s Houthis has never been authorized by Congress, in violation of the Constitution…In light of a possibly disastrous offensive on Hodeida, we remind you that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare and authorize war, and the War Powers Resolution allows any individual member of Congress to force a debate and floor vote to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities.”
 
“Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Trump Administration have ignored these warnings. They don’t believe that Members of Congress have the courage to follow through on their threat.

“Help us prove Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Trump Administration wrong. Press Members of Congress to invoke war powers to force a vote to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the catastrophic Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida by signing our petition.”

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 1 #christianityandpolitics

Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech at the Southern Baptist Convention, thankfully, sparked a debate over whether he should be welcomed or disinvited.  Pence’s defenders predictably quote Romans 13:1 as their argument for welcoming a political speech at the convention.

In Romans 13 the apostle Paul says:  “let everyone submit to the governing authorities.”  So, that means Pence needs to be given the time normally allotted for group prayer in order to deliver a partisan, political speech?

In light of this current debate, I thought I’d post a few serialized excerpts from my book, I Pledge Allegiance, that looks carefully at what Paul actually says in Romans 13:1-7.  The complete excerpt is from pages 56-62.  Here goes:

“Paul had specific concerns in mind as he wrote his letter to the Roman church and describing a comprehensive political theology of church-state relations was not one of them. Recalling the church’s precarious standing with the local government in a time of tax revolt is far more illuminating of Paul’s argument in this chapter. The early church lived within an authoritarian state. There was no expectation that the average person could exert any meaningful influence in bringing about broad-based, systemic social or political change. Neither Paul nor his readers had any conception of participatory democracy. Modern strategies for popular political and social transformation through civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance were inconceivable at the time. Naturally, this does not mean that Paul was devoid of political opinions or that he might not write something of universal political significance for the church, regardless of its particular location in time and space, but it does mean that properly understanding Romans 13:1–7 requires that we keep the actual historical situation foremost in our mind.

Observing God’s Order

“Several details in Romans 13 need elaboration for Paul’s ethical instruction to become clear for the modern reader. The chapter’s opening sentences twice affirm that government authority is put in place by God (v. 1). God has established a hierarchy of civil authority to regulate the otherwise strong tendency toward unruliness in human society. Anyone who rebels against this ordering of authority, therefore, is rebelling against God’s design (v. 2). Two details of Paul’s vocabulary clarify his point.

“First, Paul describes civil authority as part of the way God “orders” the world. This idea of God’s ordering, organizing, appointing or arranging is central to the passage, with several derivatives of the verbal root “to order” appearing five times in three verses (vv. 1 [twice], 2 [twice], 5 [once]). It is clearly Paul’s key concept. God “establishes/orders/institutes governing authorities” (v. 1) not by bringing any particular leader to power—though he may at times also do that—but by providentially creating structures of governing authority that exercise responsibilities delegated by God. When Paul says that “there is no authority except that which God has established” (v. 1), he is not claiming that divine providence places all rulers in their specific positions of power. He is saying that the various stations of authority that make up civil government are put in place by God’s providential ordering of human society.

“Understanding Paul’s use of “ordering” vocabulary helps to answer long- standing questions about Christian obedience to tyrannical rulers. The problematic logic, based on Romans 13, usually goes like this: If every governing authority is put in place by God, so that disobeying the authority is the equivalent of disobeying God, then even a man like Adolf Hitler must have been put in place by God, and disobeying even Hitler becomes the equivalent of disobeying God. This was, in fact, the logic used by many German Christians who swore allegiance to Hitler, the “divinely appointed” Führer.

“Though some additional arguments will be advanced below for addressing the question of obeying Hitler, Paul’s emphasis on ordering rather than personnel makes it clear that God establishes positions of authority, positions that are occupied at different times by different leaders of greater or lesser ability, wisdom, and moral fiber. Paul does not make God responsible for ordaining every leader who ever fills an office. Christians are obligated to respect the role of government per se in their lives, but that is a far cry from being obligated to obey, much less enthusiastically endorse, every wretched leader braying for national allegiance to his every foolish decision.

Subordination vs. Obedience

“A second—equally important—matter of vocabulary arises once we notice that Paul does not command believers always “to obey” the governing authorities (Rom.13:1). Translations that render Romans 13:1 along the lines of “obey the government” (Living Bible, Contemporary English Version, Good News Translation, Worldwide English) seriously misrepresent Paul’s words. Instead of commanding obedience, Paul tells the church “to be subject/to submit” to the way God has “ordered” governing authority. If Paul had intended for the church always to obey the government, he could have used the common word hupokouō (obey) to make his point. But he doesn’t do that; instead, Paul stays with the “order” word group and directs believers to be “subordinate (vv. 1, 5) to the authorities that “have been ordered” by God. In effect, he is reiterating the need for believers to cooperate with God’s design in ordering human society.

“Following the logic of verse 3 is crucial for understanding the full significance of Paul’s refusal to tell the church that they must always obey the government. Notice that Paul’s description of civil authority is utterly idealistic, in so far as he assumes that the church can always count on the government to faithfully enforce God’s expectations. “Rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong. If you don’t want to be afraid of the one in authority, do what is right and the authority will praise you” (my translation). Had Paul intended to deliver a lesson on Christian obedience, he missed a perfect opportunity to do so. Notice that he does not say, “Shed your fear of authority by doing what you are told; be obedient.” Instead, Paul counsels the church to free itself from any fear of authority by always “doing what is right.”

“At least two assumptions are at work in this statement. First, Paul’s argument assumes that government authorities will never be corrupt. Their judgments will always faithfully reflect God’s judgments concerning what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. But we all know better. The claim that “rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong” is not always true, and Paul knew it. The civil rights demonstrators who walked across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 were excoriated by the state’s governor, condemned by the local sheriff, and beaten with clubs by the local police. It is no secret to us or to Paul that rulers can easily reward those who do wrong and become a terror to those who do what is right, but Paul is describing the ideal, the way things are supposed to be, for the sake of his argument.

“Paul’s second assumption is that when government functions as it should, citizens never need to be afraid about doing what is right because “the right” is always what governing authorities will want from their citizens. Those who do what is right can be confident in their Christian obedience because they are simultaneously being submissive to authority, as God requires. In an ideal world, a believer’s act of submission will be synonymous with obedience because the perfect, incorruptible government will never ask its citizens to disobey God.

“Unpacking these assumptions at the root of Paul’s idealization of earthly authority also exposes the prick hidden in his argument. Paul knows that the Roman government does not measure up to this ideal. He cannot possibly in- struct the Roman church always to obey a government that made public sacrifice

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

to the Roman pantheon a civic responsibility; but he can tell them always to do what is right. When Christians act on what they know is right and those actions coincide with the government’s expectations, Paul’s argument predicts the happy outcome—“do what is right and the authorities will praise you.” But when doing what is right puts the believer on a collision course with government expectations, Paul’s instructions take on even greater significance: “Still do what is right.”

“God’s own perfect government awaits the coming age, when Christ is seated on his earthly throne. As long as Jesus’s disciples live in this world, however, they must anticipate times when the governing authorities will not praise them for doing what they believe is right in the sight of God. So Paul diplomatically commends the Roman government as much as he is able to in his description of the ideal, but he also assiduously avoids giving the church advice that could eventually lead it to compromise with the ungodly designs of a government that is out of step with God’s vision of truth and justice.

“Christians are not commanded always to obey their government or its laws. The church is told to be submissive and always do what is right. Obedience is one way of showing submission to authority, but submission and obedience are not synonymous. In some circumstances the submission God requires will work itself out as disobedience to governing authority. When a government expects believers to do things that the latter believe are wrong, things that will compromise their relationship with Christ, things that will violate their kingdom citizenship, then godly adherence to what is right demands conscientious disobedience against the government. At that point, faithful disciples remain submissive to misguided governmental authority, not by compromising their Christian conscience, but by freely submitting themselves to whatever punishment the authorities threaten to impose for disobedience. Living out the values of the kingdom of God always comes first for the followers of Jesus.”

A Few Thoughts on the Vice-President’s Speech at Today’s Southern Baptist Convention

I watched most of Vice-President Pences’ speech at the Southern Baptist Convention today.  Yes, the SBC has a history of extending bi-partisan

(Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

invitations to its politician guest-speakers.

But in today’s political climate under the Trump presidency, with leading Southern Baptist pastors like Robert Jeffress serving as Trump’s so-called spiritual advisors, the image of a “non-partisan” event has worn a bit thin.

Here are a few of my thoughts as I listened to the Vice-President’s speech:

  1. Listening to the convention’s applause for a thoroughly partisan, political talk reminded me of the recent service where church elders walked out on my message for being too political. Would these same men and woman have walked out on the vice-president this morning?  I doubt that very, very much.
  2. I, too, hope that the recent agreement with North Korea will be a step towards greater peace in that part of the world. I stand with the crowd that wants to see the entire world denuclearized. However, as a simple practical matter, I cannot help but wonder why North Korea would denuclearize so quickly and easily almost immediately after achieving its long-term goal of creating its own nuclear arsenal?  Their nukes are brand new! Call me confused…
  3. In terms of world peace, our obsession with North Korean nuclear weapons is downright bizarre in light of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Israel possesses an estimated 250+ nuclear weapons.

Israel has refused to sign the international Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow independent inspectors to look at its nuclear facilities.

Much of the early technology for Israel’s nuclear weapons program was obtained by Israeli spies stealing US secrets.

Israel threatens and attacks almost all of its neighbors on a regular basis.

Yet, the US never says a thing about the threat posed to world peace by Israel’s behavior or its nuclear arsenal, while we scream and shout about the dangers North Korea and Iran.  I call this hypocrisy.

  1. Well, I could go on about Pence’s misleading claims about the Trump tax cuts, unemployment, the growing income/wealth gap in American and much more, but this is enough for now.

The main question I kept asking myself was this: what does any of Pence’s partisan chest-thumping have to do with the mission of the Christian church?  I do know that there are SB pastor’s raising the same questions and objections within their denomination.  To them I say, don’t stop objecting. Insist that all South Baptist leaders and their churches prioritize the righteousness of the kingdom of God rather than Republican (or Democratic) politics.

(P.S. Excuse me for some shameless self-promotion, but I think I have written a good book about prioritizing the kingdom of God over and above all partisanship.  It’s called I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America).

Collaborator Christianity, Yesterday and Today

Fox News recently interviewed Robert Jeffress, one of president Trump’s spiritual advisors, about his upcoming prayer at Monday’s opening of the new American embassy in Jerusalem. Pastor Jeffress was as giddy as a school girl who had just been asked out on her first date.

Listen to the interview below:

As a dyed-in-the-wool Dispensationalist, he naturally piled a heavy load of theological freight onto America’s endorsement of Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel.  First, this is evidence of God’s providential hand in history.  Second, it confirms that Israel’s creation in the 1948-49 war was God’s own doing.  Third, it establishes that, for the past 3,000 years, Jerusalem has always been Israel’s capital city.  Fourth, it also “blows apart the myth that the Jews stole this land from the Palestinians 70 years ago.”

Anyone who understands the basics of logical argument, or is capable of simple clear-headedness, will easily see through the foolishness (not to mention the immorality) of Jeffress’s claims.  They are a tangle of irrational statements called non sequiturs and petitio principii – which are just fancy ways of saying that Jeffress isn’t talking sense.  (Where in the world did he get his doctorate?)

Either his conclusions have no relationship to the preceding argument (non sequiturs) or he simply assumes the truth of what he says and repeats it as an “obvious” conclusion (petitio principii).  Clearly, such muddle-headedness doesn’t bother Donald Trump or Jeffress’s congregation in Dallas, Texas.

Massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin by Israeli forces

There is, however, a more important issue that disturbs me a great deal.  It is the blatant immorality embedded in statement #4 above.  That is, I am deeply offended by Jeffress’s pompous, ignorant dismissal of Palestinian suffering over the past 70 years.

Palestinian refugees fleeing to Jordan, 1948

Jeffress’s attitude – in fact, the common-place attitude of all American Christian Zionists – is an example of what I call Collaborator Christianity.

Collaborator Christianity talks the talk of Christian faith, but its attention has moved away from Jesus to be refocused onto the idolatrous image of nationalistic patriotism.  Collaborator Christianity rewrites the good news of Jesus Christ in order to elevate a gospel of ethnic exceptionalism where God’s hand is best seen in the victorious elevation of a master race, class, or people group.

Christian history is copiously smeared with ugly, “I-can’t-believe-it” eras of Collaborator Christianity. For only a few examples, think of:

The Crusades when popes and bishops blessed Christian armies in their hellacious mission to slaughter Muslims (and any Jews who got in their way).

Circa 1520, The Spanish Inquisition at work on suspected Protestants and insincere Christians in a torture chamber. All their gruesome work was carried out in the name of Christianity; note the altar and officiating monks on the right. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

The Inquisition when church officials tortured innocent men and women with sublimely obscene creativity and then executed them simply because they had expressed themselves in ways that fell outside of the cultural norms.

Depiction of Spanish atrocities committed in the conquest of Cuba in Las Casas’s “Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias”.

The Conquistadors when Spanish galleons, loaded with soldiers, horses, weapons and priests, landed in the new world searching for riches, territorial expansion made more palatable by its pretense of missionary work.  Typically, the “men of God” were more than happy to help enslave the natives or to bless the impending genocide should the subhuman pagans prove uncooperative.

The German Christian Church which eagerly applauded Adolf Hitler as God’s anointed leader, sent to restore the fortunes of a German empire, ready, willing and able to fulfill its mission as God’s chosen nation.

Western Christian Zionism which sees God’s own hand in Israel’s brutal, war-time creation of nearly 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948-49 and 1967.  Christian Zionism typically assumes that Israel can do no wrong, while Palestinians remain genetically predisposed to terrorism.

Christian Zionists contribute tens of millions of dollars to Israel, funding immigration, new (illegal) settlements and other forms of expansionism (for examples see here, here, here and here).  Whereas, the Palestinian Christian church is ignored or slandered as historically unorthodox.

As Palestinians, the Christian population suffers the same injustices as their Muslim neighbors, oppressed by the same military occupation. Yet, the average evangelical tourist finds more excitement in visiting an Israeli synagogue than in searching out and worshiping with Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ.

Over the past six weeks, somewhere between 40 to 60 unarmed protesters have been shot and killed in Gaza, while 4,000 to 6,000 have been seriously injured (most due to Israeli gun fire) in the weekly Land Day marches. There has not been a single, serious injury, much less a fatality, on the Israeli side of the fence!

Yet, Robert Jeffress (and others like him) has the audacity publicly to betray the Lord Jesus – the Lord who told us to love our enemies and to situate ourselves among the poor and the refugees – by ignoring the vast levels of Palestinian suffering created by his beloved nation, Israel, while enjoying lavish, sumptuous diplomatic dinner parties at Jerusalem’s new American embassy.

We are surrounded on all sides by outrageous demonstrations of Collaborator Christianity.  Tragically, twenty-first century America is not unique.  The human penchant for depravity, both within and without the church, is never ending, and it knows no historic, national, religious, cultural or ethnic boundaries.

Brothers and sisters —

Remember the Crusades.

Remember the Inquisition.

Remember the German Christian Church.

Remember American evangelicalism’s ignorant indifference to Palestinian suffering as their pastors bow and scrape, offering sacrifices of money and adulation before the idols of Israeli political Zionism.

When Christian Leaders Become False Prophets #courtevangelicals

Whenever I take long-distance road trips by myself, I tend to dial in Christian radio.  Not because I enjoy it, mind you.  I don’t.  Not by a long shot.

Rather, I use my driving time as an experiment in American religious ethnography — that is, the study of religious customs and culture.  (I readily confess. I am an academic nerd of the first order).

I am always struck by both the growing number of right-wing talk shows and news broadcasts, together with the complete absence of anything resembling progressive, liberal or even moderate news reporting.

A few years ago I mentioned to a close friend that whenever the United States finally crosses the line and slips into a dictatorial, fascist state, our new American Fuehrer will have a large network of ready-made news media at his disposal, naturally complimenting the already servile corporate, mainstream news.

That fascist, propaganda outlet will be Christian radio, together with Christian television and online media.

I am no prophet, but my cynical musings continue to take shape. (Read this fascinating Politico article, “Church of the Donald: Never mind Fox. Trump’s most reliable media mouthpiece is now Christian TV”).

A few days ago, John Fea’s very fine blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, pointed out the development of Robert Jeffress’s “Path to Victory” website, which gives a good deal of attention to his many appearances on Fox News.

Jeffress is president Trump’s so-called “spiritual adviser” who, like many evangelicals today, has tragically confused the kingdom of God with partisan politics.  This confusion is a cancer that has spread all throughout American evangelicalism.  Sorting through this confusion is the primary motivation behind my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Jeffress has the gall to describe his  website as “a brand new ministry platform.”  Whatever it may be, however, it is not Christian ministry.  It reminds me, rather, of the false priests and prophets (who seem always to be in the majority, both in ancient Israel and in America today) condemned by the prophet Jeremiah.

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain…They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.  ‘Peace, peace they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No. They have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:13-15; also 8:10-12)

Again, I cannot help but recall the many ways that this very same confusion once worked to extinguish genuine Christian witness in Nazi Germany.

No, Trump is not Hitler.  But history does repeat itself.  Trump has successfully normalized abominable, inhumane, ignorant behavior, ideas and policies in our public discourse.

Men like Robert Jeffress are normalizing the betrayal of gospel truth for 30 silver pieces of glad-handing, White House receptions, photo ops and D.C.  gossip about the many ways in which evangelicals continue to serve as the best useful idiots inside the beltway.

A Review of Scot McKnight’s Kingdom Conspiracy

I recently read Scot McKnight’s very fine book, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church (Brazos, 2014), in which he discusses the New Testament’s presentation of the kingdom of God and its relevance for the church today.  In doing this, McKnight provides an especially important description of the missionary dimension of God’s kingdom.

McKnight argues, correctly in my view, that “kingdom work” (as many are prone to say nowadays) is always centered within the Christian church.  Then, from within the body of Christ, kingdom ministry radiates outward into the surrounding society and the rest of the world (see especially chapter 7, “Kingdom Mission is Church Mission”).

But, he warns, if Christian social activism is not an extension of the local church’s gospel teaching, fellowship, ministry and shared experience, then it is not kingdom work.  It may be laudable social and political work, but it has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.  “This means all true kingdom mission is church mission” (96).

McKnight’s church-centered understanding of God’s kingdom is pivotal to his argument.  On this point, Prof. McKnight and I are in agreement.

But McKnight’s laser-like focus on the local church also accounts for the book’s central mistake.  For he defines the kingdom and the church as synonymous with each other.  The kingdom of God IS the church, and the church IS the kingdom of God. (Beginning with chapter 5, “Kingdom is People” and passim).

This is where Prof. McKnight and I must part company.

Anyone who has read my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st-Century America, will observe the similarity between McKnight’s emphasis on the missional dimension of God’s kingdom and my own.  But my readers will also recall my insistence that the church is best understood as the citizenry of God’s kingdom, not the kingdom itself.

 

It is unfortunate that Prof. McKnight’s concern for tightening the connection between church and kingdom leads him to such an extreme. I say “unfortunate” because I don’t believe that he is any more comfortable with his identification of church with kingdom than I am.

There are numerous places throughout Kingdom Conspiracy where McKnight slips alternative definitions into the mix without acknowledging that he has just changed the terms of his discussion.  In other words, he masks the limitations of his explicit definition of kingdom by implicitly expanding that definition when his argument demands it.

For example, he sometimes notes that a kingdom “implies a king, a rule, a people, a land, and a law” (76, 159, 205).  So, the kingdom is not synonymous with people alone, after all.  It is more complex.

He also teasingly refers to “the important overlap of kingdom and church” (95), without noting that an overlap is not the same as an identity.  We are left with a suggestion that God’s kingdom overlaps with something more than people.

At one point, he resorts to the very language that he had previously criticized and rejected, referring to “the kingdom as the realm of redemption” (114).  Elsewhere he repeats that the word kingdom asserts “God’s dynamic rule” (126), the more widely held view that I endorse.

McKnight also notes that God’s kingdom brings redemption, and this redemption is “cosmic” in scope (151-52, 156, 159); that is, it includes a great deal in addition to human beings.  The kingdom of God also involves Christ’s subjugation of “principalities and powers” as well as the imminent redemption of all creation.

Finally, Prof. McKnight frequently lapses into my preferred terminology:  Christians are described as the citizens of God’s kingdom (75, 76, 99, 111, 155, 157, 164, 207).  Which, in my view, is the proper way to explain the New Testament’s perspective on God’s kingdom rule and its relationship to the people of God.

Think for a moment of what it means to live in the United States.  We the people are not synonymous with all that is America.  We are citizens of this country, but the people and the nation are not identical or coextensive.  America is as much (if not more) an idea; an idea about liberty with a specific history; a projection of power and influence as much as it is a particular population.

McKnight is forced into using this rhetorical sleight of hand because his preferred definition, identifying the kingdom exclusively with the church, simply does not comport with the full spectrum of Biblical evidence.

Am I quibbling over a minor issue?  I don’t think so.

Both Prof. McKnight and I would agree that it is important to understand the answers to Biblical questions accurately.  Thus, it is also important to understand that God’s kingdom rule is not confined only to the church.

God’s reign is working its way throughout all of history, although we may not always be able to explain exactly where and how that is happening. God’s ways are rarely self-evident.  Although church work certainly lies at the heart of kingdom work, for redeeming sinful folks like us is at the heart of Jesus’ mission, God’s kingdom is much bigger than any of us.

God rules victoriously and will one day be glorified, not only by the church, but by angels, demons, principalities, powers, and all things above the earth and below.  These spiritual powers now tremble at the knowledge of their ultimate defeat.

The kingdom of God is our heavenly Father’s redemptive reign, His saving sovereignty, now being established over all creation.  Believers are privileged to become citizens of that victorious kingdom, but our citizenship is evidence and a partial product (central and vital, but not the whole) of Christ’s reign.

I suspect that the heavenly host of innumerable cherubim and seraphim, the legions of fallen angels, as well as the new heavens and the new earth, including the redeemed supernovae, unseen galaxies, black holes and dark matter will one day loudly object to the ecclesiastical hubris which suggests that God’s kingdom involves only the church.

FADA Will Legalize Religiously-Based Bigotry

22 Republican senators (including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Orrin Hatch), led by Mike Lee (R-Utah), are trying for a 3rd time to shepherd the “First Amendment Defense Act” (FADA) through Congress.

Using the 1st amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion, FADA would codify legal discrimination against members of the LGBT community, as well as anyone having sex outside of marriage.

It is an “anti-discrimination” law that would legalize discrimination.

The bill’s language is classically Orwellian.  It states that FADA will “ensure that the Federal Government shall not take any discriminatory action” against those who excuse their own discriminatory actions as a requirement of their religious faith.

In other words, under the guise of “protecting opponents of same-sex marriage,” FADA will legalize discrimination against LGBT people, including heterosexuals guilty of fornication.

There are so many things wrong with this effort, both in its motivation and execution, it is hard to know where to begin.

Not too many years ago, identical “religious liberty” arguments were the foundation stones supporting racist Jim Crow laws throughout this country.  Business owners could legally refuse service to black people and get away with it, because their discrimination expressed a “deeply held” religious conviction.

The passage of time has not improved the fatally flawed logic behind FADA.  Nor has it sweetened the discriminatory stench clinging to its proponents.

Neither can it hide the blatant avarice lying at the root of this legislation.  For it is largely motivated by the love of money.

Reading the bill reveals that, without exception, every example of potential, government “discriminatory action” – the threats to religious freedom that FADA aims to defend against – concerns maintaining an organization’s tax exempt status or other government financial benefits.

In other words, the goal of FADA is to ensure that no one will lose their religiously-based tax breaks, while exercising their right to indulge in religiously-based discrimination.

What hypocrites religious people can be, especially when fighting to protect the preferential status granted by a government tax exemption.

Such people, who insist on defending their place at the public trough, should be expected to keep the same public rules as everyone else.  If they don’t like it, there is a simple solution:  surrender your tax exemption.

Furthermore, the renewed push for FADA is another example of the Religious Right’s persistent lust for social and political power.  It is a quest for control.  Not simply to have a place in the public square, but to control access to the public square.

It is another chapter in the Right’s continuing desire for a new age of Christendom.  In Christendom, the Christian church holds sway over who is in, who is out, and who plays by which rules.  As expressed by FADA, Christians would implement a bizarre misapplication of church discipline to those living outside the church. (I know, my theological slip is showing.  I do believe that the ancient, and entirely Biblical, prohibition against same-sex intimacy is correct and remains legitimate.)

Granted, the courts will continue to have difficult debates on the legal status of the numerous, and highly variable, religious freedom claims brought before them.  But there is no Biblical foundation to the claim being made by certain Christians that faith in Jesus requires them to have no business dealings with LGBT people.

That is a self-righteous distortion of Christian witness.

The apostle Paul confronted this very misapplication of church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13.  Some members of the church misunderstood Paul’s earlier warning to remain separate from “sexually immoral people.” They mistook him to mean that they couldn’t do business or associate with people outside the church who lived at variance with Paul’s ethical teaching.

However, every Greco-Roman city in Paul’s day was filled with people living any number of alternative, “immoral” lifestyles (as defined by Christian teaching). It was virtually impossible to conduct any type of successful business, including Paul’s own ventures as a traveling tent-maker, without striking deals with such “immoral” customers.

Here is Paul’s correction to the Corinthian mistake:

I did not mean for you to stop associating with the people of this world who are immoral…In that case you would have to leave this world…What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.

Only a racist, discriminatory, judgmental religion fears compromising its moral values by allowing the faithful to rub shoulders and do business with those unlike themselves.

The 1st amendment already protects that sort of religious bigotry.  There is no law against being a religious white supremacist.  But neither should there be a law guaranteeing the tax-exempt status of religious bigots who trample on the laws protecting equal access to the public square for everyone else.