Skip to content

Sep 17

Where do we disagree?

Where does the disagreement over Christian same-sex marriage really rest?

The disagreement over Christian same-sex marriage tends to revolve around the interpretation of the few passages that come closest to the topic: Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-28, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10, and some include Genesis 19 as well. We then ask questions like, How should we translate this word? Exactly which sex act does the author describe in this passage? Can we infer from the social setting whether the sex is mutual? These are good questions, and they will matter to some degree at some point. However, we need to start with the wider narratives of Scripture, which ground and frame the particular, topical passages. For example, it doesn’t matter what the Levitical commands in 18:22 and 20:13 prohibit until we hash out, generally, how the book of Leviticus fits into the wider arc of Scripture, and how and why the teachings of Leviticus would matter today.

I do not base my position on Christian same-sex marriage on the outcome of the six exegetical debates. That approach would oversimplify the problem and understate what is at stake. Anyways, I think those passages could all be missing from the Bible and we would still get to the same conclusions, affirming or not — just as a hypothetical seventh prohibition would not necessarily tell us anything more. Instead, I base my position on wider theological convictions that come through a reading of the whole Biblical story and the place of procreation in that story. This method drives us much faster into the heart of the disagreement.

Procreation in the Hebrew Bible

In the beginning, God created humanity in the image of God, and blessed them to rule over the animals and the birds and the land. Genesis 1:26, whether read from a creationist or evolutionary perspective, tells us about the goal for which God created humanity. We are to reflect God back to the world by exercising wise stewardship over the world. The next two verses continue this point: in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. Just as in 1:26 God gives humanity a vocation to steward the earth — to act like God himself acts towards the earth — in 1:27-28 God gives humanity a vocation to populate the earth — just as God himself did when he created humanity in the beginning. We can see this concept linguistically in our latinate word “procreation,” creating forth something new. When we procreate, we participate in the work of Creation that God has already begun, continuing it, blessed to do so as if we were God, in our role as divine image bearers. Verses 27-28 cannot be separated from 26 because the unit 26-28 together claims that God created humanity to extend his own work in Creation. God made us in his image to steward the world (26) which requires sexual difference (27) for the purpose of procreation (28) to fulfill this stewardship of the world.

The rest of the Hebrew Bible illustrates and confirms this theology of procreation. God plans to redeem humanity from its fallen state by saving one man, and through him, one nation, and through that nation, one Messiah. God calls Abraham, creates a covenant with him, and blesses him with a promise to have “more descendants than the sand on the shore, than the stars in the sky.” Barrenness, decedents, legacy, familial blessing, and God’s gift of fertility dominate the pages of Genesis to follow. These themes continue to dominate the Hebrew Bible after Genesis, becoming even more prominent in times of national destruction. Ironically, the national destruction itself usually comes from kings taking many foreign wives, attempting to build massive households with hundreds of descendants. Procreation is a blessing, and when pursued in violation of Torah it becomes a curse, but either way it remains the center of the narratives. Remember the ancient context as well. Israel was a hard and rugged place. You would simply not survive if you could not have kids. Because Israel was always only one generation away from siege, pillage, exile, and destruction, the covenant with Abraham would have given promise for security and hope for a better future. The Hebrew Bible’s extensive genealogies also show us the importance of procreation. Long lists connect everyone in the nation to Abraham, to verify their membership in the promises God made in the covenant. They also helped Israelites who grew up reciting their genealogy to remember that the promise would one day extend through them to their children.

Most people agree up to this point. Few in the disagreement over Christian same-sex marriage jump ship before here. (James Brownson and perhaps Sarah Coakley are two notable exceptions). This is because the above is, in my view, incontestable. The themes are too consistent and pervasive to ignore. The disagreements I want to consider in the next section are the ones which start when we move from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament. Does the New Testament teach that procreation is normative? What could change that would nullify the former teaching, which crucially is rooted in our portrait of Creation?

Procreation in the New Testament

Let me give four examples of the kind of analysis that complicates the procreation mandate. Two on each side.

On the one hand, we see continuity with the former portrait. Years ago in a seminary class on Biblical Theology and Interpretation, D. A. Carson took us to Mark 10 to illustrate this continuity. Have you not read? Jesus asks. Jesus uses Genesis 1-2 for the moral question of divorce and draws directly on the older narrative without qualification. He also intentionally undermines the exception that Moses made in Deuteronomy 24. This draws us away from a possible trajectory where if something is true in Creation, but precedents are set later on, we can expand outward following the later precedents. No, Jesus avoids the later legal precedent and builds his command on Creation.

On the other hand, we see discontinuity when it comes to procreation itself. What happens to procreation in the New Testament? Why does it vanish almost entirely from the text? There are a few mentions of children here and there, about allowing them into the Kingdom, about discipling them wisely, to bring them up in the way of the Lord, and so on. These teachings help people who already have children, but they tell us nothing about the procreation mandate. Now consider 1 Corinthians 7, one of the few extended texts about sexual practice in the New Testament. Paul bases his sexual advice on martial duty (1-3), mutual consent (4-5), temptation from Satan (presumably to adultery or fornication) (5-9), God’s call to live at peace (15-16), our freedom in Christ (21-24), the coming apocalypse (25-31), our undivided focus on the Lord (32-35), and the honor of virgins and of singleness as a widow (36-40). Paul’s advice comes from numerous places in moral theology and gives us a rich picture of complex wisdom, as well as the types of sources we should value in making these complex decisions. But where is procreation?

Returning to the first hand, the relationship between early Christianity and the Mosaic Law is difficult, but not really on this question. The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 decides to integrate Gentiles into the people of God and commands them to do four things: abstain from meat that has been strangled, abstain from meat that still has blood, abstain from food sacrificed to idols, and abstain from sexual immorality. These commands probably express something like the Law of Noah (though this was not explicitly developed until the early Talmudic Rabbis over a century later), which means laws God gave to all humanity through Noah, the father of all later humans. These kinds of laws are not detailed in the actual text of Genesis 6-9, but the concept lurks behind Acts 15:23-29 and Romans 2:12-16 to provide grounding for universal moral commandments. The fourth command in Acts 15 simply prohibits “sexual immorality,” but presumably all Jews would flesh out this term with Leviticus 18, where the Torah gives a detailed list of what practices count as sexual immorality. By declaring sexual immorality a universal prohibition (not limited to Jews), the Jerusalem Council made it impossible for Gentiles to use an “abolition of the Law” type argument to get around the Leviticus prohibitions.

Returning to the second hand, because Gentiles in the New Testament are “adopted” into the family of God, the need for procreation to advance the ethnic people solely of Israel has faded. The procreation mandate may seem to vanish from the New Testament, but in reality it has been transformed into the evangelism mandate. Converts are like children in the faith, raised to maturity by our faithful parentage, to become bearers of the good news of the Gospel, resulting in their own spiritual children one day. Gentiles receive paternity in Abraham by adoption through Christ (Romans 4), and so procreation is no longer necessary in its function to expand the people of God. You can draw this distinction against the Hebrew Bible too sharply — there are a few non-Israelites who join the family of God, such as Rahab, Jethro, Ruth and Naaman. But overall it seems that the multiethnic movement that begins in the New Testament accompanies the transformation of the procreation mandate because they are inherently tied together. The New Testament’s theology of adoption, then, decenters and transforms the procreation mandate.

Where do we disagree?

My reading of the disagreement leads me here. How you square these circles will determine whether Christian same-sex marriage can be morally good. Does the procreation mandate persist in marriage, or does it fade away with the coming of Messiah? Better, does the current apocalypse (1 Corinthians 7:17-31) interrupt the procreation mandate as a whole, or does it interrupt procreation within marriage? This distinction makes or breaks Robert Song’s argument in his book Covenant and Calling, which I recommend reading. If the apocalypse disrupts the need to procreate generally, then celibacy is affirmed because marriage is not required. But if the apocalypse disrupts the procreation mandate in marriage, then constitutionally non-procreative marriages can become morally neutral or good.

These questions can hinge on the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, not to mention the even wider theological topics I have not addressed here. What about natural law theology? What about gender complementarity beyond procreation (such as gender roles)? What about the sacramental end of marriage, which is that marriage signs to us Christ’s own relationship with the Church? What about gender at the resurrection? Needless to say this disagreement is complicated to an almost endless degree. It works at some of the core questions scholars pose about the relationship between the early Jesus movement and the Jewish context from which it came. The complexity of our disagreement should humble us. When you dismount your moral high horse, it becomes easier to see others eye to eye and recognize the good-faith effort they make, even when they come to conclusions you do not. This complexity may even allow for church membership across the affirming disagreement, since we already have membership with many who disagree on questions much more weighty than the technical issue with Robert Song’s argument above. For example, if your church includes Calvinists and Arminians as members, I find it difficult to exclude those who disagree in good faith on some of the biblical-theological specifics outlined here. However, traditions with a rich confessional heritage will likely come to a narrower set of conclusions, and from there we need to debate the traditions and their confessions on their own merits as such. Like all disagreements in Christian moral theology, the disagreement over Christian same-sex marriage leads us down a path, bounded by Tradition and Scripture, to the God with whom we seek one common life.

My point in this post is to encourage Christians to think more widely than the six topical passages in isolation — to attempt to see those passages within the totality of our Christian moral vision and the Scriptural narratives that ground and frame that moral vision. Focusing on those passages alone allows us to misconstrue their value and place within Christian thought, as well as over-interpret them to say what they may never have meant. Submitting the meaning and function of these passages to what we already know is like building your house upon a rock: working from the firm foundation of the most central and clear parts of God’s Word to the peripheral and unclear parts. We already do this on so many other topics. Stronger biblical-theological reasoning could help the disagreement over Christian same-sex marriage reach greater understanding, mutual respect, and precision. By the Spirit who guides the church into all truth, it may even lead to resolution.

Apr 26

Encounters with the Unknown Christ

Spring Break allowed me time to read Eleanor McLaughlin’s book Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Late Theology (2020, Lexington Books/Fortress Academic), a revision of her 2015 Oxford dissertation. It is prohibitively expensive, at $95 hardcover, but my library was willing to buy the book and loan it first to me. Interested readers who lack access could consider the $45 ebook version.

McLaughlin’s book is the first complete study of the concept of “unconscious Christianity” in Bonhoeffer’s theology, in particular in the final few years of his life (1940-45). What does this term mean? McLaughlin labors to construct a definition from the scant material references to the term (Unbewußtes Christentum), and by page 95 the definition arrives:

Unconscious Christianity refers to the whole body of good people who have encountered Christ without being aware of it and do not self-identify as Christians. In addition, they may fulfill any of these six criteria: (1) to have faith without knowing it, (2) to be selfless and participate in Jesus’s being-for-others, (3) to not seek to be other than what they are, (4) to value the penultimate [i.e., this world, as opposed to the world-to-come], (5) to perform acts of faith without reflecting on them, (6) to be a member of the Bürgertum... [I]t seems that as he further develops his ideas on unconscious Christianity Bonhoeffer suggests that unconscious Christians are recognized as righteous by God.

McLaughlin arrives at this definition by placing Bonhoeffer in context, in four ways. First, theologians Richard Rothe and Martin Rade had used the term before him, and Karl Rahner used the similar “anonymous Christian” in the same era (though he meant something else). Second, Bonhoeffer belongs in the context of the German Bürgertum [upper-middle] social class. Third, he was a member of a barely religious family, whose work against the Nazis later funded his fiction writing and this thoughts about unconscious Christianity. Fourth and finally, McLaughlin situates Bonhoeffer in his late theology, which in general is neither in clean continuity with his earlier thoughts nor radical change from them, but is a “fluid” “movement” (citing Hanfried Muller), “developing” the earlier ideas into the later (146). Additionally, McLaughlin situates Bonhoeffer’s unconscious Christianity on the back end in the context of mid-twentieth century “death of God” theology, naming William Hamilton and J. A. T. Robinson (144-146).

In other words, this book is a formal study and an exercise in historical theological exegesis, more so than a positive or constructive theological argument. I was surprised and impressed by the great lengths to which McLaughlin went to articulate Bonhoeffer’s exact view and the limits of what we can reconstruct. I can imagine a reader seeking a constructive theological argument reading the introduction, chapters 1 and 5, and the conclusion, and benefiting greatly. Meanwhile readers interested in the historical Bonhoeffer, in Bonhoeffer Studies proper, or in theological method (especially on extracting theology from fiction writing) would benefit from the whole book.

Quickly, I want to sketch the four references to unconscious Christianity in Bonhoeffer’s corpus.

First, in his essay “Ultimate and Penultimate Things,” a chapter from Ethics written in 1940 at Ettal, Bonhoeffer made a marginal comment on the manuscript (which did not enter the printed text.) The essay in general is about not sacrificing the life to come for the life of this world, and vice versa. Christians should live in both the ultimate, and the penultimate, at the same time. Towards the end of the essay he describes people who “no longer dare to call themselves Christians,” who we must then claim as Christians. We should do this because the human and good work that these people do in the world unites the penultimate with the ultimate. Then comes the note. He writes, “Unbewußtes Christentum. Balzac. Leute des Antichristus.” This note turns out to be a convoluted reference to the play Les Comediens sans le savior by Honore de Balzac (1846). The characters in the play each stand for something in French society, though they are unaware of it. Bonhoeffer is presumably then saying that unconscious Christians are playing a part in Kingdom of God without knowing it either. The reference to the Antichrist, writes McLaughlin, is more or less inexplicable (65-66).

Second, in his novel Novel, written in late 1943 from Tegel, Bonhoeffer wrote the term unconscious Christianity into the dialogue. Two boys, one from a working class and the other an upper-middle class [Bürgertum] family, are talking about trust and social class and the ways that the underclass have been so mistreated that they cannot trust anyone. (This would be Bonhoeffer’s view of the underclass, of course). Talking about his family, the Bürgertum boy says,

“But now I’m thinking about Papa and Mama. You can’t really say they’re Christians, at least not in the customary sense of the word. They don’t go to church. They only say grace before meals because of Little Brothers. And yet they’re as little affected by the spirit of false ambition, careerism, titles, and medals as your [the working class boy’s] mother is. They prefer a good laborer or craftsman a hundred times over some puffed-up ‘Excellency.’ Why is that?”

Ulrich thought for a moment. “That’s because without knowing it and certainly without talking about it, in truth they still base their lives on Christianity, an unconscious Christianity.”

This is the clearest use of unconscious Christianity in Bonhoeffer’s surviving writings. The family is probably based on his own family’s quasi-irreligious nature. The thing that distinguishes them is that they are unaffected by titles, etc., which corresponds well to Bonhoeffer’s theology of self-forgetfulness and kenosis in Christ, the self-for-others.

Third, in his letter to Bethge postmarked July 27, 1944, Bonhoeffer used the term in a theological context. This was just one week after the failed July 20 assassination attempt on Hitler, which would later lead to the order to execute Bonhoeffer. Here is the quote:

Your [Bethge’s] formulation of our theological theme is very clear and simple. The question how there can be a “natural” piety is at the same time the question about “unconscious Christianity” that preoccupies me more and more. The Lutheran dogmatists distinguished a fides directa from a fides reflexa. They related that to the so-called faith of the infant at baptism. I wonder if we are not here addressing a very wide-reaching problem. More about that, hopefully, soon.

Unfortunately Bonhoeffer did not return to this point in his surviving letters. (Bethge burned the September 1944 letters when his own arrest was ordered, so perhaps it was there, but alas). McLaughlin writes that Bonhoeffer’s example of infant baptism teases out another distinction, between faith that would be “by reflection within the individual” and faith that “simply indicate[s] the manner of being of that individual.” Unconscious Christianity, then, would be the latter type. It is not inward “faith” (i.e., how most evangelicals understand the word) but a fact about the person’s manner of being. Bonhoeffer’s statement that this could be a very wide-reaching problem intrigues me. He is including the unconscious Christian in the fides directa along with baptized infants, but I can only wonder how much further Bonhoeffer would have pressed this logic had he survived the war.

Fourth, in his notes in preparation for his new book (of which only the outline was ever written), Bonhoeffer makes several scattered comments on a chapter on unconscious Christianity. He writes:

Unconscious Christianity: Left hand doesn’t know / what the right hand is doing / Matt. 25. / Not knowing what to pray. Motto: Jesus said to him: “What do you want me to do for you?”

These cryptic comments need explaining. The first refers to Matthew 6:3, “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” The reference to Matthew 25 is to the parable of the goats and sheep. The motto comes from Mark 10:51, Jesus’s question to the blind man (who replies, “Rabbi, I want to see!”). I don’t think McLaughlin explains the comment, “Not knowing what to pray,” or at least she does not address it in the two textual analyses on 70-72 and 87-89. However it must come from Romans 8:26 where Paul writes that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.” The basic picture that emerges from these scattered references is someone ignorant (right/left hands) of their good deeds (sheep) and yet by their deeds they are encountering Jesus (Matthew 25:40/45). It takes more theological creativity to fit the “motto” and the reference to Romans 8 into this vision of unconscious Christianity, which may explain why McLaughlin shies from them.

In my own words, here is what I would say. Bonhoeffer seems to radicalize the parable of the Sheep and Goats so that it is more than an exhortation to care for the poor. Instead, caring for the poor (and etc. selfless good deeds) are an encounter with Jesus, whether people realize this or not. Bonhoeffer was driven to this view by his own situation. His co-churchmen had caved almost immediately to the Nazi regime in 1933 and were helplessly compromised in the fight against evil. Conversely, many of his co-conspirators were not religious, but they were fighting evil at great risk to themselves for the sake of the weakest in society. Bonhoeffer has this visceral understanding that the ones he expected to do right and wrong, had done wrong and right. This forced him to develop theology to explain this real phenomenon. Because his a Lutheran, he pulls on the fides directa and thinks that his co-conspirators “have faith” just as baptized infants “have faith” but do not realize it. They are playing Christian roles, like the unconscious French characters from the Balzac play, but more than this (as his thought develops from 1940 to 1944), they are participating in Christ, which is faith. The connection to Romans 8 is more obscure, but I can imagine ways to develop it which would look like Sarah Coakley’s argument in “Praying the Trinity” (chapter three of God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’). This is too abstract, I need to return to it later. But there is some connection between the Spirit placing us in the position of the Son before the Father during prayer, which corresponds well to Bonhoeffer’s unconscious Christianity. Unconscious Christians, if they really are participating in Christ as faith by their self-denying love and service, are not only participating in Christ but necessarily also participating in the Divine Life of the Triune God in total. Maybe this could extend the concept of unconscious Christianity to address a “very far-reaching problem.”

McLaughlin’s conclusion makes several valuable points.

First, calling someone a Christian when they are not, “as a tool to reveal to people who they really are, as though they are not competent enough to decide their identity for themselves,” is not pastorally wise (189). Bonhoeffer always has a pastoral heart in his discussions of this topic, which we should emulate. Many Muslims for example, and almost all Jews, would bristle at being named Christians without their say. I would add that it flies directly in the face of what Charles Taylor calls “the politics of recognition,” and so is uniquely problematic today.

Second, McLaughlin points to Tom Gregg’s book Theology against Religion: Constructive Dialogues with Bonhoeffer and Barth. There he has addressed contemporary sociology and ecclesiology and secularism and so on, and uses Bonhoeffer to do so. McLaughlin suggests his analysis could be supplemented by including unconscious Christianity. I agree, I assume, but also would like to point the arrow the other direction. Bonhoeffer’s “world come of age” came mostly through his reading of Wilhelm Dilthey, whose sociology has come under extraordinary fire. His secularization thesis has more or less been killed by Charles Taylor and others. My question is not just how Gregg’s analysis could grow by including Bonhoeffer’s insights, but how Bonhoeffer’s analysis could grow by including Gregg’s, Taylor’s, and others contemporary insights about secularism. The “world come of age” Bonhoeffer prophesied has come in some ways but not others, and the world it promised to replace still haunts us.

Third, McLaughlin points out that people today can be unconscious Christians, not just people in Nazi Germany. She does not use the term, but the social justice movement comes immediately to mind. There are many grifters and snake oil sellers in the social justice movement, I am aware, but someone who engages in social justice activism with the intent to love and serve the most marginalized may be encountering the unknown Christ.

McLaughlin’s book is judicious and compelling, and theologians will now have to debate the merits and usefulness of Bonhoeffer’s concept. I am not wholly convinced by Bonhoeffer’s unconscious Christianity, and am more likely to limit the concept to “encounters with” (rather than “participation in”) the unknown Christ. As I have struggled with deconstructing and reconstructing my faith the past two years, I have wondered where Jesus went. Many of my friends ask the same question. Could it be that I have had unconscious encounters with Jesus? “Could it be that you have been praying, unconsciously, all along?” suggested a kind professor of mine. I am less interested in what unconscious Christianity would mean for soteriology and more for discipleship and daily Christian living. Maybe my thoughts, my actions, my lamentations and loves, have been more faithful than ever before, because to my conscious mind they were alms given in secret.

Jan 28

Marginal Biden

How do you measure rainfall during a hurricane? Given the situation, you wouldn’t think to do so at all.

The Trump administration was so plagued with scandals, so consumed with Trump’s own persona, and so lacked transparency, that grading it in real time felt impossible. Who can spare the time to evaluate their transportation policy while Russia / Ukraine / COVID / Fraud / Insurrection / etc. dominated the news? And rightly so. These were major scandals, and several of them would have resulted in impeachment and conviction in a better world. Remember that this was an intentional political strategy: to “flood the zone with shit,” in the words of Steve Bannon.

One benefit to the Biden administration’s “return to normal” will be our ability to grade the government in real time on their policy decisions. I don’t expect major, term-defining scandals under Biden, and whatever scandals do happen will probably be lame and somewhat wonky. Biden has earned his “Sleepy Joe” reputation for a reason.

(“Normal” can be bad if the norm is bad. I am aware that transparent, functional, accountable government is not sufficient for a just society. I do think it is prerequisite though.)

With that said,

Here are nine actions from Biden’s first week.

Some are good, some bad. I tried to choose a representative sample, though of course I am driven by my own narrative here.

1. The administration wants to increase the speed of vaccine distribution. They have already hit their 100M/100d target (the Trump administration was basically already there by the time the Biden team took over). However, German Lopez argues that this is not enough, that the Biden admin needs to press harder for more ambitious goals. The difficulty with ambitious goals is that you may not meet them, but I for one would love for the pandemic to be mostly over by the fall. The administration has a call scheduled with the pharma companies. But the new leadership is new. They need an extraordinary amount of coordination to make this work at scale. They have already increased the goal to 150M/100d, and released a comprehensive plan. Good.

2. Signed a Memorandum to reopen ACA/Obamacare enrollment from Feb 15 to May 15. Trump should have done this, with so many people suddenly unemployed mid-year due to the pandemic, but did not, I assume for the optics of Obamacare looking like a useful program. A Vox piece questions how many people this special enrollment period can help, since the Biden administration did not give a projection. Joaquin Castro wants Biden to make a special provision for DACA recipients to join the ACA this year. Good but Small.

3. Biden signed an executive order for DOJ to stop renewing contracts with private prisons. This sounds like a nice olive branch to the left (Ilhan Omar gave it a ✅). But as John Pfaff from Fordham Law pointed out, this move 1. further concentrates power in public sector prison unions, who 2. make even more money than the profit-seeking private prisons, and 3. the order only applies to renewals, not current contracts, so anything expiring after 2024 can be overturned without consequence if the Republicans win in 2024. In Pfaff’s words, “it could be a step BACKWARDS. It does almost nothing, and frames things in a way that leads us to give too much of a pass to the institutions doing the real harm.” Bad Absent Further Changes.

4. Executive order directing FEMA to cover 100% of the cost of emergency homeless sheltering during the pandemic (until at least September 30th). State and local governments were paying 25% and FEMA 75% for the length of the pandemic, despite SLG being cash-strapped because of the decline in sales tax revenue. Shifting the cost to FEMA will allow safe and sanitary sheltering among homeless populations, which helps their personal health, and more generally prevents virus transmission among the population at large. Good.

5. Renewed the Trump administration’s eviction moratorium another two months. Renters under an income threshold ($100k single, $200k household) cannot be evicted and homeowners with FHA-backed mortgages cannot be evicted. Other aspects of the eviction system remain state-level, out of Biden’s (or Trump’s) control. The eviction moratorium funding in the CARES Act only lasted a few months, so Biden has also requested another $30B in funding from Congress (which they will give). Good.

6. Biden nominated Avril Haines for Director of National Intelligence, confirmed 84-10 by the Senate. Haines said at her hearing that under the Biden administration, the intelligence community would “speak truth to power.” In addition to vacuous rhetoric, Haines brings with her the political baggage of having covered up the Senate’s CIA torture report and having written the Obama administration’s very lax drone assassination guidelines. This is extremely sinister, and for that reason she will make a great DNI. Bad.

7. DACA will continue under Biden, and he has prepared an extremely ambitious immigration reform bill for Congress. The bill is so ambitious it must be a negotiating tactic to arrive at some lesser bipartisan agreement later, but that’s still good. Ending the legal limbo of DACA and TPS (temporary protected status) people is good. Granting a path to citizenship is good for national integration, helps grow the US tax base, leads to permanence of local/regional circular flow, creates jobs (on net), helps counter the low US birthrate, and does not have the clear partisan effect that pundits think. (Immigrants from Central and South America tend to be Catholic or Pentecostal, hold to socially conservative views, and increasingly vote Republican). According to opinion polling from Ipsos, Biden’s actions on DACA as well as other topics are popular. Good but Tentative.

8. Biden signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15/hr, and his administration is pushing a tight vote (likely 50/50/Kamala) on the national minimum wage as part of the next COVID relief bill. This will raise the minimum wage to $15/hr for all employees. We needed to do this years ago, if for no other reason than to keep pace with inflation during the Fed’s QE program, but now that 2020 has seen a surreal increase in the monetary supply we will need a higher minimum wage. There are some policy problems but they have good solutions. Slow but Good.

9. Directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development “to take steps necessary to redress racially discriminatory federal housing policies” through further enforcement of the FHA. This is an important move for racial justice, and the order includes reviewing the extent to which the Trump administration failed to enforce the FHA. Which, to be clear, was a large extent. This is a signaling move for Biden’s HUD agenda. Small but Promising.

In Conclusion

The Biden administration’s “return to normal” — its likely lack of scandal, its policy precision, its broad popular appeal, its concentration on tangible goals rather than Biden himself — will enable us to grade on an A through F scale, rather than F+ through F- scale. He may not do a great job at overcoming partisan gridlock. Various actions will backfire (like the private prison order above). Some of his decisions may work but not work enough. His legislative strategy given a split Senate will require more compromise than he wants. And so on. I join many others in expressing relief that all this is the case.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Nov 20

Five Years!

This blog began on 11/20/15. Something in my AP Literature class inspired me to write more, and to put my writing out there to be subjected to scrutiny. That scrutiny has been great for my writing. Blogging through college and seminary helped me to avoid developing an overcomplicated, jargon-heavy academic style. My blog also has had some big moments of its own, most notably my coming out post in March 2019. This little project has become part of my story and part of me as well.

I don’t know how much I will be blogging anymore. Church work is hard and bitter and Christians can be quite judgmental. Sometimes this is good for leaders (James 3:1) but often it is not, so putting my most controversial ideas out there online can become more of a liability than an asset.

With that said, there is effectively no way for me to shut up, so the blog will continue and I will have to write wisely. I have a few focused arguments that I think need to be made. So I’ll make those arguments and otherwise try to post devotionally, writing out of reflective curiosity and generous love. In that spirit here is one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite people.

Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: “I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.” Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to “give away” on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches.

― Henri Nouwen

.

Photo by Yuriy Kovalev on Unsplash

Nov 11

The Flight from the Cross

Excerpt from Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, 95-98. Originally written in 1934 in Romanian, translated in 1992 by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. This is a challenging and complex text. I am not sure what to make of it yet. His points fit nicely with the last point of my last post, that Jesus models doubt and alienation from God.

“I do not like prophets any more than I like fanatics who have never doubted their mission. I measure prophets’ value by their ability to doubt, the frequency of their moments of lucidity. Doubt makes them truly human, but their doubt is more impressive than that of ordinary people. Everything else in them is nothing but absolutism, preaching, moral didacticism. They want to teach others, bring them salvation, show them the truth, change their destinies, as if their truths were better than those of the others. Only doubt can distinguish prophets from maniacs. But isn’t it too late for them to doubt? The one who thought he was the son of God only doubted at the last moment. Christ really doubted not on the mountain but on the cross. I am convinced that on the cross Jesus envied the destiny of anonymous men and, had he been able to, would have retreated to the most obscure corner of the world, where no one would have begged him for hope or salvation. I can imagine him alone with the Roman soldiers, imploring them to take him off the cross, pull out the nails, and let him escape to where the echo of human suffering would no longer reach him. Not because he would suddenly have ceased to believe in his mission—he was too enlightened to be a skeptic—but because death for others is harder to bear than one’s own death. Jesus suffered crucifixion because he knew that his ideas could triumph only through his own sacrifice.

“People say: for us to believe in you, you must renounce everything that is yours and also yourself. They want your death as a warranty for the authenticity of your beliefs. Why do they admire works written in blood? Because such works spare them any suffering while at the same time preserving the illusion of suffering. They want to see the blood and tears behind your lines. The crowd’s admiration is sadistic.

“Had Jesus not died on the cross, Christianity would not have triumphed. Mortals doubt everything except death. Christ’s death was for them the ultimate proof of the validity of Christian principles. Jesus could have easily escaped crucifixion or could have given in to the Devil! He who has not made a pact with the Devil should not live, because the Devil symbolizes life better than God. If I have any regrets, it is that the Devil has rarely tempted me . . . but then neither has God loved me. Christians have not yet understood that God is farther removed from them than they are from Him. I can very well imagine God being bored with men who only know how to beg, exasperated by the triviality of his creation, equally disgusted with both heaven and earth. And I see him taking flight into nothingness, like Jesus escaping from the cross. . . . What would have happened if the Roman soldiers had listened to Jesus’ plea, had taken him off the cross and let him escape? He would certainly not have gone to some other part of the world to preach but only to die, alone, without people’s sympathy and tears. And even supposing that, because of his pride, he did not beg for freedom, I find it difficult to believe that this thought did not obsess him. He must have truly believed that he was the son of God. His belief notwithstanding, he could not have helped doubting or being gripped by the fear of death at the moment of his supreme sacrifice. On the cross, Jesus had moments when, if he did not doubt that he was the son of God, he regretted it. He accepted death uniquely so that his ideas would triumph.

“It may very well be that Jesus was simpler than I imagine him, that he had fewer doubts and fewer regrets, for he doubted his divine origin only at his death. We, on the other hand, have so many doubts and regrets that not one among us would dare dream that he is the son of a god. I hate Jesus for his preachings, his morality, his ideas, and his faith. I love him for his moments of doubt and regret, the only truly tragic ones in his life, though neither the most interesting nor the most painful, for if we had to judge from their suffering, how many before him would also be entitled to call themselves sons of God!”

Photo by Craig Tidball on Unsplash

Oct 18

Discipleship in Mark

For my class on the Gospels and Acts, I was asked to reflect on Mark’s vision of discipleship. Follow along in your Bible as you read, because this post is loaded with Scripture.

What is discipleship?

Discipleship is the Imitation of Christ. First, we see early on (1:16-18) Jesus call Simon and Andrew with words that reflect what Jesus is doing in issuing the call: “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus is fishing, and in doing so, making further fishers. The call is self-referential like Mark as a whole: Mark’s Gospel is a narrative of Jesus’s life, and at the same time functions to make disciples out of those who read it. Second, at the Gospel’s midway point, the seam between its first (1-8) and second (9-16) movements, Jesus tells the crowd what discipleship requires: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me” (8:34-9:1). Jesus calls the crowd to be open to martyrdom immediately after he has first predicted his own death (8:31-33). Hence taking up the cross is synonymous with the call to “follow me,” the imitation of Christ. Third, when James and John request authority and glory from Jesus (10:35-45), Jesus responds by acknowledging they will suffer his same fate. He concludes his remarks about servant leadership with another comparison to his own example: “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus centers his example in his responses to James and John and to the other disciples. Therefore, discipleship is the imitation of Christ.

How do disciples imitate Jesus?

Fight Death. Disciples of Jesus are engaged, first and foremost, in a spiritual battle against the powers of Death that wreak havoc in the world. First, at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, John the Baptist characterizes Jesus’s ministry this way: “one more powerful than I… will baptize with holy spirit.” Mark uses the unique word “powerful” (ischuroteros) again later when Jesus is describing his own ministry (3:20-35, Class Notes). How is Jesus’s ministry different from Satan’s work? In a parable, Jesus talks about “binding up the strong man,” who is Satan. So, Jesus’s ministry is the exact opposite of Satan’s work, it is a war against the spiritual forces of darkness and death. Second, Mark depicts Jesus casting out demons (1:21-28 (parallel 5:1-20) (Thiessen, 141-148). He casts out demons from holy places (in the former passage, from the synagogue on the Sabbath) and into unholy places (in the latter passage, into nearby unclean pigs). Jesus’s demon exorcism is not just to heal the possessed, or they would simply be called “healings.” Rather, they are part of a larger fight against “powers and principalities, spiritual forces, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12) as another author later writes. Third, Jesus commissions the disciples to cast out demons as well. (Mark 3:14-15 / 6:7-13) (See Witmer 132-142, 153-201 for more). Now, this command is repeated in 16:17, but it does not matter for Mark, because 16:17 is not authentic, it was added later. But this addition indicates that the early church (up to the late 4th century when 16:9-20 was added) continued to practice exorcism, as Jesus originally commanded. Therefore, disciples of Jesus fight Death and the spiritual battle it wages against God.

Live in Constructed Community. Mark depicts discipleship as shared life. First, Jesus constructs a community which, when anything else conflicts with it, must supersede all other forms of community. Jesus says, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive 100-fold in the age to come” (10:29-30). Second, Jesus gives a specific discourse about living in and leading community in 10:35-45 in response to bickering and infighting (10:41) among his disciples. It is in this context that Jesus makes a key statement about discipleship, drawing from his own example: “not to be served… but to serve.” Disciples are to imitate Jesus’s example in our own communities of shared discipleship. Third, there are clues in the text (direct references to crowds, rhetorical use of “we”) which indicate that “Jesus is one who is almost constantly surrounded by a circle of disciples; he does not exist primarily as a solitary individual but as a being-in-community, and living the Christian life means “being with him.” This portrayal of the life of discipleship as a communion with Jesus would undoubtedly resonate with the experience of Mark’s community” (Joel Marcus 267). Therefore, disciples of Jesus live in constructed communities.

Discernment. Discipleship means seeing and knowing things as they truly are, and this includes events, people, and Jesus’s own mission. First, Mark repeatedly goes out of his way to mention that Jesus “sees” people. The most significant example is 6:34: “When Jesus landed, he looked at the large crowd, and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.” (Joel Marcus (182) also lists these passages: 1:18-20, 2:14, 3:34, 6:34, 8:33, 9:25, 10:21, 23, 27, 12:34. Several of these are about the disciples’ calling). Second, Jesus heals the blind man (8:22-26), and then another blind man (Bartimaeus, 10:46ff). In the former case, the blind man gives an example of not being able to see: he “sees men like trees.” Not animals, not objects, but humans, an unclear perspective of the people around him. Jesus restores vision to the blind to make them like him, as he is so often described as seeing others in Mark’s Gospel. Since Jesus can see, those he disciples are given sight as well, that they may imitate him. Third, disciples of Jesus are to see people and see the world as they truly are. Jesus commands disciples to watch the signs of the time (chapter 13 in its entirety) and to be watchful at Gethsemane, though they keep falling asleep (14:32-42). God is at work in the world. God restores the nation of Israel, symbolically expressed in Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River (1:5 = Jordan river crossing), the commissioning of 12 disciples from a mountain (3:13-19 = 12 tribes & Sinai), and the twelve baskets of bread and seven baskets of bread (8:17-21 = Israel & fullness, restoration). The disciples needed eyes to see this work of God in their time. Therefore, disciples of Jesus must be watchful for the work of God in the world.

Open to the Inner Self. Disciples of Jesus are called to imitate their master by living with an openness to their inner selves. First, in his humanity Jesus sets an example for his disciples as one with a rich emotional life. He is angry (1:41 and 3:5) and sad (14:33). He shows signs of frustration (8:12) and exhaustion (4:38). He feels indignancy (10:14) and love (10:21). These emotions express his true humanity. Second, Luke’s Gospel transfers these emotions onto the disciples or omits them altogether, and Matthew’s Gospel retains them but switches the terms to lesser emotions (like “annoyed” instead of “enraged”) or gives reasons to justify Jesus’s emotions (Asikainen 134-155). Mark does not. His portrayal of Jesus is raw and unfiltered. Third, Jesus’s openness to the inner self would have conflicted with the Greco-Roman ideal of self-mastery over the emotions. Mark’s portrayal is thus particularly sharp, as it subverts contemporary expectations for masculinity. Jesus sets this example for his disciples to follow. Therefore, disciples of Jesus live with an openness to their inner selves.

Divine Silence. Disciples of Jesus have a relationship with Our Father that is not clean, tidy, or convenient. First, Jesus had a rich connection with the Father throughout Mark. The Father literally spoke to him out of heaven (twice: 1:11, 9:7) and Jesus is often withdrawing to solitary places for prayer (1:35, 6:30-32, 46). Second, Mark’s ascent narrative (ch 9-16) follows Jesus ascending from Galilee to Jerusalem. This ascent evokes at once the Mountain of God image from various places in the OT, including both Sinai (Marcus 423) and Zion, along with the narrative substructure of the book of Leviticus (See Morales 257-304), the rhetorical question from the Psalmist “Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?” (24:3), and the Psalms of Ascent (120-134), all in one large conflated image. Yet the opposite end comes than one would expect. Jesus will not enter the presence and the glory of the LORD in the temple. He must die (8:31-33 / 9:30-32 / 10:32-34). From Gethsemane to the end, Jesus does not pray and the Father is silent. Third, Bonhoeffer, confined to prison in Tegel and perhaps viewing the whole world through the lens of that space, cites Mark 15:34 (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”). He felt the hollow sting of protracted abandonment by God which Jesus also felt in his final hours. “The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us,” Bonhoeffer wrote (July 16th, 1944, italic original). Jesus’s cry on the cross amounts to a functional atheism. There ends our portrait of Jesus in Mark. Even as word of his resurrection leaks out, our extant text ends before we see him alive, victorious. Fourth, the Word of God is hidden, so that those without the spirit of discernment cannot find it (4:11-12). Jesus’s life is itself a parable, as are the spiritual journeys of his faithful disciples. When we seek and do not find the voice of God, then we know that we are following the true Christ.

Bibliography

Asikainen, Susanna. Jesus and Other Men: Ideal Masculinities in the Synoptic Gospels. Boston, MA: Brill, 2018.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. by Eberhard Bethge. New York, NY: The Macamillan Company, 1959 edition.

Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York, NY: Doubleday, 2000.

Morales, L. Michael. “Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the LORD?” A Biblical Theology of Leviticus. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2015.

Thiessen, Matthew. Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.

Witmer, Amanda. Jesus, The Galilean Exorcist: His Exorcisms in Social and Political Context. London, UK: T&T Clark International, 2012.

The photos are some shots of mine from the past two weeks on campus. Filtered with +0.5 exposure, -1.0 saturation, +1.0 fade. Trinity’s native falcon appears in one of the photos, for those with eyes to see.

Sep 13

Pastoral Prayer for September 13th, 2020

Today I gave the pastoral prayer at my church. Here is the text:

Pray with me, selections from the Book of Common Prayer.

Almighty God, who has placed us in this country for its betterment:

Bless our land with honorable and abundant work, sound and safe learning, and peace. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought here out of many nations and languages. Fill with the spirit of wisdom those entrusted with the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace.

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Yet we live in days of trouble, division, and injustice. Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; so that we may live in justice and peace.

We give thanks for Pastor Mike’s recovery from Covid and pray you give him full health. To medical researchers working to create a vaccine, give ingenuity and patience. To victims of wildfire in California, Oregon, and Colorado, give protection and provision. We remember now the 412 first responders nineteen years ago who laid down their lives for the lives of others. May they remain for us a parable of your Son’s own life. Comfort as well the families of the victims of the attack, God of all comfort.

All of this we ask through the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Aug 18

2 Comments

Paul within Judaism Reading List

Here is my reading list for Paul within Judaism. I developed this list by finding a few writers in dialogue with one another, and finding the journals and volumes where they have published, who else writes there, what books they tend to cite, and who endorses or forewords whose books. This started because I happened to check out the 2012 Paul and Judaism: Crosscurrents in Pauline Exegesis volume right before quarantine, and then the seminary library let us keep our books all summer, so I used that volume for my summer class term paper.

Before this gets going, a word from Paula Fredriksen on the diversity of views that go under this label:

the so-called “Paul within Judaism” [school] is a doctrinal mess. Important differences within it abound. Significant ones… distinguish my views on particular issues from those of John Gager. Gager’s Paul is no longer Law-observant; mine continues to be. (Why wouldn’t he be?) Gager’s Paul thinks that Christ has redemptive relevance only for gentiles; my Paul sees Jesus quite precisely as the eschatological Davidic messiah, thus and therefore the christos of Israel as well. And so on. Do we then represent “a school” or “a perspective”? Or something more like a “network”? A movement, maybe? Whatever.

But the label represents some unity. She continues:

The interpretive point of principle that binds us all together is the
recognition that no one in Paul’s generation would have looked at his euangelion as anything other than a particular — perhaps peculiar — inflection of late Second Temple Judaism. Thus our commitment, no matter what our various conclusions, to construing Paul’s letters within and with those criteria of meaning specific to late Second Temple Jewishness. “Christianity” as an idea and as an entity is born only long after Paul’s lifetime. To echo Pam Eisenbaum’s felicitous title, Paul was not a Christian.

From Paula Fredriksen, “Putting Paul in His (Historical) Place: A Response to James Crossley, Margaret Mitchell, and Matthew Novenson.” JJMJS No. 5 (2018), 105-106.

With that said, here is my list of journals, key scholars, edited volumes, studies, and commentaries. I will update with any suggestions.

Journals

Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting (online)

Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations (online)

Key Scholars

Frantisek Abel, Michael Bachmann, Thomas R. Blanton IV, Daniel Boyrain, William S. Campbell, James D.G. Dunn, Kathy Ehrensperger, Paula Fredriksen, Jorg Frey, John Gager, Joshua Garroway, Amy-Jill Levine, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Joel Marcus, Mark Nanos, Isaac W. Oliver, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Matthew V. Novenson, Rafael Rodriguez, Anders Runesson, Matthew Thiessen, J. Brian Tucker, Magnus Zetterholm.

Edited Volumes

Abel, Frantisek, ed., Israel and Nations: Paul’s Gospel in the Context of Jewish Expectation. Minneapolis, MN: Lexington Fortress, 2020.

Abel, Frantisek, ed., The Message of the Apostle Paul within Second Temple Judaism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020.

Avery-Peck, Alan, et al., eds. Earliest Christianity within the Boundaries of Judaism: Essays in Honor of Bruce Chilton. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2016.

Baron, Lori, Jill Hicks-Keeton, and Matthew Thiessen, eds., The Ways that Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2018.

Bieringer, Reimund and Didier Pollefeyt, eds., Paul and Judaism:  Crosscurrents in Pauline Exegesis and the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations. London, UK: T&T Clark International, 2012.

Boccaccini, Gabriele, and Carlos A. Segovia, eds., Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016.

Johnson Hodge, Caroline et al., eds., The One Who Sows Bountifully: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2013.

Nanos, Mark and Magnus Zetterholm, eds., Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015.

Nanos, Mark. Reading Paul within Judaism: Collected Essays of Mark D. Nanos Vol. 1. Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2017. See also Reading Romans within Judaism (Vol. 2), Reading Galatians within Judaism (Vol. 3), and Reading Corithians and Philippians within Judaism (Vol. 4).

Thiessen, Matthew and Rafael Rodriguez, eds., The So-Called Jew in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016.

Studies

Boyarin, Daniel. A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.

Campbell, William S. Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity. London, UK: T&T Clark International, 2008.

Eisenbaum, Pamela. Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle. New York, NY: HaperOne, 2010 ed.

Fredrikson, Paula. Paul: the Pagan’s Apostle. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2017.

Fredrikson, Paula. When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2019.

Johnson Hodge, Caroline. If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Novenson, Matthew V. The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Uses. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Stowers, Stanley K. A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1994.

Thiessen, Matthew. Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Thiessen, Matthew. Paul and the Gentile Problem. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Thiessen, Matthew. Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.

Thornhill, A. Chadwick. The Chosen People: Election, Paul and Second Temple Judaism. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Tucker, J. Brian. Reading Romans after Supersessionism: The Continuation of Jewish Covenantal Identity. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.

Windsor, Lionel J. Paul and the Vocation of Israel. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.

Commentaries

Levine, Amy-Jill and Marc Zvi Brettler. The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017 2nd ed.

Tucker, J. Brian. Reading 1 Corinthians. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.

Rodriguez, Rafael. If You Call Yourself a Jew: Reappraising Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014.

Aug 1

Strongly Recommend: Ezra Klein,”Why We’re Polarized”

I strongly recommend Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein as single best diagnosis of American politics I have read.

Think back to the 1950’s. Republicans and Democrats were similar. Each party had its own left and right wings, but neither party was “the left wing” or “the right wing” of America. They were similar enough that most voters made decisions based a politician’s integrity, military service, regional heritage, persuasive speech, or something like that, but not based on ideology. The unique way voter coalitions were lined up made this possible.

Northern Democrats, Republicans, and Dixiecrats (Southern Democrats) were each about a third of the Senate, and any two together would win a majority. Northern Democrats were allied with Southern Dixiecrats with a commanding supermajority (2/3). The South had one-party rule because of Jim Crow voter suppression, which was distasteful to Northern Democrats. But Northern Democrats were willing to turn a blind eye to the injustices of Jim Crow because they needed Southern votes to pass their bills, like the New Deal.

Everything changed with the Civil Rights Movement. Political pressure grew for new legislation. Republicans supported it, and Northern Democrats eventually supported it. Together they passed bills culminating in the ’64, ’65, and ’68 Civil Rights Acts. Northern Democrats decided to snap their coalition to pass these bills, which alienated Dixiecrats, who for a time supported their own 3rd party candidates (like George Wallace in 1968) but then migrated to the Republican party. Republicans incompatible with racism in their party then reshuffled to become Democrats. In this way, the Civil Rights Movement’s success triggered a racist backlash, causing the polarization within parties to externalize into polarization between parties.

There are more answers to “Why are we polarized?” than racism, but racism is the foundational answer that kicked the other factors into gear. For example, Christian politics were roughly even between Republicans and Democrats, because the two parties were not yet polarized by racial (and racist) voting blocks. But a Christian Republican coalition emerged to defend segregation academies, and only later shifted to public morality and family values. Race caused the politicization, which then hardened, and as racism became less popular, new platforms had to develop. But even if those new platforms were race-neutral, their coalitions were race-driven.

~~~

Another topic Klein explores is the moral narratives through which we see our country, and how these are “activated” by threats to our personal identity. If you are a straight white male with a high school diploma who lives in the country and eats CFA, your identity will be “activated” most by a highly educated, non-white, smooth-talking politician from the city who disses CFA. Naturally! That’s just how personal identity works. The parts of who we are become more salient when they are differentiated from others.

If you are a black, gay, city-dwelling college student who drinks Starbucks, and a certain politician is racist, homophobic, rural-presenting, threatens to defund colleges, and hates Starbucks, your identity will be very “activated.” Naturally! That’s just how personal identity works. The parts of who we are become more salient when they are differentiated from others.

But imagine someone who crosses over those categories. Someone who is a white, Christian, man, who eats CFA, but also is gay, college-educated, somewhat urban, and drinks Starbucks… imagine someone… I’m certain there is a person you know. What effect do divisive politicians have on him? They pull in different directions on competing aspects, which leaves him ambivalent and unactivated. Truth be told, most Americans fit into that middle category in so many ways. Most Americans are some wild mix of these categories: gender, race, religion, location, and CFA/Starbucks. But because the ones whose identities align are most “activated,” their stories become the stereotypes that define our political coalitions. The most normative and the most marginalized, but who between?

Here’s what I’m getting at, and what I think Klein is getting at in subtext without fully spelling it out. There are more political stories to be told. There are varieties of American experience that our polarized politics seem designed to ignore. There are historical and structural factors pulling Americans into two silos of attempted homogeneity. Don’t let that happen. Recognize the unique ways politicians attempt to “activate” you, notice the times your experience is being ignored, and speak a politics from that place. As much as our media culture preaches at us to be ourselves, products sell better to crowds, and so we become crowds.

What would more American stories look like? What stories could be told that unsettle the simplistic narrative that there are two-and-only-two clashing visions of our country? I think that’s the value I see in current and specific ethnographies like Chris Arnade’s Dignity (Review, Book) or Amy Goldstein’s Janesvile: An American Story (Review, Book), or Ta-Nahisi Coates’s Between the World and Me (Review, Book), or Ryan Berg’s No Place to Call My Home (Review, Book). These accounts become the raw material for another American story. I’m talking about a politics built from the ground up, one that doesn’t begin with ideological abstractions and work down, but begins with real American stories and builds out.

~~~

Those are just a few of my thoughts. I can’t begin to cover everything Klein covers — he has written a fantastic book, one anybody interested in politics needs to read. As a disclaimer, I should note that Klein’s center-left slant comes through in some of his examples, but still I think progressives and conservatives will find themselves agreeing with the real substance of most of his points.

I especially recommend the chapters “Your Brain on Groups,” “The Press Secretary in Your Mind,” and “When Bipartisanship Becomes Irrational,” along with the conclusion, and then Francis Fukuyama’s review of the book. Most importantly, please, read it before the election, not after!

Jun 18

1 Comment

Discussion on Bostock

Here was my Facebook status on Bostock v. Clayton County, and some discussion from the comments.

###

Good decision from Gorsuch. His legal argument is sound.

Keep in mind that none of the three cases claimed religious exemption. (One did in lower court, but later dropped that claim). So this decision does not impact religious organizations as the evangelical fearmongerers told us it would.

On the narrower religious exemption question, we desperately need new, clarifying legislation. Many orgs fall between “religious” and secular, like Christian colleges that are associated with, but not owned by, a denomination. Christian colleges receive billions of dollars annually from the federal government in student aid, but discriminate against a now-protected group. Colleges that discriminate on the basis of race are banned from federal funding, even if they have deeply held racist religious beliefs (see Bob Jones University). So the precedent is set to ban funding on the legally similar basis of sex. If exemptions are denied.

Additionally, many positions within orgs fall between “religious” and secular, like the math teacher at a Christian private high school, or the accountant at a church. These positions could be considered secular functions, but that does not matter. If the organization is religious, its hiring decisions are an extension of their 1A protected speech. (As Hosanna-Tabor (2012) and Presiding Bishop (1987) have already held).

I’m not sure the best path forward. Religious orgs cannot be forced to hire ministers or minister-adjacent staff who disagree with their deeply held religious beliefs. On the other hand, the bare fact of sexual orientation, apart from the decision to marry, is not a choice. Nobody should be able to discriminate on the basis of orientation alone. It seems as unchosen as race, and therefore discrimination on orientation seems as immoral as on race.

For example, I was discriminated against (denied employment) on the basis of orientation, even though I agreed with the religious org’s statement of faith on marriage and sexuality, and was not seeking same-sex marriage. That discrimination is clearly wrong. They broke their own rules. I did not choose my orientation, but to the extent that I can choose to follow the org’s rules, I did, yet they used my orientation to discriminate against me. I want that to be illegal, religious exemption or not. But what legal standard would outlaw that discrimination, without treading on religious freedom to discriminate on gay marriage? I don’t think there is a legally sound standard. My compromise position isn’t possible.

The only solution I can see would retain religious orgs’ right to discriminate on basis of sexual orientation, period. Then, we the people pressure them to adopt anti-discrimination standards internally which guarantee equal hiring on the basis of mere orientation. However, that would likely only work for a slim minority of religious orgs. I am not optimistic about widespread acceptance, or even recognition, of celibate gay people. But I don’t think the state, whether courts or Congress, has grounds to impose this. As expansively as Title VII is written, the First Amendment is more, and Constitutional.

Regardless of how the dust settles on the narrow question of religious exemptions, the main question of Title VII discrimination has been decided rightly by the court. The fight against discrimination “on the basis of sex” won a major battle today.

###

A friend said, “Beautifully said. I don’t see a good legal path either, although I have not thought about this in as much detail as you have. One would hope that, as Plato said, in a good society we would need fewer laws. Can we expect those religious communities who discriminate now to become good without legal force? Sadly, it is part of the “no compromise” identity they have forged for themselves with respect to sex and gender. (Why the hell are Evangelicals so obsessed with sex, anyway?) I hope your efforts to bring change from within bear fruit.”

To which I replied, “”it is part of the “no compromise” identity they have forged for themselves with respect to sex and gender” Exactly. The evangelical impulse post-Obergefell has been reactionary over-correction driven by fear. Anything that resembles the out-group must be condemned. When you encounter slippery slope arguments at every turn, it is a feature, not a bug. Entire denominations are in cold war over using the word “gay” or over (this is a quote) “adopting a homosexual self-conception.” They are using these far lesser questions to acid test for evangelical purity, and as proxies for the real debate over same-sex marriage. This has led to considerable damage among gay Christians, as nobody likes to be used as a political football. These pastors and thought leaders are people who engage in what I call “competitive homophobia,” where the most egregious displays of anti-gay prejudice earn greater credibility and in-group purity. Dynamics like these make it impossible for institutions to do what I described. (If my university were to adopt anti-discrimination rules for celibate gay Christians, they would be flooded with press about “going left” and “abandoning evangelical faithfulness” even though they would have done neither.)”

To his other question, I said “”Why the hell are Evangelicals so obsessed with sex, anyway?” is a great question, one that I’ve asked since reading Samuel Perry’s book Addicted to Lust earlier this year. He calls it “Sexual Exceptionalism” but unfortunately I left the book in university storage for the summer, so I don’t have much more than that…”

To which that same friend said, “It’s an oversimplification, but generally speaking when an organization loses a positive sense of who it is and no longer trusts its own values, its best option is to scapegoat and find blame outside of itself. Instead of saying this is who we are and what we stand for because these values are good, they define themselves by who they reject.I have also lived through the dramatic politicization of evangelicals, beginning in the 80s. I don’t think that is always a bad thing, but they have been manipulated and co-opted by cynical politicians for decades. David Koh, GW Bush’s first director of the office for faith-based initiatives, I believe it was called, wrote a book before he died describing his chagrin at the way Karl Rove and others cynically used him and the office for their own political ends. Just one example, but a very prominent one. … Competitive homophobia. Captures a lot, sadly.”

~

Another friend said, “Sorry Ross, but if you are willing to follow a religious organization’s statement of faith, and they still discriminate against you, maybe you should be looking at better organizations who know a good candidate when they see one. That’s just lousy. Dust your sandals off friend.”

~

Someone asked my opinion on the Alito dissent, to which I said, “I don’t see how an employer can discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without knowing their sex. Knowing that someone is gay requires knowing that they are attracted to a sex which is their own sex, and that requires knowing their sex. Similarly, to discriminate on transgender status requires the employer to first know the person’s sex assigned at birth. He also focuses heavily on the meaning of the word “sex” in 1964, even attaching 7 pages of dictionary definitions (55-62). But I don’t think it matters what “sex” means. Gorsuch says it doesn’t matter per se what the meaning of “sex” is, “but what Title VII says about it.” Since orientation discrimination requires sex discrimination, Title VII applies, without defining the meaning of the text…”

I continued, “Adam Winkler on twitter was less generous with Alito. He said, “Alito says that “sex” must be defined exactly the way that lawmakers understood that term in 1964. I’m skeptical he’ll apply that same rule to defining what counts as “arms” when reading the Second Amendment.” That is the issue, strict textualism applies when it helps conservative causes and doesn’t when it doesn’t. Usually they align, but in a case where the textualist approach conflicts with the conservative outcome, the justices have to choose method (Gorsuch, Roberts) or outcome (Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh)… FWIW, I thought Kavanaugh’s dissent was much better than Alito’s in writing and in substance, but also missed the point. Gorsuch wasn’t disagreeing that the meaning of “sex” in 1964 meant biological sex itself. So while Kavanaugh’s hermentutics were nice (and would be great to see Christians use when interpreting Scripture…) it did not matter.”

To which my friend replied, “Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I do think both Alito and Kavanaugh raise one very strong point, in that Congress has been trying to pass bills that would prohibit employer discrimination on the basis of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ many times in recent years. That would suggest that Congress doesn’t even think they are included in Title VII. That’s the main issue I have with the decision – not the outcome itself, but that it appears the court updated a law instead of Congress.” And in a second comment, “Also, I forgot to say earlier, thanks for raising those questions about religious and semi-religious organizations! I think there will be a lot of confusion in those areas over the next few years.” A few other friends said the same thing, they had not considered the ambiguity over who gets religious exemptions.

~

A different friend said, “So I have a question that I feel I might as well shoot in your direction: do you think this kind of decision oversteps the judicial rights of the Supreme court? I just wonder if this is an ok precedent to set, even if it does benefit the lives of LGBTQ individuals.”

To which I responded, “I don’t think so. If “legislating from the bench” is the problem, SCOTUS has been doing that for decades. Nothing new to see here. Just a consistent application of that practice. But I don’t see this as legislating from the bench. Gorsuch went out of his way not to construe the definition of sexual orientation or transgender status as including sex, but instead to say that discrimination on that basis requires discrimination on sex. There is no scenario in which someone can discriminate on the basis of orientation/trans and not simultaneously also be discriminating on the basis of sex. If he made the redefining words argument, it would be legislating from the bench, but as he wrote the Opinion, he is just doing regular legal interpretation.”

~

Finally, a friend asked me if I’m going to publish a book, on anything, to which I responded, “Tim Keller says not to publish until you turn 40…”

~

My lead photo is a tree near chapel on campus last October.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →