In Other News

When I went to bed last night, Barack Obama was president, Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, and Democrats controlled the Senate. When I woke up this morning, Barack Obama was president, Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, and Democrats controlled the Senate. More than a year of persistent hue and cry, an anticlimax, and now, with any luck, a swift denouement. Meanwhile, to the disinterested surprise of Americans, the rest of the world has continued to turn while they beat their heads against a political brick wall.

Copts have just selected a new pope at one of the most critical junctures in modern Coptic history. The new leader, Pope Theodoros II, has rejected the political activism of his predecessor and is encouraging the church to follow his lead:

“The most important thing is for the church to go back and live consistently within the spiritual boundaries because this is its main work, spiritual work,” the bishop said, and he promised to begin a process of “rearranging the house from the inside” and “pushing new blood” after his installation later this month as Pope Tawadros II. Interviewed on Coptic television recently, he struck a new tone by including as his priorities “living with our brothers, the Muslims” and “the responsibility of preserving our shared life.”

“Integrating in the society is a fundamental scriptural Christian trait,” Bishop Tawadros said then. “This integration is a must — moderate constructive integration,” he added. “All of us, as Egyptians, have to participate.”

This seems to be fine by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood who have encouraged the new primate "to “support the Islamic Shariaa,” to “let go of the seculars”, and to “revoke the Church’s political role.”"

In other parts of the Muslim world, Christians are facing more direct challenges from the government. Christians in Malaysia are being "converted" to Islam without their consent on government roles simply because of their names.

Bumiputra Christians in Sabah continue to be “converted to Islam” by the National Registration Department (NRD) simply because they have “bin” and “binti” in their names. Sabah churches are seeking urgent solutions to the crisis but none seems to be in sight, Bob Teoh writes in My Sinchew.

The NRD has made it clear it would continue to list Bumiputera Christians in Sabah as Muslims as long as they are known by bin or binti. It would also not rectify past entry errors by way of changing the religion listing back to Christianity in the identity cards (MyKad) of those affected. The NRD would only act upon an order by a Syariah High Court to determine whether those Bumiputera Christians whom it had listed as Muslims are not Muslims indeed.

The implications of this are far ranging--not least because these "Muslims" are not legally allowed to marry the Christians in their own community--and the hurdles the government has thrown up to rectify the error are numerous. What makes this more serious than a minor bureaucratic foul-up, however, is that perennial problem of apostasy in Islam. There is no permissible way to cease to be a Muslim, a conundrum which has found itself institutionalized in the racial-religious identity cards of Malaysia.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, sitting on the supposed burial site of Jesus, is the site of yet more controversy, this time over the more mundane matter of an unpaid water bill. The hub for Christian pilgrimage insists that it has never paid water bills as part of an unstated agreement with the utility company. Hagihon, the water company, is no longer content to receive nothing for something and has frozen the church's assests until the $2.3 million in back bills is paid.

"We trust God and hope that people will help us," [the General Secretary of the Patriarchate, Archbishop of Constantina Aristarchos] said, adding that the Patriarchate has sent letters to Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tension in the Christian world comes home with still more revelations from the Orthodox Church in America. After much publicity and dutiful investigation, church officials have released their findings about the suspended bishop accused of sexual misconduct:

Text messages and emails sent by the bishop of the Orthodox Church in America’s Diocese of the Midwest did constitute sexual misconduct, according to a letter posted to the church’s website Sunday...

“I wish that I could convince all of you what I am certain of in my heart — that conscious motives behind my interaction with this woman were not impure,” [the accused bishop] Matthias wrote. “But, I know that only active, demonstrated repentance — confession of my sins, pursuit of the means of changing, and a resulting change in conduct — will be convincing.”

Unlike the Catholic stereotype of furtive reshuffling, the OCA has embraced a more public but no less Christian program of rehabilitation and penance. Matthias will ask forgiveness from the victim directly, be admitted to a residential therapeutic program, and submit to a “focused period of time under the guidance of a peer bishop to examine, articulate and provide concrete direction in managing the expectations and accompanying spiritual, emotional and interpersonal challenges of exercising the office of the bishop.”

And more besides. If only we had directed that one billion dollars to affecting actual change in the world. But, as always, where our treasure is indicates where our heart is. Money is always hard to find except when it comes to war and politics. If that doesn't indicate their affinity, perhaps nothing will.

In Other News

Last fall, I relayed an argument that I had been having about whether or not raising one's children to be religious constituted "indoctrination," and, if it did, whether or not it was possible to raise them in a state of neutral irreligion in an effort to promote choice. I concluded, and was delighted to later find my argument mimicked by Stephen Prothero, that there is no neutral state of irreligion, that the very act of raising children is a process of "indoctrination," and that proponents of "choice" for children were constructing their argument on an anthropological fallacy. Unfortunately, people still seem to be deluded by the fantasy that children can be raised as blank slates with regard to religion:

Ontological anxiety is the anxiety created after realizing the overwhelming number of choices one can make as a free individual. Most people choose the path of least resistance and allow the choice to be made for them by their parents or other social pressures. Thus, shrinking of consciousness occurs, as a simple way to relieve the ontological anxiety is to eliminate the vast number of choices. I believe the majority of people who label themselves as Christians do so during their childhood because it is comfortable and easy for them to conform to their family's atmosphere, not because they have any sort of intrinsically strong faith or spirituality. In contrast, children with parents who do not offer a clear path of least resistance must deal with ontological anxiety as an individual. They are forced to pick through many choices and understand their choices more as a result. Thus, shrinking of consciousness does not occur to such a high degree and their more conscious choice is usually atheism (those who never overcome the issue of ontological anxiety are agnostic, as they do not make a choice).

NYU student Joseph Rauch certainly dresses the argument up in fancier language (something he probably zealously picked up in a recent seminar), but the window dressing can be ignored. (We should also probably ignore his amusing misappropriation of agnosticism which is in fact more likely to be a positive theological position--the belief that knowledge is impossible or inaccessible--than atheism, which at its most basic merely describes the absence of a particular belief.) The argument is ultimately the same and the conclusions just as flawed. Children who are raised as "blank slates" have no greater or fewer choices available to them than the children of religious adherents, and parents who "do not offer a clear path" are in fact offering no less clear a path than a Christian parent who takes their child to church. Irreligion, whether in the form of religious pluralism, religious apathy, or positive irreligion (what Rauch likely means in his grossly overnarrow use of "atheism"), is not a neutral position in childrearing. The act of raising a child, which is by definition active, has no passive positions. I don't know what they are teaching you at NYU, Mr. Rauch, but around here we call that low-effort thinking.

In Arkansas, however, low-effort thinking is being linked with conservative politics. (Speaking of issues we've tackled here before.) Researchers at the University of Arkansas got some Razorbacks drunk and were delighted to find that the probability of holding conservative positions increased with each shot of corn mash:

Bar patrons were asked about social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. As it turned out, the political viewpoints of patrons with high blood alcohol levels were more likely to be conservative than were those of patrons whose blood alcohol levels were low.

But that's not all:

But it wasn't just the alcohol talking, according to the statement. When the researchers conducted similar interviews in the lab, they found that people who were asked to evaluate political ideas quickly or while distracted were more likely to express conservative viewpoints.

"Keeping people from thinking too much...or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people's political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism," Dr. Eidelman said in the email.

Maintaining all the high standards of journalistic excellence discussed in the previously linked article, this report closes with the clearly innocent string of interrogatives: "What do you think? Are conservatives less intelligent than liberals--or more intelligent? And is conservatism a matter of lazy thinking?" It never occurs to anyone to ask whether or not sobriety or concentration might actually be correlated to political correctness rather than drunkenness and distraction to social conservatism. More insidiously, it automatically labels the motivating factor in conservatism with a derogatory epithet: "lazy thinking." Would it not be just as accurate to interpret the results thus: tests show that social conservatism is the default response of uninhibited individuals. If anything, the heuristic value of the study as reported in the article is to question whether or not social progressivism is actually furthered primarily by cultural pressures and fear of social marginalization more than anything. After all, the study doesn't indicate what way people lean who are more intelligent or more thoughtful, only which way they lean when they are less inhibited and less guarded in their responses. Rejoice conservatives; your views are instinctive (at least in Arkansas).

And while we argue about how to not raise children to not be religious and what it means when drunks in the Ozarks sound off about gay marriage, twelve Christians in Iran were anxiously awaiting a verdict in their apostasy trial. It's almost as if the Middle East has an actual war on religion.

Christ, Jain, and the Perennial Allure of Vomit

I confess a strange amusement with the way certain idioms transcend time and space, keeping their relevance throughout history and across cultures. Though it is by no means the first time, I found one such saying while reading through one of the sacred discourses of Jain, a teaching by Indrabhuti Gautama entitled Uttaradhyayana (which, curiously, is a word too often neglected at spelling bees). In this passage, Indrabhuti Gautama is recording the deathbed discourse of his master, Mahavira, who is concerned that Gautama loves him too much. After musing for a time on the nature of reincarnation, Mahavira gives this curious advice:

Give up your wealth and your wife; you have entered the state of the houseless; do not, as it were, return to your vomit; Gautama, be careful all the while!

The regular reader of Scripture--or for that matter, anyone familiar with Western culture which has been so influenced by the language of the Bible--should immediately think of the famous biblical proverb: "Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly." The parallel is striking and not at all, as it might first appear, entirely superficial. There is a strong sense in both Jain and Christianity of progress and of the profound sense of loss that comes from moving backward. Especially telling is that in both instances there is a sense in which it is better to have never been purified than to have been once cleansed and then again defiled. This is particularly pronounced when Peter takes up the proverb in his epistle, but first let us examine more deeply how the image functions in the Jain text.

Perhaps the crucial purpose of Mahavira's speech is to convey to Gautama the rarity (though not the singularity) of human life. Mahavira explains in protracted detail just how fortunate one is to exist on earth at all, even as a speck of dust, a state in which the soul may remain "as long as an aeon." And if it is fortunate, it may someday be reborn into a drop of water, where it can stay "as long as an aeon." Mahavira continues this formula through rebirth into a flame, the wind, a vegetable, and various forms of advancing life until finally he speaks of the great fortune of being born as a human and then as an Aryan (as opposed to a barbarian). Mahavira even observes that not all are fortunate enough to ascend directly up this path, as "the soul which suffers for its carelessness is driven about in the round of rebirth by its good and bad karma." But Gautama is even more fortunate still, because not only is he a human but a human who has had the karmic good fortune to be instructed in the sacred teachings and to believe the sacred teachings.

All this building of tension toward the climax is intended to indicate to Gautama just how blessed he is to be in a position where he literally stands on the cusp of enlightenment if only he would seize it. His existence--this particular life in this particular body with its nearness toward perfection--has been aeons in the making, the result of countless previous lives of karmic struggle toward this precise moment when he finally has the opportunity to break the vicious cycle of reincarnation and ascend into the eternal heavens. Given that this is true, how can Gautama still be distracted by inconsequential illusions. Mahavira insists, "Cast aside from you all attachments...Give up your wealth and your wife; you have entered the state of the houseless...Leave your friends and relations, the large fortune you have amassed; do not desire the a second time." It would be worse to squander the opportunity for perfection so nearly grasped than to have never crawled up out of the mire to begin with. Or, in biblical parlance, "to whom much was given, of him much will be required."

Peter will make the concept even clearer in his second epistle in a rant about the presence of false teachers leading Christians astray:

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire."

The passage offers a very similar message to that of the Jain text. In both, those who have made that all important progress on the path toward perfection are being tempted by a host of apparent pleasures when the true goal lies just ahead of them. Peter exhorts them to fight on because "the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials," and to remember that those sins to which they are now drawn are the very things which they have labored so hard in Christ to be freed from. Having known the truth that freedom comes in Christ, how much more foolish would it be for them to return to slavery because it appeared to them to be liberty? Paul will make much the same point about the new life versus the old in Ephesians.

This is not to say that Christian and Jain ideas of progress, regress, salvation, and apostasy are in any sense the same, though clearly they have affinities which converse well with one another. The Jain concept of perfection is intimately tied to a much more extreme rejection of the world than Christ ever advocated, which is a matter for another text on another day. A greater difference still is the way Christianity relates the goal to progress. There is a sense, in Christ, in which we are truly liberated first and then are expected to progress and be sanctified. In Jain liberation is an end which precludes the possibility of further progress. The most interesting point of contrast, however, also bears the richest fruits for thought about Christianity. In spite of startling statistics that suggest this is changing, Christians do not traditionally believe in reincarnation, an idea which is central to the Jain understanding of progress. Mahavira's aim, as already established, is to instill in his pupil a sense of the enormity of the task before him based on the aeons of karmic labor which led him to his current life and the prospect of ages more in the eternal cycle of rebirth should he fail. The importance of this life and this chance for liberation is based on the great struggle represented in reincarnation.

It strikes me then that Christianity should have an even greater sense of urgency than Mahavira does when we speak about the prospect of what we are to achieve in this life. Quite unlike the Jain system, there is no opportunity to struggle through the aeons to achieve a second shot at salvation in Christ. We are given this one life--of which Mahavira says "As the fallow leaf of the tree falls to the ground when its days are gone, even so the life of men" and of which Peter writes "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls." As earnest as Mahavira's pleas are to Gautama that he should get it right now while the opportunity is before him, how much more intense ought our own resolve be as Christians, when we know that we are given but one life and one opportunity to turn ourselves away from the world, to put off the old, and to clothe ourselves in Christ for all eternity?

You have been weighed in the balance...

On this Lord's Day, let us give thanks for the punishment which is dolled out against that most heinous sin of apostasy. Particularly those apostates Colorado, Nebraska, and Texas A&M, each of whom suffered upsetting losses yesterday in their new home conferences. Texas A&M's sins must have been particularly heinous, since--to match their loss to a middle-of-the-pack SEC team this week--they had an equally embarassing loss to a middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team last week. Clearly, "the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." (Psalm 1:6)

James A. Harding and Christian Education

In reading Earl West's article, “James A. Harding and Christian Education,” I became increasingly bemused by the fact that there is a university (and not merely a university, but the largest Church of Christ university) that takes Harding as a namesake. Given what I have just learned about James A. Harding's beliefs about the way schools should be run - not merely as a matter of preference but as a matter of right and wrong, good and evil - I am quite certain that he would be disgusted to find his name attached to Harding University. Some quotes from Harding and from the Article should suffice to illustrate what I mean.

With reference to Lipscomb University, which Harding helped to found, West writes:

So, in the fall of 1899, tuition began to be charged in all courses except the Bible and all Bible teachers did their work without pay. Harding explained, "It seems to me that a teacher of the Bible should never charge anything for his services whether he teaches with pen or tongue. We ought not to put a price on the gospel. . . ."" Teachers, then, "will depend upon voluntary, unsolicited contributions, as they do in their work as preachers, to supply whatever they need."

Again of Lipscomb University, Harding says:

It is not an incorporated or chartered institution under the control of a Board of Trustees. I could not work as a teacher of the doctrine of Christ under such control. To my mind, such an institution is wrong to the same extent and in the same way that a missionary society is. In doing the work of Christ, a Christian should not submit himself to be directed and controlled by any other authority than that of Christ, nor should he belong to any other institution for the advance of the Lord's cause than the Church of God.

He makes the same point of a different school after he left Lipscomb University (coincidentally right after they formed a board of trustees and gained a charter):

No if our school had a Board of Trustees empowered to select and discharge teachers at their will, to direct the teachers as to what and how and when they should teach, and, in general, to control the school, with a set of by-laws of their own making for the regulation of themselves and of us, I could not continue in it.

West adds:

Not only did Harding object to a Board of Trustees to administer a Christian school, he was equally negative on an endowment. When the Christian Courier, a Texas Christian Church periodical, advocated an endowment as a means of financially supporting a faculty so they could "maintain that serenity of mind necessary to keep up their studies," Harding took exception.

So Harding - who opposed boards, charters, endowments, and salaried Bible faculty - lends his name (quite unwillingly, I imagine, if he were given the choice) to Harding University - which has a charter, a board, a large salaried Bible faculty, and an almost eighty-one million dollar endowment.

The best part for me, however, was the irony of the fact that the Harding University Graduate School of Religion will next year become the Harding University School of Theology in view of these words of Harding's: "Theological schools are wrong."