In his work Religious Literacy, Stephen Prothero offers what he calls a "Dictionary of Religious Literacy." It represents his attempt to ennumerate the bare minimum of what an American needs to know to qualify as religiously literate. What it amounts to in practice is a relatively short list of terms from the world religions and their definitions which are most relevant to civic life in the United States. It was interesting for me to peruse through that list, in part to learn new things that I supposedly should have known all along but also to evaluate just how well I stacked up against his minimum of religious knowledge.
My interest in religious literacy is somewhat different, however, from Prothero's. His concern is primarily with religious knowledge as a civic duty, as a way for all people to adequately navigate the social and political landscape of Christian-dominant but highly pluralistic America. For my part, I lament religious ignorance because it leads to religious excesses and abberations. To be a Christian and to not understand basic truths about the Bible or about the main contours of Christian theology is to invite disaster into your own thinking. The proliferation of ever more ridiculous sects and abominable ethical systems in American Christianity is, I believe, a direct result of the ongoing biblical and theological illiteracy of most American adherents.
With that in mind, I would like to offer what I believe are the core Christian facts which every American Christian ought to know by adulthood in order to successfully navigate the social, political, and theological landscape of America's Christian pluralism. I will divide my list into two fifty point sections: a primary literacy and a secondary literacy. They correspond roughly to what I believe a person should learn in from their earliest childhood and what should be built onto this base knowledge later, perhaps in high school. Let it be noted that some of these concepts may appear at first glance to be quite deep and complex. For example, if I list "Synoptic Gospels" as an area of knowledge of a literate Christian, I do not expect every Christian to be able to navigate the intricacies of two source theory versus four source theory versus the Farrer hypothesis or even to know what those are. It is enough to simply know what the term "Synoptic Gospels" means, i.e. which are the Synoptic Gospels and why, so as to know it if it should appear in an adult conversation about inspiration, canon, or higher criticism. With that disclaimer out of the way, here is my own skeletal outline of a literate Christian:
Primary Literacy
1) Name the books of the Bible in order.
2) Distinguish the Torah.
3) Distinguish the Gospels.
4) Distinguish the Epistles.
5) Identify Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel,
6) Noah,
7) Abraham,
8) Isaac,
9) Jacob,
10) Joseph,
11) Moses,
12) Joshua,
13) David,
14) Solomon,
15) Esther,
16) Daniel,
17) Jonah,
18) Mary and Joseph,
19) John the Baptist,
20) Jesus,
21) Peter, James, and John,
22) Judas Iscariot,
23) Pontius Pilate,
24) Stephen,
25) and Saul/Paul of Tarsus.
26) List the 7 days of creation,
27) the 10 plagues,
28) and the 10 Commandments.
29) Be familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel,
30) Sacrifice of Isaac,
31) Parting of the sea,
32) Giving of the Law and the golden calf,
33) Fall of Jericho,
34) Slaying of Goliath,
35) Fall of Jerusalem and exile,
36) Nativity,
37) Baptism of Jesus,
38) Temptation in the wilderness,
39) Feeding of the 5,000,
40) Clearing of the temple,
41) Passion, resurrection, and ascension,
42) Conversion of Saul,
43) and the conversion of Cornelius.
44) Be able to recite the Shema,
45) Psalm 23,
46) Lord's Prayer,
47) Golden Rule,
48) John 3:16,
49) Great Comission,
50) and either the Apostle's or the Nicene Creed.
Secondary Literacy
1) Name the Deuterocanonical books.
2) Distinguish the Prophets (Major and Minor).
3) Distinguish the Pauline and Johanine Epistles.
4) Distinguish Synoptic Gospels.
5) Identify Seth,
6) Ham, Shem, and Japheth,
7) Ishmael,
8) Aaron,
9) Gideon,
10) Samson,
11) Ruth,
12) Samuel,
13) Saul, King of Israel,
14) Jeroboam and Rehoboam,
15) Hezekiah,
16) Josiah,
17) Elijah and Elisha,
18) Isaiah,
19) Jeremiah,
20) Ezra and Nehemiah,
21) Job,
22) Lazarus,
23) Mary Magdalene,
24) Matthais,
25) Phillip,
26) and Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy.
27) Be able to list the Twelve Apostles.
28) Be familiar with some of the distinctive beliefs of Catholics,
29) Lutherans,
30) Presbyterians,
31) Baptists,
32) Methodists,
33) Pentecostals,
34) and Mormons.
35) Be able to identify Augustine,
36) Thomas Aquinas,
37) Martin Luther,
38) and John Calvin.
39) Distinguish between Pharisees and Sadducees.
40) Be familiar with Matthew 5-7,
41) John 1,
42) Acts 2,
43) Romans 1-6,
44) 1 Corinthians 15,
45) Ephesians 2:8-9 and James 2:14-26,
46) and the broad strokes of Revelation.
47) Be able to roughly explain a Christian understanding of Trinity,
48) Divinity of Jesus,
49) and sin and salvation.
50) Define the term "evangelical."
Saturday, November 19, 2011
A Little Note About a Big Issue
The following represents the fortuitous collision of a personal pet peeve of mine with an ongoing discussion among a very limited circle of friends and family. For most, the information within will seem a little like reinventing the wheel or, perhaps more damningly, like toppling a strawman. For those of this mindset, let me just encourage you to ignore this or, at the very least, trust that it is necessary (if not to vindicate a theory that by no means needs my meager defense than at least as a means of personal, public catharsis).
It is tragic to me that certain outmoded theories of personality still exist, particularly those binary understandings of personality that want to lump large segments of society into one category or another. I have in mind particularly left-brain/right-brain (from here on, "LB-RB") theories of personality, though my calumny can be just as easily applied to other once serious psychological theories that now only persist in the bloated lexicon of pop psychology (e.g. type-A/type-B personalities). Rather than mounting an exhaustive critique of LB-RB theory, I think a more constructive approach might be to offer a positive alternative. Thus, I give you the Five Factor Model, a theory which attempt to measure personality along five personality continua: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Here are the reasons why I think the Five Factor Model is superior to other models, especially the LB-RB theory:
The Five Factor Model is grounded in serious, ongoing scientific research. Notably, so many of the theories which dominate in pop psychology are no longer current in the psychological or neuroscientific communities. LB-RB, for example, was a product of research in the 1960s on split brain patients, and its formulation was tied social theories about breaking away from "oppressive" traditional (linear, left-brain) ways of thinking. Similarly, type-A/type-B theory was part of medical research going on the in 1950s which has also since been exceeded. The Five Factor Model, in contrast, is the subject of ongoing psychological and scientific debate to determine its strengths and its limits. As one example, consider ongoing attempts to translate the theory into languages and culture other than English to test its universal applicability.
The Five Factor Model allows for a balance between heredity and environment. There is no denying that there is some genetics involved in personality. One need only look at children who grew up estranged from a parent but who nevertheless express many of his or her characteristic personality traits (i.e. sons of divorced parents who grow up just like their father's anyway). The LB-RB model, however, doesn't allow for much of anything beyond heredity to play a role. By claiming to tie personality directly to the anatomical make up of one's brain, it makes personality something static and intrinsic. In reality, our personalities are shaped by our experiences as much as our genetics; who you are is more than your DNA. Testing of the five traits that make up the Five Factor Model shows that each trait is influenced roughly equally by heredity and environment, reflecting a more balanced approach to the nature-nurture debate than you receive in LB-RB theories.
The Five Factor Model is first and foremost descriptive, not predictive. There is a temptation when we classify anything, but particularly something as abstract as personality, to take that classification and apply it like a hard-and-fast rule. This temptation is particularly pronounced with LB-RB theory because it so neatly claims to predict modes of thinking and therefore types of behavior. "Person X will never be an artist. He's too left-brained." That sort of thinking limits not only the ability of people to explore and excel and grow, but it limits the thinkers ability to interact authentically with people who are so surgically sorted into artificial categories. Proponents debate the degree to which the Five Factor Model can be used to predict behavior, but all agree that the five traits it offers are a useful tool in describing and understanding behaviors. It is more open to the question "why do you think you did that" than the prediction that, inescapably, "you will do that."
Finally, the Five Factor Model gives a more complex and thus more believable picture of human personalty. The biggest flaw in most forms of binary thinking is precisely that they are binary. As with Hegel's view of history and Zoroaster's view of deity, collapsing a complex reality into two broad categories is almost always erroneous. LB-RB theory tries to simplify reality and convince us that there are essentially only two kind of people. It is a tantalizing prospect, but our experience teaches us that there are millions of kinds of people. The Five Factor Model harmonizes better with our experience of people because it makes personality a combination of any number of five variables, each of which a given person can possess to varying degrees on a continuum. For example, why do we have two supremely organized women, both friendly toward people, thirsty for new ideas, and generally unfazed by problems in the world, one of whom becomes a big-time defense attorney and the other a mild-mannered suburban librarian. The LB-RB model has no answer for why two people who manifest the same kind of thinking would have radically different life paths. The Five Factor Model recognizes that people can be almost identical in numerous personality categories (four of the five in this example) and still have very different personalities and different paths in life based on small differences in certain personality features (in this case, degree of extraversion). That is only one rough analogy, but the point is simple: personality is a complex reality that requires a complex understanding that binary modes of thinking simply cannot satisfy.
Obviously, any attempt to quantify personality and to put people into categories (even five factored categories) is going to suffer from the same pitfall of oversimplifying and artificially labeling realities which we fundamentally do not understanding. Just because no theory is perfect, however, does not mean that all theories were created equal. It is time for serious-minded people to cast aside antiquated modes of thinking and convenient tools for ordering their world and advance into the messier but more useful methods presently endorsed by the psychological and scientific communities. Anyone interested in the Five Factor Model might consider a wonderful little book, very accessible in its writing style, written by a professor at the University of Newcastle and published by Oxford University: Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are?
It is tragic to me that certain outmoded theories of personality still exist, particularly those binary understandings of personality that want to lump large segments of society into one category or another. I have in mind particularly left-brain/right-brain (from here on, "LB-RB") theories of personality, though my calumny can be just as easily applied to other once serious psychological theories that now only persist in the bloated lexicon of pop psychology (e.g. type-A/type-B personalities). Rather than mounting an exhaustive critique of LB-RB theory, I think a more constructive approach might be to offer a positive alternative. Thus, I give you the Five Factor Model, a theory which attempt to measure personality along five personality continua: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Here are the reasons why I think the Five Factor Model is superior to other models, especially the LB-RB theory:
The Five Factor Model is grounded in serious, ongoing scientific research. Notably, so many of the theories which dominate in pop psychology are no longer current in the psychological or neuroscientific communities. LB-RB, for example, was a product of research in the 1960s on split brain patients, and its formulation was tied social theories about breaking away from "oppressive" traditional (linear, left-brain) ways of thinking. Similarly, type-A/type-B theory was part of medical research going on the in 1950s which has also since been exceeded. The Five Factor Model, in contrast, is the subject of ongoing psychological and scientific debate to determine its strengths and its limits. As one example, consider ongoing attempts to translate the theory into languages and culture other than English to test its universal applicability.
The Five Factor Model allows for a balance between heredity and environment. There is no denying that there is some genetics involved in personality. One need only look at children who grew up estranged from a parent but who nevertheless express many of his or her characteristic personality traits (i.e. sons of divorced parents who grow up just like their father's anyway). The LB-RB model, however, doesn't allow for much of anything beyond heredity to play a role. By claiming to tie personality directly to the anatomical make up of one's brain, it makes personality something static and intrinsic. In reality, our personalities are shaped by our experiences as much as our genetics; who you are is more than your DNA. Testing of the five traits that make up the Five Factor Model shows that each trait is influenced roughly equally by heredity and environment, reflecting a more balanced approach to the nature-nurture debate than you receive in LB-RB theories.
The Five Factor Model is first and foremost descriptive, not predictive. There is a temptation when we classify anything, but particularly something as abstract as personality, to take that classification and apply it like a hard-and-fast rule. This temptation is particularly pronounced with LB-RB theory because it so neatly claims to predict modes of thinking and therefore types of behavior. "Person X will never be an artist. He's too left-brained." That sort of thinking limits not only the ability of people to explore and excel and grow, but it limits the thinkers ability to interact authentically with people who are so surgically sorted into artificial categories. Proponents debate the degree to which the Five Factor Model can be used to predict behavior, but all agree that the five traits it offers are a useful tool in describing and understanding behaviors. It is more open to the question "why do you think you did that" than the prediction that, inescapably, "you will do that."
Finally, the Five Factor Model gives a more complex and thus more believable picture of human personalty. The biggest flaw in most forms of binary thinking is precisely that they are binary. As with Hegel's view of history and Zoroaster's view of deity, collapsing a complex reality into two broad categories is almost always erroneous. LB-RB theory tries to simplify reality and convince us that there are essentially only two kind of people. It is a tantalizing prospect, but our experience teaches us that there are millions of kinds of people. The Five Factor Model harmonizes better with our experience of people because it makes personality a combination of any number of five variables, each of which a given person can possess to varying degrees on a continuum. For example, why do we have two supremely organized women, both friendly toward people, thirsty for new ideas, and generally unfazed by problems in the world, one of whom becomes a big-time defense attorney and the other a mild-mannered suburban librarian. The LB-RB model has no answer for why two people who manifest the same kind of thinking would have radically different life paths. The Five Factor Model recognizes that people can be almost identical in numerous personality categories (four of the five in this example) and still have very different personalities and different paths in life based on small differences in certain personality features (in this case, degree of extraversion). That is only one rough analogy, but the point is simple: personality is a complex reality that requires a complex understanding that binary modes of thinking simply cannot satisfy.
Obviously, any attempt to quantify personality and to put people into categories (even five factored categories) is going to suffer from the same pitfall of oversimplifying and artificially labeling realities which we fundamentally do not understanding. Just because no theory is perfect, however, does not mean that all theories were created equal. It is time for serious-minded people to cast aside antiquated modes of thinking and convenient tools for ordering their world and advance into the messier but more useful methods presently endorsed by the psychological and scientific communities. Anyone interested in the Five Factor Model might consider a wonderful little book, very accessible in its writing style, written by a professor at the University of Newcastle and published by Oxford University: Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are?
Friday, November 18, 2011
Pope Kisses Man and Sues
When I read the other day about the new Benetton ads featuring manipulated images of world leaders kissing, I cannot say I was shocked. After all, this is the same company that brought us bloody babies and people dying of AIDS. Shock imagery is their standard operating procedure. So the picture of Obama kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao, which was the big controversy when I first saw the articles, was nauseating but not surprising. (Amusingly, the White House is pretending to be upset because of a "policy disapproving of the use of the president's name and likeness for commercial purposes" and not for the more obvious reason, that it looks like the Chinese president is totally dominating him in that picture.)I apparently missed that, in addition to a host of political world leaders, the clothing company had included a pair of religious figures in its repertoire: the pope and Egyptian imam Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb. The Vatican sprung into legal action almost immediately, claiming (rightly) that the advertisement was "offensive not only to the dignity of the pope and the Catholic Church, but also to the sensibilities of believers."
It didn't take long for Benetton to remove the ad from its website, but what's the point? The image (which I won't share here) has already gone viral. In fact, searching for the above image of Obama, you are likely to get more results featuring the pope's picture than the president's. The company's purpose was, as always, to generate controversy; it has done so with tremendous success. In an era so jaded that very little shocks us anymore, you have to credit Benetton for having the genius to imagine giant pictures of the pope kissing a Muslim man and the chutzpah to make that imagination a reality.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
A Reading Recommendation for the Illiterate
Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy undertakes in a brief span to quantify, explain, and propose corrections for the rampant religious illiteracy of Americans. In simpler terms, Prothero attempts to unravel the paradox that, while Europeans tend to be religiously knowledgeable and irreligious, Americans are pious and religiously ignorant. Religious Literacy is too short a work, at just under 150 pages of actual exposition, to argue any of its points substantially, but this is just as well because Prothero is not covering any radically new ground. Instead, the work functions as an interesting resource both as an introduction for those who, as part of their general religious ignorance, are unaware that there is a problem and as a synthesis for those who are already plagued by worry about our collective idiocy. The book is carefully organized along three lines of thought:
What is the problem?
This is by far the most gripping section of Prothero's work, not because he uncovers a problem which we are all startled to find exists but because he quantifies it in ways that highlight its embarrassing severity. It is here that Prothero shocks the reader with a rapid succession of ever more embarrassing facts: one in five evangelicals believes in reincarnation, most American adults cannot name even one of the four Gospels, most American adults cannot name the first book of the Bible, a significant percentage of high school seniors believe Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, only one in three Americans can correctly identify Jesus as the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and one in ten Americans believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. These facts, gathered from scientific surveys, are interspersed with more anecdotal tributes to American religious ignorance: a woman who believes God created Eve out of an apple, another who thinks Matthew was swallowed by a whale, most Americans cannot name more than five of the Ten Commandments, and more. Worst of all, there are not statistically significant discrepancies between religious groups. Evangelical Protestants do marginally better in surveys than Catholics, for example, but they are nearer to one another than they are to getting right. In some cases, evangelicals do even worse, as with the 60% of evangelicals who believe that Jesus was born in Jerusalem compared to only 51% of Jews. The real force of all these statistics is to re-sensitize the reader to the claim that the religious ignorance in America is no trifling matter. It is easy to say that we should know more about the faith claimed by some 80% of Americans; it is something else to come face-to-face with the cold, hard statistical reality of our own shortcomings.
Why is there a problem?
Unless you suffer under the delusion, as is the case with much of the institutional religious right, that the ongoing march of aggressive secularity is the cause of religious illiteracy, Prothero's answer to the question of "why" will not be shocking. The rise of widespread religious ignorance, especially Christian ignorance, is tied by Prothero to the American process of religious democratization, à la Nathan Hatch. It was the anti-institutional, anti-clerical, anti-intellectual impulse of distinctively American revivalism--particularly in the Second Great Awakening, but also, according to Prothero, in the post-war revival of the fifties--that began the deemphasizing of religious knowledge. The unlikely and unwitting alliance of liberal Protestantism and evangelicalism resulted in a subordination of religious knowledge to religious feeling and of orthodoxy to orthopraxy. The onus of responsibility and thus of guilt falls not the deliberate atheist but on the amnesiac Christian who has forgotten his or her duty for pedagogy.
Notably, in a justifiable effort to stop Christians from shirking their guilt in the rise of a the religiously ignorant, I believe Prothero goes to far in exonerating secularity as such. I agree, certainly, that the religious right's attempt to blame active and self-aware secular pressure is misguided, perhaps even destructive as it encourages Christians to continue to ignore their need to be the front line in resurrecting religious knowledge. It is worth remembering, however, that democratization--with its anti-institutionalism and anti-clericalism--is itself a secular impulse of Western culture. It is a more pernicious form of secularity in so far as it has been quietly accepted as if a religious truth and erodes religious knowledge, among other things, from within. In Prothero's defense, however, his work is perhaps not the place to make such a subtle argument.
How do we fix the problem?
Here, Prothero's proposal is as bold as it is unlikely. He insists that, as a civic duty, every high school student should take a mandatory course in the Bible and world religions. He reasons, quoting Warren Nord: "How can anyone believe that a collegebound student should take twelve years of mathematics and no religion rather than eleven years of mathematics and one year of religion Why require the study of trigonometry or calculus, which the great majority of students will never use or need, and ignore religion, a matter of profound and universal significance?" While some might suggest that having a course dedicated to the Bible is somehow giving preferential treatment to one religion, Prothero insists that having such a specialized course is a logical, educational, and civic necessity. Without commenting on the validity of any religion or religion at all, he correctly notes that the Bible--not the Vedas or the Tao Te Ching or even the Quran--has been the most influential work in the history of Western culture. It is the Bible and the Christian religion which dominate the American political and social landscape like nothing else. Those ignorant of Christianity in America are intellectually anemic in ways they would not be if similarly ignorant of Sikhism. In Prothero's own words:
The most intriguing part of his proposal is his examination of its legality. Showing a surprisingly broad knowledge of legal decisions regarding religious curricula, Prothero helps the reader to navigate constitutional issues surrounding his proposal (which, I should note, is by no mean peculiar to him but is being taken up in various forms on all sides of the political spectrum). His conclusion, which one struggles to disagree with, "Supreme Court justices are all but begging public schools to teach about religion."
In short, Religious Literacy is an intriguing little work which marches us through the morass of our own benightedness and, perhaps overly optimistically, proposes a way out for Americans. While I struggle to imagine a world in which Prothero's national proposals become a reality, his work has forced me to think about what might be done on a more local level, particularly by parents and churches. Many of the hallmarks of literacy according to Prothero I did not learn until I began formal education in religion. Looking back, I realize that they are facts that all Christians should know, not the least of which those of us who come from religious traditions which purport to give special place to the Scriptures.
What is the problem?
This is by far the most gripping section of Prothero's work, not because he uncovers a problem which we are all startled to find exists but because he quantifies it in ways that highlight its embarrassing severity. It is here that Prothero shocks the reader with a rapid succession of ever more embarrassing facts: one in five evangelicals believes in reincarnation, most American adults cannot name even one of the four Gospels, most American adults cannot name the first book of the Bible, a significant percentage of high school seniors believe Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, only one in three Americans can correctly identify Jesus as the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and one in ten Americans believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. These facts, gathered from scientific surveys, are interspersed with more anecdotal tributes to American religious ignorance: a woman who believes God created Eve out of an apple, another who thinks Matthew was swallowed by a whale, most Americans cannot name more than five of the Ten Commandments, and more. Worst of all, there are not statistically significant discrepancies between religious groups. Evangelical Protestants do marginally better in surveys than Catholics, for example, but they are nearer to one another than they are to getting right. In some cases, evangelicals do even worse, as with the 60% of evangelicals who believe that Jesus was born in Jerusalem compared to only 51% of Jews. The real force of all these statistics is to re-sensitize the reader to the claim that the religious ignorance in America is no trifling matter. It is easy to say that we should know more about the faith claimed by some 80% of Americans; it is something else to come face-to-face with the cold, hard statistical reality of our own shortcomings.
Why is there a problem?
Unless you suffer under the delusion, as is the case with much of the institutional religious right, that the ongoing march of aggressive secularity is the cause of religious illiteracy, Prothero's answer to the question of "why" will not be shocking. The rise of widespread religious ignorance, especially Christian ignorance, is tied by Prothero to the American process of religious democratization, à la Nathan Hatch. It was the anti-institutional, anti-clerical, anti-intellectual impulse of distinctively American revivalism--particularly in the Second Great Awakening, but also, according to Prothero, in the post-war revival of the fifties--that began the deemphasizing of religious knowledge. The unlikely and unwitting alliance of liberal Protestantism and evangelicalism resulted in a subordination of religious knowledge to religious feeling and of orthodoxy to orthopraxy. The onus of responsibility and thus of guilt falls not the deliberate atheist but on the amnesiac Christian who has forgotten his or her duty for pedagogy.
Notably, in a justifiable effort to stop Christians from shirking their guilt in the rise of a the religiously ignorant, I believe Prothero goes to far in exonerating secularity as such. I agree, certainly, that the religious right's attempt to blame active and self-aware secular pressure is misguided, perhaps even destructive as it encourages Christians to continue to ignore their need to be the front line in resurrecting religious knowledge. It is worth remembering, however, that democratization--with its anti-institutionalism and anti-clericalism--is itself a secular impulse of Western culture. It is a more pernicious form of secularity in so far as it has been quietly accepted as if a religious truth and erodes religious knowledge, among other things, from within. In Prothero's defense, however, his work is perhaps not the place to make such a subtle argument.
How do we fix the problem?
Here, Prothero's proposal is as bold as it is unlikely. He insists that, as a civic duty, every high school student should take a mandatory course in the Bible and world religions. He reasons, quoting Warren Nord: "How can anyone believe that a collegebound student should take twelve years of mathematics and no religion rather than eleven years of mathematics and one year of religion Why require the study of trigonometry or calculus, which the great majority of students will never use or need, and ignore religion, a matter of profound and universal significance?" While some might suggest that having a course dedicated to the Bible is somehow giving preferential treatment to one religion, Prothero insists that having such a specialized course is a logical, educational, and civic necessity. Without commenting on the validity of any religion or religion at all, he correctly notes that the Bible--not the Vedas or the Tao Te Ching or even the Quran--has been the most influential work in the history of Western culture. It is the Bible and the Christian religion which dominate the American political and social landscape like nothing else. Those ignorant of Christianity in America are intellectually anemic in ways they would not be if similarly ignorant of Sikhism. In Prothero's own words:
Some have argued against Bible courses in the public schools on the grounds that they somehow “establish” Judeo-Christianity. For these courses to be fair, this argument goes, teachers need to give equal time to all the world’s scriptures, treating the Bible as one sacred text among many. This is absurd and impractical. Of course, students can learn much from reading the Quran and the Tao Te Ching. But the Bible, which the Supreme Court has described as “the world’s all-time best seller,” is of sufficient importance in Western civilization to merit its own course. Treating it no differently from, say, the Zend Avesta of the Zoroastrians or Scientology’s Dianetics makes no educational sense. (And what teacher has the hours—or the training—to give “equal time” to all the world’s scriptures?)
The most intriguing part of his proposal is his examination of its legality. Showing a surprisingly broad knowledge of legal decisions regarding religious curricula, Prothero helps the reader to navigate constitutional issues surrounding his proposal (which, I should note, is by no mean peculiar to him but is being taken up in various forms on all sides of the political spectrum). His conclusion, which one struggles to disagree with, "Supreme Court justices are all but begging public schools to teach about religion."
In short, Religious Literacy is an intriguing little work which marches us through the morass of our own benightedness and, perhaps overly optimistically, proposes a way out for Americans. While I struggle to imagine a world in which Prothero's national proposals become a reality, his work has forced me to think about what might be done on a more local level, particularly by parents and churches. Many of the hallmarks of literacy according to Prothero I did not learn until I began formal education in religion. Looking back, I realize that they are facts that all Christians should know, not the least of which those of us who come from religious traditions which purport to give special place to the Scriptures.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Re-Reading Revelation: An Invitation (Ch. 22)
I realize that, from the outset, I promised that this series would be about how you can read Revelation rather than how you should read it. I have done my best to hold true to that promise, trying to offer a way for the troubled Christian to engage Revelation without being overcome by the hairsplitting nuance of Christian eschatology. This final thought will try to tread the fine line between describing a facet of the book and prescribing a hermeneutic for it. A problem arises, however, in that the final section of Revelation has something critical to say of the way that most people today read Revelation. The conclusion of the text, which traditionally ties any literary work together, specifically lends itself to something other than a strictly eschatological interpretation. In other words, John spends a great deal of time talking about the end but that vision of the future is not an end in itself. John tells us "what must soon take place" with another purpose in mind.
He is not shy about revealing that purpose to his readers either. In fact, from the beginning, John announces how he intends his readers to receive his work: "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." The sentiment is paralleled in the final passage: "And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book." What precisely does it mean to "keep" the words of a prophecy? Certainly John is not talking about merely possessing them. The NIV renders the term as "take to heart" and the NASB as "heeds." John himself gives no shortage of clues about what he means. Consider these verses which follow after the call to "keep" the words of Revelation:
-- When John falls down to praise the angel, the messenger repeats one of the central commands of the book: "Worship God."
-- "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let...the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy."
-- "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done."
-- "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."
It is almost as if, realizing that he is running out of papyrus, John feels the need to hammer his point home with a quick repetition of essentially the same command: obey. In a way that ought to be telling to modern readers, John does not spend his final moments in an exposition of the cryptic future that he predicts. Instead of stressing the when and the how of Jesus' coming, he merely assumes that coming and proceeds to tell us how we should respond. "The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price." With these words, we discover that Revelation is not a history book written cleverly in advance of the events it records. It is an invitation to the lost and an exhortation to the found. Jesus is coming soon. How will you react to that good news?
The beauty of realizing this overarching message and purpose for Revelation is that it transcends all our petty disputes. The wonderful, terrible God of judgment offers salvation to His church and solicits a response of obedience and praise from it. That message--more clearly and surely stated than any eschatological supposition--applies to the pre-millennialist and the post-millennialist alike. This preterist and the idealist are both compelled to read His glorious works and fall down at the feet of the Son of Man. The outpouring of God's wrath convicts us all, regardless of where (if anywhere) you want to locate the rapture relative to the tribulation. That is not to say that some of these issues are not mentioned in Revelation or that there discussion may not be relevant, to an extent. It is merely an effort to demonstrate that John has an intention for his text that our modern descent into polemical madness has caused us to forget--or at the very least to subordinate to petty squabbling. That Jesus is coming seems to be enough for the author and when he is coming seems to be precisely the kind of irrelevant thinking Jesus warned us against. John tells us what our first response to his text should be, and it isn't to construct an eschatological timeline. The Spirit invites us to come, to wash our robes, to persist in holiness, to worship God, and to relish the blessings we have as those who have heard and kept the words of the prophecy. "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"
*****
For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.
He is not shy about revealing that purpose to his readers either. In fact, from the beginning, John announces how he intends his readers to receive his work: "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." The sentiment is paralleled in the final passage: "And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book." What precisely does it mean to "keep" the words of a prophecy? Certainly John is not talking about merely possessing them. The NIV renders the term as "take to heart" and the NASB as "heeds." John himself gives no shortage of clues about what he means. Consider these verses which follow after the call to "keep" the words of Revelation:
-- When John falls down to praise the angel, the messenger repeats one of the central commands of the book: "Worship God."
-- "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let...the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy."
-- "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done."
-- "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."
It is almost as if, realizing that he is running out of papyrus, John feels the need to hammer his point home with a quick repetition of essentially the same command: obey. In a way that ought to be telling to modern readers, John does not spend his final moments in an exposition of the cryptic future that he predicts. Instead of stressing the when and the how of Jesus' coming, he merely assumes that coming and proceeds to tell us how we should respond. "The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price." With these words, we discover that Revelation is not a history book written cleverly in advance of the events it records. It is an invitation to the lost and an exhortation to the found. Jesus is coming soon. How will you react to that good news?
The beauty of realizing this overarching message and purpose for Revelation is that it transcends all our petty disputes. The wonderful, terrible God of judgment offers salvation to His church and solicits a response of obedience and praise from it. That message--more clearly and surely stated than any eschatological supposition--applies to the pre-millennialist and the post-millennialist alike. This preterist and the idealist are both compelled to read His glorious works and fall down at the feet of the Son of Man. The outpouring of God's wrath convicts us all, regardless of where (if anywhere) you want to locate the rapture relative to the tribulation. That is not to say that some of these issues are not mentioned in Revelation or that there discussion may not be relevant, to an extent. It is merely an effort to demonstrate that John has an intention for his text that our modern descent into polemical madness has caused us to forget--or at the very least to subordinate to petty squabbling. That Jesus is coming seems to be enough for the author and when he is coming seems to be precisely the kind of irrelevant thinking Jesus warned us against. John tells us what our first response to his text should be, and it isn't to construct an eschatological timeline. The Spirit invites us to come, to wash our robes, to persist in holiness, to worship God, and to relish the blessings we have as those who have heard and kept the words of the prophecy. "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"
*****
For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Re-Reading Revelation: All Things New (Chs. 21-22)
With the dual climax of victory and judgment now behind, the narrative turns toward the denouement. The great villain leaves the scene for ever and, with the exception of some brief exclusionary phrases, all unpleasantness is behind John. What remains is to see the great reward for which the witnesses of the Lord have endured, to realize the promise that is issued in the death of Christ (depicted in the beginning of the book as the slain Lamb) and finally ensured under the triumphant Christ(depicted at the end of the book as the conqueror on a white horse). God declares, "Behold, I am making all things new." Suddenly the world is returned to a pristine paradise, edenic in its appearance only more wonderful still. The Tree of Life is reopened to public consumption without that pesky Tree of Knowledge to wreak havoc with humanity. The river and the garden are accompanied by a great new city that represents Jerusalem as it ought to have been: pure, wonderful, and with God at her center. The imagery is enough to tantalize a lifetime's worth of imaginings.
Yet, as easy as it may be to delight in the particulars of the picture offered up to us as our hope for eternity--and that delighted is heightened when we consider just how unpleasant the narrative has been to this point--there is a more important theme at work here. Before God declares that all things will be made new, before we tour the New Jerusalem, before the thirsty are promised the waters of life, and before the whole chorus lapses into an eternal doxology, a voice from heaven makes an initial pronouncement: "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God." In this is the actual resolution of the tension in Revelation. As with the entirety of Scripture, the real villain has not been Satan but separation. Through the entire narrative, the persistent scene has been of the commands of God in heaven and their actualization on earth. God stands at a distance throughout as He works out His plan of justice and, ultimately, reconciliation.
This desire that God should be our God and we His people has been a persistent theme in Scripture. It is the essence of God's covenant with Abraham which in turn forms the whole basis for the divine work of election and redemption in the world. It was the purpose of Israel's sacrificial system of atonement that God should have some tangible presence with His people. It was the reason Solomon built the temple and the reason he knew it was ultimately inadequate. It both explains Israel's disintegration and exile and fuels their hopes for return. Paul will use it to warn Christians against repeating the sins of Israel. This ardent hope, both of God's and of humanity's, John depicts as fulfilled. His readers then, as we do now, knew that God's dwelling with humanity was still merely a promise only partially fulfilled with the gift of His Spirit for His church, but they understood after centuries of having the theme reverberating over and over again in the Scriptures that all their hope rested on the fact that God would someday break through the barriers which separate us.
It is interesting that this declaration of achievement precipitates every other blessing which is offered. Because He is there, God will wipe away all tears, and "death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore." Our former mode of existence, living apart from God, is no more. In the New Jerusalem, there is no temple anymore. After all, it was merely a symbol of God's presence; the New Jerusalem needs no inadequate symbols. The city will be beautiful radiance of fine jewels because it has "the glory of God." This radiance of God replaces the very sun, and all people will walk in His light, by His light. It is He who bids them drink from the river of life. There will be no doubt, no idolatry, no sin, because God is present and has taken His people unto Himself. Cast in this light, the final scene of Revelation becomes for us a call to refocus our hope, to strip ourselves of any superficial desire to escape this material world into a heavenly realm of mansions, robes, crowns, gold, and even more substantial things like release from disease and death and sorrow. All these are accidents. The true substance of our hope is that God should be, in a real and tangible sense, our God and that we may be purely, reverently, joyously, His people.
*****
For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.
Yet, as easy as it may be to delight in the particulars of the picture offered up to us as our hope for eternity--and that delighted is heightened when we consider just how unpleasant the narrative has been to this point--there is a more important theme at work here. Before God declares that all things will be made new, before we tour the New Jerusalem, before the thirsty are promised the waters of life, and before the whole chorus lapses into an eternal doxology, a voice from heaven makes an initial pronouncement: "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God." In this is the actual resolution of the tension in Revelation. As with the entirety of Scripture, the real villain has not been Satan but separation. Through the entire narrative, the persistent scene has been of the commands of God in heaven and their actualization on earth. God stands at a distance throughout as He works out His plan of justice and, ultimately, reconciliation.
This desire that God should be our God and we His people has been a persistent theme in Scripture. It is the essence of God's covenant with Abraham which in turn forms the whole basis for the divine work of election and redemption in the world. It was the purpose of Israel's sacrificial system of atonement that God should have some tangible presence with His people. It was the reason Solomon built the temple and the reason he knew it was ultimately inadequate. It both explains Israel's disintegration and exile and fuels their hopes for return. Paul will use it to warn Christians against repeating the sins of Israel. This ardent hope, both of God's and of humanity's, John depicts as fulfilled. His readers then, as we do now, knew that God's dwelling with humanity was still merely a promise only partially fulfilled with the gift of His Spirit for His church, but they understood after centuries of having the theme reverberating over and over again in the Scriptures that all their hope rested on the fact that God would someday break through the barriers which separate us.
It is interesting that this declaration of achievement precipitates every other blessing which is offered. Because He is there, God will wipe away all tears, and "death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore." Our former mode of existence, living apart from God, is no more. In the New Jerusalem, there is no temple anymore. After all, it was merely a symbol of God's presence; the New Jerusalem needs no inadequate symbols. The city will be beautiful radiance of fine jewels because it has "the glory of God." This radiance of God replaces the very sun, and all people will walk in His light, by His light. It is He who bids them drink from the river of life. There will be no doubt, no idolatry, no sin, because God is present and has taken His people unto Himself. Cast in this light, the final scene of Revelation becomes for us a call to refocus our hope, to strip ourselves of any superficial desire to escape this material world into a heavenly realm of mansions, robes, crowns, gold, and even more substantial things like release from disease and death and sorrow. All these are accidents. The true substance of our hope is that God should be, in a real and tangible sense, our God and that we may be purely, reverently, joyously, His people.
*****
For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Re-Reading Revelation: Joy and Judgment (Chs. 19-20)
Judgment is something of a frightening theme throughout the book of Revelation. The theme is constant throughout the text. In the prologue, John warns that "the time is near" and, in his greeting, goes farther by warning that "every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail[a] on account of him." While John adds the resignation, "Even so, let it be" there is a certain sense in which you can expect the churches not to want to put their own "amen" on that particular sentiment. In the letters which launch the book, the prospect of judgment for the clearly flawed kingdom of God is frightening. The insinuations included in those letters are given teeth as God acts on His promise of judgment for the rest of the book. Stars fall from the heaven, rivers dry up, monstrous locusts torture humanity, and they are finally harvested into a winepress and crushed to death. Judgment is ugly business.
It would stand to reason then that when the time for final judgment actually rolled around that the Christians in the narrative of Revelation would respond to the prospect of judgment much in the same way we do, with fear, trembling, and uncertainty. It is curious to find that just the opposite is true. After looking on to chapters of the terrible outpouring of God's wrath, the Christians approaching final judgment are positively exuberant. In the course of a single chapter there is a cluster of three of the most exultant hymns of the entire text. First the great multitude sings:
And the elders answer, "Amen. Hallelujah." Then a voice from the throne says:
Then the multitude begins again:
Given that the final roll call is about to be taken, we might expect a great deal more trepidation on the part of the multitude. Instead, they are praising God specifically for the truth and justice of His judgment. Too often, we take away from the text of Revelation just how frightening is the wrath of God, and that is, as far as it goes, an appropriate message. That is not, however, the primary message that the multitude in heaven seems to be taking away from the cosmic judgment drama that it has seen unfold. Quite the contrary, they seem to take note of just how righteously God has dispensed His justice. If you think back on the recipients of divine wrath, they are the sexually libertine, the idolatrous, the apostates, the murderous, and the avaricious. More than anything, however, it is the unrepentant. Quietly, subtly, John issues in Revelation no less than ten different calls to repentance or rebukes for being unrepentant. Faced with the continuous experience of divine rebuke and a constant stream of witnesses to the Gospel--including John, those beheaded for Christ, anyone who reads the text of Revelation, the squatters living under the altar, and other notables--the most notorious targets of God's wrath are those obstinate members of the human race who would still rather debauch, murder, and steal than direct their worship to its appropriate object.
It is no wonder then that the church, clothed in the pure white linen which is "the righteous deeds of the saints," should welcome God's judgment. They have correctly understood the Gospel, that salvation is for all who would turn from sin and to God. Wrath, in contrast, is reserve for those who stubbornly and in spite of all divine prompting prefer sin and death to righteousness and life. This disposition of the church is vindicated as judgment finally plays out. The righteous rule with Christ, heavenly fire consumes the enemies of the church, Satan is cast into the eternal fire with the beast and the prophet, Death follows shortly after into the pit of fire, and all humanity is fairly "judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done."
Judgment should scare us. Clearly Jesus expects it to when he invokes it during the course of his ministry and when he employs the prospect of it to inspire repentance among the churches in Revelation. On the other hand, the fear of the prospect of judgment is certainly only a means to an end. In the final reckoning of things, judgment is not something to be feared but something to delight in, not because we relish the prospect of punishment but because we delight in our service of a just God. Judgment, as much as it is an expression of wrath against evil, is first and foremost the moment our salvation is actualized. It is the moment when, after a life of service and devotion, we come before the throne to hear that our names are written in the Lamb's book of life. All too often, our collective Christian imagination sees final judgment as a moment of intense fear as we stand before a stern judicial figure rescued only by a last minute intercession of Christ as our advocate. The image Revelation gives us is different. It is one of joyous anticipation, in which we can cry out confidently in advance "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just."
*****
For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.
It would stand to reason then that when the time for final judgment actually rolled around that the Christians in the narrative of Revelation would respond to the prospect of judgment much in the same way we do, with fear, trembling, and uncertainty. It is curious to find that just the opposite is true. After looking on to chapters of the terrible outpouring of God's wrath, the Christians approaching final judgment are positively exuberant. In the course of a single chapter there is a cluster of three of the most exultant hymns of the entire text. First the great multitude sings:
Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
for his judgments are true and just;
for he has judged the great prostitute
who corrupted the earth with her immorality,
and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.
And the elders answer, "Amen. Hallelujah." Then a voice from the throne says:
Praise our God,
all you his servants,
you who fear him,
small and great.
Then the multitude begins again:
Hallelujah!For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure.
Given that the final roll call is about to be taken, we might expect a great deal more trepidation on the part of the multitude. Instead, they are praising God specifically for the truth and justice of His judgment. Too often, we take away from the text of Revelation just how frightening is the wrath of God, and that is, as far as it goes, an appropriate message. That is not, however, the primary message that the multitude in heaven seems to be taking away from the cosmic judgment drama that it has seen unfold. Quite the contrary, they seem to take note of just how righteously God has dispensed His justice. If you think back on the recipients of divine wrath, they are the sexually libertine, the idolatrous, the apostates, the murderous, and the avaricious. More than anything, however, it is the unrepentant. Quietly, subtly, John issues in Revelation no less than ten different calls to repentance or rebukes for being unrepentant. Faced with the continuous experience of divine rebuke and a constant stream of witnesses to the Gospel--including John, those beheaded for Christ, anyone who reads the text of Revelation, the squatters living under the altar, and other notables--the most notorious targets of God's wrath are those obstinate members of the human race who would still rather debauch, murder, and steal than direct their worship to its appropriate object.
It is no wonder then that the church, clothed in the pure white linen which is "the righteous deeds of the saints," should welcome God's judgment. They have correctly understood the Gospel, that salvation is for all who would turn from sin and to God. Wrath, in contrast, is reserve for those who stubbornly and in spite of all divine prompting prefer sin and death to righteousness and life. This disposition of the church is vindicated as judgment finally plays out. The righteous rule with Christ, heavenly fire consumes the enemies of the church, Satan is cast into the eternal fire with the beast and the prophet, Death follows shortly after into the pit of fire, and all humanity is fairly "judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done."
Judgment should scare us. Clearly Jesus expects it to when he invokes it during the course of his ministry and when he employs the prospect of it to inspire repentance among the churches in Revelation. On the other hand, the fear of the prospect of judgment is certainly only a means to an end. In the final reckoning of things, judgment is not something to be feared but something to delight in, not because we relish the prospect of punishment but because we delight in our service of a just God. Judgment, as much as it is an expression of wrath against evil, is first and foremost the moment our salvation is actualized. It is the moment when, after a life of service and devotion, we come before the throne to hear that our names are written in the Lamb's book of life. All too often, our collective Christian imagination sees final judgment as a moment of intense fear as we stand before a stern judicial figure rescued only by a last minute intercession of Christ as our advocate. The image Revelation gives us is different. It is one of joyous anticipation, in which we can cry out confidently in advance "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just."
*****
For a full list of "Re-reading Revelation" posts, see Re-reading Revelation: Statement of Purpose.
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