The melancholy fact runs through all history that nothing has been too absurd, nothing too cruel, to be believed and taught and done in the name of religion...You can not reason with a false religious belief any more than you can argue with a case of typhoid fever. It simply runs its course and mental health returns.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
The Wisdom of George Sutherland
George Sutherland--a lapsed Mormon and the senator from Utah in 1907--uttered these words with regard to the controversial seating of Mormon apostle Reed Smoot in the Senate. They can, and should, be removed from this context, however, and applied more broadly. They express a truth which in our contentious times could stand to be remembered:
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Here’s an Idea, Don't Vote: Violence and Representative Democracy
There's an election today. Have you heard? This will come as a shock to no one who has ever visited this site, but I will not be voting this year. I also didn't vote four years ago. Or four years before that. Or...you get the drift. As a committed old, tried and true Christian anarchist, I have watched the campaign season very closely, the way I might watch a really interesting football game, or a Spike "world's most unbelievable car crashes" marathon. Politics--infinitely more than contact sports and traffic accidents--has proves itself again and again to be irredeemably violent. Beyond that basically standard pacifist complaint, however, I would like to offer three reasons why I, as a Christian, am not voting and, wait for it, why I encourage other Christians not to vote either. If you're not a Christian, you should vote; it'd be a shame if you didn't. (Not nearly as big a shame as it is that you're not a Christian, of course.) In any case...
With this final argument, I will most nearly approach the essential quarrel that Christian anarchism has with government generally and representative democracy specifically. To do this, however, requires an examination both of the nature of the state and the moral implications in our republican form of government. Though less concrete and more nuanced than other pleas to avoid participation in the democratic process, it still serves as the most compelling reason to see voting as immoral rather than merely unnecessary, ineffective, or unimportant.
David Lipscomb states succinctly what later theologians have agonized over with regard to man's original sin: "God would govern and guide man; man would govern the under-creation, and so the whole world would be held under the government of God, man immediately and the under-creation through man. But, man refused to be governed by God...The institution of human government was an act of rebellion and began among those in rebellion against God, with the purpose of superseding the Divine rule with the rule of man." The term en vogue now to discuss man's fall is "autonomy," but the notions are the same. The account of the first sin in Genesis boils down to the belief that humanity knew better than God how to manage its own affairs.
It is not a coincidence that the second sin is murder. Violence follows logically on the heels of rebellion. Eve having usurped the divine prerogative to rule, Cain usurps the divine prerogative to judge. Ignoring the divine approbation showered on Abel, Cain renders his own terminal judgment about his brother and summarily executes him.
It is equally understandable then that civil government should arise both as an attempt to curb the influences of these sins and as their supreme manifestation. On the one hand, civil government exists to give wrest the rights of authority and judgement from the hands of the individual, a transfer of power which is necessary in order for society to function. At the same time, however, civil government exists as the collaborative human expression of that primary impulse toward autonomy. God is no more lawgiver and judge now than in the days after the fall. Instead, humanity set up an alternative lawgiver and judge to stand in the place of God. The state is essentially and inescapably an idol to our own sense of superior self-determination.
It's a truth so inescapable, God Himself might as well have uttered it:
Samuel obeys, and in his subsequent warning to the people he points out that the king will be the source of constant oppression for the people. "And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day." Samuel, to say nothing of the LORD, recognizes that human governments will always be tied inexorably to violence. Civil government, simply defined, is the ability--granted or assumed--to coerce others to behave in ways they would not otherwise. People pay their taxes because they fear the IRS, not because they have any confidence in the federal government to invest their money wisely. People drive the speed limit to avoid getting a ticket, not because they are opposed in principle to driving more than 25-mph in a school zone. A government which does not have coercive authority--which is a poor euphemism for violence--to enforce its laws instantly collapses.
But, as we've already seen, Christians have no investment in coercing non-Christians to mimic a Christian society. All our efforts to do so have in fact been counterproductive. It shouldn't surprise anyone. There is no government which can function on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount because civil government unavoidably implies violence. A foreign policy which extols "turn the other cheek" and "resist not evil" invites invasion. Imagine, moreover, a candidate running on the economic platform, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth." (Never mind that the recent rescue of Wall Street, the banks, and big business has proved the biblical adage "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.") Our judicial system would grind to an immediate halt if it were to embrace "Judge not, that you be not judged"--without moving over to talk about "he who is without sin." There's no reason to even discuss the golden rule. The fundamental incompatibility of Christianity and civil government should be obvious merely from a liberal exercise of human reason, but Paul does Christians the service of highlighting the dichotomy in Romans when he tells Christians that they must express love and peace and allow the government to be God's unwitting agent for vengeance.
Therein lies the special problem for representative democracy. For Paul, it was simple: Christians and governments were discrete ethical units. The same is not true in a representative democracy. It has been a while since most of us took a high school civics course, and, if yours was anything like mine, it was worthless to begin with. Here is the way our government works. Our nation is too large and unwieldy to have a direct democracy, wherein everyone actually exercises a specific voice in the construction of policy. Instead, through voting and other means of political activism, Americans elect a small representative group of people to construct policy on their behalf. For the non-Christian, the process is simple enough: choose whichever candidate is most likely to achieve the political ends most important to you.
Here is the problem for Christians. By choosing to elect a representative, we make ourselves complicit in everything that is done on our behalf. That's unpleasant to think about and easy to dismiss uncritically, but that is the nature of the American system of government. President Obama has your proxy to act in the executive branch. Maybe you didn't vote for him, and maybe that means you can sleep better at night know that your spotless Christian hands aren't stained with the blood of the people he assassinated by remote control. But unless you make a habit of losing, there is someone who is representing you in the American government, and it is necessary then to come to terms with the fact that government by its very nature behaves in ways forbidden to Christians.
War serves a legitimate function in statecraft, as does, arguably, capital punishment. But the Christ who told Peter to sheath his sword and stepped in front of the Jewish firing squad to save an adulteress models a different behavior, an ethical lifestyle that Christians are obligated to follow. Whoever you vote for, whoever is elected is employed only and entirely in the business of violence, that is in the business of coercing people to do what they would not do if given the choice. Whether it is taxes, speed limits, capital punishment, marriage rights, restrictions on abortion, or a war in Iran (because dying in the Middle East is the new American pastime) is irrelevant. Government is in the business of violence, and our government is in the business of doing violence with the consent of and on behalf of the voting public.
There is a solution, of course, for Christians. If to vote means to insinuate yourself ethically if not personally into the vile business of politics, then don't vote. It's not a matter of apathy or a recognition of futility. Instead, it is an affirmation that you belong to a different kingdom with a different King. Moreover--unlike America which continues to prove both its ambition and ineptitude on this front--our King will one day have everything put into subjection under his feet, without need of my vote or my campaign contributions. This is not a disengagement with the world. It is a proud boast that, in Christ, we have be granted a different mode of engagement with the world. One in which "when reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat." Christians reject, loudly and audaciously, the governing assumption the state that order is born out of violence and community out of coercion. By not voting, we concede the work of evil to the working of evildoers and reserve for ourselves the practice of untainted righteousness.
Perhaps more importantly, when Christians refuse to vote, we protect ourselves from the errors of the Israelites. We forget neither that God is our King nor the deeds He has worked on our behalf. We heed the advice of Solomon to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." and sing with the psalmist, "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes." There is a stand to take this election more important than opposition to abortion. There is a gospel to preach truer than economic equality of opportunity. That message begins when Christians extricate themselves from the polls and resume their stance as critics from without, voices in the wilderness crying "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
If the kingdom of heaven really is at hand, why are we so invested in the politics of the kingdoms of this world?
With this final argument, I will most nearly approach the essential quarrel that Christian anarchism has with government generally and representative democracy specifically. To do this, however, requires an examination both of the nature of the state and the moral implications in our republican form of government. Though less concrete and more nuanced than other pleas to avoid participation in the democratic process, it still serves as the most compelling reason to see voting as immoral rather than merely unnecessary, ineffective, or unimportant.
David Lipscomb states succinctly what later theologians have agonized over with regard to man's original sin: "God would govern and guide man; man would govern the under-creation, and so the whole world would be held under the government of God, man immediately and the under-creation through man. But, man refused to be governed by God...The institution of human government was an act of rebellion and began among those in rebellion against God, with the purpose of superseding the Divine rule with the rule of man." The term en vogue now to discuss man's fall is "autonomy," but the notions are the same. The account of the first sin in Genesis boils down to the belief that humanity knew better than God how to manage its own affairs.
It is not a coincidence that the second sin is murder. Violence follows logically on the heels of rebellion. Eve having usurped the divine prerogative to rule, Cain usurps the divine prerogative to judge. Ignoring the divine approbation showered on Abel, Cain renders his own terminal judgment about his brother and summarily executes him.
It is equally understandable then that civil government should arise both as an attempt to curb the influences of these sins and as their supreme manifestation. On the one hand, civil government exists to give wrest the rights of authority and judgement from the hands of the individual, a transfer of power which is necessary in order for society to function. At the same time, however, civil government exists as the collaborative human expression of that primary impulse toward autonomy. God is no more lawgiver and judge now than in the days after the fall. Instead, humanity set up an alternative lawgiver and judge to stand in the place of God. The state is essentially and inescapably an idol to our own sense of superior self-determination.
It's a truth so inescapable, God Himself might as well have uttered it:
Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
Samuel obeys, and in his subsequent warning to the people he points out that the king will be the source of constant oppression for the people. "And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day." Samuel, to say nothing of the LORD, recognizes that human governments will always be tied inexorably to violence. Civil government, simply defined, is the ability--granted or assumed--to coerce others to behave in ways they would not otherwise. People pay their taxes because they fear the IRS, not because they have any confidence in the federal government to invest their money wisely. People drive the speed limit to avoid getting a ticket, not because they are opposed in principle to driving more than 25-mph in a school zone. A government which does not have coercive authority--which is a poor euphemism for violence--to enforce its laws instantly collapses.
But, as we've already seen, Christians have no investment in coercing non-Christians to mimic a Christian society. All our efforts to do so have in fact been counterproductive. It shouldn't surprise anyone. There is no government which can function on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount because civil government unavoidably implies violence. A foreign policy which extols "turn the other cheek" and "resist not evil" invites invasion. Imagine, moreover, a candidate running on the economic platform, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth." (Never mind that the recent rescue of Wall Street, the banks, and big business has proved the biblical adage "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.") Our judicial system would grind to an immediate halt if it were to embrace "Judge not, that you be not judged"--without moving over to talk about "he who is without sin." There's no reason to even discuss the golden rule. The fundamental incompatibility of Christianity and civil government should be obvious merely from a liberal exercise of human reason, but Paul does Christians the service of highlighting the dichotomy in Romans when he tells Christians that they must express love and peace and allow the government to be God's unwitting agent for vengeance.
Therein lies the special problem for representative democracy. For Paul, it was simple: Christians and governments were discrete ethical units. The same is not true in a representative democracy. It has been a while since most of us took a high school civics course, and, if yours was anything like mine, it was worthless to begin with. Here is the way our government works. Our nation is too large and unwieldy to have a direct democracy, wherein everyone actually exercises a specific voice in the construction of policy. Instead, through voting and other means of political activism, Americans elect a small representative group of people to construct policy on their behalf. For the non-Christian, the process is simple enough: choose whichever candidate is most likely to achieve the political ends most important to you.
Here is the problem for Christians. By choosing to elect a representative, we make ourselves complicit in everything that is done on our behalf. That's unpleasant to think about and easy to dismiss uncritically, but that is the nature of the American system of government. President Obama has your proxy to act in the executive branch. Maybe you didn't vote for him, and maybe that means you can sleep better at night know that your spotless Christian hands aren't stained with the blood of the people he assassinated by remote control. But unless you make a habit of losing, there is someone who is representing you in the American government, and it is necessary then to come to terms with the fact that government by its very nature behaves in ways forbidden to Christians.
War serves a legitimate function in statecraft, as does, arguably, capital punishment. But the Christ who told Peter to sheath his sword and stepped in front of the Jewish firing squad to save an adulteress models a different behavior, an ethical lifestyle that Christians are obligated to follow. Whoever you vote for, whoever is elected is employed only and entirely in the business of violence, that is in the business of coercing people to do what they would not do if given the choice. Whether it is taxes, speed limits, capital punishment, marriage rights, restrictions on abortion, or a war in Iran (because dying in the Middle East is the new American pastime) is irrelevant. Government is in the business of violence, and our government is in the business of doing violence with the consent of and on behalf of the voting public.
There is a solution, of course, for Christians. If to vote means to insinuate yourself ethically if not personally into the vile business of politics, then don't vote. It's not a matter of apathy or a recognition of futility. Instead, it is an affirmation that you belong to a different kingdom with a different King. Moreover--unlike America which continues to prove both its ambition and ineptitude on this front--our King will one day have everything put into subjection under his feet, without need of my vote or my campaign contributions. This is not a disengagement with the world. It is a proud boast that, in Christ, we have be granted a different mode of engagement with the world. One in which "when reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat." Christians reject, loudly and audaciously, the governing assumption the state that order is born out of violence and community out of coercion. By not voting, we concede the work of evil to the working of evildoers and reserve for ourselves the practice of untainted righteousness.
Perhaps more importantly, when Christians refuse to vote, we protect ourselves from the errors of the Israelites. We forget neither that God is our King nor the deeds He has worked on our behalf. We heed the advice of Solomon to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." and sing with the psalmist, "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes." There is a stand to take this election more important than opposition to abortion. There is a gospel to preach truer than economic equality of opportunity. That message begins when Christians extricate themselves from the polls and resume their stance as critics from without, voices in the wilderness crying "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
If the kingdom of heaven really is at hand, why are we so invested in the politics of the kingdoms of this world?
[Reason 1; Reason 2]
Monday, November 5, 2012
Here's an Idea, Don't Vote: Politics and Christian PR
There's an election tomorrow. Have you heard? This will come as a shock to no one who has ever visited this site, but I will not be voting this year. I also didn't vote four years ago. Or four years before that. Or...you get the drift. As a committed old, tried and true Christian anarchist, I have watched the campaign season very closely, the way I might watch a really interesting football game, or a Spike "world's most unbelievable car crashes" marathon. Politics--infinitely more than contact sports and traffic accidents--has proves itself again and again to be irredeemably violent. Beyond that basically standard pacifist complaint, however, I would like to offer three reasons why I, as a Christian, am not voting and, wait for it, why I encourage other Christians not to vote either. If you're not a Christian, you should vote; it'd be a shame if you didn't. (Not nearly as big a shame as it is that you're not a Christian, of course.) In any case...
The following argument will strike many as trivial, which is precisely why I have sandwiched it between what I believe are two more essential points. Nevertheless, having disposed of the notion that Christians are obligated to construct a moral society through legislation, it is important to look at the consequences of continuing to attempt to achieve such political ends. Admittedly there is a real sense in which Scripture acknowledges that that to be a Christian means to open yourself up to ridicule. Paul even accept that the world will always look down on the wisdom of God, ironically labeling it folly. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between opening ourselves up to be mocked and causing God to be mocked.
Jesus and Paul agree here on what ought to be a self-evident truth: people are watching Christians and what they see determines what they believe. Christians individually probably are not to keen on the notion that their lives are under a microscope, and why should they be? God is more than fully aware that we all still sin. Christ is the image of the perfect human, not me. Nevertheless, the corporate behavior of Christianity speaks volumes to the world, particularly given how loudly we shout about certain issues. Unfortunately, what we're shouting about isn't meekness, poverty, righteousness, purity, peace, and mercy as in the Beatitudes--which precede the first quote--nor are is the public face of Christianity brotherly love, quiet living, and industriousness as in the passage from 1 Thessalonians. What are the loudest messages about God instead?
And if that seems like an extreme example to you, there are certainly others. Look at the now infamous statements of Richard Mourdock: "Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen." Frankly, I don't find that sentiment all that appalling, not because I agree with it but because I know it represents a large and historic branch of Christian theology. The popular media and the vocal critics of Christianity are less philosophical about it. It is sentiments like these given voice only because they are attached to political power: constitutionally challenged and protected protests or theology spilling into public policy. Meanwhile, I could walk into work tomorrow morning and proudly declare that I believe therapeutic abortion (i.e. abortion to save the life of the mother) is wrong--and I do believe that--and no one would bat an eye. They know that I have no interest in launching Christian ethics into the public sphere and so derision is replaced with apathy.
Meanwhile, regardless of what I believe about abortion--which is made largely irrelevant by my theoretical lack of a uterus--I would hope that when people describe me it is in terms more personal and therefore more sympathetic than the way most people choose to describe Mourdock or the Westboro Baptists. Those groups exist only as their public faces, only insofar as their behavior has consequences on a political scale. Yet when people interacted with Jesus, he specifically rejected any reduction of himself into a political persona. He was a healer of the sick, a feeder of the hungry, and a forgiver of sinners--not to mention a man of indisputably impeccable character himself. Richard Mourdock may very well donate to food drives. He may volunteer at hospitals. He may forgive any and everyone, even rape victims who get abortions. It's irrelevant. He will always be that Christian who thinks God is a rapist and wants to write laws on the basis of that belief.
It is time for Christians to take a long, hard look at just how extensively our involvement in democratic politics has opened us and, much more importantly, God to ceaseless ridicule. By allowing the public presence of the Christian faith to be reduced to its political manifestation--either is moralistic bigotry or socialistic coerced charity--we have transformed God the Father, Son, and Spirit from persons to partisans. There is no rehabilitating Christianity's political image. It is not possible to offer to the world a kinder, gentler, truer Christianity that will make the faith politically palatable. God makes radical ethical demands of His followers, and libertines are never going to be okay with that. God makes radical social justice demands of his followers, and aristocrats are never going to be okay with that. As long as the faith is married to political agendas, it will never be anything more than a caricature of the truth which Jesus came to impart, a revolutionary practical, ethical truth. In the meantime, more people are likely to disassociate with Christianity in favor of some vague notion of "spirituality" because to be in church means to be Richard Mourdock, et. al.
The following argument will strike many as trivial, which is precisely why I have sandwiched it between what I believe are two more essential points. Nevertheless, having disposed of the notion that Christians are obligated to construct a moral society through legislation, it is important to look at the consequences of continuing to attempt to achieve such political ends. Admittedly there is a real sense in which Scripture acknowledges that that to be a Christian means to open yourself up to ridicule. Paul even accept that the world will always look down on the wisdom of God, ironically labeling it folly. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between opening ourselves up to be mocked and causing God to be mocked.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
Jesus and Paul agree here on what ought to be a self-evident truth: people are watching Christians and what they see determines what they believe. Christians individually probably are not to keen on the notion that their lives are under a microscope, and why should they be? God is more than fully aware that we all still sin. Christ is the image of the perfect human, not me. Nevertheless, the corporate behavior of Christianity speaks volumes to the world, particularly given how loudly we shout about certain issues. Unfortunately, what we're shouting about isn't meekness, poverty, righteousness, purity, peace, and mercy as in the Beatitudes--which precede the first quote--nor are is the public face of Christianity brotherly love, quiet living, and industriousness as in the passage from 1 Thessalonians. What are the loudest messages about God instead?
And if that seems like an extreme example to you, there are certainly others. Look at the now infamous statements of Richard Mourdock: "Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen." Frankly, I don't find that sentiment all that appalling, not because I agree with it but because I know it represents a large and historic branch of Christian theology. The popular media and the vocal critics of Christianity are less philosophical about it. It is sentiments like these given voice only because they are attached to political power: constitutionally challenged and protected protests or theology spilling into public policy. Meanwhile, I could walk into work tomorrow morning and proudly declare that I believe therapeutic abortion (i.e. abortion to save the life of the mother) is wrong--and I do believe that--and no one would bat an eye. They know that I have no interest in launching Christian ethics into the public sphere and so derision is replaced with apathy.
Meanwhile, regardless of what I believe about abortion--which is made largely irrelevant by my theoretical lack of a uterus--I would hope that when people describe me it is in terms more personal and therefore more sympathetic than the way most people choose to describe Mourdock or the Westboro Baptists. Those groups exist only as their public faces, only insofar as their behavior has consequences on a political scale. Yet when people interacted with Jesus, he specifically rejected any reduction of himself into a political persona. He was a healer of the sick, a feeder of the hungry, and a forgiver of sinners--not to mention a man of indisputably impeccable character himself. Richard Mourdock may very well donate to food drives. He may volunteer at hospitals. He may forgive any and everyone, even rape victims who get abortions. It's irrelevant. He will always be that Christian who thinks God is a rapist and wants to write laws on the basis of that belief.
It is time for Christians to take a long, hard look at just how extensively our involvement in democratic politics has opened us and, much more importantly, God to ceaseless ridicule. By allowing the public presence of the Christian faith to be reduced to its political manifestation--either is moralistic bigotry or socialistic coerced charity--we have transformed God the Father, Son, and Spirit from persons to partisans. There is no rehabilitating Christianity's political image. It is not possible to offer to the world a kinder, gentler, truer Christianity that will make the faith politically palatable. God makes radical ethical demands of His followers, and libertines are never going to be okay with that. God makes radical social justice demands of his followers, and aristocrats are never going to be okay with that. As long as the faith is married to political agendas, it will never be anything more than a caricature of the truth which Jesus came to impart, a revolutionary practical, ethical truth. In the meantime, more people are likely to disassociate with Christianity in favor of some vague notion of "spirituality" because to be in church means to be Richard Mourdock, et. al.
[Reason 1; Reason 3]
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Here's an Idea, Don't Vote: Christianity and the Moral Society
There's an election in a few days. Have you heard? This will come as a shock to no one who has ever visited this site, but I will not be voting this year. I also didn't vote four years ago. Or four years before that. Or...you get the drift. As a committed old, tried and true Christian anarchist, I have watched the campaign season very closely, the way I might watch a really interesting football game, or a Spike "world's most unbelievable car crashes" marathon. Politics--infinitely more than contact sports and traffic accidents--has proves itself again and again to be irredeemably violent. Beyond that basically standard pacifist complaint, however, I would like to offer three reasons why I, as a Christian, am not voting and, wait for it, why I encourage other Christians not to vote either. If you're not a Christian, you should vote; it'd be a shame if you didn't. (Not nearly as big a shame as it is that you're not a Christian, of course.) In any case...
One of the most common arguments I hear in favor of the notion that Christians have a duty to vote is that by not voting we are allowing society to slip deeper and deeper into the quagmire of sin. By not casting my vote--typically in this scenario for the Republican candidate, but it can go either way--I become culpable for constructing a society in which school children can see a man kissing another man on a taxpayer funded field trip to an abortion clinic. (Or, if you prefer, I become culpable for constructing a society in which a misogynistic plutocrat can oppress the poor, shackle his wife to the kitchen--metaphorically or literally--and deny life-saving medical treatment to his cancer-ridden, home-schooled daughter because God told him to.) Setting aside entirely the philosophical issue of moral culpability in the absence of intention or action, there is a more obvious problem here with the way Christians have come to understand their role in constructing a moral society.
It is simple enough to begin this argument with the rather inoffensive statement that God is omnipotent. As a subset of this omnipotence, it also seems fairly obvious to indicate that it is within God's capability to prevent people from doing evil. For those of us committed to the notion of free will (and I'm sure I'll lose some of you here), that God choose is not to prevent people from doing evil is an expression of a moral truth no less crucial than God's omnipotence: compulsory goodness is no goodness at all. God, in structuring the world, has made it evident to humanity that agency is a prerequisite for morality. That is why Jesus went to such great length to convince people of the value of the ethical teachings he proclaimed. Had he wanted to, ♫ he could have called ten thousand angels ♫ and told the world, "Love one another, or else." But he didn't. Christ, the great king, unlike every government devised by man put morality in the hands of human agents and tried to persuade them to make the right decisions.
You can see where I'm going with this, and it sounds nice in theory. But you're a good, Bible-believing Christian. If only there were a verse that clearly stated that it wasn't Christians' job to police the morality of the world. Enter Paul:
I give you the context there so you can understand where Paul is coming from. There is rampant immorality in the church in Corinth--quite unlike the pure, wholesome churches of America--but it would seem that the Corinthians still seem more interested in condemning those nasty pagans with their nasty habits. Paul will have none of it. The purity of the world is none of his concern. He understood then what so few seem to understand now: it is foolish to expect non-Christians to act like Christians. You might as well beat your head against a wall. It would certainly elicit more sympathy than trying to beat the gay out of people.
The responsibility for Christians to construct a moral society is simple. The church is holy, and it is our job as Christians to keep it holy. The world is not holy. It has been given over to the lusts of impure hearts, to dishonor, to self-destruction, and to folly. Christians can purify the church; God will purify the world--with fire, no less, but don't tell limp-wristed, left-wing, bleeding hearts like me that...we can't handle the imagery. God is not interested in forcing people to behave. You can choose to live as a Christian or you can choose to live as a pagan. According to Paul, the only thing the church needs to worry about is making sure that it is composed only of those who are choosing to behave like Christians.
As for the residents of the rest of society, they are going to keep having abortions. They are going to keep going keep stealing, embezzling, defrauding, and withholding while people literally die in the streets. They are going to keep debauching themselves in inventive ways, videotaping it, and distributing it for a small monthly fee on the Internet. They are going to keep getting drunk, stoned, and...well, I lack the appropriate drug vernacular to put together a good list, but you see where I'm going.
Society will continue to be the Roman society that existed in the days of the apostles. The only difference between Paul and Christians now is that democracy has led us into the delusion that, having failed to do the difficult work of convincing the world that God is good and sin is bad, we can just pass a law and make everyone righteous. It won't work. We shouldn't try. It's wrong.
One of the most common arguments I hear in favor of the notion that Christians have a duty to vote is that by not voting we are allowing society to slip deeper and deeper into the quagmire of sin. By not casting my vote--typically in this scenario for the Republican candidate, but it can go either way--I become culpable for constructing a society in which school children can see a man kissing another man on a taxpayer funded field trip to an abortion clinic. (Or, if you prefer, I become culpable for constructing a society in which a misogynistic plutocrat can oppress the poor, shackle his wife to the kitchen--metaphorically or literally--and deny life-saving medical treatment to his cancer-ridden, home-schooled daughter because God told him to.) Setting aside entirely the philosophical issue of moral culpability in the absence of intention or action, there is a more obvious problem here with the way Christians have come to understand their role in constructing a moral society.
It is simple enough to begin this argument with the rather inoffensive statement that God is omnipotent. As a subset of this omnipotence, it also seems fairly obvious to indicate that it is within God's capability to prevent people from doing evil. For those of us committed to the notion of free will (and I'm sure I'll lose some of you here), that God choose is not to prevent people from doing evil is an expression of a moral truth no less crucial than God's omnipotence: compulsory goodness is no goodness at all. God, in structuring the world, has made it evident to humanity that agency is a prerequisite for morality. That is why Jesus went to such great length to convince people of the value of the ethical teachings he proclaimed. Had he wanted to, ♫ he could have called ten thousand angels ♫ and told the world, "Love one another, or else." But he didn't. Christ, the great king, unlike every government devised by man put morality in the hands of human agents and tried to persuade them to make the right decisions.
You can see where I'm going with this, and it sounds nice in theory. But you're a good, Bible-believing Christian. If only there were a verse that clearly stated that it wasn't Christians' job to police the morality of the world. Enter Paul:
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
I give you the context there so you can understand where Paul is coming from. There is rampant immorality in the church in Corinth--quite unlike the pure, wholesome churches of America--but it would seem that the Corinthians still seem more interested in condemning those nasty pagans with their nasty habits. Paul will have none of it. The purity of the world is none of his concern. He understood then what so few seem to understand now: it is foolish to expect non-Christians to act like Christians. You might as well beat your head against a wall. It would certainly elicit more sympathy than trying to beat the gay out of people.
The responsibility for Christians to construct a moral society is simple. The church is holy, and it is our job as Christians to keep it holy. The world is not holy. It has been given over to the lusts of impure hearts, to dishonor, to self-destruction, and to folly. Christians can purify the church; God will purify the world--with fire, no less, but don't tell limp-wristed, left-wing, bleeding hearts like me that...we can't handle the imagery. God is not interested in forcing people to behave. You can choose to live as a Christian or you can choose to live as a pagan. According to Paul, the only thing the church needs to worry about is making sure that it is composed only of those who are choosing to behave like Christians.
As for the residents of the rest of society, they are going to keep having abortions. They are going to keep going keep stealing, embezzling, defrauding, and withholding while people literally die in the streets. They are going to keep debauching themselves in inventive ways, videotaping it, and distributing it for a small monthly fee on the Internet. They are going to keep getting drunk, stoned, and...well, I lack the appropriate drug vernacular to put together a good list, but you see where I'm going.
Society will continue to be the Roman society that existed in the days of the apostles. The only difference between Paul and Christians now is that democracy has led us into the delusion that, having failed to do the difficult work of convincing the world that God is good and sin is bad, we can just pass a law and make everyone righteous. It won't work. We shouldn't try. It's wrong.
[Reason 2; Reason 3]
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Sating Our Lust for Human Sacrifice
Carrying on our theme of the press, here is an intriguing quote from Julia Budlong--early twentieth century California journalist--about the true role of our free and objective press in communicating with the public:
It seems that the great Moloch, the Public [demands] human sacrifice to appease its appetite for scandal. The newspapers are the priests who serve the altar.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Beware the News
Eighteenth century politics was remarkably like present politics, in ways more accessible than my oft repeated assertion that all politics is always and essentially mere violence. The Constitutional Convention which gave America the framework for its current form of government was arguably more contentious even than the present political climate. Unsurprisingly, the press entered the fray wholeheartedly and with a clear agenda. Noted patriot David Humphreys sent a letter to soon-to-be-president George Washington the day the Convention adjourned boasting that the press had done its part in preparing the people to accept the judgments of their leaders unquestioningly:
Judicious and well-timed publications have great efficacy in ripening the judgment of men in this quarter of the Continent.
It is crucial to remember, that "freedom of the press" in America never meant the freedom of the press to objectively report the news. It always simply meant freedom of the press to push an agenda different than the state's agenda. Then, as well as now, it is striking how often even this freedom is not exercised. Certainly beware of the somewhat obvious fallacy that "news" and "facts" are in any sense synonymous, but be even more wary of the "judicious and well-timed" stories that align too nearly with the interests of the government, whoever might be running it. In other words, good citizenship--from a secular standpoint--ought to involve having an unripened mind.
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