The Church in Nigeria "Strikes" Back

We have been following very closely the religious strife in Nigeria. (N.B., this is real religious strife, not "Obama is making me give condoms to nuns" or "My coach made me eat a pre-game meal in a church.") Initially, there were reports of retaliatory violence on the part of Christians in response to frequent, lethal assaults by Boko Haram. Thank God, the Christian Association of Nigeria has issued the following statement:

We will not encourage our people to carry arms against anybody whatsoever the situation may be. For those that are behind Boko Haram, you come to us with AK47, bombs, charms and other dangerous weapons, but we come to you in the name of God.

I want to assure Christians in Nigeria that Christ has always been with his people. He will never give victory to those persecuting Christians and the Church. Whoever is trying to exterminate Christians and Christianity from Nigeria is neither pleasing God nor his people.

Cow News

Is anyone else flabbergasted by the fact that we can put an R/C Tonka truck on Mars and develop a birth control pill for men but have yet to master the quick and humane execution of our meat? According to the Associated Press:

Federal regulators shut down a Central California slaughterhouse Monday after receiving undercover video showing dairy cows — some unable to walk — being repeatedly shocked and shot before being slaughtered...

Four minutes of excerpts the animal welfare group provided to The Associated Press showed cows being prepared for slaughter. One worker appears to be suffocating a cow by standing on its muzzle after a gun that injects a bolt into the animal's head had failed to render it unconscious. In another clip, a cow is still conscious and flailing as a conveyor lifts it by one leg for transport to an area where the animals' throats are slit for blood draining.

"The horror caught on camera is sickening," said Erica Meier, executive director of Compassion Over Killing, based in Washington, D.C. "It's alarming that this is not only a USDA-inspected facility but a supplier to the USDA."

...The videos show workers pulling downed cows by their tails and kicking them in an apparent attempt to get them to stand and walk to slaughter. Others shoot downed cows in the head over and over as the cows thrash on the ground. In one instance, the video shows workers trying to get cattle to back out of a chute while repeatedly spraying them with water and shocking them.

It's a good thing the USDA is around to inspect these places. Otherwise, imagine what they would be doing.

The Politics of Gun Control

I read Blake Zeff's recent article on gun control and found myself unexpectedly impressed. The piece begins with this simple premise:

There's a reason that nothing's happening to improve gun safety in America despite the mass shootings that now occur so regularly: No one in power is scared of the gun control movement.

And he proceeds from there to discuss not so much the "why" of gun control, which becomes so immediately repetitive in the wake of so many recent shootings, but the "how." Taking his cues from the movement to legalize same-sex marriage, he explores how gun control advocates need to be willing to invest financially in the cause and to take control of how the debate is framed. Both are pragmatic suggestions and both have worked very well for the same-sex marriage movement. It is an interesting exploration of the technology of politics.

Zeff also attempts to locate the major obstacle that gun control will face that same-sex marriage will not. For him, this is the established opposition represented symbolically (and fiscally) by the NRA. Now, I am skeptical that opposition movements to same-sex marriage can really be described as "relatively weak and poorly organized," except in places where it likely would have made no difference to begin with, but the political might of the NRA does make for a substantial hurdle to overcome.

Zeff does not, however, note a more crucial difference between the two movements. The press for same-sex marriage was, fundamentally, an attempt to expand a set of rights (as we conceive of them). Gun control, for whatever its merits may be, is an attempt to narrow a set of rights. It is critical to note that I am not saying that owning an assault weapon ought to be a right. For that matter, I am not saying getting married should be either. In simple pragmatic terms, however, where same-sex marriage has been permitted, people have been allowed to do something legally that they could not previously. Were gun control enacted, something that people could once do legally would no longer be licit.

You can frame the position as a libertarian one, as Zeff does. You can cite statistics about gun violence. You can appeal to examples of European nations with little to no gun crimes. You can reframe the parameters of the debate, restructure the narrative as much as you want. At the end of the day, Americans have a deeply ingrained cultural aversion to abridging rights. One need only look at Prohibition, that most dramatic of all prohibitive laws, and note that it took nearly one hundred years of temperance movements to see Prohibition amended to the Constitution and only thirteen years of spotty or non-existent enforcement to see it repealed. Once Americans have a taste of something or even the knowledge of the potential to taste of something, telling them they can't have it violates a spirit that permeates our society.

Zeff notes that the statistical data which shows a small majority of Americans in favor of at least some form of gun control is rendered pragmatically meaningless when the question of who will be motivated to translate those positions into votes. it is my suspicion that many people who will never own an assault rifle, even people who will never own a gun, when the time comes to decide whether or not to restrict a activity they have no intention of participating in, they will react viscerally and decisively. The Enlightenment sense of entitlement, of rights, is more essential to American culture even than Christian morality. To overturn it will require a more herculean effort even than the marginal gains that have been made toward legalizing same-sex marriage.

That is not to say it can't be done. It obviously can be. Americans have, from time to time and with varying degrees of permanence, broached new frontiers of government restriction of behavior. It is not typical, but it is possible. What's more, it is not even my intention to argue against trying to achieve gun control. While I recognize that pressing gun restrictions, even to the point that we already have, is antithetical to the spirit of those founders who drafted and supported the Bill of Rights, I also don't owe them any particular loyalty. I'd be happier in an America with fewer guns. Or no guns, since in my experience they exist primarily for sport hunting and violence directed at people--aggressive and defensive, licit and illicit.

All of that is beside the point. The point is that Zeff, while making an interesting and likely constructive argument for the mechanics of achieving gun control, fails to accurately grasp the problem of his parallel to same-sex marriage. This is not like knowing how to grow cucumbers and using that to learn how to grow squash. This is like knowing how to grow cucumbers and trying to use that to learn how to ungrow them. It's a whole different ball game.

Africa and Our Philosophy of Missions

Several weeks ago, I attended a Bible study, the speaker at which had just returned from a mission trip. The study took the form of a mission report, and the woman who led the study had a number of inspiring anecdotes to share as well as some gut-wrenching ones about the rural conditions there (which to my frustration, she seemed more curious about than moved by). Throughout the entire presentation, however, I couldn't help but wonder why she went at all. Her explanation, predictably, focused on issues like her calling and the personal faith journey it represented for her, as well as obligatory references to winning souls for the Lord.

Here's the problem. Zambia is a Christian nation. Not in the way America is a Christian nation but actually, constitutionally Christian. More than 85% of Zambians self-identify as Christians, a number significantly higher than the number of Americans who so self-identify. And while Zambia is notable, it is by no means exceptional among African nations. There are more Christians in Africa than there are Americans. Note, that was "Americans" not "American Christians." More critically, the African church is now being evangelized more successfully and more rapidly by Africans and increasingly Africans are being brought in under denominational headings that are non-existent and often unknown in the West.

In other words, the missionaries claim that while the people of Zambia had been "evangelized" they still hadn't been "discipled," came across more like American (or perhaps Baptist) chauvinism than evangelistic concern. African Christianity is thriving and growing in ways that Western Christianity have long sensed even dared to dream of. Long gone are the days of sixteenth century Ethiopian scholar Tasfa Seyvon, quoted by David Northrup as writing:

I am an Ethiopian pilgrim...from the land of the infidels to the land of the faithful, through sea and land. At Rome I found rest for my soul through the right faith.

I grew up, as so many of us did, with the missionary work to Africa taking center stage, and perhaps then there was a time for it. I don't know that I ever attended a church in my childhood that wasn't sponsoring a missionary to Africa. In truth, though, what the African church needs from Western Christianity is not another round of affluent white people to tell them the Gospel. They have the Gospel and they are taking the commission to preach it to all nations very seriously. Instead of evangelistic missions, they desperately need benevolence missions. Missions bringing doctors, food, the means to access clean water, plans for developing local infrastructure, and modern agricultural techniques.

In other words, don't tell me about going to a country where more than two thirds of the people live in poverty and expect me to be excited that you taught the local preachers to preach more mature sermons. Don't show me pictures of a village of people who lack the hygienic facilities and the understanding of disease to wash themselves regularly and expect me to be in awe that you saw a man healed miraculously of his sores. I don't want to hear the song that the children taught you in their native tongue, not those illiterate, naked children who were as hungry when you left as when you arrived. Callous as it may sound, and perhaps with a touch of exaggeration, the next missionary to Africa looking for support or accolade from me better have iodine tablets in one hand, Flintstones vitamins in the other, and these words on his lips: I am an American pilgrim from the land of the land of the faithful, through sea and land. At Africa, I found rest for my soul through the right faith.

Love Song for the South

I am not a Southerner by birth. In fact, I was an adult before I ever moved to the South for the first time. In view of those facts, my sudden and temporary exodus from the South should seem like a small affair, hardly worth mentioning (especially in this venue where I try to avoid autobiography as much as possible). Nevertheless, eight years living in the best and worst of Arkansas and Tennessee has thoroughly acculturated me.

I have been in the barren landscape of the American Southwest for only just over a week, and the culture shock, such as it is, has yet to wear off. I am not yet accustomed to the cool dry mornings and the hot dry afternoons. I still get confused momentarily at every sign where Spanish is the primary language, and English the translation. The Spanish Renaissance architecture, the dust storms, the cloudless skies, the brown landscape, the flat horizon. None of it even remotely recalls my adopted home in East Tennessee with the Smoky Mountains rising to greet me every morning.


The greatest difference is not, however, a matter of climate, scenery, or language. It is one of culture. The stereotype of the South moving at a slower pace, expressing herself in a more polite idiom, embracing notions of honor and classic

masculinity, of belles and beaus and agrarian simplicity are, James C. Cobb rightly notes in his history of southern identity, mythic constructions. Cobb does not, however, give quite enough attention to just how closely myth can conform itself to reality. The peculiar culture of the South, her sectional identity—nascent, perhaps, before the Civil War, but consciously constructed after that—can only be dismissed entirely by those academics (especially those educated Northern elites, curse us) who have only studied her but not lived in her.

There are numerous ways to attempt to quantify the cultural solidarity of the South against those who believe it is exaggerated or constructed out of misinformed nostalgia. The political solidarity is an obvious place to start, both as Democrats in the nineteenth century and beyond and then as Republicans in more recent history. Another obvious signifier is the historical predominance of democratic forms of religion in the South: the Methodists, Baptists, and Disciples. In either case, it would be simple to look at distinguishing political or religious features and reverse engineer from these telling facts about the South’s distinctive culture.

But southerners and sojourners alike do not experience those distinctive in this way. Instead, let me relay an anecdote or two that has been characteristic of my experience. After having lived in Arkansas for four years, I took a trip to the Midwest. While passing through Indiana, I stopped for a quick meal with a friend who lived nearby. The lunch was wonderful, but I couldn’t help but notice throughout how brusquely my friend addressed herself to the waitress. The waitress, in kind, seemed to respond to her just as abruptly. There was no overt hostility, but there were also a dearth of “please” and “thank you,” of smiles or friendly chatter. There certainly was nothing conversation about the tone. When lunch was over, I asked my friend if the waitress had done something to upset her, and she was confused. The waitress had been great as far as she was concerned. She left her a big tip. That was, in her Midwestern mind, a perfectly pleasant transaction. A similar lunch would probably have prompted distress for a southerner, as it did for me.

Some time later, after I had moved to Tennessee, I had occasion to attend a seminar in New York. I pride myself on my punctuality, and so I was surprised to find that when I arrived for the orientation precisely at seven o’clock when it was scheduled, I had already missed the first fifteen minutes and was left with nowhere to sit. Analogous seminars in Memphis invariable started fifteen minutes late. From New York, I took my wife into New England to visit my childhood home. We stopped at a snack shop along the way in the relatively early morning. We stood a way back from the menu, surveying it. There was no rush. The place was empty, and we had the whole day to explore the area. Nevertheless, we both got the distinct impression that we were being rushed.

There are countless positive antitheses to these as well. The police officer and the mechanic who replaced a torn belt on the side of the road in rural Arkansas asking nothing more in payment than a post card whenever we got where we were going. Walking into the barber after a bargain cutter performed a hack job on my hair and receiving the undivided care of the entire staff. Standing at the counter of a general store in North Carolina, holding up a line of tourists while I talked to the girl behind the counter about her morning sickness from her last pregnancy. Getting to know intimately the staff of a small town visitor center as we took hours to seek out the perfect place to eat. Sitting down with a stranger outside a store on main street and talking about nothing while our wives shopped.

On my last fateful trip out of the South, if you’ll pardon the melodrama, my wife and I stopped at a diner in Arkansas. A man in the parking lot noticed our Tennessee tags. He asked if the county on the license plate was near Sevier County. When we told him it was, he stopped and talked to us about his love of the Smokies, about his wife who had died some years ago, and about how he had scattered some of her ashes in the mountains. We offered our condolences. When I told him where I was moving, he offered me his condolences. Best wishes, God blesses, and good to me yous were all obligatorily exchanged, and my wife and I, delayed but not bothered, ate our breakfast.

That last incident sums up for me my brief but transformative experience in the South. Taken individually, my experiences elsewhere or my experiences in the South may be written off as so many unrelated incidents, not indicative of anything. Taken together, however, they manifest the character of a culture. Others from other parts of the nation will have had some or all of those experiences in their native regions, but I am convinced that they represent the soul of the South. Changed and changing, she nevertheless retains that distinctive pace, that polite, if only superficially so, idiom, that conservatism which is not limited to politics, that masculinity which is simple but virile, that femininity which is backward and self-contradictory but alluring, and that community where people are not strangers by default who become friends in time but friends automatically who may by circumstance be estranged.

There is, of course, a note of doxology in the above. It certainly isn’t my intention to place the South up as a paragon against which all other sectional American cultures are to be measured. Those peculiar features of southern culture have led to a number of the most shameful abuses in American history, though no more so than the ethos of the North. (Incidentally, as the historiography of the Northeast—which dominates the national conversation—continues to glory in the shame of race slavery in the South, it is curiously unconcerned with the analogous indignities which resulted from its competing system of wage slavery which, in some respects, continues even into the present.) Instead, I intend only to affirm the reality of those sectional differences and to express, on a personal level, my preference for the South, especially as I now find myself estranged from them.

The Wisdom of Nobel Peace Laureates

Ten Nobel Peace Laureates are up in arms (pardon the expression) about a new show on NBC called "Stars Earn Stripes." In theory, at least, there is no such thing as bad press, but if there are any people you do not want publicly repudiating your work, it is Desmond Tutu and company. They have written an Open Letter to Mr. Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, General Wesley Clark (ret.), Producer Mark Burnett and others involved in “Stars Earn Stripes”, which unfortunately only snippets of are being quoted by most press. Here is a longer quote about the way our culture, so distantly removed from its actual horrors, allows the enormity of war to be trivialized:

It is our belief that this program pays homage to no one anywhere and continues and expands on an inglorious tradition of glorifying war and armed violence. Military training is not to be compared, subtly or otherwise, with athletic competition by showing commercials throughout the Olympics. Preparing for war is neither amusing nor entertaining.

Real war is down in the dirt deadly. People—military and civilians—die in ways that are anything but entertaining. Communities and societies are ripped apart in armed conflict and the aftermath can be as deadly as the war itself as simmering animosities are unleashed in horrific spirals of violence. War, whether relatively short-lived or going on for decades as in too many parts of the world, leaves deep scars that can take generations to overcome – if ever.

Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.

The letter can be found, in its entirety, at the above link.

John Lathrop on Peace and War

Here are some thoughts from John Lathrop's sermon "Peace and War," which, all in all, was intriguing from a historical standpoint and dreadful from a moral one. It starts out promising (provided you ignore the full title):

The principal happiness which we are made capable of enjoying, will be found in a state of peace with God, and peace with all mankind. It ought therefore to be the principal business of our life, to cultivate peace; that peace which Jesus preached, which his disciples preached, and which is inseparable from the religion we profess. Blessed, said he, who is in a peculiar sense, the author of peace--"Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the children of God."

It should be the business of the ministers of religion, in all possible ways, to promote peace. The Holy Bible is full of exhortations to this purpose. "If it be possible," saith the apostle Paul, "as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men!"

If only he didn't go on to reduce peace to a political objective, confusing it with the mere state of mutual non-aggression between the militarizes of respective bodies politic.

Our particular attention is called to the blessings which are to be found in a state of peace in the nation to which we belong; and peace with the other nations of the earth. Nothing is more to be deprecated than civil dissension.

As a side note, he spent a curious amount of time in 1811 decrying civil wars and ensuring his listeners that such a spectacle is unlikely to ever happen in the United States. "We hope...that the opposite parties [in our country] will not wantonly provoke and irritate each other." Oops.