Squashed

“The archenemy of Christianity”

I’m tickled by this gem of a quote from Salon in an article about islamophobia in New Atheism.

As a phenomenon with its roots in Europe, atheism has traditionally been the archenemy of Christianity, though Jews and Judaism have also slipped into the mix.

“Archenemy” is a bit dramatic, isn’t it? I mean, there have been a lot of Christians who have proclaimed a lot of archenemies—from the diabolical to the schismatic.¹ Sure, “I don’t believe” is tautologically inconsistent with belief. But not liking something I like or not believing something I believe isn’t enough to make you an archenemy. That would be like saying that people who don’t care about baseball are the archenemy of the sport.

Some people believe one thing. Others believe something different. And sometimes, for a variety of reasons, it’s really important for people that others believe what they do. And sometimes people decide that being a complete jerk about something like that will maybe help them feel better about being unpersuasive. Without minimizing the significance of people’s beliefs or the tensions that differing beliefs can cause, we can certainly acknowledge that this alone isn’t enough to get us to “enemy” status, let alone “archenemy.” It’s more of a “friend we sometimes disagree (who is maybe sometimes a jerk).”

If we can look past the intrinsic comedy in words like “archenemy” or “archnemesis”,² we could ask why Christians would find threatening about atheists, new or old. About three quarters of Americans identify as some variety of Christian. Something like 4-7% identify as atheists. How shaky do you need to be in your own beliefs that the knowledge that a small minority of people disagree with you is threatening? And how oblivious would you need to be to other, bigger movements that really can be harmful to Christianity?

If I were making a hierarchical list of enemies for Christianity, I would put Christians in spot #1. (Not all Christians, just the kind that see Christianity as a cultural litmus test to determine who it’s okay to do horrible things to.) I think spot #2 goes to Christians—but just the kind that see Christianity as a civic religion that establishes a national and political identity but doesn’t ask anything of its adherents. Spots #3 and #4 go to the Christians who believe that the first priority of faith is personal perfection and that we’re excused from living out that faith until we’ve solved all of our own problems and to the Christians who think that good actions and supporting good policies can take the place of personal transformation. If the list went on, I’d get to materialism, inequality, and pride. Atheists would eventually clock in somewhere between credit card debt and people who don’t vaccinate their children.

For those of you who are New Atheists and feel that it’s your job to be Christianity’s #1 enemy, I’m not saying that you’re bad at what you do. I’m just saying that being a decent person and being passionate about what you believe in does not put you high on my list of problems in the world.

Christianity and Politics

The Christian Right has done a remarkable job of turning churches into a political force. A whole strain of Christianity has dedicated itself to ensuring that Republicans get elected.

As a Christian who won’t be voting for any Republicans this fall, I feel a bit ambivalent about this. On one hand, I’m a bit bummed that my side of the aisle doesn’t have the same religious-political force thing going. The Christian Right doesn’t speak for all Christians—or even most Christians. Still, it does seem to be where the media turns when looking for a “Christian” to talk.

On the other hand, I can’t help thinking that becoming inextricably linked to a political party is a really bad thing for a church to do. While I think faith has an important role in politics on both an individual and corporate level, I think the political whims of the Republican Party have done lasting theological damage to the Christian right.

Crying peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Some of the responses to Trayvon Martin’s death have reminded me of the prophet Jeremiah speaking against those who falsely claimed that there was no problem.

From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.

At the time, there were a whole lot of people insisting that the status quo was just fine when, in reality, Jerusalem was about to be sacked. They were pretty upset with Jeremiah for pointing this out—as if this was his fault. For those who would prefer a more secular comparison, I’m reminded of Grima Wormtongue blaming “Gandalf Stormcrow” for bringing tidings that Rohan was about to be sacked as if the person bringing bad news is the cause of that bad news. Do not be false prophets, Wormtongues, or Newttongues.

Things are not okay. The conservative line is that the only problem we have with racial inequality is the people who keep pointing out how we have a problem with racial inequality. It would be a joke if so many people didn’t believe it.

Look at numbers. Look at trends. Look at data. Willful ignorance does not solve the problem. If you claim that a problem as glaring and obvious as our racial inequality problem doesn’t exist, I can only assume that you just don’t think inequality is a problem. And when you go a step further and criticize those who are trying to solve the problem, I can only assume that you’re trying to preserve racial inequality for some reason.

This is not new. Nothing I’m writing here is particularly insightful or original. It’s been better said a thousand times. But it’s on my mind. We have a problem. And when you refuse to acknowledge what’s plain as day in order to prevent others from trying to solve the problem, you perpetuate and continue our ugly history of racial inequality.

Twelve of my better posts from 2011

Many of my best posts in 2011 went largely unread, probably because they were massively long text posts that went up somewhere around 1:00 am when everybody was asleep. I routinely break my own rules for writing a blog people might read. Here’s a list of twelve of my favorite posts (one from each month) that went mostly under the radar. They’re a bit longer and a bit more thougtful than the usual fare. Some months were awfully difficult to narrow down to a single post. (For other months, it was tricky to find a single post worth rereading.)

Understanding Poverty

If the problem were simply that the poor don’t have much money, we could just do a straight-forward wealth transfer and end the problem. Unfortunately, we can’t solve poverty by anything as simple as writing a few checks. Poverty is also about lack of opportunity, lack of security, lack of power, and (too frequently) a learned lack of expectations.

A question of faith

Striving to be a passion—to seamlessly embody a plan that isn’t my own—does not mesh neatly with our individualistic society. You are entirely welcome to think I am strange. You’re even welcome to tell me that. I can handle it.

Bombs for human rights

War is never good. It may be necessary. I may be a lesser evil. But good? Don’t believe it. Ari writes an elegant defense of bombing Libya for human rights. He may be right. I might even agree with him. But the bullshit-to-candor ratio is way off—so I thought I would offer Ari’s post interspersed with some thoughts of my own.

There is (still) no secular case against gay marriage

In which enlist my dog’s assistance in arguing against some conservative intellectuals with a remarkably impressive pedigreee.

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Justice and Income Inequality

A Wide Place has responded to my earlier post discussiong Occupy Wall Street, income inequality, and a range of other things. Because our fundamental disagreement has to do with concepts of justice, I’m going to do something a bit different here. Take this snippet from A Wide Place’s About page

[T]his blog will explore religion and politics under the twin convictions that the gospel of Jesus gives unparalleled spiritual, emotional, and psychological freedom, and principles of limited government and free markets provide unequaled bodily freedom, prosperity, and order.

It turns out we’ve got something in common. We’re both professing Christians. I, of course, don’t share that second pillar—as I believe the gospel of Jesus has enough to say about government, society, and how we conduct ourselves in relation to one another without elevating some additional creed to the level of gospel. (As you might have guessed, this post is about to take a sharp turn into the theological. If that’s not your thing, here are some pictures of baby seals. Seriously—I’m aware that Locke and Rawles and a whole lot of other people have a lot of very important things to say about justice—but for now Mr. Place and I are talkin’ Jesus.)

Acting justly toward the poor is a theme that runs, consistently, through the Bible. Those who decieve the poor, horde ill-gotten treasures tend to get in trouble. “Forgetting the Lord” is frequently synonymous with ignoring the plight of the poor. For example:

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

The theme carries through into the gospels where we see the rich directed to sell possesions, the moneychangers thrown from the temple, and a particular attention paid to the most vulnerable in society. The rest of the New Testament continues challenging barriers as the church spreads most strongly in the least powerful parts of society. Society’s obligation to help the poor (or at least stop exploiting them) is one of the central themes in the Bible. I don’t think any of this is even controverial, is it?

So when Mr. Place asks, “whose basic principles of justice,” let me answer: The basic principles that, theoretically, we both share. The principles that say that entrenched, unnecessary, and systemic inequality are a problem that a just society may not ignore. We can’t simply distil a few principles (say, “voluntary exchange within a system”) and insist that everything is okay, so long as this rule is followed. Afterall, it’s not difficult to imagine a society that follows every rule offered by Mr. Place that is, nevertheless, a manifestly unjust society.

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Prayer and solidarity

Last week, AZspot linked to a thought-provoking piece by Kristin Rawls titled “Fuck your prayer, show me solidarity.”. I whole-heartedly agree with the article’s central claim, that evangelicals (and Christians in general) ought to act more passionately and more radically on poverty issues, though I find the call to explicitly embrace “class war” rhetoric, the prioritization of student loan relief, the explicit identification with the “new” and implicitly more deserving poor, the eagerness to shame and alienate potential allies, and the implication that solidarity can be demanded rather than freely given troubling. (Upon reflection, there’s not actually much I agree with in the piece.)

The thing I think Rawls gets most wrong is a failure to understand that prayer, sincerely offered, is a form of solidarity. I know most people reading this don’t think much of intercessionary prayer, but bear with me—this is important. I’ll freely grant that frequently a prayer is not sincerely offered or perhaps, “I’ll pray for you,” is just somebody’s way of saying, “I disagree with you and I’m telling God how right I think I am.” And there’s certainly room to believe that prayer alone is not sufficient. (I wouldn’t disagree).

But that’s not how people who are serious about prayer pray. Instead they mean something closer to “Let me carve your name on my soul so that your concerns become my concerns.” If prayer means anything, it means solidarity.

Why bring religion into it at all?

In response to my quotation from a National Religious Campaign Against Torture press release criticizing the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, Waskommeng replied:

This is a good goal, but I simply don’t get why we can’t appeal to basic humanity to show that torture isn’t justifiable. Why does religion need to be involved? As soon as one brings religious expression into politics, it just creates walls.

The short answer is that religion, like it or not, is already in politics. You’ve got guys like Rick Perry claiming to speak for Christianity while advocating some horrific things. Worse, you’ve got some church leaders backing him up. In other cases, you have people with strong religious convictions who are willing to turn a blind eye to things like torture because they see Perry or the Republicans as a political ally. People start making all sorts of assumptions about what churches stand for. I think it is important for people of faith to say not in our name. We need a public, religious voice against torture and indefinite detention to ensure that lawmakers cannot use faith as a cover for abominable acts.

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A more militant breed of pacifism

It’s Advent, which means we start coming across some of the prophetic verses of scripture, like this one in Isaiah 2:

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

It’s also Republican Primary season, which means we get a bunch of people who claim to be faithful Christians espousing some extraordinarily militant stances. Enough is enough.

I don’t have a full answer on how to respond to the eschatological verses in the Bible—but I can offer, as a very modest start, that this whole swords into plowshares thing is a good thing. Will we get there any time soon? I don’t know. But if you’re not at least trying to get there, you’ve lost the vision.

Seeking peace should not be controversial.