the parish

Mark Driscoll's Penis (Tangentially); or, Wherefore art Thou, Moral Authority?

2012-01-27T12:55:36-06:00

With apologies to the great bard...

The task for half of my freshmen this past two weeks is to explain the system of moral authority in their lives. The question is fairly simple: are you what you do, what you believe, or a combination of the two? By what you do I mean actions in the world, not a job. For the record, I'm pretty sure there's not a great answer to this question, but the point of the question isn't to find the solution; it's to track the decision making process, including moral justification, when confronted with a moral dilemma.

I started thinking along this track when reading through Driscoll's sex freak book (real title Real Marriage). In it, Driscoll uses the Bible to help his penis, and yours if you're a boy, find its way around the female form: hands, mouth, vagina, and rectum. And if you think I'm being needlessly crude, read Driscoll on oral sex based on Song of Songs. Driscoll's discussion of dangling fruit reminds me of Patton Oswalt's G-Rated Filth (and that is not for the faint of heart, folks. watch only if extremely graphic language gets you aroused...er...doesn't offend you). Driscoll uses the Bible as a moral authority by which he assesses the rightness and wrongness of particular sex acts, which is quite frankly hysterical, given that he thinks it's ok to bugger his wife but not to spank his aforementioned penis, neither of which the Bible mentions. This is, of course, as I said in the previous post, an exegetical model based on personal preference. I'll go ahead and say it now; all exegetical models are based at least partly on personal preference. That Mark Driscoll is a psychotic narcissist only makes his percentage of personal preference higher than someone who at least attempts to be honest about the complexities of interpreting an ancient and often ambiguous (if not silent on an issue) text.

Moral authority is always complex at the conceptual level. When I ask students the question about how they decide what is right and wrong, inevitably they give the standard answers: parents, pastors, peers, God. The first is easiest to dispense with; most humans have willfully disobeyed parents when the desire outweighed the fear of reprisal, or when they simply stopped believing as parents did. In the first case, did they really believe what they were doing was wrong, or did what they want to do really constitute what they believed about the action? Parse at your leisure. Pastors and peers we can ignore for now, as the first is seldom really heard and the latter work more as justification or consolation than character formation. The real problem is God.

When people say God is their moral authority, I'm absolutely certain they don't understand what they're saying. First, God is not immediately available to talk to them, and as for those (like one student) who said a relationship with Jesus was key to understanding the Bible, I simply ask why you have so many denominations and traditions if that relationship steers you the right direction. It's simply a way of avoiding the dilemma. God is not your authority because God is not telling you what to do. A book is. The authority people believe is resident in God is mediated through a text, and that text must be interpreted; God, over against Elijah's assertions, is not readily available to answer questions. That leaves a community, or in most cases, an individual to ascertain which portions of the Bible function as moral authority. All this to say, if an individual is making the assessment about particular texts, then the locus of moral authority is the individual's conscience and desires, not God and not the text. The text may give shape to the parameters, but it certainly doesn't dictate particular choices.

An example. If I read that a man may not lie with another man as with a woman, and I take it as a moral command, then I create an exegetical model that dictates that all such plainly worded commands must be interpreted consistently throughout the text. There is a problem, though. When I turn over to Matthew 5-7, Jesus gives many plainly worded commands (Don't resist an evil person.) that Christians plainly ignore. The calculus seems to be how difficult the command actually is to carry out. If I don't want to have sex with a man, then that command is easy and can easily be read literally. If a man has broken into my home, the second command becomes radically difficult and must therefore be parsed. The parsing happens inside my own complex assemblage of emotion, desire, preference, will, and honesty. My personal preference becomes the moral authority. Over against the one I call Lord, I make a decision that is contrary to what he says, and to do that, I must justify it in such a way that I'm allowed to remain part of the group called Christian. At this point, I point out (hypocritically) the competing verses in the text, especially the ones about violence, to justify my decision. Hypocritical because if challenged on other issues, I'm likely to insist there is no conflict; gays can't have gay sex. Period.

The further complicating factor is the issue of forgiveness. That I am able to make decisions that allegedly go against what I actually believe is largely a function of the practice of so-called repentance. I can believe premarital sex is wrong and still engage in it as long as I make a show of saying I'm sorry to God. This, of course, allows me to do whatever it is I actually desire to do while making a feeble nod to God with faint promises of "trying harder." Once again, my own preference is the moral authority since it is what gives shape to what I actually do. That Christians have watered down the ideals of forgiveness and repentance has in fact made it harder for them to make disciples, and it has contributed a great degree to the dualism inherent in modern evangelicalism.

An example. I said, "Let's say I do everything Jesus tells me to do. I feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners, obey the commandmentes, sell my goods and donate to homeless shelters, live generously, forgive easily, love sacrficially, all because I'm crazy about this Jesus guy. I then tell you I don't believe in God. Am I a Christian?" At this point it's clear that it's a trap. Whatever they've said previously about how important actions are, it's clear now that they will disqualify all my actions based on one "false" belief. This is the heart of the problem. Belief, functionally, is the determining factor in moral authority. As long as I believe it's the authority, it doesn't matter what I do; I believe the right things. (The soteriological dilemma should be obvious here, too.) My belief insulates me from the demands of ethics and allows me to remain part of the group even as I behave in ways that are contrary to what the group says is vital to group identity.

Back to Driscoll. Reverend Sex Freak begins with a desire: I would like to insert my penis into my wife's x. I now need moral authority to do so. I parse the Bible. Oh, how convenient--here's a verse about a woman sitting in front of low hanging fruit (ironically, the description is an apt one of Real Marriage). Clearly God wants my wife to pleasure my fruit. Where the Bible is clearly silent, as if it wasn't on that issue, Driscoll finds authority in different places. That's all fine, except that this is hermeneutics in reverse. I start with my desires and then find their justification--metaphorical, implied, or explicit--in the text. This makes the text functionally worthless, and it's not just worthless for people who misuse it as egregiously as Driscoll. Without a consistent rubric to direct the exegetical process, how do you avoid exegesis based on personal preference? No one will believe you if you don't do the hard stuff, and they shouldn't. Even if you do though, how can I know that your rubric isn't arbitrary?

Reverend Sex Freak, or Why Mark Driscoll is a Sign of the Eschaton

2012-01-18T13:51:58-06:00

The beginning of the end of my tenure as pastor probably began the day I invited two of my staff members to play the "whom would I have sex with" game at the end of a staff meeting. We took out the church roster and went through it name by name. It was hands-down the stupidest thing I ever did intentionally as a pastor. Some (all) bells cannot be unrung. You see, I was playing with two women, and we came to the point where we had to answer the question about each other. Yeah. Stupid, right?

I offer that for two reasons. One, nearly everyone I know likes sex in some form, especially if porn and strip clubs are a form. Second, I'm about to criticize Mark Driscoll for being a complete freak. I made fun of him a while back for writing this:

Masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he's watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

Not only is this one of the most idiotic things a pastor has ever said, it's potentially destructive in terms of young men internalizing this horseshit and the accompanying guilt. (For more on Driscoll as non sex expert, read the amazingly insightful take by Rachel Held Evans. For an equally good assessment on Driscoll as the real reason people are buying an otherwise ordinary book, read Susan Wise Bauer.) However, what struck me as the most obvious problem with the quote is the way Driscoll approaches sex. It occurs to me that if I'd been writing about whether or not masturbation is a gay sex act (clearly it's not), I would never have put that last qualifier in. Who the hell gets turned on by his own body? Who the hell masturbates in front of a mirror in order to get turned on by his own body? These are the ideas deep inside the murky, freaky mind of Reverend Driscoll, aka Reverend Sex Freak. No idea if the twitter account is available, but if you get it before I do, give me a brief shout out.

I made the mistake of thinking that joking about sex with staff members would make me "more real" or would at least give me the opportunity to engage in some fantasies about one of them. Driscoll makes a similar mistake every day, it seems, but he's not learning from them. His arrogance is so huge right now that he conflates Biblical authority and his words in the intro to the book, encouraging readers not to ignore his "godly wisdom" in the form of an otherwise uninteresting piece of misogynistic nonsense. Bauer nails it in her assessment:

What Real Marriage has going for it, in the end, is the only thing it doesn't share with scores of other marriage books: Mark Driscoll. Driscoll has preached the book's content, he tells us, in "England, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, India, and Turkey" and has talked personally to "hundreds of thousands of couples." The author's bio reminds us that he is "one of the world's most downloaded and quoted pastors." He pastors the "2nd most-innovative church in America." The hype in the press release isn't, ultimately, about Real Marriage; it's about Mark Driscoll.

The scandalous chapter 10, the one in which "real parishioners" are allowed to ask, "Hey, Pastor Mark, can we _______?" is where things get weird. First, let me say that if you're a grown up and are in a relationship with a consenting adult and you need to ask your pastor if you can bugger your wife, you might have bigger issues than sex will fix. Second, and Held Evans is so right about this, pastors are not sex experts. Third, trying to justify certain sex acts exegetically from a Hebrew text is so fucking weird and narcissistic that I can't wrap my head around why someone needs the Song of Songs to provide him the justification for liking a blow job. Know why people like 'em, Mark? 'Cause they feel good when done right. Absent the ability to find "thou shalt not suck pole" in Leviticus, a grown up should feel content being sucker or suckee if both are consenting. Pretty sure your concept of god doesn't really care who gets a hummer as long as no one gets hurt.

What's even more bizarre about this book is not our fascination with sex, and yes, people in church like sex too, even those who say they don't; the most "shaking my head not believing this shit" issue with the book is that Driscoll thinks he's qualified to write it. "Hey, I'm Mark Driscoll. I fucked my wife. Wanna read about it? What's that? Doggie style? Hell yeah, bro. Nailed it!" He's a frat boy in charge of one of the largest churches in the world, and he's so drunk on his own celebrity that he regularly excoriates other Christians for being too effeminate or too weak or too female. He has become the authority behind the exegesis in Mars Hill church and in the thousands of Mars Hill clones springing up everywhere that are pastored by equally grating erstwhile frat boys who can't believe God will only let them fuck one woman for the rest of their lives. Well, if that's the case, she might as well be my flexible gumby whore. I'll need some biblical justification for the anal, but hey, I am a man. This would be high satire if people weren't taking this freak seriously.

The problem with Driscoll is that his exegesis is based on Driscoll. It's the ultimate reading the Bible through the lens of my desires and preferences, and he's just smart enough not to see it but to sell others on it not being the case. Driscoll has become a sucking black hole of narcissism and in an irony of comedic proportion the men around him have been brow-beaten into submission by the man they're all afraid will call them fags or women. This is Christianity post-reasonableness with a big dose of machismo, celebrity worship, pop sex psychology, and misogyny. This is what happens when all those pro-male verses are read literally and then added to the aggressive nature of Western male misogynistic sex fantasies. I used to think megachurches were destroying the church; now I'm pretty sure it's the egos behind the megachurches that are doing the most damage, and in all Christendom the spirit of discernment is getting the shit kicked out of it MMA style.

A Room With a View, or Nikolai Gogol, I Love You

2012-01-16T23:49:42-06:00

Apologies to E.M. Forster...

The end of the world is in a house near Bowlegs, Oklahoma. Every year, a holy man asks his students to visit the house, a dilapidated, shotgun shack on a half acre just south of Bowlegs. The students are not given explicit instructions. Rather, they are told to take food for a day's journey, water for an additional night, and a candle with matches. The standard question is "Will I need to spend the night, master?" The holy man shrugs and says, "I don't know."

"What do I seek there, master?"

Again, the shrug. "You seek the end."

"The end of what?"

Shrug. No answer.

The students go one at a time to the house, each on a different night of the month of their completing the program of study. Most leave after a few hours. Some find the tenacity to spend the entire evening. All begin with the investigation of the rooms. Those who don't stay all night do not complete their program. They typically don't care that they fail.

The first room is the living room. There is nothing in it. The second room, down a short hall, is the master bedroom. It contains a chair. The students typically sit in it and listen closely to the silence. It remains silence. Beyond the master bedroom is a bathroom. Its very functionality assures the students that nothing is to be learned there. Down the hall is a smaller bedroom. It contains the frame of a bed with springs still intact. Students typically recline on the bed and listen dutifully to the silence. It remains silence.

Upon leaving the small bedroom, students make their way back down the hall, and upon turning left, find the kitchen. The cabinet doors are closed. The diligent student will open them all and find nothing. Even the tap handles on the sink yield nothing but an airy squeal. The nicotine-colored stain on the floor where the refrigerator used to be is normally searched with proper attention to pareidolia. No symbols, animals, or recurring patterns are found. The most stubborn of students will make his way back to the living room, light his candle, and sit down to wait for whatever revelation of the end is to be found.

The silence remains silence long into the night and long after the candle is extinguished. As dawn breaks, the hardiest make their way to the door, inclining their heads toward the house's interior just in case the reward is given to the persistent. The silence remains silence. The master is waiting for them on the porch.

"What did you discover in the house, student?" He asks.

"Rooms, master."

"And in the rooms, student?"

"In one was a chair. In one was a bed frame. All others were empty."

"And in the emptiness?"

Finally the student feels trapped. The worst will remain puzzled, staring at the master with befuddlement. The honest will say, "Nothing, master." The rest, determined to take a lesson from their sojourn at the end of the world, will say/ask: "God?"

The master will shake his head. "What did God say to you, student?"

The student will realize his folly too late. The best of them will say: "I heard my own questions, master."

Tongues, Tebow, and Tagalog, or Grating Public Faith

2012-01-02T10:36:02-06:00

Tim Tebow was praying in tongues yesterday. Not a joke. I'm almost certain of it. I saw him on the sidelines late in the loss to Kansas City, kneeling on the turf, head bowed, lips moving remarkably fast. Unless he was reciting the Lord's Prayer over and over at blistering speed making all his lip movements unreadable in terms of real words, he was praying in tongues. I've tried to discover whether or not he's a charismatic. I assume he is, and I just don't care about that. I'm not going to hate Tim Tebow. He's not done anything hateworthy. He's a remarkably good guy by any account, and he defies the odds occasionally. Four things happened—two before Christmas and two yesterday—that make this a topic I'm finally going to get to.

Here are the four things: I went to a very nice holiday wine party with a very hospitable Christian family and happily avoided a conversation about Tebow. Bill Maher raised a storm of controversy (no shit) when he tweeted:

"Wow, Jesus just fucked #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler "Hey, Buffalo's killing them"

Yesterday, Bronco punter Britton Colquitt pointed godward with both hands when a Chief's return man (Arenas maybe?) failed to field an otherwise average punt. The ball rolled twenty more yards making it a very good punt. Colquitt assumed this was part of the divine mystery instead of shitty football and responded accordingly. Fourth, Tim Tebow prayed in tongues.

I'm seriously okay with public expressions of faith that respect the Constitution, as in no faculty/admin-sanctioned prayer in public schools, no prayers at inaugurations, etc. Praying over your meal in a restaurant seems oddly normal to me. I don't find it offensive, so long as you don't pray so loud that I have to listen, and then it's not offensive, just annoying. Want to wear a Christian tee shirt or a brooch of the Buddha? Not a problem. I don't want you wearing a "Muhammad was a pedophile" tee shirt to my class and call it religious expression, but if yours says "Jesus is Lord," I'll understand why you feel that way.

All that to say that Tebow's public expressions of faith don't trouble me. I do think it's worse than stupid to assume god gives two shits about the outcome of a game, but I understand why some fundangelicals believe he does. Tebow sports a Bible verse on his eye-black. So? At least it's not Leviticus 18:22. He prays. Billions of people pray. He prays publicly. You get the point. He's acting like a very committed, outspoken man of faith. Give it a rest, people. If you hate Florida, say so. If you don't like that he's big and goofy and gives all the credit to his god, say so. I will admit to some glee at watching his evangelical fan base gnash their teeth when I mock them with tweets about Dagon being god of Denver, just as Maher annoyed millions with his tweet. There seems to be this strange ability amongst certain people of faith to say that they know something isn't true (God cares about football games) while still holding onto a belief that it is true. Mocking them along that axis leads to anger and/or a bit too much celebration when Tebow wins. As one recent poster said: "Go Tebow! Go Jesus!" Yeah, words fail.

Where I get annoyed is with people who simply believe nonsense or when sports are portrayed as spiritual warfare. First, the party. A very nice lady said, "Tim Tebow doesn't talk openly about his faith. It's the media that keeps talking about it." This is willful ignorance or outright lying. She was nice, so I'll go with the former. Her follow-up statement was even more ridiculous: "The Bible says the Gospel is offensive. That's why people hate Tebow." The Bible verse she is referencing is in Romans, and it refers back to Isaiah, and as usual, it's Paul's updated version of the Tanakh. Isaiah warns the people that YHWH will become a stone of offense to them because of their disobedience. In view here is the coming punishment of the nation of Israel at the hands of Babylon. How any of this applies to Tim Tebow being a tad grating is clearly beyond my comprehension. Maybe it's one of those things that must be "spiritually discerned."

Sports as spiritual warfare. For those of you unfamiliar with praying in tongues, it's a common practice in churches known as Charismatic. The churches are a later form of Pentecostalism inasmuch as they believe in the ongoing gifting of the Holy Spirit in extraordinary forms (tongues, prophecy, healing, etc.). If I don't know how to pray, as Paul says, the Holy Spirit will help. Add to that the "though I speak with the tongues of men and angels..." and you have a rationale for praying in tongues. Why Tim Tebow is praying in tongues rather than watching the game is beyond me. Is the Holy Spirit supposed to help him pray that he can defeat the other team (and its Christian players), or is he perhaps praying to accept God's will for this game? Sigh. Evander Holyfield was the first athlete I remember practicing a prayer language during his events. He prayed in tongues when he fought Tyson, about whom an argument for demonic possession can surely be made, especially post face tattoo.

It's an odd cosmology that assumes a sporting event is the battle ground between the forces of good and evil. It's more than a little narcissistic, but that goes hand in hand with the evangelical worldview. I am important. Jesus died just for me. God has a plan for my life. They are taught to study David and Solomon and Peter and Paul and pray for the plan of God for their lives, all the while ignoring the untold millions who simply lived, worked, loved, prayed, and died. Tebow is following in his father's footsteps. His father runs the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association, a ministry that focuses on the Philippines to "bring the Gospel to the whole country." The ministry web site claims:

In 1998, BTEA began to implement a plan to preach the gospel in every barangay (village) in the Philippines. In a country of 92,000,000, it is estimated that over 65,000,000 Filipinos have never once heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Who is doing the estimating? According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of the Philippines is roughly 83% Catholic. Now my math sucks, but I'm pretty sure 65 million is more than 17% of 92 million. Right?

It's conceivable that people raised to believe nonsense like this (the above quote) might have a slightly elevated view of their own importance. God has chosen them to make an impact, or some other such construct. The problem with any story like this is that it's only waiting for you to interpret it along whichever axis you prefer: theist or non-theist, skeptic or believer, fan or hater. Please, pray in public all you want. Cheer for Tebow. I too enjoy watching sports commentators scratch their heads when he wins on determination, athleticism, and love of the game. He's fun to watch, primarily because of his unpredictability. He's a little like Roethlisberger in that way. What I don't need is a well-meaning if deluded believer explaining that God is using the Broncos and Tebow to bear witness. It's football, folks. Football.

Why Southern Baptists Loathe Pink (the color), or the Transitive Property Meets Douchebaggery

2011-12-28T09:14:56-06:00

Broadman & Holman, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, has recalled an unknown number of pink study Bibles. If this were The Onion, I'd follow the lede with this: "an unidentified spokesperson for the denomination said the color is too gay." Unfortunately, this ain't The Onion, and their reason for the recall isn't funny. The Bibles were a fundraising effort to support Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the formerly well-known breast cancer organization known as the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Excursus: Did anyone notice when it stopped being Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation? Now it really is Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Were they opposed to the cure before, or just clarifying their raison d'etre? This is an organization I very much support (at least in principle), but that name is just bad. Maybe a simple shift to Komen Foundation would have been good. I'm pretty sure people assume they're opposed to breast cancer, not promoting it.

Back to the Baptists. A dollar from the sale of each Bible went to Komen through the merchandising arm of the SBC, LifeWay stores, which is part of LifeWay Christian Resources. (Anyone else think it odd that the SBC is starting to resemble Kali, the Hindu goddess?)

According to a spokesperson from Komen, LifeWay had pledged $25,000. That was before someone informed B&H that Komen has a partnership with Planned Parenthood. Oh shit. Here we go. Thomas Rainer, the president of LifeWay, but not the SBC, released a very helpful statement about the process. Two statements stood out:

As this project has developed, we realized it was a mistake. (Grammar counts, even for a president, sir. Two point deduction for tense switching.)

When our leadership discovered the overwhelming concern that some of Komen's affiliates were giving funds to Planned Parenthood, we began the arduous process of withdrawing this Bible from the market.

A mistake to fund breast cancer screening and education? Nicely done, Mr. President. You didn't think it was a mistake until you received angry letters, emails, and calls from irritated fundamentalists who believe the transitive property precludes you working with "enemies" for a good cause. Here's a simple formula for readers in case you're confused about the transitive property: B&H helps Komen, Komen works with PP, therefore B&H helps PP. It's absurd, of course. Komen guaranteed the money wasn't going to any causes other than the stated ones, but Rainer said it goes against LifeWay's core values to have "even an indirect relationship" with PP. I find it an extremely dubious claim to say that funding breast cancer screening and awareness is in conflict with your core values, Mr. Rainer. If I'm funding a good cause, why do I give two shits about other partners that are funding the same good cause? This is, of course, only an issue because the SBC believes PP is only in the abortion referral business. You can disagree about abortion all you like, but withholding funding from a breast cancer organization because they use PP for screenings is absurd inasmuch as PP is also doing a good thing at that point. Ought it not be the business of Christian organizations to support mitzvahs from wherever they originate?

As to the arduous process...ugh. We're so sorry that this has inconvenienced your company, sir. I'm sure the women and men who struggle with breast cancer are sympathetic about all the boxing and shipping and paperwork required. And what will be done with those pink Bibles now? Can you just send Komen a check for the 25K you promised? I am hopeful that the SBC will realize that it's far better to keep their word on a pledge than to take the opportunity to grandstand and demonize, but I'm not sure which way they'll go. I mean, the Bible says nothing at all about keeping your word, right? It's not as if the relationship between Komen and PP was a hidden one. You used the research arm of the SBC to vette your new partnership, right? Ridiculous. Just give them the money and burn the damn Bibles. It's hard to take all that hell and wrath talk seriously when it's bound in pink anyway.

Christian Identity, or Can Baby Jesus Get Some Love?

2011-12-22T09:19:24-06:00

The survey results look promising on first glance. Ninety percent (90%) of churches will hold services on Christmas day. Anytime you get 90% of any group doing a good thing or what they ought to be doing or at least not doing a bad thing, it seems like a victory. If 90% of students completed high school, the country would marvel. But, of course, I wouldn't be writing this if I thought it was really a good thing. The numbers mask an amazing presumption and perhaps some confusion in the group that carried out the poll: the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Christmas is a Christian holiday. It just is. Talk about all the Saturnalia and pagan syncretism you like, talk about substituting one pagan holiday for a Christian one, talk about borrowed symbols and commericalism, talk all you want about it; at its core, theologically (for Christians), Christmas is the coming of Messiah, and therefore, a religious high, holy day. It's a celebration day, much like Easter (another holiday about which I'm weary of hearing stories of syncretism. One thing is clear, however it started, the Christian narrative won.), not a fast day like Good Friday. It is, by my estimation, the second most important day on the church calendar, following Easter, of course.

Can you imagine a research team sending out an email to pastors asking if they plan to have service on Easter Sunday? No. Not going to happen. Easter is always a Sunday, and it's explicitly religious, and churches church on that day. The assumption is that churches will meet on Easter Sunday. So why isn't it the same assumption for Christmas when it falls on a Sunday? Shouldn't that be cause for additional excitement? The research team knows something about American Christianity, it seems, because only 90% of churches that call themselves Christian are meeting this Sunday. May I ask what the other ten are doing?

I'm also weary of hearing about how they shouldn't be holding services so as to go out into the world and feed and clothe the poor or some other noble endeavor. Jesus said the poor will be with us always not as permission to ignore them, and in the context of the passage, he is certainly indicating that a prioritization must happen that doesn't ignore the poor but that also doesn't prevent the Church from churching. It's the same principle as Sabbath; there are six days to feed and clothe the world. Give God the seventh. That being answered...

In addition to the 10% of churches who seem to have forgotten that Christmas is a day of religious observance (War on Christmas rhetoric notwithstanding), there are those uncounted Christians who won't show up to their churches that are holding service on Sunday. Yes, some are out of town, some have relatives in town, some are ill, and some are working, but the overwhelming majority are placing the cultural celebration ahead of the religious observance. Some well-meaning but clearly confused pastors are offering a Christmas Eve worship alternative, because they want to observe the holiday, and let's be honest, it's the last "Sunday" offering of 2011. Why are those Christians not attending church on Christmas?

I have no answer, except to suggest that almost all American forms of Christianity are first cultural and secondly theological. By cultural here I don't mean style of music or mega vs. small or white vs. black or even patriotic vs. non-sectarian. I mean that Americans are largely shaped by consumerism, individualism, and materialism, the three idols of the market that serve to make all of us mini-narcissists. The Church calendar exists to break a narrative of Christian identity and formation into manageable chunks. The story is told across 52 weeks with the high points receiving special designation: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost. In each chapter, the Church is reminded who she is and the Christian is invited to participate in a formative story, the story of being Christian in the world. It is this narrative that combats the idols of the market, and it is this narrative that is losing.

Not surprisingly, Easter continues to be well-attended, because the primary theological assumption most American Christians seem to make is also narcissitic: Jesus died for my sins and then rose from the dead. The first part of the clause is the most important, and Christians celebrate Easter because the resurrection is the guarantor of the truth of the first part. Even on this most festive of days, the idols of the market win. The hidden assumption behind all this church planning is that church is for the people. Catholic priests know better. They will say the Mass this Sunday even if no one shows. Why? Because the liturgy, the work of the people, is God-directed. Church, theologically, is only tangentially for the people; its primary purpose is worship, thanksgiving, celebration, and praise, not the edification of the body. There are six days for edification; the seventh belongs to God.

Creches and Corpses, or Eschatological Atheism

2011-12-18T13:52:10-06:00

As I'm writing, it's the 4th Sunday of Advent, and already Christmas is working its magic on people who are otherwise quite loathsome. A facebook "friend" wrote a brief defense of CHRISTmas this week. You should know he's one of the worst human beings I know, but hey, baby Jesus came to save him too, but I think you're supposed to stop being a wretch (or arrogant, racist douche) once you've been found. People who you wouldn't imagine are Christian suddenly become Christian this time of year, at least in their understanding. The hhdxw saw a sign on a porch in one of our suburbs that said, "Save Christmas. Vote Republican." Indeed. Perhaps it should have said CHRISTmas.

There is no question that people can be more charitable toward their fellow humans this time of year. The cultural influence of Christmas is profound, especially after discounting the behavior of Black Friday guerilla shoppers. Salvation Army bell ringers give us a chance to feel like we're making a difference. Donating toys to Angel Tree or Toys for Tots helps fill my Treasury of Merit, thus helping me escape Purgatory. Of course, there are those practitioners of civil religion for whom saying "Merry Christmas" feels like a shot fired in the culture war, but even they are more kind this time of year.

Into this Advent season, introduce the death of one of the world's greatest known atheists, Christopher Hitchens, and suddenly the season of hope and expectation is full of eschatological reflections on truth and goodness and hell and grace. What happens when a tireless advocate for the "true" and "good" dies without saying the sinner's prayer? According to Douglas Wilson over at Christianity Today:

We have no indication that Christopher ever called on the Lord before he died, and if he did not, then Scriptures plainly teach that he is lost forever.

To be fair, as Eric Reitan points out at Religion Dispatches Wilson's piece is largely kind and gracious. He believes in eternal damnation, though. Of course he does. He's a consistent, conservative evangelical. His position, he rightly admits, would not have surprised Hitchens. He would have opened himself up to more of Hitchens's legendary scorn had he denied his belief for the sake of seeing a "friendly" saved. Wilson holds out hope that there was a last minute conversion. Of course he does. He's no smarmy inclusivist like C.S. Lewis or a Christian universalist like Philip Gulley. For Lewis, one could serve "Tash" (his faux Allah) but really be serving Aslan, because as Aslan says in The Last Battle, no good deed is in the service of Tash; all good deeds are in the service of Aslan.

The death of an atheist this time of year (especially) reveals more about what Christians think of their own eschatology than it does what the atheist believed. Hitchens was afraid he would make a deathbed confession in his last moments. It's a legitimate fear. I have nothing to lose at that last moment. Why not hedge my bets? It's the Socratic dilemma of saving my own life while betraying all that I've stood for. Would a fair judge say that Hitchens could be truly good if he called out for salvation "just in case"? Many Christians would say God would accept that. (It's true many of them sort of have to because of their view that words are really the building blocks of ontological magic.) But for some—Reitan, Wilson, and others all over facebook this week—they believe in a Just and Merciful God who always does what's right. Great.

Perhaps it's time for those same Christians to take seriously the possibility of a non-material form of Christianity, which is to say that it's possible to do what's right even while believing the wrong things. I'd prefer to believe that God cares more about behavior than belief. It seems more consistent with words like just, merciful, and good. Can a tireless advocate for the good and true ever be far from the kingdom? From within the purview of Christian theology, it makes far more sense that God is the center and we are all at some distance from God, moving in one direction or another. Can we introduce the Greek virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty, and say with a straight face that those who pursue these things are pursuing God, that they are moving toward the center? This, of course, means there is no Rubicon (or Jordan) to cross, only a directional assessment of a soteriological state, but it's far more sensible than the current rubric within evangelicaldom of having to believe the right set of propositions.

I'm not advocating for Hitchens's salvation here. I really think he was more right than wrong about god, salvation, hell, and eternity. I wouldn't wish eternity on anyone, friend or foe. I am advocating for Christian eschatology to consider the possibility that Lewis was right, that the Greeks were right, hell, that anyone who works tirelessly for truth and goodness, irrespective of whether they've "called on Jesus," is closer to the kingdom than those who fight for Christmas for all the wrong reasons or who have said the right words in the right order at the right time. Give me a good pagan over a bad Christian any day. If the Judge is just, I assume he'll agree.

Perry's Pretty Words, or Why Jesus Can't Save Perry's Campaign

2011-12-07T23:13:57-06:00

If you haven't seen Rick Perry's new pandering ad, you should watch it first. If you're too lazy, the transcript is below:

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sundee to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion, and I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong; it can make her strong again. I'm Rick Perry, and I approved this message."

Sorry, I transliterated Sunday. That's the way he said it. Shades of GWB's "nucular" references. It's called pandering to the ignorant middle. The assumption in Washington is that fans of Toby Keith, the King James Bible, and big tits in camo bikinis will always mispronounce words in a very down home sorta way. Aside from the linguistic tactics, Perry is winking without winking. See, like you, he's a Christian, but like you, he's "not in a pew every Sundee." In other words, feel free to bring your religious biases to the polls, even if your version of Christianity has more to do with what you loathe rather than what you affirm—so long as what you loathe are gays, liberals, and a certain black President—and even if you don't actually go to church but managed to check "Christian" on your last census. You're Perry's kind of Christian if civil religion in a Jesus mask is your preferred faith. That means you really prefer America, conservative politics, "old-fashioned" morals, guns, and sex with a mistress to actually going to church, tithing, taking care of the poor, and living sacrificially. (I think I just described a massive number of Republican politicians.)

Beyond that is Perry's bizarre comparison. Gays can serve openly in the military but our children can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. One at a time.

Has Perry been to a public school around Christmas time? It's all carols and creches and Christ. Sure there's Santa and reindeer and presents, but he's lying if he says traditional religious themes are missing. And what does he mean they can't openly celebrate? Are they forbidden to say "Merry Christmas" or wear a shirt that says "Jesus is the Reason for the Season"? No.
Our children can't pray in school? Is he an idiot or a liar? Can I choose all of the above? Of course they can pray in school. They can pray during the moment of silence in the morning. They can say grace over their lunch. They can "see you at the pole." They can pray at their lockers, in hallways, between classes, with friends, at Bible clubs and FCA meetings. Hell, they have more opportunities to pray than to actually learn. Again, he's either a liar or an idiot.

Obama has a war on religion? The Christian president, like the previous 43 Christian presidents, is warring against religion? This is so desperate that it's clear Perry is aware that his campaign is fucked, and he's trying to scrape together the Palin voters to achieve double digits in the polls.

Liberal attack on Christian heritage? Is he channeling Barton now? We have no Christian heritage. We have an American heritage, a Constitutional heritage, a heritage that mythmakers like Perry and Barton would savage with their idiotic assertions about our religious heritage. The problem with history is that it is seldom on our side. Yes, it's a revisionist practice, but it typically revises itself over against our generalizations and propaganda.

I don't even know what it means that "faith made America strong." Strong how? In war? That wasn't faith; it was technology in the form of weapons. In commerce? That was manufacturing, assembly lines, mass production and marketing. In character? Ha! It's all pretty words, which is ironic, because conservatives accused Obama of using pretty words. Clearly, the blade cuts both ways. This ad is perhaps the most desperate case of pandering I've ever seen. It's pathetic really, and the music and costume and tone don't save it. Can't wait to see what the handlers will do with Newt. He is an historian after all.

Old Time Religion and Penn State, or the Cult of Football

2011-12-05T09:37:38-06:00

Twice this year major sporting events have been the tableau for a corporate religious experience having nothing to do with church, but looking more like a worship service than many a megachurch techno-orgy. This isn't about pedophilia and Jerry Sandusky; I don't think many more analyses are necessary. Don't rape kids. There. Analysis complete. Of more concern to me this time around is the way in which football is portrayed both as unimportant (it's just a game) and critical to our health (let's play football so the healing can begin). Both of these perspectives are wrong, but they are entirely useful when offerd as counterpoints to the other at the appropriate time.

Penn State played the week after the firing of long-time coach Joe Paterno. Of course they did. Much as we heard calls for the NFL right after 9/11, we heard demands that the game be played so that Penn State could begin the healing process. We can't have terrorists and pedophiles winning the culture war, after all, so let's play football as a hearty fuck off to their attempts to ruin our culture and bugger our children. Makes perfect sense. In one of the greatest ironies of the year, the Penn State faithful linked arms and sang the alma mater. Ironic why? Stanzas 3 and 4 for your reading amazement:

When we stood at childhood's gate,
Shapeless in the hands of fate,
Thou didst mold us, dear old State,
Dear old State, dear old State.

May no act of ours bring shame,
To one heart that loves thy name.
May our lives but swell thy fame,
Dear old State, dear old State.

Indeed. The problem, or at least part of it, is this notion that universities are distinct entities with a system of values, a body of practices, and traditions that give shape to people's identities. This is ridiculous, of course. One need only interview a cross section of professors to see that the values taught at a particular university are all over the place. As for the practices, yes, some degree of uniformity and common memory is instilled in those who walk the old paths, but the student body doesn't even share the same sorts of practices unless they are members of the same fraternity or team or club. The most common arena for common practice is sports. Think of West Virginia's orgiastic entrance celebration or Kansas University' creepy chant to begin the basketball season. What those practices do besides give fond memories of drunken nights is beyond me, but we're supposed to believe that universities are distinct entities because of this sort of nonsense. (I'm sure the SCOTUS would grant them personhood if the money was right, by the way.)

However, as the Penn State fans linked arms and sang, flickering across the face of many was a deep sense of shared well-being, pride, and even anger. Collectively, they sang both to show their pride in their school (whatever the fuck that means) and to achieve a sense of catharsis. That sounds very much like a worship service. The announcers went along by intoning bullshit claims about healing coming out of this game. It's the most absurd justification of football's deep-rooted self-importance I'd seen since 9/11.

Less than a month later, Oklahoma State would experience a tragedy as well. This one wasn't due to the evil choices of a predator, though; rather, the vagaries of weather claimed yet another OSU aircraft. I want to be sensitive here, both because it was a horrible accident, and because I sincerely believe OSU does as fine a job as any university of making students and profs feel they are part of a larger family. (Full disclosure: I teach humanities at one of the schools in their network.) As with PSU, the announcers the night of OSU's epic loss to Iowa State spoke of healing as coming from the game, but at the same time, because the tableau included death, they spoke of football as only a game. It was a bizarre juxtaposition, and had they reversed the context, the statements would have been utterly appropriate.

Healing begins in shared communal experience. I absolutely believe that, but the idea that it's the game that creates the shared space for that is ridiculous. The game serves as a distraction, and because it's not "just a game" (someone is making millions, here, folks), the game must go on. The justification is in the portrayal of the game as a healing catharsis. How does the game heal the wounds of rape victims? How does it heal the hearts of the families of crash victims? What can football offer that community, shared grief, and mutual encouragement can't? Entertainment. Distraction. Sports as self-important cultural phenomenon. The triviality of grown men vying for a piece of leather is elevated by the priests of the game (the announcers who narrate the order of service) to a place of prominence in the psyche of gathered fans. You need football to feel whole. Has more banal bullshit ever been uttered? When someone tells me how important the game is for the healing of a community, that's when I remind them it's just a game. When they tell me it's just a game in a moment of false humility, that's when it's appropriate to say, no, it's more than a game. There is too much money, too many students, too much politics for it to be just a game, and because it's not just a game, you will find ways to justify its ongoing importance even in the midst of genuine tragedy.

Baptist Sex, or How to Resurrect Political Irrelevance

2011-11-30T09:50:33-06:00

Richard Land, president of the (it turns out) ironically named Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has released an open letter to Newt Gingrich. Land is concerned that Gingrich is not polling well among evangelicals. I assume he really means Southern Baptists with whom he comes in contact, but he says evangelicals. Fair enough. He tells the former Speaker that based upon the informal polls Land takes as he travels the country, Newt polls well with evangelical men and terribly with evangelical women. What's the solution?

Land wants Newt to pick a "pro-family venue" (maybe a Southern Baptist affiliated university?) and address his marital history. See, evangelical women aren't supporting Newt because he divorced his bed-ridden first wife to marry a mistress, whom he subsequently divorced to marry his second mistress (but we don't really have the enumeration down with any degree of certainty). Land wants Newt to totally come clean. Evangelical women, Land says using his mother as an example, are reticent to vote for a cheater unless the cheater comes clean. (I'm doing my best to play it straight at this point, folks.) He concludes with this exhortation.

Such a speech would not convince everyone to vote for you, but it might surprise you how many Evangelicals, immersed in a spiritual tradition of confession, redemption, forgiveness and second and third chances, might.

You're probably wondering why I'm even posting this. It's just Land being Land, after all. Nothing to see here, folks. Right? When evangelicals, especially of the conservative variety, wonder why I don't take them seriously when it comes to ethical talk, this will be one of the examples that I use. There are (at least) three points at which Land's thinking and writing border on idiotic.

A pro-family venue? Why would that make the slightest difference? More pro-family mojo there? Who gives two shits what venue he chooses? This just seems to be Land shilling for an appearance at a major Baptist institution.
All Newt has to do is give a "speech" about his past infidelities and Baptists will rush to forgive him. What the fuck? No repentance. No reformed life. No demonstration of character. Nope. Just say the right words and it's all forgiven. After all, we have to get that Kenyan, socialist, Muslim interloper out of the White House, and right now, our great white hope is a boring Mormon, so pretty much say the sinner's prayer, Mister Speaker, and we'll vote for you. Hell, we'd vote for Klansman at this point. They're a Christian group, right? Words are magic, right, Mr. Land? They make the old new. They bring about a new creation. They convert a career politician with hands so dirty I can't believe anyone is taking him seriously into a serious contender for the Republican party's nomination. And this is the party of principles? That you participate in the destruction of the meaning of important words is disturbing, Mr. Land. What's that Bible verse? Oh yeah, "Woe to them who call evil good."
That Land fails even to mention the "professional historian's" work for Freddie Mac is an egregious oversight for the president of an ethical advising organization. The inference here is that Newt can take $1.6 million from a mortgage company while the mortgage industry melts down, he can lie about his affiliation with a straight face, and then he can treat us all like idiots by insisting they hired him for his history expertise, but he can't fuck the wrong person. Un-fucking-believable. Mr. Land, might I suggest you actually find a coherent system of ethics at some point in your tenure as the president of the SBC's ethical body? I'd also appreciate it if you'd ensure it's not based on political expediency, and if it's not too much to ask, maybe work a little Jesus talk in there.