Bishop Budde and the Prophetic Tradition

The Rt. Rvd. Marian Edgar Budde
(Washington National Cathedral photo)

Over a week ago, Episcopal Bishop Marian Edgar Budde gave President Trump the gentlest, most benevolent scolding in recent political history. She simply urged Trump (a notoriously inattentive churchgoer) to remember all Americans when governing, not only those who resemble himself. This was too much, not only for Trump’s political supporters, but for conservative religious leaders. Trump’s supporters described Budde’s benign concerns as “the radical left just spew[ing] hate.”

Smarter theologians than I have written extensively about the foolish anti-Budde diatribes. Budde’s exhortation to look after marginalized and disadvantaged peoples comes directly from the Gospels, especially the Sermon on the Mount and the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Any familiarity with Christ’s message emphasizes that Christians have a God-given responsibility to care for poor, marginalized, and immigrant populations. Not because they’re especially holy, but because they’re poor.

I’d rather contemplate where Budde’s message situates her. In Budde’s willingness to address Trump directly, and speak explicitly to Trump’s attitudes toward American citizens, I’m reminded of three other prophets: Nathan, Elijah, and John the Baptist. All three had specific, conflicted relationships with Hebrew political leaders, and named specific sins each performed by name. Heavily churched readers might know that, for the last two, this challenging didn’t end well.

The prophet Nathan lived in King David’s palace and served some undefined advisory role. His only recorded act of prophecy comes after David steals Bathsheba, a married woman, and sends her husband to die in battle. Nathan spins a parable of a wealthy man abusing his poor neighbor; only after David answers the parable with a demand for retribution does Nathan reveal the parable refers to David himself.

By contrast, Elijah condemns King Ahab from outside the palace walls. When Ahab marries a foreigner, Jezebel, and adopts her religious practices, God sends punishment upon Israel. (In Hebrew scripture, all Israel is judged together; it isn’t a religion of personal righteousness, but a moral backbone for the entire nation.) Elijah and Ahab battle for Israel’s soul for years before the unrepentant Ahab dies and Elijah ascends bodily into heaven.

John the Baptist, though a Christian figure, is similarly Jewish. He condemns the priesthood—which, never forget, served as proxy government for Roman dominion in Judea, and therefore was more political than religious. Like Elijah, he condemned King Herod from outside the palace; unlike Elijah, Herod survived this criticism, and ordered John executed. Where Jesus preached an alternate Judaism, John continued the state-based tradition of Elijah, Amos, and Samuel.

The Hebrew prophetic tradition opposes the inclinations of power. In recent years, we’ve questioned who has the authority to “speak truth to power.” Remember a few years ago, when Republicans went berserk because Michelle Wolf took pokes at the administration at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? Her defenders insisted that court jesters had a history, even a responsibility, to mock powerful people in high places with uncomfortable truths. But, comedians? Really?

No, historically, comedians entertained; if they made political points, that came only incidentally. Indeed, in Shakespeare’s day, public performances were heavily censored, and comedy, like all performance, trended significantly conservative. Comedy only criticizes power in societies where criticism is deemed, a priori, acceptable. In coming years, as the administration promises to become increasingly authoritarian, pointed comedy, like protest songs before it, will become risky and rare.

Instead, religion has the unique capacity to challenge power in its seat. Especially in an administration that uses the forms of religion, but largely ignores its substance, as Trump does, religious leaders can tell politicians and oligarchs the truths that nobody else dares speak. To the extent that Americans generally, and the administration particularly, believe God and capital-T Truth exist, religion has the privilege to speak it.

This doesn’t mean prophets live safely. Nathan dwelt inside the palace, but Elijah spent his career living as a fugitive. The Northern Kingdom chased Amos out altogether. Jeremiah lived in perpetual fear of crowds, even as he tried desperately to convey the message they needed to hear. John the Baptist died violently, and if Christianity shares the Hebrew prophetic tradition, Jesus and his disciples (except John) all died violently.

If we believe authoritarians need somebody to “speak truth to power,” let’s start with the people who believe Truth exists. Not the people Jeremiah disparaged as “prophets of peace,” either, a category that definitely includes Trump’s so-called spiritual advisers. Rather, let’s find the holy lunatics and angry prophets camping outside the temple walls, shouting. Get ready to eat locusts and wild honey.

What I Want For Next Christmas

On the Saturday before Christmas, 2024, I tested positive for COVID-19. This is my second confirmed bout of the disease (I also believe I had a third, unconfirmed case). I'm spending the holiday alone, forced to deny myself the one thing I wanted for Christmas: time with the family and friends I love.

Within my generation, I've watched the world change, mostly for the worse. Anti-science woo-woo practitioners, a fringe subculture thirty years ago, have organized online on an unprecedented scale. While COVID-19 has become the malaria of our time, deadly but banal, antivax forces seemingly conspire to resurrect polio, measles, and tuberculosis. Pro-science rationalists can't counter this because they're fatigued from arguing against Flat Earthers and Seven-Day Creationists.

Nor are anti-science nuts alone. Historian Kathleen Belew writes that White Power insurrectionists organized online back in the 1980s. The January 6th, 2021, Capitol invasion was the culmination of years of preparation, for which progressives remain unready. We believers in civil rights for the downtrodden are stuck in the era of Mother Jones and Woody Guthrie, believing that marching will bring liberation. The bigots are organized, prepared to bring the high-tech hammer of empire down, hard.

Jesus Christ was born into similar circumstances, in an occupied nation in a globalized empire. While ordinary Jews sought leadership to resist, their actual leaders squabbled about what to do. Fight back (Zealots)? Comply in advance (Sadducees)? Focus on individual righteousness (Pharisees)? Flee the world (Essenes)? No option, taken alone, seems sufficient.

When Christ uses the term “The Kingdom of God” throughout his ministry, he means it literally. The Kingdom isn't a poetic metaphor, it's a nation we live in right now. When Jews lived as a conquered state with a puppet monarch, Jesus offered an alternate citizenship. Caesar’s terrestrial government of grandeur, gold, and military parades, isn't our homeland. We dwell in another Kingdom, right now.

How do we exercise this alternate citizenship? Keep the commandments. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the lost foreigner. Set the prisoners free.

The older I get, the further I grow from belief in an anthropomorphic God among the clouds. Yet paradoxically, this draws me closer to Christ's message. If this world's systems encourage distrust and bigotry, Christ offers alternate systems of love, mission, and mutuality. Christ's systems lift one another up, sustain a wounded earth, and restore justice to an unjust world.

And we call those systems “God.”

Remember, back during lockdown, when churches were reported as the largest vectors of infection? I believe this happened because people lost track of why church exists. Too many churchgoers saw worship as a moral goal in itself. Therefore, having sung and clapped and hugged and sat through the homily, they saw the process as complete. Then they went home, relaxed, and coughed on one another.

Instead, church should be the place we go to recommit ourselves to the systems Christ initiated. Singing the songs while ignoring the message is exactly what Jesus meant, in Matthew, in saying: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.”

Equally important, church should be the place we organize. Because, as stated, the forces of ignorance and empire are organized, prepared to crush the already weak and kill the already marginalized. Our hymns should be protest marching songs, our sermons should be plans of action, and our prayers should be motivations to act. Church shouldn't be our refuge from the world, it should be where we find strength to face the world and say no.

People who know me might counter by pointing out how bad I am at fronting the resistance. That's true. When working alone, I'm easily discouraged by the workload and cowed by confrontation. But that's the point. I shouldn't have to work alone; supported by the systems of justice we call God, I should join arms with fellow believers and face the challenges together. When we bolster one another, that's when we become the church.

Monday, upon learning that I'd be quarantined on Christmas, a local friend and his wife offered to reserve part of their Christmas dinner and bring it to me. At that moment, I felt like part of the community. I realized that I wanted to feel that in the church. Earthly powers want us to feel alone, desperate, and in competition for scraps. The Kingdom reminds us we're never alone, we face all challenges together.

What Forgiveness Is, What Forgiveness Is Not

Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

Forgiveness is one of the most necessary, and one of the most difficult, aspects of the Christian experience. When neighbors, enemies, and earthly powers affront us, the Gospel calls us to forgive generously; but our human impulse is to nurse grudges and seek vindication. Essayist Lysa TerKeurst found this in her personal life, when her husband’s infidelity nearly imploded her marriage. So she went in search of what the Bible actually says about granting forgiveness.

I find myself divided about TerKeurst’s findings. Her conclusions are biblically sound, extensively sourced, and balanced by personal experience. She found that, whenever she couldn’t bring herself to forgive, her resentments turned malignant, wounding her far beyond the original transgressions she suffered. When she opened herself to the experience of Christlike forgiveness, she didn’t need to excuse the harm done, or compromise her boundaries. She just stopped carrying her old resentments around in her pockets.

However, I quickly noticed several elements missing from TerKeurst’s exegesis. For starters, though she describes insights she gleaned from her therapist, she cites nothing from science, and little from any extra-biblical sources. She name-drops St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Spurgeon in the text, hardly rigorous scientific sources. Her insights come mostly from personal anecdotes, and her text reads more like a memoir than therapeutic guidance. She assumes you can learn from her personal journey.

I also noticed the near-complete absence of one word from TerKeurst’s text: “repentance.” I don’t recall that word appearing until an appendix. Christians must frequently forgive someone who hasn’t repented or sought to amend their transgressions, because it’s more important to stop carrying that stone ourselves. But I’ve frequently observed that powerful people demand forgiveness before they’ve demonstrated a whit of repentance, placing the burden of transgression on the one wronged, and excusing the transgressor.

We’ve seen this recently in churches. Floods of accusations, not only against religious leaders who have socially or sexually abused their parishioners, but also against church institutions that papered over the abuse, have revealed decades of unhealed trauma. Insurrectionists bearing Christian insignia besieged the American government, then urged voters and legislators to “just move on.” Forgiveness has become an obligation the powerful impose on the masses, not a gift freely given to us by Christ.

Lysa TerKeurst

TerKeurst’s larger text contains important pointers and tools to enact forgiveness in our lives. Again, she roots these insights on her personal experience rather than larger psychological research, but pause on that. Her suggestion to, for instance, begin the forgiveness process by writing down the original transgression, and its long-term impact. After reading TerKeurst’s direction, I applied this exercise myself. I found that crystallizing the hurt into words makes it manageable, not vast and insuperable.

She also expounds about what forgiveness is not. Though TerKeurst accepted the struggle to reconcile with her husband, reconciliation isn’t an obligatory component of forgiveness. Sometimes Christians must unburden ourselves of others’ transgressions, but that doesn’t mean allowing those who hurt us back into our lives unconditionally. There’s a wide gulf between forgiveness, and being a doormat. TerKeurst dedicates an entire chapter to creating and enforcing boundaries to ensure the offender doesn’t hurt us again.

Perhaps the greatest shortcoming in TerKeurst’s reasoning reveals itself in one fact: after this book shipped, her husband returned to old habits, and she reluctantly admitted her marriage was over. I don’t say this to gloat. Rather, I want to emphasize the White Protestant fondness for forgiveness, separate from repentance, has consequences. God is loving and merciful, but God is also just, and Christians who elide the need for repentance miss part of the journey.

In the New Testament, the Greek word metanoia is variously translated as both “repentance” and “conversion.” In either case, metanoia signifies a transformation of mind, a complete reorientation of outlook in service of a renewed life. Metanoia doesn’t happen instantaneously, and it isn’t something someone professes verbally. Rather, repentance makes itself known in a life realigned to serve higher goals. Apologizing and accepting responsibility are good first steps, but repentance comes in a reorganized life.

Don’t misunderstand me. Though TerKeurst purposes to write a self-help book, she actually gives us a good memoir of spiritual struggle, one which yields valuable insights, even if—we now know—her struggle wasn’t complete. If we read it that way, we have plenty to learn from her experiences. But one of the necessary lessons is that forgiveness without repentance creates a downward spiritual spiral. Don’t carry burdens unnecessarily, but don’t rush to forgiveness either.

The Kingdom Is Not Of This World

Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

When journalist Tim Alberta chronicles the corruption of American Evangelicals, he writes from both an insider and outsider perspective. He commences this, his second book, with that most conventional of Evangelical theological devices, the testimony. That is, he recounts his Christian journey to date, to verify his “born again” credentials. Son of a Michigan pastor, Alberta grew up surrounded by Christianity and church culture, and absorbed it into his bones.

But like many young American Christians, he believed the principles Christianity taught him, and that created a paradox. He witnessed the gulf between the teachings proclaimed from Sunday pulpits, and the lives Christians actually lived. Too many American Christians are discipled by talk radio and basic cable, not Jesus. Things reached a peak when he delivered his father’s eulogy—and got castigated for not being Republican enough in the pulpit.

Alberta did something most disillusioned young Christians can’t do. Already possessing journalism credentials, he undertook an investigation of American Christendom. (The “White” part of that equation goes mostly unspoken.) He visits revivalist preachers like Greg Locke, whose pro-Trump homilies have become a YouTube sensation, and Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor whom others have described as Donald Trump’s pastor.

He also visits pastors, and invested lay Christians, whose witness against Christian dominionism has sometimes helped reverse this march. Russell Moore, a former ranking theologian in the Southern Baptist Convention, left the denomination when too many denominational leaders cared more about Donald Trump and COVID-19 than discipleship. Activist Rachel Denhollander became both loved and hated when she advocated for survivors of clergy abuse and religious trauma.

This book recounts a religion torn between conflicting forces. Some Christians love America, support the existing political order, and literally use the Constitution as a theological heuristic. Others take seriously Christ’s commands to embrace the downtrodden and heal the wounded. One recalls, reading this book, that Jesus quarreled most fiercely with temple priests and congregational elders, because religion is frequently the death of spirituality.

Tim Alberta

Alberta crisscrosses America—and even, briefly, Europe—to better understand the combined forces turning Evangelicalism into a “state religion.” The conditions he finds are frequently bleak. Revivalist preachers cultivate large followings by ginning fear of an ill-defined “other” who threatens the social order, and parishioners who believe that order is God-given. Many Christians seemingly worship their own fears of uncertainty and disempowerment.

Others, seemingly, embrace uncertainty and disempowerment. While fearmongers pay publicists to flood American culture with their message, other Christians prefer to work quietly, receiving reward not from public acclaim, but from the healing they see blooming around them. These Christians generally don’t seek mass audiences and, in Alberta’s telling, sometimes feel uncomfortable when they do accrue notice. But they, and the work they do, still exist.

Intermittently, Alberta acknowledges a third contributing factor: a media landscape driven by a perverse incentive structure, which gets ratings and sells advertising by pandering to audiences’ paranoia. Anger drives cable TV ratings and YouTube clicks. There’s an entire argument brewing here about how what serves owners’ pocketbooks frequently doesn’t serve the common good, an argument Alberta doesn’t engage because it exceeds his scope. But it’s there.

This reciprocal relationship between media attention and leaders appealing to White anger, comes with a price. Alberta notes that Christianity, which once held primacy in American spirituality, is dwindling rapidly; if current trends continue, Christianity will be a minority religion in two generations. Even once-secure bastions of Evangelicalism, like Liberty University (to which Alberta returns), have become battlegrounds of American identity.

Tellingly, the leaders profiting from this arrangement don’t believe their own hokum. Jerry Falwell Jr.’s apostasy at Liberty has become almost legendary. But the leaders Alberta interviews reveal great personal doubt they don’t share with parishioners. Greg Locke admits he doesn’t believe his online nationalist paranoia, but it draws numbers. Robert Jeffress admits doubts about Trump that he daren’t speak aloud in public.

Evangelical Christianity, like America itself, teeters between extremes. Some leaders get rich and accrue large flocks by appealing to True Believers’ worst instincts. Others prefer hard work, honesty, and relative anonymity. The worst Christian examples are also the most readily visible, ensuring that the existing system preserves itself. But while the system leadership remains intact, ordinary believers, who can’t see the good work being done quietly, leave the fold altogether.

Alberta ends optimistically, suggesting the quieter Christians may be ultimately ascendent. But their triumph won’t come quickly. Things are likely to get markedly worse, and paranoia more widespread, before things get any better.

...and the Dogs Licked His Sores

The Rich Man and Lazarus (undated Orthodox icon)

Two friends, in two completely different circumstances, have quoted Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) at me recently. This forces me to turn inward and contemplate one of Christianity’s more opaque passages. This narrative, which only appears in one Gospel and has no explanatory text, doesn’t easily admit one-to-one interpretation. It reads more like modern literature than religious text, meant more to disquiet readers than enlighten souls.

The rich man—nameless in the text, but christened Dives in the English theological tradition—lives comfortably inside a fortress-like enclosure, never having to see the squalor around him. Jesus contrasts Dives’ comfort with Lazarus’ suffering. Not only is Lazarus hungry, he is “covered in sores,” presumably leprous, which makes him ritually unclean under Jewish law. He’s so unclean, in fact, that “dogs came and licked his sores.” Dogs, under Abrahamic law, are filthy scavengers.

In other words, Jesus doesn’t contrast here between rich and poor. He contrasts between a man so rich he never needs to touch the ground, and a man so poor he can’t get off the ground. One lives so richly rewarded by this world’s standards that he never needs to participate in this world, and the other must plead for crumbs so he doesn’t leave this world prematurely. Despite this, they’re separated by one thin door, and when the time comes, they seemingly die simultaneously.

Read from a conventionally middle-class moral position, the story seemingly culminates in rewards for earthly suffering, and punishment for earthly indifference. That’s how my childhood preachers interpreted this story. Lazarus ascends to heaven, not because the poor are particularly righteous or deserving, or because pain creates holiness, but because God favors the poor, and casts away those who don’t use God’s earthly blessings to assist the needy. Seemingly straightforward.

Except, as I’ve recently become conscious of widespread systemic ableism in Western society, the story has unwelcome creases. Jesus doesn’t only make Lazarus poor, he also makes Lazarus sick, and so thoroughly sick that he’s vulnerable to scavenging bottom-feeders. But Jesus seemingly offers the ultimate counsel toward patience. Wait your turn, he seemingly says; in the afterlife, God will comfort the afflicted, and consign everyone else to Hades. Just shut up and wait.

The Rich Man and Lazarus
(Sir John Everett Millais, 1864)

In practice, that’s how Christian theologians have utilized this story. Shut up and remain patient, countless bourgeois ministers have asserted, and eventually, God will reward your patient suffering. Those same ministers counseled Dives’ luxurious descendants to gift charity from their surplus, an attitude that still survives whenever you hear anybody say, “charity belongs to the church, not the government.” But an economy based on resource hoarding never gets truly fixed.

Because of Lazarus’ leprous sores, lepers’ hospitals in Victorian England were termed “Lazar-houses.” Mostly run by religious charities, these hospitals let professional Christians scoop lepers off the street, so they wouldn’t beg at the gate. But they walled lepers inside massive, fortress-like sanitoriums. Where Dives lived inside his palace, and Lazarus begged on the street, wealthy Victorians walked the street unmolested, while lepers lived inside their Lazarettos. The upshot remained unchanged: Get them out of sight!

These aren’t historic oddities. Nancy Isenberg describes the degrading language America’s founders, including Thomas Jefferson, used to describe chronically impoverished and ill White people. America’s last “Ugly Laws,” which saw people jailed for being poor, disfigured, or unpleasant to look at, weren’t repealed until 1975. P.T. Barnum built his entertainment empire by displaying disfigured, congenitally disabled, and otherwise outcast persons in his “freak show.” Barnum’s “freaks” accepted this treatment because, otherwise, they had no means to earn a living.

Conventional bourgeois interpretations of the parable focus on Dives’ earthly prosperity, and everything he loses. Middle-class pastors warn parishioners to remember the poor, and to provide sustenance from their worldly excess. Perhaps this interpretation isn’t unfair, since Jesus himself focuses his greatest word count on Dives, and everything Dives lost. But Jesus himself isn’t neutral. Jesus does something disability rights advocates deplore: he reduces Lazarus to a mute prop, with no agency, in his own story.

Jesus undoubtedly intended this story for rich audiences. Luke’s Gospel is uniquely blunt in scolding the wealthy: where Matthew’s Beatitudes promise blessings to the poor, Luke’s parallel passage promises punishments to the rich. These warnings remain as relevant today as when Jesus spoke them. Yet in targeting the rich, Luke’s Jesus strips agency from the poor. Jesus makes Lazarus an object of rich people’s pity, and disability advocates know, pity is one step removed from contempt.

But What If the Bible Doesn’t Say That?

Adam Hamilton, Half Truths: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves and Other Things the Bible Doesn't Say

We mainline Christians certainly love our platitudes. No matter what curveballs life throws, we inevitably have a ready-made cliché available. The problem is, we frequently think our preferred platitudes come from the Bible, which they most certainly don’t. Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor from suburban Kansas City, collects five beloved platitudes which he believes impede Christians’ most direct experience of God, and God’s love.

Reverend Hamilton identifies the following five shopworn cliches, including several variations on their themes:

• “Everything Happens for a Reason”
• “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves”
• “God Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle”
• “God Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It”
• “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin”

These common expressions provide handy, nugget-sized servings of Christian layperson theology, which believers can deploy in nearly all circumstances. Each one, Reverend Hamilton admits, contains some amount of truth. As canned responses to life’s ever-changing happenstance, they’re broadly unsatisfying. Sometimes, things happen because they happen; or God’s word exists in context and doesn’t apply here; or we get so busy hating sins that we forget to love our neighbors.

Worse still, in Hamilton’s estimation: entirely too many Christians believe these bromides come from the Bible. He cites a Barna Group survey suggesting that as many as eight in ten Christians believe “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” is biblical, which it isn’t. (I have a love-hate relationship with Barna research, but let’s accept it provisionally.) These clichés first substitute Man’s wisdom for God’s guidance, then elide the wisdom, leaving only cold comfort.

For instance, when telling hurting people that “God Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle,” we attribute everything that happens to God’s will. That’s pretty horrific, if you consider what catastrophes ordinary people face daily. Reverend Hamilton directly disparages Calvinist predestination, with its presumption that God planned everything you face before Creation. Scripture promises God will provide us tools to withstand life’s calamities, but not that God either gives or limits those calamities.

With each platitude, Hamilton similarly unpacks their theological meaning, and the harm they perpetuate. He admits each one has some element of truth, but that isn’t enough. When we limit our truths to easily memorized bromides, we miss God’s mission, and Christ’s love. The listeners for whom we deploy these platitudes need something deeper, so in relying on simplistic sayings, we not only short-change God, we miss our audience’s needs.

Reverend Adam Hamilton

Hamilton writes for a Christian audience, one which already believes Christ’s message of comfort and salvation in an unjust world. He writes to offer Christians necessary tools to convey that comfort to those suffering—which may, often enough, be ourselves. Too often, we Christians become so comfortable in our salvation that we reduce others’ spiritual struggles to Sunday School simplicity. Reverend Hamilton encourages us to unpack life’s difficult, subtle aspects.

If Reverend Hamilton has one overriding theme, it’s “nuance.” He expresses frustration with these platitudes because they’re unsubtle, and prevent Christians from thinking deeply about life’s most important topics. The questions which most deserve our scrutiny, get papered over with sayings we probably learned from our grandparents. Hamilton invites us to recognize that while these sayings aren’t necessarily wrong, they also seldom meet our own or anybody else’s spiritual needs.

This book began as a sermon series at Hamilton’s suburban congregation, and it retains the simple, breezy tone common in Protestant homiletics. (The publisher offers supplementary materials for adult Bible studies.) Large type and wide line spacing conceal the fact that, though over 160 pages, this book is short, barely more than a pamphlet. Hamilton offers discussion starters, not deep dives into major theological questions. That’s all some people need.

Therefore, this book whets my appetite without satisfying it. People who read voluntarily, generally want something more detailed and contemplative. Adults participating in Bible study might or might not read Hamilton’s short chapters; in-class videos, and the resulting conversation, will be the study’s heart. Hamilton briefly introduces how poets, saints, and ministers have addressed these difficult questions, then walks away, providing neither in-depth analysis nor sources for further independent study.

Don’t misunderstand me; as an introductory survey, I enjoy Hamilton’s points, and hope more Christians take his advice to heart. This book is a great beginning. But Christian bookstores are stuffed with great beginnings on important questions. Reverent Hamilton raises important points and debunks Christian myths that prevent us showing God’s love wholeheartedly. I just hope Hamilton has a follow-up pending to go deeper into the themes he raises herein.

On a similar but not completely identical theme:
How To Give Real Advice, In Ten Easy Steps

One Man's Walk Through Armageddon

Zack Hunt, Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong

You ever notice how it seems some people really, really want the world to end a week from next Tuesday? Pastor Zack Hunt used to be one of them. A youth spent studying end-times theology convinced him that Jesus would return promptly, if you read the signs. He admits having been one of those eschatological enthusiasts who steered every discussion to Christ’s imminent return. And he apologizes for that.

This book is half memoir, half deep-dive into Biblical literacy. Pastor Hunt unpacks the moral certainties that defined his youth, and the growing complexity that forced him to amend his beliefs. For a time, he apparently questioned whether he could remain a Christian without the absolute conviction of end-times theology. It took time and growth before Pastor Hunt realized faith is about the here and now, not the great hereafter.

Starting in his teenage years, Hunt found himself torn between two religious extremes. He grew up in the Church of the Nazarene, part of the Holiness tradition in American Christianity, a faith that requires “total sanctification.” In theory, this means that relationship with Jesus makes your soul as spotless as new Victorian lace. In practice, it often means that you spend your life tallying your own sins to make sure you haven’t strayed from God’s path. Hunt describes himself answering lots of altar calls and getting saved every Sunday.

Such constant soul scrutiny led, Hunt describes, to embracing a theology of vindication. The end-times eschatology described by theologians like Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye let Hunt rest calmly on the expectation that, when Jesus returns quickly, He’ll exonerate the righteous. In order to “win,” he needed only to memorize the right prooftexts, perform the prescribed rituals, and evangelize to anyone and everyone.

Hunt walks us through his spiritual journey, one he admits remains incomplete. Like many young Christians, he accepted his parents’ religion, not only without question, but also without restraint. He became a more absolute, more performative version of whatever his parents told him to believe, to the point where, in his telling, his own pastors and spiritual mentors rolled their eyes at his extreme certainties.

Zack Hunt

His encounters with Scripture as a young adult, however, forced him into impossible situations. He attended college to become a “youth pastor,” a title often associated with the worst excesses of populist Christianity. But his exegetical professors and Bible mentors showed him a scriptural reading that didn’t accord with his moral absolutes. He found himself backed into a corner: change his beliefs, or admit he favored preachers over Christ.

Although Hunt does use extensive personal narrative, and centers his own spiritual journey, he doesn’t pooh-pooh scholarship. He quotes extensively from prior theologians on topics like eschatology, exegesis, and homiletics. Augustine and Origen, C.S. Lewis and Barbara Rossing, all serve to bolster Hunt’s position. He passed through his crisis of faith and became a pastor, obviously, bringing all the scholarship that title implies.

But simultaneously, he realizes most people don’t believe in end-times theology for scholarly, scriptural purposes. They believe because it satisfies a need in their personal spiritual journey. Facts seldom persuade people from their religious or philosophical beliefs; if they did, most people would be paralyzed by the doubt stemming from conflicting facts and moral ambiguity. True Believers need a vision, and that’s what Hunt’s memoir provides.

As an adult, Hunt basically believes that end-times theology provides adherents a fast pass out of life. By believing the world will end soon, and one’s only solution is to individually get right with God, Left Behind readers are exempted from boring old requirements to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Why band together to relieve this world’s suffering, when this world won’t exist next week?

Jesus Christ, though, doesn’t support this position. Hunt notes that Jesus ties the Parable of the Sheep and Goats to his “Little Apocalypse,” his only direct end-times narrative. Jesus’ own explication of how to face the eschaton directly ties to how we live this life. Salvation, Hunt writes as an adult, isn’t an escape from this life. It’s a new life, a new kingdom, a new way of living in this physical world.

Not everyone will appreciate such conclusions. Hunt admits his teenage self would’ve hated them. But they’re no less real despite some believers’ resistance. Salvation and grace, Hunt believes now, are about being more fully alive right now. And we can’t find that, Hunt now insists, by fleeing from the real and messy life God gave us.

 

See also: The End Is Nigh (Again)

The “After” Part of Revival

A recent photo of the Asbury University revival

As I write, an event being termed a “revival” continues in the Asbury University campus chapel in Wilmore, Kentucky. Since Wednesday, February 8th, hundreds of faithful have permanently occupied the chapel building: singing, praying, preaching, and lifting hands unto God. The 24-7 religious outpouring is giving some Christians hope, in a time of seemingly unbridled selfish behavior and the continued numerical decline of American Christianity.

I’ve sat through two previous “revivals,” and therefore have definite opinions. Wrapping oneself in the moment of transcendent unity with fellow believers can definitely feel like communion with God. But, like Jesus tempted in the desert or Buddha planting himself resolutely beneath the Bodhi Tree, that moment only matters in light of what we bring back into the world. The historical track record of that “after” moment leaves me skeptical.

My first “revival” took place at a Christian rock concert in high school, the only Christian rock concert I attended. People were dancing on chairs, singing along, becoming one with the crowd, and then the lead vocalist finished with an altar call. Yes, I responded. But when the crowd dispersed, and we returned to our normal lives, the moment of exultation passed. Without the “worship high,” motivation to repent quickly dwindled.

Years later, a charming young associate pastor at the local United Methodist Church began holding Sunday evening services with a full band. Once again, the experience of crowds, music, and emotional exaltation created a perfect storm of transcendental giddiness. Unlike the rock concert, this service happened regularly, and also involved group Bible study, prayer circles, and other sustained community. This “revival” showed signs of lasting.

This pastor successfully packed a mainline Protestant sanctuary wall-to-wall every Sunday, something most conventional services only accomplish on Christmas and Easter. Donations rolled in, and money was channeled toward common good, like scholarships, community improvements, and overseas disaster relief efforts. Weekly altar calls were warmly received; even my dad, Christian but ordinarily allergic to displays of overt religiosity, walked up to “receive Jesus.”

But as the program continued, something happened: numbers began falling off. Members of the worship band, which peaked around forty-five members, began begging off. The congregation, which briefly held over 750 worshipers—remarkable for a small-ish town—began capping at a hundred, then seventy-five. While worship song instrumental breaks ran longer than the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, worship service electric bills started exceeding what the collection took in.

A recent photo of the Asbury University revival

Because the service happened weekly, the falling-off didn’t happen abruptly, as happened after the concert. Rather, things gradually tailed off. People experienced the transcendent worship high, but then returned glumly to regular lives of jobs, school, and cooking dinner. Without discipleship efforts to offer anyone a genuine new life, a genuine straight-and-narrow to walk, the worship high began feeling hollow. Interest waned, and soon, so did the service.

Don’t misunderstand me, what happened in those moments wasn’t hay. The dissolution of self that happens in concert environments distinctly resembles the ego death which Christian and Buddhist mystics describe at moments of salvation or enlightenment. However, concert transcendence depends on the crowd, and ends when everyone goes home. Likewise, when religious people leave the sanctum, if there’s no continuation of community, the emotional response dissipates.

Events like what we’re seeing happen at Asbury University make True Believers feel connected to God and one another. But eventually, everyone has to leave the sanctum and return to daily life. If revival offers nothing beyond that moment of emotional bliss, the pull of ordinary tedium quickly overwhelms grandiose feelings. Like cocaine, a worship high requires greater and greater quantities to overcome the flesh. Mere mortal pastors just can’t provide that.

However, churches can provide community. When “church” is a temporary respite from a world of exploitation, and we return to lives where others profit from our efforts, religion (or anyway religiosity) seems frivolous. Christians need forms of continuing discipleship, opportunities to participate in something larger than themselves. Living the Beatitudes is tiring when you do it alone except for an hour on Sunday. But it’s easy when Christians work together.

I don’t want to diminish the Asbury revival, or the feelings its participants share in that time and space. The defining question, though, is: will they carry those feelings, that experience, into the world? Historically, White Protestant churches are pretty bad at the “after” part of revival. I hope I’m wrong, though, because this world really needs weekday Christians to get busy living by the words we claim to believe.

Jesus in the Living Empire

1001 Books to Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 113
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

Dedicated Christians believe Jesus Christ’s message holds true in all times and all locations. But Jesus himself existed in a specific place and time: Galilee and Judea, in the narrow window between Roman conquest, and Rome’s expulsion of Jews from their homeland. Jesus spoke to a powerless and occupied nation, delivering a message emphasizing how to live when society and empire wouldn’t permit painless living. Jesus’ original audience understood this.

Dr. Howard Thurman began life in segregated America, raised by a grandmother born into slavery. Concepts of empire and occupation weren’t metaphorical to him. Therefore, he read Jesus’ teachings as approaches to living in a nation that wrote inequity into its laws, and maintaining one’s dignity and creativity in adverse conditions. Though perhaps less well-known than peers like Dr. King or Fannie Lou Hamer, his insights are equally relevant today.

Thurman, who pastored America’s first intentionally multiracial congregation and later became America’s first Black dean of a majority-White seminary, In the wake of World War II, he published an article comparing Jesus’ historical context with the the-current conditions of Black Americans, a comparison that seems obvious now, but was probably scandalous. This short (barely 100 pages) book emerged from that article and the discussions surrounding it.

In this book, Thurman breaks down the common, intuitive ways occupied peoples in conquering empires handle their occupation. Though the responses often take nuanced form in response to specific situations, Thurman organizes them into three categories: Fear, Deception, and Hate. These categories correspond to mainline Hebrew responses to Roman violence, though they’re not uniquely Hebrew, nor are they necessary to Jewish identity. They’re just how ordinary Jews handled the situation.

Against these three categories, Thurman describes Jesus’ prescription: Love. This seems counterintuitive. The opposite of Fear is Courage, isn’t it? Not so, according to Thurman. Courage is respected in powerful people, but in conquered populations, it makes one a target. Instead, Thurman proposes Jesus’ response that cannot be broken. Those who have humility cannot be humiliated. Those who love their enemies don’t carry hatred’s frequently toxic weight.

Howard Thurman

Throughout, Thurman alternates between Jesus’ historical context, and Thurman’s own times. His examination of Jesus’ life and times isn’t an abstracted sociological experiment. Rather, Thurman published in 1949, as American wars in Germany, Japan, and later Korea enflamed national sentiment. As Thurman notes, racism frequently increases in America whenever official outlets gin up “patriotic” sentiment.

This insight isn’t original to Thurman. Historians like Greg Grandin have noted that, whenever American soldiers return from overseas wars, the homeland almost immediately sees increases in racially motivated violence. America’s commitment to World War II and its bastard offspring, the Korean War, segued directly into the racialized violence that motivated Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Kwame Ture. This book precedes the formalized “Civil Rights Movement,” but is unitary with its social conditions.

Thurman, a pastor first and therefore a veteran author of sermons, reinforces his exegesis with sermonic illustrations. He describes a sojourn in India, for instance, where he shared coffee and insights with a certain unnamed Hindu leader. Thurman elides any identifying details, but this leader may be Mahatma Gandhi, who Thurman met, and with whom he maintained a lengthy correspondence. Gandhi’s activism contributed directly to American Civil Rights, and Thurman was one important point of contact.

I don’t make the sermonic analogy flippantly. According to Thurman’s preface, much content within this short book began life as a series of lectures he delivered on multiple occasions, refining and clarifying his insights with each telling. His prose is thematically dense, but not impenetrable, and he writes without scholarly reliance on frequent source citations. His tone, rather, resembles a beloved teacher expounding important points you’ll need sooner than later.

This title’s current Beacon Press edition includes a foreword from historian and activist Vincent Harding. Dr. Thurman, like Jesus, addressed his teachings to a specific audience, which isn’t us. Professor Harding situates Thurman’s writing in his historical context, with the personalities and situations that Thurman’s original audience would’ve simply understood. Sadly, though our world continues changing, the underlying problems plaguing it don’t always change.

Yes, the world has changed since 1949, and American Christianity with it. But many problems remain fundamentally similar. The concerns of Black Christians which Thurman describes, are now understood to extend likewise to Hispanic, Native American, and LGBTQIA+ Americans who see themselves as part of the Christian fold. They too live, as Thurman puts it, with their backs against the wall. And they too have much to teach Christians.

Nonpartisan Jesus vs. the Apolitical Church

Andy Stanley, Not In It To Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church

Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley endured intense criticism, some of it borderline violent, when he paused in-person worship during the pandemic. He never wanted to become a political lightning rod, but when angry parishioners accused him with cable-TV talking points, he realized that's what he became. To Stanley, political alignment is an abdication of the gospel message. I see where he's coming from, but I can't bring myself to agree.

American Christianity, in Stanley's mind, has become too invested in winning. Whether this means winning arguments, or winning elections, or winning the "culture wars," Christians seemingly care more about worldly victory than eternal truth. When we focus on winning America, Stanley says, we lose Americans. Earthly victory is eternal loss; we gain the world, as Jesus said, and lose our souls. Not exactly a fair trade.

This strictly partisan interpretation of Christianity doesn't jibe with historical Christ followers. Jesus spoke of the "kingdom of God," and importantly, he meant it. Ancient Rome didn't distrust Christians because they prayed more, but because they pledged allegiance to another King. The idea of Christians taking partisan sides in the frequent Roman civil wars would've made no sense, because Christians were already deemed disloyal to Earthly kings.

So far, Stanley and I agree. Jesus didn't come to endorse partisan alignment, and certainly not to defend existing power hierarchy. This applies across political parties, since both parties want power; the Messiah who promises to "make all things new" wouldn't support either party that wants power at others' expense. Jesus didn't call us to win, but to love, which we can't do if we're busy divvying the world into winners and losers.

Stanley goes even further. Not only did Jesus not come to win, but Jesus specifically came to "lose," by Earthly standards. Because this world is full of losers: the poor, the disenfranchised, the outcast, the ritually unclean. Stanley spends several chapters exploring this from different angles, but his upshot is basically that Jesus loves losers, not because they're especially holy, but because they're losers. We can't follow Jesus' example if we're busy winning.

Pastor Andy Stanley

Okay, in broad strokes, Stanley and I agree. I support his overarching thesis, because I disapprove of not only the recent rise of Christian Nationalism, but also the progressive Christian response that hides in government's skirts. Both options accord more power to human institutions, which necessarily robs power from "the least of these," the sheep that Jesus called Peter to feed.

But Stanley and I diverge on what that means in practice. Stanley evidently believes Christ's church should remain, in his words, "apolitical." Though he admits he began writing this book because he was appalled by the vitriolic partisan response to his pandemic policy, he seems to think that the response is to stand above the fray. The mere fact that he couldn't, that his attempt to avoid politics was interpreted politically, doesn't change his mind.

Millions of Black American Christians have learned that simply being alive, and loving as Christ first loved us, is a political act. That's true when Christians organize deliberate resistance to worldly injustice, as Dr. King and Howard Thurman proved. But the 16th Street Baptist Church showed us that, when your existence threatens the status quo, this world's powers don't need legal justifications to hate and destroy.

As Stanley himself says, becoming a Christ follower should mean a radical reorientation of life. We're called to love those this world doesn't love. That may mean, like James and John, leaving our family; it may mean, like Matthew and Zaccheus, leaving the protection that government authority grants. Loving others threatens "the world," which thrives by creating in-groups and exploiting our fear of strangers.

What Stanley seems to not grasp is that the radical love he advocates, is indeed political. It knowingly subverts the world's widespread desire to name enemies and seek victory, which powerful people use to preserve their advantages. Refusing to play the world's political game isn't "apolitical," despite Stanley's claim. Jesus refused to either acknowledge or refuse Pilate's authority, an action which spit in Roman authority's eye.

Again, I agree with Stanley, broadly. When Christians strive to "win," we play into Earthly power structures that divide the world into winners and losers, an unloving, anti-Christian attitude. He's right that Christ calls us to lose the world. But Stanley is wrong to describe this as "apolitical." The anger political insiders show demonstrates how wholly political it is when we refuse. We can't stand aloof from the consequences.

The Good Samaritan and the Blessing of Uncertainty

A Sunday School illustration of the
Good Samaritan. Click to enlarge.

I remember countless pastel-colored Sunday School pamphlets in my childhood containing depictions of the Good Samaritan parable, from Luke’s Gospel. They always contained a fair-skinned man lying beside the road, usually with remarkably little blood, despite the injuries he sustained at the hands of robbers. They usually also contained images of a priest and Levite in silken robes, ostentatiously looking anywhere other than that wounded man.

These pamphlets usually moralistically proclaimed how the priest and Levite had the forms of religion, without the spirit. Good people, these lessons intoned, would never walk past a wounded person without stopping for help. And maybe that’s true. But the older I get, the less comfortable I become with considering that the final word. Because, in choosing a Samaritan as the model “neighbor,” I believe Jesus touched on something deeper.

As Obery M. Hendricks writes, the temple priesthood was deputized to perform actual governance in Roman Judea. While the largest number of Jews were an occupied people, taxed and beholden to Roman military might, priests had greater autonomy, because they professed loyalty to ha-Shem, but obedience to Rome. Thus, like many of today’s megachurch pastors, priests cosplayed at piety, but showed first love to the occupying authority.

Therefore, their lives had a nominal level of certainty. Unlike Mary and Joseph, the priests probably wouldn’t find themselves uprooted for tax purposes. They probably wouldn’t have their lands expropriated to repay somebody else’s debts. If they traveled that storied road from Jerusalem to Jericho, they probably didn’t travel alone, despite what Sunday School pamphlets depicted; they probably had a retinue of bodyguards and functionaries at all times.

The priest and Levite weren’t just religious leaders; they were political and economic leaders too. They were the middle class of Roman Judea, the people who weren’t really free, but had the trappings of prosperity because they complied with an imposed social order. They bought into the system, and the system rewarded them by letting them feel superior to those who didn’t buy in. Their power was transient, but it was theirs.

Unfortunately, then as now, that level of socioeconomic certainty wasn’t permanent. One bad choice, one show of weakness, could yank it away. Dr. King himself called the road from Jerusalem to Jericho “a winding, meandering road….really conducive for ambushing.” Perhaps the bandits who left that nameless Jew bleeding beside the highway were still there. Maybe they deliberately left that man as bait for the tenderhearted.

For anybody wanting to live, leaving that man there isn’t an unreasonable action. The priest and Levite had economic security in an insecure time. They had power among an occupied nation. Why risk squandering it because this fool went, unaccompanied, along a road famous for being dangerous? The priest and Levite had too much to live for. Leaving that unfortunate wreck was a fair price for continued certainty.

That Samaritan, however, had no such certainty, simply by being a Samaritan. If Jews were occupied and oppressed by Rome, then Samaritans were occupied and oppressed by Jews. Throughout the Gospels, the word “Samaritan” is synonymous with somebody who has nothing left to lose: the Woman at the Well, the one leper among ten. Because modern Christians encounter the word “Samaritan” coupled with the word “Good,” we’ve forgotten its origins.

“Samaritan” is the N-word of ancient Judea.

While the priest and Levite kept walking, lest something unplanned interrupt their socioeconomic certainty, the Samaritan, in his uncertainty, stopped. He had no further guarantee than anyone else that those bandits wouldn’t reemerge, intent for second helpings. But his uncertainty, his lack of absolute worldly foundations, gave him authority enough to overcome whatever fears might’ve possessed him, and do right.

Many White Christians today think faith alone protects them. We saw this recently, when many thought Jesus would protect them from COVID-19. But Christians have no such certainty. Doing right by the powerless has cost numerous Christians their lives: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and innumerable less-famous Christians have met their fates because they chose uncertainty over power. That Samaritan loved enough to overcome his limited worldly comforts.

This judgment covers me, too. I know I use my house, books, and job as justifications to avoid sticking my neck out. I love the limited amount of certainty the world extends me, as compensation for being White, male, and willing to comply. This tells me I need a new, countercultural prayer: I need God to offer me the strength to be uncertain, and in my uncertainty, to act.

The Poor are Coming to Save Christians

Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians

Jesus Christ began His ministry by standing up in congregation and proclaiming “good news to the poor,” quoting the prophet Isaiah. So why does Christianity, as an institution, spend comparatively little time and energy on the poor? Beginning mostly in the late 1960s, a growing body of parish priests and ordained pastors began shifting focus off heavenly topics, and onto saving bodies. This focus became known as “liberation theology.”

Iliff theologian Miguel De La Torre, himself a late contributor to liberation theology, offers a thumbnail summary of the movement’s beliefs and history. This isn’t always easy. Liberation theology arose from a specific historical circumstance, the peak of the Cold War, when rich nations used poor nations as chess pieces. Liberation theology sought to emphasize that poor people existed separate from American or Soviet influence, but as human beings with souls.

De La Torre’s overview therefore begins with politics. This will irritate some Christians, who think religion is somehow apolitical. De La Torre can’t survey liberation theology without talking about America’s proxy wars in Latin America, the geographical space where this movement was most public. He sometimes goes entire pages without once mentioning religion, God, or transcendence. I can already imagine the stuffed-shirt responses likely to emerge from this angle.

However, that’s the very message liberation theology conveys. Those invested in this world’s power structures must, of necessity, overlook the poor, the hungry, the dispossessed—those Jesus called “the least of these.” Telling poor indigenous people, driven off their lands by imperial ambition, to “be of good cheer” because they’ll go to heaven when they die, denies those people’s innate humanity. It tells them their struggles only matter on another plane.

Liberation theology, by contrast, doesn’t begin with right belief. It doesn’t tell people to understand esoteric concepts correctly, and everything else will follow. Instead, it starts with people’s real needs, where they live right now. As De La Torre puts it, Jesus doesn’t favor the poor and the oppressed because they’re better or more holy people; Jesus favors the poor and oppressed because they’re poor and oppressed. By extension, we should too.

Miguel A. De La Torre

Liberative theologies begin by assuming religion gives us, not an abstracted goal regarding a disembodied God, but a mission to live in this life. Jesus became embodied and walked among Jews, an occupied people and aliens in their own land, because we’re supposed to do likewise. This means resisting oppressive governments, economies, and racial hierarchies. Christians, this precept holds, are supposed to get dirty with the rest of humanity.

This book’s largest space deals with Latin American liberation theology. This is, after all, where the movement took shape, and the place where it had the largest and most cohesive identity. De La Torre, a Cuban exile and adult convert, discusses the social forces that forced liberation theologians, mostly (but not exclusively) Catholic priests, to reject theology based on “right belief,” and focus instead on how we live this life.

But De La Torre also spends time discussing other theologies from other regions. In North America, Black Liberation theology deals with ways Christians stand in solidarity against White supremacy, while feminist theology stands similarly against patriarchy. And womanist theology (a term I’ve previously misunderstood) overlaps the two, emphasizing that Black women have distinct Christian needs different from either Black men or White women.

Finally, De La Torre addresses liberative “theologies” from other religions. Sufi Islam, for instance, has a long history of opposing kings and potentates, and Gandhi’s liberative politics were informed by his Hindu beliefs, as well as the goulash of other religions he encountered walking India’s streets. Even humanist philosophies have what De La Torre considers “theologies” connecting work among the oppressed with truths that transcend human scale.

Not everyone will appreciate liberation theology. Christians who consider religion to important and pure for grubby old politics have historically disliked this approach; post-Vatican II, the Catholic Church, with its anti-communist commitments, actively silenced liberation theologians. As a Lutheran myself, I anticipate cries of “works righteousness,” my tradition’s leading wail, for a theology which insists that Christians have a responsibility to do, not just to believe.

But De La Torre’s introduction provides persuasive evidence that Christians have a God-given responsibility, not only to have a right heart, but to express that right heart through how we treat those who can do nothing for us. De La Torre not only provides a short (150 pages) introduction to why we should think this way, but also provides an extensive reading list for other sources that go into greater depth. Because if we believe, but don’t act, what do we really believe?

“A Kinder, Gentler War on the Poor” Part 2

This essay follows from “A Kinder, Gentler War on the Poor”

A statue of Jesus Christ as a homeless man sleeping rough. (source)

It’s probably most obvious when it regards policing homelessness: our governments make it illegal to sleep under bridges, in public parks, or in cars. There’s only one reason to do this, of course. We might make some meaningless excuse about preventing unauthorized camping, but come on, Boy Scouts aren’t pitching tents in the park. The only reason to criminalize public sleeping is to create a crime that only applies to the homeless.

In other words, we don’t bust homeless people because they’re committing crimes; we create categories of crimes to bust homeless people. By this logic, “criminal” isn’t something people become because they commit crimes, but something people innately are, and we write laws to target them. Not coincidentally, these innate criminals match social categories we’ve been taught to despise on sight: the poor, the non-White, immigrants, homosexuals.

I’ve always been conscious of this on some level, though only recently have I processed how widespread the phenomenon is. Laws against “blocking the sidewalk” supposedly exist to stop street crime, but are enforced almost entirely against people who are poor, Black, or both. One of the first things that happens when well-off White people move into poor ethnic neighborhoods, is they start making nuisance calls to police about young people loitering.

Back in high school, I remember the administration writing new rules against students wearing “gang colors.” These standards were ominously vague, and largely meant bright, vibrant shades of red or blue. (This was the peak of media-driven paranoia about the Crips and the Bloods.) Notably, these rules were only enforced against Black and Hispanic students, who started wearing only faded denim and white t-shirts to appear as nondescript as possible.

Not that the rules were never enforced against White students. I saw White friends reprimanded for violating “gang colors” rules twice. Both times involved tying brightly colored bandanas around their neck or hair. In other words, White students were only targeted by anti-Black rules when they did something stereotypically Black. This means the rules did double duty, forcing Black students into mute compliance, while forcing White students into middle-class conformity.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his
favorite pose: angrily lecturing the crowd

Currently, we’re witnessing this same pattern evolving in Florida, where the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill is inventing categories of law specifically targeting LGBTQIA+ Floridians. Demonstrating conventionally gay behaviors, dressing in supposedly gay manners, or teaching schoolchildren about sexual and gender identities, have become unlawful in America’s third most populous state. Like the “gang colors” rule, the law nominally covers everyone, but will only get enforced against nonconformists.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has needed to manufacture claims of harm to justify these rules. Talk about “grooming,” kiddie-diddling, and protecting children’s innocence, is used to justify ham-fisted crackdowns. But I cannot believe, for one damn minute, that Governor DeSantis thinks talking about gender will spoil schoolchildren’s innocence. He knows as well as anybody what motivates this legislation: he’s creating rules to punish creepy out-group members.

It’s important how frequently Christianity, and specifically Levitical Law, gets cited to reinforce these rules. Like American law, Levitical Law involves definite claims of material harm: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit murder, thou shalt not commit adultery. But other laws about, say, eating shellfish, wearing mixed cloth, and getting tattoos, aren’t about preventing harm. They’re about creating an in-group identity: Thou Shalt Not Do What Foreigners Do.

But I believe Jesus, a Jew who lived during times when a conquering Empire used the Temple priesthood as a proxy government, would recognize what’s happening here. An authoritarian central government is using state power to arbitrarily punish anybody who deviates from state-sponsored identity categories. Whether those identities are economic (sleeping rough), sexual (dress to match your genitals), or racial (don’t dress like the Black kids).

I don’t support total lawlessness. We need consequences for people who commit robbery, rape, and murder. But huge swaths of law exist to enforce conformity, punish deviance, and push certain groups into permanent outlaw status. When our legislatures pass laws that criminalize, for instance, whatever Black people do, the message is clear: Black people are criminals by nature. They don’t necessarily commit crimes; their actions just are crimes, in advance.

Homelessness, gangs, sexual purity: the rhetoric surrounding these actions exists entirely to punish out-group members for things they can’t control. We don’t punish people because they commit crimes; we create criminal categories because people’s actions cause responses of revulsion and disgust among the in-group. But, from high school cliques to Fascist states, history proves that the in-group is never appeased.

Jesus and the Talmudic Tradition

Amy-Jill Levine, The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings

Conservative or progressive, believers or unbelievers, we like to believe the teachings of Jesus are straightforward and clear. We love choosing favorite passages, brandishing them like torches, and claiming: “See? Everyone knows what these words mean, so stop arguing!” So how do we handle those passages where Jesus seems to contradict his usual teachings? The places where Jesus sometimes seems authoritarian, combative, or downright nasty?

Despite being Orthodox Jewish herself, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine has spent her career mostly at Christian seminaries, teaching the faith’s aspiring young leaders about Christianity’s Jewish roots. She has explicated the teachings of Jesus and Paul, both of whom considered themselves lifelong Jews, to a generation that has forgotten Hebrew idiom. And part of that idiom is: Scripture is something we live with, not something we mine for sound bites.

Professor Levine identifies six Gospel passages where Jesus makes statements which theologians have wrestled with for centuries. She organizes them in ascending order of difficulty, starting with the Rich Young Ruler, whom Jesus told he would only achieve salvation by selling everything he owned. She rises through Jesus calling followers to apparently hate their families, live like slaves, and fear eternal condemnation, finishing on a passage where Jesus appears shockingly antisemitic.

In all cases, Dr. Levine avoids the popular Protestant desire to provide pat answers. She seeks to situate Jesus’ words in historical and scriptural context, including not only the Hebrew Scriptures which Christians call the Old Testament, but also the Pseudepigrapha (Apocrypha), Talmud, and Mishnah. Though dealing with Christian teachings, her approach is steadfastly Jewish, based on debate, testing, and acknowledging the limitations of human understanding.

Christians, and unbelievers coming from a culturally Christian background, have a history of using Scripture to stop debate. “The Bible says this,” we proclaim, sometimes literally waving our Bibles, “so stop arguing.” This authoritarian tradition has resulted in important issues of the relationship between persons and power being subsumed by anger and pettiness, as both sides wonder why the other can’t understand what seems so unable to grasp the obvious.

Amy-Jill Levine

Jewish tradition works differently. “The Bible says this,” they say, sometimes while literally spreading the book open on the lectern, “what does that mean?” The entire Talmudic tradition consists of recognized scholars struggling to understand what Biblical passages, sometimes made opaque through passing ages, mean for us today. In other words, Christians use the Bible to stop debate, while Jews historically use the Bible to commence debate.

Levine takes this latter approach. Her chapters parse Jesus’ parallels with Jewish Scripture, study the Gospels’ Greek vocabulary and its Hebrew equivalents, consider what was happening in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time, and eventually find a resting place, if not a resolution. Levine emphasizes that these are her conclusions, not absolute solutions to difficult passages. However, she invites readers to continue the debates with the best evidence they can find.

As an aside, this approach isn't always flawless. Memorist Shulem Deen describes years spent teaching young Jews the Talmudic tradition, often at the expense of math, science, and the humanities. No tradition is one-size-fits-all, and when the debate becomes more important than the action, maybe it’s time to reëvaluate our choices. However, going to the other extreme and eliminating all debate hasn’t worked so well, either.

On balance, Levine hasn’t resolved the conundrums found in Jesus’ difficult teachings. In applying the Jewish dialectic tradition, she leaves behind Christians conditioned to seek a resounding final answer, which they expect to hear proclaimed authoritatively by a (usually male) figure at a lectern. In academic terms, many Christians want a lecture, not a seminar. The Jewish love of questions doesn’t embrace the culturally Christian demand for answers.

Further, Levine’s secondary title promises “A Beginner’s Guide,” and that’s what we get. Her chapters are sized right for weekly Bible study lessons (an accompanying DVD and leader’s guide are available). Which is fine, for what it is. But she doesn’t cite sources, offer further readings, or otherwise prepare for anybody to move beyond the beginner’s level. I sometimes lament Protestantism’s lacuna between novice-level studies and postgraduate seminary.

Notwithstanding these quibbles, I really appreciate this book. Levine attempts to coach willing Christians to rediscover their faith’s Jewish dialectical heritage. Remember, Jesus taught in the synagogues, and Paul never stopped calling himself Jewish. She encourages Christians, and culturally Christian unbelievers, to do something few seem prepared to handle: to sit quietly with the word, let it grow on you, and test the message through language, thought, and dialogue.

Challenging the American Heresy

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

Christianity, a faith founded by a country preacher who called followers to feed the hungry and challenge the powerful, has become the religion of American dominion. Jesus called the lowly and disfranchised to band together and raise one another up; but the loudest, most media-savvy portion of American Christendom has thrown its weight behind militarism, White supremacy, and anti-egalitarianism. White Evangelicals are the demographic most likely to have voted for Donald Trump. So what happened?

Obery M. Hendricks, an ordained elder and sometime seminary professor, wondered exactly this. How could people calling themselves Christians believe principles so clearly unaligned with Christ’s message? His answers will cause discomfort among many Christians, including those like me, who don’t support today’s Evangelical message. He ties political Evangelicalism with Christian Nationalism, a philosophy that supports American aims, right or wrong, and believes in the saving person of Jesus, but not in Jesus’ recorded teachings.

To begin, Hendricks creates meaningful definitions of Christianity and Evangelicalism. Both share common roots, and sometimes represent conflicting visions. Christianity begins with Jesus Christ, but not every Christian reads Jesus’ message equally. Likewise, Evangelicalism has historically been tied to progressive values, including abolition and women’s suffrage. During the Twentieth Century, though, Evangelicalism has drifted politically rightward, and is frequently associated with retrogressive, even repressive values.

With his scholarly foundation in Biblical history, Hendricks emphasizes that our Christian message derives from not only what Christ, the Apostles, and the Prophets said, but what they meant to their original audiences. Conservative Evangelicals love quoting orphaned Bible verses, like Mark 14:7 or 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Hendricks puts these and other verses in their Judaean context, demonstrating with evidence that withholding food, clothing, asylum, and other support is never in accord with Christian principles.

The Evangelicals whom Hendricks describes share one important trait: they’re White. Hendricks, and several religious scholars he quotes, agree that Black Evangelicals believe oppression and injustice happen in America, and exercise their liberties to challenge the forces of repression. White Evangelicals, by contrast, believe oppression happens elsewhere, or inflate insignificant incidents (cake) to the level of Herodian tyranny. Though America’s racial delineations aren’t as ironclad as in the past, this racial distinction still matters significantly.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.

Different narratives have emphasized different origins for right-wing American Evangelicalism. Historian Kevin M. Kruse, whom Hendricks quotes, connects Evangelicalism with pro-business libertarian economics. Hendricks finds much compelling about this hypothesis, and spends an entire chapter on Evangelical economics. Meanwhile, Evangelicals claim the Roe v. Wade decision galvanized their movement, but Hendricks uses documentary evidence that it actually took fifteen years to push that to prominence.

Instead, Hendricks associates Evangelicalism with Green v. Connally, the case that stripped tax-exempt protections from private schools, and other church-owned operations, that practiced racial discrimination. A slurry of right-wing religious and political leaders, like Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and Pat Robertson, organized behind opposition to this change. In other words, issues like libertarian economics or anti-abortion politics are latecomers to the Evangelical story. This movement first gelled around White Supremacy.

Many Christians, including both clergy and congregants, reject this Christian Nationalist violence. Hendricks contrasts Christians who still believe loving our neighbor, and protecting “the least of these” are foundational values, with Christians who support guns and borders, and seek an earthly King. (Hendricks quotes generously from the Parable of the Sheep and Goats; parables loom large in his theology.) Not all American Christians support the Trumpist wing, Hendricks emphasizes, though anti-Trumpists often haven’t been media-savvy.

Throughout his work, Hendricks has frequently emphasized Christianity as a community, and Christian action as cooperative solidarity. He contrasts this with right-wing Evangelicalism, which is individualist and egocentric. In Hendricks’ reading, Christianity focuses on how we live this God-given life, not whether we get to Heaven after death. This means always remaining conscious of how we treat our neighbors and how we greet strangers, something right-wing Christianity has completely abandoned.

Throughout this book, Hendricks attempts to reawaken the Evangelical Christian conscience. This isn’t easy, since he describes demagogues who haven’t always shown they have a conscience. In his final pages, Hendricks describes himself finishing his manuscript in December 2020, believing he’d seen the lowest depths of American Christendom. We can only imagine how he received the following weeks and months.

Christianity has served diverse purposes for diverse people; some purposes have been, sadly, harmful. Hendricks encourages Christians to remember not only the person of Jesus Christ, but also His message, of comforting the bereaved and finding the lost. Hopefully Christians still have time to remember.