Proving God's Existence Absolutely: Our Modern Desire for Certainty

Recently, a lot of talk has been swirling around a series of debates between atheists and theists (mostly Christians) and between supporters of Intelligent Design (mostly protestant Christians as well) and its detractors?

On ABC, the 1990s TV star Kirk Cameron and author and preacher Ray Comfort debated two members of the Rational Response Squad, a group of atheists that try to persuade people to denounce theism.

There has also been talk surrounding proponents and opponents of ID. You can see examples on blogs and on campus news papers and so on.

Supporters of ID and evangelical theists arguing in favor of God, are struggling to wear the mantel of "science" as a way of legitimating their claims. In our time, in large part, "science" is the arbiter of truth. So everybody wants a piece of "science." Just listen to pastor Comfort on ABC. He states the point clearly in his opening remarks when he disagrees with those that say God's existence can't be proven (namely, he seems to be referring to the atheists he opposes on the stage):

I believe God's existence can be proven absolutely, scientifically without even mentioning faith.

What is interesting here is the commonsense belief that "science" is the arbiter of truth. The mantel of "science" can prove God, as the theists see it. And as the atheists argue it, "science" shows that evolution and life can form without God and that God is an irrational and superfluous idea.

There is a similar reliance on "science" to determine legitimacy and truth in our age when it comes to the struggle surrounding ID and its opponents. Opponents are generally supporters of "science"--often they are biologists, chemists, anthropologists etc (or other people in positions with something at stake in the debate) at universities. More significantly, ID proponents also want a piece of "science." They desire the legitimacy the mantel carries. To call ID "science" is to see it as a legitimate way of finding the truth of the matter. To call ID "science" is to hoist it up onto the symbolic platform that "evolution" rests. (A platform, one might add as an aside, that ID supporters are directly challenging by referring to it as "just a theory" and so on.) It is to give ID social significance and weight--I mean, ID would be "science" after all.

It seems that the aim of many ID proponents and evangelical theists is to fashion God into a rationally explicable phenomenon. From the evangelical perspective, I get the feeling that putting God in terms of "science" is seen as an effective way to spread the Good News. That God can be explained by "science" is a symbolic weapon that is strategically valuable for evangelicals. That God can be explained by "science" and isn't just "irrational" and "backward" beliefs is seen a leverage point, particularly among more educated communities. But at the same time, the desire to fashion God into an explicable being is implicitly a reaction to the dominance/prominence of the claims that faith is "irrational" in the first place.

If the "rationality" or "irrationality" of faith is not of significance to you, then its probably the case that being able to explain God with "science" is not all that important either. To some people, God is ultimately an ineffable experience. God is bigger than "science," they might say.

In these debates between atheists and theists, supporters of ID and opponents of the way of thinking, we are seeing a clash between foundationalisms--scientific realism and religious fundamentalism. But one foundationalism is politically, socially and economically weaker than the other. The foundationalism rooted in Scripture is weaker than the foundationalism rooted in the Laws of Reality. For many, Scripture may well be able to account for "science" and account for the features of Reality like the "circular" shape of the earth (as Comfort said), but in the everyday arena, "science" is used to justify God. Implicitly, then, Scripture is incomplete if it alone cannot explain God. In some sense, "science" is a contemporary crutch, a modern foundation on which Scripture can rest.

Pull them apart. These are two different areas of culture that fulfill different desires. One enables us to control and predict the world of things. The other enables us to hope and love bigger and bolder and to go beyond the merely possible.

Balls, Strikes, and Worldviews

After a game of baseball, three umpires were having a beer.

One says, "There's balls and there's strikes and I call 'em the way they are."

Another says, "There's balls and there's strikes and I call 'em the way I see 'em."

A third says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and they ain't nothin' until I call 'em."

Let's look a bit closer at these three different responses for a moment.

One might be referred to as a naive realist. The World Is The Way It Is and he's just trying to match unproblematic words to the things he's seeing out there happening before his eyes.

The second guy might be called a critical realist in that The World Is the Way It Is, but he understands that his seeing the world is perspectival.

The third guy might be called a postmodernist insofar as he understands that the world of things is meaningless until he invests it with significance by naming "strikes" and "balls" and telling a story about who "won" and "lost."

While guys one and two differ by degree, guy three differs in kind from one and two. The difference hinges on epistemology. Words don't simply correspond to things out there in the world, they invest the world with meaning and symbolism.

Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult

A fantastic quote from Michel Foucault, "Practicing Criticism."

A Critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest....

Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gesture difficult.

Relating to Postmodernism: A Rough Typology of Evangelical Positions

I'm going to risk making a typology of relations between evangelicals and "postmodernism." It is not meant to represent a fixed and forever stable arrangement, but a way to help us organize our thinking about the topic and more clearly see where people stand. The borders between types are porous and continually under revision, to be sure.

I suggest that three relations between evangelicals and postmodernism can be made out from the ongoing conversations. Each relation is multidimensional. They consist of at least a value judgement (postmodernism is good or bad, inferior or superior) and a movement (a move toward embracing postmodernism, a move away from postmodernism).*

1) Some Evangelicals reject postmodernism as making no sense and they consider it dangerous to their faith.

In a review of a certain book, one evangelical put it this way:

It is a helpful warning about the dangers of postmodernism. But this explicit warning has a subtext not intended by the writers. This subtext is an urgent cautionary reminder of the dangerous direction that the evangelical movement has taken.

Or a critical blogger's view on the matter. In this quote, he questions the evangelical and conservative credentials of an author known to be linked to the Emerging Church movement:

Here’s a bit more information for you concerning Dan Kimball, and I do happen to think he’s a nice guy, which shows he is actually quite dangerous to the historic orthodox Christ faith we know is the Truth.

These two voices define postmodernism and the faith practices and leadership that are emerging from those conditions as dangerous to more traditional understandings. The relationship they establish is oppositional. The traditional view is seen as superior to the emerging views. There is also a movement to distance, to not genuinely engage or try to understand, but to denounce and dismiss.

2) Some evangelicals are more or less attempting to make sense of this new cultural context that people often refer to as postmodernism. Yet this engagement does not render identity. Rather, these evangelicals continue to be grounded by modern beliefs and faith practices.

One of the more popular voices in this camp articulates his view toward postmodern faith practices and beliefs:

Contemporary evangelicals face the responsibility, not only of becoming conversant with the Emerging Church, but of continuing a conversation about what this movement really represents and where its trajectory is likely to lead. Some of the best, brightest, and most sensitive and insightful individuals from the younger evangelical generation have been drawn to this movement.

Echoing the sentiment of other popular authors, he remains critical:

Yet, "Once we have acknowledged the unavoidable finiteness of all human knowers, the cultural diversity of the human race, the diversity of factors that go into human knowing, and even the evil that lurks in the human breast and easily perverts claims of knowledge into totalitarian control and lust for power--once we have acknowledged these things, is there any way left for us to talk about knowing what is true or objectively real? Hard postmodernists insist there is not. And that's the problem."

Evangelicals speaking from this position seem to cast a more ambiguous judgement toward postmodernism and the faith practices that emerge from it. They are closer to postmodernism than those evangelicals in position 1 insofar as they are willing to engage (though somewhat suspiciously). The relation is one of resemblance. This perspective enables them to see that people expressing postmodern practices are complex and layered, with more or less "hard"/rigorous/consistent philosophies in circulation. While evangelicals in position 2 seem to be more willing to engage, they continue to remain rooted in certain modern conceptions, such as propositional truths and their relevance to their faith. Thus, on certain fundamental issues, there are disconnects between positions 2 and 3. One of the key consequences of this paradigmatic gap is misunderstanding and contention.

3) Some evangelicals identify themselves and their faith communities as "postmodern." Not to conflate all so-called postmodern evangelicals into a coherent whole, there are varying flavors and stripes. In relation to positions 1 and 2, however, these evangelicals find postmodern faith practices and ways of believing to make sense. It isn't simply a relativism of the faith, as those in 1 and 2 argue, but a reconstitution of what it means to be Christian and particularly to be evangelical.

As one postmodern evangelical framed the attraction to this new theology:

Deconstructive theology is an excellent rejection of the evangelical-fundamentalism of their youth and all its ills in the face of a radically pluralist, post-Christendom, post-modern world. Many emerging church folk are allergic to anything that smacks of a.) an intolerant judgmental exclusivism, b.) an arrogant, even violent, certainty about what we do know, and c.) an overly-rationalized hyper-cognitive gospel that takes the mystery out of everything we believe. If I have over-stated myself, forgive me. But I too have felt these pangs in relation to my own evangelical upbringing. Deconstructive theology is an excellent avenue of resistance to all these maladies.

Or in the words of another:

Obviously, I feel strongly that the road to inner peace and connection with our Creator is through Jesus. If you are one of the more than two billion Christians in the world, you may feel the same way. But in case you don't.... I'm not going to try to convince you that you can only do these thing if you believe in Jesus--I've seen lots of people try to convince other people about Jesus, and it's rarely successful.

The point seems to be to experience God with others; indeed, to find God in the Other and not just attempt to convert them. The aim is to not assume that we have a Secret, but to recognize that Others can know too. It is about relating to Others, to God and to oneself in a fruitful way. It is about moving beyond the management and confinement of Christ to the religion of Christianity. Evangelicals speaking from position 3 see the possibilities of postmodernism. It enables a liberating break from the foundational and fundamentalist viewes espoused by the dominant traditions articulated by positions 1 and 2.

To briefly conclude the typology, I've argued that evangelicals relate to postmodernism in three ways. Where some view postmodernism with critical skepticism and even fear, others embrace it with open arms. The difference is concrete. The question is how to deal with it. Can we relate to difference? Or must it be converted or excluded?




*On analyzing relations between self and other, I drew from Tzvetan Todorov's The Conquest of America

The Challenge of Relativism, or, The Problem Created by Absolute Descriptions

John Piper writes an apparently compelling essay on the issue of relativism. The piece is entitled: "The Challenge of Relativism."

The essay hinges on a key distinction between two kinds of descriptions.

John Piper makes a distinction between two kinds of descriptions, "daily speech" and Absolute Talk. Daily speech deals with issues like height and weight. These are topics that are measured by "human beings." Absolute Talk, however, deals with issues like "sexual relations between two men." These are topics that are judged according "God's will" as revealed in the Christian Bible.

What warrants these analytical distinctions between daily speech and Absolute Talk and between human standards and God's standards? Is it warranted to divorce the question of sexual relations between two males from the daily speech and deliberation between human beings? Can human beings not decide for themselves about the issue of sexual relations?

Piper does not justify the distinctions he makes between descriptions. He simply asserts them as if they were natural, as if talk of height and weight are naturally topics of daily speech and talk of sexual relations is naturally Absolute Talk. It seems that on some issues Piper is content to flesh out the "context or the standard" people are "using for measuring the truth of the statement," while on other issues he is keen to escape from the finitude of one's time and place.

Perhaps the issue of sexual relations can be decided by human beings, just as the topics of height and weight. Perhaps we should say that all talk is daily speech and no talk is Absolute, even talk of sexual relations between two men. In other words, descriptions are descriptions are descriptions. There is no justification in elevating one description above another. They are all descriptions made by someone in a time and place.

Relativism only makes sense in the context of Piper's essay once the distinction between daily speech and Absolute Talk is made. If no distinction is made, then the problem of relativism ceases to be a problem. Because, as Piper makes amply clear in the opening paragraphs of the essay, daily speech is not relative. The problem of Relativism is dependent on the assertion of Absolute Talk.

"The Challenge of Relativism" is really only a challenge if we insist on positing a divide between our daily talk and some kind of Absolute, non-human description that is Valid in All Times and All Places. If we situate all our descriptions in their contexts and we don't try to elevate some descriptions to the status of Absolute Talk, then the challenge of relativism is avoided all together.

What are they saying?

Some Headlines from Stories about Gozales' Testimony:

Senators Chastise Gonzales

On a Very Hot Seat With Little Cover and Less Support

Gonzales Endures Harsh Session With Senate Panel

Al, the President's Man:Alberto Gonzales is bloodied by his trip to the Senate.

Gonzo-Meter:Al, you're not helping.

Will Bush Stand by Gonzales?

Dead Man Walking Gonzales?

Gonzales' Tremendous Credibility Problem

A Disastrous Day in the Senate

Gonzales Would Serve Justice by Moving On

As tragic as the Virginia Tech shootings are, let’s face it: 32 dead is a slow day in U.S.-occupied Iraq.

Should we not cry for all the dead? Why do we cry for some and not those thousands of others?

Woody Guthrie and Jesus Christ

Woody Guthrie said:

I wrote this song looking out of a rooming house window in New York City in the winter of Nineteen and Forty. I thought I had to put down on paper how I felt about the rich folks and the poor ones.

This was quoted the liner notes for "Bound For Glory: The Songs and Story of Woody Guthrie," FOLKWAYS , 1956, p. 8.

The song goes like this:

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land,
A hard working man and brave.
He said to the rich "Give your goods to the poor."
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand,
His followers true and brave,
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff,
He told them all the same,
"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,"
But they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what He did say,
The bankers and the preachers they nailed Him on a cross.
Then they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

The poor workin' people, they followed Him around,
They sung and they shouted gay,
The cops and the soldiers, they nailed Him in the air,
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

Well, the people held their breath when they heard about His death,
And everybody wondered why,
It was the landlord and the soldiers that he hired,
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky.

This song was written in New York City,
Of rich man, preacher and slave,
But if Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galilee,
They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave.

Notice how the relationship between the poor and the rich is the focus of this song and how this song emphasizes the economic and class aspects of Jesus' words and actions. Woody's mind wasn't on sexual purity, as many Evangelicals today.

What happened to the significance of this storyline? Why do so few speak of this aspect of Jesus' words and actions today? How did this storyline get overtaken by a far more dominant storyline that focuses on maintaining sexual purity and paternalism?

If at one time in American history there were different kinds of evangelical Christians voicing their interpretations, like Woody Guthrie and his song about Jesus Christ, what happened between then and now?

"War on Terrorism" is Strategically Ineffective

My friend Jesse cued me to this link.

President George W Bush's concept of a "war on terror" has given strength to terrorists by making them feel part of something bigger, Hilary Benn has said.

The international development secretary told a meeting in New York the phrase gives a shared identity to small groups with widely differing aims.

Mr Benn said: "In the UK, we do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone.

"And because this isn't us against one organised enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives."

It is "the vast majority of the people in the world" against "a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common", he said.

"What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others, without dialogue, without debate, through violence.

"And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength."

A while back I picked up The Concept of Dread by Soren Kierkegaard. I would like to share a bit taken from the final chapter. It is entitled: "Dread as a Saving Experience by Means of Faith."

To catch you up to pace with Kierkegaard's thinking, dread is not a result of an objective thing out there in the world. Rather, "man himself produces dread." "Dread," he says, "is the possibility of freedom." Dread and possibility go hand and hand. In relation to dread, however, there is "the smiling." This is faith, the "infinite" possibility beyond the rationally explicable.

Encountering dread one may "misunderstand the anguish of dread" and turn away from faith. He is thus "lost."

On the other hand, he who is educated by possibility remains with dread, does not allow himself to be deceived by its countless counterfeits, he recalls the past precisely; then at last the attacks of dread, though they are fearful, are not such that he flees from them. For him dread becomes a serviceable spirit which against its will leads him wither he would go. Then when it announces itself, when it craftily insinuates that it has invented a new instrument of torture far more terrible than anything employed before, he does not recoil, still less does he attempt to hold it off with clamor and noise, but he bids it welcome, he hails it solemnly, as Socrates solemnly flourished the poisoned goblet, he shuts himself up with it, he says, as a patient says to the surgeon when a painful operation is about to begin, "Now I am read." Then dread enters into his soul and searches it thoroughly, constraining out of him all the finite and the petty, and leading him hence whither he would go

It is this continual dance with dread and faith, the intertwining and mutual constitution that is so important here. To have faith, one must also dread, to have doubt about the existence of God, to not loose touch with the angst of finitude. To never doubt God, in other words, is to never really have faith. Turning toward faith in the constant face of dread, making that leap, that choice in everyday situations to affirm faith. In Kierkegaard's words: "Now the dread of possibility holds him as its prey until it can delver him saved int o the hands of faith."

Beating Around the Ontological Bush

Tom Gilson, over at the Thinking Christian, posted this link to a great discussion (by John Mark Reynolds) of the relationship between science and religion.

Much of what Mark writes is agreeable to me. When he says, for instance:

If all sides of the religion-science debate admit that they are at best telling “likely stories,” then they can go about their work in peace. Each side can continue to use their own philosophic assumptions to spin new theories to explain the ever-increasing amount of data collected. Each side can tell their own story and the intelligent “neutral” can decide for himself.

But I would like to make two critical comments about the working philosophical assumptions/assertions that structure Mark's argument. My aim is simple: to make space for alternative possibilities and ways of thinking about the relationship between science and Christianity.

One: Mark's argument asserts/assumes a dualistic ontology. Though, it should be noted that his dualism is more tempered than a straight up Cartesian dualism. What does this mean? To use Mark's words, this means that:

The truth may be out there, but it can be hard to know....

The truth about the world is there. The world is real and it is knowable. It is not, however, knowable with absolute certainty. This Cartesian certainty is just not available to humans after the Fall. Humanity is cut off from the world and from each other. The mere use of language to communicate guarantees that misunderstanding and mistakes will occur.

In other words, at its ontological foundation, Mark posits a metaphysical divide between the subjective observer and between the objective observed.

Two: Mark presupposes that language is at base a vehicle for communication. He uncritically assumes a correspondence theory of truth. Mark is working from a referential epistemology, wherein subjective observers tell stories that more or less accurately match/mirror/correspond to Reality. The Truth of something, its essence, is Objective and Timeless. But because people are fallible, theories and communications between people can never perfectly mirror Reality--stories can only approximate Truth.

Where do we go from here? We've identified that Mark is working from a dualistic ontology and that he employs a correspondence theory of truth. My next move is to suggest that while Mark is articulating one ontological-epistemological combination that has a rich history in Western metaphysics, there are other possible combinations.

Instead of a dualistic ontology that posits a divide between subjects and objects, we might assume a monistic ontology. This ontology does not posit a divide between subjects and objects. On the contrary, I argue that humans and their beliefs cannot swing free of their surroundings--they are intimately bound together. It is not subjects and objects, but combinations of relationships that give form and shape to concrete realities.

Epistemologically, a monistic ontology calls forth something other than a correspondence theory of truth. If there is no gap between subjects and objects, the problem of corresponding words to things isn't much of a problem anymore. On this view, words and stories are not primarily referential, but constitutive. Words and stories work as social bindings that tie people to their surroundings, giving them meaning and form.

So, we have a monistic ontology and a non-referential epistemology, which contrasts with Mark's dualistic ontology and correspondence theory of truth. These two different ontological-epistemological combinations work as philosophical groundings that enable us to spin different kinds of stories about different topics.

Thus, we have two kinds of stories about truth.

Instead of saying that the truth is "out there" and it is our duty to search it out, I would propose that the truth is immanent and it is our duty to make it happen here and now.

The fruits of truth are to be born out of our acts toward others. And it is from our conduct, our heart and our way, that we are judged (Jeremiah 17:10).

Bearing Sour Fruit

On 27 March I wrote at the end of a post:

Don't point to a piece of empirical evidence and say: "look here, my faith in God is proven." Rather, demonstrate to me the validity and trustworthiness of your faith by showing me the fruit that it bears. Show me truth, love and justice in your actions.

There are any number of ways that a Christian can act in the name of God. Sometimes the fruit of those words and actions isn't sweet at all. Sometimes its quite sour and distasteful. We should ask: In God's name, what are you saying/doing? Below is an instance in which a Christian leader is bearing some sour and distasteful fruit.

From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Pat seems to be putting on display his nationalistic zealotry and weaving through it, his power and position as a key Christian leader. The fruit is ugly and dangerous, if you ask me.

Resemblance

"Who and what is next?"

Roberta Sklar, spokeswoman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force responded to the President's support of a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage:

"If he endorses amendments such as this, which blatantly discriminates against a class of people, you would then have to wonder who and what is next."

Ms. Sklar's statement brings to mind another time in history. One of Hitler's first acts after taking office on January 30, 1933 was to ban homosexual organizations. From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

" Soon after taking office on January 30, 1933, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations. Brownshirted storm troopers raided the institutions and gathering places of homosexuals."

"On May 6,1933, Nazis ransacked the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin; four days later as part of large public burnings of books viewed as "un-German," thousands of books plundered from the Institute's library were thrown into a huge bonfire." more

The photo below shows the burning of homosexual books in Berlin.

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." Heinrich Heine, nineteenth century German author.

"On Sunday evening, members of the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Penn Township sing songs as they burn books, videos and CDs that they have judged offensive to their God."

Published in the Butler Eagle, March 26, 2001. Courtesy of the Butler Eagle

From "Playing with Fire" by James Carroll of the Boston Globe (3/9/04):

God as Hypothesis

Many Christians whether they are aware of it or not, view the Bible and their faith through the lens of referential epistemology (or also known as a correspondence theory of truth).

What does all that gibberish mean?

It means that many proclaim the Words of the Bible to accurately fit or correspond to the world out there. As a result of this epistemological stance, we see books like Josh McDowell's mega-popular: Evidence that Demands a Verdict. In this book, McDowell lays out empirical evidence that he argues attests to the validity of the Christian faith. Or said differently, McDowell tests the Words of the Bible against the historical record in an attempt to justify the Christian faith to doubters. So, for instance, on page 68, he uses archaeological evidence to confirm the trustworthiness of Scripture.

So what's wrong with this?

One big problem is that people are inadvertently using a modern epistemological theory to support or prove their faith in the Bible. Historically, the correspondence theory of truth is a modern invention of philosophers of science. It is an epistemology that is only a few hundred years old, while the Bible is much, much older.

But really why is this problematic?

Well, because folks like McDowell are implicitly setting modern scientific practice (testing against empirical evidence the accuracy of a word) as the standard the Bible and its Words must pass before its valid. McDowell and his likes seem to want to make God into a hypothesis that can be tested against the evidence. The more evidence for God the more valid and trustworthy the Christian faith.

This way of talking about faith also has the effect of getting Christians caught up in battles with other empiricists. Thus, look at the recent books written by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris and others that try to refute Christian faith on empirical grounds. Or, they try to reduce Christian faith or religion more generally, to an empirical/material cause (e.g. a genetic or neuron-chemical brain function). In response, Christian apologists do double time in an effort to pick apart these arguments and offer counter evidence that attests to the validity of their faith.

But is faith in God really about empirics? I don't think so, or at least its not necessary.

To quote John D. Caputo on this: "Religious truth is not the truth of propositions, the sort of truth that comes from getting our cognitive ducks in order, from getting our cognitive contents squared up with what is out there in the world, so that if we say 'S is p' that means that we have picked out an Sp out there that looks just like our proposition."

Religious truth is of a different order. Saying that "God is love," for instance, is not about finding and testing "God" and "love" against the empirical record.

To continue with Caputo: "So if we say 'God is love,' that means that we are expected to get off our haunches and do something, make the truth happen, amidst our sisters and our brothers....in spirit and in truth, which means in deed, for the name of God is the name of a deed."

So, in short, we need to make the break and realize that faith in God is not dependent on some empirical piece of evidence and no amount of evidence is going to prove God or the Christian faith to be valid or trustworthy. McDowell may be doing a popular apologetic exercise that aims at convincing a modern-minded crowd of doubters--but he is doing damage too, as he risks reducing God to a rationally explicable and empirically testable phenomena. I would urge that the validity and trustworthiness of Christians and their faith is a matter to be made, a deed to be done and demonstrated to doubters. Don't point to a piece of empirical evidence and say: "look here, my faith in God is proven." Rather, demonstrate to me the validity and trustworthiness of your faith by showing me the fruit that it bears. Show me truth, love and justice in your actions.

"War on Terrorism" and the Culture of Fear

Over the weekend, a Cold Warrior, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote a surprisingly good op-ed piece in the Washington Post.

He argues that the "war on terrorism" mantra is cultivating a culture of fear in America.

I would agree. Check it out.

JesUSAves

What does this image do? It yokes Jesus, USA, and Saves into a whole. The image ties the secular (USA and corporate produces) together with the sacred. It seems to produce a historically salient nationalistic/patriotic fantasy that the USA is an exceptional state, a state touched by the hand of God and infused by manifest destiny.

Or maybe not? What do you think?

"Homosexuality": The Creative Work of Evangelicals (Part 2)

In part one, I tried to demonstrate that the issue of 'homosexuality' is not a point of discussion in the Bible. It is a contemporary issue tied to the social and political conditions in the United States, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s. Moving beyond this argument is the point of this second part.

Instead of arguing that those evangelicals that say 'homosexual practice' is mentioned in the Bible are wrong, I'll take a different tact. When someone says something to the effect: "the Bible says clearly that homosexuality is a sin." The questions that guide this analysis is: What are they doing? And, How are they doing it?

My argument is that many evangelicals continually weave the contemporary word 'homosexuality' and its attendant meanings back onto the Biblical text through the process of story telling. They take a topic that emerged enforce during the 1980s and project it back into history. The effect of this re-reading is to tie the Bible to the present political issue of 'homosexuality' in a way that justifies the speaker's condemnation on Biblical grounds.

As Albert Mohler demonstrates, the story telling happens smoothly. Watch as he creatively weaves 'homosexuality' to the Bible.

Let's get this straight -- God's condemnation of sin is not determined by science, but by God's Word. The Bible could not be more clear -- all forms of homosexual behavior are expressly condemned as sin. In so doing the Bible uses its strongest vocabulary and places this condemnation in the larger context of the Creator's rightful expectation of our stewardship of the sexual gift. All manifestations of homosexuality are thus representations of human sinfulness and rebellion against God's express will. Nothing can alter this fact, and no discovery in science or any other human endeavor can change God's verdict.

This creative weaving powerfully enables Mohler to define 'homosexuality' as 'sin' and 'rebellion against God's express will.' It situates Mohler as the knower of this fact (while not explaining how he knows) and it implies that Mohler is in God's good graces compared to the sinful 'homosexual.' But more importantly, Mohler is acting to define the limits of what constitutes the evangelical viewpoint on the contemporary issue of 'homosexuality.' 'Homosexuality' is beyond the pale and the Bible is used to justify this perspective on the matter.

Usually this creative reading of 'homosexual' is sewn into three places in the Bible:

Leviticus 18:22 which reads "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is
detestable."

Leviticus 20:13 which reads "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

Romans 1:26-27 which reads "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

From these versus, it is inferred that the Bible was referring to 'homosexuality.' The explanation for this inferential leap from the empirical evidence to 'homosexuality' is conveinently left out of the discussion. The differences in the contexts in which the Bible was written and our contemporary contexts is absent from the discussion. Instead, a condemning story is told with certainty--'the Bible says clearly that homosexuality is a sin.'

The Bible can be read differently. This is not the only way that these verses can be read. For instance, take Blogging the Bible: What's Really in the Good Book. David Plotz is not an evangelical. He characterizes chapter 20 of Leviticus in these words:

Chapter 20
This is the Law and Order: SVU chapter, where the Lord specifies punishment for sex crimes. The most popular sentence: "They shall be put to death." Execution is the price for sex between: adulterer and adulteress; man and stepmother; man and daughter-in-law; man and man; man and beast; woman and beast. A threesome of man, woman, and her mother is singled out as especially heinous: The punishment is not just death but getting burned to death. God allows a few tender mercies: Marrying a sister is punished only by excommunication. Sex with a menstruating woman—that rates only banishment. And sex with an aunt or sister-in-law merely guarantees the culprits will die childless.

Nowhere does Plotz use the word 'homosexual' to frame any of the discussion of Leviticus. He is reading the same texts (generically, the Bible) as everyone else, yet interpreting it differently than many evangelicals. Plotz's reading stays closer to the empirical text by using 'man and man' language. He does not sew into the Bible text the word 'homosexual' and thus avoids the overt politicization that comes with its use.

Thus, evangelicals are not wrong; or at least that is not my argument.

I'm just saying that to "keep thinking" about this issue seems to be another way of saying: Let's keep talking about and acting out this storyline that ties 'homosexuality' to the Bible. Let's bring this worldview to life. Let's creat it and sustain it.

"Homosexuality": An Extra-Biblical Storyline (Part 1)

It is commonplace to hear that "the Bible says clearly that homosexual practice is a sin" or some similar derivation of that.

Yet a quick peek into any of the popular translations of the Bible today reveals that 'homosexuality' or 'homosexual practice' are not empirically in the texts themselves. There is no mention of these 'sins,' as is commonly argued.

More to the point, 'homosexual' has a rather modern history.

homosexual (adj.)

1892, in C.G. Chaddock's translation of Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis," from homo-, comb. form of Gk. homos "same" (see same) + Latin-based sexual (see sex).

" 'Homosexual' is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it." [H. Havelock Ellis, "Studies in Psychology," 1897]

The noun is first recorded 1912 in Eng., 1907 in French. In technical use, either male or female; but in non-technical use almost always male. Slang shortened form homo first attested 1929. The alternative homophile (1960) was coined in ref. to the homosexual regarded as a person of a particular social group, rather than a sexual abnormality. Homo-erotic first recorded 1916; homophobia is from 1969.

Historically speaking, then, it would have been impossible for the word 'homosexual' to appear during the time of the Bible's writing, since it was first produced in a late nineteenth century book. This is significant because it directly challenges the claim that the "Bible says clearly" anything at all about 'homosexuality.'

When did 'homosexuality' emerge as a problem for evangelical Christians?

To shed some empirical light on this question, I turned to Google's new "News Archive" search feature. Here I searched for this combination of words: "homosexual + evangelical." For all the available years, the results look like this:

Pre-1950 = 4
1950-1959 = 29
1990-1992 = 455
1993-1995 = 521
1997-2002 = 1300
2003-2006 = 2190

Before 1959, just over thirty news articles appeared. The frequency of these word pairs is fairly limited. Between 1960 and 1990, however, things started to come together.

What was going on during this time?

Given this officially recognized designation as a class of people, 'homosexuals,' started speaking out in the name of 'Gay rights' and 'equality' for 'homosexuals.' Also, the political, moral, economic, and ethical issue of AIDS emerged as a problem in the United States.

Particularly during the late 1970s and 1980s, networks of people identifying themselves as 'evangelicals' and 'fundamentalists' were politically energized around various politico-religious leaders and issues. To quote Susan Friend Harding, the 1980s saw a "born-again Christian cultural diaspora" that "sent inerrant Bible-believers into the vast professional middle-class reaches of America."

The diffusion of information networks like the Internet and cable network TV lowered the cost of mass communicating to large national and transnational audiences. Of particular significance, was the rise of televangelism and the birth of an industry of mass marketed Christian products, services and merchandise.

Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States and was heroisized by many right leaning Americans as bringing down the Iron Curtain and pushing the Godless Soviet Union to collapse.

Other conditions undoubtedly were involved in making the expansion possible. The point is that the 1980s saw the conditions made ripe for an explosion of talk about 'homosexuals' and 'evangelicals' in the news. Thus, the early 1990s saw a precipitous rise in the number of articles.

The point of all this is to say that the politicization of the issue of 'homosexuality' is rather new. Being against 'homosexuality' is not a Biblical axiom. The Bible says nothing about 'homosexuality.' It is a contemporary political topic that self identified evangelicals talk about. In short, my argument is that 'homosexuality' is a contemporary storyline that emerged after WWII and crystallized as an issue for evangelicals during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Yep, Sex is on the Evangelical Mind

A few days ago I made a post about how many evanglicals have sex on the mind. Then today I ran across the Baptist Press News article that only served to fortify my view.

In Kentucky, over 700 students gathered at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to talk about God and Sex.

As the Dean of the School of Theology, Russel D. Moore said: “Right now in this generation there are a couple of white hot issues that are the key touchstones of apologetic interest, and sex is right there at the center of it"

Yes, like I've been saying...or better yet, in the words of the BPN article: "sex is not a secondary issue."

Sex is on everybody's mind it seems.

God, Science and Making Sense of a Complex World: An Illustrative Example

The short AP article was titled: "Woman in Vegetative State Awakes, Slips." It reads:

A woman who went into a vegetative state in November of 2000 awoke this week for three days, spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back on Wednesday. "I'm fine," Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday — her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods.

"I think it's wonderful. It makes me so happy," Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.

Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn't explain how or why she awoke.

"I'm just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states," he said.

A vegatative state is much like a coma except her eyes remain open.

"The good Lord let me know she's alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I'm thankful for that," said Minnie Smith, her mother and caregiver after Christa slipped back into the vegetative state.

A couple of points are worth talking about in this article. They highlight limitations and opportunities.

One: the scientist/doctor lacked the conceptual tools to explain the phenomena. He could not account for why she was waking up and then slipping back into a vegetative state. The phenomena is tapping the edge of scientific knowledge, its limit.

Just on the other side of the inexplicable another kind of answer waits, which brings me to the second point. As the mother said: the 'good Lord let me know she's alright.' While the scientist cannot explain the situation, the mother can. Her conceptual toolbox offers opportunities where the scientist is left empty handed. She makes sense of this baffling experience by pointing to God. God offers a comforting knowledge that isn't a hypothesis to be tested, but a faith to be cherished and felt.

Science and faith are not at war--as many theists and atheists shout and wring their hands. They complement one another. But they cannot be reduced to one another--creationism is faith posing as science. They are similar in some respects, and yet ultimately different. They serve different purposes and offer different ways of making sense of the complex world in which we live.

Sex on the Mind--Evangelicals in America

No, it's not enough to follow Jesus of Nazareth. It is not enough to have a burning passion for the poor. It's not enough to strive toward some semblance of social justice. We have to have sex on the mind.

Let me illustrate.

According to the Baptist News Press, five churches in North Carolina are at odds with the Baptist State Convention over the issue of homosexuality. Last fall, the Convention voted by nearly a three-fourths margin to "change the convention's articles of incorporation regarding membership."

On what issue, you might guess, are the Convention's articles to be changed and made more exclusionary? Sex!

The original BSCNC membership article stated, “A cooperating church shall be one that financially supports any program, institution, or agency of the Convention, and which is in friendly cooperation with the Convention and sympathetic with its purposes and work.”

The addition to the article states, “Among churches not in friendly cooperation with the Convention are churches which knowingly act to affirm, approve, endorse, promote, support or bless homosexual behavior. The Board of Directors shall apply this provision. A church has a right to appeal any adverse action taken by the Board of Directors.”

The deacons at St. Johns, one of the five offending churches, noted that

as a “community of the new creation,” we are “open to all and closed to none. This includes a welcome to gay and lesbian persons who wish to follow Christ with us here.”

“We have not changed our mission,” St. John’s said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the [Baptist State Convention] has changed its mission and has chosen to narrow its membership to exclude churches and institutions that do not adhere to its exclusive and discriminatory view of who is welcome in its fellowship.”

Both the NC State Convention and St. John's church have sex on the mind. But more than being simply on the mind, the State Convention and the church govern themselves around the issue of sex--sex is a topic that justifies exclusion and inclusion into this or that community. How we think about and act toward sex helps define who "we" are.

A similar article appeared in the NY Times this morning. James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins and other conservative Christian leaders wrote a letter to the National Association of Evangelicals. Their aim was to put pressure on Rev. RichardCizik, the DC policy director.

Why, you might ask?

“We have observed,” the letter says, “that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time.”

Those issues, the signers say, are a need to campaign against abortion and same-sex marriage and to promote “the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.”

The NC Baptist Convention, St. Johns and the various evangelical leaders that signed the letter seem to have sex on the mind and a burning passion for the politics of sexuality and purity.

With sex on the mind, where does that leave the poor? Or the environment? Are they secondary? Tertiary? Are their care not an issue of morality?

Make some mental space for issues other than sex.

You Can't Treat "Heroes" Like Dirt

A series of articles published in the Washington Post on the conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was a trigger. They effectively circulated these stories across mass media outlets and got people moving.

But the conditions were there at Walter Reed and around the country before the articles came out. The complaints from wounded soldiers and their families were there too. And at Walter Reed, politicians visit frequently. They come to shake hands and enjoy photo opportunities with these fallen heroes.

I want to emphasize "hero." Since 9/11, soldiers and first responders have become heroes. The other day, I heard a talking head refer to soldiers as "professional heroes." By referring to soldiers and first responders as "heroes," certain things can and cannot be done.

You can't treat a "hero" like dirt. Or, if you do, then your legitimacy comes under scrutiny. Hence, watch the politicians jump through their asses in Washington, DC as they deal with the scandal at Walter Reed.

The day the story broke in the Washington Post, the White House was fairly mute about the whole situation. On Alternet, there is a great 10 minute video of Tony Snow (the White House spokesperson) feebly fending off reporters questions about the brewing scandal. The import of the situation had not quite hit them yet.

Now you have the Vice President and the President talking up their resolve to fix the problems at Walter Reed. Congressional Republicans and Democrats are holding hearings. Generals are being fired.

You can't call someone a "hero" and treat them like dirt.

This wasn't a problem after the Vietnam War. Soldiers weren't called "heroes." Often, it seems, they were more likely called "baby killers." You can treat a "baby killer" like dirt--it is much more acceptable practice. Witness the homeless men in Washington DC that are Vietnam veterans or the vets that suffered from Agent Orange and failed to receive adequate treatment and support from the military.

But now, even Vietnam vets are basking in the glow of being a former "hero." They are "heroes" similar to WWII era vets and Gulf War vets. They are all "heroes," warriors and first responders alike.

And you can't treat "heroes" like dirt.

Complaints about VA care have been there for a long time. But it took the post-9/11 "hero" narrative combined with the pictures and stories in the Washington Post articles to create the possibility for a political explosion. And explode it has. In the expanding face of this criticism, watch all the politicians and high ranking officials jump to retain some semblance of legitimacy.

True as in Scientifically or True as in Religiously

The following is a quote that I read last night. It is from the philosopher/theologian, John D. Caputo, in his book On Religion. For me, it is a very powerful and sensible statement. For others, I'm sure it will smack of heresy.

Any given religion is better off without the ideas that it is "the one true religion" and the others are not, as if the several religions were engaged in a zero sum contest for religious truth. They need to drop the idea of "the true religion," to stop running "negative ads" about everyone else's religion or lack of religion, and to kick the habit of claiming that their particular body of beliefs is a better fit with what is "out there," as if a religion were like a scientific hypothesis, which is the mistake of the Creationist "scientists." Unlike a scientific theory, there is not one reason on earth (or in heaven) why many different religious narratives cannot all be true. "The one true religion" in that sense makes no more sense than "the one true language" or the "one true poetry," "the one true story" or "the one true culture." While rejecting the modernist idea that science is the exclusive depository of truth, we should have learned something from modernity--post-modern means having passed through and learned a thing or two from modernity--namely, that religious truth is true with a truth that is of a different sort than scientific truth. Religious truth is tied up with being truly religious, truly loving God, loving God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and there are more ways to do that than are dreamt of the faithful in the traditional confessions. Loving God in spirit and in truth is not like having the right scientific theory that covers all the facts and makes all the alternative explanations look bad.

That last sentence is possibly the catch for some folks. For them, God needs to be provable if their faith is to be worth a damn. God is more like a hypothesis waiting to be tested, than a faith to be cherished and practiced religiously.

Where are the Poor People? Dumped on the Side of the Road

I heard a story about hospitals dumping poor patients on NPR a while back. But this morning I read this article in the NY Times entitled: "‘Dumping’ of Homeless by Hospitals Stirs Debate."

The opening paragraph begins with these words:

For a year, reports have surfaced that hospitals here have left homeless patients on downtown streets, including a paraplegic man wearing a hospital gown and colostomy bag who witnesses say pulled himself through the streets with a plastic bag of his belongings held in his teeth....

Advocates for the homeless said it was common in many cities for homeless people still requiring medical treatment to end up on the street or at the doors of shelters ill prepared for their medical needs.

Much attention in this article is focused on the lack of proper laws to protect the poor and homeless people being dumped on the side of the road. But I want to suggest that the law or lack of law is only part of larger way of organizing our social and political relationships.

Michel Foucault proposed the concept of "biopolitics" and I think that it aptly helps explain this dumping process. Biopolitics is a term that refers (generally speaking) to the modern governing of life. That is, when bare life becomes the politicized object of governmental practice and the health of the people as a whole is sustained through the act of excluding the unhealthy and impure. It is a mode of governing that emerged primarily during the 18th and 19th centuries and continues to help organize much of our everyday lives.

These people being dumped on the side of the street are the objects of exclusion. In the name of efficiency and economical decisions, the hallmarks of neoliberal economics, they are pushed literally out of the hospital and ambulance and excluded from the possibility of care. Care is for those consumers that fit in to the system, for those that can pay their own way and do not become a drag on the whole population. Health and wealth go hand in hand in the context of a neoliberal economic arrangement. Conversely, to be "homeless" and "poor" is in some sense to be the figurative stranger, the outsider on the inside of a consumer-centered polity.

During the NPR story, a women was apparently dumped within eye-shot of a theatre. Imagine the onlookers watching the process. I'm sure some felt guilt pangs and maybe others actually did something about it. But in the end, most probably went into the theatre and watched their show. They too participated in the exclusion. They too joined in complicity with the hospital. We all are complicit in some way. Walking with the flows of crowds, I pass by homeless people everyday. In some sense, I think, we all politicize bare life and we all participate in its exclusion and banishment.

Christianity and Culture

In "Keeping Current With The Culture," Bill White says

How many of these terms can you identify? Metrosexual. Bennifer. Blogging. G-Unit. Is it hard to stay on top of the constant stream of culture swirling around you? (Metrosexual: a heterosexual who embraces much of homosexual culture; popularized by the wildly successful TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Bennifer: the movie star couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Blogging: a Blog is a web log (an online journal); blogging is using your online journal for the purposes of criticism, which then has extensive influence because web search engines link to them. G-Unit: The band of top-selling rapper 50 Cent.)

If we are to be like the men of Issachar "who understood the times and knew what Israel should do" (1 Chronicles 12:32), we need to study the culture. Here are a few pointers on how to catch the culture in order to bridge the gap from the unchanging gospel to the contemporary world.

The idea seems to be that culture is bad or denigrating to the word of God and that all culture is popular culture. As the subtitle to Mr. White's piece allows, this is "How to study the contemporary world without being shaped by it." The suggestion is that Mr. White is not part of the contemporary world.

Mr White offers four strategies for studying contemporary culture but not being shaped by it.

Listen to Non-Christian Radio
Watch Commercials
Study Their Bible (e.g. Entertainment Weekly)
Find a Culture Coach (e.g. a 'non-Christian,' or what he calls 'Normal People')

I hate to break it to Mr. White, but culture is more than popular and it can't simply be reduced to something bad and impure. Mr. White, whether he knows it or not, participates in a subculture--not even a subculture in the US, a fairly dominant culture in fact. Understanding what it means to be an evangelical Christian is perhaps the first sign that one is operating within this cultural matrix.

To quote The Interpretation of Cultures, by the late Clifford Geertz, an anthropologists that made his living studying culture, "culture consists of socially established structures of meaning" that makes members' actions intelligible to those participating in that (sub)culture.

So, here is another way of seeing Mr. White's actions.

Mr. White participates in a subculture, or a structure of meaning, in which it is intelligible for fellow members (particularly those engaging in preacherly discourse) to understand their actions as outside culture.

I would argue that Mr. White is not literally getting outside culture. I mean, if he were outside culture, then no one could understand what he means. He would be unintelligible to fellow preachers and to me--his words would be akin to a strange language or dialect of clicks and grunts that make no sense. But since he makes sense to us and to evangelical preachers around the world, we can see that Mr. White is participating in a culture.

In drawing a clear boundary between Christians on the one hand and non-Christians (or 'Normal People') on the other hand, Mr. White is asserting a division between inside and outside. This set of actions helps define the cultural identity community in which Mr. White participates in relation to Others--namely popculture. In his discourse, then, we see that popculture is a figure of difference and Otherness against which Mr. White organizes himself and speaks for/with a community of evangelical preachers. Mr. White is not outside culture. Rather, he is performing a cultural script that makes a lot of sense to evangelical preachers.

Asserting the Present and Settling the Past

This morning on the Baptist Press News, Rev. Henry Blackaby opens with these words:

Faith, or belief, can only operate in the present. It takes no faith to believe what has been –- that’s settled. Likewise, it takes no faith to believe what God can do, for with God all things are possible. Faith functions in what you believe God is going to do right now.

The assertion that "It takes no faith to believe what has been--that's settled" is an interesting rhetoric because it works to close down the possibility of re-thinking "what has been." Contrary to Rev. Blackaby's claim, history is the site of much struggle over just what did happen. Historical revision and the emergence of new primary source data continually challenge the dominant interpretations of "what has been." History, in other words, is far from "settled."

The act of saying that history is "settled" is a conservative move to hold in place a particular interpretation that one happens to be fond of. To say that it is "settled," is another way of saying that there is no debate, no disagreement, no alternative views, not chance for re-reading "what has been." Any close reading of the data, historical works on the topics of faith and God or the Bible itself, reveals a number of different possible readings.

Rev. Blackaby seems to be trying to stabilize a particular interpretation of faith and God. One that no doubt sustains his reading of the Bible--because, of course, we shouldn't assume that Rev. Blackaby is attempting to undermine his own faith in the vision of God that he articulates.

Faith is constituted by history. Rev. Blackaby fails to see this, because history for him is "settled," which is another way of saying the struggles out of which this history grew, has been forgotten or at least downplayed. Rev. Blackaby apparently sits at the edge of history--"in the present." And like the historical struggle that he has forgotten, Rev. Blackaby does not see his role, his effort in carrying forth this particular interpretation of faith and God. Rev. Blackaby does not recognize his concrete effort in the "present" to maintain a specific interpretation.

We are all carriers of some history. We all bring some history with us into the present. And with that effort, we contribute to the struggle that made that history the history and not just one of the many histories that could have been.

"Rapture Threat Level Orange"

On the Simpson's this evening....Homer screeches into the church parking lot and the billboard reads: "Rapture Threat Level Orange."

Two narratives are tied together here. One is biblical and the second is a national security metaphor.

They come together well to illustrate the peculiar relationship between the church and the state, which are two great institutions that give order and meaning to the modern American political and social landscape. Historically speaking, both the church and the state can be seen to evangelize fear and pronounce a condition of insecurity. It was during the eighteenth century that the state institutional complex assumed this role from the church and became the dominant institution of the two. Now, as the cartoon sign suggests, the metaphors of church are instrumental to the metaphors of national security and the state. Yet they continue to work co-constitute a sense of fear and public anxiety.

Iraq: A Money Pit

I've heard self-described economic conservatives say to the effect: "yeah, the US educational system has problems, but throwing money at it won't help."

Its funny and sad to watch many of the same economic conservatives justify throwing money at Iraq. Iraq has become a money pit.

Congress was told at least $10 billion of $57 billion for Iraq reconstruction contracts has been squandered by contractors or has disappeared without explanation. Federal auditors caution the figure is likely to go higher. The Associated Press reported the figure is nearly triple the amount of waste reported by the Government Accountability Office last fall....

This rip-off brings to mind Paul Bremer's riposte to querulous congressmen about the fate of $12 billion in cash disbursed by his Coalition Provisional Authority. There are no perfect solutions in a war zone, Bremer said. He and his minions let 363 tons of money in shrink-wrapped blocks of $400,000 skitter through their fingers with barely a fare-thee-well.

Imagine what a few pallets of shrink wrapped cash distributed to American schools would do for the educational system--particularly if there were no consequential oversight. Would any economic conservative in their right mind OK that? Well, maybe, if Haliburton or Kellog, Brown and Root contracted out the teachers and administrators.

The Great "Is" in Who "Is" Jesus?

In chapter one of his book, In Quest of Jesus, W. Barnes Tatum argues that Jesus has been framed by four general narratives.

1). Jesus the Dying Savior
2). Jesus the Example
3). Jesus the Monk or Mystic
4). Jesus the Troublemaker

In the part of the United States that I hail from, the frame announced most often is Jesus the Dying Savior. If people are talking of Jesus, then they are usually talking about the saving grace of Jesus. The three other frames are downplayed.

Obviously, though, these four frames are not the only ways that Jesus is talked about. If we move down the ladder of abstraction and examine talk more closely and concretely, we can see a number of different views of Jesus articulated. Recently, for instance, Jesus as a "manly man" has resurfaced. (You can find some examples here and here). The narrative of the manly, man Jesus recalls the well worn T-shirt images that loudly announce: "The Lord's Gym."

A much more commonplace narrative that frames Jesus is Jesus as Christian. This frame of Jesus is deeply entrenched. It is implicit to the Jesus as manly man, Jesus as savior, Jesus as example, Jesus as monk, Jesus as troublemaker. They all presupose Jesus as Christian. But historically speaking and Biblically speaking, Jesus as Christian is not quite accurate. The historical Jesus was a peasant Jew. He was crucified as "The King of the Jews." And moreover, we see in the book of Acts that it was not until Antioch that followers of Jesus were called "Christian." Let me make the point clearly, Jesus was not a "Christian." The followers of Jesus framed him as a "Christian" well after his death and that tradition lives on today. It is a living tradition so deeply entrenched that it has achieved a level of commonsense and thus remains largely unquestioned.

I make this point not to directly challenge anyone's faith, but to open up space for alternative views of what it means to follow Jesus. Too often, I fear, minority views of Jesus are pushed aside by the dominate frames. I just want to make some space for difference, for alternative interpretations. That is, afterall, agency--to do otherwise.

The great "Is," as it were, is a contextual and institutional achievement of our time and place.

The Practice of Extraordinary Rendition, or, How "We" Come to Resemble "Them"

Recently much has been written about the practice of extraordinary rendition. This is the extra-judicial procedure which involves the sending of untried criminal suspects deemed 'terrorist' to countries other than the United States for imprisonment and interrogation.

Perhaps the most famous of these incidents involve Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen that was detained at Kennedy International Airport on 26 September 2002 by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was taken to Jordan and then Syria, where he was interrogated and tortured by Syrian intelligence. Arar was eventually released a year later. The Canadian government lodged an official complaint with the US government protesting Arar's deportation. On September 18 2006, a Canadian public enquiry presented its findings entirely clearing Arar of any terrorist activities.

Much attention to this practice has centered on the legality of the issue. I want to talk a moment about how the practice shapes who "we" are or are becoming.

Underlying my discussion is the presupposition that identity is performed and not something that is lodged in "us." How does this practice define "us" as a polity?

The practice of extraordinary rendition, I will suggest, implies a logic of similarity or resemblance between what "we" do and what "they" do. Much rhetoric goes into defining "them" as "evil" and defining "us" as "freedom loving Americans." But this practice undermines that difference. It is a practice that makes "us" look like "them." And it is a practice that undermines "our" claim to the moral and legal high ground. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, maybe it is a duck. Similarly, if the US government kidnaps and tortures people, perhaps it too is terroristic.

If we look at the history of the word "terrorism," we see that the word emerged out of the context in which the government was doing just that--ruling through a reign of terror. It has since been inverted. It is now commonplace to frame terrorists as groups attacking the state. But we should not forget this history. The state and the territory it rules over is often subject to terrorism, a terrorism justified in the name of national security. That is, a terrorism justified in "our" name. That is basically my view of extraordinary rendition--state sanctioned terrorism in "our" name. Before long, "we" come to resemble "them."

What are we fighting for again? I think "we" are forgetting and in that process, "we" start to resemble "them."

Where the Hell is Hell? Orthodox and Heretical Interpretations

This morning I ran across the blog Out of Ur, a discussion site hosted by the editors of the Leadership Journal. What caught my eye was the article, "Loving the Hell Out of People," a piece originally published in Prism--America's Alternative Evangelical Voice and written by Shane Claiborne. In particular, I'm interested in his interpretation of hell. To quote the end of the article, Shane says

God is in the business of rescuing people from the hells they experience on earth. And God is asking us to love people out of those hells.

Nowadays many of us spend a lot of time pondering and theologizing about heaven on earth and God’s Kingdom coming here (and rightly so!), but it seems we would also do well to do a little work with the reality of hell. Hell is not just something that comes after death, but something many are living in this very moment… 1.2 billion people that are groaning for a drop of water each day, over 30,000 kids starving to death each day, 38 million folks dying of AIDS. It seems ludicrous to think of preaching to them about hell. I see Jesus spending far more energy loving the “hell” out of people, and lifting people out of the hells in which they are trapped, than trying to scare them into heaven. And one of the most beautiful things we get to see in community here in Kensington, is people who have been loved out of the hells that they find themselves in—domestic violence, addiction, sex trafficking, loneliness.

To myself, what Shane says make a lot of sense insofar as for many people hell is right here on earth. But this interpretation flies in the face of more traditional and entrenched interpretations of hell. For many Bible believers, hell is a place the unsaved go after they die. It is a place where spirits burn in torment, not a physical locale.

The logics of these two interpretations of hell, what I will call the concrete hell on earth and the metaphysical hell, clash. This clash is evidenced by some of the critical comments that followed Shane's article. Take one as an example:

well, there's alot that could be said about this post, but one point is obvious: you can't have your exegesis two ways. You can't talk about Jesus describing people who refuse to be loving toward others as going to a place of torment after they die and then switch your metaphor to rescuing people out of pitiful situations. Maybe it was Jesus who said "unless you are converted you will all likewise perish." 2000 years of Christianity have agreed with the teachings of Christ and the apostles that spiritual rebirth by faith in Christ is essential. As you love people in word and deed the fact that without Christ there is a place of eternal torment for all humans because of their rebellion against God has to come into play at some point.

This clash is evidenced further in a far more consequential way in the case of Rev. Carlton Pearson. I commented on the differences between Orthodox and Heretical biblical interpretations a few months back. To quote from that post

He [Carlton Pearson] began preaching that hell was not a transcendent place. Hell was here on earth--we make our own hell here on earth. This was a revelation Pearson had--while holding his grand-daughter one afternoon he saw a documentary on the Rwandan genocide and all the death and destruction that man waged against man. After prayer, he understood that hell was man made.

Rev. Pearson was formally defined as a Heretic. Evangelicals that had long called him friend and colleague shunned him and refused the possibility of this alternative interpretation.

To see Shane talking a similar line as Rev. Pearson is heartening. Different interpretations are active, but there are clearly consequences to articulating views of hell that do not parallel more entrenched views. To put this in over-simplified and over-generalized terms, the logics at work in this clash inform modernist and postmodernist worldviews. It will be interesting to see how these interpretations play out over time.

For myself, talk of hell as a metaphysical locale where souls burn makes little sense. Hell on earth is concrete. We can see the "gnashing of teeth" all around us. There is little reason to quicken our metaphysical imaginations less we wish only to obscure what is front of our faces.

Ted is Cured

Ted Haggard is cured. A number of news articles have been published over the past or week or so quoting Mr. Haggard as saying that he is "completely heterosexual." In his words, he was "acting out" and his man-loving and meth-taking was not a "constant" activity.

Is Ted's activity a problem in general? Or, is Ted's activity a problem in particular? By this I mean to say that given the community of people Ted hung with, Evangelical Christians, his behavior became a problem. If he would have been an Episcopalian, this behavior (at least the man-loving) would not have been such a problem.

This fact points to the locality, or specificity, of the problem of sexuality. Sexuality, in other words, is not the problem per se, the problem is the community and how the community understands sexuality. Evangelical Christian communities can thus be seen as laying a trap for those members that struggle with their sexuality. For, in this community, there is only space for one kind of relationship--the "traditional family" with one man, one women and how many ever kids. Step outside this "traditional family" arrangement and consequences follow, as Rev. Ted and his removal from leadership attests.

Personally, I find it difficult to imagine that Ted is cured, because I'm not sure what he would be cured of. But more than him being cured, his community is in the process of being cured. How? Ted was expelled. The curing, or more precisely, the purifying occurs through the expulsion of the impurity.

Hanging From a Cross of Iron: The Economics and Politics of War-Making

Today I read a Congressional Quarterly article on the Bush administration's budget plans for the upcoming fiscal year of 2008. The proposed budget is about $2.9 trillion. Where does the money go? Well, lets see.

$245 billion are alloted to war-making in Afghanistan and Iraq.

$700 billion total for security related spending, which comes to about $2,300 per US resident and has basically doubled since Bush came to office.

Balancing the budget was also an important theme. How was this done? Primarily, this was accomplished by cutting Medicade and Medicare spending, which would save an estimated $252 billion over the next decade. In other words, the burden is placed on the poor and the elderly.

This whole budget reminds me of a comment President Eisenhower made many years ago:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?

President George W. Bush apparently has no problem hanging American children, the elderly and the poor from a cross of iron and steel.

But war-making gives us meaning. War helps us clearly define whom we are by differentiating whom we are not. In some ways, two wars are being waged. One war is external, the "war on terrorism." This external war helps define the Nation. The second war is being waged internally against far less threatening Others. This internal war helps differentiate hierarchically those elite at the top from those at the bottom.

What are we to do with Christians wanting to do something about Islam?

"What are we to do about Islam?" is a question Mike Licona asked in this morning's Baptist Press News. By 'we', Mike is referring to Christians. His talk presupposes that 'we' are a corporate actor, an agent, with the capacity to 'do' something. It ignores the fact that Christians are divided into many different sects--there are Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Universalists, etc. But this forgetting of the sectarian differences that constitute late modern Christianity, is a move made possible by the figure of 'Islam.' In other words, in Mike's talk, it is the face of difference that helps solidify 'we' against them. And it is most certainly a 'we' versus them mentality that organizes Mike's thoughts. This becomes clear when he says:

The objective of many Muslims is to Islamicize the world. When a person or a country stands in the way of Islam’s efforts, these regard it as a “war on Islam.” This does not mean all Muslims hate Christians. For over a thousand years there have been many friendships between Muslims and Christians. However, Muslims who have befriended Christians have disregarded the Koran in the process, since it prohibits such friendships (Q 5:51).

So, in effect, it is Christian people and countries versus Muslims and their apparent efforts to 'Islamicize the world.' But in noting that Muslims do missionary work, Mike obscures the enormous time, energy and finances that evangelical Christians spend on missionary work. In some sense, then, what we are seeing here is a turf battle between Christianizing and Islamicizng agents. Mike is a Christianizing agent.

As a Christianizing agent, Mike articulates three ways of dealing with Islamic agents. The first:

Understand that we stand in the way of Islam intentionally. We believe that Islam is a religion that promotes false teachings about God. The Apostle Paul wrote, “But even if we (or an angel from heaven) should preach a Gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be condemned to hell!” (Galatians 1:8). Since Islam’s message differs fundamentally from the Gospel, it is clear what Paul taught regarding the fate of Muhammad and those who propagate Islam. A few years later Paul wrote, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). It is the responsibility of evangelical Christians to promote the Gospel of Christ to the exclusion of the core messages of other religions -- including Islam. In the eyes of Muslim Islamicists, this places evangelical Christians at war with Islam.

Again, 'we' is used by Mike to signify the boundaries between the Christian community and the Muslim community. These boundaries, as Mike says clearly, must exclude the 'core messages of other religions because 'Islam's message differs fundamentally from the Gospel.' But does it? Mike is using a logic of differentiation here. One might say that fundamentally, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all three religions tied together through the figure of Moses. And, all three religions are monotheistic. So, Mike's logic of differentiation effectively obscures the historical links between the three religions. Mike is politicizing the relationship by hardening the boundaries into an a-histoircal configuration that fits nicely with the contemporary fears many Americans have of Muslims. Thus,

It is natural to feel anger and hatred toward Muslims who want to kill us. On a national level, we can support politicians who are committed to hunting down and destroying terrorists, upholding free speech, and standing in the way of Muslim thugs who declare war on everything which does not allow Islam to dominate. On a personal level, Jesus tells us plainly what our response should be:

"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.... If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ... But love your enemies, and do good ... and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men" (Luke 6:27-35).

So, in saying that it is 'natural to feel anger and hatred toward Muslims that want to kill us,' Mike is legitimating and normalizing this response over other possible responses. Other responses that include, turning the other cheek, as Jesus might have suggested. But more than that, Mike is conflating the US war on terrorism as part and parcel of a Christian response. This comes through most clearly when he says they want to 'kill us'--meaning 'us' Christians and 'us' Americans--and then when he appeals to a national-scale war-making effort. What is fascinating is how love and war work together in Mike's discourse. This helps construct the difference between the nation on one hand and the individual on the other hand and legitimate the violence that the nation perpetrates against others and the missionary work individual Christians do. In other words, as the nation wages war, realize that Jesus calls us to a "holy war" -- the difference is that our holy war actually involves, well, holiness, and does not involve weapons and violence.

Thus, 'we' are clearly different than them. 'We' are holy and they are not. 'We' are waging a legitimate war and they are not. 'We' have the right religion and they do not. But can these strict 'we'-they boundaries not be deconstructed? Is Mike not helping to cultivate fear? Is Mike not helping discipline those that call themselves Christian? I wonder if Mike has ever met a Muslim.