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Thursday, 26 April 2012

No Greater Love: The Idolatry of Patriotic Art

Nationalist Christians often conflate scriptures referring to Christ or to the church with concepts about America or her heroes. Now, this should not surprise anyone. Christianity is socially powerful; it's natural that politicians and others who wish to enlist Christians in their cause will cynically twist scripture to their own ends. What should shock us is how eagerly some Christians buy into this abuse of scripture. I've reviewed before the American Patriot's Bible, and numerous pieces of kitschy art. But here's a piece that takes the idolatrous cake.

This is a piece from nogreaterloveart.com, called Armed with Valor.

Ironic: The passage the site is named for is John 15:13, "There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." Jesus is being self-referential here. He is the one who exhibits the greatest love by laying down his life. What is more, while soldiers certainly make many sacrifices for their friends, loved ones and nations, their goal is certainly not to lay down their lives but to lay down their enemies' lives. As General Patton famously put it, "Your job isn't to die for your country, but to make some other poor bastard die for his."

Ironic: The soldier is armed with valor, one imagines, but is also armed with an assault rifle. I imagine it's somewhat easier to display valor when armed with an assault rifle. I imagine it's also much more difficult to demonstrate love while holding one.

Sad: This piece was not composed by some propaganda department vying for Christian recruits. It was composed by a sincere Christian, who feels that the U.S. soldier exemplifies the great love of Christ. He is not referring to the general sense of sacrifice/honor/camaraderie that can be developed in wartime situations, either. He sees America as distinctly embodying Christianity. Here is another piece by the same artist:

This piece is called The Difference Between Us and Them. The different manifests itself in two forms: "secular" American images like the flag and the eagle, and "religious" images like the angel wings. But it's all religious imagery, of course, and the eagle bridges the gap by being apparently a spiritual being, perhaps a stand-in for the dove of the Holy Spirit. Doves, of course, are images of peace while eagles are predators, hunters. The difference between us and them would appear to be that God supports us, and enables us to shelter the weak through our use of force.

What do you think? Am I reading too much into these images, or do they reflect a sincere conflation of God with country?

Friday, 13 April 2012

Your Beliefs Are Officially Untrue

One commenter on a recent post said that he doesn’t see the state considering the church as direct competition. I believe this is untrue both in principle and in fact; in principle because for a liberal state the only truth can be that all are free to believe what they want so long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others to believe what they will, and in fact because the political theorists behind modern liberalism explicitly regarded the church as a competitor.*
Standard method of pledging allegiance to the flag until Hitler ruined the gesture.
The perfect illustration is the official policy toward conscientious objectors when the draft was in effect. Pacifists who applied for conscientious objector status were often tested to ensure that they were really committed to their beliefs (sometimes friends and family were interviewed, church membership demanded, etc.) but could ultimately be deemed conscientious objectors. Christians who believed in the just-war doctrine and refused to serve on the basis that the current conflict did not meet the just-war criteria could not be deemed conscientious objectors.
Why is that? Because in this case, pacifism could be regarded as a privately held belief (“I cannot justly engage in violent acts”) that did not intrude on anyone else’s privately held beliefs about violence or justice. Just-war doctrine, on the other hand, cannot be so regarded; it is necessarily a belief that intrudes upon the public square (“This war is unjust; nobody can justly engage in it”). As such the first is a valid religious belief, and the state will not force you to violate it; the second is out of bounds as a religious belief, so the state cannot exempt you from military service. The price one pays to have religious rights is to admit that they are officially untrue; what is true is the creed of liberalism, that the public square is transcendent of any or all gods.
Or, in more explicitly religious terms, so long as you are willing to sacrifice the truth of your beliefs on the alter of the common good, the liberal, tolerant, rational state will accept and protect you from illiberal, intolerant, irrational religions like Islam. And if you will not lay your religion on the alter of liberalism, you are setting yourself up as the enemy.
*Hobbes integrates both church and state into his Leviathan; for Hobbes the state is the church, and must legislate both law and doctrine. Hence for Hobbes there are precisely as many churches as states and no transnational church. Rousseau and Locke, on the other hand, create the liberal private/public distinction by disentangling church from state to precisely the opposite degree.
@stuartandabby

Thursday, 12 April 2012

Political Space and Nation-Worship

I have long contended that liberal nations like the United States by their nature demand a kind of worship. William T. Cavanaugh, in his essay From One City to Two offers a simple indictment of why this is true by contrasting the nature of the church with the nature of liberal polity. For any sized group, the problem of the one and the many needs to be resolved. In a group of pure individuals, there is no "group" to speak of; only a collection of persons. In a group where individuality cannot be expressed, there is again no "group," only a collective.
For Cavanaugh, the church overcomes the problem of the one and the many through mutual participation the unifying head of the church: Christ. But how can a nation founded on the doctrines of liberalism (basically: you can do whatever you want except impede on others' rights to do whatever they want) overcome the problem of the one and the many? Cavanaugh writes,
In the body of Christ, the many are gathered into one by means of each one's participation in the head of the body, who is Christ. The body of Christ has a transcendent reference, which, according to Paul, allows for diversity within unity (1 Cor. 12), since the interval between each one and God allows for a diversity of ways of participation in God's life. How will the modern liberal nation-state resolve the question of the one and the many in the body politic if participation in Christ is no longer the common goal? Liberalism is said to allow for a greater pluralism of ends: there are no longer two cities - the followers of Christ and the "world" - but one city with a diversity of individuals, each with the freedom to choose his or her own ends, whether to worship no god, one god, or twenty. But the longing for unity persists, along with the fear that diversity will produce conflict and tear the body politic apart. In the absence of a transcendent telos, plurality is not simply a promise but a threat, one that must be met by an even greater pull toward unity. But what could be the source of unity in a nation-state of diverse ends without a transcendent reference to participation in any single god? It can only be that the nation-state becomes an end in itself, a kind of transcendent reference needed to bind the many to each other.
This leads many social commentators to label Christianity as "dangerous" to the liberal social order, to the degree that Christians refuse to allow such a liberalism to underwrite their own beliefs. Cavanaugh here cites Martin Marty's recent text Politics, Religion, and the Common Good where Marty examines the case of Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1940s who were violently abused by nationalists for refusing to salute the American flag. Oddly, Marty uses this story to illustrate the dangers of religion in the public square, rather than the dangers of nationalism.
For liberals like Martin Marty, religions are divisive because they ask for a loyalty to something outside the one, in this case the U.S. itself. The same critique could be applied to a local loyalty that values state or town over country; the same intractable debate we have between federal and state governments. The same critique could be applied to indigenous tribes, who value their tribe loyalty (understandably) far above loyalty to the U.S. government. But all of these critiques depend on a specific understanding of the "political space."
In this arrangement, America consists of on nation-state, with one "public square" and one "common good" (48). Again, the many are subordinated to the one. Marty quotes with approval, "A republic prospers when many voices speak," and of course Marty believes religion is important as one such voice. However, when it comes to the common good, the many voices must give way to the unifying consensus.
Cavanaugh summarizes, "When space is configured this way, the unity of the one city will tend to overtake the multiple commitments of civil society, and the division of goods between eternal and temporal will not hold. The nation-state itself becomes a kind of religion."
In an upcoming post, I will examine Cavanaugh's alternative construction of social space. For now, I'll leave off with a couple of questions. Do you agree with Cavanaugh that the problem of the one and the many demands that the state install itself as an object of devotion? What real-world examples can you cite? How else could we understand public space, if not as a single public square, with a single common good to which all mediating points of view must be subordinated?

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

A Twitter Discussion on Open Theism

This morning my friend and Christian brother Tom sent me a link to a short audio clip of Al Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, where he discussed some recent comments John Piper made about the tornadoes that cut through parts of Indiana. Piper had said that the tornadoes were sent by God to warn people to repent. Piper is always catching heat for saying things like this. Greg Boyd is a theologian and professor who has written polemical responses to statements Piper made in the past, particularly after a tornado destroyed part of a church building where the ELCA had been holding meetings in which they stated that monogamous homosexual unions are not sinful. According to Piper, the tornado was a sign to the ELCA to stop approving of sin. Boyd responded with several polemical questions, such as:

Why does John discern a divine motive behind a damaged church steeple but not behind any other damage this tornado caused? For example, the roof of the Minneapolis Convention Center was damaged by this same tornado. Was God sending a warning by having his judging tornado damage this building? Or what about the damage cause by the other four tornadoes that struck the Twin Cities area around the same time? A middle school in North Branch was badly damaged, for example. Was this school more affirming toward gays than other schools in the area?

Now, Mohler agreed with Boyd in part, namely that Piper is perhaps incautious to read specific meanings into natural disasters. But Mohler disagrees more strongly with Boyd, in that Greg Boyd rejects the idea that God displays meticulous control over nature or human actions at all. Whereas Calvinists like Piper and Mohler believe God orders all things according to his will, Boyd believes that God is always reacting in the moment to circumstances as they arise. Where Calvinists and Arminians both teach that trusting God means knowing that he is in control of the future, Boyd is an "open theist," and teaches that trusting God means knowing that God is capable of handling any possible situation, even if the end of history isn't already wrapped up. Of tornadoes, Boyd writes,

I have an alternative interpretation of tornado behavior to offer. They have nothing to do with how pro-gay or how sinful people are and everything to do with where people happen to live. Tornadoes strike Oklahoma frequently because it’s located in a place where hot and cold air currents tend to collide frequently at certain times of the year. Much less frequently, the same thing happens in the Twin Cities. Why can’t we just leave it at that?

(For a more critical overview of open theism, see my post here.)

Mohler briefly described Boyd's perspective in the audio clip, then closed by stating how uncomfortable he would be if he viewed God that way. "Let me be honest," he said. "I could not sleep at night nor operate during the day if I did not believe that God is in control."

Following listening to Mohler's podcast, I tweeted at Tom to say that I didn't feel that Mohler really gets Boyd's position. Tom said that from what he's heard of Boyd, Mohler gets it perfectly, and that Boyd's position is scary. Then he said,

Lately I've seen people say God is doing the best He can given whatever. Presents a very weak view of God to say He is somehow limited in any area. Just as the Arminians limit God's ability in salvation. Boyd made a good argument for his views, but his view can't be supported from Scripture.

I was tempted to respond to the Arminian comment, but instead went after the last line. I said,

Ironic: that's how I feel about Calvinism. Logically coherent, and devoted to an abstract philosophy (drawn from Plato) about what God must be like in order to be "perfect", and then wrangling scripture into that mold. Taken straightforwardly I think scripture describes God as genuinely taking events as they happen, saying, "Perhaps this will lead them to repent."

(The rest of the dialogue I'll present in dialogue format.)

Tom: What of the prophets then? Some were told they would preach to deaf ears. If God didn't know or cause was it a guess? And, if God only knew the possibilities, does that mean that His Word failed to accomplish bringing about repentance?

Nic Don: God knew already the heart of those they wd be preaching to. Some of their hearts were hardened and they would never listen.

Tom: But in Boyd's view God knew the possibilities, not the outcome.So,God couldn't have told the prophets which outcome would happen.

ND: But in Boyd's view people can shut themselves off to God, so God cd know w/ certainty that they wd not respond. And of course Boyd agrees w/ the Arminian position that God's grace is resistible. Taken another way, God cd. certainly predict that SOME among a population wd not respond. I'm a dummy, and I cd predict that.

Tom: But, God said the people would not respond. Not that some wouldn't.

ND: I guess now is a good time to ask what passage we're discussing. #lol

Tom: I would have to look at each to remember for sure. Not an individual passage, thinking Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah being told this. I think they were all told similar.... The idea of God's grace being resistable doesn't work.Is He not strong enough2save any He wills?Is He unable2accomplish His will

ND: We'll have to agree to disagree about resistible/irresistible grace. That's just the Arminian/Calvinist divide speaking, and not unique to Boyd.

Tom: How about King David. It was prophesied in Genesis that Jesus would come of Judah. But, Saul was 1st king, of Benjamin. What if in the realm of possibility Saul had been a good king? Then David wouldnt be king and Messiah wouldnt have been of Judah. Did God not know which path Saul would go?

ND: Not 100% sure I follow, but the general view on messianic prophecy is that God ensures his results come about. It's about his omnipotence, not his ability to predict the future. And the usual metaphor is a chess grandmaster, who can state "Checkmate in four moves." He knows because he knows the game and his own mastery of it. Not because he knows the future. It's really beyond my ken to work it all through without specific texts and a bit of time. But I think we can agree that no position is evidently obvious, or no one wd disagree w/ it. We're all working w/ what we have, and I find Boyd's view as compelling as any.

Tom: If I were to stray from Calvinism I would side with the Lutheran view. Answers same q?s, but says some things are mystery. Doesn't attempt to fill in all the details, as Calvin did. Though, I think Scripture makes it clear enough to do so.

Tom: If God makes sure His will comes about, doesn't that mean He predestined it? Doesn't that eliminate free will?

ND: Great question! Boyd (and Arminians generally, incl. Wesley) aren't opposed to the idea of God predestining certain things. Boyd opposes the idea that ALL is predestined, but certainly believes some things are, including the cross and God's final victory. Likewise, Wesley believed that in certain cases, God DOES irresistibly draw individual Christians to salvation. He wd cite S/Paul.

Tom: Why would He predestine only some things? That still leaves the majority open to boast.

ND: Well, predestining some things isn't to avoid boasting, it's to ensure certain things happen. In Boyd's view (as in mine), there is no room for a person to boast of salvation, even if grace is resistible. You can't boast of giving in to God's overtures. What God does not predestine (for Boyd) is certain individuals being drawn to faith and others passed over.... Some passages seem to me clearly to support open theism. 2 Sam 24:12-16, for instance. God says, "You decide, and I'll do that." Or Exodus 4, when God says "“If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second." So either God was acting like he did not know what wd happen and deceiving Moses, or he genuinely did not know.

Tom: Pharoah is given as example in Romans 9 (possibly 10 or 11) of God hardening a man's heart.

ND: Sure on Pharoah, tho Exodus shows him hardening his heart first, and then God hardening it (as punishment?). But you still have that verse where God says, "Perhaps the first sign will convince him, or the second." And again you can explain it away, but the natural reading of the text is that God thinks the first sign might convince him. It's hard to be more utterly biblicist than the open theists. They're almost frustratingly literal in their interpretations.

Tom: I think the view of some salvations being predestined and others of free will is incosistent w/ Jn & Ephesians, perhaps others.

ND: Well, yeah, because you think the view of any being by free will is inconsistent with those passages.

Tom: I think I'm predestined to.

---

And after that the discussion tapered off. Hey, we're both busy guys, and it's not easy to have serious discussion in Twitter format. (It's even harder reconstructing the bloody thing.) But a mutual friend saw bits and pieces of the conversation and said she wished she had the attention span to try to go over the whole thing, so I decided to put this together.

What do you think? Does Greg Boyd's position about God's sovereignty sound scary? Does it sound more or less biblical than other readings? Does your Twitter timeline look basically like this?

-NDSR

Wednesday, 14 March 2012

John Wesley on "Being a Christian First"

John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist church. He never meant to found a separate movement, and until his dying day he insured that Methodism remained only a movement within the Anglican church. Nevertheless, the movement continued to move and developed its own organization and ordination.
Timothy Tennant is the President of Asbury Theological Seminary. In a recent blog post he reflected on how John Wesley models how Christians of all stripes must learn to reflect on the whole Christian tradition, and not focus myopically on their little branch. He said,
John Wesley models for us the power of learning from other Christian movements. He was a great student of the Reformation. He was a student of Puritanism. He was a student of pietism. He was a student of Eastern Orthodoxy. He was a student of the Patristics. Over the course of his writings he criticizes all of these movements, times and writers. But the “people called Methodist” also learned to glean the best from all these movements. The Methodist emphasis on experience (fourth plank of the quadrilateral) is clearly drawn from the German pietists. The Methodist emphasis on prevenient grace is drawn from the early Greek fathers of the church. Wesley’s emphasis on salvation by faith alone resonates fully with the Reformation, even while Wesley embraced so much of the “catholic” tradition. What a great model for us today. We are Christians first before we are Methodists or Baptists or Pentecostals. We must be good students of the whole movement, always learning, always listening and always reflecting.
Sounds just right to me.
What do you think? What have you learned from other traditions, and where have you allowed other traditions to influence or challenge your thinking? If you cannot think of an example, is that the result of a conscious decision, or might it reflect an isolated perspective?