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Re: Glenn Beck

Maybe its the longer warmer days that have me in more amicable spirits, but I couldn’t find a spark of anger when I heard Glenn Beck’s latest protest, encouraging people to leave churches that promote social justice — which all mainline churches do.

You know, Peter, I want to thank Glenn Beck more than scourge him. Maybe I’m banking too heavily on people’s ability to think rationally, but these are the comments for me that write him out. I can’t muster the anger to engage something so incredibly nonsensical. I can, however, see this as an opportunity to draw people’s attention to the term social justice, what it means and how it has become ideologically amorphous to the point that–as you so suitably put it–Glenn beck can throw sewage at it.

The term, though it has many manifestations in multiple socio-political arenas, essential entails an effort to correct those structures that allow for systemic and systematic poverty. Nothing, I would argue, seems more appropriate to the teachings of Jesus. Now, however, the term has become so common place that people confuse it for the likes of charity.

Currently President Obama, in full campaign form that has been absent for far too long, is urging the American people to support healthcare reform. Glenn Beck originally promised he would leave America if it passed. We can only hope, but as my grandfather used to say, “you can hope in one hand and…” I think you know the rest.

What it boils down to for me is classic fear–particularly the fear that accompanies change. For many, America has been a pretty secure place and a term like social justice remains anathema, as does health care reform. As long as I can pay the increasing premiums, why should I care about changing it? The end result is that a country banking on its prosperity will fight for an adulterated form of utilitarian security that neglects the less fortunate. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

Glenn Beck lives in a world of security, the lose of which makes his blonde hair stand on end. Social Justice endeavors on the side of liberty and equity. May we continue to fight that battle and graciously turn the other cheek to those that operate otherwise.

John Stewart takes on Glenn Beck… Again

Christianity Today, Beck hunting Jim Wallis now

Glenn Beck

Screenshot of Glenn Beck from politicsdaily.com

Screenshot of Glenn Beck from politicsdaily.com

Glenn Beck, ultraconservative infotainer and TV host, has recently decided that “social justice” is a code word for fascism. When I first heard this news, I couldn’t believe it was not a headline from the satirical newspaper The Onion. What tortured and specious logic could he possibly employ to literally link Adolf Hitler to Archbishop Oscar Romero? Apparently, the Nazis were for social justice. Never mind that anything the National Socialist Party in Germany may ever have said about the rights of the workers came directly atop a wave of antisemitism, xenophobia and nationalism. These can hardly be called the hallmarks of Theological Liberalism, Liberation Theology, Political Theology or any church-led movements for social justice. According to Beck’s “reasoning”, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stalin and Hitler belong in the same social movement.

In general, I try to steer clear of polemic. It rarely accomplishes much more than emotional inflammation and frankly, there’s an argument to be made that it is wholly inappropriate for either Quakers or Buddhists. Given my religious identification with both those groups, it seems that neither God nor the Dharma particularly wants me to get into what I’m about to do. But all things in moderation, including moderation, at least according to Mark Twain. I hope that I will be able to separate act from actor and belief from believer here, but also beg forgiveness if I don’t manage.

Glenn Beck’s program is a cancer upon society. He employs the worst kind of populist know-nothingism to justify his racist and classist thinking and he’s got a prime-time show on the most watched cable news network in America. His program is frankly the shame of our nation. We can be better than this and we must be better than this. Redistribution of wealth is not anathema to Christianity, as Beck subtly argues. It is in fact part and parcel of Christianity. What else would it mean to care for that which is of God in the least of our sisters and brothers on Earth? If we look to the book of Acts, we see not a proto-capitalist market economy, but an anarch0-syndicalist collective. If anything is anti-Christian in the sociopolitical world, it is in fact captialist market economics.

The time for meeting polemic with reasoned analysis has passed. It doesn’t work. You cannot send reason to meet unthinking passion. For every Glenn Beck, we need a Michael Moore. It pains me to say so, as a “good theological liberal”: I’m much more comfortable on the so-called high road, but it’s hard to be on that high road when the opposition is hurling filth from the sewers.

Remembering Religious Diversity

Rabbi Moses ben Maimon a/k/a Maimonides

Rabbi Moses ben Maimon a/k/a Maimonides

The New York Times features an op-ed piece from Andrew Baker this morning that should serve as a stirring reminder of the importance of shared religious heritage and diversity. It regards the difficulty of restoring the yeshiva and synagogue of Maimonides in Cairo, Egypt.

This is not, however, simply a story of how difficult it is to secure government funding for historical or architectural restoration. At least, it is not only that kind of a story. The story of restoring Maimonides’ yeshiva carries important messages about history and religious diversity. All in one building, we can see a microcosm of conflict between what we’ve dubbed a shining star of the modern Islamic state (that is, Egypt) and its troubled relationship with its own Jewish heritage.

Baker’s article aptly lays out the history of Maimonides and of the Jewish population of Cairo, so I will not belabor that history in this short article. I do want to point up the narrative nature of history here. We must endeavor to preserve the fact of humanity’s religious diversity in history from the narrative aims of a dominant state apparatus. This is not only true for the Islamic-Jewish tension in Egypt: it is equally true for the United States. We must continue to write humanity’s religious diversity back into the dominant narrative of history at every opportunity or we risk really and truly losing that rich expression of human longing for connection with the transcendent.

The religious aspect of health care

There certainly has been a lot of debate in the media over health care. While one could argue about a deontological claim to health insurance vs. a natural rights claim to health and welfare vs. a social contract theory vs. well… you get the picture.

One thing that isn’t explored as much is the role of spiritual counsel in the healing process. Peter Laarman has a good article up over at Religion Dispatches on just that topic. It’s definitely worth a read.

Guest Writer, Ashley Harness: JC of the LGBTQ

Was Jesus of Nazareth queer? Elton John says, goodbye yellow brick road; hello, gay Jesus. Our friend and peer Ashley Harnass is giddy about it:

I have always loved Elton John for his shoes (they recently inspired a purple platform heel purchase). But now I love him for his theology too. He just told the world Jesus was a “super-intelligent gay man.”

Of course, everyone is freaking out about it. The Catholic League is appalled that he called Jesus a “sexual deviant,” (their words, not Elton’s!).  And the Christian gays of England are all in a twit too. It’s a bit cheeky, I suppose, to call Jesus a fellow gay.

But as a queer seminarian stateside, I love that Elton John just put a big high-heeled footprint on Christianity. He claimed it as his own, as we all have the right to do.

After all, people have been indigenizing Jesus in their own cultures and communities for as long as Jesus has been around. It’s just that when those who are claiming Jesus in their image are in charge, we don’t call it indigenizing. We call it normal, the status quo. And thus, for example, we get a mainstream image of a Jesus who was white (even though the guy was from the Middle East).

As Gary Comstock in Gay Theology Without Apology wrote 1993, “The history of Christianity has shown that Jesus is up for grabs; and whoever is most powerful determines the prevailing image of Jesus.”

What Elton John did will not change the prevailing image of Jesus, either. But that’s not the point. What he did was add his voice to the cacophony of voices throughout history — from the first millennium through the Civil Rights era — that have claimed Jesus in their image and in doing so, named their own life experience as sacred. Perhaps Elton would fit best with the theologians of the 1960s and 1970s who named a Jesus who was Black, a Jesus who was a feminist, a Jesus who was… gay. They took him as their own.

If Jesus just happened to be a feminist queer, I’d be cool with that. But a generation beyond identity politics, for me the point is not that Jesus was actually any of these identities (besides, they are anachronistic when applied to biblical times). The point is that we too – ALL of us –  have a right to make a claim on the sacred, to call our experience of the world holy, to define our own vision of our religion and live it fully.

Thank you, Elton, for reminding us.

Check out Ashley Harness’s blog at Velvet Park.

Re: Cage Match Christology

Peter -

Hard words for some hard (bodied) Christians. First, I have to take offense that you would use that picture of my father in his twenties to represent your tough guy Jesus. Not cool.

I guess I’m just enamored with the simultaneous concretizing and exaggerating that’s happening here. We use the word “fighting” pretty frequently in our culture. Now it does not always have to do with actual fighting, i.e. fists, roundhouse kicks, and as the Cobra Kai were fond of saying, “SWEEP THE LEG!”  We use the word “fight” simply to mean to be involved in a struggle. We use it lightly, like, she’s fighting for a place in line, or I’m fighting to open this mayonnaise jar. But we all know that when we use fighting in those contexts we are being hyperbolic.

We’re not really fighting, as fighting intends violence. The thing is, maybe we have learned to be hyperbolic all the time, even with regard to our religiosity.  John Stewart and the Daily Show hysterically point out the exaggerated language of blogs - all of which connote acts of physical violence.

My question is, what happens when we forget that we’re being generous, metaphorical or exaggerative with our language? Do we end up living and acting in an exaggerated fashion also? Do we literalize and embody the exaggeration?

A second thought that I have is that fighting, moreover, is not, strictly speaking, a Jesus component; it’s a survival component. When someone’s survival is threatened, fighting is a human reaction. These ministers are using violence as a means to attract younger men, but they’re doing it out of a my “back’s against the wall” sensibility, I would judge. Not because it is at the core of the Gospel.  When one’s life is in question, its fight or flight time. These ministers have just chosen to indulge in the most rudimentary instinct for survival, literal fighting. So, they are not wrong in making the claim Jesus was a “fighter,” but they may want to take a step back and ask themselves, what was Jesus, the fighter, fighting for? What has always drawn me to Jesus, particularly through the parables, is the way he moves away from reactive, less admirable human instincts toward teachings of grace, forgiveness and wisdom – those things that I suppose are as feminine as Sophia, herself.

With regard to the Christology question, I’d agree with you. This is more eisegesis than exegesis. But a jacked up Jesus or muscular messiah isn’t new, especially in America. Last year, media was rife with the comparability of Jack Bauer, who would nobly withstand torture, with Jesus. This seems like another derivative of that masculine moral.

More on Fighting Faith:

NYTimes: “Who Would Jesus Smack Down?”
Evander Hollyfield beats wife for not tithing (enough)

Cage Match Christology

Jesus Christ, tough guy

Jesus Christ, tough guy

On February 1, the New York Times reported on an apparently growing segment of the nondenominational Christian world: mixed martial arts bouts. This is not to say that they’ve noticed very muscly men with Christian tattoos climbing into the ring. Rather, this is the story of how some congregations are using mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting to bring 18-34 year old men back into the pews. According to the Times article, the embrace of MMA ranges from showing bouts and talking about combat and fighting as a metaphor for actually training fighters and hosting bloodsport matches. Where to begin?

First, I want to acknowledge that trying to carve out any specifically pacifist Christology is not simple. Those dedicated to finding a Biblical excuse for violence love to point to Matthew 10:34 and Luke 22:36 to state that even Jesus knew that sometimes push would come to shove and if you couldn’t push or shove, you were in trouble. I won’t belabor that argument here, except to say that those two quotes stack up poorly against the reported actions of Jesus in the Gospels and the first few centuries of Christian resistance to militarism.

What is particularly troubling in this new Bloodsport Ecclesiology is its notion of anthropology and specifically masculinity. Rather than expand the repertoire of acceptable “male” behaviors to include such things as charity, forgiveness and gentleness, these leaders are reinforcing the same notions of masculine aggression that have given us generations of homophobia, spousal abuse, child abuse, war and–tautologically enough–MMA itself.

We ought not point to Jesus as an exemplar of only HALF of humanity but of the completion of all of humanity. Yes, there is aggression and affection present in all of us. There was both aggression and affection shown in the Gospel accounts of Jesus. If we follow the Chalcedonian formulation that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine both, we must allow for his having had the same aggressive drives as we have. That does not, however, mean that we are called to embrace those drives and pound the daylights out of one another.

Not too much further down the road of that embrace of aggression lies the notion that the victor in any physical confrontation had God on her or his side. Surely, if we believe in Christ crucified we cannot affirm that belief.

Holiday break

Yes, even irrepressible and intrepid bloggers get a holiday. So we figured we’d follow their lead.

The Wheat and The Chaff will return in the new year.
Happy Holidays, all!

A Priest or A Soldier

Joel Gretsch portraying Father Jack Landry

Joel Gretsch portraying Father Jack Landry

As part of the ongoing project that is The Wheat and The Chaff, I want to look not only at the news media’s interaction with religion but also at the popular media’s interaction with religion and religious themes. I owe a shout-out and a hat-tip to the excellent and engaging work of Natalie and Kathryn over at The Moth Chase. Please give them a read.

One of my favorite childhood TV shows was the miniseries/series/reunion TV movie “V”. In it, one watched a post-“Beastmaster” Marc Singer and a pre-“Nightmare on Elm Street” Robert Englund fight to save the Earth from a race of masquerading reptilian conquerors-from-beyond. Seriously.

The show has been re-launched and updated. The main plot seems to be the same: aliens promising peace arrive unexpectedly, some people suspect shenanigans, aliens are shown to be literal monsters, etc. This time there’s an interesting twist: one of our main “freedom fighters” is a Catholic priest.

The title of this post comes from a decision laid at the feet of Father Jack Landry: “You need to decide whether you’re a soldier or a priest”. This line is delivered after it’s revealed that Father Jack knows how to throw a punch because he did two tours in Iraq as an Army chaplain. He’s been running around for four episodes blowing things up and occasionally reflecting on what it means to his faith in God that we homo sapiens are not the only creatures capable of building a spaceship, but finally someone points out to him that there’s a choice involved.

The Ontological Question, theology of violence, military and imperial complicity, explosions, motorcycles and space aliens. This is a show that has it all.

Levity aside, I do think that the presentation of this particular character brings up some issues worth pondering. Does it make any difference to our belief in God that there may be other intelligent life in the universe? When do you put down the crucifix and pick up a gun?

As someone who prefers to conceive of “priestly freedom fighters” in the mold more of Oscar Romero, Ammon Hennacy, Thich Nhat Hanh and Jesus, I am pretty uncomfortable with the idea that violence and ministry can play nicely together. I think that the choice alluded to here is a deep and existential one, and I think that it may be one that goes unasked far too often. Can Christianity be true to itself and still ordain ministers who serve in uniform in areas of military conflict? Is the decision between being a “priest” and a “soldier” strictly either/or or can it be both/and?

Re: Dollar, Dollar Bills Y’all

Ah, the Prosperity Gospel. Let me get one thing out of the way before diving into the contents of the article Preston posted: I’m 100% against the Prosperity Gospel. My personal belief is that faithful adherence to Christianity calls us to question, if not absolutely reject, Capitalism. Accordingly, I am no friend of the Prosperity Gospel. I think it is a pernicious and decidedly un-Christian theology that lacks capacity for self-critique and meaningful reflection.

And I think that blaming it for the financial collapse is a horrific example of “blame-the-victim” scapegoating.

Yes, African-Americans and Latinos held more sub-prime mortgages than did whites and yes, African-Americans and Latinos are broadly represented in Prosperity churches. This is correlation, not causation. The holders of those toxic mortgages are not the people who originated the loans. They are not the people who profited from risky lending. We often hear the term “predatory lending” in these situations. The predators were the banks; the people in Prosperity churches were the prey. Quoting Rosin’s article about Pastor Garay’s congregation:

One other thing makes Garay’s church a compelling case study. From 2001 to 2007, while he was building his church, Garay was also a loan officer at two different mortgage companies. He was hired explicitly to reach out to the city’s growing Latino community, and Latinos, as it happened, were disproportionately likely to take out the sort of risky loans that later led to so many foreclosures. To many of his parishioners, Garay was not just a spiritual adviser, but a financial one as well.

In pointing this passage out, what I want to make clear is that it is dishonest to just blame a particular church or theology without looking at the relationship between that church/theology and capital markets. Rosin does a fine job of pointing out troubling aspects of Prosperity Gospel thinking but she leaves off any implications for or indictment of the markets in which Prosperity preachers operate. It borders on racism to lay blame for the sub-prime collapse at the feet of African-American and Latino borrowers while not mentioning the White bank executives who invented sub-prime mortgages in the first place.

None of the foregoing should be understood, however, as a defense of Prosperity Gospel’s claims about Christianity. I want only to point out that–theologically and sociologically speaking–Rosin has not sufficiently examined the issues before her. As to Prosperity preaching itself, I think it does enough damage on its own:

Once, I asked Garay how you would know for certain if God had told you to buy a house, and he answered like a roulette dealer. “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” And the other nine? “For them, there’s always another house.”

Pastor Garay has argued his way right into logical fallacy: the self-sealing argument. This is merely one example of many given in the article. Others include poor exegesis, proof-texting, torturous re-imaginings of the social messages of the Gospels, love of this-worldly status… I could go on, but that’s another article entirely.