New Evangelicals
December 9, 2011 10:02 PM Subscribe
New Evangelicals "Though public support for both major political parties is very low, one group of voters is usually exempted from this malaise: evangelicals. It’s assumed that at least these “values voters” are getting what they want. But we should look more carefully."
oh lord I hope so. (I am not a christian)
posted by edgeways at 10:16 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by edgeways at 10:16 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]
"So... liberation theology is making inroads into American evangelicalism, then?"
one would want to hope so, eh?
posted by tomswift at 10:17 PM on December 9, 2011
one would want to hope so, eh?
posted by tomswift at 10:17 PM on December 9, 2011
Yeah, as far as Christian theological movements go, I quite like liberation theology. I know it's considered heretical by some, but it seems to apply the concepts of the ideas preached by Jesus as passed down to us in the most literal, positive way.
I'm just a bit shocked that American evangelicalism might actually be taking it into itself and incorporating it. It seems a bit antithetical to the evangelical movement as I understand it.
So, if it's happening, hurrah!
posted by hippybear at 10:20 PM on December 9, 2011
I'm just a bit shocked that American evangelicalism might actually be taking it into itself and incorporating it. It seems a bit antithetical to the evangelical movement as I understand it.
So, if it's happening, hurrah!
posted by hippybear at 10:20 PM on December 9, 2011
As I read the article, the statement “a new kind of Christian social conscience.” was both encouraging and sad. I was thrilled to think that Christian thinking was moving in that direction, and sad that it had ever become anything other than that....
posted by tomswift at 10:21 PM on December 9, 2011
posted by tomswift at 10:21 PM on December 9, 2011
Well, it's been moving in that direction in a lot of countries... just not the US.
posted by hippybear at 10:22 PM on December 9, 2011
posted by hippybear at 10:22 PM on December 9, 2011
I'd just like the Evangelicals to get off the idea that the End Times are coming and back onto the idea that being a good compassionate person is something worth striving for.
posted by twoleftfeet at 10:23 PM on December 9, 2011 [18 favorites]
posted by twoleftfeet at 10:23 PM on December 9, 2011 [18 favorites]
I should add...
Because the idea of Liberation Theology taking a strong hold in Christianity in the US would result in a large movement against everything that has taken hold in the US as being part of being a True American.
With all the "USA is a Christian Nation" thing which seems to be going on these days, that would result in a huge upheaval to the status quo.
Disestablishmentarianism as a religious impulse pretty much goes with the whole OWS sentiment. And as we all know... we can't have that!
posted by hippybear at 10:26 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]
Because the idea of Liberation Theology taking a strong hold in Christianity in the US would result in a large movement against everything that has taken hold in the US as being part of being a True American.
With all the "USA is a Christian Nation" thing which seems to be going on these days, that would result in a huge upheaval to the status quo.
Disestablishmentarianism as a religious impulse pretty much goes with the whole OWS sentiment. And as we all know... we can't have that!
posted by hippybear at 10:26 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]
It’s assumed that at least these “values voters” are getting what they want.
Let's see: abortion is 100% legal, secularism is public policy, and pornography is everywhere. How are they getting what they want?
posted by Yakuman at 10:31 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]
Let's see: abortion is 100% legal, secularism is public policy, and pornography is everywhere. How are they getting what they want?
posted by Yakuman at 10:31 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]
How are they getting what they want?
That is what they want. It's just not what they say, or feel, they want.
posted by maxwelton at 10:42 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]
That is what they want. It's just not what they say, or feel, they want.
posted by maxwelton at 10:42 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]
Single Link Wishful Thinking Op-Ed. There's ZERO evidence these 'values voters' have taken any action to challenge the Republican Party Machine or are likely to. And I know a few people who seem to fall into the category the writer is trying to describe. Which is probably a few more than anybody in the NYT's Manhattan White Tower know. Why should this be taken any more seriously than any other Times "Lifestyle" piece?
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:49 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:49 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]
Why should this be taken any more seriously than any other Times "Lifestyle" piece?
Um, Marcia Pally, who wrote the piece is not a Times staffer. She's an academic who just published a book about the subject -- which is presumably why she was asked to write this opinion piece.
Not saying she's necessarily right. But your "it's in the Times so obviously it's blinkered and ignorant" sounds pretty kneejerk.
posted by neroli at 11:10 PM on December 9, 2011 [5 favorites]
Um, Marcia Pally, who wrote the piece is not a Times staffer. She's an academic who just published a book about the subject -- which is presumably why she was asked to write this opinion piece.
Not saying she's necessarily right. But your "it's in the Times so obviously it's blinkered and ignorant" sounds pretty kneejerk.
posted by neroli at 11:10 PM on December 9, 2011 [5 favorites]
I'll believe it when I see it. Evangelicals are virtually synonymous with Republicans. And on the rare occasions they are not, they are even worse.
The big problem with evangelicals is rooted in the fact that they are evangelical. This requires a degree of fervent and unquestioning zealotry that vilifies reason. It demands a foundation upon which to build civilization that is superstitious and backward. News that evangelicals are turning away from partisan politics seems like good news, and I'll take what I can get. But has me worried they'll poison other issues they touch using the same self assured arrogance with which they poison politics.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:28 PM on December 9, 2011 [11 favorites]
The big problem with evangelicals is rooted in the fact that they are evangelical. This requires a degree of fervent and unquestioning zealotry that vilifies reason. It demands a foundation upon which to build civilization that is superstitious and backward. News that evangelicals are turning away from partisan politics seems like good news, and I'll take what I can get. But has me worried they'll poison other issues they touch using the same self assured arrogance with which they poison politics.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:28 PM on December 9, 2011 [11 favorites]
The "Religious left" has always been there, is there hard data that this is changing for most evangelicals? otherwise it's just an interesting side note.
posted by delmoi at 11:28 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by delmoi at 11:28 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]
Well, Jesus was a liberal, and there's certainly a void in the left of American politics not being filled by the conservative party (Democrats) or the dangerously insane party (GOP).
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:29 PM on December 9, 2011 [8 favorites]
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:29 PM on December 9, 2011 [8 favorites]
The big problem with evangelicals is rooted in the fact that they are evangelical. This requires a degree of fervent and unquestioning zealotry that vilifies reason. It demands a foundation upon which to build civilization that is superstitious and backward.
This is a complete load of horse shit. You don't even know what evangelical means. It's not at all synonymous with fundamentalism or zealotry.
posted by empath at 11:46 PM on December 9, 2011 [17 favorites]
This is a complete load of horse shit. You don't even know what evangelical means. It's not at all synonymous with fundamentalism or zealotry.
posted by empath at 11:46 PM on December 9, 2011 [17 favorites]
There's ZERO evidence these 'values voters' have taken any action to challenge the Republican Party Machine or are likely to.
I'm not sure what you mean by "challenging the Republican Party Machine," but here is a bit of polling evidence from Pew about shifts in religious voting. White evangelicals made about a five point shift to the Democratic candidate from 2004 to 2008. Since white evangelicals represent about 21% of the electorate, that means those five points represent a migration of 1% of the total electorate. When elections are pretty close those kinds of numbers potentially make a big difference. Maybe the shift is just noisy data, or maybe it had more to do with the candidate being Obama in 2008 and Kerry in 2004 (both of which are plausible, I think), but then again, maybe this is the beginning of a trend among white evangelicals. If another 1% of the electorate leaves the Republicans for the Democrats in 2012, that will be bad news for the Republicans.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 11:51 PM on December 9, 2011
I'm not sure what you mean by "challenging the Republican Party Machine," but here is a bit of polling evidence from Pew about shifts in religious voting. White evangelicals made about a five point shift to the Democratic candidate from 2004 to 2008. Since white evangelicals represent about 21% of the electorate, that means those five points represent a migration of 1% of the total electorate. When elections are pretty close those kinds of numbers potentially make a big difference. Maybe the shift is just noisy data, or maybe it had more to do with the candidate being Obama in 2008 and Kerry in 2004 (both of which are plausible, I think), but then again, maybe this is the beginning of a trend among white evangelicals. If another 1% of the electorate leaves the Republicans for the Democrats in 2012, that will be bad news for the Republicans.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 11:51 PM on December 9, 2011
(which isn't to say that any form of Christianity is rational, but "Evangelical" is a broad category that goes from Pat Robertson to Martin Luther King. You can't throw all of them in the same bucket).
posted by empath at 11:52 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by empath at 11:52 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]
You can't throw all of them in the same bucket.
What about the "evangelical" bucket? ;)
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 11:53 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]
What about the "evangelical" bucket? ;)
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 11:53 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]
I was replying to 2n2222's grotesque mischaracterization of them.
posted by empath at 11:55 PM on December 9, 2011
posted by empath at 11:55 PM on December 9, 2011
Yes, I know. Poor excuse for a joke on my part.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:05 AM on December 10, 2011
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:05 AM on December 10, 2011
I doubt that Christian democracy, even in its current neoliberalism-friendly European incarnation, will be able to get any mindshare in the U.S., much less liberation theology.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:24 AM on December 10, 2011
posted by Apocryphon at 12:24 AM on December 10, 2011
The big problem with evangelicals is rooted in the fact that they are evangelical.
This is actually the core of all of the issues surround the interactions between evangelicals and politics. We talk of negative and positive liberty, freedoms to and freedoms from. And evangelicalism makes a very fuzzy boundary between these. They want freedom from persecution in its most mundane forms, even if only perceptive (i.e. Christmas), but freedom to freely impose their beliefs. It's not what the article is about, but there is a major problemo - probably THE major problemo - with the future of how religion plays out in this country where a growing number of people abide by a religion wherein its followers really truly care about the non-believers, in a very real loving sense, and that is what calls them to be intolerant their beliefs.
This is a complete load of horse shit. You don't even know what evangelical means. It's not at all synonymous with fundamentalism or zealotry.
Well, it is and it isn't. And in part, this could turn into a debate over terms. Of course, we can't talk about all of them as if they are all the same. Hell, I almost - almost - convinced my father to vote for Obama the last election, and he is an elder in the Evangelical Free Church of America, the church in which I group up. Fundamentalism and zealotry are contentious terms even with their own eponymous movements. We (growing up) used to look down on those people who were forced to wear long skirts and white blouses and who weren't allowed to dance and wore their hair up as 'fundamentalists,' because, hell, we were allowed to wear blue jeans - we didn't interpret the bible that literally. But we sure as hell didn't let women hold leadership positions in the church, let alone allow homosexuals to marry! The point is: the boundaries between fundamentalism, evangelicism - even zealotry- are very fuzzy.
Now, as for the NYtimes article and the political wont of the E-Free; it is utterly split and fractured, as the article rightly contends. I think the truth is that evangelicals are torn. Many of them recognize that the freedoms they enjoy are directly because of the separation of political powers from religious influence - they know this, and yet it is at odds with their core beliefs about saving non-believers from Hell. It is a very complicated situation to be in, and there is great disagreement amongst evangelicals about how to proceed, how to vote. They are also, as the article nods to, cognizant of their obligation to do things like help the less fortunate, etc - things that tend to be democratic values, at least in the political sphere. It does not put them in an easy place, and there is a lot of battle within the movement about how to proceed. The fact that, generally, the movement does not unify so easily behind any one political movement is why things like the Tea Party have happened - which has further split the evangelical vote.
I know many evangelicals who vote almost strictly with regard to abortion and gay rights, and everything else is just baggage to take along and deal with later. Others have a more nuanced perspective. It comes down to a great balancing act of the divisiveness betwixt one's religious views and the political options.
I know it's easy to say that, hey, everything is much more complex and individual than filing all these people under one movement lends itself to, but it is actually just the way it is, natch. One thing I will say in defense of the evangelical christians is that they do not take their vote lightly - the weight of eternal judgment falls on them with regard to their decision.
What I think we're left with at the end of the day, and I think what the article portends as well, is that the evangelical vote is more open than most people think. It isn't cut and dry. It is not a hateful, unthinking population that will just vote for the most conservative. And we see this with the fiasco that is the republican nomination proceedings happening now - if you get a bunch of people to basically agree on some hot-button topics, like abortion and so forth, the evangelicals start to split and get rather fractured amongst themselves after that.
There are ignorant democrats, as there are ignorant evangelicals, and the other way around. It would be interesting to see what a purely political realm would look like, but evangelicals, whose worldview will, by its very nature and philosophy, ultimately favor its religious implications over any purely political perspectives. They cannot separate the two, for that is antithetical to the philosophy of what it is to be evangelical. It isn't a great thing, but then again, the less religious inclined among us cannot attempt to eradicate such a thing without reducing ourselves to a similar level of zealotry.
There is no answer to this. It is best, as it seems the article in some ways alludes to, to appeal to things like economic justice and environmental conservation, and to try and find what common ground there is. The end.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:52 AM on December 10, 2011 [20 favorites]
This is actually the core of all of the issues surround the interactions between evangelicals and politics. We talk of negative and positive liberty, freedoms to and freedoms from. And evangelicalism makes a very fuzzy boundary between these. They want freedom from persecution in its most mundane forms, even if only perceptive (i.e. Christmas), but freedom to freely impose their beliefs. It's not what the article is about, but there is a major problemo - probably THE major problemo - with the future of how religion plays out in this country where a growing number of people abide by a religion wherein its followers really truly care about the non-believers, in a very real loving sense, and that is what calls them to be intolerant their beliefs.
This is a complete load of horse shit. You don't even know what evangelical means. It's not at all synonymous with fundamentalism or zealotry.
Well, it is and it isn't. And in part, this could turn into a debate over terms. Of course, we can't talk about all of them as if they are all the same. Hell, I almost - almost - convinced my father to vote for Obama the last election, and he is an elder in the Evangelical Free Church of America, the church in which I group up. Fundamentalism and zealotry are contentious terms even with their own eponymous movements. We (growing up) used to look down on those people who were forced to wear long skirts and white blouses and who weren't allowed to dance and wore their hair up as 'fundamentalists,' because, hell, we were allowed to wear blue jeans - we didn't interpret the bible that literally. But we sure as hell didn't let women hold leadership positions in the church, let alone allow homosexuals to marry! The point is: the boundaries between fundamentalism, evangelicism - even zealotry- are very fuzzy.
Now, as for the NYtimes article and the political wont of the E-Free; it is utterly split and fractured, as the article rightly contends. I think the truth is that evangelicals are torn. Many of them recognize that the freedoms they enjoy are directly because of the separation of political powers from religious influence - they know this, and yet it is at odds with their core beliefs about saving non-believers from Hell. It is a very complicated situation to be in, and there is great disagreement amongst evangelicals about how to proceed, how to vote. They are also, as the article nods to, cognizant of their obligation to do things like help the less fortunate, etc - things that tend to be democratic values, at least in the political sphere. It does not put them in an easy place, and there is a lot of battle within the movement about how to proceed. The fact that, generally, the movement does not unify so easily behind any one political movement is why things like the Tea Party have happened - which has further split the evangelical vote.
I know many evangelicals who vote almost strictly with regard to abortion and gay rights, and everything else is just baggage to take along and deal with later. Others have a more nuanced perspective. It comes down to a great balancing act of the divisiveness betwixt one's religious views and the political options.
I know it's easy to say that, hey, everything is much more complex and individual than filing all these people under one movement lends itself to, but it is actually just the way it is, natch. One thing I will say in defense of the evangelical christians is that they do not take their vote lightly - the weight of eternal judgment falls on them with regard to their decision.
What I think we're left with at the end of the day, and I think what the article portends as well, is that the evangelical vote is more open than most people think. It isn't cut and dry. It is not a hateful, unthinking population that will just vote for the most conservative. And we see this with the fiasco that is the republican nomination proceedings happening now - if you get a bunch of people to basically agree on some hot-button topics, like abortion and so forth, the evangelicals start to split and get rather fractured amongst themselves after that.
There are ignorant democrats, as there are ignorant evangelicals, and the other way around. It would be interesting to see what a purely political realm would look like, but evangelicals, whose worldview will, by its very nature and philosophy, ultimately favor its religious implications over any purely political perspectives. They cannot separate the two, for that is antithetical to the philosophy of what it is to be evangelical. It isn't a great thing, but then again, the less religious inclined among us cannot attempt to eradicate such a thing without reducing ourselves to a similar level of zealotry.
There is no answer to this. It is best, as it seems the article in some ways alludes to, to appeal to things like economic justice and environmental conservation, and to try and find what common ground there is. The end.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:52 AM on December 10, 2011 [20 favorites]
*apologies for some grammatical things.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:54 AM on December 10, 2011
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:54 AM on December 10, 2011
Kind of surprised not to see a shout-out to Jim Wallis in this.
posted by naoko at 1:30 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by naoko at 1:30 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
where once there was the appearance of an evangelical movement that sang out in one voice, there is now a robust polyphony.
always been there. it all depends on what gets coverage. in other words, you hear what you listen for.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 2:36 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
always been there. it all depends on what gets coverage. in other words, you hear what you listen for.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 2:36 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
naoko - people like Wallis (and Shane Claibourne, and the 'new monastics', and Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell etc.et.) are kind of emblematic of what this movement really is. They are very, very conservative politically, more or less hateful of gays, and more or less suspicious of women who take any role but SAHM...(with people like Driscoll on the 'more' side and people like Bell on the 'less' side, to be sure, but really it's just harder and softer versions of the same thing.) In all cases, the line seems to be that the church maintains the same stance on these issues as it has since the 80s, the members are expected to vote Republican and actively support Republicans, but the hard line stance is spoken about less in public, to make the members seem more mainstream. This helps them to attract and retain younger converts, particularly educated urban and suburban families in the 'sweet spot' for lifelong religious conversion - just had or about to have their first child - who are (like most people in their 20s and 30s) nominally more 'tolerant' than the generation before them.
Before the recession, the general strategy for doing this type of marketing was to focus your social justice efforts on Africa, in places where these churches can use aid to impose the values they can't impose at home. So they get the young members fired up to support feeding the global poor or treating AIDS, and then deliver social services only to those recipients willing to embrace their faith and politics. The young members feel good and are therefore retained- they are helping Africa, just like Jesus would have! The church builds its power base abroad (see the rise of anti-gay legislation in Uganda, Nigeria, etc.) while maximizing the number of its high-lifetime-value 'customers' at home. Usually, this works out well for the coffers - the social justice stuff can be low cost (delivered via 'partner churches' on the ground), and young converts are money-spinners over their lifetimes. It's the religious/political equivalent of losing money on a Kindle to sell more e-books.
Since the recession, this same strategy has been transferred home to the US - an even sweeter deal, as the churches involved get both the high-lifetime-value parishioners they want ("Look! Our church is different: it may be conservative politically, but it helps the deserving poor!") and a crack at local-area voters who need the help, and have to put up with the politics and preaching to get it. Every one of them they can convince to embrace and vote for the conservative message is an extra bonus. Meanwhile, the recipients of church charity provide a narrative ("I was so irresponsible and just living for myself before I found Jesus through the soup kitchen here in town. The church was the only thing that could have helped me get my life together!") that underpins the younger converts' embrace of the conservative line on 'welfare' (the idea that churches and private groups should aid only the 'deserving' poor.)
None of the above, btw, is meant to condemn the people in the pews or those young converts - they mean well and honestly believe they are doing God's work, and are trying to do good. That's why this ploy works so well.
posted by Wylla at 2:52 AM on December 10, 2011 [16 favorites]
Before the recession, the general strategy for doing this type of marketing was to focus your social justice efforts on Africa, in places where these churches can use aid to impose the values they can't impose at home. So they get the young members fired up to support feeding the global poor or treating AIDS, and then deliver social services only to those recipients willing to embrace their faith and politics. The young members feel good and are therefore retained- they are helping Africa, just like Jesus would have! The church builds its power base abroad (see the rise of anti-gay legislation in Uganda, Nigeria, etc.) while maximizing the number of its high-lifetime-value 'customers' at home. Usually, this works out well for the coffers - the social justice stuff can be low cost (delivered via 'partner churches' on the ground), and young converts are money-spinners over their lifetimes. It's the religious/political equivalent of losing money on a Kindle to sell more e-books.
Since the recession, this same strategy has been transferred home to the US - an even sweeter deal, as the churches involved get both the high-lifetime-value parishioners they want ("Look! Our church is different: it may be conservative politically, but it helps the deserving poor!") and a crack at local-area voters who need the help, and have to put up with the politics and preaching to get it. Every one of them they can convince to embrace and vote for the conservative message is an extra bonus. Meanwhile, the recipients of church charity provide a narrative ("I was so irresponsible and just living for myself before I found Jesus through the soup kitchen here in town. The church was the only thing that could have helped me get my life together!") that underpins the younger converts' embrace of the conservative line on 'welfare' (the idea that churches and private groups should aid only the 'deserving' poor.)
None of the above, btw, is meant to condemn the people in the pews or those young converts - they mean well and honestly believe they are doing God's work, and are trying to do good. That's why this ploy works so well.
posted by Wylla at 2:52 AM on December 10, 2011 [16 favorites]
They want freedom from persecution in its most mundane forms, even if only perceptive (i.e. Christmas), but freedom to freely impose their beliefs.
How do you keep a brush that broad from snapping under it's own weight? Is it like carbon fiber or something?
There is nothing about evangelism that requires you to be a self indulgent prick, even if many who self identify as evangelicals are, in fact, self indulgent pricks. It has not always been this way. From a truly fundamental PoV (as opposed to the "I'm going to pick and choose quotes so God is always on my side" school of theology) the one place in the bible where it was really clearly laid out who sucketh not in the eyes of the Lord, it was all about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the imprisoned and so on. When the topic came around to "Lord, when you hungry, naked, thirsty, etc.?" the response was basically, "Don't be a kiss ass."
If you're going to get your underwear all knotted because some hippie type has the gall to stand on a hillside in public and say "Blessed are the cheese makers" (or whatever), I think you kind of waive the right to be all angry about people wanting to impose their beliefs.
But this in now way makes anyone who is trying to impose their own belief not be a self indulgent prick.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:31 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
How do you keep a brush that broad from snapping under it's own weight? Is it like carbon fiber or something?
There is nothing about evangelism that requires you to be a self indulgent prick, even if many who self identify as evangelicals are, in fact, self indulgent pricks. It has not always been this way. From a truly fundamental PoV (as opposed to the "I'm going to pick and choose quotes so God is always on my side" school of theology) the one place in the bible where it was really clearly laid out who sucketh not in the eyes of the Lord, it was all about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the imprisoned and so on. When the topic came around to "Lord, when you hungry, naked, thirsty, etc.?" the response was basically, "Don't be a kiss ass."
If you're going to get your underwear all knotted because some hippie type has the gall to stand on a hillside in public and say "Blessed are the cheese makers" (or whatever), I think you kind of waive the right to be all angry about people wanting to impose their beliefs.
But this in now way makes anyone who is trying to impose their own belief not be a self indulgent prick.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:31 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
So... liberation theology is making inroads into American evangelicalism, then?
No, and for two reasons. First, a lot of the evangelical types being discussed in the article, including their leaders, don't really read all that much. Or if they do, it's not the sort of thing that will lead them to actually engage with existing theological or philosophical traditions or discussions. They may have some sympathies or goals which look similar to liberation theology, but it's an organic, home-grown sympathy not connected to liberation theology as an intellectual tradition. This shouldn't be too surprising, because care for the poor has always sort of been a thing in Christianity, you know?
But second, and perhaps more importantly, liberation theology as an intellectual tradition was strongly criticized, at the time (1970s-ish), for being basically Marxism with some Christianity glommed on afterward. Or vice versa, which isn't necessarily an improvement. In essence, liberation theology has a pretty particular political program, and most theologians, even those sympathetic to the movement's practical goals, wound up saying something to the effect of "Look, maybe we do need to spend more time thinking about and caring for the poor, but that doesn't necessarily lead us to Marxism, which has its own problems." A tendency towards violent revolution being a kind of inherent possibility in Marxist thought, this understandably made a lot of Christians uncomfortable.
I think what's really happening here is the break-up of what was always a sort of unnatural alliance between American Christendom and the political right. As the article observes, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even the most theologically conservative Christians were, by today's standards, downright progressive in their temporal politics, taking a dim view of big business, banking institutions, and the political establishment in general. Then, all of a sudden, starting around the 1940s (or a bit earlier), theologically conservative types were almost entirely aligned with politically conservative types. I've floated the thesis before that this had a lot to do with the rise of international communism, which was both politically leftist and vitriolically atheistic, creating the impetus for a domestic political alliance that has lasted the better part of a century. Islam has kind-of-sort-of stepped into this role, which explains a lot of the continued support for the GOP during the Bush years, but as the idea of an existential threat from Islam fades--and as the whole country gets sick to freaking death of these interminable wars--that's not really working anymore. So without a really strong external motivation to keep the two groups together, evangelicals are finding that they don't really like corporatist, aristocratic politics all that much.
This leaves them* in a strange position. This is a group of people that cares deeply about what the Bible says. And hey, maybe the Bible doesn't really prescribe the contemporary politically conservative project after all. But the thing is, it doesn't prescribe the progressive program either. The New Testament explicitly talks about politics only a bare handful of times, if that, and never even approaches what could be called a political platform. Quite the contrary actually. "My kingdom is not of this world," would seem to be the biggest theme there. When Paul talks about politics, he basically says "Keep your head down and submit to the authorities, because they wouldn't be there if God didn't want them to be. If you do well, you have nothing to fear, because either 1) they'll leave you alone, or 2) you'll suffer for righteousness' sake, which is no bad thing." Yeah, that's the stuff out of which revolutions are made, I tell you what.
This works out equally badly for people on the Right and the Left. For the Right, it has to be said that there's really no place in the New Testament where there's much talk about enforcing moral standards by political means. If anything, there's an explicit message in Revelation, the gist of which is "Look, the state is going to do all kinds of morally awful stuff, and may actually be inherently opposed to the rule of God. Don't get worked up about it." The idea that the state can be used as a means of enforcing theological virtue is simply never addressed.
But for the Left, things may actually be worse. First-century Palestine was a nation under military occupation. Parts of it were actually in three different Roman provinces (Iudea, Syria, and Arabia Petraea), and there were Roman legions specifically dedicated to keeping the Jews in line. Roman soldiers could and did demand that random people carry soldiers' packs for a mile at a time, and tax collection was explicitly extortive. The sick, the poor, orphans, and widows were basically cast off. But did Jesus act to do much about this? Not really. He fed the hungry and healed the sick, but as soon as anyone tried to co-opt that into a political program, he left. Really, look in John 6. Jesus feeds the five thousand, and they're all like "Hey, this guy needs to be king!" This was, in all likelihood, not simply because Jesus was a groovy guy. This was because, with this guy, the logistical problems of mounting an army to throw out the Roman occupiers were suddenly solved. Not only could he keep an army fed, he could heal the wounded! If Jesus wanted to effect a change in the power structure of first-century Palestine, if he wanted to end world hunger and cure preventible diseases, this was entirely within his power. And he never, ever, did it. In fact, when asked to do so, he refused. He had no interest whatsoever in effecting political change. And when Paul and the other writers of the New Testament briefly touch on what we now view as oppressive political structures (slavery, etc.) the message is always to serve well where you are without resisting. You simply can't predicate any kind of leftist political vision on the message of the New Testament, no matter how hard people try to do so.
The result? We've got a group of people who care deeply about what the Bible says struggling with the fact that the Bible may not actually say anything about politics. At least not in such a way that would permit one to say "This is what God wants for our political life." What then? Well... it turns out that this is actually a position that has existed for a long time in the Christian tradition. The Lutherans call it the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, but it's really an Augustinian idea that goes all the way back to The City of God, which deals with the question asked by Tertullian in the second century: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Any answer other than "Nothing!" which is actually an answer people like the Anabaptists and hermetic types give, requires some pretty careful argumentation, and the major confessional traditions--Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Orthodoxy--have all answered the question in slightly different but at least mutually comprehensible ways.
But remember, we're talking about a group of people that has, by and large, absolutely no connection with their own intellectual tradition, let alone any other. They're asking these questions as if no one has ever asked them before. The resulting answers are fragmented, confused, and quite frequently heretical, as people go about reinventing the wheel and coming across the same old obvious heresies that the Church dealt with two thousand years ago. I mean, seriously, Rob Bell's schtick is so bloody Gnostic it's not even funny, and a huge chunk of evangelical churches have been downright Pelegian for decades. So we get intellectually inconsistent answers, many motivated far more by sentiment than by theology or even political philosophy.
So yes, evangelicalism is increasingly fractured. There seem, largely, to be two basic options. The first is what seems to be happening to a majority of evangelical churches, i.e. they spin completely out of control theologically and basically turn into moralistic therapeutic deism, a term coined by a Notre Dame sociologist about five years ago. Politically, this means that a lot of them are going to become more progressive, as their intellectual and theological commitments increasingly match those of secular culture. The other is that they rediscover their theological heritage and become increasingly politically agnostic. One example is the young, restless, Reformed phenomenon in the Reformed tradition, but Catholicism and Lutheranism are experiencing similar movements. A lot of evangelicals are, historically, from the Reformed tradition, so a lot of evangelicalism as such is moving that direction, e.g. the transformation in the Southern Baptists over the past few decades.
The only concrete prediction one can make is that evangelicals are going to become an increasingly less reliable voting block, potentially dependent far more on the merits of individual candidates than any easily recognizable political ideology as such. In a time when elections are increasingly close and the political environment is increasingly partisan, one cannot even begin to guess how this is going to play out.
*I might even say "us" here. While I don't consider myself an evangelical, for theological reasons, I am a theologically-conservative Christian. Evangelicals are actually to theologically liberal for my lights.
posted by valkyryn at 5:34 AM on December 10, 2011 [41 favorites]
No, and for two reasons. First, a lot of the evangelical types being discussed in the article, including their leaders, don't really read all that much. Or if they do, it's not the sort of thing that will lead them to actually engage with existing theological or philosophical traditions or discussions. They may have some sympathies or goals which look similar to liberation theology, but it's an organic, home-grown sympathy not connected to liberation theology as an intellectual tradition. This shouldn't be too surprising, because care for the poor has always sort of been a thing in Christianity, you know?
But second, and perhaps more importantly, liberation theology as an intellectual tradition was strongly criticized, at the time (1970s-ish), for being basically Marxism with some Christianity glommed on afterward. Or vice versa, which isn't necessarily an improvement. In essence, liberation theology has a pretty particular political program, and most theologians, even those sympathetic to the movement's practical goals, wound up saying something to the effect of "Look, maybe we do need to spend more time thinking about and caring for the poor, but that doesn't necessarily lead us to Marxism, which has its own problems." A tendency towards violent revolution being a kind of inherent possibility in Marxist thought, this understandably made a lot of Christians uncomfortable.
I think what's really happening here is the break-up of what was always a sort of unnatural alliance between American Christendom and the political right. As the article observes, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even the most theologically conservative Christians were, by today's standards, downright progressive in their temporal politics, taking a dim view of big business, banking institutions, and the political establishment in general. Then, all of a sudden, starting around the 1940s (or a bit earlier), theologically conservative types were almost entirely aligned with politically conservative types. I've floated the thesis before that this had a lot to do with the rise of international communism, which was both politically leftist and vitriolically atheistic, creating the impetus for a domestic political alliance that has lasted the better part of a century. Islam has kind-of-sort-of stepped into this role, which explains a lot of the continued support for the GOP during the Bush years, but as the idea of an existential threat from Islam fades--and as the whole country gets sick to freaking death of these interminable wars--that's not really working anymore. So without a really strong external motivation to keep the two groups together, evangelicals are finding that they don't really like corporatist, aristocratic politics all that much.
This leaves them* in a strange position. This is a group of people that cares deeply about what the Bible says. And hey, maybe the Bible doesn't really prescribe the contemporary politically conservative project after all. But the thing is, it doesn't prescribe the progressive program either. The New Testament explicitly talks about politics only a bare handful of times, if that, and never even approaches what could be called a political platform. Quite the contrary actually. "My kingdom is not of this world," would seem to be the biggest theme there. When Paul talks about politics, he basically says "Keep your head down and submit to the authorities, because they wouldn't be there if God didn't want them to be. If you do well, you have nothing to fear, because either 1) they'll leave you alone, or 2) you'll suffer for righteousness' sake, which is no bad thing." Yeah, that's the stuff out of which revolutions are made, I tell you what.
This works out equally badly for people on the Right and the Left. For the Right, it has to be said that there's really no place in the New Testament where there's much talk about enforcing moral standards by political means. If anything, there's an explicit message in Revelation, the gist of which is "Look, the state is going to do all kinds of morally awful stuff, and may actually be inherently opposed to the rule of God. Don't get worked up about it." The idea that the state can be used as a means of enforcing theological virtue is simply never addressed.
But for the Left, things may actually be worse. First-century Palestine was a nation under military occupation. Parts of it were actually in three different Roman provinces (Iudea, Syria, and Arabia Petraea), and there were Roman legions specifically dedicated to keeping the Jews in line. Roman soldiers could and did demand that random people carry soldiers' packs for a mile at a time, and tax collection was explicitly extortive. The sick, the poor, orphans, and widows were basically cast off. But did Jesus act to do much about this? Not really. He fed the hungry and healed the sick, but as soon as anyone tried to co-opt that into a political program, he left. Really, look in John 6. Jesus feeds the five thousand, and they're all like "Hey, this guy needs to be king!" This was, in all likelihood, not simply because Jesus was a groovy guy. This was because, with this guy, the logistical problems of mounting an army to throw out the Roman occupiers were suddenly solved. Not only could he keep an army fed, he could heal the wounded! If Jesus wanted to effect a change in the power structure of first-century Palestine, if he wanted to end world hunger and cure preventible diseases, this was entirely within his power. And he never, ever, did it. In fact, when asked to do so, he refused. He had no interest whatsoever in effecting political change. And when Paul and the other writers of the New Testament briefly touch on what we now view as oppressive political structures (slavery, etc.) the message is always to serve well where you are without resisting. You simply can't predicate any kind of leftist political vision on the message of the New Testament, no matter how hard people try to do so.
The result? We've got a group of people who care deeply about what the Bible says struggling with the fact that the Bible may not actually say anything about politics. At least not in such a way that would permit one to say "This is what God wants for our political life." What then? Well... it turns out that this is actually a position that has existed for a long time in the Christian tradition. The Lutherans call it the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, but it's really an Augustinian idea that goes all the way back to The City of God, which deals with the question asked by Tertullian in the second century: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Any answer other than "Nothing!" which is actually an answer people like the Anabaptists and hermetic types give, requires some pretty careful argumentation, and the major confessional traditions--Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Orthodoxy--have all answered the question in slightly different but at least mutually comprehensible ways.
But remember, we're talking about a group of people that has, by and large, absolutely no connection with their own intellectual tradition, let alone any other. They're asking these questions as if no one has ever asked them before. The resulting answers are fragmented, confused, and quite frequently heretical, as people go about reinventing the wheel and coming across the same old obvious heresies that the Church dealt with two thousand years ago. I mean, seriously, Rob Bell's schtick is so bloody Gnostic it's not even funny, and a huge chunk of evangelical churches have been downright Pelegian for decades. So we get intellectually inconsistent answers, many motivated far more by sentiment than by theology or even political philosophy.
So yes, evangelicalism is increasingly fractured. There seem, largely, to be two basic options. The first is what seems to be happening to a majority of evangelical churches, i.e. they spin completely out of control theologically and basically turn into moralistic therapeutic deism, a term coined by a Notre Dame sociologist about five years ago. Politically, this means that a lot of them are going to become more progressive, as their intellectual and theological commitments increasingly match those of secular culture. The other is that they rediscover their theological heritage and become increasingly politically agnostic. One example is the young, restless, Reformed phenomenon in the Reformed tradition, but Catholicism and Lutheranism are experiencing similar movements. A lot of evangelicals are, historically, from the Reformed tradition, so a lot of evangelicalism as such is moving that direction, e.g. the transformation in the Southern Baptists over the past few decades.
The only concrete prediction one can make is that evangelicals are going to become an increasingly less reliable voting block, potentially dependent far more on the merits of individual candidates than any easily recognizable political ideology as such. In a time when elections are increasingly close and the political environment is increasingly partisan, one cannot even begin to guess how this is going to play out.
*I might even say "us" here. While I don't consider myself an evangelical, for theological reasons, I am a theologically-conservative Christian. Evangelicals are actually to theologically liberal for my lights.
posted by valkyryn at 5:34 AM on December 10, 2011 [41 favorites]
So far you guy this thread is really good.
Like anything in the NT, Jesus's phrase "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is heavily under dispute at the heart of what kind, if any, political interference Christianity is supposed to engage in. It can easily mean both "Let the rulers have their taxes and boss around the political realm, we Christians are only concerned with spiritual things." Or--since nothing isn't God's thing, right?--it could mean Caesar should get 0 respect at all. But, most importantly I think, it doesn't give a definitive answer: Jesus leaves us only poems, up to us to interpret. It's good to see more people taking that to mean that we should strive to protect the poor, and love the despised rather than fighting for a conservative status quo.
When folks on the left put down or despair over the OWS movement being aimless I often think of the religious folks in my rather well-to-do church. Perhaps they would vote for Obama anyway, but when they see kids getting gassed in the face for protesting against income inequality and for justice against the big banks, they feel it in their bones (much as the same kind of wealthy Christians did when they saw freedom riders get hosed off the streets in the 60s) that something must be done. And they have the resources to make it happen. Here's hoping they do.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:01 AM on December 10, 2011
Like anything in the NT, Jesus's phrase "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is heavily under dispute at the heart of what kind, if any, political interference Christianity is supposed to engage in. It can easily mean both "Let the rulers have their taxes and boss around the political realm, we Christians are only concerned with spiritual things." Or--since nothing isn't God's thing, right?--it could mean Caesar should get 0 respect at all. But, most importantly I think, it doesn't give a definitive answer: Jesus leaves us only poems, up to us to interpret. It's good to see more people taking that to mean that we should strive to protect the poor, and love the despised rather than fighting for a conservative status quo.
When folks on the left put down or despair over the OWS movement being aimless I often think of the religious folks in my rather well-to-do church. Perhaps they would vote for Obama anyway, but when they see kids getting gassed in the face for protesting against income inequality and for justice against the big banks, they feel it in their bones (much as the same kind of wealthy Christians did when they saw freedom riders get hosed off the streets in the 60s) that something must be done. And they have the resources to make it happen. Here's hoping they do.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:01 AM on December 10, 2011
Without getting into the ins and outs of whether the evangelical right in the US will or won't adopt liberation theology in large enough numbers to see a shift in political discourse, I do want to note: I don't find it hard to believe that a devout and church-going christian might see a disconnect between his or her cherished beliefs and the direction which the political religious right seems to be heading, and want to take steps that move them away from that.
A lot of believers, myself included, see a disconnect between the morals as taught by Christianity (and a lot of other religions too, frankly), and what Catholics delicately call the "administrative wing" of the church. And while a believer may feel constrained from larger gestures that could be construed as rebellion against church authority, they can and do take smaller, quieter steps. They give money or raise money for causes they believe in, support ethical practices in business at the local level, teach their kids to think about morality in and outside of the context of church teachings, encourage community engagement, things like that.
posted by LN at 6:04 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
A lot of believers, myself included, see a disconnect between the morals as taught by Christianity (and a lot of other religions too, frankly), and what Catholics delicately call the "administrative wing" of the church. And while a believer may feel constrained from larger gestures that could be construed as rebellion against church authority, they can and do take smaller, quieter steps. They give money or raise money for causes they believe in, support ethical practices in business at the local level, teach their kids to think about morality in and outside of the context of church teachings, encourage community engagement, things like that.
posted by LN at 6:04 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
valkyryn, your comments are very insightful regarding specific strains of the Christian intellectual tradition. You note that you are partly viewing these trends through the lens of being a theologically-conservative Christian yourself. I think if you view events, particularly what you describe as Jesus refusal to partake in the political process by refusing to foment or sponsor revolution, through a secular lens, then the difference between a "suffering-is-good-for-you, the-Kingdom-awaits" attitude and a contemporary "Moral Therapeutic Deism" attitude can be explained.
In other words, if you don't believe that Jesus had supernatural powers but rather was a highly-influential world historical figure (albeit a human one), then his refusal to aid the Jewish people in revolt against Rome becomes quite clear. In fact, much of the New Testament's philosophy and personal morality can be explained by reflecting on the political status of the population to whom the books were written. These were a people who had zero political power and were often literally persecuted to death. In that light, if one is a modern secularist, it would make sense that the suggested attitude is to keep your head down, not interfere with the Romans and remind yourself that your reward is everlasting life (and that the Romans will burn in a lake of fire).
The difficulty arises in that the modern Western Christian is anything but a persecuted minority. There are political setbacks from the conservative Christian point-of-view, such as legalized abortion or a steadily rising support for gay marriage, but by and large your average conservative Christian compared to your average global citizen is incredibly empowered (especially if you compare an American conservative Christian citizen to the mean global citizen). Given this empowerment, it seems logical that young people within the movement would move to a dominant culture paradigm, like Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, with its focus on the individual's well-being and individual mores. MTD reminds me of Confucianism in that way.
Your discussion was very lucid and interesting and it prompted my analysis of the same trends.
posted by Slothrop at 6:31 AM on December 10, 2011
In other words, if you don't believe that Jesus had supernatural powers but rather was a highly-influential world historical figure (albeit a human one), then his refusal to aid the Jewish people in revolt against Rome becomes quite clear. In fact, much of the New Testament's philosophy and personal morality can be explained by reflecting on the political status of the population to whom the books were written. These were a people who had zero political power and were often literally persecuted to death. In that light, if one is a modern secularist, it would make sense that the suggested attitude is to keep your head down, not interfere with the Romans and remind yourself that your reward is everlasting life (and that the Romans will burn in a lake of fire).
The difficulty arises in that the modern Western Christian is anything but a persecuted minority. There are political setbacks from the conservative Christian point-of-view, such as legalized abortion or a steadily rising support for gay marriage, but by and large your average conservative Christian compared to your average global citizen is incredibly empowered (especially if you compare an American conservative Christian citizen to the mean global citizen). Given this empowerment, it seems logical that young people within the movement would move to a dominant culture paradigm, like Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, with its focus on the individual's well-being and individual mores. MTD reminds me of Confucianism in that way.
Your discussion was very lucid and interesting and it prompted my analysis of the same trends.
posted by Slothrop at 6:31 AM on December 10, 2011
This leaves them* in a strange position. This is a group of people that cares deeply about what the Bible says. And hey, maybe the Bible doesn't really prescribe the contemporary politically conservative project after all. But the thing is, it doesn't prescribe the progressive program either.
Mmm, yes and no. You're right about politics per se — Jesus didn't appear to give a damn about politics — but not as much about strong focus on economic justice. He didn't couch it in political language, but in the synoptic gospels his ministry has basically two themes: the poor, and the kingdom of heaven. And half of what he says about the kingdom of heaven is tied to the poor in some way.
So while you're right that no political system is prescribed by the gospels, there is a pretty clear system of morality laid out, and it's not exactly a stretch for a believer to say that we should attempt to build our society along those lines, even if Jesus and the apostles stayed away from political rebellion or reform.
I think the most promising modern movement along those lines is that of the Red Letter Christians, which is trying to get Christianity out of partisan politics while still keeping focus on issues of equality and justice.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:51 AM on December 10, 2011
Mmm, yes and no. You're right about politics per se — Jesus didn't appear to give a damn about politics — but not as much about strong focus on economic justice. He didn't couch it in political language, but in the synoptic gospels his ministry has basically two themes: the poor, and the kingdom of heaven. And half of what he says about the kingdom of heaven is tied to the poor in some way.
So while you're right that no political system is prescribed by the gospels, there is a pretty clear system of morality laid out, and it's not exactly a stretch for a believer to say that we should attempt to build our society along those lines, even if Jesus and the apostles stayed away from political rebellion or reform.
I think the most promising modern movement along those lines is that of the Red Letter Christians, which is trying to get Christianity out of partisan politics while still keeping focus on issues of equality and justice.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:51 AM on December 10, 2011
This is a complete load of horse shit. You don't even know what evangelical means. It's not at all synonymous with fundamentalism or zealotry.
No. Being evangelical demands one be convinced of the absolute truthfulness of one's beliefs. A conviction that demands one be evangelical about the faith. The problem with this fervent belief is that it gives one carte blanche to do whatever it is one decides to do. Not only does one get a stamp of approval from God to believe any crazy thing, it commands the believer to go out and do something about it.
At this point, the question becomes whether that mandate from God gets channeled into something that can shore up a free and secular society, or something that tries to tear it down. The trend has been the latter. I'm not yet convinced by the article that this has changed.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:57 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
e·van·ge·lize /ɪˈvændʒəˌlaɪz/ Show Spelled [ih-van-juh-lahyz] Show IPA verb, -lized, -liz·ing.
verb (used with object)
1. to preach the gospel to.
2. to convert to Christianity.
Evangelical basically implies working hard to create new believers.
As a (hopefully) rational human, why should I care about shades of grey in how different groups of irrational people are trying to spread their particular form of madness. Its all madness, and counter-productive at its core. Or rather less, 'care,' and more 'work hard everyday to negate and eliminate' their efforts?
Evangelicals turning their attention to a somewhat less destructive participation in our world may have some positive effects, great!
posted by sfts2 at 8:01 AM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]
verb (used with object)
1. to preach the gospel to.
2. to convert to Christianity.
Evangelical basically implies working hard to create new believers.
As a (hopefully) rational human, why should I care about shades of grey in how different groups of irrational people are trying to spread their particular form of madness. Its all madness, and counter-productive at its core. Or rather less, 'care,' and more 'work hard everyday to negate and eliminate' their efforts?
Evangelicals turning their attention to a somewhat less destructive participation in our world may have some positive effects, great!
posted by sfts2 at 8:01 AM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]
I think the most promising modern movement along those lines is that of the Red Letter Christians, which is trying to get Christianity out of partisan politics while still keeping focus on issues of equality and justice.
Perhaps, but the difference between "Red Letter Christians" and plain-old dyed-in-the-wool Democrats is almost indistinguishable. They claim they're non-partisan, and maybe they technically are, but they're "non-partisan" in the way that the Brookings Institution is "non-partisan," i.e. yes, they have some intellectual diversity and the occasional unexpected policy plank, but they can be relied upon to vote Blue nine times out of ten.
Which is why they've both been criticized all along for letting their politics dictate their theology rather than the other way around. In a recent debate between Jim Wallis and Albert Mohler (the more-or-less Calvinistic president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mohler makes a careful argument based almost entirely on exegesis of Scripture while Wallis argues almost entirely from experience and moral sentiments. That kind of argumentation makes a lot of sense if one is essentially a political liberal who happens to be a Christian, but it's fundamentally incapable of convincing a committed theological conservative, because it doesn't appeal to the right kinds of authorities. Really, the whole "Red Letter Christian" concept is sort of conceding from the get-go that they're only looking at certain parts of Scripture and not others. That's just not a viable position for a theological conservative.
And a lot of evangelicals are theologically conservative. But they're only so by default and osmosis, not out of any particularly informed commitment. Most will be able to tell you that they believe in the Trinity, but probably won't be able to tell you why, what it means, or why it's even important. Similarly, there's a kind of default adherence to Scriptural concepts of sexual ethics, but only on a level with the "'cause that's what momma told me" understanding. There are certainly some that have more developed view on various subjects, but even those tend not to be particularly grounded in any particular theological tradition.
Take James Dobson, for example, the head of the much-reviled Focus on the Family. Lots of evangelicals listen to him, because he says things which fit with their intuitions. But he can't and doesn't really try to justify his positions from Scripture or even an appeal to a wider theological tradition. There's some verses here and there, but he mostly argues empirically and intuitively. So when people's experiences don't match up--and most people's don't, at least not anymore--it's really not that hard to get people to stop listening to him. It's a cultural thing, and thus not really connected to anything which might enable them to resist the pressures of secular culture.
So, like I said before, what we're seeing is the long-predicted dissolution of the evangelical phenomenon. It was criticized right out of the gate (i.e. the 1940s-50s) for having an insufficient commitment to any kind of rigorous theology to permit it to survive over the long term. It looks like that's going to be proven correct inside of two or three generations.
posted by valkyryn at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
Perhaps, but the difference between "Red Letter Christians" and plain-old dyed-in-the-wool Democrats is almost indistinguishable. They claim they're non-partisan, and maybe they technically are, but they're "non-partisan" in the way that the Brookings Institution is "non-partisan," i.e. yes, they have some intellectual diversity and the occasional unexpected policy plank, but they can be relied upon to vote Blue nine times out of ten.
Which is why they've both been criticized all along for letting their politics dictate their theology rather than the other way around. In a recent debate between Jim Wallis and Albert Mohler (the more-or-less Calvinistic president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mohler makes a careful argument based almost entirely on exegesis of Scripture while Wallis argues almost entirely from experience and moral sentiments. That kind of argumentation makes a lot of sense if one is essentially a political liberal who happens to be a Christian, but it's fundamentally incapable of convincing a committed theological conservative, because it doesn't appeal to the right kinds of authorities. Really, the whole "Red Letter Christian" concept is sort of conceding from the get-go that they're only looking at certain parts of Scripture and not others. That's just not a viable position for a theological conservative.
And a lot of evangelicals are theologically conservative. But they're only so by default and osmosis, not out of any particularly informed commitment. Most will be able to tell you that they believe in the Trinity, but probably won't be able to tell you why, what it means, or why it's even important. Similarly, there's a kind of default adherence to Scriptural concepts of sexual ethics, but only on a level with the "'cause that's what momma told me" understanding. There are certainly some that have more developed view on various subjects, but even those tend not to be particularly grounded in any particular theological tradition.
Take James Dobson, for example, the head of the much-reviled Focus on the Family. Lots of evangelicals listen to him, because he says things which fit with their intuitions. But he can't and doesn't really try to justify his positions from Scripture or even an appeal to a wider theological tradition. There's some verses here and there, but he mostly argues empirically and intuitively. So when people's experiences don't match up--and most people's don't, at least not anymore--it's really not that hard to get people to stop listening to him. It's a cultural thing, and thus not really connected to anything which might enable them to resist the pressures of secular culture.
So, like I said before, what we're seeing is the long-predicted dissolution of the evangelical phenomenon. It was criticized right out of the gate (i.e. the 1940s-50s) for having an insufficient commitment to any kind of rigorous theology to permit it to survive over the long term. It looks like that's going to be proven correct inside of two or three generations.
posted by valkyryn at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
Which is why they've both* been criticized all along
*"Both" here refers to "Red Letter Christians" and "mainline liberal denominations". Cut a paragraph without cutting a referent. *sigh*.
posted by valkyryn at 8:18 AM on December 10, 2011
*"Both" here refers to "Red Letter Christians" and "mainline liberal denominations". Cut a paragraph without cutting a referent. *sigh*.
posted by valkyryn at 8:18 AM on December 10, 2011
liberation theology as an intellectual tradition was strongly criticized, at the time (1970s-ish), for being basically Marxism with some Christianity glommed on afterward
Economically-speaking, the New Testament is explicitly Marxist. Acts 4 shows that the early church held all property in common and "distributed to each as anyone had need." Acts 5 underscores the point by relating the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who hid certain possessions from the church rather than contributing, and got struck dead by God for their trouble. Again in Acts 11 we see the congregation, "each according to his ability," contributing aid to the poor.
So while the New Testament may not provide much of a political platform, it's pretty unequivocally anti-capitalist and pro-redistribution, at least on a private scale.
posted by jedicus at 8:34 AM on December 10, 2011 [3 favorites]
Economically-speaking, the New Testament is explicitly Marxist. Acts 4 shows that the early church held all property in common and "distributed to each as anyone had need." Acts 5 underscores the point by relating the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who hid certain possessions from the church rather than contributing, and got struck dead by God for their trouble. Again in Acts 11 we see the congregation, "each according to his ability," contributing aid to the poor.
So while the New Testament may not provide much of a political platform, it's pretty unequivocally anti-capitalist and pro-redistribution, at least on a private scale.
posted by jedicus at 8:34 AM on December 10, 2011 [3 favorites]
naoko - people like Wallis (and Shane Claibourne, and the 'new monastics', and Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell etc.et.) are kind of emblematic of what this movement really is. They are very, very conservative politically, more or less hateful of gays, and more or less suspicious of women who take any role but SAHM...(with people like Driscoll on the 'more' side and people like Bell on the 'less' side, to be sure, but really it's just harder and softer versions of the same thing.)
Um. Lumping Jim Wallis and Rob Bell in with Mark Driscoll? Really? Seriously, one of these things is not like the other.
posted by dw at 8:59 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
Um. Lumping Jim Wallis and Rob Bell in with Mark Driscoll? Really? Seriously, one of these things is not like the other.
posted by dw at 8:59 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
Economically-speaking, the New Testament is explicitly Marxist.
No, it isn't. The fact that no one really seems to have thought Scripture taught those things until after Marx* should be evidence enough on its own, but...
Acts 4 shows that the early church held all property in common and "distributed to each as anyone had need." Acts 5 underscores the point by relating the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who hid certain possessions from the church rather than contributing, and got struck dead by God for their trouble. Again in Acts 11 we see the congregation, "each according to his ability," contributing aid to the poor.
Acts 4 and 5 happen in the immediate aftermath of Acts 2 and 3. It's still part of the same Pentecost event. The story isn't really how the church lived in its normal life, but how the church dealt with the fact that there are suddenly 5,000 strangers who are staying in town a lot longer than they planned. Remember, Pentecost happened during the Feast of, well, Pentecost, when diasporic Jews from around the Mediterranean basin would make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, generally for a few weeks, and then go home. Well Peter does his Acts 2 bit, and there's a mass conversion, and now there's all these foreigners and new converts. So the church in Jerusalem pitches in and helps them out. This, to be sure, is how Christians are supposed to act, taking care of the stranger and the foreigner. But it's reading too much into it to take that as any kind of statement on property theory. It's not an inconsistent reading, but it's not really a necessary reading, and it's anything but explicit.
As far as Ananias and Sapphira, Peter explicitly says "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God." Peter does not criticize him for what he did with his property--and even explicitly says that Ananias had the right to do with it what he wanted!--but for lying about it. It's right there in the text.
Acts 11 is a one-time gift of the brothers in Antioch to the persecuted church in Judea. The text basically says as much. The church still does this kind of thing today. But the mere fact that "each according to his ability" shows up does not necessarily entail anything particularly Marxist.
But all of this misses the point: you're taking descriptive passages and saying that they're prescriptive, when there's really no indication that the text requires that of us. This is a very common hermeneutical move, but if we were to take is as a general principle, we'd have to say that the correct response to a snakebite is just to burn the snake (Acts 28), that miraculous healings and resurrections are supposed to be an everyday part of the Christian experience, that speaking in tongues, whatever that means, is an essential part of the life of the Spirit, that worship services shouldn't involve singing, and that what singing there is should be unaccompanied. All of those things happen in the New Testament, so if we say that the fact that something happens in the New Testament means it's illustrating an enduring principle, we have to believe those things too. Now granted, there are still people that believe those things, but you really can't have just the "Marxist" parts without having the other parts, because it's the same hermeneutical device that leads to both of them.
Really, and even more importantly, there's really no indication that the text is trying to say anything about politics at all. Such an interpretation is, at best, secondary to the thrust of all the passages you cite, and that interpretation is never held up by another passage of Scripture as being important or echoed independently in Scripture as doctrine.
So while the New Testament may not provide much of a political platform, it's pretty unequivocally anti-capitalist and pro-redistribution, at least on a private scale.
Those are pretty loaded terms. Two things. First, the Scripture is, by and large, concerned with individual ethics over polity. What the state may or may not do about the poor is irrelevant: you need to be generous. What the state may or may not do about the powerless is irrelevant: you need to act justly and defend the helpless. And there are passage which are very explicit about that, saying that in as many words, so it isn't like we have to take a passage which might plausibly lead to a certain interpretation and run with it, like you have to do to get the Marxist bits.
But second, the jump from individual action to political action has always been a controversial one in Christianity, and saying that the New Testament supports any political platform is just asking the text to do something it doesn't do. Indeed, there's a current in most of the major Christian traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) that says that making that political move is always the wrong thing to do, as it's attempting to bring about the kingdom of heaven without reference to God, i.e. a repeat of the Tower of Babel.
Indeed, saying that the text is Marxist is actually a less demanding read on things. That might permit one to say something to the effect of "Well, it's too bad about the poor. If only the state were more involved. I know! I'll do some political activism!" all while never changing the pattern of their own material life. On the contrary, Scripture seems to take the position "The state's going to do what the state's going to do. You are nonetheless responsible to be generous to the poor around you, and the fact that you do or do not pay taxes does not alleviate you of that responsibility one way or the other." Marxism may have some concern with fairness and equity, but it doesn't really provide for graciousness, and that's what's required of us.
All of which to say, yes, it is possible to read the New Testament in a way which is friendly to Marxist insights, but the text isn't explicitly Marxist any more than it's explicitly capitalist or Pentecostal.
*Or, rather, the view only shows up in periodic heretical groups but never gained any kind of enduring acceptance.
posted by valkyryn at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2011 [12 favorites]
No, it isn't. The fact that no one really seems to have thought Scripture taught those things until after Marx* should be evidence enough on its own, but...
Acts 4 shows that the early church held all property in common and "distributed to each as anyone had need." Acts 5 underscores the point by relating the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who hid certain possessions from the church rather than contributing, and got struck dead by God for their trouble. Again in Acts 11 we see the congregation, "each according to his ability," contributing aid to the poor.
Acts 4 and 5 happen in the immediate aftermath of Acts 2 and 3. It's still part of the same Pentecost event. The story isn't really how the church lived in its normal life, but how the church dealt with the fact that there are suddenly 5,000 strangers who are staying in town a lot longer than they planned. Remember, Pentecost happened during the Feast of, well, Pentecost, when diasporic Jews from around the Mediterranean basin would make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, generally for a few weeks, and then go home. Well Peter does his Acts 2 bit, and there's a mass conversion, and now there's all these foreigners and new converts. So the church in Jerusalem pitches in and helps them out. This, to be sure, is how Christians are supposed to act, taking care of the stranger and the foreigner. But it's reading too much into it to take that as any kind of statement on property theory. It's not an inconsistent reading, but it's not really a necessary reading, and it's anything but explicit.
As far as Ananias and Sapphira, Peter explicitly says "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God." Peter does not criticize him for what he did with his property--and even explicitly says that Ananias had the right to do with it what he wanted!--but for lying about it. It's right there in the text.
Acts 11 is a one-time gift of the brothers in Antioch to the persecuted church in Judea. The text basically says as much. The church still does this kind of thing today. But the mere fact that "each according to his ability" shows up does not necessarily entail anything particularly Marxist.
But all of this misses the point: you're taking descriptive passages and saying that they're prescriptive, when there's really no indication that the text requires that of us. This is a very common hermeneutical move, but if we were to take is as a general principle, we'd have to say that the correct response to a snakebite is just to burn the snake (Acts 28), that miraculous healings and resurrections are supposed to be an everyday part of the Christian experience, that speaking in tongues, whatever that means, is an essential part of the life of the Spirit, that worship services shouldn't involve singing, and that what singing there is should be unaccompanied. All of those things happen in the New Testament, so if we say that the fact that something happens in the New Testament means it's illustrating an enduring principle, we have to believe those things too. Now granted, there are still people that believe those things, but you really can't have just the "Marxist" parts without having the other parts, because it's the same hermeneutical device that leads to both of them.
Really, and even more importantly, there's really no indication that the text is trying to say anything about politics at all. Such an interpretation is, at best, secondary to the thrust of all the passages you cite, and that interpretation is never held up by another passage of Scripture as being important or echoed independently in Scripture as doctrine.
So while the New Testament may not provide much of a political platform, it's pretty unequivocally anti-capitalist and pro-redistribution, at least on a private scale.
Those are pretty loaded terms. Two things. First, the Scripture is, by and large, concerned with individual ethics over polity. What the state may or may not do about the poor is irrelevant: you need to be generous. What the state may or may not do about the powerless is irrelevant: you need to act justly and defend the helpless. And there are passage which are very explicit about that, saying that in as many words, so it isn't like we have to take a passage which might plausibly lead to a certain interpretation and run with it, like you have to do to get the Marxist bits.
But second, the jump from individual action to political action has always been a controversial one in Christianity, and saying that the New Testament supports any political platform is just asking the text to do something it doesn't do. Indeed, there's a current in most of the major Christian traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) that says that making that political move is always the wrong thing to do, as it's attempting to bring about the kingdom of heaven without reference to God, i.e. a repeat of the Tower of Babel.
Indeed, saying that the text is Marxist is actually a less demanding read on things. That might permit one to say something to the effect of "Well, it's too bad about the poor. If only the state were more involved. I know! I'll do some political activism!" all while never changing the pattern of their own material life. On the contrary, Scripture seems to take the position "The state's going to do what the state's going to do. You are nonetheless responsible to be generous to the poor around you, and the fact that you do or do not pay taxes does not alleviate you of that responsibility one way or the other." Marxism may have some concern with fairness and equity, but it doesn't really provide for graciousness, and that's what's required of us.
All of which to say, yes, it is possible to read the New Testament in a way which is friendly to Marxist insights, but the text isn't explicitly Marxist any more than it's explicitly capitalist or Pentecostal.
*Or, rather, the view only shows up in periodic heretical groups but never gained any kind of enduring acceptance.
posted by valkyryn at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2011 [12 favorites]
Whatever route people find to be good and kind to one another, find the joy and the community the seek in their own lives, and to not spread hatred of those who are different from them, is all right by me.
I'm going to call that "Benito's Credo". What confuses me is how willing people are to look at some people with red hair who don't hold to Benito's Credo, and claim that all redheads also fail. I'm also confused by the number of redheads who are unwilling to concede just how many redheads fail to live by it.
And for 'has red hair like they do", you can also substitute "listens to the same music as they do", "lives in the same country as they do", or "prays to the same god as they do".
posted by benito.strauss at 9:08 AM on December 10, 2011
I'm going to call that "Benito's Credo". What confuses me is how willing people are to look at some people with red hair who don't hold to Benito's Credo, and claim that all redheads also fail. I'm also confused by the number of redheads who are unwilling to concede just how many redheads fail to live by it.
And for 'has red hair like they do", you can also substitute "listens to the same music as they do", "lives in the same country as they do", or "prays to the same god as they do".
posted by benito.strauss at 9:08 AM on December 10, 2011
So... liberation theology is making inroads into American evangelicalism, then?
I wouldn't say that at all. For one thing, liberation theology is still a third rail in the American church. For another, a lot of what you're seeing is a revival of traditions that pre-date liberation theology, things that were always there but being outshouted by the politically motivated fundamentalists of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s.
What you're looking at is, within the Protestant context, a New Methodism. At its heart is social justice and a belief that God has commanded them to care for the sick and poor. It was during the 19th and early 20th century that you saw the rise of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian health systems (partially to counter the Catholics, but also because of a Gospel belief). A few of us have talked about this coming for the better part of a decade -- you have a Gen X that was jaded by the Boomer drive towards politics and a Gen Y that didn't want much of either the Boomers or Gen X, and so they started looking elsewhere. Some of them wrapped themselves around the certainty of fundamentalism and Calvinism (thus the rise of Mark Driscoll). Some wrapped themselves around the post-modern movement and exegeting the Gospel for a wired time (thus the rise and now somewhat fall of Rob Bell). And then there were other splinters everywhere.
The result is what you're seeing playing out in politics right now -- The GOP appealing to an older generation of evangelicals who are greedy and scared of change, leading to the insanity they're in right now. Meanwhile, the Dems have done little to consolidate the gains they did make in the evangelical community in 2008 (and actually held onto in 2010) because they're scared of their own base. Meanwhile, you have a bunch of liberal evangelicals in their 20s and early 30s who are nominally Democrats and are starting to come into the lower reaches of church leadership. And they're scaring the higher levels of leadership.
So, is this Liberation Theology? Not at all. I'd say it's more the church doing what it used to do and what it's supposed to be doing. And besides, liberation theology is at its core a political movement, and you're looking at this new generation of evangelicals eschewing politics.
posted by dw at 9:14 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
I wouldn't say that at all. For one thing, liberation theology is still a third rail in the American church. For another, a lot of what you're seeing is a revival of traditions that pre-date liberation theology, things that were always there but being outshouted by the politically motivated fundamentalists of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s.
What you're looking at is, within the Protestant context, a New Methodism. At its heart is social justice and a belief that God has commanded them to care for the sick and poor. It was during the 19th and early 20th century that you saw the rise of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian health systems (partially to counter the Catholics, but also because of a Gospel belief). A few of us have talked about this coming for the better part of a decade -- you have a Gen X that was jaded by the Boomer drive towards politics and a Gen Y that didn't want much of either the Boomers or Gen X, and so they started looking elsewhere. Some of them wrapped themselves around the certainty of fundamentalism and Calvinism (thus the rise of Mark Driscoll). Some wrapped themselves around the post-modern movement and exegeting the Gospel for a wired time (thus the rise and now somewhat fall of Rob Bell). And then there were other splinters everywhere.
The result is what you're seeing playing out in politics right now -- The GOP appealing to an older generation of evangelicals who are greedy and scared of change, leading to the insanity they're in right now. Meanwhile, the Dems have done little to consolidate the gains they did make in the evangelical community in 2008 (and actually held onto in 2010) because they're scared of their own base. Meanwhile, you have a bunch of liberal evangelicals in their 20s and early 30s who are nominally Democrats and are starting to come into the lower reaches of church leadership. And they're scaring the higher levels of leadership.
So, is this Liberation Theology? Not at all. I'd say it's more the church doing what it used to do and what it's supposed to be doing. And besides, liberation theology is at its core a political movement, and you're looking at this new generation of evangelicals eschewing politics.
posted by dw at 9:14 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
What I am seeing is a coming collapse of the American church as we know it. The mainline branches of Protestantism are dying off, and their strongest churches are very conservative and very much leaving their denominations. Meanwhile, those churches are getting pushed by the 1000-2000-5000 member "big box churches" that are little more than an assembly hall and a post office box. And they're all being pushed by a generation of twentysomethings that see the American church as less and less relevant to their lives.
The more the GOP has treated evangelicals like a voting segment, the more evangelicals have acted like one, to the detriment of their own beliefs. And it's the reconciling of this mess we're watching now. And it probably ends poorly for evangelicals and very well for fundamentalists.
posted by dw at 9:20 AM on December 10, 2011
The more the GOP has treated evangelicals like a voting segment, the more evangelicals have acted like one, to the detriment of their own beliefs. And it's the reconciling of this mess we're watching now. And it probably ends poorly for evangelicals and very well for fundamentalists.
posted by dw at 9:20 AM on December 10, 2011
Being evangelical demands one be convinced of the absolute truthfulness of one's beliefs. A conviction that demands one be evangelical about the faith.
This isn't true in any useful way that "evangelical" is used in the op-ed, which is talking about results from mass political surveys.
Functionally, you being "evangelical" in survey research means one of two things.
First, it can mean that someone asked you about your religion, and you told them that you belonged to a Christian denomination that's on a list of evangelical denominations that someone put together. So long as you say you're a Southern Baptist, you're an evangelical even if you strongly doubt your own faith, or even have left it behind and no longer believe.
Second, it can mean that someone asked you if you considered yourself an evangelical and you said yes. Again, there's no checking here about whether your beliefs are sufficiently firm or stern enough that you really deserve to call yourself evangelical. If you say you are, you are.
That's basically it. It would certainly be possible to put together a survey with questions that did check... sort of a Voight-Kampff for evangelicals. But doing it would burn a lot of question space in your survey for little gain.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:44 AM on December 10, 2011
This isn't true in any useful way that "evangelical" is used in the op-ed, which is talking about results from mass political surveys.
Functionally, you being "evangelical" in survey research means one of two things.
First, it can mean that someone asked you about your religion, and you told them that you belonged to a Christian denomination that's on a list of evangelical denominations that someone put together. So long as you say you're a Southern Baptist, you're an evangelical even if you strongly doubt your own faith, or even have left it behind and no longer believe.
Second, it can mean that someone asked you if you considered yourself an evangelical and you said yes. Again, there's no checking here about whether your beliefs are sufficiently firm or stern enough that you really deserve to call yourself evangelical. If you say you are, you are.
That's basically it. It would certainly be possible to put together a survey with questions that did check... sort of a Voight-Kampff for evangelicals. But doing it would burn a lot of question space in your survey for little gain.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:44 AM on December 10, 2011
Those are pretty loaded terms. Two things. First, the Scripture is, by and large, concerned with individual ethics over polity. What the state may or may not do about the poor is irrelevant: you need to be generous. What the state may or may not do about the powerless is irrelevant: you need to act justly and defend the helpless.
Hence why I said "on a private scale" and referred to economics rather than politics. The point is that individual Christians and churches should, if they are true to scripture, live communally and dedicate their wealth to the poor.
Further, I think the parable of the rich young ruler illustrates that a) Christ himself made normative pro-redistribution statements and therefore b) it's reasonable to take the events in Acts as normative.
And even if the events in Acts are confined to their facts (i.e. the unusual influx of pilgrims during Pentecost), it's easy to analogize to the modern condition of a wealthy church surrounded by poverty, immigrants, and new converts (take your pick as to which group is closest to Pentecost pilgrims). It's pretty hard to say that the proper response for Christians and the church in the modern era to such poverty is to say "screw you, got mine."
Finally, consider who benefits if the events in Acts are normative: the poor. And if they aren't: the rich. Who was Christ most interested in helping? Why are you interested in defending the rich and the morality of accumulating private wealth? How does that motivation square with the gospel?
posted by jedicus at 11:31 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
Hence why I said "on a private scale" and referred to economics rather than politics. The point is that individual Christians and churches should, if they are true to scripture, live communally and dedicate their wealth to the poor.
Further, I think the parable of the rich young ruler illustrates that a) Christ himself made normative pro-redistribution statements and therefore b) it's reasonable to take the events in Acts as normative.
And even if the events in Acts are confined to their facts (i.e. the unusual influx of pilgrims during Pentecost), it's easy to analogize to the modern condition of a wealthy church surrounded by poverty, immigrants, and new converts (take your pick as to which group is closest to Pentecost pilgrims). It's pretty hard to say that the proper response for Christians and the church in the modern era to such poverty is to say "screw you, got mine."
Finally, consider who benefits if the events in Acts are normative: the poor. And if they aren't: the rich. Who was Christ most interested in helping? Why are you interested in defending the rich and the morality of accumulating private wealth? How does that motivation square with the gospel?
posted by jedicus at 11:31 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
This isn't true in any useful way that "evangelical" is used in the op-ed, which is talking about results from mass political surveys.
Agreed. We're talking about "evangelical" in the sociological sense here, potentially even more than we are in the theological sense. It's got a pretty well-understood meaning.
posted by valkyryn at 11:43 AM on December 10, 2011
Agreed. We're talking about "evangelical" in the sociological sense here, potentially even more than we are in the theological sense. It's got a pretty well-understood meaning.
posted by valkyryn at 11:43 AM on December 10, 2011
Why are you interested in defending the rich and the morality of accumulating private wealth? How does that motivation square with the gospel?
I'm not, as such. You claimed that Acts was explicitly Marxist. I disagreed. I also said that it doesn't support any political platform, period. And I said that the New Testament--and the Old Testament, when it comes down to it--are unswerving an adamant about the need for personal charity.
But I do want to note that Scripture never seems to condemn wealth or material prosperity as such. It condemns the rich when they do not help the poor, but it never actually condemns them for being rich, as such. This doesn't let us say that the rich are good, but it also doesn't really let us say that they're inherently bad. What people do with their resources is more important than what said resources are.
That's all.
posted by valkyryn at 11:47 AM on December 10, 2011
I'm not, as such. You claimed that Acts was explicitly Marxist. I disagreed. I also said that it doesn't support any political platform, period. And I said that the New Testament--and the Old Testament, when it comes down to it--are unswerving an adamant about the need for personal charity.
But I do want to note that Scripture never seems to condemn wealth or material prosperity as such. It condemns the rich when they do not help the poor, but it never actually condemns them for being rich, as such. This doesn't let us say that the rich are good, but it also doesn't really let us say that they're inherently bad. What people do with their resources is more important than what said resources are.
That's all.
posted by valkyryn at 11:47 AM on December 10, 2011
It condemns the rich when they do not help the poor, but it never actually condemns them for being rich, as such.
The rich young ruler was told to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, not to stay rich while doling it out over time, or even to only give a tithe. It's pretty clear from the parable that the state of being rich is, itself, an impediment to entering the kingdom of heaven. Further, the accumulation of wealth is in direct opposition to the admonition against serving two masters and the recognition that wherever your treasure is, so your heart shall be also. In short, I contend that the New Testament is quite plainly opposed to the accumulation of wealth, not just failing to use it to help the poor.
posted by jedicus at 11:59 AM on December 10, 2011 [4 favorites]
The rich young ruler was told to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, not to stay rich while doling it out over time, or even to only give a tithe. It's pretty clear from the parable that the state of being rich is, itself, an impediment to entering the kingdom of heaven. Further, the accumulation of wealth is in direct opposition to the admonition against serving two masters and the recognition that wherever your treasure is, so your heart shall be also. In short, I contend that the New Testament is quite plainly opposed to the accumulation of wealth, not just failing to use it to help the poor.
posted by jedicus at 11:59 AM on December 10, 2011 [4 favorites]
In short, I contend that the New Testament is quite plainly opposed to the accumulation of wealth, not just failing to use it to help the poor.
Fair enough, and the points you've made have been made by others. But, for good or ill, yours hasn't ever really been the dominant view as far as I can tell.
posted by valkyryn at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2011
Fair enough, and the points you've made have been made by others. But, for good or ill, yours hasn't ever really been the dominant view as far as I can tell.
posted by valkyryn at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2011
In short, I contend that the New Testament is quite plainly opposed to the accumulation of wealth, not just failing to use it to help the poor.
In which case it would be even less "Marxist," to the extent the average Marxist program doesn't call for the abolition of wealth so much as it does the abolition of a class structure that blocks up the flow of wealth to everyone.
Before I was a soldier, I was a commie (a Trot, more precisely), and that's all those people talked about at the bar: Not "oh man, the poor are finally gonna quit being poor and everyone's gonna finally have enough," but "oh man, without The Man forcing us to exchange our labor for some fraction of its actual value, everyone's going to have more than enough."
Some utopian movements call for less stuff — less concern for material wealth because having more stuff is unsustainable and morally distorting — but all the Marxists I knew despised that line of reasoning.
"Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
That passage? Lots of Marxists hate that kind of shit, and their attacks against traditions that espouse asceticism can be as scurrilous as their attacks against capitalist political traditions.
If you want to pick Marxism apart and separate it into little discrete bits — Marx's prediction of some utopian end point at the end of the dialectical progression, interim programs that call for the redistribution of wealth — I guess you can say the New Testament is "Marxist." But that ignores Marxism's deep philosophical materialism, which simply cannot be reconciled with any Christianity that remains attached to spirituality. That means the two traditions can perhaps share moments where their short-term goals are similar, but they'll eventually be driven apart by their underlying world views. I don't think it's any more lasting or durable a synthesis than Posadaism is a durable synthesis of Trotsky and von Daniken.
posted by mph at 12:54 PM on December 10, 2011 [3 favorites]
In which case it would be even less "Marxist," to the extent the average Marxist program doesn't call for the abolition of wealth so much as it does the abolition of a class structure that blocks up the flow of wealth to everyone.
Before I was a soldier, I was a commie (a Trot, more precisely), and that's all those people talked about at the bar: Not "oh man, the poor are finally gonna quit being poor and everyone's gonna finally have enough," but "oh man, without The Man forcing us to exchange our labor for some fraction of its actual value, everyone's going to have more than enough."
Some utopian movements call for less stuff — less concern for material wealth because having more stuff is unsustainable and morally distorting — but all the Marxists I knew despised that line of reasoning.
"Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
That passage? Lots of Marxists hate that kind of shit, and their attacks against traditions that espouse asceticism can be as scurrilous as their attacks against capitalist political traditions.
If you want to pick Marxism apart and separate it into little discrete bits — Marx's prediction of some utopian end point at the end of the dialectical progression, interim programs that call for the redistribution of wealth — I guess you can say the New Testament is "Marxist." But that ignores Marxism's deep philosophical materialism, which simply cannot be reconciled with any Christianity that remains attached to spirituality. That means the two traditions can perhaps share moments where their short-term goals are similar, but they'll eventually be driven apart by their underlying world views. I don't think it's any more lasting or durable a synthesis than Posadaism is a durable synthesis of Trotsky and von Daniken.
posted by mph at 12:54 PM on December 10, 2011 [3 favorites]
What I am seeing is a coming collapse of the American church as we know it.
There's a very interesting editorial in the Christian Science Monitor from a couple years ago that agrees with you. The author has a pretty different stance than me, but I still find it fascinating (and highly plausible).
Here it is:
But also I'm pretty sure that if Jesus were around today, he would treat the powerful, conservative church authorities roughly the same way he treated the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And that he would be hanging out in the inner city with homeless queer teenagers and drug addicts and sex workers.
It seems like the movements noted in the New York Times blog are steps in the right direction, steps toward prying American Christianity out from the deep (and in my used-to-be-Lutheran-and-am-now-a-witch opinion) and harmful co-dependency it's had with the Republican Party. Which has twisted both of them away from their "best selves".
posted by overglow at 1:46 PM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]
There's a very interesting editorial in the Christian Science Monitor from a couple years ago that agrees with you. The author has a pretty different stance than me, but I still find it fascinating (and highly plausible).
Here it is:
We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.As a queer Pagan, I'm more excited than dismayed at the prospect of a more secular, multi-religious society. I also hope that a lot of Christian denominations and institutions will choose to evolve rather than die (although I'm sure some conservatives would see the kind of transformation that I want as a fate worse than death).
...This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good....
Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress.
But also I'm pretty sure that if Jesus were around today, he would treat the powerful, conservative church authorities roughly the same way he treated the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And that he would be hanging out in the inner city with homeless queer teenagers and drug addicts and sex workers.
It seems like the movements noted in the New York Times blog are steps in the right direction, steps toward prying American Christianity out from the deep (and in my used-to-be-Lutheran-and-am-now-a-witch opinion) and harmful co-dependency it's had with the Republican Party. Which has twisted both of them away from their "best selves".
posted by overglow at 1:46 PM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]
But, for good or ill, yours hasn't ever really been the dominant view as far as I can tell.
Valkyryn, I've found your posts on this thread quite informative. I was wondering you could clarify what you mean by a dominant view and why it is important. My knowledge of theological history is about one step away from total ignorance, but I know that the theological tradition is full of disagreement. When you call yourself a "theological conservative," I take it to mean that you are aligning yourself with the dominant view. Does dominant in this case mean the view institutionalized by Rome? If it is not founded on institutionality, what criteria do you use to decide whether a view is dominant or not?
I study literature, which of course has plenty of affinities with Biblical hermeneutics. Ignoring for a moment the difference in the stakes of the analysis, I was wondering what the importance of tradition is in your view. In my field, the dominant assumption since the 1960s has been not only that each person must use their individual judgment to interpret a text, but that it isn't even really possible to imagine an appeal to tradition as being finally anything but one more form of individual judgment. Of course, there are plenty of advantages to reading the old critics, and certainly more advantages in the religious tradition than the literary one, since the aims of the latter have changed almost completely in the last hundred years and the aims of the former have remained relatively steady. However, aside the value from checking your interpretative work against the reasoning of others and learning about Christian history, what is the purpose of appealing to tradition?
posted by vathek at 2:12 PM on December 10, 2011
Valkyryn, I've found your posts on this thread quite informative. I was wondering you could clarify what you mean by a dominant view and why it is important. My knowledge of theological history is about one step away from total ignorance, but I know that the theological tradition is full of disagreement. When you call yourself a "theological conservative," I take it to mean that you are aligning yourself with the dominant view. Does dominant in this case mean the view institutionalized by Rome? If it is not founded on institutionality, what criteria do you use to decide whether a view is dominant or not?
I study literature, which of course has plenty of affinities with Biblical hermeneutics. Ignoring for a moment the difference in the stakes of the analysis, I was wondering what the importance of tradition is in your view. In my field, the dominant assumption since the 1960s has been not only that each person must use their individual judgment to interpret a text, but that it isn't even really possible to imagine an appeal to tradition as being finally anything but one more form of individual judgment. Of course, there are plenty of advantages to reading the old critics, and certainly more advantages in the religious tradition than the literary one, since the aims of the latter have changed almost completely in the last hundred years and the aims of the former have remained relatively steady. However, aside the value from checking your interpretative work against the reasoning of others and learning about Christian history, what is the purpose of appealing to tradition?
posted by vathek at 2:12 PM on December 10, 2011
Actually, most the observed effects could equally be ascribed to Paul Weyrich now doing the eternal dog-paddle in a lake of burning brimstone, rather than any positive change on the part of some evangelicals.
Weyrich, more than anyone else, controlled and directed the political work that made evangelicals publicly identified as a bunch of hateful, bigoted god-botherers. Evil genius.
The view in the editorial is pretty much ahistorical. All of these "progressive" trends have been present for a long time, they were swamped in the 1970s by Weyrich and his creatures. The story here may not so much be the expansion of good as much as the recession of evil.
posted by warbaby at 2:24 PM on December 10, 2011
Weyrich, more than anyone else, controlled and directed the political work that made evangelicals publicly identified as a bunch of hateful, bigoted god-botherers. Evil genius.
The view in the editorial is pretty much ahistorical. All of these "progressive" trends have been present for a long time, they were swamped in the 1970s by Weyrich and his creatures. The story here may not so much be the expansion of good as much as the recession of evil.
posted by warbaby at 2:24 PM on December 10, 2011
The rich young ruler was told to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, not to stay rich while doling it out over time, or even to only give a tithe. It's pretty clear from the parable that the state of being rich is, itself, an impediment to entering the kingdom of heaven.
Is it that being rich is an impediment or that for that particular guy, being rich was an impediment?
I've always liked that passage, partly because there is a lot of potential nuance. For example, the discourse begins with the ruler asking Jesus what he needs to do to get eternal life. Jesus replies that he should follow the commandments and then gives a partial list. The commands he lists are not the ones that have to do with God -- like not taking God's name in vain or keeping the Sabbath. No, he lists commands that have to do with other people. The ruler says he has kept all of those since he was a boy. Then Jesus tells him that if he wants to be perfect, he should sell everything and come follow him [Jesus]. The way I read this is in connection with the way Jesus sums up the law: love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself. The person-to-person commands are the ones relevant to loving your neighbor as yourself. But although the ruler had obeyed the letter of the law, he did not understand its principle. He didn't love everyone else the same way he loved himself.
Anyway, I think the real difficulty for people who want to say that Jesus was cool with wealth comes immediately after the ruler goes away, and Jesus turns to his disciples and says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 2:43 PM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
Is it that being rich is an impediment or that for that particular guy, being rich was an impediment?
I've always liked that passage, partly because there is a lot of potential nuance. For example, the discourse begins with the ruler asking Jesus what he needs to do to get eternal life. Jesus replies that he should follow the commandments and then gives a partial list. The commands he lists are not the ones that have to do with God -- like not taking God's name in vain or keeping the Sabbath. No, he lists commands that have to do with other people. The ruler says he has kept all of those since he was a boy. Then Jesus tells him that if he wants to be perfect, he should sell everything and come follow him [Jesus]. The way I read this is in connection with the way Jesus sums up the law: love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself. The person-to-person commands are the ones relevant to loving your neighbor as yourself. But although the ruler had obeyed the letter of the law, he did not understand its principle. He didn't love everyone else the same way he loved himself.
Anyway, I think the real difficulty for people who want to say that Jesus was cool with wealth comes immediately after the ruler goes away, and Jesus turns to his disciples and says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 2:43 PM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
But also I'm pretty sure that if Jesus were around today, he would treat the powerful, conservative church authorities roughly the same way he treated the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And that he would be hanging out in the inner city with homeless queer teenagers and drug addicts and sex workers.
THIS.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:08 PM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
THIS.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:08 PM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]
What I am seeing is a coming collapse of the American church as we know it. The mainline branches of Protestantism are dying off, and their strongest churches are very conservative and very much leaving their denominations. Meanwhile, those churches are getting pushed by the 1000-2000-5000 member "big box churches" that are little more than an assembly hall and a post office box. And they're all being pushed by a generation of twentysomethings that see the American church as less and less relevant to their lives.
Well isn't there a bigger secular(!) trend that's independent of all these internecine machinations? A trend toward less religiosity in general? It's much more visible in European social democracies, particularly the Nordic ones, but slowly, it's seeping through the rest of Europe as well. It would be easy to dismiss it as a function of the lack of centralized authority (a la the RCC), with fragmentation leading to loss of influence. But the same thing is seen in Roman Catholic countries, such as France and Spain (though the latter is partially a political reaction against the history of Francoism).
It might be tempting to claim American Exceptionalism to this trend, and it's true that we've had a much deeper religious tradition in this country, and one that's tenaciously held on in the face of economic and social changes. But, that would be reading too much into that exceptionalism (as always with any purported exceptionalism claims). All you have to do is look at the influence of Christianity in the U.S. over many generations - unmistakably, it's trending down. Even (gasp!) atheists are more willing to become publicly visible. Undoubtedly there've been occasional powerful revivals, but the overall trend has the declining sawtooth profile, with every subsequent revival peak lower in absolute terms.
Really, it's inevitable. Even for regions and religions that seem resistant to that trend, like Islam. In time, I have no doubt that religion will continue to decline (though probably never disappear in any foreseeable future).
How that decline happens is of course interesting, but the destination is already known.
posted by VikingSword at 10:35 PM on December 10, 2011
Well isn't there a bigger secular(!) trend that's independent of all these internecine machinations? A trend toward less religiosity in general? It's much more visible in European social democracies, particularly the Nordic ones, but slowly, it's seeping through the rest of Europe as well. It would be easy to dismiss it as a function of the lack of centralized authority (a la the RCC), with fragmentation leading to loss of influence. But the same thing is seen in Roman Catholic countries, such as France and Spain (though the latter is partially a political reaction against the history of Francoism).
It might be tempting to claim American Exceptionalism to this trend, and it's true that we've had a much deeper religious tradition in this country, and one that's tenaciously held on in the face of economic and social changes. But, that would be reading too much into that exceptionalism (as always with any purported exceptionalism claims). All you have to do is look at the influence of Christianity in the U.S. over many generations - unmistakably, it's trending down. Even (gasp!) atheists are more willing to become publicly visible. Undoubtedly there've been occasional powerful revivals, but the overall trend has the declining sawtooth profile, with every subsequent revival peak lower in absolute terms.
Really, it's inevitable. Even for regions and religions that seem resistant to that trend, like Islam. In time, I have no doubt that religion will continue to decline (though probably never disappear in any foreseeable future).
How that decline happens is of course interesting, but the destination is already known.
posted by VikingSword at 10:35 PM on December 10, 2011
As a queer Pagan, I'm more excited than dismayed at the prospect of a more secular, multi-religious society.
My one caveat is to be careful what you wish for. Multi-religious societies usually end up developing new dominant religions. Look at what's happening in Germany now where Islam is on the rise -- bringing back to the surface a certain amount of xenophobia among Germans.
People crave certainty, and living in a time of increasing speed and increasing uncertainty makes them more demanding of certainty. Thus the rebirth of Calvinism in America led by Mark Driscoll. Calvinists really believe they have all of this worked out, that there's airtight certainty in their beliefs.
I'm with you on wanting a secular and multi-religious America, and I think that's where we're heading, towards a plurality of Christianity with heavy doses of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, atheism, agnosticism, and wicca. But I think there are consequences, just as there are consequences of having a single belief system oppressing all others. In a free market of ideas, every idea is trying to corner the market, and while competition focuses and streamlines, it also leads to a lot of fighting.
I doubt we'll ever see the religious violence in America on the scale we've seen it in, say, Indonesia, where mosques and churches are burned pretty regularly, but I do worry the anti-Islam attitude of some on the far right is going to boil over into someone doing something stupid.
posted by dw at 8:17 AM on December 11, 2011
My one caveat is to be careful what you wish for. Multi-religious societies usually end up developing new dominant religions. Look at what's happening in Germany now where Islam is on the rise -- bringing back to the surface a certain amount of xenophobia among Germans.
People crave certainty, and living in a time of increasing speed and increasing uncertainty makes them more demanding of certainty. Thus the rebirth of Calvinism in America led by Mark Driscoll. Calvinists really believe they have all of this worked out, that there's airtight certainty in their beliefs.
I'm with you on wanting a secular and multi-religious America, and I think that's where we're heading, towards a plurality of Christianity with heavy doses of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, atheism, agnosticism, and wicca. But I think there are consequences, just as there are consequences of having a single belief system oppressing all others. In a free market of ideas, every idea is trying to corner the market, and while competition focuses and streamlines, it also leads to a lot of fighting.
I doubt we'll ever see the religious violence in America on the scale we've seen it in, say, Indonesia, where mosques and churches are burned pretty regularly, but I do worry the anti-Islam attitude of some on the far right is going to boil over into someone doing something stupid.
posted by dw at 8:17 AM on December 11, 2011
Well isn't there a bigger secular(!) trend that's independent of all these internecine machinations? A trend toward less religiosity in general? It's much more visible in European social democracies, particularly the Nordic ones, but slowly, it's seeping through the rest of Europe as well.
Yes, but the US is a different beast when it comes to religion. Europe's been in a 70-80-100 year decline from Christianity, though it seems to have finally bottomed out in Western Europe. 10% of Brits attend church, which is roughly unchanged from a decade ago.
It might be tempting to claim American Exceptionalism to this trend
Well, this is one case where the US has been exceptional. Where in Europe church attendance has been in a consistent collapse since WWII, in the US it actually rose for quite a long while after the war, and even now the US has more people claiming themselves "Christian" than any other Western nation. Even Canada has seen increasing secularization at a rate far higher than the US -- we're only about 40-50 years from when Toronto was essentially controlled by tee-totaling Methodists, only 20 years from when they were the center of the Charismatic movement, and now they're pretty much as secular as any European city.
The largest church in Europe, the Kingsway International Christian Center in the East End, has 12,000 members... which wouldn't even get it into the list of 15 largest congregations in the US despite having access to a larger population base (metro London) than any of the US churches. (Heck, two of the largest churches are in Houston.)
All you have to do is look at the influence of Christianity in the U.S. over many generations - unmistakably, it's trending down. Even (gasp!) atheists are more willing to become publicly visible. Undoubtedly there've been occasional powerful revivals, but the overall trend has the declining sawtooth profile, with every subsequent revival peak lower in absolute terms.
Except, well, it's ebbed and waned a lot. I'd argue the period around the birth of the US was actually the least religious period in our history. I mean, you have a Quaker-in-name-only Ben Franklin, an Enlightenment minded Jefferson, a less-than-Christmas-and-Easter George Washington... and it wasn't like the US was going to church all that often, anyway. It wasn't until the Second Great Awakening that the Founding Fathers suddenly found religion (after almost all of them were dead).
And if you look over time, the US has seen a waxing and waning of public religion since the Second Great Awakening. I think the difference between then and now is that there was more public respect and private contempt for religion 100 years ago -- see Mark Twain's recently released writings -- where now contempt is free and open and will even sell you a few books (on both sides).
We may be looking at the collapse of American religion towards the state of affairs in Europe, where church attendance is 1-10%, where only strongly banded together religious groups can manage any kind of voice in the government, where believing is seen as queerer than not believing. I do not deny that. And given the state of affairs, where religion and politics are so tightly intertwined that people are rejecting one to get away from the other, I think we could be looking at a long-term decline in the American church.
That said, this has happened before. America is a strange beast when it comes to religion -- it's almost like it needs it to thrive, while occasionally skipping church on Sunday at the same time. I wouldn't bet against American religion. It is amazingly adaptive and always seems to return to prominence after a generation or two off.
posted by dw at 8:47 AM on December 11, 2011
Yes, but the US is a different beast when it comes to religion. Europe's been in a 70-80-100 year decline from Christianity, though it seems to have finally bottomed out in Western Europe. 10% of Brits attend church, which is roughly unchanged from a decade ago.
It might be tempting to claim American Exceptionalism to this trend
Well, this is one case where the US has been exceptional. Where in Europe church attendance has been in a consistent collapse since WWII, in the US it actually rose for quite a long while after the war, and even now the US has more people claiming themselves "Christian" than any other Western nation. Even Canada has seen increasing secularization at a rate far higher than the US -- we're only about 40-50 years from when Toronto was essentially controlled by tee-totaling Methodists, only 20 years from when they were the center of the Charismatic movement, and now they're pretty much as secular as any European city.
The largest church in Europe, the Kingsway International Christian Center in the East End, has 12,000 members... which wouldn't even get it into the list of 15 largest congregations in the US despite having access to a larger population base (metro London) than any of the US churches. (Heck, two of the largest churches are in Houston.)
All you have to do is look at the influence of Christianity in the U.S. over many generations - unmistakably, it's trending down. Even (gasp!) atheists are more willing to become publicly visible. Undoubtedly there've been occasional powerful revivals, but the overall trend has the declining sawtooth profile, with every subsequent revival peak lower in absolute terms.
Except, well, it's ebbed and waned a lot. I'd argue the period around the birth of the US was actually the least religious period in our history. I mean, you have a Quaker-in-name-only Ben Franklin, an Enlightenment minded Jefferson, a less-than-Christmas-and-Easter George Washington... and it wasn't like the US was going to church all that often, anyway. It wasn't until the Second Great Awakening that the Founding Fathers suddenly found religion (after almost all of them were dead).
And if you look over time, the US has seen a waxing and waning of public religion since the Second Great Awakening. I think the difference between then and now is that there was more public respect and private contempt for religion 100 years ago -- see Mark Twain's recently released writings -- where now contempt is free and open and will even sell you a few books (on both sides).
We may be looking at the collapse of American religion towards the state of affairs in Europe, where church attendance is 1-10%, where only strongly banded together religious groups can manage any kind of voice in the government, where believing is seen as queerer than not believing. I do not deny that. And given the state of affairs, where religion and politics are so tightly intertwined that people are rejecting one to get away from the other, I think we could be looking at a long-term decline in the American church.
That said, this has happened before. America is a strange beast when it comes to religion -- it's almost like it needs it to thrive, while occasionally skipping church on Sunday at the same time. I wouldn't bet against American religion. It is amazingly adaptive and always seems to return to prominence after a generation or two off.
posted by dw at 8:47 AM on December 11, 2011
Interestingly, I found googling "debt jubilee" far more convincing than this NYT article, T.D. Strange. There isn't any chance they'd legislate a "jubilee" in the short term, but maybe if the financial crisis continues deepening for years. Amusing.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:24 PM on December 11, 2011
posted by jeffburdges at 1:24 PM on December 11, 2011
When you call yourself a "theological conservative," I take it to mean that you are aligning yourself with the dominant view. Does dominant in this case mean the view institutionalized by Rome? If it is not founded on institutionality, what criteria do you use to decide whether a view is dominant or not?
That's kind of a huge question, which can't be answered easily, but I took a stab at it here. Suffice it to say that I view the term "orthodox Christianity" as I hashed out in that earlier comment as being roughly synonymous with "theologically conservative" in this thread. So when I say that interpreting the passages at issue in this thread to mean that the accumulation of wealth is a moral evil as such is "not the dominant view," I mean that it isn't one that any mainstream, orthodox tradition has regarded as being the only or even the best way of interpreting those passages. It's certainly an implication of those passages, but when interpreted in light of the rest of Scripture, even the rest of the New Testament, it just doesn't hold water.
One of the axioms of orthodox Christianity/theological conservatism is that no single passage of Scripture can be interpreted in such a way that would conflict with other passages of Scripture. As other passages in both Old and New Testaments speak explicitly and positively about property ownership (How else are we supposed to make sense of "Thou shalt not steal" if there's no such thing as ownership?), the suggestion that these passages or parables should be interpreted to mean that property ownership is unacceptable have been, by and large, rejected as bad readings.
However, aside the value from checking your interpretative work against the reasoning of others and learning about Christian history, what is the purpose of appealing to tradition?
Because, as Paul put it, "If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." Faithfulness to the apostolic tradition is, for theological conservatives, serious business. It's the kind of thing people got executed over in the past and which can still get you excommunicated today.
Why? Because the position you describe here:
An argument as to how that works or why it should be that way would be a total derail, but I think it's pretty uncontroversial that every major tradition of orthodox Christianity has some doctrine which contemplates some role for church authority. Even the most individualistic Baptist traditions which put the highest premium on individual freedom generally recognize that their pastors have authority over the flocks.
This is actually going to be one of the main sticking points for "New Evangelicals" as things go forward. The people that reject church authority are going to wind up moralistic, therapeutic deists, because there's really no reason not to adopt the kind of secular hermeneutic you describe in your comment, and thus no particular reason to keep any doctrine which presents any kind of difficulty.
posted by valkyryn at 1:42 PM on December 11, 2011
That's kind of a huge question, which can't be answered easily, but I took a stab at it here. Suffice it to say that I view the term "orthodox Christianity" as I hashed out in that earlier comment as being roughly synonymous with "theologically conservative" in this thread. So when I say that interpreting the passages at issue in this thread to mean that the accumulation of wealth is a moral evil as such is "not the dominant view," I mean that it isn't one that any mainstream, orthodox tradition has regarded as being the only or even the best way of interpreting those passages. It's certainly an implication of those passages, but when interpreted in light of the rest of Scripture, even the rest of the New Testament, it just doesn't hold water.
One of the axioms of orthodox Christianity/theological conservatism is that no single passage of Scripture can be interpreted in such a way that would conflict with other passages of Scripture. As other passages in both Old and New Testaments speak explicitly and positively about property ownership (How else are we supposed to make sense of "Thou shalt not steal" if there's no such thing as ownership?), the suggestion that these passages or parables should be interpreted to mean that property ownership is unacceptable have been, by and large, rejected as bad readings.
However, aside the value from checking your interpretative work against the reasoning of others and learning about Christian history, what is the purpose of appealing to tradition?
Because, as Paul put it, "If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." Faithfulness to the apostolic tradition is, for theological conservatives, serious business. It's the kind of thing people got executed over in the past and which can still get you excommunicated today.
Why? Because the position you describe here:
In my field, the dominant assumption since the 1960s has been not only that each person must use their individual judgment to interpret a text, but that it isn't even really possible to imagine an appeal to tradition as being finally anything but one more form of individual judgment.would actually be viewed as heretical by most theological conservatives, of any stripe. Every Christian tradition believes that tradition is not simply a useful reference book but actually authoritative in some sense. There are disputes as to how that works procedurally--both the Great Schism and the Reformation were fundamentally disputes about the operation of apostolic authority--but only theological liberalism would accept anything like the hermeneutic you present. The Christian tradition has, until basically the twentieth century, largely held that individual judgment is subject to guidance and correction by the church, which can and does wield authority over its members.
An argument as to how that works or why it should be that way would be a total derail, but I think it's pretty uncontroversial that every major tradition of orthodox Christianity has some doctrine which contemplates some role for church authority. Even the most individualistic Baptist traditions which put the highest premium on individual freedom generally recognize that their pastors have authority over the flocks.
This is actually going to be one of the main sticking points for "New Evangelicals" as things go forward. The people that reject church authority are going to wind up moralistic, therapeutic deists, because there's really no reason not to adopt the kind of secular hermeneutic you describe in your comment, and thus no particular reason to keep any doctrine which presents any kind of difficulty.
posted by valkyryn at 1:42 PM on December 11, 2011
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So... liberation theology is making inroads into American evangelicalism, then?
posted by hippybear at 10:14 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]