Race, Politics, and American Christianity

Back in 2003, when the US went to war with Iraq, I was working in youth ministry at a primarily white church in the working-class city of Tacoma, WA. I have a vivid memory of sitting in a worship service during that time in which the preacher delivered a sermon in which he declared that John the Baptist was a patriot and, therefore, we should be patriots as well and support the war effort. More specifically, we were told that President G.W. Bush was God’s appointed for a time of trial and, therefore, we should not question but support his decisions.

Back in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, I was working in young adult ministry at a primarily black church in inner-city Los Angeles. The Sunday after the election, on which I was blessed to preach the sermon, many people proudly wore shirts bearing the image of President-elect Obama, and prayers were offered calling upon God to protect the soon-to-be president and to give him the wisdom required for such a position. In addition, several references were made to the “miracle” which had just occurred which many in the audience thought they would never see come to fruition – namely, a black man elected as president of the United States.

Leading up to that election I had a long conversation with my mentor from the church in Tacoma in which he professed his admiration of Sarah Palin and disbelief and inability to comprehend how a Christian, let alone the majority of a congregation, could vote for Obama in light of his position on abortion. For him, there was no way he could conceive of a justifiable reason to cast a vote for someone who supports abortion in any way. We talked about the ways that race influences politics and the complicated nature in which theological beliefs are translated into political policies and stances, but for him there was still no way that he could make sense of a “Christian” vote for a Democrat.

On a recent post in which I strongly criticized celebrity pastor Mark Driscoll’s statement on the day of the most recent inauguration, a commentor stated that “there is no hope for…conversation” between himself and those who (like me) maintain that Pres. Obama can be a Christian in light of his politics. A few days later I learned that on the Sunday following the inauguration, a man prayed at that church in Tacoma that God “please show Jesus to Obama.” Like Driscoll, this man apparently believes that Obama can not possibly be a Christian because of his political stances.

Finally, like many people out there, I’ve heard many friends from this church (and others with a similar racial composition) loudly criticize recent attempts at stricter assault weapon regulations using theological language and/or linking this political issue to abortion. Of course, I’ve also heard members of the church in inner-city LA voice their support for such legislation. Importantly, many of the members of the church in Tacoma are hunters and many of the members of the church in LA have had friends and/or family killed or injured by gun violence.

The irony here? The man who was the minister at the church in LA while I was on staff there has been invited to speak at the church in Tacoma on multiple occasions. Indeed, if you were to compare the “official” theological beliefs of both congregations they would be nearly, if not totally, identical. They make the same confessions of faith and participate in the same liturgical practices on Sunday mornings. They would, on most occassions, refer to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

However, there are many in the church in Tacoma, including those in leadership, who would declare that a Christian should never vote for a person who supports legalized abortion of any kind (or the legalization of gay marriage, for that matter). Indeed, there are probably some who, like the commentor on my previous post, believe that to vote in such a way is to prove that one is not actually a Christian. And, while many at the church in LA believe that Christians sholud not have an abortion when facing an unplanned pregnancy, I never heard anyone there equate it with murder (as is often done by members of the church in Tacoma) and know that the vast majority of the congregation usually votes for Democratic politicians in local and national elections.

What explains these different political stances and actions even though there is much theological agreement between these Christians?

Lived experience.

As much as many want to deny it, race greatly influences the ways that people experience life in America. Of course, it is not only race which leads to these political differences (inner-city LA is quite different from Tacoma and its suburbs in a variety of ways), but race is a strong contributing factor to these differences.

Indeed, the Pew Research Center has demonstrated that race is a consistent factor in how abortion is viewed politically and morally, even among Protestants. White Protestants view it as morally wrong and believe it should be made illegal at significantly greater percentages than black Protestants. Based on the voting patters of white Protestants, especially Evangelicals, and black Protestants, it is safe to assume that these racial disparities continue across a range of political issues.

There are a variety of reasons for these disparities, but one (in the case of abortion) is surely the history of black women not being able to control their bodies throughout slavery and Jim Crow. It should be no surprise, and is totally understandable, that many black women in America don’t trust others (especially white men) to determine in advance what should be done with their bodies. White men have raped, killed, abused, and degraded their bodies for centuries, and many black women have not forgotten it even as most white people have.

In short, race impacts the experience of every American Christian. And these experiences directly influence the politics of many of the Christians in our churches. There is no straightforward way to translate the vast majority of Christian beliefs into political policy and to hold any political position as a sign of theological orthodoxy, as is increasingly becoming the case among many white Evangelicals, is a grave mistake. And, though many would not say it in this way, there are many Christians who write off a significant portion of other Christians who are racially different than them because of their politics. In a world of increasing racial segregation (through the creation of primarily non-white urban ghettoes and primarily white suburbs and rural communities), people are still attending churches that are racially monolithic. This reality creates the environment in which people come to believe that their political beliefs (greatly influenced by racial experiences) are THE Christian political position and begin to use politics as a measure of Christian faithfulness and orthodoxy.

In this way, there are some who attend the church I served in Tacoma who are willing to call those who attend the church I served in LA fellow Christians on Sunday and (unknowingly?) dismiss them as non-Christians every other day of the week because of who they voted for. To overcome this contradiction we must admit the complexities of political life and recognize the way that experience shapes our politics (and, in many ways, our theology). In addition, we must work hard to live in racially and ethnically diverse communities of faith so that we actually know people who confess Jesus as Lord and vote differently than us. Otherwise, our politics can become, in practice, theologically racist because we will become ready to exclude people from the faith who vote differently than us. And, as it will turn out, those who are different from us politically tend to fall as much as, if not more so, along racial lines than denominational or theological ones.

The continuing co-optation of Martin Luther King Jr.

My good friend Jermaine McDonald is currently finishing a dissertation (which I can’t wait to read!) examining the evolution of the public view of MLK in the US. King went from a reviled radical to a fixture in the American civil religion.[1] A strong critic of capitalism and US military action in Vietnam, King is now featured in the ads of transnational corporations and has been formally canonization by the American government through a holiday in his name and a memorial in the national capital.

One way in which this transformation has been possible is because people shape King into their own image. Recently on The Daily Show Larry Wilmore pointed this phenomenon out in a humorous way.

Well, it seems that the US Air Force has joined in this shaping of King in one’s own image. They have declared that, because of the racial and religious diversity of the air force, King “would be proud to see our Global Strike team [part of the US nuclear defense system]…standing side-by-side ensuring the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal remain the credible bedrock of our national defense…”

As the folks over at Gizmodo have pointed out, this is a pretty incredible claim considering King once said,

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” in A Testament of Hope, 276

While it truly is difficult to discern exactly where King would stand on a host of political issues today, it seems clear that the man who was assassinated exactly one year after declaring the Vietnam War wholly unjust and while planning a “Poor People’s Campaign” intended to push the US government toward radical economic reforms – the man who lived and died fighting the interdependent evils of poverty, racism, and militarism – can not be used to justify public policy that promotes or ignores any of these evils. Specifically, the US Air Force is wrong that King would be proud of the continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons decades after his untimely death which was due, in part, to his protestation of these weapons.

Cornel West has recently suggested that the cooptation of King by those in power has reached a tipping point. I am beginning to believe he is right.

1I will always remember the story I once heard from a former seminary professor about why he left Evangelicalism. He was a student at Bob Jones University when King was assassinated. Upon hearing the news while sitting in class one day every single one of his classmates stoop up and cheered. Now, those same people and their children claim King in defense of their conservative politics. There is no clearer evidence that King’s public legacy is one that everyone wants to claim when even Glenn Beck is attempting to use it to his advantage. The man who is convinced Barack Obama is a socialist uses the man who was pursued by the FBI for years as a suspected Communist, and confessed to admiring something like democratic socialism, to argue against Obama’s neoliberal economic policies. Oh, the irony!

The Legacy of King in the Age of Obama

Upon hearing that President Obama was going to use the King family bible for his second inauguration Cornel West had this to say:

While the first black president having his second inauguration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day clearly has important symbolic significance, we must remember that King’s message was much more radical than “having a day on” or committing oneself to a life of service. King pushed for the removoal of the evils of “poverty, racism, and militarism.” Therefore, in a post-recession, still-at-war in Afghanistan world I give you these words from Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on April 25, 1957.

Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry of the new child psychology. Now in a sense all of us must live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob-rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence. I call upon you to be maladjusted. The challenge to you is to be maladjusted – as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a might stream”; as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions, “All men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus who dared to dream a dream of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men [sic]. The world is in desperate need of maladjustment. King, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Volume IV: Symbol of the Movement, 190-1.

The Ordinariness of the Newtown Massacre

The words “unimaginable,” “unspeakable,” and “unbelievable” have been used countless times to describe the killing of children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut. Indeed, my good friend Brad East has said, “This is not intelligible. This is not comprehensible. It is absurd. It is evil. It is not a genus of a species (whether this be “evil things” or “mass murder shootings”); it is not an instance of a larger nameable phenomenon. It is entirely dumbfounding.” And, while I understand the sentiment behind such statements (which are almost always ironically followed by thousands of words of commentary which make it clear that they believe it is none of those things), I believe they are mistaken and actually hinder our ability to respond appropriately to Newtown. In reality, someone did imagine Newtown, we all now believe it can happen, and we have been speaking about it for nearly a week. And if we continue to act as if this is not the case and that it is truly unintelligible and incomprehensible we will be saying the same words in a few months when the next Newtown occurs. Instead, we should admit that, sadly, Newtown was to be expected in contemporary America.

Perhaps one of the saddest facts about the massacre, other than the dozens of deaths, is that what so surprised most of us was that it was children who were the primary victims in a mass school shooting and not that there was another mass school shooting in the US in 2012. Part of the reason for that is that in so many ways Newtown was so ordinary. And it is the ordinariness of Newtown that so troubles me.

I’ve written before about the peculiarity of American male violence. Ours is a culture which shapes boys into young men who see violence as an organizing principle of life in the world. We are formed by our society to be violent. Prof. James Garbarino’s research has consistently made this clear. In a recent CNN op-ed, “How a Boy Becomes a Killer,” he says,

We start by recognizing that many young Americans (and other young people around the world) develop and carry with them a kind of moral damage, which I have come to call “the war zone mentality.”

However it develops, they grow up with a damaged sense of reality. They view the world as if they are soldiers confronting a hostile environment that they perceive to be full of enemies. Once they get fixated on this damaged world view, they may hatch the delusion that even teachers and young children are their enemies. For Adam Lanza, apparently even his mother was an enemy who had to be destroyed.

There is no one cause. It is as if they are building a tower of blocks, one by one, that can get so high it falls over, with innocent people dying. These building blocks can be found in a dangerous neighborhood or a school rife with bullying…through the internet and mass media…web sites and videos that promote paranoid views of the world…in pervasive and intense playing of video games…

But moral damage and a misperception of reality usually are not enough to lead to murder. The typical killer is emotionally damaged and has developed mental health problems, perhaps exacerbated by being bullied and rejected by peers, or abused and neglected at home…

The crucial point is that even “crazy” people operate in a particular culture, a particular society, a particular time and place, and within a certain world view of how to manage your rage, your hurt, and your sadness. While not uniquely American (it has happened in recent years in Europe and the Middle East), the mass murder that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, is especially American.

Our socially toxic culture promotes paranoia, desensitization to violence, almost unlimited access to lethal weapons, opportunities to practice mass murder via realistic “point and shoot” video games and games that justify violence as a legitimate form of vengeance in pursuit of an individual’s or group’s idea of justice.

And, in a related op-ed Prof. Michael Kimmel says,

Why are angry young men setting out to kill entire crowds of strangers?

Motivations are hard to pin down, but gender is the single most obvious and intractable variable when it comes to violence in America. Men and boys are responsible for 95% of all violent crimes in this country. “Male criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of females, regardless of source of data, crime type, level of involvement, or measure of participation” is how the National Academy of Sciences summed up the extant research.

How does masculinity figure into this? From an early age, boys learn that violence is not only an acceptable form of conflict resolution, but one that is admired. However the belief that violence is an inherently male characteristic is a fallacy. Most boys don’t carry weapons, and almost all don’t kill: are they not boys? Boys learn it.

They learn it from their fathers. They learn it from a media that glorifies it, from sports heroes who commit felonies and get big contracts, from a culture saturated in images of heroic and redemptive violence. They learn it from each other.

In talking to more than 400 young men for my book, “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,” I heard over and over again what they learn about violence. They learn that if they are crossed, they have the manly obligation to fight back. They learn that they are entitled to feel like a real man, and that they have the right to annihilate anyone who challenges that sense of entitlement.

In other words, our culture intentionally creates people – overwhelmingly men – who commit violence, and in the extreme mass murder. From the violence we inflict on children to the violence we teach them to inflict on others and the violent definitions of masculinity we insist they conform to we create young boys and men who believe it is natural and right for them to commit acts of violence. This is why Ta-Nehisi Coates had so many stories of men committing violence against women to draw from in his recent commentary.

And, while Garbarino and Coates are correct that better mental health care and stricter gun laws would help curb potential violent perpetrators from committing specific crimes, these legal and political restraints will not help us form nonviolent citizens instead of the violent ones we now create. For that to occur, as Prof. Garbarino also points out, we need a radical change in culture – from entertainment to parenting to politics to religion. We must become a different people if we are to avoid future Newtowns. Because – and it hurts to write this – we are a violent people for whom domestic violence, inner-city youth violence, constant warfare, and even mass shootings are our way of life.

In basketball they say “ball don’t lie.” In other words, at the end of the day the ball goes in the hoop or it doesn’t, and the winners are the ones who put the ball through the hoop more than the other team. We could say when reflecting on our common life together, then, that “bullets don’t lie.” And the bullets keep flying. And they keep killing. Because this is who we are.

Bullets don’t lie.

Because you have to see this to believe it …

It is now impossible to defend capitalism, Texas, or cable television to me for the rest of the day. My head literally hurts right now.

On Dying Well: The Witness of Ryan Woods

I never met Ryan Woods. But the way those I know who knew him speak of him is evidence enough to confirm he was an extraordinary human being.

Ryan died last week. Fortunately for us, he spent time during his last year-plus of life sharing his thoughts as he went through the process of death. And one thing he taught us through his reflections is how to die well.

Americans are funny people. We do all that we can to deny death. We get surgeries and botox and color our hair and use magic creams all in attempts to cover up the evidence that we are all getting nearer to our death. Indeed, we have birthed theologies devoted to the idea that (enough) faith should always lead to healing even as we know that all of must die and, therefore, all of us must (in the end) never have “enough” faith. And, as Dr. Thomas Long has taught us, we have spurred evolutions in funeral practices that increasingly avoid facing head-first the realities of death.

Ryan refused to do any of this and, in doing so, he joined the centuries-long chorus of Christians who have declared that death is not ultimately triumphant (indeed, it has already been defeated), that resurrection is real, and that God is good especially in sickness, pain, and death.

Many theologians, philosophers, and medical practitioners have recently lamented the fact that contemporary practices of medicine increasingly focus on cure rather than care. The goal of “beating” death is overtaking the goal of dying well. However, the former goal is futile. And one thing that the Christian faith teaches is how to die well. In dying well Christians proclaim God’s goodness and grace and ability to transfigure human experience at the end of life as much as at one’s baptism.

I am thankful to Ryan for his example in dying well, for in doing so he has taught me of God’s grace in difficult times and of God’s peace that surpasses understanding.

Please, read his blog. Donate to this fund for his wife and two young children. And watch these videos of his story:

Four Styles of American Politics

We are tempted, because of the rhetoric of talking heads on cable news and our two-party system, to think that there are only two major political positions in the United States: Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, red vs. blue, capitalist vs. socialist, etc. In reality, there are four primary ways that Americans approach politics. (Of course, there are more like 300 million approaches, but for the sake of this post four categories will cover the majority of those positions.) These are in my terms: Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, and Libertarian. Importantly, these four styles of politics are fluid and very few people actually fit into only one category across political issues. Rather, most people have a mixed vision of the political good for the United States, and I believe gaining clarity on these categories and their fluidity can help make our public discourse more moral and less polarized.

The history of American political life is, in many ways, defined by the negotiation of the tension that inevitably arises between protecting liberty and establishing equality. It seems impossible to ensure total liberty without guaranteeing inequality, political or economic. In a like manner, it seems impossible to ensure equality across social spheres without violating the liberty of people solely committed to their self-interest. Generally speaking, this tension has been negotiated in the United States by ensuring equality in the explicitly political sphere, by granting every citizen an equal number of votes (though, only after long and sometimes bloody battles for anyone other than white, property-owning males), and liberty in the economic sphere, by creating a relatively free market economy unencumbered by regulations and without the worry of competing with state-owned businesses.

The American emphasis historically has tilted back-and-forth between a focus on liberty or equality, but mainstream politics has been a tenuous balancing of the two, with ever-increasing nods towards equality in social and political life and an ever-increasing nods toward liberty in economic life. This trend toward equality in social and political life has been necessary because the US began with a very unequal distribution of political rights (see the political status of African slaves, American Indians, and women in the early years of the republic for just a few blatant examples). The trend towards liberty in economic life has especially been the case post-1960s after trends toward equality during the height of the labor movement in the early twentieth century.

The Message of the Prophets in a Time of Elections

Yesterday I was honored to preach at Federal Way Church of Christ in Federal Way, WA. Preaching on the Sunday before a presidential election is a touchy thing and I delivered a sermon with that in mind. Below is a redacted version of that sermon. Enjoy

Thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God. But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say, “Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. Micah 3:5 – 4:4

We humans are narcissistic creatures, you know. We have a tendency to think that our time is the worst time in history. That no one has faced a danger as serious as the dangers of our generation—indeed, that our generation may be the last generation. That today must be the beginning of the end. That history rests in our hands. That the urgency of today justifies …

… our daily passing by of the Lazarus’s that we come across …

… pointing out the “specks in the eyes” of the needy neighbor to soothe our guilty conscience for not meeting their need …

… the venom we spew about our neighbors who are different from us because their actions reveal the planks in our own eyes …

… the demonization of our political enemies to justify our hatred …

And the urgency of today makes us feel justified for listening to the prophets of today who are, in the words of Micah, blind and living in darkness. One quickly thinks of the “prophets” at Westboro Baptist Church who picket at the funerals of American soldiers killed in combat holding signs claiming their deaths are the punishment of God for America’s liberal ways. Or one thinks of Pat Robertson, or others, who are quick to name the tragedies of Haiti, New Orleans, or 9/11 as the judgment of God upon evil people. These are not prophets of God but are the prophets of today who cannot see clearly because they are blinded by the urgency of today.

Yet throughout history there have been prophets who had eyes to see clearly and ears to hear clearly and the wisdom to speak clearly God’s words of truth. They do not give in to the temptation of “today”; to the temptation to interpret all of history to be about me and about “us” and about now rather than about all of creation and about eternity. No, the prophets do not ignore today. They are not, as some might say, “so heavenly focused that they are of no earthly good.” No. The prophets have always been about earthly good. They “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” And in doing so they see today more clearly than those who cannot see past “today”.

The Orthodox Church in America on Slavery, Past and Present

My heart was gladdened when I read the new pastoral letter published by the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) today. The letter is titled “Pastoral Letter on the Emancipation Proclamation: One Hundred and Fifty Years Later.” In this letter several bishops and archbishops sign their name to a document that confesses the historical complicity of the Church in the sin of slavery. In addition, it pushes Christians to think beyond legislation as the answer to such a perduring human evil. And, as someone in the midst of writing a dissertation on the role of justice in reconciliation through the lenses of the doctrine of the Trinity, I found a couple of passages in the piece especially compelling. First was their situating the Christian confession that human beings are created in the image of God within the context of the doctrine of the Trinity – a major part of my dissertation.

Because Orthodox theology is grounded in the person, it has, over the course of 2000 years, sought to articulate and uphold the equal glory, honor and dignity of every person as being created in the image and likeness of God. Indeed, each person is a reflection of the Tri-Personal God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And second is their call for repentance and the need for social and economic change to adequately address both the scourge of human trafficking and the complicity of the Church in that scourge.

In the desert of human despair – in the wilderness of human trafficking – it is Christ our Lord and Savior who calls us to repentance. The historical record shows that Christians and Christian churches supported institutions of slavery and were implicated in these institutions. Christ’s call to repentance requires radical social and economic changes. (italics mine)

The letter is less than two pages long and is packed full of historical and theological insight. I encourage you to read the letter in its entirety here.

Again, kudos to the OCA for an important confession and call to repentance and justice. This is the Church at its best.

Politics is a Task

In this lecture given during our last presidential election, Robin Lovin (Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics) defends politics as a task, rather than as a tool or a temptation. He insists, in good Niebuhrian fashion, that politics isn’t about ultimate ends and, thus, is not so grand to (necessarily) be a temptation. Nor is politics a mere tool to be used in achieving ultimate ends. Rather, it is a shared human task and responsibility to address specific issues and problems common to human communities. This message is especially important in an increasingly polarized world in which candidates run to demonstrate their “faithfulness” to certain party platforms that appeal to a minority “base” rather than to demonstrate their ability to address complex problems in pragmatic, rather than ideologically pure, ways. Watch the lecture below: