Book Review: A Faith Embracing All Creatures

(A Faith Embracing All Creatures is the second book in The Peaceable Kingdom Series being published by Cascade/Wipf and Stock. I reviewed the first book in this series, A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, here.)

“The Peaceable Kingdom Series is a multi-volume series that seeks to challenge the pervasive violence assumed necessary in relation to humans, nonhumans, and the larger environment.” Each individual volume is set up in such a way so that each chapter is a response to a commonly asked question skeptical about the topic at hand. Each chapter is written by a theological scholar or engaged Christian practitioner versed in the topic. In this way, the series is one of the best examples of “public scholarship” that I am aware of. It brings some of the best thinking on pressing issues into the hands of “everyday” readers. For this, I applaud the editors and publishers.

The second volume in the series sets out to answer questions about and argue for the Christian call to “embrace all creatures.” The primary focus of most of the essays is advocating for Christians to eat a vegan, or at least vegetarian, diet. However, other instances of human-animal interactions (such as laboratory testing) are mentioned as well. The primary thrust of the book’s argument is that God’s eschatological kingdom is one which will know no violence – including violence against animals. The Church and Christians, called to embody this kingdom in the here and now as much as possible, are thus called in their discipleship to reject violence against their fellow breathing creatures. Faithful kingdom discipleship is discipleship that rejects violence of any kind.

The book begins in Genesis 1 and the question of human dominion, proceeds through questions about the covenant with Noah, animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, and Jesus eating fish and lamb. If God called on humans to sacrifice animals or if Jesus ate animals, for example, why are Christians supposed to abstain from eating animals? These are the kinds of questions that Christian vegetarians and vegans often face and that the authors attempt to answer. The advocates of Christian vegetarianism are meeting meat-eating Christians on their own terms.

In my opinion, the chapters that address specific biblical texts generally fail to convince. For example, in chapter 9 Annika Spalde and Pelle Strindlund take on the story of Jesus healing the man possessed by a “legion” of demons who then, with Jesus’s permission, leave the man and enter into pigs which commit mass suicide. “Clearly,” skeptical Christians say to Christian vegetarians, “this shows that Jesus values human life more than animal life. Indeed, here Jesus views animals as mere property that can be killed at a moment’s notice. How can you then affirm that humans shouldn’t kill animals for food when Jesus “killed” a multitude of animals in this story?”

Spalde and Strindlund, in my opinion, do a wonderful job of presenting an anti-imperial reading of the text. Naming the demon(s) “Legion,” for instance, is clearly an allusion to the Roman imperial army. Also, several of the Greek words in the story (such as apostello, agele, and epetrepsen autois) are words that had military connotations. And the pigs in the story act in ways quite unnatural to pigs; for example, rushing forward in unison rather than in multiple directions. Clearly, something out of the ordinary is up. For Spalde and Strindlund, then, this story is best read (metaphorically?) as a story of Jesus challenging imperial violence. They say, “That Mark and the other authors depict the destruction of animals is unfortunate. Yet it is also the case that no moral lesson regarding our relationship to animals can be derived from this text since it is really about Jesus’s interaction with a powerful military regime…This text is about a person possessed by a military spirit, whom Jesus freed; God Almight versus imperial might – that is the structure of this text” (107).

While I find this interpretation intriguing and plausible (and exciting!), it is clear that Mark and the early church also understood this event to be something that actually happened. And most Christians today will read it in the same way. Jesus gave permission for demons to kill pigs. Likewise, God did command ancient Israel to sacrifice thousands of animals, Jesus as a Jew who spent much time in Galilee likely did eat fish, and occasionally lamb, etc. There may indeed be reasons for these actions that point to a deeper meaning, but these animals were harmed according to God’s action, most Christians believe. The interpretive moves taken to explain away these likely historical facts are, in the end, unconvincing.

However, those places where the authors bring out themes in scripture which support a contemporary vegetarian diet are compelling. Specifically, the authors collectively argue that 1) the dominion given humans in Genesis 1 is to be a dominion exercised in a spirit of servanthood rather than dominance, imitating the loving and sacrificial dominion of God and lordship of Christ, 2) God clearly cares for animals and we are called to care for them as well, 3) the kingdom of God will be one where wolves lie with lambs, and natural predators no longer eat their prey, so that should be modeled in the here and now, and 4) it appears that Adam and Eve had only a vegetarian diet before the fall and the killing of animals for clothing and food only comes after sin enters the world. All of these are compelling themes which, if nothing else, teach us that we should treat animals with more compassion and care than we currently do.

And here is where the volume is at its most compelling: In chapter 11, titled “Are We Addicted to the Suffering of Animals?” John Berkman paints a picture of factory farms that is deplorable. This picture is not new to those familiar with this field or who have watched Food Inc. or other such documentaries. Simply speaking, the mass production of animals for food in developed countries is inhumane. This, in conjunction with the negative effects such food production has on the poor around the world, is a compelling reason for Christians to remove themselves as much as possible from the system to maintain some semblance of moral purity.

About five years ago my wife and I began lessening meat in our diet for exactly these reasons. First, we stopped buying red meat. Then we stopped buying chicken breasts. Then ground turkey. Now, we only buy fish on occasion, and usually from local vendors, and we typically only eat meat when eating out or at the home of another family. We are now calling ourselves “social meat eaters.” We have done this for a combination of reasons, but one dominant one is the gross amount of injustice tied to the factory farming of animals. This stance, for us, has meant a drastic reduction in meat consumption, but we still do partake at holidays, celebrations, and as an act of hospitality to those who host us. (Interestingly, there is a chapter in the volume that argues that Christian hospitality does not require accepting the gifts of others when in their home, but actually requires hospitality to those who enter your home – including animals.)

Unfortunately, there is relatively little space in the volume outside of Berkman’s essay devoted to these issues – though they are the most powerful argument for contemporary vegeatarianism. Also unfortunate is a lack of elaboration upon a few statements made by ecologist and evolutionary biologist Mark Bekoff in the preface. Bekoff says that “Once we realize the common bonds of compassion we share with other animals…[we will make] different choices about who (not what) we eat and buy, how we educate, entertain, and amuse ourselves, and how we conduct research” (xi). He says that animals “are rational, sentient creatures who care as much about their lives as we do our own” (xii). I wish more had been said about this topic.

And it is here that we find the greatest weakness in the book. In its laudable determination to answer the questions many Christians are actually asking it focuses disproportionately on questions of biblical interpretation. This approach is not compelling, however, because these are the wrong questions. The average person will not find several of the arguments made throughout the book convincing because to ask such questions is to read the Bible differently than the authors in the text. It is clear that the “biblical world” is one that assumes the owning, killing, and eating of animals. There may be, and I am convinced is, a biblical move in the direction of compassion and care for all of God’s creatures, but it is not one towards a principled veganism. To imply that there is such an ethic in the Bible seems to be imposing modern concerns upon an ancient text. This weakness in the book exposes a broader weakness in some strands of Christian theology and ethics; simply speaking, the Bible doesn’t have an answer for everything we face in the modern world.

The factory farming of animals didn’t exist in the world of the Bible. The links between the food industrial complex and climate change, global poverty, and obesity in wealthy countries were unthinkable. The production of animals too big to walk because they are so overfed and pumped full of steroids was centuries away. The Bible is not all we need when doing ethics. We need the Wesleyan quadrilateral or the hermeneutical circle or Ernst Troeltsch/H.R. Niebuhr’s triadic approach to faith, history, and ethics. We need more than the Bible to tackle the ethics of how humans treat animals. In short, we need to take seriously historical experience, the natural and social sciences, and other forms of knowledge available to us. The authors recognize this, and several incorporate such analyses into their chapters. However, these detours from the questions that drive the text are too brief to convert the unbeliever.

In my opinion, questions of social justice should push American Christians to limit their meat consumption and to challenge the existing system of food production. It is unjust, unhealthy, and inhumane. However, this doesn’t necessarily lead one to totally abstain from eating meat. If one can find and afford sustainable and humane meat, cheese, and eggs, I see no reason why eating them should be avoided from a social justice perpective. Indeed, we should encourage Christians and others to participate in these alternative and local forms of food production and economic systems. The case for totally abstaining from eating animals, it seems to me, rests on Bekoff’s claims about what we have come to know about animal rationality and emotions and our “bonds of compassion” with them. I am not well read in the science that is beginning to show that animals are more “human” than we have imagined, but I know that it exists. An accessible summary of that research would have been more compelling than an essay arguing that Jesus might not have eaten lamb at the last supper.

Still, taking seriously the eschatological vision of predators lying with their prey and God’s loving care of all creation are important biblical themes that Christians should more seriously consider. And many of the passages Christians point to to justify their harsh treatment of animals, like Genesis 1, are misused when used that way. These are important corrections to much popular understanding of the Christian faith. However, I am unconvinced that the Christian faith requires a plant-based diet for all Christians across time and culture. If this is not the case, then the contextual argument for contemporary vegetarianism/veganism in the developed world must be made by answering different questions. Berkman’s essay is a step in this direction. To find answers to similar questions one must look elsewhere.

On Feminism, Sexualization, and What it Means for the Church to be Countercultural

My friend and scholar Dr. Jeanine Thweatt-Bates has published an essay in the newest issue of New Wineskins magazine. In it she addresses everything from feminist interpretations of the Bible to the way that churches sexualize young girls through the ways they talk about virginity to what it would mean for the Church to finally be countercultural in regards to the treatment of women. It is well written and highly provocative. Please go check it out.

On feminist readings of scripture:

Last Sunday I taught the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders a lesson on the Ten Commandments. We read them in their entirety from Exodus 17, and they read smoothly (mostly) all the way through the last one, the one that commands us not to covet our neighbor’s donkey, slave, or wife. It’s not that that’s the only difficult commandment to explain to 3rd-5th graders (age-appropriately defining “adultery” on the spot was an unexpected challenge). But what was so difficult about this last verse was the smooth way it equates all these categories of property that Thou Shalt Not Covet. Your neighbor’s stuff: donkey, slave, wife. This time, the difficulty wasn’t that the kids demanded an explanation, like they did when I had to explain adultery wasn’t some ancient form of kidnapping. It was worse: my kids didn’t notice anything wonky about talking about a wife as a form of property.

The problem wasn’t the text. The problem was the text wasn’t a problem.

One of the things perceived as “dangerous” about feminist theologies is the way that they generally insist on reading the biblical text critically. Rather than taking for granted that this last commandment suggests, first, that God’s okay with treating wives as property, and second, therefore we should too, feminist theologies suggest that biblical texts at times contain genuinely problematic elements that we ought to identify as problems, in order to be faithful readers of the text and faithful followers of Jesus. And while this strikes many in the Churches of Christ as dangerous in some slippery-slope way, it’s not at all new. We do this pretty much automatically when confronted with those vengeful bloodthirsty imprecatory psalms. We’re not about to go dash babies against rocks because God apparently seems okay with that in a biblical text—because it’s obviously problematic. To read that text faithfully, we have to identify that as a problem. So why is that so hard to do when it comes to women—women’s status, women’s roles, women’s callings, women’s gifts, women’s voices?

Here’s my thesis. It’s hard because the attitude that women are basically the property of men (fathers, husbands) so explicitly stated in the tenth commandment is still more or less the prominent attitude in our culture today. It’s hard to call it a problem in the text, in the church, because it’s hard to see the problem, at all. Fish in water.

On sexualization in the church:

I’d rather highlight something that bothers me even more than the silencing of women in our assemblies. That is, the way in which our churches participate in the wider culture’s sexualization of women and girls—the way in which our churches participate in teaching that the ultimate value of women lies in being a desirable object.

As a mother of two girls (6 and almost 2), the issue of early childhood sexualization has been a concern of mine for a few years now. There is excellent work being done on this…Bringing attention to the ways in which toys, clothing, and media construct a seamless transition from “little princess” to “little diva” to “sex object,” starting with pink onesies and ending in thong underwear, these authors aim to educate parents and others about the ways children are being sexualized in our culture.

What do we teach them, these little princesses, in our Sunday Schools? Are we giving them the tools to resist the powerful messages that they are supposed to be cute, quiet, sweet, cooperative, helpless…sexy but virginal, desirable but out of reach, flirty but untouchable?

No. We’re not. Instead, we’re teaching them an inverted version of the world’s message of sexualization. Recently Rachel Held Evans asked, “Do Christians idolize virginity?” In short, yes. Instead of available objects of sexual desire, we teach girls to be unavailable objects of sexual desire. Symbolized by promise rings and pledges and whatnot—that pink God’s Princess Bible is the innocent beginning of a very dangerous lesson. What we don’t do is teach our girls—and boys!—that there is any possibility for women to be something other than an object of sexual desire. Available (for shame!) or unavailable (praise the wise virgins!), they remain objects of desire.

On what it would mean for the church to be countercultural:

That’s not countercultural.

What would be truly countercultural would be teaching our children that they are all, every single one of them, created in the image of God, and that no one created in the image of God can be reduced to an object of someone else’s desires. What would be truly countercultural would be a community demonstrating the reality of the equality of male and female in Christ.

God calls us—our sisters, our daughters, our mothers, our women—to more than being the pure objects of the male gaze. God calls women to embody the divine image. This means we must teach the children in our churches to see girls, and women, as more than objects of desire, but as agents of God’s will and work in the world. And when the church finds the courage to affirm and value women’s agency in the church and in the world—that, finally, will be truly countercultural.

You can read the entire article here.

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:

Why Libertarian Philosophy is Foreign to the Christian Tradition

I recently made the claim that Christians should consider Libertarian philosophy a heresy. In part, I was just being provocative; however, I am very serious in claiming that Christians should not embrace the Libertarianism that is increasingly influencing the conservative political movement in the United States. I do believe that at its heart Libertarianism is opposed to some of the core values and beliefs of the historic Christian tradition.

To flesh this claim out a bit I point you to a recent series of blogs by Reformed theologian and ethicist Matthew Tuininga.

Does the Christian Tradition Agree that Property Rights Trump the Rights of the Poor?

Aquinas and Calvin Believed Property Rights were Subject to the Rights of the Poor

Letting Christian Theology Shape our Politics: The Christian Tradition and Property, Part 3

Now, Matthew gets the general scope of the history of Christian teaching on this topic 100% correct. There is a long tradition of the best and most influential Christian theologians insisting that the needs and rights of the poor are among the most important in any Christian politics. To think otherwise is to reject the heart of Christian social teaching. However, that is not the only reason I point you to Matthew’s work. I could have made a similar historical analysis, but the regular readers of this blog would not be surprised to find such an argument coming from me.

See, Matthew is one of the most serious theologians I know – and we disagree about much. We entered Emory’s program in Religion, Ethics, and Society (E&S) at the same time. He and I make up one Emory E&S “cohort.” (And it is a testament to the intellectual freedom one may have at Emory that we have gone through our studies together as friends. One of my favorite stories concerning Matthew is the surprise registered on both of our faces when he learned I had not studied John Calvin in seminary and I learned he had not read Martin Luther King Jr. prior to arriving at Emory. Let’s just say, we come from different theological backgrounds!) He is unabashedly Reformed in his theological orientation, and, in a sea of liberals, is a confessed political conservative at a leading American research university. I do not read his blog because I agree with him on everything. I read him because, though we often disagree, I find him to be one of the most careful and nuanced conservative Christian thinkers in the country who also refuses to allow political commitments to cloud his commitment to the historic Christian tradition.

The point here, however, is that even Matthew Tuininga (a theologian trained at Emory willing to publicly defend an anti-gay marriage stance!) thinks it important to point out the un-Christian foundation of Libertarian economic philosophy.

Dear conservative friends, don’t drink the kool-aid. It is, as far as I can see, impossible to claim an intelligible and faithful Christian politic and at the same time embrace Libertarianism. They are trees grown in different soil and cannot be faithfully grafted together.

Book Review: A Faith Not Worth Fighting For

*Disclaimer: I received the book from one of the editors as a gift for providing comments on a draft of his chapter. It is my pleasure to return the gift of a free (and signed!) book with some unrequested publicity and (maybe) a sale or two.

York, Tripp and Justin Bronson Barringer, eds. A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions About Christian Nonviolence. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books/Wipf and Stock, 2012.

I was converted to Christian nonviolence by the words and life of Martin Luther King Jr. My commitment to this way of life was deepened by reading the works of Mohandas Gandhi, John Howard Yoder, Oscar Romero, Desmond Tutu, and, most importantly, Jesus of Nazareth (and those commenting on his life). This conviction was hardened by my experiences in American ghettoes and slums in east Africa and India. It has been refined through my academic pursuits and my engagement with historical and contemporary politics, especially wrestling with the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr.

It was after much of this process that I was finally introduced to and took seriously the work of Stanley Hauerwas. And I must admit, I found him a strange kind of advocate for Christian nonviolence and have had an uneasy relationship with his work. On the one hand it seems, with his commitment to nonviolence and appreciation for Yoder and the historical Jesus, that we would be intellectual compatriots. On the other hand, I find his reluctance to incorporate the liberationist aspects of those mentioned above a weakness in his work that makes Christian nonviolence seem more like a privilege for middle class suburban Christians who depend on state violence for their lives than as a commitment with real consequences for the form of life Christians are to embody in their everyday engagements of justice-seeking and neighbor-loving. However, it is hard to understate the importance of his work on virtue ethics, critiques of political liberalism, emphasis on “being the Church,” and ardent advocacy of truth-telling, on the field of Christian social ethics. In addition, like Reinhold Niebuhr, he is a thinker who I continue to read for his provocative writing and ability to make me consider and reconsider positions I have previously been unconvinced of. He is a worthwhile interlocutor for any Christian theologian and ethicist.

The thing Hauerwas is most famous for is his avid and consistent advocacy for what he calls in the forward to this book “Christological pacifism.” He attributes this stance to Yoder, though it seems fair to say that he considers himself an advocate of this position (along with what is perhaps called ecclesiological pacifism?). Christological pacifism claims that a pacifistic stance makes sense only because of what Christians confess about Jesus Christ. Only those who follow the way of the cross bestowed by Jesus upon his followers practice a pacifism that can make any sense in our world. As D. Stephen Long says in his essay, “[Christological pacifism is] the pacifism that claims that we are called through our baptisms to participate in the life of Christ and bear witness to the world as God has borne witness to us. It asks us, what happened to us at our baptisms into the life and death of Christ? … and it only works when we take seriously dogmatic Christian convictions (p. 25).”

For Long and most of the other essayists, such a pacifism is uncompromising and absolute. It demands of us that we let others die for our convictions (Long), reject participation in warmaking (and for some, policing), and that we fail and die in the face of powerful evildoers (Robert Brimlow). Christological pacifism accepts these conditions because it rests assured that God will – in the end – be triumphant and because Christ’s resurrection is the evidence that death is not the last word nor the greatest evil in human life.

This, it seems to me, is not the Christian nonviolence I was converted to. It is not wholly dissimilar, but it does seem to embrace a tragic acquiescence to injustice that is absent from King, Romero, Tutu, etc. Christological pacifists, it seems to me, would critique such thinkers for being too optimistic about the power of nonviolence to effect positive change no matter the social/political situation – on this they agree with just warriors and the like – and it is for this reason Long (and others) claim that it is the only realistic pacifism in the world. Pacifism makes sense and is “realistic” only if the story and picture of Jesus found in the canonical gospels is true and we can be assured that faithfulness to the way of Christ is what living in the ultimately real world, i.e. the eschatalogical world now breaking into the contemporary fallen world, looks like.

It is this form of pacifism that the authors seek to defend in this book. They all begin with these assumptions and put the onus on those who think otherwise to defend their stance rather than the other way around (which is the stance usually forced upon Christian pacifists). They answer many of the most commonly asked questions of Christian pacifists (like “What about Hitler?”, “What if someone was attacking a loved one?”, or “What about Jesus using the whip in the temple?”) through the lens of Christological pacifism. For some of the authors, this requires a reframing of the questions.

The most effective reframing of one of the questions in the book is the job done by Amy Laura Hall and Kara Slade. They do a marvelous job demonstrating the gendered assumptions about power and violence in the question, “What if someone was attacking a loved one?” In addition, they reject any easy answer to the question but allow the complexity of lived experience to remain. They remind us that “[b]oth miracle and martyrdom are indeed possible, but miracle is beyond our capacity for faithful expectation and martyrdom is beyond our capacity for faithful desire…Thus trapped between the ‘either’ of ethical abstraction and the ‘or’ of the desire for a poetically satisfying witness to love, the reader looking for answers in terms of a path to faithful action may have found far more frustration than moral clarity in these pages. In the end, to encourage persistence in that frustration is the clearest guidance we can give (p. 43).”

Others, rather than reframing a question, address head-on and in an unapologetic manner their posed question. They assert boldly that there is only one truly faithful path, and that path is nonviolence. Robert Brimlow, Andy Alexis-Baker, and Tripp York’s essays are along these lines. These essays serve to remind readers that this book is more than a college textbook. Rather, it is an apology for Christological pacifism and is unashamedly so. It is, then, an evangelical text for a particular form of Christian nonviolence.

And there are other essays that are simply excellent pieces of contemporary theological scholarship. The already mentioned essay by D. Stephen Long is one, and is, for me, a more compelling articulation of Hauerwas’s position (Long admits his debt to Hauerwas in the essay) than anything I’ve actually read written by Hauerwas himself. And Gerald Schlabach’s essay on a Christian pacifist stance on policing, with its nuanced articulation of the continuum of Christological pacifism (p. 74), is another. There are, then, serious contributions to scholarship on Christian pacifism that theologians and ethicists should familiarize themselves with.

In this way, then, the editors achieved their goal of answering these, for them sometimes tired, questions in a way that is clear, articulate, and, perhaps most importantly, fair to the often well-intentioned concerns of those asking the questions. However, they refuse to grant that they must always be the ones on the defensive. Rather, they succeed in turning the tables in the conversation and asking those who would take any other stance to defend their position in light of historic Christian confessions about Jesus. It achieves its goal, then, of being of interest both to scholars and laypersons as a defense of Christological pacifism.

It should be noted that the various authors do not agree on everything even if they do share a basic orientation. For example, there is a between-the-lines argument between several of the authors about the stance toward policing that a Christological pacifist should take. Some equate policing with war and others see a real, and theologically and morally significant, difference between the two. Interestingly, one place of seeming mutual agreement among the authors is an appreciation for the moral seriousness and praiseworthy sacrificial ethic of many who do engage in military violence from a just war or love-of-neighbor perspective. They wholeheartedly reject any crusader or “realism” stance, but recognize the moral seriousness of certain forms of violence even while arguing it is not an example of faithful Christian discipleship.

My most pressing concern, after the aforementioned issue of the Christian response to injustice, is a reliance in some of the essays on the “Constantinian trope.” This trope has been common at least since Yoder. In sum, it goes like this: For the first three centuries of the Christian movement the vast majority of Christians rejected the use of violence and the most widespread understanding of faithful discipleship was a pacifistic one. Post-Constantine, and the rise of Christianity to respectability and eventually political power, Christians created various excuses to ignore the clear teachings of Jesus on nonviolence. There was a sort of “fall” somewhere in the fourth century that has plagued Christianity ever since. To overcome this horrible mistake we must get back to the teachings of Jesus, i.e. become thoroughly Christological, and understand that those earliest Christians understood the message of Jesus more clearly than the majority of those who came post-Constantine. While there is clearly some rhetorical power to this story, and there is truth in it, it masks the ways in which many of those who have defended just war theory have done so from seriously reasoned theological reflections on justice and love. While it may be helpful in converting people to Christian pacifism, its usefulness among scholars has worn out. I wish the authors would have avoided it.

In the end, the book serves as a defense of a specific type of Christian pacifism. It is a defense of the form of pacifism that has been most famously been defended by Stanley Hauerwas, with a great debt to John Howard Yoder, and is both a response to those who are not Christian pacifists and those whose Christian pacifism is not “Christological enough” for the editors’ and authors’ liking. I read the book as one who probably falls into the latter category and, while not agreeing with every stance taken in the book, found it a stimulating read that challenged me intellectually and spiritually. For these reasons, I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in such questions. Also, I believe that several of the essays would do quite well as assigned readings in undergraduate courses in Christian ethics.

*My one caveat is that one not necessarily read the book straight through. The order of the questions seem disjointed to me, and I would recommend reading them in the order of most pressing concern to the reader (which, of course, its form allows). The editors made the decision to include the “practical” questions first and the the “biblical/theological” questions in the second half of the book. This decision seems confused to me, as I would think someone seeking answers to their questions about Christian pacifism might start the other way around, but the nature of the book does not require one begin with chapter one.

Why Christianity Doesn’t Need Saving: A Response to Douthat and Bass

Over the weekend, Ross Douthat asked, “Can Liberal Christianity be Saved?” In response, Diana Butler Bass asked the broader question, “Can Christianity be Saved?” My response to both is that Christianity doesn’t need saving in the first place.

Contrary to what many people seem to think Douthat argues, he answers his question in the affirmative. He claims that if liberal Christianity combines its (in his opinion lost) history of deep personal devotion with its commitment to social engagement, it can be saved. Specifically, he seems to mean a renewed emphasis on orthodox Christian doctrines and the fostering of meaningful spiritual lives, that include prayer and devotions, among its members. He says,

“What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God … the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

So, what he wants, it seems, is for Episcopalians (along with liberal Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans) to be more like the historic black churches. (Importantly, who don’t seem to be a part of either his story or Bass’s story.) Otherwise, he claims, liberal Christianity will “die.”

In response, Bass says, basically, “Whoa! Calm down … conservative churches are losing members too, and no one is saying that they’re dying. And, in fact, no matter what the numbers and media pundits say, what Douthat says needs to happen in liberal Christianity is actually happening on a “grassroots” level.” She says,

Unexpectedly, liberal Christianity is–in some congregations at least–undergoing renewal. A grass-roots affair to be sure, sputtering along in local churches, prompted by good pastors doing hard work and theologians mostly unknown to the larger culture. Some local congregations are growing, having seriously re-engaged practices of theological reflection, hospitality, prayer, worship, doing justice, and Christian formation. A recent study from Hartford Institute for Religion Research discovered that liberal congregations actually display higher levels of spiritual vitality than do conservative ones, noting that these findings were “counter-intuitive” to the usual narrative of American church life.

There is more than a little historical irony in this. A quiet renewal is occurring, but the denominational structures have yet to adjust their institutions to the recovery of practical wisdom that is remaking local congregations. And the media continues to fixate on big pastors and big churches with conservative followings as the center-point of American religion, ignoring the passion and goodness of the old liberal tradition that is once again finding its heart. Yet, the accepted story of conservative growth and liberal decline is a twentieth century tale, at odds with what the surveys, data, and best research says what is happening now. Indeed, I think that the better story of contemporary Christianity is that of an awakening of a more open, more inclusive, more spiritually vital faith is roiling and I argue for that in my recent book, Christianity After Religion.

So, Mr. Douthat asks, “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” But I wonder: Can Liberal Churches Save Christianity? The twenty-first century has yet to answer that, but I think we may be surprised.

Of course, folks who are familiar with the history of American Christianity recognize in Bass’s last question a question that has been asked for at least a century. [It sounds something like a social gospel redux (not necessarily a bad thing!)] And, apparently, it hasn’t totally happened yet.

What Douthat misses is that dwindling numbers don’t signal a need to be “saved.” And no movement outside of the “halls of power” of any Christian denomination is going to “save” a denomination or Christianity in general, contra Bass. The story of Christianity is that humans continue to mess things up and God continues to save those humans in spite of themselves.

There may be short-term fixes for declining attendance numbers. And “grassroots” movements like the early monastics, the emerging church, the Catholic Worker movement, or simply “good pastors doing hard work,” while vitally important, have never “saved” Christianity. Rather, God has sustained the Christian movement through the faithful witness of those who have endured through persecution and the calling forth of those prophets who claim the radical message of Jesus while most others are seduced by the temptations of power and wealth.

The “health” or “life” of Christianity has never been tied to the numbers of people who sit in pews on Sundays. And no matter what many claimed in the 1960s, “secular humanism,” to take Douthat’s not-so-helpful phrase, has never really been a threat the existence of a 2,000 year old movement of God. The life of the movement has always resided in those who, no matter what its institutions do or don’t do, do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Its health is always a result of those who love their enemies, love their neighbors, and choose the path of service. Professors of theology don’t “save” Christianity. Bishops, priests, and popes don’t “save” Christianity. Even popular pastors don’t “save” Christianity. God is already saving the world and uses faithful, though sinful, people to do it. That is all that matters.

Grace. Peace. Love. Justice. Faith. This is how God saves the world whether Christianity is “saved” or not.

An Exercise in Getting it Wrong: It’s about Justice, not Worship

In my last post, I wrote some reflections on the ways in which the traditional hermeneutical method of the Churches of Christ is unconvincing to many young adults today. I focused in that post on the case of women in ministry, and made passing reference to the case of the use of instruments in worship, and I will now use that second case to further the point. In that first post I labeled that method as “command-example-direct inference.” The general argument of Churches of Christ for choosing principled, acappella worship on Sunday mornings is that there is no example in the New Testament of Christians using instruments in their worship. (Not a bad reason, in my opinion.) So, in a desire to be like the first-century church, the vast majority of Churches of Christ do not use any instruments in worship. However, it is not uncommon for churches to go beyond this. Some deem the introduction of instruments in worship to be so unfaithful to the witness of scripture that its practice puts the salvation of such a church’s members in danger. (Now, that’s where we run into trouble.) Others believe that instruments are not just banned from Sunday worship services, but should also be excluded from anything else that occurs in a Church of Christ building (i.e., youth events, weddings, funerals, etc.). To make these kinds of arguments, that all use of instruments by the gathered community of believers is sinful, those churches often have to reach beyond the “there is no NT example” argument to discredit the overwhelming use of instruments to worship God in the Old Testament. The verse most often employed to this end is Amos 6:5-7. It reads:

who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; … Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile …

The argument, it goes, is that, based on this verse, we see that God never really liked all that instrumental music in the first place. In fact, we see that the use of instruments is one of the reasons that Israel went into exile. This type of logic is what is meant by “direct inference.” We can infer this from the biblical text.

However, this is not the message of the passage AT ALL. This is an example of the weakness of the command-example-direct inference model of interpretation, and also points to the limits of all interpretations that begin by quoting various verses from across the Bible rather than the close exegesis of large portions of scripture to understand its message. Proof-texting, they call it.

Rather than being a condemnation of worship with instruments, this is a condemnation of social injustice. God is saying, through the prophet Amos, that Israel will experience exile because of its treatment of the poor and extravagant lifestyle (a message churches in the US would do well to hear!). However, by focusing on piety/worship/church structure this message is missed by the majority of American Christians (especially those in Churches of Christ). An examination of the broader context of this passage will make the point clear.

Beginning in 5:4 and 5:6 there are two admonitions to “seek the Lord and live.” Who is the prophet speaking this message to? “The house of Israel” (5:4) who “turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground!” (5:7) It becomes clearer that the sin being addressed here is the sin of social injustice in vv. 10-12. They read

10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and the abhor the one who speaks the truth. 11 Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. 12 For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins – you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.

Then, in vv. 14 and 15 the prophet says “Seek good and not evil, that you may live … Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate …” It is in this context that we get the first condemnation of the people’s worship due to their injustice. The prophet warns those who pray for the “day of the Lord” while “worshiping” to be careful what they ask for. The “day of the Lord” is a dreadful day for those who practice injustice, he warns. Starting in v. 18 Amos reads

18 Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD! Why do you want the day of the LORD? It is darkness, not light; 19 as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. 20 Is not the day of the LORD darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it? 21 I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. 23 Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 24 But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Quickly moving into chapter six, then, we pick up in 6:4:

4 Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; 5 who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; 6 who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! 7 Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.

Reading this passage in context, then, makes it clear that the passage is unconcerned with the use of instruments. Rather, God through the prophet is condemning those who live a luxurious lifestyle built upon the backs of the poor through their unjust practices. It is for that reason that God rejects their worship, not for the form of their worship with instruments. However, approaching scripture through the lens of command-example-inference for “right worship” quickly misses this point (as do many other popular strategies of interpretation).

And, read against the narrative of all of scripture (as suggested in this post), this theme becomes even clearer. Isaiah 58 says that true fasting is to seek justice, not abstain from food. Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 on two occasions (Matthew 9:13, 12:7), declaring that God desires mercy (i.e., just/loving treatment of others) over sacrifice (i.e., following ritual). In addition, Jesus calls justice one of the “weightier matters of the law” over tithing (Matthew 23:23). Finally, Jesus teaches that seeking reconciliation with others comes before offering sacrifices (i.e., worship). More could be said along these lines but the point has been made.

By approaching all of scripture with the question of “how to do church” many in the Churches of Christ have missed one of scripture’s central messages: the doing of social justice is at the heart of God’s work in the world. God is, relatively speaking, unconcerned with the form of people’s worship. Rather, God cares about the treatment of the neighbor. Another way of saying this might be, God cares more about doing the neighbor wrong (or right) than about doing God wrong (or right). However, the command-example-inference approach to scripture, focusing solely on the question of how to do/organize church, continues to miss this biblical message. I submit that any method of interpretation that has proven historically to miss this message of the Bible as robustly as Churches of Christ in the latter half of the twentieth century did is a method that needs to be abandoned.

On Reading Scripture: A Question of How, Not What

Being in the middle of a search for a church to commit to (having moved across the country) has caused me to reflect on my formation in and commitment to the Churches of Christ. My recent post on the experience of ecclesial homelessness is an example of those reflections. While the response to that post has been overwhelmingly positive, the most common “negative” response has gone something like this: the problem with young adults these days is that they’ve grown uncomfortable with, or simply don’t know, the Word. If we could just get back to reading and teaching the Word of God then these problems would go away.

This is an ecclesially appropriate response for folks in the CoC to give and it points to a deeper issue: the deeper place of tension for many homeless CoCers isn’t what scripture teaches but how to interpret what it teaches. The cases of instrumental worship and women’s roles will serve as two examples. But first, a brief history:

The churches of Christ began in the United States in the early 19th century as part of the American Restoration Movement.[1] That movement was an ecumenical movement intended to transcend denominational divisions and for Christians to become “Christians only”, i.e. not Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, etc. Their method for doing this was simple: discard all creeds and denominational statements and go back to the Bible. They worked with the assumption that if someone with an honest desire for God’s truth and a pure heart shed all denominational and creedal baggage and read scripture with fresh eyes they would be able to discern how God intended the church to function and could then simply be Christians. American restorationists wanted to be Christians exactly as the first Christians were Christians (because their story of Christian history was one of continuing decline, evidenced in the multiple denominations that exist). The Churches of Christ, the most conservative of the three main ecclesial traditions that grew out of the movement[2], thus began referring to “the first century church” as the ultimate example and authority for polity and Christian living.

Of course, once they gave this thing a try they quickly realized that if you give people Bibles without any guidance for interpretation (as creeds provide) a multitude of interpretations quickly arise. The problem, then, is that you are left with only two options: either scripture is confusing or some people aren’t reading with pure hearts and are distorting God’s word. Of course, the leaders of the movement chose the latter option and, therefore, what began as an ecumenical movement morphed into a sectarian movement that changed its unofficial slogan from “Christians only, but not the only Christians” to “restoring the one true Church where salvation can be found.”

In response to this crisis of interpretation many leaders and churches adopted a strategy of interpretation intended to guide readers of scripture in its proper interpretation.[3] What was this method? First, Christians should approach scripture by asking the following question, “What is God’s eternal intention for the ordering of the Church?”[4] Second, one should look for, in this order, 1) direct commands, 2) authoritative examples, 3) direct inferences, that can answer this question.

One can apply this method to the entirety of scripture and discern God’s eternal will, it is argued. So, because there is no example of instruments being used in a worship service in the New Testament a biblically faithful and “true” church won’t use instruments. Also, since we have direct commands for women to remain silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35) and that they are commanded not to exercise authority over a man (1 Timothy 2:11-15) there is no public leadership role for women in Sunday worship services.

So, working with these assumptions and method it is clear what scripture teaches and the discomfort of the “homeless” I talked about is due to their unwillingness to submit to God’s will and not for any good theological reason. End of discussion.

However, these assumptions and that method are not biblical in a strict sense, i.e. there is no “biblical” method of interpreting scripture that looks like the one just described. And they are not, in fact, very defensible outside of a certain already held worldview. And it is not the hermeneutic employed by most “homeless” folks. So, debates about “what the Bible teaches” are fruitless when folks approach and interpret scripture differently.

Here are some of the differences in hermeneutical method that a homeless Christian may employ:

First, they don’t necessarily believe that the Bible is primarily a sourcebook for “how to do church.” Rather, they understand it primarily as the story of God and God’s interaction with the world. Through reading (and living!) this story we come to know the character of God, and are drawn into imitation of that God.[5] If this is how scripture is primarily to be read, the logic goes, God cares more about the living of the story and the imitation of God than about the organization of churches.

Second, they do not ignore, gloss over, or deny the diversity in the biblical texts. Most CoCers, and many other fundamentalists, claim that the voice of scripture is a wholly unified voice without any diversity of opinion. Homeless Christians reject this claim as false. Rather, they recognize the diversity and ambiguity of scripture and draw upon it as a resource. So, for example, they read the commands that exclude women from public leadership alongside those scriptures that mention women as deaconesses (Romans 16:1), as prophetesses (Acts 2:17), and as leading public prayers (1 Corinthians 11:5).[6]. In addition, they read Jesus’s interactions with women in the gospels as countercultural and liberating.[7] Also, they recognize that the gospel writers are not historians in the modern sense but theologians. Thus, something like telling us that women were the first witnesses to, and first evangelists of, the resurrection has great theological significance. In the light of all of scripture, then, it seems that women can be in public leadership.

Third, they do not accept the myth that there was “a first century church” and the model it followed is clearly and flawlessly recorded in the NT. Rather, they read the various epistles and recognize many churches, dealing with a multitude of problems, and disagreeing on important theological issues. Yet, they are all recognized as Christians.(For instance, the Corinthian church was dealing with adultery, abuse of the Lord’s Supper, and denials of the resurrection, and Paul continually called them “children” and “brothers and sisters.”) If there was diversity in the earliest churches (planted by Paul!), they reason, then there is room for diversity in churches in the twenty-first century.

So, if many young adults from the CoC don’t toe the traditionalist line on some traditionally key doctrinal issues it’s not because they don’t know what scripture says, it’s because they disagree about how that scripture should be interpreted. What traditional leaders have been unsuccessful in teaching, then, is not “the Word” or a love of scripture. Rather, it is that they have not convinced many in the next generation of their hermeneutical method which, in an increasingly postmodern world, seems at best rigid and at worst implausible. To continue to beat the “we just need more Bible” drum, then, will continue to fall on deaf ears. “Homeless” young adults do know what the Bible says, they just interpret and apply it differently because they find the “direct command-authoritative example-direct inference” model unsatisfactory. A robust defense of that hermeneutical method is what is needed to successfully defend the traditional view on some of the most contested CoC doctrines today. However, I know of no such convincing defense. This is a place for real growth in the CoC. If we move beyond an outmoded hermeneutic we may open up the space for new life in our churches.

1 This is already going to cause some issues because most members of CoCs understand themselves to be part of “the one true church” which goes all the way back to Jerusalem in 33 AD/CE. Historically, however, this is untenable. I don’t want to get into the theological arguments for this claim here so we’ll stick with the historical record.

2 Also the Christian Churches and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

3 As a side note, this method fit perfectly in a culture so profoundly shaped by Enlightenment ideals of rationality and scientific discovery as early America. This method is not a method that makes sense in all times and in all places.

4 Naturally, this led CoCs to focus primarily on issues of church organization and polity, rather than ethics, systematic theology, etc. They, therefore, spend the majority of their time in the pastoral epistles rather than the gospels, for instance.

5 Importantly, this is also different from those who approach scripture as a “how-to” manual for life, like many prosperity preachers do. Or, as a piece of modern history or science, as many creationists do. Scripture is primarily theology, it is about God, and everything in it points to theological truths before anything else. It should not be judged according to its historical accuracy, scientific acumen, or practicality in achieving wealth. It should be judged according to the truthfulness of its witness to God’s character and the relationship between God and creation.

6 Why are these examples ignored in the “orthodox” CoC tradition, they ask? This is one example of why the second criterion mentioned above, namely authoritative example, seems like nothing more than cherry-picking. We clearly don’t emulate everything the churches addressed in scripture did. For example, we don’t take the Lord’s Supper as part of a communal meal (or “Love Feast.”)

7 For example, in Luke 10:38-42 Jesus treats Mary as a rabbinic disciple.

Where Do You Read the Bible?

This is a question that would have seemed weird to me not too long ago. However, now I see it as one loaded with (potential) theological significance. I have been told since my teenage years about the virtues of daily Bible reading. To encourage this habit, I have also been encouraged to do this reading/reflection at the same time and in the same place to help reinforce the habit. For various reasons this is a good and practical suggestion.

Of course, anyone who has embarked on regularly scheduled spiritual practices can attest to the fact that they can often become rote, boring, and stale. Something I never considered as a contributing factor to this phenomenon was the staleness of reading location this suggestion breeds.

One of my favorite blog “mini-series” going right now is Richard Beck‘s reflections on biblical passages he teaches in a prison. In these posts he highlights the ways that reading scripture in a prison, and with prisoners, has opened his eyes to new ways of understanding scripture. (For example, check out this post. Seriously, read it.) I’ve written before about how reading Jesus’s story of the rich man and Lazarus in a Nairobi slum forever transformed the way I read that passage. Well, I’ve finally connected the dots and would like to recommend to you an idea to revitalize your devotional life and open your eyes to fresh readings of scripture: read the Bible in new, and uncomfortable, places.

It’s really that simple. Pick up your Bible. Go somewhere you don’t normally associate with reading scripture. Sit down. And read. Read the Bible in the midst of new sights, sounds, smells, and people. Read it in quiet places and read it in the hustle and bustle of the city. Read it on the bus or subway. Read it in a park. Read it outside of a Tiffany’s jewelry store. Read it on a street corner. Read it in a nursing home. Read it in a garden. Go somewhere new and read the scriptures anew.

This insight, if you’re like me, is not something totally unfamiliar. Many of us know the power of reading the creation story or the psalms when in the middle of nature’s beauty. Those who have been on mission trips know that being in an unfamiliar culture can open one’s eyes up to fresh readings of scripture. We know this, but we don’t often intentionally practice it. At least not in our day-to-day lives.

What finally made this insight click for me was teaching this preaching course. My co-teacher, who learned this trick from Anna Carter Florence, mentioned how he has had students in his preaching courses do this in preparation for a sermon and that it has often had remarkable results. He literally has them go catch public transportation or sit in Buckhead (Atlanta’s most posh neighborhood) and read the scripture they will preach on (often out loud) and see what insights they gain by the simple act of physically relocating.

It really is amazing how much such a simple thing, moving into a new or uncomfortable space, allows God to open our eyes to new and uncomfortable insights from scripture. So, go ahead and give it a try. You might never want to read scripture in the same place again.

The Jewishness of Jesus as a Resource for Jews AND Christians

Recently, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly (one of my favorite television programs of all-time) did a story on “Jewish Jesus.” In interviews with Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and with author of the book Kosher Jesus, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the topic of Jesus’s Jewishness as a constructive resource for the practice of both Christianity and Judaism was discussed. These interviews join the conversations of many theologians and biblical scholars who argue that understanding the Jewishness of Jesus can contribute to the overcoming of racism in the west, anti-Semitism, and contribute positively to interreligious dialogue and peacebuilding. I found the pieces very interesting and recommend them to anyone interested in the importance of Jesus in theology, religious studies, lived religion, and interfaith relations.

Below are links to the main video and two extended interviews with Levine and Boteach:

Jewish Jesus

Extended Interview with Amy-Jill Levine

Extended Interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach