Category: Culture

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Culture Epistemology History Law and Policy

Evangelicals and Slavery

John Patrick Daly’s book “When Slavery Was Called Freedom:  Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War” should be required reading for anyone interested in the relationship between Christian faith and public policy in America.

Daly traces the ways in which evangelical Christians supported the pro-slavery cause in the antebellum South.  As Daly notes, evangelicals in the North tended towards abolitionism, and used theological and Biblical arguments in support of their position.  But evangelicals in the South overwhelmingly supported slavery, and likewise used theological and Biblical arguments in support of their views.

It’s tempting to make a “no true Scotsman” argument at this point:  the Southern evangelicals, we would like to suggest, were using theology and scripture improperly, as a mask for their greed.  In a sense, I would argue along these lines.  Like nearly all Christians today, I think it’s clear that a properly developed Biblical theology must consider slavery a great evil.

However, in another sense, this kind of argument is anachronistic.  The Southern preachers who supported slavery really believed that Divine Providence had ordained the institution of slavery in the American South for the benefit of both the white and black populations.  Interestingly, according to Daly, they for the most part did not rely on earlier arguments from creation and geneology (i.e., the so-called “curse of Ham”), but rather mostly framed their arguments in terms of Providence.  Moreover, the Southern preachers argued that the revivalistic fires of the Second Great Awakening burned hot in Southern states where slavery flourished.  For many antebellum Christian leaders in the South, Providence and Revival confirmed the righteousness of slavery.

Of course, to us today (and to most Northern theologians at the time), this was a tragic, awful, horrid betrayal of Christian principles.   The lingering question is, do we have the courage to question our own beliefs about how our faith ought to relate to the pressing issues of our day?

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Biblical Seminary Culture Justice Law and Policy

Gleanings Laws for Today

In Missional Theology I, we were required to write  contemporary paraphrase of the gleanings laws in Lev. 19:9-10 and Deut. 24: 19-22. Here is mine:

Now when you develop ever more sophisticated global communication networks that facilitate creativity and trade, when you discover new medicines, when your lands produces the abundance resulting from advanced farming and husbandry technologies and genetically modified stock and seeds, when your study of the human genome yields new insights about human health, when you create new cultural and technological goods from the traditional and biological resources of the South, you shall not seek all the rents available to an efficient monopolist under a strong intellectual property regime; you shall leave a portion of the rents to the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. You shall permit the poor, the orphan, the widow and the stranger to access your technologies and information on equitable terms that promote their welfare and development. You shall remember that you were once a developing country and the LORD brought you freedom and abundance; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.

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Culture Justice Law and Policy

Terminology (and Ideas) for Engagement with Muslims

Chris Seiple of the Institute for Global Engagement, a Christian think tank on foreign policy issues, offers these excellent guidelines for how we should speak of engagement with Muslims throughout the world.  Over and over again, IGE shows itself to be one of the most thoughtful Christian voices on U.S. foreign relations to be found anywhere.

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Culture

Blog on Faith and Film

This is a heads-up for Craig Detweiler’s blog on faith and film.  Detweiler runs the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Seminary.  Pretty cool.

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Biblical Seminary Culture Historical Theology

Christian History — Contextualization

I’m starting my first class today as a student at Biblical Seminary.  I’ll be working ever so slowly on a Masters in Missional Theology.  Hopefully God will use this to enrich my work as a law professor and in the local church, as well as to deepen and broaden my own faith.  My first course is an online class in World Christian History.  We started with this great quote:

“. . . All historically visible Christianities are partial manifestations of an essence that is never seen in an unmixed form, and can never be seen in its wholeness and entirely on earth. The ‘God’s eye’ view of the eternal of the Christian Church is just that. Every manifestation of Christianity is partial because it is always a composite. The churches never escape their social context and the value of their host society. So the Christian message and the Christian life always combine elements drawn from the ethos and assumptions of the age (which, of course, Christianity, in turn) help to shape.” Evan Cameron, Interpreting Christian History, pg. 86.

Nice.

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Culture Spirituality Theology

Nature's Witness

If you read one book on the relationship between faith and science this year, it should be Daniel Harrell‘s Nature’s Witness:  How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.

Harrell is Associate Minister at Park Street Church in Boston.  Park Street has been a leading evangelical church for 200 years.  Given its location in Boston, near some of the world’s greatest universities, Park Street’s missional context requires it to maintain a significant level of intellectual rigor.  It is important that a Pastor in this church has been able to take on the challenge of examining evolutionary biology honestly and forthrightly from the perspective of evangelical faith.  

There are three key strengths to Harrell’s book that I think are lacking in varying degrees in similar books recently authored by scientists such as Francis Collins.  First, Harrell recognizes the discomfort this subject causes for many evangelicals, and uses a conversational style that diffuses some of that angst.  Second, Harrell is thoroughly trained in evangelical theology (he studied at Gordon Conwell Seminary), and therefore is more careful with scripture and theology than some other faith-and-science writers.  Third, Harrell offers some frameworks for resolving the tensions that arise from honest efforts to relate an evangelical commitment to scripture and a fearless look at the scientific evidence.  He is not willing to accept false dichotomies between the truths of nature and the truths of scripture, yet he is able to make space for the tensions that inevitably result from any efforts at synthesis.

Harrell’s overall approach is summed up in this passage:

The controversy between Christian faith and evolution is exacerbated by increasing mounds of scientific data that lend weight to evolution. Paleontology, biochemistry, cosmology, physics, genetics—you name the discipline—each regularly puts forth newly discovered evidence in support of Darwin’s simple idea of descent with modification. While some people of faith choose to keep their doors closed, shutting out science is not necessary. Christian faith by definition defies human conceptions of reality (1 Cor 3:19). Its claims are grounded in extraordinary events that defy scientific explanation (most importantly the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus). But God is not only present where science is silent; he remains present even where science speaks loudest. The expansiveness of the universe, the beauty and complexity of organic life and the remarkable makeup of human consciousness—naturally explicable occurrences—are also interpreted by Christians as manifestations of God (Rom 1:20). Christianity consistently asserts that all truth is God’s truth, implying that faith and science, despite differences when it comes to explaining why, nevertheless should agree in regard to what is. Why bother talking about God if God has no relation to observable reality?

The last line in this paragraph — why bother talking about God if God has no relation to observable reality — is essential to a missional stance today, I think.  We cannot shut our church doors to reality, we cannot bury our heads in the sand, we cannot deny what is obvious.  If our faith requires us to run and hide from discoveries about the natural world, it is not a faith worth having.  If our only apologetic response to surprising evidence from nature is to villify, attack, question the motives of the discoverers, and construct an elaborately obscuratanist epistemology grounded in massive conspiracy theories (all of the world’s scientists are lying to us!), then it should be no surprise if “church” becomes more and more irrelevant in our culture.  Thankfully, there are more an more people like Harrell who are capable of winsomely thinking things through in the best tradition of evangelical faith.

I hope to do a series on this book, as follows:  (1) more on God and reality; (2) the problem of divine action; (3) important theological tensions; (4) missional conversations on faith and science in local churches.

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Culture

Socrates in the City

A friend put me on to the Socrates in the City group in the New York area.  Looks like a great resource.

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Culture Law and Policy Spirituality

Gay Marriage — The Sky is Falling!

I get the Family Research Council’s email updates, mostly to see what the Religious Right is thinking about.  Today’s email, offensively, was titled “Here Come the Grooms.”  Among other breathless turns of fearmongering phrase, it tells us “When the clock chimes 5:01 p.m. (PST), the California ruling that threatens to undo thousands of years of natural marriage will officially take effect, triggering five months of social chaos that could wreak havoc on every state in America.”

And they wonder why reasonably educated Christians who live in the real world are increasingly unwilling to put up with the marriage our faith to right wing politics?  Does anybody really believe that at 5:01 p.m. PST “thousands of years of natural marriage” will be undone?  So, suddenly, all of the marriages recorded in my family geneology book going back to the 1600’s are going to disappear?  Everything I know from my family and church about loving my wife and children will vanish from my brain? 

And does anyone really think there will be “five months of social chaos” starting at 5:01 PST?  Gas prices will shoot up to $10 per gallon, the markets will collapse, Wall Street bankers will line up for food stamps, loving moms and wives will march in the streets against their husbands and children…  not.  Well, the $10 gas might get here, but not because of this court case.

Whatever happend to the Church against which even the gates of hell won’t prevail?  If we can’t “win” in American courts or legislatures, suddenly God’s creational ordinances relating to families will be repealed? 

As Christians, we have ideals for human relationships, including the very special relationship of marriage.  We very often don’t live up to our own ideals even within the Church, even within “natural” marriage.  I’d daresay that pornography, workaholism, overconsumption, and just plain selfishness are far greater threats to our Christian ideals of marriage both within and without the Church right now than whether or not secular laws purport to give the status of “marriage” to gay couples.  But even if our ideal includes a social order that gives a privileged legal space to life-long commitments between one man and one woman, it’s long past time that we realize we don’t live in a nation-state that endorses our ideals.  America is not, never has been, and never will be a “Christian” nation — get over it.

Should we then not advocate for what we believe are civil laws that reflect our ideals?  No, we should not cease to advocate for what we believe is right and best.  But our expectations have to be realistic, our tone and tactics have to be Christ-like, and our hope ultimately has to be patiently eschatological.  Maybe this is a time when we are being called to live faithfully and counterculturally in Babylonian exile as the Church and not as the State.   What if all the Christian families in America really practiced what we profess about mutual respect, love and perseverence within marriage?  Nothing would then “undo” marriage.  And what if we all decided that our attitudes towards our gay neighbors must above all else be to love them as we love ourselves?  Maybe then we’d start to become instruments of grace in places where the gospel often doesn’t get a hearing.  (And no, “love” doesn’t mean “I’m ok, you’re ok.”  One thing it means, I think, is “I’m a mess, you’re a mess — and here is Jesus, who loves to forgive and work on messes.”)

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Culture Science & Technology

Microsoft, Google, and White Spaces

Microsoft, Google and other information technology and electronics companies are lobbying the FCC for access to the expanded “white spaces” between digital television broadcast signals. White spaces are buffer zones that prevent signals for different television channels from interfering with each other. They offer the potential for gigabit-speed Wi-Fi access. Existing Wi-Fi technologies, however, cannot exploit this space without creating interference with television signals. Television broadcasters therefore are resisting the approval of white space Wi-Fi devices.

This presents some interesting questions about the information infrastructure commons. Television broadcasters and equipment manufacturers have invested heavily in what could be considered pre-infrastructure — broadcast equipment, programming, and television sets — for use on the digital broadcast spectrum infrastructure. Does that investment privilege television use of the spectrum infrastructure over Wi-Fi use? Are television and Wi-Fi truly separate uses given the convergence of video with Wi-Fi? Will my neighbor’s video conference call interfere with my sacred right to wach “Lost” in high def?

Categories
Culture Spirituality Theology

Everyday Journal

During exams I got behind in my blogging and failed to mention the latest issue of The Everyday Journal.  Among other notable articles is this interview with Brian McLaren by Thom Turner.  An excerpt from the interview:

If I want to see change in the world, the change needs to begin in myself. If I want to see the world become more peaceful, for example, I need to become a person of peace. If I want the world to become less consumptive, I need to become more self-disciplined, and so on. So, to be the change we want to see in the world, we need spiritual practices that help us change. If you imagine a bunch of greedy people trying to make the world more generous, or a bunch of bitter people trying to make the world more forgiving, you see the folly of seeking local, national, or global change without paying attention to spiritual formation.

And this reflection by Meagan on finder herself changed forever after missionary work in Alaska: “even today, talking to my friends from SEND of Alaska’s Summer Missionary Program (SMP) sometimes reminds me of what I imagine an AA meeting to be like.”

As well as much other excellent stuff!