World Vision, The Biblical Text, and 'Good News to the Poor'.

It was less than a week ago that World Vision, an Evangelical Christian humanitarian aid, development, and advocacy organization, announced their decision to hire and extend equal employment benefits and opportunities to same-sex married couples. At that  time, Vice President Richard Stearns made clear that the organization was not changing its belief that sexual relations outside of marriage were sinful, but rather that:

changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues. It also allows us to treat all of our employees the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage.

Stearns went on to say that the decision was World Vision’s alone, not the result of outside pressure, and that the board were ‘overwhelmingly in favor’ of the new policy. He went on to reassure World Vision supporters:

…we are not sliding down some slippery slope of compromise, nor are we diminishing the authority of Scripture in our work. We have always affirmed traditional marriage as a God-ordained institution. Nothing in our work around the world with children and families will change. We are the same World Vision you have always believed in.

Regardless of those assurances, the backlash from certain segments of the Evangelical Christian community was immediate. The Assemblies of God, one of the largest denominations in the US, urged its 3 million members to cut their support. This was no idle threat; according to Christianity Today, about $567 million of World Vision’s $1 billion budget comes from private contributions, according to the 2012 annual report. Individuals can personally sponsor a child in an undeveloped or underdeveloped nation for $35 a month. Through this programme, World Vision is able to sponsor 1.2 million children worldwide; within days, 2000 supported children had been dropped.

In the face of this backlash, World Vision have been forced to withdraw the new policy. In a statement, they said:

The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman…

Stearns told reporters, ‘We’ve listened. We believe we made a mistake. We’re asking (supporters) to forgive and understand our poor judgement in the original decision.’

Needless to say, my emotions over all of this have been on a roller coaster, from surprise and delight with World Vision’s original decision, to anger and depression in the midst of their subsequent decision. I was so angry last night I could barely speak. 

Thankfully I could type, and what you’re reading now is the result.

I am so embarrassed for the World Vision board, its employees, and the many supporters of the organization who supported the original decision. I am outraged for World Vision’s LGBT employees- and for those who honestly believed that World Vision had become a safe and embracing place to apply to work. And I am positively furious that a large portion of World Vision’s global work, and so many children’s lives, were put at risk- and remain at risk.

Make no mistake, that risk is coming from a portion of the Christian community who believe their reading of scripture is more important than the lives of the most poor and the most marginalized people on Earth. The wealthiest Christians on Earth- those in the suburban US- took the poorest and most vulnerable children on Earth hostage, threatened to refuse them food, shelter, medicine and a their advocating voice, all over an employment policy, an issue that the children had never heard of and which didn’t affect them in the slightest.

    

This is not Christ; this is anti-Christ. This is satanic.

I’m not going to take the time here to get into a biblical exegesis of the issues surrounding LGBT people; regular readers know my views on that topic, and I'm conscious that it is not my area of expertise. My field is liberation theology, and my thoughts on the World Vision issue that I'll give here come from that direction.

Liberation theology arose out of Latin America in the late 60s in the wake of Vatican II and the watershed 1968 meeting of Latin American Catholic bishops in Medellín, Colombia.  Over the next two decades, Latin American theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Juan Luis Segundo, José Bonino, Leonardo Boff, and Jon Sobrino developed and broadened the movement, but liberation theology is not so much a corpus of their works- impressive as it all is. Rather, liberation theology represented a new theological moment, an attempt to do theology in a new way.  It begins not with doctrine but with a focus on social reality, the social reality of poverty, oppression and marginalization. It prioritizes theological reflection as a means of drawing on the experiences of the people and helping to build their consciousness as the people of God, finding themselves and their circumstances in the biblical text. Liberation theology was methodologically rooted in an attention to praxis, the cyclical process of reflection and action which saw theological reflection not as an end in itself or simply a means to develop a stronger personal piety, but as a component of fundamental social transformation. Finally, liberation theology represented a new theological direction; it was theology done from the perspective of the most poor and the most marginalized. Liberation theology emphasized God’s ‘preferencial option’ for the poor; it recognizes a fundamental incompatibility between the priorities of capitalist economy and the Christian Gospel; In God’s economy, the liberationists contended, the needs of the poor come first. This is not to say God loves the poor more, but in a world where wealth, power and command are prized, God, so said the liberationists, was to be found with the poorest, the most marginalized and the powerless… And so should his Church.

This is why, as a theologian who roots his work in liberation theology, I don’t blame World Vision for reversing their decision. The primary idea that underlays the 'preferential option' is that, when decisions need to be made, priorities set, resources allocated, or money spent, we should begin all discussion from the standpoint of the effects of any action on the poorest or most marginalized in our community. I believe World Vision did that. Faced with a  situation where the health, safety and indeed the lives of children and communities in which they work and for whom they advocate were put at risk, they opted for the poor and for their communities. That is their calling. It is all of our callings. There are any number of things they could have done- many things that I personally believe they should have done. But I want to keep the focus on what they did. 

Don’t blame World Vision; blame those who threatened those in World Vision’s care.

When I first heard about the circumstances that led World Vision to reverse their decision I was immediately reminded of the Hebrew prophetic tradition, the prophets Hosea and Amos, who announced God’s solidarity with the poor and his judgment against the seemingly righteous who couldn’t care less for them. The similarly-themed Sirach 4:1-6 came to my mind:

My child, do not cheat the poor of their living, and do not keep needy eyes wanting. Do not grieve the hungry, or anger one in need. Do not add to the troubles of the desperate, or delay giving to the needy. Do not reject one in distress, or turn your face away from the poor. Do not avert your eyes from the needy, give no one reason to curse you; for if in bitterness of soul some should curse you, their creator will hear their prayer.

These are the Hebrew biblical texts known so well by Jesus, that serve as the basis of his proclamation of the Gospel, which will always be, first and foremost, ‘good news to the poor’ (Luke 4:18) and very bad news indeed for those that oppress and defraud them. The Sirach text goes as  far as to give us an image of the poor- frustrated, desperate, angry with the massive injustices daily heaped against them- crying out ‘God damn the rich!’, and the prophet assuring them that God heard and answered…

In the reality of all these biblical texts, how do those who threaten the poor in World Vision’s care have the unmitigated audacity to dare say that their actions are motivated out of a reverence for scripture?

How can any of them dare to declare themselves ‘Christian’- ‘follower of Christ’- and yet idolize their own reading of the biblical text- their own intellect, their own opinion, their own interpretation- over human lives?

How dare they idolize random proof texts that seem to confirm their cultural biases over the person of Jesus revealed in the Gospels?

Jesus’ love and care for the ‘least of these’, for the desperate, the marginalized and the vulnerable is the foundation of the Gospels, and stands in utter contrast to those who threatened World Vision. When asked who was the greatest in the kingdom of God, Jesus did not call a heterosexual married man and woman to him; he called a child- a vulnerable child, weak, in need of care, trusting and innocent. These, Jesus insisted, were the greatest in God’s kingdom. With that, he issued a warning: ‘If anyone causes one of these little ones who trust in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and be thrown in the sea and drowned; Woe to those who cause the weak to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!’ (Matt. 18:6-7)

It was Jesus who said, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them, for God’s kingdom belongs to such as these.’ (Matt. 19:14)

It was Jesus who said ‘I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was destitute, sick, imprisoned, a stranger…’ (Matt. 25)

It is the Gospel of Jesus, ‘good news to the poor’, that invites us to find ourselves in these texts. Are we feeding the poor, or are we starving them?

Are we giving fresh water, or are we dumping pollutants in the river?

Are we  giving, or are we withholding?

Are we healing, or inflicting?

Are we welcoming, or are we abandoning?

Are we liberating, or are we incarcerating?

Do we wear the cross of salvation round our necks, or a millstone?

Where do you stand? 

Mass Disillusion, or, Why I (Still) Go to Church

Since I was a child, church attendance has always been a regular feature in my life. Our family was in church every Sunday, and usually several times a week. And I always enjoyed it, not simply the social aspects but the ritualistic and spiritual aspects as well. Church interested me; I felt like it nourished me; it gave me a sense of energy.

Over the past four or five years, I haven’t felt that.

Rather than gaining energy from regular church attendance, I feel like it saps it out of me. I really don’t enjoy going to church.

Well, perhaps that’s not quite the right sentiment; it’d be closer to the truth to say that I find going to church more and more difficult.

There’s been much written in the theological blogosphere about church attendance and how my generation is attending less and less. I’ve read much of it and can relate to some of it. Yet I still feel a personal disconnect from a lot of it. Many writers- as well as many of my friends- seem to be quite content to have given church the push. I don’t feel that way. I really want to go; I don’t want to stop; in fact, I’m not sure if I’d know how to stop going altogether.

Many people I know have stopped going to church for very serious reasons of feeling abused or victimized by church or churchgoers. This hasn’t been my experience, but I completely understand it. And they were right to stop.

I’m aware that most of the issues I’ve chosen to highlight here are matters of personal preference and aesthetic taste rather than many of the issues of feeling hurt or traumatized by the structures of faith practice that many others feel; what I’ve felt from church over the years has been alienation rather than abuse. But I am still aware of what many others might feel from going to church; there is a sense of ennui, disillusion, and fatigue. I often feel like it takes an enormous amount of energy for me to go to church now. And that just doesn’t seem right.

I’m part of the Catholic Church, and feel a real sense of belonging to the worldwide Church, as well as to all of the worldwide Christian faith in all its diversity. I am constantly being nourished by the lives and experiences of my Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Reformed, and non-denominational brothers and sisters, and feel deep connections with them all. But that doesn’t translate into wanting to go to church- it sometimes does, and it certainly used to, but I feel it less and less.

So what is it that makes me not want to go to church? 

I don’t get much out of the music.

I have a B.A. in Music Performance, which included four years of taking music history. That’s where I fell in love with the full corpus of western sacred music. Early Christian liturgical music, from the chants in Arabic, Coptic, Greek, and Latin through to the music of the European Renaissance, is all very precious to me. But Palestrina was who changed my life. Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 1594), wrote sacred music that sounds like this:

That type of music is called polyphony, and Palestrina was the absolute master of writing it. To me, it sounds like a long piece of beautiful, rich silk being pulled over glass spheres laid out on a perfectly smooth wooden floor. Every time I hear the ‘Kyrie’ from his ‘Missa Aeterna’ I cry. Every. Single. Time. To hear it in an actual worship setting, as I did so many times in the cavernous sanctuary of the Cathedral of St. Anne in Belfast, was such an extraordinary privilege. It ruined me for anything else.

Of course, it’s unfair to expect to hear that kind of stuff from a small choir in rural Montana, and I do appreciate their time and their effort. But the music they pick is just insipid. The ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ we sing every week is just worthless. It’s not really their fault; any and all attempts to translate and sing it in English make it (I think) incredibly awkward and clunky. And it goes on forever. And I don’t like worshipping to piano and guitar. I’d get rid of instruments altogether, but no one asks me.

I don’t get much out of the teaching.

I have a PhD in theology. That doesn’t necessarily make me smarter than our priest or other clergy that I know, but it does mean that I’ve spent a lot of time reading theological reflection that is rich, creative and incredibly rigorous. I liken it to almost a physical discipline. I’ve had to develop and exercise theological ‘muscles’ beyond what is typical- and it felt really good. Sometimes I feel like an athlete who loves to do iron man triathlons taking part in a community fun run; I do it, but it’s not pushing those theological ‘muscles’ that way they’re used to being pushed. Lots of people I know, who have studied theology on an academic level, can relate to what I’m talking about. Many have told me so.

Like what I said about music, it’s not that the teaching is bad… ok, sometimes it is. I’ve heard the biblical text abused- made to say or mean what it absolutely does not say or mean. That’s incredibly destructive to our faith and to people within it. But more often than not, I simply hear the biblical text taught from the lowest common denominator, reduced to mushy little ‘feel good’ bits. It’s often lazy and soft. Don’t get me wrong; theological reflection doesn’t need to be complicated to be good. But it does need to be nutritious and constructive. A simple truth briefly stated can stay with you all week and helps you live a more meaningful Christian life. If I get that, I’m satisfied. But I rarely do.

I don’t like ‘folksy’ clergy.

Our priest seems to believe that the more relaxed and informal a worship service is, the better. He begins every service with a run-down of the local high school and college sports news. He’ll stop in the middle of everything to relate quick, clever asides.  His homilies are a series of humourous quips. He’ll break into light banter with congregants. I find it extremely distracting. I don’t need every worship service to be grim and somber, but it should feel different from a parish congregational meeting. I came here to experience the infinite; please shut up about the football.

I don’t like assumed uniformity.

Since the Catholic Church is hierarchical and centralised, this can be a particularly Catholic issue. But across Christianity- whatever the denomination- there is often a tendency to simply assume that everyone in our denomination or congregation all agree on any number of issues. I’m not saying that everyone can or should be able to believe whatever they want to believe; but we need to realistically acknowledge that our readings of social issues, doctrine and Holy Scripture are diverse, complex and growing. And that’s a good thing! Growth and adaptation are signs of life. But believe me: issues surrounding gender, sexuality, and reproduction are spoken of from the pulpit, in the announcements, the newssheet and the website as though we are all in agreement about how these issues should be approached. For those looking for more engagement and complexity, it’s alienating.

I don’t like default prayers for the military.

This dovetails with assumed uniformity. Every week, at the end of the prayers, our priest tacks on a sentence prayer for the members of our faith community serving in the armed forces overseas, for their safety and their safe return. This isn’t in the liturgy; it’s a personal addition. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but if personal additions to the liturgy are permissible, would it be ok for me to chirp up and ask for prayers for those I know who are active peacemakers, anti-war activists, or even incarcerated war resistors? Probably not…

I don’t like sweets for kids who haven’t had their first communion.

Yep, you read that right; kids who haven’t had their first communion get to go up after communion for gummy bears and chocolate. Both of my kids are communicants, and trying to explain to them the superiority of the tasteless chip of wheat flour and water they get to the treats available to younger kids is a headache. The whole practice spreads confusion and misunderstanding about the nature of the Eucharist. Call me a grouch, but I think that it’s important to get that stuff right.

I don’t like hand motions.

Benedict XVI will be long remembered as the Pope who screwed up the Liturgy and then quit. And one of the more ridiculous things put into the new liturgy was a re-emphasis on hand motions- raising our hands at this and that, striking our breasts when we confess our sins, holding hands at the Lord’s Prayer… None of this was a big deal in the working class parishes in North and West Belfast; Irish Catholics just looked at all that and unconsciously let out a small, disparaging laugh that said, ‘well, bollocks to that’ and went on as normal. But Holy God, American Catholics do love their hand motions. I don’t. So there’s me at Mass in rural Montana in an Antrim GAA top with my hands in my hoodie pockets, thinking it all feels incredibly silly. Sorry.  

I don’t like passing the peace. 

Again, this was less of a problem in Ireland, where you quickly make eye contact, take the person’s hand and say ‘peace’. Do that with the three or four closest people around you and you’re done. Here?  Well, first, stand around and wait for the married couples around you to finish their long, lingering embraces. Then wait for them to do that with each of their four children. In the meantime, some people have started to mill around the sanctuary finding people they know to greet. The whole thing quickly becomes a refreshments time with no refreshments. And who needs that?

I don't like the applause.

There is a talented violin player who plays in our worship times, and quite often he  plays in the interlude after communion. He's a lovely player with a rustic, western/Hispanic flavour to his playing. He fills the quiet space beautifully, until he finishes and- usually instigated by our aforementioned priest- we break out in applause for his performance. I find it very inappropriate and hugely distracting. At a wonderful moment of calm spiritual transcendence, it's  like  a  TV announcer saying 'This moment  of calm spiritual transcendence has been brought to you by...' There are about a dozen people  who help to make our worship service a meaningful time- the communion servers, the deacon, the readers, the greeters, even the people who put together the coffee and tea for after the service. None of these people gets applauded for their efforts. Either applaud everyone or don't applaud anyone. Actually, I take that back-  just don't applaud anyone... 

I don’t like flags.

This was a bigger deal when I was part of the Church of Ireland, the Anglican Communion in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Anglican churches- as well as most other churches identified as Protestant in Northern Ireland- are typically festooned with British flags and flags associated with the British military. I found it very disconcerting, like I was being forced to honour a British military and imperial history with which I did not identify and wanted no part of. Since moving away from the Church of Ireland, this issue has receded a bit for me, but I still don’t like flags- any flags- in a church sanctuary. Nope, not even the stars and stripes... Our religious faith should transcend any form of nationalism. When it doesn’t- as all the research I did during my Masters work in post-conflict reconciliation amply shows- the results can be catastrophic. When I’m in church, I want to focus fully on my faith and my spirituality. Flags never help.

So, with all of this constant, low-level irritation, why do I go? 

I think, for me, it comes down to the deep love and devotion I have for the Eucharist itself, known by many names across many traditions- the Lord’s supper, holy communion, the holy mysteries, the breaking of the bread, an t-aifreann. It is an ancient ritual, one that- beyond its spiritual and symbolic understandings- we in the Christian religion believe comes directly from Jesus himself. It is something he did and called upon us to do; to do, he said, ‘in remembrance of me’. It is a long, unbroken string dating back to- literally- the very beginning of our faith.

I’ll struggle with teaching, doctrine, music, practice and people, but all that recedes into the background for me when I am in the presence of the elements- this bread and this wine that at the same time we believe to be so much more.

This is where I meet Jesus.

It is where I touch the divine, where I feel a part of an ancient body of believers stretching from Palestine to North Africa; from Byzantium and Rome to Canterbury; From Ethiopia to Syria to Armenia; From Iona and Lindisfarne to Inishfree and Croagh Patrick; from Swiss reformers to Spanish Jesuits to French missionaries to Irish immigrants; from Catholic Workers to Mennonite pacifists; from Ignatian missionaries to Native Americans to the Flathead valley of Northwest Montana… to now.

If that connection to the Eucharist ever goes away- if that feeling of stability and connection to faith and history ever recedes- then I will indeed stop going to church.

But I don’t think it will. I honestly don’t know how it could. 2,000 years of spectacularly bloated bureaucracy, thoughtlessness, carelessness, cruelty, abuse, and just plain idiocy have never been able to completely obscure the simple faith of love of God and our neighbour...

But that’s the bottom line. 

'God Is Dead'? Contemplating the Death of God and Bad Christian Cinema

The other day, a friend on Facebook posted the trailer for a new Christian film ‘God’s Not Dead’, due to be released 21 March of this year. 

The film tells the story of college student Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper) who, on the first day of his Philosophy 150 class, is informed by the course instructor Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) that he and his fellow students will be required, in writing, to disavow the existence of God. If they don’t, they face failing the class. Wheaton refuses, which sets the stage for an epic showdown between him and Radisson. You can watch the trailer here:

http://godsnotdeadthemovie.com/

As the film hasn’t been released yet- and, if I’m honest, I doubt I’ll be seeing it when it is- my thoughts and comments here will deal exclusively with the trailer and the social and religious milieu that I believe it inhabits.

After seeing the trailer, my first thought was that while it certainly doesn’t give away the ending, neither does it set us up for any great cliffhanger. I really don’t think it’s possible to view the trailer and think, ‘Gosh I’ve got to see this and find out how this plays out!’ I also doubt anyone will walk out at the end saying, ‘Wow, I sure didn’t see that ending coming!’

Secondly, from the look of it, the character of Radisson is an unbelievably ridiculous character and a comically atrocious educator. A university-level philosophy professor- on the first day of class- announcing to his introductory philosophy students that their final grade is dependent on a written declaration that God does not exist? And then singling out a devoutly religious person for public castigation and ridicule, threatening and bullying that student inside and outside of class? I wouldn’t debate this person; I’d lodge a formal complaint with the Dean of Faculty and hire an attorney…

But then, I’ve seen this type of film countless times over the years and I don’t think the makers are going for gritty realism or well thought-out character development. I think the film- like most Christian art of this type- is designed primarily to encourage and instruct, not to tell a story; it is a polemic before it is art. There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, but the message is what is crucial here, rather than the medium or the method.

This is the world as the filmmakers and their demographic perceive it to be. It is a social reality where certain Evangelical Christians feel more and more isolated and marginalized. They see their public influence and privileges that were simply taken for granted being diligently chipped away by hostile enemies. Their world is full of ‘Radissons’- didactic, unreasonable and vindictive voices who loathe God and believers and who want nothing less than to destroy them and their faith; a world where all critique or critical reflection is an unsubtle test and a threat to a pure, solid faith; a world where higher learning is a dangerous, anti-theistic battleground and all rules are stacked against them. Most crucially, it is a world where every threat is a dire one; all of Christendom hangs in the balance; there is victory or there is oblivion.

What they don’t see- or don’t recognize- is a world where the House of Representatives and the Senate is 83% professing Christians (if you factor in Mormons, it rises to 87%), the Supreme Court is 67% professing Christian (6 out of 9; the three remaining are Jewish, so the ‘Judeo-Christian’ corner is fairly well-defended), every single US President since the foundation of the nation has been a professing Christian, and 73% of the country overall are professing Christians. Those kinds of numbers don’t point to Christianity in America being- or becoming any time soon- a marginalized minority…

Nevertheless, the film’s demographic see their faith as endangered and in decline, in need of constant care to keep from disappearing altogether. Many of them would reject the notion that most professing Christians in America are ‘real’ Christians and would reject out of hand the faith of perhaps half of the elected officials and judges.

At bottom, I’d argue that most of the discontent that these types of Christians are feeling comes from confusing a diminishing of social influence and cultural privilege with oppression or persecution. For much of the nation’s history, American Christians- and more specifically, certain denominations of predominantly white, Evangelical Protestant Christians- enjoyed an abundance of the former; other voices-  Christian or otherwise- were easily overlooked or ignored, too few or too marginalized to make a dent.

That reality, for the last five decades or so, through shifts in cultural norms, the rise in profile and influence of not only other forms of Christianity, and also of the specifically non-religious viewpoint, has seen a slow but significant rebalancing of the public discourse. This rebalancing is often seen as a gradual erosion of ‘rights’ by some of the formally privileged, even if their understanding of that ‘privilege’ is largely unconscious.

But the film intrigues me for the simple reason of its title and its central premise: Can you empirically prove that God is ‘alive’? Again, not having seen this particular film, I don’t want to judge it but, from seeing the trailer, it doesn’t seem like reasoned argument is at the heart of the film’s narrative- even if it perhaps wants to think it is. Radisson’s rejection of God comes as a result of the death of a loved one. My guess is that the ultimate resolution to this in the film is emotional rather than philosophical or empirical.

In a sense, it couldn’t be otherwise. But the weakness of this from the point of view of Christian apologetics is that the existence of God is here made dependent on human feeling: ‘I know God exists because I feel his existence; I see God’s effect on my life’. Here, God’s existence is determined by finite human acknowledgement. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever for accepting God’s existence based on that premise, but it doesn’t prove anything. But more troubling, God is no longer transcendent but utterly dependent; God is no longer ‘God’.

Likewise, if God’s existence or otherwise depends on personal positive outcomes (as it does for Radisson), God is quickly reduced to a magical talisman, a good luck charm, or an idol. Likewise, if God exists to serve as a prime cause, a creator, or an explanation for truth, beauty, or existence itself (as God does for many), God is again relegated to the place of a necessity, a ‘thing’, albeit the most important ‘thing’. God is made an idol once again.

Each of these examples is, at the very least, the idolatry of reduction of God. But ultimately, if one accepts the premise of God as eternal and immutable, then that God, for all practical purposes, is dead. In the trailer, Radisson quotes Macbeth’s nihilistic despair, but his subtext is obviously Nietzche’s madman crying in the street:

‘Where has God gone?’ he cried. ‘I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. We are all his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving now? Away from all suns? Aren't we perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Aren't we straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn't it become colder? Isn't more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s putrefaction? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’ 

Nietzche, in the voice of the madman, does not celebrate the death of God; he laments the thoughtless murder of God by humanity’s neglect and abuse. Nietzche laments the institutionalization of the words and actions of Jesus into ‘Christianity’ and the focus given to remembering the words of Jesus instead of doing what Jesus did. Moreover, there is the critique of those who needed God for no other purpose than to explain material mysteries now conclusively explained by science and technology. Again, it is the death of a 'small' god, a 'god' made by humanity for its own needs.

Then, as now, the truth of the madman is too close to the bone and the crowd ignores him. He realizes this and deduces:

‘I come too early,’ he said then; ‘my time hasn't come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling — it has not yet reached human ears. Lightning and thunder need time, deeds need time after they have been done before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars — and yet we have done it ourselves.’

The madman observes that, in Nietzche’s lifetime, humanity still hypocritically went through the religious motions, embracing a practical atheism in the midst of life while preserving the pageantry of church life to no apparent purpose. It would be 60 years after his death that the alienation of modern life would bring the stark realization of the divine murder- the lack of any necessity for God, brought about by humanity’s idolatrous carelessness- to a critical juncture.

Into that existential and philosophical breach stepped a new theological grappling with this crisis. In regards to the film, I believe it might continue to offer a more constructive way forward regarding the feelings of anxiety felt by both its makers and its supporters- a changing reality and an inadequate understanding of God.

They see a world that is hostile to them and to God, and this in turn leads them to declare ‘God’s Not Dead’; I suggest that they simply agree that God is indeed dead… and then focus on the life and death of Jesus.

This line of thinking was suggested in the 1960s by radical Christian theologians such as Gabriel Vahanian, William Hamilton, Paul Van Buren, and especially Thomas J. J. Altizer, but also existed in the work of the Jewish Holocaust Theologians like rabbi Richard Rubenstein. I’m being a bit facetious, of course; I’m absolutely sure that the makers of ‘God’s Not Dead’ wouldn’t touch this kind of theology with a barge pole.  But please bear with my flight of fancy…

This theology- particularly Altizer’s- suggested that the full meaning and significance of the coming of Christ in the person of Jesus cannot be understood or indeed accepted without understanding that it spelled the end- the death- of God. The incarnation of Christ in the person of Jesus, culminating in the death of Jesus, is the ultimate expression of divine love and grace, the fulfillment of all divine action. Creation itself is made new, not from anything that preceded it but completely in the ‘new Adam’.

In the birth of Jesus, God dies. ‘Old things are passed away; all things become new’. A new commandment has been given to us: ‘Love one another.’ This is not an addition to the law; it is the death of the law, its annihilation, fulfillment and new life.

It is in this understanding that all struggles and rationalizations with God come to an end; a God who declares the death penalty for working on the Sabbath; a God who demands the death of Isaac; a God who takes land from one people and gives it to another, then demands the genocide of the original inhabitants; a God who hates shellfish, hates gays, loves war, loves ‘us’ and not ‘them’…

We can confidently say, ‘Don’t worry; God is dead.’

God dies so that Christ may live, and Christ in the person of Jesus gives us life in the form of the law of love.

This theology liberates us from the endless New Testament squaring of an Old Testament circle. However, it also robs the legalist of the comfortable divine endorsements of personal and cultural prejudices. In God, we legislate; In Jesus, we love.

The question is: do we have the courage, the strength of faith to declare our atheism and love as Jesus loved? This is our narrow road, our small gate, our new creation.

I don’t know what the film ‘God’s Not Dead’ would look like if Josh had just calmly written that God was dead and simply continued to live the life of a follower of Jesus. Perhaps this kind of theological musing will never find a place in bad Christian cinema. No matter. 

God is dead. Jesus lives. Pass the Popcorn. 

Sexual Orientation: Moving Beyond ‘Regardless...’

On 29 January 2014, The Church of England issued a statement on behalf of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Justin Welby and John Sentamu. The statement reported that the two men had officially written to all primates of the Anglican Communion, as well as the Presidents of Nigeria and Uganda, reiterating their commitment- and the commitment of the Anglican Communion- to ‘the pastoral support and care of everyone worldwide, regardless of sexual orientation.’  The full statement can be read here:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2014/01/archbishops-recall-commitment-to-pastoral-care-and-friendship-for-all,-regardless-of-sexual-orientation.aspx

This statement was in response to recent legislation in Nigeria and Uganda. In Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan this month signed into law a bill which bans same-sex marriages, LGBT groups and public displays of same-sex affection. On top of this, Sharia courts in the predominantly Muslim north of the country have had gay men publicly lashed. Mainstream Anglicanism and fundamentalist Islam working in concert to deny gay people not only life and liberty but also freedom from physical abuse is a somewhat cruel irony.

In Uganda’s legislation, LGBT people face the threat of life imprisonment for living openly and honestly. The death penalty was removed from the final legislation, but that’s cold comfort to  people whose real lives are being really destroyed.

The statement of the archbishops highlights the plight of millions of people around the world who now face legal, state-sanctioned prejudice for their sexual orientation. This is, of course, in addition to the cultural stigma, family abandonment, loss of employment and education opportunities, verbal abuse, and physical violence that many daily face.

My thoughts on the statement are these: Firstly, I think it should be welcomed insofar as it at least proactively responds to the egregious abuse of human rights in two countries in which the Anglican Church is a major presence.

That said, I feel it displays a huge weakness in that it perpetuates a bad habit that many official church documents often do: it talks ‘about’ LGBT people rather than ‘to’ them. In doing so, it perpetuates LGBT people as objects of sympathy and care rather than subjects of justice and liberation. Gay people in the statement are still inherently ‘other’, naggingly ‘outside’. It’s an unconscious reinforcing of the notion that the Church needs to love gay people so they’ll want to ‘come in’ without the understanding that the Church needs to love gay people because they’re already ‘here’.

I once had a lay leader of an evangelical church ask me how his church might be more welcoming to gay people, passionately using imagery of ‘throwing open the doors’ of  the church. When I suggested that they first needed to be thinking about taking care of the gay people that were already inside his church, he seemed a bit shocked at the thought. But the fact is that, in the 300 or so people that regular attend his church at a Sunday service, statistical data tells us that there’s probably between 15 and 30 who don’t feel comfortable enough- ‘welcomed’ enough- to share who they are with their brothers and sisters sitting around them. ‘Welcoming’ them means responding to their real-life needs- exactly the same as those of straight singles and couples- and many of them probably have little or nothing to do with sex. 

Yes, believe or not, gay people have lives other than sex lives.  For instance, Marie is trying to stick to a budget in hopes of finally getting a new car, but her partner Brenda spends money like water. Paul lost his job and he and Richard are now getting by solely on Richard’s income.  John and Mark would love to feel comfortable enough to sign up for the couples retreat; Sarah has had a crush on Ciara for months and would love to chat with the youth pastor about the difference between ‘liking’ and  ‘loving’; Robert would love to be part of the singles group; Karen and Jen are thinking about adopting; David tenses up every time the pastor talks about ‘reaching out to those trapped in homosexuality’...

There’s a good chance that’s what your church looks like… and I firmly believe that’s not a bad thing. Which brings me to my second point:

When I first read the two archbishops’ statement, one phrase immediately stood out to me:

‘...the commitment made by the Primates of the Anglican Communion to the pastoral support and care of everyone worldwide, regardless of sexual orientation.’

Actually, it was the last bit, ‘... regardless of sexual orientation.’

Well, to be honest, I think it’s simply the word ‘regardless’. I realise that it was written in good faith and with the best of intentions. But I want to poke at it a bit…

The dictionary defines ‘regardless’ as ‘having or showing no regard; heedless; unmindful of’. A thesaurus equates it with words such as ‘disregarding’, ‘blind’, ‘careless’, ‘insensitive’, ‘uninterested’, ‘unobservant’.

The question is- what about us does God disregard? What about us does God choose to ignore? What does God love about us ‘regardless’?  

The answer is, obviously, sin. ‘God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners (that’s the ‘regardless’ bit…) Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8).

Thus, In this case of the statement of the two archbishops, the word ‘regardless’ is only applicable if the sexual orientation of a minority is indeed considered a sin. Theologically, forgiven sin is the only thing that God disregards, the one thing he purposes to ignore. It is one thing to say that God (and his Church) embraces us ‘regardless’ of what we do; it is another to say that God (and his Church) embrace us ‘regardless’ of who we are.

And there’s the rub. The statement refers to gay people as ‘human beings whose  affections happen to be ordered to people of the same sex’ yet also refers to the  church’s ‘discussion and assessment of moral appropriateness of specific human behaviours’. The former is natural; it is part of God’s creation and should therefore, one assumes, be actively celebrated, as we do in the case of anything we believe God created good. The latter is open to moral debate, as anything God created good can be distorted, dangerous and difficult.

However, just because a behaviour can be sinful should not preclude out of hand its being done ever. A sexual orientation naturally leads to desire and activity. All three are, in my opinion, natural. Anyone who’s ever fallen in love knows what I’m talking about: noticing leads to, well, really noticing; hesitancy turns to courage; casual chat turns into serious chat; brushing the skin turns to hand-holding and embrace; ‘like’ turns to ‘love’; desire turns to commitment, and I think you see where this is going… If something is natural, it grows, flowers, matures, becomes deeper.

Yet it is on that point that I find many of the statements of the Anglican Communion on this matter- and those of other churches, including my own- remarkably obtuse. The Anglican Church in their statement declares sexual orientation natural. In doing so, they believe they are being eminently progressive. But declaring something ‘natural’ is far short of declaring something celebratory. ‘Natural’ is merely a factual statement, not a positive affirmation. In my mind, it denotes uneasy acknowledgement and nothing more. The optimum phrase there is ‘nothing more’; ‘You’re homosexual? Well, that’s natural; anything beyond that is problematic. Sex is out altogether; all sexual relations outside of marriage are sin... and we won’t marry you. Basically, you can have friends, even deep friendships, but nothing more...’

Lord Byron described friendship as ‘love without his wings’. And that is precisely the kind of love that the majority of the Christian Church permits gay people- flightless, wingless, grounded, never soaring. By declaring God’s love- and the Church’s acceptance- ‘regardless’, LGBT people fall through a massive theological crack and are condemned to ‘nothing more’. They may love only up to a point- and that point is a million miles shorter than the point that I as a heterosexual man may go. The Christian Church expects and encourages me, as a straight man, to… how do I say this modestly?... ‘fully embrace’ my orientation. They’d start asking serious questions of me if I didn’t, suggesting all kinds of books, courses, retreats and counselling to get things, well, ‘going in the right direction’.

My sexual orientation- and its full expression- are deemed natural and celebratory. If I broke my marriage vows and started giving myself emotionally or sexually to another woman, only then would they deem it necessary to remind me that God loves me ‘regardless’- and then, only for what was deemed a sinful action, not for who I fundamentally was.

I don’t believe God loves me regardless of my heterosexual orientation; I believe that God loves me because of my heterosexual orientation. I believe that the love and the sexual attraction I feel for my wife is a source of divine joy. That’s certainly what the Church has always led me to believe. The Church begins from a standpoint of celebration of my sexual orientation and all aspects of my sexual being.

That is certainly not what the vast majority of LGBT people have ever been led to believe. LGBT sexuality has, of course, been demonized for centuries, and even in today’s climate of more openness and understanding, it is still assumed by many Christians and their leadership structures to be inherently and deeply problematic- a problem to be solved, a crisis to be averted, a difficulty with which to be grappled, at best a mistake to be carefully managed.

From what I can see, LGBT people’s sexual orientation is not celebrated. It is not believed to have been created by God, much less created ‘good’.

But I don’t I don’t believe God loves LGBT people regardless of their sexual orientation; I believe God loves them because of their sexual orientation. I believe that LGBT people were created ‘good’- just like me. But As long as we and our churches hold onto and verbalise the idea that God loves gay people ‘regardless’, we- and they- will unconsciously believe that there is something inherently wrong with them. 

So, while I welcome the intentions of the statement of Welby and Sentamu, I’d humbly suggest that we need to move beyond ‘regardless’. If LGBT people are indeed, created in the image of God- as Welby and Sentamu have on many occasions insisted- then they are created ‘good’.

And that should be enough.

Our Lady of the Barricades: The Virgin Mary’s Advent Revolution (and who wants to stop it…)

The season of Advent is a time of preparation and expectation. Something is going to happen. And as a result of that happening, change is coming. It will not be a small change but a complete change- a transformation of what was into what is to be. All things will be made new; systems will be inverted; powers will be overturned.

A revolution is coming. The season of Advent is often a study in this transformational revolution.

And in a real sense, it is a time to choose sides.

It is for that reason that Jesus declared that his coming would not bring peace- certainly not the ‘peace’ of a complacent status quo- but a sword (Matt. 10:34-35). The Gospel of the kingdom spoken of by the ancient prophets and revealed by Jesus was- and is- the great divider. God reveals himself in Jesus as a God of life and liberation, justice and salvation. But of course, if there is a God of life and liberation, there are also idolatrous systems of death and injustice. And Jesus made plain that you couldn’t serve both (Matt. 6:23-25); you had to choose.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus made clear the parametres of that choice:

Blessed are you that hunger now; you shall be filled. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they abandon you and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for my sake. Rejoice in that day, and be joyful, for your reward is great in God’s Kingdom; in like manner did their fathers treat the prophets (Luke 6:21-23).

But there was a flipside to that coin:

But woe to you that are rich! What you have now is all you’ll ever have. Woe unto you that are full! You will be hungry. Woe unto you that laugh now! You shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets (Luke 6:24-25).

What we see is that what the message of the Gospel of Jesus is for you depends very much on where you’re standing. It is indeed ‘good news’ if you are poor, hungry, marginalised and slandered; it’s very bad news if you are making people poor, taking food from the hungry, part of a privileged minority, or spreading hate and disinformation. For some, the words of the Gospel are good news; for others, they are a threat and a warning.

All of this is very prescient for Advent, as it is the season of preparation for the incarnation of Christ. It is a time to remember the time before Jesus and those who understood themselves to be preparing the way for his coming. I’d like to focus on two:

We begin with John the Baptizer, who preached a message of repentance. What was this repentance? ‘If you have extra clothes, you should share with those who have none; if you have extra food, you should do the same’; to tax collectors: ‘collect no more than you are required to’; to soldiers, he demanded ‘no blackmail, no bullying. Make do with your pay’ (Luke 3:10-14)

It has become easy for certain parts of the Church to focus on repentance as a personal thing, a repentance of individual piety. And while there is often a need for personal repentance, in the biblical text we see John stressing the social aspects of repentance. At its heart, John’s message was one of justice and equity.

But Advent’s most powerful revolutionary manifesto remains that of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Luke’s Gospel records the meeting of the ‘mothers of the revolution’- Mary and Elizabeth. It was here that Mary, filled with the spirit of God, proclaims the coming transformation: God had honoured her so much that every generation to come would call her- a young, Palestinian Jewish woman-  ‘blessed’; God had ‘scattered the proud… brought the powerful down from their thrones and raised the lowly… filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty-handed’ (Luke 1:48-53).

It is impossible to overstate the radical nature of Mary’s words; there is no other description for them other than ‘revolutionary’. The incarnation of Christ was, in every sense- socially, theologically, spiritually- understood by the earliest Christians as a revolutionary transformation. And ever since, the ‘Song of Mary’, the Magnificat, has been the comfort and the hope of the poorest, the most oppressed, the most marginalised.

It has also been a threat to every repressive, unjust system ever since. The ‘Song of Mary’ was expunged from the Christian liturgies of the churches of British-controlled India; it was banned in the 1930s by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco; in the 1970s it was banned by the Argentinian military junta when it was adopted by the ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ for use in their demands for justice and nonviolent resistance to the regime; in the 1980s it was banned from public use by the Guatemalan dictatorship; in Nicaragua, during the years of the Somoza dictatorship, poor campesinos mockingly referred to the documents they were required to carry proving they’d voted for Somoza as ‘the Magnificat’.

These brutal, unjust regimes were under no illusions about the potential of Mary’s words- who they were spoken to, who heard the message , who took comfort from them, and who was threatened by them. And they had every right to feel threatened; German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered by the Nazis, wrote:

The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might say the most revolutionary advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings… This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world...

We must never presume to be on the side of God and his justice as proclaimed by Mary and Jesus. We must never presume that those who govern us are not equally threatened by the Kingdom of God or immune from its denunciations. GT Hunt, one the lawyers for the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, has related his account of receiving a request for a copy of the Bible from one of the prisoners, Saifullah Paracha. Hunt dutifully sent a copy to the chaplain at the prison, with a note explaining Paracha’s request. The next time Hunt visited the prison camp, he received a stern rebuke from the prison command: the Bible represented a potentially dangerous breach of prison discipline.

And who can blame the powers that control Guantánamo? Why on Earth would they risk men being held without charge, condemned without recourse to any semblance of justice, obtaining the respite of the words of Mary or the solidarity of her son? Why allow them to fraternise with a woman who so bluntly proclaimed God’s judgement of the powerful? Why risk them meeting a man whose entire life proclaimed release to the captives, justice for the marginalised, and went as far as to identify specifically as one of them- ‘I was in prison...’? (Matt. 25:36)

What does Advent mean for us? If we ask John the Baptizer, ‘what must we do?’, do we dare receive an answer?

Where do we stand with Mary’s manifesto? Will we stand with those who shout it from the rooftops, or will we align ourselves with those who dare not have it even whispered?

The message of Advent is that the incarnation is coming. The revolution is coming.

It’s time to choose sides...