"Government of the people, by the people,

and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”

Lately it seems that some Christians believe that once something is legal, or constitutional, enacting it becomes moral, and that our lawmakers, and executive rise above moral responsibility when they act within the law. This is dangerous non-sense. 

Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg pose the most ethically challenging description of a democracy in the modern era. They underscore this simple fact: In the United States the people, the voters, bear direct moral responsibility for the actions undertaken on their behalf by the government. They created the government and they have to own its actions. 

Of course the term “government” is misleading. It isn’t just the voters who are responsible for government. The government itself is made up of elected individuals. Because legislators have the power to create, change, and end laws they individually bear moral responsibility for their actions as law makers. 

And even the executive branch cannot evade moral responsibility in its enforcement of the law, because the legislators have given the executive branch wide latitude in exercising its judgment in how to best enforce the law.

In short, and to repeat, there is no such thing as “government.” It is a meaningless abstraction. There are morally responsible (or irresponsible) people making and enforcing laws.No one of voting age in the United States and no one elected or appointed to office can reasonably speak of the behavior of "the government," or "the law," as something separate from their personal moral behavior and responsibility.

I make this point as we focus our attention on the present situation with migration and immigration. Legislators are personally morally responsible for their failure over decades to pass reasonable legislation addressing the challenge of economic migrants and asylum seekers in relation to American aspirations to be a moral nation. Because the laws they pass affect many countries outside the US, they bear moral responsibility for having helped create the need for economic migration and asylum on countries outside the US, and for America’s economic need for workers. 

At the same time the executive branch is morally responsible for the policies it has created as the chief agent of foreign policy and their negative impact on people outside the US. And it bears responsibility for implementation of recognizably problematic immigration laws, particularly in areas where it has the power to determine when, how many, and under which circumstances to issue visas or deportations.

And yes, that is as true of the past voters, legislatures and administrations as it is true of those currently in office. 

But finally it is you and I, the voters, who are morally responsible for what is happening on the border. We elected our legislators and our president, we have access to them to influence their decision making, and we will vote to change them. 

Nor does our moral responsibility end just because we didn’t vote for the winning person or party. None of us is a moral island who hasn’t influenced and been influenced by our neighbors. We are responsible for the sins and righteousness of our society even if we didn’t directly commit the former or encourage the latter. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. . . .” Its worth looking up. 

I suggest that instead of moaning and pointing fingers of blame at “the government” or even a particular political party, (and parties are also a moral fiction hiding individual responsibility,) we get to work changing things. Protest if that’s your thing, write letters to the editor, call your congressman, volunteer for any of the groups that aid migrants and their families, do business in Latin America in a way that resolves rather than creating social problems if you have the capacity, run for office yourself. But most of all VOTE and encourage your neighbors to vote.  

Responsibility, Blame, and the Criminalization of Need

We're responsible even when we’re not to blame.

As our nation considers the question of who, when, and how we’ll allow immigrants to come into the US, and our president leads with his well known moral constancy, it is worthwhile to consider what Christians believe about the relationship between responsibility and blame. 

The answer is easy. The life of Christ, and the parable of the Good Samaritan make the same point: We are responsible for the welfare of others even when we are not to blame for their suffering. And as Christ showed on the cross, it isn’t just a matter of innocent victims. As he took responsibility for us because of our entirely self-inflicted sin, so we have responsibility even for those who brought their problems on themselves. 

The problem we face living out a Christ-like life is that we have multiple overwhelming and conflicting responsibilities for the welfare of our neighbors and family. They are overwhelming because no amount of personal time and energy will solve even one of these problems. I know a woman who has given her life, every minute of every day, to promoting the welfare of orphaned children. Still, there are more and more orphans every year. The list goes on of those types of individuals to whom any one of us or our whole community could give everything without solving their problems. 

Even Jesus could not cure all the diseases of his Galilean world, or feed all the hungry in his neighborhood. Even in the first century a meal for 5,000 was a drop in the bucket of hunger. 

Then there are the conflicting needs. The victim on the side of the road calls for a Good Samaritan, but the person who passes by may have a sick child at home, a dying mother, or just a job that will be lost if he’s late again. The moral demands on our time and energy never offer simple choices.

So we are all caught up in the complex ethical problems created by overwhelming need and competing goods. And we have no choice but to make difficult choices about how we’ll use our personal and social time and resources to take responsibility for our neighbors, regardless of their blame.

And that is as it should be if we are followers of Christ. The unease, the psychological pressure from making moral choices, helps us grasp God’s love for us. It cuts off our self-righteousness at the roots, and leads us to fully embrace God’s gracious judgment on our lives; far more gracious the that of our neighbors or than the judgment we so regularly render on others.

Unfortunately we’ve found a way to avoid those moral choices. It relieves our psychological pressure. And ultimately it relieves us of reliance on God. We’ve found a way to maintain and even increase our human self-centeredness and the autonomy to which Sin continually calls us. 

We’ve discovered the criminalization of need. 

By making human need a crime we’ve alleviated ourselves of responsibility for it. After all, what decent Christian person should support crime? Drug addiction, alcoholism? Make either the addict a criminal or the behaviors that follow a crime and you don’t have to help addicts get sober.  You just thrown them in jail. Poverty? Make debt a crime, whether it an inability to pay traffic fines, for example, or failure to pay taxes, and you can safely and quickly toss poor people out of their homes as a prelude to putting them in jail and never take responsibility for helping them out of poverty. 

And what if children are being murdered by gangs, refugees are fleeing from from war, or pregnant women are starving to death? Make migration across national borders a crime and you can shuttle them into pens, or let them die in the desert of thirst, or just shoot them down when they run. Because Christians in a Christian nation don’t have to take responsibility for criminals. 

Jesus knew something about the criminalization of need. Hungry on the sabbath? Too bad, eating is a crime. Sick? Whoops, healing on the sabbath is a crime. Did you happen to get mugged on the road? Well being unclean is a crime and I don’t have my rubber gloves to help you up. Blind? Yeah, that’s a crime too - your parent’s if not yours. Maybe you need to pay your tithe, but got your salary in the emperor’s coin? Well its a crime to use that money. 

The enemies of the gospel have always maintained their righteousness and ignored their responsibility for the welfare of their neighbors by criminalizing need. Its the oldest trick in the book. So it is surprising that Christians who actually have that book, and claim to know its author, and accept the validity of his rebuke of those who use this trick, have used it themselves. Indeed Christians in Congress and in the Whitehouse, fully supported by their Christian constituencies across the US are still using it: a nation of whitewashed tombs.  

Is America a Secular Nation?

No. 

The term “secular,” in terms of a public realm absent all religion or reference to transcendent values didn’t exist in the time of the founding of the United States. The founders of the United States were careful to exclude both religion generally, and distinctly Christian expressions specifically, from the constituting of the US as a nation. And of course the First Amendment forbids the government from establishing a religion. 

Yet references to transcendent values that are assumed to guide the public are foundational to the beginnings of the United States. Take the Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Here "Nature's God" is given equal place to the "Laws of Nature" in entitling people to their political rights, as it is their Creator who endows them with unalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. 

Since that time the public practice of religion by politicians and even political bodies has never been forbidden by the courts so long as it does not “establish” religion or deny anyone’s religious freedom. Legislatures have chaplains and open with prayer, so long as they are non-sectarian and non-exclusive. And however relatively new and controversial we have the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on our currency. 

So religion is neither excluded from the public realm or even from the specifically political realm. Indeed religion is a critical player in public discourse as the founding fathers no doubt anticipated.  

As I noted in the last blog this doesn’t mean the United States is a Christian, or even religious nation. 

The United States is rather a nation with no established religion but which in offering freedom of religion makes room for religion in the public and political realm. This creates an intentionally religiously plural public environment. 

The birth of the United States would eventually give birth to what has become the most difficult problem for contemporary Christian life: sharing the public space as a realm of religious witness. 

As the United States has become more complex, and as it is now in the midst of de-Christianization, we find ourselves in an environment in which the claims of the gospel must be heard amidst other, and sometimes contradictory claims about God, God’s self-revelation, and God’s love. More can be said of this evangelistic context, but I’ll assert here that to be taken seriously in our cultural context our witness to Christ must explicitly recognize the right of other religions to the public space. In this cultural space we can neither ignore them nor deny them them a place without denying the basis of our own religious freedom of witness. And it seems to me that we both assert our right and theirs best by engaging in dialogue over matters of mutual interest. 

Secondly, all political theology in the public space must become inter-religious theology. We cannot separate out what it means to be a faithful Christians in our political actions from what it means to be joined in the common democratic work with people of other religions.

And finally, as our public space has become more religiously complex, and thus not dominated by a single religion, it has left room for those who are not religious or who are even anti-religious. And that has been affirmed by the Supreme Court as a natural result of the establishment clause of the constitution. This forces us to consider a public political theology that recognizes and cooperates with committed political engagement not based on religious principles. 

This challenges us in a good way, for it forces us to ask with renewed clarity about how God's providence is alive beyond the boundaries of not only our religion, but all religions, and thus to proclaim a God whose engagement with our social world is comprehensive enough to be worthy of worship.  

Is America a Christian Nation?

No. Although it is a nation with a lot of Christians.  

Recently Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, as well as many other evangelicals have sought to assert that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Their arguments are a tissue of half-truths and misrepresentations, but need to be addressed. 

https://ptv.org/america-is-a-christian-nation/ will give you as much insight as you wish into the way in which Jeffress frames his argument.

Assertion 1: "52 out of the 55 signers of the constitution, the framers of the constitution, were evangelical believers.”Clearly this argument turns on the anachronistic application of the modern term “evangelical” to men who lived over 200 years ago, before the term was ever used. So what about the founding fathers in context? If we turn to Encyclopedia Britannica we find a more nuanced answer that is far from Jeffress’ assertions. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214. And for scholarly depth one could go to The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, by David Holmes, which finds the majority to had been influenced by or were openly Diests. Those looking for a vigorously conservative view see a Heritage Foundation article at: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/did-america-have-christian-founding. 

Adherants.com gives us the definitive answer by listing the religious affiliations of the 55 signers:  

• Episcopalian/Anglican.      57.1%.  32
• Congregationalist               23.2%.  13      
• Presbyterian                        21.4%.  12
• Quaker                                  3.6%.   2
• Unitarian/Universalist          3.6%    2
• Catholic.                               1.8%.   1

Now Jeffress himself has said that Catholics are not Christians. Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ, so they aren’t in. And Quakers were executed for heresy in Puritan Boston, so its hard to see them being “Evangelical Christians.” Already we have 5 non-evangelical Christians. Of those remaining we know at least a few were openly Deist. So by the most general possible count Jeffress is dead wrong. If we consider that the evangelical revivals of the period were precisely intended to convert Anglicans to true Christianity his assertion becomes even more dubious. And after all, Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians would become the bulwark for liberal protestantism. One can see that there are no Baptists, Pentacostals, Independent Evangelicals and etc. None of the groups we associate with modern Evangelicalism were present for the founding of the United States. 

Jeffress' claim is completely bogus. 

Assertion 2: The establishment clause of the US constitution isn’t intended to prevent a the government from establishing a religion, it is intended to prevent it from establishing  “a denomination.” Or to quote Jeffress directly concerning Thomas Jefferson’s writing in 1802, "Jefferson was referring to an establishment of a denomination, not a religion."

First we must note that this isn’t what either the 1st Amendment or Thomas Jefferson says. The clause, which Jefferson quotes, says “religion.” A good literalist like Jeffress should recognize that you can’t just willy nilly say that a word means something different from what it says. 

Secondly, and more importantly for those interested in the truth instead of plausible lies, is that the word “denomination” is first used to refer to a particular religious sect is 1716. That is more than 50 years before the Declaration of Independence. So if the founding fathers meant “denomination” they certainly had the word available to them. And indeed, the US Congress specifically REJECTED using the terms “denomination” and “sect” in early versions of the Bill of Rights. So Jeffress’ assertion here is completely specious. 

Why, one wonders at this point in history, is a knowledgeable religious leader asserting that “America is a Christian Nation” and then offering bogus evidence he attributes to its founding fathers and founding document? One is tempted to ascribe political motives, but with a Supreme Court made entirely of Catholics and Jews, who are excluded by Jeffress from being included in our “Christian Nation,” that seems far-fetched. Its not likely efforts to twist the constitution toward theocracy will get past them, and one wonders what Jeffress and his allies make of the fact that the Supreme Court of a "Christian Nation" doesn't have a single person they regard as a Christian. 

The more likely explanation is far more tragic. Jeffress and his constituents sense that their long standing fable of America as a preserve of evangelical Christian power is rapidly being exposed as a fantasy. The sermons and videos are an effort to reassure the nervous faithful. And the religio-patriotic mega-rallies, billboards, political prayer meetings, and increasingly bombastic self-assertion are the last colorful gasp of a dying religious star. They are a fireworks finale soon to fade into drifting smoke behind their smoke and mirrors leader. 

Fortunately what will remain will be the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ. It will be much diminished in political and cultural power, and far more like salt and light. 

Guns in Cultural Context

The Dallas Morning News ran an article on the recent school shooting in Sante Fe, Texas. It noted that in the aftermath of the shooting not only explicitly religious responses, but religion (almost entirely Christian) in the school itself was increasing. The instinctive response of this East Texas community was to turn to God for both answers and solace. Prayer meetings, vigils, memorials, and now Bible studies and prayer groups are an outcome far more visible than Texas governor Gregg Abbott’s three hastily called meetings with lawmakers and community leaders. We don’t know which will be more consequential,  but its clear nothing will happen quickly in the realm of public policy.

This is a stark contrast to the responses following the shooting at the Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. That shooting led almost instantly to student outrage turned to political action. And consequential political action. The state of Florida quickly changed some of its gun laws and the students went on to Washington DC. For weeks there was hardly a day that activism for gun control wasn’t in the news thanks largely to these students and their parents. 

In these two very different responses to very similar events we see cultural differences that are a fundamental part of contemporary American society. What we do in a crisis is a good indicator of how our culture understands the human person in relation to both society and the larger and largely unseen forces at large in the world. It indicates how we both realize and express our collective identity and solidarity. And it tells us where we find a connection with past and future.

One American culture places humans most immediately in the context of both Divine love and concern, and in the context of unseen and largely unmanageable forces that govern personal behavior. For Governor Abbot and his supporters the solution to school shootings is essentially defensive, more guards and more guns. 

The other American culture places humans most immediately in the context of the social and political networks that make up the common life. And those are manageable through tougher laws controlling gun ownership and use and identification and treatment of mental illness. From within this American culture prayers are, if not totally pointless, at least desperately misguided. If you want to change things you talk to your legislators, not to God.  

If we are wise we recognize that ours is a culturally plural society, and that this cultural pluralism isn’t just a result of ethnic or religious identity. Thus accomplishing any desirable goal will require dialogue and negotiation. Such dialogue and negotiation is tiresome if you are an activist who wants to change things immediately. And its tiresome if you happen to control the majority of the votes in a City Council, State Legislature, or Congress.  Yet without such dialogue and negotiation we accomplish nothing and find ourselves in the hands of those best able to negotiate and manipulate cultural difference. The current president of the United States is proving to be masterful at this. He met the Parkland students and talked about gun control then prayed with the families at Santa Fe and denied what he had said earlier.  In both cases he gained political credibility without committing to any political action.

And in the meantime? We Christians continue to fight the culture wars. The recent Supreme Court decision on the baker who didn't do a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage was essentially a rebuke to a government agency that refused to take the religious commitments of the baker seriously. But progressives, instead of actually learning something about religion and religious freedom have continued to post their teardrop emojis on Facebook and denigrate the religious beliefs of everyone who doesn't agree with them as irrelevant in relation to the need of LGBTQ persons to be affirmed in the public realm. And conservatives continue to act as if religious freedom is the preserve of evangelical Christians - trumpeting America as a Christian nation and looking for new ways to oppress Muslims (not to mention Jews and Mormons and yes, LGBTQ persons.) Small wonder that Christianity is declining; who wants to sign up for an ecclesial extension of a civil war?  

The founders of the United States understood that the new nation was multi-cultural. They set up mechanisms to both respect cultural difference and find a common good. As it happens cultural difference at that time was primarily mapped to geography, and thus a political system balancing geographically defined states in relation to the federal government made sense. Today while geography remains important, there are other markers of cultural difference, most obviously urban versus rural but others as well. It remains to be seen whether the leaders we elect whether in our government or in our churches (and we are ultimately responsible for them) are able to reshape our political systems for the diversity we are experiencing in the 21st century.

In Defense of Paige Patterson

What!!!!! 

But wait. It might be worthwhile to consider the man. 

Because if the reports are true you can say this about Paige Patterson: his behavior over his career as a pastor was completely consistent, and completely consistent with an unwavering commitment to the teaching of scripture. 

After all, what would Paul do? Would Paul ever counsel a woman to divorce an abusive husband? That wouldn’t have even been a possibility in Paul’s time. He would have told the man to behave better. That is clear. So would Dr. Patterson.  

What about reporting sexual abuse to the authorities. Well Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, as well as Paul were pretty clear that conflicts between Christians, not least husbands and wives, need to be resolved inside the Christian community, with excommunication as a last resort. (And I note, that doesn’t do much for the woman.) And this was completely consistent with 1st century Jewish, and indeed subsequent Rabbinic Jewish teaching. When you live under military occupation you don’t go to the occupiers for justice. 

And it doesn’t take much to see that from the time Patterson helped lead the Southern Baptists into their fundamentalist desert that they weren’t going back to the fleshpots of contemporary American culture for either sustenance or justice. 

What I’ve noted above about scripture is hardly news. Dr. Patterson’s problem wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t lived so long. Anytime up to the 1980’s or even 1990’s  his advice would have been the consensus among conservative Christians. It probably remains the consensus in many churches outside the US. Indeed I know first hand it is the consensus among some Methodist Christians. Go back a century it would have been the consensus of all Christians. 

What changed wasn’t Paige Patterson, what changed was Western society and its understanding of the personhood of men and women, and thus how they should relate to one another. Grant girls and women their own autonomous personhood apart from fathers, brothers, and husbands, and everything changes about both their rights (to not be treated like objects) and their responsibilities (to care for their their own well being even if it means turning their husband in to the police.) 

Now I know you are thinking that the Bible says that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between male and female. In fact if you look there is a lot in the Bible to suggest that the traditional patriarchy was misguided in relation to the gift and demand of God Reign in Jesus Christ. But at least for 1900 years no one saw that in the Bible. 

What changed, and this is the problem for all who look for security and stability in the authority of scripture, was the social context. The Bible did not teach us that women were full human persons independent of the patriarchy. We Christians learned it only through the interchange between the Church and our rapidly changing culture - sparked by new ideas about humanity forged out of the Enlightenment. Only then could we see in the Bible what had been there all along. 

If we are serious about our theology of revelation and inspiration we must recognize that the distinction between natural revelation and special revelation isn’t adequate. Revelation isn’t just present in nature and the scriptures. It is present in society and culture.The Holy Spirit doesn’t just speak through magnificent sunsets, towering mountains, and the words of prophets and apostles. She speaks through ever-deepening insights about what it means to be human that arise in the evolution of human culture. 

Until we get that we’ll find that instead of being led by the Spirit into a greater understanding of Christ’s Reign we’ll be kicked by the Spirit, one Paige Patterson at a time, into God’s Reign. 

There is an interesting case study unfolding at this very moment in a Irving Bible Church. The elders of the church were pushed to reexamine the question of whether women could be elders in the church. (http://s3.amazonaws.com/ibcmedia/media/docs/women_ministry_IBC.pdf?mtime=20151124213203) They were conscious and honest (more than most conservative Christians) that in its efforts to be faithful to scripture the church had erred over the centuries in its understanding of God’s Reign. So they carefully studied the question of women in leadership and concluded: “the New Testament seems to imply that eldership is reserved for men.” 

I love that word “seems.” It is (or would be) a tectonic shift the thinking for most conservative Christian groups. It is the recognition that Christians might make mistakes when it comes to interpreting scripture. That indeed they mighthear the voice of the Holy Spirit in some place other than a group of men (or even men and women) huddled over their “textus receptus” discussing for the ten thousandth time the meaning of “the original Greek.” They might hear the Holy Spirit in the vast movements of human liberation that have emerged outside the Church, but are every bit as much a realm of revelation as scripture or nature. 

Would that every statement emerging in the ongoing United Methodist debates began with “it seems.” That might just be the measure of humility and openness to the leading of the Spirit that we need.