It's all on you...
I had a memorable conversation with a friend the other day—a truly decent guy, someone who makes me feel comfortable and who listens well. He's newer in my life than many people and so he wanted the back story on me. Basically, he asked, "What's a business woman like you doing with a missionary past?"
The conversation quickly evolved into shared story lines—he was in a fraternity (Lamba Chi) and I was in a sorority (Kappa Kappa Gamma). I was a little sister at the Lambda Chi house at UCLA, in fact. We both "got saved" through campus ministries (Navigators for him, Campus Crusade for Christ for me). That shared background is a bit like knowing a secret handshake. We talked easily about stuff like discipleship, evangelism, relationship versus religion, moral authority, and the possibility that the world may end in our generation!
It was more difficult to talk about the changes in my faith. My friend was respectful, kind, interested. That's always nice. He did ask one question, though, that I'm still thinking about. His primary concern in all these years since college is that his kids know what he discovered: that there is a moral absolute that is separate from what he, their dad, tells them; distinct from what the culture expresses; superior to their own judgments.
This is where it falls apart for me. It would be nice if such a thing existed. And certainly the case has been made in many faiths that that "thing" does in fact exist and will eternally! But it seems to me that there is a critical oversight in that assertion—that a superior, binding, moral absolute exists apart from our participation in it. The oversight is this: in order forany set of beliefs, principles, to be considered absolutes, we must deem them so (we reason, assign values, determine why we accept them as outside ourselves by consulting our reason, experiences and thoughts). Not only that, but for these morals we've assigned supreme authority to have a binding effect on us, we must empower them with our consent.
The interpretation of what these principles mean in our lives must be arrived at in a context (culture, generation, gender, intelligence, geography, education). We hear stuff said to us by those in power and we adopt their point of view and seek reinforcements.
The "static" absolutes of the past have evolved; the Christian God is no longer thought to endorse slavery, despite Paul's admonition to slaves to obey their masters. Women have rights and are no longer property of their husbands.
One of the benefits of a life that falls apart spectacularly is that you get to see just how much you were in control of the moral compass you adopted for your life. Even the need to label the items as "separate" from self, as binding from beyond can only occur if you say "yes" to that way of knowing, believing and receiving.
Our kids sometimes flummox us because we can see so clearly what they "ought" to see and don't (smoking is harmful, drinking while driving is dangerous, marijuana is illegal, unprotected sex is risky, texting while driving is reckless, not saying "thank you" to those who give to you is impolite). So we invoke larger "backing" for our clearer moral vision (the Surgeon General, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the laws of our state, the Bible, Oprah, and Emily Post). Yet no matter how large we make the authorities behind our morally superior positions, we are powerless to do anything to create conformity to the principles we iterate.
The only way that anyone or any list or any book or any code or any law has power in our lives is by consent. Not only that, the laws themselves have no power! They have never prevented a crime. The choice to act or not is entirely on the individual choosing or not choosing the action.
Moreover, ethics do turn out to be situational. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is filled with practices we would find horrific today. LIkewise, church history is littered with acts deemed moral in their time that today's believers regret.
My favorite professor (Dr. Dewey) once explained to me the genius of Paul's primary insight released to the New Testament churches. Paul articulates that the shift in understanding about God has to do with how God-followers cultivate a spiritual life. The Holy Spirit lives within and we are cultivating an attentiveness to the depths of our experience when we make moral and ethical judgments. But we can't do it alone... none of us is free enough of our own baggage to make those judgments without harming others. So we do it in community. Each community, in each era, with their own language, experiences and limitations seeks the "good" or the "true" or the "compassionate" as best they can together. The conclusions they draw are "drafts," not published "once-for-all" documents. Each generation revises the previous generations insights to conform to their time.
If you doubt what I'm saying, think about the move to end slavery in America. To run an underground railroad, to work toward abolition meant embracing contemporary revelation that flew in the face of Scripture as it had always been understood. We don't shift postures lightly or easily (no whims), but our faith must be responsive to the promptings of the Spirit in community. If the code is already written, there is no need for Spirit. That's what Paul taught us. It's what I believe.
Showing posts with label Black theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black theology. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Waking up: The shift from one point of view to the another
My Facebook set of friends is one of the more diverse bunch of people I've run across online. That's because suddenly my past and present have collided in conversation in ways that would never happen if we limited our relationships to in-person contact. So what's happened is that my high school friends, who knew me mostly as a short, a-political, theater student without much of a religious agenda, are interacting with my college friends who knew me as this zealot who shared the Four Spiritual Laws with anyone stuck in a bank line with me. My missionary and Vineyard friends are interacting with my liberal theological graduate school buddies. My homeschool momma friends are talking to my business networking friends here in Cincy. And of course, my Obama campaign colleagues are talking to my rightwing radio pals from bygone years.
And like me, many of my friends have gone through significant shifts (either a deepening of loyalty to their original commitments, or a radical reassessment which led to a new, changed point of view).
I respect all of you (even when we disagree). I wouldn't keep you around on my FB if I didn't! In fact, I have kicked a few off my list when they've crossed that invisible line called "Coerce Julie back to what is good for her and tell her she is going to hell if she doesn't listen."
So here's the thing. For years (over 20), I adopted a point of view both politically and theologically that was rooted in a set of assumptions (these assumptions were handed to me with care and conviction, and they were based on the core doctrines of evangelicalism at the time). I remember once saying to Don Carson (some of you will remember him), the head of our Campus Crusade chapter at UCLA, "Why are you telling me that predestination as a theological tenet has to be believed in order to be a Christian? I haven't even had time to think about it yet." I had the same reaction to inerrancy (Is this really necessary to be a Christian? Can I think about it a bit?), to the doctrines of heaven and hell. I still remember saying at my first Bible Study at Kappa Kappa Gamma that I didn't like the idea of hell, after all, that would mean all my Jewish friends from high school and step relatives were going there... and I couldn't quite *get* that. I mean, it was one thing to believe in heaven and hell when you grew up in La Canada or Pasadena, where everyone you knew was Protestant. But what happened when you had to include people you loved, A LOT, in that number?
I found myself suddenly in conflict: to belong meant to adopt (uncritically, really) the values and doctrines that enabled me to remain a part of the community (this new, great group of people who were so much fun to be with), or I could reject those tenets and not be in the group, not have the love, worship, prayer, moral values, and community Christianity offered. So adopt I did (and worked to learn the apologetics for these tenets) and from then on, made it my chief aim in life to save those I loved and those I hadn't yet met from hell.
But time has a way of tugging at the tangled threads. The intellectual conflicts, the theological discrepancies, the arguments online with people I genuinely grew to love about splitting hair differences... how did these show the compassion of Jesus or the relevance of spirituality in a globalized world of diverse expressions of reality? It hurt to think Christians couldn't even agree on very basic ideas and would be cruel and critical of each other arguing over what amount to technicalities, many times.
The rightwing vision of politics has also walked in lockstep with the evangelical vision. Since we grew up knowing we couldn't criticize theology (who could ask if Jesus really rose from the dead with a physical body or if the Bible has mistakes, and stay in an evangelical church?), we are also equally beholden to rightwing politics as naturally right, clear. If someone speaks with conviction, we tend to adopt that point of view as long as it leads us back to reinforcing those original tenets we were told to adopt (our membership in the community is at stake if we challenge those tenets - ask me how I know this).
To inhabit someone else's point of view, to give it weight, to care about its interior logic is not one of the values of evangelicalism. We are taught to convert people to our point of view and to understand theirs only enough to change their minds. We spend countless hours reinforcing our own beliefs in community contexts, privately, listening to sermons and tapes, reading books, listening to music. We adopt these views as our own, but from within the safe protected context of like-minded people (and we elevate those with more education as leaders as a way to tell us that we are thinking critically, to help us navigate the pesky incongruity or penetrating question of someone from the outside). We suppress our own questions. We avoid The Jesus Seminar or Richard Dawkins, because they are dangerous.
This is not to say that there aren't brilliant men and women on the right or in the conservative evangelical movement who have dug deep and have spent time drawing conclusions that they feel are both intellectually sound and honest. There are. I've read them, met some of them. What I reject today is that so many people have adopted their thinking second-hand. (To be fair: on both left and right, though I am less versed in how this happens on the left - what I have seen is much more arguing over nuances on the left - a chief value of theirs is dissent!)
If you haven't sat inside the point of view (letting it be "right" for awhile, looking for its logic, how it hangs together, how it creates a worldview that coheres and supports a vision of life and happiness for the one who holds it), you can't actually know if yours is true (or at least, "true enough" for your life). It's one reason I attend a black church. I was sick of secondhand reports about what black leaders are doing and saying or not doing and saying. I was sick of the myopia of white church that thinks reconciliation means having a sister church that is black, or getting more blacks to attend your white church. I wondered what the black community had to say about it. I wondered how they experienced America, and the church, and "truth" from their experiences.
I spent two years reading pro-choice literature, getting inside the mindset that saw being "pro-choice" as the higher morality (yes, they do feel that way!), as the obvious right belief system that is more compassionate and ethical than the alternative. I did this after we had been actively involved in Operation Rescue. I also wish pro-choice people would spend time understanding the radical commitment of those engaged in civil disobedience to stop abortion, too.
What's happened to me, then, is that I got tired of secondhand news, theology, sociological commentary. I stopped buying into the scripts I'd been handed and became unwilling to defend something just because it had always been "true" in the community I loved. If I had one piece of advice for those who can't quite grasp what it is that's happened to me, I'd say pick the thing you are most afraid of (the thing you most don't want to be true) and go read about it. Meet someone who holds that viewpoint and let that person influence you. Invite their ideas into your living room, care to understand the world from inside someone else's mind. If you do that for a little while, yes, you will change. But your compassion will also grow, and your insights will be yours, and your spirituality will deepen.
I'm also conscious of the fact that there is so much I can't possibly know well enough to make adequate judgments (how could I ever say if global warming is real or not? I'm not a scientist, have no training or tools to evaluate the arguments, can't come close to making a real case that isn't some watered down version of someone else's). So I hold my current "positions" with some guardedness, knowing that I'm a few arguments away from another shift. But I'm no longer afraid of getting it right or wrong. I love the process, and I feel privileged/relieved/blessed to have been able to leave behind the need to vilify "the other" in order to protect my point of view. (That doesn't mean I won't criticize the other, but I hope I do it knowing that I could again shift my point of view if the facts that I understand warrant it.)
Peace.
And like me, many of my friends have gone through significant shifts (either a deepening of loyalty to their original commitments, or a radical reassessment which led to a new, changed point of view).
I respect all of you (even when we disagree). I wouldn't keep you around on my FB if I didn't! In fact, I have kicked a few off my list when they've crossed that invisible line called "Coerce Julie back to what is good for her and tell her she is going to hell if she doesn't listen."
So here's the thing. For years (over 20), I adopted a point of view both politically and theologically that was rooted in a set of assumptions (these assumptions were handed to me with care and conviction, and they were based on the core doctrines of evangelicalism at the time). I remember once saying to Don Carson (some of you will remember him), the head of our Campus Crusade chapter at UCLA, "Why are you telling me that predestination as a theological tenet has to be believed in order to be a Christian? I haven't even had time to think about it yet." I had the same reaction to inerrancy (Is this really necessary to be a Christian? Can I think about it a bit?), to the doctrines of heaven and hell. I still remember saying at my first Bible Study at Kappa Kappa Gamma that I didn't like the idea of hell, after all, that would mean all my Jewish friends from high school and step relatives were going there... and I couldn't quite *get* that. I mean, it was one thing to believe in heaven and hell when you grew up in La Canada or Pasadena, where everyone you knew was Protestant. But what happened when you had to include people you loved, A LOT, in that number?
I found myself suddenly in conflict: to belong meant to adopt (uncritically, really) the values and doctrines that enabled me to remain a part of the community (this new, great group of people who were so much fun to be with), or I could reject those tenets and not be in the group, not have the love, worship, prayer, moral values, and community Christianity offered. So adopt I did (and worked to learn the apologetics for these tenets) and from then on, made it my chief aim in life to save those I loved and those I hadn't yet met from hell.
But time has a way of tugging at the tangled threads. The intellectual conflicts, the theological discrepancies, the arguments online with people I genuinely grew to love about splitting hair differences... how did these show the compassion of Jesus or the relevance of spirituality in a globalized world of diverse expressions of reality? It hurt to think Christians couldn't even agree on very basic ideas and would be cruel and critical of each other arguing over what amount to technicalities, many times.
The rightwing vision of politics has also walked in lockstep with the evangelical vision. Since we grew up knowing we couldn't criticize theology (who could ask if Jesus really rose from the dead with a physical body or if the Bible has mistakes, and stay in an evangelical church?), we are also equally beholden to rightwing politics as naturally right, clear. If someone speaks with conviction, we tend to adopt that point of view as long as it leads us back to reinforcing those original tenets we were told to adopt (our membership in the community is at stake if we challenge those tenets - ask me how I know this).
To inhabit someone else's point of view, to give it weight, to care about its interior logic is not one of the values of evangelicalism. We are taught to convert people to our point of view and to understand theirs only enough to change their minds. We spend countless hours reinforcing our own beliefs in community contexts, privately, listening to sermons and tapes, reading books, listening to music. We adopt these views as our own, but from within the safe protected context of like-minded people (and we elevate those with more education as leaders as a way to tell us that we are thinking critically, to help us navigate the pesky incongruity or penetrating question of someone from the outside). We suppress our own questions. We avoid The Jesus Seminar or Richard Dawkins, because they are dangerous.
This is not to say that there aren't brilliant men and women on the right or in the conservative evangelical movement who have dug deep and have spent time drawing conclusions that they feel are both intellectually sound and honest. There are. I've read them, met some of them. What I reject today is that so many people have adopted their thinking second-hand. (To be fair: on both left and right, though I am less versed in how this happens on the left - what I have seen is much more arguing over nuances on the left - a chief value of theirs is dissent!)
If you haven't sat inside the point of view (letting it be "right" for awhile, looking for its logic, how it hangs together, how it creates a worldview that coheres and supports a vision of life and happiness for the one who holds it), you can't actually know if yours is true (or at least, "true enough" for your life). It's one reason I attend a black church. I was sick of secondhand reports about what black leaders are doing and saying or not doing and saying. I was sick of the myopia of white church that thinks reconciliation means having a sister church that is black, or getting more blacks to attend your white church. I wondered what the black community had to say about it. I wondered how they experienced America, and the church, and "truth" from their experiences.
I spent two years reading pro-choice literature, getting inside the mindset that saw being "pro-choice" as the higher morality (yes, they do feel that way!), as the obvious right belief system that is more compassionate and ethical than the alternative. I did this after we had been actively involved in Operation Rescue. I also wish pro-choice people would spend time understanding the radical commitment of those engaged in civil disobedience to stop abortion, too.
What's happened to me, then, is that I got tired of secondhand news, theology, sociological commentary. I stopped buying into the scripts I'd been handed and became unwilling to defend something just because it had always been "true" in the community I loved. If I had one piece of advice for those who can't quite grasp what it is that's happened to me, I'd say pick the thing you are most afraid of (the thing you most don't want to be true) and go read about it. Meet someone who holds that viewpoint and let that person influence you. Invite their ideas into your living room, care to understand the world from inside someone else's mind. If you do that for a little while, yes, you will change. But your compassion will also grow, and your insights will be yours, and your spirituality will deepen.
I'm also conscious of the fact that there is so much I can't possibly know well enough to make adequate judgments (how could I ever say if global warming is real or not? I'm not a scientist, have no training or tools to evaluate the arguments, can't come close to making a real case that isn't some watered down version of someone else's). So I hold my current "positions" with some guardedness, knowing that I'm a few arguments away from another shift. But I'm no longer afraid of getting it right or wrong. I love the process, and I feel privileged/relieved/blessed to have been able to leave behind the need to vilify "the other" in order to protect my point of view. (That doesn't mean I won't criticize the other, but I hope I do it knowing that I could again shift my point of view if the facts that I understand warrant it.)
Peace.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity
This is an audio of my talk from the Truth Voice (Subversion) Conference in Dayton last weekend. We have a video of it, but right now only 12 minutes are posted. I'll put up the embed once they have re-uploaded it. I think audio is less distracting anyway (I use my hands so much! lol).
Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity
The meat of the material really gets going after minute 13. I give an introduction that includes personal story and some biographical detail of Bonhoeffer's life. I'd welcome any engagement with these ideas. Am slowly putting together a little dossier of materials, insights, writings and stories to include eventually in some sort of book. Yes, the elusive book goal! :)
Anyway, enjoy!
Here I am!
Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity
The meat of the material really gets going after minute 13. I give an introduction that includes personal story and some biographical detail of Bonhoeffer's life. I'd welcome any engagement with these ideas. Am slowly putting together a little dossier of materials, insights, writings and stories to include eventually in some sort of book. Yes, the elusive book goal! :)
Anyway, enjoy!
Here I am!
Julie Bogart: Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prison from Virgil Vaduva on Vimeo.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Peacemaking, not peacekeeping
Our church had a visiting pastor yesterday from Charlotte North Carolina. His message, that he gave so tirelessly all over Cincinnati last week, ended with a spectacular collapse to the floor in the middle of preaching during the eleven o'clock service, Adam Clark tells me! Apparently the preacher blacked out, crumpled to the stage, and the church stood in stunned silence for a few moments, then erupted into a pandemonium of shouted prayers, cell phones dialing 911 and someone vomiting in the pews. Eventually, our guest speaker did rise again (about 8 minutes later) and preached another few minutes shouting that the devil could knock you down, but he could not keep you down! Cheers and hollering followed. After a minute or two, he was finished and ushered out to paramedics.
Naturally, I missed that service.
Still, I got to hear the whole message at 8:00! And it was a good one.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the Peacemakers" and our visiting pastor said, "Jesus did not bless the peacekeepers." Just because a scene is "peaceful" (no evidence of struggle) does not mean it is a picture of true peace. As visiting pastor said, "A man with his foot on my neck may look like peace." The absence of struggle is not peace.
He went on. The presence of law and order is not peace. Just because there are rules and we're told to obey them doesn't mean that justice has prevailed. Law and order is not equal to peace. It's equal to protecting the status quo. The status quo is not peace.
To be a peacekeeper means to choose not to upset the status quo. It means to turn your head when injustice is present. It means to tolerate abuse. It means to not rock the boat, to match the expectations of the ones in power without challenge, it means giving up your expectations of fair treatment in the name of pacifying the aggressors. Our visiting pastor (VP, I'll call him) reminded us of MLK Jr.'s "Beloved Community" and their fight to end the so-called "peace" of segregation (a peace-keeping strategy to stop the strife between races... yet not a peace that could last). He reminded us that while MLK Jr. called on a nation to be that beloved community, his legacy must be carried out from that macro level all the way to our most micro experiences.
Let me explain because this is where it got very powerful for me. As a member of the Obama campaign, I experienced firsthand how important it was to work neighborhood by neighborhood and person by person. The campaign depended on regular people taking time to realize their dream of a different future for our country. VP cited Obama as an example of someone who understands that to make peace, all parties must be engaged in the struggle and that it is a struggle. Peacemaking is not a peaceful experience. It's an electrifying, shake up the system practice. Peacemaking starts by disturbing the peace!
Today, peacemakers have to be about that kind of commitment. The beloved community starts with us, personally, in our hearts and relationships: not just our nation, state, or even cities. Not just out communities, neighborhoods and streets. But in our very homes, families and selves. He pushed his finger at us as he drove home his point. Peacemaking begins with a radical reorientation of how we understand justice - that we ourselves have a right to respect, truth and love in all our relationships and without it, that relationship's status quo has got to go.
We flex out muscles in the private sphere, among our families and friends. Injustice is not only what is done to us by the government or law enforcement. It's what we tolerate in the name of "peace" for our daily lives, which then becomes a habit of capitulation. Any peace forged on the basis of "keeping the peace" is not a peace that lasts. Justice, even when there is a high price of chaos to get there, brings about an enduring peace. You will know peace by how it lasts.
He described the way peacemaking leads to upheaval and struggle. Compromise is not a part of justice. Justice is respect, equality, truth and love. It is mutuality - a base from which all parties are able to have dignity before one another, without hiding who or what they are, or changing who or what they are to accommodate another's vision for them. It's not about who has power over who, but how to ensure that all have their rightful share of power in a shared context.
Radical overthrow of the status quo is necessary when oppression is most severe. Disturbing the peace is the route to enduring peace.
I've broken it down in my life. Well-being is the goal for all of us. Peacefaking (as my friend once said) is not peacemaking. The virtue Jesus blesses is not tolerating injustice, mistreatment, disrespect or loss of dignity in the name of some mythical struggle-free environment or relationship. Jesus blesses peacemakers who are so captivated by a vision of respectful, fair treatment for all, they risk the "peace" (the institutions that protect even their personal status quo) for the sake of a lasting peace - one that guarantees dignity, respect, truth and love for each member.
Naturally, I missed that service.
Still, I got to hear the whole message at 8:00! And it was a good one.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the Peacemakers" and our visiting pastor said, "Jesus did not bless the peacekeepers." Just because a scene is "peaceful" (no evidence of struggle) does not mean it is a picture of true peace. As visiting pastor said, "A man with his foot on my neck may look like peace." The absence of struggle is not peace.
He went on. The presence of law and order is not peace. Just because there are rules and we're told to obey them doesn't mean that justice has prevailed. Law and order is not equal to peace. It's equal to protecting the status quo. The status quo is not peace.
To be a peacekeeper means to choose not to upset the status quo. It means to turn your head when injustice is present. It means to tolerate abuse. It means to not rock the boat, to match the expectations of the ones in power without challenge, it means giving up your expectations of fair treatment in the name of pacifying the aggressors. Our visiting pastor (VP, I'll call him) reminded us of MLK Jr.'s "Beloved Community" and their fight to end the so-called "peace" of segregation (a peace-keeping strategy to stop the strife between races... yet not a peace that could last). He reminded us that while MLK Jr. called on a nation to be that beloved community, his legacy must be carried out from that macro level all the way to our most micro experiences.
Let me explain because this is where it got very powerful for me. As a member of the Obama campaign, I experienced firsthand how important it was to work neighborhood by neighborhood and person by person. The campaign depended on regular people taking time to realize their dream of a different future for our country. VP cited Obama as an example of someone who understands that to make peace, all parties must be engaged in the struggle and that it is a struggle. Peacemaking is not a peaceful experience. It's an electrifying, shake up the system practice. Peacemaking starts by disturbing the peace!
Today, peacemakers have to be about that kind of commitment. The beloved community starts with us, personally, in our hearts and relationships: not just our nation, state, or even cities. Not just out communities, neighborhoods and streets. But in our very homes, families and selves. He pushed his finger at us as he drove home his point. Peacemaking begins with a radical reorientation of how we understand justice - that we ourselves have a right to respect, truth and love in all our relationships and without it, that relationship's status quo has got to go.
We flex out muscles in the private sphere, among our families and friends. Injustice is not only what is done to us by the government or law enforcement. It's what we tolerate in the name of "peace" for our daily lives, which then becomes a habit of capitulation. Any peace forged on the basis of "keeping the peace" is not a peace that lasts. Justice, even when there is a high price of chaos to get there, brings about an enduring peace. You will know peace by how it lasts.
He described the way peacemaking leads to upheaval and struggle. Compromise is not a part of justice. Justice is respect, equality, truth and love. It is mutuality - a base from which all parties are able to have dignity before one another, without hiding who or what they are, or changing who or what they are to accommodate another's vision for them. It's not about who has power over who, but how to ensure that all have their rightful share of power in a shared context.
Radical overthrow of the status quo is necessary when oppression is most severe. Disturbing the peace is the route to enduring peace.
I've broken it down in my life. Well-being is the goal for all of us. Peacefaking (as my friend once said) is not peacemaking. The virtue Jesus blesses is not tolerating injustice, mistreatment, disrespect or loss of dignity in the name of some mythical struggle-free environment or relationship. Jesus blesses peacemakers who are so captivated by a vision of respectful, fair treatment for all, they risk the "peace" (the institutions that protect even their personal status quo) for the sake of a lasting peace - one that guarantees dignity, respect, truth and love for each member.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Obama and my breaking heart
I haven't written about Obama and his current media struggles (let's reword that shall we?) - the current media savagery on Obama - because I actually admire and respect the man, because I still think he is the best person for the job of president, because I admire and accept Rev. Wright and his theology.
What is so flipping ugly about this current battle is the way white America seems to have been taken completely off-guard by the idea that there are still blacks in America who aren't satisfied with the status quo. It's as if white America is waiting for a big thank you note signed by black America: thanks for ending our slavery! thanks for giving us the vote! thanks for guaranteeing our civil rights! thanks for all the ways you tell us we are no different than you and so should not feel at all in the slightest injured by what we perceive to be racism! thanks for all that old-fashioned respect for our abilities to transcend white injustice by the "boot-straps" techniques. In other words, thanks for just being you - white, privileged, unconcerned with the color of our skin, so happy when one of us finally moves into the suburbs and drives a compact.
The idea of vomiting comes to mind right about now.
The Daily Kos has a great post on this topic.
Yes, I have officially migrated to the dark side, completely radicalized, in the pocket of black radicals... you know, the ones on crystal meth, who live paycheck to paycheck, who have spent time in prison but are trying to find a way now, who go to church each week hanging onto the white man's religion for hope. Those "out of touch" blacks who still imagine that white America has it out for them... because clearly whites don't - I mean look at the fair treatment of Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama...
When the primary season started, the Right thought Hillary was the danger and Barack would be a preferred candidate. They were utterly taken aback to find out that there were huge numbers of whites in America who really don't see race when evaluating a candidate for president. About that time, Sean Hannity switched his "Stop Hillary Express" to "Stop Barack Obama." No one had discovered the Reverend Wright yet. So Hannity spent his days explaining that race would become the issue and that he would find the dirt on Obama.
Yes, fair and balanced Sean Hannity.
The entire scandal and debacle is manufactured shit. Rev. Wright's tirades from the pulpit have nothing to do with presidential policy and everyone who stops to think for six minutes knows that. This is one more instance that Colin Powell predicted: Build up the black man, then publicly Take. Him. Down.
You think blacks were cynical before? You ain't seen nothing.
What is so flipping ugly about this current battle is the way white America seems to have been taken completely off-guard by the idea that there are still blacks in America who aren't satisfied with the status quo. It's as if white America is waiting for a big thank you note signed by black America: thanks for ending our slavery! thanks for giving us the vote! thanks for guaranteeing our civil rights! thanks for all the ways you tell us we are no different than you and so should not feel at all in the slightest injured by what we perceive to be racism! thanks for all that old-fashioned respect for our abilities to transcend white injustice by the "boot-straps" techniques. In other words, thanks for just being you - white, privileged, unconcerned with the color of our skin, so happy when one of us finally moves into the suburbs and drives a compact.
The idea of vomiting comes to mind right about now.
The Daily Kos has a great post on this topic.
Yes, I have officially migrated to the dark side, completely radicalized, in the pocket of black radicals... you know, the ones on crystal meth, who live paycheck to paycheck, who have spent time in prison but are trying to find a way now, who go to church each week hanging onto the white man's religion for hope. Those "out of touch" blacks who still imagine that white America has it out for them... because clearly whites don't - I mean look at the fair treatment of Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama...
When the primary season started, the Right thought Hillary was the danger and Barack would be a preferred candidate. They were utterly taken aback to find out that there were huge numbers of whites in America who really don't see race when evaluating a candidate for president. About that time, Sean Hannity switched his "Stop Hillary Express" to "Stop Barack Obama." No one had discovered the Reverend Wright yet. So Hannity spent his days explaining that race would become the issue and that he would find the dirt on Obama.
Yes, fair and balanced Sean Hannity.
The entire scandal and debacle is manufactured shit. Rev. Wright's tirades from the pulpit have nothing to do with presidential policy and everyone who stops to think for six minutes knows that. This is one more instance that Colin Powell predicted: Build up the black man, then publicly Take. Him. Down.
You think blacks were cynical before? You ain't seen nothing.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Black Theology Reprise
Adam Clark, my black theology professor, wrote the following article for the Cincinnati Enquirer, addressing the Rev. Wright flap. I think he did it well.
Wright's teachings are part of African-American opposition to empire
Excerpt:
In response, a local Catholic apologist has weighed in:
Clark's Defense is insulting
Honestly, I find the reductionistic approach to Cone's theology insulting. And since when is the "Gospel universal" - as if the Catholics even mean the same things by that word as the Protestants, let alone black Christians struggling for civil rights?
In any event, read both and weigh the issues yourself. I did post a response to Leonardi's editorial on his blog (listed at the end of his article).
Wright's teachings are part of African-American opposition to empire
Excerpt:
The presidential candidacy of Obama can be assessed on its own terms. But the uproar over the rhetoric of Wright is largely a result of America's unfamiliarity with the history and language of the black church. The political character of black sermons such as Wright's are not rooted in the give and take of electoral politics, they derive from biblical faith. The black church has historically identified with the minority Jewish population of the first century. They regard the Jewish population's relationship to the Roman Empire as similar to their own relationship to the American Empire. This identification has caused black Christians to make a distinction between the biblical Jesus and the American Christ. The American Christ is a product of the American middle class, a deity who endorses empire and converts his followers into being pro-war, pro-death penalty and anti-abortion. The biblical Jesus reveals a God who is provocative, a God who upsets the powers and is eventually rejected and crucified by them.
The language of the black church that conveys this oppositionality does not translate well into the arena of presidential politics. It was never intended to. The black church's language is the language and worldview of a people who have been at the margins of social power - a symbolic language, not a literal language. Words seldom have a one-to-one correspondence with events. Black religious language is inherently evocative, hyperbolic and impassioned - aimed more toward devotion than debate. It is intended to convey divine ecstasy and anger to parishioners, not dialogue among pundits.
In response, a local Catholic apologist has weighed in:
Clark's Defense is insulting
What's more, Wright's so-called Black Liberation Theology bears nothing in common with "biblical faith." The Gospel message is universal. It is the message of salvation from the slavery of sin through the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The race-based theology - ideology is a better word - espoused by Wright and defended by Clark is something else entirely.
Honestly, I find the reductionistic approach to Cone's theology insulting. And since when is the "Gospel universal" - as if the Catholics even mean the same things by that word as the Protestants, let alone black Christians struggling for civil rights?
In any event, read both and weigh the issues yourself. I did post a response to Leonardi's editorial on his blog (listed at the end of his article).
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Driven to blog.... Obama and Wright
I'm reading comments about the scandal of Rev. Wright's comments and now Obama's attempt to address them from his own point of view. I worried at first that the nation would be derailed from the primary race into a fear-fest by the remarks of an inner city black pastor speaking to his own congregation about the ideas he felt were nourishing to them (never anticipating that they would be the subject of national scrutiny with the intention of derailing one of the bright rising stars of politics this century).
I've changed my mind. This topic deserves center stage because it reveals the gross misunderstanding of the white community when it regards racism and black history in America. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this discussion is the one that is long overdue in the states and has been suppressed since the assassinations of MLK Jr. and Malcolm X. Geraldine Ferraro's comments now rise as petty hand-wringing "take my marbles and go home" whining compared to the much more explosive force of Wright's ideas, suddenly unleashed on an unsuspecting, far-too-comfortable and trusting, white middle class.
That blacks have lingering feelings of oppression: not acceptable.
That blacks see the white race as the perpetrators of the most violence in the history of the world: dare not speak it.
That blacks live daily in a different reality than we whites: not the fault of whites (oh no!) - theirs: for not rising above it cheerfully, without criticism.
It is amazing to me the way no matter what black Americans do, they are painted together with one brush. That Obama has transcended race in his quest for the White House, has not allowed a limited vision of his future to dictate his place, has made use of the advantages offered through the Civil Rights Act to become an advocate for those whose rights continue to be threatened... this is of no consequence. The fact that he attended a church with a pastor who felt free to speak his mind (to even dissent with a "Damn America") is enough to say that Obama is all of that and therefore dangerous.
Let's look for a minute at the Southern Baptist beliefs, shall we? People without Christ go to eternal hell, including Catholics. Women are inferior to men in role and therefore are not equal to men in their ability to lead spiritually. How about the long relationship between war and standing for violence in the American Christian tradition that runs counter to the pacifism that characterized the early church? These are the beliefs of a Huckabee. Shall we also delve into the strangely unsubstantiated views of the Mormon church too because of Mitt Romney's candidacy?
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell could say that the two towers fell due to our immorality (God keeping score on homosexuals and abortions) but Rev. Wright can't say that our capitalist, insensitive foreign policies led to the attacks on 9/11. Yet of the two, whose assessment deals with facts and reality?
In reading black theology and studying it for two semesters (and then again while working on my thesis) what stood out to me most was that the black Christian community is caught between "white man's religion" and a genuine experience of hope gained through the struggle to be free of the white man's domination. That hope comes through the message and person of Christ. It's the hope that fuels Barack Obama's passion for politics. It is a hope that might even say, "Damn America's past; Bless America's future." We can't get there through a pretense that somehow white America had nothing to do with the present conditions of black experience. In church on Sundays, the black community should finally have the dignity of a space to say what they think, what they need to to get beyond the nearly 400 years of second-class status we've accorded them.
One commenter to Obama's apologetic related to this scandal wrote along these lines: Here we whites ended slavery and gave blacks civil rights. And this is how we're repaid?
There you go. That's the problem in its starkest version. Get outside yourself and listen with different ears. Allow yourself to be troubled, pushed back, knocked out of your comfort zone. I'd contend that's how it is for many blacks every day.
I've changed my mind. This topic deserves center stage because it reveals the gross misunderstanding of the white community when it regards racism and black history in America. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this discussion is the one that is long overdue in the states and has been suppressed since the assassinations of MLK Jr. and Malcolm X. Geraldine Ferraro's comments now rise as petty hand-wringing "take my marbles and go home" whining compared to the much more explosive force of Wright's ideas, suddenly unleashed on an unsuspecting, far-too-comfortable and trusting, white middle class.
That blacks have lingering feelings of oppression: not acceptable.
That blacks see the white race as the perpetrators of the most violence in the history of the world: dare not speak it.
That blacks live daily in a different reality than we whites: not the fault of whites (oh no!) - theirs: for not rising above it cheerfully, without criticism.
It is amazing to me the way no matter what black Americans do, they are painted together with one brush. That Obama has transcended race in his quest for the White House, has not allowed a limited vision of his future to dictate his place, has made use of the advantages offered through the Civil Rights Act to become an advocate for those whose rights continue to be threatened... this is of no consequence. The fact that he attended a church with a pastor who felt free to speak his mind (to even dissent with a "Damn America") is enough to say that Obama is all of that and therefore dangerous.
Let's look for a minute at the Southern Baptist beliefs, shall we? People without Christ go to eternal hell, including Catholics. Women are inferior to men in role and therefore are not equal to men in their ability to lead spiritually. How about the long relationship between war and standing for violence in the American Christian tradition that runs counter to the pacifism that characterized the early church? These are the beliefs of a Huckabee. Shall we also delve into the strangely unsubstantiated views of the Mormon church too because of Mitt Romney's candidacy?
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell could say that the two towers fell due to our immorality (God keeping score on homosexuals and abortions) but Rev. Wright can't say that our capitalist, insensitive foreign policies led to the attacks on 9/11. Yet of the two, whose assessment deals with facts and reality?
In reading black theology and studying it for two semesters (and then again while working on my thesis) what stood out to me most was that the black Christian community is caught between "white man's religion" and a genuine experience of hope gained through the struggle to be free of the white man's domination. That hope comes through the message and person of Christ. It's the hope that fuels Barack Obama's passion for politics. It is a hope that might even say, "Damn America's past; Bless America's future." We can't get there through a pretense that somehow white America had nothing to do with the present conditions of black experience. In church on Sundays, the black community should finally have the dignity of a space to say what they think, what they need to to get beyond the nearly 400 years of second-class status we've accorded them.
One commenter to Obama's apologetic related to this scandal wrote along these lines: Here we whites ended slavery and gave blacks civil rights. And this is how we're repaid?
There you go. That's the problem in its starkest version. Get outside yourself and listen with different ears. Allow yourself to be troubled, pushed back, knocked out of your comfort zone. I'd contend that's how it is for many blacks every day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)