Against the Stream

"Left Behind: Nicolae" Begins at Slacktivist

Fred Clark at Slacktivist, has once again taken on the burden of reading the Left Behind novels so that we don't have to. He's already worked his way through Left Behind and Tribulation Force and has now begun the third novel, Nicolae. Poor, poor man!

The key point of this first installment is, I think, embodied in this excerpt:

LaHaye can’t imagine changing his prophecies to make them even remotely possible in this world, so instead he changes this world into one in which his prophecies might have a chance. Sometimes this requires a massive revision of the structure and function of institutions like the UN. Other times it involves something even more radical — such as rewriting human nature to eliminate parental affection, national pride and religious devotion.

The world of these books bears some resemblance to our world — but only at the most superficial level. It’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of familiarity due to all the recognizable names and places. You recognize words like “Chicago” or “Israel” or “United Nations” and assume you know what they mean here. Don’t be fooled. The world of Left Behind is not our world. It is an alien universe inhabited by alien creatures and ruled by an alien god.

But Fred's real accomplishment has never simply been to tolerate a series of abysmally bad novels. I can only assume he's been able to do that by building up a tolerance over time through taking them in small doses. No, his real accomplishment is in using these truly terrible books to comment in a profound way on the state of evangelical Christianity, the invalidity of the premillenial dispensationalist worldview the books represent, and the difference between the "Real True" Christianity that they espouse and a Christianity rooted more solidly in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and the best theological traditions of the church.

It is a genuine work of alchemy to transform texts as bad as these into something that one can learn from, and Fred deserves a great deal of credit for taking on the challenge, and for doing it so well.

Muslim Fantasy Literature

Alyssa Rosenberg interviews Saladin Ahmed about his novel Throne of the Crescent Moon and reflects on the way that fantasy literature uses history and religion:

Dervishes are, of course, a real thing rather than a fantasy or cultural creation, but it’s not quite clear in the book whether your characters are Muslim or not, or whether they follow an analogous but not identical faith. How much did you want the novel to be directly tied to and function as a reflection on contemporary understandings of Islam?

That’s been probably one of the most interesting things that’s kind of been raised and discussed about this book. Some people reading the book feel like they’re mentioning God every couple of pages, it’s getting annoying. It’s a secular reading that wants an anachronistically secular reading of pre-industrial fantasy world. And there are some people who are reading it who say ‘I expected it to be more Islamic.’ It’s a secondary world. It’s a made-up world. It’s not Islam. It’s not the Middle East. It’s not Earth. It’s a made-up world in the way that Robert Jordan or George R.R. Martin, that most people writing today are writing in made-up worlds. It might look like historical periods in our own Earth, but they’re made up. And that’s very intentional. And I didn’t want to wrie a book that’s about Islam. I’m choosing to write a religion that looks like a religion that gets maligned a lot in the culture the book is being read in. At the end of the day, this is an adventure fantasy novel that can’t bear the weight of truly depicting Islam in such a problematic world on its little shoulders.

But I feel like we’re in the midst of a nice boom in fantasy set in the Muslim world, whether it’s Matt Ruff’s alternate history novel The Mirage, or G. Willow Wilson’s hackers-and-djinn novel Alif the Unseen coming out this summer. Do you feel like your work, and that boom, is responding to the broader cultural conversation into which that work is published?

I’m not that writer who will say I’m a mystery writer, or I’m a horror writer, but I happen to be black, or I happen to be Puerto Rican, or I happen to be a woman. I’m not that person. Being Arab and being a Muslim is part of my consciousness on a daily basis. You’re telling your story in a world where stories are always being told. There are small attempts in this flimsy form of an adventure fantasy [to say something different.]…

Not to say that there’s not all sorts of oppression that’s specific to Muslim women, but there are fears and hatreds that are very specific to Muslim men in our culture. And on the other side, there are these stories about genre heroes, and what men should be. And a lot of my fiction straddles that line. I’ve got a story where there’s a Muslim gunslinger. This book is about a badass Paladin with a sword, to use my Dungeons and Dragons history here. Part of the sadly radical gesture, that phrase about feminism being the radical notion that women are people, a lot of my work is about the fact that Muslims and Arabs and people who look Arabic are heroes.

The whole interview is worth a read, including his take on the issue of race in Game of Thrones.

How Reinhold Niebuhr Dropped the Ball on Racism

In James Cone's new book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree he offers a sustained critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguing that Niebuhr, despite the principled radicalism of much of the rest of his writing, was notably mild when it came to the ugliness of racism in the United States. As John Blake writes:

Today, Niebuhr’s importance is acknowledged by both liberal and conservative Christian leaders. President Obama once called him one of his favorite philosophers. Niebuhr, the author of classics such as “The Irony of American History,” died in 1971 after a lifetime of political activism.

Cone, however, said neither Niebuhr nor any other famous white pastor at the time spoke out against the most brutal manifestation of white racism in the 20th century America: lynching.

Between 1880 and 1940, Cone says, an estimated 5,000 black men and women were lynched. Their murders were often treated as festive affairs. Women and children cut off the ears of lynching victims as souvenirs. People mailed postcards of lynchings. One postcard of a charred lynching victim read, “This is the barbeque we had last night.”

But Niebuhr said nothing about lynching, little about segregation, and once turned down King’s request to sign a petition calling on the president to protect black children integrating Southern schools, Cone said.

For Cone, this is a crucial omission because, he argues, "Niebuhr’s decision not to speak out against lynching encouraged other white theologians and ministers to follow suit" due to Niebuhr's prominance and status.

While I'm somewhat dubious of that last claim (I suspect many white pastors would have come up with plenty of reasons not to speak out irrespective of what Niebuhr did), the central point is no doubt right. Niebuhr was willing to go out on a limb for the things that mattered most to him -- In favor of economic justice, for defending England against Germany, against the Soviet Union -- but he stayed very close to the center when it came to race.

He certainly spoke out on behalf of racial equality, sometimes forcefully, but he took no risks for it, Cone argues. And any honest attempt to grapple with Niebuhr's legacy needs to take account of this reality. Even admirers of Niebuhr need to recognize where he fell short, and ask how he could have or should have done things differently.

Religion in "Game of Thrones"

Alyssa Rosenberg interviews Bryan Cogman about (among other things) the role of religion in Westeros in light of the events of last week's episode:

One thing we see in this episode—and that gives the episode its title—is a baptism, and Jon Snow also gets something of a theology lesson. Given your role as keeper of Game of Thrones mythology, what role do you think religion plays in the franchise? And do you think there are particular challenges in bringing religions where gods are active in the world, and fealty, which is a similar emotion to worship, to a modern audience?

George’s exploration of religion is, without question, one of my favorite aspects of his story. It plays an increasingly significant role as the series goes on, not only in the lives of the various characters but in the “game” itself. Last season, faith was largely depicted in a personal way — Ned’s quiet vigil under the weirwood tree, Cat’s homemade shrine to the Seven, etc. This season, we begin to see how religious faith is used in the pursuit of power, specifically with Stannis and Melisandre. And while the various religions in our story (the Seven, the Lord of Light, the Drowned God) were born out of George’s imagination and are somewhat fantastical, I think modern audiences can definitely relate while watching. I would say that “gods” are very “active” in our own world, especially when it comes to those in the pursuit of power — you need only examine some of the rhetoric from the candidates in the current presidential race to find examples of that.

I for one am hoping that Martin has some grand plan with regard to the various religious threads he's weaving in this story. Though I think he's come right out and said that the God's themselves won't be making any direct appearances.

"The Settlements Are the State"

Shaul Magid reviews Peter Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism at Religion Dispatches:

Excluding “The Jewish President,” an informative chapter on President Obama’s liberal Jewish friendships early in his career, much of the book goes over territory familiar to those of us who read widely on this subject or work on this issue, filling in many details. But it is hardly radical. Whether you agree or not with calling the West Bank “undemocratic Israel,” or whether the settlements are the primary impediment to a resolution, to argue that the settlements are undermining Israeli democracy and eating away at the moral core of Israel’s founding ideology is hardly a radical claim. In Israel, it isn’t even a “leftist” claim.

To state that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t really interested in ending the occupation is not a bombshell. It is obvious. Until the final chapter and the conclusion, The Crisis of Zionism is a well-written, passionately argued exposition of the decline of Israel’s humanistic foundations over the past forty years. One can argue with details, out-of-context quotations (show me one writer on this topic who isn’t guilty of that), and premature conclusions; but on an issue this complex and volatile, one can always do that. However, such criticism misses the point. Or, more accurately, perhaps that is precisely what the fervently pro-Israel critics do to evade confronting the real issue. The basic narrative of Crisis is fairly straightforward and I essentially agree with it; my criticism is what Beinart says we should do about it. 

He notes that much of Beinart's argument is rooted in a sort of sentimental nostalgia for the kind of liberal Zionism that Beinart grew up with, and that it offers a lament for a sort of idealized Israel that may never have truly existed.

When he turns to Beinart's proposed solutions, again he argues that much of Beinart's prescription is rooted in a set of overly simple agenda items that will do little to solve the underlying problems. Regarding Beinart's most controversial stand -- the economic boycott of products and services from the settlements, Magid writes:

On the question of boycotts, Beinart suggests what I will call the “half-pregnant” solution that is no solution at all. He is correct to argue that boycotts are a form of nonviolent protest that should be considered very seriously. But his suggestion implies a distinction that I do not think exists. The settlements are not distinct from the state, they are an integral part of it.

Israel is a legislative democracy (its flaws notwithstanding), so its elected officials must be viewed as representing the majority of the population. This may be more complex in a parliamentary democracy but it is still the foundation upon which we call something a democracy. Israelis elected a parliament that supports the settlements. Polls indicate that if elections were held in Israel tomorrow the coalition would be even more rightist. Israeli high school mock elections held in 2009 gave present Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a settler and vocal advocate of the settlement movement, a clear victory as Prime Minister.

Given that, whatever polls say regarding a majority of Israelis’ “willingness” to end the occupation, when they go to ballot box as a collective, they indicate otherwise. American Jews need to take seriously the real likelihood that Israelis (not just Netanyahu) simply do not want to end the occupation for all kinds of reasons. For many American Jews this causes cognitive dissonance—but they may have to deal with it.

While Beinart gestures to his leftist critics that he is aware of the argument that one cannot separate the settlements from the state, he never responds to them. Probably because he can’t. His suggestion that we should boycott the settlements and give that money (and more!) to the state belies the reality that the state funds the settlements, which is why no one I am familiar with ever suggested boycotting the Afrikaner farmers while giving more aid to the South African government.

Interestingly though, Magid devotes more of his review to Beinart's call for a rewewal of Jewish orthodox progressive educational institutions, arguing that it will result in the isolation of Jews from the rest of society. Far from enabling a more progressive worldview, he argues, it will lead to a vision of non-Jews as "the other."

In the end though, Magid doesn't get to the heart of Beinart's challenge. His criticisms are noteworthy, but as Beinart has said on a number of occasions: If you disagree with his proposed solutions, specifically regarding the boycott of the settlements, what alternatives do you propose. That's an important question to which I have not yet heard a compelling answer.

Sam Spade Among the Niebuhrians

 

David Brooks, striking some familiar Brooksian themes, offers some constructive criticism for what he sees as a new generation of activists, while invoking the spirit of noir fiction:

Yet one rarely hears social entrepreneurs talk about professional policing, honest courts or strict standards of behavior; it’s more uplifting to talk about microloans and sustainable agriculture.

In short, there’s only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality and disorder head-on. So if I could, presumptuously, recommend a reading list to help these activists fill in the gaps in the prevailing service ethos, I’d start with the novels of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, or at least the movies based on them.

The noir heroes like Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” served as models for a generation of Americans, and they put the focus squarely on venality, corruption and disorder and how you should behave in the face of it.

A noir hero is a moral realist. He assumes that everybody is dappled with virtue and vice, especially himself. He makes no social-class distinction and only provisional moral distinctions between the private eyes like himself and the criminals he pursues. The assumption in a Hammett book is that the good guy has a spotty past, does spotty things and that the private eye and the criminal are two sides to the same personality.

He (or she — the women in these stories follow the same code) adopts a layered personality. He hardens himself on the outside in order to protect whatever is left of the finer self within.

On the one hand, there are a lot of times when Brooks sounds like your stuffy uncle, lecturing you at Thanksgiving about the need to come down to earth and stop chasing moonbeams. I also get a little bit nervous at what seems to be some lurking authoritarianism in Brooks' social vision. That said, I do think, on the other hand, that he points to some important dimensions of creating lasting and effective movements for social change, although I don't think he wants them to change in quite the same way that I do. He's sort of classic Burkean conservative in many ways, wanting to preserve tradition while being open to the new. This makes him a radical leftist from the perspective of the modern Republican party.

So where Brooks and I see eye to eye is on the need for politically realistic movements for social change in order to create a just and stable society. Thus Brooks and I also see eye to eye on the continuing importance of Reinhold Niebuhr to political discussions in the United States. With that in mind, I was gratified to see that we're not the only ones thinking along these lines:

If EVER there was a moral realist who understood the place of sin and grace in the human soul ~ as well as in politics - it was Niebuhr. He made it clear that human sin has to do with our ability to see and name the common good, but the inability to do it consistently.  He articulated an understanding of politics that grasped the difference between how grace works in the individual human heart and the body politic.  And he offered people of good will a way to advance the cause of compassion and justice that was always grounded in humility.

In fact, Niebuhr saw naivete and moral utopianism as an ally of hubris - sometime to be challenged as clearly as possible - knowing, of course, that "now we see as through a glass darkly... only later shall we see face to face."

The relevance of Niebuhr was so evident I'm surprised Brooks didn't make the link explicit himself. Nevertheless, it is always good to see Reinie invoked in these conversations.

Can We Live Without God?

Alain de Botton says it's risky:

In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up – we don’t need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour can be overlooked. 

Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). I simply want to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what is missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely. By all means, we can dismiss him, but with great sympathy, nostalgia, care and thought.

Yet we can be good without God. What religion does, he argues, is offer us constant reminders:

The problem of the man without religion is that he forgets. We all know in theory what we should do to be good. The problem is that in practice, we forget. And we forget because the modern secular world always thinks that it is enough to tell someone something once (be good, remember the poor etc.) But all religions disagree here: they insist that if anyone is to stand a chance of remembering anything, they need reminders on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis.

I tend more toward the principle advocated by Reinhold Niebuhr, that religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people. I'm also reminded of the quip that evil people will do evil things, good people good things, but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. The rejoinder of course, is that for evil people to do good also takes religion.

So, on as one of the evil who wish to do good, I'm glad to have religion around to help.

A Bit More on Homosexuality and the Bible

Scot Miller has a few more thoughts on the question of homosexuality and biblical interpretation, in response to Robert Gagnon. At base though, what he's doing is explaining the core problem of the relationship between the Bible and morality. He writes:

The truth is no believer can simply point to a scripture and say, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.” Interpretation and understanding is inescapable for everyone. The texts about homosexuality can be legitimately interpreted in different ways.

The question for believers is not finished by asking, “What did the Bible say?” This is at best a trivial question about a historical document. (And it is a naive question, for it disregards the fact that we cannot escape the historically conditioned prejudices we bring to the text. The historical question hides within it prejudices that can obscure the meaning of the text.) The more significant question for a believer is, “How am I to understand what the Bible says?” This question opens up the possibility of theological reflection.

I would put things slightly differently, arguing that the key question is "how is God speaking to me through the Bible?" or "How am I encountering God in the texts of the Bible?" But I suspect that at core this is precisely what Miller means when he uses the word "understand" here. He follows up with some examples:

When the Bible says that God commands the Israelites to kill the babies of their enemies (which God does in Deut. 3:1-6 and 1 Sam 15:1-3), does this mean I’m supposed to believe that infanticide and intentionally killing noncombatants in war is good? Should I celebrate with the Psalmist when he takes pleasure in imagining the babies of his enemies being smashed to death on a rock (Ps. 137:9)?

Of course, not. These verses need to be interpreted in their historical and cultural contexts. Anyone who thinks that infanticide or intentionally killing noncombatants (or slavery) could be morally permissible because they are approved by God in the Bible is certainly mistaken. (And I know of nobody who would hold such an absurd interpretation.)

We believe these practices are mistaken because the moral arguments for these practices are recognized to be bad by our moral community. We can no longer imagine plausible justifications for killing innocent children. Neither can we justify the killing of noncombatants, a practice long forbidden by the just war theory, which was developed in part by Christian theologians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.*

He concludes, quite rightly: "If the Bible’s acceptance of infanticide and killing noncombatants (and slavery, and the dietary prescriptions in the Holiness Code) are historically conditioned, then the Bible’s pronouncements on homosexuality may be historically conditioned, too."

At the same time, he acknowledges that at a certain stage of the conversation, we come down to first principles: There simply isn't an agreed upon interpretive framework that can be appealed to by Christians in order to determine how the Bible shoudl be read or what it should be understood to say. Even among sophisticated, non-fundamentalist readers of the Bible, there is no court of common appeal that can resolve the baseline disagreements on moral issues within the Christian community. But if this is the case, then the question of what it means to regard the Bible as authoritative is rendered inescapably problematic.

PS., As Slacktivist quite rightly reminds me, this conversation is important, but this is far more important at the end of the day.

*Actually, in the case of just war theory, the situation is even more difficult than it appears, since Augustine and Aquinas borrowed the core elements of just war theory from pagan sources, particularly Cicero.

Homosexuality and the Bible

Scot Miller has been doing a thorough analysis of Robert Gagnon's The Bible and Homosexual Practice over the past week. The whole set of articles is worth reading. But I think the crux of his argument comes down to this:

Gagnon seems to misunderstand the kind of material he’s dealing with when it comes to biblical texts and theological arguments. Texts and theological arguments are not like mathematical formula that have timeless meanings. Language is slippery. Translations are difficult. (As a philosopher, it’s interesting to me that both Continental philosophers likeHans-Georg Gadamer and Anglo-American pragmatists like W.V.O. Quine agree on the difficulty of translating anything with complete accuracy. Gadamer argues in Truth and Method that “every translation is at the same time an interpretation” [p. 384], and in Word and Object Quine speaks of the “indeterminacy of translation” [pp. 72-79].)

The best anyone can do is come up with likely interpretations that are subject to revision based on better evidence and arguments. With any luck, your interpretation may become widely accepted and a consensus can form around it, but even a consensus is historically conditioned and subject to correction and rejection later.

Gagnon wants to convince us that the theological and scientific arguments which reject his way of reading the Bible must be wrong because they contradict his conclusion about homosexual practice. In fact, the alternative arguments are really proposals or suggestions that may actually allow us to read the Bible more adequately. It is a mistake for Gagnon to understand these arguments as ways of undermining the Bible’s authority. They are rather different ways of valuing the authority of the Bible.

Having not read Gagnon's book, I'm relying on Miller's reading and working on the assumption it's accurate. It certainly seems reflective of the kinds of conversations I've had with others on the issue of the Biblical teachings on homosexuality, and Miller says better than I've been able to articulate what I think the central problem is with those kinds of conversations.

As a protestant Christian, I put the Bible at the center of my faith. But saying this never really gets to the question of how the Bible is the center of faith. For someone like Gagnon, it seems to center faith precisely in presenting commands and propositions that, even if one is not a fundamentalist, one must accept as normative without qualification. But as Miller points out, once you've put aside the need to read the Bible as a fundamentalist, it becomes exceedingly difficult to decide just how the Bible is to be in dialogue with culture and still understand it to provide these kinds of normative commands. And, as Miller notes, Gagnon seems to have decided what he wanted the Bible to mean on the subject of homosexuality, and then read the Bible in the way that reinforced that.

But there are other ways to put the Bible at the center of one's faith, and for me, understanding it not as a set of divinely ordained commands and norms, but as the very human story of how the community of faith comes to understand itself as related to God, in a very fallible and evolving way, is much truer to what one can actually read from the text. And what that means for the Christian community is that we too have to struggle to understand ourselves as related to God, in light of the experiences of those who have come before us, and in conversation with the world we find ourselves in the midst of. At the center is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which defines the core of the Christian reality. Apart from that, we are in dialogue both those who came before us, and those who travel the road with us now.

 

Let Us Not Mock God With Metaphor

John Updike, "Seven Stanzas at Easter":

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall

It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)