Emergent Village will be hosting its annual Theological Conversation this year in Atlanta, GA from Nov. 1-3 on the topic of “Creating Liberated Spaces in a Postcolonial World.” This year’s conversation will feature a global panel of theologians- Musa Dube of Botswana, Richard Twiss of the Lakota Sioux tribe, and Colin Greene of the UK. This blog post was written as my personal response addressing why it is vital for all Christians to engage in the postcolonial conversation. For more information about this event or to register click here.
From a Western vantage point it can be easy to assume that the way we (I am speaking as a white, privileged American here) approach Christianity is normative or perhaps even correct. We call our theology, well, theology, and give modifiers to other people’s theology as if they were somehow inferior or partial theologies. Asian theology, African theology, feminist theology, liberation theology, postcolonial theology – become electives to be dabbled in or ideas to be scorned as heretical in light of the traditions that place our perspective firmly at the center of perceived truth. But in doing so we deny the voice of the church and the truth of Christ’s message. We end up only hearing theology spoken from the mouths of the privileged and the powerful. But Jesus did not come to only bring good news to those who rule the world.
For instance it is hard to advance a truthful theology of suffering when we are the ones forcing others to suffer. In our country where some Christians say they are being persecuted if a salesperson says “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” we often lack even the most basic point of reference for understanding how people from different cultural settings who’ve lived through oppression and grief approach their faith.
For example theologian Chung Hyun Kyung comments on the influence on Asian women’s theology of Western colonizers telling them God is love while beating, staving, and raping them. This experience and twisted message affects how they view God and what questions they ask of God. She writes that their challenging of God on his silence during their oppression cannot help but shape their theology. They ask of God, “Where were you when we were hungry? Where were you when we called your name as our bodies were raped, mutilated, and disfigured by our husbands, policemen, and the soldiers of colonizing countries? Have you heard our cries? Have you seen our bodies dragged like dead dogs and abandoned in the trash dumb?” (Struggle to be the Sun Again, p22).
Questions must be asked as theology is done in such postcolonial contexts in attempts to differentiate the message of the colonizers and the message of Jesus. For instance, when oppressed people are told that a good Christian is quiet, subservient, and accepts suffering and poverty by the very colonizers who live in luxury and benefit from the service and poverty of the people, some serious theological reconsideration is in order. A theology that is only ever applied to women or oppressed peoples in order to keep them subservient is highly suspect. Truth and worship are far more important than such self-serving twistings of God’s word. But it takes hearing from these voices from the margins and wrestling with the same questions they wrestle with in order for the church as a whole to move towards a healthy and truthful theology.
But to do so requires humility. It not only requires some of us to give up our positions of power and privilege while admitting that we do not have the corner on Christianity, it may also require repentance and reconciliation. It requires admitting that our privilege came at the expense of others – that the poverty in the world today has its roots in forceful conquest of land, the outright theft of natural resources, and the enslavement of peoples around the world. It requires admitting that the life we now enjoy has its historical roots and present reality in the blood, sweat, and tears of others. It is only after we repent of these sins that we can be open to embracing a fuller theology which we can only learn by listening to the voices of others – often the very others we must ask forgiveness of.
Being open to hearing and believing these truths is difficult. It is far easier to mock the theologies of others and call them heretical than to humble ourselves and repent in the name of truth. But it is vital for the health of the community that is the universal body of Christ. The eye cannot say to the hand that I have no need of you – or that I am more important or more connected to God than you. We must embrace our whole body, even the parts we have abused or neglected. To truly be the body of Christ we must listen to the voices of the oppressed and the colonized – for we can never be whole without them.
Why?
Why do we do this whole Christian thing? Why do we go to church and proclaim the faith that we do?
I’m sure that there are a number of readers who will call me an idiot for even asking that question. The expected answer of – “because we love Jesus” (or something like that), is all the answer they desire. In fact, for some, any other answer is inappropriate and evidence of a compromised faith. But honestly, I hardly know what that answer even means for many people these days. “Loving Jesus” is the rote response, but the problem with rote responses is that they are often a poor substitute for real introspection. The pat answer suffices when in reality one hardly knows one’s own soul well enough to even begin to answer the question.
As much as people want to make everything all about Jesus these days, Jesus has unfortunately become a shield to protect us from deep engagement. People start asking questions, a dialogue develops, differences emerge and instead of letting truth be sought with courage someone at that point suggests that we just need to refocus on Jesus and stop all the arguing. Jesus is what it is all about, so thinking anything more complex than just evoking his name gets shut down. But who is that Jesus to them? Without reflection or introspection, how can Jesus even be known apart from being simply an icon that we worship?
Faith is complex. Our motives for belief are complex. No one simply goes to church for the pure unadulterated reason that they love Jesus. We go because something in the environment resonates with us. Be the church hip and relevant (whatever those mean), or soaked in art and beauty, or thick with tradition – our souls find a home that we can be comfortable in. A home where we can best find the paths that lead us to God. Or we go for the community. Be it the stay-at-home moms who find a support system in the two hours of adult contact they get each week at church. Or simply the friends who can connect over a shared discussion of theology, the church offers the communal connections our souls cry out for. We go for the music, the emotional high, the networking opportunities, the dating opportunities, the playground, the coffee, the need to feel right, the intellectual stimulation, the need for encouragement, the reminders of childhood, the desperate need to feel welcomed and included. We go for a million different reasons.
And yes we go for Jesus. Sometimes this is a two dimensional Jesus we call upon to shield us from asking the hard questions. Sometimes it is a Jesus we are imperfectly trying to follow. Sometimes it is a Jesus who has transformed our lives. So yes, we go to church for Jesus. But also for all these other reasons. And in truth there is nothing wrong with any of it. We are complex creatures, piecing together meaning in our fractured world in whatever way we can. Faith feeds off culture which feeds off community. Jesus is there, but he is incarnate in all the muck and mire and breathtaking beauty just as much today as when he was born in that stable. There is nothing to be ashamed of or to reject out of hand in admitting this complexity.
Where the problem lies is when we can’t look into ourselves and ask these questions. When we are too afraid to know ourselves well enough to admit these truths. When we slap on Jesus like a shield to protect us from the hard work of knowing, then we’ve stopped actually following Jesus. Following Jesus should never be our excuse to stop pursuing truth or to stop asking the hard questions. Following Jesus shouldn’t force us to pretend that we are above the cultures of this world or are too good to be influenced by basic human needs (like the need to be loved). Maybe a flat image of Jesus we project can form a wall strong enough for us hide behind, but the real Jesus can’t do such a thing because he is deep in the midst of all the realities of life, and culture, and doubt, and longings.
Asking ourselves why we are Christians should never elicit a simple straightforward answer. We are complex people who worship a complex God – we need to allow God to be in even that complexity. Our answers might end up sounding less holy or more self-centered, but at least they will be honest reflections of reality. Hollow answers, although sanitized and religious sounding, do a disservice to the God we claim to follow. I think Jesus desires our whole self – neediness and cultural baggage included – more than some unreflective protestation of devout worship. To make it all about Jesus, we have to admit that it’s never just all about Jesus. And that’s okay.
So Brett McCracken has been getting a lot of press recently for his book criticizing and making fun of so-called hipster Christians. And yes, here I go giving him more press by adding my “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” thoughts into the fray (which is a typical response I’ve been hearing to his stuff, which Daniel Kirk gave best of here and here). And just to clarify (since I know people will say it), it’s not that I think “hipsters,” or culture or the emerging church (which btw, McCracken, is still very alive and well) or discussions about sex or social networking or whatever are above critique. On the contrary, I think any discerning person will constantly be engaged in a critique of the world around them. We are by nature unceasingly in dialogue with our culture – a culture which is not inherently good or bad, but must be assessed and measured as we swim through its waters. Popular culture is not a construct that we can escape; it is a reflection of our collective conscious (for good or for ill). Outright acceptance or rejection of such culture simply because it is popular demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of how we as social creatures even construct reality (although it may sell books). So this isn’t a defensive response to critique, it is a call for informed dialogue.
For full disclosure, I haven’t fully read Hipster Christianity yet – just extended excerpts (thank you Amazon “look inside”), summaries and reviews and articles and blog posts McCracken has written. I don’t know McCracken, but I do have to say that discovering recently on his blog that he was a fellow Wheaton College grad who lived in Traber dorm (a stereotype that only fellow Wheaties will understand) helped clarify his cultural influences for me as well as explain his obsession with C.S. Lewis (who at Wheaton was referred to as St. Jack or “the fourth member of the Trinity). But I did take his “are you a Christian hipster?” quiz, which of course told me I was a hipster. From what I could tell anyone who isn’t fundamentalist or Amish and has a pulse in the 21st century would be labeled “hipster” according to the quiz – including McCracken himself who seems far cooler than I will ever be. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I am the definition of uncool. I have no sense of style, I don’t know how to do my hair, I don’t listen to music, I am not artistic, I’m a freaking stay-at-home (mostly) mom for crying out loud. But apparently (according to McCracken) since I read non-male/white/Western theologians, think the church should discuss something as important as sex, attend a church that meets in a warehouse and uses candles, like Stephen Colbert and Lady Gaga, believe we can learn truth from literature and film (I got the same Wheaton College English degree as McCracken after all), desire to steward God’s creation, and think oppression, human trafficking, and modern day slavery are wrong I am a self-centered hipster and therefore in danger of compromising my faith for the sake of being cool.
And so once again I state, “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” The logic there is so horrible I don’t even know where to begin. I’m struggling to tell if he is just another one of those Christians who lashes out at anyone who has a different faith journey than him (and I’m sure he would poke fun of me using the term “faith journey”), or if he is truly ignorant of how deeply rooted in faith much of the stuff he criticizes actually is (or if this is a disguised theological attack that chooses not to use theology). I just don’t know. I don’t deny that the people he describes exist, or that there are people who desperately just try to be cool. But why he feels this obsessive need to label and therefore dismiss entire sections of the church who are simply trying to faithfully follow Jesus is beyond me.
Why is the conversion of the girl who had her perspective changed by the art history prof in college who now creates non-Thomas Kinkade Christian art as part of worship more suspect as being inauthentic or not truly Christian than the drug dealer who read a Chick-tract and now works in a soup kitchen? Is God not working for transformation in her life too? Or why is believing that Kwok Pui-lan, or Musa Dube, or Richard Twiss, or Gustavo Gutierrez might have something to teach us any different than believing we can learn from C.S. Lewis, or Francis Schaeffer, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Or why is the guy who wears thrift store or fairly made clothes more in danger of having caring too much about his appearance interfere with his spirituality than the youth pastor who spends hours describing to his group (in great detail) the exact sorts of bathing suits or the exact width of shoulder straps the pretty young high school girls are allowed to wear during summer camp? Or for that matter than the middle-aged women who have self-appointed themselves the modesty police or even Richard Foster who devotes a large section of Celebration of Discipline to the clothes Christians should wear? Why is it okay for their ideas about appearance to be faith-based and biblically-sound, but not the so-called hipster’s? Why are emerging forms of spirituality automatically suspect as being more culturally influenced and therefore harmful to Christianity than those that emerged twenty or thirty years ago?
I know I am not a creature independent of my culture. No one is. Anyone who claims otherwise needs some serious re-education. But to claim that we so-called hipster Christians are the way we are simply because we are self-centered “all about me” folks who are trying to be cool and relevant utterly misses the point. I attend a church of broken misfits who are desperately trying to live faithfully. I don’t attend my church because we are so cool that we meet in a warehouse and sit on couches, I attend it for the community that has formed around each other in that particular environment. Sure the environment influences who we are, but it isn’t the sum of who we are – just like gathering by a river or in the catacombs or sitting in pews or a cathedral influences but doesn’t not ultimately define other churches. I don’t read postcolonial voices because that makes me relevant; I read them because I believe the body of Christ cannot survive without all its parts. I don’t buy fair trade because it’s trendy; I buy it because the Bible tells me to care for the poor and to not cheat a worker of his wages. I don’t fight human trafficking because it makes me feel good, I do it because it is wrong that six year old girls are kidnapped and forced into prostitution where they are repeatedly raped by men who have a sick and twisted view of women and sex (two topics that churches apparently should avoid discussing because they are just trendy shock-gimmicks). (And by the way, when we’ve reached the point in the conversation where people are questioning opposing the enslaving of children as sex toys because it might be too trendy and relevant of a topic then I’m done with that conversation – God is nowhere in it).
I am a cultural creation, I freely admit that. But don’t for one minute project your disapproval of my culture trappings onto me and assume that I have uncritically allowed such things to put the “realness” of my faith in peril. If you want to criticize such things or suggest another type of popular culture that you think is more appropriate for Christians to embrace (cuz, we all embrace something) then do that. Let’s disagree, but for the sake of respectful and truthful dialogue please don’t naively dismiss my lived faith as merely an attempt to be cool when nothing could be further from the truth.
We live in a world full of pain and injustice; there is no getting around that fact. We can hide from the truth or try to protect ourselves from reality, but just because we don’t want to know about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist. Our world does its best to hide its dark side from consumer eyes and our school boards do their best to hide most of history from our children. It takes work to keep our eyes open wide enough to see reality. Thankfully, there are people out there who do try to be informed, who try to end injustice, to heal past wounds, and to make amends. Yet recently, as I was reading Eduardo Galeano’s classic book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent, I came across an almost casually mentioned atrocity that jolted me with the reminder that even for the people who are out there actively seeking to fight injustice, there remains one injustice that many would prefer to continue to ignore – the oppression of women. Across the world it is women who often face the worst injustices and yet are often brushed aside as not important enough to seek justice for.
In writing about how the sugar cane industry has destroyed the land and economies of many Latin American countries and led to numerous human rights abuses, Galeano mentioned that in certain plantations in Brazil (at least as of his writing) it was common practice for the plantation owners to claim jus primae noctis, or, right of the first night with the daughters of their workers. Most commonly known to us from the movie Braveheart this is a medieval custom giving to the Lord of an area the right to the virgin night of all the women he ruled. Although in Medieval times the actual consummation was rarely if ever practiced as many families chose the option of “giving” the Lord the bride’s dowry instead (what the Lord was after anyway), Galeano reports that on the plantations the owners would demand the right to have their way with their workers’ 11-12 year old daughters in exchange for the worker remaining in their employment.
Reading that affected me in a visceral way. In the midst of a litany of oppression, I was reminded that women truly bear the brunt of injustice worldwide. Their bodies are chattel, they aren’t deemed worthy of education, and they are fed leftovers if they get food at all. Because they are women their oppression is magnified. Not only must they endure the poverty and the colonialism, but also the objectification of their bodies and the required subjugation of their wills. When voices for liberation or revolution arise the women are called upon to endure hardships and make sacrifices, but it is never their liberation that is fought for. The few that call out for women’s needs to be addressed and for liberation to come to women are told that in light of the greater injustices and oppression that their cause is just a selfish distraction. I hear it all the time in the church – there are just too many more important things to spend energy on than trying to bring justice to women. We aren’t even worth the effort of those that make it a point to care about injustice and the oppressed.
Feminist postcolonial theologians are quick to point out this imbalance. They ask how can we say that we truly desire liberation if in achieving that liberation women still remain oppressed? They repeatedly insist that equality and respect for women should never be an afterthought to be sought sometime after the real work of combating injustice is done, but an instead should be at the very foundation of what it means to seek liberation itself. Nations and races cannot ever fully work for reconciliation and mutual respect if those nations are built upon oppression from within. But sadly, theirs are not the voices that are commonly heard.
In reading non-Western theologies recently (both postcolonial and evangelical), I have in fact encountered the very opposite. Men, who write on combating injustice and prejudice by calling the church to learn from say Korean or First Nation theologies and church practices, insist upon, as part of that process, an affirmation of gender roles that give men a strong (and sole) leadership role in the home, the community, and the church. They see a firm affirmation of this hierarchy of men over women to be integral to ending race divisions in the church itself. So not only are the needs of women ignored, healing and justice are proposed through the continued oppression and sacrifice of women.
Injustice and oppression make me sick and prompt feelings of rage inside of me. But reading about these young girls being raped as pawns in the never-ending cycle of colonial and commercial oppression left me feeling raw. This isn’t just about greed and economics. It isn’t just about racism and power-plays. It’s rooted in a subjugation of women that denies our worth and turns us into mere objects for men to use as they see fit. Most of the Western world hides behind their ignorance of history and injustice (often willfully sought) as an excuse to uphold the status quo. But when even those who claim to care about justice say that speaking out of behalf of women isn’t worth the effort I can barely respond. How can justice be justice if it is only for men?
I wrote this post last week as a submission to Sojourner’s God’s Politics blog. But Sojourners is not yet sure of if they will respond to the Prop 8 verdict or what that response will be. Maybe this will get posted there eventually, maybe it won’t. So I’m just going to post this here because I feel it has to be said.
I’ll be perfectly honest – I had a hard time writing this post. I’ve had multiple people ask me recently why there has been nothing at the Sojourner’s blog about the overturning of Prop 8 or about the struggle of LGBT folks for basic rights. My queer friends who deeply respect the organization as a defender of justice for all ask why no one is writing about justice for them or celebrating when such justice is achieved. My usual response has been, “yeah, someone really should write about that for Sojourners.” That is until I was called out on my hypocrisy. Why was I so willing to stick my neck out (and be ripped apart) for so many other oppressed groups, but not for homosexuals? Why was I remaining silent?
Those challenges hit me hard. They opened old wounds and deep regrets of a time when I had been silent before that still cause me pain. Tim was one of my closest friends in high school. We knew each other from church youth group and would spend hours together discussing books or playing cards in some coffee shop. We went to college in different states and in those pre-cell phone and pre-Facebook days when AOL was still pay-by-the-minute, we drifted apart. I heard through the grapevine that he had come out of the closet and that all of our other youth group friends refused to associate with him anymore. But even then I didn’t reconnect with him, caught up as I was in my own college life. After graduation, I had no way to get in touch with him, but the desire to contact him and just let him know I still was his friend weighed heavy on my heart. I always thought that someday I would find a way to reach him. But then a few years ago while I was still living in another state my mom called and mentioned offhand that Tim had died after being hit by a car while walking home from a grad school class. Apparently many of our former close friends from high school had refused to even attend the funeral in protest of his orientation.
I had remained silent for too long. I don’t know if he assumed I condemned and rejected him like the rest of our youth group friends, I never got the chance to tell him otherwise. I missed an opportunity to show love to the hurting and I will forever regret my silence. And I miss my friend.
So I knew that I could not remain silent now. Even as I am unsure of what exactly to say, I knew I had to be a voice standing in solidarity and celebration of the overturning of Proposition 8. Our LGBT brothers and sisters need to see now more than ever that they are loved by the church – that we can come alongside them and mourn when they mourn and rejoice when they rejoice. They need to see that the church sees them more than just as objects to be debated. If we remain silent now by failing to publicly celebrate this momentous occasion we will have missed our opportunity to show love to the hurting.
So I am celebrating with friends who can now enjoy the same cultural and legal benefits of marriage as I can. Who can now visit their partners of many years in the hospital and include their spouse in their health coverage. And I join them in their hope that one day these basic civil rights will not only be available in a small handful of few states, but all across our great nation. At the same time, I express my sympathy as they and their families continue to be thrust into the centers of controversy – forcing them to fight to hold onto basic civil rights in our society. I don’t even pretend to understand their struggle to simply live normal lives and the day to day pain that causes, but I do know that I can’t contribute to that continued pain by choosing to remain silent. I can’t wait for someone else to speak up for me – I can’t outsource loving my neighbor. And so I rejoice with the parts of the body of Christ who are celebrating being granted one small portion of the privileges I already enjoy. It seems almost pathetic and nowhere near enough, but it’s all I can think to do.
I know I’ve written a lot here recently about the Park51 community center. In trying to be a voice of love as a Christian, I’ve mentioned I’ve been met with a lot of hate and just downright ignorance and prejudice. In hearing President Obama publicly speak on on behalf of the community center, my heart truly broke. It’s not that I don’t agree with him (I do), it’s just that it makes me ashamed for my country and the Christians living here that our President has to make a speech like that. Our country has dealt with the religious liberty issue, and we have worked through the growing pains that brought us to the place where we guarantee religious liberty for all. The fact that our President has to remind of us that – remind us of who we are and what we value as a nation is truly depressing.
In my article for the Common Ground News Service on A Christian response to the Islamic Community Center I wrote -
In the continued confusion and misunderstandings sparked by the events of 9/11, I all too often encounter a culture of fear and revenge. Some Christians unfortunately say that the terrorists’ actions represent the heart of Islam. They project their fear and hatred onto all Muslims, blaming them for those events and asserting that they desire the destruction of Christianity and America’s freedoms.
Ironically, many of these same people are the first to argue when so-called Christians commit heinous acts that they do not act on behalf of all Christians. They go so far as to say they aren’t actually Christians, much less representative of the religion, as we saw recently when members of Michigan’s Hutaree Militia were arrested for planning to slaughter law enforcement workers.
But this same distinction is rarely extended to our Muslim brothers and sisters.
I wish I could offer an apology on behalf of those who hold such misinformed beliefs – for those Christians that fail to follow in the way of Jesus and who instead oppose the rights of Muslims to worship freely in our country. But I don’t speak for them. I can only live my life and use my voice to represent a different side of Christianity, one that truly believes God’s love and mercy extends everywhere.
And I can hope with Bloomberg that the building of this community centre will achieve its goal of working for reconciliation and “help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 are in any way consistent with Islam.”
It hurts to see so many Americans and so many Christians believing lies and spreading fear. It hurts to know that we don’t love our neighbor. And it is uncomfortable to realize how few fellow Christians are speaking out in defense of our Muslim brothers and sisters. I am not a Muslim, there are many parts of Islam that I disagree with (as there are with parts of Christianity), but I am embarrassed and ashamed by how I see America and the church responding to this issue. May God forgive us.
In about a month (Sept. 8-9), a national conference will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Big Tent Christianity: Being and Becoming The Church. In the spirit of setting up revival tents to see where the Spirit is moving, this conference is gathering voices together to explore what it means to be the body of Christ – all of us under one big tent. And yes, I’ll be perfectly honest, there are a lot of Christian voices not represented (or woefully underrepresented) at this conference. I hope that at the conference the fact that not everyone is included under the big tent is humbly acknowledged. But the conversation is important nonetheless and holds the potential for helping the church as a whole embrace our diversity and differences.
This post is part of a Synchroblog meant to jumpstart the conversation regarding what this “big tent Christianity” looks like. Participants in this synchroblog were asked to reflect on – “what does “big tent Christianity” mean to you? What does it look like in your context? What are your hopes and dreams for the Church?” There are dozens of different ways I can think of to respond to those questions, but what really resonates the most with me is the idea that big tent Christianity holds no place for fear.
In Psalm 23, when David speaks of how God guides, protects, and comforts him, he mentions that God prepares a table for him in the presence of his enemies. This isn’t some twisted comfort through schadenfraude or mockery of others – this is being able to sit at a table with one’s enemies and share a meal in peace. This is an image of what it will be like in the New Heaven and the New Earth when the entire body of Christ sits down at the banquet table of the lamb. Unitarians and Baptists. Catholics and Fundamentalists. Emergents and Neo-reformed. We will all eventually sit next to each other in peace.
I don’t say that to imply that our differences are insignificant or our theologies unimportant, but to affirm that we have no reason to fear the presence of the other. We can exist under this tent together.
But all too often we avoid even listening to the voices of others for fear that they might corrupt us, or (worse) confuse us. We want to hold on so tightly to our little piece of the truth that we demonize everyone else and inoculate ourselves against their influence. So there are college students who are told (usually by their youth pastors) to stay far away from Bible and religion classes in college for fear that all that historical criticism will affect their faith. They fear any knowledge that might force them to change. Or there are the pastors who get fired from their church for having a book by an emergenty author on their shelves. Fear of new ideas creeping in shuts down the pursuit of knowledge or the ability to question. At our old church, we were taken to task for exposing the youth there to different Christian traditions because it might cause them to choose to be something other than Baptist. There was fear of anything but the known. And many fear listening to the voices of postcolonial, or liberation, or feminist theologians for fear these voices of the margins might challenge the way things have always been (as defined by one’s particular western tradition).
Instead of learning from each other and admitting that we all follow our own particular and highly imperfect cobbled-together streams of Christian tradition, we demonize each other out of fear. We make up words like heresy or syncretism to avoid having to actually listen to those around us. We have lost the ability to value what we value and yet still sit and break bread with those with whom we disagree. This Christianity looks like a bunch of small tents scattered across a plain, each trying to keep its distance from the other and to defend its territory at all costs.
So that’s why I love the idea of a big tent Christianity. It represents the place where we can come as we are (with beliefs fully intact yet held humbly) into a place where fear is banished and we can sit in peace with even our so-called enemies at the table of the Lord. It’s where we can be the body of Christ.
As a writer with a public blog I’ve become used to getting hate emails. Sure, some people might leave offensive comments on a blog, but the real vitriol gets reserved for emails. From the sick and twisted ones detailing what sexual violence I need done to me to cure me of my feminism to the reminders that I will one day burn in hell because of my association with the emerging church, I’ve become used to the church’s odd way of demonstrating “love” to one’s neighbor. But when I look at the two posts that have far and away garnered me the most hate mail, I find it difficult to not be disturbed and heartbroken for the church.
Last summer my inbox filled up with angry responses to my post recounting the often ignored history of the slaughter of the Native American’s at the Taos Pueblo (men, women, and children took sanctuary in the church and the US Army burned them alive inside). I was called every name in the book for daring to question the greatness of the US and our right to Manifest Destiny. Then recently, my post supporting the Cordoba House (the mosque going in near Ground Zero) was linked to at the Cordoba House site to demonstrate that some Christians do support the project. That of course brought on a new wave of hate in my inbox. From those accusing me of supporting the pedophile religion of Satan to those telling me I was mocking the power of Jesus by tolerating Muslims, I witnessed the overwhelming animosity Christians hold towards the other. The words of Jesus to love our neighbor apparently don’t apply if that neighbor looks or believes differently than we do.
Out of everything I have written, that these two posts should elicit such visceral responses demonstrates how deep the issues of racism and prejudice still are in the church today. Oh, churches might give lip service to accepting others and being “colorblind,” but in reality those fears and prejudices run deep. The general message of the white American church is eerily similar to a white person saying “I’m fine with black people; I just don’t want them living next door.” So we are fine with collecting dream catchers and turquoise jewelry and seeing sexy Native American teens running around shirtless as they turn into wolves, but not with listening to their side of the historical story or admitting to our country’s acts of terrorism against their nations. And some even say they are fine with Muslims as long as they don’t put a mosque where we can see it or ask us to engage in reconciliation projects. Stereotypes and prejudices are preferred to the truth and anger erupts if such positions are questioned or challenged.
Granted, many Christians aren’t even okay with the lip-service tolerance or the “equal as long as they are separate” mentality. Recently Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL declared September 11, 2010 to be International Burn a Koran Day. In a YouTube video (warning – video contains footage of a burning Koran) he tells viewers “if you call yourself Christian you should be burning the Koran because it is of the devil.” Their blog even lists the top ten reasons to burn a Koran as if it is some sort of late night comedy routine (interestingly enough, I’ve heard most of the arguments they list used against the Bible as well). Similarly, in a recent trip back to Taos, NM I heard some white Christians discussing how the genocide of the Native American nations was a blessed gift from God to eliminate the satanic influence of their cultures from our “one nation under God.” There are some things that are just so extreme and so absurd that it is hard to believe people are even saying them much less saying them in the name of Christ, but for many Christians this sort of hatred is at the core of their faith practice. Vengeance and revenge against the other has superseded the commands to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.
The question that plagues me is if the church will ever repent of its allegiance to hate and start following in the way of Chris instead? It seems like the church has embraced a culture of hatred. I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that said “I’m for the Separation of Church and Hate,” but someone found its anti-hate message so offensive that they vandalized it with a marker. On top of that, much of the church has lent its ear to the false prophets who mock the words of Jesus and who command their followers to run from the churches that encourage us to love our neighbor or to set the oppressed free. When the truth of God has been replaced by these racist and hate-filled lies of our culture, it is hard at times to have hope for the church. When yet another hate email arrives in my inbox questioning my faith because I spoke out against acts of violence and terrorism against non-white American peoples, I have to wonder where Jesus is in the church these days. But even amidst all that darkness there are glimmers of hope. I see the Christians (the National Association of Evangelicals even) asking that the International Koran Burning Day be canceled in the name of Jesus. I see the handful of Christians willing to stand with Muslims as they build the Cordoba House. These are public voices presenting to the world the side of Christianity that isn’t defined by violence and hatred. They may be few, but it is enough to keep believing that the core of Christianity hasn’t been completely corrupted or destroyed.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990. It seems a bit strange when you think about. It has only been for the past twenty years that people with disabilities have been guaranteed fundamental civil rights in our country. Granted, it has only been within the past century that women and other minorities have been assured of those rights as well. And of course we all know how often those rights are denied or ignored, and that there are groups in America who have yet to be legally given such basic rights at all. But seriously, twenty years ago many disabled people could not physically enter most buildings, ride public transportation, attend mainstream schools, or not be denied a job simply because they used a wheelchair. There were no signs saying “Able People Only,” but the entire world was set-up to keep the disabled on the outside.
Sad thing, even as a disabled person the only reaction I ever heard about ADA was negative. People complained about the hassle of making space for the disabled. They said it was unfair that the disabled were being given special privileges (yes, seriously people were stupid enough to say something like that). And, most of all, they complained about the cost. And being in the church world, where I heard that complaint most often was from churches. Now I understand that churches often don’t have a lot of money, and to add another few hundred thousand onto a renovation budget to be ADA compliant is difficult. A church I was at once attempted to renovate their sanctuary to fit in more seating, but in the end we lost seats because of the ramp we had to put in to make the stage accessible. It was hard and forced the church to rethink where the money was to be spent, which of course led to some choice words being said about the “liberal nonsense of the ADA.” But in truth, I had to wonder why the church wasn’t the one out there doing whatever they could to include the disabled – even without being forced to by law. Jesus went out of his way to be with the disabled in his society, the church could at least do the same.
Where this gets confusing for me is the intersection of disabled people and worship. Straight-up, there is a lot that churches do in worship (especially in more experimental experiential worship) that is just plain inaccessible to the disabled. There have been a number of times at my current church where I have just sat quietly in my seat because whatever worship activity we were doing would have been impossible to do with one hand. And I always cringe a bit when we do active things, or create art, or meditate on a film and exclude the wheelchair users and the blind in our congregation. I similarly don’t wish to exclude the say, kinesthetic or visual learners in the church, but it sometimes feels as if there is no awareness of how a disabled person could enter into the worship experience. As a church have we forgotten how to go to the lengths of cutting open a roof and lowering our disabled friend in through the ceiling just so they could meet Jesus?
So as we celebrate these twenty years, I think it should be as a reminder of how far we still have to go in our culture and in the church. There are still churches that ban the disabled from serving as priests. And there are churches that see disability as a result of sin or of a lack of faith in the Lord to heal. I’ve been told to just have enough faith and the Lord will grow my arm, or to at least look forward to having two perfect arms in heaven. Disabled people need to be included in worship, but first, we need to be accepted as who we are. Not as people to be pitied or to be cured, but as children of God created the way God wanted us to be. We want to be included in community not because a law forces us to be put up with, but because the church desperately wants to love us and desires to hear our voice.
I want to thank Glenn Beck. His recent tirade against liberation theology has granted that particular conversation more press time than it’s been given in years. It’s hard to make a theology that bangs the drum of the preferential option for the poor sexy in our land of excess and wealth. Sensationalized stories of sex slavery make the airwaves from time to time, but a theology that makes us take a hard look at economic injustice of our culture, not so much. So, thank you Glenn Beck for introducing a new generation of Americans to liberation theology.
But, obviously, Beck’s portrayal of liberation theology wasn’t exactly positive. Besides calling it socialist (seriously dude, stop being such a one trick pony), he said it wasn’t Christian because it focused on social sin and “collective salvation” instead of the strictly personal salvation message that is at the heart of Beck’s interpretation of Christianity. Granted, Beck knows his audience. His average viewer most likely believes that the message of Christianity can be reduced to this concept of one’s personal relationship with God. The message one hears in many conservative evangelical American churches can be boiled down to “Jesus died for ME. God demands MY worship. I must attend church to strengthen MY faith.”
To question this self-focused religion (even by proposing an outward purpose for our faith) is tantamount to heresy. For instance, I’ve been reading critiques of the evangelical feminist movement and many of them mock the movement because it prompts people to focus on the needs of women and men instead of solely focusing on God. These books suggest that if we were true Christians, we would only care about our relationship with God and not the petty needs of other people. To serve others or to care for people apparently have nothing to do with our personal relationship with God and so therefore must be cast as a deterrent to faith.
I’ve heard the same reasoning applied to Christians engaging in environmental action. I got in trouble when I was in junior high for wearing a “save the dolphins” necklace. I was told that in caring for the dolphins I was worshiping the creation and not the creator. My time and energy should be devoted only to developing my personal relationship with God – which at the time was defined as reading my Bible, praying, doing devotions, singing, and attending church. And as I’ve written about before, I received a similar response at a moms group when I mentioned how important ethical consumption was in my life. I was informed that as a wife and a mother, God does not expect me to care for the poor, but to only make sure I am fulfilling my role in tending to my family (since that is how a woman best serves God).
This “it’s all about me” religion generally masquerades as being “all about God.” In fact in such circles books, buttons, and bumper stickers that say “it’s not about me” are quite popular. And while I think there are serious issues with some of the self-deprecating, soul-silencing, and passion-erasing messages that such a stance often promotes (like telling women they are selfish for pursuing a career or that to cure depression one just needs to get over oneself and pray more), on the whole this sort of religion is very self-focused.
But the disturbing consequence of making Christianity all about MY personal relationship with Jesus is that we eliminate our neighbor. Oh, we are taught to pray for our neighbor in order to strengthen our own faith. We are taught to fear the corrupting influence of our neighbor. And, above all, we are taught to condemn our neighbor. But we have inoculated ourselves from having a neighbor to love. If we are not to care about the plight of women, or the destruction of the environment, or the oppressed third world farmer because it would take away from our complete devotion to God, then the idea of loving our neighbor becomes a meaningless concept. That command then becomes so confusing that we have to start focusing on the “as yourselves” part of the verse instead – making sure that each of us loves ourselves enough to devote ourselves only to God.
Having no neighbors to love does make our faith easier. As long as we aren’t going on murder sprees, cheating on our spouse (or looking at porn), and only gossiping in the form of “prayer requests” we don’t have to do the hard work of repentance very often. But add social sin into the mix and say that part of worshiping God involves caring for the poor and oppressed and faith becomes exponentially more difficult. None of us could claim a good relationship with God by those standards. And most of us would have to drastically alter our consumeristic lifestyles in order to avoid daily sin. So therefore it is easier to ignore the parts of the Bible that tell us God hates our worship and closes his ears to our prayers unless we are caring for the poor and the oppressed than to actually figure out how to do it. It is easier to label (and mock) such things as socialism or to say that loving our neighbor distracts us from loving God than it is to repent of social sin. It is easier to say, “MY faith is all about ME and MY relationship with God” than it is to making living sacrifices of ourselves.
So Glenn Beck gets it right – at least when it comes to understanding the felt needs of his target audience. Who cares if you are ignoring scripture and rewriting Christianity, the best way to keep ratings high is to define right living and true religion as looking out for number one. Because, seriously, who needs a neighbor to love when we have ourselves?
It’s been awhile since I’ve done this, but today is all about the links. All justice related, so enjoy!
- Jennifer Gainer Wildeboer has embarked on an ethical eating project and is blogging her way through it. She writes –
I’m developing a blog (and eventually a book, if the door opens) over the next calendar year. I am calling it Whole Food/Soul Food: A Year of Eating Ethically. I am changing my family’s eating habits to remove all foods that I can’t pronounce as well as trying to eat fresh, local food and not eating factory farmed meat or dairy. The goal of the project is to get healthier, eat more ethically, make my actions match up the ethics of my faith, and to prove that it can all be done without being rich. I am planning on blogging and writing about the experience as well as interviewing local farmers and the like.
Fantastic endeavor. I wish her luck and I am eager to read what she discovers about food, her faith, and herself along the way.
- Also my friend Shelton Green in currently in India forging relationships with fair trade factories for his newly launched fair trade clothing company Good & Fair. He is awesome, the company is awesome, and I love that he just went to India to really get to know the people he will be working with. He has been blogging through his travels there, reporting on what he is experiencing and the people he is meeting – I highly recommend checking it out. This recent entry is a great perspective on the impact of fair trade –
I have spent the last two days at the factory of a fairtrade clothing producer here in Kolkata, India. I have conducted a few interviews and begun to take pictures. I have spoken with people at all levels of the company. Honestly, I am struggling a bit to understand how people live in such abject poverty. Culture shock set in right away when I arrived and I am now beginning to tread my way thru it as I attempt to understand the cultural context in which I find myself.
I think I expected “fairtrade” clothing production to look very different than what I found. Without thinking thru my expectations, I now see that I wanted it to be “western” and easy to identify. Fairtrade simply looks different “in the flesh.” It is very relative. The wages are enough to lift people out of poverty, allowing them to a place to live and the basics of life for the wage earner and his or her family. The company I am looking at and will likely partner with, does more than pay a living wage (which, as you would expect, is more than minimum wage). They pay for the children of employees to go to school, they pay part of the employees premium in order them and their family (including parents) to access the government health care program, and several other things that are benefits on top of wages. This company is the only company in India that is fairtrade certified by one of the U.S. based fairtrade organizations.
Even after all of that I am struggling to understand that what I am seeing is what fairtrade looks like in the real world. Fairtrade gives the poor a life, it doesn’t give them the life that I have and luxuries I enjoy. I want them to want the things that I want, to look like me and to act like me, then they will no longer be “the poor.” That’s what the unreformed, unacknowledged, old school “missionary” in me wants to do. And that is the worst thing I could hope for them. They deserve the life they want, and not one that conforms to my ideas of prosperity.
The work of Good & Fair is to tell the story of these workers who are treated and paid fairly, and who are safe and free at work; and to support them by utilizing ethical supply chains. Their is more to fairtrade, but I am learning those things are at the heart of it.
And finally, in a completely self-serving bit of self-promotion – as I mentioned on Facebook, I submitted an entry into the Anthony Bourdain Medium Raw essay contest. The topic was, “Why Cook Well?” and I wrote from the perspective that cooking well helps us get over ourselves by pushing us to care for the people we are cooking for as well as the people who grow our food and the earth it grows in. I just wanted the larger voice of justice to be represented among the essays. So if you want to support me and those ideas, I invite you to go read and vote for my piece. You can vote once a day, so if you really love me… 
Okay, end of Julie commercial.
Enjoy the links!
In my Having Fun in Church post from a couple of weeks ago, Patti left the following comment that has been gnawing at my brain for the past few days –
I think fun is great for church. I also think that activities like roller skating and rodeos (a big church in Nashville had a rodeo in church for July 4) don’t belong in the sanctuary. Hold them in the gym, the grounds, the activity center, the parking lot–maybe even in lieu of “regular” services sometimes, but not in the sanctuary. Keep this place apart for the decorum and solemnity that some activates need, i.e. communion, weddings, christenings, confirmations, funerals/memorial services, etc. Individual, personal introspective reflection is needed for enlightenment to occur.
I’ll be honest, I flat out disagree with her perspective, but I really appreciated the comment because of how it illustrates different conceptions of what the purpose of church is.
I addressed this topic of sacred space in church a few years ago (Sacred Space and Revolving Christmas Trees), but I think my perspective has develop even since then. My perspective has always been influenced by my “low church” experience, but I believe my understanding of what is sacred has become even more ecumenical over time. I’ve stopped seeing the sacred as a place I go to worship God, but as the place where God shows up in a variety of ways.
As a child I attended a large Bible church that while it had a sanctuary, I was never allowed to enter it. I spent my time in the children’s building far away from the worshiping adults. After moving to Austin, our church met in a sanctuary with moveable chairs. The church used to meet in a used car dealership, and since building a sanctuary, used it for not only worship, but also cleared it out for children’s and youth events or set it up with tables for all church meals. That particular church now has a state of the art stadium as its sanctuary. I later was on staff at a stereotypical iconoclastic Baptist church for awhile, where the sanctuary was painted stark white with no adornments to potentially distract us from the word of the Lord. Since then I’ve attended churches that have met in school cafeterias, YMCA karate rooms, a community center for mentally handicapped adults, a warehouse, and my living room.
This experience has ingrained in me the conviction that the building is simply a gathering place for the body of Christ to meet and be the church together. When you meet in a house church it is impossible to keep the sanctuary set apart for “the decorum and solemnity” of a few activities. But we were no less the church and no less able to worship God because we sat on the same couches on Sunday morning that my husband and I had snuggled together on to watch a movie the night before. The space wasn’t sacred because it was set apart to be used once a week, it was sacred because the body of Christ gathered there to support each other and worship God. Same thing with the church we currently attend. We are Journey Imperfect Faith Community that gathers at the Warehouse. The Warehouse is not Journey. Our “sanctuary” is our living room, where we worship, share meals, have movie and board game nights, hold meetings, host recovery groups, and simply be the church with each other. Personal introspective reflection and enlightenment occurs there, as does fun, and lament, and community.
I honestly have a hard time fully entering into worship in sanctuaries whose sole function is to be a sacred and holy space. I struggle with justifying such a waste of resources – not only for creating an ornate expensive structure to begin with, but for the clinging so tightly to a space that gets used once or twice a week. How is that good stewardship? How does that allow us to serve God and each other? How does that allow us to be the body of Christ? For me, setting apart a space as sacred flies in the face of all that Christ was. He tore the curtain in the temple, he told us to worship him in spirit and truth. He didn’t confine himself to the trappings of a building or argue that the temple should stop being the community hub that it was in favor of it only being a place of worship. He taught that all of life is sacred, and that we have opportunities to serve and worship in all aspects of life.
I get that there are Christian traditions that value a set-apart sacred space (and I am sure I will have an interesting time wrestling with this as I enter an Episcopal seminary this fall). And I fully get how our environment can influence or shape a worship experience. But I have a hard time limiting the sacred to just that which is solemn or full of decorum. God is far bigger than that. I don’t want to shut out who God made us to be as his followers just because I only want to affirm one aspect of who God is. Places become sacred because we seek God there. How that happens is a mystery and is as multifaceted and diverse as God herself. I believe we can encounter God in so-called sanctuaries in worship and in meals together, in the laughter of children and in the struggles of a small group. The sacred permeates it all.
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