The Psychology of Christianity: Part 1, The Bigger Tent

Just this week I (along with my co-author Andrea Haugen) submitted a chapter for a coming APA handbook on psychology and spirituality. My chapter was to present an overview of the Christian faith, noting its theological distinctives while simultaneously reviewing the empirical literature related to Christian belief and practice. (Others are writing chapters on the other world religions.)

This was an interesting job as it involved trying to view the entire Christian faith through the lens of psychology. My first task in this chapter was to specify the Christian faith. Who are Christians? And what do they believe?

Current estimates indicate that 32-33% of the world population is Christian, around 1.9 to 2.1 billion souls. Most of these are in Europe (531 million), followed by Latin America (511 million), Africa (389 million), and North America (381 million).

As far as the shape of the Christian communion is concerned, the four major branches of Christianity are Catholic (1.1 billion adherents, or 52.4% of Christians), Protestant (375 million, or 17.9%), Orthodox (219 million, or 10.4%), and Anglican (79 million, or 3.8%).

What do these Christians believe? Answering this question was the first task of the chapter, deciding how to specify the Christian faith, theologically speaking. I made a predictable decision and decided to use either the Apostles' or Nicene Creed:

On Angels

I'm reading Rowan Williams' book Tokens of Trust. Given my skeptical stance toward metaphysics I've tended to ignore the biblical accounts of angels, but this passage by Williams in Tokens gave me much to think about:

God has made what we can see and manage and what we can't see and can never manage, a universe some of which we can get a grasp of and some of which we can't. This isn't a recommendation not to try to understand, but simply a reminder that not everything is going to be made sense of from our point of view. We don't get to the end of being baffled and amazed. I sometimes think that this is the importance of talking about angels in Christian teaching. Odd as it may sound, thinking about these mysterious agents of God's purpose, who belong to a different order of being, can be a least a powerful symbol for all those dimensions of the universe about which we have no real idea. Round the corner of our vision things are going on in the universe, glorious and wonderful things, of which we know nothing. We're so used to sentimentalizing and trivializing angels--they are often reduced to Christian decorations, fairy godmothers almost (as in most of the extraordinary flood of books about angels in recent years). But in the Bible angels are often rather terrifying beings occasionally sweeping across the field of our vision; they do God strange services that we don't fully see; they provide a steady backdrop in the universe of praise and worship. They are great 'beasts,' 'living creatures,' flying serpents burning with flames, carrying the chariot of God, filling the Temple in Jerusalem with bellows of adoration, echoing to one another like whales in the ocean. Those are the angels of Isaiah and Ezekiel--anything but Christmas card material. And sometimes a human form appears to give a message from God and something in the event tells the people involved that this is a moment of terror and truth, and they recognize that they have met an angel in disguise.

Now whether or not you feel inclined to believe literally in angels--and a lot of modern Christians have a few problems with them--it's worth thinking of them as at the very least a sort of shorthand description of everything that's 'round the corner' of our perception and understanding in the universe--including the universal song of praise that surrounds us always. If we try and rationalize all this away, we miss out on something vital to do with the exuberance and extravagance of the work of God, who has made this universe not just as a theatre for you and me to develop our agenda, but as an overwhelming abundance of variety and strangeness.
"Round the corner of our vision things are going on in the universe, glorious and wonderful things..."

"...the universal song of praise that surrounds us always."

"...this universe...as an overwhelming abundance of variety and strangeness."

More and more, it seems, I'm being drawn into the language of the angelic and the demonic for the reasons Williams describes. These words, for me at least, are helping me pick out aspects of my life with great precision and clarity. They seem to name something for me that had no name before.

For example, in teaching my bible class on Sunday I compared a worship service to an exorcism. I said, basically, that for a moment in that service it seemed like the demonic forces of dehumanization so in control of our world--social, political, and economic forces--suddenly seemed to evaporate; that it was like an exorcism had taken place and with the retreat of the demonic there was a glimpse of the Kingdom Coming, that heaven came close to earth and the sunlight of God's grace broke through the clouds. God's will in heaven was being done on earth.

To be honest, I really don't know what is happening to me. I've never talked like this. But more and more I'm using this language to describe my life.

George MacDonald: Justice, Hell and Atonement

As I've written before in these posts about George MacDonald, reading MacDonald is what convinced me to become a universalist. And no sermon in Unspoken Sermons has had a more decisive impact upon me in this regard than the sermon Justice. This sermon, in my opinion, is MacDonald's theological magnum opus.

MacDonald begins the sermon by asking us to think about the nature of justice and punishment. Are justice and punishment the same thing? This is an important question because when Christians speak of hell as "just" they are implicitly drawing an equivalence between the "punishment" of sin and God's "justice." But MacDonald wants to push back on that notion, to suggest that justice is a far richer concept than punishment. And if this is so, no amount of punishment in hell gets God closer to achieving justice. To illustrate this MacDonald has us consider someone stealing our watch:

Suppose my watch has been taken from my pocket; I lay hold of the thief; he is dragged before the magistrate, proved guilty, and sentenced to a just imprisonment: must I walk home satisfied with the result? Have I had justice done me? The thief may have had justice done him—but where is my watch?
The point here, obviously, is that a "just" result can't be found through punishment alone. No doubt punishment is a part of the picture. But, as any victim knows, "justice" isn't reducible to punishing the perpetrators. Crimes (and sin) create relational and psychological wounds that punishment cannot heal.

The Church at Gass's Tavern

I just started reading the book Crashing the Idols: The Vocation of Will D. Campbell (and any other Christian for that matter) by Richard Goode and Will Campbell.

Richard was my faculty mentor at Lipscomb University my first year of teaching. I left Lipscomb after only a year, and I still lament leaving the orbit and friendship of Richard Goode. So it's been good to get into this book and to experience what Richard has been up to in his work with Will Campbell.

Will Campbell is a revelation to me. His life, work and theology are simply astonishing. No doubt I'll have much more to say about Campbell in the weeks and months to come, but for today a thought-provoking quote from Campbell on leaving the location of the church unnamed and unspecified, if only to protect it from being co-opted and "institutionalized":

I think it ["the Church"] does exist, but I'm afraid to look for it, because if I find it and name it, I'm going to run it, if I can. That's the evil of institutions. But Jesus said he would build his church in the world, and exactly where it is at any moment, I don't know. I don't think [one knows when she is in it]. I don't know when I'm in it. Take Gass's Tavern [in Mt. Juliet, TN], for example. For many years it was just a little country beer joint. I've done a wedding for just about everybody there. I've buried numerous patrons who have died. I visit the ones who are in jail. Sometimes I get up on stage and pray for the sick. Now, I could make the case that that's my church, but I won't, because if I did, the next thing you know, we'd have a bulletin, or drink only Pabst. And I'd expect to be rewarded for all the things I did there. So I don't say that's my church, but that is the Church at work in my life...If I believe that all institutions are inherently evil by definition, then I certainly can't assume that I can create a better one. I might have a good organization for a while, but, before long, any organization is going to become hardened and rigid. I think people do come together, like we do down at Gass's Tavern. It's when we institutionalize it--when we do it the same way every Sunday--that it becomes perfunctory and losses any meaning. I say this in spite of the fact that I like ritual, liturgy, and so on.

Evolving in Monkey Town

I just got back from a short term mission trip to Houston accompanying some middle school boys from our church (my son among them). It was a wonderful experience working with the Impact Houston Church of Christ and their ministry to the disadvantaged in that city.

During the trip I had Rachel Held Evans' book Evolving in Monkey Town in my pocket, reading it between worship services, service projects, and innings at a Houston Astros game.

Evolving in Monkey Town is a spiritual memoir. It's the personal story of how Evans, who grew up in the thick of evangelical fundamentalism, went through a faith crisis and emerged with a stronger, deeper faith. Her story is eerily familiar as I, and many of you I expect, have made a very similar journey.

"Monkey Town" is a reference to Evans' hometown of Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the (in)famous Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. You'll recall how in the popular imagination the Scopes trial was a showdown between biblical fundamentalism and Darwinian evolution (this is the mythical view of the trial captured in the play/movie Inherit the Wind; for a more accurate historical analysis of the trial see Edward Larson's Pulitzer Prize winning book Summer for the Gods). You might think, given the title of the book, that Evans' faith struggle has centered on the issues involved in the Creationism versus Evolution debate. But the "evolving" in Monkey Town has less to do with Darwin than with Evans' struggle with doubts and her own subsequent spiritual evolution in response to those doubts. "Monkey Town" is a backdrop to the book, functioning as a sort of metaphor. Here is Evans at the beginning of the book about her faith "evolution":

While evolution on a broad, historical scale happens every now and then, evolution within the souls of individuals happens every day, whenever we adapt our faith to change...My story is about that kind of evolution. It's about moving from certainty, through doubt, to faith. It's not about the answers I found but about the questions I asked, questions I suspect you might be asking to. It's not a pretty story, or even a finished story. It's a survival story. It's the story of how I evolved in an unlikely environment, a little place called Monkey Town.

To Change the World: Part 5, Faithful Presence

This is the final post reviewing James Davison Hunter's book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. My two-part reviews of Essays 1 and 2 of To Change the World:

Essay 1, Part 1: Confused about Culture
Essay 1, Part 2: The Weak Culture of Christianity

Essay 2, Part 1: Christianity and Ressentiment
Essay 2, Part 2: What about those Anabaptists?
In Essay 2 of To Change the World Hunter discussed the cultural failures of three Christian groups: The Christian Right, the Christian Left, and the Anabaptists. In Essay 3, the final essay of To Change the World, Hunter summarizes the "paradigms of engagement" we see in these groups regarding how each understands its relationship to the larger non-Christian culture ("the world"). Hunter's summary of the paradigms of engagement for the Right, Left and Anabaptists are:
"Defensive against": The paradigm of the Religious Right

"Relevance to": The paradigm of the Religious Left

"Purity from": The paradigm of the Anabaptists

On Snobbery and Simplicity

I have a theory about snobbery that I often share with my students. It's pretty simple. Here it is:

Everyone is a snob about something.
In the dictionary snob has two different definitions:
snob
noun.

1. One who tends to patronize, rebuff, or ignore people regarded as social inferiors and imitate, admire, or seek association with people regarded as social superiors.

2. One who affects an offensive air of self-satisfied superiority in matters of taste or intellect.
My theory speaks to the second definition. It is my belief that everyone has some place in their life where they experience a "self-satisfied superiority in matters of taste or intellect."

Maybe you're a snob about music, coffee, beer, worship styles, theology, computer platforms, clothing, home decor, blogging platforms (!) or certain lifestyle choices. You can be a snob with just about anything. And it's my contention that everyone has some snob in them. Maybe we're not a generalized snob, but there are areas where it comes out.

Which areas? Well, it's likely to be found in those areas where we've been heavily invested or have some expertise, training, skill or knowledge. In this, being a snob is close to being a critic. That is, when we adopt a critical stance toward something (perhaps for good and legitimate reasons) we are on the threshold of snob. The difference, in my mind, is that snobbery is an emotional delight, mainly smugness, in the act of criticism. That is, your criticism is largely about you and your own self-esteem project. Being a snob is being critical to make yourself feel better. And this is why we're snobby about things we're good at. This talent, skill and knowledge we possess is what makes us special and unique. Which means that the things that confer self-esteem are the very locations where I can act as critic, "insider," and expert. For it is with the stuff we're good at where we'll feel superior, prideful, smug, and snobby.

More, snobbery can affect the simplicity of my life. Generally, I'm a person of modest tastes. I drink Folgers coffee in the morning. I work comfortably between Macs and PCs. I own just three pairs of jeans, one pair of "dress" shoes and no dress pants at all (it's 100% jeans). I buy used cars. To be clear, I'm not frugal. But for the most part I don't worry about brand names or quality. In the language of psychology, when it comes to consumption I'm a satisfier rather than a maximizer. I'm a "good enough" kind of guy.

And yet, in a corollary to my Rule of Snob I have a related rule in regards to consumptive snobbery. Here it is:
Everyone demands unjustified quality in some area of their consumer existence.
Here's an example. I have a friend who demands quality in sunglass wear. So he'll spend $200 on Oakley sunglasses. I can't remotely imagine spending that kind of money on sunglasses. I buy my sunglasses from WalMart and gas stations. My current sunglasses (which look fantastic on me) were $10. In short, I'm not a sunglasses snob. Cheap, functional sunglasses are just fine for me.

I have other friends who will not drink coffee unless it is very high, Starbucks-level quality. The Folgers coffee I drink in the morning just won't do for them. So I'm not a coffee snob.

But according to my rule, there must be some, fairly arbitrary, places in my life where I demand unjustified quality. I have to be a snob about something, right?

True enough, here is a list of things I'm snobby about:
Sneakers

Pens

Watches

Bikes

Ice cream
Some commentary given the randomness of my list:
Sneakers:
I grew up playing basketball. And it was an annual ritual to buy new, leather basketball shoes at the start of the season. It was like going to church. And I loved the smell of new leather and the look of new Converse or Nike shoes. Ever since, I've been spoiled. All my sneakers are brand name. I'll buy my sunglasses at WalMart, but not my sneakers. I go to athletic stores for that. I'm a sneaker snob.

Pens:
For some reason, I demand a good pen. I write a lot so I care about the flow of the pen and the size of the line it makes. So I don't buy bulk packs of Bic pens. No, I go to Office Depot and stand there forever trying out all these expensive pens. I'm a pen snob.

Watches:
I'm a very casual dresser. Even in formal situations I dress down. Sometimes too much so. To help offset this I tend to wear an expensive watch. It's not crazy expensive, but I'll spend $100 on a watch. I think I do this because, per Thorstein Veblen's theory, it functions as a sign of my conspicuous consumption. That is, although I wore shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops to my meeting at the university today, I had my watch on. It's a sign, I guess, that I'm "consciously" dressing down (to be, what, a rebel?) and that I'm not a hobo. The watch, no matter what I'm wearing, anchors me to my socioeconomic class. So I'm a watch snob.

Bikes:
I ride a bike to work most days. Given all my time on my bikes (see, I have more than one) I've come to demand quality in them as well. I own brand name bikes, a Trek hybrid and an Electra Amsterdam. So I'm a bike snob.

Ice Cream:
My favorite food in the whole world is ice cream. I eat an astonishing amount of ice cream. It's the food that soothes me and makes me feel childlike. Given this consumption, I've acquired a taste for high quality ice cream. I can't eat cheap ice cream. So I'm an ice cream snob.
So there it is, a bit of confession. I bring it all up to note how this random demand for quality creates yet another occasion for snobbery. More, this consumptive snobbery complicates my desire to live a life of simplicity. My failures with simplicity have less to do with acquisitiveness than this demand for quality in particular areas.

So what about you? And snob confessions?

The Ethics of :-)

A few weeks ago I mentioned some of the research I was doing with two groups of students this summer. The first group is working on tattoos and spirituality. The second group is working on emoticon usage.

Emoticons, I'm sure you know, are the ubiquitous little faces we add to electronic communication--emails, texts, Twitter, Facebook, blogs--to add emotional content to our message. The most common emoticon is the smiley face, which comes in two main varieties:

:-)

:)
I pefer the one with the nose. I have no idea why. Likely it's a Freudian thing having to do with my mother. Beyond the two main varieties there are some less common variations:
:0) Adding a big nose for a kind of clownish look.

=) or =-) Using an "equals" sign rather than the colon for the eyes.
You can accentuate the smiling and even laugh by adding a capital D for the closed parentheses:
:-D

=D
And so on.

Beyond smiling the most common emotion is the wink, a way to take the edge off a playful or sarcastic electronic communication:
The wink:

;-)

And there is so much more. You can stick your tongue out:

:-P

Get angry or grim:

>:-|

:-|

Or sad:

:-(

Or surprised:

:-O
The creativity here is really remarkable.

Beyond the emoticon we also see the use of initialisms to communicate emotional or physical reactions to electronic communication. The most common being:
lol, LOL

omg, OMG
And, finally, you can add emotion to electronic communication by using capital letters, because REALLY YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS STUFF. This along with a promiscuous use of punctuation. Like:
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What????????????????
Where's all this coming from? Well, humans evolved to communicate face to face. Consequently, most of our communication is nonverbal, with meaning judged by attending to tone, volume, eye contact, and body language. These aspects of language are called paralanguage, and they are critical in the communication process.

Now ponder the dawn of electronic communication and the challenges it has placed upon human communication. Think of it from an evolutionary standpoint, how completely unequipped we are to communicate through this medium. Having stripped away the paralanguage electronic communication is very glitchy. Lacking tone and other nonverbal cues we often misinterpret electronic communication. This, combined with the anonymity, is the main reason blog conversations are so difficult and unproductive. We are trying to communicate about volatile material though a medium stripped of paralanguage, the aspect of language most critical to getting us productively through difficult conversations.

Given this situation, it's remarkable how a paralanguage has evolved for electronic communication. It's still glitchy, but it has helped. Consider the two sentences:
Joe, you're a jerk.

Joe, you're a jerk. :-)
Odds are, you interpret the second sentence as being a stab at humor. Or, at the very least, good natured ribbing between friends.

And this is one of the interesting things that the students and I discovered in getting into the emoticon literature. The power of paralanguage is that it can override the literal meaning of our words. When I use sarcasm--deploying that paralinguistic tone we all know and love--I mean the exact opposite of what I'm saying. Interestingly, the same goes for emoticon use. Having evolved to clarify electronic communication emoticons can now be used to create ambiguity in meaning which can then be exploited to say hurtful things.

For example, imagine this sentence:
Joe, you're a jerk. ;-)
What's that wink about? Do I mean what I'm saying? Or not? Likely I mean it, but if I add the wink I can say what I want ("Joe, you are a jerk.") while hiding behind the emoticon (wink, wink). It's the Internet equivalent of saying something harsh and sarcastic and then appending "I'm only joking." Because, really, you're not joking. The "I'm joking" is just a way to insert enough paralinguistic ambiguity into the conversation so that you can hide if you need to.

The point of all this is that, as silly as it sounds, there is an ethical issue involved in emoticon use. Emoticons can be, albeit small, forms of violence. Tiny daggers that can add a bit of sting to our electronic communication or, more properly, allow us to sting others while granting us plausible deniability. Come out and shoot and then run for cover behind the ;-).

Have great day on email, texts, and the Internet! Be kind out there.

:-*

(That's a kiss.)

(And if I add a halo it's, what, a holy kiss?)

O:-*

How Pleasure Works

How does pleasure work? Why do we enjoy the pain of Tabasco sauce? Or enjoy horror movies when the sight of real blood makes us queasy? And why do we value original artwork over expertly rendered copies?

These are some of the questions tackled by Paul Bloom in his new book How Pleasure Works. (H/T to George for alerting me of its publication.)

I haven't read Bloom's book yet, but two online reviews (from The Times and Slate) give us the shape of some of his answers (which, based on what I'm reading, is similar to his earlier book Descartes' Baby, which I have read).

According to Bloom, one of the keys to pleasure, and human cognition generally, is that we are innate essentialists. We believe objects have an inner, hidden quality--an "essence"--that makes the object what it is.

In the world of art the "essence" is the spark of genius and creativity which we feel only exists in originals, not copies. The "essence" of, let's say, an original painting is that we feel something of the artist infuses the artwork. That these brushstrokes were from the actual brush of Monet or Van Gogh makes all the difference. Exact copies, while artistically identical, lack the "essence" of the artist. Originals have essences that copies lack.

The same goes for human relationships. Consider Capgras Syndrome where people believe their friends and loved ones have been replaced with exact duplicates. Copies, it seems, are also not enough in love and life. And it appears that something in the brain is devoted to tracking this difference, the distinction between the exterior and the interior, the appearance and the essence.

And this ability to distinguish appearances from essences might explain why we enjoy Tabasco sauce and horror films. Our enjoyment comes from the fact that we know that the horror film isn't real and that the pain of the Tabasco sauce will end. We can indulge these experiences because our brain tracks them as "copies." Real pain and real gore are in different categories.

And it's this craving for the real, unseen "essence" that may also (partly) explain faith and our enjoyment of the natural world. That there is an Artist out there--and that these are his or her brushstrokes in that cloud, butterfly, sunset, or face--makes all the difference.

On Being a Christian

During Bible class today at church I was struck again at Paul's description in Romans 12 of what it looks like to be a Christian. Quotes from Romans 12, in a bulleted list (translation is The New Jerusalem Bible):

On Being a Christian: A List from Romans 12

Never pride yourself on being better than you really are.

Think of yourself dispassionately.

When you give, you should give generously.

If you are put in charge, you must be conscientious.

If you do works of mercy, let it be because you enjoy doing them.

Love without any pretense.

Avoid what is evil; stick to what is good.

Let your feelings of deep affection for one another come to expression.

Regard others as more important than yourself.

In the service of the Lord, work not half-heartedly but with conscientiousness and an eager spirit.

Be joyful.

Persevere in hardship.

Keep praying regularly.

Share with any of God's holy people who are in need.

Look for opportunities to be hospitable.

Bless your persecutors; never curse them, bless them.

Rejoice with others when they rejoice.

Be sad with those in sorrow.

Give the same consideration to all.

Pay no regard to social standing.

Meet humble people on their own terms.

Do not congratulate yourself on your own wisdom.

Never pay back evil with evil.

To the utmost of your ability, be at peace with everyone.

Never try to get revenge.

If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat; if thirsty, something to drink.

Do not be mastered by evil, but master evil with good.

To Change the World: Part 4, What About Those Anabaptists?

In our last post discussing James Davison Hunter's book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, we discussed Hunter's observation that one of the tragedies of contemporary Christianity (in America at least) is that both the religious Right and the religious Left have come to be characterized by ressentiment, narratives of injury. These narratives of injury are tragic for three interrelated reasons: 1) Ressentiment forces Christians to politicize their faith and associate it with political ideologies, 2) Ressentiment causes Christians to define their collective identity around feelings of injury (they see themselves as being victimized by other groups, 3) Ressentiment leads to the demonization of and struggle against (a largely political struggle, see #1) other ideological groups.

In short, pushed by ressentiment the Christian witness and identity becomes increasingly hostile and negativistic. A victim and siege mentality takes hold. And, to fight back, the Christian community struggles to grab political power to protect itself and way of life. According to Hunter this turns Christians into "functional Nietzscheans," a community defined by a "will to power" (a power needed to defend themselves against "those people").

The ressentiment of the religious Right comes from feeling victimized by modernity and liberal humanism. The Right feels injured because its way of life is threatened by the secularism found in Darwinian evolution, the dissolution of the family, abortion rights, gay marriage, and so on. More, the Right feel victimized by liberal cultural elites who dismiss them as intellectually backward, redneck and racist.

The ressentiment of the religious Left comes from its slow decline in American public discourse. During their heyday in the 40s, 50s and 60s, mainline Protestant churches were a cultural force. Liberal theologians like Tillich and Niebuhr were public intellectuals weighing in on all manner of cultural and political issues. Now, mainline churches are in decline, increasingly impotent and irrelevant. More, they see the religious Right growing in strength and political influence. There is a ressentiment on the Left about the Right getting to represent "Christianity" in the culture wars. Further, the Left sees how much sway the religious Right has with the GOP. While the Left identifies with the Democrats they don't feel they have a similar stranglehold on their party. Again, this leaves them feeling powerless and marginalized.

This, then, is the ressentiment of the Left and the Right. The Right fights against liberal humanism. And the Left fights, in the twilight of its former glory, against the growing influence of the Right in setting the cultural "Christian" agenda.

But Hunter's analysis doesn't end here. There is a third, vibrant Christian group out there: The Anabaptists. Who is this group? And have they managed to find a path past the ressentiment of the religious Right and Left?

The Anabaptists (and those who affiliate with them, ecclesially or theologically) have been profoundly shaped by the work of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, in particular his epic book The Politics of Jesus. A central tenet of Anabaptist theology is the Constantinian heresy, also called Christendom. According to the Anabaptists, Christianity became corrupted when the Roman emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Empire. Up to that point, Christians, as a marginal and powerless group, were able to faithfully live out the Sermon on the Mount, a life and witness very much in contrast with the violence of Empire. But in the wake of Constantine and the establishment of a "Christian Empire"--called Christendom--Christians, now holding power, had to make critical concessions. No longer could the Sermon on the Mount be followed literally. Thus, Constantinian theologians stepped in to reconcile the teachings of the radical, peasant rabbi with the gilded halls of power and affluence. The two, you might expect, didn't fit well together. So Christianity became diluted and corrupted. More, Christianity became an instrument of the state. Being a good Christian meant being a good citizen and a flag waving patriot. Jesus and the Empire were now one and the same.

You might see in all this a parallel between Constantine and Christianity in America today, the quest to keep or create a "Christian Nation." Anabaptist theologians are keen to critique this Constantinian impulse amongst American Christians.

This critique of a "Christian Nation" makes the Anabaptists natural allies of the religious Left as they critique the growing influence of religious Right. And, at times, it can be hard to distinguish between the Left and the Anabaptists. But good Anabaptists will take pains to put distance between themselves and the Left. The Left remains too political for the Anabaptists and still compromised by Empire. Anabaptists are, after all, pacifists and the Left, being Niebuhrian, are not. In short, the Anabaptists would like to say to both the Left and the Right (although they have more sympathy for the Left): "A pox on both your houses!"

So maybe the Anabaptists can escape the ressentiment and "politicization of everything" that has tragically captured both the religious Right and Left. Is this the path through to the promised land?

Hunter says no.

His reasons for this conclusion are twofold. First, Hunter feels that the Anabaptist experience is also characterized by ressentiment. Their "narrative of injury" revolves around Constantinianism. Feeling injured by Christendom, Anabaptists define themselves as being over against a corrupted Constantinian church. This "againstness" is succinctly captured by Stanley Hauerwas's formulation that "the first task of the church is to make the world the world." That is, the church's job is to clearly mark where the church ends and where the world begins. And we can see the reason for this: It prevents the Constantinian dilution of the Sermon on the Mount. As much as Christendom wants a splash of water in that glass you have to drink that whiskey straight.

But the problem here, as many have noted, is that this formulation seems to make Christendom a prerequisite for the existence of the church. That is, the church starts being defined as the rejection of a prior Constantinian compromise. This, Hunter suggests, is the source of Anabaptist ressentiment. Defining oneself via a narrative of injury. In this, Constantine (then and now) is the injury and the church defines her existence in opposition to that.

Hunter's concern in all this is that the Anabaptist impulse is better at articulating what it is against than what it is for. Further, by defining its identity in relation to Empire (even if negatively so) Anabaptists continue the trend toward the "politicization of everything." In all of this, according to Hunter, the Anabaptists, while different, start to look a lot like the religious Right and Left.

A second, related problem with the Anabaptists, due to their "againstness" of the world ("make the world the world"), is that they can struggle with being world-affirming when this is needed. For example, Anabaptists often offer harsh criticisms about capitalism and market economies. Fine, they make a lot of good points about consumption, inequity, and economic exploitation. But what are the alternatives? Particularly if you eschew political participation to fix the situation? Further, Anabaptists can be charged with hypocrisy in various cases, seen as benefiting and participating in the very institutions they criticise. To fend off these criticisms and reduce complicity the Anabaptists, as Anabaptists will do, will pull inward, creating pious and separate communities that are self-sustaining and, of necessity, separate from "the world." This is the sectarian strain in Anabaptist thought and practice. The trouble with this move is that the church abandons the world to "be the world" and gives up on trying to change the world for the better. What is the Anabaptist going to say to the Christian Wall Street trader? The Christian business owner? The Christian police officer? The Christian mayor? The Christian lawyer? The Christian who works at WalMart or McDonald's? The Christian oil rig worker? The Christian poultry farmer? Or the Christian actor or artist?

The conclusion for Hunter is that, while different, the Anabaptists are very similar to both the religious Left and Right. All three are characterized by ressentiment and all three have failing notions about how Christians might "change the world" for the better.

Derek Webb

I'm excited that at this year's Summit at ACU we will be hosting the Christian musician Derek Webb. Many of you who follow Christian music already know Webb. He was a member of the band Caedmon's Call and in 2003 launched a successful solo career.

I don't listen to a lot of Christian music, but intrigued by the Summit announcement I went out to find out a bit more about Webb and his music. I bought his first solo album She Must and Shall Go Free. I loved it and quickly realized what many had already known about Webb: He likes to take theological risks with his lyrics. Some of that risk-taking is seen on the most popular track from She Must and Shall Go Free, the song Wedding Dress:

Wedding Dress by Derek Webb

If you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
Should that be all I'd ever need
or is there more I'm looking for

and should I read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
To make me handsome, rich, and wise
Is that really what you want

I am a whore I do confess
But I put you on just like a wedding dress
and I run down the aisle
and I run down the aisle
I'm a prodigal with no way home
but I put you on just like a ring of gold
and I run down the aisle to you

So could you love this bastard child
Though I don't trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side

I am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers so less wild
That I would take a little cash
Over your very flesh and blood

Because money cannot buy
a husband's jealous eye
When you have knowingly deceived his wife
A YouTube clip of Webb preforming the song live:



Reading about Webb I discovered that his third solo album--Mockingbird--created some controversy in Christian circles (as has his most recent album The Stockholm Syndrome). Jana knew I wanted to listen to Mockingbird so, for my birthday, she went to our local Mardel's to pick up the CD. And, wouldn't you guess, she ran right into the (still lingering) controversy.

Jana looks on the shelves and can't find Mockingbird among Derek Webb's CDs. So she goes up to the counter and asks, "Do you have Derek Webb's CD Mockingbird?"

The clerk's face goes white. He says, "You won't be able to find that album in Abilene. That CD has been pulled from all the Christian bookstores in town."

"Why?", Jana asks.

"Apparently, the CD is somewhat controversial, politically that is. But let me see if it's at the warehouse."

He checks and they have a copy. He asks Jana if he should have it sent to the store. She asks, "You aren't going to get fired when the CD shows up here are you?"

He laughs, "I don't think so." He then leans forward conspiratorially and whispers, "I went to his concert when he played this album and it was fantastic." All very hush, hush.

So, of course, I'm really intrigued by this album. Mockingbird has been banned from all the Christian bookstores in Abilene!

Suddenly, Derek Webb is my hero.


[Post-Script:
Today is my birthday and I got Mockingbird this evening along with the story of its purchase. I also got a handmade card, a Mountain Dew t-shirt (the only thing I drink besides coffee and chocolate milk), and a new wallet. The card made by Aidan, featuring, inexplicably, a raccoon, was my favorite gift. Sorry Derek...]

Are You a Hipster Christian?

Are you a Hipster Christian? Take the test.

My results:

Your Christian Hipster Quotient:
81 / 120

High CHQ. You are a pretty progressive, stylish, hipster-leaning Christian, even while you could easily feel at home in a decidedly un-hip non-denominational church. You are conservative on some issues and liberal on others, and sometimes you grow weary of trendy "alt-Christianity." But make no mistake: You are a Christian hipster to at least some degree.
There's been a lot of conversation out there about "Christian hipsters." Most of it is just making fun of emergent church types. I actually tried to do some productive theological work on this topic and wrote six posts on "Hip Christianity":

Hip Christianity, Part 1: Seeing and Authenticity
Hip Christianity, Part 2: When Bad is Good
Hip Christianity, Part 3: Christianity is Cool
Hip Christianity, Part 4: High & Low, Bebop & Beat
Hip Christianity, Part 5: Stuff White People Like
Hip Christianity, Part 6: Selling Out

On Being Conservative

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to Utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one's own fortune, to live at the level of one's own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one's circumstances. With some people this is itself a choice; in others it is a disposition which appears, frequently or less frequently, in their preferences and aversions, and is not itself chosen or specifically cultivated.

--Michael Oakeshott, On Being Conservative

To Change the World: Part 3, Christianity and Ressentiment

In Part 2 of James Davison Hunter's book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World he begins to analyze the current relationship between Christian faith and politics.

Hunter starts with an overarching claim: Everything has become political. Every aspect of American existence has become politically contested. The family? It's a political concept with rival ideological visions. Reproduction and sex? Hotly contested. Morality? A political war zone. Marriage? Um, yes. Christianity? Sadly, faith itself has become political, with those on the Right and Left trying to wrest Jesus from the other side.

What this means is that modern Americans increasingly define who they are and what they believe through political power struggles. The tragic consequence of this is that the state becomes the final authority, the means by which we relate to each other. In light of this, the goal is to take the powers of the state away from the other groups so we can control the political process. Both the Left and the Right are engaged in this power grab. Hunter on this point:

Politics has become so central in our time that institutions, groups, and issues are now defined relative to the state, its laws and procedures. Institutions such as popular and higher education, philanthropy, science, the arts, and even family understand their identity and function according to what the state does or does not permit. Groups (women, minorities, gays, Christians, etc.) have validity not only but increasingly through the rights conferred by the state. Issues gain legitimacy only when recognized by law and public policy. It is only logical, then, that problems affecting the society are seen increasingly, if not primarily through the prism of the state; that is, in terms of how law, policy, and politics can solve them.

In short, the state has increasingly become the incarnation of the public weal. Its laws, policies, and procedures have become the predominant framework by which we understand collective life, its members, its leading organizations, its problems, and its issues...
There are a number of consequences of this "politicization of everything." For example, ideology becomes increasingly important. Hunter:
Politicization is most visibly manifested in the role that ideology has come to play in public life; the well-established predisposition to interpret all of public life through the filter of partisan beliefs, values, ideals, and attachments...Taken to an extreme, identity becomes so tightly linked with ideology, that partisan commitment becomes a measure of [our] moral significance; of whether [we are] judged good or bad.
I worry about ideology because it comes to trump the gospel. We read the gospels as Republicans, as Libertarians, or as Democrats. It is increasingly difficult for Christians to allow the gospels to read the Republicans, or read the Libertarians, or read the Democrats.

But it gets worse. Our ideological positions have an emotional tone, what Nietzsche called "ressentiment." Ressentiment is a feeling of resentment and anger. Hunter defines ressentiment as "a narrative of injury." According to Hunter, ressentiment has come to define American political discourse. That is, those on the Right feel "injured" and "harmed" by Obama. Just as the Left felt "injured" and "harmed" by George W. Bush. In light of this "injury," feelings of anger, resentment, and even hatred begin to boil up. Hunter on ressentiment:
The sense of injury is the key. Over time, the perceived injustice becomes central to the person's and the group's identity. Understanding themselves to be victimized is not a passive acknowledgement but a belief that can be cultivated. Accounts of atrocity become a crucial subplot of the narrative, evidence that reinforces the sense that they have been or will be wronged or victimized. Cultivating the fear of further injury becomes a strategy for generating solidarity within the group and mobilizing the group to action. It is often useful at such times to exaggerate or magnify the threat. The injury or threat thereof is so central to the identity and dynamics of the group that to give it up is to give up a critical part of whom they understand themselves to be. Thus, instead of letting go, the sense of injury continues to get deeper.

In this logic, it is only natural that wrongs need to be righted. And so it is, then, that the injury--real or perceived--leads the aggrieved to accuse, blame, vilify, and then seek revenge on those whom they see as responsible. The adversary has to be shown for who they are, exposed for their corruption, and put in their place. Ressentiment, then, is expressed as a discourse of negation; the condemnation and denigration of enemies in the effort subjugate and dominate those who are culpable.
The sad aspect of all this, as Hunter shows, is that Christianity--on both the Left and the Right--is now dominated by ressentiment. Christianity has become a "narrative of injury," anger at other political groups and other Christians who are driving the country into the ditch. As Hunter observes:
Christianity [has] embrace[d] certain key characteristics of contemporary political culture, a culture that privileges injury and grievance, valorizes speech-acts of negation, and legitimizes the will to power...To the extent that collective identity rooted in ressentiment has been cultivated and then nurtured through a message of negation toward "the other," many of the most prominent Christian leaders and organizations in America have fashioned an identity and witness for the church that is, to say the least, antithetical to its highest calling...it creates a dense fog through which it is difficult to recognize each other as fellow human beings...
According to Hunter, this is the current tragedy of the Christian faith.

Advice about Drinking?

Over at Slate Christopher Hitchens is posting bits from his new memoir. The latest installment has Hitchens discussing his drinking. In it, he makes some comments about alcohol and the three Abrahamic religions:

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—​the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—​is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the Seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.
The essay ends with Hitchens giving some advice on drinking:
...here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that's an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—​as are the grape and the grain—​to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.
As a faculty member on a Christian campus I struggle a lot about what to do in giving advice to college students in regards to alcohol consumption. Here's an example. A couple of years ago I was on a panel discussing "good decisions" out in front of Spring Break. Alcohol was a major topic. At the time, according to the Student Handbook, no ACU student, even those of legal drinking age, was allowed to drink alcohol, on or off campus. Obviously, there was no way to enforce this policy. Yet we knew that plenty of students would be drinking over Spring Break. Hence the need for the panel.

But how were we to address this reality? Because if we openly admitted the reality of students' drinking this admission would seem to condone violating the code of conduct in the Student Handbook. That is, if you said, "Hey, we know many of you are going to drink, so if you do here's some advice..." you would be seen as encouraging rule-breaking, or at least going easy on it.

So how do you give helpful and realistic advice while simultaneously supporting the prohibitions in the Student Handbook? It's tricky, and for most of the panel we just dodged the issue. Toward the end of the panel, noticing that we had said nothing remotely helpful other than "Don't drink. It's against the Handbook" I took the microphone and said "Listen, if you do drink, be smart. Don't get drunk. Particularly around strangers. Just drink one beer and nurse it through the night." This comment--if you drink, nurse it--caused a bit of a stir, but many students seemed to appreciate it. It was some sensible advice inserted into what had been a moral vacuum.

It seems to me that a lot of Christian advice for young people wrestles with this dilemma. On the one hand you have a prohibiting approach, a simple "Don't do X." Cut and dried. Just don't. On the other hand is a "If you do do X, be smart about it and here's what being smart looks like." In favor of the former is its strong moral vision with high standards. It's the ideal target to shoot for. But the downside of this approach is its lack of realism, a too optimistic view of human nature. In favor of the latter is its realism but this approach can also lower the bar, morally speaking. How do you balance the two approaches in the same conversation?

John Patrick Shanley's Doubt

Had a great time at the Christian's Scholars Conference. A highlight was going to a performance of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable (the play which was subsequently directed by Shanley in the 2008 film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman). On Thursday night Shanley attended the show and participated in a delightful talkback.

The entire play is packed, almost line by line, with theological, moral, social, and epistemological insight. One of the most powerful theological moments in the play is the opening sermon delivered by Father Flynn, a sermon that sets the tone for the entire play:

What do you do when you’re not sure? That’s the topic of my sermon today. You look for God’s direction and can’t find it. Last year when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation. Despair. “What now? Which way? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself?” It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that! Your bond with your fellow beings was your despair. It was a public experience, shared by everyone in our society. It was awful, but we were in it together! How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity? “No one knows I’m sick. No one knows I’ve lost my last real friend. No one knows I’ve done something wrong.” Imagine the isolation. You see the world as through a window. On the one side of the glass: happy, untroubled people. On the other side: you. Something has happened, you have to carry it, and it’s incommunicable. For those so afflicted, only God knows their pain. Their secret. The secret of their alienating sorrow. And when such a person, as they must, howls to the sky, to God: “Help me!” What if no answer comes? Silence. I want to tell you a story. A cargo ship sank and all her crew was drowned. Only this one sailor survived. He made a raft of some spars and, being of a nautical discipline, turned his eyes to the Heavens and read the stars. He set a course for his home, and, exhausted, fell asleep. Clouds rolled in and blanketed the sky. For the next twenty nights, as he floated on the vast ocean, he could no longer see the stars. He thought he was on course by there was no way to be certain. As the days rolled on, and he wasted away with fevers, thirst and starvation, he began to have doubts. Had he set his course right? Was he still going on towards his home? Or was he horribly lost and doomed to a terrible death? No way to know. The message of the constellations—had he imagined it because of his desperate circumstance? Or had he seen Truth once, and now had to hold on to it without further reassurance? This was his dilemma on a voyage without apparent end. There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. I want to say to you: Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
When I saw the movie I spent most of my time thinking about religious doubt. But having seen the play and listening to Shanley in the talkback it began to dawn on me that Shanley is thinking about doubt in much broader terms. Yes, religious doubt is a part of all this, but the opening question of Doubt--What do you do when you are not sure?--is much broader. It's a question less about how we live with God than about how we are to live with each other. Because the main issue in the play is less about doubting God than about doubting the goodness of other people. In addition, consider Shanley's introduction to the play where he suggests that self-doubt is critical to growth and maturity:
There's a symptom apparent in America right now. It's evident in political talk shows, in entertainment coverage, in artistic criticism of every kind, in religious discussion...

We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe it's because, deep down under the chatter, we have come to a place where we know that we don't know ... anything. But nobody's willing to say that...

What is Doubt? Each of us is like a planet. There's the crust, which seems eternal. We are confident about who we are. If you ask, we can readily describe our current state. I know my answers to so many questions, as do you. What was your father like? Do you believe in God? Who's your best friend? What do you want? Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so. Because under that face of easy response, there is another You. And this wordless Being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid and wordless, until the resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.

It is Doubt, so often experienced initially as weakness, that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake. Like you've gone the wrong way and you're lost. But this is just emotion longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present...

There is an uneasy time when belief has begun to slip, but hypocrisy has yet to take hold, when the consciousness is disturbed but not yet altered. It is the most dangerous, important and ongoing experience of life. The beginning of change is the moment of Doubt. It is that crucial moment when I renew my humanity or become a lie.

Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite; it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That's the silence under the chatter of our time.

Lorraine Motel Room 306

On our way to the Christian's Scholars Conference we stopped in Memphis so Jana and I could take Brenden and Aidan today to the National Civil Rights Museum. I had visited the museum once before and was looking forward to the boys being old enough to get something, spiritually speaking, out of the experience.

One of the powerful things about the Museum is that it doubles as a memorial. The museum is built into the former Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. You end your tour at the Museum at Room 306, the room MLK was saying in. You look out on the balcony where he died, the spot marked by a wreath.

This visit the tour opened with the new documentary short film The Witness. The trailer of The Witness can be seen here. Given that I cried multiple times during the film I walked out of the gift shop with a copy (plus some books, CDs, and DVDs as I continue to plot and plan for my Freedom Ride class).

The saddest scene in The Witness, and this gets me every time I see it, is watching MLK deliver his final sermon. You'll know it as his "Mountaintop" speech. These were the final words MLK ever preached, delivered on the evening of April 3, 1968:

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
If you watch the video of that speech you can see how emotional Dr. King was that night. At the end of the sermon he almost collapses into the arms of his friends. As many have observed before, it was if, that night, he knew that his time was up. Dr. King had already told many of his friends that he wouldn't live to see his fortieth birthday. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed the day after his Mountaintop sermon on April 4, 1968.

He was thirty nine years old.