Romanticizing the spiritual foundations
I’m reading Sikivu Hutchinson’s wonderful new book Moral Combat. There’s an apposite passage about Jim Wallis in the first chapter:
Wallis argues that America is suffering from a crisis of values. Progressive religious belief is the antidote to this crisis because “history is most changed by social movements with a spiritual foundation.” [Wallis, God’s Politics, p 24] This view fails to consider the extent to which American social movements – from the white supremacist imperialist spiritual foundations of the Revolutionary War to the patriarchal and heterosexist spiritual foundations of the modern civil rights movement – have been hindered by their “spiritual” foundations. By romanticizing the spiritual foundations of social movements, Wallis demonstrates that he is unwilling to interrogate how Judeo-Christian dogma undermines women’s rights and gay rights. Hence Wallis’ prophetic politics is based on cherry picking scripture to articulate a social justice agenda fundamentally incompatible with the patriarchal, imperialist, sexist, homophobic, inhumane thrust of the Bible. [pp 15-6]
Italics mine. And just so: as we saw just a couple of weeks ago when Sojourners rejected that mild “let’s welcome everyone” ad because um er ah well it was about welcoming a lesbian couple and their little boy omigod.
If one is already using normal human judgement to cherrypick the bible for non-objectionable progressive bits (leaving aside huge, nasty, evil, tyrannical bits), why bother with the bible at all? The only reason I can see is to be able to claim that god is on your side. But then those who pick from the nasty bits to bolster their argument are just going to do the same, using their own human judgement of what is good and right to avoid those bits that are too toxic (or inconvenient) even for them. The seductive lure of absolutism, I guess….
I suspect because they feel their scripture offers some sort of authority and that their arguments would not stand on their own. Of course we have to ask, what kind of authority can a book offer if it is just being mined for the supporting passages?
Yep, who will win the argument? Does using e.g. Leviticus to support their discrimination of homosexuals or those citing “love thy neighbour”? One can only hope that empathy and compassion will gather more numbers in the end.
Argh, I always cringe a bit when I see “Judeo-Christian”. Have all those medieval pogroms never happened? When did Judaism and Christianity become BFF?
Static,
When Christian theocrats wanted to give themselves constitutional cover, and a small subset of conservative Jews wanted to make a powerful political alliance.
In the 1980s when I first encountered Wallis, he was the voice of progressive Christianity. Wallis and Sojourners distinguished themselves from the vast majority of evangelicals with their radical commitment to peace, racial equality, fair treatment for poor people (in the US and around the world), and even strong support of women’s rights (with the exception of abortion rights). What I wonder about Wallis is what made him stop this radical progression and stagnate. How can he miss the fact that it is just as unacceptable for the church to ostracize a same-sex couple as it would be to ostracize a couple with different skin colour and/or ethnic background?
“history is most changed by social movements with a spiritual foundation.”
The frightening thing is that this seems to be true. Even with non-religious movements it seems to be ones such as marxism or fascism which promise a kind of spiritual redemption- and the opportunity to kill lots of people in the name of progress and redemption- that have the greatest appeal and the greatest effect, at least immediately.
@Roger — yes, they always kind of leave out the mass killing part of it, don’t they?
Me too now that I’ve read that “Judeo-Christian” actually means “Christian”. And it makes complete sense to me. How many Jews use the term “Judeo-Christian” when describing their values. “Judeo-Christian” is pure Christianspeak, from the religion that invented antisemitism.
How can he miss the fact that it is just as unacceptable for the church to ostracize a same-sex couple as it would be to ostracize a couple with different skin colour and/or ethnic background?
Maybe he’s just not willing to abandon that bit of Leviticus. I wonder if he eats shellfish and wears clothing of mixed fibres? That would be just as much cherrypicking. It all depends on where he draws the line, if he even knows he’s drawing it. I imagine the more etherially minded, ground-of-all-being, Karen Armstrong types are going to be more inclined to be progressive than the literalist fire and brimstone types, but they’re all being “cafeteria Christians”. Is it the case that Wallis is somehow, for all his progressive stances in the past, closer to the literalists than the apohaticists in his theology?
How do those who claim to be more literalist in their reading explain the cherrypicking which they do themselves? There’s nothing in the text to say “okay, this bit is really key and must be accepted as is and this one’s just a metaphor that you can bend to your wishes.” I’ve always wondered about the contrast between the literal treatment of Genesis and their whacky, acid-trip interpretation of Revelation (which does not really lend itself to a truly useful literal reading if your aim is to shoehorn the US of A into end-time prophesy, as it is in the “Left Behind” school of eschatological thought.)
I’m increasingly becoming concerned about where atheism is going. Don’t get me wrong, I think atheism becoming an active voice in society is an important change, but I don’t want one system of hierarchy replaced by another; I want hierarchies smashed and replaced by egalitarianism. But this is increasingly becoming a fantasy of mine if human nature is something different. As Roger mentions, social movements are so seductive that they can hold a quasi-religious status if individual liberty somehow becomes forgotten.
New atheism either has egalitarian aims or it doesn’t. Social change has limits, because we’re forgetting about the state. Social movements that become a political force have had a disastrous history, because politics is about power, and power is hierarchy.
I thought the idea of a moral project was important. But now, I understand morality is about care or sympathy. While socially important, it’s completely impotent in the face of political power. And so the real social project is justice or fairness and equality. But how do you attain fairness and equality without power? And with power, you are back to the old system of hierarchy.
It’s my thought that “Progressive religious belief”is merely another name for not taking scripture literally when it doesn’t suit the argument. Then it becomes all “ineffable” and “numinous”. It becomes impossible to know what such christians’ beliefs are since there is nothing on which to base them. It can be anything I say it is today. Tomorrow? what argument do I need tomorrow? See – easy! Much easier than developing a personal view and ethic. And you can slag any “fundamentalists” who insist on a literal reading.
Of course it has its pitfalls, unrealized by many. For instance, if the story of adam and eve is not literally true then christians have absolutely nothing to which to tie their core belief in “the fall of man”. And if “the fall” didn’t happen then there was no need for the whole crucifixion/redemption/”Xt died for your sins” malarkey and hence no need for Xtianity at all. Bit of a problem what? And no, CS Lewis did not satisfactorily resolve this……he just made the “ineffable” argument!
Part of Egbert’s point about power and hierarchy seems on the money (I’m not even going to try to discuss where atheism is going, a flame war doesn’t sound like fun). That’s really what drives the cherry picking, and always has.
Scriptures, for any religion, really, aren’t exactly known for their internal consistency (correct me if I’m wrong about some specific religion, I’m not an expert, just expressing an observation), which makes them especially useful for supporting whatever agenda you have in mind, and legitimizing policy that you are enacting because you can (having power) and want to.
If that’s how you choose to look at it, then it becomes easy to see why Leviticus is trotted out as an authority on homosexuality, while no one pays attention to the poly-cotton blend underwear they put on this morning. Because, really, getting worked up about mixed fibers in clothes requires a remarkable level of OCD, while other people’s sex lives always seem worthy of discussion and regulation. More importantly, clothing fibers contribute little to questions of status and power (which is always a concern for those IN power), but if some man dares to disregard his naturally higher status by acting like a woman (i.e. the proper semen receptacle), that can be a very threatening thing to those invested in the idea of being entitled to power (homosexuality seems not to be a universal hangup though, as there are ways to reconcile it with misogyny if one tries, like ancient Greeks, for instance).
It seems to be particularly disgusting when the fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good types go and cherry pick all the “nice” parts of scriptures while sweeping all the “nasty” ones under the rug precisely because they are doing various opressors’ job for them. Why talk about real problems, correct real injustices, deal with ugly things happening in the real world and face the difficult task of striving to civilize ourselves and act with more forethought and compassion, when it’s so much easier to hijack the discussion onto matters of scripture, talk about high spiritual ennobling matters, while doing the same old thing: looking out for your own best interests, furthering your status and your own goals at the expense of others.
To be honest, to a degree it’s probably our “fault”. Not that we really could or even should do anything to change that. But I see Wallis’ whole thing as being more and more ra-ra team Christianity, which could be seen as a reaction of the knee-jerk variety to the rise of vocal Atheism in our society.
The BIG beef I’ve always had with folks like Wallis is that they really make it crystal clear that when the rubber hits the road, it’s about promoting the religion, and NOT about the good they do. Even if they do good, it’s the means to the ends and not the ends itself.
The problem is the privilege. And Wallis is entirely unwilling to challenge that privilege. He wants to reinforce it. He’s battoning down the hatches, so to speak. And as such, acknowledging that there are a lot of Christians out there that are acting in an obviously immoral fashion directly undermines that privilege of his religion being necessary for morality.
Anna,
That is exactly what is beginning to upset me. I think religion is an irrational mentality, not driven by reason. Atheists can be driven by exactly the same mechanisms, focusing on what is agreeable and empowers them and completely overlooking what is disagreeable and dempowering.
And so what happens is very human–little personality cults form, groups with hierarchical structures form, where dominating voices begin to drown out the timid ones. This leads to the silencing of criticism, because larger personalities or groups silence out timid individuals or the voice of opposition. Then consensus begins to form that is no longer based in self-criticism, all of which have been silenced and expelled from the group.
This is of course exactly what is happening among the accommodationists. The New Atheists tends to be lead by liberal-minded intellectuals, who are capable of disagreeing on personal views, and probably welcome criticism. But as a larger group or community, things can become very ugly very quickly. I really think this is a serious problem that all atheists need to face.
Egbert — agreed. It’s a serious problem all people need to face, really. Problem is, people as a group aren’t good at that. For one, a lot of meta-cognitive skills are required to even comprehend this, and it’s just not something the majority of humans are good at. I really don’t see a way to “fix” that. It’s true that atheists, as a group, tend to have a more intellectual bend, but that’s still no guarantee of being willing and able to examine things from different perspectives, to question assumptions that are so ingrained they remain beyond conscious awareness.
Maybe I’m just too timid, but faced with the choice of starting a flame war that’ll get personal and never actually focus on relevant points, or shutting up, I prefer to shut up — it’s better for my blood pressure, and it’s not as if I were accomplishing anything by making a fuss anyway… I wonder how many other people have the exact same thought and just shut up.
Anna,
I hope there are many of us, but we’re all very often alienated away from each other and therefore have no voice. In our own ways, we try and do a bit of good within a community, only to get shunned and alienated. It’s disturbing.
Egbert: when you get right down to it what you can do is only what you can do. You can’t make anybody else do what you want except through fear (and that has to have credible (not necessarily actual) force behind it or somehow appeal to others because they get something out of it. Frankly I’ll settle for what I can accomplish in myself and my local relationships. I’m over bettering the world – largely because the world doesn’t want to be better and because I don’t know what a better world would look like anyway. BTW as an atheist of long standing I admit of no leaders. None of the gnus or the accomodos were around when I became an atheist, AFAIK, especially that veteran trench warrior Stedman……like 50+ years ago……..although we did have some fine spokespeople such as Russell.
sailor1031,
I’ve been an atheist for ten years, but an rebel, anarchist and individual for much longer. The reason I came back into the game of atheism because I could not sit back and watch what was happening with Islam. And so I’m here in whatever capacity I can be. I could easily give up entirely and lead a solitary bohemian life, but new atheism is my ‘last chance’ of seeing something positive in humanity.
Egbert…um…so you’re worried that equality is elusive, and hierarchies tend to form, and social compassion isn’t as abundant as it might be, and communities can be overtaken by groupthink. Anything else? I wouldn’t want to fail to try to fix everything via a thread at B&W.
Ophelia,
Whatever crisis I’m going through, I think what you’re doing on your blog and its consequences in the new atheist movement are important.
Yeah, right. It can be very hard to determine what is fair, honest, and best for a society, politically-speaking. But if you look at history, the moral questions have always become laughingly easy to resolve whenever we stop trying to answer them using reason in this world — and instead switch the subject from “what is the right thing to do?’ to “who has the right spiritual foundations?” Who understands God the best? Which interpretation of which religion is true? Could any question be more simple? More conducive to friendly, honest discussion and quick and happy resolution? Surely not!
You don’t have to convince your opponents; you just have to convert them! Look at how well that has always worked in history. Wallis is on to something.
/snark
The BIG beef I’ve always had with folks like Wallis is that they really make it crystal clear that when the rubber hits the road, it’s about promoting the religion, and NOT about the good they do. Even if they do good, it’s the means to the ends and not the ends itself.
Funny thing is, when I was hanging out with “folks like Wallis”, we were often accused by the fundagelicals of quite the opposite – that we were too worldly-minded with our attention to justice and fairness in the here-and-now, when we should have been storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven. It’s almost as if Wallis has come to the realization that too much commitment to fairness and justice (not to mention rational thought) will eventually lead to Atheism, so he has backed off and shifted his allegiance to faith for the sake of faith, rather than as a means to the end of building a better world for all.
Great thread. Sorry I came in late. I became Christian for a few years because of a church that honestly welcomed LGBT and unashamedly cherry-picked the good liberal verses. I quit when I realized that even doing that supported unhealthy magical thinking and indirectly supported fundamentalism. As Karmakin said, its about the religion promoting the religion. Really it is more of a dynamic, “I wanted to do some good and found a church who helped me do it, so to pay it forward I should promote that church or churches like it.” Once I realized it would be better to do those things without supporting the medieval structure of a church, I broke out of it.
To the “Of course we have to ask, what kind of authority can a book offer if it is just being mined for the supporting passages?” and similar questions, I have studied not only the Bible but other religions, philosophies and mythologies and I still think some of the Biblical stories rank among the best. When you break out of the “Fall-Wandering-Resurrection” story, some of the parables and traditions can inform us. Generally you won’t find these interpretations in church, a recent episode of On Being about the Exodus or the writings of Gustav Guiterrez are good examples.
A social movement needs stories to build upon, and good stories contain mythic characters, Jungian archetypes. Wallis wants God to feature in those stories, simply because that is his favorite character and I suppose it has buttered his bread.