Earlier this fall, Politico’s Stephanie Simon chronicled the amazing rehabilitation of faux-historian David Barton.
Last year, Barton’s reputation was in free fall after seventy evangelical historians criticized the blatant inaccuracies in Barton’s The Jefferson Lies. These scholars weren’t upset that Barton interpreted American history from a conservative perspective–most of them do the same. They were troubled, nay outraged, because Barton was peddling falsehood on a grand scale.
When Barton’s publisher, Thomas Nelson, pulled the book in response to a chorus of hostile reviews, many assumed that Barton was finished as an evangelical icon.
Not a bit of it. By October of this year, Glenn Beck was encouraging Barton to run against Republican John Cornyn and Ted Cruz was inviting the evangelical “historian” to appear with him at political rallies.
If the criticism hurt Barton it doesn’t show. In fact, suffering for righteousness’ sake was a disguised blessing. (more…)
Although Pope Francis wasn’t speaking “ex cathedra” in his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” (and therefore made no claims to infallibility) he does get to define Catholic teaching. He is the Vicar of Christ, after all. At least if you call yourself a Catholic.
A bit later, Limbaugh claimed that “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.”
There is some truth to this claim. Pope Francis has been influenced to a modest extent by liberation theology, an effort by Third World theologians to explore God’s “preferential option for the poor” from a Marxist perspective. It is orthodox Catholic teaching to claim that God has a heart for the poor. It should be orthodox Protestant teaching too, and, beyond the confines of American culture Christianity, it is.
But Pope Francis hasn’t been critical of capitalism, as such; his beef is with “unfettered capitalism”.
Limbaugh, correctly, points out that unfettered capitalism doesn’t exist anywhere. Markets are always subject to some government regulation, the question is, how much. But the rapid worldwide increase in wealth inequity is a direct result of steadily declining government control of global markets. Moreover, the “trickle down” school of economics the Pope is critiquing largely endorses unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism. Markets may not be completely unregulated, but Limbaugh and his ilk seem to imply that they should be.
A 2011 poll conducted by Public Religion Research Institute found that 44% of Americans believe Christian values are at odds with capitalism while only 36 percent believe that Christianity and capitalism can be harmonized. In fact, only 56% of Tea Party enthusiasts think capitalism and Christianity are completely simpatico. According to this survey, 61% of Americans don’t believe businesses would behave ethically without government oversight.
Not surprisingly, the study found that minority Christians believe the Church should address social and economic issues; white Christians want to hear sermons about social issues, but they don’t want their preachers talking about economics.
Limbaugh’s claim that the Pope’s critique of trickle down economics is “pure political” (sic) isn’t surprising. The white Christians who don’t want to hear issues of economic justice addressed from the pulpit frequently make the same claim. “I don’t come to church to hear political sermons,” they say.
They really mean that they don’t want to be reminded about Jesus’s statements regarding about the love of money and the fires of hell.
But how “political” are pastors being when they talk money from the pulpit. When politicians talk about money they are trying to tell voters what they want to hear without losing support from deep pocket donors. Politicians from poor, minority districts occasionally talk straight about money; but elected officials with wealthy constituencies (Democrat or Republican) deflect attention whenever possible from the addiction to unrighteous mammon that has become an inescapable part of the political game.
A Brookings Institute economics values survey from this summer shows that 44% of American white evangelicals describe themselves as economic conservatives. I suspect most of these people hold trickle down economics in high regard. Among white Catholics and Mainline Protestants, only 34% embrace the economic conservative label. But among Latinos, only 7% describe themselves as economic conservatives and only 3% of African Americans are comfortable with the label.
When American Christians complain about “political” sermons, they are really objecting to prophetic biblical preaching that hasn’t been passed through a political filter. We don’t hear this kind of talk from politicians or from political pundits. If preachers don’t give us the biblical perspective we will have to find it for ourselves. If we take our definition of normality from the political sphere, we can’t read the Bible with comprehension.
White American Christians insist on political sermons. The kind that reinforce what we already believe. The kind of that appeal to the handful of deep pocket contributors who keep the church finances in the black. That’s political preaching, and we can’t get enough.
Pope Francis gave us prophetic biblical preaching stepped in the ethics of Jesus. Compare his frank rebuke with the pablum we have come to expect from politicians and the difference is stunning. Pope Francis is an astute political philosopher but, thanks be to God, he ain’t no politician.
Fox Business host, Stuart Varney, is mad at Pope Francis.
“I go to church to save my soul. It’s got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics.”
He’s right, the Pope does want to influence his politics. And, although the new Pope hasn’t criticized a particular brand of politics, he is demonizing the economic system near and dear to Varney’s heart.
The Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”)doesn’t attack capitalism as an economic system. The target is the brand of trickle down economics that is often associated, in the United States, with the Chicago School of economics. Capitalism always comes with some measure of governmental regulation; it’s a matter of how much and of what kind.
The argument driving Evangelii Gaudium begins with a bold statement:
We need to distinguish clearly what might be a fruit of the kingdom from what runs counter to God’s plan. This involves not only recognizing and discerning spirits, but also—and this is decisive—choosing movements of the spirit of good and rejecting those of the spirit of evil.
Two posts with related content caught my attention this week. First, defense attorney Mark Bennett takes the Dallas Morning News to task for repeating the bizarre accusation that over 300,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year in Houston alone. Bennett checked the actual number and discovered that (a) only 105,004 felony and misdemeanor cases were prosecuted in Houston in 2012 for all crimes combined, and (b) only 2 cases prosecuted in Houston courts related unambiguously to sex trafficking.
Secondly, Fred Clark tells the story of Fran Keller, a woman from Oak Hill, Texas who was recently released from prison after serving 20 years for a “satanic ritual abuse” case created out of thin air. Clark argues that there are zero confirmed and documented cases of satanic ritual abuse in the United States–the crime is the invention of the overwrought religious imagination. As I document in my book Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, a satanic ritual abuse scare swept across the Bible Belt two decades ago, and lots of people exploited the opportunity. Tragically, a lot of people also went to prison for non-existent crimes produced, in most cases, by counselors coaching three year old clients to repeat sordid tales that, all evidence to the contrary, must have happened. This was certainly the case in the Fran Keller fiasco.
Sex trafficking is a hot item these days, especially in evangelical circles. Unlike satanic ritual abuse, sex trafficking actually occurs and the victims are often vulnerable immigrants. In some third-world countries, sex trafficking has grown to scandalous proportions. Nonetheless, the vast majority of women involved in sex work in the United States do what they do because they need the money and they believe they can’t find a better way of earning it. True, many of these career decisions are made in early adolescence (or pre-adolescence in some cases), so we sometimes must ask if a genuine choice is involved.
That being said, most women in the sex industry got in, and stay in, because the advantages appear to out-weigh the disadvantages.
I sometimes fear that evangelicals focus on domestic sex trafficking because it is one of the few moral issues that can be addressed without messing with systemic economic injustice. On the surface, the issue appears to involve evil adults, normally male, who are easily demonized. Therefore, we can express moral outrage without having to take sides in the American culture war. Nobody gets upset or pushes back.
Don’t get me wrong, I congratulate Christians who focus their love on women working in the sex field–these people need all the help they can get, no question. But why are we talking about sex trafficking while remaining silent on immigration reform, mass incarceration, homelessness or white collar crime?
Is an exaggerated and narrow focus on sex trafficking the contemporary equivalent of the ritual satanic abuse craze of the mid-1990s? I would appreciate it if those who know more about this issue than I do could critique my thesis which, I freely admit, is rooted in a gut suspicion.
According to this article in the New York Times, Kareem Serageldin, once a top executive with Credit Suisse, has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years for his role in the derivatives meltdown. Like so many others, Serageldin bundled toxic mortgages and sold them to unwitting investors.
But why did a federal judge sentence the defendant to half the term outlined in the non-binding federal sentencing guidelines? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess because Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein explained his actions. According to the Times:
“He was in a place where there was a climate for him to do what he did,” the judge said. “It was a small piece of an overall evil climate inside that bank and many other banks.”
No one who has studied the sad trajectory of the mortgage crisis and the economic collapse it spawned can quibble with the judge’s assessment–the accused was caught up in an evil corporate climate. I have no problem with a judge taking that into account. We are all accountable for our individual decisions, but we are all dancing with the culture and, most of the time, the culture leads.
But can you imagine a judge cutting a member of a drug gang some slack because he operated within an evil climate? I can’t.
In fact, we have artificially jacked up sentences for narcotics-related crimes on the theory that the tougher we get, the greater the deterrent effect. Other street punks will notice that Tony got thirty years for a second offense and mend their ways. It has never worked, but that’s the rationale. (more…)
We worship a bi-polar deity, most of us anyway. Our God is the very definition of love . . . but, like the killer bunny in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “he’s got a vicious streak a mile wide.”
We are taught that God is love. We are taught that God consigns the wicked to hell for eternity. Surely both can’t be true?
C.S. Lewis (who, like Jack Kennedy, died fifty years ago today), captured this dilemma beautifully in The Pilgrim’s Regress. It was his first crack at Christian apologetics written shortly after his conversion to Christianity in 1929. The allegory is set in the land of Puritania where a young boy named John is taken, as all young boys eventually are, to meet the Steward. Puritania is owned by “the Landlord”, a shadowy figure who has gone abroad and left his vast domains in the hands of a caretaker. Lewis was always at his best writing about children, and his description of John’s visit to the Steward is so good I will give you the whole story just as he wrote it: (more…)
It’s hard for ordinary people like you and me to evaluate the creationism v. evolution debate. We all have our opinions, of course, but most of us are taking a shot in the dark. Young earth creationists generally believe that the “Christian world view” will be lost forever if the evolutionists win. In other words, this really isn’t about science at all, it’s about tribalism. If every member of the tribe could admit to being wrong about evolution at the same moment, we could pull it off. But so long as embracing evolution means banishment from the tribe, few have the courage to change their convictions.
The pro-science people embrace the doctrine of evolution because the vast majority of biologists believe it. Some of us have a course or two in evolutionary biology and may even have read a popular book or two on the subject. But we are not scientists.
We believe in evolution because the theory makes conceptual sense.
More importantly, because an overwhelming consensus has emerged within the scientific community that evolution is the only theory available that squares with the evidence at our disposal.
Finally, we find it unlikely that 99% of the world’s biologists have joined a conspiracy to lie to the public. (more…)
The sad story of Marco Rubio explains why we won’t be seeing comprehensive immigration reform anytime soon.
Like Ted Cruz, Rubio is the child of Cuban immigrants who became American citizens without having to stand in line for day, let alone a decade. As refugees from the hated Castro regime, Cubans receive special treatment at the border and it shows in their politics.
The rising prominence of men like Cruz and Rubio is often taken as a sign that the Republican Party is sensitive to the needs and aspiration of the Latino population. But Cubans, as recipients of special favors rooted in Cold War politics, can’t feel the pain of the larger Latino community.
Consider this. In the last presidential election, only 44% of Cuban Americans supported Barack Obama, only 44% supported Obama, compared to 76% of Central Americans, 79% of South Americans, 78% of Mexican Americans, 83% of Puerto Ricans, and fully 96% of Dominican Americans. In other words, the Cuban vote went for Mitt Romney while the rest of the diverse Latino community voted decisively for Barack Obama.
These ugly facts place men like Marco Rubio in a tight place. The man has presidential aspirations and it is increasingly clear that you can’t ascend to the top job without at least the 44% Latino support George W. Bush worked so hard to get. Had Bush received 30% Latino support, he would have been beaten by two relatively weak Democratic challengers.
On the other hand, to win the Republican nomination you have to survive the primary season, and that means appealing to the Tea Party base.
Which explains why Marco Rubio, after helping draft a Senate bill that balanced tough border enforcement with a pathway to citizenship, is now endorsing the go-slow, piecemeal approach to reform favored by House Republicans. Even the deeply flawed Senate bill was too much for Tea Party loyalists because it would eventually mean more Latino voters.
In theory, the Republican Party could take its cue from George W. Bush, winning Latino support by backing sensible immigration reform. It’s just a matter of signalling to Latinos that they are welcome in the country and in the Republican Party.
But the Tea Party can’t go there. A movement built on white racial resentment (the cash value of small government conservatism) doesn’t want more non-white people entering the country.
What part of “illegal” do liberals like George W. Bush not understand?
Marco Rubio knows he can’t change this simple fact of American political life, and has adapted his politics accordingly.
Latinos, per se, are not welcome in a Republican Party controlled by the Tea Party. Rubio had to decide between being Latino and being Cuban, and he made his choice. The Tea Party loves Cubans, but despises Latinos.
This probably means that comprehensive immigration reform will have to wait until the Republicans suffer another defeat in the presidential election of 2016. Latino support for the Democratic candidate, no matter who it is, will be even stronger than it was in 2012. When a political party signals its’ contempt for a large portion of the electorate it must live with the consequences.
If your ambition is to hang on to a Senate seat in the American South, opposing immigration reform makes sense. If the goal is the win the White House it’s quite another matter. The Republicans have effectively opted to be a regional party dedicated to the care and feeding of the White electorate. That’s a winning combination in places like Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, but for the party of Lincoln, it is a long-term disaster in the making.
A new ACLU study highlights the consequences of sentencing non-violent offenders to Life without parole (commonly known as LWOP). Here’s the lede:
For 3,278 people, it was nonviolent offenses like stealing a $159 jacket or serving as a middleman in the sale of $10 of marijuana. An estimated 65% of them are Black. Many of them were struggling with mental illness, drug dependency or financial desperation when they committed their crimes. None of them will ever come home to their parents and children. And taxpayers are spending billions to keep them behind bars.
On a related note, Doug Berman notes that Sam Hurd, who once caught passes for the Dallas Cowboys, could be sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to a single drug transaction in April. Hurd actually received a sentence of fifteen years, but because his case involved a large quantity of drugs, life was an option. Hundreds of non-violent offenders have not been so lucky. (more…)
It is hard to believe that two full decades have passed since R. Albert Mohler ascended to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the seminary has produced a twenty-five minute documentary documenting the heroic stand Dr. Mohler took against the progressives and liberals who controlled the seminary prior to his arrival.
Earlier this morning I posted a video by Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian storyteller. It’s a TED talk delivered in Oxford, England. Adichie says that when we limit ourselves to one story about a person or a people, no matter how well-researched and compelling, we are bound to get almost everything wrong. The truth emerges from many stories; one story, taken alone, will always be a lie.
Southern Seminary’s celebratory documentary is, without apology, a single story. It is not surprising that none of the “progressive” or “liberal” professors who once marred the heritage of James Petigru Boyce, the seminary’s founder, were asked to comment. The only representatives from this apostate assemblage are Dianna Garland and Molly Marshall, the only women who appear in the documentary. Dr. Mohler, we are told, courageously forced these women to resign their teaching positions in the face of overwhelming outrage.
The documentary doesn’t obscure the fact that nobody supported the president’s draconian behavior. Louisville’s Courier-Journal took editorial exception to Mohler’s tactics. The student body and all but four professors were adamantly opposed. Virtually no one associated with the pedagogical process at the school agreed with Al Mohler, and yet he stuck to his guns.
What is a seminary? The flesh and blood people who currently walk the halls, offices and classrooms, or the tiny band of slavery-endorsing Confederate Calvinists who founded the school in 1859? According to the documentary, the answer is neither. The seminary is defined by the Abstract of Principles penned by Basil Manly Jr., who combined bits and pieces from a number of Baptist confessions into a single document.
Professors Garland and Marshall signed the Abstract in good faith. They interpreted the document in one way; Dr. Mohler interpreted it very differently. Mohler’s interpretation prevailed because he had the support of the conservative movement and they didn’t. It was sumple power politics. Many stories were reduced to a single narrative by brute force and the seminary was saved.
The documentary doesn’t trouble itself with the fact that almost half of the folks voting at the the denominations annual convention showdowns opposed the spirit of the conservative movement. It didn’t matter. A slim majority supported the movement, and that was all that mattered.
I wonder if the folks who produced this bit of hagiography are troubled by the fact that every single person featured is a white male? I doubt it. They could have lined up a conservative female student who attended Southern in 1993 and supported Dr. Mohler’s ascendancy. There must have been at least one–Southern had 3,000 students at the time.
But that’s just the problem. Women aren’t supposed to attend seminaries designed to prepare men for pastoral ministry. Any female student studying at Southern in 1993 must, in retrospect, be viewed as a child of darkness.
The producers could have interviewed a seminary secretary, I suppose, but who cares what secretaries think? The folks featured in the film are heavy hitters, men of substance, great minds.
If you asked Al Mohler, or any of the long list of white male worthies appearing in this documentary, why they don’t believe women should serve in positions of ministry or hold authority over men in any ecclesiastical capacity, they would tell you it doesn’t matter how they feel or what they think. They don’t personally have a problem with women; God has a problem with women. He says so in His inerrant word.
If you could travel back in time and ask James Petigru Boyce why he wore the uniform of an army dedicated to maintaining the institution of slavery and the principle of white supremacy, he would likely say much the same thing. It wasn’t a matter of whether the founders of Southern Seminary believed Negroes were inferior to Caucasians and thus fit only for the status of chattel property. The founders didn’t create black people as an inferior species; God did that. He said so in the same inerrant Word that, in the opinion of virtually every gentleman theologian working in the Southern states in the mid nineteenth century, celebrated slavery as the revealed will of God.
I have long argued that a preference for reading the Bible literally became popular in the South because it allowed theologians to trump the radically inclusive teaching of Jesus with select quotes from the Apostle Paul and the Old Testament. If you start with Jesus you will never end with slavery or the systematic exclusion of women. So you start with the handful of passages that appear to sanction your pet prejudices and then argue that, because the Bible speaks with a single voice, Jesus must have endorsed the virtue of slavery (in the nineteenth century) or the systematic humiliation of women (late twentieth century). What’s good for the father must be good for the son.
A young Al Mohler with Billy Graham
What happens when the Christian faith is reduced to a single story? In the mid-nineteenth century you get slavish support for the institution of slavery? In the early twenty-first century, you get an all-white, all-male institution preparing pastors for leadership in all-white, male-led congregations.
If the men and women who taught at Southern Seminary when I was student there were liberal in any sense, it was only because Jesus was telling them to grow beyond a rigid orthodoxy that relegated women to secondary status and a religious tradition that condemned the civil rights movement as thinly-disguised communism.
These folks loved the South, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the heritage of Southern Seminary; but their primary allegiance was to Jesus Christ.
I was surprised to discover that the documentary freely admits that Al Mohler had been dreaming of being president of Southern Seminary for at least a decade when, at the tender age of 33, his dream was suddenly realized. The story of Al calling up his pal, Danny Akin, at an ungodly hour to share the exciting news that the trustees had offered him the big job is more-than-just-a-little embarrassing. When young leaders are thrust into positions of great responsibility, aren’t they supposed to be humbled and awed by the enormity of the task before them?
According to the documentary, Al Mohler was thrilled to death to have been chosen “for such a time as this” because God, long before the foundations of the earth were laid, had ordained that it should be thus. (Yes, it actually says that.) Who is Al Mohler to argue with a God who ordains slavery, relegates women to the kitchen, and chooses thirty-something neophytes to lead a time-honored institution?
That said, we can only marvel at the wonders Al Mohler has wrought. He has survived his critics. He has evolved into the intellectual voice of conservative evangelicalism. And it won’t be long before he will be celebrated as the elder statesman of the New Calvinism he now champions.
It’s always nice to see a boy chase his dreams and catch them . . . even if he has to ruin a few hundred careers to make it happen.
By Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
Friends of Justice 