Author: Alan Bean

What kind of Baptists are we?

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By Alan Bean

In the 1950s and 60s, the unofficial public theology of America was dominated by theologians associated with what we now call “the Protestant Mainline”.  A public theology makes biblical teaching relevant to the pressing political, economic and social issues of the day; it gives the Church a public voice.

There was nothing particularly radical about the old public theology, but it gave voice to the “Christian realism” then in vogue.  Management and labor should work out their differences amicably.  The solution to the “race problem” was understanding and forbearance on all sides.  Families and governments should live within their means. That kind of thing.

Those days are gone.  America has a new public theology.

Theologians and judicatory officials associated with “the old mainline” denominations are still making the occasional moral pronouncement, but nobody is listening, least of all the folks in Washington.  The new public theology is a product of the Religious Right and its central tenets are so well-publicized that there is hardly any need to lay them out.  Free markets are God’s way of solving social problems and nothing else works.  Ever.  The role of government is to protect the nation from its enemies and protecting the free functioning of markets from excessive regulation.  Because corporate America creates jobs and leads innovation, labor must bend to the will of management.  The new American meritocracy places everyone on a level playing field so accusations of racism and sexism are just whining.

The new public theology begins with economics, moves to politics and ends with religion.

I could elaborate, but you get the idea.

The partial shutdown of the US government is largely a consequence of our new public theology.  Obamacare isn’t dismissed as bad public policy; it’s heresy. The free market provides the best of all possible health care systems and anyone who thinks government can make things better has rejected the revealed will of God.  When doctrinal purity is at issue, compromise is impossible.

I know what you’re thinking.  The new public theology I have described is a minority report that fails to speak for the majority of religious Americans.  True enough.

But just ask your average twenty-five year-old what “Christians” think about economics, social policy and the Bible.  I suspect you will get something very close to the public theology I have described.  Young people might not buy this perspective, and they might even see it as inconsistent with the teaching of Jesus, but it is viewed as the standard Christian view.

Let me get personal.  I have two sons who are convinced that most Christians, at least those in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, embrace the new public theology I have described.  Moreover, they see my take on Christianity (more on that below) as an odd anomaly.  “Dad, nobody else thinks like you,” they tell me.

I submit that this conclusion is common, even standard, among young adults.

This problem is particularly acute for Baptists.  “Moderate” Baptists can’t reveal the name of their congregation without appending a long list of disclaimers.  “I’m a Baptist,” we say, “but not that kind of Baptist.”

The new public theology is viewed as the normative Christian position by default.  Churches that identify with the Religious Right proclaim their public theology with vigor and without apology.  Everyone else in the American Christian community is strangely silent. Sure, our well-educated preachers have nice things to say about theological abstractions like justice, love, peace and reconciliation, but they rarely tell us how these virtues impact the economic, political and social life of the nation we live in.

Silence is considered the wise, nuanced approach.  “I’m not paid to tell my people how to vote, or how to think on policy issues,” preachers tell one another, “I tell them what the Bible says, and it’s up to them to make the application.”

But “making the application” is what theology is all about.  The Religious Right has the ear of the nation because they know what they believe and they spell it out for us.  They make the application.

Churches that limp along without a public theology become practically and morally irrelevant to the larger society.  They have nothing of substance to say to young adults who are eager (for a brief season) to devote their lives to a larger purpose.

Again, the problem is particularly acute for Baptists.  If you’re not that kind of Baptist, then what kind of Baptist are you?

Why have we lost our prophetic voice?

First, there is the problem of the “messy middle”.  Most congregations reflect the full ideological spectrum of American life.  A pastor preaching to a mix of conservatives, moderates, liberals (and a growing number of libertarians) can’t address social, political or economic issues in a substantive way without enraging and alienating somebody.

Members of messy middle congregations easily assume that “most people in my church think like me”.  But let real people start talking about real issues and this perception fades quickly.  Why force church members to focus on the ideological divisions within the body, pastors ask.

Having been a pastor, I fully understand the concern.  Job security is a valid issue.

Embarrassing theological questions emerge when we are forced to reckon with our diversity.  If we are all taking our cue from the same Bible and we’re drawing such different conclusions, who’s got it right and who’s wrong?

More likely, we conclude that the Bible doesn’t have much practical guidance to offer, so we’re all free to make up our own minds.  Diversity is hailed as the cardinal virtue.

But our loss of prophetic voice is only partially explained by the messy middle problem.  Here’s the deeper truth: we know what Jesus says about money and it doesn’t take a seminary degree to grasp the economic, political and social implications.

We can take refuge in complexity, of course.  The Bible is a very big book featuring a long list of authors responding to a crazy quilt of different circumstances.  There’s some stuff in Leviticus, Joshua, and Nehemiah that’s hard to square with the Sermon on the Mount.  Right?

Right.  But if we start with Jesus and the broad biblical tradition that shaped his message, the broad outline of a clear, prophetic theology is clearly discernible.

Our problem isn’t that the message is fuzzy; our problem is that the message is frightening.

If we take our cue from the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer and the Mary’s Magnificat where would that leave us?  Outside the camp, on the margins, numbered with the sick, the sinners, the poor and the desperate.  We’d have to ask where all these hurting people came from.  We’d have to move from charity to advocacy.

Worse still, our churches would be transformed from mainstream bastions of respectability to counterculture communities living on the fringe.

We might gain a prophetic voice, but we would lose almost everything else.

Hence our silence.

But the question won’t go away: if we’re not that kind of Baptists, what kind of Baptists are we?

Mississippi church issues apology for racism

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Two Mississippi pastors, Eric Hankins (left) and Andrew Robinson, have fostered healing between their churches in Oxford, a city that faced racial tumult during the civil rights era. Hankins is pastor of First Baptist Church; Robinson is pastor of Second Baptist Church. Photo by Kevin Bain.

By Alan Bean

It is easy to be critical of this Baptist Press story.  It reflects a rather superficial understanding of racism, and is written from a distinctly white perspective (there is little interest, for instance, in learning how Black Baptists experienced the racist past of Oxford, Mississippi).

On the other hand, the apology issued by First Baptist Church is commendable and remarkably rare.  Although the congregation voted to exclude non-white worshipers in 1968, pastor Hankins correctly observes that most Oxford congregations wouldn’t have felt the need to put the matter to a vote.  This is a small step in the direction of racial reconciliation, but it is a beginning, and for that we should all be thankful.

Mississippi church seeks racial reconciliation

OXFORD, Miss. (BP) — When First Baptist Church in Oxford, Miss., passed a resolution apologizing for its 1968 decision to exclude African Americans from worship services, it opened the door for racial reconciliation in its city.

“I had never seen a church or any organization move that seriously toward repentance and then apologize without any excuse,” said Andrew Robinson, pastor of Oxford’s historically black Second Baptist Church, a National Baptist congregation that accepted the apology and granted forgiveness. (more…)

In Memoriam: Herman Wallace

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Tory Pegram, Campaign Coordinator for the Coalition to Free the Angola 3, reports that Herman Wallace died after spending three short days in the free world.  The state of Louisiana, fully mindful that Mr. Wallace was nearing death, worked overtime to ensure that he died behind bars.  Fortunately, the judge who ordered his release refused to bend under pressure.

The persecution and prosecution of the men known as the Angola 3 has always been driven by an ideology that consistently trumped the facts and the requirements of simple justice.  This ideology was theoretically motivated by “Christian” values; but the tragic racial history of the South was always the real driver.

I should note that Tory has served on the Friends of Justice board, and was an invaluable ally in our successful fight for justice in Jena, Louisiana.

Tory Pegram reflects on the death of Herman Wallace

This morning we lost without a doubt the biggest, bravest, and brashest personality in the political prisoner world.  It is with great sadness that I write with the news of Herman Wallace’s passing.

Herman never did anything half way.  He embraced his many quests and adventures in life with a tenacious gusto and fearless determination that will absolutely never be rivaled.  He was exceptionally loyal and loving to those he considered friends, and always went out of his way to stand up for those causes and individuals in need of a strong voice or fierce advocate, no matter the consequences.

Anyone lucky enough to have spent any time with Herman knows that his indomitable spirit will live on through his work and the example he left behind.  May each of us aspire to be as dedicated to something as Herman was to life, and to justice.

Below is a short obituary/press statement for those who didn’t know him well in case you wish to circulate something.  Tributes from those who were closest to Herman and more information on how to help preserve his legacy by keeping his struggle alive will soon follow.

With deepest sadness,

Tory Pegram

Campaign Coordinator

International Coalition to Free the Angola 3

Obituary for Herman Wallace

On October 4th, 2013, Herman Wallace, an icon of the modern prison reform movement and an innocent man, died a free man after spending an unimaginable 41 years in solitary confinement.

Herman spent the last four decades of his life fighting against all that is unjust in the criminal justice system, making international the inhuman plight that is long term solitary confinement, and struggling to prove that he was an innocent man.  Just 3 days before his passing, he succeeded, his conviction was overturned, and he was released to spend his final hours surrounded by loved ones.  Despite his brief moments of freedom, his case will now forever serve as a tragic example that justice delayed is justice denied.

Herman Wallace’s early life in New Orleans during the heyday of an unforgiving and unjust Jim Crow south often found him on the wrong side of the law and eventually he was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for armed robbery.  While there, he was introduced to the Black Panther’s powerful message of self determination and collective community action and quickly became one of its most persuasive and ardent practitioners.

Not long after he began to organize hunger and work strikes to protest the continued segregation, endemic corruption, and horrific abuse rampant at the prison, he and his fellow panther comrades Albert Woodfox and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown in solitary.  Robert was released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary but Herman remained there for an unprecedented 41 years, and Albert is still in a 6×9 solitary cell.

Herman’s criminal case ended with his passing, but his legacy will live on through a civil lawsuit he filed jointly with Robert and Albert that seeks to define and abolish long term solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, and through his comrade Albert Woodfox’s still active and promising bid for freedom from the wrongful conviction they both shared.

Herman was only 9 days shy of 72 years old.

Services will be held in New Orleans. The date and location will be forthcoming.

For more information visit www.angola3.org and http://angola3news.blogspot.com/.

 

What critics of Obamacare don’t get

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Drug

There is an obvious answer to this piece by Chris Arnade: Don’t abuse drugs and the problem goes away.  If that makes sense to you, read no further.  If you care about the woman in the picture because she is a human being, read on . . .

Ted Cruz and Obamacare critics clearly don’t get it

Opponents of reform don’t see how lucky they are to have easy access to healthcare. For homeless addicts, it’s a different reality 

Chris Arnade

The Guardian

Homeless drug addicts fall through the cracks in America’s healthcare system. Photograph: Chris Arnade

I arrived at 9am as planned, with $10 in my pocket and a sheet of phone numbers. Sonya was missing, her corner space now just a bed of cardboard, a bundle of dirty blankets, broken needles, and a Bible. Her kitten was gone, presumably given to a friend to watch, or maybe it fled, scared by the roar of semi-trucks only 10 meters away.

I walked the stretch of the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx, New York, where she begs for money.

At 10am I found her leaning against a pole. She smiled, “I just need to get straight before I go”. I have learned the language of addicts. She was talking about one last hit of heroin before entering detox. The thought of being dope sick in a waiting room is just too much.

Nobody had drugs available this early; she had to call for a delivery that came an hour later.

Most of her veins are dry, shriveled from overuse. Except in her foot. She took off her shoes and asked for privacy:

My feet really stink, sorry, get all soggy in these shoes. Out here you can’t really wear heels.

I grabbed her small purse, once red but now black. Inside was her paperwork: an expired driver’s license from a happier time, a Medicaid letter crumpled and torn. I struggled to make out her information; maybe it was a letter E or an F on her Medicaid ID, maybe a three or an eight. I wrote down the different possibilities.

I waited in the car, calling different hospitals and inpatient programs that accept those who only have Medicaid. Most calls went to voicemail, doomed to become messages unreturned. Forty minutes of calling netted me three rejections, all the places were filled or needed proof of residence. I explained she slept under an overpass. They shrugged. Rules are rules.

Desperate, I called a place nearby, a place most addicts hate, a place with “nasty doctors and nurses who treat you like shit”.

“What is her Medicaid ID?” I repeated the numbers and letters. “What is her drug of choice and when was the last time she used?” I looked over at Sonya, still hidden in her corner, working on her foot. “Her drug is heroin and the last time is five minutes from now.”

They had a bed. She slept in the van as I drove, overpowered by a bar of Xanax she neglected to tell me about. She slept again in the drab detox intake room, filled with others desperate to be clean. The smell of urine and bleach was overpowering.

Ted CruzUS Senator Ted CruzTwo college kids were giving a lecture on healthy eating, passing out flyers. They left one on Sonya’s lap.

After an hour of confusion, she was turned down. Her Medicaid coverage had expired. Renewal letters never reached her patch of dirt she calls home. Sonya returned to her spot, coiled on the cardboard and collapsed into the blankets, the Bible under her head.

I have tried about 15 times to take homeless addicts to detox. Only twice has it worked, and only after days of navigating misinformation and filling out paperwork.

One addict was turned down after eight hours of driving from clinic to clinic, because they were not in withdrawal at the time. I asked what in the hell I have to do to help get an addict clean. A doctor, angry at his time being taken, responded:

Just drop them off sick at the emergency room. They have to take them.

I did that once, waiting amongst families with ill children, families who are forced to use the ER as their primary care physician. We waited five hours. It ended with the addict running into the street to vomit, sick from withdrawal, his pants soiled.

After dropping Sonya off, I drove home. The radio news was filled with reports on Senator Ted Cruz’s 20-hour marathon rant against healthcare reform, which includes an expansion of Medicaid to cover an additional 21.3 million people.

Ted Cruz has access to wonderful healthcare coverage, available either through his government job or his wife’s job at Goldman Sachs.

I also have secure access to quality healthcare, because of my prior job on Wall Street. Unlike Sonya, when I was battling a penchant for beer, I had many luxurious options: weeks away in a country estate or a private suite that offered family visits. I never went that route, but it was always available to me and others as fortunate.

I understand now, after so many frustrations and failures dealing with one of America’s most neglected and at-risk populations, how lucky I am to have those choices.

Ted Cruz does not.

What’s all this about Conscious Capitalism?

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By Alan Bean

Have you heard of Conscious Capitalism yet?  If not, you soon will.

This article by Harvard student Lucia Hulsether describes the philosophy,  originally popularized by the photogenic Blake Mycoskie, CEO of TOM’S shoes (pictured below).  Her primary interest isn’t in the nuts and bolts of Conscious Capitalism, nor is she offering a critique of the philosophy; she wants to understand why this marketing strategy is so appealing for consumers.

Her basic answer is that it feels good.  We want to be on the side of the angels, and we want to shop till we drop.  Being told that we can do both at the same time sounds too good to be true.

If you are looking for a positive take on Conscious Capitalism, this rapturous piece from the Harvard Business Review should fit the bill.

If you want a slashing critique of the Conscious Capitalism model, read this piece of wrecking ball journalism from CEO Jim Garrison.

If you are in the market for an excellent book on the theology of economics (or the economics of theology) Joerg Rieger’s No Rising Tide is a great place to start.

But if you just want to know why so many people shop at places like Whole Foods, TOM”S shoes, Trader Joe’s and the Container Store (all proud proponents of Conscious Capitalism), Lucia Hulsether’s article is an illuminating place to begin.

Lucia Hulsether

Here they are, smiling and crying, the words catching in their throats as they place tiny shoes to the feet of tiny children. Seven strangers, the YouTube video tells us—a recycling truck driver, a retired nurse, a special education teacher, a college student—all astonished to be invited on a special mission: to deliver free pairs of TOMS shoes to needy children in Honduras. (more…)

Kiker: The God of the Gaps

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A few days back the Friends of Justice website had a blog post regarding Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, and his inclusion of young earthism (about 6,000 years) in his theology. That blog brought to mind this sermon, which I preached at Kent Baptist Church in Southern Indiana in Spring, 1965. I was surprised to find a full manuscript of that sermon. I would be less cerebral and less dogmatic about some of this than when I was a young Elihu challenging Job and his friends. I would also seek to be more specific regarding Greek thought, rather than painting all Greek thought with a Platonic brush. This sermon, while dated in details, is still timely. My mind has changed very little on this topic in the intervening 48 years. 

To all who studied with him, the influence of Eric Rust will be apparent in this sermon.

Charles Kiker

The God of the Gaps

There was a disturbing article in the Louisville Times this past week. It was entitled “Evolution Revolution” and concerned a group of Warren County, Ky. Citizens who are protesting the use of text books teaching the evolutionary theory. The spokesman for the group, a Warren County farmer, put it this way, “You take a child and teach him one doctrine at home to believe in the Bible and that God created man. You send him to school and he’s taught the evolutionary theory.” The farmer concluded, “Man was either created by God or else it all happened through a series of strange happenings. . . .”

There was a disturbing editorial in the Texas Baptist paper, The Baptist Standard, a few weeks ago. In this editorial the editor criticizes E. C. Rust, the capable scientist, biblical scholar, theologian and Philosophy professor of Southern Seminary. Dr. Rust is criticized by the Texas editor because he told a group of college students that science is on the brink of making a living cell, and that Christians should not be disturbed if this fact does happen.

I find it disturbing that there are movements led by Christians underway in Texas and New Mexico to keep textbooks containing certain scientific theories out of the public schools.

I find these facts disturbing because they seem to point to the fact that a group of sincere, dedicated, though misinformed, Christians are seeking to put Christianity over against modern science. (more…)

Health Care, Jobs and Death Threats

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By Alan Bean

When I watch the government-shutdown-saga unfolding in slow-motion, I can’t get Father Gregory Boyle out of my mind.

Why are so many people so opposed to the Affordable Care Act that they are willing to resort to a weird kind of legislative terrorism?  What is it about this unwieldy blend of free market capitalism and social democracy that is so offensive?  Sure, Obamacare is a compromise stacked on a compromise; a sort of best-deal-we-could-get phenomenon that leaves no one elated.  But that isn’t why the program has stirred so much primal emotion.

We are dealing with two fundamentally different ways of responding to poor people and their needs.

And that’s why Father Boyle is on my mind.

I hadn’t heard of Boyle until I heard him speak a couple of weeks ago in New Orleans.  Now I find that his book, Tattoos on the Heart is the assigned reading for the JustFaith class I am teaching.

“In 1992 Homeboy Bakery is launched,” Boyle tells us, “but seven years later, in October of 1999, it burns to the ground.”

Homeboy Bakery was created with some white-guilt donation money, to create work for Latino gang-bangers in Los Angeles.  When the building went up in flames, Boyle initially suspected arson.

“When I say this, people often presume I mean that gang members did it.  I never thought that.  Homeboy Bakery stood as a symbol of hope to every gang member in the county.  That they would destroy this place of second chances didn’t make sense.”

It’s the next remark that comes to mind when I think of the train wreck in Washington: (more…)

Judge frees Herman Wallace from prison

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Herman Wallace, a man who spent the vast majority of his life in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola prison, will die in the free world.  You can get the backstory in this piece Andrew Cohen wrote for the Atlantic just a few days ago.  An excellent summary of the myriad legal issues involved in the case of the Angola 3 is also included with Mr. Cohen’s announcement below.  It is impossible to know how many days of freedom Herman will enjoy.  He is terminally ill and his loved ones were scheduled to visit him in his prison cell for final goodbyes.  Now this bitter-sweet meeting will be taking place somewhere in the free air Mr. Wallace was denied for the entirety of his adult life.  The big deal isn’t that Herman Wallace was denied a fair legal process, but that the legal system in Louisiana failed to correct an obvious problem when it had the chance. AGB

Judge Orders Angola 3’s Herman Wallace Released From Prison

Andrew Cohen

The Atlantic

U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson did a remarkably good and decent thing today — something that every judge should aspire to do in the right circumstances. He found a way to bring a small measure of justice to a man whose entire life had been rife with injustice. He found a way to order the immediate release of Herman Wallace, a terminally ill prisoner at the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana who spent 40 years in solitary confinement in a 6′ by 9′ cell for a murder there was no valid evidence he committed.

Last week, I wrote about this case here at The Atlantic because I felt it comprised so many of the failings of the American justice system. A black man whose trial is marked by racial animus. A defendant whose attorney does unconscionable work. A lack of physical evidence or adequate investigation. Co-defendants and state witnesses with obvious incentives to lie. Punishment that was both cruel and unusual. Deliberate indifference on the part of reviewing courts. It all happened to Herman Wallace. All of it and more; his case was a disgrace from the beginning. (more…)

Why Al Mohler believes the world is 6000 years old

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Alan Bean

Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a young earth creationist.  That is, he believes the earth is 6,000 years old (give or take a decade).

When I stumbled across this fact in a Peter Enns column, I was stunned.  Dr. Mohler didn’t pick up his young earth views in school.  My theological education is exactly the same as his.  In fact, we studied under the same professors during roughly the same period.  No one at Southern Seminary was taking issue with the unanimous verdict of science in the 1980s.  The universe we talked about was created by God, to be sure, but when the issue was the age of the earth, we took our cue from the best science available.

Mohler doesn’t actually deny the unanimous verdict of science.  The earth appears to be millions of years old, and biological life appears to have undergone considerable evolution.  But Mohler believes that God created the earth with “apparent age”.  The heavens and the earth had to be created 6,000 years  ago because that’s what the biblical narrative suggests.

God wrote the Bible and God don’t lie.  End of discussion.

This makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons.  Will people now assume that I am a young-earther because I have two degrees from SBTS?  That’s a distressing thought.

But it goes much deeper than that.  How can an intelligent, well-educated man like R. Albert suddenly decide that, contrary to all appearances, one and one makes three? (more…)

When silence kills

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By Alan Bean

When John Kennedy was assassinated years ago, Dallas, Texas, was known as the most far-right city in America.  In the wake of Kennedy’s killing, Dallas pastor William Holmes asked, “In the name of God, what kind of city have we become?”

But interviewed five decades later, Holmes insists that most Dallas residents were moderate conservatives.  The folks who heckled, jeered and threatened Lyndon Johnson in 1960 and Adlai Stevenson just weeks before the Kennedy’s came to town were not representative of the community.

So, has Dallas got a bad rap?

Not really.  Rev. Holmes identifies the key problem.  Dallas was a “business-oriented, family-oriented, church- and synagogue-oriented and adamantly disinclined to engage, to confront, and to challenge anyone who held a more radically conservative point of view.”  (emphasis added). (more…)