the parish

Someone is Gonna Piss Off the Rain God, or How to Simultaneously Win and Lose

This is my piece for RNS/WaPo about the Bethany, Okla., Methodist minister who is suing the state of Oklahoma over the Native American sculpture featured on the license plate. I'm writing another piece for the Gazette locally, so I'll have more to say after that piece runs.

 

Wounded Hearts and Abused Dogs, or Why I'm for Marriage Equality

I left Christianity begrudgingly. I fought for every remaining tenet of the faith, strove to keep some faint object of faith alive, and ultimately succumbed to the myriad questions that traditional theism couldn't answer without resorting to tautologies, circular reasoning, or incoherent wish fulfillment. It was a difficult period, made worse by the fact that I worked in professional ministry. Many times I replayed the hose and push-up scene from An Officer and a Gentelman, wherein Lou Gosset, Jr. (Foley), demands of Richard Gere that he (Mayo) quit. Mayo continues to do push-ups while Foley wonders aloud why he doesn't quit. "I got nowhere else to go!" Mayo sputters. It was a poignant moment in the film, and I felt Mayo's confusion and fear as I faced my exit from the faith. What the fuck would I do if I didn't do ministry?

One of the last things I read that actually made an impact on me as I lost my faith was Paul Holmer's The Grammar of Faith. Holmer was a professor of theology at Yale (of course he was) and an expert on Wittgenstein, my philosophical idol. Holmer's thesis in the book was very simple: theology, rather than making us smart, ought to make us holy. It was a revolutionary concept in a grad school full of people who were painfully smart, people who ended up bruised and broken by the Church because they asked difficult questions or didn't settle for the same banal answers that passed for apologetics in church circles. My mentor, Dr. Steve Green, offered us Holmer because, I think, he thought Holmer could help heal us, and for a time, he did. But Holmer's ideas were viral in the best and worst way; the more you thought about them, the more they infected your thinking, and the more they infected your thinking, the more you applied them to church-thought like a template. How does this particular instantiation of church-thought measure up to Holmer's thesis?

Here's a random truth about me: I hurt when I see suffering. Really hurt. In most of my classes we begin the period with story time. Students are required to tell stories, but they must be about sadness or tragedy or arrests or unplanned pregnancies. I want to hear their stories about suffering because the sharing of suffering brings a class together. I'm not sure they ever figure that out, by the way. They just love story time without knowing why. One rule is no stories of animal suffering. I can't abide stories about tragedies that befall animals. This seems strange to my students, but the explanation is simple. Humans are rational creatures, and so we attempt to make sense of our suffering. Animals don't share that quality, and so their suffering, at least by my reckoning, is a moment of unredeemed pain. It's just shitty, inexplicable pain foisted on a creature that deserves better. It's why I change the channel when Sarah McLaughlin and abused pets appear. I hurt for the animals that have been wounded by people who are too stupid and barbaric to have a basic level of empathy for non-rational creatures.

If theology should make us holy, it should absolutely make us empathetic. Alas, that seems not to be the case. As Holmer says in The Grammar of Faith, "Theology is, then, an interpretation" (9). This, I'm sure, is a Barthian assessment. God revealed in Jesus is primary revelation. The testimony of the disciples is secondary revelation, including the Bible. Theology is tertiary revelation, at best. If all theology is interpretation, and it is, then theology is not "Word of God." Yeah, Barth, again. However, secondary revelation is not "Word of God," either. This is the theological problem with the discussions about same-sex marriage. Too many Christians treat a handful of verses as the "Word of God," but they understand the phrase as a description of the text, not an event, ala Barth and Tillich. 

I'm not even going to discuss the Constitutional issues around which this conversation should actually be formed, as I'm almost certain there is no credible response from a non-religious perspective that could militate against gay marriage in a republic or democracy. Equal protection seems to need very little parsing, as equal is a zero-tolerance designator when it comes to rights afforded to citizens who are both of age and have legal standing.

Christianity has failed to make Christians holy, and it has clearly failed to make them empathetic. This should be a catastrophic failure of what they believe, but they have insulated themselves against reality shattering their theologies by insisting that God makes them holy by virtue of killing Jesus. No work is necessary. No attempt to understand a suffering world. No reason to reach out to "the other" with compassion. No actual laboring for a genuinely holy life. No. Only a triumphalist assertion of holiness that the recipient of grace has done nothing to earn. Indeed, this dependence is seen as a virtue. This redefinition of holiness is disastrous for those who are viewed as enemies of the tribe.

For gays and lesbians, who according to a narrow theological reading of an ancient text are "others," the redefinition of holiness allows for a subset of Christians to view them as "abominations" even as that same subset views themselves as "saved by grace," even as they work to ensure the suffering and marginalizaton of their "brothers and sisters" who are also "created in the image of God." The law, which the Apostle Paul clearly says must be accepted in totality if one is to follow it, is directed against these "others," even as the legalists, by practice if not self-definition, excuse themselves from the penalty of the law by appeals to a slaughtered Savior's death. It's a theology that is self-justifying even as it condemns the marginalized to injustice, said injustice being excused by appeals to an ancient law. The whole thing is so painfully bizarre, self-refuting, and hypocritical, that I'm befuddled that Christians don't repent of their own hypocrisy and beg their gay and lesbian neighbors for forgiveness. Instead, though, they will justify their beliefs by appeals to a holy God while they excuse themselves from the hard work of holiness.

 

How to Talk to Gay People, or Just Admit You're Wrong

I need to apologize to some of my Christian friends for what they are about to read. I seldom work with binaries, as I find them less than useful, and more often than not, I find them to be false dichotomies. However, I think the tenor of a certain debate has reached a point that I'm weary of not saying something directly. This post started as a response to an article (or yet another damn article) in the NYT about the (insert ominous all-cap font) decline of evangelical America. John S. Dickerson, legitimate award-winning journalist, author, and evangelical pastor, wrote the piece as a thubmnail assessment of the paralysis currently suffered by American evangelicalism. His assessment about the symptoms is very accurate. He is, after all, an investigative journalist, and like many of his kind, he is able to look at information without flinching.

In short paragraphs he chronicles the shrinking political influence, the shrinking donations, the loss of young evangelicals, and the inability of evangelicals to "adapt to rapid shifts in the culture," especially same-sex marriage. After talking about a couple healthy signs, including inexplicably megachurches in most large cities (that is surely a sign of cancer, sir), he moves to his main concern:

But all this machinery distracts from the historical vital signs of evangelicalism: to make converts and point to Jesus Christ. By those measures this former juggernaut is coasting, at best, if not stalled or in reverse.

What is unexpected is Dickerson's lack of concern about this malaise. He thinks it a good thing. That is the subject of a future post, and one that I will probably not write until I read his forthcoming book. Dickerson then makes three statements that I want to combine before I get to the main point here.

We evangelicals must accept that our beliefs are now in conflict with the mainstream culture. We cannot change ancient doctrines to adapt to the currents of the day. But we can, and must, adapt the way we hold our beliefs — with grace and humility instead of superior hostility...I believe the cultural backlash against evangelical Christianity has less to do with our views — many observant Muslims and Jews, for example, also view homosexual sex as wrong, while Catholics have been at the vanguard of the movement to protect the lives of the unborn — and more to do with our posture...This does not mean we whitewash unpopular doctrines like the belief that we are all sinners but that we re-emphasize the free forgiveness available to all who believe in Jesus Christ.

Notice that he never says explicitly that gay marriage is wrong. That has to be inferred from the entire piece. What he says is that even if you do think it's wrong, you have to hold that belief with grace and humility. Sigh. I'm so weary of this diagnosis. I will happily grant that encouraging fellow evangelicals to avoid being truculent assholes festooned with douchebag awards is a noble cause and even a good idea. It misses the entire point, though. You can be nice and still support injustice. You can be kind and still be painfully wrong. You can be polite and still be a bigot. 

This will sound crazy to some people, but the Bible gets some stuff wrong. Way wrong. I won't trot out the list of silliness from Leviticus here. Most of you familiar with this debate are familiar with the list. Let's apply Dickerson's thinking to just one historical example: slavery. Imagine a pastor in 1850 saying, "We can't whitewash unpopular doctrines. Slavery is mandated by Scripture. It is God's natural order. What we must do is hold that belief with grace and humility." That's reductio ad absurdum, folks. The method is nonsensical. What matters here is that evangelicals come to the point where they can say they are wrong. Many have. Many try for a middle ground of tolerance and outward love, but believe that it is grievous sin. Many believe they must "speak the truth in love," and how much damage has been done under that fuckin' banner? 

Marcus Borg once offered a sensible rationale for assessing what is and isn't a moral law, especially when wanting to import ostensibly moral laws from the Tanakh. He said that trangression of the law would need to cause obvious harm to individuals or the community in order for it to be considered a moral law (excepting those that are direct offenses against the invisible Being, like blasphemy, I suppose). Those opposed to homosexuality and same-sex marriage are incapable of showing what actual harm would derive from the acceptance of homsexuality as normative within a framework that doesn't see sexuality as a simple binary. If the Bible is treated as a document that requires justification for its claims, and it should be, what is the justification for prohibiting same-sex marriage or homosexual sex? Even if you believe in an invisible being who dispenses divine laws, you must at least ask yourself the rationale for prohibitions. This one seems to have none. Absent a tenable answer for that question, please just admit you're wrong. It's way better than holding outdated, discriminatory beliefs with "grace and humility." Admitting you're wrong is a sign of true humility, in fact.

Moving Forward on a Lie, or The Mormon Moment

I learned yesterday in this excellent piece from Slate that The Book of Mormon exists in first edition form. That is stupefying. Imagine a first edition Tanakh or New Testament. Imagine how many questions could be answered about textual accuracy and canonicity. In the Mormon piece, the subject, a Mormon historian named Quinn, found six substantial changes in the text of The Book of Mormon between the first edition and the current edition. There were many more changes, but he believed six were critical in terms of Mormon theology. This is what makes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints such a rare opportunity in the study of religion. They are a modern faith. Their origin, history, and documents are all available to us. Imagine if Jesus had lived a mere 150 years ago. Imagine the possibility that John, James, Peter, and Paul built the Church at the turn of the 20th century. That's what we're dealing with when we look at the history of Mormonism.

Quinn realized that the "revelation" Smith allegedly received was not as infallible as he had been led to believe. The text had been emended, and not with slight emendations. This is no surprise to someone outside the faith of Mormonism. Smith's laughably anachronistic references to the cultures of Meso-America and North America are well documented. What Quinn discovered in his quest for the truth, though, was that Mormon leadership didn't care if the origin of their sacred text didn't square with the official story. One member of the leadership even muses aloud that "truth is not always helpful." I agree with that sentiment in the narrow sense. If someone is fat, I don't need to point it out. The truth in that sense is not helpful. I think of it as the emphasis Buddhists put on right speech. All truth-telling is not right speech, so the Mormon leadership and I agree, sort of. 

Truth is very helpful, however, if I'm trying to decided whether a set of religious teachings and practices is based on truth or falsehood. The election in two days has brought about an amazing Mormon moment in the country. Evangelicals are rushing to embrace Romney, and because they cannot embrace a member of a "cult" as POTUS, they are quick to call Mormonism a legitimate faith. (In all honesty, some are being far more consistent and calling it a cult, including Franklin "I Make Shit Up and Sign My Dad's Name To It" Graham.) Exactly what constitutes a legitimate faith is a cipher. Of the world's many religions, the five we know the most about are Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. The first is practiced by relatively few believers, especially when compared to the other four, all of which have adherents in the billions. What we know about these five faiths is a matter of history, conjecture, mythology, half truths, legends, obfuscation, sanitized narratives, and occasionally, truly true stories. We don't have access to the records as we do with the history of Mormonism.

This is a crucial difference because it allows the veneer of legitimacy to adhere to ancient faiths, but faiths that are constructed in the modern age will be revealed to be the false belief systems they are. Except that Mormonism is one of the fastest growing faiths in the world. We know Joseph Smith's life story: con man, criminal, philanderer, etc. We know the sacred text has been changed. We know the convenience with which "new revelations" have allowed Mormonism to adapt to the changing American culture. Want to be a state? Well, all you need is God to reveal that polygamy isn't okay anymore. How do you feel about the Civil Rights Act and its subsequent impact on America's racial topography? Oh, really, your Church says what?! Um, never mind. New revelation in. We're now cool with black folks. Whew. We know the sacred text is riddled with so many errors that only the willfully deceived can believe it reports anything that could be called sacred history. We know nearly every falsehood associated with the growth of this faith, and yet no one who practices it seems to mind. Now people are prepared to vote for a man who believes in an utter falsehood  because they can't stand his opponent. I get it. Lesser of two evils and all that, but this goes to the heart of how we construct our lives around some kind of tangible truth.

Why shouldn't people be free to practice whatever faith they choose even if the faith seems silly, so long as it's not harmful? Agree. Agree. Agree. However, two points. Why the hell would someone want to align his life with a false system, by which I mean a system known to be false? The older faith systems may be false; I'm almost sure they are, but they are removed from our current context so much that proving their falseness is a virtual impossibility. They are widely thought to be reasonable articulations of metaphysical questions and answers. I think they're nonsense, but they have the benefit of being too old to fully deconstruct. However, with Mormonism, we have a fully deconstructed set of claims. They're not true. They don't add up. The history says Joseph Smith made it all up. In our lucid moments, we know this to be the case, but we're so polite about religion that we dare not say it for fear of offending someone. People are allowed to have their own faith. It's their right. Agreed, again. However, it's one thing to respond in faith to things that can't be known. Responding in faith to things known to be false is not faith; it's lunacy. 

Secondly, within the Christian tradition there is a notion that because the church grew and thrived following the death of Jesus, "something" must have happened. By "something" they mean resurrection, but they pretend to be objective by not mentioning the actual word. It's a semantic way of throwing up the hands and saying, "We're not calling it resurrection, but something happened." The notion has been popularized by C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell, among others. N.T. Wright tried to give it a more scholarly treatment, but it still boiled down to Lewis's idea that the church could not have grown based on a lie. Paraphrasing, Lewis said that men will die for a lie if they don't know it's a lie, but no one will die for a lie they know to be a lie.

The history of Mormonism shows that not to be the case. Smith's followers knew who he was. They knew what he was. They witnessed it. Historians have shown us the falsity of his claims and his book, but early Mormons accepted martyrdom, believed the lie, and grew their church. They continue to grow the church, even in the face of "unhelpful truths." As we've learned with Mormonism, belief is way more complicated than just showing someone a truth or a lie. People believe what they want based on very complicated reasons, not just epistemological courage. In fact, it's more rare to find people who disbelieve things simply because those things aren't true. In fact, the more committed someone is to a system of belief, the more unlikely he believes contrary evidence, even if the evidence is irrefutable. 

What is distressing to me about this Mormon moment is that Americans are acting as if the truth doesn't matter. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. We can't always know the truth, but when we do, it might be a good idea to shape our lives around it, not around what we prefer to be true.

Mustafa Akyol on Islam and Democracy: An Interview

Mustafa Akyol is a political commentator and author based in Istanbul, Turkey. Akyol, who is Turkish, writes extensively about Islam, the Middle East, democracy, and the West. His work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal. He will be in Oklahoma City this weekend, giving lectures at OU, OCU, and UCO, and promoting his book Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. The University of Oklahoma event will be different, inasmuch as it's sponsored jointly by The Institute of Interfaith Dialog and OU's Center for Middle East Studies. Akyol will focus on the war in Syria at the OU event. I interviewed him for an advance for the Oklahoma City University event for the Oklahoma Gazette. The transcript of the interview, which was conducted via email, is below.

Who was the intended audience for your book?

First, it is open minded Muslims who would like to rethink some of the authoritarian tendencies in their tradition. Secondly, it is open minded non-Muslims, especially Westerners, who would like to see the nuances in the theology and history of Islam.

What is the overarching thesis?

In a nutshell, I am arguing for an interpretation of Islam that values freedom. This includes freedom of religion for other faiths, of freedom from authoritarian governments. I show that such a liberal approach always existed in the Islamic tradition, although the image of Islam has lately been shaped by the oppressive and even violent strains. I also show how oppressive measures in shariah, or Islamic law, can be reformed by Muslims without them abandoning their loyalty to the fundamentals of the faith.

What will the Oklahoma events focus on?

I am certainly not going to argue that all Muslims in the world are tolerant, peaceful, liberal people. Some of them clearly are not. But I will try to show that their illiberalism or militancy comes often not from religion, but political problems and cultural attitudes. I will also try to share some lessons from the Turkish experience of Islam, which is not noticed enough.

Will you be discussing themes from your book as well as othermaterial? If so, what material?

I will certainly share some themes in my book, but will also explain how they relate to some very recent events, such as the horrible terrorist attack in Libya against the late US Ambassador, or the complexities of the Arab Revolutions.

This seems to be very timely given the American film and the subsequent violence. Can you talk just a bit about the disconnect between the West and our understanding of blasphemy and blasphemy laws?

The main issue there is how to reconcile the Muslims' deep respect for their religion and the West's deep commitment to the freedom of speech. I argue that we Muslims can express loyalty to our faith peacefully in a free society where some people may unfortunately mock our faith. The Qur'an does not say "go and attack people if they make fun of Islam." It only says "do not join those people in their mockery." The latter only suggests a civilized expression of disapproval.

How are blasphemy laws consistent with freedom of speech or expression or religion? Is there a common ground?

In fact, there are blasphemy laws in some Western states, such as the UK, as well, but they are not implemented. This reminds us that blasphemy has been an issue in the Christian tradition as well. But modern day Christians have agreed that using violence to punish blasphemy or heresy (as the Inquisition did pretty rigorously for centuries!) is a wrong idea. I think a similar reconsideration is necessary for us Muslims as well, and I show how that can be possible.

Do you find terms like Islamist, Christianist, etc., helpful? Why or why not?

The term "Islamist" is helpful, for it helps distinguish the people who have turned Islam into a political ideology from traditional Muslims who see Islam mainly as faith, worship and morality. As I show in my book, Islamism is in fact a 20th century phenomenon, and is actually a synthesis of Islam with modern totalitarian ideologies like communism. I, however, believe that we Muslims should better synthesize Islam with democracy and freedom. And this is really not as impossible as many think these days.

 

The Cross in the Closet: A Review

By now, many of you have heard of Timothy Kurek, the former Liberty University student who decided to out himself to friends and family and church. Kurek is straight, by the way, but he wanted to spend a year "in the shoes" of LGBT folks after a friend was kicked out of her house for confessing to her parents that she was a lesbian. He enlisted the help of a couple friends, including a faux boyfriend, and an aunt. No one else knew his confession was a sham. Since the release of his book, The Cross in the Closet,he's been written up in The Guardian and featured on ABC News. 

Kurek's story is genuinely compelling, and readers (well, most, but more on that later) will tend to root for him. The Guardian talks about a book in the tradition of Black Like Me, and that's probably going too far unless they simply meant it's a memoir about living like "the other." There are some flaws in this book, and it seems some editing would have helped tremendously. 300+ pages simply weren't necessary to tell the story. There is so much anguished hand-wringing and theologizing that I found it difficult to endure in parts. As a reader, I wanted to hear about the interactions with his new world and the responses from the denizens of his old world more than I wanted to hear his ofttimes excruciating inner monlogue. To be fair, there are times that his interior conversation is excellent. For example...

There is a scene in the book where Kurek enters a gay dance club for the first time. He is set upon by a shirtless man with glittered torso who drags him on the dance floor and proceeds to dirty dance with him. Kurek is mortified to the point he shames the man. His inner monlogue at that point is outstanding.

Finally he looks down, and I take the brief moment to run from the club. I am overcome with regret, and as I walk to my car I resolve to change. If I am going to do this, to really do this, I cannot merely mask the judgment inside of me—I will have to leave it at the door. I will save the judgment for myself, and try from now on to meet these people on their turf, with an open mind and heart. --pg. 37

Here he gets to the issue quickly, without excess words. His insight about going beyond "masking judgment" is helpful to writer and reader alike. I wanted more of that sort of concise insight, not paragraphs of "how I let my judgment go and learned to love gay people."

He also makes use of an externalized metaphor, and this not being an episode of "Scrubs," I found it more annoying than helpful. He sees his internal Pharisee sitting next to him, and he engages the Pharisee in dialog or they exchange barbs, mockery, etc., throughout the book. I'd compare it to Dexter and his dad or brother, but those guys were dead. The problem isn't just the externalized metaphor; it's that he's already writing pages and pages of internal dialog about his struggle, and then he adds his conversations with the Pharisee, which are, well, internal dialogs, thereby extending the amount of anguished hand-wringing.

Last criticism. (I think.) Audience. I always wonder whom Christian authors are addressing. Ingrained in them is this notion that all books must be at least partly evangelistic, even novels, which, as we've all experienced, leads to shitty novels. Kurek writes as if he's addressing fellow Christians who don't fully understand the experience of the LGBT community vis-a-vis their interactions with fundangelicals. It's a noble cause, and I say that with no sarcasm. However, if Kurek wants his fellow Liberty-ites and his Nashville Baptists to hear what he's saying, suggesting "Your god is a dick," is probably going to lead to the closing of the book, (I did completely agree with the sentiment in the context, but I'm not a Christian.) if they even get past his first two uses of "bullshit." Profanity as indicator of hip, understanding Christianity is a bad idea if one wants to reach conservative Christians. (It's virtually the same impulse that leads Kurek and others to mention beers by name in their stories. Just say, "I drank a beer." If you mean to indicate a Portlandesque liberal, say, "I drank a microbrew." That will suffice. Hipsterisms are the death of good writing.) 

Those are the main criticisms, and a couple are just minor grievances. Overall, the story is compelling, the characters well-drawn, and the encounters richly narrated. I did think calling Westboro Baptist members Christians stretches the defintion far beyond the breaking point, but Kurek was attempting to eschew judgment and make a bigger tent, for which he should also be commended. The sections where he deals with his mother are genuinely moving, especially when he reads her journal and discovers what she's not saying aloud. Ultimately, Kurek maintains his commitment to evangelical Christianity, but he allows that LGBT deserve equal rights and are committed to God in ways fundangelicals refuse to understand. Many of us who already believed that (or believed it didn't matter because of our atheologies) welcome him to the light. I hope the book allows both LGBT folks insights into the interior working of theological deconstruction (something the character Will does very well in the book), as well as affords fundangelicals the opportunity to see the damage they've done to the LGBT community.

Disclosure Notice: I received a free, electronic copy of the book from Speakeasy in exchange for this review.

Brian McLaren on Christian Identity and Homosexuality

This is the transcript of an interview I did with Brian McLaren to advance his Oklahoma City appearance on October 12 at Mayflower UCC for the Oklahoma Gazette. We started off talking about his new book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Eventually, we got to the issue of people's response to his involvement in his son's same-sex blessing ceremony. As always, questions are in italics, and his answers are in regular type. If I make a comment or editorialize, I'll note it.

How did you come to write this book?

I've been thinking about writing is for a long time, probably since A New Kind of Christian. As I was writing it, I was aware that a new kind of Christian entails a new Christian identity, especially related to people of other faiths. In NKOC, I was trying to deal with Christian identity inside Christianity, but with the new book I look at the different problems that result as Christianity relates to other faiths.

We  (ed: by which he seems to mean American Christianity, but I suspect we could extend it to Anglican Communion, etc.) do two things well. We either have a strong Christian identity and a corresponding hostility to other faiths, or we have a weak Christian identity that is tolerant of other faiths. What we need to consider is a strong Christian identity that is benevolent toward other faiths.

How is this different than the old ecumenical movement or the Lausanne Covenant?

I think the ecumenical movement has been very good in treating other faiths charitably. The Lausanne Covenant itself is charitable and not hostile toward other faiths. The ecumenical movement didn't always show a strong Christian identity, so I want to frame the discussion with the ideas of strong Christian identity and that charity toward other faiths.

For many people, the telos of evangelism is that the whole world must agree with us--and that's true of people who aren't Christian. There are pluralists who want everyone to be a pluralist. This isn't just about evangelism, though. This new Christian identity has to take into account this question: what does love for my neighbor look like if my neighbor doesn't want to convert?

How do you answer it?

We have actually had Christians mobilizing to prevent the building of mosques in the United States, like the group in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Do you think Muslims in those cities feel like they have loving Christian neighbors? A strong Christian identity means that we speak up with them and in their defense. 

We are facing monumental global crises — the environment, the divide between rich and poor, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the threat of catastrophic war. Governments and religions cannot tackle these problems alone. I like what Rick Warren says about this. He said he's interested in interfaith dialogs as much as he's interested in interfaith projects.  If we can do that, it can open up a new chapter in Christian mission.

The book's release is timely given the recent film about the Prophet Muhammad. What do you say to those sorts of knuckleheads who believe provocation is the best way to address another faith?

People are going to be knuckleheads. In those instances, we have to speak up from an alternative religious position. The alternative to bad religion isn't no religion; it's good religion. When Christians say and do harmful, prejudicial and violent things, we must speak up. When they moblize against mosques, we must speak up with and in defense of our Muslim neighbors. In the dispute between Israel and Palestine, if either side engages in inhumane or unjust behavior, we must speak up. We must speak up to our own tradition, someteimes siding with other traditions against our own.

Do you think words like Islamist and Christianist are useful in these moments?

Andrew Sullivan uses the word Christianist to make a helpful distinction between a political ideology and Christian practice. It's a useful name, and there is a value in naming things. However, there are also unintended consequences.

I grew up in a fundamentalist setting. Fundamentalists of every kind almost never seee themselves as oppressors, only as victims. They see no harm in their words and names directed at homosexuals or Muslims. In fact, they believe they are speaking the truth. However, any perceived insult directed at them, a term like Christianist, for example, only serves to stir up more victimization on the part of fundamentalists. Recently, I was speaking at an event and I took the opportunity to describe certain people as Islamophobic. Only afterwards did I realize that the people who most needed to hear what I was saying took offense to the term.

You recently took some criticism for presiding over your son's same-sex blessing ceremony. How did you react to that?

As a parent, you always feel protective of your kids. You don't want them to be hurt. I felt that way about my son as the ceremony gained attention. These things make it apparent that issues related to hostility and identity also apply within the faith. I know Christianity Today had it on their blog, but I didn't read it or the comments. My wife did, though, and she was very upset. We did receive all sorts of texts and voicemails from people who supported our decision and who disagreed respectfully.

I keep hearing the war is won on the LGBT issue, and we're just fighting mop-up battles. Thoughts?

I think this issue will follow a similar path as racism and equality for women. That's good news and bad. There still are pockets of resistance on those two issues. We still have segregated worship in American churches. Women are prevented from being in ministry or being ordained, and they are in some places viewed as less equal. We will have the same pockets of resistance on the LGBT issue, too. The good news is that younger people view it as more normative. They see people for who they are. And I think in the U.S., even for those who are opposed, it's still a better environment than elsewhere.

I've spent a great deal of time in Africa and Asia over the past several years. Gay people's lives are still in danger in some of those countries. Globally ,we have a long way to go. The most conservative American Christian I can imagine wouldn't call for the death of a gay person for being gay.

It's been 11 years since NKOC. Anything you would change in that book looking back?

No. I don't think so. I was really lucky. I started writing that book when I was 40. I'd been through the issues in the book by then. At that age, writing left me with less regrets, so there was nothing really to change. I did open up areas that I didn't fully work through, but I've done that in subsequent books.

What's next?

I'm not certain on the next project. It will be some sort of catechesis. What would an introduction to the faith look like with this new Christian identity? What would it look like to re-introduce someone to the faith? That's what I'm thinking about. I'm not ready to write it yet.

Joel Osteen: Hope, an Interview

Joel Osteen's Night of Hope was in Oklahoma City last night. I did the advance for the Oklahoma Gazette. As is always the case, I have way more material than could go in the story. This is the full text of the phone interview with Osteen.

What is the purpose of the Night of Hope tour? Can I call it a tour?

We wanted to see some people who watch the television show, to connect with them. Many people who watch the television program don’t attend church. This night gives them an opportunity to take a stand for their faith.

I guess tour is right. We've been doing this for six or seven years, one city each month. We've did New York City, Anaheim, and Atlanta to start. I never dreamed people would come out, but we sold out every venue. The Oklahoma City Night of Hope will be our 120th show.

Are you combining this with a book tour? I saw that Every Day a Friday is now in paperback.

Actually, I will be doing a book signing, but by the time I get there, I'll have a new book out. I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life.

What will the event consist of? Is it like a worship service? And why hope?

It is a night of praise and worship, yes. I'll share my story in the sermon. Victoria will speak about relationships, and my mom will talk about overcoming cancer. The evening is meant to lift people’s spirits.

I think hope is important. We can't live without it. It allows us to move forward from wherever we are.

Your father was sort of a traditional Pentecostal. Is there any of that theology in what you do? What part of his theology did he pass on to you?

My father was really more of a mix of Baptist and Pentecostal, what would later be called Charismatic. Being raised with him for 36 years and traveling and working together every day for many years, I'm sure his theology comes through in what I do. My father was for people; he believed in lifting them up. That's really what I took from him.

You were an unlikely successor. How was that first time at the pulpit?

I was very nervous the first time I preached. I had to hold onto the podium because I didn’t want anyone to see how badly my hands were shaking. I saw a picture of it a while back. I was very young; it was 13 years ago.

Ever watch the video of it?

(laughs) No. I don't think I want to see that. Still, I felt like I was supposed to do it. I did get comfortable over time.

Your critics accuse you of preaching a 'prosperity gospel.' How do you respond to that?

I never liked the term ‘prosperity gospel.' There is only one gospel. Prosperity to me is part of that one gospel, and it means good relation ships, peace of mind, and many other things. When some people say it, they are talking only about money. It comes from this group who believes Christians should suffer and be poor. I don't read the Bible that way, though. The way I read the Bible, I believe we’re to be leaders, be examples, and be a blessing to other people.

You have two children. How old and what are their plans?

Well, Alexandra is only 13, so she's in school. Jonathan is 17 now. He's finishing up high school and plans to go to the University of Texas for film studies.

You've had remarkable success with Lakewood. What do you think your father would be most proud of you for?

I'm sure he'd be proud of me for carrying on the legacy he started. He began with only 90 people, and now we have more than 40,000. Overall, I think he'd just be proud in general, though. I believe he'd say he couldn't be more proud than to see a son take over an do well.

What do you want people to take away from the Oklahoma City event?

You know, we're still amazed at how many people come out. We want to lift them up, give them hope. Whatever they're facing, we want them to have hope. Really, though, I leave more inspired than the people who come. They give me hope and inspire me. I just want them to know that God’s dream for them is bigger than their dreams for themselves.

Evangelizing Gay Chicken Sandwiches, or Eat Mor Crow

Recently I wrote a post about what non-Christians get wrong when talking to conservative believers about same sex marriage. Thanks in large part to Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy's rather Pat Robertson-esque remarks about God's judgment, I get to turn the tables. Here then is a primer on how Christians ought not address the issue with non-Christians.

We can begin with Dan Cathy's remarks. Unless Mr. Cathy has now joined Westboro Baptist Church, he will have a difficult time accounting for all the sins in America that God hasn't judged us for. Let me be clear, I'm pretty sure Westboro has exactly two convictions, neither of which are related to Christianity: we are media whores and we love money. What they have managed to do, though, is provide a blueprint for Mr. Cathy to follow. God's judgment is everywhere, and not all of it is related to homosexuality. Soldiers dying in war are a result of God's judgment. Crime. Porn. AIDS. Just connect every ill to God's judgment, and voila, you have the perfect method for insisting that people follow the rules your tribe thinks are important to avoid God's judgment. The criteria are nebulous, but what really matters here is power and having the world the way my tribe prefers it.

Excursus: To show how abhorrent this practice can become, one only need read the heinously stupid, offensive, and sexist comments by one Jared Wilson, a self-flaggelating Calvinist with an abiding hostility to women couched as righteousness. As part of his diatribe against the shitty 50 Shades of Grey (the only thing we agree on is that modifier), Wilson quotes an even more odious Wilson, Douglas Wilson, who once wrote that rape is God's "general judgment" on America for abandoning our god-ordained gender roles, including women submitting to their husbands' sexual desires. What is clear about this tactic is that there is simply no way for a Christian to convince any nonChristian of any kind of connection between what is happening and "God's judgment," nor can they connect their assertions to any tenable biblical position.

Homosexuality is not natural. Well, the people engaging in gay sex aren't androids, so it's clearly part of the natural world. You may mean it's against natural law, but then you'd have to explain why animals do it as well. Then you could say it's against god's natural order, and I'd ask you why man on man was prohibited in Leviticus and not woman on woman. (This is the case, by the way. The prohibition is gender specific.) Is lesbianism part of god's natural order? That would make me feel so much better about certain porn sites.

Homosexual sex is anatomically improper. This is a mechanical argument. Here's all I know to say: they seem to enjoy it, and straight couples enjoy similar experiences, so unless you're part of the "vajayjay only" movement, leave this one alone.

Homosexual sex doesn't lead to procreation. No shit. But it does lead to recreation. Again, unless you're part of the "ovulation only" movement, you probably ought to leave this one alone as well. I should also point out that many people don't give a single shit about having kids. To say that it's improper because it doesn't lead to childbirth is to confuse pragmatics with aesthetics or biological function with physio-emotional activity. Unless you can demonstrate that it's immoral, you're making an argument about preference.

Homosexual sex is immoral. There it is. Trot out the verses from Leviticus. You'll need to pretend God doesn't order the execution of homosexuals (Lev. 20:13). You'll also need to pretend lesbianism doesn't count (Lev. 18:22). You'll then need to explain all the prohibitions from the holiness code (Lev. 17-26) that are no longer considered immoral. And finally, you'll need to realize you're talking to people who don't believe your magic book is magic.

That's the critical issue here, folks. People like me who don't believe the Bible is inspired will only shake our heads at you when you pick and choose verses from your magic book while you happily ignore hundreds of commandments from the same book. Even if you followed every jot and tittle of the law (that's Bible talk for you pagans), I still wouldn't believe the book is binding on people because I don't believe in the inspiration of your book. No "rule" in the Bible is binding on anyone. Christians who think the rules are binding are loathe to actually follow them, but when it comes to an issue of power, politics, or cultural control, they feel absolutely free to apply rules with no hermeneutical method save preference.

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexual sex. Here's where ignorance of your own text gets you, Christians. It would help if you actually read the damn book. In Ezekiel 16:49-50, the prophet chronicles the sins of Sodom: overfed, unconcerned, haughty, contempuous of the poor and needy, and committing abominations. There's that word. What is clear here is that Ezekiel doesn't list homosexuality, but a Christian will be quick to jump on abominations. Two things, read back through the holiness code to see how many abominations there are, many of which will shock you for their utter banality, and then recognize how hospitality customs functioned (function) in the Middle East. The greatest sin of Sodom was that her inhabitants intended to rape visitors to the city. It was an egregious offense to treat a visitor badly, but to consider sexual violence against them, male or female, would certainly qualify as an abomination.

I fully expect Christians to still use these passages as if someone somewhere will finally be convinced that God hates homosexuality. The odds are good that if anyone is converted by this shclock, the next obvious question ought to be "When do we start executing them?" After all, isn't consistency warranted here?

Not Desiring God, or Tell Me a Better Story

I was reading a damn good essay earlier about how theists, especially Christians, get it wrong in the debates with atheists. What also stands out in the debates is how atheists get it wrong. The writer is very sincerely trying to make the point that Christians must posture themselves in word and deed as people who make their god look desirable. This comes as no surprise to those of us who studied at Southern Nazarene University. Over and over again in the grad program, Prof. Steve Green emphasized that we are all people know of our god. Words don't mean anything; how we behave will communicate to people what kind of god we serve. It's one the main things I took from my education there, even as my faith was finding no handholds for the deconstructive process I was in. 

I like to think of philosophy as therapeutic, as a means of clarifying language. (Yes, I had a heavy dose of Wittgenstein.) It won't tell us very much beyond what someone's words seem to mean versus what they actually mean. Still, that's a valuable tool (and I do recognize that the logic side of philosophy helps us understand more than the meanings of words.) Just allow me to oversimplify, and you'll see where this is headed. When atheists and theists debate god, the field of battle is all wrong. The current tactic when debating scientific materialists is to show why scientific materialism is untenable. This isn't necessarily true, but it does leave more questions open than answered. As if theism doesn't. And that is sort of the point. Neither system works all that well, so both sides attack each other based on the weaknesses of the opponent, never offering a substantive defense of their own weaknesses. Why defend systems when the therapeutic approach shows that both systems suck? Why not allow the questions to be open? Why not admit the ad hoc nature of both endeavors? Why not just admit that there is a ton of shit no one knows? (And if you're wondering, I'm far closer to the materialist view than the theist view.) 

If by some miracle a theist was finally able to demonstrate irrefutably that materialism is an empty system, she would not be one step closer to demonstrating the truth of theism. This is what the debaters don't seem to understand. The very best of the modern Christian philosophers, Plantinga, was seemingly aware of this, so he created a fiction called "properly basic beliefs," and then he put "belief in god" in that category. Lovely. No more hard work showing why the hell anyone would believe in this god. It's just properly basic. Now, let's allow the howlingly funny assumption that belief in god is properly basic. Where are you? Deism? Polytheism? Animism? How far does that path take you? It sure as hell doesn't arrive at "Christ Crucified." At that point, the apologists will abandon their faith claims and insist on playing by the same rules as scientific materialists: history, textual criticism, archaeology, linguistic analysis, and so on to prove the superiority of their version of theism over the other versions. Pay no attention to how we got here, folks, just pay attention to where we're headed. Yeah, no thanks. 

Back to Professor Jeff Cook's excellent essay. Here's the best line in his argument: "We have not established that Christianity should be revered, nor that it is attractive, nor that it is worthy of affection. We prefer to pull out our five proofs for its 'truth and argue our misguided interlocutors into the Kingdom cold." I have no quibble with the second part. Five proofs mean nothing to someone who doesn't already want to believe. Belief is seldom rational, and it's almost always intuitive when it comes to abstract concepts, except for those who actually do the hard working of thinking things through. As a professor myself, I assure you it's a rare student who thinks things through, and as a former pastor, I assure you congregants aren't any better than their college-age offspring.

As for his first sentence, though, I do have a quibble. It's bigger than a quibble. You will never be able to show me that Christianity is attractive, and not because of all the hypocrites in the world. Shit. We're all hypocrites; we just have different convictions about when to live the lie. I don't believe the story. I don't believe that I need salvation. I don't believe that you offer a remedy to a malady that besets me. I don't believe the whole narrative, and having rejected the metanarrative because it doesn't hold together at all, I will automatically reject the extrapolations that come from it. He speaks of a desire that we already know is there. Fine. But many of us tried for decades to fulfill that desire in the context of your theistic metanarrative, and we have left unfulfilled. Now, that could be because Calvin was right and I am a reprobate, but that just makes your god a dick, and once again, unattractive. 

That is why in a debate I don't need to defend a system. I just know yours doesn't work. What's mine? Well, after four decades in a theist worldview, I'm still cobbling bits together. I happily call it ad hoc, and I'm untroubled by it. I don't worry about eternity. Who the hell wants to live that long? Yeesh. I don't worry about sin or forgiveness, except in this material world of hurt feelings and betrayals and sins against each other. I don't worry about hell. What an unbelievable amount of time and energy and paper have been devoted to that most barbaric of obsessions. I don't feel any sense of angels, demons, holy spirits, burning bushes or any other encounter with the holy. 

This is not to say I've utterly rejected all concepts of god, and that is why I don't call myself an atheist. I call myself a skeptic because I'm withholding judgment in case more evidence becomes available. What kind? No idea. I reject theism. I reject all the prefixed theisms as well. That doesn't mean I'm a materialist, but it does mean I'm weary of watching atheists defend materialism rather than just go straight to the demand that theists give any shred of evidence of the truth of their extraordinary claims. It's a tedious process, and Professor Cook is right that we do well to ridicule any idea that a story of violence, death, blood sacrifice, invisible creatues, and unverifiable ontological claims could ever lead to a desire for theism. He didn't mean it that way, but I do.