I delivered the following lecture on Friday, November 13, 2015, at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA, at the gracious invitation of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
CONFRONTING ETHICAL AND DISCIPLESHIP ISSUES IN THE
21ST CENTURY
Baptist Joint
Committee Lecture Series
Fuller
Theological Seminary (Travis Auditorium)
Pasadena,
California
Friday, November
13, 2015, 2 PM
Jesus declared in the lesson of the Good
Samaritan that the greatest commandment is to love God with one’s entire being
and to love others as oneself. Today I will address theological, hermeneutical,
and ethical deficiencies which contribute to our inability or refusal, as
followers of Jesus, to
better understand religious liberty as a value that must co-exist alongside and
be recognized as integral to commitment to equality because of the love mandate
in the Gospel of Jesus.
My fundamental premise is that
evangelical followers of Jesus have not theologically, hermeneutically, and ethically
considered religious liberty to be part of the deep and wide justice imperative
that appears throughout Scripture. This shortcoming
is because the Hebrew and New Testaments are not studied, preached, or
understood as valuable religious liberty source material, in much the same way
evangelicals have refused to understand that those sacred writings declare
salvation to be a social justice imperative.
Consequently, most evangelical followers
of Jesus affirm faith without a Biblical appreciation about the relationship
between religious liberty, discipleship, and social justice. Failure to include religious liberty as part
of the way followers of Jesus understand discipleship hinders the ability of
evangelical followers of Jesus to develop and live out a robust social ethic
consistent with the teachings of Jesus and the social justice imperative found
in the Torah.
The
Traditional Approach to Religious Freedom
The freedom of a person or community to
publicly or privately manifest religious beliefs or teach, practice, worship,
and otherwise observe religious traditions—including the freedom to not follow
any religion—has long been considered a fundamental human right in various
societies across the ages. In a country
with a state religion, religious liberty contemplates that the government
permits other sects aside from the state religion, and does not persecute
believers of other faiths.
Many, if not most, evangelical followers
of Jesus view religious liberty in the United States from the perspectives of Western
European and U.S. history. Protestants will
trace their views on religious liberty to 1517, when Martin Luther published
his famous 95 Theses in Wittenberg in an effort to reform Catholicism. Luther was given an opportunity to recant at
the Diet of Worms before Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Luther refused to recant, was declared a
heretic, and was then sequestered on the Wartburg, where he translated the New
Testament into German. After Luther was
excommunicated by Papal Bull in 1521, the reformation movement gained ground,
spread to Switzerland, and then grew to England, France, and elsewhere in
Europe.
The French Revolution abolished state
religion in France. However, all
property of the Catholic Church was confiscated, and intolerance against
Catholics ensued. Under Calvinist
leadership, the Netherlands became the most religiously tolerant country in
Europe by granting asylum to persecuted religious minorities (French Huguenots,
English Dissenters, and Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal).
Religious freedom began in the
Netherlands and New Amsterdam (now New York) during the Dutch Republic. When New Amsterdam surrendered to the English
in1664, freedom of religion was guaranteed in the Articles of
Capitulation. That freedom also
benefited Jews who arrived on Manhattan Island in 1654 after fleeing Portuguese
persecution in Brazil. Other Jewish
communities were eventually established during the 18th century at
Newport, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charleston, South Carolina,
Savannah, Georgia, and Richmond, Virginia.
Efforts to escape religious intolerance
are part of the national heritage of our society. Recall that the Pilgrims first sought refuge
from religious persecution in the Netherlands, and later founded Plymouth
Colony in Massachusetts in 1620.
However, most of the early colonies were
not generally tolerant of religious pluralism, with the notable exception of
Maryland. The colony of Maryland,
founded by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, was the first government in what
eventually became the United States to formally recognize freedom of religion,
in 1634.
Roger Williams was forced to establish
the new colony of Rhode Island to escape religious persecution driven by the
Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans were active persecutors of Quakers,
along with Puritans in Plymouth Colony and other colonies along the Connecticut
River.
In 1660, an English Quaker named Mary
Dyer was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts for repeatedly defying a Puritan law
that banned Quakers from the colony. Her
hanging marked the beginning of the end of the Puritan theocracy and New
England independence from English rule, as King Charles II in 1661 prohibited
Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism.
Students of U.S. history, and
particularly religious liberty, are no doubt familiar with William Penn. Chief Justice Earl Warren summed up Penn’s
courageous commitment to religious liberty in his book, A Republic, If You
Can Keep It. William Penn was a Quaker leader in London. The Quakers were not recognized by the
government and were forbidden to meet in any building for worship. In 1681 King Charles II of England gave the
Pennsylvania region (Pennsylvania means “Penn’s Woods”) to William Penn, a
Quaker, who established the Pennsylvania colony so Quakers and other faiths
could have religious freedom.
These and other historical events, along
with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, form the
foundation for what many people, including followers of Jesus, understand about
religious liberty. The First Amendment to the federal Constitution, ratified in
1791, reads, in pertinent part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
That constitutional guarantee was later made
applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment states that “No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Together, the First and Fourteenth Amendments
guarantee that government will not establish a religion, prefer one religion
over another, become entangled in disputes involving religious doctrine,
practices, and officials, nor interfere with the “free exercise” of religion.
However, the religious liberty ideal has
Biblical antecedents in the Hebrew Testament, the Gospels of Jesus, and the
rest of the New Testament.
Religious
Liberty Antecedents in Hebrew Testament
We read at Genesis 41 that Joseph, a
great grandson of Abraham, became prominent in Egypt when his spiritual
discernment was recognized because he interpreted an Egyptian pharaoh’s dreams
as an omen of approaching years of agricultural prosperity followed by years of
famine. The dramatic narrative about Joseph
recognizing his brother Benjamin, at Genesis 43, becomes even more meaningful
when we read that the Egyptians who dined with Joseph “ate with him by themselves”—apart
from Joseph their prime minister and apart from Joseph’s brothers—“because the
Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the
Egyptians.”
Joseph rose to political prominence in
Egyptian society due to his spiritual discernment. Nevertheless, the social separation described
in that dining narrative indicates that Joseph had something resembling a
“separate but equal” co-existence with his fellow Egyptian political
operatives. Joseph is recognized in the
final chapters of Genesis as a man whose religious values and ethnic identity
set him apart in Egyptian society.
Exodus, the second book in the Hebrew
canon, opens with the dramatic story about how the Hebrew people were socially,
economically, and politically oppressed by the Egyptian majority. We traditionally have understood the Exodus
as the salvation narrative of the Hebrew people from Egyptian bondage.
However, the Exodus narrative also
exposes a struggle for religious, social, and physical liberty in the collision
between the religious, political, social, and ethical framework of the Egyptian
empire and the liberating design of God presented through the agency of Moses
and his brother Aaron. As the editors of
New Oxford Annotated Bible note:
The predictability, the timing of both
beginning and ending, the intensity, the contest between Aaron and the
[Egyptian] magicians, the distinction between Egyptians and Israelites, and the
emphasis on Pharaoh’s knowing (acknowledging) God all point to combat on two
interrelated levels: between Israel’s
God and Egypt’s gods (12.12), including the deified Pharaoh, and between their
human representatives, Moses and Aaron, and Pharaoh, his officials, and his
magicians.
Exodus is also a vivid illustration about
the quest for religious liberty and the collision of divergent systems of
religious belief. Moses was sent to
Egypt to present a divine demand to the Pharaoh that the Israelites be freed so
they could worship God. During the series of plagues Pharaoh’s
courtiers appealed on one occasion for their leader to allow the Israelites to
go, saying: “How long shall this fellow
[Moses] be a snare to us? Let the people
go, so that they may worship the LORD their God…”
Deuteronomy should also be understood for its relevance to our
understanding of religious liberty. The
Israelites entered Canaan bent on genocide of the indigenous population based
on the view that nothing short of that would allow them to be a holy people.
From Judges onward, the Hebrew canon
presents numerous accounts of political, military, and social collisions
between followers of the religion of Moses and neighboring societies known for
different religious beliefs and practices.
And the writings concerning the Hebrew prophets from Elijah forward
contain vivid accounts of competing, and often violent, religious claims, ranging
from the standoff between Elijah and the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel,
to the threats and dangers suffered by Jeremiah from other, politically favored,
religious figures of his time.
Religious liberty is a theme
dramatically presented in the post-exilic writings of the Hebrew canon. Like Joseph in Egypt, Daniel, Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah preserved their ethnic and religious identity after they
were taken to Babylon. The fiery furnace experience of Hananiah
(Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach), and Azariah (Abednego) we read about at Daniel 3
and the lion’s den experience of Daniel about which we read at Daniel 6 are plainly
lessons about civil disobedience based on religious devotion. Some commentators view the historical
novella of Esther, and particularly the title character, as representative of
“the marginal and sometimes precarious status of Diaspora Jews who were obliged
to accommodate their lives to an alien environment” in a way that “differs
markedly from the outlook of Diaspora Jews like Ezra and Nehemiah.
Religious
Liberty Antecedents in the Gospels
The Gospels of Jesus present numerous
illustrations of divergent religious systems engaged in a more or less uneasy
co-existence. The Jewish people of
Palestine lived under Roman political and military control, but retained the
freedom to follow their religious traditions.
Yet, the Gospels also demonstrate the
challenges that ensue when a minority religious movement (the religion of Jesus)
attempts to co-exist alongside a dominant religious tradition (that of the
Sanhedrin Council orthodoxy). The
contrast between how Jesus understood and applied the moral, social, and
ethical imperatives of Torah and how Torah was understood and applied by
established and recognized religious leaders of his time and place runs
throughout the Gospels.
The sharp difference between the
religion of Jesus and the religious perspective of the scribes and Pharisees
resulted in clashes between Jesus, followers of Jesus, and unnamed
critics. At Mark 9 we read that Jesus
found his disciples and “some scribes” arguing in the same passage where Jesus
healed a boy afflicted by what the text terms “an unclean spirit.”
Religious liberty is a recurring theme
in the Gospels. We read in Luke’s Gospel
that when disciples of Jesus tried to stop an anonymous exorcist from casting
out demons Jesus contradicted their intolerance, saying, “Do not stop him; for
whoever is not against you is for you.” The night-time meeting between Jesus and
Nicodemus vividly demonstrates an attempt at intra-faith dialogue. When we read about the encounter between
Jesus and the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s Well, we are learning how the social
justice impetus within Jesus included a religious liberty aspect that impelled him
to push aside longstanding sectarian and ethnic animosities in pursuit of
redemptive fellowship.
The Johannine community to which we owe
the Fourth Gospel appears to have understood the religion of Jesus as a
minority movement that threatened the religious, political, cultural, and
social hegemony of the Sanhedrin Council, especially after the raising of
Lazarus.
When we read about the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin Council and his
subsequent indictment by the Sanhedrin before Pontus Pilate, the Roman
governor, we are reading how religious figures in a dominant religion
fabricated a national security accusation to stamp out the emerging religion of
Jesus.
According to John’s Gospel, Pilate was
not interested in refereeing a religious dispute between rival Palestinian
Jewish factions, so Pilate tried to release Jesus. However, when Sanhedrin leaders associated
Jesus with insurrection, Pilate lost interest in achieving liberty for Jesus,
and ordered him crucified. We rarely, if ever, hear the crucifixion of
Jesus interpreted for its religious liberty significance alongside the
traditional salvation perspective.
Religious
Liberty Challenges from Acts to Revelation
We do not proceed far in Acts before the
religion of Jesus collides again with the dominant religious movement in
Jerusalem. Peter and John were arrested
and brought before the Sanhedrin Council after they healed a lame man and
proclaimed that the man was healed “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
whom you crucified…” As the religion of Jesus began attracting
more followers, the threats Peter and John received turned into sectarian
persecution, as shown by the trial and stoning of Stephen.
We read about the encounter between
Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch at Acts 8, and are accustomed to that passage
being highlighted for its evangelism and missionary significance. Yet, the passage is equally instructive
concerning religious liberty.
Philip fled Jerusalem after the stoning
of Stephen and went to the city of Samaria.
His presence was not merely tolerated.
His ministry effort there was so well received that Peter and John,
dispatched from Jerusalem to investigate it, were also welcomed and
well-received. These are clear examples
of religious liberty and inclusion taking root among early followers of Jesus.
We do not gain a complete perspective
about the conversion of Saul of Tarsus if we disregard that Saul was a leading
force in the effort to root out and exterminate followers of Jesus. Saul’s opposition to religious liberty
deserves to be highlighted.
After Saul was converted, he was
accepted by the Damascus community. When we read in Acts 9 that “the church
throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace,” “was built up,” and
“increased in numbers,”
we may reasonably argue that the religion of Jesus traces its early ascendance
to conflicts, challenges, and victories surrounding the exercise of religious
liberty.
Beginning at Acts 10, we read how early
followers of Jesus began to struggle among themselves with divergent
viewpoints. Peter’s rooftop vision and
later baptism of Cornelius
eventually forced the young religious movement to become ethnically
inclusive.
By the time we reach Act 15, that
inclusivity was being challenged by traditionalists who insisted that Gentile
followers of Jesus become circumcised.
The council we read about at Antioch in Acts 15 shows how the young
movement wrestled with divergent religious views among its own adherents,
struggled to co-exist alongside the religious teachings and practices of the
Sanhedrin Council, all while living as colonized people under Roman political
and military occupation.
When we read about Paul and Silas being jailed
and later in Philippi at Acts 16, we are reading about a religious liberty
struggle. When we read that Paul and Silas were accused
of “turning the world upside down” during their brief ministry in Thessalonica,
and when we read elsewhere in Acts and other New Testament epistles about the
imprisonment, trials, and other experiences of Paul during his missionary
efforts, we are reading how the religion of Jesus was threatened and oppressed
by the dominant religious faction. The
New Testament closes with the Revelation of John who wrote that he was exiled
on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea “because of the word of God and the
testimony of Jesus.”
The
Cost of Ignoring Biblical Religious Liberty Antecedents
Evangelical followers of Jesus are not
nurtured to recognize these and other religious liberty illustrations in our
sacred writings. This demonstrates a glaring
shortcoming in the traditional ways evangelicals engage theology, hermeneutics,
and ethics.
I agree with proponents of liberation
theology who argue that the Bible presents God as suffering alongside oppressed
people. When God confronts Moses for the
first time in Exodus, God identified with enslaved people, not the empire that
oppressed them, as shown by the following memorable passage.
Then the Lord said,
‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their
cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them
from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad
land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come
to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to
bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’
Theodore Walker, Jr. has observed that
black liberation theology “understands that liberating answers to questions
pertaining to the circumstance of oppression and the struggle for freedom are
essential to the Christian witness,” resulting in “a particular vision of God
that has been summarily formulated by James Cone and others under the
conception of God as ‘God of the oppressed.’”
Walker explains that vision of God and contrasts it against what he
termed “the prevailing Western theological tradition” as follows.
When black theologians speak of God as
God of the oppressed, we do not mean merely that God is present with, related
to, worshiped by, or somehow involved with those who are oppressed. This would be to understate the matter. From the perspective of black theology, to
speak of God as God of the oppressed is to affirm that God actually experiences
the suffering of those who are oppressed.
Moreover, black theology knows, from the data of human experience, that
the experience of suffering from oppression entails a desire to be liberated
from such oppression. Hence, it follows
that the God who experiences the suffering of the oppressed also desires their
liberation.
Black theology has its deepest rootage
in the experience of enslaved and oppressed Africans, and in their
appropriation of the witness of scripture, but not in the philosophical and theological
traditions of the Western academy and its medieval and Greek forbears. The essentially non-Western rootage of black
theology is often concealed by the fact that most African-American communities
of worship wear the labels of European-American Protestant denominations. It must be remembered, however, that
African-American denominations are not “Protestant” in the sense of having been
born in protest to alleged Catholic abuses; instead, African-American denominations
are protestant in the very different sense of having been born in protest
against oppression by European-American Protestant denominations…
To be sure, black theology is defined in
considerable measure by its protest against the prevailing Western theological
tradition. History has taught us that
classical Western theism is quite capable of abiding peaceably with, and even
of being very supportive of, such oppressive activities as the enslavement of
Africans and the genocide of Native Americans.
It is characteristic of black theology to be unforgivingly critical of
any theology that fails to affirm that God favors the struggle for
liberation. If God is conceived so as
not to favor this struggle, then God is thereby conceived so as not to experience
fully our pain and suffering. Such a
conception of God is contrary to the Christian witness to God’s suffering as
indicated by the cross, and it is contrary to the vision of God as that utterly
unsurpassable Friend whose love is
perfect and all-inclusive…
…Because we know that God actually
experiences our oppression, we know that God favors our struggle for
liberation. This is removed as far as
can be from such classical attributes of God as immutable, totally impassible,
wholly other, and unmoved mover. From
the perspective of black theology, the prevailing classical Western (white)
theism is logically, existentially, and religiously anathema. Insofar as classical theism aids and abets the
structures of oppression, James Cone would describe it as the theology of the
Antichrist.
One’s perspective on theology affects
hermeneutics. The evangelical
hermeneutic is bottomed on what Theodore Walker, Jr. terms “the prevailing
classical Western (white) theism,” which has traditionally resulted in emphasis
on piety and personal salvation, global evangelism, and missions.
Evangelicals frequently cite the Great
Commission passage at Matthew 28:19-20 as authority for that emphasis. Sadly,
the theological and hermeneutical perspectives of evangelicals have been also allied
with maintaining oppressive order, not achieving liberation from
oppression.
This tendency is, to some extent,
responsible for cognitive dissonance—morally and ethically—among evangelicals
concerning religious liberty and other Biblical imperatives regarding justice. Because they have not interpreted the Bible
in terms of its relevance to social justice in general and liberty, including (but
by no means limited to) religious liberty, evangelicals primarily consider religious
liberty an essential attribute for a well-ordered society, not a moral and
ethical imperative arising from the divine passion for liberation from all
forms of oppression.
Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected on the
ethical and social consequences of Western theism to some extent in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Ponder this excerpt from King’s letter to
white Birmingham clerics who criticized him for becoming involved in nonviolent
civil disobedience efforts to protest racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama
in 1963.
…I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as
one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the
church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was
nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and
who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus
protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported
by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the
South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright
opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its
leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have
remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the
hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the
justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel
through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped
that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their
worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I
have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because
integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In
the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white
churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious
trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and
economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social
issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched
many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which
makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the
sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and
all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn
mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty
spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her
massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself
asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? … Where were
their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to
rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative
protest?"
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment
I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have
been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep
love. Yes, I love the church…. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ.
But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and
through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time
when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what
they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that
recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that
transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town,
the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians
for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside
agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they
were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small
in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be
"astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they
brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.
Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak,
ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of
the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the
power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's
silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If
today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church,
it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be
dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth
century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has
turned into outright disgust.
More than half a century has passed
since King’s April 16, 1963 letter.
However, his observations are, sadly, true today. Last week I and others received an email
message from Rev. Daniel Buford, Minister of Justice at Allen Temple Baptist
Church in Oakland, California, that echoed King’s assessment. In pertinent part, it reads as follows:
This
morning I had an “Aha!” moment of epiphany when I saw that the cop who pushed
the Indian man to the ground down south was the beneficiary of two hung juries
and will not be punished for what he did.
The cop saw the brown skin of the elder from India and treated him like a Black
man. The Muslim boy who was kicked out of school for making a clock experienced
[what] has happened to thousands of African Americans whose White teachers are
threatened by the brilliance of dark skinned people who are young, gifted, and
Black.
In my research on these human rights violations at the hands of police I have
come upon the surprising cases of people treated so badly that [I] automatically
assumed that they were Black until I dug a little deeper and saw a picture of
the victim. Native Americans activists die in jail in 2015 under circumstances
like Sandra Bland.
An unarmed White teenager on his first date was killed recently for not obeying
police orders in a satisfactory manner just like many of the teenagers on the
list I have complied.
A White Policewoman in Florida dumped a White man in a wheel chair onto the
floor because he was not moving as fast as she thought he should without
protesting her treatment of him.
Cops sexually molest White women as well as women of color with little outcry
about the systemic molestation experienced by all women. The absence of records
kept about rogue police treatment of Black People also means that no records
are kept for anybody.
My
“Aha!” is confirming an old trope; Black people are the canaries in the
mineshafts of institutional racism; what kills us mostly and firstly will kill
everyone eventually regardless of race. Our problem is compounded by the fact
that we are also trapped in a labyrinth with the Minotaur of white supremacist
state sponsored terrorism. Police Brutality is seen as a “Black problem” just
as Sickle Cell disease is seen [as a] disease that only affects people of
African descent resulting in many swarthy Mediterranean-Caucasians ending up
sick, misdiagnosed, and dead. Environmental Racism kills us first because of
where we live and work but everyone must eat, drink, and breathe in the same
environment; wind patterns aren’t limited by zip codes. The pollution in
our areas always radiates outward. People …don’t give a damn about stopping
rogue police as long as Blacks and Mexicans are mainly being hunted and the
White community is secure in that knowledge. This [is] precisely where empathy
with Human rights concerns comes into play. Haile Selassie said it this way
when the League of Nations ignored his warnings about the implications of
Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice
everywhere!”
Although theologians and evangelical leaders
profess belief in religious liberty, they somehow have consistently lacked the
theological and ethical capacity to relate religious liberty to the wider
struggle for freedom from oppression. As
Rev. Buford shared in his email message, this demonstrates a basic deficiency
in human empathy. I call it moral and
ethical dwarfism.
I see no evidence evangelicals recognize,
respect, support, and have joined the Black Lives Matter movement and struggle
for freedom from the oppression of state-sanctioned abuse and homicide of black
people by law enforcement officials. Likewise,
immigrants facing xenophobic rhetoric from talk show commentators and
self-serving politicians see little evidence, if any, that evangelical
scholars, congregational leaders, and rank-and-file evangelicals consider their
plight in the face of blatant oppression to be relevant. Workers struggling for living wages see
little evidence that evangelicals who are adamant about religious liberty
consider income inequality to be morally and ethically relevant to the
evangelical notion of justice.
The defect in human empathy arising from
theological, hermeneutical, and ethical parochialism explains how evangelicals
can be alarmed that photographers, bakers, florists, and a Kentucky county
clerk must serve all persons, while U.S. evangelical pastors support oppression
of LGBT persons in Uganda.
Moral and ethical dwarfism accounts for the incongruity between evangelical
complaints about religious persecution of Christians in China,
contrasted by their appalling silence, if not open endorsement, of Israeli-government
sanctioned persecution of and discrimination against Arabs and followers of
Jesus in Israel.
I attribute moral and ethical dwarfism of
evangelicals about religious liberty and the deeper and wider issue of justice
to the theological, hermeneutical, and ethical failure of evangelical scholars,
denominational leaders, and pastors. Evangelical
scholars, denominational leaders and pastors study, preach, and teach the
Hebrew Testament account of Naomi returning to Judah from Moab after the deaths
of her husband and sons.
Somehow, they are unable or unwilling
to recognize and affirm the theological, hermeneutical, and ethical relevance
of that text to demands by Palestinians to return to land from which they have
been displaced.
Evangelical scholars, denominational
leaders, and pastors study, preach, and teach the Hebrew Testament account of
how Queen Jezebel of Samaria orchestrated a state-sponsored land grab of the
vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite. Somehow, that scholarship, preaching, and
teaching fails to illuminate and affirm the theological, moral, and ethical
relevance of this Biblical passage to Israeli-government displacement of
Palestinians from their homes, and destruction of Palestinian crops and farm
land, to permit construction of illegal Jewish settlements.
These and numerous other examples are
why people struggling against oppressive power view claims of evangelicals
about religious liberty with disappointment, mounting distrust, and
disgust. People struggling against
oppression have good reason for that disappointment, distrust, and disgust. They understand that their struggle for
liberation from oppression is grounded in belief that God is, to use the words
of Theodore Walker, Jr., “that utterly unsurpassable Friend whose love is perfect and all-inclusive.”
Although evangelicals are viewed as the
dominant sect among followers of Jesus, evangelicals not only appear intolerant
toward other religions; evangelicals appear insensitive, if not unsympathetic and
disdainful, about oppression faced by others.
There is scant evidence from the course offerings I read on the websites
of evangelical seminaries that many of the evangelical scholars who teach and
write about religious liberty care about people suffering from mass
incarceration, terrorism due to racial profiling, race-based abusive and
homicidal police conduct, xenophobia, homophobia, economic oppression caused by
classism and capitalism, and other kinds of oppression. Instead, it seems that evangelical scholars,
pastors, and other leaders care about religious liberty because they want to be
free to proselytize their version of the religion of Jesus, not because they
believe God cares about liberating all people who suffer from any
oppression.
This shortcoming matters more than one
might think. Recall that the early
followers of Jesus were a minority sect. When Constantine became the first
Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, the religion of Jesus
entered the mainstream. The Inquisition and Protestant Reformation show that
followers of Jesus struggled across time to demonstrate tolerance for divergent
views within our own belief system. However, the Bible shows that God is not
only concerned that people are free to proselytize. Our sacred writings illuminate God’s concern
that people be free to live, work, and be accepted where they lived as persons
of dignity and worth, not deviants, threats, or commodities for private and
social exploitation.
Earlier this year, President Marvin McMickle
of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School concluded a stirring address at the
Baptist Joint Committee’s luncheon during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s
General Assembly with the following statement.
I believe in the First Amendment, in the
separation of church and state, in religious liberty, and in the right to
worship God as one chooses or not to worship God at all. However, I believe in
something else just as strongly; maybe more so. I believe that American history
and its economic foundation was largely written in the blood of African slaves
and their descendants; a story that a great many people do not want to hear. Of
course I am mindful that if time allowed we could tell a similarly chilling
story about the blood and suffering of Native Americans and how the
appropriation of so much of their land is the real story of how the west was
won…
… I believe that our nation has not yet
resolved all of the lingering effects of nearly 400 years of slavery,
segregation, and second-class status for millions of its citizens. All of this
was done and continues to be done by the activity of many who represent the
power of the state. Sadly, it could not have lasted as long as it has if it had
not been for the silence of so many of those who represent the message of the
church, the synagogue, and the mosque.
Borrowing a line from the 1960s song by
Simon and Garfunkel, I hope the day will come when the church in America will
break the “Sound of Silence” in the face of injustice and inequality! I believe
in religious liberty, and I hope that all who labor for the separation of
church and state as a valid principle in American society will also labor for
the civil and human rights of those whose quest for physical freedom has lasted
just as long as the fight for freedom of conscience.
I join Dr. McMickle in urging
evangelical followers of Jesus to break from the morally and ethically
indefensible practice of supporting “soul liberty,” while actively opposing the
demands from others for life, liberty, and equality. The love of God about which we preach, study,
sing, write, teach, and pray demands that followers of Jesus love God enough to
protect our neighbors, including our neighbors with divergent lives, beliefs,
behaviors, and struggles, as much as we cherish our own religious liberty.
Conclusion
Evangelical seminaries, denominational
leaders, other religious educators, and pastors have refused to embrace a
theological vision that inspires a hermeneutic affirming robust respect for and
advocacy of religious freedom as part of a deeper and wider reverence for God’s
involvement in and support for the human struggle for liberation. That shortcoming blinds evangelicals morally;
it also hinders evangelicals ethically from recognizing and affirming that
others must be protected from any persecution, mistreatment, bigotry, and other
oppression, not merely religious-based persecution, mistreatment, bigotry, and
oppression.
Consequently, we should not be surprised
when evangelical followers of Jesus misunderstand, and misrepresent, the social
justice imperative enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the
equality guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the “love of neighbor”
ethic taught and lived by Jesus. And, as
Martin King pointedly observed to religious leaders considered “moderates” more
than fifty years ago from a Birmingham jail, we should not be surprised by
people “whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.”
The people who teach theology,
hermeneutics, and ethics must call followers of Jesus to participate with God in
the divine struggle for human dignity and equality concerning matters beyond
the freedom to proselytize, pray, preach, and erect monuments to those
efforts. Religious liberty is a
fundamental social justice imperative bottomed in a deeper and wider understanding
about who God is and what God is about, not merely a tool used to achieve
national pluralism based on tolerance of divergent sectarian beliefs and
practices.
Hence, evangelicals must re-think
theology, hermeneutics, and ethics. If
evangelical followers of Jesus are to develop and live a mature and robust
faith, a faith not defined by moral and ethical dwarfism, then the people who teach
theology, hermeneutics, and ethics, the people who lead religious
denominations, and the people who lead congregations must hold, and affirm, a
vision that God participates in the human struggle for liberation from
oppression in all its forms.
Respect for religious liberty must be
understood, affirmed, and be bottomed in the deeper and wider love of God, the
love that inspires one to recognize and respect the inherent dignity and
equality of all persons. Until
evangelicals ground our notions of religious liberty in the deeper and wider love
of God, our religious liberty advocacy and rhetoric will be correctly
recognized, and ultimately dismissed, as sectarian chauvinism.
God deserves much better than that from
us.
The statements contained in
this lecture, and any comments offered by the author in response to questions
or during discussions associated with this lecture, reflect the views of the
author alone. In no way do they reflect,
or should they be ascribed to the views of any other person or entity,
including but not limited to, members of the judiciary (whether in Arkansas or
elsewhere), as well as religious bodies, (including New Millennium Church and
any other entity with which the author is affiliated).
The Scripture quotations and
citations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
I
will throughout this lecture and its companion use the term “followers of
Jesus” instead of Christians, and refer to myself as a “follower of Jesus”
rather than as a “Christian.” Many
evangelical Christians consider Christianity, as a world religion, a vigorous
protector of religious liberty. However, as a world religion, Christianity is
also often identified with imperialism and colonialism at the expense of religious
beliefs, traditions, and worship practices observed by indigenous
populations.
Writing about what has been deemed the
“Christianization of the Roman Empire,” Joel Spring states:
Christianity
added new impetus to the expansion of empire.
Increasing the arrogance of the imperial project, Christians insisted
that the Gospels and the Church were the only valid sources of religious
beliefs. Imperialists could claim that
they were both civilizing the world and spreading the true religion. By the 5th century, Christianity
was thought of as co-extensive with the Imperium
romanum. This meant that to be
human, as opposed to being a natural slave (barbarian?), was to be “civilized”
and Christian. Historian Anthony Pagden
argues, “just as the civitas had now
become conterminous with Christianity, so to be human—to be, that is, one who
was ‘civil’, and who was able to interpret correctly the law of nature—one had
now also to be Christian.” After the
fifteenth century, most Western colonialists rationalized the spread of empire
with the belief that they were saving a barbaric and pagan world by spreading
Christian civilization.
See,
Joel H. Spring, Globalization and
Educational Rights: An
Intercivilizational Analysis, (Routledge, New York, 2001), p. 92.
Similarly, Kenyan legal scholar Makau Mutua,
among others, argues that Christian efforts at global proselytizing as a
function of religious freedom has, ironically, resulted in the erosion of
native religious traditions and denial of religious freedom to adherents of
native religions. In Mutua’s words,
“Imperial religions have necessarily violated individual conscience and the
communal expressions of Africans and their communities by subverting African
religions.” See, chapter titled, Proselyism and Cultural Integrity, at
Chapter 28 in Facilitating Freedom of
Religion or Belief: A Deskbook, (Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or
Belief, 2004), p. 652.
These and related factors lead me to prefer
the terms “follower of Jesus” and “the religion of Jesus” over “Christian” and
“Christianity.” I do not associate following Jesus—and prefer to not have my
religious identity associated—with support for imperialism, manifest destiny,
neo-colonialism, militarism, racism, sexism, crass materialism, classism, and
techno-centrism.
