More of This, Please

June 24, 2012 By vorjack 10 Comments

Via the New York Times:

Msgr. William J. Lynn, a former cardinal’s aide, was found guilty Friday of endangering children, becoming the first senior official of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision.

The 12-member jury acquitted Monsignor Lynn, of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, of conspiracy and a second count of endangerment after a trial that prosecutors and victims rights groups called a turning point in the abuse scandals that have shaken the Catholic Church.

The single guilty verdict was widely seen as a victory for the district attorney’s office, which has been investigating the archdiocese aggressively since 2002, and it was hailed by victim advocates who have argued for years that senior church officials should be held accountable for concealing evidence and transferring predatory priests to unwary parishes.

I side with the theory put forth by Andrew Greeley in Priests: A Calling in Crisis. The thing that turned a series of isolated pedophiles in the priesthood into a massive, global crisis of molested children was the tendency of the hierarchy to cover up reports and shuffle abusive priests to new areas. The culprits were able to harm many more children because they were moved into a new region with new targets instead of being arrested.

In attempting to protect the Church, they damaged it, perhaps beyond saving. If there’s a chance of saving it, the process has to begin by making sure that members of the hierarchy are held accountable.

Filed Under: Uncategorized 10 Comments

Signs and Wonders Camp

June 23, 2012 By vorjack 24 Comments

When The American Jesus posted a video trailer for IHOP’s “Signs and Wonders Camp,” I was ecstatic. Finally I might be able to find out how they get so much filling into their stuffed french toast. I mean, we already know the secret of their omelets is a dollop of pancake batter. Apparently, pancake batter at IHOP is like grace in Calvinist theology: it comes whether you ask for it or not.

But to my bitter disappointment, it turns out to be a promo for the International House of Prayer. Damn.

At the museum I work at, we do all sorts of kids activities based around science and technology. We do the old coffee filter and magic marker chromatography experiment, and we do bridges out of popsicle sticks and we make things out of straws and marshmallows or toothpicks and gumdrops. Well, here’s a camp where you learn how to do faith healing. Charming.

Filed Under: Christianity, Videos 24 Comments

The Memory of Wounds

June 22, 2012 By vorjack 8 Comments

Over at Experimental Theology, Richard Beck considers the question of why some groups want to be seen as the underdog. He quotes from James Davison Hunter’s work To Change the World:

The sense of injury is the key. Over time, the perceived injustice becomes central to the person’s and the group’s identity. Understanding themselves to be victimized is not a passive acknowledgement but a belief that can be cultivated. Accounts of atrocity become a crucial subplot of the narrative, evidence that reinforces the sense that they have been or will be wronged or victimized. Cultivating the fear of further injury becomes a strategy for generating solidarity within the group and mobilizing the group to action. It is often useful at such times to exaggerate or magnify the threat. The injury or threat thereof is so central to the identity and dynamics of the group that to give it up is to give up a critical part of whom they understand themselves to be. Thus, instead of letting go, the sense of injury continues to get deeper.

In this logic, it is only natural that wrongs need to be righted. And so it is, then, that the injury–real or perceived–leads the aggrieved to accuse, blame, vilify, and then seek revenge on those whom they see as responsible. The adversary has to be shown for who they are, exposed for their corruption, and put in their place. [This] ressentiment, then, is expressed as a discourse of negation; the condemnation and denigration of enemies in the effort to subjugate and dominate those who are culpable.

Fred Clark, contemplating one of the current “war on Christmas” flare ups, links this directly to the Evangelical subculture:

The Christian candy cane legend has come to serve the same purpose as all that silly demagoguery about the “War on Christmas.” It is told and retold to foster a sense of grievance and victimhood. The Sunday school teacher’s object lesson wanted us to see candy canes and to remember Jesus’ birth. The Christian candy cane legend wants us to see candy canes and remember that the culture used to be ours, that it rightfully belongs to us, and that it is being unjustly taken away from us by secular humanists, activist judges, liberals, academics, evolutionists, radical feminists and homosexuals.

It reminds me of a famous quote from the Nobel Lecture delivered by the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. After he spoke of friends who lay in mass graves courtesy of the Nazis, he apologized for “laying bare a memory like a wound” and gave us an incredibly provocative quote:

It is possible that there is no other memory than the memory of wounds. At least we are so taught by the Bible, a book of the tribulations of Israel. That book for a long time enabled European nations to preserve a sense of continuity – a word not to be mistaken for the fashionable term, historicity.

A memory of wounds can give us an identity and a sense of connection with the past. This solidarity is powerful, and it can be politically useful, particularly in a democracy where mobilizing a segment of the population can easily change the outcome of an election. And so we see demagogues manufacturing the memory of wounds, implanting the idea that something precious has been taken away so that they might ride the politics of resentment into power.

Filed Under: Christianity, History 8 Comments

There Were Giants on the Earth! Mutant Giants!

June 21, 2012 By vorjack 12 Comments

According to Dangerous Minds, World Net Daily, your source for Fundamentalists crazies and birther nonsense, is pushing the work of Jim Staley. Staley’s schtick seems to be a mix of Fundamentalist “the Bible says it, I believe it” nonsense cut with a dose of von Däniken. His big product right now is a DVD titled “The Sons of God.” According to the WND store blurb:

This is a very in-depth teaching out of Genesis 6 that deals with the term “sons of God.” Jim goes to great length using the Scriptures, the writings of Josephus and other extrabiblical books of antiquity to reveal exactly who the “sons of God” are, who the “Nephilim” are and how it all relates to the End of Days. This teaching pulls together Greek mythology, the La Azazel goat of Yom Kippur, fallen angels, roaming evil spirits and aliens. Not only is this teaching on-the-edge-of-your-seat fascinating, it is scripturally based and riddled with the facts of history.

Hooo boy. He had me until “aliens.” Although, I’ll give him credit for this one:

Passion for Truth Ministries is a unique ministry birthed out of a personal need and desire to know the truth of the Scriptures from the perspective of the ones who wrote them, instead of the perspectives of the Greek “church fathers” or Western-American denominationalism, and without reading into them 1,800 years of church tradition and man-made doctrine.

Most Fundamentalists I’ve dealt with would prefer to jettison the ancient worldview of the people who wrote the Bible. It’s nice to see someone try to work out the popular mythology of the ancient Canaanites that the Bible only contains passing references to. But … well, let’s just say that I question his methodology. Here’s a trailer:

How long before the History Channel is carrying this guy? Jason Colavito, Mike Heiser, I turn him over to you. His full video seems to be up on youtube. Seems like a poor business decision, but it’s his gig.

Filed Under: Bible, Christianity, Videos, Weird 12 Comments

Everyone Interprets, Some Just Admit It

June 20, 2012 By vorjack 51 Comments

Libby Anne is wondering about a certain atheist trope: reading the Bible makes you an atheist.

First, because while I’m sure there are plenty of Christians who don’t read the Bible, everyone in the evangelical community where I grew up read it on a daily basis, and not just the easier books like the Gospels. Second, because I read the Bible through numerous times before I even graduated from high school, and doing so didn’t shake my fundamentalist/evangelical faith one iota.

I think there’s a difference between reading the Bible and having the Bible explained to you. Let me try to explain it this way:

What The Bible Says vs. What We Say the Bible Says

There’s the Bible, a collection of letters and books produced by different authors over the course of five or six hundred years. But then there’s a field of interpretations surrounding that Bible, a mixture of explanations and stories associated with the Bible that get passed down through tradition.

Well before you ever read the Bible – well before you can read – you have already begun to encounter that field. You are told what the Bible contains, what the Bible means, how it is used, what authority it possesses and so forth. You hear Bible stories and hear snatches of the Bible quoted authoritatively. Even if you were not raised Christian, you most likely encountered that field countless times.

The most obvious example is the nativity story. Before you came to know good from evil, you probably encountered the nativity story a dozen times, either by hearing the story told and preached or by seeing a creche. You heard about the shepherds and the angels and the three wise men. You heard about the trek to Bethlehem and the murderous King Herod.

But of course, there are actually two different stories there that have been mixed together. And there are no “three wise men,” that’s just a traditional guess. But many people have grown up with that story, and so opening the Bible they see that story in Matthew and Luke and do not question the idea that the two stories should be combined. They do not note that the wise men are not numbered.

Such people are not encountering the Bible directly, they are only perceiving it as it is visible through that field of interpretation. And those interpretations come to them through their community.

Let It Challenge You

When I was young, my family was Episcopalian, but most of my friends were Evangelicals. I got fed up with the way Episcopalians would evasively answer questions about what certain passages in the Bible meant. “What do you think it means?” was a typical response. In contrast, most of my Baptist friends could expect clear authoritative answers.

In hindsight, I recognize that my community was very conscious of that field. They were trying to avoid giving me pat answers. Better for me to be challenged by a Biblical passage than to through life anchored to some interpretation simply because of something my Sunday school teacher said.

Most of the Evangelical families living in the semi-rural south with me actually did believe that there were pat answers. They had no problem teaching the answers which they had learned from their families. And in this process the problems of the Bible are papered over, the challenges are swiftly removed and the contradictions are given a gloss that minimizes them. And since this process has been going on for generations, most of these answers are quite good and sound very reasonable.

Of course, this means that these families are not encountering the Bible directly. They were dealing with the field of interpretation that hovers around the Bible, while insisting that it really was the Bible all along. This field distorts the text, highlighting some passages and covering others – picking and choosing.

I write all this, partially to respond to Libby Anne’s questions, but also as a response to people in the recent discussions of Progressive Christianity who were arguing that at least the Fundamentalists don’t cherry pick the Bible. As I’ve pointed out before, they most definately do pick and choose what verses apply to their lives.

Or rather, they let the field do it for them. That allows them to say with a straight face that they accept the authority of the Bible while still ignoring large sections. They’re unaware that they’re still miles away from the Bible, interacting with the field of traditional interpretations that their community has passed on to them.

So the difference between Fundamentalists and Progressives is not that one the first take the Bible literally and the second pick and choose. Both groups interpret the Bible in ways that minimize or remove certain sections and highlight others. The difference is that the Progressives do it consciously.

Filed Under: Bible, Christianity 51 Comments
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