Steve Heitland (click here for a brief bio and list of articles) has just written an article about an endangered trait for Christians, especially Christian men: power. Power has gotten a bad rap according to Heitland because of how power has been used to abuse others. And while Heitland earnestly seeks to reduce the frequency in which the use of power becomes abusive, he doesn't want to reduce the quest for and exercise of power by Christian men. The article was posted on the American Reformer website (click here for the article).
According to Heitland, the Christian use of power is under attack from both inside and outside the Church. From inside the Church, Heitland describes GregoryBoyd's power-over/power-under model of thought and why he sees it as a threat to what he will describe as a Biblical model for the use of power. While Boyd describes power-over as the abusive of power because people use it to rule over people, he then touts power-under as the solution to the abusive use of power. For Boyd, power-under describes not as the ruling over others, but as the ability to 'influence' and 'persuade' others to do what they should. This issue a problem for Heitland because he sees that model as diluting the kind of power Christian men should seek to exercise.
The threat to the use of power by Christian men that comes from outside the Church comes from the Duluth Model that was created by the sociologist Ellen (not related to Mike that I know of) Pence. Pence created a model that seeks to prevent abuse by replacing reliance on power, which is seen as the sole cause of abuse, with egalitarianism. Pence believes that abuse occurs when those with power have their position of power not rightfully recognized by others. That produces anger because of the perceived unfairness by the person with power and thus that person responds abusively (click here for description of the Duluth Model and there for information about the wheels used describe the portrayals of interactions that can either lead to abuse or positive interactions). Heitland displays two of those wheels and the content of those wheels show some of the merits of Pence's work.
Despite the merits of Pence's work, Heitland finds fault with it because he sees it relying on Critical Theory and feminism. And thus, Pence cannot see the merits in the use of power that Heitland claims to see because Heitland uses the Scriptures to find the positive use of power to rule over others.
In contrast to those challenges to power, Heitland sees only one culprit when the use of power becomes abusive. And we need to recognize that Heitland is totally and sincerely opposed to the abusive use of power. The culprit that Heitland sees is selfishness. When power is exercised selfishly, abuse can result.
Then Heitland goes on to describe how the Scriptures paint a picture where the use of power to rule over is present in the authority structures defined by the Scriptures. Though not listed by Heitland, those authority structures include government over people, employer over employee, husband over wife, husband and wife over children, and ministers and elders over church members.
While Heitland claims that neither the reliance on egalitarianism nor implementing the power-under model of thought will solve the problem of abuse, he provides 3 changes to how men are to use power to rule over others that can reduce abuse as much as possible. The first change is to understand and employ the biblical vision of justice which includes the need to protect the vulnerable. The second change is to see the benefits that power and control can bring. The third change is that the use of power and control must be done in faith.
We should note that in terms of properly using power, the issue isn't whether one is using power for personal gain; but whether power is being used to gain righteousness. In the end, Heitland states that we must see power and control as gifts from God. And that we must exercise power and control both humbly and in faith to do our best to avoid abusing others while ruling over them.
There are some problems with Heitland's approach. The scapegoating of selfishness for all of the abusive uses of power is one. Has not history taught us that some who abused power did so thinking that they were pursuing righteousness. Examples include John Calvin and his pursuit and putting to death of witches or his approval of the burning of Servetus for heresy. Martin Luther had the same pursuit of righteousness motivation when he wrote against the Jews later on in his life. Many southern Christians who defended Jim Crow in America did so because they believed that they were following what the Scriptures said about white supremacy and against the mixing of the races.
And it isn't just Christians who thought that they were pursuing some kind of righteousness while abusing those under them. Vlad Lenin, for example, believed that he was implementing what Marx taught and thus abused many who opposed his rule. Some American Presidents honestly thought that they were protecting America and, perhaps, the world when they supported or participated in the replacing of leaders of left-leaning democracies with tyrants.
In addition, more needed to be said by Heitland about when and where power and control should be exercised and when and where it should not. The problem I've seen with many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians is that we are constantly taught to submit to this authority structure or that authority structure, that we often have great difficulty in turning off the authority switch so that we can related to others as peers and equals.
Also, Heitland doesn't distinguish between when those with power must exercise control from when they shouldn't exercise control. Here, Heitland could make use of the wheels employed by the Duluth Model to teach how we can influence or persuade without resorting to attempts to control others. His takes a binary approach to how he sees the Duluth Model and perhaps its basis of Critical Theory too. When criticizing the Duluth Model, Heitland doesn't target anything particular about Critical Theory or feminism that he believes is wrong. And so what Heitland appears to be suggesting is that everything in Critical Theory and feminism must be rejected rather than individual points in Critical Theory and feminism. That kind of black-white thinking is what we see in authoritarianism. And Authoritarianism was a subject of study by the Frankfurt School in trying to discover why so many Germans remained loyal to Hitler and the Nazi leadership despite what they say happening around them.
But what is most disturbing is what could be suggested by Heitland's approach to power and control in terms of how Christians should relate to fellow citizens who are unbelievers. Here we should note that the American Reformer website itself is a project of Newfounding. New Founding is an organization whose purpose is to help Christians 'build the America they want to live in' (click here for a link to Newfounding). So is Heitland's article telling Christian men to obtain power to control a call for these men to look to obtain power to make America into the nation of their dreams? A survey of some American Reformer articles would suggest, not imply, the answer of 'yes' to that question
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