Is Each One Of Us A Mixed Bag?

Richard Mouw (click here for a bio) has recently written an enthusiastically positive review of the life of Reinhold Niebuhr for the Religion News Service (click here for the article).

Niebuhr is an important theologian to study simply because of his sphere of influence. He was referred to as an 'American Conscience' in a new documentary film about him. He influenced people from those in the Kennedy Administration to those in the Obama administration and including former FBI director, James Comey. Thus, Niebuhr's influence included the secular as well as the religious. Niebuhr spoke out strongly against racism--not mentioned by the article being reviewed--while not overlooking the faults of some of those fighting racism. He always challenged the idea that Americans were more virtuous than others and opposed self-righteousness (click here).

Other positions not mentioned in the article included supporting World War II--should note that World War I had turned him into a pacifist-- and opposing the Soviet Union's increasing control over parts of Europe. He also opposed the Vietnam War (click here).

However, Mouw mentions that Niehbuhr had multiple detractors. Those who differed with him came from the Evangelical world as from those who were atheists. Mouw doesn't go into any details in this article either about Niebuhr's positive traits or valid criticisms about him. Instead, he briefly mentions his strengths and that some disagreed with Niebuhr. And then Mouw ranks Niebuhr as one of  America's 3 'greatest' theologians along with Abraham Lincoln (Niebuhr's choice for greatest theologian) and Jonathan Edwards. I am trying to figure out here why Martin Luther King Jr. did not make Mouw's list.

From here, we should note a significant criticism of Niebuhr from Noam Chomsky (click here, there, and there again). One of Chomsky's concern had to with Niebuhr's views as supporting elite-centered rule either in general or in some specific policies). A quote like the one below doesn't shed a positive light on Niebuhr:

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course (click here).

However, what if Niebuhr was talking out of observation of a snapshot in time only. This certainly doesn't totally negate Chomsky's criticisms of Niebuhr aiding elite-centered rule, but then what we would see in Niebuhr's quote is a more practical side than ideological one. And yet, there is still a real cause for concern where elites in power could easily justify taking advantage of the situation based on what Niebuhr wrote.

What we should note here is that, like the records for most of us, Niebuhr's record is a mixed bag. And because of that, categorical statements either in praise or condemnation of Niebuhr or of most anyone else misses the mark because of which side the praise or condemnation selectively focuses on, the other side goes minimized or neglected.


 

 

"Mourning" Castro's Death

Jeffrey Salkin (click here and read the first biography) wrote about Fidel Castro's death in a blogpost for Religion News Service (click here for the article). There are two distinct features about his article. With the first attribute, what Salkin took away with one hand he gave back with another. With the second one, Salkin shows that any criticism that significantly relies on decontextualization only serves those who lack self-awareness. And we should note that the lack of self-awareness can produce the kind of pharisaicallism demonstrated in Jesus's parable of the two men praying (click here for the parable). It also allows us to prance around like the emperor who had no clothes.

What does Slakin take away that he gives back? It is his rejoicing over Castro's death. For while Salkin says that rejoicing over the death of one's enemy is against his religion, he gives multiple reasons why he should celebrate Castro's death. The first reason is that Castro introduced Salkin to the fear of death via the Cuban missile crisis.  Another reason the significant number of Jewish victims of Castro's revolution. They became victims when they lost their businesses to Castro's nationalization of business. Here, these Jewish victims share some similarities with those Russians who lost their businesses during Lenin's hijacking of the Russian Revolution of October, 1917. Also Jews from Israel have suffered from Castro's support of Palestinian terrorism. However, Salkin is quick to note that Castro also treated Jews with some favorability as demonstrated by his embracing of Jews in Cuba, his allowing for Jewish emigration, and the memorial to the Holocaust located in Havana.

In addition, Salkin condemns the Communism that Castro adhered to. He has attributed, as have several conservatives I have run across, as many as 100 million deaths to Communism. And he unequivocally says 'Communism is a moral and spiritual failure.'

While Salkin gives all of the reasons in the world for why he should rejoice over Castro's death, he says he is prohibited from doing so. Thus, one has to wonder why Salkin lists all of the reasons why he should celebrate Castro's death while saying he doesn't do so. Here we might ask if Salkin himself is as much the focus of this article as Castro is.

As for the second characteristic of this article, we need to look at all of the reasons why Salkin should want to dance on Castro's grave. For example, when Salkin mentions the fear Castro induced via the Cuban Missile Crisis, what he misses is the fact that it was the Soviet Union that put those missiles there because it believed that there was a dangerous, dangerous to them that is, imbalance of power. For not only did the US have far more nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union did, the US had already placed nuclear armed missiles on the USSR's border in Turkey before the USSR even though of placing missiles in Cuba. The American missiles in Turkey posed as much threat to the Soviet Union as the Soviet Union's missiles in Cuba did to the US. This is the first area in which Salkin demonstrates a lack of self-awareness.

Salkin's criticisms of both Communism and Castro's support of terrorism also exhibits a lack of self-awareness. For example, what Salkin calls Communism is really Bolshevism. Here we should note that the Bolsheviks were opposed by the Mensheviks. Both groups claimed to follow Marx. And this is an important point because to be this specific allows us to see that Communism and Socialism are not monoliths. We should also note the criticisms that both Lenin and Stalin received from fellow Marxists. The most telling criticism comes from Rosa Luxemburg when she called Lenin's rule a bourgeoisie dictatorship because the structure of his government imitated the structure practiced by the bourgeoisie in their private sector ventures and businesses (click here). In other words, according to Luxemburg, what Lenin set up in the then new Soviet Union was not a Marxist kind of Socialism. Rather, what he set up was the same kind of rule used by the Tsars. The Tsars practiced totalitarian rule and they were strongly supported by Russia's Capitalists and business owners. Here we should note that what preceded Castro's revolution, a revolution that displaced so many Jewish business owners, was the brutal and corrupt rule of Batista. And we should note that until Castro came onto the scene, the US supported Batista's government.

And while Salkin's criticism of Castro's support of the PLO as a support for terrorism, why can we not make the same claim about any world leader who supports Israel's IDF with military aid? For doesn't the IDF terrorize and kill Palestinian civilians? Here, we should also note that following Castro's revolution but prior to the placing of missiles in Cuba, was not just the Bay of Pigs incident, there were numerous American attacks on Cuban civilian targets. In other words, America practiced terrorism against Castro's Cuba.

It isn't that Castro doesn't deserve to be severely criticized or that Salkin's criticisms of Castro lack merit; it is that before criticizing others, we need to be aware of our own faults and sins.  For without that self-awareness, our criticisms can be unduly harsh. In addition, without self-awareness, our criticisms will lack credibility because we are denying the faults and sins that others can clearly see. We saw examples of this during our last presidential election. Both the Republican and Democratic establishments could not derail Donald Trump's candidacy because while correctly noting his faults, they failed to admit their own failures and thus people rejected their messages because that denial of faults meant that there would be no change in the future. And people wanted change.





This denial of faults that stems from a lack of self-awareness that starts with the decontextualization of what Salking was reacting to.

Why Christian Business Owners And Others Should Provide Services To Same-Sex Weddings

I am really tired of writing about this subject. What subject is that? It is same-sex marriage.

For many decades, if not centuries, those from the LGBT community have been marginalized through discrimination and job loss, violence and even death,  social stigmatization,  and incarceration for acting on their sexual orientations.  In addition, they have been given the double message of the importance of monogamy along with legal prohibitions against same-sex marriage in society. And one of the leading groups that promotes and enables this marginalization of those from the LGBT community are many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians. 

But it isn't as if the past marginalizing of those from the LGBT community was enough.  While waging a losing battle to keep same-sex marriage illegal, some of my religiously conservative Christians proposed Jim Crow type discrimination laws targeting those from the LGBT community in general and same-sex weddings in particular. And now that that attempt has failed to leave the ground, individual Christians are tempting fate by individual acts of civil disobedience meant to interfere with those from the LGBT community from enjoying their now legal right to engage in same-sex marriage.

The latest attempt to interfere with joining of couples in same-sex marriages by some of my fellow religiously conservative Christian brothers and sisters took the form of a country clerk from Kentucky named Kim Davis. She refused to dispense marriage licenses to any couple because she was trying to prevent same-sex couples from obtaining such licenses. And many a conservative Christian voiced the opinion that Kentucky was legally obligated to accommodate Davis' faith-based actions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

To partially answer the dilemma that Davis' defiance of a court order brings, we need to go back a little bit in time when such civil disobedience was being carried out by my fellow religiously conservative Christians from the private sector. And that brings us to the subject of this blogpost. Here, we are reviewing an article written by Jonathan Merritt on Christian business owners who portray themselves as embattled preachers because of the legal ramifications that resulted from their failing to provide goods and services to same-sex weddings (click here for the article).

The part of Merritt's article that applies to the Davis case is sandwiched between some reluctant approval of a biblical interpretation made by Denny Burk on the identity of the 'least of these brothers and sisters of mine' from Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats. In that parable, Jesus teaches us that those who ministered to the least of the these were rewarded with eternal life in heaven while those who didn't were sent to eternal punishment. Burk makes the claim that the least of these brothers and sisters of mine referred to followers of Jesus only and that in America today, the least of these applies to those Christians who are being persecuted for taking stands like the ones taken by those Christian business owners who refuse to sell goods and services to same-sex weddings.

And though Merritt finds merit in Burk's interpretation of the identity of the least of these as being Christians who are vulnerable, he thoroughly disagrees with Burk that the least of these includes Christian business owners who are drawing a line in the sand by refusing to do business with same-sex weddings. The highlight of Merritt's article is found in why he disagrees with how Burk here. After that, Merritt appeals to authority by citing prominent theologians who challenged Burk's application of the parable. This appeal to authority was really unnecessary and took away from Merritt's opportunity to expand on why these persecuted Christian business owners cannot be counted as the least of these.

So let's get to the highlight of Merritt's article here. It's a quote that comes from a judge who was speaking to a Christian business owner about his obligations to provide services to a same-sex couple:

You’re being fined because the law is clear that public businesses must serve the whole public.

There are a couple concepts here which we cannot afford to miss. First, the job of any Christian business owner is the same job as any business owner: to 'serve the whole public.' Such is not just the unwritten contract that is involved with running a business, but is the law according to the judge. Too many times, we Christians enter the business world in ignorance because we are only thinking about the role we would like to choose for ourselves. In part we can choose certain roles for ourselves when we run a business, but that is only in part. Sure we can use whatever business we own to evangelize, but there are other roles that are foreordained any public business. We cannot unchoose them because if we run a business, we operate within a system that involves the public rather than on a island where those who visit are by invitation only.

Second, we don't think of the ramifications of what being able to select which part of whole public we will serve. And by that, I don't mean that we don't have any choice in whom we will serve by the products we provide. Rather, we don't have the right to say to people who do desire buy our products in order to use them in legal activities that we don't have to do business with them simply because of the group they belong to. In fact, the law protects certain groups that have been or are still marginalized from such discrimination. 

To allow such discrimination is to allow a part of the kind of discrimination Blacks faced during Jim Crow. And while some of my conservative Christian brothers and sisters might protest by saying that practicing homosexual acts, unlike belonging to a particular race, is sin, practicing such sin still does not warrant the mistreatment from society that comes with discrimination and the marginalization that follows.

But what about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the requirement that both public and private employees provide accommodation for religious practices. Here we should note that such is the case if providing such accommodations does not cause undue hardship on the employer. As a Daily Kos article pointed out (click here), some jobs and faiths cannot be reconciled. An example of such an irreconcilable couple is being a Quaker and serving in the Marines. Though I am not sure if the Marines have any Quakers, I am sure that there are certain job positions in the Marines to which Quakers should never apply. So too is the pairing of a government position such as county clerk and a Christian, Kim Davis to be specific, who sees the legal giving of marriage licenses to same-sex couples as being irreconcilable to how she wishes to apply the Scriptures.

For just as business owners are obligated to serve the whole public, so too government officials are obligated to protect the legal rights of all who require their services. And if Davis finds that both doing her job and living her faith are contradictory, then she should not hold the position of county clerk seeing that she can only serve part of the law, not all of the law.

Merritt's quoting of the statement made by the judge to a particular Christian business owner is the highlight made in his article. I do wish that he would have spent more time discussing that statement rather than trying to quote Christian authority figures in an effort to contradict how Denny Burk was applying the parable of the sheep and the goats and, in particular, claiming how we must help the least of these brothers and sisters of Jesus includes helping Christian business owners who refuse to do business with same-sex couples looking to be married.

And now I return to my original point. I am tired of discussing this subject. Why? For one thing, though equality with heterosexuals in society is good and necessary, achieving that equality does not bring any structural changes to society.  Also, we should note that every thing that could be said of same-sex marriage has been. The talking that goes on afterwards is simply posturing.