Real White Christian Guilt

Rod Dreher has caused a real stir by strongly suggesting that, in the light of today's lost culture war, Christians should look to St  Benedict (click here), a monastic, for learning how to live in more tight knit communities. The reason for doing this is so that we don't lose our values and traditions to an increasingly hostile, secular and modernistic culture. 

We've lost the culture war to secularism and modernity, Dreher says, and so now it is our turn to be marginalized. Here we should note the first funny, not ha ha funny, thing about Dreher's view of our situation. That because Christianity has lost control over culture, its enemies stand poised to marginalize us. But never does Dreher say anything about whether Christians had marginalized unbelievers when Christianity ruled culture. We do know that many Christians definitely worked to marginalize people of color and the LGBT community, but as long as unbelievers followed Christian inspired civil laws, such as the Blue Laws. Thus, it seems that Christianity coexisted to some extent with parts of secularism and modernity. But now that secularists and modernists are in control via  the sexual revolution, we can anticipate being persecuted to varying degrees with the result that we will be marginalized in society (click here for Dreher''s Christianity Today article describing his Benedict Option).

So Dreher has proposed that Christianity, in several senses, circle the wagons because of our anticipated torment. And here is the next funny thing. For while Dreher is adamant about denying that we are to withdraw from society, he sees a strong need for us to become more insular because culture has gone too far for us work with it.

Dreher has received both positive and negative reactions from a number of Christians. This blog has rejected Dreher's proposal starting with his analysis of the problem and finishing with his solution.  This blog has stated that Dreher's analysis is flawed because it seems to assume that Christians and unbelievers cannot or should not share society as equals. And this blog has rejected Dreher's solution because it is similar to what was known as 'White Flight.' That was when Whites moved to the suburbs from urban neighborhoods in order to get away from neighborhoods where Blacks were beginning to move into. Other Christians who have rejected Dreher's Benedict Option do so because they see other Christian examples, such as that set by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of dealing with anticipated marginalization. Certainly, no one could argue against following Bonhoeffer's examples of how to deal with hostility and persecution.

But along comes Jemar Tisby (click here for bio) from the Reformed African American Network to throw an altogether different challenge at Dreher's Benedict Option. For Tisby sees racism in Dreher's approach. How could he possibly see racism in an issue where race has no bearing on the issue at hand? It is actually quite simple. For Tisby asks why, if Dreher is looking for examples on how to handle marginalization, has he not looked to the African American Church for examples of those who handled marginalization? After all, the vast majority of those from African American Church have been marginalized for most of America's history if not all of it.

In an article on the Reformed African American Network (click here for the article), Tisby answers that question. The answer is that White Christians do not go to Black Christians to be taught. In Dreher's case, it was because Dreher looked for help from examples that came from a completely different continent. It might not have occurred to him to look for examples from America because those examples were from those of a different skin color and race. And Tisby does share a couple of examples of Blacks who, because of their graceful responses to some of the most difficult hardships, could become sources of inspiration and enlightenment on how to handle being marginalized.

Tisby's point is rather simple and so obvious. Yet, neither Dreher nor his critics nor his supporters, at least the ones I have read, have considered looking to the African American Church as a resource for how to handle being marginalized in society. And all those who ignored the many African American  examples of how to handle marginalization and worse included me. Yes, I thought that Dreher, despite his denial, proposes a significant withdraw to society. But never once did I think of looking the to African American Church for examples of and wisdom on how to handle marginalization in society. I am as guilty of overlooking the wisdom of the African American Church in this matter as Dreher is and this is despite my having read Martin Luther King Jr. and James Cone.

Before we consider how to handle the changing times in our culture, especially regarding how to endure potential marginalization and persecution, perhaps all of us should put the Benedict Option on hold while we research how the African American Christians endured all of the hardships that White Americans, including White Christians, threw their way.

Do Christians Need Corrective Lenses When Looking In The Mirror?

Alan Noble (click here for very brief bio) recently wrote an opinion piece for Christianity Today that claimed that America needs to elect a Christian President in these Post Christian times (click here for the article). What spurred him into writing this piece was an article written by Jennifer Hecht on why our nation might need a president like Bernie Sanders (click here for that article). Hecht's assertion is based on Sanders' lack of formal religious belief as opposed to the other candidates all of whom have formal Christian ties and thus an assumed impartiality due to that lack of formal religious association.

Noble questions the wisdom of Hecht's claims in the light of today's issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He also brings up our nation's tendency to elect Christians as Presidents.  In the end, Noble recognizes that we live in a divided Post Christian nation and that we need a leader who can bridge the gaps between the groups so as to protect each group's liberties and concerns. Oddly enough, some of the groups he mentions here with us Christians are those whom we have persecuted at least now and then: the LGBTQ community, immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, poor Whites, the police, and others.

Why, according to Noble, does our nation need a Christian President when Christianity's influence is dying? According to Noble, it is because we now know what it is like to be marginalized, or a "challenged" group. And because of our new place in society, we are the best hope for providing a leader who can be empathetic to all the other groups that are struggling.

The problem is that neither history nor current events supports Noble's claim that Christianity produces the empathy and patience needed to bring marginalized and antagonistic groups together. In fact, whether Christianity is now a marginalized group is very debatable seeing that it has had a privileged place in this nation since Europeans landed on this continent. We relgiously conservative, White Christians have been active in marginalizing others based on race, gender, religion, and now sexual orientation and identification. We have been the leaders in putting those who are different in their places. Yet now that we no longer have the pull to control society's mores and marginalize others, we see ourselves as being marginalized and thus can immediately be empathetic to the others.

If we think of the current support for and efforts of Christians to pass the new religious freedom laws that allow Christians to discriminate against same-sex weddings and those in the LGBT community in various ways, how can Noble believe what he is writing let alone trying to convince others of his point?

Calling us religiously conservative Christians a "challenged" group in society simply because society's sexual mores have publicly switched away from our sexual morals indicates a desire to magnify our loss of prestige and privilege in controlling society. But how does that put us Christians on the fringe of society? The next claim that the nation needs us to provide for them a Christian for the office of President shows another kind of inflation  only this one is on our sense of our own importance to others. Some might call the latter magnification a mild case of having delusions of grandeur.

We Christians in America have spent centuries trying to control society while not caring about the multitudes we have hurt or neglected on the way. American Christianity started very much as a White man's religion. Yes, Blacks were brought to Christ, but our religion's teachings here still favored the White race for such a long time if it still doesn't. We have been cold and merciless to the LGBT community. And we have, from the beginning, proclaimed ourselves as the 'city on the hill.' So in a sense, inflating our losses and our remaining importance to others can simply be described as the same-old, same-old as when we were in charge.

Noble's article here indicates that some of us religiously conservative Christians have lost touch with social reality. And the reason for that lack of connection is that we feel the need to have a more important role in society than any of the ones we fell into. Certainly not all Christians share this lack of awareness of our real place in society.But this article he wrote was posted in the Christianity Today's website proves that Noble is not alone in his delusional understanding of our place in society.

Is The Conservative Church Nuance Impaired?

This article is written for the daughter who brought John Pavlovitz's article to our attention by commenting on it on social media. She has for a long time been sensitive to the plight of those who are marginalized in society.

An important article to read is written by John Pavlovitz on the Church and the LGBT community (click here or there). The article first appeared on his blog and was then picked up by the Huffington Post. The article is important because of how those in the LGBT community and the reputation of the Gospel are suffering by our treatment of them.

What's causing this suffering? According to Pavlovitz, one cause is how we translate the Christian theology on homosexuality into how we speak the truth. 

Pavlovitz starts with a somewhat gruesome list of ways Christians show their disapproval of the LGBT life. These ways include beatings, bullying, shaming, ostracizing, marginalizing, and so on. In essence, the Christian community acts to "dehumanize" those in the LGBT community. This results in causing some people to want to do more than just "shoot the messengers." And who could blame them? Don't the messengers also represent the message?

Another result is that gays cannot feel free to worship with us. And to add insult to injury, we bid them good riddance when they leave.

In short, there is something about the sexual views and practices of the LGBT community that leaves those of us in the Christian community discontent with merely tackling the sin of homosexuality, to use football terminology. We feel both bound and free to pile on, spear, and target those in the LGBT community. We feel bound because we must show the proper level of righteous indignation in order to prove our love for God, our Christian street cred. But we also feel free because the transgressions committed by the those in the LGBT community have given some of us permission to release our own pent-up hostility. This means that the sins of others can be to us Christians what hot water is to a teabag. As the hot water simply draws out what is in the teabag so the sins of those in the LGBT community have drawn out our true colors.

Though not mentioned by Pavlovitz, if how we treat the LGBT community in Church is not enough, we insist that society must follow our example by punishing and stigmatizing homosexuals and the transgendered as well. Much of this punishment revolves  around denying homosexuals equality lest they escape stigmatization and are counted as normal. 

The overall theme of how many of us Christians treat the LGBT community is that those in that community must know their place. Many of us want them to think that they are not only not up to our standards, they are a threat to us, to our society--and that is despite their many personal and historical contributions. And after we call on society to punish those in the LGBT community, we have the audacity to wonder why we get push back. We wonder why people not only disagree with our views of sex, they question our religion. And though we, in our usual self-flattering way, want to view their resistance against us as resistance against God, we need to realize that not only have we hurt fellow people who are made in the image of God and fellow sinners, we have harmed the Gospel's reputation by not speaking as Jesus would have. This is the point of Pavlovitz's article.

Pavlovitz prefers to finish with a question rather than a suggestion or two. So to try to answer his questions might require that we return to the drawing board. The most immediate solution would be to change our theology. We could rewrite it to accept homosexuality. But to do so would be to betray the Scriptures. For while some LGBT apologists want the Biblical debate on homosexuality to revolve around the definitions of a couple of words, the scriptural passages in Leviticus and Romans, both of which condemn homosexuality, remove the issue beyond the reach of individual definitions by talking about the concept and how it falls short of God's design.

Therefore, changing our theology about sex is not an option. So we must, for the sake of some who are made in God's image and the Gospel, look for changes in how we communicate our theology for the solution. And if we listen to the complaints raised by those in the LGBT community, it will not be too difficult to solve some, but not all, of the sources of contention.

What many in the LGBT community seem to be saying is that we are overstating our case. We are, to repeat the above football references, doing far more than just tackling the sin; we pile on, spear, and target the people involved. And we do so while being blind to our own sins. In short, we come across as the pharisee in the parable of the two men praying (click here). The sins of others have given us delusions of self-righteousness. We forget that while Paul associates the sin of homosexuality with the Gentiles in Romans 1 (click here), he then goes on to describe the sins of the Jews in Romans 2 (click here), and then finishes by stating that no one is better than the other in Romans 3:9-21 (click here).

Thus, our ways of speaking to and treating gays have shown that we have not only exercised bad bedside manner when telling homosexuals about sexual sin, we've made matters worse by not treating them as equals both as individuals and as people in society. And until we change that, much of our teaching about Biblical sexual morality will be lost in translation and we will become stumbling blocks rather than preachers of the Gospel.

All of this starts with how we want society to treat those in the LGBT community. For we cannot expect to have the Church be more loving toward those in the LGBT community when we require, in varying degrees, that society marginalizes both homosexuals and the transgendered. So how we want society to treat those in the LGBT community is where it starts though it isn't where it ends. And we must also realize that because of the past unjust suffering, the sensitivity of some in the LGBT will prevent them from distinguish those who preach in love and those who don't.

Yes, we must be firm in holding to Biblical moral standards regarding sex. But that doesn't preclude us from being gentle with those who do not meet those standards and speaking to them as equals, as fellow sinners.