Evangelicalism, R.I.P.

Back in 1988, in the wake of  televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's fall from grace due to his hiring of a prostitute--itself coming on the heels of the even more ridiculous Jim Bakker's dalliance with Jessica Hahn--I overheard a fellow member of our church in Richardson, Texas both shocked and worried about the consequences of his fall for "us," i.e., "evangelical" Christians. At the time, I thought her concern ridiculous. These weren't "our" people, or so I imagined. In my way of thinking at the time, the "evangelicalism" to which we adhered was different. It was "respectable." Its leaders, at least in the circles I then associated with, were highly educated, culturally astute, and dismissive of the anti-intellectual Pentecostalism and Prosperity "theology" promoted by these disgraced men.

So I thought then. Now is another matter entirely. Evangelicalism, in my reckoning, is dead. And, considering my own personal history, that is not an easy or palatable thing to concede.

You see, I am a Christian, and have been as long as I can consciously remember. I am what many would consider a "cradle evangelical." I am the son of an evangelical--indeed, by his own preferred nomenclature, a fundamentalist--theology professor of some local repute. I grew up in a "Bible-believing" fundamentalist church. I attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran primary school for four years. I graduated from the same evangelical/fundamentalist Christian college where my dad taught. I attended and earned a terminal degree in New Testament from a famous nondenominational evangelical seminary. I taught Greek at that seminary while earning my doctorate, and subsequently taught New Testament, Greek, hermeneutics, and theology at a proudly evangelical college in my home state of Pennsylvania. I have been a member of the Evangelical Theological Society for decades. I have, as it were, evangelicalism in my blood. Given this history, you can understand why it gives me no pleasure to render the diagnosis of the movement's death. Nevertheless, I find that verdict inescapable. As a result, I must likewise confess to a long-term myopia, if not an ostrich-like sticking my head in the proverbial sand, on this matter.

Part of the problem is linguistic in nature. "Evangelical," as I explained years ago, is a slippery term, amenable to various definitions. As much as I would like to understand the term historically and theologically and take refuge in the term's origins in the Protestant Reformation's putative "recovery" of the biblical "gospel (euangelion)," its later application, both in Britain and in America, to a trans-denominational, conversionist Protestant orthodoxy, and especially in the attempt, in the 1940's and 1950's, to rescue such orthodoxy from the black hole of inter-war Philistine Fundamentalism, to do so is, in my view, sadly no longer defensible.

It is a truism of linguistics that word "meanings" develop, and often change, over time--a lesson I learned well from reading the King James Bible in my youth. Consequently, to rely on, assume, or insist on historical meanings of terms is precarious at best. Words also, as any students of "fundamentalism" can attest, have both denotations and connotations, both of which must be acknowledged and taken into consideration.

The fact that, beginning in the 1970's, so-called "conservative evangelicals"--people who, for all practical purposes, were nothing more than only slightly reconstructed fundamentalists of the old sort--began self-designating this way may have felt a tad disconcerting, but it unmasked the fact that fundamentalists all along had been a subset of the larger group known as "evangelicals." It was in fact the "New" Evangelicals of the '40's-'50's who had purposefully driven a wedge between the two groups. And this further brought into relief the nasty fact that evangelicalism--despite its commendable legacy (if only partial) of social action in the 19th century and renewed emphasis on intellectually- and culturally-responsible engagement with the world in the 20th--has always had a healthy strain of anti-intellectualism within its ranks, the religious element of classic American Know-Nothingism.

Ask anybody on the street--or in a factory like the one in which I used to work--what an "evangelical" is, and they will respond by referring to some iteration of what has, for the better part of four decades, been called "The Religious Right." Whether old school Southern Baptists like Jerry Falwell, Sr., or Pentecostalists like Pat Robertson, or fundamentalist legacy "leaders" and organizations like Franklin Graham and Liberty University, or ever more fringe elements of neo-charismatic and Prosperity "theology," "evangelicalism," in common parlance, is associated with rigid, politically conservative Protestant Christianity, with all the corresponding connotations of anti-intellectualism and self-righteous, culture war-style moral judgmentalism that go along with it. Such linguistic realities cannot simply be waved away.

Indeed, if anything, matters have grown ever more dire during the past four years. In 2016 I was shocked when it was reported that 81% of self-professed white "evangelicals" had voted for Donald Trump, a famously cretinous and racist failed businessman--six bankruptcies!--with a decidedly unchristian penchant for adultery, divorce and, in his words, "grabbing" women "by the p*ssy." Four years later, after 30,000 lies, separating migrant children from their parents at the border, coddling white supremacists, obstruction of the Mueller probe, impeachment due to his extortion of the Ukranian president, obsequiousness to foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin, and an unconscionable malfeasance in dealing with a pandemic that has killed almost 400,000 Americans, some 76% of them still voted for him over Joe Biden, many even indulging the delusional fantasy that Trump was a Christian himself. In the days since his weeks-long firehose of lies about "voter fraud" led to the seditious assault on the U.S. Capitol, many, like faux historian Eric Metaxas, still defend him and hold out hope for a second term in the White House. Worst of all, as I wrote about last week, many "evangelicals" actively participated in the insurrection, flying "Jesus" flags and banners while Christian music blared from speakers on the capitol grounds.

What to do? Some optimistically hold out hope for the continued viability of the term. Reformed theologian Richard Mouw, the retired former President of Fuller Theological Seminary, just two years ago wrote his winsome little book, Restless Faith, in the attempt to rescue the label while navigating the rough waters of needed change. Another to do so is the Anglican New Testament scholar, Oxford's N. T. Wright. In an interview published in The Atlantic in December 2019, Wright said the following:

Part of the problem here is the word evangelical. I know a lot of people who have basically abandoned it since the whole [Donald] Trump phenomenon.

In England, people are a bit embarrassed about the word. But I’ve taken the view that the word evangelical is far too good a word to let the crazy guys have it all to themselves, just like I think the word Catholic is far too good a word for the Romans to keep it all to themselves. And while we’re at it, the word liberal is too good a word for the skeptics to have it all for themselves. It stands for freedom of thought and exploration.

More recently, in response to the terrible events of January 6, Wheaton College's Ed Stetzer wrote an op-ed in USA Today in which he called for "an evangelical reckoning" and repentance for being "fooled" by Trump, tolerating his misbehavior and ignoring matters of justice and genuine political discipleship. 

To be sure, as Stetzer maintains, evangelicals have largely (80%!), to their shame, been fooled by Trump. But--and this is the point--this gullibility is a long-standing one, one which raises the pressing question as to whether or not this gullibility is a motivated gullibility, whether or not this susceptibility to falsehood, authoritarianism, white supremacy, patriarchalism, and idolatrous Christian nationalism is indeed a manifestation of rottenness and theological declension at the core of the movement. When I read or hear words from the mouths of Franklin Graham, Falkirk Center/Liberty University's Jenna Ellis and Charlie Kirk, Metaxas, First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, or even more "respectable" academic conservative evangelicals like Southern Baptist Seminary President Al Mohler and theologian/former President of the Evangelical Theological Society Wayne Grudem, this suspicion is inevitably reinforced. Indeed, listening to them and reading horrifying books like evangelical anti-Trump historian/Messiah University Professor John Fea's Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, makes it clear to me that what such people represent is a fundamentally different understanding of what being a Christian means from that which I have always, as a professed evangelical, held.

Thus, as much as I admire men like Mouw and Wright, and appreciate the outspoken disapproval of Trumpism and Christian nationalism by people such as the Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore and the Presbyterian journalist David French, I now maintain that, at least as far as I am concerned, holding on to the label "evangelical" is a futile endeavor. And this breaks my heart.

I am a Christian. I stake my life on Jesus as the crucified and resurrected Lord, and seek to follow him and his teachings with all that is in me. I am an orthodox, Protestant theologian in the Reformed tradition. I gladly stand in the tradition of New Testament scholars such as F. F. Bruce, I. Howard Marshall, George Ladd, Don Hagner, Harold Hoehner, Darrell Bock, Scot McKnight, Craig Keener, N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, and Mike Bird. But I can no longer accept the label "evangelical." I am a Christian. Full stop.

The Confederate Battle Flag in the U.S. Capitol

Over at The Atlantic, Clint Smith reflects on the image of a man carrying the Confederate Battle flag in the halls of the United States Capitol. Here is a taste:

 

Over the course of the past century and a half, the design of the Confederate battle flag became inextricably linked to the story of the Confederacy. The flag’s symbolism cannot be disentangled from the cause of those who fought beneath it. It cannot be separated from the words of its vice president, Alexander Stephens, who wrote in his infamous Cornerstone Speech that slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” and that the Confederacy had been founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

As I looked at the photograph on Wednesday, I thought of how the flag had expanded and evolved in meaning, how it had become a staple of Ku Klux Klan rallies, how it had been waved by white people attempting to intimidate Black children who were integrating schools after Brown v. Board of Education, how it had been made a part of flags in states whose legislatures worked tirelessly to disenfranchise Black citizens. And now it will forever be associated with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when the nation watched a new iteration of white-supremacist violence, incited by a deranged and cowardly president.

During the Civil War, the Confederate Army never reached the Capitol. The rebel flag, to my knowledge, had never been flown inside the halls of Congress until Wednesday. Two days ago, a man walked through the halls of government bearing the flag of a group of people who had seceded from the United States and gone to war against it. Then, presumably, he walked out—carrying so much of this country’s history with him.

Earlier this week I wrote about the disappointment and angst I felt when seeing flags and banners associating Jesus with the goings on at the Capitol on January 6. Associating the name of Jesus to sedition is blasphemous, and any so-called "Christian"--Paul the Apostle would refer to such a person as adelphos onomazomenos [cf. 1 Cor 5:11])--who does so would bring his withering quotation of Isaiah 52:5 in Romans 2:24 upon his or her head.

But as an American Christian--note: not a Christian American; the syntactical difference is all-important and a pointer to much of what is wrong with so much of what passes for White American Evangelicalism today--the sight of the Confederate flag in our nation's Capitol brought both deep sadness and righteous anger. It was the same response as what I had on July 3, 2008, when I saw that flag flying at a house in the former mill town of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania on the outskirts of Philadelphia. It was the same response I had a few years later when I saw that flag flying on a property in Parkesburg, Pennsylvania while passing on the train on my way from Lancaster to Philadelphia. Don't these people--in Pennsylvania, of all places--realize that an estimated 27,000 Pennsylvanians were killed in the Civil War to destroy everything that flag stood and stands for? Don't they realize that one of their own, Philadelphia's General George Gordon Meade, was the victor over what that flag stands for at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in south-central Pennsylvania?

I am sick and tired of rationalizations to the effect that display of this flag is simply a matter of "heritage" or Southern "pride." As Joe Biden would say, Malarkey! (which also doesn't explain the presence of this flag on properties and pick-up trucks in the North). What is there to be proud of about a society and culture based on human chattel slavery? Yes, a Southern white person could take pride in their heritage of country music, though such postdates the time when that flag had relevance (and, I might add, just as a black Southerner could take pride in the blues and jazz music they created). But this is hardly what display of this flag is meant to signify.

Indeed, this is another matter entirely. The Confederate flag today is a symbol drenched in the despicable mythology of the Lost Cause. It is a tribal symbol of White Nationalism, one that associates America with its White "Christian" past and fears/resents the more culturally and ethnically diverse America that is developing. Indeed, that picture of a person carrying that flag in our nation's Capitol presented a moment of clarity. It showed, for the whole world to see, what the phenomenon of Trumpism signifies. It showed what dead-ender Trump cultists really stand for. Whether or not any of them really believe his endless lies is irrelevant. They see Donald Trump as the last, best hope for reversing the cultural and demographic trends they find threatening, and they were willing to commit insurrection to see him re-installed, however illegitimately, in the Oval Office. These seditionists were eventually repulsed on Wednesday. Finally. But for how long?

Christians and Sedition: Reflections on Yesterday's Insurrection at the United States Capitol

 

(photo credit: Hamil Harris; image @https://religionunplugged.com/news/2021/1/6/some-history-behind-the-christian-flags-at-the-pro-trump-capitol-coup)

12 April 1861. 7 December 1941. 11 September 2001. Three "days of infamy," to use the parlance of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the second of those dates. To these three I would add a fourth: yesterday, the 6th of January 2021, when a mob of seditious thugs, incited to insurrection by the President of the United States, swarmed and invaded the Capitol building itself in a vain attempt to overthrow the will of the people and hinder Congress from certifying the legitimate victory of Joe Biden over their hero, Donald Trump.

This event, predictable as it may have been to anybody remotely attuned to the words and actions of this President, was nonetheless as surreal as it was horrifying. The picture of a man carrying a large Confederate flag outside the Senate chambers, with a portrait of John C. Calhoun, the pro-slavery antebellum Senator and Vice President from South Carolina, behind him, was both disheartening and enraging. No picture, I thought, could better symbolize the racism and, yes, fascism that animates the beating heart of MAGA-hatted Trump loyalists. Nevertheless, disappointing as it was to see such a thing, one could not or should not have been surprised by it. Racists will be racists, just as surely as leopards will always have their spots (Jeremiah 13:23).

To me, however, the most disturbing aspect of yesterday's failed insurrection was the presence of signs such as "Jesus Saves" and the blasphemous "Jesus 2020" banner pictured above. I am a Christian. So, yes, I believe that Jesus "saves." But, I must ask for the thousandth time, what does Jesus have to do with American Presidential elections? (For my thoughts on this issue two election cycles ago, see here and here.) America, like all other nations, has a veritable graveyard, not in a closet, but in its living room for all to see. It is not, nor was it ever, a "Christian nation," let alone a Theocracy. The kingdom of God and any kingdom of this world, including the United States of America, are confused or fused only at great peril and with great misunderstanding.

What interests me at this time, however, is the (to me) very curious phenomenon of so-called white "evangelical" Christians, people who glory in their devotion to the authority of the Bible and to the morality articulated therein, supporting Donald Trump. These are people who, prior to the arrival of Trump, ostensibly believed that "character matters," and thus believed Bill Clinton was, in light of his tawdry affair with Monica Lewinsky, thereby unworthy of the office to which he had been elected. Yet this is a demographic of people who voted upwards of 80% for Donald Trump, not only in 2016, but in 2020 as well, after four years of his unceasing lies, cruelty, undeniable racism, deference to foreign authoritarians, impeachable corruption, and self-interested malfeasance and nonfeasance in the face of a pandemic that has already claimed 360,00 American lives. Indeed, as Messiah University historian John Fea noted today, most of the Congressional objectors to the Electoral College tally were evangelicals.

How does one explain this? I understand that, for some Christians, abortion is the single issue that trumps all others (though I wonder how many of them consider either the fact that the biblical evidence for a hardline position is somewhat slimmer than they have been led to believe, or that many nuanced pro-Lifers such as myself believe the issue is better addressed as a moral than as a legal matter). I understand, but wonder how other, more prominent biblical concerns, such as justice and treatment of the poor, can be so easily shunted aside. To be sure, some, recognizing this, have rationalized their support for Trump by invoking the figure of Cyrus the Great, the 6th-century BCE Persian king deemed God's "servant" in Isaiah 45 for decreeing the return of some Jews to the land. Such an analogy is theologically illegitimate at many levels, not least because America hardly occupies an analogous, covenanted position to Israel/Judah in the purposes of God. Indeed, on this reasoning, every ruler in every country could be deemed a "Cyrus," given the view of Paul the Apostle that "the authorities that exist have been established by God" (Romans 13:1). One must look elsewhere.

One is hard-pressed to attribute support of Trump to simple ignorance alone. Yesterday on Facebook, I somewhat uncharitably referred to yesterday's rioters as "lame-brained," and was justly called out for it. Yet one is hard-pressed to deny that ignorance, both empirical and theological, lies at the bottom of this support. Moreover, at least at the level of empirical evidence, this ignorance is nothing if not a willful ignorance. Anyone who believes a word coming out of Trump's mouth must ignore the 30,000 lies, fact-checked ad nauseum, that he has uttered the past four years. Even prior to this, remember that Trump had been in the limelight for four decades. His history of self-aggrandizement, grandiosity, racist real estate practices, womanizing (cheating on his multiple wives, including with a porn star he paid off to keep quiet, bragging about "grabbing them by the p*ssy"), philistinism and six (!) bankruptcies were all public knowledge. His conduct in office--whether acceptance and cover-up of Russian help in getting elected in the first place, his racist cruelty to refugees and would-be immigrants, his impeachment for extorting the Ukrainian president to harm Joe Biden's electoral prospects, his shameful response to the COVID pandemic--cannot simply be attributed to "Fake News" or disinformation by "Democrat" [sic!] politicians or the "liberal" media. Acceptance of (what Joe Biden would call) Trumpian "malarkey" is, like it or not, ignorant. And this ignorance is both willful and, hence, culpable. Indeed, such culpable ignorance manifests a fatal lack of both intellectual and moral discernment, one which has besmirched the name of the very Lord evangelicals claim to follow.

But what, ultimately, lies behind this gullibility and failure of discernment? In short, I would suggest that this ignorance is fundamentally a motivated ignorance. By that I mean that the type of die-hard Trumpian support of so many white evangelical Christians is due to their unexamined presuppositions, preunderstandings, and prejudices (my former students will, I hope, remember this constant emphasis in my teaching). Simply put, at least for the past 40 years, after Jerry Falwell and the Religious Right coalesced in their allegiance to Ronald Reagan and the GOP, it has been an article of unexamined faith that "conservative" Christian religious convictions must be married to so-called "conservative" (read: "right wing") political convictions. Thus, by definition, even a confessed Christian such as Barack Obama, because he was a political liberal, must be seen as suspicious at best, and malicious at worst. Donald Trump, though manifestly irreligious and empirically corrupt, is to be preferred to the Methodist Hillary Clinton or the devout Roman Catholic Joe Biden. 

Now the recognition of motivated points of view is nothing new. Indeed, it is one of the hallmarks of the postmodern critique of modernism's hubristic positivism. We all have presuppositional grids through which we interpret everything we experience in the world. That can't be helped. Nor is it a bad thing. But one cannot simply reduce interpretation of evidence to simple solipsism, such that each person is entitled to his or her "alternative facts," as Kellyanne Conway put it. In other words, as I have argued previously, one must make every effort to examine one's presuppositions, and humbly allow the preponderance of evidence to alter them. Evidence must trump ideology (pun intended).

Changing one's mind can be as difficult as changing one's behavior, especially in matters of group identity. Doing so, as I can attest, can cause great existential angst and professional peril. Years ago I recounted my own somewhat painful journey from an early, inherited/assumed Republicanism to a theologically-motivated switch to the Democratic Party more than 30 years ago. That did not mean then, nor does it mean now, that I follow in lockstep with every element of the Democratic platform. It does mean, however, that fundamental matters of justice and loving one's neighbor as myself are the determinative factors in my affiliation.

I am aware, of course, that not all--indeed, not many--of my Christian brothers and sisters will agree with my stance. And that's fine. Personal experience and innate temperament interact with our rational faculties to create our own points of view. And thus I have great respect for principled conservatives with whom I may disagree, both among friends and authors/columnists whom I read regularly.

But that is not at issue in MAGA-hatted Christian Trumpism, such as we saw yesterday in Washington. Enthusiastic support for Donald Trump the politician is hard to explain, given the history of the past four years, abortion notwithstanding. Support for Trump the man--the egomaniacal, mendacious authoritarian-wannabe--is even less so. But following him and committing oneself to his cause--the New Testament scholar in me recalls the favorite Johannine construct pisteuein eis--to the point of treasonous sedition, like we saw yesterday in our nation's capitol, is a dead end road. Associating Donald Trump with Jesus is itself bizarre. No politician in American history, Richard Nixon included, diverges so far from the example of our Lord than does Trump. Beyond that, however, the very act of sedition in the name of Jesus is blasphemous. It runs counter to everything Jesus ever taught or embodied. And it invalidates any claim to be a genuine follower of the Prince of Peace who laid down his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

This is a serious matter. Such unexamined support for the unsupportable is the scandal of today's evangelical church. In the midst of his polemic against his fellow Jews in Romans 2, Paul the Apostle, quoting Isaiah 52:5, writes these scathing words: "You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written, 'God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you'."

Let the one who has ears to hear listen.

The Feast of Epiphany and Gentile Christianity

[Note: This is a revision of a post originally written on 1/6/2013.]

 

 (Botticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, The Uffizi, Florence, 1475)

Today marks the traditional date for the Feast of the Epiphany (though, as in the Anglican Church, usually celebrated on the Sunday between 2-8 January), which commemorates the visit of the Magi bearing their gifts to the baby Jesus narrated in Matthew 2:1-12. This feast has special significance to the vast majority of present-day Christians who, like me, are Gentile in their origin.

Matthew begins his Gospel by identifying the subject of his biographical work as “Jesus Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1, my trans.). These titles, as well as the order in which he lists them, provide an essential clue for how to understand the narrative that follows. Both of them allude to covenant promises found in the Hebrew Bible, and implicitly assert God's faithfulness to those promises, despite the people's unfaithfulness ("exile:" Matt 1:11, 17). By identifying Jesus as “Messiah” (“Christ”) and “son of David,” Matthew is making the claim that this Jesus of Nazareth, about whom he is writing, was the long-awaited heir to the promise of a Davidide who would finally bring the nation's exile to an end and inaugurate the hoped-for everlasting kingdom (2 Samuel 7:4-17; Psalm 89; cf. Psalms of Solomon 17:21). Simply put, Jesus was the rightful heir to Israel's throne occupied, at the time of his birth (ca. 5-4 BCE), by the Idumean Roman puppet, Herod the Great. 

Jesus, the “son of David,” was also, according to Matthew, the “son of Abraham,” a status Jewish people proudly understood themselves to have (e.g., Matthew 3:9; 8:11-12; 4 Maccabees 6:17, 22: 18:1; t.Ned. 2.5; Sifre Deut. 311.1.1 et al.; cf. the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians). By this designation Matthew refers back to the foundational covenant promise of Genesis 12:1-3 (reiterated and expanded in Genesis 15, 17, 22) and thereby identifies Jesus as the “seed” of Abraham in whom the promise of blessing for all the world is fulfilled. Jesus, in other words, was Israel's king for the whole world. How this blessing is extended and received becomes clear at the conclusion of the Gospel, where the resurrected Jesus commissions his disciples in Matthew 28:19: people from all nations—even Celtic Americans like me!—receive the Abrahamic blessing when they respond to the gospel and become disciples (i.e., “followers”) of the “son of Abraham.”

This is how the visit of the Magi must be understood in Matthew's story. These astrologers “from the east” (Parthia? Babylonia? Arabia?), having seen his “star” (the tailed comet recorded in the Spring of 5 BCE?) deduced (because of the planetary massing of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in 7-6 BCE?) that one had been “born” (techtheis) “King of the Jews” (Matt 2:2). Here Matthew's skill as a storyteller and narrative theologian becomes evident, as he tells the story of the Magi's visit to the baby Jesus by using the template provided by the story of the birth of Moses in the Torah. His basic theological point is obvious: just as Moses was the deliverer who led Israel out of captivity in Egypt, so this Jesus would be the deliverer who would effect the New Exodus promised in, inter alia, Isaiah 40-55.

In Matthew's telling, Herod (thus implicitly viewed as a usurper to the throne) and “all Jerusalem” responded to news of the birth of the Jewish King the very paranoid way Pharaoh and the Egyptians were said to have done more than a millennium earlier in response to the Israelites' fecundity (Exodus 1): they were “terrified” (etarachthē [Matt 2:3]; cf. Josephus, Ant. 2.206, 215; likewise, the response of Herod in ordering the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem [Matt 2:16] parallels that of Pharaoh in ordering the murder of all male Israelite infants [Exod 1:22]). 

In contrast to this Jewish response (foreshadowing the passion narrative; cf. Matt 27:1, 25, 37), the pagan Magi found Jesus and “worshipped” (prosekynēsan) him. In Matthew's narrative, it becomes clear that this act of homage/prostration is a picture of the rightful act of worship due the one already described as "God with us" (Matt 1:23). More significantly, Matthew intends the Magi to be understood as the firstfruits of the anticipated pilgrimage of the nations and their submission to the true God (cf. Matt 8:11-12). The Evangelist does not, as he does a number of other times in the chapter, use a formula quotation to argue that this act "fulfilled" a biblical text or texts (cf. Matt 2:5-6, 15, 17-8, 23). But he didn't have to. Indeed, his narrative clearly echoes two texts. First, Psalm 72:10-11, 15, 17:

        The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him;

            the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts.

        All kings will bow down to him

            and all nations will serve him ...

        Long may he live!

            May gold from Sheba be given him.

        May people ever pray for him

            and bless him all day long ...

        May his name endure forever;

            may it continue as long as the sun

        All nations will be blessed through him [cf. Matt 1:1!],

            and they will call him blessed."

Second, Isaiah 60:6, a text describing the nations' coming to Israel's light (Isa 60:3) when their exile is finally over:

        Herds of camels will cover your land,

            young camels of Midian and Ephah.

        And all from Sheba will come,

            bearing gold and frankincense

            and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.

Significantly, for the last line the LXX translation of Isaiah 60:6 reads, "Hēxousin pherontes chrysion kai libanon oisousin kai to sōtērion kyriou euangeliountai" ("And they will come bearing gold, and they will bring frankincense, and they will proclaim the salvation of the Lord"). By implication, with this resounding echo Matthew declares that the Magi's prostration before the baby Jesus is eloquent testimony that this child would be the one to bring God's promised salvation to his people (Matt 1:21!).

All too often we Gentile Christians forget that the one we love and serve is, first and foremost, Israel's Messiah, and that it is by God's grace alone that we “wild branches” have been “grafted in” to replace the “natural branches” who have been broken off the olive tree because of their unbelief (Romans 11:17-24). But, thanks be to God, the natural branches will one day be grafted back on (Rom 11:25-27)! Let us, then, remember what  Paul said in a later letter: “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called 'uncircumcised' by those who call themselves 'the circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:11-13 [NIV]; cf. Rom 15:8-12). Soli Deo Gloria!

I will close by quoting the Collect for Epiphany from The Anglican Book of Common Prayer:

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

2020, Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You, and Death

One of the indelible memories of my youth is watching the ball drop in Times Square to usher in the new year, with my dear, departed Uncle Willie softly commenting, "Another year passed ..." To my youthful ears, such wistfulness was borderline humorous. New Years wasn't for nostalgia, so I thought, at least for me. It was for celebration, watching Chicago on Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve, and--especially--for watching multiple college football bowl games on New Years Day.

That was then. It is amazing how the growing realization that one has many more days in the rear view mirror than on the road ahead can change one's perspective, however. Over the years, I have increasingly found myself uttering, if only to myself, Uncle Willie's words when the clock strikes 12 on the 1st of January. 

But not this year. 2020, as we all know, has not been a normal year. Three million Americans have died, including more than 380,000 (so far) in a pandemic exacerbated by a criminally negligent governmental response. Untold numbers of luminaries have passed--from New Testament scholars on my personal Mt. Rushmore (The University of Durham's Jimmy Dunn) to politicians and public servants (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis), to authors (John le Carre), to actors (Jerry Stiller, Carl Reiner, Regis Philbin, Olivia de Havilland, Wilford Brimley, Chadwick Boseman, Sean Connery, Diana Rigg, Dawn Wells), to musicians (Ennio Morricone, Peter Serkin, Lynn Harrell, Ellis Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Little Richard, Charlie Daniels, Peter Green, Justin Townes Earle, Spencer Davis, Neil Peart, Bill Withers, Eddie Van Halen, Billy Joe Shaver, Charlie Pride), to athletes (baseball players: Dick Allen, Al Kaline, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Phil Niekro, Johnny Antonelli, Tony Fernandez, Jay Johnstone, Mike McCormick, Tony Taylor, Bob Watson, Jimmy Wynn; football players: Timmy Brown, Pete Retzlaff, Don Shula, Gale Sayers, Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Paul Hornung, Willie Wood, Bobby Mitchell, Jimmy Orr, Larry Wilson, Mike Curtis, Fred Dean, Chris Doleman, Kevin Greene, Jim Kiick, Del Shofner, Rosey Taylor, Jake Scott; basketball players: Kobe Bryant, Tommy Heinsohn, K. C. Jones, Wes Unseld, Jerry Sloan, Clifford Robinson, Curly Neal, John Thompson; soccer star Diego Maradona).

Death is in the air, as it were. So, it seems to me, ought serious reflection on the brevity and fragility of life on what Shakespeare's Hamlet, himself contemplating death by suicide, called "this mortal coil" in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy (Hamlet 3.1.56-69). 

Enter Bruce Springsteen, the most important American rock and roll musician not named Bob Dylan. Over the years, the Boss, as happens to all of us once we hit our late 50's and 60's, had lost friends (Terry McGovern in 2007) and "blood brothers" (E Streeters Danny Federici in 2008 and, most significantly, "The Big Man" Clarence Clemons in 2011). But it was the death, in 2018, of George Theiss, the frontman in Springsteen's first teenage band, The Castilles--making him the last remaining member of that group--that finally dislodged the writing block that for years had prevented him from creating new material designed for his nonpareil band. A torrent of songs flowed, the result of which is his new album, Letter to You, recorded live with the E Street Band in his Colt Neck, NJ studio in a mere four days in November of 2019.

It hardly needs to be said that Springsteen, at 71, is far past the peak of his commercial success. Nor is it news that his creative peak is likewise but a faint light in the rear view mirror. That peak was a long one, encapsulating the 6 diverse albums he released from 1973's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle through 1984's Born in the USA, all of which are now part of the classic rock canon. I would personally rate each of them with 5 stars [indeed, the best of the lot, 1975's Born to Run, is one of three albums that, in my opinion, break the scale and deserve six stars, the others being The Who's Who's Next and the Stones' Exile on Main Street]. In the intervening years Bruce has released a number of fine albums and even more great songs. But it is my considered opinion, after listening over and over to the record for the past two months, that Letter to You has supplanted 2007's Magic and should be recognized as Springsteen's finest album since the aforementioned Born in the USA.

The album begins with a bit of musical misdirection, with Bruce's finger-picked acoustic guitar and hushed vocals performing a melancholic song that wouldn't have sounded out of place on his 2005 album, Devils & Dust. Yet the lyrics set the tone for the album to come: 

Big black train comin' down the track

Blow your whistle long and long

One minute you're here

Next minute you're gone

"One Minute You're Here," and the album to come, are about the transitoriness of life and how one should respond to death and the nasty fact of its inevitability. Once he has made this clear, the collection's musical focus takes shape with the second song, the album's title track. "Letter to You" is classic Bruce, with the E Street Band, recorded live, sounding more powerful and vital than ever. Though the song may owe more to Springsteen's finely-honed craft than to inspired creativity, it is a definite, and welcome, return to form. Then comes the best newly-written song--more on that presently--on the album, "Burnin' Train," a barnburner that recalls Bruce's "glory days," with a marvelous Phil Spector-styled Wall of Sound production, including the use of a glockenspiel that recalls the aforementioned Phantom Danny Federici's work on Born to Run:

Immediately following this formidable one-two punch, the Boss takes a detour of sorts, one in which the Springsteen traditionalist in me takes unmitigated delight. "Janey Needs a Shooter" is one of three songs--the others being "If I Was the Priest" and "Song for Orphans," both of which, in acoustic form, were presented to the legendary John Hammond, Jr. in his Columbia audition in 1972, and both of which provide ample evidence of why he was so often deemed "a New Dylan" in his early years--written almost 50 years ago that, to me, are the three best songs on the album. "Janey," its tune reminiscent of the classic outtake "The Promise," would not have sounded out of place on 1978's great Darkness on the Edge of Town: 

As I said, however, the emotional weight of the album is found in four songs inspired by the death of his friends and bandmates that deal with death and the proper response to that inestimable loss. Besides the opener, there is the bookend closer, "I'll See You in My Dreams," as well as the tribute to Theiss, "Last Man Standing," and another rip-roaring classic, the hard-rocking "Ghosts," its melodic line reminiscent of the foundational riff of Springsteen's late friend Tom Petty's "Free Fallin':" 

How, then, does Springsteen respond? Bruce is not a practicing Christian. Indeed, he frankly acknowledged, in his 2016 memoir, Born to Run, that he is a lapsed Catholic, though he maintains that he is "still on the team." As such, thankfully he doesn't pretend, as is fashionable in some circles today, not to be afraid of death because it is simply "part of life." The deaths of his friends and bandmates have clearly affected him, and his sense of loss is palpable, even in the ostensibly optimistic, harder-rocking songs.

Melancholy he might be, but brow-beaten by death he emphatically is not. "I'm alive!" he shouts in "Ghosts," experiencing their ghosts moving in the night as he plays the music they used to perform together, and affirms he will "meet" them "on the other side." In the closer, he confesses "death is not the end," as he "will see [them] in [his] dreams."

The constitutionally melancholic theologian in me can gladly share the sentiment while realizing that it isn't sufficiently robust intellectually to salve the psychic wounds of human mortality. Death, as the Apostle Paul acknowledges in 1 Corinthians 15, has been universally victorious since the dawn of time. Even so, it must not be supinely accepted, but raged against. Years ago I wrote a piece reflecting on Jesus' response to the death of a friend in the famous story of Lazarus's resuscitation in John 11. Famously, Jesus is said to have "wept" (John 11:35). More significantly, using language elsewhere used of horses snorting when enraged, the Fourth Evangelist writes that he became indignant, internally raging at the depredations and oppression caused by death as a (personified) usurper in God's good creation (11:33).

The solution, of course, is found in the already/not yet structure of New Testament eschatology. In the Gospel story, Lazarus's resuscitation is illustrative of Jesus' role as "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25-26), such that those who believe in him will "live," even if they die, precisely because of his resurrection later narrated in chapter 20. Paul is even more explicit. Because of Christ's resurrection as the "firstfruits" of the eschatological harvest (1 Cor 15:23), death's victory has been overturned (1 Cor 15:55) for all who are "in Christ" will, at the last trump, be "made alive" (1 Cor 15:22, 51-54).

Death hurts. Lets not forget that, let alone pretend it isn't true. And well it should. But the more important truth is the sequel: those who are in Christ have, as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Death, as the Boss realizes, is not the end. But the Christian hope is not merely an ephemeral sight or experience of our deceased love ones in our dreams, but rather in an embodied existence with them on the new earth in the presence of the One who loved us and gave himself for us (Galatians 2:20). Soli Deo Gloria!

Jesus the Radical

 Per Peter Wehner:

First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly radical and radically inclusive figure Jesus was, and neither are today’s Christians. We want to tame and domesticate who he was, but Jesus’ life and ministry don’t really allow for it. He shattered barrier after barrier ...

For Christians, the incarnation is a story of God, in the person of Jesus, participating in the human drama. And in that drama Jesus was most drawn to the forsaken and despised, the marginalized, those who had stumbled and fallen. He was beloved by them, even as he was targeted and eventually killed by the politically and religiously powerful, who viewed Jesus as a grave threat to their dominance.

Indeed, every scholar involved in the constantly waxing/waning study of the so-called "Historical Jesus" acknowledges Jesus' friendship with the religiously/socially ostracized and marginalized as a defining characteristic of his "ministry." After all, the story of his calling of the tax collector Levi is recorded in the bedrock, Markan "triple tradition" found in, inter alia, Mark 2:13-17. Jesus' and his disciples' dining at Levi's residence elicited a peeved, self-righteous accusation masquerading as a question from certain Pharisees, described as "teachers of the law:" "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" "Sinners," here, is as much a sociological designation as it is a theological one. Like "liberal" or "socialist" in many circles today, it was a smear word, used to denote anybody whose adherence to the Torah didn't meet the standards of the accuser (and with the Pharisees, concerned as they were to keep the Torah strictly so as to hasten the advent of the long-awaited Davidic Kingdom, these standards were rigorous indeed). In such circles, association with such people wasn't merely personally damning; it was detrimental to the prospects of the Jews as God's covenant people.

The same accusation is likewise found in the "Q" passage dealing with Jesus and John the Baptist found in Luke 7:18-35//Matthew 11:2-19. Jesus' closing salvo against the "people of this generation" was as follows: "For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." But wisdom is proved right by her children (Lk 7:33-35)."

My concern today is not so much why Jesus made this such a central concern. Wehner's NYT column does a good job with that question. Rather, my concern is why this acknowledged Jesuanic radicalism has been marginalized almost completely in much of what passes for white, "evangelical" American Christianity today. "Evangelicals," as strict Protestants, wholeheartedly affirm that membership in God's covenant people--what the Apostle Paul, using a forensic/legal metaphor, refers to as "justification"--comes by "grace" alone. "Grace," as John M. G. Barclay has argued in his already classic Paul and the Gift, refers to an "unconditioned gift," one given without consideration of worth, be it ethnic or moral; hence, as the apostle famously affirms, grace excludes boasting, whether such pride rests in ethnicity (Romans 3:27) or moral performance (Ephesians 2:9).

But if boasting is excluded, that necessarily means that self-righteousness and pride are antithetical to what it rightfully means to be a Christian. Unfortunately, however, I hardly need to inform anybody that, in poll after poll, descriptors such as "self-righteous" and "judgmental" appear at or near the top in respondents' answers when asked their views of "evangelicals." Indeed, I would argue that it is not merely moralism, but selective moralism, that all too often marks the public posture of "evangelicals" in America today, much to their shame and the hindrance of the gospel of grace they profess to stand for. Some matters--in a constantly shifting environment, currently it seems that abortion and LGBTQ issues are high on the list--are emphasized, while others--not surprisingly, issues popularly associated with "liberal" or "progressive" politics, such as greed, lust for power, pride in "achievement" or even the country of our birth--take a back seat, if acknowledged at all. Meanwhile, egregious sins committed by Christian "leaders" like Ravi Zacharias and Jerry Falwell, Jr. are downplayed, if not conveniently ignored. I write this to our shame.

This is not new. I myself am what might be described as a "cradle evangelical." My father was a Bible Professor of some local renown.  I have been a Christian as long as I can consciously remember. I have a terminal degree in New Testament from a famous evangelical Seminary, have taught at an evangelical college and been a member of the Evangelical Theological Society for decades. Even so, the disconnect between the inspiring example of Jesus and the parochial example of the evangelical church has troubled me almost from the beginning of my faith journey. In my youth, I was vocally criticized for playing my trumpet in my high school's jazz band. It would be preferable, so they said, that I use my abilities to play "Christian" music rather than the "Devil's music" written and performed by people with sinful lifestyles. Certain activities and habits--drinking, smoking, dancing, movies, rock music--were deemed too "worldly" for Christians to participate in, without considering that "worldliness," in New Testament perspective, cannot be limited to such relatively trivial matters, but rather refers to the frequently unexamined structures of a world still operating on the stage of the "present evil age." 

Such an attitude manifests what I refer to as "ethical desiccation." Moreover, such contempt for the non-Christian world and for the "sinners" that inhabit it is theologically incongruous, not only with the example of Jesus, but with the acknowledgment that we, though "children of wrath," have been "saved by grace" (Eph 2:1-10). Grace received from God demands grace proffered to others. Why don't we? 

The Coventry Carol and the Massacre of the Innocents

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Lullay, thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we do sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might, in his own sight,

All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!

And ever mourn and sigh,

For thy parting neither say nor sing,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Tomorrow, in the Western Church, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the boys of Bethlehem who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, were massacred by Herod the Great in his vain, paranoid attempt to eradicate the "threat" to his throne posed by the birth of Jesus, the one "born King of the Jews" (Matt 2:1-8, 16-18). 

This horrific story is one event narrated in the Gospels whose historicity has been regularly challenged (for example, see the back-and-forth a few years ago between James McGrath and Tony Jones here, here, here, and here). Without delving too far into the discussion, the historian in me acknowledges that there is no external (non-biblical) attestation of the event. Nevertheless, anyone who has ever read the first-century Jewish historian Josephus sympathetically (cf. Antiquities of the Jews 15.5-7, 50-87, 173-78, 232-36, 247-52, 260-66, 289-90; 16.361-94; 17.42-44, 167, 182-87) must acknowledge that the story is consistent with what may be known of Herod's character. Herod, though raised as a Jew, was ethnically an Idumean, and this nasty fact was never far from his mind as King. Although he was, in many respects, a cultured man and renowned for his architectural achievements, his rule, commencing in 37 BCE when the Roman Senate conferred on him the title "King of Judea/King of the Jews"--here we can discern Matthew's great skill as a story-teller--was increasingly a despotic one, punctuated by scores of massacres. Indeed, any ruler who had no compunction murdering his favorite wife (Mariamne I, in 29 BCE) and three of his sons (Mariamne's sons Alexander and Aristobulus in 7 BCE for high treason; Antipater II, his firstborn from his first wife, Doris, in 4 BCE; upon learning of this, Octavian is reported by Microbius to have commented, "It is better to be Herod's pig [hus] than his son [huios]") would have had no ethical qualms, even at almost the age of 70, about killing a dozen or so baby boys in a small, insignificant Judean town of no more than 1000 people.

Be that as it may, the story is one with powerful theological significance. Oftentimes in the West, we Christians have sentimentalized Christmas with saccharine pictures of quaint manger scenes with shepherds and Magi accompanying Mary and Joseph. But it is instructive to keep in mind that the early spring of 5 BCE was, like today, a troubled time, racked by violence, pain, and unsavory political machinations. Indeed, as N. T. Wright has written, "Before the Prince of Peace had learned to walk and talk, he was a homeless refugee with a price on his head" (Matthew for Everyone, Part One [London: SPCK, 2002] 14). But it was precisely that situation he came to reverse.

Scholars have routinely noticed that Matthew narrates the story of Herod and the Magi in a way that accentuates the tyrant's parallels with the prototypical enemy of God's people, Pharaoh, and highlights Jesus' own parallels with Israel's first deliverer, Moses. His implicit point is hard to miss: Jesus would "save his people from their sins" (Matt 1:21) by enacting the long-awaited "New Exodus" promised in Isaiah 40-55 that would, once and for all, bring an end to the protracted exile in which the Jewish people still languished. The Evangelist makes this point explicit in his oft-misunderstood quotation of Jeremiah 31:15 in Matthew 2:18. The slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem, writes Matthew, "fulfills" what was said through the prophet Jeremiah:

A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.

The typical lay reader of scripture would assume that the Evangelist is claiming that the massacre fulfills a direct prophecy/prediction of its occurrence almost six centuries before it happened. But any serious reading of Jeremiah 30-31 should disabuse anyone of such naivete. These chapters are classics for the promise of Israel's restoration to divine favor and, consequently, the land after exile. Ramah, located just north of Jerusalem, was one of the villages through which the city's residents passed on their journey to Babylonia (see Jer 40:1). "Rachel," Jacob's favorite wife and the matriarchal personification of the people, refuses consolation because "her children are no more." Jeremiah, however, immediately relates Yahweh's comforting promise of "return from the land of the enemy," because of which she need no longer weep (Jer 31:16). Most significantly, this promise is the prelude to the great promise of a "New Covenant" which God would establish with the people, forgiving their sins and writing the Torah in their hearts (Jer 31:31-34). In Matthew's theological understanding of history, the massacre of the innocents was the "eschatological" "fulfillment" of Rachel's (the mother of the Jews) weeping in Ramah over the deportation of the tribes to Assyria (and, later, Babylon). In other words, it was the climactic act of Israel's exile and the prelude to the deliverance to be effected through the life--and, as is clear in Matthew's unfolding narrative, through the death and resurrection--of the one newly born "King of the Jews" in Bethlehem. As was promised in Jeremiah 31:16, "Rachel" need weep no longer because the long night of exile was soon to be over as God establishes his new covenant with the people (cf. Matt 26:28). The "consolation of Israel" (Luke 2: 25; cf. Isa 40:1-2) had arrived with the birth of this Jesus.

But the genius of the Christian faith is that it has no illusions that the world in which we now live is a perfectible one, let alone a perfect one. Yes, the New Testament teaches that God has, in Messiah Jesus, brought the promised "age to come" to bear on the world we live in. But this new age as yet exists in tension with the "present evil age" which will not meet its ultimate demise until the baby of Bethlehem, the crucified and risen Lord, returns to consummate the promised kingdom, where God's will shall be done "on earth as it is in heaven." This means, of course, that indescribably awful events such as we continue to experience daily will continue. But praise be to God that he has spoken truth to worldly power, that he has met the world's evil head-on in the person of his only Son, who bore the weight and consequences of that sin on the cross, and gives his followers the sure hope that one day in the not too distant future, we will experience the renewal for which we all hope, fully and forever. Soli Deo Gloria!