To "Cancel" or Not To "Cancel": Ravi … and Yoder, Barth, and Luther?

On the 9th of this month, a long-awaited Independent Report was issued, confirming the rumored longstanding pattern of sexual abuse committed by the famous Christian and Missionary Alliance Evangelist/Apologist Ravi Zacharias in the years leading up to his death in May of last year. The report documented, in excruciating and nauseating detail, his manifold sins against women who trusted him, not to mention against the God he ostensibly served.

The question immediately presents itself: How should Christians, not only the laity but professional ministers and academicians, respond to such a public fall from grace?  I remember well the knee-jerk response from (too) many in the immediate aftermath of abuse allegations before his death, to wit, to play down the claims and discredit the accuser under the pretense of the "importance" of his ministry for the advancement of God's kingdom. [David French shoots down this dodge with a dose of good theology: "In reality, God will accomplish His purposes, with or without any of us, regardless of our gifts or talents."] Alas, the accusations turned out to be all too true. And, as we all should have learned by now in light of sexual abuse allegations in the political realm (see: Clarence Thomas, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh), the testimony of victimized women should be taken seriously, not dismissed out of hand when inconvenient. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, if not a fortiori, in the sphere of Christian ministry.

Once sin has been exposed and confirmed, however, how should we respond? Alas, as Kyle J. Howard has lamented, many Christian "leaders" have rushed to empathize with Zacharias, some even resorting to the timeworn, oh-so-pious sounding "But for the grace of God" line (thankfully, Howard has refrained from naming names, to protect the guilty). And, make no mistake, atheists and other nonbelievers like Beth Stoneburner have noticed. One wonders, wouldn't it be preferable to empathize with the victims in such situations? Certainly we must do better than that. The C&MA have made a start in the right direction by posthumously revoking his ordination. Yes, we are all sinners, but some sins are such that any future attempt at ministry would be disqualified. To excuse or minimize the consequences of such actions perhaps tells more about the excusers' own foibles than it does their spiritual discernment. In the Pastoral Epistles one requirement of an overseer (episkopos ["bishop"]) is that he be a "one woman man" (mias gynaikos andra) (1 Timothy 3:2). The precise interpretation of this expression is disputed, but all agree that it is inconsistent with sexual infidelity, let alone heinous, premeditated sins like sexual predation and sexual abuse. Yes, we all experience temptation to sin, and do so daily. But sins such as these are not among the "normal" range of sins for which we routinely pray in the Lord's Prayer, "forgive us our trespasses." Thus I would argue that men who perform these acts are thereby disqualified from positions of spiritual leadership. Yes, grace is available and repentance is possible. But actions, even forgiven sinful ones, have consequences.

There are no precise parallels to what Zacharias did in the pages of Scripture, though the sinfulness of major biblical characters is hardly swept under the rug. Simon Peter, of course, was a denier, but his later career certainly warranted the name "Peter" (i.e., "Rock") given him by Jesus on the occasion of his confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:18). Likewise, the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles can refer to himself as the "worst" (prōtos) of sinners because he had, prior to his call on the road to Damascus, persecuted the church (1 Timothy 1:15; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9). The late F. F. Bruce may have praised the "warmth" of his personality (Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, p. 15), but, as one who considers Paul his greatest hero and who did his doctoral work on the Apostle's most hot-tempered letter, Galatians, I can certainly attest to what his opponents there would have considered his irascibility. Indeed, as the great Bishop Joseph Barber Lightfoot wrote in 1865, "The systematic hatred of St Paul is an important fact, which we are too apt to overlook, but without which the whole history of the Apostolic ages will be misread and misunderstood." One need not look to hard or long to discern why.

Perhaps the best partial parallel is King David who, though referred to as a "man after God's own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14; cf. Acts 7:46), was, if one reads carefully between the lines of the Deuteronomistic history, consistently more of a scoundrel than he appears on a surface reading; and that doesn't even take into consideration his affair with Bathsheba and his subsequent machinations ensuring her husband Uriah's death on the battlefield. Yet this is the man to whom God promised an everlasting kingly line, culminating, as the New Testament argues, in the present and future reign of Jesus, Son of David (Matthew 1:1). 

Despite these failures, one thing each of these biblical examples have that is lacking in Zacharias is the all-important matter of repentance. Even the adulterer and murderer, David, has a literary record of his repentance inscripturated in Psalm 51, a penitential psalm traditionally attributed to his pen. I am obviously not privy to the inner workings of Zacharias's mind or soul, but there is no public record of any repentance on his part, let alone evidence of any "fruit worthy of (karpous axious) repentance" (Luke 3:8) in his last days. And that is a pity.

The question remains, however, about the work of men like Zacharias. Are their ideas and contributions, especially their books, now off limits by association? [Note: in the title, I have co-opted the au courant expression, "cancel." By doing so, I do not mean to provide support for the current right-wing complaint about so-called "cancel culture." Indeed, this tiresome campaign is both hypocritical and disingenuous (see the recent posts by Calvin Univesity professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez and the venerable anti-Trump conservative columnist Mona Charen), intended as a way to get their racist and other objectionable ideas in through the back door, as it were. Accountability cannot be avoided by juvenile screeds against "canceling."] Indeed, some, including the English writer Tanya Marlow, answer with an unequivocal yes. To do otherwise, according to Marlow, would be an insult to victims of abuse.

Marlow understands the difficulty of her position. Difficult or not, we must take her argument seriously. Speaking for myself, "canceling" Zacharias wouldn't cost me a thing. Indeed, Zacharias wrote 30 or so books, but none of them were scholarly tomes, and his erstwhile field of popular apologetics is, to say the least, not my bailiwick. I have always found more philosophical arguments for the justification of religious belief (e.g., by Oxford's Basil Mitchell and Notre Dame's Alvin Plantinga) and historical arguments centered on Jesus' resurrection (e.g., by The University of St. Andrews' N. T. Wright and Houston Baptist University's Michael Licona) more significant.

But "Slacktivist" Fred Clark threw an inconvenient spanner in the works this week by referring to a parallel situation, the sad case of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. I first became aware of Yoder through an assignment in my Political Science course at Cairn University as a senior in the fall of 1977. My teacher, Lin Crowe, had us write a book review of Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, a book-length exegetical and theological defense of nonviolence with which I, having been raised in red-blooded, dispensationalist  American Fundamentalism, had never been acquainted. To be frank, I didn't have a clue what to do with it and, as I recall, Professor Crowe was more than gracious in the grade I was given. Over the years, however, as I allowed the Synoptic Gospels to correct my naïve, dualist "soterian" understanding of the New Testament―gleaned almost entirely from John's Gospel and a selective reading of Paul―I began to appreciate and learn from Yoder's work, even as I continued to disagree with him in some respects. But then, after his death in 1997, the truthfulness of reports about his longstanding, sociopathic sexual abuse of multiple women was confirmed. This raised an existential question: What should I do about his work? Should it be relegated to the dustbin, invalidated to the same extent as his character was revealed to be unworthy of the adjective "Christian?"

I could go on. What about Karl Barth, surely the most significant Systematic Theologian of the 20th century, who maintained a decades-long affair with his personal assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum with the full knowledge of his wife? What about Confederate Reformed theologian Robert Dabney and slavery-defending 17th century Methodist evangelist George Whitefield? Even more problematic for me: What about my theological forebear, John Calvin, who was a witness at the trial that led to the burning of heretic Michael Servetus at the stake in 16th century Geneva? And what about my hero, Martin Luther, who, despite his massive achievements, in 1543 penned the execrable On the Jews and Their Lies, providing an model of Germanic anti-semitism that flowered, as we know all too well, in the Holocaust of the 1930's-40's? It would be tempting to excuse or lessen the liability of many of these men by claiming they were all "men of their time." But all of us are, aren't we? Not to mention that Dabney's contemporary, the theologically-challenged evangelist Charles Finney, was an abolitionist. Likewise, Whitefield's friend, John Wesley, preached strongly against the evils of slavery. Many have tried to lessen Calvin's culpability by reminding us that the Reformer didn't have the authority to execute Servetus, and that the motivation of both Calvin and the civil magistrates was to uphold God's honor by punishing heretics. Good motives, however, even misguided good motives, don't excuse wrong behavior. Yes, these were all men of their times, and we do well not to expect them anachronistically to have 21st century sensibilities. Yet, I repeat, such acknowledgement does not excuse their actions.

But what about the books of these flawed, at time fatally flawed men? Baylor's Roger Olsen is representative of many who follow former Wheaton College Philosophy Professor Arthur F. Holmes, who in 1979 wrote the popular All Truth Is God's Truth: 

If someone says something true, it doesn’t really matter what his or her life was or is like—in terms of the TRUTH status of what he or she said or wrote. We should embrace the truth regardless of the broken vessel that held it …

I do separate the truth from the communicator of it. If what a person says is true, it doesn’t matter what his or her life is like—as far as the truth remaining true and therefore being valuable.

Olsen attributes the idea to the early 3rd century Father Clement of Alexandria. I have been unable to find such an idea in his writings. St. Augustine, however, when discussing the "superstition of the heathen" in his On Christian Doctrine, II.18, writes: "Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master." So the notion has good historical Christian precedent.

If only things were so simple in cases like Zacharias's. Indeed, "All truth is God's truth" has become something of a truism. Yes, of course, it's true. But it doesn't necessarily answer the question. N. T. Wright, in an interview dealing with the revelations of sexual abuse by the late Catholic theologian and advocate for the disabled, Jean Vanier, nuances the thought somewhat: "Does it undermine everything he did and said? No, it casts a shadow on it." That's certainly getting closer, I believe. And it has the air of reasonableness. But does it answer the question definitively? Not that I can tell.

It is essential to understand that authors, even the most scholarly ones, are not authorities who must be followed by virtue of their position in the church or in the academy. What they write can be, and must be separated from their vocation. If, as in the delightful story found in Numbers 22, God can speak through the comical, humble medium of Balaam's ass, one can likewise learn from the words of flawed―genuine Christians or not, as the case may be!―interpreters of the Bible. One must, as with all things theological, prayerfully use one's mind, renewed and transformed by the Spirit (Romans 12:2), to think critically and, like the Bereans of old (Acts 17:11), examine what is said to determine whether or not what is said is trustworthy. As I have often said, beware the opposite error: an interpreter's spirituality or spiritual maturity are not guarantors of accuracy, either!

But here's the rub: Can one disentangle what such men as Zacharias write from what type of people they are or were? Certainly not. And thus one can't blithely assert that their books are fine and untouched by the filth of their personal lives. There is no simple answer. Discernment and maturity are required, taking into consideration both the seriousness of their offense and how their sinful perversion may have influenced their thought processes. Will we be up to the task?

Charles Kugler's Plea and Warning to Evangelicals

 From Houston Baptist University Theologian Chris Kugler in Christianity Today:

“I’m surprised people are still even trying to run in those circles.” 

That’s what my colleague—a New Testament scholar who signs up to all the ecumenical creeds and staunchly defends the inspiration of Scripture—said to me. And by “people”, he was specifically referring to Bible and Theology Profs running in conservative evangelical circles.

It’s simply assumed—and one sees it again and again in practice—that if you get the academic training, you will find life in many evangelical churches difficult, if not impossible.

But why? Why do most Bible scholars and Theologians say: “I give up. I’m exhausted. It’s time to go Anglican/Episcopalian/Methodist/Presbyterian, etc.?”

As one who has spent 6 decades in this environment, been educated in its institutions of higher learning, and experienced the vicissitudes and what Professor Kristin Du Mez has  perceptively referred to as the "Cancel Culture" invariably associated with teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at two evangelical schools, I understand the sentiment completely. It's an experience I never would have imagined when I signed up for such a career when I entered graduate school 42 years ago.

One pertinent question is why this is so. Kugler suggests, in my estimation rightly:

It’s because so much of evangelicalism—with respect to philosophy, theology, and hermeneutics—is at least 30 years behind the curve.

If this is so, a second, more pertinent question, presents itself: What can be done, if not to fix the problem entirely, at least to mitigate its worst manifestations? For Kugler, it's a matter of humility, discretion, scholarly responsibility, and a proper, historically sensitive understanding of Luther's insight of the "priesthood" of believers:

A couple of points in this regard:

1. Training is important. You should not sit under a pastor who has no serious biblical or theological training (and there are, of course, many different kinds of training).
2. MacArthur, Sproul, Piper, etc., are not reliable Bible scholars or Theologians. There’s a reason why they’re almost universally regarded in academia as unreliable biblical or theological guides. It’s not because “academia is liberal”. It’s because most of the experts recognize that folks like this—however much good they have done for the kingdom of God—don’t demonstrate the necessary competencies to handle complex historical, biblical, and theological issues with skill and nuance. There’s a reason why many have flocked to Wright, McKnight, Bird, etc. It’s not just because they’ve found in these scholars a tasteful balance and nuance. It’s because they recognize a requisite competency.
3. Rediscover the great ecumenical creeds of the church as the markers of genuine Christianity. Stop making your church’s doctrine number 89 a “gospel issue”.

And this is, for me, a plea and a warning. There are some merits to a “Mere Christianity Evangelicalism”. But it must beware of falling prey to some of the worst of the unintended consequences of Luther’s Reformation.

The priesthood of all believers does not entail the “scholarhood” of all believers. And that’s something with which Luther would have emphatically agreed. 

I applaud Kugler's warning as well as his advice. One wonders, though, whether in today's climate it will be heeded, or even if heeded, the slide to ever-increasing diminishment can be stemmed. Last month I penned an obituary for Evangelicalism, one I wish would have been premature. But, alas, I don't think so. The "movement," such as it is, is too associated―shamefully, not merely in public perception―with an American political agenda that is in large measure antithetical to that of a genuinely Christian worldview. It is, moreover, too theologically diffuse: not only the old Calvinist/Arminian and Reformed/Dispensationalist divides, tricky to navigate as they always were, but, more to the point, the increasing prominence of neo-charismatic and prosperity teachings which the outside world looks at, entirely properly, with a mixture of bewilderment and disdain. Indeed, to this entirely self-interested observer, "evangelicalism" truly lacks a center from which any meaningful self-definition can suffice.

Most to the point, however, and central to Kugler's warning, is the overwhelming anti-intellectualism of the movement (indeed, a characteristic not limited to conservative religious expressions). This charge is central to his first point concerning preachers with no serious academic theological training. Years ago, during my first year teaching at an evangelical college, I made the comment in a chapel panel discussion that everyone who planned to go into the pastorate needed to go to seminary―and not just any seminary, but one that prioritized exegesis in the original languages, a grammatical-historical-critical hermeneutic, and historical theology. Afterwards, I was pulled aside and gently instructed in the "error" of my ways. Many, if not most, of these prospective ministers would be preaching in small rural parishes and wouldn't be able to afford such extra training, I was told. What I said could be understood as a belittling of the education they were then receiving (one wonders if similar advice given to pre-med students would have been received so negatively). I could understand the point. Perhaps I could have softened what I said―which goes for just about everything I say―and suggested they make every effort to do so if at all possible. 

But the prevailing "Vo-Tech" view of ministry and ministerial preparation in so much current evangelicalism is the problem, is it not? If ministers and Bible teachers, naïve in their own understanding of Scripture, simply teach what, to them, is the "clear" meaning of the text, they simply pass on their own misinterpretations and consequent failures in contextualization to the faithful. The problem is exacerbated when, as is so often the case, Evangelicals look to men (always men) like MacArthur as authorities and "defenders" of the verities of the faith (one caveat: Kugler is being a bit unfair to John Piper; despite my massive disagreements with the latter over his strident defense of the so-called "Old Perspective of Paul" and what, to me, is his highly objectionable, smug Patriarchalism, Piper can certainly lay claim to being a bona fide biblical scholar, having earned a ThD in New Testament at the University of Munich under the estimable Leonhard Goppelt, and whose first two published works were scholarly monographs on Jesus' Love Command and The Justification of God in Romans 9). And now we are reaping what has been irresponsibly sown over the past number of decades. 

The problem is not, as Kugler notes, "liberalism," however one wants to define that "scare" word. The colleagues he writes about, just as my own grad school teachers, all subscribe to the great ecumenical creeds of the 4th-5th centuries and confess to the Bible's authority and "inspiration"―i.e., the original text, as best as we can determine what it is, is "God-breathed" in the sense that it is entirely adequate, if interpreted properly, to convey the message intended by God. One could even add the easily abused term "inerrancy," so long as one avoids the modernist trap and nuances it properly, taking into account authorial intent, ancient literary and historical conventions, and (in terms of discerning the significance of the text for today) what my friend Bill Webb has called a "redemptive movement hermeneutic." 

Such painstaking nuancing, however, causes one to realize that the real issue is one of hermeneutics, not bibliology. "Evangelicalism," as it largely exists today, attributes to "inerrancy" a hermeneutical function, to wit, privileging a literalistic, indeed modernist, reading of the text as inappropriate to the Torah as it is to the Book of Revelation. "History," as recorded in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, must be interpreted via the canons of ancient (both ANE and Greco-Roman) historiography, not those of the 19th century positivist historian Leopold von Ranke. And, it goes without saying, an improper historical understanding of the text guarantees a misguided appropriation of the text for today.

This may sound pessimistic, but it need not be. Kugler's plea is mine as well. Both pastors and laypersons need to watch out for where they get their information about the Bible. Do they take the word of non-scholars, be they orthodox and educated like MacArthur or less theologically-oriented charlatans like Paula White? Or do they look to responsible scholars of the church, such as N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight, Mike Bird and, I would add, Darrell Bock? For Evangelicalism to survive in any fruitful form, we had better hope the latter.

On the Death of a Wicked Man

 Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; 
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

(Marc Antony, in Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2)

I felt nothing. I had just perused my morning Facebook feed, and came upon news of the death of Rush Limbaugh on a cousin's page. So I immediately checked the Washington Post, where the news was confirmed. To my surprise, I still felt nothing.

I am not Marc Antony. Nor was Rush Limbaugh Julius Caesar. And I certainly am no William Shakespeare. So my quotation of the Bard is meant to be taken literally, not with the biting irony of the original. For the man who died yesterday was, despite his massive influence, certainly unworthy of anything resembling genuine praise.

The great American writer Mark Twain once quipped, "Some people bring joy wherever they go, and some people bring joy whenever they go." To be sure, there were many who experienced a kind of joy in hearing of his death, just as many others felt grief. But this begs the question, how should a Christian respond to the death of a wicked man?

And make no mistake: Rush Limbaugh was a wicked man. Notwithstanding Paula White's tweet that Limbaugh "shared [his] faith openly" and the various encomia issued by Franklin Graham, Liberty University's Falkirk Center, and the various arms of the vast right-wing media empire (on which, see John Fea's post here), whatever "Christianity" expressed by Limbaugh―and before he died he did express his faith in terms of a "personal relationship" (a red flag for me) with Jesus―was to the very end unaccompanied by repentance for his manifold public transgressions of the past 30 or so years. 

Limbaugh, you recall, was one who coined the term "Feminazis" for women who desired and fought for equality in the home and in society. In the 90's he called first daughter Chelsea Clinton a "dog." In 2012 he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" for testifying in favor of healthcare provisions for birth control. If anything, his racism was even worse. He raged against proposed reparations for African Americans as if such were an affront to white people who had "earned" their station in society. In 2001, in an ill-fated stint on Monday Night Football, he dismissed Eagles' Pro Bowl quarterback Donovan McNabb with these words: "The media has been very desirous that a Black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve.” Earlier he admitted to saying the following: "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?" This, of course, was all prelude to his propagation of the "Birther" myth that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and thus was disqualified from holding the Presidency.

Limbaugh's ire was also directed at environmentalists who decried clear-cutting old growth forests ("trees are nothing but crops") and scientists (climate change is a "hoax;" COVID-19 is nothing but "the common cold"). Moreover, he was a proponent of Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election and claimed that the Capitol Riot of 1/6 was just people "taking selfies" and not as bad as the protests against racism last summer.

Indeed, it really isn't fair to principled conservatives to call Limbaugh a conservative. He was, if anything, more of a grenade-throwing anti-Left crusader, whose emotion-laden rhetoric and ire were based in white male grievance and directed to similarly aggrieved people who felt their position on the social and economic pecking order threatened by the cultural changes dating back to the 1960's. An important observation, usually unrecognized, was pointed out yesterday by Jonathan Chait in the New York Intelligencer:

Yet his show was curiously devoid of any skill at argument. I am a big believer in listening to opposing arguments and attempting to understand them. I regularly read organs like National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and many others to understand how counterparts on the right see the world (and I do the same for those to my left).

Limbaugh’s program was useless in this regard. He could blather for hours without going from a premise to a conclusion. His only tools for processing opposing points of view were assertion, mockery, and resentment. Limbaugh liked to call himself smart, but he was a lifelong stranger to reason. He hid this weakness with a remarkable ability to gab smoothly and seamlessly.

And therein, as far as I am concerned, is his legacy. He tilled the ground for the rise of Donald Trump and the latter's hijacking of a Republican Party whose Cadillac now, in the words of Neil Young, "has got a wheel in the ditch and one on the track." For Donald Trump is nothing if not Rush Limbaugh―without the wit or charm, of course.

How should a Christian respond to the death of such a man? The first thing that needs to be said is that none of us is God. Nor can any of us claim a priestly "bind and loose" capacity to determine the spiritual state of an individual. Such, thankfully, is above all of our pay grades. The author of Hebrews writes, "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Heb 9:27, NIV). God is a just judge, but he is also a merciful God who has been "propitious" (hilasthēti) to us in his Son, Jesus Messiah (cf. Luke 18:13). We can not presume, let alone gloat in the demise of one we consider wicked or our enemy. After all, as the exilic prophet Ezekiel records, God himself takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek 33:11; cf. 18:23). If not, then a fortiori, neither should we. Not only do all of us have to face God's judgement seat―and I would remind Christian workers of Paul's words on this matter in 1 Corinthians 3―but all of us without exception are, as Paul reminds us, "by nature children of wrath," saved only by an unconditioned gift of God's "grace" (Ephesians 2:1-10). Self-righteousness may be the default condition of people both on the Left and the Right (for different reasons, of course!), but it has no place in a Christian who rightly understands him- or herself.

Nonetheless, once we have ensured that we rightly understand and evaluate ourselves, it is imperative, as Fred Clark reminded us yesterday, that instead of refraining from speaking ill of the dead, that we make sure to speak honestly of the dead, lest we fail to learn from, or teach others to avoid making, their mistakes. And this is especially important in the case of Limbaugh, who was idolized by far too many "ditto-head" American Christians. The reputation of our Lord and the advancement of the gospel are far too important to do otherwise.

"Law and Order," Trump's Mob, and Republican Cowardice

From the University of Pennsylvania's Dick Polman this morning:

The Senate GOP’s Coward Caucus is infested with abetters [sic!] of home-grown fascism and is poised to exonerate the goon most responsible for the rabble violence that occurred on the day that will live in infamy. But you’d think they’d at least open their ears to the protracted screams of D.C. cop Daniel Hodges.

As captured on video yesterday, during day two of the Senate impeachment trial, Hodges was doing his duty to defend the Capitol when the MAGA mob crushed him in a doorway. His screams reverberated through the Senate chamber as a number of Republican “jurors” looked away, busied themselves with busywork or doodled on legal pads.

And this is the party that purportedly champions “law and order.”

Officer Hodges’ screams highlighted the toxic hypocrisy of a GOP still in thrall to (or living in fear of) the nation’s top domestic terrorist. As we know, most Republican senators are willing to abide his most flagrant desecration of democracy – but weren’t they all on board with loving law enforcement and touting the slogan that Blue Lives Matter?

(Read the entire article here.)

Watching the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump yesterday was a surreal experience. Years ago I never could have imagined my country devolving into such cartoonish bedlam. But this was no cartoon. It was the painfully detailed documentation of a republic in its death throes … and of elected "leaders" who, frankly, could not give a toss. Imagine a future leader with Trump's thuggish, authoritarian ambitions, but with more intelligence and without his ham-fisted, transparent buffoonery. Kiss our democracy good-bye.

Three things are abundantly clear from yesterday's proceedings. First, the mob that attacked the Capitol, threatened the well-being of the United States Congress and Vice President Mike Pence―make no mistake, the chants of "Hang Mike Pence" make it clear they took Trump's rhetoric both seriously and literally―that killed officer Brian Sicknick and injured 140 others, were barbarians worthy of Polman's referring to them as "Visigoths." And, like the epithet implies, a central component of their barbarism is a shockingly invincible ignorance. This ignorance, and ignorance's handmaiden, gullibility, made them ripe for Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election, the victims of which, in Trump's words, included them as well as him. Alarmingly, 76 per cent of self-identified Republicans believe this myth of a stolen election. No amount of evidence is apparently enough to dislodge this fantasy from their brains, and G.O.P. officeholders who acknowledge reality are increasingly paying a political price. Of late it has been common to read or hear the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's quip that "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." True, but people who get their "news" from propaganda outlets like Fox, Newsmax, and OAN are conditioned to confuse the former for the latter.

Second, though 56 per cent of Republican voters believe Trump bears no responsibility for the attacks on the Capitol, the House Impeachment Managers yesterday destroyed any possible defense of such naivete (see, inter alia, here and here). If it were not already blindingly obvious, it is now undeniable that Donald Trump is guilty as charged, and that he must be convicted and barred from holding any future office.  After yesterday's powerful presentation, any attempt to assert otherwise is, frankly, motivated nonsense.

Which leads to the third point of clarity: Senate Republicans who refuse to acknowledge this are embodiments of what (with apologies to JFK) could be called "Profiles in Cowardice." Their deflections and obfuscations are both shameless and shameful … and, to be blunt, pathetic. One thinks of Josh Hawley and what Brian Williams referred to as his "nihilistic performance art" yesterday in the Senate gallery. One thinks of the weaselly Lindsay Graham's performance last night on Sean Hannity's show on Fox (never has a man's reputation and significance withered as much as has Graham's, following the death of the estimable John McCain, who gave him whatever significance he ever seemed to have). No one, least of all me, expects Senate Republicans to grow both consciences and the courage to convict Trump. Lord knows, if they did so, they might be voted out in a primary challenge when re-election comes up! But what galls more than the cowardice is the hypocrisy. "Law and order" for thee, but not for me (and my tribe), indeed.

One more thing: The closest analog to what is happening today came during the summer of 1974, that marvelous time between my high school graduation and enrollment in college. I'm speaking, of course, of the demise of Richard Nixon because of his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Let's be clear. Nixon was guilty of impeachable offenses. And the evidence that would have convicted him wasn't simply compelling eyewitness testimony (as in Trump's first impeachment). He was caught on tape. Yet, guilty as he was, what he did pales in comparison to the malignant treachery of Donald Trump. And he was forced to resign because he was informed that the Republicans in Congress would not support him. Alas, there are not many such principled Republicans in Congress today.

More to the point: my father was a Republican loyalist who voted for Nixon both in 1968 and 1972. Yet the facts of Nixon's criminality, exposed by the media and in the thorough congressional hearings, convinced him that Nixon, as sanguine as he was toward his politics, had to be removed from office. You see, my dad was a Christian, who believed in something called truth. He was a Christian, and thus believed wholeheartedly in justice. Truth could not be spun in such a way to avoid it. Justice, to be justice, must be impartial. He believed that, as do I. What bothers me is that today I don't see many so-called "evangelicals," in thrall to Trump as they inexplicably are, who appear to agree. Is it possible that many of them will come to their senses and repent of their foolishness for the sake of the gospel? Certainly. The New Testament teaches that God can (and does) grant repentance (2 Timothy 2:25). But I will not hold my breath.

Bruce Springsteen's (and Jeep's) Call for National Unity

 

There’s a chapel in Kansas

Standing on the exact center of the lower forty-eight.

It never closes.

All are more than welcome

To come meet here, in the middle.

It’s no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately

Between red and blue

Between servant and citizen

Between our freedom and our fear.

Now, fear has never been the best of who we are.

And as for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few.

It belongs to us all.

Whoever you are, wherever you’re from

It’s what connects us.

And we need that connection.

We need the middle.

We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground.

So, we can get there.

We can make it to the mountaintop

Through the desert

And we will cross this divide.

Our light has always found its way through the darkness

And there’s hope on the road up ahead.

Everyone who knows me knows that Bruce Springsteen is my favorite rock and roll musician. To be sure, part of that is due to the fact that he did his greatest work during my high school, college, and early graduate years. The soundtrack of my long-departed youth, indeed. Bruce also, as a native of Freehold and Asbury Park, New Jersey, was a link to my own Northeastern roots during my 19 years of "exile" in Dallas. Listening to his first three albums (especially) conjured up to mind the region I loved (and still love), even as I missed it while living in the flat, scorching Southwest. Most of all, however, I have always loved Bruce because he is among the most intelligent and thoughtful of the popular musicians of my era, rivalled only by the even more prolific, protean Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and perhaps the country/rock troubadour Steve Earle.

Springsteen also has had a certain mystique in his hesitancy―unlike contemporaries like Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and even Dylan (here)―to lend his name to commercial enterprises. Hence my surprise to learn he had agreed to speaking these words, words about national unity, no less.

The ad was largely considered one of the best of an evening marred by one of the most disappointing games in recent memory. The longing for unity is an admirable one, to be sure. Predictably, however, his call was met by criticism both from the Left and the Right. Self-righteous critics on the Left (for an example, see here) whine that, in light of the previous four years of Donald Trump and the MAGA-hatted hordes, "Springsteen is ultimately preaching reconciliation without reckoning," not to mention that "he’s sticking up for a car company whose products are hastening the death of our planet — a death that the boomer demo being courted with this two-minute clip won’t have to witness," and even that his use of the symbolism of the chapel in Lebanon, Kansas, suggests a Christian nationalism (really?) [For the Boss's E Street sidekick, guitarist Steve Van Zandt's (aka The Sopranos' Silvio Dante) curt Twitter responses to such nonsense, see here and here.] The criticism has been even more strident on the Right, for whom Bruce's call for unity and occupying the "Middle" is said to be disingenuous in view of his consistent criticisms of Trump and what he represents (for one of many examples, see here).

Perhaps the trouble is with the commercial's use of the term "Middle." The "Middle," is, I suppose, in the eyes and mind of the beholder. And compromise or middle ground is, frankly, not plausible (or possible?) between the current iteration of the Democratic Party, of which Springsteen is a member, and MAGA-hatted Trumpism, the de facto stance of today's G.O.P. The problem is exacerbated by the nature of a commercial advertisement, where brevity disallows any expression of nuance.

Let's be clear, however. By "the Middle," Springsteen was not speaking in terms of some ideological scale of traditionalist political positions, in such a way that historical figures such as Humphrey, on the Left, and Reagan, on the Right, would not qualify. If he were doing so, I would hope that his Right Wing critics would acknowledge that the movement that has occurred has been largely asymmetrical, in the form of the increasingly rightward radicalization of the Republican Party. Indeed, in my own lifetime it has moved from a business-oriented, anti-Communist big government Keynesianism (Eisenhower), to small government anti-Communism (Reagan), to anti-government, authoritarian anti-"socialism," defined as anything to the Left of their own, rightward-trending position. The Democrats, by contrast, have moved from FDR and Truman to Clinton, Obama, and Joe Biden. You didn't see any leftward movement? Neither do I.

By "the Middle," however, what the Boss is calling for is the rise of a rational, reasonable sphere in which discussion and the free flow of ideas (i.e., what historically has been called "liberalism") can co-exist even with the actors holding firmly to their own considered opinions. It is a sphere which, for all practical purposes, would span the Center-Left to the Center-Right, one which in which Barack Obama, Joe Biden, the Clintons, Chuck Schumer, Paul Krugman, Jamelle Bouie, Eugene Robinson, and E. J. Dionne (on the Left side of things) can co-exist peacefully and fruitfully with Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, Tim Miller, Michael Gerson, and Steve Schmidt (on the Right side of things).

Of course, such comity cannot reasonably co-exist between strident sectors of the academic Left and the even more strident denizens of the decidedly not academic extreme Right of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan and their ilk. But disagreement need not imply hostility. Unity need not imply ideological uniformity. One of the most meaningful moments of Jeep's commercial was the concluding dedication "To the ReUnited States of America." We have a long way to go. But that doesn't mean we can't hope.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Death of the G.O.P., and Her "Christian" Trumpism

On January 6, hours after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in a riot that led to 5 deaths, including the murder of officer Brian Sicknick, 147 House Republicans and 6 G.O.P. Senators shirked their constitutional duties and voted not to confirm Joe Biden's electoral victory because of "fraud" for which there is not a scintilla of hard evidence. Four weeks later, on February 3, 61 House Republicans voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the daughter of the former Republican Vice President, from her position as the 3rd-ranking member of the G.O.P. House caucus. Her "sin"? She had the audacity to respect the Constitution and vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting that deadly riot. Then the very next day only 11 of them voted with 219 Democrats to remove QAnon freshman congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)―and, reportedly, half gave her a standing ovation―from her committee assignments for, among others things, incendiary claims that a plane never hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that the Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas school shootings were "false flag" operations, that the 2017 Las Vegas shootings may have been staged, that Barack Obama was a Muslim, that Bill and Hillary Clinton are murderers, that Nancy Pelosi has committed "treason" and thus deserves to be executed, that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a "communist," that Joe Biden is "president of Communist China," that Muslims don't belong in American government, and―most bizarre of all―that California's 2018 wildfires were caused by Jewish "space lasers" (for a convenient summary of Greene's outrageous, transparently dangerous views, see here). Let this sink in: More House Republicans voted to remove (the very conservative, more traditional Republican) Liz Cheney than to remove the conspiratorial greenhorn Marjorie Taylor Greene.

This is bad enough, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Arizona's state G.O.P. not only censured Republican (!) Governor Doug Ducey for the "sin" of enacting "anti-liberty" emergency measures during the coronavirus pandemic, but also introduced a bill to allow the Legislature (currently dominated by Republicans) the authority to override the secretary of state's certification of its electoral votes. On January 19, the Oregon G.O.P issued a letter claiming (against all evidence) that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was a "false flag" and condemning the 10 House Republicans who had the temerity to impeach Trump. Just this week word has leaked that the Nebraska G.O.P. has drafted a "Resolution of Censure" against Nebraska's Republican Senator Ben Sasse (see his response here) for his opposition to Donald Trump. As far as the Republican "base" is concerned, an Axios poll earlier this week put Marjorie Taylor Greene's approval ratings at +10, in contrast to Liz Cheney's at -28.

All this validates the considered opinion of conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who last week opined that "The GOP isn't doomed. It's dead." And, contrary to what many might suppose, I don't view this with glee. The country needs a functioning center-right party to balance the center-left Democratic Party. To put it bluntly, however, today's G.O.P. is not that party (just as certainly as that the post-Reagan G.O.P. is not the activist, big government Republican party of its 3 greatest Presidents: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower). Such is recognized by both conservative writers like Tim Miller (here and here) and liberals like Jamelle Bouie (here). Bouie perceptively speaks of the "dissolving" of the "once-porous border between the right and the far right." Dana Milbank, more colorfully, refers to it as "the cult of Trump." Most pointedly, the evangelical Christian conservative Michael Gerson, former head speech writer for George W. Bush, condemns Trumpism as "American fascism." 

The aforementioned Marjorie Taylor Greene has now become the poster person for this development. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to put it bluntly, is not a fan. Earlier this week, he blasted her as a "cancer" on the party because of her "loony lies and conspiracy theories." Indeed, The Washington Post's Parker refers to her as "a QAnon-promoting female version of Trump — only without the charm." The characterization is apt. The only thing that approaches the level of her arrogant self-confidence is her staggering gullibility and invincible ignorance (can you imagine Kevin McCarthy's having assigned her to the Education Committee?!). 

As a Christian theologian, however, what concerns me most is that she "baptizes" her lunacy and conspiratorial hatefulness with the veneer of Christianity. Just last week, Tyler Huckabee wrote an article for Relevant Magazine in which he noted that in 2011 Greene had been baptized at North Point Community Church, the Georgia megachurch pastored by Andy Stanley (Full disclosure: Stanley graduated with his ThM in my class at seminary; I didn't know him personally, though I did grade some of his Greek papers while I served as a TA for the New Testament department). 

Now, I am used to so-called "Christians" like Trump's former press secretaries Sarah Sanders and Kaylee McEnany having no compunction lying for their boss and defending what was, on the face of it, indefensible. They were not ignorant, however, and they did what they did knowingly and in bad faith (even if they thought they were somehow, for whatever reasons, justified in doing so and pretending they were telling the truth). Greene is another animal entirely. She evidently believes (or used to believe, as she now, somewhat unconvincingly, claims) the nonsense she spouts. In January 2020 she posted a campaign video in which she claimed that Democrats want both "to murder babies up until the day of birth”―a demonstrably false claim―and "to take away our guns." Are guns necessary simply for self-defense? Hardly. Back in October she posted another video in which she implied that to "get your freedoms back" from "socialists" like Joe Biden would entail "earn[ing it] with the price of blood." Yesterday, Democratic Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland showed a poster-sized copy of a (since-deleted) Facebook post (pictured at left) in which an AR-15 toting Greene portrays herself as the enforcer against the so-called "Squad," the liberal (and minority) Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (pictured), and Ayanna Pressley (not pictured) likewise abominated by Donald Trump. 

To put it mildly, this is not the posture to be taken by any genuine follower of Jesus of Nazareth. The "John Wayne"-style, hyper-masculinized Jesus is, after all, an idol of right wing American imagination. Likewise, Paul the Apostle, writing to the wisdom-obsessed churches of Corinth, notes that "Not many of you were wise by human standards ... but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise" (1 Corinthians 1:26-27, NIV). It should go without saying, however, that the brilliant and educated former rabbinic scholar did not intend this as an excuse for continued ignorance and the gullibility that so often accompanies it. On both these counts, the pugnacious and fact-challenged Greene betrays her Christian confession. 

To be sure, yesterday Greene attempted to defend herself by saying that "none of us are [sic!] perfect," by tepidly "regretting" some of her supposedly "past" QAnon beliefs, and admitting, in suspiciously general terms, that "9/11 happened." Today, however, she showed her true colors, doubling down on her extremism, saying she has been "freed" and will do everything in her power to cement Trump's influence and push the Republican Party even further to the Right.

But "regret" hardly substitutes for what is needed, to wit, repentance. In her public statements the last two days she has not retracted her most heinous idea, namely, her endorsement of political violence against her―and what she considers the nation's―political enemies. And that is simply inexcusable. She needs to repent. And, as John the Baptizer so forcefully put it, that entails "produc[ing] fruit in keeping with repentance" (Luke 3:8). Anything less not only casts Christianity in a bad light, it casts aspersion on the one to whom it is called to bear witness. And that is not acceptable.

"It's All About Jesus"

"The older I get, the more I realize it's all about Jesus."

So said my old friend, Scott Countryman, as we were sitting and drinking coffee together at the Dunkin' Donuts on West Chester Pike in Havertown, PA. It was the 7th of October 2006. Scott was in town for the funeral of his mother, who had passed away earlier that week from the cancer that had stricken her for a number of years.

Scott and I have been friends for 50 years. We lived only a few blocks apart in our comfortable Philadelphia suburb and attended the same church, where both our mothers were accomplished lyric soprano soloists in its estimable choir. We both attended Haverford High and played trumpet together in the band. As Bruce Springsteen sang in his classic "Bobby Jean," his ode to friend Steve Van Zandt upon the latter's 1984 departure from the E Street Band, "We liked the same music/We liked the same bands/We liked the same clothes"―even as many in our religious circles disapproved of our choices. We both loved sports, and some of my fondest memories of youth are of our playing softball at Karakung ("The Launching Pad"), Merwood, or the Haverford High School fields whenever we could get a chance every summer. Scott was one of the groomsmen at my wedding in 1979. Most importantly, after studying history in college, Scott followed me in attending seminary, after which he has spent decades, first in Germany, then in Minnesota, and now throughout the world, in missions. We are, in the best sense of the words, not only friends but brothers and fellow workers in the ministry of the gospel.

When Scott uttered those words, I immediately agreed, and the truth of the sentiment becomes clearer to me with each passing year. They are a salutary reminder to me, a lifelong academic biblical scholar, of what really matters, of what all my critical and theological study was really meant to undergird, that what I loved to sing as a Kindergartener 59 years ago ("Jesus Loves Me") is but the acorn which contains, in nuce, the oak of my later theological knowledge attained through diligent study. Of course, I do not mean to imply that academic biblical study is unimportant, let alone worthless. Indeed, any of my former students can attest how seriously I took my work (the inverse of how seriously I take myself) and how deep my love for theology was (though, I must confess, perhaps surpassed by my love of sports and music). Yet academic rigor and theological sophistication amount to a hill of beans when reduced to sophistry and disconnected from what really matters, to wit, the work of the gospel―the gospel, as Mark, the earliest Evangelist, puts it, "about Jesus Messiah, the Son of God" (Mark 1:1).

A Christian is, by definition, a "disciple" or follower of Jesus (Acts 11:26). And this is what causes me concern. When people think of Christians, especially self-described "evangelical" ("gospel") Christians, in today's America, do they see Jesus? Or, to put it more pointedly, what Jesus do they see? Do they see the Jesus found on the pages of the New Testament (granting the differently nuanced Christologies of its various authors, which in my view together form a richly variegated, yet coherent and compatible tapestry)? Or, God forbid, do they see an idolatrous Jesus of American imagination, one whose sacrificial death overlays and "sanctifies," if you will, a presupposed conservative Americanism? 

The most explicitly "high" Christology in the New Testament is found in what is almost certainly the last canonical Gospel to be written (in the '80's-90's CE), the Gospel of John. In the prologue to this most theologically profound of Gospels (John 1:1-18), the human Jesus who lived, taught, and died in 1st century Palestine was none other than the incarnation ("en-fleshment") of the eternal Word of God, God himself in his self-revelation in creation and new creation. For John, the Word/Logos (1:1) was not merely a personified attribute of the invisible God, as so often in Jewish literature, both canonical and otherwise. On the contrary, the Logos is "hypostatized," being both "with God" and "God" by his very nature, and thus intrinsic to the very being of the one God. Hence this Word, who "tabernacled" with us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (1:14), was the very "exegesis" of the God of Israel (1:18). In other words, if you want to know what the one God is like, look not to Greek philosophy or any human-made system, but to the Jesus who lived, died and, as Christians believe, rose again in the first century.

This is very profound indeed. Jesus of Nazareth―the Jesus we discover in the four Gospels, not the Jesus of later pious or impious imaginations―did not seek power. Indeed, he offered no resistance when arrested and crucified by the Romans as "King of the Jews." Even though he counted among his 12 closest followers a Simon described by Mark (perhaps anachronistically if, as is likely, he wrote either immediately prior to or following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE) as a "zealot" (Mark 3:18), he famously taught an ethic of nonresistance and love for enemies (Matthew 5:38-48). Throughout his "ministry" he was a thorn in the side of any and every group of people who considered themselves to be "leaders" of the community. Both the priestly, aristocratic Sadducees as well as the scholarly Pharisees, who had more respect among the common folk, were targets of his criticism. He excoriated self-righteous hypocrites of every kind even as he had compassion on the poor, weak, despised, and marginalized among the people. In short, he both proclaimed and embodied the "gospel" of the kingdom, perhaps even, as N. T. Wright has argued forcefully, viewing his final journey to Jerusalem as the long hoped-for return of Yahweh to Zion (e.g., Isaiah 52:8), where that kingdom would be inaugurated precisely by his dying as Israel's king/Messiah on a Roman cross.

Yes, as my friend said so simply, "It's all about Jesus." For me, the text that best encapsulates what this means is found in Matthew's Gospel where, by both word and deed, Jesus displays himself to be the fulfillment of what the Torah's Sabbath Law was designed to point forward to (Matthew 11:25-12:13). In his words:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry (Matthew 11:28-30, NET Bible).

May this be the Jesus we who claim his name both proclaim and emulate.

I close with a couple of pictures of myself with my old friend, 38 years apart, from 1977 and 2015.

At the Philadelphia Zoo, 4 July 1977

In Havertown, July 2015

My Ancestry and the Bane of "Christian Nationalism," Part 3: "Christian" America as Imperative?

 Here's Princeton historian Allen Guelzo:

If, in Jefferson’s words, the Constitution had erected a “wall of separation” between the church and the federal government, there was no corresponding wall between church and culture. Closed off from making policy, churches organized independent societies for Bible distribution, for alcoholism reform, for observance of the Sabbath, and for suppressing vice and immorality. And, they grew. By the time the French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville took his celebrated tour of the United States in the 1830s, he was amazed to find that while “in the United States religion” has no “influence on the laws or on the details of political opinions,” nevertheless, “it directs the mores” and through that “it works to regulate the state.”

The question Tocqueville did not ask was whether American religion would always be content simply with cultural dominance, and might not seize an opportunity, if it presented itself, to assert a political role. 

In my last post, I argued that the notion that America is an explicitly "Christian" nation has no legitimate historical or constitutional basis. This, of course, has not stopped huge numbers of politically conservative Christians―everyone from old school, postmillennial Theonomists like Greg Bahnsen and more nuanced, contiguous/adjacent "Federal Vision" advocates like Peter Leithart and Doug Wilson on the Reformed side of the spectrum, to the far more numerous variations of "Religious Right" evangelicalism, including the growing number of neo-charismatic believers that Brad Christerson and Richard Flory have dubbed "Independent Network Charismatic" Christianity, on the other― from believing either that such is so or, even if not, that the church has the responsibility/mission to make it so, to advance so-called "Christendom."  Common in such thinking, particularly on the fundamentalist and neo-charismatic end of the spectrum, is the naïve belief that America has been granted some sort of "covenantal" role in God's purposes, and that they, the real Christians, have the right to a privileged role in the nation's affairs. If such is so, on this way of thinking, America's fortunes, like that of Israel and Judah of old, are determined by its obedience or lack thereof to "biblical" standards of morality, selectively determined. As one might expect, these "standards" align nicely with the platform and priorities of the G.O.P.; hence their determined effort to wield influence via the political process, through electing the "right" people who will pass "right" legislation and appoint the "right" judges. 

Hence also their hysterical reaction to Joe Biden's substantial electoral victory in November. Thus―as if his ignorant and self-righteous flouting of California's COVID rules were not enough―on the 21st of January the "respectable" fundamentalist California pastor John MacArthur snidely tweeted, "It’s official, one nation in rebellion to God with liberty and social justice for some." (One wonders when America ever was in obedience to God: when we made a home for ourselves by stealing land and killing off millions of the continent's aboriginal inhabitants? when we marginalized St. Paul's injunction to "submit … to the governing authorities" [Romans 13:1] and rebelled against the crown? when we enslaved Africans and later engaged in systematic discrimination against their descendants? when we separated migrant children from their parents at the border? Such historical myopia simply boggles the mind.)

Of course, not all Christians, even many who self-identify as evangelicals, think this way. One thinks of Anglican New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, or the historian Randall Balmer, referred to in my last post (not to mention those in the Anabaptist tradition). But such voices have a tendency to be drowned out in the public square by the louder, more strident ones of the Religious Right. And this inexorably raises the pertinent question: Is this desire for the church to exercise political power and make America a Christian nation legitimate? What does the Bible have to say, if anything, about this? 

Years ago I pointed to a remarkable text in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians (yes, I remain part of the minority convinced that Paul, not some anonymous "Paulinist," wrote what the late New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce memorably called "the quintessence of Paulinism") that, I believe, points us in the direction of an answer to this question. Ephesians 1:9-10 occurs in the middle of a long encomium (Eph 1:3-14) loaded with majestic praise to the triune God for the full sweep of his saving purposes ranging from eternity past through history to its ultimate consummation. The language is so glorious that one can be excused for taking it all in with less than total comprehension of what exactly the apostle is saying. The key text is verses 7-10:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight. He did this when he revealed to us the secret of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, toward the administration of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ – the things in heaven and the things on earth. (Ephesians 1:7-10, trans. NET Bible) 

A close reading of these verses (here I provide a summary of what I argued there in more exegetical detail) indicates that Paul is making a two-stage argument in verses 9-10:

First, God has now revealed his previously hidden "secret" plan and intention for the "fullness of times" (1:9-10a). The term translated "secret" in verse 9 is the Greek term mysterion; hence the regular translation "mystery" in most older versions. A "mystery," considering the term's conceptual background in the use of the Aramaic term rāz in the Book of Daniel, is a revealed secret, an aspect of God's decree for the denouement of history that had previously been hidden, but now revealed for the first time. In verse 9 Paul explicitly states that God had already "disclosed" (gnōrisas) this secret to "us" (hēmin). Not only that, but God's disclosure of the mystery was in line with (kata) God's sovereign and eternal purpose (eudokia, his "good pleasure" or "decree"). In verse 10 the apostle continues by explaining that the sovereign purpose of which he is speaking has in view (eis) God's "administering" (oikonomia) the "fullness of times," i.e., the time of the consummation of his purposes. In such an apocalyptic worldview, God's sovereign, free purpose, as A. T. Lincoln (Ephesians [WBC; Dallas: Word, 1990] 31) rightly noted, thus "embraces history and its ordering." This raises the inevitable question as to what this revealed secret purpose of God entailed. The answer comes in the latter half of verse 10, and forms the second stage of Paul's argument in these verses.

Second, God's ultimate purpose is to reintegrate the universe under Christ (1:10b).  Paul defines the content of this "mystery" in the infinitive anakephalaiōsasthai, which has been variously translated (""to head up" [NET]; "to bring together under one head" [NIV]; "to unite" [ESV]; "brought into a unity" [REB]). Historically, the term was used of the "summing up" or "recapitulation" of an argument in legal contexts (Quintilian, Aristotle, et al.). Paul himself used it in Romans 13:9 to refer to a comprehensive summing up or unifying of a larger entity (the Torah) under one focal point (the love command). It would thus appear that Paul's point is that "all things" (ta panta) will one day be subject to the lordship of Christ, who will reintegrate them and restore them to their divinely-designed place and function. This is all well and good. But matters get interesting once one asks when this "summing up" or reintegration is thought to take place. In the immediate context the answer might appear to be "in the fullness of times," the final stage of the divine oikonomia of history. In the wider context of the letter, however, the answer becomes more nuanced … and interesting. 

First, in Ephesians 1:22-23, as a consequence of God's powerful raising and exaltation of Christ. Paul quotes Psalm 8:7 to the effect that God has (already!) subjected all things under Christ's feet (hypetaxen) and given him to the church as head over all things. Christ thus  has already been installed as cosmic Lord as well as being head over the church. 

Second, in Ephesians 3:3-10 the apostle elaborates on the "mystery" he so cryptically spoke of in chapter 1. Simply put, this mystery concerned the primary theological datum of the epistle, to wit, that Gentiles were fellow heirs, members of the same body, and fellow partakers of the benefits of the covenant promises whose fulfillment in Christ defined the content of the apostolic gospel.

What this suggests is that, in keeping with the eschatology common to all strands of the early Christian tradition, there is a two-stage fulfillment of this "recapitulation." For Paul, in other words, the unification of Jews and Gentiles in the church in Christ is the first stage of the reunification of all the diverse and renegade elements of the universe which will reach its consummation in the new heavens and new earth. The necessary corollary of this is that the church is the locus of God's present activity in which his kingdom purposes are being implemented. And if that is true, then all attempts by Christians (of the Left or the Right) to take the reins of political power and legislate Christian morality, even against the democratic will of the country as a whole, are fundamentally misguided. 

What I am suggesting has certain precedent in a broadly Anabaptist vision of the church's relation to culture. It likewise overlaps in part with what conservative journalist Rod Dreher refers to as "The Benedict Option," though without the latter's monastic overtones. As Allen Guelzo noted above, a "wall of separation" between church and state need not imply an impenetrable wall between church and culture. As followers of Jesus, the church is intended to function as "salt" and "light" within the wider culture (Matthew 5:13-16). Likewise, the great Hebrew prophet Jeremiah wrote in a letter to the exiles in Babylon, "Seek the peace and prosperity (shalom) of the city in which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for if it prospers, you too will prosper" (Jeremiah 29:7). This, obviously, does not imply quiescence. Nor does it suggest an Amish-like withdrawal from the political process. On the contrary, Christians must take their place in the public square as one voice among many, without expecting to be afforded privilege or preferential treatment for what they have to say. And how they act in this sphere matters. They must take rejection with grace and without grievance, be up front with the religious foundations of their positions, and realize that in a secular democracy such as America, many of the issues they hold dear are likely better treated as moral than as legal matters. Instead of entertaining the fantasy of building God's kingdom, they must rather work for that kingdom by championing its priorities, above all justice, finding common ground with those who may not hold their religious convictions. Moreover, it is imperative that they freely confess to the church's failures and , indeed, complicity in the injustices that have permeated the nation's history. Above all, Christians would do well not to resent and whine about the passing of a "Christian America" that was, truth be told, a fiction in the first place. After all, "Christian Nationalism" is, as are all nationalisms, fundamentally idolatrous.

Ultimately, what this means is that instead of directing their energies to legislating their values into law via the democratic (or otherwise) political process, they should rather put more energy into making their church communities be in practice what they are in theory, viz., colonies of the kingdom of God living in the midst of the world whose present shape, as Paul the Apostle says elsewhere (1 Cor 7:31), is "passing away" (paragei). 

In closing, I can do no better than to repeat what I said earlier:

What it means most of all, however, is that we as Christians need to take more seriously than we thus far have that we need to embody the kingdom virtues of grace, mercy, truth, and justice in our own communities … We need to ask ourselves, what might be the result in the wider culture if we did so? That is true witness. And that is how we as Christian communities ought to go about our designed business to be a "kingdom of priests" in a fallen world.