Tuesday, September 21, 2021

September 21, 1964: The Most Infamous Day in Philadelphia Sports History

 
[Note: This is an update and revision of my post from 21 September 2012]

Chico Ruiz stealing home, Connie Mack Stadium, Philadelphia, 21 September 1964

Fall is my favorite season. Weather-wise, the turn from summer's sweltering heat to autumn's fresh crispness, with its attendant azure-blue skies and the Northeast's brilliant displays of leafy color, is one of the most highly anticipated events of my year. Yet the approach of the autumnal equinox each September 22-24 is marked by an event that, for me, brings back painful memories of childhood disillusionment and has left an indelible mark on my sporting psyche—and not only on mine, but on millions of Philadelphians of my generation: The Phillies blew a seemingly insurmountable 6 1/2 game lead in the National League with only 12 games to go by losing an unthinkable 10 games in a row. The way this streak began was so bizarre, and how the mounting losses seemed so inexorable, certainly (in my mind) justifies the pessimistic fatalism that has made Philadelphia fans infamous in the sporting world.

In the spring and early summer of 1964 I was 7 years old, a burgeoning sports fan who loved playing wiffle ball in the alley behind my row house apartment on Balwynne Park Road in the then-new Wynnefield Heights section of West Philadelphia, a neighborhood carved out of land once occupied by an amusement park called Woodside Park. 1964 was the first year I followed big league baseball in earnest, reading the box scores religiously as if my life depended on it, collecting the Topps baseball cards my dad bought from the Jack and Jill ice cream truck that made its nightly rounds in the neighborhood, listening to By Saam, Bill Campbell, and the recently-retired Rich Ashburn call Phillies games on WCAU radio, and going for the first time to see the Phillies  play in old Connie Mack Stadium at 21st and Lehigh in North Philly. 

At the time, I obviously had no clue of the Phillies’ sad-sack history: only two pennants (and zero World Series victories) in their 81-year history, 17 last place finishes in the span of 29 years between 1919-1947, and a record 23-game losing streak only 3 years earlier in 1961. All I knew was that in the months of April, May, and June of 1964 the Phillies ("we") were locked in a two-team battle with the Willie Mays-led San Francisco Giants for supremacy in the National League. On June 15, when my family left for a summer at Deerfoot Lodge in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, the Phils and Giants were deadlocked in first place with identical 34-23 records. The Giants, not surprisingly, were led by pitcher Juan Marichal, who on June 15 had an 8-2 record and a typically low 2.42 ERA, and the incomparable Mays, by consensus the National League’s, if not baseball's, premier player. In 1964 Mays was off to the hottest start of his legendary career; he was hitting .400 as late as May 23, and on June 15 was still hitting .360 with 18 homers (despite not having hit any in the previous 18 games) and 48 RBI in 57 games. The Phils didn’t have the same level of star power as did the Giants (or the Reds, Braves, or Cardinals for that matter). Indeed, 38 year-old manager Gene Mauch utilized a platoon system for 5 of the 8 positions, with only second baseman Tony Taylor, rightfielder Johnny Callison, and 22 year-old rookie third baseman Richie (“call me Dick”) Allen playing every day. Callison, though, the hero for the NL with a walk-off homer off Dick "The Monster" Radatz in the All-Star Game at Shea Stadium on July 7, had his best season in ’64 with 31 homers and 104 RBI, and was, apart from Roberto Clemente, the best defensive rightfielder in the senior circuit. Allen, meanwhile, despite what could charitably be called his "shortcomings" at 3rd base (41 errors), was a sensation, running away with the NL’s Rookie of the Year award by hitting .318 with 29 homers, 38 doubles, and 13 triples, while scoring 125 runs. The “Wampum Walloper” remains the single most powerful (non-steroid using) hitter I have ever seen, and his torrid start in ’64 was a prime reason for the team’s quick start out of the gate. 

During my summer in New York, the Phillies gradually pulled away from the Giants, who were hurt by the loss of Marichal due to back spasms for nearly a month in July and August. When my family returned to Philly at the end of August and the Phils returned from a short, 6-game road trip to Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, we both came back to a city palpably different from the one we had left, one reeling from race riots that decimated Columbia Avenue (now Cecil B. Moore Avenue) in North Philadelphia, just a mile south of Connie Mack Stadium.*  

Columbia Avenue in the Aftermath of the Riots, 28-30 August 1964 (AP Photo)

Phillies 1964 World Series Tickets(photo @
http://keitholbermann.mlblogs.com/
tag/1964-world-series/ )

When the Phillies left for their brief trip on August 23, they led the Reds and Giants by 7½ games, having demolished the Pirates, 9-3, at Connie Mack behind Allen's 2 homers and ace Jim Bunning's 14th win of the season. But they proceeded to lose 4 of the 6 games on the trip, 2 of 3 to both the Braves and the Bucs. On the last game of the trip, the Pirates, behind a complete game from big Bob Veale and Bob Bailey's 3 hits and 3 RBI, chased ace Chris Short after an inning and a third, winning 10-2. Short, who had allowed only 1 earned run in his three previous starts, all complete game victories, saw his microscopic ERA rise from 1.69 to 1.90. But the Phillies were still in first place with a seemingly secure 5½ game lead over the Cincinnati Reds, 6½ over the Giants, and 7 over the surging St. Louis Cardinals, who had rejuvenated themselves by trading for speedy outfielder Lou Brock on June 15. When, on September 20, Bunning defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers at Chavez Ravine, 3-2, to run his record to 18-5 and lower his ERA to 2.33, the Phillies came home to North Philly with the aforementioned 6½ games lead (over the Reds and Cards; 7 over the Giants) with just 12 games left on the schedule. Printing presses in Philadelphia proceeded to print World Series tickets for what appeared at the time to be inevitable, and 90,000 were sold within hours. But, alas, it was not to be.

September 21, 1964 is the most infamous day in the infamous history of Philadelphia sports. The Phils were at home against the second place Reds, with 12 game winner Art Mahaffey facing John Tsitouris, who had been a major disappointment with a 7-11 record. The game remained scoreless until the 6th inning when, with one out, rookie Chico “Bench Me or Trade Me” Ruiz (for more on Ruiz’s tragically short life, see here) singled and sped to third on a single to right by Vada Pinson, who was gunned down at second by the rifle-armed Callison when he tried to stretch it into a double. That brought up Frank Robinson, one of the league’s most feared sluggers, with 2 outs. Then Ruiz did the unthinkable—“the dumbest play I’ve ever seen,” according to teammate Pete Rose: he attempted a naked steal of home with the right-handed Robinson (!) at the plate, risking decapitation and the wrath of the irascible slugger at the same time. But somehow ―Philadelphians might say "typically"―it worked.**  Mahaffey, noting Ruiz’s break for home, was distracted enough to uncork a wild pitch outside the reach of catcher Clay Dalrymple, enabling Ruiz to score the game’s only run. The Phillies anemically managed only 2 hits the last 4 innings of the game off Tsitouris, both doubles off the bat of Wes Covington. 


At first both the team and the fans took the loss in stride.  After all, they still had a 5½ game lead over the Reds. But closer inspection would have shown the cracks already showing. Three days previously, Short had blown a 3-0 lead in the 7th inning against the weak-hitting, defending champion Dodgers, allowing 3 straight hits, culminating in a game-tying home run by Frank Howard, before a throwing error by Ruben Amaro led to the Dodgers scoring the winning run in the 9th off reliever Jack Baldschun. The very next night, in an eerie preview of events on the 21st, Willie Davis won the game for the Dodgers in the bottom of the 16th inning with a naked steal of home off reliever Morrie Steevens. With 2 out, Davis had singled for his fourth hit of the game. He then proceeded to steal second and go to third on a wild pitch by the iron man Baldschun, who was then relieved by Steevens, off whom the speedy Davis swept home. Bunning's win on the 20th seemed to steady the ship briefly, but the listing began again with Ruiz's daredevil dash on the 21st. 

The next day Frank Robinson homered and Jim O'Toole went the distance for his 16th win as Short was roughed up for 6 runs in 4.2 innings, raising his ERA from 1.92 to 2.14 and lowering his record to 17-8, as the Reds walloped the Phils, 9-2. As the losses began to mount, the team tightened and, even worse, manager Gene Mauch, the "Little General," whose facility at small ball and strategic matchups had been instrumental in the team’s overachieving success that year, began to panic. Most famously, Mauch used his best starters, Bunning and Short, multiple times on only 2 (!) days’ rest, with predictably bad results (for detailed analysis of this and other of Mauch’s managerial failings contributing to the team's demise in '64, see here).  When, on September 28-30, the Phils were swept by the Cardinals in a 3-game series at Busch Stadium, they had amazingly lost 10 in a row, and fallen into third place, 1½ games behind the Reds and 2½ games behind the streaking Redbirds, who hadPhiladelphia fans would instinctively say, "of course"―won 8 in a row. Even though they rallied to defeat the Reds in the final two games of the season, they fell one game short at the end when the Cardinals rallied from behind to defeat the lowly Mets on the strength of the bats of Bill White and Tim McCarver and the arm of Bob Gibson, who won his 19th game of the season in relief. Often lost to memory amidst all the recriminations is the fact that in the 30 days of September 1964, the Phils played 31 games, with no days off.

All these years later, I still recall these events, and the anguish they caused, as vividly as if they happened yesterday (actually, I could only wish to recall yesterday’s events so vividly!). In moments of thoughtful reflection, I can see how they influenced my own fandom at a fundamental level. For me, losing and choking are the expected results whenever my Philly teams play. I am never surprised when a Philadelphia team snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, whether it is the 1968 Sixers losing three straight to the aging, and clearly inferior, Celtics, the 1977 Sixers losing four straight to Bill Walton’s Blazers after taking the first two games easily, or the 2000 Flyers losing three straight to the New Jersey Devils after taking a 3-1 series lead. I am never surprised, but always angered, when clearly superior Philly teams fail to win championships, whether that team is the 1980 Eagles or the 2010-2011 Phillies. I am likewise never surprised when Philadelphia players rarely seem to live up to their early promise or hype, whether it be Dick Allen, George McGinnis, Donovan McNabb, Eric Lindros, Ryan Howard, Carson Wentz, or Ben Simmons.  Frustration, in my experience, has been the norm, and we Philadelphians of the old school are known to voice that frustration in ways that more “refined” and less star-crossed fans of other cities are less wont to do. But it is this very history of frustration that makes the city’s rare championships—the 1960 and 2017 Eagles, the 1980 and 2008 Phillies, the 1967 and 1983 Sixers, and the 1974 and 1975 Flyers—all the sweeter because of their very unexpectedness and rarity.

Time heals all wounds, so the saying goes. In a sense, I guess that’s true. Today I look back at the 1964 Phillies, with names like Covington, Gonzalez, Taylor, Rojas, Wine, Baldschun, Dalrymple, Bennett, and especially Allen, Callison, Bunning, and Short―the last four, the undisputed stars of the team, all now, sadly, with us no longer―with more fondness than I do the more successful Phillies of 2007-2011. To me, they remain bigger than life, despite their failure and my now advanced age. But that failure taught me a dubious “lesson” I wish I could unlearn, but deep down inside know I never will.

Friday, September 17, 2021

Once Again, Evangelicals and the Coronavirus Vaccines: God's "Fools," or Just Fools?

 

Six months ago, on the eve of receiving my second Moderna jab, I wrote a post, in shock and, if I am honest, in anger as much as in horror, detailing the hesitation of large numbers of self-described white "evangelicals"―54%, compared to 68% of religiously unaffiliated Americans―to "definitely or probably" get vaccinated against the COVID virus. Speaking to my fellow Christians, I concluded my post thus:

This is what it means to be a Christian. To be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth necessarily entails a commitment to fulfilling "the righteous requirement of the Law," summed up by Jesus, in classic rabbinic fashion, in terms of the Shema and the love command. It is a Christian's duty, as a Christian, to be neighbors to everyone who comes across his or her path―cf. the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 10:25-37including one's enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). And in the present circumstances, this means to wear a mask. It means to commit to social distancing. And it means to take the vaccine as soon as one can get it. Just do it.

What I wrote then remains true today. And with the impressive vaccine rollout under the Biden Administration this past spring, it appeared matters were looking up, and that we were finally starting to get the pandemic under control. But then along came the mutation known today as the Delta variant, thought originally to have arisen in December 2020 in India. This variant, it now seems, is both more virulent and highly transmissible than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, and is the cause of the current third wave of the pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the country, particularly on the swath of the Sunbelt from Texas to Florida and now in the interior of the South and Appalachia from Tennessee to West Virginia. As a result, last week President Biden issued an executive order, detailing a COVID-19 mandate covering upwards of 100 million Americans in an effort to right the ship and get the country's ship of health back on track.

What happened? Politically-generated COVID resurgence, that's what. In an NBC poll last month, 91% of Biden voters claim to have been vaccinated, compared to only 50% of Trump voters. As a result, the early lead the US had in vaccinations has evaporated, to the point that it now lags behind every other G7 nation in vaccination rates: Canada at close to 75%, France, Italy, and Britain between 70 and 73%, and Germany and Japan at around 65%. The US? 63%. And the needle is hardly moving. The results of this lag are as unsurprising as they are infuriating, as this graph from Johns Hopkins University shows:


But, and this likewise is unsurprising, the American problem is not a uniform, across-the-board problem. Indeed, Paul Krugman, citing the same Johns Hopkins statistics, shows that  so-called "blue" states like New York, Massachusetts, and even California resemble Canada and Germany more than they do "red state" COVID hotspots like Texas and Florida, hamstrung as the latter are by MAGA, GOP governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis who have done everything in their power to frame the issue in terms of "freedom" by restricting the freedom of municipalities and companies to institute mask mandates or vaccine passports.




In view of such statistics, one could have hoped evangelical Christians would have reversed their earlier skepticism about the vaccines and realized their God-given responsibility vis-à-vis the welfare of their neighbors (not to mention their own self-interest). Alas, however, large numbers of them―higher percentages than even white Republicans who did not identify as evangelicals―continue to be either hesitant to get the vaccine or adamant in their refusal to do so. Indeed, earlier this summer studies showed a distinct correlation between COVID hot spots and high concentrations of white evangelicals. This nasty fact has been the source of much grief and frustration for many thinking Christians, not least Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Yet the reaction of evangelicals, by and large, to President Biden's COVID mandate, has been as predictable as it has been disappointing. Even though a poll this week showed that upwards of 58% of Americans supported Biden's vaccine mandate, large numbers of evangelicals demur. They don't have a degree in science, let alone a relevant Ph.D., yet they take the word of (the vaccinated and admitted fibmeister) Tucker Carlson over Dr. Anthony Fauci and the overwhelming scientific consensus, and decide to do their own online "research" (for which they have no training or competence) to validate their own preconceived beliefs or wishes. Alternatively, as some on my Facebook feed have done, they take the puerile "libertarian" option and cast the issue in terms of "freedom," proudly proclaiming #iwillnotcomply and accusing those who want to act so as to control the pandemic (!) of "politicizing" the virus in order to "strip Americans of their rights" in the interest of seizing power and control over them .

When I read or hear such things, I have to sit back and breathe deeply before I let the metaphorical "gathering gloom" envelop me. After all, what is this if not a manifestation of the tribalism to which all of humanity is, unfortunately, prone? And evangelicals have, over the past 50 years, devolved to the point where they have largely become simply the religious arm of the right wing of the Republican Party. This is, then, not simply a theological problem, involving a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of what Christianity entails; it is also a missional problem: the world sees evangelicals and what they stand for clearly, and they just as clearly don't like what they see. The issue, consequently, is this: Is this rejection a matter of rejecting them because of their witness for Christ, or is the rejection based in more fundamental issues, namely, demonstrable ethical and/or intellectual failures of the evangelicals themselves? To use the language of one of the evangelicals' primary texts for their self-understanding, Is their pronounced vaccine hesitancy/rejection a manifestation of what Paul the Apostle called God's counterintuitive "wisdom?" Or is it simply run of the mill "foolishness" that the "world in its wisdom" rightly rejects? The text in question is 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, which reads as follows:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-31, NRSV)

What this remarkable passage affirms is that the cross is, not merely an apocalyptic event effecting a definitive change in world orders [1], but an epistemologically revolutionary and transformational one as well: the cross serves as the definitive criterion for that in which true wisdom consists. The Corinthians, as is being increasingly recognized, [2] were in thrall to the sort of popular sophistry and rhetoric indigenous to Corinth, and which led to the boastfulness and competitiveness for which the church has become notorious. In view of the Corinthians' fascination with such sophistry, Paul takes pains in verse 17 to point out that Christ commissioned him, not to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel [3]―and that he did so without the sophistry of the "clever rhetoric" (ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου) [4] his readers so admired, designed as it was to confer status on the speaker, lest by doing so the cross of Christ would be "emptied" (κένωθῇ) of its saving, transformative, and paradigmatic power.

The aim of the Apostle in these verses is to subvert the Corinthians' conceptions of what genuinely counted as "wisdom." In doing so, he sets up an apocalyptic contrast between two groups of people confronted with the "proclamation" (λόγος) of the cross: to those who are "on the road to destruction" (τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις), this proclamation smacks of sheer madness or folly (μωρία); to "us" (ἡμῖν) who are in the process of being saved (τοῖς σῳζομένοις), however, this proclamation is the word of God's power (δύναμις), in that the cross serves both as the means of God's rescuing intervention and the modus operandi of how his power is worked out in the lives of his people.[5] 

Paul calls for what Richard Hays has deemed a "conversion of the imagination," placing the term "wisdom" in the scriptural/prophetic context of Isaiah 29:14 (1 Cor 1:19), asking his readers to see, in the crucifixion of Jesus, an indictment of the human sophistry prized by the Corinthians. [6] To Jews looking for signs that their promises were about to be fulfilled, Paul's message of a "crucified Messiah" (κηρύσσομεν χρίστον ἐσταυρωμένον) was an offensive, oxymoronic stumbling block (σκάνδαλον). To Greeks such as his Corinthian readers, such a message was inanity (μωρία), the opposite of the type of life that would lead to the success and honor to which the "wise" would strive (1 Cor 1:23). 

It is imperative to realize that, as an apocalyptic contrast, the shift in perspective needed is not one that a person can undertake on his or her own; one, whether one is a Jew or Greek, must be effectively "called" (κλητοῖς) by God, as a result of which one recognizes, by experience, the Messiah as both God's power and wisdom (1 Cor 1:24). If indeed the cross is the definitive criterion of genuine wisdom, then, as the Apostle will go on to say a couple chapters down the line, "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Cor 3:19).

This is one of Paul's great texts, of course, and it should explain the reaction of people to the proclamation of the Christian gospel of the cross. All too often, however, it is illegitimately utilized to explain (and sometimes glory in) the world's hostility to evangelical Christian beliefs and actions. I used to remind my college students, "Yes, the Bible says that all who live godly lives in Christ will be persecuted; but all too often we are reviled, not because of Christ or the message of the cross, but because we are acting like idiots." In other words, we as Christians must make sure that opposition to us is due to our faithfulness, both to the message of the cross and to the cruciform pattern of our lives. After all, that is the counterintuitive divine "wisdom" of the cross.

And it is precisely here that the current evangelical hostility to the COVID vaccines in the name of personal "freedom" shows they have (once again) gone off the rails. Yes, the New Testament presents a narrative of liberation. But it is the narrative of the liberation of the Second Exodus/New Creation anticipated in Isaiah 40-66, not the bastard. modernist narrative of human individualism and autonomy so beloved in today's America, not least among self-identifying Christians. Freedom frees one for service, not license. It is the cross that serves as the touchstone of God's wisdom. Evangelicals rightly emphasize the atoning significance of the cross. Yet it is the cross as paradigm, the cross as the means by which God has made and makes his power known in the world, that truly demonstrates the counterintuitive and countercultural character of God's wisdom. And it is this cruciform pattern of life, exemplified by Paul and his apostolic colleagues (1 Cor 4:9-13), that exemplifies the "folly" the fissiparous, competitive Corinthians despised, and which today's evangelicals likewise appear unwilling to emulate.

For further reading:

  • Duke Divinity School Professor Curtis Chang, on why he doesn't believe in Religious Exemptions to Mask Mandates
  • Messiah University History Professor John Fea, on why he thinks President Biden made the right call on COVID mandates
  • Western Seminary Theology Professor Todd Billings on how Calvin could help vaccine skeptics learn a bit of creation theology
  • The evangelical Presbyterian David French: "It’s Time to Stop Rationalizing and Enabling Evangelical Vaccine Rejection"


Friday, September 10, 2021

Randall Balmer on Racism as the REAL Catalyst for the Religious Right


In my last post, I looked at evangelicalism in terms of what Jesus would have referred to as the "fruits" it has borne, its sociological manifestations―including sexism, racism, homophobia and, especially, almost universal support of Donald Trump―that have led to what has become known as the "exvangelical" phenomenon sweeping the country.  Today I would like to look back more than four decades to what can only be understood as the roots of this problem, the rise of the so-called "Religious Right" in the 1970's. In doing so I am fortunate to have Randall Balmer as a guide. Balmer is the John Phillips Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College and one of our foremost scholars of American religious history. Just last month he published a slender (141 pages), yet powerful, volume on the origins of the Religious Right entitled Bad Faith, [1] one which not only exposes the truth of these origins but elegantly explains what, to me, had always seemed inexplicable, to wit, how people who claimed to follow Jesus could so whole-heartedly follow the ever-more blatantly un-Christian tenets of the Reagan and post-Reagan Republican Party.

One of the convenient myths evangelicals have long put forward to explain the rise of the so-called "Religious Right" in the late 1970's is that it was a principled response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Not so, argues Balmer. [2] Indeed, as he demonstrates convincingly, evangelicals, by and large, understood abortion to be a Catholic issue, and were generally tolerant of the practice and supportive of the Roe decision. Balmer cites, not only successive editors of Christianity Today magazine, the redoubtable Carl F. H. Henry and Harold Lindsell, but First Baptist Dallas's famous fundamentalist Pastor W. A. Criswell and, most shocking of all, Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who, noting the Bible's silence on the matter of abortion, considered it plausible for an evangelical to believe that "a developing embryo or fetus was not regarded as a full human being." Even Jerry Falwell admitted to not preaching his first anti-abortion sermon until February 26, 1978, five years after the Roe decision was promulgated. Indeed, the first evangelical anti-abortion voice Balmer finds was that of the liberal (!) Republican Senator from Oregon, Mark Hatfield, in 1973.

The evidence Balmer adduces fits my lived experience. Like Balmer, I am a son of evangelicalism: he, the son of a 40-year pastor in the Evangelical Free church, I the son of an evangelical Bible professor; in the '70's, he went to college at Trinity College and seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I did my undergraduate work at Philadelphia College of Bible (now Cairn University) and, in 1979, started seminary in Dallas. Abortion, in both our circles, simply was not an issue. When Harry Blackmun wrote the Roe v. Wade decision for the 7-2 majority, it made the splash of a Chinese platform diver. The issue of "life," so prominent and heated in today's partisan world, was a non-issue. Indeed, in Protestant circles an embryo, even a fetus, was generally considered to be a potential life, not a full human being in its own right. [3] 

Even more astonishing, at least to those who were not alive at the time, is the realization that "evangelicals" did not constitute a reliable, nation-wide voting bloc. Balmer, as he has done for years, makes much of 19th century evangelicals' activism concerned with those on the margins of society. Though, as he well knows, this is only part of the story, like many he points to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 as a turning point, after which evangelicals, particularly those who preferred to be called "fundamentalists," turned inward, away from the world, developing their own subculture of schools, denominations, camps, mission boards, Bible Institutes, and so forth, which came into their own in the middle decades of the 20th century. Indeed, most evangelicals and fundamentalists of my youthful acquaintance―remember, this was an overwhelmingly white, suburban, middle class demographic―were reliably Republican, if indeed they voted at all. But the Republicans of the 1960's and early 1970's were not the Republicans of the post-Reagan years, let alone the MAGA-hoards of the 2020's. Indeed, what truly characterized the evangelical political attitude of my youth was distrust of human government, a distrust motivated, at least in part, by the pessimistic dispensationalist theology which was de rigueur in those circles. The present world was, in the words of St. Paul, "passing away" (1 Cor 7:31). The world was heading, so we were taught, toward an antichristian climax of a "one world government," and so "big government" of any kind was viewed as a harbinger of that bleak forecast. It was the return of Christ (the "rapture") for which we were waiting, not social improvement, let alone the realization of God's kingdom on earth. In any case, any notion that we could change the world for the better was nothing but a pipe dream. Our job in this dualistic worldview, so we were taught, was to evangelize: "witness" by preaching the gospel so that people could be saved out of the world when Christ returns.

But then, in the late 1970's, everything changed. And it changed seemingly overnight. What happened? Balmer's book provides the definitive answer. And this answer is as important as it is disheartening and ugly: From the beginning, it was always a matter of racism, pure and simple. Balmer tells the remarkable personal story of a gathering he was invited to attend in Washington in November 1990, ostensibly to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency, in which one of the founding pillars of the Religious Right, Paul Weyrich, vociferously claimed―against the received wisdom and/or the approved narrative―that abortion had nothing to do with the emergence of the movement. Instead, as Balmer skillfully tells us, the catalyst occurred on January 19, 1976, when the IRS, based on the Green v. Connally decision of June 30, 1971 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia [4], rescinded the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies. This got the attention of one Jerry Falwell, who had founded his own segregation academy. Falwell then got together with Weyrich and other like-minded conservatives to fight the IRS so as to try to preserve their tax-exempt status and to frame the issue as one of the schools' religious freedom, as schools that didn't take any federal money, to discriminate (my word, not theirs) as they pleased. Balmer's narrative, and the sketches he provides of the major players in the story, are in equal parts compelling and troubling. His main point is clear, and the evidence he uses to back it up is beyond dispute: it is a movement generated to defend racial segregation in evangelical institutions―and to place the blame for Bob Jones's loss of its status at the hands of the Democratic Carter Administration, even though it had originally been the Republican Nixon Administration that had taken action against the school.

Where, then, does the abortion issue, enter the picture? Here Balmer points to the aforementioned Weyrich, the evil genius, as it were, behind the movement, who had been looking, as far back as the 1964 Barry Goldwater Presidential campaign, for an issue to mobilize evangelical voters, but had come up empty. Realizing that he would need an issue more "respectable" than defense of segregation academies to serve as the requisite "wedge"― he hit upon his winner by happenstance on the eve of four Senate races in 1978, when he directed pro-lifers to leaflet church parking lots on the Sunday before the election; in each of them, the heavy underdog pro-life Republican emerged victorious in a low turnout election. Voila. Weyrich had his issue. [5] And by 1980, the turning point had come. Evangelical voters, now largely united under the umbrella of the "Religious Right," massively supported the divorced-and-remarried, former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, who, while Governor of California, had signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967, over the evangelical Christian Jimmy Carter. And abortion was now becoming the driving force in their political logic. [6]

Responding to Balmer's evidence is no easy thing, especially for a Christian who lived through the events involved. At one level, one is disgusted by the racism, corruption, duplicity, and sheer "sinfulness" of the characters involved, especially considering the self-righteousness and "morality" in which such wickedness was deliberately clothed (so as to be hidden from public view). Then again, I never had any respect for people like Jerry Falwell, let alone Paul Weyrich, to begin with. And in my family, headed as it was by a self-proclaimed fundamentalist Bible professor and theologian with spiritual integrity, Bob Jones University was always an object of contempt because of its racist beliefs and practices. Then again, I was raised in Philadelphia, seemingly light years away culturally from the rural south where "segregation academies" flourished to benefit white so-called "Christians." This cultural disconnect somewhat explains my disorientation when, as I wrote earlier this year, I heard a fellow member of my church in Dallas worried about the consequences of televangelist Jim Bakker's fall from grace for "us," i.e., "evangelical" Christians. What I didn't realize then, buried as I was in the midst of my Ph.D. studies, is that my intellectualist/theological (and naively urban and Northeastern) understanding of what "evangelicalism" entailed was already passé. "Evangelicalism" had already been largely swallowed up, at least in the public mind, by the Religious Right. The goals of the so-called "New Evangelicals" of the 1940's and 1950's had been entirely left behind. And what was becoming clear at that time has only gotten worse in the in the subsequent decades. Indeed, what Balmer demonstrates is that there is a direct line between the founding of the Religious Right and today's Trumpified, xenophobic, anti-CRT "evangelical" Christianity. The dots aren't that difficult to connect.

Upon further reflection, however, I can't let the circles in which I was raised off the hook so easily. It's all too easy for a Philadelphian such as I to stand in judgment on southern Christians for their blatant racism. After all, the Christian college I attended had African American students, some of whom were my teammates on the basketball team! But how many African American Professors were there at the college? (Answer: 1, and he was buried in the Social Work Department) What about the subtle racism of low expectations? How many Christians did I hear using the "n word" in casual conversation? How many, ensconced in their tidy, middle class neighborhoods on the Main Line looked down and sat in judgment on less well-to-do black folks living in run-down neighborhoods in West Philly? ("they should pick themselves up by their bootstraps, blah blah, blah" [Pelagianism 101]). And what really was the reason pious white church folk condemned the rock and roll, blues, and jazz music I loved so much (and still do) in my youth? Was it really the "lifestyle" of the performers? It's funny, I never heard them claim the "lifestyle" of Leonard Bernstein or Peter Tchaikovsky disallowed their music from being played. And what was their response when one of their white youth tried dating an African American? Hint: It wasn't pretty. 

And I wish things were completely different today. To be sure, in some cases, they are. But old attitudes die hard, if at all. To give one example, a couple of years ago, we had just returned from a week in Atlantic City and were talking to an old Christian lady. When we told her about our trip, she said, "You should have gone to Ocean City. There's more of our kind of people down there." Of course, she could have been referring to "Christians," because Atlantic City is famously a city of casinos, and Ocean City, a famously dry town that bills itself as "America's Greatest Family Resort," was founded as a Methodist retreat. But somehow I don't think so. I didn't say anything, but what I should have said is that the relentless whiteness of Ocean City is its one drawback; Atlantic City, for all its troubles, looks like America, and I like it for that reason. Indeed, the only reason I can live the somewhat middle class life I now do is due to the White Privilege she, and no doubt most evangelicals in America today, relentlessly resist acknowledging exists. I hate to admit it, but racism is baked into the DNA of American evangelicalism.

If this is so, is there any hope for evangelicalism? Can they reverse the course they have trod over the past 40+ years? Balmer, always the optimist, tells Camp he sees a flicker of hope in Jesus' resuscitation of Lazarus (John 11) after decay had already started to set in. If God can do that, then maybe he can prod evangelicals to reconsider other aspects of their political agenda and thus see the disconnect between the far-right precincts GOP to which they have given fealty and Jesus' directive, in Matthew 25, to care for "the least of these." He is a realist, however, and in a moment of honesty, says that the 2016 election "really represents the end of evangelicalism, at least in any meaningful sense." If 81% of evangelicals could vote for Donald Trump, and an almost identical percentage do the same four years later, it is past time to give up the charade that they actually care about "life" or "family values." No one any longer is fooled by such nonsense, except perhaps the self-deluded.


Thursday, September 2, 2021

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPARSIN: Jay Green and Fred Clark on the #Exvangelical Phenomenon

Years ago, in response to a query from a former student struggling with his faith, I penned a rather long post entitled "Why I Am Still a Christian." In it I recounted the story of one Rachael Slick, the daughter of a Westminster Seminary graduate, who had abandoned the faith in which she was raised. Her story, as everybody is now aware, is not unique. Indeed, a widely distributed recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute suggested that White Evangelical Protestants had declined from 23% to 14.5% in the 15 years from 2006-2021. Over the past few decades, prominent intellectuals have either abandoned orthodox expressions of Christian faith (Frank Schaeffer) or left the faith entirely (University of North Carolina biblical scholar Bart Ehrman). More recently, and at the popular level, I Kissed Dating Goodbye author Josh Harris renounced his faith and announced a "deconstruction" course (subsequently pulled). These, of course, are only the tip of the iceberg.

This iceberg, only now becoming all too visible to the heretofore triumphalist Titanic of American White Evangelicalism, is increasingly being known by the clever moniker of "Exvangelicalism." And it behooves those of us who care about Christianity in its genuine expressions to understand these "exvangelicals" and what they signify in our present cultural and ecclesial climate. One who has attempted to do so is Jay Green, Professor of History at Covenant College, affiliated with the (evangelical) Presbyterian Church in America. Green, to his credit, does more than simply criticize or denounce, taking the time actually to talk to Blake Chastain, one he describes as a "leading spokesman" of the movement (such as it is), who hosts a podcast of the same name. In an article last month at John Fea's Current website, Green, after noting the wide spectrum of beliefs contained under the "exvangelical" umbrella―everything from progressive forms of Christianity to outright atheismnotes the uniqueness of this "movement." What drives this departure from the faith they "once vocally and joyfully professed" is not primarily theological or historical skepticism per se, but rather the fatigue of a perceived spiritual oppression―in Chastain's words, "the totalizing mental and social environment" of evangelical Christianity. In Green's words:

One finds limited talk of theology among these Exvangelicals apart from repudiating the “rigidity” and “literalness” of evangelical faith. The paradigm shifts they have undergone seem more sociological than theological; more concerned with cultural claims than metaphysical ones.

Yet, Green avers, quoting Chastain and adding a bit of snarky commentary at the end, even the exvangelicals have certain hard and fast commitments of their own:

Even so, Chastain is quick to lay down what he sees as a few non-negotiable commitments all share: “We embrace the LGBTQ community fully, are thoroughly feminist, denounce the role of white supremacy in society in general, and white evangelicalism in particular.” (It seems that giving up on the idea of fundamentals is easier said than done.)

The implications, at least as he sees them, are clear. The exvangelicals, in Green's reckoning, have allowed "sociological" factors derived from the prevailing culture to derail them from what Green considers to be the properly theological and "spiritual" factors that legitimately define the faith. 

The very next day (!) Green's article was met with a reply by the "Slacktivist," Fred Clark. Clark commends Green for making the attempt, if not a wholly successful one, to understand these people and for listening to Chastain in particular. Yet he maintains that Green nonetheless misses the boat entirely in that the disjunction he makes between "theological" and "sociological" factors, what Clark niftily dubs the "vertical/horizontal dichotomy," is illegitimate. Using Jesus' famous teaching about the inexorable connection between a tree and the fruit it bears, Clark suggests Green underestimates the real reason for the exvangelicals' rejection of evangelicalism:

It's not wrong to say that many of these younger people are rejecting or reshaping the evangelical religion they were taught because of "cultural claims" rather than purely doctrinal or theological disagreements. But what I think Green misses is that this is exactly the basis for much of their critique of the evangelicalism they're leaving behind. They're pointing out that evangelicalism is, itself, more of a cultural/sociological construct than a theological/spiritual/doctrinal one.

Or, to put it another way, "one finds limited talk among these exvangelicals" of the tree itself and greater emphasis on the fruit it bears. That's the language of the Sermon on the Mount ― words spoken by Jesus according to Matthew 7: "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. … Thus you will know them by their fruits."

In those terms, it would seem to be one big difference between Green's perspective and that of the exvangelicals he's struggling to understand. From his point of view, as an observer and sometimes critic of evangelicalism within that world, the focus is on the tree ― on the theology, doctrine, spirituality, and religiosity of evangelicalism. And from that point of view it's entirely possible and worthwhile to focus on such things in themselves as something separate and distinct from any secondary  "sociological" or "cultural" aspects of the people and institutions holding those theological views.

From the point of view of those exvangelicals, however, it's not possible or meaningful to consider the "tree" as something abstract and distinct from the fruit it bears. Any evaluation of the tree is dependent on the quality and substance of its fruit. And they know this fruit from personal experience. They were fed that fruit for a long time and they say it made them sick.

Clark's argument here is unusually perceptive. For theology, as theoretical and as "vertical" as it might appear to be in theory, has unavoidable, indeed necessary, social or "horizontal" corollaries. Nowhere is this more clear than in Paul's (probably) earliest letter, Galatians. There the Apostle is at his most strident and hot-tempered, attempting to counter the impact of "agitators" who have made inroads in trying to convince his Gentile converts that, in order to truly become children of Abraham, they must become circumcised. It is in this context that he first articulates his famous "justification by faith, not by works of the law" theologoumenon. Traditional Protestantism (the "Old Perspective on Paul") always interpreted this as a polemic against a supposed "works-righteousness," the vain attempt to "earn" one's "salvation" by putting God in one's debt (à la Romans 4:3) and being able, consequently, to boast in one's achievement (à la  Ephesians 2:9). Yet observant interpreters should notice that the "works" in question are works "of the law"―they are Jewish practices prescribed by the Torah. What was at issue was not "works-righteousness" as such, let alone "self-righteousness." What was at issue instead was the Torah as the definitive cultural framework of God's covenant people. [1] Paul's opponents in Galatia didn't deny Christ or the necessity of "faith" in him. Nor did they deny his atoning death or the fact that his role in fulfilling the Abrahamic Covenant, any more than did (implicitly) Peter or the "men from James" (Galatians 2:12) whose pressure led the "apostle of the circumcision" (Gal 2:7)―and even Paul's erstwhile champion and ministry partner Barnabasto draw back, in a bit of play-acting (hypokrisei; Gal 2:13), from table fellowship with Gentile believers in Antioch (Gal 2:12). What Paul's opponents failed to grasp (and fellow apostles failed to act upon in their shameful withdrawal at Antioch) was the simple matter of what time it was. God's fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant in the Christ event brought with it an apocalyptic change of aeons; the time of the Torah had now been shown to be merely preparatory (Gal 3:24), now made redundant by the cross and the consequent new creation which rendered circumcision neither here nor there (Gal 6:14-15)―but if insisted upon a de facto rival of Christ and nullification of the cross. Thus in saying justification was by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, Paul was, in effect, driving a theological wedge between things his opponents, on what they considered explicitly biblical, theological grounds, held together. And the "sociological" or "cultural" ramifications of such a wedge were immense. For, in Paul's view, his opponents were forcing Gentile converts to "Judaize," an implicit denial of the gospel truth that "in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Gal 3:28). Critics of the so-called "New Perspective on Paul" have often criticized its proponents for substituting sociology for theology. But such criticism is (often) misplaced. For, whereas they are correct in affirming that "justification" is a soteriological doctrine in that it deals with a person's standing before God, it must be remembered that the Apostle articulated the doctrine in the context of, and in the interest of, arguing for the full inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant people of God. And, as Barclay has said, "these social effects are not just the context of Paul's theology, mere illustrations of soteriological principles, but its goal, since the calling of Jew and Gentile in Christ is the fulfillment of Israel's calling in mercy, and thus at the center of God's purposes in history." [2] As in Paul's day, so in ours: bad theology leads to bad practice. And if this is so, bad practice is indicative of defective theology.

This leads to Clark's second master stroke, to wit, his pointer to Jesus' words about trees and fruit in the Sermon on the Mount. The general principle of like producing like, to wit, that there is an unerring consistency between internal states and the external acts emanating from those states, is conventional, [3] and no doubt Jesus, as an itinerant teacher, utilized it in many a teaching situation. [4] In the most famous of these, Matthew 7:16-20, it appears the First Evangelist has taken the Q tradition also found in Luke's Sermon on the Plain with reference to human speech (Luke 6:43-45) and adapted it to apply to the deeds of "false prophets" (Matt 7:15). [5] But the principle, as it did in the first century in the context of Jesus' historical ministry [6], has a far wider application to movements as well as to individual actors: so as not to be deceived by any movement, look carefully to see where it leads. What "fruit" does it bear in the life of its adherents? What fruit does it bear in the culture it purportedly aims to benefit? This is a matter on which I have often reflected over the years, with much consternation as regards the movement in which I was raised. And the "exvangelicals" are forcing my hand.

As I have often reflected, evangelicalism―even in many of its "better," more theologically responsible manifestations―has, because of its inherent "conversionist" tendencies, often put most of its emphasis on how one becomes a Christian and on being part of the "in" group that is "saved" and, hence, will "go to heaven" when they die. What it means to be a Christian, what living like a Christian looks like, is given comparatively less emphasis … or at least less sustained thought. All too often, what Paul refers to as life "according to the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16; Romans 8:4) is reduced to a mere bargain basement, individualistic pietism; the rigorous "obedience that comes from faith" (Romans 1:5) is reduced to a selective moralism focused on sexual "purity;" "worldliness," if it is even frowned upon any more, hardly ever is associated, as it should be, with matters like greed, money, and power. The more frequent target is the more nebulous "liberalism." All too often, as I have lamented again and again over the years, it is simply assumed by huge numbers of White American Evangelicals that the way of Christ is the way of conservative Americanism, with all the tacit, arrogant assumptions of American exceptionalism and militarism along for the ride.

Not so the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is the way of the Kingdom of God. Indeed, the glory of the New Testament gospel message is that, far from simply being a message about how an individual can "get saved" and "go to heaven," it is rather the royal announcement of the arrival, if only in part and in the midst of the present evil age, of this promised kingdom of God through the historical events of Christ's death and resurrection (I have argued this in detail in my posts herehereherehereherehereherehere, and here). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). This is our hope. This is what we are to pray for daily. And, by implication, what we should be manifesting in our lives and communities are the priorities of this kingdom. According to the Old Testament prophets, one of the defining features of the promised New Covenant of the eschaton was to be the interiorization of the Torah through the gift of the Spirit (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:27). According to Jesus, reflecting the language of Micah 6:8, what mattered especially were the "weightier" or "more important" (barytera) matters of the law, such as justice (krima), mercy (eleos), and faithfulness (pistis) (Matthew 23:23).

Jesus' Sermon on the Mount provides a literary précis, as it were, of what the ethics of this kingdom inaugurated by Jesus look like. [7] When Jesus, at the end of the sermon, speaks of "fruit" indicating the nature of a tree, what sorts of things did he have in mind for his hearers to look for? Consider some of the things he speaks about earlier in the sermon: turning the other cheek (5:39), loving one's enemies (5:43-48), giving to the needy in secret (6:1-4), forgiving others (6:14-15), not judging others (7:1-5). He sums up his ethic in the famous "Golden Rule": "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). [8]

This, to be blunt, is not the "fruit" the exvangelicals, or anybody else for that matter, have tended to see in large swaths of American evangelicalism, and haven't for quite some time. What they have seen is persistent toxic masculinity, [9] unacknowledged and often unrepented-of racism/white supremacy, [10] the well-nigh inexplicable 80+% support of the presidency of Donald Trump, and now the even worse COVID-denialism/anti-vaxxing/anti-masking refusal to love one's neighbors as oneself. [11] And these features of American evangelical culture are, to say the least, toxic to growing numbers of younger Americans, even those raised within the evangelical subculture. Bad fruit, indicative of a bad tree. The logic is as impeccable as the conclusion is inexorable.

At the same time, Clark's enthusiasm for the exvangelicals' standpoint needs to be tempered somewhat. For, you see, Green is entirely correct in his assertion that the so-called "corrections" they see as necessary to the cultural ethos of evangelicalism are gleaned, not from the Bible or by necessary theological deduction, but from the secular culture in which they live. Now I have often observed, and lamented accordingly, the peculiar phenomenon that so often it is atheists and agnostics who in America today show the type of compassion for the underprivileged, oppressed, and marginalized that ought to be the hallmark of followers of Jesus of the Nazareth, the Son of Man who "had nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). And surely there is no necessary reason why their genuine concerns need be played off against the major tenets of Christian orthodoxy codified in the ancient ecumenical creeds, including Trinitarianism, Chalcedonian Christology, and the atoning death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Messiah, just as there is no necessary reason―indeed, no reason at allthese tenets should work themselves out "sociologically" the way American evangelicals have, by and large, done. [12] Yes, contemporary concerns matter, and the exvangelicals are entirely correct in their criticism of the inadequacies and failures on the part of American white evangelicals. But first and foremost what matters is how one responds to Jesus and the claims he and his earliest followers made about him. All people are responsible for how they respond to the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. And the so-called "Christians Making Atheists," as the Progressive Christian writer John Pavlovitz calls them, have a lot to answer for.

We are indeed living in a pivotal time for the church. Green, I think, is correct when he writes:

Disappointment, aggravation, and rage against the many foibles and hypocrisies found among Christian believers are not a new phenomenon. They are as old as Christianity itself. And, at least since the Enlightenment, public renunciations of personal faith aren’t especially novel either. But the tenor and contextual specifics driving this recent spate of deconversions give this moment a unique feel. I believe the current wave of evangelical defections signals a kind of inflection point for conservative Christianity in America, where a distinct set of moral, cultural, and political vexations are directly fueling personal decisions to abandon the faith, especially among younger Christians. 

Yet, after lamenting the consequences of "tarnished witness," he goes on to say, 

But I must continually remind myself that observing the broken practices of deeply flawed believers—my own especially—bears no necessary implications for the validity of Christianity’s truth claims. In fact, they remind us of our great need for a Savior. 

I'm sorry, but I must demur. Yes, of course, we are all sinners, none more so than I, for whom Luther's famous dictum, simul iustus et peccator, could have been coined. But what the exvangelicals have identified is more than simply the remnants of sin in regenerated-but-still-sinful creatures. What they have pinpointed is systematic failure indicative of a rotten tree, a theology which may have gotten how to become a Christian right, but which has whiffed badly on what it means to live like a Christian in a fallen society.  As I wrote painfully back in January, evangelicalism is dead. The writing has been on the wall for years. It's days are numbered. It has been weighed and found wanting. But all is not lost. According to the First Evangelist, Jesus promised Peter that he would build his church, and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). And now I speak to myself: let's get moving!