Faith and certainty

Today I stopped by our beloved branch library and picked up a copy of Chris Hedges' I Don't Believe in Atheists. Most of my friends would probably classify Hedges as a liberal, which is not altogether unjustified, but how many liberals are this blunt about sin?

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the material advances of science and technology equal an intrinsic moral improvement in our species. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. Religious fundamentalists, who believe they know and can carry out the will of God, disregard their severe human limitations. They act as if they are free from sin. The secular utopians of the twenty-first century have also forgotten they are human. These two groups peddle absolutes. Those who do not see as they see, speak as they speak and act as they act are worthy only of conversion or eradication.

We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. Sin reminds us that all human beings are flawed--though not equally flawed. Sin is the acceptance that there will never be a final victory over evil, that the struggle for morality is a battle that will always have to be fought. Studies in cognitive behavior illustrate the accuracy and wisdom of this Biblical concept. Human beings are frequently irrational. They are governed by unconscious forces, many of them self-destructive. This understanding of innate human corruptibility and human limitations, whether explained by the theologian Augustine or the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, has been humankind's most potent check on utopian visions. It has forced human beings to accept their own myopia and irrationality, to acknowledge that no act, even one defined as moral or virtuous, is free from the taint of self-interest and corruption. We are bound by our animal natures.

After I got over my minor irritation over the corruption of the word "fundamentalist" (which among Christians once stood for a fairly precise theological position that did not necessarily involve the arrogance and narrow-mindedness the word now implies), I began thinking about Hedges' first implication, that belief or lack of belief in God has, by itself, negligible social impact.

I think I know what he means. He doesn't deny the impact of great religious prophets--he cites a string of Christian heroes, including Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day. However, he would also assert that Christianity has no monopoly on such heroes, and in fact some great moral heroes had no overt religion at all. He doesn't (at least so far) provide a comparative census (how many heroes belong in the Christian camp, the Muslim camp, the atheist camp, etc.)--but his argument doesn't depend on statistics. He's saying that religious faith as the sole category of analysis isn't a predictor of whether a person is to be "feared," despite the charges of the "new atheists" (Dawkins, Hitchens & co.) that religious faith is a malevolent social force.

Instead, Hedges fears the sinful power of certainty in the social arena. And it's a legitimate fear. The inward certainty of a powerful intellectual or emotional conversion, presumably, is one thing. Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, among many others, both tell stories of having to come to grips with doubts before being able to move forward with courage; they reached a measure of certainty that empowered them for their public ministries. I had to make a decision to trust Jesus without reservation before I could overcome the principal block to faith, which was my deep and angry suspicion of all authority. However, that inward certainty may or may not lead to certainty of action--particularly of categorical and coercive action in the social arena.

Certainty is a slippery quality. In my experience, it comes and goes--and returns. More importantly, it is relational rather than operational: I can be certain that God wants the best for you and me, and that God will be with you and me as we work for that best, but I'm hardly ever certain about what concrete steps to take next. For that decision, I need a mix of intuition, prayer, plain secular fact-checking, the wisdom of others, and a willingness to risk being wrong.

Is this kind of "provisional" certainty debilitating for social action? Can great social movements be propelled by leaders who are modest and self-consciously fallible? I don't object to a leader who competently communicates a powerful vision and tries to persuade me to sign on. For me, the most basic red flag is how leaders see their opponents. Do they objectify those who don't agree, those who stand in the way, and even those they seek to convince? Do those leaders try to apply scary categories, emphasize how alien the "enemy" is?

The rest of us need to wrestle with certainty, too. "Fundamentalist" leaders, religious and atheist, will rise up despite eloquent authors' warnings, but maybe our message can empower ordinary people against falling for the charms of their certainty. My understanding of Christian Quaker evangelism is that we proclaim a different kind of certainty--not that we evangelists have the whole story, not that we can do the thinking for you, not that we have a great plan for your life summarized in this brief tract, but we are certain that you are made in God's image, and you already have the capacity to become aware of that image, that Light, in you. It is not an issue of whether our Light is better than someone else's. Instead, if we trust the Holy Spirit and the promises of God, our sole responsibilities are to invite you to turn to God for inner confirmation of God's already-existing constant and loving invitation, to tell you our community's resources and experience in accepting that invitation, and extending our community's hospitality as we together (jointly, humbly, imperfectly) try to work out together the awesome implications for ourselves, each other, and the world. Don't you think this kind of inward convincement might inoculate us against the claims of overconfident, presumptuous leaders?

Our resources as a community are not modest. They include the Bible (which is utterly trustworthy when we don't wield it with inappropriate certainty), our history of discipleship as a faith community, and the diverse gifts present among us today--especially when we use them with mutual forbearance and a respectful division of labor. Given all this, it's hard for me to understand why we Quakers sometimes seem so collectively timid. For example, I really thought that when Friends United Meeting formally joined the Christian Peacemaker Teams, we would significantly increase their enrollment, and it was sad to read this past week that CPT closed their Hebron program for lack of workers. [Note: It did reopen, and I served there in 2019.] We Friends need more certainty, less diffidence. But maybe it is a different kind of certainty, because too often I've seen evidence that we feel superior, less evidence that we expect God's promises to the world to be fulfilled through us.

Later in his book, Chris Hedges repeats some powerful historical arguments against Christian pacifism. However, his indictment of pacifists is almost the same indictment made by Quaker writer R.W. Tucker (see "What are we afraid of?"). The kind of pacifism that George Fox advocated did not depend on the kind of optimism Hedges condemns, but on a certainty that doesn't blink in the presence of sin--an awareness that we are peaceable soldiers in the Lamb's War under the captaincy of the Prince of Peace. This is a kind of certainty that can be deployed with humility and a crucial awareness that the war is not just outward, but inward. When we "get in the way" alongside Christian Peacemakers, when we refuse to pay war taxes, when we publicly resist objectifying those who are "different," when we rise up against unjust wars and counsel conscientious objectors, and when we evangelize with integrity, telling people the whole salvation message (not just its individual dimension) AND inviting them to experience the message in community, I think we can make "certainty" both modest and powerful.

(part two; part three)

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Righteous links: The Obama corner .... Is Barack dull? ~~ Barack's 20-year-old good deed, in English and Norwegian. (Thanks to Kathy Torvik.) ~~ More on Barack Obama overseas: Readers of the Russian-language Washington ProFile bulletin voted 61-39% that Obama would be "better able to exercise a positive influence on relations between the USA and the countries of the former Soviet Union." And here's an unrighteous link: several Russia online media sources used this terrible Reuters photo of John McCain (first in gallery). Who at Reuters thought this was a usable photo??

Paul Krugman explains, in plain English, the work for which he received the Nobel prize in economics. ~~ Andrew Sullivan writes a candid and useful piece on "why I blog." I don't have the time or drive or freedom to post several times a day, as he does, but in my own modest once-a-week fashion, I scratch a lot of the same itches. ~~ Never in my memory have the USA media so UNDERreported a Canadian story: the country had a NATIONAL ELECTION THIS WEEK! ~~ Christian Peacemakers continue their important ministry in At-Tuwani. You can download a report at this site. I have mixed feelings about the format of this report (are bar charts really the most effective or credible way to deliver this data?) but have no doubts that the report deserves attention.

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Considering the state of the world, I am still certain that I'm advancing the right kind of music in these entries--the supremely evocative form known as the blues. Especially today's clip. Alice Stuart sings, "I'm going to show you more money than Rockefeller's ever seen." Well, at least I'm not claiming certainty about that.

Godly uncertainty

A Coptic-language New Testament fragment.
Source: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

God is the creator and sustainer, the author and finisher of our faith. So why does so much of God's purpose seem almost deliberately obscure?

Certainty is so fashionable among some Christians that I'm sure this sounds like a trick question. Without this certainty, what would be the point of holding high-profile conferences in which charismatics are denounced as nonbelievers? Why bother labeling Barack Obama as anti-Bible? Why fight over biblical "translations you can trust"? From knuckle-dragging fundies to hell-bound liberals, so many of us seem sure of the scandalous inadequacies of others.

I'm an adult convert, so I can remember how entertaining I found this scene in my atheist days. The Bible seemed to be a book that was (1) pasted together from scattered fragments, (2) copied and recopied, (3) translated and retranslated, and then (4) treated as a source of irresistible logic to convert or at least confound the lost. When I began reading the Bible for myself (ultimately leading to my own conversion) I found within it no license for arrogance, but instead an amazing realism about the enduring messiness of being human.

Biblical realism includes clear warnings about the tendencies of leaders to abuse their authority. "It will not be so among you" said Jesus "but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant." (Matthew 20:26 in all sorts of translations.) But if there's one thing that seems to mark a lot of church leaders, it's the tendency to swagger. Just read some of the approved biographies on the Web sites of celebrities and top scholars in the religion industry. Apparently, the Holy Spirit could cause amazing things to be included in the Bible, but isn't able or willing to make us take them seriously. And some of these leaders are causing actual harm--telling us who can and can't serve in ministry, or that God approves of war and murder (in select cases, of course), or that it is perfectly consistent with Godliness to cut funding for poor people. I could see advocating the reduction of fraud, but eliminating actual benefits??

Apparently, perfect certainty and perfect reliability weren't in God's plans, either for biblical translation or for human behavior. For better or for worse, we're stuck not knowing for sure what to do next. "When we pray, coincidences happen," as Douglas Steere said, but the people we pray for still die sooner or later. People we love will hurt us, and we will hurt them. God has given me a new family in the form of the Body of Christ, and what a wonderful family it is, even as it sometimes drives me to the edge of insanity. (And I'm not even commenting on what I do to others!) Somehow I have to come to terms with the reality that, for now, this is enough. I hope that together we can break our addiction to certainty, and cling to the one thing we actually have control over--our commitment to each other's welfare, now and for eternity.

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Now here is a (courteous, mostly) conversation that is interesting, even without certainty guaranteed: Is Sarah Young truly entitled to record Jesus's words to her in a verbatim, first-person style? (Confession: I've not read her books and feel no urgency to do so, but I'd love to hear from anyone who has.)

"Could it be that my tribal culture is more evolved than the justice system of the United States?"

"Do Evangelicals Really Like Our Planet?"

... And, by the way, "What Planet Are We On?" (Tom Engelhardt.) The USA's military budget is as large as the next thirteen national defense budgets combined, but we seem powerless to do more than destabilize and assassinate.

If the overwhelming military power at the command of Washington can destabilize whole regions of the planet, what, then, can’t such military power do? ... As every significant U.S. military action of this new century has indicated, the application of military force, no matter in what form, has proven incapable of achieving even Washington’s most minimal goals of the moment.

"The BBC's First Man in Moscow," and the equally fascinating career path of his son.

Marking Venedikt Erofeev's birthday by taking his train. (Our train now....)

The computer corner: Having just installed Ubuntu 13.10 on my old, homebuilt computer with good results, here's my first plug for Linux in a while ... "Ubuntu vs Mint: Which Distro Is Better for Beginners?" (I like them both.)

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Going back to December 6, 1983, Hamilton, Ontario, for a historic recording session:

Some cautious thoughts on enthusiasm

Source.  

We're in the USA! Specifically, at the moment we're enjoying the air-conditioned hospitality of the Raymond Village Library in Raymond, Maine, with its helpful staff, high-speed Internet, and, in four days, its annual book sale. Timing is everything.

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Last week I wrote about Friends and enthusiasm. My main concern was that our emphasis on hospitality for those wounded by bruising encounters with Christian legalism or authoritarianism might cause us to forget another equally important potential audience: those who are ready to make a wholehearted Christian commitment and are searching for a trustworthy spiritual home. By "trustworthy" I mean a congregation that will honor that commitment without exploiting it.

I identify with this second audience. Certainly I'd inherited a deep suspicion of the religion industry from my atheist parents, but I had no personal experience of oppression or thought control in the name of Christianity. The Bible was new and interesting unexplored territory, not something I'd ever been beaten over the head with. Most importantly, Jesus had told me that I could trust him, and I was eager to meet people who had experienced the same assurance. Quakers, with their lack of organizational overhead, seemed to be the most obvious place to look for that kind of simplicity and directness.

It wasn't long before I realized that not all the Friends in Ottawa Meeting--my first experience of Friends--had been drawn by the same need for New Testament simplicity and directness. Not all were as fascinated by the Bible as I was. Some were--for example, Anne Thomas, who brought a very high level of intelligence and scholarship to her fascination. However, other Ottawa Friends seemed far less fascinated, although they were certainly tolerant. And, not surprisingly, I got to know some Friends who were there precisely because fascination with the Bible didn't seem to be a requirement to be in that fellowship.

I now look back and feel very thankful that, given this variety in the meeting, I found enough mentors and attachment points there that my youthful search for a more "pure" and direct Christianity was met by a congregation that would probably not have agreed on this definition of itself!

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Last week, Bill Samuel commented, "If folks in a faith community aren't enthusiastic by what they're finding, why should anyone join them?" That set off a train of thought in me: What about people who are enthusiastic about finding a spiritual home that doesn't require enthusiasm? What if comfort or safety are higher priorities? Or shared skepticism, or congenial temperaments and personalities?

It's not as if Friends of the calm persuasion don't do outreach and don't want to grow, it's just that this outreach sometimes seems designed to attract people who are equally averse to enthusiasm. It's like mating calls to others with the same socio-economic and intellectual anxieties as those already there. BUT to be fair, a lot of evangelical Christian outreach also strikes me as having unacknowledged cultural and intellectual filters, rather than emphasizing an unconditional invitation to become learners in the school of Christ.

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Is enthusiasm dependent on certainty? A few years ago, I wrote a review of Chris Hedges' thoughtful book, I Don't Believe in Atheists. Hedges treats certainty with a great deal of caution, and by and large I agree with him. In my review, I argued that we can have relational certainty--the kind of certainty that supports joyful participation in a faith community as well as enthusiastic evangelism--without having operational certainty. Is this true in your experience?

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Is enthusiasm dependent on emotion? I'm pretty sure it's not. In fact, it's obligatory emotionalism, compulsory cheerfulness, that probably give enthusiasm a bad name. In his book How to Be Pentecostal Without Speaking in Tongues, Tony Campolo argues that we can have the spiritual freedom often attributed to charismatics and Pentecostals without being trapped by requirements of prescribed behaviors. This is really important to me, because I almost never clap, raise my hands, or repeat cliches on command of a worship leader unless I have inward permission to do so. I will happily attend worship gatherings where those things are practiced, and where 99% of the rest are doing them, if I sense authenticity and integrity in the fellowship, but rightly or wrongly I won't conform simply because it's expected. I will try to resist making a judgment on others' behalf about precisely where the line is between healthy obedience and unhealthy conformity, but I was brought up in a family that was immersed in a cult of obedience, and I'm simply allergic to anything that smells of compulsion. Sorry about that.

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"It takes more than a swank coffee shop to reach millennials." An interview with Naomi Schaefer Riley.

"Before we appeal to Hitler as the ultimate argument against Christian nonviolence, we first have to ask how Hitler was able to amass a following of Christians in the first place." Brian Zahnd, via Danny Coleman.

A delightful surprise: Chicago Reader links to Eduard Artemyev's score for Solyaris.

Primarily addressing liberals agonizing over the recent U.S. Supreme Court "Hobby Lobby" decision, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan expresses some of my own concerns in addressing "The impossibility of religious freedom." How can we expand the conversation beyond culture-war constraints to include, for example, Friends United Meeting's longstanding refusal to collect war taxes from conscientiously dissenting employees, or make them prove they are U.S. citizens in ways that contradict their conscience?

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Blues dessert, from the nostalgia menu: the Kinks cover Slim Harpo....

Digesting 2008

It's humbling to look back on earlier years of this blog. As time has gone by, links have expired, I can see my inadequate photo handling (I can no longer recommend Photobucket), formatting and style decisions have been inconsistent, videos constantly need to be replaced ... and that's not even counting my miscalibrated analyses and outright ignorance! I hope I've chosen my samples carefully to conceal the worst.

The New Times, 22 December 2008:
2009: In expectation of a thaw

Even so, today, as I compiled this post, I found it interesting to see what the world looked like to me back in 2008, a year dominated for me by my hopes and concerns around the Obama-McCain presidential contest in the USA, and by the practicalities of settling in our new home in Elektrostal, Russia. I hope at least a few of these sample articles from 2008 might have at least some antiquarian interest for you, too.

Just as background: Starting in 2010, I began marking the end of each year by selecting monthly samples for a year-end digest. Last year, I also added a page of monthly samples for 2009. Today I decided to tackle 2008, thereby allowing me to avoid saying anything about the impeachment trial taking place in the U.S. Senate for at least another week -- in other words, this housekeeping task seemed like a valid escape. The next times I'm trying to avoid a subject, I'll add 2007 ... 2006 ... then 2005 ....

Back to 2008: I've tried cleaning up most of the dead links and videos, but I apologize for the inevitable loose ends. Let me know whether anything stands out, either helpful or just plain dumb.

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January: Vanity of vanities (Quakers and class)

I do have a hypothesis: a group that has integrity and spiritual power can attract people from any race and social class. (Unfortunately, so can groups that fake it well: there's never a time when discernment isn't required.) I remember one very dear Friends fellowship that was pretty homogenous but yearned for diversity; half a block away was an Elim Fellowship pentecostal church where there was ACTUAL diversity--racial, social, class, temperament, language. Spiritual power does NOT necessarily mean emotional contortions, but it does mean crossing a threshold of conversion and self-abandonment not typically found among the self-satisfied or terminally autonomous.

(Full post)

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February: Remember what you know

These words came to me several times in the past few days: Remember what you know.

They came to me first as I was listening to a story about a church which was experiencing conflict between some church members and the pastor. Members were being drawn into pro-pastor and anti-pastor factions; I imagined some were feeling the temptation to resort to worldly tactics for the upcoming monthly meeting.

Although there were allegations about the pastor that needed to be taken seriously, I wasn't happy with the possibility of a struggle for or against an individual, a struggle that ignored the systemic "Lamb's war" dimension of the problem. I wanted to say to everyone, Don't get knocked off center; remember what you already know....

(Full post)

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March: Conversion is just the beginning

After years of our son's influence, and after considering the persuasive arguments of a certain Northwest Yearly Meeting pastor, I've converted. My new Sony laptop is using Linux as its operating system, specifically Ubuntu 7.10.

It was not an easy conversion. First of all, who wants to live a clean, calm, pious life after you've seen the glamour and glitter of Windows Vista (which came with the Vaio)? Not only is Windows Vista attractive, with its soft, translucent, animated windows, but it works so hard to lure you further into its world. Most of the buttons on its opening desktop lead you straight into offers for even more delicious e-treats. It even comes pre-loaded with TWO Spiderman films ready to enliven your workspace, just waiting for your input of a credit card number.

But it was all those encumbrances that really put me over the edge. 

(Full post)

(My first Ubuntu update made things better)

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April: Eisenhower blues

So that is what is missing from this enmeshment of wealth, influence and deadly force: an ethical and moral center, pointing out the pervasive influence of this enmeshment ("economic, political, even spiritual"); arguing persistently and persuasively for a true balance of power, backed by a vigilant and informed citizenry. As Why We Fight noted, the American empire has no guarantee of immortality; therefore, sounding an alarm about the untenable corners into which our military-industrial complex has backed us seems like a highly patriotic calling.

... Although Eisenhower's warning rings true to me, I'm not personally interested in defining how much military power and war industry are too much, or not too much. The armed nation-state is a relic of an unredeemed world. The patriot in me wants to know how we'll implement his call for an informed, vigilant citizenry. But the evangelist in me wants to go further.

(Full post)

(Honorable mention for April *blush*: Jeremiah Wright and cynics gone wild)

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May: Does God hate divorce?

One thing that we've found from listening to so many stories of heartbreak and hope: domestic abuse is not confined to any social class or status, nor excluded from any. Domestic abuse occurs in every class, every income group, every level of supposed "sophistication." Despite my special scrutiny of the situation among evangelical church families, abuse occurs just as often among liberal or secular people. Two decades ago, Judy Brutz's research revealed that violence happens in liberal Quaker households--certainly a culture that honors equality and nonviolence. I don't suppose that even readers and writers of Quaker blogs are immune!

(Full post) 

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June: Rolling and reading 

In Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction, [Rodney] Clapp is, in part, measuring Johnny Cash's stature by showing how the great country musician both embodied and deliberately defied the contradictions inherent in being a Christian performer, a Southerner and a patriot. But Clapp's primary purpose is not to cause us to admire Johnny Cash, although he succeeded in that (for me, anyway); it is to ask us as Christians to consider the hard intellectual and spiritual work inherent in advancing "democracy for grown-ups." If we can see "contradictions" as occasions for dialogue rather than for distress that we can't impose unity, then Clapp's book provides a whole series of interrelated dialogues, perhaps especially between the "democracy of the parade" that characterizes the U.S. North and the "democracy of the revival" in the South. An earthier formulation for dialogue is suggested by Rodney Clapp's first sentence of Chapter 3: "In country music, holiness is the pork to hedonism's beans."

(Full post)

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July: "Support our troops" and other incomplete sentiments

Two days ago I sat on a bench outside Aubuchon Hardware, Raymond, Maine, looking at the cars parked in front of me. A fair proportion of them had "Support our troops" stickers. I used to have a "Support our troops--bring them home" sticker on our car until someone pried it off.

In this USA election season, and in particular on this Independence Day weekend, it would be great to add more content to these laudable sentiments. Just as there is "cheap grace," there is "cheap support," and I suppose the "Support" sticker itself is the cheapest.

So here is the American Christian pacifist's manual on supporting our troops, version one:...

(Full post)

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August: To see light more clearly

As we shuffled forward, I lost track of distances altogether, but eventually we came to a widening of the path--the location of a cell where a monk once lived with his Bible and prayer book. We saw two or three such cells. We found a branch path where excavation was just starting, and returned to the main passageway. Just when were were becoming overwhelmed by the depth of the darkness, we saw the vertical shaft leading up to another exit, located inside the church on the hill above the entrance.

When we had retraced our steps back out to that first entrance, we blinked at each other and asked why monks had wanted to spend much of their lives in deep underground chambers. Nikolai, who had brought us, said that there was an ascetic belief that in total darkness you could see light more clearly.

(Full post)

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September: Baptism

...About seven years ago I sat in a Sunday school class studying Friends distinctives, and the subject of baptism came up. One participant, also from a Lutheran background, challenged us on the subject--specifically, what kind of threshold do Friends recognize between NOT being in the household of faith and BEING in the household of faith? What emotional cost is there in not recognizing or providing such a threshold?

One thing I love about Friends theology is its functional nature. We're not likely to agree on how baptism affects our eternal destiny, but may well be able to talk about whether and how we express repentance, convincement, and commitment to God, each other, and the world. I hope we do so, because for some Friends, our casual and tacit approach isn't adequate. (And it doesn't seem fair for those who are satisfied to impose a conversational embargo on those who aren't.)

(Full post)

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October: Faith and certainty

...[Chris] Hedges fears the sinful power of certainty in the social arena. And it's a legitimate fear. The inward certainty of a powerful intellectual or emotional conversion, presumably, is one thing. Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, among many others, both tell stories of having to come to grips with doubts before being able to move forward with courage; they reached a measure of certainty that empowered them for their public ministries. I had to make a decision to trust Jesus without reservation before I could overcome the principal block to faith, which was my deep and angry suspicion of all authority. However, that inward certainty may or may not lead to certainty of action--particularly of categorical and coercive action in the social arena.

Certainty is a slippery quality. In my experience, it comes and goes--and returns. More importantly, it is relational rather than operational: I can be certain that God wants the best for you and me, and that God will be with you and me as we work for that best, but I'm hardly ever certain about what concrete steps to take next. For that decision, I need a mix of intuition, prayer, plain secular fact-checking, the wisdom of others, and a willingness to risk being wrong.

(Full post)

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November: The Gift of the Stranger

[This turned out to be the most important book I read in my preparations for teaching in Russia.]

[The authors] root their vision in an interpretation of the Babel story in Genesis, the story of Pentecost in Acts, and other Biblical passages, that emphasizes God's delight in diversity and God's sovereign disapproval of imperial arrogance (as demonstrated, for example, by Babel's builders). With special attention to a 17th-century educational reformer I'd barely heard of, Comenius, Smith and Carvill show that a humane and God-centered understanding of foreign language instruction has deep roots in Christian intellectual tradition.

They go on to apply their three assumptions and three assumptions in a review of the various reasons currently used to sell foreign language learning--appealing to "The Entrepreneur," "The Persuader," "The Connoisseur," "The Tourist," "The Escapologist," "The Revolutionary." There are redemptive aspects to all of these motivations, but mostly they are oriented around "profit, pleasure, and power" for the learner, rather than developing the capacity to offer healthy hospitality and to be a sensitive stranger.

(Full post)

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December: Are you adequately ashamed?

Every country probably has its share of mindless pseudo-patriots, who display no capacity for reflection and regret. In the long run, no country is well served by ignorance, but politicians observably find it expedient to make appeals to this constituency--yes, even in the USA, where our recent political season featured flattering references to the "real America" where doubters are scorned and where people know better than to share the wealth. Those who do have a calling to be more reflective and prophetic about national traumas will probably always face an uphill battle. There's nothing wrong with Americans who love Russia to support transparency and healing, but only if it doesn't strengthen the impression that all we want to do is ignorantly pour salt into old Russian wounds for the sake of American political agendas or simply to reinforce our own prejudices.

[2021 PS: In the 12 years since I wrote this piece, I have the unscientific impression that younger people have become less aware of the full depth of Stalinist terror. On the one hand, this may be the costly loss of a history that touched practically every family; on the other hand, it may help to explain why some of them face a new season of repression with less fear than I might have expected.]

(Full post)

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I cannot entirely neglect what's going on in Washington, DC. Here's the Washington Post's inventory of evidence in the trial of Donald Trump. I cannot express my own distress at the prospect of an acquittal in this matter in calm and moderate tones. Too many Republicans have tacitly discounted Trump as a one-of-a-kind embarrassment whose legacy can somehow be managed without political risk to them or the country. However, the whole point is that the Trump personality cult made no such discount; they took him at his word. Meanwhile, the next demagogue is taking notes.

In the meantime, Heather Cox Richardson sums up the day.

Sydney Blumenthal on the martyrdom of Mike Pence.

QuakerSpring is holding an online gathering on March 6. 

In music news, Derek Lamson has revamped his Web site, including free tracks; Shemekia Copeland wants to fuse politics with the blues.

The feline-filtered jurist goes global.

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One of my favorite blues videos from 2008: Albert Collins, "If Money Was Trouble, I'd Be a Millionaire."

Faith and certainty, part three

Our whole day was taken up by a wonderful Institute excursion to the beautiful Volga River port city of Yaroslavl, which is celebrating its 1000th birthday this year. (Pictures coming.) My favorite stop was the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral and its surrounding monastery/museum, but I was glad we had time to stop in at one of the most interesting and idiosyncratic museums I've ever seen, the Museum of Music and Time, on the Volga Embankment.

We spent eight hours on the bus there and back. While on the bus, I thought about a story I read recently--covered in the Associated Baptist Press with the headline, "Albert Mohler says he's embarrassed by past support of women in ministry." (ABP archives are temporarily offline, but you can see the story here, with comments, and the sermon it comes from here.) The element that intrigued me was his encounter in 1984 with the venerable Carl F. H. Henry. Al Mohler was a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Henry was one of the great statesmen of American evangelicalism, a cofounder of Fuller Seminary, and the founding editor of Christianity Today.

(above) Carl F.H. Henry

(above) Ham Sok Hon. Source.

Henry was visiting the seminary, and Mohler was able to serve as a host to this great intellectual mentor. At the time, Al Mohler was strongly in favor of equal opportunity in pastoral leadership, and had participated in protests against the Southern Baptist's Convention's resolution against women pastors. Then came Henry's visit. As Mohler tells it,

At one point, it was my responsibility to get Dr. Henry from one end of this campus to the other. As I was walking him along, he brought up the issue of women in the pastorate. He asked me my position on the issue. With the insouciance of youth and the stupidity of speaking more quickly than one ought, I gave him my position. He looked at me with a look that surprised me and said to me, "One day, this will be a matter of great embarrassment to you." That’s actually all he said. When Carl Henry tells you that on the seminary lawn, the effect of that embarrassment was instantaneous.... The shock on his face was enough to arrest me. We talked more; we didn’t get close to that. We did talk about it many times thereafter.

Henry's remark led to feverish study and a complete turnaround by the next morning. One certainty was replaced by the exact opposite certainty. "I realized that indeed Carl Henry was right. One day I would be very embarrassed about this."

As you'll see if you go to the complete text, Mohler emphasizes that "...Carl Henry didn’t change my position, but he sure did arrest me. It was the Scripture that changed my position." I confess that I find it very hard to accept that as a flat statement, even though I certainly believe that Al Mohler searched the Scriptures very diligently that night. "Frankly, the urgency on me was such that I didn’t think I could eat or do anything until I found out why I was going to be so embarrassed."

I take at least two lessons from this story and others like it:

First, it's a moving demonstration of a mentor-student relationship and its power to affect belief. I'm sure Carl Henry had no intention of exerting an extra-biblical influence on Mohler; he simply wanted Mohler to take a deeper look at the biblical evidence, which the older man was (in all likelihood) sure would convince the student to change his viewpoint. But relationship has its own convincing power, equal to words and ideas, if not superior. I can't speak for either man, of course, but I can't help question Henry's assertion that Mohler's egalitarian beliefs, even if wrong, would eventually be "a matter of great embarrassment...." Why embarrassment? What social price, social punishment, was implied? Is such a cost consistent with Christian love in the academy and the church as a whole?

A second, related point: great minds are not always right. Mohler ascribed his earlier pro-equality views to the accepted orthodoxy of the seminary at the time. Henry's viewpoint, scripturally based as he believed it was, also was unquestioned orthodoxy for many. But not all those who believe passionately in equality are speaking "... [w]ith the insouciance of youth and the stupidity of speaking more quickly than one ought..." nor are they all simply parroting the local conventional wisdom. What social incentive did early Friends have to follow spiritual and scriptural guidance going 180 degrees against the monolithic beliefs of their day? In any case, "venerable" does not equal "infallible." I know this is logically obvious, but is it always emotionally obvious?

When I was a brand new convert and Friend, still a college-age student, I don't know whether a similar encounter would have had the paradigm-shattering impact that Henry had on Mohler. My conversion was itself a very fresh memory--Jesus had saved my life, and had completely upset the atheistic certainties of my family background. I wanted to know God more and more, but I still carried my parents' inoculation against the religion industry, including its apparent love of hierarchies, licenses, and showmanship. I needed to see raw spiritual authenticity, unprotected by privilege and mystique. The Lord who told me to love enemies and expect miracles was, to my mind, not going to bless the world's ways of power and rank. Can you see why Friends were so attractive to me? Robert Barclay, whose Apology I gobbled up over lunch hours along with greasy sub sandwiches in the back room of Canterbury House bookstore, kept cutting through establishment pretensions with both common-sense biblical interpretation and appeals to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whose confirmation I kept experiencing, to my daily joy.

And the mentors I found! First, my Quaker godmothers in Canadian Yearly Meeting--Deborah Haight, Anne Thomas, and Ruth Morris. Slightly later, I particularly remember Jim and Ann Lenhart asking for an "opportunity" with me during their visit to Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston, where I was on staff; I was all of 24 years old, and they said to me that they sensed that I had a public calling which I should not neglect. None of these Friends--nor Gordon Browne or my other later mentors--ever told me to worry about embarrassment. Instead, their function for me (as no doubt Henry's was for Mohler in the larger scale of things) could be summed up by the title of a pamphlet by Douglas Steere, which he handed me at a vulnerable point in my student years, "On Confirming the Deepest Thing in Another."

As for that indefinable quality of being "venerable," inhabiting the senior ranks of quakerly "weightiness," I'm sure Carl Henry had it in spades. He played a major role in breaking open the closed world of mid-century fundamentalism and aiding the birth of modern humane evangelicalism. He is rightly credited with helping the reunification of the social justice and doctrinal emphases in American evangelicalism. The fact that he did not break away from patriarchal captivity simply proves the incompleteness of the evangelical dialogue without the witness of Friends and others who have experienced breakthroughs that he did not. But thank God those breakthroughs did happen; otherwise I can't imagine where I would have found a spiritual home where I could cherish the Scriptures and breathe the clear air of Gospel freedom, peace, and equality.

One final note: Sometimes those we might rightly regard as venerable don't see themselves that way at all. I was at the Friends World Committee's Triennial sessions in Mexico in 1985. Among the impressive Friends in attendance there was Ham Sok Hon, the respected and beloved Korean Friend, who (aside from his thoughtful participation!) made quite an impression with his beard and flowing white robe. When a Western Friend complimented him on his attire, he replied, "Isn't polyester wonderful?"

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Faith and certainty, part one

Faith and certainty, part two

Another post mentioning Al Mohler and certainty.

Al Mohler, Andy Stanley, and the Bible.

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Phoebe walks around Yaroslavl.

Sarah Ruden's fresh examination of St. Paul, along with her account of joining Friends.

Save Blue Like Jazz (the film).

A teachable moment on Whidbey Island. "Yeah, that seems about right."

Micah Bales on Friends United Meeting's "emerging leaders" conference.

Bob Woodward and "the Washington gossip machine," by Andrew Bacevich. "The theme of that story is not whether Dick likes Jane, but whether the [U.S.] Constitution remains an operative document."

"That All-American urge to punish."

"FBI files on Iowa peace activists now public."

Two related open-source articles: "OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle," and "Welcome to The Document Foundation."

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A blues dessert by Bill Sims Jr. and Mark Lavoie.

The Quaker high-wire act (and the Atlantic Ocean again)

Wonder of the Seas: our position this morning.

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Still on the open ocean. What a difference a week makes, at average speed of about 20 knots. The zigzag in our course was the result of responding to a medical emergency yesteerday, during which a Portuguese helicopter airlifted a passenger to a hospital on land. We will be approaching Gibraltar in about 32 hours.

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Years ago, at the All-Kentucky Gathering of Friends, I remember being asked how I, an apparently intelligent person, could call myself a Christian. (I mentioned this incident in a post entitled Risk and resurrection.) I was a staff member of Friends World Committee for Consultation at the time, and my service included two contrasting expectations: courteous and empathetic outreach to the full spectrum of Quakers I met in the course of my travels, and honest expression of my own testimony. In those days, most corners of my Quaker world either strongly identified as Christian, or were places in which Christians were a (sometimes defensive) minority.

My current spiritual home is Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends, though I also continue to be a member of Moscow Meeting in Russia. SCYMF and my home meeting, Camas Friends Church, describe their values as Christ-centered, Quaker, and welcoming all sexual identities on an equal basis. There are probably many in the Christian world that would see tensions within that set of values, but many of us say that they are mutually reinforcing.

One of our challenges as a young yearly meeting is, as I see it (and I have no official voice!), to balance two qualities: solidity without false certainty.

By "solidity" I mean a continuity of vision and purpose, a trustworthy teaching voice, and the stability needed for a Christian community to go beyond existence today as congenial affinity group, but instead also to be a place where people are born and die, come to faith, become leaders by a transparent process according to their gifts (without irrelevant criteria getting in the way), and wish the best for each other even in conflict. "Solidity" as a Quaker group means to me to be grounded in the essential Quaker agenda: "What does God want to say and do through us?"

Here's the high-wire act: doing all this without resorting to false certainty. I have my own sense of security in my experience as a disciple of Jesus -- 48 years of counting on the trustworthiness of Jesus, and recognizing that the Quaker testimonies match my experience of the signs and wonders empowered by the Holy Spirit. However, my understanding is not, and cannot be, any organization's official template. My influence on others is completely dependent on my own trustworthiness and the integrity of my relationships with others, and even that does not guarantee any particular outcome of our conversations. Change is possible in either direction, but not because we are trying to fit into an external mold.

To tell the truth, there is no corner of Christianity where "certainty" truly guarantees anything other than a motivation to conform and be accepted. In more authoritarian circles, people who are feeling a need to "deconstruct" their faith either have to hide or leave. (Tell me if I'm wrong about any particular group; I'd be glad to hear their story.) I hope that Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting and Camas Friends Church are places where people who can no longer accept their earlier certainties know that they will be given just as much love and support during this process as they were and will be in seasons of greater confidence.

I find much value in doctrines as important attempts to express urgent spiritual insights and make them public and communicable. To the extent that we Quakers have doctrines, such as those expressed by Robert Barclay and other gifted Quaker theologians, I think that these expressions should be considered and meditated upon by anyone wanting to know about our community and its history. But let's be honest -- there is probably no Friends meeting or church that exactly conforms to those doctrines, and that is not surprising. Practically nobody comes to faith along the same paths as those early Friends. Their faithfulness -- evidenced in the staying power of the movement they began -- earns them the right to be taken seriously, but not to be followed uncritically.

Some Christians see the Bible as a guarantor of right doctrine. The Bible is a unique testimony to God's relationship to Creation and to all of God's creatures, but the Bible itself neither has nor claims to have any magical ability to provide its own interpretive keys. As soon as someone insists on providing and imposing such a key, we have another example of false certainty.

People of faith are always on a high wire. There's no aspect of faith that doesn't involve the risk that our prayerful discernment, necessary as it is, might be in error. What I love about Camas Friends, our yearly meeting, and similar trustworthy Christian communities is that, if I fall, my friends will catch me in our net. And at another time and place, I will return the favor.

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Somewhat to my surprise, I've not written anything about Ukraine today. The war is still what I'm thinking and praying about more than anything else. I was glad that the rather thin Internet service on this ship made it possible to join the Tuesday meetings for worship with a concern for Ukraine, under the care of Friends World Committee's European and Middle East Section.

Thinking about Jesus in the shadow of the Russian Easter offensive: Is death the point?

Russia's fascist "background noise" (a look back eight years ago).

David Hadley Fink: the Quaker peace testimony has never been rescinded....

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I need some blues dessert. Nothing less than high-voltage Albert Collins will do.

More heat than light

Yalagin Street 2008; photo by Judy Maurer. All these houses have been replaced by modern retail buildings.

In keeping with the temperature theme, I report some musings on salvation and hell.

(Just for the record, it's -2 degrees F. outside as I write.)

Last week I mentioned Charles Blow's New York Times article, "Heaven for the Godless?," reporting on a Pew Forum study revealing that many American evangelicals believe that Christianity is not the exclusive path to heaven.

Charles Blow permits himself a bit of sarcasm for evangelicals who are not sufficiently open-minded to please him: "After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians." But he is probably at least partly right in his suggestions for why rank and file evangelicals in the USA might want to subvert the certainties of their leaders. On some level, "...Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith." He also reports that the majority of Christians surveyed are not convinced that the Bible is the literal word of God.

Among those evangelical leaders in a "tizzy," as Charles Blow might put it, is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler. The biography on Mohler's Web site, presumably written or at least approved by him, makes it quite clear that he is a heavyweight in the American evangelical world.

His blog includes two responses to the Pew study: "Many Paths to Heaven?" and "For Goodness Sake?"

I have some problems with Mohler's argumentation, which I think is both illogical and evangelistically unhelpful. But before getting into that, we do share a crucial certainty: In one way or another, Jesus is central to salvation. The Bible is clear on that, and I don't think any credible theory of the authorship, inspiration, or authority of the Bible to Christians can fudge that central point. The issue is the way we use this certainty -- do we understand this truth descriptively, or do we use it as an argumentative trump card on behalf of an authoritarian understanding of Christianity -- one that claims the power to name whole categories of saved and condemned people? Secretly, surely we all know that no Christian authority has ever been able to convince a majority of all members of the Body of Christ exactly what constitutes sufficient literal belief to assure salvation.

So, yes, I believe that Jesus is involved with salvation 100% of the time. (The church, however, is involved at a lower percentage!*) I part ways with Mohler, and the many other leaders who argue along the same lines he does, on some lesser but still very important points:

Specifically, Mohler incorrectly analyzes Blow's approving summary of Christian flexibility, as documented by Pew.

Blow argues that many American Christians are rejecting the claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation for sake of "goodness." In other words, "good" people don't believe that other people are going to hell.

Here we see the ultimate confusion of theology and etiquette. The implication of Charles Blow's argument is clear. He believes that Americans are trimming theology to fit current expectations of social respectability. Socially respectable people -- people who are recognized for "goodness" -- consciously reject the clear biblical teaching that Jesus is the only Savior because it just isn't socially respectable to believe that your neighbors and fellow citizens who do not believe in Christ as Savior are going to miss heaven and go to hell.

I don't believe the implication is clear at all. Instead, people are being guided by an unconscious but powerful doctrine of the nature of God. It is the same doctrine advocated by Quaker theologian Robert Barclay, who cannot understand a God condemning to hell those who by historical accident never had an opportunity to receive the Gospel invitation. Or, more briefly, God decides who is saved, not Baptists or Eastern Orthodox, or anyone else. All we can do is try to describe what we have learned about God with some kind of reverent consistency.

That search for consistency is reasonable. If we cannot publish Truth coherently, with clear and public links to the evidence of divine Purpose that God has graciously granted us, we betray our prophetic responsibility. We imply that God's grace is either capricious or only knowable to the spiritually elite.

But, too often, consistency is confused with certainty by those who want to be in religious authority over us. Rather than saying, "God has made us ambassadors of reconciliation, to plead with you on behalf of the message of grace, which we've experienced in our own community in these ways ..."-- in other words, emphasizing what they've learned from God's dealings with them--they begin to presume to know what God will do with (to) you and me and those others. That is beyond what they literally do know, and any biblical argument to the contrary is based on selective proof-texting -- motivated in part, I suspect, by the emotional need to defend their kind of certainty. God is not trapped by human chains of logic, whether it be the logic of liberalism or conservatism.

The tizzied response might be, "But we must warn people of the danger of damnation; if they go to hell after we neglected a chance to dissuade them, it's on our heads!" True, not providing an invitation to the joy and truth of God's promises in Christ, and the incarnation of those promises in Christian community, is a dangerous sin, assuming we ourselves even have a clue about what that means, but I disagree that such fire-insurance methods constitute either an accurate or an effective Gospel invitation. In any case, arguing from effect is not logical. We must argue from what we truly know, and God's own sovereignty should make us humble about what we do and don't know.

The idea that God may save whomever God wants to save does not let us off the evangelistic hook. The "Great Commission" still stands. We just don't get to use smug certainty or false reasoning to lure/scare people into our camp, or, more likely in these postmodern times, repel them away. Those Pew respondents who have a wider than authorized understanding of salvation may need to be challenged on exactly what constitutes "right sharing of spiritual resources"--it may be a more demanding aspect of discipleship than they realize -- but, in their implicit rejection of a category-based understanding of salvation, they're also posing a very important challenge to their doctrinal guardians.

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* "The church is involved at a lower percentage!" I don't mean to pass by this huge aspect of the topic with a glib throw-away line. Maybe later!

Back at this post, I defined "evangelism" this way: Evangelism is the persuasive, experience-driven communication of spiritual truth, combined with an invitation to experience a community formed by that truth. Without the invitation, evangelism is never complete.... However, I also cannot believe that, in the ministry of reconciliation, God is completely trapped by our limitations, either now or for eternity.

---

It's ironic that sometimes those who are proudest of being Quaker are the most reluctant to embrace evangelism. How would they even be here if the invitation had not somehow been kept open all these generations? For those who judge evangelism harshly by its imperialist distortions, saying "by what right do we impose our beliefs on others?" (yes, "imposing" is wrong), I like the way Vincent Donovan puts it in his important book Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai: He asks, what right do we have to withhold this treasure from anyone?

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Righteous links: Want a reality check for our parochial squabbles? Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2008. (Thanks to Mary Kay Rehard.) ~~ Jim Fine argues for a strong USA role in Middle East peace. And Gene Stoltzfus writes about Gaza. ~~ An atheist assesses the evangelical role in Africa. (Be sure to see the diverse comments.) ~~ "Stimulus package"--a view from Kenya. ~~ The social construction of good and evil, and the rejection of God: Dostoevsky still has something to say!--See the December links here.

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"Up Above My Head": More from Ruthie Foster.

"They stand condemned" ...

Ottawa, Canada: The Heyerdahl/Maurer corner of Chapters bookstore.

The second edition of the Atlantic Monthly podcast Radio Atlantic, discussing the theme "One Nation Under God?", refers to an exchange between U.S senator Bernie Sanders and Russell Vought, nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Sanders quoted these words from an article that Vought had written to defend Wheaton College in the controversy over professor Larycia Hawkins:

Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.

The senator went on to ask, more than once, "Do you believe that statement is Islamophobic?" Vought responds that, no, he's simply stating the Christian convictions that he holds in common with Wheaton College.

The Radio Atlantic panelists discuss this exchange and the clash of worldviews that it seems to reveal. (For example: Did Sanders really not know that Christians believe in the exclusive role of Christ in salvation? Was he imposing a religious test on the nominee, in violation of the U.S. Constitution?) Panelist Emma Green distinguished between "intolerant pluralism" and "tough pluralism," both of which defend a religion's self-conceptions but differ in their ability to engage with people outside their communities.

What grabbed my attention was the word "condemned" in Vought's article. There is so much wrong with using this word! There is no technical use of the word "condemned" that outweighs its ugliness outside a very specific context. From any small-o orthodox Christian viewpoint, people who are not Christians are to be cherished and highly valued, not regarded with condemnation.

The argumentative tone in that excerpt indicated by Sanders is actually understandable in the context of Vought's original article and its use of John 8:19 and 3:18, and Luke 10:16. But the use of the word "condemned" for whole groups of people, most of whose individual members may never have received a respectful Christian invitation (never mind having "rejected" it in any meaningful sense), is repulsive. And Sanders was entitled to wonder whether a nominee using such language about whole categories of people is capable of treating those "condemned" people with enthusiasm and dedication.

Am I simply being a "good American" for whom etiquette outweighs truth, who doesn't have the theological backbone to say "condemned" when necessary? Here I'm going to repost some related thoughts from back in 2009....

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Last week [January 1, 2009] I mentioned Charles Blow's New York Times article, "Heaven for the Godless?," reporting on a Pew Forum study revealing that many American evangelicals believe that Christianity is not the exclusive path to heaven.

Charles Blow permits himself a bit of sarcasm for evangelicals who are not sufficiently open-minded to please him: "After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians." But he is probably at least partly right in his suggestions for why rank and file evangelicals in the USA might want to subvert the certainties of their leaders. On some level, "...Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith." He also reports that the majority of Christians surveyed are not convinced that the Bible is the literal word of God.

Among those evangelical leaders in a "tizzy," as Charles Blow might put it, is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler. The biography on Mohler's Web site, presumably written or at least approved by him, makes it quite clear that he is a heavyweight in the American evangelical world.

His blog includes two responses to the Pew study: "Many Paths to Heaven?" and "For Goodness Sake?"

I have some problems with Mohler's argumentation, which I think is both illogical and evangelistically unhelpful. But before getting into that, we do share a crucial certainty: Jesus is central to salvation. The Bible is clear on that, and I don't think any credible theory of the authorship, inspiration, or authority of the Bible to Christians can fudge that central point. The issue is the way we use this certainty -- do we understand this truth descriptively, or do we use it as an argumentative trump card on behalf of an authoritarian understanding of Christianity, one that claims the power to name whole categories of saved and condemned people? Secretly, surely we all know that no Christian authority has ever been able to convince a majority of all members of the Body of Christ exactly what constitutes sufficient literal belief to assure salvation.

So, yes, I believe that Jesus is involved with salvation 100% of the time. (The church, however, is involved at a lower percentage!*) I part ways with Mohler, and the many other leaders who argue along the same lines he does, on some lesser but still very important points:

Specifically, Mohler incorrectly analyzes Blow's approving summary of Christian flexibility, as documented by Pew.

Blow argues that many American Christians are rejecting the claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation for sake of "goodness." In other words, "good" people don't believe that other people are going to hell.

Here we see the ultimate confusion of theology and etiquette. The implication of Charles Blow's argument is clear. He believes that Americans are trimming theology to fit current expectations of social respectability. Socially respectable people -- people who are recognized for "goodness" -- consciously reject the clear biblical teaching that Jesus is the only Savior because it just isn't socially respectable to believe that your neighbors and fellow citizens who do not believe in Christ as Savior are going to miss heaven and go to hell.

I don't believe the implication is clear at all. Instead, people are being guided by an unconscious but powerful doctrine of the nature of God. It is the same doctrine advocated by Quaker theologian Robert Barclay, who cannot understand a God condemning to hell those who by historical accident never had an opportunity to receive the Gospel invitation. Or, more briefly, God decides who is saved, not Baptists or Eastern Orthodox, or anyone else. All we can do is try to describe what we have learned about God with some kind of reverent consistency.

That search for consistency is reasonable. If we cannot publish Truth coherently, with clear and public links to the evidence of divine Purpose that God has graciously granted us, we betray our prophetic responsibility. We imply that God's grace is either capricious or only knowable to the spiritually elite.

But, too often, consistency is confused with certainty by those who want to be in religious authority over us. Rather than saying, "God has made us ambassadors of reconciliation, to plead with you on behalf of the message of grace, which we've experienced in our own community in these ways ..."--in other words, emphasizing what they've learned from God's dealings with them -- they begin to presume to know what God will do with (to) you and me and those others. That is beyond what they literally do know, and any biblical argument to the contrary is based on selective proof-texting -- motivated in part, I suspect, by the emotional need to defend their kind of certainty. God is not trapped by human chains of logic, whether it be the logic of liberalism or conservatism.

The tizzied response might be, "But we must warn people of the danger of damnation; if they go to hell after we neglected a chance to dissuade them, it's on our heads!" True, not providing an invitation to the joy and truth of God's promises in Christ, and the incarnation of those promises in Christian community, is a dangerous sin, assuming we ourselves even have a clue about what that means, but I disagree that such fire-insurance methods constitute either an accurate or an effective Gospel invitation. In any case, arguing from effect is not logical. We must argue from what we truly know, and God's own sovereignty should make us humble about what we do and don't know.

The idea that God may save whomever God wants to save does not let us off the evangelistic hook. The "Great Commission" still stands. We just don't get to use smug certainty or false reasoning to lure/scare people into our camp, or, more likely in these postmodern times, repel them away. Those Pew respondents who have a wider than authorized understanding of salvation may need to be challenged on exactly what constitutes "right sharing of spiritual resources" -- it may be a more demanding aspect of discipleship than they realize--but, in their implicit rejection of a category-based understanding of salvation, they're also posing a very important challenge to their doctrinal guardians.

---

* "The church is involved at a lower percentage!" I don't mean to pass by this huge aspect of the topic with a glib throw-away line. Maybe later!

Back at this post, I defined "evangelism" this way: Evangelism is the persuasive, experience-driven communication of spiritual truth, combined with an invitation to experience a community formed by that truth. Without the invitation, evangelism is never complete.... However, I also cannot believe that, in the ministry of reconciliation, God is completely trapped by our limitations, either now or for eternity.

---

It's ironic that sometimes those who are proudest of being Quaker are the most reluctant to embrace evangelism. How would they even be here if the invitation had not somehow been kept open all these generations? For those who judge evangelism harshly by its imperialist distortions, saying "by what right do we impose our beliefs on others?" (yes, "imposing" is wrong), I like the way Vincent Donovan puts it in his important book Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai: He asks, what right do we have to withhold this treasure from anyone?

[End of archival stuff.]

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Related: Six heretics who should be be banned from evangelicalism.

"I think the academic posturing of 'taking x seriously' delineates who can (and who cannot) participate in conversations."

A heartbreaking story that makes me realize what a sheltered life I lived, even in Russia: Why adolescents are selling self-created porn.

This week's challenges for Russian civil society.

Noam Chomsky on finding common ground with (among others) evangelical Christians.

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Blues dessert today: from Denmark, another version of the song I may have used more than any other over these years. "It Hurts Me Too."