Against the Stream

Who Does Not Work Shall Not Eat

Frequently in arguments over social policy, conservatives will haul out Paul's admonition in 2 Thessalonians "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" in order to justify cutting or eliminating welfare programs, on the ground that such programs promote "idleness" among the poor.

In Religion Dispatches, Dan Schultz critiques those arguments, first by noting some of the inherent problems that both those on the right and the left face in translating scripture into social policy, but then by noting how misapplied the this particular passage is:

Paul wasn’t writing to a “sect.” It was a particular church at Thessalonica, and he was writing to correct a mistake of his own creation. In 1 Thessalonians, he tells the church that Jesus will be coming soon. That encourages some of the members to give up their jobs in preparation for the parousia, living off the community while they wait. Those are the people Paul says should get back to work: Jesus may be coming, but not so quickly that you don’t have to contribute to society.

Perhaps Rep. Arrington knows of a widespread problem with people receiving SNAP benefits who refuse to work because they think the second coming is just around the corner, but I sort of doubt it.

I’m going to give the edge to Protas here. Generalizing away from specific passages, the unmistakable pattern in scripture is meaningful social care for the poor. That doesn’t command government intervention, of course, but neither does it rule it out.

Schultz rightly notes that plucking this passage out of its context in order to justify refusing support for the poor does violence to both the situation in which Paul was writing, and to the overall tenor of both Judaism and Christianity with respect to care for the poor. It is also worth noting, in passing the context of both Greek and Roman society at large, which were based on the widespread use of slave labor. For most of the privileged classes, "idleness" was not a problem for the poor, but a problem for the wealthy. The poor had no choice but to work if they wanted to eat, and in the case of slaves had no real choice at all. But in the case of the rich, the landed, the elite, who were often also the ruling classes, the legislators, the statesmen and the philosophers, idleness was a fact of life. They relied on the labor of the poor and of slaves in order to support their idleness.

However, the larger point remains vital and relevant: How should we use scripture in the formulation of public policy. On the one hand, in a pluralistic democratic society, the answer is "we shouldn't" at least in the sense that, just because we believe the Bible says something is not, in itself, a reason we should enact that thing as law. On the other hand, however, as Schultz notes, for people of faith, the traditions to which they belong, including scripture, form their moral predispositions and attitudes in inescapable ways. We learn who we are as moral beings through our engagement with those texts and traditions, so they inevitably shape our attitude toward social policy.

But in that case, it's vitally important that we understand and interpret those texts properly, in their own contexts and with respect to their relevance to our time and place. Without a robust hermeneutic that can allows us to move from the time and place of those texts to our own, at best we will misinterpret the social implications of the Bible, and at worst, we will use those misinterpretations in ways that harm the poorest and the most vulnerable among us.

The Elusive James Comey/Reinhold Niebuhr/Twitter Connection

As long as I'm posting about things Niebuhr-related this week, I might as well draw your attention to this weird little story, via Gizmodo. Apparently FBI Director James Comey has Twitter and Instagram accounts, and they are named after Reinhold Niebuhr:

Among the various Comeys, only two of the suggested accounts lacked both real names and profile photos. And only one of these had anywhere near the “nine followers” that James Comey claimed to have. That account was reinholdniebuhr.

Can we be sure? Well the circumstantial evidence in the article is pretty compelling, particularly this:

By senior year, Comey was a double major in religion and chemistry, writing a senior thesis on theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and televangelist Jerry Falwell and on his way to the University of Chicago Law School

Hm. Fascinating. Of course, the account is private, so good luck using this information to learn anything about what the FBI knows about Trump and China, or Reinhold Niebuhr for that matter.

Was Reinhold Niebuhr a "Real Theologian"?

As I mentioned the other day, there is a new movie being released on the life and work of Reinhold Niebuhr. As a result, we are seeing the reemergence of the perennial question of whether or not Reinhold was a "real theologian." Most recently, this question was raised again  on the blog Die Evangelischen Theologan by J. Scott Jackson, who writes:

Just how theological was Niebuhr's work -- at least the main body of it? To what extent did specifically Christian theological and moral commitments shape his vocation as public intellectual? From what I've read, I'm inclined to answer the later question: "a very great deal." But the earlier question seems a little more ambiguous. To be sure, Niebuhr, who never earned a doctorate, did not write extensively, say, about the intricacies of trinitarian dogma; nor did he offer in-depth analyses of atonement theories; nor did he offer a thorough critique or defense of two-natures Christology. That said, I do have to point out that Niebuhr was a prolific and world-class preacher, who could engage biblical texts with extraordinary sensitivity and insight.

As Jackson's comment indicates, he is well aware that Niebuhr was a very biblically literate preacher, and was able to work with a biblical text in order to produce some genuinely stirring sermons (and for those who are interested in doing so, I highly recommend Niebuhr's book Discerning the Signs of the Times, which contains several examples of his sermons). So an important preliminary question to answer is "what do we mean by theologian?" And it turns out, that depends on who you ask.

Most of those in the "Niebuhr was not a theologian" camp are barthian -- followers of, or strongly influenced by, the work of Karl Barth. Barth's theology, of course, is vast and encompassing. His magnum opus, The Church Dogmatics, which was unfinished at the time of Barth's death at fourteen densely packed volumes. Barth is generally understood to be a "dogmatic theologian" or as we Americans might say, a "systematic theologian," and thus approaches theology with the goal of examining the theological enterprise as a comprehensive whole. Paul Tillich, while very different from Barth, is a theologian in the same sense: Interested in the doctrinal dimensions of Christian thought and their implications. Additionally, both Barth and Tillich saw theology as the work of the Christian community as manifested in the Church.

Probably the most trenchant critique of Niebuhr on this point, at least in the last few years, has been Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas, while clearly having carved his own theological identity, is among those for whom Barth's theology was a major influence, and this shows particularly in his treatment of Niebuhr. In his Gifford Lectures, With the Grain of the Universe, Hauerwas writes the following:

For Niebuhr, theology was tested -- or to use his language, validated -- by its ability to provide provocative accounts of the human condition. Accordingly, Niebuhr's theology seems to be a perfect exemplification of Ludwig Feuerbach's argument that theology, in spite of its pretentious presumption that its subject matter is God, is in fact but a disguised way to talk about humanity. (115).

In a similar vein, Shirley Guthrie, a student of Karl Barth's wrote his dissertation on Niebuhr's theology and ethics, and concluded as follows:

Nevertheless, we have seen that both on the basis of what Niebuhr has said and on the basis of what he significantly has not said, the questions we have raised about the "independent" character of his theology and ethic can and must be asked. Moreover, we have seen that they may all be summarized in one single question. It is the question, based on the New Testament faith itself, of the place of the person and work of Jesus Christ in Niebuhr's thought. An answer to the questions we have raised must begin above all with the question of his person and work as the risen Lord, and with the Church as the particular place in which he reveals himself and through which he works. For the problem of the Christian ethic, like that of any other ethic, is "what shall we do and say now?" and the Christian answer depends directly on what christ is today. We have seen again and again that this is the crucial point for evaluating Niebuhr's ethic and theology, the crucial point for judging the validity or inadequacy of his "mythical" or "symbolic" interpretation of the Christian faith, and for measuring his success or failure in fulfilling his own criteria. ... Is it not so that Niebuhr does not, and on the basis of his presuppositions neither need nor can, recognize the reality of the living, self-revealing, working Lord, Jesus Christ; and is it not so that just for this reason one must say that his presuppositions themselves as well as the theology and the ethic which follow from them cannot be independently Christian?

Guthrie packs a great deal into a short passage, but the implied answer to his question is that Niebuhr's thought cannot be understood to be "independently Christian," which is to say for Guthrie, as for barthians generally, it is rooted in some source outside of the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and thus not authentically Christian or in a real way genuinely theological.

In the Facebook conversation on Jackson's article, George Hunsinger recommended Guthrie's take on Niebuhr, asserting that it demonstrated that "all of Hauerwas's worst fears were realized." All of which is to say, all the barthians agree that Niebuhr was not a theologian. Though what they are really saying is that Niebuhr was not a barthian, which is self-evidently true, and a point that Niebuhr would not only have acknowledged, but celebrated.

But the accusation runs deeper than the idea that Niebuhr was not a theologian, even in the broad sense that he was not a dogmatic or systematic theologian. What is really being asserted by both Guthrie and Hauerwas (and, though I suspect he'd deny it, tacitly affirmed by Hunsinger) is that Niebuhr's work was not even genuinely Christian. Rather, there are three specific ways in which, for the barthians, Niebuhr fails the Christianity test.

First, they argue that he did not really believe in God, but was a form of religious naturalist, of the Feuerbachian sort. Hauerwas makes this accusation explicitly above. However, this is a drastic misreading of Niebuhr. As Gary Dorrian has noted, Niebuhr had a very strongly transcendent view of divinity:

Epistemologically, Niebuhr posited a divine ground of meaning and coherence beyond all finite notions of meaning and coherence; ontologically, he asserted the transcendence of God’s being over all contingent and temporal being while affirming that God is continually present to God’s creation in the workings of providence, the history of judgment, the grace of renewal, and the stirrings of individual moral conscience (The Making of American Liberal Theology, vol. 2, 468).

I've written on this topic myself in other places. In an article published in Political Theology, I wrote the following:

It is simply not credible for Hauerwas to attempt to paint Niebuhr as a “naturalist” for whom God was simply a projection of human desires and virtues and Christ was simply a good man. When Hauerwas makes such statements as “Niebuhr’s god is not a god capable of offering salvation in any material sense,” one wonders how Hauerwas can interpret such Niebuhrian statements as “the significance of a Christ is that he is a disclosure of the divine purpose, governing history within history,” or “the self-disclosure of God in Christ is significantly regarded by Christian faith as the final ‘word’ which God has spoken to man. The revelation of the Atonement is precisely a ‘final’ word because it discloses a transcendent divine mercy which represents the ‘freedom’ of God in quintessential terms.” ("Being Wrong and Being Right," 480-1)

Furthermore:

Given Niebuhr’s own emphasis on the human need for and longing for God as emerging from a realization that we are incapable of attaining our highest possibilities, it is difficult to understand how he could possibly see any version of “naturalism” as providing a solution to the problems endemic to the human condition. One might understand if Niebuhr were to reply in the spirit of exis- tential resignation, that the human condition is insoluble, but to posit God as the solution to the particular problems that Niebuhr identifies necessitates a rejection of religious natural- ism, not an embrace of it. (481)

Indeed, Niebuhr explicitly and emphatically rejects religious naturalism directly:

The trouble with religious naturalism is not only that it obscures the whole mystery of the divine, the mystery of creativity and grace, but that it also falsifies the whole drama of human history with its increasing heights of good and evil and in the paradoxical relation of persons to this drama. For persons are both the creatures and the creators of the process. Professor Wieman is under the impression that a classical Christian faith is merely a crude, pre-scientific way of looking at the world, God, and the self. He, with the help of modern science and the ontology of Dewey and Whitehead (more Dewy than Whitehead, for Whitehead did not understand the mystery of creation beyond the temporal process and consequently agonized about the relation of the "primordial" to the "consequent" God) will construct a more adequate view of God and the world. H will define either the temporal process itself as God, or that part of it which is value-creating. Since Hitler's day his is not so certain that the process of "integration" is of itself "value-creating."

This suggests that Hauerwas was far too eager to read Niebuhr through the Feuerbachian lens, and left on the cutting room floor any ideas or passages of Niebuhr's that didn't support his preconceived notion of what Niebuhr's theology, not being barthian, must necessarily be.

Second, they argue that Niebuhr did not have an adequate Christology. Though here again, the passages quoted above give a very clear indication of the way in which an incarnation Christology was central to Niebuhr's soteriology. And the entire second volume of The Nature and Destiny of Man is given over precisely to the question of the significance and character of Jesus Christ. As Langdon Gilkey notes:

This intimate relation in Niebuhr between social theory, political ethics, and "high theology" (Atonement and Christology) is nowhere more event than in Niebuhr's discussion of "powerlessness," the powerlessness and so the ultimate vulnerability of Jesus as the Christ. Here the agape of God, which represented the pinnacle of the divine transcendence and mystery, becomes in historical enactment the apparent opposite of transcendence, its paradoxical partner, powerlessness and vulnerability. In the divine love the ultimately unconditioned becomes the absolutely conditioned. And this paradox of unconditioned majesty and radical conditioned vulnerability, of ultimate power and absolute powerlessness, is for Niebuhr the center of the Christian gospel and of the Biblical message. (On Niebuhr, 186).

Paul Lehman as well, saw Christology as central to Niebuhr's thought, stating: "Christology has been and is the principal passion and purpose of his theological work ... Christology is pivotal, not peripheral ... a remarkably evangelical view of the person and work of Jesus Christ" (in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, quoted in Fackre, The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr, 104).

Third, it is often argued that Niebuhr did not have an adequate vision of the role of the Church in Christian ethics. Now here, his critics do have a point. Niebuhr did not write extensively of the role of the church or its place in Christian ethics. Both Hauerwas (for whom the Church often seems to be about the only thing that does matter) and Guthrie hammer Niebuhr on this point. Yet, two things need to be said about this. First, Niebuhr himself was a lifelong church-goer and was a pastor for many years. He regularly preached in churches around the country. Clearly Niebuhr was, in his life, very closely affiliated with the church. Secondly, Niebuhr's innate suspicion of the way in which group egoism and self-deception functioned in institutional settings was no doubt a factor in his lack of attention to the church as any kind of exceptional institution. Indeed, the sad fact is that the Church as quite often remarkable precisely to the extent that it is not an exception on these fronts.

However, Niebuhr did recognize this as a deficit in his own thought, writing:

I think that I have increasingly recognized the value of the Church as a community of grace which, despite historic corruptions, has the 'oracles of God,' as St. Paul said about Israel. The church is the one place in history where life is kept open for the final word of God's judgment to break the pride of men and for the word of God's mercy to lift up the brokenhearted. Inasmuch as this has been only a growing recognition, Professor Wolf's criticism is justified. But when I see how much new evil comes into life through the pretention of the religious community, through is conventional and graceless legalism and through religious fanaticism, I am concerned that my growing appreciation of the church should not betray me into this complacency. (Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, 437)

While it was never the subject of sustained attention in his thought, it was always in the background of his reflections, even if not viewed that way by Hauerwas and Guthrie, for whom the only validly Christian ethic is precisely one that takes place in and through the church. Of course, Niebuhr's ethic was in and through the church. As Gabe Fackre notes:

Critics often accuse Niebuhr of lacking an ecclesiology. As a pastor and teacher in the church he helped to found-the Evangelical and Reformed Church-I saw for myself his deep immersion in and love for the Church. This ecclesial context is basic to who he was and how he thought, especially so his shaping by both the Reformed and Lutheran traditions of his church. While Niebuhr never attempted to construct a systematic ecclesiology, his life and faith cannot be understood without a grasp of the functional ecclesiology in which they are grounded. (The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr).

What it was not was by and exclusively for the church, which seems to be the bone of contention for Hauerwas.

To return to the question of what makes a "real" theologian: If the only definition of "theologian" that is acceptable is "dogmatic" or "systematic" theologian, then I suppose Niebuhr wasn't a theologian, but then I'm not sure that Augustine was either. Both wrote occasional theology, writing in context and seeking to illuminate the particular pressing theological themes with which they were confronted in their own time and place. While Augustine's range may have been greater than Niebuhr's, that hardly detracts from the idea that Niebuhr was a theologian in the same vein as Augustine, any more than one can say that, because Tom Brady has won more Super Bowls than Payton Manning, that somehow means Manning isn't a quarterback.

Sometimes, the "Niebuhr is not a theologian" argument is grounded in an assertion that Niebuhr himself denied that he was one. This of course, requires taking his words out of context. In the volume of critical essays about his theology, to which he responded, he took specific note of Paul Lehman's critique of him:

Thus the Christological center of my thought has become more explicit and more important. But, as Professor Lehmann declares, I have never pretended to be a theologian, and so I have elaborated the Christological theme only in the context of inquiries about human nature and human history.

This would seem perhaps to settle the case, until one turns to Lehman's article, because Lehman was specifically noting that Niebuhr was not a systematic theologian. His statement? "Reinhold Niebuhr is not a systematic theologian (Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought).

Honestly, the whole argument is intensely annoying to me precisely because it is typically used as a way of delegitimizing Niebuhr as a Christian thinker -- undermining his status not only within the field of Christian theology generally, but even as a Christian. At the end of the day though, I think, for all I've written here, I probably can't answer the question better than Langdon Gilkey:

To my knowledge, no one has tried to present Niebuhr's political and ethical views in the light of his entire theological viewpoint -- which was, I believe, the way that he always saw those views. that is to say, he understood politics and ethics theologically, in relation to what he regarded as the Christian understanding of human being, of the creativity and the ambiguity of freedom, and of the course of history under God. As he argued repeatedly, this theological framework is essential for any valid comprehension of the puzzles and paradoxes of our ordinary experience.

That sure sounds like a theologian to me.

 

What Is a "Nuanced" Stance on Abortion Anyway?

Yesterday I posted about Tom Groome's New York Times article arguing that the Democrats need to stop being the "abortion party," and noted the two Religion Dispatches articles criticizing Groome. After the article posted, Charlie Camosy chimed in on Twitter to argue:

 

It is pro-lifers (of mutiple parties) who have nuanced policy positions. Democratic party has utter lack of nuance. https://t.co/1CvFcQz78N https://t.co/Sl6SRGLDFa

— Charlie Camosy (@CCamosy) March 30, 2017

This led me to respond that I'd never found the pro-life position particularly nuanced, and that Groome's article reinforced that opinion. To which Camosy responded:

 

@ScottPaeth 20 week ban with exceptions vs #shoutyourabortion as a social good paid for by pro-lifers. which is more nuanced?

— Charlie Camosy (@CCamosy) March 30, 2017

And then it was on. You can go read the whole exchange on Twitter, but since it's very difficult to carry on a ... well nuanced conversation 140 characters at a time, I thought it would be worth thinking at a bit more length about the subject here.

As I read Camosy's defense of the "nuance" of a 20-week ban on abortion, I kept thinking I needed Inigo Montoya to show up and chime in "You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means." And this, it seems to me, was indeed part of the problem. We both understood by the word "nuance" something very different than the other did, though I have to say that, re-reading the thread this morning, I still don't think the word means what Camosy thinks it means, and it's certainly not very nuanced to portray "Shout Your Abortion" as representative of the default position of most pro-choice folks.

First of all, it seems to me that Camosy was repeatedly misrepresenting the current Democratic party platform on the issue, and Hillary Clinton's own words on the matter. To be clear, I was defending what for me has always been the best liberal approach to the question of abortion, as encapsulated by Bill Clinton back in the 1990s, that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." Camosy, citing himself, kept referring to an LA Times article in which he asserted that the Democratic Party platform "betrayed millions of party faithful." But that article is hardly an example of nuance. It criticizes the platform for insisting on the removal of state restrictions on abortion, and insisting on it as a core element of reproductive health, while eliding all of the ... well nuance of the reason why those provisions were included in the first place: Repeated conservative attempts to throw up insurmountable roadblocks to abortion under any circumstances.

Even a passing familiarity with the ways in which Republican state legislatures have sought to do end runs around the Supreme Court rulings on abortion by, for example, requiring doctors working in abortion clinics to have residency at a local hospital, and then refusing them that residency, or creating expensive and unnecessary zoning and construction requirements for abortion clinics. These tactics have sought to create circumstances in which abortion, even if technically legal, became impossible to actually procure in some states. Ignoring those particular circumstances is not very nuanced.

But more generally, it's worth noting that the Democratic platform actually did a pretty good job of accomplishing the goal of ensuring that abortion was both safe and legal on the one hand, and rare on the other. The planks insisting on the right to access to abortion, and its importance for a general policy of reproductive health serve to ensure the first two criteria. The third is accomplished through platform language that ties the right to abortion to the right to health care generally and, most particularly to the right to have a child. Here is the particular language:

We will address the discrimination and barriers that inhibit meaningful access to reproductive health care services, including those based on gender, sexuality, race, income, disability, and other factors. We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care, evidence-based sex education and a full range of family planning services help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

And we strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child, including by ensuring a safe and healthy pregnancy and childbirth, and by providing services during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including adoption and social support services, as well as protections for women against pregnancy discrimination. We are committed to creating a society where children are safe and can thrive physically, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually. We recognize and support the importance of civil structures that are essential to creating this for every child.

And indeed there is ample evidence to demonstrate that, if your goal is to reduce abortions, these are the policies that you should be advocating. So when Camosy complains that the platform kept the "safe and legal" while abandoning the "rare," it seems to me at least that he didn't read the platform with sufficient ... nuance.

There is also evidence that, in terms of implementation of these policies, abortion rates decline under Democratic administrations. When I made that case to him, Camosy responded by linking to a Snopes article that he claimed labeled the assertion "False." However, a more ... nuanced ... reading of the Snopes article shows that what was false was something that I wasn't arguing, and what wasn't false was what I was claiming. The Snopes article addresses the question of whether abortions both go up during Republican administrations and decline during Democratic administrations. And, since Roe v. Wade, it is apparent that abortion rates do not in fact increase under Republican administrations, but they do decline (and decline more) under Democratic ones. This chart illustrates the point:

Charlie contended that a "Stats 101" analysis of the data would show something else, though he didn't elaborate. But while the trend line seems to either hold stead or decline only slightly during the Reagan and Bush years, it drops precipitously under both Clinton and Obama. So perhaps Charlie will get around to elaborating on his point in some other venue, but it still seems to me that the evidence does demonstrate that if your goal is to make abortion rarer, Democratic policies do the job better than Republican ones, though of course it's always worth remembering that correlation does not equal causation.

OK, so then, is a 20-week ban, as Camosy advocates, "nuanced"? Well it's certainly far more nuanced than the position taken by the Republican party, but a getting hit in the face by a brick in a gym sock would be more nuanced than anything in the Republican party these days. However, what the 20-week ban fails to account for is the situation of woman who, late in pregnancy, discovers a fatal defect in the gestating fetus, and the emotional and moral turmoil that women in that situation face. I suppose the response is that such instances are fairly rare, but then, late pregnancy abortions are rare to begin with. Camosy does of course note that the ban would come "with exceptions," but there the devil is in the details, and if the exceptions were sufficiently broad, it would basically make the ban worthless as policy anyway. A 20 week ban would almost certainly not make most abortions more rare in any respect, while increasing the suffering of families in genuinely tragic circumstances. Whether or not you think that abortion should be available in those cases, it remains the case that at the ban Camosy proposes once again fails the nuance test.

In the end, both Groome's and Camosy's complaints seem to amount to the same thing: They want the Democratic party to move closer to their position on abortion. That is of course a totally fair position for them to take. But to argue that the current Democratic Party policy isn't precisely what I said above -- to make abortion safe, legal, and rare -- suggests at a minimum a lack of charity in how the democratic position is understood and interpreted. And it certainly represents a failure of nuance.

Complexity and Nuance in Arguments About Abortion

Two articles in today's Religion Dispatches address Tom Groome's New York Times editorial urging Democrats to back away from their strong official support for abortion rights. Groom argues, as the title of his post asserts: "To Win Again, Democrats Need to Stop Being the Abortion Party." In the editorial he writes :

If Democrats want to regain the Catholic vote, they must treat abortion as a moral issue, work for its continued reduction and articulate a more nuanced message than, “We support Roe v. Wade.”

Both Patricia Miller and Myiram Renaud take issue with Groome's (or as Miller repeatedly, and I assume unintentionally refers to him, "Broome's") argument. Both note that Democratic politicians have repeatedly over the years sought to nuance their support for abortion rights with various qualifications, perhaps the most of famous of which was Bill Clinton's affirmation that abortion should be "Safe, Legal, and Rare." As Renaud states:

But for those with ears to listen, prominent Democrats like Obama and Clinton do articulate a more nuanced message than “We support Roe v. Wade.” They treat abortion as a moral issue because, for them, it is one.

The truth of the matter is that, no matter how much nuance any pro-choice candidate puts into their position, it will be unsatisfactory to those who are inveterately anti-abortion. If the only answer to the question of what to do about abortion is "prevent it entirely" then there is no pro-choice position that has a chance of succeeding in that argument. At the same time, as Miller notes, there is no evidence that a more "nuanced" position would have won Clinton the votes of that many Catholics, and that in fact the loss she suffered among white Catholics in the Rust Belt states had little to do with her stance on abortion to begin with. What's more, if the goal is to create a winning strategy, it's virtually guaranteed that Clinton would have lost more support among pro-choice voters than she would have gained among Catholics if she had altered her fundamental support for Roe v. Wade.

That said, the Democratic position on abortion is already plenty nuanced. As Miller notes:

The Democratic Party signed on wholeheartedly to so-called common ground efforts to find ways to decrease the need for abortion and promote adoption in the mid-2000s. The “Reducing the Need for Abortions and Supporting Parents Act” was introduced in 2006 and included increased funding for family planning programs, improved insurance coverage for pregnant women, and tax incentives for adoption. It was supported by NARAL, Catholics for Choice and the Christian Coalition. It was Republicans who walked away from these efforts when they realized they could make political hay by opposing Planned Parenthood and insurance coverage for contraception.

At the same time, the allegedly "pro-life" position is belied by the utter lack of genuine support for the care of infants once they are born on behalf of conservatives, which was revealed nowhere more clearly than in the debacle of the Trump/Ryan American Health Care Act. Again, Miller notes:

Political restrictions on women’s access to abortion aren’t about protecting life or realizing the “moral complexity” of abortion. Nowhere was this more obvious than the fight over the ill-fated AHCA, which would have banned coverage for abortion, and if the “Freedom Caucus” had their way or Republicans had a shot at a clean bill, also would have stripped maternity coverage and newborn care as essential health benefits. That’s right. The “pro-life” party would have made it impossible to terminate your pregnancy and impossible to get medical coverage for that pregnancy or your newborn. That sure is some moral complexity.

There are lot of reasons Clinton lost in November. And Trump's support among evangelicals is one of them, and certainly tied to his support for abortion restrictions. But Groome's analysis, as Miller and Renaud each show, radically misplaces the role abortion politics played in the outcome, at at least as it relates to Catholics.

Why Go Niebuhr?

Last January I did a live streamed "webinar" with Tripp Fuller at Home-brewed Christianity. As always with Tripp, I had a blast, and if you missed it, you can now check it out at the link below!

Why Go Niebuhr?

Meanwhile, in other Niebuhr news, last night DePaul University hosted a showing of the new documentary about Reinhold Niebuhr, An American Conscience. The director, Martin Dobelmeier was on hand to speak about the movie, and I was on a panel with Reggie Williams from McCormick Theological Seminary. The movie great and I highly recommend you check it out. Here is the trailer.

Trailer: An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story from Jen Quintana on Vimeo.

Tying these two events together, last night after the panel discussion, Jeremy Sabella, who wrote the excellent companion book for An American Conscience, reminded me of something I said in the January podcast that I had completely forgotten about, but which clearly remains relevant as we reckon with the continuing disaster of the Trump presidency: We don't need a new Niebuhr, we need a thousand Niebuhrs!

Eric Metaxas, Your Bonhoeffer Privileges Are Revoked!

 

Bonhoeffer can't even with Eric Metaxas

 

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about Eric Metaxas's egregious misuse of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology in order to condemn liberal, pro-gay and lesbian Christians, arguing that these Christians, rather than the anti-gay conservative evangelicals that are Metaxas's gravy train, were akin to Nazis. At the time, I ended my post with these words: "So now, let us finally be done with Eric Metaxas. May I never have to hear his name or discuss his "work" ever again."

Alas, this was not to be. As Metaxas has spent the last few years capitalizing on his absolutely abysmal, morally bankrupt, and historically inaccurate biography of Bonhoeffer in order to cement his place as a conservative Christian public intellectual. It would be bad enough if he had simply written a poor biography and then moved on. But having positioned himself now as a go-to "Bonhoeffer scholar," he sees fit to invoke Bonhoeffer's legacy in the name of whatever ax he happens to be grinding at the particular moment (as in the above case of Christianity and homosexuality).

And now, it's come to this: Metaxas has now decided to thoroughly sully both his own, barely salvageable to begin with, reputation, and the legacy of a genuinely great Christian theologian and moral exemplar by arguing that Bonhoeffer's theology should lead Christians to support Donald Trump. No really. This was his argument.

In The Wall Street Journal he recently wrote the following:

The anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer also did things most Christians of his day were disgusted by. He most infamously joined a plot to kill the head of his government. He was horrified by it, but he did it nonetheless because he knew that to stay "morally pure" would allow the murder of millions to continue. Doing nothing or merely "praying" was not an option. He understood that God was merciful, and that even if his actions were wrong, God saw his heart and could forgive him. But he knew he must act. 

Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer knew it was an audience of One to whom they would ultimately answer. And He asks, "What did you do to the least of these?" 

It's a fact that if Hillary Clinton is elected, the country's chance to have a Supreme Court that values the Constitution -- and the genuine liberty and self-government for which millions have died -- is gone. Not for four years, or eight, but forever. Many say Mr. Trump can't be trusted to deliver on this score, but Mrs. Clinton certainly can be trusted in the opposite direction. For our kids and grandkids, are we not obliged to take our best shot at this? Shall we sit on our hands and refuse to choose? 

If imperiously flouting the rules by having a private server endangered American lives and secrets and may lead to more deaths, if she cynically deleted thousands of emails, and if her foreign-policy judgment led to the rise of Islamic State, won't refusing to vote make me responsible for those suffering as a result of these things? How do I squirm out of this horrific conundrum? It's unavoidable: We who can vote must answer to God for these people, whom He loves. We are indeed our brothers' and sisters' keepers. 

We would be responsible for passively electing someone who champions the abomination of partial-birth abortion, someone who is celebrated by an organization that sells baby parts. We already live in a country where judges force bakers, florists and photographers to violate their consciences and faith -- and Mrs. Clinton has zealously ratified this. If we believe this ends with bakers and photographers, we are horribly mistaken. No matter your faith or lack of faith, this statist view of America will dramatically affect you and your children. 

For many of us, this is very painful, pulling the lever for someone many think odious. But please consider this: A vote for Donald Trump is not necessarily a vote for Donald Trump himself. It is a vote for those who will be affected by the results of this election. Not to vote is to vote. God will not hold us guiltless.

It is hard to underestimate how genuinely horrific this argument is. Leaving aside the rehashing of numerous distortions of Hillary's record, the argument boils down to: Hillary is wrong on abortion and gays, so Bonhoeffer would have us vote for a crypto-fascist, racist, misogynist, islamophobic buffoon with no impulse control, no knowledge of anything regarding public policy, ominous ties to Russia, and a demonstrated penchant to lie constantly without any provocation whatsoever.

It's worth nothing that Metaxas mentions abortion only in passing (and, in the process, bears false witness against Planned Parenthood by accusing them of "selling baby parts" -- a widely debunked lie), and then proceeds to his real agenda: Fear of TEH GAY.  This is all couched in the language of "genuine liberty and self-government" which he claims will be "gone forever" if Hillary Clinton has a chance to ... what? Appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court? Really? Or more judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Really? The Notorious RBG is the greatest threat to our democracy? Somehow Metaxas has convinced himself that if Hillary Clinton gets to appoint one or more Supreme Court justices this will be, despite every rational indication otherwise, the complete and utter end of the American experiment. Having to give equal treatment in public accommodation to gay couples will lead to the gas chambers, apparently.

And, lest you think that Metaxas doesn't really make that kind of equivalency. Here is what he tweeted* mere hours ago:

The fascistic globalism of HRC/Obama is similar to the threat that German fascist nationalism was in Bonhoeffer's day. Both are anti-God.

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) October 19, 2016

As an alternative, he not only proposes Trump, but indeed argues that Bonhoeffer would support Trump. And Bonhoeffer, he argues, would support Trump because Bonhoeffer knew that we all ultimately are answerable to God. Never mind that Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Nazis early precisely because of the kind of racist rhetoric that Trump uses toward Mexicans and Muslims. Never mind that Trump's authoritarianism and disdain for democratic processes, even to the point of threatening to jail his political opponents, would have reminded Bonhoeffer chillingly of Germany in the 1930s. Never mind that Trump's desire to control and punish the press would look a lot, if he got away with it, like similar events with which Bonhoeffer was directly familiar. Never mind Trump's connections to the alt-right movement which explicitly connects itself to Nazism. Never mind that Donald Trump embodies quite literally the opposite of everything Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood for. Leave all of that aside. Metaxas is appropriating Bonhoeffer in order to further argue that God wants us to vote for Donald Trump!

Bad enough as it is to see Metaxas continue to stain the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it's even worse to see him do so in order to argue for a privileged Metaxas-only pipeline into the mind of God. Bonhoeffer was never, never so arrogant as to claim he knew what God demanded of him. On the contrary, much of his personal struggle was precisely about the moral ambiguity of determining what he should do as an individual of conscience in the absence of such knowledge. He participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler not because he thought that God was demanding it of him, but in spite of the fact that everything he knew about the Christian tradition impelled him in the opposite direction. He did so because he felt the burden of responsibility in the face of God's silence and his own knowledge of just how bad the Nazis were. He was determined to stand before God, not with clean hands, but with the knowledge that he could face God's judgement knowing he had acted responsibly on behalf of those who could not act for themselves, unwilling to hide his dirty hands.

Clearly Metaxas has elevated the perceived threat of a Hillary Clinton presidency to such a level in his own mind that he believes the struggle to elect Donald Trump is equivalent to the struggle of the Confessing Church against the Nazis. But that's a transparently ridiculous claim. And making it requires a complete distortion of Bonhoeffer's legacy. On the other hand, if Hillary isn't Hitler, neither really is Trump -- Despite his authoritarianism, despite his racism, despite his xenophobia, despite the violence of his followers. He is, at worst, a down market Silvio Berlusconi, more of a fool and a travesty than an actual threat. Nevertheless, to attempt to deploy Bonhoeffer in order to argue that God is commanding us to support such a clod, despite the fact that he stands in opposition to everything we know Bonhoeffer stood for, it's more than simply a shame. It's an insult, and it demands action.

Therefore, Eric Metaxas, in the name of all who value the theology and the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I hereby revoke your Bonhoeffer privileges! And may God have mercy on your soul.

*Interestingly, it turns out that Eric Metaxas has blocked me on Twitter, which I find terribly amusing, since I don't think I ever tagged him in anything, and didn't even follow him on Twitter. I guess it was a preemptive blocking, just in case I ever decided to call him again on his total nonsense and horrible misuse of Bonhoeffer.

Fear of the Stranger

This is quite relevant to recent events. My DePaul Religious Studies colleague Laith Saud's recent TED talk.

 

Can We Infer the Intent to Offend?

Building on my piece from yesterday, a great deal of my objection to the idea of having certain speakers on university campuses was rooted in the idea that, given the university's mission as a place where ideas can be debated and discussed, and where those ideas can advance intellectual inquiry, a speaker whose sole motivation was to offend others was not appropriate for a university setting. The response I got, initially on Twitter, but also in other contexts as well, was "well, who are you to judge whether it was intended to offend?" Or "Isn't offense in the eye of the beholder?" To which I have typically responded: "I believe it is possible to infer the intent to offend based on the record of the speaker." In other words, from what was known about Milo, and what was known about his rhetoric, and the substance-free nature of the writing in which that rhetoric was typically contained, it was possible to infer that his sole motivation was to offend a substantial portion of the student population. I would extend that argument to the group that invited him: I think we can infer from their invitation to Milo that their entire motivation was to offend the progressive student groups that they knew would show up to protest the event.

Certainly the fact that Milo's events had been protested in a similar way at other venues suggests that everyone involved knew what the likely outcome was going to be. I'd suggest it was exactly what they were hoping for. But I want to expand the conversation beyond this particular speaker on this particular occasion and ask whether or not we can be permitted to infer the intent to offend, generally speaking.

My point here is not whether we can know that people are, as a matter of fact, likely to be offended by a particular speaker. I'm not suggesting that the mere fact that people could be offended is a reason to bar a particular speaker. On the contrary, as I noted before, I think that speakers of all positions on the left-right spectrum, whose views may happen to offend some portion of the student population, certainly have a place as speakers in a university setting. For example, I believe that a pro-choice speaker should be permitted to speak at a Catholic university, even though many Catholic would be offended by them, because the argument about abortion itself has merit, and having that argument in the midst of university life is part of the mission of the university. Similarly, I believe that a speaker advocating building a Trump-style border wall on the American-Mexican border should be permitted to speak, as that argument is part of the larger debate about immigration reform in the United States. I think in either case, it should be unsurprising if protestors showed up, and as in the case of Milo's event, I think it would be ill-advised if those protestors disrupted the event, but protest is certainly an appropriate response.

My question runs to a more difficult issue: To what degree are we permitted to infer that, when someone says something offensive, they are saying solely to offend, versus saying something for the purpose of advancing an important conversation which just happens to offend? The person advocating for abortion rights may indeed offend pro-life Catholics, but that would be in the context of advocating a point of view about the rights of women over their own bodies. Compare that to a speaker who was invited to a Catholic university for the purpose of trampling on a consecrated communion wafer. The later speaker would clearly have no goal except to offend Catholics, and I think it would be well within the purview of the university to exclude them.

Similarly, in the case of the advocate of the border wall, while their viewpoint would be offensive to many, and certainly to me, as long as it was not couched in an argument that Mexicans are in some way innately inferior human beings, but in say economic terms, then offensive as it would be, it wouldn't be solely offensive. On the other hand, inviting a member of the Aryan Nations to campus would clearly have no other purpose but to inflame anger and cause offense to people of color around campus.

Again, if you know what someone's record of speech and action is, I believe it is entirely possible to infer intent from action, and to infer future intent from past action. We do it all the time. A substantial part of human interaction in every context involves the inference of internal states from external actions. Much of human language is about negotiating the differences between what people say and what they intend. And of course, as imperfect creatures, we often get that wrong. But I would suggest that we get these things wrong most in ambiguous, marginal cases where what is being communicated is unclear, or the connection between external act and internal state appears to conflict. But again, to use the communion wafer example: Someone who came to campus for the express purpose of doing that would leave no ambiguity with regard to their goal of offending.

But then the rejoinder would no doubt be: Well shouldn't people have the right to act in an explicitly offensive manner? On the one hand, in your own home, I suppose you can act as offensively as you want. If you can find people who are willing to pay for you to be offensive, you can take the show on the road. If you set up your soap box in a public park, you can be as offensive as you please as long as you obey park rules. But that's not what a university exists to promote. If you are offensive because you are presenting controversial ideas that are otherwise of worth in advancing the intellectual mission of the school, then a university can and should permit that to take place. But no one has a right to be offensive in the context of a university setting, even when presenting controversial ideas. To put it another way: If someone is presenting an idea I disagree with, then it is not a refutation of their idea for me simply to say that I find it offensive. However, if a person is acting in such a way that they are advancing no real idea, but simply trying to get a rise out of me, then to respond by saying "You are simply being offensive" is indeed a refutation. It's saying, effectively, "You are not advocating an idea that is capable of response or rejoinder, but simply trying to be offensive for offensiveness's sake."

Take the communion wafer example again. Let's give the example some detail. Suppose I were to invite a member of the Church of Satan to campus to advocate for the idea that religion was false, that would be an acceptable speaker for a university setting, even a Catholic university setting. But if, as an illustration of his contempt for religion, he pulled out a communion wafer and trampled on it, that would cross the line to pure offense. It is entirely possible to make the anti-religion argument without the offensive act. And making that argument may indeed offend some people. The simple fact that the speaker is from the Church of Satan may offend some people. But those things are offensive in the context of advancing a conversation that is part of the university's mission. The trampling of the communion wafer, on the other hand, is not.

To push it a step further. If we knew that the particular speaker was in the habit of coming to campuses in order to trample communion wafers, then I would argue that it would be perfectly acceptable to say that the speaker was not welcome, because we, once more, can infer his intent to offend based upon what we know he had done in the past.

Next question: suppose our communion-trampler somehow bypassed the university administration and got invited anyway. When word got out, a group of Catholic students decided to protest the speaker, and what's more, some of them decided that they were going to interfere with the speakers act of wafer-trampling. What would we say about their actions? I honestly am not 100% sure. Would the university president have apologized to the member of the Church of Satan if those students succeeded in shutting down the event? I don't know. What I do know is that the problem started when the decision was made to invite the speaker who was known for committing such an act.

As I've argued elsewhere, given the substance-free nature of Milo's offensive rhetoric, and given the demonstrated tendency of his followers to respond to his opponents via intimidation, I believe that the original sin in this entire drama was the decision to allow him to speak at DePaul in the first place. I think it was entirely possible to infer his intent to offend based upon his past actions, and that those actions gave a good indication of what was likely to happen.

What university policies should exist to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future? I admit I am not sure. Where should the precise boundary be between acceptable and unacceptable speakers? I'm not sure about that either. I'm not even 100% sure that Milo fell on the wrong side of that line, though as I've argued, I have a strong suspicion that he does. But I do think that ultimately we should recognize that not every speaker is acceptable in the context of a university, and determining which are, and which aren't, is part of the university's mission.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Not a Religion

Earlier this week, a Federal District Court ruled that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CFSM) should not be considered a religion under U.S. law. According to an article on the ruling by the Religion News Service, this was based upon the fact that the Church was clearly intended to be satire, and not anything that could be considered a "genuine" religion.

In a 16-page decision, the U.S. District Court of Nebraska ruled that Pastafarianism is satire, not sacred, and that anyone who thinks it is a religion has made an error “of basic reading comprehension.”

“This is not a question of theology,” the ruling reads in part. “The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a ‘religious exercise’ on any other work of fiction.”

What I find interesting in the ruling is the fact that it makes a clear demarcation between something that is transparently satirical, and what would commonly be considered "genuine" faith. It raises a number of sticky issues, not least of which is "how can one go about distinguishing "genuine" from "inauthentic" religion. However, I don't think that the problem is nearly as difficult as the ruling's detractors are seeking to make it.

In the view of the CFSM's supporters, it is impossible to distinguish between a "real" religion and the CFSM, since everything that appears absurd about that faith is, in their estimation, no less absurd than the doctrines of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology. By ruling against Pastafarianism (as the church is sometimes referred to), they argue that the court is  making declarations about what constitutes "true" versus "false" religion.

However, that's not how I read the situation. The question is not whether the object of the religion is true or false, but whether the belief in the object of religious faith is sincerely held by adherents. The problem isn't that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's that absolutely no one really believes that there is one. As an act of satire, the CFSM has done its job too well. It has set itself up as such a transparent attempt to troll genuine religious belief, that no one can possibly take it seriously as a religious faith, to the extent that, even if someone were to claim to believe it sincerely, it would be quite clear that this is simply part of the act. (And if you don't believe me, try listening to or reading someone affirm the doctrines of Pastafarianism without conveying an obvious smirk).

This is in distinction from, say Scientology, which I have in the past defended as an "authentic" religion. By this I do not mean that I believe its doctrines to be true, or even remotely plausible. Rather, in thinking of Scientology as a religion, I recognize that there are many people who, for better or for worse, hold it as a sincere matter of faith. Now, I have heard from former Scientologists that much of the leadership of the Church is corrupt and abusive. This is probably completely true. I've heard enough similar reports to grant that a high degree of probability. But it's irrelevant to the question of whether it constitutes an authentic religion, because again, it's not about the truth or falsity of the doctrines, it's about the sincerity with which they are held. It's not about the virtuousness of the church's leadership, it's about the degree to which they are genuinely held in esteem by their followers, or can at least make a credible case that they are.

And this is the problem with the CFSM. One respondent in a conversation about this asked "why must it be the case that a belief is held sincerely in order for a religion to be authentic," to which I responded, "because the very nature of the word "belief" implied the idea that the thing believed is sincerely held to be true. There is simply no such thing as a genuine "belief" which is not sincerely held. Since nobody claiming to hold to the beliefs of the CFSM has been able to make even the most basic case that they hold those beliefs sincerely, it cannot be considered to a genuine religion. It's too successful as an act of satire. If the CFSM had wanted to be held as an actual religion, it would have had to do a better job cultivating a base of followers that could credibly claim that they sincerely believe it.

This, to be clear, has nothing to do with the question of whether one can "prove" the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster any more than one can "prove" the existence of God. The response that the FSM is just as credible as the Christian or Muslim God is, from a legal perspective, beside the point. This is not a matter of philosophical proof or comparative theology. It's a matter of what the courts often call the "reasonable person test." Would a reasonable person, looking at the CFSM conclude that its adherents held its beliefs sincerely, or merely for the purposes of satire. On that basis, I think a court could validly conclude that the CFSM is not a religion because it's precepts are not sincerely held.

Now, there may be other grounds on which one could make a case for the validity of the CFSM as a religion, but I'm of the opinion that, as New Religious Movements go, it's really not very interesting precisely because it's so obviously satirical. What I'd be interested in seeing would be a case where, for example, someone who followed the Jedi religion wanted that to be officially recognized. There are, after all, those who hold that Jedi-ism is a genuine religious belief, and they hold it sincerely. I think one could make a very compelling case, in a way that one can't for the CFSM in favor of adherents of Jedi religion, on much the same grounds as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Scientology.