Defenseless Enemies

In a - not terribly well verified - news story running the circuit of mostly conservative blogs, it is claimed that Israel easily breached the radar defenses of Syria and bombed a certain site well inland in that country. The upshot of all of this is that, the story alleges, Syria and Iran are now shaking in their boots as they realise that any sites within their borders can now be attacked at will by Israel and/or the US.

I'm not going to link to the story, but if you want to see it, google 'defenseless enemies are fun'. That's the rather striking line that the story/ essay ends with.

Of course, that is just the sort of rationale that terrorists use, whether in open air markets in Baghdad, buses in Tel Aviv, or airliners over New York. But never mind the likelihood that we are becoming the very thing we allegedly are fighting against.

And never mind that, in the usual process of global escalation, as we constantly militarily up the ante, it will soon be our enemies saying the very things about us: 'defenseless enemies are fun'.

I say never mind that not because those aren't massive problems that even a bit of reflection and prayer might bring to mind, but because they are simply more of the same that we have had through time to this point, only magnified by technology and anxiety. It's just sin, which is banal and unsurprising, if also unacceptable.

But I do wonder what Jesus would make of it.

I seem to recall that he told us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us and do good to those who persecute us. And when he was arrested, subjected to a mock trial, and executed on a cross by his enemies, the enemies of God - that is, by us - he asked his Father to forgive them. And then after he was raised again he didn't return to kick some butt, but instead went to those who abandoned him and sent them to those (others) who killed him, with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Or maybe he would agree that 'defenseless enemies are fun', not because that means you now have untrammelled, irresistable power (unchecked by love or goodness), but rather because it might deliver us from our own obsessive need for defense at any cost, giving us the basis for peaceable Christian witness, and the possibility for forgiveness and reconciliation. After all, the first apostles were sent without weapons, or security of any sort. Even granted the changed cultural situation we live in - heck, maybe because of the changed cultural situation - why should we expect to be any different?

I do wonder, however, to the extent that the attitude in this essay captures the present American spirit, on just what grounds we can maintain the pretense that America is a Christian nation.

My Neighbour, My Self (part II)

Maggi linked to my sermon from last Sunday (Thanks, Maggi!) and reminded me of an idea I had hit upon that I wanted to expand a bit.

I said, in reflecting on the part of the 'great commandment' which says 'love your neighbour as yourself':

Who is our neighbour? Suddenly, in the logic of the parable, we’re not calling the shots; we are not so sure just who our neighbour is. Suddenly we’re not so sure just who our self is. If I’m to love another as my ‘self’ then the upshot is that I’m not even totally familiar with who I am, as I seem constantly to find that self facing me in others. And here we find the most radical challenge, for in this we see that no boundary will finally stand in the way of us and our neighbour, if we are to love them as our self. There are certainly distinctions: yes; love doesn’t seek to make everything else the same. But boundaries? No. There are no boundaries to our neighbours, no limits to whom we are to find our very selves in, no restrictions to whom we are to love unstintingly in God.

What I was trying to get at, although I probably did not develop it as well as I should have was the ambiguity of 'as'. Usually we simply think that we love our neighbour 'as' ourselves, in the sense that we love them 'in the same way' we love ourselves. Then the debate becomes - what if we don't love ourselves? or do we always love ourselves regardless? And other generally unhelpful things to dwell on.

How to get around this to something else?

I noticed that 'as' is ambiguous - it doesn't just need to mean (in English, at any rate) 'in the same fashion as'. And the way we usually parse it out with this verse, it simply assumes - reifies, really - our sense of self as something independent, interior, not essentially relational. Thus, there are two 'selves', which are basically complete and independent: neighbour and oneself.
But what if our 'self' is not something (completely) independent and self-subsistent? What if it is in process and something which is not possessed but given - by God, and by others? In that way, we discover who we are gradually through others (and eschatologically in God), and our failure to love another as our self is indeed as failure to love oneself, because it is in the other - in all of their individuality and otherness, to be sure - that our 'self' is found.

This sounds REALLY abstruse, when I put it this way! I arrived at it more intuitively than anything, in reflecting on the relationships in my life: spouse, child, parents, friends, mentors, strangers, etc. I wouldn't be - couldn't be - who I am without those people, most (or all) of whom I couldn't have anticipated. In that sense, my self is a gift (i.e. given to me rather than created by me) in the way that these others are gifts.*

Again, I want to emphasise that in saying that I find my 'self' in others, I am not colonizing others and co-opting them into my 'self'; just the opposite, in fact. The upshot of this all is not that the other is my 'self', but rather that my 'self' is not something I control and construct, but is itself - to a degree - 'other'.

And so, it is in loving others that we properly love ourselves, for it is only there that we truly discover, in God, our self; and we also then have the delightful opportunity - and the dreadful responsibility - to help the other, to some small degree, discover in us, and in God, their own 'self'.

Maggi helpfully clothed this all with a more concrete example: "Love your neighbour as if he was you" means I look at the homeless guy and realise that at the deepest level I too am vulnerable, lost, fragile, and so to offer him love and respect is to see myself mirrored in him. I love him, because I realise that I must also love myself as I really am, not just the exterior impressions that everyone else sees."

The only thing I could add to this is the sense that we don't just see ourselves mirrored in him, but who we are is extended through him, in a way it wouldn't be if we hadn't met him, or hadn't loved him.

A final thought is this: I don't think that Jesus had in mind all of the technical - and perhaps tortured - explanation I have just provided when he said 'love your neighbour as yourself.'** But I am also convinced that he didn't have in mind our usual sense of 'self' as something self-identical, self-created, and independent. I suspect that the sense of 'self' present in his culture would have been far different than our modern sense. But I offered this take on the passage not to 'read Jesus' mind' as if this is what he truly meant, but rather to attempt to faithfully expand on several implications of the gospel for our day, particularly having to do with our day-to-day lives and encounters with others. In this way, I think it is faithful to Jesus' teaching to 'love your neighbour as yourself.'


*I am aware of the fact that some of how people are given their selves - being defined by others through racism or sexism for example - is not at all a gift in a good sense. But I am not sure that the dynamic of one self only coming through others would be any different in an utterly virtuous and Godly community. The response, I think, is not utterly independent self-creation, but rather a restored communal creation.

** In fact, in Luke, it is the lawyer who says this, anyway.

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Conflict

'We need, as I have said, to take on the reality and inevitability of conflict; our error is often to see this as a kind of metaphysical statement about the inevitability of mutual exclusion and strife, rather than about the ways in which we are formed in the hard tasks of responding to the resistance, the otherness of the world (people and things), and in the accepting of our inability to guarantee ourselves or anyone an untroubled passage through it. The assumption that strife is an absolute 'given' in the world grows from the convistion that we possess a territory to be safeguarded, whether of law-based achievement or naturally given essential selfhood. The gospel of the resurrection proposes that 'possession' is precisely the wrong, the corrupt and corrupting, metaphor for our finding place in the world. What we 'possess' must go; we must learn to be what we receive from God in the vulnerability of living in (not above) the world of chance and change.'

- R. Williams, from 'Resurrection and Peace', p 273, 274 in On Christian Theology

My Neighbour, My Self (Sermon for Proper 10c)

Text of a sermon preached at St. Mark's Church, Newnham, Cambridge

by the Rev. Jason A. Fout

on 15 July 2007

It’s always a sign of mixed success when a proper name becomes a common noun. In America, for example, we make photocopies on a Xerox machine; if we need a facial tissue, we will ask for a Kleenex. Here in the UK, I’ve noticed that when we tidy up, we’ll get out the Hoover. There are many other examples I imagine we could cite. I am led to believe that executives are wary of this tendency though, because as these proper names come to apply to all sorts of things then they end up not meaning very much and the specific benefits of, say, a Hoover vacuum, are lost in the shuffle.

It seems to me that the term ‘Samaritan’ is quite similar to this, and that the story that Jesus told in our gospel reading for this morning has become so popular and well-known that the very pressure of the story on the meaning of the word ‘Samaritan’ has caused it to mean something else. For example, do a web search for ‘Samaritan’ today and you will be linked with Samaritan’s Purse, Samaritan Ministries, Samaritan Hospital, and a confidential counselling service by the name of the Samaritans. This certainly speaks of a great success for this story. These are good organisations doing valuable work, and they have taken their name from the one who showed mercy in this morning’s reading.

But friends the risk is that if we just allow ‘Samaritan’ to mean ‘someone prone to helping another’ then we might miss hearing some of the surprise in this story. The story of the Good Samaritan has, for good reason, been so well loved over the last two millennia that our familiarity with it might stop us from also noticing its strangeness, and we might miss some of the depth and the challenge present here. So I propose this morning that we linger over a few of the details from this reading, to better grasp it, to better love it, and most of all, to be better grasped by the love we find in it.
Continue reading My Neighbour, My Self

Perhaps the first thing to notice is that, unlike in Matthew and Mark, it is not Jesus but the lawyer who says what we have come to know as the great commandment, to love God and love your neighbour as yourself. This is not altogether surprising: both elements of this come from the Old Testament, and indeed rough contemporaries of Jesus such as Rabbi Hillel said similar things. But the effect in this context then is to lay the emphasis not on the teaching to love as such, but on Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s second question: ‘who is my neighbour?’ This question becomes the overriding focus of this entire passage, and Jesus’ response to it sheds ample light on both loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself.

‘Who is my neighbour?’ the lawyer wants to vindicate himself to the teacher, wants to show his cleverness, wants to manage his responsibility. And who is my neighbour? The way the lawyer asks this question puts him in the driver’s seat. He is in control. He is the one who loves. He is the one who decides if another person is truly his neighbour or not. This is his game. With his question to Jesus, he’s just trying to estimate the size of the pitch and identify his teammates.

In answer to this question, then, Jesus’ story becomes quite odd indeed. One of the two main characters, the man set upon by robbers, is passive and unconscious for virtually all of the story, left half dead in a ditch. He doesn’t even have a speaking part. We know almost nothing about him other than that he is most likely an Israelite, like the lawyer. And we know that throughout this story he is passive, exposed, vulnerable. In answering the lawyer’s question, Jesus effectively turns it on its head: who is my neighbour? Is not a question that we answer out of our own power, by our own decision, through our own control. Determining who our neighbour is is not a matter of carefully vetting likely candidates and finding some who are really worth bothering with. No; in the event, our neighbour is who we are given.

And what a neighbour this man is given. A priest and a Levite both see the man, half-dead, and pass by on the other side of the road. These fellow Israelites are most likely afraid that this man is not half dead but all dead, and in that case coming into contact with him would render them unclean. So his countrymen and co-religionists pass him by. Instead, a Samaritan comes upon him and helps.

Now here is where we ought to be careful and try to bracket out our contemporary notions about Samaritans. To an Israelite of Jesus’ day, a Samaritan would have been repugnant. There had been hatred and animosity between the Jews and Samaritans for centuries, as the Israelites held the Samaritans to be idolaters and betrayers of the faith. And the Samaritans gave as good as they got. Roughly 25 years before Jesus would have told this parable, a group of Samaritans entered the Temple in Jerusalem and scattered human bones around, desecrating the place. In our story today, once the Samaritan comes on the scene, the lawyer most likely would have thought that he would come upon the half-dead Israelite and finish the job. To the lawyer, the Samaritan’s help would have been shocking, even scandalous. And that, of course, is just why Jesus used him in the story in the first place.

What’s more, the help that the Samaritan gives is extravagantly over the top. He doesn’t just give first aid, but takes him to an inn. He gives the innkeeper an amount of money that, at that time, would have sustained a person for three weeks. And he doesn’t even stick around for a thank you. In fact, there is no sense at all that this half-dead Israelite ever even knows who saved his life.

In response to the lawyer trying to screen who his neighbours are, Jesus tells a story of an Israelite who is exposed and vulnerable and who is helped, extravagantly, by someone who would normally be considered a mortal enemy. Our neighbour is not who we choose; our neighbour is who we are given. It is in light of this, then, that we can go back and understand the teaching about loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbour as ourselves.

Who is our neighbour? Suddenly, in the logic of the parable, we’re not calling the shots; we are not so sure just who our neighbour is. Suddenly we’re not so sure just who our self is. If I’m to love another as my ‘self’ then the upshot is that I’m not even totally familiar with who I am, as I seem constantly to find that self facing me in others. And here we find the most radical challenge, for in this we see that no boundary will finally stand in the way of us and our neighbour, if we are to love them as our self. There are certainly distinctions: yes; love doesn’t seek to make everything else the same. But boundaries? No. There are no boundaries to our neighbours, no limits to whom we are to find our very selves in, no restrictions to whom we are to love unstintingly in God.
Sisters and brothers, in this day of the internet, international travel, and globalisation the world seems to grow smaller; it is clearer now more than ever that any line we draw to limit our neighbours will simply be arbitrary. And so we discover that we have neighbours far and near: your family who sits at the dinner table with you, the young woman across the counter at Caffe Nero, the Baptist or the Muslim or the atheist who lives down the street, the unemployed young man who lives across town, the politician we disagree with so ardently, even the worker in a different country who picked the fruit you ate with breakfast or who sewed the shirt you’re wearing right now. Who is my neighbour, who I am to love? Who isn’t my neighbour?

We might even be surprised to find, in fact, that God is our neighbour. That’s not to parrot the words of that song from the nineties that God might be ‘one of us’. What I mean is that the story of the Good Samaritan is also a parable of God’s grace. The man who is half-dead and abandoned, who is unable to do anything on his own encounters a freely given and extravagant healing love from a surprising source, without conditions. This love gives him back his life and allows him to be a neighbour to others. This is the mercy and love of God that we meet through Christ, and that empowers us to love our neighbour. And so here we find that love of God and love of neighbour meet.

We don’t love God because it is a commandment. It is ‘written in the Law’ because God loves us first. God’s love elicits love from us. We respond to that love with love; and we find that even the love we respond with is a gift from God. This responding love is then worked out in loving our neighbour. Loving God and loving neighbour are not two different projects, for love begets love. The love we receive is the love that we love those around us with; and it is with that same love that we graciously receive from our neighbour, who is also beloved of God.

We know how the lawyer in today’s story answered Jesus’ question, but we don’t know what he did after that. Was his life changed? Did he ‘go and do likewise’? Or was he so turned off that he went and looked for a different venue to plead his case in? Or did he, perhaps like most of us, walk away convinced that Jesus was right, yet also knowing how far he was from it, nevertheless trying to love others with the love that he had found in Christ? Of course, we can only speculate about him. But I hope that as we go out in the wake of this story we will be both challenged and comforted by what we find here: by the surprising Samaritan, by the neighbour in our life we do not choose but are given by God, and most of all by the extravagant love and grace of God. In that way, may we better grasp this story, better love this story, and above all, be better grasped by the love we find in it. Amen.

But not before.

"It may be that the day of judgement will dawn tomorrow; in that case, we shall gladly lay aside our work for a better future. But not before".

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(Hat tip to Rachel Muers.)

I love this this quotation, which I just ran across. It expresses my frustration with those who recommend quietism or withdrawal from the world and the work of the Kingdom, as if the gospel only dealt with invisibilities. It is only when the 'better future' of the eschaton comes in its fullness - and come it will and full it will be - that we may take our hand from the plough.

Streetwise: God's Spring

"The gift of imagination is not about the scarcity of the Church but about the abundance of God. The church does not need to ponder morosely its own shortcomings in order to explain the breadth of the kingdom: the gift of imagination beyond the Church is not because God so resented the Church but because God so loved the world. Awareness of its own failures should increase the Church's humility, but not jaundice its vision so it cannot see the buds and sounds of God's spring elsewhere."
-Sam Wells, God's Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics Blackwell: 2006 p. 34

An Introduction and Conversation on Just War and Pacifism

I have a friend that I have known since high school, Rhett. We had gotten out of touch -- as is so easy to do -- but recently this blog has been the occasion for some interesting e-mail exchanges between him and me. I have been delighted to catch up with him and renew our valued friendship. Rhett and I used to be very close compatriots in our ideological outlook. Our lives have gone in somewhat varied directions since those days, and I think we have each grown and matured quite a lot. While we still share much important in common, we are in rather different places on some other issues now. But he is also a very cordial, charitable conversation partner. I won't say much more about him, especially as he is threatening to start a blog of his own: he can introduce himself more then.

We had a good e-mail exchange last week, and I asked him if I could post most of our conversation online: he said yes.

In essence, he had written me in response to my "weeping and gnashing" post, asking some good questions about Christians and war. My responses try to mediate the Christian tradition as best I know it and my own convictions about the issues involved. The rest of this post contains excerpts from that e-mail and a few additions that occurred to me over the weekend:

There is much more to say about these issues than I am able to express in a brief e-mail at the end of the day, so this might well turn into an ongoing conversation (which I would welcome).

Your questions:
1) Do you think most Christians are pacificists or non-pacificists or haven't considered it all?

I think historically, since Constantine, of those who have thought about it seriously, more have been in the just war tradition. But there has almost always been a strong minority position of pacifism, especially before Constantine and in Anabaptist traditions. I suspect, however, that many Christians do not think sufficiently about these issues and do not consider that there might be a conflict. It is quite important to remember, though, that pacifism is not (merely) resistance to war or unwillingness to fight. It is not just about a decision to not fight in a war. It is an active commitment to seek peace at all times and work towards a peaceful and just world. Many pacifists make the point that if more people worked for this, we would have fewer wars in the first place. It is also important to keep in mind that just war criteria do not justify many of the wars we have fought. This is a good segue into your next question

2) How does pacifism intersect with a just-war? For example, was it okay for Christians to participate in the Civil War and thus liberate the slaves? How about liberating the Jews and others from the Nazi death camps? The reason I ask is that these are often cited as justifications for war or why war is okay.

I could expand on the conditions for a just war here, but I suspect it is more important to say this: to be a pacifist in no way entails condoning -- or even tolerating -- slavery and death camps. Interestingly, the Christian tradition is absolutely unanimous that violence and killing is always abhorrent, it is never seen as a positive alternative. The difference between pacifism and just war is that just war says that there might be some time that we need to -- as a last resort -- engage the evils of war (say in self-defense or defense of another, weaker person). If we do engage in war, just war rationalises, we need to have rules and limits to ensure that we do not sin even more in the conduct of that war. Pacifism, on the other hand, says that suffering evil is better than inflicting it, as that is what our Lord did on the cross. (He could have summoned armies of angels, but instead died, extending even those who crucified him forgiveness rather than vengeance.) From either perspective, pacifism or just war, the Christian is bound to do everything possible in a nonviolent way to secure the freedom of the slaves and the Jews, even to the point of our own death. But the just-war adherent recognizes that there might be some final, tragic last resort when force and violence may be engaged within certain limits.

3) Is there a time when war is okay? For example, Rahab is praised for telling a lie to protect the Israelite spies, and some conclude that there are times when it is okay to lie, i.e., protecting a life -- is there a similar application to war.

I don't think such a case can be made (although others would clearly disagree). This is partly because most of the fighting/battles/wars that seem divinely sanctioned are those of the OT people of God fighting to return to (or protect) the promised land. I don't think a church/ N.T. people of God who follow a Lord known as the Prince of Peace can claim to have similar leadings from God. Even more, I certainly don't think that any modern nation-state (even the state of Israel) can claim that in any way. either.

I find that "divinely sanctioned" fighting quite troubling, by the way. I honestly don't know what to make of it. My general way of proceeding theologically won't allow me to excise it from the text ("oh, that was a mistake", or "we humans have evolved since then", etc.), nor will it allow me to set it up as some sort of divine pattern that must be repeated. When I try to theologize, I usually deliberately leave tensions unresolved. So I let these passages sit in the shadow of the greater part of the tradition, which does not sanction either wars of the modern nation-state or divine violence, and I profess to not understanding what may be a mystery as yet too deep (for me at least) to fathom.

I suspect that the specific example you mention, coupled with other notable, noble examples -- e.g., hiding Jews or other persecuted people in Nazi-controlled lands during World War II -- may have moral force in part just because the people who did these deeds did do in the face of force and violence by others, presumably with potentially quite serious consequences for themselves.

4) In your opinion can a Christian be President of the United States, knowing that in order to protect and defend the Constitution, he may have to initiate a war?

This is a good question, to which I don't have a good answer, any more than can a Christian be emperor of Rome or king of England. I need to think about it some more, but I think I would at least be content with whoever was both a Christian and President of the U.S. at least acting a little uncomfortable about it, confessing that he felt quite torn at times, etc. In other words, it would be a start if a Christian who wanted to be president at least entertained the possibility that he or she might not be able to become president because of the things they would be expected to do.

It would be good if we could at least see that there was conflict between the two things, being a Christian and being a president. I think in the same way I wouldn't be so horrified with us going to war if we really did so as a last resort, with some sort of almost tragic sense about it -- an awareness that going to war means not national glory, but an admission that we have failed. Instead, many people seem to see it as some sort of triumphalistic fulfilling of a national destiny.

5) In the Old Testament God uses war to achieve His purposes -- do think that that happens now and that he would call Christians to participate?

I don't know that I have a really satisfying answer to your fifth question beyond what I have replied to question three.

I suspect that we also need to think carefully about what we mean when we say that God "uses" things. If we subscribe to a robust sense of God's providence, we confess that God uses even our sin to achieve God's ends -- but we would never say that we ought therefore to sin.

But the OT war tradition is something that I am not all that comfortable with (for Christian reasons), and I haven't yet thought out what I think about it, beyond feeling pretty certain that it's not something for us today.

Also, I think how one views end-times theology may have bearing on this as well.

I'm not entirely sure this is true, although it has some intuitive appeal. If you subscribe to a dispensational, premillenial view of the end-times, then the primary task of the church is to save souls and wait for Jesus to return and take you out of the world (for a time) while it undergoes tribulation. This discourages a kind of care for the world and other people that might guard against going to war. (This is not uniformly the case, though, as Seventh Day Adventists tend to be premillenial and dispensational, yet have historically been pacifist and conscientious objectors.) It also might encourage you to participate in war so as to, perhaps, usher in the "last days" -- there has been much speculation (Hal Lindsay, et al.) that the Middle East and some conflict there will be instrumental in bringing about the return of Christ.

If you are postmillenial (or, generally, amillenial), then you would see the Church and (especially) the Holy Spirit as instrumental in bringing in the salvation, righteousness, justice and peace of the Kingdom of God, which would seem to encourage the kind of care for the world and other people that would cause you to refrain from war. On the other hand, most of the nations in Europe which dominated and oppressed much of the world through massive empire from the 17th to the 19th centuries were officially Christian, and subscribed to amillenial or postmillenial eschatologies. I suppose that if one starts to be to self-congratulatory about one's own righteousness (and rightness), particularly being postmillenial, then one can easily begin to see those who do not accept one's prescriptions for them as being ignorant or wicked -- in which case extermination might not seem like a bad option.

The irony is that premillenial dispensationalism has traditionally been the eschatology of preference of (self-described) fundamental Christians, who have traditionally been known as a socio-economic underclass. So -- in purely sociological terms, not theological or philosophical -- one can understand the profound desire for deliverance, and the disconnect from power that would prompt one to look for it from outside: Jesus returning to remove his elect from the world. The problem is (and Caleb has adverted to this on his blog): what happens when that eschatological scheme becomes the dominant ideology of the world's regnant power?

I always appreciate this kind of interaction and look forward to more of it, Rhett.
grace and peace,
Jason

Just in case you needed something over which to weep and gnash your teeth...

I ran across this web posting almost by accident. Check it out: it is an Iraqi Christian blog, but reproduces photos of a military rally held at a Baptist church in Kentucky.

I think it is especially shocking given how much we purport to scrupulously maintain separation of church and state, and decry the eliding of faith and politics that we claim to see in Islam. Ironically, to the degree that I understand Islam -- and I don't claim it is much -- they actually have rationales internal to their tradition which would underwrite Islamic government. In fact, it is the outside imposition of Western-style "secular" governments which dissolved the Islamic Empire (at least in the Islamic memory and imagination), and have brought about the sorts of problems and disparities that we find causing so much trouble today.

I'm not entirely sure that the Christian tradition underwrites the sort of "separation" (and I really must use quotation marks here) of church and state that we claim to have here in America. But I am much more certain that the "secular" state values it, and is more than happy to transgress that line when it is convenient, and insist on respecting it when that is convenient.

There was a time when Christians were prohibited from serving in the military...now we are thought of as prime targets for recruitment. Since when did blind obedience to the State, blood-thirstiness, and willingness to kill others when so instructed, become Christian virtues? Even for those Christians not inclined to pacifism, who would countenance fighting a defense war, or a conflict which satisfied the criteria of "just war" -- how can we so eagerly embrace a war which seems motivated by opportunistic expansion of empire? Can war for the protection -- or expansion -- of consumer markets be far behind?

John Howard Yoder used to hang a poster on his door where he taught which read "a modest proposal: that all the Christians of the world refuse to kill other Christians." Some students would come up to him with righteous anger, claiming that this was typical, disgusting Christian self-regard. His response would be "Hey, it's a start." If American Christians and Iraqi Christians (or Christians anywhere) would start by refusing to kill each other, we would have to find other means of operating in the world.

Stanley Hauerwas, in an essay compiled in one of his books, made the (typically controversial) claim that homosexuals (as a class of people) are more virtuous than Christians (as a class of people). His basis for this claim was the fact that the military was dubious about whether gays could serve effectively, but did not seem to doubt that Christians could kill people and break things when so ordered.

I know this post has rambled around more than most, but the photos and church bulletin made me want to gag and cry at the same time. Even for those Christians not inclined to pacifism -- and I suppose I am in a minority here -- it seems that this kind of uncritical mixing of overt military promotion and Christian fellowship ought to raise some very serious questions about what difference it makes to follow Jesus as Lord.

God have mercy on us all.

Miscellaneous updates and an AKMA reference

I haven't blogged for some time, partly due to a lurking illness which hasn't yet been bold enough to assert itself fully. Low grade sickness saps your energy, but not enough to wipe you out, In this way, it is rather like an inch or two of snow: not enough to cause life to grind to a blessed halt so you can rest and recuperate, just enough to add misery to exhaustion.

Also, I've been busy, not least with looking at several General Ordination Exams. I will be helping the Board of Examining Chaplains to assess them next week at an Episcopal camp outside of Houston. I've done this for three years now and while it is an awful lot of work, I think the GOEs are important and I am glad to be able to serve the church in this way. In a certain slightly perverse way it is even fun. But it also means I won't be able to blog next week.

All grad school applications are now in, but I won't hear about them until probably March or so. Shpilkis in the meantime. I don't like not knowing where we will be living several months from now.

AKMA has contributed an interesting post on the subject of Christian marriages, with all of his usual eloquence and charity. (This was the third in a series for him. Here's the first, and here's the second.) Along the way he expands his discussion, summarizing and clarifying what I have written elsewhere about contested questions. (I don't mean that he actually looked at what I said and summarized or clarified, this isn't a statement of literary dependence -- it is more likely, if anything, that I have unwittingly imported ideas he set out on his own. But it seems at least that our minds are travelling in similar circles.)

His entire post is very much worth a read, but I thought the following sentence particularly worth marking:

Facile binaries between “us” and “them” serve the political purpose of drumming up the fevers of the
partisans (especially when we pathologize or anathematize those with whom we disagree), but they rarely
clarify the best grounds for advocating one or another theological position, and almost never give somebody a good reason for changing her or his mind.

I originally wrote "...the following sentences worth marking:" but when I returned to the original post, I realized that I wanted to quote the whole darn thing: it's gold. So go and read it. Now. That's okay, I'll be waiting here when you're done....

Other miscellaneous tidbit to include here include a couple of note about upcoming blog stuff:

1) I owe Peter (and others, no doubt) a definition of "church marketing", which is forthcoming.

2) Rhett has asked me to discuss premillenial dispensationalism and what I find problematic with it, particularly its eschatology, and this might be more interesting in a post than in an e-mail. (Tell me if I'm wrong, Rhett.)

3) I need to provide some more evidence and argumentation about church marketing generally, in support of my earlier post.

4) I am planning to start a series of entries which introduce modern theologians to readers, with links to online resources. Regular readers will be not at all surprised to find that my list of theologians leans towards Anglicans, the Radical Orthodox, and postliberals. Rowan Williams, David F. Ford, John Milbank, and Stanley Hauerwas will be among the first.

5) Some more ruminations about the Christian faith and its relation to the "public sphere" (and why the "public sphere" is such a dubious and dangerous idea).

6) I also owe Howlin' Hobbit something on the relationship between doctrine and life/ethics/behavior/something like that. I have been wanting to blog on this for a while, anyway.

7) More book reviews.

So, watch this space! But not next week, I'll be gone.

Tidal Wave Reflections... and Actions

I was so overwhelmed by the initial news of the tidal wave and its destruction that I kept it at bay in my mind as long as I could. But as usual denial flooded its banks, this time with the pictures on the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday. It was so distressing, I wouldn't leave it face up on the breakfast table.

Of course denial is a guilty luxury (and sometimes a luxury of the guilty) that, like much else, many can't afford. So far, around 77,000 are accounted dead with many more missing, with maybe more than 100,000 dead when all is said and done.

To put it in perspective, just south of 3,000 people died on 9/11.

If you want to help -- and who wouldn't? -- I've put some links at the bottom of the post. But first, two more links:

As so often is the case, Real Live Preacher says it well, this time comparing the money we have pledged to send in aid in response to the tidal wave disaster with the money we plan to spend on the (second) inauguration of President Bush. (FYI: $15mil compared with $30-40 mil.(*but see note below -ed.)) And as he is so good at doing, he isn't content to let us point our fingers and cluck our tongues, but brings it home, too.

Also, if you would like more information on the tsunami itself, including firsthand updates, you can check out this blog. I don't know who maintains it or how reliable their information is; I would be cautious to give money through it, but it is a chilling look at the scope of this disaster.

There are a number of quite reliable sources to which you can give and know that your money is serving those it is supposed to. (This list is not at all exhaustive, of course):

Unicef (Select your national committee from this home page and give through them.)
World Vision (This is a special page set up for victims of the tsunami.)
Oxfam (This is another page with information about emergency programs for people effected by the tsunami.)
Episcopal Relief and Development

* Peter Young helpfully points out that the aid America is sending, as a nation, has been upped to $35 mil. from $15 mil. For what it's worth, I would not be surprised to see that increased, perhaps significantly, as the needs become even clearer. More than that, many, many individuals like you and me will give to agencies like the four listed above and many more, once again showing the sort of generosity that Americans have been known for. The same certainly goes for the Britons, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders who regularly pass through Gower Street, as well. So why not give, if you haven't yet?

Ed. update (10:45pm EDT): in addition to the US, the UK has pledged £15mil for the first phase, the EU generally 30 mil. euros, and Canada C$33mil. (More information available here.)

Wasting away again in Aporia-ville

A question has been rolling around in my head for a few weeks, and I still don't have a good enough answer to it. Maybe some reader would be kind enough to set my thinking straight?

The question is this: why is embezzlement an imprisonable crime, but adultery is not?

It might sound strange at first, but here's my thinking: adultery is a breaking of faith between two people. One person (at least) acts faithlessly to vows which they have made publicly, generally resulting serious injury of the other partner.

Embezzlement -- secretly taking (say) money from a firm for one's own use -- is also a way of acting faithlessly, in this case to one's employment contract. And it is a way of breaking faith between two people, since a corporation is considered a "person" for purposes of liability, etc.

But one action is illegal and the other (as far as I know, I'm certainly not a legal scholar) is not. (Side note: I will be exploring this on the basis of the laws of the nation-state in America: the laws of other nations might differ, and we have a rather different view in the church.)

It might be objected that one is an issue between two people (in the "privacy of their home") and one is a much larger matter (in the "public realm of business"). But this seems a specious distinction. This specific synthesis of "private" and "public" realms arose in the industrial revolution. It is historically particular, and not "obvious" or "natural". Feminists helpfully remind us that this sort of division of the world made issues such as domestic abuse or slavery "private". It has also had a corrosive effect on the church as Christian faith has been relegated to "personal preference", one's "private decision", and has been further marginalized to "a person's relationship with God" or, worse yet, one's "spirituality". This distinction between private and public hides from us the public, political nature of much that is allegedly "private", it can be a willful blindness.

But say that we grant that adultery is an issue to be resolved between two people, it is not a matter for law courts -- fine. If we grant that, then it seems that the same must be said for embezzlement, for it is also a matter between two people (the alleged embezzler and the "corporate person"). So if I were to embezzle a kettle of fish from Bob's Bait Shop, why should this not simply be resolved between me and a representative of Bob's Shop? To say that this is public when it is manifestly an issue between two people seems arbitrary.

Perhaps it might be objected that we cannot allow embezzling to go unpunished, because to let it go unpunished would be to encourage the practice, and punishment is properly the task of the nation-state, not an individual. (Of course, this fails because demotions in the company or termination would count as punishment, too, but let's grant the point for now.) If this were true, then the same could certainly be argued for adultery as well. Even if we find ourselves squeamish about "enforcing fidelity" between two people with a covenant (strange we don't feel similarly squeamish about "enforcing honesty" between two people with a contract), we might cogently argue that unchecked infidelity in one area of life might lead to infidelity in another. So, we should discourage adultery because it might to embezzlement!

In the end, I don't see how a strong distinction can be made, unless embezzlement is defined as something other than "breaking faith". (And it seems straightforward that stealing is a kind of breaking faith.) It might also be argued that some kinds of breaking faith are socially tolerable and others not, but again, I don't see how such a distinction can be drawn.

I raise the issue not because I think we should de-criminalize embezzlement. I do think we might re-think our view of adultery, though. In any event, the private-public distinction needs serious re-thinking. Mostly, it is an aporia which arose in my mind that I could not resolve, and it gave rise to a strong suspicion about America, if not the West generally:

We take money more seriously than relationships.

Wait...not THE John Stott?

Most mornings I sip my coffee over the latest edition of the New York Times. It's "the paper of record", I get good national and international news, good coverage of events at the center of the universe (i.e. New York City), and the best daily crossword puzzle I can find. And, yes, I usually like the Op-Ed pieces, too. Paul Krugman is a favorite and Maureen Dowd is a guilty pleasure. Of course, there are two things I do not read the Times for, because when it comes to these, they just don't get it: the Chicago Cubs and religious (particularly Christian) faith.

(Of course, there might be more connection between the topics than we know -- but that's for another time.)

So you can imagine my spit take when I saw John Stott's name show up in the headline of David Brooks' column on Tuesday. Stott is an Anglican of unabashed evangelical sympathies, has been involved deeply in many parts of the church around the world, and qualifies as an "elder statesman" of the church. I do not agree with everything that he stands for, my theology runs in a somewhat different direction, but I have deep respect for him as a person of profound faith, humility, and conviction. (I have had the distinct pleasure of meeting him, and I concur with Edward Cook's assessment of that experience.)

David Brooks' point in talking about Stott is the reason I mention the column. (May I say, also, that I am not usually a David Brooks fan: his column a couple of weeks ago on the virtues of the exurbs was execrably bad. That's a real hot button for me. The exurbs are a regrettable economic necessity at best; if they represent the acme of what American culture has to offer, we should envy the dead.) Brooks makes the excellent point that when the media -- although he might as well mean all of us -- choose representatives of Christianity, they should not make recourse to "bozos" (his term) such as Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton, but should instead call on folks like Stott.

His point, in brief, is that you cannot understand Christian faith if you don't meet its authentic representatives.

And I take from that the idea that even within the church we cannot understand the perspectives with which we disagree without meeting, and getting to know, and yes, even loving, that perspective's authentic representatives. It takes fortitude and patience, more than we're used to exercising. It doesn't mean agreeing with them; it does mean loving them enough to work to understand them on their own terms. It might mean having a probing constructive or critical conversation with them, but it will be with a brother or sister in Christ, not merely an opponent.

Granted, this sort of patient, charitable conversation doesn't make for good television, but it does build the kingdom of God -- which is, after all, the point.

Semper Paratus

A sermon preached at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in St. Joseph, Michigan

on Sunday, November 28th. (Advent 1A)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Many of us are familiar with the popular Left Behind series of novels. These books tell a story about people struggling to find faith after the Rapture. The Rapture is a time, supposedly, when God will take his faithful people out of the world and subject the world to upheavals and torments in preparation for a final judgment. Now, none of you here will have heard Mother Liza or me teach the Rapture, and there’s a good reason for that. In fact, some of you have heard us speak out specifically against this notion as being unbiblical and sub-Christian. Nevertheless, here we are on the first Sunday of Advent faced with one of their favorite texts, in Matthew, where they will point out that it says “one will be taken and one will be left”. It seems straightforward: surely this is evidence of Rapture?
Continue reading Semper Paratus

Well, not really. As N.T. Wright points out[1], the sense of the text is most likely one being taken away to experience judgment, while the other remains untouched. It is more like secret police coming in the night to arrest someone than God taking the righteous out of the world. No, in this scenario, the righteous stay in the world to continue their work.

We might be tempted to want to mute the tones of judgment in our texts, but that would be a mistake. For one, these readings pick up on a prominent theme of Advent, Christ’s return at the end of the age.

But also, that there is indeed judgment coming is an important part of Christian proclamation. When Christ returns he will bring justice and righteousness with him, setting things right in a world gone wrong. We ought to look to it with as much gladness as we can muster, happy that those who have been oppressed and victimized will be restored, and thankful that we ourselves will, at last, be set right. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann summed it up well when he said “Judgment at the end is not an end at all; it is the beginning. Its goal is the restoration of all things for the building up of God’s eternal kingdom.”[2] This isn’t something we dare to soft-pedal.

But we ought to be quite concerned when our thinking about final judgment takes on the character of a revenge fantasy. Or as Anne Lamott says, “you can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”[3] This is, I fear, what the authors and perhaps some readers of the Left Behind series have slipped into, and something we should guard against, something we should leave behind.

So we hear from Christ that we should stay awake and be ready; that is that there’s something coming that’s not yet here. Today we also hear from Paul that “the dark is gone, the day is near”, that is that there’s something that is already here. And in the tension lies a profound truth: that the Kingdom of God is already here in part, but not yet in its fullness. And one implication of this is that Christ’s coming, and the judgment that builds up God’s kingdom are not events in the distant future, but are to have effects on our lives here and now.

Christ tells us to be ready, but he is not talking about having enough information to understand the signs of the times. We’re not to waste our time looking at social security numbers and barcodes and the United Nations thinking that they are somehow harbingers of the end. After all, Christ himself said in the verse right before this morning’s reading, no one knows the day or hour.

Our task is to live day-by-day, hour-by-hour, being ready to meet our Lord. Once we set to one side this language of one being taken and another left behind, I think we can see two clear examples in today’s texts of how we can live so as to be ready.

First, Isaiah has a vision of universal peace, in which all nations turn to God, and as a result violence and war come to an end, even to the point that unneeded weapons are fashioned into implements of life and growth. I think this is a very powerful vision of the order of thing in the world as we know it being completely transformed, turned upside down by God. There are many ways that we can begin to live even now as if this were true. Certainly one straightforward way is to support peacemaking efforts on the world stage in whatever small way we can. But this has much broader application, too. In one sense, this is not just the end of war, but the end of cutthroat competition as well, the end of scenarios where the only outcome is someone wins and another loses. Perhaps one way this might cash out is in the business world, where managers and executives can begin thinking win-win. Some business models (such as Whole Foods Market) have already begun demonstrating that taking good care of workers means taking good care of the business itself; it’s win-win. Another example of flourishing noncompetitive industriousness is in open-source coding of computer software. In this, the computer code of a program is available for everyone to see: there are no proprietary secrets to guard, and so the computer programs that these people make actually tend to be better than others because a wider variety of people can give feedback and improve it. These are some specific, rather secular examples of real-world projects which seem to participate in Isaiah’s vision of a transformed world, where there is no war, and by extension, no antagonistic competition. How might God be calling us to think win-win, that we can live so as to be ready?

Another way that we might so live is found in Paul, where he says to “lay aside the works of darkness and …live honorably as in the day.” Some of what Paul meant in referring to works of darkness is most likely works done in darkness. For example, if someone chooses to rob his neighbor, such a thing would most likely be done in darkness, partly to avoid being noticed, but also partly because then one is anonymous – there is little risk that your neighbor will see that his own neighbor is stealing from him. The anonymity given by the cover of darkness can be a powerful factor to tempt us to do what we ought not do. The darkness of anonymity can allow us to be unloving, unrighteous, and yet still seem – at least to those who we think matter – loving and righteous.

Today, we have many other forms of anonymity besides darkness: on the computer, driving in our cars, or interacting with people who don’t know us on the telephone or in shops or offices. In these settings we might be tempted to act in ways that would embarrass us, if we knew the other people involved and they knew us.

I’ve done this myself. Most days, I wear my clerical collar in the office here and around town as I take care of business. I’ve become pretty comfortable in it. It’s usually only just before I am about to lay into someone working behind a counter or after I’ve cut someone off in traffic that I remember that I’m publicly identified as a member of the Christian clergy and I have a certain standard of behavior to maintain.

Of course, I’m wrong.

It’s not that I need to treat people with love and respect because I wear a funny collar. I need to treat everyone with love and respect because I was baptized into the life and death of Jesus Christ, and that helps me to see those around me as beloved creations of God. And of course, it’s not just me, but all of us, all Christians, who are called to live, as Paul says, “honorably, as in the day.” If we do not dwell in the darkness of anonymity, but live in the light so that people may see our faces and know our names, we can live in consistent love and integrity. How might God be calling you to live in the light, that we can live so as to be ready?

These two practices – thinking win-win, and living in the light – are modest attempts by us to live so as to be ready, to reflect to the world the love and grace of Jesus Christ and even, in some small way, to anticipate the coming Kingdom.

This all puts me in mind of a rabbinic saying: If you were to treat every person around you as if though he were the messiah, come secretly and in disguise, then it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t come at all.
But maybe another way to get at it is this, since as Christians we believe Messiah has already come in the form of Jesus: if we were to treat every person around us as if Messiah had already come the first time, then perhaps it would be as if he had already returned, already established his reign completely, already set right a world gone wrong. May God give us the grace to do so, and so live in a world in which no one is left behind. Amen.

[1] N. T. Wright, Jesus and The Victory of God, p. 366.
[2] Quoted in James Howell, Exploring Christianity: The Bible, Faith, and Life. P. 183, 184.
[3] Exact source unknown.

Hope, Persevere, Heal, Love

A sermon preached at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in St. Joseph, Michigan
on Sunday, November 14th. (Proper 28C)

Mal. 3:13-4:2a, 5-6; Ps. 98:5-10; 2 Thess. 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In modern terms, Jesus was not a very good marketer. In today’s gospel reading he says, “you will be hated by all because of my name.” Apparently Jesus hasn’t read the latest in church growth books. After all, that’s not a particularly welcoming slogan: “become a Christian, be hated by everyone.”

Now I certainly don’t mean to second-guess Our Lord. But wouldn’t it have been far better if he had claimed that everyone would love us because of his name, and as a result we could win friends and influence people? Or if that wasn’t close enough to the truth, then maybe he could just say, “because of me you will be regarded with kindly indifference.” That would have been nice, because then we could just lead quiet, anonymous lives, going about our business. Or even if that didn’t fit, then at least he could have used a euphemism: “follow me, and others around you will experience a negative attitude adjustment.”

But no, Jesus says, “You will be hated by all because of my name.” Perhaps we ought to change our church signs here to “St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – you think you hate us now, just wait ‘til you get to know us!”

Continue reading Hope, Persevere, Heal, Love
But joking aside, the readings from this morning point in different ways to a mystery that we have each encountered in one way or another. The mystery, to put it plainly, is this: the world is out of whack and the wicked seem to flourish while others suffer.

This was certainly true at the time of the prophet Malachi. He writes that people said, “It is vain to serve God. What do we profit by keeping his command? Now we count the arrogant happy; evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test, they escape.” In other words, why are we so worried about righteousness when it seems that the wicked are the ones who get ahead in life?

We certainly know about this paradox, too, don’t we? Take for example, Margaret Hassan, who worked with Care International in Iraq. She devoted her life to working with the poorest and most disadvantaged of people, and she was kidnapped several weeks ago and has not been heard from recently. Others working in relief and rebuilding in that hobbled nation have been kidnapped and killed, too, and yet those who have committed these atrocities seem to have escaped. Or take the attacks on 9/11, and all of those lives lost, while the masterminds, for the most part, walk free. The innocent and those who have worked for good are threatened and killed while the wicked continue in their ways.

Or, closer to home, think of the airline pilot who serves with safety and dedication for thirty years only to have his pension yanked while in retirement. In general, it seems like the little person is getting squeezed, whether it is the hard-working family who cannot afford health insurance, or the promising child who can’t receive an adequate education, or the retired senior whose fixed income can’t cover unanticipated expenses. Many people work hard, very hard, their whole life doing the right thing and never get ahead. It might be easy for such folks to look at others who get ahead by wickedness: a sleazy politician, a corrupt businessman, in some areas, a drug dealer or a pimp, and wonder why these people skate through life so easily. The prophet knew well how the wicked seem to prosper, while the innocent and righteous suffer; he knew the world was out of whack.

In the gospel reading today, some take Jesus to be talking about the end of the world. It seems that whenever wars and portents are mentioned, then people think Armageddon must be in view. But actually, Jesus is talking about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, not the end of the age. Of course the Romans razing the Temple certainly seemed like the end of the world, as it can hardly be overstated how important the Jerusalem Temple was to Jews and early Christians. But Jesus says not to worry about all that: the disciples will be hated far and wide before the first stone is thrown down. And here we come to a second mystery.

If we are perplexed about why the righteous and the innocent suffer, we might also wonder why Christians are so disliked. Now, certainly we can give some pretty sober historical answers to that question. We are hated because of crusades, inquisitions, our cooperation with the colonizing efforts of Europe and America, and, as Gandhi put it, our ongoing inability to be like Jesus. No mystery there.

But it goes deeper than that, and therein lays the mystery. I don’t think Jesus had these abominations in mind when he said that. I think he was pointing to something deeper, for he knew that his followers would encounter this resistance before the church would ever have power and wealth. I think he was saying that, like a patient who insists that the medicine for his cure is actually poison, a world that’s out of whack is going to resist the means of its healing.

I don’t think this hatred just comes out of perversity, though. I think it comes out of fear. Like someone who has been sick so long she can’t imagine what she would be like without this malady, the world has forgotten that it is out of whack and needs healing.

This healing, that’s really what we’re about as the church. In following Jesus as his disciples, we are embodying – or at least growing to embody – the way that life was intended by God to be. We grow to love God and worship him as our creator and redeemer. Knowing that our lives are not of our own making, we learn to live lives of gratitude and thanksgiving. We are taught this chiefly in the Eucharist, in which God gives himself to us without reserve, so that we might give ourselves back to him, and by extension, to the world around us, without reserve.
Living thankfully, we can live lightly, not being afraid of losing what we have for we don’t truly have anything anyway, we’re just taking care of it while we’re here. And all of this opens us up to love our neighbor as ourselves. The work that we do here in the liturgy, and the work that God is doing in our lives, and the way we live in the world: all of this is nothing less than the healing and renewing of the creation. This is the great adventure that God has called us to, and to which he calls everyone far and wide.

So what do we do then? How are we to live in a world that’s out of whack, that’s not yet completely healed and renewed? This is still a place where the righteous and innocent suffer while the wicked prosper, still a place where people are hated because of Jesus’ name. There are two responses to this in our texts for today.

First, Jesus says to persevere. He says don’t be misled; don’t be terrified; trust that I will be present with you in your suffering; even though you will be hated, persevere. As I have been saying, it is this perseverance which will mean new life for the world. We endure out of love for God and love for our neighbor, not simply because we are mulishly stubborn or gluttons for punishment.

Second, God responds to the prophet Malachi saying, “once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked.” In other words, God sees and God will act, in God’s time. But just because we are suffering or hated does not mean that we are doing the wrong thing. And it might seem like the wicked get ahead at the expense of the innocent and the righteous, but in the end they do not win.

So let us take confidence. The hatred, the suffering that we see in the world is real; sometimes we experience it ourselves. But they are not the final word, for Jesus bids us to not worry but keep doing what we know to be true and right. We are to hope for God’s ultimate deliverance. And we are to invite others: come, join us as we grow together in love and gratitude, and, through the Spirit of God, embark on the adventure of healing and renewing the creation – which isn’t such a bad slogan, after all. Amen.

America is a ________ Nation

I have a friend who is fond of saying that America is a Christian nation; I have to confess that I don't know what he means.That's not just a rhetorical ploy: I think that the phrase is so overused, so general, and so thoughtlessly invoked to support one cause or another, that it is in fact unclear to me just what people mean they use it. It could mean:
Continue reading America is a ________ Nation

1) The majority of American citizens are actually Christian. This is the most straightforward meaning, and also has the virtue of being (more or less) verifiable. One could do a poll and discover that (say) 85% of Americans can recite the Apostles' Creed without flinching. But while this meaning is verifiable, it also has the disadvantage of being useless: what, precisely, follows from the fact that most American citizens are Christian? It is also verifiable that a majority of American citizens are female. Does that mean that all true Americans are actually female, or at least willing to allow females to set the national agenda, and get out of their way when they seek to make policy that affects all of us? If it is not true for females, why do we Christians feel differently? I suspect it is because we (or at least some of us) subscribe to a different sense of America being Christian than this one. Maybe it is:

2) Historically, the institutions of America were set up by Christians and were based on (Judeo-?) Christian principles. Again, we seem to be on relatively safe ground (although not as safe as #1). We can easily do a historical survey and find that a large number of the major figures in the founding of our nation were Christians of one stripe or another, mostly either evangelicals or unitarians. Of course, if we want to be really precise, we should say that America is a Protestant (and then either evangelical and rationalist) nation, for Roman Catholicism was seen as an unwelcome outside influence. Roman Catholics have struggled mightily for quite some time to show that they are true-blue Americans, think of the suspicions surrounding John F. Kennedy. They have come quite a ways, though, as the criticism by many of John F. Kerry was not that he was too closely aligned with the pope, but that he wasn't close enough. I also think it is significant that the Protestants who were most influential in the founding of America (evangelical, rationalist) had almost no sense of the church as a visible embodiment of the Kingdom. American evangelicals of either the reformed or pietist varieties have typically seen the church as a voluntary collection of believers. Rationalists were usually concerned with doing one's duty and living a good life; the church for them was more about making decent, respectable citizens than making saints. The Transcendentalists who inherited a good bit of the rationalist establishment had even less use for the church, seeing it as primarily an unwelcome accretion of hoary tradition which should be stripped away to find the "true religion of man". (I admit, the foregoing was an oversimplification; but this is a blog, not a monograph, and I will stand by them as substantially correct) All of which is to say that the institutions of America were set up by certain kinds of Christians, who were themselves products of certain historically specific conflicts. So at any rate, those who hold to this second version need to 'fess up that it is not a Christian nation, broadly construed, but a certain kind of Christian nation, and there might be certain other Christians who would not be at home here (much less Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists). But in the end we shouldn't be distracted into qualifying the claim in this way, because it is really a problem of description versus prescription: just because thus and such was (descriptively) the case at the founding of the nation, it does not lead to thus and such needing to be the case here and now. For example, the founders of the nation were also propertied white males, and yet today we extend the franchise to the poor, to people of other races and ethnicities, and to women without a thought. (Granted it took awhile, but we eventually made those changes and found that we were still Americans afterward.) It could, of course, be the case that America is by definition Christian, as perhaps one might suggest it is by definition egalitarian. In that sense, a prescription (America should be Christian) might follow from a description (America was founded by Christians). But that is not meaning number 2, it's meaning numbers 3 and 4:

3) It was the intention of the founders of America that we be a Christian nation. This is rather more difficult to establish, and even if one could establish it, it still isn't clear what follows from it. For example, it could be shown that the founders also intended that only propertied white males be able to vote -- but again, we have extended the franchise (and confounded the founders' intentions) with little or no problem. The same would hold true of their intentions vis-a-vis religion.

So far, we have looked at the following justifications for America being called a Christian nation: Most Americans are Christians, The nation was founded by Christians, The nation was founded by Christians who intended it to be a Christian nation. None of these seem persuasive, but there is one more meaning of the phrase "America is a Christian nation" which I suspect many actually hold, perhaps with some measure of bad conscience:

4) America is a Christian nation because it is God's elect nation. In this version, America has been given by God a role analogous to Israel in the Old Testament, as God's chosen instrument. America bestows and spreads God's gifts throughout the world: freedom, liberty, consumer goods, true religion. This very sense of America as elect nation has crept into our president's rhetoric about war, but he is only the most recent proponent of a longstanding American tradition. (It is also a longstanding British tradition: they did it before us, and, frankly, they did it better, though no more convincingly. They also have the benefit of having ceased this rhetoric for the most part.) The Puritans' sense of the nation being a "shining beacon on a hill" has often been enlisted in this cause, although I think it is usually misunderstood by those who so use it. Quite often, this sense of America as an elect nation owes much more to civil religion than to anything demonstrably Christian, and there's a reason for that: no such claim can be supported from the Bible, tradition, or theological reason. It is, perhaps, gnostic, a claim to a secret revelation, a secret knowledge about God's call, God's plan for the world, and the nature of this nation. Such a claim usurps the role of the actual political body which is analogous (if not quite superseding) to Israel in the Old Testament: the church, the chosen saints of God salted throughout the nations of the world. Because of this, such a claim is damnable idolatry and should be renounced by any self-respecting Christian.

America is none of these. America is not a Christian nation. America is a nation, pure and simple. It is one of the nations (the Greek word can also be translated Gentiles) that Israel and the Church are to live among, to which Jesus sent us to make disciples.

I realize that this opens up as many questions as it answers, probably more. For example, what is the proper role of the Church in America? If the Church is the primary political body for Christians, then to what extent should Christians be involved in the political doings of the nation-state? As Christians, we may have ceded to the nation-state some of our own responsibilities (caring for the poor, the elderly, the sick), as my friend Pamela suggests in a comment earlier, but does that mean we should discourage the nation-state from doing that? I don't know the answers to these questions, even for myself, much less to persuade others. I know that it is quite complex, and any response will reflect that. But I am quite dissatisfied with the present syntheses on offer, which seem to boil down like this:

1) Make the state the church, outlawing (say) the teaching of evolution, mandating prayer in schools, and so forth. As I said to a dear friend last week in an e-mail, this version seems to think that if we just overturn Roe v. Wade then the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness, which is palpable nonsense. or:

2) Check your faith at the door, leaving your convictions about that which informs (ideally) the whole of your life to one side as unimportant.

I could and no doubt will say more about this in future, although perhaps to trumpet my perplexity and ignorance as much as anything else. Maybe one of my three (!) gentle readers will add his or her comments.

But for now, this much I am sure of: America is a nation, full stop.