Christianity and culture

Review: American Idolatry

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American Idolatry, Andrew L. Whitehead. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2023.

Summary: Drawing on sociological research showing the association of racism and xenophobia with Christian nationalism, argues of the dangers of the idolatries of power, fear and violence to the American church.

My exposures to Christian nationalism are of the anecdotal character–the heartbreak of pastors whose people forsake sound teaching for a message of nationalism laced with fear and calls to the assertion of power or even to violent uprising. I also know the heartbreaking work of walking alongside young people “de-constructing” their faith because of alienation from churches that have become captive to such messages, which seems so unlike what they’ve encountered of Jesus in the gospels.

Andrew Whitehead articulates with academic rigor the concerns I have in my personal encounters. He writes as someone growing up within evangelicalism who wrestles with whether it is possible to be both Christian and patriot (yes) and how Christian nationalism is different from both. As a Christian, he argues that Christian nationalism is an empty, hollow philosophy rooted in idolatries of power, fear, and violence. As a sociologist, he notes studies that show how the embrace of Christian nationalism is one of the best predictors of both racist and anti-immigrant attitudes.

He begins with defining Christian nationalism as the conviction that civic life should be organized according to a particular form of conservative Christianity. This includes a moral traditionalism that maintains social hierarchies (between men and women, economic classes, races, and outsiders) and supports authoritarian social control to maintain those boundaries, including the threat and use of violence. He spends a chapter defining this, noting that signs of this in churches are American flags in sanctuaries, messages of fear or self-interest from the pulpit, “Celebrate America” services around July 4, defense of seeking access to power, comfort with the use of violence, and us versus them thinking.

The next three chapters look at three manifestations of idolatry, which he describes, quoting Kaitlyn Schiess as the “capitulation to a different story and set of values. Idols make promises of protection and provision, and they require allegiance. He looks at the focus on using power to benefit “us” versus seeking the common good of all, and contrasts this with the approach of a Jesus who “turns the other cheek. For example, are we concerned with defending our religious liberty or protecting the religious liberty of all? Then he looks at how fear becomes an idol attracting followers by evoking fears around race, immigrants, and religion and contrasts this to the teaching of Jesus who calls his disciples to “fear not.” He notes for the example the evoking of the fears of the presence of immigrants leading to higher crime rates when in fact the crime rates among this group are lower. Finally, Whitehead considers how Christians have legitimated the use of violence in the assertion of power to attain the goals of conservative Christianity, as visibly evident in the January 6 effort to seize the Capitol building and prevent the Constitutional certification of the election and succession of the presidency. Whitehead believes this to be deeply embedded in our history both with Indigenous people and Blacks maintaining first slavery, and then racial subordination. Again he contrasts this with the command of Jesus to “lay down your sword.”

Chapters six and seven then discuss how power, fear, and violence associated with Christian nationalism are connected empirically with racism and xenophobia. He offers suggestions for readings and one of the most important suggestions he offers is for white churches to relinquish social control, sharing the example of Shalom Community Church’s reparations efforts and relnquishing all controls of funds collected to Black religious and community leaders. He observes how we will go on short-term mission trips but want to refuse entry of people from the same countries to the US. He profiles the Neighbor to Neighbor ministry that has worked to welcome immigrants and how it has replaced fear with joy.

In his concluding chapter, he speaks of the challenge to tell better stories than the idol stories the Christian nationalism has embraced. I think this is spot on. My sense is that the appeal of Christian nationalism is that it offers both a cause and a sense of being empowered, and yet these are not derived from the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom. I’ve been saddened oftentimes by not only how destructive and divisive is Christian nationalism. I’m saddened by how small it is compared to the grand narrative of the gospel that brings both personal and social transformation, breaking down every barrier, and accomplishing through spiritual power and the power of love what political power and armed violence can never achieve. Whitehead’s use of examples of ministries that are doing this are important–stories that can be seen and not just talk are necessary.

Whitehead’s book is also important in confronting where elements of Christian nationalism have crept into our churches. I wonder, though, how many such churches will read this. I suspect that a more significant audience may be those who have been part of such churches in the past who need to come to terms with this past, and perhaps the unconcious biases that they carry from these, even if they have reacted against the church. Reflection, lament, repentance, and embrace of the gospel offer a path of spiritual reconstruction, and this book can help point the way.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: From Pandemic To Renewal

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From Pandemic to Renewal, Chris Rice. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: Addresses eight global crises exposed by the COVID pandemic and how Christians may be agents of healing and transformation.

We’ve been through a crisis unlike what most of us have ever faced. Not just some of us in some places. But all of us. In every place. It’s one that has left its marks in our bodies, in our families and social networks, in our politics. Even where the marks are not visible, there are scars on our psyches. That’s what a deadly global pandemic does. And it exposed other crises in our world–political polarization, inequities, corruption, international tensions and a crisis of truth. For many, it exposed a poverty of spiritual resources, evident as much as anything in what seems our frantic effort just to move on and put the pandemic behind us. But the marks remain, and the crises the pandemic exposed remain. Christians are a people who don’t believe in moving on, but in renewal and transformation, often out of suffering, deep pain, and crisis. That’s because we believe in a God who has entered the world’s suffering, pain, and death in his Son, and who brought life, renewal, and transformation out of the darkest hour. But the question is, how does this bear on our experience of the last years and the crises we continue to face?

Chris Rice has lived a life at the intersection of the world’s pain and the gospel’s renewing power, from interracial community development efforts in Mississippi, to the halls of academia, to international relief efforts, and to pleading the cause of the world’s poor at the United Nations. Then the pandemic isolated him for a time in New England with his father and gave him to think about the challenges and opportunities of renewal in a post-pandemic world. In this book he identifies eight crises exposed more clearly during the pandemic and transformative Christian practices to address these crises. His eight chapters dealing with these are:

1. Bearing Joy for a World of Frantic Anxiety. In a world of rising anxiety expressed in a focus on activity, excessive positivism and activism turned to violence, Rice proposes the virtue of joy born out of a life of contemplating being the beloved of God.

2. Centering the Vulnerable for a World of Rising Disparity. The pandemic, thought to be the great equalizer, exposed inequities in death rates, high stock values and long food lines, and great inequalities in the distribution of vaccines. The way of the gospel is the way of the Samaritan on the Jericho road, taking costly steps to focus on the world’s vulnerable.

3. Being Peacemakers for a World of Surging Polarization. Rice recounts some of the unhealed wrongs he has encountered among those with whom he works and the power of the word “we” as we think of who “our” people are. He speaks of the Antioch moment where the gospel crosses boundaries of hostility, of the church’s peacemaking mission as we pursue restorative justice and hold truth and love together in these efforts.

4. Redeeming Power for a World of Political Mediocrity. Rice assesses both the potential for great good and great evil in the exercise of political power. He considers our contemporary polarization, paralysis, and pessimism, and the value of political love in action for the sake of the vulnerable, practiced in prayer, pursuing “purple” spaces, and local opportunities to pursue the common good.

5. Making Transnational Disciples for a World of American Blinders. Rice talks about the American blinders of both how we may believe ourselves saviors of the world and our lack of perception of how American power is perceived elsewhere in the world. He invites us to grow as transnational disciples through expanding what we read, through empowering majority world leaders, and pursuing international friendships.

6. Pursuing Private Integrity for a World of Public Validation. For many of us, what we do, what we have, and what others think of us is the focus of our lives. Rice calls Christians to private integrity, who we are out of public view, through personal examination, vulnerability with others, and communal safeguarding.

7. Cultivating Moral Imagination for a World of Unprecedented Dangers. Amid the dangers of technological disruption, environmental degradation, and the bi-polar China-US conflict, he bids us to imagine a moral world yet to be through forsaking our reliance on technological solutions and our lust for dominion, through instilling hope, through “thinking little,” through practicing non-violent communication, and making climate change personal. He also advises that more Americans might spend time learning Chinese! I thought this perhaps the most prescient chapter in the book.

8. Renewing the Church for a World Longing for Hope. The pandemic, in Rice’s view, has been a time of pruning for the church, a prelude to its renewal. He believes renewal consists in knowing our destination, reforming Christian formation, going deep into congregational life, creating new wineskins for mission, learning to function as ambassadors in the public square, and rooting our lives in intimacy with Christ.

What is striking as I look over this list is that it is about the formation and renewal of Christian character. Joy. Vulnerability. Peacemaking. Political love. Discipleship. Integrity. Moral Imagination. All of this is woven in the context of ecclesial communities. Rice makes a compelling case that this renewal of Christian character has far-reaching consequences, extending to the anxious, the poor, those at enmity, to our politics, to the nations, to our social lives, and to the existential dangers of our time–whether technological, environmental, or nuclear apocalypses.

Chris Rice opens a conversation we desperately need to have. There is no getting back to life before the pandemic. We live in a different, and in many ways, scarier world. How then will the people of God live? Will we bring spiritual understanding to what we have been through, and to how we might live amid the dangers and challenges and opportunities of our new situation? Will we stop fighting old battles and resist the temptation to simply return to our old patterns? This book, including the discussion guide provided for groups, can be an instrument for Christian communities to take stock and discern what it can mean to hope for renewal out of the ruins of these last years.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Stuck in the Present

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Stuck in the Present: How History Frees & Forms Christians, David George Moore (Foreword by Carl R. Trueman). Abilene, TX: Leafwood Publishers, 2021.

Summary: A discussion of the value of reading history for the Christian, better equipping us not only to understand our past but to engage our present, and how to make the most of what we learn.

“There is no truth in history.” “You can’t trust anyone who writes history.” I’ve seen comments like this in social media, as well as in some commentary. In part, I understand the comments. I’ve read “historical” accounts that are selective, cherry-picking facts that support whatever they are asserting, while ignoring other facts that weaken their case. But I also love history and have read a lot of it. And I can point to careful historians who don’t leave things out and form their conclusions on the basis of facts and primary sources. I learn from them, and when I see present day parallels, I can discern more of the implications facing us. Seeing what happened when an archduke was assassinated in Central Europe, triggering the events of World War I, I see how fraught “incursions” on Ukraine’s sovereignty could be.

David George Moore, in this highly readable account, makes the case for the benefits to Christians of reading history, and how we may do so discerningly. He contends that due to our disdain for history, many of us are stuck in the present, impoverished of the longer view that gives us a breadth of perspective from which to assess present events. He begins though for arguing that we end the divide between head and heart– that we both invest in the hard work of learning history (head) and do so that we might more fully love God and others (heart). The hard involves concentration, a willingness to weigh different viewpoints, including those we might dissent from, and may often be motivated by our passion for cogent witness. He contends that learning is spiritual, ongoing, practical, and can be painful when it requires change of us. It is relentlessly curious.

He goes on to argue that the past is not the past. He contends that Christians, of all people, ought get this idea. The events of the death and resurrection of Jesus set in motion a chain of events that stretches over 2000 years and shape the very form of our lives and worship, and even many of our church buildings. Often, the study of history reveals our own cultural blind spots. History explains how we got here and gives us a shared memory and heritage, a profound resource at times of difference and a source of hope.

He then tackles the question of what we can know of the past. He observes that the past may sometimes be easier to study than the present–it is easier to distinguish the important from the trivial. He outlines how one may distinguish good from shoddy historical scholarship–the thorough consideration of all relevant primary sources, the balanced discussion of different viewpoints, the judiciously reached conclusions that don’t go beyond or contrary to sources. He argues that these practices, while distinctive from scientific methods, demonstrate the possibility of historical work not hopelessly mired in subjectivity.

He concludes with the dispositions necessary for productive learning–humility, honesty about our sin, remembering only God is omniscient, and listening well. He contends for four practices he calls Moore’s Maxims when dealing with important and controversial matters:

  1. Be sure that we have properly understood the other’s position.
  2. Be certain that we understand our own position.
  3. Recognize that we may give our positions more importance than they deserve, that we may differ over matters of secondary importance that we may just agree to disagree on.
  4. Always strive to communicate with grace.

He concludes by commending the three virtues of holiness, humility and humor, especially the ability to laugh at ourselves.

Moore’s discussion is punctuated by application sections titled “Benefits to your ministry.” This should not be taken as just for pastors since all of us are called to serve (or minister on behalf of) the Lord. His argument is one relevant to every Christian and leaves us better equipped to engage. How I wish, for example, that our present day American church had learned the lessons that run from Constantine to the present about how the church was always seriously weakened in terms of spiritual power when it entwined itself with state power.

The work includes two appendices. The first consists of three interviews that offer case studies of the value of reading history with Robert Tracy McKenzie on the First Thanksgiving, Jemar Tisby on the American church and race, and James McPherson on the Civil War. The second was of interest, raising some concerns over the “Inductive Method.” He grounds his discussion in both the other approaches used to engage scripture in the church’s history and the inductive method being grounded in Common Sense Realism. I found it curious that his objection to inductive study might equally be applied to his defense of historical research. In truth, neither are totally detached and objective–but that doesn’t mean that either is necessarily mired in subjectivity. The checks of humility, of checking our understanding against received tradition, of the danger of forced applications are well taken.

I was surprised here at the absence of any reference in the text or notes to Robert A. Traina, whose Methodical Bible Study was the Bible of Inductive study, and whose instruction at Biblical Seminary in New York was influential upon many who taught this method (including the reviewer, through one of his students). Traina would probably readily concur with his concerns but argue that careful textual study, rooted first in observation, is the counterpart to the good historiography Moore upholds in other parts of this work and addresses his concerns.

That quibble aside, this is a readable, engaging, and vital argument for the importance of reading and knowing history. The suggested reading points the reader to more resources making this case and exemplifying good historiography. While Moore makes a serious case for reading history, it is also evident that he, as have I, have discovered the rich enjoyment awaiting the reader as they delve into good works of history. I hope that will be the case for many (and I hope it is many) who read his book!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Reading the Times

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Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Jeffrey Bilbro. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021

Summary: A discussion of what Christian faithfulness looks like as we engage the news, focusing on our practices of attention, our awareness of the time we are in, and the communities of which we are part.

We are in what some have called an epistemic crisis, particularly as it pertains to the news. We have more access to news media than ever on broadcast and cable TV, print and online publications and stories that pervade our social media feeds. Yet we are less confident than ever in the veracity of these sources and so we turn to those that our particular “tribe” favor. Jeffrey Bilbro comes at this slant. Eschewing the traditional advice (that has even appeared on this blog) of fact-checking and diversifying our news sources, Bilbro proposes a different theological framework for how we engage with the news.

First of all, he considers the Christian practice of attentiveness. He observes what he calls the “macadamization of the mind” with all the different news fragments that come across our attention every day, that flattens our critical and perceptual abilities. He commends sancta indifferentia, a holy indifference that is not disengagement but rather responses that come out of contemplation and not knee-jerk passions, allowing us to discern what we ought really care about and focusing on truth rather than outcomes. We need to learn how to read not the Times but the Eternities, in the words of Thoreau. Some of this may come through the liturgies of attention of reading books, particularly old books and learning a craft that grounds us in the physical world rather than the virtual life of our screens.

Second, Bilbro focuses on time, distinguishing between chronos or clock time, and kairos, an awareness of the seasons and rhythms of life. Both may be over-emphasized. Instead, Bilbro commends Auerbach’s idea of “figural realism” that “locates common individuals and events in the grand architecture of heaven.” In Christian faith, the Incarnation may be considered the greatest example of this as the coming of Jesus brings to focus the redemptive purposes of God pointing to their ultimate fulfillment in the eschaton. For Christians, the practices of the liturgies of the hours and the church year as well as the meditation upon works of art attune us to the great realities within which our daily, embodied life is lived.

Finally Bilbro considers the communities to which we belong–not nebulous, online communities or political tribes, but the local communities of our physical place, our congregations, and those we join in deeply shared interests. This is why the safeguards commonly proposed to dealing with media are not enough. They do not engage the atomization of community into amorphous “public spheres.” Here he commends the forming of real communities that cross ideological line in addressing localized and practical concerns such as has occurred with the Catholic Worker Movement and the Bruderhof, and notes the publishing efforts that arise from these that provide redemptive alternatives to much of our media. He notes the examples of both Frederick Douglass and Dorothy Day, whose writing came out of and was sustained by the communities of concern of which they were part. Bilbro shares the example of his own efforts in local culture, reflected in the website Front Porch Republic. He argues we ought both support and engage in such efforts in real community.

There is much I like in what Bilbro proposes in having our lives grounded in attention, aware of the kairos moments of God amid the stream of events, and real belonging to our local communities–even to the point of walking in them, which many of us have rediscovered in the pandemic. I would have appreciated some discussion about distinguishing between redemptive and toxic communities. White Citizens Councils and abolitionist and civil rights organizations both functioned at local levels and published. What is the difference between a community that draws one into a dark place, and one that strengthens and calls out the better angels of our nature?

What I most appreciate is that Bilbro proposes that the shape of Christian faithfulness as we engage the news is really one of bringing our reading of the news into a richly textured life of attention, of awareness of the grander story in which our lives are embedded, and of the communal life of those with whom we walk through life. Bilbro offers both fresh perspective and practical steps that help us read both the Times and the Eternities in our lives.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.