How to Fight

Today, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 10:30 am to 12 noon Eastern Time zone, you are invited to watch the webcast of a panel moderated by Chris Glaser on “Religion in the Public Square” at Yale Divinity School.

“Because church people tend to think they should not fight, most of them are really bad at it,” Barbara Brown Taylor rightly observes in her book, Leaving Church.

I think this applies not only to congregations. Couples, families, colleagues, coworkers, communities, citizens, elected officials, liberals and conservatives (the latter two for different reasons) do not know how to fight in a way that is mutually beneficial. Winning is more important than compromise, scoring points is worth more than mutual growth, attacking individuals has more traction than evaluating and even understanding another’s positions.

Many of us liberals and progressives fear conflict, and thus bend over backwards to accommodate opposing views, sometimes to the detriment of what is right. Many conservatives and neoconservatives enjoy the fray, as if going to holy war, sometimes to the detriment of what is just. Liberals by definition are to be open to all viewpoints; conservatives by definition are resistant to progressive views.

In high school, one of my least favorite extracurricular activities was debate club. The research involved, the requirement to argue each side of an issue, the inherent public speaking as well as the evaluation of the judges all made it undeniably challenging. And the topic that year was “socialized medicine,” hard to believe less controversial then than it is now but difficult nonetheless.

What I learned, though, was that attacking an individual rather than his or her facts lost points. Attacking an opinion rather than its underlying bases lost points. Attacking an idea rather than cogently presenting an alternative idea lost points. Lack of humility and lack of an ability to “see” the justifiability of the other side’s position lost points, as well as the understanding required to refute those justifications. Winning the debate was as much about remaining agreeable as it was about being right. (Presidential debates are closer in form to raucous wrestling matches than debate formats we were taught!)

That’s why I both loved and was challenged by the television series The West Wing.  Though fictionally based on the administration of a liberal president, it nonetheless tried to show divergent opinions on a wide variety of subjects, and the bases of those opinions. I remember one episode in particular that felt like a slap in the face, when a conservative staff member said to a liberal staff member, “It’s not that you just want to regulate gun safety. It’s that you don’t like the people who like guns.” And I had to admit, that at least for me, this was somewhat true. The gun aficionado to me was of a different class—my classism revealed.

Today I moderate a panel for my Yale Divinity School reunion on the subject, “Religion in the Public Square.” Fittingly, it will be held in Niebuhr Hall on the campus, named for famed YDS theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, who taught and wrote of the need for “the prophetic strain” in Christianity. Two more recent books come to mind. One is Yale professor Stephen L. Carter’s book, a favorite of then President Bill Clinton, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, about how religious values have a place in the public square. The second is University of Massachusetts professor Glenn Tinder’s The Political Meaning of Christianity: The Prophetic Stance, about the role of Christianity standing over against popular culture as loving critic. I recommend both of these books as guides to fighting for what is right and just.

Many of our parents encouraged us to stand up to bullies when we were kids. Jesus stood up to the religious and political bullies of his day, unwilling to kill but unwilling to yield in the fight for what was right and just. While more humbly asserting what is right and just (given that we are not Jesus!), I believe we need to do this as well, “armed” with truth, passion, understanding, and compassion, just as Jesus was. As our YDS liberation theology professor Letty Russell once wrote, “We join in God’s work of liberation by reflecting on the meaning of that liberation in the lives of those who find themselves dehumanized.”

+++

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal devotions, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  Please click here to learn more about this ministry and/or make a donation!

"Bad Theology"

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

Liberals should not allow ourselves to be bullied by self-styled conservatives who accuse us of “bad theology.”

“Our sociology is predictably derived from, legitimated by, and reflective of our theology. And if we gather around a static god of order who only guards the interests of the ‘haves,’ oppression cannot be far behind,” Old Testament seminary professor Walter Brueggemann wrote in The Prophetic Imagination.

The frequent mistake of liberals in our politics of justice and compassion, Brueggemann suggests, is that we fail to claim our theological basis in God’s freedom to identify with the “have nots” over against the status quo. So, “Social radicalism has been like a cut flower without nourishment, without any sanctions deeper than human courage and good intentions.”

On the other hand he says, “A case can be made that unprophetic conservatives [do] not take God seriously enough to see that our discernment of God has remarkable sociological implications.”

From Moses through the prophets to Jesus, the biblical witness is of a God who cares about the oppressed, the widow, the orphan, the alien, the poor, and the religious outcast. Unless we are caring for “the least of these,” we are not taking the theology of the Bible seriously. And yet those who oppose caring for “the least of these,” from social security to health care to immigration reform, are the most likely to claim our theology is “bad.” (BTW, Jesus said nothing about contraception or homosexuality, the frequent litmus tests of “good” theology, and more than once he affirmed the rights of women.) In preserving the biblical tradition, liberals are the true conservatives.

Religious freedom is not freedom from responsibility to provide for the underserved or underprivileged. It is rather freedom from the gods and the demagogues that prevent us from doing so.

Wise as Serpents

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

During a Q&A following my presentation on “Reconciliation” this past weekend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a young woman commented on the difficulty having true dialogue with an opponent who feels free to attack in a way that same opponent would resent being attacked.

I recognized the experience. Many religious and political conservatives seem to require a lot of coddling when we try to offer liberal or progressive alternate views. I try to say nice things about their heroes or values or viewpoints while they seem to feel no compunction blasting mine!
 
I had just contributed reflections to a lectionary resource book on Jesus’ admonition to his disciples as he sent them out to proclaim the commonwealth of God: “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” The King James Version has “harmless as doves,” suggesting gentleness.

But this counsel seems only to be expected of the underdog facing off with the powerful and privileged. And so in recent centuries we honor the wisdom and gentleness of people like Sojourner Truth, Margaret Sanger, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Oscar Romero, and Desmond Tutu.

But why aren’t those who oppose movements of the Spirit similarly counseled to wisdom and gentleness? Why are they allowed to get away with ignorance and harshness?

Wise and gentle Mary’s anticipation of the commonwealth of God was read in the Pittsburgh churches I preached in Sunday: “God has shown divine strength, scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts, bringing down the powerful from their thrones, and lifting the lowly; filling the hungry with good things, and confounding the privileged.”

In her book, Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris reminds us that Mary’s song was considered so subversive that “the government of Guatemala banned its public recitation” in the 1980’s!

Like mother, like son.