The Social Gospel Nag

My wife and I have been searching for a new church in our new city for just over a year. We’ve settled on one, for now. But the search has been disconcerting. 

There are a hundred-and-one reasons. One is my own, slowly, dissolving faith. I keep hoping for a church that will run with my doubts, rather than try to assuage them, or deflect them, or (God forbid) covert me to some sort of orthodoxy.

Shub Niggurath is a fictional H.P. Lovecraft god.
One that can, apparently, inspire preachers to nag.

The search has also been disconcerting, if I’m totally honest, because many—by far the most—of the churches I’ve visited have been mostly made up of elderly people. They’ve been faithful for long lifetimes. They deserve an opportunity to rest from their labors, to enjoy the next generation take on leadership and choir seats. I remember when—in a different denomination—I preached to churches full of young people, young adults, and young marrieds. It made for better singing, better after-sermon coffee klatches, better bazaars and picnics and volunteers. It’s all gone now—if not in the denomination I used to serve as a minister in—at least it’s very rare in the churches I’ve checked out in my new city.

But among all the reasons (I could go on for a while) why mainline churches (and increasingly, Evangelical churches) are failing, the one that irks me the most is this—they are consumed by a form of works righteousness.
 
Works righteousness is the idea you have to do something to get in good with God. In Evangelical churches, it manifests itself in the preaching of moral codes, which if you keep (more or less, and as defined by your denomination or minister) you get heaven as a reward. The Trumpization of the Evangelical Church in the USA has put the lie to that. 
 
But in the UCC, we have our own unique kind of social gospel works righteousness. It’s the notion that unless we’re busy doing everything in our power to set the powers that be—government, institutions, systems—to right, we’re falling short. 
 
United Church works righteousness is a never-ending list of “to-do’s.” House the homeless. Challenge Israeli apartheid. Fight racism. Pursue peace. Be LGBTQ-friendly. Change the system. Save the planet. Change your habits. Call your MP. Donate. Plant a forest. Acknowledge our wrongs vis a vis First Nations. And on and on.
 
Ironically, there is not a single one of these “to-do’s” that I disagree with. I embrace every one, without qualification. I preached or have written about each one. I have been guilty of what I’m going to rail against in this post.
 
The problem is one of balance. You see, the only church that can effectively make a dent on these issues is a healthy church. Such churches are multi-generational. They play and are fun. They meet in and out of the sanctuary. They are full of laughter and full of informed care for those in the fellowship who need it. They are full of people who are focused on each other as the closest neighbours at hand, a practical training ground for all our other neighbours. 
 
But preachers who wave their finger, endlessly, at people, telling them what to do, how to do it, why to do it all—they are weighing church goers down and making staying church, or coming for the second or third time, very hard. 

The preacher nag inspires the same sort of negative reactions that mask mandates did. It isn't that the mask mandate was a dumb idea. It is that people don't want to be told, over and over. It infuriates most of us--or exhausts us before we begin.
 
The preacher nag, perhaps unintentionally, serves as a constant accusation that we have not measured up. It is imitative, in an odd way, of how newspapers—on TV or the web or even real paper—work. You put the murders first, the car crashes next, and finish with scandal. Op Ed pages are full of negative reads on each and every political decision and economic trend. Good news is either absent or buried. 
 
Our churches are similarly focused on all that’s wrong. We put the latest injustice first, then the worst looming ecological disaster next, and finish with what we better do or else last. Good news?
 
Look. Once again, I’m personally engaged in righting injustices, responding to disasters, and being politically involved. But as much as the church as a public institution and its members as citizens need to address many urgent matters, we should do so because the church has inspired us to gratitude and thanksgiving first. Too much nagging muddies our motivation and saps our energy.
 
Let’s preach dreams rooted in hope. I want to hear sermons that celebrate the good—and even the privilege—that so many of us experience; that celebrate starry nights, great music and art, real caring, an ancient tradition, forgiveness, sex, shared meals, and friendship. 
 
Let’s preach out of our gratitude rather than our civic and cultural problems and fears and injustices. Where is the light yoke promised by Jesus? Where is the community in love with each other—not just for Sunday coffee time—but communities that prioritize the knowing and sharing and mutual support that the New Testament so often speaks of? That’s the foundation of our love for all neighbours and strangers.
 
I long for the consolations of the gospel. I long for a spirituality that isn’t so much marching orders as it a magical spiritual mystery tour. I long to be inspired instead of commanded.
 
Look, the seventy- and eighty-year-olds who fill many United Church pews are true believers in the social gospel. Most of them don’t need to be convinced anymore. They’ve hung around when the UCC was among the first churches in Canada to truly welcome women to leadership. We lost a third or more of our membership making sure that LGBTQ people were not only welcomed, but celebrated, but they stuck with us. Our older members also hung around when we called for an end to apartheid and as we made steps to work out reconciliation with First Nations. The people who still come to our churches have fed the hungry, housed the homeless, donated to the United Church and its favorite causes, and on and on. They don’t need to be nagged to do more.
 
And younger people are looking for hope, for inspiration, for meaning amid so many crises—they don’t want to be nagged to do more and more and more either. They’re busy with families and two careers. They’re struggling to make mortgage or rent payments and to hang on to their temporary jobs in a gig economy. Even if we, here in Canada, are living through the materially best of times, most peaceful of times, many young people don’t experience it that way. What do we have to say to them besides “volunteer. Do more. Support. Vote. Go. Go. Go.”?
 

I’d love to see the United Church commit to some sort of reverse-sabbath pattern when it comes to pulpit nagging. That would be a commitment to limit our nagging to one Sunday in seven. A commitment in the rest of our preaching and lives together to focus on the old, old story (and some new ones!) because the way to change anyone’s heart is through the doorway of the imagination.  

 
I’m not lazy. I do my part. But I’m filled with spiritual yearning. I want meaning. Maybe I'm strange that way. I wake up wondering what it is all about. I feel vulnerable in a world more dangerous than we realize and I want to know whether there is hope. I want my church to have a psychic playground out back, where we can laugh and play together, feed each other and party. Where I can be rejuvenated. 
 
I get that other people might want wildly different things from church than what I want. But if we did a reverse Sabbath, we could use those other six Sundays to explore what other people are curious about when it comes to God and humanity and this planet. Bring it on.
 
But, oh. I’m so tired of being told what to do.
 
 

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God?

If you go to church, you’ve probably sung Here I Am to Worship, by Tim Hughes:
 
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, they great name we praise.
 
I don’t sing this song. Though God has always had an outsize presence in my life, I’m trying to tone it down. An almighty God just doesn’t make much sense to me anymore—though I’m still good with “invisible.” I’ll get back to that, briefly, before the end of this post. But right now, you might well be wondering, “what? Haven’t you read J. B. Phillips’ famous book, Your God Is Too Small?” This was a big bestseller in the fifties and has been continually in print since then. 

Phillips’ book contains insights. He says we shouldn’t think of God as our resident policeman or as a grand old man or as a managing director, among other things. Phillips’ bottom line is that we must avoid caricatures of God. They often reflect our own wants, needs, or psychoses.
 
Ironically, some of these caricatures do make God seem big—though in distorted ways. So, if God really was a cosmic policeman, keeping peace for everyone in the world world, that would be a hugely impressive God. Or, if God was everyone’s (nearly eight billion of us) managing director, serving as everyone's judge and co-pilot, that would be impressive.
 
After rejecting these metaphors, Phillips says the best clue we have to the greatness of God is our longing for beauty, good and truth, longing that he says cannot be explained by science. This is odd because biologists, psychologists, and philosophers all have theories about how such longings evolved and why we experience them. 
 
Phillips also suggest that a key truth that magnifies God is that he reconciles himself (always a "him" for Phillips) to us through the god-man Jesus. And while this section of the book mentions several other doctrines Phillips believes make the case for a really big God, I didn’t find it very compelling. In spite of his frequent use of phrases like, “the weight of the evidence,” or “indisputable fact,” he gives too much credit to, and offers too little support for, his own thinking. All in all, Phillips doesn’t so much establish the bigness of God as give a very short course in evangelical theology’s description of a big God.
 
Even if Phillips misfired here, it doesn’t necessarily follow that God is small. Orthodox systematic theology includes lists of God’s "divine attributes," each of which makes for a huge God. He’s apparently omniscient (knows everything), infinite (that means really big), omnipresent (everywhere—quite something when you consider the James Webb photos), immutable (unchangeable—though since this seems silly on the face of it, many theologians have tried to reframe this as faithfulness).
 
Scripture makes some big claims about God too, claims on which these attributes are partly based. This matters if you think scripture is the inspired and infallible word of God. Ironically, people who believe this usually pass over, lightly, descriptions of God that they don't like. For example, theologians don't enumerate attributes that could be based on other, less impressive sides to God: killing forty-two children with bears because they teased his prophet for being bald (2 Kings 2:23-25), killing the first-born of Egypt (Exodus 12:29-32), or killing seventy thousand Israelites because their king did a census (2 Samuel 24). Well, and there are more, similar, portrayals of God all through scripture. 
 
The attributes of God that theologians do talk about are deeply rooted in Greek, mostly Platonic, ideals. And they put God, ironically, in a box. They make God so big that God must be responsible for every good or ill thing that happens in the world. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. But also, on the theory if you can stop a bad thing happening, you should—all human actions, both good and bad pass through the hands of this big God. I recently read a post from a FB friend who wrote, “God is so good,” upon the safe arrival of a few guests from far away. Well, if safety after an eight-hour drive is a gift from God, then so too must car accidents and worse. Only double-predestinarian Calvinists, of course, would admit so gladly. 
 
I don’t like this line of thinking at all. I wonder if there are alternative ways of thinking about God. For example, I remember driving through Bali once, with my spouse Irene, to see Agung volcano.
 
The taxi-driver honked his horn incessantly, and it was bugging me. So, I asked him to explain. He said each honk was a way of honoring the Gods of the place he was passing through: the God of the bridge, the God of the great palm, the God of the dangerous corner. Gods, for him, were small and had limited scope. Their power and might was merely local. They were not omniscient, but could hear, so long as you honked loudly enough. 
 
God doesn't have to be big just because that's the sort of God we want. In truth, for most of recorded history, humans have often hewed to smaller-sized gods. Even the mighty Zeus had to share headlines with Hera his spouse, and a host of lesser Gods, many of them his children. For most of his history, the God of Abraham shared top billing with, variously, El, Baal, and Asherah. Judaism only became a mostly monotheistic religion just before, or during, the Babylonian exile. That development was then written back into, and mirrored, in the scribal compilation and editing of Hebrew scriptures. (More about this is coming in a follow-up post).
 
So, humans, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as King David and nearly all of his descendants—they all, more often than not, worshipped several wee Gods rather than one really big God.
 
This is not an argument for paganism. The wee Gods of most Old Testament Israelites were also wee in their morals, often vindictive and violent, as the examples above  remind us.
 
But a God with more limited scope would explain all our unanswered prayers. Such a God would not be responsible for Tsunamis because he or she couldn’t cause or prevent them. Such a God would not be choosing to be good to some travelers and not others. Such a God would not be coming to town, making a list, checking it twice, to find out who is naughty or nice.
 
What might such a wee God do? Perhaps haunt us with dreams of beauty, goodness, and truth. Such a God might be praying to us to fulfill all his or her dreams. Such a God’s greatest deed might simply be to come to us with a still, small voice. 

God Isn't In the Driver's Seat (or, If Evolution Is True, What Do We Do With God?)

 

            I sort of believe in the theory of evolution like I sort of believe in the theory of gravity. Think about it. That means evolution is not up for discussion. But while the theory of gravity bores me, unless I’m falling, the theory of evolution fascinates me.

 

            Here’s why. I went to Toronto District Christian High, in Woodbridge, as a teen. Unlike many Christian schools, at Toronto Christian we were taught about evolution. We were taught, in fact, that evolution was how God probably created the universe. This is called theistic evolution.

 

            However, there was a single exception. Humans. According to my teachers humans were sinless special creations God made in his image a few thousand years ago. We were not part of the animal kingdom. We did not evolve. 

            This was pretty much the line I was taught at seminary, too. After seminary, I spent a year of graduate study digging deeper, comparing the Bible’s several creation stories to similar older creation stories like the Babylonian Enuma Elish, a creation and flood story told by ancient Israel’s neighbors. I learned that the stories in the Bible seemed to be very intentional, shabbat-night-live satiric commentaries on the more ancient creation stories of Israel’s neighbours. 

 

            Since then, studying human evolution has become a hobby. And one of the reasons I finally left my previous denomination was because I couldn’t, finally, pretend to play along with my denomination’s official view that the Genesis myths were actually real history.

 

            More recently, scientists have unraveled the human genome and the DNA within it. Doing so not only allows us to find relatives several generations removed through sites like 23andme’s DNA kits, but unravelling the human genome has helped us find criminals by the DNA they leave behind, and now even cure some diseases rooted in genetic problems. Within that genome, we’ve also discovered the deep evolutionary roots of humankind that ties us to the rest of the animal kingdom. We humans evolved from other earlier hominids, as have the Great Apes and yes, even monkeys. We are also related to other branches of the homo species, like Neanderthals and Denosivans—both now extinct. 

 

            But why am I telling you all this? Because as I’ve studied cosmic and biological evolution, I’ve begun to ask myself, more and more, “so what role does God play in all this?” If everything evolved, and if science can describe that evolutionary process without needing a God, then what use is God?

 

            And this is what I came up with. It is tentative. It is the best I can do. And I am very, very open to better ideas.

 

            Imagine a car. The car loosely represents the cosmos. And imagine God. God can relate to the car in several ways. For example, perhaps God is the driver.

 

            That is, God gets behind the wheel. God has the key, turns the ignition, and gets the car going. God as driver is in complete control. God chooses the destination. He’s the driver, after all. God steers the car around every corner. In fact, God even built the car he drives—he’s a cosmic Henry Ford. This is how most conservative Christians think of God—he’s completely in charge of the whole cosmos—starting it, directing it, and so on. It’s why, when someone dies or they get a new job, such Christians will say things like, “well, it was God’s will. That’s God’s plan.”

 

            Prayer, then, could be imagined as us asking the driver, God, to steer the car in a certain way, and get us to places we want to go. But God is the driver. God might listen to us, as passengers, but God might not. God is completely in charge of our journeys. Nothing is up to us. In its most extreme of the Calvinist versions of this line of thought, God’s mind is never changed by prayer. God has already decided everything ahead of time. This is called predestination—God decides everything about the destination and our drive there. Humans don’t really have a choice. No free will.

 

            But many Christians (and people of other faiths) disagree. For example, some Christians imagine that God is not much like a driver, but more like a passenger in a self-driving car, a next-generation Tesla, say, that he (usually) invented and built. In this case, God provides the blueprint, gets things going, comes along for the ride, but doesn’t personally steer the car himself. This is called deism.

 

            Deists have their own favourite analogy. Imagine finding a watch in a field. You pick it up. You wind it up. And the watch ticks and tocks. It keeps time. Perfectly. 

 

            If you found such a watch, you would have to presume that it was made by someone. Watches don’t just appear, by accident, as it were. So, if you found a watch, you would have to believe that there was a skilled watchmaker who designed and manufactured it. 

 

            Well, when deists look about the cosmos what they see is something even more wonderfully and fearfully made than that watch. The planets in their circuits, our blood coursing through veins, and all the laws of nature suggested to these ancients that, as with the watch, the cosmos must have a designer and a manufacturer. But once a big bang sets it off, the cosmos runs by itself. God is inventor, creator, but once God is done, God lets the whole mess run itself. Deism. 

 

            I’m more inclined to a deist God than to a driver God who predestines everything. My problem with deism, however, is that modern theories actually can pretty much explain everything—the big bang, the appearance of life, evolution. The physical world doesn’t need an inventor or watchmaker to be properly explained. Which is why Richard Dawkins wrote a book about evolution called, ironically, The Blind Watchmaker. 

 

            Well, as you can see, if you don’t need God to create the cosmos and just come along for the drive, and if you don’t need God as the creator and driver either, there isn’t much room left for God. So, some Christians—liberal ones, for the most part, have begun to think of God not as the driver, not as a quiet passenger who just set things in motion, but as a backseat driver.

 

            You see, while science can explain a lot, some people don’t think science can explain morality, our human notions about what is right and wrong. And so, these Christians turn God into a backseat driver who is always telling us what is right and wrong, what direction to take our lives, which pedestrians and hazards to watch out for. This is a nagging God, a pushy God, a “you better get this right,” God. A liberal works-righteousness God who seems, always, to be saying, “Be better. Do more. Divest. Rally. Protest.” This God speaks to us insistently, mostly through theologians and denominational executives and pressure groups who are sure they know exactly what God wants when it comes to a whole list of contemporary issues. And while I often agree with these people, I don’t like the tone, and I don’t like the imagined God behind this tone, very much.

 

            None of these pictures of God ring true for me. Is there another possibility? I think there is. Perhaps God, in some wild but mysterious way offers guidance when we, alone in the car by ourselves, or together with each other as a community, seek that guidance. That is, instead of nagging us, perhaps God is more like Google Maps or the Waze app. Except those kinds of maps are too directive, too sure. So maybe God is more like the author of an old-fashioned paper map. We can unfold it and turn to it for direction, but we need to read it carefully, parse its options, interpret it, and rely on the corroborating (or not) advice of fellow passengers. Only when we turn to God “The Paper Map,” for direction do we receive it—in part and imperfectly. 

 

            But where might God provide such guidance, in real life? Well, I’d say that scripture is where we often—if not always!—find it; and in the cumulative wisdom we’ve built up about scripture as a community, over thousands of years. Scripture, and our reflection on it, is the divine roadmap we have for arriving (“perhaps,” says John Caputo. “We hope,” I add.) at our desired destination.

 

            I’m not saying that scripture is dictated by God, or that it is authoritative (so we better listen to it, or else!), or even that it is divinely inspired. But overall, scripture—including the scriptures of other religions and the Testament we received from the Jewish people—scriptures do represent thousands of years of deep listening on the part of humans to a mysterious divine wisdom that seems to permeate the cosmos and sometimes our own deepest selves, as well. God whispers, sometimes we hear, some of those who heard tried to write it down.

 

We argue about how to understand scripture, we question some of its odd suggestions that belong to another place and time, but overall, in scripture and in the communities that listen to it we are nudged along. In scripture we may find God gently, kindly, offering direction when we seek it, encouraging us to live full lives that benefit each other and help us find our place in the cosmos.

 

            Scripture in this sense is a lamp that prevents our feet from stumbling when all is otherwise dark (Psalm 119:105). Keep in mind that when scripture is described as a light, it isn’t talking about a modern flashlight or streetlight that reveals all. It is a flickering, uncovered olive-oil lamp with a sputtering wick that threatens to go out at any minute, and gives just enough light so that we don’t trip over what would otherwise be obvious rocks and chasms in the path. 

 

            Scripture is this sort of provisional and delicate divine gift. But gifts, to be true gifts, must be given unconditionally. There is no expectation of a return, no nagging about thank-you cards, no obligation to give something of equal or greater value back. If we were given a gift conditional on how we responded to it, it would be merely a financial transaction, a debt to be repaid, rather than a gift. We’d have to interpret it correctly, or else. But no. As a favorite writer of mine once put it: There is nothing you have to do, there is nothing you have to do, and there is nothing you have to do.

 

            The gift of scripture, written by humans, is an invitation, really, to explore meaning and purpose beyond our everyday matter-of-fact experiences. Science, and theories like evolution, explain a lot—everything, really. And yet, for such a world as this, we also have this one thing more, this ancient gift, this old map, for why and how to live a life—not just for survival, but for the love of all things bright and beautiful.

Understanding the Racist Right’s Affection for Violence

 

            Nearly twenty years ago I was invited by Brock University to give the annual Christ and Culture lecture sponsored by the chaplains there. I was going to speak about the racist Aryan Nations and, in Canada, Heritage Front. This was one of the subjects of my PhD research. A panel of professors as well as the Canadian chair of the B’nai B’rith would respond. 

An Aryan Nations Rally

            Just before I began, three men walked in and sat near the front. They wore Nazi-like insignia, Doc Martens, chains and crosses. They were members of Canada’s Heritage Front, a group not unlike the United States’ Aryan Nations. As I began my lecture, I was somewhat intimidated. I stumbled over some of my words. I wondered what was going to happen.

            My talk especially focused on Richard Butler, the racist leader of the Aryan Nations. He espoused a doctrine called Christian Identity, which taught that white, “Aryan,” peoples were the true descendants of Israel and that modern Jews were imposters. Butler made this claim on the basis of a complete—and idiotic—reinterpretation of the Bible. He also taught that Black persons were subhuman descendants of ape-like people who lived before Adam and Eve. 

Aryan Nation Members and Their Hate on Display

            These sort of claims by so-called Christians were not new. Many can be traced back to the Protocols of Zion, a book written by anti-Jewish propogandists during Tsarist Russia. It is a collection of racist myths of that era, and falsely describes a Jewish plot to take over the world through kidnapping and killing Christian children and using their blood to cook with. Today’s QAnon conspiracy theories are deeply influenced by the completely fictional Protocols. 

 

            Butler’s sermons constantly goaded his followers to look forward to a time of great violence against all non-Aryans. It would be a race war to rid America—or at least the Pacific Northwest—of anyone who wasn’t white. The movement fell apart after Butler’s death, and after it was successfully sued for all its assets by two First Nations people. They had been badly beaten up by Aryan Nation foot soldiers near their compound in Idaho. However, equally racist Aryan Nation splinter groups still exist and influence the Racist Right to the present. 

 

            Do they think they can actually win? Yes. But their strategy isn’t ever going to be a frontal assault against today’s established order. It will be an apocalyptic battle that surprises and amazes.

 

            The worldview—the central story—that motivates the Aryan Nations and others of their ilk is one of extreme lack. They are focused on what is wrong with the world, and especially what is wrong in their own lives, and how little they can do with a deep state in charge to actually change things. Theologian John McClure suggests that with this sort of narrative style: 

 

spiritual warfare is not fought in the sky with human subjects contributing prayers and offerings. It is fought in the arenas of history and human experience, with God contributing self-commitments, promises and priests for the process. 

 

            In other words, the Racist Right’s constant focus on how the whole world conspires against them leads to the notion that divine violence here and now, violence that makes the news, is the only answer. This holy violence will lead—through suffering and sacrifice—to a new world guaranteed and approved by God.

 

            So, to achieve this new world, the Racist Right wants to light the fuse that will blow the powder keg of racism and spark a spiritual race war. They are dangerous because their spiritual motivation doesn’t depend on success as the world would count it. They look to God to ultimately bless such violence and provide the reward. Their terroristic asymmetrical violence will be the spark that moves God to intervene for white deliverance. 

 

            After the insurrection in Washington on January 6, the press was full of head-scratching—or anger—at Evangelicals who were so visibly involved. There are many reasons why Evangelicals have fallen for QAnon and the Racist Right. But surely one of those reasons has to do with the wide-spread, pre-existing apocalyptic belief in a return of Jesus. This belief is often associated with themes of judgement upon and punishment of today’s world, its culture, and its mores.

            

            The Racist Right is not uniformly or perhaps even mostly evangelical, of course. But the secular Racist Right—more along the lines of Canada’s now defunct Heritage Front—also tend to a kind of apocalypticism, though of a different sort. They also have a worldview characterized by an emphasis on their lack and suffering and the indignities they endure. They believe that deliverance might come (as it did in Hitler’s day) from a vanguard of people who see the value in making Jews and people of color scapegoats for white ills. Punishing such scapegoats—first through intimidation, then through terror, will in turn, spark its own kind of apocalyptic final judgement, as in Hitler’s final solution. Such violence, properly staged and celebrated will lead to widespread appreciation for White Power among the masses and spark the race war the secular Racist Right also wants. 

 

            In the end, these “spiritual” approaches to getting your historical way, by sparking violent opposition to the powers that be, is no different than Al Qaeda’s use of terror throughout the Middle East and world. The Racist Right is ideologically committed to terrorism as a means to spark something, rather than as the actual means for achieving it. 

 

            The Racist Right can, sometimes at least, be stared down. That’s what happened on the day I gave my lecture at Brock. 

            

            As I began, I tried pushing their presence out of my mind. They listened quietly. When the B’nai B’rith president got up to speak, however, they begin whispering ridicule and laughing out of turn. Finally, feeling embarrassed—after all, I had spoken about how we needed courage to confront far-right racism—I turned around, held my finger to my mouth, and shushed them. 

 

            And, for some reason, that shut them up.

 

            After the lecture, though, I was told by a Brock official that anonymous threats had been received before the lecture. Undercover CSIS agents (Canada’s FBI) were in the audience, just in case. When I left, outside the hall, the police presence was quite visible. Maybe that was the real reason the Heritage Front was so easy to quiet that night.

 

            I don’t know, for sure. It does seem, to me, though that if we are going to meet the challenge of QAnon and wide-spread Evangelical support for racism and strongmen, we are going to have to do more than walk our talk of faith, hope and love. We are also going to have to understand their talk and where it comes from. And be ready with an answer.

The Silent Night Within

       Silent Night is a Christmas carol that, if you think about it, is a bit odd. I mean, if Jesus really was born in a stable, with angels singing and cattle lowing and donkeys braying, and shepherds praising, the first Christmas probably really wasn’t that silent.

         Usually our Christmases are not silent, either. My kids visit, and the grandkids too. Friends come from as far away as Japan and Zimbabwe. My son David will make three times the necessary noise banging around pots and pans while cooking. Grandkids rip open presents with gleeful little screams, then tease each other loudly, and then ask me to read to them.

Once the kids are in bed, we adults stay up late laughing, shouting, talking politics and religion. The Homepod plays competing song lists.

But not this year. My house will be silent. Tonight, Irene and I will sit, a little sad, glad for each other’s company, in a living room lit by candles, alone.

Now, I understand that this year’s quiet, especially at Christmas, is not what any of us wanted. It is a disappointment. For some of us it is worse—what with the worry of infection, and the depression that goes on and on due to isolation or financial stress. All of these ills are ours this Christmas. But for me, there is also another angle, the one suggested by the carol, “Silent Night.”

You see, in normal circumstances, I love the silence. I cope with busy commutes by turning off the car radio. I get ready for the day by taking the dog for a long walk. I used to listen to podcasts on those walks. Now I just trudge in silence. No one calls out to me. I daydream. 

I love the silence. Max Picard, a Roman Catholic philosopher, writes in his book, The World of Silence, "Outside the forest, the flowers are like silence that has thawed, and glistens in the sunlight." I like that—“outside . . . the flowers are like silence that has thawed.” One of my favorite Bible texts—an important one for ministers, especially, to take to heart—is Ecclesiastes 6:11. "The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?"

In my heart I'm an introvert. I know how to be with people, how to get my oar in during conversations at a party, how to do a “meet and greet at church.” And I enjoy all that. But I get my energy from being alone and silence is my reward. 

What about you? I know that we can’t all be introverts. We need both extroverts and introverts to make the world go round. But just as introverts need to learn to make their peace with noise, I think extroverts can learn to appreciate the gift of silence.

Here is why. We all have a secret place of refuge, a sanctuary, in our souls, that most of us don’t visit often enough. It is where we go to ponder the most difficult questions life throws at us. It is where we construct the meaning we spend our lives achieving. This sanctuary in our souls is where we cultivate gratitude for the good others have done for us and nourish the good will we need to love our neighbors.

And that sanctuary in our souls, since it is ours alone, is a place that can only be entered alone. It is therefore a place of silence: a speechless silence full of awe on account the miracle of the universe; a prayerful silence that yearns for peace on earth; a respectful silence that honors the mysteries of other—other people, other loves, other choices. The silent sanctuary of our souls is a refuge for those tossed to and fro on the violent and unpredictable currents of time and civilization—especially now, during Covid time. The silent sanctuary in our souls is one of the few places we can hear the still, quiet voice of God, if Her voice is to be heard at all.

            And in the end, that is how I take the Christmas carol, Silent Night. Not silent because the animals really were, or the angels lost their voice. But the song sings of a silent night because the story of Jesus’ birth takes are dumbfounds us with its suggestion that God is not just notion, not merely the answer to a philosophical puzzle, but God is really here, with us and in us, enlivening us, even now. 

            And so, we whisper, in response, this year to ourselves alone, “let all the earth keep silence, before him.”

My Ten Favourite Reads from 2020

          I find that the annual ten-best and hundred-best book lists are pretty boring. The lists have in common that they’re mostly made up of the same mass market bestsellers. I think there is a direct connection between the amount of marketing dollars the publisher spends and getting on these lists. These books are, by design, intended to have wide appeal, but that means many great “specialist” books and small press books get missed. So here is my very personal list—best books I’ve read in 2020, regardless of when they were published. 

          The list has several themes in common across the themes: religion, anthropology, and race(ism). Hope you find something here that you like!

NOVELS

1. Exit West, by Mosin Hamid. Such a unique and lovely narrative voice! I mean the writing! A melancholy and romantic book about what binds humanity together and what pulls us apart. Set in the Middle East and California, it follows a few characters who move around the world as doorways beyond the control of central governments makes the whole world’s population mobile. Magical realism here, and it works. 

2. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi. Lovely and painful. A narrative dive into the lives of ordinary people who both fail and triumph. Most of the failures are due to hatred—systemic racism—and war and colonialism and ignorance, among other human shortcomings. But the way these people keep the flames of hope and love alive is inspiring and beautiful. The unique structure of the novel is also very interesting, as it follows two joined yet separate families through multiple generations. The writing is simple, pointed, and lovely. Best read of the year.

3. The Overstory, by Richard Powers. Well, I can find things to criticize here. The book is a bit too preachy; it reads, sometimes, too much like a botany text; and it is really long and could have used a bit of trimming. Still, this is a magnificent book. Powers creates believable characters who do, at turns, lovely and horrible things to save the world’s trees. Powers hears and shares the language of trees so that I can almost hear them.

4. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I read this postapocalyptic book in high school, again in college, and then not again till now. It is a book worth reading for its humanity, for its sympathetic portrayal of religious people (perhaps a bit too sympathetic) and for its grand historical sweep. I can't say I share all of Miller's Roman Catholic sensitivities, especially in light of so many recent revelations. But as a study of the complex interplay between religious conviction, civilization, and politics, it can’t be beat. 

MEDIA

5. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, by Marryanne Wolf. The great irony that weighs against this book is that those who might gain the most by reading it never will. They’ve abandoned deep reading for the mesmerizing screen. Wolf is a neurologist who explains in great detail the latest research into why reading is becoming harder and harder for most people in our society. A must read for ministers, teachers, and parents too. Wolf’s specialty is child development.

          A fine companion book to Reader, Come Home, is Digital Mini-malism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. After reviewing, briefly, much of the same material that Wolf describes in greater detail, and after explaining Silicon Valley’s corporate aims, Cal Newport offers a step-by-step guide to his media detox plan. I’m going to take it this January, when I begin my sabbatical!

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

6. Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah. As a regular visitor to South Africa, this book revealed, to me, just how much I've missed. I've been to the townships, both in the city and the countryside. I've visited Soweto, Cape Town, Johannesburg and many other towns. But I was always a tourist and I can see I missed mostly everything.

          This is a humane insider’s book about people trying to figure out a new thing with old prejudices and problems. They do better than you'd think, but it is quite a trip. Noah himself turns out to be a totally likeable, yet complex person. His mother? Well, she is a character who leaves me both impressed and sad. Read this. Surprises everywhere. Well written, too.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 

(or, Doubt and Evil)

7. Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt by Alec Ryrie. A well-written, engaging story with many vignettes along the way. Ryrie argues that as impressive as rational arguments for and against the existence of God might be, most people have become unbelievers for emotional reasons. 

          Ryrie names two that have ancient historical roots: anger (especially at religious institutions, rather than at God) and anxiety (especially surrounding how one can know this or that, given the many opinions out there). I thought his concluding analysis of our society’s turn away from church a bit weak, but for the most part a well-researched and engaging attempt to listen for faith voices other than those of the scholars.

8. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. I made a goal of reading ten classic works this year. Right now, I’m plowing through Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Arendt’s book, I’m finding, is a fitting companion to Dostoevsky. 

          She examines the life and trial of Adolf Eichmann in order to try and understand what made him send so many Jewish persons, by rail, to their deaths during World War II. Arendt doesn’t think it was the devil. Her portrait of a man unselfconsciously stumbling into evil is disheartening and important—especially now, as nations around the world sees more and more strong men taking power and their sycophants helping smooth the way.

SCIENCES

9. Ancestors in Our Genome: The New Science of Human Evolution, by Eugene E. Harris. Human evolution has always been a fascination of mine. I sometimes think that career-wise, my greatest regret is that I didn’t become an evolutionary anthropologist.
          The genomic science is challenging for a lay person like me. But the subject is truly fascinating. We all know how DNA can be used to identify certain illnesses, potential relatives, criminals, and even rapists. DNA is a powerful tool for tracing our relationships to and contacts with others. But the same science and tools can be used to determine our evolutionary relationships too. This book covers when the homo sapiens line diverged from the last common ancestor of our us and our cousins, chimps and bonobos. It covers why we know that humans mostly evolved in Africa, and how we are related to other human species that are now extinct, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and even earlier humans. I loved it.
          Runner up in the evolutionary biology category was Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes. The title says it all. A marvellously detailed (perhaps a bit too detailed) look at many Neanderthal archeological sites and what we can learn from them.

10. In a different corner of the anthropological world, I was completely absorbed by At the Bridge; James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging, by Wendy Wickwire. James Teit was an overlooked, turn-of-the-nineteenth century anthropologist who lived with, studied, and advocated for the indigenous peoples of British Columbia and Northwest USA. 

          Wickwire examines Teit’s life, his participant-observer stance among the First Nations, his political engagement with Ottawa and Victoria, and his understanding of the systemic racism First Nations consistently faced. Every page is filled with fascinating stories and insight.

The Pieta, The Death of Wolfe, and Remembrance.

     Christian theologians and artists have always been in love with Jesus’ mother, Mary, who they named, Theotokos, mother of God. Liturgies, music, and prayers especially focused on her purity and suffering.

     One of the suffering moments—not actually mentioned in scripture—was when Mary first held the body of Jesus after it was taken off of the cross. This moment is called The Pieta, which can be translated as “The Pity,” or “The Compassion.”

     Here is an early example, the Rottgen Pieta from the fourteenth century. It is graphic and gritty and moves me. Jesus’ wounds still flow. He is emaciated, ugly, broken, just as you would expect a crucified holy man to look. Mary is shocked, on the verge of disbelief.

     The medieval Germans peasants who saw this Pieta in their church knew this kind of suffering for themselves. Medieval life was, as Thomas Hobbes said, “nasty, brutish, and short.” The Rottgen Pieta offered those peasants both a Jesus and a Mary they could identify with.

     But there is another, darker side to this and similar devotional sculptures. The sculpture suggests that suffering is holy. Mary and Jesus’ suffering here justifies suffering as a reality of life peasants had to accept. The Rottgen Pieta—and many more like it--was used by the church to teach, nurture—and control—peasant believers.

     Not so Michelangelo’s Pietá. It served a very different purpose for a very different audience. This sculpture, found in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, is one of the most admired works of art of all time.

     The earthy realism of Rottgen is gone, replaced unearthly Platonic idealism. Mary, even as the mother of a 31-year old man, is still a beautiful virgin, the prototypical perfect woman. And Jesus, even in death, is Adonis-beautiful, too.

     The story here is that Michelangelo was hired by the French Cardinal Jean de Bilheres to create this sculpture for two reasons. It was to serve—and for a while, it did—as Bilheres’ tombstone. But more importantly, Bilhere was in Rome as a French ambassador after a disastrous war between France and most of the small Italian Republics. It was a war marked by the brutal sack of Mordano, about 250 kilometers north of Rome. The French army put all its citizens, including women and children, to death. 

      Now, after this inconclusive but brutal war, Bilhere was supposed to help smooth things over. And so, he tasked Michelangelo, an Italian artist, to use a notably French and German theme, The Pieta, to sculpt a work of Italian marble to place in the French chapel of the first St. Peter’s in Rome, Italy. A peace offering that bound the two peoples together.

     With Michelangelo’s Pieta, the suffering of Mary and Jesus is a passing whisper—as Bilhere hoped the suffering of Mordano and Italy might be soon forgotten, too. The ugliness of war is here swallowed up by the stunning beauty of national reconciliation symbolized by Jesus’ reconciliation of humans to God, through his death. The Pieta is a stunning piece of political theater.







     Which brings us to a modern pieta, Pablo Picasso's Guernica. You've seen this painting. I don't know how to speak to its beauty--it is striking and compelling and abstract, though.

     Here Picasso painted the suffering of the village of Guernica during the Spanish civil war, just before WWII. The Nazi Luftwaffe bombed that little Basque village on a market day. There was no military target. The purpose was simply to sow terror. Two hundred and fifty townspeople died. It was a modern Mordano.

     Thus, like Michelangelo’s Pieta, Guernica is very, very political. But instead of trying to smooth over a war, it puts Nazi war crimes front and center, condemning them.

     And if you look closely, you will see on the far left, a pieta—Mary holding Jesus in her lap. It’s Rottgenall over, but in Picasso’s cubist style. Do you see it? On the left?

     In case you can't, here is a reproduction, done as a sculpture, by well-known American artist
Arthur Lopez, in the Mexican-American Santero style.

     I have one more pieta to show you, Benjamin West’s, “The Death of Major-General James Wolfe.”

     You remember James Wolfe. He was the commanding British officer during the French-Indian war. The French were besieged at Quebec, and tried to break through British lines with a surprise attack on the Plains of Abraham, that failed. The battle only took an hour, but during it Wolfe was shot and died of his wounds.

     The battle led, soon after, to France’s exit from New France. Wolfe has, forever after, been seen as Canada’s first war hero, and the epitome of the British Empire’s fighting spirit and military prowess.




     Wolfe’s painting, of course, is yet another version of The Pieta. West knew Michelangelo’s Pieta well from when he lived in Rome as an art student. Here, West lays out Wolfe as Michelangelo laid out Jesus. General James Wolfe is a sacrificial lamb who died to establish true civilization in the New World jungle. One commentator writes, “This deliberate visual association between the dying General Wolfe and the dead Christ underscores the British officer’s admirable qualities. If Christ was innocent, pure, and died for a worthwhile cause—that is, the salvation of mankind—then Wolfe too was innocent, pure, and died for a worthwhile cause; the advancement of the British position in North America.”

     In contrast to other paintings of Wolfe’s death from the same era, West filled his painting not with regular soldiers, but with military dignitaries. In fact, none of these men were actually there. West added them to add dignity to the scene. One of those watching is a First Nations warrior, looking on Wolfe adoringly—in stark contrast to how most First Nations would have felt about these European wars that kept dragging them in.

     But West has no time for such objections. He is making myths that justify the violence, greed, and visions of world domination that are at the root of all empires, including the British Empire. West here is an evangelist for wars on behalf of the crown and for territorial expansion.

     All of which brings me near to the end of what I want to say this morning. All of these works of art that I’ve shown you this morning served propagandistic ends. In each of them, the story of Mary holding Jesus’ body, a religious theme—was used to score political points.

     The Rottgen Pieta served the churches need to tell the story of Jesus to illiterate peasants who needed comfort, assurance—and who needed to be kept in line. It said, “shut up and embrace your suffering, like Mary and Jesus did.”

     Michelangelo’s Pieta was meant to paper over war crimes. It was an offer of arm’s length, platonic friendship as a substitute for war.

     Picasso’s pieta was exactly the opposite. It served as a condemnation of war by including a very Rottgen-like Pieta that represents the evil of war.

     And the question for us, of course, is this. Will we let Remembrance Day, as well as its rituals and music, use us in a similar way? Or will we see through some of the myths to the fact of war’s evil? To the actual pain and suffering of both soldiers and civilians? Will we, perhaps, use Remembrance Day to organize for no more wars?

     This week, we ought to remember the heroism of our boys; but we also remember Flanders Fields and the poppies their bodies fed. We remember the WWI sacrifices of Vimy Ridge and the Somme and Passchendaele, but we also now understand that ultimately, these battles were fought for the elites of a British Empire against the elites of a German Empire, rather than for any common good or high moral principle.

     We have fought other morally ambivalent wars. The Royal Mounted Police against the Metis. The first overseas deaths of Canadian soldiers in a totally useless Anglo-Boer war that mostly served to make the British Empire richer while brutally erasing Africans. But our boys also died fighting the horrific reality of Nazism in what is sometimes called the twentieth century’s only just war. Our boys liberated extermination camps and liberated my ancestors in Holland. In any case, whether the cause was just or not or just middling—our men were always true and valiant.

     And now I wonder, how will history judge our time in Afghanistan, after the Taliban is back in control, as they seem destined to be? Or our material support for Saudi Arabia and its ruthless war in Somalia?

     I do not know.

     But today, we nevertheless remember the Christ-like suffering of all our military martyrs. In their memory, and to prevent the need for remembering more soldiers in the future, we commit our Remembrance Day not merely to making glorious national myths, but to learning the hard lessons of history, history as objective as we can make it.

     Even good wars are hell. We must do all within our power to avoid falling for heroic myths that want to use us, and instead, as a nation, build lasting peace wherever we can lend a hand.

     I am not naïve. I know that hating war cannot end war. But I plead with you, as followers of Jesus, who gave his own life as a protest against both religious bigotry and Roman military occupation, I ask you, as followers of Jesus to use your social and political and economic gifts and powers to make peace.

     This is the most fitting Remembrance of all.