Swiss Minarets and Thomas Kuhn

I've been thinking of late about incommensurability, which of course moves me to think of Switzerland.

Switzerland first: As you may have heard, the Swiss voted this last Sunday to amend their Constitution's religious freedom statutes to ban minarets from being built in their country. The referendum campaign, spearheaded by a right-wing party (the Swiss People's Party, or S.V.P.), played on European fears of "Islamification," referring to cultural changes wrought by the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries. The campaign inspired a war of posters and pundits for and against the ban. The signature poster of the S.V.P (found, along with other posters, here) depicts a black, burka-clad figure in the foreground. Behind her is a depiction of the Swiss flag with a half-dozen black minarets sprouting (piercing?) like missiles from it. "Vote yes on the Minaret ban," reads the block lettering.

The vote's results surprised and dismayed the European community (see here and here), especially as the referendum passed with a 57.5% majority (in a 53% voter turnout). Swiss government officials, many of whom seem embarrassed about the amendment's passage, nevertheless admit that the vote democratically expresses the will of the people. There's no trickery here, just a simple, clear political victory.

For most liberal-progressive observers, the Swiss ban represents a disappointing, even frightening reaction to the challenge of cultural and religious difference. Given that Muslim-European tensions run much hotter in other European countries, the Swiss vote may auger a tightening of borders and sharpening of (white/Christian) cultural norms. For supporters of the ban, the referendum establishes a crucial defense against influence of a culture whose ideals and practices are seen as radically opposed to traditional Swiss and European values. One Belgian politician, speaking in support of the ban, put the case thusly: "It’s a signal that they [Muslim immigrants] have to adapt to our way of life and not the other way around."

Notions of cultural adaptation, tolerance, and religious liberty church messily within this controversy, which brings me to incommensurability. I draw this term from the work of Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher and historian of science most famous for his 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In that book (and I simplify brutally), Kuhn refutes the commonsense picture of science as a narrative of steady, accumulative progress. Instead of a smoothly ascending line where discovery builds upon discovery builds upon discovery, Kuhn argues that science instead operates more episodically, resembling perhaps a series of disconnected graphs.

Indeed, for Kuhn the very definition of "science" changes radically over time. Scientists working within a field at any one time operate more or less within the bounds of a commonly held model, a paradigm, that describes the basic contours of what a particular science (say, astronomy) is and what it should do. Paradigms function as a common set of assumptions about the way things are that give scientists a range of options for experimenting in, observing, and explaining reality. Paradigms define for scientists what there is to be done, scientifically speaking.

The Ptolemaic model of the solar system, for instance, served as the predominant astronomical paradigm for the Western world for many centuries. In this model, the Earth is the center of the universe. A set of crystalline spheres (one for the sun, the moon, each of the recognized planets, and the stars) rotate concentrically around the Earth. For a very long time all astronomical activities operated within this model. Observational evidence that seemed to contraindicate this model (the retrogression of Mars, for example) served not to disprove the model but to indicate the need for greater elaboration of the model. "Epicycles" (miniature orbits within orbits) were thus invented, complicating the system but more or less explaining away the apparent difficulties.

With Copernicus and Galileo, however, the Ptolemaic model had to be scrapped in favor of a whole new paradigm in which the earth and other planetary orbited the sun. Suddenly (well, "suddenly" on grand-historical timescales) "astronomy" had an entirely different set of grounding assumptions. Lifetimes of "scientific" work on the nature of epicycles became, in this new paradigm, the exploded fictions of a bygone era. It was not possible, in other words, to be a Ptolemaic astronomer with Copernican tendencies. One had to convert totally from Ptolemy's paradigm to a heliocentric paradigm if one wished to remain an astronomer.

Or consider physics after Einstein. One could not be a dedicated Newtonian physicist and work within a paradigm of general relativity. Scientific paradigms are, for Kuhn, incommensurate with each other, so radically different that between the two there can be only conflict or conversion, not compromise or adaptation.

I've been thinking about incommensurability in a different sense, relating the idea not to scientific paradigms but to religious paradigms, religious worldviews. In the Swiss minaret controversy I locate not two such worldviews (the right-wing S.V.P. and the Muslim immigrants) but three: those two and the tolerant-secular-European worldview that wants to see all religions as practicable within a scheme of ordered, democratic liberty. Although of those three, I identify most with the latter, I have to wonder whether that third option is in fact the least capable of conceiving of and dealing with incommensurate worldviews.

What do I mean by that?

More tomorrow,

JF

Advent Reflections

Back from traveling, gearing up for the mad rush of stuff-to-complete-before-Christmas. On the way back from my sister's house in OK (an 11-hour drive), my partner and I processed several hours of conservative evangelical podcasts covering a range of fun topics. Our conversations about those topics gave me notions for half a dozen things to delve into and write about here.

For now, though, I'm moved to put that on pause and recognize that today is the first day of Advent, the lead-up time to Christmas.

Growing up in the Southern Baptist Church, Advent was unknown to me. Starting around Dec 1, our church would start in on the Christmas hymns--a whole month of them. The very fist hymn I learned to play as accompaniment was "Away in a Manger." To this day, I adore Christmas hymns (the doctrinal ones especially) with a passion impervious to the requisite yuletide pessimism about consumerist takeovers of the holiday. I'm ready for Christmas--and Christmas hymns--starting, roughly, February.

It was a shock for me, then, to join a church which celebrated Advent, which is intended as a kind of buffer zone before Christmas, a time for Christians to focus on and prepare for Christ's coming rather than to celebrate his having already arrived. Oddly enough, the church where I first encountered Advent was the university-affiliated Baptist church I've written about previously--the one where my father served as custodian instead of pastor. I didn't really get it except to note (and lament) how there was a lot less Christmas hymn-singing than I preferred.

Joining the Methodist church meant confronting the reality of Advent more overtly. No Christmas hymns at all until, oh, the week of Christmas Day--if that. Instead Methodists have a whole other ("other" from my Baptist perspective, that is) subgenre of hymns dedicated to Advent ("His Promised Coming" as the hymnal puts it): "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"; "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus"; "People, Look East"; and frankly more that I don't really know well. Indeed, a lot of the hymns we sing are newly written, as if the Methodist church has only recently decided that Advent is for a different kind of hymn than Christmas carol.

I remember being a bit resentful of Advent, partially because the festival reinforced to me everything foreign in the Methodist church. I had a bit of pride as a Baptist in knowing how the church year worked, knowing how the hymnal worked, knowing how services worked--in general knowing Baptist stuff pretty well. Being a Methodist meant starting almost from scratch. A Chrismon tree (see here)? The wreath with the candles (see here)? That awful, sing-songy "Light the Advent Candle" ditty (see here)?

And no "Away in a Manger."

My parents in their respective services would generally arrange a kind of read-through-the-Christmas-scriptures (i.e., a service of lessons and carols) in which they could pack in all the favorite hymns in one super-service. So we did eventually get to sing Christmas hymns. But it wasn't the same as the month-long celebration of favorite carols I had loved as a child.

As I've grown older and perhaps more patient, though, I've come to appreciate Advent on its own merits. Actually, what helped me to appreciate Advent most was my having to become familiar with another bit of orthodox liturgy--Lent. Lent, of course, describes the forty days prior to Easter in which Christians meditate on and prepare for the Redemptive Act of Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection. It kicks off with Ash Wednesday, which I privately think of as a kind of Christian Apocalypse Day, on which it is appropriate to contemplate one's own mortality, the fragility of life, and the grace that passes understanding.

Advent, by contrast, struck me (strikes me still) as a kind of anti-Lent, by which I mean a dialectical complement to Lent. If Lent is the Last Supper, the Night in Gethsemane, the Holy Saturday--the time of tense waiting when hope seems stripped away--then Advent is a happy expectation, the sunlight at the end of a long tunnel, the welcome pregnancy. Like Lent, it deserves its stillness, its holy moments of pause within the bustle. But those moments are moments of thrill, of getting in touch with the excitement of the Good Work, the New Thing that is coming. It is hope, hope, hope that makes the celebration--the fulfillment of that hope--meaningful.

I recognize that, as a Christian, much of my theology rides on the Holy Week of Christ's redemptive act and of Christ's resurrection. But what really inspires me about my faith is the fact of Incarnation, that my God gave up godhood to be with me on Earth. That Event of God-With-Us is itself an act of divine atonement--at-one-ment--with humanity.

Advent reminds me that, if sober reflection on my sin and need for reconciliation is part of my faith, so too is the command to watch hopefully, to seek hopefully, and to find and rejoice.

For that reminder to hope, I can learn a few new hymns.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

More tomorrow,

JF

Saving the Pets of the Rapture

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

For today's post, I bring you a bit of evangelical-related pop culture goodness: this site, run by a company called "Eternal Earth-Bound Pets." The company presents itself (I have no reason to doubt them, but I haven't checked thoroughly myself) as a group of animal-loving atheists. For $110, the group will sign with you a contract to the effect that, should the Rapture occur, the group will take over care of your pets. The $110 covers one pet for one 10-year period. Extra pets are $15 per pet (I wonder if they count fish in the same aquarium individually).

Their FAQ page is worth a look. Example question: "How do you ensure your representatives won't be raptured?" Answer: "Actually, we don't ensure it, they do. Each of our representatives has stated to us in writing that they are atheists, do not believe in God / Jesus, and that they have blasphemed in accordance with Mark 3:29, negating any chance of salvation."

I wonder if they've had to field requests for proof of blasphemy. Mark 3:29, of course, refers to the "unforgivable sin" of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which gets interpreted in a number of ways by various Christian churches. Does the company offer videos of its representatives blaspheming? Signed statements of blasphemy? At what point, really, does denial of a particular (veeeerrrry specific) religious belief become another kind of faith practice?

Anyway--credit where credit is due: I heard about them from a podcast called "Issues, Etc." a conservative call-in show.

There's lots of deliciousness to hash out from the Pet-Saving Atheists, but I leave you for today simply to digest on your own.

And consider: The group is celebrating their 100th client.

More soon (again, Thanksgiving travel=spotty updates),

JF

RIghts and Wrongs

Spotty updates this week as I'm traveling to visit family for Thanksgiving.

I'm taking some time out of cooking--well, time out of helping my partner cook--to post a bit. To revisit briefly what I was writing about last time, though, just to complete a thought: Say what you will about or against the Manhattan Declaration (the right-wing Christian statement recently released), but it's not, as some have suggested, an unfair or illegitimate use of rights discourse.

For instance, the Declaration's authors to claim that their right to free expression of religion trumps the gay or lesbian person's right to have their unions recognized as marriage or to be free from discrimination on the basis of their orientation. The authors would argue, for instance, that a tax-exempt, faith-based charity ought to be able to refuse service or hire to a lesbian since non-closeted lesbian identities violate conservative Christian precepts. To forbid the charity from making such decisions in the name of non-discrimination policies is, in the Declaration's logic, to violate the charity-workers' rights to free expression of religious conviction.

The authors apply similar logic to the case of a physician or pharmacist faced with a patient or client who wanted an abortion (or "the morning-after pill"). The physician or pharmacist must, in the authors' eyes, be allowed to deny service in such cases. One can imagine (and the Declaration itself suggests) other cases where professional or governmental duties interfere with a person's perception of religiously mandated acts. The recent news I mentioned briefly about military personnel proselytizing overseas, much to the embarrassment of the military and US foreign policy. In these and other situations, the Declaration insists that the right to religious liberty--the freedom to express and live by the dictates of (conservative Christian) conscience must remain paramount.

Critics have countered that the authors have a warped view of the right to religious expression. Yes, Christians may privately believe that homosexual behavior is wrong, that abortion is immoral, or that the gospel needs to be spread in every situation. The US guarantees that people may believe these things and that people may act on these beliefs. But the Declaration's critics would argue that these rights obtain within strict boundaries, in relationship to other rights, and--crucially--in relationship to the rights of others. A religion might insist that its adherents kill anyone with a ponytail, and adherents are completely free to believe that. They are not, however, free to act on that belief. The ponytailed person's rights to life--to not be murdered--overrides the other person's right to religious expression.

Of course the Declaration calls for no one's death. But insofar as the authors maintain a right to (for instance) discriminate against GLBT people, critics make a similar argument: your religious freedom cannot override equal protection under the law. To claim otherwise, to claim in fact that First Amendment freedoms guarantee a right to discriminate against GLBT people--these are for critics spurious claims. They "hijack" the liberal discourse of rights.

But the problem is that liberal discourse does not provide a specific definition of rights to hijack. This is a persistent and powerful fiction of human rights language. We hold certain truths to be self-evident, that all people are endowed with natural rights--but in practice rights don't exist apart from active recognition by a community (specifically by a state). I can believe with all my heart that I have a natural right to yell fire in a crowded theatre, but unless the authorities agree with me, or unless at least a sizable group of people agree with me, then my right exists as a subjective opinion and little else. This is not to say I don't have that right; perhaps I actually do. But rights are primarily matters of practice and common recognition, not transcendent self-evidence or personal conviction.

As such, no one's claim to a particular human right can ever finally be proved or disproved, only fought for and agreed to by a critical mass of society's members--or not. I may take issue with the Delcaration authors' claim that they have a religious right to employment discrimination, but my disagreement can't consist simply of pointing to some list of self-evident rights and saying, "See? Not there!" After all, in the Declaration, GLBT people are the ones claiming a false right, a right to have their private sexual proclivities validated as "normal."

Because rights have no final content, situations in which rights appear to conflict or in which there's a disagreement about what rights exist are particularly vexing.

More tomorrow,

JF

Phantom Menaces and Rights Squabbles

I'm afraid I let loose a bit too much yesterday, knocking down (well, as much as one can on a short blog) some of the logical/theological inconsistencies riddling the "Manhattan Declaration"--the recently released salvo by a group of Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical conservatives.

In the interests of critical generosity, I should note one piece of rhetorical ground on which I think the Declaration isn't as vulnerable as some of my liberal-progressive comrades seem to believe. One site I viewed gave a fairly thorough rundown of the Delcaration's many problematic features. The commentary led, however, with an allegation to the effect that the religious right was once again "hijacking" civil rights language. While I have a lot of problems with their stances, I don't think that they're misusing civil rights language--at least no more than any liberal-progressive group does.

I assume that the reviewers meant the Declaration authors' section about "Religious Liberty." That section, the third major point (after the "culture of life/anti-abortion" section and the "marriage culture/anti-gay" sections), begins with a brief reaffirmation of the wrongness of religious coercion. The point, however, isn't "don't force conversions" but "government shouldn't prevent people from expressing disapproval of abortion and glbt identities." The authors castigate "those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a
right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated
around these practices be recognized and blessed by law" (6). Mind you--this bears repeating--the Declaration offers no proof that anyone seriously asserts a right to kill the aged and disabled. These are phantom menaces, conservative-Christian boogie-men lumped together with doctors who endorse a woman's right to choose in order to make abortion (all abortions, apparently, performed for any reason, even to save the life of the mother) seem horrible.

The authors go on to cite several anecdotes that purport to illustrate a general decline in religious liberties--mainly religious organizations who have their tax-exempt status threatened for not complying with anti-discrimination statutes. Against such a threat, the authors promise civil disobedience, a la Martin Luther King, Jr. "Unjust laws degrade human beings," write the authors. Thus laws that are unjust must not be obeyed.

Of course, by "unjust laws," the authors mean "laws that remove the privileged status granted to religious organizations when said organizations choose to claim exceptions to the rules everyone else has to follow." To receive tax-exempt status, a charity organization must not, for example, refuse to serve members of a particular race, religion, creed--or (in some instances) sexual orientation. A private charity is of course free to follow the dictates of its conscience and not serve, say, communist Baptists. It cannot, however, claim federal recognition or receive the unearned privileges regularly extended to faith-based organizations if it does so.

Thus there is a bit of, well, disingenuousness in the Declaration's claim to being discriminated against because of their choice to discriminate. Tax-exempt status is always already a special regard, not an essential right of religious organizations. If it were a right, then religious organizations would be able to discriminate against anyone for any reason.

Clearly, though, the Declaration's authors consider the removal of tax-exempt status for, specifically, discriminating against heterosexual-only policies as of the same species of oppression as prosecuting people for expressing disagreement with pro-gay-inclusion policies. Again, the authors cannot point to any kind of grand campaign to force pastors to marry gays or lesbians; none exist. Another phantom menace. The authors' bold statements that they will not be forced to bless homosexual unions, then, strike me as so much hot air.

Nevertheless, beneath the big read devils they put on display, the authors do locate a legitimate conflict. They are correct, for instance, in framing their disagreements as a conflict of differing conceptions of civil rights. The state's protection of the right to religious expression does conflict with other rights--the right to equal treatment under the law, for example, or the right to autonomy of self. For instance, were the state to declare (as it has not in most cases) that same-sex couples have the same set of rights as married couples, this declaration--this new definition of rights--would in fact violate the religious convictions of many people. Moreover, by recognizing the right of same-sex couples to be married, the state basically prioritizes the protection of that right above the hetero-only conviction.

To be sure, making same-sex marriage legal does not mean that rights to religious expression are therefore nullified; people who believe in hetero-only marriage do not face the choice of ceasing that belief or being prosecuted. What such people lose is instead the expectation (which they may have thought of as a right) that the state match their faith-based convictions about sexuality. Expressing their beliefs may not win them a night in the Birmingham jail, but neither will it win them approbation from government. Indeed, if they want to access government funds or if they wish to serve as a representative of the state, they must set aside their faith convictions insofar as those convictions violate the government's official stances.

Example? If the government recognizes same-sex marriages as equivalent in every respect to heterosexual marriages, then no judge or justice of the peace (or clerk granting marriage licenses) has the right to deny same-sex couples the documents or recognitions heterosexuals enjoy. The civil servant in question loses the right to both be employed and express their religiously based discrimination at the same time.

In this sense, then, the government's establishment or recognition of some rights (e.g., a woman's right to choose abortion, same-sex couples' rights to marriage protections) does result in a practical reshuffling of rights priorities. Religious convictions may not prevent the state or its representatives from enacting its protection of other rights. A conflict does in fact exist.

The easy response to this conflict--the response taken by the liberal-progressive reviewer I mentioned above--is simply to say that the Declaration's authors are simply misusing the whole notion of rights, fabricating some fake right to have the state endorse their anti-gay or anti-abortion attitudes.

I disagree.

More tomorrow,

JF

Manhattan Declarations and Ruminations

News about the "Manhattan Declaration," the manifesto signed by representatives of conservative evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox faiths, continues to spread through the liberal blogosphere. I got a chance to read over the whole thing. There's nothing terribly new or surprising here. The manifesto has three main sections: Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty. Each section begins with a general scripture and goes on to outline a conservative Christian consensus stance on those issues. Of course, each section frames its issue in terms of a growing threat from a secular world.

The "Life" section, for example, laments the continued acceptance of abortion as a legal medical procedure, linking "the killing of the unborn" with the killing of the elderly or disabled (i.e., euthanasia). Thus does the Manifesto conjure a dark but amorphous group of forces actively calling for the murder of unborn, aged, and/or handicapped individuals.

Who are these people? Who's advocating that the elderly get killed off? Apparently the "ghosts" of the "intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe" during the 1920s who (apparently with one unified, elite-intellectual-salon voice) called for the killing off of those unfit for survival. The "horrors of the mid-20th century" had buried these eugenicist ideas and their advocates, but "they have returned from the grave," costumed in the rhetorical clothing of liberty and choice.

In other words, "death panels," those physicians or caregivers who would dare to broach the subject of a person's being able to control how strenuously or for how long or under what conditions doctors may prolong that person's life. Here I thought it was reasonable, moral people thinking about living wills, do-not-resuscitate orders, or the plain old desire to let life end when every moment is agony. But instead I find it's Nazi eugenicists cleverly tricking people out of planning ahead for the inevitable.

As for who's thinking about killing of disabled people--who knows? The Manifesto is silent, assuring readers only that whoever these phantom murderers are, the Church stands ready to combat them.

Strangely absent from the Manifesto's talk of the culture of life is any mention of the death penalty or military action (such as the preemptive invasion of a country that never attacked us). While I do not agree with their stances on reproductive issues, I have to admit at least that Catholics are quite consistent in resisting the death penalty as much as they resist abortion. That the Manifesto is silent on such an issue puts the lie to its "culture of life" rhetoric.

The next section, "marriage," features a similar cavalcade of horrors stemming from the weakening of the institution of heterosexual marriage--or, more specifically, the weakening of "marriage culture." After some mention of the tragedy of divorce and infidelity, the marriage section devotes most of its space to an attack on the idea of non-heterosexual marriage. The authors argue that heterosexual marriage is uniquely blessed because only it involves the "sexual complementarity" of man and woman who "become one flesh" through the miracle of procreation. As if detecting the inevitable rebuttal (i.e., what about heterosexual marriages that do not aim at procreation?), the Manifesto specifies that the necessary component is the husband and wife "fulfilling the behavioral conditions of procreation."

Oddly, the authors follow that qualification with this statement: "That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility,even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation."

Huh? I call non-sequitor. If possibility of procreation gives heterosexual marriage it's monopolistic claim to morality, then you can't simply say that non-procreative marriage is just as good. That's not even Biblical! Look at what Abraham did when it looked like Sarah wasn't going to conceive: he took himself another woman (Hagar, whom he abandoned once Sarah got pregnant). Clearly, for Abraham, the lockbox of heterosexual monogamy just didn't cut the mustard if procreation wasn't happening.

A host of other problems crop up in this "marriage culture" section (among them: the historical amnesia about the gender inequalities that defined marriage for centuries; the encomium on polygamous marriages evident in Bible stories of Abraham, David, Solomon, and many others; the parallels between hetero-only marriage arguments today and same-race-only arguments of the early to mid 20th century; etc.).

The last section, "Religious Liberty" begins with the venerable argument against religious coercion before quickly turning into a "they're out to get us!" bit of breast beating about how put upon religious (i.e., conservative Christian) people and institutions are by a government that apparently punishes them for expressing their faith. The argument here--the government won't let us discriminate!--is as full of holes as the marriage-culture argument, but considering these holes is the work of another day.

More tomorrow,

JF

Paranormal Movie Reflections

So--a religious/faith experiment. I'm about to go to see the movie Paranormal Activity--a near-midnight showing. I've heard from trustworthy sources (read: my sister) that it's quite a frightening film. Its fear, apparently, derives in part from a typical fear of the supernatural (ghosts, demons, etc.).

Now, liberal as I am, I do not disbelieve in such things... How scary might this be?

We shall see. Off we go.

---
Back.

It's fascinating to me just what people find frightening about the supernatural. PA, as you may know if you've seen it (spoiler alert if you haven't), turns out to be about not a ghost but a demon, a demon apparently linked to the lead female character, Katie. The film's conceit is that Katie's boyfriend, Micah (pronounced Mee-kah), decides that the best way to deal with the anomalous phenomena connected to Katie (which at first include small things like noises, doors moving, faucets turning on, etc.) is to film everything. Like most "found footage" films (e.g., Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield), PA depends upon at least one character insisting that everything must be caught on camera, which produces the corollary convention of other characters' complaining repeatedly about how the film-making character has to keep that blankety-blank camera rolling all the time.

But the found footage shtick works pretty well here, making PA into a kind of Ghost Hunters with a bite. Micah's desire to exacerbate the situation so as to produce cooler video footage conflicts with Katie's growing desperation to make him stop. The negative energy produced by the couple's fighting, plus the bold (read: foolish) challenges that Micah directs toward the whatever-it-is leads to increasingly bizarre and violent events, ending with... well, you should see it or have your own sister explain it to you in detail.

Two matters caught my attention, aside from the largely effective scare scenes. First, it strikes me that the movie portrays as much the horror of a woman not being listened to by her husband. Again and again Katie begs Micah to stop filming, to stop provoking the entity, to not go down the hall, to not leave her alone, to not mess with Ouija boards--countless pieces of advice that seem (from the point of view of the horror movie's audience) completely sensible. Micah repeatedly deflects, twists, and condescends his way out of her advice, becoming the horror movie version of the husband who won't stop for directions.

As the disturbances get more horrifying and as Katie deteriorates further under the nightly assaults on eight hours of undisturbed sleep, Micah insists that he and he alone can "deal with this," that "no one invades my house," and that he and he alone will protect Katie. He "does research," looking online, reading a few books, and basically confirming that yes, demons sure are awful, pesky things.

Oddly enough, though, these characters have practically no effective tools to address the paranormal. Well, I take that back: one of the first scenes involves the couple's talking to a "doctor" and psychic who deals primarily with ghosts. It's he who informs the couple that they're dealing not with a ghost tied to the house but with a demon tied to Katie herself. He suggests that they contact a colleague of his, a demonologist, as he (being a ghost expert) isn't able to help. Micah refuses to contact the demonologist as a point of pride.

Now, by this point--"you have a demon"--most characters in other movies would revisit some religious beliefs, seeking out a priest, a pastor, a rabbi, what have you. But aside from a brief reference or two (and one prop), the movie presents two characters nearly entirely devoid of a faith tradition to draw on. The "demon research" Micah does, though it features many standard demonic pictures, avoids mention of anything like hell, Satan, God, heaven, or any of the other supernatural cohorts of demons in Christian (or Jewish or any religious) cosmology. Demons are "supernatural beings" that cause harm--that's it. They might as well be invisible aliens.

This oddly secular supernaturalism leaves the characters utterly defenseless against the entity itself. They can attract the entity's attention. The demonologist (it is suggested) can "fix it" in some undefined way. There's some talk of exorcists, though these aren't identified as religious figures but as "experts" like the psychic at the beginning. Micah and Katie never once consider speaking to a religious figure of any sort or that religion itself might have something to offer in terms of trafficking with the supernatural.

I'm sounding, I realize, a lot like my mother, who was always quick to lament when this or that pop culture plot or show failed to mention God or Christianity, such as a Christmas show that featured Santa but didn't refer to Jesus. I don't mean that I think PA should have gone Exorcist, with the holy water and the split-pea soup and all. Rather I'm interested in how the movie stays so faithful to its materialist style (only scientific investigations of the supernatural, please) that once materialism fails for the characters (the doctor-psychic can't help; the demonologist is out of town), they have nothing to fall back on except whimpering and screaming.

I'm curious to hear what more traditional evangelical types think of this movie and about the absence of evangelicals (or of any self-identified people of faith) in the film. Now, maybe the film makers simply wished to keep the film clear of Exorcist-style imagery. Or perhaps Christians made their faith so completely a matter of culture war battles that they have nothing meaningful to contribute to a film about "paranormal activity." Either way, this film doesn't seem likely to attract many conservative evangelical spectators. One family in front of us got up and left in the middle of the film. They had endured several frightening scenes, but once Micah brought out the Ouija board, the father said, "That's it; let's go." And off they went. My impression was that scary scenes were OK, but Ouija boards were just too evil...

More tomorrow,

JF

Two Moments of Christian Dismay

Sometimes, it's too much.

In my research on conservative evangelical outreach, I have to keep in mind most of the time that I'm writing for an academic/artistic audience that is, in general, vaguely hostile to evangelicalism or conservative thought. I do my best in such cases to practice "critical generosity," a term coined by performance scholar David Roman. Among other things, critical generosity means doing your best as a critic to understand the mindset, the world view, of the subject you're investigating or writing about, being extra careful not to let your own personal biases color the presentation of the subject.

In Roman's case, as he wrote about fund-raising performances and cabarets produced in the early part of the AIDS epidemic, critical generosity meant suspending standard critical evaluative criteria--is this a good piece of art?--in favor of exploring and appreciating what it was that the performances were trying to do on their own terms.

I try to apply a similar kind of critical generosity toward conservative-evangelical (or even fundamentalist) worldviews that seem very far from my own. I find it challenging and productive to force myself to get into the head space of, say, Fred Phelps, Ray Comfort, or the ex-gay ministries (and I emphasize that these are radically different entities--I mean to emphasize a diversity of evangelical beliefs, not suggest that these are variations of the same thing).

But every so often, I run into a product of evangelical (or more broadly "Christian") culture that snaps me out of critical generosity and into Christian dismay. I had two such moments today, alas.

The first involves the "Manhattan Declaration," a longish statement by a diverse (relatively speaking) collection of Christian conservatives. Alas, I have yet to read it (tomorrow's work), from the executive summary it appears to be standard religious-right culture-war boilerplate with a civil disobedience twist. That is, the declaration makes amorphous statements to the effect that Christians (by which they mean their kind of Christians) are going to stand ready to disobey laws that force them to kill unborn babies, murder disabled people, recognize homosexual marriages, or tolerate limitations on the expression of (Christian) faith.

That's right--this powerful, signed-by-125-Christian-leaders, news-media-attracting statement by "Christianity" says that the main issues facing the people of God today, the key areas of life with which they should concern themselves--are no abortions, no gays, and you'd-better-say-Merry-Christmas!

Of course things are more complicated than that, but pardon me for a moment while, sans critical generosity, I just shake my head. Really? This is the witness of transformative, saving love you want to make to the world? "Here's what we're against (by the way--all of these are in that evil old health care bill that will extend insurance coverage to more people)."

Good job, Christianity. Another winning witness. Because people are falling away from the church because it's insufficiently clear about it's dislike of abortion, gays, and other religions.

Second dismay moment: My partner's on his way to my place, traveling from Illinois all the way down to me, a journey that takes him through the hinterlands of Mississippi. On the way, he listens to talk radio, where (on NPR apparently), he heard a story about this outfit: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This group, from what I can gather, agitates for soldiers' and officers' rights to practice their faith (read: proselytize conservative evangelicalism) no matter where they're serving. There was apparently a Harper's story about them in May (which the MRFF proudly displays on its site). Among the anecdotes gathered by the magazine? Parading through a middle-eastern town with "Jesus Killed Mohammad" being proclaimed in Arabic and English...

Ugh... (shakes head).

Well--my partner just arrived! Nothing brightens up evangelical dismay like a loved one.

More tomorrow,

JF

Comfort and the Origins Giveaway

And today in non-prison-related musings, we have the unveiling (well, an unveiling, as in yet another unveiling) of Ray Comfort's free edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in faux-honor of Darwin's 200th anniversary.

Comfort, as you may recall, is the powerhouse street evangelist behind the Way of the Master, a set of techniques for sharing the gospel that are essentially built around a conversational demonstration of a person's sin and imminent damnation. Together with actor Kirk Cameron, Comfort has started or inspired one of the more prominent trends in twenty-first century evangelicalism--oriented away from denominationally affiliated churches, focused on person-to-person outreach, and grounded in a conservative quasi-Calvinist message.

Of late, however, Comfort has devoted a great deal of energy to combating atheism and agnosticism, particularly as they manifest in the form of proponents of evolutionary theory. His blog, "Atheist Central," has, I admit, become a regular stop in my daily walks through various internet sites. He'll post a cartoon, a link, or (more often) a brief Bible lesson or anecdote, generally wrapping up with some version of "and this shows how foolish atheists are when they deny God."

These posts attract comments like a fresh kill attracts scavengers. Ray's bait apparently offers too enticing a temptation for some professed atheists to resist. Even the briefest post quickly garners, 70, 80, even more than 100 posts, most of which seem to be from "regulars," staunch atheists oddly obsessed with repeatedly, day after day (and often several times a day) pointing out how, once again, Ray's shown how ignorant he is. Of course, the comments also feature regular defenders who pipe up to cheer Ray on or to set out intricate rebuttals to some other atheist's argument.

Comfort encourages such regulars, at times responding briefly to comments himself. Occasionally, a comment or two will itself inspire a posting. Or (like here) Comfort will post some of the more extreme, "I hope you die, Ray," comments. Apparently the only comments he blocks as moderator are those that include cursing, "blasphemy" (i.e., taking the Lord's name in vain), URLs, and/or those that do not capitalize "God" or "Jesus."

Frankly, the comments are half the fun (odd fascination?) of the site for me, staging as they do shrill, repetitive debates between super-polarized sides. The site--and Comfort himself--seem to attract mainly vehement opponents or ardent supporters, anti-Christian (in the Hitches/Dawkins sense) secularists or fundamentalist-leaning evangelicals. Comfort has never really had much truck with mainstream evangelicals or moderate/liberal Christians (the latter of which he would likely not consider Christian at all). If it isn't polarizing, he's not interested (on this site, at least).

Consider, for instance, the Origins giveaway. Lately, Comfort's posts and the comments have revolved around his latest--what to call it?--stunt? Comfort has published and is giving away free copies of Darwin's Origin book with an essay by him that relates bits of Darwin's life and seeks to refute Darwin's theory. Ostensibly, he gives away the book to demonstrate the rationality of Christianity (which for Comfort is utterly opposed to any Darwinian theory). Readers can read Darwin's argument and Ray's (much briefer) rebuttal and decide for themselves who has the right of things.

Early on, Comfort got quite a bit of flack when early readers discovered that he had excised several chapters; Comfort explained that publishing costs had initially prevented him from printing the entire volume and that the expurgated chapters were available for download from his site. The current giveaway apparently solves this problem and includes the unabridged text.

The intro (the link to which appears broken currently) largely recycles standard anti-Darwin arguments, arguments that the more advanced creationist organizations (yes, there are advanced creationist organizations) have left behind.

And that's one of the fascinating things to me about Comfort. As an evangelist, he's distinctive and (from a research standpoint) exciting. As an apologist, and as a creation apologist specifically, he borders on the embarrassing, particularly when compared to some of the slicker creation apologetics outfits out there.

More tomorrow,

JF

Baptist Roots Against the Christian Prison

Why is a Christian prison (proposed to be built in Wakita, OK) a bad idea? Let me count the ways. It side-steps some important prisoners' rights procedures (the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program), it declines to declare exactly which kind of "Christianity" will be the right kind, its claims to efficacy (based on federal faith-based prison programs) are based on questionable statistics, and it communicates an image of penal religiosity that I thought went out of style after the Spanish Inquisition.

Oddly enough, though, I think much of my resistance--aside from those reasons above--stems from my upbringing as a Southern Baptist. On this blog I've sometimes treated my Southern Baptist childhood rather harshly. Certainly, I've left behind many of the theological features of my previous faith. But one Baptist tradition I think of as quite healthy concerns the longstanding Baptist suspicion toward governmental-church relations.

I would guess that most non-Baptists today would find it surprising to discover that the Southern Baptist tradition was for many years defined by its resistance to government involvement in the work of the church. Today, prominent Baptists like Richard Land regularly speak out in favor of religious right/culture war issues that invite government to dictate quite specific moral and even religious standards. Indeed, the very idea of a separation between church and state has become something of a religious-right (a term I generally dislike) bugbear, though Jefferson first spoke of a "wall of separation" between Church and State in a letter to a group of Baptists.

But religious liberty--the individual (or the individual church's) ability to decide for him or herself how to practice faith--has historically been a defining feature for Baptists. That many (perhaps most) Baptists now endorse some version of the "US as a Christian nation" notion represents a position that many historic Baptists would have found incomprehensible. Now, for present-day advocates of the "Christian nation" argument, the separation of church and state (more specifically, the establishment clause of the Constitution's First Amendment) still obtains. They simply interpret that clause as forbidding the state from actively controlling churches.

Perfectly acceptable to those who who endorse this line of thinking are proposals such as prayer in schools (by which they mean Christian-Protestant prayer), Bible-reading in classrooms (by which they mean Christian-devotional Bible reading), federal recognition of religious symbols and holidays (by which they primarily mean Christian--and maybe Jewish--symbols/holidays), teaching creationism in science courses (by which they mean a particular Christian view of creationism), prayers at government functions (by which they mean primarily Christian prayers), insistence on a strict definition of marriage and family (by which they mean a contemporary Judeo-Christian, heterosexual model)--the list goes on.

I find unconvincing the argument that these and other issues do not violate the establishment clause. Were advocates of prayer in schools to be as passionate for, say, Hindu or Wiccan prayers as they are for Judeo-Christian prayers (and what about praying in tongues?), I'd at least find their arguments easier to accept as honest. But the same religious right organizations that clamor for Christian expressions in governmental life tend also to protest vehemently when someone in government makes a non-Christian (especially Islamic) expression of faith.

And there's the problem (well, one problem--there's lots). It's the nature of most faiths to be exclusive. I don't expect Christians to endorse Islamic faith tenets, or vice versa. Sikhs are Sikhs, for example, because they believe that the Sikh understanding of divinity and spirituality is true in a way that the Christian or Baha'i understandings are not. Even universalist faiths believe that their "all-faiths-are-one" take on spirituality more accurately reflects reality than non-universalist interpretations do.

A faith may be tolerant of other believers, but tolerance presupposes an essential disagreement. One tolerates that which one does not agree with. That which you find agreeable by definition doesn't have to be tolerated; you endorse it. A state-funded expression of faith means that the state partakes of that faith's exclusivity. It may tolerate other faiths, but its essential preference for one faith above others will eventually show itself, if only by the absence of this or that symbol. Indeed, even the most general expression of faith by the state excludes those who eschew religious faith. And for a state to endorse a particular faith--formally or tacitly--is for the state to establish it, giving a subtly coercive undertone to that faith's otherwise normal expressions.

It's that sense of coercion ("yes, you can be any faith technically, but you should know that the US is a Christian nation") that Baptists have historically found unpalatable. Baptists themselves had, early on, been on the wrong side of such coercion in England, and the pain of that experience installed itself into the theological DNA of the denomination. They were for many decades after allergic to any perceived scheme to establish a state faith.

Exactly how a state might operate without endorsing a particular faith--or faith in general--is, admittedly, a vexing question. Religious-right critics have a point when they argue that scrupulous secularity on the part of governments is itself a kind of exclusivist expression of (non)faith.

But I can state more firmly my conviction--my historically Baptist conviction, I think--that Christianity has no business trying to take on state functions or trying to make the state into an arm of the Church. Christ repeatedly makes the point that his kingdom is not of this earth. "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," says Jesus, "and give unto God that which is God's." When people try to make him king, he slips away. When Peter draws a sword to defend Jesus, he gets a rebuke. Nowhere in the New Testament is there anything like a command to wage a political culture war or to try to get the government to adopt Christian statutes. Christian work is for Christians and churches, not governments and governmental institutions.

This includes prisons. Insofar as states are defined by the fact that they hold a monopoly on sanctioned violence (i.e., government alone may exercise legitimate violence against humans within a state), the policing and punishment (and, hopefully rehabilitation) of those who violate state laws is a state function. That states often outsource this function to private facilities--a dubious practice in and of itself, this making prisons a for-profit industry--does not change the fact that prison is a job for the state. Churches--Christian churches least of all--have no business running prisons in the US.

So says this former Baptist. (and this current one)

More tomorrow,

JF

Hurrah Words and the Christian Prison Debate

I'm still catching up on grading/administrative duties I missed while away, so I've not yet had a chance to study the "Christian Prison" data more closely.

To refresh, the prison in question is the brainchild of Bill Robinson of Corrections Concepts, Inc. Planned for the small northern Oklahoma town of Wakita, the 600-inmate prison would be run entirely by Christian staff. Inmates, who would volunteer to be transferred there for the final months prior to their release, would have the option of undergoing a number of life skills and faith-building programs.

Certainly faith-based prison ministries are nothing new, and from what I can tell experiments in federally run faith-based prisons and prison units have been tried in Florida and in Texas. These, however, seem to offer faith-based programs staffed by volunteers, and the prison administration and staff themselves are not required to be Christian. Anecdotes from such prisons claim a calmer atmosphere and lower recidivism rates. Scientific data don't yet exist to support those impressions, however. Indeed, research by Florida State University Criminology professor Dan Mears suggests that causal links between religious programs and positive outcomes are often based on shoddy research.

At issue is the vague descriptor "faith-based," which could mean anything from a life skills program run by a religious charity to a Bible study class. The blurry lines here make it impossible to tell if, for instance, convict A owes her benefits to having studied Genesis or to having learned how to manage personal finances. Faith-based programs themselves, however, often claim any and all benefits without bothering to make this distinction.

I think a "Christian prison" built of, by, and for Christians, would run into a similar blurriness problem. Sociologist Anthony Cohen once wrote of "hurrah words"--terms like democracy, freedom, or justice--that summon instant, almost universal support from (at least) people in US culture. They're uniter-words, the vocabulary of common assent that politicians and other leaders can mobilize to encourage people to rally around a cause, putting aside their petty disagreements for a moment.

The problem is, hurrah words only work if they stay safely abstract. Once people start discussing among themselves exactly what democracy means or what justice is, they quickly discover that they hold radically divergent ideas. The uniter word itself becomes then the cause for division.

Christian functions in a similar way for, well, Christians. Just about all Christians can answer yes to the question, "Are you a Christian?" But--as any street evangelist will tell you--once asked "What does it mean to be a Christian?" or "How could I become a Christian?", people give very different answers, answers which most street evangelists are quick to correct according to the dictates of their particular theologies. I joked yesterday about denomination-specific prisons being the next step on the faith-based prison path, but in fact denominations exist due to the fact that "What does it mean to be Christian?" has no single, universally convincing answer--at least, none that mortals can detect as such.

Would the Christian prison affirm the Real Presence in the Eucharist as Roman Catholics do or maintain a symbolic-only understanding of the Lord's Supper as Southern Baptists do? Would it see faith as a matter of a singular conversion event or as a slow process of sanctification and justification? Would it practice the Baptism of the Spirit (glossolalia--speaking in tongues) or ban such a practice as heretical? Would the Bible be approached as the literal, inerrant Word of God or as the inspired-but-human testament to the Living Word that is Christ? Which translation would be used--the New Revised Standard Version? The King James? The Message?

These aren't minor questions; they're the very stuff of schisms, the substance of deeply held denominational boundaries. The theological orientation of Corrections Concepts, Inc., will likely determine how it makes decisions about staffing, inmates, and programs. It's disingenuous, at best, for Corrections Concepts, Inc., to present itself simply as "Christian," as if the term were self-explanatory. Of course, were the organization to specify a faith, to declare itself as, say, Lutheran rather than Christian, it would likely find it even harder to garner popular support (and it's had plenty of difficulty in the numerous other locales it's attempted to convince). Lutheran (or Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic, or Nazarene) just isn't as powerful a hurrah word as Christian.

I do not mean to infer bad faith (as it were) on the part of Bill Robinson or CCI. The company does not earn my confidence, however, by having its attorney blame past resistance to the project in other towns on Satan. That's the other, propagandist function of hurrah-words; they preempt debate about or criticism of the idea they are called to prop up. Speak out against the invasion of Iraq? You're against national security. Speak out against a public protest? You're against freedom of speech. Speak out against the faith-based prison? You're against Christianity.

It's dirty pool. And it's a flashing red light indicating (perhaps) a weak argument or an agenda with something to hide.

Even aside from the creepy-vague rhetoric used to justify the prison, though, I have other reservations about a Christian prison.

More tomorrow,

JF

Sustaining Complexity Against the Hero High

I'm back from the Puerto Rico conference, where I was able to see my partner, catch up with old friends, hear some fascinating papers, and even (the night before I left) swim in the ocean.

I'm pleased to see the post about the Christian Prison (again--that just seems like a contradiction in terms to me) got some traffic. Clearly this is a matter deserving more attention. I mean, what's next? Denominational prisons? "I've spent 3 years doing hard time at the First Methodist Penitentiary. It's tough, but at least it's not as strict as Immanuel Baptist Prison. I keep hoping for a transfer to that Unitarian facility I hear about..."

I'm grateful to the commenters for their support and additional information. After I catch my breath (i.e., catch up on grading/class planning), I plan to investigate this issue more closely, and the resources suggested seem like excellent places to start. Thanks!

Before I dive into that matter, though--one of the papers I heard at this theatre conference was from my friend Laura Edmondson (I don't usually name names, but her work is fabulous). Laura researches East African theatre, particularly in the Tanzania/Uganda area. Of late, she's focused on performances, both by Africans and by outsiders, that address the multiple, various, and (in some cases) ongoing wars, battles, and genocides plaguing that region.

I've longed to have her perspective on the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda (latest news: this formal letter of protest by Exodus International). Laura has a way of investigating East African issues that combines a clear appraisal of the area's history with a critical awareness of how easy it is for Westerners especially to oversimplify those issues.

Her presentation was on a play by US playwright Lynn Nottage called Ruined. Ruined takes place at a brothel in a disputed region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) run by a savvy, powerful woman named Mama Nadi. As the play begins, Mama reluctantly agrees to take in two girls to work in her establishment. One of these, Salima, had been kidnapped and used as a concubine for a group of rebel soldiers. The other, Sophie, has been "ruined": raped with a bayonet so that she suffers from constant pain and (it is implied) a degree of incontinence. As such Sophie, while physically the more attractive, is useless as a prostitute since cannot herself have sex and, as a "ruined" woman, is considered dishonored. Mama nevertheless takes both girls in, employing Sophie mainly as a singer/eye candy.

As the play progresses, Nottage shows how Mama survives in a world defined by ever-shifting relations of trade, foreign intervention, and violence. Like Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage (a play that serves as a rough model for this one), Mama refuses to declare loyalty to anyone but herself and her establishment, stroking the egos (and other things) of any soldier, commander, rebel, miner, or what have you who enters.

Nottage herself spent several years interviewing women who lived (or had lived) in Congo, many of whom were themselves "ruined" by rape. In Congo especially, rape is a weapon of war. A woman may be gang raped by soldiers in full view of her village and family so as to dishonor them along with her. Often rapist-soldiers will use objects like knives, sticks, or guns, damaging their victims and (when not immediately fatal) causing debilitating, humiliating, and painful conditions such as fistulas. This report by the Newshour on PBS gives a good overview. Men, too, are victims of this kind of war-rape. All of these acts of violence, of course, occur in the larger context of the aftermath of "Africa's World War," in which political power struggles, inter-tribal tensions, and the legacy of multiple exploitative colonial experiences erupted into widespread violence, much of which remains active today.

Confronted with this horrible spectacle, the temptation for theatre artists--particularly Western theatre artists--is to make, well, a spectacle out of all that horror. What's the problem with that? Well, for one thing, the Western dramatic tradition (the last couple of centuries, at least) prefers its dramas simple and its conflicts clear. Good guys versus bad guys, white hats versus black hats--this is the stuff of good theatre. Little in the Congo or other East African contexts, however, lends itself to melodramatic casting. To create a play about Congo in which bad people do terrible things to good people would be to flatten out, to do violence to, a complicated history.

Ruined, however, tries (as Nottage says) "to sustain the complexity" of the DRC's situation. No one in the play comes off as completely innocent, yet neither does Nottage set up a villain capable of absorbing all of the blame for the violence and human want. The play isn't interested in clarifying who's really at fault in this scenario. Indeed, little details in the play--references and bits of imagery sprinkled here and there--fill out the world, make it ever-more complicated.

In sustaining the complexity of the play, in denying the audience anything like a good/evil taxonomy of persons or forces, Nottage quells the Western impulse to "save the day," the impulse to act first--do something, anything--without thinking. As I've written about previously, the West's tendency to cast itself as Heroic Intervener encourages it to imagine and act on scripts in which it "succeeds" as hero insofar as it identifies a Bad Guy and destroys it. More often than not, this kind of action leads to the realization that ham-fisted interventionism does little beyond giving the West a "hero high" (that all-important sense of having done something) and may even make the situation worse. It may be, in many cases, that the best thing the West can do in some cases is to delay doing something huge, to question whether it's really equipped to intervene in a situation effectively, and to reconsider if the love of the hero-high isn't blinding it to other realities.

The potential danger, of course, with sustaining complexity like Nottage does is that spectators have the opposite reaction. Rather than donning a "Super-Savior" costume, Western spectators may just throw up their hands in despair and disengage, deciding that the horrible violence is just the way things are. Or--perhaps this is worse--the complex play may impose an artificially simplistic resolution.

Unlike the Brecht play it's modeled after, Ruined stays generally in the bounds of theatrical realism. As theorist Jill Dolan argues, realism as a style often dictates that plots resolve artificially (similar to how sitcoms typically return things to normal by the end of the episode), and Ruined is no exception. The play ends (spoiler!) with Mama revealing to the man who adores her that she, too, is "ruined"; the man (named Christian) accepts her anyway, giving a brutal play about brutal realities a sweet ending that (to Dolan and other critics) mars the careful treatment of the DNC situation.

My friend Laura, however, noted that East African spectators who have read the play or heard it (it does not yet have an African staging, nor has it yet been translated into Swahili or any other African language) like the ending. They resonate with the affirmation that life does go on and that, as the character Christian says, "we, and I speak as a man, can do better."

I do not do justice to my friend's in-depth analysis of the play, having just heard it once. I was so impressed, however, by just how carefully Laura strives to sustain the complexity of her reaction to Ruined while refusing to disengage. It's her example I've kept in mind as I've reacted to the Ugandan debates. Indeed, I think that example can apply even to the Christian Prison debate. What complexities are there? How do my own feelings, my own need to be Activist-Christian Hero, hinder my ability to see the situation in all its complexity? How, finally, can we as Christians and as activists do better?

More tomorrow,

JF

The Christian Prison

My posts for the next few days may be spotty, as I'm attending a scholarly conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico (I know, I know--poor me!).

I did see an item posted on one of the far-right news sites. It's here, an article about "the nation's first all-Christian prison" to be built in Wakita, OK. A group called "Corrections Concepts, Inc." under the leadership of Bill Robinson is pulling together private funding to design and construct a 600-bed prison facility to be staffed and operated entirely by Christians. Prisoners who are near the end of their sentence and who would have to volunteer to be transferred there would enroll in various prison programs (e.g., GED, life skills classes, work release). Apparently, prisoners would not have to attend chapel or be themselves Christians, but the curriculum they'd be going through would be "Christ-centered."

According to this article from the Tulsa World, Robinson is himself an ex-convict and is interested mainly in helping reduce recidivism rates. From what I can tell, he has been trying to realize his idea of a Christian prison for some time, having been rebuffed in other towns (see here and here).

Now, I'd like to be for a project that supports helping prisoners. Jesus directs Christians to visit prisoners and to reach out to those who are suffering or oppressed. And US currently leads the world in terms of incarceration rates and numbers of prisoners (that's right--we imprison people at a higher rate than China, Russia, Cuba, Rwanda, etc.)--a predictable effect of so many mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes. Indeed, US prisons are overtaxed, creating something of a crisis. Thus there's no shortage of people who need help.

But the line between "visit/help people in prison" and "run a prison yourself" seems fairly bright to me, and this project crosses it. It's one thing to assist prisoners with educational initiatives to help them succeed on the outside, but it's quite another to operate an institution making profit on prisoners, no matter how altruistic the owners' stated intentions might be.

And the "Christians-only" clause--exactly how would this be enforced? Who defines or determines the Christianity of the staff? If a staff converts to another faith or if the staff's Christianity gets deemed too heterodox--what happens? Robinson insists that he has all the Constitutional questions licked, but I'm just not so sure.

And then there's information from this site: www.piecp-violations.com, which monitors implementation of the federal Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP). PIECP in essence allows the industrial products of prison labor to be bought and sold at rates on part with products from non-prison labor, provided that the prison in question follows some basic guidelines. For instance, PIECP-qualified prisons must pay prisoners in the program at prevailing wages rather than at the federal minimum wage. According to this article on the piecp-violations website (which is not run by the government), Corrections Concepts, Inc., has stated that it does not plan to abide by PIECP guidelines.

As a private prison, of course, it does not have to do so. What this means, however, is A) the products of the prison labor at the Wakita prison will be produced more cheaply and therefore sold more cheaply than those of other private-sector companies, and B) the prisoners will be paid less than they would for doing the same work in the private sector and are not guaranteed the same kind of workplace protections PIECP mandates.

This seems suspicious to me. I would like to think that Mr. Robinson has a rock-solid rationale for wishing to bypass a program designed specifically to prepare exiting prisoners for real-world work environments. But the nagging thought in the back of my head is the fact that prisons in the US are to a large extent for-profit industries. The crisis of so many prisoners is, unfortunately, also a market opportunity.

Is it really the church's place to be an entrepreneur in that market?

I keep thinking about the image that Christianity wants to send to the world. We are to be the face of Christ to the people most in need of seeing that face. Somehow I imagine that face, that love, appearing and unfolding to those in need without truncheons, pepper spray, and razor-wire fences.

What was it Christ said in Matthew? "For I was in prison, and you owned the cell."

More tomorrow--well, more when I can get a chance to post, anyway.

JF

Friendship Evangelism: Skepticism and Defense

It's uncomfortable for me to speak in positive terms about evangelizing. As I've written before, my early experiences in the Southern Baptist Church--where "evangelizing" meant "constantly asking strangers whether they had given their lives to Christ"--left me cold toward the idea of inflicting my faith on others.

Listening to Ira Glass interviewing Jim Henderson on this week's This American Life, I found myself agreeing with Glass's incredulity about the efficacy of Henderson's "doable evangelism." A variety of "friendship evangelism," Henderson's technique seeks to avoid the confrontational approach--the "urgency" approach--of the Way of the Master. Rather, friendship evangelism's focus is on cultivating authentic relationships with non-believers, letting faith convictions emerge naturally as part of the relationship rather than artificially as part of some "bait and switch" sales pitch.

I can see the appeal. Ideally, a Christian's life should be legitimately distinct enough that any close friend of a Christian would note it. Moreover, one would hope that the Christian's loving attitude would on its own attract new converts or at least provoke people to wonder, "What's up with that person? I want what she has..." People are more apt to listen and learn from someone if they ask of their own accord. The confrontational, if-you-died-right-now-would-you-go-to-heaven questioning of the urgency evangelists presents a face of Christianity that is at best little more than a get-out-of-hell-free card and at worst a shrill, judgmental harangue.

Glass's criticism--his honest confusion, I should say--was this: What if Christianity never comes up? It's perfectly possible to co-exist with people of other faiths, or of no faith at all, and never broach the subject of Things Eternal. Or, as is more often the case, friends practice mutual awareness of and respect for their colleagues' beliefs without needing to know everything about them or feeling like they have to make an issue out of that difference.

What's the difference, in other words, between being a friendship evangelist and just plain being nice? If the goal of the evangelist is to spread the good news, then can you really call a technique that doesn't involve sharing the good news evangelism at all?

The pro-friendship response (and I should emphasize that I have not read Henderson's own work--this is my guess) would likely acknowledge and embrace the risk of the difference-with-no-difference. But that's the point--if your Christianity co-exists seamlessly with non-Christianity, perhaps (as the LOLcats say) "ur doin it wrong." The challenge of friendship evangelism--life evangelism--is to not confine your "ambassador for Christ" identity to discrete, on-the-street encounters where you're in "evangelist mode." Rather, you pattern your entire life after an awareness of your status as Christ's representative on earth. You are aware at all times--not just when "soul winning"--that you are to embody the loving-grace-kindness (chesed) of God for all people.

The challenge is to make this practice of all-the-time-chesed so authentically interlaced into your daily life that people take notice. In a way, this is a deeper challenge, a harder discipline, than even the stage-fright-defying tactics of the Way of the Master. And there's a good amount of scriptural support for this approach.

The life-evangelism approach also highlights the fact that urgency evangelism can at times present a distinctly un-loving and un-Christian face.

Now, Way of the Master folk would (and do) counter that they are the ones showing true love. If someone's blithely walking toward a cliff edge, is it loving to do nothing to warn them, hoping perhaps that they simply see your behavior and follow your example of not-going-toward-the-edge? No! The loving thing to do when you know a saving truth is to shout, scream, plead, challenge--do everything you can to get the person to stop, to turn around, to be saved.

The problem is that in the urgency scenario the love is often only obvious to the evangelists. To the people they're trying to save--the people to whom they're showing real love--the evangelists can seem not loving but annoying, pushy, and hateful. In theatre, we warn young actors that it matters less about whether they think they're communicating X emotion or Y subtext; it only matters if the audience gets it. If the actor (or director or designer or playwright) has to explain that the audience didn't get it but that it's really there, trust me!--then the message effectively doesn't exist.

In other words, love between two people that only one party recognizes as such is at least suspect. True, parents often have to discipline their children ("don't touch that hot stove!" "don't run into the street!"), which is unpleasant for children. The children may not in the moment of discipline feel love per se, but the parent is nonetheless showing love by setting and enforcing healthy boundaries. But even that logic has limits. Abusive parents exercise unhealthy discipline; calling physical violence against a child "love" does not make it so.

Moreover, the child-parent relationship feels wrong when transferred to the evangelistic relationship. For the evangelist to treat nonbelievers as children--they don't know I'm being loving, but I really am!--is a dubious tactic at best. As friendship/life evangelism techniques argue, if it looks like un-love, sounds like un-love, and feels like un-love--well, it's probably un-love.

More tomorrow,

JF

All Bait, No Switch

Every scholar in academia has a secret fear that just as she is about to start or complete a new research project, someone else will publish a similar project, thus destroying any hope for originality.

Just such a fear struck my heart today as I drove to my coffee shop to do work for today. My radio, tuned as always to NPR, had the peerless radio program This American Life on it. For those who may not know, TAL chooses a weekly theme and produces three to five short segments about that theme. The segments are typically stories about some small-scale, personal situation--a feud between neighbors, a local band's struggle to become famous, a girl's attempt to work out her feelings for her ex--but the interviews, straightforward narration, a light production notes combine so deftly as to make for a riveting hour of programming. It's dangerous to turn on the radio when TAM is on and you have something else to do; it'll suck you in.

Today, wouldn't you know it, the topic of the story I tuned into was new techniques for personal evangelism--the very thing I'm writing about. Dagnabbit! I think, Beaten to the punch!

In fairness, I should admit that I've stolen--ah, been inspired by that radio show on a number of occasions. Much of my research (Hell Houses, flash mobs) I started or sharpened after hearing a show about that topic. So I have no real ground to complain that a show like this got to some fascinating topic before I did.

Besides, as I listened to the segment, it became clear that the show's theme wasn't evangelicalism per se but "bait and switch." Specifically, the host (Ira Glass) was interviewing one Jim Henderson, an evangelical author who champions what he calls "Doable Evangelism." His thesis is that most personal evangelism takes the form of a "bait-and-switch"--you start to strike up a conversation and then--inevitably--turn the talk toward Christ. Most non-church-going people, he argues, don't care much for that bait-and-switch. It feel manipulative.

"So," asks Glass, "what do you offer instead?"

Henderson then outlines his approach, which involves watching, praying (he speaks of "unauthorized praying"--praying for people without their knowing), and listening. "You ask them how they're doing," he explains, "and you just listen without interrupting."

"That's it?" asks Glass, "When do you give them the pitch?"

Henderson explains that the focus for his ministry isn't creating converts. "Christ said to go forth and make disciples, not converts," he argues. He says the first step is to get Christians out into culture, to detoxify (not his word) them in the eyes of the world.

Glass at this point seems incredulous. He shares how he and his wife have a number of deeply religious friends, but nothing about his friendship with them does anything to pull him towards church away from his "staunch atheism." "What does it matter?" he challenges Henderson, "It doesn't sound like your approach does anything. It's all bait and no switch."

Henderson accepts the criticism amiably, noting that that's just what his "ideological opponents in evangelicalism" would say. "But consider the alternative," he says. If you as a Christian turn every friendship with non-Christians into a sales pitch for church, you'll likely lose the friendship. Which is better: to preserve a friendly relationship with people or to alienate people in the name of Christ?

The segment ended soon after (and I breathed a sigh of relief to learn that the show had left my research area relatively unexplored). But I'm caught by the idea of Christianity as all bait and no switch.

Now, from my work I recognize that Henderson isn't doing something all that novel. "Friendship evangelism" of various sorts has been around for quite a while, emphasizing the need to create authentic and lasting relationships with people prior to broaching the subject of heaven, hell, and Things Eternal.

The obvious competitor strategy is what Michael Spencer calls the "wretched/urgency evangelism" of people like Ray Comfort or Todd Friel and their Way of the Master (about which I've written extensively here). Comfort would dispute the idea that the task of making disciples can begin with any other step than conviction and conversion through a presentation of the Law and Grace. People could die and spend eternity in Hell at any moment, and it's the Christian's job to do anything and everything to make people aware of that grim fact. It's not a lifetime of discipleship that saves, they would argue, but repentance and receiving the grace of God.

Not surprisingly, then, their tactics resemble the "bait and switch" that Henderson resists. They start with a normal conversation, shift to the "are you going to heaven?", go through the Ten Commandments, and end with the "here's how to get out of Hell" pitch. For their part, Friel and Comfort are as disparaging of friendship evangelism as Henderson is of urgency evangelism. Pointing to their "bait" parts--the hook that draws the "fish" in--Comfort says he can establish a rapport--a friendship--with someone in about a minute. But it does no good to be someone's friend, he argues, if you don't share with them the one truth that saves them from the Eternal Fire.

This would be the main argument against Henderson's style (at least as presented on the brief segment): if you believe in Hell and in salvation through Christ as literal realities, then isn't it an act of the most cynical animosity to withhold that information from your friends for fear of rejection? Comfort's favorite illustrations frame the situation in concrete images: if I have a spare parachute and know the plane we're on is about to crash--and I withhold that parachute from you for fear you'll find my offer pushy--how can I possibly call myself your friend?

Now--to tip my hand, I'm more on Henderson's side (I think--I'll need to do some research) than Comfort's. But for the friendship approach to score rhetorical points, it needs to overcome the strong argument against it from the urgency evangelism side.

More tomorrow,

JF

An Off-Key Bandwagon

Sigh--just when you think it's safe to hop on the bandwagon, you hear a badly out-of-tune note in the brass section.

I ended yesterday's post half-convinced to finally join the Facebook group protesting the proposed Bahati Bill in Uganda, the bill that, among other things, condemns homosexuality as an act on par with rape and calls for the death penalty for people caught having homosexual relations. I don't see the group itself literally doing much to persuade Ugandans not to adopt the bill. Ugandans are capable of debating such bills themselves, and Western disapproval of anti-homosexuality bills can be/has been used as "proof" that the decadent homosexuals of America wish to further corrupt pristine, authentic Uganda.

Rather, I argued that the utility of such a group consisted in getting people who otherwise wouldn't be in community to join together and perhaps even begin re-encountering each other's differences. Culture war veterans who almost never have a kind word for each other now--for the space of this one issue at least--find themselves united. As they join on this one issue, as they talk and listen (well, write and read) each other's testimonies, they may in the future be less likely to dismiss their opponents as thoughtless or immoral.

But, as I checked the pro and anti Bill Facebook pages today, I find a plethora of posts by one gentleman, clearly anti-Bill, whose views are in their own way just as toxic as those contained in the Bill. A taste of two posts by this person (and, to warn, these are pretty offensive), the first from the pro-Bill page, where he's filled the visible fields with posts like this:

The african struggle for democracy - as evidenced by the creators of this group - was and still is an exercise in hypocrisy. It wasn't about liberty and the protection of human rights. It was, in retrospect, only about taking what the "bwana" or colonial master had - the big buildings, the mercedes benz, the nice sui...ts... [sic] If black people had TRULY suffered under oppression, I think we would find that they would today be the biggest supporters of freedom, the right to express oneself, the right to be who you are. That just clearly is not the case. It seems, for Ugandans (and other african people), it's alright that other people suffer, as long as "I" don't.

Or this (from the anti-Bill page):

I wish people would realise that there is no point trying to help Uganda (or the rest of sub-saharan africa for that matter) in any way. The more you try to help, the more that help is turned against you, with accusations of "imperialism", "neo-colonialism" and so on. They don't want to be helped, that much is clear. All the west has been doing for the last few decades is to encourage the dependancy cycle in african countries: liberal, white-guilt advocacy groups encourage governments to send more aid and poverty-relief schemes into Africa, the aid is rapidly used up or siphoned off by corrupt governments who use it to further entrench themselves, while asking for yet more aid. Meanwhile, on the ground, the pathetic, half-literate population follow the dictates of their own backward culture which encourages the view that political leaders are always right and the leader who shouts the loudest is the "most right".

Blech. With friends like these... I don't know the gentleman in question here, but regardless of who he is, the things he says are about as ethnocentric-racist-classist as can be. Worse, his arguments--especially as he posts them (again and again and again) on the pro-Bill page, do absolutely nothing but play into the Uganda-versus-the-West melodramatic propaganda that assists the Bill's proponents in Uganda. Nothing makes a draconian anti-homosexuality bill seem all the more vital as a defense of "authentic" Ugandan culture than a pro-homosexual rant that disparages Ugandan culture.

In defense of the Anti-Facebook page's administrators, his comments have for the most part been roundly denounced or dismissed. It's painful, though, that on the pro-Bill page he and his supporters seem to be the main face of the West.

Such are the vicissitudes of using Facebook as activism.

If there's any kind of bright side, he seems at least not to be trying to represent Western Christians. The more I think about/write about this debate, the more I think that it's a testament to the ways that Christianity can operate in ways that bypass nationalist loyalties and ideologies. Westerners as Westerners may not have much of a place to stand in criticizing Ugandans' anti-gay attitudes (attitudes which are of course by no means shared by all Ugandans). But Western evangelicals as Bible-believing conservative Christians--and, yes, as opponents of the GLBT movement--may have the ability to speak (some degree of) truth in love.

Again, I think the importance of this debate isn't so much the debate itself; indeed, I think this debate will flare out soon and people will barely remember it six months from now. Rather, this debate is a staging ground for how the Christian West relates to the Christian South.

God help us your children of all nations to recognize each other. Let all who see us engage cry out, "see how much they love one another!"

More tomorrow,

JF

Affect and Activism in Facebook Politics

So--I suggested yesterday that certain expressions of "activism," such as joining a Facebook page protesting the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill (known now as the Bahati Bill after one of its co-sponsors, David Bahati), may in fact be a form of affectivism.

That is, the urge to "do something" in the face of a shocking injustice (in this case, instituting the death penalty for homosexual acts) can in fact result in activities that do less to address the injustice itself and more to satisfy the urge to action. Clicking on a "join this group" (or "sign this petition" or "send this form e-mail") button, seeing the group's postings added to your "wall," receiving updates about the group's status--all of this can create the appearance that you have, along with 3,000+ other people, "done" something meaningful. You have the feeling--the affect--of joining a positive, activist movement.

Let me be clear: Facebook activism is about the Facebook user more than the ostensible object of activism. No Facebook page founded and populated primarily by US citizens shocked at Uganda's proposed legislation will likely do thing one to persuade Ugandans to resist passage of this bill. In terms of non-virtual effect, joining a Facebook page literally does nothing except produce a feeling of self-satisfaction.

But surely it's good for people to know about the Ugandan situation, isn't it? Surely Facebook is a good way to raise people's consciousness about this situation, yes? I mean, the more people who know about this Bill...

...um... What? What exactly follows from more US people knowing about this Bill? Suppose the Facebook group doubles, triples, increases to hundreds of thousands of people protesting the Bill. What are these groups of outraged US citizens proposing be done? Invade Uganda and make them behave? Shout the international equivalent of "shame on you"? Regardless of what you or I may personally think of US foreign policy, it is clear that in the eyes of much of the world, the US's authority to assert itself as arbiter of international morality is currently strained at best. Uganda faces a number of challenges (e.g., the threat posed by the Lord's Resistance Army) arguably much more pressing than an offensive bill. Where is the US outrage/consciousness-raising about those challenges?

Worse, the outraged cries of Western groups may play into a Ugandans-versus-the-West narrative that the bill's backers are using (at least in part) to make passing this bill a sine qua non of Ugandan identity. "See how the decadent West opposes our sovereignty?" they say, "See how the homosexuals are desperate to import their vile [colonial] behaviors into our [pristine, Godly] nation?"

I should note, again, that the situation is precisely not one of "Ugandan values versus the West." Uganda already has a robust debate about this Bill within its own borders. It doesn't exactly need the Enlightened West to Teach it what is Good and Proper.

What, then, is the good of a Facebook group if such affectivism focuses more on US citizens than on remedying the actual situation?

Let me share up front that I don't particularly see this situation as one that US citizens as such are able to change. Uganda's decision on the bill--whatever it may ultimately be--will simply be a reality the US and other Western nations have to live with. Certainly, if the Bill becomes law, that reality will have repercussions in terms of international relations, aid, travel, and so on. At that point--as the US government decides how to react to this act by Uganda--then groups like the Facebook page might exert pressure on representatives to enact material changes to US relations to Uganda. At that point, though (i.e., writing to senators, lobbying, voting), the work is plainly activism--action-focused rather than affect-focused.

Until such time, Facebook activism remains a matter of conjuring a group of people joined by the affect of outrage. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Activist community isn't a song that plays itself. Should the time come for action, it's vital that there be an activated group of people to initiate that action. Affect-focused activism like the Facebook page play a role in creating that activated community.

Moreover, the group grants a possibility for a bit of civic self-reflection, allowing members to explore the bonds and tensions between them. As I've noted, the Facebook group is not the product of the Human Rights Campaign or Amnesty International but of Warren Throckmorton, moderate-conservative Christian advocate of "ex-gay" therapies. Yet the group has attracted people from throughout the political spectrum: diehard atheist leftists, GLBT-affirmative Christians, conservative Biblical inerrantists, ex-gays, ex-ex-gays, people of other faiths, people merely interested in human rights, people who join out of peer pressure/guilt.

As these people begin to talk to each other, their discussions probe their respective political/theological boundaries. Some of the debates get quite heated about issues of whether or not homosexuality is natural/unnatural, evil/good, or curable/innate. But no matter what the differences, the conversation returns to "well, we disagree on X, but we both believe that this Bill is wrong." The group performs that communal tension I've written about before--bound together in some respects (one specific issue in this case) and fundamentally opposed to each other in another.

It's exciting to me, actually, that this group--which may or may not prove lasting--contests so many "culture war" alignments, re-orienting (if you'll pardon the pun) "left" and "right" sides in a rare moment of shared perspective. Such a for-this-issue coaliltion isn't sameness, but neither is it exactly antagonism.

Goodness. I may have just convinced myself to join. If you'd like to, the link is here.

More tomorrow,

JF