[Oe List ...] 1/14/21, Progressing Spirit: Brian McLaren: Doubt, Faith, and Why Breaking Up (with Authoritarianism) is Hard to Do; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Jan 14 08:34:59 PST 2021
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Doubt, Faith and Why Breaking Up (with Authoritarianism) is Hard to Do
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| Essay by Brian D. McLaren
January 14, 2021
I grew up in a 6-day creation sector of Christianity. Evolution, we were taught, was a Satanic deception to make us lose our faith. It was a banana peel on the slippery slope to hell; and it led me to my first theological crisis when I was 12 years old.
I’d been that kid always sneaking off into the woods - I was the tadpole hunter, the newt finder, the turtle spy, the snake discoverer, the raccoon tracker, the birdsong listener, always coming home with wet feet from tromping through a puddle or swamp.
My immersion in the natural world (augmented by lots of reading at the local library) led me to find evolution compelling. So, after considerable struggle, I secretly gave my pre-teen self permission to doubt what my Christian elders taught me. I didn’t throw out Genesis, I just let it be what it obviously was (to me, anyway) - not a science textbook, but a visionary poem celebrating the goodness of all creation.
The biblical literalism and corresponding distrust of science that I learned in church back in the ‘50s and ‘60s still thunders from pulpits and Christian radio today. Disbelief in evolutionary biology won’t kill you, but distrust of the science of pandemics and climate change might, and being a faithful Christian is not a vaccine.
As I’ve sought to understand why so many of my fellow Christians risk harming their lives, families, churches and communities as an expression of being pro-faith and anti-science, I keep returning to the work of social psychologists like Bob Altemeyer. A growing body of research suggests that about a third of us react to anxiety, change, grievance and shame with an almost uncontrollable desire to find some individual (usually a powerful male) or group (usually led by a powerful male) who makes us feel safe. Unfortunately, this very human need for relief renders us susceptible to becoming authoritarian followers.
Authoritarian leaders are clever and they know the messages that will convincingly make followers feel secure: Don’t believe the experts; believe me. It’s not your fault; it’s those guys over there who are to blame. Don’t worry; I can bring the good old days back again. I alone can fix it. I have the simple answer to your fears.
Authoritarian groups spin all kinds of scary conspiracy theories to keep followers feeling safe, innocent, fearful of others, aggrieved, and importantly, under their control. As a result, it’s hard to break free, whether your brand of authoritarianism is religious or political. When it’s a powerful fusion of the two, authoritarianism has cult-like power that can undercut both Christian faith and democracy. For over 40 years, clever politicians have formed calculated alliances with authoritarian religious leaders to manipulate followers for mutual advantage. They’ve groomed millions of us to deny the evidence for evolution, climate change, an historic pandemic, and recently, the clear outcome of an election.
Because I’ve lived my six decades of life in close proximity to religious authoritarians, I have this instinct about what they are about to say even before they speak, and I can still feel their power. I remember the twelve-year-old me, anxious about how much I could differ from my conservative Christian upbringing without being rejected by my church. And then I think of literally millions of conservative Christians in the same predicament today.
Exiting that authoritarian superhighway requires a safe off-ramp, and there is one available. I know because I’ve taken the exit ramp that leads from a naive and controlling religion to deeper and more liberating faith and spirituality, namely, doubt. Not the reactionary, angry, swing-to-the-other-extreme kind of doubt. Not the doubt-everything-so-you-can-be-a-smug-cynic kind either. Responsible doubt - the kind of critical thinking that tests inherited or accepted beliefs and explanations and releases us from being under someone else’s control.
This kind of doubt is not the enemy of true faith, it is the enemy of authoritarianism.
Until they experience a disruption or intervention of some sort, many of our neighbors will remain drawn to the euphoria of authoritarian followership. They’ll keep tapping into the desired high at a rally or church service, through conspiracy theories like QAnon, and through mass and social media that reinforce their followership. They will put themselves, friends and families in danger by refusing to wear a mask, and as a sign of their faith, many will refuse a vaccine too. Some of these activated followers might even arm themselves for civil war to protect the leader to whom they have pledged their allegiance.
What can the rest of us do as this process unfolds? First, we can set an example of grace, hope, kindness and mercy. If we use the rhetoric of shame, fear and grievance, these emotions will spread like a contagious virus, driving people deeper into authoritarianism for relief. Alternative social spaces of grace, hope, kindness and mercy can provide our neighbors a safe alternative to authoritarian belonging.
Second, we can model freedom from the fear of doubt. We can see doubt not as the end of faith, but as a passageway to a deeper and wiser faith. We can go public with stories about how we've faced our doubts and changed our minds. We can simply testify, “I used to see it that way, but I no longer do.” The conversations that ensue can be an exit ramp out of authoritarianism.
Third, we can understand how hard it is to break up with authoritarianism. It might take months or years for people we love to get out entirely. If we lack empathy and patience, we can easily scare people back into the perceived safety of authoritarian belonging. If we create safe social space for people to face and process their doubts without judgment or shame, if we let them know that doubt isn’t something to be ashamed of, if we help them see that doubt is actually a sign of honesty, curiosity and growth, then they can pass through the portal of doubt into deeper, more honest faith. So if you are able, increase your savvy about the lure and power of authoritarianism. And set an example of a better kind of faith, faith that is willing to pass through the valley of the shadow of doubt in the pursuit of truth, goodness, justice, joy and peace on the other side.
~ Brian D. McLaren
Read online here
About the Author
Brian D. McLaren is a best-selling writer, speaker, activist and an Auburn Senior Fellow. The author of over 20 books, his brand-new release is Faith After Doubt, St. Martin’s Press (January 2021). You may also be interested in his online resources on bias and authoritarianism, available at brianmclaren.net.
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Question & Answer
Q: By A Reader
What Christian principles can help us make it through difficult times like these?
A: By Toni Anne Reynolds
Dear Reader,
It can feel so challenging to think that a tradition can remain relevant in a time of great tumult. I personally think that the most challenging times are the moments that birth the strongest aspects of a faith tradition. Despite not being able to gather in person there are many ways to stay grounded in Christian principles and find ways of connecting during this era of social distancing.
I come from a faith community that used prayer trees. This can be especially powerful during this start of the new year, with the fresh energy of resolutions and high hopes for the times to come. Group prayer is such an old way of convening. You can organize a monthly or weekly prayer time and each of the members of your community, group can commit to join in prayer for 15 minutes at the same time.
I know the gospel tells a different story of the moments just after Jesus’ execution, all of the disciples huddled together in one place. But Jesus and the disciples traveled with many people, and impacted many people. I suspect, with confidence, that their community was larger than the 13 of them. Surely, they experienced moments of separation, distance and uncertainty. These are the moments to employ the practices that were strengthened when things were “good”. Depending on your Christian persuasion, the principle of community is likely strong. This is a time of searching for new ways of being in community, but surely the strength of mind is always foundational. May you have the space to use your mind to connect with those in your community.
My favorite principle is communion, at least in the form of eating together. You may already be doing something like this, but having a meal together via video call, or again, at a designated time, is a great way to use the energy of this connective principle right now.
I know these seem like flimsy suggestions so I’ll end with the strongest one I’ve heard so far. If you were to wrap your arms around yourself as best you can, or simply massage your own feet or forearm, the brain doesn’t know the difference between it being your hand or someone else’s. But! The brain does register the contact as pleasing and helpful for that state of enjoyment we have when we receive a hug from another person. Healing touch is bringing on a whole new meaning in these times. So, as cheesy as it sounds, hug yourself, massage your own feet and do what you can to hear the voice of people who love you.
~ Toni Anne Reynolds
Read and share online here
About the Author
Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXIV:
Introducing Luke
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
May 27, 2010
By the time the third gospel, the one we call Luke, was written, history had moved to the last years of the 9th decade at the earliest and quite possibly to the early years of the 10th decade. The Christian movement had journeyed beyond its earlier traumas and tensions and was now concerned about making a case for its legitimacy in the Roman Empire. I date Luke between 89 and 93, though with all proposed dating there is debate on both ends. This gospel, however, does reflect Christianity’s transition out of Judaism and toward to the Gentile world. The community for which Luke’s gospel was written appears to have been made up primarily of dispersed Jews, who no longer followed their traditions in a rigid pattern and, as a consequence, are beginning to attract a rising tide of converts from the Gentile world.
These Gentile proselytes, as they came to be called, had little dedication to or interest in the cultic practices of circumcision, kosher dietary rules and unfamiliar liturgical practices such as a 24-hour vigil around Shavuot or Pentecost and the eight-day celebrations of the Harvest Festival known as Sukkoth. They were not intent on discarding or losing the meaning of these holy days, but they clearly were eager to reduce their place of importance and the hold they had once had on their lives.
The author of Luke is unknown, but the tradition has always identified this book with Luke the physician, who accompanied Paul and is mentioned in both Colossians 4:14 and in II Timothy 4:11. Please recall, however, that Colossians is disputed as to its being genuinely Pauline, with the weight of scholarship against it, while no New Testament scholar of significance would attribute II Timothy to the pen of Paul, so this identification is tenuous at best. What we do know about the author of the gospel of Luke, and the same person clearly wrote the book of Acts as Volume II of his gospel, is that in all probability he was born a Gentile and had been drawn first into the ethical monotheism that marked Judaism. He appears to have actually converted to Judaism and to have joined the synagogue through which he moved into Christianity. He may well have been a convert of Paul’s, at least he has clearly identified himself with Paul’s point of view and he champions it in both the gospel and the book of Acts.
The internal data that point us to these conclusions are plentiful. First, there is the genealogy of Luke in chapter three, which, quite unlike the genealogy in Matthew, carries the ancestry of Jesus back not just to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, but to Adam, who would have been understood in the world view of that day as the father of the whole human race, which would include the Gentiles. Also in Luke’s genealogy it needs to be noted that while he ties Jesus to King David, he does not carry that lineage through the royal lines of the kings of the Southern Kingdom as Matthew does, but suggests that the line ran not from David to Solomon but from David to Nathan. Biblical sources tell us of no son of David named Nathan, but David had many wives so he might have had many sons whose names we do not know. Where Luke got the name Nathan or why he settled on it is hard to say, but the moral hero of the story of David and Bathsheba was a prophet named Nathan, about whom I have written before. In other places, Luke appears to borrow names from Old Testament characters if it suits the message he is trying to articulate, so the connection with Nathan, the prophet, might be a good guess. We also know that Luke was not impressed with royalty or with magi, as they both get de-emphasized in this gospel.
In other notes that may give us insight into Luke’s values, we note that this is the first gospel, and thus the first place in the Bible, ever to mention the Samaritans, and Luke does so with sensitivity and inclusiveness. Only Luke, for example, tells us the parable of the “Good Samaritan.” That is just one more indication that his community has moved beyond the Jewish point of view. Later in the book of Acts (chapter two), Luke emphasizes anew the universal theme in his narrative when he suggests that when the Holy Spirit fell on the gathered Christian community. He is quite pointed in noting that Pentecost was a worldwide event in which the Spirit fell not only on the Jews but on the peoples of the world, who then proclaimed the gospel in whatever language those hearing spoke. To make sure that his readers understood this point, he named those who were present. They were: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Egypt and Rome (Acts 3:4-10). Clearly Luke envisioned a Christianity loosed from the ethnic limits of Judaism and propelled into being a universal faith.
We note also that the author of this gospel makes no claim to his ever having been an eye witness, but rather mentions the research that he has done, which enabled him to produce this work. He says in his preamble that “many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of the things which are surely believed among us, even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eye witnesses and servants of the word (Luke 1:1-5).” We can now be certain that Mark was one of these sources since Luke reproduces in his gospel about half of Mark. Many scholars also suggest that Luke and Matthew both had a common source made up of a collection of Jesus sayings from which they both quote frequently and almost identically. This popular hypothesis requires the existence of a now lost book to which the title Q has been attached. There are some other scholars, a minority, who dismiss the Q hypothesis and assert instead that Luke also had Matthew in front of him when he wrote and that, while he preferred Mark, he did use a number of Matthew’s additions to Mark and that is what created the similarities between Luke and Matthew that are attributed to Q. While the majority of scholars still follow the Q hypothesis, I for one have never been convinced of it. It is not important to enter that debate here; I merely state it as a way of keeping the argument open.
Luke also introduces a number of things into the developing Christian story that have not to our knowledge been there before. The first one is the account of the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1). It is a fascinating story from many angles, but it is clearly not history. It reminds me of a song popular in my teenage years entitled, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” John is born to post-menopausal parents. That is a wonder, but it pales into insignificance in the light of the story of Jesus being born to a virgin. When the birth of John occurs, the neighbors gather to celebrate. When Jesus was born, however, it was not neighbors, but angels who come crashing through the midnight sky to celebrate his arrival. Clearly, when Luke wrote, there was still some tension between the followers of Jesus and the followers of John the Baptist. That is why there is such a concentrated effort in all the gospels to assert that John the Baptist, who was clearly the first of the two on the scene, knew that he was subservient to Jesus: “He must increase, I must decrease.” Luke pushes this to the extreme by having the fetus of John the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth leap to salute the fetus of Jesus in the womb of Mary (1:39-45). In this narrative, Luke appears to have borrowed a story from Genesis and applied it to his narrative (see Gen. 25:12-23). In both stories, a baby leaps in the womb of its mother. In the Genesis story, it is Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, who is pregnant with twins. As these twins struggle in Rebekah’s womb, she seeks the counsel of an oracle to determine the meaning of this leaping only to learn from the oracle that the older son (Esau) would ultimately serve the younger son (Jacob). In Luke’s story the babies are not twins, but Luke does make them kin — perhaps cousins — but the meaning is the same, the older boy, John, will serve the younger boy, Jesus.
The custom of taking material from familiar Old Testament sources, such as the book of Genesis to tell the Jesus story, is discernible in other places. In Luke’s narrative about the birth of John, he says that the Baptist’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, conceived him when they were both post-menopausal. That motif was clearly borrowed from the story of Abraham and Sarah, who did the same thing when Isaac was born. The names of John the Baptist’s parents were also, in all probability, plucked from Old Testament sources. Luke will portray John the Baptist not as Elijah, but as “the voice crying in the wilderness,” a phrase that comes from the book of Malachi. The immediate predecessor to the book of Malachi in the Bible was the book of Zechariah, so Luke uses that name for the father or immediate predecessor of John the Baptist. Identifying the source of the name Elizabeth for John’s mother is more difficult. There is only one other Elizabeth in the Bible and she is the wife of Aaron, the brother of Moses and the sister of Miriam. Elizabeth, written as Elisheba in Hebrew, and Miriam (written as Mary in Greek) would thus be sisters in law and thus their children would be first cousins. Only Luke implies kinship between Jesus and John and I believe that he accomplishes this by his creative use of names drawn from the story of Moses and his siblings.
As we look more deeply into Luke’s unique way of telling the Jesus story, we will see again and again that Luke’s purpose is to interpret Jesus in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures not to recreate him historically. Unless we understand this clearly and thus free our minds from the shackling literalism that distorts the modern ability to study the scriptures, we will never be able to hear the powerful message of Luke. This new vision also introduces into the study of the Bible a playful kind of speculation that leads us deeper and deeper into its truth. As our consideration of Luke moves on that will become clearer and even more obvious.
~ John Shelby Spong
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