What November 4 Means: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

I have heard many friends comment in person about what Tuesday's election of Barack Obama means to them. It is unlike other presidential elections that I have been part of. It is a new thing. For many African Americans, it is something they believed they would never see, and they could not trust it even when the evidence in October seemed to say it was going to happen.

Some people have taken the time to put their thoughts into words for others to read and contemplate. I have been moved more than once by what I have read. After reading this essay by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., I thought I would make note of a few such statements here.

Gates has taken a look at certain historical statements from Frederick Douglass, George Edwin Taylor, and others, which shed light on the long and hard struggle through which many have trudged on a hopeful path toward overcoming the barriers of racial injustice. His comments about talking to his father were the kind of poignant anecdote I have heard and read over and over this week. He also notes a prescient statement by Jacob Javits in 1958 which fairly accurately predicted the current political achievements of African Americans in Washington, DC.

It reminded me of a statement from Booker T. Washington in which he anticipated a change in the rights of African Americans in another half century. That change began almost on time with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, but it was far from complete, with many more lives to be lost in the struggle. In the same way, Gates reminds us that much that must change in the US will not change quickly or easily. However, that takes nothing away from the unprecedented arrival on the scene of the first African American to be elected president.

Election Day at From the Wilderness

My friend Ryon Price wrote a reflection on ministry and the eucharist on Election Day.

The line that struck me was this one:

In the midst of all these governments, and figures, and actors on the center stage of history, then Luke says. . .

"The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert."

Take a look at it, and remember that God's Spirit interrupts where we may not be expecting.

Carter's RACE 5: Immanuel Kant and the Racialized Teleology of Enlightenment

After defending the dissertation and moving on to teach, I was so relieved not to be reading only what could be digested for nourishing some part of my project. I immediately started reading in one of my key areas of interest that had mostly lain dormant while in doctoral studies: Mesoamerican history and the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. Through my seminary years I had come to believe that something of grave importance for the church had happened during that time and that it was poorly understood. I believed that something had gone terribly wrong, and that it was somehow tied to contingencies rather than necessity. Something had happened in the history of European engagement with the civilizations they were newly encountering that could have gone otherwise. As it turned out, it was disastrous for many of the world’s peoples and for the church. I was eager to restart this line of thinking through new research.

About seven months later, I started teaching my first undergraduate ethics course at Shaw University. On the first day of class, a student asked me questions about the textbook choices and course design that made me realize something that I had bypassed during doctoral studies. As an adjunct, I was teaching from syllabi prepared by others, and it presented a fairly standard approach to European philosophical ethics. Although my fellow students and I had applied a good deal of intellectual concern to matters of racial division in the church, I was amazed at how little effort I or my teachers had put into actually reading and studying literature examining such matters. So my next crash course was in African and African American approaches to ethics.

Looking back it became apparent that when I wrote in my dissertation about the ways that accommodation to modernity had handicapped and even perverted the churches of the West, I did not grasp the interrelationship of modern nation-states and racialized thinking. Among all the fruit of studying John Milbank, I was not pushed by him toward a construal of modernity as a racialized world. I can see now where I might have grasped some insight had I been looking. However, the critical turn in Milbank’s argument never really embraces the construction of whiteness. Milbank’s identification of the “liberal Protestant metanarrative” offers possibilities for reflection on the racialized nature of the modern world, but frankly I was focused on the rise of modern nation-states and did not give enough attention to the rise of modern economics nor the racial implications of the nation-state. Carter’s work offers a way to probe this direction and gain a new insight into what I have studied.

Several years after I finished my dissertation, the work of Luis Rivera in A Violent Evangelism helped me to begin to understand this gap in my education and thinking.

The key here, as I made note of in the previous post, is that Carter has examined critical but lesser known writings of key figures. This time, it is Immanuel Kant. Kant, ever positionized as anti-teleological, is far more complex than most of us learn in school. His attention to teleology can’t be ignored in Toward Perpetual Peace, yet to my reading this work was either an anomaly or a late-career change of perspective which contradicted earlier views. But Carter has shown the critical teleological elements of Kant’s entire project, evident in his fascination with Enlightenment and what it means for the future of humanity as the seeds of human potential unfold in the rise and triumph of the white Europeans in the world.

This connection to race might be ignored by many readers as “throwaway comments” scattered in his writings. This is in fact the favorite hermeneutic of twentieth-century philosophy and political science, which carves out the sections of enlightenment writings that speak to theological arguments or racial conceptions. Most of us are aware of Kant’s derogatory remarks about the impossibility of a black man making good sense when he talks. The commonly repeated racist quotation becomes an emblem of the racist heritage of modernity, but most of us go on teaching Kant as if this belief about race is not central to his philosophical project. Carter has argued that certain essays and reflections from the heart of Kant’s career clearly develop the significance of race within the philosophical, political, metaphysical project of Kant’s career. Race, and particularly the white race which is a race transcending race, is a critical driving force in the teleological unfolding of human destiny.

The contrast of black and white races is a critical element of Kant’s thought. The black race represents a kind of dead end of one possible trajectory of human development. Having reached a certain point of development, perhaps a nadir, the black race would be most difficult to turn and move toward the higher directions of the human race displayed and potential in whiteness. The “darker races,” in having developed certain seeds or potentialities inherent in humanity, have become enclosed within the trajectories of their particularity, “they suffer under the entropy of their own particularity: they can’t get over themselves.” Thus believing that race is a natural and inherent and permanent feature of humanity, he singles out one race, a kind of super race, as the one destined to fulfill human destiny. As for the others, “their racial existence is an impediment to their human existence, where ‘human’ here stands for the universal.” Only one race can stand for the universally human (89).

Having been led to this place, it now seems obvious that the racializing project is inherent in the modern project, not merely a detachable extra appendage unrelated to and unnecessary to the body politic and the body of knowledge. It remains a driving force behind so-called globalization and the neocolonial vision of multinational corporations and nation-states.

Celebrating a Leader in Math Education

This week began with milestones to celebrate. Everybody knows about Tuesday, but that was the second one for me. On Monday, Everly Broadway, my beloved, successfully defended her dissertation: African American Achievement in High School Mathematics. It is a study of how reforming curriculum can influence achievement for all students, with special attention to the way that a better designed curriculum can benefit African American students. I am now proud to be married to Dr. Broadway, the degree soon to be officially conferred.

For some time, educators have discussed the “achievement gap” between minorities and white students in the U. S. education system. Many have focused research on the school atmosphere and the teachers’ ways of interacting with students. Habits of low expectations for minority students influence the ways some teachers teach. Research into different expectations of girls and boys in math class has led to significant insight into the ways teachers interact with students. Gender research has helped to bolster the recognition that race, ethnicity, and economic level may affect the expectations and teaching practices of classroom teachers.

Embedded deeper in the teaching of mathematics is a cultural assumption that only an elite few people are smart in mathematics. This assumption about a born elite has sometimes been referred to in shorthand as “the math gene.” So thorough is this cultural formation that no one is surprised to hear a highly competent professional adult say, “I’ve always been bad at math.” Earlier education research addressed the problem as “math anxiety.”

Dr. Broadway has been driven by, among many issues, the way that this view of mathematics is so thoroughly naturalized in the culture at large, and particularly in the culture of education. I don’t know how many times she has asked me questions like: “Why do people think it’s fine for only 10% to succeed in math? Why would teachers be satisfied to assume that almost all students in high school cannot learn math?”

Based on her findings, this is not the assumption of many other education systems in other parts of the world. Moreover, where the education system does not assume “the math gene,” teachers, mathematicians, administrators, and school counselors take on the challenge of conducting research and finding ways to do a better job of teaching math to all students. If you already believe that 90% will not be able to cut it, that puts the whole system off the hook for not doing better at bringing all students up to the standard.

Dr. Broadway has taken up with civil rights veteran activists and historians, such as Bob Moses, Charles Cobb, and Charles Payne, and mathematician and educational reformer Carol Malloy, sharing their cause of analyzing and closing the achievement gap in mathematics. They have described access to courses in higher mathematics as one of the great civil rights struggles of this era. Part of the problem is that too many schools have designed their math curriculum to delay or discourage students from starting to take higher math courses. Along with the structural barriers, so many families and neighborhoods are full of discouraged people who fear that since they had a hard time in math, their children will not be good at it. As with any struggle to open up opportunity, there is the need to change both the structures of power and the hopes of those who have not had access.

How often have teachers, frustrated that a student does not quickly “get it” in algebra class concluded that the student just does not have what it takes to succeed in math? How often have teachers, who found math easy as students, assumed that the way they were taught must be the best or only way to teach math courses? How often have well-meaning school counselors discouraged students from taking higher math courses on the assumption that they would find them too challenging and probably fail? How often have school administrators made judgments about tracking students into lower math courses because they are used to seeing certain groups do poorly in math? How often has the motivation to push more students into learning higher math been undermined in part by the conflicting short-term goal of keeping scores up on high-stakes tests in algebra and geometry?

Dr. Broadway’s research looks at new ways of designing high school math curriculum which show promise in helping all students achieve in math. Her research shows that when African American students are given opportunities to take higher level math courses, they can succeed in them. It shows that the curriculum design which links mathematics to real problems from science, from professions, from economics, from public policy—from the kinds of things that matter to human living—students who have been assumed not to be capable of “getting it,” can “get it.” Better math curriculum design delivered to all students makes “the math gene” appear as what it is—a myth. School systems committed to success in math for all students can make headway across the board, and the achievement gap can be narrowed. Over time, perhaps it can even disappear.

Dr. Broadway’s research examines the qualitative research, and has much promise to offer in this area. At its core, however, it is a quantitative study of achievement. The results on the initial high school math course leave no doubt. Better courses can improve math learning for African American students, and they can make a dramatic difference in a short time.

The disappearance of the achievement gap probably will not be immediate, but it is not so far away as most would assume. Much effort is being proposed and even carried out to make sure that children of all economic levels get a good start in school from an early age. Finding ways to back away from the industrial sized schools toward more high-touch schools closer to where children live is gaining momentum. Linking education to mentoring, internships, and specialized training is making a comeback. Changing our ways of thinking about math learning is an important next step. Dr. Broadway is committed to opening the doors so that “every child can achieve in higher mathematics.” I have heard her say those words hundreds of times, and it is her passion. There are many reasons why these words are true, and the rest of us need to join her to see that this mission will be carried forward.

Carter's RACE 4: Foucault, Modern Political Thought, the Jews, and Race

As stated in earlier posts, I am taking a slow pace through the arguments by J. Kameron Carter concerning the emergence of the modern racialized world. Carter has done many of us a great favor by taking time to read some of the lesser known writings of key figures of modern thought.

Perhaps you were not the kind of student I was, but I found myself barely keeping my head above water in the vast sea of writing which had some relevance to my dissertation research. Now and then, I would see an insight in someone’s thought, and hope to find the one essay or book I could read that would allow me to mine what I needed either (a) to add strength to my argument or (b) to show that I was not so dense as to have completely ignored someone important. I didn’t drown, but there was so much more that was missing. In addition, I was thankful for certain books of grand scope which helped me to organize and schematize large portions of the field I was studying. Carter’s book is that kind of book, and I am glad that I now get to join him in this conversation.

One writer I tried to understand through a few brief writings and lots of conversations with colleagues is Michel Foucault. Although it seemed obvious to me that I was influenced by is ideas, I did not try to make him a primary conversation partner. Carter, on the other hand, has carefully examined not only well-known texts, but also some lesser known speeches and essays which shed important light on the growth of modern racialized rationality and social structures.

Carter draws on Foucault to build a case for the centrality of the Jews for the emergence of race. The Jews, as the archetypal writers of counterhistorical narrative, help to shape the modern vision of history as not merely the accomplishments of the victors, but also of the struggles of the oppressed for liberation. In recognizing this significant contribution, Foucault and Carter see the way that modern understandings of race emerge from this consciousness of a distinct people that the Jewish covenant and scriptures bring into existence.

Modern Europeans, influenced by the Reformation as a movement of protest echoing the prophetic voice of the Jews, come to see their relationship to other peoples of the world in a racial frame. Fascinated by their own ways in contrast to the ways of others, and inclined to see themselves and their ways as superior to others, Europeans transform their adopted religion of Christianity into a messianic soteriology and eschatology of whiteness in history. Western Civilization claims triumphantly the meek and lowly Crucified One and his followers as a community called to elevate the rest of the world to its potentiality, by persuasion, force, or extermination. The Jews, as the exemplars of a peculiar people who gave birth to the vision of a liberative counterhistory, must ironically be eliminated in one way or another in order for whiteness to complete its salvific mission in history.

As I struggled to understand the ways the modernity’s churches have departed from their calling in order to serve false saviors and idols, I remained painfully unaware of the implications of race for modern rationality. I lived in the midst of Christian failure to overcome the racialized ideologies of U. S. culture, but did not see the radical nature of the problem. I knew that “racisms is a faith,” but I thought it to be something that could be pointed out and overcome through a process of clarifying teaching from the New Testament. I saw it as an intellectual error made favorable by an oppressive economic structure, and therefore a residue of the past that was being left behind, albeit far too slowly.

What I did not see was the way that modern politics, economics, and everything else has been structured by the invention of whiteness and a racialized world surrounding it. There were many texts that should have pointed me in that direction, but for the most part I had not read them. I did not receive the message from the books I had read from Latin American theologians, even though they were often addressing these matters.

Bailout 6: Don't Stop Paying Attention

In the past week, a couple of reminders have come around that caught my attention. We have to recall that the deep causes of this financial downturn lie in unregulated and deregulated management of capital and in the "bubbles" created by wishful thinking about dot-com businesses and inflated housing prices. Risk trading, debt swapping, and all that mess played with other people's money, and the banks and large money companies thought they could keep bleeding the low- and middle-income people for greater and greater profits. One of the better places to read and hear about the economy is a blog called Planet Money. I also get plenty of good insight from Truthout, as the comments below will illustrate.

The first reminder came from Dean Baker, and I heard it elsewhere, asking whether any executives have had their pay cut. Are CEOs and executives whose companies have been bailed out by our taxes had to feel any of the pain? We are not getting any such reports.

Second came the reminder in an article posted on Truthout that banks getting an influx of taxpayer money seem to be planning to keep on paying out dividends as if nothing has happened. Dividends come from profits, and profits come from a good economy. If the dividends come from taxpayer bailouts, then what's up with that? I don't pay taxes so stockholders can make dividend income. If I have to pay to keep banks from failing, that is one thing. But dividend income is another.

Is the Treasury Department looking out for the public interest here? We have to keep watching and calling for accountability.

Rwanda's Lingua Franca

Rwanda struggles to recover from the terrible events of more than a decade ago. The continuing disaster now plays itself out in Congo, where armies battle over control of the eastern part of the country.

I came across a couple of stories today. One tells about the decision to replace the French language with English as the primary language of international conversation. Students will be educated in English in the public schools. The primary reasons: neighboring countries and trading partners speak English, and school textbooks in English cost much less than those in French. It will take some time for a generation or two to make this transition happen. I wondered if the engagement of groups like Saddleback with their PEACE plan has had any influence on this.

The other article describes the revolutionary changes going on in gender relations in Rwanda. Women, a large majority of the population after the genocide and exodus, hold the majority of seats in the legislature. Many laws which discriminated against women are being systematically repealed and replaced. It will be fascinating to see how these changes continue and what influence a more egalitarian Rwanda may have on other African countries.

Frank Schaeffer--Country First?

Frank Schaeffer had an op-ed this week that caught the attention of left-wing activist Amy Goodman. Here is here interview with him. His critique of the religious right is fascinating. He says that their deep anti-Americanism of awaiting Armageddon and hoping for things to get worse and worse has been twisted into a hypocritical Country First boosterism. Yet ultimately, he believes it remains a secessionist, full-scale attack on the U. S., one whose vicious, hateful head has appeared in recent rallies for McCain and Palin. He believes their attempt to pin the label "terrorist" on Obama will lead to an unleashing of violence. Let's pray it does not.

Bailout 5: How the House of Cards Began to Tumble

According to some new information, Wells Fargo analysts and others have come to conclude that Wachovia's mortgage-based securities are probably worth 85¢ on the dollar, with a few of the worst ones worth 74¢ on the dollar. That is lower than earlier estimates that I had read, but not so low as the market was pricing them. No wonder Wells Fargo was willing to pay much more than Citigroup had offered to buy out Wachovia. I reiterate that the mortgage losses in real dollars are not nearly so bad as what the market would make it seem. Citigroup was very angry that someone called them on their extreme low-ball offer and sued Wells Fargo. Now they are fighting it out over who buys Wachovia. If the market stabilizes, who knows if someone else will even offer a better price.

On the other hand, the market in loans between banks and in commercial paper (short-term loans to large businesses to keep their cash flowing day to day) got into a serious crisis over the past months and weeks. I got a tip to listen to an outstanding description of just why this crisis came to be seen as so serious. I was surprised to find out that it was on the public radio program This American Life, usually known more for its quirkiness than for hard-hitting financial reporting. I don't mean they never tackle hard topics--their work on school reform is also some of the best I have ever heard. So if you have about an hour to listen and learn, you won't be disappointed by listening to Another Frightening Show About the Economy. If you want to dig a little deeper, another hour will allow you to hear about the housing bubble and unorthodox mortgage practices which laid the groundwork for this recent crisis in the show called The Giant Pool of Money.

Finally, the point that the people of the U. S. who are being asked to bail out these businesses need to get a share of the profit from their recovery. Another Frightening Show will explain the idea of making sure the government takes an ownership share through preferred stock in whatever companies it bails out. A growing swell of voices are asking for this. It is written as an option into the bill that Congress finally passed, but not because Paulson or Bush were advocating it. So if you want to know what to say to your representatives and senators, then ask them to support this way of dealing with the money our taxes will make available. Here is how one economist describes it.

Carter's RACE 3: Cavanaugh, Baptists, and Practices

In note 74 on p 393-94 of Race: A Theological Account, J. Kameron Carter helps me identify what seems to me a shortcoming in William Cavanaugh’s turn to the sacrament as the practice of formation leading out of the dilemmas of the modern nation-state in his remarkable and powerful book, Torture and Eucharist. In reading Cavanaugh, certain aspects of his RCC sensibilities concerning the Eucharist did not quite settle well with me to me and remained alien from my own formation as a Baptist. I wondered whether I would be able to appropriate his arguments about the sacrament, or whether I would need to substitute a different account of counterhegemonic practices of the church.

Yet I also have been grateful for the ways that Cavanaugh was describing an alternative to one of the great losses of the Baptist tradition. Too often Baptists have settled into acceptance of a Zwinglian memorial view of the sacraments and the reduction of sacraments to ordinances.

Luis Rivera helps give some perspective this problematic in his counterhistory of the conquest of the Americas with its imposition of Christianity through forced baptisms (A Violent Evangelism). Part of what the Baptists a century after Columbus and Cortez were unhappy about was the way that state hegemony had become intertwined with ecclesial hierarchy to discipline bodies through control of the sacraments. The sacramental practice often seemed alienated from its covenantal institution and embodiment in the living Christ. Thus, the Baptists were demanding a restoration of the sacrament in new covenantal practice dissociated from such blatant state hegemony. In their own ways, they also failed to see the ways their vision of baptism and the Supper would be coopted by the powers and authorities. So my reservations about Cavanaugh's account were no less reservations about what my own tradition ultimately also failed to analyze and understand in its own practices.

The Baptists often lacked an adequate understanding of the full political nature of the church, and thus quickly followed, perhaps afar off, the magisterial vision of the divided body and mind and the two regimes, two kingdoms, etc. Acknowledging these shortcomings and the corrective offered by Cavanaugh, I still think there is room for, even need for, an account of other sacramental ecclesial practices, as suggested by Jim McClendon’s hermeneutical device of word, worship, work, and witness in Doctrine. I find Cavanaugh’s argument to suggest, or at least be receptive to, such an account of ecclesial practices, not unique to Roman Catholicism in the production of bodies (politic).

Cavanaugh’s effort to reconstitute the unity of body and mind, of religion and politics, in the sacrament is in the right direction. However, Carter points out that Cavanaugh does not apply his excellent critical skills to the ways that the sacraments become tools of hegemonic power in colonialism. I must confess that I also missed these critical features of modernity in my earlier research and writing. Carter affirms that racial and colonialist reasoning are central to the constitution of modernity. He extends the work of scholars like Cavanaugh in trying to provide an account which incorporates this problematic of race, politics, and theology, the genealogy of their interrelationship in modernity, and ultimately a Christological critique of modern racialized theopolitics.

Carter's RACE 2: The Racialized Jew

With apologies once again to Dr. Carter if I have misunderstood his argument, I am attempting to articulate some of what I am learning and thinking about as I read his new book.

In his critique of Cornel West and analysis of Michel Foucault (in Race: A Theological Account), J. Kameron Carter raises a matter of particular concern for professional theologians. There is a tendency in the profession of theology to be overly confident of the power of language. Thus, the critique of modernity, and if Carter is right, the critique of racialized understandings and structuring of bodies (politic), can emphasize the discursive structures of racial reasoning without adequate attention to the nondiscursive structuring, the production and reproduction of racialized bodies (politic), the “dynamics of relationships of force” (48).

This problem, it would seem to me, shines a light on the difficulty for white theologians to identify the effects of whiteness on theological theory and practice. Thus we find ongoing attempts at therapy through language to eliminate racism and racialized thinking. The most naïve form would attempt to create terminology to substitute for racialized language in a kind of idealistic method of changing the reality by changing its name. While this has some therapeutic value, it cannot in and of itself uproot and dismantle the power relations and structures of production which are the inherent logic and grammar of a racialized theopolitics. Next, Carter will interrogate Foucault’s concept of biopower and biopolitics as a more material analysis than West offered.

West, it would seem, probes the emergence of a discourse of biblical interpretation and other intellectual productions which deployed elements of the new scientific vision, Cartesian philosophy of mastery, and the normative gaze of classical aesthetics. The discursive structures “circumscribe how people of African descent come to be situated in the modern imagination” (49). The shortcoming of West’s excellent work, according to Carter, is that it can provide explanation for the conditions of the possibility of the emergence of white supremacy, but it does not explain why white supremacy was the actual result. He implies a level of contingency, which he then fails to name; thus, a hint of inevitability or necessity hangs in the air. Foucault goes on to recognize the moment of anxiety over the racialized Jew in modern Europe which elicits a pseudotheological articulation of a notion of the white nation around which an entire hierarchical construction of race comes into being. The biopolitics of the nation appears in the dialectical relationship of decentralized individualism with centralized administration and surveillance, such that the people themselves police nationhood in their own racialized, individualized, modernized, pseudotheologized bodies.

Bailout 4: How to Use $700 Billion

$700 billion dollars for what? All of a sudden, George Bush thinks there is another $700 billion dollars available to spend. This is the guy whose advisers told him the Iraq war would finance itself, or at most cost about $50 billion. The bill for that debacle is fast approaching $600 billion after five years. What's another $700 billion going down into an abyss?

Of course, these same people say there is no money to fully fund No Child Left Behind, closer to $20 billion per year. There is no money to provide health care for the uninsured (not even for uninsured children through SCHIP), which $700 billion would cover for six or seven years. There is no money to support the Millenium Development Goals which the World Bank says could be funded with $40 to $60 billion per year spread among all the contributors. For Christians familiar with the Micah Challenge, this last example is a part of the shared agenda of churches in many nations.

A few comments from this week's discussions at the United Nations General Assembly seem appropriate here ("No Bailout for the World's Poorest").

Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the newly-elected president of the General Assembly, warned that the current financial crisis will have "very serious consequences" that will impede the significant progress, "if indeed any progress is made", towards the targets established by the MDGs, "which are themselves insufficient".

"It is always the poor who pay the price for the unbridled greed and irresponsibility of the powerful," he said, taking a passing shot at the staggering 700-billion-dollar bailout proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush to save the high-stakes investment banks of New York from bankruptcy and collapse.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates that "money doesn't seem to be a problem, when the problem is money".

"Let us look for a moment at what is happening on Wall Street and in financial markets around the world. There, unsound investment threatens the homes and jobs of the middle class," he added.

There is something fundamentally wrong, he argued, "when money seems to be abundant, but funds for investment in people seem so short in supply".

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding told the General Assembly that the crisis currently rocking the world's financial markets reflects the inadequacy of the regulatory structures that are essential to the effective functioning of any market.

But it is more than that. It represents the failure on the part of the international financial system to facilitate the flow of resources into areas where they can produce real wealth -- not paper wealth, he added.

Bailout 3: The Cranky Economist Speaks

Another comment on the "bailout" from cranky economist Dean Baker:

Congressional support for the bailout was a big victory for those who want to redistribute income upward. The bailout is about taking money from the schoolteachers and cab drivers and giving it to incredibly rich Wall Street bankers, who are so incompetent that they drove their banks into the ground.

This upward redistribution was done under the cover of crisis, just like the war in Iraq. But there is no serious crisis story. Yes, the economy is in a recession that is getting worse, but the bailout will not get us out of the recession, or even be much help in alleviating it.

Baker goes on to make a case that the reason for the bailout is a false claim of imminent freezing of the financial system. Instead, it is an empty threat by the banks to avoid being taken over by the Federal Reserve. Baker says the Federal Reserve would not allow the financial system to freeze, but would keep it going by seizing control of the banking system. Wall Street hates that idea. But you and I would still have access to ATMs, and small businesses would still have access to loans to keep themselves liquid. The ones to lose would be the executives and large financial stakeholders.

We're being scammed again by mythical weapons of mass destruction.

Bailout 2: Bailout or Feeding Frenzy?

Bailout or feeding frenzy?

The failure to pass today's bill promising a solution to the credit crisis should not be a big surprise. Numerous members of Congress were reporting contacts from constituents opposing the Bush/Paulson plan at ratios between 100/1 and 1000/1. This weekend's Citigroup acquisition of Wachovia Bank should give us a clue into the anger and opposition of the populace. Citigroup swooped in and acquired an enormous range of financial resources at fire sale prices. This is exactly the kind of profiteering, even racketeering, that the average person suspects is going to happen.

Citigroup, it is said, has tried without success to build a consumer banking business for many years. Raking in money in other ways, they were among the financial institutions not overwhelmed by the mortgage crisis. (What happens when this morphs into a consumer credit card debt crisis, is yet to be seen.) Bad decisions by First Union, which renamed itself Wachovia when it acquired the previously well-managed bank, included buying the mortgage company which specialized in one of the now-despised mortage innovations, option adjustible-rate mortgages. These are the ones that let the borrower take the option of not making a payment now and then (and adding it on the end of the loan period). Now they own too many bad mortgages.

The strange thing about this crisis of "securitized" mortgages is that they are really worth much more than the market is saying. Around 2.5% of mortgages are in foreclosure. Many of those have been processed into interest-bearing securities, or bonds. So on average, it might be that the value of such a bond, in real terms of how much it would pay out, may have dropped to around 97.5 cents on a dollar. But let's estimate that the mortgage bonds are worse off than that because they are encumbered by additional mortgages which are not yet in foreclosure, but in danger. And let's say that these securitized mortgages have a larger share of the bad mortgages from the recent frenzy of bad financing than the 2.5% rate would indicate. So maybe these interest-bearing bonds may pay out 90 to 95% of their face value. Maybe a few would be even lower, or much lower. But that would not cause such a crash. What causes the crash is that since no one wants to buy these securities, their price drops way below their adjusted value. Then the holders may find themselves with a cash-flow problem. They need to sell some securities, but they can't get a buyer at a fair price. When this infects the whole market, the financial institutions start to treat these securities as if they are worth almost nothing. As a side effect, a powerful and wealthy institution like Wachovia finds its stock dropping to pennies. But buying them at a low price is a great idea if you don't have to worry about cash flow. The government has time to see them pay off, and maybe at a good profit.

In walks Citigroup, with the help of the FDIC, to pay a measly $1 per share to buy one of the largest banks in the world with assets galore. Buying at a fire sale lets them reap a huge reward. Just like Bank of America bought Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Just like J. P. Morgan Chase bought Washington Mutual. After all this hoop and holler about a financial crisis, the US is left with three financial giants who have an even greater ability to dominate the financial business and exercise a joint monopoly over setting interest rates and fees.

This so-called bailout had nothing to say about the concentrated power of wealth in the hands of the few. And its fatal flaw was that it did nothing to help the other people caught in the mess of bad mortgages. The bailout plan had no provisions to help refinance mortgages for common people, homeowners who are facing foreclosure in a weak economy. It was suggested that by buying these mortgage-based securities, the government would be able to refinance mortgages for homeowners. But owning the security is not the same as owning the actual mortgage. These remain in the hands of banks, savings and loans, and other mortgage institutions all over the place. This plan does not offer any relief to them. It offers relief to large financial instutitions who have questionable securities.

So an additional provision to assist homeowners might have been enough to win a few more votes. The provision to deny "golden parachutes" are a gesture toward the common borrower, but not much more than that. Real help to homeowners is what was needed. The long and heated meetings about bailing out the economy could not muster the compassion and courage to do what was right. The proposal allows the same feeding frenzy to go on. As one commentator said today (I can't remember who), the homeowners who endure foreclosure faces the greatest crisis. They can't go back to their neighborhoods. They lose the bedrooms and kitchens where they lived. They no longer live where their ball teams or other social connections had been built up.

The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America released the following comments:

There is one reason for the financial crisis – Foreclosures.
There is only one solution – Restructure mortgages to make them affordable.
Who would benefit – Everyone.

This seems to me to sum up the shortcomings of the proposed bailout.

Thanks to reports on NPR's Morning Addition, AP news reporting by Sara Lepro, and the insights of my friend Steve Bumgardner for helping me think abou this issue. Any erroneous reporting and reasoning is mine.

Bailout 1: Mary Nelson and Job Losses

Mary Nelson, a leader I admire greatly, wrote the following about the current Wall Street mess on the Sojourners God's Politics blog.

In Money We Trust
by Mary Nelson 09-23-2008

The Wall Street debacle reminds me of the fall of Babylon … of the excesses of greed over the common good and the little folks (like the ones in my low-income community) getting the short stick both before, during, and after. A recent article talked about how, in the last few years, the fear of the risks of getting discovered and regulated were overcome by sheer greed. Greed over fear. Clearly, this is a time for sackcloth and ashes for some. It strikes me as sheer nonsense that our money has “In God We Trust” clearly printed on it. It is more appropriate to say, “In Money We Trust.” Our misplaced spending priorities mean $12 billion a month on war in Iraq and Afghanistan, propping up big corporations without capping their personal profits, but neglecting poor people without homes, health insurance, and quality public education.

But we all have gone haywire in this atmosphere of excessive greed, thinking we could get rich or richer, making risky choices and spending far more than we need to get what we want. Buying and spending was promoted after 9/11 to help get the country going again: “Go out and buy,” the president said. In our community financial education classes, we help people understand the difference between needs and wants. Our officials and a lot more of us need to understand and act on the difference between needs and wants as well.

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.

What were the risks people took? Analysts on the radio today said that if something does not ease the financial crisis, lines of credit will dry up, meaning many small and medium sized businesses, and some large ones, will not be able to make payroll. Average folks will start losing their jobs. Large corporations will not be able to get quick loans to keep their operations going, and plants could shut down. We already know that the big companies are almost through raiding the pension funds and health care promises they made to workers. The ones who are hurt the most are not the ones playing games with the millions and billions. A person who loses ten out of twenty million is not nearly so bad off as someone who loses her only livelihood in a bi-weekly or monthly paycheck.

Carter's RACE 1: Gnosticism, the Body, and Black Churches

I'm working slowly through J. Kameron Carter's new book, Race: A Theological Account. My first response is that it promises to share a place in my learning with a few other books which seek to narrate the emergence of the intellectual, social, and political character of the modern age and its dissolution. Carter, like me, is convinced that critical yet contingent events, movements, and developments occurred at critical moments congregated around and in relation to the European venture into global empire. With apologies to my friend JKC, I will attempt to articulate a few of the things I have been learning.

Having offered a structurally parallel argument about hierarchical arrangments of bodies that appears in the disputation between Irenaeus and Gnosticism, Carter moves to show how a restructuring of humanity in the European imagination asserts and deploys the concept of whiteness as an ordering principle. He finds the critical move of differentiating whiteness in the modern construction of Jews as deficient humanity. This initial Enlightenment vision of rewriting Christianity as whiteness affirms a supersession of the covenant with the Jews and simultaneously severing Jesus from his Jewish covenantal flesh. A spiritualized Jesus, mascot for white supremacist visions of a world order in which European empires manage the globe, contributes to the classification of non-European bodies (politic) as lesser forms of humanity, a hierarchy of racialized bodies (politic). Carter finds in the early articulations of Christian faith among African Americans an apprehension of how racialized theology and politics has gone wrong, along with insight into the path theology must take to again be true to the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ.

When it came time in my Christian Ethics class to discuss Jim McClendon's Ethics, chapter 3, it occurred to me that McClendon's initial argument had waded into the same waters of which Carter's more recent book gives richer historical and theoretical account. McClendon argues that in confronting the misconstrual of bodily existence and nature, individualism of the sort that severs body and mind has greatly harmed Christian thinking about the natural and the body. He turns to the insights of certain scholars of the black church to argue that a residue of wholeness lacking in much mainstream theology can be found in the practices of the black churches, some of which he labels as embodied religion, life-affirming faith, conversion narrated through bodily experience, presence to God and one another, participation in the life of God, possession by the Spirit, and openness to the depth of human suffering. A key element of the articulation of such an argument is the hermeneutical stance toward recapitulation of the stories of Israel among the Africans of this continent.

McClendon approached this topic with some trepidation, recognizing that he could be construed to be stereotyping black people in the same ways that racism has always done so. Thus, it is critical to see that his argument is not that the black church exhibits emotion, ecstatic movement, etc., but that it witnesses to a wholeness which does not assign opposites to body and mind, to black and white. If I am reading correctly, then Carter's argument affirms and extends the insight that McClendon ventured 22 years ago.

What's Wrong with Community Organizing?

After the Republican Convention speakers made fun of community organizing, Christophe Ringer wrote an excellent piece about their show of ignorance and dissembling on this matter. There is some good description of what community organizing is about. He also challenges the orthodoxies of how black leaders are supposed to lead.

What Are We Waiting For? Part 2

Here is the second part of the sermon, continued from the previous post.

What Are We Waiting For?
Part 2

Romans 8:12-25

Paul wrote in verse 19 that all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. He goes on to say that creation groans in labor pains for redemption, for the renewal of creation, the new creation that God has already set in motion in the redeeming work of Jesus. All of creation groans. We try to make our way in life by using fossil fuels, but the system of manufacturing and consumption spins out of control until the world’s climate starts to be changed, pollution affects our air and waterways, and finally competition over limited supplies of fuel drives gasoline prices higher and higher. Creation groans in labor pains for redemption.

The two young men long for a world in which people treat one another well; they long for it without hope that it can really happen. The people across the Middle East and Africa long for rulers who will not sacrifice the lives of the people of the land in order to hold on to their power. They long for the powerful nations of the world to stop playing power games over their resources and lives. All creation groans for the children of God to be revealed. The poor people of this country long for their leaders to invest in people’s health and lives rather than more and more weapons. Creation is groaning all around us. The children of the world long for the opportunity to eat, learn, be healthy, and grow up to have families and homes, rather than being forced to work in sweatshops, to wander as refugees, or to be kidnapped to become child soldiers or part of the modern slave trade. All creation groans, longing for redemption.

Two Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to visit a former Duke Divinity student who is a pastor at a small town on the north side of Burlington, Vermont. Driving down through Vermont, along Lake Champlain and across the three large islands in the northern part of the lake, I had the privilege of seeing another piece of the beauty of God’s creation. This week in Kentucky a group of professors I was meeting with hiked up into the mountains to see a natural stone arch formed by the power of waters which once flowed where now there is a deep gorge and a thick forest. We don’t have to look very far beyond our parking lot at Mt. Level to see the great variety and complexity of the vegetation, animals, and landscape that make up the earth on which we are blessed to live.

Maybe if I could just step outside, get out of the rat race, and look at the beautiful countryside, I might be able to convince myself that things are just fine in the world and that nothing remains to be redeemed. But even in the midst of this beauty, I suspect you could tell me why what seems to be beautiful and complete falls short of perfection. Divisions among people because of skin color, social status, and economic opportunities no doubt affect the lives of people in Vermont just as they do in North Carolina. Economic and political decisions made in Washington, D. C., Beijing, Moscow, London, New Delhi, Jerusalem, and Teheran play a role in how many refugees are compelled to seek asylum or a new start. Offshore outsourcing of industry has turned the economy of places like North Carolina, Kentucky, and Vermont upside down, as factories close and jobs go away. Creation groans for our redemption.

Yes, all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Who are these children of God? What will we see in their revealing? What are we waiting for? First we should note that they are joint-heirs with Christ. They have been adopted through a new birth into the very family of God. They are God’s children. Previously they were orphans, living without love or hope, with no purpose or meaning, nothing in which to place their faith. But having been adopted, now they are heirs of all that God has given in creation. They are a new race of God’s children, acknowledging with Paul in Athens that God has made all nations of people of one blood. They are joined to Christ as the beloved of God, and they are joined to Christ in the mission of God’s love. They have received the Spirit of God that sets them free.

Why is the gift of the Spirit a gift of freedom? Having been joined to Christ and the Spirit, the children of God can set aside their fears of what the powers of the world might do to them. They can give up their fears of people who are different from them. They are free to live and love with the kind of self-giving commitment Jesus had. They can give up their own privileges for the sake of others as Jesus did. With their lives joined to Christ and the Spirit, nothing can destroy them. They can even risk their livelihood and their lives, knowing that God will be with them in life or in death. The whole of creation awaits the revealing of the children of God, a people who like Jesus are willing to suffer if they must to see God’s demands for justice carried out. They know that the blessings they receive from God are not for hoarding but for sharing. I think I would like to know that kind of person. I’d really like to have that kind of person live in my neighborhood. I’d be eager to meet a group of people who lived that way.

I hate to say it, but when I read about church people, I don’t always see people like this. When I talk to church people, I don’t always hear about the risks they are taking for the poor and marginalized, the beloved of Christ. Too often, so much attention and effort goes into managing the organization that the church forgets about being God’s plan to display the character and nature of God in the world. We may be the only image of Jesus that people ever see, so we don’t want to be out of focus and blurry.

Paul teaches us in Romans and elsewhere that the community of people who live God’s way are the very definition of the glory of God. He says that as we grow in grace, as we grow in our Christian lives, as we grow as God’s people, we will be transformed from one degree of glory to another. In this way, it will be as if we see the glory of God in a mirror. Did you get that? The glory of God is something Paul says we should see in the mirror, not because God is satisfied with us to stay stuck where we were on the day of our baptism, but because God will walk this road of life with us to change us to be more and more in the image of the true humanity revealed in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, our joint-heir, is the measure and standard of our humanity. He is the firstborn of many brothers and sisters who bear a family resemblance. Joined to him in baptism, we commit ourselves to become like him in his humility, his generosity, his faithfulness, his gentleness, his peacefulness, his patience, his kindness, his meekness, his hunger for justice, his purity of heart. People who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God are the very purpose God had for creation, the true image of God in humanity, the revealing of the glory of God. This is why all creation groans, longing for the glory of God to be revealed in the children of God.

So on the day of your baptism, you probably could not see all that God intends for you to be. Even years later, we see our failures and our shortcomings. We have far to go to take hold of that for which God has taken hold of us. So we press on toward the high calling. We run with perseverance the race set before us because of the glory that is being revealed to us and in us. We hope in Christ, for Christ is the hope of glory. With patience, we await that for which we have hoped, a creation which measures up to the goodness, beauty, and justice God has intended from before the foundation of the world.

What Are We Waiting For? Part 1

I've been sitting on this sermon for a while, reworking it a couple of times. Here is the first part of it.

What Are We Waiting For?
Part 1

Romans 8:12-25

Just before we perform baptisms here at Mt. Level, Pastor Turner calls for and receives a public confession of faith from those who have come to be joined to Christ. In the joy of that moment of confession, he usually turns to the rest of the congregation and asks us whether we who are present remember our baptisms. That is not such a hard memory for Baptists to dredge up, and the question encourages us to look back upon our lives so far following Jesus.

Some of those present have a rush of joy as they start to remember how their lives have changed over the years from that day they entered the waters of baptism. A few have in mind the harmful ways of living that God’s grace has helped them leave behind. Others have in mind the ways they have learned to trust God and walk in faith. Someone may remember the joy of growing to know the ways of God and finding a direction or purpose for living. Someone else may relive the joy that comes from having become God’s instrument and living in a way that serves and builds up other people.

Looking back on what has happened to us, we practice what Jim McClendon called one of the remembering signs of the church. We remember what has died with Christ, what has been buried with Christ, how our lives have been raised to walk in the ways of Christ, how we share in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Remembering helps us to join with the newly baptized in this community act of the church, this shared event of baptism that unites us to Christ and to one another.

A while back there was a very good feature film called Tender Mercies, starring Robert Duvall. It is the story of a middle-aged country singer whose life hit bottom through egotism, selfishness, anger, and alcoholism. The troubled character’s life had declined and dissipated to the point that he was drifting from place to place, ruining whatever remaining friendships he had. In the story, he ends up at an isolated Texas roadside motel and gas station, and that’s where his redemption begins. Struggling to get sober, he finds his way into a Baptist church, receives the good news of God’s love, and starts to learn the joy of giving of himself for others. Eventually, he is baptized, along with another character in the story, a young boy. In their conversation after the baptismal service, the question is asked, “Do you feel any different?” The answer, which probably comes as no surprise to folks like us, is, “Not yet.” Feel any different? Not yet.

So on the one hand, at Mt. Level we can look back on the years since our baptisms with joy in seeing how God’s work in our lives has unfolded. Yet on the other hand, the movie’s question reminds us how at the beginning of the process, we could not immediately see what God was up to in our lives. Today’s text reminds us, right at the end of the passage, that we were saved in hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. When we can see something already, we don’t have to hope for it. We already have it. But that is not how so many things work. Some things we have now, and others require waiting with hope.

When we entered the waters of baptism, we reached a great milestone in our pilgrimage toward the Reign of God. The hopeful act of baptism marked our commitment to place our trust in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. It depends on what situation you were in at that time just what the hope was. Maybe you did not see your way out of the traps of sin that were unraveling your life. You had determined to unite yourself to Christ to gain the strength to lay aside the weights and besetting sins in your life. Since you had been unable to turn your life around on your own, accepting baptism demonstrated your hope for a different life that was as yet unseen.

Perhaps you were a child who was recognizing longings you could not completely understand. It was a longing for something more of life that had been kindled by hearing the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the church and singing the songs of faith. You had come to recognize the love of God revealed in Jesus. You knew that Jesus loved you, and you knew that the church people loved you. So you were ready to say that you would walk hand-in-hand with the ones who had pointed you toward this love and this way of living. You were living in hope of what you could become in the hands of God, but you did not see it yet. It was part of the mystery of the life that God was already unfolding in you.

Whatever our situation at the time of our baptism, it is a time in which we do not yet see the full results of what we hope God’s grace will do in us. We are saved in hope, and we hope for what we do not see. God is not finished blessing when we climb out of the waters of baptism. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of humanity all that Christ has for us. As Jeremiah told Israel, God has plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give us a future and a hope. As Paul wrote in chapter 5 of this same letter to the Romans, hope does not disappoint. As he wrote to the Philippian church, God who began a good work in you will bring it to its completion.

A couple of weeks ago our family was at the gathering of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. One evening in particular took us out of the ordinary events of the group. After an evening worship service, we walked down to a public area by the St. Lawrence River, in the town of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, a suburb of Montreal, Quebec. That night, a sixteen-year-old girl named Maggie was baptized.

It was a moment of great joy for her and for those of us who had watched her growing up in the faith. It was an opportunity for us to dwell in the hope of what God would continue to do in her life, in the lives of other young people present, in the lives of the old folks present, and in the work for justice and peace that many of them are doing in the name of Jesus. After she came up out of the water, one of the men started singing one of the good old songs, “Down by the Riverside,” a baptismal song. We come to the waters of baptism and lay down all the things from our lives, good and bad, so that we may offer ourselves to be remade and renewed by God. On that evening we joined in raising our voices to promise that we would lay down our burdens, we would lay down our swords and shields, and we would study war no more. A few of the town’s residents gathered to hear and see our witness, perhaps a bit puzzled by this crowd of people having church outside at the edge of the main business district.

Among the observers were two young men of about twenty years of age. When they saw us gathering, they made their way to get a view of the action. They heard us singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” and one asked in a loud voice, “Don’t these people know that God doesn’t exist?” They may have considered disrupting the observance, but instead became more than a little intrigued with what was happening. They conversed with several people over the next twenty minutes, sometimes intent on trying to get us to make some harsh or judgmental statement which would confirm their idea that Christians are hateful people who hold on to ideas that don’t make any sense. Apparently that part of their expectations went unfulfilled. Instead, they got a chance to see that there are Baptists who don’t fit their stereotypes of vengeful, unquestioning people with no compassion for anyone who does not agree with their ideas.

Both of the young men asked questions about how they could get their baptisms, performed on them as infants, reversed. They wanted to be unbaptized. They could see no reason to find hope in their baptism or in the church. One said he was an atheist and a nihilist, a person who does not believe there is a god nor that there is any purpose to the existence of the world or human beings. He said he thought we were more like biological machines.

As far as they could see it, there was no hope revealed through the church or baptism. Too much wrong in the world stood in the way. We did not hear detailed stories of their personal pains and hurts, but it is very likely that part of their disdain toward the church comes from direct experiences with Christians failing to live up to the name. But there is no point in my trying to psychoanalyze them. Whatever the cause, one can observe that they were not ready to hope in what is unseen. Too much of what they do see—the history of Christian failures to stand for peace and justice, the suffering of the hungry, Christians they have known who displayed hatred and bigotry, Christians unwilling to respect the questions these young men have about the possibility of faith—yes, too much that they see in the world leads them to despair rather than to hope.

I wish I could tell this as a story that would wrap everything up neatly in a storybook ending, with the young men seeing the light of faith and asking how to follow Jesus themselves. That’s not how it ended up. When most of the crowd had walked back to the campus, they called me aside to talk for another ten or fifteen minutes. I tried to respect their questions and resentments. They spoke to me with respect. I suggested some things they may not have thought about. They were willing to reconsider some of their assumptions about Christians. In the end, they were thankful for the conversation, and they acknowledged that all Christians don’t fit the stereotypes they had built up. They were surprised and seemed to be pleased to meet Christians who longed for the world to be better in some of the same ways that they longed for. The questions they asked and the challenges they made definitely revealed that they longed for a better world, whether or not they had much hope to see it.

Continued in next post . . .

Just Peacemaking

Just peacemaking is the name for the body of work and writing by Glen Stassen, as well as an approach to peace and justice shared by many others with whom Glen has worked over recent decades. Recently Daniel Schweissing wrote an interesting post about his own interest in the just peacemaking paradigm. He links to more extensive writing by Michael Westmoreland-White discussing the principles of just peacemaking. I encourage you, as I am, to take some time to learn more about this important intellectual project and witness to Christian ethics.

Mexico City Olympics and U. S. Civil Rights

In 1968, the Olympics were held in Mexico City. One event many people remember was the medal ceremony for the 200 meter runners. Two African Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists and looked down away from the flag. The Olympic Committee was so angry, they were sent home and stripped of their medals. You can read about this story in blog posts by Duane Shank and Jerrod McKenna. Keep following the links, and you will learn even more. It is an intriguing sequence of events in a year of great turmoil and change.

I was struck as I read the statements and watched the video clips. I was 10 years old when these Olympics took place, and I remember the protest clearly. It was the first widely televised Olympics, and the first time I was paying attention. I remember a getting a feeling that the protest was inappropriate. Listening to some of the criticisms in the online clips, I was reminded of the vocal criticisms of Smith and Carlos.

White folks who have sought to come to grips with their formation in a racialized world have learned that even when they have made progress, they still can be surprised to discover uncritical responses embedded in their racialized historical memories. I found myself looking at these events with the eyes of a 10-year-old who had been taught not to hold racial hatred but who was confused by the intersection of racial injustice, sports, politics, and patriotism. My initial memory of the events brought back the judgment that these young men should have found another way, another time, and another place to express their political views.

For decades I have been critical of the devotion shown to the U. S. flag, freely referring to it as idolatry. Moreover, I have been intensely engaged in issues of race intellectually and personally for over a decade. It would seem that I would have thought through Mexico City by now, but I guess my attention never settled on it long enough to think through my earlier reactions. This time, as I read about the political context in the U. S., the International Olympic Committee, and Mexico, I was awakened to a whole new way of looking at Smith and Carlos. As I learned of their deliberate acts of protest, it made complete sense.

Whatever I've learned, there is always more. I look forward to the opportunity to watch the new documentary about these events, Salute!, and to looking at Tommie Smith's book Silent Gesture.

Barbara Lee Interview

"Barbara Lee Speaks for Me," was the slogan used by many who agreed with her opposition to going to war in Afghanistan. As the lone opposing vote, she gained a reputation beyond her local congressional district in Oakland, CA, where she is a member of Allen Temple Baptist Church. Here is a recent interview she did with the news organization Truthout.

Chicago in July

I spent a few days in Chicago this week. The first two days were full-time family time with Naomi and Lydia, my daughters (seen here mugging for the camera at the church Community Day). We went to museums, the aquarium, the Taste of Chicago festival, and the Sears Tower. On Saturday night, we attended the hip-hop worship at Lawndale Community Church, called "The House."

The rest of the time, I attended the Ekklesia Project annual Gathering at DePaul University North Campus. I was pleased to see friends I had not visited with for some time: James Lewis, Phil Kenneson, Andrew Adam, Trecy Lysaught, Mike Budde, Steve Long, Kyle Childress, and Rodney Sadler. And that is just naming the professional theologians and not all of the church leaders. I presented a paper entitled, "Racialized Ecclesiology, Catholicity, and Oneness," based on work I am doing currently on the relationship of race, in particular whiteness, to theology. Some parts of what I presented has appeared in this blog earlier.

One of the highlights of the meeting was sharing discussions with Craig Wong, Glen Kehrein, and a variety of other folks, concerning ways that the Ekklesia Project and the Christian Community Development Association might fine common cause.

Scalia's Judicial Activism

Scalia's Judicial Activism

For all of his railing against judges who make law as opposed to his strict constructionist view of exegeting the meaning and intent of the text, Justice Scalia has shown that he is equally capable of making law today. He overthrew the tradition of second amendment jurisprudence by endorsing the National Rifle Association's view of the constitution. His opinion creates an individual right to own a gun.

I suspect that many would disagree with my judgment that Scalia is making law. He has cited a history of laws and opinions that favor an individual right to possess a gun, and he has shown that certain previous opinions do not exclude an individual right to own a gun, even if they did not endorse it. Since it was lacking in the law, Scalia saw fit to make it law by this opinion, rather than leaving it to states and localities to make laws appropriate to their situations. He says it is only logical that the individual right is intended. That is certainly so if you are already convinced that the individual right is entailed in the amendment.

Racialized Ecclesiology, Apostolicity, Catholicity, Oneness

Some thoughts on "Racialized Ecclesiology, Oneness, and Catholicity"

During the couple of weeks that I did not post anything, I was still writing. Here is a piece of another argument I am working on.

Many discussions of ecclesiology find their way to the four traditional marks of the church contained in the Nicene Creed. Although they are far from a comprehensive guide to ecclesiology, these four marks open the conversation toward a range of shortcomings when applied to contemporary churches. The church in the contemporary United States is far from the church that the gospel calls into being. In an age questioning the inherited assumptions of Christendom, one mark has captured much theological attention. There is fruitful conversation from many quarters of the church concerning a renewed call to holiness. The perspectives on holiness are wide-ranging, and the possibilities for common work are plentiful.

On the other hand, the least agreement may persist on the mark of apostolicity, as illustrated in recent remarks promulgated by the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, reiterating one version of the disputed mark of apostolicity. Clarifying Catholic dogma in light of contemporary impulses toward ecumenicity, this statement classifies what sorts of churches are true churches, which ones are deficient, and which ones do not qualify as churches at all. This definition rooted in a certain view of apostolicity assigns a large portion of what many would call the church, which encompasses about a third of people in communities who call themselves Christian, to the category of separated ecclesial communities not deserving the name church. These groups lacking proper apostolic pedigree include those James Wm. McClendon has called baptist with a lower-case “b.”

This division over apostolicity highlights the even more prominent shortcomings of the church with references to the terms “one” and “catholic.” One still hears the occasional excesses of residual Reformation rancor which call the Roman Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon.” Much new interest in the oneness and catholicity of the church has emerged among Protestants and Catholics since Vatican II. Much of its momentum among Protestants is rooted in regrets for the great damage done to the cause of Christ by the divisiveness of the Reformation and by the subsequent accommodation of Protestantism to modernity. Consequently, many have sought a solution to the errors of Protestantism in a reappropriation of an earlier tradition less tainted by the mercenary and mercantile impulses of modernity. There is much to be gained from this effort, and it has borne much fruit.

What sometimes fails to appear in this process is the full scope of the contemporary scandal of catholicity and oneness. A great deal of effort by European American Protestants has been exerted toward rapprochement with Roman Catholicism. For the most part, it remains a conversation among Europeans, their ancestors, and their descendents. Thus, it seems to characterize the wound against the oneness and catholicity of the churches as one between feuding Europeans or between America and Europe. There is no denying that this grave wound’s roots stretch to an argument started five centuries ago between northern and southern Europeans. Yet, the intra-European argument’s subsequent history, and perhaps its deeper roots are intertwined with the rise of European imperialism and the resulting era of European world domination. Consequently, much of the division of the churches also appears in the form of racially and ethnically divided churches. Even the Roman Catholic Church, with its worldwide hierarchy of bishops who symbolize the catholicity and oneness of the church, must admit the imperial and colonial relationship that continues to characterize their center and periphery.

Race cannot be relegated to the margins of theological discourse as if it were unrelated to doctrine. Race oppression and division is not merely a moral failure by people with correct doctrine, but it is an eschatology, an anthropology, a ktisiology, a doctrine of God, an ontology, a soteriology, a Christology, and an ecclesiology. As an ecclesiology, it rejects the catholicity and oneness of the church. Both Protestantism and Catholicism need healing from this wound. Categorically, the baptists need healing.

Some steps along the path to healing come from rigorous analysis and hard thinking about the ways that modern imaginations, indeed the weight of centuries of Christian theology, have been colonized by racial reasoning. Race is often positioned as “the Black problem” or “the Asian problem,” when these are merely the derivatives of the original sin of racism. At its core, race is “the white problem.” Instead of puzzling over how the church (code for “the white church”) can adjust itself to accommodate the difference of blackness, U. S. churches must turn their attention to why and in what ways they have adjusted their theologies to construct the difference of whiteness.

Reception of Black Theologies 4

Inadequate Responses of White Theologians to Black Theology

Here I am discussing possible responses to black theologies from another angle, particularly from the point of view of white theologians who avoid polemic against black theologies and seek to understand themselves as appreciative of the contributions of black theologies. Part 4.

Having discussed some ways in which black theology can be positionized by assumed normative theology, it will also be worthwhile to reflect on certain inadequate responses taken by white theologians to black theology.

A. A first response would be to nit-pick. Looking for every inadequacy, some theologians seek to discredit black theology on the basis of the flaws in the arguments of various theologians. Of course, all theologians are susceptible to flawed theologizing. In the face of black theology’s harsh critique of white theologies, a defensive reaction is not surprising. Yet answering a cogent critique by a counter-critique is an inadequate response, especially when one ignores the central arguments in order to challenge peripheral arguments. It makes a Bible reader think about the story of the speck in the other's eye versus the beam in one's own eye. Obviously, there could be no justification to claim that black theologies are flawless or beyond criticism; however, their substantive criticisms of modern theology demand a more constructive engagement than mere counterattack. It is too often an evasive measure.

B. Others, including many of my teachers, responded to black theology by acknowledging its importance, then declining to engage its agenda. A common sort of reason for this response was that black theologians spoke for a community of which the white theologian has little or no direct knowledge. Sometimes a noble premise helped to justify the lack of engagement: black theology is a subject matter that I dare not address because of my limitations, so it should be left to black theologians to do that work. They say that they would not presume to describe the theological perspective of blacks having not experienced the oppression blacks have experienced. Invisible in these arguments seems to be the assumption that the critical challenges of black theology do not raise systemic problems for theology as it is being conducted in white institutions. A side affect of declining to engage is the fostering of schismatic theological paths and methodological ghettos.

C. Another response is to hear and believe the critique, but deflect it elsewhere. Too often, convinced of our own intellectual responsibility, theologians receive the critical arguments of black theology as if they are directed toward others. This is not unlike the response of many contemporary persons who resent black anger toward the U. S. and its continuing racialized social structure. It is a common mantra among contemporary whites that they know slavery is wrong and have never owned slaves. “Don’t put that on me” is their response.

Luis Rivera spoke to the NABPR/CTS meeting a number of years ago about an experience he had at a conference at a prominent midwestern U. S. evangelical protestant university. He had been invited to speak on his outstanding work published in English under the title, A Violent Evangelism. As he prepared to speak, many conference attendees had approached him with effusive praise about the critical theological analysis he had done concerning late medieval Catholicism and the conquest of the Americas. The more conversations he had, the more uncomfortable he became. He began to believe he was being applauded not for his critique of European colonial theologies broadly, but specifically for his critique of Roman Catholic colonial theologies. The protestant evangelicals attending the conference were looking forward to a roasting of the catholics that would reinforce their sense of rightness. So he changed his topic when he got to the podium, and announced that he thought the conference would be better served to hear a parallel critique of protestant imperial colonial theology.

D. Others white theologians have been glad to engage in the academic repartee of critical theologies such as black theology. This armchair approach is compatible with the multicultural model, and it tempts academic theologians to one of our most besetting sins. We gain insight into important critical ideas which demand revolutionary practice, we learn to speak eloquently about them, we make pointed statements and knowing gestures, but our professional and ecclesial practice remain unchanged.

Reception of Black Theologies 3

Denying the Dogmatic Significance of Black Theologies: Racism in Churches as Merely Moral Failure

Here I'm offering a view on the dogmatic significance of black theologies. Part 3.

4. A fourth perspective is both appreciative and ultimately puzzled by black theology. From this perspective of normative theology, black theology speaks up about the moral failure of the church, and it does so eloquently by drawing on theological tradition. However, the problem is a moral failure, not a dogmatic issue. Dogmatic or doctrinal theology is not implicated in the critique brought by black theology, from this point of view. Whites are fully capable of continuing to theologize in their traditions without need for reform or revolution.

Let me discuss this last perspective a bit more. It assumes that the normative theology that white theologians and ministers do in white institutions is largely on track. They can continue to do systematic theology dependent on Thomas, Calvin, Edwards, and others without the need to apply a historical, systemic, and structural critique of the traditions that flow through the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries during which churches and theologians helped to construct and validate the globalization of race consciousness and white supremacy. Somehow, Christian dogmatic theology emerged undamaged by its coexistence and collaboration in the Era of European World Domination.

Moreover, this perspective denies a primary methodological claim of Jim McClendon concerning the relationship of ethics and doctrine. Ethics is not the afterthought or the second moment derived from the first moment of dogmatics. The divisions of systematic theology usually called doctrine and ethics are both fully theological, thoroughly interrelated, and mutually dependent on one another. For that reason, he said that he could have put either ethics or doctrine first in a three volume structure for systematic theology, for each makes its proper claim. A theology grounded in practices cannot ultimately separate an intellectual moment from a moment of action in theological reflection.

On a less grand scale, but no less insightful, John Perkins describes his growing awareness of the doctrinal problematic of race. In his interactions with white evangelicals, and perhaps especially white Baptists in the South, he became increasingly aware of the depth of their spiritual devotion to a Jesus and a God who also sanctioned white supremacy as an article of faith. On paper, their theological statements of faith seemed to be orthodox, yet something must have gone terribly wrong for so many in churches to have been formed into a racialized theology. More than failure to do what they knew to be right was at work. The sheriff’s deputies who beat him nearly to death did so out of a deeply rooted, theologically sanctioned vision of sin, salvation, and Jesus Christ.

To be continued . . .

Reception of Black Theologies 2

Responses to Black Theology from the Perspective of White Theology as the Assumed Norm

Here I am doing more analysis on how black theologies have been received. Part 2.

Responses to Black theology have been varied, and the external (and sometimes internal) responses are to a great extent framed within the naturalized position of white theology as the assumed norm.

1. From that vantage point, it would be no surprise that many white theologians responded to what Cone and others were doing by declaring it simply not Christian theology. On any given day at your institution or mine, if the topic of Black theology enters the conversation, someone is very likely to say, “I just think theology should be for everyone. I don’t think of theology or Jesus as for just some people. It should be universal. That’s why I can’t go along with black theology.” In so doing, the mask of neutrality and the invisibility of whiteness are reinforced in the name of universals which have been defined by European imperial ambition and racial hierarchies.

2. However, many theologians have come in the past forty years to recognize some level of value in the black theology movement.

2.1 The least appreciative of such positions can be characterized by an experience of one of my Shaw colleagues who was studying theological ethics at a prominent northeastern U. S. university about three decades ago. During advisement concerning his research with a prominent white professor, he was told something like the following, “I hope you are not thinking of doing that black theology. That is over with, and there is no need to keep saying the same thing.” From this point of view, Black theology brought a noteworthy critique to normative theology. It’s critique has been made, and acknowledged by those who are intelligent, and it need not be repeated. It was a necessary critique, and it is complete. This position can be combined with some of the ones which follow.

2.2 Similar to the necessary and complete position, but slightly more appreciative, is a view that sees black theology as a dialectical moment. Shaped by a quasi-hegelian imagination, this view would say that black theology identified an inherent contradiction in theologies shaped by European culture and thought. Much of what black theology offered--its insistence on theology as contextual, its recognition of a flesh and blood Jewish Jesus who took sides with the poor and suffered at the hands of the political elite, its enlarging of the community in which theological hermeneutics must take place, and so on—have been accepted by much of the mainstream of normative theologies. Therefore, if not already, at least in the foreseeable future, black theology will have played out its moment and significance, and there will be no more need for it.

3. A third perspective could be associated with terms like diversity or multiculturalism. In this perspective, the more universal theology, the normative theology, extends its tent to include many different perspectives so that we can learn from them all. Christian theology can take many forms, and it is good for each form to have expression. Black theology, in this sense, is a kind of boutique theology. It is an interesting diversion for those who do normative theology. It is a case to be examined for how theology can be reinterpreted by giving free reign to integrate a different culture with normative theology.

3.1 From an appreciative direction, this perspective might see black theology as one more square in a patchwork quilt of theologies. Perhaps black theology is by now a familiar quilt square, so it gets a little less attention than more recent creative and provocative squares added to the theological quilt.

3.1.1 Some who are appreciative and concerned with orthodoxy would seek to engage black theology in dialogue for the sake of mutual edification, but with little permanent significance for the traditional forms of theological reflection.

3.1.2 Others who are appreciative but consider orthodoxy passé would see black theology as another element in the post-modern play of ideas which can help humanity forge a creative adventure into the future, although it may largely be irrelevant to the kind of theologizing whites are doing.

3.2 Less appreciative, yet accommodating, would be the view that black theology, in its limitations as a seemingly tribal theology, exhibits deficiencies which make it inappropriate as the core of a program of theological study. It can be paraded and observed as a distinctive and critical voice with some lasting value, but its deficiency is especially in its focus on a minority tradition rather than on universals. This position combines elements of multiculturalism with the view that black theology's critique is necessary and complete.

To be continued . . .

Reception of Black Theologies 1

Black Theology: A New Word, a Critical Project, and a Consolidation of Tradition

As I continue to work on the issue of whiteness in relation to theology, I am putting a few pieces of analysis on this site for response. Part 1.

In one sense, Black theology broke onto the scene as something new, an innovation in the late 1960s. Black theology offered a new word in the academy. Certainly, there were echoes and resonances of this new theology in other settings and with other names, such as the Latin American liberation theologies identified with Gustavo Gutierrez, the self-identified liberation theology of John Howard Yoder’s Politics of Jesus, and somewhat later, womanist theologies which sought to advance the insights of black theology and feminist theology with a more thoroughgoing liberationist method.

In a second sense, Black theology represented a critical project in theology. Having recognized the intransigence of so-called Christian institutions in confronting hierarchies of privilege and disadvantage grounded in race, Black theologians like James Cone began to put forth a Barthian “No” to the status quo of theological production.

Third, and perhaps most important, Black theologies consolidated in academic terms the preached, lived theological perspective of a community of people whose faith offered a vision of the world that bore witness to the divine denial of human systems of domination and divine faithfulness and love toward the oppressed and marginalized. These three impulses help to identify the black theology movement according to its purpose and emergence.

To be continued . . .