Tag: Christianity

What We’re Doing When We Call A Neighborhood “Bad”

~ Jesse Curtis ~ 1 Comment
Rebuilding homes in an older neighborhood isn't all bad - Inman

My dear brothers and sisters, listen! Hasn’t God chosen those who are poor by worldly standards to be rich in terms of faith? Hasn’t God chosen the poor as heirs of the kingdom he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor.

               James 2.5-6

Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.

               Acts 11.9

A poor person’s land might produce much food,

    but it is unjustly swept away.

               Proverbs 13.23

Those who mock the poor insult their maker.

               Proverbs 17.5

We recently moved from a “bad” neighborhood to a “good” neighborhood. Or so I’m told. What exactly are wealthy and middle-class Christians doing when we call a neighborhood “bad”?

1 We’re hiding how the world works

When we say a neighborhood is bad we’re making a commentary about class, crime, schools, and, very often, race. “Bad” is not our shorthand for how these factors actually work. It’s our blunt instrument to hide all the most pertinent questions.

Why is it socially acceptable for local, state, and federal governments to deliberately create communities of concentrated poverty?

Why do police fail to keep some communities safe?

Why do white parents fallaciously use race as a heuristic for school quality?

Why have wars on drugs and crime targeted people based on their race and class positions rather than focusing on drugs and crime?

Why did white people, businesses, and all levels of government deliberately segregate our metropolitan areas on the basis of race?

Why do middle class and wealthy people oppress the poor by supporting restrictive zoning and opposing investments in public goods?

Why are racism and classism so socially acceptable in middle-class white communities?

We’re just getting started. We might ask dozens more questions. But when we say that a neighborhood is “bad” we are not calling these questions to mind. We are, instead, refusing to ask them. When we call a neighborhood bad we are naturalizing that condition and making a commentary about the people living there. We are telling a lie.

2 We’re rejecting how God’s kingdom works

The discourse of “bad” neighborhoods doesn’t just hide an enormous number of implicit ideological and historical claims. It also make a theological statement. With casual cruelty and complacency, it suggests that the way the Christian scriptures talk about wealth, poverty, and faith are not meant to be taken at all literally. We assume that the divestment Jesus demanded of the rich young ruler has little bearing on us.

Isn’t it just possible that when James said God has arranged the world to work in such a way that the materially poor are rich in faith, he actually meant it and the world really does operate in precisely this way?

Isn’t it possible that when the Apostle Paul said that God has chosen what is weak and despised in the world to shame the strong, he really meant it? When he told the Corinthians that not many of them were rich or important, couldn’t it be that he described not only their particular situation but a common theme running through God’s upside-down way of doing things?

When we say that a community is “bad” we are probably saying something about how safe it seems to be there, how nice it is to raise children there, how readily one might find a good job there and make money. Our units of measurement have nothing to do with the things Jesus told us.

Take a community that is rich in faith, vibrant in neighborliness, God-blessed in its orientation to people rather than things, but has a higher than usual crime rate. That community is “bad.” In contrast, a neighborhood oriented to things, tasks, and success that also happens to be wealthy and safe is “good.”

What does it mean when the standard discourse among middle class American Christians calls spiritually barren places “good” and spiritually rich places “bad”? Part of the problem, of course, is that our classist and racist imaginations cannot comprehend the facts of ordinary life in “bad” neighborhoods. What God has called good we call evil.

This unconscious hostility to the kingdom of God is so common among American Christians that parents who purposely raise their children in a “bad” neighborhood are likely to be called foolish, if not guilty of child endangerment. Meanwhile, parents who raise their kids in spiritually impoverished neighborhoods imagine that we are giving our children the best upbringing our money can buy. We are molding our kids to be striving, success-oriented collectors of things, human doers who disdain the kingdom and the people who inhabit it.

But at least we didn’t expose them to a bad neighborhood, right?

Three Highlights from How to Fight Racism

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment

I’m reading Jemar Tisby’s new book, How to Fight Racism. I recommend it. It’s silly to write about the book before I’m quite done with it but I am getting excited and want to share some quick highlights. Here are three things I think Tisby does especially well.

–Moving past the racist/not racist dichotomy. Tisby reminds us we’re all on a journey. I like to tell people I think I’m a little less racist than I used to be. But it is absurd to suppose that I am not at all racist or that my actions are never racially harmful. How could I possibly grow up where and when I did, become socialized into whiteness, and not be racist? Tisby’s framing encourages us neither to despair nor feel self-righteous, but to move forward from whatever point we find ourselves.

Upon meeting me for the first time, a Black teenager once moved up close to me, looked me over, and asked, “Are you racist?” On one level, she was merely a rambunctious kid engaging in some deliberately provocative play. But on a deeper level she was very efficiently finding out crucial information about me. If I responded defensively or with anger, she would know I was not a safe adult and she should stay away. I don’t remember if I gave her “my less racist than I used to be” answer, but I do remember consciously letting go of any impulse to defend myself.

–Rejecting the personal/systemic false choice. A generation ago, there was a whole genre of Christian racial reconciliation books that said relationships were the key to racial progress. All too often, these books and their readers used this relationship focus as a weapon against structural critique. The liberals missed the point, they said. Systemic solutions didn’t deal with the human heart. Only relationships among Christians could create real racial progress.

Tisby rejects this simplistic prioritizing of the personal without losing sight of how important relationships are. He writes, “People need a personal motivation to disrupt the regular patterns of racism in their own lives and in society…It is difficult to pursue effective structural remedies to racism if you have little understanding of the personal experiences of marginalized people.” Instead of the personal and systemic being at odds, Tisby sees personal relationships as a way to galvanize system-level action while keeping that action rooted in the real experiences of ordinary people.

Tisby’s insistence that fighting racism is a both/and matter also carries a challenge for white liberals and leftists. If you’ve seen white liberals speaking the rote language of racial enlightenment, throwing around academic jargon with ideological inflexibility, then you know how important real relationships are. If you’ve seen white liberals imagining their own cities as a white archipelago surrounded by black and brown no-go zones, then you know how important personal action is. (On more than one occasion, people have “misheard” Alicia and I when we tell them where we live. It just doesn’t fit their mental map).

If you’ve seen white liberals speaking the language of pity, then you know how important real connections to black leaders are. Tisby insists that we shouldn’t just vote for people who might change systems. We can reject the narrow range of personal choices our segregated society tries to funnel us into. We can rethink where we send our kids to school, for example.

–Rejecting the politics of church primacy. You’ve heard this one before too: “The church is the only hope for racial progress. Only the gospel can change hearts.” This might be a plausible point of view coming from a radical Anabaptist envisioning an Acts 2 kind of primitive Christianity. But it reeks of excuses when it comes from mainstream American Christians who envision a role for the state in all sorts of important moral matters only to conspicuously assert the singular primacy of the church when it comes to race.

Tisby does not downplay the importance of the church at all. In fact, his chapter on doing reconciliation right is excellent on specific ways churches should take action to pursue racial justice. But he recognizes the rhetorical role defenses of the church can play in justifying inaction at the social and political level. If you think racial progress comes only through the church, you ought to explain how the church will level the racial wealth gap. While you’re at it, do tell how the church will abolish racist policing and end school segregation. Of course, no one actually has such a plan, because these problems extend so far beyond the church’s capacity. Too often, the rhetoric of church primacy is really just another way of saying that racial oppression isn’t a serious problem demanding a systemic response.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that is so invested in the personal and ecclesial battle against racism, yet completely refuses to play the either/or game and give short shrift to systemic change. There is no contradiction between praying for a spiritual awakening for your hard-hearted friend to finally see the reality of racism, and at the same time pressuring institutions to pay reparations. They go hand in hand.

Tisby has a talent, I think, for meeting us where we are–wherever that may be–and challenging us to go a little further. This is a very good book.

On Singing O Holy Night In White Evangelical Churches

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite Christmas songs is O Holy Night. The music carries you from quiet meditation to a rousing conclusion, and the lyrics are not the stuff of ordinary Christmas carols. I’m always especially struck by these lines:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.

If Wikipedia and the image above are to be believed, the music was created in 1847 by the French composer Adolphe Adam. The lyrics originate from the French poet Placide Cappeau that same year. But his lyrics are not the ones we sing.

In 1855, the American Unitarian and transcendentalist John Sullivan Dwight translated and reworked Cappeau’s text into the English form we sing today. Dwight was unorthodox in his theology (Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity) and radical in his politics.

Dwight was an associationist, a radical reformer who sought to construct a form of Christian socialism in the United States. In an 1849 manifesto of principles, Dwight declared, “We are disposed to take the name of socialist for better or for worse, and challenge all the world to prove that there can be a better Christian…than is the genuine socialist who feels and understands his reconciling mission.”

He continued, “Our watchword is the peaceful transformation of the subversive, false societies of competition into the co-operative society of unity and harmony under God’s perfect code of love.” In the emerging tenets of Christian socialism, Dwight foresaw “a science which shall reconcile all interests, all parties, do away all terrors, and effect a peaceful transition out of these ages of industrial competition, with its attendant train of poverty, ignorance, crime, war, slavery, and disease, into an age of universal co-operation, union, competence, refinement, peace, and Perfect Liberty with Perfect Order.”

Grand ambitions indeed. When the Civil War came, Dwight was a staunch supporter of the Union cause. He hated slavery. During the war he wrote a song for the soldiers of his alma mater that included these lines of anti-slavery patriotism:

As the war transformed from a limited conflict to restore the union to a revolutionary attack on slavery, the United States had become, in Dwight’s eyes, “now a Country grand enough to die for!”

What had been prophesied in the Christmas song nearly 20 years before was now coming to pass: “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother.”

Dwight’s words in their context of the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s were irrevocably radical, unavoidably political. They were words to cause offense and inspire hope, words to cut and wound, words to which one could not help but have a strong reaction. They were words of heresy or of utopianism.

Some 170 years later, I stood in the sanctuary of a white evangelical church on a Sunday morning in December. As Ferguson smoldered, the quiet opening strains of O Holy Night washed over the worshipers. As the song built to its emotional center, people around me raised their hands and closed their eyes in praise. We sang:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Anger welled up in my spirit and I thought of the words of the prophets: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” I didn’t know who had written O Holy Night, or when, but I knew something was wrong with us singing it.

When we sang these lines without knowing the context of their creation, the messy politics of the lyrics became little more than spiritual allegory. When Dwight wrote these words, they were earthy and practical, carrying in them a hard to miss call to repentance. The unavoidable implication was that thousands of white evangelicals in the south were oppressors. God was going to strike them down.

But in our mouths the lines took on the uncomfortable aspect of bystanders. Our privileged and removed position rendered the perspective of the songwriter in a new light. Now it was not in solidarity that we sang; it was as spectators. The people singing are not enslaved or oppressed; they stand off at a distance, claiming to be brother to the oppressed.

When we sang it that December morning in the shadow of Ferguson, I knew all too well that many of us could sing those words precisely because they meant so little. I knew that oppression was of little concern to some of those around me. I knew at first hand how cold and hard of heart some of these worshipers were toward the descendants of the enslaved.

O Holy Night was sung in churches all over the country this morning, the brother slave an allegory signifying almost nothing. If we sung a Christmas song this morning that was true to Dwight’s ethos, how many worshipers would have walked out?

“Chains shall he break, for the immigrant is our brother.”

“Chains shall he break, for the gay man is our brother.”

“Chains shall be break, for black lives matter activists are our brothers.”

O Holy Night is a wonderful song. But do you really want to sing it?

Thoughts for Sunday: The Radical Politics of Christmas

~ Jesse Curtis ~ 1 Comment
https://www.americamagazine.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_large_header_image/public/main_image/GallagherFeature_2_12-10-18.png?itok=VhCk6aml

Growing up, I was taught to read the Bible literally and take the plain meaning of a text at face value if possible. But I don’t believe this is the approach we took to Mary’s Song:

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
    Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Luke 1.46-55

Impeachment Is Obviously Right. How Do We Live With That Knowledge?

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment
Image result for impeachment

On a historic day like this, it is all too easy for us to take refuge in moral sanctimony (“Can you believe how awful the other side is?”) or moral relativism (“Whose to say what is right on something as messy and partisan as impeachment? Let’s just agree to disagree”).

In reality, impeachment is a moral question, and defending Trump is an immoral answer to it. (Yes, I hear myself. I know I’m socially located and all the rest of it, but this is not a close call. Sorry!)

But we must not suppose that the lesson to take from this is one of Republican perfidy and Democratic virtue. On the contrary, the sobering truth is that we rarely do the right thing simply because it is right.

We are experts in aligning our perception of what is moral with our self-interest. When the two of them come into unavoidable conflict, it is self-interest that wins the day most of the time. Some people do escape this trap. We tend to remember them as saints and sages.

It is self-serving and unrealistic to suppose that the moral clarity of the event tells us a great deal about the moral stature of its participants. Republicans face the difficult choice of doing the right thing or protecting their self-interest. In choosing self-interest, they are merely doing what most of us do in most such situations. Democrats are in the much more enviable (and unusual) position of alignment between truth and partisan interest. We should not be sanguine about how they would behave if the shoe were on the other foot.

So today, I don’t want to deaden my conscience with the pretense that both sides in the impeachment struggle have equal moral claims. That’s an absurd proposition. It’s alluring because it allows us to better get along with others and think well of them. But it’s a cheap shortcut. The real challenge is to be openhearted and generous and kind without searing our conscience in the process. Trying to downplay the evils of Trump’s hatred against women, his cruelty and racism, might make some of your social circles more peaceful. But at what cost?

Neither do I want to reach for the self-righteous escape hatch. I recognize Republicans’ hypocrisy and self-interest precisely because I’m so experienced in my practice of these character flaws. Rather than assuming the moral clarity of this moment tells me something profound about the moral fiber of Trump supporters, I want to implicate myself in their unjust behavior.

Thoughts for Sunday

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1200px-Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

The father of the prodigal son gives himself totally to the joy that his returning son brings him. I have to learn from that. I have to learn to “steal” all the real joy there is to steal and lift it up for others to see…

This is a real discipline. It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded with lies. I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways. The reward of choosing joy is joy itself. Living among people with mental disabilities has convinced me of that. There is so much rejection, pain, and woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.

Surely I will be called naive, unrealistic, and sentimental, and I will be accused of ignoring the “real” problems, the structural evils that underlies much of human misery. But God rejoices when one repentant sinner returns…

For me it is amazing to experience daily the radical difference between cynicism and joy. Cynics seek darkness wherever they go. They point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes. They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental. They sneer at enthusiasm, ridicule spiritual fervor, and despise charismatic behavior. They consider themselves realists who see reality for what it truly is and who are not deceived by “escapist emotions.” But in belittling God’s joy, their darkness only calls forth more darkness.

People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness…

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Thoughts for Sunday

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1200px-Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son.

At issue here is the question: ‘To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?’ Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me…

‘Addiction’ might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates contemporary society. Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power, attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world’s delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in the ‘distant’ country,’ leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father’s home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in ‘a distant country.’ It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Thoughts for Sunday

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment
Image result for Tiffany Studios' stained-glass portrayal of Saint Augustine (Lightner Museum)

I’ve been slowly reading some of the church fathers in recent months. I come out of an evangelical tradition that had little use for the historic church. It has been fascinating and enriching for me to discover these ancients texts beyond the Bible. Here are a few lines from Augustine’s Confessions:

Who will enable me to find rest in you? Who will grant me that you come to my heart and intoxicate it, so that I forget my evils and embrace my one and only good, yourself? …

The house of my soul is too small for you to come to it. May it be enlarged by you. It is in ruins; restore it. In your eyes it has offensive features. I admit it; I know it; but who will clean it up? Or to whom shall I cry other than you?

What’s A Pro-Life Democrat To Do?

~ Jesse Curtis ~ 1 Comment
Image result for jimmy carter

I’m a pro-life Democrat. You wouldn’t know it from the positions of party leaders, but there are millions of us. Joe Biden’s reversal on the Hyde Amendment last week signaled that, whoever wins the party nomination, millions of pro-life Democrats are unlikely to have their views represented in 2020. Indeed, activists appear to want to drive pro-life Democrats out of the party entirely.

What in the world is a pro-life Democrat to do? I second what John Fea said a couple months ago in a post about Jimmy Carter’s brand of pro-life politics: “I think there are a lot of pro-life Democrats out there who would agree with Carter, but they do not make their voices heard for several reasons:”

1. They do not want to be ostracized by the Democratic Party.

2. They are afraid that if they defend the unborn they will be accused of not caring about women’s rights.  (This, I believe, is a false dichotomy).

3. They do not want to be associated with the divisive and unhelpful “baby-killing” culture war rhetoric of the Right.

4. They do not endorse the Christian Right/GOP playbook that teaches the only way to reduce abortions is to overturn Roe. v. Wade.

I think this is exactly right. To put it simply, let’s unpack the phrase, pro-life Democrat. I’m pro-life because I’m a Christian and cannot be otherwise. I’m a pro-life Democrat because I don’t believe patriarchy and free market radicalism have anything to do with protecting life; indeed, they are inimical to it.

I can’t make common cause with the right-wing anti-abortion movement. It is thoroughly embedded in the broader activist right, which tends toward dishonesty, racism, and sexism. The imperatives of capitalist extremism govern their activism, so that policies that would reduce abortions are not pursued simply because such policies would upset wealthy people.

But before I become too critical of right-wing activists for letting capital dictate the extent of their efforts against abortion, I can, as a pro-life Democrat, ponder my own similar position and my own complicity. Do I not speak up for fear of causing a break with Democratic activists with whom I otherwise agree? Do I fail to speak with appropriate moral conviction for fear of electoral or social consequences?

I do not believe the right-wing anti-abortion movement is promoting a helpful pro-life agenda, nor do I think overturning Roe v. Wade will usher in the utopia they imagine. But my alienation from the most viable and visible pro-life movement does not free me to sit on my hands. In fact, it adds to my responsibility to act creatively to protect life outside those right-wing channels.

I don’t pretend to know at this point what that should look like. I am already trying to pursue a lifestyle that I believe aligns with a Christian ethic of life, but I do not intend to trumpet those personal choices here. In this case I’m thinking more of public advocacy and financial support. What organizations are worthy of our money, our voices, our retweets? Yeah, I said it, retweets matter!

If any readers have given significant attention to these things or are already supporting an organization that you recommend, I’d like to hear about it. I’d like to put my money where my mouth is. Given the data we have on why women choose abortion, it seems intuitively obvious to me that we can significantly reduce abortions simply by empowering poor women. Imagine that.

Previewing My Summer of Learning about Early Christianity

~ Jesse Curtis ~ Leave a comment

On a bit of a whim I’m hoping to delve into the history of early Christianity this summer. In recent years I’ve become increasingly interested in learning about my faith beyond the fundamentalist roots in which I grew up. In the old days, learning about social contexts, historical developments, and critical scholarship on the Bible would have been scary. In more recent times it’s not only fascinating to me, it’s devotional. God is unlikely to be particularly impressed by my knowledge, nor shaken by my doubts. So it’s fun to learn more.

The following list reflects what happened to be on Temple’s shelves on the last day before Paley Library’s permanent closing. So this is not a recommended way to build a reading list. But I’m going to start with this:

It’s pitched as an accessible book for students and laypeople, which is probably exactly what I need to orient myself to the historical context and the field.

This one looks like a fun follow-up:

I’m also kind of excited about this comparative collection surveying the rise of Christianity and Buddhism, respectively:

I imagine these two books will speak to each other:

And then there’s kind of a grab bag of random stuff:

Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity
Image result for The Last Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate and the War against Christianity
Being Christian in Vandal Africa by Robin Whelan

If all goes well, I’ll know a lot more about Christianity by the end of the summer! And I figure previewing my study marginally raises the chances that I’ll actually follow through.