On Being a Bigot

I have sat on this post for several days, trying to scrutinize my own sentiments.  In my post about Ariana Huffington and Pat Robertson, I referred to Huffington as a bigot.  It’s a harsh word and I’ve been thinking about whether it appropriately fits.  I think it does, but I feel the need to explain myself.

In today’s climate, we don’t like extreme-sounding language on certain sensitive topics.  It seems extreme to use a word like “bigot” for someone like Huffington.  It seems reactionary.  I want to be a peaceable person, so I shy away from harsh language.  Furthermore, the word often is used with regard to white prejudice on questions of race, so maybe it doesn’t translate very well.

Dictionary.com defines “bigot” as “a person who is intolerant of any differing creed, belief or opinion.”  Hmm.  Too strong.  This makes us all bigots virtually all the time.  A word that covers everything covers nothing.  Even bigots tolerate some “other opinions” at least some of the time, I would think.  “Intolerant” is too vague anyway and has become kind of a buzzword.    “AskOxford.com” (I’m doing this blog at home and don’t have acccess to OED) says of “bigot:” “a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others.”  “Prejudiced” helps.  “Intolerant” of the views of others sometimes has real merit.  “Prejudice,” on the other hand, is pre-judging before the case is permitted to be made.  Prejudice means jumping to conclusions on probably some sort of ad hominem basis.

I work in academia.  Anyone familiar with this environment knows that bigots can and sometimes do have Ph.Ds.  I wince to write those words.  It’s ironic, because a big part of our job is to expose bigotry.  And here’s the danger: if you think you (or someone else) cannot be a bigot because well-educated, think again.  We should not be fooled by our own sophistication.

I am not interested in propping up Pat Robertson’s sagging image.  Whether he is still regarded as a nationally powerful Christian leader is a debatable point.  I hang around a lot of young people who barely recognize his name, if at all.  We have much more serious problems in the Christian community than Pat Robertson.  Maybe that’s why I’m not as bothered by Robertson’s comments as some people are.

Huffington is no less a bigot simply because she is more articule and sophisticated.  We’d better start paying attention to and recognizing bigotry of all flavors, especially by people who help to shape public opinion.

I have deeply conflicted feelings about public opinion these days.  I like that blogging and other media allow for more people to share opinions in an accessible format.  I worry that we don’t distinguish very well thoughtful, careful opinions from fear-mongering and demagoguery, particularly when it comes in such articulate packages.

I’m sufficiently bothered that I have another post coming immediately on another topic.  Stay tuned.

Huffington, Robertson and Haiti

I’m alternating between scratching my head and gnashing my teeth.  The Huffington Post has taken issue with Pat Robertson’s comment on Haiti’s alleged pact with the Devil and I received the chance to subscribe to a “Pat Robertson Doesn’t Speak for Me” group on Facebook.

Scratching my head: why does Ariana Huffington care what Pat Robertson says?  If she wants to minimize his impact, she should ignore him, not plaster his quotes all over her blog.  What he said came during an airing of the 700 Club, so he was talking to his viewers, who, for most the part, I’m sure, completely agree with his world view.  He made a sweeping historical/theological statement: that Haiti, seeking independence from the French in the late 1700s made a pact with the Devil.  It certainly raises my historian’s caution – you know, putting two and two together and getting five, drawing inferences that don’t follow from the evidence, that sort of thing.  But the hysteria from the Huffington Post, et. al., I don’t get either.

There was no judgment in Robertson’s voice or demeanor about Haiti.  According to the CBN web site, their ministry is actively engaged in earthquake relief in that devastated land.  I don’t know if Huffington actually checked (I doubt it), but if one takes a few minutes to look, then Robertson’s quote seems a lot more like an understandable (even if historically questionable) comment made from within Robertson’s Pentecostal/Charismatic theology.

Gnashing my teeth: responding to Huffington’s charge, the CBN website puts a spin on Robertson’s comments that fudges what he actually said.  I wish Pat Robertson would “man up” and stick to his guns.  Christians need to have the courage of their convictions and if he really believes that Haiti is under some sort of demonic spell, then he should say so without apology or qualification.  And he especially shouldn’t give a second’s thought to what Ariana Huffington and her ilk thinks.

Irony: I heard Jack Cafferty on CNN talk about how poor Haiti has been destroyed by corruption and inept government. Upon examination, how much practical difference is there between “corruption” and “demonic influence?”

Christians cannot and should not operate in a box.  We live in this world and we need to engage fully in its doings.  I’m enough of a “methocostal” myself that the notion of demonic influence is not beyond the pale for me.  Talk of demonic activity has been completely distorted by entertainment media – people hear “demon” and they think green, projectile vomit, contorted faces and levitating furniture, but most versions of the demonic are much more mundane.  I think often of Paul’s comment in 2 Cor. 10, about “tearing down strongholds and taking every thought captive to Christ.”  How often does the demonic work at the level of mere thinking and we don’t even notice?

But while Christians should have opinions based on their theological/faith perspectives – as Robertson does – we should be wise and wily in how we communicate them.  Public comments by public Christian figures should never be made just for the home crowd.  Still, though I’m a little queasy about Robertson’s analysis, Huffington is the real bigot, not Robertson.

Epistemic Humility and the Force of Ideas

Off and on (mostly on, I suppose), I think about the clash of ideas that takes place between people when talking about religion.  In “educated” (I use this word advisedly) middle class America, there is an informal moral principle at work that, I think, confuses the courage of one’s convictions (and the associated truth claims) with a wrong use of power.

Some years ago (2001), Baker Academic published a collection of essays by leading evangelical scholars called No Other Gods Before Me? It’s edited by John Stackhouse.  I recommend the book.  It is an illustration of epistemic humility while maintaining a clear commitment to standard (broadly-understood) evangelical commitments to the Christian faith.  One need not agree with everything in the book to appreciate the care and thoughtfulness of the authors and to be challenged by their ideas.  Epistemic humility.

Christians of all stripes (especially Christian college and seminary professors who don’t recognize that they’re doing it) make the mistake of confusing the force of an idea with coercive tactics in arguments.  Coercive tactics sometimes fly under the flag of “informal fallacies” in logic.  When I think I can undermine your idea by making a reference to something about you personally – the charge of “homophobe” is a classic example on a very contentious topic – it’s called an informal fallacy (ad hominem attack), but it is also a power move.  Another one is “fundamentalist” (or “liberal”).  We think we can dismiss someone’s idea simply by naming some aspect of their character that we think takes away the force of their ideas.  If I’m a “conservative” and you’re a “liberal,” then I don’t have to take your ideas seriously because you’re “liberal.”  This move is a power move, not just a “bias.”

How Christians use power when they are making their claims is of fundamental importance.  In so many evangelistic appeals, we are misusing power (and abusing trust) when we manipulate people’s feelings in order to get them to sign a card.  In politics, campaign rhetoric is based on appeals to emotion (another logical fallacy), manipulating hearers’ feeling by playing (primarily) on fear.

OK, so I’ve named the easy parts.  What about when an idea that I hold as fundamentally true, say, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh and the Savior of the world, is considered exclusionary (here’s the power) by someone who doesn’t believe that idea?  If I insist that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father, what about people who don’t agree?  They recognize the force of the idea , which, if they persist in their prior commitment (i.e. don’t change their minds to match my claim about Jesus), leaves them out of the blessing that I associate with my belief about Jesus.  They feel understandably left out and they also think that we have demeaned their views regarding salvation (or whatever term they would use to describe spiritual wholeness).

It seems to me that my being epistemically humble means that I am authentically willing to hear their criticisms of my view and to be open to having my idea shaped by their criticisms.  But it most certainly does not mean that I have give up a priori on my idea about Jesus, which is what happens sometimes when people confuse truth claims with power moves.  Too much dialogue between people of differing religions assumes this starting point.  It basically asks Christians (at least the ones who think this way) to drop their beliefs about Jesus in order to enter “properly” into dialogue.  This is a power play of another sort and it illustrates the difficulty.  Ideas have force and we can’t avoid it.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that Christians in America, at least, are going to have to work up much more social courage than we often have, if we’re going to live effectively in a society that doesn’t recognize the difference between the force of ideas and the manipulation of feelings.  And that I write this blog on Epiphany seems quite relevant…

The Emotional Impact of Good Thinking

There is a long practice (or prejudice) in Christian history that separates “head” and “heart.”  It comes to us most strongly, perhaps, from the Pietist movement that began in Germany in the 17th century.  People who identify themselves as “evangelical” know this terrain very well.  We pietist evangelicals use this kind of language commonly to describe inauthentic religion (“mere” head knowledge) and authentic religion (heart knowledge).  I don’t like this trade-off and I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t.  The head-heart trade-off is a false dichotomy.

It turns out that good thinking involves having the right kind of feelings, a point to which Christians need to pay close attention.  We need, therefore, to quit talking about “head knowledge” versus “heart knowledge.”

I rather feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but let me try out this idea anyway.  Let’s try to notice the difference between between two aspects of learning.  “Learning” can mean something like cognitive mastery – I “get” (i.e. understand and can manipulate) an idea and can make use of it in other ideas.  I’m afraid that, usually when we talk about learning doctrine, we put it in this framework.  But (by itself) it isn’t learning.  It is reductionistic and looks much like the “head knowledge” we decry.

If we follow the usual path, at this point we switch to “heart knowledge” for the corrective, but it is precisely here that we start going wrong.  We go wrong because with “heart knowledge,” sound doctrine (good thinking) tends to get downplayed.  Oh, yes, we know that believing the right things matters, but really it matters mostly to prove our orthodoxy, our being on the “right side” of a controversy.  For spirituality, by contrast, what  really matters is how one feels and what one does.  Does one feel love for Jesus?  Does one do what Christians are supposed to do (go to church, tithe, feed the poor, etc.)?

If we want to work on “heart knowledge” we tend to look to the spiritual disciplines to help us.  So, we read books on prayer and mysticism, or fasting, or some other practice.  We tend not to read books on theology, partly because “theology” has become so technical that only professional academics can use the lingo.

So we pietist evangelicals fall off the log the other direction and reduce the Christian faith to “heart knowledge.”   In truth – and it’s critically important that we “get” this point –  “learning” something means doing the hard cognitive work for understanding and being taken by, possessed by, the truth of God’s revelation.  It is still mental and conceptual, but it is more than mere mastery of concepts.  The ideas become personal – the will has yielded and “made it personal” in a more-than-merely-cognitive way.  In learning, I’m not merely manipulating an idea.  That idea permeates my whole being.   Clearly, this sort of learning affects our emotional tone and we become, over time, different, renewed, transformed people.

If my chain of thought is sound, it means we Christians need to spend a lot more time with doctrine/theology: reflectively, ponderingly, persistently, leisurely, slowly, prayerfully.

If Only We Recognized the Prince of Peace

I’ve heard the story.  I’ve read the story.  And I just watched the story on the History Channel while I was mortifying my flesh on the treadmill.  The Christmas Truce of 1914 is truly a historical wonder, but not for conventional interpretation.

For context, a quick re-telling: On the Western Front, five months into World War I, British and German soldiers made enemies through no act of their own, found themselves staring across No Man’s Land at each other on Christmas Eve.  Across that void, the British heard Germans singing, “Stille nacht, heilige nacht…” and some of them began to sing back, “Silent night, holy night…”

Peace broke out.  Enemies met in that space between the trenches and exchanged food, chocolate, trinkets, buttons and other bits of memoriabilia.  There was a small Christmas tree.  They even had a soccer match.  It must have been an absolutely miraculous moment.

The Christmas Truce so took hold that the British officers actually had a pretty hard time getting their troops back into a more bellicose posture.  According to the History Channel telling, it took a British officer essentially murdering a defenseless German soldier to jump-start the war.  Four long years of horrific bloodshed ensued.

Historians on the program opined that the “reason” such a moment could take place was because the combatants could – in the Christmas moment – recognize their common “humanity.”  The narrator even used the word “fellowship” in describing how quickly and well these men bonded with each other.

Completely lacking was the historians’ recognition of the common faith of the British and German soldiers.  What an astonishing blind spot!  Recognizing the “humanity” in someone else does nothing to explain this moment and, worse, it positively ignores the obvious.  These British and German combatants, in hearing the songs of Christmas, recognized their common Lord.  Something bigger than France, Britain or Germany was revealed, if only for a moment – the governance of the Prince of Peace.

Now let’s play the historian’s game and think about counterfactuals – the “what might have happened” had event B taken place rather than event A.  So, in my little scenario, let’s say that the troops – recognizing the implication of Christians killing other Christians – on both sides had refused to carry on with the war.  What if they had realized that both  British and German followers of Jesus had something in common that transcends national status?  What if the moment had been permitted to develop (the History Channel program played out just this possibility that perhaps the war might have been permitted to stop right then), which might have dramatically foreshortened what became a long and bloody war?

A Christmas Truce of 1914 that led to peace would have prevented the humiliation of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles…and Hitler would not have happened.  There would not have been the smoldering resentment in Germany that fed his demonic vision.  The German economy would not have been shattered.  The political situation would have been different.  No Hitler, no World War II.  Imagine a history without either World War I or II.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is a historical marvel.  We ought to scour history for other such moments.  They show us the Prince of Peace ruling.  If only we recognized him. Come, Lord Jesus.