The Bible Goes to School

A Textbook for teaching the Bible in public schools

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona recently signed into law a bill promoting the teaching of the Bible as an elective course in Arizona's public schools.  According to a largely critical posting (here), the purpose of the course is to, "among other things, educate students on the influence of the Old and New Testament on laws, history, morals, government, literature, art, music, customs, values, and culture."  The bill has been, of course, controversial.  The ACLU opposed it, and an editorial at The Arizona Republic (here) raises the objection that the proposed course opens the door to a number of abuses that include not only proselytizing students by Christian teachers, but also the possibility that teachers critical of the Bible will have a bully pulpit for subtle attacks on it.  In sum, teachers can't be trusted to teach the Bible fairly and circumspectly.

In theory, the idea of teaching biblical literacy in public schools is a good one.  The Bible is a key cultural document, and students should have some knowledge of it on that basis alone.  Teaching the Bible, furthermore, offers the possibility of students gaining at least some knowledge of religious concerns, which generally are barred from public education in spite of the importance of religion to our society.  This is not to say that the schools should promote religion as such.  Rather, it would be good for students to have some background in religion, especially for those who aren't getting anything at home.

The objections raised by opponents of the new law, however, also carry weight.  The opportunities for abuse are obvious and serious, especially because the law protects teachers from legal prosecution or disciplinary action so long as they can show that they followed the course outline mandated by the state. This does seem to open the door to abuses by both "pro-Bible" and "anti-Bible" teachers because any teacher can pack their own meanings into the outline.

And there is a further concern, which has to do with qualifications. Science teachers are expected to know science. Math teachers have a math background. It is unlikely that most Arizona schools have teachers who have any academic training in the Bible, and it is not likely that they would have the time to become conversant with the Bible as an academic field of study. And those most likely to abuse the course (both pro-Bible & anti-Bible) are the ones least likely to be interested in the academic study of scripture. That is to say, these courses are liable to promote ignorance and/or bias as much as or more than provide an open opportunity to discover the contents of the Bible.

Brian Jennings, a Christian blogger writing from a more conservative perspective observes (here), "We need to be very careful when using the state as a means to achieve Christian ends and think through possible unintended consequences. Jesus describes the kingdom of God as something that grows in the midst of the kingdoms of this world, not something imposed by them." He goes on to state that, "I’m sure those who want the Bible taught in public schools are well-intentioned, but we should call a time out to think. Can we really reduce the Bible to literature or history without betraying its life-changing message? The Bible needs to be studied academically, but in light of what it claims to be – the self-revelation of God – not as a history book without colorful pictures."  These are real concerns.

Becoming Free

Let go, and respond to the immediate needs around you. Don't get caught in some false perception of yourself. There will always be another person more gifted than you. And don't perceive your position as important, but be ready to serve at any moment. If you can let go of who you think you are, you will become free--ready to love others. If you learn to see your impermanence, you will be able to live for the moment and not miss opportunities to love by pushing things into the future.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Source: Unknown

From: inward/outward

The Power of Idolatry in Our Times

When I was a grad student at the University of Maryland in the 1980s, I presented a paper in one of my classes on the missionary role in the modernization of 19th century northern Thailand.  Another student quizzed me on the motivations of the missionaries and rejected out of hand my claim that the missionaries were primarily motivated by their religious beliefs.  He argued that they went to the mission field in search of economic gain, and that fact explained their behavior.  Their beliefs were just a ruse.  Now, any fair reading of the missionary record does not substantiate that argument nor does the fact of the risks missionaries faced living in one of the most isolated places (from North America) in the world—especially health risks but also the risks attending living in a kind of social exile from their homeland.  I still remember, however, the scorn of my fellow student as I tried to make the case that faith was the primary motivation for most of the missionaries most of the time.  I knew from my own experience that faith is a powerful source of motivation.  And I knew for having spent years working with missionary documents and publications that their faith was the primary reason for their being missionaries, but my classmate rejected the whole idea out of hand.  He denied reality.

Previous to that experience in the classroom, I worked as a church-based archivist in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and the archives I managed contained a fair amount of missionary records going well back into the 19th century.  I remember a conversation with an American doctoral student working on his dissertation in the field of anthropology during which I observed that there was a wealth of material on his subject in the missionary records at the archives.  This grad student said with clear disdain in his voice, "I would never use missionary materials."  When I asked why, he replied, "Because they are biased."  Talk about the kettle complaining about the soot on the pot!  Yes, of course, missionaries wrote with a bias, which a reputable scholar will learn to read through and make allowances for.  On the other hand, they were the first Westerners to live for extended periods of time in northern Thailand, and their records contain a wealth of historical anthropological data obtainable from no other source.  This grad student rejected learning from that source because it was tainted by the religious nature of the record.

My point is that religious conservatives do not have a monopoly on self-righteous arrogance based on ignorant prejudice.  Those of us who are various degrees of liberal decry the denial of evolution and the findings of science by folks on the right while we engage in our own forms of prejudice and denial based on our own ideologies.  Ideological idolatry is no respecter of persons or philosophies or theologies.  It is a danger to us all.  For those of us who seek to live the Christian life, this is why doubt is so important.  Doubt can help us refrain from turning faith (which is a humble trust in God) into certainty (which can become an arrogant ownership of God).

Two Viewpoints

"I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view. I've said many times through this campaign that one of the things I hope to do is to help build a conservative majority in the United States Senate and continue to help the House build a Republican majority and have a Republican White House and then bipartisanship becomes having Democrats come our way."

Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock

May 9, 2012, on "Fox & Friends"

“I’ve said it many times, this is a historic time, and the most powerful people in both parties are so opposed to one another that one side simply has to win out over the other.”

Richard Mourdock

Quoted in the New York Times, May 8, 2012

"If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it."

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)

Statement on his primary defeat to Richard Mourdock, May 9, 2012

Occasional Convergences

Doi Saket Temple, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Although we sometimes seem to live in different worlds, there is evidence of a fair amount of cross-fertilization between evangelicals and ecumenicals (a.k.a. the mainline).  A wing of the evangelical movement, for example, has developed a deep concern for issues of social justice and for the environment.  There are mainline churches, meanwhile, that are discovering the importance of engaging in evangelism.  In particular cases, ecumenicals and evangelicals are each learning to speak the language of the other.  A case in point is a recent posting by Prof. Paul Louis Metzger, a self-styled evangelical, entitled, "Mormons and Buddhists are not “Isms” or “Ists.  They're people.”  Metzger calls on evangelicals to be more sensitive to the heritages and faith perspectives of people of other faiths and advocates what we might call a "soft" approach to evangelism by which one approaches others out of respect and a genuine desire to learn about their faith in hopes that the sharing that follows will help them see Christ. He concludes the posting by saying that, "Hopefully, the more personally and particularly we engage diverse religious practitioners from the perspective of their experiential participation in their traditions, the more they will experience through us and hopefully for themselves how personal—not packaged—the Jesus revealed in the Bible really is."

While some liberal Christians might feel that Metzger still has too much of an agenda, the tone and feel of his approach to people of other faiths stands in stark contrast to that of many evangelicals who are dismissive of other religions and certainly would not be willing to listen to what their adherents have to say.  In interfaith settings, there is nothing inherently wrong with a respectful mutual sharing of one's own faith.  The key is a willingness to be shared with as much (or more) than to share.  I recommend that you take a look at Metzger's posting.  It represents a hopeful convergence between the best of ecumenical and evangelical thinking.

Brand New

The Gospel is handed down from generation to generation but it must reach each one of us brand new, or not at all. If it is merely "tradition" and not news, it has not been preached or not heard--it is not Gospel.... If there is no risk in revelation, if there is no fear in it, if there is no challenge in it, if it is not a word which creates whole new worlds, and new beings, if it does not call into existence a new creature, our new self, then religion is dead and God is dead.

Thomas Merton

Source: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

From:  inward/outward

Riding the Black Swan

Christ on the Cross, Diego Velazquez

Two previous postings (here and here) described and reflected on the idea of Black Swan Events, historical events that are unexpected, have a significant impact, and are later accepted as having been almost the natural course of things.  We've seen that Black Swan Events are complex and that the name itself names something historians and many others were already aware of.  We know they exist, but coming to terms with them is the issue.  Yesterday (here), I considered the possibility that God authors Black Swan Events, including especially the Christ Event, for divine ends and left off with the following questions: In our day and age, how do we best make sense of the Presence of God in history and our lives? Given the complexity of Black Swan Events, does it make sense to believe that God uses some of them for divine ends?

Humanity has been wrestling with the divine since the dawn of the race, and these are not questions to be answered in a single blog posting—or at all, actually.  However, it is worth considering that God who is Beyond has created the parameters within which we live.  God created an evolving universe and made us the "products" of an evolutionary process.  God has given us freedom, and it seems only reasonable to presume that we are the "authors" of Black Swan Events, which events betray all of the marks of a broken humanity trapped in chaotic conditions of our own making.  Yet, we are more than just broken.  We create good as well as evil, and thus some of our Black Swan Events are positive, creative ones.

In a manner we do not understand but sometimes perceive with deep spiritual clarity, God who is Present rides the swirling surf of our lives working quietly but persistently to change the course of history.  As Christians, we trust that God was Present in Christ in a unique way, a full way.  God, that is, resides in and rides the crest of Black Swan Events constantly seeking to transform them or, at least, bring healing that mitigates the destruction such events can cause.

God works in history the way our hearts work in our lives.  I don't mean the pumping physical heart but, rather, the emotional heart.  That heart is as real, sometimes more real than the physical one even if the idea of the heart seems to be "only" a metaphor.  Both the heart and God are beyond-physical realities that define important elements of our human experience.  Beyond proving but powerful nonetheless.  In freedom, we do the things that lead to Black Swan Events.  In love, God seeds those events with healing and even, sometimes, transformation.  Amen.

Black Swan Events & God

Christ on the Cross, Diego Velazquez

Two recent postings (here and here) described and reflected on the idea of Black Swan Events, historical events that are unexpected, have a significant impact, and are later accepted as having been almost the natural course of things.  We've seen that Black Swan Events are complex and that the name itself names something historians and many others were already aware of.  We know they exist, but coming to terms with them is the issue.

Viewed theologically, we might be inclined to embrace this concept as describing the way in which God acts in human history.  Any number of biblical events including the call of Abraham, the Exodus, and especially the "Christ event" fit the description of Black Swan Events.  They were unforeseen, significant, and later were turned into a narrative that purported to explain them so that we don't normally even think of them as being Black Swan Events.  We might conclude, then, that God uses Black Swan Events to influence and change the course of human history.

The problem is that the temptation of Adam & Eve, the death of Abel, and other biblical events can also be seen as Black Swan Events—as can a myriad of ugly, tragic historical events right down to the present.  God did not cause the death of Abel, and God was not the author of 9/11.  So, then, we should amend our inclination to say that God acts positively ("redemptively" in theological-speak) and  occasionally in history and does so through Black Swan Events.

OK, sounds good, but does God actually instigate Black Swan Events to influence the course of human history in an intentional way?  Or, are we reading God as the cause of such events back into them so that we can make sense of them?  The concept of Black Swan Events, that is, leads us back to a perennial theological issue, which is the way in which God is present in human history (and in our personal lives).

With all due humility, we must confess that we do not know how God is Present in history and our lives.  We know what the Bible says, and we put a good deal of stock in scripture; but it was written at times when humanity had a vastly different understanding of the universe.  In those times, it made perfect sense to believe that God causes Black Swan Events.  The vast majority of Christians still accept that ancient view, but one wonders how much spiritual sense it actually makes today.  In particular, are we willing to accept the biblical understanding that God repeatedly failed to make effective use of Black Swan Events, which is the tale the Old Testament tells?  God created humanity, which rebelled.  God called the Hebrews, who time and time again failed their calling.  It is an open question whether the Christian church will prove the Black Swan Event of Christ was any more of a success.

In our day and age, how do we best make sense of the Presence of God in history and our lives?  Given the complexity of Black Swan Events, does it make sense to believe that God uses some of them for divine ends?

Puzzling & Repellent Religion

"If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know."

C.S. Lewis,

"The Weight of Glory"

A  Sermon preached at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, June 8, 1942

Black Swan Events Revisited

Yesterday's posting introduced the idea of Black Swan Events, as being significant historical events that are unpredictable.  This concept, which originates with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, describes a phenomenon that historians have long been keenly aware of, which is that there is a randomness to history that defies all of their powers of explanation.  Even the most important of historical events "just happen," and all of our post-event explanations cannot fully account for them.  Historians are also aware of Black Swan Events that almost happened, such as the failed assassination attempt on president-elect Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.  There is a whole genre of alternative history fiction devoted to speculating what might have happened if a given Black Swan Event didn't happen, such as the accidental murder of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War.  Sci-fi author, Orson Scott Card, has written a fascinating book entitled, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, which describes a future where it becomes possible to manipulate past Black Swan Events—in this case, the discovery of the Americas, which has to stand as one of the great Black Swan Events of all time.

The point is that Black Swan Events are complex, and we have to be careful about how we use the term to understand the past.  Taleb claims, for example, that they are unpredictable and unlooked for.  The fact that we can't control them is part of their power over us.  If that is the case, was 9/11 a Black Swan Event?  According to the Wikipedia article, Rick Rescorla, "As the World Trade Center security chief for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter, Rescorla anticipated both attacks on the towers and implemented evacuation procedures that are credited with saving many lives. He died in the attacks of September 11, 2001, while leading the evacuation efforts." Rescorla, obviously, did not predict the particular event of September 11, 2001, but he did anticipate the possibility of that event.  He took steps to anticipate that possibility and thus actually exercised a (small) measure of control over it that saved some lives.  So, was 9/11 truly a Black Swan Event?   Or, again, was the assassination of President Kennedy such an event?  The government had developed a whole set of personnel and procedures to deal with just such an eventuality, and while it is true that all of that preparation failed to prevent the assassination it was anticipated.  It was known to be a possibility.  Was it a Black Swan Event?

In determining what constitutes a Black Swan Event, more weight needs to be given to the idea that such events are unexpected rather than unpredicted.  Many Black Swan Events were predicted by someone, but those who had the power to respond to those predictions and prepared for their potential consequences either ignored the predictions or did not even know about them—or, took a few ineffective precautions.  We can know something about the future, but our knowledge is partial, uncertain, and easy to discount.  As we know from political punditry, it is also often just downright wrong.  And sometimes even when we anticipate them and take massive steps to counter-act them—such as is the case with presidential assassinations—we still fail to stop them.  On the other hand, sometimes we do prevent them, such as the foiled attempt to assassinate President Reagan.

In an excerpt from his book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (here), Taleb writes a Black Swan Event is, "an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility."  By this definition, Kennedy's assassination was not a Black Swan Event, however much impact it had on our world in 1963 and subsequently.   We know that a presidential assassination is always a possibility.  But Kennedy's death was a Black Swan Event.  We didn't expect it.  It had tremendous impact.  And since 1963, we've expended tremendous effort to trying to understand the event.  There was a presidential commission devoted to exactly that task.  That is, we can correctly argue either way on this one.  It both was and was not a Black Swan Event.

In sum, the actual nature of actual events in the real world are complex (even in our personal lives) and the concept of Black Swan Events does not do justice to that complexity.  It may be a useful term in some ways, but it needs to be treated and used circumspectly.  By the way, the term "black swan" goes back to ancient Roman times when everyone knew that all swans are white.  "Black swan" described something that was impossible.  Then, Europeans discovered Australia and learned that swans can be black, so the term eventually came to mean something unexpected.  The discovering of black swans was thus a smallish but significant black swan event.