American Christianity, Ansley Quiros writes, is “In the Midst of a Theological Crisis.”
Not that this is anything new. This same “theological crisis” — this same conflict over the meaning of Christianity — has long shaped and been shaped by American history, from the long dispute over enslavement through Reconstruction and its abandonment, the second Reconstruction of the Civil Rights era and the long slow abandonment of that (bringing us to the present).
This is the same “theological crisis” explored in Mark Noll’s excellent The Civil War as Theological Crisis, which examines white Christians’ competing, irreconcilable religious arguments for and against slavery. And the same crisis or conflict described in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural:
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully.
Noll focused on that first bit: “Both read the same Bible.” Not only did both sides read it, but both sides claimed to defer to it — to be guided by obedience to its authoritative teachings. Both read it and declared its words to be clear, unambiguous, and incontrovertible, and yet the two sides firmly held that the Bible clearly stated incompatible, opposite things.
Quiros sees this same crisis recurring or remanifesting itself in things like the contradictory response to a recent sermon by the Right Rev. Marian Edgar Budde at the National Cathedral in which she pleaded for “mercy” for children and immigrants. The polar opposite reactions of two factions of white Christians show that, as Shane Claibourne put it recently, we seem to have “two Christianities.” Two very different, theologically incompatible, Christianities.
But again, as Quiros recognizes, this is not new. These “Two Christianities” are precisely the same two opposite factions that Noll and Lincoln described. Quiros hints at this with the way her wry comment that “there is really no Christian case to be made against mercy as a concept” echoes Lincoln’s “It may seem strange” comment.
This perennial “theological crisis” among white Christians in America leads Quiros to conclude with a thorny question:
How much is really theological and how much is using religion to justify politics or create a moral cover? Of course, I still don’t know. Interpretation and prioritization of religious principles and theological truths are often political, even partisan. But I think theological belief matters. I think that theological conflicts, like the one hinted at last week, have long been historically and morally significant. As we stand at another inflection moment in our national story, I’m curious (alarmed! but still curious) about the surprising role that theology might play — on both sides — in how the crisis unfolds.
This can seem like a chicken-or-egg type of question — which is to say a question that is unanswerable, or a question for which the answer is irrelevant since either answer will bring us to the same place. Yet, as Quiros says, “theological belief matters,” even if or when it is a post-facto fig-leaf used to “create a moral cover” for political views. In such cases, the theological claims may be a mask, but they are also a buttress and a bearing wall in the permission structure that makes those political views seem tenable. Without that theological support — as make-work and transparently after-the-fact as it may be — those political views are less sustainable. As the Princeton theologian and abolitionist Albert Barnes said, “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”
But of course I also think “theological belief matters” apart from its political consequences. The misery caused by bad theology is not restricted to politics. Any form of belief in something that is not true is gonna cause all kinds of problems in all areas of life.
Another way of approaching Quiros’s question is to note that certain theologies correspond nearly one-to-one with certain politics. Tell me your hermeneutics, and I can, nearly all of the time, guess what parts of “the same Bible” you will recite and what attributes you will attribute to “the same God.” And then — 99 times out of a hundred — I will also be able to guess your political beliefs on any given question. That’s correlation and not causation, and it doesn’t resolve the chicken/egg question of which way causation might flow.
Because this “theological crisis” is primarily an expression of hermeneutics — a divide over how to interpret and understand the Bible — it’s still tempting to imagine that there is some biblical resolution to this conflict. Alas, it won’t help to turn to the Bible to resolve this conflict because the very same conflict can be found within the Bible itself.
Like I said, this ain’t new. It’s as old as the Bible — as old as writing itself. (Probably older, it’s just not possible to find written evidence of that.) In trying to describe this conflict within the biblical canon I sometimes — half-jokingly borrowing terminology from fandom — refer to it as the debate between “Team Ezra” and “Team Ruth.” Or as the debate between “Team Jonah” and “Team Book of Jonah” — because the repugnant strawman character of Jonah was written to represent “Team Ezra” by an author who was squarely on “Team Ruth.”
Here’s a sense of that debate, and how I choose to negotiate it, from a post here 12 years ago on how “For Team Jonah, the Bible condemns interracial marriage“:
For these folks, “What does the Bible say about X?” is answered by searching out the passages that mention X and citing each of them as an authoritative, definitive statement answering that question. You know — clobber texts.
The premise of this practice is that the Bible is uniform and univocal. Every chapter and every verse is equally authoritative, and so they all must agree as part of a single, singular, consistent voice. The Bible cannot contradict itself, and so therefore any one verse speaks with the authority of the whole and to dismiss any one verse or passage is to dismiss the whole.
The alternative, of course, is to recognize that the Bible is a library — a collection of books, many of which are themselves anthologies collecting scores of other works — and that this library of texts contains a great diversity of opinions. The Bible presents us with arguments and disagreements — sometimes fierce disagreements between wholly incompatible ideas.
One of the biggest such disagreements is the heated argument that pervades much of the Bible between what I call Team Jonah and Team Book of Jonah. For Team Jonah, God’s plan of salvation is for the chosen few — the righteous elect. Ninevites and Pagan sailors need not apply. God picked Abraham and rejects everyone else. You can find this view presented, asserted and defended in a host of passages throughout the Bible.
But you can also find this view attacked, rebuffed and rebutted in a host of passages throughout the Bible. The book of Jonah is a polemic against this view. It was written to mock this view — to ridicule it as a ridiculous distortion of God and of our calling to follow God. Like many passages in the Bible, the book of Jonah argues that God’s plan of salvation is breathtakingly inclusive. Abraham was chosen by God, yes, but he was chosen by God as a vehicle to bring salvation to the whole world. For God so loved the cosmos.
Once you recognize and accept the presence of this argument throughout the Bible, you also come to see why the clobber-texting approach of the so-called conservatives doesn’t work. You come to see how the hunt-and-peck concordance word-study approach of the proof-texters is a lousy way to determine “What does the Bible say about X?”
Apply that approach to the question of interracial marriage and you’ll come across passages like the one above from the book of Ezra, which is something of a manifesto of Team Jonah. If you reject the reality of the Bible’s diversity and if you reject the idea that the Bible contains arguments, then you’re forced to regard such texts as authoritative and binding. “Separate yourselves from … foreign wives” becomes a religious command and a religious duty. Clobber-texters always wind up on Team Jonah, which is why, like Jonah himself, they always seem so perturbed.
The so-called conservatives tend to complain at this point that those of us who recognize and accept the diversity of the Bible are just picking and choosing the parts of the Bible that we like and ignoring the other parts. That complaint is quite a concession — an admission that we’re right about the diversity of the scriptures, because we wouldn’t be able to do what they’re accusing us of unless the Bible does, in fact, contain such an array of diverse perspectives.
But set that aside. Is that really what I’m suggesting? No. I don’t ignore the parts of the Bible that make the case for Team Jonah, I contend with them — I contend against them. Yes, it is true that there are parts of the Bible I don’t like, so I dislike them. Actively.
Given that the diversity of the Bible is a fact, this is the only honest approach. The long argument between Team Jonah and Team Book of Jonah presents two incompatible sides. I’m picking sides. I’m siding with one side of the argument against the other side. Anyone who thinks that constitutes dismissing or ignoring the other side doesn’t understand what the word “argument” means.
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