Conservative, Progressive, and Automobiles

There’s an interesting piece today in the Washington Post about the challenges facing the possible emergence of a progressive religious movement. Once again, this causes me to think about what we (and, by we, I’m speaking mostly to those who follow Jesus) mean when we use the categorical terms conservative and progressive.

As I’ve written before, I would like for us to challenge our own categories by asking questions like: What are the things that we desire to conserve? Do those things have lasting value? What are we trying to conserve that is merely culture-bound? And how is it that we see ourselves progressing? What are we progressing from, and what direction are we progressing? By what motivation, energy, and power do we progress? Is our progress energized by the Spirit of God, or by the power of cultural voices?

When I wrestle with these questions, I wonder if we can’t be both of those things at the same time, given some legitimate answers to those questions. If we act conservatively with the assumption that everything we cherish has ultimate value, then we risk an arrogance that can blind us to what God is doing in the world (biblical example: The Holy Spirit falls on Peter’s gentile friends [Acts 10-11], and the conservative value of Jewish exclusiveness is rattled, and a progression revealed by God emerges). If we act progressively with the movement of culture, we risk losing our basis for theological and biblical reflection and end up getting swept up by every societal shift that claims to be progressive.

If conservatism is characterized by safety, and if progressivism is characterized by new risks, then the only things I can think of that adequately hold both in tension are new cars.

Think about it: The safety features in cars today are a quantum leap from what existed 40 years ago. Airbags, seat belts, braking systems, and overall construction all help to create cocoons of safety for human beings. At the same time, theses cars have the capacity for face-distorting speed, with a mechanical responsiveness that would dazzle the minds of stunt drivers of past generations. A new car has the capacity to create joy in the hearts of both conservatives and progressives. They might even take a ride together.

On top of that, these cars are expensive. Conservative or progressive, both will dive deeply into our capitalist economic system in order to purchase new automobiles. That’s just how it is. Banks who offer car loans could care less about our politics.

I would love to see us all quit screaming at one another, caricaturing one another (and then skewering the caricature), and condemning one another. Now might be a good time to start listening, talking and reflecting. We have to question the things we think need to be conserved. We have a long Christian tradition of conserving the wrong things and ignoring the right things. We also have to question our progressive leanings. If culture is our only criteria for interpreting Scripture, theology, and ethics, then any cultural shift will do.

On Abortion and Artificial Categories

I appreciated Rachel Held Evens thoughtful post regarding her evolving views regarding abortion. It continues to be a difficult and painful debate (it is rarely a conversation, and I appreciate Rachel’s attempts at civil discourse), especially with the recent discovery of the horrors inside Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic.

As the Gosnell case unfolded, I began thinking how the arguments for “ pro-choice” (which have actually devolved into arguments that are “pro-abortion”) have successfully altered the public perception of life by segmenting and depersonalizing the early stages of human life in order to turn the discussion to things abstract and legally categorical.

So, zygotes, embryos and fetuses end up having little or no relationship to the human beings that will emerge at birth. It’s a handy way to win the argument, and it has been fairly successful in the western world in altering people’s thinking about the acceptability of abortion.

How do we who follow Jesus respond to this? Christians are not unified on the subject. We easily fall into the same public categories of pro-life and pro-choice, the former being conservative, the latter progressive.

The securing of victory for pro-choice proponents has been found in the law. The law has offered legality to the practice of abortion even while setting boundaries to the timing of the procedure—boundaries that are often pushed.

Christians have faced off with both abortion and infanticide in the past. In the earliest years of the emerging Christian movement, one Christian writer highlighted the common cultural practice of abandoning unwanted infants outside the city limits where they would either die of exposure or be killed by wild animals. He indicated that neither Jews nor Christians discarded their children that way, and were even known to rescue abandoned babies and take them into their own families.

Until the late fourth century, infanticide was an accepted practice in both Greek and Roman societies. But there was a technicality: To avoid actually committing murder, the unwanted infant would be left out in the wilderness, where it would either die of exposure (a natural process) or be rescued by the gods or a kind traveler. One defender of the faith remarks:

“First of all, you [pagans] expose your children, so that they may be taken by any compassionate passer-by, to whom they are quite unknown!” Tertullian (c. 197, W) 3.26.

His response to his pagan detractor? We don’t do that.

We’ve created a lot of technicalities in our culture as well. We have legal lines that we think offer us protection and justification. That might work in the public square, but it shouldn’t work for we who follow Jesus. There’s an artificiality to that perceived safety zone that is proven every time the law is changed. The law of the land may be important, but it often speaks more about majority preference than it does ethics and morals (for example, in the mid-1800’s, the Supreme Court ruled that states were able to enslave human beings imported from the southern hemisphere. We’re all probably glad that there were people who claimed that the law didn’t speak for them).

Rather than thinking about human life (or any life, for that matter) as a series of disconnected phases, I prefer to think of life as a unified trajectory that starts with conception. There is an inevitability to the cellular creation that we call a zygote: It’s destiny is to emerge into the light of day and become present to the world.

And, for we who follow Jesus, we might also say that such a life is intended to affirm and nurture the life it encounters in the world. If we are going to use the term “pro-life,” then it ought to relate to more than the denial of the practice of abortion. It should relate to how we view war, capital punishment, and poverty for starters.

I’ve spoken of this before in relation to gay marriage. If we fall into the pre-created categories of discourse that come to us from the public square, then we stop short of thoughtful theological reflection on issues of tremendous importance. We in the church seem to be particularly short on that kind of reflection these days.

O Lord, make haste to help us.

When We Hate Those Who Have a Name

When people oppose us, take views that are not only different from ours but offensive to our religious/political/social sensibilities, there are so many incredible things we can say about them:

Homophobes! Haters!

Liberals! Heretics!

Conservatives! Close-minded bigots!

Evolutionists! Despisers of God!

Creationists! Head-in-the-sand morons!

Catholics! Pope lovers!

Reformers! Protest lovers!

And on and on and on. Incredible, in the strictest sense of the word: So implausible as to elicit unbelief (Free Online Dictionary). But we must believe it because it is happening all around us.

But once, in a moment of weakness, we might stop talking, stop crafting our objections in our heads, stop doing our defensive self-talk that says we have to argue down all comers, and

we listen.

we listen.

We hear how fear and pain have formed the views of the other. We hear how the other has thought about the issue that divides us and learn that the one sitting before us may not be a fool or a heretic, but instead, has approached a difficult topic from a perspective that we hadn’t considered.

And sometimes—just sometimes—we learn that we sit across from a co-human who struggles with life like we do. We sometimes discover that our so-called opponent also claims to share with us a common faith

(can it be so? Can you belong to Jesus and be a . . . . and believe that . . . . and be aligned there . . . . and here . . . . and be that kind of person . . . .

and, and, and.

And sometimes, we learn that the one we have categorized, vilified, demonized, and ostracized

has a name. A name that we can speak as though speaking with a human

a co-human, one made in the image of God.

And our ears ring with familiarity, and revelation, and illumination. And sometimes we get up from the table still marked by disagreement but possibly also marked

by friendship.

And we turn and see Jesus, the Friend of Sinners. Our Friend.

And together we come to his table to share bread and wine, body and blood, and we come not out of worthiness but because we have been invited by Jesus himself

who hears us argue, hears us malign, hears us condemn, hears us reduce and categorize. And he listens to us.

And he loves us.

And he weeps.

Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on us.

Heretics as Conservative and Liberal

Yesterday I was sitting in a workshop dealing with educational diversity, and this quote stuck with me:

“If the goal of liberal education is to move students from their own embedded worldviews and broaden their perspectives—diversity is a vehicle for achieving this goal.”

Liberal here, of course, is not a theological or political label, but a term reference to a broad type of educational experience that exposes the student to a wide range of thought and scholarship.

But the quote caused me to think of a billboard I saw recently from a local Christian university:

“Think Biblically About Everything.”

I think I understand the intention behind this statement. Christians are people of the Bible, and our texts help to form our thinking about ourselves, our faith, and the world.

But what if our way of thinking biblically comes out of an embedded worldview that has any number of misconceptions about the world? What if “thinking biblically” really means, as I think it does, thinking with our embedded way of interpreting the Bible?

For example: Quite of few people in the southern part of the US in the 18th and 19th century believed that slavery was a practice that was biblical. After all, there is no specific prohibition against slavery in scripture. In a sense, the abolitionists—many of whom were committed Christians—were seen as running cross-grain against the Bible. They could be seen as religious, economic, and political heretics.

When I believe I have my answers all nailed down, I can easily and effectively identify the heretics: They are the ones who think differently from me.

That doesn’t mean that people who think differently from me (or you) aren’t heretics. They might be. But their challenge to my way of thinking is not tantamount to heresy. Otherwise, we would have to say that the canon is closed on debate and on thinking in general. Without that dynamic, there would not have been a Protestant Reformation (or, for that matter, a Catholic Reformation).

Are we done thinking, challenging, and reforming? A common Reformation declaration is “Reformed, and always reforming.” Are we really always reforming? Or do we have everything figured out?

Two labels that have become increasing unhelpful are conservative and liberal. They currently seem to identify two large camps that hate each other. I wish we could reform those terms and the thinking that goes with them, maybe this way:

Being conservative is great when there is something of deep and lasting value that needs to be conserved.

Being liberal is great when old and new ideas are both allowed at the discussion table, and cognitive dissonance is resolved through listening and dialogue.

Conservatives tend to see liberals, by default, as heretics.

Liberals tend to see conservatives, by default, as idiots.

We need to work on this.

What is "Conservative"?

Now, to be fair, what do we mean when we use the term “conservative”?

In current US culture, the term has fallen on hard times, too often equating it with some form of radical fundamentalism or hard line obstructionism. Whether referring to religion or politics, it seems to be a term, like “progressive,” that has lost its way.

At its heart, conservatism seeks to maintain things of value, whether those things are traditions, practices, institutions, or beliefs. Even the most liberal of people are conservative somewhere in their lives (go into a liberal church and change the paint color or the seating, and watch the fur fly; or alter the way a liberal family celebrates certain holiday traditions and watch the children and grandchildren howl in protest).

People who seek to protect the environment are usually referred to as liberals, and yet their official label is “conservationalists.” Pretty crazy.

Right now, in the US, what is it that we are attempting to conserve?

In the political arena, it seems to be something that is grounded in economics. I do find myself a bit stunned by the increased revelation that many of our conservative politicians over the last few decades have claimed an allegiance to Ayn Rand’s so-called objectivism, illustrated in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Yet, even that staunch, conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr., felt that Rand’s dismissal of all things charitable was unacceptable. Recently Paul Ryan (who has been characterized as a Rand devotee) was chastised by the Roman Catholic Church for embracing a Randian social and economic policy that turned its back on the poor.

The problem for people of faith (like Paul Ryan) is that while Ayn Rand left her oppressive communism behind, she brought her atheism with her. So is that progressive or conservative?

I find too many of my Christian brothers and sisters morphing religious conservatism with American conservatism, and seeing it as one thing. That is, in my view, a very dangerous and possibly poisonous cocktail.

Are there things to conserve? Probably so. Do we dare seek to conserve those things we have come to value without some form of theological reflection? Can we read the “conservative” works of people like Ayn Rand (and her contemporary followers like Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul, and others) and then turn and read Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and draw the conclusion that they are compatible?

In my book, it’s unthinkable.

What is "Progressive"?

When we speak of being (or others being) progressive, what do we mean?

Historically, at least in the US, progressivism was associated with social reform that addressed working conditions, child labor, fair housing, and so on. Presently, however, the terms “progressive” and “liberal” appear to have become conflated.

Progressivism today seems to have more to do with the demand for individual rights than it does with social reform (although some might point out that the various legislations that emerge from those demands create reform). As new interest groups rise up to demand rights, their causes are typically championed by those who identify themselves as progressive.

There are also followers of Jesus who consider themselves to be progressive. From my experience, they seem to line up with those who live in the progressive political world.

As I consider this, I have to ask a question: What is the force that causes the progression in the first place? In other words, from what, to what, and by what do we progress? Is it some sort of evolutionary power that pushes us along? Is it popular consensus? Is it the mounting demands of various interest groups? What is it that moves us along?

There’s a great story in the New Testament (Acts 10-11) about something progressive taking place. The emerging followers of Jesus were seeing their experience as a uniquely Jewish story (can’t blame them, really). When Peter ended up meeting with a group on non-Jewish, God-fearing gentiles, the Spirit of God fell upon them. Peter realized that something he never anticipated was happening, and he reported it to his co-leaders in the Jerusalem church. They agreed (at least initially) that the Jesus experience was a much bigger story than they had ever imagined.

I think those folks would have claimed a progressivism that was caused by the movement of the Holy Spirit. But it wasn’t simply grounded in cultural or social preference. They (Paul, actually) would go back to their own Scriptures and discover that the grand preferences of God for the world were there all the time, but they had missed them. In that sense, they were actually becoming conservative, as they sought to conserve what they now believed was God’s true desires for all people.

We need to think about this whole idea of being progressive. I think we ought to pause for moment and think about the power that pushes us to progress through history.

Christians of the Agenda

CNN ran a recent story titled "Progressive group starts training pro-abortion rights religious leaders."

This causes me to think, once again, how Christians are coming to be defined in the US. We seem to be viewed as people of various agendas.

We're all about abortion and contraception - on one side or the other.

We're all about immigration - how to keep people out or in.

We're all about nailing down the true American way - as various forms of either conservative or progressive.

(On that note: What exactly is it that we wish to conserve? Is everything worth conserving? And what does it mean to be progressive? What "progresses" people? What are people progressing from, and toward, and by what power?)

If I remember correctly, we are to be people of the Spirit of God, called to be his people for the sake, blessing, and reconciliation of the world. We are called to proclaim and demonstrate the reality of the kingdom of God. We are to be branded with the name of Jesus, living as people willing to drink his cup and submit to his baptism. I think all that's in the Bible somewhere.

People of the Spirit? or People of the Agenda?