So I have just finished reading Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. It’s been popular for a while, especially in certain circles at UNC.
The book and author are the latest iteration of the stream of Christian theology which was known as the Progressive Gospel in the early 20th Century, Liberation Theology in the 1970s and 80s and the Social Gospel in the early 21st Century.
What these theological movements have in common is an emphasis on the church’s role in doing good works on the earth in the present as opposed to proclaiming the world to come. As Claiborne himself writes, “We can tell the world there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.” In his view, the church’s goal is not so much to convert people to faith in Christ as much as it is to convert them to a better way of living. He argues that “conversion is not an event but a process, a process of slowly tearing ourselves from the clutches of the culture.” By practicing social justice, we are, in Claiborne’s words, “practicing resurrection.” The salvation of man’s soul through the redemptive sacrifice of Christ takes a secondary place to the salvation of man’s earthly body from poverty through following the earthly example of Christ. In short, we are to “believe so much in another world that [we] cannot help but begin enacting it now.”
Whatever else you can say about Claiborne, he does attempt to live out his philosophy. He lives in a communal house in a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia, where he ministers to the poor, homeless and drug-addicted. He lives a life of poverty and chastity, and his ministry (called The Simple Way) is run based on donations.
Part of the problem is, Claiborne’s proposals to enact heaven on earth are simplistic, naïve and juvenile. He advocates not only for the abolition of the death penalty but of the prison system as well. He dispenses with the nuclear family, saying that God has achieved “final triumph over patriarchy” and that fathers are no longer necessary because “only God is worthy to be seen as Father.”
He does not stop there. He calls for the abolition of money, because it encourages materialism and the unequal distribution of wealth. In its stead, he proposes replacing it with a system of bartering. He does not seem to recognize that bartering is simply a less complicated version of the materialism of monetary exchange. The underlying problem, as Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:10, is the love of money, not money itself. Replacing money with another form of wealth exchange will not change this.
But it’s not just money that Claiborne is after, it’s the entire system of market economics. In Claiborne’s ideal world, the free market will be replaced by sharing or bartering, and there will be what he calls “mystical multiplication” of resources. He remains hazy about what this means, which is easy to do when one’s economic model is reliant upon miracles to function.
Claiborne uses the event of Jesus feeding the 5,000 as an illustration of his economic model. He does not ever address the fact that this event was a miracle, and as such it was a singularity rather than an economic pattern. What’s more, the purpose of the miracle was surely not to provide an economic model, otherwise Jesus would have repeated it many times instead of only performing it twice. Rather, Jesus later explained (John 10:38) that the purpose of these miracles was so that “that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” Jesus performed miracles to show that he was God, not to provide examples for us to live by. It is not our job to take on the role of Christ and perform miracles.
But the biggest problems with Claiborne’s philosophy are not his proposals for social change but his theology.
Claiborne persist in perpetuating the idea that Jesus came as a social revolutionary. He goes so far as to write that “Jesus was crucified not for helping the poor but for joining them.” In portraying Jesus as an agent of class conflict, Claiborne conflates the Biblical idea of the poor with the Marxist concept of the proletariat. As Josef Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in his 1984 pamphlet, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of ‘Theology of Liberation’“:
…The “theologies of liberation”, which reserve credit for restoring to a place of honor the great texts of the prophets and of the Gospel in defense of the poor, go on to a disastrous confusion between the poor of the Scripture and the proletariat of Marx. In this way they pervert the Christian meaning of the poor, and they transform the fight for the rights of the poor into a class fight within the ideological perspective of the class struggle. For them the Church of the poor signifies the Church of the class which has become aware of the requirements of the revolutionary struggle as a step toward liberation and which celebrates this liberation in its liturgy.
Claiborne also goes off the rails in his definition of faith and conversion. For Claiborne, “conversion is not an event but a process, a process of slowly tearing ourselves from the clutches of the culture” after which we begin “practicing resurrection” by enacting true biblical social justice.
This has no basis in scripture at all. Biblically, when a person comes to faith, they acknowledge Christ as their savior, and are, in Jesus’ words, “born again.” However, in Claiborne’s theology being converted means to tear yourself away from the dominant culture and begin enacting the process of cultural change Claiborne wants to see in the world. Rather than works becoming an expression of our faith, it appears that works become our faith. Claiborne’s view of a converted Christian is closer to Che Guevara and Leon Trotsky’s idea of the “New Man” than a Biblical view of salvation.
Likewise, his definition of faith has problems. “Faith is loyalty,” he writes. In fact, it isn’t. A precise definition is hard, but faith is trust would be the best I can come up with. You can be loyal to someone without trusting them. Claiborne argues that the early Christians were executed for their lack of faith in the state. This is only true if you define faith as loyalty. In fact, they were executed because their refusal to sacrifice to the cult of the emperor undermined the Roman civic religion. Roman civic religion was not about belief, it was about unifying the people around a common symbol. As Dr. Richard Talbert has taught me, Christianity introduced the idea of faith and belief. It was a concept which was foreign to Roman civic religion. After all, it was the Roman gods which Seneca was referring to when he wrote that “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
But Claiborne’s biggest problem, and one that eclipses all the others, is his view of the role of good works in the world. Claiborne wants to see Jesus as a social revolutionary, a savior of men on earth rather than just of men’s eternal souls. By wanting people who “believe so much in another world that [we] cannot help but begin enacting it now,” he wants to bring heaven to earth. In the words of Josef Ratzinger, he wants a “temporal messianism” in which Christ’s church works not only to save people’s souls but to save their physical, material lives as well.
The problem is, this is a fallen, broken world full of imperfect people who cannot redeem themselves by their own efforts. Claiborne wants to bring to earth what is reserved only for heaven. Yet, no matter what people do, this broken world will remain broken. As Paul wrote (Romans 8:18-25):
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Creation is in a fallen state, and it will one day be liberated. We can do nothing about this. However, our present sufferings “are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed” in the future when all creation is set right after Christ’s Second Coming.
When Jesus was in Bethany two days before his crucifixion, a woman came to the house he was staying in and poured a jar of expensive perfume over his head. His disciples decried the waste, saying that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus replied by saying “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial.” Here, Jesus indicated that his spiritual ministry – his death and resurrection – was more important than his temporal ministry to the poor.
The primary role of the church is to reach the lost with the message of the gospel. This is a spiritual ministry, not a temporal one. Temporal ministries may be carried out by the church, but it is not the primary mission of the church. We are called by Jesus to be the “salt of the earth.” Salt is a preservative. It slows decay. It does not stop decay, only decreases it. It certainly has no restorative power. Likewise, we have no power to restore the earth, just to slow its decay.
Claiborne’s teachings are not only wrong, they are extremely dangerous. When people put their faith into an ideology which promises to save the world, they inevitably get their faith shattered when their ideology fails to deliver.
For many decades, communism was such an ideology. Utopia, it was believed, was right around the corner. Yet, in 1991 the system met its final collapse. It was shown once and for all to be practically and morally bankrupt. As a result, the masses lost any remaining faith in communism. The faith survives in a few scattered pockets left behind by modern society, but it is for all intents and purposes dead.
Likewise, suppose a large number of Christians someday put their faith in Claiborne’s ideology. Like all ideologies which promise to bring heaven to earth, it will someday catastrophically fail. Will this mean a mass exodus of Christians who leave the faith? This already happened in the 1940s, when the global horror of World War 2 showed that the Progressive Gospel rang hollow. As a result, Christianity declined, somewhat in the United States but especially so in Europe.
Temporal ministries to the physical needs of people are not wrong. But they are not redemptive. We can feed a hungry person, but we cannot end hunger. We can find a homeless man a home, but we cannot end homelessness. We can heal a sick person but we cannot end sickness. We can end a war, but we cannot end warfare. We can save a person’s life, but we cannot stop them from dying. Only Christ can do that, and it is not our job to attempt to take his place.
To celebrate women’s week, the Carolina Women’s Center is involved in a project entitled Take Back the F-Word. It is a project in which students are to “Imagine a world where no one is confined by rigid gender expectations . . . a world built on ideals of inclusivity and social justice.”
The f-word project is an attempt to redefine what feminism means: “No matter what you imagine—there’s a feminism for that!”
This week the Women’s Center is sponsoring an exhibit in the union full of offensive artworks. The artwork is meant to illustrate the need for consent before sex (I think). There are unnecessary nude/half-naked pictures of women and men meant to get their point across.
There are also T-shirts hanging along the wall. The shirts each have sentences scribbled on the front. Phrases such as “Rape hurts people” etc. are among the messages scrawled.
But, does this display make sense within the context of the f-word project? What if one’s feminism is so “inclusive” as to include rape? What if one’s standard is one’s pleasure? The f-word people seem to be hypocritical on this point.
To say that men should not rape women is to “confine” them into “rigid gender expectations.” It is, according to the feminist’s standard, not feminist.
Fornication is a sin against both God and the body. To say that it is not merely because one feels “constrained” is to open the door to moral relativism. Continuing along the same line of reasoning, rape is a sin as well not only because it is a sin against the body and against God, but because the rapist is violating an individual’s property (his body) and his inherent worth.
Unfortunately, feminists don’t see it that way. UNC feminists lack the moral authority to promote healthy relationships because they are relativists.
I think it is the people-person (way down?) in me that sympathizes with the modern liberal’s obsession with “diversity.” I enjoy meeting different types of people from different backgrounds because it’s fun. Usually our differences aren’t so contrary that I cannot make a new friend. Also, the portraitist in me even enjoys the privilege of looking at a diverse population of interesting people.
We as a society collectively approve this harmless, generic diversity. Pluralism is something of a prized possession of modern America. It certainly isn’t an inherently bad thing.
Unfortunatly, the term diversity has been hijaked for political gain by “liberals.” In the hands of said liberals, diversity has become an ideal.
To take a term that means nothing more than “variety” and to somehow start emphasizing it as a necessary virtue makes no sense. The reason it makes no sense is because diversity neither satisfies nor breaches a moral standard. It isn’t the same as lying or stealing etc. Thou shalt not steal is a clear standard. Besides being intuitively immoral, stealing is contrary to a commandment given by God. On the other hand, diversity is as amoral as a chair or a computer. Yet, when a member of the cult of diversity has something to say, the sense of moral imperative is palpable. How can that be?
In my opinion it is because diversity is nothing more than a sideshow.
For most people that I know diversity usually refers to the inclusion of minority parties for the sake of variety. Specifically, it refers to either skin color, sexuality, or sex or a combination of the three. But, in truth, diversity has nothing to do with empowering minorities. The term diversity is the buzzword that serves to cloak a hidden agenda. That agenda can be best summarized in the phrase “social justice.”
The funny thing is that advocates for diversity aren’t really that diverse at all. It’s kind of sad, actually. They are very, very predictable — at least when it comes to ideas. This is so merely because they have all bought into a specific lie; the lie that the individual is only as important as the community grants. In fact, an individual’s worth comes by way of their birth. It is not contingent upon the ratio of black people to white people. Nor is it contingent upon their sexuality or gender. They are human, and that is enough.
Whether a provost is whiter than average or not should not be a concern of learned professors. The fact that it is frankly embarrasses me.
After sitting through boring forums and spending minutes analyzing the candidates for SBP, I have come to the following conclusions about each of them:
Shruti Shah: Shruti seems to focus on making the size of student government smaller. This is without a doubt the most brilliant thing for which I have ever heard an SBP candidate advocate.
Greg Strompolos: Greg has one platform point that he ever reiterates: bring Google Apps to campus. Personally, I have no idea what that means.
Monique Hardin: Seems to be a nice person who wants to hold office hours in the pit. Believe me, I will not be going.
Nash Keune: Nash’s campaign is funny and anyone who doesn’t think so probably takes student politics too seriously.
Joe Levin-Manning: From what he has said at the forums I have no idea for what Joe stands.
Hogan Medlin: Frankly, Hogan’s eagerness and major in political science turns me off. But, alas, people who want to be SBP are the people who run for SBP.
I’ve met most of the candidates, and they are nice people. However, from what I can tell, Shruti and Monique are the only ones with sticking points (the ones all of them reiterate at the forums) that address issues within their power to address. And, from what I think, out of those two only Shruti has an idea worth implementing.
Overall though, I find it increasingly stupid to care what the SBP candidates do or think. For instance, all of the SBP candidates participated in the Bounce Forum last night. There they each proved themselves to be basically the same (I refer to the “serious” candidates — you be the judge). I watched them grandly laugh at jokes that maybe the most jaded of third graders would smirk at.
To be clear, I am saying they are frauds who, for the most part, believe that student government matters beyond the regulation of our student fees. The mentality that all problems ever known to man must be addressed through one channel, that of government fiat, has flooded over to saturate the debate. They are delusional, and should think about getting real jobs.
I attended some of both the College Republican and Young Democrat meetings last night. They each held a forum for Student Body President (SBP) candidates. What meet me was a smack in the face of boringness.
As a congressman I understand the need to sound like you have something important to say and do. Nevertheless, “platforms” should be simple because the jobs required from the student government officials are simple. Congressmen approve appointments and approve funding. Those are the two important things congress people do. The SBP appoints a lot of people, can veto bills and set agendas (J.J. Raynor did this very effectively) if he wants. Besides representing the students, that’s about it.
I’m not trying to be rude to you nice people who take student government very seriously and who work hard at what you do. But, in the scheme of things, what you do should not be that important. And you shouldn’t see yourselves as the supporters or the protectors of the students (as some SBP candidates seemed to posit last night).
Instead, you should see yourselves as people doing an extra curricular activity. To see it as your job or as some sort of opportunity to centrally plan the activities of students is just silly. The students don’t need you, student government officials.
For goodness sakes, your only real responsibility (in my opinion) is the responsible allocation of monies. And, for that matter, if we didn’t have the student fee process I wouldn’t care. My parents would have a greater amount of expendable income and I Heart Female Orgasm and the Carolina Review would have to find a way to fund themselves. Boo-hoo.
All the students out there who vote should consider these things as they make choices. Bottom line: student government positions are leadership positions. The people you elect should be responsible and competent, but not power-hungry. By power-hungry I mean they should not see government or themselves as too self-important. If they do, silly programs or extensions of programs that cost you money will pop up each year, every year, like wild-flowers. Take for example the child-care fee increase or the safe walk program.
In conclusion, don’t feel the need to care too much about student government campaigns, but if you do, vote for the person who sounds the least full of himself and the least interested all the while checking their competency.
The Supreme Court rendered a decision Thursday destined to significantly alter the shape of future elections, ruling that companies and labor unions can spend their own money on political advertisements that are uncoordinated with the campaigns of specific candidates. The case pitted the court’s five conservative justices, including swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, against the four liberals. The division along ideological lines highlights the struggle ensuing in many areas of government between liberty and the persistently anti-corporation attitude of the left.
The arguments presented in defense of campaign finance regulation claim that large companies would be too influential in protecting their own interests if allowed to spend from their own treasuries on advertisements. Often this interest is the preservation of America’s free enterprise system, as it is with the opposition of the health insurance industry to the current reform proposals and that of American banks to further financial regulation. Attempts at silencing these businesses because of their participant role in the economic system under attack by Democrats are thus a subtle and indirect content-based restriction on free expression. While Democrats persisted in trying to prevent companies from mounting their opposition, those who are thinking more clearly value their perspective – if anything, the vehement admonitions of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries ought to awaken us to the detriment of current proposals.
With this ruling, businesses will be free to express themselves on these issues, just like regular Americans; under a now over-turned previous court decision the government could bar companies from spending money on campaign ads. Parts of the McCain-Feingold bill were voided which banned issue ads late in the campaign cycle. The issue at hand was the challenge to a video criticizing Hillary Clinton produced by a conservative advocacy group.
As I argued in a previous post, throughout the constitutional history of free expression, the rights of speech and press have been extended to financial capability. Some of the earliest attempts at censorship in America were licensing laws or taxes designed to hurt publishers financially and thus stop the presses. Such efforts are now unconstitutional; it is only logical that total disqualification from expression based on financial capability is now unconstitutional, as well.
In the most recent installment of the increasingly tyrannical Congressional majority’s long train of abuses, the Democrats leave us yet another renewal of hope for 2010. In one of the more strikingly overt acts of special interest in recent memory, party leaders have agreed to exempt nearly 12 million union members from the first five years of a proposed tax on the most expensive health care plans. As if they were attempting the top the public relations disaster that has become the purchase of Sen. Nelson’s vote for the health reform bill, the Democrats offered another rather clear explanation for the Republican turnaround that began tonight in Massachusetts.
The tax is part of the health reform bill passed by the Senate and a key difference between the Senate and House bills. Poorly designed to begin with, the tax would impact 19 percent of Americans with employer based health insurance, and that number would increase due to inflation as the threshold fails to keep up. Prior to the deal, 40 percent of those affected by the tax were to be union members, the primary reason why the tax was not a part of health reform in the more union-sensitive House.
The incident highlights several important points characteristic of the Democratic majority in Congress. First, they are uncomfortable taxing their own supporters, but relying almost exclusively on the wealthiest Americans, a majority of whom did not cast their votes for them, is a perfectly reasonable solution. It is this contradiction – that Democrats spend freely with their opponents’ money – that gives philosophical credence to the notion of wealth redistribution as nothing short of theft. If Democrats genuinely believed in compassion expressed through the paying of taxes (a preposterously nonsensical idea even on the surface), they would begin with those who voted yes for this sort of change. Instead, though the tax is already highly progressive by nature, and thus destined not to include much of the tax-paying Democratic constituency, they exempted even more of those citizens most likely to support the reform.
The related second point is that Democrats are increasingly comfortable with transparently corrupt deals aimed at appeasing key cogs in their machine. Unions are among the most dedicated supporters of the Democratic Party; they are also among the chief culprits of the inefficiency of employer based insurance and a driving force behind current health care reform. When their leaders realized that the Senate bill included many union members in the fund raising plan to finance their much sought reform, they worked a special interest deal to ensure that reform passed without forcing them to fund it.
The bill needed only to raise the premium threshold to be transparently aimed at exempting a key group of Democratic supporters; they made it even easier: they limited the exemption strictly to those supporters. Working families without union membership and the same priced employer based insurance would still pay the tax.
Having exempted their supporters from among the victims of the tax, it isn’t a stretch to call this a tax levied by Democrats on their political opposition. Conceptually that resembles theft far more than it does traditional revenue gathering. Attempting to limit an undesirable aspect of an unpopular bill to only political opposition might have even surprised James Madison, the prophet of encroaching majorities.
It does, however, bring to mind a certain tyrannical government lowering unpopular taxes in the quasi-democratically represented homeland, then attempting to fund their war with taxes on their unrepresented, yet industrious colonies.
