You took Adeodatus to your baptism (I almost wrote: your funeral). The boy came later and told me how it was. I hardly listened. I wanted only, then as now, to meet you once on level ground and hear from your mouth the sound of my name.
You could drown my name in silence but not silence it in your mind. I am in the pages of your writing: Eve, Lilith, the daughters of men. I am the slave on account of sin, the flesh that weighs down wisdom, the image that deceives, the vessel that catches and holds captive. In me you beat down your unruly flesh.
From a boy passionate with love and clarity I watched you change into a driven man who broke himself in two. Everything for you is now split halves: Charity is founded on rejection, sainthood on divorce. Other men choose the downward path away from the mother’s heaven, toward a holiness woven in the flesh. Those men grow up. They face their opposites and know themselves, and suffer what they cannot know.
I wish I had confronted you when I could, as wives confront their husbands, but then you never let me come so close. Philosophy protected you, then your rank, and finally your mother. Monica—the virgin mother and the heavenly city!
You turned to gaze with her into eternal space. For you, holiness is Monica and her son, like the two natures of Christ, united without showing how.
Since I am banished from that mystery I will go elsewhere. You cannot unmake me by theology. Aurelius, your mistress and the world are standing outside closed church-doors excommunicate. The story of our parting has two sides. I wonder if Aurelius is still alive.
Source: Feminist Interpretations of Augustine, ed. Judith Chelius Stark (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 301–2.
Jeff is an old classmate of mine, a very good guy, an evangelical pastor, great sense of humor. He posted this on his Facebook timeline:
election year[ih-LEK-shun yir] noun 1. A time when decent people throw off their personal responsibility of how they speak about people in authority, in order to promote someone else. Anyone else. 2. A period every four years when otherwise balanced thinkers abandon core values (Example: sanctity of life, etc.,) in order to rationalize supporting someone else. Anyone else. 3. A moment when many citizens celebrate a right paid for by someone else. Anyone else.
Francis Shaeffer admiring his knickers and deploring abortion.
I found the post rather interesting in its assumptions. And it recalled to me the variety of Christianity that was the centerpiece of my Evangelical / Fundamentalist high school: Woodcrest Christian School, in Riverside, California. I liked my high school. I’m still in contact with a number of my classmates. My graduating class numbered 24. We studied New Testament Greek in the 9th and 10th grades. We had courses in biblical hermeneutics and systematic theology. But at the same time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jerry Falwell was promoting his Moral Majority movement. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family was making its way into every evangelical household through books and radio programs. Many of us kids had seen the terrifying film “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” narrated by pioneer culture warrior Francis Shaeffer with his creepy, weird knickers. There we learned that true Christians are about being against abortion, and that abortion is the most wicked injustice ever. It was in the beginning days of the fusion of Christ and the GOP.
Jerry Falwell helped align American fundamentalism and Evangelicalism to the GOP and right-wing politics.
I know where Jeff is coming from. But I’m definitely not in that place. It’s not my Christianity; it is the faith of my past. It is one that I came to reject, even while I was in school and attending the Christian Reformed Church. All those fundamentalist emphases were beginning to make inroads into my church, too; but there was more than that in the Dutch Reformed tradition. There was a tradition of respecting science, of establishing actual universities and not Bible colleges, of caring about society, and not just political power. It was certainly not a perfect tradition, and it still is far from perfect. It was (and still can be) patriarchal and it had (and sadly is still plagued with) the typical assumptions about white superiority (note Apartheid in Dutch Reformed South Africa); but it was a different world than American fundamentalism, with its anti-intellectual tendencies and its fear of science.
So this was my reply to Jeff:
I find this post… very unsatisfying. It makes me wonder, a lot. It makes me wonder if we know the same God, or worship the same Christ, or read the same Bible. It prompted me to respond. This is not a personal attack, but a radically different view from an old classmate.
First, #1, it seems to try to silence people from criticizing those who are in authority. Scripture does not mince words in criticizing wicked rulers, and even calling for their downfall and for God’s judgment upon them. We should call out wickedness and lies, and never align themselves with them, even when we think it’s for a higher purpose (which can only mean banning abortion, which for American fundamentalists is the only reason Christ came to earth) because it never is for a higher purpose. It’s about power, and control, and nostalgia for a past that never was. Psalm 52 is a good place to start here. Moreover, we only tend to say this to protect the leaders we like, the GOP ones.
Re: #2: This seems to me like a blatant statement that you better vote GOP or you’re abandoning your core values. Except some people have core values like rejecting racism and white supremacy, loving the poor and immigrants, hating putting kids in cages and separating from their moms and dads; rejecting demonization of differing views, rejecting culture war Christianity, rejecting the normalization of lies and deceit, affirming the importance of the free press and not demonizing and lying about the press, affirming good science and repudiating conspiracy theories, affirming good relations with our international allies, rejecting pandering to our enemies, and rejecting using religion and the Bible as a cheap election prop. Perhaps none of those values really matters, though, because Christ only came to earth to overturn Roe vs. Wade. This one is exceptionally offensive and shortsighted; it’s as if everything Jesus said never mattered. Christians don’t love abortion, but guess what? Not all Christians think it’s a good idea to criminalize it. Nor do all Christians think it makes sense to scream “murder!” to shut down any dissent from the culture war mantra. And when Christians claim to be pro-life, while denying the pandemic, resisting a simple, neighbor-loving thing like wearing masks, and spreading lies and conspiracy theories, and urging the police to violently suppress black people when they rise up after yet another unarmed black person is murdered by the police, people can see that American Christians don’t really care about human life. Abortion has just become their idol; it makes us feel righteous when we are anything but righteous.
#3 Just seems foolish to me; it’s simply wrong. No soldier ever paid for my rights. Stop comparing soldiers to Christ and his cross; it’s blasphemous and it simply reflects American militarism and civil religion. The Constitution says where my political rights come from: I am naturally endowed with them by my Creator. And that applies to every human being: white, black, brown, soldier, pacifist, liberal, conservative. So that’s just bull, pardon my French, and very offensive to me as an American and a Christian.
This kind of Christianity, if that’s what it is, is utterly foreign to what I would consider the gospel. In fact, I think the American church is becoming apostate; it worships political power and right-wing ideology. The church in the US is declining at the fastest rate ever, and I can see why: The church does not follow Christ. It follows the GOP. They will believe any lie as long as it serves the agenda of maintaining power. But Americans are seeing through the lie, and either turning away from the faith altogether or turning away from militaristic, white male-dominated Fundamentalism. Our friend [a mutual friend who later became an atheist] rejected this faith, and I don’t blame him one iota.
A young friend said to me recently: Why would I ever go to church? All the Christians I meet are just so full of hate. They’re so racist. They believe all kinds of lies and spread lies and conspiracies and “All Lives Matter” slogans all over Facebook and bully people who wear masks during a pandemic. Well, yeah. Why would she? Too many American Christians are hateful, angry, bigoted hypocrites. The latest example: Jerry Fallwell, Jr. Next week there will be a new candidate.
I was personally shaped by this political Christianity at Woodcrest [Woodcrest Christian School, our high school]. But my own church tradition was a bit outside the Evangelical bubble. We had a tradition of caring about the poor. We had a tradition of loving education and science. We weren’t afraid of dinosaurs. These things enriched our faith, rather than threatening it.
This is just to let you know that there are followers of Christ who utterly reject what you seem to be saying here, and who think that the gospel is a whole lot more than trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, and maybe isn’t even about that at all. Maybe culture war Christianity is not even real Christianity and is a false gospel. I am deeply ashamed of American Christianity for selling its soul (Christ) for a mess of pottage (political power and influence). It is terribly discouraging for me as a Christian, and it forced me out of a pastorate where people did not want their prejudices challenged. I doubt I will ever go back into ministry because of what this has done to my soul.
I was evangelized into the Christian faith, with my single mom and my younger sister, in a small congregation of the Christian Reformed Church in Riverside, California, now called Hope Community Church. We were baptized, catechized, discipled. Adults in that congregation taught us the faith. I learned that human beings are deeply sinful. I learned that God loves all people, despite their sins and failings. I devoted my life to ministry in the Christian Reformed Church.
This morning I came across a Facebook post from one of those adults, one of those people I looked up to, who has known me since I was 11 years old. It was a link to the misleading video by the vile grifter Candace Owens, who has profited off being a token black voice for hate, division, and even racism. In the video, Owens denies systemic racism and trashes the name and reputation of George Floyd, the man killed by police recently.
It is profoundly disappointing to see someone, whose family helped disciple me, whom I looked up to as a child, post something that seems like a denial of the gospel of Christ’s love for people on the margins, a denial of our collective guilt and complicity in racism. It’s a post that makes white people feel good about their prejudice and enables them to deny their racist attitudes and shift the blame for police brutality onto the victims of that brutality. We believe in total depravity, but not when applied to us or our society.
Poster made by Kara Slade @KaraNSlade, shared on Twitter by Fleming Rutledge @flemingrut.
The Christian Reformed Church explicitly recognizes and calls out systemic racism for the oppressive sin that it is. From an email that pastors in the denomination received last week:
These high-profile cases are not anomalies. They are not simply the result of some rogue police officers. Instead, they underline the systemic nature of racism and its pervasiveness in our culture. George Floyd is one among way too many African American men disrespected as image-bearers of God in the US. And in Canada, there are similar systemic realities that result in precious children of the Creator taken too soon.
George Floyd had a criminal history. He spent five years in prison for armed robbery. In 2013 he was paroled, and after his release, he became involved in a ministry called Resurrection Houston. In 2014 he moved to the Minneapolis area. In 2017, he filmed an anti-gun violence video. In 2020, he lost his security job because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had five children, including two daughters who reside in Houston, ages 6 and 22, and an adult son in Bryan, Texas.
On May 25, George Floyd was accused of passing a fake $20 bill. Was he guilty? Did he do it knowingly? We’ll never know because he never had a chance to defend himself. A police officer, who also has a history of violence and is now charged with murder, acted as judge, jury, and executioner.
To respond to the cry “black lives matter” with the indignant “all lives matter” is a denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a rejection of what Christ says about the Shepherd leaving the 99 to search for the one, and what he says about the father welcoming the prodigal son while the elder brother only thinks about the boy’s faults and sins.
To pretend that systemic racism is not real is evil. It is a lie, a falsehood, designed to make privileged people feel comfortable about their hate and prejudice.
George Floyd was a sinner. He also believed in Jesus Christ and looked to him for forgiveness. Christianity Today published a profile: “George Floyd Left a Gospel Legacy in Houston.” Below is a photo of George Floyd’s friend, former NBA star Stephen Jackson, with George’s six-year-old daughter Gianna, who is now fatherless.
Was George Floyd a saint? Well, actually, yes. In the New Testament, a saint is someone redeemed and forgiven by Jesus Christ. Some people in the congregation of my childhood seem to have completely forgotten that basic fact of the gospel. As the little boy discipled in that church, it is profoundly disturbing to me. As a minister of the gospel, I condemn and repudiate it, and I call for those who deny Christ in this way to repent.
Check out this post from Lisa K. Deam, who is writing a book on the spirituality of pilgrimage. She observes that Jean Gerson, reflecting on the flight into Egypt by Joseph, Mary, and the child Jesus, makes the bold statement that God is a fugitive and a foreigner (“Deus est fugitivus et advena”). In an era in which so many American Evangelicals are joining the anti-immigrant bandwagon, it’s an important reminder that Jesus wants us to identify with those who are powerless and not with the privileged and powerful, and it is a call to “see Jesus in our fugitive neighbors.”
