The complexity of Christianity in immigration politics

I know, I know, you are tired of reading my rants about Alabama's HB 56, but today I encourage you to read someone else's thoughts on the law - the North Alabama Bishop of the United Methodist Church.  Bishop Willimon enlisted our pastor, R.G. Lyons to compose an open letter to Governor Bentley, Senator Scott Beason and Representative Mickey Hammon.  The letter addresses the shortcomings of the law, according to the tenets of the Methodist faith.  As interesting as the letter are the comments posted below, revealing how troubling politics can be for members of a faith that must consider not only theology but also the machinations of their day to day life.  While the tone remains mostly courteous, the passions of the parishioners and pastors bleed through in between the lines.

A final word on the Apocalypse?

By the fact that you are reading this, I gather that you have not been raptured.  By the fact that I am typing this, you may gather the same about me.  And thus ends the debacle that was May 21 Doomsday.  Or does it?
Harold Camping is not the first, in the name of scripture, to predict a specific date for Judgement Day.  And despite Jesus's warning's against such predictions (and predictors), Camping's followers are not the first group to wholeheartedly sell out their possessions and lives in preparation for the second coming.  The Apocalypse has been incorrectly predicted time and again, by prognosticators both scientific and religious.  The founders of both the Methodist and the Seventh-Day Adventist churches predicted dates for the end of the world.  So despite Camping's failed prophecy, don't expect his followers to abandon ship just yet.

In fact, Camping has not abandoned his own ship.  In an interview with BBC, he maintains that the world has indeed entered into Judgement, though not with the kind of flare he'd expected.  The actual date for the end of the world, he maintains, is October 21, 2011.  So we will have to wait until then to see if he is truly correct.  The benefit for us here is that we get to continue Apocalypse Watch 2011 until that day.  The bad news is that, just as before, people craving escape from this broken world will continue to follow Brother Harold into deceit.

Props to Camping for hedging his bets.  While some of his followers have literally given everything they owned in expectation of the end, he awoke on May 22 still owning a private, for-profit business capable of sustaining him.  Family Radio is worth over $100 million, and I am guessing that won't be much different on the morning of October 22.

I have taken three observations  from this debacle.  First, the bible is an incredibly challenging book to understand.  Debates have raged since before canonization about what Christianity actually means.  I am thankful for the redemption brought through the Church, but I am saddened at the manipulation and confusion that has diverted millions from the goodness of the gospel.  I pray that we would be protected from those who use the scripture to promise health and wealth, to promote violence and to swindle the masses.

Second,  if you want to see how invested a prophet is in his own predictions, check his bank account.  Like Camping, both of the Wesley brothers, the founders of Methodism, individually predicted different dates for the end of the world.  Like Camping, their dates were wrong.  However, John challenged his followers that poverty was a call of the gospel, proclaiming that dying with anything to one's name was shameful.  Unlike Camping, John Wesley lived in poverty, and died with less than $20 to his name.  So long as your prophet projects the end of the world while maintaining a healthy pocketbook, you should look at him with mistrust.

Finally, people are incredibly forgiving.  As I noted before, failed end of the world prophecies have sprouted before into huge, international denominations.  Remember, despite Brother Harold's previous incorrect predictions in 1994, he still maintained a large following, not to mention a lucrative radio network run exclusively by donations.  Even if the world fails to end in October, don't count on all his followers to jump ship.

So keep coming back as Apocalypse Watch 2011 progresses.  And remember, even if the world doesn't end, we still have the end of the Mayan calendar, scheduled for December 2012.  Happy watching.

The end is near

If you are yet unaware, the world is coming to an end.  When is that end? May 21, 2011.  That's Saturday around 5 pm CDT.  Better get your ducks in a row.


At least, that's according to Harold Camping of Family Radio Worldwide.  Harold claims to have examined the scriptures and done the math, and proclaims that Judgement day is upon us.  He's not the only one.  The message has gotten out, and numerous followers are preparing themselves for the rapture by spreading the news all over.  Some have even quit their jobs and budgeted their funds in such a way as to run out on the 21st.

In response to all this, I have two questions: 1. Even if I don't actually believe that the rapture is coming on Saturday (I have some serious misgivings about the rapture anyway), do I get to go? 2. What does all this say about the God we believe in?

Firstly, if this is all true, I hope I get to go.  I read Left Behind in high school, and it is bad news for those who don't get the call.  As I said, I have some misgivings about the theology of the rapture, like when Jesus prayed that God wouldn't take believers out of the world but that He would protect them from the evil one.  But maybe these folks are right.  Maybe God has chosen to make the timing (with which He wouldn't share with Jesus) known to an 89 year old white preacher with a $100 million radio network.  Reading some interviews, like here at NPR, folks have literally given their lives over to what this guy is selling.  NPR also notes, importantly, that Brother Camping has incorrectly predicted the world's end before as September 6, 1994.  (In his defense, he had yet to complete his research.)

If all this isn't true, what does it say about our perceptions of God?  Why is He poised in anger to torture and destroy most of the world?  And why do Christians work so hard to escape the world around us?

Three things strike me about the interviews in the NPR story linked above.  First, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty among the believers interviewed.  They are not uncertain about Brother Camping's predictions, but they are uncertain about their salvation.  It is as though our God is one who sits in heaven measuring our good deeds, and He's not taking many with Him.  In fact, despite one-fifth of the world claiming Christianity, only 3% will supposedly be rescued.  The need for an in and out group, even within the church, is disheartening.  The same Jesus whose compassion extended to the weak and heavy laden, the orphan and widow, the outcast and the harassed is now going to massacre 97% of the world's population, most of whom used to be within His range of compassion?

A second point I noticed is that all of them are fearful of one thing: the suffering to come.  What could be more American than a gospel that assures avoidance of suffering?  Why are we, as Christians, so committed to a faith that allows us escape from suffering when it is one of the few things that Jesus promised?  Jesus assures few things, and suffering is on the list.  Thankfully, we also get a Helper, and the comfort of knowing that He is coming back.  I don't think Brother Camping would get much of a following if he promised his followers that they get tortured and killed, but somehow Jesus sold the promise of a cross and it worked.  (If that isn't divine intervention, I don't know what is.)

Finally, these folks are wholeheartedly committed to this cause - enduring rejection, forsaking their loved ones and selling all they have.  What if these folks were doing these things not to escape Judgement but to bring Justice?  In some ways, I am jealous of them.  They have found the proverbial pearl of great price, something so valuable that it is worth forsaking all else.  Though Brother Camping may be distorting the gospel and truth of scripture, he has managed to convince these folks that he has something worth value.  What if I believed in something so much that I forsook finances and relationships and social standing?  I am afraid that might actually be the call of the gospel.

John M. Perkins

Recently Rachel and I had the opportunity to see Dr. John M. Perkins speak at South Highland Presbyterian Church.  Perkins was born to a family of black sharecroppers in rural Mississippi.  After his brother was shot by a sheriff, Perkins realized he needed to get out of Mississippi and headed to California.  In California, he became a Christian and soon realized he was being called back to Mississippi in the heat of the civil rights movement.  There he has labored for years, fighting for civil rights and community development.  He has played an integral role in Christian Community Development Association.

Now in his ninth decade, Dr. Perkins remains vibrant and sharp.  His message was particularly challenging in his charges of how we have shaped Christianity to fit within our culture.  I am a white southern Christian, he is black southern Christian.  We use our faith to support our -isms: capitalism, communism, socialism.  We pick and choose what scriptures we need to endorse our political party.  In the words of Jesus, this should not be so!  Dr. Perkins calls us to Christianity first and foremost.

I wrestle with this: how can I engage my culture in a redemptive but a-political way?  So many political issues are tied to the gospel.  How do I stand for for these issues without attaching myself to the machinery around them?  Currently Rachel and I are reading through Ched Meyer's Binding the Strong Man in a book group.  Meyers argues that the gospel is absolutely political in nature.  We are called to challenge American imperialism, to advocate for the poor, to fight for a consistent ethic of the sanctity of life, and to stand (and ultimately die) with the oppressed.  Meyers shows how Jesus's fight was not only spiritual in nature, but also political.  My immediate inclination is to attach myself to a political system that advocates for these issues.  But Perkins pushes back, as politics will inevitably tempt me to mistake my politics for my faith.  Apparently fleshing this out is a bit more difficult than I hoped it would be.

Liberation

Liberation Theology.  God favors the oppressed.  The tenet is sound, but scary as hell itself.  For I, white, middle class, American, educated, am not oppressed.  I am not a widow.  I am not an orphan.  I am not an alien. 

The phrase has entered into conversation twice this week.  My conservative, evangelical background shys from anything not mentioned by Augustine or Spurgeon or C. S. Lewis.   In such a moment I rejoice in friends who believe in a God big enough to save heretics.  Some seminaries teach students to start using that word early.  Even hinting threats to the establishment must be dismissed by a powerful label, conjuring up images of the Inquisition or gnostic witchcraft.  Thankfully, ours is a God who fears not the questioning of His character; He is not afraid of heresy.  We are welcome to wonder, even at the cost of doctrinal soundness.  Props to Steve Brown for freeing me to become heretical in my pursuit of God.

In Liberation Theology, we find a discomforting challenge to institutional Christianity.  The established church quivers, be it in the halls of the Vatican or protestant seminary.  But a thorough reading of scripture cautions against siding with almost anything resembling an institution.

Thus I will question.

Given my aforementioned status of being decidedly unoppressed, I meet Liberation Theology with reluctance.  What does such a doctrine imply about my standing with God?  In the Psalter, we meet the God of the brokenhearted, the lonely, the sinner.  In Jesus we find a man who persistently rejects the systematic theology of learned men to touch lepers and women.  James cautions our proclivity to honor the honorable.  These simple truths have been components of my faith for as long as I remember.  But what if these components are, in fact, the center?

So who is oppressed?  Walking the streets of Southside, I see black people, homeless people, gay people and disabled people.  Each of these, according to the social structure of modern day Birmingham, have found some sort of oppression given the mentioned characteristics.

In class this week, the issue of race arose.  Despite the civil rights movement and the 2008 election, I firmly agree with Derrick Bell that racism is a permanent and integral part of American culture.  We are inherently racist, a fate sealed by a myriad of intractable factors, both biological and environmental.  What's more, our generation's politically correct denial of the presence of intrinsic racism is a fertile medium for the perpetuation of implicit, unspoken racism.  What can be done?

Where is the Church?