Posts Tagged ‘Religion’

Psalm 109:8 and Violent Rhetoric

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting on a new phenomenon making its way throughout evangelical culture: bumper-stickers that read “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8″. If you take the time to look up the verse you see this:

8 May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership. (NIV)

Okay, cute, right? They want someone else to be President. How amusing. Whatever.

Except that the Psalm doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say:

9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.

10 May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven from their ruined homes.

Aaaaaaaand now we’re getting into the territory where things turn decidedly un-Christian.

It’s pretty clear to me that this imprecatory psalm isn’t innocuous; at the very least, the person praying this psalm is praying for the death of the President. If one considers the link between violent language and violent deeds – a link we’ve talked about before – it becomes pretty clear that this could be seen as a clarion call to assassination.

Frank Schaeffer (son of Francis Schaeffer) makes this point succinctly in his interview with Rachel Maddow about this phenomenon:

“But now it turns out [in right-wing rhetoric] that he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers to which all these Biblical allusions are directed, who should be slaughtered if not by God then by just men [. . .] Really, this is trawling for assassins, and this is serious business.”

I’d like to echo what Schaeffer said right there: This is serious business. Words do things; violent rhetoric breeds violent actions. When someone is praying for the President to be struck down by God, it’s only one step further for that person to decide that he or she is God’s instrument to carry out what he or she sees as God’s justice. This is scary stuff here – and it’s only being compounded (again, as Schaeffer points out) by the Manichaean, apocalyptic worldview many evangelical Christians are succumbing to.

But of course, we Christians know that many of the people who would pray this psalm don’t really want to see President Obama struck down – they just want him voted out of office in 2012. Fine. But that’s not what this psalm says, and if we’re nothing else in this world, we should be honest. Praying for God to strike down political leaders we disagree with is not Christian – and those who display bumper stickers, or T-shirts, or coffee mugs bearing a Bible reference that calls for Michelle Obama to be made a widow and Sasha and Malia to be “fatherless” and “wandering beggars” soil the name of Christ in this world. They give all Christians a bad name with their implication that such thinking is in any way in line with Christian morality or values.

In other words – all Christians should stand side-by-side against such thinking. There’s nothing “cute” or “amusing” about a bumper sticker or a T-shirt that calls for the President of the United States to be killed, whether that be by God’s hand or man’s. For the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of Christianity’s reputation in a skeptical world, we must stand against this phenomenon and be vocal about our stance. We must make it clear that such rhetoric is in no way Christian, and that those who would pray such a thing are not praying in the Holy Spirit.

The upshot of this is clear: If you’re a Christian, and someone you know has one of these bumper-stickers, you have a responsibility to say something to them – particularly if they’re part of your church. If responsible Christians don’t stand up against hateful and violent language among us, we shouldn’t be surprised when the world thinks we’re hateful and violent. We need to stand up to our fellow Christians and let them know that things like this bumper-sticker are not of Christ, and tell them in the name of Jesus that they need to stop using violent and hateful language.

And we need to pray for President Obama, whether or not we agree with his politics, as Paul says in 1 Timothy:

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

May we continue to hold up our President and all our leaders in prayer during these troubling times.

(Cross-posted at the Matthew 25 Network.)

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A Conservative Bible? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Apparently the Bible is too liberal… so the same people who brought us Conservapedia (the right-wing conservative version of Wikipedia, complete with made-up facts) are going to rework the Bible to make it fit into their worldview.

Seriously.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Among their conservative principles for Bible translation:

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Their full free-market meaning? Yeah, Jesus was totally thinking about laissez-faire and the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s free market when He told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor. And the whole parable about the farmer casting his seed over the field? Clearly, Jesus is talking there about optimizing crop yields and exploiting laborers in order to maximize agricultural profits.

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

(For the record, here’s the story in question.)

Yeah, because we wouldn’t want sentiments like “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to complicate our worldview. We wouldn’t want to contemplate whether or not we’re acting hypocritically before we condemn others.

Of course, given the spotty record of right-wing religious figures who demagogue about family values, maybe they are better off excising that passage…

And finally, the coup de grace…

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

Why not go the whole way and replace “Lord” with an inarticulate guttural grunt, a thumbs-up, or a “guy nod”? God doesn’t want those boring liberal words mucking up His pristine Bible. Conservative God doesn’t use words, He uses action… so next time you’re in church and they ask you to read a passage aloud, instead of all that boring text with its “high word-to-substance ratio” you should just punch the guy next to you in the jaw. That’s what Conservative Action God wants.

(Cross-posted at the Matthew 25 Network.)

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“Brothers of ethnicity?” Maybe that’s your problem right there.

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

From a Columbus Dispatch article on the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, at which they kicked out a church that actually dared to treat LGBT people as human beings and expressed concern over a report that the SBC could lose 50% of its population by 2050 because they’re seen as old, white, and conservative:

[Johnny] Hunt, who was re-elected to a second one-year term yesterday, said, “One of the reasons — and it is a true reason — is we need to really join with our brothers of ethnicity in this convention.”

Brothers of ethnicity? Really? That phrase is probably the key to the SBC’s problems – and the reason they won’t get fixed.

First, the fact that he ascribes “ethnicity” to non-white people is probably a pretty big part of the reason that people who aren’t old southern racists aren’t too keen on joining a Southern Baptist Church. It’s apparent that to him, white people aren’t “brothers of ethnicity”; only people with darker skin have ethnicity. If there’s a more obvious statement that the SBC considers whiteness the norm and non-whiteness as Other, I’d like to see it.

Second, the fact that he only seems to think that the SBC needs to reach out to “brothers of ethnicity” is also telling. Gen-Xers and Millennials, with a few exceptions like the followers of the abusive Mark Driscoll up in Seattle, seem to have picked up on the obvious fact that women can do anything men can do, including lead churches. Yet the SBC seems trapped in the 1950s, when men were supposed to be the leaders and women the followers. The rest of the Western world has woken up to the basic fact of gender equality, at least in principle; why do conservative churches lag so far behind

Third, unrelated to that phrase – is it possible that there’s a relationship between the SBC kicking out, without any apparent controversy, a church that at least partially acknowledged the humanity of LGBT people, and the report indicating that the SBC is in decline? Is it possible that younger folks like me are realizing that anti-gay attitudes – by which I mean any notion that LGBT individuals aren’t entitled to acceptance and equality at all levels of our society, including in the church – are contrary to the love of Jesus Christ, just as racism and sexism are? Is it possible that churches that still hold such attitudes are going to shrink, while churches whose attitudes are more in line with Christianity are going to grow?

One can only hope.

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