Providence

, , , , , , , , , ,

Thinking with Ryan Burge: God 'anointing' presidents -- a Trump thing or an American thing?

, , , , , , , , , ,

Maybe something strange leaked into the American water system a dozen years or so.

I am not a Republican, so I wasn’t part of the choir that sang the praises of Ronald Reagan. I do remember that journalists and historians were nervous about Reagan referring to America as an “anointed” land (example here). However, I don’t remember his followers using similar “anointing” language to describe the president. Ditto for George W. Bush.

I do remember (I was still a Democrat at the time) the wave of interesting semi-religious images and language in press coverage of the young Sen. Barack Obama as he started his bid for the White House. Folks who have been around will remember the online feature — “The Obama Messiah Watch” — that Timothy Noah launched at Slate. Here is the overture for the first post in that series:

Is Barack Obama — junior U.S. senator from Illinois, best-selling author, Harvard Law Review editor, Men’s Vogue cover model, and “exploratory” presidential candidate — the second coming of our Savior and our Redeemer, Prince of Peace and King of Kings, Jesus Christ? His press coverage suggests we can’t dismiss this possibility out of hand. I therefore inaugurate the Obama Messiah Watch, which will periodically highlight gratuitously adoring biographical details that appear in newspaper, television, and magazine profiles of this otherworldly presence in our midst. …

Readers are invited to submit … details — Obama walking on water, Obama sating the hunger of 5,000 with five loaves and two fishes — from other Obama profiles.

I bring this up to point readers to an interesting feature entitled “Trump The Anointed?” at the Religion In Public blog — written by Paul A. Djupe and GetReligion contributor Ryan P. Burge.

Here is how that post opens, referring to people who — in polling nearly a year ago — believed that Donald Trump was “anointed by God to be president of the United States”:

Just 21% believed this, but evangelicals were more likely to believe it (29%), and pentecostals were the most likely (53%). This belief didn’t come out of nowhere, it was making the rounds of conservative media, with figures such as Rick Perry suggesting that Trump is “the chosen one,” a label Trump embraced and used (while pointing toward the clouds) in an August 2019 presser. Others used variations on the theme; he was compared to King Cyrus; “God was behind the last election;” and Trump is the “King of Israel,” and the “second coming” according to Wayne Allen Root.

Now, there is a theological point that needs to be made here.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Will preachers fighting 'shelter in place' rules create a church-state disaster?

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For several weeks now, churchgoers — and journalists — have been waiting to see what would happen at Easter, Passover and Ramadan.wisely,

We don’t have all the answers, yet. But it’s clear that in the overwhelming majority of cases, Christians in North America and around the world will be observing Holy Week and Easter at home, watching small teams of clergy and musicians celebrate the holiest rites of the Christian year while striving to follow the fine details of “shelter in place” orders.

In my own church — Eastern Orthodoxy — we will celebrate Pascha a week after Western Easter. Clergy in the Diocese of the South (Orthodox Church in America) just learned that our Archbishop Alexander has (I believe) set strict standards (.pdf here) for his parishes all across the Sunbelt. People will stay home through it all — Holy Week and Pascha — watching five-person teams of clergy and chanters do as many of the long, ancient rites as they can. Click here for Rod Dreher’s poignant post on that, which includes:

Did you know that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the one built over the site where Jesus died, was buried, and was resurrected, has been closed for the first time since … the Black Plague, in the 14th century? The right way to see this is that we Orthodox Christians are being asked to make an absolutely extraordinary sacrifice for the life of the world — so that this plague which has killed, and will kill, so many, and will have reduced so many to poverty, can be defeated. As the old-school Catholics like to say about sacrifice, we should, “offer it up” as an extreme sharing of Christ’s passion. We will know in a way we never have the meaning of the crucified Jesus’s words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

All of that loomed in the background as “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I recorded this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

For the most part, we tried to look past that story and down the road at the long-term legal implications of other religion-beat headlines caused by the coronavirus crisis.

I am referring to the small number of evangelical Protestants who have been rebelling against government orders to “shelter in place.” Julia Duin and I wrote about the coverage of some of these cases here (“About Rodney Howard-Browne and what happens to Easter, Passover and the hajj during a plague“) and then here (“All megachurches are not alike: NYTimes noted Howard-Browne arrest, but didn't leave it at that“).

What happens if — as some are planning — clashes between a few churches and state officials end up in court?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

All megachurches are not alike: NYTimes noted Howard-Browne arrest, but didn't leave it at that

, , , , , , , , ,

Rare is the day when I do not receive some kind of email linked to the following issue.

I will use “evangelicals” in this equation, since that is the most common religious flock mentioned in these missives. You also see this equation play out with “Catholic voters,” “Jews and Israel,” “New Yorkers,” “Democrats” (and “Republicans”) and lots of other niches in public life.

It is one thing to say that “evangelicals” are doing such and such or are responsible for a specific trend/event that is in the news. Think about that recent New York Times headline — now tweaked — that read: “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals.”

Making blanket statements of that kind — about evangelicals, Jews, journalists or any other group — requires either (a) massive amounts of solid reporting or some combination of (b) ego and/or (c) hatred.

Frequently, journalists need to carefully look at the evidence and add words such as “most,” “some” or even “a few.” They may need to limit their judgmental statements to certain zip codes or subgroups of a larger whole (there are many kinds of Baptists, for example).

With that in mind, consider the following New York Times story that — #WAITFORIT — deserves some praise for not putting all evangelicals and even megachurch pastors in the same boat during the coronavirus crisis. And, yes, I am returning to an important topic that was just addressed by our own Julia Duin. Here’s the double-decker Times headline: “

Florida Pastor Arrested After Defying Virus Orders

The sheriff of Hillsborough County said the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne, a Pentecostal pastor, endangered the lives of his parishioners by holding services on Sunday.

Yes, that preacher — again. Here is the overture:

MIAMI — Before the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne, the pastor of a Pentecostal megachurch in Florida, held two church services on Sunday — each filled with hundreds of parishioners — lawyers from the sheriff’s office and local government pleaded with him to reconsider putting his congregation in danger of contracting the coronavirus.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

That wave of attacks on churches in Indonesia: Is the 'moderate' Muslim news hook gone?

, , , , , , , , , , ,

If you asked typical American citizens to name the world's largest Muslim nation, in terms of population, most would probably pick a land somewhere in the Middle East -- not Indonesia.

However, if there is one fact that many Americans do know about Islam in Indonesia, it is that most Muslims in this sprawling and complex nation practice a "moderate" form of the faith (whatever that "moderate" label means). This has allowed believers in various faith groups to live in peace, for the most part.

Thus, terrorist attacks in Indonesia linked ISIS are big news -- at least in the American news outlets that continue to offer adequate coverage of international news. Sadly, an ominous cluster of attacks this past weekend in Indonesia probably received little if any attention in most American newspapers.

The New York Times, of course, was a notable exception. Here is the lede in its report:

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A wave of deadly bombings on Sunday and Monday and evidence of more planned have shaken Indonesia just ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, with entire families -- including children -- carrying out suicide attacks against Christian worshipers and the police.

The troubling discovery Monday of completed bombs in a housing complex outside Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, came a day after members of a single family carried out three attacks against separate churches in the city around Mass time, killing seven people.

The use of the word "Mass" implies that the attacks focused on Catholic congregations, when the reality was more complex than that -- since Pentecostal and traditional Protestant churches were targeted, along with Catholic sanctuaries. In other words, the attacks were aimed at all Christians (and police), not just Catholics.

But that was not the main issue here. The Times report quickly reminded readers:

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, practices one of the most moderate forms of Islam in the world, but still has a homegrown terrorism problem


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Spies, lies and morality: Could Christian agents use deceit or illicit sex?

, , , , , ,
Spies, lies and morality: Could Christian agents use deceit or illicit sex?

THE QUESTION: Is it moral for a Christian to work as a spy, and in the process deceive the enemy or employ illicit sex to obtain essential information?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Let's explore that fascinating ethical topic, raised by a recent lead article in Providence, a young “journal of Christianity & American foreign policy.” See this link. The journal’s cover illustration, from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1946 movie “Notorious,” showed a U.S. agent (Cary Grant) who seduces and recruits a woman (Ingrid Berman) to exploit her sexuality and spy on Nazis in Brazil.

Fiction aside, consider true-to-life British agent Amy Elizabeth (Betty) Thorpe, who operated during World War Two under the code name Cynthia. She seduced the press attache at the embassy of France’s pro-Nazi Vichy regime and enlisted him in traitorous deceit to feed her secret information. (They later married.) Thorpe had no apologies. She was told her efforts saved thousands of British and American lives and explained, “Wars are not won by respectable methods.”

Providence is neo-conservative in outlook and takes inspiration from liberal Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who forsook youthful pacifism to espouse “Christian realism” and endorse a necessary “just war” as moral. The journal likewise believes Christians should support use of military force when it’s ethical in terms of the who, the why, and the how.

If we assume soldiering and killing in combat are moral to defend the innocent and one’s country, it makes sense that spying on the enemy for a good cause is an acceptable vocation for a Christian. But if so, what tactics should spies employ, or shun?

Those matters were addressed in Providence by Darrell Cole, an ethics professor at Drew University, whose pertinent  book “Just War and the Ethics of Espionage” (Routledge) has just been issued in paperback. To cut to the chase -- or the chaste -- Cole accepts lying to help a just cause but flatly rejects sexual seduction. Let’s unpack this.

First, is it always evil to bear false witness?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

In Comey's America, a news boomlet for the political theology of Reinhold Niebuhr

, , , , , ,
In Comey's America, a news boomlet for the political theology of Reinhold Niebuhr

The Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations have scumbled long-standing visions of America's role in the world. During times past, the then-regnant “mainline” Protestantism might have addressed matters, but its intellectual impact has eroded. Are any resources from this or other segments of American religion equipped to provide moral guidance on foreign policy for such a confusing time?

 That’s a big fat story theme, which brings us to the current boomlet to reclaim the “Christian realism” of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). Niebuhr was deemed the nation’s “greatest living political philosopher” by his ally Hans Morgenthau, a noted foreign policy analyst. In more recent times, Niebuhr has been lauded by former Democratic Presidents Obama and Jimmy Carter.

Yet, surprisingly for a theological liberal and longtime Socialist, Niebuhr also has moderate and conservative disciples. Jack Jenkins proposed in a May 18 ThinkProgress piece that President Trump’s “greatest ‘conservative’ opponent may turn out to be” Niebuhr. Others utter hosannas in a Niebuhr documentary premiered in January at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, where he taught for 32 years.   

Another fan, of all people, is the hyper-newsworthy James Comey, late of the FBI, who mentioned this to New York Magazine years ago. In March, Ashley Feinberg of gizmodo.com even unmasked Comey as a Twitter user under Niebuhr’s name. The Comey angle is fleshed out in “The F.B.I. and Religion,” co-edited by Sylvester A. Johnson and Steven Weitzman (University of California Press) and in a May 19 Weitzman article for Christianity Today.

Comey’s 1982 senior thesis at William and Mary compared the Reverend Niebuhr’s political theology favorably over against that of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of the conservative Moral Majority. Both men cited Scripture and advocated Christian political involvement, Comey observed, but Niebuhr always recognized the ambiguities and shunned “America-first” fulminations.  


Please respect our Commenting Policy