I don't want to run this issue into the ground, but there is one thing that Obama said in his speech today that really frustrates me, in the sense that he should not have needed to say it.
We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
Equating Ferraro and Wright was politically the right thing to do. In fact, it was utterly necessary, both in the way it brought Hillary's proxy problems into view as well as putting Wright into the context that White America has prepared for him: racist.
But the reality is that what Ferraro and Wright said have nothing to do with one another.
Geraldine Ferraro was criticized for making blatantly racist statements. She has a habit of claiming that being black in America is somehow an advantaged status; the attack on Obama this year was prefaced by her attack on Jesse Jackson in 1988. It's a sad irony that Ferraro believes these attacks are justified, since there is a good case to make that it was Jackson's 1984 Democratic primary pledge to pick a woman for his running mate that led to Mondale's choosing her as his running mate when he won the nomination. Any semantic games that Ferraro wants to play regarding how general her remarks are become irrelevant in the face of her history of claiming that being black in the USA is to be advantaged.
On the other hand, Jeremiah Wright is being criticized for telling the truth. No, not about Hillary Clinton and her supposed level of privilege or her supposed lack of any obstacles to her success. Those statements are not only untrue, but also misogynistic - even if Wright himself necessarily isn't. What's important is to understand that according to the rules of American discourse, what he said about Hillary was perfectly acceptable. Obama didn't give his speech today because of those comments.
No, Obama had to repudiate, renounce, denounce, reject, disagree, contend, argue, debate and generally say an emphatic "NO" to Wright's words about Jesus and about America. And those words were true. I'll quibble about the whole "Rome=Italian=White" thing, but Wright was absolutely correct about the power structures in Palestine 2,000 years ago and Jesus's place within them. He was absolutely correct about the profound evils that have been and are committed within the borders of and in America's name. It's true that when Wright called upon God to damn America he was standing not only within the prophetic tradition of Black Christianity, but also standing alongside prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea. Much more damnation is found in just one of above prophets' namesake books than Rev. Wright has been able to produce his entire preaching career.
But White Christianity has long ago decided to ignore just who the Hebrew Bible prophets were addressing, instead pretending that those men had messages for ancient Israel's neighbors only. White Christianity has long ago decided to ignore that Jesus wasn't a Christian, but a Jew, and that he only spoke words of condemnation to the leaders of his own religion while accepting the company and friendship of whores and thieves. White America allowed its religion to spread among the slaves as a way to salve their consciences and exert some control over what their slaves believed.
What's happening today is just a continuation of the way in which the slaves and lower classes took the rich white man's religion and not only accepted it, but started to understand it, practice and expect even the white man to do the same. That's Jeremiah Wright's scandal. That's his offense, the offense of his church. At Trinity UCC in Chicago they not only understand that systemic and systematic racism is prevalent in this country, they work to change that. They work to improve people's lives here on earth not in spite of their Christian beliefs - heaven is usually held out as the only reward poor people need - but because of their Christian beliefs. Their practices and even their very existence is a slap in the face of White American Christianity - just like the person and message of Jesus was such a slap in the face of the religious and political rulers of his day.
I was recently sent a link to this article that appeared in the Christian Century almost a year ago. Obama's faith, unlike so many of our politicians, seems to be the real deal - not measured in terms of sincerity, because people like James Dobson, John Hagee and Mike Huckabee are sincere. They are sincere about a religion that has very little to do with the Bible they claim to revere. No, I mean "the real deal" in terms of a faith grounded in what Jesus actually said and did instead of the accretions of the last 2,000 years.
If true - and I'm really starting to think it is - Barack Obama is probably the most dangerous man to ever make a serious run for President.
In what sense do you mean "dangerous"? Dangerous to the status quo?
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | March 18, 2008 at 07:38 PM
Thank you Stephen. I'm a seminarian (a UCC one at that) who's been waiting for someone to put the ideas that have been racing around my head into words (it's lazier that way). What's scandalous about Rev. Wright is what was scandalous about Jesus himself. What's radical about Rev. Wright is what was radical about Jesus himself. What scares white America about Rev. Wright is what scared Rome about Jesus himself. I don't mean to compare, obviously, Rev. Wright with Jesus, as Wright's frailties are as obvious as his passion, but many of us have forgotten what it was that brought Jesus to the attention of the authorities and, eventually, to the cross: a radical message of hope and liberation. Sorry for the soapbox, but your words finally brought out my own. Cheers and God bless.
Posted by: WA | March 18, 2008 at 07:43 PM
Dangerous to the status quo?
Yes. If Obama takes his church's theology with him to the White House - well, maybe it wouldn't amount to very much. Systems are strong. But there's religious belief that serves and strengthens the status quo, and there's religious belief that upsets it. The danger - forgive me, I'm using that homiletically - from Obama is to the institutions in this society that benefit from inequality and injustice.
I'm not saying that Obama will do anything, only that I see a potential we don't usually see at this level.
Ironically, if I'm right about Obama's level of faith, he'd govern in a way that would be very acceptable to all the atheistic progressives in the blogosphere.
Posted by: Stephen | March 18, 2008 at 07:54 PM
"the real deal" in terms of a faith grounded in what Jesus actually said and did instead of the accretions of the last 2,000 years.
Thank you. ;-)
Posted by: litbrit | March 18, 2008 at 08:05 PM
And further to your comment, Stephen, I agree with your analysis of "danger (or threat, or whatever word one prefers) to the institutions in this society that benefit from inequality and injustice".
Look at the enormous popular support Obama has--from the masses that are made up of We the People, not from the corporations and special interests, I mean. Torches and pitchforks have morphed into laptops and small donations.
And yes, setting aside personal faith for a moment, it's true that progressive ideals--equality; justice; fairness; education for all; allowing your neighbor to be who he is while you be who you are; taking care of the sick and the poor; celebrating the good in all--are actually terribly familiar-sounding to anyone who's ever read Christ's words as social and political philosophy. This agnostic, Jesus-appreciating progressive has only ever feared the faux-Christians running amok in our government, and we all know who they are.
Posted by: litbrit | March 18, 2008 at 08:40 PM
"I'll quibble about the whole "Rome=Italian=White" thing, but Wright was absolutely correct about the power structures in Palestine 2,000 years ago and Jesus's place within them."
This seems false.
With the important caveat that no one really knows what happened 2,000 years in Palestine concerning an itinerant preacher, it certainly doesn't seem obvious that the political dynamics were the same.
Roman authorities allowed a great deal of regional autonomy, and it seems obvious that a fair reading of the Gospels is that Jesus posed absolutely no threat at all to Roman military and political hegemony in Palestine (hell, after he died, the Romans easily crushed a rebellion with far greater popular and elite support that anything Jesus of Nazareth could ever muster). Romans may have eventually put Jesus to death, but it is almost certainly because he was disrupting life amongst Roman puppets in the Judean aristocracy, not because Jesus was leading any kind of popular insurgency. Not that we really know, but it seems VERY unlikely that Romans would have put Jesus to death without serious political pressure being brought to bear from the Pharisees and Sagucees.
But more importantly, it is certainly not obviously true that Jesus's theology posed any real ideological threat to the Roman empire. In fact, this atheist's opinion is that there is no political philosophy inherent in the teachings in the Gospels, although one can certainly cherry-pick quotations in various ways to support one's favored view. Certainly, if we were to take the words of Jesus (as reported in the Gospels) as they meant AT THE TIME, there is no reason to believe that Jesus had a significant restructuring of existing power structures in mind.
So, an imperial power put a colonial subject to death because of pressure from the elites of same ethnicity/nationality of the victim because that victim challenged the comfortable lives of the collaborators and not because the hegemonic power felt threatened in any way.
This isn't really here nor there as it relates to the wider point, but the dynamic isn't the same.
Posted by: PTS | March 18, 2008 at 10:33 PM
Wow, a lot of "certainlys" in there, just ignore all of them.
Posted by: PTS | March 18, 2008 at 10:36 PM
What part of Wright's statement that "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color" is true?
Posted by: Quiddity | March 19, 2008 at 03:21 AM
So, an imperial power put a colonial subject to death because of pressure from the elites of same ethnicity/nationality of the victim because that victim challenged the comfortable lives of the collaborators and not because the hegemonic power felt threatened in any way.
I don't understand how this is a challenge to Wright's point.
The argument that Wright was making, common to many forms of liberation theologies, is that one needs to read the bible contextually - to understand in which structures of power the text functions. We identify, in our own world, which figures in the text we ought to identify with, and find an opportunity to critique both ourselves and the structures of power in the current society.
When white, wealthy Christians read the Gospel, they find themselves identifying with Jesus and his marginalized followers. Wright was arguing that white, wealthy Americans ought to read the Gospel and see in their own situation the situation of Roman citizens. The gospel can then serve the function of self- and social critique.
As such, while I strongly agree with the overall post, I kinda disagree with Stephen's statement that Barack's theology is about what Jesus "actually" said and did. As I read Wright, he's making the argument that reading the bible is not about determing what "actually" was the case, but it's about drawing lessons for working for justice in the present world.
In an related note, there is an incredible talk by James Cone available for free on the Harvard Divinity School website. Y'all should check it out. (Cone Lecture (requires Real Player).
Posted by: DivGuy | March 19, 2008 at 04:33 AM
I kinda disagree with Stephen's statement that Barack's theology is about what Jesus "actually" said and did. As I read Wright, he's making the argument that reading the bible is not about determing what "actually" was the case, but it's about drawing lessons for working for justice in the present world.
That was my assessment of Trinity UCC's theology, not a description of Wright's own claims about their theology.
American Evangelicalism has devolved to a point where it consists largely of intellectual assent to various propositions - Jesus is Son of God, Bible is inerrant, gays are bad, etc. Ethical requirements have been reduced to not being gay, not getting divorced (too often), opposing abortion.
Since Jesus never said anything about inerrancy, his mom's sexual status at the time of his birth, abortion, homosexuality, and since his stance on divorce doesn't really match up with Evangelical practice, my opinion is that any group that focuses on the poor and marginalized with an eye toward making the Kingdom of God a physical reality here on earth is a group more in line with "what Jesus actually said and did."
Obviously the caveat applies about Jesus's teachings and actions coming to us through accounts written some time after his death, I'm only relying on the 4 canonical gospels, blah blah. You know the drill.
Posted by: Stephen | March 19, 2008 at 08:07 AM
...there is no reason to believe that Jesus had a significant restructuring of existing power structures in mind.
The Levites in power at the time certainly had reason to fear a restoration of the House of David, no matter what Yeshua "had in mind." It was this fear that led the priests to prompt the mob to its "Crucify Him" moment.
Like much of history, this is little more than a guess.
Re the HIV/Negro connection - ~25 years ago I read a study which suggested that Northern Europeans were 3x's less likely than subSaharan Africans to be infected after one exposure to the virus, Mediterraneans 2x's, breaking it down by blood subgroups. Around the same time I read a postulate that HIV was genetically adapted to more readily attack the sickle cell trait which defends against serious malarial infection. Whether this adaptation was engineered by man or not I cannot say.
Posted by: cavjam | March 19, 2008 at 08:18 AM
It was this fear that led the priests to prompt the mob to its "Crucify Him" moment.
It is extremely improbable that such a moment occurred. Our evidence of ancient Roman and ancient Jewish legal practices leaves no suggestion that I know of that death sentences were brought before the people. Those passages make much more sense within Matthew's separatist ideology than within ancient Roman or Jewish criminal trials.
Posted by: DivGuy | March 19, 2008 at 10:58 AM
Divguy,
I must admit that I don't understand your response. Stephen said that the political dynamics between Obama and Jesus were the same. I asserted that they were not. I was responding to Stephen's claim that I quoted in the beginning.
You said that it was about context within liberation theology, but not about what Jesus "actually" said and did.
That was precisely my point! Inspiration and contextualization is fine, but let's not fool ourselves as to what we know about the history of the period. Jesus was not a threat to prevailing power structures and if we look at the publicly available meaning of his theology, he did not advocate any kind of revolutionary egalitarian political philosophy. He was not crucified because he was a racial or colonial minority that threatened the hegemony of a different racial group.
I have no problem with people using the Bible, the Iliad, Nordic sagas, the Upanishads, or Bushido as inspiration for their politics. If it motivates them to further social justice, all the power to them.
But intellectual integrity compels us to say that that is precisely what we are doing: finding inspiration and pushing us in a direction we were already heading, not simply buying what is already there.
A radically egalitarian social philosophy is simply not present in the teachings/sayings of Jesus/Paul/Mark/Luke/whomever if we take seriously the historical, sociological, and linguistic context in which they were uttered.
Posted by: PTS | March 19, 2008 at 10:13 PM
It is extremely improbable that such a moment occurred. Our evidence of ancient Roman and ancient Jewish legal practices leaves no suggestion that I know of that death sentences were brought before the people. Those passages make much more sense within Matthew's separatist ideology than within ancient Roman or Jewish criminal trials.
I'm afraid you're confusing the hinterlands of Iudea with Rome. Pilate was a petty prefect whose willingness to forgo any semblance of legal masquerade is described by Josephus in Antiquities.
Prefect of Iudea was a minor post and surely he would avoid any situation which might draw Rome's attention. With troop numbers of ~3000, most of which were in Caesarea, to control three provinces, his was a precarious perch. He'd bow to the will of the Maccabees in a methedrine heartbeat to avoid even the appearance of a possible uprising.
Judaic law is irrelevant. The whole point of turning to Pilate was to have the Romans do the heavy lifting.
I don't know what Matt's got to do with this, the "Crucify Him" scene is in Mark.
Posted by: cavjam | March 19, 2008 at 11:14 PM
A radically egalitarian social philosophy is simply not present in the teachings/sayings of Jesus/Paul/Mark/Luke/whomever if we take seriously the historical, sociological, and linguistic context in which they were uttered.
Some unsolicited advice: go to whomever taught you about the Bible and demand your money back. While Jesus wasn't known in Rome, he was certainly able to upset Pilate and Herod. And it didn't take long for the Christian sect to upset Rome enough to be persecuted pretty heavily.
Jesus spends the first 6 chapters of Mark systematically making himself more and more unclean according to Jewish law and practice at the time. He intentionally hung out with drunks and whores, inviting them into his inner circle. I have serious doubts that you've even read Luke if you think there's nothing in there to suggest that Jesus spoke of a "revolutionary egalitarian society."
If Jesus was just a rather nice, inoffensive guy he would not have been crucified by the Roman government with the obvious approval of the Jewish religious power structure of the time.
If he did nothing to upset anyone, then why was he put to death? Or was Jesus a radical defender of the status quo? A revolutionary prophet whose message was one of maintaining current social stratification in the interests of political stability? Perhaps instead of going around healing outcasts, his miracles actually consisted of giving rich people bigger houses and more money.
Posted by: Stephen | March 20, 2008 at 09:30 AM
First and foremost, we have no idea why Jesus was put to death. The evidence is perfectly consistent with Jesus being put together over a doctrinal dispute that challenged, for example, the financial position of Sagucees (by, for example, kicking their cash cows out of the temple) without, as I said, challenging the broader social/political/economic structures within that society.
Martin Luther would have been executed if he had not escaped (and his theology might have, eventually, lead to an egalitarian politics through many twists and turns) the Diet of Worms but the mere fact of his execution (or Savanorala's, or Huss's) does not imply a revolutionary egalitarian politics (which was totally absent from Luther's actual theology), challenging the established authority on sensitive points is sufficient.
But more importantly, you have ignored the dependent clause (if...uttered) that is key. I have no doubt that you can derive some kind of liberatory creed, taking standard English translations out of their Levantine context. I do not doubt there is fodder there. Nor do I deny that Christianity, as it developed, was a necessary condition on the development of other, truly egalitarian political thought (just as Luther was a big contributor, even if he would have been horrified at the consequences).
What I deny is that the public meaning of Jesus's utterances, and all the evidence we have of his intentions (though, obviously, this is more speculative) do not reflect anything like a consistent attack on the prevailing social structures of the time the way, say, Marx or Plato presented systematic social critiques.
Take Luke. Much of what Jesus says in Luke, and other places, can be explained by placing Jesus within the tradition of Jewish Apocalypticism. There are many scholars, serious scholars, who would assert that many of Jesus's politically sounding statements--in our ears--would not have been accepted as such by those listeners at the time. And one of the reasons that we know that is...they weren't so taken by those who came after him.
Again, this isn't to say that Christianity reflected and caused developments that would eventually lead to political theory and action that would argue for the restructuring of the fundamental relations of power-- gender, class etc-- in society.
But it just ain't there in the Gospels.
Posted by: PTS | March 20, 2008 at 10:05 PM
First and foremost, we have no idea why Jesus was put to death. The evidence is perfectly consistent with Jesus being put together over a doctrinal dispute that challenged, for example, the financial position of Sagucees (by, for example, kicking their cash cows out of the temple) without, as I said, challenging the broader social/political/economic structures within that society.
Just to be clear, what you're suggesting is that Jewish religious leaders got the Roman government to execute a man over a doctrinal dispute, right? That's what you're saying here. And by so doing you are making the claim that I'm ignoring historical context. Well, that's interesting.
Martin Luther would have been executed if he had not escaped (and his theology might have, eventually, lead to an egalitarian politics through many twists and turns) the Diet of Worms but the mere fact of his execution (or Savanorala's, or Huss's) does not imply a revolutionary egalitarian politics (which was totally absent from Luther's actual theology),
I can't imagine what reason you have for including this. By your own admission Luther wasn't put to death and didn't have a theology with "a revolutionary egalitarian politics." Utterly irrelevant. Why pick Luther? There's all sorts of historical figures that have, at best, a tangential relationship to a discussion about Jesus yet don't add anything to it.
Much of what Jesus says in Luke, and other places, can be explained by placing Jesus within the tradition of Jewish Apocalypticism.
Yes, it can be explained that way. It's wrong, but you can do it if you want. Those serious scholars, whoever they are, can also explain things how they want, but they're wrong as well. As presented in Luke Jesus pretty much went around pissing everyone off, starting with his performance in the synagogue in Nazareth.
Let me also speak to your remark about "English translations." I do tend to use them because they're convenient and because some of my professors have been part of the translation teams for a couple of versions. But I also can read both Hebrew and Greek for myself. Don't assume too much.
Posted by: Stephen | March 20, 2008 at 10:38 PM
Any time you want to actually reference evidence and make arguments rather than unsupported assertions, now would be a good time. I can't respond to things like this,"And by so doing you are making the claim that I'm ignoring historical context. Well, that's interesting." Because there isn't any there, there.
And I didn't say that the Jewish leaders had him executed because of a mere doctrinal dispute. I am willing to grant that he challenged the religious authority of the current Jewish leaders, and that he even threatened established commercial interests (say, kicking merchants and moneylenders out of the Temple). But there is a world of difference between those PARTICULAR disputes and a generally egalitarian political philosophy.
And about Luther, come off it. Jaysus. The reason that Luther wasn't executed by the Catholic church was because HE ESCAPED. He would have been executed (or perhaps exiled or placed under house arrest if he was lucky) for a mere doctrinal dispute because he challenged religious authorities. The fact that he criticized indulgences, for example, does not mean that he also rejected the general structure of society (in fact, he actively rejected such interpretations of his theology, being utterly horrified by various peasant rebellions in the name of Protestantism). The challenge to religious authority combined with his attack on their financial interests was fully sufficient to motivate execution by his enemies. This isn't hard.
Same thing with Jesus. Certainly, he "pissed people off," but that doesn't require anything like a systematic critique of society. Certainly Socrates pissed people off, but that doesn't mean he rejected the polis, quite the opposite in fact.
Look you can reject the scholarly vein that places Jesus within the tradition of Jewish Apocalypticism if you want (one scholar that leaps to mind as advocating this interpretation is Bart Ehrman). Hell, even do it without argument and with a tad of condescenscion. Fine, but I don't see why I have to take your argument particularly seriously. It is just totally crazy to think that Jesus, as an itinerant Jewish preacher, might be reasonably placed within the tradition of itinerant Jewish preaching. No, he must have been some radical social reformer making use of egalitarian ideals (developed and fully theorized centuries later) that would have made very little sense to anybody else he was speaking to.
But if you read Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the early Christian commentaries, you don't see whole lot of radical social change being advocated. What you do see is a lot of people saying, "Prepare for the kingdom of heaven because it will happen in our lifetimes." Reading the Pauline epistles (hell, the whole New Testament), you get a strong sense that they thought that the world was going to end soon.
And that kind of worldview is deeply antithetical to social critique. Why fix society when you have only a generation until God's kingdom on earth? Much better to pay closer attention to converting people and to their inner virtue. The social institutions are going to be irrelevant pretty soon anyhow.
Now, you might say that when these apocalyptic visions turned out to be false, Christianity gradually morphed into a doctrine that became the linchpin for latter developments in political theory: Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius etc etc. That's certainly true. But was it literally advocated by Jesus? Of course not. And I don't see what rides on saying it did.
Posted by: PTS | March 21, 2008 at 03:55 PM
Any time you want to actually reference evidence and make arguments rather than unsupported assertions, now would be a good time. I can't respond to things like this,"And by so doing you are making the claim that I'm ignoring historical context. Well, that's interesting." Because there isn't any there, there.
This from the guy who says that "serious, very serious scholars" all agree with him, and then came up with Bart Ehrmann. Ehrmann's interesting, but not exactly in the top echelon.
That's fine, though. Here's my argument: you said that the Romans put Jesus to death over a Jewish theological dispute. When that was pointed out, you backtracked and suggested it was because Jesus kicked the business ventures out of the Temple. Only problem with that is you have to believe that event actually happened; it also would help your case if we all accept the Synoptic timeline for it instead of John's.
But arguing that the cleansing of the Temple was the event that directly led to crucifixion really hurts your argument that Jesus had no egalitarian politics, because part of his anger was directed at profaning the Temple and part of it at how ordinary people were being cheated by the money changers and livestock sellers. Cleansing the Temple was a profoundly political statement, so you might want to reconsider making it the sole reason for putting Jesus to death.
I'm supposedly making assertions without evidence, but you're the one saying there's nothing political in, say, Luke. Or that what is political in there didn't matter much to the people at the time. Have your read Luke 4? Jesus picked out an incredibly political passage from Isaiah, and the people with whom he grew up tried to kill him because of it.
If you want to retreat behind the idea that they were angry at Jesus for proclaiming himself the Messiah, your argument gets even weaker, since the Messiah was a political position, not the purely spiritual one we think of. The Gospels tell of times that the crowds of people tried to get Jesus to declare himself their rightful king, but that he refused because their ideas about kingship didn't mesh with his.
Eating with whores, drunks and thieves - over and over that's presented as a big problem, one that tarnished Jesus's reputation. But to you, apparently, it was no big deal. Jesus declared a Roman the most faith-filled man in Judaea, he intermingled with Samaritans, he made beggars the heroes of his stories - you have to ignore all of that to suggest that Jesus had no intention of a transformed society.
I could go on, but I've already listed out several other things in the New Testament, none of which you have addressed. None of it.
Well, I will talk about one more thing. There is an element of anticipating an immediate eschaton. But apocalyptic isn't the same as Left Behind, nor was the Jewish apocalyptic of the couple of centuries on either side of Jesus always intended to be taken literally the way premillennial dispensationalist Christians do today. It was a literary genre, a way of expressing theology. The Christian book of Revelation is a good example of this. It's a masterful use of Jewish apocalypic imagery to get a message out to a persecuted Church, but to say that message consisted of "hang on a few days until the world ends" is to seriously misunderstand it.
Whatever the early Christians' beliefs about the eschaton, they did in fact set up a radically egalitarian society within the Church. You haven't addressed this, though I don't blame you. This was at the very beginning; later on the Church left that type of thinking behind. Your argument suggests an opposite timeline which is entirely unsupported by history.
And I don't see what rides on saying it did
You certainly seem to see some value in saying that it didn't, so I'm not sure what you think you're accomplishing with that statement.
Posted by: Stephen | March 22, 2008 at 09:50 AM
Okay, your tone is getting increasingly nasty, and we are going round and round, so this is probably my last go at this. I will respond quickly to several of your points, then I will try to diagnose what is going wrong here:
1) I never backtracked. Look at my 10 pm post on 3/20. I refer to the financial position of the Sagucees in that post.
2) Bart Ehrman came to mind because I took his class. But since he is the Chair and Distinguished Professor at UNC, got his PhD at Princeton, has scholarly books publiched by Oxford Harvard University Presses, and has loads of articles in what appear to be prestigious journals, I would like to see a reason (other than the fact that he has published popular works as well) why he is a back-bencher.
3)I didn't say that the cleansing of the temple was the sole reason, simply a plausible explanation. We are dealing in probabilities. However, punishing cheating merchants hardly constitues anything like a radical critique of the social order. Luther criticized a corrupt catholic church, but that didn't mean he wanted to overthrow the conspiracy.
4) Proclaiming oneself the Messiah was certainly a political act, as is any religious dispute between a reformer and an established church. However, the mere fact that the Messiah was a political position--although it was conceived as essentially a conquering monarch--and that religious disputes ALWAYS have a religious component does not tell us what the nature of the dispute is. I do not deny that Jesus courageously faced down established authorities in a way that had political effect. That is obvious. What I deny is that this represented some kind of systematic egalitarian ideology in the temporal world.
5) The various stuff you point to wrt prostitutes etc is inconclusive at best. Nowhere--as far as I know--does Jesus directly challenge slavery, patriarchy, or advocate equality in terms of material circumstance. He says that we should not let the beggar starve, but does he say there shouldn't be beggars? Certainly, he says that everyone that the meek will inherit the earth, but this can be interpreted as a claim about heaven. He says we shouldn't judge prostitues unclean, but he never really challenges the idea of a male-dominated world. In general, Jesus is concerned with matters of the soul, adherence to religious doctrine, and inner virtue but is unconcerned with institutions. But if you want to point to specific passages, we can discuss those.
Not only that, but there is strong reason to believe that these passages were emphasized as a way of later differentiating Jesus from the Jews. That is, it is quite possible that much of this was added or specially emphasized to make a point vis a vis Christianity as appealing to Gentiles verus Jews. It might not reflect any real social agenda at all, but merely the historical needs of the Gospel writer.
6) Luke 4. This is a perfect example of what I am talking about. To our ears, this passage in Elijah sounds like a fairly standard political tract with a Marxist or human rights bent. But I sincerely doubt that it was so interpreted by those at the time as being so. Why? No one interpreted Elijah, at the time, as advocating class conflict, the freedom of the proletariat, the dignity of man or something like that. We know that the "oppressed" didn't include women or slaves etc etc. Perhaps Elijah is referring to the political autonomy of the Jews in their own state in Palestine, or some other political issue. I don't know, but it is certainly implausible that he was uttering the Jewish prophet version of the Declaration of Independence. You are making the mistake of equating our meanings of terms into their meanings of the terms.
Who are the "prisoners," for example? And how will they be freed? Isn't it possible that Jesus is referring to Kingdom of Heaven rather to any temporal or political institutional reform? Isn't it likely that something like that is the referent for "good news"? Etc etc. If Elijah wasn't taken to be advocating extensive social reform (and it seems manifestly obvious that he wasn't), then why should we take Jesus to be doing so?
This is what I mean by attending to the historical, linguistic, and sociological context of the utterance. I may be wrong, but you certainly haven't provided me with a lot of reason for thinking otherwise.
7) Your point about the difference in apocalypticism between now and then is interesting. I don't know much about it, but I don't see how you can deny that there is a genuine eschatology in at least some New Testament writings: Paul's writings on marriage, for example. And why did Luke want to repudiate apocalyptic Christian interpretations if no one took them literally? Not an objection, but it does seem odd to me.
8) I didn't address it because you haven't brought it up until now. I would have to read more about these "egalitarian" set ups. How egalitarian were they? How much variation between churches? Which churches are referring to? What are your sources for this? How early? Paul certainly wasn't a radical gender egalitarian, though he might have been more egalitarian than he is given credit for due to some changed and added passages. Peter was made head of the church. This is a request for more information. Who and what are referring to here?
But more importantly and independently of the previous point, wasn't this equality that stopped at the edge of the church? To what extent did this religious development presage political and social reform?
I mean, it isn't like Christians were running around freeing slaves. Most Christians would have been happy to live within the confines of the Roman empire if they had been given exemption from requirements of public paganism, like the Jews.
-------------------------------------------------
Anyway, I'm done. But I would like to point out that your comments have been much more mean-spirited than I feel anything I said warranted.
But what has gone wrong? I think you are equivocating on "political." You seem to think that you have disproven my thesis if you can show that any political authority was discomfitted by Jesus or that Jesus's teaching had ANY social and political effects.
I am fully willing to grant that Jesus's teachings had some direct consequences on the social and political. In a world where religion was such a pervasive influence, it would be bizarre to suggest it wouldn't. However, it stretches the words that Jesus uttered to meaninglessness to suggest that Jesus himself had some kind of radical social agenda that we would recognize as such.
I think it is important to keep these claims separate. Jesus made a significant and necessary step for Western society to ditch earlier eretaic Greek moral philosophy and move to something more universalist. But simply because it was an important first step from A to Z does not mean that A=Z.
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The reason I think it is important to keep saying this is that I think it is important to realize the extent to which SECULAR philosophy made equally important contributions to this process. Modern democratic egalitarianism did spring fully formed from the mouth of Jesus, it developed through a long dialectic that incorporated Stoicism, Christianity, Platonism, and all the modern ideological developments.
Posted by: PTS | March 22, 2008 at 10:01 PM