Thoughts on Libya

I heard Dennis Kucinich call for the impeachment of the President for authorizing US participation in the military operation in Libya, while John McCain -- President Obama's opponent in the 2008 elections is calling for a more robust engagement (I'm assuming that's boots on the ground).  That's quite a wide divergence of opinion.  My friends and colleagues are of various minds on this issue as well.  I would guess that as usual I will fall somewhere in between.

Like many of the World's people I have been watching closely the events unfolding in a region stretching from Tunisia to Iran.  We are seeing popular uprisings, people taking their lives into their own hands, refusing to simply follow the dictates of the powers that be.  I've found it interesting that many here in America are dismissive of these aspirations, suggesting that Arabs and Muslims aren't capable of democracy -- but were we ready for it in 1776?  Some will say that we're already involved in two other wars, why enter a third?   Personally, I wouldn't call this entering a war.  We're participating in an action protecting people seeking to determine their own future.  Yes, that might seem like splitting hairs, but I think the hairs need splitting at this point. 

Whether you agree with the actions taken by Western Governments as authorized by the UN and called for by the Arab League, I would hope that you would sympathize and even empathize with the people of Libya, who have lived under the iron fist of a megalomaniac for decades.  Libya has lots of money, but it has gone to the few and not the many.  We are seeing this unfold in Yemen and Bahrain as well.  The times are changing and we must get ready for what comes next.  It may be messy, but that is the way of revolutionary moments.  It was true for this country, and the concerns that led to revolution in America were not nearly as dire as those experienced in these countries today. 

Do I have a word from the Lord on this?  No, I just have my own gut sense that we are at a tipping point in history and it would be good if we all got on the right side of history!

The Adjustment Bureau, Rick Warren, and Process Theology (Bruce Epperly)

Out this past weekend was the latest Matt Damon movie -- The Adjustment Bureau.  I've yet to see it, but Bruce Epperly, a regular contributor to this blog did see it and offers his thoughts from a theological perspective on the movie's message on the fate of humanity, comparing it to Rick Warren's rather deterministic Purpose Driven Life and the more open vision of Process Theology.  I think you'll find this essay intriguing and thought provoking. 

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The Adjustment Bureau, Rick Warren,

and Process Theology

Bruce G. Epperly

The Adjustment Bureau raises issues of God’s plan, destiny, choice, and chance. Rising political star David Norris is destined, yes destined, to become the President of the United States, until a chance encounter with dancer, Elise Sellas. This apparently chance encounter leads to an intricate struggle between the angelic case workers assigned to keep him on the Chairman’s (aka God) pre-established plan and the love struck Norris, who believes that he can choose his own destiny.

The Chairman’s plan takes a page right out of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. According to the movie, God chooses the important events of our lives, steering us toward the course God has determined that will be best for us and the planet. We think we are free, when are really actors performing the script God has already written for us. The death of Norris’ parents and his brother is not accidental, but the working out of the Chairman’s plan to give Norris the hunger for political greatness, thus fulfilling his father’s dream.

Rick Warren’s image of human destiny takes a similar path in making the following affirmations about the relationship between God’s plan and human decision-making.

• God plans all the important events (genetics, gender, talents, family of origin) in our lives without our input.
• Every experience, including traumatic events, such as cancer, abuse, the death of a child, or tsunami, is “father filtered,” or planned by God for our growth.  
• In every event God is testing our fidelity to God’s sovereign decision-making. 
• God “smiles” when we follow directions and do as “he” says. 
• God wants us to “color inside the lines.” Coloring “outside the lines” leads to meaninglessness in this life and alienation from God (hell) in the next. Those who seek to thwart God’s plan will be punished.

Warren’s belief in divine destiny led one of my friends to describe his book as the “puppet driven life.” Both Warren and The Adjustment Bureau’s image of God’s plan assert that when it comes to the most important things, freedom and choice are an illusion. Happiness and fulfillment come from following the pre-established plan.

Now the Adjustment Bureau takes two slight diversions from Warren’s spiritual determinism. Within the Chairman’s plan, chance events occur. Norris meets Sellas and the pre-established plan for his life is jeopardized. Second, the movie suggests that God can scrap certain plans in favor of others, and open the doors to choice in rare circumstances. Although neither Norris nor Sellas is aware of it, the Chairman’s plan had once included them falling in love. That plan, however, was scrapped for greater things for each of them. Nevertheless, the energy of the Chairman’s negation unexpectedly draws them together.

For both theologians and lay people alike, divine choice and human freedom have often been pitted against one another. Either everything reflects divine decision-making or we are entirely free. Perhaps, there is another alternative that joins divine vision and decision-making, human freedom, environmental and genetic conditioning, and chance. This is the multi-faceted approach of process theology.

From the perspective of process theology, every event emerges from the intricate and dynamic interplay of God’s vision, environmental influences, genetics, and creaturely choice. In the dynamic interplay of life, accidents happen – cells reproduce in ways that lead to cancer, bridges collapse, and brakes fail. In this same interplay, human choices can lead to cancer, abuse, faulty construction, and genocide. God has not willed these events, but must, like us, live with these events, seeking to make the most out of difficult situations.

Process theology asserts that God is intimately involved in our lives, providing possibilities, inspirations, and intuitions; working through the interdependence of life to promote synchronous encounters; inviting us to use our limited freedom to create a just and beautiful world; and giving us strength and creativity to respond to personal and communal calamities. God is not in absolute control, nor do we create our own realities.

Still, God is constantly innovating, working within the world as it is to bring forth the right balance of order and novelty. Within the limitations of the many factors of life, humans are also constantly innovating, using our limited freedom moment by moment to choose our pathways. While creaturely freedom may be quite limited, given the influence of the past, environment, genetics, politics, economics, and divine influence, human choices made moment by moment can lead to life-changing expressions of creativity and beauty. Sadly, they can also lead to pain and suffering.

Life is a dynamic interplay of call and response in which God calls and we respond, and God calls again, adjusting God’s vision to our choices rather than forcing us to follow a pre-ordained script. Still, from the perspective of process theology, God provides many possibilities and opens the door to many vocations, or personal destinies. There is God’s vision for a particular moment in time but this vision is part of many broader visions, embodied over a lifetime. Moreover, process theology asserts that God’s vision is neither coercive nor competitive. God creates the context for maximal expressions of freedom and creativity, congruent with the well-being of the global and local communities. Freedom is limited, but it is real.

Like a good parent, God hopes we make the right decisions for ourselves and others. But, God also welcomes surprises. Contrary to Rick Warren and the Chairman’s initial plan, innovation leads to greater and more energetic revelations of God’s presence in our lives. After God has given us the most creative visions to integrate with our freedom and the impact of the environment, like a good parent, who has supplied crayons and paper for our recreation, God whispers in our unconscious, “Surprise me. Bring something new into the world. Do something beautiful and unexpected.”

The Adjustment Bureau provides much food for theological reflection. It invites us to ponder the intricacies of freedom and destiny and God’s role in determining who we are and what we do. It suggests that we may not be puppets of fate after all, and that our calling is to take risks for love, beauty, and healing. These risks rewarded with greater opportunities for freedom and creativity in partnership with the source of all freedom, creativity, and possibility.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (May 2011); and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He may be reached at bruceepperly@gmail.com.

God of Liberty -- Review

GOD OF LIBERTY: A Religious History of the American Revolution.  By Thomas S. Kidd.  New York:  Basic Books, 2010. 298 pages.

It seems as if the debate over whether the Founders of the American Republic were secular Deists or Evangelical Christians will never end. Both sides marshal “evidence” to support their contentions, but reality might be much more complex than the partisans would have us believe, with early Americans ranging from strict separationists to advocates of state establishment. Thomas Paine, who had been an important publicist for the Revolution, wrote strongly worded denunciations of Christianity, while Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams defended the primacy of traditional Christian piety and practice. In God of Liberty, historian Thomas Kidd helps us sort out the complexities so that we can enter the contemporary debate on firmer ground.

A professor at Baptist-sponsored Baylor University, Kidd is sympathetic to the religious voices present at the time, as the blurbs by leading Evangelical historians Mark Noll, Harry Stout, and George Marsden, affirm. Like these esteemed historians, Kidd believes that religion played an important role in the nation’s founding, but they also are in agreement that there were a variety of voices and concerns present in the founding era, and therefore it is important to get the story right.

Kidd covers a period that stretches from the French and Indian War to the early decades of the 19th century, a period in which the last established faiths were disestablished. Standing at the center of this presentation is Kidd’s contention that Enlightenment Rationalists such as Thomas Jefferson and evangelicals such as John Leland believed that every citizen is entitled to religious liberty. The two parties may have had differing reasons for their espousal of religious liberty, but their shared belief that that a government established religion inappropriately impinged on one’s freedom of conscience proved to be foundational to the American experiment.

It was a common belief that religion played an essential role in defining the moral foundation of society. John Adams and George Washington, neither of whom was especially orthodox, believed that religion played an essential role in preserving moral virtue and respect for authority. We sometimes think of the Enlightenment providing a rather optimistic view of humanity, but the Founders were not sure that their fellow citizens were ready for self-government, so they took steps to keep a balance of power between the Federal branches of government and between states and the Federal government. There was the belief that no one entity should be given too much power. It is in light of this fear of human avarice that we need to hear the debate over disestablishment. Advocates of establishment, such as Samuel Adams (Congregationalist) and Patrick Henry (Episcopalian), believed that disestablishment would lead to societal disintegration, and therefore fought to uphold the status quo. Jefferson and Leland on the other hand believed that religion played a central role in upholding the moral foundations of society, but they believed that religious establishments were by nature coercive and ultimately corrupted both religion and government.

The First Amendment, therefore, emerged as a means by which the twin concerns for promoting virtue and liberty could be sustained. Kidd suggests that this Amendment was a “triumph for both the dissenting evangelicals and the Enlightenment Rationalists.” He goes on to say that these “two socially and theologically disparate groups each did its part to prevent America’s national government from practicing religious persecution or giving preference to one religious group at the expense of others” (p. 225). Interestingly, the chief opponents of the Constitution and the First Amendment were people who feared that the new system might “prove hostile to the interests of Christianity” (p. 226).

The history of the nation’s founding demonstrates that even if religion wasn’t the driving force of the revolutionary era, religion still played an extremely important role in the developments of the era. Some of the decisions were pragmatic in nature, so that disestablishment may have occurred at the federal level, but it took considerable time before the states were completely disestablished. In addition to acknowledging the pragmatism of many of the Founders, we must also acknowledge the presence of anti-Catholicism in this era. Another factor that we often miss in our debates is that disestablishment occurred in the South before it occurred in New England. This was due in part to the tenuous hold of Anglicanism on this region. Congregationalism faced fewer rivals in New England and so the process took longer, but even there the movement toward disestablishment couldn’t be halted.

Although defenders of establishment feared that disestablishment would prove hostile to Christianity, in the end they discovered that it encouraged religious practice and even reinforced public virtue. There seemed to be a common belief that a divine hand was involved in the nation’s founding, even if not everyone agreed as to the full identity of the God who ruled providentially over the land. Unfortunately, providentialism had a dark side, because “if God is on your side, then how can you be wrong?” (p. 251).

Although providentialism -- including it's dark-side -- marked American self-understanding, there was, according to Kidd, another key driver in the American self-understanding.  He believes this idea was even more powerful in the development of American ideals than providentialism, but it too was rooted in the nexus of faith and freedom.  This idea is "equality by creation."  This belief first undermined the ideas of aristocracy and hierarchy, opening up new vistas for everyone, but it also proved to be damaging to institutions such as slavery. 

With a century of political philosophy crystallized in the Declaration of Independence's soaring claim of human equality, revolutionary Americans came to the conviction that because God created everyone, all persons were fundamentally equal before him.  This belief immediately threw the legitimacy of slavery into a state of profound moral doubt. (p. 252).

Change didn't happen overnight, and it would take a war to rid the nation of slavery, the seeds of its destruction were planted in this belief that equality is rooted in creation.  Of course, this discovery led some, including Jefferson to ponder whether or not Africans were of the same created order.  Still in the end the seed was planted.

Although many political progressives would like to hang on to the idea that the Founders were, with a few exceptions, secularists and at most Deists, this book can help those of us who believe in the importance of recognizing the value of religious pluralism engage in a more nuanced and effective conversation about the role of religion in the public square. Perhaps the most helpful aspect of the discussion is Kidd’s reminder that the religious freedoms we have today come to us because of an unlikely partnership between Enlightenment rationalists like Jefferson and dissenting evangelicals such as John Leland. Understanding this partnership may help change the tone of the debate, and it’s for this very reason that this is an important book for Progressives to read.

A slightly expanded version of review posted at The Progressive Christian

 



Secular Revolutions, Religious Landscapes

I've found it rather ironic that the same people who complain about the "naked public square" in the US, are among the ones calling for the revolutions in the Middle East to be "secular."  As Shatha Almutawa writes in the Thursday edition of Sightings, while religion hasn't been driving the revolutions, religion -- especially Islam -- has been infused into the revolutions.  Many of the protests have taken place after Friday prayers.  Imams and religious teachers have sought to empower the people to claim their freedoms and rights -- even countering claims by the oligarchs that freedom leads to chaos by pointing out that stability and freedom go together fairly well in the West.   President Bush wasn't wrong about the possibilities of democracy in the Middle East.  He was wrong in his belief that we could impose it from outside through military means.  It has to be homegrown, and the seeds of homegrown democracy are being sown.  Almutawa has written an insightful piece that deserves careful attention and conversation!  

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Sightings 2/24/2011

Secular Revolutions, Religious Landscapes

-- Shatha Almutawa

While the Middle East uprisings have not revolved around religion, faith has not been absent from Arab scenes of protest in the last two months. God and scripture are invoked by revolutionaries and those who oppose them for the simple reason that Arab dialects and ways of life are infused with religion.

To an outside observer the revolts of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain might appear to be entirely secular, but Arabic Twitter and Facebook feeds are brimming with prayers, some formulaic and some informal, asking God to aid protesters and remove oppressors. Qur’anic verses and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad are shared on Facebook walls. One blogger titled his post: “A saying of the prophet about President Qaddafi.” In the quoted hadith Prophet Muhammed warns of a time when trivial men will speak for the people.

After Libyan president Moammar Al-Qaddafi ordered brutal attacks on demonstrators, leaving thousands dead and even more wounded, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi urged the Libyan army to kill Qaddafi. “I say to my brothers and sons who are soldiers and officers in the Libyan Army to disobey when (the government) gives orders to kill the people using warplanes,” the prominent Sunni scholar said, according to UPI. Soldiers have already defected in large numbers, and the pro-democracy army has taken hold of many Libyan cities.

In every part of the Arab world religious spaces such as mosques and churches have been stages for demonstrators as well as opposition. In the United Arab Emirates an activist was arrested after giving a speech at a mosque in solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. In his speech he invited worshippers to join him in performing a prayer for the Egyptian protesters.

In Egypt marches began at mosques after Friday prayers, and inside them imams gave speeches in favor of or opposition to the uprising. Egyptians are donating blood at mosques near the Libyan border. In Bahrain pro-democracy and pro-government protesters demonstrated outside Manama’s Al-Fateh Mosque as well as at Pearl Roundabout.

Even though religion is not the driving force behind the revolutions, religious leaders continue to defend protest in speeches that are disseminated via YouTube. Dr. Tareq Al-Suwaidan, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, gave a speech in which he urged Arabs to continue demanding freedom, human rights and an end to corruption. He challenged the governments’ claim that revolutions will lead to instability and insecurity, and that new freedoms would lead to chaos. “The west is living with these rights in stability and security, and they are making progress,” he said. “Our religion calls for these rights. Our religion guaranteed them to us.”

Al-Suwaidan’s tone is one of disbelief at dictators’ illogical statements and the contradictions in their claims. But his ridicule of government leaders is tame in comparison to the jokes made by Arabs all over the world following Al-Qaddafi’s speech. The jokes, too, involve religion. “Al-Qaddafi’s demands are simple—only that the people should say: There is no God but Al-Qaddafi,” Nael Shahwan tweeted in Arabic. Mohammad Awaad wrote, “Qaddafi ‘the god’ is a natural result of a media that has become accustomed to not saying no to a president, as if he is never wrong.” He continued, “I believe we have 22 gods”—one for each Arab country.

The opposition, too, is armed with religious rhetoric, but mosque, Qur’an, and hadith have been central in the Arab world’s struggle for freedom and democracy. Religious leaders as well as lay people have found that the language of religion is also the language of revolution. After all religion is very often the spirit of Arab life, and the inspiration for most of its endeavors—jokes and revolutions included.

Shatha Almutawa is the editor of Sightings and a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.