“Here I stand; I can do no other”: Why This Baptist Educator is Against Religious Instruction in Public School Classrooms

Oklahoma made the news again this week.  Somehow, this is rarely a good thing, especially when education is the issue at hand.  On Thursday (6/27), at the regular meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Education, State Superintendent Ryan Walters said that effective immediately, all public school teachers in Oklahoma who teach 5th through 12th grade will be required to have and teach from the Bible in their classrooms.  In multiple interviews afterwards, he said that any teacher who refuses could risk losing their teaching certification.  As a Baptist, and one who knows her Baptist history, I cannot in good conscience comply with such an edict.  It violates every principle I have about the importance of religious liberty, soul freedom, and the separation of church and state.

The quote in the title of this blog post is from Martin Luther’s famous speech at the Diet of Worms where he was called to account for his break with the Catholic Church on a number of doctrinal issues including, but not limited to, the sale of indulgences and lay access to Scripture.  The Diet of Worms occurred a few months after Pope Leo X had excommunicated Luther, and his very life was at stake as the princes of the Holy Roman Empire were poised to execute the man they declared to be an outlaw.  The full quote is even more instructive: “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me.”  This defiant statement in favor of freedom of conscience set the stage for one of the most important and far-reaching religious reform movements in the world.  While Luther is not without his problems (his rampant antisemitism, for example), his legacy and inspiration would echo through the years and inspire even more religious change.

While Luther supported freedom from Catholic oversight, he was not a full-fledged supporter of religious freedom: he allowed harsh punishment of heretics and had no patience for Judaism in public life.  However, in the years after the Protestant Reformation began, there were groups who would pick up the mantle of religious freedom and freedom of conscience and broaden its scope beyond the “right” type of Christians and move to include all people of all faiths (or no faith at all).  The two denominational tracks this unfettered freedom of conscience took are the Anabaptists of Continental Europe and the Baptist separatists in England.

Even as the Reformation moved full steam ahead in Continental Europe, church and state were still deeply enmeshed.  To be fair, there were some practical reasons for this.  Birth records were most consistently kept in church offices, so baptizing new members of the community early in life was one of the most surefire ways to keep track of who was born when and therefore who was eligible for marriage (mostly the girls) and military service (the boys).  Of course, the Calvinist doctrine of original sin which closely mirrored Catholic doctrine also played a role in this.  

A group of Protestants disagreed with both the close intermingling of church and state and the practice of infant baptism.  The Anabaptists (or “re-baptizers”) as their opponents called them believed strongly that Scripture said only those who could repent of their sin could be baptized; therefore, infant baptism was null and void.  The Anabaptists were and are also pacifists who believe that the wars of the secular world are not the purview of the church and that believers should not participate in them.  Today, the Amish and Mennonites are the most well-known of the Anabaptist tradition.  Both groups, as well as other Anabaptists, were heavily persecuted in the aftermath of the Reformation by Protestant and Catholic officials alike with many of them being imprisoned, tortured, and executed (often by drowning since they advocated for adult baptism by immersion).

Meanwhile, in England, the Reformation took a slightly different path.  Beginning with Henry VIII and his marital problems (an oversimplification, I know, but also not the most important part of this story), the Church of England sought to reject that which it disliked about Roman Catholicism (like…no divorce), but keep the parts of the Catholic Church it saw as acceptable (there is a reason that Anglicanism is often called “Catholic-lite” or Catholicism without the guilt).  Of course, this reformation was not without its problems: “Bloody” Mary, Fox’s Book of Martyrs, etc.  While the Catholic vs. Anglican battle was raging, two other groups emerged–Dissenters and Separatists.  These two groups thought there was still too much Catholic influence in Anglican theology, though the way they combatted it was different.  The Dissenters sought to effect change from the inside.  The Puritans were a Dissenter group, for example, who sought to further “purify” the Church.  Separatists, however, saw the Anglican Church as wholly unredeemable and sought to break away and do their own thing.  Both groups were persecuted until William and Mary’s Act of Toleration in 1689.

From amongst the Separatists emerged the Baptist tradition.  John Smyth and Thomas Helwys were early Baptist pioneers, often regarded as the founders of the first Baptist congregation anywhere in the world.  Their small Separatist congregation in England eventually had to relocate to the Netherlands (an Anabaptist haven).  In 1609, they formed the first Baptist church, which split when they went their separate ways in 1611 (and Baptist churches have been splitting ever since…but that’s a different story for a different day).  While Smyth’s theology evolved to be more Mennonite than Baptist, Helwys would continue to advocate for Baptist beliefs, including the necessity of adult baptism and religious liberty.  In 1612, Helwys published A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, one of the earliest and most important declarations of universal religious liberty.  In it, he says,

Christ is the head of his Church….Let it suffice the King to have all rule over his peoples, bodies, and goods; and let not our lord King give his power to be exercised over the spirits of his people…. For men’s religion to God, is betwixt God and themselves; the king shall not answer for it, neither may the king be judged between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the last measure.

The notion that the King had no say AND no sway on the religious lives of individuals was scandalous, as was the fact that Helwys, upon his return to England, sent an autographed copy of The Mystery of Iniquity to King James I.  For his trouble, Helwys was imprisoned and died in prison in 1616.

Fast forward now (not much, but some) to 1638 and the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies in what would become the state of Massachusetts.  Roger Willliams, a Puritan, later a Separatist, founded the First Baptist Church in America in  that year.  He did so after several years of his beliefs evolving and changing, particularly regarding the Puritan practice of punishing religious wrongs in civil courts.  In particular, Williams detested the Puritan requirement that everyone attend church on Sundays.  Forced worship, Williams wrote, “stinks in God’s nostrils.”

Roger Williams, banished from Plymouth for his heretical (to them) beliefs, became the first American voice of Baptist religious liberty.  He argued that by inserting themselves in civil matters, the Puritan church had, negatively, “a gap in the hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wilderness of the world,” which would–inexorably–pollute the Garden and turn it, too, into Wilderness.  In his magnum opus, titled The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, Williams would further argue that “God requireth not an uniformity of Religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state.”  

For Williams, the doctrine of “Soul Liberty” (what we Baptists today call Soul Freedom) was paramount.  This means that all people–Christian or not–are made in the image and likeness of God and given by God the power, intellect, and reason to choose for ourselves what to or not to believe.  That choice must, by its very nature, be free–free from meddling by those in the Church or those in the State.  Civil power, Williams believed, had no dominion over an individual’s soul liberty: “All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.”  The separation between church and state is at the very heart of Baptist beliefs about soul freedom and religious liberty.  Don’t believe me?  Let’s keep going.

By the Revolutionary period, most of the colonies (9 of 13) had established churches which meant that those colonies had picked their favorite denomination of Christianity and it received special favors, power, and–most importantly–MONEY from the colony.  The flip side of this was that those of minority faiths often lacked civil power, especially in the northern Congregationalist colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts where they couldn’t hold elected office and had to pay tax money to a church they did not attend.  Baptists were in the minority in many of the colonies where there were established churches.  

Isaac Backus was among the most prominent spokesmen for Baptists during the Revolution.  Converted to Christianity in 1741 as a result of the First Great Awakening before becoming Baptist on account of his opposition to infant baptism a decade later, Backus lived in Connecticut and later Massachusetts and experienced life as a holder of minority opinions in places with strict establishment.  In 1773, Backus preached a sermon that would be widely distributed afterwards called An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, Against the Oppressions of the Present Day.  In it, Backus asked, “Now who can hear Christ declare, that his kingdom is, not of this world, and yet believe that this blending of church and state together can be pleasing to him?”  Here, Backus harkened back to Williams’ belief in a distinction between church and state and the need to separate the two.

Two decades later, John Leland, a firebrand Baptist preacher from Massachusetts, would continue this line of thinking in a tract titled The Right of Conscience Inalienable: 

Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free.

Leland echoes this notion of unrestrained soul freedom as a God-given right that no civil entity can infringe upon.  What separates these Baptist ancestors from other religious thinkers of the time is that while others championed religious freedom, it was often for their own beliefs.  As Leland made very clear, Baptists saw (and see presently) this as something available and necessary for all people, regardless of belief: 

The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever...Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians. (from A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia)

This distinction between toleration and liberty was repeated by George W. Truett (after whom the seminary at Baylor is named) in his 1920 speech “Baptists and Religious Liberty,” delivered on the steps of the US Capitol:

Baptists have one consistent record concerning liberty throughout all their long and eventful history. They have never been a party to oppression of conscience. They have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil. Their contention now, is, and has been, and, please God, must ever be, that it is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices. Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty. Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the right to tolerate. Toleration is a concession, while liberty is a right. Toleration is a matter of expediency, while liberty is a matter of principle. Toleration is a gift from man, while liberty is a gift from God. It is the consistent and insistent contention of our Baptist people, always and everywhere, that religion must be forever voluntary and uncoerced, and that it is not the prerogative of any power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, to compel men to conform to any religious creed or form of worship, or to pay taxes for the support of a religious organization to which they do not believe. God wants free worshipers and no other kind. (Emphasis added)

One of our great modern Baptist prophets for the cause of Soul Freedom, Dr. James Dunn, said “Soul freedom is the biblical and theological starting point and religious liberty naturally follows. If we all, in some serious way, replicate God, religious liberty is a moral and social inevitability.”  He also argued that one could not have soul freedom AND civil powers engaged in religious matters: “Religious freedom and church-state separation are a package deal.”  Even the Southern Baptist Convention, which has–I would argue–wandered FAR from the Baptist path laid out for it over the years, recognizes the necessity of religious liberty in the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message: “A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.”

A free church in a free state.  Civil powers that apply to all, not just a few who believe “the right things.”  These are hallmarks of Baptist beliefs and doctrine, echoing through the centuries.  As a public school teacher, I see students of a variety of faiths and no faith at all in my classroom.  I cannot–I WILL not–in good conscience teach from the Bible.  I will teach that the Bible is an important scripture to Christians (and the Old Testament to Jews).  I will speak of how different people interpret the Bible in different ways.  I will talk about different approaches to scriptural interpretation.  But I will not teach FROM the Bible.  As a Baptist, to do so would go against every fiber of my being.  “I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me.”

Israel, Hamas, and the Deep Human Tragedy of Occupation

The end of September and beginning of October saw my Global War on Terror class discussing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict during the 2000s and early 2010s (I’m teaching this class backwards – from the present back to 100 years ago.  It’s been interesting…but that’s another story for another day).  Given the events of the last two weeks, I feel like I won’t have any problem linking all of the problems we’ve been talking about to current events.  However, as I’ve watched the news over the last day, I’ve seen a lot of overly simplistic opinions about this conflict.  While I certainly don’t have any answers (okay, I do, but none that would be given any traction in American foreign policy circles), I do want to try to add some necessary background to this latest and most gruesome chapter in the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Some Background

As antisemitism increased around the world – particularly in Europe and Russia, Jews began looking for places where they could go to escape pogroms (see Russia in the late-19th and early 20th centuries), antisemitic conspiracy theories (see Protocols of the Elders of Zion, also originating in Russia), and false accusations of malfeasance based on antisemitic tropes (see The Dreyfus Affair in France in the late-19th century).  Theodor Herzl, a secular Jew from Austria, wrote the foundational text of Jewish nationalism (Zionism), Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), in which he argued that expanding antisemitism required the creation of a state where Jews could be free from persecution.  While his preference was the creation of that state in Palestine, he also floated the idea of purchasing land in Argentina as a possibility.  

It cannot be overstated here that at this point, this conflict was not religious at all.  Herzl and other early Zionists were thoroughly secular.  Herzl himself found Jerusalem to be a backwards, premodern place unbefitting a modern people.  He also had little use for the Jews of Palestine at the time who were far too tied to religion for his taste.  Nevertheless, the historic ties to Palestine were too strong for the Jewish people to ignore and they began immigrating to the Holy Land in waves (called aliyah) beginning in the early 1880s, first from Russia, then from Europe.

Prior to 1920, when the Ottoman Empire was officially carved up by the European powers, Jews and indigenous Arabs in what was then the Ottoman province of Palestine generally coexisted.  However, once the British assumed control of territory and Jews and Arabs began espousing competing nationalist sentiments, conflicts escalated and fighting became more common.  After World War II, the British, demoralized and cash-strapped, abandoned the former Mandate of Palestine, leaving it to the newly-formed United Nations to figure out.  The UN was equally unsure (and unprepared) to deal with the mess in Palestine, and eventually the Jews took matters into their own hands.  The Israeli Declaration of Independence was read by David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, standing under a picture of Theodor Herzl on May 14, 1948.

War broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbors almost immediately and continued until January 1949.  The Armistice Line of 1949 gave us the map that we basically still have today:

The Gaza Strip was more or less autonomous for a decade before Egypt put its foot down there in 1959, an unrelenting occupation that would continue until the Israeli military victory in June, 1967.  The West Bank was formally annexed by Jordan in late-1950 with Palestinians there accepting Jordanian rule.  Palestinians in the West Bank were granted Jordanian citizenship and allowed to run for seats in Jordan’s parliament.  Despite the defeat of Jordan in 1967, Palestinians retained Jordanian citizenship until 1988 when Jordan officially severed claims to the territory and recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the sole representative of Palestinian national aspirations.

While May 1948 was seen by Israelis as the culmination of decades of struggle, Palestinians saw it much differently.  Among Palestinians, 1948 is called al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”).  Palestinians living in the newly declared state of Israel were forced out and into refugee camps, marking the beginning of the Palestinian refugee crisis.  That crisis was only exacerbated by the June 1967 War.

The June 1967 War completely changed the calculus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  At the end of the war, Israel had claimed and occupied the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula (from Egypt), the West Bank – including East Jerusalem (from Jordan), and the Golan Heights (from Syria).  The capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan added a new religious layer to the conflict as the Old City and all of the Holy Sites are there and had, thus, been under Jordanian control for close to 20 years, and Jordan had refused to allow Jewish pilgrimage to the Old City during that time (despite a UN resolution requiring it).  When Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan visited the newly liberated Western Wall, he famously said, “We have returned to the holiest of our Holy Places, never to part from it again.”  

This sentiment was echoed and, in many cases, magnified by religious Israelis who saw it as their obligation to reclaim all of historic Palestine which they believed was given to them by God in perpetuity.  Therefore, shortly after Israel’s victory in 1967, construction on Israeli settlements throughout the territories it occupied began.  Palestinians and many international human rights organizations claim this to be a violation of international law, specifically the 4th Geneva Convention which renders it unlawful for a civilian population to be transferred to militarily occupied lands.

Six years later, the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history (until Oct. 7) happened when Egypt launched a surprise attack against Israel during Yom Kippur (October 6, 1973) to attempt to regain control of the Sinai Peninsula, especially the east bank of the Suez Canal.  When the conflict ended, Egypt survived, regained control of Suez, and eventually secured a peace accord with Israel which gave them all of the Sinai back (the Camp David Accords, signed in 1978).

A poster displayed at the Egyptian Military Museum commemorating the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The "Invincible Army" is Israel. This is, at best, revisionist history.

The next decade marked a deterioration in conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza.  Settlements began to proliferate, and Israel dispatched military units to protect them, limiting the movement of Palestinians and subjecting them to curfews, collective punishments, home demolitions, extended detentions, and excessive wait times at security checkpoints to enter Israel where many Gazans worked.  During the late 1970s and early 80s, Palestinian leadership – in the form of Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) – was in exile, first in Beirut (from which they were expelled during the Lebanese Civil War) then in Tunisia.  While the PLO was secular, the local organizations that emerged in Gaza during this time were decidedly Islamist and affiliated, at least nominally, with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Gaza was a tinderbox by the time 1987 rolled around, so it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that what was a seemingly ordinary event (an Israeli settler was stabbed in Gaza, then an Israeli military vehicle veered into a line of Palestinian cars, killing several) spawned a massive wave of protests among the Palestinians called the Intifada (Arabic for “to shake something off.”  Here, that something is occupation).  The First Intifada was a largely nonviolent protest movement that included work stoppages, sit-ins, barricades, and throwing rocks at the Israeli military.  Israel’s often excessive responses drew widespread international condemnation and, for the first time, international attention and sympathy for the Palestinian cause.  

Let the reader understand: Prior to December 1987, the Palestinians were little more than bit players in the drama that surrounded them.  They had no government, no military, no police force, and only shaky representation on the international stage.  Events happened to them, rather than the Palestinians having any power to actually shape events for themselves.  What’s more, except for the Jordanians, every nation surrounding the Palestinians was actively hostile to them in some way or another, none more so than Israel.  The First Intifiada was the first time that the Palestinians took center stage in their own struggle.  It was also the event that marked the genesis of Hamas.

Understanding Hamas

Hamas is a terrorist organization, but it’s not only a terrorist organization.  It’s a political party, but also a social movement.  It’s both an “anti-system” party and semi-democratic (when the circumstances are right).  In other words, to pigeon hole Hamas or worse, to pigeon hole “supporters” of Hamas as one thing or another misses lots of nuance.

Hamas was created in the immediate aftermath of the First Intifada and moved quickly to organize on the ground in Gaza to help those who were participating in protests.  With the PLO in exile, Hamas was better positioned to render aid and, therefore, gain popular support among Palestinians.  In 1988, Hamas published its charter which was unequivocal in its desire to destroy the state of Israel.  This message was reiterated in a pamphlet published in the summer of 1988, unambiguously titled “From the Sea to the River,” a reference to a desire to create a Palestinian state (and thus destroy Israel) from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.  However, for all of its anti-Israeli sentiment, Hamas did not carry out any suicide attacks within Israeli borders until April 1994, in response to Israeli settler violence at the Mosque of the Patriarchs in Hebron which left 29 Palestinians dead and over 100 injured.  While Hamas was planning and thinking about how best to carry out suicide attacks for several years by that point, the timing of this first attack cannot be ignored.

While suicide attacks are what Hamas is infamous for, that is not the only thing the organization provides.  In fact, most of Hamas’ yearly expenditures are allocated to social services: housing and unemployment assistance, food pantries and soup kitchens, schools and playgrounds, hospitals and medical clinics.  These services are especially important in Gaza where, after Israeli “disengagement” in 2005, Palestinians have been unable to travel outside of the territory except in extreme circumstances related to medical needs.  It’s easy to label Hamas’ motivations for providing this aid to Gazans as craven – after all, people are a lot more likely to ignore the violent aftertaste of suicide bombings when the organization carrying them out is also putting a roof over your family’s head, food on the table, and making your kids feel better when they get sick.  While there is certainly truth to this, the group is nevertheless providing vital services to the Palestinian people (and, it should be noted, with the tacit consent of Israel who allows Qatar to funnel money for humanitarian projects to the group).

Hamas has also been involved in political projects almost since its inception.  At first, its members ran for seats in professional and student unions throughout the Palestinian Territories, abided by election results, and opposed PA attempts to appoint rather than elect mayors and municipal councils as antidemocratic.  Eventually, they would run for positions on city councils, though the question of whether to participate in parliamentary elections was a much thornier one because of concerns that running for seats in a national governing body created by the Oslo Accords might mean implicit acceptance of the peace agreement which Hamas roundly panned as selling out the Palestinian cause.  

When Hamas finally came around to the importance of competing for seats in parliamentary elections, mostly to combat the corruption that was rampant in the PA, its victory in such endeavors was thwarted – not just by factions of the PLO, but by the United States as well, which supported efforts by Yasser Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, to undermine Hamas’ electoral success.  Hamas, for its part, chose to participate in the 2006 elections precisely because it hoped that its willingness to participate in the democratic process would cause international actors to take it more seriously as a representative of Palestinian national aspirations.  

Instead, the old guard of the PA (Abbas and company) watched as the US and other international actors cut off all international aid to the new government which led to massive strikes by government officials who couldn’t receive a salary.  Furthermore, as president of the PA, Abbas had the power to issue executive orders himself that undercut Hamas at every turn.  The net result was to completely freeze Hamas out of the political process which itself is currently in a state of suspended animation: there have been no presidential elections since 2005 (Abbas’ first term in office technically expired in 2009) and no parliamentary elections since 2006.  Because of Israel’s disengagement from and blockade of Gaza, the Palestinians now, functionally, have two competing governments – one in Gaza (Hamas) and one in the West Bank (the Palestinian Authority) – neither of which recognize the authority of the other.

However, it cannot be ignored that Hamas showed during the 2000s that it was willing to soften its rhetoric toward Israel when it felt that doing so would garner more support from the international community.  In 2002, one Hamas leader argued that if Israel would withdraw to the 1967 borders and agree to a long-term cease fire (at least two decades), the Palestinians would be so busy building their own state that they wouldn’t care what Israel was doing next door.  He was killed in an Israeli air strike the next year.  Hamas’ decision to participate in 2006 elections was similarly designed to show the international community that it was willing to work toward, if not peace, at least a cessation of hostilities, but that decision was met with massive resistance from the Palestinian Authority, the United States, and Israel.  The unilateral disengagement of Israel from Gaza in 2006 only exacerbated the problems in Gaza.  While Israel argues that it no longer “occupies” Gaza, it certainly controls Gaza as every border crossing, the shoreline, and the air are controlled by Israeli forces and people can only leave Gaza in cases of great medical hardship.

When I was in Israel in 2009, I took this picture along the main pedestrian thoroughfare in Bethlehem.  This is Hamas graffiti (the larger image is “Hamas” in Arabic, the longer phrase in the upper left hand corner of the picture is the full name of the organization, harakat al-muqawima al-Islamiyya, in Arabic).  

This was fairly emblematic of where the Palestinians were in 2009.  Familiarity bred contempt, and Hamas was seen more favorably in the West Bank because Palestinians there were sick of the corruption in the Palestinian Authority.  The situation in Gaza was somewhat different because Hamas was able to galvanize support after the Israeli military excursion known as Operation: Cast Lead in late-2008 and early-2009.  The Israeli Defense Forces were accused during Cast Lead of collective punishment, excessive use of force, and the use of white phosphorus weapons, which are known to cause painful burns on the skin of anyone exposed to them.  Hamas was accused of using the civilian population of Gaza as human shields and attacking civilians in Israel with indiscriminate missile strikes.  This was neither the first time nor the last that both sides have been accused of legion bad behaviors. This happens in nearly every military confrontation they have, including the current conflict.

Let the reader understand: Much of the news coverage of Hamas over the last two weeks has created a two-dimensional caricature of the organization.  It is possible to both recognize that Hamas’ tactics are criminal and that Hamas has changed and altered its rhetoric and behavior when the situation called for a different approach.  We must also confront the fact that Hamas’ intransigence cannot be divorced from Israeli actions toward the Palestinians.  While there is no guarantee that Hamas’ stated desire to work within the system after the 2006 elections would have come to fruition, it is absolutely certain that such moderation was never going to happen after the total Israeli blockade of Gaza and American support of PA actions to undermine the group’s ability to govern following its victory.  Furthermore, simply condemning Hamas as an organization that refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist ignores the internal debates in the organization about whether that is still truly representative of the group’s position or simply a rhetorical position that it takes when strategically convenient.  

Where We Are Today

The last two years have featured both an escalation in the conflict in the West Bank and a concomitant hardening of political positions among Israelis and Palestinians alike.  Prime Minister (again) Benjamin Netanyahu, long a hard-liner in Israeli politics, has appointed far right-wing ministers to his cabinet who are openly hostile to Palestinian nationalism and even the need to protect Palestinian human rights.  Under Netanyahu, settlements have expanded in the West Bank, which has led to increasing restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement along with the expected appropriation of Palestinian land by Israelis and the demolition of Palestinian neighborhoods, villages, and farmland.  Beatings, arrests, and deaths among Palestinians have also skyrocketed over the last two years with 2023 already on pace (prior to this conflict) to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories in the last 20 years.  Attacks by Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews against Palestinians as well as Israelis excursions to the top of the Temple Mount (home of the Dome of the Rock and off limits to Jews) have also increased with little to no effort by Israeli officials to deter them.

Despite Gaza no longer being “occupied” as such, there is no freedom in Gaza.  All of the border crossings are closed to Palestinians, there is an Israeli naval blockade, and Israeli drones and aircraft patrol the airspace above Gaza.  It is, in essence, an open air prison for almost 2 million people, half of whom live below the poverty line, nearly 50% of whom are unemployed, and the majority of whom are 18 or under with few prospects for a better life.  Furthermore, Gaza’s utilities are provided predominantly by Israel (the rest are provided by Egypt) who has been known to turn off the electricity to all or part of Gaza as collective punishment for attacks by militants (a violation of international law).  Because of fuel shortages (as fuel is also provided by Israel), hospitals in Gaza often face the reality of generator power that may or may not last until either the power is turned back on or fuel supplies can be replenished.

Let the reader understand: 75 years of occupation, refugee camps, and Israeli actions that amount to violations of international law and/or war crimes have created a sense of anger, resentment, and restiveness among the Palestinians.  In The West Wing’s four episode arc related to this issue, perhaps the most important observation comes from Kate Harper (played by Mary McCormick):

However repugnant Hamas’ activities – not just two weeks ago, but throughout its history – to divorce its actions from the on-going resistance to Israeli occupation ignores important context and ties the hands of everyone who wants to try to fix this situation.  The Palestinians have ample reason to continue to be angry with the Israeli government (and their own, for that matter).  Hamas cannot be bombed out of existence as long as the conditions that gave rise to its existence remain.  Over half of the residents of Gaza are now displaced; many of them have no homes to return to because of Israeli bombardment of their neighborhoods.  Eliminating Hamas’ command and control is a short-term fix that will not solve the real problem: until the Palestinians have freedom – freedom of movement, freedom to pursue economic opportunities, freedom to have a state of their own, the anger, the resentment that birthed Hamas will remain and in five or ten or fifteen years, the children who have lost most or all of their families in the last two weeks will be the next leaders of Hamas or something worse.

The Tragedy of Occupation

As we have learned more about the Israelis who were killed or kidnapped two weeks ago, the deep human tragedy of this whole ordeal, not just the events of October 7, but the circumstances that preceded it have become terribly apparent.  Many of the people Hamas killed or kidnapped were deeply committed to peace and to advocating for a new way of doing things that would make lives better for both Palestinians and Israelis.  One of the women who was kidnapped is a leader of an Israeli women’s organization whose sole purpose was the meet women and children leaving Gaza for medical treatment in Israel to accompany them to the hospital, keep them company, communicate with their families in Gaza, and ensure that those people were safe, cared for, and not alone.  These women realized that they could not convince Benjamin Netanyahu or his government to change their policies, but they could take steps to ease the discomfort of those Palestinians who needed medical care and were not given permission to have any family accompany them.  

Hamas has set the cause of the Palestinians back not just because they have given the Israeli government, already hostile to Palestinian demands for self-determination, an excuse to respond to its actions with massive military force, but also because they have trampled, maybe irreparably, on the goodwill of Israelis who want a different path forward, one that recognizes the shared humanity of Israelis and Palestinians and the shared desire to achieve a just and peaceful resolution to this 75-year-long conflict.

Hamas would not exist if not for Israeli occupation.  Hamas’ suicide bombings would not have begun if not for Israeli occupation.  The constant threat of violence against both Israeli and Palestinian civilians is a result of generations of Israeli politicians deciding to perpetuate an unjust occupation against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  What’s more, the deep human tragedy of the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories has only emboldened forces around the world who have contempt for Jewish and Muslim people.  Antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise around the world, and the events of the last two weeks have only made them more of a threat for Jewish and Muslim populations.  We have, sadly, seen the evidence of that play out in this country with the senseless killing of a young Palestinian boy in Chicago and this weekend’s murder of a Jewish leader in Detroit.  

At times like these, we must commit ourselves to being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.  We can both abhor the actions of Hamas and call for Israel to exercise restraint in its military response in Gaza.  We can condemn the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government while demanding that Israeli civilians, many of them deeply concerned with the actions of their government, be protected from violence.  We can recognize that the actions of Israeli politicians and Palestinian militants are deeply problematic and often unlawful while speaking out against rhetoric demanding collective guilt or violence against Jews and Muslims around the world.  

The excessive and terrible violence of Hamas’ attack on Israel two weeks ago must be roundly condemned.  However, that attack did not occur in a vacuum, and if we ignore the context of occupation and Israel’s policies that continue to violate the basic human rights of the Palestinian community, we cannot, will not be able to prevent another such tragedy from happening.  The United States must exhibit some real leadership and pressure the Israeli government to put an end to actions that are detrimental to a real and lasting peace.  What Hamas has done is unconscionable.  However, only one side here has any real power to end this conflict: the side with a functioning government and a powerful military.  Israel alone has the capability to end this violence once and for all.  The leadership in Israel right now has no desire to do so.  Unless and until there are real consequences to their continued oppression of the Palestinian people, this cycle of violence will continue and more people – innocent Israelis and Palestinians – will pay the price.

Why Evangelicals Suck at Sociology and Other Musings about Faith, Race, and the Way Forward

 The other night, I was on the phone with my best friend who was telling me about how she pissed off a bunch of rich white people in a Sunday School class at a suburban Baptist church which shall remain nameless.  How did she manage to piss folks off?  She suggested that acting like Jesus shouldn’t require folks to “pray about it.”  It should require people to, ya know, Act. Like. Jesus.  Either you believe that Jesus said to help the poor, visit those in prison, and care for the widow and orphan or you don’t.  No prayer necessary.  

The “Let’s pray about it” of it all gave rich white folks an excuse for inaction, to escape discomfort.  And so my best friend called them on it.  I told her (after I nearly fell off my couch laughing because...of course her Enneagram 8 self couldn’t keep her damn mouth shut) that I would have given anything to be there--if only to shout a hale and hearty “Amen!”  Needless to say, she hasn’t been back.

After a semester in which I walked my History of Religions class through the history of White American Christianity from the colonial era to the present, I have come to several conclusions--all interrelated.  I hope by the end of this blog post, all of these conclusions will coalesce into an explanation of why one group has a serious problem with the idea of “critical race theory” whatever they think THAT means (spoiler alert: they don’t have a clue) and why literally no one else does.  It’s an answer that applies to all sorts of issues--poverty, church sex abuse scandals, racism, xenophobia, etc.  

This blog post is directed at White Christian Americans.  It examines the history of White Christian America.  I don’t want anyone to get the impression that this is a condemnation of Christianity as a whole; it is not.  What it is is a call to repentance from White folks who have overwhelmingly benefitted from 400 years of American history which have overwhelmingly privileged those with light skin.  But first, a few threads to pull….

Premillennial Dispensationalism and Evangelical Fatalism

Uh oh….I just introduced a couple of $64,000 words into the discussion, didn’t I?  Fear not!  They aren’t quite as scary as they seem...except I have to introduce another $64,000 word now too.  Oops….Eschatology (the study of the end times) has always played an interesting role in American Christianity.  Prior to and, in places, after the Civil War, postmillennialism was de rigueur in most of the United States.  

Postmillennialism assumes that Jesus instituted his Kingdom on Earth before his death and through preaching, conversion, and evangelism Christians could create an environment in which Christ would return AFTER a millennium (1000 years) of Christ’s perfect Kingdom on Earth.  This was a pretty positive view of society--Christians living in harmony with each other.  So it’s easy to see why postmillennialism died off pretty quickly after the Civil War.  After all, the whole point of the Civil War was the DISharmony among people.  

After the Civil War, a wave of pessimism swept through American Christianity and premillennialism took over as the eschatological position of most American Christians.  Premillennialism argues that the world will continue to deteriorate (as it is a result of a sinful and fallen humanity) until Christ comes back to implement his millennial Kingdom.  One of the most popular iterations of premillennialism is dispensationalism.  Dispensationalism was popularized in the United States by C.I. Scofield and his Scofield Reference Bible.  

In essence, dispensationalism argued that God’s people had moved historically through a number of eras or dispensations (the number varies, though Scofield himself held to 7 dispensations).  Regardless of how many dispensations one acknowledges, everyone agrees that we are in the 6th dispensation--the age of grace.  At the end of the age of grace comes the Rapture (the bringing of all believers to Heaven) and the Tribulation (the earthly era of chaos and calamity for all non-believers in the hopes of bringing them to Christ).  Only once God’s wrath has been visited upon the non-believers will Christ’s 1000 year reign come.  Everyone with me so far?  Okay, good.

Premillennialism sees the problems of our current times as proof of an inherently fallen world that no one can fix because they are beyond humanity’s ability to fix; only divine intervention will set everything to right.  Because of its preoccupation with the sinfulness of man, it’s no surprise that many premillennialists are also Calvinists since Calvinism holds to the doctrine of original sin--that is, that Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden has been visited upon all of humanity and so only God’s grace which we do not deserve and cannot earn can save us.  More on this later….

The problem with premillennialism and Calvinism is that they both lend themselves to a certain degree of fatalism when it comes to confronting social issues--things are bad because people are sinful, and we can’t make them better so why try?  During the Civil Rights movement, Billy Graham exemplified this position when asked for his reaction to Martin Luther King’s speech at the March on Washington in 1963 (the “I Have a Dream” speech).  Graham said, “Only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.”  

When “a personal relationship with Christ” Becomes an Idol

Much of White American Christianity, and definitely White American Evangelicalism, maintains the importance of being “born again.”  The idea of a conversion experience (first mentioned in John’s Gospel and perhaps most famously portrayed in Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus) is at the heart of many a church narrative.  Indeed, this is one of the four parts of the so-called “Bebbington Quadrilateral” which lots of folks point to as the defining characteristics of evangelicalism.  

I don’t put much stock in the uniqueness of any of the 4 things on Bebbington’s list to the evangelical experience, so we won’t go into them here.  But the idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” and Jesus as a personal savior is rampant in American Christianity.  Fun fact, as an aside: I do not consider myself “born again.”  I was never “saved.”  I simply don’t remember a time when I didn’t believe Jesus was important, so there was no reason to ask him into my heart when he was already there.  Just another reason I make a TERRIBLE evangelical.  But I digress….

The idea of a personal relationship with Jesus is not bad on its face; like most idols, it only becomes problematic when it assumes an outsized place in a person’s life.  Here’s the problem, then.  When one’s Christianity becomes about “my” salvation and “my” personal relationship with Christ, any outside factors become unimportant.  “My” sins have been forgiven, so I’m good, but the rest of you?  Yeah, you’re on your own.  AND, as we’ve already discussed, humanity is inherently sinful and we can only save ourselves by accepting God’s undeserved grace.  So when any social issue is raised, the response is typically, “Well, I’m not a *insert social problem here* so this isn’t my problem.”  

This response assumes that each of us lives in our own little bubble and that the problems outside of the church mean nothing to those in the sanctuary.  This insular way of thinking is a big part of King’s critique of his White Christian brothers and sisters in “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”  A “personal relationship with Christ” is the theological brother of “rugged American individualism.”  As long as people see their actions as divorced from the consequences of those actions on those around them, they can absolve themselves of any necessity to take action to solve social problems.

Evangelism vs. Evangelicalism

So, I’ve snuck in another $64,000 word…which might actually be the root of a $64,000 question: what the hell is evangelicalism?  Well...no one really knows.  Or at least, no one can really define it.  The aforementioned Bebbington Quadrilateral lists being born again, activism, a belief in the Bible as the ultimate authority, and a belief in the importance of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to redeem mankind.  George Marsden, one of the preeminent historians of American Christianity, once glibly defined an evangelical as “anyone who likes Billy Graham.”  When I was in Cairo, an evangelical was anyone who wasn’t Orthodox or Catholic.  However, lately evangelicalism has taken on a political tinge: An evangelical is a white person who votes Republican.  By the way, the literature review it would take to look at all of the definitional issues on evangelicalism would take PAGES.  Go Google it.  You’ll find all sorts of sources to walk you through the various approaches to defining the word.

I have this thing about definitions.  I think they’re important.  But defining evangelicalism is no easy task.  The problem is that different groups, different points of view result in different definitions.  At its heart, evangelicalism should be about the evangel (Greek for “good news”--what we would call, in English, the Gospel).  And, in the early history of evangelicalism, that is what it was about.  Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield are considered some of the precursors to modern evangelical movements in the United States.  However, with the ascension of religious folks into public, often political, life since the mid-20th century, the term has taken on an irredeemably political meaning as well.  And--precisely because I believe definitions matter--this means that evangelicalism should now be viewed as a political movement, not a religious one.  

What I believe should take precedence here is not evangelicalism which is an increasingly ideological and troublesome term, but evangelism.  “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  If this is the backbone of the Christian witness, then let’s get back to that.  Let’s also remember that the whole purpose of calling ourselves “Christian” is to follow Christ, to live out his example.  That’s the whole point of our baptismal covenant (“Buried with Christ in baptism; raised to walk in the newness of life.”).  We are followers of Christ.  We should look to his example in the Gospels (the evangel) to show us the way forward.  

Care for the least of these, be peacemakers, help the poor, the widows, and the orphans.  THIS is the way of the Lord.  Preach the Gospel all the time; when necessary, use words (NOT a quote from St. Francis of Assisi, to whom it is often attributed.  He also, while we’re killing St. Francis quote dreams, did not come up with the so-called “Prayer of St. Francis.”).  The evangel was--and is--revolutionary.  The last shall be first, and the first shall be last turns the balance of power in society completely on its head.  If we stick to evangelism, we might just get a lot farther as Christians than getting stuck in the constant cycle of arguing about whether Jesus was a Republican or a Democrat.

Why Evangelicals don’t do Sociology

A couple of weeks ago, one of my fellow teachers posted on Facebook, regarding all of the anti-Critical Race Theory legislation being passed around the country, that as history teachers, we cannot, nor should we shirk our responsibility to teach the good, the bad, and the ugly of our nation’s heritage.  One of the pastors at the church she attends commented (predictably) that racism was about the inherent fallenness of mankind and anything that looked at class-based theories put kids on a slippery slope toward Marxism.  

It was at this point that I realized that the primary disconnect between evangelicals and sociologists such as myself.  When people who have made an idol of a personal relationship with Jesus, who believe that all of the bad in the world is the result of the fallenness of man, only see social problems through an individualistic lens, they cannot, will not, see the social forest for the individual trees.  As a sociologist, I don’t have the time to look at each individual’s actions, beliefs, or level of sinfulness.  It’s simply impractical.   Sociology is the study of society, of social groups.  Sociologists must necessarily transcend the individual level in order to get anything accomplished because 7 billion case studies would be...a LOT.

When evangelicals look at racism, they see their own lives: “I’m not a racist.”  But individual racism is only the tip of the iceberg.  Restrictive housing covenants, criminal codes regarding drugs that unfairly target minorities, literacy tests given only to Blacks trying to register to vote, redlining and predatory lending practices, food deserts, underfunded schools, and the hyper policing of Black and Brown communities are among the things sociologists talk about when we talk about structural or institutional racism.  Falling back on the individualist view of sin and social problems absolves evangelicals of looking at how generations of white folks have benefitted from policies that not only helped them, but actively hurt minority communities.

This individualist vs. structural divide informs a number of social debates in the United States.  Sex abuse scandals are a result of the sin of those who have abused their power, not the misogyny that permeates complementarian doctrine or the structures and institutions that enabled that abuse to happen in the first place.  Gun violence is the result of the sinfulness of the individual gunmen, not the structures of toxic masculinity, the glorification of militance as manliness, and the idol of “individual protection” that lead people to act out in such ways.  Poverty is the result of individual choices, not the generational passing down of wealth (or the lack thereof) that affects an individual’s starting point in life.  Evangelicals simply cannot see the world in sociological terms because they have a blind spot to the interconnectedness of people groups, social problems, and the very real fact that nothing, not one thing, in life exists in a vacuum.  

When my best friend pushed back against the idea of “praying about it” before helping the poor (the context of this particular discussion in Sunday School), she was challenging the idolatry of a personal relationship with Jesus.  Before anyone can act or address an obvious social problem, they should pray about it as an individual because their salvation, their sin is paramount.  This is a total subversion of the Gospel message.  Jesus didn’t pray about whether he should help the poor; he just helped the poor.  Jesus didn’t pray about whether he should heal the leper or help the lame to walk or the blind to see; he simply did it--even when doing so was sure to irritate the religious leaders of his day.  A more truthful response would be “I don’t want to do this because it makes me uncomfortable.”  Not spiritually satisfying, but certainly more truthful.

Furthermore, the obsession with the inherent sinfulness of people (the Calvinism of it all) and the fact that said sinfulness is so deeply entrenched that only the second coming of Christ can serve as a corrective (the premillennialism of it all) means that evangelicals can simply throw up their hands and say, “See?  We can’t do anything about it!”  Again, this is a complete subversion of evangel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  He didn’t have a lot of patience for those who wanted to preserve the status quo.  He wanted his disciples to go and change the conversation.  He upended the status quo just as surely as he upended the money changers’ tables in the Temple.  At no point in his ministry did Jesus throw up his hands and say, “Oh well….Guess that’s just the way it is.”  If we claim to be followers of this Jesus character, we shouldn’t do that either.

If White evangelicalism is a corrupted movement, then what should we do?  How, then, shall we live?  We should live out an example in the image of Christ.  We should love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, upend the status quo when it inhibits progress (which is almost all of the time), and confront structural factors that maintain White supremacy.  We should be comfortable with discomfort, ready to confront our own biases, and accept that life has been unfairly good to people who won the genetic lottery.