Author: D. G. Hart

The Gospel Coalition and Race, Part II

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

It has been a while, but Justin Taylor posted a couple of items that might suggest the Co-Allies are not the best judges of their own attitudes toward race (as suggested in a previous post) or ethnicity. Some may want to read this post as mean-spirited, whose aim is to make the Coalition look bad. Others might say (myself among them) that the Gospel Co-Allies may want to consider better how they come across, in which case this post could be a free piece of advice from an outside consultant about the thorny realm of the politics of identity. I provoke, you decide.

The post in question here refers to the children’s book that Eric Metaxas wrote a few years ago about Squanto, the native American who saved the Pilgrims during the first informal observance of Thanksgiving. Taylor doesn’t say much, but he provides links to the Amazon cite for the book and to a CNN interview with Metaxas from a few years ago.

This is the Amazon book description:

This entertaining and historical story shows that the actual hero of the Thanksgiving was neither white nor Indian, but God. In 1608, English traders came to Massachusetts and captured a 12-year old Indian, Squanto, and sold him into slavery. He was raised by Christians and taught faith in God. Ten years later he was sent home to America. Upon arrival, he learned an epidemic had wiped out his entire village. But God had plans for Squanto. God delivered a Thanksgiving miracle: an English-speaking Indian living in the exact place where the Pilgrims land in a strange new world.

In his interview, Metaxas tells the host that this story was a “beautiful thing,” a “picture of the harmony we had right at the beginning of our history.”

Maybe I’m jaded or simply Reformed, but I am not sure that this story is where you want to go to pull the rabbit out of the hat of “God will and does provide for his people.” Calling it a miracle without addressing the pain and suffering does seem too sunny-side up and it hardly comports with the narratives of the Old Testament. It reminded me of the Sunday school stories I would hear where teachers spared students from the dark side of human suffering or the troubling realities that did not fit with a Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know view of the world. And there is plenty of dark in this story — slavery, European treatment of native Americans, and possibly even racism (if you want to go there). And yet Justin encourages us to view this with the tidy bow of God’s miracle in saving his people? Does it not take a little insensitivity to ignore the brutal treatment of native Americans? Or should not a Christian at least talk about the hidden ways of God? Instead, we get an “inspirational” story that allows us to feel warm about our turkey dinners and the meaning of Thanksgiving.

Here’s a piece of advice to Justin: take this post down before someone who cares about social justice, racism, and the rights of native Americans — at least those outside the genteel and rosy Coalition circles — sees it. (Or at least change the graphics since I am not sure native Americans are supposed to look so European.)

Speaking of Moral Ambiguity

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

I have been reading The New Republic since grad school days. It is not as good now as it was in the days when Andrew Sullivan was editor (and I don’t say this to pay him back for a mention of my book). Back then it was provocative, funny, and well written. Stephen Glass likely accounts for some of the magazine’s dullness these days. But the “back of the book,” the arts and book review section, continues to be one of the best. Where else can you read a put down like the following of Harold Bloom?

Bloom and I were once employed by the same academic department. I hasten to add, lest there be a question of bias, that my decade at Yale left me feeling little toward him one way or the other. I never even met the man. Having fulfilled the dream of academics everywhere by renouncing as many obligations toward his home department as practicably possible—meetings, committee assignments, duties in the graduate program, every responsibility except undergraduate teaching—Bloom had long since become, as he likes to put it, “a department of one.” I think I only saw him about three times.

Which is not to say he wasn’t sometimes on my mind. At a certain point during my sojourn at the institution, I started to develop the Heart of Darkness theory of the Yale English department. Conrad’s novel is about colonialism and racism and the shadowed reaches of the human heart, but it is also a dissection of bureaucracy. My first clue came when I realized that my chairman was a perfect double for the manager of the Central Station, that creepy functionary who has “no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even,” who “could keep the routine going—that’s all.” But what clinched it was the recognition of the role that Bloom played in the paradigm. Bloom was Mr. Kurtz. (Marlow, broken by his African ordeal, was any number of my senior colleagues, their souls crushed by the tenure process. The “pilgrims”—that pack of hopeful fools who set off into the jungle in pursuit of a chimerical fortune—were the graduate students.)

Since I have of late been defending celebrity academics (or their athletic coaches) from easy put downs, let me explain that the appeal of this depiction is what it says about American higher education. If folks believe that Division One athletics is a problem, they may also want to consider a system that employs professors not to assume normal faculty responsibilities.

But the point of this post is to call attention to the wonderful description of the moral perplexities that confronted the United Kingdom at the time of the Civil War in the United States. The following from a review of Amanda Foreman’s book, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random House, 2011), proves to this 2k equivocator that people in power seldom have an easy time determining the “right” thing to do:

FREEDOM is a rangy, broad-shouldered value, capable of heavy rhetorical lifting. Liberals had coalesced around another form of freedom: free trade, the bedrock of British industrialization. Abolitionism had taken root in the partly protectionist, largely rural soil of late eighteenth-century Britain. Now panting, shrieking trains ripped through a land studded by smokestacks and mines; conurbations crawled over hillsides like great black snakes. Touring the factory towns spawned by late industrialization, Friedrich Engels described the socially deadening grind of workers who toiled interminable shifts at the steam-powered looms, trudged home to fetid slums, supped on potato parings, and nursed their babies on gin.

Engels likened factory labor to enslavement, but Lancashire textile workers in fact owed their livelihood to American slaves. Rhymed Punch:

Though with the North we sympathize,

It must not be forgotten,

That with the South we’ve stronger ties,

Which are composed of cotton.

Textiles were Britain’s biggest business, and cotton from the deep South was its biggest source. The Union blockade of Southern ports snipped the supply line to millions of Britons reliant on the industry. The resulting “cotton famine” hit hard and fast: within a year, 400,000 British workers were unemployed or nearly so, putting their 1.5 million dependents at risk. State welfare cases quadrupled in months. Even the staunchest abolitionists, Prime Minister Palmerston included, had to see the crisis in Lancashire as a more pressing humanitarian problem for the government than the plight of far-off slaves. Recognizing the Confederacy, or at least evading the blockade, could restore the cotton supply, while joining the Union might deepen and prolong the suffering at home.

Then there was the political freedom that Liberals championed abroad: the freedom of people to govern themselves. Palmerston—whose “attitudes,” Foreman nicely observes, “had been formed in the age when wigs and rouge were worn by men as well as women”—had made his reputation as a defender of national self-determination, in Belgium, Greece, Italy, and Hungary. (Never mind that he also sent in gunboats to assert British power in the Middle East and China.) Why not the Confederate States of America? “The South fight for independence; what do the North fight for except to gratify passion or pride?” asked the home secretary. The rising Liberal star William Ewart Gladstone fancied he saw shades of Garibaldi in Jefferson Davis. “We may have our own opinions about slavery,” Gladstone declared the day after the Emancipation Proclamation ran in the Times, “we may be for or against the South, but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders … have made a nation.” (Gladstone, later revered as the “People’s William,” had delivered his maiden speech defending his plantation-owning father’s treatment of slaves.) Give the Confederacy political freedom, these men assumed, and freedom from slavery would follow.

I Am A Bigger Man Than Angelo Cataldi But Not Joe Paterno

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

The latest news of Joe Pa’s firing led Angelo to inaugurate his 6:00 am show today with these words, “Justice has been served.” This is a peculiar rendering of the situation. Authorities have brought allegations of sexual abuse by a former Penn State Coach. That coach is out on bail. The trial has not started. He is, according to American jurisprudence, innocent. No jury has pronounced him guilty. No judge has issued a sentence. But not Joe Pa, according to Angelo. Joe is guilty of covering up an act which has yet to be proven. “Unfrigginbelievable” does not do justice to the leaps in legal and moral logic in this declaration.

Just to keep tabs on Angelo’s moral imbecility, today he called Sandusky’s problem — the guy who is alleged to have abused the boys — “mental.” Angelo also admitted that Joe Pa was not guilty of breaking any law, but he was morally culpable. This is convenient for a man who sponsors an annual wing-eating contest where sexual perversions (all consensual and hetero, of course) add zest to the already “hot” wings. I would like to see Angelo devote an entire show to the moral difference between sexual failings and poor judgment. I would also like Angelo to explain what exactly he knows about the situation since so much of it remains murky. Earlier in the week Angelo referred to the incident in the shower as “rape.” Now he is calling it “groping” and “fondling.” Angelo is ignorant. But he “knows” that it could not have been any of the kinds of tomfoolery that goes on in boys and men’s locker rooms. From his vantage 220 miles and ten years away, the incident had to be foul and libidinous, and that Joe’s knowledge of it was fouler and wicked.

Meanwhile, Angelo and crew mocked the Penn State students who rioted last night. One of WIP’s other hosts, Big Daddy Graham, called for closing the entire university, that is how immoral the situation is. Never did it dawn on any of these radio hosts that they are as hysterical as the PSU fans of Joe. Nor did they consider how the media feeding frenzy may have contributed to the clunky — to say the least — handling of Joe’s dismissal and the reaction from PSU students. (Could not the University have suspended Joe for the rest of the season and then let him retire?) Then again, these folks have no moral imagination whatsoever. I guess when they are right, the mysteries of human existence evaporate.

But someone with a moral imagination might also consider what the parents of these boys knew and when they knew it. I know it is wrong to blame the victim. But if the problem in this scenario is the god-like status of Joe Paterno, his ability to raise money for the school because of his squeaky clean image, and the school’s need to keep Joe Pa’s idol free from any tarnish, then didn’t the parents of these boys contribute to the problem? Weren’t they sending their boys to these programs precisely because of their adulation of Joe Pa and colleagues? To be sure, such idolatry does not deserve sexual abuse. But Joe’s pristine image was the creation of more than PSU. It included parents who wanted their boys to play there. It also involved reporters and radio talk-show hosts who fed the publicity of Division One football programs. But for Angelo, Joe alone needs to atone for the sins of all these idolaters.

Angelo deserves some credit for seeing a few moral complications. When former governor Ed Rendell came on yesterday’s show and counselled caution and letting the gears of justice grind, Angelo wondered if Rendell had actually known about the situation at PSU during his tenure in Harrisburg. This raised the same moral problem of what did Rendell know and when did he know it, and whether the governor was actually guilty of the same indiscretion as Joe Pa. But because the former governor and former mayor of Philadelphia has been a friend of Angelo’s show and is a regular on the Comcast Eagle’s post-game show (good sabbatarian that I am, I don’t watch it, really — plus we don’t get cable), Angelo was unwilling to press Rendell on his responsibility. (Angelo resembled Bunk in Season Five during Jimmy’s shenanigans.)

The one relatively interesting comment today came from Al Morganti who generally avoids Angelo’s hysteria (though he is the mastermind of Wing Bowl). Al argued that this scandal affects the entire university because PSU is beholden to the football program. That’s likely true. But Al did not go far enough. American higher education is beholden to the NCAA (at least in Division One sports). All university presidents should be looking at themselves in the mirror today and for many years to come over the dependence of their institutions on athletic programs that have almost nothing to do with an education except for paying bills (and even then the proceeds from Division One football — as I understand — go more to fund sports programs that can’t pay their bills, not to put more books in the library — though Paterno has been a champion of learning and the library at PSU in ways unimaginable with the peripatetic Nick Sabin now at Alabama).

In the end, what is most aggravating about the end of Joe’s career is that it came during a cultural moment when moral coarseness prevails but — perhaps to avoid utter degeneracy — the same culture inflicts a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy. It is the same culture that judges the founders of the United States as odious because they held and countenanced slavery. This is a form of moral discernment that brings ruin on the reputation and accomplishments of reputable and accomplished people (despite their fallenness) because of one offense. For the next several years, people will remember Paterno more for this scandal than his remarkable career and appealing persona. That persona was evident even in his two statements — one of retirement and one after being fired. No bitterness, only gratitude did he express for his beloved PSU, despite being treated fairly shabbily by administrators apparently intent on saving face.

Of course, moral perfectionists like Angelo will read Paterno’s statements cynically, as someone who is still trying to cover his behind. What Angelo and other secular Wesleyans need to remember is that the one-strike-and-you’re-out policy is a moral standard reserved for God. The rest of us schlubs, whether redeemed or not, know that we have already struck out.

But I will not retaliate in a way fitting Angelo’s self-righteousness. I will not fire him from my life even though he has shown remarkable stupidity and absurd moral discretion. I still enjoy the banter about Philadelphia sports and like to hear many of the writers that appear on the show when the hosts actually talk about sports. Still, I cling to the hope that someday Angelo will interview Paterno, Joe Pa accepts, and and the octogenarian proceeds to knock the hysterical moral bully on his ever widening can.

If I Liked Bunk, Can I Still Admire Joe Pa?

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

Morality is alive and well on the airwaves of sports talk-radio. The ethical crisis of the moment is what did Joe Paterno know about the sexual abuse of boys by a former assistant coach and when did he know it. The issue has led to remarkable moral clarity for talk-show hosts who generally embrace views that the Baylys associate with secularism and relativism in the United States. Why, Angelo Cataldi, has even called for the firing of Joe Paterno for not controlling the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the security forces of Penn State University, and not knowing every single aspect of the football program at PSU. In other words, Joe Pa should be fired for not being God.

This is not a post about sexual abuse. It is about ethical abuse.

First, Angelo and company have no apparent capacity to consider what friendships may do in preventing someone from leaning hard on a friend and colleague. Would those who are calling for Paterno’s firing be so quick to decide so categorically to eliminate a friend or relative? Isn’t one of the most persistent problems of human existence that moral ideals run up against personal allegiances all the time? Does this make violations of an ethical code right? No. But the inability to imagine the angst that someone like Paterno may have gone and still be going through is the sort of one-dimensional outlook that prevents evangelicals and other pietists from ever reading novels that explore morally ambiguous circumstances.

For instance, Bunk Moreland is one of the great characters on The Wire. And in Season Five Bunk knows what Jimmy is doing to bring a drug lord to conviction — namely, breaking the law and police regulations. Bunk disapproves mightily of Jimmy’s misdeeds. But Bunk never tells on Jimmy. Was I outraged that Bunk didn’t rat? Duh! Bunk remains one of my favorite characters despite his moral weakness. This is the stuff of life. It is likely what Joe Pa has gone through many times. (Of course, it could be that Paterno doesn’t care a wit about his former colleague or the boys the ex-coach abused. But how someone could be that cynical and that morally self-righteous all in one gulp gives my brain indigestion.)

But the moral crisis thickens when listeners remember that the show Angelo and company broadcast is sponsored by many gentlemen’s clubs where the lines distinguishing the righteous from the unrighteous are not so clear. Granted, Angelo may argue that pedophiliac sex is not consensual, is if voluntarism justifies willful lying before a grand jury or driving eighty-one miles per hour on the Ohio Turnpike. But last time I heard, human trafficking was one of the great illicit activities in our time and many of the women who come to the United States through human trafficking wind up in gentlemen’s clubs (see Season Two of The Wire). And has Angelo ever considered that some of the people who engage in the activities that transpire in gentlemen’s clubs end up being hurt by such behavior — from sexually transmitted diseases to psychological and spiritual scars that will follow the dancers and their tippers around the rest of their lives?

So it is not at all clear that Angelo and others who self-righteously condemn Joe Paterno are all that free and clear from the moral law they so eagerly enforce.

Will I be disappointed if it turns out that Joe Pa looked the other way too many times and didn’t seek to protect kids from lecherous men? Yes. But I am also disappointed in a talk-show host who (while driving my wife nuts when he talks about babes and boobs) is generally entertaining but so morally obtuse not to see that most days he should be disappointed in himself before pointing out the moral failings of others.

Thinking Curmudgeonly Thoughts After the Curmudgeon

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The recent post about boundary-set and center-set distinctions, which only confuse rather than clarify the differences between the PCA and the Gospel Coalition, was not original. The Christian Curmudgeon notes that he published a piece in World magazine all the way back in 1996 that criticized these categories as the church growth movement was formulating (and Tim Keller was imbibing) them.

These are but two movements that represent an attempt to create Christian unity by substituting a new paradigm of thinking for the traditional. Leave it to the Church Growth Movement to name these paradigms.

The traditional paradigm is called “boundary-set thinking.” Boundary setters write creeds and confessions and use them to judge where people stand in relation to the truth. Those who affirm the creed or confession are inside the boundary. Others are outside.

The new paradigm is called “center-set thinking.” Center-set thinkers are concerned not with boundaries but with direction. Jesus Christ and the gospel are the center and the question about any person is not, “Is he inside the boundary?” but, “Is he moving in the right direction?”

But it is at this very point that the new paradigm has a problem. Who is the Jesus at the center? The Jesus of Arius or Athanasius? Which gospel are we moving toward? The gospel of Rome, Geneva, or the Crystal Cathedral?

No matter how great it is when minds of a certain caliber think the same thoughts, it is embarrassing to be conceiving those ideas some fifteen years later. Kudos to the Curmudgeon for his insights and apologies to readers for redundancy.

Two-Kingdom Theology and Professional Sports Fans

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Protestant athletes are in the news — Tim Tebow, of Bible-verse eyeblack fame, and David Freese of World Series heroism (thanks to our D.C. correspondent). The reasons for the attention to these athletes say a lot about the differences between evangelicalism and confessional Protestantism. Practically anyone who watches sports knows that Tebow is a Christian and for good reason since he exhibits the typical born-again wear-it-on-your-sleeve (or in this case cheek) piety. Practically no one knew that Freese is a Missouri Synod Lutheran, and again this is fitting since confessionalists prefer not to draw attention to themselves.

Brian Phillips at Grantland (thanks to one of Reformed Forum’s listeners) has a very funny and poignant essay about Tebow. He is particularly interested in the way that the Denver quarterback is carrying the weight — likely intentionally — of the culture wars on his strong back. People either love or hate Tebow and it seems to depend on whether one is a Christian or one is anti-Christian. But Phillips points out astutely how stupid rooting against Tebow is:

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the universe is radically meaningless. If that’s the case, then when Tebow wins, it’s a fluke that doesn’t prove anything. When he loses, it’s also a fluke that doesn’t prove anything. For his losing to mean anything, it has to tie into some larger cosmic order, and if it does, then it can’t prove that there isn’t one. Since no one really knows whether the universe is meaningless or not, things rapidly grow confusing. Tebow scoring a two-point conversion on an off-tackle power play could prove that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, or it could, well, not. Tebow’s getting picked off after telegraphing a pass could doom us to a state of terrifying metaphysical uncertainty, especially if we are the Broncos’ quarterbacks coach. But if you’re against Tebow, you can’t read too much into Tebow’s failures, or else Tebow has already won.

I myself have no dog in this fight, partly because the National Football League holds less and less interest, and also because the Tebow story hasn’t grabbed any part of me.

At the same time, I have plenty of reason to root against Freese (though it is too late for that) since he is part of a team that took down my beloved Phillies (and he had some hand in doing that). If I were an evangelical and my faith went “all the way down,” then I’d have to root for another confessional Protestant (better if he were Reformed — and didn’t play on the Lord’s Day). But two-kingdom theology is remarkably handy in allowing me to separate my ecclesial convictions from rooting interests. So while I appreciate Freese’s church affiliation as a confessional Protestant, as a native of Philadelphia I hope the Cardinals recognize his value and trade him to Major League Baseball’s equivalent of hell — the Houston Astros.

What's the Difference between a Modernist and a Fundamentalist?

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For those with stomachs to read, a revealing discussion is going on over at the Gospel Coalition and at Mere Orthodoxy about the debate between Al Mohler and Jim Wallis over social justice. What is striking in the original post which summarizes the debate, and in reactions from people who would appear to be evangelical, is how many born-again Protestants refer to social justice with a straight face. One reason someone might say “social justice” with a raised eyebrow is that critics of the Enlightenment, like Alisdair MacIntyre in Whose Justice, Which Rationality, suggested long ago that ideas like justice are a lot more complicated and owe a lot more to social settings like Enlightened Europe than the are abstract truths that everyone knows for sure and can readily implement.

An additional wrinkle in this discussion is how some evangelicals bend and twist in order to attach works to faith, sanctification to justification, word to deed, in order to add social justice to the proclamation of the gospel. Not to sound like Glenn Beck, but social justice is not only threatening the United States, but it’s also doing a number on evangelical Protestantism (and so many thought born-again Protestants were conservative; have I got a book for them?)

So to add a little clarity (as our mid-western correspondent reminded me this morning), I bring to mind the views of the modernist Harry Emerson Fosdick and the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan on the task of the church (and the problem of doctrinal divisions) in alleviating social problems. Important to see is that both sides want a relevant faith and castigate denominational or theological differences. I don’t know how born-again infatuation with social justice will work out any differently for evangelicals than it did for their grandparents in mainline Protestantism. Another bad ending to a religious story.

Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” (1922)

The second element which is needed if we are to reach a happy solution of this problem is a clear insight into the main issues of modern Christianity and a sense of penitent shame that the Christian Church should be quarreling over little matters when the world is dying of great needs. If, during the war, when the nations were wrestling upon the very brink of hell and at times all seemed lost, you chanced to hear two men in an altercation about some minor matter of sectarian denominationalism, could you restrain your indignation? You said, “What can you do with folks like this who, in the face of colossal issues, play with the tiddledywinks and peccadillos of religion?” So, now, when from the terrific questions of this generation one is called away by the noise of this Fundamentalist controversy, he thinks it almost unforgivable that men should tithe mint and anise and cummin, and quarrel over them, when the world is perishing for the lack of the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith. . . .

The present world situation smells to heaven! And now, in the presence of colossal problems, which must be solved in Christ’s name and for Christ’s sake, the Fundamentalists propose to drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration. What immeasurable folly!

William Jennings Bryan, “Freedom of Religion and the Ku Klux Klan” (1924)

The world is coming out of the war, the bloodiest ever known. Thirty millions of human lives were lost, three hundred billions of property was destroyed, and the debts of the world are more than six times as greate as they were when the first fun was fired.

My friends, how are you going to stop war? . . . There is only one thing that can bring peace to the world, and that is the Prince of Peace. That is, my friends, the One who, when He came upon the earth, the angels said, “On earth, good will toward men. . . . Is it possible that now, when Jesus is more needed, I say the hope of the world — is it possible that at this time, in this great land, we are to have a religious discussion and a religious warfare? Are you going my friends, to start a blaze that may cause you innumerable lives, sacrificed on the altar of religious liberty? I cannot believe it.

(P.S. Bryan’s speech was to the Democratic National Convention and in response to a report that proposed to exclude the KKK. The double irony is that the Democratic Party was a place where Christian appeals prevailed, and that such a faith as Bryan’s “conservative Presbyterianism” could embrace white supremacists for the sake of a civil religion that sought to apply Christ to social problems. In which case, it’s another proof of the errors both religious and secular that follow when you mix faith and politics — you get social gospel.)

What's The Difference Between the Gospel Coalition and the PCA?

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

If this were a joke, the punchline might be, “only Tim Keller’s hair dresser knows for sure.” Ba dop bop!

I understand that this question might wind up some readers, especially those who think the Gospel Co-Allies do no wrong. But it is one that need not be pejorative. It could say good things about the Gospel Coalition, for example, that it resembles the PCA. Since the latter is still a Reformed church and Reformed churches are good things, a comparison between the Coalition and a Reformed church could be possitive. Of course, the answer to the question could go the other way and liken the PCA to the Gospel Coalition, a parachurch agency that fancies itself Reformed.

The reason the question could go either way is the lengthy explanation that Tim Keller and D. A. Carson gave (though the text uses the first person singular several times) to the recent imbroglio over James MacDonald’s invitation to T.D. Jakes. They distinguish between a “boundary-bounded set” and a “center-bounded set,” and claim that the Coalition has always been a center-bounded institution. I’m still scratching my head over these concepts. They sound more like sociology than ecclesiology and I tend to be skeptical when ministers or theologians employ jargon outside their own expertise. Be that as it may, the use of these concepts does not necessarily clarify the difference between a parachurch agency like the Coalition and a Reformed denomination like the PCA.

First, the nature of a boundary-bounded body:

. . . you establish boundaries to determine who is “in” and who is “outside” the set—whether the set of true believers, or the set of faithful Presbyterians, or the set of evangelicals, or any other set. For the boundary to have any hope of doing its job, it has to be well defined. If the definitions are sloppy, the boundary keeps getting pushed farther and farther out.

What makes this definition odd, especially in reference to Presbyterians, is that Keller has been involved in the recent debates over subscription within the PCA in ways that have expanded the boundaries. Even if someone wanted to interpret the recent changes in the PCA’s constitution in a conservative manner, it would be hard to read Keller’s understanding of the PCA or his presence in those debates as placing him on the side of tightening the PCA’s boundaries. In which case, I wonder if Keller really sees that big a difference between boundary- and center-bounded identities.

Next comes the center-bounded conception:

. . . center-bounded sets don’t worry too much about who is “in” and “out” at the periphery. Instead, there is a robust definition at the center. For TGC, the center is defined by our Confessional Statement (CS) and Theological Vision for Ministry (TVM) and sustained by the Council members. There we expect unreserved commitment to these foundation documents.

This still sounds to me like a boundary-bounded set up. But what makes this different is that no one can join the Coalition.

Individuals and churches may choose to identify themselves with us and use the thousands of resources on our site, but Council members do not fall into paroxysms of doubt as to whether or not this individual or that church truly belongs to TGC: we are not a denomination, and we do not have the resources to engage in the kind of vetting at the periphery that a boundary-bounded set demands. At the margins there are many who love part of what we stand for and not other parts.

So it would seem that the big difference here is membership. The PCA has members and the Coalition doesn’t. This gets confusing because Keller and Carson, among others, are “Council Members” of the Coalition. Why some parts of the Coalition have membership and others don’t is a mystery. Yet, the same thing — that some in the PCA love, Keller included, parts of what the denomination stands for and not other parts — can be said of a denomination or a boundary-bounded set. In fact, it is true of most Reformed churches. In which case, Reformed churches may actually be much more center-bounded than the Coalition, except that the center of confessional Reformed Protestantism happens to be much bigger than the Coalition’s center, and for that matter, more biblical because the Reformed confessions try to do justice the whole word of God, not simply the bits about which guys from different denominations might agree.

One last similarity comes when Keller and Carson describe the diversity of ministries that exist outside the Coalition among the various “members'” activities:

Within these bounds, Council members discharge ministries that are highly diverse, with their own networks, specific aims, and relationships with many people outside the Council. Sometimes these relationships make other Council members uncomfortable. A Council member may choose to participate in discussions with an organization known for its laxness in doctrine and practice. He may do so in order to serve as a voice for faithful Christian confessionalism within that organization. Looking at this ministry, other Council members might evaluate things differently and warn the participating Council member that he is merely being used: it would be wiser for to avoid the association. But those are judgment calls. TGC does not normally take any position on whether a Council member’s associations are wise or expedient, even though there are not a few Council members who will offer their private judgments out of genuine affection and concern for gospel fidelity and clarity.

“Within these bounds”? I thought the Coaltion was center-bounded, not boundary-bounded. Be that as it may, this description of ministry diversity could also well apply to the PCA where the ministers who belong to the denomination have any number of ministries beyond the denomination’s. Think of New Life Presbyterianism and the different agencies that this wing of the PCA sponsors. Think of the Perimeter Church of Atlanta. Or how about Briarwood in Birmingham, Alabama? But speaking of Elephants in Rooms, what about Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church? What about all of the networks that Keller has established?

Which leads to the question that I asked at the outset: how different is the Gospel Coalition from the PCA? Judging by the Tim Keller’s involvement in the Gospel Coalition and the PCA, not much.

P.S. I might actually have received more counsel on these musings from the Coalition if the Keller-Carson post had been open for comments, but not even Justin Taylor’s post about the statement permitted discussion. I guess the indirect rebuke to MacDonald was all that the Coalition could bear.

Celtic Coincidence?

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

Last night I attended a wonderful concert of Scottish folk music, performed by Julie Fowlis and her accompanying band of fiddle, guitar, and bouzouki. Ms. Fowlis plays the whistles as well as she sings. It was a glorious testimony to the creativity and endurance of the folk who live, work, and play in Scotland’s Western Isles (where I hear the whiskey is almost as good as the song).

Yesterday morning on my way to class I was reading a review in The New Republic of a new book on W. B. Yeats by R. F. Foster. As many know, Yeats had one foot in the occult and the other on planet earth. What I did not know, though I have heard various assertions about Celtic spirituality over the years, was that Yeats may have picked up an interest in the occult and supernatural from Irish Protestant culture. According to the review:

As far back as 1989, Foster was publishing arresting reflectiosn on the role of the occult in Irish Protestant culture, and this subject generatesthe most original chapter in his new book, tracking the Irish sources of Yeats’s interest in magic, secret socities, seances, and the supernatural.

“Twenty years ago,” Foster writes, “I suggested some patterns behind the atttraction of the occult for Irish Protestant writers,” ascribing that attraction in part to “Protestant insecurity and self-interrogation” in a country where elaborate Catholic and folk supernatural beliefs dominated. Foster’s chapter takes the reader on a rapid ride from stories of the supernatural to Swedenborg to the (adult) Irish fairies, establishing the theme of “a parallel world which can be entered by concentrated mental and spiritual exercise, and whose denizens engage in activities which both mirror and illuminate our own — and affect our destinies.”

So, to all of those Celtic Protestant readers out there, how much is there to this observation about Irish Protestantism? I don’t ask this to wind anyone up. When would I ever do that? I am genuinely curious and Foster’s hunch about the dominant Roman Catholic presence in Ireland makes sense. I should also mention that Foster’s book seems fairly responsible in its judgments. In Foster’s own words:

Current criticism tends to read the effusive literary productions of this era through theses such as the picaresque, or racial “othering,” or a colonized discourse which can be paralleled elsewhere in the British Empire. It might be more profitable to look at what the Irish Romantics wanted to do, what they thought they were doing, whom they admired, and how they expressed their nationalism, or sense of nationality . . . And these texts, written by Protestant Unionists determined to claim an Irish identity, were key influences on the young Yeats.

(Thus, ends my Facebook moment.)

The Gospel Coalition Goes Racial

Published on by D. G. Hart61 Comments

Several recent developments among the gospel allies have revealed that no matter how much we denounce racism, race is a category that is alive, well, obscure, and still divisive. Race, for instance, is almost as foggy as evangelicalism. Try to tell the difference and explain it briefly between race and ethnicity. Try to tell someone of African descent who came to the United States by way of Haiti that they are “black” in the same way that descendants of African-American slaves are. Try even to explain how President Obama is more black than white. Or for lighter shades of racial characteristics, try to explain how the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese, despite historic animosities, are all “Asian.” And don’t forget about the Irish, white people whom other whites – in this case Boston Brahmins – called black. Race is, as you may be able to tell, slippery. What is more, the persistent appeal to it ironically keeps alive the kind of quasi-scientific claims that fueled eugenics and other early twentieth-century schemes for preserving racial purity.

But the folks with good intentions, the allies of the gospel, keep stepping in the gooey subject of race with consequences unbecoming their wholesome (even if sappy) aims. First it was Christianity Today’s publication of an excerpt from John Piper’s new book, Bloodlines. The provocative title of the piece was, “I Was A Racist.” It chronicles Piper’s life, from his southern youth where he presumed the superiority of whites to blacks, to his days at Wheaton College where he was confronted at an InterVarsity Fellowship conference to consider the legitimacy of inter-racial marriage, to his studies in Germany which allowed him to visit concentration camps designed by the “master” Aryan race, to his decision as a middle-aged man to adopt an African-American child. Along the way, Piper employs tropes and taps sentiments designed to show the wickedness of racism, all the while he avoids a technical definition of the concept. And without a definite idea of what constitutes racism, readers don’t know if Piper really was a racist or whether his self-absolved declaration of innocence is justified.

Here’s one example of the sentimentality that lurks around Piper’s reflections:

I was, in those years, manifestly racist. As a child and a teenager my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning. Those who defend the noble spirit of Southern slaveholders by pointing to how nice they were to their slaves, and how deep the affections were, and how they even attended each other’s personal celebrations, seem to be naïve about what makes a relationship degrading.

No, she was not a slave. But the point still stands. Of course, we were nice. Of course, we loved Lucy. Of course, she was invited to my sister’s wedding. As long as she and her family “knew their place.” Being nice to, and having strong affections for, and including in our lives is what we do for our dogs too. It doesn’t say much about honor and respect and equality before God. My affections for Lucy did not provide the slightest restraint on my racist mouth when I was with my friends. . . .

So Lucy was only as good as a dog? Is that really the way that whites viewed blacks when they taught them the Bible? Do dogs have souls? Were Boston Protestants “nice” to Irish Roman Catholics? And was this sort of treatment the same that the Nazis showed to Jews? Whatever the answers to these questions – and they will be decidedly mixed depending on the answerers’ bloodlines – Piper avoids a systematic treatment of race and opts instead for associations. Please do not misunderstand. Slavery was abhorrent, skin-color based slavery more so. But do we need to liken slavery to the Holocaust in order to condemn it? Meanwhile, notice the flip side of these associations – Piper’s kin were the equivalent of the Nazis. Is this any way to regard our families (as if Nazis were only evil all the time, as if people who believe in total depravity would locate wickedness in one ethnic group)?

Another observation to make about Piper’s piece is the way that adopting a child of African descent seems bestow racial innocence. I admire Piper for doing this, and for the kind of life he tries to lead by living in a specific neighborhood in Minneapolis. But is he not aware of African-Americans who might regard his adoption as simply another way of saying that “some of my best friends are black”? Of course, the folks who might say this about Piper, from Al Sharpton to Cornel West, could be harboring views of race and racism that a person of European descent could never avoid. But if that’s the case – which it is (think about Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team) – then why bring up race at all? Why not write a book about families, adoption, and urban living? Why the need to talk about private matters that are so patently alarming and have the potential for manipulation? If evangelicals read and adopt this book as a clear and incisive statement on race, they will surely be surprised the next time they enter a discussion or read a news item which reveals how deep and contested are the politics of identity.

One more thing — why does Piper not apply his assumptions about diversity to African-American churches? When I taught a course on religion in Philadelphia I showed students some videos from the African Methodist Episcopal Church and from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, not at the same time, but to cover the African-American experience one week and the experience of some ethnic-Europeans another. What was striking in these videos was how proud the African-American churches were of being black. They made no effort to reflect the diversity of their congregations because they didn’t have much racial or ethnic diversity. But not so for the Lutherans. We saw Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and even European-Americans in the Lutheran videos, even though the appeal of Lutheranism outside German and Scandinavian settings is tiny.

This does not mean that Lutherans or Piper are wrong to seek diversity in their churches. It does mean that if diversity is a biblical imperative – as opposed to an outgrowth of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism – then Piper should be communicating to black church leaders the importance of enfolding white’s and Asians into their congregations. But if he did that, would he be able to claim that he WAS a racist and isn’t one anymore?

Around the same time that Piper’s piece appeared in Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition was engaged in some soul searching thanks to James McDonald’s decision to interview T. D. Jakes for Elephant Room. The problem apparently (since I don’t know the work of MacDonald except for the excruciatingly painful video he did with Mark Driscoll and Mark Dever about pastoral ministry, nor do I know about T. D. Jakes except for Don Imus’ regular invoking of and praise for the bishop — note the irony) was the terms under which MacDonald invited Jakes. Was Jakes a fellow believer in gospel? Or was and is he guilty of faulty view of the Trinity? MacDonald’s explanation of the situation was not good enough for a number of bloggers, white and black. The problem was particularly the mixed message that MacDonald (and by extension) the Gospel Coalition would send to the black church about the doctrine of the Trinity. According to Thabiti Anyabwile:

The news of T.D. Jakes’ invitation to The Elephant Room is widespread and rightly lamented by many. I’m just adding a perspective that hasn’t yet been stated: This kind of invitation undermines that long, hard battle many of us have been waging in a community often neglected by many of our peers. And because we’ve often been attempting to introduce African-American Christians to the wider Evangelical and Reformed world as an alternative to the heresy and blasphemy so commonplace in some African-American churches and on popular television outlets, the invitation of Jakes to perform in ‘our circles’ simply feels like a swift tug of the rug from beneath our feet and our efforts to bring health to a sick church.

Justin Taylor jumped on the bandwagon. “The most sobering and painful commentary on this controversy has been penned by Thabiti Anyabwile and Anthony Carter, who have both labored winsomely and heroically for a reformation in the black church and see this invitation as a tremendous setback for the cause of grace and truth. I’d encourage you to consider their perspective on something like this.”

What is remarkable in this reaction to MacDonald is, first, the assumption that the white church has a sound doctrine of the Trinity. Unless I missed something, the Gospel Coalition is a wart to the Matterhorn (thank you Henry Lewis) of the Trinity Broadcast Network and the larger Pentecostal and charismatic world which consists of Americans of European descent as much as blacks. In other words, the black church has no corner of heresy and the Gospel Coalition has a lot of work to do if it is going to labor winsomely and heroically for a reformation in the white church.

Second, the Gospel Coalition’s doctrine of the Trinity is not exactly Nicea. The first point of their doctrinal statement reads:

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Compare this to the Westminster Confession and you see a lack of precision:

1. There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

2. God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest, his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent, or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.

3. In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.

Of course, the Westminster Confession is not Nicea either. But it does have the important Nicene bits – the affirmations about substance and person, and the one about the Son being eternally begotten of the Father. In which case, if the Gospel Coalition wants to set itself as the standard for orthodoxy in the white church, especially on the Trinity, why not actually affirm (or teach about) the Nicene doctrine of God?

In the end, I’m not sure what race has to do with the current status of orthodox Trinitarianism in the United States, or with one pastor’s decision to adopt a child. But a lot of people seem to think that race still matters and that is not a recipe for overcoming racism but for keeping the vague concept of race alive.