Decent Exposure

A friend linked to this blog post as her Facebook status, and as I read it I realized that it seemed to be entirely beside the point. The blogger, a Christian psychologist, reported this exchange with a student:

"I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God."

I responded, "Why would you want to do that?"

Startled she says, "What do you mean?"

"Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?"

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

"Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you've wronged?"

She thinks and answers, "Yes."

"Well, why don't you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God."

"Obviously," he continued, "I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture." He doesn't object to spending time with Jesus, he wrote, but "all too often ... has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being." He concluded, "I truly want people to spend time working on their relationship with God. I just want them to do it by taking the time to care about the person standing right in front of them."

What bothered me initially was that the writer seemed to equate being a decent human being with a Christian, though given our ecumenical times I'm sure he would reject the imputation. I wrote to my friend in comments that trying to be a decent human being doesn't require Christianity -- many Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucianists, and people from most other religious traditions would agree, I think, that learning to be a decent human being is valuable. Nor, I think, is any kind of deity needed: as an atheist, how to be a decent human being is one of the questions, and practices, that matter most to me. Other atheists might not agree, but that doesn't affect the point. (To read some atheists, I gather that they don't think you can be a decent human being if you don't believe in evolution, or if you believe in astrology; I think that's obviously not true. This position would be the mirror image of certain kinds of Christian piety.)

True, you could try to reconcile the blogger's position with the teachings of Jesus, who's reported to have said things like this passage from Matthew:

41“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The trouble is that teachings like this aren't about "trying to become a more decent human being": they're about trying to escape damnation and get into the Kingdom of Heaven. (Though it could also be argued that they aren't about "working on your relationship with God" either, for the same reason.) Jesus also taught his followers to abandon their families, to forego their parents' funerals, and so on; the goal was to be saved, not to become a more decent human being -- which, insofar as it matters to the Jesus of the gospels at all, was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Some Christians have tried to moralize Jesus' teachings that don't fit the model, by claiming for example, that Jesus forbade divorce because he was concerned about the fate of divorced women in a patriarchal society. Maybe someone who was so driven by sexual craving that it led him to impose himself on others might have become a more decent human being by gouging out his own eye, or by becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven. But the context of such teachings makes it pretty clear that Jesus' primary concern wasn't with ethics.

Which brings me to the other side of the question. Every religion has important stuff in it which has nothing to do with being a decent human being. What does believing that Jesus is the Son of God, or being baptized, have to do with being a decent human being? What do circumcision, keeping kosher and going to micva have to do with being a decent human being? What does the system of purity and impurity in Hinduism, or its caste system, have to do with being a decent human being? What does praying five times a day while facing Mecca have to do with being a decent human being? Even Buddhism, which along with Confucianism is one of the more purely ethical religious structures, has plenty of features that have nothing I can see to do with being a decent human being. And these concerns are not supposed to be part of what my friend called putting on a "pious front": they are just as essential to religion as ethical teaching and practice. Which is one reason I'm not religious, because they aren't important to me at all.

These teachings, beliefs, and practices are important to many people. I'm thinking of the poll I wrote about here, which indicated that neither interpersonal ethics nor one's "relationship with God" are what concern most Christians in the US today: the pollsters found that a majority of those who "join a faith" (74 percent) cited "the attraction of religious services and styles of worship" as a key factor in their lifestyle choice. And there are parallels outside of theism. To read some atheists, I gather that they don't think you can be a decent human being if you don't believe in evolution, or if you believe in astrology; I think that's obviously not true. Just as obviously, believing in evolution or not believing in astrology doesn't make you a decent human being.

This division also comes up in some of the ethical philosophy I've been reading lately. It's not enough, philosophers say, just to do the right thing; you have to do it for the right reasons from the right disposition, and strive to be a good person. I can't really deny that -- on some level I agree that the two aspects of ethics are inseparable -- but something about it still bothers me. For example, does it imply that if I am not yet a good person, I shouldn't do the right thing? Of course not, if only because doing the right thing is part of the process of becoming a good, or at least better person.

It's somewhat like asking about the relationship between being a good artist and being a decent human being. Numerous great artists have been failures in their relations with other people, and it has been debated how significant that is. Can you be a great artist even if you neglect or abandon your wife and children in the pursuit of Art? I'd also insist that many great religious teachers -- I'd include Jesus in that number -- have been poor role models for interpersonal relationships. The Buddha abandoned his family, because human attachment was an obstacle to enlightenment. At the same time, he produced some moral teachings that I consider valuable. I'm just saying that I don't think one can reduce Christianity, or any other religion, to being a decent human being. Putting stress on that aspect may be helpful when people go too far in the direction of ritual and piety, just as it would have been proper to suggest to Paul Gauguin that he lay off the absinthe and support his kids. But that would not necessarily have made him a better artist.

The Trouble With Privilege Is That Everybody Doesn't Have It

I don't remember where I first heard the title of this post, but it seems to me that someone ascribed it to Virginia Woolf. Whoever said it, I think it's right.

One day about a week ago Homo Superior posted on same-sex marriage, attacking an article by the English writer and provocateur Mark Simpson. The article, which turns out to be two years old, argues that marriage is basically a religious institution and that same-sex couples don't need it if they can get marriage-equivalent civil unions, as they can in England. This displeased HS, who argued that

there is no progressive case against gay marriage as an issue of social justice, not unless progressive politics has stopped meaning the struggle for maximum freedom and full equality. One might make radical critiques against the institution of marriage — and please do so in the privacy of your own seminars — but all social justice movements of the past have sought to change access to existing institutions, not attempted to create new ones out of air, because that’s what equality requires.

Does it? And why should "radical critiques" of marriage take place only "in the privacy of your own seminars"? (And who's "you"?) Such critiques have been around for some time, and they don't have anything to do with same-sex marriage per se. The early Christian churches weren't big on marriage or on sex of any kind, and a radical critique of marriage was advanced by nineteenth-century feminists. It should also be remembered that heterosexual marriage is rather on the skids in the US, with many heterosexuals preferring to avoid legal bonds in favor of more informal arrangements. Domestic partnerships were first registered in the US by cohabiting heterosexuals. Simpson didn't claim in his article that new institutions should be created "out of air" -- he pointed out that different sexual and domestic arrangements already exist. He also argued that most British queerfolk were satisfied with civil partnerships, which would be one of those "new institutions."

It's also false that "all social justice movements of the past have sought to change access to existing institutions", though I must thank Homo Superior for giving me such an opening. The anti-slavery movement didn't seek to change access to an existing institution, it sought to abolish it. Slavery was very old and had a religious dimension as well: in the New Testament the Christian is a slave of Christ, and abolitionists have always had difficulty finding biblical support for their position because there really isn't any. (This counts against the Bible, of course, not in favor of slavery.) "Changing access" to the institution of slavery would have entailed something like subsidies to enable the less wealthy to have slaves of their own, and eventually to allow black people to own slaves too, including white ones. That would be "equality" in exactly the sense HS is talking about, but I don't think many people would see it as desirable.

The reason a radical critique of marriage is in order is that marriage has traditionally had nothing to do with equality. First, it existed, and still exists, to privilege some couples over others. If you're married, your sexual relations are licit; if not, they are fornication or adultery. Laws against fornication largely fell by the wayside in the United States in the late twentieth century, but some states still have laws against adultery. The children of married couples are also licit, or legitimate, and the aim has always been to privilege some children over others. The stigma of illegitimacy has diminished greatly in the past few decades, but it's not totally gone yet. Many "marriage equality" advocates talk about the "rights" that follow from marriage, but they are privileges and benefits, not rights -- if they were rights, it's a violation of the principle of equality to reserve them for married couples.

The gap has narrowed somewhat in the past century, but marriage also enshrines inequality between the partners, with the wife losing much of her legal personhood when she marries. And those are just the legal disabilities. Until fairly recently, married women were less happy than unmarried women -- or married men. The change has been explained as a result of married women's increased autonomy, especially the freedom to earn their own money. But whatever the reason, women have been voting with their feet against heterosexual marriage, around the world. The real question ought to be why marriage still has so much prestige.

The legal and social disability of single people -- including unmarried couples -- compared to married ones isn't exactly a secret: "marriage equality" campaigners harp on the point constantly. But they aren't campaigning to increase access to marriage's privileges and benefits by single people -- only by same-sex couples. As IOZ asked once, "If they are, in fact, human rights, then why must you be married to acquire them?" To invoke equality in connection with an intentionally and functionally unequal institution such as marriage is dishonest.

Let's not forget divorce. Marriage makes it harder and messier for couples to separate, even when there are no children involved. It looks to me as though many couples stay together longer than they should, from a misplaced fear of being judged wanting -- selfish, lazy, immature -- because they didn't live happily ever after. I've succumbed to it myself, but I've also seen enough other people make the same mistake, at great emotional cost, that it bears stressing here.

I have a few bones to pick with Simpson, though. He begins his diatribe by objecting to religious opponents of same-sex marriage being called bigots.

It’s faintly absurd to have to even say this, but it isn’t bigoted to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s just being conventional.

We have a false antithesis here: a goodly proportion of bigotry is conventional, often obligatory. Like many people, Simpson mistakes bigotry for an individual pathology, not a social structure.

Nor is marriage a fundamentally religious institution (though see above, on the religious dimension of slavery). In un-secular societies, just about every aspect of life is sacralized, from birth to death. If marriage were basically religious, though, that would be an argument against government involvement in it -- in the United States, that is. Simpson seems to overlook the formal separation of religion and government in America, while England has a state Church. In European countries, even those with established churches, the distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage is often even more sharply drawn.

Besides, as I've pointed out before, the American separation of religion and government means that same-sex couples who want religious ceremonies can roll their own, as it were, and there's no legal barrier to their doing so; the legal barriers here are to same-sex civil marriage. The "conventional" non-bigots Simpson defended can wail and gnash their teeth, but they can't stop same-sex couples from redefining religious marriage to suit themselves.

I'd point again to Nancy Polikoff's book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage (Beacon, 2008), which argues that all families should be valued, whether they involve married or quasi-married couples, or no couples at all. Children need support and protection whether their parents are married to each other nor not. American and European society were already moving in that direction until the 1980s, when a pro-marriage backlash pushed by the religious Right tried to reverse the trend. The depressing thing is that so many gay people went along with it.

A common misunderstanding of second-wave feminism and gay liberation was that, because they made radical critiques of marriage, they were therefore against any coupling or relationships at all. It's important to recognize the validity of single life (and celibacy, for that matter), and of erotic life that doesn't involve exclusive couples, but many people have formed successful long-term couples that weren't formalized in marriage. (One researcher recently pointed out that non-marital couples don't last as long as married ones; but that may be not be a bad thing -- from what I've seen, a good many couples stay together a lot longer than is good for them.) The importance of friendship, whether or not it includes erotic relations, needs a lot more attention too. What matters is enabling and encouraging people to discover and choose what they really want from their relationships, and I believe one way to move in that direction is by decentering marriage, and making it one possibility among others for people who are getting intimate with each other.

I Do Not Like Your Christ. I Like (Some of) Your Christians.

I just picked Frank Schaeffer's latest book off the shelf at the public library: Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism). Schaeffer is the son of Francis Schaeffer, a Presbyterian pastor who left the US in 1948 to bring the gospel to the European heathen. The father cultivated a chin beard and founded a retreat in Switzerland, where some of his disciples recorded his teaching and turned it into books with a pseudo-countercultural veneer. He had quite an influence on the American Christian Right, and Ronald Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop co-wrote a book with him.

The Father died in 1984, and the Son, who had already been producing books and films, apparently broke with his family and friends, wrote a fine autobiographical novel called Portofino, criticized the Christian Right of which he'd been a part, and eventually joined the Greek Orthodox Church. Evidently he decided he didn't dislike religion that much.

I glanced through Patience with God in the library before I checked it out and noticed the chapter on apocalypticism, "Spaceship Jesus Will Come and Whisk Us Away." It's mainly an attack on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's Left Behind series. Schaeffer declares (110):

No, I am not blaming Jenkins and LaHaye's product line for murder or racism or any other evil intent or result. What I am saying is that feeding the paranoid delusions of people on the fringe of the fringe contributes to a dangerous climate that may provoke violence in a few individuals. And convincing folks that Armageddon is on the way, and all we can do is wait, pray, and protect our families from the chaos that will be the "prelude" to the "Return of Christ," is perhaps not the best recipe for political, economic, or personal stability, let alone social cohesion.

It's not certain, though, that Left Behind fans are "the fringe of the fringe," though we are often told that the early Christians were. Paul Boyer wrote in his history of such beliefs, When Time Shall Be No More (Harvard, 1992, page 100):

Nor did premillennialism in the 1865-1920 years appeal solely to the poor and disaffected; it also found support among the middle classes, the well-to-do, and even the elite. The signers of an 1891 memorial to President Benjamin Harrison written by premillennialist William Blackstone and urging support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine included Cyrus McCormick, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller. Two Los Angeles oilmen, Lyman and Milton Stewart, financed the publication and distribution of The Fundamentals. Chicago department-store owner John Pirie hosted Cyrus Scofield's annual Bible conferences at Sea Cliff, Pirie's estate on Long Island. The head of the Quaker Oats Company, Henry Crowell, chaired the board of trustees of the Moody Bible Institute. Large middle-class Baptist and Presbyterian churches in New York, St. Louis, Boston, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and many other cities were bastions of premillennialism in these years. As Ian Rennie has written, dispensationalism attracted some of the most outstanding evangelicals of the day – and some of the wealthiest. Whatever else may be said of, belief in an imminent Second Coming, in punishment of the wicked, and in a Millennium when the injustices of the present age will be set right, cannot be dismissed -- in the Middle Ages, in the pre- World War I, era, or in the late twentieth century -- as merely the desperate creed of the disinherited.

It's also not true that believers are told that all they can do is wait, pray, and protect their families -- they can, and must, make more converts to Christ. Groups which preach the imminent "Return of Christ" are usually socially cohesive, as long as they work hard on missionary work. It worked for the early Christians, after all.

Schaeffer blames "a literalist interpretation of the biblical Book of Revelation" for the Left Behind theology (111):

This weird book was the last to be included in the New Testament. It was included as canonical only relatively late in the process after a heated dispute. The historic Churches East and West remain so suspicious of Revelation that to this day it has never been included as part of the cyclical public readings of scripture in Orthodox services. ... In other words, the book of the Bible that the historical Church found most problematic is the one that American evangelicals latched on to like flies on you know what.

If only it were that simple! It's true that Revelation is important for End-Times Christianity, but the whole New Testament contains similar material. Matthew, Mark, and Luke show Jesus beginning his public career by announcing that the End was near, and all contain speeches by Jesus in which he lays out the signs that will presage his return. Revelation contains more of the same kind of stuff, but if it hadn't been included in the Bible, Christians would still have enough to support an obsession with their lord's return. Even John, odd man out among the gospels, pays at least lip service to the idea. Paul's letters show him trying to keep a lid on end-times fervor, which shows that a "literalist" interpretation of these teachings is not due to a modern misunderstanding of ancient allegory. People in Jesus' and Paul's day who heard "The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15) took it to mean, reasonably enough, that "the form of this world is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:31) in time as human beings reckon it. That may be why the second letter of Peter, probably the last New Testament book to be written, must explain the delay in Jesus' return. Scoffers "will say: where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. ... But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief" (2 Peter 2:4-10).

What restrained End-Times fanaticism in the Christian churches was religion in the sense of Schaeffer's subtitle: organized, conformist religion. In any case it's dishonest of Schaeffer to pretend that such beliefs are due only to one marginal book in the New Testament.

He then eulogizes the great Jewish artist Marc Chagall (120):

It seems to me that a lot of us non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist followers of Jesus find ourselves where Marc Chagall found himself vis-a-vis his faith in God and the public perception of what that faith really means. Chagall is proof that not all people who identify with Christianity and Judaism (or religion in general) are of the Hagee, LaHaye, Rushdoony, and Jenkins ilk.

Ah, the Golden Mean again! There are Fundamentalists to the Right of him, and Atheists to the Left of him! Into the Valley of Death rode the Archmandrite! I've written about the middle path before, and about this whingeing that you can't call yourself a Christian anymore because of all the Bible thumpers preaching hate who cause decent Christians to be stereotyped. (Anne Rice did that very thing last week. Look, fool, if you "follow Christ" you're a Christian. But for a real emetic, check out this article by an atheist who assumes that because Rice has renounced the church, she's "going to be become an atheist." Then read this incoherent babble by a Christian who questions whether Rice ever was, like, really a Christian. *CORRECTION at end of post.) I don't refuse to call myself gay because Andrew Sullivan does and I don't want to be stereotyped as a Catholic Republican with a second-rate mind. If you don't like the image presented by members of a class you belong to, you do your best to present a different image -- not to replace the "bad" image, but to make it harder for others to stereotype the group.

But this is something I've been fighting about with liberal Christians for a couple of decades now, who seem to think that if we could just get rid of a few embarrassing teachings here and there, no one could reasonably object to Christianity or refuse to join it. Yes, it would be very nice if Christian churches were all pro-gay, pro-feminist, pro-choice, anti-racist, and so on. And yes, Christians should be nice to people of other religions and not believe that they have a monopoly on truth or morality (since they don't). But achieving those minimal conditions wouldn't mean that Christianity is true. You don't have to be a Christian to take any or all of those stances, and I don't see that Christians are obliged to take them.

I gather from what I've read of Patience with God that Frank Schaeffer is critical of Israel (he denounces both Christian and Jewish Zionists), and I guess I'll have to read the rest of the damn book to find out what his positions are on homosexuality, women's equality, abortion, contraception, political economy, and other hot-button issues. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he agrees with me on many of them. But that doesn't mean that his positions are therefore the Christian positions, let alone that Jesus would have agreed with him. Since I don't stereotype Christians, I know that they aren't all homophobic Bible-thumping literalists. Many Christians -- and that includes some homophobic Bible-thumping literalists -- are quite decent people. Many atheists are not. That has nothing to do with the validity of either Christianity, any other religion, or atheism.

Schaeffer tries to get rid of the embarrassment of End-times theology by blaming it all on Revelation. Either he doesn't know, or he's deliberately not mentioning, that the whole New Testament is a collection of End-times tracts. What does he do with the gospels' Jesus: the faith healer, the hellfire and brimstone preacher of damnation, the end-times fanatic? Most liberal Christians I've known have never read the gospels, let alone the rest of the New Testament, so they have no idea what to do with that Jesus. Most of them are better people than the gospels' Jesus, but I can't credit them with much intellectual integrity.

Here's a good bit to close with, from page 99: "I can't prove this, but I think that any person who remains a 'professional Christian' in the evangelical/fundamentalist world for a lifetime, especially any pastor, risks becoming an atheist and/or a liar." I don't see atheism as a risk myself, and I make bold to suggest that it isn't only the evangelical/fundamentalist Christian professional who risks becoming a liar.

*CORRECTION: I got e-mail from the blogger I linked to here, pointing out with justifiable snark that I'd misread their post and that they were siding with Rice. I plead guilty: I was reading too fast. But on rereading it I still think the post is incoherent, partly not the fault of the blogger because Rice is claiming that she isn't a Christian, because Christians are bad; she's a follower of Christ, and therefore good. This Is So Gay regrets the error. Let that be a lesson to me not to rush postings.

Harumph!

On second thought, I figured this diatribe should be posted separately from the book review.

My blog entry "Gay Christians Say the Darnedest Things" was linked by slacktivist in July, which led to a brief and interesting exchange of comments there. Some commenters complained that I don't enable comments here, a matter which I've mentioned but not really explained before. Reading the slacktivist commenters confirmed my decision. For just one thing: at least one person complained that they couldn't understand why I'd written such awful things, and that I never explained in the entry why I did. If that had come up in comments here, I doubt Mr. Know It All (viz., Moi) could have resisted the temptation to point out where in the post I'd given my reasons. That wouldn't have been as effective as what happened in the slacktivist thread, where other readers pointed out my given reasons in my post. This indicated, if it didn't prove, that it wasn't just my imagination that I'd done so -- that a reasonably attentive reader could have spotted it.

Aside from that, the critiques were mostly ad hominems (He thinks he's so smart! Why does he have to say such awful things?), when the commenters didn't simply jump to the conclusion that I must be an anti-gay fundamentalist instead of a militantly gay atheist. I've been online for more than twenty years, often patiently answering such people point-by-point, and in the past few years I realized that I just didn't feel like wasting my time with such stuff anymore.

One commenter griped, "I find it really annoying myself when people otherwise on my side try to defend it by bashing Christianity / religion-in-general or by spouting nonsense about how religion works." Well, as I wrote in the original post, I find it really annoying when people otherwise on my side try to defend it with misinformation and irrationality. (Just what "nonsense" I'd written was, of course, not addressed: no critic even tried to rebut what I actually wrote. But of course, Christianity is good, so anyone who criticizes it must have something wrong with them.) And the low level of discussion among so many liberals who are supposedly on my side, as in that comments thread, just depresses me more. So does their bad faith, their refusal to listen to others.

However -- I'm still not enabling comments here, but as I said in my opening post, you can still e-mail me with your criticisms and comments and I'll try to reply. There's an e-mail link in my profile, and if you can't find that, you can write to me at thisislikesogay at gmail dot com. But as I also wrote in my introductory post: "I also reserve the right to post anything I receive, especially if it's either very helpful or informative, or if it's abusive."