History & Hope

Conflating Christianity & nationalism shifts Christian hope from the counter-cultural Messiah to the powers of the State

That's a paraphrase of one of the ten consequences Kyle Roberts names at "Unsystematic Theology." Here are a few others:

• Confuses the gospel of grace with the “good news” of material wealth and security;
• Undercuts the prophetic power that Christianity needs in order to be salt and light;
• Undermines the cross;
• Disrespects those who have been marginalized by the configuration of powers in the nation-state.

See all ten, along with Roberts' commentary, prompted by recent happenings at First Baptist church, Dallas, TX.

Paul's Evangelical Politics

Not Rand Paul or Ron Paul but the apostle Paul, in the letter to the Ephesians, expounded by N.T. Wright:

Paul is well aware of the challenges that will be faced by a people claiming to belong to the family of the Messiah, the Jewish 'royal family' as it were, and claiming to tell the Jewish story and so to claim the inheritance of the world: all history had been waiting for this moment, not the birth or accession of Caesar; all space, time and matter was summed up in this King, not the putative world ruler in Rome! This Messiah, raised from the dead, is the one who has been exalted

above all rule and authority and power and lordship, and above every name that is invoked, both in the present age and also in the age to come. [1.21]

The creation of a single family, the new humanity and new Temple, is thus a major political act, with resonances out into the world of power. This worldview is not adopted without full awareness of the challenge and the risk. Paul is already suffering the consequences, but that only makes him the more determined. My task, he says,

is to make clear to everyone just what the secret plan is, the purpose that's been hidden from the very beginning of the world in God who created all things. This is it: that God's wisdom, in all its rich variety, was to be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places -- through the church! This was God's eternal purpose, and he's accomplished it in Jesus the Messiah, our lord. We have confidence, and access to God, in him, in full assurance, through his faithfulness. So, I beg you: don't lose heart because of my sufferings on your behalf! That's your glory! [3.9-13]

From: N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Parts III and IV (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 731.

Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism

From Kirk Davis Swineheart's New York Times book review of a new book by Chris Jennings, which Swineheart calls "a triumph of narration and scholarship":

...All utopian experiments would seem to invite comparison with the Shakers, whose advocacy of simple living, hard work, shared property and gender equality holds tremendous modern appeal (in certain circles, anyway).

...[T]he Shakers’ influence found its fullest expression in four other distinct communities started during the first half of the 19th century: New Harmony, the Fourierist Phalanxes, Icaria and Oneida. All, he argues, were inspired by Ann Lee, who preached that salvation lay in creating heaven on earth. By turns elegiac and colloquial, “Paradise Now” chronicles the ascent and demise of these “fellow travelers” — the Shakers among them — as they chased their perfectionist ideals.

Extremists Terrified by History

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova on the razing of the St. Elijah's monastery, the oldest in Iraq, built 1400 years ago:

"Despite their relentless crimes, extremists will never be able to erase history. It also reminds us how terrified by history the extremists are, because understanding the past undermines the pretexts they use to justify these crimes and exposes them as expressions of pure hatred and ignorance."

Rev. Manuel Yousif Boji, a Chaldean Catholic pastor in Southfield, Michigan, commented:

"A big part of tangible history has been destroyed. These persecutions have happened to our church more than once, but we believe in the power of truth, the power of God."

From an AP report, "Islamic State razing of Iraq monastery condemned," Jan. 20, 2016.

Can History Be Hopeful?

Many thanks to Spectrum for posting this:

Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the highly-acclaimed exploration of American race relations, Between the World and Me, doesn’t find hope in history. In fact, said Coates in a December essay for the Atlantic, “a writer wedded to ‘hope’ is ultimately divorced from ‘truth.’” Such a writer’s commitment is to “the ahistorical, to the mythical, to the hagiography of humanity,” not history.

The essay provoked a great deal of comment, raising profound questions of obvious centrality for Christian historians (and for the blogging experiment that I’ve titled History and Hope). Is “history and hope” a contradiction in terms? Should an enterprise that links the two continue in the world of 2016?

Coates indeed hits the bulls-eye in targeting “triumphalist narratives about US history,” as Peter Wirzbicki puts it in his response to Coates’ essay. Yes, exploitation and injustice have marred the American past, such narratives acknowledge, but the nation’s enlightened ideals have prevailed – the really bad stuff is way behind us now. Such storylines make it easy to dismiss the seriousness of current iterations of racism and oppression. The need for continued improvement may be acknowledged, but the assumption they underwrite is that decent, democratic, progressing America cannot be fundamentally flawed.

Harvard Historian Contextualizes Adventist Outlook on State Persecution

In another of the spate of articles generated by Donald Trump's reference to Ben Carson's religion a couple of weeks ago, Stephanie Condon of CBS News nicely incorporates insights from David Holland (left), a scholar of American religious history at Harvard Divinity School:

"In fact, Carson's statements about Islam could be interpreted as out of step with the philosophy of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which has historically stressed the importance of the separation of church and state.

"In the religion's early days, there were many states that had laws prohibiting work on Sunday. Many Seventh Day Adventists were jailed and faced a degree of persecution because they didn't recognize the Sunday Sabbath, Holland explained.

"'From very early on, they were very sensitive to the power of the state,' he said. 'Ellen White was quite outspoken on this topic and declared that the union of religious and political power would be one of the signs the world was coming to an end.'"

Holland is the author of Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America and is working on a comparative study of Ellen G. White and Mary Baker Eddy.

Persecution More Likely to Come from the Right, says Dr. Carson

Dr. Ben Carson believes that the "persecution involving the Sabbath" in the United States anticipated in Adventist prophecy belief is "more likely to come from the right than the left." But, in a video posted on YouTube last June that shows him being interviewed from the podium of the Avondale Memorial Church in Australia, Dr. Carson states that he hopes that he is "not around anymore" when these end-time events unfold. So much for an imminent realization of the "blessed hope."

 In the meantime, Dr. Carson will be defending the two "strongest pillars" of American civilization --"the Judeo-Christian belief system" and "strong family values" against the onslaught of leftists inspired by Marx, Lenin, and Saul Alinksy. 

Whatever one thinks of the policies advocated by the presidential candidate that polls currently place second among Republican candidates, his interviewer seems on the right track in commending him for not turning Second Advent hope into passivity about public issues. Adventists have tended toward that pitfall, despite Ellen White's repeated admonitions against it (see Testimonies 5:711-718 for just one example).

Roger Olson Urges Evangelical Renewal of Second Advent Hope

Roger Olson grabbed me a few years ago with The Story of Christian Theology -- a masterful synthesis of historical theology in the form of a lively narrative. So, when Roger speaks (he blogs at Patheos.com), I try to incline a receptive ear, as evidenced by my most recent post.  And, my "Adventist" antenna readily picked up his post for today, "Embarrased by the Parousia? Evangelicals and the Return of Christ." An excerpt:

I’m not calling for a renewal of eschatological fever, paranoia, “life boat ethics,” or any of that that so unfortunately often accompanied evangelical emphasis on the parousia in earlier times. I’m calling for a renewal of balanced, sane emphasis on the parousia as a genuine theme of the New Testament and hallmark of evangelical faith—confident expectation of God’s future visible victory over evil and vindication of his Son’s lordship. I’m calling for us to pray with the primitive churches of the New Testament “Maranatha!” (“Come, Lord Jesus!”)....[more]

The Cross and America's Revenge Culture

At  Paperback theology, Tim Shuttle writes:

America is a revenge culture: Revenge the television series, revenge porn, revenge games in sports… vengeance is a mainstay of foreign policy and a thematic obsession for film, television, and female pop-musicians....

The cross—God’s ultimate act of redemption, and the central revelation of God’s heart of the world and for what the kingdom of God is all about—was the intentional forgoing of God’s right to vengeance, or retribution. It was the rejection of violence as an effective means of redemption.
If anyone in history had a case for revenge, it’s Jesus. But he didn’t take it. Why? Because Jesus was always asking the question, how will it end? The brokenness, the violence, the wars, murder, abuse, injustice, suffering—how will it all end? His answer was the cross. He swallowed up death. And when he did, he killed revenge....

Did the Founding Fathers Believe In American Exceptionalism?

Historian Sheldon Stern turns to John Adams for insights in responding to criticism of the 2015 College AP U.S. History revision by Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Institute. Kurtz faulted the revision "or its failure to highlight 'American exceptionalism,' which he defined as 'America’s sense of principled mission, its unique blending of religious and democratic commitment, its characteristic emphasis on local government, the high cultural esteem in which economic enterprise is held, and America’s distinctive respect for individual liberty.'"

Stern writes:

Adams was confident that the new United States was on the cusp of a brilliant future. But he did not believe that Americans, as a people, were exempt from the flaws and faults of other nations and peoples. “There is no special Providence for Americans … and their nature is the same with that of others. …We are not a chosen people … and we must and we shall go the way of all earth.” Americans, he warned, were not immune to the hubris, greed, and foolishness of the rest of mankind.[2]  He was convinced that negative rather than benign forces had largely shaped—and would continue to shape—human political behavior; and Americans were no exception....