Christian Nationalism, Christian Zionism, and the Diversity of Views

 Friends, 

 

Save the Date! On Sunday, June 9 at 1:00, St. Mark will host a documentary film entitled, “True Believer.” Brian McLaren describes “True Believer” as “an insider account, supported by a wide array of experts and informants, who brings us along on [a] journey of discovery and departure from white, right-wing Evangelicalism.” St. Mark member Robin Voss is one of the film’s Executive Producers and we will have a panel discussion following the film with Diana Butler Bass, Lisa Sharon Harper, Julie Ingersoll, and Randall Balmer, as well as Kristen Irving, the movie’s subject and director. More details and an opportunity to register are forthcoming. For now, I encourage you to save the date and plan to attend. 

 

Over the last two weeks, I have had a number of experiences that remind me of both the challenges and the opportunities that face us as we seek to do justice in our world. 

 

Last Thursday I attended a webinar on “Confronting Christian Zionism” that was sponsored by the Presbyterian Church (USA) Christian Zionism working group. In 2004, the 216^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church approved active opposition to Christian Zionism and called on churches to engage with it in study and advocacy. Many of our mission partners in the Middle East are asking us to put more energy into that calling, and a similar overture will be brought to the floor of the General Assembly when it meets this summer. 

 

The webinar had a three-person panel and was hosted by Rev. Dr. Cynthia Holder Rich, a Presbyterian pastor and member of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network. The panelists were Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian who is the academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College and pastor of the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem; Rabbi Brant Rosen, leader of Tzedek Chicago and co-founder of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council; and Rev. Marietta Macy, Associate Pastor for Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church in Charleston, West Virginia. 

 

You can read a summary of the 90-minute webinar here, and watch it by clicking here.

 

Dr. Isaac was particularly passionate in querying why more Christians are not raising their voices in response to the utter destruction that is taking place in Gaza and made several references to a book by Dr. Mitri Raheb, who has spoken here at St. Mark in the past, entitled Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible. You can find the book here. What impacted me the most was Rabbi Rosen’s comments. He was in complete agreement with Dr. Isaac and disclosed his own personal struggle to operate within the bounds of his rabbinical order, because of his opposition to Zionism. I found his remarks to be very candid and authentic.

 

Likewise, I was part of a discussion on Passover last week with a Jewish peace activist. She told about a special Passover Seder written especially to call her people to seek justice in Palestine, in light of the Jewish liberation story of Passover. While there are many Jewish persons who are supportive of the attacks on Gaza, those two voices last week reminded me how I often underestimate the spectrum of opinions that exists among people of faith. 

 

Another case in point came to light when I sat down with three different Evangelical faith leaders from Orange County to discuss my concerns about Christian Nationalism and to let them know that we would be hosting a film that is critical of it. I anticipated that two of them might differ with me strongly, but all three of them agreed that they were quite concerned about the encroachment that many Evangelical pastors have made into politics and that many politicians have made into Evangelicalism. While it is easy to imagine that Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists are all one and the same, there is a spectrum within that faith community as well. And doors that can open for fruitful dialogue. 

 

Oh, my friends, there are many difficult roads to navigate to be faithful in these times,

Mark of St. Mark

 

The Presentation of Easter

This past Wednesday I was asked to address the Newport Mesa Irvine Interfaith Council on what Easter means to the Christian church. I was one of five speakers, so we also heard about Passover, Ramadan, Bahai, and the Zoroastrian holy days. The challenge for me was to speak about Easter to those who may not know our story, and to decide what to leave on the cutting floor in order to meet the ten-minute limit. I decided to offer an overview of biblical and theological representations of the significance of Easter, then conclude with a suggestion that is my own. Here goes.

Jesus of Nazareth was a Galilean Jew living in the first century of the common era, whose life and teachings are described in the first four books of the Christian New Testament known as the Gospels. The arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus is described narratively in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, which most biblical scholars agree were written between forty and sixty years after the events. But while the stories took some time to pass through oral traditions into writings, the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection was a matter of immediate consequence for the Jesus’ followers, which is made plain in the letters that an apostle named Paul wrote to various Christian churches within a decade or so after Jesus’ death and resurrection. So, first we’ll look at the storied accounts of Easter, before turning to what Paul – the first significant theologian of the Christian church – had to say. 

 

Each of the gospels tell a story about the first Easter morning. Each of them shows that it was women who first saw the empty tomb and who became the first evangelists about the good news that Christ was risen. Each of them attests that Jesus was, in fact, dead and buried, and then raised from death as he promised. At the same time, the gospel stories differ in many ways, from details about who was there, what they saw, what they did with what they saw, as well as in stories of the risen Christ visiting with his followers. For someone who wants to reconcile all the stories as historically factual without difference, the gospel accounts can be frustrating. Personally, I find it a gift that the early church, which preserved and gathered and granted to us these gospel stories, did not try to reconcile them all into the same thing, but was willing to accept diverse ways that people experience and relate what happened on Easter morning. So, if one wants to read about Easter morning and the day of Jesus’ resurrection, these gospel accounts are where one wants to go, and Christians churches do that on Easter Sunday year after year. 

 

For a more theologically-driven approach to Easter – and to resurrection more generally – one is better off turning to the Apostle Paul. Paul never met Jesus before the crucifixion, but Paul did encounter the resurrected Christ and claimed to have as much of a relationship with Jesus as those who were present throughout the Gospel stories. For Paul and for the Christian Church, Jesus was not just an inspiring teacher, profound prophet, or courageous martyr. The resurrection means that Jesus is really present in the world, even after death and even today. Paul’s writings address the resurrection in 3 respects: Personally, communally, and cosmically. 

 

Paul’s insistence that he had met the risen Christ just as really as some of the disciples who were with Jesus all along, is an incredible claim. It means that Jesus’ resurrection was not just a daylong event, or a 40-day excursion as some of the gospels tell the story, but an everyday, ongoing reality. Christ was raised, but Christ is alive and present among us. For Paul, that was a personal and life-transforming reality, and for the Christian church it is why we use the present tense in speaking about the presence of Christ among us. The personal presence of Christ that Paul had, and which Christians generally share, comes out in our language about the real presence of Christ when we break bread and share wine together, as well as when we speak of Christ as the head of the body, which is the church. 

 

There is another way that Paul and the church speak about the resurrection. We see the resurrection of Jesus as the “firstfruit” of our own promise of resurrected life. This is the communal aspect of the resurrection. Paul says, “Just as Jesus shared in a death like ours, so too will we share in a resurrection like his.” This is a promise that has brought comfort to many persons facing their own death or grieving the death of others; and it has brought courage to many who face tyranny and the threat of death by others. 

 

And finally, Paul had a cosmic view of what the resurrection means. It’s not just Jesus, not just Christians, and not just humans who are implicated in the promise that Jesus’ resurrection brings. It is all of creation, which Paul describes as “groaning” under the threat of death, awaiting new life. Simply put, the resurrection puts an end to the domination of death. Insightful persons have reflected for years on how the reality of having to die has been the motive for many human anxieties and practices. The threat of death is often the main tool by which tyrants rule and the fear of death has often led to the exploitation of women so men could leave a prodigy. For Paul, when God raises Jesus from death, the power of death is broken, and creation is freed from the bondage of sin and death. That is no small thing. 

At first glance, one might think that Easter is what distinguishes Christianity from other religions the most, since it is rooted in the resurrection of the one whom we call the Christ. But I want to offer just one last thought. When Jesus spoke of resurrection, he used a metaphor that was grounded in nature. “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it falls into the ground and dies, it produces much fruit.” In the end, the mystery of the resurrection is something that we see every day. 

Mark of St. Mark

The Little Gate to God

 Friends, 

 

Lately I’ve circled back to read the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, remembered chiefly for his tremendous influence on what became known as “the Social Gospel.” I would list Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis (first published in 1907) as one of the most influential books in my own spiritual journey from the hyper-personalized approach to faith that I grew up with, to an expression of faith that reflects more adequately the call to justice that permeates the writings of the prophets and the preaching of Jesus. On the 100^thanniversary of the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis, Rauschenbusch’s great-grandson, Paul Rauschenbusch, republished Christianity and the Social Crisis with accompanying responses to each chapter by a spectrum of Christian and non-Christian writers. In the Foreword to the book, Paul cites a poem that his great-grandfather had written at the end of this life about prayer, entitled “The Little Gate to God.” The poem is rather long, so I will only cite portions of it here. I cannot express how beautifully Rauschenbusch was able to meld together his biting social critique – partly informed by his work as a pastor in “Hell’s Kitchen” in New York – and his genuine, Christ-centered piety. This ode to prayer demonstrates that blend powerfully and has been a true influence in my own calling. And I will resist my temptation to make the words more inclusive, although I suspect Rauschenbusch himself would have been open to that progress in the use of language about both humanity and God.

 

The Little Gate to God

In the castle of my soul

Is a little postern gate,

Whearat, when I enter, 

I am in the presence of God. 

In a moment, in the turning of a thought,

I am where God is. 

This is a fact. 

 

This world of ours has length and breadth, 

A superficial and horizontal world.

When I am with God

I look deep down and high up. 

And all is changed. 

The world of man is made of jangling noises. 

With God it is a great silence. 

But that silence is a melody

Sweet as the contentment of love, 

Thrilling as a touch of flame. 

 

In this world my days are few

And full of trouble.

I strive and have not;

I seek and find not; 

I ask and learn not. 

Its joys are so fleeting,

Its pains are so enduring,

I am in doubt if life be worth living. 

When I enter into God, 

All life has a meaning. 
Without asking, I know; 

My desires are even now fulfilled, 

My fever is gone

In the great quiet of God. 

My troubles are but pebbles on the road,

My joys are like the everlasting hills, 

So it is when I step through the gate of prayer

From time to eternity.[1]

 

May we enter that postern gate regularly, 

Mark of St. Mark

 

---

[1] Paul B. Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21^st Century: The Classic that Woke Up the Church, (New York: Harper Collins Publishers), 2007, pp. xv-xvi.