The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Here's historian Mark Noll on the subject of the primitivist strain in American evangelicalism, as exemplified in William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech:

... Bryan's use of history ... also marked a difference with Rerum Novarum. Whereas the encyclical made careful use of ancient authorities, especially Thomas Aquinas, both to define a proper method for examining public issues and to provide answers for specific economic questions, Bryan's history was ritualistic and mythic. ...

The American Revolution had taught evangelicals that the past was corrupt and that ardent effort in the present might even usher in the millennium. ... This primitivism sought to dispense with history almost entirely in its effort to recapture the pristine glories of New Testament Christianity.

Because it draws strength from evangelicals' devotion to the Bible generally and to the illuminating examples of the New Testament specifically, the primitivist influence in American evangelicalism remains very strong. But for evangelicals, the record of the centuries after the New Testament era is dim at best, corrupting at worst. Responding to the crises of the moment, therefore, requires, as in the example of Bryan, an application of absolute principles along with a fervent appeal to millennial possibilities. The aeon between the first and second advent has never been the object of systematic evangelical attention. For William Jennings Bryan, as for evangelical commentary on public life more generally, there has been no Thomas Aquinas, no deference to a tradition such as Aquinas represented for Leo XIII, and no felt need for such deference.

I raise this in response to this post from Mark Kleiman and his follow-up here.

(Kleiman's omission in the links list to the right is an error I will soon correct.)

In these posts, Kleiman seems willing to accept and embrace the naive primitivism of American evangelicalism. He muses about how the Sermon on the Mount and other New Testament passages might inform Christian reflection on public issues, but does not seem to consider that he may not be the first person to do so. I've come to expect this breezy dismissal of 2,000 years of thought, debate and writing from my fellow evangelicals, but it's disappointing to encounter this approach from someone who I think knows better. And last I checked Augustine, Aquinas, Niebuhr, et. al. were still in print.

Having said that, I enjoyed Kleiman's posts because -- unlike many contemporary Christians -- he takes the Sermon on the Mount seriously. (Much of what he writes here reads like something from Stanley Hauerwas or John Howard Yoder.)

One of my major complaints with premillennial dispensationalism -- the view promoted by the Left Behind novels -- is that it relegates the ethical teachings of the Gospels to a future millennial kingdom and views them as irrelevant for Christians today. Kleiman, to his credit, takes the Gospels more seriously than LaHaye and Jenkins.

The proximate cause for his comments is Cardinal Martino's expression of sympathy for a particularly unsympathetic enemy. Kleiman's response -- that Martino is being scandalously faithful to the teachings of Jesus -- reminds me of William S. Burroughs' hilarious reading of the Sermon on the Mount. When he gets to the part about loving one's enemies and turning the other cheek, Burroughs starts muttering that this is damn fool nonsense and the kind of talk that could get a person killed. Kleiman is, of course, less profane that Burroughs, but no less blunt:

Loving your enemies, for example. That has to be one of the world's dumbest ideas.

Kudos to Kleiman for recognizing that this is an idea, at least, that demands a superlative adjective. It's also an idea, however, whose implications have been explored and debated for centuries. Ignoring or dismissing all of that history in an attempt to engage, unmediated by history or community, the "pristine glories of New Testament Christianity" can lead to what Noll calls "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind."

UPDATE: Re-reading this, I realize I've neglected a key point that I want to make regarding Kleiman's post and other, similar, observations about Christianity in general and American Christianity in particular. I should have begun by thanking him.

Christianity, as he reminds us, holds up a very high set of standards. At any given time, in myriad ways, we who accept that name will fall lamentably short of those standards. And one of the ways we fall short is in failing to see that we are doing so.

This leads many people to conclude that "all Christians are hypocrites." I see where they're coming from, but I want to preserve the distinction between hypocrisy and akrasia, or simple human weakness. Jesus himself harshly condemned the former, while extending mercy toward the latter (see, for example, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican at prayer).

Kleiman, again to his credit, avoids this charge. He simply echoes -- with one of my favorite comments from Chesterton -- that "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." For that reminder, he deserves the thanks of those of us who are trying -- however clumsily -- to follow this difficult, trying path.

Comments

Did you see the PBS three part broadcast on Christianity? Evangelicals should be pissed off seeing that. The broadcast takes much of the faith out of the christianity and shows the historical inaccuracies that would never be mentioned in church. A few examples they cited was the how Jesus spoke Arametic and the gosbel writers wrote in coptic, yet all three gosbels excluding the earlist translations of mark are all these same in translation, which never happens when three independent transators are used.

This is showen by how different the dead sea scrolls are to the gosbel of thomas, and how a oral tradition going to a written tradition changes its power base and control. Anyway, I thought this is relevent to your bashing of the left behind series.

[Eli]

I can't tell if Kleiman is being facetious or thinks he's on to something when he says this:

"Christians are the professed adherents of a foreign dominion, serving a King whose authority is not recognized by the Constitution of the United States. It's not even obvious that people with such divided loyalties ought even to be allowed to vote, let alone have their voices heard in public discourse."

Well, whether it's "obvious" or not, it is the actual truth that U.S. citizenship does not require an oath of blind obedience. Or maybe I escaped having to take mine, through the devious strategy of being born here.

I'll serve whom I choose to serve. If Mr. Kleiman or our government has a problem with my actions, we'll discuss that as needed. But his "divided loyalties" line, even if joking, has very disturbing implications and makes it hard for me to find any merit in the rest of the article.

[dan]

I believe Kleinman is being facetious; it is a parody response to those who claim that Catholics' obedience to the Pope makes them dangerous to the US, that Jews' longing desire toward a rebuilt Jerusalem divides their loyalties, and that other religions' disregarding of the Divine Power that inspired the Constitution means that they, too, are dubious Americans.

I have heard all of these spoken--the first around Kennedy's election, the latter pair more recently.

I think the comment that the Christian imperative to worship God first and foremost is only the natural continuation.

[Eli]

Dan, of course I've heard the kind of things you're talking about, but it's not clear to me how Kleiman is "parodying" that kind of thinking; he seems to be calling for its wider application, though he then dismisses it because there aren't enough "actual Christians" to be much of a threat. I don't get any kind of threatening vibe from his writing, I think he's just scoring points off religious conservatives, but it doesn't make sense as parody in this case when the people he's making fun of are not relying on any variation of such an argument - so the only purpose it can serve is as a straw man. He doesn't seem aware that the same thing could be said about any non-religious person with strong ethical principles that he values higher than political allegiance.

I am curious & don't want to jump to conclusions, so I just E-mailed him.

[Dan]

It's true; I could have been jumping to conclusions. I look forward to hearing him, or you, clarify.

[Deana Holmes]

Back when the US was bombing Serbia, I was acquainted with a few people who were part of a local (Salt Lake City) church heavily influenced by the Toronto Blessing. Their politics were for the most part hugely conservative. One night I was talking to one of them, Brad, and he told me that God had spoken to him. No, I didn't blow him off, because I've had some odd experiences too. So he explained that God told him there was something that He wanted Brad to do. What's that? Brad said. God replied, I want you to pray for someone. Brad said, OK, Lord, who is that? (Thinking of course that this would someone easy to pray for.) God said, Slobodan Milosevic. Brad said, But...but...but and God told him that he, Brad, needed to pray for Milosevic because Milosevic needed prayer and nobody was praying for him. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

After September 11th and then again with the war, I've had opportunity to remember this. "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you..." I will confess I haven't had the guts to pray for Bin Laden or Saddam. And yeah, I feel guilty.

[Tom Benjamin]

I don't know whether I am a Christian or not. My mother is devout and I was baptised and raised in a protestant church.

I stopped going because I have never been able to bring myself to make the leap of faith required. Christianity was always in conflict with determined skeptism about everything else that is, well, deserving of skeptism.

The ethical standards are, however, deeply ingrained. I don't think loving your enemies is anything more than working to eliminate them. It is very nearly self interest. That's the point. If I love my enemy, he is hardly an enemy, is he? I don't want any enemies. This is a dumb idea?

This does not mean that I will not deal with the Adolf Hitlers, Saddams or Osamas. I can imagine killing an enemy if that was the only way to protect me and mine. But I would take no joy in it.

It was very easy for me to feel compassion for Adolph Eichmann in that glass booth. A mousy little accountant who everyone knew - including he - was a dead man. He was a weak little bureaucrat who got in way over his head. He wasn't worth hating. He was a frightened little man. He was all alone, on television, held up to be despised by the world. I was young - too young to comprehend his crimes - but I felt sorry for him.

Saddam Hussein gets his just desserts. Fine. He's a pyschopath. Fine. He's gone from being in top of his world to a rat in a hole with more - lots more - bad stuff on the way.

But in the proper context, we should show compassion. We do not need revenge. Revenge creates unnecessary enemies. Compassion always surprises, always works in unexpected ways.

"When there is a fork in the road," said my mother, "You always take the high road. You'll see. It always works out better in the end. The low road is often easier and always tempting but never right. Even when the high road costs you in some trivial way you will like yourself better for it."

I think she is right. I don't think Christian standards are that difficult to live by on a personal level. Everyone falls short, but the right course is not that hard to find.

Translating those individual ethical standards to the collective, to the political process, to corporate cultures, to foreign policy...

I think that impossible.

[Eli]

Though I was probably the only one in any doubt, Mark Kleiman has informed me that yes, he was kidding about that.

[Morgan]

I've never commented to Slacktivist, and I'm a little behind on my reading due to holiday madness.

I came over here from Boing Boing to read the deconstruction of Left Behind. In the meantime, I've found some fine writing about Christianity that's intelligent and scholarly but still accessible to a semiliterate layman like myself.

Oh, and thanks so much for reading Left Behind so I don't have to.