The American Revolution Was NOT About Modern Issues

I was born and raised just a handful of miles from where General Sullivan started his long (and doomed) campaign north against the native Iroquois Confederacy and the British; in the town where I was raised, there lived a Declaration of Independence signer and on one day every year, ‘Heritage Day’, we celebrate the fact that where we live, over 200 years ago, was one of only three locations where the Declaration of Independence was publicly read.  A few miles west of me, the Liberty Bell was carried and hidden during the British occupation of Philadelphia.

Modern view of the Forks of the Delaware.

And the county in which I lived raised 9 companies to fight in the continental line, and one of those individuals is my direct ancestor.  Of those individuals raised to fight in the militia, almost all my direct ancestors were called to duty (though not all saw action).  My childhood home rested on what was once Leni-Lenape territory; land that was, in a large sense, stolen from them by the family of William Penn.  The area, called the Forks of the Delaware, was where the Treaty of Easton was signed, and where during the 1760′s, dozens of settlers were forced to flee their land, their homes, because of raids by the natives–some were killed.  General La Fayette, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin were among those who visited the town and spent time in its local establishments.

I raise these points because I want to be clear that not only do I have an keen interest in the American Revolution, but I have practically grown up around symbols and places directly related to it.  Anyone with a sliver of situational awareness, who comes into my hometown, is immediately aware of its rich history.  Even the very flag of our town is modeled after the stars and stripes (13 of each).  One might say all this history is what spurred me on my own research.

Flag of Easton, PA (cir. 1776?)

One of the most important functions of the historian is to be able to explain why things happen–not just that they happen.  Sometimes it is important to express that something that is believed to have happened actually never happened at all.  In this way, the historian must always follow the evidence and not simply presume something based upon preconceived notions.  When it comes to the American Revolution, it takes a real patriot (in my humble opinion) to recognize the complexity and nuance of the times rather than presuming a fantasy or mythology about it.

One of things you learn is that a lot of our modern mythology of the period comes from after the time of the Revolution.  It is situated first upon America’s second war with the British–the War of 1812–and before and after the American Civil War, when many of the veterans of the Revolutionary War were dying (much like our present situation with veterans of WWII–basically 60-80 years after the war ended).  What we had were concerned citizens who started to realize that the founding of our nation–used so poetically during the War of 1812 and the American Civil War–may be lost to posterity if histories and biographies and lineages weren’t put to paper immediately.  And what followed were grandiose accounts of heroism and embellishments of deeds–not often by the veterans themselves, but certainly by those taking notes.  A picture of a perfect American movement were formulated in the minds of readers everywhere.  But this world is not one founded upon fact; it is a ‘master story’ wherein the sitz im leben and the cultural milieux of the day are all forsaken for what is essentially a world based in propaganda.

The issues of independence were not always black and white; the grey area between the extremes was the frontier farmer who–though a pacifist–was forced to fight a war which pulled him away from his family, leaving them vulnerable to British and native attacks.  It was the the burning of native villages and the murder of their people that helped forge this nation; while people were decrying British tyranny, they were murdering native women and children (though native attacks were just as brutal).  It had been luck–sometimes more than tactical advantage–that had brought victory for beleaguered and wary continentals on the battlefield.  And without the aid of the French (granting us arms and soldiers to fight, and experience with which to train Continental troops) who knows what might have happened.  The British were not the only enemy that had been faced; local corrupt government officials, put in place by opportunity, were as ruthless as some of the British dragoons.

In our modern time, these issues–our ancestors’ issues–are relatively unknown to the masses who wave their flags on the 4th of July.  Instead, anachronistically, certain individuals will try to make their own petty issues the issues of the patriots who fought to create this nation.  Like spoilt children, these modern day ‘tea baggers’ attempt to subjugate the past; they confuse ‘not always getting what they want’ with ‘tyranny’ and don’t have the slightest clue what the word ‘tyranny’ means.  They link modern hot-button topics like gun control and women’s rights to the Revolution, as if Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams got together because the British were trying to enact stricter regulations on the sale and distribution of firearms (they weren’t), or as if Patrick Henry decried ‘Give me liberty, or give me death!–because I don’t want a public option or universal healthcare!’  The absurdity of it is astonishing (and speaks to the troubles of America’s education system–clearly standardized testing has failed us).

No, this hasn’t happened and no, it won’t happen.

At the time of the American Revolution (which broke out in 1775, not 1776 as some of these website owners seem to think), the British had troops in country already. In other words, aggressive foreign troops were on colonial soil–we don’t have that problem in the contemporary United States.  Additionally, the issue of representation was really important.  The problem was not that American colonists had to pay taxes (the taxes, compared to Englishmen on the mainland, were relatively low) but that they were unfairly taxed without any representation in parliament.  In these contemporary United States, we have so much representation we don’t know what to do with it all (and barely anyone writes to congressmen anymore and not everyone who can vote does vote–essentially nullifying the whole purpose of having representation).

The modern myth is that the American government is acting tyrannically.  But the problem with this myth is that the government is “of the people, by the people”.  We elect our own officials every few years.  We have a series of checks and balances in place precisely to prohibit a dictatorship.  And yet somehow–in some bizarrely paranoid and delusional worldview–there exist individuals in this country who actually believe that the United States government is a tyrannical one lead by a ruthless dictator (that the majority of this country elected twice).  Since these individuals are partially responsible for the government (you know, since we have free and open elections), one has to wonder what that says about them.

The irony here is that those involved in the Tea Party do not seem to have a grasp of what the term ‘patriot’ means, nor do they even seem to be able to follow their own rhetoric.   Their website claims that they are a ‘grassroots’ organization, but the Koch Brothers’–who help found the organization–are anything but (as their activities suggest).  Their claim that they are a 501(c)4 organization that does not endorse political candidates is simply false.  They claim that they want limited government help, but that doesn’t stop members from collecting from the government any chance they can get.

Hypocrisy.

If I can be so bold, the only thing this modern day Tea Party has in common with the founding patriots of this country is the level of illiteracy (if their constant grammatical and spelling errors are anything to go by) and the style of clothes (though Revolutionary War patriots didn’t hang tea from their hats).   Their concept of a Neocon or Libertarian system was so foreign to the founders that they would not have recognized it as a legitimate form of government; instead they used the ideals most commonly associated with French revolutionary and philosophical thinking and the Bill of Rights was most dependent upon Classical ideals of democracy (though in a form of a Representative Republic).  Interestingly enough, the modern Neocon movement is one that would take away representation from the people and place it in the hands of the wealthy elite.  These are the same people supported by the Tea Party (who claim falsely that they were hijacked by Neocons, but in actuality their founders *are* Neocons).

To bring this back around, the most glaring (and damning) missive came from Michele Bachman (whose conspiracy theories always amuse me) who claimed that the POTUS had released information about the IRS “scandal” (of which it is not) as a way to ‘wag the dog’.  But ‘wagging the dog’ is something that conservatives have been doing since the days of Bush II.

If you haven’t seen ‘Wag the Dog‘ (1997), you should.  Robert De Niro stars in the film, so you know that someone is getting shot.  The premise is a simple one (yet prescient): How do you keep power when the country doesn’t like you (through either a scandal or something else)?  You use the media to spin something new; you start a fictional war.   You create an incident, you rally support by claiming you’re a patriot, and then fabricate a war which, under the guise of patriotism, is entirely supported by a populace who does not want to be considered a traitor (or condemned as committing treason).  Ring any particularly loud bells?  It should.

Michele Bachman’s base are precisely the group most ‘wagged’ by the dog.  They steal the language of the American Revolution to fit their own selfish means; words such as ‘patriot’, ‘liberty’, ‘tyranny’, ‘freedom’ and they alter the meaning of these words, take them out of context, and utilize them to justify their own political agendas.  Granted, both parties do this, but I don’t ever recall seeing Obama in a whig and tricorne.

In my opinion, modern day Tea Partiers have hijacked and diminished the vital roles of our ancestors and disgraced their sacrifices–and for what?  For more corporate power over the American worker, who cannot get a job because Tea-Party-backed legislators are making it easier to send work overseas?  For lower wages for the American family so poverty is a bigger issue in this country?  For poor healthcare and zero accountability?  The Tea Party would demolish all the progress this country has made; they seek to deny rights to others so fervently by spouting slogans like ‘read the constitution!’ and ‘protect our rights!’  And they would so eagerly forget about the religious oppression which drove so many of our ancestors to the port cities of the United States–like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia–to escape such persecution; they forget this, and then demand more religion in our modern government.

The real tragedy here is that they fail to see how completely inconsistent their own rhetoric has become; America is not rushing in to confiscate their weapons (though they have no problem wearing assault rifles in public, around children), no one is shutting them down, they still publicly assemble–their rights are still firmly intact, all the while lamenting them as if they have already been stolen away.

The hanging of a Stamp Distributor.

In conclusion, we need to stop allowing this sort of rhetoric to continue.  If it seems as though I’m bringing the hammer down hard on the Tea Party, or that I’m being unfair, it is only because they are the ones so adamant about using this rhetoric.  To be clear, and I must stress this, liberals should not be using rhetoric of the founding fathers either.  However, the Tea Party seems to have completely adopted this rhetoric and have most prominently used it and that is problematic.  No current political party in the public eye has any basis for which to claim solidarity with the Sons of Liberty.  We just don’t live in such a world anymore; our policies, our goals, our sitz im leben is not theirs.  They fought and died so we wouldn’t have to face such challenges again.  Despite protestations from the Tea Party, we still don’t face those challenges.  We have, instead, a whole new range of challenges ahead of us and hijacking the past to incite the present is just plain dishonest.

The American Revolution and the Debate Over Gun Control

While doing research for a side project in which I have a great interest (American History), some general myths have been debunked (for me, at least) in the process.  One such myth is the notion of gun access and the American Revolution.  There is this (somewhat fictive) notion in some parts of the country, by certain individuals, that citizen soldiers–every one of them armed with his own gun–turned aside the British occupation and invasion of the colonies.  Some (like David Kopel) have argued that the British attempted to confiscate and limit gun access to the general public and this, somehow, facilitated the start of the American revolution.

The classic (that is to say, the modern, media-driven) impression of the militiaman is that of Mel Gibson, running out of his burning home carrying an assortment of six or more muskets and rifles.  But how accurate is this pro-gun argument?  What does history tell us?

There is no way that the NRA leadership did not squee during this scene.

The notion that an armed populace rising up against the British, angry at the seizure of weapons in Boston, is a simplistic one that does not take into account the variety of other factors leading up to the war.   Interestingly, those American militiamen and minutemen who fought at the first battles of the war–Lexington and Concord–seem to have been armed by the community (generally there were magazine stores, buildings filled with barrels of gun powder, and weapons stores where muskets would be kept somewhere in outlying areas) and also, in some ways, by the British themselves.  As colonies of British empire, communities in the New World were required to keep up an active duty militia of armed men and artillerists with working cannon.  While the wars in Europe spread to the Americas, the French and their Native American allies were a constant threat to the frontier regions of many Northern colonies (all of New England, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, though also Maryland and Virginia).  During the 1760′s, the rise in bloody raids by French and Native forces, along with the burning of crops and farms (and amounting to the deaths of over 200 Pennsylvanians), the edict of arming the general populace and maintaining military associations seemed only reasonable and expected.

It should be noted strongly that certain factors, socially and regionally, led to the consequence of a some-what armed populace–mainly required military enrollment.  However that isn’t to say that everyone was armed; this myth needs to be dispelled.  The notion that every farmer had a rifle is one that is often played upon by politicians and activists without knowing the facts.  For a large part of the war, a good portion of the Continental Army just wasn’t armed (either because munitions were left behind in a struggle or because new munitions had not yet arrived from Europe).

David Kopel writes, “The Patriots of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, resolved: “That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles.””  But even if this had been stated, an attempt to suggest that this had started the war is nothing more than a fantasy.  In Pennsylvania, when the Militia Act went into effect in March of 1777, and classes of men were called up to serve (essentially drafted) and sent to the lower PA counties to participate in the Philadelphia Campaign under General Washington.  It was the job of the local governments to arm and supply provisions for these men, though if men had arms, they were requested to show up with them.

Why is this important? On October 3, 1781, the state of the Lancaster militia, residents of Lancaster who were called up to arms (the men who so gallantly charged the claim that they would raise their illegal arms to fight the British–in Kopel’s fantasy world, that is), had been so depressing that Governor Reed wrote to General Lacey that he had “no arms here, Mr. Moore having last week delivered all in the store to our militia of the town, and after this, you know, there is no recovering them” (which, by the way, supports the contention that these were not arms belonging to individual gun owners, but to a community magazine and storage area).  After which, Reed wrote that, “Colonel Ross called yesterday to inform me that he had a battalion of 690 in the same naked condition.”  The disposition of these troops was such that, without arms, they were useless and so Reed had to actually call them back home (though they were not discharged).  During the Battles of Germantown and Brandywine, hundreds of Pennsylvanians sat around camp in the regions of Chester and Trappe waiting for muskets instead of joining the fight.

These kids are better armed than many of the militia companies during the Revolutionary War.

When the British marched on Lexington and Concord, they did so not to harm any of the people, but to destroy the weapon stores and magazines in those areas to prevent rebellion (though they had already invaded at this point and had established a foothold in Boston–the war had already begun).  In other words, they did not go house to house and remove weapons from individuals (this is a mythic construct), but were headed to a community building where these arms were located to destroy them.  Through good intelligence, colonial militiamen and minutemen had already emptied the magazines and store houses and had armed themselves, some with those very armaments, and prepared for a fight.  Such is confirmed in eyewitness testimony of one Sylvanus Wood, a man who joined with other militia on the green at Lexington.  In 1858 his account was published, wherein he writes that the Captain of the militia at Lexington yelled:

“Every man of you, who is equipped, follow me; and those of you who are not equipped, go into the meeting-house and furnish yourselves from the magazine, and immediately join the company.’

Further supporting my position here is the fact that none of these men were solid shots.  While they may have drilled with weapons on occasion, they were not accustomed to firing a weapon often, as many citizen soldiers weren’t skilled at shooting as the math proves (don’t let your eyes gloss over, keep with me here–it pays off).

Assuming that every casualty inflicted during the battles at Lexington and Concord were the results of musket and rifle fire (they weren’t, some were caused by bayonets and bladed weapons–but for the sake of argument), just 15 out of every 100 rounds fired from the colonial militia (numbers unknown, but said to be around 70 at Lexington and around 1000 by the end of the engagement at Concord)  found their target (inflicting about 15% casualties on the British; about 270).  Of the British forces (numbering about 1800 regulars), they did slightly worse; less than 1 out of every 10 shots fired struck a colonial militiaman, which amounted to about 90 casualties.

While the number of British wounded and dead seems high, at the onset of the Battle of Lexington, the British (numerically superior, about 250 to 70-ish American militiamen) inflicted 19 casualties while receiving none.  So while potentially hundreds of rounds were exchanged in the beginning of the fight, by the British, loosely speaking only 8% hit someone.  Marksmanship just wasn’t important; the value of a musket was not in its accuracy but in the amount of them you could bring to the battlefield.  Most muskets were not rifled, so when a volley is fired by a company of men with muskets, within 50-75 yards, it acts like a shotgun.  Sometimes you hit and most times you didn’t.  But the real value to muskets was their fast-loading time and ability to keep up a continuous and steady fire upon the opposing forces.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have to fire at will, I can’t see a damn thing with all this smoke flying about.”

As well, during the Siege of Boston in 1775-6, the militia participating in the siege had been given spears to use in case of an enemy assault, partly because ammunition stores were low and some men just didn’t have weapons to fire.  Later in the war, the situation had not much changed.  While many Pennsylvania riflemen were expert marksmen, the accuracy rate was abysmal amongst them.  We’d like to think that the hardened frontier made these men crack shots, but even in the thick of combat, as skilled as some of these veteran soldiers were in 1778-9 (like during the Sullivan campaign), hundreds of rounds were expended with few finding their mark.  As has been noted elsewhere, at the skirmish of Wetzell’s Mill, at least two dozen veteran riflemen fired at Lt. Col. Webster as he rode, on his horse, right towards them at close range; somehow, every round expended missed him and his horse.

The implications here are obvious; while some men on the frontier made it their livelihood to hunt for food and defend against attacks from local tribes, a good portion of the population did not bother with them.  Worse yet for Kopel’s position, even those who did own and use guns (which were expensive) did not seem to use them regularly to be efficient with them.

The fact is that the 2nd Amendment has never been about owning a gun.  Such language is not present there at all:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The context–given that it was written during the Revolution–is quite clear, that this is related to the function of an well regulated militia which, by the way, is run by the state government (and which played a key role in the American revolution); today we call them the National Guard.

Not the definition of a ‘well regulated militia’.

The notion of owning a firearm was not unheard of during the period of the Revolution, but it was more common that weapons were kept in community areas specifically for use by the militia who would need them in times of crisis.  In other words, the American colonials had already established a form of gun control, wherein private ownership–even on the frontier (of which most of Pennsylvania was included)–was rare enough that people simply could not arm themselves to fight in the Revolution.  The random speeches and poetic tracts of leaders, notwithstanding as anything more than propaganda, does not prove otherwise.  Attempts to saddle the issue of pro-gun ownership on the founding of this country, when the facts are on the table, are doomed to failure.

Using the Bible to Support ‘Pro-Life’ Arguments

Bob Cargill shared an interesting verse this morning from Genesis 6, which portrays a frustrated god that so regretted his creation (man) that he sent a flood across the world that swallowed all life–all life, except a remnant that could fit on a relatively small ship comparatively (based on the measurements in Genesis, it would translate to roughly 500 feet long; smaller than the Titanic).  But I think that Bob’s apt point is that if God is ‘pro-life’ then why would he wipe it clean?  It is important to recognize that  those who take the genesis account seriously, those who take the biblical narratives literally, must believe that we’re not just talking about grown men and women with exceptional cognitive abilities to choose right from wrong, we’re talking about infants and disabled individuals who can not always make decisions on their own due to their limitations (you know, since babies really can’t decide where they are born or who their parents are, let alone make any sort of vital cognitive decision beyond whether or not to poop themselves).  Not to mention the perhaps thousands of women who might have been pregnant at that exact moment god decided to wash away the sins of the world (by quite literally washing away everything that had the potential to sin).

“Seriously, you’re all going to die.”

I know some may seek to justify this by making the argument that Jesus’ death had changed everything.  His coming signified the change in god’s personality, or so goes the argument.  God no longer orders the taking of women and children as war plunder, the dashing of children on rocks, or giant she-bears to go terrorizing and mauling mischievous children who don’t believe in resurrections.  It’s like god spent a few months at rehab and emerged a changed deity; he’s a gentler, kinder god on a 12-step plan to happiness.  While this is pleasant enough for me (I’m grateful we’re not still stoning people for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, don’t get me wrong), the idea that ‘all life is sacred’ is not really a big part of the biblical narrative.  How can it be?

Bob says it best:

People of faith must put their faith – and the claims made about their faith – in a real, modern context. Rather than rushing to regurgitate some worn out apologetic claiming, “God cannot tolerate evil,” or “It’s not genocide if God does it,” people of faith must consider that the one they consider to be the “objective moral foundation” for all things ethical at one point in history killed everyone on earth because he regretted creating them! Imagine this same death sentence on the world’s population today. It is nothing less than genocide.

Dude has ninja angels.

Taken in broader sweeps, the Hebrew Bible is far from being ‘pro-life’; indeed it is quite the opposite, portraying god as a sort of vengeful, wrathful warlord who demands the ultimate tribulation while single-handedly destroying his enemies.  At some points he even permits (and actually participates in) the massacre of a whole family of his loyalist servant (Job), and while he may have given Job back twice what he had, he still killed dozens of people who did not deserve to die (that little fact often gets glossed over in Sunday School).  Imagine your wife and children slain before you; don’t worry, you’ll get a whole new wife and more children.  Does that make it better?  Does that justify it?  No sane human being could find any justification in such atrocious (and needless) acts of violence.   And I would seek to remind everyone that Matthew is pretty clear that Jesus did not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matt 10.24)–nor did he come to abolish the law (Matt 5.17; that is, the Torah, and not one iota is to be removed).  The argument commonly made that none of that matters because he fulfilled the law is a non sequitur; he is specifically portrayed to say he did not come to abolish it, and clearly Matthew believed this was true, as he does all he can to situate Jesus as a priestly Moses figure who makes this very claim!

The fact remains, at the end of the day, that using the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament to justify pro-life positions are doomed to fail.  After the bible portrays god as ordering the slaughtering of the first born children of Egypt, any attempt to portray him as someone who cares a great deal about human suffering and human life falls flat on its face.   I’m sorry, but there is no ‘human value’ that god holds dear–only subservience matters to him.  Those who believe are saved (most of the time) and those who do not god deigns them to misery and destruction and torture and death: whether man, woman, child, or those unborn.  It is horrid and obscene.

Anyone who attempts to use the bible to validate their pro-life position is wrong.  Simply put, they need to find a different argument.  I’m not saying I am all for abortion; I’m pro-choice, but I don’t think abortion would be a decision I would support.  But I’m not everyone and I’m not in everyone’s shoes; I’m only in my own.  Objectively, pro-life is unjustified for that very reason, at least that is my opinion.

Book Review: Candida Moss – ‘The Myth of Persecution’

I had very little knowledge of this book prior to receiving my copy, though I did have high expectations based upon what little I did know.  A professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame, Dr. Candida Moss has focused quite a bit on the subject of martyrdom and judging from her earlier work she tends to treat the evidence objectively (while remaining realistic about it), making her a superb scholar.   From the blurb on the book, it looked to be a subject with which I have a lot of interest; it appeared to have that edge, that revisionist quality, of which I felt I would enjoy reading.

There were a lot of ways this book could have failed.  It is not an easy task to challenge a foundational doctrine.  Often books of this magnitude will fall short somewhere, either in interpretation, or in attempts to find bizarre explanations that side-step critical issues.   So it is, in fact, a testament–a μάρτυς, if you will–to Dr. Moss’s abilities that this book finds its footing and takes off running from the very first page.   It does not disappoint.

In the introduction of The Myth of Persecution, Dr. Moss spends a good amount of time laying out the framework for the rest of the book.  She engages, first and foremost, the modern mindset of martyrdom within Christianity–a temperament that she treats carefully and respectfully–and how this contemporary mentality feeds off of a tradition of an ancient persecuted Christian church.  In certain cases throughout the history of the world, persecuted Christians (i.e., those who often face inexplicable hardships, including death) have likened their struggle with the ancient martyr traditions, often dualistically (as in a battle between good and evil).  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, she writes, as “Sometimes this idea inspires great courage and heroism and provides comfort to the sick or dying” (p. 9).  She then goes on to aptly point out the distinction between actual persecutions and the invoked kind.  That is to say, those who would relate disagreements (often minor) between themselves and other political- or social-opposing groups (like those relating to how religious issues should be handled in a secular society which makes allowances for minority rights, for example) to persecution.

We all know about this tactic, don’t we?  How often do we hear someone talking about how they are ‘religiously persecuted’ because they can’t force prayer in school?  Or how about those who feel oppressed because they can’t get judicial officials to follow the law of the Bible instead of modern, secular laws?  Dr. Moss highlights this important issue with a good blend of criticism while recognizing the social factors that push this mentality onward.  For that she gets bonus points, in my book.  It is far too easy to get lost in the polemics and vitriol, and yet she somehow manages to avoid all that by cutting right to the social factors and implications, while remaining honest and forthright about the ‘wrongness’ (if I can use it that way) of such blatant word misuse.  But while this is not persecution in the true sense, she argues, this is how modern western societies–particularly in America–interpret the word:

In this polarized view of the world, disagreement and conflict–even entirely nonviolent conflict–is not just a difference of opinion; it is [in the mind of this social entity-Ed.] religious persecution. (ibid.)

Dr. Moss is tactful, never making any accusations or calling into question anyone’s integrity or honesty; she treats these feelings are genuine (though when it comes to politicians, she may be too generous).  Still, her underlying premise is that there are individuals, whether they are religious or political figures, who evoke the language of persecution and–when this occurs–there are real and unfortunate consequences.

It is almost as if they knew I was writing this book review!

These mythical constructs that a person might conjure–specifically those constructs empowered emotionally by persecution language–are far from beneficial.  Rather than drumming up strong convictions, bolstering courage in face of opposition, or seeking out peaceful solutions, those groups within our society who feel persecuted are charged-up by this language, encouraged to become reactionary, and cause tremendous trouble–even to the point of committing acts of violence.  In other words, one who is under the impression that they are being persecuted–rather than simply acknowledging a disagreement in opinion–are likely to find justification in retaliation; that is to say, those who feel persecuted become the persecutors.

Then Dr. Moss throws in the wrench: What if the age of persecution is (mostly) a myth?  What if this deep-seated social memory recall, that many Christians learn from a young age, is not rooted in the verisimilitude of history?  This raises all sorts of questions, and Dr. Moss does a fine job dealing with them all.  As a minimalist, I am always more interested in the ‘why’ than the ‘what’; ‘what is this story saying’ is important, but not as important–in my opinion–as ‘why is this story being told?’.  So I was delighted to see Dr. Moss express this very concept:

When asked to describe the experiences of Christians under Roman Rule,…others might refer to those martyrs burned alive or beheaded or to the extreme tortures and grisly forms of execution that only the most sadistic minds could conjure up. …  This is the picture of the early church that we get from nearly two thousand years of literature, art, and–now–film. .. When it comes to why Christians were persecuted, people are hard-pressed to supply an answer.  (pp. 127, 128)

To be clear, she does not outright deny that Christians are persecuted (or that they were persecuted in antiquity); she is particular in what she says:

There’s no doubt that Christians thought they were persecuted;… Nor should we underestimate the reality of their experiences.  There is no doubt that Christians did die, that they were horrifically tortured and executed in ways that would appall people today,….  At the same time, the statements of apologists like Justin martyr, Tertullian, and Eusebius do not fit the evidence.  We need to be wary of the claims of Christians that they were everywhere and always persecuted, when, in fact, they were not.  (pp. 160, 161)

That said, I have to find something about which to be critical lest I be considered a bias reviewer; to be fair to Dr. Moss, these criticisms don’t have any impact on the value and usefulness of this book, and most of what I have to criticize is superficial at best.

Let me preface this by saying I really enjoyed Dr. Moss’s discussion of the early martyrdom traditions and how, like most ancient literature, there are clear designs at work, where the authors of these traditions show literary indebtedness to other,more ancient narratives (both Greco-Roman and Jewish).  Still, I would have liked to see a discussion of some of the earlier persecution stories dealing with Paul and Ignatius.  While Paul is talked about a bit (especially on his rhetoric of persecution), I don’t recall reading anything about his supposed imprisonment (as this is, itself, a form of persecution.  Both of these narratives have similar (unbelievable) elements (Colossians 4:18, where Paul is supposedly writing from prison, vs. Ignatius’ Epistle to the Romans):  Here they are, captured by Romans for, apparently, just practicing Christianity, and yet these same captors are supplying both Paul and Ignatius with a seemingly endless amount of ink and papyri just to write about the very same religion for which they were arrested.  And just who sent the letters?  It seems rather bizarre to imagine the Romans, who are presented as hostile towards Ignatius, would just do his bidding by sending out mail.  Likewise it seems just as silly to presume that other Christians would smuggle them out.  In the church tradition, Paul is supposedly martyred, but Ignatius reminds us in his epistles that he is supposedly surrounded by all sorts of wild beasts heading toward the Colosseum to be martyred!

Additionally, a discussion of the Abraham/Isaac traditions would have fit nicely into Chapter 1, which deals with the concept of martyrdom prior to Christianity.  While not necessarily a ‘martyr tradition’ in the official sense (read the book to find out why the language is important), in some versions of the story, Isaac is killed by Abraham.  This story also has certain motifs, like with that of Socrates, of a death narrative that was deemed both necessary and pious in certain Jewish and Christian traditions.  In my opinion, the father having to sacrifice his son to embolden a covenant has some interesting (albeit, generic) correlations with the passion narrative itself.

Of course, these minor critiques are nothing to worry about.  Their absence does not detract from the book in any way.  To the contrary, and to Dr. Moss’s credit, what she didn’t include couldn’t hurt her case, but only make it stronger.  The best example? The rather small size of the Christian movement in the first few centuries.  As a barely noticeable religion, a historian would be hard-pressed to find a solid reason why the Romans would even take notice of Christianity, make any sort of distinction between it and Judaism, or find just cause (or any cause) to launch a campaign of persecution against them.  Quite to the point, Pliny, a provincial governor of Bithynia (see his Epistulae) in the early second century, doesn’t even seem to notice them through most of his political career (which is extensive, and he surely would have come into contact with them at some point were there persecutions prior to the period!), and only when someone brings them before him, he acts–but he is utterly confused by them, and has to write the emperor in order to find out what to do with them (besides what he has already done)!  He isn’t even sure if holding the name ‘Christian’ itself or if the actions done under the name are considered an offense.  Had the Christian movement been larger, had there been an edict or discussion or law concerning the persecution of Christians prior to or during his governorship, Pliny would have known about it.  So not only is Dr. Moss right, arguments could be made which greatly support her conclusions in this very important volume.

This is a book about which I could go on and on, but I don’t want to drag this review out any longer (and continue to bore the pants off my readers when they could be enjoying the book I’m reviewing instead).  The Myth of Persecution espouses many truths about modern society and ancient society, both religious and secular.  But it also exposes a truth about humanity as a whole, though quite indirectly: we are satiated by myth.  Humans are simply more inclined to accept a traditional perspective than a factual one.  Man is intrigued more by legends of heroism than by real courage and heroism (and many of us wouldn’t even know where to look for it).  And whether a story is historical or not will never be as important as whether it is good or not.  For that reason, as well, some may not like what Dr. Moss has to say.  Her presentation–sound and verifiable as it is–will not win support from certain social groups and individuals who find the age of martyrs a useful tool in directing the masses to fulfill their agendas.

This guy probably won’t buy it, though he is one person who really needs to read this book.

For those who are interested in the early church–that is, the best approximation we can find of what that ‘early church’ might have looked like–this book is a dream come true.  It analyzes long-ignored subjects in a tenacious–yet fruitful–manner that will grab your attention and keep you turning pages.  It is an enjoyable read and Dr. Moss has much to say–all of it is engaging, thoughtful, and brilliant.  These are traits that are hard to come by in even the most popular academic books.

Finally, I would add–in light of today being International Women’s Day–that The Myth of Persecution is defining in others ways not directly relevant to the subject of martyrdom.  There is something really exhilarating and refreshing about a book like this, which defies centuries of church tradition dominated by a testosterone-run hierarchy, written by an intelligent and (dare I say) attractive woman, in a profession (academia) also dominated by men (though, finally, the dynamics are shifting–yet not fast enough).  Scholarship (and society, more broadly) needs more of just this sort of thing; it needs more books that shake the foundations of long-held presuppositions by bright female scholars like Dr. Moss.  I hope she helps keep studies like this coming (and I also hope she lets me keep reviewing them).

I hope readers will check out the other reviews along this review tour:

Wednesday, March 6th: RMP

Wednesday, March 6th: A Philosopher’s Blog

Thursday, March 7th: A Book Geek

Saturday, March 9th: The Musings of Thomas Verenna

Monday, March 11th: Aspire2

Tuesday, March 12th: Earliest Christianity

Wednesday, March 13th: 50 Books Project

Thursday, March 14th: Do You Ever Think About Things You Do Think About?

Monday, March 18th: The Way Foreward

Tuesday, March 19th: The Dubious Disciple

Wednesday, March 20th: Exploring Our Matrix

Thursday, March 21st: The Gods Are Bored

Monday, March 25th: Broken Teepee

Also check out her interview at the Huffington Post and check out her book trailer here:

Bill O’Reilly and the Polarizing Political Figure of Jesus

It has come to my attention that Bill O’Reilly will be publishing a book on the life and death of Jesus. This news has been making the rounds on the interwebs and of course I’m concerned. It isn’t necessarily because I don’t like O’Reilly, or because I find his views on generally everything to be atrociously flawed and morally questionable, but I am concerned because the last thing we need to happen is a “Which way would Jesus vote?” debate start dominating the conversation about the figure of Jesus.

Of course I’m aware that Jesus is often called upon by various politicians of all affiliations. But politicians most likely use this rhetoric to reflect what popular culture supports and, unfortunately, sites like Rapture Ready (a website for fundamentalist Christians who believe the world will end within their lifetimes) make the following (generally popular) claims about Jesus found in certain wings of evangelical Christianity:

There is one thing certain we can state, based upon the integrity of Bible truth. Jesus would never endorse or be a member of any party whose platform supports abortion, gay rights, and a general hostility to Bible-believing Christians.

Interestingly, Jesus is portrayed to have spoken thousands of words between all four Gospels, yet not one of those words was about abortion or gay rights. What to do about people who are hostile to Bible-believing Christians? Well, it gets a little hairy in this area, but there is that oft-quoted phrase “turn the other cheek.” So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be about endorsements, for or against, for any particular political party.

When it comes down to it, scholars have enough trouble coming to any sort of consensus on what Jesus may have said and what he might have done, let alone what his political views might have been (in some circles, questions are raised as to whether or not such a figure as Jesus existed at all, or if such a figure existed in a way similar to how he is portrayed in the New Testament).

And now that we’re on the subject, I don’t really hate bankers, or what they do, I just don’t want them doing their business in my house!

And the right side of the aisle are not the only culpable ones. While Jesus spoke of social change in theological terms, he was not the liberal, leftist ideologue that some would suggest (like those at Jesus was a Liberal believe). He did not come to bring class equality, he did not come to preach against the corporate state (‘render unto Caesar’ and all that), he did not bring it to ‘the man’ (‘the man’ crucified him). He did not resolve to rid the world of poverty, he only eased their suffering by promising them a better world when they died (of leprosy, of starvation, of a beating by a slave owner, etc…); he never promised the poor freedom from their current, earthly state of poverty-stricken existence.

And while it may shock some of you, on occasion, he got involved in a little saber rattling. Jesus was not portrayed as a pansy. He had his moments of testosterone (can God have testosterone?) fueled rage and sometimes he was pretty blunt about what to do with those who crossed him (“those who are not with me are against me” and “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” and “these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence”).

Many of these verses were used during the inquisition of heretics and during the crusades by those in power to support (theologically) the violent acts they committed. Whether they were right or wrong (wrong, in my opinion) is just demonstrates how that liberal, hippie (not to be confused with ‘hipster’) Jesus with the ‘anti-war’, pacifist attitude is a myth (in John 2.15, Jesus made a whip out of cord and he whipped the crap out of people for goodness sakes!). But it is a myth in the same sense as the conservative, anti-gay, pro-guns Jesus that the right loves so much.

“I’m saving this one lamb from the evil meat-packing corporations! Huzzah!” said Jesus never.

So am I concerned about O’Reilly’s foray into historical Jesus studies? Oh, god yes. I’m terrified. But I’m terrified because of the way lay people and politicians will continue to construe and deconstruct the Jesus we have–even as unstable and contradictory an individual as he may be–and scholarship will continue to remain within a relatively isolated community of experts. In other words, books by the Bill O’Reillys and the Clint Willises (author of Jesus Is Not a Republican) of the world are the only books on Jesus that anyone will read. Because they will be the only books available and accessible.

Besides, broadcasters and talking heads don’t have the facts straight when it comes to their actual jobs (reporting the news). Bill O’Reilly can’t seem to figure out how what causes the tide, so just how well do you think he’ll do getting the historical Jesus right? Keep in mind, scholars can’t even seem to figure it out entirely–and they’ve spent their professional career trying to find answers. I’m betting that O’Reilly will not produce a very accurate picture.

He is already imaging Jesus much like how he views himself, a “beloved and controversial young revolutionary” who is constantly persecuted, but who fights for what that which he believes. It is a stunning pseudo-autobiographical portrayal of Jesus through O’Reilly’s eyes. And had O’Reilly been trained in the field, he would know that Bultmann pointed out this troublesome factor of historical Jesus scholarship decades ago. But O’Reilly isn’t a scholar, nor even an educated layman on the subject; he is a pundit on a news network with an agenda (like all politicians and political-pundits). That is precisely the problem.

“I should write a book on Jesus… but also on aliens.”

Jesus’ portrayal in the Gospels is multifaceted because we have at least four portrayals. But the nuance of the figure of Jesus is much greater, and so limiting Jesus to particular synchronic values does nothing but narrow his value to everyone. Even as a secular student of history, I can find value there because the study of these nuances is important to all–not conservatives, not liberals, not any particular sectarian group. So this is my plea to everyone: leave Jesus out of politics. You are not salvaging history, you’re destroying the future (of history).

The President’s Children are More Important than Your Kids

The whole function of this NRA commercial is ridiculous.  No one is saying your kids aren’t important or that their safety isn’t important.  The NRA is feeding you horse crap so you’ll be too distracted to think critically about this issue.  Certainly your kids–your family–mean more to you than anything.  But while that is so, the question that is being asked isn’t one that requires emotion to answer.  In truth, whether or not the President’s children are more important to protect is the key here, and that answer is, most obviously, a yes.  But let’s break this down for everyone so no one is left feeling confused.

The NRA asks:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”

via NRA ad brings Obama kids into gun debate – TODAY News.

Aside from the fact that the president is in constant state of threat (all the time, every day, every hour of the day–unlike your kids) and often by NRA supporters (threats against the president from the conservatives–that is to say, American Citizens–are astronomical, about 40,000 since he took office in 2007, thanks to crazy talking heads on the Republican News Network…er, Fox News–threats are up over 300% since the Bush Administration.  And since the NRA deems it useful to just insult the president by race-baiting…), are the president’s kids more important?  Here is why I think so.

In case you may have forgotten, the President of the United States is the guy that holds sway over, oh I don’t know, 3 million active and reserve military personnel with, you know, tanks and aircraft carriers.  Also he knows of countless national security issues, overseas interests, and–oh, oh!  Let’s not forget about the fact that he has the power to enforce the launch of the more than 5100 nuclear bombs in our arsenal.

So yeah, the President is an important guy.  He has all the marbles.  And there are crazy bad people out there who want to threaten this man.  This begs the question: hasn’t anyone seen Air Force One?!  Don’t you recall the plot of that movie?  You know:

The President of the USA goes to Moscow and gives a stirring speech outlining the USA’s new “Zero-tolerance” policy with respect to terrorism. On the flight home, terrorists take over Air Force One (the President’s official plane) and take the passengers (including his wife and daughter) hostage. The terrorists plan to execute one hostage every half-hour unless/until their demands are met.

Yeah…that plot!  And that plot isn’t some random premise; the fact is this threat is very, very real.  So yeah, that is why the President has armed secret service men around him at all times.  That, and the 40,000 incredibly insane conservatives (probably NRA members) who want to kill him or see him killed.

So to answer your question, oh dreadfully ignorant NRA commercial: “Are the President’s kids more important than yours?”  Unless you’re the leader of a nuclear-armed nation (i.e., a superpower), then the answer is: well, d’uh!  Because if something were ever to happen to them, or the President, chances are high that–you know–a world war might start and I doubt that would be good for anyone’s children, now would it?

Quote of the Hour: Obama as a Socialist Muslim Extremist

Beautifully stated:

“The cognitive dissonance one has to [allow] to believe something as flatly contradictory as Obama as both a radical Muslim and a 1960′s Alinsky-style socialism liberal is utterly astounding. Sheer personal animus and fear create new realities.” – Michael Gibson on Facebook

The latent contradiction between ‘Muslim extremist’ (which is as conservative as one can get, next to Rush Limbaugh) and ‘leftist socialist/communist’ falls on the ears of the ignorant and those who simply parrot the propaganda they hear, those who use words without understanding their meaning.

Calvin on Happiness and Ignorance

Quite relevant to today’s political crises:

In Support of Christopher Rollston (and a Reply to T.M. Law)

Today, Jim West published an article on Bible and Interpretation calling upon Emmanuel to do what is right, from a Christian perspective–and he makes some very good points.  Jim Davila wrote a well-thought-out piece in support of Chris Rollston.  James McGrath posted an examination of the marginalization of women in the Bible in a very useful way, and yesterday he also published a nice roundup on the current situation involving Chris Rollston and Emmanuel (specifically Dr. Blowers).  And he shares these apt statements with his readers:

But in this case involving Chris Rollston, a direct contravention of the school’s statement of faith doesn’t seem to be the issue. And so I want to avoid all potential side issues, and focus on one central point: If Chris is wrong about the marginalization of women in the Bible, as those who are seeking to have him disciplined or fired surely think, why not just disagree with him? There are plenty of Christians who agree with him, plenty who disagree, and no classic creed of the Christian churches takes a stance on this issue (not that that should matter to an institution connected with the Stone-Campbell tradition). Nor does the position statement of Emmanuel Christian Seminary as found on their web site takes a stance on this particular matter.

If Emmanuel Christian Seminary has failed to communicate to its students, some of its faculty members, and its board of trustees how to disagree constructively as Christians, and that it is possible to disagree as Christians without punishing, firing , expelling or otherwise using authority in an attempt to silence the person you disagree with, then they have failed to engage in the most fundamental mission of any educational institution, and have failed to live up to their identity as a Christian institution.

An action like this can only ever be self-defeating. For surely if your own stance were self-evidently true, a simple correction or pointing out of the error would be sufficient. Resorting to the use of power and exclusion indicates fear, not confidence. Rest assured that the views you fear will get increasingly more attention as you try to silence those who articulate them.

via In Support of Christopher Rollston.

I was not aware of T.M. Law’s recent comments about it until reading this roundup (can be found here) and that is a little disheartening since Law addresses me directly (I would hope Law would just send me a note directing me to his discussion in the future) but, while I am glad to see he is back to blogging, I am not at all persuaded by his position.  In fact it is a little discouraging.

To be clear, I’m all for ‘toning down rhetoric’ but it seems as though Law is not really up to speed on everything.  Also, and I don’t mean to suggest that Law did not read my article carefully, I do find it a little perplexing that he would make criticisms against me that restate exactly the same things I say as if I never said them (more on that in a moment).  But there are more curious oddities in Law’s presentation of my arguments.

I won’t press the issue, but something that deserves some mention is the apparent condescension throughout his piece.  It appeared (from my point of view) to be dripping through his suggestion that I’m somehow ignorant of confessional institutions (but I will say this is neither true nor demonstrable from my article—even when Law takes snippets of my arguments out of context, my words ring of someone who understands confessional theological institutions quite well; but whatever).

I’m also not quite sure why he writes that, had he been an administrator at Emmanuel, he “wouldn’t answer a blogger to begin with” because (a) I’m not just a blogger, but a student at a research institution who is actively engaging scholarship, (b) my article wasn’t written on a ‘blog’ but in a credible online journal (Bible and Interpretation, though as an Op-Ed piece), and (c) Law is also a blogger and I’m sure that had he felt the urge to press a question, published it in an academic forum, would probably not enjoy being called just ‘a blogger’.  This rhetoric seems out of place in an entry meant to encourage a more level-headed approach to this whole mess.  Maybe it was not meant to offend, but then why bother including it?  I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but I hope that in future correspondence, we can make do without such notions.  So let’s move on to the meat of his arguments (which, again, are difficult to address since where he believed we disagreed or where he calls me ignorant, we’re actually on the same page).

(2) Law argues what everyone knows: confessional institutions have different goals than other (secular) institutions and staff at these confessional facilities work under those goals.  But I’m unclear if Law thinks it acceptable to ignore the tenure process at these institutions because they happen to be faith-based, or if he believes it is acceptable for them to fire tenure professors at will, without any reason or cause because a small fraction of the staff are disturbed by what another member of their faculty wrote publicly?  He expresses concern for Chris Rollston, but doesn’t seem to address this.  He spends all his time telling us about confessional institutions but no time at all addressing the crux of the issue (which is what my article was about): academic integrity and intellectual honesty at these institutions.  The ambiguity of his position is rather bizarre.

(3) Law goes on to suggest that because these institutions function differently:

“As far as legality is concerned, confessional institutions also whistle a different tune to the one heard in the universities. They do not have to pinpoint a specific violation of a specific doctrinal point in order to terminate a faculty member. All they must show is that the employee in question has espoused a view that is contrary to the spirit of the confession. The spirit, not the letter. And even if their legal counsel is not satisfied, there are a host of other options on the table.”

But that is the precise function I’m trying to nail down here.  And this is why I believe that Law could have probably read my article more carefully.  The issue is not whether I understand this function (I blatantly talk about *this very function* in my paper), but why this is acceptable and—more directly—why Rollston is being ‘disciplined’.  Now Law might argue on the side of Emmanuel; that Rollston’s article was ‘contrary to the spirit’ of the school.  But he would be wrong, since the self-appointed(?) representative of Emmanuel, Dr. Blowers (he uses ‘we’ a lot, really likes talking in the first-person-plural), has stated over and over that this is not a heresy case (which is precisely what one would need to show in order for the firing to be legal) and that the goals of Emmanuel are in line with open and free dialogue.  So we have the most senior member of faculty, who is also an administrator at the school and Chair of the Area Chairs, and whose parents were high-level donors to Emmanuel subverting Law’s own argument that “[s]ome…confessional institutions would even consider ‘academic freedom’ just as subversive and dangerous as any form of liberal theology”.

But that is the whole point I’m making!  Emmanuel is sayings one thing and doing another.  And while that may be fine to Law, that is unacceptable to me.  You have someone as prominent as Dr. Blowers making offensive and charged public statements about Chris Rollston who also, very publicly, claiming that ‘disciplinary action’ *will be administered* (his words: “We are looking at disciplinary action” which intimates it is already in-motion).  Again, the issue is not about whether or not I understand these sorts of institutions, but about how some will say they are one thing and do another.

As an aside, Law writes that “[t]hey may in fact receive legal counsel not to talk publicly about what they are doing.” But it is too late for that.  The cat is out of the bag.  I’m in agreement with Jim Davila where he writes:

“The real issues, which I have not yet seen either Professor Blowers or Emmanuel Christian Seminary address, are that, first, an academic at this institution has apparently violated fundamental confidentiality principles by disclosing an ongoing disciplinary case against a colleague to someone not involved in the case and, indeed, apparently someone not at the institution at all. That the improper disclosure went public through a misunderstanding of how Facebook works only exacerbates the breach of confidentiality and illustrates why rules of confidentiality exist in the first place. This is arguably an internal matter for the institution, but given that the issue has gone public, it can hardly be kept quiet now. (If Professor Blowers or Emmanuel College have commented substantively on this and I have missed it, I would be grateful for the link.  Apologizing for accidentally making the breach of confidentiality even more public is not addressing it substantively.)”

I would like to remind the reader that this particular issue has nothing to do with what the ‘general faculty and staff’ at Emmanuel think—this inquisition (which is really what it is, despite what Blowers says) is the result of one man’s agenda and nothing else.  This isn’t a matter of the whole of the faculty coming out against Rollston, but one man who has seemingly taken it upon himself to speak out against, and threaten, his job.  We need to be clear on that.  Maybe behind the scenes there are other happenings, maybe the faculty is split, but they aren’t spouting off unforgivable statements, playing defense, or otherwise splitting hairs about the so-called secular agenda on blogs or public forums like Dr. Blowers has done since this all began.   It is clear to anyone with two eyes and a brain that Dr. Blowers has been on some grand crusade since Rollston’s article was published; until other evidence presents itself, we should keep this in mind.

(4) I am not at all convinced by Law that these institutions are somehow removed from the rest of the academy (at least, that is the impression I get from his blog post).  I do not believe that any accredited institution can simply ‘ignore’ the workings of academia and just go on doing its own thing without wanting to engage it or be a part of it.  All institutions of Higher Ed are inexplicably linked and none (mo matter how much they despise it) can remove themselves from it—James Tabor is absolutely right about this. Students of Emmanuel are future scholars–they will interact with and through the academy.  They will publish papers, join faculty, and move through the tenure process elsewhere.  So it is not at all fair to suggest that institutions like Emmanuel should just get a free pass here because this is ‘how they are’ and if we don’t ‘get them’ tough.

While Law may be correct that their “idea of what defines a “successful education” is different than, say, a research institution like Rutgers, he is wrong if he thinks that such a belief excuses them from academic judgment when they state they seek to provide “a rigorous academic experience” but then back-peddle on that very issue.  That is neither fair to the students who pay money to attend Emmanuel, nor fair to the faculty who are trying to educate their students in the best way they can (and now, finding out, they have to tip toe around for fear of losing their jobs over something they might write—as basic and uncontroversial as it might be).

This, along with point (2), cause me to wonder how anyone can ask “But who is pretending, and what are they pretending?”  I can only presume at this point that Law just is not investigating this issue beyond what must have been a cursory glance through my paper.  Who is pretending?  Emmanuel, Dr. Blowers—they have presented themselves as something they are not (and they continue to do so).

(5) Contrary to law, I was careful with my wording, I was measured and level-headed (not reactionary) to the events that have unfolded.  I was also careful with generalizing; I recognize that many confessional institutions are what they claim to be and get along just fine, and I’m fine with these institutions.  But there are certain confessional institutions which are owed judgment for what can only be called ‘lying’.  My issue is not with ‘confessional institutions’ as a whole, but specifically those which preach from the pulpit one way and when the class leaves the pews, do the exact opposite of what they just preached.

Now far be it for me to belabor the issue, but if Law is saying that these institutions are using words incorrectly, or using words to present themselves as ‘scholarly’ while not really agreeing with the true definitions of those words (‘critical’, ‘tenure’, ‘Christian’, ‘academic’, etc…) then that is a problem.  Because students will pay for what they believe to be a challenging education at Emmanuel, and if Law is correct in his interpretation of confessional institutions that “of what defines a “successful education” is different”, then they need to state that clearly.  They need to be directly honest about their positions on critical scholarship, what they think about the way women are treated in the Bible, how they mean to educate their students on their campus about these matters.  At this point, neither Emmanuel, nor Dr. Blowers (who again continues to speak for the school), has stated anywhere that this is the case.  In fact they have argued the exact opposite of this and have instead pushed forward with the notion that Emmanuel, in line with the Stone-Campbell tradition, is all about challenging their students.

I must reiterate my earlier argument here, as I did in the comments under Dr. Blower’s article: Had this been just an academic disagreement, no one would have blinked an eye towards Dr. Blowers, Emmanuel, or this situation. Academic disagreements happen *all the time* and are the staple of credible, critical scholarship of which Dr. Blowers believes to be so vital to his institution and to himself. And this is, after all, how Dr. Blowers continues to present his defense–this isn’t a censorship, but a disagreement over how Rollston’s article was presented.

But this has not been a simple matter of disagreement, or a friendly sparring match between two colleagues over nuance (which it should have been, by all accounts—Dr. Blowers states that *he* feels that Rollston was unprofessional and irresponsible in his presentation of the marginalization of women, again demonstrating that he is behind the charge and he is speaking for Emmanuel). No, Dr. Blowers may be displeased with Dr. Rollston’s HuffPo article, but he took it from a general disagreement to something much more scandalous. He has threatened a colleague with ‘disciplinary action’ and he did so *in the public forum*! This doesn’t come from the blogosphere but Dr. Blowers himself.

One thing is certain; when someone at an institution uses the editorial “we” (in the sense of “We are looking at disciplinary action in the next few days” – Dr. Blowers) because one scholar doesn’t like what another scholar said–we call that censorship. Maybe at Emmanuel, ‘the church’ comes before all else, including the respect deserved of tenure, or of the many loyal years devoted to the institution by the colleague being ‘disciplined’. But let’s be absolutely clear. Dr. Blowers has stated:

“Within our own Stone-Campbell heritage, Emmanuel has been a “moderate” school, trying to avoid the polarizations of liberal and conservative and providing a healthy environment for students to be challenged in their faith, put through the refiner’s fire of tough questioning, and yet given strong theological and spiritual resources to build for future ministry.”

But one must wonder how threatening the job of the most prominent and well-respected member of faculty at your institution with disciplinary action for putting students “through the refiner’s fire of tough questioning” is in line with that *stated* goal. And one has the right to ask, directly of Dr. Blowers and of Emmanuel itself: what sort of standard is being set when they can so easily disregard the tenure process, can disregard its colleagues, and also, quite directly, their student body in the process?

This is a question that I posed to Dr. Blowers directly last week; and over 3,000 words later, Dr. Blowers has not taken the time to answer it.

Law is correct that we need a measured approach to this, and we must be careful in our engagement of the evidence.  But let’s be real here.  There are ways in which a responsible, respectable institution handles itself.  Emmanuel has, in the course of a few weeks, publicly announced disciplinary action against a tenured faculty member about an article he wrote which was neither against the Stone-Campbell heritage nor out of line with any of the current scholarship (that even Emmanuel states it embraces), has seen its most senior faculty member commence with a public heresy trial (on blogs, in comments, on his Facebook) and then state that is *not what he’s doing* (though it is clear to everyone else).  Then that same faculty member refuses to answer any question relating to the matter—after he had already made the issue public (which isn’t conspiracy, but it may be a scandal), and that I take issue with any of this is…what are Law’s objections exactly?  That this is a result of my misunderstanding of the way confessional institutions do business?  Sorry if I don’t find that particular line of reasoning to be very persuasive.

Bob Cargill Sets the Record Straight on Emmanuel and Chris Rollston

Over at my article on Bible and Interpretation, Bob Cargill makes the following salient points to Paul Blowers (snippet below):

Dr. Blowers,

As an alum of, and former adjunct professor at a Restoration school (Pepperdine), and as a colleague of Dr. Rollston’s, I have taken an interest in this developing story, one that increasingly looks like an attempt by the administration at Emmanuel Christian Seminary to terminate a tenured professor at the urging of a professor of church history, who just happens to be the son of a wonderful and well-loved regent of both Emmanuel and Milligan College. (That would be you.)

So as one who was raised in the Churches of Christ, and as one who now proudly teaches Religious Studies at the University of Iowa, and who is heavily involved in the Digital Humanities, I have taken additional interest in this story because so much of it has taken place in the form of YOUR public comments in the online realm, such as Facebook and blogs.

HOWEVER, as a member of the academy, and as a scholar and a professor engaged in the academic enterprise, it is every bit my, and ALL scholars’ business to know whether or not a supposed institution of higher learning is abiding by fundamental academic principles like tenure.

Do you not realize that your repeated (non-)responses of “it’s just our internal business” and “you don’t have all the information” makes the recent events at Emmanuel appear all the more scandalous, as these are the typical responses of an organization that is attempting to cover up and distract from something that goes against all rules of professionalism and academic propriety?

If Emmanuel has terminated a tenured professional, and one that is as respected as Dr. Rollston, for doing his job – offering an interpretation of scripture based upon his expertise, but one which you, as a Professor of Restoration history, happen to disagree with, and for which you have publicly chastised him – then there will be such a professional and public outcry against Emmanuel that whatever is left of their credibility will instantly be flushed away and the only individuals who will support the institution, and the only students who will attend the college are the far-right leaning, bordering-on-fundamentalist conservative Stone-Campbell sectarians who regularly champion anti-intellectual causes and badmouth any form of critical biblical scholarship. Are you TRYING to make Emmanuel look even MORE anti-intellectual than Glenn Beck University?

via The Bible and Interpretation – On Academic Integrity and the Future of Biblical Studies in Confessional Institutions.

You will want to read all of Bob’s points (spread out over three comments #13-15).