Humility and the lessons of history

It’s rare for a religious discussion to remain in our mediaculture for long, but that’s been the case for President Obama’s comments at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5. Obama gave a speech in which he compared Islamic violence with historic Christian violence. Political opponents expressed outrage. Jim Gilmore, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the remarks “the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime.” 

In the speech, Obama said that “during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” He then brought his historical analogy closer to home: “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
From what I’ve seen, historians who’ve responded to the claims don’t take issue with his statements. Others, though, don’t like him criticizing Christianity or America. 

This raises a question: Is it valuable to practice self-reflection (and self-criticism) as Christians?
A second question is, Is it fair to even call what was done in the Crusades, the Inquisition and in the American South Christian? Most Muslims would deny that what ISIS is doing reflects Islam.
In a Feb. 10 article at Slate.com, Jamelle Bouie explores the facts behind Obama’s statement about Jim Crow. He makes two basic points: (1) it was worse than we may have thought, and (2) it was a religious ritual.
“In a recent report,” Bouie writes, “the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative documents nearly 4,000 lynchings of black people in 12 Southern states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—between 1877 and 1950, which the group notes is “at least 700 more lynchings in these states than previously reported.”
He goes on to offer descriptions of a few of these “lynchings” (the word doesn’t capture the brutality of the torture and butchery), which are too horrible to quote here.
Bouie then notes that these lynchings weren’t just vigilante punishments or “celebratory acts of racial control and domination.” They were rituals. He quotes historian Amy Louise Wood, who writes in her book Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940: “Christianity was the primary lens through which most southerners conceptualized and made sense of suffering and death of any sort.”
Another historian, Donald G. Mathews, writes in the Journal of Southern Religion: “Religion permeated communal lynching because the act occurred within the context of a sacred order designed to sustain holiness.” 

But why bring this up? What purpose does it serve?
Perhaps it’s a lesson in humility and a warning against self-righteousness. Jesus certainly had plenty to say about the perils of self-righteousness (see Matthew 23).
What ISIS has done is horrible—and comparable to what those “Christian” lynch mobs did. But let’s not judge all Muslims by that group. We don’t want all Christians judged by what other so-called Christians have done.
And let’s do some self-analysis as well. Are we not all prone to acts of domination or violence? Can we learn from our past in order to not practice such violence?
Maybe we need to practice confession and repentance on occasion.

The possibility of the impossible

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, … Now I know only in part.—1 Corinthians 13:12

We all see the world through lenses that are stained, cracked or askew. And sometimes, as Jesus shows us, we need to learn from those who are blind.

In John 9, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, we see how people’s assumptions affect what or how they see. The disciples assume the blind man or his parents have sinned.

Jesus sees the man in a different light. Here, he says, is an opportunity to see God at work.

The neighbors can’t believe it. It doesn’t fit their worldview. And when the Pharisees hear who healed the man, they decide, This guy’s a sinner who doesn’t keep the Sabbath. According to their worldview, they’re right, a person who doesn’t keep the Sabbath can’t be from God.

The blind man in this story is like the ideal disciple. He’s truthful, focuses on his own experience, not on what it means, and he’s courageous.

The Pharisees call the blind man back in and hint at what he needs to say. Remember, according to us, this man is a sinner.

This reminds me of when the police or other authorities question someone and say, Admit it, we know you’re guilty. Just say it.

All the blind man has to do is say, Yes, he’s a sinner, so he couldn’t have healed me. But he won’t go for it. He simply tells the truth. All I know, he says, is that I was blind, and now I see.

They want an explanation. How did Jesus do it?

And here is the funniest line in the story, maybe one of the funniest in the entire Bible: I already told you. Aren’t you listening? Do you also want to become his disciples?

The Pharisees resort to categorization, a strategy many of us employ often. We know more than you. We come from better stock.

The blind man, with the clear eyes of innocence and logic, points out the contradiction here. If Jesus is a sinner and not from God, how did he heal me?

Later, Jesus confronts the Pharisees. Because you say you see, you remain blind.

It should be obvious that this story is not really about physical sight but spiritual sight. In fact, many blind people are more aware of what’s around them than those of us who have sight.

It’s easy to read this story and laugh at the Pharisees, but when I read it, I’m struck by how much like them I am. I, too, think I’m right most of the time. And when I’m contradicted, I look for a way out, a way to categorize the one who disagrees with me, or I simply ignore what they say.

In his article “Seeing Our Blindness” (page 22 of the October issue of The Mennonite), John C. Murray writes, “The biggest hindrance to new insight, new understanding and a deeper awareness of God’s presence and activity in the world is what we think we already know.”

One of the things my spiritual director asks me is, Where have you seen God active in your life? This is what Jesus does in this story. While others saw a man stuck in his blindness, someone they could go on ignoring, he saw a possibility. Derrida calls God “the possibility of the impossible.” I need to look for that possibility. I’ve learned that when I look, I tend to see God’s activity in ways I don’t when I don’t look.

Jesus saw possibility. He even saw that spitting in the dirt and making mud can serve as a way to anoint a man and bring healing.

Mennonite Church USA is facing important decisions as we examine our differences. We must look for the possibility of the impossible as we seek unity in the Spirit.

But seeing requires humility, realizing we often don’t know what we think we know. As Christian philosopher John D. Caputo says, “Faith is idolatrous if it is rigidly self-certain but not if it is softened in the waters of doubt.”

Why Christianity makes emotional sense

Review of Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford (HarperOne, 2013, $25.99, 240 pages)

There’s a long tradition of Christian literature called apologetics, which is an intellectual defense of Christianity, why it’s reasonable to believe it. British author Spufford in his witty, accessible and profane new book takes a different approach. His is a defense of Christian emotions, “their grown-up dignity.” He writes: “The book is called Unapologetic because it isn’t giving an ‘apologia,’ the technical term for a defense of the ideas. And also because I’m not sorry.”

Who will want to read this book? First, Christians will be drawn to it but will also find plenty they may disagree with. And his swearing will offend some.

Second, people who like to read good writing. Just take a few minutes to read his brief critique of the message New Atheists have put on British buses: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” His beef is with the phrase “enjoy your life.” What follows is prose that reads like a good novel.

Third, the curious. Whether or not you call yourself a Christian, take note of that word in the subtitle: “Surprising.” You will find something to surprise you, whether or not you agree with it.

While Spufford, who is an Anglican, claims not to be presenting an intellectual defense, he does make reasonable arguments in an attempt to clarify what Christianity is; he just tries to tie them to people’s experience. For example, he notes that people may view believers as “people touting a solution without a problem, and an embarrassing solution too, a really damp-palmed, wide-smiling, can’t-dance solution.” Then he argues that “it’s belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable.”

Another part of the subtitle he keeps to throughout is “Emotional Sense.” While many claim that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer, Spufford writes that “it is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don’t have the feelings because I’ve assented to the ideas.”

Spufford develops his own terms as alternatives to standard theological ones. For example, his second chapter is called “The Crack in Everything,” in which he presents a way of addressing “sin” without using that word, which tends to refer to “the pleasurable consumption of something,” especially sex. He goes on to create a term he uses throughout the book: HPtFtU, which stands for the human propensity to f--- things up.

In “Big Daddy,” he addresses the experience of God, which he describes thus: “I am being seen from inside, but without any of my own illusions. I am being seen from behind, beneath, beyond. I am being read by what I am made of.” Then he goes into a long description of awareness in lovely prose. He notes that such an experience brings comfort but is not comfortable. “Starting to believe in God,” he writes, “is a lot like falling love, and there is certainly a biochemical basis for that.”

Spufford reiterates the emotional sense of faith: “I’m only ever going to get to faith by some process quite separate from proof and disproof; … I’m only going to arrive at it because in some way that it is not in the power of evidence to rebut, it feels right.” He concludes that God “is as common as the air. He is the ordinary ground. And yet a presence. And yet a person.”

In “Hello, Cruel World,” Spufford considers the problem of evil, which he describes thus: “What sort of loving deity could have the priorities that the cruel world reveals, if the cruel world is an accurate record of His intentions, once you look beyond reality’s little gated communities of niceness?” He then dismisses several theodicies, or arguments to solve this problem, before concluding that “all is not well with the world, but at least God is here in it, with us. We don’t have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story.”

This leads to his chapter on Jesus, which he calls “Yeshua,” where he retells the story of Jesus from the Gospels. Scholars will no doubt find it too cursory, but I found it well done and engaging.

Even though Spufford writes in his preface that he didn’t write the book to “engage in zero-sum competition with atheists,” he has those and other voices in mind at times as he confronts and names certain perspectives. In his chapter “Et Cetera,” he points out the view that somebody, “probably St. Paul, retrospectively glued Godhood onto poor Jesus,” who was really “a minor first-century religious reformer with a bit of a bee in his bonnet about gentleness. A well-intentioned and irrelevant person from the pre-Enlightenment ages of superstition.”

In “The International League of the Guilty, Part Two,” Spufford deals with the difficulty of balancing grace and justice. He writes, “We want God’s extra-niceness confined to deserving cases such as, for example, us, and a reliable process of judgment put in place which will ensure that the child-murderers are ripped apart with red-hot tongs.”

While parts of Unapologetic may tax one’s patience, most of it reads quickly. And while some of his points are hard-hitting, confronting Christians as much or more as others, the tone is mostly confessional. He’s giving us his experience, how he came to see how Christianity makes emotional sense.

This is likely a book I’ll return to more than once. And I imagine others will, too.

The wealth gap keeps getting wider

Believe it or not, we’re in an economic recovery. But if you’re not in the upper 7 percent of American households, you may not realize it. If you’re among the rest, i.e., 93 percent of American households, you may still be feeling pinched.

According to a report released April 23 by the Pew Research Center, “wealth inequality widened dramatically during the first two years of the economic recovery, as the upper 7 percent of American households saw their average net worth increase 28 percent while the wealth of the other 93 percent declined,” writes Michael A. Fletcher in the Washington Post. The uneven recovery has only accelerated a decades-long trend of growing wealth inequality in the country, despite rising popular and political awareness of the dynamic.

From 2009 to 2011, the Pew report says, the average net worth of the nation’s 8 million most affluent households jumped from an estimated $2.7 million to $3.2 million. And for the 111 million households that form the bottom 93 percent, average net worth fell 4 percent, from $140,000 to an estimated $134,000, the report said.

These changes mean that between 2009 and 2011, “the wealth gap separating the top 7 percent and everyone else increased from 18-to-1 to 24-to-1” and that “the most affluent 7 percent of households owned 63 percent of the nation’s household wealth in 2011, up from 56 percent in 2009.”

Why such a disparity in net worth? Mostly it’s because the wealthiest households have their assets concentrated in stocks and other financial instruments, while others’ wealth is concentrated in their homes. During the recovery, stock values have rebounded and reached new highs, while housing values have stayed mostly flat.

This widening gap applies to all Americans, but “the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in wealth between non-Hispanic white Americans and most minority groups, according to a new study from the Urban Institute,” writes Annie Lowrey in an April 28 article in the New York Times.

The Urban Institute study found that while the wealth gap widened, the income gap between white Americans and nonwhite Americans remained stable, writes Lowrey. “As of 2010, white families, on average, earned about $2 for every $1 that black and Hispanic families earned, a ratio that has remained roughly constant for the last 30 years. But when it comes to wealth—as measured by assets, like cash savings, homes and retirement accounts, minus debts, like mortgages and credit card balances—white families have far outpaced black and Hispanic ones. Before the recession, non-Hispanic white families, on average, were about four times as wealthy as nonwhite families, according to the Urban Institute’s analysis of Federal Reserve data. By 2010, whites were about six times as wealthy.”

By the most recent data, the average white family had about $632,000 in wealth, versus $98,000 for black families and $110,000 for Hispanic families, the report said.

Two major factors helped to widen this wealth gap in recent years. The first is that the housing downturn hit black and Hispanic households harder than it hit white households, in aggregate. Second, black families suffered bigger hits to their retirement savings, the Urban Institute found.

Without changes to government policies, it’s only going to get worse. “The Urban Institute suggests reforming government policies that encourage savings but disproportionately benefit the already wealthy and families with high incomes, like the home mortgage interest deduction,” writes Lowrey.

Such a wealth gap is far from the justice Jesus called us to practice.

A scientist's experience of heaven

While many see compatibilities between science and religion, many others see conflict. An Oct. 15 article in Newsweek, “My Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander, tries to bridge that conflict in a dramatic way.

Alexander is a neurosurgeon who has taught at Harvard Medical School and other universities. He tells of an experience he had four years ago when he awoke with an intense headache. “Within hours,” he writes, “my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down.” Doctors at the local hospital determined that he had contracted a rare bacterial meningitis that had penetrated his cerebrospinal fluid, and the bacteria were eating his brain.

For seven days he lay in a deep coma, and his higher-order brain functions were totally offline. Then, as his doctors weighed whether or not to discontinue treatment, his eyes popped open.

Alexander writes about his experience as a scientist because he knows how stories like his sound to skeptics. He notes that while he considered himself a Christian before this happened, it was “more in name than in actual belief.”

But his experience changed that. He writes: “There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well.” He describes “a larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, precoma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.”

Alexander is not the first to describe such an experience, but he is one of the few who does so as a scientist, and a neurosurgeon at that. And, as far as he knows, no one before him ever traveled to this dimension “(a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation.”

This is important because the chief arguments against near-death experiences “suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient or partial malfunctioning of the cortex.”

His cortex wasn’t malfunctioning; it wasn’t even functioning. “According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind,” Alexander writes, “there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.”

He goes on to describe his experience, with frequent disclaimers about language not being able to adequately capture what happened.

The message that “went through [him] like a wind” had three parts. He summarizes them thus:

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

Regardless of Alexander’s science credentials, most nonbelievers, I imagine, will simply deny the truthfulness of his experience, believing (yes, having faith) that some nondivine explanation will eventually emerge.

Many Christians, I imagine, will also deny his message because it’s too inclusive. It lets people off the hook. It doesn’t punish evildoers.

Alexander writes that the universe he experienced in his coma is “the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways.”

I’ve read (and heard) other accounts like Alexander’s, and each time I feel encouraged. But I also know it comes down belief. While science feeds our knowledge, what we decide about the universe and our place in it comes down to faith.

Prejudice and religious ignorance

Mennonites are used to being misunderstood, both in negative and positive ways. We often hear others ask about horse and buggies or plain black clothing when they hear we are Mennonites.

On the other hand, some people laud Mennonites for being committed to peace and justice, not realizing the great diversity in our ranks on those subjects.

We all carry prejudices. We prejudge others, make assumptions about them, often out of ignorance about those people and what they may believe.

Much of our media betrays great ignorance about religion—not just Mennonites but many religious groups. And if you spend much time on the blogosphere, you encounter great ignorance as people spout views that are at times hateful, certainly prejudiced and that show ignorance about the groups they are putting down in order to advance their own views.

One of the groups most commonly misunderstood are Muslims, whose numbers are growing rapidly in the United States. And worldwide Islam is the second largest religion.

Nevertheless, it is treated as monolithic and homogenous. As religion scholar Philip Jenkins writes, “Arguably, over the span of its development, Islam worldwide is quite as diverse as Christianity.”

One of the stereotypes about Islam is that it is Arab, yet, Jenkins writes, “Of the world’s eight largest Muslim countries, only one—Egypt—is Arab in language and culture, and it would not be too far off the mark to see Islam as a religion of South and Southeast Asia.”

A recent book, Woman, Man and God in Modern Islam by Theodore Friend (Eerdmans, 2012, $35), is an excellent source for getting to know modern Islam.

Friend, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an award-winning historian, traveled across Asia and the Middle East in order to understand firsthand the life situations of women in Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. The book relates hundreds of encounters and conversations with people he met along the way.

Friend writes that the reader will find “respect for Islam conjoined with faith in women and in their creative and productive potential.”

Meanwhile the media regularly report bombings by Islamicists but ignore peaceful overtures by Muslims, such as “A Commond Word” in 2007.

Ignorance of religion has enormous consequences, whether it’s a white supremacist killing Sikhs or U.S. soldiers burning copies of the Qur’an or the U.S. invasion of Iraq helping overturn half a century of women’s right to be treated as equal citizens in Iraq.

And with the recent rioting over the anti-Islam video reveals religious ignorance going many directions. 

Religious ignorance extends beyond Islam. Every day some media reinforce views of religious groups that are simplistic and fail to build understanding.

One media source that helps counter this practice is Religion News Service. For example, the weekly report dated Sept. 5 included an article on Mormons okaying Coke and Pepsi, one on Seventh-day Adventists arguing about female clergy, a Q&A with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the “Ground Zero mosque,” one on Jews in New Orleans, a Q&A with David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association, and one on the trial of Amish bishop Samuel Mullet Sr., whose followers forcibly cut the beards of Amish men.

There are many sources for learning about others and their beliefs before we make judgments about them. Jesus’ warning about judging others (Matthew 7:1) is pertinent. Let's take time to understand others' religious beliefs before we make judgments about them.

The cult of the individual--part 3

For decades the mainstream media generally ignored religion. Now we see articles on religion, which is a major factor in American society, with some regularity. For example, the April 9 issue of Newsweek proclaimed on its cover, “Forget the Church: Follow Jesus,” while the April 16 cover of Time ran the headline “Rethinking Heaven.” Even more notable than the prevalence of articles on religion is that many are written with some understanding of religion.

 

Even though I don’t agree with everything in the two articles I’ve mentioned, they are worth reading and discussing.

Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, writes in Newsweek about “The Forgotten Jesus.” He laments how in America faith has become too politicized. Early in the article he asks two questions: “What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself?”

He refers to Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, from which he removed all but those passages he thought reflected the actual teachings of Jesus. Jefferson (and Sullivan, apparently) considered this “a simpler, purer, apolitical Christianity.” That’s naïve, to say the least.

Sullivan assumes a certain framework for "politics." In Chapter 4 of my book Present Tense I use the word in a different sense, that of a community making decisions together. Jesus had plenty to say about politics (see John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, for example), but he wasn't talking about American politics. 

Sullivan goes on to point out that organized religion is in decline, largely because churches have pursued power rather than faithfulness to Jesus’ teachings. He notes the Catholic hierarchy being exposed as “enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children.” Mainline Protestant churches have declined rapidly, he writes, while Evangelical Protestants, to give one example, is the group that American pollsters have found to be most supportive of torturing terror suspects. He writes: “This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: ‘Be not afraid.’ ”

Sullivan claims that Christianity (and he means in America; he ignores Christianity in other parts of the globe) is in crisis. He notes that “many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial,” that “the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism” and that “many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward ‘spirituality.’ ”

His solution? Christianity needs to go back to Jesus by emulating Francis of Assisi, who did not seek power but lived nonviolently.

Sullivan makes an important point when he says this does not imply a privatization of faith, which has been a typical American response to religion. He writes that great injustices, such as slavery, imperialism, totalitarianism and segregation, “require spiritual mobilization and public witness.” But the greatest examples of such movements renounce power and embrace nonviolence.

The cult of the individual enters when we pit "Jesus" against the "the church" without designating what those words mean. The church becomes a monolithic bogey man that is the locus of all evil, while Jesus generally represents a nice person who embraces all my beliefs. We end up with an unspecific, simplistic "church" and thousands of Jesuses, all made in our image. 

Thomas Jefferson, a deist, exemplified this individualistic approach when he made a Bible that included only Jesus' teachings. Where did he think those teachings came from? Did he—do we—not recognize that Jesus was a Jew, a member of his religious community who loved Israel (the people, not the country) and criticized it from within?

There's no doubt churches and other religious groups have done horrible things, but they have also done wonderful things. And who made each of us arbiter or judge of those entities?

Generally I like Sullivan's article. But I don't like the cover title. It sets up a false dichotomy.

In the Time article, “Heaven Can’t Wait,” Jon Meacham, also a Christian, notes that while 85 percent of Americans believe in heaven, “we don’t necessarily agree on what heaven is.” 

Meacham explores the history of the afterlife and shows how understandings of heaven have evolved. He points out the difference between the New Testament's view of heaven and the way many Christians view it today. He quotes New Testament scholar N.T. Wright: "When first-century Jews spoke about eternal life, they weren't thinking of going to heaven in the way we normally imagine it." Instead, "eternal life meant the age to come, the time when God would bring heaven and earth together, the time when God's kingdom would come and his will would be done on earth as in heaven."

Today, Americans have different understandings of heaven. "Many Christians," writes Meacham, "often focus more on accepting Jesus as their personal savior and the subsequent enforcement of biblical laws in preparation for the world to come."

Others, Meacham writes, argue that “the alleviation of the evident pain and injustice of the world is the ongoing work that Jesus began and the means of bringing into being what the New Testament authors meant when they spoke of heaven.”

But Erik Thoennes, chair of biblical and theological studies at Biola University and a pastor, thinks this focus “tends to come from white dudes wearing skinny jeans who live in the suburbs and not poor, suffering people.”

Meacham seems to agree more with Wright, who is white but as far as I know doesn't wear skinny jeans, that this as the work of religion: “bringing reality closer to conformity with theocentric aspirations in a world in which loving one another as we would be loved is a sacred act and a way of expanding the dominion of God—or heaven—in the world.”

I also fall more on Wright's side, though I understand the need for comfort and encouragement in the midst of suffering, and I do believe God embraces us in life or death. One thing I like about this view Meacham describes is that it focuses on God's bringing justice to the entire creation. It's not just about my soul.

Both these articles are worth reading and pondering. They are also worth talking about with others as we do politics, discern together how we should act in our faith community.

The Bible vs. capital punishment

On Good Friday, let's consider capital punishment, which the Romans practiced in putting Jesus to death those many years ago.
Herald Press has released a book that collects the writings of John Howard Yoder on capital punishment. Who is John Howard Yoder? Some have called him one of the most important theologians of the past century. Certainly he's the most renowned Mennonite theologian, though Yoder saw himself as more of an historian than a theologian.
Yoder, who died in 1997, wrote many books and articles, and new collections of his writings keep coming out, along with books by others responding to his thought. This recent book, The End of Sacrifice: The Capital Punishment Writings of John Howard Yoder, is edited by John C. Nugent. Nugent points out in his introduction that this book is not exhaustive, that "several essays have been omitted because they primarily repackage old material for new contexts." The book consists five chapters, and the longest is Chapter 4, which contains all of Chapter 2 and more.

In reading this book, I kept underlining passages, and I thought, These are too important to let pass by, so I've decided to share some of those quotes here. Capital punishment is an important topic too often ignored and too easily accepted by Christians who claim to follow the Bible's teachings. For related material, see my earlier blog, "The Shame of U.S. Prisons."
In his introduction, Nugent writes: "Central to [Yoder's] position is his conviction that both biblically and culturally, from ancient society until today, capital punishment is an inherently cultic and ritual practice."
He describes Yoder's core thesis thus: "Since the death of Jesus brought a decisive end to sacrifices for sin, Christians should proclaim its abolition, and death penalty advocates should no longer claim biblical validation."
In a footnote, Nugents writes that "this collection should put to rest the notion that Yoder had no theology of atonement."
Now to Chapter 4: "Against the Death Penalty: A Debate with Wayne House," which includes Yoder's position. A footnote explains that "none of House's material is presented, nor is Yoder's critique of House's specific position."
In response to the use of Genesis 9:6 ("Whoever sheds the blood of Man / In Man shall his blood be shed / For in the image of God / He made Man.") to support capital punishment, Yoder writes: "It is then a mistake to read the word to Noah as if it were a command ordering its hearers to do something that they would otherwise not have done. It is not that; it is a simple description of the way things already are, an accurate prediction of what does happen, what will happen, as surely as summer is followed by winter, seedtime by harvest. That killers are killed is the way fallen society works; it is not a new measure that God introduced after the deluge to solve a problem that had not been there before, or for which God had not yet found a solution."
More from Chapter 4: "The killing of a killer is not a civil, nonreligious matter. It is a sacrificial act. … If there is killing, the offense is a cosmic, ritual, religious evil, demanding ceremonial compensation. It is not a moral matter; in morality a second wrong does not make a right. It is not a civil, legislative matter; it is originally stated in a setting where there is not government."
In reference to the book of Hebrews' mention of the high-priestly sacrifice of Christ, Nugent quotes the famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth in a footnote: "Which category of particularly great sinners is exempted from the pardon effected on the basis of the death penalty carried out at Calvary? Now that Jesus Christ has been nailed to the cross for the sins of the world, how can we still use the thought of expiation to establish the death penalty?"
In reference to "an eye for an eye," Yoder writes: "The appetite for imposing symmetrical suffering is thus a natural reflex in primitive cultures, poetically apt but not always applicable. … It is a standard cultural reflex rather than a prescriptive guide. Jesus explicitly sets it aside."
In reference to Jesus and the civil order, Yoder writes: "The Christian challenge to the death penalty properly begins where Jesus does, by challenging the self-ascribed righteousness of those who claim the authority to kill others." See John 8:1-11.
He adds: "The saviorhood of Jesus applies to law and to social punishment for sin, no less than to prayer."
"The civil order is a fact. That it might be done away with by pushing the critique of love 'too far' is inconceivable. … Thus the Christian (and any believer in democracy) will be concerned to restrain the violent vengeful potential of the state."
"Justice is a direction, not an achievement. It is a relative, not absolute concept."
"Christians begin to deny their Lord when they admit that there are certain realms of life in which it would be inappropriate to bring Christ's rule to bear."
"It is thus formally wrong to look in the New Testament for specific guidelines for a good civil society."
In reference to Christ transforming culture, Yoder writes: "To say that every human being is endowed at birth with an inalienable right to life is our analogy to the Bible's speaking of the sacredness of blood."
"The primary threat to human dignity is not the impunity of individual offenders not proven guilty, but the absolute power of the state itself to punish."
In reference to the clash of rationales for capital punishment, Yoder writes: "The Bible's witness on these matters is a long story, not a timeless, unchanging corpus of laws or of truths. What matters for us is not the cultural substance of where the story started (with is racism, its superstition, its slavery, its holy warfare, its polygamy, and its abuse of women), but where it was being led. That direction is toward Jesus; toward validating the dignity of every underdog and outsider, of the slave and foreigner, the woman and the child, the poor and the offender. This is done not on the grounds that this or that outsider is an especially virtuous person, but on the grounds of God's grace."
"By unjustly condemning the Righteous One in the name of the Pax Romana and the welfare of the people (John 11:50; 18:14), the claimants to human righteousness refuted their claim for the rightness of the death penalty in the very act of imposing it."
Yoder goes on to make other arguments tied less directly to the Bible, including how the death penalty is often murder, as people are put to death who are later proved innocent. And there are many more fine quotes I could have used from this excellent book, but I've gone on long enough.
Bottom line: Don't accept the frequent claim that the Bible supports capital punishment. The death penalty is a ritual of sacrifice, and Jesus put an end to sacrifice. Today is Good Friday, the celebration of Jesus freely giving himself up to death at the hands of the Romans, who certainly believed in capital punishment.