Thabiti has written a kind-hearted piece about how to deal with the “crazy Confederate uncles” of the extended Reformed family. Having dealt with some of the crazies that are out there, I believe that in some respects Thabiti is being too kind, while in other respects he is not being kind enough. And that is because an additional distinction must be made.
In pressing for this distinction to be made, I will be asking (again) for a question to be addressed, one that was not addressed in my earlier and otherwise fruitful exchange with Thabiti. But for that, you will have to read on.
I would like to work my way to that point by citing the centerpiece of Thabiti’s post, a point I wholeheartedly agree with. I do this because I like agreeing with Thabiti, and because it is actually the hinge of the whole matter. The only thing I would want to do with his point is strengthen it a smidge, and I believe that Thabiti would agree with that strengthening. Here it is:
“So, in this view, one could study systematic, historical or biblical theology and give very little reflection to ethics—what to do with all that theology besides write more theology. Theology became something for the head and occasionally the heart but very seldom the hands—especially if those hands were going to be lifted to help the poor, marginalized, and oppressed.”
I would want to modify this by adding the phrase “including public square ethics” after his phrase “very little reflection to ethics, including public square ethics.” Theology must engage with all of life, and if it does not engage, then to Hell with it because that’s where it is going anyway.
One of the problems that afflicted Southern theologians like Thornwell was the prevailing doctrine of the “spirituality of the church.” There is a sense in which this doctrine could be okay, but in actual historical practice, it had precisely the effect that Thabiti complains about — the effect of detaching what a Christian people said they “believed” and what they were willing to do through their elected representatives. Point taken, and a thousand amens. But this point, if applied by us now, is going to rebuke the entire North American church, black and white both. Nobody gets off easy.
Throughout Thabiti’s piece, he compares the “crazy Confederate uncles” of the Reformed world to a dearly-loved schizophrenic uncle of his. When we look at the historic Reformed engagement with the world of public ethics and policy (think, 16th and 17th centuries), and we then look at the bastardization of this approach in the modern radical two kingdoms approach (R2K), schizophrenia is not too harsh a description of it. The theological maneuvers it takes to keep the gospel from applying to the public square are convoluted indeed.
At a recent conference, I asked David Van Drunen about the propriety of signing a petition at a white church in a segregated city, when a racial incident had inflamed the populace, with the petition appealing to the mayor to take steps that would calm things down. Van Drunen, consistent with his views, was against doing something like that. You can read more about that issue, if you like, here and here. In short, the headquarters of the view that Thabiti is critiquing is not found at the lonely editorial desk of a neo-Confederate newsletter, circulation 28. The headquarters is Westminster Seminary in Escondido.
So when we have gotten this theological point straight (which we must do), the first place we should apply it ethically is to the sins and crimes of our own era. If we disqualify allies in our current battles over historical disagreements about whether a particular action was justified centuries ago, we are being penny wise and pound foolish — and when we have done the necessary historical work, we may discover that we were being penny foolish also.
Suppose I discover, while picketing an abortion clinic, that the guy carrying the sign next to me thinks that Cromwell was justified in his treatment of the Irish. I don’t believe that, and the Catholic priest on the other side of me is outraged by it. Should we start slapping each other with our placards, or are there some bigger issues? As in, the “right now” issues?
Suppose I am a crazy schizophrenic uncle. Suppose I am living in my very own construct of a world, and suppose my expertise on the conditions of Southern slavery is derived entirely from repeated viewings of Song of the South. But the routine execution of millions of defenseless black children today nevertheless horrifies and appalls me, and I want it stopped yesterday, while the vast majority of my evangelical black friends (who think that I am the schizo) voted for the Obamaghoul, a man who attends a Planned Barrenhood rally in order to pronounce a benediction on those people. Now what? Where do I go to get out of this funhouse?
Remember, theology leads to ethics, including public ethics. As I never tire of saying, theology comes out your fingertips. That means the real action right now has to do with the dismemberment of the unborn, a practice carried out in the name of the Constitution, same sex mirages and persecution of Christians who won’t bake cakes in celebration of them, and the inveterate and very progressive hatred of places like Detroit. These are our outrages. These are our sins and crimes. These are the places where we will be placed in the balances, where we will be found wanting.
For pro-life black Christians to vote for someone like Obama, or to celebrate the life of a radical pro-abort like Mandela, is like finding yourself in the middle of a pro-Torquemada rally in 16th century Madrid attended entirely by illegal Jews who liked his views on the minimum wage and health care. Talk about life in the madhouse.
So here is the distinction that must be made. There are pockets of Confederate sympathizers out there made up of folks who have hated Yankees for generations, and they still get together and sing songs about it. There are generations of animus there that do need to have the gospel applied it. There are whites who have refused to let the gospel address the sin of racial animosity and/or racial vainglory. That’s bad, that’s a sin, that’s to be rejected. It is also — in terms of all the real evil being done to black people today — a low-budget affair.
So there is another kind of revisionist, and this is the kind that I don’t believe Thabiti is taking into account. Some of us came of age in the seventies, and were startled into our activism by atrocities like Roe v. Wade. We got engaged, we obeyed Thabiti’s paragraph, we started crisis pregnancy centers, we planted Christian schools to teach our children how to engage with the outside culture the integrated way Christians ought to, we started to read books. God calls us to be useful in our generation (Acts 13:36). Where did this all come from? How did we get here? Why do Americans believe that the Federal government has the right to make such bloodthirsty decrees? How did the Federal government get so tyrannical and swollen? These are relevant questions.
So here is my question again. As I explained in my previous installments in my exchanges with Thabiti, it is not possible to try to bring the Bible to bear on public policy issues without immediately fielding questions about slavery, the stoning of homosexuals, and the lawfulness of clam chowder. If you engage, they will counter-engage with that, and you had better have more of a response prepared than mere hand-waving and throat-clearing. As we got involved in these issues — because of the self-evident truths found in Thabiti’s paragraph — one of the things we had to deal with was trying to explain why Paul Hill was not in the right when he took up arms against abortionists. If John Brown was right, he reasoned, why would he not be right in doing the same thing against a greater evil? So we denied the premise — John Brown was not in the right. But that leads to other issues, right?
But if he were . . .? What if he were in the right? What follows then? And so that is my question. Why are those activists who drove us to war in the mid-nineteenth century to be applauded, and those who were trying to drive us to war in the 1990’s to be condemned? You cannot arrange for a Q&A in the public square, and then refuse to answer the most obvious and most fundamental question that can be posed.
If you insist on incrementalism now, then why do you disallow it as evil and racist and hardhearted then? If you reject incrementalism then because the evil was so great, then why do you accept incrementalism now when the evil is much greater? If you don’t think a call to arms is a wise or godly response now, then perhaps it would be a good idea to stop calling people names for not thinking it was a good idea then. If we could bring the United States to the brink of war over the issue of abortion, would it be worth it? Or does the gospel address our sin and evil in ways that we have not yet understood?
Do we really want to say that if every aborted black child today had been given a reprieve, and was born into slavery, that their condition of slavery would be worth a war? But if we just go with the summary executions of black children that our generation prefers, not only must we not have a war over it, we must also support those who perpetuate the travesty?
In every era, those who truly are “poor, marginalized, and oppressed” are those whose oppression can be imposed by the respectable. It is the easiest thing in the world to get everybody to be appalled at the sins of other times, for those, when we come down to it, are the sins of other people. We naturally gravitate to those. But our sins, ah . . . that’s another matter. True oppression occurs whenever the “poor, marginalized and oppressed” are not reckoned to be such. They don’t count. They don’t get registered in that category. So, since 1973, there have been about 16 million abortions of black children, and because this is the way true oppression works, nobody gives a damn.
16 million. And it happened on our watch. But wait . . . let’s talk about Cromwell . . .
I would rather be true to my black Christian brothers, and be thought false by them, than to be false to them, and thought to be true. At the same time, I am laboring toward the time when we can all get out of the trap that insists on those two as the only possible options.
So the short answer is that engagement in the public square is tougher than it looks. It takes courage. You have to work through the issues. You have to address the hard questions without flinching. You have to be willing to be misrepresented, because that is the cost of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking with humility.
As I was reading this in the coffee shop, the chorus of the song was playing: “I got soul but I’m not a soldier” (ironically by The Killers)
I think the words characterize the schizophrenia well.
Nice. I immediately got a musical vibe as well. Crazy Uncle Remus. If you know the tune, sing along……….Zip-a-dee-doo-Dah, zip-a-dee-ay, the world burns up as I casually pray. Reading my Calvin, no time for the fray, zip-a-dee-doo-da, zip-a-dee-ay ……..A dead baby on each shoulder. To ignore them, is a challenge, but at least they give me balance. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay, no need for engagement, no urge for the fray.
Well said Pastor Wilson!
One of the most important things I’ve learned from Pastor Wilson.
Could someone help me understand what Doug is referencing here: “If you insist on incrementalism now, then why do you disallow it as evil and racist and hardhearted then? If you reject incrementalism then because the evil was so great, then why do you accept incrementalism now when the evil is much greater? If you don’t think a call to arms is a wise or godly response now, then perhaps it would be a good idea to stop calling people names for not thinking it was a good idea then. If we could bring the United States to the brink… Read more »
“I would rather be true to my black Christian brothers, and be thought false by them, than to be false to them, and thought to be true.” – That is love sir. Thank you
What do you mean by this sentence?
and the inveterate and very progressive hatred of places like Detroit.
My wife and I are sitting here talking about the various ways to take the preposition of, and which is intended in this particular interest, as the sentence doesn’t make it clear.
Thanks!
John
Doug, do you have any thoughts on why God chose to judge the sins of the 19th century by giving us a government that would enable the slaughter of 16 million people? Had the South won the war do you believe given the events that have led up to now WW1, WW2, and the rise/spread of communism do you believe our policy on abortion would be different? If the men who formed the constitution of the Confederate State of America were so bind to the evils of race based slavery what gives you confidence that the same men would have… Read more »
Interpretation of tongues for Austin: If you insist on incrementalism against abortion now, why was incrementalism against slavery evil/racist/hardhearted in A.D. 1861? If you reject incrementalism in favor of civil war with a million deaths over slavery for A.D. 1861, how can you accept incrementalism now as we routinely murder a million babies a year? If it’s OK to avoid civil war over abortion now, why do you call Doug a racist for wishing it had been avoided in A.D. 1861? Or if we could have a civil war over abortion now, should we? I (Andrew) hope this makes it… Read more »
John, I mean that liberal policies destroy places the way they destroyed Detroit.
John, the events of WW1 and WW2 would have been starkly different. Communism would have still occurred in the USSR. I can easily see a situation where The US could go communist, invade Canada and the Second War would have been between the USA, and the USSR vs. the CSA, Britain, France and Germany with Japan gobbling up Asia.
Let me get this straight, D.W. You’re suggesting that slavery should have been preserved because abolishing slavery had the NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE of allowing abortion? That makes no sense to me at all. And I see your critique of African Americans voting Democrat, but I see no evidence of the Republicans having tried to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Sydney, slavery was legal in all 13 colonies/states at one time. Manumition happened in the North, nonviolently because of the Gospel. Manumission was starting to happen nonviolently in the South before the Civil War. If the Civil War hadn’t happened the slaves would have been freed without the hundred years of the Klan that succeeded the end of the War.
No, Sydneysider, he didn’t say anything remotely like that. It’s not abolishing slavery that had the necessary consequence of allowing abortion in Wilson’s account, it’s fighting the Civil War. Abolishing slavery and fighting the Civil War were, and are, not precisely the same thing.
Doug, a better name for that organization would be Bland Barrenhood.
And one more comment back to Syndey: Don’t confuse the Republican party with the church, the Gospel, or indeed anything that is on God’s side. They’ve had a pro-life plank in their platform, but it’s there only because the party leadership knows they can’t win elections without some Christian support. But they quite clearly detest us and wish like heck they didn’t need a bunch of cranks and fundies in their camp.
Doesn’t that mean that we should all agree that slavery is evil and that it’s GOOD it was abolished (while regretting the amount of blood shed in doing so)? Put that way, I think Thabiti would be in total agreement as well. And so would a man who once said “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood… Read more »
Robert, as to “if the Civil War hadn’t happened the slaves would have been freed,” are there any books supporting that theory? I’ve not seen it before, and it seems to me rather unlikely, at first glance. Plus (being a Calvinist and believing that history follows God’s plan), I’m not even sure such a counterfactual makes sense. / / / Bro. Steve, if that is true — if both Democrats and Republicans are problematic from a Christian point of view — then shouldn’t we ease off in attacking those who felt Obama was the lesser of two evils?
It’s probably true that without the Civil War, slavery would eventually have been abolished anyway, though at the cost of many thousands of blacks continuing as slaves until it did. Plus I don’t think Jim Crow would have ever ended without the Fourteenth Amendment; it wouldn’t have been called Jim Crow but the anti-black laws and customs would have continued. But I don’t think any of that helps with a discussion of abortion, because at the time of Roe v. Wade, the clear trend was also in favor of legalizing abortion anyway. Several states, including Washington, California and New York… Read more »
And that, by the way, is also what we’re seeing with gay marriage. The Supreme Court has not imposed it on the entire country, but at this point 40% of Americans live in states where it’s legal, and the trend is in one direction only. At some point, gay marriage not being legal will be a Southern regional phenomenon, and at that point the Supreme Court will probably find it’s a constitutional right.
What my history professor at the University of Idaho said when I was an undergrad, is that in Virginia and states closest to the North, that it was becoming more common for slaveowners to leave a clause in their wills to free slaves upon the slave owner’s death. You wouldn’t see that in Mississippi or Alabama. I don’t think that professor is a Doug fan either.
She spoke on the changing attitudes of the church in the northern parts of the Southern states. Manumition was happening, nonviolently
According to David Hacket Fischer, the basic differences that existed culturally between North and South resulted from emmigration patters. The English settlements provided the framework into which other European migrations fell. Northerners went back to the Midlands and East Anglia. The South originated out of London and the backwoods people were Celts. So we see many cultural and social differences. Then there is the narrative the South has: the north went Unitarian and decided to engineer a utopia. Well, it’s not that simple. The North COULD say: the South is made up of snobs and ignoramouses, depending upon whether you’re… Read more »
Actually, Robert, my understanding from the literature is that in Virginia at least, manumissions DECREASED substantially over time, as the result of various laws restricting manumission. In some cases, slaves manumitted on the death of their owners were simply re-enslaved by the state. The peak of manumissions in Virginia was, I understand, in 1790.
If I can try to read Mr. Wilson’s mind, this post is not about “what we should have done in 1860”, but much more about what we need to do today:
My uncharitable hypothesis: The doctrine that the Church should do nothing flows out of a fear of coolshaming, not a robust conviction about her role in the public square.
I wasn’t aware that people like John Brown *were* applauded. Most of what I’ve read on them says “right goal, wrong methods.” And I understand that, in April 1861, it was the Confederacy, rather than the anti-slavery camp, that began military action. But this whole “Song of the South” discussion seems pretty much guaranteed to fatally compromise any attempt to tackle modern problems such as abortion. D.W. indeed says as much: “If we disqualify allies in our current battles over historical disagreements about whether a particular action was justified centuries ago, we are being penny wise and pound foolish.”
Yes, the church msut witness to the world that Christ is Lord. It was public news then and it’s public news now. We are still suffering from a platonic fundamentalism that shrinks from pursuing justice out of fear that it will be misunderstood as advancing a superficial social gospel. The war of the 20’s is over and we must move past the old dichotomy. If the gospel is anything, it is total. How far its implications will stretch prior to the Lord’s return remains a question for us. But we cannot doubt our calling to work toward that culmination. I… Read more »
Can I talk about Cromwell instead? Because, Pastor Wilson, I think this book would be right up your alley: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cromwell-Honourable-Enemy-Tom-Reilly/dp/0863223907
It was written by one of your fellow ‘amateur historians’ (God bless ’em!) and ruffled some feathers.
As you were.
If you reject incrementalism then because the evil was so great, then why do you accept incrementalism now when the evil is much greater? Your position mostly rests on this premise, that abortion is worse than slavery was. But you treat this as obvious and ubiquitous, when I haven’t seen any evidence in the linked article that Thabiti actually agrees with this assessment. If anything, he seems to treat slavery as an exceptional evil. But I think the subtext of what he is saying is that the belief that Cromwell was justified in his treatment of the Irish isn’t necessarily… Read more »
Cromwell’s treatment of the IRish reflected a consensus on the part of the English that they simply didn’t matter. That started with Henry VIII. One interesting thing about Cromwell, though, is that he did treat the Jews better than the rest of Europe did. He seemed to think they might convert at that time as part of some prophecy. Puritan-minded people happily allowed them to dwell there and do business.
“one of the things we had to deal with was trying to explain why Paul Hill was not in the right when he took up arms against abortionists. If John Brown was right, he reasoned, why would he not be right in doing the same thing against a greater evil? So we denied the premise — John Brown was not in the right.”……………………………………………………………………………The huge problem I have with this claim is that the first book published to supposedly prove this point was “Southern Slavery”, which went on and on about why Southern slavery was not really much of an evil… Read more »
In other words, Pastor Doug, seriously underplaying the evils of Southern slavery completely undercuts what you claim was the main purpose of your whole argument.