Civil Commotion

The Internet undermines pastors.

Among the many ways 2020 has been punishing for pastors, one of the most disheartening is the way COVID-19 has further accelerated the already troubling tendency of Christians being shaped more by online life and its partisan ideological ecosystem than by church life and its formational practices.

It was already an uphill battle for pastors before COVID. The digital age, and more broadly our secular age, has greatly expanded the horizon of ideas shaping Christians. The church is increasingly just one voice among many speaking into a Christian’s life.

This is undoubtedly true, and … YAAAAAAAY! The traditional Christian narrative is incontestably false, and the ethics are cultish, so good riddance.

A letter to the New York Times asks a series of questions I’ve muttered like, approximately, 10,000 or so times.

To the Editor:

Just once, when a “hard-working Caucasian-American” says her freedoms are “being taken away” or her “rights are being limited” by liberals and progressives who urge acceptance of other people, I would love to hear the answer to a simple follow-up question. What freedoms have you lost? Which rights have been limited? Give us specifics.

No significant gun laws were passed under President Obama, even after Sandy Hook. So what can you do or say under President Trump that you couldn’t do or say under Mr. Obama? I suspect that the evangelical Trump supporters would struggle to answer. Because the real answer is, it’s not about rights or freedoms. It’s about who matters in America. And they were happier when only white Christians mattered.

Kate Adams Goss
Floral Park, N.Y.

The sad truth is that the people who make this complaint are merely repeating a grievance they heard from some demagogue or other; the humdrum truth is that their lives aren’t affected at all if the formerly-subterranean gay couples in their hometown are happily married and preoccupied with the same concerns as everybody else.

I pointed a few weeks ago to an indignant outburst by the Catholic League’s William Donohue about criticism of Junipero Serra by the New York Times. What do you know? The newspaper has once again incurred Donohue’s wrath.

“Last week, a few hours after publishing an essay about American Catholics’ reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement, I received a flood of ill tidings via email. My correspondents’ anger was unrelated to the subject of my article, but was instead inflamed by a mention of Junipero Serra, a canonized Franciscan friar who founded Spanish missions throughout California in the 18th century.”

Bruenig cites the sentence where she accused Serra of torture, but nowhere in her 1754-word article is there even an attempt to disprove what I said. In other words, she provides zero evidence that Serra tortured the Indians. While her piece this time is much more balanced than her initial one, her failure — and the failure of the newspaper — to come to grips with my single complaint is as revealing as it is disturbing.

Father Serra never tortured the Indians. It is a lie.

Well. According to Wikipedia:

Mark A. Noll, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, wrote that Serra’s attitude — that missionaries could, and should, treat their wards like children, including the use of corporal punishment — was common at the time. Tinker argues that it is more appropriate to judge the beatings and whippings administered by Serra and others from the point of view of the Native Americans, who were the victims of the violence, and who did not punish their children with physical discipline. Salvatore J. Cordileone, archbishop of San Francisco, acknowledges Native American concerns about Serra’s whippings and coercive treatment, but argues that missionaries were also teaching school and farming.

There you go: Yes, Serra flogged Native Americans — but taught them the ABCs!

Personally, neither Serra nor Donohue is particularly interesting; this story is noteworthy only because of Donohue’s recurring insistence upon an obvious fiction — that Serra’s treatment of Native Americans was non-violent. This is as Christian as it gets: Ignore settled, established facts; insist upon a happy lie; and then attack the character of those who won’t go along. Donohue is a fool, but I’ve no doubt whatever that he is sincere.

Retweeted by Donald Trump, earlier today:

Leave Democrat cities? Let them rot? My best guess is that this means “mostly black” cities — like my own hometown of Detroit. I’m sure that’s how the racist, white supremacist, neo-nazi portion of his base will read the tweet.

Generally, moral and ethical teachings are grounded in a commonsense consensus about the behaviors needful to the survival and flourishing of a particular group. Holy Men might invest the teachings with divine authority — as in the case of the Ten Commandments, say — but they always are rooted in the lived experience of the community in which they arise; this explains why the rules vary so widely throughout the world.

Most ethical complexities arise from the competing needs of different groups to which an individual belongs, and this week has put two good examples of that on display.

The first is the case of Grace Community Church, in California. There, members insisted upon attending church in defiance of a reasonable lockdown order prohibiting large assemblies. Certainly, they committed an offense against the well being of the communities in which they live; almost certainly, some of those church attendees were infected with the Covic-19 virus, and they will go on to infect others. Their attendance will directly affect the health of some of the people they encounter, and will affect the economy of the state writ large, influencing the financial well being of people they will never encounter at all.

How do they justify their conduct?

“Major public events that were planned for 2021 are already being canceled, signaling that officials are preparing to keep restrictions in place into next year and beyond. That forces churches to choose between the clear command of our Lord and the government officials. Therefore, following the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, we gladly choose to obey Him.”

Now, the 1^st-Century Christian church was a cult, and the New Testament is the literature of a cult, and if you belong to that cult the decision of the church makes sense — because, like every other cult that has ever fouled the earth, Christianity teaches that all conflicts must resolve in favor of the church.

“You are not the husband you should be unless Jesus is more important to you than your wife.” “You are not the parent you should be unless Jesus is more important to you than your children.” “You are not the wife and mother you should be unless Jesus is more important to you than your husband and children.” Everybody has sat in church and heard these teachings at some time or another, and that is the teaching of a cult — and that is the teaching that puts Grace Community Church at odds with its neighbors.

A second, more humble example involves Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask, who declined to participate in the post-season playoffs. “I want to be with my teammates competing, but at this moment, there are things more important than hockey in my life, and that is being with my family.”

Rask’s teammates probably feel betrayed by him, left hanging when they need him; his family is probably grateful he is acting to minimize the risk of contracting Covid-19. Once again, the ethical choice hinges on deciding which tribe’s needs to give priority.

It’s a lot more common to have difficulty deciding which tribe to serve than to have difficulty deciding what is right behavior from the perspective of that tribe.