Civil Commotion

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Morality

§254   An inquiiy into the origin of our moral valuations and tables of law has absolutely nothing to do with the criticism of them, though people persist in believing it has; the two matters lie quite apart, notwithstanding the fact that the knowledge of the pudenda origo of a valuation does diminish its prestige and prepares the way to a critical attitude and spirit towards it.

What is the actual worth of our valuations and tables of moral laws? What is the outcome of their dominion? For whom? In relation to what? Answer: for Life. But what is Life? A new and more definite concept of what “Life “is, becomes necessary here. My formula of this concept is: Life is Will to Power.

What is the meaning of the very act of valuing? Does it point back to another, metaphysical world, or does it point down? (As Kant believed, who lived in a period which preceded the great historical movement). In short: what is its origin? Or had it no human “origin “? Answer: moral valuations are a sort of explanation, they constitute a method of interpreting. Interpretation in itself is a symptom of definite physiological conditions, as also of a definite spiritual level of ruling judgments. What is it that interprets? Our passions.

Michael Hamar has quite rightly complained over the years that black clergy sometimes seem to toady-up to the predominantly white leadership of the evangelical denominations, failing to recognize that the fight for gay rights is simply another expression of their own fight for civil rights.

One thing that has continued to strike me since coming out is how blacks – a demographic that has faced horrific discrimination simply because of who they were – are all too likely to be homophobic. Worse yet, at least here in Virginia, they allow them selves to be duped and used as water carriers for whites who would prefer to see a return to the Jim Crow era and the disenfranchisement of blacks.

OK, before I go any further, I’m obliged to admit that 10-years ago, say, that wasn’t obvious to me, either. It was only by reading Michael’s blog, and Andrew Sullivan’s (now defunct), that I ‘got’ it and understood that gays really are second-class citizens who suffer unjustly and at terrible cost.

So it’s news that a historically black Baptist school has created an uproar by inviting a lesbian bishop in a same-sex marriage as a speaker — and refuses to back down before fierce criticism. The words of Dwight McKissic, an influential black pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention:

An incredible, unprecedented, and thus far un-repented of, event took placed on Tuesday evening, March 17, 2015, at the Baptist World Center on the campus of American Baptist College (Dr. Forrest Harris, President). It was reminiscent of an event strongly rebuked by Jesus, that’s recorded in the book of Revelation (Revelation 2:18-25). The purpose of this article is to summarize and capsulate that awful evening for posterity sake, and to communicate to the larger National Baptist family the sad state of affairs, theologically and spiritually, at American Baptist College, Nashville, Tennessee.

[ … ]

In response to the lesbian bishop speaking controversy at ABC recently, Dr. Harris stated to the “Tennessean,” a local newspaper:

“It’s sad that people use religion and idolatry of the Bible to demoralize same-gender-loving people.”

When asked to define “idolatry of the Bible,” Harris said:

“When people say (the Bible) is synonymous with God and the truth,” he said. “We can’t be guided and dictated by a first-century world view.”

That statement, and that statement alone, ought to be enough reason for the ABC Trustee Board to immediately relieve Dr. Harris of his duties.

This is fun, don’t you think?

I share McKissic’s view that the Biblical teachings about homosexuality are too unambiguous to be susceptible of misunderstanding, no matter what Matthew Vines says; after all, there really is no wiggle-room when the punishment for “lying with a man as a woman” is death. I reject without caveat, exception, or the barest quibble, however, McKissic’s belief that the Bible is a trustworthy source of moral instruction. Frankly, I think you’ve got to be debased to the level of a dumb obedient farm animal to accept that claim and surrender your own capacity for moral reasoning to that of Bronze Age goatherders.

There is not merely a natural right to think and judge, there is a moral duty to think and judge — and those who refuse to step-up and answer that moral duty make of themselves the instrument of undeserved harm to others. They become the Dark Side, because that’s easier than living as a responsible thinking adult.

To do as you’re told is, of course, exactly what clergy demand. After all — who knows? If you pause to question why gays ought to be stoned, you might pause a bit longer and wonder what that jivey business with the talking snake and the bad piece of fruit was really all about.

I think Vines’ argument is specious, theologically, but his case for acceptance of gay relationships by Christian churches is going to prevail in the majority of both black and white churches. The straightforward fact is that churches that won’t adapt are going to find themselves with small, aging congregations, and in a sea of hostile young people. Pastors as a class may be dim, but they’re not suicidal; they will hold their nose and make peace with gays, agree that it has all been a terrible, Terrible!, misunderstanding, and find some other group to demonize.

Longtime readers will doubtless recognize the name Jeri Massi, whom I have regularly applauded for her heroic work fighting abuse in IFB churches and their ancillaries. Though we obviously disagree on some pretty fundamental questions, we do agree that the abuse inheres in the belief system itself, and I can think of nobody who has done more than she to expose and demonstrate that.

So it gives me no little pleasure to note that The Wartburg Watch is tooting Jeri’s horn today (with links).

Hephzibah House may sound like a wholesome environment for teenage girls based on the information provided; however, individuals have come forward claiming it was anything but that. A number of years ago, a group of Hephzibah House ‘survivors’ began speaking out about their horrific experiences while living there. One very concerned woman who brought attention to these alleged abuses was Jeri Massi, who wrote Schizophrenic Christianity. This book, which was published in 2008, denounced corruption within Christian Fundamentalism that has brought great harm, particularly to children.

Well done.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
II: Criticism of Morality

§253   An attempt at investigating morality without being affected by its charm and not without some mistrust in regard to the beguiling beauty of its attitudes and looks. A world which we can admire, which is in keeping with our capacity for worship which is continually demonstrating itself in small things or in large: this is the Christian standpoint which is common to us all.

Through an increase in our astuteness, in our mistrust and in our scientific spirit (also through a more developed instinct for truth, which again is due to Christian influence), this interpretation has grown ever less and less tenable for us.

The subtlest way of escape: Kantian criticism. The intellect not only denies itself every right to interpret things in that way, but also to reject the interpretation once it has been made. People are satisfied with a greater demand upon their credulity and faith, with a renunciation of all right to reason concerning the proof of their creed, with an intangible and superior “Ideal” (God) as a stop-gap.

The Hegelian way of escape, a continuation of the Platonic, a piece of romanticism and reaction and at the same time a symptom of the historical sense of a new power: “Spirit” itself is the “self-revealing and self-realising ideal”: we believe that in the “process of development” an ever greater proportion of this ideal is being manifested thus the ideal is being realised, faith is vested in the future, into which all its noble needs are projected and in which they are being worshipped. In short:

1. God is unknowable to us and not to be demonstrated by us (the concealed meaning behind the whole of the epistemological movement).

2. God may be demonstrated, but as something evolving and we are part of it, as our pressing desire for an ideal proves (the concealed meaning behind the historical movement).

It should be observed that criticism is never levelled at the ideal itself, but only at the problem which gives rise to a controversy concerning the ideal; that is to say, why it has not yet been realised, or why it is not demonstrable in small things as in great.

* * *

It makes all the difference: whether a man recognises this state of distress, as such, owing to a passion or to a yearning in himself, or whether it comes home to him as a problem which he arrives at only by straining his thinking powers and his historical imagination to the utmost.

Away from the religious and philosophical points of view we find the same phenomena. Utilitarianism (socialism and democracy) criticises the origin of moral valuations, though it believes in them just as much as the Christian does. (What guilelessness! As if morality could remain when the sanctioning deity is no longer present! The belief in a “Beyond “is absolutely necessary, if the faith in morality is to be maintained).

Fundamental problem: whence comes this almighty power of Faith? Whence this faith in morality? (It is betrayed by the fact that even the fundamental conditions of life are falsely interpreted in favour of it, despite our knowledge of plants and animals. “Self-preservation “: the Darwinian prospect of a reconciliation of the altruistic and egotistic principles).

I thought the Starbucks race initiative was hokey but well-intended, but now that I’ve read this Matt Barber piece it occurs to me that the company might be on to something, or has at least identified a genuine need.

Maybe it’s just how I’m wired, but I kind of relish the opportunity to explain to a bearded, ghost white, heavily pierced and tatted 29-year-old aspiring LGBTOMGWTFBBQ Gender Studies professional that the whole “Hands up Don’t Shoot” meme was a cultural Marxist hoax rooted in, as are all things “progressive,” a bunch of pretend stuff.

Barber is looking to me like the kind of guy the conversation was meant for.