The illusion of american innocence

7/25/2017 3 Comments

The illusion of american innocence

We promise, this time we will actually talk about chapter 2! From the School of the Americas to Vatican 2 and the Christian Base Communities, we've got a lot of content in this chapter.

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf says that Americans have a "pervasive sense of innocence" and "optimism," that we see ourselves as "good people" and therefore tend to see others as "bad people" (http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/america). While many of us do see ourselves as generally good people, I suspect we would struggle to unanimously claim that in seeing ourselves as good means that we see others as automatically bad people. However, this chapter lifts up for us how the assumption that Americans and American policy leans toward good and leans toward justice, might be blinding us a little when it comes to the real picture of what our involvement in the global economy is doing to people in other countries. What do you think? Do you agree that Americans have a pervasive sense of innocence?

Also in this chapter, we begin to see similarities between the ways that Christian Base Communities in Latin America and African American Churches in the U.S. are beginning to organize in ways that would forever change theology, the Church, and the world.

Seeing the power of faith communities to move the arc of justice makes us wonder, where and for what is the church organizing today?

3 Comments

Beth Walters

7/26/2017 06:01:44 pm

Ben refers to a talk we had after his sermon two weeks ago; I would like to build on that. Yes, I see both of the sowers as, of course, characters in parables. In the parable from the first week with Matthew, the whole image of seeds falling on rocky, pathway, weedy or fertile soil can be interpreted as being very judgmental -- which is not the way I hear it. Jesus who, it emphasizes nearby, “did not say anything to them without using a parable,” explains himself later as being the sower. (I actually believe the last section was added later, as most explanatory passages surely have been, but...)
So if Jesus is the sower, then his “seed” must be his parables, his actions, his healings and all the words he spoke, to individuals and very commonly to crowds. He sowed a lot of seeds, in many different places, to the whole range of people. Whether something he said clicked with a person surely differed widely among all hearers. What anyone heard varied in its being "heard" at all, or how it was heard, by different people. That they didn’t hear it at all was no sin; some heard it more but it didn’t stick with them, while others got more but the “weeds” of daily life somehow erased what they had heard. Then there were others on whom seeds fell and who were transformed, became new creatures, because for some reason, perhaps chance, they were fertile ground. The degree to which it effectively built them anew as individuals differed widely, however; in some it was “in some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” So Jesus said if you have ears, listen!
Now, as to something being taken away: After the rocky soil parable, the disciples come and ask Jesus to explain, as usual. That is when he says, the nature of the seeds being "the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.” And “whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
To me, he is talking about people who have “gotten” his parables, words and actions, and as a result can understand and are eager for more. For those who didn’t get it, they probably weren’t rich soil for anything that called for change. Perhaps an example was the resistant rich young ruler.
Even though I cite that rich man as an example, these passages have nothing to do with personal/corporate wealth, economics or capitalism for me. They have to do with the riches Jesus encouraged us to invest in. Perhaps it is, in fact, like capitalism: the more we have of them, the more we will get.

Beth Walters

7/26/2017 06:04:39 pm

Oops. The comment above was supposed to go on the July 18 discussion instead.

Beth Walters

7/27/2017 05:01:34 pm

Miguel’s use of the word Christendom here jumped out at me, making me curious about the difference between that and Christianity.”

As a result, I now would say that “Christendom” was born in the fourth century, around the time some Christian leaders fought and gave form to the Nicene Creed, the password for getting the Roman Empire’s embrace…. and more power. The empire and the Roman emperor Constantine would then have a single religion that Rome could endorse, ending the multiplicity of faiths in its territories and, as a result, giving Rome the right to use power to obliterate faiths not approved by Rome.

But the key word in the deal that the two bodies cut those years was “power.” Getting power. And I believe that changed the church, from then through 2017, and certainly beyond. Instead of being free to release power (and the other two great temptations, possessions and prestige) as Christ urged, the church bought into them.

That became the fuel for most of the church’s image. Huge steepled cathedrals. Lavish robes for priests and palaces for Popes. Wars to erase infidels. Harsh demands on the faithful. Focus on money for the church, with not giving sacrificially being cruelly judged sin. Support for political stances (see in Armchair Theologians histories). An emphasis on having the largest congregations, having the most prestigious pastors. Sharp control of theologies (a symptom of self-defined power), with any other form of Christianity being wrong. Etc. Etc.

Christendom seems akin to King-dom… but not about the One we call King.

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The illusion of american innocence

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