Southern Baptists kick out Saddleback Church for having a woman pastor

A while back, I wrote about "What’s Odd About ‘The Purpose-Driven Life’" for Medium. I'm thinking of the Purpose-Driven Life's author, Rick Warren, right now, because I learned from another writer on Medium that the Southern Baptist Convention kicked his Saddleback Church out of the denomination. It's because the church has a woman pastor. Given other general behaviors of the denomination, it doesn't surprise me, but the event is worth noting.

See also my posts on this blog: Evangelicals disappointed in Trump's behavior and Inconsistencies in crediting suffering and success to God

Gender-neutral God

England supposes God doesn't need gendered pronouns after all:

The Church of England will look into the use of gender neutral terms to refer to God in prayers, but the centuries-old institution said on Wednesday there were no plans to abolish current services.

The issue reflects growing global awareness about the assumed usage of pronouns causing offence or upset to those who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

"Christians have recognised since ancient times that God is neither male nor female," a spokesperson for the Church said. "Yet the variety of ways of addressing and describing God found in scripture has not always been reflected in our worship."

— "Church of England explores gender neutral God," Muvija M, Reuters, 8 Feb 2023

Also:

The Rt Rev Dr Michael Ipgrave, Bishop of Lichfield and vice-chair of the liturgical commission responsible for the matter, said the church had been “exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years”.

“After some dialogue between the two commissions in this area, a new joint project on gendered language will begin this spring,” he said. “In common with other potential changes to authorised liturgical provision, changing the wording and number of authorised forms of absolution would require a full synodical process for approval.”

The specifics of the project are as yet unclear.

— "Church of England to consider use of gender-neutral terms for God," PA Media, 7 Feb 2023

The Times (UK) also has an article (paywalled) (7 Feb 2023, by Kaya Burgess)

UK media so normal a paper does a front page splash objecting to God’s pronouns, lack of gender, declaring heresy against the state’s religious authorities and centuries of settled theology of all major monotheistic religions

— Nate (@nateffo) February 8, 2023

‘God is a man, actually, and he lives in the moon, or maybe in the sky, and he takes a slash in the moon or sky toilet like any other omniscient, omnipresent bloke would’

— Nate (@nateffo) February 8, 2023

More About 'How Evil Works' — or, more precisely, how a right-wing guy says it does

In this article on Medium, "What Transphobia Sounded Like in 2010," (a 7-minute read), I unpacked some statements in the book How Evil Works by David Kupelian, an editor of WorldNetDaily.

Go check out that article if you like, but here's more stuff about that book that was less directly relevant to my central point in that short article.

---

How the Left Machinates with Fake Crises

He also says the left manufactures crises to serve its socialist agenda.

Specifically: "The environmental movement has become one of the most powerful, modern battering rams of the left." In particular, he says, "man-caused global warming is a fake crisis." Children who are "forced to sit in classrooms" (otherwise known as going to school?) have been "brainwashed" by activities like watching Al Gore's documentary on global warming.

So, too, he says, "the false accusation of racism remains a powerful weapon of the left." (He says nothing, of course, about the weapon of actual racism itself.)

God, Though, Loves a Good Crisis

God, he says, "'creates a crisis' - or perhaps more accurately, allows a crisis to develop in our lives" so that "we end up growing in His direction."

Jesus and Capitalism

He likes Christianity and Judaism but not witchcraft and atheism. U.S. culture, in his view, is based on "Judeo-Christian, free market values." (I can't offhand think of any value I'd call both religious and capitalist, but I let that be.)

His complaint against "Marxism, communism, socialism" is two-pronged. First, he says, people don't follow the moral rules he says they're supposed to follow, so they set up a false god. People who are "estranged from the laws of God now need the 'god' of socialist government." That will be a demagogue. Second, this behavior is animated by people feeling sour grapes ("hate, dissatisfaction, greed, and especially envy") about not being rich, so they turn to a socialist demagogue who "demoniz[es] 'the rich'."

How Do We Know that God Exists? That Evil Exists?

Because sometimes people make "principled" and "self-sacrificial" choices. And how could there be any other explanation for that, other than that God is the source of Choice A and evil the source of Choice B?

A rudimentary and universal moral conscience, which people have regardless of their belief in God, is, he says, "the very evidence of God." The Bible just tells us stuff we already know is true: "the Bible says stealing and murder and lying are wrong because they are wrong." (Great.)

He compares atheistic "freedom from God" to the sickly effect of "those green Christmas-tree-shaped air fresheners" that make the air smell worse.

Evil is out there, actively trying to invade and persuade us, he assures us, citing the New Testament and "the blockbuster film Spider-Man 3."

Theology of Lying

• "We elect liars as leaders because we actually need lies if we're avoiding inner Truth."
• "Lies do a great job of excusing their failings and validating their illusions."
• "Conflicting emotions cause you to be unable to think straight, and can easily result in your compulsively believing the lie."
• "When you're upset, the lie takes on a mysterious quality of attraction and believability, as though a protective force field has temporarily been disabled, allowing the lie to enter your mental inner sanctum."
• "If we assume that what feels good is good, and what feels bad is bad, we have a huge problem, because lies often make us feel good..."

Hatred

For young jihadists, he says, "the core of their being" is "a smoldering fireball of suppressed rage." He goes on:

"Intense hatred has a way of morphing inexorably into full-blown, epic madness. Indeed, hate is like spiritual plutonium, possessing bizarre, explosive, and transformative qualities of which we are largely unaware. It is the means by which evil itself blooms on this earth, especially when rage is focused and magnified by a malignant worldview."

Similarly, "many people who 'dislike' or 'are uncomfortable around' guns are actually afraid of what they might do if they had a loaded firearm in their hand," and they "project" these ideas onto the gun, classifying the gun itself as evil.

War

He complains that the government uses tax dollars to "fund evil," in which he includes "obscene, perverse, and blasphemous 'art,'" and not, say, the war in Iraq, about which he speaks positively. He says that President George W. Bush "amazingly" protected the US post-9/11 from further attacks on home soil by launching combat operations overseas (thereby conflating the rationales for war in Afghanistan and Iraq) and describes the war in Iraq as "giving the Iraqi people a chance to choose another destiny."

Similarly, this on the incineration of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

"It broke Japan. It confronted the 'evil spirit' that had possessed that nation…and violently exorcized it. Having neutralized the evil that had captivated Japan, America became that nation's friend and helped massively reconstruct it, ultimately turning Japan into the civilized, successful, First World economic power it is today. Think how utterly amazing that is."

Anything other than war, it seems, is "moral weakness" and "appeasement."

Who's the Real You?

There are evil "forces working through you," and "if deep down you really don't agree with those feelings [schadenfreude or envy, then in a very real sense those feelings are not you. You could say there are two of you: with the real you being the observer who is chagrined over the dark thoughts and feelings rising from the deep." People ought to reflect and seek "repentance and real change."

Also, people's "entire sense of self-worth" shouldn't be "based on what others say to them and about them." That approval should come from following the godly impulse inside us, so that God rewards us with "direction, purpose, energy, and genuine and lasting happiness."

Guns

He believes that "more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens results in less crime," citing a 1998 book that preceded the Columbine High School massacre and was already 12 years old when he cited it.

Definitionally, a law-abiding person will not commit, is not committing, and/or has not committed a crime, so their gun doesn't increase crime. And some use of guns — chiefly, suicide and accidents — might not be categorized as "crime." But we don't have predictive knowledge of exactly who is law-abiding, non-suicidal, and won't experience an accident, so the real question is not about certain types of people but about whether more guns in a society overall increases the use of those guns, and the answer is yes.

Why do people tell religious stories they don't believe in?

From an essay by Scott Hershovitz, "How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In," New York Times, May 2, 2022:

"'I think that for real God is pretend and for pretend God is real,' Rex announced.

I was stunned. That’s a big thought for a 4-year-old. It’s a big thought for a 40-year-old. I asked Rex to explain what he meant.

'God isn’t real,' he said. 'But when we pretend, he is.'

Philosophers have a name for this sort of view. They call it 'fictionalism.'

* * *

Some philosophers are fictionalists about morality; they think rights aren’t real except in stories that we tell. Others are fictionalists about numbers; they think that math is made up. I think both views are mistaken; I believe in morality and math.

But I think Rex was right...I am a fictionalist about God.

* * *

I just don’t believe the stories that we tell. And hearing them in English forces me to confront that, over and over again.

Still, I pretend. And I don’t plan to stop. Because pretending makes the world a better place. I learned that from my kids too — Rex and his younger brother, Hank.

Pretending blurs the boundaries between this world and the ones we imagine. It breathes life into stories, letting them shape the world we live in. Just think of the delight kids take in Santa Claus, even those who know, deep down, that he’s not real. Or the way they lose themselves in play. Pretending makes the world more magical and meaningful."

How does it do so? The pretend stories can remind us "that people persevere, survive and even thrive" although "the world has been falling apart from the start" in part because "there’s beauty in trying to put it back together."

If you want more, Scott Hershovitz has written this book on philosophy and children:

See also my article: "What Can Jews Do When They Don’t Believe in God?". It's a 5-minute read on Medium.

Belief in God: Statistics

A 2003 Harris poll found that 90 percent of American adults believe in God, and that most also believe in heaven and hell (82 percent and 69 percent, respectively). More recently, a 2018 Pew Study found that 56 percent of Americans believe in “God as described in the Bible,” one-third believed in some other kind of God or higher power, and 10 percent had no such spiritual belief at all. Many believe that God protects them (77 percent), has rewarded them (67 percent), has punished them (40 percent), or talks to them (28 percent).

Does all this belief change anyone's behavior? Perhaps not. It certainly drives religious behavior: In 2014, Pew found that 36 percent of Americans claimed to attend religious services at least once a week, while 30 percent never (or almost never) go at all. Personal belief and identity also drive the amount that people donate to congregations, religious charities, and religiously-branded charities. Outside of religious activity, however, the impact of belief on the rest of life is debatable. In 2011, The Week reported that a newly released study from Kansas University "found almost no difference in the sex practices of atheists and highly religious people, except that the religious felt very guilty..." And in 2013, a small study revealed how criminals use religion to justify their crimes:

"The authors surveyed 48 'hardcore street offenders' in and around Atlanta, in hopes of determining what effect, if any, religion has on their behavior. While the vast majority of those surveyed (45 out of 48 people) claimed to be religious, the authors found that the interviewees 'seemed to go out of their way to reconcile their belief in God with their serious predatory offending. They frequently employed elaborate and creative rationalizations in the process and actively exploit religious doctrine to justify their crimes.'"

Beliefs in Europe vary widely, with a 2005 survey (cited by Barbara King) showing that 97 percent in Poland and 37 percent in the Czech Republic saying they believe in God. That survey included 14 countries. It is not clear whether Denmark and Sweden were on the list, but of those nations, Victor Stenger once noted that "about 20 percent believe in a personal God, consider God to be important in their lives, and believe in life after death..."

On any local level, beliefs may be slow to change, in part because, as George Cunningham put it, "There is a 7 in 10 chance that you have the same religious affiliation as your parents."

Scientists are far more likely to to be atheists than the rest of the population. A 2007 survey of 1,646 scientists conducted by Ecklund and Scheitle found 62 percent atheist or agnostic, while 10 percent were certain of God's existence and 4 percent believed that "there is the most truth in one religion." A 2009 Pew study found that approximately half of U.S. scientists believed in God or a higher power, while the other half did not or would not say. A 2005 study found that natural scientists are more likely than social scientists to be atheists.

---

See: "People Think Atheists Are Just As Bad As Rapists? Christ." Anna North, Jezebel, December 1, 2011. It refers to this academic article: "Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice". It’s 18 pages. You may need a university library subscription to view it.

Why people are reluctant to call themselves atheists. Harmeet Kaur, CNN, March 10, 2024

Sources

2003 Harris poll cited in Barbara J. King. Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2007. p. 220.

The Week, June 10, 2011, p. 6.

Victor J. Stenger. The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009. p. 234.

Cited in Barbara J. King. Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2007. p. 228.

George C. Cunningham. Decoding the Language of God: Can a Scientist Really Be a Believer? Prometheus Books, 2009. p. 80.

Survey results of Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle funded by the Templeton Foundation and published in 2007. Cited in George C. Cunningham. Decoding the Language of God: Can a Scientist Really Be a Believer? Prometheus Books, 2009. p. 18.

Still unconvinced that God exists: Holes in the argument from objective moral values

Within the "Conversations with Matt DeLockery" Christian podcast available free on iTunes, four episodes titled “Looking for a God” (Parts 1-4) deserve a little attention, although, as I show below, they fail to present a convincing argument for the existence of God. Together, the episodes total one hour, and they were released on four different dates in October and November 2017.

'1 - Intro to the Moral Argument'

The first episode is a solid introduction. DeLockery's stated intent is to examine whether human behavior implies God's existence. He believes that God’s existence is “probably the most foundational question there could possibly be on any subject, because it touches on everything else,” especially the question of whether human purpose is given to us or whether we invent it for ourselves and the question of the afterlife. He explains the importance of critical thinking and gives a brief overview of common arguments about God’s existence. He says that, in discussions about whether morality is objective or subjective, "we’re looking for an answer to the question: Are there any basic foundational principles that say how humans should operate in relation to ourselves, other people, the world around us, and so forth?"

'2 - Objective vs. Subjective Moral Values'

The second episode has some flaws.

He defines "objective" as "hard fact": something that is true for people regardless of what culture they belong to and regardless of who recognizes it as an objective truth or who may believe it to be a subjective truth or falsehood.

He defines "subjective" as preference or opinion. Throughout the episode, apparently unwittingly, he goes back and forth about whether such preference is personal or social, and unfortunately this detail leads to the failure of his argument.

In this passage, he says the subjectivity can be either personal or social.

“Subjective moral values are things that we feel or are socially right or wrong. [emphasis mine] These vary from group to group and can and do change. Think about the phrase ‘everything’s relative.’ If a particular moral value is relative, then it is subjective. Moral values being ‘relative’ and moral values being ‘subjective’ are really two ways of saying the same thing. However, if a particular value is not relative, then it is ‘objective’.”

But then he asks listeners to ask themselves what they personally feel, their "immediate gut reaction," about the question of sex trafficking. Specifically, when they examine the source of ther moral opinion that sex trafficking is wrong, he asks listeners to decide: is their belief due to “social pressure,” a “social ‘no-no’,” or is sex trafficking “actually wrong”? Here, DeLockery implies that you can determine that something is objectively right or wrong based on what you subjectively feel. This is confusing at best. An "immediate gut reaction" is practically the very definition of subjectivity and is not a good way to demonstrate hard facts about the world.

The confusion is repeated:

“Are there things that are really good or bad, and are not merely based on social preferences? In my opinion, I think that there are many more values that are subjective or relative. However, not all are. I think sex trafficking is morally wrong. I think taking advantage of poor people is morally wrong. I think loving and caring for others is morally good. And I don’t think these things are merely preferences. They are not relative; they are not ‘to each his own.’ I think there really are at least some moral values that are objective because I think that’s how the world is. It’s not because I want to believe that there is something right or wrong with certain things. It’s because when I look at the world, I see [my emphasis] that there really is[my emphasis] something right or wrong with certain things. That is how I perceive the world when I look around me.”

By starting with the individual or social definition of subjectivity and, by some conscious or unconscious sleight of hand, dropping off the individual so that only the social remains as the hallmark of subjectivity, DeLockery allows the individual to be the arbiter of the objective. Even had he started with a purely social definition of subjectivity, this schema would not endure long, because the question would arise how a number of infallibly objective individuals suddenly become fallible and subjective when they organize into a society or culture.

Another problem is revealed by his choice of "sex trafficking" as an example. He assumes that his audience is sufficiently educated to recognize the phrase "sex trafficking" (defined as kidnapping and selling or exploiting people, often minors and often across international borders, for sexual purposes); that they recognize it is illegal in most countries; and that they are aware that everyone around them shares values that place them in opposition to it (likely, since he speaks to an audience interested in modern Christian apologetics). His example works reasonably well and makes its point rapidly precisely because everyone in the room already knows everyone else's general orientation on this topic. There are, however, people who practice sex trafficking; there are places where it is considered culturally acceptable to give girls to older men for marriage or as a form of collective punishment, and people from those cultures might have different definitions of "sex trafficking"; there are scenarios, such as war, in which kidnapping and rape become commonplace when they were not so before; and there are sociopaths or rebels among us who might know the socially appropriate thing to say when asked for their moral opinions but do not actually hold these feelings. So, asking the room to examine their personal feelings on a given moral question does not prove that the answer to that question is universally held. It matters how you ask the question, who is in the room, and how they choose to respond. It is not at all like placing a rock and asking someone to kick it to prove that it is a "hard fact." Anyone, regardless of their belief, culture, situation, or capacity, will trip over a rock or walk into a wall placed in front of them, but they will not all agree on values, which makes it difficult to prove that any given value is indeed objective. My own "immediate gut reaction" to value statements can always be contradicted by someone else's gut reaction and it will be difficult to arbitrate between us. It seems better to say that our moral intuitions matter and yet are fallible.

It is also confusing why the objective value is said to be true regardless of what anyone believes about it, yet apparently the only way to investigate the value is to ask "What do you believe about it?"

'3 - Evolution and Morality'

Believing that he successfully demonstrated in the previous episode that objective values exist, he now inquires where those values come from. According to him, God is one option:

“Now, there really isn’t much of an argument that a god could create moral values, or objective moral values. It’s pretty simple: If there is a god who can create everything, then creating a specific way that he wants his creatures to function is pretty straightforward. God makes man. God can provide a set of operating instructions to explain how man best functions. Pretty simple.”

In my estimation, this is not, to the contrary, at all simple because there is little to compare it to. As a human, I can engineer nonliving objects and, through selective breeding or environmental control, tinker with or influence living beings. In so doing, I control how they do operate, but I do not control how they should operate. The only way I can change values and rules about how any object or being should operate is by changing the values and rules of the society in which we participate — which is, by definition, in the realm of the subjective. If I were "God," it is not obvious how that status would enable me to create values and rules that are objective, nor how a value or rule could possibly be a hard fact about the world rather than just my opinion (albeit a divine opinion) about what I want my creations to do. Thus the question of whether God can create objective moral values cannot be dispensed with so easily. But it is dispensed with, so onward we go.

Could values have evolved? In examining the possibility that objective values resulted from "biological evolution," DeLockery doesn’t start with any pre-human or non-human type of animal. He only asks about how social learning might have occurred to promote human survival. He believes it’s clear that evolution — assuming that evolution is a real process, a position to which he does not commit — can produce subjective values (those that can “vary from place to place, from group to group”) but cannot produce objective values. At best, evolution could somehow aid us to "discover” objective values.

Now he changes his definition of “objective.” An objective fact, he says here, is one that “cannot change.” This contradicts a nuance of an example he gave in Episode 2. There, he said that the statement “gas-powered cars need oil to function properly” is an objective fact because of “the way gas-powered cars are currently made [my emphasis]...This does not change, and will not change, until the ways cars are manufactured changes [my emphasis].” The objective fact indeed can change to reflect the underlying conditions that support its validity. But here in Episode 3 he declares that an objective moral fact cannot change.

He says that, while evolution may help humans discover objective moral values, it can only produce subjective moral values. The type of values generated through evolution meet “the definition of subjective because it’s everything about how it affects the other person, how it is perceived by the other person, not whether it’s inherently the way that the human machine was made to function.” Note the assumption that the human machine was made at all (by a creator) which was assumed indirectly in Episode 2 when objective moral values were discovered by immediate gut reaction.

He concludes that, since objective values exist (as asserted in Episode 2) but could not have evolved (as asserted in Episode 3), they must have been created by God. He does not consider any alternative origins of values — say, for example, the result of a careful reasoning process.

'4 - God, Morality, and Euthyphro'

He presents Plato's Euthyphro dilemma: Can God arbitrarily choose values or is God held to a standard above himself? Neither is attractive, so DeLockery solves it with a third option: God is identical with those values. The values reflect God's character. The objective values with which we concern ourselves reflect the values of our Creator just as a painting reflects something of its painter. This is all merely asserted, not properly argued, and this is the shortest of all four episodes.

Human calamities aren't caused by an angry God

Many religious people blame God for terrorism, natural disasters and other calamities. They may interpret a disaster as God's collective punishment – usually acknowledged as eminently reasonable, since it is God's will – visited upon a large group of people for the offense of a subgroup. In the cases where such thoughts are expressed out loud, they may appear on the surface to provide an explanatory cause for the disaster, but they actually exploit and redirect the public's negative emotions surrounding the disaster, often with the intent of maligning an unpopular group.

"God works in mysterious ways... but he gets really fucking weird when it comes to poor people and dangerous places." @Gabino_Iglesias, Coyote Songs, p. 27, @broken_river. pic.twitter.com/jg2O02v67Q

— Kristen 📖 (@kristenwerefox) December 17, 2018

Jerry Falwell's comments about Sept. 11

It's been like this my whole life. I'm old enough to remember when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said NYC deserved 9/11 because it was full of gays bsky.app/profile/ac82...

[image or embed]

— mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) January 8, 2025 at 11:03 PM

Two days after the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2011 in which militant Arab Muslims attacked New York and Washington, Rev. Jerry Falwell appeared on "The 700 Club" television show and declared:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

The usual theological clarification of this statement is that God did not actively violently attack people, but rather lifted his usual protection (Falwell called it a "curtain") and allowed the attacks to happen; one might see the moral distinction as analogous to that between active and passive euthanasia.

Related: Anna Merlan's 2019 book Republic of Lies notes a similar distinction on a political rather than a theological level: "conspiracy theories relating to September 11" suggest "that the Bush administration either passively allowed the attacks to happen or orchestrated them for political ends. (The two branches of 9/11 conspiracism have become so entrenched that they have their own acronyms: LIHOP, for 'let it happen on purpose,' and MIHOP, 'made it happen on purpose.')"

At the time, a few prominent people agreed with Falwell. That year, on Oct. 4, the Rev. Lou Sheldon opined that relief services for victims of the terrorist attack should be meted out with a priority rating based on the victims' sexual orientations and marital status.

Most people, however, leapt to disagree with Falwell's statement. Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American way, called Falwell's broadcast "absolutely inappropriate and irresponsible." Spencer Phillips made the pointed jab in Front Page Magazine on Sept. 17, 2001 that Falwell's type of coercive, us-and-them fundamentalism "may have been the inspiration for 9/11 because it is an opinion wholly shared by the Islamic fundamentalists behind the attack."

In 2006, David Kuo, former special assistant to President George W. Bush, wrote of Falwell's original statement:

No one doubted Falwell's ability to make outrageous statements. This wasn't outrageous. It was immoral. It was insane.

In 2011, Biblical scholar Jennifer Wright Knust debunked the late Falwell's claims as having

no parallel at all in biblical writings: the word 'pagan' does not appear; abortion is not discussed; there was no ancient 'feminist' movement; 'gays and lesbians' with a 'lifestyle' are never mentioned; 'secularism' as a concept had not yet been invented; and 'pedophilia' is not talked about, let alone defined as a crime... The American Civil Liberties Union said they 'refused to dignify' Falwell's broadcast with a response. Despite the wishes of many that Falwell's statement could be swept under the table, the words still ring powerfully in people's memories years after they were spoken.

Other attempts to link 'homosexuality' and 'terrorism' in the public perception

The idea that homosexuality draws God's wrath in the form of terrorist attacks resurfaced several months later in Israel. Jerusalem's first Gay Pride event was held on June 7, 2002 despite the mayor's refusal to finance it. One writer praised the gay activists for "beat[ing] the system by ignoring it, acting as if justice and peace were fait accompli instead of a receding fantasy." Counter-protesters accused the marchers of angering God and leaving Jerusalem prone to terrorist attacks.

The association of homosexuality and terrorism persisted on a subconscious level. Fox News Channel talk show host Bill O'Reilly complained on "The O'Reilly Factor" on June 2, 2010 about a new advertisement that McDonald's was airing in France inviting gay people to "come as you are." O'Reilly asked, “Do they have an Al-Qaeda ad, you know, come as you are?”

The idea that God is angered by human sexual transgression is very old, going back at least as far as a Byzantine association of homosexuality with paganism. In the year 528 CE, earthquakes hit Antioch and destroyed much of the city of Soloi Pompeiopolis. Some people blamed God's anger over human sexual transgression. The next year, a bishop from Rhodes and a bishop from Thrace were tried before the city prefect of Constantinople; one was tortured and exiled, the other castrated and put on display. "Justinian then ordered a more comprehensive round-up of people engaging in pederasty....The penalties for conviction on charges of 'religious deviance' included public humiliation, flogging, and castration – sometimes inflicted with such brutality that the victims died." Basianius, a supporter of the Greens, was "dragged out of a church" on Theodora's orders, "tortured during the trial and castrated upon conviction," according to Procopius. (David Potter, Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 135-136.)

In August 2019, Ohio State rep. Candice Keller (R-Middletown) posted to Facebook saying, "Why not place the blame [for mass shootings] where it belongs?" She cited a long list of what she considers to be social ills, beginning with "the breakdown of the traditional American family (thank you, transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates)," and then closed ominously, "the fury will continue."

In March 2020, Meir Mazuz, an Orthodox Sephardic rabbi in Israel, said that the appearance of coronavirus in Israel was God's punishment for gay pride parades. Mazuz, according to The Times of Israel, is "the former spiritual leader of the defunct ultra-nationalist and homophobic Yachad party, and is head of the Kiseh Rahamim yeshiva in Bnei Brak."

How do the injured parties give an account of the situation?

The otherwise satisfying belief that victims, however remotely, somehow deserve their suffering has a shortcoming: it is primarily reassuring when one's enemies suffer, and it is never a satisfying explanation for the suffering of oneself and one's allies.

Why was a flammable, six-story-tall Christian statue known as "Touchdown Jesus" in Monroe, Ohio struck by lightning in 2010? Perhaps God was angry at atheistic culture, so he stopped protecting Christian works of art?

When someone is personally injured, they may feel angry, and that anger may tie in with anger about unrelated subjects. There may be a tendency to conflate two issues together even though they are plainly unrelated; in this way, people may experience complex anger about victimhood. In his book "The Belief Instinct," Jesse Bering quoted Ray Nagin, the African-American mayor of New Orleans in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, who conflated his anger about the Iraq war with his anger about the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina when he said to reporters: "Surely God is mad at America. Surely He's not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretense. But surely He's mad at black America, too. We're not taking care of ourselves." Nagin subsequently had to apologize and backpedal.

Collective punishment

According to theologies that involve collective punishment, people don't always suffer for the contemporary sins of their neighbors; God may turn against an entire country for something that happened hundreds of years ago.

The German Evangelical Conference at Darmstadt, soon after World War II ended, "claimed that Jewish suffering in the Holocaust had been a divine visitation and called upon Jews to stop rejecting and crucifying Christ." As Bart D. Ehrman noted in God's Problem, it "was not German Christianity's finest moment." More recently, Rev. John Hagee argued that Hitler was the "hunter" referred to in Jeremiah 16 who pursued the Jews and who therefore at least indirectly fulfilled God's will by hastening the creation of the state of Israel. Sen. John McCain rejected Hagee's endorsement of his 2008 presidential bid due to these comments. (Hagee also called Hurricane Katrina "an act of God for a society that has become Sodom and Gomorrah.") Jews, for their part, have a long history of theologically interpreting ethnic and religiously based hate crimes against them. The Jewish response to the deadly 1903 pogrom in Kishinev, Russia, “reveals how fully [the idea of] God’s retribution had given way to a secularistic commitment to human responsibility," wrote Eugene B. Borowitz in his 1991 book Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew. He said: "one would have to search hard to find a lament that Jewish sin had brought this evil upon the community. Instead...moderns knew that human freedom, not God’s retributive pedagogy, lay behind these events.” (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996. p. 35.)

In 2014, Susanne Atanus, running in a primary election to become a Republican Congressional representative for Illinois, said that God was angry about same-sex marriage and abortions and that he was punishing Americans with tornadoes and autism. The state's Republican party denied that it had ever supported her and recommended that she withdraw from the race.

The Liberian Council of Churches released a statement, as noted by Joel Baden and Candida Moss in 2014, that ebola, a contagious viral hemorrhagic fever, was evidence that "God is angry with Liberia" for "corruption and immoral acts (such as homosexualism, etc.) that continue to penetrate our society."

In 2018, Franklin Graham (the son of Billy Graham) responded to a public figure's support of same-sex marriage by saying that "God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality."

In 2018, two days in advance of the expected landfall of Hurricane Florence upon the Carolinas, South Carolina-based pastor Rick Joyner claimed that God was punishing people for the sin of abortion. Later that year, in November, David Johnson, chairman of Ohio's Columbiana County Republican Party, posted online images stating that the raging fire in California that had killed dozens of people was "God’s Punishment to Liberal California" and that it was “Hell on Earth, brought to you by the liberals in California."

Right-wing Christian activist Mary Colbert said on television in June 2019 that "earthquakes, tornadoes, storms" are caused by human sin, not by climate change, and indicate that the End Times are approaching.

Christians in Florida prayed against the approach of Hurricane Dorian in August 2019.

Christian broadcaster Rick Wiles — who in November 2019 referred to Trump's impeachment as a "Jew coup," for which Trump rewarded him with a hotel room and press credentials for his "TruNews" to cover the World Economic Forum the following January — referred to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic as punishment for the Jews. "God is spreading it in your synagogues! You’re under judgment because you oppose his son, the Lord Jesus Christ," he said.

See my Medium article, "Atheists Don't Fear Divine Punishment," for examples of collective punishment (and other such things) from Pat Robertson.

Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Responding to the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, media mogul Ted Turner (died 2026) said in an interview:

I'm not a real religious person, but I'm somewhat religious and I'm just wondering if God's telling us He doesn't want us to drill offshore, because He sure is setting back offshore drilling. And right before that we had that coal mine disaster in West Virginia where we lost 29 miners and...the Chinese lost 29 miners too in another mine disaster over in China...I think maybe we just oughta leave the coal in the ground and go with solar and wind power and geothermal...could be He's sending us a message.

A different Ted Turner — the Rev. Theodore Turner of Boothville, La. — said: "The oil spill is part of prophecy. The Bible prophesized hardships." At least to the extent that he was quoted in this article, he did not, however, make the extra leap of claiming that he knew why certain hardships were befalling certain people. His seems to be a more honest, humble approach.

Not just Christianity

People of religions other than Christianity may subscribe to analogous theological beliefs.

Former Israeli chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu blamed opposition to the state of Israel for causing the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Asia, and, not having learned his lesson, he told an ultra-Orthodox radio station in 2007 that the Holocaust, which killed millions of Jews and non-Jews, was God's indiscriminate punishment delivered because some Jews were modifying and liberalizing religious tradition.

Iranian Muslim cleric Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi said in a YouTube video in 2010 that inappropriate female dress leads to promiscuity, and "when promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase." The reference to earthquakes was pointed, as tens of thousands of Iranians died in an earthquake in 2003.

The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, said that an earthquake-caused tsunami that killed thousands of people was divine punishment [tembatsu] for the sin of "egoism and populism." John Nelson, a professor of religious studies at the University of San Francisco, explained that the Japanese Buddhist idea of "the gods having an agenda was instrumental to the ideology of the prewar years, when it was said to be Japan's divine mission to conquer Asia and establish an empire."

Bigotry against anyone doesn't improve the victims' condition

Many people assume that God exists. Others add that this God is offended by certain human behaviors. But why go on to assume that God wants to make large numbers of innocent people suffer? Much of human suffering is caused by humans ourselves – and there's no need to compound our collective pain by lacing misfortune with bigotry.

Image: Tornado in Elie, Manitoba. Image by: Justin Hobson © GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version Wikimedia Commons.

This article was originally posted to Helium Network on Feb. 21, 2011.

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How many Americans believe the Bible is the 'Word of God'?

Over the years, Gallup has asked Americans if they believed the Bible was the "actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word." In 1977, 38 percent of Americans identified themselves as Biblical literalists – rejecting the poll's other options that the Bible is "the inspired word of God" or "an ancient book of fables" – but by 2011 this response had declined to 30 percent. The decline was not perfectly linear. The number of Biblical literalists increased to about 40 percent in the early 1980s and declined to a low of 27 percent in 2001 before rising slightly again.

Gallup found that Biblical literalists were more likely to claim that they were Protestant Christians, attended church weekly, were political conservatives and/or Republicans, had only a high school education or less, and had low incomes. Additionally, Rasmussen found in 2005 that they are slightly more likely to be female and over 40.  (Among atheists and agnostics, by contrast, men clearly outnumber women two-to-one, according to the Pew Religious Landscape Study in 2008.)

When Americans are asked in a general way if they will affirm the truth of the Bible, the majority do so. Rasmussen found in 2005 that 63 percent of Americans agreed that "the Bible" – without having been asked to limit their response to specific stories within the Bible – was "literally true." This figure is twice as high as Gallup's.

Of course, it is possible to believe that some, and not all, statements in the Bible are true. When people are given options to declare belief in specific parts of the Bible, it generates a more nuanced picture of belief. ABC News Primetime poll in 2004 found that over 60 percent of Americans were literalists about certain Biblical events such as the creation of the world, Noah's ark, and Moses parting the Red Sea.  Those who described themselves as "evangelical Protestants" were more likely than other Protestants to have these literalist beliefs. A CBS news poll later that year found similar results, with 55 percent claiming to believe in the creation of the world as described in the Bible. Yet another poll found that 40 percent believed that God created humans "pretty much in their present form" several thousand years ago (Gallup, 2010).

William Saletan argued for Slate that, while Gallup has found in a dozen polls between 1982-2014 that at least 40 percent of Americans claim to believe that God created the Earth less than 10,000 years ago, a new 2014 study by the BioLogos Foundation found that, when people are pressed to be more specific about their beliefs and allowed to express uncertainty, only 15 percent of Americans maintained such a position.

Americans' beliefs differ so widely by geography such that it is hard to generalize about what Americans believe. In the U.S. states of Alabama and Arkansas, 75 percent believe the Bible is literally true, while in Vermont and Massachusetts it is only 22 percent (Rasmussen, 2006).

While 92 percent say they believe in God, only 71 percent say they are "absolutely certain" of God's existence. A quarter of Americans believe God is an "impersonal force." (Pew, 2008)

Polls have returned an assortment of more dramatic, specific beliefs. Over three-quarters of Americans believe in angels. (Scripps Howard / Ohio University, 2001) From 1975 to 1995, 140 children died of curable diseases in the United States after their parents refused medical treatment for religious reasons.  A Pew survey in 2006 found that a third of black Protestants and a third of white evangelicals believe that the "Second Coming" (the return of Jesus to Earth) will occur during their lifetimes.

And although nearly a quarter of Americans don't expect to have a religious funeral (American Religious Identification Survey, 2008), nearly half of Americans said they would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist (University of Minnesota Study, 2008) and 60 percent think the nation benefits when politicians make public expressions of faith (Newsweek, 2002).

Update: In 2020, a third of self-identified evangelicals in the United States agreed with a statement that Jesus was a good teacher, but not God. (The study from Ligonier Ministries was conducted by LifeWay Research.) In addition, two-thirds agreed that Jesus "is the first and greatest being created by God." Both of these positions are inconsistent with "evangelical teaching and most historic Christian doctrine," according to Relevant Magazine.

This article was originally posted to Helium Network on July 30, 2011.

Holding meaningful discussions with people who have different beliefs about God

"Each of us has a basic view of reality and God that we act out every day," says Geneen Roth in Women Food and God (2010).  Who can deny that simple, foundational statement?  "Anyone who breathes and thinks and experiences," she wrote, "has beliefs about God."

Are religious beliefs, or the lack thereof, important? They surely are. Beliefs combine to craft the worldview that drives a person's most cherished values: their sense of self and society, their sensitivity to the world, their joy and sympathy.

James Calvin Davis provides this definition in his book In Defense of Civility (2010):  "A worldview is a moral reading of the universe. It is an interpretation of the events that surround us, the choices that confront us, and the responsibilities that obligate us – all in relation to a particular understanding of the 'meaning of life.'"

In Davis's opinion, it is a misguided secularism that attempts to shove all "religious ideas" out of public discourse.  Everyone has a worldview that informs their values. Some worldviews are religious, and therefore not everyone can easily separate their moral concepts from their religious concepts, nor should they be expected to do so as a prerequisite for dialogue. It is not necessary to shut down all dissimilar religious beliefs before commencing discussion.  In fact, a discussion can be held directly about the dissimilar religious beliefs as well as about what other beliefs might result from them.

Chris Stedman's book Faitheist (2012) makes a similar point:  "Religious and nonreligious identities are perhaps our most important social capital, for they signify our most central values, which inform how we act in the world."  He is careful to distinguish atheism as an "identification marker" rather than a "belief system."  Nevertheless, an atheist identity can suggest the inclusion of some belief systems and values and the exclusion of others, so it is a meaningful, important identity, just as religious identities, belief systems, and values are meaningful and important.

Written from an atheist perspective, Stedman's book strongly advocates for dialogue between people with "different metaphysical beliefs." Openness to exchanging stories about personal beliefs is part of "taking religious identities seriously." The point is not necessarily to attempt to convert the other to a different opinion, but to perceive and understand the other as one does in a relationship.

Atheists who primarily practice the art of monologue, as Stedman admits he once did, risk operating with "caricature and critique instead of humility, honesty, and open-mindedness" and "treating religion as a concept instead of talking to people who actually lived religious lives."

When two people investigate the possibility that they have some shared values despite some differing beliefs about God, it amounts to "the difference between mere diversity and engaged pluralism."  The result of this pluralistic work can be "a diverse community defined by shared values rather than shared identity." 

It is perhaps a side benefit that, whenever someone expresses willingness to discuss values, their very willingness is a public example that members of their identity group care about values, reminding everyone else of their humanity.  All this, even before a single specific word is spoken!

In her book Because I Say So: The Dangerous Appeal of Moral Authority (2010), Nikki Stern says:  "Ethics and morality don't eliminate the possibility of faith; they simply don't require it. It's hard to imagine being more tolerant than that."

To put it another way: expressing one's values in word or deed neither precludes nor requires a religious identity. Feeling secure of this fact will lead to tolerance of those with different identities. The next step can be a proactive, pluralistic approach.

A note on the image above: If an ostrich has the patience to read a newspaper, each of us can try to understand another person. Photo by Anefo / Noske, J.D., 17 Feb 1951. © No known copyright restrictions. Nationaal Archief of The Netherlands, No. 904-4385. Flickr.

This article was originally published to Helium Network on Nov. 10, 2012.

Martel's Tiger eats Ockham's Razor

The movie Life of Pi is faithful to Yann Martel's award-winning novel of the same name.  Fans have had to wait since the book's 2001 publication for a film adaptation, finally released in 2012, about a boy trapped in a lifeboat with a tiger after their menagerie-bearing cargo ship sinks in the Pacific Ocean.  The human-tiger interaction was made possible by CGI technology and is available with and without 3-D.  The animal looks quite real, and actor Suraj Sharma is inspiring in his role as the persistently God-directed boy who must tame the tiger.  The story is told as a flashback as the adult narrator relives his experiences.  (Would-be filmgoers prone to seasickness might want to stay home on dry land.)

Before the shipwreck, the boy's father warns him not to anthropomorphize the zoo tiger.  "When you look into his eyes, you're seeing your own emotions reflected back at you – nothing else," the rationalist father maintains.  The viewers are thus reminded of the need to struggle with their own assumptions about the tiger's behavior throughout the movie.  This adds depth to the viewers' likely experience of being unable to look away from the tiger's gaze during the riveting journey.

Some of the book's more memorable elements were left out, probably because they would have been too disturbing for a popular audience.  The book's raw depiction of starvation is merely suggested by a brief view of a skin-and-bones animated tiger.  The period of hallucination also feels abbreviated compared to what was in the book, but that is probably a good thing.  Likely for the sake of the PG rating, gone are the excruciating details about bowel movements as a consequence of surviving on raw fish and being confined to a small boat.  Also likely for purposes of keeping the film appropriate and comprehensible to children, a failed rescue attempt with gruesome results was entirely omitted, as was the narrator's temporary blindness due to the ravages of exposure.  (Were it a different kind of film, it might have been interesting to attempt to depict the narrator's blindness as he floated alone on a sparkling ocean he couldn't see.)

So, although purists may quibble over how the movie differs from the book, the adaptation was done well, and every moment of the movie is entertaining.  Its entertainment value, in fact, is an essential part of its purpose and message.

At the conclusion of the movie, investigators are skeptical of the rescued boy's story and demand from him "a story we can all believe."  "A story without things you've never seen before," the boy clarifies.  "That's right," the investigators agree.  The intimation is that many people will only believe what they already know how to believe.  The movie challenges this practical approach, highlighting instead the value of what entertains and inspires people, if they will only suspend their disbelief.

The proposition that the story will "make you believe in God," which is more subtle in the novel, is heavy-handed in the movie.  This lofty promise could make the film popular with a religious audience.

The story does indeed embody an argument for God, but it's not an overriding, knock-down argument.  The events involving the tiger in the lifeboat are shown at length.  A briefly offered competing narrative – provided verbally, not visually – is that the boy was in a lifeboat with some human survivors until they killed each other, and then he was alone, with no tiger.  The provided conclusion is that, because the hero was stranded on a lifeboat with no other human being, he is the only person who can provide a narrative about what happened during that time, and since it makes no difference in the end what really happened, the best criterion for judgment is what makes the best story.

"So it is with God," viewers are told.  Why not believe the better story?  The one with a tiger?  The one with a God?

This raises the question of what makes one story "better" than another.  Is it simply the story that is more entertaining?  It cannot be so; the entertainment value of a theistic narrative would be a poor basis for deciding the factual matter of whether God exists.

According to Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times, "so magical and mystical is this parable, it's as if the filmmaker has the philosopher's stone." Philosophically, this is only a version of the ontological argument, in which God is deemed to exist because he is defined as existing:  QED.

The philosophical principle of Ockham's Razor says that, if two explanations are equally good, one should gravitate toward the simpler narrative that makes fewer assumptions.  The principle one might call Martel's Tiger is in direct competition:  the grander the assumption, the better the story, which is the option that should be embraced.  In this way, the film opens up – but does not directly address – meaningful questions about the role of story in religious narratives.

After being treated to two hours of stunning animation, the viewer must acknowledge that the drama that illustrates courage, hope, and amazement and features charismatic animals is indeed a "better story" than a short, depressing sketch of a shipwreck bringing out the worst in human nature.  This does not, however, mean that the viewer must agree that God exists.  Thus Nick Schager's review in the Dallas Observer rightly referred to film's ending as its "nadir".

There is a third story option:  many would say that the tiger story is improved after it is interpreted it as an allegory in which the animals represent humans.  So might it be with God.  If one finds that stories with supernatural elements are more entertaining, educational, and ultimately redemptive when they are understood as allegories, then, according to the law of Martel's Tiger, God could be best understood as a useful fiction.

As this third option is not made explicit in the movie, it will probably not be a major part of most discussions about the movie.  Some viewers will no doubt manage the pabulous, incorrect take-away message that God must exist because the boy could not have survived his ordeal without God's help, as this is more consistent with the way God is discussed in American culture.

"God, I give myself to you," the hero says, floating in calm sea water that is at last ethereal and luminous, barely separated from the sky ringed by endless clouds, a Renaissance heaven.  "I am your vessel.  Whatever comes, I want to know.  Show me."

If some viewers find that moment more annoying than transformative, more arresting will be the Hinduism-inspired vision of the entire universe inside the god Vishnu's mouth, when all the boy's visible world consists of a bioluminescent ocean and a tiger's jaws.  The movie has something for everyone brave enough to watch it.

Originally posted to Helium Network on Nov. 23, 2012.

Image: Tiger at the Dublin Zoo, 1936. From the collection of the National Library of Ireland. © No known copyright restrictions. Flickr.

Believing in the divine, or experiencing the divine?

Do you believe in God? Why, what a funny question.

The Pagan leader Starhawk wrote that "we do not believe in the Goddess — we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves."

More recently, Pascal Boyer explained: "It takes us Westerners some effort to realize that this notion of 'believing in something' is peculiar. Imagine a Martian telling you how interesting it is that you 'believe' in mountains and rivers and cars and telephones. You would think the alien has got it wrong. We don't 'believe in' these things, we just notice and accept that they are around. Many people in the world would say the same about witches and ghosts."

So, too, Michael Harner: "Shamans don't believe in spirits. Shamans talk with them, interact with them. They no more 'believe' there are spirits than they 'believe' they have a house to live in, or have a family. This is a very important issue because shamanism is not a system of faith....Shamans talk with plants and animals, with all of nature. This is not just a metaphor. They do it in an altered state of consciousness."

This may become what is called "religious experience" as distinct from "religious belief." Carl Jung said: "I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God."

And then, the joke, as retold by John Herman Randall, Jr.:

"Do you really believe in [baptism by] total immersion?"
"Believe in it? Why, I've actually seen it!"

Sources

Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (1979)

Pascal Boyer. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2001. p 9.

The anthropologist Michael Harner on Shamanism.org. Quoted in Barbara J. King's Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2007. p. 138.

Carl Jung, quoted in Norman Vincent Peale's Treasury of Courage and Confidence, Indiana: Warner Press, 1970, 1974. p 76.

John Herman Randall, Jr. The Meaning of Religion for Man. Harper Torchbook, 1968 (originally Macmillan 1946). p 24.

Beyond theism and atheism: Anatheism

"As the prefix ana suggests, anatheism is about repetition and return," Richard Kearney explains in Anatheism, in which he justifies doubt as the entry point to faith. To get more granular, "There are three basic elements to anatheism: protest, prophecy, and sacrament."

For those who experience it, the aerial view is something like this:

"What comes after God? What follows in the wake of our letting go of God? What emerges out of that night of not-knowing, that moment of abandoning and abandonment? Especially for those who — after ridding themselves of ‘God’ — still seek God?

That is the question I wish to pursue in this volume. And, so doing, I propose the possibility of a third way beyond the extremes of dogmatic theism and militant atheism: those polar opposites of certainty that have maimed so many minds and souls in our history. This third option, this wager of faith beyond faith, I call anatheism. Ana-theos, God after God. Ana-theism: another word for another way of seeking and sounding the things we consider sacred but can never fully fathom or prove. Another idiom for receiving back what we’ve given up as if we were encountering it for the first time. Just as Abraham received back Isaac as gift, having given him up as patriarchal project. In short, another way of returning to a God beyond or beneath the God we thought we possessed."

It is a moment of "freedom of belief" before we choose our path or our side. Even after we take a position, we can always come back to the doorway of doubt, the point of possibility, to reexamine what we believe.

"Anatheism acknowledges the emancipatory force of critical atheism as an integral part of theism, understood as a second faith beyond faith. And it also respects agnostic atheism that remains just that – agnosia, not-knowing — choosing not to make the second move of faith. What anatheism opposes is militant antitheism, which — as in the Reign of Terror or Stalinist persecutions — is just as pernicious as triumphal theism.

Anatheism is a freedom of belief that precedes the choice between theism and atheism as much as it follows in its wake. The choice of faith is never taken once and for all. It needs to be repeated again and again — every time we speak in the name of God or ask God why he has abandoned us. Anatheism performs a drama of decision whenever humans encounter the stranger who, like Rilke’s statue, whispers, “Change your life!” And every moment is a portal through which this stranger may enter."

He writes at length about the ability to embrace the stranger, the Other, and how the openness of the anatheist perspective regarding our understanding of God allows us to be similarly receptive of humans we do not yet understand. Anatheistic "disorientation" implies a readiness to be reoriented, and yet a perpetual willingness to return to disorientation and then be reoriented in a new way.

He also writes about how awareness of the suffering in the world, specifically of the Holocaust, prompts a rejection of "the God of theodicy," that is, a God who obviously exists, can save people, but doesn't...or, probably worse, a God who deliberately plans human suffering as part of a larger design. This kind of theism is barren, since it encourages people to accept suffering and injustice passively and even to defend it as God's will. "Anatheism is not atheism then, but it does agree with enlightened atheism that the God of theodicy is dead."

Rather, the only credible God is one that doesn't have the power to stop our tribal hatreds and cruelties and is consequently waiting for us to learn to approach the Other in peace. Such self-empowerment to create the sanctity we wish to see in the world necessitates an entry point that is a kind of atheism — a healthy, inquisitive, clear-minded skepticism — but does not remain in any rigid ideology, either theist or atheist.

It is from an atheist moment of interiority within the self that we may open out toward the exteriority of the stranger: ‘Only if it starts from me as a separated being and goes as a host to the Other, welcoming the Other as guest, only in this manner can an eternal return within the interiority of the circle of being be escaped. For when I turn to the Other interiority turns into exteriority.’ [John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics (London: Routledge, 1995), 67.] It is in this context that Levinas holds that the gift of Judaism to humanity is atheism — namely, separation from God so as to encounter the other as absolutely other.

He describes the tradition of apophatic theology, which refers to describing God as not-this, not-that, or explicitly refusing to describe God because God cannot be described. To presume to describe God is to exclude certain possibilities. "This is not the last word," he assures us. "It is a cleared space to begin again." It also may be that "the recognition of God as a ‘nothing and nobody’ (ta me onta) enables us to identify with the nothings and nobodies of this world in a movement of loving revolt."

He also attributes to anatheism the fusion of the sacred and secular. He does not mean this specifically in the political arena, but in some other dimensions, such as the sense of duty and virtue and willingness to defend human rights and engage in debate.

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Related, from Jamie Howison:

[Walter] Brueggemann provides a helpful framework for describing what is going on here. He sets out a description of the life of faith, but I suspect it is something of a script for life in the human family generally. He writes: I suggest, in a simple schematic fashion, that our life of faith consists in moving with God in terms of a. being securely oriented, b. being painfully disoriented, and c. being surprisingly reoriented. Secure orientation, painful disorientation, surprising reorientation; it is a movement that we see played out again and again, both in our own lives and in the great human drama. Perhaps there is not always and everywhere a secure beginning, and clearly the experience of being "surprisingly reoriented" is not universal. For many people, the best they can hope is that they might learn to live with the pain or, perhaps, be sold something that could narcotize them into a proverbially false sense of security. Nevertheless, the people of God must live at least in openness to the surprisingness characteristic of our God.

Source

"The Psalms, the Blues, and the Telling of Truth." Jamie Howison. Quoting Walter Brueggemann, "Praying the Psalms," Winona, Minn.: Saint Mary's Press, 1993. p. 14. Printed in Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. Edited by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard. Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 2003. pp. 32-33.

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See also my articles on Medium, "The Benefits of Doubt" (April 2020) and "Knowledge is a Reeating Question" (October 2022).