Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century, by Daniel Schultz, is a new book that you should buy, read and think about.
Why?
I thought you’d never ask.
You shouldn’t buy it just because the author is a friend and mentor of mine who was the first to give my filtered news bit a national stage, although I’m happy that your purchase will put a buck or two in his pocket. He’s pastor of a tiny church in a tiny town in Wisconsin’s farmland, and the pay can’t be enough (I’m a preacher’s kid, so I know).
You should buy it because it will demonstrate to you that much of what passes for conventional wisdom is really a heaping pile of bovine excrement. That conventional wisdom (and I use that word very loosely) is what this book refers to as “scripts” — “dynamic, normative stories that actualize our values in patters of behavior, often below the threshold of consciousness.” They’re stories we tell each other, and ourselves, about how the world works. They’re the understandings we share about what’s true. The main script controlling us today is “the script of therapeutic , technological, consumerist, militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.” The script promises to make us safe and happy, but the promise is a lie. Rarely do we ever stop, look at that promise and ask, “Hang on — is that right?”
Schultz answers the unasked question with a convincing “No.” Repeatedly.
What Schultz calls scripts — it’s the word coined by the premier Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, whose work heavily influenced this book — but I call them myths. And in this book, Schultz is a masterful myth buster.
The first myth he busts, the first group delusion he shatters, is the “obvious fact” that religious = conservative, particularly that Christian = conservative. Not too long ago, a woman in the church I attend was in a political discussion and made the remark, “Well I’m a Christian, so of course I’m conservative.” Never mind that she’s a member of, and was standing in, an ELCA church in Madison, Wisconsin, where what’s taught as the word and will of God is so full of compassion, empathy and love it would make the Tea Party boil over. Never mind that she’s claiming to love, worship and follow the teaching of Jesus — the love-your-enemies, turn-the-other-cheek, forgive 7 times 70 times, give all you have to the poor and you’re all children of God so you don’t need all those rules and authorities guy. You know, the ultimate anti-conservative.
The fact is America has a rather large religious left — and that’s not just people who are progressive and religious, it’s people who are progressive because of their religion. And — it kills me that I have to say this — they’re not all Christians. You wouldn’t know of course from listening to politicians, preachers on TV or the wingnut, mainstream, corporate or alternative media. They are all sticking to the script and perpetuating the myth.
Next myth busted: Religion tells us what to do. Yes, the religious Right has a long list of answers it tries to impose on all of us, but Schultz correctly sees that “the main function of the Religious Left is to ask the questions, not line up behind the answers.” Which, if you think about it, reflects the core difference between Right and Left: the Right is about maintaining the status quo, while the Left is about imagination, experimentation and exploration. As Schultz puts it:
Progressive faith has been generative not in its support for established powers or settled narratives but in its eternal, persistent, damnably disruptive questioning of the seemingly self-evident ways things must be. Religious liberals are meant to be gadflies in the service of the Lord, asking thought political theologies difficult questions about what truly makes us safe, what truly makes us happy, and were it is that the mystery and promise of God is leading us.
To dissect the “therapeutic script,” Schultz takes on abortion and delivers a smashing blow to the myth that Christianity is united in its opposition to abortion and, perhaps more importantly, to the myth that America is in the midst of a “culture war.” The culture war is one sided, “with hostility and violence originating exclusively from the right wing,” and the Left must not be seduced into finding “common ground” with the anti-choice Right:
A truly progressive Religious Left will need to stand its ground on abortion. A truly faithful movement will need to seek hope and freedom for women beyond medicalized regulation of their bodies. Only when we understand that women must be empowered as a principals matter of justice will we be able to break new ground on this social, political and religious dead zone….
So when someone says that “we Christians” believe this or that on the subject of abortion, it is important to respond: who is we? There simply is no single, authoritative choice for Christians in the United States. Nor, on most issues, is there a single position uniting the body of Christ. In the case of abortion, however, there is a rough consensus that it should be available on one form or another…
Schultz says we need to change the script. We’d do better to see the issue of abortion as an issue of power.
…progressive believers should pursue justice in empowering women in all areas of life, including the power to control reproduction…. If we want to change the script on abortion, we will have to write a new one in freedom, in power and in hope.
Another reason to buy this book: Chapter 2 is, hands down, the best description of how we got into our current economic mess I’ve found yet. Even better, it’s written so those of us who don’t have degrees in economics can easily get it. (When the second edition comes out — hint, hint — I’m hoping he includes a discussion of how the Right has redefined “small business” in a grossly fraudulent way in an attempt to further enrich the already insanely rich.)
…they have systematically rigged the game against them (the poor), their fellow citizens, in the service of the bottom line. They have not so much shut their eyes to the cries of the poor as created a world in which the poor need not be imagined. Pharaoh at least had to face Moses.
I could go on and on, because this short (211 pages) book is packed full of good stuff, but I’ve already lost half of you, so, I’ll wrap it up with Schultz’ advice to the religious Left.
The old scripts are failures. ”We are not safe, and we are not happy.” But what do we do?
What I mean to suggest is that the Religious Left must forever be seekers, without being so arrogant as to assume they have found God’s answers. To be true to our faith and our politics, we must continually question the assumptions that undergird the structures of social power.
The chapter entitled “Postscript” reads, to me, as poetry — as beautiful as it is powerful.
So just go do it. Buy the book. Read the book. You can thank me later.