I have only just started reading
Jesus and the Disinherited, the slim volume that
Jim suggested in response to
my call for reading recommendations. Though it was written and published in the 1940s, it's almost impossible not to read it in context of what's happening today as the blending of religion and government comes closer and closer to reality.
I almost hesitate to comment on it, because I fear that in approaching the subject of Christianity I will very quickly find myself out of my depth. However, as I was reading some of Howard Thurman's words from decades ago, I kept hearing echos of another more recent work. I can't quite resist commenting before I've finished Thurman's work. In his preface, he writes:
Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion and national origin? Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of the religion, or is it due to a basic weakness in the religion itself?
It's obvious that today one might broaden Thurman's categories to include gender, sexual orientation, and economic status, just to name a few. He goes, on in his first chapter to write the following.
To those who need profound succor and strength to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity has often been sterile and of little avail. The confentional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague. Too often the price exacted by soceity for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in it's formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. …it reveals the extent to which a religion born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and a of nations whose very position in modern life has too often been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to weak and defenseless peoples.
If that didn't take your breath away, read it again and ask yourself if Thurman would write that passage any differently if he were able to observe he brand of Christianity exhibited by the likes of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, James Dobson, and the rest of the usual suspects. If ever there was a brand of Christianity "on the side of teh strong against the weak," I think we have a winner today. I suspect Thurman might add one word. Simply, "amen."
Reading Thurman's words reminded me of some words by George Lakoff, that I read some months ago, buried deep in his book Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Would that I had the time to go back an search for Lakoff's words, but it comes down to his explanation of conservative metaphors for morality, particularly the metaphor of morality as strength.
In the conservative mind, the metaphor of moral strength has the highest priority. Though it clusters with other metaphors that we consider shortly, it is the one that matters most. It determines much of conservative thought and language -- as well as social policy. …The morally weak are evil and deserve what they get.
…An important consequence of giving highest priority to the metaphor of Moral Strength is that it rules out any explanations in terms of social forces or social class. If it is always possible to muster the discipline to just say no to drugs or sex and to support yourself in this land of opportunity, then failure to do so is laziness and social class and social forces cannot explain your poverty or your drug habit or your illegitimate children. And if you lack such disciple, then by the metaphor of Moral Strength, you are immoral and deserve any punishment you get.
In my unstudied view, for there are countless others more well-read in this area, and who have thought more about it, it makes for a world view in which the "strength" of wealth and well being are seen as signs of moral rightness, the very state being being among the "disinherited," as Thurman calls them—"those who need profound succor and strength to live in the present with dignity and creativity"—is a sign of moral failure. It makes it easy to consider that the poor and disenfranchised deserve to be such because of their moral failings, as evidenced by the fact that they are poor, disenfranchised, etc., for if they had the "right moral values" they would not be such.
I have a lot more to read, and certainly a lot more to understand. But considering that Thurman's work is said to have influenced and shaped the civil rights movement, with it's own flavor of "liberation theolory" and the idea that "God" is on the side of the disinherited and oppressed, looking at where we are now makes it seem as though the momentum that moved the pendulum of faith through its arc from right to left has swung it back right again. Thinking on that, I find myself wondering: how long is that arc? And how long before it swings back this way?
