Here it is in simplicity. I am entirely laying aside any questions about Trump's own faith or morality. Christians hold (at least) two sometimes competing "biblical" values: the nature and mission of the Christian church, the "body of Christ" vs. the prophet Jeremiah's (or rather God's) instruction to the Israelites in Babylon to "seek the peace (shalom) of the city in which live." Now, let's suppose for the sake of argument (wincing here) that 'seeking the peace of the society' would best be fulfilled by "making America great again" in the sense that Trump proposes. And furthermore, let's suppose that Trump actually could do that. In other words, I am here (painfully) giving all the benefit of the doubt to Trump and his supporters on value #2.

What about the other value? I am entirely unwilling to equate the basic agenda of the Christian church with American greatness, mostly because the Christian church is a global, transnational body. I am entirely unwilling to suppose that Trump's agenda is consistent with the basic agenda of the Christian church as defined by ANY major transnational stream of Christian thought (individual ideologues aside) in the past 200 years. Here, I am not willing to give Trump the same benefit of the doubt, but let us suppose that a Trump Presidency, in its enacted policy, neither hurts nor helps the most basic agenda of the Christian church (I am presuming that this agenda precludes xenophobia and religious discrimination, even if such agendas did fit with value #2). I am decidedly unconvinced that brutal military response would appropriate or effective to stop (rather than enflame) the persecution of Christians in places where they are vulnerable.

The very moderate question I want to ask is this: will the visible, audible, public support of Trump by Christians (publicly, visibly, audibly representing themselves as representative Christians) help or hurt the agenda of the Christian church, the "body of Christ" in carrying out its mission as defined by ANY major transnational stream of Christian thought in the past 200 years?

I can imagine a convoluted scenario whereby the Christian church ends up repenting of its support for Trump and its public humility and demonstrable repentance ends up helping the basic agenda of the Christian church, but I wouldn't suggest this as a game-plan.

Along with many others, I affirm Paul Wehner's Trump and the debasement of faith. 

Christmas Day, 1914 is celebrated every year as a testimony to many things. You will see inspiring posts about it on social media, and you will be moved, as I am every year. Christians like to think that on this day, the Prince of Peace conquered, because on this day, at several points along the Western Front, British and French troops on one side and German troops on the other, stopped shooting at each other, came out of the trenches and shared food, soccer, cigarettes and the "Christmas spirit." And the war was over! No. They went back to killing each other. It almost makes me want to become a Puritan, because in banning the celebration of Christmas (and other holy-days, since no day was really more holy than any other, they reasoned), the Puritans might have avoided this particular hypocrisy. But maybe we should celebrate it. When one's home is the battlefield, a day of fellowship between enemy soldiers is really incredible. When your world is relatively stable and tranquil (like many Americans, as long as they avoid cable-news), an act of violence on Christmas seems the worst of atrocities. So, I'm posting this early; you might forget about it by the 25th...

Forget about it by the 25th so you can enjoy a nice Christmas with your family, but read on for now. Another Christmas event that Americans like to celebrate is Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776. David Hackett Fischer wrote a great big book about it that is quite acclaimed. Did you remember that it was a Christmas event? There's a great (if inaccurate) painting of it that you might have seen. Below is a partial view from pbs.org.
Why did Washington cross the Delaware on Christmas? It sounds like the beginning of a joke. It is not.

 In Joseph Buffington's 1936 biography, The Soul of Washington, Buffington praised Washington’s wisdom in making the “Christmas Day” (actually December 26, 1776) attack on Trenton, NJ.  Buffington wrote that Washington devised the attack because he was “filled with the Christmas spirit himself… [and] knowing the German and British love of Christmas and their joy of Christmas cheer… [they] would, of all nights in the year, be off guard (53f).” Perhaps Washington (the schismatic Anglican?) was strangely Puritan about holidays? Not likely. Buffington went to great lengths to establish Washington’s special love of Christmas. He might overplay Washington’s “Christmas spirit” but surely the General was capitalizing on the British and German celebrations. Reportedly, when Washington was informed by General Sullivan that the weather inhibited the army’s weapons from firing, Washington retorted “Tell General Sullivan to use the bayonet. I am resolved to take Trenton."[i] Apparently the British/German forces suffered 'only' 23-26 casualties to the Americans 4 or 5. Still, this is not what most Americans think of as “the Christmas spirit” in either the religious or secular sense. In 1779, publisher John Bell wrote that Washington was “a total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”[ii] And yet, when caught up in a political conflict against other Christians it was, “use the bayonet.” I know some of my fellow American-Christians are equally inspired by this event and by the Christmas Day truce of 1914, but I that is too much cognitive dissonance for me. For me, December 25, 1776 remains the “Real” War on Christmas. With this kind of historical example, I can’t be too irate over “Happy Holidays.” Now, forget about this and enjoy the Holidays. I intend to have a joyous celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (that’s basically what ‘Merry Christmas’ means right?).

References:
Howard Peckham, ed.  The Toll of Independence: Engagements and Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 27.
[i] Wright, Kevin. “The Crossing and Battle at Trenton – 1776” An article for Bergen County Historical Society. http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/Pages/crossingatdtrenton.html
[ii] Boller, George Washington and Religion, 118.

I grew up with 14 guns in the house (including one like the semi-auto Colt .45 1911 model pictured here - I recall it kicked like a mule). These guns made me feel safer. I learned to shoot them moderately well, and it was fun.

In light of the many recent mass-shootings, I wanted to share some random thoughts as a long-time gun-lover, who is not currently a gun owner.

1. Articles like this, which suggest that public discourse between gun-rights advocates and gun-control advocates is basically impossible aren't helpful. If discourse is impossible, then coercion or submission become the only options.

2. I can only assume that calls to "repeal the 2nd Amendment" in social media are intended to:
- preach to some choir that already agrees with the preacher
- counterproductively enflame the opposition, in which case, WHY??
That being said, repealing the 2nd Amendment would move gun-ownership from "right" to "privilege." The government hasn't always done well with citizen rights. How do you expect they would do with privileges?

3. Calls to large groups of young Americans to arm themselves and obtain concealed-carry permits are irresponsible.
We currently have a problem with too many of our well-trained law enforcement officers making lethally bad judgement-calls. If 10s of thousands of 20-40 year old males (in particular) intend to start carrying, I project an explosion of lethally-bad judgement calls made by would-be hero-citizens.

4. I once did some research on cases of firearm self-defense. I came across a large NRA-affiliated database of cases. I selected the case that was geographically closest to my location. The database described a case of a woman at home, shooting at armed intruders from a local biker-gang. I dug up the case in a local news source. It turns out the woman worked from home... running a meth-lab, and had fallen afoul of the bikers. This was not a clear-cut case of a law-abiding citizen defending herself from anonymous bad-guys. But where innocence or righteousness are concerned, maybe few cases are clear-cut.

5. Most of the mass-shooting cases I can remember were not perpetrated by Muslims.

6. Gun-control advocates fail to recognize that for gun-rights advocates, the problem is not enough responsible people stepping up and owning guns. While other countries have less gun-violence, American gun-rights are what make us superior to those other nations. If a new Hitler arises there, he will run over those people. If a new Hitler arises here, he'll have to think twice.

"This record keeps skipping. Everyday I read something new about our Crumbling Cultural Christendom. Today it was a throwback article on NPR about Randall Balmer's 2011 book, Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament and Tobin Grant's post of last week on Religion News Service, "Evangelicals (always) fear losing religious liberty and being called bigots; a look at 1950s evangelicalism." Go check them out.

The topic of Grant's post is fairly self-evident, but the main thrust is evangelical concern about public discourse. Grant writes, "such is evangelicalism. It is a tradition that wants to engage in public debates in which evangelical arguments are met with hostility." In the 1950s, evangelicals (represented by the National Association of Evangelicals or NAE) were afraid that the U.S. government's newly friendly relationship with Roman Catholic leadership would erode religious freedom; but more so, they were beginning to feel that explicitly Christian discourse was increasingly unwelcome in these public debates. (This is now kind of ironic given Fr. John Neuhaus' prominence in evangelical circles for the promotion of ecumenical efforts in public theology - check out First Things.) They complained about a "code of platitudes" governing public discourse, in the same way that many leaders today complain about "political correctness." They also pushed for the U.S. to withhold aid from countries that limited religious freedom, which seems somewhat reasonable depending on the circumstances, but runs counter to certain New Testament teachings about loving concern for enemies and persecutors. 

Tobin Grant is making interesting cultural observations, not necessarily critiquing anyone, but his article reminded of atheist Daniel Dennett's challenge from his book Breaking the Spell:
Suppose I have a friend, Fred, who is (in my carefully considered opinion) always right. If I tell you I’m against stem-cell research because “my friend Fred says it’s wrong and that’s all there is to it,” you will just look at me as if I was missing the point of the discussion. This is supposed to be a consideration of reasons, and I have not given you a reason that I in good faith could expect you to appreciate. (From Brian Hines' Church of the Churchless site).

Does this mean that all public dialogue on public policy must be framed in "secular" terms? The debate is ongoing. On one hand maybe Christians shouldn't be so pragmatic. Speak the language of faith and deal with the results. On the other hand, when it comes to ethics, insisting on the language of faith sometimes seems to assume that Christian ethics are totally arbitrary, rather that assuming that Christian ethics stem from a God who may have reasonably discernible human well-being in mind.

Randall Balmer's lament is summarized as follows:
"He says blind allegiance to the Republican Party has distorted the faith of politically active evangelicals, leading them to misguided positions on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
"They have taken something that is lovely and redemptive and turned it into something that is ugly and retributive," Balmer says.
He argues that modern evangelicals have abandoned the spirit of their movement, which was founded in 19th-century activism on issues that helped those on the fringes of society: abolition, women's suffrage and universal education.
"I don't find any correlation in the agenda of the religious right today," Balmer says.
Balmer's book describes how he discovered that the Religious Right of the late 70s and the 80s was not founded on concern about abortion, but concern about religious liberty stemming from IRS attacks on Bob Jones University for its outmoded "anti-miscegenation" policy that forbade interracial dating. Balmer, a somewhat disaffected evangelical historian was invited to attend a fairly high-level meeting of Religious Right leaders in 1991, in which this reality was clearly stated. He points out that certain prominent Southern Baptist leaders (for instance) welcomed more permissive legislation on abortion in the 70s and he laments that late-20th century white-evangelicals were on the wrong side of civil rights in the 60s in particular.

This is a fascinating excerpt and I have not read the book, but the excerpt misses a couple of things. First, the "pro-choice" (anachronism noted) Baptist leaders of the 70s were about to walk into a brutal maelstrom of ecclesial tension in the 80s. Those guys represented an "old guard" that was on the way out. Second, even if Religious Right leadership came late to abortion as an issue with potential traction to mobilize their base, it might still be the case that evangelicals (ie. church-goers, not politicians) saw in abortion an issue worthy of the legacy of 19-century activism. The methods and ideologies used by activists, then and now, might still be deeply problematic as well, but to dismiss the pro-life movement because of the idiosyncrasies of its foundation, its sometimes crude scientific misunderstandings and uncompromising ideology is to miss the bigger point. People in our country regularly dismantle living humans in the womb, often because women feel they have no other "choice." What kind of choice is that and is this reality unworthy of the attention of Christians? I understand that Balmer is partly frustrated because Religious Right leaders created a false narrative, and it is well worth Balmer's revision to set the story straight. Therefore, maybe his lament should be less concerned with the missed opportunities for heroic activism on the left (this issue, not that one) and more concerned with evangelical truth-telling and power-politics in general.

In my last post, I wrote about how American society and the American Academy of Religion both reflect and don't reflect the demise of cultural-Christendom, which is seen in the resentment of Christians about their loss of power and status and in the resentment of non-religious people when religious people retain power and status. It honestly wasn't clear to me who might resent the new AAR VP David Gushee more: conservative Christians, because Gushee is now LGBT affirming, or nonreligious scholars, because their scholarly guild will be led by a "professional Christian" (Gushee is a Christian theologian and ethicist). But frankly, with the elections over, whatever resentment existed was not very palpable. However, I mentioned that I clearly saw resentment in one group of scholars.

Just for kicks, I stopped in at a session of the “God Seminar” of the Westar Institute. The “God Seminar” is like the famous Jesus Seminar (also a Westar project) that voted on which sayings of Jesus from the Gospels were authentic. Following this model, the God Seminar scholars (16 white males and 2 white females, overwhelmingly American philosophical theologians) tinkered around with and then voted on a few propositions about God. At one point, one of them expressed resentful bewilderment regarding why their theological hero, Paul Tillich, didn’t have the same kind of long-term influence as the more evangelical theologian Karl Barth. One member of the panel suggested that it was at least partly due to a well-endowed center for Barthian studies (I assume he meant Princeton), a speculation that met some approval. It reminded me of baseball’s resentful/envious Yankees-haters and made me think that in America, maybe religious people, non-religious people, theologians, scholars of religion and baseball fans are one big mutual-resentment society. In America, we compromise, and nobody gets everything they want.

So what does this all mean? I’m not sure I know, but resentment is ugly, whether you see it on the news or in the mirror and mutual encouragement, appreciation and understanding are beautiful. Confronting my cynicism about the state of society, at the Temple University Department of Religion breakfast, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, non-religious, straight-people and LGBT-folks all ate a great meal, encouraged each other in their endeavors and caught up on each others’ kids and families. 
 
“The times they are a changin’” – Bob Dylan
 
“There is nothing new under the sun.”  - Ecclesiastes

The stature of liberty inscription: "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" used to be a point of American pride.

Stability is nearly always preferred to displacement; more so when children are involved. Survival is nearly always preferred to death. If people are choosing displacement for themselves and their families, they are desperate and deserve compassion.

Based on my wife's experiences as a elementary guidance counselor in two struggling school districts in the Philly area, it seems like refugees-as-immigrants are often relocated to low-income areas where the social services they need, including education (our traditional main-method of assimilating immigrant communities), are already over-utilized and under-resourced.

Concerns that terrorists would infiltrate the U.S. alongside genuine refugees seem legitimate to me, given ISIS attacks that I am aware of in at least 8 countries outside of Iraq and Syria.

A Quaker friend of mine sent an email to our governor Tom Wolfe (Dem - PA) applauding him for his commitment to accepting Syrian refugees. He received a mildly defensive email in response that could only be interpreted as an automatic reply to what must have been a flood of critical emails, but you know the old saying about the squeaky wheel and the grease? I think the flip side is also true. Greased wheels don't squeak and people that are pleased, content or satisfied with a decision never make as much noise as the displeased, so the knee-jerk response email just indicates who is making noise, not the will of a certain majority.

This post is about the State of the Union/s; our mutual society and my little guild of religion and theology geeks/scholars; The United States of America and the American Academy of Religion (AAR). 

Saturday, at the AAR annual conference in Atlanta, Baptist ethicist/theologian David Gushee gave the following overview of religion in America:

1. the Constitution officially dis-established Christianity (unlike England) in a country where Christianity remained “culturally established” (unlike post-Revolution France) and therefore still influenced legislation such that Christians didn’t feel threatened and weren't concerned to throw their weight around
2. In the 1960s, Christianity divided into Left/Right camps, immigration increased religious diversity and secularization weakened the power of cultural-Christendom
3. Today, roughly 70% of Americans still claim Christianity as their religion, but cultural-Christendom is fading and does not influence legislation in any pervasive sense (it still does in some regions on some issues). The government generally treats Christianity with “benevolent neutrality."
4. Christians with a cultural-Christendom mindset react to the loss of power and deference in a number of ways:   Emotionally - shock, fear and most of all resentment                                                                                   Politically – attempts to “take the country back” which mostly fail, or expansive religious liberty campaigns to     help them “opt-out” of secularization
5. We are now faced with a bewildering array of new religious liberty issues stemming from the collision of secular/liberal and traditional Christian convictions
6. This is all fairly obvious to lots of people, but many secular people can still identify all sorts of religious influence and (they would say) privilege, in American life that imposes on their desire to live purely secular. I personally, tend to see the Constitution and 1st Amendment as establishing a "pluralistic" society, not a secular one.

This is where the story gets interesting. David Gushee is the newly (and controversially) elected VP of the AAR.  In a Friday session of the AAR annual conference, Gushee essentially gave a “testimony” of change in his life: Gushee used to work at Union College in Tennessee and then at Southern Baptist Seminary. He has published numerous books about Christian ethics and global conflicts (I used one volume he edited for a class I taught at Messiah). He alluded to his work in these settings (denominational schools where professors have to agree with the school's statement of faith) in terms of being “captive to power-structures” that don’t really offer academic freedom and stated that it is very hard to think thoughts or come to conclusions that run against the grain of the institution because one's job is at stake, a claim echoed by some other Christian scholars.
 
 In 2007, he was hired at Mercer University in Georgia, which is historically Baptist, but no longer a confessional school. While teaching Sunday School at his local Baptist church, Gushee began to encounter, engage and befriend a number of LGBT people that started showing up there. He hadn’t thought deeply about LGBT issues in his previous 20+ years of teaching Christian social ethics, being mostly concerned with issues of war and racial, religious, and political conflicts. However, these relationships forced him to think, and change his mind. Last year, he published an account of how he came to the following conclusions:

1. Christians need to re-establish their commitment to covenantal unions as the proper context for sexual activity and expression, and:
2. Christians need to welcome LGBT folks into full involvement in every area of the church, including Christian covenantal unions, leadership, etc.

​This story isn’t about that, but regardless of what my readers think, I think it is fair to say that:
1. Gushee gave a calm, moving and provocative account of the suffering of LGBT people, the cruelty of the church, and the way he saw the Fruit of the Spirit in LGBT Christians.
2. If Gushee was not LGBT affirming, I doubt that he would have been elected VP of the AAR; not that he isn't qualified, but because he is an ethicist. If he was a historian, it's possible that no one would care about his personal position on this unless he was very vocal about it (also; I'm not at all  saying the change of mind was politically motivated for professional advancement. Gushee is nothing if not sincere.).

As it was, Gushee’s election was controversial because some people in the AAR think the organization should represent scholars who study religion using disciplines like history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. Theologians are “doing” religion, and therefore they don’t really belong in the leadership. This election was especially controversial because the VP will become the President and this year both nominees were theologians. So, for some people in AAR, this is like having a research-subject (psychiatric patient) as the head of a psychiatric research association. It’s okay for religious people to be scholars of religion as long as their scholarship is not itself a form of religious practice. Religious scholars can (and do) have their own guilds. This is where the State of the Union and the State of the AAR converge. Even though a LOT of Christian seminarians, theologians, biblical scholars and other religious people are members of AAR and many AAR sub-groups are “religious” in nature, AAR has recently tended to reflect a post-Christendom context (the last 3 Presidents were not theologians of any religious tradition). But does it now? Is this a "victory" in some sort of culture-war?
 
I don’t know how Gushee feels about the resistance to his election or if he feels any resentment coming at him. He seems like a very gentle, reasonable person who would not hold any grudges, but after all he was elected, and maybe that indicates that AAR isn’t as post-Christendom as some people think. I anticipate a movement of non-religious scholars to "take back the AAR" in future elections. For conservative Christians in the AAR, Gushee's stance on LGBT folks in the church (still a clear minority opinion in Christian institutions) is still indicative of post-Christendom society or even secular ideals of individualism creeping in to the church. I don't know if Gushee feels any resentment coming at him from that corner of the AAR either.

However, I did run across one group of scholars at AAR who clearly felt resentment about being slighted in the religious development of Western post(?)Christendom.  More about this in the next post.

The horrific events of this past weekend have more people looking for serious answers about ISIS. My point here is to offer a couple brief summary answers and mostly to direct people to some interesting resources for fuller answers.

First, at the most basic level, people need to know that ISIS arose in Iraq (or at least gained much of its momentum) in response to a paranoid crackdown on the majority Sunni population by the U.S.-backed Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Long story short: he created his worst nightmare. ISIS involvement in Syria is partly the result of similar Shia-leadership v. Sunni majority faultlines. In this sense, the conflict has vague similarities to the history of Catholic-Protestant violence in Ireland, and is part of the reason some commentators say the current conflict is "more political than religious."    Photo of IRA militants below is from dailymail.uk

However, and second, the rhetoric of ISIS is pervasively religious, a point made quite strongly by Graeme Woods article at the Atlantic, "What ISIS Really Wants" where he describes ISIS as "very Islamic." Tangential story: I remember a young couple who came over for dinner a few years ago and brought with them a delicious baking pan full of something they described as a "Lutheran dessert." I don't know if it was "very Lutheran" or not (or even what that would mean), but they clearly associated it with their Lutheran heritage. The question is, how would I, as an outsider, be able to judge the validity of this? In the case of 95+% of non-Muslims who are trying to figure ISIS out, here's what we've got: we know they are Muslims; we know they like to quote Islamic literature. Therefore, they are very Islamic. However, we have no idea about the contexts of the quotes we hear (textually, or historically) or the traditions of interpretations that surround or bracket such quotes in an Islamic cultural context. Have we ever considered the number of radical revolutionary groups who liked to quote the Declaration of Independence and admired George Washington? It's a lot. Would we therefore say that those groups are "very American" or even "very Republican"? Probably not. I think it is important to concede that ISIS is very "religious" and it seems logical to suggest that since their religion is Islam, that they are "very Islamic." But, once again, if we looked at various violent "Christian" armies throughout history that have done horrible things while flinging around Bible verses, singing hymns and having daily "church services" would we concede that those groups were "very Christian"? Very religious? Maybe. Very Christ-like? No. So, is ISIS very religious? Maybe. Very submitted to God? In any mainstream Islamic sense? I don't think so.

I recommend Woods' Atlantic article. Read it. It's helpful. But if you're willing to make that commitment, go the extra mile and read two more. I can't recommend Woods' article without recommending a couple of others.
First, read John A. Azumah's article "Challenging Radical Islam" from the Christian journal First Things. Azumah does a great job of placing ISIS in (or outside of, as the case may be) the very particular traditions of Sunni Islamic law. He indirectly raises a question for Christians: Do we WANT Islam to be fundamentally and uncontrollably violent because that makes us feel religiously superior? I often find that atheists dialoguing with Christians insist on maintaining the most literalistic fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible and Christianity and I think Christians do something similar with Islam sometimes.
Second, read "What is Islamic?" by Haqiqatjou and Qadhi over at MuslimMatters.org. I don't agree with everything they have to say (they have 21 points of response to Woods), but they expand on the details of Islamic jurisprudence, offer some helpful insights (and links) and ask additional helpful questions.

Yesterday, in my World Religions class, two students gave presentations about Satanism (one about the philosophy and one about the Church of Satan). Students had been given the assignment to make presentations about either a religion we had not covered in class OR an undiscussed aspect of a religion that we had covered ("covered" being used loosely here). For the record, the kinds of Satanism discussed here are not technically "devil-worshippers" and generally disdain those who are. The Church of Satan was founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey and is atheistic; using "Satan" in a symbolic/mythic fashion to stand for their own form of humanism. While it retains some ritual elements, these are interpreted psychologically for the most part, do not make sacrifices and are fairly strict about not harming children, consensual sexuality, personal responsibility and minding one's own business. Fairly libertarian stuff. And, while listening to these presentations, something struck a bell. It reminded me a great deal of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which is so popular with political conservatives.

This is the Satanic statement (#4 out of 9) that caught my attention: "Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!" In my mind, this resonated with the general tendency in contemporary conservative rhetoric to judge and distinguish between the "deserving poor" and some other class of poor that are viewed as societal parasites (Satanism refers to these kinds of people as vampires) that is the most dogmatic in Ayn Randian "Objectivism". As it turns out, Anton LaVey was greatly influenced by Ayn Rand, and I wasn't the first person to notice this (surprise).

Other similarities include: the aforementioned atheism; radical individualism or "egoism" and hedonism; a certain kind of rationalism/empiricism, and ruthlessness towards enemies.
If you want to learn more: Google it. Check out "What is Objectivism?" on The Objective Standard; The Nine Satanic Statements, Nine Satanic Sins and Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth on the website for The Church of Satan; or Google "Anton LaVey and Ayn Rand" and check out what turns up.

This famous bit of dialogue (adapted with reasonable faithfulness to the screen) from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis seems to be a preacherly favorite, and for good reason.  When I think about the ways American churches have domesticated Jesus (who can frankly seem a bit rough-around-the-edges in the Gospels) it IS kind of scandalous.  However, I wonder if preachers love this passage so much because they feel domesticated themselves and this gives them permission to push the boundaries; to "call sin sin" "roar" a bit (assert their authority in some way).  Again, I tend to think that part of the problem of mediocrity in American Christianity is that if a church attempts to exercise any social authority in the lives of its members, they go elsewhere (if consumerism in church selection isn't a sign of domestication, I don't know what is).

However, the abuse of authority is also a serious problem in Christianity.  So I find it absolutely fascinating that Lewis uses his phrase "not a tame lion" as the rationale behind the subjugation of Narnia in The Last Battle.  If you haven't read it - DO.  As with the rest of the series, it does contain the ethnocentrism that detracts from its contemporary potential, but the portrayal of deception and the abuse of beloved doctrines is brilliant.  As the free Narnians are manipulated into willing slavery, they ask "how could Aslan demand all this?"  The response is always, "Well, he's not a tame lion, after all."  In one poignant scene, King Tirian of Narnia frees a group of dwarves and tries to enlist them to help free other Narnians, but they balk at his request, being a bit confused after their deception about who Aslan really is anymore.  Tirian's undoing is his recitation of the now cursed aphorism, "He's not a tame lion, after all!" The dwarves walk away.

It seems that everyone has forgotten the crucial clause added by the Beavers: "But he's good!  He's the King I tell you!"  It never comes up. The element of criticism that could have been applied is lost.  Notice that the application of this criticism requires a fundamental assumption:  that there IS a correlation between what the Narnians think "good" means, and what "good" must mean to Aslan.  Unlike many theologians and pastors, who quickly jump to the conclusion that God's ways (and their own?) are too transcendently "other" to be questioned, Lewis (like his hero George MacDonald) invites critical thinking about cherished theological maxims and their deployment by those who claim to speak for God.

In the book of Job, Job rants and raves and demands his day in court with God, counter to his companions who offer the conventional wisdom. In the end, God responds in a strangely nuanced fashion.  On one hand, God rebukes anyone's (or is it just Job's friends?) capacity to challenge God's ways, but the text also affirms that Job did not sin in anything he said and God states that Job has "spoken of me what is right."  I admire Lewis for his foresight about this beloved phrase and his willingness to include its abuse and manipulation in the last of the series.