Able, Baker, Charlie Chaplain

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Atheists? Foxholes? Do they mix? An interesting op-ed piece in yesterday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger by Daniel Akst poises some provocative issues. Akst notes that some atheists in the U. S. Army are demanding equal time when it comes to chaplains. Just because they do not believe in God does not mean they don’t have spiritual needs. One of the misperceptions about atheists that abounds in the media is that they are anti-spiritual. Rock-solid rationalists who see nothing beyond this mere physical existence. Well, trying to cast all atheists in the same mold would be like trying to get Baptists and Roman Catholics to celebrate their Christianity together on a Sunday morning. Yes, some atheists are strict materialists. Others believe in a spiritual existence, sans deity. Do they not have the same right to comfort on the battlefield as their theistic co-combatants?

Of course, the other question – perhaps the elephant in the room – is the appropriateness of military chaplains at all. In a nation that does not support any one religion above others (at least in theory) government funding for religious functions is always under scrutiny. Can the military pay the Catholic chaplain, the amorphous Protestant chaplain, the Jewish chaplain, Islamic chaplain and not the atheist chaplain? Many large universities now sport humanist chaplains: Harvard had a very prominent one, and even humble Rutgers has a humanist spiritual guide. No doubt military service is highly stressful and those responsible for destroying others need to be buoyed up in times of deep distress. Should our government not pay for equal opportunity for all soldiers?

Naturally, the unspoken corollary remains a mere whistling down the wind: could we learn not to fight at all? Most religions make the claim that they are here to better the lot of humankind. Still, many wars are sparked off by religious hatred, and distrust of the other would require that we at least keep a national guard around in the best of times. If religions of all stripes could work hard to convey the message that we are all in this together, convince the maligned, disenfranchised, those who feel unfairly oppressed, that we are equally valued, what we would have to fight over? Of course, that would require equitable treatment of all people. It is so much easier to manufacture weapons than to lay down one’s wealth to help someone one doesn’t even know.

Is this humanity?

Genesis Rising

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Educating against the grain of an unthinking religiosity is a sobering enterprise. Every semester students provide presentations for my intro class on various issues that the Hebrew Bible informs in wider society. Inevitably one group will choose evolution as the relevant topic. While the actual theory of evolution is outside the scope of a Bible course, I spend more time on Genesis than on any other book. I carefully explain how “science” is a concept absent from the biblical world and how the creation myths in Genesis have no basis in the physical reality we know. The world Yahweh is busy creating consists of a dome turned upside-down over a plate-like earth. That see-through dome keeps out the waters that rush back in a few chapters later to flood the world. It is a fantasy world that even the most intractable creationist can’t accept. (Well, maybe not the most intractable.)

Nevertheless, the Creationist movement that began about 1920 has done its homework. That homework, unfortunately, has been in disciplines that both biologists and biblical scholars ignore – public relations. Any observer of modern American society can easily see the distrust with which education is regarded. As a culture, we dislike those who “think they’re so smart” while we daily use the gadgets and devices they design and improve. Biblical scholars are especially suspect because they engage in the most hubristic of all human activities: storming Mount Olympus (oops, sorry, Heaven) itself.

In a typical Rutgers University intro class of 50 or so students, with a wide variety of majors including the sciences, student presentations on evolution ultimately end up suggesting “let the students decide for themselves.” Although they consistently rate my instruction highly, they just can’t let go of the gnawing belief that Genesis 1 describes the world as it actually is. Disappointed, I am not surprised. When headlines constantly demonstrate the antipathy – if not downright hostility – that governors and some presidents have for education, we will reap what we sow. That, by the way, is from the Bible.

(It's just made of green cheese)

Hallowed Be Thy Game

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I don’t follow sports. At all. This may seem an unmanly confession, but I think of it as more a silent protest against a society that pays excessive bonuses to people who play for a living. It’s not that I have anything against physical fitness – I still jog regularly and have been known to rattle the free-weights around a time or two – it’s simply the recognition that the more difficult achievements, intellectual achievements, are undervalued. Not that I make any claims of being an intellectual – I have no time for those who tout Ph.D.s like intellectual currency – but I see things from a different angle. Usually when I reach the sports section, I simply flip over the whole wad of pages to get onto what’s next. Today, however, a front-page sporty headline caught my attention, “‘God Can Turn Mistakes Into Miracles’ is the message Michael Vick sent out…” I confess, I don’t know who Michael Vick is. But he knows what God can do in some sports venue.

I grew up with God. The information I was given was that those who devote the majority of their time and attention to God will receive their reward. Not always in money, despite what the Prosperity Gospelers bray, but at least in kind. Being the kind of person who likes to follow things through to their logical conclusions, I ended up with an appropriately named “terminal degree” in religious studies. The prosperity came in the satisfaction that I could teach others for a reasonable, if low-end, salary and continue my goal of deeper understanding. Then Prosperity Gospelers took over the seminary and those of us without material cache were kindly kicked out. I was jogging between seven and nine miles a day, looking for answers.

The headlines this year have included tragic college sports-related injuries, one of the more dramatic from my own part-time home of Rutgers. Immediately medics rush to the field and prompt, professional medical care is given. I am covered by no medical plan. Many athletes take my classes, and they can count on the good graces of God and university officials to take care of them. In my opinion they are just as capable of learning as any other students, but the incentives just aren’t there. Why earn a degree in a field that will plant you on your backside all day for minimum returns when you can perform miracles in the athletic world for more money than the average citizen can even imagine? If God can turn mistakes into miracles, perhaps this misspent life of religious studies can turn into a lucrative position after all.

Miracle or mistake?

Jehovah Jireh

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They came again this week. I was, conveniently, not home when they rang the bell. One thing with which I must credit the Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, is that they do recall the identity of their targeted converts. My neighborhood missionary always addresses me by name, and although she often has different associates with her, she knows I teach Bible courses at Rutgers and when we actually talk she tries to convince me of the Witnesses’ more exacting grasp on the truth of Holy Writ. When I returned home I found a copy of Awake! tucked in the door handle. Not the current issue, but the November 2007 edition entitled, “Can You Trust the Bible?”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses resemble many of my Fundamentalist friends in that they assume if you don’t share their view of the Bible that you somehow “distrust” or “disrespect” or “disbelieve” it. Too many disses! This mono-directional view of a complex document devalues the content and power of the biblical narrative, but most people are not trained to view subjects from multiple perspectives. This is clear from Awake! One point that the magazine makes regards science: “when it comes to scientific matters, the Bible is noteworthy not only for what it says but also for what it does not say.” The writers acknowledge that a scientific worldview conflicts with the flat-earth outlook of the biblical world, but oh, what the Bible doesn’t say! This enormous argument from silence speaks volumes. When we approach the question from the point of view of what mistakes the Bible does not make, we’ve got a universe entire in which to roam.

On the question of biblical authorship, the principle of pars pro toto is utilized to justify divine authorship. The Awake! article begins, “The Bible is frank about who penned its contents.” Among the first lessons of 101 is just how much of the Bible is anonymous. The next statement, however, is wrong on several points: “Most Bible writers acknowledged that they wrote in the name of Jehovah.” Almost never does the Bible claim direct divine guidance in its writing. The credit for this goes to Pseudo-Paul in 2 Timothy – only there does an author placing in the Bible make any claims about his fellow composers having been inspired. Jehovah as a name for Yahweh is documented for the first time in the 13th century (C.E.).

I am touched that a woman who knows so little of who I really am keeps coming to my door to save me from an unpleasant afterlife. She has taken the time to find an appropriate piece of literature for my teaching interests. But, like my Fundamentalist friends, she has missed the forest for the trees. After over forty years of reading and teaching the Bible, I have my own answer for “Can You Trust the Bible?”