Asian American Apostate: Who’s Reviewing Who?

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R Scott Okamoto is “a writer, musician, and podcaster,” but his writing takes up this book review. His recent book, [INSERT LINK] Asian American Apostate, describes a weaving journey of his movement away from a personal religious faith, one characterized by evangelical Christianity, towards a recovery of his ethnic identity as Japanese American man, becoming welcomed into a pan-Asian community that he’d rarely known, and discovering satisfaction in his marriage, neighbors, and the arts. The journey recalls his youth, college days, and his movement out of graduate school into teaching in higher education, and while the weaving is good, the emphasis of his journey out of the Christian faith involves his discoveries as a lecturer in an English department.

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Normally, such journeys would not make for exciting reading. It’s probably me: These autobiographical works of personal transformation stimulate my doing the eye-roll. It’s been awhile since I’ve read this genre; my faint memory of this reading is perhaps more due to the accumulated resistance to any narrative that likely omits encounters that would push back or forbid some personal victories or changes. You’re unlikely to find such omissions by Okamoto. He routinely observes some really weird and offensive stuff and keeps it real: Some of his changes emerge from making some social blunders or he simply omits confrontation with some genuinely wrong-headed and wrong-hearted people… of whom would be folks from within the evangelical Christian tradition… I found his book to be a real page-turner and there are some strong indictments of some Christian institutions that made Okamoto’s personal transparency all the more engaging, fallible, and a joy to read.

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I’d heard (or read?) Okamoto stating he didn’t want the book to be a hit piece on the evangelical university (aka EVU) he taught at within the English department. But, if it weren’t for his reporting of the (can I say this Scott?) craziness at the institution, someone else would do it. Indeed, that reality is emerging and it renders the administration and the trustees (and, consequently, lumps in some faculty, students, and alumni) as racist, homophobic, decidedly Republican, and everything one might include in the adjective, “fundamentalist.” So, Okamoto’s book gives some authentic depictions of those realities, and more than once, I had to pause and wonder: How did these students get to EVU? What is happening at the family dinner table, Sunday mornings at their churches, and the kinds of social media these students are calling upon that would produce sexual/gender animus and casual remarks of hideous racial hostility in classroom discussions? It’s not merely that Okamoto had to endure these remarks: which is horrifying in itself. No, the absurdity of this institution goes much further: When he confronted such misguided thinking, he found himself having to explain his responses to his department chair! Coming after EVU would be low hanging fruit for Okamoto: He chooses to tell his story of faith deconstruction and how EVU and its participation within the larger evangelical movement contributed to his departure from the Christian faith.

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It may help at this point to address something that, perhaps, you (and certainly for myself) wondered if there was some theological sticking point for Okamoto. In other words: What doctrinal matters became problematic for Okamoto and why? It’s a fair question, but that’s not how he rolls. So much of what he narrates falls squarely into a lived theology, one enacted by the late adolescents. I hasten to add: the label “lived theology” often signals participation in social justice movements that are informed by one’s faith tradition: You won’t find that embodiment among most of the students Okamoto describes.

Given the actors in the story, their sense of identity comes from what their parents and (male) pastors have inculcated in them. When the topic of sexual purity, viz., virginity, comes up in the classroom, Okamoto describes some genuinely naive and hilarious statements: “If you masturbate X number of times, you lose your virginity.” And: “Your virginity is the greatest gift you could ever give your spouse.” (187) Campus ministers will hear this kind of nonsense from students coming from the contemporary evangelical tradition: And they will make such assertions with a confident authority. It’s not unique or exceptional to EVU. This ersatz version of lived theology comes from pastors and youth directors that haven’t tried to test these statements against any close reading of the Bible or even within their own theological traditions. It’s like pulling teeth to even get such students to consider a thoughtful engagement with the Bible that would at least shed some light on sex: They are so confident what they know is secure, certain, and unassailable. That kind of theology was problematic for Okamoto, but it wasn’t something he was addressing.

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I will add that the worship of money and the uncritical allegiance to the GOP also come in for interrogation by Okamoto. By and large, such criticisms are now well known. What makes his critique so interesting involves his awareness of how such commitments were well secured by even the first year EVU students in the late 90’s and were pervasive among the faculty. The EVU student body were overjoyed when McCain invited Palin on the 2008 GOP ticket: She was a Christian that they recognized. When Obama won the election, students were full of public anger and grief. Okamoto remained unsurprised when Trump was elected: The students and alumni had long been groomed for voting for such a candidate long before Obama became president. Most of what Okamoto describes is white Christian nationalism writ large much earlier than imagined and largely dismissed by most people. (Yes, including me.) He saw it early, often, and, to his credit, attempted to engage it with great questions. Even if some of his students did not change their minds, the vignettes of neo-con students that honestly took up Okamoto’s questions makes this reading compelling and gratifying.

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What isn’t clear, though, is how these engagements within EVU moved or influenced Okamoto. I’m sure they had some influence, and he’s transparent about his revulsion about what is said and done at EVU. You’re likely to wonder as I did why did he stick around as a faculty member? He makes a few gestures towards a few responsive students that were often appalled by the lack of humility and compassion of their classmates. The early start of the Asian Pacific student group on campus gave Okamoto some encouragement but it soon became obvious that none of the leadership of the group would make some serious efforts to confront racism on campus. It wasn’t until some years later that Asian American students made some collaborative efforts with Black and Brown students on campus to publicly confront the highest levels of campus leadership, only to be stonewalled. Such movement over time developed good relationships for Okamoto; in such a context, his ongoing discovery of his ethnic identity received additional momentum.

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And, this is where I would want my colleagues, InterVarsity staff, to pay attention here. The whole discussion of ethnic identity formation cannot be undertaken without considering how a person engages their faith, their experiences with racism, and their self-understanding of their ethnicity. While I want to encourage discoveries of family histories (which often account for migration stories) some of the social upheavals and cultural dynamics resist fixing our ethnic status. While many of us have routine encounters with racism that are structural in nature, we might presume that the constraints might be attempt to be color-blind. (They are not, but we know that.) Finally, the question of how we interrogate our faith often summons questions of ultimate concerns, agency, and community. These three measures become lifted by Okamoto in varying degrees, and while he narrates his journey as that of faith deconstruction, I would propose we also consider that he is also answering questions of what it means for him to be human. Those answers, given with authenticity and fallibility, contribute to his ethnic identity formation.

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Okamoto provides several snippets of his undergraduate journey of faith while participating in InterVarsity at UC San Diego. He describes eating lunch with a couple of gay students and the mutual discovery that they could hold an amicable conversation. He doesn’t describe any serious conversations within his student fellowship about his being a Japanese American male, although such questions were already emerging. Later, while teaching at EVU, a family member invites him to a group of pan-Asian artists, and different questions emerge about the suitability of such gathering. Having identified this, Okamoto also realizes his sense of comfort and welcome by the others in the group. Meanwhile the sense of structural racism at EVU, throws his experiences with the pan-Asian artists into sharper relief. Being welcomed at EVU, even as the instructor of any number of courses, demands of him to concurrently surrender his ethnicity and to use conduct and speech that will comfort and welcome the white students, for whom any deviation from a particular ethnocultural system brings an immediate threat to their person. The students, after all, are the paying customers: Okamoto needs to be as unoffensive as possible, and to fulfill that need is an explicit denial of his ethnicity.

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“But what about his faith?” Right: I wondered the same thing. To be fair to Okamoto, we shouldn’t expect him to offer a philosophical defense of his decision to leave the Christian faith: even less so to provide a theological apology. Here’s a guy who would lead worship as an undergrad in InterVarsity, and presents as a fairly chill participant in the evangelical tradition. It’s where he is confronted at UCSD by microaggressions or by how the formation of EVU fulfills an intention to serve a very small slice of Christian young adults who have little encounters with Jesus, Okamoto realizes how far such people are from the Jesus readily apparent in even the most lean and conservative reading of the Gospels. The vignette of the athlete discovering the spectrum of versions of Jesus riding a donkey discloses both the shallowness of the engagement of these students and the genuine respect Okamoto has for the Gospels as such stand. He doesn’t come out and say: “F this. I can’t stand these students-faculty-administrators-trustees who think Matthew 7:21-23 doesn’t address them.” He often has other versions!

This point is bit opaque: Okamoto isn’t departing the faith because of the racism directed toward him or the denial of his ethnicity or because his faith questions everything about EVU’s existence. But, it sure helps him observe the contrast between his developing community of artists and the degrading institution of EVU. The discovery of his emerging humanity from having a supportive family, neighbors, and the group of artists all contributed to his flourishing. Which I dare say: Most InterVarsity staff want this for their students and alumni, no? Granted, the conviction is that such would occur in the context of Christian community and a sense of mission: All of which were, by definition, absent wherever Okamoto turned. And goodness: He turned everywhere looking for such contexts and mission and none were to be found unless he gave up his ethnic identity and his ultimate concerns.

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Which gets me here: Many of my present and former colleagues of InterVarsity have mentioned with a great deal of frustration, sadness, and disappointment: “So many of our students — especially the former leaders — can’t find a church that they can connect with or serve in in any meaningful way. Their faith is languishing.” Yes, and I’ve observed this: Even in myself. That our lives, our ethnic identities, and our faith development might wax and wane is not something that we address within our mentoring of university students. One might think the pandemic would have made such matters more explicit, but I don’t find that to be true in the present. For Okamoto, the kinds of strange stuff at EVU only tended to become reproduced at his local megachurch. Which he finally moved away from for a more mainline congregation: and that didn’t last either.

What Okamoto did discover was that community of pan-Asian artists continued to grow over the years and, more importantly, continued to welcome him and treat him as one of their own. He felt at ease, not having to defend his interests or what brought him joy. Such experiences lead him to conclude he had stopped believing in God, in Jesus, and the rest of the apparatus of the Christian faith: Okamoto renders this as apostasy. He continues to live a joyful life, one that has still engaged all of the suffering and disappointments that everyone breathing encounters. Okamoto now describes his life as “based on mutual respect and love for everyone around you for yourself…you gotta try this. Embracing my identity, my sexuality [he still identifies as a cis-hetero male], and my humanity has given me more joy, fulfillment, and sense of purpose than I ever had inside of Christianity.” If my InterVarsity colleagues and I are honest, the what and the how of our discipleship of students has produced others like Okamoto. Not that I agree with the assessment of Okamoto. Read on.

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Some of my colleagues will recall in December of 2020 the cry of one of our own. The lament emerged from learning that an alumnus had reached out in distress. The former student expressed grief and confusion because he believed the presidential election had been stolen from Trump. The staff member asked how this alumnus could be so mistaken: That one of our own students could be misguided and upset that an election was now misrepresented as fraudulent. In a conversation with another colleague, I recalled this lament: “The way we mentor students worked perfectly.” The kinds of questions we asked then, even now, inadequately addressed politics, ethnic identity (although this has improved), or sexuality, or the kinds of social networks you rely upon for encouragement now and for your future.

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To Okamoto and any other InterVarsity alumni: We failed to ask better questions of you. Even so, it’s good to get this out in front: There are ways to ask those questions that address what matters most to you. If in asking, “Who are the people that make you feel as though you have a present and a horizon with Jesus?” we’d also have to admit that we may not be that group. And, while we live in an “on-demand” culture, it’s not as though you could have turned instantly into a different church or community that would have welcomed you or loved you. If we shoulder some of the blame for failing to be as welcoming as the Gospel aims toward, it’s also true that we’re far more limited in knowing and trusting what is possible (or available) in Christian community.

For everyone, it’s worth recognizing that Okamoto does ascribe to evangelicals many of the woes and injustices toward women, non-White peoples, and the LGTBQIA communities. Where we are culpable, the faithful response is one of admission, of restitution, of reconciliation. (And, “No,” reconciliation is not some heartfelt express of sorrow and regret. It would take a much longer post to get into that!) But my point is that becoming responsible for setting things right where we have done wrong (yes, even if we were unaware of it) starts us in the right direction. Although I don’t consider myself an evangelical anymore (Christian, yes; evangelical, no), I know first-hand what kind of problems are generated by my former group. There are other ways to belong to Jesus and each other that do not involve the contemporary culture wars.

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Finally, one might wonder if I expect Okamoto to return to Jesus and his church. It’s a fair question, and let me answer this in a layered way. I seriously doubt he would ever darken the door of any congregation that lives as those from EVU. I trust I don’t need to clarify this segment. But, I do sense that his self-disclosure of the kind of person he’s becoming will make him highly conscious and thoughtful about what community he would join in: One that self-consciously keeps itself from centering or protecting White people; an inclusive church that welcomes people of all ethnicities, genders, and social strata; a congregation that takes up sides with the poor and those suffering from injustice and violence and deprivation. There’s very few churches like these; I have a some other musings on this topic forthcoming.

Okamoto has stated he’s fine with the kind of person he’s becoming away from Jesus and his people. While I object to his broad-brush strokes in painting the evangelical faith, as though there were a single unified evangelical faith of whiteness, everything I’ve read so far makes sense to me: In other words, were any of us living in his shoes, all of the outcomes he describes should impress us as entirely plausible. It won’t come as a surprise that he has also marshaled some energies and relationships to explicitly oppose merciless evangelical influence in the world.

Lastly, I’m well aware of those encounters with Jesus that resist our efforts to hold him at a distance or keep him out of our lives. What I’m stating here is not that divine power overwhelms our agential powers or capacities. Rather, Jesus possesses those kinds of affection that enjoin our cognitive faculties to consider the source and whether we can remain open to him being the source of divine love. Such a Jesus, if I’ve read Okamoto correctly, welcomes everyone and invites them to join with him in making the world more just, more beautiful, more inclusive. Obviously, there’s much more to Jesus than this, but Okamoto is right, just spot-on, about how such a reading of Jesus won’t be found at EVU, and lead to the formation of Christian communities that live faithfully in response to that Jesus.

Where am I going to find the “time”?

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Whenever I read books by Asian American authors (usually of East Asian ethnicity) about their identity, I’m drawn to the elements of their internal conversation: An incident occurs, like a conflict with one’s parents, or an abrupt encounter with a white or non-Asian person. Then, some time passes, a few minutes, a few days, or longer. And a review of the incident gets rehearsed: Not merely, “I should’ve done this.” Rather, some earnest attempt at interpreting the moment, the persons involved, and the present outcome. The recent book by Cathy Park Hong offers a poignant and unvarnished discovery of such a process. In this review, the book comes from the self-disclosure of four Asian American authors, all of whom identify themselves as followers of Jesus; their self-talk about their identities and how they process such are on full display and invite the reader into similar processes for forming their Asian American identity and a faith commitment in Jesus Christ.

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This self-talk can be both an experience of condemnation, confusion, as well as affirmation and clarity. Sometimes all of the elements present at once. I mention this, as Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationships, and Vocation brings several versions of the internal conversation by all of the authors. All of the four authors write from a plural identity: as second generation Asian Americans, as evangelical campus ministers. (Full disclosure: I am colleagues with all four and friends of three of the authors.) In taking up the massive topic of identity formation, they’ve both narrowed their topics to not merely answering the question of “what’s an Asian American who follows Jesus” but to include consideration of family and friendship, as well as ecclesial life, work, and marital status. Anyone who has read academic accounts of identity formation for second generation persons of faith (any faith) will know that the triad of ethnicity, religion, and race all contribute in indeterminate ways to the formation of one’s identity. In some ways, the book recognizes the varying inputs, but wisely steers clear of the academic conversation in order to address Asian American young adults.

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That’s not to say that the authors are unaware of the discussion of Asian American identity formation. The initial chapter of the book has the authors introduce themselves; this introduction helps as the authors give some sense of history in understanding their respective names. de Leon subsequently takes up questions of identity and culture, recognizing the complex entanglement of migration and labor, American military presence in East Asia, and the reaction of white Americans to migrant Asians starting in 1882 and the culpability of Asian American law enforcement in the present. This history sets up the rest of the book for grasping how some social precedents that are involuntarily encountered have varying degrees of influence upon the self-understanding of the emerging Asian American young adult, especially with regard to their Christian faith.

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Daniel’s chapter on vocation offers a case study in how post-college employment discoveries, opportunities, and engagement with one’s family all lend to his identity formation. Ask any South Asian American person about the pressures from their migrant family/elders for fulfilling an upward-mobility life trajectory: “crushing” or some synonyms might emerge in response.

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Thao’s chapter on religious diversity trades on some familiar responses to Romans 14 and 1 Cor. 8-10. But, unlike some missionary literature addressing engagement with other religious traditions, Thao reveals the network of encounters that are simultaneously emotional, familial, cognitive, social, and spiritual. Such lived encounters resist clear prescriptions as her story demonstrates. Thao also writes a chapter on singleness that offers well known critiques of how pulpits frame the human relationships as ultimately fulfilled in matrimony. Aside from those, Thao advances a spirituality of singleness that concurrently addresses singles who are Asian American Christian persons and other Christians. Her proposal stands out as a courageous and healthy contribution to identity formation. For those of us who have cringed on a Sunday morning hearing some version of “the model from creation,” Thao’s generous and sensitive approach lends healing and well being.

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Although there are many more chapters to this book, the one by Chan has an explanation of racialization that offers one of the best discussions on the topic: academics looking for ways to make their scholarship public should read her chapter. The discussion here is succinct, but zeros in on the salient matters of anti-naming and bullying, overt exclusion and conditional belonging, as well as the enduring maliciousness of the perpetual foreigner status and the model minority myth. Because of the genre, Chan also offers some strong remedies for both external and internal resistance. Even if the academic reading this chapter section doesn’t have a dog in the hunt with the Christian tradition, these proposals do what often the academics do not: offer remedies that heal and empower Asian American identity formation. Surely these should be commended.

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A strong sense of history permeates all of the chapters: How could any discussion of Asian American identity formation, Christian or otherwise, avoid such? Besides recounting stories of life “back home” and of the motives for migration by one’s parents and family, this genre would be incomplete if it did not commend practices that would be beneficial to one’s identity as both a Christian and an Asian American. Here is where I want to engage these authors to consider how they understand time and change.

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Daniel’s chapter on vocation also offers a good reference point for this engagement. He describes a history of informing his parents about his sense of calling to serve as a campus minister, which his parents reject. Five plus years later, his parents announce they commend his sense of calling, and this event contributes to Daniel starting a new career in ministry. Thao mentions her brothers marrying out, and their efforts to give their mom a long on ramp of time to become acquainted with their prospective brides. There are others, but all suffer from too much brevity

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In studies of second generation religious persons, it is almost a given that the social and cultural contrast of life for those persons and their parents will emerge in the investigation. To wit, the migrant children are often socially positioned among white and/or English-speaking people outside their home; in the home, the culture is of their migrant parents. In contrast, the migrant parents are often in partial social isolation from western culture and may not need to speak in English.

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What some scholarship has found punctures the notion that the migrant parents are indeterminately “fixed” in their Asian cultural life: Most of these parents are routinely confronted by western culture that, just like their children, raises questions, objections, affirmations, and requests for commitments. It is that they have a lower frequency of encounters and the time duration is longer for parents between such encounters than for the second generation offspring, for whom such encounters overlap in time and arrive at a higher frequency. But, that difference does not keep the parents from adapting. Far from it. The length of time for learning a new culture tends to be greater for the migrant parents.

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It is worth observing that the western evangelical practices host a pedagogy of urgency. Contemplation on vocational decisions, discerning a marriage partner, and especially a decision to enter into a conversion to the Christian faith: all these and more are promoted to be done in haste within the western evangelical tradition. Parallel to Daniel’s story are other Asian American evangelical students who have entered a similar conversation with their parents, aiming to declare their intention to serve as a campus minister and wanting to receive their parent’s blessings. Many of these earnest and winsome students begin at a standing-start in such a conversation with their parents. Their parents simply haven’t had the time and space of discerning and digesting how their children have lived on campus as witnesses and servants of Christ. The response of the parents can be far more elaborate and hostile than that of Daniel, even if the parents come from the Christian faith.

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In a different space, I learned of one such Asian American student, and the joy among my colleagues was great. Here was a dedicated student, fruitful in ministry, that wanted to join our staff team. And the parents knew absolutely nothing about how the student had conducted ministry on campus while living as an undergraduate. The conversation outcome not only produced broken trust with the parents, but the instantaneous switch of shame turned on, and the staff team found itself isolated from the student. My reaction was shared by others: that we had generated pressure to immediately join our ministry. This pedagogy of urgency deserved a stronger critique from the authors. My hunch is that they have stronger narratives to call upon: stories that both received all of the theological virtues and resisted this pervasive sense of “do it now” that saturates western evangelicalism.

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I commend this book to everyone, as it hardly helps to slot the valuable discussion and encouragement to only Asian American young adults. But, I’d want all the readers and the subsequent discussions to take their time for reflection and the building of trust. The learning of one’s name can come from a variety of experiences and relationships; the practices commended by the authors lend themselves to receiving that variety. Asian American young adults can become comfortable with both the leisure and the awareness of the many social forces promoting change: Transitions can be planned for with one’s family and friends, but rarely can such changes be completely managed. Consequently, their identity is not fixed from history and the contemporary social milieu, but they can responsibly contribute to the formation of their ethnic identity and their faith commitment.

A very short and fallible introduction to Critical Realism

A friend in my office has moved from data collection to data analysis. One of his committee members, in listening to his early conversations regarding coding, suggested several textbooks, including Christian Smith‘s What is a Person? That reference was at the bottom of a long list of texts, and my friend asked, “…do you have thoughts on his treatment? Do you know if this is where Christian Smith deals with CR most concertedly?” So in what follows, I try to answer this request.

I commend Smith in virtually everything he does! May I ask: Where did the suggestion, even if inferred, come from?

As far as CR and Smith goes, his writing represents what so many others, including Archer, have done. To wit, they have a social/sociology problem, and they allow CR to inform their problem, the subsequent theorizing, and then the research itself: Even if the research is merely writing, and not “field work.”

In other words, what Margaret Archer, Smith, and others have not done is go for a full-blown elaboration on what CR is and does. At points along the way in What is a Person?, Smith does retrieve—helpfully to my reading—CR and uses North American examples and language to illuminate CR and then advance the argument he makes. I just retrieved my copy, and noticed I had bookmarked a section on retroduction that I found to be among the clearest explanation of that form of argumentation that CR relies so heavily upon.

An example of CR: Recall, perhaps, what a Trader Joe’s Ice Cream Sandwich appears as and tastes like. It’s a low, cylindrical sandwich of dark chocolate wafers chocolate-chip cookies, with vanilla ice cream in between, and mini chocolate chips are dotted around the surface of the ice cream. You take a bite on the 4th of July, and you have all kinds pleasurable sensations in your mouth, as well as the enjoyment of your family consuming the same.

But, what is an ice cream sandwich? Is it only what you can observe, i.e., taste and feel, or is there more? What recipe creates this TJ ice cream sandwich? Surely that contributes to it being what it is in your hand and in your mouth. What of the kitchen processing? The economics of mass producing it? All of these and more make this ice cream sandwich from TJ’s real. Remove any one, and you might have an ice cream sandwich from TJ’s: and it would be real: It just would not be the same reality.

If I may take a stab here—only on my 2nd cup of coffee here!—at describing CR for you. Critical Realism emerged out of Roy Bhaskar’s dissatisfaction with the theorizing of economics. He was a Marxist, but more of the academic type and less the political type. In particular, and this is my voice here, he felt uncomfortable with the social constructions of the world being taken as reality, and further, he resisted the dominant view of positivism that obligated any theorizing and research to rely upon Hume (constant conjunctions) and similar empiricism, and consequently, effectively fenced off what was real and what was not. So, the bulk of (early) Bhaskar was confronting positivism, and he later came (hard) for social constructionism.

But, that is not CR: all that lead to this: Bhaskar proposed that Hume was only half-right: To be sure, when we apply a flame to gasoline, it changes into fire and vapors. So, all that experience we observed is real. But, is that all there is? Even if by reputation or trusted allies, we learn: Don’t apply fire to gasoline. That is actual. But, is that all there is? What mechanisms or tendencies are there that promote that change from a liquid into fire and vapor? If there is water in the gasoline, does the gasoline always catch fire and evaporate?

That is where CR goes: that reality is stratified, and emergent, and that there are potentials, tendencies, and mechanisms that exist. Whether or not those tendencies become activated is different from observing the outcomes, and the outcomes may not be the same every time (his resistance to Hume right here).

Two more last, and long matters: First, a table that I refer to often, as it helps me ask better questions about what is not only observed, but what are the possible mechanisms at play in any social context:

Domains of Reality
Empirical: Experience
Actual: Experience; Events
Real: Experience; Events; Mechanisms, Tendencies

Back to the TJ’s ice cream sandwich: You and family are shopping, and the wife says, “Hey! Let’s get ice cream sandwiches!” (An observable mechanism with rewards and sanction!!!) You and the kids walk to the frozen aisle—because in your experience, whether by history or by guidance from others, that is where the ice cream sandwiches are to be found—to fetch a box out of the frozen case. Even if you’ve never been to that particular store, you reasonably expect to find ice creams sandwiches in the frozen aisle (event).

I hasten to add: in hearing your wife’s request, there plausibly other mechanisms at work that are not observable. I wanted to add this, as quite often, most mechanisms are not observable, and must be argued for their existence.

In short, in doing this example, I am proposing the “trinity” of CR: ontological realism (some mechanisms underly all of social reality: your wife’s request), epistemic relativism (all accounts of the real are committed to the truth and fallible, i.e., partial, a function of historical context, and incomplete, but that knowledge is not the reality itself: you believe you’ll find the ice cream sandwiches in the frozen aisle, but you need to get there to test that belief), and judgmental rationality (all descriptions of reality fail to be absolute, and therefore, will always be subject to revision, but often give us satisfying renderings of reality: “Wow: These ice cream sandwiches from the frozen aisle might not make it out of the parking lot.”).

Last matter, and we return to Smith and What is a Person? So, for Archer and Smith…and myself (!), the central question of the social world is accounting for how structure, agency, and culture (SAC) interact. For some people, there is little expectation of formally getting at what is real. For CR people, there is the expectation that one can make some good rendering of social reality, of which religious experience is included. One does this rendering through an analysis of the elements of structure, agency, and culture.

What makes this analysis so powerful is that one can plausibly account for why some mechanisms produced change (or transformation) in, say, structure, but the another mechanism acting elsewhere resulted in stasis (or reproduction) in, say, agency. And that is where the power is:

I observed one student come around to the realities of racism, and concurrently embrace her Chinese identity as part of her faith commitment. But, her class/student cohort remained unaffected by her inward and outward changes regarding social and racial dynamics. That is to say: the student (an agent) experienced a theological mechanism accompanied by other mechanisms like her reflexivity that produced agential transformation. That’s real. And, the academic structure she was committed to did receive her changes, but did not change itself, i.e., the curriculum and the faculty continued to act in ways that lead to structural reproduction (the faculty had interests to keep the structure in stasis and as users of the curriculum, as a cultural item, also refused change to sustain stability in the cultural system). That is also real.

Smith’s book, then, is all about agency. The book before, Moral Believing Animals, and the one that followed, To Flourish or Destruct, are his trio of books on agents. By his own admission, Smith has now rejected the chapter in MBA on social construction, and has moved clearly into CR, because social construction only has a partial and inadequate rendering of what is real. Part of where Smith and other CR people are going is where Bhaskar was heading all along: You must continue to provide explanations of reality that offer truth. And, that is where Smith, Archer, others have trouble with social construction: It can avoid making truth claims. And, making truth claims about agents has all kinds good possibilities, that are good not just for the agent, but those around her/him as well.

Here’s a link that is barely accessible to giving a 30,000’ vista of CR. I mention “barely” as just reading it, I realize how much work people like myself need to do to spread the word about the Gospel of CR. Some of what is proposed relies upon a commitment to make one’s philosophy of (social) science explicit, instead of tacit. I still get pushback from people about making one’s philosophy of science explicit: Which I find sad, and, at some levels, disturbing. It’s not even intuitively obvious what CR is, and yet, once one reads it, one cannot help but wonder at its ways of empowering our research. CR should be understood as underlaboring for social theorizing: in a North American context, it is perhaps better understood as a meta-theory.

Of course, I write “the Gospel of CR” amusingly, but I suppose I take for granted that many Christians like us want reality to be better explained and engaged with, as opposed to unreality, and all the deleterious effects of such. In short, there is no enchiridion for CR. You’d have to do the pick-and-shovel work and read Bhaskar. FWIW, I found his writings obtuse and fascinating all at once.

It may help to know about these CR folks that many are adherents within the Christian tradition; we collaborate well with people who are from different traditions: CR is a broad church, as the metaphor goes. I have seen that NT Wright has dipped his toes into the CR waters; this book on theology and CR also does some wonderful work in throwing light on the central concerns of CR that I mentioned above. Jonathan Grimes, Isaac Voss, Darren Duerksen: all did their dissertations at Fuller using some CR, largely calling upon Archer; Duerksen just co-authored a book with Bill Dyrness and did some good work on emergence and ecclesial structures. Matt Croasmun revised his dissertation on sin in Romans 5-8 into a book, and that is hands-down the best work on emergence, or rather, the best research that allows emergence to explain sin in Romans. The applicability of Matt’s excellent discussion on emergence to other forms of research cannot be overstated by me. I really enjoyed reading it, and you would too.

Emergence isn’t the only matter related to CR, and there are other really good books that I found helpful for theology, missiology, and the sociology of religion: This book on CR and God by many authors really hangs together well, but it does have some heavy lifting in place. I know of other works being developed, and there is a CR seminar being proposed for the American Society of Missiology for 2021.

More questions? Of course!

Happy 110th Birthday, Lesslie Newbigin!

As is custom here, I make a comment or two on the birthday of the late, contemporary missiologist, Lesslie Newbigin. Most of my family, friends, and colleague know of my continuing indebtedness to Newbigin. Although I had not met the man, I sense that so much of his faith journey and understanding of mission overlapped with my own that I often sense in reading his works that he knows me better than I myself! To be sure, so much of Newbigin’s writings later in his life aimed at how mission might be directed toward the West.
In just writing that last sentence, I am already reminded that, in my earliest days as a new convert to the Christian faith, the movement of the Gospel would be as much outward as it would be internal and personal. In other words, what some people called “mission” needed to be simply applied to life within our own geo-political boundaries. Newbigin, in more ways that I can recount, addressed this matter time and time again.

Of course, part of the problem in communicating such a movement of the Gospel as “mission” meant swimming upstream against a very strong cultural and ecclesial current. That current remained exclusively dedicated to “mission” as evangelistic work and church planting outside one’s geo-political boundaries, and preferably among a people of darker skin and a different language than English. Such a dedication is still very much alive, although the vitality of such a commitment could be up for discussion. Newbigin certainly took up that conversation with force, and, with forty years as a cross-cultural Christian minister, had a certain amount of experience to call upon when confronting ecclesial apparatus that might say, “We just do ministry,” a phrase I have heard from the lips of colleagues on many university campuses. As if we, for those of us in the West, do not possess any cultural context with which to call upon…

I find such perspectives lacking, and, if I may, generative of some despair and vacuity in the Christian communities of the West. I doubt we can “think” our way out of some of the hopelessness of our day, given the magnitude of corruption in the White House, the enormous movements of migration taking place across our world (and often the same people trying to get to the US), the vast and growing opioid epidemic, and the remarkable growth of poverty. No one person could take this on in solitude, and some of the best and brightest of the West are routinely thwarted in their efforts to reverse this wretchedness.

And Newbigin spotted this coming, even decades ago. He drafted pamphlet in 1983 titled, “The Other Side of 1984,” and it was so popular that he was invited to expand on it, and it was published as small book. There is nothing small about this book. From the first page, Newbigin confronts incipient despair in the West:

I have often been asked [while in retirement], “What is the greatest difficulty you face in moving from India to England?” I have always answered: “The disappearance of hope.” I believe everyone who has made the same move will bear me out. Even in the most squalid slums of Madras there was always the beliefs that things could be improved. One could start a night school, or agitate for a water supply…there was still the belief in a better future ahead…
In England, in contrast, it is hard to find any hope…there is little sign among the citizens of this country of the sort of confidence in the future which was certainly present in the earlier years of this century…
Every culture goes through periods when self-criticism is general. But is is also true that cultures are born and die. The question now is whether our present self-criticism is merely the normal self-questions of a healthy culture, or whether we are at the point where a culture is approaching death. It seems to me, and I know I am not alone, that the truth of our present situation is nearer to the second of these alternatives than to the first.
The Other Side of 1984 (1983)

For Newbigin, it is “those whose lives are shaped by the Christian hope founded on the resurrection of Jesus as the pledge of a new creation” that remain a unique sign of hope in an otherwise sad and disconsolate society. This sense of using the verb “founded” deserves some attention by us all, especially for those of us who might resist that kind of certainty associated with our faith commitment. Rather than merely aspirational, Newbigin asserts that discipleship receives formation from a variety of sources, one of which is a confidence in an act of God that God also reveals to humanity in the person of Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

Consequently, more than warm thoughts, such a confidence has a practical orientation towards a durable encounter with the risen Jesus in the midst of an otherwise tenuous social setting, a society that wrestles with despair, loneliness, conflict, and carelessness towards one’s humanity and that of others, and a disregard for the thriving of the earth. Those fallibly living with such a practical orientation gesture toward the future in anticipation of not just being better, but of becoming a new humanity through the resurrection from the dead. But, those lives get rehearsed now, with joy, from following Jesus and all of the attendant hope that accompanies such a journey among the poor, and into systems deserving of correction: even within one’s zip code.

 
That rehearsal could be mission.
Happy Birthday, Lesslie Newbigin!

El Paso, Dayton, & the Diversity of People Living in the USA

Today is Sunday, August 4, 2019.

While walking my dogs this morning, I observed the following: One neighbor waved to us as he tossed his baseball glove into the cab of his truck, and he drove away.

Another neighbor, as she walked out the front door, informed her husband that he still needed to get estimates for a new roof for their home. She was dressed in preparation for a morning swim, including having a couple towels draped over her neck. She hopped into her car and drove away.

They drove off into what I hope was a period of uninterrupted exercise and refreshment. I also trust they were safe in their surroundings, and free of threat to their person, as well those sharing their space and recreation. I presume that this kind of activity is a routine for their Sunday mornings.

I assume that some people around the nation got up this morning, dressed appropriately, and drove away to a shooting range. They may have cleaned and oiled their guns the night before, and made sure they had plenty of ammunition, as well as the requisite apparel and safety equipment.

Having arrive at the range, they checked in, paid their fees, prepared themselves with their attire and safety equipment, examined their weapon to be clear and empty of ammunition, and, once at the firing line, loaded their gun.

Now that the target is in place, they can begin firing at—and only at—the target. Once the person tires of shooting or exhausts their ammunition, they conclude their day by reversing their earlier procedure: Clearing and emptying gun of any unexpended ammunition, wiping off the gun, packing it, and proceed to their car for the drive home.

They drove away from what I hope was a period of uninterrupted exercise and refreshment. I also trust they were safe in their surroundings, and free of threat to their person, as well those sharing their space and recreation. I presume that this kind of activity is a routine for their Sunday mornings.

I also assume that some of these same people have no idea what happened in El Paso and Dayton. Or a week ago in Gilroy. They don’t check the news, and when such stories pop up on social media, they ignore it.

If they do know about such mass shootings, they also ignore the developing news stories. They remain untroubled by these reports.

This is representative of some of the diversity in the USA.

Today is Sunday, August 4, 2019.

Racist Tweets, Silence, and Anger

The past week has been full of racism, anti-racism responses, and swings on the emotional pendulum that feel as though the cycles refuse to dampen, refuse to lose energy and amplitude. Count me among those whose anger, sadness, and rage has felt as though the needle on the gauge was pegged at 100.

 
Having stated this, I would remind you of the following:

 
I’m of Afghan descent: my paternal grandfather migrated here from Afghanistan. Hence, my family name. He left a high-elevation tribal village as a late adolescent to avoid injustice.

 
I’m of Mexican descent: my maternal paternal grandmother migrated here from Mexico. She migrated because of domestic violence directed toward her, her sister, and my great-grandmother.

 
I’m your ethnically-ambiguous, white-passing friend: Hello, Mom! Yup, my mom is as white/Northern-European stock as they come. So, if you didn’t know my family name, you’d likely default to “Mike’s a white guy.” And, as we press into this, I’d agree: So much of the world I grew up in contributed to and authorized me to live as a white guy.

And, I would remind you of another matter: I’m a racist.

You see, that I am racist is not because I am a vicious, mean-spirited bastard who acts maliciously toward people of color. Rather, I am a racist because the social world of the USA has made it possible for persons with my appearance to receive education, employment, goods, social capital, distribute wealth to family, move about freely in most social spaces, and flourish: all at the expense and suffering of people of color.

So, when someone like Trump comes along, and exclaims through tweets and campaign rallies that persons like the four congresswomen should “go back to their countries”, the same social world described above authorizes white and white-passing people like me to remain silent, remain calm, and remain distant from such ugly statements.

As some may have observed (but, I doubt anyone, really), I’ve been relatively quiet on social media about these repellant statements, utterances that further disclose how manifestly ignorant the president is of the Constitution and the subsequent forms of government institutions. I’ve re-tweeted some, and shared what others have posted. I did propose on Facebook that people send a message to the White House, requesting that the President apologize to the four congresswomen, as well as to the nation. I know how far that will go. But, apart from that, I’ve kept relatively quiet. It’s easy to do that when you are white/white-passing. But, there’s more to it than that easy social world.

That silence flowed from a sense of indignation that has astonished me. Like so many of you, I have felt so utterly helpless to respond and correct this kind of incivility and hatred directed toward people of color.

I know that my grandparents, my father, and my aunts and uncles, probably some of my cousins, too, have heard, “Go back to where you came from.” When I read that first tweet, and his self-righteousness that followed in subsequent tweets and other contexts, I felt a volcano rising inside myself. So, I decided to keep quiet. I knew emotionally I was on Caps-Lock earlier this week. I picked my spots.

So much of my praying in the Psalms this week connected with my anger and longing for justice:

16 But to the wicked person, God says:
“What right have you to recite my laws
or take my covenant on your lips?
17 You hate my instruction
and cast my words behind you.
18 When you see a thief, you join with him;
you throw in your lot with adulterers.
19 You use your mouth for evil
and harness your tongue to deceit.
20 You sit and testify against your brother
and slander your own mother’s son.
21 When you did these things and I kept silent,
you thought I was exactly like you.
But I now arraign you
and set my accusations before you. (Psalm 50:16-21)

And the following:
You have rejected us, God, and burst upon us;
you have been angry—now restore us!
2 You have shaken the land and torn it open;
mend its fractures, for it is quaking.
3 You have shown your people desperate times;
you have given us wine that makes us stagger.
4 But for those who fear you, you have raised a banner
to be unfurled against the bow. (Psalm 60:1-4)

I make no special claims to remedy our current predicament. Only that we have a God in Heaven that guides us, white/white-passing people who are racists, and that we are called into the way of Jesus, to participate in the remedies that promote God’s justice in our nation. Better this, rather than claiming, “I’ve got this racist problem figured out.” Surely, I do not.

Find your voice, not only in your prayers, but among family and friends, and your government to reject the racism that so many white/white-passing people benefit from. Ask your family and friends how they benefit from the current set-up in our society as it pertains to white people. No doubt you will learn that they are “not racist,” and don’t have a mean bone in their body. It is also likely they don’t have any friends who are Black, Brown, or Asian.

More than this raising of your voice, Jesus calls us to live in such a way, daily, that repudiates racist governments and social environments that enact racism against people of color. You can start by naming yourself as a racist, fully confident that you may not have a mean bone in your body and you will be completely misunderstood. But, you can daily live in ways that, even if incrementally, make our world less racist, and confident the Lord will lead you into that anti-racist future. A future that no longer elicits red-hot anger or confirms silence in the presence of racist injustice.

My Hot Take on the Craziness on Marie Kondo is More Authoritative and Less Racist & Misogynist Than Yours

My grandfather instructed me on the threshold of adolescence, “Michael, if you borrow a man’s tools, return them to where you found them and return them cleaner than when you borrowed them.” We can forgive my grandfather’s gender-ascription to the ownership and use of tools, but his wisdom has endured for me in so many unexpected ways. The first time I applied his advice, the person I had borrowed from said to me, “Thank you for cleaning my tool! I had been meaning to do that for a long time. Thank you!”

Often in our world today, well-intended advice can be easily ignored or discounted, especially when it’s delivered from someone who is of a different gender, ethnicity, or citizenship. There are, of course, a multitude of conditions and personalities that promote that dismissal that we are all aware of: and even citing one is to overlook about a dozen others.

So, when Netflix released a series from Marie Kondo, following on the success of her book, The Life Changing Magic Tidying Up, the response to her advice has been deep and wide: at least for the month of January, 2019. Kondo appears to have struck a nerve: consignment shops and donation stores have reported a surge of drop-offs and gifts of clothing and “stuff.”

More recently, there have been a succession of white-passing women criticizing Kondo for her wisdom and experience in “tidying up.” Some of her advice has elicited some of a subtle, but nonetheless vigorous critique. Some of it is downright petty. Others tend to take a more nuanced, racist approach to criticism of Kondo herself : I intended to post a link to a racially-tinged saturated Tweet, but the (white-woman) author deleted it when she discovered her latent racism…anyway:

I like the book. And here’s why: She had my attention with this one quote:

How can they be expected to know how to tidy when they have never studied it properly? (11)

Now, ever mindful that what comes to your mind and mine when we read/hear the word, “tidy,” Kondo then explains the breadth and depth of that activity. Not merely shuffling items around giving the appearance of order and doing so incrementally and routinely, for Kondo, to “tidy” has some depth to our possessions and household, procedures to excavate that depth, and practices to manage the depth of the possessions. From the book and the tv series, it becomes apparent that to “tidy” takes many days. The outcomes are remarkable. A few extra thoughts follow here regarding the notion of “spark joy,” some really, really good critiques of Western perceptions of Asian spirituality as a function of Kondo’s presence, and finally: books. Perhaps that is the one issue that everyone is polarized over.

I condense Kondo’s discussion in her book (39-42) here, but for those who know me, I can hardly discuss her text without bringing in Margaret Archer’s original work on reflexivity. In brief, we use our internal conversation to take action in the world. And, that is what you’ll read in Kondo’s discussion on “spark joy”: She exercises her reflexivity to conclude,

“…that the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.” (41)

Now, a few fundamentalists reading this might think otherwise, viz., that Kondo is subtly promoting some version of Shintoism or other version of Japanese spirituality. Hardly. (More on that for a moment.) I would simply continue, that if we consider how contemporary advertising and marketing manifest themselves, often the appeal is to our senses and our emotions: and then the utility of the item/garment/mode of transportation/food, etc. Right? Sensory access leads to emotional activation: that is an informal statement, but also one that most of us would concur with when it comes to marketing. When I purchased/obtained this item, I likely did so because it sparked joy. Kondo is merely (ahem) coming up from the other side of that economic transaction and raising the question: Do I still have joy from this object?

Let me address everyone on the spirituality matter by referring you to my colleague, Melissa Borja, and her excellent blog on Kondo and spirituality. This is totally the first and last word. She also calls upon my friend, Jane Iwamura, and her seminal book, Virtual Orientalism. Jane’s work is contemporary and historical, and will shake up how you view the presence of Asian actors in Western media, and both will contribute to how you perceive Asian religions, given most of you reading this will be Western educated, if not living in the West already… it is definitely worth your time to read Jane’s book.

Lastly, I simply disagree with Kondo’s recommendation that you keep yourself to “no more than 30 books”, although I’m having a hard time finding that citation in her book. There’s no anti-materialism here on her part; the critique on books simply doesn’t apply universally, and I’d say it’s a safe bet that Kondo would agree. The reaction of so many people tends to corroborate that books “spark joy”! Thus, we keep them, and re-read our books!

Kondo’s advice appears to be solid, and fruitful. I might update you sometime on how I take it up. Now aware and reading her book, I’m less likely to ignore her advice: there is an elegance to her experience and wisdom. And: it’s entirely possible I will deviate from her recommendations. We’ll see. I’d like to try it out starting with my clothing, per her recommendations.

There are other folks out there doing this decluttering thing; Becker is one of the minimalist crowd, and that is decidedly a strategy to reduce one’s possessions and material imprint on the world. Jay is another minimalist with some traction, as is Joyce Fung, M.D. I’ll leave you with a question or two: When I survey Amazon publications on the decluttering/minimalist topic, I find the preponderance of the authors are white men and women: Why? I’m not observing African Americans or Latin/x American authors. Why?

Happy 110th Birthday, Lesslie Newbigin!!!

Today would have been 110th birthday of Lesslie Newbigin. His life and ministry in the name of Jesus Christ informed all of his writings on theology, mission, church, and contemporary culture. As you’ll read below, much of what Newbigin penned continues in salience, and presages so much of what the church lives into at this very moment.

A few griefs observed…

Yesterday, a friend and colleague, Jen Huerta Ball fell asleep in Christ. Jen had a unique way of speaking the truth in love, an irrepressible joy of being known by Jesus, and a complete confidence that our humanity was involved in a long journey of transformation by the Word and Spirit. One might look across Facebook and read of the many tributes and expressions of grief from those whose lives were personally touched by Jen. I will add that when I first joined InterVarsity, I met Jen and Jon, and upon learning I was serving among international students, they instantly perceived the importance and dignity of me and of the service. I felt so loved: and I still do. And that embrace and understanding by Jen remained a constant thread in our infrequent meetings.

I’m not into folk religion, but my wife has oft commented, “2018 has really sucked.” She’s right. It’s been a hard year for a variety of family and friends; I will spare you the other sorrow-generating circumstances. In just this year alone, I’ve observed 3 men lose their wives: my father-in-law, a friend from the other side of the world, and now, Jon. I’ve watched and listened to these three men steward their wives, in varying measures, in the path of this life into the next. They are nothing if not heroic. They would demur at this point, but I will stick with my judgement.

And, for them, as is true for each of us, grief has a way of surprising us, of sneaking up, unveiling our memories, assisting us in that imperfect recall of life together. The loneliness that follows is the worst: but, I would not want my memory erased or lost.

I’ve noticed that grief can serve as the great reset button in our lives, and this is true for the three men. What I mean by “reset” is that who is important, and thus, complaining about them or anyone else, for that matter, gets resolved in a way that, first of all, recovers their humanity. To cavil, to practice the unnecessary pettiness, erodes the one being picky and the person in focus. Grief has a unique power to illuminate this characteristic and to redirect it into the constructive and right questioning of matters that lead into life.

My sense is that these men are on a vocation of grief; it is a calling that demonstrates the heart-rending power of grief to transform us, and collaborate with Jesus in ways that make us more human, and ready for a eternal-kind of life.

Remembering Well on Memorial Day

While browsing through Facebook this morning, I spotted a couple of posts that, well, took me by surprise once my feelings calmed down. One was from a high school friend regarding respect not given to a political leader of our country; the other was from a leader within the mission I serve within, asserting a split between preaching content and responsible concern for justice issues. And, today is in the USA, of course, Memorial Day; it’s the day in which remembering those women and men who died while in serving in the US military. It just now occurs to me, that such a day could be also be in effect for other nations. Those from the so-called West might be more familiar with Armistice Day (France; Nov 11) and with ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand; April 25). South Korea honors their military dead on June 6; Nigeria gives honor to theirs on January 25, to coincide with the conclusion of the civil war.

Returning to my friend, I was captivated by the kind of remembering taking place in the post. First, it was a recollection that graduating students from Notre Dame walked out when Vice President Mike Pence began his speech. My friend found this act from a year ago highly disrespectful. Much to my surprise, several other high school friends chimed in, although taking a more diplomatic resistance to the intent of the post. My initial thoughts were two-fold. One, while Pence shares a faith in Jesus Christ that most of the audience at the Notre Dame commencement holds, his enactment of his faith runs counter to Pope Francis and the historic corpus of Catholic social teaching. The refusal of the VP to welcome Syrian refugees is but one item of strong conflict with the church. The list of problems really could occupy this entire post. So, when my friend and others claim the graduates disrespected the VP, and that they hadn’t considered the consequences of their actions—and would likely do so in hindsight with remorse—I couldn’t help but wonder if my friend understood higher education and how our consciences often work. Two, I know faculty at Notre Dame. They saw the walkout coming before Pence was announced to the public; I suspect some privately rejoiced to see their former students both demonstrate independent thinking and embody their Catholic tradition with regard to the Gospel and justice.

Which brings me to the leader’s post. There was a weird split in the post, one that hearkens memory of how Pence both embraces the evangelical tradition but holds on to practices that sustain the power and privilege of whiteness. In brief, the post proposed the split between politics and preaching content. While affirming participation in efforts to confront and address injustice, the post claimed such would also ruin the testimony of Christians, merely in the taking of political sides. This kind of claim informs so much of the kind of preaching that omits anything thought of as political, so as to remain clear about “the message.”

A few of you reading this will recall that I have already conducted research on absence in preaching, and the kinds of causal efficacy these omissions in sermons exert upon a congregation. My initial study involved sermons in Southern California the Sunday immediately following the Charleston massacre at Mother Emanuel AME in 2015. What can be disclosed follows: It is as if a mass shooting in a church in North America never happened. This research is on a hiatus for now—still finishing my dissertation—but, since that horrific event, there have been other assassinations in churches, most notably the sad event in Sutherland Springs, TX.

As I mentioned above, the impulse of so much evangelical preaching involves a selective memory, so as to avoid any confusion of politics and the Gospel. This impulse has a social reflex within North American evangelicalism, and it routinely gets exercised so as to sustain whiteness. Thus, the preaching of “the message” becomes reduced to “receiving Christ”, assenting to his execution at Calvary, and, based upon an exclusive interpretation of the atonement, receiving the forgiveness of sins so as to secure entry into heaven. In large part, the preceding constitutes the bulk of evangelicalism.

Consequently, the rhetoric does not leave room for ethics, beyond “making a decision.” Which is weird, right? For example, it’s not as though Jesus ran to the front of the line, and pleaded with the centurions: “Hey, nail me up first!” Indeed, just a small moment of pause has lead more than one non-theologically trained reader to conclude: the religious authorities of the day conspired with the occupying military force colonizing the nation to execute the Nazarene for an imagined religious offense that failed to present as a capital crime. The Gospel message has always been intwined in politics: even before we have the New Testament. The real question, beyond “receiving Christ”, is: “What do you now do about this state of affairs in the world, now that you belong to Christ?” Surely, the 2017 graduating class of Notre Dame offer a partial and memorable answer to that question.

On a day in which memory is intended to renew our respect for those who died to secure our political freedoms: even Google has failed me. I cannot recall who said it, and so I paraphrase: “The Old Testament can be summarized by one word: ‘Remember’.” It occurs to me, that for those of us who place our faith in Jesus Christ, we do well to remember how Jesus and the prophets attempted to hold in tension the grace of God with allowing the logic of that same grace to penetrate our entire world. The risk of being misunderstood or confused will doggedly exist and cannot be reduced or minimized while actively living into this memory that pushes us into the future with God. Demands for respect and proposals for clarity are not inadmissible, insofar as such explicitly offer submission to the God of Israel, disclosed in Jesus, who gives us our salvation and invites us to remember that. Otherwise, these kinds of posts offer a politic that attempts to place itself in parallel to the reign of God, a politic that aims to generate a memory that is respectful and respectable. That is a version of remembering that we would all do well to reject.