On Tuesday July 31st, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions Announced the formation of a “Religious Liberty Task Force.”
Many Christians unquestioningly celebrate this occasion.
However, I think there exists a more insidious concession implicit within such a claim.
There has been a lot of talk about the word Evangelical. In today’s culture, Evangelical and Evangelicalism have become associated with the far right and Donald Trump. It does not matter where you land on this issue, but it is in fact the case in the United States of America. I am not interested in saving this term. However, I am very interested in “Evangel” or Good News. What is ultimately at stake in Sessions task force is our ability to understand what it means to say that Christians proclaim good news.
For many, a space of free expression granted by the government is the predominant way that Evangelism can take place. Such a stance is historically untenable. However, embedded within that assumption is yet another assumption, namely power. Only when power is given can Evangelism happens.
Take for example the case of Kim Davis. Davis in her public office refused to discharge marriage licenses to members of the LGBTQIA+ community. She claimed that such an act would violate her Christian conscience. There were many ways that she could have exercised this conviction (such as resigning), but she believed that the best means to express her conscience is a flat refusal to discharge her duty. The interesting piece to this conviction is not her conscience, but that she believed that this conscience should be recognized as valid and secured by the government. This is more than a freedom of religion, but rather state supported religion. This is one way to interpret freedom of religion. However, much more is evident here. Davis wants her conscience to not only be placed on equal footing, but to dominate. She desires that her conscience be imposed by force. So not only does Davis desire that her conscience be recognize as valid, but it must be recognized as exclusively valid. As such, Davis envisions Evangelism as an exercise in coercion.
The questions raised by the task force and the Religious Liberty task force are: How does one witness to Christian truth? What does it mean for Christian news to be good?
Before I begin, let me first highlight that I draw heavily on two essays by a much maligned theologian John Howard Yoder. “On Not Being in Charge” and “On Not Being Ashamed of the Gospel”. (Biographical data below) I understand that his actions are morally reprehensible. I only use him to address this very specific political situation.
Christian misunderstanding of Evangelical arises from two errors: validity and security.
As Yoder begins his essay on the particular truth claim of “Good News” he notes that Christians often long for a validation of their truth claims. (Yoder, 1992, 289) The point here is that all humans crave for their way of knowing the world to be THE way of knowing the world.
This is quite separate from the desire for the world to know Christ, but we will get to that later.
The essence of the this desire is that we not only want to be credible, but that we want people”to have to believe us.” (Yoder, 1992, 287) This is most clear in the temptation toward fundamentalism, namely the move toward self-evident interpretations of Scripture that are not subject to criticisms of any kind. Usually these appeals lie in certain privileged texts that need no hermeneutic, textual locating, or broader narrative explanation. (i.e. Romans 13:1-7; Matthew 10:34; Matthew 11:12; etc) So validity seeks a publicly available criteria that subjects Christian claims to inscrutability. Popular Christianity often cannot admit that the claims it makes are, as all traditions, limited by the community to which they belong.
Despite this, the truth claim of Christianity, namely Good News, is more than just a “whim” or “bias.” (Yoder, 1992, 290) Therefore, the claims of the gospel, its Good News, arises in particularity rather than in its absence. Since the news Christianity proclaims is “good” then it must arise from a certain setting and is able to be communicated into such a setting. Without these, the Good News ceases to be news. (Yoder, 1992, 290-1)
Now here is where the task of validity intersects with the potential risk of the “Religious Liberty Task Force” for sharing the Good News. The issue is that when Christian claims are viewed under the alternative rubric of “liberty” or “rights” then it starts to redefine itself according to an alien logic. The Good News becomes a possession, namely that which is mine over and against that which is yours. Davis illustrates this well.
This begins to speak to our second error (i.e. security). However, before we approach this second error we must complete the first.
The issue of “distilling” the Good News into the language of “liberty” and “right” is that these are publicly verifiable criteria arising from a constitutional order that subject the authority of the gospel to the authority of the constitution. Such a process contorts the gospel so that it can no longer be communicated. In short, it ceases to be “news.” Universal criteria lose the identifier of news because it presents nothing new. There is no sharing in this intellectual map, there is only an authorization for each to possess. Such an authorization mutes the radical claims of the gospel in a broader rubric of intelligibility that requires state sponsored violence in order to secure it and as such it can no longer be good.
Such a mapping of Good News must be overturned. Instead of insisting on a universal, shared experience or a possession the communicability must “submit” to the needs of its particularity, namely its neighbors, city, and communities. The gospel’s public nature is not found in a criteria of validity, but in its ability to be in public amongst a variety of narratives.
*Here I want to point out the reader, I am critiquing most directly a certain issue of the task force, namely the white hegemonic grasp that utilizes the gospel as a means to dominate, exploit, and rule. I reject any use of submission colonial and binding that preserves the dialectic between master and slave.*
Therefore, what makes the news “good” is its radical inclusivity. It is, for lack of a better phrase, for everyone. It must embody and communicate in all things a radical hospitality to its hearers and viewers. It does not seek a shared criteria of validation secured by a legal apparatus or task force. Rather, the Christian community receives itself the particular story of Christ. Yet it is not sectarian, it is not private. This message must be told and lived publicly among neighbors. To quote Yoder,
“The ‘news’ is not public only in a formal sense: its substance as well is of the ordinary world, not mysterious. Jesus announces in God’s name that new way of handling money, power, status, and enemies – all public, political agenda – will henceforth be possible and will be demanded because God’s rule is now real…The news is about a man leading a social movement, out in the open, which so threatens the authorities that he is killed.” (Yoder, 1992, 292-3)
Thus, the one who communicates Good News does not desire to establish one’s place at the table among the elite in a shared criteria, but rather one who accepts rejection. Crucifixion is a path not traveled by a “Religious Liberty Task Force”. The desire to seek validation and a shared criteria, in short a right or liberty, thus treats the Good News as a mere commodity among others to be possessed and kept. Rather, Good News lives among neighbors and communicates to them AS neighbors in solidarity with their need knowing full well the news might be rejected. The sins of the task force and Davis are that they cannot accept rejection.
The second error previously gestured to and now named explicitly is security.
The great insight is that good news cannot be demanded by coercion. If the Good News must be “imposed” then it is “null.” (Yoder, 1992, 292) Coercion can take many forms: epistemic, biopolitical, etc. All of these coercions force “uniformity” where Good News, by risking its own rejection, embraces diversity. It must demythologize claims to speak for all of humanity. Thus, Good News stitches together a tapestry of diverse people. Not in order to assimilate, but in ekklesia, namely that which is a body of diverse members all one in Christ.
As Yoder writes,
“The urge to resist this diversity arises from the singular vision of validity. My way must be the way to see the world, which denies just how particular vision operates. The validity that searches for a shared vision to the point of dilution is one that has already argued it knows the meaning and direction history should take.” (Yoder, 1996, 74)
It seems this quote names the U.S. need for security, but also begs another question: what is the “American” way of seeing the world? It is clear that this question should be conditioned by the historical examples of violence that have been deployed for the protection of an American way. In various times and places, segregation, genocide, slavery, etc have all been used as a means to preserve an “American” way. Thus, it is a preservation of whiteness that we can assume is given historical privilege. The term “religious” is but another means to preserve this. The good news, as illustrated above, is not primarily about being in charge. Therefore, this urge comes from some other impulse.
The desire to have a task force or greater Christian influence in the public sphere by means of a shared criteria must end. This is not synonymous with saying Christians cannot share good news. Rather, it means that Christians must embrace an elegance expressed by Jesus in his message of Good News that not only included the tax collector and prostitutes but even went as far as to say that they would enter the kingdom of heaven before the religious elite. (Matthew 21:31) The gospel is free and public because it is free to be with all people.
As Yoder writes,
“The challenge to the faith community should not be to dilute or filter or translate its witness, so that the ‘public’ community can handle it without believing, but so to purify and clarify and exemplify it that the world can perceive it to be good news without having to learn a foreign language.” (Yoder, 1997, 24)
Such a gospel rejects security and validity as necessary for its proclamation and witness.
Yoder, John H.“Firstfruits: The Paradigmatic Public Role of God’s People,” For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public, 15–36. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. 1997.
Yoder, John H. “On Not Being Ashamed of the Gospel: Particularity, Pluralism, and Validation,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers. Vol. 9. No. 3 (1992) 285–300.
Yoder, John H. “On Not Being in Charge,” War and its Discontents: Pacifism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Traditions. Ed. J. Patout Burns. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 1996.
