Their Blood Cries Out to God

January 26, 2015
Filed under Ethics, History, Religious Studies, Theology

Reflections for Holocaust Remembrance Day

Not long after the beginning, Genesis tells us that there were two brothers. One killed the other. “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground’” (Gen. 4:10). This is the Lord’s response when the murderer denies knowing where his brother is and asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” We humans are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers; and yet we have been disowning and killing each other since the beginning.

On this day seventy years ago, the last prisoners were liberated from Auschwitz. On this day today, we commit to remembering the more than six million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others who were rejected and murdered by their fellow humans. Their blood still cries out to God from the ground.

Read More »

From Brother to Brother

January 19, 2015
Filed under Ethics, History, Humanities, Religious Studies, Spirituality, Theology

Gender, Sexuality, and Shared Human Responsibility (Communal Guilt Part 5 of 7)

Many people in the world face the persistent threat of sexual assault and see their career prospects diminished because of their gender, as a recent study shows. Some of these same individuals—but also many others—face ridicule and rejection because they find themselves attracted to people of the same gender. Some face similar treatment because they find themselves from a very early age alienated from their own bodies, understanding their gender identity to be other than their biological sex.

And then there is the rest of humanity. Some of us have the luxury of being able to ignore others’ struggles and to deny that gender and sexual identity define our lives in significant measure. Not all of us do ignore or deny their impact—and none of us should—but many can and some do. Straight, non-trans men, that’s us.

Ironically (and perhaps unfortunately), the cause of justice for women, including transwomen, for transmen, for gays, and for those who reject traditional binary definitions of gender and/or sexuality, depends in part measure on us.

I am not advocating the idea that women need men more than men need women. Neither am I proposing an androcentric noblesse oblige. Rather, I am drawing attention to the facts that those who are straight, non-trans, and male have been among the greatest perpetrators of injustice against those who are not, and that those of us who are not perpetrators are too often silent. People need people, and humanity needs all the people—or at least the vast majority of the people—to be on board with solving its most pressing issues. Issues of justice relating to gender and sexuality are no different.

You do not even need to believe that non-traditional approaches to gender and sexuality are moral to recognize that you and people like you, including your faith community, have been complicit in failing to love all people and love them well.

Read More »

A Threat to One of Us is a Threat to All of Us

December 4, 2014
Filed under Ethics, History, Theology

Genocide and Shared Human Responsibility (Communal Guilt Part 4 of 7)

Few of humanity’s transgressions seem as weighty as genocide. The average American high school student knows this, if they have paid any attention at all. Some see Schindler’s List or excerpts of The Holocaust miniseries. Many read Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, or Maus. The Holocaust looms large.

A focus on the Holocaust risks endowing it with a sense of uniqueness. Yes, it was unique in its scale, intensity, and efficiency; but genocides had happened before and they have continued to happen since. We must not teach with depth at the expense of breadth, lest students falsely assume that genocide is either a phenomenon of the past or will remain perpetually someone else’s problem.

Read More »

Your People Are My People

November 28, 2014
Filed under Autobiographical Reflections, Ethics, History, Theology

Race, Racism, and Shared Human Responsibility (Communal Guilt Part 3 of 7)

“What are you?” sometimes strangers and new acquaintances ask me, whether obliquely or directly. I have come to learn that this is short-hand for “What race/ethnicity box(es) do you check?” The racial categories on current U.S. census forms are more complex than they ever have been, yet they remain simplistic. (See a helpful article here. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/14/u-s-census-looking-at-big-changes-in-how-it-asks-about-race-and-ethnicity/ ) “Black, African-American, or Negro” stands in contrast to the deceptively straightforward appearing “White.” Citizens of Asian ancestry have six boxes to possibly check, along with an “Other Asian” fill-in blank. By contrast, Arab- and Persian-Americans have no obvious option (“Other”? “White”?), leading to controversy within their respective communities (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/01/census.check.it.right.campaign/ ).

The history leading up to these designations is serpentine and rife with contradictions (whether to count “Latino” as a race or as something else, for example). Until relatively recently, the forms also required respondents to check one box and one box only, implying that racial categories are mutually exclusive, in fact a long-standing attitude in the U.S. and elsewhere, especially regarding the purity of whiteness.

Read More »

Unoriginal Sin

November 18, 2014
Filed under Ethics, Theology

The Conceptual Foundations of Shared Human Responsibility (Communal Guilt Part 2 of 7)

Non-individualistic understandings of guilt are fundamental to both Judaism and Christianity. This is part of what makes both religions as counter-cultural today as they ever have been. Yet often the worldviews of particular Jewish and Christian individuals are more defined by their respective cultures than by the religions they profess to embrace. For many, it is not evident that we should be our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers.

Read More »

Concepts of Collective Guilt

November 12, 2014
Filed under Autobiographical Reflections, Ethics

The Benefits and Limits (Communal Guilt Part 1 of 7)

We in the West often fail to think in terms of “we.” Individualism has defined the post-Enlightenment European experience and, perhaps to an even greater extent, the U.S. American experience. By “individualism” I mean a pervasive perspective of the world in which personal autonomy is the ultimate good; each individual can and should define for themselves what is right and even what is true, every woman for herself, every man for himself.

There is so little middle ground in American political life in large measure not merely because of seemingly irreconcilable positions but because of a shared commitment to individualism. The moral individualism on the Left stands in a perpetual stand-off with the socio-economic individualism of the Right.

Read More »

The Paradox of Christian Nationalism

November 6, 2014
Filed under Theology

An American Blind Spot

I would like to make explicit what seems evident to many Christians elsewhere in the world: Christianity and nationalism are incompatible.

For the purposes of this essay, I define Christianity as the beliefs and practices of those who claim to follow Jesus and his teachings, and nationalism as any ideology that elevates the welfare of one nation (usually one’s own) over all others. I recognize that this definition of Christianity is broad to the point of risking being vague, and simple to the point of being simplistic.

While I do not wish to reduce Christianity to the teachings of Jesus and Paul, I think it is helpful to note two conflicting realities. On the one hand, the teachings of these two foundational thinkers of Christianity stand at odds with nationalism. On the other hand, some of the most reductionist (Christianity = Jesus + Paul) Christians in the U.S. have been among the most nationalistic.

What follows is not a critique of Christianity, much less a well-rounded analysis of it, but rather a critique of the nationalistic variety.

Read More »

Queuing Up Your Thoughts

October 21, 2014
Filed under Technology, Writing

Hootsuite for Academic Bloggers

If you blog and you are an academic, like I do, you probably go through periods of feast and famine in terms of your time for producing your online writing. If only there were a way for you to store up a wealth of writing and automate its dispersal online!

That is the precise thing that Hootsuite is designed to do. The social media manager allows you to schedule tweets, facebook posts, and just about anything else you might need. When you link your Hootsuite account to your Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media accounts, Hootsuite can coordinate and schedule all of your posts on those accounts.

Read More »

Sometimes Seeing Clearly Means Knowing When to Look Away

October 17, 2014
Filed under Autobiographical Reflections, History, Humanities, Religious Studies

Grasping the Horrors of the Holocaust is a Struggle. It Ought to Be.

As a Ph.D. student, I spent the better part of three years researching the Holocaust and its legacy. While I focused on the response of a group of Protestant nuns living in its aftermath, my research was broad enough that it spanned both the poetry and theology of Jewish survivors, as well as the propaganda of those who promoted and committed it. For example, I read Mein Kampf and I loathed it, but I do not regret it. One cannot understand humanity without understanding the depths of human evil. At the same time, one can only understand the potential height of faith and hope by learning from those who confronted such senseless hate first-hand. Convinced of this necessity, I have continued to explore the theological legacy of the Holocaust and its emotional toll on the survivors and their families.

Yet sometimes the weight is more than I feel I can bear. And so it is that for the second time I will be presenting on religion and science-fiction at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Neither my initial presentation nor my latest one has had anything to do with the Holocaust. When one of the staff members at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum asked me if I would consider applying for a research fellowship, I answered, “I want to… but not yet. Sometimes part of seeing clearly is knowing when to look away.”

Read More »

“Never Forget” Means “Never Again”

October 11, 2014
Filed under History

The Continued Relevance of the Holocaust

The rallying cry of the survivors of the Holocaust has been “never forget.” This is not an exhortation to live in the past. Never forgetting implies action in the present. “Never forget” implies “never again” and a commitment to undertake whatever actions are necessary to that end.

We must keep our eyes open to the genocides and potential genocides happening in the world around us. Rwanda wasn’t that long ago. Kurdish populations are perpetually under threat in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. And the persecution of Christians throughout the Middle East is often paired with ethnicity as a category for exclusion and extermination. This is not new, although with the ascendance of ISIS, the threat is more acute than ever.

Read More »