I am a big fan of the Christmas season. I like the wacky Santa
Clauses, kitschy baby Jesus displays, and constant ringing of carols in
stores. The variety of Christmas music is a joy; I am a big fan of
Brave Combo’s “It’s Christmas, Man,” and Charles Brown signing “Merry
Christmas Baby,” to just name a few. It’s neat the way Christmas has
become a common cultural holiday, more than a religious one. I recently
returned from a trip to the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. In honor of
the season, many members of the Native American Church there will be
holding celebrations in their traditional structures with all-night
drumming and chanting sessions fueled by peyote. Meanwhile, a Dutch gay
group is having a “Pink Christmas” featuring a nativity scene with two
Marys and two Josephs.
Goodwill and good cheer often seem universally infectious during
this season, at least in most years. Wholesome personal and family
traditions get established, strengthening bonds and community, even if
the religious trappings are completely ignored. That is the stealthy
message of Christmas; it pushes us all to interact harmoniously with
our fellow humans. We all surely need more of that.
But beneath these trappings, contradictions between Christianity and
larger society lurk. One, of course, is the dispute between the
Christian community and those supporting gay and lesbian rights.
According to a poll released this month by the Public Policy Institute
of California, the ban on gay marriage in Proposition 8 received its
strongest support from evangelical Christians. Within the Christian
community, 85 percent of evangelicals supported the ban, along with 66
percent of others who call themselves Protestants and 60 percent of
Roman Catholics. These results have to be disheartening to liberal
Christians in the Bay Area, but certainly they are not surprising. In
fact, these results are but a reflection of the culture war within
Christianity itself, which has moved front and center in today’s
politics through issues such as Proposition 8.
On one side are those who could be called “Sermon on the Mount”
Christians. President-elect Obama has cited this Sermon on the Mount,
which contains the “turn the other cheek” language and a version of the
Golden Rule, in his support for gay rights — although not gay
marriage. On the other side of this chasm are those who have a vision
of Christianity based on the death of Jesus and the redemptive effect
of that crucifixion on the world today. You might call them the “With
God on my side,” Christians. Their vision is a harsher version of
Christianity, seeing the death of Jesus as a self-sacrificing love that
should be followed in order to reach an other-worldly heaven in the
afterlife. This view of Christianity is embraced not only by
conservatives such as George W. Bush and James Dobson of Focus on the
Family, but also by some surprising figures. For instance, the letters
of Mother Theresa reveal that she believed that one must sacrifice
one’s self to truly live as a Christian. Pain, she wrote, is “the kiss
of Jesus.”
Such divisions may seem esoteric and of little value to many,
especially in a country that is becoming more diverse each day. Yet we
remain a culturally Christian nation. The individual moral codes of
most of us — even many atheists — resemble the principles
laid out in the Ten Commandments.
Stepping into this dispute, in a book published earlier this year,
are two progressive East Bay theologians, Rita Brock, director of Faith
Voices for the Common Good, and Rebecca Parker, the president of Starr
King School for the Ministry in Berkeley. In their book Saving
Paradise, Brock and Parker work a little historical anthropology to
argue that around 1000 A.D., Christianity made a fateful turn away from
being focused on a love of this world and the seeking of paradise on
earth to a focus on crucifixion, violence, and a taste for empire.
Their ultimate aim in Saving Paradise is the rediscovery of
humanistic roots in Christianity. Trying to penetrate debates about the
“true meaning” of any religion is difficult; trying to understand what
religion teaches about how to live in the world is hard as well. That
the three Abrahamic religions — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
— are engaged in a violent global version of the Ultimate
Fighting Championship while jointly embracing many similar sacred
scriptures is mind-boggling.
In their combination travelogue and intellectual history, Brock and
Parker criss-crossed Europe looking for images of Jesus in early
churches. What they found is that, for the first thousand years after
Christ’s death, his life and death were used to promote a vision of an
earthly paradise. Their argument fits in with recent historical
scholarship arguing that Jesus was a Middle Eastern revolutionary,
leading people who were looking to escape the difficulties of life in
the Roman Empire. This is important for Brock and Parker as they argue
that these facts conflict with the version of Christ’s death that, as
Parker has written, “places victims of violence in harm’s way and
absolves perpetrators of their responsibility for unethical behavior.”
The villain of their historical whodunnit is Charlemagne, who
originated the idea that killing for Christianity was a noble act, thus
making the religion a “colonizing tool.”
Brock and Parker believe the cross and the crucifixion are the
theological props for this view, a mistake we still suffer from today.
And they are not the only high-profile Christians to challenge the
image of the cross. Noted black theologian James Cone, who praises
Saving Paradise on its book jacket, has argued that the cross served a
purpose similar to the lynching tree in the American South.
Crucifixion-centered Christianity has justified war and colonization,
counseled people to accept abuse they should resist, and glorified
pain, he believes. While criticizing Christians who do not do enough to
combat racism, Cone argues that both the cross and the lynching tree’s
purpose was to establish dominance through terror and murder, silencing
dissent and fortifying martial control. Think about this when you see
the cross in the nativity scenes.
The goal of Brock and Parker is to restore the idea of earthly
paradise to its rightful place at the center of Christian thought and
to redirect thoughts to making life better here and now. I like this
approach and I think it is an appropriate way to think about
Christmas.
Happy Holidays.
