A few correspondents have asked me what I think of the new “Evangelical Manifesto,” recently released by a group of evangelical leaders (including—full disclosure—some friends of mine).
Another friend, Prof. Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College, grumps in the Wall Street Journal about how boringly moderate it is, among other sins. But let’s just see if that’s such a bad thing.
The nice people at Merriam-Webster tell us that “manifesto” means “a public declaration of intentions, motives, or views: a public statement of policy or opinion.” Jacobs wants the writing to be “punchy” and the document to be “short,” although he recalls that the most famous manifesto ever, the communist one, amounts to a small book.
Still, this one is twenty pages, and when I read it, I wondered why anyone would care what I thought about it. It strikes me as completely sensible, moderate, intelligent, a bit wordy here and there, and kinda dull.
And isn’t that a pleasant change!
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In this last post, I’d like to reflect on how Richard Dawkins unwittingly and certainly unwillingly helps the Christian Church, as well as the other theists he so energetically opposes.
In particular, he helps us by showing us how some of us sound to people such as he, as well as to others who also do not share our premises. I was struck as Dawkins spoke at how similar was his style to that of many Christian apologists and preachers I have encountered/endured through the years.
For instance, he presented major issues in a simplistic fashion only to dispatch them with breathtaking swiftness. Here’s one example.
Dawkins averred that theism is patently contradictory. A God who can see the future with certainty (because of omniscience) thus is powerless to do anything other than what he foresees himself doing, thus compromising his omnipotence. Voilà! Theism is incoherent!
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Richard Dawkins has traveled the world, sowing his particular gospel of atheism, science, rational argument, and the courage to live in the light of The Facts.
He has appeared before countless audiences, participated in dozens of debates, and handled hundreds of questioners. But he seemed surprised, even nonplussed, by the line of questioning he received from several members of the UBC audience who patiently lined up to press him on . . . vegetarianism.
By the time Dawkins encountered the third such questioner, he was moved to wonder aloud whether he was encountering some sort of “lobby.” No, just the West Coast.
Yet this particular issue presented an intriguing window into Dawkins that had not been provided in his presentation. For his presentation was mostly offensive, in the sense of attacking positions he disliked, rather than defensive, in the sense of offering cogent reasons for adopting his own life philosophy. (His presentation was also at times astonishingly offensive in the other sense, but more about that in my third post.)
Being pressed about vegetarianism, then, we got to see Richard Dawkins construct and defend some ethics. And what a ramshackle thing he produced!
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Richard Dawkins at UBC: Part One, Dawkins as Rhetor
April 29, 2008
So someone at the University of British Columbia (UBC) decided it was a good idea to bring Richard Dawkins to campus to give a free public lecture. Fair enough. He’s an academic celebrity and there are precious few of those.
The two (two!) professors who introduced him, however, introduced him as someone who could impressively relate the humanities and the sciences. That claim deserves a little scrutiny.
Lots of people have analyzed and criticized Dawkins’s arguments over the years. Indeed, there are whole forests’ worth of books now in print responding to one or another of his anti-theism volumes. And who can count the number of phosphors employed similarly in the blogosphere?
What I will do over the next three posts is to offer what I hope will be some observations that complement these direct engagements with this ideas, and I will do so indeed from the perspective of the humanities.
Let’s begin with one of the most ancient of the liberal arts and consider Dawkins as Rhetor, as orator, as public speaker.
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Jesus, Muhammad, a Sudanese Teddy Bear, Irshad Manji, and Me
December 27, 2007
Irshad Manji, a Canadian activist who cajoles and confronts her fellow Muslims from the theological left of Islam, recently asked some of her acquaintances what we thought of a case in the Sudan that received international attention.
An English teacher in that country invited her 7-year-old students to name their class teddy bear. The overwhelming choice was “Muhammad,” so they were then all sent home with assignments regarding their mascot.
But a staffer at the school complained that the 54-year-old teacher, Gillian Gibbons, intended to insult the Prophet. Charges were laid, Ms. Gibbons was put in prison and threatened with flogging, she was tried and found guilty, and then Sudan’s president pardoned her after considerable diplomacy at a high level and angry demonstrations on street level. (Read about it here.)
Ms. Manji, now living in New York, got into a vigorous discussion with a Sudanese cab driver about it all. (Vigorous discussions are Irshad’s stock in trade!) She blogged about it, and asked a few of us for some responses–especially asking the interesting Christmastime question, “What would Jesus do?”
I replied instead to the related question of “What would Jesus have me do?” and Irshad excerpted a bit of my answer on her blog. As for what Jesus would have done if he had been on site in Sudan, well, here are some thoughts on that question, also.
Why I Signed the Yale Response to “A Common Word”
December 20, 2007
Over the last few weeks, various Christians have contacted me because they are troubled over encountering my name amidst dozens of other signatories listed in a recent New York Times advertisement as supporting a public statement of support for a recent document from moderate Muslims, “A Common Word between Us and You.” (I’m glad to say that others have contacted me to express their appreciation that I did sign it.) The statement of support, entitled “Loving God and Neighbour Together,” was drafted by several professors at Yale Divinity School, including my friend Miroslav Volf, founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology.
(For all of the relevant documents, see the pertinent press releases and links here.)
It was Miroslav who e-mailed me to ask if I’d like to sign the statement for the NYT publication. I read the original Muslim statement and the Yale response, and didn’t sign right away. I was concerned that differences between the faiths, particularly about the divinity of Christ and God’s triune nature, were not as clearly set out in either statement as I would have preferred. Had I drafted the statement myself, I would have made changes elsewhere as well.
But I wasn’t being asked to help draft it. The thing was done, and the question now was a simple, binary one: Sign or not?
To D. A. Carson on the Emerging Church: Leave Me Out of It
November 1, 2007
A couple of years ago, a few students brought to my attention the fact that D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago, had quoted me in his book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Zondervan, 2005).
They each came to me, and several people have since approached me during speaking engagements around North America, because Carson uses something I wrote to illustrate something he doesn’t like about the emerging church. This use has puzzled each of my inquirers for the same two reasons: (1) they didn’t know I had anything to do with the emerging church and (2) they didn’t think that Carson construed properly what I wrote.
So I retrieved a copy from our library, looked up my name, and behold, on page 66, there I am.
Why John Tory Is Right–and Wrong–about Religious Schools
September 28, 2007
The great province of Ontario, Canada’s richest and most populous, is in the throes of an election. As many Canadians know, one of the hottest issues in that election is the promise of Conservative leader John Tory to consider funding religious elementary and secondary schools in that province.
As a native of Ontario, a product of its public school (and university) system, and one with some interest in questions of church and state, I’ll offer my full support for John Tory—and my full disagreement with him.
First, then, my support. Tory argues that if the government of Ontario ought to support a Roman Catholic separate school system, as it has for a long time, then it should support other religiously-based schools. It makes no sense in 2007 to continue to cater to the preferences of what used to be the largest religious minority in Ontario without offering similar support to others.
I was preparing this morning for my fourth interview on the life of Jerry Falwell when I thought I’d look into the strange case of his taking on the Teletubbies. This was a man, after all, who took on pretty big foes: Bob Guccione and Penthouse, Larry Flynt and Hustler, the liberal news media, the Democratic Party….
So what was he doing “outing” Tinky Winky?
Almost every article I looked at this week mentioned Falwell going after Tinky Winky, the purple, “magic-bag”-toting Teletubby as a covert normalization of homosexuality among the preschool set. And how risible everyone seemed to find it: Jerry Falwell attacking a cartoon character who couldn’t possibly be taken seriously as a symbol of gay pride.
–Except that Falwell was right.
Belligerent, Bullying Believers: Spite, not the Spirit
January 30, 2007
Recently, the polymathic Susan Wise Bauer wrote generously about my book, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender (Baker Academic, 2005) in the fine magazine, Books & Culture. (Full disclosure: I happen to be a contributing editor to said journal.)
She begins, however, by testifying to the oh-so-concerned correspondence she has received by those who stand with her regarding such issues as Christian home schooling, but who are also aghast at her endorsement of Biblical feminism. These folks don’t just disagree with Ms. Wise Bauer and her opinion: They see her and it as dangerous and warn others, as well as her, against the spiritual peril she poses.
