Fragile Anxiety

We, American evangelicals, have had our theological imaginations colonized.

We, American evangelical Christians, have had our theological imaginations colonized.

The Jesus story we hear, read, and teach has been shaped by western-white-male notions of reality. Throughout the course of history, Euro-American male identity became the locus of interpretation and meaning. There are instances where this is easy to name and an obvious misrepresentation. I.e. German artists and theologians in the Third Reich explicitly depicted Jesus as a blonde hair blue eyed German and in Utah, where I live, it’s honestly pretty tough to tell the difference between Jedi Ewan McGregor and a portrait of the Messiah. But, in other ways the colonization of our theological imagination is far more inconspicuous; layered under 500 years of history, academia, preaching, podcasting, and writing. We don’t notice it, don’t know to question it, because it’s the water in which we swim.

As theologian Willie Jennings says,

“The Christian theological imagination was woven into the process of colonial dominance. Other peoples and their ways of life had to adapt, become fluid, even morph into the colonial order of things, and such a situation drew Christianity and it’s theologians inside habits of mind and that life that internalized and normalized that order of things.”[1]

That doesn’t demean the contribution western theologians have made to our understanding of faith. I am a product of the protestant reformation, grateful for its insistence on the individual accessibility of Scripture, the effectual power of grace, and the democratization of pastoral responsibility. But at the same time our theological imagination has been cut small and with it our understanding of the world, the kingdom, and the work of Jesus.

There are so many ways our colonized imagination shapes our theology but let’s begin at the beginning, with how we read.

The Search For Truth

The sixteenth century was a violent period in western history. Religious wars sparked by the Protestant Reformation dominated the European landscape; dividing nations, destabilizing political systems, and upending life for millions.

As Catholics and Protestants waged war over religious distinctions. The west began to wonder, how do we determine what is true? If two groups, operating from similar source material (the Bible) can come to such different conclusions how can we know anything for certain?

Enter Descartes, who, frustrated with the uncertainty and anxiety of his world, hypothesized that we could think our way into objective truth. But to get objective we needed to dispense with the subjective; experiences, tradition, and culture. Those were outside influences that couldn’t be trusted. Truth needs to be “insulated” from external experiences — like in a lab — within ourselves.

I think therefore I am.

Meaning that me, my brain, and my rational become the means through which I determine truth. I do not need to rely on popes, pastors, or the collective wisdom of my tradition, I can know the truth alone.

But how do I, myself, determine truth?

I apply the scientific method, do empirical research, and test my hypothesis. In our fit to ward off anxiety and find certainty we applied empiricism and the scientific method to EVERYTHING, including religious truth. If the wars of the 16th century were a result of subjective religious bickering than the solution would be a method of discovering objective religious truth.

Thus, emerges historical criticism, an attempt to apply scientific tools to the study of the Bible. I.e. if we can understand historical contexts, original languages, grammar, and syntax than we can understand the text objectively and systemize its teachings (systematic theology) into concrete and universal truths.

I have a master's in historical-critical research and am so grateful for its contribution to my faith. However, the problem is, OUR historical-critical approach became the ULTIMATE measure of truth. As Brian Blount writes,

“Scientifically objective methods of exegesis must be put in place to ward off the influence of a reader’s experience. And so they were. The problem was that the methods of themselves came out of the Euro-American experience. The methods did not control the experience; they were a part of the experience. And so methodological study of the bible became, in essence, an exercise in reading the Bible through a Euro-American lens.”[2]

Maybe you’re wondering what the big deal is, “We’ve been operating from this framework for over 500 years, seems to be working alright.”

The problem is, we cannot dis-embed ourselves from our culture and in our search for certainty, we centered western-male (experience) as the ultimate moral authority.

To illustrate this, here are two examples:

Identity

During the enlightenment, European men established a “new organizing reality of the world — themselves.”[3] Technological development, social systems, and scientific discoveries all became reflexive measures that God had centered the west in all of history. It was our “birth rite” our “divine calling” to lead, conquer, and colonize.

Our “manifest destiny.”

What happens when Christianity is positioned within European identity? It takes on western markers:

• It became theologically systematic (scientific method) in the tradition of western pedagogy (i.e. education). When western missionaries traveled to the New World they attempted to “teach” theology in western style. When indigenous communities rejected western pedagogy they were labeled “savages” and “barbarians.”
• It was culturally western. “True” Christianity looked like the west. All across the new world, Christian boarding schools were set up to “re-educate” indigenous communities. The goal was to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Missionaries never even paused to consider the value of indigenous cultures. Why would they? Western truth was universal and certain.
• It was white, the Euro-American male body became the “compass marking divine election”[4] to the exclusion of other bodies.

Bifurcated Reality

The enlightenment bifurcated spiritual and material realities rendering spiritual truth immaterial and internal (personal)­­ — religious vs. secular. The good news of the Jesus story was reduced to moral truths (religious) with little bearing on the natural world or human society (secular). In some ways, this reduced religious influence on politics but at the cost of investing ultimate social authority in the state. You win some you really lose others.

The Jesus story became about spiritual good news for the individual not material good news for the world. We still do this, we express the ultimate hope of the Jesus story as a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Though beautiful, this is a reduction of the cosmic, new-creation, injustice upending story of the Bible.

Political theologian William Cavanaugh describes this writing,

The religious/secular distinction is a modern Western construction that arose as an adjunct to the rise of modern state and the triumph of the civil over ecclesiastical authorities in early modern Europe… religion came to be an essential interior impulse… essentially distinct from the ‘secular’ pursuits such as politics, economics, and the like.[5]

This spiritual story is convenient if you sit in a position of power over and against others. Enslaved peoples were regularly taught a reduced Jesus story to pacify revolutionary impulses. It would be dangerous to the continuity of white male power if news got out that Jesus, a racialized minority, identified with the marginalized, and was lynched by the state for inaugurating a kingdom of justice and equity.

Fragile Anxiety

The great irony of enlightenment confidence is that it’s a shallow lie to mask male anxiety with pretensions of control. Hidden, under our righteous certainty, is fear. Disguised, within our cool rationalism, is a gnawing anxiety. I think this is one of the reasons it is so difficult to challenge our theological traditions. Doing so triggers a fragile anxiety which leads to ever more desperate gambles for control and certainty.

De-Colonizing

How do we begin de-colonizing our theological imagination?

De-colonize your theological library — who are you reading and where are they coming from? The Christian tradition is deeper and wider than white evangelical theologians. If the only theologian you know is Wayne Grudem, you have a colonized imagination. You need this, reading outside of white evangelism and Euro-American experiences will transform your vision of the Jesus story in ways that will lead you into a deeper and more robust imagination.

De-center you experience — the Bible is “for you” but it was not written to you. It was written to, primarily, poor and marginalized communities who were attempting to navigate the forces of domineering empires. Additionally, the Jesus story wasn’t written for individuals, it was written to and for communities. As you read, ask yourself new interpretive questions:

• How can I understand this from a different perspective?
• How might this message have been received by early Christians who were gathering around a table with Roman citizens, Jewish Christians, and even slaves?
• How might this have sounded to Israel, who received these words while exiled and enslaved in Babylon?
• What does this mean for a people, not a person? What does this mean for the world we find ourselves in?

Discern truth with others — religious truth is discerned collectively not decided empirically. Read the Jesus story in community, while asking questions about your current cultural moment, in dialogue with your tradition. Theologian Letty Russel describes this as round table talk, writing,

“round table talk is designed to talk back to tradition. It is often ‘talking back’ in the sense used by bell hooks, of claiming a voice at the center of the church as an interpreter of what it means to follow Christ in contemporary society.”[6]

All of us have a theological tradition that we can be both grateful to and skeptical of, especially when it claims dogmatic certainty.

Dislodge your need for control — Trust that God is at work; sustaining, revealing, and extending the Jesus story throughout culture and time. We have to dispense with our need for certainty and dislodge the myth that we can manage anxiety with control. We can’t. And when we try to, we get caught in a cycle of ever-increasing anxiety that necessitates greater control. This cycle severs trust and hinders our ability to discern with others around the table.

Questioning our tradition isn’t a weakness of faith but a testament to the enduring power of the Jesus story to speak hope and life across time and space.

Books to Read:

Rescuing the Gospel from The Cowboys by Richard Twiss

Unsettling Truths by Mark Charles & Soong Chan Rah

Church in the Round by Letty Russel

Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus by Reggie Williams

With Both Eyes Open edited by Johnson and Kalven

Then the Whisper Put on Flesh by Brian Blount

Texts Under Negotiation by Walter Brueggemann

Doing Local Theology by Clemens Sedmak

[1] Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 8.

[2] Brian K. Blount, Then the Whisper Put On Flesh: New Testament Ethics in an African American Context (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001).

[3] Jennings, The Christian Imagination, 58.

[4] Ibid., 34.

[5] William T. Cavanaugh, Field Hospital: The Church’s Engagement with a Wounded World (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2016), 181–82.

[6] Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 35.