Listening to Howard Zinn (author of the classic A People’s History of the United States) at a town hall meeting style presentation recorded in 2007 (you can get it on Itunes from WGBH Politics) I was struck by the need to recognize the sheer complexity of issues and multiplicity of perspectives. 
To state it as simply as possible: Not everything is the same. When we attempt to represent EVERYthing as if it were represented by ONE thing, we often neglect the complexity and multiplicity involved in the matter.
I will use two examples that Howard Zinn illustrated well at the community forum, then address the issues that it seemed relevant to connect to.
Zinn takes on the idea of “Family values”. Some conservative political interest say that they represent ‘family values’. But he asks “Which family?” I think it is a valid question. There are families with single moms and multiple kids, divorced dads raising a family, there are foster families, adoptive families, multi-generational families living in the same house. There are lesbian couples with no kids and gay couples with kids. My wife are were D.I.N.K.s (double income – no kids) hen she lost her job while were trying to adopt (which fell through recently) and every permeation you can imagine.
Which family is represented by Focus on the Family’s values? It is erroneous to act as if there is one kind of family and that you represent their values.
That is, unless you are saying that you value only one type of family.
That would be fair enough but you would have to stop using the phrase ‘family values’. Some families value making money or achieving success. Some value conformity. Some value religious adherence above all else. Some value military service while others value independent thinking or even civil disobedience.
Zinn says the same thing about the ‘National interest’. I am a big fan of Paul Kahn’s Political Theology and both he and Zinn talk about President’s ability to declare war or even launch the nuclear codes should the President deem it ‘in the national interest’.
But which of the many National interests? The Nation is not interested in only one thing. There are hundreds or thousands of interests. Unfortunately the reductive mono-speak is code. These buzz-words become code-words for an assume-unstated single issue that clouds the true complexity behind the language.
Zinn touched another example which has been showing up in a lot of my reading lately. The phrase ‘We the people’ is a magnificent ideal. I admire the phase and the idea behind it so much. But I think that it is worth noting that when it was written – we the people were not in the room. At the time of it’s writing, not every ‘we’ was represented.
There were no native americans in the room, no women, no blacks, no commoners. Just land-owning white males. But they had an idea – and it is that idea that we love!
I actually think that this is the exact type of trajectory mentality that we see in a progressive reading of the New Testament. When Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He is doing this exact thing. He wrote in prophetic expectation using the 3 categories employed in his day were being broken with resurrection power. Barriers between nationality (or race), legal status and gender were being dissolved. My assertion is that it was not for the purpose of homogenization but for multiplicity! The former containers can not contain what it being poured out and welling up in Christ’s new life.
This is why I don’t sweat the fact that Paul appears to by anti-gay (though I argue that he was not anti-gay in the same way that those who quote him today are). You have to read Paul on a trajectory. Within the fruit of the Spirit of God is seed of liberation and transformation. So like ‘We the people’ – it looks forward to a greater reality than was present at it’s writing. Contained within the words is an ideal not yet realized. That is part of why I don’t want to conserve the reality of the time of it’s writing, but spring board off of it to be propelled to a greater one.
We can get caught up in reductive views that ignore the inherent complexity that we are dealing with. For instance, “Is the world essentially good or bad?” or “Are humans inherently evil or innately good?” That kind of simplicity is blind to the multiplicity of factors that we are dealing with in any conversation and allowing the conversation to be framed that way almost ensured that no progress will be made.
Good people still do bad things or even do good things with poor motivation. People who do bad things often love their own families.
We do ourselves a great disservice when we allow our media to talk about ‘the evangelical vote’ or even ‘the black perspective’ as if those parameters only mean one thing or as if everyone within designations voted the same way or believe all the same things, hold all the same values and act in unison. It is fictitious, deceptive and paralyzing.
You can’t even say ‘gun owners’ and mean one thing! Our language (and the dualism behind it) is crippling our culture.
There has been a great “De-centering” that has happened to humanity in the past 500 years. If you just look at the effect starting with Copernicus and continue to Darwin, the earth is not the center of the universe and neither are humans.
It would do us well to move from a reductive mentality (center/ order) to a dynamic interplay of emergent elements. When we recognize the complexity and multiplicity involved in the reality behind our ‘code words’, we will begin to access the real issues that face us.
It was a blast! [
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 
The Next Pat Robertson Gaff
With the election season over, the frequency, intensity and insanity of conservative white men making outlandish statements will hopefully die down … I’m moving a bunch of blogs over there this week and found this cheeky little blog I wrote in the middle of the fire-storm.
Pat Robertson topped even himself in the category of ‘insulting-inflammatory- stupid comments while the tape is running’ this morning. That may seem difficult with all of the previous entries that have earned him elite status in the gaff Olympics.
The most recent entry was in response to a question from a man who apparently wanted to know what to do with his non-submissive wife. Robertson started with suggesting that the man could convert to Islam … and as tough as it might be to top that one, he did. After conceding that the Bible does not allow for him to divorce her, Robertson gave him the option to move to Saudi Arabia – thereby indicting not only an entire religion but an entire nation.
I know that many will want to jump on Robertson with disdain and scorn but … maybe we should not be so quick to jump to judgement. As often happens in cases like this, there is a good possibility that there is something we don’t know behind the scenes. There might be more to the story that at first meets the eye.
Now, before you dismiss this outright – just keep in mind that many preachers and politicians who rail against homosexuality later turn out to have been involved in illicit same-sex affairs at the very time they were railing. This pattern can be seen in leaders of many self-righteous and sanctimonious movements.
With public figures, we just don’t know. So I am suggesting that we might want to hold off judgement. Sure, right now it looks like crazy Uncle Pat has come unglued and betrayed the very gospel that he is supposed to be a minister of and a spokesman for. But … let’s just give it time.
That is plan A.
If you can’t wait for that, there is a plan B. As I proposed a while ago, it is possible that words for fundamentalist christians are like dialogue in porn movies. They play an important role in allowing us to suspend our suspicion and get down to the real business at hand.
I said that the real activities were nationalism, capitalism and militarism. One of our deaconesses added patriarchy. This accusation would stick to Robertson’s many gaffs like a field of burrs on a cheap pair of cotton dockers.
Here is the thing: I want to be a generous and gracious purveyor irenic ecumenism. But there are times when you hear something like this and realize how many people are genuinely injured by this stuff. Like it or not – he is a spokesman for our religion, my tradition and Jesus’ name. This is why I go so far out of my way to say that we need to stop waiting for Superman and start sticking up for causes that don’t directly impact us.
Here is a conversation that I have had repeatedly in the past 20 years.
People don’t like when I am critical, negative, dismissive or adversarial. Neither do I. All I am saying is that I am very nervous about what gets broadcast on christian radio and TV these days and the impact that it has on thousands and thousands of people.
So here is the question: If, and I am only asking ‘if’, there was a machine that was fueled by a different vision of the world and different priority structure than that fleeting Galilean vision – but it was covered with a thin veneer of Jesus talk as a mask for the true agenda … shouldn’t we say something at some point?
If the Jesus-paint was only a mask on a monster, or a series of brushstrokes on a Hollywood set facade … we should say something right?
That probably is why plan B in this case is not so popular.
THE most important thing in all of this is that we are very clear about people who have simply bought into a bad brand of christianity and those who are up to something with it. It is one thing to have merely inherited a flawed-limited-unaware religious product and those who openly promote a product that injures people and harms those who need what Christ provides the most. We have to be careful. This stuff is wicked, acidic, and cancerous. We can’t paint with a broad brush or be dismissive of folks who are just walking the same road we are all walking together – trying to figure it out.
May God give us grace in the journey. We need it. Lots of it.