Identity Politics and Criticism

I am linking to a video of the inaugural poem written by Richard Blanco. Poetry is a difficult thing to evaluate, always has been. No one read John Donne until he was resurrected by T.S. Eliot 100 years ago, and by my lights he is the best (short) poet of all time. Yet he went unnoticed and unappreciated for 300 years. That's how it works. Tough to judge.

About Mr. Blanco's poem the most I can say is that it was, mercifully, better than Maya Angelou'spoem from Clinton's inauguration. But so were most of the poems I heard at the Manhattan dive bar's dismal weekly poetry night. Apart from that, I can't get too excited about it. There is a difference, after all, from being like WaltWhitman and being Walt Whitman. All in all, just not my thing.

It was also not RodDreher's thing. Dreher is a blogger at The American Conservative, one of the world's best magazines, and one of my favorite writers. Here was his most scathing comment, following an excerpt: "Yadda yadda. Bleah. Why do we even have inaugural poems? JFK had one written for him by Robert Frost, but after him, only Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have had them. I prefer the Republican strategy." He prefaced the excerpt with the equally odious "I just can't bring myself to enjoy [the poem]." That was all he said. 

He then issued a challenge to his readers to write their own inaugural limerick in the comments section so, disregarding my standard refusal to read blog comments, I decided to see what people came up with. Instead of good-natured response to his challenge, the comments section had been hijacked by liberal commenters charging Dreher with homophobia and anti-gay bias for not just love, love, loving the poem. Dreher's response was that he didn't even know the poet was gay, he just didn't like the poem. (Cards on the table: I did know Blanco was gay before I heard the poem, AND still found it wanting; surefire evidence of my bigotry.)

What I noticed in these critiques of Dreher's assumed homophobia was that no one was defending the merits of the poem (except for repeating the ad infinitum comparisons to Whitman), they were merely arguing that the only reason one could have for not approving was hate. And I was struck by how monumentally ridiculous that was. And then I was reminded of a clip from an episode of last year's Parks and Rec, when Leslie Knope is being interviewed by the dry host of a public radio program. After her segment she is asked to introduce the musical group the station will be playing next: Nefertiti's Fjord, a Norwegian lesbian duo. She takes off her headphones and complains about how terrible the music is. The host agrees, "Yes, it is quite awful. But they are lesbians." It is a perfect sendup of the less tolerable moments on NPR (an organization I love and give money to annually) and tells a salient truth of our culture--we are almost unable to critique anything produced by an aggrieved minority group. Much of what is praised in our culture is diversity for the sake of diversity. 

This is really easy to do in the arts because the experience of them and evaluation of their merit is so subjective. It would be hard for a physicist to be given the Nobel Prize for being gay or Latino (think of how condescending that would seem), but in the realm of arts being a member of a countercultural/minority group identity can certainly be an aid to recognition and praise. If the work is critiqued it is either because the critic just doesn't get it or the criticism was surely personal and motivated by hate. In other words, there is no way to critique stuff. 

I remember trying to read Toni Morrison's Beloved and only being able to make it through about 20 pages before I was mind-numbingly bored and refused to go on. And the thought flashed through my mind: are you only rejecting this book because it was written by a black woman? Shouldn't you give it a bit more time? The answer of course was much simpler: I just didn't enjoy it and didn't want to use my limited free time to read something I didn't enjoy. That was five years ago. Maybe I would like it better today. I loved Kerouac when I was 22; I read an excerpt from On the Road last year and wanted to go back in time and punch that smug sonofabitch in the face. Art is weird. At different times things have struck me as brilliant that I later come to look back on with embarrassment.

Perhaps 150 years from now cultural historians will hail Blanco's occasional verse as the sine qua non of early twenty-first century American letters. More than likely people will forget that it ever happened. However it is viewed, how ludicrous is it that any critique of it is viewed automatically as a critique of the author's sexuality and most likely veiled racial hatred towards the man of the day? When all criticism is personal, criticism is dead as an art form in its own right. Reasoned criticism or even mild dislike is met with pure emoting, and in our culture emotion trumps reason.

I suddenly realize that I have more thoughts on this subject but have already exceeded the proper bounds for the length of a blog post. More thoughts on our weird relationship toward criticism and the club-wielding use of identity politics to follow.

Bloodlines Review

The issue of race is easily one of the single most difficult things to talk about in our culture. Sadly, any wishful thinking that the election of a black president would wipe the slate clean for future generations has proved entirely wrong. As a country we are still mired in issues of race, from the pop culture debate surrounding Quentin Tarantino's latest revengeploitation film, Django Unchained, to last years killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent social media campaigns, to idiots at anti-Obama rallies with signs saying "Keep the White in the White House," to the impulse of some on the left to credit any dissent from Obama as bigotry, to the more recent idiotic statement of (former) ESPN talking head Rob Parker about quarterback Robert Griffin III's who qualifies as only "kinda black" for such grievous sins as being a Republican and engaged to a white woman. It is safe to say we have failed to move on.

And it is still a difficult topic to discuss. A lot of confusion stems from people, especially white people, being unsure of exactly how they can contribute to a conversation about race without said conversation being a) white people being told how bad they are, or b) being criticized for their participation in this conversation, no matter how careful and thoughtful they are. Last year I taught freshman in college how to write, and as we all know, integral to one's success in writing is the ability to fully understand white privilege. Or so the curriculum seems to think. I brought in an article to class one day about the Madden 2012 football video game which had just been released. The author of the article was (self) righteously indignant about the color scheme the Madden engineers had chosen for the customizable player option. If you are a quarterback, default is white; running back, you're black; lineman, white; and so on. How in this day, the author asked, could we be so backwards as to buy into all of these old stereotypes about white quarterbacks and speedy black athletes? One of my white students threw up his hands in despair and asked, "How do we win?" At the heart of his anguished plea was this question: what could the gamemakers have done that would not have elicited a negative response? Make all players black? That would be furthering the stereotype that blacks are only good at sports. Make them all white? Oh, boy. In other words, if you're looking for racism under every stone, you can easily stretch yourself to find it. And my students wanted to know how it was possible to navigate that landscape without someone taking a shot at you; wasn't it easier to just not try?

And into this mess comes John Piper and his book Bloodlines: Race, the Cross, and the Christian. Cognizant of the current situation regarding race, Piper is super aware of the reality that if you speak about race you will be criticized. For some you will go too far; for some not far enough. For some your recommendations will seem too extreme, for others too mild. To some you will sound apologetic for the racism of the past, to others you will sound too harsh on people who lived in different times. It is enough to make one throw one's hands up and quit. But, gladly, Piper didn't do that.

He begins by recounting his youth in South Carolina, where he imbibed the racial prejudices of the culture around him. For example, his childhood church voted in 1965 to not allow blacks to become members. His defiant mother proudly escorted an African American family the Pipers were friends with into the church when her daughter was married, but the culture around him was violently anti-black. South Carolina held out until the 90s before recognizing interracial marriages. So that was his situation and it took awhile for him to see how profoundly it affected the way he viewed races.

Piper's background is important because it sets the stage for what becomes the guiding thesis for his book: he was rebuked for his racism, repented, and taught to live another way by his acceptance of the Reformed theology of the Christian faith. The answer, then, for fighting racism is not some airy liberal do-goodism, the motivation for which is quite usually baseless, but acceptance of hard, yet liberating Christian truth. What white people need and what black people need isn't more conversation about grievances, important as it is to be aware of the very real grievances black Americans have historically and still currently suffer from white Americans, but to come to Jesus.

This is not exactly a surprising answer, given Piper's theological convictions, but it is a convincing answer. The Church is/has been/will be complicit in any number of shortcomings, and historically racism looms large. In many ways, most churches are still functionally segregated. Piper's response to this is that the racial situation of the church, past and present, is largely a failure of application and not doctrine. Lest this seem like a convenient copout--Christianity is great, except for all the Christians!--Piper backs it up with his customary deep exegesis. 

The exegesis is based on an explication of the five traditional doctrines of the Reformed faith, the infamous TULIP acronym. Piper goes chapter by chapter showing how adherence to these doctrines (formed as they are on the testimony of scripture) undoes the ability to view other races as inferior or somehow less beloved of God. What first attracted me to Reformed/Calvinist doctrine, apart from the fact that its expositors didn't seem afraid to confront the whole Bible, was the way that it leveled the playing field for all men. That T up there in the acronym stands for total depravity, which is not a great way of putting it, but essentially means that we are all equally dead in sin and therefore all equally unworthy of God's grace. Everything we have is unmerited favor. You can brag about unmerited favor, but you come off sounding pretty lousy, like the parodied Republican in this year's 30 Rock that complained about how unfair taxation on the rich was because he "earned my trust find by always being polite to grandfather."

In other words, Reformed theology systematically undercuts everything that we use to puff ourselves up: high birth, accomplishment, etc. Instead what we have is all due to and emanates from God's free grace. I cannot look down on anyone, because I in no way deserve or earned what I have been given. Racism is founded on the idea of superiority, that of one racial group over another. Christianity undermines the very idea of superiority, putting us all on the same level.

Christ came to break down the barriers we have erected through sin, both the barriers that keep us from God and those that keep us from one another. In Paul's great chapter on love, which Piper doesn't have space to treat here, he speaks about how he now sees in a glass dimly and that one day he shall behold face to face and know even as he is fully known. It by no means stretches the text to apply its future vision to other people as much as self-knowledge of knowledge of God. That is restoration, or true sight, to fully see one another in our God-bestowed glory.

Some no doubt will complain that Piper's solution is unnecessary. The idea is now ubiquitous in our culture that we can be good without God, that even requiring some spiritual motivation to love others and seek racial harmony shows weakness. All that I can say to that is those people have little idea how much they are leaning on the Christian ethical tradition to make the self-evident claims they want to make. There are precious few cultures in the world not based on a Christian worldview in which racial harmony, freedom of religion, or equality of the sexes are even broad cultural goals. We didn't arise out of the primordial muck loving one another and seeking justice.

Piper shows how wonderfully and completely the love for others inherent in Reformed theology applies across races. How integral to the vision of Jesus and the mission of his Church is racial harmony. This is another key point in the book: Christ's mission was to desegregate a heavily segregated world. He shows favor to Gentile and Samaritans and women. In the final words to his disciples he tells him that they will be his witnesses all over the world--to Jew and Gentile alike. In St John's apocalyptic vision in the book of Revelation he sees a stream of people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people in procession to worship the glorified Christ. Christ's mission is for his followers to go the world; its fulfillment is that people from every ethnic group on this planet will one day praise his name.

In closing I will mention briefly why Piper named the book what he did, for I find it to be quite beautiful. Worldly bloodlines have caused a lot of harm in this world. People can be either too proud or too humiliated over their ancestors and their history. What Christ does is abolish our worldly bloodlines and establish a new bloodline: one that starts at the cross and flows freely in every person under the sun who bows at the name of Jesus, our Savior and Uniter. To God's unquenchable glory.

The Rejection of the Ancients

I am currently reading through Jacques Barzun's magnum on Western culture, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. Barzun, the polymath who passed away in October just shy of his 105th birthday wrote this bestselling history in 2000, at the age of 93. After hearing about him on NPR following his death I bought the book from Amazon and starting listening to his favorite composer, Hector Berlioz, the nineteenth century French Romantic.

The book is great. I could try to come up with a more laudatory adjective, but great covers it. It is hard to imagine a mind reared in contemporary academia writing a book like this, so broad ranging and comprehensive. And Barzun refuses to buy into all of the prejudices of current thought. For example, on Christopher Columbus, the now universally loathed explorer, Barzun has this to say:

"The Spanish colonists committed atrocities from greed and racist contempt that nothing can palliate or excuse. But to blame Columbus is a piece of retrospective lynching; he was not the master criminal inspiring all the rest. It is moreover a mistake to think that because the native peoples were the sufferers, all of them were peaceable innocents. The Caribs whom Columbus first encountered had fought and displaced the Anawaks who occupied the islands. . . In short, what happened on the newfound hemisphere in early modern times continued the practice of the old. . . Everywhere the story is one of invasion, killing, rape, and plunder and occupation of the land that belonged to the vanquished. Today, this fusion or dispersion of peoples and cultures by means of death and destruction is abhorred in principle but flourishing in fact. Africa, the Middle and Far East, and South Central Europe are still theaters of conquest and massacre. And Columbus is not the responsible party." (100-101)

Columbus or white Europeans or Catholicism or Christianity more broadly or plain old avarice are nice to have as convenient scapegoats, transcending, as we imagine ourselves to be, all of these old shackles currently, but Barzun notes that the same things we blame on the evils we are casting aside are propagated by non-white, non-Christians all over this planet at this very moment. It reminds me of that great episode of South Park where Cartman goes to the future and witnesses the interstellar war between various atheist alliances, fighting it out over who best understands unbelief.

There is a sort of fatalism to Barzun's observations that call to mind the chastened Milton at the end of his career in the dark days of the Restoration, blind and worldly defeated, when he voices through the archangel Michael the following: "So shall the world go on/ To good malignant, to bad men benign/ Under her own weight groaning, till the day/ Appear of respiration to the just/ And vengeance to the wicked." Milton's vision had an apocalyptic bent to it, but his point is largely the same as Barzun's, namely that we aren't getting better. It may look like it for a time, but then the hope fails and the vision dies.

What our demonizing of figures from the past underscores, and the subject of Barzun's next chapter on the rise of utopian fantasy in the sixteenth century, is the way in which we have inherited from this Renaissance era a sort of disdain for the past, the curious belief that somehow as a species we have made dramatic improvements in all metrics and are now free to banish our ancestors. I would argue that this progressivity applies to both right and left, though each would cite different data to prove their claim.

Barzun and Milton both recognize the fallacy of progressive thought. History is cyclical, in a number of important ways, not linear. A culture develops through barbarism to a level of gentility, imagines itself enlightened, and then sloughs into decay to be either defeated by an opposing civilization or to rot from within (or both). Such was the fate for great cultures of the past; such is the fate of the West. So shall the world go on.

Why I Love John Piper

I am reading Bloodlines by John Piper right now, a fantastic little book about race, that I plan to write a post about very soon (for books with one controlling thesis such as this one I find it best to wait until I have finished in order to say much about it). But that is not the purpose of this post; the purpose of this post is to use Piper's own words here to talk about why I enjoy him so much and see in him a great blessing to the church.

The first two chapters of the book are autobiographical and this excerpt comes from the first chapter:

"If any of this sounds valiant, don't be too impressed. I am not a good example of an urban pastor. Because of the way I believe God calls me to use my time, I don't have any significant relationships with most of my neighbors. Nor does our church reflect the diversity of this neighborhood. There is diversity, but nothing like the statistics above [Piper's church is in the most ethnically diverse region of the Twin Cities].

Probably I could have been far more effective in immediate urban impact in this neighborhood if I had not written books or carried on a wider speaking ministry. Some thank me for this ministry, and others think I have made a mistake. Again, you may see why I cherish and cling to the gospel of Jesus.

The Lord will be my judge someday. I will give an account to him of how I served him. I expect that as he goes down the list of the choices I have made, none will have a perfectly pure motivation, and many will appear as unwise in the bright light of his holiness. I hope I have been a good steward of my gifts and time. But my confidence in the judgment is not in that. It's in the perfection of Jesus that God has credited to me through faith and in the punishment Jesus endured for me. . ." (39-40)

What I appreciated so much with this, given that it had little to do with the main topic of the book is that Piper is addressing the rise of the so-called celebrity pastor and the backlash it has created.

There are two main criticisms that I have encountered of the celebrity pastor, one comical, the other uncharitable. The comical one is that the critic of the pastors could become famous if they wanted, but humble-hearted servant that they are, they choose to toil in anonymity in a small congregation. These men view fame as a matter of will, apart from talent or the work of God. Focusing on "ordinary pastors" is a great thing*, but the dismissive "well, I don't want to be a celebrity pastor" thing is laughable. If you have to say that, you really do. But, good, you will probably never have that problem.

The uncharitable criticism is one that removes any sense of agency from these celebrity pastors. What I mean by this is it treats these men as if they are not aware that there are other ways of doing their vocation and as if they have not thought deeply and prayed fervently over the ministry decisions they have made. That they sort of fell into this and now they don't know what to do. Piper here shows the care with which he makes his decisions, as well as the omnipresent awareness that there will come a day when he will give an account for his actions to his Lord.

For better or for worse, podcasts and the internet have shrunk our world to where it is not uncommon for a spiritually hungry person to take in more content (audio, video, or written) from a celebrity pastor in a faraway locale than their local pastor in their local church. Of course this can be a dangerous thing, both for celebrity pastor and for spiritually hungry person judging his pastor against the speaking/writing ability of this celebrity pastor, but it is not wholly bad. It can be very good. I thank God for John Piper and Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler and others like them, because even when I disagree with them I can appreciate their passion for the gospel and the church. Pastors who write books aren't out there actively encouraging people to be dissatisfied with their local church and move to Minneapolis or Seattle.

Piper loves the Church, the whole Church, and feels called to use his gifts in a specific way. Has he made wrong decisions? Yep. Will he make more? Sure. But the purpose of life isn't to wait for perfection and then act, to continually weight every decision to the point of inaction, or to sit back and criticize someone who is working night and day to bless God and his church. Celebrity pastors make mistakes; so do ordinary ones. Ultimately, it is between them and the Lord. Piper is very cognizant of this fact; I hope his critics will remember the same thing.

*One of the ironies to me of publicizing the ordinary pastor movement, if one can be said to exist, is that it tries to popularize the ordinary. An uncharitable view of this, which of course I would never take, could see this as trying to make being ordinary famous. Plus, no one starts a blog and puts their stuff out on the internet in the hope that no one ever will read it. I wonder how often these ordinary pastors check their web traffic?