willowlovestheology

[willowlovestheology]

Consolidating my contents.

Hello!

In order to simplify my life, I have decided to consolidate this blog into my Substack newsletter effective immediately.

All existing contents here will be kept for the time being.

March 18, 2023

Willow.

[willowlovestheology]

How indigenous land acknowledgements can end up as another 'woke' virtue signalling without substance

It has now been a year (as of this writing, March 22, 2021) since most churches have shuttered their doors and switched to online livestreaming worship services. Many of these churches made recordings of these services available for later replays, and even as churches began resuming in-person services in some areas, they are keeping their livestreams.

This has allowed me to explore how different churches and denominations worship, around the world.

One of the things I have noticed was the practice of "land acknowledgement" becoming increasingly common among progressive-leaning churches in the United States.

"Land acknowledgement" is a brief statement that mentions something like, "The place where we worship today is a traditional home of the Coastal Salish peoples." This practice began widespread in Canada among the academics and community organizations maybe a decade or so ago, but it has been largely unknown in the U.S. until recently.

In general, this practice is meant to remind ourselves of the history built upon European colonialism, and to counter the historical narratives most of us learned in our childhood (that Christopher Columbus "discovered" America and the Pioneers "explored and built" the United States and Canada).

In progressive Christian denominations, this practice is also an acknowledgement of their past involvement and collaboration with colonial-settler policies of North America, such as forced expulsion of the First Nations from their territories and into reservations, ripping indigenous children from their parents and placing them in "Indian Boarding Schools" (many of such schools were operated by the churches) in order to "civilize" them, and forcible conversion of the indigenous peoples into Christianity (and forced cultural "Christianization" along with it).

But somehow I feel that this 10-second statement at the beginning of a worship service is just another shallow, "woke" virtue-signalling and nothing more.

Acknowledging is a first step, but without substantial actions to right the wrong, it only serves as a means to numb the white guilt that is experienced by the educated white middle-class. In a sense, an empty land acknowledgement might be worse than no acknowledgement at all. Even worse is pretending like somehow their complicity in the theft of indigenous lands is justified because they had performed some kind of "Native American" ceremony (often led by an individual who does not have authority to represent an indigenous nation or a tribal government, or worse, entirely appropriated by non-Natives, or even worse, someone claiming to have "channeled" the "spirit of the indigenous ancestors" of the land -- a terrible form of spiritual bypassing).

If a burglar broke into someone's house at gunpoint, expelled the residents and decided to illegally squat on the house, merely reciting that "this house is a historic home of Mr. Jones" does not absolve the burglar of their crime. Maybe the burglar was successful at squatting and lived there for 20 years undisturbed. Then the burglar had guts to sell that stolen house to someone and made a handsome money. The new occupant of the house then repeats the statement, "this house is a historic home of Mr. Jones." One day, Mr. Jones comes home after 25 years of absence. The new "homeowner" wouldn't budge and instead calls the police, claiming that this is their "private property." Purchasing stolen goods from a thief does not make the stolen goods no longer stolen in the eyes of the law.

The irony of all this is that these progressive Mainline Protestant churches that recently adopted land acknowledgement are the churches that largely appeal to the "property"-owning upper and middle class white people. (And many of the historic Mainline Protestant churches in central business districts hold significant financial interests in prime real estate.) They have often supported public policy that would benefit them through increased "property values" at the expense of low-income and housing-insecure people (which include a large percentage of indigenous people). They continue to profit from their speculative "investments" in real estate, which is essentially trading in stolen goods, without any concrete action plan for reparation. The feel-good land acknowledgement exercises fail to challenge their complicity in the very evil it seeks to address.

In addition to all this, the land acknowledgement also begs a very uncomfortable question: these churches also have championed the rights of immigrants (which is not a bad thing) through their participation in the sanctuary church movement, public advocacy, and sponsoring social services geared toward helping the immigrants. It may be said that many immigrants to the U.S. are indigenous people from the modern-day Mexico and Central American countries; but that would exclude many others who are from Asia or Africa, who also experience the effects of institutional and systemic racism. How can indigenous rights and immigrant rights co-exist without conflicting interests? (This is an honest question as I am torn.)

As with other slogans of wokeism, it lacks in substance and tangible actions. So far, the Jesuits have decided to retrocede some of their lands back to the Rosebud Sioux nation. But I am yet to hear whether these progressive churches would give up their land holdings, and whether they will condemn as sins their parishioners' continued exploitation of these indigenous lands, and their pathological addictions to homeownership and landlordism.

Update (Oct. 8, 2021):

Recently, this practice has come under criticism by the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists, which has called for a pause and review of the land acknowledgement practices.

No data exists to demonstrate that land acknowledgments lead to measurable, concrete change. Instead, they often serve as little more than feel-good public gestures signaling ideological conformity to what historians Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder have called – in the context of higher education’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts – “a naïve, left-wing, paint-by-numbers approach” to social justice.

Take, for instance, the evocation in many acknowledgments of a time when Indigenous peoples acted as “stewards” or “custodians” of the land now occupied. This and related references – for example, to “ancestral homelands” – relegate Indigenous peoples to a mythic past and fails to acknowledge that they owned the land. Even if unintentionally, such assertions tacitly affirm the putative right of non-Indigenous people to now claim title.

-- Elisa J. Sobo, "Land acknowledgments meant to honor Indigenous people too often do the opposite - erasing American Indians and sanitizing history instead." The Houston Chronicle, Oct. 7, 2021.

This article may be freely used under the terms of the Cooperative Nonviolent Public License, version 7 (CNPLv7). All other uses require express permission of the author.

Originally published on March 22, 2021; edited on Oct. 8, 2021 to add quote from Elisa J. Sobo.

#land acknowledgement #land back now #decolonize #decolonization #indigenous people #christian denominations #mainline protestantism #progressive christianity #virtue signaling #cultural appropriation

[willowlovestheology]

In a nutshell, process theology posits that God cannot be simultaneously omnipotent (almighty), omnipresent, omniscient (all-knowing), and good. 

Process theology is one of the ways theologians try to wrestle with theodicy, or the millennia-old question of “how a good God can allow bad things to happen?” 

In some ways, process theologians are like Deists: that God does not actively control or micromanage the world of God’s own creation. In saying so, they reject the idea of God as an omnipotent being. 

While we often feel tempted to an easy, black-or-white thinking, personally I do not think process theology does justice to either God or the humankind. Process theology intentionally presents a “weak” God, which often results in a gap that is inevitably filled by a kind of humanism that elevates humans (either individually or more often, collectively) to the position of God. Process theology thus tends to appeal to liberal theologians, who already come with a great deal of skepticism and agnosticism. 

An alternative model I’d like to present is this: 

1. God is infinitely wise, intelligent, and mighty, beyond any human imagination. 

2. God created humans as (originally, at least) perfect reflections of the very nature of God, which must include agency, autonomy, free will, and creativity. 

This way, we do not fall into the trap of process theology that discounts God’s nature, while also avoiding the doctrine of predestination and fatalism.   

When people say "if God is omniscient how can we have free will" or "how can God allow evil" think of God as a master player of 3D chess. Like all expert chess players God knows all permutations of possibilities, so there are millions of future outcomes. 

Another analogy: If you're a computer programmer creating a virtual reality world like Second Life the code theoretically "knows" what will happen. Nothing happens outside what the code allows it to happen by design (aside from unintentional bugs, which are products of fallible human coders!). But users still have agency and choice in that virtual world and there are thousands and millions of potential futures. 

In addition, our ideas about what’s “good” or “bad” are necessarily be skewed, if the creation accounts of the book of Genesis were to be believed. Even without that, “good” and “bad” are often relative value judgment that depends on context.

More on this topic: 

Philosophy Dungeon: https://philosophydungeon.weebly.com/process-theodicy.html 

Omnipotence and the problem of evil: https://web.archive.org/web/20161017130305/https://aaronstrietzel.com/?p=682 

The fatal flaw of process theology: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2012/05/31/the-fatal-flaw-of-process-theology/ 

Theodicy, an overview (PDF): https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/documents/TheodicyOverview.pdf

#process theology #theology #theodicy

[willowlovestheology]

Food for thought.

[willowlovestheology]

from https://www.faithinpubliclife.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FIPL_CountEveryVote_Toolkit_v5wlinks.pdf 

#elections 2020 #election day

[willowlovestheology]

Election day prayers? (Or, is God a Republican or a Democrat?)

For whatever reason, faith cannot be separated from the rest of human activities. Many who profess a religious belief pray over the various challenges of their personal lives as well as of their society and nation. For example, they pray that their kids do well in SAT (or college entrance exam, for those outside the U.S.); some may even offer up a special prayer that their favorite professional sports team may win.

While such prayers may seem like just innocuous “good luck gestures,” they begin to look ugly when they turn into something more vicious. Would God hear a prayer of one country and its soldiers imploring that their enemies be mercilessly slaughtered and defeated? What if their adversaries were praying the same prayer, to an ostensibly the same God?

Today, I know that people of all faiths are praying, meditating, chanting, or sending “positive vibes” for the contentious U.S. election day. I also know that, even if many of them profess to worship the same deity and may even share many identical doctrines, they may be praying for an entirely different outcome. Some, believing that a Biden presidency could mean an “end to religious liberties,” pray that Donald Trump will decisively defeat the Democrats. Conversely, many Christians appalled by the four years of the Trump presidency, pray that God would stop him from winning another four years by helping Joe Biden.

Come tonight, or over the next several days, we will know which candidates would win the elections up and down the ballot. Seemingly, some prayers would be “answered,” while other prayers were “ignored.”

This sort of thing presents interesting theological questions about prayer. Likewise, it leads to a question of whether we should even be praying for elections (or wars, or football games). More importantly, does God play favorites? Is God the supremely partisan politician in the sky?

Many people of many faiths miss the point by praying (or doing similar, equivalent acts) that their favored candidates win or their disfavored candidates lose an election.

Some people, in hope that prayers that are “very specific” would yield “very specific” results, construct many overly specific goals in their minds, pray that God would grant them exactly how they want things done, in exact order, only to find themselves frustrated and discouraged when things don’t turn out exactly so (for example, one prays that God will give them $3,500 through a lottery ticket they will buy this morning at the 7-Eleven store five blocks from their home). In this election season, some may be praying similarly: that God would help so-and-so win the presidency, and so-and-so win the governorship. Then they either blame themselves or God when the results won’t turn out the way they prayed.

This is something I call “micromanaging God.”

Usually “micromanaging God” will never work. When I am tempted to get into this mode, I always ask myself: what are the ultimate reasons why I am praying, and what are the sources of my emotions – anxieties, anger, angst, or hope?

To demonstrate this point, let me ask you this question: Why are you praying for { Donald Trump | Joe Biden | Jo Jorgensen } to win this election day? I bet it is because you perceive that whatever happens tonight will be consequential to your personal life and/or those of your loved ones. Maybe it’s because you fear that { Donald Trump } victory means you might { lose healthcare and thus an inability to manage your health conditions }; or that you perceive a { Joe Biden } presidency means { more COVID lockdown and the resulting unemployment and economic hardship, possibly leading to homelessness or bankruptcy }. When you dig deeper, you know that you are seeking your fundamental human needs to be met: health, security, stability, and so on.

And these are universal human needs, whether you are a Republican, a Libertarian, a Democrat, a Green, or a Socialist. When we realize this, our mind’s focus evolves away from this ugly partisan tribalism to the common good and national well-being. Those you may despise because they may be marching around black-clad or wearing a red baseball cap are also beings having a human experience, created in the divine image. While we humans may have different ideas about how to get things done and different approaches we may take to achieve individual and collective well-being, our prayers should not be partisan. Instead of focusing on the appearances and phenomena, focus on the ultimate. Doing so is neither escapism nor spiritual bypassing; I am not suggesting that we ignore the real consequences of bad public policy, nor am I suggesting that we stay away from voting or civic engagement – quite contrary! However, we should root ourselves not in partisan ideologies, or the “us-versus-them,” conflict-oriented mindset. This way, we get “out of God’s way” instead of micromanaging God.

“Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all.” – Proverbs 3:5-6 (The Message).

[Cover photo by Josh Carter.]

Originally published in my companion blog, Mind Geographic, on Nov. 3, 2020.

Copyright 2020 Willow Morrigan, Creative Commons Public License 4.0 by-nc-nd.

#theology #election day #elections 2020 #prayer #affirmative prayer #spiritual development #spirituality #spiritual direction #election anxiety

[willowlovestheology]

[willowlovestheology]

[willowlovestheology]

#Evangelicals #Evangelicalism #Trumpism #Youtube

[willowlovestheology]

Quick take: My critique of reimagining God as “female” (or, Goddess worship)

Heard somewhere on conservative social media echo chamber: “Liberals say it’s ‘hate speech’ if I ‘misgender’ someone, but somehow they are okay with ‘misgendering’ our God!”

I’m a long-time follower of feminist theology. It didn’t take more than a couple of years since I was baptized and joined a fundamental Baptist church at age 15 that I began developing questions about the notion of God as “father.” At the same time, I believed that any kind of idolatry was satanic. It wasn’t until after I enrolled in a Bible college and began seriously questioning Christian faith (this is a common occurrence among seminarians) that I started to explore this topic in depth. 

Twenty years ago, I left the Evangelical Christian world entirely and joined a Unitarian Universalist church. It was the year when I looked beyond the Judeo-Christian traditions, exploring Neo-Paganism in particular. Seventeen years ago, I spent over half a year in a Wiccan commune. After these years, I sought to reconcile Christianity with the idea of a female deity. Among progressive mainline Protestant Christians, gender-neutral liturgical languages were becoming standard by then, but they hadn’t quite gone as far as declaring that they engage in an overt goddess worship (except for a few fringe groups and rogue congregations, such as San Francisco’s Herchurch). 

I studied feminist theology at a graduate school level. I’ve read numerous academic journals over countless hours, and written many papers myself. 

As the late Mary Daly famously wrote, “If God is a male, then male is God.” I concurred. I was led to believe that maleness is idolized as God, therefore toxic masculinity became the foundation of human society manifesting as militarism, patriarchy, capitalism, and so on. 

The flip side of this argument is that everything female is good and not to be questioned. Or else, you’re a misogynist. Including, not questioning the underlying concept of gendered stereotypes. After all, womyn are empathetic and intuitive and spiritual and sensual and relational and emotional blah blah blah, and men are this and that. Not only that this thinking reifies a highly heteronormative and rigid binary gender norms, but also dehumanizes neurodivergence. Too often people still believe in an outdated and debunked “extreme male brain theory” of autism. The subtle and unspoken message is that unless you’re a neurotypical, heterosexual, cisgender female you are not fully “divine.” 

Sadly, what I see in the modern-day goddess movement is not much different from its patriarchal antithesis, even though it is not as obvious as, say, Christian right-wingers who believe Donald Trump is doing “God’s work” by defunding social safety net, jailing foreigners, and legalizing discrimination (I bet their idea of God is not too different from that of the ancient Hebrews). 

Goddess worship is too often used to whitewash the tacit involvement -- and complicity -- by many white middle-class women in various forms of systemic injustice. While shamelessly using culturally appropriated rituals and objects from BIPOC heritage, their woo-woo rituals provide a platform for spiritual bypassing.  

The late Dr. Marcus J. Borg once said, “Show me the God you worship and I’ll show you who you are.” We the humans tend to create God in our own image, notwithstanding the official Christian belief that we were created in God’s image. White men think of God as an old white man in the sky. In an African American church it is common to see a picture of Jesus as a black man. During this LGBTQ+ Pride month, we even hear from LGBTQ+ Christian leaders that “God is queer”!

When we give human attributes an aura of divinity, we cover up our problems and position them beyond criticism. Anthropomorphism, as a metaphor, was a useful tool in primitive societies (and even in modern societies) to articulate the idea that is too above and beyond our capacity for ordinary people to fathom. It was useful for the ancient Hebrews to describe Yahweh as an angry, jealous tribal warrior-king who goes before them to destroy the surrounding nations. It was useful in medieval Europe to imagine God as an absolute monarch who deserves worship services with all the pomp and pageantry (this is why great historic Catholic and Anglican cathedrals resemble a palace). But in doing so, we covered up and explained away our evil doings. Wars and genocide were justified. Corruptions among the church hierarchy involving money, politics, sex, and other worldly special interests were hidden behind the veneers of the sacred.

[willowlovestheology]

[willowlovestheology]

#systemic racism #black lives matter #racial justice #church history #complicity

[willowlovestheology]

Why Evangelicals still support Donald Trump as U.S. president

Important: Personally I am not in any way supportive of Donald Trump in any capacity whatsoever. However, as someone who spent much of my young adult years as a conservative-leaning libertarian and a self-identified member of the “Christian Right,” I can see where their reasoning is. Consider this to be my “devil’s advocate” piece.

Amidst the COVID-19 crisis and social disruption, once again America exposes its deep-seated cultural polarization. Some Evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists (these are not interchangeable terms, as one can be Evangelical without being fundamentalist, and true fundamentalists consider most Evangelicals to be heretics) see the governmental edicts of social distancing as a direct attack on their freedom of religion.

Even as the U.S. president fumbles and fails in his response to COVID-19, the polls are fairly consistent in the Republican support of Donald Trump, many of whom consider themselves to be Evangelical Christians. 

Many progressive people of faith and politically middle-of-the-road Mainline Protestants continue to scratch their heads and wonder how a self-proclaimed “Bible Believers” can vote for a pathological liar, thrice-divorced womanizer who has been accused of sexual misconducts, whose documented ties to Christian Church is tenuous and questionable at best.

The key to understand the Evangelical thinking is this: “God uses imperfect and broken vessels” to do “His will.” 

In the Gospels, Jesus chose those who were widely considered immoral and despised by the established religious norms of his day. Tax-collectors (who were known to be highly corrupt under the Roman Empire) were in, the Pharisees were out (the Pharisees were the predecessor to what we know today as the Rabbinic Judaism). None of the 12 apostles were particularly considered “holy,” devout, or religious by their cultural norms. Rather, much of the early Jesus movement spread through its populist and iconoclastic message that were anti-establishment and anti-clerical.

One of the popular analogies used by the Trump-loving Christians is that Donald Trump is the modern-day King Cyrus the Great (559–530 B.C.E.). Cyrus was the emperor of Persia and he was the only gentile in the Hebrew Scriptures to hold the title of the “messiah” (Isaiah 45:1) -- the title reserved for the kings of Judah. Needless to say, as a Persian emperor he did not observe the Torah. Very likely he worshipped the Persian deities according to his traditions (something the Hebrew Scriptures would otherwise consider as a grave sin worthy of death). He might not even live up to the biblical sexual morality. As it turns out, Cyrus allowed the exiled Israelites to return to their homeland, thus permitting their temple worship to be resumed (note at the time, the Israelites’ worship was inextricably tied to the temple). Since Cyrus, even though being an idolatrer and a heathen, used his sovereign power to help restore the Israelites’ freedom to worship Yahweh, he was called the messiah. 

This also reminds me of a newsletter I received back in the early 1990s from a missionary organization, which had an article giving thanks to God for Chairman Mao Zedong(!). Yes, it is that Chairman Mao who was responsible for atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, under whom millions -- including many, many Christians who refused to worship the idol of Communism -- perished. The writer of the article claimed: God used Mao Zedong to build highways across China, even to the remotest part of the country, so that missionaries could later reach the hinterlands of China; God used Mao Zedong to invent the simplified Chinese characters to eradicate illiteracy, so that Chinese people could read the Word of God. The absurdity of this argument, especially in light of Mao’s concerted efforts to destroy Christianity and freedom of religion in general, aside, it kind of illustrates the (sometimes cynically opportunistic!) mindset of some Christians, who believe that “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28) according to the divine providence even when it seems inexplicable by human reasoning. Or, to put it more crudely, “enemy of my enemy is my friend” and since Donald Trump is an enemy of the secular humanist left, he is their “friend.”

For many Evangelicals, Trump was the antidote to what they saw as Obama’s overreaching attempt at restricting their freedom of religion. Many conservatives were alarmed by Barack Obama’s subtle transformation of “freedom of religion” into “freedom of worship” -- the latter being merely a freedom to worship in private, without the implicit rights to live out their faiths and religious values in public arena. With the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to legalize same-sex marriages nationwide and the Obama executive edict on transgender, the Evangelical collective anxiety rose to the new level. They saw with horror how overzealous governmental bodies began issuing fines and shutting down businesses for speaking out against homosexuality. That fear drove the Evangelical Christians to anything that could stop this trend. Donald Trump was the proverbial straws the desperate Evangelicals grasped. Yes, under any other context, it was very unlikely that Donald Trump has gotten this far with the Evangelicals.

And this same fear is at play again as Americans vote for the next president this year. The Democrats are once again seen as the enemies of religion eager to shut down churches, calling them “non-essential.” If the Democratic (and some Republican) politicians have an audacity to dare call the exercise of religion as “non-essential,” while Donald Trump seems eager to “reopen America” (and initially, hoping for Easter services to be held) then the Evangelicals will continue to donate to the Trump campaign and vote for him in November. Very little else matters to them. 

Sidenote: It has been claimed by some Donald Trump supporters that the president was “saved” and “born again,” and therefore is a Christian. Since salvation is by faith and grace alone, and not by work, as they may argue, this would make Trump “holy” in the eyes of God. Needless to say, the same people were very eager to pile on Pete Buttigieg, as if faith and grace aren’t sufficient if someone is gay. 

#evangelicals #religious right #trumpism #religious freedom #religious liberty #polarization

[willowlovestheology]

[willowlovestheology]

[willowlovestheology]

[willowlovestheology]

It’s true that First Amendment rights are not absolute, and that, in the immortal words of former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the Constitution does not require us to enter into a “suicide pact.”

But it’s also true that during times of crisis, individual rights must zealously be protected. We don’t have to look too far back in history to see what happens when they’re not. For instance, many Japanese-Americans were interned solely on the basis of their race during World War II. It was shameful.

#civil liberties #first amendment #freedom of religion #freedom of assembly #human rights