This chapter will identify four social evils/negative cultural values and briefly discuss each of them; they are ethnocentrism, racism, classism and sexism. Each social evil will be examined both biblically and in modern American society. Each of these social evils structure supposed superior/inferior relationships in society---Jew over Gentile, white over black, rich over poor and male over female. These social evils are more than personal attitudes; they are also cultural values and they usually lead to acts of oppression. Understanding these social evils is a key part of creating a theology of society.
ETHNOCENTRISM
Ethnocentrism (own-culture-centered) comes from the Greek word ethnos meaning people, nation, heathen or Gentile with an emphasis on culture or nationality, not race (physical characteristics such as skin color).
For the Hebrews humankind outside of the chosen people of Israel were called the ethne, the nations or the Gentiles. In Jewish eyes, the Gentiles were given to idolatry and therefore were supposedly unclean and inferior. The concept of ethnocentrism can be drawn directly from the use of ethnos in the Scriptures even though the word ethnocentrism is not found in the Bible.
The word ethnos occurs 162 times in the New Testament; 43 times in Acts and 54 times in Paul's letters. Many times ethnos is literally translated as Gentile. In New Testament times, a sharp distinction was made between Jew and Gentile creating an immense barrier between them. Separation or segregation was comprehensive with many rules and regulations to reduce contact. Even Jews who became Christians often found it difficult to associate with or witness to Gentiles. Luke 4:25-30 and 9:51-56 are examples of a religiously based ethnocentrism which came perilously close to the death of Jesus and the total destruction of a Samaritan village by Jesus' disciples. In addition, we find ethnocentrism cutting the nerve of evangelism to the Gentiles and Samaritans until the eighth chapter of Acts, attempting to limit God's love and grace, dividing the body of Christ and legitimating oppression.
In U.S. history, we find this same type of religiously legitimated ethnocentrism. This religio-cultural ethnocentrism preceded racism historically, and I believe that even today it underlies and supports racism; it is a greater problem than racism is.
When and where did this ethnocentrism take root? At least as far back as the century before (1500s) the English colonization of America. Ronald Takaki, author of A Different Mirror, makes a direct link between the way the British treated the Irish and the way British colonists treated Native Americans; early on, the colonists even called Indians, Irish, a very derogatory nickname.
In the 1500s, the British were engaged in the brutal conquest and colonization of Ireland. Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh were involved. The British saw themselves as civilized and superior; they saw the Irish as savage and inferior. And the Protestant English despised the Catholic Irish. In their conquest of the Irish, the English had a strong sense that they were doing God's will; their religio-cultural ethnocentrism fueled their oppression. In my judgment, the British were as brutal and were Hitler and Stalin.
The British brought their religio-cultural ethnocentrism with them as they invaded and colonized America; English ethnocentrism and systems of oppression were imported lock-stock-and-barrel along with their Bibles. The Puritans added a sense of chosenness to this perverse mix---later called Manifest Destiny. Supposedly, it was God's will to conquer and colonize this new land---this New England---and set up a Christian nation. Any people who stood in the way were like the Canaanites---to be destroyed, if necessary. Puritan religion combined with an Anglo-Saxon culture/civilization fueled a dangerous ethnocentrism which led to brutal acts of oppression again and again.
All of this was in place before the idea of race/racism came to the fore in these United States. Racism began around 1660 to justify slavery in Virginia and became full-blown between 1800-1850. Racism did not replace religio-cultural ethnocentrism; it was simply added to an already evil mix. This demonic mix legitimated the oppression of Mexicans, Japanese, Hawaiians, Filipinos and others. The Klan was driven by ethnocentrism as much as by racism. So are evangelicals in the late 1990s, according to Michael Emerson's sociological research.
Generally, the American pulpit is silent about the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression, even though these are major biblical themes.
For documentation, see A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki; Race and Manifest Destiny by Reginald Horsman.
RACISM
The concept of race is not a biblical concept. The Bible addresses nations, languages and cultures, but not races as we think of them today. For example, rabbis have told me again and again that Jews are not a race; they are a religio-ethnic group. But most American non-Jews classify Jews as a race of people. We read our deep-seated ideas of race into situations where they do not belong.
Most social scientists today assert that race as a concept is too imprecise to be valid. Which set of physical characteristics should be used to categorize races? There are endless variations of skin color. Though the concept of race is imprecise, inaccurate and invalid, the social meaning assigned to race---racism---is real and powerful and destructive.
According to sociologists Michael Emerson and Joe Feagin, racism is alive and well in modern America. Based on 1990s data, Emerson, in Divided by Faith, shows that American society as a whole and white evangelicals in particular still tolerate or participate in the continuing of racism. Joe Feagin, in Living with Racism, shows that middle class Afro Americans still battle with systemic racism. Jerome Miller, author of Search and Destroy, makes a devastating critique of the criminal justice system for targeting Afro American males. Glenn Loury, author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, has many charts documenting a continuing racial gap in almost every area of life.
Joe Feagin, a sociologist who studies race and gender, has published 50 books and 190 research articles on these topics; he has documented the historical roots of American systemic racism in his book Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (2000); the third edition was released in 2014. Feagin takes a hard look at our founding fathers and the racism/slavery that pervaded our nation at the time and how systemic racism pervades our society even down to this present time.
Fifty-five wealthy men gathered in 1787 to write a constitution for this newly democratic nation. Forty percent owned slaves or had owned slaves and "a significant portion of the others profit to some degree as merchants, shippers, lawyers and bankers from the trade in slaves, commerce in slave-produced agricultural products, or supplying provision to slaveholders and slave-traders." In 1700, Wall Street was "one of the first large colonial markets" for slaves. Half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were either slaveholders or slave traders.
George Washington was one of the richest men in the colonies; he owned around 300 slaves. Thomas Jefferson owned around 260 slaves. "We, the People" did not include one-fifth of the population who were slaves; it was an elitist constitution which left out not only Afro Americans and Native Americans, but also women and the poor. It does not sound like a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." "Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Sam Houston enslaved black Americans. Ten U.S. presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Johnson, and Grant) owned slaves."
To keep current on accurate information about American racism, check out the website by Feagin, Racism Review.
CLASSISM
Classism (economic segregation, socioeconomic inequality or in lay terms, the wide and growing gap between the rich and poor) was the number one topic of Luke's gospel. A corrupt religio-politico-economic elite ran Jewish society and they even turned the Temple into a system of oppression. Jesus was scathing in his denunciation of the corrupt and oppressive system.
According to economist Paul Krugman, political analyst Kevin Phillips, sociologist William Julius Wilson, and sociologist Robert Bellah, growing class divisions have destroyed any semblance of American equality and they are undermining the very foundations of American democracy. Paul Krugman (2002) states:
"We are now living in a New Gilded Age. . . . an astonishing concentration of income and wealth in just a few hands. . . . the United States . . . has more poverty and lower life expectancy than any other advanced nation. . . . The 13,000 richest families in America now have almost as much income as the 20,000,000 poor. And those 13,000 families have incomes 300 times that of average families."
Little of the recent economic growth has trickled down to ordinary families. This money is being used to buy political and intellectual influence. Federal economic policies have increased socioeconomic inequality. Ray Boshara writes about wealth inequality in the Jan/Feb, 2003, Atlantic Monthly. He states: "The U.S. is more unequal than at any other time since the dawn of the New Deal---indeed, it is the most unequal society in the advanced democratic world."
For more documentation, see two books by Kevin Phillips: The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990), and Wealth and Democracy (2002). Also When Work Disappears by William Julius Wilson, and Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah. For excellent, accurate information on the extreme racial wealth gap, read Thomas Shapiro's The Hidden Cost of Being African American and Black Wealth/White Wealth. To keep current on the racial wealth gap, google the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University which Shapiro directs. To keep current on the wealth gap in general, read Sam Pizzigati's weekly online, Too Much, Excess and Inequality.
SEXISM
This section is on sexism or male dominance.
In creation, male and female are equal as persons; Genesis 1:27:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
In redemption, men and women are equal as persons; Galatians 3:26:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
In Spirit-filling, men and women are equal as persons; Acts 2:18:
Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
Persons and persons in relationship governed by love are primary. Person in roles, such as husband and wife, are secondary. If persons in roles are made primary, then a woman can dwindle into a wife. An overemphasis on husband as head and wife as submissive can damage the unique personhood of an individual; it can open the door to sin, abuse and oppression.
The punishment for Eve's sin was:
He [husband] will rule over you. Or he will be your master.
The punishment for the wife is dominance by the husband. This dominance is the result of the fall, not a principle as a result of the creation. Among Christians, this sinful dominance should be replaced by sacrificial love (Eph. 5:25) and honor and respect (I Peter 3:7). Unless the husband is reminded repeatedly about what his new Christian role is, he is likely to slip back into his old cultural role---enforced submission.
According to Ephesians 5, the husband is not told to "Assert your headship; be the boss of your home; enforce submission by your wife." Instead, he is told to love, cherish and sacrifice.
His gift to his wife is love; her gift to her husband is submission. This priority is important; only in a relationship bathed by love is it safe to submit. The husband should be exhorted to love ten times as often as the wife is told to submit, but often it seems that the opposite is the case. In reality, both should submit to each other. Only if the partners are giving these gifts to each other will the marriage work as God designed it to work. Without the emphasis of persons in relationship giving gifts to each other, the marriage can dwindle into rigid roles and then into a battle for dominance.
Steven Tracy, in an article in Christianity Today (Feb., 2007) entitled, "Headship with a Heart," tells about his 15 years of counseling in his pastoral ministry. Again and again, he has heard husbands "use male headship to justify abuse." His wife, a family therapist, "hears horrific stories of male authority turned malignant virtually every day."
Battered into Submission (1998) documents that "pastors fail to take the husband's violence seriously and simple encourage wives to be submissive."
"Unfortunately, secular society and even the Christian church consistently fail to protect women, and often blame women for physical or sexual violence perpetrated upon them. . . . Violence against women is as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer."
Tracy concludes that churches "must pursue all means possible to protect vulnerable women, and teach that male headship means protection, not domination."
Recommended further reading: I Married You by Walter Trobisch; Gender and Grace by Mary Stewart Van Leuween.
In conclusion, I will try to summarize social evil by referring to three versions of the American trinity:
Martin Luther King's trinity of capitalism, racism and militarism.
My trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.
Another trinity: sexism, American exceptionalism and perverted Protestantism.
Summary statement: If the American church neglects justice, the love of God and the love of its ethnic neighbors, as the Pharisees did, any talk of justice will be a joke. And injustice/oppression will be widespread---unchecked and unchallenged---today in 2014 at it was in 1776.
No comments:
Post a Comment