Hate Crimes and David Brooks

The famous Swiss-Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) supposedly once said that a Christian pastor should "preach with the Bible in one hand and the current newspaper in the other." I'm not sure I fully agree with that counsel. (At least I have never preached with a newspaper in my hand!) It seems to me that a pastor who preaches "in light of the news" can easily get so wrapped up in social-political events of the current moment that he or she loses sight of God's own "good news," God's central message of judgment and grace, of Christ crucified and risen for the forgiveness of sins, a message that is aimed at the individual heart and life. We sometimes refer to that central message as God's words of "law" and "gospel." Through this twofold message, God summons us to repent of our sins and to trust in his promises for the sake of Christ our Savior and Lord.

But that divine message does not come to us in a vacuum. The biblical prophets remind us that God always aims the divine message toward humans in the here and now. Moreover, God is not "disconnected" from social and even political events, at least according to the biblical prophets. "Justice" sure seems to matter to God, at least according to the Holy Scriptures. Then, too, the "repentance" to which God calls us is not merely an abstract idea or a mere private matter. Just as the Old Testament prophets’ call to repent went out to the whole people of ancient Israel, so there are also New Testament calls to repentance that are directed to entire churches. God calls us to repent of all sins, both those that are more personal and individual and those that are more corporate, social, and even political in nature. An aspect of repentance is acknowledging "the heart of darkness" that resides in each of us ("original sin"), confessing our sins, receiving by faith God's mercy and forgiveness, and then seeking to amend one's sinful life.

I was thinking about the specificity of sin when I was reading today's edition of The NW Indiana Times. In it there is a story about the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Of course the immediate context for the story was the murder of six Asian-American women and two others in Atlanta earlier this week. The larger context, however, goes back to last year when some political leaders frequently referred to the covid virus as "the China virus." This rhetoric helped to inspire some individuals to act aggressively and even violently against Asian people in our midst. Since March 2020, nearly 3,800 "anti-Asian" incidents have been reported to one agency that keeps track of such things. According to the article, nationally women reported hate crimes 2.3 times more than men. Asian-American organizations have been trying to call attention to this problem for many months. There is real fear among our Asian brothers and sisters here in the US. (Some of what I have heard reminds me of what happened to German Americans during the First World War. During that time, when America was at war with Germany, many German Americans, a lot of them Lutherans, experienced "hate crimes" as well. My grandfather once told me that he knew a German-American Lutheran pastor who had been pulled from the pulpit of his congregation in 1917, and was tarred and feathered by locals who thought "he must be a propagandist for the German Kaiser.")

This story about the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans hits close to home. One of my colleagues and friends, whose office is just down the hall from mine, teaches theology at Valpo. She is a very devout Roman Catholic laywoman, who grew up in a mixed Chinese and Dutch-American family. She is an American citizen. In addition, she has earned graduate degrees in theology from Georgetown (Ph.D.) and Yale (M.Div.). Her expertise is in Chinese Christianity as well as East-Asian religions. 

I recently learned from her that she herself experienced a hate crime last year in Valparaiso. She was shopping with her newborn daughter at our local Aldi when a group of "boogaloo civil war" guys, as she describes them, came up to her and started spewing hate-filled rhetoric at her and her infant. They were echoing language about the covid virus that they had heard from one of our political leaders at the time. She told me yesterday, "I didn't engage them or try to finish shopping. I just immediately lifted [my daughter] out of the shopping cart and walked straight out the door, and they didn't follow us...." Thankfully, that is the only such incident she has experienced since moving here a few years ago. 

What are we to do in view of this sad and disturbing situation of racist hatred in our country and community? 

It seems to me that we can begin by asking God to forgive us for the times that we have harbored hate in our own hearts or have acted in hateful ways toward others. None of us is free of that problem. The "old Adam" lurks in each of our hearts. Only the medicine of Christ and the Holy Spirit can address that inborn disease. Second, we can pray that the Lord would not only change our hearts and minds but also the hearts and minds of others who are hell-bent on hating people who are different from themselves. Instead of "scapegoating" others, we can ask the Lord to direct us to the true "Scapegoat," our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the cross has borne away the sins of the world.  And we can ask the Holy Spirit to guide our ways, to lead us to discern how best we can help our neighbors in need, and to do what needs to be done. Right now, those neighbors in need are our Asian brothers and sisters. (When one of the Lord's sheep is in trouble, he leaves the 99--whom he also loves [all lives matter!]--and goes after the one who is in most need of help!)

Today's edition of the other paper I read each morning, The New York Times, has a very thoughtful editorial by one of the most important and influential Christians writing and speaking in America today, namely, David Brooks. (A high-point of my week is listening to him on Friday evenings on the PBS NewsHour.) His editorial today speaks to the problem of social injustice and inequality in the US. Brooks doesn't get too theological too often, but this is one of those times when he does, and, if you ask me, he is spot on. It's the kind of article that invites you, the reader, to engage in self-examination and prayer, to seek the change that God wants you to undergo (i.e., "repentance"), and to take steps that reflect that change. It's worth underscoring that such themes fit with the current church season, Lent.

Here's the link to Brooks' article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/social-justice-christianity.html?smid=em-share

Happy Birthday, Prof. Schlink!

Today marks the 118th anniversary of the birth of Edmund Schlink (1903-1984), one of the most important Christian theologians and ecumenists of the last century. After earning a doctorate in psychology (Marburg, 1927), he completed a doctorate in theology (Muenster, 1931), under the direction of Karl Barth. (Between these two doctorates he had suffered a crisis a faith, which led him to work for a year as a field hand on a Silesian farm. There he encountered Pietistic Christians, who helped him through that period of spiritual struggle and renewal.) 

He submitted his theological Habilitationsschrift (yet another doctoral dissertation) to the faculty at Giessen in 1934.

During the German dictatorship, he was active in the so-called "Confessing Church." After the war, he was called to teach theology at Heidelberg University. He remained on that faculty until his retirement in 1971. Between 1946 and his death, he was very active in the World Council of Churches, serving on its Commission on Faith and Order. He founded and led the Ecumenical Institute at Heidelberg, he was active in a circle of Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians in West Germany, and he served as the official representative of the German Protestant Church at the Second Vatican Council.

For the past decade, Schlink's work has been my main scholarly interest. I am currently editing and translating his 804-page Ecumenical Dogmatics, his magnum opus, which will be published late this year or early next year by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (which recently merged with Brill).

In honor of Dr. Schlink's birthday today, here is an excerpt from his classic 1957 essay on "The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue":

Among the various forms of prayer doxology assumes a special place in view of its pronominal structure.

In doxology believers do not ask God anything for themselves, nor do they ask God to act for other people, but they only worship God. While the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer pray for the coming of the kingdom, the doxology of the congregation confesses “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.” Doxology is all about the praise-filled recognition of the reality of God. God can thus be addressed in the second person—as, for example, in the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer. But, as a rule, doxology speaks of God in the third person: God is not addressed as a Thou but praised as a He. When we translate the original Greek “Glory be to God on high…” (Lk. 2.14) or “to him be glory forever and ever” (Rom. 11.36), that does not imply that God is first granted “glory” or majesty through the doxology. Instead, the doxology “gives” God the “glory” that God already has. More precisely, it praises the majesty that God has and is, and indeed has and is even if a person does not give God the honor. Doxology is the reflection of the eternal divine majesty in the praise of human beings.

Doxology is based on God’s act of salvation. Because God has accomplished his action for human beings, in fact for the world, God is praised by the believer. This is quite clear in the praise psalms in the Old Testament:  Because God, who is enthroned on high, has shown mercy in his act of salvation in history for those who are nobodies, he is praised without end as the Lord, who graciously stoops down from on high and who indeed is without end majestically sublime and merciful, gracious, kind, and lowly. Adoration arises from the acknowledgment of God’s historical act. This praise is the unfolding—in the literal theo-logical sense—of gratitude for God’s action in that the psalmist’s gratitude breaks out into hymnic praise and adoration of the eternal God himself.... 

Likewise, doxologies found in the New Testament live from God’s act of salvation, from the act of salvation in Christo which, despite the Parousia yet to come, is already entirely fulfilled. The congregation on earth may now already thus participate in the songs of victory of the glorified, who celebrate the defeat of all the powers hostile to God and the fulfillment of God’s lordship, and who praise God and the Lamb. Because doxology is grounded in God’s act of salvation, the latter is also referred to frequently and explicitly in the words of New Testament doxology. But their use is not essential to the wording of the doxology, and even when they are explicitly mentioned in a doxology they appear there more as the occasion and basis for the doxology than as constituting its actual content (compare, for example, Rev. 4.11; 19.1ff.). Doxology is ultimately about God himself—about God on the basis of his mighty acts toward us and toward the world—yet about God who does not fully disclose himself in these acts but does them in the freedom of the almighty and loving Lord, who already existed before his acts and who will continue to be after them, who is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Doxology is not merely about God’s action in history, but about God himself, about his eternal reality. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Is. 6.3). This statement is valid regardless of whether or not the earth gives glory to the Lord. “Holy, holy, holy is God the Lord, the almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Rev. 4.8). “To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. 1.17). “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever” (Rev. 7.12). The central concern in these and many similar statements is the acknowledgment of God as God, who forever and ever and who before his mighty acts of salvation and after them is the same holy, almighty, glorious and wise one. Statements about God’s being, essence, and attributes thus occur in the etymological unfolding of doxology that praises God’s eternal all-history-encompassing aseity. The same holds true for the adoration of Jesus Christ, who is praised not only as the crucified and risen one but also as the eternal who encompasses time, and thereby also as the pre-existent one, who, like the Father, is the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

--Edmund Schlink, "The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue," in Ecumenical and Confessional Writings, vol. 1 (The Coming Christ and Church Traditions; After the Council), ed. Matthew L. Becker, trans. Matthew L. Becker and Hans G. Spalteholz (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 70-71.