Is there Common Ground?

If my post above needs to be deleted, so be it. I just think it’s nearly impossible for us to be trying to delicately speak of these things to each other whilst desperately trying to ignore the Gorilla thrashing about with loud gongs (in the middle of our “national room”, anyway!).

Maybe in this room I am that gorilla at the moment. If so, Brad has the tranquilizer darts. :monkey_face:

Well … it is your OP so you can call it that way if you want. But I suggest that it is loaded with politics (as Jesus – our prime peacemaker himself inextricably was). Ignoring the politics happening alongside all this would be like trying to study global climate change while insisting that the sun is off-limits for any study of what is going on with the earth. But that is your call. I’ll delete my original post.

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Agreed. Unbundling the issues from politics is important. But acknowledging how embedded our beliefs are in political and cultural narratives is absolutely essential, as well. Unbundling can’t happen until we understand first how bundled we are.

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The main common ground I see (both in the political and scientific-origins realms) with other Christians is that we are all interested in wanting to do the right things and live in faithful ways. That’s why it is therapeutic to me personally to work alongside so many (and have them as students, and colleagues) whom I know and respect for many good reasons. I know that the demonizations of “the other side” does not fit them (us). And so the medicine of mixing it all up does its job. We can’t all be right, but we can be wrong without being evil in that “wrongness”.

I’ll add here that you won’t reach peace without justice. Sorry if that verges on political again, but the parallel I think is too important to ignore. On science issues peace will prove to be ephemeral if you willingly sacrifice truth (the scientific equivalent of moral justice on the political side?). We can humbly recognize that we don’t have the whole truth and may be wrong about some parts we think we do have. That is a healthy posture most of the time I would guess.

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That is right.

It is not that we are to ignore politics, but we are to reject it as the primary way of understanding and influencing our world. A very helpful book on this is To Change the World by James Davis Hunter, https://www.amazon.com/Change-World-Tragedy-Possibility-Christianity/dp/0199730806. The seduction of politics is that it seems like a way to claim power to cause change. However, the way the world works, the way our faith works, this is not the path to influence.

Our culture, the Church in America, is captive to two great idols. On one hand, there is science. But on the other is politics. As Christians, we are to engage in both science and politics, but the real challenge is to do so in a way that sees it correctly as a man-made thing. Even though our world worships science and politics, we cannot.

I am probably sounding Stanely Hauerwas-ian now, but this is the real danger here. That is why I really resist the attempt of people to bundle their theology and politics with evolution.

A great example of this is Open Theism. Of course, evolution is compatible with open theism, and it is no surprise that so many open theists gravitated to it. Still, it is a grave mistake to say that evolution some how demonstrates that open theism is correct, and that God’s providence is a false illusion. The open-theism vs. providence debate is seperable entirely from evolution. And we should separate it.

The same can be said about Biblical inerrancy (and I am an inerrantist), liberal/conservative politics, climate change, predestination vs. free will, abortion/eugenics/racism, etc. All these issues are separable from evolution (and young earth creationism too), and we should keep them separate, even though our instinct is to see this first through a political lense.

Remember, at BioLogos, our purpose is to “invite the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.”

That purpose is served when we see things first through the lense of Jesus: his life, death and resurrection. He needs to be our starting point, not politics. Not science.

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I really resonate with your critique here, Joshua. Amen to all of it.

It is Jesus’ politics which I will not ignore, the shadow of which falls over all other principalities and powers including our own science and politics. One way of reaching into the world of people with whom we want to find common ground is to enter into their concerns with them. We don’t always get to dictate to them what their concerns should be or which domains their concerns should stay within. If we section ourselves off for the purpose of some cleanly controlled evaluation, we will miss seeing much of what causes them to believe and live as they do.

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Polling data from the American election do (apparently) show that much of the support for Donald Trump comes from white males without college educations, many of whom are from rural parts of the country–which is the lion’s share of the USA’s territory. Whether they are “mainly” evangelicals, however, is a different matter. I don’t recall seeing specific data for that, and I would tend towards some skepticism here. A lot of rural white Americans are not very religious, whether or not they identify themselves as Christians, let alone evangelicals. I suspect that guns are actually more important than Bibles for many in Trump’s camp.

Donald Trump himself is absolutely not an evangelical (by any definition I would accept), and though some evangelical leaders have supported him (Mike Huckabee is an obvious example), many others have not. Anecdotally, I spent two days with more than a dozen evangelical pastors this summer, and not one single pastor supported Trump–I don’t assume that, it was talked about.

A lot of evangelicals were probably conflicted by the options offered on the ballot. This isn’t the place for readers to chime in about how they voted, and why–certain other sites are more appropriate for that type of discourse. To keep this conversation in a more academic mode, I will share this: NY Times columnist Ross Douthat–a keen student of American politics and religion and a devout Catholic–believes that many evangelicals view Mr Trump not entirely differently from the way in which many Syrian Christians view Mr Assad: as a strong man who will protect their religious freedom (which obviously means different things in the USA than in Syria) from being further limited–especially by appointing Supreme Court justices who respect religious freedom, but also in other ways. So, they might have voted for him, even though they neither like nor admire him, because they feel that they have no other choice. (I hasten to add that Mr. Douthat absolutely does not push this comparison any further, and he doesn’t believe that Mr. Trump is like Mr. Assad in other respects.)

Finally, support for gun rights and/or religious liberty does not equate with racism, though I wouldn’t doubt that some racists support those things.

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Hi Ted,

Skepticism in the absence of data is appropriate. Pew just released a preliminary analysis of exit polls from November 8, and it’s very disheartening to me:

fully eight-in-ten self-identified white, born-again/evangelical Christians say they voted for Trump, while just 16% voted for Clinton.

But I don’t want to hijack the thread. What the recent election demonstrates is that we can go far, far afield when politics becomes our primary way of thinking and acting. What happened in the 2016 election can easily happen in Josh’s common ground symposia.

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Josh’s comments in this thread about creationism and racism are largely on target. The big picture is indeed complicated—just as the even bigger picture of racism and evolution is complicated. Sound bites won’t accurately convey the whole story, and I will try not to offer any sound bites of my own.

I will offer a few general comments. First, Ken Ham has spoken clearly and strongly against racism for many years. For an overview of their views as of 1999, I recommend this pdf version of a printed tract by Ham and others in my collection: http://www.temcat.com/L-4-Topical-Library/Creation/Races-of-Man.pdf. Among other points, the authors deny that the Bible prohibits “inter-racial” marriage, they deny the traditional claim that Ham was cursed (it was actually his son Canaan) and the alleged consequence that his skin color was darkened, and they affirm that “There is really only one race—the human race.”

Whatever one might say about other creationists, one cannot say that Ham is a racist.

At the same time, I could easily provide examples (in addition to Bob Jones) of some leading creationists in earlier years who said some racist things. I won’t take time for that.

Charles Darwin was a racist by modern standards, but (a) so was Abraham Lincoln and (b) his racism did not lead him to support slavery—his bitter opposition to slavery is in fact well documented. On the other hand, many American Christians have believed that the Bible supports slavery, and many of those people would have been considered YECs, if the terminology had been used in their day. See http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-of-nature/having-bacon-with-their-bible-southern-christians-and-the-race-question

As a general rule, anthropologists down to World War Two were strong racists, partly because of their acceptance of evolution with the implicit notion that various human “races” were in different stages of evolutionary “advancement”; almost all of them were either non-religious or even vigorously opposed to religion, especially Christianity. Also, scientific racism (i.e., racism justified in terms of evolution or eugenics) was a standard part of American high school biology texts in the same period. A pertinent example is the text by Hunter that was used in Tennessee at the time of the Scopes trial. So, I understand why Ham claims that “Darwin did more than any person to popularize” racism. Darwin himself didn’t do much along those lines, but Darwinians certainly did much to spread racist ideas.

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Correlation is not causation.

There is a complex set of reasons why many evangelicals voted for Trump. Remember, a very large proportion (a majority?) of Trump voters strongly disapprove of Trump. For many Christian, as easy as it is to make an evangelical case against Trump, it is just as easy to make an evangelical case against Clinton.

And once again, the purpose of our faith is not to prevent the election of Trump. Or (for that matter) Clinton.

The fact that we so often act as if our faith should require taking specific sides in these ephemeral and parochial concerns is the the core of the problem. This happens because we see the world first by politics. Through that lens. This distorts everything.

I think C. S. Lewis’ quote is salient now, and relevant as it ever was.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else
from Is Theology Poetry? http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Theology=Poetry_CSL.pdf

C. S. Lewis is speak to all of us here. He speaks of “Christianity”, but the core of our faith is Jesus. We can equivalently say, “Christian thought is to see the world in light of Jesus, by way of Him, through that lens.”

The context is very relevant to us. In the essay, C. S. Lewis is pointing out that science (and therefore) scientism is not a complete worldview. It cannot make sense of beauty, morality, religion, or even science. As C.S. Lewis writes…

Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the [none]-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself.

This is true of our faith. Everything makes sense in light of Jesus.

He is also right about science. Scientism is ultimately incoherent.

And this is also true of politics. The “politicism”, the partisanship, the parties and politics of our world are ultimately incoherent. This is not where we place our hope. Though our world see the world through this lense first, we are to see the world through Jesus first.

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If you have a moment, you will not regret watching this 5 min clip of Stanley Hauerwas. One of the greatest living theologians of our time.

Joshua - excellent post.

My only dissent with it is your criticism of bundling theology with evolution (I’m with you entirely on politics), and that’s because the “origins debate” is everything to do with theology and how it interacts with the science. Otherwise your blank face at the top of the column would represent a missing Jerry Coyne supporter rather than a missing Steve Meyer supporter. Despite ID’s methodological hesitation to “do God” we’re talking about an in-house Christian debate.

“Creation” in both “Creationism” and “Evolutionary Creation” is a theological term which both teams hold in common - but do they mean the same thing by it, and do they mean what the Bible and historical Christianity have meant by it? And of course “theistic evolution” is also a theological term, raising the question of what the “theistic” means: does it oppose “atheistic” evolution, or “deistic” evolution, or both?

Although it’s more to do with “what divides” than with “what unites” (apologies for that), the question of things like Open Theism is significant in any bridge-building exercise, because Creationists both Young and Old are (almost by definition) theologically conservative, and they often gain the perception that to believe in evolution entails abandoning not just the literal historicity of Genesis (which can be discussed on solid, shared, theological principles) but embracing novel views on sin, on Scripture and (as you mentioned) on the nature of God and creation itself.

I’m not sure of the answer to that, within what are all “broad church” movements, but I suggest it at least requires each “position” agreeing the theological parameters of its “main stream”. For example, if the Intelligent Design spokesman were a Hindu (when most ID people are Evangelicals), ones YEC was a Mormon rather than a Baptist, ones OEC an agnostic Jew and ones EC spokeman an Open Theist with a postmodern kenotic understanding of Scripture, I suspect that the merits of the science would get rather buried by other matters in the discussion.

When George Wallace was running for president, our pastor said that he couldn’t tell us whom we should vote for. But he did say that it is a sin to vote for a candidate with a sinful platform.

Listen:

Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever

@Swamidass

This is what I find problematic about your search for common ground.

I have proposed a common ground which I would think would be a slam dunk for all Christians.

That is John 1:1-3
John 1:1-3 (NIV2011)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Sadly I have found no one who is really interested in exploring the NT understanding evolution and cosmology. Everyone finding an excuse for not taking it seriously.

Until our common ground is the willingness to seek God’s Will and God’s Way based on the Logos, Jesus Christ we will be just spinning our wheels.

Most evangelicals voted for Trump who told them what they wanted to hear, rather than what was good for all of America. This does speak to the arrogance of evangelical white America and the failure and weakness of its theology. .

When we step back, we do have a tremendous amount of common ground, yet as is the case in politics, the focus is often on the differences. There are many reasons for that, but often come down to power and associated financial gain. Many have positions they feel they must defend, and of course those in control try to cultivate the controversy to keep the donations coming.
I am currently in a bible study of 1 John, and am impressed how it all comes down to love. This was reinforced by a recent blog/ book review by RJS ( at What Do You Love? | Musings on Science and Theology) which includes the quote:
“For Augustine, what we call human virtues are nothing more than forms of
love. Courage is loving your neighbor’s well-being more than your own
safety. Honesty is loving your neighbor’s interests more than your own,
even when the truth will put you at a disadvantage. And because Jesus
himself said that God’s law comes down to loving God and your neighbor
(Matthew 22:36-40), Augustine believed that all sin was ultimately a
lack of love.”

Indeed we have to look at our hearts, and work towards discussing our differences in love. That does not mean we sacrifice truth, but rather that we seek truth in the context of love.

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Somehow we are back to politics. The comments here are uniformed about the “other” side. This is not helpful. As hard as this is to believe, even in this election, our opponents are not evil, even if they are wrong.

I find it very hard to believe that this analysis has much merit at all. Have you had any careful conversations with any Trump voters and asked them why?

This over the top on two levels. First, Trump is not a segregationist (though he certainly seems like a racist). This better than a Hitler comparison, but not by much.

Second, there is certainly “sins” in Trumps platform. Do you really want to argue there is no “sins” in the Democratic platform? If we were take this advice fully, we would vote for no one. I do not think this is what you are advocating. Instead, the argument becomes equivalent to saying that Trump is sinful, but the Democratic platform is not. I cannot swallow that.

Do you really believe that the dominant reason Evangelicals voted for Trump is to support sexism, misogyny, racism, bigotry, hatred and division? The Trump evangelicals I know hate this part of his message, but felt they had no other choice. They felt they were making a choice between two very bad options. Many of them were making pragmatic calculations.

My church in Saint Louis includes both Trump voters and ardent Progressives (Bernie supporters that moved to Clinton) and also Clinton. Politically, we are sharply divided. Here is what one member of my church shared. She was very concerned about the Trump win…

I share my specific worries that relate to me directly with my republican friends when I talk about it. I don’t blame them for voting for Trump. I think they have a right to vote and they’ve exercised that right. But now I’m trying to get them to understand why I’m afraid/sad/disappointed. The few conversations I’ve had with Trump supporters have been encouraging in that they hear me out and they support me in saying “I hear your fears. But I don’t think this will happen.” Or- "I think we are on the same page but I don’t think the administration will allow Trump to do this or that. "

First of all, I think it is the role of the Church to enable conversations just like this, in the context of family.

If you talk to Evangelical Trump supports, I am convinced that even though there will be real and significant policy differences, you will find that they are not the racist, opportunist, bigots you have been told they are. Even though Trump appears to be a racist, a large number of people who voted for him (e.g. a surprising percentage of black, Hispanic and union voters) voted for Obama too. They are not usually racists.

We can disagree with their decision to vote for Trump, but this does not make them complicit with him. It does not make them racists too.

To draw an imperfect analogy, Bill Clinton was not an honorable character in how he treated women. The same feminists and liberals that looked over his “sins” cannot understand how evangelicals look over Trump’s “sins.” It is unfair to call feminists who supported Clinton hypocrites as it is for us to call evangelicals who support Trump mysogynists and racists. Politics is about hard choices between bad options. Often we choose to be pragmatic, hold our nose, and vote for someone we disagree with on substantial issues.

My biggest concern about white evangelicals is that they do not often understand or show empathy to non-whites like me. The problem is dominated by (sometimes willful) ignorance. However, we cannot help them understand us, until we take the time to understand them.

I understand how difficult this is, but politics is a false way of viewing the world. Even if we are convinced our neighbor is wrong, we need to start by understanding them. We do have much more common ground than we know. It is critical, at this moment, that we seek that common ground out.

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@Swamidass

Yes. I have talked to them. They are my friends and relatives.

Tragic. There will be a lot of this nonsense in the coming years I fear.

And please do not take my posts as defenses of particular votes for Trump. I am just saying that we live in land divided sharply by politics now. And we have for a long time. Our hope cannot be in politics.

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@Swamidass

No, I do not believe that evangelicals were voting for the Donald because he is a bigot.

His message is clear. Only Donald Trump can make America great again. Sounds to me very much like a bargain with the Devilo. Give me your Vote/Soul and I will give you whatever you want. This in fact is worse than racism.

Many evangelicals believe that President Obama is the Anti-Christ, and yet when a real Anti-Christ arises promising them the sun and the moon, thjey vote for him.

Most evangelicals voted for Trump because he promises to overthrow Roe vs Wade. They feel very guilty that abortion is legal in their country. This is the gross form of legalism, which has no place in the lives of those who are freed by grace and love…

Sin is sin and there will always be sin in this world until Jesus returns. Trump was clever enough to know that he could get evangelicals to go along with him if he promised to outlaw abortion.

Of course the Republicans have been playing this card for a long time and have failed to fulfill this promise, so it remains to be seen as to whether they have played evangelicals for fools once again. My bet is they have. In any case they have renewed the seeds of division by seeking to have the government impose an absolute morality on people which is not Christian.

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@Jay313 @Relates @beaglelady @jpm

Politics is one of the idols of the american Church. We assess everything through this lens first, and it creates deep problems. This is true on the right, left, and the among the anabaptists too.

Please comment on this article summarizing To Change the World

A few salient quotes…

The irony is that there is no phrase more beloved to a certain kind of Christian than “to change the world.” But in Hunter’s persuasive account, the strategies those very same Christians have pursued are, by themselves, woefully incapable of changing the world.

Of course we all want to change the world to make it better, but the dominant strategies do not actually work.

In a trenchant analysis of the three most coherent Christian social movements of our time, he finds a shared fixation on politics, and on power conceived narrowly as political. Exhibit A, of course, is the Christian Right, which perennially survives the predictions of its demise. It is driven by nostalgia for Christian dominance and moral coherence. Exhibit B is the Christian Left, less well-organized but still vigorous, and driven by a desire for economic justice (and abhorrence of the Christian Right).

And Exhibit C, shrewdly presented, is the “neo-Anabaptist” faction carrying on the thought and work of John Howard Yoder, driven by a distrust for the ungodly violence of the market and the state.

At its core, all three movements are captured by political. They see politics as the dominant way of effecting change, even though this is neither true nor the way of our faith.

The tragedy of all three movements is their impoverished understanding of culture and of cultural power, and the degree to which they have become captive to ressentiment, the rehearsal of grievances (whether the enemy is secular humanists, Christian conservatives, or the imperial state) rather than the pursuit of a true common good.

And this is what I hope people are hearing in my posts here over the last couple days.

Rather, Hunter calls us to “faithful presence”—fully participating in every structure of culture as deeply formed Christians who also participate in the alternative community of the church. Whereas the first essay is relentlessly sociological, the last is surprisingly theological, even doxological, in its call for Christocentric, ecclesially formed cultural presence.

Part of the reason why I was so drawn to Francis Collins in the early years (and I why I choose to affiliate with BioLogos) is that he was an example of that Faithful Presence in 2006, in the darkness of Dover. At a moment of intense political conflict, when it [seemed] impossible to identify as a Christian in science, Collins did. And he did so in a way that created space for peace, by explaining his personal journey to faith in Jesus.

In that place irreconcilable conflict, precipitated by the politics of the creation wars, a true follower of Jesus became an understandable, attractive, and winsome witness of Jesus in the scientific world.

We cannot fully reform or control the politics of our world. We can, however, be a faithful presence here. That, I believe, is where are focus should be.

And one final quote from the article…

A truly cultural agenda, putting our power to deeper and better use than the rehearsal of ressentiment, is one of the most important callings Christians could possibly embrace. Hunter offers a crucial alternative to the political and anti-political camps of Right, Left, and Yoder. But such a movement will require partners.

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