Meanderings, 23 November 2024

Hello from San Diego! Kris and I are in San Diego for the annual SBL meetings, when thousands (and I mean thousands) of professors from around the world gather. To think together, to listen to one another’s latest ideas and conclusions, and to enjoy the company of one another. Not to ignore… to browse through the latest publications of the major publishers in our field.

And, so, Advent begins:

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

My long-time friend Bob Smietana offers us a wonderful memorial of the one-and-only Tony Campolo:

(RNS) — Tony Campolo, an American Baptist minister and sociologist who spent decades trying to convince evangelicals and other Christians that their faith should motivate them to address social ills like poverty and racism, has died.

He was 89.

A native of Philadelphia, Campolo was known for his charismatic preaching and sense of humor, which made him a popular speaker at college campuses, churches and Christian conferences — and equally at home giving an altar call or social commentary.

“Putting religion and politics together is like mixing ice cream with horse manure,” he told the comedian and television host Stephen Colbert in 2006. “It doesn’t hurt the horse manure; it ruins the ice cream. And I think that this merger of church and state has done great harm to religion.”

The author of 35 books, Campolo held degrees from Eastern University, Palmer Theological Seminary and Temple University. He taught sociology first at the University of Pennsylvania and then for decades at Eastern Christian College, where he was named professor emeritus. He also served as an associate pastor at Mount Carmel Baptist, a predominantly Black church in Philadelphia, and in 2019 was named a co-pastor of St. John’s Baptist.

Jaylen did the right thing at the right time:

A Chicago-area postal worker was recently applauded for saving another person's life after jumping into action while on his route.

Jaylen Lockhart was working on Saturday afternoon in Aurora, when he noticed something that didn't seem quite right.

"I was looking at my rear view mirror at him, and he took a tumble," Lockhart recounted.

Lockhart did not simply call 911; he got out of his truck to help.

"I'm trying to get up at the same time and, and... he tell me just to stay down, just stay down, you might be hurt, and it can't be walking anywhere," said Guy Miller, who fell walking his dog, Bentley.

Lockhart flagged down some neighbors to help - and got Guy to give him his home address.

The postal worker found Marcia, Guy's wife, and then went back to finish his route.

Guy's family posted the story on social media -- to share their thanks.

"I was raised that way," Lockhart said. "I was raised that way, my parents, my family..Just, you look out for others. You know in the state that the world is in today, just kindness and grace is all that anyone ever needs."

The postal worker's selfless act will be recognized by the city of Aurora next week. But more importantly, he has gained an extended family in the Millers, who will open up their home to Lockhart's family to celebrate Thanksgiving.

"I said, 'What are you doing for Thanksgiving? You have family? Yeah?' We said, 'We're family, definitely,'" Marcia said.

On identity:

We people apply labels to all sorts of things—names, if you prefer that to “label”: we’ve named birds down to the level of subspecies. We have national labels: “American,” “Canadian,” “Zimbabwean,” “Brazilian,” etc. We have racial and ethnic labels.

What we often don’t pay enough attention to is the level of the label we choose for something—or someone. What’s my top-level identity, the number 1 that applies to me?

One thing that’s drawn my attention to this is that I’ve recently joined the BlueSky social medium, and I have a label or identity there (my ID is @jimibooks.bsky.social, if you care to follow me there). I see people using shorthand to say something like “I’m @xyzxyz.bsky.social”, but that’s not their identity (“am” being an identity verb); it’s their “handle" or “label” on that platform.

Something I read, written by Jonah Goldberg, called attention to the fact that we love to use labels as ways of primarily categorizing other people (his essay is here, if you’re interested). This is not a secular or religious or political problem; it’s universal. This approach to labeling one another, other human beings, totally misses their primary identity and diminishes their humanity. Yes, we have to use labels even to be able to converse. The problem arises when we make the label we choose the primary descriptor of the other person. That’s a problem and that’s wrong.

Twenty or so years ago, when I was spearheading our church’s slow movement toward adding women to the eldership, the debate revolved around the primary label we would apply to ourselves or to other humans. Am I a male primarily, or a human being first of all? Some thought that, if asked “what are you?” (not who!) they would answer “male” or “female.” An analogy came to mind. Bearing in mind that all analogies fail eventually, I asked: “What do you think a stallion or mare or gelding would say if you were to ask it, ‘What are you?’ I think the first answer would be ‘I’m a horse’; it would not see its sex as its primary identity.”

This analogy, which I thought was quite direct and simple, was met with quite a bit of resistance, to my surprise. My analogy did not resolve the debate, probably because the idea of leadership by women in the church was at that point, in that group of people, quite challenging….

Any time that we base our entire perception of another human being on a secondary (or tertiary!) descriptor, as if that were their identity, we have failed. There may be much about the other person to praise or to criticize—to disagree or to agree.

Furthermore, we tend to valorize—esteem or endorse—our friends or people with whom we already agree because doing so enhances us, in our own eyes and perhaps also in theirs. We tend demonize our opponents for the same reasons. Much of this is subconscious, not a result of a careful analysis, and may also be based on our emotions, rather than conscious rational thoughts.

Of course, we should continue to call a person who lies as a matter of regular habit a “liar,” as long as we recognize that her lying is secondary to her core identity. The flip side of that coin is also true, that when we consider someone a “hero” we are not using a term that identifies their core—but we certainly can still call him a hero. Nonetheless, both of these people are, first of all, human.

Aimee Byrd on doubt and certainty:

Sometimes, when I’m discouraged about life—particularly the life of faith—I read Ecclesiastes. And I’m reminded that there was a teacher/preacher of sorts—Koheleth—way back in the middle of the third century B.C.E., that spoke to the incongruities, anxieties, absurdities, and the fragility of it all. Here is our discontent, gloriously in God’s word to his people today.

For a good part of my adult life, I was pursuing the certainties of the faith. I wanted it all nailed down, this is who God is, this is who I’m supposed to be, this is how to raise my kids. And may I just go ahead and add in for timing, this is who you vote for.

The security of it all is so alluring. Until you get a crack in the structure, and you realize you got the scaffolding all wrong.

For those who are weary of the black and white Christianity that thinks life fits together like a Lincoln Log house, as long as you have all the pieces perfectly in order, maybe you can give the faith another look by starting in Ecclesiastes. What if we had more preaching like this today? Our questions are still the same: “the meaning of life, the unfairness of fate, the inevitability of death—but more, death’s cruelty in stripping us of all dignity, distinctiveness, achievement.” I’m quoting from Ellen Davis’s commentary on Ecclesiastes, which is such a great accompaniment to reading what she describes as “the poetics of humility” that is Ecclesiastes.

Philip Jenkins on the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Council:

e organize our history according to key dates, which seem to mark sharp boundaries in the flow of events. The year 1865 is an obvious American example, and 1945 plays a similar role for much of the world. These are the moments when crucial historical trends self-evidently ended or began, and we naturally choose them to frame our books or our television documentaries. When, as so often happens, history refuses to be so precisely framed, we glide over the inconsistencies. Neatness is all.

In the history of Christianity, and of the civilization built upon it, the year AD 325 represents one such natural division. May 2025 marks the 1,700th anniversary of what we usually think of as one of the most decisive moments in that history, namely the great council that the emperor Constantine called at Nicaea, near his new city of Constantinople. Of the pivotal importance of the event there seems little doubt. We speak of the church’s earliest days in terms of Ante-Nicene Christianity, or the age of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Something, surely, must have changed at that point. But exactly what that might have been remains a matter of intense debate.

The story of Nicaea is quickly told. In 312, Constantine consolidated power in the Roman Empire and granted toleration to Christianity the following year. He accepted some leading Christians as his advisors on religious matters and felt the need to demonstrate his leadership of the larger church when it fell into crisis or division. 

Such a situation developed in Alexandria, where the presbyter Arius argued that Christ the Son was not fully equal to God the Father. Because the Father was unique in being unbegotten, he must be different from the Son, who was begotten in time, and through whom the Father created the world: “There was a time when He [the Son] was not.” Just how directly these ideas stemmed from any one individual such as Arius is much disputed, but it is rhetorically useful to label any given teaching as the quirky sentiments of one lone individual, rather than a broad intellectual current. It should be noted, though, that Arius was actually not departing too far from views held by eminently respectable earlier thinkers.

Even so, as the Alexandrian church debated the issue, it was Arius personally who attracted the stigma for venturing on dangerous ground, and he was condemned. To resolve the spreading controversy, Constantine summoned a great council from the whole world, the oikou mene, which thus became the church’s first “ecumenical” council. 

Between 250 and 300 bishops gathered at Nicaea, representing a minority of the 1,800 or so who then held that office; only five came from the Western church. Tensions ran high during the month or so of debate, and legend holds that Arius was publicly slapped by Bishop Nicholas of Myra—the historical original of Santa Claus. Ultimately, Arius was condemned, with only two bishops prepared to speak up for him. Christ’s full equality with the Father was proclaimed in a new creed, which declared him to be of the same substance, homoousion. 

With their mission duly accomplished, the Fathers dispersed to their homes, and every one, we assume, lived orthodox-ly ever after.