Racism and Fraternities/Sororities

I was assigned to write an "Anatomy of Racism" paper this past week for my Critical Race Theory class. As a white individual, I found one of the assigned books entitled The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege by Robert Jensen to be the most helpful and illuminating to read. Jensen's admirable lucidity and frankness made so many aspects of this book that much more powerful. This one excerpt about the problem of segregation among U.S. fraternities and sororities on college campuses was really very interesting. Maybe this is due to the fact that I attended an evangelical university where the Greek system was non-existent, but this segregated reality within fraternities and sororities never occurred to me before reading this book. The level of influence and power that is ensured through these particular social networks is deeply problematic not only for the inherent racism therein (as if that weren't enough), but also for the fact that it is a level of corruption in itself. Segregation within the Greek system is yet another (crucial) form of systemic racism that must be uncovered and unmade in order for any level of equality to be actualized within American society. Read on:

"On most U.S. university campuses with a Greek system, fraternities and sororities are segregated. Any Greek organization that enforced such segregation by official policy - a "whites-only" rule - would be bounced off campus. But the continued existence of overwhelmingly segregated fraternities and sororities on many campuses, as a result of traditions and practices that are not overtly racialized, runs afoul of no regulations. But two crucial questions arise.

First, how does the presence of virtually all-white Greek organizations affect the racial climate of the campus? It's reasonable to assume that on a campus where official segregation as abandoned only a few decades ago and non-white students still routinely report they do not feel particularly welcomed on campus, the presence of high-visibility and prestigious groups that remain exclusively or largely whites-only adds to the sense of the university as a white-supremacist institution. Also, the persistence of overtly racist parties at white Greek houses - such as "ghetto parties" in which attendees mock urban blacks, or fake slave auctions - adds to the sense of a campus as a white space. The existence of predominantly non-white Greek organizations, especially black fraternities and sororities, does not change this reality. When unwelcome and/or made to feel uncomfortable in white organizations, it's hardly surprising that non-white students would form their own groups.

Second, Greek organizations are more than just clubs for students while on campus. They create social networks that endure beyond college days and provide entree into business and politics. One study found that a quarter of chief executives at the 500 largest corporations in the United States were fraternity members and that 'once they've graduated, [members] can tap into the network of past fraternity brothers or sisters who litter all tiers of corporate America.' The conclusion: 'A mere 8.5 percent of full-time university undergraduates are members of either a fraternity or a sorority. Not only have fraternities been the breeding ground of those 120 Forbes 500 chief executive officers, they also have spawned 48 percent of all U.S. presidents, 42 percent of U.S. senators, 30 percent of U.S. congressman, and 40 percent of U.S. Supreme Court justices, according to data from The North-American Interfraternity Conference.' The vast majority of these people are, of course, white.

So, the continued existence of a segregated Greek system perpetuates white supremacy, not necessarily because those who support the system have an overt white-supremacist ideology or intend the organizations to have that function. But in a white-supremacist society, the failure to intervene to change the course of the institution means that the institution will perpetuate white supremacy. Racism is no longer official policy of the institution, but its practices are racist. If a university with a Greek system that has this character were serious about creating a truly nonracist university, one easy way to begin the process would be to eliminate the Greek system or enact policies that make desegregation mandatory within a limited time frame. In most universities, either policy is unthinkable" (Jensen, 20-22, emphasis added).

The Liberation of the Gospel.

After a really amazing Barth seminar today due in no small part to David Congdon's fantastic presentation, I was inspired to continue reading J. Louis Martyn's Galatians commentary over dinner this evening. I simply wanted to note that I never cease to be amazed at Martyn's analysis of Galatians 3:28 where Paul declares that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Martyn helps to illuminate the radicality of the Gospel's liberation from these very categorical distinctions in Jesus Christ in the following excerpt with exceptional lucidity:

"In a word, Paul employs the ancient equation of the world's elements with archaic pairs of opposites to interpret the religious impact of Christ's advent. Following the baptismal formula, he applies that tradition not to the sensible elements, but rather to the elements of religious distinction. These are the cosmic elements that have found their termination in Christ. Specifically, the cosmos that was crucified on the cross is the cosmos that was founded on the distinction between Jew and Gentile, between sacred and profane, between the Law and the Not-Law. What we contemplate the identity of this crucified cosmos, it is not difficult to see how its departure could lead a Pharisee to speak of his own death (Gal. 6:14)" (405-406).

As Martyn notes just a page earlier, the old cosmos that was founded on the "creational pair of male and female" is also crucified in the cross (404). The reason that this is the essential good news of the Gospel is that these competing elements (Jew and Gentile, sacred and profane, male and female, Law and Not-Law) only lead to enslavement. But in Christ, these distinctions are put to death so that God has truly acted in Jesus Christ to liberate all humanity from such enslavement. This liberation is precisely what has been accomplished in Christ. And this is particularly important and revolutionary for me because I have personally felt the continual enslavement of such ever-present distinctions maintained and defended not only in the world but also in the Church, not least of which being the distinction between male and female. With the pervasiveness of complimentarianism in evangelicalism that violently surfaces every now and again through happenings like John Piper's assertions about a supposed "masculine Christianity", I am reminded of the need for the Church to hear again and again the freedom of the Gospel that Paul proclaims so fiercely all throughout the book of Galatians. To return to the distinctions listed above including those between men and women, one not only forfeits the liberation won for humanity in Christ, but one becomes enslaved once again to the dualities that separate humanity. My prayer is that the Church can hear anew Paul's radical call to recognize the death of such distinctions that completely and finally find their termination in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ecclesia as Mission.

I spent most of the day reading Nate Kerr's Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission for seminar tomorrow. And then I spent a few hours discussing the book with some good friends. My mind is still reeling from the book so these thoughts are probably premature and unhelpful. But I found Kerr's understanding of ecclesia to be a direct extension of Barth's understanding of Church as event. In my estimation and to my utter surprise given the numerous reviews of the book, and I shared this with my friends, I don't think that Kerr undermines the importance of ecclesia at all, but rather reformulates the identity of the Church in a way that takes us away from attempting to secure our own existence and power, to the Church that is always for the other and only exists as it does so in concrete action. You might not like his definition of ecclesia, but he certainly has one (despite its ever-present fluidity). Here was one of my favorite parts:

"The heart of the question of mission has to do with coming to 'see the church in relationship to the world rather than defining ecclesial existence "by definition" or "as such"'. Whatever we thus mean by speaking of the church as an ecclesia, we can no longer simply mean by this a 'gathering' which occurs exclusively or even primarily in terms of 'centred' spaces of a formation that occurs prior to the movement into that which is 'outside' or 'beyond'. ... The immediate referent of the ecclesia is not then that church which would tarry along here below as a counter-polis to the cities of earth, but rather that eschatological city in the fullness of whose coming there will not longer be even a church, but rather the manifestation of that 'new humanity' from all the nations in and through whom God's own life will be all in all. ...

Constituted by mission, 'church' is entirely the operation of God's apocalyptic action in Christ, and its 'peoplehood' the diasporic work of the Spirit. As under exile, such a peoplehood is bound to appear as tenuously ad hoc, its fleeting presence being only 'for a time', and so at best politically irrelevant and at worst dangerously ineffective. And yet such might be the surest sign that one has, by God's grace, been delivered over to that mode of engaged and embodied action whereby alone we pass from ideology to doxology" (189, 196).

Isn't that what we fear most? That ecclesia will be fleeting, and ultimately seen by the world as irrelevant, and ineffective? That ecclesia is not simply a being that "is" as an entity we can claim and control? Isn't everything we try to do be it through fantastically hip visual media, the aesthetic of high-church liturgies, political involvement and alignment with certain interest groups, or even action for and among the poor usually a desire to secure the Church's presence, relevance, and effectiveness in the world? Don't we usually live as though the very salvation of the world depends upon the Church as a mediation of divine revelation? I think Kerr's corrective words against such attempt to secure power and visibility over and against the world can not be ignored.

Disclaimer: When I ask rhetorical questions like those in this post, I'm not necessarily referencing any specific person or school of thought in general. My last aim is to be uncharitable and alienate. This blog is almost always a space to work out my own personal theological views rather than a violent exercise in polemics. I am working out my own resistances to a Barthian understanding of the Church as an event, which are directly manifested in the questions I listed themselves. Because ultimately, I (sinfully) want to secure my own power and my own relevance, and effectiveness in this world and have done so in the past through Church attendance, the liturgy, political involvement, and working with the poor. Kerr's words are those of judgment over and against attempts to do so and I thank him for it.

The Theology of Eberhard Jüngel

I picked up Eberhard Jüngel: Theological Essays II (ed. John Webster) from the library this evening and read the first essay entitled "'My Theology' - A Short Summary" over dinner. After a self-conscious introduction, Jüngel outlines nine points to offer his own theological confession of sorts. I found it to be really interesting, especially the third and ninth point. However, for what it is worth, I'm not entirely convinced that "speaking" which comes as a result of belief, should formally precede "listening", "astonishment", "thinking", or more importantly, "suffering." The following are his nine confessional points with excerpts under each point:

1. I believe, therefore I speak.

• "Not of me and of my faith - or at any rate of me and my faith only in so far as it is pertinent. I believe, therefore I speak of the God in whom I believe and of his liberating truth" (4).

2. I believe, therefore I listen.

• "One should note: God himself comes to speech. He himself 'takes the floor'. Indeed, to his eternal being there belongs language that addresses. No human being can speak from him or herself. But God is the one who does speak from himself. His word is the original expression of his being and the original form of address and, in the unity of both, the word that creates out of nothing. Faith hears this word. It knows itself to be created by this word. It owes itself to this word. Hearing, it comes into existence. And it always returns again to the word which created it. I believe, therefore I listen to the God who speaks out of himself" (6).

3. I believe, therefore I am astonished.

• "In believing, the human person experiences the mystery of the triune God who takes the relationlessness of death upon himself, in order to be the being rich in relations, the being of love in the unity of life and death to the benefit of life. It is the mystery of even greater selflessness in the midst of such great trinitarian self-relatedness. In faith in the triune God, the depths of the word of the cross are opened up. I believe, therefore I am astonished at the trinitarian mystery as the sum of the gospel: God from eternity and thus in and of himself is God for us" (8).

4. I believe, therefore I think.

• "The faith which gives itself to be thought attains its idea of God from the harshness of the death of Jesus Christ. It therefore demands that God be thought as the one whose creative omnipotence and freedom are something other than what is prompted by axiom of divine absoluteness, and as the one whose eternity and activity is something other than what is demanded by the axioms of the timelessness and impassibility of the eternal. If God is love, then truly love is omnipotent, and love is the very core of all true power. And the truth-criterion of power is that it is able to have compassion, and in this way to overcome suffering. God's being must then be thought as an existence which exposes itself to nothingness, whose richness of being realizes itself as a se in nihilum existere, existing out of itself into nothingness. And God's creation must then be thought as an act of primordial beginning which implies as act of primordial self-limitation" (11).

5. I believe, therefore I differentiate.

• Those who believe have found in God and in God alone the origin and goal of their being, the supporting foundation of their existence. They know themselves to be eternally secure in his creative love, and in it alone. They know themselves to be justified by God's grace, and by it alone. They know Jesus Christ as the way and the truth and the life, and he alone. When it is a matter of the truth of their idea of God and of their salvation, they listen to the Holy Scriptures, and to them alone. ... But to say alone and only is already to be involved in differentiating in a fundamental way that which may in no way be mixed. Sin is known as the presumptuousness of wanting to be like God, and its destructive compulsion as the need to want to be like God. The believer knows that God became human to differentiate savingly and definitely between God and humanity. ... The believer exists in distinction. In this way he or she safeguards life's wealth of relations. Whoever differentiates has more from life" (13).

6. I believe, therefore I hope.

• "I believe, therefore I hope that world history will not be the judge of the world, such the murderers would always triumph over their victims. Rather I hope that Jesus Christ will come to judge the living and the dead, in order to reveal himself again in this judgment as the one who calls sin by name and thus as the savior who liberates the sinner from sin" (15).

7. I believe, therefore I act.

• "Hope is the motive of all action. However, clear hope in God's coming kingdom has obligated hope to a specific course of action. For in view of the coming kingdom of freedom of peace, of justice, and of love, the one who hopes recognizes what is to be done and what is to be left undone, given the conditions of the world. He or she hopes to be able to make plausible for human reason at least distant - very distant - parables of the kingdom of God on earth as goals of human activity, and is determined to work for the realization of these goals as much as possible" (16).

8. I believe, therefore I am - namely, a new creature and as such, one called to represent the being of Jesus Christ in the communion of saints, as a person existing as a member of the church of Jesus Christ.

• "The church is different from other human communities in that it lives from the forgiveness of sins and precisely thereby is holy, and in that it knows that it lives from the forgiveness of sins. In this way it represents God as the one who forgives sin by granting a share in his holiness. In this way, moreover, it represents God as the one who liberates from self-incurred slavery and immaturity by granting a share in his freedom. In this way, also, it represents God as the one who reconciles the world by granting a share in the peace of his life as Father, Son, and Holy Spire in which the deepest opposites are united" (17).

9. I believe, therefore I suffer.

• "In fact the believer will often be able only to be silent. Yet if faith's silence is not the last possibility, if there is no final silence for faith, it is because faith has come to know God as the truth himself. One may not therefore withhold from him even the sorrowful and painful truth. Afflicted silence necessarily directs the complaint which speaks truth toward God, even if it is only expressed in the form of a cry de profundis. Theology need not be ashamed of this cry to God, which must also be able to accompany even the most certain talk of God, if it is to be responsible talk of God. ... For as a theology of the cross, it connects the tested faith to its origin, back to the God who suffers for us, because through his suffering he helped the love that has overcome death to victory, the only comfort of suffering humanity. He has eternally condemned evil and sin to defeat. The first and last task of proper theology is therefore not that of articulating our story of suffering, but that of bringing the story of Christ's passion to speech as gospel. Yet in everything it has constantly asserted one thing and one thing only: that the God who was denounced and crucified by his human creatures has said to us and so also to himself once and for all Yes (2 Cor 2:19). And 'my theology' can be and seeks to be nothing other than the reflective attempt to spell out this divine Yes" (19, emphasis added).
  

The Heart of God.

This has to be one of the most beautiful passages I've read as a theology student thus far:

"This is Mt. 9:36: 'But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.'

As we have already read in Lk. 1:78 about the σπλαγχνα [compassions] of God, we now read about an εσπλαγχνισθη [being filled with compassion] expressly attributed to the man Jesus of Nazareth as He journeys through the towns and villages of Galilee, teaching and preaching and healing. The expression is a strong one which defies adequate translation. He was not only affected to the heart by the misery which surrounded Him - sympathy in our modern sense is far too feeble a word - but it went right into His heart, into Himself, so that it was now His misery. It was more His than that of those who suffered it. He took it from them and laid if on Himself. In the last analysis it was no longer theirs at all, but His. He Himself suffered it in their place. The cry of those who suffered was only an echo. Strictly speaking, it had already been superseded. It was superfluous. Jesus had made it His own. To the mercy of God which brings radical and total and definitive salvation there now corresponded the help which Jesus brought to men by His radical and total and definitive self-giving to and for their cause. In this self-giving, by the fact that His mercy, in this sense, led Him to see men in this way, He was on earth as God is in heaven. In this self-giving He was the Kingdom of God come on earth."

- Karl Barth, CD IV.2, 185.

The Promise of Heaven.

For my M.Div degree requirements, I've had the opportunity to serve as a chaplain for this current academic year. I hardly ever talk about my experiences as a chaplain, both online or in face-to-face conversations. There is rarely so much and so little to say at the same time. I often find myself quite undone by the experiences I am afforded in chaplaincy. I don't think I've ever been more keenly aware of my own limitations, shortcomings, finiteness, and inabilities. And I don't think anything else in my life has quite drastically shaped and challenged my theological confessions as these past few months. Through the numerous conversations and confessions, the moments of consoling someone's deafening cries, or being asked the most basic questions about God's love in the face of true darkness, I am reminded of the need for hope.

But where does hope come from? For me, heaven invokes images of hope. Since I was a little girl, the understanding of heaven was always in the future where the Lord returns again and makes all things new. I genuinely can't recall how many times tears have fallen over the pages of Revelation 21 when God seems utterly absent in moments of suffering. Yet, these past few months have reminded me that this future-oriented eschatology is not enough. In fact, it is all too cheap. This understanding of heaven is not sufficient for those I am supposed to listen to, comfort, and counsel today. And so I've been left to continually ponder the meaning of heaven and the promises therein for the here and now. I've repeatedly turned to the eschatological vision of Moltmann to answer these questions. In fact, I think all chaplains simply need tremendous amounts of Moltmann to get them through the day. This specific passage explaining Moltmann's understanding of heaven is nothing short of the kind of salvific hope that keeps faith alive:

"Understood as adventus, it is the promised future that ultimately determines what becomes of the past and present, and not the other way around, as the idea of futurum implies, with all prospects for what will become of things considered to be determined by their past. The prophesied Day of the Lord is characteristically proclaimed as coming from ahead, not from behind. The trajectory of its coming is not from the past into the present but from the future into the present ...

To hear this word of heaven's coming as God's promise changes not only the way the future is perceived, Moltmann emphasizes, but even more importantly and as a consequence, the way that the present is engaged. By not finding its corresponding reality in present experience, the language of promise, as Moltmann points it, creates the experience of history. The reason this is so is that a promise creates a new reality in the present by instituting a relationship to the future that would not otherwise be the case. In the terminology of the linguistic philosophers, a promise has performative and not simply informative force in that it constitutes a commitment. Its truth can only be proven in coming events as the word of commitment is not only given but also kept and revealed to be trustworthy in what comes to pass. In the terminology of scripture, to cite words from Paul, the experience of history Moltmann describes is the sharing in 'the sufferings of this present time' of a promised 'glory about to be revealed' (Rom. 8:18).

It is the glory of what is promised that creates the engagement, and not the evasion, of the sufferings of the present. The heavenly future proves true only with reference to what is currently happening on earth. This is strikingly emphasized in the Gospel of Matthew, where the coming of the Son of Man with the glory of all the angels is promised in Jesus' teaching to be revealed precisely int he treatment of those who are currently being considered "the least" (Mt. 25:40, 45). Equally, in the the Letter to the Hebrews, where much is written of a faithful hearing of the promise of heaven, it is notable that the "desire [for] a heavenly country" (Heb. 11:16) is not assocated with any disregard of earth and its sufferings, but rather is depicted as a persevering on this very way of the Cross, by currently showing hospitality to strangers, and remembering those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those being tortured, as though being tortured as well (Heb. 13:1-3).

Living by the promise of what is coming in this Gospel frame of reference, Moltmann concludes, represents no utopian evasion of present reality in favor of some never-never land of bliss beyond the sunset because it is only in relation to events happening here and now, in the social and political, as well as existential experience of history, that the promised advent proves to be a countervailing reality to its crucifying opposition. In doing so it reveals the constancy of the future's commitment to the present, an historical faithfulness not realized in factually demonstrable or existentialist phenomena, but in the existence of perseverance in hope en route to the Promised Land."

- Christopher Morse, The Difference Heaven Makes, 46-47.

Theology as Divine Possibility.

After reading about Radical Orthodoxy all evening, I found this respite:

"For Karl Barth, theology is, human speaking, an impossibility; where it nevertheless becomes possible, it does so only as a divine possibility. A theology which has truly understood this will be one which finds its basis - not once, but again and again - in the Realdialektik of the divine veiling and unveiling. It will be a theology which takes seriously the reality of divine action not only on the level of the theological epistemology it presupposes but also on the level of the theological method it employs. On the other hand, the employment of a method which could succeed in the tasks appointed for it by its human practitioners whether God exists or not - which, in fact, would not be altered in the least by a confession of the nonexistence of God - would reduce theology to something humanly achievable, manipulable, controllable. It would reduce theology to a regular, bourgeois science alongside all other sciences."

- Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 112.