Reading the Quran: Fundamentalism

I am no fan of fundamentalism, in any of its shapes, forms, or iterations.   Within Christian faith, fundamentalism represents a fundamental and irredeemable betrayal of the intent of the Reformation.  Bible-worship is the Protestant idol, just as ecclesiastical authority became the Catholic idol.

So as I encounter the Quran, I've been struck by how equally damaging Islamic fundamentalism has been to the spiritual lives of Muslims.   The Quran contains much to commend it both ethically and spiritually, but I can't read it without realizing how deeply it was shaped by a very specific context.   It is a fiercely and resolutely Arab expression of engagement with the divine, drawing on the forms and expectations of a single cultural context.   It has one voice, and one theological perspective.

In that way, the Quran is radically different than the Bible.  The many books that comprise the Bible speak from an array of different perspectives, spanning thousands of years and speaking from a range of different cultural contexts.  There is harmony, but there is also tension and dissonance.  Reading the Bible requires discernment, because taken in and of itself and without the guidance of the Spirit, it does not always cohere.  

Fundamentalism within Christianity has always involved awkward and extrabiblical interpretive gyrations to reconcile those perspectives.  It is a clumsy, inherently bankrupt theological exercise.

But the Quran speaks with one voice, in one language, from one culture, at one time.   Absolutizing that perspective...not the higher order values, but the cultural framework into which those values were expressed...would be easier, because of the cultural univocality of the Quran.  It requires very little effort. 

That poses a challenge on several fronts for resisting Quranic fundamentalism.  If the Quran is understood to require a "good" culture to share the same expectations about gender and jurisprudence as existed in sixth century Arabia, it cannot be reconciled with modernity.   To do this requires some portions of Quran to be understood as either metaphoric or leavened by context.

If, for example, we read the Quranic requirement to cut off the hands of thieves as no longer literal, but as representing the need to prevent the thief from stealing again, we're good.   If it's literal?  Then the resultant culture is not compatible with the ethos of the Western world...or of most democratic republics.

This requires a faith to say not just that a practice is no longer acceptable, but that it was not acceptable at the time, and to be able to find grounds for resisting an explicit statement in an ancient text.  Christians and Jews, for instance, would not consider taking a captive woman from a defeated nation as a concubine.  There may be rules to that effect in Torah, but our understanding of God has evolved past that point.  We no longer feel obliged to even defend that practice.  Similarly, though there are rules and regs for slavery in the Bible, it is not compatible with the essence of our faith.

Then there's the "inerrancy" issue.  Where there are inaccuracies in Quran...like, for instance, the misrepresentation of the Christian Trinity, or the repeated assertion that Jews consider Ezra (a scribe influential in the rebuilding of the temple after the return from diaspora) the son of God in the same way Christians consider Jesus the son of God...the challenge for Islam is how to approach those Quranic variances from reality.

Context helps, of course.  Pointing out that the Prophet may have been responding to the worship of Mary and not actual Christian orthodoxy might help.  The Ezra thing, though, seems so out of connection with the reality of every historically recorded form of Jewish practice that it requires some pretty intense parsing.  Jews are monotheists, radically and completely, and at no point ever in recorded history outside of the Quran has Ezra been considered the progeny of the divine.   The only valid interpretation is to say, well, no, this isn't an accurate portrayal of Judaism.  Or perhaps to say, well, honestly, we have no idea what this means.  Which is fine, because it would be true.  Like the close-but-not-quite timelines in the Gospel of Luke's historical background information, there's some ancient-world-fudge-factor in the Quran.

Fundamentalism deals poorly with this sort of thing.   But for progressive, open-minded Muslims, saying: "Yeah, we're not sure quite what was being gotten at here" or "You know, that's just from context" is entirely feasible.    The higher order virtues in Quran govern their lives, and they are happy to live within the bounds of the surrounding culture and a more progressive interpretation of Islam.

Because What the Blogosphere Really Needs is Another Manifesto

On my day off, just because, it was editing day.

I cranked out another 5,000 words of that old novel I'm editing and typing up for Kindle publication, which I'm enjoying, as will maybe a half-dozen other people, my mother included.  OK, maybe not my mom.  She's not really the eBook sort.

And then I went back and reworked a bit of online theological musing I'd done several years ago.  The impetus for that was a probing conversation in a Sunday Bible study, in which a young member of my congregation asked about how and in what way the Bible had authority.

It was...well...a bit more of a dialogue than a group discussion, but as we'd already finished up examining the deeply challenging text from Genesis, and I'd asked for general questions, it was cool. 

The issue was coming to understand how our sacred texts can have authority if they are not literally inerrant, perfect and without contradiction or flaw.  This is a non-trivial issue, so obviously, it's taken some of my processor time over the years.  Long of short of it:  I view scriptural inerrancy as spiritually analogous to ecclesiastical inerrancy.  Both represent human failures to understand the nature of the relationship to God that Jesus calls us to live out.

And so the Neoreformationist Theses returns to the web, tightened up and ready to sit there and look pretty.   

It's particularly entertaining, given that a quick run through Google indicates that I'm the only homo sapiens sapiens who actually uses that word.  That renders the odds of another person searching for it...oh, gosh, let's see...essentially nil.

Ah well.  

Forming A Militia Doesn't Count as Christian Fellowship, Kids

Amazing how things in life repeat themselves. It was at around this time in Clinton's first term, as I so recall, that the Angry White Men began to lose it. The seething fury at not being in charge of the country grew, coupled with a deepening paranoia about the role of government in American life. Suddenly we were faced with Branch Davidians, and then Timothy McVeigh.

Over the weekend, there was an aggressive response to a Michigan-based militia calling itself the Hutaree, who were apparently thought to be planning an attack on...well...something. It's not yet clear.

Hutaree immediately struck me as rather notably ungrounded in any of the key concepts of Christianity. This is because it is apparently just a word they made up to describe themselves. Having spent an hour or so yesterday perusing their website and their forums, the Hutaree have...well...a rather interesting worldview.

They are solidly conservative, and if their forums are any indicator, certain that they are participating in a Tim LaHaye novel. They're radically pro-Israel, and their postings on their forum are woven up with little snippets of Hebrew. You know, mixed with reviews of weapons and military gear, just like my church newsletter.

More up my alley, they self-describe as Christian, but their version of Christianity is an intentional mix of texts that appear to justify a radically martial view of the world. You keep all the dualistic, apocalyptic, "world is black and white" stuff. You keep the teachings that use martial metaphors, while being sure to forget that they are metaphors. You ditch, in it's entirety, the Sermon on the Mount. And most of the Gospels. And most of the writings of Paul and His disciples. These things get in the way of our Red Dawn fantasies.

As I've noted before, that binary view of the world is one of the most dangerous possible misreadings of our faith. It is antithetical to the democratic process. It is also radically in opposition to the core teachings of Christ, and the spiritual ethics of Paul and James and John. When you mix it in with our culture's radical individualism, tendency to feel aggrieved, and love of firearms, there's the real potential for fugliness.

Blades and Bludgeons

One thing that invariably surfaces in any ongoing conversation with a fundamentalist (hi Mark!) is their assertion that every single word of the Bible is the Word with a Capital Wubbleyou. Every last word must be equally important, because it was all written down by God. Therefore, we must all show equal deference to every text, and view every one of the books that make up the Bible as saying exactly the same thing.

They don't, of course, which is why literalism spends so much time creating a swirling defensive frenzy of meticulously interlocking rationalizations. But as I was musing over the repartee I've had recently and in the distant past, I was struck by something. When literalism brings scripture into an argument, it tends to be used as a bludgeon. Because it's approached like a large, univocal mass, it too often gets wielded like a blunt instrument. You must accept all of this! Whack! All of this! Whack! Every! Whack! Last! Whack! Iota! WHACK!

In debates, the literalist approach is typically to just pound people over and over again with the Bible, with the idea that eventually they'll yield. Or run away. Or just carry their deep bruises around for the rest of their lives, along with the conviction that Christianity exists primarily to hurt people.

Unlike some of my progressive brethren, I'm perfectly willing to take up our sacred texts when the time comes to battle. If you understand it, scripture can be a potent thing. But not as a bludgeon. Not ever.

Used properly, it's a blade. It's got an edge. The edge of the blade is...well...the heart of the Bible, it's finest point. It's not so much a club as a sword, or better yet, a scalpel.

And like a scalpel, it's purpose is not to pound folks into submission, but to heal.

The Cultic Echo Chamber

What amazes me most about Westboro Baptist is just how "successful" they've been by cult standards. Like most psychotically insular communities, they honestly don't care about convincing anyone of their position. Instead, the purpose of their demonstrations is to gather attention for themselves and affirm their sense of "chosenness."

Their sense of self-importance and of being a central player in some great cosmic struggle requires constant collective ego-massaging. As the communities into which they forcibly insert themselves recoil in horror at the cruelty and small-mindedness of their message, that recoiling is interpreted within Westboro as an affirmation of their righteousness. The whole world is evil. They are the righteous elect. From that perspective, every creatively multisyllabic curse shouted from a passing car is another sign they must be right. Every Holy Finger of Rebuking raised in their direction reassures them that only they know the truth, and everyone else is hell-bound.

By setting themselves in a consistently adversarial position against everyone who is not part of their incestuous fellowship, they strongly reinforce the bonds within their community. They share in the "hardship" that they themselves have created, and in doing so, they create a powerful and deeply internalized bond of shared suffering. They know they are pariahs. They embrace their "alienness," and rejoice in it.

The danger here, of course, is that the bonds of self-inflicted oppression that unite Westboro Baptist are not all that conceptually different than the bonds carefully nurtured in other corners of the Christian world.

The human beings who go from homeschool to youth group to Christian college to young adult ministries to family ministries are taught a deeply embedded sense of otherness. The world is evil. It does not understand us. So we close in on ourselves.

On one level, that's because a society reared on greed and onanistic self-obsession can't grasp the deep grace and love of Christ.

But it's not always the fault of the culture outside. Sometimes, the message can't be conveyed because unlike the apostles, we choose to express it in ways that mean nothing to folks who aren't part of the inner circle already. We see this in many threads of the evangelical community, like the "Way of the Master" scripted evangelism of Ray Comfort, where every person offended by his message of hell becomes an affirmation of his rightness.

That we're not all Westboro Baptist doesn't mean there aren't lessons to be learned from their example.