Month: July 2018

Christian cybermisogyny and hate speech has to end

fire

There is a trend that the church simply cannot afford to ignore – cybermisogyny and harassment of women “in the name of Christ”. I wish I was joking.

I’ve talked before about what I call “Trolls For Christ” – the worst kind of ill-informed Pharisee determined to spill hate in defence of the church. Just recently I penned an open letter to a church leader engaged in cybermisogyny dressed up as a book review.

This “defending the church” argument in support of cybermisogyny (because it targets women far more than men) is wrong on two grounds – a minor point but the church does not need us to defend it (that’s taken care of, read the Bible) but more importantly – because hate speech should have no part in Christian living. Not ever.

Jesus talked about being meek, turning the other cheek, forgiving sins, and healing people. Somehow we have made it all about defending our rights. Did we forget that he said over and over that when someone tries to trample your rights – help them to do it? If they sue you for your coat, give them also your shirt. If someone compels you to go a mile, go two miles. That is literally where the expression “to go the extra mile” comes from.

How bad is cybermisogyny?

The Guardian reports that women writers are facing unprecedented levels of harassment, rape threats, and abuse.

In 2014 there was an organised campaign of harassment that became known as GamerGate. The harassment campaign targeted several women in the video game industry; notably game developers Zoë Quinn, Brianna Wu, and media critic Anita Sarkeesian.

Account upon account of the online harassment of women continues to pile up.

WMC report that this can include defamation and accusations of blasphemy. Defamation, in this case, can include coordinated attempts where a person, or, sometimes, organized groups deliberately flood Google, social media and review sites with negative and defamatory information.

As for the blasphemy charges…

Women face online threats globally, but they run a unique risk in conservative religious countries, where, in blasphemy is against the law and where honor killings are a serious threat. Accusing someone of blasphemy can become, itself, an act of violence.

A 2013 report from the organisation Working to Halt Abuse Online showed that 72.5% of those who reported being abused on the internet were female. That, right there, is cybermisogyny.

This all culminated in a campaign under the hashtag #MeToo. How did the church respond?

What is the church doing about cybermisogyny?

Is the church speaking up those that have no voice like the scriptures say (Proverbs 31:8)? Do we weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15-18)? Do we, as God’s law command, protect the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 10:17-19)?

No. No, we do not.

We don’t do this because the church is too busy joining in with the cybermisogyny. We cannot condemn the sin because we are the sin.

Australian Christian news website, Eternity News, shared an article dedicated to ordinary women revealing sexual harassment by Christians.

#MeToo: Christian women share stories of assault at the hands of Christian men

And we wonder why the church is not seen as relevant any more?

Disagreeing with you is not a sin, church

I hate to have to be the one pointing this out because I thought we were past these basics but disagreeing with someone while being a woman is not a sin; harassing a person you disagree with is a sin, though.

Treating women like something you can own is a sin.

This cybermisogyny, protecting cybermisogyny, and failing to speak out against cybermisogyny from Christians are all sins too.

It is not okay to call women all kinds of names, to suggest their character, their faith, or their life is anything less than it is just because the way they interpret the Bible or chose to live their lives, differs from the way you do.

Jesus said, in John 13:35, that it would be our love for each other that would show we are his disciples. This behaviour shows that we are not His disciples. Maybe few of us ever were.

The church needs to repent, and fast

The moment #MeToo started to break headlines, church groups the world over should have joined with the oppressed and cried out for justice. We did not and that is to our shame.

Our churches must, most urgently, change how we address sexual violence. So far we have done too poor a job of even recognising that it exists. We have failed to be salt and light. I think we all know all that salt which is no longer salty is good for?

I don’t pretend to have a plan for how we can change but Eugene Hung has some strong suggestions.

  1. Ministers and their churches need to address sexual violence on a regular basis.
  2. Ministers and churches must not neglect biblical passages that describe sexual violence.
  3. Churches need to bring more women into upper levels of leadership and decision-making authority.
  4. Church leaders must refuse to be party to conspiracies of silence.

We need to change and we need to change fast.

Fixing Calvinism but you might not like it

There may be a way of fixing Calvinism and the problems that Limited Atonement introduce but I do not think its supporters would like it at all. 

I wrote recently about what I see as the fatal flaw – a hamartia if you will – in Calvinistic doctrine. Today, I’d like to propose a way to correct it.

My problem with the forms of Calvinism (that I have encountered) are the variations on the doctrine of Limited Atonement. More specifically, the behaviour it seems to produce in its adherents. These doctrines that limit the atonement to only God’s elect that are exposed to doctrinal tests go on to fail at every turn.

Calvinism sets up as a core belief that Grace is irresistible. It has to wrestle with the fact that while Philippians 2:10 talks about every knee bowing at the Name of Jesus when very few actually seem to do so. This is where Limited Atonement comes in. It says that God only picks those of us he loves and wants to save – everyone else was born for hell. It is not exactly conducive to loving people unconditionally. Why love those God hates?

As I have indicated before, this can produce a spiritual smugness – “God likes me, but you He hates”. That little bit of the yeast of the Pharisees goes on to corrupt the whole doctrinal system, its believers, and the church as a whole.

The fix (but you might not like it)

The fix to this problem was prosed sometime around the start of the seventeenth century by Moses Amyraut (1596–1664). I’ve talked about this person before when I tried (and utterly failed) to accurately define Amyraldism. My mistake was in not understanding Moses Amyraut’s idea that we are all the elect; everyone will be saved in the end.

Clearly then, I do not understand this doctrine as well as I thought I did. However, it does provide a form of Calvinism that can exist without the Biblically questionable doctrines that God only wishes to save some of us. Of course, you then have to accept a doctrine of the eventual salvation of all mankind. A doctrine is more commonly known as Universal Salvation.

This much wider and more inclusive Calvinism is, at least, more internally consistent, and less at odds with scripture. It would require you to abandon any doctrine of eternal punishment in hell too. In short, it calls for a full dose of metanoia. Which is okay because a change of mind is a vital part of repentance. Something we Christians should be comfortable with.

I am undecided about Calvinism but this way of fixing Calvinism at least leaves it doctrinally coherent.

Testing Doctrines: Limited atonement

In this post, I will try to apply the Testable Doctrine Theory to the doctrine of limited atonement.

Testable Doctrine Theory is an idea I put forward that says that a sound doctrine should be able to stand up to a series of tests and that only sound doctrine would pass these tests.

Limited atonement is the idea that Christ only died for some people and not others.

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The Atonement

What is the atonement, how does it work, and what does the Bible have to say on the subject? While most Christians agree that Jesus Christ is the saviour, things fragment on further exploration

Introduction

Wait, this is not the definition of a single word, what is going on?

I have in the past attempted to define various words used in the discussion of doctrine with varying degrees of clarity and depth. Usually, I cover such terms only up to the depth of my own needed understanding to discuss some other related topic. This time, however, I have no end goal in mind beyond laying out an index of ideas from which I can build.

In other words, I am going to sketch things out with the broadest possible strokes and then revisit the details in later posts.

Definition of atonement

In western Christian theology, atonement describes how human beings can be reconciled to God through Christ‘s sacrificial suffering and death.

—Wikipedia

Broadly speaking the atonement describes what Christ did, why (and perhaps how) he did it, and what it means to Christians.

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An open letter to some religious leader called David

Written Letter

This post, in a rapid departure from my usual format, is in response to an open letter by David to Vicky Beeching. I’ll confess I have not read the book in question and am simply responding to the form and content of the blog post in question.

Dear David,

In your open letter, you have the following words to say, and it is by according to these words that I will reply to you.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by the door of my heart, but I hope it is always open to reflect the glory of the God who is love. I also want to keep open the door of my mind and be open to reason, evidence and persuasion.

I hope, therefore that we can reason together. However, for us both, this will be tinged with the same conflict of interest – blogs by their very nature are about public attention and love in its nature is not. Let us continue then, assuming the very best of intentions but with the full knowledge that we are flawed.

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