Character Assassinators

Cowboy Bob knows the answer to that!

I get an emailed newsletter from an atheist called Ashley Haworth-Roberts who spends much of his time harrying the anti-science Christian fundamentalist culture. As I am a researcher of sectarian brands of Christianity I find that Ashley actually succeeds in drawing my attention to a lot of useful material. In one of his latest newsletters he quotes a Trump and Ken Ham supporting fundamentalist who calls himself "cowboy Bob".  What interested me was the following quote from the cowboy's blog. It's an indication that for at least some of the Christian right-wing young earthism is a faith test, a test you fail if you don't go along with their young earthist views  Here's the quote with my emphases:

Some folks reject the Bible's authority. We expect that from atheists and other non-believers, but there are professing Christians who also downplay the Word of God. Scripture plainly says that everything was created in six days. Instead of humbling themselves and submitting to Christ, they light a shuck out of there and head for the comfort of riding the owlhoot trail. (Cowboy speak for "outlaws") They are degrading Scripture.

Why would a supposed believer want to compromise? It seems to me that these owlhoots don't want to look like one of those people who reject deep time, so they seek the praise of men rather than God. Another reason is that they want to accommodate atheistic views of science and their interpretations of evidence so they can allow for evolution. Some of these alleged Christians get a notion to add millions of years to the Bible by pretending it doesn't mean what it clearly says. 

People who try to compromise with theistic evolution, old earth creation, and hybrid creation accounts do not accomplish anything of value. Indeed, such tinhorns mock God, his people, and Scripture. Do they really believe? Their insistence on eisegesis over exegesis**, ridicule of Bible-believing Christians, and giving comfort to enemies of God causes me to lack belief that they do so.

(See http://www.biblecreation.com/2019/02/making-hybrid-creation-stories.html)

It never occurs to people like this that even on a literal interpretation Genesis 1 is hardly a description of the process of creation for it says very little about the details of this process; that is, the actual sequence of events that the commands of God entail. The Genesis 1 narrative, by all accounts, is (necessarily) a mere summary of an immense burden of creative activity  See here.

But what I would like to focus on here is the fact that the above quote reveals just how full of assumptions the cowboy is about  the underlying motives of those Christians who don't agree with him: The cowboy is quite sure that Christians who beg to differ are harbouring malign ulterior anti-Christian attitudes. Moreover he, like other young earthists, is unlikely to make known that his views actually originate from the 1960s, a time that Ken Ham thinks of as the young earthist reformation.

The character deformation implicit in the cowboy's words allied to his all too obvious profound suspicions of Christians beyond the pale of his subculture are of-a-piece with the right wing & fundamentalist affinity for paranoid conspiracy theorism: Let's not forget that Trump and professional Christian conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have in the past engaged in mutual support. 

As the Watchtower egged on its followers to believe that 1975 was going to be the likely end of this system of things and then claimed that it never made a prediction, so likewise we can see how Ken Ham is egging on the cowboy's behaviour and yet turns round and tries to claim that he's not making young earthism a salvation issue...... Oh yes he is!. 

Apart from research purposes I would warn reasonable Christians to avoid engaging with people like the cowboy (along with fundamentalists in general).  As we can see one doesn't start on a level playing field with them. Reasonable Christians (who are in fact in the majority, I'm glad to say), in fundamentalist eyes, are the lowest of the low, traitorous apostate spiritual outcasts on the "owlhoot" trail! Fundamentalists like the cowboy are so full of a priori suspicions & potential recriminations that the trusting and mutually respecting relationship  needed for constructive dialogue just isn't there to start with. Interaction with them just catalyses further accusations, slandering, anger, aggravation and polarisation. However, it helps to realise that these people are not out to intentionally deceive, but their pathological paranoid vision of the world is very real to them; it takes a long time and a lot of effort to deconstruct that world view.  Unless one is specifically lead to engage these kinds of rabid sectarians there are better things Christians can occupy themselves with!

Relevant links
As the following links suggest there are parallels here with a sect like Jehovah's witnesses.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzLwnl6qE_yeemhBVURGSExVaFE/edit?pli=1

http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2018/05/fundamentalist-publicity-sects.html

Footnote:
* I doubt the cowboy would be able to tell us much about the relationship between "eisegesis & exegesis" and the difference between "notation and connotation". 

Vulnerable Mission and Mythos vs Logos in the Walled City of Kowloon

Kowloon's walled city, now demolished.

The January 2019 edition of Premier Christianity magazine has an interview with Jackie Pullinger, a Christian whose mission field was the notorious Walled City of Kowloon in Hong Kong. The story of Jackie Pullinger's foray into the dangerous labyrinth of the Walled city is the stuff of living legend. This is heroic Christian mission as Christians love to hear it. An ill-prepared maverick with no ties to an official mission organisation pits themselves against the darkest elements that often lurk in human community and comes through triumphantly. Pullinger's story has some similarities with that of Gladys Alywood.

Christians love this sort of stuff especially as most Christian's "walk with God" is a fairly unexciting affair in comparison. Through the lives of people like Pullinger Christians can live the exciting, adventuress and miraculous Christian life vicariously. Above all, it lends hope for the humdrum lives of many Christians because we hear how, from a most unpromising starting point (Which most rank and file Christians can identity with!), God can confound us by raising up some big new thing. However, therein may lie the rub: Some Christians might think: "Why doesn't God work for me like that? What am I doing wrong? Why is the supernatural missing from my life?". Thus a subliminal sense of guilt can set in under the surface. Sometimes that guilt turns outward into anger and blame against local churches that by-and-large don't show Christians how they too can live these supposedly "super-duper-supernatural" lives.  I have seen this happen.  Anyway, Pullinger's story has been told many times so I need say nothing more of it here

***

In response to a question from the interviewer about how she learnt the local language Pullinger replied as follows:

Pullinger: Well it was a good thing I didn't begin too quickly because I just had time to do a short evangelism course before I got on the ship, and if I'd known Chinese I would have said too much. I thought that preaching the Gospel was explaining how Jesus came to die for your sins and, of course, that's no preaching the Gospel at all....

Interviewer: Why isn't it?

Pullinger: Because that's not necessarily good news to anyone who doesn't know love, who doesn't understand your language, who doesn't follow your logic. So, it was a good thing because I found out that the people there were not listening anyway, they were watching to see how I acted, whether  I really did love them. And if I really did love them, maybe God really did love them.                                                                                                                                                                                     
MY COMMENT: I'll be commenting on this very important inter-cultural question later. Pullinger then goes on to talk about her first Chinese convert who, after his meeting with Jesus, she plied with follow-up literature and information about the faith. She tells us that given Chinese culture this was one of the worse things she could have done: Because in Chinese culture learning is taken so seriously, a lack of academic success is tantamount to being a failed person. Hence Pullinger's first convert was intimidated by all the follow-up books which he mistakenly interpreted as proof that a grasp of all this information was a condition of faith.

Interviewer: Is there a lesson there that Western Christians can be too bookish?  

Pullinger: I think that the Word of God is terribly important but it depends on how you access that. Nowadays when people come to know Jesus, we pray  with them for the gift of tongues  immediately. It's not an optional extra, we say, but the way he'll give you a new language to help you talk to Him....No, it's not a prerequisite. The prerequisite is "Would you like to help pray somebody off drugs?". OK now, can you manage four hours of praying non-stop? Tongues would be a really great help. That's it. It's not the tongues that makes it special, it's just quite hard to keep going in your own language.

MY COMMENT I'll read the foregoing to mean that Pullinger sees tongues as an all but necessity in her kind of work, work which, of course, she will know best about.  So, giving her the benefit of the doubt I assume that she would reply "No" to the rhetorical questions in 1 Corinthians 12:29-30:

Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

After all, one finds that for many Christians who seek an "experience" or "tongues" when they have hands laid on them for the "Baptism of the Spirit", nothing really noticeable happens. In fact you can find Charismatic Christians who will admit this. For example, Tony Higton, a C of E charismatic admits in his book Called to Serve: A Local Church Study Course that when a Christian goes for a "Baptism of the Spirit" there may be no accompanying special experience or tongues to be had. I will be giving another example in my next post. 

I have heard of several cases where the believer is expecting some kind of spiritual down-load or epiphany and nothing happens; sometimes this can challenge their faith if their expectations are crushed. Moreover, some Christians seeking the "Carpet Blessing" (another name for the "Toronto Blessing") have, on occasion, been disappointed to find that they have not been blow over by God's Spirit but instead are simply pushed over by the "priest" administering the blessing. In general the question of whether a Christian seeking an epiphany, perhaps to fix a spiritual existential crisis, actually has some kind of experience or spiritual down-load seems to depend on the personality involved, although the hard-line Charismatics will not likely accept this and are inclined to witch-hunt for "spiritual blockages"  if their expectations of an "experience" are not fulfilled. 

***

There are important things to learn from Pullinger, although there may be some things to unlearn as well. In the West Mythos and Logos (See footnote* for more on Mythos and Logos) expressions of belief sit uneasily with one another. They may try to be friends but the relationship can be tense and stormy. We see hints of this in the interview with Pullinger. 

1. MYTHOS

In my opinion rank and file Western Christians (that is, Western Christians outside the intense academic culture of colleges and universities and those who classify themselves as traditional reformed Christians) are not "bookish" enough about their faith: Today the premium is on an existential faith that seeks satisfaction, validation and authentication through supernatural encounters with the divine. Anything else is likely to be regarded as less than the ideal divine plan. In this context Christian learning tends to be thought of as at best as having an ancillary supporting role and at worse utterly inferior to "Touches of God". However, I must add my usual disclaimer that I am certainly not in the business of offering a blanket and unqualified denial of people's epiphanies, baptisms, touches of God, divine encounters, speaking in tongues, prophecies and what have you: I don't automatically write-off such experiences anymore than I expect my particular spiritual experiences and pilgrimage to be written-off. Proprietary experiences can be very helpful. The stickler is though, that many have a one size fits all philosophy consistent with the gnostic-like tendencies of some parts of fundo-Charismatic Christianity. (See here for more on the Mythos vs Logos divide)


2. LOGOS

Where Pullinger has important lessons for us is on the subject of inter-cultural mission: Her approach looks as though it classifies as what missionary Jim Harries would call Vulnerable mission; that is, mission which is:

a) Determined to meet people where they are at in their culture and properly understand and engage that culture before thoughtlessly spouting formulaic evangelical cliches at them as if those cliche's can somehow magically "speak Christians into existence". Principally the cultural immersion of the Vulnerable Missionary is achieved  by learning the local lingo in its context so that the connotative content of the language is taken on board along with its notational content.

b) Avoids as far as possible destabilising relationships within the local culture with the promise of the introduction of developmental funds and Western resources. This avoidance prevents the missionary being put into the role of a rich benefactor or "bwana", thereby helping to foster authentic relationships rather than locals being tempted to kowtow to their rich missionary patrons. A client-patron relationship probably has the effect of obscuring many cultural oddities from the missionary, as the clients are inclined to curry favor with their rich patrons by keeping up appearances.

For whatever reason it seems that Pullinger naturally followed this "Vulnerable" approach. This form of mission is called "Vulnerable Mission" by Jim Harries because it opens up the missionary to dangers, misunderstandings, isolation and that of becoming a servant learner rather than a leader. Vulnerable mission can also sometimes result in fraught relations with other Western missionaries and their mission organisations, organisations who see their task exclusively in terms of a leading developmental role: i.e. "holistic mission". This is not to say Christians shouldn't be involved helping to develop and industrialise the poorer nations of the majority world.....the purpose of VM, as I see it, is to introduce another method in the missionary toolbox of methods, one which circumvents some of the conundrums caused by holistic mission. VM is mission which reaches the parts that other forms of mission don't. The Vulnerable Missionary needs to be a supreme diplomat. But unfortunately there is potentially an inner contradiction here; Vulnerable Missionaries have to be strong characters and strong characters are not natural diplomats, as I can testify from my own experience. 

We see from Pullinger's account how she inadvertently was prevented from using a one size fits all approach to her mission field. As she makes clear, if she had arrived in Hong Kong with just enough Chinese to think that she understood the language it would have been a disaster. To properly understand a language one needs to understand its cultural context and therefore the connotational content of the local natural language. One cannot learn the connotational content of a language without being immersed in the local context.

Because Pullinger had to learn the local language, effectively on the job, she had to first get to know her people, understand them and above all demonstrate her love for them. She could then share the Gospel in a way that was meaningful to them. Even so, as she admits, it was ignorance over Chinese culture which meant she made at least one mistake from the start. But she knew she had to learn and learn fast!

Footnote: Mythos and Logos

* Mythos: Often indescribable and intuitive, "Mythos" connotes experiences that may be referred to as "sensing God's presence", "touched by God", "empowered by God"  etc. These experiences  are often difficult to analyse and articulate. Sometimes a state of consciousness rather than a demarkable experience the whole thing can be very mysterious. 

Logos: Strong on content, analysis and thinking based experience: Very theologically inclined this articulated content will, in varying degrees, revolve around theology and the Bible,The Word; hence "Logos". This category actually embraces the paranormal, such as healings, tongues and prophecies as these events can be analytically investigated for authenticity.