Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary Fall 2020: "Defying the Demonic"

Defying the Demonic

Insights The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

FALL 2020

Rigby • Banda • Farley • Fergusson Treviño • Starling-Louis • Blackman • Risher Holton • Schweitzer • Johnson

Insights

The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary Fall 2020

Volume 136

Number 1

Editor: William Greenway Editorial Board: Carolyn Helsel, David Johnson, and Randal Whittington The Faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Margaret Aymer Gregory L. Cuéllar Bridgett Green William Greenway David H. Jensen David W. Johnson Bobbi Kaye Jones Carolyn B. Helsel Philip Browning Helsel Paul K. Hooker

Timothy D. Lincoln Jennifer L. Lord Suzie Park Cynthia L. Rigby Asante U. Todd Eric Wall Theodore J. Wardlaw David F. White Melissa Wiginton Andrew Zirschky

Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

is published two times each year by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 100 East 27th Street, Austin, TX 78705-5797. e-mail: dwhite@austinseminary.edu Web site: austinseminary.edu Entered as non-profit class bulk mail at Austin, Texas, under Permit No. 2473. POSTMASTER: Address service requested. Send to Insights, 100 East 27th Street, Austin, TX 78705-5797. © Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Printing runs are limited. Permission to copy articles from Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary for educational purposes may be given by the editor upon receipt of a written request.

The past six issues of Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary are available on our website: AustinSeminary.edu/Insights. Some previous issues are available on microfilm through University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 (16 mm microfilm, 105 mm microfiche, and article copies are available). Insights is indexed in Religion Index One: Periodicals, Index to Book Reviews in Religion, Religion Indexes: RIO/RIT/IBRR 1975- on CD-ROM, Religious & Theological Abstracts, url:www.rtabstracts.org & email:admin@rtabstracts.org, and the ATA Religion Database on CD-ROM, published by the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606-6701; telephone: 312-454-5100; e-mail: atla@atla.com; web site: www.atla.com; ISSN 10560548.

COVER: “Jesus in the Wilderness” by Genesis Tramaine; ©2018, acrylic and oil sticks on can-

vas, 48” x 30; God is Trans exhibition; Collection of Tina and Larry Jones; Courtesy of the artist and Richard Beavers Gallery; https://www.artsy.net/richard-beavers/artist/genesis-tramaine.

A detail of the painting in black and white appears on page 3. Photo by Karisha Hickman.

Contents

2 Introduction

Theodore J. Wardlaw

Defying the Demonic 3

Speak of the Devils: Creative Faith in a Time of Pandemic

by Cynthia L. Rigby

12

Bumbling Forward in Faith

An Interview with Cynthia Rigby

17

Reflections

Ministry Amidst the Demonic

by Lameck Banda

Becoming Children of Light

by Wendy Farley

God in the Struggle

by David Fergusson

29

Pastors’ Panel Carolina Treviùo, Shavon Starling-Louis, Gordon Blackman, Sharon Risher

34 Faculty Books Pastoral Care and Counseling, an Introduction, by Philip Browning Helsel, reviewed

by Jan Holton; Christian Understandings of Christ: The Historical Trajectory

by David Hadley Jensen, reviewed by Don Schweitzer

37 Christianity & Culture Freedom and Accountability: Machiavelli and Acton on Political Ethical Responsibility

by David W. Johnson

Introduction

Y

ears ago, early in my presidency, Kay and I and our two girls joined an Austin Seminary student travel seminar to Zambia. Our faculty leader was Bill Greenway, and, having led a couple of previous trips to Zambia and other parts of southern Africa, he was a wonderful guide and mentor for all of us.

The greatest measure of our time was spent on the campus of Justo Mwale Theological College—a Reformed and Presbyterian seminary on the edge of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city. We were hosted generously in multiple churches and driven to Victoria Falls and introduced to many religious leaders and luminaries from that part of the world. But the most enduring experience I had—the one that vividly sticks with me to this day—was a classroom exercise one day on the Justo Mwale campus. Our entire group of seminarians—along with an ethics class of Zambian students taught by their dean, a Dutch Protestant minister/scholar named Dr. Henk van den Bosch—sat together in a seminar room, some thirty of us. Dr. van den Bosch called us to order, and then said, “Let’s have a cross-cultural conversation. What is it that most unsettles you as you imagine going to your first parish?” He added, “Let’s let the American students speak first.”

Our students, pondering a life of pastoral service in the church, began breaking the silence with various fears. “Having sufficient down-time from the demands of ministry,” said one student. “Being seen as a person with authority,” came another answer. Soon the answers were spilling out: “Being able to save for retirement.”

“Having a car allowance.” “Being paid well.” “Parental leave when the children are born.”

Soon it was time for the Zambian students to mention the most unsettling thing they would face in their first parish. Every one of them gave one of two answers: “The specter of AIDS,” and “The power of the town witch doctor.” In that context, these were the two biggest threats to one’s ministry, and perhaps one’s life. Was their Christian faith any match at all, they wondered earnestly, in a deadly epidemic and/or the powerful presence of “traditional healers”?

I thought for a long time about all that the cross-cultural differences revealed in that illuminating class conversation. It comes to mind again in this moment in our culture. Is our Christian faith strong enough to go up against the often-tyrannical and unethical power held by certain leaders in this moment of our nation’s life? Do we feel powerless in the face of a deeply ingrained, four-hundred-year-old tradition in this country of racism and white supremacy? What is a worthy destination toward which, in this time and place, we should chart our course, and what is at stake if we summon the courage to do so?

I believe that such questions as these lurk within the essays and other contributions offered in the pages ahead. You will be edified by this issue of Insights, and perhaps even preoccupied with what the late Representative John Lewis called “good trouble.”

Theodore J. Wardlaw,

President, Austin Seminary 2

Speak of the Devils:

Creative Faith in a Time of Pandemic Cynthia L. Rigby Only creative faith can resist the onslaught of destructive faith. Only the concern with what is truly ultimate can stand against idolatrous concerns.

––Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith1

Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself.

––Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone2

“T

here’s got to be a reason,” replied my colleague and next-door neighbor, David Johnson, after I told him we had named our new kitten “Neville.”

And he was right—there was. We had named him after Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter series, the kid who plunges right into everything,

Cynthia Rigby is The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology at Austin

Seminary. Her latest book is Holding Faith: A Practical Introduction to Christian Faith. She is a general editor of the nine-volume lectionary commentary series, Connections (Westminster John Knox). Current projects include a book on Christian feminist theology and one tentatively titled, Splashing in Grace: A Theology of Play.

3

Defying the Demonic despite his awkwardness and fear; the kid who never outgrows his dorkiness but winds up standing up to the demonic Lord Voldemort nonetheless. If I recall correctly, we chose the name just after we brought Neville home, set down his cage, and opened the door. To our surprise, Neville, a stray rescued from a friend’s car engine, didn’t hesitate. He walked straight out and plodded across our living room, his ears way too big for his head, looking around as though to say: “So this is my life, eh? Well, I’m gonna do what I can.”

This essay is about doing what we can to confront the devils at work in our world today, about living creatively in relation to the God who does not want us to aim to be revolutionaries, but to strive to be faithful. It suggests that what this means for our day-to-day lives is that we keep bumbling our way forward, eager to join in God’s work in the world—even when we are afraid, even when we have doubts, even when we go unnoticed—because we know we participate with others in something far greater than any isolated effort, in something that will endure, in the real reality of God which will one day untwist the oppressive distortions crafted by the devils of this world.3 This essay also attempts to articulate a critical proviso to the preceding sentences. We bumblers called “Christians” may gain the courage to push forward despite ourselves, believing that (as Martin Luther put it): “the right [one],” Jesus Christ, “is on our side.”4 But this is a very different dynamic than if we are certain we are right because we confess God is with us. When our faithfully bumbling forward despite fears and uncertainties is replaced by a self-righteous march of certainty, it is we ourselves—we personally, we the church, the institution, the nation—who might need to be exorcised.

It is on one level understandable that people of faith would rather march than bumble. After all, who doesn’t want to be seen as winsome, decisive, effective, heroic? Newsstands, bookstores, and newsfeeds are full of advice for how we can gain self-confidence and thereby influence and success. But confidence founded in certainty that we are right—rather than in the God who promises somehow to work our faithful actions together for good—quickly becomes idolatrous, even demonic.

A prime and multiplying example of this phenomenon, noted by scholars from Reinhold Niebuhr to James Cone to Catherine Keller, is the extreme nationalisms that have been propagated in the western world over the last century and a half.

When nations and national leaders connect without pause their conviction that “God is with us” to “therefore we are surely in the right”—especially when the claims being made are vague and unsupported—distortion and destruction follow.5

This phenomenon is sobering, highlighting again the importance of the question, How do we bumble forward to do what we can, confident that we are “friends of Jesus” (John 15:15) who know “the mystery of God’s will” (Eph. 1:9), without feeding the demons of self-righteous certainty, demons obsessed with gaining supremacy and idolatrously trying to take the place of the sovereign God? How do we make sure our faith is creative and not destructive, neither submitting to these demons nor merging ourselves with them in order to gain the power we want?

We need to develop a demon-handling skill set. Step one, I suggest, might be to 4

Rigby discern and name the demons that are threatening to destroy us or trying to recruit us. Step two would be to move forward despite our fear, determined to do what we can to participate creatively in God’s shaping of the future. Step three would be to keep checking up on ourselves and our siblings in the faith, repenting of ways we are complicit in feeding the demonic and resubmitting ourselves to being undone and remade by the God who will not be contained by even the most liberating human agenda.

Step One: Naming the Demons When I say “devil,” “demon,” or “principalities and powers” (Eph. 6:12), I am not picturing substantive creatures.6 I am, however, drawing from classical ways of thinking that convey valuable truth about why it is so hard to be and to do what we are called to be and to do. The basic storyline is this: Satan and the demons were created by God as part of the good creation. And (like human creatures) they fell, turning away from what they were created to be and toward that which is not true or beautiful or willed by God, turning toward that which (according to Augustine) is the absence of good, toward evil. Ever since then, they have been driven to pull us away from our created (good) and redeemed (forgiven) identity, toward the evil that is not really real insofar as it was not made substantively by God and is not what finally defines us. But as liberation theologians James Cone and James Evans have noted, to be twisted in the wrong direction, away from God’s creative and redemptive purposes, has a devastating, substantive impact.7

What is important is not whether or not we believe demons have substance, but that we understand them as important ways of naming the substantive threat of destruction to our lives and well-being, and to the life and well-being of the world. With regard to the power of forces twisting us away from God’s creative and redemptive purposes, the traditional Christian storyline creates spaces for creative reflection. The threat is that we will never live into what Paul Tillich calls “our ultimate concern”; that we will never know what it is to participate so fully in that which is holy that we are utterly free to be the creative creatures God created us to be. If we resist who we are as finite, turning from mutual relation to others by entering into demonic systems in order to gain power and influence, our creaturely creativity—stagnated by lack of freedom—will dissipate. We might survive by destroying others, but we will only be misers. If we are on the other side of the dynamic and are being sucked dry by the demonic, on the other hand, Cone insists that we fight back. “If we are created for God,” Cone insists, “then any other allegiance is a denial of freedom, and we must struggle against those who attempt to enslave us.”8

Theologians are not alone in the concern that the demonic meddles with human creativity, vocation, and fulfillment and therefore must be disarmed. Strategies are offered by therapists, doctors, yoga instructors, and motivational speakers.

Consider Stephen Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, which argues that the demon he calls “Resistance” leads to the destruction of life by impeding us from “doing our work” of creating.9 In a similar vein, Lynda Barry advocates “drawing your demons” 5

Defying the Demonic as a way of naming them and gaining the freedom to create10

Before demons can be named and disarmed they must be correctly identified.

In the history of spirituality, demons are referenced as being all around us but are difficult to recognize. “Even Satan comes as an angel of light,” the Apostle Paul reminds us, so it should not come as a surprise that “false apostles . . .disguise” themselves as “ministers of righteousness.”11 Pressfield points out that even something as angelic-sounding as “self-care” can feed the demon of Resistance if it keeps us from doing our creative work.12 Theologians offer various guidelines for differentiating between that which is of God and that which is not. John Wesley, for example, in mid-18th-century England exhorts Christians not to confuse the Holy Spirt with the human spirit, advising them to look for the “fruits of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—as evidence of true religion.13 Swiss theologian Karl Barth, critiquing western capitalism in the mid-20th century, argues that “the command of God is self-evidently and in all circumstances a call for counter-movements on behalf of humanity and against its denial in any form.14 William Stringfellow, lawyer and lay theologian in the 1960s United States, suggests we test the institutions we are involved in with three criteria that can help us assess whether or not they are veering toward the demonic: 1). “the denial of truth;” 2). the use of “doublespeak” and “overtalk” (terms born from Orwell’s famous novel, 1984, where telescreens blare in every home with distorted messages such as “war is peace,“ “freedom is slavery,” and “ignorance is strength”); and 3) “secrecy and boasts of expertise” (generally on the part of leaders or institutions asking followers to trust their superiors unquestioningly).15 And James Cone, black liberation theologian of the early 21st century, insists that Jesus Christ is the final criterion for discerning that which is from God and that which is not. “Jesus Christ is the ground of human liberation,” he notes, therefore, “any statement that divorces salvation from liberation . . . must be rejected”16 While these and other criteria have repeatedly proven helpful to Christians who want to name and challenge the demonic, Catherine Keller suggests that this era marked by the pandemic might offer a unique opportunity insofar as it offers a clearer view of usually more camouflaged demons. We live, in fact, in a time of “pandemic pandemonium,” says Keller, playing seriously with both the alliteration and the etymology of these two words: (1) pan-demic (meaning “all people;” as in all of us are affected by COVID-19) and (2) pan-demonium (meaning “all those demons;” as in the pandemic isn’t the only thing we are dealing with by a long shot!). Keller points out that the word “pandemonium” was created by John Milton and introduced in Paradise Lost. It is the name he gave to the capital of hell,17 Keller explains, a city created not by Satan, but by the biblically named god, Mammon. Mammon created that “elegant” city with all the treasures of the world (3).

Keller suggests the coronavirus is forcing us to see demons that we often overlook. Our deep-seated systemic racism is exposed, for example, by the fact that while people who are African American make up only thirteen percent of the population, they account for a third of coronavirus deaths (2). The demon Keller calls 6

Rigby “the sickness in our food supply” is exposed by our pre-existing conditions, caused by inflammation in our bodies due to what we eat (2). And the demon of “environmental demise” is evident in the still-unfinished story of how the coronavirus came to be, a story that surely includes humans pushing other animals out of their natural habitats (3). These are three of many examples.18 “In this moment, these pan-demons dance garishly into view through the pandemic interruption of normalcy,” Keller says, “and so they get demoralised for a moment. And they seem just too much. Too many. Too many feverish issues to address all at once” (4). It is no wonder we want to get back to “normal,” to re-coat Pandemonium with its glitter so we won’t have to see—and contend with—the insidiousness of what is always there.19

If Keller is right, this moment assigns us a great responsibility. The demons are out and we can see them clearly. We need to act to point them out to others before we “return to normal” and they once again become less visible. As we struggle to live out our faith in the midst of this crumbling Pandemonium, how may we keep courageously bumbling forward, defying the demonic by rejecting self-righteousness and refusing to hope either for a return to that glittering normal or to survive whatever “new normal” comes upon us? How might we eschew such destructive faith and do what we can to step out and to contribute creatively to the shape of our future?

Step Two: Moving Forward Creatively The destructive work of the demonic, as we have said, is to keep us from living before God as the creative creatures we are. On an individual level, the demons related to this can be named and countered in a variety of creative ways: through good parenting, friendships, worship practices, prayer, therapy, discipline, meditation, and other strategies. But how do we move forward faithfully in relation to the demonic as it has invaded our lives at an institutional level, a national level, even a global level? What can we do to stop the destructive, idolatrous powers that keep us thinking and operating as though some people are superior to others because they are white, rich, male, straight, American, or members of some other privileged class? Walter Wink believes that, in relation to systemic distortion, our “spiritual task is to unmask this idolatry and recall the Powers to their created purposes in the world.”20 We might recall, as an example of this, that Luther addressed his prophetic ninety-five theses to infidelities of the Roman Catholic Church (which soon thereafter strove to reform itself in the so-called Counter-Reformation), or that Calvin prefaced his Institutes of the Christian Religion with a subtly prophetic appeal to King Francis I. This task, Wink insists, cannot be done alone. It requires the efforts of the entire ekklesia. Moreover, he adds, “The church must perform this task despite its being as fallen and idolatrous as any other institution in society” (369).

Wink is right about the need to work in community. But I would suggest that if the church is creatively to challenge the destructive power of the demonic, it needs to do more than act despite its fallenness and idolatry. Might there not be a way to factor our own complicity with and experiences of the demonic (as individual 7

Defying the Demonic people of faith and as contributing members of “fallen and idolatrous” institutions) into the content, actions, and timbre of our faith itself? In other words, is it possible to engage the “spiritual task” to which we are called in a more whole, robust, and self-reflective way than by simply acknowledging we are “wicked rascals” and moving forward nevertheless?21

Paul Tillich suggests an approach to faith that folds aspects of our experiences of the demonic into the life of faith itself in ways that can actually strengthen our capacity to move forward to confront life-destroying powers. Tracing this via the example of Neville confronting Voldemort, notice that Neville doesn’t start his final speech with words of triumph, but by acknowledging the finality and emptiness of death. “It doesn’t matter that Harry’s dead,” he says, “People die all the time.

Friends. Family.” J.K. Rowling puts these words in the mouth of a character who knows what he is talking about, for Neville’s parents have been so gruesomely tortured that they can no longer recognize him. While Harry’s murdered parents are celebrated, Neville’s are only pitied. From the vantage point of a faith certain of triumph, these first words of Neville’s speech might be considered too negative, faithless, even destructive. But from the vantage point of Tillich’s paradigm, Neville’s faith is creative because it neither submits to the demonic nor denies its power, but factors it into his courageous and vulnerable response.

The same can be said of the psalmist who demands that God wake up (Ps. 44:23); of Mary when she holds Jesus accountable for Lazarus’s death (Jn.11:21); and of Jesus when he calls God out for abandoning him on the cross (Mk. 15:24).

Tillich advocates that we risk embracing the dangerous doubts, questions, and uncertainties that come right up against rejecting the God of power and justice because he believes doubts, questions, and uncertainties keep us open to experiencing the “God above God”—the God who does not conform even to our most progressive agendas or ideologies, the God who is, as Tillich likes to put it, “our ultimate concern.” Tillich concludes, “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”22

Allow me to back up and describe Tillich’s paradigm in another way before trying to bring the “so what” of all this home. This time I will begin with Tillich’s conception of God and move to describing faith rather than the other way around.

God, for Tillich, defines God’s own self. Who God really is lies beyond even our very best definition. God is holy, but only God decides what that means. We tend to see and define the demonic as the opposite of holy. But Tillich insists (as do Barth and Cone) that God won’t be confined by some definition of God that makes sense to us. Tillich looks at the world and at our lives and thinks things are messier than such simple “opposites” (or binaries) will allow. Writing as a Westerner in the heart of the Cold War, he notices that people tend to think they must choose to understand God in one of two ways. In the first, God is the One whose holiness destroys us, who scoffs at the ideals of freedom and creativity, who demands unquestioning submission and obedience. In the second, God is the One whose holiness corrects the demonic God of way #1, demanding retribution for injustice and proffering freedom and creative opportunities for all.

8

Rigby The second God is the clear choice of the 20th-century Western world. But here’s where the problem comes in, according to Tillich: this understanding of God—this God who counters the idolatrous, tyrannical God of way #1—“replaces holiness with justice and truth.”23 What we have done in adopting such a God, however inadvertently, is create another god we carry with us into wars, into political campaigns; the “God” who is on our side, the “God” who wins, the “God” who makes our nations great and will help us return to normal. Faith that follows this god rather than the God above God will wind up destroying creativity in the name of freedom, according to Tillich, because it is closed off from the possibility of holy destruction that leads to the creation of new being. In contrast to this, the creative faith of true religion resists reducing God to either (or any) option, refusing to march in lockstep, embracing experiences of the abyss, and bearing courageously the danger that it will itself be transformed by the subject of its ultimate concern.

Step Three: Staying Open to Holy Destruction How, in the midst of the current pandemonium, might we develop and maintain a creative and open faith that knows how to walk humbly with the God who calls us to do justice and to love kindness?24 What does it look like, in Tillich’s terms, to stay open to dynamic interaction with the God above God; to submit to the one who may call us to let go of our well-formulated ideologies for the sake of contributing to a new normal that we cannot yet imagine? What does it look like, in Cone’s terms, to live as those who remember that our experiences “are not the Truth itself”; even when they are a “source of the Truth”; to recognize that the Truth of Jesus Christ, is “so high we can’t get over it,” “so low we can’t get under it,” and “so wide we cannot get around it”?25

There are several answers to this, explicit or implied, weaving their way through this essay. First, faith that is open to holy destruction engages constantly in the hard work of self-reflection. We should humbly and constantly apply to ourselves and our own actions the criteria for discerning the demonic that have been passed on to us by wise members of our communities of faith. Corresponding to this, we should ask others to hold us accountable for staying creative—refusing either to be disempowered by those who have succumbed to the devils or to being lured into that ugly work ourselves.

Second, creative faith that is open to holy destruction must guard against being reduced to a static and rigid ideology. As Cone reminds us, sources of truth should not be leveraged as truth itself; even when we are right, we have not exhausted what is true, good, and beautiful. To the degree that we know this, we are prepared to join together freely with a diversity of other creaturely creators, contributing essentially to the creative work of the God that is always greater than any of us—and even all of us altogether—can ask or imagine. To resist codifying the desires of God (or to call out the principalities and powers that are doing this instead of hoping they will just go away) takes constant attention and self-recalibration. It requires from us the spiritual discipline of daily re-submitting in love to being living sacrifices, bumbling our way forward to be transformed by the living Word of the God 9

Defying the Demonic who is above God.26

Finally, creative faith that is open to the melting and the molding of the Holy Spirit cries out with the questions and uncertainties that rise from the disappointments, agonies, and betrayals we have experienced in relationship to the holy. As Tillich notes, we don’t spend a lot of time and energy being uncertain about things we don’t care about. We wrestle with uncertainty only in relation to that which is of ultimate concern to us; only in relation to that in which we have put our trust.

Jesus’s agonizing cry of “Why?” then, is not simply an expression of doubt that is understandable and forgivable, given the circumstances. Jesus’s “Why?—and ours—is essential to the work of transformation insofar as it manifests our ongoing struggle to hold on to what matters most in the midst of the pandemonium that surrounds us. To ask “Why?” is to refuse to submit passively to God’s “secret will” (Calvin).27 It is to insist on remembering and interpreting what is happening in light of the history of our relationship to God.28 It is to be poised to condemn the destructive power of the demonic even as we keep an eye out for what the God above God might be up to, even if we don’t like it. Finally, it is the way to join with all creation in the “groaning for redemption” that keeps us bumbling forward in hope, watching and working for the day when all will be “set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”29 v NOTES 1. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 30.

2. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (New York: Scholastic, 1997), 298.

3. Drawing here from the imagery in v. 1 of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”: “And though the world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed, [God’s] truth to triumph through us” (https://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh110.sht; last accessed 8.22.20).

4. Drawing here from the imagery in v. 2 of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” 5. For a recent example of the idolatrous conflation of nationalism and God, see Vice President Pence’s speech at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/08/27/pence-bible-rncjesus-flag/ (accessed 9.21.20). Thanks to Kevin Ireland for providing this example.

6. I developed my understanding of what constitutes the demonic in “Evil and the Principalities: Disarming the Demonic,” in Life Amid the Principalities, eds. Michael Root and James J. Buckley (Eugene: Cascade, 2016), 51-67.

7. See James Cone, The God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 160, and James Evans, We Have Been Believers: An African-American Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 8.

8. Cone, 145.

9. Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art (New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2012), passim.

10. Lynda Barry, One! Hundred! Demons! (Drawn and Quarterly), 2017.

11. II Cor. 11:13–15.

12. Pressfield, 112.

13. Galatians 5:22; John Wesley, “The Witness of the Spirit I,” In John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology. Eds. Albert Outler and Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999).

14. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, eds. Geoffrey Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956–1976, 12 vols), III/4, 544.

15. William Stringfellow, Essential Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013).

16. Cone, 141.

17. Catherine Keller, “Pandemic Pandemonium,” At https://www.abc.net.au/religion/ pandemic-pandemonium-catherine-keller/12281594. Other references to this essay will be indicated parenthetically.

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Rigby 18. If you are using this article in a group study, it might be constructive to pause and make a list of the demons being exposed in our times.

19. For more on how we should respond to the cultural yearning to get back to normal, see the end of Keller’s article and also my article titled “Eccentric Hope” (Perspectives, Vancouver School of Theology, Summer 2020) at https://vst.edu/perspectives/eccentric-hope/.

20. Walter Wink, The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

21. I am drawing, here, from the language of Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics IV/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 666.

22. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

23. Tillich, Dynamics, 17.

24. Micah 6:8.

25. Cone, 33.

26. Romans 12:1-2.

27. For more on my critique of Calvin, see “Providence and Play” in Insights (126:2; Spring 2011), 10–18.

28. Consider how often the lament psalmists rehearse the history of their relationship with God (e.g., see Psalm 44).

29. Romans 8:21.

Questions for Discussion by Professor Rigby 1. I appreciate Catherine Keller’s insight that we are experiencing not only a pandemic, but also pandemonium (“all those demons”). What demons would you say we are fighting? Make a list or, maybe, draw them.

2. What criteria do Stringfellow, Wesley, Barth, and Cone offer to help us discern between what is of God and what is not? Can you suggest any additional criteria?

3. Christians confronting the demons of this world think of themselves as “bumbling forward” in hope rather than marching forward with certainty.

What do you think of that argument? (You might want to reflect on whether you are willing to live like Harry Potter’s Neville or, more classically, like Man of La Mancha’s Don Quixote).

4. What do you think is meant by creative faith? What is destructive faith? I argue that any version of faith that is closed off to God acting in surprising and even uncomfortable ways is ultimately idolatrous. How do you feel about being open to God working even through what Tillich calls “holy destruction”?

5. Why is it important to ask “why?” questions in the face of the demonic, even if they can’t be answered?

6. How should Christians talk about what’s next for this world, following the pandemic? How should our hope for what is abnormal—for the coming of the Kingdom (kin-dom) of God—affect the way we engage the cultural discourse about getting back to normal or the warnings about the “new normal”?

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Interview Insights Editor William Greenway Interviews

Cynthia L. Rigby

Bumbling Forward in Faith Professor Rigby, you told us your topic last January, before COVID-19, George Floyd, and the shaking of our world. Why did you focus on the demonic?

Mainly because of the number of questions I get about the devil, demons, and evil forces in the world when I’m out visiting churches. Mainline theologians don’t talk much about the demonic, so I proposed this topic to nudge myself into thinking more about it. What sense can we make of biblical imagery of principalities and powers and demons and the fight we wage with them?

You begin with a Paul Tillich quote about creative faith and the truly ultimate.

What is truly ultimate and what is creative faith?

The truly ultimate is whatever ultimately drives us. Tillich wants our ultimate concern to be God, not our perception of God, not our construction of God, but the God who is above God. For instance, in his day, and still in ours, a misplaced ultimate concern is nationalism. Whenever our ultimate concern is not God, it becomes idolatrous and requires confessing and repenting and a return to the God above God—on this particular point, Barth and Tillich agree (and they do not agree about much).

How does this jive with creative faith? Creative faith is always open to receiving from this God who is above God, always open to the God beyond our idea of God melting us, molding us. Creative faith is open to transformation even in times where God seems to be acting in very un-Godlike ways, which can feel very risky.

You also cite J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, where she has Dumbledore say we should always call things by their proper names because “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” What are these devils we should take care properly to name today?

The pandemic has unearthed so many. As noted in my essay, Catherine Keller says “too many” to deal with all at once. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-environmentalism, ageism—so many people who have died of the coronavirus are dying because they’re in homes for people who are elderly and not getting the treatment that they deserve. Disparities in class are being unveiled. I’ve read that disparities in class have become inadvertently visible in Zoom classrooms, where suddenly in 12

Interview the background the differences in students’ homes is starkly visible. All kinds of demons are getting uncovered in these days.

You say even our talk of “getting back to normal” and the “new normal” can be demonic if it serves to cover over and resist transformation?

Yes. I’m a bit suspicious when it sounds like the goal is primarily to get back to where we are comfortable or to “adapt” and survive whatever comes at us. I’m concerned that emphasis on “normalcy” and “adaptability” might keep us from being creative and open to naming and disarming the demons that obstruct the kingdom of God. Our focus should be, rather, on participating in God’s work of bringing the kingdom “to earth as it is in heaven.” This peaceable kin-dom is not normal.

You stress that we should be confident God is with us, but you also caution us not to march ahead with certainty, but to bumble forward despite our uncertainty. What is the difference between marching and bumbling?

I think the difference has to do with where our certainty is centered. I associate “marching” with treating God as a kind of notary or divine caddy or sponsor or maybe helicopter parent who assures us we are entitled and supports us in our rightness. But the fact that God is with us doesn’t mean we are necessarily in the right. Actually, awareness of God’s presence with us and inclusion of us in the work of bringing the kin-dom should provoke in us jaw-dropping humility, as it did so often with the psalmist (see Psalm 8). The work is God’s, Barth reminds us; all our efforts are provisional (which, by the way, frees us to be playful). That’s what makes it so amazing that God uses us as essential players in God’s work! Philippians 2 reminds us that when we remember that “God is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for God’s good purpose,” we will not be know-alls, but will marvel at our inclusion, “working out our salvation with fear and trembling.”

I bet there are people reading this who are asking, “Is she saying God wants us to be afraid?” I don’t think that, exactly. But I do wonder if sometimes we jump too quickly to thinking that being afraid or uncertain has nothing to do with the Christian life, to assuming being ultra-confident is a sign of a solid faith. What I’m learning is that having faith really does mean we have to keep climbing back up onto that altar, continuously re-submitting to the God who is above God, being always open to new ways God might be speaking—even through our uncertainties, sufferings, doubts, and fears (Rom. 12:1–2). What I suggest, rather, is that we “bumble along” like Neville or, to use a more classic example, like Don Quixote, from Man of La Mancha, whose family wants to lock him up for “dreaming the impossible dream.”

I’m playing with the image of bumbling as a way into imagining what it looks like to move forward even when we are uncertain, hoping against hope that, even though we might fail, we are participating in a cause far greater than ourselves. Our certainty rests in God, not ourselves—the God who has entered into our uncertainty and validated it, in a sense, taken it into Godself. To the degree we think faith is about marching forward with certainty we will naturally attempt to overpower or repress our fears, doubts, and sufferings. Better to bumble forward and watch to 13

Defying the Demonic

How do we live faithfully in this space?

By hanging on until it’s over, spouting pietistic aphorisms, determined to be convinced it will be all right? At what cost to reality, including weeping with others? Or do we go the route of doing what we can, deciding God doesn’t have much to do with the world, and advising everyone to be reasonably responsible, but to be gentle with themselves if they don’t get much done? see how God might use the stuff we once were taught is weak and shameful to transform the world.

We’ve spoken of the creative faith you affirm, but you also warned against destructive faith. What does destructive faith look like?

Destructive faith is faith that’s closed off to the transcendent God above God who is doing things that we might not expect or want. Destructive faith is a closed system, any closed system—conservative, liberal, progressive, whatever—any system closed to the work of the Spirit who continuously makes us anew.

You speak of being sucked dry by a demonic dynamic. You invoke the noted black liberation theologian James Cone, who says we should struggle against this dynamic because it violates the gift of our creation. Can you say more about what Cone is talking about?

Cone is talking from the perspective of Black Americans, from the perspective of those who have been harmed by Christians who march forward self-righteously in the name of a god of their own making, not even trying to see the God above God. Robert Dabney, who ran the Austin School of Theology, the precursor to Austin Seminary, for example, wielded Bible verses as weapons to justify slavery and promote white supremacy. In this regard, the Black Lives Matter movement is naming and seeking to disarm those demonic principalities and powers that shape institutional systems, sucking the power and the life out of some people in order to 14

Interview benefit others. James Cone thinks this is the mortal fight Jesus fought and won, culminating on Calvary. This is Christus Victor atonement theory—another thing (besides the demonic) Presbyterians think they are too sophisticated to take seriously. Cone, by contrast, claims Jesus is victor over the demons and urges the faithful to get on board, bumble forward, and fight.

What do you mean when you talk about the God above God? What vision of God do you have in mind and what are you resisting?

I’m finally more Barthian than Tillichian in my understanding of God, meaning that I believe God can be known by way of God’s self-revelation if we can manage to see it. While God’s acts reveal God’s true being, however, I don’t believe they ever exhaust it. As Scripture says, “God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.”

That’s what Tillich thinks, too. And reading Tillich during this pandemic and the rough times we’re having with “all those demons” served as a good reminder to me that even Jesus doesn’t exhaust the reality of God. We have to resist even a vision of God centered in Jesus if that vision reduces God to a God that is only Jesus.

I started thinking about all this a couple of years ago, when I was having health problems and my father died. I preached a sermon in the Austin Seminary chapel asking the question, Does God ever lead us into temptation? I got a lot of pushback on that question because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing the God we know in Jesus Christ would do. But, you see, what we expect God to do and not to do is kind of beside the point. That’s what it means to be open to being met by the “God above God.” To move away from thinking about what it seems like God would do to being open to what God is actually doing.

Can you say more about your understanding of the significance of Jesus’ cry from the cross and what this means for our questioning?

Yeah. When we are truly open to being met by the God above God in ways that we not only didn’t expect, but in ways we don’t like (even in ways that don’t seem very God-like), it helps to know that Jesus is right there with us. He, too, is disappointed, at times, in the God above God. He struggles with God’s will. He cries out, suffering and lonely, with a bitter “Why?” It is not at all evident that Jesus at the very end of his life was “convinced … that nothing could separate him from the love of God.” He experienced separation. But think of what he learned, and what therefore God in a sense learned, and what the world learned by way of Jesus’ submission to the God above God. I don’t think the cross is creative or playful; but I have trouble, these days, denying that there is nothing redemptive about the cross itself.

I think there is some holy destruction going on there—and Jesus is naming it, and the lament psalmists name it, and we should name it, too—that twists the demonic back around in ways that show God taking what we intended for evil and using it for good (Gen. 50:20). Creative faith, as I have said, needs to be open to holy destruction as well as to the stuff we like and can make sense of, or else our faith becomes destructive, closed off to God’s work of undoing and remaking.

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Interview You are affirming doubt and questioning and bumbling along, yet you end expressing confidence that in the end God’s way will triumph …

Rats. I was trying to not default to being triumphalistic at the end. True to what you’re saying, Romans 8 has that beautiful verse where Paul declares he is convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

This makes me wonder: What if I’m not convinced? What if I’m uncertain? Fortunately, Romans 8 also talks about all creation groaning for redemption; we are in labor pains, Paul says, as we wait. That’s where we are at this moment, I think.

That’s where I am, at least. And I’m trying to figure out how to live the Christian life as we are groaning, present even to the painful moments, working for the kingdom to come. This unique time that we’re in is not parallel to waiting from cross to resurrection, in my view; it is more about how to navigate Christian life from resurrection to Second Coming, as the sky grows red in California, black people are ruthlessly murdered, and corrupt governments try to keep marginalized people from casting their vote. How do we live faithfully in this space? By hanging on until it’s over, spouting pietistic aphorisms, determined to be convinced it will be all right? At what cost to reality, including weeping with others? Or do we go the route of doing what we can, deciding God doesn’t have much to do with the world, and advising everyone to be reasonably responsible, but to be gentle with themselves if they don’t get much done?

I am trying for a third way. A way that includes uncertainty as well as certainty, all the whys as well as the statements about God’s love. It is the way of the bumbler and not the marcher; the one who keeps pushing forward and trying things because they know and hope they participate in something greater than themselves. It is the way that celebrates God’s unconditional, steadfast love whether it holds to it firmly or it loses sight of it explicitly. It is the way that is open to the God above God being present in the abyss itself, on the cross, and even—possibly—working in and through the demonic that God is thereby turning inside out.

In this understanding, nothing is separating us from the love of God on this dire day, in this difficult moment, not only because God has entered into it in Jesus Christ but because God has taken us—with our uncertainties; with our bumblings—into the life and work of God that includes suffering, doubt, disappointment, despair, agony, temptations, and questions. Living before the sovereign God, when things are good and we can praise, means all of our work is play (Barth). But living in relation to the God who is above God, when things are bad, means even in our loneliness, fear, and pain we are not left behind, for God is with us, groaning at our side, with all creation, even when we cannot pray (Romans 8:26). And the reality of this love lifts us up, along with the sufferings of the world, along with our uncertainties. Our uncertainties are not overridden but included, somehow, in the life and work of God. So we beloved are ready right now to bumble forward and confront those demons, hoping against hope that God is somehow working together for good even those things that are truly horrible. Perhaps, in this framing, registering our uncertainty is a form of confession: it is a way of acknowledging that—really—God is bigger than our very best imaginings. v 16

Reflections

Ministry Amidst the Demonic Personal Stories and Principles Lameck Banda

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inistry life in Africa is expected to be enjoyable, full of blessings, and ultimately to bring glory to God, for the simple reason that it is a faithful response to a calling from the triune God. However, at times ministry life can be confronted with a number of frightening challenges. Among the many challenges of ministry life are encounters with demonic forces such as satanism, witchcraft, and demon or spirit possession. From the onset, it is worthwhile to point out that it would be unwise to deny the demonic reality and power as manifested in satanism, witchcraft, and demon possession. For most people in Africa, demonic reality and powers are perceived to be a reality. Hence, on one hand, Africans never underestimate or downplay the demonic. On the other hand, they, especially devoted African Christians, do not magnify the power of the demonic to an extent that they become the main subject of worship. The power of God surpasses that of the demonic. So we are called to continual worship of God and proclamation of the gospel amidst the reality and power of the demonic.

In this article, therefore, we briefly address the scriptural view of the demonic as a stepping-stone for the entire article. Then, we share selected stories of the demonic encounter during ministry life in rural Zambian settings. We further suggest some principles for defying the demonic as a way of raising awareness for ministry life.

Scriptural View of the Demonic The discussion of angels, particularly the demonic, is in some ways the most unusual and puzzling of all theology. Karl Barth describes this doctrine as the “most re-

Lameck Banda is associate professor of systematic theology, eth-

ics, and African theology, and head of the Department for Systematic and Ecclesiological Studies at Justo Mwale University in Lusaka, Zambia. He earned his MATS degree from Austin Seminary and the PhD from University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, Republic of South Africa.

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Defying the Demonic markable and difficult of all.”1 Nonetheless, Scripture teaches that God has created and chosen to carry out God’s acts through the angels. By angels we generally refer to spiritual and superhuman beings who work within human history. Some of these remained obedient and faithful to God and carry out God’s will and work, while others disobeyed, lost their holy condition, and now live to oppose and hinder the work of God and God’s children. Under the influence of Satan, the demonic forces seek to thwart the purposes of God. However, God has limited their powers.

The Bible says little about the origin of the demonic and how these forces came to have their current moral character. From 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6, we see that demonic forces are created beings who sinned and came under judgment. In this condition of being cast into nether gloom, the fallen angels have sufficient freedom to carry on their evil activities. In this article, we analogously refer to the demonic forces in terms of three media—satanism, witchcraft, and demon possession— through which evil activities are carried on. We now share some selected stories of demonic encounter during ministry life.

Personal Stories of the Demonic Under this section we simply share selected short stories about demonic encounter in the forms of satanism, witchcraft, and demon possession. For each of these media, we share two stories in order to draw the point home and demonstrate the African perspective of the demonic.

Satanism. Starting with the belief in satanism as a medium of the demonic in Africa, a young man narrated to me how he was initiated into satanism from a tender age. He claimed that he was reporting to the devil himself in the underworld, and he could be used to kill people through causing accidents and in many other ways.

Later on, he was converted to Christianity after hearing the preaching of an evangelist in a church service.

Another story concerning satanism is about a committed member of our church who was accused of using satanic influence in his business. It was alleged that he had a black coffin in a small room of his house which caused his business to prosper. When he died, he was buried next to his business associate, both of whom had “sold their years” to the devil.

Witchcraft. The stories on witchcraft are not mere narrations but recount personal experiences during my ministry. One evening I was riding a bicycle along a small path in the bush when I heard something like a big dog or hyena running after me from behind. When I stopped to check, there was nothing. This happened several times in a repeated manner each time I got back on my bicycle. This caused a lot of fear in me, especially when I was told that witches were after me.

Another experience was that of a swarm of lice on my bed. One weekend I cycled many kilometers to another congregation where I was assigned as a visiting minister to a congregation which did not have a full-time pastor. Since I was at the congregation the whole weekend, I had to spend nights there. On the first day, in the middle of the night, there was a swarm of lice on and around my bed like sand

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Banda scattered all over the room. The next day I could not see even a single louse. I was told this was a form of witchcraft and again, this frightened me to death.

Demon possession. The last set of stories is about demon possession where I was personally involved in the act of exorcism. One evening I was preaching during a youth camp. In the middle of preaching, many in the audience started manifesting demon possession. By the time I finished preaching there were a lot of people who needed my attention for exorcism.

Another story is about a young man who had been working for a witchdoctor and practicing sorcery in his village. Again, this occurred at a youth camp after I had preached in the morning, Almost everyone had left for outreach in the surrounding villages, but I had remained at the venue to prepare for an evening session. The young man in question manifested demon possession after eating some food the witchdoctor had forbidden him. Together with some other young people we had to exorcise the demonic powers from this youth. After deliverance, we ate together the “forbidden food�and nothing evil happened to him.

All these stories reveal the reality and power of the demonic which thwart the work of God in the African milieu. This is a big issue in Africa which should not be ignored when doing ministry. How then does one perform ministry amidst the demonic forces? Hence, the last section focuses on principles towards defying the demonic in ministry life.

Principles for Defying the Demonic We have argued that the demonic issue is a reality and powerful conceptualization which sways us into a world of anxiety. It is for this reason that we now move on to highlight some key principles which would help us to defy the demonic. It is vital to accept the reality and power of the demonic. However, inasmuch as Africans accept the reality and power of the demonic, they also trust that God is ever present and gives power to believers that is stronger than that of the demonic (Josh. 1:9; 2 Chr. 32:7-8; Job 2:4-6; Mt. 28:18-20; Mk. 16:15-18; Eph. 4:27; 6:12; 1 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 5:8-9; 1 Jn. 4:4). Scripture attests to the fact that the power and presence of God protects his people and gives a sense of security and ability to triumph over the demonic. Hence, we cannot afford to worship the demonic and substitute confidence in or fears of the demonic for the sovereignty of God. Ministry amidst the demonic in Africa calls for reliance on the Holy Spirit, honest study of Scripture, and commitment to prayer. There is a need to rely on the power of God all the time, not on your own power. However, this should not give room for manipulation of God. Defying the demonic requires a sense of reverence for God and an attitude of humility and never being puffed up with the successes of your ministry. Ultimately, God should be at center of ministry amidst the demonic, with the ultimate goal of ministry being to present the gospel. It is only the gospel that comes with power to triumph over the works of the demonic forces.

Conclusion Ministry amidst the demonic in Africa is about accepting the reality and power of 19

Defying the Demonic the demonic. This helps us to be aware of the presence and ability of the demonic, which in the end leads to the realization and trust of the greater power of the triune God. Consequently, trust in the presence and power of God enables us to defy demonic forces. All this is possible through the finished work of Christ on the cross.

Satanism, witchcraft, and demon possession stand already defeated through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are confident to defy the demonic through Christ who strengthens us (Phi. 4:13).

Hallelujah! v NOTE

1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3. Edinburgh; T & T Clark, 1961 : p. 369.

Insights, The Podcast To listen to the full interview with Professor Cynthia Rigby, tune into our Insights Podcast at

AustinSeminary.edu/Insightspodcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Becoming Children of Light: Falling in Love with Truth During Dark Times Wendy Farley

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riends, I write as the thin veneer masking white racism is being torn off, as our cities burn with the rage and grief of justice endlessly denied. I do not know who will read this essay, but I am directing it to fellow white people who abhor racism even as we are caught up in it. Soon enough other news stories, other crises, will dominate headlines. But we will remain enmeshed in pervasive racist institutions that will demand our attention for a long time. Many progressive churches have denounced racism. But the work of surfacing preconscious images and assumptions will be on-going.

Our unwilling complicity invites reflection on how racism embeds itself in our minds and our social structures. A crucial part of this picture is the ability of racist logic to mask itself. The philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that dark times are made possible in part by assaults on truth that render public atrocity morally invisible. Herself a refugee from Nazi terror, she writes: All this was real enough, as it took place in public. There was nothing secret or mysterious about it. And still, it was by no means visible to all, nor was it at all easy to perceive it; for until the very moment when catastrophe overtook everything and everybody, it was covered up not by realties but by the highly efficient talk and double-talk of nearly all official leaders … When we think of dark times … we have to take this camouflage … also into account.

Even as racism is displayed with enormous clarity every day, mass deception has been horrifyingly successful in concealing from public discourse the persistence, scope, and barbarism of the American color code.

Wendy Farley is Rice Family Chair of Christian Spirituality at the

University of Redlands Graduate School of Theology. Previously, she spent twenty-eight years at Emory University. Her research has focused on philosophical and feminist theology, comparative theology and contemplative practices, and the ethical underpinnings of thought and practice. She has written six books.

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Defying the Demonic African Americans are beaten and killed, arrested and imprisoned at a much higher rate than any other demographic in this country. Their health outcomes, including infant and maternal mortality, are worse, regardless of their profession or income.

Their schools are inferior and underfunded. Their pre-school children are more likely to be disciplined. College students weighed down by negative stereotypes find it difficult to perform at their intellectual level. These facts are easily available.

A ten-second Google search produces pertinent articles and books from the CDC, National Institutes of Health, and innumerable scholarly sources. As we confront this information we might sympathize with Rachel Carson’s awakening to massive ecological degradation: “Some of the thoughts that came were so unattractive to me that I rejected them completely, for the old ideas die hard, especially when they are emotionally as well as intellectually dear to one.” Like Carson, we must locate “an island of difficult, lifesaving truth amid the ocean of civilizational delusion.”

Why is it so easy to believe lies? To acquiesce to systems that destroy countless lives? The demonic is an old symbol for the structural delusions that infect society.

Satan is a murderer and liar but also the ruler of the world (e.g., Jn 8:44, 12:3, 2 Cor. 4:4). This ancient mythology is potent because it gives shape to the obfuscating mystery of how easily we—as individuals, people of faith, citizens who want to be good—are seduced by it. The demonic symbolizes the power of patriotic ideals and the supposed nobility of Christian mission to conceal the atrocities built into our nation’s history and the conduct of our churches. Once we normalize evil with plausible-sounding rationalizations, we dissociate it from our ethical categories.

We are horrified, for instance, to hear of a teenager being stalked and murdered as he walked along talking to his girlfriend on the phone. But racist assumptions are built into our thinking. In the case of Trayvon Martin’s murder, we reconstruct the narrative. He was likely a criminal. Black teenagers can be frightening. Even a slight teenager facing an armed adult is threatening. Self-defense is a natural response.

The plain atrocity of gunning down a high school student armed only with a packet of Skittles becomes invisible, masked behind racially biased newspaper accounts, justice systems, and a thousand media images of dangerous and criminal black people.

This is how the demonic works. It does not scare us with hideous face and horns. It slides into the seemingly natural, pre-conscious assumptions we make. It turns our automatic trust of whiteness and anxiety about blackness into unreflective willingness to accept as sensible an array of laws, anecdotes, and explanations which, upon careful reflection, are obviously racist. It is uncomfortable and personally demanding to see the way racism has infected our minds. So, we accept prefabricated deceptions that translate moral outrage into further evidence of black criminality. Unconscious but potent consent to this lie fuels a quick descent into a twisted acceptance of violence: if by virtue of being Black someone is a criminal, however trivial the crime, it is natural to stop them, however egregious the force.

Events that would be inconceivable if the victim were white become commonplace when the victim is Black.

Racism infects religion, as it does the rest of society. During the recent protests 22

Farley against racism, Donald Trump called on the military to clear a path through peaceful protestors with rubber bullets and tear gas so he could process across a street for a photo-op holding aloft a Bible in front of St. John’s Church. It was an almost perfect ritualizing of the demonic. Trump’s symbolic gesture reaffirmed America’s long-held allegiance to the sacred worth of domination. Church and scripture perfume authoritarian violence. The bishop of Washington D.C. condemned this act, and for many it was deeply disturbing. But many white evangelicals applauded it, celebrating Trump as “wearing the armor of God.” Their praise ratifies the demonic appropriation of religion, mirroring the way religion and racist violence have been braided together in an unholy love knot for centuries.

As noted womanist theologian Karen Baker Fletcher observes, “In the presence of extreme violence, faith is sorely tested. When faith survives and thrives to the point of being a source of healing for others, it manifests as a form of courage … But how does one attain this courage in a world of violated relationships? If the courage to confront the complexities of existence in its beauty and its ugliness is found in the dance, pulse, touch, heart, and breath of God, then who is God?” The demonic entices us into thinking God lives in white churches, far from the tangle of injustice, poverty, and “the new Jim Crow.” But the gospel calls us to adore the God who created the world, who is present in its beauty and tragedy, and who cherishes everyone in it. “Metanoia!” Christ calls out to us: wake up, open your eyes—the Kingdom of God is already among you (Matt. 4:17, Mk 1:14). The gospel invites us to renounce demonic lies and to experience reality in a completely different way.

This is not forgiveness or remorse but becoming aware that heaven is already present whenever we perceive Christ dwelling in one another (Matt. 25). If the demonic pushes our Black siblings out of the circle of this command, the gospel demands that we awaken to the sacred worth of those whose humanity and suffering we have been blind to. The joy of the gospel will be born in us when we pierce the veil of consoling fictions and recognize the beauty of those who stand before us, even when these black and brown faces are “despised and rejected by men … full of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).

We are vulnerable to the demonic when emotionally satisfying lies ingratiate themselves into our sacred precincts. But as Christians we have resources for resisting white supremacist “powers and principalities.” When we renounce our delusions, we rejoin our Beloved in the long work of unsentimental, urgently concrete love. We seek mercy not only at the end of times but commit ourselves to lives of radical compassion—for all beings and for the earth itself—in the midst of time.

Maya Angelou wrote of the caged bird who sang for a freedom it had never seen and yet longed for. She is speaking of Black America’s unfathomable courage to envision freedom in the midst of spiritual and literal incarceration. But cannot those of us who are imprisoned by self-deception and mutilated by the distortions of privilege also long for freedom? Freedom to join the lament for the relentless assaults on black bodies—and trans bodies, female bodies, immigrant bodies, poor bodies?

Freedom to discover the innumerable contributions to science, medicine, art, literature, education, religion, and political reform that we benefit from? Freedom to 23

Defying the Demonic re-evaluate the past and join the labor for a different future?

The world is structured by the demonic: by deception and lies, domination and violence. As Christians, we must remain alert for the ways in which the demonic infiltrates our churches and our faith. I long for racial reconciliation and have experienced communities where this seems possible. But it is early to demand reconciliation: “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). Rather, we can allow ourselves to be taught, not only by a history we have denied and repressed, but by the spiritual wisdom that our Black siblings have gained through their intimate walk with Jesus during their long crucifixion. Let us listen to Black leaders. Let us learn from the rage of protesters. Let us apprentice ourselves to great civil rights mothers such as Rosemarie Freeney Harding who invokes her maternal ancestors to, “Teach about how to be family. How to live like family. How to live with some strength and care in your hands. How to live with some joy in your mouth. How to put your hands gentle on where the wound is and draw out the grief. How to urge some kind of mercy into the shock-stained earth so that good will grow.”

I pray that we are at a turning point. But it will be so only if we outwit the demonic in our churches, politics, newspapers, schools, minds, and hearts. Let us be children of light—not because we walk in the light—but because we desire the light of truth and justice and are willing to dedicate ourselves to this desire. v BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Popova, Maria. Figurings. New York: Vintage Press, 2020.

Steele, Claude M. Whistling Vivaldi. New York: Norton Press, 2010.

Teague, Matthew. “He Wears the Armor of God: Evangelicals hail Trump’s photo op,” The Guardian June 3, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/ jun/03/donald-trump-church-photo-op-evangelicals

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God in the Struggle

David Fergusson

L

iving in the midst of lockdown has provided me with different challenges and opportunities. I am relatively fortunate, since for me on the hills of south Edinburgh the disruption of COVID-19 has yielded unexpected gifts. As my usually busy diary has been emptied of commitments, I have found more time for contemplation. I experience my immediate surroundings with greater intensity. The natural world is still displaying its colours and marking the changing seasons. Our wildlife carries on as if nothing has happened. I’m reminded of the stories of soldiers in trenches and POW camps who devoted themselves to studying birds. While imprisoned during World War I, one young Oxford scholar organised twenty-four-hour observation of a pair of redstarts and later wrote a standard work on the species.

He watched them with delight since “they lived wholly and enviably to themselves, unconcerned in our fatuous politics.” But for us, as for him, there is ultimately no escaping the politics and deadly challenges of the day. With time to follow the news and reflect on global developments, we’ve all thought more about our social conditions, what needs to be preserved and what needs to change. As a theologian, I have been faced with revisiting issues around providence, in particular questions about death, suffering, injustice, and the relationship of God to us and our world.

When the Lisbon earthquake struck on All Saints Day in 1755, thousands lost their lives. Much of Europe entered into discussion about what God might have intended by this event. For many, perhaps the majority, it was perceived as a work of punishment inflicted upon a wicked population. Since it was an act of God, they reasoned, it must serve some specific divine intention. If this was the dominant

David Fergusson has been professor of divinity at the University of Edinburgh since 2000. He also serves as dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland. His recent publications include The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and the coedited History of Scottish Theology (Oxford University Press, 2019).

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Defying the Demonic view amongst Europe’s theologians and preachers, others adopted a more sceptical line, especially Voltaire, the French philosopher. The indiscriminate damage caused by the earthquake did not look to Voltaire like a precision attack on the ungodly.

Those commemorating All Saints Day in the churches suffered high casualties, he noted, while others, including many in the city brothels, survived unscathed. God’s aim wasn’t very good, or so it seemed.

Moreover, Voltaire and others wondered, Why on earth would a loving God act in such a way? What satisfying justification can be given of divine benevolence or of the best possible world when so many children have died? Pombal, the Portuguese prime minister, was by all accounts a power-hungry political operator. Yet he recognised the danger of the moment and responded by arranging for the burial of the dead, treatment of the injured, provision of emergency supplies, and for protection of the stricken city from looters and pirates. Some chastised him for counteracting what God had surely intended. Yet today, most Christians in Europe view the response of Pombal as more in accord with the will of God than the earthquake itself.

One important feature of theological responses to the current pandemic has been the merciful absence (mostly) of attempts to interpret this as the consequence of a divine decision. This paradigm shift separates churches today from those in earlier generations who attempted to discern in every catastrophe, whether personal or global, a coded message from God. Floods, famines, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and plagues are no longer viewed in most quarters as directly sent

by God to punish and chasten. Elements of Scripture do incline in this direction, though Jesus appears firmly to have rejected any direct correlation between human merit and natural events in his commentary on the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4) and the man born blind (John 9:3).

At a time of crisis, a refusal of some speculative questions may itself be the right response. Often denounced for their phoney solutions to his suffering, Job’s three friends did at least sit silently with him on the ground for seven days and nights. Should we consider that our prime task is to explain why God sent this pandemic or even to consider why it was permitted, as if its occurrence were the result of some divine cost-benefit analysis? Those troubling “why” questions—Why this?

Why now? Why me?—may run deeper in the human psyche than we often admit.

Though seemingly natural and spontaneous, we should refuse the presupposition that there is a “one-on-one” causal relation between natural disaster and divine intentionality, or between what we deserve and what happens to us. Much better to focus upon that about which we can be sure, such as the call to love and justice and to support those who seek to resist disease and disaster, locating God’s providence in the spirit of that call.

What this suggests to me is that there is a place for understanding God’s rule in more adversarial terms of contest, struggle, and promise. Traditional approaches to providence have tended to think of it in terms of sovereign control, wherein every event is ordained to maximise the greatest possible good. Yet this distorts much of the Hebrew Scriptures, in which God must wrestle with recalcitrant material, including natural forces and human malevolence. This is further intensified in the 26

Fergusson crucifixion of Jesus. His witness and ministry take place in the face of rejection, opposition, and violence from the overwhelming earthly power of the Roman Empire.

If the way of Jesus Christ, the way of the cross, is the locus of our hope, it appears as foolishness when assessed merely in terms of material wellbeing, philosophical explanation, or political success.

Christian theologians have understandably been nervous around notions of the demonic. The oneness of God and the goodness of creation leave no place for a dualist cosmology in which the world is the battleground for a war waged between finely balanced forces of good and evil. Gnosticism and Manichaeism were both rejected early in the history of the church as beyond the bounds of legitimate belief.

These binary oppositions set the God of creation against the God of redemption, and the Hebrew Scriptures against the Christian. Yet, at the same time, images of impersonal and menacing forces ranged against the rule of God are also present in the New Testament. There are times and places in which this language requires articulation whether in those sudden and random misfortunes that blight individual human lives, natural disasters that engulf populations, or in unjust societal structures that prevent human flourishing.

A theology of providence should create the space to articulate the ways in which evil is not yet defeated. The parables of Jesus point us in this direction. Some speak of grace, promise, and the miraculous spread of the kingdom from small beginnings. Yet others attest opposition, division, and delay. Elsewhere, Jesus’s own work is characterised in terms of a war with the demons and the casting down of Satan. The Pauline invocations of demonic images and elemental forces also generate an awareness of the forces ranged against God. These should have their place if we are to register the external threats that are faced not only by people but the entire created order. It is worth noting here how naturally the language of warfare has come to our lips as we characterise the combatting of COVID-19. The sense that in this world we are battling real evil still rings true.

The Cambridge philosophical theologian Donald MacKinnon once remarked “If I am to be arraigned for heresy, then let it be Manichaeism.” His point was not to argue for a cosmic dualism of good and evil but to allow greater scope in the Christian imagination for language that adequately expressed the enemies such as suffering, evil, and injustice. Likewise, Friedrich Schleiermacher notes that, although we may not wish to systematise teaching about the devil and the angels, this language should have its place in the liturgy and prayers of the church, for it gives a powerful voice to our fear and despair. Perhaps Protestant theology in particular has been guilty of too readily suppressing such images.

In recent months, several writers have commented on the difficulty in praying in the midst of the current crisis. Regular patterns of devotion and trusted books of prayer can suddenly seem out of place. Alison Joyce is minister of St Bride’s Church, in Fleet Street, London. In a moving piece in the London Times, she recalls how one of her predecessors, Richard Peirson, elected to remain in post during the Great Plague of 1665, while others sought the safety of the countryside.1 At grave

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Defying the Demonic risk to his own life, he ministered to the dying and the bereaved. Parish records reveal that one day alone he buried forty-three people. Several of those who assisted him in this work were themselves carried away by the plague. Musing on all this, Joyce wonders what Peirson might have prayed about during these calamitous times. What moved him to stay in post? Did he feel closer to God in carrying out his life-threatening ministry? Did he experience guilt at the loss of faithful helpers?

During lockdown I have returned each day to the Psalms. There I’ve been struck by how the lack of interest in speculative questions is matched by an intense awareness of God as present and active in the struggle. This is conveyed even when God seems for a time to be passive, hidden, or silent. Many of these Psalms are written by distressed people in situations of sickness, war, fear, and deprivation. Much is made of waiting and longing; God is there but has yet to act decisively. John Calvin understood this. Commenting on the flood in Genesis 9, Calvin notes that the rainbow is a sign of God’s faithfulness in the midst of trouble.2 Arching above us, it is set in the sky as a token of constancy, a promise of deliverance. Though we may be threatened by flood, the sign of the rainbow enables us, Calvin writes in his commentary on Genesis 9:13, “to stand with greater confidence, than under a clear and serene sky.” God is not aloof from the struggle, dishing out retribution or dispensing favours from on high, but remains restless and engaged in our midst.

In the ministry of Jesus, the signs of the kingdom are evident in healings, exorcisms, the feeding of hungry people, the sharing of meals, and the calming of storms. People are given hope and drawn towards a better future, despite opposition and division. Though far from complete, the defeat of evil has already begun, and we are called to join in the struggle.

What then of God’s struggle? History teaches us that there are real dangers associated with misappropriation of combative metaphors for God. Such images of the divine should be neither exclusive nor dominant. Sometimes, however, combative metaphors are needed to see the work of God as much more than a passive presence, or as presiding over a perfect cosmos, or as the struggle of one who will only remedy everything in an eschatological future. Irenaeus once spoke of the “two hands of God”: as Word (i.e., Jesus Christ) and as Spirit. In line with this image we can see God active in Jesus, who heralds and enacts the kingdom, and also active in the Spirit, who assails, enables, and encourages us to cooperate in works of justice and love. v NOTE

1. Alison Joyce, “Credo,” The Times of London, 18 April 2020.

2. John Calvin, Calvin’s Complete Commentary on the Bible, Vol I: Genesis to Joshua (USA: Delmarva Publications, 2013).

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Pastors’ Panel We asked religious leaders for their reflections on ministry in light of this issue’s lead article. Here is what they told us.

T HE PA NE L The Reverend Carolina Treviño is designated associate pastor at Central Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, working primarily with the homeless population through the ministry of the church.

The Reverend Shavon Starling-Louis is pastor of Meadowlake Church in Huntersville, North Carolina, and a “follower of Jesus committed to anti-racism/ antioppression work; an African-American female solo pastor to a predominantly white church; the spouse of a seminarian in the midst of the child-rearing years.”

The Reverend Gordon Blackman (MDiv ’14) is pastor of Alpine Presbyterian Church in Longview, Texas. Before seminary he practiced law in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The Reverend Sharon Risher (MDiv’07) previously served as a trauma chaplain in Dallas, and in 2015, her mother and cousin were among the “Charleston 9,” victims of a racially motivated mass shooting. She is the author of For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness after the Charleston Massacre.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “demonic”?

Carolina Treviño There’s no such thing as demons, right? At least that’s the mainline Presbyterian wisdom I was raised with. Demons are metaphors; they aren’t real and never were.

And saying you believe in demons—spirits from another plane of existence that cause pain, confusion, chaos, or worse—is a sign that you’re woefully naive or a Baptist. It was fine to believe in angels, but not demons, because that makes you theologically unsophisticated.

I don’t think like that anymore. Too many people have asked me to do exorcisms on them. I have to admit that I started doing them as a form of pastoral care. Like, if this person believes they need an exorcism, I’ll humor them, but I don’t really believe in demons. I mean, if exorcisms were really needed, certainly I would have learned how to do one in seminary, right? But as the years have gone by, I’ve seen and felt things that I cannot explain otherwise. I have felt different types of energies move through people, I have seen their eyes shift, their voices change, their demeanor radically alter. And I have had the hairs on the back of my neck stand up—my body’s way of telling me something real is there. It’s not scientific, I know. But there is SO MUCH I don’t know about spiritual matters or the spiritual realm that it’s probably not a bad idea to have some humility around demons, like a reverse Pascal’s wager.

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Defying the Demonic Shavon Starling-Louis The demonic. I hear this word and I am at once skeptical because it has been used to weaponize fear of the other, and paradoxically, I also deeply embrace the word in its precision in naming the reality of being spiritually, emotionally, physically, and psychologically possessed by that which is sinful, broken, evil, and unwisely foolish.

The demonic has traditionally been used by a colonizing derivation of White Christianity to alienate people and their pre-Christian cultures: “demonic” as a word of judgement when there is a lack of cultural competency and curiosity. This demonic label has been slapped on rituals and healing arts of Indigenous/ First Nation people as well as the remnants of traditional African faiths that abided in the souls of enslaved Africans beyond the middle passage.

In recent weeks, since the release of Beyonce Knowles-Carter’s visual album “Black is King,” I have heard the word demonic come up in some Christian circles as they describe the integration of pan-African images and symbols by an artist of African descent, despite Mrs. Knowles-Carter’s repeated acknowledgement of her Christian faith.

Let me be real clear: I think this sort of Christianity devoid of intercultural competency is well ... demonic.

The demonic attempts to possess, isolate, wall-up, and wall-in people. The demonic speaks to me and says I have no value because I am black and a woman. The demonic speaks to our fears and amplifies them. The demonic makes us afraid of people we have never met based on one piece of information about them. The demonic is comprised of generalized lies that we have all internalized. The demonic severs the arteries to vital life-giving hope within ourselves, amongst ourselves, and in the world.

The demonic deceitfully mocks wisdom, compassion, and vulnerability because it can’t actually defeat them. Wisdom is the will and skill to be about the work of promoting the flourishing of all of humanity and all of creation. The demonic wants to separate us from the will to be wise, and the demonic want us to be poor stewards of the skills that God has given us for the sake of wisdom.

Gordon Blackman My wife and I enjoyed watching a television series about three good witches whose role in life was to destroy demons. When I first hear the word “demon,” I think of the personified evil from that show. While I prefer to not think of there being real demons in God’s good and “very good” creation, I cannot overlook the numerous times the word or a derivation is used in the Bible. Like so many theological/biblical issues, this is a mystery to me. I prefer to think of present day “demonic” forces as being anything which produces fear or actions contrary to God’s will. Unfortunately, with all the evil in the world, it is not hard to find demonic forces at work.

Sharon Risher When I hear the term demonic, I think of the devil, evil spirits, and white people.

As a Black person in America, brought up during the 60s, my history is intertwined 30

Pastors’ Panel between reality and the spirit world. Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, where a third of all slaves were brought from Africa, we “Geechees,” (locals) believed in the spirit world. I can remember my grandmother and mother talking about the “old lady” in the neighborhood who had a “special gift” of healing or getting a spirit off you when someone had a “hex” put on you. My African ancestors believed in evil spirits and used the knowledge and wisdom of the witch doctors to release them from such spirits.

The demonic in my mind is anything that keeps me controlled through sin, steering me away from serving Christ.

White people were always referred to as evil or the devil in my community.

I didn’t understand this until I was older and started to understand what white people did to us (Black people) as a result 400 years of slavery, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, etc. To me, it is demonic for white Americans to subject a whole people to such degradation and violence, for their own capital gain. To this day, America has not reckoned with its own guilt and shame. Black people continue to suffer by the hands of evil, by people like Dylan Roof, who had to be evil to walk into a church and kill nine innocent people because he wanted to start a race war.

Yet, through all of Black people’s suffering and pain, our faith—my faith—in God, no amount of oppression can take us away from the “Good spirit” who can make this life bearable. I know evil spirits are in the universe; I pray I’m able to discern who/what they are.

How do you deal with your own fears these days?

Gordon Blackman One of the most common phrases in biblical theophanies is “fear not.” The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:18). When fear threatens to paralyze me, I reassess the fear in light of practicing the love of God. I ask myself, How does what I fear change in the light of God’s perfect love?

Sharon Risher I’ve dealt with my fears during these turbulent and pandemic days by first thanking God for waking me up. During the first couple of months I was anxious, worried, and depressed. My income was greatly affected because I travel a lot, and events were cancelled. I had no income. My daughter and her husband started to work from home, which added to my everyday stresses. I was afraid to go out of the house because I didn’t know if I would get sick.

To say my prayer life increased is an understatement. I started to write more, I read more, cleaned the house more, laid in bed all day. I started to get past the doom and gloom around May, and then something terrible would happen: another Black body killed by police, more gun violence—killing our black and brown sisters and brothers in our communities more than ever—food lines, unemployment, political fatigue. I’m thrown back into lamenting and wailing for our country. I began to have positive self-talks every day, I started to listen to more music that was calming 31

Defying the Demonic to my soul. I’m very vigilant about my surroundings, I avoid crowds, I wear a mask, wash my hands constantly, and I continue to advocate for common-sense gun laws and spreading the good news of the gospel through my preaching and writings, using various social media platforms, and through print media.

Carolina Treviño Depends on the day. Sometimes I go for a walk through my neighborhood. Sometimes I cry and overeat. Sometimes I listen to Tracy Chapman and pray. Sometimes I drink too much. Sometimes I ask all the women who came before me—my mother, my abuela, my bisabuela, and all my great-greats—to please help guide me through this time. Sometimes I do an alphabetical gratitude list. Sometimes I practice the mantra “I am confident and at ease with myself.” Sometimes I just laugh and laugh and laugh and roll down the windows, turn the radio up, and drive.

But my work with people experiencing homelessness also provides a lot of opportunities to face my fears head-on. Sure, it’s sometimes scary to work with people having brain health episodes or withdrawals from substances or to walk into hidden camps under bridges. But honestly, for me, the harder fears to face are the ones that require me to speak up to rich white people about how we can’t undo poverty without undoing their wealth. Or how to talk with city officials and business leaders about homelessness with conviction. Or how to work on the streets wearing my clergy collar, not it wearing me.

Shavon Starling-Louis In these days I deal with my fears in a plethora of ways.

I often find my fears are lifted up to God. In a simple “God, what the heck is going on? And what would you have me do with it?” prayer. From here, I’d say 20% of the time, I am truly unburdened after this sort of prayer. Rarely, but sometimes, I can even forget what was weighing me down.

Other times my fears linger in my body and mind like a low-humming sound with the volume going up and down depending on how attentive I am to the fear at any given moment. When I notice this, my wisest self takes a deep dive in self-care.

This includes journaling, meditating, listening to 90s R&B, having a praise party with my favorite gospel artists, having a good cry, taking out my resistance bands and doing a quick workout, but unfortunately this is only about 33% of the time.

I’d say many fears that arise these days are connected with deeper systemic fears that are triggered by the similarity of the newest fear-inducing situation. This usually requires some help to untangle. I lean into my self-care team of mental health therapists, massage therapists, physicians, and more.

How do you see yourself “defying the demonic,” however you might see the “demonic” at work these days?

Sharon Risher I continue to use my voice as a change agent. I find myself involved in issues that 32

Pastors’ Panel are both racially and politically challenged. This new-found ministry has given me an opportunity to be heard by the masses, to bring hope through an authentic voice. I see myself “defying the demonic” by delving deeper into the Word of God, which deepens my relationship with God. The deeper I go, the closer I get, the more I serve. I defy by being an informed citizen and participate in the political process through my right to vote. I defy by carrying my faith and theological understanding as a messenger of the “Good News” of the gospel to all. I “defy the demonic” by continuing to confront racism and how racism plus guns is a deadly combination, causing devastation, pain, and profound grief to families as a result. I defy by standing up against hate in any form. I defy the demonic by trusting in humanity and living the best Christ-like life I can.

Gordon Blackman By working to bring in the kin-dom of God, by seeking to help God’s people see God’s will for their lives, by seeking to make God’s love known, I am combating the demonic. When I help others see the love of God and how it casts out fear, the demonic loses its power. The demonic gains power by sowing fear. God, who is love, casts out fear.

Shavon Starling-Louis As a child, my grandmother talked about the demonic in two ways. She would say: 1) Devil comes to kill, steal, and destroy; you must protect your joy at all cost, so do something for yourself, and 2) Tell the truth; shame the devil.

I struggle with the first; I often try to do more when I should probably be doing less, because the lie of productivity as protection and the stereotypes of lazy black people affect how my community sees me.

So I try my best to let Grandma Delores’ second axiom on the enemy lead me to balance. I try my best to always tell the truth even if it’s awkward. I talk to my husband and tell the truth of my sadness, anger, confusion. I tell the truth to my therapist. I tell the truth to the friends I have. I tell the truth to my black clergy siblings. I tell the truth in my posts online. And because I am blessed to still have her, I tell the truth to my grandma. And in these truth-sharing times we laugh, cry, pray, and dream—and shame the devil as we recreate some of that joy and life the enemy so desperately wants to steal, kill, and destroy.

Carolina Treviño I don’t know, except trying to be the woman in the Mary Oliver poem, who is “afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” v

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Faculty Books Recent publications by Austin Seminary professors Pastoral Care and Counseling, An Introduction: Care for Stories, Systems, and Selves by Philip Browning Helsel, The Nancy Taylor Williamson Associate Professor of Pastoral Care, Austin Seminary.

acts of love and justice. Similarly, Helsel uses case stories as the primary vehicle through which we learn about helpful and ethical practices of care that shape one’s pastoral imagination. Ultimately, these are also spiritual stories, “parables of the spiritual life, the everyday disciplines of joy and surrender that are central to the Christian practice of faith” (133).

Second, our stories are always connected to the stories of others. Each personal story is influenced by larger complex systems, or networks, of others past and present with whom and by whom our emotional selves are shaped and forever entwined.

We have recently seen this demonstrated, often painfully, in the media through countless stories of individual suffering, loss, death, and injustice, all made more poignant by the deep ways families and communities are also affected. Nor can we, Helsel reminds us, ignore the ways larger social systems shape our life—nor ignore how these same systems privilege some in society while neglecting or harming others.

Third, in caring for others the pastoral self is also transformed. As we invest of ourselves in the care of others and truly hear their suffering and lament, change happens (131). In order to be present with those who suffer, Helsel stresses, pastors must work to understand their own woundedness and invest in restorative practices that can sustain one in the life of ministry. The strengths and wounds caregivers carry with them strongly impact the ways we tend to the needs of others, for good or ill.

Pastoral care, Helsel shows us, is an act of sacred presence with the people of God, whether in the most ordinary of circumstances or the most despairing ones.

It is advocacy with and for the oppressed.

It is the ability to stand with others in their pain and to sharpen our vision for the ways that love, hope, and resilience can take hold. Helsel does not shy away

Paulist Press, 2019; 184 pages; $39.95.

Reviewed by Rev. M. Jan Holton, PhD, Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Care at Duke University Divinity School

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imes such as these bring to full force the immeasurable value of a theologically and theoretically insightful, gently wise, and entirely approachable book like this to guide ministers through the complex practice of pastoral caregiving. Between the everyday challenges of life and the ongoing crises—a pandemic, economic despair, and social unrest—parishioners today face stress, anxiety, depression, and a myriad of other sufferings. We need to know that God remembers us and cares about us. Phil Helsel’s book, Pastoral Care and Counseling, An Introduction: Care for Stories, Systems, and Selves, provides pastors and lay ministers with essential tools and a vision for caregiving that leans into meaning-making, embraces Divine mystery, and transforms caregivers and care-seekers alike.

Helsel artfully organizes the book around three core structural principles of human development and behavior that are essential for the practice of pastoral care. Frankly, I think we could all benefit from understanding them. First, we are storied people who long to have our stories heard and remembered by others and God. Jesus understood the power of stories and used them throughout his ministry to reveal God’s redemptive

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Faculty Books Christian Understandings of Christ: The Historical Trajectory by David H. Jensen, Academic Dean and Professor in the Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair in Reformed Theology. Fortress

from difficult contexts of care. He wades right into some of the most daunting and overwhelming caregiving situations that can befall ministers, such as suicide, addiction, domestic violence, and the daily injustices facing immigrants. Each is made even more timely and meaningful by the ongoing turmoil of this strange time in which we find ourselves. Helsel navigates caregiving needs and skills in these contexts with compassion and an eye toward the horizon of God’s love and care.

Ultimately, the caregiving task is about helping care-seekers feel they are being kept in mind by others and God. We need to know that God remembers us.

Through God’s remembering, the people of God are saved, protected, and redeemed time and again throughout the Hebrew Bible and the Gospel—not because they were deserving but because of God’s unending mercy.

When we feel remembered by God, we, too, feel the courage to stand in the uncertainty that comes with suffering and to lean toward the mystery of God. Pastoral care, Helsel says, “is an orientation to human experience that … dwells in mystery, not needing to come to quick conclusions about life” (141). Only when we can quell the need for easy answers can we begin the difficult work of making meaning from our suffering and transforming it. In these trying times I am especially grateful for Dr. Helsel’s own pastoral imagination, which has given rise to this fine work, and for the ways it will shape our own call toward pastoral caregiving.

Press, 2019; 300 pages; $24

Reviewed by Don Schweitzer BA, MDiv, STM, PhD, McDougald Professor of Theology at St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon, Canada

A

t a pivotal moment in Mark’s gospel Jesus asks his disciples “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replies, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29). This is a famous incident in the synoptic gospels partly because every Christian is challenged to some extent to answer this question and explain what their answer means. This well-written book by David Jensen gives a fascinating, accessible survey of how Christians through the ages and from around the world have answered this question.

Jensen begins by summarizing how Jesus is understood in major writings of the New Testament. He then moves through the early church, medieval, Reformation, and modern eras up to the present day, giving accurate and concise summaries of the christologies of major theologians, church leaders, and not so famous people from each era. Philosophers, theologians, nuns, preachers, novelists, and significant church documents all appear here. Reading through this book one encounters a chorus of witnesses who have tried to say who the fascinating Galilean is who stands at the heart of Christianity and what he means in terms of his saving significance. Jensen deftly sets each christology in its context and briefly sketches its main features, highlighting the authors’ approaches to understanding Jesus, their main ideas and contributions, and their shortcomings.

The scope of this book is amazing. For example, the christology of the eminent nineteenth-century European philosopher Hegel is followed by that of Jarena Lee,

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Faculty Books the first woman authorized to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Jensen notes how Hegel’s interpretation makes Jesus’s story a cosmic story, a pattern for how God is active in history. He shows how Lee’s christology foreshadows those of feminist and liberation theologies that would come a century later. He notes how the puritan Jonathan Edwards extolled Jesus as the embodiment of true spiritual beauty. And he lifts up how for Hildegard of Bingen, actively working for the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed becomes a means of gaining knowledge about him as the Christ.

This is a book for theological novices as well as tenured academics. It will be useful for adult Christian education programs, for reading groups, and for individual study. For the theological novice it opens up a wealth of reflection upon Jesus. For the seasoned theologian it provides a handy reference book, and no matter how seasoned a theologian is, there will be someone in this book whose christology they haven’t studied before.

As Jensen introduces us to the christologies of these many Christians and non-Christians, he also provides insightful commentary and evaluation. For instance, he shows how the person of Jesus empowered some to resist patriarchy and violence. By including the christologies of some critics of religion and Christianity like Feuerbach, Jensen raises questions for the reader that prompt critical reflection

on one’s own understanding of Jesus. By incorporating christologies from around the globe, he shows how Jesus transcends cultural boundaries and, conversely, how different cultural backgrounds lead to different understandings of who Jesus is, what he saves from, and how.

To read this book is to be invited into a great conversation. One can simply listen in, or one can join in and position oneself in dialogue with it. Whatever your church, whatever your theological circles, this book will broaden your understanding of the breadth and depth of conversations about Jesus. While Jensen includes a vast array of voices, he never lapses into a relativism in which any view of Jesus is acceptable.

As he points out, the gospels and the New Testament have contours that any adequate understanding of Jesus must respect. Ideas have consequences, and their impacts must be assessed in light of who Jesus was and is and what he said and did.

Jensen ends with some thoughts on the future of christology. As he notes, today Jesus is the defender of all life, not only human life. Moreover, the story of Jesus Christ is a story of hope in the face of brutal violence and death. It ends with his resurrection, and the commissioning of his followers to spread and enact his message of love wherever they may be. This book should be in every seminary and every church library. It deserves to be widely read. v

Please support the publication of Insights by making a gift online: AustinSeminary.edu/donate or by returning your gift in the enclosed envelope.

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Christianity & Culture

Freedom and Accountability Machiavelli and Acton on Political Ethical Responsibility David W. Johnson

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re the leaders of states to be judged according to the same laws and ethical standards as its citizens? Are they to be judged by different laws and standards? What are those standards? Or are such leaders beyond judgment?

The idea that the ethical standards that apply to rulers differ from those who are ruled is ascribed to Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). His book The Prince is often described as the foundation of modern political philosophy, but its intent was practical: Machiavelli was writing about how leaders and potential leaders can gain and maintain power. The Prince is essentially a handbook for the politically ambitious.

Among its teachings are instructions on observing and discarding the canons of conventional morality.

The goal of the ruler, in Machiavelli’s view, is to remain in power. In order to do so, the ruler must preserve the political order. Actions must be judged according to whether or not they aid in preserving the state, whether or not the actions themselves are regarded as good or evil: “Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to

David Johnson is associate professor of Christian spirituality and

church history at Austin Seminary. Ordained in the PC(USA) he has served churches in Texas and New Jersey and taught on the faculty of Brite Divinity School. He is the author of Trust in God: The Christian Life and the Book of Confessions (Geneva Press, 2013).

37

Christianity & Culture necessity.”1 “Machiavelli writes that in order to maintain the state, princes are often forced “to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion.”2 However, rulers must preserve the appearance of acting virtuously to ensure the support of those who are governed, “that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious.”3

Such sentiments have led to the pejorative connotations of “machiavellian” as an adjective, and even to the (uncertain) suggestion that “Old Nick” as a nickname for Satan derives from Machiavelli’s first name. Many scholars have suggested that such a designation is not entirely fair.4 Machiavelli was not entirely without ethics, but his ethics were entirely instrumental: an action was to be judged in terms of the effect it would have on maintenance of state power. Machiavelli did not actually say that the end justifies the means, but he certainly thought so.

There is no denying the influence of The Prince since it was published in 1532, five years after Machiavelli’s death. It was widely read both as an exercise in political philosophy and as a guide for those in leadership positions—this despite its being placed on the Church’s Index of Prohibited books in 1559. Machiavelli clearly endorsed hypocrisy and duplicity, but many have argued that, whatever one may think of it, his overarching principle, that people in power must operate by different sets of rules than their followers, is simply the case.

The opposing viewpoint was articulated by John Emerich Edward DalbergActon (1834-1902), the historian universally known as Lord Acton. Acton argued that political leaders ought to be judged for their actions according to the same standards as their followers, and that according to those standards, most leaders in world history were morally deficient. Acton is well known for saying in a letter to a friend, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Acton concludes, “Great men are almost always bad men.” In his analysis, people such as Alexander the Great were simply mass murderers.

Acton studied the history of freedom. He determined to write the history of liberty from the time of the ancient world to the contemporary era, based on original sources. Acton’s history never materialized, but a substantial number of his reviews and essays on freedom have been published.5 Acton thought freedom was more than just the absence of restraint. Freedom for him was the ability to follow one’s conscience. In his essay, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” he wrote, “By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom, and opinion.”6 On the face of it, this definition might suggest moral anarchy, for consciences are notoriously variable. But Acton fought all his life against moral relativity. He held that there was an objectivity to ethical standards, first of all because they were given by God. He begins his account of the history of freedom with the Hebrew Bible, in which the moral code was not a human convention but was given by God.7

The primary tenet of that code, as Acton saw it, is the value of human life. Human life is invariably sacred, and therefore murder is objectively evil no matter the context. This gives the historian a standard of moral judgment that is applicable no matter the historical or social context.8 Political leaders are subject to moral judg38

Johnson ments, as Acton saw it, and cannot excuse themselves by claiming that the good of the state requires them to do evil. He wrote, “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases.”9 Juxtaposing Machiavelli and Acton reveals one of the fundamental tensions in civilized life. On the one hand, it is surely true that political leaders often must make choices that are different from those of ordinary citizens, including choices that might send those citizens to their deaths. On the other hand, it is equally true that political leaders can be held accountable for the choices they make, and there are mechanisms to do so, at least in some governments. The process of impeachment in the Constitution of the United States is one such mechanism. Even without such mechanisms, the exiles of Napoleon and the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders provide historical examples of those in power being held responsible for their misdeeds. When accountability is lost, political leadership threatens to become tyranny. But if the difficult choices are not made when the situation requires them, the very survival of the nation might be imperiled. It would be hard to prove Acton’s assertion that most great people are bad people, although history certainly reveals that any number of bad people have attained power. But history also reveals that people in leadership positions are often faced with finite choices, none of which are purely good or purely evil.

This forces a return to the question of the canons of moral judgment, and here the role of the church comes into play. The responsibility of the church to promote social righteousness and to exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world requires that it articulate ethical norms, not just to its members, but to its social and political context. In an increasingly pluralistic society, this can be difficult. The fact that the contemporary church is being torn asunder by issues that are fundamentally moral makes it even more difficult. But no society can survive ethical anarchy, so there must be some consensus as to what is true and good and just, and this consensus must apply to all. Christianity cannot impose such a consensus, but it certainly can exhibit what it might be, if it has the will to do so. As Acton wrote, “Therefore we must treat others as we wish to be treated by them and must persist until death in doing good to our enemies, regardless of unworthiness and ingratitude. For we must be at war with evil, but at peace with men.”10 These words sound like a paraphrase of the Golden Rule, but Acton attributes them to the ancient Stoics. This suggests a broader applicability than just a Christian teaching, although Christians certainly teach it—or they should. Doing good to the enemy is a part of what it means to respect all human life as supremely valuable. If Acton is right that power tends to corrupt, he might also be right in holding that the value of life as a guide to conduct tends to sanctify.

Acton is quite specific about what holding to this principle might mean. In accordance with his understanding of freedom as the ability to follow one’s conscience, he argues that social conditions such as enslavement, poverty, national and social prejudice, and lack of health care and education all inhibit such freedom, and 39

Christianity & Culture hence must be addressed in societies that intend to nourish liberty. He suggests that progress in liberty often comes from the protests of the disenfranchised and outcast. He wrote, “The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”11 A famous quote aptly attributed to Ghandi echoes Acton: “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” By that understanding, the most that one can say about any country, including our own, is that it is in the process of becoming free, and that becoming is hard, slow, contentious work—but truly worthwhile work nevertheless. v NOTES 1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, tr. Gianluca Ruffini (Amazon: Kindle Edition, 2018), p. 21.

2. P. 24.

3. Ibid.

4. See, for example, Maurizio Virali, Nicolo’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli, (New York NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001).

5. A number of collections of Acton’s work have been published. Perhaps the most comprehensive is the three-volume John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, (Carmel, IN: Liberty Fund Inc., 1988).

6. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” in The Collected Works of Lord Acton, ed. John Neville Figgis et al., (Amazon Kindle Edition, 1907), Kindle Location 26270.

7. “Thus the example of the Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development, and not of essential change; and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man.” Kindle Locations 26289-26291.

8. Cf. Perez Zagorin, “Lord Acton’s Ordeal: The Historian and Moral Judgment,” Virginia Quarterly Review 74 #1 (Winter 1998). https://www.vqronline.org/essay/lord-acton%E2%80%99sordeal-historian-and-moral-judgment, accessed July 28, 2020.

9. Acton, “Letter to Creighton, April 5, 1887,” in Collected Works, Kindle Locations 8966-8967.

10. Acton, “Freedom in Antiquity,” Kindle Locations 26612-26613.

11. Kindle Locations 26278-26279.

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