Race vs. Culture

Tags

culture, Politics, race

Race in politics has been a focal point in the U.S. for a long time; however, in the last several years it has become more important than at any point in my lifetime. So much that I have written on the subject before here.  Given the events in Charlottesville, VA and the reactions to these events, I must now speak again upon the topic of race.

As a preface to these thoughts, however, I want to meditate upon how Scripture describes God. St. Athanasius the Great defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit in a letter to his friend Serapion. He identifies what he called paradigmata, or paradigms that illustrate to us the nature of God. For example, he points out that the Father is equated to a fountain (Jer 2;13; Bar 3:12), the Son is called a river (Psalm 65:10) and we are told that we drink of the Holy Spirit (1Cor 12:13).

The pattern can be described this way: the Father is the source of the metaphor (fountain), the Son is the incarnation of the metaphor (running water) and the Holy Spirit is the means by which we participate in the metaphor (we drink).

Thus, if the Father is a poet (which shares the same etymology as the word “create” in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”) the the Son is the Word (John 1:1) and the Holy Spirit is the breath (wind) through which we hear and speak that poetry:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.—Acts 2:1-4)

Therefore, as Peter declares in 2 Peter 1:4, “through these [promises] you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature,” God’s desire is for us to participate in Him. Due to the fact that we are created according to the image and likeness of God, He also desires that we participate in each other as well: “I have given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:22). This is key to understanding race and culture in a world obsessed with both.

Culture is something that can be shared and participated in. For example, I can watch Korean movies and television, eat and cook Korean food, wear traditional Korean clothes, learn to speak the Korean language and learn how to behave in polite Korean society. Being Korean would make the learning curve on all these things shorter, but it is not necessary that I be Korean to participate in all these things.

Race, on the other hand, is not something I can participate in. I am not and will never be Korean by race.

Therefore, culture, as a concept, can help us see the image and likeness of God in other people. It allows us to step in other human being’s shoes and live like they do. It allows us to see a different perspective. It allows us to grow ever closer to God’s deepest desire that we be one like He is one.

In radical contrast, race prevents us from seeing the image and likeness of God in others. As a concept it really only has one purpose: to separate us and prevent us from talking to each other and therefore experiencing that which culture invites us to experience. In a practical sense, race is only useful to those interested in power. Race de-humanizes people so that they can be easily pitted against each other and used and abused to gain and maintain power.

In other words, if I am White, African-American, Latino, Asian, Native American or any other race, than I am merely a tool used by those interested in power to gain and maintain power. It is arguable that I am not even human.

If, however, my culture is European, American, African-American, Latin-American, Asian, Native American, etc. than I and other human beings can freely share our cultures with each other and therefore more easily see the image and likeness of God in our fellow human beings.

Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scyth′ian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all. — Colossians 3:11

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Meditating on Race and Ethnicity

Tags

anthropology, ethnicity, Politics, race

Given that the concept of race and ethnicity has become a focal point in the U.S., both culturally and politically, I thought it would be helpful to share some of my own thoughts and experiences as well as a Christian perspective on the subject. To that end, I would like to introduce two men to you.

The first is my father. Ethnically, he is Welsh, born of Welsh parents. Culturally, however, he is American. We have family from his maternal side that have been in this part of the world since the 17th century. We know this because his mother (my grandmother) was an amateur genealogist that had traced our family tree back to the 12th century. There was, however, one bit of controversy within the family, because there is evidence that suggests that some of my ancestors hail from Germany. Thus, I thought it was a good idea for our family to give my dad a genetic marker test from the National Geographic Society as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago. Shockingly, while there were no German markers in his profile, there were Greek ones. A lot of them. It turns out, my dad is half Greek.

The second is an NBA basketball player by the name of Γιάννης Αντετοκούνμπο (Giannis Antetokounmpo) who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks. He also plays for the Greek National Team because he was born in Athens, Greece. He lived his entire life there until his success in basketball took him out of the Sepolia neighborhood of the Greek capital. His parents are both from Nigeria.

I have a very serious question for all of those out there who think race and ethnicity are so important that they should be a large factor in our cultural and political experience: Which of these two men are Greek?

For all practical purposes there are only four ways to answer this question:

1. Both

If both men are Greek, then race, ethnicity and culture are all relative. Anyone can be Greek. Anyone with any affiliation genetically or culturally could claim to be Greek. For example, 17% of my genetic markers are Southwest Asian (as are all of those who have European ancestry). Asian cuisine, philosophy, cinema, television, technology, language, etc. are vital to who I am today. If both these men are Greek, by what criteria can I not be considered Asian? This renders race and ethnicity largely meaningless.

2. Neither

If neither men are Greek, then the two main criteria for understanding race and ethnicity — genetics and culture — are no longer legitimate means of determining race and ethnicity. Again, this renders race and ethnicity largely meaningless.

3. My dad

If my dad is Greek and Αντετοκούνμπο is not, then using culture as a means of determining ethnicity and race is bunk. Thus, black and latino culture are not attributes of race. Anyone can claim elements of these cultures as their own because racism based on culture isn’t a thing nor is cultural appropriation.

4. Αντετοκούνμπο

If Αντετοκούνμπο is Greek and my dad is not, then genetics do not determine race, only culture does. Thus, either there is no such thing as an African-American because culturally they are all American or anybody who lives in an African-American neighborhood, goes to a traditionally black college or black church, or anyone who adopts the language, clothing and music of the African-American culture is ethnically and racially black.

I hope this illustrates that any close examination of race and ethnicity reveals how fluid, subjective and fallible these concepts are. Indeed, I would argue that they are largely artificial. Due to environment and circumstances, different groups of people have developed different ways of explaining the world around them and using that which was given them. All of these people, however, are people and their experiences and ideas can be shared and used and adapted by anyone who finds them useful and/or inspiring.

I am confident of this view of humanity because it is beautifully expressed by St. Paul, not just once, but twice (meaning that this was something he was repeatedly preaching during his apostolic journeys):

Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scyth′ian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all. — Colossians 3:11

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:28

God made humanity according to His image and likeness. Christ took on humanity in nature, not as race or ethnicity but as a whole. He preached to women, men, Jew and Gentile alike. The first person He revealed Himself as the Christ to was a Samaritan woman.

Thus, Christ went to the Cross and died so that everyone can share in His eternal life, despite the various ways we like to separate and divide ourselves from each other. In other words, I am a human being, not a race or an ethnicity.

Simplicity

Tags

heresy, Oration 38, Politics, Science, St. Gregory the Theologian

While Section 7 of St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38 might seem like the most difficult to decipher of anything yet encountered in this homily on Christmas, it is something we ought to be paying attention to. St. Gregory is talking about the nature of God. Given that he is only one of three men in the entire history of the Orthodox Church to be given the title Theologian — one who knows God — what he has to say in Section 7 is extraordinarily important when it comes to understanding how the Orthodox Church approaches who God is.

There are two key elements to St. Gregory’s exploration of God’s nature in Section 7. Intriguingly, they say as much about ourselves as they do about God.

The first key is that “He is only sketched by the mind, and this in a very indistinct and mediocre way, not from things pertaining to himself but from things around him.” In other words, our minds cannot begin to grasp the nature of God. This flies in the face of modern man’s understanding of himself. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that, through our rational capacities, we can and should be able to understand and control everything around us. Our scientific world view, our dependence upon technology and our desire to save the world through various applications of science, technology and political theory speak to this self image.

In contrast, St. Gregory humbly declares that such an understanding of humanity is foolishness. Our rational powers cannot begin to comprehend the nature of God. Indeed, the only thing he is willing to concede that we truly know about God’s nature is that it is without limit. Thus, one cannot approach God with our modern self image. It severely limits not only who we are, but our ability to understand who God is.

God, the ungraspable, can only be grasped through a personal encounter. He draws us towards Himself so that we may catch glimpses of Him. It is through these encounters that He purifies us. It is through the personal relationship we have with God that we are able to learn how to become like God.

The second key comes from St. Gregory’s statement “Let us inquire further, for simplicity is clearly not the nature of this being.” St. Gregory lived at a time when the philosophy known as Neo-Platonism held a huge sway in the way people of the Roman Empire looked at the world. So much so that, at the very least, Christians had to frame their discussions about God in Neo-Platonic language. Some, however, let Neo-Platonism color and even determine their approach to an understanding of God.

Neo-Platonism holds that what is Good (aka Divine) is simple. The more complex something is, the further away from the Good it gets. Thus, for example, the flesh is further away from the Good than is the soul.

A mistake made by Christians throughout the ages is that we have a tendency to approach God with a philosophical presupposition. In other words, we have an idea of what we want God to be and then try to make God fit our idea of what we want. Since God is beyond the mind — a mediocre instrument for understanding God — approaching God in a philosophical way will necessarily lead to errors. Indeed, one can trace every heresy in the history of the Church to a philosophical presupposition.

At the time St. Gregory was preaching, the primary philosophical presupposition that was causing error and heresy was the Neo-Platonic concept of simplicity. Thus, he dismisses it by pointing out that not only is the mind too mediocre to begin to understand God, but that the concept of simplicity flies in the face of the Church’s experience of God. No philosophical concept can contain that personal relationship.

Thus, we cannot approach God with what we want Him to be. Rather, we must accept Him as He is. This is why God revealed His name to be “The One Who Is” (O ΩΝ, the Greek translation of God’s name revealed to Moses at the burning bush). He reminds us that no human concept can determine or contain the nature of God.

The Seat of Worldly Power

Tags

Jane Jacobs, Politics, Psalm 1, St. Hilary

St. Hilary continues to meditate upon the seat of pestilence:

But although they bring to the discharge of their duties a religious intention, as is shewn by their merciful and upright demeanour, still they cannot escape a certain contagious infection arising from the business in which their life is spent. For the conduct of civil cases does not suffer them to be true to the holy principles of the Church’s law, even though they wish it. And without abandoning their pious purpose they are compelled, against their will, by the necessary conditions of the seat they have won, to use, at one time invective, at another, insult, at another, punishment; and their very position makes them authors as well as victims of the necessity which constrains them, their system being as it were impregnated with the infection. Hence this title, the seat of pestilence, by which the Prophet describes their seat, because by its infection it poisons the very will of the religiously minded.

One of the more enlightening books that I was required to read in seminary was Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs. Written as a dialogue (which actually makes an otherwise very dry philosophical treatise very readable), she meditates upon the moral foundations of commerce and politics. Of interest here are a few of the moral foundations of politics:

• Take vengeance
• Deceive for the sake of the task
• Be exclusive

The first comes into play when crime is committed. A worldly sense of justice demands that some kind of vengeance or retribution be leveled against those who commit crime — even answering murder with murder (think about what America recently did to Osama Bin Laden).

The second refers to the necessary secrecy and deception involved in national defense. Federal politicians are required to lie about military operations in order to protect the lives of soldiers defending the nation. If a politician were completely honest about troop movements in times of war, for example, it could cost the lives of hundreds or thousands of soldiers and civilians. Indeed, that politician could properly be tried as a traitor.

The last refers to the need in national and civic defense to discriminate against entire segments of the population for the good of the many. It would not only endanger the life of a police officer, fire fighter or soldier if that person were physically disabled (even with something as simple as asthma), but it would endanger everyone around them in a life threatening situation where that disability comes into play.

In other words, the seat of Pilate — the seat of worldly power — requires that people who occupy that seat engage in activities and choices that by the standard of Christian morality are sinful. The seat of Pilate places people in situations where it is impossible not to sin — rather, they are forced to make decisions about the degree of sin that will cause the least amount of damage.

This is why, as St. Hilary points out, the Prophet calls this a seat of pestilence — it infects those who sit in it with sin. Or, as the familiar axiom goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Power

Tags

Politics, Psalm 1, St. Hilary

Having discussed both the counsel of ungodly and the way of the sinner, St. Hilary moves on to the seat of pestilence:

Now the third condition for gaining happiness is not to sit in the seat of pestilence. The Pharisees sat as teachers in Moses’ seat, and Pilate sat in the seat of judgment: of what seat then are we to consider the occupation pestilential? Not surely of that of Moses, for it is the occupants of the seat and not the occupation of it that the Lord condemns when He says: ‘The Scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; whatsoever they bid you do, that do; but do not ye after their work (Matt 23:2).’ The occupation of that seat is not pestilential, to which obedience is enjoined by the Lord’s own word. That then must be really pestilential, the infection of which Pilate sought to avoid by washing his hands. For many, even God-fearing men, are led astray by the canvassing for worldly honours; and desire to administer the law of the courts, though they are bound by those of the Church.

Scripture offers two examples of seats: that of Moses (whose occupants are the Pharisees) and that of Pontius Pilate. Note that those who occupy both seats are sinners. Christ famously calls the Pharisee hypocrites (Matthew 23:13), but the seat itself, as St. Hilary points out, Christ Himself says is not the source of the problem. If one occupied the seat sans hypocrisy, one would be blessed by that seat.

The seat of Pilate, however, is a seat of judgement — something reserved for God. In his arrogance, Pilate believes his seat has the power to wash away the sin that he commits when he hands Christ over to be crucified. The world is always offering us the glory of men by substituting seats of worldly power for things that rightly belong to God. We are led to believe that politicians have power over life and death, judgement and the forgiveness of sin. Pilate himself believes that he has Christ’s life in his hands — that he can forgive His “sin,” judge him innocent and thus save Christ’s life:

Don’t you know that I have power to crucify you, and have power to release you? (John 19:10)

In other words, Pilate, like Adam before him, grasped at power that properly belongs to God:

Jesus answered, ‘You could have no power at all against me, except it were given you from above'(John 19:11)

Anne Rice & Secular Myths about Christianity: Politics

Tags

Abortion, Anne Rice, Church and State, death penalty, Democrat, Philemon, Politics

I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

The above quote was posted by Anne Rice, author of the Vampire Chronicles, on her Facebook account. Continuing my series of posts in reaction to this quote, today I will write about Rice’s fourth complaint — that Christianity is anti-Democrat.

I am going to assume that since Rice capitalized the word “Democrat” that she is referring to the political party, as opposed to the form of government. In either case, Christianity has always had an intriguing relationship with civil power. On one hand, we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt 22:21). This can be seen in both the liturgical practice of praying for our civic leaders — even those Roman emperors who were actively persecuting the Church. In the Apostolic Constitutions, it implores Christians to “Be subject to all royal power and dominion;” however, it does qualify this statement with these very important words: “in things pleasing to God.” Thus, when faced with the prospect of sacrificing to the idol of the Emperor, early Christians were compelled to refuse, thus breaking the law and choosing, in most cases, to be tortured and killed as martyrs.

Thus, in a Christian world-view, politics always play second fiddle to Christ. Indeed, Christ Himself demonstrated this in the sixth chapter of John:

Jesus, as He realized they were about to come and take Him by force and make Him king, fled back to His hills alone. (John 6:15)

Christ did not come to play politics. Thus, as Christians we should always be wary of politics and political parties and ultimately be willing to rise above them in order to be what God wants us to be.

Case in point, let us examine some very unChristian aspects of each political party here in the United States:

• Republicans tend to defend the death penalty for violent criminals. As Christians, we need to understand that even these vile examples of humanity are still made in the image and likeness of God and that they should be afforded every opportunity to repent and turn back towards God. The death penalty denies them this chance.
• Democrats tend to defend abortion. As Christians we see even the unborn as fully human, unique and unrepeatable. To destroy them inside the womb is murder, dehumanizes the unborn and ultimately denies humanity to an entire segment of the human family.

Thus, both parties fail to uphold a Christian world-view. That isn’t to say that they do not have redeeming factors, but we are called to transcend politics and do what is right in the sight of God. When we place our loyalty to any political entity — whether it be a party, a nation or an ideology — above God, disaster follows. One need only look at the early 20th century in places like Germany, Russia and China to see the outcome of party above God. It cost the world millions of lives.

For an excellent example of a Christian transcending politics, see St. Paul’s letter to Philemon. He is obedient to the law of the land — he sends back the run away slave Onesimus to his master Philemon; however, he calls Philemon to welcome back his run away slave, not as a slave, but as a brother. Thus, Paul, while obeying the law moves beyond the law to something greater — a vision of the world where:

by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. (1Cor 12:13)

Indeed, according to tradition, Philemon does welcome back Onesimus as a brother. Not only is Onesimus freed, but is eventually ordained as a bishop.

Thus, Christianity is not anti-Democrat. Rather it is beyond Democrat (or Republican).