Wayne Northey
Saint Paul University, Conflict Studies, first scholar-in-residence (2007) in Conflict Studies Department, 2007
Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find much more about that on his expanded personal website - a work in progress: waynenorthey.com
Phone: (604)796-0400
Address: 2360 Lougheed Highway
Agassiz British Columbia
CANADA
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Phone: (604)796-0400
Address: 2360 Lougheed Highway
Agassiz British Columbia
CANADA
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Videos by Wayne Northey
https://youtu.be/mZVQfE5e2VE.
More on the video and the Conference here:
https://waynenorthey.com/2020/08/02/rjworld-econference-august-22-31-2020/?theme_preview=true&iframe=true&frame-nonce=e514b818b3
More on the video and the Conference here:
https://waynenorthey.com/2020/08/13/rjworld-econference-august-22-31-2020-robbie-robidoux-wayne-northey/
This long presentation picks up where the Keynote presentation leaves off. It explores in particular penal/prison abolitionism. Given the recent worldwide calls to defund police, prisons, and the military, this is perhaps a crucial kairos moment to revisit prison/penal abolitionism.
As I explained in my Keynote address: “Crucial”—from the Latin, crux, for cross—that connects to the moral eruption of the first-century trajectory set ever since towards human freedom, liberty, and equality by the arrival of Christianity. There were ethically radical shock-waves directed at subversion of all power structures bereft of human caring in light of the Cross: at once foolishness and stumbling-block ever since Christ’s death.
Conference and paper link:
https://waynenorthey.com/2022/04/22/announcing-rj-world-econference-2022/
This idea of living justice will be reprised throughout.
For better or for worse, the Western legal tradition has impacted—indeed dominated—Criminal Justice Systems around the globe. There is of course one tragic obvious reason: European global Empire-building and colonization.
What initially drew me to Restorative Justice in 1977, when I became second Director of the first Restorative Justice initiative in Canada—that was eventually imitated repeatedly worldwide—its initial allurement, was its peacemaking ethic. That has perdured ever since.
Conference and paper link:
https://waynenorthey.com/2022/04/22/announcing-rj-world-econference-2022/
Papers by Wayne Northey
Unbeknownst initially, I suddenly realized and was a little taken aback, that theologian Paul Nuechterlein, 4 whom I cited a few times early on in the talk, was in the audience.
I write thus of what the author says in Chapter 5, entitled, “You Must Not Be Yourself: Guarding the evangelical family secret”:
We learn of the family secret, namely that all the exalted claims about
God just don’t quite add up. Frank expresses it bluntly this way, on
behalf of many a wounded evangelical soul:
All this talk about a loving heavenly Father is bullshit. He doesn’t love
me, and I don’t love him. I’m tired of trying to love a distant, unfeeling
bastard. I want a break from the lies this family tells. I want a break
from this family. (p. 159)
I cite in the review a New Testament scholar, thus:
Theologian Walter Wink says, in a similar context:
Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure
religion (Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in
a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, p. 149; https://www.amazon.ca/Engaging-Powers-Discernment-Resistance-Domination-ebook/dp/B001DIWHKE/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EFZHN6199Q1A&keywords=Engaging+the+Powers%3A+Discernment+and+Resistance+in+a+World+of+Domination&qid=1692820753&s=digital-text&sprefix=engaging+the+powers+discernment+and+resistance+in+a+world+of+domination%2Cdigital-text%2C321&sr=1-1).
The review's opening paragraph is thus:
In the Introduction, author Doug Frank describes a billboard, erected
doubtless by an "evangelical" Christian, that reads, "TRUST JESUS!"
Frank imagines another a mile further down the road, that reads, "OR
ELSE!" These capture something quintessential about evangelical belief
and tone, the author, an evangelical Christian himself, claims. This is
reminiscent of The Four Spiritual Laws, distributed in the billions by
evangelical Christians. Its opening line goes, "God loves you and has a
wonderful plan for your life." Yet as Hans in my novel Chrysalis Crucible
(2015) rejoins: "But if you don't buy in, God hates you and has a terrible
plan for your afterlife." (p. 401)
There is a person of my acquaintance who used to love this song: He is Risen!-Keith Green-Easter Song i-once by his account pulling over on the road to deal with overwhelming joy in response to its sheer power, an exuberance that touched him emotionally to the core. There came the day however, sadly long since, that it was all rejected, and his "Jesus" became so completely watered down that it is impossible to conjure up an understanding of why such was viciously rejected and crucified-if one holds to his (un)belief.
As to then rising again, Dead men simply do not rise, his "scientific" mind asserts dogmatically like the best (or worst) of any religious fundamentalist I have known. At least as hard or more so to imagine is why a whole rabble of Jesus followers joyfully joined the ranks of martyrdom in allegiance to that belief-then or since (a rather gargantuan throng of such in fact).
So is it the case, as my acquaintance now claims rather dogmatically, that the Gospels are barely "historical," that it is simply known that scientifically, the resurrection is at best mere fairy-story, at worst a belief to be jettisoned if one time held, or rejected if considered? (I have concluded that there is no more rigid fundamentalist than one who comes to reject what once was held near and dear: in whatever field of inquiry/activity). There is a problem with my acquaintance's fundamentalist pontifications: he is in no way qualified to make such sweeping denials-at least not as an historian, not as a scientist, not as a theologian. He is none of them. But it's ok with me. I bear him no ill-will for his unbelief. He's welcome to his opinions. And they can always change. I do however demur when his (un)beliefs are pronounced as, for all intents, incontestable truths. As though if one only had intellectual/academic/moral integrity one would just know his new fundamentalism with contrary content is the only show in town. . .
I do not mind that he rails against/mocks Christian fundamentalists; that a Bishop Spong is/was his particular cup of tea. (Spong who in the books by him I read repeatedly showed himself to be one of the greatest fundamentalists of them all!) I just wish he'd dial down the unbelief dogmatism (a variation of "religion-poisoning-everything" à la Christopher Hitchens mantra). Sigh.
Jesus throughout history has transfixed lives, making it for starters a challenge to those who deny the Gospel's transformative power once it gets a hold of one's life. An illustration of myriad/which is this book published in 2012: Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and other Christians in Disguise. ii Of it we read: It may seem a surprising claim, but some of the most brilliant and original critics of modernity have been shaped by Christianity. In Subversive Orthodoxy, Robert Inchausti maps out a tradition of twentieth-century thinkers-including philosophers, activists, and novelists-whose "unique contributions to secular thought derive from their Christian worldviews." Inchausti revisits the lives and work of a stunning array of well-known Christian thinkers as well as figures not often thought of as Christian. From Walker Percy to Dorothy Day, Jacques Ellul to Marshall McLuhan, Inchausti offers a fascinating who's who of what he calls the "orthodox avant-garde." Subversive Orthodoxy will be an informative and encouraging read for pastors, laypeople, and students concerned about the Christian response to secular ideologies.
In 1974 two youths who had been drinking and had been "talked to" by the police already, took out their frustrations on the small community of Elmira, Ontario, by doing damage to twenty-two different vehicles and homes. Several months later the youths pleaded guilty to the charges, and Judge Gordon McConnell in Kitchener ordered a Pre-Sentence Report. Mark Yantzi, the Mennonite Probation Officer writing up the report, discussed the case with the local Mennonite Central Committee court volunteer, Dave Worth. Both had been reading recent publications by the Law Reform Commission of Canada in which it had been stated that reconciliation played an important role in criminal justice. They also knew that reconciliation was the central concept of their Christian faith.
This brief paper discusses Christian understandings of the origins of Restorative Justice as corrective to such understandings that over the centuries highlighted and ran harsh retributive justice systems in the West; in turn exported to the whole world.
(There is so much more on my website here: https://waynenorthey.com/justice/.
Three books have also been published of a projected five, in a series called Justice That Transforms. All essays in them are uploaded onto this site. To order any of the books, please learn more on this page: https://waynenorthey.com/justice/justice-that-transforms/.)
More than any religious spirituality, including Christian, violence is the cultural air we breath. This century has seen more people slaughtered than all previous centuries combined—107 millions in wars and regional conflicts by the mid-90’s. And Christians have led, blessed, and participated in the vast majority of this killing, and continue to do so into the third millennium.
Yet this massive slaughter has been carried on in a world ostensibly dominantly under the sway of Christian spirituality. Is it therefore to be concluded that a Christian worldview and praxis lead ineluctably to an ultimate bloodthirsty spirituality, and therefore the sooner eradicated from the human cultural landscape, the better? Or is there “something rotten in the state of Denmark?”—in the worldwide expression of Christianity that at times is profoundly aberrant from the way and teachings of its Founder? That is the thesis of brilliant 19th-century Danish theologian and social theorist Søren Kierkegaard, founder of existentialism. He wrote:
My position is that the whole prevailing official proclamation of Christianity is a conspiracy against the Bible—we suppress what does not suit us (quoted in Bellinger, The Geneaology of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil, New York: Oxford University Press., 2001, p. 98).
This question is pursued in light of Christianity's saturation and formation of Western culture.
It is interesting that the photo chosen for the article highlighted in my website post 1 (not shown above) is along the lines of what Larry Dixon wrote (The Other Side of the Good News: Contemporary Challenges to Jesus' teaching on hell 2) in apparent approval of an instance of "horrific violence" by the U.S. Empire in the first Gulf War:
A brave journalist who was in Baghdad when the bombs landed, cried out in his television report, 'I have been in hell.' As horrible as war is we would have to say to him, 'No, you haven't. If we understand Jesus correctly, war is only a small foreshadowing of that final condition of the forsaken (p. 14, emphasis in original).'
Besides the sanctimonious piety in these kinds of warnings, the tragic flaw in Dixon's book begins with the title. For there is no other side to the Good News, or it simply ceases to be such... Or as 19th-century American newspaper columnist, Matt Miller, wrote in an ironic riff on Evangelicals' all-time favourite verse, John 3:16 (I love the verse too!):
For God so loved the world that he temporarily died to save it from himself. But none of that really matters because most people will be tortured for eternity anyways.
Why not the Gospel Message that Jesus was totally nonviolent, and we’re called to be nonviolent too?
It is not so much an argument for Pacifism as making space for a challenge to its alternative, in one’s commitment to taking Jesus seriously. It does not address the minefield of thorny practical issues of living “in, but not of the world,” which two millennia plus of Church history have brought to bold relief on this matter. Then again, neither does Jesus.
Abstract theology holds for me little appeal. So along the way, beginning with my friend, I interact with embodied expressions of Pacifism’s alternative.
Simply stated: in Jesus, if not Pacifism, why not?
In an interview with Religion & Politics, the author discusses how she came to its writing: Yes! Since about 2010, I had been giving talks on evangelicalism and masculinity and had been approached by publishers, but there were two things at that point that made me a little hesitant to dive into a book project.
For one, the things that I was uncovering were very depressing. I wasn't sure that I wanted to live with that for the years that I knew it would take to write a book. For another, I wasn't sure at first how mainstream it all was. As a Christian myself, I wanted to be careful about shining a bright light on this dark underbelly of American Christianity if it was merely a fringe phenomenon..
However, just before the [2016] election, things clicked for me. The Access Hollywood tape came out, white evangelical elites continued to defend Trump, his support among white evangelical voters remained strong, and I thought, "Ugh, I think I know what's going to happen and I think I know why."
That's when I pulled some of that old research and wrote [a paper] "Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity." And then the book was published in 2020. Following is a webinar on this book with Kristin Du Mez done by Calvin University where she has taught since 2004. A link to a wide array of her talks on this overall topic/her book may be found here.
Much additional related material is introduced before the actual Review. There are multiple links.
https://youtu.be/mZVQfE5e2VE.
More on the video and the Conference here:
https://waynenorthey.com/2020/08/02/rjworld-econference-august-22-31-2020/?theme_preview=true&iframe=true&frame-nonce=e514b818b3
More on the video and the Conference here:
https://waynenorthey.com/2020/08/13/rjworld-econference-august-22-31-2020-robbie-robidoux-wayne-northey/
This long presentation picks up where the Keynote presentation leaves off. It explores in particular penal/prison abolitionism. Given the recent worldwide calls to defund police, prisons, and the military, this is perhaps a crucial kairos moment to revisit prison/penal abolitionism.
As I explained in my Keynote address: “Crucial”—from the Latin, crux, for cross—that connects to the moral eruption of the first-century trajectory set ever since towards human freedom, liberty, and equality by the arrival of Christianity. There were ethically radical shock-waves directed at subversion of all power structures bereft of human caring in light of the Cross: at once foolishness and stumbling-block ever since Christ’s death.
Conference and paper link:
https://waynenorthey.com/2022/04/22/announcing-rj-world-econference-2022/
This idea of living justice will be reprised throughout.
For better or for worse, the Western legal tradition has impacted—indeed dominated—Criminal Justice Systems around the globe. There is of course one tragic obvious reason: European global Empire-building and colonization.
What initially drew me to Restorative Justice in 1977, when I became second Director of the first Restorative Justice initiative in Canada—that was eventually imitated repeatedly worldwide—its initial allurement, was its peacemaking ethic. That has perdured ever since.
Conference and paper link:
https://waynenorthey.com/2022/04/22/announcing-rj-world-econference-2022/
Unbeknownst initially, I suddenly realized and was a little taken aback, that theologian Paul Nuechterlein, 4 whom I cited a few times early on in the talk, was in the audience.
I write thus of what the author says in Chapter 5, entitled, “You Must Not Be Yourself: Guarding the evangelical family secret”:
We learn of the family secret, namely that all the exalted claims about
God just don’t quite add up. Frank expresses it bluntly this way, on
behalf of many a wounded evangelical soul:
All this talk about a loving heavenly Father is bullshit. He doesn’t love
me, and I don’t love him. I’m tired of trying to love a distant, unfeeling
bastard. I want a break from the lies this family tells. I want a break
from this family. (p. 159)
I cite in the review a New Testament scholar, thus:
Theologian Walter Wink says, in a similar context:
Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure
religion (Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in
a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, p. 149; https://www.amazon.ca/Engaging-Powers-Discernment-Resistance-Domination-ebook/dp/B001DIWHKE/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EFZHN6199Q1A&keywords=Engaging+the+Powers%3A+Discernment+and+Resistance+in+a+World+of+Domination&qid=1692820753&s=digital-text&sprefix=engaging+the+powers+discernment+and+resistance+in+a+world+of+domination%2Cdigital-text%2C321&sr=1-1).
The review's opening paragraph is thus:
In the Introduction, author Doug Frank describes a billboard, erected
doubtless by an "evangelical" Christian, that reads, "TRUST JESUS!"
Frank imagines another a mile further down the road, that reads, "OR
ELSE!" These capture something quintessential about evangelical belief
and tone, the author, an evangelical Christian himself, claims. This is
reminiscent of The Four Spiritual Laws, distributed in the billions by
evangelical Christians. Its opening line goes, "God loves you and has a
wonderful plan for your life." Yet as Hans in my novel Chrysalis Crucible
(2015) rejoins: "But if you don't buy in, God hates you and has a terrible
plan for your afterlife." (p. 401)
There is a person of my acquaintance who used to love this song: He is Risen!-Keith Green-Easter Song i-once by his account pulling over on the road to deal with overwhelming joy in response to its sheer power, an exuberance that touched him emotionally to the core. There came the day however, sadly long since, that it was all rejected, and his "Jesus" became so completely watered down that it is impossible to conjure up an understanding of why such was viciously rejected and crucified-if one holds to his (un)belief.
As to then rising again, Dead men simply do not rise, his "scientific" mind asserts dogmatically like the best (or worst) of any religious fundamentalist I have known. At least as hard or more so to imagine is why a whole rabble of Jesus followers joyfully joined the ranks of martyrdom in allegiance to that belief-then or since (a rather gargantuan throng of such in fact).
So is it the case, as my acquaintance now claims rather dogmatically, that the Gospels are barely "historical," that it is simply known that scientifically, the resurrection is at best mere fairy-story, at worst a belief to be jettisoned if one time held, or rejected if considered? (I have concluded that there is no more rigid fundamentalist than one who comes to reject what once was held near and dear: in whatever field of inquiry/activity). There is a problem with my acquaintance's fundamentalist pontifications: he is in no way qualified to make such sweeping denials-at least not as an historian, not as a scientist, not as a theologian. He is none of them. But it's ok with me. I bear him no ill-will for his unbelief. He's welcome to his opinions. And they can always change. I do however demur when his (un)beliefs are pronounced as, for all intents, incontestable truths. As though if one only had intellectual/academic/moral integrity one would just know his new fundamentalism with contrary content is the only show in town. . .
I do not mind that he rails against/mocks Christian fundamentalists; that a Bishop Spong is/was his particular cup of tea. (Spong who in the books by him I read repeatedly showed himself to be one of the greatest fundamentalists of them all!) I just wish he'd dial down the unbelief dogmatism (a variation of "religion-poisoning-everything" à la Christopher Hitchens mantra). Sigh.
Jesus throughout history has transfixed lives, making it for starters a challenge to those who deny the Gospel's transformative power once it gets a hold of one's life. An illustration of myriad/which is this book published in 2012: Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and other Christians in Disguise. ii Of it we read: It may seem a surprising claim, but some of the most brilliant and original critics of modernity have been shaped by Christianity. In Subversive Orthodoxy, Robert Inchausti maps out a tradition of twentieth-century thinkers-including philosophers, activists, and novelists-whose "unique contributions to secular thought derive from their Christian worldviews." Inchausti revisits the lives and work of a stunning array of well-known Christian thinkers as well as figures not often thought of as Christian. From Walker Percy to Dorothy Day, Jacques Ellul to Marshall McLuhan, Inchausti offers a fascinating who's who of what he calls the "orthodox avant-garde." Subversive Orthodoxy will be an informative and encouraging read for pastors, laypeople, and students concerned about the Christian response to secular ideologies.
In 1974 two youths who had been drinking and had been "talked to" by the police already, took out their frustrations on the small community of Elmira, Ontario, by doing damage to twenty-two different vehicles and homes. Several months later the youths pleaded guilty to the charges, and Judge Gordon McConnell in Kitchener ordered a Pre-Sentence Report. Mark Yantzi, the Mennonite Probation Officer writing up the report, discussed the case with the local Mennonite Central Committee court volunteer, Dave Worth. Both had been reading recent publications by the Law Reform Commission of Canada in which it had been stated that reconciliation played an important role in criminal justice. They also knew that reconciliation was the central concept of their Christian faith.
This brief paper discusses Christian understandings of the origins of Restorative Justice as corrective to such understandings that over the centuries highlighted and ran harsh retributive justice systems in the West; in turn exported to the whole world.
(There is so much more on my website here: https://waynenorthey.com/justice/.
Three books have also been published of a projected five, in a series called Justice That Transforms. All essays in them are uploaded onto this site. To order any of the books, please learn more on this page: https://waynenorthey.com/justice/justice-that-transforms/.)
More than any religious spirituality, including Christian, violence is the cultural air we breath. This century has seen more people slaughtered than all previous centuries combined—107 millions in wars and regional conflicts by the mid-90’s. And Christians have led, blessed, and participated in the vast majority of this killing, and continue to do so into the third millennium.
Yet this massive slaughter has been carried on in a world ostensibly dominantly under the sway of Christian spirituality. Is it therefore to be concluded that a Christian worldview and praxis lead ineluctably to an ultimate bloodthirsty spirituality, and therefore the sooner eradicated from the human cultural landscape, the better? Or is there “something rotten in the state of Denmark?”—in the worldwide expression of Christianity that at times is profoundly aberrant from the way and teachings of its Founder? That is the thesis of brilliant 19th-century Danish theologian and social theorist Søren Kierkegaard, founder of existentialism. He wrote:
My position is that the whole prevailing official proclamation of Christianity is a conspiracy against the Bible—we suppress what does not suit us (quoted in Bellinger, The Geneaology of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil, New York: Oxford University Press., 2001, p. 98).
This question is pursued in light of Christianity's saturation and formation of Western culture.
It is interesting that the photo chosen for the article highlighted in my website post 1 (not shown above) is along the lines of what Larry Dixon wrote (The Other Side of the Good News: Contemporary Challenges to Jesus' teaching on hell 2) in apparent approval of an instance of "horrific violence" by the U.S. Empire in the first Gulf War:
A brave journalist who was in Baghdad when the bombs landed, cried out in his television report, 'I have been in hell.' As horrible as war is we would have to say to him, 'No, you haven't. If we understand Jesus correctly, war is only a small foreshadowing of that final condition of the forsaken (p. 14, emphasis in original).'
Besides the sanctimonious piety in these kinds of warnings, the tragic flaw in Dixon's book begins with the title. For there is no other side to the Good News, or it simply ceases to be such... Or as 19th-century American newspaper columnist, Matt Miller, wrote in an ironic riff on Evangelicals' all-time favourite verse, John 3:16 (I love the verse too!):
For God so loved the world that he temporarily died to save it from himself. But none of that really matters because most people will be tortured for eternity anyways.
Why not the Gospel Message that Jesus was totally nonviolent, and we’re called to be nonviolent too?
It is not so much an argument for Pacifism as making space for a challenge to its alternative, in one’s commitment to taking Jesus seriously. It does not address the minefield of thorny practical issues of living “in, but not of the world,” which two millennia plus of Church history have brought to bold relief on this matter. Then again, neither does Jesus.
Abstract theology holds for me little appeal. So along the way, beginning with my friend, I interact with embodied expressions of Pacifism’s alternative.
Simply stated: in Jesus, if not Pacifism, why not?
In an interview with Religion & Politics, the author discusses how she came to its writing: Yes! Since about 2010, I had been giving talks on evangelicalism and masculinity and had been approached by publishers, but there were two things at that point that made me a little hesitant to dive into a book project.
For one, the things that I was uncovering were very depressing. I wasn't sure that I wanted to live with that for the years that I knew it would take to write a book. For another, I wasn't sure at first how mainstream it all was. As a Christian myself, I wanted to be careful about shining a bright light on this dark underbelly of American Christianity if it was merely a fringe phenomenon..
However, just before the [2016] election, things clicked for me. The Access Hollywood tape came out, white evangelical elites continued to defend Trump, his support among white evangelical voters remained strong, and I thought, "Ugh, I think I know what's going to happen and I think I know why."
That's when I pulled some of that old research and wrote [a paper] "Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity." And then the book was published in 2020. Following is a webinar on this book with Kristin Du Mez done by Calvin University where she has taught since 2004. A link to a wide array of her talks on this overall topic/her book may be found here.
Much additional related material is introduced before the actual Review. There are multiple links.
This overwhelming tragedy today points to an overwhelming travesty committed a century ago against thousands who had peopled the Sumas Lake area: a Lake that was drained under the noses of--in stark terms, stolen from--the Sumas First Nation.
The current horrific events cast an eerie spotlight on a century-old gargantuan injustice committed by White Settlers. There is no gentle way to state it. Calling it an injustice, a blandly inadequate term, or property theft according to the Criminal Code of Canada, are the only legitimate labels for such an incalculably grotesque high crime.
The paper that follows discusses the reality of that tragedy, and points to the need to right such a tragic wrong.
When once the Apostle Paul had posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community, extreme intolerance, part of Christendom towards those who remained outside it became the inevitable consequence (Civilization and its Discontents). This brief paper calls for an alternative understanding as in the above title:
"Man Is Ubuntu To Man" - as in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's definition of ubuntu: "A person is a person through other persons". In turn, this is ultimately exemplified in the Trinity. Paper also a chapter in my "Justice That Transforms: Volume One".
Yes! Since about 2010, I had been giving talks on evangelicalism and masculinity and had been approached by publishers, but there were two things at that point that made me a little hesitant to dive into a book project.
For one, the things that I was uncovering were very depressing. I wasn't sure that I wanted to live with that for the years that I knew it would take to write a book.
For another, I wasn't sure at first how mainstream it all was. As a Christian myself, I wanted to be careful about shining a bright light on this dark underbelly of American Christianity if it was merely a fringe phenomenon
...
However, just before the [2016] election, things clicked for me. The Access Hollywood tape came out, white evangelical elites continued to defend Trump, his support among white evangelical voters remained strong, and I thought, "Ugh, I think I know what's going to happen and I think I know why."
That's when I pulled some of that old research and wrote [a paper] "Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity." And then the book was published in 2020. Following is a webinar on this book with Kristin Du Mez done by Calvin University where she has taught since 2004. A link to a wide array of her talks on this overall topic/her book may be found here.
There is much before my review, including several related links and videos.
Yes! Since about 2010, I had been giving talks on evangelicalism and masculinity and had been approached by publishers, but there were two things at that point that made me a little hesitant to dive into a book project. For one, the things that I was uncovering were very depressing.
I wasn't sure that I wanted to live with that for the years that I knew it would take to write a book. For another, I wasn't sure at first how mainstream it all was. As a Christian myself, I wanted to be careful about shining a bright light on this dark underbelly of American Christianity if it was merely a fringe phenomenon...
However, just before the [2016] election, things clicked for me. The Access Hollywood tape came out, white evangelical elites continued to defend Trump, his support among white evangelical voters remained strong, and I thought, "Ugh, I think I know what's going to happen and I think I know why."
That's when I pulled some of that old research and wrote [a paper] "Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity."
And then the book was published in 2020. Following is a webinar on this book with Kristin Kobes Du Mez done by Calvin University where she has taught since 2004. A link to a wide array of her talks on this overall topic/her book may be found here.
In an interview with Religion & Politics, the author discusses how she came to its writing: Yes! Since about 2010, I had been giving talks on evangelicalism and masculinity and had been approached by publishers, but there were two things at that point that made me a little hesitant to dive into a book project.
For one, the things that I was uncovering were very depressing. I wasn't sure that I wanted to live with that for the years that I knew it would take to write a book.
For another, I wasn't sure at first how mainstream it all was. As a Christian myself, I wanted to be careful about shining a bright light on this dark underbelly of American Christianity if it was merely a fringe phenomenon
. . .
However, just before the [2016] election, things clicked for me. The Access Hollywood tape came out, white evangelical elites continued to defend Trump, his support among white evangelical voters remained strong, and I thought, "Ugh, I think I know what's going to happen and I think I know why."
That's when I pulled some of that old research and wrote [a paper] "Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity." And then the book was published in 2020.
Following is a webinar on this book with Kristin Du Mez done by Calvin University where she has taught since 2004. A link to a wide array of her talks on this overall topic/her book may be found here.
There is also much related material available. There are multiple links, and several Footnotes.
In Volume Two of this series, the chapter, “The Cross: God’s Peace Work”, that appeared in Stricken By God? (2007), also interacts with the book under review.
What the author argues is an understanding of atonement he dubs “narrative Christus Victor”. He readily admits its contextual particularity, saying:
It cannot be claimed that narrative Christus Victor is the ultimate atonement image and that our problem of how best to articulate the saving work of Christ has now been definitively solved for the remainder of life on earth (p. 228).
He writes at the outset:
The working assumption in development of this model is that the rejection of violence, whether the direct violence of the sword or the systemic violence of racism or sexism, should be visible in expressions of Christology and atonement…. Thus proposing narrative Christus Victor as a non-violent atonement motif also poses a fundamental challenge to and ultimately a rejection of satisfaction atonement (p. 7).
The burden of the book is to present an affirmative answer.
And his kind of Christianity in turn has made Trump into an Evangelical darling. Wherein the connection?: both darlings pander to reductionist simplicities in addressing societal ills. What’s wrong with America is solved (Trump) by making it (religious right wing) white again; (Colson) by making America Christian again . If it was however even hinted at that America’s first step in embracing Christian conversion is divestment from worldwide hegemony and corporate malfeasance, Colson would have (he died in 2012), and the vast majority of American white Evangelicals today would, rise/risen up in uncomprehending shock and horror… Or they at least would needs slink away sorrowfully like the Rich Young Ruler. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s interaction with the story highlighted, we read:
The difference between ourselves and the rich young man is that he was not allowed to solace his regrets by saying: “Never mind what Jesus says, I can still hold on to my riches, but in a spirit of inner detachment. Despite my inadequacy I can take comfort in the thought that God has forgiven me my sins and can have fellowship with Christ in faith.” But no, he went away sorrowful. Because he would not obey, he could not believe. In this the young man was quite honest. He went away from Jesus and indeed this honesty had more promise than any apparent communion with Jesus based on disobedience (emphasis added).[11]
My website explores this kind of counter to dominant white Evangelical America sucked in by Trump, so contrary to Colson. It is dedicated to the Gospel as Counter-Narrative to Empire.
Sadly, Colson’s career as Nixon’s “Hatchet Man” was far more successful (until it came crashing to an end!) than his skill as theologian or cultural commentator.
This is the opening shot of a provocative book calling for the abolition of the prison. The author documents in Chapter IV the tragedy of the centuries-long history of Christendom’s use and bolstering of the prison system. Of that he says simply:
But prison abolitionists have always been a small minority. In the mainstream of Christendom, church and state have been and remain prison collaborators (p. 175).
To that he says by way of understatement:
‘Correctional’ management may be perfectly comfortable with the teachings of the contemporary church. But it is likely that the teachings of Jesus would wreak havoc (p. 176).
This book includes more information on the history of thinking about capital punishment than is available in any other English work.
This book examines the relationship between the theologies of atonement and penal strategies....
is the description from the inside cover. Its theme is...
[t]he question of the impact of religious sensibilities, or the structure of affect surrounding the crucifixion, on penal practice, and the correlative effects of the development of criminal law on the understandings of the atonement...
Publication of such a book is highly significant to Western readers and all cultures impacted by the West, given the dominance of Christian ideology upon criminal justice practice for a millennium. “...Christian theology constituted the most potent form of ideology in Western society for at least a thousand years, up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its ideological importance is by no means dead (p. 7).
Marshall says late in the book:
Only someone woefully ignorant of history could possibly view such moral sensibilities [as “care for the wretched of the earth”] as the accidental product of nature; rather they are the fruit of the Christian revolution in history
Wilma has been for me constant reminder that, on the receiving end of violent crime is the victim, is the community: both profoundly grieving, needy, bewildered, fearful. We Restorative Justice advocates — of whom she is one! — must bear that constantly in mind.
Her contributions to the victim community in serious and violent crime, and to Restorative Justice, have been immense and immeasurable.
In particular, the last book, Engaging the Powers, aligns with and extends Ellul's and Eller's theses. Inarguable is the thesis that the Judeo-Christian Tradition points to Jesus' primacy over the Powers. In Christian Church history, perhaps the greatest betrayal of Jesus is its being in bed with the Powers. The great historic Church Traditions-Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism-are all variously tainted by-at times awash in-this infidelity, as is much of Protestantism. (For one example only: the King/Queen of England is still head of the Anglican Church.. . Titular today, but historically, despots.
The Christian Reformed (Calvinist) volunteer came to my office to inform me how upset he had been by the review you’re about to read. The Bible teaches the Death Penalty, he vigorously (dogmatically!) affirmed. And he was there to prove it to me!
After listening to him for quite a while, and a little response here and there, he then switched to a more conciliatory tone. He had, so I learned, become a prison volunteer with one stated proviso to our Volunteer Co-ordinator and friend, Jim Wilson: he refused to visit someone in prison for murder: they deserved the death sentence — though such was in Canada abolished in 1987. . . But — and then came the punchline — he ended up agreeing to visit a murderer after all, since such was the only available “match” at the time. But more: he was then actually happily matched to a second such!
In our true humanity, if we are so attuned, when we are told not to shoot until we see the “whites of their eyes,” then we will never shoot, for up that close, we see in those eyes reflected back their — and our true humanity. . .
Such is ever the way of Christ.
His book, published by then, Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century, was for me an outstanding read: combining erudition and passion with great historiographical and sociological acumen: on top of which, it was a rousing prophetic tract — and a great service for the Church.
At least, a service for those trying to have eyes and ears to see/hear.
As my friend Ron Dart says, though, the “Evangelical Sanhedrin” was sadly unkind to him. . . Ron and I had planned visiting him a few years ago, but that unfortunately fell through.
The book reviewed in this chapter is once again outstanding — for those with those right kinds of eyes and ears.
Advocates of Restorative Justice seek to reclaim the nonviolence of Jesus. Their cry echoes the refrain of a wonderful Negro spiritual:
Ain’t gonna study war no more!
Restorative justice offers an alternative to war — including war on crime. Its goal is to see offenders like Bobby Oatway return peacefully to their communities and become productive citizens. It embraces, rather than excludes, the victim, offender, and impacted community. It’s a peacemaking, rather than war-making, response to crime.
According to Henk Smidstra, chaplain at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women in B.C.:
. . . Restorative Justice can be regarded as a cluster of values, beliefs, and attitudes that determine how the viewer defines the situation and determines its solution. . . Call it the lens of the heart and mind that can see conflict as either bad, or as an opportunity to grow and heal; as an event that breaks the law, or as an event that has harmed people.
[Restorative justice] puts emphasis on restoration, and on healing the harm of all those affected by conflict or crime. In fact, offenders and victims all become collaborators in looking for solutions that will creatively address the obligations created by the hurtful incident. . . Restorative justice focuses on relationships, not on controlling or punishing others, but empowering others to flourish and be active participants in restoring and maintaining community well-being.
It is heartening that it is still in the current (2024) online Encyclopedia.
I was further introduced by him to more writings of the Church Fathers and Mothers; to an array of other theological writings throughout the centuries; to an understanding that the Reformation in fact sewed the “DNA of schism” (Ron’s phrase) into the Church politic, and I ultimately discovered, that the Christian faith is “. . . the most influential framework for making sense of human existence that has ever existed,” and “. . . still shapes the way that even the most secular modern people think about the world.”
One of so many qualities I love about Ron is his generous, irenic spirit. He knows my thoughts on the following quote. Part of honouring him is reminding myself that where our opinions here somewhat diverge, he’s never used that as an occasion to break our fellowship.
While I have understood Erasmus to have been the premier 16th-century pacifist (and Christian humanist), whose writings for instance inspired and taught Anabaptists their pacifism, Ron writes in the book I published for him:
But Erasmus was no absolute pacifist. He was very much the nimble, subtle and nuanced owl of his age, ever finding a thoughtful and navigating a thoughtful pathway between the pacifist doves and warlike hawks.
Ron’s assessment that such thinkers are “the nimble, subtle and nuanced owls of their age” has always struck me as passing strange. If “Teaching the Gospel Message that Jesus was totally nonviolent, and we’re called to be nonviolent too,” then aren’t exception caveats in the otherwise dovish Erasmus more of a departure from The Way than being “nimble” on The Way? And can it be denied that Erasmus’ opposition to church militarism became part of his legacy — not nimble path-picking between doves and hawks?
Professor Vern Redekop, drawing on anthropologist René Girard, refers to such systems as societal scapegoat mechanisms by which the select few are prosecuted/persecuted on behalf of the many.