American History part 3 -- From Roar to Reagan

This is taking longer than I anticipated. I guess 250 years is a long time. 
1. From Revolution to Fracture
2. From Civil War to World War
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13. World War I had ground the world's optimism to a halt. Like a massive release of repressed energy, America exploded into the Roaring Twenties. We cut loose -- fast and loud. In what was really a very fragile world, we danced on the edge of a fault line.

The 1920s roared. Jazz filled the clubs. Skirts got shorter. Radios crackled in living rooms. Ford’s assembly lines put cars in every driveway. Stock prices soared. Flappers danced. Bootleggers ran liquor under the nose of Prohibition. And Wall Street promised endless returns.

It was a decade of speed and spectacle. Women had won the right to vote. Black culture exploded in the Harlem Renaissance. Technology shrank the world and expanded the future. If the Gilded Age was gold-plated, the Twenties were neon-lit.

But behind the glitter, cracks spread.

The 1920s weren’t just jazz and flappers. They were also lynchings, race riots, and immigration quotas. The Immigration Act of 1924 slammed the door shut on much of the world, especially Asia and Eastern Europe. The KKK came roaring back, larger than ever. Now it was not just anti-Black, but anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic. The fear of the “other” became political fuel.

Prohibition turned ordinary people into criminals and gave rise to organized crime. The stock market had become a casino with no rules. Everyone was gambling, and no one thought the party could end.

Until it did.

14. In October 1929, the market crashed. Fortunes evaporated. Banks failed. Unemployment exploded. The illusion of endless growth was shattered. The Roaring Twenties screeched to a halt, and the Great Depression began.

It had been a decade of wild celebration. But the bill had come due. The party was over.

Tariffs played a part. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in 1930, was meant to protect American jobs by taxing foreign goods. Instead, it triggered a trade war. Other countries retaliated. Global markets froze. The crash became a global depression.

The government’s first response? Do nothing. President Herbert Hoover believed the market would correct itself if the "invisible hand" was just left alone. He refused direct aid to anyone. He called on charities and churches to step up. It wasn't the government's job to help people in need -- that was the church's responsibility. 

But the church neither had the will nor the resources. It wasn’t nearly enough. People began living in tent cities they called “Hoovervilles” to mock the Republican president. The name stuck.

Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt, promising a New Deal. The federal government would now be an active player in the economy. It would help create jobs, protect workers, reform banks, and in general, try to rebuild trust. This marked the rise of a new Democratic Party. For the first time, Americans expected the government to care whether they lived or starved.

Roosevelt didn’t fix the Depression overnight. But he changed the rules. Social Security was born. Unions were able to make industry care about the people who worked for them. The government no longer just watched. It acted. 

Millions of Americans today survive on Social Security -- the same program Roosevelt signed into law over loud cries of “socialism.” Medicare and Medicaid continue to save countless lives. And yet, many who rely on these programs have been convinced to distrust them simply because they come from the government. What irony! Programs are seen as threats by the very people they protect.

But jobs alone didn’t bring recovery. Something bigger happened. Something global. Something you would never dare plan.

15. The storm had been building. Germany was still bitter from the Great War and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. Into that resentment stepped a man who channeled their anger. To many, he was a clown -- loud, ridiculous. The rich and powerful thought they could control him, use him. But almost inexplicably, his charisma drew in the ordinary German. The German people made him unstoppable. By the time many realized the depth of their mistake and miscalculation, Germany was in ruins. And their Führer was hiding in a bunker saying the German people had failed him.

Hitler had blamed the Jews for German problems. He blamed the socialists. He blamed the "degenerates." He would get rid of homosexuals and eventually anyone who opposed him -- including Jesus followers like Bonhoeffer who didn't go along with Germany's Christian nationalism. Hitler was going to purify Germany and make it great again -- a third Reich. 

He crushed dissent. He unleashed the "Brownshirts." These weren't the military or the police. No, they were his own group of loyal fanatics, eager to intimidate, beat, or disappear anyone Hitler labeled an enemy. They would round up people in the night (or the day) who would just disappear. Soon he was building camps -- first for political enemies, then for anyone he deemed impure. Out of sight, out of mind.

The whole world was tipping toward "strong men" at the time, autocrats. It made people feel better to think that someone was taking charge and getting their worlds under control. Someone was thinking of them for a change and kicking some butt.

Italy had Mussolini, Japan had militarists hungry for empire. The world watched. And waited. Hoping that his flame would burn out on its own.

America tried to stay out of it. “America First,” people said. Some were even sympathetic to Hitler's complaints about Jews and degenerates. American Nazis held a huge rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939.

But neutrality couldn’t stop war. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. In 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That was it. America joined the fight. Japan pushed us into taking the right side.

Factories came roaring back. This time they made planes, ships, and bullets. Women filled the assembly lines. So did African Americans, though still in segregated jobs. The U.S. became the arsenal of democracy, sending supplies to allies, turning its economy into a war machine.

And it worked. But not without cost.

120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps in America. No trials. No charges. No actual basis or benefit. Just fear and suspicion. They were an easy target for our anger. And we made the Constitution look the other way.

In Germany, we were reminded that the worst atrocities are only as far away as human beings. Hitler’s regime carried out the Holocaust, murdering six million Jews, along with millions of others. They killed the Roma, gay individuals, disabled people, and of course those who dared to speak out against what they were doing. The world was confronted with industrial genocide.

Germans were forced to see it. They had denied it. Those who believed Hitler was a savior had believed all the propaganda he had spewed as he controlled the media. They're having a good life in those camps. American soldiers forced the residents of Dachau to walk through the camp and admit with their eyes what they had let happen. In other places, we forced them to bury the dead in the camps.

America fought on two fronts: Europe and the Pacific. In Europe, it helped liberate France, marched into Germany, and crushed the Nazi regime. In the Pacific, the war was brutal. Jungle to jungle, island to island. Japan refused to surrender. 

Then, in August 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs -- one on Hiroshima, one on Nagasaki. We had split the atom -- something many thought God wouldn't allow to happen. Japan finally surrendered.

The war ended. But the world had changed.

70 million dead. Cities flattened. Borders redrawn. Empires dissolved. And two superpowers emerged: the United States and the Soviet Union.

America was now a global leader. Economically. Militarily. Culturally. But also morally. That was the big question: Would we use our power for peace -- or domination? Would we remember what we fought for or just what we won?

16. The war was over. But peace wasn't simple.

Soldiers returned to parades and promises. They had fought for democracy, for freedom, for justice. But back home, Black veterans still weren't able to get a loan and were still forced to use the back door. Women who had run factories were expected to return quietly to the kitchen (yeah, that was going to happen). Japanese Americans were released from camps into neighborhoods that still didn’t want them.

America had changed. But not enough. It still fell short of those big words we wrote in 1776.

For some, the 1950s were a golden age -- suburbs, appliances, white picket fences. But it wasn’t golden for everyone. Many still lived in the shadows of that dream.

A movement began to grow. It wasn’t loud at first. It was a woman who sat down on a bus. A preacher who marched without weapons. A crowd of college students at a lunch counter, waiting to be served like human beings.

The Civil Rights Movement wasn’t just about laws. It was about dignity. Did the Declaration of Independence mean what it said? "All men (and women) are created equal."

Some people didn’t like the question. They called the marchers "communists." Called the students "agitators." Called the preachers dangerous. Maybe one day, but let's move slowly -- meaning let's just ignore the injustices. (It's often said, if you want to know what you would have done then, you're doing it now.)

The marches grew. "Those troublemakers." "Lawless." "Criminals." The dogs and fire hoses came out. The violence was televised. And the world saw what America still was.

But things began to change. Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Segregated schools were deemed unconstitutional. Was desegregation a perfect solution? No. But it finally began to move the needle in the right direction. Racists responded, "They're legislating from the bench!" There was a sudden surge in the founding of private Christian schools in the South for some reason.

Civil Rights Act (1964): No more legal segregation. Voting Rights Act (1965): No more literacy tests or poll taxes. For a moment, it looked like the country might turn a corner. It was moving toward 1776 again!

But progress always wakes up resistance. As civil rights expanded, coded backlash crept in. "Law and order" (meaning don't protest injustice). "States’ rights" (meaning the government can't make me treat black people as equals). "Family values" (meaning keep women from being equals). Make America look like it used to (nudge nudge, wink wink).

17. And then came Vietnam.

We said we were stopping communism. We had been fighting communism a long time. In 1917, we watched the Bloody Revolution in Russia, and it scared us to death. In the Soviet Union, Stalin turned out to be as brutal as Hitler -- he just did it quietly and no one ever stopped him. When the Soviets got the bomb, we saw the possibility that the world could end at our own hands.

Senator McCarthy and others exploited Cold War fear to accuse innocent Americans of being traitors. Careers were ruined, lives upended. It was a national witch hunt. Eventually he was shut down, but he was a reminder that America was not immune to hysteria. Thus far we have always managed to fix it eventually. History doesn't promise we always will.

In the 60s, the fear of communism led us to send 58,000 Americans to die in a jungle. Millions more were maimed, broken, or drafted into a war they didn’t understand. Why were we there again?

And the country cracked open.

Protests filled the streets. Soldiers came home and were blamed for decisions made far above their pay grade. A president resigned. Another pardoned him. Trust in government collapsed. The golden age faded. What was left was a country that no longer believed its leaders. Our sense that we were a morally exceptional nation was gone -- at least for a while.

The 1960s ended in fire and fatigue.

King was assassinated. So was Bobby Kennedy. The streets were full of tear gas and protest signs. The dream of the Great Society was cracking under the weight of war, inflation, and fear. The liberal consensus had overreached -- or at least, that’s what some said. Too much change too fast. It's a formula for backlash.

A new message started taking root. "We’ve gone too far. Time to reel it back in."

Enter Richard Nixon. He didn’t shout. He didn’t rage. He whispered. He spoke to the “silent majority” He soothed the people tired of chaos, change, and being told their morals were deplorable. 

He didn’t say he opposed civil rights. He just said we needed “law and order.” He didn’t say Black communities were the problem. He just cracked down on “urban crime.” Use nice words to hide good old racism.

It worked. He won.

And then he wiretapped his enemies. Paid hush money. Lied to the public. Used government power to protect himself. Watergate wasn’t just a scandal. It was a revelation of who we really were. Even a president might break the law if he thought it served him. If we hadn't had the tapes, his followers would have never believed those who questioned him. Some still didn't believe he was wrong even with the tapes.

Democracy needs good laws. But it works best with people of good character -- if you can find any. The workings of the government need to be done out in the open. There need to be mechanisms of accountability. Watchdogs. "Trust but verify." But our rules are only as good as our will to enforce them.

Nixon resigned before he could be removed. He at least had some honor. He had the character to apologize to the American people. His successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him “for the good of the country.” That phrase became code for: He broke the rules, but let’s move on.

18. But the real shift came with Ronald Reagan...

American History part 2, from Civil to World War

Yesterday I posted the first half of American history through the Civil War in 2200 words. Here's part II.
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Free, Sort of
8. The Civil War was over. The Union had survived by force. Slavery was gone -- legally, at least. Would America live up to its big words, again?

For about ten years, it looked like it might.

"Reconstruction" wasn’t just about rebuilding the South. It was about rebuilding the idea of America. Three new amendments were added to the Constitution. The 13th abolished slavery. The 14th said everyone born here was a citizen and had equal protection under the law. The 15th said you couldn’t deny someone the right to vote based on their race. 

It sounded like a second founding. A chance to actually mean the things written down in 1776.

An amendment to the Constitution means it's just as bedrock as the first version. Anyone born here is a citizen. No president can change it. No Congress can change it. Only another amendment could change it. Of course, a rule is only meaningful if it is enforced.

For a little while, real change happened. Black men were elected to Congress -- in the 1860s! Public schools opened across the South. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped formerly enslaved families start new lives. It was messy, but it was movement.

But not everyone wanted to move forward.

White supremacists in the South responded with violence. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan formed to terrorize Black Americans and the white allies who tried to help them. After the northern troops left, southern legislatures passed "Black Codes" to make it easy to arrest blacks and then use them for cheap labor. The North, exhausted by war and not really too concerned, stopped caring.

1877 was a dark year in American history. Disputed ballots and partisan maneuvering called into question the results of the presidential election. The future of the government was in question.

A backroom deal brought certainty at a price. The federal government would pull troops out of the Democratic South in exchange for letting the Republican candidate win. With the soldiers gone, so were the protections. Black "citizens" were on their own.

Reconstruction was over. The South was free to recreate slavery by other means. The result at times was worse than slavery itself.

States passed laws to segregate everything from schools to train cars. These laws were challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. But as it has done occasionally in dark times, the Court gave them its blessing in 1896. Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that “separate but equal” was just fine -- even though it was never equal. It was just separate.

The South got its way. Jim Crow took root. Voter suppression. Lynching. Legal segregation. Racial terror became everyday realities for Black Americans. The dream of Reconstruction faded into the shadows. The "Great Migration" would soon begin to the north.

And it wasn’t just Black Americans facing this backlash. Immigrants from China, Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe were pouring into the country. They were looking for work, for safety, for a future. But to many who were already here, they were the enemy. Too foreign. Too Catholic. Too poor. 

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major federal law to ban immigration based on race or nationality. The message was clear. Some people were more welcome than others. Some didn’t belong at all. 

Humans are a herd animal. We don't like people from other herds.

Gold Outside, Rot Inside
9. Reconstruction ended. The North moved on. The South doubled down. Meanwhile, some entrepreneurs got busy getting rich. Really rich. Run-the-country kind of rich.

Welcome to the Gilded Age. It was named not for the gold itself, but for the thin, shiny layer of gold sometimes used to cover something rotten underneath. 

On the surface, it looked like progress. Railroads stretched across the continent. Factories roared to life. Skyscrapers rose. Immigrants poured in, chasing opportunity. The United States became a global industrial power seemingly overnight.

But underneath? A mess.

Monopolies controlled entire industries. Carnegie controlled steel. Rockefeller controlled oil. J.P. Morgan controlled finance. They called them “captains of industry.” Critics called them "robber barons." Democracy doesn't work when the powerful can buy who they want and elect who they want.

The wealth at the top was staggering. The poverty at the bottom was crushing. Workers labored long hours in dangerous conditions -- for pennies. Children worked in coal mines and cotton mills. If you got hurt on the job, bye, bye. If you died on the job, there was no compensation. If you protested, you were fired -- or worse.

Politics wasn’t much better. Corruption was everywhere. Bribes, kickbacks, and "pay to play" ruled the day. Elected officials sold their influence. City bosses ran political machines like the mafia. The economy might have been booming for the top. But the government only served the rich, not the people.

The press was owned by the powerful. Workers were disposable. Millionaires -- who would be worth billions today -- controlled public policy. The poor were blamed for being poor. And when people got angry enough to protest, the powerful called them dangerous, un-American, even criminal.

With every wave of immigration came a wave of panic. Nativist groups sprang up, claiming America was under siege -- from Jews, Catholics, anarchists, the poor. The “real” Americans (meaning white Protestants) thought they were losing their country. They blamed immigrants for crime, disease, and unemployment. They demanded laws to keep the outsiders out. Sound familiar?

But pressure builds. And eventually, it bursts.

The labor movement began to rise. Workers organized strikes. Journalists -- called “muckrakers” by those who didn't like them -- began exposing the filth behind the glitter. Upton Sinclair wrote about rats in the meatpacking plants. Ida B. Wells wrote about lynching. Jacob Riis photographed tenement slums. Ida Tarbell took on Standard Oil.

And slowly, reforms began. Antitrust laws broke up monopolies. Child labor laws were introduced. The federal income tax was created so the rich might finally pay something back for the opportunities the country had given them. Senators would now be elected by the people, not just appointed by elites. Women fought for the right to vote and demanded to be heard.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t enough. But it was a start.

The Gilded Age had promised that anyone could rise. In reality, it was a world rigged for the few. The people finally started asking, "What kind of country is this?" And who, exactly, is it working for?

While industry built empires, new religious movements took root. This was the age of Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science. Old churches split. New sects formed. 

Urban revivals, led by people like Dwight Moody, preached salvation in a world changing too fast. The world was a sinking ship. There was no way to save it. All we could do was get as many people as we could into the lifeboats.

In booming cities, social gospel preachers said that fixing poverty wasn’t just good policy -- it was God’s will. Their sense of progress thought we were getting the world ready for Christ. We were ushering in the kingdom.

Imperial Expansion
10. By the turn of the 20th century, America had seen enough smoke, smog, slums, and scandal to demand a cleanup. That’s where the group calling for progress came in, the "Progressives."

They weren’t one group. They were journalists, teachers, politicians, and pastors. They were anyone fed up with the mess left behind by the industrial machine. Their message was that the system was rigged against the ordinary person, and the people deserved better.

Teddy Roosevelt stormed into the White House swinging a “big stick.” He busted monopolies and took on the corrupt railroads. He helped protect workers in their strikes and pushed laws for clean food and drugs. He wasn’t against business. He just didn’t like bullies. 

In the end, he was too much for the Republican party, and he left. This was a major turning point for the party. They were less and less the party that freed the slaves. They were more and more the party of industry and the elite.

The 16th Amendment gave us an income tax. The 17th made senators elected by the people. The 18th banned selling alcohol -- for a while. Then the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote. Four big changes in less than a decade.

Progressives believed government could be a force for good. They weren’t always right. And they didn’t always include everyone. But they changed the game.

They said corruption wasn’t inevitable. Poverty wasn’t a moral failure. Justice should be public policy. Funny how this sort of progress could become a dirty word. 

11. But, then again, not all "progress" is truly progress. While reformers were busy trying to clean up the mess at home, we began to look outward at the rest of the world, and we liked what it saw. Land. Labor. Leverage.

In 1898, we declared war on Spain. Why? The official line was to help Cuba gain independence. The real reason? To grab territory and prove that we had power like the old European empires. The real reasons for things are often more selfish than the noble words we use to sell the public.

We won in less than four months. There were prizes: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. That same year, Hawaii was added. It had already been overtaken by American interest in its sugar. A few years later, we took part of Colombia and carved out Panama -- just to build a canal to connect the oceans. All of it was wrapped in the language of progress and civilization.

This was Manifest Destiny, international style.

Some called it expansion. Some called it liberation. In the places we took, it looked like conquest. In the Philippines, after leading the Filipinos to think we had freed them from Spain, we then turned and fought a brutal war against them. They woke up to find that we had actually taken them over.

We said we were spreading democracy. But like King George, we often denied it to the people we governed. Turns out that it was really more about sugar, rubber, ports, and power.

But this was a turning point. We no longer just a country. We were now an empire.

Even as we were expanding overseas, we were closing its doors at home. The early 1900s saw a rise in eugenics, anti-immigrant hysteria, and “Americanization” campaigns. Immigrants were told to drop their languages, their cultures, even their names. We were flexing our muscles abroad while tightening its borders at home.

The Great War
12. The 20th century began with optimism. People thought the world would get better and better. Progress was everywhere. Science, technology, democracy. What could possibly go wrong? We had evolved beyond the primitive barbarism of the past.

Then came the Great War, which would turn out to be World War I. At first, leaders tried to spin it as progress -- they called it the "war to end all wars." It wouldn't end up feeling that way.

It started in Europe, in 1914, with a shot fired in Sarajevo. A bumbling teenage assassin killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The continent exploded. A bunch of old men beating their chests over who was the boss sent millions of their people to their deaths without a second thought. 

The war had been waiting to happen. Empires had been stockpiling weapons, signing secret alliances, and polishing their medals for years. All it took was one spark.

One of the deadliest wars in human history followed, launched by emperors and ministers whose pride was bigger than their wisdom. Millions went to the trenches. Millions never came back. 

The weapons were new -- machine guns, tanks, poison gas. But the leadership was old -- arrogant, entitled, and shockingly indifferent to human life.

For the first three years, Americans watched from a distance. 

President Woodrow Wilson promised neutrality. But the war wouldn’t leave the U.S. alone. German submarines started sinking ships. A telegram was intercepted, promising Mexico a piece of the U.S. if it joined the fight. In 1917, America entered the war.

The U.S. didn't just bring boots and bullets. It brought money. Supplies. Hope. American involvement helped tip the balance. By late 1918, Germany was exhausted. The war ended. The peace, of course, was another fight altogether.

Wilson came to Europe with big dreams. He wanted a new world order. He called for open diplomacy, free trade, self-determination for nations, and -- most famously -- a League of Nations. It was meant to be a place where countries could talk instead of shoot.

The Europeans, especially Britain and France, had other ideas. They wanted revenge. Germany would pay. Literally. The Treaty of Versailles punished the losers and redrew the world map with imperial crayons. Borders shifted. Empires collapsed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire -- gone with the stroke of a pen. And what replaced them wasn’t always stable.

Wilson got his League of Nations -- on paper. But back home, the U.S. Senate said no. America had entered the war late and left the peace early. It would not join the League. Wilson had a stroke trying to rally the nation. His dream of global cooperation was shelved. 

And yet, America had changed.

We had tasted world power and liked it. The economy boomed. American culture began exporting itself. Jazz, movies, advertising, cars. Our military had proven it could fight across an ocean. Europe was battered. America was rising.

But the war had cracked the faith of a generation. The Enlightenment dream of reason and progress had gone up in trenches and gas clouds. Cynicism grew. Art got darker. Philosophy turned bleak. The world didn’t feel safe anymore. Not even modern. Just broken.

The world had been reshaped. And America -- whether it admitted it or not -- was now at the center of it.

American History part 1 -- from Revolution to Fracture

A New World. 
1. Who would a new world attract? Certainly the adventure seekers and the innovators. Also, those looking for new ways to make money. Some were running away from a bad situation. And of course, the ill-intentioned, looking to get away from the law. Finally there were the people already here, just waiting to be crowded out.

Might there be gold? Surely there were all sorts of goods to exploit, said the Spanish, who destroyed the Aztecs and Incas to get at them. The Dutch West India Company, the Plymouth Company, and the Virginia Company all came to get rich. There was tobacco to be farmed, which would soon bring enslaved Africans to do the farming.

The Puritans sought freedom from the Church of England -- after briefly trying to take over England themselves. They couldn't force their ways on England, so they looked for somewhere else to do it. In Massachusetts, they could finally impose their freedom on everyone -- for a few years, at least. Mary-land was Catholic. Virginia and Georgia were Anglican. Pennsylvania was Quaker. 

After a century of religious wars, America decided it was best to let people worship their own way. This new land would not have an official church. There would be a wall between the church and state. Jefferson called it the separation of church and state.

2. The Spanish did better in the south. The French did ok in the north. England would rule the middle. Thirteen colonies. A rowdy bunch. 

They made the mistake of thinking they were British citizens -- who should be treated like British citizens. Worse still, they were filling their heads with all sorts of silly ideas: that all men were created equal, that people had certain inalienable rights, that governments should answer to the governed. Imagine the audacity. "No taxation without representation." Really? 

Clearly, they didn't understand how King George III saw things. He was the king. They were his servants, the help. They should do whatever he said. And he had bills to pay, thanks to a war he just finished. So, tax them he did. 

And they got angry. 

You know what happens when people get angry. Some of them shout. Then some nervous soldiers shoot them. The king thinks, "Serves them right. They should respect authority." Then they get angrier. Then some of them drop a few million dollars worth of tea in a harbor. Then the king gets angrier. And the whole thing just escalates.

They appeal to him. But he's the king. More shouting. More shooting. Pretty soon you have these high minded colonists writing declarations. They're posting, "Give me liberty or give me death" on social media. They're creating an army, well a voluntary militia using their own guns. 

That's when it stopped being a protest. That's when it became a revolution.

Out of Many, One?
3. What do you do you with thirteen colonies, each with different economies, grudges, and versions of faith? How do you turn them into a country? 

You start with some words. Big ones. Self-evident truths. Unalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t a constitution. It wasn’t a law. It was an argument. A manifesto, really. Directed at King George. And also the world. And just maybe even themselves. 

They were trying to throw off a king. They needed some something that sounded like justice. Something that rang eternal. Something grounded in nothing less than the Creator himself.

"All men are created equal." Of course, they didn’t really mean everyone. Women? Not really. The people who already lived there when they arrived? Definitely not. The enslaved Africans farming their land? Not even close. They didn’t get a seat at the table -- not even a folding chair. 

But the words were out there now. And words have a way of haunting their writers. As a black man would later write in 1935, "Let America be America again... America never was America to me."

They would somehow win. It was almost a miracle -- ragtag militias defeating the world’s most powerful empire. Leading them was a quiet, unflashy man named George Washington. And when the war was over, he did something nearly unheard of. He stepped down.

Following the example of the noblest of ancient Romans, Washington gave up power. Others would have gathered a mob and stormed the halls of authority to keep their fist tightly around the reins of power. Not Washington. And in so doing, he helped make space for something even more unusual than revolution.

A republic.

4. The colonies were now states. What was the proper balance between the states and this new government thing? Version 1 gave more power to the states. It was called the Articles of Confederation. It lasted about as long as a bad group project. States printed their own money, taxed each other, and ignored Congress like it was a substitute teacher. 

The founders quickly realized that revolution was easier than unity.

Enter the Constitution. Drafted in 1787 in a locked room in Philadelphia. It was part blueprint, part peace treaty. It gave the federal government real teeth. The government could tax, raise an army, and regulate trade. 

It also built in checks and balances. Three equal branches of government. The president was like the CEO of a company. Efficient. The Congress set the rules and passed laws. The judiciary was like a referee to say when the others had stepped outside their lines or broken the rules. The system would only work if they all kept their ends of the deal.

It was careful. Strategic. And full of compromises.

Take the Senate. Two representatives from every state no matter how big or small. Or the Electoral College. It was a way to let elites keep a hand on the wheel. Or the Three-Fifths Compromise. It was an agreement to count enslaved people as partial persons for political math, while denying them any actual rights. That one wasn't just tangled. It was morally rotten.

And yet, the document worked. Mostly. It got ratified. As long as they would add a Bill of Rights, which was essentially an insurance policy against tyranny.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even entirely democratic. But it was a system that could be improved over time. In theory, it was strong enough to hold together a messy, aspiring republic. And it was flexible enough to let that republic grow into its lofty words.

5. As I said, the first amendments to the Constitution were the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech -- we can badmouth the government without getting arrested. Freedom of religion. We can be Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists and freely practice our religion here. Congress can't pass laws that assume specific religious beliefs. The press can publish whatever it wants and not get hauled to jail.

The government can't search our houses without probable cause and a warrant. You have to have evidence to arrest us. Everyone here -- legal or illegal -- has a right to due process. Everyone has a right to a fair trial. We are innocent until proven guilty.

Still more. We have the right to remain silent. The right not to be tortured. We have the right to own a gun -- as long as we don't shoot people at random with it.

Anything else is anti-American. Anything else has no place here. Anything else should be arrested itself and thrown into jail -- with due process and a fair trial, of course.

So they made a government. Now they had to figure out what kind of country it would be.

Alongside the politics, something else was going on -- faith. America’s early years were marked by bursts of religious passion known as the Great Awakenings. The First Awakening in the 1700s stirred revivalism and helped spark ideas of equality before God. The Second Awakening, in the early 1800s, fueled movements for abolition, temperance, and women’s rights. 

Religion wasn’t just in church. It was shaping how Americans thought about justice, purpose, and who got to speak for God.

The Rise of the People
6. The Constitution gave them structure, but not identity. That came slowly, through trial, error, and power struggles. The first few presidents were mostly elites. They were men who had land, education, and powdered wigs. 

Washington set the tone with his dignity and restraint. Adams was brilliant but cranky. Jefferson wrote poetry about liberty while owning over 600 slaves. Madison built the system and then watched it buckle under the brief War of 1812. (The British burned the capitol after we tried to invade Canada.) Monroe tried to soothe it all with a “Doctrine” that said the U.S. should take over everything from sea to shining sea.

Still, the country was growing. It was growing physically and politically. The Louisiana Purchase doubled its size. Steamboats, canals, and cotton began stitching together a national economy. 

The stitching came at a cost. Native peoples were being pushed out. Slavery was expanding west. The North and South were already starting to eye each other suspiciously. And under it all, the democratic spirit was starting to boil. The common man wanted in.

Thus spake Andrew Jackson. The first Democrat.

He wasn’t like the others. No Harvard. No powdered wig. He was a self-made frontiersman, a war hero, and a political battering ram. His followers called it a movement. His critics called it mob rule.

Jackson believed the people -- well, the white, male, property-owning people -- should steer the country. He dismantled the Bank of the United States. He waged war on elites. He used the veto like a sword. He didn’t just expand democracy. He redefined it, for better and worse.

His presidency was populist, combative, and fiercely loyal. He rewarded his supporters with government jobs -- whether they were competent or not. He ignored Supreme Court rulings when he didn’t like them, putting the Constitution on shaky ground. And when it came to Native Americans, he was brutal.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced entire nations from their homelands. The Trail of Tears wasn’t just a tragedy. It was American policy -- might makes right. Thousands died so that white settlers could move west. Some Christian nation.

So yes, Jackson was a man of the people. But not all the people. Only the ones he liked. He showed the country what democracy could do. And what it could destroy.

A republic is more than a democracy. It is a democracy with rules. Rules that protect the minority and the powerless from the majority. Just like the Bible teaches. Or is supposed to.

The logic behind Jackson’s presidency soon had a name. Manifest Destiny. It was the belief that America was meant to expand across the entire continent. It sounded noble. In practice, it meant running over people, waging war on Mexico, and dragging slavery westward. It wasn’t just expansion. It was violence dressed up as national purpose.

The Road to Civil War
7. The country kept growing. Land, population, ambition. But under all the steamboats and railroads and waving fields of wheat was a slow, spreading fire. It was the question everyone wanted to avoid.

What do you do with slavery?

The North didn’t want to compete with it. The South couldn’t live without it. And the West -- new, raw, unsettled -- became the battlefield where that conflict played out. Every time a new state wanted in, the fight started again. Slave or free? Stay in balance or tip the scales?

They tried compromise. Missouri. 1820. Let one slave state in, one free state in. Keep the scales balanced. Then came the Compromise of 1850. California free, but runaway slaves had to be returned. It basically nationalized slavery enforcement. Even Northerners had to help.

Then came Kansas-Nebraska. 1854. “Let the people decide,” they said. They called it popular sovereignty. What they got was bleeding Kansas. Warfare in the prairie over whether people should be property.

Enslaved people kept fleeing. Kept suing. Kept speaking. Frederick Douglass. Sojourner Truth. Harriet Tubman. They weren’t debating. They were escaping, resisting, fighting. The South tightened its grip. The North started to listen. And the Supreme Court? It doubled down.

In 1857, the Court told Dred Scott he wasn’t a citizen. Couldn’t sue. Had no rights the white man had to respect. It wasn’t a ruling. It was a spark in a powder keg.

The country wasn’t cracking. It was already cracked. John Brown tried to end slavery with bullets. The South saw abolitionists as terrorists. The North saw the South as a moral disgrace. The center didn’t hold. Then came 1860.

Abraham Lincoln. The first Republican. 

Back then, the parties were flipped. In the mid-1800s, the Democrats were the party of slavery. Republicans opposed it. Democrats were mostly in the South. Republicans were mostly in the North.

Abraham Lincoln didn’t run on ending slavery outright. He ran on stopping its spread. That was enough. The South seceded before he could even unpack. One by one, states broke away. They didn’t trust him. Or democracy. Or the idea that their world could change.

And so, war.

The Civil War wasn’t just about states’ rights. It was about whose rights counted. Did the spirit of the Constitution protect slavery -- or people. The war would show whether the Union could survive a moral cancer it had tried to manage instead of remove.

Lincoln led not just with words, but with resolve. He didn’t free the slaves at first. But as the war ground on, the stakes became all or nothing. If there would be a Union, it would not keep people in chains any more. The Emancipation Proclamation turned the war into something more than politics. It made it a reckoning.

The cost was staggering. Over 600,000 dead. Cities burned. Families shattered. The South, once rich on cotton and cruelty, was broken. But so was the illusion that America could sidestep its original sin forever.

The war ended. The slaves were free, at least on paper. The Union was preserved -- barely. And a new question emerged. What kind of nation would rise from the ashes?

What would it do with its freedom now?

1.2 When there were many gods

In my cycle of writing, the project called, "the flow of revelation" comes next for a couple days. Here are the previous posts in this series:

Introduction
1.1 What Christians Believe about God
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1.2 Many gods
4. When you see the word God in your English Bible, it is inevitable that you will insert into that word the sense of God that is in your head. It is likely you will infer that same picture of God everywhere you read about him in the pages of Scripture. You will invest him with all the attributes you believe he has. You will assume all the impressions you have of God.

Reading the Bible on its own terms requires us to move beyond what is in our heads and into the world of the text. For example, the English word God appeared nowhere in the books of the Bible when they were written. It was rather words like the Hebrew Elohim or the Greek theos. The proper name of God does not appear in most of our English Bibles -- Yahweh. It's hiding when you see LORD in all caps in the Old Testament. Learning these names for God in the Bible is a first step toward hearing Scripture for what it first meant rather than defining God with the definitions in our heads.

A second step is to realize that the understanding of God is not static throughout the pages of the Bible. After all, there is perhaps more than a thousand year span between the earliest references to God in the Hebrew Bible and the end of the New Testament. As God walked with his people, their cultures did not stay static, and God continued to meet with them throughout that time. 

5. Let's start at the beginning of the record. Before Abraham, what was the state of belief in God? Many like to think that there was some pure line of faith in one God that came down through a godly line from Adam to Noah to Abraham. But here is what Joshua 24:2 says:

"On the other side of the River [Euphrates], your fathers lived from of old. There was Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor. And they served other gods."  

Joshua is quite clear that the father of Abraham and the fathers before him were polytheists. That is to say, they believed in many gods and they worshiped many gods. This picture certainly fits with what we know of the ancient Sumerians who lived at Ur during its peak. It fits with the Elamites after the Sumerians lost power. And it fits with the Old Babylonian culture that replaced them.

Joshua tells us that Abraham grew up in a polytheist home. Does that mean that God never spoke to anyone for thousands of years since Noah? I personally don't think so. It may not be exactly what John had in mind, but I'd like to think that God gives light to every person who comes into the world (John 1:9). 

Obviously, if God speaks to everyone at some point in their life, they do not always know what to call him. A native American living in the year AD1000 would not know the name Jesus or Yahweh. But is it possible that some might have genuinely worshiped God with what limited knowledge they had? After all, no one in the Old Testament knew to worship Jesus either. Then at death they would have recognized their Lord as he is. There is an old saying: "God judges us according to the light we have."

6. In revelation, God meets us where we are and then moves us from there. Did Terah authentically worship God with the knowledge he had? We don't know. Most in Ur at that time called the king of the gods, "Enlil." Then again, Abraham may have been an Amorite, in which case it is at least possible that he grew up calling the king of the gods El.

There was no written Bible at this time. It would be hundreds of years -- perhaps 1000 years before any of the Old Testament was written down. As we will see, the name Yahweh was not yet known as the personal name of God (Exod. 6:13).

Jacob's wife Rachel was clearly still a polytheist because she stole the ancestral household gods from her father (Gen. 31:19). This is not surprising if Terah was still a polytheist. It suggests his son Nahor and grandson Laban were as well. Rachel follows suit. The Genesis text does not try to hide it.

So what do you call God when he has not yet fully revealed himself to you? When God meets someone in this world where they are, what name does he use?

Why it is only natural that they would think of him as "the Most High God."

7. How does God begin to reveal himself to those who genuinely worshiped him in these centuries from Abraham to Moses? They know him as El Elyon ("God Most High") and El Shaddai ("God Almighty" or possibly "God of the Mountain").

When Abraham has rescued Lot from Amraphel (Hammarabi?) in Genesis 14, he meets a priest named Melchizedek upon his return. Of what God is Melchizedek a priest? He is the priest of El Elyon -- the highest God, the king of the gods. [1]

Of course! In a polytheistic world, what is the most logical way to think of God? Why he is the highest God! He is the strongest God! He is the king of the gods!

Both Genesis and Exodus 6:3 suggest that the primary way that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob referred to God was as El Shaddai, which is commonly translated as "God Almighty." Scholars debate the exact connotation of shaddai. If it is a carry over from the Babylonian world, it might mean "God of the Mountain."

It is true that Genesis often refers to God as Yahweh, but this is likely the later author identifying God in terms of what was later known. It would be as if a story referred to a character by a name that wouldn't be known until later in the story. For example, there are some place names in Genesis that are referred to by names they wouldn't have till centuries later. [2]

Trying to get into Abraham's head, then, he may have served El Shaddai whom he also called God Most High. But he probably acknowledged that there were a host of other spiritual forces out there as well. Perhaps he didn't worship them. We don't know for sure. We're at 1800 BC or so. We are a thousand years before Elijah would try to stop Israel from serving other gods.

There is a name for worshiping one God while accepting that other gods exist. It is called henotheism. And the worship of one God while there are others around is called monolatry...

1.3 One Legitimate God

[1] There is a tradition to see Melchizedek as a pre-incarnation Christophany (Christ-appearance) or cameo of Christ in the Old Testament. This is based on a popular interpretation of Hebrews 7 in church history. However, Hebrews 7 is much more likely using Melchizedek in Genesis 14 as a type of Christ rather than thinking that Melchizedek was Christ.

[2] So northern Canaan is referred to as "Dan" in Genesis 14:14. But Dan was Abraham's great grandson -- clearly not the name that location had in Abraham's day.

Through the Bible -- Mark 7

Previous posts on Mark at the bottom.
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1. Mark 7 is a key Scripture for understanding Jesus' ethic. Elsewhere in Mark, Jesus says that the command to love God and love neighbor gives us the first and second most important commands of the Law (Mark 12:28-34). Matthew 22:40 goes further -- all of the Law can be summed up in these commands. [1] What is the essence of a Christian ethic? It is to love God and love others, where the love of others includes our enemies (Matt. 5:43-48).

Mark 7 not only gives us supporting evidence for that love command, it clarifies for us that Christian ethics is a heart ethic. That is to say, it is a virtue ethic rather than an act-oriented ethic. Our human sense of right and wrong often deteriorates into "dos and don'ts." It is hard for most people to handle nuance or complexity, which requires an ability to think on a higher, more complex level.

So religious systems often deteriorate into rules. Then the human penchant for certainty over ambiguity multiples rules, and inevitably religions can become legalistic -- at least their members can. Legalism is a love for rules for their own sake. The Bible becomes a list of rules, and fundamental principles are ignored because of "this verse."

2. The Pharisees and some scribes come up from Jerusalem to "inspect" Jesus. In their minds, they are the authorities coming to pronounce a verdict on Jesus. This is the hubris of some with formal authority in the face of divine authority. They do not realize that they have no authority whatsoever in the face of Jesus.

(As an aside, we tend to stereotype the ancient Pharisees because most of Jesus' encounters with them in the Gospels are negative -- Matthew 23 especially. However, like today, some Pharisees followed their traditions from a love of God. Nicodemus would be a case in point. Some people are strict because they're legalists. Others are strict because they want to do everything to the glory of God and they believe God requires of them all the things they do. [2])

3. The flash point is washing one's hands before eating, along with all the items associated with eating. [3] It's easy for us to think this is about good hygiene and germs, but that would be to impose modern concerns on the biblical text. They knew nothing of such things.

This was about purity. Think the holiness codes of Leviticus. In the marketplace, one was likely to touch something that was religiously unclean. The practice thus seems meant to ensure that you do not contaminate yourself by eating with hands that have been "commonized" (koinos) or made unclean. It's not a matter of sin but of ritual purity.

(As an aside, it is unclear that the word baptizo here is about "immersing" ones hands. It is possible, but it would be the root fallacy to think that the word always must mean immersion because of a historical root going back to a word for dipping. The meanings of words wander with cultural use and they can easily leave etymological or historical meanings behind. "Wash" is the safest translation to avoid overinterpretation.)

4. Verses 3-4 explain basic practices of Pharisees and "the Jews." These explanations likely imply that the original audience of Mark was Gentile or non-Jewish. You don't need to explain to a Jew what a Jew does. [4]

These verses also explain that this hand washing practice is the "tradition of the elders." These were likely specifically Pharisee traditions about how to keep the Law. The Sadducees claimed to just follow the Law -- not traditions about how to keep the Law. [5] Of course that's a crock. The Sadducees also had their own traditions on how to keep the Law. In that sense they are like fundamentalists today who claim to follow Scripture alone, not recognizing that their interpretations follow traditions they aren't even aware of. It wasn't tradition itself that they were rejecting but Pharisaic tradition. [6]

5. Jesus effectively calls them hypocrites and legalists. They claim to follow God. They put up a good show of following God because they follow a lot of rules. They follow God "with their lips" (7:6). But, perhaps like some Christians today, their heart is far from him. The way they treat others reveals that they really have no part in the real service of God. They use their rule keeping as an excuse not to do the things that God wants the most -- mercy, faith, and justice for those without it (Matt. 23:23). They strain out gnats from their cereal, but let camels pass through.

Jesus uses the example of getting out of taking care of your parents by pretending to dedicate those resources to God (7:9-13). "Sorry mom, I can't take care of you because I've designated those funds." It's a lawyer trick that uses the details of the Law to get out of keeping the heart of the Law. Many Americans do this today with the Bible, using a verse here or there to wiggle out of the more fundamental principles of Scripture. [7]

Mark once again uses an Aramaic word, corban. Mark does this 7 times and it is a small piece of a cumulative case that Mark is the earliest of the four Gospels. 

6. In 7:14-23, Jesus gives the heart of his virtue ethic. External things do not make a person unclean. That's not how it works. "Uncleanness" is something that is on the inside. It comes from the heart. If the heart is "unclean," evil things come out. These include things like sexual immorality, murder, adultery, envy, slander, and others. Defiling things don't come from the outside. They are a function of what is inside.

These words reflect a fundamental moral truth. The acts we do are not the focus of whether we are doing good or evil. Rather, it is the attitude and intention of our hearts that reveals whether our acts are truly evil. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for considering the consequences of an act as well. One can unintentionally wrong someone. There are unintentional sins.

But this is not the focus of a Christian -- or New Testament -- ethic. Paul presents the same ethical approach in Romans 14. Two people can do the same thing and it be sin for one and not sin for the other, depending on one's intention in relation to the act. Whether one is acting from a heart of faith is what makes the difference (Rom. 14:23). In Paul's view, "nothing is unclean in itself" (Rom. 14:14). It is rather our attitude toward the act that makes it clean or unclean. [8]

7. A key verse in this paragraph is 7:19, usually translated as something like "Thus he declared all foods clean." Traditionally, this verse has been understood to release Christians from keeping the Old Testament food laws. It thus would sit alongside traditional understandings of Acts 10 and Paul in Romans 14 and Colossians 2.

At the very least, we should probably nuance this understanding to recognize that Mark is writing for non-Jews. Matthew does not copy this remark in his version of this story. After all, he is likely writing for a Jewish audience that did not likely believe Jews were free from keeping the food laws.

It is of course a parenthetical remark that would not likely have come from Jesus' lips. In fact, Logan Williams has made a landmark proposal that in fact Jesus is saying that the stomach cleanses all food that we eat, making washing of hands unnecessary. [9] While this is an important argument, it probably fails not only on the grammar of the verse (katharizon is masculine, nominative, singular, which seems to be an independent nominative and thus not tied to the grammatical train of thought). It also fails to recognize the Gentile orientation of the comment.

The traditional understanding would thus seem correct. Four decades after Jesus' crucifixion, there were Gentile Christian communities that did not believe that the Jewish food laws were binding on them, and they saw Jesus as the ultimate authorization of this position. This is of course the understanding of most Christians today, namely, that we can eat pork, blood pudding, and other foods prohibited of Israel in Leviticus.

8. Mark 7 has two more stories. The first is the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman. She is not a Jew -- a striking juxtaposition with a story of great interest to non-Jews. Jesus is far afield in Tyre and Sidon to the northwest. It would be a 2-4 day journey from Galilee.

Her daughter has an unclean spirit. Again, this is a striking juxtaposition with a story that has just been about what makes a person unclean. Unlike those things that are thought to make a person unclean when you touch them, Jesus' touch works the opposite direction. And in this case, he does not even touch her. His faith from a distance cleanses this young girl of her unclean spirit, and the demon leaves her.

One of the more striking aspects of their conversation is Jesus' words to her on the priority of "feeding the children" of Israel. He effectively refers to the woman as a puppy milling around the table where the children are eating. [10] She does not reject the premise but instead responses that even the puppies get to eat scraps from the children's table. 

Jesus casts the woman's daughter out and makes her clean.

9. The final story in the chapter is the healing of a deaf man who also cannot speak. Jesus spits and touches the man's tongue. He sticks his fingers in his ears. These actions were of course not necessary, but they probably were known patterns of behavior used by other healers of the day. They are thus an example of Jesus meeting his world within their own cultural assumptions.

Mark gives us another Aramaic word, Ephphatha. See above. The man is instantly healed and begins to speak.

Jesus tells them not to tell anyone. This is part of the "messianic secret" theme where in Mark especially Jesus commands the demons not to speak his identity and tells those he heals to tell others. The demons obey. But of course most of the people don't, making it difficult for Jesus to travel openly. 

It would seem that, in this season, God gives us humans the freedom to disobey him. This is a major rejection of the impulse of some Christians to try to take over their governments to force the world to follow their understanding of God's rules.

[1] Matthew 7:12 is similar, as is Romans 13:10.

[2] See especially Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine, eds, The Pharisees (Eerdmans, 2021).

[3] Some later manuscripts include the table itself.

[4] It is of course possible that this as a marginal note that made its way into the text. It is not copied into Matthew, which used Mark as its primary source. Matthew similarly does not copy Mark 7:19. It does include Mark 13:14. These three verses in Mark have traditionally been seen as parenthetical comments from the author of Mark to his audience. 

However, in the case of the first two, it is clear enough why Matthew would not include them. Since he is likely writing to a Jewish audience, he does not need to explain what Jews do. And quite possibly he would not see 7:19 as applying to a Jewish audience. More below.

[5] This sense of the Sadducees is based on one source alone -- Josephus, Antiquities 13.297. Some have mistakenly read this passage to mean that the canon of the Sadducees only included the Pentateuch. That may also be true, but it is not what Josephus was saying here.

[6] It reminds me of denominations that say they aren't denominations. Or churches that say they are non-denominational when they clearly stand in the streams of particular Christian traditions.

[7] One example is the full participation of women in the gospel, something modeled throughout the New Testament and anticipated even in the Old Testament. Yet modern day "Pharisees" use 1 Timothy 2:12 to try to wiggle out of this fundamental principle of Pentecost (Acts 2:17; cf. Gal. 3:28).

[8] In this regard, Paul and Mark seem to operate within similar communities of early (Gentile) Christianity.

[9] Logan Williams, "The Stomach Purifies All Foods: Jesus’ Anatomical Argument in Mark 7.18–19," NTS 70 (2024): 371-91.

[10] It helps the tone a little to recognize that the word used is not dog outright but "little dog," perhaps suggesting a playful tone to the conversation.

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Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
Mark 2
Mark 3
Mark 4:1-34
Mark 4:35-5:43
Mark 6

Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)
Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)
Mark 13 (Temple Prediction)
Mark 14:1-52 (Last Supper)
Mark 14:53-15:47 (Good Friday)

Mark 16 (The Resurrection)  

A "Consensus" Biblical Worldview

In case my analysis of biblical paradigms yesterday might be a little unsettling, I thought I would follow it up with how an "eyes wide open," orthodox biblical worldview might work.

1. First we need organizing principles, a mechanism to prioritize biblical material. Ordinarily, we use tradition to do this without knowing it. An "eyes wide open" mechanism would do this intentionally. What are the most appropriate organizing principles if we want an "orthodox" biblical worldview?

Ultimately, common or consensus Christianity is the most logical answer for what the ultimate organizing principle of an orthodox biblical worldview is. Orthodox Christian belief and practice was settled in the controversies of the early church. Was the Arian or the Nicene interpretation of the Scriptures correct? The church decided that it was the Nicene. [1]

What are we talking about? We are talking about the early councils and creeds. We are talking about the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed. We are talking about Chalcedon. We are talking about:

• The Trinitarian nature of God as three persons but one God
• God as creator out of nothing
• The great value and yet fallenness of humanity
• God's walk and revelation to his people -- first Israel but then the church
• The incarnation of Christ
• The bodily resurrection of Christ
• The saving work of Christ
• The work of the Holy Spirit in the church and the world
• The church as God's apostolic agent in the world
• The resurrection of the dead, the second coming of Christ, and the eternity of God's kingdom

These can all be considered as organizing principles and a lens through which we organize the individual data of Scripture. They are the scaffolding that both corresponds to material in the text and yet affirms a certain prioritization of the text. 

If we were to find any biblical materials that seem to be in tension with these principles, those texts would either be considered unclear or given a subordinate role in our biblical theology.

2. We should acknowledge the role of the church -- the community of faith -- as a co-participant in this biblical perspective. For example, it was the community of faith that recognized the canon. That is to say, Scripture would not have clear boundaries without the church. Should the Gnostic Gospels be included? It was the consensus of the church that said no. [2]

The consensus of faith is the tradition of the community of faith. There are many points of disagreement within the body of Christ (e.g., the nature of predestination). These are not essential pieces of an orthodox biblical worldview (although they feature prominently one way or another in Reformed and Arminian biblical worldviews). They are "doctrine" and not "dogma" from an orthodox biblical worldview. [3]

3. To say that the contours of a biblical worldview require some external scaffolding is not to deny that this scaffolding has roots in the biblical texts. For example, it would seem that the books of the Bible are unanimous in their affirmation that there is one God who created the world (we will assume that Esther implied this). 

If we were to dig deeper, we would find that there is still variety of understanding with regard to what this meant to various biblical authors. But the existence and oneness of God is a clear guiding organizational principle which is the unanimous assumption of Scripture.

It is also thoroughly orthodox for us to suggest that the New Testament provides an authoritative perspective on the Old Testament. [4] A non-Christian Jew would not agree with this organizing of the biblical materials. That is to say, the New Testament understanding of the Old does not clearly arise from an inductive reading of the Old Testament texts themselves.

Within the New Testament , we can say that Jesus the Christ (as understood by the consensus of faith) provides the organizing principle of the New Testament texts. The New Testament texts are also incarnated in contexts, so Jesus gives us the "line call" on how we should approach texts whose meanings or application seem less clear. [5]

Ethically, the twin love command -- love God and love neighbor -- provide the organizing principle of all biblical ethics, including New Testament ethics.  Yes, Psalm 137:9 celebrates the murder of Babylonian babies, but Jesus' command to love our enemies provides an authoritative lens for the appropriation of this verse (Matt. 5:43-48). [6]

4. On issues where the consensus of faith does not have a clear position, individual denominations or traditions may. But these are not part of an orthodox biblical worldview. They are "adiophora," matters that are not essential or at the core.

I believe it is possible to see this orthodox biblical worldview in the biblical texts in two ways. First, we can redefine the words as necessary and flatten the text into a single coherent narrative. Alternatively, we can read the texts in context and situate them in a "flow of revelation" that is ultimately pointing toward orthodoxy. In this second approach, the earlier biblical texts are on a journey toward orthodoxy.

5. An orthodox biblical worldview thus trusts that the Holy Spirit was guiding the church to the right understanding of Scripture. This is a "trilateral" between Spirit, Church, and Scripture. 

Where is reason? It is inevitable. It is in every sentence of this post. It is in every sentence of anyone disagreeing with this post. The key is that we reason with faith seeking understanding, open to God's illumination.

[1] Note that since the debate was the Bible versus the Bible, it required an outside mechanism to decide (see comments on Godel's incompleteness theorem in the previous post). By faith we believe that the Spirit led the Church to the right decision.

[2] Again, there is no verse that says, "It's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John folks." The decision on the contents of the canon had to be made from outside the canon looking in.

[3] Here I allude to the old idea that some beliefs are dogma and written in blood. Some are doctrine and written in ink. But others are more in pencil. 

[4] I sense I might get some push back here from some Old Testament scholars, but, in my opinion, they are likely changing the meaning of the Old Testament text to accomplish what I am arguing for without admitting it.

[5] Again, I can imagine some pushing back on this. As with the objectors in #4, I might argue that those pushing back have possibly already altered their interpretations of the New Testament to fit the creeds and done what I am arguing for without admitting it.

[6] I can see others objecting to this. However, almost like the unanimous faith in one God in Scripture, the love command is the most pervasive ethic in all of Scripture and both Matthew 22 and Romans 13 say as much.

7.5 Biblical Paradigms as a Case Study

Happy Philosophy Thursday! Finishing up a chapter on epistemology.
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17. There was a professor when I came to Indiana Wesleyan University who taught history through the lens of a biblical worldview. By that time, I had gone through the fires of seminary and beyond and was in the final stages of developing what I might call a contextual understanding of the Bible. Biblical worldview language hadn't really been part of my holiness background, although I had certainly heard of it. It was a foundational concept though for the history department at IWU at that time.

Coming to IWU was a good thing for me. If I had taken a job at a research university, I would probably have continued on my merry way in a bubble where I didn't have to articulate my paradigm shifts to anyone. I could just teach the Bible the scholarly way. I wouldn't have had to engage a quite powerful machine of counter-argument. 

But IWU students were me, ten years earlier. They hadn't gone through the fires I had, and they probably didn't need to. But how could I speak their language? How could I get back into their heads? How could I rewind my mind ten years?

18. In my third or fourth year at IWU, I talked the Religion Department into having a regular colloquium. We would make presentations to our students on one issue or another. The first one was in the old College Wesleyan Church, and it was on hermeneutics.

At that first one, I presented a paper titled, "The Bible as an Object of Knowledge." It was an early attempt for me to try to put into words the contextual paradigm shift that I had undergone during my formal studies of the Bible. The title presented a simple truth. The meaning of the Bible is something we have to input into our heads. In other words, we have to interpret it.

Many, many people act like the meaning of the Bible is obvious. It's an unexamined assumption. But in reality there is disagreement about every inch of the Bible. I have repeatedly pointed out that there are 10,000s of denominations each with different interpretations. Visit 10 churches preaching on the same text and you may get 10 different "truths" from the passage. "Now here's what's going on here" or "Here's what no one has noticed before." Grab a shelf full of commentaries on any passage and you will have multiple interpretations on the same passage by those who know the most about the passage! 

And, as I've mentioned, some of what people say is the Bible doesn't actually come from the Bible. For example, our position on abortion doesn't really come from the Bible. The Bible doesn't say a word about abortion. That doesn't mean our position is wrong. It just means that we don't realize how much of what we say is the Bible really comes from our traditions, experiences, and assumptions. 

When I say, "the Bible is an object of knowledge," I mean we have to interpret it. I chuckle when people pit reason and the Bible against each other -- trust the Bible, not your reason. I chuckle to myself. What the heck do you think you are using when you interpret the Bible??!! You use your reason when you are reading the Bible. Reason is what is taking place whenever you connect two thoughts together.

The magnitude of our lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling on such things.

19. So what is a biblical worldview as this phrase is normally used? It is a paradigm. It is a system of organizing the data of the Bible. In good Kantian fashion, there are two key components here. There is the data of the Bible and there is the organization our minds give to that data.

My paper back in 2000 talked about three main reasons why there are so many different interpretations of the Bible. The first is disagreement over the meaning of individual words, verses, and passages. The second is disagreement on how to integrate the various passages of Scripture together. And the third is the gap between the time of the Bible and our time. The result is a shocking multiplicity of possible biblical worldviews. I dare not say infinite. I won't say countless. But it is a much larger number than we probably can come to grips with. [32]

This correlates well with the elements of a biblical paradigm that I just mentioned. The "data" of the Bible is the interpretations of individual passages. These can be probably correct interpretations but they can also be false data, so to speak. Suffice it to say, 1) if there is one correct interpretation of the original meaning of a passage and 2) there are a lots of different interpretations of that passage, then 3) most of the interpretations of the passage are wrong about the original meaning. [33] This simple argument suggests that there is more false data about the Bible than true data -- at least in relation to what the Bible first meant. Remember, these are the "atoms" in a person's biblical worldview.

20. But then there is the organization of that data. If you think of the data of the Bible as a word cloud, some of the data is "bigger" than others. That is to say, some verses are going to be more central to the meaning of the Bible than others. A good biblical worldview would prioritize properly. Does Hebrews get a bigger say on the topic of sacrifice or Leviticus?

Martin Luther suggested that we use the "clear" verses to interpet the "unclear" ones. He is basically talking about organizing principles. Which verses do we select as most significant? (Which ones do we effectively ignore?) Which data do we make central? Which data do we consider strange and puzzling? The problem is that we disagree on which verses are clear and which are unclear!

There are a lot of different ways to prioritize and integrate the biblical materials. For example, 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 both talk about death using the metaphor of sleep. Most Christian traditions consider this merely a metaphor and prioritize parts of Scripture that suggest we are conscious between our deaths and the resurrection.

But not the Seventh Day Adventists. One of the fascinating things about Seventh Day Adventists is that, from an orthodox perspective, they prioritize the wrong passages. They notice the "weird" passages and then choose them over the ones other Christians consider "clear." So most Christians recognize that the early Christians worshiped on the Lord's Day, Sunday. But the Seventh Day Adventists have noticed that the Old Testament Sabbath was on Saturday.  

So in their organization of the data of Scripture, they have prioritized the Saturday Sabbath over Sunday as the Lord's Day. It is another organization of the biblical materials. It is actually quite staggering to think of how many possible permutations there could be.

For example, someone might say, "The New Testament reflects a perversion of the Old Testament" and prioritize the Old Testament as the authority over a biblical worldview. Frankly, this would be the orthodox Jewish way to organize the Christian Bible.

Along with different interpretations of indivdiual verses, the different organizations of biblical material into different biblical theologies have naturally resulted in a myriad of different denominational biblical theologies.

21. In order to construct a biblical worldview, there have to be organizing principles that you bring to the text. When I learned about Gödel's incompleteness theorem, it seemed to apply here. The basic gist is that a system is never grounded completely in itself. Similarly, the text of the Bible can't entirely interpret or organize itself. There have to be guiding principles, scaffolding, that comes alongside, a meaning-harvesting mechanism.

I'm messing with some Reformation pillars here, but as a holiness child I didn't grow up with them. They ultimately were unreflective anyway. The perspicuity of Scripture is unaware that the clarity actually comes from tradition. "Scripture only" has resulted in 20,000-30,000 different denominations. They were ultimately unreflective perspectives. In 2000, I would have said they were pre-modern conceptions.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral in this regard is more profound than you might think. (And who cares whether Wesley ever used those words or if Outler coined the phrase -- it is hermeneutically profound.) You can't get rid of reason if you utter sentences. Tradition is what steers our biblical theologies. And the Holy Spirit speaks to us in experience, so I would think twice before rejecting him.

22. So all the principles we have explored earlier in the chapter apply to this case study of biblical worldivews. They are paradigms. They shift from time to time and group to group.

And power is involved in those shifts. Denominations police their biblical paradigms. Inerrancy is a paradigm that is guarded by powers that be. In my first decade at IWU, I read the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. I didn't find anything too difficult in it.

BUT, I also recognized that in the paradigm of those who drafted it, it likely meant a lot more than what it said. For example, once you allow for different genres to play by different rules, then inerrancy doesn't ensure any specific position on evolution or women in ministry or pseudonymity. It only requires that you consider the Bible to be truthful in what it affirms. 

But that's not why the term is policed. The term exists in part to prevent interpreters from drawing certain conclusions from the biblical text. That is the real nature of the paradigm. And it is guarded by those with power. This is why a John Sanders can lose his job over Open Theism, even though he believed he was interpreting the Bible correctly. 

So, there are many possible biblical worldviews. It seems reasonable to use Christian orthodoxy (that is, tradition) as its utlimate organizing principle. That can't change what it originally meant. As Gordon Fee once said, it can't come to mean something it never meant. [34]  I wouldn't put it exactly that way. But I would agree that the original meaning is what it meant, and it can't change. [35]

But we can prioritize those parts of Scripture -- a chorus of voices -- that align with orthodoxy. We can make those the fulchrum points and map the rest of Scripture to them. We can speak of an orthodox biblical worldview -- but it is only one of many, many possible interpretive organizations of the biblical material.

[32] In the early 2000s, I felt inspired to write up these insights for a contest with Westminster John Knox Press. I wrote Who Decides What the Bible Means? in a week. Unfortunately, they did not accept it, nor did Abingdon (I felt I was blocked by someone who got them to publish his version of the book instead). I finally self-published it.

[33] I want to be clear that I believe in the polyvalence of texts and that God uses the flexibility of potential meaning to speak many different messages to many different people. When I say there is one correct interpretation, I mean of the original meaning, which is only one possible valid meaning.

[34] Gordon Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 4th ed. (Zondervan, 2014).

[35] I have another writing project, The Flow of Revelation, that is basically a biblical theology that integrates the Bible's original meaning in a flow that ends in Christian orthodoxy.

 _______________________
Previously,
1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
2.2 Contextualization in Missions
2.3 Beyond Relativism and Absolutes 
3.1 Setting the Stage for a Political Conversation
3.2 Binary Political Thinking
3.3 Assumptions about Christ and Culture
3.4 All our thinking and living is enculturated.
7.1 How Do We Know (part 1)
7.2 A Framework of Understanding (part 2)
7.3 The Ordering of Impressions (part 3)
7.4 Paradigm Shifts (part 4)

 

Mike Winger Video 2.2 (Genesis 2)

1. My walk through Mike Winger's videos on women in ministry and leadership continues. He spends over an hour in his second video on Genesis 2. He goes through a lot of small arguments that various people make here and there. He seems especially to engage two resources.

First, I am glad that he has continued his dialog with Philip Payne. It seems to me he argues with him over small points. I went to those points in Payne's book and didn't get the same feel as you get from his video. I didn't disagree with Winger on most of his points in relation to these small points. There are so many arguments that have been made by so many people on both sides -- some are stronger than others.

The other source he engages significantly in this video is Two Views on Women in Ministry in the Zondervan Counterpoints series. It features Tom Schreiner and Craig Blomberg on the complementarian side and Linda Bellvue and Craig Keener (Asbury professor) on the egalitarian side.

You may be surprised to know that I agree with a great deal of what Winger says about the details of Genesis 2. In fact, he reminded me of some of the same reactions I had to various ideas in seminary. At Asbury, Don Joy was particularly fond of the suggestion that the initial 'adam of Genesis 2 might have been androgynous -- both male and female. I thought this was funny then. Joy had asked the Bible faculty at Asbury about the concept before he published his book Bonding. They told him they didn't see it, but he published it anyway.

I would say, though, that I don't think it's as outrageous as it might seem. I just don't think it's the right interpretation.

2. I do want to get to some key points of disagreement, though, before getting into minutia. Fairly early on in the video, he says that both complementarians and egalitarians both agree on the centrality of Genesis 2 for the debate. Let me say as an odd duck that I have never really felt this way. In my booklet, Why Wesleyans Favor Women in Ministry (2004), I didn't mention Genesis at all. I do mention it in my more recent, A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry and Leadership because it is part of the debate, but it has never been the central part of the debate for me.

Why? Two reasons.

The first is something that I discussed in one of two posts I made in preparation for this one. We are in a phase of biblical studies and biblical theology that is characterized by what I have called "flatness." For most, it is a "pre-modern" or "pre-reflective" perspective. That is to say, it is based on a deficient understanding of how to read the books of the Bible in context.

I may actually be more annoyed at the prevalence of these "narrative" readings among post-liberals for whom it is a postmodern reading. These narrative readers deliberately minimize contextual readings in favor of reading the Bible as a single story. I am perfectly fine with this as long as you acknowledge that you are reading the Bible out of context to do so. 

The pre-modern reads the Bible as one book from God to us without awareness of context. But the post-liberal to a large extent ignores historical difference. For some, it's a matter of principle even. In my Who Decides What the Bible Means? I set out as legitimate 1) original meaning interpretations, 2) orthodox-consensus readings of Scripture, 3) church-community readings of Scripture, and 4) individual spiritual readings of Scripture -- the key being that the Holy Spirit is directing these readings.

3. But if we construct a biblical theology, it is clear that a Christian reading of Scripture must privilege New Testament conclusions on Old Testament issues over the original meaning of the Old Testament. [At this point, a number of evangelical Old Testament scholars break out in hives.]

For example, there is nothing in Leviticus to suggest that animal sacrifices (or the temple) will ever stop being offered. In this regard, Hebrews provides the authoritative perspective on those sacrifices. They were illustrations of the one effective sacrifice of Christ. Similarly, circumcision is the assumption of the Old Testament. But Paul tells the Galatians they will have fallen from grace if they get circumcised.

Finally, as I show in the previous post I mentioned, the New Testament has distinct interpretations of Old Testament passages that go well beyond what those passages meant originally. For example, we would not get the impression that Lot was greatly distressed about the sins of Sodom from Genesis, but 2 Peter 2:7-8 portray him as a righteous man vexed by the sins of the city. We can take 2 Peter to be making an inspired point through Lot without thereby changing our inductive interpretation of Genesis 19.

What are you getting at Ken? What I am getting at is that I am most concerned with what the New Testament has to say about men and women more than with what Genesis 2 by itself says. This is not because Genesis 2 isn't significant. It is because Christian theology prioritizes New Testament revelation as more complete and more precise. 

(Mind you -- I know I am creating challenges for myself hereby. Winger already mentions in this video that 1 Timothy 2:13 uses the order of Adam and Eve's creation to support 2:12. I will defer that discussion for later.) 

Let me illustrate this principle of NT privilege. Colossians 2:16 tells the Gentile Colossians to stand their ground about anyone who condemns them because they do not keep the Jewish Sabbath. Romans 14:5 similarly tells the Romans to decide as a matter of their own conscience whether they will consider one day above another -- a clear allusion to the Jewish Sabbath. In short, Paul did not consider the Jewish Sabbath to be binding on Gentile believers. For him, it was a matter of personal conviction for them.

Now this is a straightforward observation, in my opinion. But it causes all matter of hives for the Flatlanders. "But, but, but." One person said to me once, "But the Sabbath goes back to creation!" (Gen. 2:3). "I know," I responded. "Isn't it crazy? Paul doesn't care."

4. So what does Genesis 2 say? Here let me invoke two posts I did recently in my Science and Scripture series, one of which mentioned different approaches to Genesis 2-3 in that regard and the second of which did some preparatory work on questions of genre. I'll leave the New Testament use of Genesis 2-3 for later in Winger's series.

First, Genesis 2-3 in context was an expression of the messed up state of the world. That is its point. I argued in the second post just mentioned that a comparison of Genesis 1-2 suggests that these are not to be taken as rigid history but as more "archetypal" -- expressing fundamental things. The reason is because Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present a different order of creation. This doesn't mean one is wrong. It means that we are wrong to expect them to be literal presentations. They are doing something more profound. They aren't exactly poetry, but what they are doing is as "poetic" as it is literal, in my opinion.

The later of the two creation presentations, Genesis 1, puts male and female together as co-regents of the earth with no fall mentioned.

The second presentation in Genesis 2-3 culminates in three expressions of the state of the world. Men work hard to get the soil to yield its fruit. Both men and women will die even though God had intended for them to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. Women will have painful childbearing and they will find themselves dominated by their husbands. And of course there are consequences for snakes too.

This is the point of Genesis 2-3. These chapters express the fallen situation of humanity. They are "etiological." They answer the questions, "Why do men have to work so hard on the land?" "Why do people die?" "Why do women have such painful childbirth?" "Why are women dominated by men?" (And why don't people and snakes get along?) [1]

In the process, the point of Genesis 2 is to picture the world before it was this way. As I have argued, it is probably not a video tape. If it were meant as a videotape, it would contradict the order of Genesis 1. Rather, it expresses that 1) men did not have to work hard before the Fall, 2) women did not have a painful life before the Fall, with their husbands dominating them and, of much less importance, 3) snakes and humans weren't on such bad terms before the Fall. 

For this reason, if there is hierarchy in Genesis 2, it is not the point. Indeed, the point is the harmony of Adam and Eve before the Fall, their peaceful cooperation. Their co-regency. The point of the way it is presented is the oneness and unity of Adam and Eve before the Fall -- the one fleshness of them and the distinction of them from the animals -- not Adam's authority over Eve. That almost goes against the point.

Shocker -- I am willing to say that there could be a light assumption of Adam's primacy in the way Creation 2 is presented. What I am saying is that, not only is that not the point. I am saying that to emphasize it is to miss the point of the story, which is the harmony of the two prior to their act of disobedience. 

In such a thoroughly patriarchal world, how might you present a pre-Fall situation that did not have man and woman at each other's throats? That is what Genesis 2 is about. It is the structure of the ancient world without the conflict, struggle, and bitterness. It is God meeting them in their assumptions and moving them from there. It gave an idyllic picture that was the opposite of dominance.

But God wants to do more!

5. So the street warfare that Winger engages in is all fine and good. I agree with him on almost every minute point of interpretation. But, at the risk of playing into his hands, I believe that this is a spiritual struggle. There are women who know they are called. There are men who know women are called. Some of the interpretations of some can be a little "creative," shall we say. (And Winger fully acknowledges that there are some crazy complementarian interpretations out there too.) 

But is because they see the trajectory of Scripture. They see the whole council of God. One of the problems with fundamentalism, in my opinion, is that it can get so involved with the verse-by-verse street warfare that it misses the Spirit of Scripture. It misses the big point because it is arguing about some detail of the letter. This is what the Princeton Calvinists did with slavery in the mid-1800s.

This is not putting experience above the Bible. Interpreting and applying the Bible is a complicated thing -- look at how many thousands of interpretations and applications there are out there. A little guidance from the Holy Spirit seems in order. Indeed, Bible technicians, "letteralists," can be dangerous because they can miss the heart of Scripture while focusing on the details (cf. Matt. 23:23-24).  

[1] I have no problem seeing the snake as Satan, but this was not part of the original meaning of Genesis 3. Not only is Satan not mentioned, but the understanding of Satan does not seem to have come into play until after this time -- later in the post-exilic period. It is not until the first century BC that any surviving Jewish writing equates the snake with Satan.