22AR27-13

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AR 27:13 - The "White Christian" feelings of comfort barometer

In this issue:

EDUCATION - "the intolerant, progressive ideology that increasingly dominates schools and universities"

SYNCRETISM - the penal substitution view of atonement as "an individualism" of Whiteness in Christianity

Apologia Report 27:13 (1,566)
April 6, 2022

EDUCATION

"There is no greater threat to young people's intellectual development and personal integrity than the progressive ideology dominating schools." -- so begins Amy L. Wax's review of Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competitive Age, by Matt Feeney <www.bit.ly/3L4RhaM> which ends with a classic case of the reviewer pointing out what the author failed to include.

First, regarding the book's content, Wax finds that "Americans have transformed what was once a natural function, guided by age-old conventions and instincts, into an elaborate, minutely analyzed project beset by conflicting recommendations and expectations. ... Yet what do all these tracts [on childrearing, family life, and parent-child relations] amount to? As a parent myself, an aficionado of such works, and with an academic interest in how children become contributing citizens, my answer is: not much, and little of use to the average American parent. ...

"As Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker <stevenpinker.com> and others have noted, most experts resist the notion that biology [likely traceable to children's varied natural endowments] is important - sometimes more important than upbringing. A commitment to a blank-slate ideology, with its emphasis on nurture and parenting, renders much research in child development, and much childrearing advice based on it, virtually useless. ...

Matt Feeney <mattfeeney.com>, "a journalist, writer, and father of three from Oakland, California.... offers a very personal take on the 'little platoon' [Edmund] Burke deemed foundational: the nuclear family. Feeney ... paints a wide-ranging portrait of the quirks and perversities of our current parenting culture. The picture that emerges is not a happy one. Little Platoons amounts to a sustained lament that borders on a dirge.

"Feeney's chief complaint is neither original nor unfamiliar: modern families ... find themselves running an anxious, taxing, frenetic race. ... What's the purpose of this ordeal? To secure for their children a place in the university-to-elite pipeline, the only sure path to life at the top of society. That means getting them into a prestigious, selective college.

"Feeney depicts the college admissions obsession as malign and corrosive. ...

"But this dire account is unpersuasive on several fronts. Feeney seems oblivious to the limited reach of the high-stakes college rat race. ...

"Feeney seems affronted by the very idea of outside pressures being brought to bear on families. ...

"[H]is critique of the college rat race implicitly reveals a distinctly modern view of family life. ... His ideal families take stability for granted and assume the satisfaction of basic needs. ...

"In holding up this paradigm Feeney seems oblivious or indifferent to alternatives...."

Wax uses the second half of her review to take up where Feeney's bad news leaves off (and ultimately ends up with an even more dismal conclusion). "He is silent on the education system's sharp left turn: the aggressive, progressive explosion of 'wokeness'; the rise of social justice warriorhood; the repeated invocation of systemic racism and the patriarchy; the suppression of free speech and inquiry; the aggressive 'cancel culture' intolerance; the obsession with identity politics, 'disadvantage,' victims, and oppressors; the disparagement of white society and white 'supremacy'; and the denigration of meritocratic principles, rigor, logic, and evidence-based arguments that now pervade virtually all educational institutions from kindergarten on up. ...

"[R]eality and the dangers it poses would have required a deeper dive. One place to start would be with *Turning the Tide*, a 2016 report on college admissions reform by the Harvard Graduate School of Education <www.bit.ly/3wrZX73> endorsed by many top colleges. ... Turning the Tide serves as a sinister 'how to' guide for elite educrats who want to impose their tendentious vision on the rest of us. By shaping the incoming class, admissions bureaucrats can do just that.

"Although trying to sound impartial and culture-war neutral, Turning the Tide is anything but." Significant discussion follows.

"Turning the Tide helps tell the big story Matt Feeney misses: there is no more grievous threat to young people's intellectual development and personal integrity, or to parents' proper authority over their children, than the intolerant, progressive ideology that increasingly dominates schools and universities today. ... Feeney's failure to indict the education system for this egregious exercise in 'moral rent-seeking' detracts fatally from his book's timeliness and force." Claremont Review of Books, Sum '21, <www.bit.ly/3tyrJNb>

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SYNCRETISM & WOKEISM

"How White Christians turned syncretism into an insult" by Ross Kane (professor and director of doctoral programs, Virginia Theological Seminary) -- finds that "In recent years ... syncretism has become [a] derogatory term. What it implies may include 'Your Christianity doesn't seem pure,' 'Your Christianity is less refined than mine,' or 'Your Christianity feels exotic to me.' It nearly always comes down to "Your Christianity makes me feel uncomfortable." ...

"For centuries, syncretism was something to aspire to. This makes it different from heresy, theology's other epithet, which has never been a compliment. Syncretism was long used to express admiration for the ability to form alliances across ecclesial divisions. It only became pejorative in the early 20th century. ...

"The evolution of syncretism tells a larger story about Christianity over the last few centuries. It's a story about racism and how that racism has constrained and imperiled our understanding of divine revelation. ...

"In the 16th century, before syncretism was an insult, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a letter to Philip Melanchthon. ...

"Here syncretism signifies prudent cooperation during a fractious time. Similarly, Zwingli promoted syncretism among Swiss Reformed churches. Martin Bucer also called his ecclesial negotiations syncretism.

"The word gained something of its caustic quality during the 17th century, in a fierce Lutheran debate between Georg Calixtus and Abraham Calovius. ... This debate became known as the syncretistic controversy, and people began using the word syncretism to express their worries about Christian purity. ...

"It wasn't until the early 20th century in Christian missionary circles that the word became clearly negative. At this point, White Christians began learning about religious practices in other parts of the world, in part through correspondence with European missionaries. ...

"While an anthropologist used the word syncretism to show the enduring power of African cultures across the Middle Passage and amid centuries of enslavement and racism, White Christian theologians used it to deride forms of Christianity they found inferior to their own. ...

"At the 1928 World Missionary Conference, delegates expressed concern about syncretism among 'younger churches' but not European ones. In many years of studying how Christians used the word syncretism during this era, I've struggled to find places where White Christians used it about themselves. ...

"This worry about purity shaped how Christians understood revelation. White Christianity saw itself as the norm and as the primary bearer of divine revelation. It did not expect to discover something new through different cultures' encounters with Christ. ... In this way, racism inhibited comprehension of divine revelation by narrowing its scope.

"After syncretism became firmly entrenched as a theological insult, outside of theology its connotation changed again. Among anthropologists in the 1990s, syncretism was celebrated as the reshaping of Christianity from an imperial religion into a means of resisting colonialism. Syncretists showed creativity by blending Christianity with indigenous traditions. They carried wisdom from these traditions into a new Christian idiom. ...

"Meanwhile, biblical scholars also recognized dissonance between syncretism's varying associations. Many found themselves caught between the theologians who saw syncretism as an insult and the religious historians and anthropologists who saw syncretism as inevitable. In scripture, biblical scholars found all sorts of syncretisms. Ancient Israelites borrowed rituals and understandings of God from Canaanites. Paul borrowed from Stoicism in his theology and ethics. ...

"The gospel can be transplanted from one culture to another without undergoing significant change, because new cultural expressions of Christianity are considered ancillary to its core and the core of Christianity never changes.

"In this view, syncretism becomes an insult because it represents an understanding of Christianity's core as cultureless. Seeing the gospel as freestanding from culture, however, retains the troubles of Whiteness in Christianity. ...

"For instance, someone might see penal substitution as central to the gospel without realizing that this view of atonement is now tied to an individualism honed in Europe and North America. ...

"Some syncretisms harm Christianity, and indeed some are abominations. White nationalists erecting a wooden cross at the United States Capitol during their insurrection earlier this year was a syncretism, blending Christianity with a vision of White America. ...

"While liberal Christians may be tempted to use the term syncretism as an insult when applying it to someone else, this obscures the fact that we all syncretize. It doesn't help us face the challenges of racism and revelation that accompany syncretism. ...

"'White Christians' feelings of comfort should not be the barometer for whether the church incorporates a particular syncretism." Christian Century, Jun 16 '21, <www.bit.ly/37sWY0z> (Any questions?)

For a more balanced (and evangelical) view of syncretism and related controversies, see Larry Owens' "Syncretism and the Scriptures" <www.bit.ly/3KbpeX7> at the MissioNexus site.

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