Remembering Søren Kierkegaard

He was an odd guy in many ways. He was out of step with, and way ahead of, the times in which he lived. And he was a constant irritation to the religious establishment of Denmark, the country in which he lived his entire life.

Søren Kierkegaard is the one of whom I am writing. He was born two hundred years ago, in February 1813, and died at the young age of 42, on November 11, 1855. (This is the third month in a row to write about a significant Christian thinker/doer of the past; in September I wrote about Albert Schweitzer, and last month it was Jonathan Edwards.)

When I was a junior at William Jewell College, I remember hearing about Kierkegaard for the first time. My interest in him grew over the next several years—so much so that my doctoral dissertation was titled “The Meaning of ‘Paradox’: A Study of the Use of the Word ‘Paradox’ in Contemporary Theological and Philosophical Writings with Special Reference to Søren Kierkegaard.”

When I was writing my dissertation, I was mainly interested in Kierkegaard’s brilliant thinking. But soon after beginning my teaching career in 1968 I read the (to me) captivating book Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective (1968) by Vernard Eller, the outstanding Church of the Brethren scholar. (That stimulating book can be found online here.)

Reading Eller’s book led me to read again Kierkegaard’s last writings, collected in a book entitled Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon ‘Christendom' 1854-1855 (1944; new edition, 1968). That volume is a hard-hitting collection of criticism not of Christianity but of Christendom, institutionalized Christianity as seen in the state church of Denmark (and, by implication, elsewhere).

In the year he died, Kierkegaard expressed his opposition to Christendom like this: “The religious situation in the land is:

Christianity (that is, the Christianity of the New Testament—and everything else is indeed not Christianity, least of all by calling itself that), Christianity does not exist at all . . . .

So in a sense, Kierkegaard was a fundamentalist—but not in the sense of emphasizing the sine qua non doctrines of Christianity as did the fundamentalist movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Rather, he emphasized that real Christianity must include “radical discipleship,” to use Eller’s words.

Kierkegaard’s writings included philosophical/theological works such as Philosophical Fragments (1844) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846), psychological/theological books such as Fear and Trembling (1843) and The Sickness unto Death (1847), and devotional/theological writings such as Works of Love (1847) and Practice in Christianity (1850).

For you who would like to read more of Kierkegaard’s challenging thinking, I highly recommend the excellent book Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard (2002), which is introduced at this link.

The first half of that book, selected and edited by Charles E. Moore, is a summary of SK’s key ideas, and then roughly the last half is a collection of excerpts and aphorisms arranged topically. Reading “Provocations” greatly helps us to understand Kierkegaard better. But more importantly, it helps us to grasp more fully what it means to be a true Christian.

Long before Bonhoeffer wrote his noted book about Christian discipleship, Kierkegaard stressed the necessity for Christians to follow Jesus faithfully. In his words, “Christ comes to the world as the example, constantly enjoining: Imitate me. We humans prefer to adore him instead” (Kindle, loc. 3426).

Even though he died 158 years ago, Søren Kierkegaard remains not only well worth remembering, but also his thought-provoking writings are worth reading, pondering, and embracing.

What Ever Happened to Southern Baptists?

"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” is a highly acclaimed 1962 black-and-white movie. June and I enjoyed watching that psychological thriller for the first time last Friday evening.

Baby Jane was an adorable vaudeville performer in 1917 as the movie begins, and after a few scenes in 1935 most of the movie takes place in the present (1961) when the former Baby Jane Hudson has become an ugly villain, impressively portrayed by Bette Davis.

Please don’t misunderstand: I am not comparing the evil Jane Hudson, or the movie, to Southern Baptists in most ways. But there are, unfortunately, some similarities.

During much of my lifetime, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was a vibrant, generally attractive, growing denomination. Figured as the percentage of the total U.S. population, SBC membership grew by more than 30% from 1950 to 1980.

But things began to change, and the percentage of SBs decreased by nearly 15% from 1990 to 2010. There were multiple reasons, but during that time the SBC, like Baby Jane, had turned rather ugly under the leadership of fundamentalist-leaning leaders.

Consequently, from 1950 to 2010 I personally changed from being a proud (in the good sense of that word) Southern Baptist, to a wary SB, then to an embarrassed SB (as I wrote about in my book “Fed Up with Fundamentalism”), and finally to being a former SB.

The Southern Baptist Convention has long been the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. According to the 2012 "Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches," the SBC has 16.2 million members, more than twice the number of the second place United Methodist Church with 7.8 million.

And yet a recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out that Baptists are departing from the religious traditions of their childhood faster than any other Protestant group.”

LifeWay Research, a polling firm tied to the SBC, even projects that the church’s membership will fall by half, to 8.5 million by 2050, returning to the level of the mid-1950s.

Decline in membership, of course, is not only a Southern Baptist phenomenon. Diana Butler Bass’s book Christianity after Religion (2012) documents the notable decline of membership in most U.S. Protestant denominations. But the decline in the SBC is among the most pronounced.

There are several possible reasons for the downward trend. Let me suggest just a few:

·   An inability, or lack of desire, to keep up with the changing mindset of the times. Like the aging Jane Hudson, many SBC churches and institutions seem to want to live in the heyday of the past (the 1950s) rather than seeking to cope with the new realities of a new generation.

·   A retroactive stance toward women. Recently Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite posted a provocative article, “Five Christian theologies scarier than Halloween.” One of the five: “women should 'submit’”—such as was called for in the Baptist Faith and Message as amended in 1998.

·   A marked alignment with conservative Republicans. In contrast to Jimmy Carter, the most famous SB politician of the 1970s, we now have Sen. Ted Cruz at the leading SB in Washington. In addition to Sen. Cruz, all five of the Southern Baptist U.S. Representatives who took office in January are conservative Republicans who last month voted against the bill to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling. No wonder many people look askance at SBs!

Baby Jane couldn’t restore her previous attractiveness. But such would be possible for Southern Baptists, and I hope that it will happen—and pray it will happen long before the end of the projected 50-year decline.

"Nightmare in Maryville"

Maryville is a county seat town in northwest Missouri. It is the home of Northwest Missouri State University, and as we lived in the neighboring county that is where several of my high school classmates went to college.

Outside of those familiar with northwest Missouri, though, not many people have heard much about Maryville. But that recently changed.

But since the appearance of “Nightmare in Maryville,” the front page article in the Oct. 13 issue of the Kansas City Star, the town of some 12,000 people has been in newspapers as far away as Los Angeles, on national TV news programs, and on prominent websites like HuffingtonPost.com (at least nine times, first at this link).

It all centers on Daisy Coleman, a 14-years-old girl who in Jan. 2012 was allegedly raped by a high school senior. But no one was convicted of the crime against Daisy—mainly, it seems, because the guilty young man was from a prominent family who was able to get the charges dropped.

On Oct. 18, Daisy divulged “what really happened” in an article posted on the Internet, and it seems to be in basic agreement with the Star’s article. It seems clear she did some things she shouldn’t have done.

She shouldn’t have been drinking alcohol with her 13-year-old friend, as that is illegal. She shouldn’t have sneaked out to “have fun” with older boys in the middle of the night. And she shouldn’t have drunk the “bitch cup” when she got there.

But what she did pales in comparison to what happened next. It seems quite clear that she was sexually abused—and then dumped back outside her house and “left for dead” in the freezing cold. None of the foolish things she did can possibly justify the criminal action taken against her.

Neither can anything excuse the crassness of the people in Maryville who turned against her rather than blaming those who grossly mistreated her.

Unfortunately, rape cases are not terribly rare, and if it had “only” been that, it would not have been widely reported in the media. In 2011 there were over 1,450 cases of forcible rape in Missouri, including four in Nodaway County, where Daisy lived with her mother and three brothers.

But in the case of Daisy, the crime against her has been aggravated by what seems to be a failure to prosecute adequately the perpetrators of the crime, as well as by the negative reactions toward Daisy and her family.

A special prosecutor from Kansas City has now been appointed to re-open the case. Several months from now there may be “justice for Daisy,” such as many people locally and nationally are calling for.

In reading Daisy’s own version of what happened on that night 21 months ago and since, I was sorry to see that she wrote, “I quit praying because if God were real, why would he do this?” I can understanding something of the pain and hurt Daisy has experienced, on various levels.

But why blame God? How did God have anything directly to do with her own misbehavior, the criminal behavior of those who abused her, or the failure of the legal system?

I wish Daisy could read the helpful new book with the pungent title “How to Pray When You’re Pissed at God” (2013) by Ian Punnett.

At any rate, I want to say, “Daisy, don’t be so quick to give up on God. You badly need God’s warm embrace and the support of a community of faith. And it is possible for you to find both.”

In Appreciation of Ignatius and the Jesuits

As many of you know, I teach one course a semester at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. I have been doing that, and have greatly enjoying doing that, since August 2006, so I am now in my fifteenth semester there. How time flies!

Founded in 1910 as Rockhurst College, it became a university in 1999 and is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. The oldest and most prestigious member of that organization is Georgetown University, founded in 1789.

The Society of Jesus (S.J.), whose members are usually called Jesuits, is a Catholic Order founded by Ignatius Loyola and officially approved six years later by Pope Paul III in 1540. It is currently the largest male Order in the Roman Catholic Church with about 17,500 members worldwide.

Ignatius, whose real name was Iñigo López de Loyola, was born in the Basque region of Spain on October 27, 1491. (Loyola was the name of the village where he was born, not a “family name,” although it is often used that way now.)

As a young man, Ignatius was a knight and was wounded in battle in 1521—a month after Luther had declared “Here I stand” at the Imperial Diet of Worms in Germany.

While recovering, Ignatius turned his attention to spiritual matters. This resulted in his writing “Spiritual Exercises” in 1522-24. After recuperating, he ended up at Paris University where he and six university friends formed the Society of Jesus on August 15, 1534.

Statue of Ignatius at Rockhurst U.

Before starting to teach at Rockhurst, I knew little about Ignatius or the Jesuits. (I was a big admirer, though, of Father Gabriel, the impressive young Jesuit missionary in the superlative 1986 movie “The Mission.”)

And I did know about Francis Xavier, one of the original seven Jesuits and the first Jesuit missionary. In 1549 he became the first Christian missionary to set foot in Japan.

As I have learned more about them, my appreciation for both Ignatius and the Jesuits has grown. Earlier this year I read Margaret Silf’s popularly done, and somewhat quixotic, book “Just Call Me López: Getting to the Heart of Ignatius of Loyola” (2012). (This might be a book some of you would enjoy reading if you want to learn more about Ignatius.)

Perhaps the primary popularizer of the Jesuits in the U.S. at this time is James Martin (S.J., b. 1960). In addition to his highly readable “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life” (2010) in which he explains how Ignatius helps people with practical spirituality, from time to time he also appears on “The Colbert Report.”

Some of the notable Jesuits you may have heard of include Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Daniel Berrigan, and John Dear (about whom I want to post an article soon). Of course the most famous Jesuit of all is now Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope.

Ignatius’ main life principle became the Jesuit motto: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (“For the greater glory of God”). I use this on the introductory page of the PowerPoint slides I use for each class period at RU.

Even though I am not a Jesuit and have several distinctly different doctrinal beliefs, I admire the sincerity and spiritual commitment of Ignatius and am not reluctant to use his words as a suitable expression for my work at a Jesuit university.

And I am happy to post this in appreciation of Ignatius and the Jesuits.

"It's Not About the Nail"

Some of you probably have seen a certain YouTube video making the rounds. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to click on this link and watch the 1 min. 42 sec. video before reading the rest of this posting.

Written and produced by Jason Headley, the above-mentioned video is titled “It’s Not About the Nail.” It was sent to me by a family member who referred to it (on the email subject line) as “Fun (and short) video clip -- worth watching.”

Online comments include such words as “hilarious,” “LOL,” and “cracking up” – along with many more serious and some sarcastic comments.

In my reply to those on the family distro, I wrote, “Well, I thought this video was interesting, but I didn't think it was funny.” And, “It seems to me that sometimes just listening/understanding isn't enough and not particularly helpful.”

The response from the one who initiated the conversation: “Sometimes no matter how right you may be, if you cannot connect empathically with the other person, it is all for naught and they will not hear your truth.” I agree. But sometimes people will not listen to reason even if you do connect empathically.

That’s the reason I didn’t think the video was funny. The guy seems to have listened quite well. But that didn’t seem to help overcome the pain the woman in the video was experiencing. As my oldest granddaughter wrote, “Maybe it’s just that sometimes people just have to face facts in their own time.” Probably so. But sometimes we may need to confront others.

This discussion brought to mind the fine book “Caring Enough to Confront” (1973; 3^rd ed., 2009) by Mennonite theologian David Augsburger (b. 1938). In the Preface, Augsburger writes, “If I love you, I must tell you the truth” (p. iii).

Of course, the truth must be expressed carefully and with compassion. That is why Augsburger’s first chapter is called “Care-fronting: A Creative Way Through Conflict.” Putting care and confrontation together provides “the unique combination of truth and love that is necessary for building human relationships” (p. 9)

Empathic listening is important in showing others that we care about them, and usually any communication is enhanced by really paying attention to the other’s pain and fears. Once we help others know that we really care about them, then perhaps we can help them solve the problems they are facing or the fears they are wrestling with.

The old saying is doubtlessly true in many cases: “People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.”

Empathetic listening is important in families and among close friends. And certainly it needs to be practiced wherever, and especially whenever, there are conflicts—at home, among friends, at work and elsewhere.

Is that how I should respond to those who strongly disagree with my opinions expressed in this blog (or on Facebook)? Perhaps to a certain degree. But I don’t make these postings as a pastor, counselor, or mediator. I am trying to encourage serious thinking, and thoughtful dialogue.

When there are disagreements with what I write, I welcome people expressing their opposing viewpoints. But I don’t think my primary response should be, “Yes, I understand how you feel.”

There is a time and place to deal with feelings, of course. But this blog is designed primarily for dialogue, which occurs best when opposing viewpoints are expressed and discussed. Often, indeed, it is the nail needs to be talked about.