I have been wanting to do an interview with an articulate and perceptive non-theist, and I have found one in Dr. Valerie Tarico, author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.
What’s the point?
1. Evangelicals are constantly mischaracterizing non-theists. We need to listen and not preach.
2. There is some common ground of concern here for many of us, especially in the area of the ethical practices of religions that seek to convert.
3. We need to measure our responses against reality. Some of our typical talking points aren’t very impressive, so we might consider retiring or reworking them.
4. I want to build a bridge. Dr. Tarico is very open to that kind of dialog.
Dr. Valerie Tarico is a former evangelical who now describes herself as a spiritual nontheist. Her book The Dark Side distills her moral and rational critique of Evangelical teachings. Tarico is a graduate of Wheaton College. She obtained a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Iowa before completing postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington. She writes regularly for the Huffington Post and hosts a monthly series on SCAN TV Seattle: Moral Politics – Christianity in the Public Square. Last year Tarico founded www.WisdomCommons.org, an interactive website with quotes, stories and poems from around the world all promoting shared ethical values. Her essays about society, faith, and family life can be found at www.spaces.msn.com/awaypoint.
Dr. Tarico, welcome to the Internet Monk.com interview.
1. Tell the Internet Monk.com audience the basic story of how and why you left evangelicalism. I’m particularly interested in any significant books or authors that were part of that journey.
Hmm. Books and authors. I think I ended up falling from faith mostly in spite of the books I was reading to shore up my faith! I grew up in a non-denominational Bible church, and my relationship with Jesus was at the very center of who I was. In high school I was proud to stump my biology teacher with ideas from the Creation Research Society, and when I arrived at Wheaton College I think I was more devout and conservative than the school was. (I mean, they let post-millennialists and Lutherans in the door.) Even so, I would say that from adolescence on I struggled to fend off moral and rational contradictions in my faith, evolving more and more idiosyncratic ways of holding the pieces together. In particular, I couldn’t understand how I was going to be blissfully, perfectly happy – indifferent to the fact that other people were experiencing eternal anguish.
The final straw came while I was completing a doctoral internship at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. My job was to provide psychological consultation to kids and families on the medical units. I was working with kids who were dying of cancer or enduring horrible, frightening treatments in order to survive it. As I listened to the explanations offered by people who believed in an all powerful, loving, perfectly good interventionist God, it seemed to me these “justifications†were comforting, but they didn’t make things just. I re-read The Problem of Pain, and the resident rabbi offered Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. Both rang hollow. Finally I said to God, “I’m not making excuses for you anymore.†And suddenly it felt like I had been holding my God together for so long with duct tape and bailing wire that all I had left was tape and wire. So I walked away. I didn’t really re-engage with Christianity in any systematic way until it became clear about five years ago that Biblical ideas were dictating social policy—and killing people.
2. Anti-theists (or non-theists) of various kinds are now making their numbers and voice heard in the public square. What are two or three of the primary myths/truths about non-theism that people of traditional religious faiths are going to have to get rid of and/or adjust to in the future?
Well, first of all let me say that not all nontheists are anti-theists. Most nonbelievers are simply not interested in religion. Many see it as a benign force that contributes to stable moral communities. Those who are vocally outspoken against supernaturalism are a minority. I think this is important to emphasize because the silent majority is—well–silent and so not noticed. Humanists who join inter-spiritual dialogue or nonbelieving parents who are busy reading bedtime stories and making cookies for school bake sales don’t tend to make their voices heard on these issues. Mostly they just want to be left in peace – to not have Christians witnessing to their kids or interfering with their medical decisions.
The myth I am confronted with most frequently is that non-Christians (especially those who have left the faith) are indifferent to morality or they reject the gift of salvation because they don’t want to be morally accountable. Because Christians self-perceive as a city on a hill, a light shining in the darkness, they assume they have the moral high ground. Some think that there is no basis for morality apart from the Bible and a redemptive relationship with Jesus. So what they fail to recognize is that much of the critique of Christianity is a moral critique, and much of the outrage is moral outrage.
Another myth is that non-theists broadly and anti-theists particularly have little interest in spirituality. In my experience many are profoundly concerned with issues not only of morality but also of meaning and unity and wonder: the small humble delights that that makes life a joy to live, the willingness to give yourself to something bigger than yourself, the beauties of love.
3. How do you feel about the high profile of atheists like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens who consistently oppose religion of any kind as an unquestionable evil? Is there any feeling in the non-theist community that they are being portrayed as “fundamentalists” as well?
Those guys definitely are anti-theists and taboo breakers to boot, which makes people love to hate them. (“The Missionary Position�) But I think they change the dialogue in important ways. To cite a provocative example, Dawkins has said that religious indoctrination of children is child abuse. In reality, all education of children is indoctrination at some level. Every parent or teacher has to wrestle with the balance of top-down mind control vs open inquiry. But if we push past knee-jerk reactions to Dawkins’ assertion, he raises a serious moral question for believers: Is Christian indoctrination abusive more often than people like to think? Psychologist Marlene Winell, who specializes in recovery from fundamentalism, would say yes with three exclamation points.
I personally find the “fundamentalist†label a bit of an eye roller when applied to Dawkins or Harris. It’s childish. “You stink.†“No, you stink.†The word fundamentalism has a specific history and meaning. It is about having a core set of dogma-based assertions that are nonnegotiable, and historically these fundamentals are the central tenets of Christian orthodoxy. It’s not a synonym for strident or uncompromising. A quick glance around any department store will give you an idea of how easily we humans confuse the quality of packaging with quality of contents. The same is true for communications. In my experience, Dawkins et al are more nuanced and thoughtful in their actual analysis than what the public reaction would suggest, and I wonder how many of their critics have actually read them vs reacting to their posture. Other atheist and agnostic writers love to define themselves by saying, “I’m not like those guys.†It’s a way of positioning as a moderate and gaining access to an audience that feels conflicted about the role of religion in society. Tangentially, I think that within Christianity, people often fail to recognize theological fundamentalism if it is wrapped in rock music and skateboard art or in warm, loving community.
4. Setting aside the obvious issue of breaking the law, at what point does an evangelical parent, in the religious training of their own children, cross the line into what you consider the abuse of that child?
Imagine you work in a mental health center and a woman says to you, “My husband says he loves me unconditionally and if I don’t love him back he is going to torture me to death as slowly as he can.†Some theologies are inherently abusive.
When I was a teenager my youth group showed a movie called “A Thief in the Night†about the rapture, and a few years back, churches were creating “hell houses†for Halloween. In both cases, the blood and gore and implied violence were meant to be shocking and emotionally traumatic – all justified morally because shock and trauma right now are better than having people tortured forever. But a therapist like Marlene Winell, who I mentioned before, routinely sees people who developed panic disorder or chronic depression and anxiety in reaction to hell and rapture threats. Because of my writing I sometimes receive stories that make me as a mom want to cry. One child became hysterical whenever he called out and his parents didn’t answer because he thought they’d been taken. Another repeatedly prayed the prayer of salvation — never sure that it had “taken,†until she ultimately became distraught and suicidal. I wonder how many children in the coming up generation were traumatized by being exposed to Mel Gibson’s blood orgy, The Passion. My mom’s old church took a busload including pre-adolescents – kids who largely had been sheltered from Hollywood violence and had no way to have hardened themselves against it. If it wasn’t a religious theme, the parents themselves would have thought it abusive.
Here’s the challenge, though: Causing trauma isn’t necessarily abusive. I had my appendix removed when I was five, and it was absolutely terrifying because I was in pain and tied to a hospital bed and left alone. But I don’t think of it as abusive because it was necessary. Is scaring people into salvation necessary or abusive? When you intentionally cause harm or trauma in order to prevent a greater harm, it’s not enough to be well intentioned. You also have to be right. And if you’re not, the rest of society has a responsibility to weigh whether you are causing trauma unnecessarily—especially when those being harmed are children.
5. When you see a church spending large amounts of money on children’s ministries and activities, do you believe this is ethical or unethical? Why?
If you heard that Scientologists were spending large amounts of money on outreach to kids would you believe this was ethical or unethical? What if they offered a subsidized summer camp to inner city kids like Child Evangelism Fellowship does? What if they had a storefront alcohol-free bar for underage skateboarders like City Church does in Ballard, Washington? What if they had teenage tutors slipping colorful invitation cards to kids in public middle schools like Foursquare Church does in Seattle?
Children are hard wired to be credulous, to believe what they are told by adults who have authority over them and who nurture them. It’s the only efficient way for them to pick up all the information they need. They can’t afford to question and test when we tell them stoves burn you or cars squish you, so they’re built to trust us. Because they are vulnerable in this way, we have a particular responsibility not to exploit or abuse that trust. If you believe the exclusive salvific claims of Christian orthodoxy, then the end justifies the means. That, I think is at the heart of children’s ministries. But it’s only fair to admit that children are being offered metaphorical candy – and the ultimate goal of conversion isn’t always up front. One Jewish neighbor sent her daughter to a playful, wholesome youth group at a local mega church because she thought “nondenominational†meant interfaith.
6. I’m sure that you’ve got a good response to the frequent evangelical contention that non-theists have no morals. What do you say? (And what is the mistake evangelicals are making with that objection?)
I’m kind of embarrassed for people who say this, because it means they know so little about morality and about child development. Morality doesn’t come from religion. Healthy human children come into the world primed to become moral members of society, just like they come into the world primed to acquire language. Moral emotions like empathy, shame, guilt and disgust begin to emerge during the toddler years regardless of a child’s cultural or religious context. A toddler may pat an injured peer or offer a grubby toy to an adult who is distressed. A preschooler may hide behind a couch to cover a transgression. As a child’s brain develops, moral emotions are joined by moral reasoning. By age five or six, kids can argue long and loud about fairness.
Research is just starting to show how our moral emotions and reasoning are guided by powerful moral instincts. I think these instincts are the reason that across secular and moral traditions we humans share some basic agreements about goodness. The golden rule appears in some form or another in every ethical system. Sometimes it emphasizes proactively doing good. Sometimes it is only about avoiding harm. Sometimes it applies to even the smallest sentient creature, sometimes only to males of a single religion, but it’s there. For the last year and a half I’ve been working on a project called the Wisdom Commons, an interactive website that gathers quotes and stories and poetry from many traditions as a way to “elevate and celebrate our shared moral core.â€
7. Why would any evangelical want to read your book, The Dark Side?
Well, I have at least two siblings who would tell you that I’m a pawn of Satan, and you shouldn’t read it! On the other hand, several Christian friends read and provided feedback on the manuscript. Their perspective is that God doesn’t need us to cover for him or to hide from complicated realities.
I am a non-theist and my conclusions follow my thinking, but The Dark Side is less a challenge to Christianity than to bibliolatry. I was taught, and still believe, that to worship human decisions and creations is idolatry. So in terms of whether someone would want to read this text, I would ask: Do you really worship God or are you getting caught by the worship of traditions and texts? Which do you twist to fit the other? When your deepest best understandings of Love and Truth bump up against creeds and canons, which win out? Given that there are human handprints all over evangelical practices and teachings, how much time have you spent learning to spot them?
In reality, this kind of analysis and critique is very much in keeping with the Christian tradition. The writers of the Old Testament took the Akkadian and Sumerian traditions and asked themselves, Which pieces are merely human? What is our best guess about the divine realities that lie beyond? They gleaned and wrestled and kept some fragments of the earlier stories and said, “This is our best understanding of what is Real and what is Good and how to live in moral community with each other.†The writers of the New Testament look at what the Torah had become and saw idolatry. Again, they gleaned and culled in light of how they understood Jesus and then offered their best understanding of God and goodness. Same with the Protestant Reformation. The reformers scraped away at obviously human encrustations like indulgences and cult of saints until they came to what they thought was the heart of the revelation. I think that the deepest challenge of the spiritual quest is not to defend the answers of our spiritual ancestors but to do as they did—to dig and scrape and take ourselves into that uncomfortable space where growth happens.
8. How would you handle it if your child became a Bible toting member of Campus Crusade for Christ? In the same vein, how should evangelicals respond if their child takes the anti-theist road?
It would be hard. My daughters are both passionate about making the world a kinder place—primarily for weird animals like sharks and manatees and kakapos and factory chickens. But more recently they got wonderfully caught up in microcredit (through Kiva.org) and started directing their birthday money toward humans. I’d be grieved to see their passion and compassion channeled by an ideology. My biggest grief would be if one joined a religious organization that discouraged deep loving relationships with outsiders, including family. An elderly couple I met at a humanist gathering are not allowed to see their evangelical grandchildren because they are retired scientists with a secular world view.
When my younger brother came out as gay, it pitted my mom’s theological fundamentalism against her love for her son. Love won out. That is what I aspire to, and it is what is would hope for any parent in a similar situation.
9. Christian apologetics and cultural communication today have taken several major turns since your days citing creationists to Wheaton profs. For example, Tim Keller, a PCA pastor in Manhattan, has earned a broad hearing from the culture in his book “The Reason for God.” Keller is not Josh McDowell, it’s safe to say. Younger evangelicals are anti-culture war and many were pro-Obama. Many evangelicals accept evolution, although quietly, and many more distrust “Creation science.” Do any of the changes in apologetic methods and approaches since your loss of faith interest you when you are portraying evangelicals in print or speech?
You are right. Many of the conditions that pushed me to join the public dialogue have shifted, and when I engage secular audience I quite often bring up these changes. I love it that evangelicals like Jim Wallis are complicating that dialogue from a social standpoint, and a new generation of evangelical ministers like Rob Bell are complicating the dialogue theologically.
I see the theological dialogue as most important. Unless we understand that our theological agreements are provisional and open to growth, social change is just a matter of Christianity fluctuating in response to social conditions. There have been many times in history when the balance shifted between personal /doctrinal purity and compassion/love. Then conditions change and the pendulum swings back, in part because bibliolatry and what I call ancestor worship keeps people from growing beyond the understanding of the Bible’s authors and the councils that decided the creeds and canon. My hope is that we will come to understand our spiritual heritage and our own minds well enough that the cruelties perpetrated in the name of God become a part of history.
______
I’d like to thank Dr. Tarico for her time and effort in helping all of us understand this new relationship between evangelicals and non-theists. I know the vast majority of my audience is appreciative as well. Hopefully, we will hear from Dr. Tarico again as some of these issues emerge in other contexts.
NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS AND DISCUSSION: I will ban- not moderate- but ban immediately anyone who is disrespectful in language or content in their comments. (IM commenting guidelines are under the FAQ tab, #10.) Angry evangelicals and angry non-theists be warned. I will not allow anyone to remain in the discussion who seeks to psychologically explain away another person’s experience, demean or insult a belief system, nor will we be evangelizing or ridiculing, etc. Further, I am not looking to sponsor the kind of debate that goes on with the Triabloggers, etc. This interview is about non-theists and their perceptions of evangelicals. Obviously, we don’t agree, but obviously as well, Dr. Tarico has brought up many points that concern many of us in this readership. Keep the focus on the interview and be respectful to the person and we will be fine.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Ways of living out our response to Christ’s call on our lives vary widely, and Dr. Tarico’s desire for her children to not embrace certain expressions of Christianity which have unloving effects seems sensible.
I have seen such expressions of Christianity at close hand and whilst they can be internally consistent and compelling, their external (and, often, internal) effects are plainly self or group focussed and un-loving in their treatment of others.
To have a problem with such forms of Christianity is not to reject all others or Christ.
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>Thus in question #4, she goes on to say that “some theologies are inherently abusive,†using a caricature of the most common evangelical conception of the relationship between God’s unconditional love and his justice in the punishment of unrepentant sinners as an analogy.
It’s easy to simply claim something is a misrepresentation. How does the analogy differ from evangelical theology?
The only thing that comes to mind is the distinction between “you will be tortured if you don’t accept the gift” and “you will be tortured if you don’t love him back.” But this difference gets smaller still because many theologies teach that the evidence of salvation is the fruit of the spirit. “By their fruits you shall know them.” Thus there is reason to doubt someone’s salvation without fruit. Now the distinction becomes “if you aren’t behaving in a certain way you might end up being tortured” versus “you will be tortured if you don’t love him back.” Suppose the abusive husband weakened his threat so that the torture was possible and not certain. He’s still abusive.
It’s not exactly the same, in that “love me or be tortured” differs from “develop the following attitudes over time – you have room to make mistakes, but if you aren’t progressing, you need to start worrying about the possibility that I’ll start torturing you.” But this isn’t the kind of difference that makes a difference. I don’t see any significant difference that could justify one being abuse without the other being abuse.
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Thanks mr monk on your interview.
i am a “non-theist” ex-xtian like your interviewee.
Might i also add that i read through some of your own writings on dealing with P/C members and their weirdnessed.
Your article on “Signs I’m Weary of Weird Christians” echoed many of the concerns that bothered me, particularly during my time in the foursquare church in LA (although i dont have anything bad to say about Mr Hayford)
Although i never felt drawn towards your own brand of evangelicalism ( i got wrapped up in the charismatic fellowship thing of the 80s in the UK ) i share so many of your views.
I particularly cannot stand Benny Hinn ites and to your comments about uncritical devotion to “anointed” leadership i add my atheist “amen”.
However of course unlike you i ended up rejecting it all.
Like ms winell i too got sucked into creationism for a while – but i did this while mourning the loss of the wonder of the “science with question marks” that i used to revel in in my youth until i became a xtian.
i now have that wonder back and i find the combination of reason , empiricism and naturalism to give me a much richer and to my mind more compassionate world view than the one i had as a believer.
Anyway – thanks for a good interview.
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This is the statement from the good doctor in the interview that I find very intriguing: “Research is just starting to show how our moral emotions and reasoning are guided by powerful moral instincts. I think these instincts are the reason that across secular and moral traditions we humans share some basic agreements about goodness. The golden rule appears in some form or another in every ethical system. Sometimes it emphasizes proactively doing good. Sometimes it is only about avoiding harm. Sometimes it applies to even the smallest sentient creature, sometimes only to males of a single religion, but it’s there. For the last year and a half I’ve been working on a project called the Wisdom Commons, an interactive website that gathers quotes and stories and poetry from many traditions as a way to “elevate and celebrate our shared moral core.â€
The evidence that she gives here suggesting that it is in opposition to Christianity is exactly the kind of evidence that I use to say that every person is “created in the image of God” (Genesis) and is created with a conscience (Romans 2). This may not have been a significant part of her theological teaching during her formative years, and certainly, for many of us in evangelicalism, we have to admit that we have done a poor job describing and communicating that all people are created with a whole set of common characteristics that are simply part of the human race, and therefore emerge in every religion. This actually reinforces the biblical message for me. My recommendation for the doctor is to go back to the gospels and take a long, long look at Jesus instead of basing her world view on what she sees in human institutions and family dynamics.
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Bill In the article you cited the parents were not following Christian principles. They merely “SAID” they were. Big difference. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we are not to receive medical attention when needed. Doctor Luke wrote 2 books of the Bible. I think God approves of doctors, even gentile ones. The Amish don’t use zippers. The Apostle Paul said nothing about zippers. “When is a belief accountable for it’s actions?” I guess when people actually follow the beliefs and it results in harm. However, not giving medical attention to a child is not a Christian belief. It is a total misreading of the Bible out of context. I think the parents should be prosecuted as well for child neglect. But don’t hand Christianity on what it does not teach.
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What Dr. Tarico and Sarah and Dawn are advocating is nothing new or odd in our world. China does not allow parents to bring their children to Christian church. Home education is illegal in most european countries. A father in Germany had his children removed from him by the state for home educating his daughter because she was being taught darwinian evolution as fact and sexual education practices at the state run school. The whole notion of a hands off state in the affairs of religion and children is an anomaly in world history. Less than 150 years ago Baptists were arrested for not having their children baptized in many euro countries that had state religions. The 1st president of Harvard was fired for not having his daughter baptized. Christians, especially Baptists, have been able to enjoy a short window of freedom that is now closing once again. I think Dr. Tarico has the best of intentions, but using the power of the state to mold one’s societal intentions always has a loss of freedom for others.
We must protect children from real abuse, especially physical abuse, a lack of medical care, and yes education as well. But parents do love their children more than strangers do. Once we cross the road and attempt to enforce our belief structure onto others we disagree with by using the power of the state then we are no longer free.
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Sorry to be so late to this party, which means I haven’t read all these comments. I’m frustrated by a couple things. 1st – Her de-conversion did not solve the problem of evil. The sovereignty of God is the best solution to the problem. 2nd – Her claims of emotional abuse of children are not deniable anecdotes, but replacing end times judgment with no after-life, and ultimately becoming worm food is no better, and, I consider, worse. I am not orthodox, but if she had examined Eastern Orthodoxy, perhaps she would have been less offended by Orthodox theology about hell which I’ll quote. “…St. Maximus’ apokatastasis wherein all things really will be recapitulated in Christ and the reprobate will experience the glory fire of God, which is good in itself, as torment. This is not denying eternal torment.” from here, http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2009/07/problems-in-calvinsim-and-reformation-theology-why-i-left-redux-a-new-debate.html
God is good
jpu
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First, my english is very poor. Second my belief: I’m atheist.
> evangelical Christian orthodoxy is unacceptable
The same applies to you, you probably think that my parents educating me as an orthodox jew (I hate this name, lets use the hebrew word for it: dati) was also unacceptable (christianity is partly based on the view that judaism is unacceptable, just read the pauline epistles and the church fathers with theirs faulty hermeneutics of judaism to confirm that). The same goes on for muslim parents, sikhs, hindus, atheists and even the nature worshiping guy somewhere in Siberia, this is why some christian sustains that they have a moral monopoly in the universe, if that’s not the case there’s no need to spread the “good news”. What’s the problem with this? I think that a totally acceptable view, it’s part of being christian, jewish, atheist, muslim or whatever else, to think that other worldviews are unacceptable, problem arises when someone thinks that it’s unacceptable to think that his worldview is unacceptable, and I personally know a great number of christians in this situation (for me this is because christianity is a religion with a great emphasis on proselytism, Islam is similar with its penalization of apostasy), this raises things like creationism, the difference between jewish and christian creationism is that jews knows that it’s not right to force a non-jew to accept the jewish creationism and try to force its teaching in public schools.
As for the reason that I became atheist, I think abhorrent that someone can believe that my great-uncle that lived in a shtetl in the middle of nowhere in Poland and died at 17 in Treblinka will face “His justice in the punishment of unrepentant sinners” even if he never was exposed to christianity in his lifetime, a corollary of this is that he and a german that was a soldier in the camp are on the same moral ground, the lowest, except that the german could convert to christianity later in life and enjoy an everlasting life in the company of God, many people that he helped to kill no, for the majority of christians they are guilt where the german soldier is not of something, for me this raised the question of why a God would reveal himself to Paul and not to my great-uncle, even worse, why to Moshe instead of a girl in 4th century Scandinavia or a guy in 10th century BC India, if you believe in some sort of election then it comes naturally why Paul and Moshe, they where chosen by a sovereign God, otherwise there are not a good answer and as for me there’s no good motives to believe that there exists a God.
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I have a question for you. If you were President of the United States would you support gay marriage and abortion? If yes, why? If not, why?
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Re: And suddenly it felt like I had been holding my God together for so long with duct tape and bailing wire that all I had left was tape and wire. So I walked away.
I personally feel that as Christians or just as humans we need to have a tangibility to our faith at some point-especially at the point of severe trauma in our lives or the lives of others. As the apostle said “faith without works is dead”- well who can hang on to a faith with no seeming intervention from God?
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Fortunately Dr. Tarico was very clear.
From question #3, she makes clear that to her, “fundamentalism” means adhering to the central tenets of evangelical Christian orthodoxy. To most any observer, that means the Trinity, Jesus as the incarnate son of God, his crucifixion and resurrection, second coming, justification and sanctification, heaven and hell, etc. So for the purposes of this discussion, fundamentalism means evangelical Christian orthodoxy.
Then she refers to another psychologist who specializes in “recovery from fundamentalism,” which by her definition means “recovery from evangelical Christian orthodoxy.” That psychologist emphatically believes that Christian indoctrination is often abusive, “more often” than we want to believe.
I think there is general agreement among the kind of Christians who post here that there are churches, cults, and sects, who are excessively and punitively legalistic, who insist upon upholding questionable tertiary doctrines as essential beliefs, who teach the prerogative of leaders to manipulate followers, and so forth. These features in a church are what we would typically refer to as “fundamentalism,” and there would be widespread agreement that the indoctrination in those groups is frequently abusive.
But Dr. Tarico clearly is trying to communicate that Christians need to expand their views of what is abusive, thus using the words “more often than we want to believe,” as in that we don’t want to believe that other communities, even maybe ours, are abusive, but she believes they are.
Thus in question #4, she goes on to say that “some theologies are inherently abusive,” using a caricature of the most common evangelical conception of the relationship between God’s unconditional love and his justice in the punishment of unrepentant sinners as an analogy.
In case you missed that, Dr. Tarico asserted that the theology most often espoused by evangelical Christians, firmly in orthodox ground, is inherently abusive.
Ergo, evangelical Christian orthodoxy = inherently abusive = bad.
Then at the end of her answer to question #3, she asserts that we often “fail to recognize” fundamentalism (which, again, means evangelical Christian orthodoxy), which was later established in answer #4 as this inherently abusive, bad thing — if it is found in the context of cultural accoutrements appealing to young people, or even in warm, loving community.
In case you missed that, evangelical Christian orthodoxy is inherently abusive even if it is found in the context of warm, loving community.
Then at the end of her answer to #4, she makes clear that being well-intentioned in exposing children to religion is not enough, rather those doing so have to be right, otherwise society has a vested interest in preventing abuse.
The conclusion is easy enough to draw. If one does not believe evangelical Christianity is true, then if another family is bringing up its children to believe in evangelical Christianity, no matter how warm or loving the family, no matter how affirming the community of faith, no matter how well-intentioned the parents, the upbringing is inherently abusive and society has the responsibility to intervene.
In the answers to #7 and #9 she sets up a contrast between “doctrinal purity,” “texts and traditions,” “creeds and canons,” and “the decisions of our ancestors” on the one hand, and love, truth, and compassion on the other. This is an echo of the usual liberal critique on orthodoxy.
The message here is clear enough — evangelical Christian orthodoxy is unacceptable, and unless we get our act together and change our theology to something more acceptable to society, we should not expect society to sit idly by any longer and let us abuse our children by raising them to believe in it.
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The interview was fascinating, very interesting and provocative. The devil in the weeds is the slowly growing though sometimes shrill insistence on painting Bible believers as dangerous, morally inferior and promoters of evil. While this particular writer was civil the message is clear enough. Christians are dangerous people with very bad ideas. The question is when will society deem that it has a compelling interest to keep us from raising our children with our faith. When will we be deemed too dangerous to be allowed to raise our own children. That is only one of the possible outcomes of some of the ideas addressed here.
There was more than a hint of moral superiority gained by leaving faith. But it is interesting that at the root of your interviewees apostasy was theodicy. I might add that many of the tenants of the faith that Tarico was offended by are in process of being discarded by people who do not lose their faith in the process. If you are troubled by theodicy then the arcane theology of hell that most evangelicals espouse could simply be deemed as one more reason to defect. Can a God who tortures people forever for unbelief really be seen as loving and gracious?
The mind races with possibilities…. I wonder if Tarico would have defected from a less fundamental brand of faith.
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Marc,
I am not that clever, nor was I trying to be. I cannot answer your questions, I can only see how my own have been answered or not. I do mean it when I say enjoy the journey. Part of that journey are the thoughts of Dr Tarico. Great interview.
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http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/07/worthington_attorney_attacks_p.html
This is an article on a child’s death at the hands of their Christian parents who believed that God heals thru prayer and that medical care is not needed. When is a belief accountable for the actions of it’s followers?
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Early in the interview Dr. Tarico mentioned her experiences with the dying children in the hospital. My take on her reaction was that she realized that God was absent in any meaningful way. He provided neither meaning or support or cure or …. anything. If there were no God the situation would be no different. This resonated with me as this is also the realization that I have come to: That God answers no questions and ultimately satisfies no needs except with unfulfilled promises that faith hangs onto despite much evidence to the contrary. Despite 25 + years of theistic belief after a conversion from atheism, I find myself back where I started. I find that the things I thought Christianity provided for me- foundations of truth, goodness and beauty, a relationship with the transcendant, conformity with Reality as it is, a ground to act with heroism and holiness, all are available without God and without illusions and unbelievable stories. I have been free of belief in God for about a year now. We’ll see how it goes…..
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I figured that “non-theist” is more a word used by small-a atheists who want to distance themselves from the high-profile Madilyn Murray O’Hair types and “Wipe Christians From The Face Of The Earth” crazies (like those IMonk mentioned getting hate mail from after his “Coming Evangelical Collapse” editorial hit the big time).
Kind of like Christians who wonder who died and made Fred Phelps THE spokesman for all of them.
However, adopting a different term to distance yourselves from the crazies has only limited effect. There’s nothing to stop the crazies from hijacking the new term, using it for themselves, and forcing the non-crazies to find yet another term to distance themselves.
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An interesting an thoughtful interview. I think she has brought up many important points, especially concerning morality. I wonder sometimes why so many Christians think that morality is something specifically Christian, when St. Paul in Romans says that morality in inherently written into the hearts of everyone! As a Catholic, I can point of course also to the teaching of the Catholic Church that says that there is a difference between natural law (that is “written into the hearts” by the act of Creation) and the specific Revelation of God in the Old and New Covenant.
Many elements she is mentioning seem to come from her specific, non-denom, dispensationalist background, like that traumatizing stuff about the Rapture or Hell. I know that there have been times and places where it was the major pedagogic principle to scare kids away from supposedly bad things – but I hope that today we may know better and also show more respect for the reasoning faculties of our children.
When she was talking however of religious child rearing and childrens’ ministries, I was constantly asking myself: Aren’t the parents responsible for a child? If a parent is against religious teaching for his or her child, why on earth does he/she send the kid to such a ministry or why don’t they inform themselves beforehand? No-one is obliged to send their kid anywhere! I had the impression she is shifting the responsibility there a bit.
What I also think is somewhat questionable in Dr. Tarico’s assessment is her criticism of charitable activities as a kind of “backdoor” to “religious indoctrination”. Charitable activity is one of the basics of the Christian life, and always has been.
Of course, as a Christian, one hopes that the people will get to know Christ through the charity that is shown to them, because “God is Love”. But charitable work is also a value in itself! As a Christian, I have to help others, because Christ says so! I can’t just leave the inner-city kid or the beggar in the gutter… I think this is what many non-theists don’t understand well: That charity is the first and most important act, not simply a means to an end, even though it may (but must not, because people are free to choose) lead people in some cases to embrace the Christian faith. (Actually, in ancient Rome the pagans were extremely impressed that Christians helped all others in case of catastrophes, independently of religion, social standing or family relationships…)
As to the development of children: I think it’s quite clear that no-one can force any child to accept their own world-view or convictions. My own parents were most unhappy when I left my agnostic family background in order to become a Catholic. I would be unhappy as well of course, if my own future children left the faith. But we as parents and children have to stand together, no matter what happens. We must always show the other that we love them, no matter what: as children who have embraced something our parents do not understand, and as parents whose children left what we hold dear.
I must say however, that I don’t see any contradiction in this case between “religious principles” and love, as Dr. Tarico seems to suggest. Family love is good in itself, it does not depend on people’s actions. (I would even hold that any “love” that is not unconditional is not love, and is certainyl un-Christian.) And of course many Christian parents know that the best way to get their children back to the faith on the long term is by constant prayer, love, acceptance (without relativism) and trust in God. St. Monica prayed and weeped for 15 years before her son came to the Christian faith and became one of the great saints of the Church, St. Augustine. A non-theist parent may have less solid hopes to relie upon, but may still hope that their child develops well and leads a happy and wholesome life.
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https://internetmonk.com/articles/M/messup.html
Here’s the article.
iMonk, in your introduction to the article, you wrote “Consider, instead, an approach that values “normal†more than being the most religious second grader in town.”
I see that you put ‘normal’ in quotes. What was the purpose of that? Were you implying that there’s no such thing as normal, were you implying that it wasn’t a good goal to aim for? I’m curious–I don’t believe there’s necessarily such a thing as ‘normal,’ or that it’s a very Christian value to aim for, especially in light of the fact that we’re all the ‘broken sheep’ you talked about in another post, and we have different normals and different broken places, so that God can come through in a variety of ways even as he and we try to heal ourselves.
Dr. Tarico and iMonk, thanks for the interesting interview. It’s helped clarify for me some problems I’d been having when I’d tried to force myself to join a church again; maybe now that I can see those problem a little better I can attack them.
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I say that I’ve seen Christian billboards on the interstate here in Arkansas advocating “spare the rod and spoil the child.”
A recent child abuse case here also hinged on the father’s excuse that he was simply following the Bible when he beat his kid in the grocery store parking lot to such an extent that several people called the police.
Children have been placed in foster homes with strangers when their parents died because the parent’s choice of guardian was gay, based on legislation driven by Christians.
Christians are constantly asking society to intervene to stop the spread of ideas such as evolution that are taught to children.
When I lived in Texas there was a well-publicized case in which an evangelical Christian family converted an elementary school age Jewish child without the parent’s knowledge.
It’s just a fact that many (not all – I surely don’t want to lump everyone into the same category as the folks I am referring to) Christians see *all* children as opportunities for evangelism and indoctrination.
For example, I want no part of abstinence education for my children, because it raises the odds of pregnancy, yet Christians succeed in having it added to the curriculum.
it is ironic that you fear societal intervention to stop Christian intervention, because from where I sit the far larger threat is Christian intervention in the way I raise my child.
Until Christians stop intervening in the way I raise my kids, I look for society to protect the innocent.
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Joe–Thanks for your response. However, it was somewhat amusing in that you didn’t answer any of my questions while somehow implying that one day I’d change my tune. It’s a clever tactic that I suppose is designed to make you feel better about your beliefs. I was very honest in what I wrote.
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iMonk– This is your forum so I have to respect your wishes. From my perspective, it feels like I stated something that, well… perhaps it can make those who believe a bit uncomfortable. You might think that is unfair, but it is an honest statement on my part.
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Marc-
I really prefer we not have a debate on the atheist-Christian conflict. There are so many forums for that elsewhere.
MS
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Fair enough. I was just wondering.
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Dear Marc,
You sound a little like me 30 years ago. You sound more like my older brother 25 years ago; an entrenched atheist. Now a catholic priest. Enjoy the journey – wherever it takes you.
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I can’t pretend to know what is meant by “love” to all or even most Evangelicals. The radio ministries broadcast throughout central California are my most common window into that community.
As for the primacy of the Creation (material reality) over the Bible as a source of revelation…
The Bible is at very best second hand. It claims to be the word of God (suspiciously insistent on it actually), but offers no proof other than the ‘facts’ it presents in reference to itself.
The world offers primary evidence which anyone may independently inspect themselves. If you don’t believe me that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, you are perfectly free (encouraged actually) to measure the decay rates of radio isotopes, verify that those decay rates should be constant (and apparently are) based on everything else humanity has discovered about atomic nuclei, and that the oldest rocks we find on Earth are about 4.3 billion years old. That is a lot of work… it took many lifetimes to originally do, but it can be (and has been) independently verified.
Anyway, science is a method of inferring (tentative) truths about the natural world (Creation). Scientific claims do no require you trust them. In fact, the process of science hinges on challenging and testing claims.
In contrast, Biblical “truth” rests only on trusting the authority of the Bible. I’ll readily agree that many Christians (especially American Protestants) have a long tradition on questioning the authority of the Church, yet accept the authority of a collection of old stories and books of law on their own say-so.
I like to quip that someone claiming to hear the voice of God would most likely be considered insane today… but a story written 1900 (give or take a few 100) years ago claiming to be the word of God is considered true because it says so. I suppose that some people would conclude that we are far to skeptical of “prophets” these days, but just take a look at the collection of people claiming personal divine revelation in the last several decades and how many of them were obviously evil and/or insane and managed to gather a following none the less.
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I am atheist (freethinker is perhaps a better word). These are my thoughts: If a person tells me that he/she believes in god (or gods) in some vague way I can understand this. After all, whether or not there is a god is the biggest mystery for humankind. Personally, I don’t believe that god exists, but if god(s) should exist I don’t believe that this god interferes in any way with our lives (based on what I see everyday life). Also, I don’t believe in prophecy, therefore I don’t believe in any organized religion. Why don’t I believe in prophecy? Well, it means believing in something that someone else is saying when we have no way to judge its veracity. And we’re talking about claims that are several thousand years old (and more in some cases). Anybody can say anything and say god it’s from god. Now, even god-fearing people don’t believe everyone who says he/she spoke to god. So how do you know who is a true prophet and who is a false prophet? Well, you don’t. And that’s why they call it faith. But I can tell you for certain what god is. God is… anything you want god to be. That’s why we have different religions each believing in its own prophet(s). In my humble opinion, none of them are true. Like a mathematical equation, they cancel themselves out. Now, if this god or gods exist, why use prophets. Why not just speak to everyone at the same time and clear up the mess we’re in. For those who believe in an organized religions, it’s way too easy to claim you have the right belief and that everyone else who believes different, or not at all, is wrong. Religion has a very strong tendency to divide people. After all, if you can’t see the truth that I see, then you are not as smart as me or as good as me (I don’t mean me personally). I would be interested to know what makes the prophets within the Christian faith true prophets as opposed to other religious prophets? I have a lot more to say, but that’s all for now.
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It’s the term she choose for herself, and I try to respect wish in all dialog. Pretty basic.
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I believe Dr. Tarico is simply calling for society to stop giving to religion, and for religions to stop expecting, special dispensation in their treatment of children. The right to freely transmit religion to one’s children has many times been used to excuse things that would otherwise be considered neglectful, dangerous or even abusive, and in my interpretation she is only asserting that we must stop allowing that.
Situations of physical abuse in the name of religion are rather clear-cut, and society and the law are increasingly willing to intervene on a child’s behalf. We cannot, however, stop at physical acts–if we acknowledge that words can be abusive, we also must evaluate the words of religion. We must ask why it’s cruel to tell a child “If you misbehave, the monsters in the closet will eat you,” but loving to tell him “If you misbehave, you’ll burn forever in hell.” And most important, we must consider the very process of shaping thoughtful, capable adults. Just because a parent disapproves of nonmarital sex, is it right for him to actively keep his teenagers from learning information that could help them stay safe should they choose a different path? Is it right to shelter a child to such a degree that he’s much less likely to develop critical thinking skills? They’re not easy questions, but they’re fair and important.
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Is the term Atheist not allowed anymore? I’m not trying to make a smart comment I’m just wondering if non-theist and anti-theist are the new PC, “dialogue” promoting classifications.
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And that a lot of Christians are clueless. As in “If It’s Marketed as CHRISTIAN, It Must Be OK!”
According to the guy over at Totem to Temple (now Onward, Forward, Toward), so many churches in his area bought out entire screenings of The Passion that the theater chains showing it had to ban advance ticket sales or group sales in order to let their regular customers see it. Too often, regular moviegoers would find all screenings “Sold Out” and a steady parade of church buses pulling up to the theater. Just one of those bits of weirdness you get IRL.
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Ms. Tarico’s larger point struck me the most, so I don’t like to sidetrack on the “state persecution” angle, but I don’t think that Greg is so far off from reality. Ms. Tarico does seem to be endorsing the state (she calls it society, but who else in society but the state would have the power to intervene?) intervening in the religious upbringing of children. No, you say, she didn’t say intervening in religious upbringing, she said intervening to stop harm or abuse. But the point of the discussion surrounding that comment was how religious upbringing, and in particular the threat of Hell is harmful or abusive.
It’s one thing to say “here is my story, I found my evangelical upbringing abusive, and I am going to write books and speak to anyone who will listen to try and expose and discourage others from perpetrating the same abuse.” But when she says that society has a responsibility to weigh whether the harm of telling children about Hell and salvation is justified, that sounds like the court system, like child protective services to me. She didn’t elaborate on what “the rest of society” would do if they weighed this judgment and determined the harm was not justified, but that is the most likely scenario that I come up with. That in combination with the terminology “abusive.” Abuse is the scenario in which our government has been given the right to remove children from homes, require the parents to attend parenting classes, require that the parents and children receive counseling from a psychologist, require the parents to answer to a judge, etc. Ms. Tarico is the only one who can say what she really has in mind, but that is what I take away from that paragraph of hers.
Fortunately freedom of religion is in the Constitution, which would be a good weapon in the fight, but wouldn’t guarantee anything. Google “parental rights amendment” if you’re interested in a constitutional amendment that would have bearing on this general issue, regardless of what Ms. Tarico meant by her comments.
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well patrik it is the implication that Christian ideas are inherently harmful and that society has a right to intervene to prevent the transmission of those ideas that is I think a threat. I think if you want to asuage my fears a better approach would be to convince me that the good Dr. does not view Christian beliefs as harmful and does not think that society should intervene to prevent the spread of those ideas. But as I read the interview she seems to think that our ideas are in fact harmful and that society should intervene in cases where Christian beliefs are taught. What say you?
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If you are not permitted to practice your religious beliefs including the practice of indoctrinating your children in the faith that is by my belief persecution. Granted being challanged is not persecution, granted being made uncomfortable isnt persecution but being hindered in your efforts to transmit your faith to your children is persecution.
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Dear Greg,
I hope you are alone (in feeling threatened by Tarico’s words). There is nothing wrong, incorrect nor confusing in what Dr. Tarico says. Why don’t you just listen to what people say?
No, those words are not a threat to Christians.
However, they are a threat to any behavior that causes harm with no justifiable reason (where reason means reasonable, not just having an excuse).
If such a behavior is typical for some Christians, Mormons or Atheists, society should stop them. It does not mean fighting Christians, Mormons or Atheists. Just fighting some particular wrong-doing.
That’s basically what she says. She could not possibly be any clearer. And she could not possibly be more right.
I decide not to insult your intellect by actually explaining it to you any further (hence I am deleting 3 more illustrative but verbose examples I’ve written below).
I’d rather give you your time to think it through again. I believe you’ll understand.
-patrik
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Thanks to Michale Spencer for being willing to bridge the relational gap between non-believers and believers. I am someone who has crossed that bridge, going from a fundamentalist, Baptist ordained minister (part-time) to a secular humanist. As far as I can tell, my level of compassion and commitment to a morality based on mutual respect and non-harmfulness is about the same as most Christians I know. In short, morality is the result of several factors and religious beliefs is only one of those.
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I think we have to admit that compassion is not the exclusive domain of any belief system. Every belief system has had its moments of hatred, violence and intolerance. Even Jesus is made to say by the gospel writers (the question of what, if anything a historical Jesus may have said is still up for scholarly discussion): “Luke 14:26 (New International Version) “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
The (at least theoretical) command to love did not only come from Jesus’ mouth but also (reportedly) from the mouth of the Buddha and even Muhammad said similar things.
The author’s point is valid in that conversion might (stress might) lead a child to become close-minded and exclusitivistic in their attitudes. I have certainly seen much anecdotal evidence of this. To be fair, I also know of several Christian children who are compassionate and kind but the issue of whether or not a child is loving seems to stem more from their parents genetic predisposition and upbringing. I have known brats from all belief systems.
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I can’t speak for Dr. Tarico, obviously, but it doesn’t seem to me that she is, at all, calling for state persecution of anyone. I think she is saying that society has an obligation to look out for the people who are vulnerable in society (i.e- children), and that if an organization is harming those vulnerable members, society has an obligation to investigate and interfere if necessary.
Investigation and interference can be unpleasant, but that is hardly persecution- or at least persecutation as I understand it to mean. Being challenged or even made uncomfortable for your beliefs isn’t persecution.
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Am I alone in seeing in these words a threat ? Dr. Tarico writes:”When you intentionally cause harm or trauma in order to prevent a greater harm, it’s not enough to be well intentioned. You also have to be right. And if you’re not, the rest of society has a responsibility to weigh whether you are causing trauma unnecessarily—especially when those being harmed are children. ” Since Dr. Tarico obviously thinks we are wrong are her words not a call to state persecution of Christians? If they are not help me understand why they are not.
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Good point about confusing terms, in particular equating “love” with uncritical obedience — yet it’s also important to remember that many “evangelicals” and “post-evangelicals” retain their faith in spite of abuses w/in the visible/institutional church system, and many such people are walking away from the system *because* they have been reading the bible and *because* they believe in Jesus. In other words, the bible actually *does* sternly critique the very kinds of unloving religiosity that modern-day non-believers point to when they find fault with “Christians” and Christianity. In other words, far from being uncritically obedient to a man-made religious structure/system, many followers of Christ are assessing that system in light of what the bible says, and finding the system wanting — not finding Jesus wanting.
Another good point about the Creation itself being a revelation — the question is, what does it reveal? Again, the bible has much to say about this. The Creation itself may, as you suggest, be a more fundamental revelation than the bible, but I haven’t thought that notion through enough to want to express an opinion about it. I do think, however, that the Bible, in some sense, simply *is*, too, just as the world simply *is*. There’s no denying the fact that the bible exists in great varieties of forms and formats and in great quantities throughout the world.
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It is important to realize that some Evangelicals adopt specific terms and non-standard meanings for words… which complicates dialogue immensely.
A few examples:
“love” is synonymous with uncritical obedience.
“truth” is revelation based on authority, as opposed to logic (in the technical sense of logic).
“logic/proof” is just a chain of apparently plausible inferences.
“blessed” just means successful/fortunate (any success is a sign of God’s favor… very Calvinist actually).
ect… ect…
On a bit different note…
Many (if not all) Evangelicals hold up the Bible as the ultimate revelation… but isn’t Creation itself a more fundamental revelation? Where a literal reading of the Bible conflicts with truths evident in the world, it seems to me (and most non-theists I would suspect) that there is simply no contest. If you believe in a Creator God or not, the world is the ultimate revelation (actually given to all, unlike any text claiming to be Special Revelation). The Bible (repeatedly) claims to be revelation, the world simply *is*. The Bible (and the church) insist upon their authority, but anyone can inspect the natural world themselves and discover truth.
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I am also a “non-theist” and aspire to become as articulate and gentle as Dr. Tarico. I have never visited this website before, but I want to commend Michael Spencer for opening the dialog and encouraging CIVIL discussion between Christians and non-theists.
One quick comment on the criticism offered by Weekend Fisher: I think the compassion Dr. Tarico was worried about the children losing was their compassion towards animals. Most religions, including Christianity I think, place humans at a special place in the universe and all other animals as lesser, rather than believing we are all just evolutionary accidents of nature and humans have no special “rights”. Many religions manifest this by sacrificing animals to appease their god.
Thank you again for the opportunity iMonk!
Peace!
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Dr. Tarico’s answers to your questions are thoughtful and thought-provoking. I particularly appreciate the way the entire interview highlights the fact that non-believers are not necessarily indifferent to morality — many, indeed, are keenly concerned with right living. I agree with WF that summing up Christ’s ongoing work in the world through His body as participation in “mere ideology” misses the real and living message not only of what He said (and continues to say) but also of how He lived and how faithful followers of Him struggle, earnestly, to live, with love grounded in truth as the highest priority.
My own life experience of faith is interestingly opposite to Dr. Tarico’s: I was raised functionally atheist/agnostic. I had no interest in the Bible, and a very cynical opinion of Christians and Christianity. In my mid-30s I met someone whom I found attractive enough that I wanted to find out if I could believe what he did: that Jesus is Lord. So, I began reading the gospels for the first time, with a decidedly un-spiritual motive, and was surprised to discover that I found Jesus believable. Since that time of first receiving faith by hearing the word as I read it silently, on my own, I have weathered about 11 years of turbulent personal stuff and gradual growth in clarity about who Jesus is, what he is telling us, how to participate in the life of his Body, and so on. Like Dr. Tarico, I’m wary of bibliolatry and ancestor worship, but I continue to find the word of God as contained in the Scriptures to be astonishingly full of life and timeless wisdom and deep, deep nourishment — I don’t see the NT as outdated in the least, although I’m aware that we tend, humanly speaking, to misunderstand it at times.
I’m also very much aware of how terribly unloving “churchianity” can be, and in fact I left a largish non-denominational church about a year ago b/c I believed, deeply, that Jesus had something else for me — not a different faith, by any means, but a different way of living it out, in a real experience of loving and truthful fellowship with brothers and sisters. I’m beginning to experience real freedom in Christ, after having experienced some pretty oppressive stuff which was carried out in Christ’s name but often, sadly, without his authority and love. I’ll offer a some reading recommendations to Dr. Tarico, which might be of use: Frank Viola’s and George Barna’s Pagan Christianity, as well as Re-imagining Church and the forthcoming Finding Organic Church. But more importantly, I’d offer the recommendation to her, with all respect and good will, that she keep an open mind about Jesus, and open ears to what he is still saying, which hasn’t changed in spite of all the atrocious or sometimes just foolish and immature things his followers have said and done over the last couple of thousand years. Thanks for doing the interview. I’m glad to have read it.
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I found her assumptions insulting at several points. The most memorable was when she said that it would grieve her to see her children to become Christians because it might squash their compassion and replace it with mere ideology. The core moral teaching of Jesus is the primacy of love. That is one of my favorite “unique points” of Christianity: that love is given the prime spot in morality straight from the founder’s mouth. Love is even held to be the true nature of God. If Christianity has made contributions to the world’s moral discussion, the primacy of love would be among them.
Take care & God bless
WF
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The vicar at my former, conservative evangelical, Anglican church lamented the way that school religion inoculated people against the real thing (Americans who are keen on school prayer: take note). The flip side to that is that people who work out they don’t believe in the Anglicanism of state school assemblies and private school Monty Python style chapel services aren’t usually bothered about Christianity: they just think it’s silly. Dawkins expresses some admiration for his school “padre” in The God Delusion, so I doubt it is school Anglicanism which is responsible for his attitude to religion. Indeed, over in Lynchburg, Dawkins seemed surprised that de-converts might be angry. Yes, really. He’d considered they might be afraid of Hell, but that was about it.
If you want to meet people who’re really angry, you need to talk to ex-evangelicals and ex-Catholics.
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Sometimes it takes an outsider to notice and point out the blind spots.
They’re called blind spots for a reason.
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Might be a dynamic similar to vaccination, where a weakened version of a pathogen is used to set up an immune reaction against the full-strength kind. (And sometimes triggers an allergy — a destructive over-the-top immune reaction to only vaguely-related non-pathogens.) Another commenter on this thread mentioned Dawkins as coming out of “the default Anglicanism of British schools”.
And if you’re raised in a “conservative evangelical upbringing”, you’re probably close enough to see the dark and seamy side of Evangelical culture. (You have imperfect people in the mix, you’re going to have a dark and seamy side. Because “People are people, and the world is full of tricks and twistiness yet undreamed of.”) I believe IMonk has an essay about “how Christian Parents screw up their children” somewhere on this site.
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My personal observation is that while life-long atheists like myself can get upset with Christians sometimes (…), the only people who get truly incandescently mad at the religious are people who used to be religious themselves, and feel they were injured by it in some way. (Certainly not all, or even most, ex-religious people feel this way. But I think some do.)
Because they have been betrayed and hurt by someone/something they trusted. Like being dumped hard by a girlfriend or getting divorced and taken for all you’ve got by a gold digger you married. After something like that, Nobody Is Going To Ever Hurt Me That Bad Again, and you get pre-emptive and paranoid, reading anything similar as The Enemy and striking first.
But murder threats, even in the abstract… that’s nuts.
No matter what the context, there’s always going to be some fanboy who’s over-the-top. And when you factor in somebody being hurt to the core of their being, things can go nuclear FAST.
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The Christian has to defend Christ, because he has been made too small to survive on his own. We have made God into our personal friend, and then we find ourselves evaluating God on a human scale.
In other words, a puny god for a Punyverse that fits snugly (and smugly) within the Christian’s mind and the four walls of his church/womb — Earth and some lights in the sky, 6013 years old, ending twenty minutes into the future. And cannot stand up to the actual grand Universe that’s out there. So the only way to retain this safe little god is to Culture War against anything that might threaten the safe little Punyverse.
It’s like the words either Bertholt Brecht or G.B.Shaw put in Pope Urban’s mouth regarding the Galileo affair — boiled down to “But if the Universe is so big, and Earth is not the center, then I the Pope am insignificant! And that cannot be!”
Where is the awe of God? Where is the smallness of ourselves abiding in the infinite?
Stifled by the MAO Inhibitors. I remember the sensation of being introduced to Christian (TM) genre fiction after 10+ years of Golden Age SF, where I toured vast tracts of imaginary/creative landscape under tour guides such as Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, and Cordwainer Smith. After that, all the approved Christian examples of genre creativity were a stifling small box without Mystery, Awe, or Otherness, only Scripture and party-line dogma dictated to the reader upon pain of Hell.
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Mr. Monk,
May I congratulate you on your entrance into the world of blogging. I find it all rather complicated and challenging. But. Perhaps. If I hang around here for a bit, I might be able to learn a thing or two. From your future successes, of course. Though I really am concerned that if I ever had credibility, what would I ever do if it were to become tainted.
Your humble servant,
William
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i’m also fascinated that non-theists and anti-theists have no problem pointing out excesses of christianity, et al. (and why does she only hit Christianity in this interview?) without pointing out the supreme inhumanity of nazism and soviet communism, which have killed more people than any religion i can think of.
It’s simple. Neither governments were built on or driven by atheist ideals. If or when the governments were anti-religious, it was in the interest of obedience to the state, not in the interest of promoting atheism.
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From the posts I’ve had to moderate today, it looks like I’ve run into a problem that Jesus himself may have experienced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_Uvg56U_o&eurl=https%3A%2F%2Finternetmonk.com%2Farchive%2Fits-a-comedy-biti-thinkit-does-sound-familiar&feature=player_embedded
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Well I’m just getting started in this blogging thing, and my goal is for everyone to like me. Thanks for the heads up. I need all the helpful assistance I can get from my commenters.
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Seriously? You didn’t comprehend my point. But, ok. It’s your site, you do what you want.
Unfortunately, your credibility is tainted in a few atheist sites I subscribe to.
Maybe a simple, I see where you are coming, I apologize if you felt offended would have done wonders for your cause.
Good luck to you, though.
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OK. I’ve had to delete several posts. Comments are all now going to moderation.
The phrase “you don’t comprehend my point” doesn’t go over well here.
Commenters unfamiliar with my approach to moderation should read the FAQ #10.
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Paul & MaryLynne,
You are both right. As exChristians, you do have a better/more sympathetic understanding of both Christianity and the church. What’s interesting though, is that both of you left your churches AND denied the propositional truths of Christianity.
I would guess that a large quantity of IMonk’s readership also left the churches they were brought up in, or are at least trying to distance themselves from the regular evangelical landscape that seemed to play a part in why both of you left Christianity. (Some of IMonks readers don’t even want to call themselves “Christians” anymore while still believing the fundamentals of orthodox Christianity).
So, in other words, we have a lot in common – the only, not so minor, difference being that we still believe that Christianity is true while you no longer do. Having this common ground and these differences is why honest discussion between the two groups has so much potential. Which is why IMonk’s decision to interview Tarico was such a good idea.
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This discussion gets at the heart of an issue never addressed in the Baptist church I attended as a teen: what if non-Christians can also be as good as Christians? What if they can be as content and happy? I always felt that the argument was that non-Christians couldn’t be as happy, and if they were, then there was always eternal damnation afterward. A relationship with God was presented as a relationship with a friend — you could guarantee that you’d always have this one very good friend who’d be good to you. That was appealing to me as a teen, but ultimately, well, I have other friends. What’s one more?
I can see why many evangelicals turn to the Orthodox church. I sometimes think that God and Christ as parent and friend are such reductions, that they create the problem Dr. Tarico describes. The Christian has to defend Christ, because he has been made too small to survive on his own. We have made God into our personal friend, and then we find ourselves evaluating God on a human scale. Where is the awe of God? Where is the smallness of ourselves abiding in the infinite? I think a certain presentation of Christianity serves as a mask for individual pride (my God is better, so I’m better), rather than a place to submit the self, to bury the self (I don’t brag about God, I submit myself to Him). What if Christianity weren’t about being better, or even feeling better, but about seeking God always and in all things?
My $.02
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One of Hitler’s propaganda slogans was “Church, Kitchen and Cooking”. Those were his recommendations for women. He was also strongly opposed to secular schools because he thought that God was required in order for students to form proper moral standards. Hitler was also known to publically quote a work by Martin Luther known as “The Jews and Their Lies”.
Here are some quotations in case you don’t believe me:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html
It’s all very well claiming that Hitler was lying, but many of these claims to religious fervour are contained in his personal memoirs (“Mein Kampf”) which he wrote in prison. It does not seem like the sort of place where Hitler would feel compelled to appeal to the religious.
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A few comments here have implied that Dr. Tarico was claiming that children are perfect moral actors. Her actual point was that morals, or at least the building blocks of morals, are innate and manifest in children regardless of religious instruction. The ultimate source of morals, in other words, is bio-psychological, not biblical. But of course the cultural environment a child grows within adds to and shapes the moral compass, making our mature moral worldview a bio-psycho-social construct. This is again true regardless of whether or not religion is present.
To reiterate, the assertion Dr. Tarico was refuting is the idea that a lack of faith in God is equitable with a lack of moral conviction. But look at many dedicated Buddhists, most of whom believe in no gods…it would be difficult, even for many evangelicals, to observe their general behavior and call them immoral (the Christian in question might not agree with every moral structure they see, but that is not the same thing as seeing a *lack* of morals).
The long and the short of this issue is that non-theists are as capable of moral conviction as theists are of lacking them.
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Thanks for this interview, Michael.
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Yes! This is what I have found, too. I am no longer a person of faith. I grew up Catholic with an uncle who was a priest and an aunt who was a nun, I was part of a charismatic Catholic youth group that was the center of my world, and I felt I had a personal relationship with Jesus. I started asking questions in young adulthood, and by the time I was 35 I had reached the conclusion that there is not sufficient evidence that any higher being with a personality and opinions exists, much less that the specific claims of any religion make any sense.
I remember, though. It was comforting to know that there was some reason for things, even if I didn’t know it. Someone was listening all the time and cared about me and my teenage hair crisis or fights with my sisters. There was a peacefulness about it. When I am in conversations with people of faith they often just can’t comprehend how I can be happy without God or belief; they imagine themselves if God went away and it is scary. I am happier now, but I understand.
My brother never did believe in supernatural/gods, and he doesn’t get it. Our sister left the Catholic Church and joined a Bible-based fundamentalist church, and he is totally baffled. I don’t agree with her choice, but I see how comforting the strict doctrine and strong community is to her and I remember how that was.
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Also here via Friendly Atheist, although that’s only because his blog is before yours in my reader 🙂
I’d like to think that those of us who were Christians as adults and then left have some more understanding of what Christianity is about than Dawkins does (he left as a child having thrown off the default Anglicanism taught in British state schools at the time, if I remember rightly). I’m not so much talking about the propositional content of Christianity (although I remember a few places in “The God Delusion” where he got that wrong) as some sort of understanding of why someone would believe, the dynamics of communities of believers, and what it feels like to believe. Ex-Christians can perhaps come up with a more sympathetic critique than someone who was never a Christian. At least we can if we ever stop being angry and can resist the temptation to mock our former beliefs (a temptation I’m not immune to :-).
Along those lines, I wonder whether you’ve encountered John W. Loftus. He is a former evangelical Christian, now atheist, who seems to have a reasonable reputation among Christians for being an honest opponent.
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Came here via the happy atheist, and the remarks on christian outreach (camps etc) reflect my views on Catholic schools…
Thank you
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Did Dr Tarico think the world was a happy clappy place? “The Problem of Pain” or “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” don’t strike me as coming from the caricature of Christianity extant in American evangelicalism. Lewis is, well, Lewis, and whatever his faults, is not usually criticised for teaching an uncritical belief. Kushner is Jewish and would probably be called an Open Theist by Christian lights.
Our cognitive biases mean we tend to weigh our experiences more heavily even than reliable reports. I imagine there’s nothing like working with dying children for throwing the evidential argument from evil into sharp relief.
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I am truly thrilled to find a blog where the emphasis is on constructive dialogue. Engaging others fairly is a very difficult standard to meet in a society that seems to glorify hostile debate. I’m not suggesting that there are no problems on this blog. But it comes considerably closer to a true standard of healthy, constructive dialogue than most blogs I have read.
The conclusions that Dr. Tarico reached in her evaluation of Evangelicalism’s teachings are familiar territory for me, and I concur with some of her insights.
I firmly believe that one can never be truly enlightened until you can articulate exactly what is wrong with your OWN viewpoints. I have discovered that much of what I have been raised to believe in my Evangelical upbringing is biblically, theologically, and rationally dubious. However, I must emphatically state that my response was not to reject Evangelicalism but to reject what Evangelicalism had become.
I have watched many friends and acquaintances follow a similar path as Dr. Tarico. I rejected that path just as I rejected the path of what Evangelicalism had become. My commitment to epistemic virtue demanded that I level just as much critique (if not more in some cases) to alternative worldviews. When I shined the spotlight of illumination upon alternative worldviews, I found them far more wanting than the tortured worldview of my youth. Of course, this in no way should be construed to imply that alternative worldviews had nothing valuable to say to me. I’m merely trying to point out that once I acquired the requisite philosophical, exegetical, and hermeneutical tools, I was able to lay to rest much of what had become objectionable to me in Evangelicalism, and many of those objectionable aspects are precisely what Dr. Tarico critiques. Same objections, different response.
But then, this is just my story. Blessings to all
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Seems crazy to me, too. I recall reading at the time that movie came out, that it was marketed directly to churches of a particular outlook and with large congregations. Marketing works. I think the answer to your question is just that simple.
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I think that this is an important point, properly directed at non-theists. I find it patronizing to both atheists and non-atheists alike. They are basically saying, “Hey, I promise not to challenge you intellectually just so we can be friends, okay?”
I do find that Dawkins and PZ Myers are collegial, it is their words and not their delivery that discomfort people.
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I wanted to add one more thing about the “cultural” aspect of this. The problem of explaining evil, as I said, is solely a religious problem, but I absolutely agree about the fact that most people try to ignore the suffering of others. At some level, this is necessary. If I cared about every person on Earth as much as I cared about my girlfriend or parents, I would go insane within the hour (imagine your entire family getting murdered – and then imagine that happening every second). I think our attempts to avoid suffering are in part necessary. With TV and the internet, we can now witness videos of suffering that we never would have even heard of in the past.
That said, I do wish people could face up to it a _little_ more. I’m not great at this myself, but I do try to contribute to food banks, Doctors Without Borders, etc.
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The fact that this thread is readable and not totally enraging to one side or the other is indeed great…
My personal observation is that while life-long atheists like myself can get upset with Christians sometimes (personally, as a scientist and mathematician I get hung up on evidence and logic, and upset when people start ignoring them), the only people who get truly incandescently mad at the religious are people who used to be religious themselves, and feel they were injured by it in some way. (Certainly not all, or even most, ex-religious people feel this way. But I think some do.)
But murder threats, even in the abstract… that’s nuts.
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I think the point Dr. Tarico was making is the classic problem of evil, which does only affect religions that believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, good deity. Evil, on the face of it, is incompatible with the existence of such a deity (and to date there is no intellectually satisfactory theodicy). Secularists have no problem at all explaining evil. (Darwin was partially inspired by Malthus’ essay on catastrophic population collapse – that life is a struggle, and we’re not all on the same side, is basic to evolution. Humanists point out that as thinking people we can try to overcome such base impulses, however. “Survival of the fittest” is a description, not a prescription.)
So I’m utterly bemused at the idea that your parents said there was no such thing as evil. I’ve never heard that from anyone (even Quakers only say “there is that of God in everyone”, which means that no one is _all_ bad).
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I can’t help but notice the similarities between Dr. Tarico’s move away from theism and similar moves by others such as Ehrman or Templeton. It’s a shame that much of what happens in conservative evangelical upbringings actually seems to end up distancing people from God.
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Confusing whatever event or reasoning led one to or from faith with the whole of ones position seems to be a common mistake on both sides. Life changing moments like these can often be triggered by something as small as a college class on evolutionary biology or the realization that everything you knew about Santa was wrong. The thing to keep in mind is that these changes are just the embryonic stages of a new worldview, not a comprehensive refutation of the old.
Equating Dr. Tarico’s confrontation with the problem of evil and the entirety of her reasoning for being a non-theist would be just as big a mistake as writing off Dr. Collins’s Christianity on the sole basis of his experience with the frozen waterfall.
P.S. Thanks for the great entry and discussion, iMonk. I’m going to have to check out the rest of your site.
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Brilliant posting Michael. Dr. Tarico presents well what so many of us have come to. I commend you for listening. It has been interesting but not surprising how some also listen and others not.
I share her specific comments on bibliolitry and ancestor worship. I am glad I cut loose to think for myself. I still believe in God. But the crazy corrosive harmful unhealthy stuff had to be left behind.
She is really trying to be a healer by pointing out how unhealthy some of the commonly accepted lines of thinking in “Evangelical/Fundementalist” really are.
Good on you Monk
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dude, it was all the stuff going on in the Bible at the behest of God that caused me to lose my faith….
The “satan’s doing it” was working as far as bad stuff going on in the world was concerned… but after the fourth time through the Bible I just couldn’t believe that any sort of powerful and good being could manage to have a textbook that messed up.
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Thanks especially to Michael who set the ground rules in no uncertain terms at the beginning and enforced them.
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Personally I find this interview fascinating since I went through much the same thing that Dr. Tarico did, except the other way around. I was raised in a very secular household and taught that evil didn’t exist and most people deep down inside are good. I then became a teacher and started teaching in a violent, inner-city school. The non-stop misery, violence, hatred, and emptiness that I saw on a daily basis in the lives of my students didn’t go along with my previous philosophy of life. The lack of hope and emptiness in the lives of my students was almost too much to bear at times. It was at this point I began to grow interested in Christianity and was pointed toward the cross and the gospel. Christianity explained suffering, and the Gospel gave a cure for that suffering.
I guess because I wasn’t raised in a Christian home and didn’t know much about Christian culture I wasn’t aware of the whole “happy clappy” aspect of modern Christian American culture. If I had been aware of it then I probably would have been turned off it like Dr. Tarico was. When I became interested in Christianity I tended to read older works that fully acknowledged suffering and didn’t try to whitewash it. The church I eventually started attending also had a more ‘old-school’ vibe to it, without any happy-shiny mega-church stuff.
I think Americans as a whole-both theists and non-theists-have diffculty when confronted by suffering. We tend to have shallow explanations for it, and like to pretend that it doesn’t really exist. It’s more of a cultural problem than a purely Christian problem.
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An excellent interview! Dr. Tarico is refreshing compared to Dawkins, Hitchins, and Harris. More intellectually honest, too. The issues are certainly challenging and provocative. However, at the close of the day, all talk of “morality” and goodness lapse into naked subjectivism. Go past the text, the revelation, the Incarnation, and all you have is the self and the original lie – you can be as gods.
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I would like to hear her at length talk about her view of Jesus. It sounds like she was surrounded by all the evangelical culture and ideology, but attachment to Jesus never really happened.
In other words, I think a lot of us empathize with her reasons for leaving, but it sounds clinical, like an intellectual calculation that just stopped adding up. For myself, Jesus’ person is what keeps me believing, not the conundrums I face in life, faith communities, ideology, etc.
I would be interested in an interview with her two siblings who think she is a pawn of Satan.
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The Nazis, generally, were mystics, with a strong interest in the occult. My take is that while both anti-Christian and anti-Jewish, they were delighted to glom onto anything spiritual in which they found any self-justification. Many fundamentalists like to say the Nazis were atheists (as a tool to attack atheism), but that is very inaccurate if you take as the definition of atheism to be, “no faith in the supernatural at all”.
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I believe that suffering was one of the larger reasons that Oriana Fallaci considered herself a Christian agnostic.
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I think this statement about 80% shows a total lack of understanding of what was involved to live prior to the last 50 years. Growing up on a working farm through out most of recorded history required 99% of your waking time. Now some of it was done with your family but getting up a 5 AM every day of the year every year of your life to milk the cows and doing it again at about 5 PM was way more commitment to work than most of us working 60 hours a week would ever contemplate.
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I just want to say thanks for hosting this interview Michael. Real dialogue and discussion is so difficult to find on such important topics.
Also, thank you to Dr. Tarico for doing the interview.
And thank you to the commenters. The entire thing has been a refreshing change of pace from the normal type of “discussion” this type of thing usually instigates.
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Thank you Michael and Dr. Tarico, for the the interview and for modeling open communication. I was struck not so much by the differences, but by how much I agreed with Dr. Tarico’s observations about evangelicalism, though in my case it has led to becoming a post-evangelical rather than a non-theist.
There is much to listen to here, and much to learn.
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Thank you, Dr. Tarico, for your time and thoughts contributed here. I checked out your website and clicked on one of the many words crossing the screen….”Mercy”….and liked what I read on the page that popped up. http://www.wisdomcommons.org/virtues/86-mercy
And I just went to your blog http://awaypoint.spaces.live.com/ and read your interview with Rev. RIch Lang about the Book of Revelation. I knew a lot of what he said there, but I wonder if most New Testament scholars say NONE of the original 12 apostles actually wrote anything we read in the New Testament. I have always felt when I read the letters attributed to the apostle Peter that they didn’t sound at all like the Peter I read about in the Gospels. I know that his encounter with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost could have changed him in a mighty way, but still. I did just check out http://www.biblestudyinfo.com/peter/peter.shtml and I see it says his first letter may have been basically his, but “fixed up” by Sylvanus, a man well-trained in rhetoric. The page goes on to say that the second letter by Peter is more problematic because things are mentioned there that didn’t happen until after Peter’s death. But I know it is not so important as to who wrote it as to what they are saying. (Sorry for going off-track.)
Anyway, I see a lot of other interesting things at your blog so I will spend more time over there reading.
Thanks for letting us know about Dr. Tarico, Michael!
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Wish I had the time to do that. Someone give me an assistant for my birthday.
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iMonk, thank you for modeling how to listen and have a thoughtful, loving conversation with a neighbor who has a differing faith commitment.
I am so impressed that I would like to suggest that you publish a regular, perhaps weekly “conversation” with someone outside the Christian faith. If there is one thing I have learned since leaving the pastorate and becoming a chaplain is that most evangelical believers I know spend way too much time talking to themselves, and really have no idea how to really listen and talk to their neighbors one on one.
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Ironically, I find conservatism much more in tune with a Christian mindset. We oppose public health care, not health care which we provide with charity plus the patient’s funds as available(e.g. Shriners’ Hospitals, St. Jude). One could oppose public schools, yet champion private schools with scholarships for the poor (Catholic schools used to be precisely this). We can oppose government highways, yet have highways such as private toll roads. Even national defense could be militia-driven.
Why, Jjoe, does righteousness require mass coercive measures? I think it’s very easy for one (not implying it’s you) to consider one’s Christian obligation to the poor fulfilled after voting for a liberal politician in the voting booth, having personally expended neither time nor coin.
BTW, I’m a physician.
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Whoa, nellie. Hitler was virulently anti-Christian. He found it soft and too pacific, precisely unsuited for his agenda. And he thought the Bible was claptrap. There were no Christians in the upper echelons of Nazism, and in any event Christianity in Germany was already in decline, especially Protestantism. God’s will was not in the picture.
Now, intriguingly, Hitler did express admiration of Islam, and met with the intensely Jew-hating mufti of Jerusalem.
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I’m in central Florida so things may be a bit distorted, but I monitor the internet and the TV pretty closely.
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I too would like to thank Dr Tarico and imonk for opening this door.
I must admit, my head continues to spin the more time I spend reading this stuff, but I believe when it finally rests, I’ll be in a better place spiritually. I believe the Church can learn much from these dialogues and intend to share (especially the idea of the Church taking the moral high ground thus ultimately requiring hypocrisy).
I so appreciate Dr Tarico’s challenges to fundamentalist ideas about love and truth. Much to think about, indeed.
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JJoe, I have noticed the: “When Jesus told us we need to be like children, he didn’t say Christian children, He said Children” as well and I agree with you.
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Thanks for being willing to open the lines of communication, imonk. And thanks to Dr. Tarico for engaging in honest, stimulating conversation and being willing to dispel some myths about non-theists.
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Other people have added essentially what I would have said, and as a reluctant agnostic I’ve gotten good food for thought on both sides of the question. Thanks again for being the only Christian Blog I’ve found worth reading.
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My comment (the part you deleted) was directed at you, not Dr. T.
If I, for example, made the statement So I walked away. I didn’t really re-engage with Atheism in any systematic way until it became clear about five years ago that Atheistic ideas were dictating social policy—and killing people., what would your response to that be?
I think that if your interviewing someone and they toss out statements like that, it is more than reasonable to ask clarifying questions, as part of the inteview
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Yes, as a pastor I get asked all the time about suffering. I tell people to read Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Gospel of Matthew (in that order).
Sometimes, life sucks – and kidding ourselves into knowing why is sucks isn’t helpful one bit. It’s nice to know, however, that Jesus took on our suffering and pointed to something beyond it.
I can’t explain, and justifying the suffering of children is (in my mind) stupid – but I can be present and cry out, “How long?” with people.
I know middle-class people tend to expect more than that, because for us suffering is the aberration, but given that Jesus emerged in a world where you were lucky to reach age 40 I think, perhaps, it’s enough.
And, Dr. Tarico, my wife is all about saving the manatees – she loves those chubby things.
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Perhaps neither? Many other issues could easily apply. The big issue I am seeing is Christians behaving in ways that belie the name.
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I hope this is just the start of many good conversations to come. It has been frustrating to me to see so much heat and so little light in internet dialogue between theists and non-theists.
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So, is the issue one of “non-theists” rejecting the testimony of Christ, or the failures of Christianity to live up to “non-theists” expectations?
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I won’t watch that film myself, and I’ve taken my kids (all under 13) to see at least one R-rated movie. I’ll defend my choice of Slumdog Millionaire, but I really want to know why churches bought tickets to The Passion in bulk. Seems crazy to me.
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Very refreshing to hear someone from the “other side” (I am obviously at a loss to describe her position), who has been in the Christian world, and speaks rationally about her experience then, and now. It is a point of view I never hear – thanks Dr. Tarico and imonk.
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I just want to say that the part where Dr. Tarico talks about how Christians (and, implicitely, anyone with any kind of articulated world view) are faced with the uncomfortable choice- the comfortable, familiar texts, rites, traditions, etc that bind a faith- or openness to loving, which (I think is implied) is the path of being open to God- I love that part.
That makes so much sense to me, and I hope that I can live that out. I think this pertains to the law/Gospel tension you have been exploring, lately, Michael. Or maps on to it, anyway.
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Rats. I posted my earlier comment before I read down to IMonk’s earlier post on “Looking for Luther.” After “Looking for Luther” my post reads like an eager student trying to say exactly what the teacher wants to hear.
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I guess I’m guilty as charged then. That’s how I read Ephesians 2 and that has been my experience with my children. I guess I’m the token Calvinist that reads and responds here. I’m also a proponent of the nouthetic counseling model, but I certainly understand and respect those who differ.
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Without minimizing the reality of Dr. Tarico’s struggles with faith (and then faith being the loser), her story is not unique among those who reject the faith: “I was taught that, with God, the world is a happy, clappy place. Then I came face to face with a situation that could not possibly be squared with the world being a happy, clappy place. So I rejected God.”
I have a difficult time understanding why obviously intelligent people believe that the caricature of Christianity extant in so much of American evangelicalism is the faith. How about using some of those critical reasoning skills, give the Scriptures an honest reading, and then ask yourself whether what you observe in church is what Christ actually taught (let alone what the Psalmists taught). I’d suggest that coming to grips with sin, sickness, and death invites us as much to reject the world in favor of Christ as it invites us to reject Christ in favor of the world.
Luther called it the “theology of the cross.” How we need it today.
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I think that you’re going off on a bit of a rabbit trail here, unfortunately. Neither Nazism or Communism were religions. One was a philosophy that became a political system, and one was a method for German revenge over the excesses of the justice delivered by Europe due to WWI.
Yet both functioned as State Religions in their societies, complete with holy books, civic rituals, hagiographies, and Millenial Perfect Futures (always on the other side of the present’s atrocities, just as in their predecessor’s Republique of Perfect Virtue). And provided cosmic-level justification for what the “Men of Sin” running them were probably going to do anyway. (And Communism, probably because of its greater age, even had schisms (Stalin/Trotsky, Russian/China/Albania), heresies (Trotskyism), fundamentalism (Khmer Rouge), and Inquisitions (NKVS/OGPU/KGB) to enforce Orthodoxy; Naziism was more like a one-off Cult centered around the Cult Founder that didn’t get the time to evolve that far.) Sort of the idea of “civic religion” but much more formalized and heirarchical and Total Theocratic in all but name.
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Unfortunately, Joseph, your post is highly illustrative of one of the most common and off-putting habits of many Christians in the eyes of non-theists. Here you have someone who is explaining her view thoughtfully and respectfully, and your response comes off as a knee-jerk attack against her for having the temerity to believe differently from you. I’m prepared to assume it was not your intent, however It advertises poorly for Christianity.
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Very true. Trying to reconcile what my fundamentalist upbringing taught me with reality nearly broke me, before I encountered Dr. Collins “The Language of God”. Probably one of the most important books I ever read in my life.
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For those of us on the analytical/methodological side, is there a way to give things an innate or ongoing accountability where we continually bring all activity back to “and this is Christ” rather than “and this is Christianity”?
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…would put the blame for shifting the discussion to morality firmly at the feet of Christians, who have spent centuries saying that no one but themselves could be truly moral. Of course, the Gospel refutes that completely.
I find that statement fascinating. Can you cite passages that approach this issue, or at least point me in their direction? I am neither an evangelical nor a Christian but I pursue Biblical studies (I read Greek, Hebrew, & Aramaic and often do my own translations in articles on the subject), and often find myself defending Christianity to those whose idea of it is well described by Dan Allison above. I would really like to dig a little deeper into the Biblical refutation of moral exclusivity, but you’re the first person I’ve ever run across who’s ever said there is such a thing. Thanks!
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I think that this is a breaking point for a long of younger Christians. If you’ve been told all of your life “suffering is just part of God’s plan for glorification” or variations thereof, it leaves you without answers for why children suffer.
Or anybody.
Or why we’re not more effective at being a positive comforting agent in the face of that.
Whereas, I think that a lot of non-Christians, in the face of suffering, are free to see God as actually trying to fix the situation through and with us, rather than in spite of us. Or using us all as constant object lessons for his grand sunday school lesson.
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Thanks to Imonk for introducing me to Dr. Tarico’s work! Just reading this interview has been very helpful and inspiring. I plan to read through the links you provided, also.
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“I think I ended up falling from faith mostly in spite of the books I was reading to shore up my faith!”
She should have read more Osteen and Lucado.
“In reality, all education of children is indoctrination at some level. Every parent or teacher has to wrestle with the balance of top-down mind control vs open inquiry.”
Not many people would admit this. Do churches even want their congregations to raise their children to have a spirit of inquiry? The Apostle Paul did. Most sunday school classes would say no.
“… a serious moral question for believers: Is Christian indoctrination abusive more often than people like to think?”
Is it? What if you teach your children that it’s a sin to go to the doctor?
“My mom’s old church took a busload including pre-adolescents – kids who largely had been sheltered from Hollywood violence and had no way to have hardened themselves against it. If it wasn’t a religious theme, the parents themselves would have thought it abusive.”
It’s comments like this that are precisely why you need to keep having more interviews with nontheists/athiests/etc. They see how things look for the outside.
How many Christians even thought of the irony of saying”now that I’ve sheltered my children from ever being able to walk inside a movie theater, or watch anything rated above PG, let’s go take the whole family to see The Passion!”
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I’d like to suggest that we see our children as “more sinner than saint” because that is what evangelicalism has conditioned us to see. If we have on the glasses of total depravity, sin nature from the womb, naturally rebellious infants, etc., then that is what we will see. I really liked Dr. Tarico’s mention of child development. It is a basic and foundational source of knowledge in child rearing that has been largely eschewed by evangelicals because it is associated in their minds with what some consider the devil’s very own field of study: psychology.
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Great interview, Michael. There is much to be learned here. Thank you, Dr. Tarico, for your willingness to participate.
I have always thought that debating morality or thinking that Christians have the moral upper hand is a dead end street. Morality is never the issue between non-theists (I like that term) and Christians. I think Christians (and the rest of the world for that matter) will be better off when we realize this and get doing what only we can do – preach the Gospel.
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My thanks and appreciation to Dr. Tarico. I think my only observation would be linked to this statement in her answer to question #1…
“Finally I said to God, “I’m not making excuses for you anymore.†And suddenly it felt like I had been holding my God together for so long with duct tape and bailing wire that all I had left was tape and wire. So I walked away.”
It seems that mindsets similar to this are at the crux of why many walk away from Christianity. We feel that we have to defend, explain, or somehow justify who God is and what he does, and in trying to do so eventually conclude that we can’t or even shouldn’t. Even her friends, referenced in her answer to question #7, alludes to this when she says that, “Their perspective is that God doesn’t need us to cover for him or to hide from complicated realities.”
I agree with this. I wonder if Dr. Tarico agrees as well. Their answer seems to satisfy her in question 7 but not question 1??
Nonetheless, good stuff to ponder.
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Yes, thank you Cass Midgley, very well said!
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sorry for the word you didn’t like. i’ll try to be more careful next time. i meant it as a criticism of what she said, not as an ad hominem. forgive me.
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I will need to read this a few times; there is much to chew on here.
Michael, I appreciate you doing this. I don’t believe we need to hide from the truth, however complicated it may be. Thank you for providing this to us, so that we can better know our non-theist friends.
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i think many philosophical systems approach being religions.
the rest of your points are well taken.
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If the paradigm for science you associate with Christianity is Creationism, then you’re doomed if you walk the road Valerie walked. You won’t be able to live with it and you’ll give it all up and declare that Christianity hates and opposes science.
Very ironic in that the largest Christian communion, the RCC, explicitly and confessionally accepts evolution as a theory of human origins compatible with the faith. But who knows that in the circles that told Valerie the Creationists had the answer?
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“The fact is that the general public has never heard of Tim Keller, NT Wright, Brennan Manning, or Rob Bell. How we could go about replacing the former with the latter in the public consciousness, I do not know, but I pray for the day when historic, orthodox Christianity is the equivalent of “Christianity†in the public consciousness.”
Amen to that.
Whenever I read testimony like Valerie’s, I reminded of how important it is to avoid all of the distortions of our faith, however seemingly insignificant, that can make Christianity seem like an awful or immoral thing, instead of a beautiful and hope-filled thing.
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I agree, and would put the blame for shifting the discussion to morality firmly at the feet of Christians, who have spent centuries saying that no one but themselves could be truly moral. Of course, the Gospel refutes that completely. As a Christian, it is completely a non-issue whether Dr. Tarico is more or less moral than I am. In fact, should it be the case that I am proven to be immoral, it affects absolutely nothing about the Gospel. The issue for the Christian is 1) Is there a God and 2) What do we know about such a God and 3) What is our human connection to/relation to this God? Non-Theists see these questions as anthropology. We see these questions as presuppositional and beyond essential. The issue of morality meets both of us later in our conversation, and if the Christian knows the Gospel, he/she will never engage in a “Who is more moral?” debate. We must, however, talk about the comparative origin and implications of morality. As Ravi says, some people love their neighbor, and some people eat their neighbor. Do you have a preference? 🙂
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If we have convinced ourselves that the only possible way to live a “normal” live is that 80% of our time is taken up with work and necessities, with 10% left over for family and church, and of that church activity, perhaps 2% takes place outside of the building (yes, over-generalization) what does this say in context of what we are shown in the bible?
Or rather, could it be said of anybody in the initial new Testament church that there was a time in which they were not “missional”? When the lifstyle of Christ had permission to not be present in them?
I struggle often with the idea that the very job-culture that I am part of defeats my ability to be a disciple.
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I think much of this discussion on both sides focuses on questions of morality. I also think this largely misses the point of what Christianity is really about.
Dr. G.E. Veith expressed a great idea (that I need to read more about) that discussions of morality belong in the left-hand kingdom (society and government, in Lutheran parlance) and not in the right-hand kingdom (the church, broadly speaking).
I agree with Dr. Tarico that children are born with an innate sense of fairness and morality, but every child begins to violate this “natural law” almost from day one. Christians are in this dilemma every bit as much as any other human. I’m not about to get into the comparative morality of various religions and non-religions because I think that sin (in the Christian language) is universal among humans.
Where we may have common ground is in restoring a common sense of “public virtue” that is largely free of God-talk. There are certain basic public morals that allow us to live together peaceably in a diverse society, and I truly believe that people of all belief systems can live together in harmony by upholding these common values. In my upbringing, the Boy Scouts did a very good job of discussing civic virtues (citizenship, tolerance, care for the environment) in a way that did not depend on religious doctrine or exclude people over religion.
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I feel as if there is a misrepresentation going on here regarding the “moral compass.” Romans 1 makes it clear that there is some sense of right and wrong in everyone’s heart. I think the point is that apart from some standard it is impossible to declare any act as being absolutely good or evil. I would submit that the Bible is the appropriate standard to use. I’m not sure that anyone says that there can be no morality apart from the Bible as if all non-theists were running around in a depraved frenzy. Well, I’m sure that someone says that…
I don’t know about your kids, but mine have definitely been more sinner than saint as they’ve come into the world. Yes, they show flashes of compassion, but their overall focus is on themselves.
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“I’m convince that a person whose primary allegiance is to mankind, over God and country, is most apt to please God. This, to me, is the point.”
I like this. Evangelicals say one needs to ‘put God first’ but and “seek first the kingdom of God” but these terms are too poetic to be useful, for me anyways
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I think some people would argue that the high rate of suicide among gay teens can be traced back to Biblical ideas — or at least the application of them.
Although it doesn’t spring from the Bible, and is really in opposition to it as I read it, the conservative Christian opposition to public health care is my hot button. I equate it with abortion, because in both cases children die because it’s cheaper and more convenient. I understand that we should trust God to take care of us, not the government, but think about applying that philosophy to public education, national defense, or interstate highways.
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..stand-by…..i will have a very relevant comment as soon as i can get wikipedia to load up..(server is down)..
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Thank you for this.
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Did I or did I not say something about a Triablog style debate? If there’s not enough of that going on on the internet to keep a person occupied, maybe I can furnish some forum addresses. I was here to listen, learn and adjust my approach and thinking, not correct Ms. Torico’s.
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So I walked away. I didn’t really re-engage with Christianity in any systematic way until it became clear about five years ago that Biblical ideas were dictating social policy—and killing people.
I really think there are a number of issues with that statement that should be addressed, [Mod edit]
First – what ideas are acceptable to “dictate” social policy? Are any religious ideas reasonable? Clearly biblical ideas formed the basis for parts of western culture – are all biblical ideas suspect and therefore should be shunned?
Related, in a democratic society, just what ideas should be prevented from being discussed/legislated? Which ideas must be banned from discourse and legislation?
And the biggest softball tossed – what biblical ideas are killing people? That begs for more detail.
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Smokin’ awesome interview Michael. Thanks for doing this. And thanks to Dr. Tarico as well. You both took a pretty good-sized risk to participate. What a pleasure to see that it is people of good will engaging these issues rather than the normal bomb-throwers.
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I think that depends on your area. Here in Chicago, Christianity is equated with Catholicism and historical Black Protestant churches. Evangelicism is what is equated with that list.
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iMonk, thank you for facilitating this. I appreciate that there is finally a good example of mature interaction and dialogue on opposing issues that didn’t disintegrate into a fighting/cursing/insult match.
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After walking away confused from evangelical christianity 5 years ago (former pastor), I have recently indentified most with the Unitarian Universalist denom. My local UU is small and mostly made up of “liberal” Christians or post-Christian agnostics. Your question, “what’s the point” is a good one. I would ask the same of the modern evangelical agenda. I do see God love and Christ’s death as “universal” and have conceded that if there must be sheep and goats, it pleases me that the goats would be identified by their lack of love (practiced, not lip serviced) for their fellow humans or perhaps those who “shut the kingdom of God in men’s faces”. What if Jesus’ severe reference to those that cause people to “stumble”–fall into animosity toward God–was because our potential to do damage to God’s agenda far exceeds are propensity to help. I’m convince that a person whose primary allegiance is to mankind, over God and country, is most apt to please God. This, to me, is the point.
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I want to thank Dr. Tarico and especially Imonk for allowing her to speak. As a non-theist I have read and heard much on the internet that is negative about people like me and i know many non-theists who say negative things about Christians. Yet, I follow this blog as a method to counteract the extremists on both sides. I am very impressed that you are willing to engage with those who think differently and I wish more people on all sides of the religious issue were willing to engage in calm dialogue. Thank-you.
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Have you seen those videos of swastikas on the altars of churches of Nazi Germany?
Although Hitler wasn’t that religious and there were strong dissenters who gave their lives in opposition, many Christians and theologians thought that God had singled out Germany to be the favored nation among them all.
It is something to think about when looking at the root causes of the holocaust. Would the persecution of the Jews have happened without it being seen as God’s will as backed by the Bible?
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Joseph: Your use of the word “feeble” got you edited. This interview is about Christianity. She didn’t mention the Nazis because they advertised themselves as Christians, and she didn’t mention communists for the same reason you don’t mention the Conquistadors.
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Yeah, or rather “after kids hit X age, as adults, only Y% are actually likely to make a decision for Christ, so we have to get them early.”
But we never see Christ preaching to kids. Or trying to convert people to a religion.
Which seems to ask, should we be specifically targeting adults, and, is the way that we do church precisely wrong because it asks the wrong things of adults, without asking those of the practitioners of our religion?
And, thus, how much of the religion that we practice is, in itself, anti-Christ?
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I think that you’re going off on a bit of a rabbit trail here, unfortunately. Neither Nazism or Communism were religions. One was a philosophy that became a political system, and one was a method for German revenge over the excesses of the justice delivered by Europe due to WWI.
She’s pointing out the excesses of Christianity because she’s BEING ASKED about Christianity.
I don’t see her being asked about other political systems, or philosophies, or religions, do you?
She answered the questions she was asked. She didn’t go off on tangents, she spoke very directly to what she was asked. Assuming iMonk didn’t edit the interview. *wink wink, nudge nudge*
I don’t think that this is a woman who would agree that there is such a thing as good religion.
I would also venture that Jesus would agree.
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@imonk, kudos to you for engaging in this civil dialogue
regarding children’s ministries, even as evangelical Christian, I wonder about “indoctrination” — so much pounded in way before somebody is mentally mature enough to make a proper consideration. does it “poison” the well, so to speak?
there’s a huge push and focus on children’s ministry (perhaps it’s just my church, where it’s bandied about how “85% of those who give their lives to Christ do so as a child”…
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A lot of people don’t really use the term Evangelical anymore, since it’s become so claimed and diluted at the same time.
I’m a big fan of missional (which will probably half a half-life of 6 months at the rate we go through terms these days)
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Thank you to Dr. Tarico for the thoughtful answers and avoiding the cheap shots.
I suspect many IM readers share your negative views of Christian fundamentalism, and have made major shifts away from the Christianity of their youth, as I have. In my case, I shifted, eventually, into a different understanding and view of Christianity, but I definitely understand why you shifted into non-theism.
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Thanks for posting this. It helps to see how we are perceived by others. When I was in college a cult that was known for destroying lives and families was trying to gain a foothold on our campus. Some ex members came to educate our BSU leadership on the tactics they used. I found myself thinking we do a lot of the same things to get people to come to what we do.
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It is interesting to note that her “de-conversion” story almost mirrors the conversion experience of Dr. Francis Collins, who came out of Med school a convinced Atheist, but became a Christian due directly to his encounters with human suffering.
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I don’t know how such a thing could be accomplished, but only an intentional and aggressive effort to correct widespread misperceptions will help us here. The general public — at least in the US — equates Christianity with Young Earth Creationism, Lindsey/LaHaye-style dispensationalism, Hagee-style Christian Zionism, Fred Phelps, Alan Keyes, and Randall Terry.
The fact is that the general public has never heard of Tim Keller, NT Wright, Brennan Manning, or Rob Bell. How we could go about replacing the former with the latter in the public consciousness, I do not know, but I pray for the day when historic, orthodox Christianity is the equivalent of “Christianity” in the public consciousness. If non-theists are going to reject Christianity, they should at least know what it actually is.
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in following the “religious indoctrination is child abuse” theme, i think dr tarico implicitly undermines her argument that there is a type of fundamentalism among non-theists and anti-theists.
as an orthodox christian, i can find agreement with her crticisim of bibliolatry and what amounts to ancestor worship, both of which seem to pervade evangelical and traditional/liturgical traditions in christianity. nevertheless, i get the impression that her idea of a good religion is something akin to Unitarian Universalism, where everything is scrutinized and doubted to the point where nothing is fundamental and everything is allowable. religion, by its very definition, requires at least some absolutes to which everyone subscribes. without it, what is the point?
i’m also fascinated that non-theists and anti-theists have no problem pointing out excesses of christianity, et al. (and why does she only hit Christianity in this interview?) without pointing out the supreme inhumanity of nazism and soviet communism, which have killed more people than any religion i can think of. many of her fellow travelers have the same blind spot…[Mod edit]
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brilliant. another breath of fresh air. a forerunner in the impending mass exodus from the modern christianity that deralied centuries ago. this invigorates my hope that “we” (Jesus people) are truly repenting, restoring sound doctrine, returning to Jesus and love and humanity. the “church” will soon join the human race and in so doing join God. Of the two greatest commandments, I believe God would that we embrace the second one (love people) EVEN at the expense of foresaking the first one (love God), because it is impossible to fulfill the second one and NOT (indirectly even) fulfill the first one; whereas it IS possible to fulfill the first one (albeit delusionally) and forsake the second one–Christians are atypically experts at this. Thus, if the entire human race rejected God but turned to each other in love, compassion, peace, etc. I think God would be THRILLED! Because we would (unknowingly) be turning to to Him and fulfilling His vision for the earth. Because when we “do it” to each other, we “do it” to Him. And, in the parable of the two sons, the one who said “no” to the father but actually did what the father asked, was honored by the father, and the one who only lip service to him, was dishonored. Christians talk love and actually think their loving, but this is the great delusion of this era of Christianity. It’s sad that people have to abandon God to actually fulfill His will for them, but this is the false-Christianity that we’ve created and many are abandoning it, and right they should.
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The idea that we’re born with moral instincts and can discern very early right from wrong is very threatening to many Christians simply because of the myth that there is no basis for morality apart from the Bible.
The foundation of Christianity rests on the idea that we are totally depraved and sinful, and yet every child is born with an inherent sense of compassion, of justice, of empathy — a Jesus-shaped morality developed in the absence of any knowledge of Jesus.
When Jesus told us we need to be like children, he didn’t say Christian children, He said Children.
How many children have been emotionally abused by other children because they were not “saved?” Many. My kid doesn’t attend the local mega-bible-church, and she gets told she’s not a good Christian, not saved, and reads from a Bible that’s been changed. (I suspect some of it comes because she attended one meeting of this church’s youth group and didn’t come back because “they even had a capacchino machine, dad!”) Yet this bullying is OK with the parents because it’s bullying for Christ.
Dr. Tarico is right on target when she says that many Christian fail to see that the outrage against them does in fact have a moral basis. It’s a logical conundrum for them that is unresolvable except by closing their eyes even tighter.
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Dr. Valerie Tarico, thank you for your vulnerability and for helping me see these issues through your perspective. I have the utmost respect for you!
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Todd: Well, we aren’t exactly helping that, are we? 🙂 What is an evangelical according to the Pyro boys or Rob Bell or Joel O or Ken Ham. Ahem.
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Just awesome, some excellent thought here.
There’s a temptation to list a string of books from the question of how that fits into the discussion, but really, that’s a dishonest communication on my part, isn’t it?
Still, I wonder how the activities of folks like Shane Claiborne fit into the above discussion. Also, would she consider any Christian who wants other people to also meet Christ to be Evangelical? (the word seems to take on different meanings in different contexts, so I thought I’d ask.)
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