A Reflection on the AAR mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting 2014

Usually I am among those who support liberal theological platforms. And the American Academy of Religions, by and large, supports the broader spectrum of religious voices in the world, which by extension tends to exclude Fundamentalist groups who stake claims in exceptionalism, authoritarian theology, and the divine inspiration and inerrancy of scripture.

At this year’s mid-Atlantic regional meeting, a panel met to discuss what they are defining as Theology without Walls. While the panel included esteemed theologians who are well-read in the literature of interfaith studies, I was quite surprised that so much of the audience, was not readily happy with their conclusions.

Like its annual counterpart, the regional meetings are filled with progressive thinkers in the religions, whose backs usually back religious inclusiveness. But it was refreshing to see a number of people comment to the panel that they found the use of the term “Walls” to describe dogmatic borders an offense that could not sufficiently account for the movement as universal, as the panel has imagined it. One comment in particular spoke about the problem of discounting years of ecclesiastical decisions as simply being the work of disengaged theocrats who were were not complicatedly involved in hashing out doctrines within the community in which they found themselves. I found this point quite compelling since the concern was that if someone does not “come to the table” do we have the right to consider them outside of the question.

At least in terms of U.S. foreign policy, as an example, we do this all the time. As the situation in the Ukraine heats up, we impose sanctions. When North Korea does not subordinate to our demands, we isolate them economically. We do not tolerate insubordination or dissent. And so I think the question is importantly relevant. Surely, liberal universities do not hire conservative thinkers, but I guess the same could be said for conservative seminaries hiring liberals who do not append to their statements of faith. So listening to one another and talking to one another is often done despite one another…antagonistically. This gentleman’s comment, however, reminded me that perhaps we don’t have the right to create or imagine any theological worldview that does not take into account our fundamentalist brethren, even the ones who go to their deaths as martyrs and take innocent peoples with them.

The way to answer this has been done of course. The anonymous Christian of Karl Rahner or even Bonhoeffer’s grasp of his doctoral advisor Reinhold Seeberg’s idea that God acts despite us and that this reality is not merely perspectival but is a reflection of the world, needs to be considered, especially if we grant people the freedom to speak for themselves. Perhaps it is only that in rejecting our conversation and the proposition that “all religions being equal” excludes them that we might ask why they are not open to us, and then going to our experiences, especially those of us who have come out of fundamentalists churches, ask what it took in our worldview to crack to allow for our transformations of thinking that was even bigger than say soteriological expectionalism.

Sharia law, Pashtunwali, and Another Textual Reason Why Jesus’s Condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah was not about Homosexual Indiscretion

Recently, I watched the movie Lone Survivor. At its conclusion, Marcus Luttrell, played by Mark Wahlberg, encounters Afghani civilians whom he asks for help after having his unit wiped out by the pursuing Taliban. In return, the Afghanis take him into their village. When the Taliban comes in and orders the villagers to turn him over, the Afghanis refuse. Just prior to the credits, the audience is informed that it was the custom of Pashtunwali that kept Luttrell alive, and that the custom dates back 2,000 years.

The technical term, melmastia, is a dimension of Pashtunwali in Arabic and Pashtun Sharia Law that deals with hospitality. The custom of course is not exclusively Arabic, but Semitic, in the sense that peoples of the region felt themselves honor-bound to acknowledge it. It is the prevailing theme in the Jewish Bible’s story of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the men of the city surrounded Lot’s house and demand his visitors.

After the cities are destroyed, we are told, that the reason why it was judged was because Sodom and Gomorrah did not treat its visitors with hospitality. A fact seen in the following verse.

“Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door. (Genesis 19:9)

In fact, the men of Sodom also despised Lot because he too was a recent foreigner who made his home there!

So when Jesus charges his disciples to preach the gospel, sending them out in twos, he warns that any town that does not welcome them will have a harsher punishment awaiting them then even Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of Judgment.

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. (Matthew 10:14-15)

One reason for this may have been that while Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities of Canaanites, the cities which Jesus commands his disciples to visit are restricted to the cities of the Jews. And perhaps as Jews, being among Jews, the standard was higher.

One rarely hears the Matthew passage in this context, but indeed the fact that Jesus acknowledges that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is not homosexuality or even rape but a lack of hospitality remains an important interpretative lens to this passage. Given the seriousness with which Jesus treats this sin, it remains difficult to internalize, especially for a 21st Century Western audience where we tend to keep our neighbors at arm’s length.