Ever heard somebody claim that Christianity is largely to blame for sexism, or at least has done nothing to oppose it? While many Christians and institutional churches have certainly engaged in more than their share of sexist behavior, a strong tradition of Christian egalitarianism runs deep. Consider Clement of Alexandria:

Let us understand that the same virtue pertains to men and women. For if there is one God for both, there is also one Pedagogue for both. One church, one self-restraint, one modesty, a common food, a common marriage bond, breath, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love, all are alike. Those who have life in common, grace in common, and indeed salvation in common also have virtue and a way of life in common. … Therefore also the name “human” is common to men and women.

— Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6.100.2–3, trans. Roberts and Donaldson, quoted from Nonna Verna Harrison, God’s Many-Splendored Image (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010)

Clement was not, of course, an egalitarian in the modern sense—he probably would have opposed the idea of a female bishop, for example—but theological understandings like his laid the foundations that would eventually lead to modern gender egalitarianism.

Once upon a time, during a Sunday morning worship service, I almost laughed out loud when the man on the stage said, “Look around you and see all the people who aren’t here this morning.” I couldn’t see them, of course, because they weren’t there! We all have blind spots, things and—unfortunately—people we overlook. I know that I have them too … and by definition, I don’t know what they are.

The insidious power of blind spots reared its ugly head in a poll I answered today. The Christian Chronicle, “an international newspaper for Churches of Christ” (to quote its masthead), currently has a poll on its home page.

Notice anything missing? Can you see the people who aren’t there?

In my Religion 101 course (an introductory Old Testament course for first-year students, not a “how to be religious” course), students can earn credit toward their final grade in many different ways. One of the options, the Prophet achievement, invites students to write about the use of the Bible debates over abortion.

In the two semesters that students have had this option, several have quoted or referenced Isaiah 46:3 in an attempt to demonstrate that God considers not-yet-born children to be fully human persons, worthy of divine care and attention. I do not wish, in this post (or the comments thread thereafter), to engage in a debate over whether viewing fetuses as fully human persons has theological or scientific validity in general. Rather, I want to think out loud about whether that claim finds exegetical support in this verse. The wider debate can wait.

At one level, one can easily dismiss this verse from consideration in the abortion debate, because the verse addresses the entire “house of Jacob//Israel” as a group, not any individual person, much less every individual person. The references to Jacob//Israel’s birth in Isaiah 46:3 refers metaphorically to the birth of the group, not to the births of individual human beings.

However, in a more sophisticated fashion, one might argue that the metaphor really works only if the ideas expressed do apply to individual humans; if what is said isn’t true of individual humans, there’s no reason to consider it true of the nation cast metaphorically as a human. Granting this point makes the question more complicated.

The Hebrew text of Isaiah 46:3c–d reads:

העמסים מני בטן
הנשאים מני רחם

The parallelism is tight and indisputable. To whatever stage in life line c refers, line d refers, and vice versa. The NRSV translation makes this clear:

who have been borne by me from your birth,
carried from the womb

The more widely circulating NIV, however, casts line c in a different temporal frame than line d:

you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,
and have carried since your birth.

NRSV and NIV agree on the sense of line d, but NIV pushes line c back before birth, to conception. If the NIV is right to do this in line c, then line d should also be rendered in the same temporal frame, given the very tight semantic and syntactic parallelism. But were the NIV translators right to give line c the spin they gave it? I don’t think so. To me, the preposition מן suggests “from the time you came out of the belly//womb,” as the NRSV translators indicate in both lines, and as the NIV translators indicate in line d. Certainly if that is the sense of מני רחם in line d, it is the sense of מני בטן in line c. Also, when you take Isaiah 46:4 into account, it becomes clear that the contrast is not between birth and death, but between infancy and old age. (Death would be highly inappropriate in this context, because the whole point is that the nation, though scarred, is not dead.)

Apparently, the translators who worked on the TNIV agreed that the NIV translation was tendentious (or just plain grammatically wrong), because they revised it to

you whom I have upheld since your birth,
and have carried since you were born.

Isaiah 46:3–4 expresses a beautiful sentiment about God’s love and care for the “house of Israel,” but it has no bearing on debates about abortion—not just because it’s about a collective instead of individuals, but also because the implied time frame begins after birth.

Yeah. Don’t I wish.

The Federal Trade Commission wants me to make sure you know that if you click on an Amazon.com or iTunes Store link here on Higgaion—like this link to John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis 1—and then you actually buy something pursuant to that click, I get a small kickback in the form of a gift certificate.

The FTC also thinks it’s really important for you to know that sometimes I post reviews of books that were given to me, free of charge, by the publisher. This hasn’t actually happened very frequently on Higgaion, but of course it relates to the reviews I’ve published in Review of Biblical Literature, other such places, or Higgaion itself. Most of the books I’ve reviewed on Higgaion are books I’ve paid for. Yes, it’s true. Hector Avalos is probably $0.73 richer because I bought two of his books.

And when I get a chance to buy books like John Oswalt’s The Bible among the Myths using Amazon.com gift certificates that I got because you clicked on a link here and then bought a book that I’m reviewing here, everybody is happy, happy, happy. Amazon pays the publisher. You pay Amazon and get 30% or more off the MSRP.* I get a few pennies in gift certificates, and when these add up, I buy another book and review it, which entertains and enlightens you. It’s the circle of life.

* Just don’t do this with Eisenbrauns books, okay? Buy them directly from the basket strapped to the handlebars of James Spinti‘s bicycle.

Oh, by the way, Duke University Press is officially unhappy with the FTC ruling. Laura Sell (no, that’s not made up), one of DUP’s (no, that acronym isn’t made up either) senior publicists, has written to the FTC to complain about a possible “chilling effect.” I hope Ms. Sell understands that Higgaion will warmly welcome any review copies of biblical studies books that Duke University Press wants to send this way. And I hope you readers all understand that if I review a book by Duke University Press, I just might have gotten it free. Or not. But I told you, and now the FTC should be happy.

If this topic has already generated much discussion among bibliobloggers, I missed it. Even if everybody else has mentioned it, I feel compelled to register my disgust with the recent actions of Steven Anderson, paster of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.

I find Anderson’s comments appalling. Anderson hopes that God strikes Barack Obama with deadly brain cancer. I hope that God fills Anderson with love, compassion, and a spirit of repentance for his hate-mongering.

And before anybody asks: yes, of course I know all about the imprecatory psalms, and don’t consider them an appropriate model for Christian prayer. I find them to be honest, heart-wrenching—and unfit for someone who claims to embody the love of Jesus, who asked God not to kill, but to forgive the people directly responsible for his own death.

It’s just that “internet users don’t want to pay for content. Period.” So reports ReadWriteWeb, reflecting the conclusions of a study commissioned by the European Union. According to RWW, “many people [polled for the study] claim that they wouldn’t pay for online content even if all other free options were taken away.” You can’t blame peer-to-peer networks for this, the EU concludes; it’s a consequence of the very Internet itself. Read the whole story on ReadWriteWeb and follow the links there for more details.

James West will speak at Pepperdine at 7:00 PM on October 21, 2008, as the second lecturer in this year’s newly-renamed W. David Baird Distinguished Lecture Series. His topic will be “Spirituality and Religion: A Cheyenne Family Story.” Mr. West, who holds an M.Div. from Andover Newton, founded and presides over the charity Futures for Children (Albuquerque, New Mexico) and has many other experiences in business, charity, and government.

Oh, you thought maybe I meant someone else?

In a January 20, 2008 commentary published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, popular Christian writer and speaker Tony Campolo asserts that the “real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism” (quoting the title, which accurately sums up the argument even if penned by an Inquirer editor rather than Campolo himself). Lest anyone think that Campolo puts forth a creationist screed, he writes at the beginning of the penultimate paragraph:

I hope our schoolchildren will be taught that it is up to science to study the processes that gave birth to the human race.

If so, then what’s the problem, Tony?

Some creationists fear Darwin because his theories contradict their literal biblical belief that creation occurred in six 24-hour days. But they do not get at the real dangers of Darwinism. They do not realize that an explanation of the development of biological organisms over eons of time really does not pose the great threat to the dignity of our humanity that they suppose. Instead, they, along with the rest of us, should really fear the ethical implications of Darwin’s original writings.

In reality, those writings express the prevalent racism of the 19th century and endorse an extreme laissez-faire political ideology that legitimizes the neglect of the suffering poor by the ruling elite.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and again, and as many times as it needs to be said: the “ethical implications” of a scientific theory have no bearing whatsoever on its truth or falsity. One really can smash atoms and thereby release enormous concussive force, if one uses the right procedures and materials. One ought not, in my opinion (and Campolo would undoubtedly agree), use this scientific knowledge for destructive purposes. However, my ethical/moral opposition to the use of nuclear bombs does not in any conceivable way impugn the truth of atomic theory. Atoms are what they are; they behave as they behave. If we put these ideas to unethical or immoral uses, that’s our problem, not atomic theory’s. Darwin offered a scientific hypothesis—now so well-supported that it deserves to be called a theory—to explain speciation. If people have put that idea to unethical or immoral uses, the problem lies in the people, not the theory.

But even more basically, Campolo just flat-out misrepresents Darwin’s own attitudes. Campolo writes:

Those who argue at school board meetings that Darwin should be taught in public schools seldom have taken the time to read him. If they knew the full title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, they might have gained some inkling of the racism propagated by this controversial theorist. Had they actually read Origin, they likely would be shocked to learn that among Darwin’s scientifically based proposals was the elimination of “the negro and Australian peoples,” which he considered savage races whose continued survival was hindering the progress of civilization.

Never mind the completely gratuitous comment about Darwin’s school-board-meeting proponents, information that Campolo could not possibly know (unless he’s either a mass mind-reader or has done an amazing job of exit-polling at a representative sampling of school board meetings). The term “races” in the subtitle of the Origin refers to various species, not to variations among human beings. Darwin certainly never proposed “the elimination of ‘the negro and Australian peoples.’” I don’t know where Campolo got his information—but it wasn’t from Darwin. As a matter of fact, Darwin despised slavery and racism. On May 22, 1833, Darwin wrote from South America to his sister, Catherine:

What a proud thing for England, if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes [slavery]. I was told before leaving England, that after in Slave countries: all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the Negro character.

Later that year, on June 2, Darwin wrote to John Herbert:

It does one’s heart good to hear how things are going on in England. Hurrah for the honest Whigs. I trust they will soon attack that monstrous stain on our boasted liberty, Colonial Slavery. I have seen enough of Slavery & the disposition of the negros, to be thoroughly disgusted with the lies & nonsense one hears on the subject in England.

Troy Britain provides <a href=”http://home.att.net/~troybritain/articles/darwin_on_race.htm” target=”_blank”>other quotations</a> from Darwin about racism and slavery. Darwin’s personal history and published writings make it awfully clear that he was about as far from racist as was any nineteenth-century Briton. Indeed, Darwin wrote the following near the end of The Descent of Man:

The variabilty of all the characteristic differences between the [human] races, before referred to, likewise indicates that these differences cannot be of much importance; for, had they been important, they would long ago have been either fixed and preserved, or eliminated [by natural selection].

Red and yellow, black and white—not significant, in Darwin’s sight. Darwin actually thought that the similarities he observed among people served to confirm his notion of common descent, as he wrote in The Descent of Man:

Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of body, &c., yet if their whole structure be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other on a multitude of points. Many of these are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently aquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans are as different from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Fuegians on board the beagle, with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were with ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate.

What’s most darkly ironic about Campolo’s misinformed op-ed is that the Bible has undoubtedly strengthened Euro-American racism much more than The Origin of Species (if the latter has done so at all). A century before Darwin, the biblical “curse on Ham” (which doesn’t actually exist; it’s really a curse on Canaan, but interpreters have often kicked the curse up the genealogical ladder to Canaan’s daddy). Racist interpretations of Genesis 9:19–27 were almost non-existent before the 18th century, according to Benjamin Braude, professor of history at Boston College. Starting in the 18th century, Europeans and Americans who held Africans as slaves began to willfully misinterpret the passage as a justification for slavery.

Campolo missed the boat, pure and simple. I have respected Tony Campolo for many years, and even got to meet him once when he gave a series of lectures at Milligan College. I think he’s made a number of positive contributions to Christianity over the last few decades—but this op-ed, chock full of misinformation, definitely isn’t one of them.

Westboro Baptist Church, home base of the execrable Fred Phelps of “God hates fags” fame, has lost a lawsuit brought against it in a U.S. district court. Read more about it at CNN.com. Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania sued Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, and his two daughters for invasion of privacy and intent to inflect emotional distress after they picketed his son’s funeral. Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq; Phelps’s hateful contingent has become infamous for picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers, claiming that those deaths are due to the United States’s toleration of homosexuality. In this case—apparently the first time a deceased soldier’s family has sued the picketers, or the first such case to be resolved—the jury awarded the plaintiff $2.9 million in compensatory damages, $6 million in punitive damages, and $2 million for causing emotional distress. The judge noted that the award “far exceeds the net worth of the defendants.” Good. Maybe they won’t be able to afford to print up any more hateful signs or afford bus tickets to picket other people’s funerals.

I just learned a few minutes ago about Free Rice, a website where you can take a vocabulary quiz and feed the poor all at the same time—in fact, there’s a causal relationship between the two. Go play a word game for a while and feed some hungry people.