The Overview (Tuesday, April 19)
Tensions over the scope of religious freedom, reflecting on our "uniquely stupid" moment, and my recent chapel message
Last week I had the privilege of speaking in our university’s chapel service. This semester we have been making our way through the Exodus story, remembering Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and its subsequent wandering in the wilderness on its way to the promised land.
My talk focused on Numbers 21, which tells of God instructing Moses to fashion a bronze serpent as a means of relief for Israel in the midst of their suffering from an invasion of venomous snakes. Jesus cites this account in the Gospel of John, comparing the elevated bronze serpent to “the Son of Man … lifted up.”
Here’s a selection from my talk.
It has been a long time since the Exodus. In fact, it’s hard to fathom how long God’s people have been waiting and wandering. For us, a long time may be a manner of days or weeks, as when we’re waiting to hear back about a job prospect or college admissions decision. It may be a manner of years, even, as when we’re waiting for the opportunity to become parents, for healing from chronic illnesses, or for reparation of broken relationships. But the Jews had been waiting for decades since their liberation from slavery to inherit the land that had been promised. They knew what the Lord had promised to them, and yet they found themselves continually waiting, without any sign that they were getting closer to the promised land.
So you can imagine their frustration with God and with his servant, Moses, when they lashed out at God and accused Him of abandoning them to die. But we must also see just how faithless God’s people are being in this moment. Recall all the ways in which God had provided for them since their deliverance from Egypt – the escape through the Red Sea, daily water and food in the desert, and victories in battle. But at this moment, the faithfulness of God is not on the minds of His people; instead, they are pointing to all the ways He has seemingly abandoned them. Instead of praising God for his steadfast provision during trials, they are cursing these very blessings as “worthless.” Their grumbling has blinded them to the ways in which the Lord is caring for them in their wandering.
I imagine we can all relate to this story, even if we have never spent decades wandering through the desert on the way to the promised land. When things are going our way, we are prone to rejoice and to give thanks to a God who gives and gives generously. But when things turn south—be it relatively minor things like disappointing grades or difficult coworkers, or more serious things like damaged relationships or personal tragedies—we are prone to frustration, to anger, to lashing out at God for apparently turning His back on us.
Of course, God’s faithfulness to us is everlasting; it covers the highs and the lows of our day-to-day lives, and is not contingent on our changing circumstances. There are seasons of life where we may be in deep, deep valleys, but even in those moments the Lord is faithful. That doesn’t necessarily make those seasons any less painful, but for Christians, we can take heart that the same God who suffered and died for us also walks alongside us, in the best of times and the worst.
Back to Israel. They’re bitter. They are completely over their wandering. They’re blaming God and they’re blaming Moses for their predicament. And as a result they are stricken with what is essentially a plague of venomous snakes, to the point that, according to verse six, “many people of Israel died.” Actually, it’s not just that they are stricken by these snakes; the text is clear that God Himself is responsible for sending the deadly snakes among the people.
Why would God send fiery serpents to afflict Israel in the first place? It is not out of spite or rage against his people. Rather, it is a consequence of their sin. A holy and righteous God cannot excuse or brush off sin; doing so is contrary to his perfect nature. Israel made sacrifices not because God took pleasure in the death of pure and undefiled animals. Israel did this because this was necessary to appease the wrath of God; it was the only way they could be absolved of their sin. God’s wrath is not borne out of anger; it comes in opposition to sin.
So, as they have done so many times before, God’s people repent of their sins. They acknowledge that they have sinned against God by lashing out at Him and his provision for their needs. And they pray that God would take the serpents away from them. And as He has done so many times before, God hears and responds to their prayer, and provides a way out for his people from misery and death. As one writer put it, “Because He is holy, He must deal with our sin. Because He is love, He chooses to offer us mercy.”
I’ll share the recording of this talk when it’s available. Until then, here’s the Tuesday, April 19 edition of The Overview:
1. Writing for Religion and Politics, Charles McCrary discusses the evolution of the term “sincerely held religious belief” in the context of religious freedom disputes in the United States. McCrary, author of the book Sincerely Held, argues that the framework for evaluating the sincerity of a person’s beliefs is both problematic and heavily weighted toward the practices of white Protestant Christians.
McCrary highlights the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ramirez v. Collier, in which the Court ruled 8-1 that Texas must permit a pastor to be in the death chamber as an inmate is executed, praying for him and laying hands on him. The one dissenting vote was Justice Clarence Thomas, and Thomas’s claim that the inmate’s views were “insincere” troubled McCrary:
Does Thomas’s dissent portend a new willingness of conservatives to interrogate sincerity claims more closely? This would be a surprising development, since the conservative legal movement in the last decade has galvanized around sincerely held religious belief, using the concept as a tool to fight against LGBTQ rights, public health restrictions, public education, and other potential impositions. If conservatives were to double down on a more skeptical stance toward sincere beliefs, it could undermine a thriving part of their movement. If, for instance, the owners of Hobby Lobby had been subjected to a higher standard of sincerity and religiosity, would they have passed it?
I’m looking forward to reading McCrary’s book this summer. While I agree that there are real problems with judges evaluating the sincerity of someone’s religious beliefs when considering religious freedom claims (e.g., how does this not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment?), I’m more curious to read what McCrary thinks about the current judicial trend toward deferring to religious freedom claims in general.1
2. Speaking of religious freedom claims, the New York Times reports on a new case involving the claims of several Marines seeking religious accommodations for their Sikh beliefs. From the story:
A Marine artillery captain named Sukhbir Singh Toor has been on a mission over the past year to become the first Sikh in the United States Marine Corps allowed to openly practice his religion while in uniform.
During that time he has won a string of victories against the strict dress standards of the Marine Corps, and he can now wear the beard, long hair and turban required of a faithful Sikh while on duty. But recently, the Marine Corps dug in, refusing to allow him or any other Sikh to wear a beard on a combat deployment or during boot camp, saying that beards would hinder the corps’s ability to function and put lives at risk.
More:
Joining [Toor] in the lawsuit are three prospective Marine recruits who have been told they must shave their beards and cut their hair for boot camp, where all Marines receive basic training, and only afterward would be able to apply for a religious exemption.
The lawsuit is emblematic of the larger struggle the tradition-bound military faces in trying to attract personnel in an increasingly diverse nation, while preserving practices that took root when its ranks were almost entirely white, male and Christian.
One crucial detail working in the Sikhs’ favor: the Marine Corps already has exceptions to its beard policy, for those with medical conditions and for those in Special Forces missions. This makes this case at least somewhat similar to Holt v. Hobbs, in which the Supreme Court ended up ruling 9-0 for an inmate who had sought permission to maintain a short beard due to his Muslim religious beliefs.
3. New York Times reporters Elizabeth Diaz and Ruth Graham explain the increasing connection between Christian worship music and conservative political rallies. Consider this:
The Christian right has been intertwined with American conservatism for decades, culminating in the Trump era. And elements of Christian culture have long been present at political rallies. But worship, a sacred act showing devotion to God expressed through movement, song or prayer, was largely reserved for church. Now, many believers are importing their worship of God, with all its intensity, emotion and ambitions, to their political life.
Or this:
The infusion of explicitly religious fervor — much of it rooted in the charismatic tradition, which emphasizes the power of the Holy Spirit — into the right-wing movement is changing the atmosphere of events and rallies, many of which feature Christian symbols and rituals, especially praise music.
With spiritual mission driving political ideals, the stakes of any conflict, whether over masks or school curriculums, can feel that much larger, and compromise can be even more difficult to achieve. Political ambitions come to be about defending God, pointing to a desire to build a nation that actively promotes a particular set of Christian beliefs.
“What is refreshing for me is, this isn’t at all related to church, but we are talking about God,” said Patty Castillo Porter, who attended the Phoenix event. She is an accountant and officer with a local Republican committee to represent “the voice of the Grassroots/America First posse,” and said she loved meeting so many Christians at the rallies she attends to protest election results, border policy or Covid mandates.
The article generated a good deal of pushback from conservative Christians on social media, including Daily Wire journalist Meg Basham who described the piece as an effort to paint certain Christians as “scary”:
I’ll just say this: Responses like Basham’s are worth noting as phenomena in themselves, at least in terms of our current culture war moment.
4. Writing for the Atlantic, Jonathan Haidt provides perhaps the most thoughtful commentary to date on the connection between social media and political/cultural decline in 21st-century America. Here’s the gist of his argument:
Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three.
Haidt specifically blames changes to social media—specifically, the “like” and “share” functions—allowing users to quickly share and identify with information as especially damaging.
Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the “Retweet” button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”
Drawing on James Madison, conspiracy theories, and extremism among “normal” Americans, among many other things, Haidt offers an account that is simultaneously convincing, sobering, and frightening. It is a long read, but a rewarding one.
5. Finally, you may know that in addition to my role as a political science professor at John Brown University, I also serve as assistant director at JBU’s Center for Faith and Flourishing. Last week, CFF was pleased to host Alliance Defending Freedom’s Greg Baylor for a talk—and fruitful Q&A—on the tensions between religious liberty and LGBTQ rights.
I don’t agree with everything that ADF does, but Greg was a wonderful guest and engaged our students exceptionally well. You can watch the whole thing below.
I, for one, believe this is a very good thing.