Parishioners in the church of my childhood often sang the hymn, "I have decided to follow Jesus...No turning back, no turning back." The hymn cautioned disciples about turning away from Jesus. This essay explores the prospect of being disciples by getting in front of Jesus.

To follow a person usually means walking behind that person. Could it be, however, that we follow Jesus most faithfully when we walk ahead of Jesus? I argue for a progressive Christianity that extends the meaning and mission of Jesus into the present and future, rather than promoting an obsession with the past. Defining "progressive Christian" and "prophetic evangelical" (interchangeable terms for me) will facilitate a discussion of the politics of progressive Christianity.

Progressive Christian

According to some accounts, the term "progressive Christian" surfaced in the 1990s and began replacing the more traditional term "liberal Christian." During this period, some Christian leaders wanted to increasingly identify an approach to Christianity that was socially inclusive, conversant with science and culture, and not dogmatically adherent to theological litmus tests such as a belief in the Bible's inerrancy. The emergence of contemporary Christian progressivism was a refusal to make the false choice of "redeeming souls or redeeming the social order."

In the 1990s, many mainline Christian denominations were (and some still are) experiencing a significant decline in membership and cultural influence. The malaise in mainline Christianity occurred as some fundamentalist and conservative Christian communities experienced growth in the United States and across the globe. There are nuances between fundamentalist and conservative Christian denominations. Yet fundamentalist and conservative Christian communities united in the public square to form the "Christian right" -- a network that also included affiliated political, educational, and cultural organizations.

Even the casual observer of culture and politics can identity the considerable influence of the Christian right on public life in the United States during the last 40 years. This influence has extended all the way to the White House. For example, the historian Randall Balmer explores the impact of the Christian right upon the perspectives and decisions of President George W. Bush (God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush).

During the last four decades, it often seemed, at least from the media's standpoint, that all Christians were either fundamentalist or conservative. Yet there are countless persons like me whose understandings of and approaches to Christianity are vastly different from those in the Christian right. We, too, profess to be followers of Jesus. Consequently, we are striving to define and live a type of Christianity that is theologically flexible and hospitable to social diversity. With that broad history in place, let me give further shape to the definition of "progressive Christian."

Progressive Christians believe that sacred truth is not frozen in the ancient past. While respecting the wisdom of the past, progressive Christians are open to the ways truth is moving forward in the present and future for the betterment of the world. Progressive Christianity recognizes that our sacred texts and authoritative traditions must be critically engaged and continually reinterpreted in light of contemporary circumstances to prevent religion from becoming a relic.

Toward an American Theology of Freedom

In 1962, when the civil rights fervor in our country was approaching a tipping point, the great theologian Karl Barth made his one and only trip to the United States. (Of course, I have to get Barth in here given the extensive study I’m doing of him in relation to my current book project.) On that trip he implored his American hosts of the need to demythologize the Statue of Liberty. What did Barth mean by this? He was pointing to the need for an ideologically-unhinged approach to liberty. In short, he was calling for a true and specifically American theology of freedom.

But little did Barth know, to say nothing of his many American interpreters even now, that his call to demythologize liberty put him in an interesting company of thinkers and activists. This was a tradition of black intellectuals spanning the trans-Atlantic. A central figure in this tradition was Frederick Douglass.

In 1852 (on the 4th of July of that year, to be exact), just over a century before Barth showed up in America, Douglass called for a similar demythologizing of and deeper reflection on freedom and liberty in American life. Indeed, he carried out the unmasking and in the process discerned that at the center of the mythos of American liberty and its political shortcomings on the key question of the day, which was slavery, was a deep and profound failure of Christian social imagination. It was in that magnificent piece of political oratory, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” that Douglass took up his analysis of liberty and freedom. (You can find the entire speech here.)

With the war in Iraq still fresh in our political memory banks and with the recent doubling-down on the war in Afghanistan—wars waged in the wake of the September 11th attacks to defend “freedom,” because as the saying goes, “freedom isn’t free”—it is well worth returning to Barth’s admonition as the dust now settles the July 4th weekend festivities. But I want to do so by way of Frederick Douglass, the one-time American slave.

In this post, I’m going to give or at least try to give something of the flavor of Douglass’s profound address, how in it he is really intervening into America’s religious and political discourse. I’ll finish up by suggesting a connection (and it can only be a suggestion for now: I will develop it in another posting) between what Douglass is talking about and current debates about immigration in our national life.

I am more than willing to admit that from the moment I was taught to text message I have been hooked, and I now send with lightening speed hundreds of text messages each month. I use text messaging to handle quick questions, to give quick updates, and basically to have ‘conversations’ in time frames I control without the demands of face-to-face exchanges.

On the level of quick connection this new technology is wonderful, but I can’t help but believe something is missing. We may be exchanging information, but are we really communicating?

This question is not to suggest a longing for a return to ‘old’ ways of “getting things across.” I am not lamenting technological advances. I’m not trading in my TREO, and I’m not canceling the media package on my phone or reducing the number of messages I sent through that magical device. I am not calling for a technology purge.

I’m simply noting that technology comes with a price, and this price has something of a postmodern twist. By this I mean that tweeting and other high-tech modalities of exchange send information about happenings, attitudes, feelings, and events—but in a way that disconnects life moments from bodies.

We, through our dependency on quick pieces of information, are dispersed and outside our bodies. Life developments become confined to the written word (often in shorthand), and the non-written modes of expression are lost or at least rendered obsolete. No more body language, no more knowing through voice inflection, and no more reading facial expressions.

Bodies become an unnecessary element of our information exchange. We become flexible identities, molded around bits of life events with limited ways to interpret them. The experiences we share and chronicle on these handheld devices speak about the ways in which our bodies occupy time and space, but this is done in ways that allow us to live and share ourselves with countless others without any real awareness of the bodies we carry through the world.

Bodies Tell Stories

Exchanging moments of our day with (faceless) others is meant to fix us in time and space in certain ways: information is more plentiful and quickly digested, but those sharing and those consuming this information are ghosts—phantoms.

Numerous scholars have argued, and I think rightfully so, that the body is a ‘text’. It is both material and metaphor; both a physical marker of our place in human experience and also a ‘sign’ or ‘symbol’ read in ways that define our place in social organization. In short, bodies tell stories; but these stories require something of a physical presence. Our bodies carry something of our historical and cultural memory, and only so much of that memory can be communicated through body-less exchange. Text-messaging, tweeting, and so on provide opportunities for the sharing of large amounts of data, but perhaps without the type of quality control one would anticipate when face-to-face, or when shared in any way that brings the physical body into play. There’s an ability to hide oneself through technology that reduces vulnerability and reserve.

What to do about this? I’m not giving up my messaging, and I’m not suggesting anyone should. Tweet if you must. Update your Facebook profile. There’s no turning back from this technology, the increased speed and ease with which we share information.

However, this ability calls for greater personal control; a new sense of decorum. (Accountability takes on a new meaning, and authenticity in this case demands new modes of measurement.) While using this technology it seems wise to maintain a certain level of discomfort, recognizing that there is something about ourselves that is missing from those exchanges.

It is important to be mindful that we are hiding pieces of our selves, and what we write and what it says about ourselves is really limited and somewhat deceptive. Sharing moment-by-moment bits of information is not the same as nurturing relationships.

The Sodom and Gomorrah story reaches its climax when Lot's nameless wife is turned into a pillar of salt. This nameless biblical woman has been dismissed throughout history as a vain and materialistic woman who, because of her character, deserved her punishment.

The rabbinical text blames the destruction of Sodom on its wickedness, and the transformation of Lot's wife on her unbelief. When people leave wickedness behind, some still pine for their previous evil ways symbolized by glancing reminiscently toward the past. As Jesus would eventually warn: "No one placing their hand on the plow and looking at the things behind is worthy for the reign of God" (Luke 9:62).

Her sinfulness has become normative in modern biblical hermeneutics. For example, The Interpreter's Bible notes that Lot's wife was "the woman caught in the whirlwind of fire from doomed Sodom because she was still too reluctant to leave the wicked city ... she was representative of all those in every time who are caught in the consequences of the evil they cannot quite let go."

Lot's wife's condemnation even comes from the mouth of Jesus, the only other place in the Bible where she is mentioned. When discussing the urgency by which the last days approach those accustomed to luxurious living, Jesus provides us with a warning to "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:31). The assumption is that Lot's wife was narcissistic, seeking the pleasures of this world. This theology is read back into the text, even though the Genesis account is silent about the character of Lot's wife.

All that the text tells us about her is summed up in six Hebrew words that translate to: "And his wife looked back from behind him and she became a pillar of salt." Based on this solitary mention, elaborate character portraits of Lot's wife are constructed. Why? To justify her demise.

If she is not portrayed as a foolish woman with a self-indulging heart, then her punishment would appear capricious, especially if, because she's a woman, Lot did not bother discussing the options facing them as he did with his prospective son-in-laws. After all, the text fails to note any discussion with Lot's wife concerning what could befall them. Verse 15 simply has the angels stating, "Take your wife and your two young daughters ... lest you [masculine singular] be consumed."

For most of us, our sense of justice is offended that the God of second chances, the God of love, mercy and forgiveness would act so harshly, especially when we consider that the text is ambiguous about who was informed concerning the danger of looking back. In order to justify Lot's wife's punishment, she must either be vilified or simply ignored.

Even though her presence is implied throughout the Sodom and Gomorrah story, she remains invisible. For example, when we are told that Lot prepared the two angels a meal of unleavened bread (Genesis 19:3), more than likely it was his wife, under a patriarchal rule, that did the preparing, serving and cleaning up.

Yet, for a brief moment, Lot's wife takes center stage in the story. Lot's wife becomes visible when she looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. This becomes a disturbing tale of a person who is punished for attempting to see the destruction of the city. And yet, when Abram also looked toward Sodom's demise, he is not turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:27-28).

Rather than depicting Lot's wife as either the totality of worldliness or the other extreme of virtuousness, maybe we should see her like we see the rest of us: a human who falls short of the glory of God. As an invisible member within a patriarchal society, she probably did the wash with her neighbors – also nameless women. They might have been present when she twice gave birth, as she might have been when they gave birth to their own children.

She shared gossip and stories with them as she tended her garden, prepared meals or simply rested under the stars after a long day of heavy, menial work. The men of the city may all have been wicked, but these women with whom she shared a similar fate of patriarchal oppression, more than likely, were her friends.

Sodom, with all its imperfections, was her home – just like many of us have made our homes in the entrails of the empire. She might have looked back to see the life that would no longer follow the well-established rhythms of the everyday. She might have looked back to mourn friends swallowed up in God's wrath who were now no more. She might have looked back to say adieu to all the daily rituals and routines that marked her life and provided meaning to her existence.

Who among us would not have also taken a peek, along with Lot's wife and Abram? Those of us who have known exile, being cast from the land that witnessed our birth, are always in a quest to see the cause of our estrangement. Only then can we hope to find healing and create healthy, well-adjusted lives. We look back, lest we forget our identity.

It does not really matter why she looked back. The reality is that we will never ascertain the motives of her heart. The fact is that she looked and was swiftly punished by God. If she did know of the consequences and still looked back, then she committed suicide. But if patriarchal rule meant Lot did not need to inform her of what was occurring, then her looking back was an accident, making her a victim of homicide. Lot's wife is killed because she is prohibited from remembering. There are no opportunities for absolution or redemption offered to her. This is one of those verses in Scripture that is profoundly disturbing, for it seems as if the God of Lot is not the merciful and forgiving God to whom we have become accustomed.

I entered graduate school in the mid-1990s, a period marked by the rise of the black public intellectual: Michael Eric Dyson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, and a host of other prominent scholars who became household names. Suddenly newspapers, popular magazines, and even television shows featured black intellectuals. The reaction was bifurcated. Some celebrated this development as an opportunity to elevate the discourse on social policy, especially on issues of race. But there were also complaints that this new crop of intellectuals talked too much and did too little. And some felt that by talking so much to the public, the black intellectuals risked diminishing their scholarly legitimacy.

At the time, the conversations among black students at elite graduate programs were framed around whether to become public intellectuals. But did we have the charisma or conversational skills to do this kind of work? Such a question was rarely raised. Instead we debated what kind of intellectual we wanted to be: one who sat in the ivory tower? Or one who talked to the people? There was a general skepticism that both roles could be successfully played simultaneously.

Becoming a public intellectual appealed to many of us because it seemed to provide a way of making one's scholarship more meaningful. Our ideas would be available to people in our home communities who might not ever set foot inside a university. Such a prospect was affirming. In a career where labor and education often don't lead to economic gains, it is easy to feel diminished by society. Being seen on television could cut against that nagging sense of devaluation.

Although there was a slight ebb in the amount of attention paid to black public intellectuals in the early years of this century, the limelight shines once again: The democratizing power of new digital forms of communication and 24-hour cable television news networks has renewed the role of the black public intellectual. Additionally, President Obama's election drew particular attention to the community of formally educated and politically engaged African-Americans to which he and Michelle Obama belong, a community that includes many scholars. It is at this moment of renewal that we need to rethink what it means to be a public intellectual.

I recently spent an afternoon with girls at an urban high school in Philadelphia that serves a largely black, poor, and working-class community. I am frequently invited to speak to young people, usually girls. I talk to them about academic success and offer some words of motivation. This group of girls had a stunning combination of brilliance and need. I spoke about my personal history and we discussed their interests, and our mutual inspirations. It was a different kind of public-intellectual experience. Around the same time, I gave interviews that were quoted in newspapers in the United States and Britain. Guess which "public intellectual" work felt more meaningful? I'm not suggesting that everyone would take teenagers over The New York Times, but if I had to choose, I certainly would.

For me, it's a matter of tradition. From the late-19th until the mid-20th century, it was a matter of course that African-American intellectuals engaged in public life in a multitude of ways. They developed school curriculums, worked in and for civil-rights organizations like the NAACP, and participated in civic organizations, churches, and professional societies. James Weldon Johnson, for example, author of the poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which was later set to music and became known as the Negro national anthem, was a principal, lawyer, ambassador, secretary of the NAACP, and one of the founders of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers—which helped establish modern copyright law.

Anna Julia Cooper, one of the first African-American women to earn a doctorate, and author of the most important early black feminist text, A Voice From the South (1892), was a teacher and principal of the M Street High School in Washington, and also wrote on pedagogical questions alongside her contemporaries W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. Her role as an educator and intellectual complemented her activist work against Jim Crow and gender inequality. Although the exigencies of that time created many renaissance men and women among the black intelligentsia, we can, even in these less oppressive times, be inspired by their desire to contribute in diverse ways.

I can only imagine that someone with no intimate knowledge of the humiliation of Jim Crow -- of having to go to the back door of a restaurant or simply being refused service because of the color of one's skin -- would find the recent comments of Rand Paul compelling.

Some will argue, as many have, that Paul's comments about Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were consistent with his libertarian principles. His idea of freedom requires that he reject any governmental intrusion on the private lives of American citizens. So he, like others, finds racism repulsive, would march, if given the chance, beside Martin Luther King, Jr. against state-sanctioned segregation, but vehemently opposes any governmental effort to restrict the bigoted ugliness of those so thoroughly committed to white supremacy: it is their first amendment right, after all. Paul is content to protest government-sanctioned racism, but he fails to see government's role in ridding the nation of racism.

These sorts of white folk unsettle me. They seem to be blind to the suffering of others. They seem, at least to me, to be terribly selfish -- and dare to call that selfishness freedom, or to justify their own ugliness by an appeal to some abstract principle of states' rights. In the interim, those who are not considered "one of us" are left to suffer the ire and violence of bigots.

In short, Paul's principles offer little comfort to those bearing the brunt of this nation's racist past and present. In fact, they do just the opposite. They alert us, or at least me, to be ever mindful of the ugliness that always seems to linger beneath the surfaces of our democratic form of life -- an ugliness based in a troublesome conception of whiteness.

Some white folk are not too happy about the current direction of our nation. They want to take back "their" government. They don guns in public. They hurl invective at their opponents. They pass draconian immigration legislation. They ban ethnic studies in school districts. They insist on a view of the United States that mirrors their own self-conception: white and deeply conservative.

What is required of us when confronting such voices is a loud renunciation: we must reject the view of whiteness this approach to politics presupposes. And we do so in the name of democratic principles that are consistent with our commitment to justice.

Freedom-talk without justice-talk is empty and, potentially, dangerous. Paul and those like him would do well to remember this. Too many Americans, of all colors, have engaged in struggles to achieve our country in light of their view of "justice as a larger loyalty." That commitment has led many Americans to risk their lives to rid us of this insidious notion that ours is a "white" nation.

When I was relatively young, my parents moved us to a different neighborhood in our small town in Mississippi. I was playing with my new friend. He was white. Our Tonka trucks were yellow. His dad yelled, "Leave that nigger alone and get in this house." He abruptly stopped, picked up his truck, whispered goodbye, and left. I cried.

My hope and prayer is that the legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of government in the service of good, has allowed me to flourish and has also given room to that gentle whisper -- to that hushed act of solidarity -- to blossom as a profound commitment to justice and freedom for all.

Belief in God, eternity, and other basic religious assertions are questions that have dominated public opinion surveys for some time, but there are some who now believe that non-belief may become the new default. According to a recent American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of more than 54,000 adults, the number of people willing to identify themselves as atheist and agnostic rose from under 2 million in 2001 to 3.6 million in 2008. When you leave out the labels "atheist" and "agnostic," ARIS found that over 18 percent of Americans (as many as 40 million) do not profess a belief in God.

Looking over the data, evolutionary psychologist Dr. Nigel Barber attempts to argue that atheism will actually replace religion sooner rather than later: "Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries, particularly the social democracies of Europe. In underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists," he recently wrote in Psychology Today. "Atheism is thus a peculiarly modern phenomenon."

Why are modern societies fertile ground for blossoming unbelief? With a flair you would expect from a psychologist, Barber gives four reasons:

1) Religion is a comfort blanket for the fearful. In modern societies, social welfare programs abound. These programs reduce public fear, and therefore, reduce the need for religion.

2) Religion may promote fertility since it exalts marriage. But large families are more valued in agrarian societies, not modern ones.

3) Religion is therapy. As Karl Marx famously said, religion is the opium of the people. Modern societies, however, turn to psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors to cope with their emotional and psychological needs.

4) Religious communities are social organizations. In modern societies, however, there are other ways to meet one's social needs (e.g., sport spectatorship).

"The reasons that churches lose ground in developed countries can be summarized in market terms," Barber contemptuously concludes. "First, with better science, and with government safety nets, and smaller families, there is less fear and uncertainty in people's daily lives and hence less of a market for religion. At the same time many alternative products are being offered, such as psychotropic medicines and electronic entertainment that have fewer strings attached and that do not require slavish conformity to unscientific beliefs."

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself … The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.
–Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom, pgs. 110-1

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study employed Eunice Rivers as an outreach coordinator for more than thirty years. Her role, as an African-American nurse, was to gain and maintain the trust of black men targeted by the study. She helped ensure that they did not seek the widely available, highly effective medical care that they critically needed to treat their syphilis, because if they received penicillin they would disrupt the study's goal of observing the disease's devastating course of blindness, madness and physical decay.

Georgia's largest antiabortion group, Georgia Right to Life, is employing a similar strategy. Catherine Davis is its Eunice Rivers. As outreach coordinator for the predominantly white group, this black woman is traveling to black churches and colleges decrying abortion as a genocidal conspiracy against African-Americans and encouraging black women not to exercise their legal right to obtain the healthcare of their choice.

The Tuskegee study was initiated in the rural South during a period of great economic distress. It preyed on vulnerable communities with few medical resources and little political power. It employed a cynical racist strategy of encouraging black compliance by deploying black spokespeople to claim that the study's efforts were in the best interests of African-Americans.

Georgia Right to Life has revived this racial masquerade by portraying its opposition to reproductive rights as a campaign for racial justice. This is a potentially effective strategy because it taps into the troubling legacy of eugenics-inspired efforts to broaden birth control access and legalize abortion. Family planning pioneer Margaret Sanger was a eugenics proponent who sought to reduce birthrates among the poor, the disabled and racial and ethnic minorities. State-enforced involuntary sterilization was a common practice in the United States until the 1960s. Southern doctors routinely performed hysterectomies without consent; civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer was the victim of one of these "Mississippi appendectomies." Moreover, black families and children are often labeled deviant, pathological, potentially criminal and burdensome to taxpayers. In a country that glorifies large white families, it feels as though few celebrate or encourage the birth of black children. Given this ugly history, it is easy for many to believe racialized antichoice appeals like the Georgia Right to Life billboards asserting Black Children Are an Endangered Species.

But if black children are endangered, the reasons are far more complicated than those billboards suggest. If these conservative organizations are really concerned about creating and maintaining a robust black birthrate, then they will have to buy space for some additional billboards. They could start with a billboard that says, Poverty Is Genocide. Black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die before their first birthday. Maternal poverty, inadequate nutrition and insufficient prenatal care are the key contributors to black infant mortality.

They need a billboard declaring Inadequate Education Is Genocide. Black children are significantly more likely to live in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty and residential segregation and, therefore, to attend schools with inferior resources, lower-quality instructors and larger class sizes. Children in these schools are vastly more likely to drop out, to be arrested, to be the victims of violent crime and to die prematurely.

But first, we want to talk about black men for a moment because on just about any day, there is some tragic story about black men in the news on the Internet or bandied about at the water cooler. And often those stories are about how black men are mistreated by police or underserved by educators or about how they are falling short in some way. But sociologist LHeureux Lewis, who is himself a black man, has been thinking about and documenting a fresh take on the question of black men and race and power, as a theory that he calls black male privilege.

And if that raises your eyebrows, you are not alone. So, we called him to find out more. Hes - LHeureux Lewis is an assistant professor of sociology at the City University of New York, and he joins us now. Welcome, thank you for joining us.

Professor LHEUREUX LEWIS (Sociology, City University of New York): Thank you for having me on.

MARTIN: So, define black male privilege. Im sure thats a phrase on its face that will get people to sit up and take notice.

Prof. LEWIS: My working definition is really a system of built-in and often overlooked systematic advantages that center the experience and the concerns of black males while minimizing the power that black males hold, which is a fancy way of saying, we are absolutely used to talking about African-American men in crisis. And we can talk about this crisis so much that we miss the ways in which black men are oppressed and can also serve as oppressors.

MARTIN: And when you say privileged, I think generally people think of privilege in relation to whom. So, when you think of privilege, are you speaking relative to someone?

Prof. LEWIS: Absolutely. Black male privilege is first centered as being relative to black women. Im not comparing black males privilege to white male privilege. I think one could argue that, but itd be a very dangerous leap. When we look in the African-American community, there are actually spaces where black men are advantaged and often sometimes dominate a dialogue, when we should be listening more carefully to whats happening with black women equally.

MARTIN: Give an example.

Prof. LEWIS: In particular, if we think about the narrative of mass incarceration, we think about the ways in which black men and black boys have been locked up at increasing rates since the 1980s. While this is true, the fastest growing incarceration rate is particularly among black and Latino women. And because we havent thought seriously about whats happening with black girls and Latino girls, we tend to make the issue of incarceration solely male, and we miss the different ways in which we need to be intervening not just for our young boys, but also our young girls.

MARTIN: Well, give another example then, because I think people would say focusing on those who are even worse off than you doesnt mean youre well off.

Prof. LEWIS: Well, the first time I really came to think about black male privilege was when I was a freshman at Morehouse College. And at that point, there was actually an incident of sexual assault between a Morehouse student and a Spelman student. And what I found quickly were that black men were -instead of actually talking seriously about issues of sexual assault, which are very common in our community, it became a discussion about the ways in which black men become vilified. So, what happens is we often look at issues like domestic violence or sexual assault, and instead of actually dealing with those who are survivors or the victims of it, predominantly African-American women, we re-center it on black men.