Religion, Violence and Agriculture?

So I skipped Philip Jenkins and my friend David Holcomb to hang out with my family this weekend, but I could not pass up a chance to hear one of my biggest influences, William Cavanaugh, speak. I mentioned before that he inspired my Eucharist as Eat-In post as well as the series on his book Being Consumed. His topic was “Violence and the Religious/Secular Distinction.” Let’s see if it eventually ties back into agriculture.

One of the things that draws me to Cavanaugh is his clarity. The to remain unnamed Baylor professor that presented a paper before him was eloquent and intellectual, but I could not get his point. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he was saying. All of the sentences coming out of his mouth were grammatically correct and coherent, but there was no real focus, no feeling of purpose. Cavanaugh on the other hand is like a laser that cuts through all the foggy intellectualism and brings a clarity of vision and purpose to bear on his subject. He is what intellectuals should be if they wish to serve any larger purpose in the world. Now that I’m done heaping praise…

His forthcoming book on which his talk was based seems to have three main theses:

1. The religious/secular distinction is neither real nor helpful
2. There was no recent resurgence of religion that proved the secularization thesis wrong. Religion just migrated from the church to the nation-state
3. The myth of religious violence is a tool that enables the state to legitimate violence by drawing a distinction between religious and secular violence

Cavanaugh deftly cuts through a lot of the arguments on both sides about violence and the religious/secular distinction, by pointing out how notoriously difficult it is to define religion. Many seek to create a distinction that points out the difference between state and religious violence, but their definition of religion is broad enough to include ideologies such as capitalism, marxism and nationalism.

Cavanaugh used a 1940s court case against Jehovah’s Witnesses as an example. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were charged with not participating in the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The court found that national cohesion and patriotism trumped the free exercise of religion in this case. The Supreme Court later overturned this case, but the language used in this case to make an artificial distinction between our national civil religion and all other forms of religion continues. The argument is still made that the use of God in our founding documents, patriotic songs and official government occasions and ceremonies as somehow fundamentally different from the use of the word God in religion.

So, it should be clear that Cavanaugh is arguing against the notion that the secularization thesis, that humanity would eventually evolve past religion and it would disappear completely, was somehow defeated because this amorphous thing called “religion” made a resurgence. The secularization thesis was defeated because it was always wrong and religion migrated from the church to the nation state as the church privatized religion and accommodated to the surrounding culture.

Finally, Cavanaugh argues that the religious/secular distinction is used to create a myth of religious violence that somehow legitimates state violence against religious extremists because the one is fundamentally different than the other. If his thesis is correct, this is nonsense. The truth is that we must use these constructs to continue to legitimate violence be dehumanizing and “othering” the people that threaten us in some way, whether its actual physical harm or more of an ideological threat.

Food in the Bible: Exodus 22

There is a lot of material in this passage, but I would like to look overall at the connections between the disparate topics. Here is a sampling of the variety of commands in this chapter.

When someone steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, the thief shall pay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. The thief shall make restitution, but if unable to do so, shall be sold for the theft. (22:1)

When a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married, and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. (22:16)

If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. (22:25)

This chapter combines rules about agriculture, sex and economics, three things we usually don’t talk about in the same sentence. For us these are distinct areas of life that we keep very separate. In the world of the Ancient Near East these things were understood to be inextricably linked, bound together.

Wendell Berry has also made the connection between our misuse and misunderstanding of sexuality and our similar misuse of the land.

Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place (Sex, Economy, Community and Freedom, 133).

There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth. Between our relation to our own sexuality and our relation to the reproductivity of the earth, for instance, the resemblance is plain and strong and apparently inescapable. By some connection that we do not recognize, the willingness to exploit one becomes the willingness to exploit the other. The conditions and the means of exploitation are likewise similar (Unsettling of America, 120).

(both quotes taken from Scripture, Culture and And Agriculture)

In other words, sexuality is not something separate and apart from the natural world. Rightly understood it is part of the continuing creation. Our relationship to each other is connected to our understanding of our connection to creation. If our view of others makes it possible for us to exploit them sexually or view them as objects, we will naturally objectify creation as something to be used and exploited. This passage also makes the connection between abuse of sex, abuse of the land and abuse of the poor. As said above, a willingness to exploit the land is connected to a willingness to exploit people. These things are inextricably linked.

Each of these areas involve breaches in relationships. The first area is a breach in relationship between neighbors and the animals and fields that constitute their livelihood and survival. The second area is a breach in appropriate sexual relationships in which one party is being exploited by another. The last are is a breach between those who have opportunity and means of sustenance and those who live on the margins of society. It is easy to see in the Ancient Near East how these areas overlap and interrelate. Social constructs gave women, aliens and the poor precarious positions in society. Their fate rested in the hands of others. These social constructs were connected to the agrarian “land-as-life” culture.

It is difficult for us in the modern world to see that these areas continue to be interrelated. There is no other way for us to survive than to live off the land. We have outsourced this task to foreign lands and foreign people in our own land. Therefore our relationship to the poor and to the land continues to be interconnected. We have most succeeded in divorcing sexuality from a “land-as-life” worldview.

Pornography, as one example, commodifies sexuality and turns it into a pleasure-producing product with no emotional or relational attachments. The lie is that pornography is not exploitative and does not hurt anyone. I think Berry delineates the way that misuse of sexuality creates the possibility for exploitation by objectifying others. It is not enough to simply be against exploitative forms of sexuality. In order to deal with the damaged relationship that this produces we must regain a positive understanding of sexuality that incorporates it into a holistic understanding of creation.

The Original Sin of Agriculture: Competition vs. Cooperation

There is no arguing that the revolution of agriculture changed the way that we relate to the world around us. Ishmael makes the argument that agriculture led us to see ourselves as competitors with everything that is not our food. Therefore, we kill off plants and weeds that compete with the grains and legumes that we want to harvest and eat. We then must also kill off the animals that feed on those competitors to our food. We might also have to kill off the animals that feed on those animals lest they come around licking their lips at us.

In this way of thinking we see nature primarily in terms of competition. Altruism and cooperation are really aberrations in the normalcy of competition and violence. This is the way it seems people tend to think about “survival of the fittest.” All the players in the ecosystem are competing for scarce resources against natural obstacles and barriers. Those who are able to beat out their competitors, within their own species or other species, survive and flourish. Isn’t that what we see on Discovery Channel when predators are hunting their prey and picking off the weak member of a herd?

The problem is that ecosystems are not made up of only predators, and even predators may not be as cutthroat as we think. More and more evidence suggests that cooperation is at least as powerful a force in nature as competition. In fact, it may be stronger than competition. It’s difficult for us to conceive that cooperation is a basic and primal force in nature. Our culture and world revolve around the idea of competition. Most of our economic ideas are based on the assumption that competition is the basic building block of nature and society and that when it is allowed to run free it results in the best possible results for all. Our education system is based on competition, scoring, testing, achievement and success. Sports and athletics are not influencing the rest of our culture. They are the natural outgrowth of a culture of competition.

Just as in nature, this may not be the best way to organize ourselves. Perhaps we have allowed our assumptions about the natural world to form the way we think about human society and civilization. There are plenty of examples where human societies valued cooperation over competition and flourished. Many Native American cultures made decisions based on consensus rather than voting which always excludes the minority. There are worker owned factories in Spain and Latin America (the specifics elude me) that have done very well with a cooperative approach to business.

How have our assumptions about the way the world is structured and functions on the most basic, natural level shaped the way we choose to organize ourselves and order life together? Is there another, better way? I hope and pray that there is.

This is part of an ongoing series exploring basic assumptions about agriculture, history and our relationship to creation: The Original Sin of Agriculture Part I, Part 2, Part 3.

You Have Heard It Said

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

-Ben Franklin

“Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.”  

-Henri Nouwen

A couple good quotes about violence, democracy and economics to ponder. How do those three weave together in our lives, relationships and systems? It seems to me they are always at play together.

The first quote points out that democracy is always less than perfect. Consensus is the only model that is able to serve the entire community. Democracy always results in the majority (whether in numbers or power) oppressing the minority. Franklin, as we should expect, seems to think that freedom and violence will keep an imperfect democracy in check. I’m not sure how well that has worked out for the American experiment.

Nouwen adds the dimension of economics to the mix, connecting the basic premise of property to violence and oppression. This connects directly with what I shared Monday about the foundational passage concerning Israel. They were a people without possessions, but possessed by the God who owned everything. Because we belong to God everything is ours. But Nouwen reminds us that our possession of everything as we relate to God is for the purpose of sharing it, not defending or hoarding it.

So, taken together we can say on the pessimistic side that democracy and economics are both fueled and maintained by violence. In light of who we are as the people of God, however, we know that this is an illusion. As a community of saints we live out our calling and purpose by revealing God’s reality in the way we give and share freely all that God possesses, which is everything. This way of being is in direct competition with the way of being that relies on violence and coercion, but we believe that it will prevail in the end.

Joseph’s Experiment With Redistribution

I’m shifting my schedule by a day this week for this extra post on the Joseph story.

In a recent Food in the Bible post on Exodus 3:7-8 one of the intelligent readers of this blog (if you read my blog I assume you must be above average and good-looking) asked a question about my charcterization of Joseph’s policy to deal with famine as “misguided.” Wasn’t it God’s will for Joseph to interpret the dreams and save the people from famine (including his own family)? If the policy was wrong, then was God wrong? I think it will help to look closely at the text.

First let’s look at what Joseph’s actual plan was for dealing with the famine,

Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land, and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plenteous years. Let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine. (41:34-36)

So, take one-fifth of the produce of the land and store it up for the seven bad years. Good idea. What happens when the time comes?

He gathered up all the food of the seven years when there was plenty in the land of Egypt, and stored up food in the cities; he stored up in every city the food from the fields around it. So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance–like the sand of the sea–that he stopped measuring it; it was beyond measure. (41:48-49)

It says that Joseph stored up all the food. The plan was pretty specific about storing only one-fifth of the produce, so I take the general term “all” to mean that Joseph did not follow this policy. The description of the amount of food is intended to make clear exactly how ridiculous the amount of food he stored was. I will speculate that Joseph took as much food as he could without people dying. So, the people lived a subsistence existence only keeping enough food to survive on.

Why did Joseph do this? We don’t know. Maybe he was worried that one-fifth wouldn’t be enough. Maybe the power got to him. It tends to do that as we see when we turn to the famine years in chapter 47.

Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe… Joseph collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house. (47:13a, 14)

Next the Egyptians come asking for more food. So, Joseph asks for their livestock. That goes on for a year until the livestock are all gone. (It’s worth noting here that the livestock and the money are not “all gone.” They are now the property of Pharaoh.) So, the people again ask for food saying, “Buy us and our land in exchange for food…just give us seed, so that we may live and not die.” (47:19). They are forced to sell themselves into slavery and leave themselves landless. Well, now who is going to work the land? The landless slaves of course.

“Now that I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh, here is seed for you; so the land. And at the harvests you shall give one-fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones” (47:23-24)

Lest we forget, this is in the midst of a famine. The reason they are coming to Joseph is because they have no food and can grow no food. His solution is to take their land and their freedom and tell them to go back to the land they no longer own and try growing some food. Notice that the specific number of one-fifth returns at this point. Now that the people have become landless slaves, Joseph is handing out seeds instead of food (Where did the “sea” of food go?). Now that he’s forcing the people to grow the food he promised them he’s also requiring them to give the one-fifth that was supposed to be collected during the years of abundance, not the years of famine. Joseph says it all with a big smile as if he’s doing them a favor.

So, there are probably a number of ways of interpreting this. 1) You could claim that the whole thing was God’s will. What we perceive as injustice and/or suffering might just be part of God’s bigger plan (i.e. bringing the Hebrew people out of slavery later to create the nation of Israel) 2) You could claim that Joseph’s original policy was God’s will and he botched it because of his own greed, incompetence or both. Or 3) it is not at all clear from the text that Joseph’s policy was given by God at all.

The first option makes light of suffering, injustice and evil and cannot be reconciled with the portrait of YHWH as a God of justice. The second option is fine if you need the plan of action to be ordained by God for some reason, but it seems to me from the text that the policy was Joseph’s idea. It might have worked out better if he had followed through, but he didn’t.

I think the Bible is made up of some passages that describe the way the world should be and some that just describe the way things are. My opinion is that this falls into the latter category.