Told Through the Eyes of the Winners

In 1998, I left the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and the Church of the Nazarene where I had been a staff member, to assume the pastorate of Motor and Ackworth Friends Churches near Indianola, Iowa. We stayed there 4.5 years.  These two Quaker meetings loved and encouraged us as I learned how to be a pastor.  Motor was the church where my mentor D. Elton Trueblood spent his childhood years, and we went there because of his recommendation.

Southern Seminary very graciously permitted me to take the remaining three courses I needed (for a MA degree--but I had enough hours for an M. Div., the problem was Southern had a stingy registrar who only took 8 of my 27 hours from Earlham School of Religion) at the University of Iowa.  Iowa was, as far as  I knew, the only state university with a School of Religion.  I transferred the credits back to Southern Seminary and graduated there in 1991,  even though I was recorded, Quaker speak for ordination, in 1990.

I took a church history course at Iowa.  My professor was a Catholic. Of course, I had no clue I would someday be Catholic myself.  The course was one of those where you could take it for undergraduate or graduate credit, and if you took it for graduate credit you had to  do extra work, but the lectures were the same.   I was the only graduate student in the class.

The extra assignments involved reading and writing response papers to a couple of books. One of them was Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.     

Bauer's thesis was that history is told through the eyes of the winners.  If the views which the early church declared heresies had prevailed, we would now call them orthodoxy and the views we now consider orthodox would be heresy.  I imagine that is basically right but I also wrote in my paper that I do think the Holy Spirit guided the church to get it right.

But for 30+ years, his basic thesis has rolled around in my head and I have come to believe he is correct and that ought to give American Christians pause about a couple of things.

FIRST, I think this thesis should give us pause about how we read Scripture.  I figured out in seminary that the Bible was not 100% scientifically or historically accurate. As I have written, it cannot be because the first two chapters of Genesis actually contradict one another.  But as an old man now I also think the Bible contains some moral points of error.  And the reason for that is that history is told through the eyes of the winners.

I do not believe God wanted anyone killed, ever.  I do not believe God wanted blood sacrifice--not even Jesus' blood.  The Psalmist tells us 

For you have no delight in sacrifice;
    if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17 NRSV)

God is not a wrathful being demanding blood, but the father standing at the end of the road, waiting for the prodigal to come home.  The father in the story embraces and welcomes and forgives the prodigal before they slaughter the fattened  calf.

I do not think God wanted women to be under the authority of men, ever.  And I do not think God EVER FAVORED ONE NATION MORE THAN ANOTHER.  God promised to make a great nation of Ishmael as well as Israel.  Our scriptures tell the story through the eyes of only one side of the family.  There is simply no way they can present the total truth.  One of the best books I ever read was the womanist theology of Delores Williams and her book, Sisters in the Wilderness which speaks theologically to black women and their plight, using the story of Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, and God's providential care for Hagar and Ishmael as a case study in how the majority view is not necessarily the whole truth.

Because the Hebrew and Christian scriptures come from only one side of the family, I think we should not necessary conclude that the holy books of our Islamic relatives are based on falsities.  I have had students get irate with me when I told them, "Yes, Islamic people DO worship the same God Christians and Jews do."  We might not like it, but it is a fact.  Realizing that we only have our familial version of the story, even if we never seek out the other side of the story, ought to give us pause when we think we have the whole truth.

SECOND, I think this awareness that history is told only through the eyes of the winners should compel us to cry out against what Gov. Ron Desantis and those working with him in Florida are doing to how history is taught.  I think every Christian thinker should denounce the so-called PragerU. PragerU is a website owned by a guy named Dennis Prager, who produces five-minute videos which tell American history in such a way that it is extremely skewed to the right.  The idea that slavery had beneficial aspects is part of the worldview which Prager articulates.

I think before anyone even entertains the idea that slaves benefitted from slavery, or that the story of Rosa Parks and the bus boycotts can be told without reference to race, we should ask them, through their writings and through their descendants.  History which is told in a way which is beneficial to majorities, whether ethnic, religious, gender or otherwise, cannot be accepted as accurate.  It would be like saying the Holocaust was good for the Jews, homosexuals and others.  It is despicable to even entertain such ideas.

Because history is told through the eyes of the winners,   Americans, Christians,  and American Christians specifically, should be profoundly skeptical of the truth of their world view.  I have a saying at the top of my Facebook page which I think could be placed here.

TRUTH IS FOUND IN THE  VOICES OF THE MARGINALIZED.