Why I Don't Celebrate St. Patrick's Day

Seamus, age 10, and his father in Drumcliff, County Sligo, where W.B. Yeats is buried.

Why I Don't Celebrate St. Patrick's Day

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seamus-mckiernan/st-patricks-day-ireland_b_4976705.html

Posted: 03/16/2014 11:39 pm EDT Updated: 03/17/2014 6:59 am EDT

Seamus McKiernan
Senior Blog Editor, Special Projects, Huffington Post

My name is Seamus, but I don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day. That may sound incongruous for a dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland whose grandfather founded the Irish American Cultural Institute. But on March 17 each year I actively avoid the leprechauns and the "Kiss Me I'm Irish" t-shirts and the silly green hats and the 9 a.m. Guinness guzzling. That's not because I'm opposed to having a good time and it's certainly not because I'm not proud of my Irish heritage. Quite the opposite: I'm worried St. Patrick's Day has become a farce, a celebration of cartoonish symbols of Irish culture that minimize, dilute and demean what it means to be Irish. Wrapped in an excuse to drink debaucherously (itself a stereotype long used to keep Irish immigrants down), the holiday is so devoid of culture that it may as well be grouped with fake holidays like SantaCon -- just switch red garb for green.

Certainly, the 34 million Americans with claims to Irish ancestry would agree that Irishness is more than green beer, shamrocks, and other images of the Stage Irish. You don't have to decipher the impossibly dense Ulysses by James Joyce (I haven't) to recognize that the richness of Irish culture is lacking in the drunken celebrations on St. Paddy's Day. I'm talking about music by the Chieftains and Van Morrison and U2, I'm talking about Beckett's Waiting for Godot, I'm talking about the teachers of the Irish language, I'm talking about the revolutionary Michael Collins, and I'm talking about Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde and Seamus Heaney (good name!).

When you see revelers stumbling in U.S. cities today, you have to ask, which Ireland are they celebrating?

In fact, St. Patrick's Day as we know it is really an American invention. Here are a few facts about the history of St. Patrick's Day that might surprise you:

• Until the 1970s, St. Patrick's Day in Ireland was a minor religious holiday.
• The first St. Patrick's Day parades were held in the U.S.
• St. Patrick's color was blue, not green.
• St. Patrick's Day was a dry holiday in Ireland until about the 1970s.
• St. Patrick may not even have been Irish.
• The shamrock is a popular Irish symbol, but not the symbol of Ireland.

As a kid, I already had an aversion to St. Patrick's Day. I never wore a green shirt to school on the holiday, a protest that without fail elicited pinches from my classmates -- and even confusion from my teachers. "But your name is Seamus," they'd say, dumbfounded, thinking I'd forgotten the day.

Like a lot of Irish Americans, my name offered the first lesson about my heritage. When your name is frequently mispronounced, you have little choice but to find out where it comes from. (See-mus? Shah-mus? Shameless?) My sister's name is Cáitrín (mind the accents!). That sparked our curiosity about our origins, notwithstanding the occasional butchered pronunciation over the loudspeaker at roll call.

My cultural education in Irish-American-ness came primarily from my parents and grandparents. That meant reading Irish literature from a young age. It meant pulling a Michael Collins biography down from the shelf and peppering my dad with questions about the Easter Rising. Why was the country divided by North and South? I learned that Ireland's flag, which flies outside of bars on March 17 -- the one with white between the orange and green -- was really a statement about peace between the two sides.

It meant family trips were often occasions for lessons about Irish history or current events or folklore, like the story of the famous one-eyed giant who roamed Tory Island. (I think I still believed that one after I knew the Santa Claus ruse was up.) It meant learning to play the violin and veering away from the Suzuki method to the jigs and reels. It meant studying for a summer at a school in County Donegal in a Gaeltacht, a region where the predominant language is Irish. It meant being asked to memorize William Butler Yeats' poem "Easter 1916" for a high school English class. The Irish struggle for independence Yeats writes about felt like distant past -- it was harrowing to find out that it wasn't so long ago. "Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of a heart," I remember reciting.

And it meant looking up to my grandfather, Eoin McKiernan, the father of nine kids (Deirdre, Brendan, Fergus, Ethna, Gillisa, Grania, Nuala, Liadan and my father, Kevin). My grandfather, a scholar who was named one of America's greatest Irish Americans of the 20th century, made it his life's work to teach Irish Americans about where they came from. To do this, he founded the Irish American Cultural Institute, which awarded grants to Irish writers, composers, artists, and Irish-language initiatives, including historical tours to the Emerald Isle and Irish language classes. (In fact, I recently learned that long before Seamus Heaney was a Nobel laureate, my grandfather gave him a writer's grant.) He was recognized internationally for his work and invited to the White House on several occasions. Princess Grace of Monaco chaired his Institute.

Forgive the family stuff, which can be boring. But I mention it because St. Patrick's Day is upon us. Today the river in Chicago is dyed green, parades are planned across the country, and people are ready to party. But when I walk around today, I won't be seeing the fullness of my heritage on display. I'm trying to keep in mind what Yeats, arguably the greatest poet in the 20th century, wrote about a sense of solidarity "wherever green is worn." I don't think he meant the annual buffoonery in sports bars in midtown Manhattan that passes for being Irish. He was talking about the deep identity that unites a people.

Figuring out who I am is a work in progress, but I think my grandfather, whom everyone called Grandpa Mór, would have understood. After all, he always said, "What is bred in the bone will out."

Chicago's Green River on St. Paddy's Day
More Photos Chicago Celebration

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Easter, 1916

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172061

by William Butler Yeats 1865–1939

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

FOOTNOTES: September 25, 1916

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

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My Ambivalence About St. Patrick's Day

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-stieger/st-patricks-day_b_4911866.html

Posted: 03/17/2014 6:21 am EDT Updated: 03/17/2014 6:59 am EDT

by Bill Stieger

Writer from St. Paul, MN

Given my surname, I feel mixed about celebrating St. Patrick's Day. I am Irish; in fact, three quarters so. I am descended from the Lennons, the Abbotts, the McCarthys, the Eagans. My cousins include the Kanes, the Runyons, the Flynns and the Russells. I am as Irish as an American can be, except for the German name inherited from my father's father, who had married Catherine Eagan.

Friends, fellow St. Paulites, please consider my dilemma. I am solidly St. Paul Irish. My grandfather attended St. Paul Academy as a classmate of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and knew him. But will I proudly march with the prominent Irish families in my city's St. Patrick's Day Parade? No. I'd attended some of those parades in my early years. During the festivities, someone would invariably ask for my name, which I admitted with a shrug was McBride.

I blame St. Luke's Elementary for planting the corrosive Catholic guilt that sears across my chest as the lies pile higher. In fact, so pathetic is my neurotic attachment to honesty that the Internal Revenue Service is sole entity to which I can lie to with glee.

So, it hurts to be "Stieger" on St. Patrick's Day. The insult weaves through the miserable narrative of my life. It catches me at each station. My first wife was a girl of Norwegian heritage who was an eighth Irish, but carried one of the great Irish names. The only thing Irish about her was her temper, which seemed to have survived the cross-breeding: she was a woman who could start an argument in an empty room.

Another aspect of St. Patrick's Day that grinds does not concern my name. It is this: annually, I ask myself, Why do we Irish work so hard to perpetuate every derelict stereotype of our race on St. Patrick's Day? Stand at curbside as drunken louts in leprechaun suits stumble down Wabasha Street, blowing plastic stadium horns. March beside Elvis Presleys in Green Pompadours. Witness the bleary eyed teens as they upchuck green beer on the sidewalk.

Do you think I exaggerate? Read the messages on the horrific buttons and sweatshirts these revelers wear to degrade the tribe: "10 percent Irish/90 percent beer," or "Member of the official Irish drinking team!" Check out pervy intonations, like "Erin Go Braghless," or "Kiss my Shamrocks," or my favorite of all: "I'm starting a drunken brawl with the first person who stereotypes the Irish."

I mean, please! Can you name another ethnic group so bent on its own self abasement? Imagine any other culture or ethnic group frolicking in costumes and behaving in a manner that perpetuates the stereotypes of bigots. None do it. But Irish Americans insist on acting like the clowns at their own circus.

And what about Mr. St. Patrick himself? Patrick was born in 5th century Roman Brittania. He was kidnapped at 16 by pagan raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland. A few years afterward Patrick escaped and returned to his family in Britannia. He later sailed back to Ireland after becoming a cleric, and was eventually ordained bishop.

Though not much is known of the historical St. Patrick, the St. Patrick of Irish lore was said to have rid Ireland of its snakes. Scientists now agree that Ireland's watery isolation makes it near certain that snakes never inhabited the island, though many ascribe their absence to Patrick. Ditching the snakes was Pat's contribution to his nation? Snakes. Big deal. The story I would've hoped for would be for Patrick to come along ten centuries later and used his holy powers to rid Ireland of the British. Where was the old boy during the troubles?

So, you'll not see this Stieger joining the parades this coming St. Patrick's Day. He will, however, raise a glass in remembrance of the great Irish writers -- Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, O'Connor and Shaw, among others. And, if asked, yes, I will gladly kiss their Shamrocks.

More Photos - St. Paddy's Day Parade, New York City, NY

* * * * * * * * * * *

Everything You Know About

St. Patrick's Day Is Wrong

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/14/brutally-honest-st-patricks-day-facts_n_4957861.html

The Huffington Post  | by  Christine Dalton

Posted: 03/14/2014 11:01 am EDT Updated: 03/14/2014 11:59 am EDT

St. Patrick's Day is almost upon us! Typically, we associate the holiday with drinking, drinking, and drinking. Oh, and being Irish.

But there's a lot more to St. Patrick's Day than most people know. Truthfully, you've probably been living a lie. When you learn all the facts, this holiday actually kind of... sucks.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but here are 10 brutally honest facts about St. Patrick's Day....

10 - St. Patrick wasn't Irish. Historians believe he was born in what is now England, Scotland or Wales.

9 - St. Patrick's color is blue. We've been living a lie! You might want to hold off on the green face paint this year.

8 - St. Patrick's Day as we know it was invented in America. Really?! Catholic University's Irish American expert, Timothy Meagher, explains that St. Patrick's Day celebrations began in the 18th century in American cities with large Irish immigrant populations."It becomes a way to honor the saint but also to confirm ethnic identity and to create bonds of solidarity," Meagher explained. Really.

7 - March 17th is the day St. Patrick died. So you're celebrating his death.

6 - St. Patrick didn't drive all the snakes from Ireland. Probably because there's no evidence that snakes have EVER existed in Ireland. The climate is much too chilly for them.

5 - The shamrock isn't the symbol of Ireland. Sure, you can find shamrocks all over the Emerald Isle, but the real symbol is the harp.

4 - St. Patrick's Day used to be a dry holiday. Today's booze-bags look to the holiday as a great excuse to start drinking Guinness at 9 AM. Until 1970, however, all pubs in Ireland were closed in observance of the religious feast day.

3 - Corned beef and cabbage isn't a traditional Irish dish.It's just about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs. You're better off sticking to Guinness.

2 - There are more Irish people living in the U.S. than Ireland. The population of Ireland is about 4.2. million. In contrast, there are around 34 MILLION people of Irish descent living in America.

1 - Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are slim to none. 1 in 10,000 to be exact. Ouch.

But let's end on a happy note. At least these two guys are Irish.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

Sex Trafficking in America & Helping to Break the Cycle

Helping women escape 'the life'

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/us/cnnheroes-carter/index.html?sr=fb031514womenescapelife1pVODtop

By Kathleen Toner, CNN

updated 1:37 PM EDT, Fri March 14, 2014

CNN Hero: Vednita Carter

CNN Hero: Vednita Carter

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Vednita Carter founded Breaking Free to support women who wish to escape prostitution
• She believes the women her nonprofit helps are victims of sex trafficking and not criminals
• Breaking Free provides food, clothing, housing, counseling, job skills training and more
• Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2014 CNN Heroes

St. Paul, Minnesota (CNN) -- As darkness falls, Joy Friedman hits the streets -- the same ones she used to troll for customers while working as a prostitute.

"My last trick was turned behind that storefront," she said, gesturing to a nearby building.

Now the survivor of sex trafficking cruises these neighborhoods with a different purpose. She's looking for women and girls who are caught up in this lifestyle so she can offer them free condoms and hygiene products.

She is also delivering a message: There is help for them if they want it.

Friedman works for Breaking Free, a nonprofit that helps women escape prostitution. It's where she got help 13 years ago.

"(Prostitution) has been happening forever. And forever, women have just been the victims of it," said Vednita Carter, the organization's founder. "They deserve better."

CNN Report: 95% of the women Vednita Carter helps struggle
with addiction,  abuse, trauma, financial instability and shame.

Since 1996, Carter says she has helped more than 6,000 women get the support they need. In the process, she's built an army of survivors who have joined her crusade to end sex trafficking.

Lured into 'the life'

Carter personally knows about this world. At 18, she was hoping to make money for college when she responded to an advertisement for "dancers." At first, she danced fully clothed, but her bosses and then-boyfriend soon pressured her into stripping and, eventually, prostitution.

It was more than a year before Carter called a friend who helped her get back on her feet. Later, she realized how lucky she had been.

"The majority of women don't have anyone to call. There is nowhere for them to turn," said Carter, now 60. "That's why I do this work."

CNN Heroes: A tour of the sex underworld

For many of the women Carter helps, "the life" is all they've known. Studies show that the average age of entry into child prostitution is 12 to 14, and many of the girls have been sexually abused or were runaways.

Carter works to educate the public and law enforcement to see these women as victims of sex trafficking rather than as criminals.

"Prostitution and sex trafficking really are the same thing. It's about buying and selling a human being," she said.

Leaving 'the life' behind

Carter says 95% of the women she helps struggle with addiction as well as physical abuse, mental trauma, financial instability and shame.

"It's a process. If (they've) been in it forever, it's all they know," she said. "They think it's their destiny."

Carter's drop-in center provides food, clothing and emotional support to any woman coming off the street, no strings attached.

For many women, the first significant step is to participate in a 14-week class called Sisters of Survival. Graduates are honored in a ceremony, marking the start of their new lives.

Prostitution and sex trafficking really are the same thing.

It's about buying and selling a human being. - Vednita Carter

CNN Money: Inside the underground sex economy

"They learn that they do have other choices that (they) can make," Carter said.

The group also provides permanent and temporary housing, addiction counseling, job skills training and legal assistance.

Most of the staffers who work at Breaking Free are survivors of prostitution, making it one of just a few organizations like it in the United States.

"I have a purpose now," Friedman said. "I'm a fighter, and I'm going to fight 'til I die for each and every person involved in sexual exploitation."

Fighting the demand

Carter believes that sex trafficking won't end until men stop purchasing sexual favors. She established one of the country's first "John Schools" that educates men arrested for solicitation about the impact of their actions.

"I'm not here to make you feel like a piece of sh*t, but you've got to feel something," Doris Johnson, a survivor, told a group back in 2012. "That's somebody's daughter."

According to Carter's group, only 2% of the men who complete the course reoffend.

Carter is considered by many to be a pioneer in the anti-sex trafficking movement, and she is determined to keep fighting as long as she can.

"We are really raising an army here. And this is a battle," she said. "It's not OK to buy and sell us. We are not for sale."

---

Want to get involved? Check out the Breaking Free website at www.breakingfree.net and see how to help.

* * * * * * * * * *

Inside the underground sex economy

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/12/news/economy/underground-sex-economy/index.html

By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney March 12, 2014: 10:27 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Until now there hasn't been a lot of data to help law enforcement and policymakers better understand the economics of the illegal sex trade and trafficking.

But a study released Wednesday by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center analyzes the size and structure of the underground commercial sex economies in eight major cities: San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta and Kansas City, Missouri.

The three-year effort, which began in 2010, was funded by a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, which supports research that can aid in the prevention, detection and prosecution of human trafficking.

Researchers interviewed pimps, traffickers, sex workers and child pornography offenders, as well as local and federal law enforcement officers.

Of the eight cities studied, Atlanta had the largest cash-based underground sex economy at $290 million a year and Denver the smallest at $40 million, based on 2007 data. (There was insufficient data available for Kansas City, so it was dropped from the estimation analysis.)

The way in: Often pimps and prostitutes get into the business because they had a relative who worked in it or a friend who encouraged them. Neighborhood influence, poor job prospects and childhood trauma also played a role.

Coercion: It's often assumed that sex workers are physically coerced to work for and stay with a pimp. But researchers found that psychological manipulation played a major role, too -- whether it was the promise of attention from the pimp or more tangible incentives.

Likewise coercion through psychological or emotional abuse was used as a form of punishment to keep employees in line.

Related: Pimps hit social networks to recruit underage sex workers

The report recommends that states should include coercion -- not just physical but also the more subtle, non-physical forms -- in their definition of sex trafficking.

Gang involvement: Gangs are increasingly involved in prostitution and sex trafficking, especially in San Diego.

Often rival gangs will temporarily put aside their differences to work cooperatively to maximize their profits -- for instance, by sharing the same hotel out of which their prostitutes work.

Pimp circuits: Some pimps form networks across cities and regions, operating more as a brotherhood than as rivals. When transporting their sex workers to another city, their networks keep them apprised of law enforcement activities and offer advice on finding clients.

Pimps 'friend' victims on Facebook

Pimps interviewed also indicated that they thought pimping was a less risky crime than others, such as drug trafficking.

And many felt that "no one actually gets locked up for pimping," according to the report.

Role of the Internet: The cash-based sex trade has traditionally been street-based. But now the street is just one part of the trade, which has been greatly expanded by the online sex market. Participants told researchers they perceived the Internet to be less risky in terms of detection by law enforcement and it let them vet potential clients more easily.

Family, friends and legal businesses as facilitators: The underground sex economy is aided by above-board businesses. For example, a hotel's employees may look the other way when a pimp does business out of that hotel, and may even accept payment for doing so.

Meanwhile a pimp's friends or family may serve as drivers or security detail for his prostitutes.

No profit in child porn: Researchers found that there's an increasing amount of child pornography being produced in the United States, and it's increasingly graphic and violent.

But it's often available for free and offenders interviewed said they were part of online child pornography communities.

"Why pay?" one respondent told researchers. "I guess I just assumed that anyone asking for money was a sting."

Those incarcerated for non-contact child porn offenses -- such as possession and distribution -- said they consider it a victimless crime since they weren't producing the pornography.

Offenders did, however, indicate that they want treatment but said there are few options for it in prison.

Among the report's recommendations: Laws should hold criminally responsible anyone who facilitates or hosts online child pornography content and communities.

First Published: March 12, 2014: 12:19 AM ET

Interview with Vednita Carter of Breaking Free on Sex Trafficking

Part 1

Interview with Vednita Carter of Breaking Free on Sex Trafficking

Part 2

Revisualizing the Church as Fellowship and Community

SHE’S NOT A MEGACHURCH. SHE’S MY SISTER.

http://shaunaniequist.com/shes-megachurch-shes-sister/By Shauna NiequistPosted in - General on March 11th, 2014

When I was three, we lived so close we could walk to the church my parents started. When the first building was being built, we’d walk over every evening to watch the construction. We had little hard hats, my brother and I, and we’d check every day what had been done, what new beams or walls, what new electrical or plumbing.

I know that my church’s name is shorthand for all manner of things—seeker movement, megachurch, modern evangelicalism, whatever.  But those words don’t tell you who she is.

She’s my sister. She’s less than a year older than me. Here in Chicago, we call that Irish twins. She was my playground, my safest place, my home more than the house I grew up in. I’ve worked there, cried there, stood in weddings there, witnessed funerals there. I fell in love there, working alongside the man who became my husband.

People ask what it’s like to be a pastor’s kid. I don’t know the difference. What’s it like to be anyone else’s kid?

What I know is that the church is my family every bit as much as my aunts and uncles are. What I know is that the very best parts of who I am today were nurtured along by that incredible community—by Sunday school teachers and junior high small group leaders and mentors and friends who walk with me still.

I know it’s a thing. I know people write about it, rage against it, have strong opinions about it. But I’m not talking about all that. I’m talking about who she is.

If I could reach through the computer and take you by the hand, I’d walk you through the hallways and tell you stories of confession and redemption. I’d show you where I learned to read God’s word, where I learned to listen for his Spirit, where I gave my life to him and to his purposes here on earth.

I’d show you where I got a concussion in junior high, and where I was standing when a boy reached to hold my hand for the first time. I’d show you where I was baptized, where I was when I watched the Twin Towers fall on September 11th, where I sat trembling just before I preached there for the first time, scared out of my mind.

I’d introduce you to Casey, who I met in 6th grade, who is one of my dearest friends to this day. I’d sit you down to talk with Dr Bilezekian, my Dad’s mentor, a man who’s been like a grandfather to me. I’d introduce you to men and women who’ve been volunteering there for more than thirty years, holding babies or packing up groceries in the care center or sweeping up, long after the services are over.

My church isn’t perfect. Sisters, of course, know each other’s faults better than anyone else. But being a sister also means you get a front row seat to the good, the beautiful, the fiercely loving and thoroughly grace-soaked best parts of it all. The view from here is breathtaking.

For a long time, I didn’t write much about my church. I needed, for a long time, to talk and write about other things, to make a way and a voice for myself that wasn’t only defined by the pastor’s daughter part of my life.

But this church of mine, this sister: it’s not only the church of my childhood. It’s the place where I pray, sing, confess, take communion now. It’s the community that shapes me, walks with me, instructs me, holds me now.

I’m not little anymore, and neither is she. But she’s still my sister.

You learn all sorts of things growing up the way I did. And one of them is this: the labels never suffice. The articles and blogs and books and outside opinions never will capture the real thing. They’ll reduce it to policy, numbers, data.

They fail to capture what a church actually is: real live actual humans, showing up day after day, year after year, building something durable and lovely over time, together, with prayer and forgiveness and love.

They forget that it isn’t an institution. It’s a family. She’s my sister.

Confessions of an Ex-Apologist: "In Defense of Why I Left My Calling"

On Being an Ex-Apologist

(Hardman, part 1 of 3)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/03/on-being-an-ex-apologist-hardman-part-1-of-3/

by Peter Enns

March 11, 2014

Comments

Below is the first of three posts by Randy Hardman on his experiences as an official Christian apologist and why he felt he had to move on from that vocation. (Readers may remember an earlier post with a similar theme.)

Hardman speaks his truth from his experience and has a deep story to tell, some of which we read about in these posts (and I hope to see more of it in time). He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Appalachian State University and will graduate this Spring from Asbury Theological Seminary with an M.A. in Biblical Studies and an M.A. in Theological Studies. He blogs at www.thebarainitiative.com–as he puts it–on things that most of the world doesn’t care about but he thinks they should. He also is the father of two wonderful children, a church consultant for a mainline Christian publisher (a job he says he’s way too opinionated for), and a freelance writer.

---

Disclaimer: Just as it is easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater, these posts are in no way an attempt to say apologetics as a whole is a pointless discipline, nor are they intended to say that by defining myself as an “ex-apologist” I refuse any rational argumentation or apologetic endeavors.

I am an apologist in so far as it is a “tool” in my belt, not a vocation or an identity. These posts are intent on reflecting, through personal testimony, a popular conception of apologetics that I find to be largely one-dimensional and misguided.

Still, I want to acknowledge that there are people, groups, and ministries devoted to doing apologetics within a framework that I find to be both appropriate and helpful (i.e., I would be remiss if I did not mention my work with Summit Ministries in particular stands in exclusion to the nature of what I reference here, for in my experience, while largely traditional as an organization, they encouraged me to think deep and believe even deeper—they share a positive aspect of my entire story).

- Peter

---

Randy's Story

Part 1

I was bred to be an apologist.

I had the classic story that, interestingly, so many others share: one involving an initial teenage salvation, an eighteen year old skepticism that led to agnosticism/atheism, and a re-gained confidence of my faith through reading Josh McDowell’s The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict.

At 18 years old I entered into the world of apologetics, enrolling at a secular school to “defend” the Christian faith against those professors who sought to destroy it and with an intent to save the faith of the 75% who, I heard endlessly from those surrounding me, would walk away from their faith because they didn’t know “why they believed what they believe.”

At the age of nineteen I started an apologetics campus ministry, which quickly found a 501c3 host and went national, placing apologetics clubs at campuses all over the U.S. As a twenty year old college student, I spent my nights arguing for creationism, inerrancy, and God’s existence on internet forums and spent many weekends traveling to speak on why apologetics can save your faith…just like it did mine!

When somebody asked me who I was, I often replied, “I’m an apologist” and I was convinced that this was who I was “meant” to be. “God is calling me to this,” I would say.

The sad part is, while the story is true, it is only true to a certain qualified extent.

While I certainly came across “evidences” that allowed me to shake off some of the intellectual doubts that I had picked up on, I can’t say any longer that apologetics “saved my faith,” which was something I said time and again in front of audiences and in writing.

I knew all the reasons as to why Christianity was true. I could spout off the cosmological argument quicker than you could say Richard Dawkins, and I certainly royally upset enough professors–not to mention fellow students–with my public classroom defense of the faith!

But despite being so immersed in apologetics, my “faith” was as far from God as ever.

I didn’t know Him despite knowing all about Him. Christianity was an orthodoxy to be defended, a set of correct conservative doctrines and dogmas based on philosophical, historical, and scientific arguments, not a personal covenant or a relationship with the redeemer of souls.

I knew “why I believed what I believed” yet I, too, was in that 75%. How ironic! If my private life was exposed–my addiction to porn, my alcohol and pot consumption, my relationship with my girlfriend–I looked like your average college guy, not the model of an upstanding Christian apologist I tried to be in front of others.

Reason did little to strengthen my faith, despite my repeated claim that it “saved it.” It just turned me into a jerk with a lot of ammo–a jerk who merely pretended to have things put together by the overwhelming evidence of Christianity but, in reality, who was more assuredly as confused, carnal, and lost as the person I was insistent to win over to Christ through rigorous argumentation.

I don’t blame anyone but myself for my words or actions, but there was a large extent to where I sincerely confused salvation with knowledge, where my life and actions and personal emptiness failed to really matter in the long run as long as I had my conservative Protestant theology worked out.

And I think whereas I alone bore the need to repent from divorcing my head knowledge from my heart knowledge, there is also a significant fostering of that mindset within apologetics. There is a particular invitation that says, “Got doubt? We got answers” as if intellectual answers can assuage our doubt and our longing for faith.

When we promise someone that they can become an “official apologist” (as some programs and schools do) or when we treat the discipline as if it has the potential to create or save faith in those who doubt, I fear that we end up offering people empty promises, even if they appear to be temporary solutions.

This comes from personal experience and from conversations with some of those who are our most sophisticated thinkers.

The doubts that I dealt with ten years ago are the same doubts that I deal with now, albeit in different ways sometimes and I routinely pray, not read, for faith. Rationalism never quenches the thirst of doubt; it only masquerades it.

Beyond this, I wonder how often simplistic conceptions of apologetics promote the notion that our best expression of our faith is our public defense of it, not the proclamation of it rooted in our life.

I wonder, in fact, how many use the “defense of the Gospel” as an excuse for incredible pride and judgment, a “Christian excuse” to tell others to be quiet and sit down, thus making Christian apologetics a very non-Christian discipline.

Slowly, the dissatisfaction of “having all the answers” started to eat away at me and, with that, my sense of pride.

I remember one day in particular, walking into a classroom on a Sunday morning to teach an apologetics class to some youth. I was coherent, but still slightly drunk from the night before. I am sure I wreaked of smoke but nobody mentioned anything so perhaps Axe Body Spray does work after all.

The shame and the guilt ran circles inside my head as I spoke about the evidence for the resurrection, standing in front of this group pretending to be a leader. Here I was, at a church teaching an apologetics class, giving the “answers as to why Christianity’s true” but without any real conviction of it myself.

Oh, in retrospect how I wished someone would have asked me not about “premise two” but, rather, “how is your soul?” The emptiness and the shame consumed me that day and I realized that despite all my head knowledge and all my intellectual flexing, I was only what John Wesley called an “almost Christian.”

It was the day that I admitted to myself, “Apologetics did not save my faith. It saved my pride.”

Perhaps for many, as in my case, apologetics becomes a means of hiding our faithlessness, not answering it. After all,

• Why is it that so many apologists are so consumed with the discipline that it seems to be what they eat, drink, and sleep?
• Why is it that so many insist on “defending the faith” in the classroom, no matter what sort of insult, interruption or shame that brings the professor and class?
• Why is it that so many are threatened when popular boundaries are brought into question by none other than fellow Christians?
• Why is it, as I have seen personally, so many apologists turn out to be jerks, little different in rhetoric and spirit than the New Atheists they so fervently wish to counter?

Can the Devil not find his way into the apologetics camp too?

- Randy

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The Exodus of Inerrancy and Entrance Into Authenticity

(Hardman, part 2 of 3)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/03/the-exodus-of-inerrancy-and-entrance-into-authenticity-hardman-part-2-of-3/

by Peter Enns

March 12, 2014

Comments

Today we continue our 3-part series by Randy Hardman on his experiences as an official Christian apologist and why he felt he had to move on from that vocation. (The first part is here, with an important disclaimer. Readers interested in similar posts on this theme can find them beginning here, here and here.)

Hardman holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Appalachian State University and will graduate this Spring from Asbury Theological Seminary with an M.A. in Biblical Studies and an M.A. in Theological Studies. He blogs at www.thebarainitiative.com, is the father of two wonderful children, a church consultant for a mainline Christian publisher, and a freelance writer.

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Randy's Story

Part 2

In my previous blog, I outlined part of what it was like as a born and bred apologist, and I cautioned of a major problem with thinking so one-dimensionally about faith. Apologetics can succeed in hiding doubt, fear, and faithlessness in any given person, as it did in me.

I played the game for so long that eventually I even wondered whether admitting to myself that I was just an “almost Christian” and getting things right was really worth the embarrassment of it all. As it turned out, it was—since obviously I am now writing this.

It took quite some time for me to admit that apologetics didn’t really save my faith but only gave me the impression that it did.

But, as I’ve stressed over and over, this denial was rooted in a particular way of thinking about Christianity which I think a lot of us evangelicals–especially those who have been captivated with apologetics–fall into: faith as science.

As the late Stan Grenz and John Franke note in their tremendous book Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context, it is somewhat ironic that modernist thinking has extended so far in both the directions of the “godless” and the “godly.” For every atheist that’s incorrigibly committed to the truth of his philosophical naturalism there is an evangelical incorrigibly committed to his theism in such a way that neither one lacks the need to feel absolutely certain.

For these evangelicals, conviction leaves no room for doubt, and so in popular Christian apologetics doubt is something to be assuaged with answers.

I think central to this view is the idea of inerrancy. It is a doctrine that seems to pervade even to the point of our trust in salvation. Indeed, I got an email yesterday from a junior in college asking “How can I trust the Bible if the Gospel of John has Jesus die on a Thursday?! If that’s false, might the whole thing be false too?!”

Her answer is the result of Christian thought being in bed with modernist thought, wherein one’s faith is not truly faith but, rather, certainty rested on shaky foundations. Remove too many bricks from that foundation and the whole thing tumbles down! Like this college junior, I myself bought into such a notion of faith and it rested mostly on the doctrine of inerrancy.

Of course, it’s a non sequitur to say “If Genesis is not science then Jesus didn’t rise from the dead,” but that doesn’t mean that that’s not the sort of bargain most people have adopted, probably unknowingly. But, as I’ll talk about in the next blog, there are major consequences to this way of thinking.

For the moment, I want to end on a positive note about what can happen when one begins to think outside of the inerrancy framework.

I remember my senior year of college taking the last undergraduate class I would ever take entitled “The History of Creation and Evolution.” The class was one of the best classes I ever took (and not once did I think the professor was an evil minion of Satan wanting to strip our faith from us!), for it challenged me to wrestle with a question that set off an authentic pursuit for truth and, more importantly, a relationship with Christ rooted in knowing more of him than about him.

The question was this: if evolution is right, does that make Christianity false? It was a bargain, for whatever reason, I was unwilling to accept. And it was only from that point forward that I saw a new way of wrestling with my questions. Of course, searching for answers would always be part of it. But I began to see faith and knowledge as centering on two different things.

Faith, while incorporating beliefs to an extent, is not about what you know and how well you are convinced of it. It is about how intimately you trust a person, and I can tell you from personal experience in some of the darkest moments in my life, it is only covenantal faith–not knowledge or arguments–that can appropriate doubt.

It is trust, not data, that allows one to wrestle through the night with God, through the unanswerable, and, indeed, the irrational. It allowed me to approach questions differently and it allowed me, a couple months later, to re-examine my own life and concede what was true: I didn’t know Christ as much as I knew about him.

Since ridding myself of the fear of reading Scripture outside of the inerrancy paradigm, I have returned to the Bible–not the systematic theologians or apologists–to answer the deepest questions, not needing to have the surface questions asked first.

In it I find beauty for God’s grace in allowing us to participate in its production, human error and all; [comment: please refer to my most recent article on this: "How Are We to Read the Bible? As a Divine Product or Human? Part 1 of 2" - r.e. slater]

I find beauty in the multitude of voices, for the truth is sometimes life does seem nihilistic and we need Ecclesiastes to stand beside us or Job to yell at God with us;

I find beauty in reading Scripture primarily to save my soul and teach me how to live like and within Christ, not in teaching me what to believe and how to think about Christ.

At the end of it all, mere knowledge about God is about as useful to our lives as knowledge of plate tectonics. But certainly, if we strive to know Him personally, to really develop a deep trust with him as “my Lord and my God” our knowledge about him will grow in tandum with our actual knowing of him.

When we rid ourselves of the need for an inerrant, scientific-like, Bible, it has the ability to transform our faith from a need for certainty to a need for authenticity.

- Randy

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The Casualty Problem

(Hardman, parts 3 of 3)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/03/the-casualty-problem-hardman-parts-3-of-3/

by Peter Enns

March 13, 2014

Comments

Today we have the third and final post in Randy Hardman’s 3 part series on his experiences as an official Christian apologist and why he felt he had to move on from that vocation (see part one and part two). (Readers interested in similar posts on this theme can find them beginning here, here and here.)

Hardman holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Appalachian State University and will graduate this Spring from Asbury Theological Seminary with an M.A. in Biblical Studies and an M.A. in Theological Studies. He blogs at www.thebarainitiative.com, is the father of two wonderful children, a church consultant for a mainline Christian publisher, and a freelance writer.

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Randy's Story

Part 3

My last two posts (here and here) dealt with my testimony as a trained apologist and a transformation that took place when I allowed myself to really stop thinking of faith as a science. This post still deals with what I find to be a strange irony in the discipline of apologetics, namely, the insistence upon a “rational and well thought out” faith with the insistence on upholding scriptural inerrancy and creationism.

To that end, I have to confess that I am incredibly bothered by the fact that the popular apologetics movement laments the 75% of students who leave the faith (they say, “because they don’t have intellectual answers for what they believe”) and yet they demand that one cannot embrace certain conclusions of their disciplines, no matter how well thought out and evidenced.

It is my conviction that when we insist that young people have to choose between evolution and God, or the critical results of scholarship and faith, we are not at all helping students overcome some of the intellectual barriers and questions they might have. Rather, we contribute to the swath of students who find Christianity to be opposed to reason.

A few years ago I had lunch with a friend of mine. Through our friendship, we find ourselves routinely at odds on theological points (strangely, these odds started to only become exposed as I was starting to leave the popular apologetics mold).

As I was currently enrolled in a Biblical Studies program at Asbury Theological Seminary, he posed me a question: “Randy, what do you think? Did Luke and Matthew use Mark as a source?” I don’t really know what answer he expected from me but I just looked at him and said, “Absolutely! That’s pretty near consensus in NT scholarship…I don’t see any reason to doubt it!”

My friends eyes widened as he sat back in his seat, threw his hands up in the air, and said, “No, no, no…They didn’t use Mark as a source. That’s just a theory promoted by the Devil and populated through Bultmannian scholarship.”

I went back to my pizza.

What lay behind my friend’s assertion was a conviction that critical biblical scholarship was necessarily inimical to Christian faith. One could not approach the Bible with the same scrutiny as other historical works for, in doing so, one was threatening faith, [that is, the kind of faith he was holding].

In light of this perceived threat, evangelicals developed the doctrine of inerrancy, set in hand with the tools to deal with any possible contradiction one might dream of!

Likewise, years ago I heard a well respected Ph.D. young-earther remark, “One day, as a teenager, I sat with the Bible in one hand and On the Origin of Species in the other and made a decision on which one I would commit my life to.” As a young-earther, he obviously chose the Bible (in case you were wondering). Everything for this scientist–a scientist with impeccable credentials I might add–was to be read through his interpretive lens of literalism.

The problem, as you are probably suspecting, is this: When we caricature Christianity by such narrow boundaries, we run the risk of making Christianity anti-intellectual. Even more dangerous, however, is that when we promote views like these in the vein of “apologetics” and “Christian intellectualism” we run the risk of making our [form of] intellectual Christianity anti-intellectual.

What happens, for example, when a student told all his life that he must choose “God or Darwin” enrolls in a biology major? Or, as in my case, what happens when we are told that the existence of a contradiction invalidates the Bible? As I noted in my previous post, I was a young-earther and an inerrantist for quite some time, and I can tell you personally that struggling with overwhelming evidence on both fronts is something I wish no one need deal with.

How I made it through without reverting to a cold, hard atheism is beyond me. But what I do know is that there are too many casualties who don’t make it through for the same reasons. I have watched too many friends abandon all trust in God because they were told they need to choose between the boundaries set by evangelical apologetics and science.

Is the risk of being wrong about evolution or inerrancy really worth the loss of countless Christians who unnecessarily struggled? Are our casualties really worth it if, after it’s all said and done, we find out that we’ve been fighting for illusionary principles and doctrines after all?

While my own struggle didn’t predominately have to do with “having the right answers,” I can tell you that the mere exhaustion of trying to intellectually reconcile evolution and God and contradictions with Scripture weakened my soul to a point that I was probably more susceptible towards the attractions of this world. Indeed, after reading some of the creative reconciliations designed by inerrantists, who wouldn’t want to just get high and think about nothing?! (sorry–I had to).

The point is this: When popular apologetics builds itself up as the “case for” you name it, it can certainly succeed in portraying itself as more rigorous than it is. But, ultimately, all theories fall into some bit of tension, and if we are so convinced that our rigorous case necessitates rigorous boundaries, we will inevitably contribute to–not reverse–the intellectual (and sometimes, therefore, spiritual) rejection of Christianity.

- Randy