How Did I End Up in an Exhibit that Honors Luther's 95 Theses

This year marks the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses. In Wittenberg, Germany, there is a National Special Exhibit on “Luther! 95 People—95 Treasures” from May to November 2017. Organized by the Luther Heritage Sites Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt, the exhibit seeks to follow “the young Luther on his path to the Reformation and highlights the significance of his impact on people from the 16th century to the present day.”

Among the 95 people are Johann Sabastian Bach and Martin Luther King, Jr. The national exhibit received 4 million euros in funding from local and state sources.

How did I end up in this exhibit as I am not Lutheran and have never published anything on Luther or the 95 theses?

Thus, I was surprised when I received an email in April 2016 from Dr. Benjamin Hasselhorn, curator of the national exhibit, saying that he wanted to include me in the exhibit. He was interested in my work on the Occupy Movement, a movement which he regarded as “bringing together. . .the central tenets of Christian belief and the call for a more equitable and humane society.”

“What is the relationship between the Occupy Movement and Luther?” one may ask. Hasselhorn explained, the Occupy Movement was “the embodiment and representation of an idea that was similarly of great importance to Luther: that charity and love should stand firmly at the core of religion as opposed to an institution or the protection thereof.”

I still had doubts, for the Occupy Movement was a leaderless movement and no one single individual could represent the grassroots effort. Time magazine named “the protester” as Person of the Year in 2011, instead of choosing a particular individual.

I suggested to Dr. Hasselhorn the idea of having “the Occupiers” as one group of people to be included. I even thought of inviting friends who have participated in the Occupy Movement to send me pictures so that a slide show can be shown at the exhibit. 

But Dr. Hasselhorn explained that the exhibit wants to explore Luther’s legacy in a personal approach and it would be difficult to include the Occupy Movement as a whole as people participated in it had different orientations and faith traditions. He was interested in my approach to the Occupy Movement from a theological perspective.

With Joerg Rieger, I have written Occupy Religion: A Theology of the Multitude—the first theological reflection on the movement. I also provided comments and feedback for the editors of Theological Reflections on the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, a continuation of the Occupy Central Movement 佔領中環in the fall of 2014. I am a pioneer of postcolonial theology and my theological reflection on the Occupy Movement is part of my overall work.

Dr. Hasselhorn asked me for an artefact to represent the Occupy Movement. I thought of a yellow umbrella that a friend from Hong Kong gave me as a gift. Protestors used umbrellas to protect themselves against the police’s use of teargas and pepper spray. When I sent Dr. Hasselhorn pictures of the umbrella, he said it would be perfect for the exhibit. It has the words: “A dreamer, but I’m not the only one” on it!

Since I was included in the exhibit, I began to think more about the legacy of Luther and Reformation. So when the editor of the Ecumenical Review invited me to contribute an essay to a special issue that marks the 500th anniversary, I said yes. My essay “Reformation Unfinished: Economy, Inclusivity, and Authority” appeared in Ecumenical Review 69.2 (July 2017).

Martin Luther lived during the emergence of early capitalism in Europe. Max Weber has written about the relationship between Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism. During the peasants’ revolt, Luther did not support the protesters and called upon the German nobility to suppress them. In our time, Luther possibly would not stay in the Occupy campsites and I don’t know if he would support the Occupiers. But he did support charity and provision for the poor. This is what the Lutherans call faith begetting charity.

Luther’s idea of priesthood of all believers was really radical in his time. He argued that the clergy and laity did not belong to two different estates. He surmised that there is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, except that of office and work. He wrote, “We are all priests, as many of us as are Christians.”

But full inclusivity in the church still has a long road to go. Some denominations still do not allow the ordination of women and GLBTQ persons. The feminist movement has challenged the church to accept full equality and ministry of women. The full acceptance of GLBTQ persons has been a painful and tortuous journey, leading to separation and division in some denominations. As the mainline churches experience decline in membership, the emergent church movement has called for greater participation and leadership of lay people.

Luther emphasized the authority of the Bible over against the authority of the pope and the traditions. While the Bible has been used to support liberation movements, it has also been misused as a symbol of cultural superiority. A literal and fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible has reinforced conservative attitudes toward women and GLBTQ people.

Christian communities have to live out the vision of priesthood of all believers and develop models of interpreting scriptures and authority in participatory ways. The church needs to find new ways of being church. Do we need a new reformation? 

Being a Christian and Linsane



Yao and Lin in Taiwan



Last Thursday I did not know Jeremy Lin. Since then I can’t have enough of him. I watched the Knicks games online, check out Jeremylin.net, searched YouTube for his replays, and read the extensive coverage of this Chinese American phenom in the Chinese newspaper World News and news websites.

Even his grandmother in Taiwan was interviewed for the New York Times. President Barack Obama, an avid basketball fan, talked about Linsanity with his staff. The Big Apple becomes Lin-city—all in just ten day!

 

Why this craziness? The cover of Sports Illustrated says it all. The cover photo is Jeremy Lin guarded by five Lakers players, with Kobe Bryant coming behind him. Lin scored a career-high 38 points and outdueling Bryant. The caption on the cover reads, “Against all odds: The sudden and spectacular ascent of Jeremy Lin.”

Watching Lin is fun. He is like a spinning top. His last-second 3-pointer beating Raptors was mesmerizing. He smiles after his spectacular shots and pumps his fists. We smile with him and enjoy the ride.

Onto his 6’ 3” and 200-pound body, many scripts have been projected, since we can look at his unexpected rise from so many angles at the intersections of race, gender, nation, sports, and faith.

The fact that he is the first American of Taiwanese or Chinese descent to excel at the NBA is no small matter.

China won 51 gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics. The men won shooting, weightlifting, diving, gymnastics, table tennis, badminton, canoeing, and swimming. They excelled in events that the bodies don’t even touch each other’s.

Nation and manhood are often intertwined in popular imagination. Chinese men have been called “the sick men of East Asia” for a long time. China’s national soccer team has become a laughing stock and a disgrace. Can Chinese men compete in physical games in which bodies collide and crush into each other?

Before Lin, we had Yao. But Yao Ming is exceptional. He is 7’ 6”. He was groomed nationally to be a basketball star.

Lin is Linderella. No one gave him a chance, even though he captained his Palo Alto High School team to a state title and led his Harvard team to the best records in the team’s history.

Now, everyone wants to claim a piece of Linsane. Asian Americans and Canadians wore T-shirts with his name to the games and rooted for him instead of for the home teams. Some Asian American women in New York went to sport bars to watch Lincredible even though they seldom watch basketball. His family underscores his Taiwanese background since both his parents came from Taiwan. But China claims him too since his maternal grandmother grew up in Zhejiang.

David Brooks in today’s New York Times looks at competitiveness in sports not through the national narrative, but through the lens of religion. Lin was brought up in a Christian home and became a Christian when he was a freshman in high school. He founded and led a Bible study group when he was at Harvard.

Brooks writes, “The moral ethos of sports is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.” He says that modern sports emphasize assertion, competitiveness, and the display of prowess. Religion teaches humility, self-abnegation, and serving as an instrument for a larger cause.

So Brooks has not heard about a muscular Christianity that has been promoted in some circles. Jesus was depicted as a muscular, tattooed biker and boxer, ready to take on the world. This muscular Christianity has been bolstered by books such as No More Christian Nice Guy and The Church Impotent—Feminization of Christianity. This brand of Christianity is gaining grounds not only in American South but also in England to give Christian men a macho model.

If Brooks has simply googled Bible and sports, he would find that there are many Bible verses that tell us about how to become good athletes, touching on competition, preparation, winning, losing, and sportsmanship. “Do you know that in a race that the runners all compete, but only one receives a prize? Run in such a way that you may win it” (I Cor. 9:24). “Fight the good fight of faith” (I Tim 6:12). “And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules” (II Tim 2:5).

Brooks has also misunderstood sports. Humility, unselfishness, and caring for the team rather than focusing on the self are essential winning qualities for team sports. Shaquille O’Neal had to humbly admit that his free throw shooting was one of his major weaknesses and improved on it over his career. Michael Jordan became great not simply because of his great athleticism and talent. He reached a mythical status when in his mature years, he knew how to be a team leader and made everybody around him play better.

In a 2010 interview in which Lin talked about his faith, he said, “For me to put more of an emphasis on my attitude and the way that I play, rather than my stats or whether we win a championship. I learned more about a godly work ethic and a godly attitude, in terms of being humble, putting others above yourself, being respectful to refs and opponents.” Such an attitude will serve him well and Linsanity will continue to spark and linspire.

Sugirtharajah's Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism

R. S. Sugirtharajah and Pui Lan, 2010

What is the need for another introduction to postcolonial biblical criticism? Didn’t Sugirtharajah publish the highly acclaimed Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford 2002) almost a decade ago? The answers to these questions are simple: postcolonial biblical criticism keeps on developing.

This text begins with an introductory chapter on postcolonial theory and concludes with an afterword that discusses the future of postcolonial biblical criticism. It charts the development of the field, criticizes Orientalist reading practices, and offers helpful reading strategies. It includes a chapter by Ralph Broadbent summarizing the foundational texts in postcolonial biblical criticism.

On the back cover, Stephen D. Moore says the book is accessible to novices, but “old hands will also learn enormously from it.” I couldn’t agree more. 

The first chapter offers an updated development of the postcolonial condition. In the past, postcolonialism was based on what Gayatri Spivak has called a “South Asian model.” But today’s Empire is decentered and deterritorialized (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri) and different from the previous colonial period. I detect urgency in the book to address economic inequity brought by globalization. Sugirtharajah said, in the early stage, postcolonial critics focused on political independence of former colonies. Then attention moved onto the dislocation and displacement of migrants and diasporans. Today, postcolonialism must address global hunger and the plight of the rural poor and peasants (20). In this way, the book wants to respond constructively to the persistent Marxist critiques of postcolonial biblical criticism by David Jobling, Roland Boer, and Gerald West.

I was struck by Sugirtharajah’s suggestion that biblical studies be considered an essential component of Oriental studies. In Orientalism, Edward Said already indicted the philological work of Ernest Renan, a major contributor to the historical quest of Jesus in the nineteenth century (author of Vie de Jésus, 1863). Placing biblical studies within the parameters of Oriental Studies allowed us to distinctly see how Orientalist archetypes have been reactivated in social-scientific approaches to biblical studies. Sugirtharajah denounced the Orientalist construction of the “Mediterranean” in the works of John Pilch and Bruce Malina. The use of cultural anthropology in biblical studies has created the binary of “us” versus “them,” and gives further support to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Said’s contrapuntal reading has been well known in postcolonial criticism. In this book, Sugirtharajah insightfully uses Said’s exposition of “late style” to discuss the writings of Paul and John. Said discusses the two contrasting late styles found in artists and thinkers during the twilight of their creative careers. One is wisdom, serenity, and harmony. The other fascinates Said for its display of “intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction.” In music (Said was an accomplished pianist and music critic), Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and Mozart’s “Cosi  fan tutte” demonstrated this late style.

Sugirtharajah says that Paul’s Romans represents the first late style. According to Acts, he was a troublemaker and arrested for resisting Roman authorities numerous times. But in Romans, he became mellow and told his followers to submit to the authorities (Rom. 13). John’s Book of Revelation represents the other late style, if John is taken to be the same author of the Fourth Gospel. The Book of Revelation is uncompromising in its anti-imperial stance, in sharp contrast to the apolitical nature of the Gospel of John.

The volume addresses the issue that male postcolonial biblical critics have not paid attention to feminist issues. Broadbent’s chapter includes a section on “postcolonialism and feminism” (83-86). Sugirtharajah points his readers to resources on mutual criticism between feminists and postcolonial critics (19-20), criticizes the misogyny in the Book of Revelation (161), and challenges the use of gender stereotypes in the construction of the Mediterranean (107-108). These are good attempts – but much more can be said.

The contribution of queer studies to postcolonial criticism is glaringly missing in the book. The leading queer theorist Judith Butler has written on war, Zionism, and American imperialism. Marcella Althaus-Reid’s work and some of the chapters in The Queer Bible Commentary include analyses of imperial power. Contrary to Sugirtharajah’s comment that the Song of Songs falls outside the concerns of postcolonalism (53), Christopher King’s reading of the Song in The Queer Bible Commentary shows that transgressive love prefers the outsider. This has implications for the construction of the “other,” an issue discussed throughout Sugirtharajah’s book. The intersection between postcolonialism and queer studies has been broached in other fields and ought to be included in discussing the future of postcolonial biblical criticism.

*This review first appeared in the Journal of Postcolonial Networks, November 2011.

The Silver Bible and Other Surprises

The most treasured book in Uppsala is the sixth-century Silver Bible (Codex Argenteus).

While I have seen other handwritten
and beautifully decorated medieval Bibles in Europe, this is the first time I saw a codex dated back to the sixth century.

The Silver Bible contained the manuscript of the Gothic translation of the four Gospels in Greek in the fourth century. It was written in silver and in gold, and probably for the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great. The Goths were nominally Arians.

In addition to seeing the Silver Bible, Uppsala has many surprises for me. Let me begin with breakfast. I ate breakfast this morning in the hotel. It consisted of bread, cheese, egg, different cold cuts, cereal, veggie salad. Conspiciously absent were the sweet things in American breakfast: pancakes and muffins. There were also large jars of almonds, flax seeds, and walnuts.

The other surprise was which way to open the door. After I brought my luggage to my room, I tried to get out. I couldn't open the door and thought I was locked. I was pulling the door inside the room. But it should be pushed outside. I have never pushed a hotel door toward the corridor. Then I was never sure whether to push or to pull the doors.

This afternoon I gave a lecture with Powerpoint to the faulty and students of the Faculty of Theology. I asked for a lectern and was told there wasn't any. Surprise, surprise, I was asked to sit down to deliver the lecture, in a classroom in which those at the back could not see me.

I was glad to see my Swedish friends who came to the lecture: Dr. Elisabeh Gerle, an ethicist, Dr. Helene Egnell, author of Other Voices and specialist in gender and interreligious dialogue. My Olso friends Dr. Marianne Bjelland Kartzow and Dr. Anne Hege Grung also attended.

But the most enjoyable surprise was the rehearsal for tomorrow's ceremony. The Master of Ceremony began by saying that he would give a lecture before the actual rehearsal. He really gave the history of the medieval ceremony for 45 mins! It was so entertaining and I laughed so hard that tears were dripping down my face--imagine I had make-up on. . .

The recipients of honorary doctorates in theology were to receive the degrees first. Theology was the oldest faculty and queen of the sciences in the medieval period. The other person who will receive it is Professor Per-Arne Bodin of the University of Stockholm.

He presented a lecture on "At the Bath of the Hole in the Ice: On a Religious Ceremony and the Soviet Tradition." He is a specialist in the Russian Orthodox tradition. He talked about the celebration of the Christ's Baptism in Russia. The congregation would process down to a hole in the ice, often carved in the shape of the cross. After the priest blessed the water, the people would take some home, as it was thought to have healing property. Some even immersed themselves in the icy cold water. The Russian word for winter swimmers, morzj, literally means walrus. He also elaborated how this tradition figured in Chekhov's work and in Russian novels and poetry.

One fellow wrote a novel called The President's Last Love. Putin invited other presidents to take a winter bath in a hole in the ice. The Ukrainian president was able to withstand the cold. But the British Prime Minister and the American President could not. I guess Putin showed his manhood.