Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
MLK, Mike Pence, and the Great Cloud of Witnesses

MLK, Mike Pence, and the Great Cloud of Witnesses

Last updated on: September 1, 2020 at 2:08 am by Chris Gehrz

MLK, Mike Pence, and the Great Cloud of Witnesses 2020-08-31T23:59:07-04:00 Chris Gehrz

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’m now one day into my experience of teaching on a college campus in the middle of a pandemic, and I’ve already sensed a pattern: the more things stay the same, the more they change.

As usual, the semester started with me helping to introduce Christianity and Western Culture (CWC), Bethel University‘s venerable team-taught, multi-disciplinary, first-year, general education course. But I’m usually in a lecture hall, not a socially distanced multi-purpose space with a disco ball hanging overhead.

Even with this space, we’re only having about 40% of our students in the classroom for any particular lecture, with others watching recordings

Awkward as I felt standing on that stage, muscle memory kicked in as I opened with a devotional reflection on what’s long been our theme scripture in CWC:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. (Heb 12:1-2, NIV)

I’ve talked about these words dozens of times now in this class. The author’s allusion to “a great cloud of witnesses” is an ideal fit with a course that seeks to introduce young Christians to sisters and brothers in Christ from centuries past.

But in a course that’s also meant to help students understand the connections between past and present, this time it felt like I needed to head in a slightly different direction and acknowledge that Hebrews 12 has been in the news, thanks to this portion of Vice President Mike Pence’s address last Wednesday at the Republican National Convention:

Let’s run the race marked out for us. Let’s fix our eyes on Old Glory and all she represents. Let’s fix our eyes on this land of heroes and let their courage inspire. And let’s fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith and freedom and never forget that where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom — and that means freedom always wins.

I’ve previously taken issue with Pence’s misuse of the New Testament, so I’m not going to belabor what other Christians from across the theological spectrum have already pointed out: that it’s nothing short of blasphemy to substitute symbols of American patriotism for Jesus Christ himself.

Glad Pence seems to know Scripture; grieved & appalled he’d believe substituting “Old Glory” for “Jesus” wasn’t blasphemous and equating the freedom Paul was referring to with civil liberties.

Christians fix our eyes on Jesus, not the flag.

Screenshot credit: @amylpeterson pic.twitter.com/hPt0lkLtcd

— Greg Jao (@GregJao) August 27, 2020

But Pence’s proof-texting seems even more reckless in light of the “therefore” that introduces Hebrews 12. The author wants us to “fix our eyes on Jesus” in light of chapter 11’s stories of women and men who

were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Heb 11:13-16)

Abraham, for example, had the faith to travel “to a place he would later receive as his inheritance… even though he did not know where he was going” (v 8). Christian nationalists often interpret America — Pence’s “land of heroes” — as a latter-day “promised land.” But the author of Hebrews says that Abraham “made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (vv 9-10). Even when he came to the land he’d been promised, Abraham “lived in tents.” (In fact, Genesis’ account of the story has him leave Canaan almost immediately.)

Now, it’s also possible to make too much of the “living in tents” idea. If it’s a mistake to deify any land or country, that needn’t mean that we care nothing for the patch of Earth where we’ve pitched our tents, shrugging at its injustices and inequalities in the confidence that our sojourn here is fleeting. If we long “for a better country—a heavenly one,” does that mean that we long only for the world to come, or can we long for our temporary home to become — however imperfectly — “a better country”?

Our students will spend much of the semester realizing that there’s no simple answer to that question — at least, none that our course’s “great cloud of witnesses” can agree on. But as a challenge to get them thinking about the implications of that question, we start at our chronological finish. After reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read from the greatest epistle written by Martin Luther King, Jr., his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Embed from Getty Images

Again, this is par for the course in CWC. I’ve only known to us to open with MLK, whose argument that Christians are obligated to disobey unjust laws sets up an ancient debate that students will encounter on Friday, when they read from Athenian writers like Sophocles and Thucydides. And our excerpt from King’s letter ends with a powerful image that suggests one potential answer to the course’s overarching question, How should Christians relate to the surrounding culture?

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society….

I’ve challenged students (and myself) with that paragraph dozens of times: What made a persecuted church “very powerful”? Has the church of today traded that kind of power for another? What would it mean for us, individually and collectively, to act as a “thermostat” rather than a “thermometer” in contemporary America?

But this year, I found myself much more interested in pointing students to an earlier passage in the letter. Addressing himself to a group of moderate white clergymen who supported desegregation but thought his methods too radical, MLK compared himself and other protesters to another Athenian our students will read in the next few days:

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates (1787) – Wikimedia

“For if you kill me,” Socrates tells his fellow citizens in Plato’s Apology,

you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the state and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

The task of such a God-given “gadfly,” said King, was to use “nonviolent direct action… to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” That’s obviously relevant after months of mass protests over the same enduring issue that King sought to confront.

On a campus mere miles from the spot where George Floyd was killed, a classroom like ours might seem nothing like the site of a mass protest. But I told students that the task of a professor in a class like CWC can be as gadfly-like as King’s: “to create a tension in the mind,” so that we can “rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal.” If the liberal arts are “liberating arts,” then we must first experience the tension that will lift us “from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

And when I say “we,” I need to start with “me,” and only then come to my students.

Even before I said a word yesterday, I experienced the crisis I meant to create. I felt the tension I always feel when I teach “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and recognize myself more in its recipients than its author. My instinctive response to injustice is to be wary of extremism and eager for order. Left unchallenged, I will always find myself comfortably arrayed among the “white churchmen [who] stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”

Embed from Getty Images

But I know I’m not alone. In 1963 or 2021, it’s so very easy for “the contemporary church [to be] a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound… an arch defender of the status quo.” Too often in the last four years, the contemporary church has offered “silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are” under Mike Pence and his boss. The more things stay the same, the less they change.

So while Pence and I agree that we Christians need to look to the “the author and perfecter of our faith,” I need to point my students to a Jesus who was, in MLK’s words, “an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment.” When Pence exhorts Americans to stare at “Old Glory and all she represents,” I have to confront students with an American past that is truly a foreign country to anyone called to sojourn in this unjust land yet yearn for “a better country—a heavenly one.”

In this year when things have changed — but not enough — I pray that God will make such words something more than “pious irrelevancies.”

Epistle to the Hebrews

liberal arts

Mike Pence

Previous Post

August 31, 2020

When Was the Cold War?

Next Post

September 2, 2020 Abby Johnson and the Problem of Biblical Womanhood

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe Guest Post guest post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What occupation did Peter, Andrew, James, and John have before following Jesus?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Tax collectors Scribes Fishermen Politicians