Insular Thinking About the American Nuclear Family
For all his castigation of the nuclear family (complicit, according to Brooks, in the many modern American societal ills that he catalogs), he offers no real alternative means for achieving the goal he desires — complex and deep networks of individuals in extended families supporting each other. Though distorted in numerous ways by fallen mankind, the nuclear family has persisted through the ages as a mainstay of natural law. Far from being a parochial innovation of twentieth-century conservative America, the nuclear family is in fact the universal building block of every known society.
“The Nuclear Family was a Mistake.” So reads the provocative title of a relatively recent essay published by David Brooks in The Atlantic.[1] The attention-grabbing headline was perhaps overshadowed by other, more immediately pressing headlines at that time (ironically, Brooks’s essay was published in the same month that the whole Western world suddenly began to lock itself up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic). Yet while pandemics (and wars) come and go, the secular West’s continual spiritual decline has proceeded apace, ever more rapidly accelerating in the decades since the sexual revolution.
David Brooks is certainly not alone in his assessment of the “nuclear family,” a term which has now become an epithet of opprobrium in our culture. One thinks of certain sitcoms, such as Married with Children, which mock the dysfunctional nuclear families they depict with a kind of bemused apathy (or by turns even a concealed hatred). The academy as well has worked diligently to stereotype this family model as a historical novelty, deeply tied to social conservative ideals in North American society.
Yet what is most surprising, perhaps, is the degree to which the American church in many quarters has thrown in its lot with the culture in criticizing the emphasis that earlier generations of evangelicals placed on family. Note, as well, that this critique is by no means exclusive to left-leaning evangelicalism. Indeed, both the left and the right increasingly have framed their critiques of “purity culture,” and the preoccupation with marriage and procreation, as distractions — even a form of subtle idolatry — that too often sidetracks from the gospel.
There have been numerous recent re-examinations of the virtues of evangelical mainstays such as Focus on the Family and The Promise Keepers. There has also been a reconsideration, to some degree, of the traditional evangelical emphasis on young people avoiding secular dating practices, and instead marrying early and seeking to form a family unit as soon as possible. Significantly, some of the major players in a bygone era of evangelicalism have renounced their previously held views (such as Joshua Harris, author of the wildly popular 90s classic I Kissed Dating Goodbye), or else proven themselves to have been deeply morally compromised (such as Ravi Zacharias or Josh Duggar). These factors (as well as others) have, in one way or another, recently served to slam the brakes on the traditional evangelical emphasis on the family in the context of Christian discipleship. Just as the 1950s were for the broader American culture, the 1990s are increasingly viewed, in the popular imagination of much of contemporary evangelicalism, as a kind of idealistic, unrealistic, imbalanced high-water mark of the “nuclear family.”
Countervailing Arguments Against the Family
The trends described above have coincided with some new opposing emphases in American evangelicalism. In reaction to a perceived overemphasis on the family unit, there has been growth in recognizing singleness as a gift from God and as something to be aspired to. Especially significant here is the rise of “Side B” Christianity and the encouragement, even celebration of, celibacy for same-sex attracted Christians (in place of marriage, which is sometimes viewed as “inauthentic” for such persons). As such, one potent strategy in the effort to equalize the perceived unfairness between married Christians and other Christians struggling with homosexuality is to downplay the importance of marriage and procreation in the Christian life itself. Some have gone even further than this. The founder and president of the Revoicemovement, Nate Collins, asked openly in a 2018 conference address: “Is it possible that gay people today are being sent by God, like Jeremiah, to find God’s words for the church . . . [and] shed light on contemporary false teachings and even idolatries?” This he characterized as a “prophetic call to the church to abandon idolatrous attitudes toward the nuclear family.”
Rather surprisingly and counterintuitively, the nuclear family is now subtly associated with the modern American preoccupation with individualism and materialism. Advocacy for traditional families is even stigmatized (though usually not overtly) as a selfish undertaking that tends to cannibalize other equally legitimate extended and non-traditional familial bonds. The family, consisting of a husband, a wife, and their children, is thus effectively stereotyped as being the privilege of well-to-do white middle class families.
The argument in Brooks’s essay is illustrative of this. His piece does not necessarily read in the way one might expect (to judge by its attention-grabbing title). It is not a screed that directly assaults biblical marriage or ridicules procreation. Rather, his critique of the nuclear family is couched more in terms that present this family model as a somewhat utopian ideal which only flourished for around a decade or so in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to a constellation of chance historical circumstances (what Brooks terms “The Short, Happy Life of the Nuclear Family”).
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A Curious Clue about the Origins of the New Testament Canon
Written by Michael J. Kruger |
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Covenants were largely conceived as something written or read; i.e., something in a book. It is precisely for this reason that warnings were given not to change the text of the covenant (Deuteronomy 4:2), and there were concerns about it being in the proper physical location (Exodus 25:16).Although most discussions about the development of the canon focus on the patristic period (second century and later), there is much canonical gold yet to mine from the pages of the New Testament itself. Unfortunately, this step is often skipped.
There are a number of possible reasons for why it is skipped. But perhaps most people just assume that the whole idea of a “canon” is a late development anyway, and thus we wouldn’t expect to find anything about it in the New Testament books themselves.
Aside from the fact that such a position already presupposes an entire canonical “worldview” known as the extrinsic model (for my critique of this model see my book The Question of Canon), it keeps us from noticing some fascinating clues.
One passage that I think contains a number of intriguing clues is 2 Cor 3:14 when Paul says, “When they read the Old Covenant, that same veil remains unlifted.”
Often overlooked in this passage is that Paul understands a covenant to be something that you read. In other words, for Paul (and his audience) covenants are understood to be written documents.
When we look at Paul’s Jewish context this should come as no surprise. So close is the relationship between the covenant, and the written documentation of the covenant, that Old Testament authors would frequently equate the two—the covenant, in one sense, is a written text.
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Robust Biblical Theology Runs Along Diagonal Lines
How does one reconcile the one and the many, being and becoming, freedom and determinism, autonomy and dependence? These questions have preoccupied philosophers since the era of the pre-Socratics. Watkin’s approach is to begin with God, in whom things dwell in perfect harmony—even though we sometimes place them in opposition to each other (his love and his justice, for example). Watkin then demonstrates how modern culture demands we either affirm one or the other or adopt a synthesis of the two that produces an unsatisfying compromise—a tertium quid, or “third thing,” to use the technical theological term (“neither fish nor fowl,” to use the untechnical, nontheological expression). Finally, he moves to showing how the truths that exist harmoniously in God are manifested in the gospel, albeit in an unexpected way.
The summer of 2020 is memorable for many reasons, none of them positive: COVID-19; the death of George Floyd; and social turmoil across many Western countries, focused particularly on the colonial past of Europe and the United States. Amid all the chaos, the term “critical theory” (CT)—specifically in the form of “critical race theory”—entered common parlance.
While CT was once a highly specialized phenomenon of little interest outside postgraduate seminars in the humanities, suddenly everyone—especially those with Twitter accounts and personal blogs—was an expert in the field. Most surprising of all was how many Christians seemed eager to be in on the action.
So CT moved into the mainstream, becoming a point of conflict at school boards; higher education institutions; and churches, both locally and at the denominational level. It became a shibboleth, a tribal marker, with the question “Are you for it or against it?” requiring a simple yes or no answer as a test of orthodoxy on both sides of the discussion.
Yet CT isn’t a unified phenomenon, nor is its literature easy to understand. With one stream of CT finding its roots in Hegel and the other in French post-structuralism, the field is rife with rebarbative prose, opaque arguments, and slippery conclusions.
The highly politicized role CT has come to play in current cultural discussions makes it hard to find a reliable guide to the issue or, more importantly, a sound proposal for a Christian response and alternative. Christopher Watkin seeks to address this lacuna in his major book Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.
Guided by Augustine
CT has two basic goals. It strives to expose the contingent nature of the reality we as human subjects experience and in which we participate, and it aims by so doing to alter the way we think and relate to the world around us.
Further, at the core of CT, whether of the Marxist variety associated with the Frankfurt School or the post-structuralist variety connected to Michel Foucault, is the notion that power and manipulation lay behind the apparently natural but in reality socially constructed world we inhabit. So understood, CT has clear affinities with Christianity. Christianity claims the world and our perception of it are distorted by sin, that we live according to lies, and that all human relationships are marked to some degree by selfishness. What Watkin does is build on these and other affinities to move beyond knee-jerk and simplistic “Boo!” or “Hooray!” alternatives and to mark a path forward.
The guiding light of Watkin’s project is Augustine, whose City of God is arguably the first and greatest example of what a Christian CT might look like. In the course of that work, Augustine debunks the myths Rome told about itself, often by way of what later critical theorists would dub “immanent critique,” exposing the contradictions of Rome’s own narrative as a means of clearing the ground.
Augustine uses the biblical plotline to provide a grand explanatory scheme for his relativization of Rome and his assertion of the superiority of the gospel, something the contemporary theologian John Milbank refers to as “out-narrating.”
Watkin deploys all these elements in his development of a biblical CT. Using the overarching biblical metanarrative to frame his analysis, he moves deftly from Christian doctrine to critiquing the most pressing issues of our day. Much of what the book contains will be familiar to TGC readers as it’s solid biblical theology. The discussions of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation follow familiar lines, along with discussions of key biblical genres, such as prophecy and wisdom.
Indeed, it’s in his discussion of the prophets—the great exemplars of biblical CT—that Watkin excels. If, as Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach state, the point isn’t to describe the world but to change it, then the prophetic imagination is surely critical.
Key Framework: Diagonalization
So what is it about Watkin’s work that makes it “critical” and not simply a re-presentation of standard biblical theology? The answer lies above all in his deployment of what he calls “diagonalization.”
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The Disparity Antiracists Don’t Talk About
Since blacks who are married are much less likely to be in poverty, then why, he asks, aren’t activists promoting black marriage? It’s a good question. According to the Family Research Council, “Married-couple families generate the most income, on average” compared to single-parent families, cohabiting families, or divorced families. Other studies have shown that marriage provides health benefits and the ability to deal with stress.
In all the talk about racial injustices, the racial disparities for abortion are ignored. And that’s because we would need to talk about marriage. I’m John Stonestreet, and this is Breakpoint.
Recently in The Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley asked a provocative question, “Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?” In it, he describes how the “black abortion rate is nearly four times higher than the white rate,” how more black babies in New York City are aborted than born, and how “[n]ationally, the number of babies aborted by black women each year far exceeds the combined number of blacks who drop out of school, are sent to prison and are murdered.”
Even books on racism by Christian publishers, for example, Jemar Tisby’s How to Fight Racism, never mention the significant racial disparities that exist when it comes to abortion, even while spending significant time on other disparities, such as student achievement, incarceration, wealth, and healthcare in general. The new book Faithful Anti-Racism by Christian Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan shares similar disparity stats to Tisby’s, but the only mentions of abortion are embedded in quotations regarding conservative interests.
According to Riley, one issue is that talking about the racial disparity when it comes to abortion would necessitate discussing how to “increase black marriage rates,” since so many women having abortions are single. Riley states:
One problem is that such a conversation requires frank talk about counterproductive attitudes toward marriage and solo parenting in low-income black communities. It requires discussing antisocial behavior and personal responsibility.
Now, to be clear, disparities do not always point to injustice or racism. As Thaddeus Williams writes In Confronting Justice Without Compromising Truth, those who call themselves antiracists assume that disparities reveal widespread discrimination or institutional injustice.
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