In Beyond Apathy: A Theology for Bystanders, Elisabeth T. Vasko points out that "We live in a society that is all too willing to tolerate violence." That may be true. Just turn on the news or read the paper. But to her thinking, persons who "occupy social sites of privilege" due to their "race, class, sexual orientation, or gender" are frequently bystanders, "those how aid and abet perpetrators (oppressors) through acts of 'omission and commission.'" In other words, white males are complicit in violence against women, homosexuals, and non-white individuals.
In our "heteropatriarchal" society, "gay bashing and slut shaming reveal that gender-based violence remains endemic to Western culture." Similarly, "white racism appears in the form of unconscious bias." I won't argue with Vasko that culture is permeated with prejudice of many kinds. But as a white male, I have to object to her assertion that white males are guilty of violence no matter what. In her view, I could live in a racially mixed community, adopt an African-American child, worship and serve in a racially mixed church, give money, time, and resources to all varieties of organizations which serve the black community, and love everyone, regardless of race, with a pure heart, but I would still be guilty through "systemic unknowing," "latent racial bias," and having benefitted from structural racism.
The idea of structural sin has always been problematic for me. How do I incur guilt for something I have not done? But for Vasko, structural sin makes me guilty since I am a person of privilege. While I don't like the idea, I understand the point and can see how theologians make it. However, Vasko takes the idea farther, outside of Christian orthodoxy. Jesus, she says, "is not immune to ethnic prejudice and religious exclusivism." He is "inscribed in structural sin." He is not "innocent, morally perfect, and one how takes sides with the oppressed." He "appears to take sides with the oppressor, his actions mirroring present-day patterns of privileged escape, racism, and bullying." She even goes as far as to reject substitutionary atonement. Rather than glorify the cross, she promotes a "theology of survival that emphasizes Jesus' healing ministerial vision."
Vasko misses an opportunity to speak to an important issue in society. When we see violence, whether perpetrated by family members, random criminals or bullies, or even by the police or other officials, we must speak out. However, Vasko places moral equivalency on those who swing the fist and those who stay in the shadows for their own safety. And I am just as guilty, sitting here at home in my living room, because I am a white heterosexual male. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
I honestly think she's living in another universe, or at least in another era. In my world, I have had bosses who are black, female, and even black females. I have worked with black, female, and homosexual coworkers, some of whom have been promoted ahead of me. A black police officer lives in my neighborhood. I even have a black president. Yes, racism, sexism, and homophobia still exist. But Vasko goes to far in saying that because I live and breathe as a white man, I am, ipso facto, culpable of any racist, sexist, or homophobic acts of violence. (By the way, she leaves no space for a legitimate theological claim that homosexual activity is sinful. Simply making that claim makes one guilty of violence against homosexuals.)
So, the bottom line on Beyond Apathy is that I found it offensive in its prejudice against white, heterosexual males. More importantly than that, I found her diminishing of Christ's atonement to be outside of Christian orthodoxy. She is writing inside an echo chamber of liberationist and womanist theology. But of course, what do I know. I am blinded by privilege and culpable because of my DNA.
Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!
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