Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Liberating the Letter of James


Given that Rick Warren is on record as saying that he is in favor of 'wealth creation' instead of 'wealth redistribution,' I think a paper I recently wrote brings James "the brother of the Lord" into the picture as a dialog partner, and has some explanatory power as to what is going through Rick's head.

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The Letter of James has had something of a checkered past, and probably ranks as one of the most forgotten, dismissed, or attacked books in the Western canon of scripture.  In terms of abuse, famous is Luther’s characterization of the letter as “an epistle of straw.” The Letter of James also took much abuse in the late nineteenth century, such as being regarded as the “least Christian book in the New Testament.” [1]   Some interpreters went so far as to say that the text is actually Jewish with references to Jesus added later in its development.[2]  One can imagine that, in a more anti-Semitic age in Europe, such a judgment of the letter would be used to marginalize its place in the canon.  More recently, Elsa Tamez—a Methodist Latin-American feminist theologian—speaks of the Letter of James as a letter that would be ‘intercepted’ by national security agencies in certain countries and branded as subversive, due in part to its denunciation of exploitation by wealthy landowners.[3]  

But the notion that the letter would be considered too hazardous for some to read is an alien concept to me.  When I entered debates about the importance of ‘works’ in the life of faith—the purview of ‘James versus Paul’—I was still situated in a context that favored abstract discussions of the method of eternal salvation, which was the context in which I was raised.  The life of faith in my former Southern Baptist context was occupied with correct belief and the avoidance of sin.  Those who were kind and generous are/were admired, but the conscious understanding of works as being an active component of faith was not present because “works” were thought of in caricature—as a way for humans to try to tip the salvific balance in one’s favor.  The debate never tipped into considering the experience of oppression.  Indeed individualism reigned as the frame of reference.  The Letter of James was rarely consulted in the Southern Baptist context in which I moved.   The oversight now strikes me as egregious.  

So, my goal is to suggest the possibility of the Letter of James being ‘intercepted’ shows that the primarily theological debate between faith and works is not the most important legacy of the letter.  The letter is a prophetic call to care for the poor, for which James 2:14-28 serves as a theological underpinning.  I also wish to suggest that the way James speaks of the rich and the poor, and the favoritism showed to the former, are immediately applicable in the context of issues of class in the United States.  As such, James challenges American churches.  This post will proceed as follows.  I will offer a critique of some of the intentional and unintentional ‘interceptions’—by which I mean the marginalization of the letter as a whole— of the Letter of James in scholarship and ecclesial settings.  I will then move to consider what the Letter of James can offer in terms of understanding first century class distinctions (the difference between the destitute, the ‘working poor,” and the wealthy),  which can also speak to—and challenge—  twenty-first century Americans.

One unintentional interception is the preoccupation with debating modes of salvation and how we read James as being a debate partner of Paul.  Luke Timothy Johnson notes that there is a pervasive fallacy in Biblical studies to assume that Paul “has to figure in the equation somewhere.”[4]  While James 2:14-28 has been historically read as a contradicting Paul (while in actuality Paul and James are in some agreement), Johnson is rather rightly annoyed that “scholars continue to read whatever is different from Paul with reference to Paul, rather than allow it to stand as simply different.”[5]  For better or worse, I would say my own approach to the letter fell into the fallacy Johnson wrote about:  my preoccupation was to read James in light of Paul because what I was raised to consider important were the mechanisms of eternal salvation.  Given that much of scholarship of the letter has revolved around this theological debate, I would say my preoccupation with just James 2:14-28 is part and parcel of a Western privileging of abstract thought.  Johnson posits that the preoccupation with the theology of Justification by works and/or faith is the result of the historical-critical paradigm and the “purportedly “scientific” study of the Bible.”[6]  I would argue that this paradigm is a ‘Western’ invention and while it is an important conversation, debating faith and works interferes with the call to care for those who are oppressed. [7]

Moving into the Episcopal Church in my early twenties meant coming into a denomination in which there was a stereotype (and a waning reality) of wealthy congregations.  But my move also brought me into the orbit of liberation theologies, which have brought me further into the other issues in the letter of James. Liberative theological work, such as that of Tamez, rightfully points us to the fact that there is more to James’ letter than a refutation of Paul.  James has an agenda of his own.  But moving into certain churches does not guarantee one will hear James proclaimed in worship.  Other forms of interception occur.  Tamez notes that the reasonableness of faith is valued more than the practice of faith, and so it is not unusual that “as least in [many] Protestant churches…Paul is read and quoted more than the Gospels which speak of the life of Jesus.[8]  She charges Western society with a preference for what is said about Jesus (the building of a theological concept of Christ) as opposed to what Jesus said (presumably the active component stemming from belief in Jesus as Lord).  This was certainly the experience of my childhood.  

Further, Tamez notes that the letter’s “radical critique of the rich” has made its proclamation rare.[9]  She writes that she: 

“knows of churches where the letter is skipped over in the liturgies because there are many rich members in the congregation, and it is very uncomfortable to speak against them when they are sitting in the front seats.  Certain parts of James, especially chapter 5, are very concrete and very difficult to spiritualize.”[10]

Indeed, if a church is following the Revised Common Lectionary, James 5:1-6—the warning to rich oppressors—is skipped over; though one will hear that they are to remain patient in suffering (James 5:7-10).[11]  Unlike the terms of debate over faith and works, which garners those who contest the means of salvation and so maintain a focus on that particular issue, the selection of the lectionary is an intentional ‘interception’ in which churches and committees choose which texts are worthy to be proclaimed, or which texts need to be skipped for reasons of comfort or political maneuvering.  

The final method of interference I’d like to mention could be used by both academicians and church authorities.  Tamez notes that Martin Dibelius, who wrote one of the touchstone modern commentaries on the Letter of James, wrote extensively on the paraenetic character of the letter.[12]  He also wrote that a document of moral exhortations is relevant for a certain period of time and place, but the exhortations may no longer have bearing outside of that context.[13]  One may hear something similar in other matters in which debates of ethics and the Bible arise.  However, like Tamez, if we take James’ central message to be the defense of, solidarity with, and care of the oppressed, then we should ask when there has never been a group oppressed.  Since it is historically unlikely that there has been such a utopian society, the Letter of James may have something to say to us.  One thread which can be pulled from Jame’s liberative stance is the solidarity of the poor in opposition to the oppression of the rich.

One trouble that James was addressing was the issue of identification with—and favoritism toward—the rich (2:1-13).  It is this problem that sets the context for the theological instruction in James 2:14-28 on the matter of faith and works.  James mentions two different classes of ‘the poor’ in the letter.  The first is the ptochos, which most often refers to a penniless alms beggar, and is the term James uses in 2:2 when speaking of a poor person in dirty clothes.[14]  The other class is the penes—those who had a job but did not own property.[15]  Although the word penes does not appear in the letter, these are who James means when, in 5:4, he speaks of laborers and harvesters whose wages the rich hoard by fraud.  These were laborers who were a day’s wage away from becoming the ptochos.[16] It is both of these classes of the poor whom James seeks to protect.

What James seems to know about wealth is that it can garner considerable respect from those who do not have wealth.  James knows that the regard of the identifiers of worldly status and wealth can lead communities to forget that there is to be a preferential option for the poor, and so the rich are treated with respect and the best of the community while the poor are forgotten and further marginalized (‘Sit at my feet’ (2:3)) in the very community of the God who made them “heirs of the Kingdom (2:5).”  In order to countermand this tendency to respect the rich over the poor, James reminds them that the “royal law” is no defense:   “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors (2:8-9).”[17]  

It is this community issue which sets the stage for James’ reminder of who is actually important within the community.  One may have faith, and one may seek to follow the perfect law of liberty (1:25), but one is to not simply be a hearer of the word.  One is to be a doer (1:22-25).  And what seems to James to be so disturbing is that one will show favoritism to the rich while allowing the poor to continue to suffer: 

“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (2:15-16).”

Indeed, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world (1:27).”  And given the surrounding context of the letter, one may imagine that James is attempting to keep communities “unstained by the world” by reminding them of their responsibility to the poor as opposed to their favoritism of the rich.

James further seeks to draw a wide line between the rich and the poor by reminding those he addresses “…You have dishonored the poor.  Is it not the rich who oppress you?  Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you (2:6-7)?”  This seems to signal that the community, in James’ mind, is comprised most properly of the poor, both ptochos and penes, and yet they forget that they are to stand in solidarity.  In essence James may see himself as reminding the poor in the Christian community that there is indeed a divide, and they should not be blinded by the riches of the world, or be tempted to chase them (see 4:1-3 and 4:13-17) for fear of losing sight of God and becoming one who oppresses the Godly.  Indeed according to James, the rich (plousioi) are characterized by their elegant dress (2:2), their use of courts against the poor (2:6), insatiable accumulation of wealth (4:13 and 5:3), their unjust dealing with workers (5:4), luxurious devotion to pleasure (5:5), and their murder of the innocent (5:6).[18]  As Tamez points out, “these are the characteristics of the rich, familiar to the prophets and to Jesus.  It is no wonder James has been called the Amos of the New Covenant.”[19]

So, James was trying to bolster the solidarity of the poor among Christians of varying wealth; in fact, in the letter he assumes varying degrees of wealth even as he tried to create solidarity among the poor over the rich.  He considered most egregious that possibility that the community did not give up the quest for excessive worldly wealth and showed favoritism to the rich while denigrating their poorer brother and sisters.  It is reasonable to assume that the penes in the congregation would be living barely above subsistence, yet were quite happy to say that at least they weren’t the ptochos.  James also assumes that he had to remind the congregations of their responsibility to do something tangible for the ptochos, and not just wish them well (2:15-16).

What does this have to do with the church today?  Something very similar to the situation James confronted has been studied in sociological readings of American society, particularly the national mass media’s portrayal of class in American society.

In an essay on the media’s portrayal of class in American, Gregory Mantsios notes that while American society is one of the most highly stratified societies in the industrialized world, with class distinctions bearing significant weight upon the living of one’s life, the nation is able to maintain an illusion of an egalitarian society by the dismissal of class through and in the media.[20]  Ownership and control of national media is concentrated in a few companies representing corporate interests; and media exercise the ability to define overarching cultural tastes, tell the history of the people, establish our identity, and shape our perceptions about each other and the nature of our society.[21] As the media represents the interests of the affluent in society and help to create the illusion of solidarity between the affluent and the middle class (constructed as a universal ideal), a wedge is driven in between the middle class and the working poor, or simply ‘the poor.’  But the middle class and the affluent class are portrayed as victims of the poor, who threaten the middle class and the affluent’s hard-won prosperity through bad decisions and government redistribution (“welfare”).  The poor are to be feared, and/or cut-off.  In actuality, this construction of the universal middle class and their identification with the affluent does not need to be tied one one’s incomes, “what matters is that most of “us” share an intellectual and moral superiority over the disadvantaged.  As Time magazine once concluded, “Middle America is a state of mind.”[22]

Simply put, American Christians live in a context in which the working poor are primed to identify themselves as the upwardly-aspiring middle class seeking to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; the poor who cannot do so are demonized or rendered invisible.

In the twenty-first century, as in the first century, affluence beckons people toward attainment of wealth and the lionization of the rich is still a habit of human nature, while the poor are castigated and ignored.  American churches are no exception to this trend.  James, then, poses a challenge and a question to Christians in all churches, but particularly in American churches.  With whom will we identify:  the rich who seek to exploit others or those among us who are oppressed?  What shall we chase after:  wealth or God (in this way James mirrors Jesus, we can only serve one master)?  If we have wealth, shall we use it to relive the plight of the oppressed?  These are the questions an ‘intercepted’ letter of James asks of Christian communities.  The hope of a liberative reading of James is that the community will learn that faith is less something to be “understood,” but enacted.



[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The letter of James: a new translation with introduction and commentary, Anchor Bible Series (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 150-151.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Elsa Tamez, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith without Works is Dead (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 1.
[4] Luke Timothy Johnson, Brother of Jesus, friend of God: Studies in the letter of James (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2004), 115-116.
[5] Johnson, 116.  Johnson here is referring specifically to the faith v. works dynamic present in Paul’s work and Jas. 2:14-28, but the general principle of the fallacy stands.
[6] Luke Timothy Johnson, The letter of James: a new translation with introduction and commentary, Anchor Bible Series (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 156.
[7] By ‘Western,’ I mean Western European and North American spheres of influence.   
[8] Tamez, 5. 
[9] Tamez, 6.
[10] Tamez, 6.
[11] "James." The Text This Week - Revised Common Lectionary,  http://www.textweek.com/james.htm (accessed March 31, 2012).  Interestingly, the Episcopal Church’s lectionary did include James 5:1-6, until the denomination switched to the RCL.
[12] Tamez, 4, quoting Martin Dibelius, James, rev. Heinrich Greeven (Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1976), 54.
[13] Tamez, 4.
[14] Pedrito U.. Maynard-Reid,  Poverty and wealth in James (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987), 108n.3.
[15] Meynard-Reid, 108n.3 and Tamez, 24-25.
[16] Tamez, 24-25.
[17] Meynard-Reid (66) believes this to be the case.
[18] Tamez, 28-30.
[19] Tamez, 30.
[20] Gregory Mantsios, "Media Magic: Making Class Invisible" in The social construction of difference and inequality: race, class, gender, and sexuality, 2nd ed., edited by Tracy E. Ore (Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 82.
[21] Mantsios, 82.
[22] Mantsios, 86-87.

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