Category Archives: Current issues

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A personal perspective on immigration

Debates about immigration policy are back in the news. At such times, it’s helpful to remember the other side of policy: hundreds of thousands of individual stories. Immigration has always involved hardship, but unfortunately I never fully came to grips with that reality until it became part of my own reality. Ours was supposed to be an open-and-shut case: a fiancée visa. Our timing, however, was admittedly unhelpful: right after 9/11.

Médine and I had long been friends and had even discussed marriage. One day, however, I received a letter from her that a relative had carried out of the country. Civil war had come to Congo-Brazzaville, and she didn’t know whether she would live or die. By the time her letter reached me, her town had been abandoned and burned. For the next eighteen, anguished months I could do nothing but pray for her safety. Meanwhile, she was often traveling miles through snake-infested swamps and fields of army ants to get food for her family.

When the war ended and we were able to resume communication, we decided to marry, but were very naïve about international politics and policies. At the time, because of the recent war, her country lacked a functioning U.S. consulate, so she and her 3-year-old son would have to travel to Cameroon. It took awhile in the postwar situation to get all the papers that the U.S. government understandably required. For example, even though she had kept her passport while she was a refugee, the new government required new passports. For another, she had to get documents regarding her marital status. (She had been married briefly in Congo, but the husband had strangled her while she was pregnant and turned out to be a bigamist.)

A week after she finally reached Cameroon my teaching semester ended and I flew there to be with her while seeking the visa. We had been advised that, for some reason, a marriage visa took twice as long as a fiancée visa at that time, so we should wait and then marry in the U.S.

The requirement, though, was for me to return to the U.S. and file. A contact also informed us that one of her needed documents was inadequate, unknown to us, so she had to return to Congo while I fretted further for her safety — and her son cried that she might never come back. When I finally had the documents in hand and my lawyer was preparing to submit them, 9/11 happened — and immigration policy changed virtually overnight. On top of that, the Vermont Service Center was shut down due to an anthrax scare, and petitions became backlogged.

My fiancée had spent 18 months displaced from her home in Congo. Now she spent months displaced in a country not her own, waiting for a visa to my country. Conditions were better and the family hosting her was gracious, but now she was far from family and friends and lonelier than she had been as a refugee. As a professor I had an unusual gift in that I did not need to report for work during summer and winter breaks. Apart from those periods, however, I could not be with her or her son.

Through a senator’s intervention, the fiancée visa was expedited after I returned to Cameroon. We happily took our copy of the form to the consulate, only to discover that the consulate needed the form directly by diplomatic pouch from the United States; our copy of the document was not adequate. The consulate kept expecting the form by diplomatic pouch at any time, but it never arrived.

After more than two months back in Cameroon, I had to return to the U.S. because my next semester was starting. We had already missed our first wedding date. What broke my heart most was the sincere pleas of the boy, David, now 4. “I will come to Philadelphia with you tomorrow,” he kept promising. When I finally had to leave without him he cried. “Who will play with me?” A friend took us all to the airport; afterward Médine found a place alone and sobbed.

“The consulate must have lost the file,” the woman at the immigration service assured me. The consulate, however, insisted that the immigration service must have lost the file. Similar stories from friends suggested that the fault likelier lay with the overworked immigration service, but it didn’t matter. The woman on the phone warned me that whoever lost the file, I would have to start over with a new petition, and that could take six more months. We were devastated, and it could have really been six more months had the consulate not had mercy on us in view of the evidence already provided. (I should mention that once Médine and David were in the United States, immigration officials here were very courteous to them.)

Our experience was painful, but we watched even more painful experiences among friends who did not have such established legal grounds to have family members with them. Of course there are many factors to consider when debating the logistical details of immigration policy. But debates about policy should never lose sight of what immigration involves in the lives of the real people that immigration rules affect. When my wife and I think about immigration, our first thoughts are about the concrete pain of real families separated by international borders.

(Note: this article was originally published as part of Craig’s ongoing blogging on the Huffington Post website. See more of his articles here.)

 

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Historical evidence for the existence of Jesus

Contrary to some circles on the Internet, very few scholars doubt that Jesus existed, preached and led a movement. Scholars’ confidence has nothing to do with theology but much to do with historiographic common sense. What movement would make up a recent leader, executed by a Roman governor for treason, and then declare, “We’re his followers”? If they wanted to commit suicide, there were simpler ways to do it.

One popular objection is that only Christians wrote anything about Jesus. This objection is neither entirely true nor does it reckon with the nature of ancient sources. It usually comes from people who have not worked much with ancient history. Only a small proportion of information from antiquity survives, yet it is often sufficient.

We recognize that most people write only about what they care about. The only substantive early works about Socrates derive from his followers. The Dead Sea Scrolls extol their community’s founder, but no other reports of him survive. The Jewish historian Josephus claims to be a Pharisee, yet never mentions Hillel, who is famous in Pharisees’ traditions. Israeli scholar David Flusser correctly observes that it is usually followers who preserve what is most meaningful about their teachers, whether the leaders were Buddha, Muhammad, Mormon leader Joseph Smith or African prophet Simon Kimbangu.

Interestingly, however, once ancient writers had reasons to care about Jesus, they did mention him.

Josephus, the only extant first-century historian focused on Judea, mentions both Jesus and John the Baptist as major prophetic figures, as well as subsequently noting Jesus’ brother, James. Later scribes added to the Jesus passage, but the majority of specialists agree on the basic substance of the original, a substance now confirmed by a manuscript that apparently reflects the pre-tampering reading. Josephus describes Jesus as a sage and worker of wonders, and notes that the Roman governor Pilate had him crucified. On the cause of crucifixion Josephus remains discreet, but mass leaders were often executed for sedition — especially for being potential kings. Perhaps not coincidentally, Jesus’ followers also insisted, even after his death, that he was a king. Josephus was not a Christian and does not elaborate, but his summary matches other sources.

Writing even earlier than Josephus, Syrian philosopher Mara bar Sarapion claimed that Jesus was a wise Jewish king. Tacitus later reports on events from 31-34 years after Jesus’ ministry, associating Roman Christians with him and noting that he was executed under Pontius Pilate. These and other sources provide only snippets, but they address what these sources cared about. By comparison, Tacitus mentions only in passing a Jewish king on whom Josephus focused (Agrippa I); nor was Tacitus interested even in Judea’s Roman governors. Tacitus’s mention of Pilate in connection with Jesus’ crucifixion is Roman literature’s only mention of Pilate (though Pilate appears in Josephus and an inscription).

From Jesus’ followers, who were interested, we naturally learn much more. Fifteen to 30 years after Jesus’ ministry, Paul wrote much about Jesus, including an encounter that Paul believed he had with the risen Jesus probably within a few years of Jesus’ execution. Rightly or wrongly, Paul staked the rest of his life on this experience. Other early Christians also preserved information; some 30-40 years after Jesus’ ministry, Mark’s Gospel circulated. Luke reports that “many” had already written accounts by the time Luke writes. Luke shares with Matthew some common material that most scholars think is even earlier than Mark. Only a small minority of figures in antiquity had surviving works written about them so soon after their deaths.

What can the first-century Gospels tell us? Certainly at the least they indicate that Jesus was a historical figure. Myths and even legends normally involved characters placed centuries in the distant past. People wrote novels, but not novels claiming that a fictitious character actually lived a generation or two before they wrote. Ancient readers would most likely approach the Gospels as biographies, as a majority of scholars today suggest. Biographies of recent figures were not only about real figures, but they typically preserved much information. One can demonstrate this preservation by simply comparing the works of biographers and historians about then-recent figures, say Tacitus and Suetonius writing about Otho.

What was true of biographies in general could be even more true of biographies about sages. Members of sages’ schools in this period typically preserved their masters’ teachings, which became foundational for their communities. Memorization and passing on teachings were central. Oral societies were much better at this than most of us in the West today imagine; indeed, even illiterate bards could often recite all of Homer from heart. None of this means that the Gospels preserve Jesus’ teaching verbatim, but by normal standards for ancient history, we should assume that at the least many key themes (e.g., God’s “kingdom”) were preserved. Indeed, many of the eyewitnesses (such as Peter) remained in key leadership positions in the movement’s earliest decades.

One significant feature of these first-century Gospels is the amount of material in them that fits a first-century Galilean setting. That setting differs from the Gospel writers’ own setting. The Gospel writers updated language to apply it to their own audiences, but they also preserved a vast amount of information. This is merely a sample; specialists devote their lives to the details.

Yet, valuable as examining such historical evidence is, we must return to where we started. Logically, why would Jesus’ followers make up a Jesus to live and die for? Why not glorify real founders (as movements normally did)? Why make up a leader and have him executed on a Roman cross? To follow one executed for treason was itself treason. To follow a crucified leader was to court persecution. Some people do give their lives for their beliefs, but for beliefs, not normally for what they know to be fabricated. Jesus’ first movement would not have made up his execution or his existence. How much they actually remembered about him is a subject for a future post.

(Note: this article was originally published as part of Craig’s ongoing blogging on the Huffington Post website. See more of his articles here.)

 

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Will gifts like prophecy and tongues pass away?

Paul says that spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues and knowledge will pass away when we no longer need them (1 Cor. 13:8-10). Some Christians read this passage as if it said, “Spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge passed away when the last book of the New Testament was written.” This interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13 ignores the entire context of 1 Corinthians, however: it is a letter to the Corinthians in the middle of the first century, and they had never yet heard of a New Testament in the middle of the first century. Had Paul meant the completion of the New Testament, he would have had to have made this point much more clearly–starting by explaining what a New Testament addition to their Bible was.

In the context we find instead that Paul means that spiritual gifts will pass away when we know God as He knows us, when we see Him face to face (13:12; when we no longer see as through a mirror as in the present—cf. 2 Cor 3:18, the only other place where Paul uses the term). In other words, spiritual gifts must continue until our Lord Jesus returns at the end of the age. They should remain a normal part of our Christian experience today.

A broader examination of the context reveals even more of Paul’s meaning in this passage. In chapters 12-14, Paul addresses those who are abusing particular spiritual gifts, and argues that God has gifted all members of Christ’s body with gifts for building up God’s people. Those who were using God’s gifts in ways that hurt others were abusing the gifts God had given for helping others. That is why Paul spends three paragraphs in the midst of his discussion of spiritual gifts on the subject of love: gifts without love are useless (13:1-3); love seeks to edify (13:4-7); the gifts are temporary (for this age only), but love is eternal (13:8-13). We should seek the best gifts (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1), and love gives us the insight to see which gifts are the best in any given situation–those that build others up.

The context of Paul’s entire letter drives this point home further: Paul’s description of what love is in 1 Cor. 13:4-7 contrasts starkly with Paul’s prior descriptions of the Corinthians in his letter: selfish, boastful, and so on (1 Cor 3:3; 4:6-7, 18; 5:2). The Corinthian Christians, like the later church in Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-22), had a lot in their favor, but lacked what mattered most of all: the humility of love.