Can You Question the Virgin Birth and Still Be a Christian?

by | Dec 23, 2014 | Headline News | 1 comment

(RNS) It’s a tough sell: A young, unmarried teenager gets pregnant, but the father isn’t a man but God himself. And the girl is a virgin — and (some believe) remains one even after she delivers a strapping baby boy.

That’s the story of the Virgin Birth, one of the central tenets of faith for the world’s 2 billion Christians. The story is embraced by every branch of Christianity, from Eastern Orthodoxy to Mormonism, Catholic and Protestant.

And yet, many theologians, pastors and other Christians say the Virgin Birth gets short shrift at Christmastime. Finding the idea hard to swallow, many believers would rather focus on the cute little baby in the manger instead of the unusual way he got there.

Yet for other Christians, the Virgin Birth is a deal-breaker. You can equivocate about other biblical miracles, such as whether Mary’s son was really able to turn water into wine, but the Virgin Birth must be accepted as gospel.

Without it, they say, much of Christianity falls apart.

“To remove the miraculous from Christmas is to remove this central story of Christianity,” said Gary Burge, a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. “It would dismantle the very center of Christian thought and take away the keystone of the arch of Christian theology.”

Why is the Virgin Birth the lynchpin of Christianity? Was it miracle or metaphor? And can you call yourself a Christian if you can’t accept the idea?

For Burge, an evangelical and author of “Theology Questions Everyone Asks,” the Virgin Birth is essential. His thinking goes like this: If Jesus was not virgin-born, then he was not the son of God; if he was not the son of God, then he was just another crucified man and not the sacrifice that would redeem the sins of the world.

“In Jesus, we don’t have a prophet who simply speaks as a human being about God. We have a son of God who presents the father to us,” he said. “It is a huge difference, absolutely huge. Put in jeopardy the Virgin Birth … and Christianity simply becomes a human gesture instead of a divine revelation.”

Burge’s thinking has a lot of followers. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that nearly three in four Americans think the Virgin Birth is historically accurate. Among evangelicals, the figure is even higher: 96 percent.

But the Virgin Birth is found in only two of the four Gospels. In Matthew, an angel tells Joseph: “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” In Luke, an angel tells Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God.”

Mary’s famous response  – “How can this be? – has been echoed by skeptics and believers ever since.  Some translations have Mary citing her virginity or her status as a single woman or, more cryptically, “I know not a man.”

Some scholars see the absence of the Virgin Birth in the other two Gospels — John and Mark — as evidence that the story originated after Jesus’ death. It was a way to make Jesus special, to prove he was who he said he was to a skeptical world.

But Ben Witherington, a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, finds proof of the Virgin Birth in its supernatural aspects. Why, he said, would anyone wanting to create a new religion craft such a far-fetched story?

“Matthew and Luke feel compelled to tell us the story because they are utterly convinced that is how it happened,” he said. “Nobody would believe them unless there was clear, compelling evidence it actually happened. If you just wanted nice metaphors that would not raise anyone’s hackles, this is not the story you would come up with.”

Other scholars point to the writings of the Apostle Paul. Paul’s life overlapped with Jesus (even though they never met), yet he also never mentions the Virgin Birth. He says Jesus was “born of a woman” and his birth was “under the law.” Some scholars say Paul doesn’t specify a Virgin Birth because there wasn’t one; others say his words imply Jesus did not have an earthly father.

However the story originated, by 381 A.D., the belief in it was formalized in the Nicene Creed, a profession of faith used by all branches of Christianity except Mormonism. Although different versions vary in the exact wording, the creed says that Jesus “came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”

But some contemporary Christians see it as a metaphor, not a miracle. For John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop and author of “Born of a Woman,” the story becomes more powerful when stripped of its supernatural elements.

“Mary had to produce without losing her virginity and that’s an interesting trick,” said the famously liberal Spong. “I think that denigrates our humanity. Biology is kind of wonderful — a man and woman are in love and they create a child that represents both of them, and I think that is a powerful symbol and wonderful one.”

Yet rethinking Mary to that extent goes too far for Christian Smith, a Notre Dame sociologist of religion.

“If God is not capable of a miracle like the Virgin Birth, then what kind of God is that?” he said. “If you abandon the doctrine of Jesus being fully God and fully human,  then he becomes just a  great teacher. But then what is the point of the death on the cross if it doesn’t tie back to God incarnate, God with us?”

Gay Byron, a Presbyterian minister and a New Testament professor at Howard University, said one reason some Christians question the Virgin Birth is the church has done a generally poor job of explaining it.

“There are many ‘Mary’s’ out there who find themselves in unexpected situations and often marginalized from support and encouragement to make it through to a song of praise,” she said. “So this story matters today just as much as it mattered over 2,000 years ago. So we who believe continue to share the story and open up new possibilities for connecting to the realities in our world today.”

Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.

Christian Movies: So Close, & Yet So Far

by | Dec 22, 2014 | Headline News, Jelani Greenidge |

Just like “Christian music,” the terminology regarding faith-based cinema is often problematic. Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a “Christian” movie because movies, though often remarkable pieces of art full of symbolism, commentary and meaning, are not sentient beings. Even the animated ones are, strictly speaking, still things, inanimate objects lacking eternal souls, incapable of feeling emotions or making decisions. In this sense, calling a movie Christian because of one high-profile Christian involved (Kirk Cameron) would be as silly as calling an LA Lakers basketball game Christian because of the involvement of Jeremy Lin.

And yet, most people make implicit moral judgments about the quality of films based on the involvement of certain high-profile Christian people or the approval of certain organizational gatekeepers (pastors, Christian writers, parent advocacy organizations, et cetera). The term “Christian movie” is a pragmatic piece of shorthand for, “feature film either presented by or aimed toward Christian people.” This could serve as a definition, except for the fact that filmmaking is an inherently collaborative endeavor, which – as can be seen in any final credits sequence – often requires the work of hundreds or even thousands of people, spread across a duration of weeks, months, or in some cases, many many years.

And yet, this does not stop people from talking about movies as Christian, often because the presence of some nebulous form of “Christian message,” which in some cases (Fireproof, The Passion of The Christ) is quite explicit and easily understood, and in other cases (Bruce Almighty, The Preacher’s Wife) is a little less clear or explicitly Biblical. This is an improvement, but still problematic, because even if you ignore the difficulty and ambiguity inherent in trying to verify the Christian identity of all the principal creative roles in the filmmaking process (the film’s producers, directors, screenwriters, stars, etc.) and just focus on the relative “Christian”-ness of the message, sometimes the layers of meaning and messages in films can be messy to unpack.

Consider this list of films from the last decade, each of which are notable for one of the following: being a vehicle for a high-profile person of faith, having a faith-based message, having source material that’s sourced from or thematically related to the Bible, or having a very specific outreach strategy involving churches or church leaders:

Heaven Is For Real (2014)

The Book of Eli (2010)

God’s Not Dead (2014)

Believe Me (2014)

Jumping the Broom (2011)

The Single Moms Club (2014)

The Second Chance (2006)

Son of God (2014)

The Gospel (2005)

Black Nativity (2013)

Saved! (2004)

Blue Like Jazz (2012)

Courageous (2011)

I’m In Love With A Church Girl (2013)

Noah (2014)

Machine Gun Preacher (2011)

Bella (2006)

The Grace Card (2011)

There is a stunning amount of stylistic and thematic diversity in that list of films, diversity that hasn’t been around in decades past. There are films that portray Biblical characters with a faithful, orthodox interpretation, communicating an explicitly Christian message (Son of God, The Passion of the Christ). There are films that portray an explicitly faith-based story where the primary storyline revolves around someone beginning or affirming a faith commitment (God’s Not Dead, I’m In Love with a Church Girl).

Then there are films that portray a family-friendly story where Christian faith is a  ancillary part of the plot, but not a primary dramatic element (Courageous, Bella). Also there are films that portray a generally redemptive story that is consistent with certain aspects of a Christian worldview, but that contain thought-provoking conundrums or messy, thorny issues for the viewer to grapple with (Blue Like Jazz, Believe Me).

There are films partially created or produced by people with very public faith profiles, like TD Jakes’ involvement with Jumping the Broom and Steve Taylor with Blue Like Jazz. There are films that take a hard look at Christian ministry, both domestically (The Gospel, The Second Chance) and internationally (Machine Gun Preacher).

And then there are films that deal with faith or Biblical themes but are created by people who are not of faith, like Darren Aronofsky’s recent Noah, or the Michael Stipe’s satirical takedown of evangelicalism, Saved! Also, plenty of TV comedies take a swipe at Christianity, like “South Park,” “The Daily Show,” or more recently, “Key & Peele.”

(And don’t even get me started on Aaron McGruder’s “Black Jesus.”)

My point in all of this is that good art requires the examination of faith issues from a variety of perspectives and voices. Yet for many audience members, the only way a film can be “Christian” is if there is a major altar-call type scene with a dramatic conversion. If the movie isn’t an overt endorsement not only of faith itself but Judeo-Christian morality and/or Protestant culture, then it’s not “Christian.”

This is the chasm that prevents Christians from being taken more seriously in the industry. It’s not necessarily the people of faith who are doing their best to create good work within the confines of both their moral compasses and professional opportunities, but the fans, the people whose distorted, low expectations artificially deflate the market for good art that interfaces with issues of faith.

Chris Rock said recently that the true test of racial equality in America will be when black folks will have the freedom to make mediocre or terrible films and still be able to continue to work and improve as filmmakers. I think a similar dynamic is true for Christians, but in reverse. For Christians to be more fully accepted in Hollywood, audiences will have to stop flocking to bad films just because they’re marketed to Christians (like Nic Cage’s Left Behind remake), demolish the Christian subculture bubble that exists for film in the same way it used to for music, and be free to evaluate each film on its own merit.

There are three films coming out soon which should be attractive to audiences of faith, and they are all intriguing to me for different reasons. Do You Believe, which I covered for a press event in a separate piece, The Same Kind of Different As Me, an unexpected tale of faith and friendship featuring Djimon Hounsou, Renee Zellweger, Greg Kinnear, and producer Devon Franklin’s remake of Annie, which will be out during the 2014 holiday season.

I hope these films are good examples of crowd-pleasing entertainment and thought-provoking art. But more than that, I hope that people of faith will see them, and in doing so, redefine their expectations around what films good Christian people should see.

In my opinion, good Christians should see good films… however “good” is defined. As Christians, both embedded in our own subculture but also in the midst of a broader American popular culture, we’re clearly not there yet… but we’re a lot closer than we’ve ever been.