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What exactly does it mean when someone levels an accusation that an individual, or a church, or even a whole denomination, affirms “bad theology”? Is it intended to start a conversation? To correct that theology? To bring something into view that might not otherwise be apparent? Is it just a tool of high-control religious environments? In this episode, Dan takes a look at this idea and argues that it can be any and all of these, with very different aims and effects.
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As always, welcome to everybody joining me for It's in the Code, a series as part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is, of course, Dan Miller.
I am professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
As always, glad to be with you.
Proud to report that I am Tenaciously closing the gap with the emails that I need to respond to.
Been working through those.
Some of you will have heard from me, again, always so apologetic and sincerely so about falling so far behind, but I do the best I can to respond to the emails.
Do value those.
Just always so many great insights, so many great comments, such great feedback, great topic ideas.
I do take them seriously, even if it takes me a time to respond to them.
I know some of you, you hear.
You hear the responses in the series, even if I haven't had the chance to email.
But all of that is to say, please keep reaching out.
Daniel Miller Swaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Value that so much.
Committed to closing the email gap once again, and I'm getting there.
But in the meantime, I want to jump into today's topic.
So today's topic is one that I've been sort of thinking about for a while based on some conversations I've had with people who listen and things like that, but then going through the emails and getting a chance to look back at some of those and some themes coming up from there.
I was like, yeah, I want to do this, right?
And so what I want to look at today is the issue—I guess it's an accusation—of bad theology, when somebody says that some position or another is just bad theology.
And the reason I want to do that is I've had, number one, a lot of people, you know, writing in with insights about how they've been affected by people saying that something is bad theology or hearing that language in a church.
Or clients that I work with who talk about, in their view, being gaslighted.
Gaslit?
Gaslighted?
Whatever that is.
The past tense of having people gaslight them as they were coming out of evangelicalism or something that moved them out of high-control religion.
When they were told that the questions they were asking or the concerns they had were quote-unquote bad theology and like, what's going on with that?
But I've also had some folks who've said, well, like, Dan, it's kind of weird.
Like, sometimes you guys will talk, you and Brad, and you'll say something is bad theology.
Or I know I say that from time to time in this series as well.
And they're like, why do you say that?
Are you buying into the theological background of the people that you're talking about?
Or, you know, they said in a theology podcast, like, what's going on?
Like, why do you occasionally talk about something being bad theology?
And so those are all interesting questions.
And so I decided to hit this accusation of bad theology.
I think this is going to tie in with some other upcoming episodes as well.
We'll see how that goes.
Sometimes these things make more sense in my head than they do when they come out.
But basically, if we take this language of bad theology, if you're like, what exactly does that mean?
What is the accusation about?
How does it work?
Why did I feel so bad when somebody told me something I said was bad theology?
Or why did I get angry or whatever?
I think that the accusation, I think it is typically an accusation or a critique, right?
At the very least, it's a critique that, you know, that position reflects bad theology or an accusation.
It could be that there is something wrong or nefarious about your position because it's quote-unquote bad theology.
I think that that language, that phrase, can have a lot of different connotations.
It can have lots of different uses.
And I think these range from really technical academic uses to really straightforwardly polemical and ideological uses.
And so I kind of want to start, you know, with that kind of continuum, and I want to start with what I'm calling the technical use, right?
And this is the most straightforward sort of sense in which somebody might talk about bad theology.
It's also the one that regular people—that is, people who don't study theology, people who don't have theology degrees, people who have maybe never formally studied Christian doctrine or something like that—are the least likely to have encountered, okay?
And this is the accusation that might be leveled between, say, professional theologians or professors or somebody like that.
It's essentially a critique of somebody's theological position on the grounds that it's based on faulty reasoning or bad logic or it has problematic presuppositions or false premises or so forth, and therefore it's bad theology, right?
It's just not good.
It's not well-reasoned, well-thought-out, Or systematically articulated theology, right?
And when people use it in that technical sense, it's basically similar to the kind of disagreements that like philosophers might have with each other, right?
Philosophers will argue all the time about, you know, premises or arguments or logic or whether somebody's drawn a problematic conclusion or different things like this.
And I think generally, when people say bad theology in that sense, it's a pretty abstract use, and it's probably over the heads of most of us mere mortals who have to do other things in our daily life than, you know, talk about abstract theological things.
It's also worth noting that within theology, even academic or sort of formal theology, there can also be some play in this.
Because theologies are often confessional in nature, they do often reflect one's confessional identity, so meaning whether one is like Roman Catholic or Orthodox or Reformed or Lutheran, right?
And so sometimes, oftentimes, theologians, even formal academic professional theologians, they start with a different theological architecture.
They start with different premises.
And so Sometimes the accusations about, you know, bad theology, they can still have what we might call an ideological or sectarian tinge to them, okay?
So there's always some degree of that, I think, that is greater in theology than maybe a discipline even like philosophy, okay?
But that's the kind of technical sense, and I've used arguments about bad theology in this sense.
So when I argued, say, in the series or the series of episodes on biblical inerrancy, which a lot of folks had great thoughts about in the emails, I argue, essentially, that inerrancy is bad theology, and lots of reasons I said that, but one of the reasons was very technical, okay?
And I don't want to rehash all of it, invite folks to go back and listen to it.
It was probably, I think, the first episode in that little sort of mini-series, I guess we could call it.
But basically, this is how it works.
I argue that the doctrine is incoherent.
If a doctrine is incoherent, that would be an example of bad theology.
And I argue that because people who claim that the Bible is inerrant typically mean that it is divinely inspired, And that because of this, all Christian doctrines or beliefs should have their origins in the Bible.
The Bible should be the source of our Christian beliefs and practices and so forth, okay?
But to defend this view, somebody comes along and says, wow, that's a big statement to make about this book that's 2,000 years old.
Can you like Why should I think that about the Bible?
And they'll put together their arguments for, like, why the Bible should be that, maybe not to talk about what kind of God God is and how God would communicate things and arguments about how we can know the truth and so forth.
The point is, they have to develop a theological argument for the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible.
But once they've done that, they have undermined the very doctrine that they are developing, because they are now having to use a theology not drawn directly from the Bible to develop the case that all theology should be developed from the Bible.
It's an example of circular reasoning, or begging the question, or it's what we could call maybe a performative contradiction.
In other words, if you succeed at making the theological argument, you have undermined the point you were trying to make.
That's a quick, dirty rundown.
Again, go back, take a listen.
The point is, when I refer to, or if somebody asks me, you know, why aren't you an inerrantist?
Or what are problems with inerrancy?
I say, you know, first and foremost, I think it's just bad theology.
It's an incoherent doctrine.
There are other parts of it that I think make it bad theology, right?
But that's just an example of this technical sense, okay?
So sometimes—and when people say, how come sometimes you talk about bad theology?
Sometimes that's what I'm talking about.
It's just technically speaking, as somebody who does have, you know, an advanced degree in systematic theology, it just seems like bad theology to me, bad theological reasoning, okay?
Most folks who email me or reach out to me or clients that I work with that have run across this term, bad theology, or whatever it is, that's not what they're talking about.
They're not talking about that technical use.
They are talking about a couple other uses, and I think one of the most common, which is this, which is basically what I would call the sectarian use, or the polemical use, right?
And what I mean by this is just the instance in which Christians of one particular kind of denomination or tradition criticize or condemn Christians of different denominations or traditions on the grounds that they're based on bad theology, okay?
And there can be a lot of overlap with this in that technical sense, right?
They can have well-reasoned, articulated arguments.
There are entire books, often, you know, entire writing traditions about these things.
But what I think makes this different, and I think where most people run into it, is when that accusation, the denomination X, Y, and Z, or, you know, that church down the street teaches bad theology, it's intended as a conversation stopper.
It's not usually backed by any kind of discussion.
It's not usually elaborated further.
It is not intended to enhance discussion.
It's not intended to reach the truth or to strengthen one's position, you know, on the basis of arguments against it or something like that.
It's a conversation stopper, right?
And you can imagine, and these are the kinds of conversations I've had with folks, I've had this experience, Somebody asking their parents, saying, hey, you know what, why don't we go to a Baptist church instead of the Lutheran church down the road that my friend Julie goes to?
Oh, well, that church has bad theology.
Oh, okay, I didn't realize that.
I didn't realize that Julie is, by sort of extension, a bad Christian.
It's bad theology, right?
So in the second use, I'm calling this sort of polemical use.
It's a kind of Christian name calling.
You label a tradition that is not your tradition of Christianity as being theologically problematic or having bad theology or whatever as a way of not having to engage that tradition, as a way of being able to dismiss insights from that tradition, as a way of maybe being able to draw distinctions between your adherence and adherence of that tradition and so forth.
And I think it's often taken as a form of refusal to address questions or challenges that are raised about a particular tradition, rather than actually addressing what's supposedly wrong with them.
You simply, basically critique You know, the source of that questioning as being problematic in some way to not really get into it.
Okay?
So that's the second use.
This kind of polemical use brings us into what I think is the third.
And this is what I'm just calling sort of accusations of bad theology and high control religion.
Okay?
And this is the one that I think resonates with people the most directly, people that I hear from, certainly the clients I work with.
And I think this is just kind of an extension of that last one, right?
And that's when that statement about that other church over there, or that denomination over there, or maybe I was in a Southern Baptist church and didn't have a lot of good things to say about the Catholics, because Catholics have bad theology in any number of ways.
It's when that bleeds into a kind of more individualized approach, the approach that impacts individuals within a particular church or Christian community or sometimes a family, right?
And what I mean here is when accusations of bad theology, when that accusation is used to keep other people in line, when it's used to control their behavior, when it's used to coerce them, When it's used to protect the interests of the leader or pastor of a church or some group within the church and so forth.
Okay?
And what I envision here is when somebody in a church, say, asks a question about a belief or a ritual or a practice and is accused of expressing bad theology for doing so, okay?
The aim again here is to shut down discussion, right?
So it overlaps.
I think these uses bleed together, right?
It's aimed to shut down discussion.
But this time it's not a large-scale institutional sort of thing.
It's not a, yeah, the Lutheran Church down the road is no good.
Don't pay any attention to them.
It's smaller scale.
The aim is to bring the individual or the group posing the question back into line.
It's a kind of bludgeon that is used to counter what is perceived and may be a challenge to the authority of someone's pastor or church or parents, right?
It effectively justifies not responding to the question or challenge.
Right?
Because what it communicates is this, and I think this is, on that kind of emotional level, this is what I hear from people, and I hear people who say, like, you know, I hear that phrase, bad theology, and I really, I have a hard time with that.
I feel weird about that.
I get really angry.
I don't even know exactly why.
I think the reason is, or I'll just throw this out there, and people can let me know if this resonates, is that when, it's basically them saying that, you know, Sally, the fact that you would even ask that question...
Really shows that you're working from some bad theology.
You've let some bad theology—you're not believing things about God that you're supposed to believe.
You've let false belief come in and color your judgment.
And that isn't aimed at discussion.
That isn't aimed at understanding.
That isn't aimed at any kind of charity toward the person posing the question.
That is aimed at making sure that you're brought back into line.
Did you stop asking those questions?
Did you stop leveling those challenges?
And so forth.
And here's an example.
Once upon a time, when I was in youth group, you know, the Bible has passages, especially in the Apostle Paul, about avoiding sexual immorality.
And this is a big part of purity culture and so forth, is not being sexually immoral.
But I posed the question, and I said, you know, how do we know that all premarital sex is sexually immoral if the Bible doesn't really spell out what that is?
Like, it doesn't tell us what sexual immorality is.
It just says not to be sexually immoral.
Right?
And I didn't get an answer to that question.
I didn't get somebody who said, wow, you know, that's a really good question.
Let's go talk to the pastor and find out.
What I was told was like, wow, you don't want to take the commands of God seriously?
You're going to ask that kind of question?
You're going to ask God to clarify what God commands?
That's bad theology.
I was shamed into silence and acquiescence, right?
And that was the aim.
That was the purpose.
So oftentimes, When people talk about bad theology, that's the aim.
The aim is shame.
And the aim of shaming somebody, again, is to bring them back into line.
It is to make sure that they remain the person that you want them to be within an existing structure of authority.
And so if somebody wants to know, you know, how do I know?
And again, this kind of goes to that question, how do I know if I'm in a high-control religious environment, right?
Because people have questions, and there are plenty of churches and plenty of pastors out there, folks, who invite questions, who are open to questions, who are open to modifying their theology if they think it needs to be modified, right?
Those people exist.
When you know they're not, when you know that this is being used as that bludgeon, I think the signs of this are, again, a refusal to engage the question.
Our resistance to follow-up questions.
Maybe they respond to the question like, okay, well that's cool, but I've got another one.
So the Paul one, the logic I would always hear is sexual immorality, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, cool.
But how do we know that means married stuff?
Oh, well over here in another Pauline epistle, it says that a deacon can be the husband of one wife, and so that implies that they need to be married.
And you're like, oh.
Okay, but, like, maybe that just means they can't be married to more than one person, and it's not really clear that it says they have to be married.
Like, if they are married, they can only have one wife.
Maybe we want to say that means they can't have been divorced or something, but, like, that's about Deacon stuff.
It's not about sexual immorality.
It doesn't seem like it really fits, right?
You got this follow-up question.
They shut that down.
Or you get just explicit or implicit threats of sanction if the questions persist.
Well, you know, If you're not really sure about this, I'm not sure you can be doing—I'm sticking with the youth group example—I'm not sure you can be doing, you know, youth group devotionals anymore.
Or, you know, John, if you've got these questions, I mean, that's great, and I want to affirm you in that, but maybe you ought not to be on the praise and worship team on Sunday morning anymore.
Jennifer, I love that you're interested in the Bible and what it's saying and so forth, but if you're really not sure about its authority, like maybe you shouldn't be hosting a small group at your house anymore, right?
You get those threats that if you don't stop asking these questions and fall in line, here are the things that are going to happen to you.
So that's the third example, right?
Kind of moving from this continuum.
Where, again, I think that this is the one that probably people have in mind when they contact me and they say that this is something that weighs on them and weighs them down and so forth, okay?
There's one more example that I want to give, and this is the one that I think is typically at play when I level the accusation of bad theology.
I already talked about that technical sense, but there's another one.
And this takes the form of what's known as imminent critique.
And that's not a term I've made up.
It's a term probably lots of you know or have heard.
An eminent critique is just basically a method of argument that tries to show that a position is problematic or inconsistent from within the framework of one's opponent, right?
So you are trying to show somebody that, you know, considered from their own perspective, given their own presuppositions, their own starting points, their own beliefs, etc., that some position they're advancing is problematic, okay?
And so usually in the podcast, when I say position X, Y, or Z is bad theology, I'm generally saying that.
And because we're usually talking about, you know, conservative Protestant Christianity in America, high-control religion, things like that, what I'm usually saying is, from within the conceptual framework or theological edifice of this kind of Protestant Christianity, this is bad theology.
This thing that the Protestant Christians are telling us is bad theology.
In other words, you're saying it's contradictory.
It contradicts other core theological components that they have.
Right?
It's a pretty standard form of critique in different domains, but I wanted to highlight it because, again, I've had folks reach out and they're like, why do you talk about bad theology?
I mean, do you even agree with this?
No.
I often don't agree with much of the theological edifice of conservative Protestant Christianity, but there are times when I will, you know, sort of enter into that space, so to speak, to try to say, even if we take this as our starting point, This position that they're advancing is problematic, right?
It doesn't fit.
And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this, I think, because it fits in some other questions and topics and follow-ups that people have asked, you know, some other pieces where this is the kind of argument that I might make.
But I wanted to clarify that, because it's a good question.
When folks have said, like, what do you mean when you use the language of bad theology?
Why are you doing that?
What are you doing?
That's typically what I'm doing.
I'm usually using it in that technical sense, Or more often in this kind of sense of critique.
And part of my story is that oftentimes I encountered this as an evangelical.
I found that given certain presuppositions and commitments I had, other key components of the evangelical life world, if you want to call it that, they didn't fit for me.
I found them to be contradictory, and that's part of what moved me out of that movement.
So there that is.
So some reflections on bad theology and, you know, related phrases.
It could be other things.
But kind of trying to get in and sort of decode what that can mean.
Again, it can mean lots of different things, and I think it's important for somebody to To try to explore maybe when you hear that, how is somebody using that?
What are they trying to do when they say that?
I think that's always the key question to ask when people use certain language.
What are they trying to do with that language?
I think it can also be, it can be really negative.
It can be a bludgeon.
It can be a way of controlling others.
It can also be a way of just trying to illustrate that things don't fit together.
It can be technical and so forth.
As I say, I think this is going to relate to some upcoming episodes.
We'll see how that goes.
But I need to wind this down, so I want to say thank you for listening.
Those of you who support us in so many different ways, thank you.
Please keep reaching out to me, Daniel Miller Swaj, S-W-A-J, swaj at gmail.com.
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Help us keep doing the kinds of things that we're doing and the work that we really work hard to do and to bring to you.
As always, thank you.
And I will throw out here, I don't know if it will have come through the mic, but there is some kind of roadwork going on outside my window.
And so if there's like weird noises and things like that, I apologize.
That's what it is.
Hopefully they're making my road better.
Right now I just see them tearing it up, so I don't know what's going on.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for the support.
Please be well until we get a chance to talk again.
