that "the world" (as opposed to the church) does not have a corner on sin and depravity. This story is surprisingly depraved and, in my opinion, surpasses even the recent tragedy in Knoxville. My comments on that story apply, mutatis mutandis, to this story as well.I'm blogging about this story for a completely different reason, however, one that is unimaginably less important than what the people involved are dealing with as they learn the details of the tragedy that has launched them into the national and (I should think) international news. Specifically, I'm interested in the normally subconscious processes by which we imagine the world around us, especially when we lack certain details about that world. For me, this story raises questions about how we imagine the identity of a person who could, allegedly, abuse his daughter, murder his wife when she discovered his abuse, and hide her body for three years in a freezer while continuing to engage in ministry.
I'll be honest here, and I ask for some sympathy as I admit to things that aren't politically correct so that, perhaps, we can understand those things and think critically about how best to deal with them. When I first read about this story in my RSS feed, the image that came to my mind was or a Robert Duvall-style preacher: 
a middle-aging White man of dubious moral and theological accomplishment. I'm not sure where this pre-fabricated image comes from, whether it was the description of the suspect (an evangelical preacher), the location of the crime (the American Southeast), or the nature of the crimes (incestual abuse, murder, hiding/mutilating [?] a corpse). But for some reason, I was surprised when I saw the photo of Mr. Hopkins included in CNN's report of the story (see above), and specifically that he is a Black man. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret my apparent bias; I'm not even sure who it's a bias against. (Certainly it isn't a bias against other races/racial minorities that I didn't automatically associate this crime with a Black man!) What I am sure about is that some potent social forces are at work here, and that these forces are all the more powerful for being, usually, invisible. If a White preacher had perpetrated this crime, I doubt I would have noticed the way my biases worked to portray the world in the absence of further information.
And, of course, this makes me wonder how these forces work in other areas of my everyday life. And, finally, I wonder what difference my biases make for my own interpretation of the biblical texts and my own reconstruction of early Christianity. Given the overwhelmingly likely probability that my biases are substantially different from those of ancient (Judeo-)Christians, I also have to wonder what historical and exegetical problems these biases inevitably bring to bear on my own academic and pastoral work.
a middle-aging White man of dubious moral and theological accomplishment. I'm not sure where this pre-fabricated image comes from, whether it was the description of the suspect (an evangelical preacher), the location of the crime (the American Southeast), or the nature of the crimes (incestual abuse, murder, hiding/mutilating [?] a corpse). But for some reason, I was surprised when I saw the photo of Mr. Hopkins included in CNN's report of the story (see above), and specifically that he is a Black man. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret my apparent bias; I'm not even sure who it's a bias against. (Certainly it isn't a bias against other races/racial minorities that I didn't automatically associate this crime with a Black man!) What I am sure about is that some potent social forces are at work here, and that these forces are all the more powerful for being, usually, invisible. If a White preacher had perpetrated this crime, I doubt I would have noticed the way my biases worked to portray the world in the absence of further information.And, of course, this makes me wonder how these forces work in other areas of my everyday life. And, finally, I wonder what difference my biases make for my own interpretation of the biblical texts and my own reconstruction of early Christianity. Given the overwhelmingly likely probability that my biases are substantially different from those of ancient (Judeo-)Christians, I also have to wonder what historical and exegetical problems these biases inevitably bring to bear on my own academic and pastoral work.
2 comments:
For me, this story raises questions about how we imagine the identity of a person who could, allegedly, abuse his daughter, murder his wife when she discovered his abuse, and hide her body for three years in a freezer while continuing to engage in ministry.
I see what you're getting at in terms of the stereotypes that we have in our minds, probably formed by a lifetime of watching TV. But of course these kind of actions can and have been carried out (at least since freezers were invented!) by people of all kinds of racial backgrounds, occupations, religious beliefs and socio-economic status. Same sinful human nature no matter who you are.
You're right to include the word 'allegedly' too of course, since none of this has been proved yet. And although being a theologically conservative preacher is no guarantee against this kind of behviour, it's also not clear yet that's what he is either. He is only 'allegedly' evangelical too. What is the "Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ" anyway? CNN are not always ecclesiastically literate - it may be a fringe sectarian group rather than a mainstream evangelical church. Or perhaps it is Pentecostal? I have no idea. Whatever he is, the whole thing is indeed very tragic.
My understanding — which may be but almost certainly isn't wrong :D — is that Inspirational Tabernacle is the name of the local church (akin to All Souls of "All Souls Church"). As for the Church of God in Christ, they self-identify as the "fastest growing African-American Pentecostal church in America."
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