Over at Salon Jane Roper writes about returning to church, because of her kids. I find the article of interest in part because it is a point of contention whether or not people continue to return to church as they have children. Roper's article shows that at least some still do. Yet I am interested in the details. Roper was raised Congregationalist and returns to church among Unitarian Universalists, which itself historically comes out of the Congregationalists. Roper returns to a church community that has historical roots in a church of her own personal history and one that shares the conclusions she arrived at as a young adult. However more interesting is the description of a journey from being a joiner, participation in various groups, clubs and committees, to being against joining such institutions, and then deciding that there might be something to being a joiner (well sort of she still is a little uncomfortable with the idea) after all. This journey has some parallels to some of the journeys and struggles of certain members of Reconciler. We have wrestled with questions of what joining a group means. Does joining and having a community and working together necessarily, involve committees, fundraisers, service projects, study groups, retreats etc? Also, are you joining if you join for your kids? I suppose on some level it is admirable to do something for your children you wouldn't do if you did not have children because you on your own can't provide something you believe your children need. So, I am not saying there is nothing of value here but is what is valued community or the experience of community? I get the sense from the essay that the conclusion Roper has come to is that children need the experience of community, but the value of community itself is still questionable beyond providing an experience Roper want's her children to have.
Those who are at Reconciler and have come through Reconciler aren't so interested in the experience of community (or so it seems to me) but struggling with a particular sort of community grounded in a particular understanding of reality. In this struggle some of the programmatic aspect of American church and institutional life that Roper is re-embracing for the sake of her children, is actively questioned and discarded, and community and institution is opened up to reinterpretation and redefinition. Of course this is done also with a certain attempt to recall a very particular articulation of community centered upon a particular religious vision, quite different from what is being sought at a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
Even so there is perhaps also a form of caution to some of the call's to more or less uncritically have churches embrace various types of social media. Roper should remind us Christians that there are elements of our embodied existence that can only be communicated as we gather together, as we Baptize, as we eat bread and drink wine, as we embrace at the peace. None of which can take place in the facebook, twitter etc. I say this as someone who does pray the daily office at times on Twitter thanks to the Virtual abbey. Yet it is different, from praying the office with the monks at St Gregories Abbey. My thought is not so much to critique the embracing of social media by churches but are we questioning the forms of community and through such questioning making sure that we as Christians are not allowing technology to move us from the incarnational and sacramental center of our faith. Which is something Roper seems to want to affirm or at least to have her children experience even though she doesn't believe in the incarnation itself.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Self and Stories of the Self
One of the things I did not touch on here is the story Peter Rollins told about a Homes and Country article that ran around 1930 featuring the home of a rising European leader, vegetarian, and painter. He loved to entertain guests and gave cupcakes to children. The house was beautiful and well appointed, the painter talked in a cultured way about his paintings and about art. From the article one gets the sense that this man is a decent person. This person was Adolf Hitler.
He also tells this story here in this video:
Peter Rollins takes this to show that the story one tells about oneself is not one's true self. If I understand him correctly Rollins wants to say that such a narrative is a pseudo self, it is false. The stories we tell ourselves aren't true. At the Insurrection tour he unpacked this more than he does in the above video. We tell stories about ourselves that stand in place of our true self. We can be overcome these false stories through action: we can work at making sure the story we tell ourselves about our self matches our material conditions. We all know who Hitler ultimately was and he wasn't a nice guy, he was evil and the mastermind of genocide. Hitler was not the story told in the Homes and Garden article. Rollins says we are our material conditions and actions, not the stories we tell ourselves. But I don't know that the above example does the work Rollins wants it to do. Or rather it does as long as one simply accepts the story most of the world now tells about Hitler: that he was the the mastermind of a great genocide, an evil and unstable man, possibly the very incarnation of evil itself. This narrative we believe cannot be squared with a cultured gentle vegetarian painter, therefore that narrative must not be Hitler's true self. Yet this view of the self posits the self as simple and singular over which we can overlay complexity but that always views said complexity as always false. However, if as Rollins also posits we find the self in the material conditions and actions of our lives, then Hitler's house vegetarianism and paintings reveal the self of Hitler as much as what he did as Fuehrer of Nazi Germany. Now we may choose to judge that self claiming that one set of material conditions is more significant than the other, but based on Rollin's claims about the self we cannot dismiss his vegetarianism and painting and appointment of his house as false, since these are also material conditions and actions.
We may want to believe that the two things are incompatible, incommensurate and contradictory, but I posit we want to believe that because we don't want to believe that our own cultured narratives could overlap with this one we have judged as the incarnation of evil itself. The belief in a singular true narrative of the self means we have the hope of achieving our pure selves that will not overlap with certain others, whom we can then keep at a distance. This I don't think is what Rollins' is about but I think it is why this theory of the self has certain resonance, and why the example of Hitler lends itself so well to Rollins' thought. He is concerned that Christians have and accept narratives incommensurate with Christ, especially the moment of Christ on the cross feeling abandoned by God, and wants to encourage the sloughing off those incommensurate narratives but through appealing not merely to their incompatibility with the Christ narrative but by encouraging a search for the true and singular self.
What I'd like to posit as another view of this story about Hitler the vegetarian cultured painter who understood the good things of life and someone whom we think we could like, is that the self is multiple and not singular. I posit the possibility that we could have more than one narrative of the self (or more than one self,for it is difficult to disentangle a self from a narrative) and that we are unable to make them agree, this is the case Hitler presents us with: Two sets of material conditions and actions that lend themselves to two different narratives of Hitler and they don't seem to coincide in one self, but they are equally true. Such a multiple self is always already in danger of self-contradiction and thus dissolution. If there is a lie we tell ourselves it isn't our stories, which don't match up to our material reality, (most stories we tell ourselves do match up with at least some aspect of our material reality) rather the lie we tell ourselves is that the self is singular and indivisible. The self is multiple always in danger of disolution, but the solution to this is not Rollins singular true self.
In positing this I am interpreting Derrida on what we are encountering or can know about an author, and Derrida's own musing and playing with "Derrida" as interpreted by a friendly critic and Derrida as written in conversation with St Augustine's Confessions. From this I have concluded that the self is not reducible to a singularity, and from St Augustine I learn that we as those made in the image of God do reflect in our being who God is, and thus there is something of the Trinitarian life in our own life. God also is not reducible to an absolute singularity, but is a perfect unity of three persons. The Trinity tells us that multiplicity does not necessarily contradict a unity and oneness.
Admittedly this is itself an attempt to describe my own experience and to justify my own choices. The name of this blog brings together to disparate narratives of myself. What I do is to admit both that the narratives of myself are disparate and seek to make choices in those narratives that lead towards the coincidences of those narratives rather than the dispersion of myself in multiple and incommensurate narratives. Hitler is perhaps the example of one whose disparate narratives never found coincidence and so becomes a site destruction emptiness and death, the site of evil. This is perhaps the disturbing things about ourselves they tend toward this dissolution, being the site of evil. What will ultimately hold our narratives together isn't ourselves, isn't our effort towards singularity but openness to the Other, who is perfectly three and perfectly one, in whom we move and live and have our being.
In a conversation years ago, a Romanian artist and iconographer, Ion Ardelean once said in response to someone saying "I am among many things a guitarist". He said don't say that "rather say of the many things I am one of them is a guitarist." This has long stuck with me as a truly wise saying.
He also tells this story here in this video:
Peter Rollins takes this to show that the story one tells about oneself is not one's true self. If I understand him correctly Rollins wants to say that such a narrative is a pseudo self, it is false. The stories we tell ourselves aren't true. At the Insurrection tour he unpacked this more than he does in the above video. We tell stories about ourselves that stand in place of our true self. We can be overcome these false stories through action: we can work at making sure the story we tell ourselves about our self matches our material conditions. We all know who Hitler ultimately was and he wasn't a nice guy, he was evil and the mastermind of genocide. Hitler was not the story told in the Homes and Garden article. Rollins says we are our material conditions and actions, not the stories we tell ourselves. But I don't know that the above example does the work Rollins wants it to do. Or rather it does as long as one simply accepts the story most of the world now tells about Hitler: that he was the the mastermind of a great genocide, an evil and unstable man, possibly the very incarnation of evil itself. This narrative we believe cannot be squared with a cultured gentle vegetarian painter, therefore that narrative must not be Hitler's true self. Yet this view of the self posits the self as simple and singular over which we can overlay complexity but that always views said complexity as always false. However, if as Rollins also posits we find the self in the material conditions and actions of our lives, then Hitler's house vegetarianism and paintings reveal the self of Hitler as much as what he did as Fuehrer of Nazi Germany. Now we may choose to judge that self claiming that one set of material conditions is more significant than the other, but based on Rollin's claims about the self we cannot dismiss his vegetarianism and painting and appointment of his house as false, since these are also material conditions and actions.
We may want to believe that the two things are incompatible, incommensurate and contradictory, but I posit we want to believe that because we don't want to believe that our own cultured narratives could overlap with this one we have judged as the incarnation of evil itself. The belief in a singular true narrative of the self means we have the hope of achieving our pure selves that will not overlap with certain others, whom we can then keep at a distance. This I don't think is what Rollins' is about but I think it is why this theory of the self has certain resonance, and why the example of Hitler lends itself so well to Rollins' thought. He is concerned that Christians have and accept narratives incommensurate with Christ, especially the moment of Christ on the cross feeling abandoned by God, and wants to encourage the sloughing off those incommensurate narratives but through appealing not merely to their incompatibility with the Christ narrative but by encouraging a search for the true and singular self.
What I'd like to posit as another view of this story about Hitler the vegetarian cultured painter who understood the good things of life and someone whom we think we could like, is that the self is multiple and not singular. I posit the possibility that we could have more than one narrative of the self (or more than one self,for it is difficult to disentangle a self from a narrative) and that we are unable to make them agree, this is the case Hitler presents us with: Two sets of material conditions and actions that lend themselves to two different narratives of Hitler and they don't seem to coincide in one self, but they are equally true. Such a multiple self is always already in danger of self-contradiction and thus dissolution. If there is a lie we tell ourselves it isn't our stories, which don't match up to our material reality, (most stories we tell ourselves do match up with at least some aspect of our material reality) rather the lie we tell ourselves is that the self is singular and indivisible. The self is multiple always in danger of disolution, but the solution to this is not Rollins singular true self.
In positing this I am interpreting Derrida on what we are encountering or can know about an author, and Derrida's own musing and playing with "Derrida" as interpreted by a friendly critic and Derrida as written in conversation with St Augustine's Confessions. From this I have concluded that the self is not reducible to a singularity, and from St Augustine I learn that we as those made in the image of God do reflect in our being who God is, and thus there is something of the Trinitarian life in our own life. God also is not reducible to an absolute singularity, but is a perfect unity of three persons. The Trinity tells us that multiplicity does not necessarily contradict a unity and oneness.
Admittedly this is itself an attempt to describe my own experience and to justify my own choices. The name of this blog brings together to disparate narratives of myself. What I do is to admit both that the narratives of myself are disparate and seek to make choices in those narratives that lead towards the coincidences of those narratives rather than the dispersion of myself in multiple and incommensurate narratives. Hitler is perhaps the example of one whose disparate narratives never found coincidence and so becomes a site destruction emptiness and death, the site of evil. This is perhaps the disturbing things about ourselves they tend toward this dissolution, being the site of evil. What will ultimately hold our narratives together isn't ourselves, isn't our effort towards singularity but openness to the Other, who is perfectly three and perfectly one, in whom we move and live and have our being.
In a conversation years ago, a Romanian artist and iconographer, Ion Ardelean once said in response to someone saying "I am among many things a guitarist". He said don't say that "rather say of the many things I am one of them is a guitarist." This has long stuck with me as a truly wise saying.
Friday, April 09, 2010
Insurrection Tour Comes to Chicago
The Insurrection Tour facebook page indicated it would be a full house at Trace bar, but one never quite knows what to expect from facebook rsvp's in my experience. But we aimed to arrive as soon as the doors would open for the event. When we entered the upstairs of Trace there was already a good crowd and immediately met two people I knew who had seen my announcement about the Insurrection tour on Facebook. They wanted to know more about this, I didn't have any clue what to expect and still not having read any of Peter Rollins' books, couldn't say much more than this is somewhere in the Emergent Church conversation. By the time the presentation/show was to begin the place was packed.
What then took place is difficult to convey, because the components, Peter Rollins speaking and telling stories, punctuated with interludes of video montage and ambient music (by Jonny McEwen), and music and poetry (by Padraig O Tuama) were all in a strange sort of dialog, that didn't always appear to fit, but did create at times a sense of counter point, to what Peter Rollins said and the stories he told. The friend who came with us described it as mesmerizing. And there was something very much captivating about the form of the event (not exactly sure what to call it). At moments striking beauty flashed out, at times it was humorous, and at times labored.
Before I continue I want to say one thing: I came away feeling renewed. Something about the event continued for me the celebrations of the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. Meaning that whatever critique may follow something of the intention of this Insurrection tour did reach me as true. Also, I think any criticisms here, and expression of disappointment comes out of a longing for more, a sense that what was done paled in comparison to what was seeking to be expressed, and I admit perhaps that's the point.
Peter's portion of the presentation was a form of intellectual story telling that at moments approached preaching, and was supplemented by exhortation and explanation of the meaning of his parables and jokes. One aspect of this story telling fell flat because it was obviously a prop a tool in fact a deus ex machina (The first chapter of his presentation): The claim to have found a book that had his presentation in it, and all that would happen and had happened. He made constant reference to this non-existent book. It also meant that the event/presentation had a literary feel to it, that I found distracting; like labeling the sections of his presentation "chapters." As counter point to this was Padraig's poetry and song most of which were quite beautiful, though I found the poetry more compelling than the music (though that had more to do with my preferences in music than his musical talent). Padraig's pieces slowly introduced a location for the experiences that has prompted these various artistic and intellectual reflections and exhortations, Belfast, Northern Ireland. However, Rollin's was seeking to dislodge from his audience a attitude towards faith that I recognized as a certain form of Evangelicalism, and so I wondered why this continual reference to this religious other? I still do not have an answer. Of course an obvious answer is that this is Peter's native faith, though I have a difficult time believing that.
Disappointingly the whole event did nothing more for me than walk me down the early years of my spiritual journey, punctuated by the lament and recollections in poem and song from Belfast. Peter Rollins used slightly different language than I have used, though he quoted from two thinkers who are also part of my companions on the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Soren Keirkegaard. He referenced Bonhoeffer for his assertion and demonstration that our faith can be a faith in a Deus ex machina. Admittedly it was some point in childhood that I first realized this, it was part of my resistance to saying the prayer to accept Jesus into my heart that was offered semi regularly by a certain Sunday School teacher. Though it took a long time for this realization to mature and profoundly affect my own faith life, and only began to mature at some point in high school.
The second and third chapters took me through to my 20th or 21st year, as I embraced doubt as not only part of faith but connected up with Christ's Crucifixion. The origin of my adult faith is a vision of Christ crucified as the center of and holding together the disparate aspects of myself, yet that vision gave me no certainty and didn't resolve the doubt. I also remember coming to the realization that this faith that cries out with Christ "My God, My God why have you forsaken me!" moves on to the Resurrection and that the truth of the Resurrection is to be actualized in life. Rollins used the language of materialize or something like that- his exact wording I am forgetting at the moment.
So, I agree or have agreed with Peter Rollins. Yet as I left somethings weren't sitting well with me. Last night I described it to Kate and our friend as feeling that the whole presentation even as it exhorted to doubt and to embrace uncertainty was itself certain and indubitable. It was all enclosed in a smooth glass box and I couldn't reach in and grab a hold and wrestle with the experiences and ideas. As I have discussed and reflected and written this post I think I have been able to remove the glass box a little and get at some of what doesn't fit for me.
One thing that I recall was Rollins rejection of the function of church as that which can hold faith for us when we doubt. This he viewed as a lessening of the horror that Christ experienced of abandonment by God on the Cross. Yet, the actuality of Christ on the Cross is more complex, For it is the divine human who experiences separation from the divine and yet that separation is never actually complete. Of course this is a mystery and I hesitate to say more, except that this mystery itself posits the lack of truth of Jesus Christs experience of abandonment as actual and total abandonment. So, while I think I agree with Rollins' criticism of how people often use this actuality of the church to have faith for them so as to avoid the pain of doubt, there is a proper way for the church to so function, or so I would say, and it seems to me that what is needed is an articulation of the complexity of this mystery rather than a continual critique of what isn't working.
In the end I don't buy the bleakness of the resentations depiction of Crucifixion and Resurrection, because I wouldn't put so great an emphasis on a Christian's achievement of what we are given in Cross and Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. Rollins is still seeking that perfect and pure body of Christ without blemish or stain, and it is good to so seek this. However, not if one is to seek it in our current historicity. This church has never historically existed, read the New Testament carefully and hypocrisy is no less rampant among the early and persecuted Christians than it is in our day. Rollins presentation is caught up in our contemproary allergy to hypocrisy, which prevents an enter into the complexity of our faith. There was a denial (paradoxically) of the tensions that Christian faith creates for us, and the longings it awakens as it tried to assert that we in our time bound limited ways can on our own fulfill these longings if we doubt and make material the Resurection in our own lives. This is itself a type of remaining certainty in the midst of the faithful doubt the doubting faith Rollins exhorted us towards. Yet the Insurrection Tour was also to awaken those longings it was also about the achievement of them, this faith in our ability to achieve these divine longings that I feel is a major flaw of the presentation and, possibly in Rollins own philosophy and theology (I don't know I'd need to talk with him or read his books, which I plan to do). Rollins actions are movement while standing in place, he is arrested by his own deconstruction that fails to deconstruct itself. People have built houses when they should have built tents and so he refuses to even construct a most simply habitation. There is only desert and it isn't clear whether any Oasis is actual or our imagination and so it is best to remain in the desert hoping by some impossibility that we may embody the Resurrection through resisting all visions of an oasis. This is the impression I am left with, and yet even so hope of a habitation breaks through, and as does the reality of the Resurrection that is even if we don't embody it.
There is more, but I think I will leave it here for now. If you were there last night I'd welcome your own experience to the evening and what you took away from it. I may write more for there was a great deal to ponder and reflect on, even if I also feel it is stuff I am very familiar with.
What then took place is difficult to convey, because the components, Peter Rollins speaking and telling stories, punctuated with interludes of video montage and ambient music (by Jonny McEwen), and music and poetry (by Padraig O Tuama) were all in a strange sort of dialog, that didn't always appear to fit, but did create at times a sense of counter point, to what Peter Rollins said and the stories he told. The friend who came with us described it as mesmerizing. And there was something very much captivating about the form of the event (not exactly sure what to call it). At moments striking beauty flashed out, at times it was humorous, and at times labored.
Before I continue I want to say one thing: I came away feeling renewed. Something about the event continued for me the celebrations of the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. Meaning that whatever critique may follow something of the intention of this Insurrection tour did reach me as true. Also, I think any criticisms here, and expression of disappointment comes out of a longing for more, a sense that what was done paled in comparison to what was seeking to be expressed, and I admit perhaps that's the point.
Peter's portion of the presentation was a form of intellectual story telling that at moments approached preaching, and was supplemented by exhortation and explanation of the meaning of his parables and jokes. One aspect of this story telling fell flat because it was obviously a prop a tool in fact a deus ex machina (The first chapter of his presentation): The claim to have found a book that had his presentation in it, and all that would happen and had happened. He made constant reference to this non-existent book. It also meant that the event/presentation had a literary feel to it, that I found distracting; like labeling the sections of his presentation "chapters." As counter point to this was Padraig's poetry and song most of which were quite beautiful, though I found the poetry more compelling than the music (though that had more to do with my preferences in music than his musical talent). Padraig's pieces slowly introduced a location for the experiences that has prompted these various artistic and intellectual reflections and exhortations, Belfast, Northern Ireland. However, Rollin's was seeking to dislodge from his audience a attitude towards faith that I recognized as a certain form of Evangelicalism, and so I wondered why this continual reference to this religious other? I still do not have an answer. Of course an obvious answer is that this is Peter's native faith, though I have a difficult time believing that.
Disappointingly the whole event did nothing more for me than walk me down the early years of my spiritual journey, punctuated by the lament and recollections in poem and song from Belfast. Peter Rollins used slightly different language than I have used, though he quoted from two thinkers who are also part of my companions on the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Soren Keirkegaard. He referenced Bonhoeffer for his assertion and demonstration that our faith can be a faith in a Deus ex machina. Admittedly it was some point in childhood that I first realized this, it was part of my resistance to saying the prayer to accept Jesus into my heart that was offered semi regularly by a certain Sunday School teacher. Though it took a long time for this realization to mature and profoundly affect my own faith life, and only began to mature at some point in high school.
The second and third chapters took me through to my 20th or 21st year, as I embraced doubt as not only part of faith but connected up with Christ's Crucifixion. The origin of my adult faith is a vision of Christ crucified as the center of and holding together the disparate aspects of myself, yet that vision gave me no certainty and didn't resolve the doubt. I also remember coming to the realization that this faith that cries out with Christ "My God, My God why have you forsaken me!" moves on to the Resurrection and that the truth of the Resurrection is to be actualized in life. Rollins used the language of materialize or something like that- his exact wording I am forgetting at the moment.
So, I agree or have agreed with Peter Rollins. Yet as I left somethings weren't sitting well with me. Last night I described it to Kate and our friend as feeling that the whole presentation even as it exhorted to doubt and to embrace uncertainty was itself certain and indubitable. It was all enclosed in a smooth glass box and I couldn't reach in and grab a hold and wrestle with the experiences and ideas. As I have discussed and reflected and written this post I think I have been able to remove the glass box a little and get at some of what doesn't fit for me.
One thing that I recall was Rollins rejection of the function of church as that which can hold faith for us when we doubt. This he viewed as a lessening of the horror that Christ experienced of abandonment by God on the Cross. Yet, the actuality of Christ on the Cross is more complex, For it is the divine human who experiences separation from the divine and yet that separation is never actually complete. Of course this is a mystery and I hesitate to say more, except that this mystery itself posits the lack of truth of Jesus Christs experience of abandonment as actual and total abandonment. So, while I think I agree with Rollins' criticism of how people often use this actuality of the church to have faith for them so as to avoid the pain of doubt, there is a proper way for the church to so function, or so I would say, and it seems to me that what is needed is an articulation of the complexity of this mystery rather than a continual critique of what isn't working.
In the end I don't buy the bleakness of the resentations depiction of Crucifixion and Resurrection, because I wouldn't put so great an emphasis on a Christian's achievement of what we are given in Cross and Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. Rollins is still seeking that perfect and pure body of Christ without blemish or stain, and it is good to so seek this. However, not if one is to seek it in our current historicity. This church has never historically existed, read the New Testament carefully and hypocrisy is no less rampant among the early and persecuted Christians than it is in our day. Rollins presentation is caught up in our contemproary allergy to hypocrisy, which prevents an enter into the complexity of our faith. There was a denial (paradoxically) of the tensions that Christian faith creates for us, and the longings it awakens as it tried to assert that we in our time bound limited ways can on our own fulfill these longings if we doubt and make material the Resurection in our own lives. This is itself a type of remaining certainty in the midst of the faithful doubt the doubting faith Rollins exhorted us towards. Yet the Insurrection Tour was also to awaken those longings it was also about the achievement of them, this faith in our ability to achieve these divine longings that I feel is a major flaw of the presentation and, possibly in Rollins own philosophy and theology (I don't know I'd need to talk with him or read his books, which I plan to do). Rollins actions are movement while standing in place, he is arrested by his own deconstruction that fails to deconstruct itself. People have built houses when they should have built tents and so he refuses to even construct a most simply habitation. There is only desert and it isn't clear whether any Oasis is actual or our imagination and so it is best to remain in the desert hoping by some impossibility that we may embody the Resurrection through resisting all visions of an oasis. This is the impression I am left with, and yet even so hope of a habitation breaks through, and as does the reality of the Resurrection that is even if we don't embody it.
There is more, but I think I will leave it here for now. If you were there last night I'd welcome your own experience to the evening and what you took away from it. I may write more for there was a great deal to ponder and reflect on, even if I also feel it is stuff I am very familiar with.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Is Brian McLaren arguing against a Caricature?
One of Scott McKnights criticisms of Brian McLaren's latest book is that his "Soul-sort Narrative" is a caricature and doesn't exist in any reputable form, or even more strongly only exists in the mind of Brian McLaren. Over at the Christiannonduality blog (side note I find it humorous that the tag line of the blog itself sets up a duality between Thinking/proposing and imagining/participating, a duality I find at best inaccurate and at worst false) JB posts a brief response to Mcknight's post. Oddly enough JB begins his response saying that McLaren is not in A New Kind of Christianity (ANKoC) "describing mainline Christianity". This is an interesting point to make as a response to Mcknight because McKnight himself is not speaking about "Mainline Christianity", at least not in the common use of that word, but "Evangelicalism". In the midst of this banter over the use of labels I continue to wonder what exactly is McLaren addressing. For McKnight McLaren's target is Evangelicalism and thus his complaint that essentially what McLaren critiques is a caricature. This thought I think connects up with what JB points out as Mclaren's rhetorical strategies of hyperbole and sweeping generalizations to map things out. In my view it is these rhetorical strategies that make difficult identify with any precision what sort of existing or formerly existing form of Christianity Mclaren is actually talking about as he describes the belief about its god "Theos" (BTW surely Brian knows that "theos" is the Greek word used for God in the NT right?!). Jb limits McLaren's target to Fundamentalism, which is what I have said elsewhere, but McKnight takes him to have a broader target,which is Evangelicalism beyond and inclusive of Fundamentalism.
Though based on various reviews I have read it does seem that in his broad mapping McLaren is including "Mainline Christianity" at least in its being "Western Christianity". Perhaps JB wants to say that "Mainline Christianity" has come out of and away from what McLaren critiques. But I wonder then is JB wishing to appropriate McLaren but saying the critique applies to others but not JB's Christianity? JB feels McLaren is on target but critiquing those other Christians. McKnight feels he has caricatured what he critiques and asserts that McLaren's target is Evangelicalism in particular but that McLaren's "soul-sort narrative" doesn't describe actual Evangelicalism. though he also interprets that McLaren's target includes "mainline" or at least the historic theological tradition of the mainstream of Christian faith.
My suspicion is that the difficulty here is that McLaren has a particular form of Christianity in mind (perhaps what he initially taught as he started Cedar Ridge Community Church, I don't know) but that he then blames on and identifies with broader historical antecedents. Its this later move that I think JB is talking about when he talks about McLaren as mapping a a very rough trajectory. Thus while JB praises McLaren's rhetoric I find this rhetoric the very thing that unravels his argument as he knits it together. In a sense if JB is correct here, McLaren as cartographer has whole contents in view and he is pretty good at giving the general outline of the continents with the necessary distortions to the actuality for the sake of presenting something which is three dimensional in two dimensions. However, McLaren doesn't seem to actually think of himself as a cartographer of contents giving us a "satellite view" of the continent. McLaren wants to be writing guide books to how to get around France and Paris: telling us the best places to stay, what to avoid etc. But really to get around France and Paris I don't need the satellite view. I don't need to see from above (google maps satellite is interesting but I never found it helpful as a means to know what to expect on the ground when finding my way to a new place), nor sweeping generalizations about terrain and the character of the French people. If your offering me a guide book you better know the place backwards and forwards not simply a combination of one corner of Paris and the map of all of France and the continent of Europe. My suspicion of McLaren is that he knows a particular corner of Paris really well and certain provinces of France very near Paris, and then from that wants to extrapolate from that narrow experience to the entire city of Paris and the whole of France. Perhaps as JB says this is simply what is done when trying to do what Mclaren is doing, after all we can't know experientially the whole of Christian reality, and our interpretation of the history of Christianity will be colored by how you have experienced it. However, McLaren's rhetoric crosses out the inscription of his particular experience and overwrites it with an "objective" account of the history of the "soul-sort narative.", as having an actual history through time that has been taught as official doctrine, not just something some form of contemporary Christians may believe. I know there are Christians that believe something like his "soul-sort narative." but I am with Mcknight in questioning its actual extent even while finding McKnight's assertion that it doesn't actually exist at all. So, i think I'd agree that his "soul sort-narrative" is a caricature, a caricature that some currently may be acting out.
My suspicion is that the difficulty here is that McLaren has a particular form of Christianity in mind (perhaps what he initially taught as he started Cedar Ridge Community Church, I don't know) but that he then blames on and identifies with broader historical antecedents. Its this later move that I think JB is talking about when he talks about McLaren as mapping a a very rough trajectory. Thus while JB praises McLaren's rhetoric I find this rhetoric the very thing that unravels his argument as he knits it together. In a sense if JB is correct here, McLaren as cartographer has whole contents in view and he is pretty good at giving the general outline of the continents with the necessary distortions to the actuality for the sake of presenting something which is three dimensional in two dimensions. However, McLaren doesn't seem to actually think of himself as a cartographer of contents giving us a "satellite view" of the continent. McLaren wants to be writing guide books to how to get around France and Paris: telling us the best places to stay, what to avoid etc. But really to get around France and Paris I don't need the satellite view. I don't need to see from above (google maps satellite is interesting but I never found it helpful as a means to know what to expect on the ground when finding my way to a new place), nor sweeping generalizations about terrain and the character of the French people. If your offering me a guide book you better know the place backwards and forwards not simply a combination of one corner of Paris and the map of all of France and the continent of Europe. My suspicion of McLaren is that he knows a particular corner of Paris really well and certain provinces of France very near Paris, and then from that wants to extrapolate from that narrow experience to the entire city of Paris and the whole of France. Perhaps as JB says this is simply what is done when trying to do what Mclaren is doing, after all we can't know experientially the whole of Christian reality, and our interpretation of the history of Christianity will be colored by how you have experienced it. However, McLaren's rhetoric crosses out the inscription of his particular experience and overwrites it with an "objective" account of the history of the "soul-sort narative.", as having an actual history through time that has been taught as official doctrine, not just something some form of contemporary Christians may believe. I know there are Christians that believe something like his "soul-sort narative." but I am with Mcknight in questioning its actual extent even while finding McKnight's assertion that it doesn't actually exist at all. So, i think I'd agree that his "soul sort-narrative" is a caricature, a caricature that some currently may be acting out.
Paul VerHoeven on Jesus
I ran across this today, and quoting from this interview with Paul Verhoeven interview I met him when I was in college. One of my Religious Studies professors was a fellow of the Jesus Seminar as was Paul Verhoeven. Interesting that he has written a book as he was speaking then of using the research from the Jesus Seminar as the basis for a film about Jesus. Not sure what else I have to say about this except that I was taken back to the days of the Jesus Seminar as they were still working on the saying of Jesus, and Verhoeven came to Long Beach State on a couple of occasions while I was there.
Friday, April 02, 2010
"What Wondrous Love is this": Thoughts after Good Friday Service
The Good Friday service is always so powerful, with the chanting of passion from the Gospel of John, the adoration of the Cross, and the chanting of the great reproaches. Each time I find myself hearings and encountering the passion in a different way than before. Not necesarily new but it simply hits me differently.
Today it was that I was presiding (for the first time) at the service and I came to the service with two articles from the Huffington Post about Good Friday and the crucifixion
The first article I read late last night, by Rita Nakashima Broch. The article seems to be saying that to attach anything salvific to the Cross and Jesus Crucifixion, torture in some general way becomes a good. I get rejecting Anselm's theory of the Atonement (though whether what the author critiques is Anselm's theory in its fullness, and he didn't invent it whole cloth as the author gives that impression.) even that the Cross and the Crucifixion of Christ is an uncomfortable, but even if we reject Anselm's theory it seems that other ways of comprehending keep us from simply seeing torture as salvation in itself. In fact that seems to me to be part of the point of all this Through something horrific and evil, By God in human flesh willingly undergoing this evil, transforms human evil and offers us a way through and out: true liberation. An Implement of death becomes in this instance only (not in some generalized way) that which gives life, the tree of life.
And then an article by Paul Raushenbush. Which attempts to more or less well contextualize the crucifixion with God's sacrificial love as the context of the crucifixion as salvific. The author quotes his Great Grand Father Walter Raushenbush in making his case.
Both articles for some reason left me feeling like something was missing,something was being missed, and then the Anglobaptist posted this:
So very beautiful and haunting. Such great beauty in that song and that rendition of it.
So this all was there tonight as I heard the Gopsel chanted. On one hand I heard in ways I had not before the politics of the passion story: the Religious leaders playing off Pilate"s ambitions and anxieties of his position. Pilate playing the magnanimous leader in a situation where he could only win: If He could get the religious leaders to agree to Jesus' and he was the revolutionary he was presented as, then he'd have the excuse to crush. If Jesus wasn't such a figure then his reputation among certain populations of Judea could grow more positive. For the Religious Leaders, they have the chance with Jesus to appear to the Roman authorities as good loyal subjects of the Roman Empire who would even protest when the imperial governor would release a mostly harmless trouble maker. In the end even as Pilate gives in Pilate mocks the Religious leaders, and does so in away that they can only half heartedly protest. Their king is someone in the full control of imperial power, the King of the Jews ends up on a cross. But Jesus is not subject to all the political grandstanding. Jesus endures, and points out the various attempts to grab at power and influence, and shows how he is following another way, that leads through his death on the Cross. Here is some amazing love that can stand and withstand all this to seek to pass through death, to bring all out of the death trap of such ways of politics and the world.
"What Wondrous Love is this" Theories don't capture it, only point to the more that is there, the astounding enormity of what this day means, should leave us speechless and in awe, and tears both of joy and sorrow.
Today it was that I was presiding (for the first time) at the service and I came to the service with two articles from the Huffington Post about Good Friday and the crucifixion
The first article I read late last night, by Rita Nakashima Broch. The article seems to be saying that to attach anything salvific to the Cross and Jesus Crucifixion, torture in some general way becomes a good. I get rejecting Anselm's theory of the Atonement (though whether what the author critiques is Anselm's theory in its fullness, and he didn't invent it whole cloth as the author gives that impression.) even that the Cross and the Crucifixion of Christ is an uncomfortable, but even if we reject Anselm's theory it seems that other ways of comprehending keep us from simply seeing torture as salvation in itself. In fact that seems to me to be part of the point of all this Through something horrific and evil, By God in human flesh willingly undergoing this evil, transforms human evil and offers us a way through and out: true liberation. An Implement of death becomes in this instance only (not in some generalized way) that which gives life, the tree of life.
And then an article by Paul Raushenbush. Which attempts to more or less well contextualize the crucifixion with God's sacrificial love as the context of the crucifixion as salvific. The author quotes his Great Grand Father Walter Raushenbush in making his case.
Both articles for some reason left me feeling like something was missing,something was being missed, and then the Anglobaptist posted this:
So very beautiful and haunting. Such great beauty in that song and that rendition of it.
So this all was there tonight as I heard the Gopsel chanted. On one hand I heard in ways I had not before the politics of the passion story: the Religious leaders playing off Pilate"s ambitions and anxieties of his position. Pilate playing the magnanimous leader in a situation where he could only win: If He could get the religious leaders to agree to Jesus' and he was the revolutionary he was presented as, then he'd have the excuse to crush. If Jesus wasn't such a figure then his reputation among certain populations of Judea could grow more positive. For the Religious Leaders, they have the chance with Jesus to appear to the Roman authorities as good loyal subjects of the Roman Empire who would even protest when the imperial governor would release a mostly harmless trouble maker. In the end even as Pilate gives in Pilate mocks the Religious leaders, and does so in away that they can only half heartedly protest. Their king is someone in the full control of imperial power, the King of the Jews ends up on a cross. But Jesus is not subject to all the political grandstanding. Jesus endures, and points out the various attempts to grab at power and influence, and shows how he is following another way, that leads through his death on the Cross. Here is some amazing love that can stand and withstand all this to seek to pass through death, to bring all out of the death trap of such ways of politics and the world.
"What Wondrous Love is this" Theories don't capture it, only point to the more that is there, the astounding enormity of what this day means, should leave us speechless and in awe, and tears both of joy and sorrow.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Maundy Thursday
I did get focus on the sermon. The text I brought into the pulpit is posted on Reconciler's blog. However this text is not as focused as I got in preaching (I believe). The service itself helped me gain focus. The joint service with Immanuel and St Elias, begins with confession and laying of hands and speaking of forgiveness, followed by a procession around the nave of Immanuel Lutheran Church, sing a Kyrie in Pakistani.
This is one of those situations where I try to recall what I said in the pulpit. What I do remember is that I made a stronger connection between Jesus new command to love, and the example of this love being Jesus washing of the disciples feet. Then I wove themes from the whole Triduum, since my sermon tonight will be the only sermon for the Three Days.
This is one of those situations where I try to recall what I said in the pulpit. What I do remember is that I made a stronger connection between Jesus new command to love, and the example of this love being Jesus washing of the disciples feet. Then I wove themes from the whole Triduum, since my sermon tonight will be the only sermon for the Three Days.
Maundy Thursday and I need a Sermon
So much is swirling in my head right now. The culmination of Lent is crashing in and questions of my vocation, the Mind of Christ and this day of the command to love and eat and drink in remembrance. The conversation and story telling around getting or not getting the emergent church and discomfort with Brian McLaren are in this mix as well. This is not a good situation for settling on a focus for tonight's sermon.
I am still quite struck at the generosity of Robyn's response to my attempt to account for my discomfort and distance from the emergent church. Robyn told her own story in response. In that story she comes to say the place she ends up is with Jesus. I say Jesus executed by the Roman Empire as a criminal and terrorist, Christ on the cross and seeking the Mind of this Christ is where I end up. hmm..., Wonder if the Christian Militia recently in the news, is two thousand years later taking seriously the propaganda that sent Jesus to the cross. I guess they didn't read the Gospels too carefully (if at all, seem more interested in Revelations etc.) that the charge of insurrection (sorry Peter Rollins couldn't resist linking to the tour here) and usurpation were trumped up charges. Well, you see my problem my mind is all over the place. Interwebs, and Twitter don't help in this regard.
Oh right where I was going with all this is that it seems to me that one place where Robyn's and my story intersect is in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. That Story that we only know in and through the four Gospels. I perhaps at the moment am more willing to assert an orthodox spin on all of this then perhaps Robyn is, and yet there is Jesus in the midst of our stories.
There is Jesus in the midst of a disparate crew of disciples with all sorts of ideas about who Jesus is and what it means for a restored Israel, and the fate of the Roman Empire. Each with very different stories, most of which we know little or nothing about before they meet Jesus. In the midst of their stories Jesus commands love, and demonstrates what he means by this word and command, by washing feet.
What analogue to our times for this act? There are no basins at our doors to wash the dust off our feet. When we enter a restaurant there is no lowly worker hired to rinse our feet off before sitting down for our meal. Yet it is still a powerful unsettling symbol to the extent that the thing we consistently talk about as we plan these services of the Three Days is how do we encourage and get people to participate in this rite of washing feet. It is strangely intimate (which is from our context I think probably not so much so in 1st century Palestine) and still dirty activity. We are very much like Peter, don't touch my feet as our initial response to this act of washing feet. Yet, the service and love portion is perhaps lost on us a bit, given that there is not some lowly position in our labor force in which people are given the task to wash feet. And yet that is the point, God in human flesh before the supper in which we are to eat and drink in remembrance, takes on the role of the lowliest position one could have as a servant or a slave. insurrection in deed, but not in the way the trumped up charges wanted the Romans to believe.
There is so much here that is simply astounding, and beyond comprehension, or at least tidy systematization. As the crucifixion looms and at our Good Friday service we adore the cross; debating substitutionary atonement seems to miss something. I get the rejection of it: More or less it was this exclusive theory and the early Covenanter's assertion that Jesus died out of Love that God had for Humanity not as the recipient of God's wrath in our place that the Covenang was born. Even so rejection of this isn't the answer. We can't get away from that Jesus' death isn't an accident, and it isn't simply about identifying with suffering. Ivan in the Bothers K shows us the weakness of that position as well. No, it was the plan, the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world. We may not like it our attempts to systematically and theoretically comprehend it may land us in horrific ideological places, but without the cross there is no Resurrection. There is no life as Christians understand it without passing through this death, through Death itself. As the Orthodox Liturgy proclaims "Christ beat down death by death..." It seems we often in the US feel that we must chose between a theory of the atonement where God is the wrathful furious God who is only able to calm his rage enough to forgive by killing his Son (I use the male pronoun here deliberately), or something that equally reduces God and the cross to some equally ( in my mind) distasteful place of platitudes about God being with us in suffering. I'd say that these three days are neither simply about wrath nor about suffering, and yet about both and so much more.
We don't have to choose, rather we are called to contemplate divine love that is greater than what we can grasp, and at the same time face ourselves, our inability not only to comprehend but fully and completely live out this love that calls to us. No reductions here, only the massiveness, the awesomeness of something we are always already only beginning to understand and live out. And so we come and we wash and we worship and kneel. We weep with tears of sorrow and joy, and we wonder that through death somehow God has ended all oppression and injustice. God beat down Sin and death and freed us from their "necessary" dominion over us, and yet we still must choose and we so often choose death and our reductions over life and its infinity.
I am still quite struck at the generosity of Robyn's response to my attempt to account for my discomfort and distance from the emergent church. Robyn told her own story in response. In that story she comes to say the place she ends up is with Jesus. I say Jesus executed by the Roman Empire as a criminal and terrorist, Christ on the cross and seeking the Mind of this Christ is where I end up. hmm..., Wonder if the Christian Militia recently in the news, is two thousand years later taking seriously the propaganda that sent Jesus to the cross. I guess they didn't read the Gospels too carefully (if at all, seem more interested in Revelations etc.) that the charge of insurrection (sorry Peter Rollins couldn't resist linking to the tour here) and usurpation were trumped up charges. Well, you see my problem my mind is all over the place. Interwebs, and Twitter don't help in this regard.
Oh right where I was going with all this is that it seems to me that one place where Robyn's and my story intersect is in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. That Story that we only know in and through the four Gospels. I perhaps at the moment am more willing to assert an orthodox spin on all of this then perhaps Robyn is, and yet there is Jesus in the midst of our stories.
There is Jesus in the midst of a disparate crew of disciples with all sorts of ideas about who Jesus is and what it means for a restored Israel, and the fate of the Roman Empire. Each with very different stories, most of which we know little or nothing about before they meet Jesus. In the midst of their stories Jesus commands love, and demonstrates what he means by this word and command, by washing feet.
What analogue to our times for this act? There are no basins at our doors to wash the dust off our feet. When we enter a restaurant there is no lowly worker hired to rinse our feet off before sitting down for our meal. Yet it is still a powerful unsettling symbol to the extent that the thing we consistently talk about as we plan these services of the Three Days is how do we encourage and get people to participate in this rite of washing feet. It is strangely intimate (which is from our context I think probably not so much so in 1st century Palestine) and still dirty activity. We are very much like Peter, don't touch my feet as our initial response to this act of washing feet. Yet, the service and love portion is perhaps lost on us a bit, given that there is not some lowly position in our labor force in which people are given the task to wash feet. And yet that is the point, God in human flesh before the supper in which we are to eat and drink in remembrance, takes on the role of the lowliest position one could have as a servant or a slave. insurrection in deed, but not in the way the trumped up charges wanted the Romans to believe.
There is so much here that is simply astounding, and beyond comprehension, or at least tidy systematization. As the crucifixion looms and at our Good Friday service we adore the cross; debating substitutionary atonement seems to miss something. I get the rejection of it: More or less it was this exclusive theory and the early Covenanter's assertion that Jesus died out of Love that God had for Humanity not as the recipient of God's wrath in our place that the Covenang was born. Even so rejection of this isn't the answer. We can't get away from that Jesus' death isn't an accident, and it isn't simply about identifying with suffering. Ivan in the Bothers K shows us the weakness of that position as well. No, it was the plan, the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world. We may not like it our attempts to systematically and theoretically comprehend it may land us in horrific ideological places, but without the cross there is no Resurrection. There is no life as Christians understand it without passing through this death, through Death itself. As the Orthodox Liturgy proclaims "Christ beat down death by death..." It seems we often in the US feel that we must chose between a theory of the atonement where God is the wrathful furious God who is only able to calm his rage enough to forgive by killing his Son (I use the male pronoun here deliberately), or something that equally reduces God and the cross to some equally ( in my mind) distasteful place of platitudes about God being with us in suffering. I'd say that these three days are neither simply about wrath nor about suffering, and yet about both and so much more.
We don't have to choose, rather we are called to contemplate divine love that is greater than what we can grasp, and at the same time face ourselves, our inability not only to comprehend but fully and completely live out this love that calls to us. No reductions here, only the massiveness, the awesomeness of something we are always already only beginning to understand and live out. And so we come and we wash and we worship and kneel. We weep with tears of sorrow and joy, and we wonder that through death somehow God has ended all oppression and injustice. God beat down Sin and death and freed us from their "necessary" dominion over us, and yet we still must choose and we so often choose death and our reductions over life and its infinity.
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