engaging

How Taking a Hike Can Lead to Metaphysics

May 23, 2013 by Tripp Fuller 1 Comment

I am PUMPED about this guest post by philosopher & avid hiker Leon Niemoczynski. I first connected with Leon when I read his book on Charles Peirce and then found out he was into Process thought, speculative realism, and German Idealism. On top of that I listened to him do a better job than I even imagined connecting the work of Meillassoux to Whitehead in his paper “Meillassoux’s God and Process Theism.” Any way, I think you will dig this post. After you read it comment or call-in some questions for Leon because he will be visiting the podcast soon. Now… here’s Leon!

Nature can remove us from an obsessive humanism. It can return us to a state of thinking about the world rather than about ourselves. Part of my desire to hike, therefore, is simply the desire to be removed from other human beings. In other words, while hiking, I’d genuinely rather be thinking about plants, animals, and trees than about other people. Hiking, to me, means escaping social media, escaping the internet, and escaping human social presence. Hiking is actually among the most radical forms of anthrodecentrism in that it’s an immersion into a “world without us.”

Yet, what is the world “without us?” In this question there seems to be a metaphysical issue at stake: What is the world, really, whether humans or not? Is it possible that hiking (especially in remote environments) may divulge this question’s answer?

I see these ideas not only as part of metaphysics, but as part of theology. I see these fields of query as being intertwined in their concern with ultimacy. This probably sets me apart from a large number of contemporary philosophers who do metaphysics, as most contemporary philosophers in the continental tradition simply disavow God or, at the very least, disavow the notion that world involves some intrinsic process of value creation which is not fundamentally concerned with human life. To state that the divine may not take the human to be the sole pinnacle of its creation certainly sets me at odds with a large number of other philosophical theologians that I know of. However, I do believe along with Whitehead (and others, Hartshorne among them) that other “cosmic epochs” are indeed possible, and that a true eco-theological understanding of the cosmos must take into account the reality of relations between human and non-human alike, or even more fundamentally, we must take into account how the world, nature, in its most vast and encompassing sense, shall go on once the human species is extinct.

In another way, however, what I mean by God, especially relating God to an immanentist and materialist metaphysics, one that at once speculative as much as it is naturalist, places me midstream, I think, within some of the more current debates in continental philosophy. In fact, for some 20th century metaphysicians (for example, Gilles Deleuze) arguably “God” just is this process of creative becoming. And so realism, materialism, naturalism, and theology all intersect here. And as I hope to show in my own future work, ecology or more accurately “eco-theology” – in its twin dimensions of metaphysics and value theory – must be added to this list as well. To put it another way, ecology has yet to become properly theological which is at once metaphysical.

What is metaphysics, and why may taking a hike lead to it? Metaphysics is what Whitehead calls “speculative philosophy,” it is “the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in which ever element of our experience can be interpreted.” This description sounds forbiddingly abstract. Though, on the next page of Process and Reality, Whitehead goes on to say that metaphysical principles can never “fail their exemplification.” In other words, part of the requirement for a good theory of reality is that reality actually exemplify that theory’s truth or meaning. (This is “pragmaticist” as well.)

My first book, Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (Lexington Books, 2011) stated a thesis very much in line with Whitehead’s thought mentioned above – that an adequate metaphysical picture of the world ought to evidence itself through empirical data. This data may present itself within natural events of the world (a volcano, a spider’s web, a shooting star) as much as it can within personal human experience. A tension becomes apparent in that one might ask whether or how what I am calling “God” here can be “empirically” exemplified. And so “empirical” and “exemplification” take on key roles for me, especially in such a way that, as being adequate to an empirical picture of the world, they remain part of a metaphysics which does not rely strictly upon lone human “experience” for its data within some sort of isolated “proof” (isolated as in lone subjective phenomenological experience). If anything, a community of inquiry must sort through and engage empirical data. Here the Peircean notion of a “community of inquiry” is as good as any scientific community which looks to discern the ultimate features of the world apart from one’s personal experiences of those ultimate features.

Now, it is my view that concrete sensuous elements of the world, including human experience, but not limited to it, may present the divine or divine creative becoming. In other words, it is possible that nature affords lines of insight into its own infinitely productive ground in such a way that materiality and the sensuous may indeed serve as the divine’s chief exemplification, thus the divine’s concrete and aesthetic expression. Thus the aesthetic may signify “feeling” in such a way that aesthetic value is a “sensuousness” and materiality indicative of divine process. We may account for, in a much deeper way, I think, what materiality can mean if “feeling” simply does reference “just” mere human emotion but instead references the sensuousness of the world in which we find ourselves. Indeed, tones of materiality an sich may constitute the “feeling” of the world which is of its own unique value: a non-anthrogenic value.

No one doubts that there is a non-cognitive element to the material realm in which “non-human” but still sensuous experience “appears,” but I would like to draw attention to the form of qualitative immediacy that is the natural world of which we are (but a small) part. I would conjecture that on the most fundamental or primal level, qualitative experience is present within all of the natural world and indeed constitutes it. If this is true, I would argue, that empathy or a feeling of connection – especially for creatures capable of experiencing that value – is possible even among the most primal forms of life as there is a continuity of feeling among those creatures capable of communicating and expressing, feeling and connecting.

Arguments concerning skepticism aside (“How do you know that there is information exchange among non-humans unless human beings are somehow present to detect it?”), scientifically we do understand that there are forms of consciousness other than human beings that, if not by analogy, then by their behavior alone, exhibit recognition of qualitative immediacy and “broadcast” their experience of sensuousness. This immediacy and sensuousness is present and gauged in terms of importance (Whitehead) or value, where perception of the value indicated in the material realm is crucial if a life form is to survive.

Introspectively, the feeling of sympathy (metaphysically on a wider scale I shall call this “onto-sympathy”) means that any connection, any relation, requires a kind of Fichtean negation of self, of one’s own finitude as a self in order for any semiotic exchange to take place. For A to communicate with B, A must send information to something not-A. To me, remarkably, this may also serve as a communicative foundation for a religious sense of piety as much as it can for a metaphysical foundation of communication. In other words, negation, identity, semiotic exchange, self determination, all seem to require at a minimum qualitative experience which allows first, a sense of one’s own finitude, being a self-communicating creature who relates to some other, but second, an immediacy whose elasticity stretches to meet an “other” who is not finite (whether process, Person, reality, etc.) and who is not “just” human. On my view, “materiality” understood as a sensuous aesthetic – perhaps even understood as an intensive fabric of “material aesthetic” – may thus serve as the medium upon which “feeling” (onto-sympathy) “bonds” individuals into any possible identity or contrast: the ultimate of these contrasts being finite-infinite.

The question I would like to end this short reflection with is this: If it is true that the natural world has of its own character intensive aesthetic properties, feeling tones, or is imbued with a material sensuousness that is expressed by human and non-human alike, and if this sensuous materiality may divulge divine creative becoming in its immediacy (the divine interpreted to be something like a process panentheistic God, following Whitehead), then when alone hiking is it not possible that attending to or immersing one’s self within this material sensuousness may in fact afford contrasts which open lines of insight not just into specific viewpoints of qualitative immediacy, say regarding other forms of life – plants, animals, birds, trees, etc. – but into the general character of a divine becoming, lived by all? Further, if this value is opened to us, rather than by us, could we not say, metaphysically, that this value is non-anthrogenic and essential to the creation and sustenance of life itself, the divine life included?

In a future post or article I would like to parse out how this value may not necessarily be strictly “affirmative” in character (as in the addition of some positive moral value), for there is a distinction to be made between moral value and the intrinsic value (positive or negative) of adding to or subtracting from existence. In other words, it may be possible that breaks, fissures, and disruptions, darker “tones” of melancholy or even bleakness itself may be just as informative about the most general features of the world as any other tone in question– and that, indeed, the “darker” tones of the world – of the divine – may be among the most illuminative. This is an avenue yet to be explored and continues along the lines of my research into Schelling, German romanticism & aesthetics, “speculative naturalism,” and process theories of value creation.

Filed Under: latest, philosophy, science, thinking

How (Not) to Speak about Oppression

May 22, 2013 by Stephen Keating 44 Comments

This is a guest post by Marika Rose.

If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
- Jesus

If such persons really knew oppression – knew it existentially in their guts – they would not be confused or disturbed at black rebellion. but would join black people in their fight for freedom and dignity. It is interesting that most people do understand why Jews can hate Germans. Why can they not also understand why black people, who have been deliberately and systematically murdered by the structure of this society, hate white people? The general failure of Americans to make this connection suggests that the primary difficulty is their inability to see black men as men.
- James Cone

The pedagogy of the oppressed cannot be developed or practiced by the oppressors.
- Paolo Freire

There’s a reason why Marx didn’t worry about how the proletariat could get the bourgeoisie on side, why feminists need men like fish need bicycles, and why Malcolm X didn’t spend his time trying to win over white people. But we don’t get to be neutral in the fight for liberation: there is no Switzerland of the class struggle. So what happens when we find ourselves on the wrong side of the quest for justice?

To be white, cis, heterosexual or able bodied (and so on, and so on) is to be in a position of privilege and of power. The world is on our side; the system exists for our benefit and, whether we like it or not, we are complicit in the violence it has done and will continue to do in order to ensure that we continue to benefit. It’s complicated, obviously: intersectionality doesn’t just mean that multiple forms of oppression converge on individual people but also that not very many of us are holding all of the winning cards. But we don’t get to be neutral. If we are white in a racist society, we are, by default, on the side of the oppressors. We benefit from the history of slavery and colonialism; we benefit because we are not subject to the constant undermining and aggression, the conscious and unconscious prejudice and hatred, the structural features which perpetuate racism.

We grow up in a world where most of the people we’re supposed to look up to look, well, like us. We don’t have to worry about what people will think about us if we carry a rucksack on public transport. People don’t constantly expect us to speak on behalf of all white people, and when we talk about race we can probably do so without everybody assuming that we are angry. We benefit in so many ways from our whiteness, and so whether we want those benefits or not, we don’t get to be innocent.

“Not being racist” isn’t a default state that we get to lay claim to as long as we don’t say the wrong things. It’s something to aspire to, and it entails the constant work of unpicking all of the ways in which our very identity is formed by racism. The repeated shame of realising that, for all our best intentions, we will keep getting it wrong, and the painful work of admitting what has happened when we screw it up.

Most difficult of all, I think, it is about the constant struggle to let go of the belief that the way to fix racism is for us to fix it, that the way for the oppressed to be liberated is for us to be the their liberators.

To be privileged is to have power over people that we have no right to. If that bothers us, then we need to work out what it means to let go of that power and to seek to live in solidarity with the people we are oppressing. I don’t know entirely what that looks like, but I am pretty sure that it starts with us listening: to hear from the people we are complicit in oppressing what their experience of the world is, what liberation looks like for them, and how we learn what it means to fight alongside them.

- It means that we allow them to stand in judgement on us: to recognise that we are not the excluded and the marginalised but the excluders and the marginalisers.

- It means that we need to recognise that when Jesus says “Woe to you who are rich” he is talking to us; that when Mary praises the God who casts down the mighty from their seats of power it is we who need to be unseated.

- To recognise that the hope of the gospel is also the hope that justice will be done, that what is wrong in the world will be righted; and to recognise that for us that hope ought to be terrifying because we are what is wrong with the world.

- It is to recognise that if it is dirt which is holy, we have to stop washing our hands.

Marika Rose is a PhD student at Durham University and is writing her
thesis on Žižek and apophatic theology. You can follow her
@MarikaRose

Filed Under: engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: intersectionality, Liberation, oppression

Meaningful Dialogue and Dialogue about Meaning

May 20, 2013 by Callid Keefe-Perry 13 Comments

Guest Blogger: Amy Mitchell of UnchainedFaith.com

Not long ago, I read a lively discussion among a group of fellow writers on the interpretation of Scripture and who has earned to right to explain the meaning and original context for the Bible. Two of them suggested that theological discourse must begin with specific courses of study, including language; the third disagreed. I found myself feeling uncomfortable as I scrolled through the conversation, for a number of reasons.

First, I don’t entirely disagree. My education and experience are in nursing and health science, with an emphasis on women’s and children’s wellness. It always makes me roll my eyes at least a little whenever someone tries to educate me on those topics, particularly when that person’s entire knowledge base seems to derive from either WebMD or conspiracy-theory channels. It can be just as frustrating to have a rational discussion about health as it is about the Bible for a lot of the same reasons. I can identify with believing that one should be thoroughly educated, preferably from an accredited school of [insert your area of expertise], before attempting to debate the finer points. In that sense, I recognize that I’ve been guilty of PWAD—Philosophizing without a Degree—and that makes me feel awkward.

Second, I immediately recognized something suspicious about these bloggers—they are all white men. These are people who have the luxury of not needing to defend themselves. Even women who have been to seminary often find themselves ignored or disrespected, or they have their credentials questioned whenever they offer an opinion. Among those of us who have not earned advanced degrees, most people are more likely to listen to men on matters of theology—as though we women don’t have any idea how to research a particular topic and are just making things up as we go along (or as though our entire theology is built on the concept of “story”). Some months ago, a well-known progressive Christian tweeted to me that he never reads women on matters of feminism or theology, because these women are still steeped in patriarchy and aren’t progressive enough. He refused to acknowledge that women might, in fact, be experts on women and that by ignoring us he was doing the very thing he claimed to be avoiding. In fairness, he isn’t entirely wrong; white feminist theology is fraught with problems. His solution, however—to only read the writings of men on feminism and feminist theology—is misguided at best and misogynistic at worst. The only time I’ve ever felt more marginalized was in a conservative evangelical church, and even there, at least I knew what to expect. I appreciate what these men are trying to do—bring dignity to writing on Scripture—but they shouldn’t make proclamations about who has the right without thinking deeply about what that means for people who have been underrepresented in pastoral ministry and how it comes across when white men try to interpret Scripture that addresses the personhood of people who are not they.

Third, I’m not convinced that merely having an education (or knowing Hebrew and Greek or having taken courses in Biblical Studies) is a fair way to give the stamp of approval for theological discourse. There are still plenty of pastors who make grave errors in interpretation regardless of their study. How many times in the last month alone have well-known preachers made foolish doctrinal statements? How many of us have left fundamentalist religion because we regularly heard sermons in which people were marginalized or shamed? Those pastors would likely all claim that any other reading of the text is faulty, just as more progressive pastors and theologians might claim their reading is the right one. In fact, those are two sides of the same coin; both stem from a desire to find the one, true meaning of each and every verse of the Bible. Knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and even understanding cultural context, may or may not lead to better interpretation. Instead, education becomes a weapon for both sides to use against one another—and the casualties are those of us who dwell outside those intellectual debates, most of whom just want to know how to love God and serve others.

Theology and interpretation of the Bible are important for those of us who have to navigate the divide between the teachings of the church and our study and experience of the real world. I’ve spent the better part of twenty years trying to figure out how to reconcile what I know about human anatomy, physiology, and sexuality with what the church has taught. For those of us outside the ivory tower, theology is not about needing to find the best rendering of a specific word in the Hebrew Bible or the social constructs leading to Paul’s invented phraseology. It doesn’t exist only in the spaces where one investigates the theories of atonement and weighs them against one another. Instead, it lives in the place where I need the words to explain why a certain reading of the text does more to promote than to prevent damage. I need to be able to talk about theology because it matters that my mind and my soul be united, especially when caring for people the church has ignored, shamed, and marginalized.

A better way to handle discussions about heavy topics is to extend trust to one another. Those of us in the trenches of human existence have become fearful of anyone we see as part of “the institution” of whatever we happen to dislike at the moment. It’s easy to fear pastors, just like it’s easy to fear teachers or doctors. Those of us who are or have been part of an institution may feel defensive about our position within that community and wish to hang on to our authority. It’s like Thanksgiving dinner—we tend to divide ourselves, seating one group at the adults’ table in the dining room and relegating the other to the kids’ table in the kitchen. What if now and again we all just took our plates and hung out in the living room together?

So what do you think? Can we have a conversation about what the Scriptures mean without degrees and language study? Or are we better off leaving it to the experts?

Amy Mitchell is a family woman, feminist, LGBT ally, reader, writer, and nerd. She considers herself a progressive Christian, even if that does sometimes earn her the side-eye from both directions. She likes to poke holes in conservative Christian culture and theology, but she requires copious amounts of caffeine to do it effectively. She can be found blogging at http://www.unchainedfaith.com

Filed Under: bible stuff, engaging, latest, philosophy, sermon, thinking Tagged With: Amy Mitchell, education

God Is Not Like Me

May 12, 2013 by Bo Sanders 11 Comments

I grew up in a tradition that said I should be, as much as possible, like Jesus. I get that – and I try to do so.

Yesterday at the Loft LA I had the privilege to say 3 things (among many others) about God:

God is Black (from James Cone)
She Who Is (from Elizabeth Johnson)
God is a Fag ( from Bernard Brandon Scott)

It is interesting because I am none of these three things! I am not black, a women, or homosexual. It is interesting then to present these images of a God who is very much different than I am – even as we, as a community, are being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

It is important that we acknowledge that God is not on the side of ‘the powers’ but of those in need of liberation – that it is equally as accurate and as inaccurate to call God ‘She’ and it is to call God ‘He’ – and that according to 2 Corinthians 5:21

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This is a topsy-turvey business.

Over the last 20 years of ministry I have noticed a somewhat unsettling trend that in order to be like God, I have had to move away from many of the natural strengths that ‘God gave me’.

While I love to be at center stage in the spot light with a microphone – I am fascinated with the cell group, house church, and small group model of church. As a pentecostal, I am obsessed with how the Spirit of God is at work in the People of God.

While I am a big, hairy, muscular man – I am convinced that feminist theologian are right and that Christian history does not accurately reflect the will and mind of God for the world that God loves so much (John 3:16).

While I am white guy – I am writing my dissertation on ‘White Privilege’ and hoping to confront some of the systemic racism that will not do as we move into the 21st Century.

So while I attempt to be more like God, I am very aware that God is not all that much like me.

This is an important distinction. As C.S. Lewis said in his poem “A footnote to all prayers” (it references Pheidias who was a legendary statue maker in the ancient world):

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

When we pray, we by nature blaspheme – all of us. The reality is that language , by its nature, means that words are provisional. When the Hebrew Testament speaks of God as a ‘King’ or Martin Luther writes a hymn declaring “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” … these are analogies. They are metaphors. They are temporary place holders.

Anything that we say about God is (in the apophatic sense) both illustrative and, at the same time, not exactly all that accurate. We would do well to get used to saying :

“God is like X … and that, of course, is not exactly true.”

Philippians 2 is helpful at this point. The ‘Kenotic’ Move of Christ self-emptying and descending for the purpose of service, exhorts us to not hold onto anything too tightly (clinging/grasping) but to empty our certainty and expose all of our assumptions to that which is not natural to us. Not an easy task!

If we acknowledge, then, that all language is provisional… that it is just a accurate and as inaccurate to call God she or he… that any prayer is at some level blaspheming … and that I am called to be like God – though I know that God is not exactly like me … then I can begin a kenotic journey of recognizing God while releasing God from my pre-conceived notions.

This is the dynamic journey of faith: to recognize the full moon and the new moon, the high tide and low tide, the Fall and the Spring, the ebb and the flow, the fall and the rise of all that I am familiar with and and all that I am ignorant about. That is what we talk about when we talk about God.

Rob Bell puts it this way:

When we talk about God, then, we’re talking about something very real and yet beyond our conventional means of analysis and description.

The Germans, interestingly enough, have a word for this: they call it grenzbegrifflich. Grenzbegrifflich describes that which is very real but is beyond analysis and description.

When I’m talking about God, I’m talking about your intuitive sense that reality at its deepest flows from the God who is grenzbegriff.

Bell, Rob (2013-03-12). What We Talk About When We Talk About God (Kindle Locations 767-772). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I would love your feedback and reflections.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, living, post-something, quotes, sermon, thinking Tagged With: Bernard Brandon Scott, Bible, book, books, C.S. Lewis, church, Elizabeth Johnson, feminist, gay, God, homosexual, James Cone, jesus, kenosis, Phil 2, prayer, Rob Bell, sin

TNT: Jim Wallis, the Church and the World

May 10, 2013 by Bo Sanders 10 Comments

In this episode: Tripp talks with Jim Wallis about the Common Good and being on God’s side, then Bo and Callid chat about the church and the world.

The four books that come up in this episode are:

On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good by Jim Wallis

The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen

The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas

Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective by Craig A. Carter

Let your voice be heard! Go to the ‘speak-pipe’ on the home page and let us know what you think about ‘the church and the world’ – we will use it on the TNT in 2 weeks.

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Filed Under: engaging, latest, politics, thinking, TNT

The Thing With Labels

May 2, 2013 by Bo Sanders 7 Comments

On this week’s TNT I proposed that labels can be good and helpful. They don’t need to be divisive or negative.

Now some people want to eschew labels all together. I get why they might want to do that but I find that not only a daunting task but a nearly impossible way to proceed through society and culture.

What I am suggesting is that labels are unavoidable and can be helpful – IF a couple of things are clarified.

Like labeling a Pilsner and a Pale Ale, it is necessary to know that you are getting a different product BECAUSE it has come through a different process and has different ingredients.

This is not a problem. An Episcopalian is different from a Nazarene and an Unitarian in pretty significant ways. No one balks at that.

Where this does become a problem is when

You mean the label meanly – in a pejorative way.
When you don’t use the label correctly.

Both of these came up recently in an episode that is illustrative. In Fitch and Holsclaw’s new book Prodigal Christianity:

Please keep in mind – I am not trying to start-up the argument again and thus will not link to the original posts – I am trying to talk more broadly about HOW we use labels in theological conversation.

“On the one hand, we are less than satisfied with what the “new kind of Christianity” has become. Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and others have helped us ask important questions and contributed greatly to creating a generous and compassionate Christianity, and to them we remain grateful friends. But their answers have often lacked substance on which we could live, and what goes by the name of “the emerging church” now appears to have settled into another version of mainline Christianity.”

This is a horrible couple of sentences. First, because Tony Jones rails against the mainline. Second, because as a mainline pastor (which I am) the use of that phrase is not remotely being utilized correctly.

Mainline is an expression of church. It is both a model of organization and a historic expression.

I think that what Fitch meant by it was a liberal theology. But liberal is a constellation of loyalties – a series of commitments that form and APPROACH to theology.

Now you can see the problem. The term was meant to distance the authors FROM those other 3 (McLaren, Jones, Pagitt) AND it was used incorrectly.

Pilsner and Pale Ale, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, these are labeled as such and that is not a problem. But something happens theologically when labels are assigned BY others instead of letting one self-identify and when those labels are not accurate.

____________

In a post-script, Tripp says in the TNT that he thinks something else is going on entirely. He thinks that this error is really the result of trying to say something theologically when in reality is it ethics … but you don’t want to say so!

Jones is theologically orthodox. Fitch is probably left of Jones politically (due to Zizek). Tripp think that this is really only about homosexuality but that Fitch doesn’t want to say it – so he attempted to get at it theologically and thus missed his mark, causing confusion and conflict.

_______

I would love you thoughts on this issue of labels: their utility and their misuse.

Filed Under: emergent, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: book, books, Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Fitch, Geoff Holsclaw, Holsclaw, labels, Liberal, Mainline, theology, Tony Jones

TNT: Labels – Rick Warren – Politics

May 1, 2013 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

In this Theology Nerd Throwdown, Bo and Tripp discuss labels, Rick Warren mourning publicly (and virtually) and how the issue of gun control demonstrates the broken nature of our political system.

We begin with a fun new game of defining words in 30 seconds.

If you want to follow up some of the topics covered in the Throwdown, you can click on the links below:

Labels and the potential overlap of Subverting the Norm and Missio Alliance

The difference between Progressive and Liberal also what I learned about using ‘vs.’

You can also sign up for this Summer’s high gravity book club or get the new videos of Rob Bell, Barry Taylor and Peter Rollins

Thanks to all who sponsored this episode!
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Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, TNT

Christian Social Justice and “the Common Good”?

April 30, 2013 by Deacon Bill 3 Comments

I’m a big admirer and supporter of Sojourners Magazine and its editor-in-chief Jim Wallis, who was just interviewed on the Homebrewed Christianity Culture Cast again, and just released a new book entitled On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good. Jim gets this phrase from a famous Abraham Lincoln statement. It’s been around since antiquity and perhaps finds its roots in Greek political philosophy, but does this idea of “the common good” invoke an adequate Christian social ethic?

Last week the question was raised by several Missio Alliance folks about whether Jim Wallis and Jerry Falwell are two sides of the same coin. At first I had a hard time not finding the mere suggestion of this to be ridiculous, but then I thought it nonetheless might be a good segue into a related discussion. If for further argument’s sake one grants that this is true, then I would submit that Gustavo Gutierrez and John Howard Yoder are two sides of the same coin as well (see the diagram below).

One concern is that “common good” language might just be repackaged utilitarianism or Christian realism, in the modern tradition of doing the greatest good for the greatest number. I’ve benefited significantly in recent years from the work of Hauerwasian-leaning political theologians who might say this, like William Cavanaugh or Daniel Bell Jr, whose latest book, Economy of Desire, I recommend. Here is an interview with him.

The question that always arises for folks like this seems to be something like, whose good? On whose terms? This question is one of the main reasons post-liberals and Anabaptists are reluctant to engage in politics in a formal, and what they would call, coercive manner. Their epistemological issues are varying and complex, but without getting into a discussion of the limits of language, perhaps a pithy summary of this position might be that Christians should only enter into dialogue and commerce in a Christian way and for Christian reasons. Does this preclude interreligious justice efforts or any kind of public collaboration on legislation in the public square?

In keeping with the spirit of last week’s exchanges regarding Subverting the Norm and Missio Alliance and Geoff Holsclaw’s suggestion that we talk more about differences, I’d like to try out a way of “mapping” some of those differences. In seminary I took a class with Roger Olson (Homebrewed interview here) entitled “Christian Social Justice” at the same time that I was enrolled in Marc Ellis’ (Homebrewed interview here) seminar on Liberation Theology. While Olson’s class framed the discussion generally in terms of different views on capitalism and the morality of violence, Ellis seemed to me to be more intent on organizing the class around the themes of justice and religious identity and building community vs. empire. I’ve tried to include these dimensions in the following graph:

For a brief summary of my understanding of what each quadrant represents, go here.

Kathryn Tanner is another political theologian who has influenced me. She was interviewed on Homebr ewed Christianity by Philip Clayton in 2011. Her latest research deals with what Christianity can say about the global economy in light of the hyper-financialization of international markets and the recent Great Recession. Here is something she said a few years ago in an article in the Christian Century about Christian theological and ethical responsibility today that has really stuck with me:

Enlightenment challenges to the intellectual credibility of religious ideas can no longer be taken for granted as the starting point for theological work now that theologians facing far more pressing worries than academic respectability have gained their voices here at home and around the globe.

Theologians are now primarily called to provide, not a theoretical argument for Christianity’s plausibility, but an account of how Christianity can be part of the solution, rather than simply part of the problem, on matters of great human moment that make a life-and-death difference to people, especially the poor and the oppressed.

I interpret Tanner to be saying here that, in the context and age of globalization, the proper Christian response is one that seeks to make a difference and be good news for the world and those living in it. The criteria for this “good”, and what makes it “common” appears to be something like life instead of death, and addressing the needs of our shared material existence and limitations despite other differences — be they religious, cultural, geopolitical, etc. Can this be done without sacrificing Christian character and identity? In other words, do we have to speak the same language to work toward a common ethic? Is this materiality the best “public” or “common” ground? I tend to think so.

At AAR this past November in Chicago, I got to interact with Christine Hinze and others in the ecclesiological investiations group who have attempted to offer Christian theological and ethical critiques of and responses to the financial crisis of 2008. In my paper I tried to argue that North American emergent church ecclesiology provides a good model for Christian resistance to the financialization of capital that is always threatening to privatize profits and socialize losses. After thinking about this more lately, I wondered if the above diagram couldn’t be transposed ecclesiologically (note the change from “government” on the left to “culture”):

Like the previous one, this graph is not sufficient to capture the diversity of ecclesial forms and perspectives in the North American landscape, as it doesn’t include many others such as Catholics, Pentecostals, the Eastern Orthodox Church and so on. It also fails to consider the ethnic diversity of our ecclesial context. Moreover, as we’ve seen, the labels of “emergent”, “missional”, and even “evangelical” are often more confusing than clarifying. In light of the conversation last week though, I do think this layout can be helpful.

Filed Under: emergent, engaging, politics, pomo, post-something, thinking

Do Confessional and Radical theologies need each other? More on Missio Alliance and Subverting the Norm

April 27, 2013 by Callid Keefe-Perry 3 Comments

Guest Post from Tad Delay

I. On Tuesday Bill posted a very conciliatory case for “Why Missio Alliance and Subverting the Norm need each other.” Bill and I were both at Subverting the Norm. And to be honest, I do not know much about Missio Alliance. But I’m intrigued and want to think more about this.

II. Tony Jones advised those at StN to “be loyal to this tribe” and “put less words in scare quotes. Just answer the goddamn question.” I’ve been thinking about that. The catch of course is how to determine who is in the tribe. Being part of the vituperative world that academia so often is forces you to get used to the idea that some people are brilliant comrades working toward similar goals and yet can be very difficult people. That’s easy enough to spot and work with. On the other hand, a difference of goals has a tendency to inflame tensions no matter how good our intentions are. That’s easy enough to recognize, but very difficult to work around. So how do we decide who is going toward a similar destination via different route or who has departed for a different course altogether?

III. This far-too-simplified schema is how I tend to think of Christian theologies. Each of these has a difficult time talking with either of the other two:

A) Confessional pastoral and lay theologies

This is the filler of many sermons, coffee house conversations, and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists. It is not sophisticated, but it is theology “on the ground.” You know it when you hear it. And it absolutely has to be engaged, but it is more and more difficult to dialogue with the more you learn theology.

B) Confessional academic theologies

This is the material produced by the seminaries and universities. Along with Biblical studies, academic theology is expansive, engaged with history, systematic, and (hopefully) philosophical. My assumption is that every future pastor and/or theologian makes a decision at some point in their studies about whether or not they will even try to communicate the material they are learning, because more academic theologies can feel very intimidating and threatening to parishioners who are not reading theology/philosophy. It is meant to be theology “for the church” in the roundabout way of developing coherent, esoteric systems of thought. I put Missio Alliance here. Again, I profess my ignorance of Missio Alliance, but my impression from those I’m in dialogue with tells me MA is a very confessionally Christian group.

C) Radical, political, and process theologies

This third category is theology in the aftermath of Altizer, Whitehead, Derrida, Schmitt, Badiou, Žižek, and of course the two living JCs. This group often treats theology as a void that can only be accessed by the various disciplines on the periphery. There are certainly confessional types among them (particularly within post-liberal or process types), but its also not at all uncommon to find entirely atheistic political theologies in this camp. Subverting the Norm asked a broader question about postmodern theology, but since radical theology ended up being such an important theme, I put Subverting the Norm mostly – but not entirely- here.

VI. Conservatives, liberals, and radicals see very different problems as the main point to address. The primary antagonism we select directs our energy. Sometimes disparate theologies can work together on social issues here and there, but on a long enough timeline they are driven apart because the antagonisms they mean to address are mutually incompatible.

Forgive the caricatures, but political conservatives locate a primary antagonism along lines of moral purity or cultural/religious loyalty. Liberals locate the primary antagonisms along some combination of class, race, and gender or whatever else liberals are upset about. Both liberals and conservatives tend to agree on capitalism (with minor skirmishes over neo-classical or Keynesian models), and thus we get the stereotypical similarities between platforms. Radical and/or Marxian perspectives locate the primary antagonism almost exclusively along class lines, which is why we are always complaining about capitalism. And at Subverting the Norm, there was a definite tension between liberals who wanted to talk about how to be more inclusive and radicals who think theology (no matter how inclusive) does not matter if it doesn’t occupy politics.

So can Missio Alliance and Subverting the Norm work together? I definitely hope so. I haven’t even figured out if StN’s mix of radicals and liberals can work together in the long term. But if we can be serious about exactly how confessional (or not) we expect a theology to be, and if we can isolate the antagonism(s) our theologies address, then we are at least on a path toward an answer. And that answer has implications that are much more significant than two conferences.

Tad DeLay is a PhD student in philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont Graduate University. http://taddelay.com

@taddelay

Filed Under: emergent, engaging, latest, news, post-something, thinking Tagged With: Confessional, Missio Alliance, radical, subverting the norm

Faith-Works: What’s the differance?

April 24, 2013 by Stephen Keating 8 Comments

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. –Ephesians 2.8-9

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. –James 2.26

Ah, the old faith versus works debate. Paul vs. James: cage fight! Who wins?

To be honest, it has been a while since I have given this one any thought. Once you realize that the various documents of the Scriptures were written with/regards/to/from various communities with differing problems and emphases, making them all fit together exactly isn’t so important. And yet, what if this particular “problem” shouldn’t be?

In his new book Outlaw Justice: The Messianic Politics of Paul, Ted Jennings offers a fresh reading of Romans, bringing together insights from ancient political thinkers and contemporary philosophers. In the introduction, he explains some of the choices that he had to make in translating the text.

The reading of this text that I propose here breaks with this tradition of reading Paul. The reading begins by restoring terms like “law” and “justice” to their basic political significance. So dominant has the apolitical reading of Romans become that it will be necessary to introduce a number of unfamiliar translations into this reading. In part this is neces- sary to help the reader encounter a text with fresh eyes not blinkered by the tradition. A strategy of defamiliarizing is almost always necessary to allow a fresh encounter with the text. But in this case it is even more important if the text is to be liberated from its cloying confinement in the cult like enclave of traditional religious reading. Much of this is simple substitution warranted by the text itself: Judean rather than Jewish, messiah rather than Christ, justice rather than righteousness, fidelity or loyalty rather than faith, generosity or favor rather than grace, Joshua rather than Jesus, and so on.

So next time you’re reading your Bible, try translating “faith” as fidelity. It works!

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, engaging, latest, philosophy, politics, thinking Tagged With: Ephesians, faith, fidelity, james, outlaw justice, paul, Romans, ted jennings, works

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Do Confessional and Radical theologies need each other? More on Missio Alliance and Subverting the Norm

Guest Post from Tad Delay

Faith-Works: What’s the differance?

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