The “Inverse Theology” that is referenced is from Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno.

Also referenced is the popular blog from last month “Undercover Boss” by Stephen Keating 

Here’s what happened in this week’s episode: The CEO of Diamond Resorts puts on a (really bad) disguise and pretends to be a new hire at various jobs in the company. He works alongside receptionists, plumbers, etc. At the end of the show, he reveals to the people he worked with that he’s the CEO and then he gives the workers that he worked alongside a big bonus, like paying off their mortgage or a new truck. Super generous of him right!? I don’t think so, and here’s how Karl Marx showed me why:

Ok, let’s look at the idea of work more generally first. If we look around we can see that in every society there are people that work and people that don’t work (this isn’t necessarily bad, some of the people that don’t work are children, the elderly, etc.). In order to take care of the people that don’t work, the workers have to produce more than they need for themselves. The word that Marx used for that “more” is “surplus.” Surplus is the extra stuff that the workers produce that goes to take care of needs/wants that are not their own. 

For example: let’s say I have a small shoemaking business and at home I have a baby. In order to take care of the baby (who obviously can’t work), I have to make some shoes to sell to take care of myself and I have to keep making more shoes so that I can take care of my baby. Part of the money that I make from my labor of making shoes goes to me and part of it goes to my baby. Any of the money that comes from my labor that doesn’t go to me is called surplus (obviously, the surplus that goes to my baby is good!).

In the shoemaker example, I make the shoes and I choose to make extra shoes (in Marxist terms: I choose to produce surplus) so that I can take care of my baby. Notice, and this is key: As self-employed person, I’m in charge of my own surplus. 

Now, let’s say that I apply for a job at McDonald’s. Like everyone else, I want to “get paid what I’m worth!” But here’s the rub: we all know that McDonald’s will only pay me $10/hour as long as I am producing more than $10/hour worth of Big Macs to sell. If McDonald’s doesn’t make more than $10 off of my labor, then I’ll get laid off. This is true in all businesses that are organized in what Marx called a capitalist business structure. In other words: in a capitalist business, the worker does not get all the surplus from their labor. Capitalism is not a way of organizing government, it’s a way of organizing labor relationships in a business.

So McDonald’s makes money off of my labor, i.e., they get to keep part of my surplus and I have no say in what happens to it. Marx called this “exploitation.” Now, stick with me because it sounds inflammatory, but all it means is that in capitalism, the worker does not have control of their surplus. The caplitalist business keeps the worker’s surplus. It doesn’t matter if the worker is aware of this, or if you have a really nice boss with good intentions that pays you the “market rate.” It simply means that the worker doesn’t have any say over the surplus of their labor. In US corporations, it is the board of directors who decide what happens to the surplus (keep in mind the workers have no say in electing the board!). Thus, in capitalism, there is a built-in tension between the workers and the people who get the surplus. They must continually argue about how much or how little of the worker’s surplus that the owners keep. For example, every time you ask for a raise, you’re in essence asking to keep more of the surplus from your labor.

“The poll, published Wednesday, found that while Americans overall tend to oppose socialism by a strong margin — 60 percent say they have a negative view of it, versus just 31 percent who say they have a positive view — socialism has more fans than opponents among the 18-29 crowd. Forty-nine percent of people in that age bracket say they have a positive view of socialism; only 43 percent say they have a negative view.”

So ‘socialism’ being popular among young Americans doesn’t mean they have any clue what it means.  Surely some do but I think it may be the fact that for most young Americans we know our lives – regardless of our hard work – will not as a whole be as good or better than our parents.  So if ‘socialism’ is the word for a different way of organizing our economic relationships as a country why not say ‘positive’ when asked because ‘capitalism’ has broken the promise of the American dream.

 Perhaps another reason ‘socialism’ is growing in popularity is thanks to our growing outlandish political Right in the country.  I thought of this when a high school student told me he was a socialist and I said “What? Do you have any idea what that means or would mean for your family?”  He said, “Yeah, you want college to be affordable, healthcare available to all, and to go back to Clinton era taxes.  I mean that’s why everyone is upset at Obama and he’s a socialist.”  What if our hyper-polarizing rhetoric in America and in particular the socialist name calling on the Right is actually making an audience for the very idea they abhor?

Two theological asides.

1) If you look at just the poor and non-white stats our country is significantly critical of capitalism.  Should those on the underside of our system get a hearing from the church about the effects of our system on their lives and family?

2) ‘Progressive‘ is way more popular than ‘Liberal.’

Public reactions to the word progressive are far more favorable than to the word liberal; two-thirds have a positive reaction to the former compared with just half for the latter. There is very little difference among Democrats – who view both terms favorably.  The largest difference is among Republicans most (55%) of whom have a positive reaction to the word progressive, and a negative (70%) reaction to the word liberal. (link)

Does that mean liberal Christians should use progressive?  And why didn’t they ask about ‘Incarnational Christians?’

Marc Ellis is widely regarded as a prophetic voice and an original thinker. He is a Professor of History at Baylor University and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. He has authored many books including:

• Encountering the Jewish Future
• Judiasm does not equal Israel: the Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic  
• Toward a Jewish Liberation Theology
• Practicing Exile 

He is also under a cloud of controversy right now! Please go to this website:  https://www.change.org/petitions/ken-starr-president-of-baylor-university-stop-persecution-against-prof-marc-ellis and sign the petition to protect his job and his right to speak freely! 

 A few weeks ago Joerg Rieger cautioned about a type of Christianity that was a cheerleader for the system, that reinforced the status quo, and participated in society in way that strengthened Empire.

I have said before I come from a background where this type of thinking is not just disorienting but alienating. The focus is on individuals – with little mention of anything systemic. The goal is the salvation of souls for the afterlife – with no address of collective issues.

It was reading Walter Wink  “the Powers the Be” that radically impacted the way I could see this. I have since encountered other writings and teachers who have opened the subject even further.

Now, it is odd to look at the central figure of our faith and ask how did Jesus ever get portrayed as a guy who basically told people to be nice and obey the rules? Cornell West would talk about him be sanitized, deodorized, and neutralized. Someone else might call this being a chaplain to the empire.

Tripp and I have a theme that shows up in our personal conversations on a fairly regular basis. It revolves around the idea that variable X or Y may be changed or tweaked, but the outcome of the equation is never in doubt. A specific issue may be protested, but the machine itself in never in danger. Certain areas can be challenged or  even overhauled, but the system itself is never in jeopardy.

This is not limited to Empire. It goes beyond hegemony. It is not limited to Capitalism.

The powers that be, or the system, or the machine (as you prefer) is an omnibus. It can absorb – incorporate – and co-op any variation, deviation, or even challenge … and in the end the structure is nearly unchanged. The system is never in danger. The machine doesn’t even slow down. The Powers are never in jeopardy. It eats new ideas with barely a burp – let alone beginning to buckle.

 We could talk about an anarchist musical band that signs a record contract, or a retail store that sells Buddhist trinkets from ‘the far east’, or a seminar on Native American spirituality that meets in a university classroom… but I don’t want to get sidelined.  

Benjamin Barber in his book Jihad vs. McWorld talks about the market in such a way that sketched a picture (for me) of a machine that needs to be fueled by new authentic-indigenous expressions, otherwise it runs dry and burns out on it’s own the boredom of its generic repetitions and knock-offs.

“McWorld cannot then do without Jihad: it needs cultural parochialism to feed its endless appetites. Yet neither can Jihad do without that world: for where would culture be without a commercial producers who market it and the information and communication systems that make it known?”  

We have talked with Joerge Rieger (ep. 116) about a theological look at global economics. We have talked with Graham E. Fuller (ep. 117) about a historical perspective on East-West relations.

I am curious about the theological address of some revolutionary response to the machine. We talk about Jesus and Empire. We talk about the Constantinian compromise. We have the Hauerwasian response that gets interpreted as withdrawal & testimony. Cornell West wants us to be Prophetic.

What is the theological answer to the question that the machine is asking? Certainly, like Tripp is fond of saying, we have to be about more than a slightly kinder gentler empire. Jesus challenged the status quo of his day – economic, militaristic, racial, gender, and religious. How does a follower of Jesus address a system of oppression, domination, invasion and economic disparity?  Thoughts?

Rieger is the Wendland-Cook Endowed Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology (SMU), prolific author, regular speaker, motorcycle enthusiast, and just plain awesome dude.  In the podcast we discuss the relationship of politics, power, the economy, and our present crisis from a theological and biblical perspective.  We move from the abstract to the practical and along the way I hope it’s clear we both had a good bit of fun.

 Join Us @Soularize Oct 18-20!

Rieger is author of many books including:

No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future  (Kindle $9.99)

Christ & Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times

and Globalization and Theology ($8.80 Kindle, $9.80 paperback)

Check out his amazing website for great resources!

Thanks to Ellie Haugsby at the Chautauquan Daily for the sweet pic of Rieger in action.

The New York Times just published a storyabout a cadre of Bishops  in Alabama suing the state over the passage of a new and tough immigration law. They (rightly) claim that this law is so ambiguously written that it could disallow them the right to act toward immigrants as they claim Christians are commanded: as good Samaritans. I don’t pretend to know what the right answer for immigration reform is in the US; I tend to think that the way that each side often looks at the current issue is, on the right, xenophobic and, on the left, unsustainable. However, I’m not trying to conjure another simplistic debate one way or the other in this post. (I’m implicating my above views in this st

atement.) What I would like to say is that I’m in complete solidarity with my own Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, and the Roman Catholic Church of Alabama on this matter and that they and their suit will be in my prayers.

Perhaps more importantly from a theological-political level, however, the issue raises for me the importance of the separation of Church and State in the U.S. and the tension that exists between the ultimate allegences of each institution. On the one hand, the Church stands always and forever for a Kingdom that we cannot bring but must do our best to imitate in the here and now; they are right to see this as a “Kingdom issue,” for lack of a better term. In this Kingdom, there is neither Jew or Greek, man or woman. All tribalisms die. On the other hand, the State necessarily stands for the collective interests of its people, protecting them and their material and legal well-being first. (I’m not claiming that’s what the State of Alabama is actually doing, by the way; I’d probably believe just the opposite. I won’t doubt that the State is trying to protect its citizens, however.) This means the state is a tribal formation grounded in the idea of common-law and heritage.

However these tensions between Church and State ought to play themselves out within individuals and institutions, the beauty of this particular issue is how it exemplifies the impossibility of the situation: that these two institutions do and will butt heads. If they don’t, one of the two institutions is doing something wrong!

Over the last few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important and dangerous issue we face as a society is education. There are multiple reasons for this, but perhaps the most compelling is that there is no difference between education and democracy.  What I mean by that is the same thing that educational philosopher John Dewey argued in his seminal work ‘Democracy and Education’ – which is that the major aim of education should be to promote self-aware, critical thinkers who understand their interdependence with and responsibility to the society in which they live.

If you believe the major premise of Dewey’s argument – that democracy and education are so intertwined they literally cannot be separated – then it is immediately obvious why a vibrant education is the most important thing in the country. More important, even, than national defense, the economic outlook, etc…

Now the tragedy is that our current educational discourse presents two equally terrible options: either our legislators are silent on the issue of education (i.e. they just don’t care), or they are vocal and hold a terribly mistaken understanding of what education is, and its goals. I believe that, unless the current trajectory of education is changed, it will ultimately collapse our already thinning democracy. I’m quite serious about this.

In a nutshell, neoliberalism is the idea that everything in society should be measured by a market-driven approach. It assumes not only are those with ‘business experience’ more capable and qualified to oversee any system of policymaking or administration, but that all things essentially boil down to business analytics and standards.

I don’t want to harp on this point too much, but the short version of the story is this: this assumption is not only dead wrong, it going to end up destroying our democracy and our way of life. It is fueled by a McCarthy-era fear of economic globalization, meaning that the US will no longer be the economic bully it once was. It is grounded in a number of hugely mistaken philosophical ideas about the nature of human existence, knowing and learning (which I don’t bore you with, but will happy to discuss at a later date). It has made itself manifest across all sectors of society, but the one I, personally, most interested in is education for the aforementioned reasons.

What it’s meant in terms of education is the absolutely ludicrous claim that the ultimate aim of education is economics. It extends this premise into the argument that business methods and mindsets (based on a completely naive understanding of knowing, teaching and learning) are best suited to the education system: training models, comparable performance measures, efficiencies of scale, standardization. Viola! Education has now become big business.(FYI: Obama’s policies on education are more destructive and terrifying than George W. Bush’s)

This neoliberal disease has reached near fever pitch. Here’s a good example: the Wake County School System (traditionally considered a model of public education in moderately urban environments) hired retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata to run its system. His credentials? A 12-month training program at a big business education training facility. In any other field, this would be considered absolute lunacy. Could you imagine taking a one-year course in medicine and then being hired to run Duke Medical Center? Well, the people of Wake County decided that was not only acceptable, it was preferable to alternatives like, say, taking the best a brightest in the field of education as a leader for the system.

“The Market As God” by Harvey Cox

I personally think, however, that the whole debate is smitten with a series of category mistakes, which I’d like to  address. I’ll begin by  briefly reconstructing two of the more audacious positions on the matter. First via atheistic evolutionary-biologists, evolution is taken not only to be a true account of human biology, but it is taken to absolutely negate the factual existence of God based on the fact that God is not necessary for evolution. Second, and via creationists, evolution is taken to be untrue precisely because it negates the factual existence of God, the Bibilical accounts of which must be given precedence as that are incommensurate with a evolutionary world. These debates, then, make two category mistakes.

First, God is not, I don’t think, an object among other objects or a “fact” among other “facts,” as I use the term above. That is, if one looks around the room, one has an experience of different objects in the room; one experiences the chairs, knowing in these experiences the functionality and usefulness of the chairs; one experiences the cushions under one’s bottoms, understanding that without them, one would sit on something far more hard. But one does not have an experience of God in this way precisely because God’s being is absolutely distinct from those empirical objects that give themselves over to our perceptions in their uses and qualities.

God, rather, is “invisible,” as the old term goes, which cannot be taken to mean, again, an object in the room that’s unseen, but something utterly different than objects that surround us. That is, when we talk of God, I don’t believe we talk about a direct experience but about what could be called a re-orientation of our experiences. That is, we are addressed by that which is completely other than ourselves in such a way that our previous ways of experiencing are brought into question and formed anew. Paul calls this new experience of the world given by God an experience of the world in terms of faith, hope, and love. I take this to mean that we can no longer experience the world solely in terms of its usefulness for us, especially other people, but in terms of what God intended and intends for it—that what is now the case need not always be so!

In this way, it is silly to try and attest to God’s being by way of factuality and as a fact among other facts. This is a categorically mistaken way of thinking about God’s being, which cannot be proved or disproved as such.

Second, what evolution has more precisely to do with God depends entirely on whether one already stands conscientiously re-oriented within the being of God and, thus, how one interprets the meaning of any worldly fact, including evolution. That is, both sides are wrong to think that evolution says anything necessary about God prior to a belief in God. Rather, one can only interpret the meaning of evolution based on one’s assumption that there is or is not a God. Thus, Christians, for instance, can and do not only affirm the factuality of evolution but can also very specifically interpret evolution as God’s working out of salvation history! Atheists, likewise, can see that, by means of evolution, we do not need to posit a God, which they are absolutely right about even in Christian terms; after all, God is always a gift and never a necessity, which is why the language of emanation has been dropped for the language of grace.

The truth of the matter, then, is that evolution can (and does) stand as a factually demonstrable way to interpret the so called natural history of humanity and the earth while, at the same time, saying absolutely nothing necessary about God, especially in terms of God being interpreted as a fact among other facts. Either way, one can rightly affirm the factuality of evolutionary processes, which really shouldn’t be up for debate.

The only matters that ought to be up for debate are evolution’s interpretive possibilities.

I was talking to an adult member of my church yesterday about the fight over the debt limit.  At some point I said “well God has already taken sides and I am not sure it is being voiced.”  I went on to say I have no divinely ordained policy prescriptions but scripture is clear descriptively about what God celebrates and abhors in a nation.  The conversation was a bunch of fun and at the end of my Baptist Bible-flippin tour of justice she said, “Wow I had no idea. You should preach that sometime.”  After that I decided I should at least post a blog and say explicitly….God takes sides.

God takes the side of the oppressed, marginalized, impoverished and excluded. God is for them.  God is also against the oppressors, violators, full and power wielders.  Pharaoh knows this to be the case, the Prophets proclaimed, and Jesus’ Mom put it to song.  A little attention to scripture and one quickly sees that the actual material reality of people is a preoccupation of God.  In fact God did not mind legislating the redistribution of land, forgiveness of debt, and imposing upon Israel’s elite the necessity of a social safety net.  There was even this dude named Jesus who told a crazy parable about God judging nations for failing to take these national obligations seriously while getting the religious vocabulary correct.

I know we don’t like the idea of God taking sides.  It gets most people who go to most churches mad, at least in America, because we know we are likely among the most full, wealthy, and powerful people this planet has ever seen.  Yet the church and its leaders often edit, soft pedal, and nuance their way around these divine calls for material transformation.  People like me are scared to say something because we know we usually suck at changing our own patterns and feel powerless to change the suicidal system we were born into but for those who spend their life studying the Christian faith this call is pretty clear.

Now I could go on a good rant now about how the present economic showdown demonstrates how economism has become the one true religion of the state that binds both political parties together or how the American church is so impotent that demonstrating less regard for the poor is a means to securing their support….but then I might get out of hand fast. So instead here are two quotes from the 20th century’s most famous orthodox theologians….not progressive, liberal, social gospelers, feminist, or liberation theologians….Barth and Bonhoeffer were not interested in those games, loved some Trinity, didn’t need to put a word between Jesus Christ (ex. Jesus as the Christ), and had no trouble lecturing on eschatology.  Hope you get the idea – the 20th century’s orthodox articulators knew the God of Israel who was incarnate in Jesus took sides and I think they could help us out today…..and of course they can’t get run out of town.

God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it….The Command of God is a call for the championing of the weak against every kind of encroachment on the part of the strong. – Karl Barth

Bonhoeffer here describes the place from which the church should examine and assess a situation, the place from which one can come to see reality as a Christian…

It remains an experience of unmatched value that we have learned to see the great events of history from the underside, from the perspective of the eliminated, the suspect, the abused, the powerless, the oppressed, and the ridiculed, in short, from the perspective of the suffering.

How would our present economic impasse and the conflict and conversations around it be different if this divine command was on our hearts?  How would the budget negotiations, taxes, spending, and debt appear from the perspective of America’s underside?

What would it take for the church and its leaders to admit we really to suck at being faithful both in our own material existence and in our fidelity to God’s dream for the world in our church leadership?

Really, the only part that lost me was Stewart’s concluding speech. It wasn’t bad, and I had no particular problem with what he said, except maybe that I think he and a lot of left-leaning individuals tend to underestimate a lot of peoples’ motivations for being “unreasonable” in the first place. Rather, it was the fact that he gave the speech at all. I kind of imagined it like this: Maya Angelou recites one of her beautiful poems as only she can do, only to be immediately followed on stage by an interpreter who then tries to explain the poem. They had already accomplished what they needed to accomplish…which was what?

To join the swaths of pundits, what I thought and hoped Stewart and Colbert needed to accomplish was a break in contemporary political discourse; they needed to offer a stop, like a dam to a river, to the torrent of commentators that keep mouthing and jawing in the 24 hour news cycle. In this regard, I thought comedy a perfect apparatus to do such; comedy can take people off guard, allow what is seemingly sensible to be seen as less sensible under a new light. Take, for instance, the late Mitch Hedberg’s line, “Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.” The statement takes a perfectly normal (and delicious) food and just sort of sees through it, breaks our previous relationship with it. I think that’s what I wanted and partially received from Stewart and Colbert.

This idea, however, got me thinking that maybe what I expected of Stewart and Colbert was not necessarily their job at all. I say this because I wonder if such explicit disruption isn’t one of jobs of the Church? As a Christian, I take it as a given that Jesus of Nazareth was united to God as God’s revelatory self-expression, enough so that Jesus as a person was definitively divine—nothing particularly new, here. I also take it that, in the New Testament witness of Jesus, we can, among other things, understand Jesus as a moral example without reducing him to one—again, nothing new here. Among the seemingly infinite lessons to learn from this God-man, then, was that he was constantly disruptive: from reinterpreting his own scriptures, telling his mother whom his “real” brothers and sisters are, expressing parabolic ideas about the kingdom of God, performing miracles, driving the money-changers from the Temple, to his taking on the cross and resurrecting. In fact, these latter two disruptions (the cross and the resurrection), Paul interprets as having disrupted the greatest scourge of creation death itself. The Gospel is at least, then, a Gospel of God’s disruption in this world, in almost all aspects of what it means to be a world.

To push this point further, it seems to me, in fact, that many influential church leaders have taken just such a clue from the Gospel. Martin Luther-King Jr. comes immediately to mind, whose disruptive voice helped to usher in civil rights legislation in the U.S., for instance. Or, take again, Martin Luther who, love him or hate him, ushered a poignant critique against the corruption of the Church of his day while reinterpreting one of the core tenants of Christian belief, Justification; or take again Thomas Aquinas, whose brilliant synthesis of Aristotle and Augustine made the church leaders of his day definitively uncomfortable, to the point that he was accused of and had to defend himself against heresy; the list could go on.

Perhaps we can take something from both the original disruption and the exemplary repetitions of this disruption, even if only imperfectly, as each situation demands, and without having to believe that any disruption we enact is even as terribly effective or as important as our predecessors’. In other words, if God has broken into and interrupted our lives for the better, couldn’t we at least attempt, even if we utterly failure, to do the same in any number of our contemporary situations and regarding any number of contemporary issues?

Maybe, then, the U.S. Church could stand on the coattails of Stewart and Colbert, who, attempting to explicitly do so or not, have brought at least a partial disruption to U.S. political dialogue, especially the provocateurs who inhibit if not only from developing but beginning at all. The Church need not address or stand for any particular standpoint in this case; it really might need to just stand as the Church at all, disrupting the situation as it stands

At any rate, taking a cue from Stewart and Colbert, I’d love for churches from around the U.S. to also hold a rally in D.C. at the mall under a banner of something like “Rally to Eat Nachos.” It’s neither overtly Christian nor particularly political, but it need not be; as Saint Francis tells us in what I think are mutually interpreting statements: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love” and “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” Even if such a rally didn’t directly do terribly much, it would be both funny and very disruptive in its own Christian way. By offering, if not for only a couple hours, what is basically a big church picnic on the steps of the capital (one where we eat the greatest food that God offers to creation), such a rally might continue to offer just enough of a break in the current political situation to ripple its way through the political atmosphere. It would be a subtle but perhaps poignant protest against the altogether absurdity of our current political climate. Such a rally doesn’t fix the economic outlook or directly help the many individuals and families currently in despair (which, of course, we ought to be doing, too), but maybe it’s a piece of a larger pie that can help instigate dialogue that can more definitively help.

At the American Academy of Religion I was able to join LeRon Shults, Philip Clayton, and Stephen Knapp for a discussion about how theology finds traction in the world.  Other than being slightly out of place being paired with these three theological super stars, I believe something happened that was worth sharing.  Enjoy!

HT: Transforming Theology

On ‘townhall.com’ Chuck posted a little editorial on the health care debate titled ‘What if Mother Mary Had Obamacare?’  Now that is an interesting question.  I am sure that Chuck, a public figure very forward about his Christian faith, would not use the pregnancy of Mary, the Mother of God, as a political tool… I might be wrong.  Chucky writes,

Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington’s wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

Here’s my guess about what would have happened.  Mary would still have been ‘highly favored by God.’  This is a statement about Mary’s character. So I imagine upon hearing that she was to be the Mother of one who would ‘reign over the house of Jacob for ever,  whose kingdom there will be no end, be born Holy, and be called Son of God,’ she would not say ‘that sounds nice Gabriel but this doesn’t really fit my life plan.’  I bet she would still respond by saying ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ God didn’t pick Mary randomly.  God didn’t force her into the deal.  Christians have long affirmed that God gifted her with a singularly unique role in God’s redemptive work in history and is to be an example of the faith for us today.

I know the Texas Ranger is scared of Obama’s political power, but I don’t think he needs to worry about Obama orchestrating the abortion of God. What concerns me the most is that it was OK for him to be so haphazard with Mary, her character, and the Bible just to score a point for his ‘townhall’ team.  I am not saying Mary does not do things that can have political consequences, but this application seems ridiculous.  Mary was the type of woman, like her Son, who remains faithful to God regardless of the situation.  To suggest otherwise is to go against the Bible’s testimony to her character.

Now as for Mary’s real political statement, her song for God’s justice (Luke 1:45-55).  This one was applicable for Herod and calls Obama and the rest of us to respond today.  Scot McKnight comments on this passage….

What was God about to do through Mary’s son? Here are the five main points:
*    Scatter the proud
*    Strip rulers from their unjust thrones
*    Stand the humble up with confidence
*    Satisfy the hungry with food
*    Send the rich away empty

Which means these are the problems:
*    Pride
*    Unjust rulers and injustice
*    Oppression of the humble
*    Hunger
*    Oppression by the rich through accumulation

You can all draw your own conclusions, but for me I can’t imagine Mary loosing her faithfulness because more people are getting health care.

* Check out this related post over at 220 South ‘Chuck Norris Kicks Logic in the Face’

I’d like to eventually add some commentary on the whole conference, especially Taylor and Habermas’ ideas.  Other than a couple introductory comments below, I’d say simply listen to these people for yourself.  I personally think that, as always, Charles Taylor and Cornel West are the most immediately accessible speakers, so perhaps listen to them first.

With regard to Taylor (always my favorite on this subject), he especially is interested in re-defining secularization.  He wants to forget about that understanding of the concept that holds that secularization is an, if not the, anti-religion.  Rather, as a good Democratic ethicist, he’s interested in breaking the external control of any power-structure, including anti-religions, and trying to give persons the rights and abilities to think by themselves for the common good.  This last point is especially important, not necessarily for this particular conversation, but for Taylor in general; his dedication to the common good and what it means to live the good life separate him always from the rest of the Democratic pack.

‘Is capitalism a sin?’ I go on to ask, ‘Would Jesus be a capitalist?’ Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the 95 percent under them combined?

All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what’s left for everyone to fight over. Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven. He told us that we had to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you’d have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.

Here’s an interview where Moore discusses his own religious convictions a bit more.  Personally I am not sure that ‘capitalism’ in general should be the target, but the particular form we currently have.  Well I’ll talk about that more later.  Any one seen the movie?  What did you think of the article?

healthcare.’

The demise of the functionalist understanding of religiosity has undermined the notion of state churches, which are mostly cultural museums for the culture at large in the states who still have them (France and England, for instance); and it has also undermined the notion of the American denominations, all which used to have some sort of preferenced say on moral…not legal…issues in the U.S. (again, I wrote about this in the previous blog).  This latter point is especially pertinent for us.  As I already talked about, persons such as Reinhold Niebuhr…who was once a pastor in Detroit, president of Union Theological Seminary, and in many ways a national Christian theologian and commentator…had moral authority within the United States really up through the 60s; and these “public theologians” had a say not merely within a specific church demographic, such as a Rick Warren does, but in the society as a whole…as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. points out in this article.

What I have said this demise of functionalism (and thus denominationalism) has caused is a sense that the church is no longer necessary to the social order.  Whether the churched readers like this statement or not, the social order as it stands no longer recognizes the church as having a genuine role in the moral governance of the country.  And because the general social order lacks this recognition, there is, metaphorically speaking, no room for the church to speak up as a church in the contemporary debates. In many parts of this country (certainly not all), to speak as a church, as a Christian, means nothing whatsoever; it’s about the equivalent of standing up at a town hall meeting and saying, just prior to speaking one’s mind on the issue at hand, that “I prefer to wear only one sock to bed at night.”  While this person might find their single-sockedness an important point of identification thought ought to buy them public respect, no one else cares.  In the same way, no matter how dear the church holds its own identity, it no longer holds any moral authority in the public eye.

I need to briefly take a step back here in order to, perhaps, more clearly define just what this social order is that I’m talking about.  In the U.S. and in other countries that have sought with varying degrees of success to promote civil rights, there exists, in many ways, no direct “common good.” In other words, there is no direct economic, political, or moral goal that the government seeks except the civil liberties of the people.  This statement is no doubt an ideal statement.  Of course the government gets involved in issues beyond the protection of civil liberties and often oversteps the bounds it set for itself, but usually only justifiably for the sake of the preservation of the conditions that allow its population to flourish as free individuals, that is, as individuals with civil liberties.  So there are city, state, and federal highways that allow us to visit one another and provide an economic infrastructure for us to create materials through which we live; there is a military to protect our way of living; and there ought (in my not so humble opinion) to be health care to protect our common health.  What the government does and does not get involved in is decided, however, not by the governing bodies and politicians themselves (another ideal statement), but by the people (or lobbying groups) whom they represent.  This means that the direction of the country’s governance is supposedly defined by the people, legislated by the politicians, and promulgated by the courts.

The U.S. democracy is supposed to be one for, by, and of the people.  Being “of” the people and what that means is important.  What it means is that there is a general sphere of civil dialogue (and I mean “civil” legally, not morally, as recent town hall protestors have shown) in the country.  There is a public debate taking place through newspapers, town hall meetings, and now the internet through which a series of public opinions are formed and developed , helping to set the trajectory of our legislative priorities as a country. This dialogue is, in many ways, a negotiating table at which many corporations, think tanks, unions, etc. have a say (it’s something like the U.N.’s Security Council, only more dysfunctional).  These various groups hammer out their agreements and disagreements, trying to sway public opinion to their side, and thus political actors to their side.

It is in this context that I say the moral authority of the church is gone. In other words, I am saying that our seat at the negotiating table has been taken away by the public at large, and that we’re now left in the waiting room.  And this is the precise reason we not only don’t, but really can’t, say anything about contemporary debates as a church and be taken seriously by our secular contemporaries.  So it is good that the UCC stands for single-payer health care, and (in my opinion) it should; but no one in the populace beyond the church cares.  I should also add as a bit of an aside for now that we may not like this status, but we ought not feel too terrible about it either.  Not only might it be a good thing at the end of the day, but also we’re not the only “organization” that has suffered this loss of prestige.  Without trying to figure out the previous century’s political players, what I can say is that economic pseudo-prophets (also known as economists) and “scientists” (a term that unfortunately has very little definite meaning anymore) have begun to hog most of the seats at the moral and legal negotiating table, making for one of the many issues that I will soon try to deal with in future blog posts.

So what can the church do?  I will not try to say what the mission of the church is other than to say that the church is, religiously speaking, Christ’s breath in the Holy Spirit into this world.  So, whatever we believe that means, we must first acknowledge that we gain our value-systems from precisely this point.  Our faith very much defines who we are, the diversity of questions and concerns that we have, and the various ways our respective churches see them through and act on them.  We ought to continue to let this sense of divine breath drive our value-systems while simultaneously acknowledging that most of the rest of the social order thinks we’re pointless, at least for now. And, in light of the loss of our place of moral preeminence, we might think of reengaging the world on two points.

For one,  like Chevy and Chrysler, we need to rebrand. We need to show (to use somewhat crass terms) that the product we purport to give is as good if not better than any competitor’s.  Thus, in the long term, we ought to stand as the church as a loving example of Christ, whatever that might be interpreted to mean; we ought to stand  in such a way that we might at least buy back a place of prophetic significance with some of the negotiators at the negotiating table.  Whether we will ever again have a seat at the table itself may neither be possible nor desired.  But that’s a question for a different day.

Secondly, and in the short term (which I’m more interested in right now) we ought to allow our value structures to inform our beliefs, but translate those beliefs into the most rationally and rhetorically compelling arguments that we can. We ought to try to influence public opinion in its own terminology while finding the core of our values in the breath of Christ.  Thus by “rationally and rhetorically compelling,” I think we must acknowledge that the language of the church does not hold; rather, the values issuing forth from the faith must be argued for in such a way that the public at large might see them as good.  I will try to provide some examples in the blogs to come as to how we might do this, precisely through the socio-economic and political terms generated in the modern secularizing movements.  In other words, for all the hurt secularization might be perceived to have cause the church, I will show why it might be a good thing and how certain trends in it might be used by the church to the social-order’s advantage, even on issues such as the contemporary health care debate.

We just sent out a national alert today. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, introduced by Reps. Waxman and Markey, will put a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and create millions of green jobs here in the U.S. It is a crucial step toward an environmentally and financially sustainable economy. We will not be able to prevent global warming and protect life on the planet unless we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. We can’t accomplish this dramatic feat by only making changes in our personal lives, as important as these changes are. We need this bill. We’ve got to put pressure on Congress to pass it. Especially those of us in the religious community who support it need to be heard, because you can believe that they are hearing from the opposition.

How do we make our voices heard?

You can go to Interfaith Power & Light’s Action Center right now and spend a few seconds sending a message directly to your representative. Also, you can sign up for our action alerts to get updates on this legislation.

Here is the message that we sent out from IPL’s founder, the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham:

Dear Supporter,

With the introduction of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) in the House of Representatives, we are very close to the clean energy revolution that we have been working and praying for. In order to get to the finish line we need to increase our efforts to push this legislation through in its strongest form.

The bill has faced an onslaught of attacks by interest groups trying to weaken it at every turn. But the faith community has been calling on Congress to do the right thing. On May 6, 50 IPL state leaders descended on the Capitol to deliver our message of support for strong and fair climate legislation. In addition, IPLs in five key states ran ads in local newspapers urging fence-sitting Congressmembers to pass the bill out of committee.

The bill is now almost to the House floor, and we are inviting you to contact your representatives. We know they are hearing from the opposition, which is generating thousands of calls and letters. Now more than ever, we must make sure the voice of the faith community is heard loud and clear! Don’t forget to mention the moral obligation that every one of us has to leave a healthy future for the least among us and the people that come after us.

Yes, I will tell my representative that global warming is a moral issue and we must pass effective and equitable climate policy this year!

Keep the Faith,

The Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham

P.S. Please forward this message to your friends!

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