zizek

Maybe the Mayans Weren’t Wrong

January 14, 2013 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

In all of the hub-bub surrounding the Mayan apocalypse that came and went without incident, it was tough to resist the funny one-liner on Facebook and Twitter. We have become so calloused against the doomsday predictions that have fueled the religious airwaves, TV broadcasts and book sales of the last 30 years.

I get that. I came to faith during the cold-war in the heyday of characters like Hal Lidsay, Harold Camping and the Left-Behind phenomenon. Y2K was a bust and everyone was holding on for the December 2012 end of the Mayan calendar. But I’m afraid that in our hurry to make funny quips we may have missed something important:

This actually could be the end of time.

It is similar the snark-fest regarding the Hostess bankruptcy and the end of Ding-Dongs and Twinkies. Lost in all of the jokes was the reality of unjust labor practices by the cooperate execs of Hostess who, even at the end when massive layoffs could have been averted, continued to pay themselves ridiculous salaries and bonuses.

Hostess stole money from it’s workers pensions to use for things like operations – the whole while paying millions of dollars in bonuses to it’s 19 executives who were leading it into bankruptcy.

We didn’t address the illegal, and unjust practices of the mis-management, I suspect, because there were just too many jokes to be made about Twinkies.

It appears that a similar scenario has blinded us to the reality of the Mayan calendar.

Never mind that the Mayans didn’t predict an end-of-the-world on the actual day – only that the calendar ended.
Never mind how the ancient people may have conceived of the cyclical nature of time.
Never mind the odd fascination that descendants of European colonist have with indigenous artifacts from a genocidally exterminated people.

Jokes about the Mayans provided too many punchlines.

The Mayans were made a joke.

But, like the Hostess bankruptcy, I wonder if a much bigger issue was ignored in the flurry of Facebook snark and apocalyptic themed parties.

What was lost in all the end-of-the-world banter was a sobering look at the realties that we face as humanity and that, if one had ears to hear, would sound an alarming warning signal that the world as we know is in real crisis.

I fear that like the proverbial frog in a kettle, that we have slowly adjusted and grown comfortable in rising temperature of the water and have failed to acknowledge that things might soon boil over.

Just take three areas

Economy
Environment
Military Tensions

Long ago, I left-behind the reading of Revelation that causes so many to live in fear of an impending catastrophe. But I’m not sure that people of faith can afford to grow comfortable thinking that the world we see is in it’s final form. Capitalism, Democracy and Nation-States are assumed to be the as-is realties on the planet.

Zizek is oft-quoted as saying Christians are fascinated with the end of the world because it is easier to imagine life ceasing to exist on planet earth than it is for Christians to imagine an economy after capitalism.

Global capitalism has bankrupted itself. The European Union (with countries like Greece and Spain) is in real trouble. The American economy is being exposed with its massive debts and downgraded dollar. China has mixed capitalism in with a form of communism – and a massive population – in a way that leaves most experts baffled.

The environment is being degridated. It is conceivable that our ground water could be toxified, our warming oceans could cause extinction of the seafood we eat, and our thirst for easy energy (what the Frack are we doing?) could have repercussions that would make the planet uninhabitable for the human species.*

That is all before nuclear fallout. Tensions is the middle east, America’s admittedly endless war on terror, and desperate global disparity are now more consequential than ever.**

It one takes the failing global economy, the toxification of the environment and the realities of perpetual war – maybe the Mayans weren’t wrong after all.

Maybe we have moved into the end of time.

_________________

* The practice of ‘mountian-top’ removal in places like West Virginia coal is instructive about environmental impacts.
** The Isreal-Palestine conflict and America’s role are especially illuminating.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, media, news, politics, post-something, public policy, science, thinking Tagged With: book, books, calendar, Capitalism, China, December 2012, doomsday, economy, end of world, environment, European Union, fracking, Israel, left behind, Mayan, Palestine, War, war on terror, zizek

Hipsters and Zombies as the end of civilization

December 3, 2012 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Last week I went down to Tripp’s office to work on some stuff for the podcast. I walked in while he was talking to Jordan and Christian from the Homebrewed Culture Cast. They were recording a segment about zombies and the Walking Dead series.

The conversation was great – you will really enjoy that episode when it comes out. Toward the end, Christian asked about why the surge in popularity of zombies and vampires. After Tripp’s market driven answer (which was sweet) I jumped in with a theory that I wanted to elaborate on here.

I quoted Ballard in Kingdom Come

Consumerism rules, but people are bored. They’re out on the edge, waiting for something big and strange to come along. … They want to be frightened. They want to know fear. And maybe they want to go a little mad.
- Ballard, Kingdom Come

When we live in a time when like ours, where the as-is structures are assumed and there is a certain giveness to the system, we view them as final applications. Nation States and capitalism are just two areas where this can be seen (Tripp explains this well in the interview).
In this consumerism as culture humans are defined by their external signs and symbols. These become signifiers that form more than our image, they project our identity. It is in this cul-de-sac and the end of the wide road of consuming that the monotony of round and round sameness becomes soul-numbing. You can see why things on the fringes, that lurk in the dark and just below the surface begins to titillate and become attractive.

We are bored.

Alasdair MacIntyre (who asses the situation so well in After Virtue – even though I disagree with his solution) says this about what the church becomes

nothing but a meeting place for individual wills, each with its own set of attitudes and preferences and who understand that world solely as an arena for the achievement of their own satisfaction, who interpret reality as a series of opportunities for their enjoyment and for whom the last enemy is boredom.

Our fractured and contentious societal situation is inflamed by (at least) three cultural elements: consumerism, globalization, and pluralism. The first is the disposition of individuals within a society, the second impacts the proximity of different communities, and the third affects the posture when approaching a disparate series of relationship for communities.

Consumerism is hyperbolized in an examination of Hipster ‘culture’ by Douglas Haddow entitled “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization”.* Haddow provides a vicious critique when he says:

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

It this both the dislocation of generational continuity and the isolation of consumerist aesthetics that are troubling about the brand obsessed and all too self-aware ironic sensibilities that alert one to the incredible disenchantment and disassociation of the youth culture. It is these very same consumerist influences and institutions that give rise to their embodied expression and vague angst that manifests in such irresponsible yet elaborate demonstrations of the Hipster’s intentionally senseless displays.

Ironically, we have more stuff and access to more toys, information, and treats than ever before … but we are soul-numb bored. This is the danger of thinking that what we have is everything in it’s final form. That our representative democracy, that our free-market economy, that our United Nations are the pinnacle and the end of history.

This is why that Zizek quote about living in the end times is so great – that it is easier for most Christians today to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine living in some other economy beside capitalism.

Hipsters and the suburban fascination with zombies and vampires … are trying to tell us something.

* The subtitle of this article says “We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality. “
Mark Douglas Haddow, “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters”, n.d., http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, news, politics, pomo, post-something, thinking Tagged With: after virtue, Ballard, book, books, Capitalism, city, end of civilization, end of history, End of the world, hipster, MacIntyre, Occupy, religion, suburban, Twilight, vampire, Walking Dead, zizek, Zombies

I Could Not Be Less Reductive: Love, Sex and Faith

September 10, 2012 by Bo Sanders 9 Comments

It has become quite clear over the past several years that the source of many arguments in my life and in our culture ordinate with a desire to reduce things down to their simplest components or lowest common denominator. Over the past decade I have really embraced a complexity model of things. I can illustrate it with two examples:

The foundational thinking of Josh McDowell and Ravi Zacharias – the apologetics school I had been groomed in – began to ring hollow in a number of areas. Through that process, I came to see the advantage of conceptualizing reality as a web, anchored in several locations, rather than a building resting on one key foundation.

The foundationalist approach is scary in a shifting culture. What used to seem rock solid is in danger of falling like a house of cards if even one element is moved or compromised.

I moved from a magical ex nihilo understanding of 6 day creation (it was not the theologically sophisticated one you might be familiar with) but could not buy the cold darwinian evolution that had been so demonized in my camps. Turns out that both a fairly reductive. It wasn’t until I discovered emergence thought and the interplay of elements that I was able to move beyond the simple either-or option of creation vs. evolution.

This move away from the reductive becomes important in three key conversations: love, sex, and faith.

Love - when I talk with other youth pastors or teens from other youth groups, I am frequently surprised with just how often a reductive approach is taken on the topic love. “Is love an action or an emotion?” Sometime a third option will be given: “or a decision”.

Its not that the answer to the question is that consequential. That is easy enough to deal with. It is the thinking behind the question that is so dangerous! Of course love is an action, it comes with feelings and creates more feelings and we make decisions about that at every step along the way. Its easy enough to side step the either/or trap … what concerns me is why something as grand and essential complex as love has to be reduced down to a single element? What is the driving influence there? It is bigger than just getting christian teens to not ‘give into their emotions’ or to show their love for God and the world by putting it into ‘action’ whether they feel like it or not. There is something else behind that reductive move.

Sex - I am truly shocked by how often a reductive maneuver is employed by those who are a little more conservative than me when the topic of sex comes up. “While sex may be pleasurable – in the end, it is primarily about procreation” my debate partner will say. “In fact, God probably made it pleasurable so that we would want to do it more.”

I object to this live of reasoning strenuously! Sex is about a whole myriad of things.

Our sexuality is about pleasure, connection, expression, intimacy, power, procreation and drive. It certainly is not about just one thing.

Look, I know a heterosexual couple that can’t procreate. They have a very healthy sex life. I know another couple who did procreate (twice) and are finding that it is significantly impeding their sex life.

Sex in the 21st century is not just or even primarily about procreation. Even heterosexual couples who can procreate have sex that does not result in pregnancy.

Faith - I have heard voices as disparate as Slavo Zizek and Martin Luther pull a reductive move when it comes to faith. Zizek has said on more than one occasion that he would like to see good deeds done for no other reason than that they the right thing to do – good on their own merit – and not because the one who does it gets anything out (like an altruistic sense of satisfaction) or believes that she will be rewarded for it in the next life. This reminds of Luther’s early wrestling with loving God (If I only love God for saving me then I have loved God for the wrong reason and it is not love worthy of God … etc.)

I don’t get this at all! It seems to me that whether you believe in a God (I do) or whether you subscribe to a social construction theory of morality (that as social mammals it benefits us to benefit others in a series of non-zero and reciprocal relationships) that both are best understood as essentially complex webs of meaning and relationship.

Let’s take the God road for a minute. If there is a God who wants me to do good things, then it stands to reason that I may be made in such a way that I both enjoy doing that good and benefit from it. That does not take away from the goodness itself, it is just distributed to several factors of befit. Why is it only truly a good deed if I get nothing – not even satisfaction – out of it. Even if I do something anonymously for which there can be no reciprocal or social benefit, I’m not allowed that simple satisfaction of knowing I did something good? So the only truly good deed is done with emotional distance and internal steel? That is bogus! It seems to me that even without God in the equation, that reductive move is limiting and harmful, even self-defeating.

A far better approach would be embrace the social locatedness of human existence and to recognize the collective pot of goodness to which we both benefit from and contribute to. A pot of common-wealth that is both relational and substantial that has made us who we are – we have been molded, shaped and groomed by it – and to which we participate that can benefit others as well as be rewarding for us.

Doing good is complex and it is essentially complicated. We don’t need to break that down and diagnose it as much as we need to embrace it and pour ourselves into it.

In the end, I see this impulse toward the reductive to be not only limiting to thought but detrimental to joy. I think we are missing out by not embracing the multifaceted and layered complexity of love, sex and faith.

-Bo Sanders

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: apologetics, Bible, book, books, creation, evolution, faith, God, jesus, joy, love, Luther, sex, zizek

The Pornography of Fundamentalism

August 28, 2012 by Bo Sanders 44 Comments

- by Bo Sanders

Normally I try to be as generous, welcoming and irenic as possible. One of my favorite slogans actually comes from my venerable partner Tripp Fuller at Big Tent 1 when he said that the ‘tent’ should be big enough for every former incarnation of ourself … but I was never a fundamentalist. I flirted with being one in Bible College but never converted.

This past week I was flying back across the country after visiting my family and I was rummaging through my Ipod to see if anything caught my attention. I stumbled on an old Slavo Zizek lecture. As with all Zizek lectures he wandered through almost every topic under the sun – but two caught my attention: pornography and fundamentalism. I want to try and connect them here.

In a pornographic movie, the dialogue is secondary. It is merely window dressing. Think back to your younger years – before you were a christian. The dialogue is a thinly veiled, contrived scenario to get the actors into the same space. It is little more.

A handyman comes over to a lonely women’s apartment to fix a hole in the wall. She says something about another hole that needs attention.

You get the idea. The dialogue is superfluous to the real intention. It is poorly written and even more poorly delivered. The dialogue is a facade, it is merely intended to set up the main activity. [added later] It allows for the suspension of suspicion so that one can enter into the fantasy.

Dialogue performs the same function for Christian Fundamentalists.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am not saying that the verbiage of fundamentalists is insincere or disingenuous. It is not. Fundamentalist believe it with all their heart. What I am saying is that the words in church perform the same function as dialogue in porn. The words that are spoken are secondary to the main activities: nationalism, militarism and capitalism.

When I was in Bible College I use to set my VCR to record TV preachers while I was at school. I loved listening to preachers. I wanted to be one and I modeled myself on the famous ones. I even sent money to folks like Chuck Swindoll so I could get their tapes and listen to them over and over.

The more I read the Bible, however, the more I realized that something was wrong. At my evangelical college we studied the historical context of the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. We even touched on some Roman legal stuff for the New Testament - while avoiding things like Empire for the most part. [Jesus’ message was spiritual after all, not political.]

I started getting a pit in my stomach when pastors would shoe-horn modern issues between the lines of scripture. It made me nervous when they would draw a direct line from ancient Israel to modern America. My fallout actually came in two parts:

Step one was simply (but quietly) objecting to the lack of translation or conversion between Old Testament Israel which was a theocracy and America which was democracy … and a pluralistic one at that.
Step two was the vehement (nearly venomous) push-back I got when broached the subject.

It was in the vicious rebuffs that something grotesque was exposed. The words that were spoken – while important and delivered with conviction – were secondary to the real driving influence and aim. The real engine is nationalism, militarism and capitalism. Those are the real gods of American fundamentalists. The christian verbiage is the fiberglass body. It is important, visible and gets most of the attention but it is not what is driving the machine.

Like dialogue in porn, it is only utilized to get the players into proximity with each other. It is only used to set up the main (real) activity.

Ask yourself these 3 questions:

Why are voices raised, fists shaken, and teeth gritted when fundamentalists talk about God pouring out love for us in Christ and salvation being found in ‘the way, the truth, and the life’? Why doesn’t the medium match the message?
Why is there unquestioned support for modern Israel regardless of their atrocities and unjust behaviors?
Why is it permissible to be so aggressive with people who disagree with you on issues like who is allowed to be married (a civil union) by the state?

The reason that the medium doesn’t match the message is because the real message is not found in the words. Like dialogue in porn, it is only meant to set up the scenario for the real activity. Spend all the time you want on analyzing it or the logic behind it, but it is like capturing fog. It is a temporary holder for the main event. In fundamentalism’s case, that is nationalism, militarism and capitalism. Don’t get distracted by the christian verbiage or the message of Jesus – you will only be frustrated and baffled. No, there is something else driving this machine. Just ask questions, even quietly, and you will hear where the real priorities are.

Why this matter so much is cover in part 3: It’s a Sign.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: army, Bible, book, books, church, empire, fundamentalism, God, government, Israel, jesus, justice, law, legal, marriage, Military, Old Testament, Palestine, porn, pornography, preacher, Swindoll, unjust, War, Zionist, zizek

What has changed since I was your pastor

May 21, 2012 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Last week I had chance to return to the place where I had been a pastor for 11 years. I have been away for 4 years pursuing higher education. It was great to reconnect with folks that I love very much. The trip also included a chance to head out into the woods with a group of guys for a week-long canoe trip in the Adirondack Mountains.

One night around the fire, someone asked

“so you have learned a lot and changed a lot since you were our pastor, bring us up to speed. What has changed in your thinking in 4 years?”

It was a question that I hoped would come up and had given it a lot of thought as I flew across the country from LA to NY.

I said that there were 3 big changes – that I had added 2 things and gotten rid of 1 thing.

Directions:

We had a saying that oriented us over those 11 years I was pastor: Upward – Inward – Outward: it must be all 3 – they must be in that order. I have learned that there is a 4th direction: downward.

When we look downward, two things happen:

We see the earth. This awakens us to things like where our food comes from, ecology, and location – the importance of place. Christianity is an incarnational religion and it is a spirituality that is em-bodied. Location is central to the practices of christian community.
We see those less fortunate or less powerful. This awakens us to issues of justice. Cornel West is the one who has helped me see the importance of not just looking around (which is vital for awareness) and looking up (where our strength come from) but looking down for those who might need some help.

Adding this 4th direction brings in issues of environment, locatedness, and justice. It illustrates the importance of embodying the gospel in a place – none of us are from everywhere.

Critique and Create:

One of the things that I have learned in my travels (from folks like Zizkek, Cornel West, Marc Ellis and Diana Butler Bass) is that there are 3 broad kinds of churches in North America:

Prophetic – that critique the system
Therapeutic – that help you adjust to the system
Messianic – that look to escape the system

We were great at two of them. We had a natural Messianic element because our denomination is staunchly and passionately pre-millennial (the soon coming King! is one of our big 4 things). We also had a good dose of the Therapeutic and helped a lot of people be the best version of themselves within the existing structures.

If I got to do it again, I would add a Prophetic element and address the systems and structures that hold so much sway in our communities and in the lives of our congregations.

The example that I used was routinely praying for a guy with a limited skill set to get a job. “Jesus – please help ‘J’ to get a job”. By not addressing the relationship of local government with factories and manufactures in our area … we were relegating the answer to our prayers to the ‘powers that be’ and J was perpetually disappointed with God and discouraged in his faith. We nearly set him up to fail.

Those are the 2 things I have added: a 4th direction and 3rd element. But I have also gotten rid of something – I no longer believe in the supernatural.

Why the Natural is super:

I am convinced that the church has made a major mistake in adopting the language of the super-natural. Since the epic flub with Galileo and Copernicus the church has allowed science to have the natural (things that make sense) and has been relegated to watching over things that increasingly don’t make sense and retreating into words like ‘mystery’ and ‘faith’ as cover for that which is just not reasonable.

I do not believe in a realm (the natural) that is without God. As a Christian, I believe that God’s work is the most natural thing in the world. I am unwilling to concede the natural-spiritual split and then leave less and less room for God as science is able to explain more and more. The church is foolish to accept the dualism (natural-supernatural) and then superintend only the spiritual part.

No wonder 85% of our kids walk away in their 20’s. This stuff is unbelievable.

I would prefer to reclaim the language of the ‘miraculous’ (surprising to us or unexpected) and ‘signs’ from the Gospel of John (that point to a greater reality).

So that is what has changed since I was Senior Pastor four years ago. I look down now (at the earth, for location, and for issues of justice). I hear the Prophetic critiquing the system. And I have gotten rid of the super-natural while embracing the miraculous.

It was so great to share these thoughts and hear the feedback from my friends as we share the week together. I would love to get your feedback or to hear how you have changed in the past few years. -Bo

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Diana Butler Bass, Directions, faith, God, jesus, Marc Ellis, Natural, Prophetic, science, Supernatural, zizek

Hit Me (baby) One More Time: on turning the other cheek

April 24, 2012 by Bo Sanders 2 Comments

I’m going to see Slavo Zizek this evening. He is at the LA Library and we got tickets! In preparation I have been listing to all of my archives of his talks – including the last time he was at the LA Library. His conversation partner that night was Jack Miles (author of God: a biography) and the topic that night was violence.

As I listened again I was struck with how timely the dialogue was in light of our conversation about Jesus and (s)words last week – as Tripp and I prepare to go into the podcast studio this week to record a TNT about that, as well as leaving the church.

In his book ‘Violence’ Zizek addresses the idea of emancipatory or redemptive violence embedded in Christianity – a topic that we have discussed at length. But at one point Miles has to correct the philosopher. It concerned that issue of ‘turning the other cheek’. What Miles has to flesh out is that a master would have hit a slave – not by striking him on the right cheek – as he would an equal – but the left with a back hand. The command then is that if someone strikes you in this way (on the left cheek) show to them the right as well and in this way provoke them to a greater of level of violence than they had originally intended – accomplishing two things:

exposing their violence
positioning your dignity in the face of that violence

I have also been reading Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence. He clarifies it this way:

There are three general responses to evil: 1) passivity 2) violent opposition 3) the third way of militant non-violence articulated by Jesus. … Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil.

Wink outlines that third way later in the book with a series of bullet points:

Seize the moral initiative
Find the creative alternative to violence
Assert your own human dignity as a person
Meet force with ridicule or humor
Break the cycle of humiliation
Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position
Expose the injustice of the system
Take control of the power dynamic
Shame the oppressor into repentance
Stand your ground
Force the Powers to make decisions for which that are not prepared
Recognize your own power
Be willing to suffer rather than to retaliate
Cause the oppressor to see you in a new light
Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective
Be willing to undergo the penalty for breaking unjust laws
Die to fear of the old order and its rules

This type of thinking is as revolutionary as the day it was spoken in that famous sermon by Jesus. The binaries and dualisms that we operate in are just failing us at every turn. The overly simple either-or options are a trap.

Here is the simple reality: loving your neighbor is a big enough challenge that it has kept many thinkers for many traditions busy trying to figure out who (exactly) is one’s neighbor. and what does love look like. We follow a teacher (in this ‘way’) who goes past that debate and says “Love your enemies”. Let’s be honest – that doesn’t make any sense! If I love them … they would not long be to me an enemy

I end with a Wink: Love of enemies is, in the broadest sense, behaving out of one’s own deepest self-interest; “that you may be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:45).

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, dignity, God, Jack Miles, jesus, Matthew 5, pacifist, Sermon of the Mount, violence, Walter Wink, zizek

Radical Political Theology with Clayton Crockett

November 23, 2011 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Clayton Crockett tells that you can’t go home again. The world of religion and politics has changed so radically that the old definitions and boundary markers are nearly unrecognizable – and even less helpful.

Clayton Crockett is Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. His work focuses on postmodern theology, Continental philosophy of religion, psychoanalytic theory and theoretical issues concerning religion and politics.

In the 1960s, the strict opposition between the religious and the secular began to break down, blurring the distinction between political philosophy and political theology. This collapse contributed to the decline of modern liberalism, which supported a neutral, value-free space for capitalism. It also deeply unsettled political, religious, and philosophical realms, forced to confront the conceptual stakes of a return to religion. (from the book description)

In this conversation with Tripp Fuller, politics, history and religion are evaluated from thoroughly theological lens. His book Radical Political Theology : Religion and Politics after Liberalism is available from Amazon in hardcover and Kindle editions.

Don’t forget to sign up for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation in Claremont, CA January 31-February 2.

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Filed Under: books, church history, conversations, engaging, features, philosophy, podcast, politics, thinking Tagged With: barth, books, capitalism Tillich, Clayton Crockett, death of God, history, political, radical, theology, zizek

I like both Peter Rollins

November 4, 2011 by Bo Sanders 15 Comments

Confession: I’m a big fan of Peter Rollins. Actually, I am a big fan of both Peter Rollins.

Maybe I should explain. There seem to be two Peter Rollins

the mesmerizing author and speaker credited with such wondrous works as How (Not) to Speak of God, The Orthodox Heretic, and now Insurrection, who helps people’s faith by relieving them of their superfluous religious facades.
the suspicious and sinister author and speaker who mystifies critics with his ability to deconstruct (ie. deceive) and entertain (ie. trick) people into asking Slovoj Zizek into their heart – and thus agreeing to go to hell.

As you can see there are two distinct Peter Rollins. And here is the thing, I like them both.

I like what Peter Rollins is up to and I like what people think that he is up to.

I buy books for my nephews and nieces. The favorites are Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne and Peter Rollins. These books challenge their hearts, expand their minds, and help their faith. They would have one view of Peter Rollins.

I often listen to MDiv and other students at Christian Colleges and Seminaries go after Peter Rollins like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They accuse him of masking deceptive A/theistic trickery under the guise of deconstruction and post-structural poetics. The accusation is that he is importing some sort of hollow, empty, nihilistic slight-of-hand with a sweet & seductive Irish lilt.

Truth is: I like them both.

I like the guy who helps the young people in my family and youth group to think through their inherited faith and mean the things they say, even if it is a bit more humbly.
I also like the guy who is subverting and undermining the grotesque bloated corpse of Christendom and its related classicist theology.

I like that I can give his book to almost anyone.

I like that educated evangelical christians think he is up to something.

I am a big fan of both Peter Rollins.

the new podcast of his Insurrection is here.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, philosophy, thinking Tagged With: a/theist, deconstruction, evangelical, peter rollins, zizek

Žižek and Evangelical Christianity–The End of Evangelicalism?

May 27, 2011 by Tripp Fuller 6 Comments

- From Deacon Fackenthal

David E. Fitch’s new book, The End of Evangelicalism?, brings together about the two most unlikely conversation partners I could imagine–Slavoj Žižek and American Evangelicalism. And it does so with surprisingly good results. I have to admit, since I don’t really consider myself an evangelical and don’t generally accept the major tenets of evangelical theology (Biblical inerrancy or substitutionary atonement), I approached Fitch’s book with high intrigue and moderate expectations. But I can honestly say that every expectation was greatly exceeded.

The End of Evangelicalism? begins with the premise that evangelicalism in North America has experienced a crisis. Fitch agrees that we may well be living in what can more appropriately be called a post-evangelical age. In order to diagnose this crisis (and death?) of evangelicalism, Fitch employs the critical theory of Slavoj Žižek, the left-wing Hegelian, Lacanian, atheist who has in recent years become the rock star of postmodern philosophy. Fitch examines three dearly held convictions among evangelicals–belief in the inerrant Bible, the decision for Christ, and belief in the Christian nation–using Žižekian analysis to demonstrate through each how evangelicalism has devolved into a set of beliefs that are empty at the core. In his analysis Fitch is clear to say that, unlike Žižek, he does not believe that Christianity itself is empty at the core. He does not think that Christian beliefs “are somehow necessarily false or illusory,” but he argues that the way in which evangelicals voice and practiced them leads toward a reified set of beliefs which then become ideology. For both Žižek and Fitch, it is this ideology that is truly empty at its core.

If you have read only a bit of Žižek or are completely intimidated by Žižek, fear not. Fitch takes some difficult concepts and makes them easily accessible to those uninitiated in contemporary critical theory. The first chapter of the book provides some background into Žižek’s social critique and draws out the concepts that Fitch employs in the next three chapters, which deal with the three beliefs he sees as signaling the devolution of evangelicalism into ideology. The most important Žižekian concept for Fitch is that of the master signifier–”a conceptual object around which people give their allegiance thereby enabling a political group to form.” Yet master signifiers don’t actually stand for anything concrete, and hence they are “empty signifiers.”

Fitch argues that Biblical inerrancy, the decision for Christ, and the Christian nation are all master signifiers, since they shape an ideology around which evangelicals organize themselves and their witness in the world. Biblical inerrancy becomes nothing more than an identifier or a “badge” to prove one’s evangelical standing, since it doesn’t actually say anything about what a given church or organization believes regarding Biblical interpretation. In fact, what the master signifier of Biblical inerrancy does (and what each of these master signifiers do) is allow us “to believe without believing.” Each of these master signifiers organizes people’s allegiance and belief around an idea that remains empty at the core.

What Fitch suggests instead is that these empty signifiers be replaced with beliefs and practices informed by the fullness of Christ. Out of this will come a politic of mission that adopts “a posture that embodies socially the incarnate presence of God in Christ that participates in his mission in the world.” The important word here is “participation.” It is only when evangelicals (or Christians of any stripe) embody the gospel, embody what it means to be a follower of Christ, and live out a Christ-centered politic in the world that empty-at-the-core ideology will be replaced with the fullness of an incarnational theology. The last chapter of the book articulates exactly how this might happen, taking again each of the three beliefs in turn.

In the epilogue, Fitch looks briefly at four evangelicals who are practicing the sort of politic of mission described here: Peter Rollins, Brian McClaren , and Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. While Fitch has points of contention with each of these authors, he sees in them promise for the future of the post-evangelical world.

Whether you are an evangelical, a progressive, or a progressive evangelical, I highly recommend reading Fitch’s book and grappling with his critiques. The fun thing about master signifiers is that we all eventually fall into their trap.

Filed Under: books, emergent, philosophy, thinking Tagged With: david fitch, evangelicalism, zizek

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