The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion and the Public Sphere

I came across a blog today that is part of the Social Science Research Council called The Immanent Frame: Secularism, religion and the public sphere. For anyone interested in the social sciences this blog looks to be promising. The blog contains post by many contributors including prominent figures such as Charles Taylor, Scott Appleby, Robert Bellah, William Connolly (who’s most recent book Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (Duke University Press, 2008 ) looks quite interesting), Dwight Hopkins, David Hollinger, Nancy Levene, Leigh Eric Schmidt, James K.A. Smith, and Mark C. Taylor. For anyone with a particular interest in the work of Charles Taylor (which I hope would be many; if not you might want to pray about that) there is quite a bit of engagement with his most recent 896 pg. tome, A Secular Age. I’ve included a link above to the blog and encourage you to check it out. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts after you get a chance to view the blog and read a few posts. There are a couple of other SSRC blogs that can be accessed through the SSRC link above. However, I haven’t had a chance to look over them much so I can’t make any direct recommendations. Enjoy!

The Rock (music) upon which the Church is Built: Celebrating the U2charist (cont.)

For all those that took interest in the previous post on the U2charist I have added another video. This one is an advertisement for a U2charist celebration that took place in Chicago. I’m still trying to be fair and not too quickly dismissive of this whole ordeal, but this ad seems to confirm some of my difficulties.

I find movements like this, ones which seems to latch onto some cultural icon and baptize it as a Christian icon in a desire for relevancy to the surrounding world, to be very frustrating, to be quite honest. I am all for seeking to be all things to all people, to be engaged enough in the community you live in to speak to those around on the level of their day-to-day concerns. However, as Christians, our greatest relevancy to those around us comes not in knowing this or that band, having seen this or that movie, or wearing this or that brand, but in being faithful to Christ and growing closer to him, and others, as members of his body. Only in doing this are we, as the body of Christ, able to embody an alternative lifestyle as part of a (forgive the term) counter-cultural community (maybe better put, a counter-political community), one that operates on a whole different set of values and allegiances. Only in this are we able to offer a new way of being human, a way that exists in Christ, as his body, empowered by the Spirit, to the praise and Glory of our Father; not in simply showing the world that we have found Jesus in the music that they listen to and therefore listen to it as well. Yes, Bono has values that overlap with that of the Church, and yes U2 has lyrics that are vaguely Christian, but I think that we would be far better off seeking to get Bono connected to a church than trying to connect the Church to Bono. True relevancy is not giving those who don’t know Christ what we think they want but offering to them what we know they need, which is not Bono, but Jesus – incarnated in the self-giving life of the church (his body) as it follows him in his call to radical discipleship on a path that doesn’t lead up, onstage with the cultural elites of our day, but down in a life of self-dispossession.

The Rock (music) upon which the Church is built: Celebrating the U2charist

I was talking with my friend Halden the other day and in the conversation he mentioned to me something he had heard about called U2charist. Halden explained to me that the U2charist is the celebration and partaking of the eucharist to the music of U2. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, but upon searching YouTube I was able to find several videos of congregations celebrating the U2charist. I’ve included one of them below for everyone’s…everyone’s…well, do with it what you want.

Apparently, this is the new way of some of today’s churches as they are emerging from…something/somewhere into/unto…something/somewhere else. I’m not really sure how all that works, but maybe they too still haven’t found what they are looking for.

While there is much that could be said about this movement I will hold off for now and allow people to comment as they like. I will add a follow up response soon after I have thought a little more about the reasons this bothers me so much.

God Bless America! Land of the Free…

I found this picture online and had to share it with everyone else.

The One Movie Meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
Kicking and Screaming

2. One movie that made you cry
Life is Beautiful (gets me every time)

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
Monty Python’s: the Search for the Holy Grail

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
Good Will Hunting

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
The Devil Wears Prada

6. One movie you hated
The Fountain

7. One movie that scared you
The Ring (Creeeeepy!)

8. One movie that bored you

The Fountain
9. One movie that made you happy
Once

10. One movie that made you miserable
Walk the Line (I loved the movie, it just left me feeling super depressed)

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
Teeth

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
Pretty much every role Nicole Kidman has ever played

13. The last movie you saw
Iron Man

14. The next movie you hope to see
The new Indiana Jones Movie (Booyah!)

15. Now tag five people: Adam, Patrick, Sam, Eric, Luke

…between Levinas and Derrida…

As I have been reading Levinas over the past couple months, I have found it rather difficult to locate people who want to engage with me concerning his work and ideas. In light of this, I have simply turned my attention to finding other books that engage his philosophy and settle for people in print. I’ll be the first to admit that his work isn’t the most accessible, but I’m truly convinced that his ideas are worth all the hard work it takes to understand.

With that said, I stumbled across a helpful blog this morning titled “…between Levinas and Derrida…” This blog appears to be a college course on the work of Levinas and Derrida, and issues of otherness in general. As a college course, it may only have limited lifespan, and therefore a limited value, but it looks rather promising for entering into discussions on the work of Levinas. I’m hoping that it will be as promising as it looks. So, if anyone is interested I would encourage you to check it out. I’ve included the link above, or it can also be found on my blogroll.

Navigating the Maze of Ethical Relations

I have been recently thinking through the nature of the ethical relation between people in the work of Miroslav Volf and Emmanuel Levinas. I have come to somewhat of a wall in my thinking and would love any thoughts and engagement that anyone would like to contribute. You don’t have to have read either of them to add to the conversation because the issues at hand are far larger than these two thinkers. They have simply served as the impetus for thinking about ethical obligations in interpersonal relations.
Here is my dilemma: Both Volf and Levinas address the ethical demands placed upon a subject by the presence of the Other (i.e. my appropriate response toward all people outside of myself), and argue for an “embrace of the other” (Volf) or a “being-for-the-other” (Levinas). The difficulty is that they emphasize opposite aspects of the relation in making their ethical demands.

For Volf, the difference of the Other(s) shouldn’t be the point of focus in the relation, for such a focus often leads to an exclusion of all that are not like the subject (or his community). Volf calls this the “logic of purity” which he understands to be rooted in an “exclusive notion of identity,” that is, an notion of identity which is based in the elements of difference between myself and those around me. Therefore, if I happen to love the color blue and my neighbor loves the color green, then I understand who I am (my identity) as one who loves blue, rather than green. This “exclusive notion of identity,” Volf says, carries consequences that are often deadly in today’s pluralistic world. This, certainly, can be seen simply by turning on the news. There is no objection here on such consequences. However, I have recently been reading Emmanuel Levinas and have found his arguments for the nature of the ethical relation between the “I” and the “Other” to be rather persuasive in certain areas.
For Levinas, the nature of the ethical relation between the “I” and the “Other” is founded upon the difference, or “alterity” in his words, of the Other. In trying to move beyond the violent reduction of the difference of the Other into the sameness of the subject (a reduction he sees inherent in discussion of Western ontology in general, and in the writings of Husserl and Heidegger in particular), Levinas argues for an epistemological exclusion forced by the Other upon the subject. Now, this is no intentional act on the part of the Other but is instead an inherent iconoclasm within the relation that occurs as a result of the intentional act of consciousness of the subject. That is to say, when I, as a subject, try to conceptualize and understand (in cognitive ascent) the being of the Other (who they are), they forever allude my (cognitive) grasp in their othernesss, and shatter my concepts of who I understand them to be. Therefore, for Levinas, ethics is always critique: it is a critique of the subject’s understanding of the Other that takes place by way of the Other’s otherness (their difference that exists beyond the subject’s categories), eliciting a response of being-for-the-Other.
So, here is my question, with which I would appreciate any feedback: How is one to navigate through the maze of the ethical relation between the “I” and the “Other” without the violent reduction of absorbing the Other in the sameness of myself (Levinas’ position of preserving the difference of the Other) or allowing such difference to result in the violent consequences that often follow from what Volf calls an “exclusive notion of identity? As a side note, I must say that it is clear that there is always violence of some sort inherent in interpersonal relations. Nevertheless, how is one to move forward without being intentionally violent. I have some thoughts with regard to these questions, and some possible answers. However, I’m interested in bringing others into the conversation to open it up a bit more. Let me know what you think.

The Labor of Communion in a Capital Age

I recently read a great article by Daniel M. Bell in The Princeton Theological Review entitled “The Labor of Communion in a Capital Age.” In this article Bell takes issue with our Capitalist Age and its inherent tendencies to distort human relations with people, God, and the creation. In contrast to the subject of capitalism (homeo economicus), a subject characterized by “struggle, conflict, and competition,” Bell offers a Spirit-formed subject that is corporate and ecclesial in nature. “Unlike its capitalist counterpart this is a subject that is…neither self-interested nor relates to others as commodities in an endless (business) cycle of competition and conflict driven by scarcity but instead participates in the divine gift economy of abundance and ceaseless generosity.”

My friend (and roommate) Adam informed me that The Princeton Theological Review can be found online so I have linked the article and would definitely encourage all to read it. It is fairly short, focused in its concerns (comparing the autonomous subject of capitalism with the Spirit-formed, ecclesial subject), hard hitting in its critiques, and encouraging and hopeful in its proposals. I highly recommend it! Below is a summary quote from the article.

“In sum, the problem with capitalism is that it construes our relations with one another and God in a manner that precludes genuine friendship and communion. Under capital, we relate to one another competitively, agonistically, and God, far from befriending us, far from seeking to deliver us from the sin-induced agony that is this struggle, instead presides over it like a prison guard staging a gang fight. Thus, even if capitalism works, it is still wrong because the agony it fosters and perpetuates among people and with God is antithetical to the true communion for which we were created, to which we were called, and which Christians are empowered to proclaim and embody.”
(Daniel M. Bell, “The Labor of Communion in a Capital Age,” The Princeton Theological Review 35 (Fall 2006), 8.)

Pope Benedict on God as Creator and Redeemer

“The truth is that the rejection of Creator and creation, which Marcion shares with the wide stream of so-called gnosis, generated not only an ascetical contempt for the body, but also a cynical libertinism, for this too displays in reality a hatred of the body, of man, and of the world…In the false ascetism that is hostile to creation, the body becomes a dirty bag of maggots that deserves only disdain or, indeed, ill treatment. Similarly, the basic principle underlying libertinism is the degradation of the body to a mere thing. Its exclusion from the realm of ethics and of the mind’s responsibility means its exclusion from that which makes man human, its exclusion from the dignity of the spirit. It becomes a mere object, a thing, and thus the life of man, too becomes cheap and common…Where man despises his body–whether as an ascetic or as a libertine–he also despises his own self. Both an asceticism hostile to the creation and libertinism lead man by an inherent necessity to hate this life of his, to hate himself, indeed to hate reality as a whole, and herein lies the explosive political power of both these basic attitudes. A man who feels himself disgraced in this way would like to tear apart this prison of shame, that is, his body and the world, in order to escape from such humiliation. He cries out for another world because he hates the creation and the God who bears responsibility for all of this”
(Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God (San Fransisco:Ignatius Press, 2008 ) pg 43-43)

Why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had to die, and why I think he knew this

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and, of coarse, all over people were talking about it. There were articles, radio programs, shows, etc. On one particular radio segment on NPR, interviews were held with family and friends recounting his life and the events taking place in the days leading up to 4 April, 1968.

On April 3rd, Dr. King had been in Memphis, Tenn. speaking in a crowded church regarding a strike that was taking place by sanitation workers over poor pay and working conditions. “The issue is injustice,” Dr. King stated in his message, “The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.” Addressing the racial inequalities in the city, and consequent economic injustices, Dr. King spoke boldly and prophetically.
Drawing from Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, Dr. King spoke of the responses of the Priest and Levite toward the man on the side of the road:

“And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” (All right)

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That’s the question before you tonight. (Yes) Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job?” Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” (Yes) The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question. [applause]

Dr. King was very well aware of the dangers and threats on his life that were being made as he spoke on April 3. Having been stabbed in the chest several years earlier by a demented woman with a letter opener, the tip of the blade on the edge of his aorta, he daily bore a reminder in the form of a scar. Making his awareness more explicit during his speech, Dr. King acknowledged to his audience that though he had seen the Promise Land, he may not make it there with them. In speaking of his uncertainty about what the “difficult days ahead” may hold, he, nevertheless, proclaimed great personal commitment to the mission at hand:

“[I]t really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. (Yeah) [applause] And I don’t mind. [applause continues] Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will…And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

As a minister of the gospel, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in quoting the biblical prophet Amos, sought to see “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Seeking to bring justice to “the least of these,” those to whom justice had been withheld, Dr. King ran against the contemporary cultural current in pursuing justice and righteousness, in the name of love, by means of nonviolent protest. So why did he have to die, and why do I think he knew it? He had to die because he was seeking to live out the gospel of Christ, and I believe he knew this would most likely result in his death because he was aware of the subversive implications of this gospel-it undercuts and stands directly against all other powers and authorities.

Arthur McGill, in his book Suffering: A Test of Theological Method, also draws from Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan and speaks of the “shocking impracticality of Jesus’ teaching.” McGill asks

“If a man really possesses a readiness to expend himself for others, will they not take advantage of him? Will they not soon take all his clothes and borrow all his money? Of course, says Jesus. Of course, if you live in this way, you will be used up by others. Of course, they will take everything you have. That is why you should expect this self-expenditure to lead sooner or later to your death. He is quite clear and unafraid about the practical implications of his teaching” (McGill, 55).

Discipleship consists of following Jesus, and the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Therefore, following him in his life of self-expenditure will lead to death. However, this is exactly what you want to happen, what you want people to do. McGill continues, “It is the essence of your love to want to be expended for others, and even to die for others” (McGill, 55).

Now, I know that many would likely object to using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of an exemplar Christian due to his extra-marital relations, etc. Nevertheless, just because someone doesn’t reflect Christ in one area of their life doesn’t mean that they can’t in another. My point is not whether or not he was an exemplar Christian in his whole life or had a perfect theological understanding of all of life (no one does!). I simply want to acknowledge that much of his life, his concern for racial equality, economic justice, his non-violent approach to those in opposition, and his willing self-expenditure, was self-confessedly rooted in the gospel, whatever other motiving factors there might have been. Because of this, he stands as a witness to the power of the gospel, a power that demonstrated in weakness, in self-expenditure, and love. In seeking to follow the call of Christ, he sought a life of self-expenditure, rooted in love, for the other. For Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., death was the logical outcome of such a life, just as it is for all who seek such a path in the service of our Lord.