« August 2005 | Main | October 2005 »

As I travel down this road, trying to live the Gospel, not as a socialist or a capitalist, not as a neo-con or a civil libertarian, not as a "liberal" or a "conservative", but as a follower of Jesus Christ within the faith handed down to the saints through the ages, I find it often frustrating because of the labels that I receive, and the way that cultural dichotomies and modernist/post-modernist presuppositions push towards equally unacceptable positions. It seems that these tensions are almost inherent within American Protestant institutional cultures -- most likely because of the historical Protestant hegemony in the US, with its commitments to the church to provide the moral voice for the governance of the state. How does one find friends on the way, conversations so that one is not merely stupid, or "leftist" or "pietistic"? How does one maintain the perspective needed for the constant formation that one needs to go through in a culture like this so that one is not merely speaking one's "personal perspectives"?

Of course, reading in the Scriptures and tradition is indispensable as is prayer. But I've also found some helpful blog sites for me along the way. First, ericisrad.com helps me, not only because Eric is so kind to me, but because he reads and thinks while sitting at a computer screen within the marketplace. As he reflects and reads, he perceives well material as it interacts with his network of friends, his work, and his life as part of our congregation.

A little more distant from me are a group of friends that I have yet to meet, but seem networked together. Charles Jones at ressourcement.blogspot.com has an excellent site. Charles is a member of Communion and Liberation, one of the so-called "new religious movements" within Roman Catholicism. Often dismissed as "conservative" by the media, such movements, I am discovering, are conservative in the best sense of the word: attempting to live faithfully within the faith handed down to the saints within the contemporary church catholic. One of my goals right now is to think "protestant denominations" within the framework of the "new religious movements" within catholicism. There might be ways of understanding ourselves here to help heal the fragmented body of Christ today.

From this site, two others come to mind: nouvelletheologie.blogspot.com and, for news and perspective, www.tcrnews2.com. At times I will find myself disagreeing, but what I find helpful is a conversation with people who likewise are trying to live not defined by American/modernist "right/left" issues, but by the Christian tradition.

So I'm thankful for such sites and friends, and looking forward to continued conversation and even, God willing, bodily, not just cyber-, interaction some day!

Posted by johnwright at 9:32 AM | Comments (1)

In response to some of the feedback from last week, let's bite off the rest of Stephen's speech in Acts 7, even though it is more than we usually look at in one setting. One must admit that, if Stephen was trying to defend himself, he does a lousy job. Maybe Stephen saw something more at stake than how the high priest and synagogue authorities saw him.

Read vv.17-43 gives Stephen's summary of Israel in Egypt and the events of their Exodus from Egypt. The story was obviously well known to the Jews, celebrated in the Passover in Jerusalem. It might be interesting to list the particular events to which Stephen refers in his summary of Exodus through Numbers. In the Stephen's summary, who are the "bad persons" and the "good persons"? What does the speech make of Moses? What is the role of God? Does it criticize the Law?

Vv. 44-50: What does Stephen say about the Tabernacle and the Temple? Does he actually criticize the Temple? On what basis does Stephen make sure that God is not confined to the Temple? Has he said anything necessarily controversial yet?

Vv. 51-53 Stephen's tone suddenly changes. What does he do with his audience in relationship to the story that he has told? How one responds to the speech depends on with whom one identifies? How can we identify with the audience? Why might it be important for us to hear Stephen's speech from their perspective? Is the Jewish leaders fault keeping the Law or not keeping the Law?

VV. 54-56: Note the way the story moves back and forth between Stephen and "they"? What is the difference? Is Stephen angry? Are they?

Vv. 57-60: Why exactly do they "stone" Stephen? Why do they "stop their ears"? Note the relationship between the death of Jesus and the death of Stephen. What does Stephen's death tell you about Jesus' death?

It might be interesting to discuss again exactly what the issue is that leads to Stephen getting stoned, as well as a comparison between his disposition and the mobs. Has Stephen failed or succeeded? What does Stephen's death have to say about our life?

I hope this helps your discussion. As you can see, we are part of a rather controversial people. Maybe the key is keeping the controversy at the right point and sustaining the right disposition within these controversies.

Posted by johnwright at 9:13 AM | Comments (0)

As a human being, a Scripture scholar, a theologian, and a pastor, I have tried to commit my life to participating in the kingdom of God the Father initiated by Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit through the life of the visible body of Christ, the church, in the world. This has been and is the consistent passion of my life -- because I really think that it is true. As I have read and thought and pastored through the years, my judgment is that what has been called "liberalism" -- in its political (the liberal democratic nation-state), economic (capitalism), ethical (emotivism), anthropological (therapeutic individualism), cognitive forms -- provides the biggest obstacle to participate in the kingdom today. It seems to me that liberalism is so prevalent, whether in modern or post-modern, neo-liberal consumerist or egalitarian communitarian, militaristic or liberal pacificist, forms, that liberal commitments provide options within itself that makes living virtuously as part of the body of Christ very difficult.

I find that I am therefore often interpreted as "being against", rather than being for. Especially as a professor and clergy within a Christian group, the Church of the Nazarene, that is looking for influence and prominence within the US society, I find myself strangely out of step, as neither influence nor prominence matter to me. I would love for the kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven -- I pray that daily and seek to participate in such a kingdom. If that is influence and prominence, I'm all for it. But I'm not sure that is what those around me are seeking.

I often thank Eric Lee at ericisrad.com for his insights and guidance. Today he gave me a site with an essay by the Archbishop of Grenada. It is an amazing essay. I've tried to abridge it some, and take away its jargony edge (I edited out most of the references to Radical Orthodoxy!!). The Archbishop here articulates the concerns and the positive program in a manner that I am not able to do. As an archbishop, he too sees the importance of holding together intellectual commitments, theological faithfulness, and the embodied life of the church in local congregations.

The essay might take awhile, and even a few attempts to get through. Yet I believe that it is worth it, for members of our parish, persons involved in PLNU, and friends throughout cyberspace to develop a language and a program to live out the unity that is the gift of God for us in Christ. If you'd like to get together and discuss the essay, let me know. I'd love to work through it with friends.

Some Contemporary Challenges for the Life and the Thought of the Church, as Seen from the West.
By Javier Martínez Archbishop of Granada
http://www.secondspring.co.uk/articles/martinez.htm
Abridged by John W. Wright

My reflections this morning, however, will not be concerned so much with the past than with our situation as Christians in the present and the future. . . .
The statement of this conviction is especially relevant to the complex phenomenon I want to address this morning, which I consider one of the greatest challenges Christianity has had to face in the twenty centuries of our history, comparable only in scope and in danger to the Gnostic or the Arian crises. . . .
I. Liberalism or Secular Reason
Let me formulate without further delay the challenge I have in mind. One name for it is "liberalism", and to be short, I understand by that name what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre names also "liberalism" in his works, especially in Whose Justice? What Rationality?1 It is (with its economic counterpart, capitalism) the dominant system of belief at the political, economic and cultural levels, which has remained in the world after the fall of communism (with the exception, perhaps, of the Islamic countries). And this system of belief I consider to be a major danger for the freedom of the Church and for the future of the world. In a sense, it is danger that could prove worse than communism, because it masks itself, it remains hidden, and for that reason it does not create resistances. It might well happen that liberalism could succeed where communism has failed, that is, in destroying the Church as a real people with a culture and a tradition, and in emptying Christianity from its human substance.
Instead of "liberalism" we could say, broadly referring to the same phenomenon, "the Enlightenment", or "Modernity". These names designate the ideal of a world that would be fully human by first domesticating, and then rejecting and substituting the Christian world. . . . . For MacIntyre has also shown that, for all its appeal to universal reason, the culture of the Enlightment is just one more tradition, born from particular circumstances in the history of European Christianity. Moreover, it is a tradition that:
1) it masks, and first of all to itself, its character as tradition;
2) it is constitutively intolerant, among other reasons, as a necessary consequence of its unawareness of its traditional character;
3) with all its predicament and power as the official culture everywhere in what was once the Christian world, it is already an intellectually dead culture, because it creates an alienated type of humanity, it disintegrates itself, and it is bound to dissolve itself into nihilism. In fact, its triumph coincides with its destruction2.
. . . .
A name that I particularly like for the whole of this phenomenon is "secular reason", which is in the title of this paper and I have borrowed from the title of what I consider to be an important book of the Anglican theologian John Milbank, Theology and social Theory. Beyond secular reason6. "Secular reason" includes what MacIntyre would name "liberalism", but has a wider scope: it has the advantage of including also the various fragmentary positions in which liberalism and the Enlightenment Project have disintegrated. . . .

My first point is then, after all, quite simple, and not especially original. Secular reason is both intellectually and morally exhausted. Its mythical character and its lack of foundation are already unmasked. It has all the power, but power is all it has; defeated by itself, in fact it has lost already the case of rationality, as has lost also all the cases it used to uphold in the past, like freedom, joy for life and love of this world. Even to say that what comes after liberalism is nihilism is just part of the truth, because the term "nihilism", in the form of "post-modernity" or in some other philosophical garb, seems to lend somehow a respectable, professorial halo to the phenomenon. . . . .

Nihilism is today not a philosophy, it is above all a practice, and a practice of suicide even if is a soft suicide. It is the suicide of the depressed. It is also a practice of violence. The secular society lives in daily violence, violence with reality. This violence shows that nihilism cannot and does not correspond to our being. But it shows also, in a very concrete way, how the secular society annihilates itself by engendering the very monsters that terrify it most and that it itself hates most: the twin monsters of fundamentalism and terrorism. After 11th September 2001 and 11th March 2004, it is more and more obvious that Islamic terrorism, like Islamic fundamentalism, by all its Muslim coloring and a certain vague connection with traditional Muslim ideas and practices, is not understandable or thinkable without the West, it is mostly a creature of Western secular ideologies. It is pragmatic nihilism using Islam instrumentally, very much like the emergent modern nation-states used in their own political interest a Church institution like the Inquisition.

II. The Destiny of Christianity within Secular Reason

One has to recognize that, at least in the West, the Church in general has not been successful in taking a stand that will allow her to recognize, not to say to overcome, the strategies of secular reason. . . .

And this is my main reason to distrust the urge that so many feel nowadays in certain countries (this is the case in Spain) of bringing the Church as Church into the political arena to fight propositions that utterly offend the Christian understanding of human life (the so-called "marriage" of homosexuals, other obvious destructions of marriage, the experiments with human embryos, "liberalization" of euthanasia and abortion, etc). The very interest that the proponents of these monstrosities seem to have in the provocation makes me extremely suspicious. On the other hand, I cannot bring myself to imagine the Church of the second or of the third century trying to overthrow and take over the Roman Empire to make it Christian, instead of converting it. For us Christians, that kind of "battle" is always a distraction and a trap. . . .

I do not believe, therefore, that any strategy to conquer influence or power in our societies will do any good to the Church or to the cause of Christianity in any sense. We as Christians cannot have any nostalgia of the days of the past and, least of all, for those very conditions that have led to the invention of the secular as a reaction against a decadent and already reductive image of Christianity. A strategy of looking for influence will only continue to hide to most Christians the fact that the real "enemy" is not truly outside us, but within us, in the exact measure (which is a very large measure) we share those very assumptions whose consequences we criticize so sharply in the decisions of some politicians (but in general only of some).

In consequence, that strategy will only distract us from the only "politics" that is needed in the present situation, and the only one can really make a difference in the world: being the body of Christ, living in the communion of the Holy Spirit in this concrete hour of history. In other words, the "politics" we most need is conversion in order to build up of the Church again as a banner among the nations, as "a nation made from all nations". An effect of this distraction is that it allows the immense energy Christianity unlashes to be used instrumentally in the favor of political programs that do not and cannot, in any way, be identified with the life the Lord has given us. That life lives in the Church, and not in a political party, not even in one that would eventually present itself as being at the service of the "Christian values". The circle closes when one realizes that the instrumentality of the Church to a political program becomes by itself – in complete independence of the content of that program – a hindrance to the freedom of the Church and to the faith of the world in Jesus Christ.

Let us turn to the question of what happens to the Church when she accepts to understand herself in the frame set up by secular reason. In the very beginning of the book of John Milbank I have already mentioned, he describes poignantly that situation in reference to theology:

The pathos of modern theology – says Milbank – is its false humility. For theology, this must be a fatal disease, because once theology surrenders its claim to be a metadiscourse, it cannot any longer articulate the word of the creator God, but is bound to turn into the oracular voice of some finite idol, such as historical scholarship, humanist psychology, or transcendental philosophy. If theology no longer seeks to position, qualify or criticize other discourses, then it is inevitable that these discourses will position theology; for the necessity of an ultimate organizing logic cannot be wished away. A theology "positioned" by secular reason suffers two characteristic forms of confinement. Either it idolatrously connects knowledge of God with some particular field of knowledge – "ultimate" cosmological causes, or "ultimate" psychological and subjective needs. Or else it is confined to intimations of a sublimity beyond representation, so functioning to confirm negatively to confirm negatively the questionable idea of an autonomous secular realm, completely transparent to rational understanding.

. . . Within the frame of secular reason the Church can only survive in one of the two modes of confinement indicated by Milbank. In the first confinement, "ratio" and "fides" are parallel lines that never meet, although it may be conceded that they do not contradict one another12. Now, the separation between "ratio" and "fides" is just the reflex of many other divisions, and ultimately of the division between God and reality. And so, the first confinement finishes always in the second one. There, at the end, there is only "ratio": "fides" vanishes among the fantasies of the human mind.
In fact, there is only one confinement, in two phases. As soon as the sphere of the religious, in which Christianity as a whole is placed, designates a particular sphere of human activity next to other spheres (philosophy, morality, the sciences, the arts, and so on), it is thereby severed of any other human reality; it becomes autonomous, but it has to become unreal also, since to every parcel of reality corresponds its own sphere of knowledge in rapport to which is completely transparent, with the implication that the different spheres of knowledge expect complete dominion over the assigned parcel of the real world.

To religion there is no reality left, and therefore it cannot even be a kind of knowledge, it has to belong to the purely private and subjective realm of sentiment and preference. Its concern, if it is conceded that is for something "real", has to be for a wholly otherworldly "reality". And since this reality will have no relationship or bearing on anything of this world, in the end will have no reality out of the purely subjective imagination (Feuerbach's religion). . . .

In fact, as already stated, De Lubac saw this "dualism" as a cause of atheism:
On the one hand, though the dualist – or, perhaps better, separatist – thesis has finished its course [in the theology schools], it may be only just beginning to bear its bitterest fruit. As fast as professional theology moves away from it, it becomes so much more widespread in the sphere of practical action. While wishing to protect the supernatural from any contamination, people had in fact exiled it altogether – both from intellectual and from social life – leaving the field free to be taken over by secularism. Today that secularism, following its course, is beginning to enter the minds even of Christians. They too seek to find a harmony with all things based upon an idea of nature which might be acceptable to a deist or an atheist: everything that comes from Christ, everything that should lead to him, is pushed so far into the background as to look like disappearing for good. The last word in Christian progress and the entry into adulthood would then appear to consist in a total secularization that would expel God not merely from the life of society, but from culture and even from personal relationships.
. . . .

The obvious and inevitable question is then: What in that case could be the interest of a faith that cannot give meaning to reality, and can only be instrumental for an already existing philosophical social, moral and political system? Asking this question puts into a sharp light the atheism implicit (but not wholly hidden) in both of these positions, the "progressive" and the "conservative", and the great width of the common ground that these two positions share, in spite of all the bitterness of some of their debates during much of the twentieth century.

The combination, then, of modern compartmentalization, in the form of dualism or in other forms, with that metamorphose of the supernatural into a "double" of this word already mentioned causes two main phenomena:

The first of them is the "disappearance" of the Church, that stops being understood as "the body of Christ" and therefore as His "sacrament", as the human place of flesh where to meet Him, and becomes instead an aggregation of individuals that share (more or less) the same "beliefs" and the same "values" (these "values" being generally understood in Kantian or relativistic terms)19. . . .
The second phenomenon, consequence of the previous one, is the complete identification of Christianity with secular thinking, so that being a Christian becomes meaningless, and makes no difference in real life. David L. Schindler has expressed how this phenomenon happens in America this way:

My argument, as it concerns Christians, is that the problem of secularism in America begins in a significant sense within the (Protestant and Catholic) churches themselves and their theology and religious practices. To put it in its most radical and indeed what seems to me also most precise terms, the disappearance or indeed the death of God is a phenomenon occurring not only in the 5 percent of Americans who do not profess belief in God but also and more pertinently in the 95 percent who do.
. . . .

At the end, the paradox of the Church in secular society is the same that again MacIntyre expressed many years ago as a dilemma for (protestant) theology, in the following way:

We can see the harsh dilemma of a would-be contemporary theology: [1] The theologian begins from orthodoxy, but the orthodoxy which has been learnt from Kierkegaard and Barth becomes too easily a closed circle, in which believer speaks only to believer, in which all human content is concealed. [2] Turning aside from this arid in-group theology, the most perceptive theologians wish to translate what they have to say to an atheistic world. But they are doomed to one of two failures. Either [a] they succeed in their translation: in which case what they find themselves saying has been turned into the atheism of their hearers. Or [b] they fail in their translation: in which case no one hears what they have to say but themselves.

This is not only the doom of today's protestant theology. It is everywhere the dilemma of Christian media, of Christian morals, and of Christian education. It is the dilemma of today's Christian presence in the world at large.

And yet, with all this critique of secular reason as one more particular tradition, and with the observation of the deadly consequences that its uncritical acceptance has for the Church and for itself, I have to recognize, and it is essential at this point of our argument to note, in order that this argument not be misunderstood, that at least one aspect of secular reason is the direct heir of Christianity: the affection for reason as such (as for freedom as such, or for the human dignity as such) is so much so a characteristic of Christianity and of Christian tradition that Christianity is uniquely able to embrace whatever truth is contained even in the "secular" criticism of religion. In fact, the secular critique of religion, be that of Feuerbach, Marx, Durkheim or Nietzsche, could not have happened or flourished outside Christian soil.

III. "Return to the Center"

One cannot see the desert unless one belongs somewhere else. One cannot rationally criticize a position or perceive its limits unless one has seen something else. And of course, we have seen something else. We have seen the martyrs, the saints. We see their resplendent humanity, and we know two things: first, that such a nation of saints cannot be built on a falsehood, and second, that the promise of Christ "I will be with you to the end of time" (Mt 28, 28) holds true. We can make ours the words of Newman at the end of his now famous "Biglietto Speech", in which he expressed very strongly the dangers of liberalism in religion as the enemy he had fought all through his life:

Christianity has been too often in what seemed deadly peril, that we should fear for it any new trial now. So far is certain; on the other hand, what is uncertain, and in these great contests commonly is uncertain, and what is commonly a great surprise, when it is witnessed, is the particular mode by which, in the event, Providence rescues and saves His elect inheritance. Sometimes our enemy is turned into a friend; sometimes he is despoiled of that special virulence of evil which was so threatening; sometimes he falls to pieces of himself; sometimes he does just so much as is beneficial, and then is removed. Commonly the Church has nothing more to do than to go on in her own proper duties, in confidence and peace; to stand still and to see the salvation of God. . . . .

This is a fantastic witness of faith and confidence in the promise of Christ. "The Church has nothing more to do than to go on in her own proper duties, in confidence and peace". Nowadays, however, "religious liberalism" has gone so far in the delusion of Christian minds that even "her own proper duties", from preaching to the sacraments, are understood (or rather, misunderstood) in the frame of secular reason. Newman himself, seeing this danger, in that same speech, said also: "Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth". He knew that liberalism (or secular reason), and not only in religion, has an immense ability to disguise and mask itself, to present itself as "the natural way", the way things have always been, and should always be. It is therefore necessary a great effort, both intellectual and moral, to unmask its strategies, to show its ideological character, both outside and inside the Church, and to return again to the Holy Tradition, disentangling it from the bounds that have it tied and crippled, in order to propose it anew, in all its freshness, to today's man.
The problem with most critics to liberalism, as we have already insinuated, is that they have been made in the name of Marxism (or from the partial acceptance of Marxist outlooks). This has implied the acceptance of the beliefs common to Marxism and liberalism (since Marxism was, as MacIntyre says, "in the first instance a critic of liberalism and of bourgeois society in their own terms"), and with them, the implicit or explicit assertion of the unavailability and the uselessness of Christianity for the "things of this world". So, most critiques of liberalism, in the long ran, have worked in favor of the establishment of that same secular culture which was at the base both of liberalism and of its critics.
. . . .

Now, if liberalism is everywhere successful (although its very success constitutes the death of all its professed ideals), and if it represents a major danger – and, for the most part, a hidden or unrecognized danger – to the Christian Church, what can we do?
What is needed, in my view, is, as the title of the French version of a little book Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote in 1969 says, a "return to the center"27. Not the center as in politics, as the middle way between right and left, but the center as the point from which the whole novelty of Christianity springs. The "center" is the gift by which the Triune God gives himself through Christ in creation and redemption, a gift that is given today in the communion of the Church, a gift that constitutes the very meaning of all reality, and that recognizes Jesus Christ as "the heart of the world". In fact, one could describe the best theological efforts of the nineteenth and the twentieth century – at least in the West – , and the only ones that will survive the devastating effects of time, as attempts to recuperate tradition, and to recover the meaningfulness of Christian tradition for human life, beyond the dualistic or otherwise fragmenting distortions created by secular reason and the several variants of a secular reinterpretation of Christianity. In other words, these attempts try to recuperate tradition avoiding the dilemma MacIntyre had signaled and we quoted above: buying meaning by selling tradition, that is, by making tradition say what secular reason says already without the need of faith.

IV. On the way to "The Center": Landscapes/Landmarks

In this final part of my paper I would just like to call attention to a few signposts on this way to the center. Although I will remain mainly in the field of theology, as it is proper in the context of this conference, I want to mention that the "recuperation" of the "center" implies three aspects that are united between them . . . .

I mean the magisterial teaching of the Church, the theological effort and the charismatic life of God's people. Of course, from these three aspects of the life of Christ's body, one has the particular mission, given and guaranteed by the Lord Himself, of preserving and handing down the Holy Tradition: and this is the apostolic ministry. But none of the three aspects can be severed from the other two without destruction or grave damage to the whole body of Christ. That is the case, for instance, when the magisterium insists in the social teaching of the Church as an essential part of the Church's life: if most of the Christian people understands their own life in the frame of secular reason, that social teaching remains as an abstract theory, taken seriously by a few, unknown by most. And if it would happen that the teaching of the shepherds would not be "theological" (by accepting, for instance, the very modern and deadly division between theology and pastoral care), the Christian people will be without guidance, the Christian faith would be cut from reason, and soon will dissolve itself in the world, perhaps in the form of a religion with some Christian coloring. Conversely, when theology does not represent the systematic reflection on the experience of the Church, not paying enough attention to the authoritative role of tradition and the magisterium, then inevitably becomes instrumental to ideology and to the powers of this world.

Let us begin with theology. The works of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac, whom I have just cited and whom I consider by far the greatest Catholic theologians of the twentieth Century, have to be read clearly in the context of the concerns I have been talking about at the beginning of this paper. . . .

As for De Lubac, he wrote about his own work, in a note to be published in the Italian edition of his complete works: "My task has basically been (...) to help know better, and therefore, understand better and love more, the treasures of the great catholic tradition – I would say gladly, some of its great common places – misunderstood by so many, very little truly known even by those who would in all sincerity like to preserve it and to defend it"31. In his first book, Catholicism, published in 1938, a work in which he wanted to bring to the foreground "the social aspects of the dogma" as they are expressed in the Christian Tradition, De Lubac wrote: "By revealing the Father and by being revealed by him, Christ completes the revelation of man to himself"32. . . . Now, this is, in every sense, just what tradition has always said about Christ and mankind, what was already in the Creed of Nicaea and the New Testament. But the important thing about this quote is that, when taken seriously, makes impossible for a catholic to maintain a liberal position, and goes beyond any secular dualism or fragmentation: Christ belongs to the very definition of man, in such a way, that to think of man without Christ is just to leave the understanding of man incomplete, is to miss what matters most, even for the building of the polis: mankind's destiny and vocation to share in the divine life of the Son of God. One could say that the whole meaning of De Lubac's work has been to unearth tradition and liberate it from the confinement of secular reason.

Balthasar and De Lubac are not the only theologians in the West to have tried to free Christian experience and language from the bounds and reductions of secular reason. There are certainly others, although one has to admit that there are not many who relate that "center" of the Christian event with the different issues of Christian anthropology or moral life without falling into the dilemma spoken of by MacIntyre; . . .

All the "landscapes" we have mentioned up to this point are theological. But the journey "beyond secular reason" cannot be done by theology alone, is not primarily a problem for theology. Because theology is the intellectual articulation of the experience of the Church, and it cannot be done except from that experience. When that experience is lacking, or is confused, the thought cannot but be confused, and theology becomes just a variant of secular reason, just the expression of the dominant cultural outlook. Even the teaching of the Church, alone and by itself, is not enough. Because "the snare has overspread the whole earth" in such a way that the teaching of the Church is received and read mostly, even by people whose good will one knows and cannot deny, through the filters of secular reason: either is reduced in a pietistic manner, or it is reduced to "liberal values" and morality.

In fact, in my view, the challenge is so great that implies all of us, every single Christian, every Christian family and every Christian community, wherever we are, and whatever our history, and whatever the wounds we may have caused one another through that history. The challenge cannot be addressed without our being open to learn from one another both the failures and the achievements, and so to help one another with the charity that corresponds to members (suffering members, wounded members) of the one Body of Christ. The first fragmentation of the Christian experience is our division, the first fragmentation of the Church (and the first opening to the rise of secular reason) happens when we stop understanding one another as members of the one Body of Christ.

One of the truths that have been opened to me in the conversation with the work of MacIntyre is the awareness that life (history) is not the application of ideas, that there is always a very close interaction and dependence between practices (political and economical, familiar, educational, artistic, cultural), and theory. Practices embody theory – there is not the slightest human gesture that does not imply a whole ontology – but are also able to create or modify theory, as theory often serves to justify, modify or create practices. This is a key point in MacIntyre's work, scattered all throughout it. Community is prior to tradition, is the place of tradition. It is the place of rationality (both practical and theoretical), and therefore it is the place of intellectual and moral life. It is also the place for "the individual" to belong, and belonging, to become a person, to get an identity for the self and for the world. If this is true, as I think it is, the consequences for the challenge I have been discussing in this paper are of great import. The issue before us, in fact, is not a question of changing some of our ideas, or of our language. What is at stake is not only theology, as the articulated language of faith. It is faith itself. Or rather, it is the Church as the human space created by the Triune God for the fulfillment of humanity, and it is faith as the recognition of this fact.

At the light of this, one can perhaps understand better MacIntyre's call at the end of After Virtue, quoted already in part above. He is comparing our time with the epoch of the decline of the Roman Empire: "What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us". . . .

So there is theology, there is the teaching of the shepherds of the Church, there are individual persons, families, parishes and monasteries, to whom Holy tradition and the teaching of the Church has reached and the grain found good soil, and the sowing is fruitful. They perceive the danger, they suffer it, and they can still lovingly recognize the infinite signs of the presence of Christ in the world. They know God loves them immensely, and they love God with all their heart. I have met them many times. They are frequently alone, with no roof, in the open. They are the scattered remnant of the Christian people, the most beautiful human reality ever grown upon this earth. They need to be sustained by the Church; they need to be recognized by the others at home.

Then there are the experiences that the Lord makes grow, a little everywhere, in parishes, in the centers of study and culture, wherever there are persons of faith who gather "in the name of Jesus Christ", and for whom Christ becomes the center of thought and action, because is a gift "more precious than life". They are sometimes called "movements", and they are in a sense like new forms of monasticism. They are realities in which the experience of being the Church – a Church with a body – is renewed with a freshness that fills life with joy and hope, in the midst of all the sufferings and trials of life. In them, even if sometimes in a different manner from the one has been usual, Christian rationality grows and can compare itself with other ways of living and thinking; there is again a tradition to pass on, and theology can flourish again.

I would like to finish mentioning some characteristics of this new discovery of the Church. Or perhaps I should say, this new disclosure, or "revelation", since the Father, the Risen Lord and the Holy Spirit are the ones who over and over again create and regenerate the Church in history, and allow us to see "what many prophets and kings wished to see, but could not see" (Lk 10, 24). These characteristics can for the most part be deduced from what has already been said.

The Church needs to become again, at all her levels, "the house and the school of communion", as John Paul II has reminded us. The Church has to be a community life, in a sense, "a family" life, like the life of "a body". She needs to recover "social" density. Not as a ghetto, but as real family life, always open to life and to society. "Family", "mother", "house, "nation", "body", are not just names for the Church, are social realities essential for the life of the Christian Tradition. The Church is a company for life, and for everything in life. In other words, the Church has to be "rescued", so to speak, from the drying and inhuman power of the managerial logic, and has to recover the sacramental logic, which is the one that belongs to her.

The Church is a community life centered in the liturgy and the Eucharist. The Eucharist, with all its dimensions (without being reduced in a pietistic and individualistic way) is the practice of the Church, and so, it is a school: a school of community life, a school that allows us to understand in a unique way who is God, who is Christ, who are we; who we are for God, and who we are for one another; and what is the world for us. The Eucharist is the only place of resistance to the annihilation of the human subject. And the Eucharist is also the place where one can learn and experience a universality, which is not the abstract and false universality of modernity, which is not in opposition to local realization, identity and fullness.

In that community, the movement of the heart (mind and all) is a movement that goes in the direction of a rediscovery of Christian tradition, with all the riches and the variations that this tradition has, and not of a flight from it. For us Christians, differences are not an obstacle, but a treasure, as long as those differences are understood and lived in the light of the sacramental logic of the Body of Christ. Even the Gospels are four, and God is the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The experience of life in that community is a human experience that, because it is an experience of Christ, becomes a way of looking at all reality, that is, it becomes a source for rationality, and it refers to all dimensions of human experience and human practice (knowledge, art, and all kinds of human relationships, including the political or economic).

Of course, to make these things to happen is not just in our hands. Even to desire them is already a grace. The Church is not ours, but the Lord's, although we know the Lord desires His Church shining in the midst of the night. To us it remains, first of all, to give thanks for what we have – which is everything already, since we have Christ and the Holy Spirit – , and for the graces the Lord does not stop giving us, like our meeting this morning. And then we can desire and pray that every one of us may flourish and grow "until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of god, to maturity, to the measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4, 13).

Posted by johnwright at 7:23 PM | Comments (0)

Yesterday the student newspaper at PLNU, The Point, published a little essay that I wrote in response to a request from a student. The essay compares two statues on campus, including the new statue in the business building.

Behind the essay lies the work of John Milbank in Theology and Social Theory. In his "post-modern critical Augustinianism" (see ericisrad.com, direct link here) Milbank takes Augustine's two cities and reinterprets the contemporary world in light of an "ontology of violence" that lies behind capitalism and certain strands of post-modern thought, and Augustine's trinitarian 'ontology of peace'. Yet Milbank's thought is so esoteric and difficult that it is hard to wade through. Yet his categories are important, I believe, to understanding forces that would distort the faith given to the saints. The statues provide a concrete display of two fundamentally different ontologies that Milbank also discusses.

My whole argument depends on the relationship of the statue in the business building to a pagan Greek temple. If one wants to check out these architectural form, one can go to http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Arts/GreekTemple.htm to see the architectural form of the greek temples, compared to the idol of the bull and bear in the business building here.

It is interesting to note that this struggle, seen here on the PLNU campus, parallels very closely the struggle that Tracey Rowland has discussed in the distinction between two types of catholicism within Roman Catholicism today: "Whig catholicism" and "Augustinian catholicism". Broader perspectives throughout the church catholic help us see more clearly what is at stake for us.

Two Statues: An Icon and An Idol
By John W. Wright
Professor, School of Theology and Christian Ministry

Colleges and universities within the Church of the Nazarene are not known for their realistic statues. Shaped by Puritan fears, such statues have historically smacked of “popery”, and thus been assiduously avoided. It is of interest, therefore, that campus now presents two statues: the statue of Jesus calling Peter in between the Ryan Library and the Nicholson Commons and the new statue of the bull and the bear within the entryway of the Fermanian School of Business.

Of course, public statues are not merely aesthetic works for personal enjoyment. As Roland Barthes reminded us in his book Mythologies, such works appear as natural within our environment, and thus obscure the particular histories and interests embedded within them that they seek to naturalize. It is thus of more interest to note the vast differences between these two statues, and to ask what these difference suggest about PLNU.

The statue of Jesus calling Peter stands to the side of pedestrian thoroughfares. A concrete sidewalk invites those passing by to leave voluntarily their paths of business for repose around the feet of Jesus. No benches are present, but a wall behind Jesus closes off the statue from the open space behind it. Jesus stands on ground level, one arm on Peter’s shoulder; one stretched out in invitation to embrace those around Him. Peter, shoulders slightly hunched and bent at the waist from his toil, still has both hands on his fishing nets. He looks plaintively into the compassionate face of Jesus. Jesus beckons Peter -- and the onlooker -- from the struggles of labor into His open arms.

In contrast, the statue of the bull and bear stands high on a pedestal within the main entryway into the Fermanian School of Business. Outside columns and an overhang direct one into the building. The glass doorways are smoky, slightly obscuring the view into the entry. The statue blocks direct access into the center of the building; one is forced to walk around it to enter the building completely. Benches allow a passerby to sit and gaze up at the statue. Restrooms and a custodial closet fill the other wall. Coming out of these rooms, one must gaze at the statue unless one intentionally looks away. A recessed ceiling with indirect lighting centers the statue from above; colored tiles provide the same focus from below. The statue dominates the room, forcing one to gaze upward onto it. The whole architecture of the entryway closely resembles an ancient Greek temple, with its god at the center of the naos, the temple’s inner court.

The statue itself has a bull and a bear, forces of nature, entwined in battle. The bear’s snarl reveals his teeth looking upward to consume the bull; the bull raises his hooves in a charge, neck tilted to ready its horns in defense or attack of the bear. In the midst of the struggle between these irrational forces, one finds a stock market ticker ribbon with stock prices encoded upon it. Out of the conflict between the bull and the bear, wealth emerges.

The two statues thus present two radically different ontologies as ‘natural’: an icon of peace where God calls humans voluntarily from the toils of life to God’s own Self through Christ; an idol of conflict in which human beings involuntarily participate in the blind conflict of nature in order to produce wealth. One wonders which statue more deeply presents the fundamental convictions of the university.

Posted by johnwright at 7:46 AM | Comments (5)

I didn't place last weeks sermon on the web. Maybe I'll get to it. But I wanted to get yesterdays. It continues some of the themes that I've been reflecting on within my (w)rants.

Then back to grading.

Matthew 21:28-32
Philippians 2:1-13

Our gospel reading is disturbing. Why does Jesus appeal to these two sons? Why does he feature the mouthy one, the one who told his father, “no!” Why does he honor tax collectors, economic oppressors, and prostitutes? Why does he make such a bid deal of obedience, not faith? Why concentrate on the external conformity rather than in internal emotions? The parable is hard for us to hear. I’d like to ask why this is so. Then I’d like to look at our Gospel reading before turning to the Epistle reading this morning.

I. We’ve got to come to terms with why it’s hard for us to hear Jesus’ teaching here as good news.

It seems to me that non-Christians have discovered the irony in the transformation of the Christian faith in modern America. Wasn’t it Ghandi who asked why only the Christians were the only ones who didn’t know that Jesus taught non-violence? In today’s world, many artists recognize the distortion of Christianity by Christians in the US. Cake wrote a song, “Jesus wrote a blank check.” Billy Idol, not exactly cut from the same image as Amy Grant, covered a wonderful song from the 70s called, “Plastic Jesus”. It speaks of the type of faith that makes it hard for us to hear the gospel today.

I don’t care if it rains or freezes, Long as I got my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car;
Through my trials and tribulations, And my travels through the nations With my plastic Jesus I’ll go far.

Ridin’ down the thoroughfare, with his nose up in the air
A wreck may be ahead, but he don’t mind.
Trouble come and he don’t see, he just keeps his eye on me
And any other thing that lies behind.

If I’m in the traffic jam, he don’t care if I say **expletive deleted**; I can let all my curses roll
Cause hazy co plastic doesn’t hear Cause he’s got a plastic ear.
The man who invented plastic saved my soul.

If I weave around at night; he’s gone to think I’m very tight.
They never find my bottle, though they ask.
Plastic Jesus shelters me, for his head comes off, you see
He’s hollow and I use him like a flask.

I don’t care if it’s dark or scary Long as I got my minted Mary
Riding on the dashboard of my car. I feel that I’m protected amply
I’ve got the love of the whole **expletive deleted** family
Riding on the dashboard of my car.

These artists have picked up that we’ve been shaped by what a sociologist Christian Smith and others call “therapeutic individualism”. That’s kind of fun to say, “Therapeutic individualism”. Basically, this means that we view “the individual [or I might add, the communal] self as the source and authentic standard of moral knowledge and authority, and individual self-fulfillment as the preoccupying purpose of life. Subjective, personal experience is the touchstone of all that is authentic, right, and true”(Smith, Soul Searching, p. 173). Jesus, or rather, faith in God or Jesus or whatever works for me, whatever I experience as ‘meaningful’ or significant is what really matters, what I want to do, what I must do. My responsibility in life is to make my actions fit with the internal emotions, passions that I bring with me in my deepest self, or within my “community”.

Of course, this means obedience to anything outside my self or my own circle of intimacy is a bad thing. Smith writes, “’External’ traditions, obligations, and institutions of society” are “inauthentic and often illegitimate constraints on morality and behavior from which individuals must be emancipated” (Smith, p. 173). What matters is intentions, one’s heart, one’s sincerity. If behavior doesn’t match up with the inner emotions, one shouldn’t engage with it. Why, the son who says he will do what the Father says is the one who is morally authentic, even if he can’t bring himself to do what the Father says. The other son is merely conforming to the Father’s authority. Obedience doesn’t matter; what matters is intentionality, agreeability, even if it is not followed by proper behavior.

Once we’ve been shaped by “therapeutic individualism”, it’s very hard to hear Jesus’ riddle as making any sense.

This is how the US society has shaped us. We’ve learned to shape our behavior to meet our emotions. If something will enrich our experience, we’ll choose it. But to engage in something merely to obey, no way we’ll do that. Obedience only can serve my personal meaning, and therefore, cannot be obedience. Given this cultural prejudice, no wonder we can’t hear Jesus’ saying. It makes no sense to us.

2. But the story is clear: obedience, not agreeability, not respectability, is what matters to God.
We like agreeability, respectability, in ourselves and other people. I do. Someone who is smooth talking, someone who will be nice. In some ways, it doesn’t matter what follows afterwards. Especially in things of the heart, in what we call voluntary activities, those activities not determined by work or the state, appearance, language, agreeability, respectability is what we’ve learned to honor.

Yet Jesus’ riddle is quite simple: Which child obeyed his father? The one who obeyed is the one who obeyed. As they say, talk is cheap. Agreeability is overrated. Respectability doesn’t really matter. What matters is the visible act of obedience in the world, obedience to the will of the Father. It’s not obedience to some inner voice; it's obedience to the proclaimed Word of the Father.

Jesus seems to be speaking of obedience to God’s kingdom in his riddle, obedience to his Word as the Word of God. John announces God’s kingdom, and its righteousness. Jesus proclaimed, taught, lived this kingdom. The kingdom isn’t about nice words; it’s not about agreeability; participation in the kingdom doesn’t come through respectability. Even prostitutes and tax collectors participate in the kingdom before the agreeable and respectable. The kingdom is about obedience to the Word of the Father, seen and heard in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. One bodily participates in the kingdom through obedience to Jesus. It is impossible to be obedient to this kingdom without faith in, loyalty to Jesus, for the Father has commanded us to believe in the One Whom the Father has sent. Repentance therefore is necessary; obedience follows repentance.
Obedience to the Father through the Word of the Son matters.

3. Then our passions, our emotions, our inner psyche has to be shaped by the Spirit to meet the demands of our obedience.

Did you notice the importance of obedience in the epistle reading? Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus. Christ became obedient. Paul states, Obey me. And then the whole passage comes to its outcome in the command, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.” Obedience to the Word of God is work. For in the work, we have to be re-made, sanctified by the Spirit, to sustain life within the obedience of our actions.

Obedience comes before the inner desire, before our desire for fulfilling experience; obedience comes before we feel like it. In obedience, the Spirit must form the inner desire rightfully for proper love of God and neighbor as we participate in God’s kingdom through Jesus by the Spirit’s power. Excuses, rationalizations, denials, agreeability – none of those matter. Indeed, such actions mask our disobedience that arises from a lack of goodness in our hearts. We live in self-righteousness, rather than the righteousness of Christ. And tax-collectors, economic oppressors, and prostitutes go before us into the kingdom for we think that we don’t have to engage in repentance, the repentance even of believers; they cannot afford such delusions.

This is why direct, personal, obedient participation in the works of mercy is so important. I don’t care about your “political views.” Engaging in the works of mercy, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, overseeing the sick, visiting those in prison, burying the dead, as obedience to Christ puts us in situations that force us to be changed inside. Obedience forces us not to be captured by the ideologies of the left or right around us; obedience forces us to trust in God, not agreeability and respectability; obedience forces us to grow in faith, hope, and love of God and love of neighbor in God. Obedience forces us to have the fruits of the Spirit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Obedience is not an end in itself; the end is the inner virtues, the fruits of the Spirit, our sanctification. But we will not fully discover these fruits in our lives without obedience. We obey God the Father through Christ – and thereby open our lives for the Spirit to remake our hearts as we engage in the works of the kingdom, working out our salvation with fear and trembling.

We come to this Table in obedience. Not because we think it’s cool, not because it’s a hip way to reach an ‘emerging church’. We don’t come because if you come, you’ll have a powerful spiritual experience. We come because we’re commanded – Jesus said, “As often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.” You can pretty well live every day without recognizing the most important aspect of your life – God’s love for you in Christ. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for you. In the coming, in participating in the real body and blood of Christ in faith, the Spirit works to bring forth the love for God for which you were made, a love to be lived out in love of neighbor. Come in repentance; come in faith; come to let the Spirit bring forth the Spirit’s fruits that arise out of obedience to the kingdom that God has shown us in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. And most of all, be thankful.

Posted by johnwright at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)

Saturday started early with a 1-0 victory for my girls rec soccer team, The Return of the Tropical Lawnmowers. The victory moves us to 3-0 -- we've won more already than in the past four years combined!!

Much more significant, however, was the funeral of John Kang. John was a friend, a refugee from the genocide in the Sudan. We had worked together for the benefit of his people here in San Diego as they adjusted to a foreign land. He sat in an ESL ministerial studies class that I and Kevin Timpe taught most recently. I was reminded that John had participated directly in the peace talks that has resulted in a peace agreement between the South Sudan and the Islamic government. It is a fragile peace, but better then the long civil war. Ironically, the government was established the week that John died.

I sometimes wonder if John's death was necessary. He had liver cancer. He had not felt well for months. Each time that he had gone to the doctor, he had been sent home, told that he was not seriously ill. I wonder whether he could have received a diagnosis if the local medical establishment had seen him as an international diplomat rather than a poor African immigrant. John leaves his wife, Mary, with 10 children, including a newborn in the hospital who is struggling with health.

After the funeral at the Covenant Church, we reconvened at our building for a "reception". I listened as Nuer men from throughout the United States speak in honor of John and charge those gathered, especially John's eldest sons, to be strong, stay united, and care for each other an the family. I thought of the Scriptures, and how they encourage the church, as a minority, resident aliens with their own culture, to sustain life in a culture that wants to assimilate them. The earnestness, the repetition, the passion that came with the addresses showed the concern and hopes of the elders. What a shame it would be if, at the time the Nuer are preserved in the Sudan, they undergo a different type of "genocide" by the assimilative processes inherent within the "pluralism" of the United States culture.

Bol Lual and Peter Kweck honored me by asking me to speak to the group. I stressed how John had helped me understand so much, how he combined goodness and wisdom in his life. I tried to express the honor that I have for the Nuer way of life.

It was disturbing that many of the young adult males did not gather for the funeral or reception. They do not have families, as they were killed in Sudan, and seem much more prone to assimilation than the refugees who made it out with families. They have not been unfolded in the church, often having to take jobs that conflict with Sunday mornings.

Already the Nuer have ordered John Kweck, a widower, to take care of Mary and the kids. It is very hard with the families scattered throughout San Diego with little resources. We will have a long journey with John's family, and amidst the Nuer. They have much to teach us as part of the body of Christ.

I will miss John Kang. I sense the challenges ahead for us, with our brothers and sisters among the Nuer as well as supporting John's family. Yet I have learned amidst these challenges there awaits a profound glimpse of a life that truly is life.

Aaron Friberg, who has worked with the youth group and the older of John Kang's family, said a very profound thing at the funeral. "It is a whole lot harder to let go of John Kang than it was for Brother Mike [Patterson]." It is true. But still, we go on, grieving, wondering, but in the assurance that Christ is with us.

Posted by johnwright at 8:37 AM | Comments (1)

Stephen's speech in "defense" to the accusations that he proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the temple occupies a major section of Acts. This is the first speech given by a follower of Jesus other than Peter. One of the interesting things to ask is who much is Stephen concerned to "defend" himself from the false charges against him. Are these really what is at issue? But in the process Stephen tells the story of the Torah as a Jew, the foundation story for these Messianic Jews to whom he belongs. He speaks as a Jew to Jews. Again, we see that our lives are an extension of the synagogue and the election of the Jews in a very real sense.

Verse 1 introduces the speech. Why is it asked by the High Priest? How does the high priest and the mob from the synagogue of the freemen view authority in this situation?

Vv. 2-7: To whom does Stephen address his speech? Why would he use language of family? With whom does Stephen identify? Why would Stephen begin his defense with Abraham? How does this relate to the charge that Jesus was to destroy the temple? Why would he emphasize that God gave Abram no land, especially not the land that they are on? What is the relationship between the election of Abram, his lack of land, and the quote from Exodus 3:12 in v. 7?

vv. 8-16 Behind this section, the issue of land is still seemingly at work. Circumcision is a sign of God's election of the Jews. Why does Stephen mention this and then go into the story of the descendants of Abraham? Why would he call Jacob Jacob and not Israel? Why does he rush to the story of Joseph? What is his point about the story of Joseph? What is he unfolding in his summary of Genesis? Who is Stephen a part of here? Who are his accusers? How is this a "closing argument" in his trial? What is the relevance of his summary of Genesis? How is the mention of famine in Egypt and Canaan (note, not Israel) relevant to the real reason that he was arrested? Do you remember the purpose of Stephen's office? What is he saying about this Jewish Messianic practices that we have seen so far in Acts?

In some ways it is hard for us to see the importance of Stephen's speech for we who are Gentile believers in the Jewish messiah. But how does our lives reflect the life of the election of the Jews? If we share in this same root, what does this story suggest about our lives? How is our life as a congregation like that of a synagogue? What can the synagogue teach us as Messianic belivers?

Have a wonderful evening!

Posted by johnwright at 7:48 AM | Comments (0)

As a follow up to the last (w)rant, I'd like to post an essay that I wrote several years back after George W. Bush's State of the Union address. I sent the essay to Christian Century as a response to the address and to Christianity Today, but neither decided to publish it. But it shows concretely what Smith argues is the parasitical nature of Moral Therapeutic (Relational) Deism.

Leave our Hymns Alone: A Christian Response to the George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address

Certain hymns still bring back warm remembrance from my holiness upbringing. “Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever,” my blue-collar congregation would sing with relish. My friends and I would open the hymnal with anticipation when the music minister would call out the number for “Wonderful Grace of Jesus.” In this song the men of the congregation for once had the privilege of singing the lead in the chorus, while the women joined with their descant line. In a rousing climax, the whole congregation would unite our voices with “Praise His name!” In youth camps, we sang “There’s Power in Blood” even more energetically: “There is pow, pow, pow, pow (breath) pow, pow, pow, pow (breath), wonder-working power, in the blood, (yelling) in the blood, (singing) of the Lamb, (yelling) of the Lamb!” The songs formed me to know that, as a Christian, my salvation was found in the faithfulness of Jesus. A confidence sprang out that helped me understand that living in Jesus entailed more than the forgiveness of sins: “Would you o’er evil the victory win? There’s wonderful power in the blood!”

My eyes opened wide, therefore, when I read a turn of phrase in the midst of George W. Bush’s State of the Union address: “There’s power, wonder-working power, in the . . .” Immediately, chords of gospel music involuntarily rang in my ears. I was primed for the word “blood” that should have come next. I was ready to shout at the top of my voice “in the blood!” . . . “of the Lamb!” But I was disappointed. Salvation, victory o’er evil, does not come in Jesus, in the blood of the Lamb in George Bush’s world. Salvation, power over evil, the wonder-working power, comes in the “in the goodness, in the perseverance, in the faith of the American people.”

As I read, I was confused, even bewildered. The President had stolen our song! Moreover, he’d stolen the very means of salvation that is at the center of my life as a Christian, my life as a member of the body of Christ, a people that comes from every tribe and every nation. Years earlier at our teen camp, such a shift in the terms of “There’s Power in the Blood” would have brought a laugh at our camp variety show. All would have recognized it as a parody of our deepest Christian convictions. The problem is, no one laughed during the State of the Union address. No one caught the joke. Mr. Bush had replaced Jesus with the United States as a messianic people and had set himself at its head . . . and everyone seemed to take him seriously!

Sadness crept over me as I felt that a life-long friend had been violated. As I continued to read through the speech, I began to understand why no one had laughed. In my holiness church, we had sung how Jesus had freely given his life for victory over evil. By dying for evil-doers, for sinners like me, God had in Jesus defeated the power of evil. We no longer needed to live bound under the power of evil, cowering in fear. We could “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:20). What wonderful good news! No wonder the congregation sang so voraciously.

While the President’s address received the predictable partisan resolve, it did not -- and could not --elicit the profound joy that my childhood congregation expressed in their hymn singing. Mr. Bush pledged that the United States would save its citizens and even the whole world from evil. Unlike our holiness songs, however, his prescribed method was not overcoming evil through the power of the blood of the Lamb, but by bringing death and destruction to those deemed evil – and, by implication, anyone around them. Such is the record and the prospects for Iraq. Experts estimate that the 1990-91 Gulf War resulted directly in 110,000 civilian deaths; long-term effects of the war and the subsequent embargo have killed between 344,000-525,000 children under the age of five alone. If the President’s plans for war against Iraq go forward, a leaked United Nation’s report estimates that deaths of 48,000-261,000 will occur in a conventional war; 375,000-3,900,000 will die if a civil war breaks out with weapons of mass destruction unleashed by either side. In both scenarios, an additional 200,000 will be killed from indirect effects of the war. All I could do was think of Jesus, on his way to the cross, telling the daughters of Jerusalem, “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed’” (Luke 23:28-29).

We no longer sing those rousing holiness hymns any more. Choruses are in vogue now. My children would not catch the parody of salvation in Christ that the President offered in his version of the “wonder-working power.” I will point the parody out to them, but I’m not sure whether they will really feel why I think it is so important. That saddens me too. Perhaps such sadness is appropriate in days such as these. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.

Posted by johnwright at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)

As I've continued thinking about the way that the liberal political commitments shape institutional life in the United Staes with their own ideas of what the true, good, and beautiful entail, I recognize that it becomes very difficult to resist the temptation to be defined as against these currents in order to sustain the faithful witness of the church. If Christian Smith is correct in his analysis, an analysis consistent with scholars like Bill Cavanaugh in his essay in Radical Orthodoxy, liberalism exists in the formation of the nation-state as a parody of the church. Parodies only work if there is sufficient commonality with the "real thing" that one can see the humor in the parodic performance. What happens when no one can see that a parody is a parody? Yet when one is engaged in the performance of the real thing, how does one reject the parody without rejecting the truthfulness that the parody entails, and even, instructs?

Smith describes the "Creed" of Moral Therapeutic Deism (or Relational Deity) as
(1) A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
(2) God wants people to be good, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
(3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
(4) God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
(5) Good people go to heaven when they die. (p. 165)

In and of itself, except for the oversimplification of #2 and the blatant falisity of #4, there is nothing untruthful about the rest of this "Creed". It describes well some profoundly Christian convictions. Yet this is why it is perhaps so insidious, for it overwhelms the baptismal Creed of the Church: The Apostles Creed:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

One can move from the Apostle's Creed to affirmations in the Creed of MTD by a certain process of disembodiment and abstraction, the particularistic rearticulation that comes from re-placing the church with the nation-state. In seeing this, Smith's additional comments make sense:

"The elements of its [MTD] creed are normally assimilated by degrees, in parts, admixed with elements of more traditional religious faiths. Indeed, the religious creed appears to operate as a parasitic faith. It cannot sustain its own integral, independent life; rather it must attach itself like an incubus to established historical religious traditions, feeding on their doctrines and sensibilities, and expanding by mutating their theological substance to resemble its own distinctive image. . . . This religion generally does not and cannot stand on its own, so its adherents must be Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Jewish Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Mormon Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, and even nonreligious Moralistic Therapeutic Deists. . . . Believers in each larger tradition practice their own versions of this otherwise common parasitic religion. The Jewish version, for instance, may emphasize the ethical living aspect of the creed, while the Methodist version stresses the getting-to-heaven part. Each of the believers then can think of themselves as belonging to the specific religious tradition they name as their own – Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Mormon, whatever – while simultaneously sharing the cross-cutting, core beliefs of their de facto common Moralistic Therapeutic Deist faith. In effect, these believers get to enjoy whatever particulars of their own faith heritages that appeal to them, while also reaping the benefits of this shared, harmonizing, interfaith religion" (p. 166).

What Smith doesn't adequately emphasize is that this "faith" is every bit as much as particular and exclusive as other traditions -- it just masks its particularity by a language of "tolerance" -- and we all know that tolerance cannot tolerate the intolerance.

It is the majority discourse within this society, even as it has colonialized the life of the church, whether it be mainline or evangelical Protestant, or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Academic theologians have given sophisticated and profound intellectual formulations to support it. It is tempting to see the Tillich versus Barth or the Rahner versus Balthasar tensions of 20th century theology in light of the defense of MTD versus ecclesial resistance to MTD.

Yet the real place for the issue is within the parish or local congregation. Pastors face incredible pressure, social and financial, to extract the Creed of MTD from the Apostle's Creed, or merely to interpret the Apostle's Creed in light of MTD (or just abandon the Apostle's Creed and baptism). In good intentioned response to the struggles of those around, the pastor/priest intuitively responds to the "needs of the parishioners" -- and often rightfully so -- from within the truthfulness of the parody. Yet in the process, the life of the church so easily becomes colonized and distorted, the home of a parasite rather than the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps this is the challenge for us today: how not to be defined by the parody even while we resist it; how to embrace the truthfulness of what the parody emphasizes while not letting it colonize the life of the church. This calls for great wisdom, far exceeding mine. It seems to me that God has given the church (ie., local congregations, parishes that are at once local and catholic) three distinct, simple practices that might help us live faithfully: (1) Reading the Scriptures in worship and the faithful proclamation of the Word; (2) The Sacraments, especially baptism and the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist; and (3) the Works of Mercy. While in isolation from each other, each one may be coopted into MTD and thus the service of the liberal nation-state. Yet when a congregation/parish remains committed to enfolding all three as witness to the Triune God, it seems to me that they become a profound means of grace to sustain the faithful life of the church, even amidst the tremendous power of the institutions of this society to coopt and colonialize the life of the church.

Posted by johnwright at 8:15 AM | Comments (2)

I have much to blog again this week as I process last week and weekend. But this story just came to me from Father Simon Harak, S.J, who works for the War Resisters League. It is a reminder that the US led atrocities in Iraq continue. One by one the US military are turning villages and cities into Fallujahs. This story is particularly appalling.

US thugs raping minor girls in Tellaffar

Quds Press - Al-Moharer.net

September 15, 2005

Independent medical sources confirmed today that two minors girls died of injuries and horrible pains after having been raped by US soldiers in the town of Tellaffar, 45 kilometers west of Mosul north of Iraq.

Quoting a source from the Red Cross Organization, hospital sources indicated that two cases of rape have been confirmed, and two minor girls were assaulted and raped on the hands of the US Cavalry division which is involved in attacking the Iraqi City since the last few days.

The hospital source who was speaking on the condition of anonymity, declared to the Quds Press reporter, that the two little Iraqi infants were raped by US soldiers after the US forces entered Tellafar Turkomen neighborhood.

The medical source indicated also that one of the little girls died after having been assaulted and raped in turn by many US soldiers, while the other girl was transported in a critical state to a nearby hospital.

The source also added that the US military are trying to suffocate the affair, according to the source own terms.

In the meantime an Iraqi US appointed military spokesman refused to confirm the facts to the journalists who were near the US and the Iraqi forces at the entrance of the City, saying that these rumors are used by the "terrorists" to get some sympathy, according to his expressions.

The Red Cross source confirmed the criminal assault against the Iraqi infants, and told Quds Press that one of the girls is called Nawf and the other Labiba, and refused to give the name of their father for security reasons.

The Red Cross source also said that the US are preventing any non US embedded press agencies, newsmen or any TV cameras from entering the battle zone.

It is important to note that there are press reports indicating the use of napalm and chemical weapons by the US military against this Iraqi tiny city situated at some 300 miles to the north of Baghdad, that is why the US military forbid any independent journalists, press, or TV cameras to enter the war zone, just as they did in the town of Fallujah last fall, where thousands of innocent civilians were murdered and hundred of thousands were made refugees in their own homeland by their US liberators.

Translated by al Moharer.net Courtesy of Abu Assur, Abu Assur, Al-Moharer French Section Editor

Posted by johnwright at 9:06 AM | Comments (0)

It seems that the past few weeks have brought me into extensive interaction with the "health care industry" in San Diego. While I need to blog more on what I've learned through interaction with the San Diego Health and Faith Alliance, I want to share two other experiences from the week.

I mentioned a few days ago that I visited Bill Hatcher in the Emergency Room on Tuesday evening, 8:00 pm. I speculated that it would be 2:00 am before he got out of the emergency room. I was wrong. He did not get out of the emergency room until the next morning, after breakfast. He was then given a bed on an unoccupied floor, until he finally moved into a room late Wednesday morning or Thursday afternoon -- almost 24 hours after entering the hospital, he began receiving direct medical treatment for his legs. Once in the room, his care has been good, but it shows the difficulties of getting medical treatment while poor. Shoved to the end of the triage, with little resources or immediate trauma, there is no medical or financial incentive for the hospital to care for him. Given that this is a reoccuring problem, I knew pretty much what his treatment would be -- it isn't hard to diagnose. Yet there are so many "hurdles" to get through that it becomes difficult. I was also a bit concerned that they gave Bill morphine for the pain -- possibly not realizing the struggles with chemicals that Bill has had in the past.

To me it seems to show the need to develop church-based smaller "hospitals" that actually know the persons over time that can be more immediate responsive to the sick and provide good care that is not embroiled in the bureaucracy that the "for-profit" system requires. In other words, we need to think creatively as embracing medical care as a work of mercy rather than as a means of profit. I think of the old Catholic system that has slowly gotten absorbed into the contemporary techno-bureaucratic system -- though with places of resistance that distinguish them experientially from purely "secular" hospitals and how it would have been built by a poor group of minority immigrants. It seems that some retrieval of this history might be appropriate.

Similarly, we lost a friend, John Kang, to death this week. John was the "eldest elder" of the Nuer community from the Sudan in San Diego. I met him first six years ago in discussing the housing problems of the African community here in San Diego in light of eviction notices that were going out so that landlords could up their rents when the market conditions made housing more expensive here. He was always a great source of wisdom and grace. I teach his second eldest son now, and his kids have been enfolded in various degrees with us. He leaves a wife and nine children, with Mary, his wife, 6 1/2 months pregnant with their 10th child.

John died of liver cancer. In the past weeks, perhaps months, he had been to the hospital at least three times with symptoms, but had been released each time without any or at least a correct diagnosis. Could this have saved his life? Did his financial condition have anything to do with this? I don't know.

Yet miscommunications did take place that have brought additional pain and struggles to his family, though I can tell that the doctors attempted to communicate appropriately. Yet without someone who knows and understands the family, the cultural differences, the language struggles, such communication becomes difficult. The Nuer language does not possess verbal tenses like English. I am wondering if that led to the family expecting John to have died on Wednesday morning, only to find him still alive. It sounds like finally an appropriate conference took place with the family yesterday, when the life support systems where withdrawn from John, and he slipped away to be with his Lord. Yet this most likely came about because Mary, his wife, not totally understanding this system, had refused to take the life support away, even though John's body could not recover. Thus it then became economically viable to have the conference.

I guess I want to have us think and pray about a "Christian humanism" where the bodies of the sick are not subject to treatments that the market can provide, but are treasured and honored as ones whose sufferings unite us with the sufferings of Christ.

In closing it is interesting to reflect upon these experiences in light of the profoundly practical, profoundly Christian instructions on the sick found in the Rule of St. Benedict. Such wisdom, for the sick and their caretakers, gives us a basis to think from and with given our contemporary situation:

Chapter 37
Before all things and above all things,
care must be taken of the sick,
so that they willl be served as if they were Christ in person;
for He Himself said, "I was sick, and you visited Me" (Matt 25:36),
and, "What you did for one of these least ones, you did for Me" (Matt. 25:40).
But let the sick on their part consider
that they are being served for the honor of God,
and let them not annoy their sisters who are serving them
by their unnecessary demands.
Yet they should be patiently borne with,
because from such as these is gained a more abundant reward.
Therefore the Abbess shall take the greatest care
that they suffer no neglect.

For these sick let there be assigned a special room
and an attendant who is God-fearing, diligent and solicitous.
Let the use of baths be afforded the sick
as often as may be expedient;
but to the healthy, and especially to the young,
let them be granted more rarely.
Moreover,
let the use of meat be granted to the sick who are very weak,
for the restoration of their strength;
but when they are convalescent,
let all abstain from meat as usual.

The Abbess shall take the greatest care
that the sick be not neglected by the cellarers or the attendants;
for she also is responsible for what is done wrongly by her disciples.

Chapter 37: On the Old and Children
Although human nature itself is drawn to special kindness
towards these times of life,
that is towards the old and children,
still the authority of the Rule should also provide for them.

Let their weakness be always taken into account,
and let them by no means be held to the rigor of the Rule
with regard to food.
On the contrary,
let a kind consideration be shown to them,
and let them eat before the regular hours.

http://www.osb.org/rb/text/

Posted by johnwright at 8:43 AM | Comments (0)

Alongside my (w)ranting, I've been reading from Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, 1.1. I'm reading him with several questions in mind, but always amazed at his insight. He is very sophisticated in his rants -- you'd almost not know that he was ranting because of the acuity of his arguments. But as a specialist in (w)ranting, I can detect where he engages in such ranting. Behind his rants are exactly the type of convictions that drive what Smith has called Moral Therapeutic Deism. Whereas Barth doesn't quite see the anchorage of theological modernism and liberalism in political liberalism right up front, he does recognize that the church functions on a different ontology, a understanding about what really is, than that of the modernist world around. In other words, Kevin Timpe is (w)right, underneath the particular moralism (the Good) and the therapeutic (the Beautiful) of Moral Therapeutic Deism, is a particular Ontology -- an misunderstanding of God and Creation. MTD is based upon a Christian heresy.

Barth knows that heresy is important to dialogue with and for the church; it serves a useful function to help the church discriminate what is true in faith. Heresy is something very different from pure unbelief. Barth says "heresy is for faith an important factor -- which is not the case when it [faith] is present as pure unbelief. Because in heresy it [unbelief] is present as a form of faith, it must be taken seriously at this point, and there can and must be serious conflict between faith and heresy" (CD 1.1, p. 32). I'd like to argue that the ontology of the "Deism" in Moral Therapeutic Deism is the precise place where the heresy occurs, a heresy that ironically often presents itself as a "conservative Christianity".

Smith writes, "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is about belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one’s affairs – especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved. Most of the time, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance. . . . . God sometimes does get involved in people’s lives, but usually only when they call on him, mostly when they have some trouble or problem or bad feeling that they want resolved. In this sense, the Deism here is revised from its classical eighteenth-century version by the therapeutic qualifier, making the distant God selectively available for taking are of needs" (pp. 164-5).

Smith's choice of the word "deism" is unfortunate. In Deism God winds up the world and lets it go without any interaction. This is not what Smith describes. Rather than Deism, the God of MTD is a "relational God" who seeks to enter "relationship" with creation, especially individuals who are struggling with the physical and psychological demands of life. In this conception, God and creation share one together in one realm of Being. God is conceived as a "Really Big Powerful being" and we are comparatively weak, broken beings. But since God is a being like us (except infinitely bigger and better), God can interact with us when both God's will and our will allow the interaction to take place because we share the same medium.

It's like being able to talk on the telephone with someone else because a common network connects the two people talking. God becomes the "Loving Will" on the other side of the phone, always waiting for us to pick up our end of the line, and connect to God by so willing. If you care, Radical Orthodoxy calls this a "Univocity (One Voice) of Being", and traces it to shifts in medieval thought in Duns Scotus. Ultimately, it posits the Being that is shared between God and humanity as a particular understanding of Will, the will as "rational self-determination." Freedom, understood as the ability for rational self-determination, becomes very important for both God and humanity to share, as a precondition for ensuring that Being remains "authentically". Thus, we can see how liberal nation-state that supposedly protects such "freedom" (separated from the good except as individuals chose, as Kevin noted) presents itself as the true protector of Being -- ours and God's. The church becomes removed to a private realm of individual choice, and our bodies get handed over to the state.

Where is the heresy? Two very simple but profound shifts occur from Christian convictions: (1) God's will becomes separated from God's Triune nature. For Christians, God is not a powerful Will that can do whatever God decides that lies behind God as Father, Son, and Spirit. God IS Triune. As Triune, God's Will is found in the desire that the Father finds in the Son by the Spirit; that the Son finds in the Father by the Spirit; and that the Spirit finds in the Father and the Son. God's Will does not love; God's Will is Love, found in the pleasure of Eternal Giving and Receiving, the Eternal Difference that is God. God cannot not love, for as Eternally Triune, God is Love, a Love that always operates as Gift because it is never in response to any Lack. Only God is Necessary Being in the fact that God, as Triune, is Love. The True, Good, and Beautiful are seen as One in the simplicity of the Triune Love that is God. (2) Because of this, as beings we depend completely on this Love, but not as necessary, but as accidents, contingencies. Our being is not necessary -- only God IS. We only have being as we are in God. The being that we have, then, is not of the same "kind" as God's -- there is no medium that we share with God that allows us to "relate" to God, no common denominator that ties us together with God. This is what Christians have always asserted in understanding that God created all that is from nothing. We are only because first God IS, and therefore, we exist only as gift, pure gratuitous gift.

Of course, this means that we can't escape God, we can't get out of "relationship" with God. We can not be who we really are in God, but that's different. Nor can we escape the fact that God is Love. Freedom then is not rational self-determination, but the ability to be drawn in desire to our Source of Being, our Creator, to God in whom what is True, Good, and Beautiful are One, the One revealed to us sent by God the Father in Jesus Christ, God the Son, by the power of God the Spirit, One God. In our sin, God draws us into God's very Life in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, and thus, the people of God that is the church. It is here in Christ's body that we discover what is good, and what is beautiful, because both the Good and the Beautiful are revealed to us in the One who is the Truth. The Christian ontology thus supports the life of the church, that operates amidst but not of the misconstruals of reality that support the modern liberal nation-state. Only by rejecting heresy can we live truly.

Therefore, there is no way to recover a genuine sense of morality nor therapy (salvation) without being immersed in the Life that is God. It is only in the Love of God that we will discover the love of neighbor, and only in the love of neighbor that we can actualize that for which and by which we were created, Love of God.

Posted by johnwright at 7:34 AM | Comments (2)

Just quick updates for your prayers and reflections. Last night I went to Bread of Life. I was humbled as Shadow asked me to witness and bless his marriage as the officiating clergy. Of course, this raises certain issues that come to light with the nature of marriage and catechesis and Shadow. But I never will forget his love and concern for me when I fell and dislocated my knee 18 months ago at the church.

Then I went to see Bill Hatcher whom Deron had taken to the emergency room at Mercy Hospital in the afternoon. It was a little after 8:00 pm, and he was still in the emergency room. He still had not seen a doctor. I have yet to get today's update, but I'm sure he waited for hours before getting a room. The emergency room was full with sick and hurt people of all ages -- from geriatrics to an infant. As he was suffering no trauma and had no private insurance, I'm sure he was low on the triage scale. It was a depressing place to be -- I wonder how much longer such a slow system can exist in its care for the sick.

This morning I received an email that John Kang had died. John is a friend of the congregation, the longest US dwelling person from the Sudan. His son, Duach, is my student this year, and Nyawech regularly attends with us. Gordan, Duach's older brother, was a long participant in our youth group. It was very sad.

Then in early afternoon I was told that John was yet alive, though still unconscious. They had announced his death already in chapel. Now we just need to pray for John and his family. He has been a great friend of the congregation and a source of wisdom for living with those from the Sudan, Nuer and Dinka, as part of us.

Posted by johnwright at 2:45 PM | Comments (0)

When we pick up the Acts of the Apostles again, we are following the appointment of the 7 from among the Greek speaking Jewish community in Jersualem to distribute food to the widows. The story turns to focus on one particular member of those assigned to the task, a person named Stephen. The assignment given to Stephen seems to immediately have gotten him into trouble with the authorities. It is interesting to look at the passage in depth to see the rationale of the problem.

V. 8 introduces Stephen as an individual character for the first time. He was given prominence of place by being listed first of the seven in v. 5. For fun -- and to see the irony in the events to follow -- after reading v. 8, turn to Deuteronomy 34:10-12 and read it. What do you notice about the relationship between Moses and Stephen? Among whom are "the people" that Stephen does his "great signs and wonders"? Is he contesting Judaism and Moses or working within them?

Vv. 9-12. Why would it be this particular synagogue that would get in a dispute with Stephen? Why would they not like him? How does it relate to his assignment to distribute food and his engagement in the works of mercy? What does the church's active engagement with the works of mercy do? Maybe you could imaginatively discuss the nature of the Spirit and wisdom by which Stephen spoke? Why would they not be strong enough to refute Stephen?

V. 13-14 How does their inability to refute Stephen lead to their deceitful employment of false witnesses? Why would they accuse him of speaking against the Temple and the Law? What is it in the distribution of goods and loyalty to Jesus that would make Stephen vulnerable to the charges? Is it true? How does this relate to Stephen doing "great signs and wonders"? Why would they accuse Jesus of destroying the temple and changing Jewish customs?

V. 15: How does Stephen respond? Why do their words not upset him? Who is judging whom?

It might be good to talk about Stephen's response to the accusations, and what convictions and virtues one must have to respond in a similar manner to such an event. What does his demeanor have to do with his assignment? How can we open ourselves to God's grace to be so shaped? Why is this important for our witness?

Have a good night!

Posted by johnwright at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

The second term in Smith's analysis of the American cultural form of "religosity" or "spirituality" is "therapeutic." The term in some ways goes back to philosophical schools of late antiquity. It was used often to describe salvation by the early Christians -- God's grace included a healing from sin. Yet I just violated what the term means in American discourse. We will speak of brokenness, but not sin. To mention sin is not nice; it is not therapeutic. It assumes a moral judgment that the moralism of niceness does not allow.

Within the shaping done by the institutions within American culture, we have learned a completely different moral discourse that determines what "therapy" is. Of course, the term has moved to the psychologist's couch rather than the pulpit, except where the pulpit provides a cheap psychological couch for a congregation.

Here is how Smith describes the therapeutic in our culture:

"Moral Therapeutic Deism is, second, about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents. . . . what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people. . . . . It is thus no wonder that so many religious and nonreligious teenagers are so positive about religion, for the faith many of them have in mind effectively helps to achieve a primary life goal: to feel good and happy about oneself and one’s life. It is also no wonder that most teens are so religiously inarticulate. As long as one is happy, why bother with being able to talk about the belief content of one’s faith?" (162-3).

Now I'm all for feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. Yet to evaluate life in this terms, and to see this a life's true end, now and in the future, leads to all sorts of problems. First, there is a profound sense in that how I feel is utterly irrelevant. I can feel good for strictly extraneous or even, morally problematic, reasons (say, for instance, devouring a hot fudge sundae over chocolate ice cream with whip cream) or because the Dodgers or Yankees lose (I don't care who wins, as long as the Dodgers and Yankees both lose). Second, to live to have feeling good and happy as an end, I think, is a sure way to make sure that one does not receive the gift of true happiness.

To show the difference between Christian "happiness" and the therapeutic happiness that helps me advance within a capitalist society, I'd like to quote a dictation from Francis of Assissi, "True and Perfect Joy".

"The same [Brother Leonard] related in the same place that one day at Saint Mary's, blessed Francis called Brother Leo and said: 'Brother Leo, write.' He responded: 'Look, I'm ready!' "Write,' he said, 'what true joy is.'

'A messenger arrives and says that all the Masters of Paris have entered the Order. Write: this isn't true joy! Or, that all the prelates, archbishops and bishops beyond the mountains, as well as the King of France and the King of England [have entered the Order]. Write: this isn't true joy! Again, that my brothers have gone to the non-believers and converted all of them to the faith; again, that I have so much grace from God that I heal the sick and perform many miracles. I tell you true joy doesn't consist in any of these things.'

'Then what is true joy?'

'I return from Perugia and arrive here in the dead of night. It's winter time, muddy, and so cold that icicles have formed on the edges of my habit and keep striking my legs and blood flows from such wounds. Freezing, convered with mud and ice, I come to the gate and, after I've knocked and called for some time, a brother comes and asks: 'Who are you?' 'Brother Francis,' I answer. 'Go away!' he says. 'This is not a decent hour to be wandering about! You may not come in!' WHen I insist, he replies: 'Go away! You are simple and stupid! Don't come back to us again! There are man of us here like you -- we don't need you!' I stand again at the door and say: 'For the love of God, take me in tonight!' And he replies: 'I will not! Go to the Crosier's place and ask there!'

I tell you this: If I had patience and did not become upset, true joy, as well as true virtue and the salvation of my soul, would consist in this.'

Therapeutic in contemporary culture has been separated from the True, Good, and Beautiful -- that is, from God. Without understanding our divine "therapy" in terms of the image of God renewed in us as seen in Jesus Christ, the God-human, his life, his teachings, his kingdom, his presence in the Eucharist, the therapeutic becomes part of the evil of the fallen world, a distortion, a lack, sin. Being formed by this cultural expectation puts us into continual dramas and struggles with ourselves and others for our contentment, and thus, ensures that we never genuine experience contentment, but always sustain our status as victims. Always looking for the greener grass, we live unsettled in trying to achieve settledness. In this way, we are shaped to keep in the cycles of the consumption, if not of leisure provided by wealth, consumption of experiences, "worship experiences", "experiences of the other" whatever gives us the fleeting fix of happiness.

Again these subtle ways of (mal)formation arise out of the political context in which we live. As liberal polity begins with the autonomous individual seeking one's own self-fulfillment, defined in the terms of the individual, the state then takes over the regulation of the "public" sphere so that the individual can pursue "happiness". In so doing, we are wrestled out of our proper place beginninng and ending in God, and instead, become caught in our own self-pursuits.

Posted by johnwright at 9:29 AM | Comments (2)

The last few days have been very full. My roommate from college, Joe Kennell, came by. We've only seen each other a few times over the past 20 some years. We watched the Ohio State/Texas football game and regressed to behaviors of 25 years ago! It was a good time. Also, "The Return of the Tropical Lawnmowers", the girl's rec soccer team, started the season with a 3-1 victory -- using some borrowed players . . . but hey, a win is a win, exceeding our victory total from two years ago.

But as I've thought, I haven't really had a good (w)rant -- not being able to keep up with focalized weekly wrants. SO I thought I'd begin my week grumpily. I thought that I'd start an extended (w)rant of my favorite kind -- the way that contemporary social, political, and economic institutions have (mal)formed the life of the church and individual believers within our contemporary liberal democratic society.

My source for my (w)rant is a reading of Christian Smith's Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford, 2005). I have come to believe that this social scientific description is absolutely necessary reading for anyone interested in the faithful life of the church in this society because it describes so well the parodies that liberal political theory produces in the name of Christianity or Islam or Judaism or Hindu. It makes no difference -- it is its own hegemonic, particularistic aggressively prosyletizing theological convictions that calls for absolute adherence to the polity that it supports -- the modern nation-state and its economic system of unfettered capitalism.

Before I (w)rant, I want to make sure that my (w)rant is directed towards the correct source -- not the churchs, pastors, and theologians that have been colonialized, and even willing cooperated with the colonialization of the church. Obviously it is good that God through Christ, not me, will judge (although I've often volunteered to help God in this task). The enemy is not the church that has been secularized, but the modernist state and its advocates that has with a passive aggressiveness managed to present their ideology as "natural". More accurately, this (w)rant is a means of penance for how deeply I have been formed by this cultural situation from which I need delivered so that I might live a holy life, acceptable to God, my reasonable service.

Thus it is that Smith suggests "that the defacto dominant religion among contemporary US teenagers is what we might well call 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism' (p. 162). He argues that the teenagers are very conventional in their theological convictions, basically mirroring the convictions of their parents and adults as taught within the society at large. As you will discover, I think that he misuses the term "Deism" but will get to that in a view days. (W)right now we will concentrate on the first word in the phrase: Moralistic.

Smith writes, "First, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one’s health, and doing one’s best to be successful. . . . Being moral in this faith means being the kind of persons that other people will like, fulfilling one’s personal potential, and not being socially disruptive or interpersonally obnoxious. . . . Feeling good about oneself is thus also an essential aspect of living a moral life" (p. 163).

I call this the tyranny of niceness -- and it is strongly moralistic. If you want to receive moral condemnation in this society, try to morally evaluate someone's behavior directly to them in front of others -- that is not nice, pleasant, tolerant. What is True, Good, or Beautiful recedes; what matters is personally affirming everyone.

Of course, finding one's "personal potential" is about finding a certain respectability within the cultural elite -- or at least working to support the social status quo around us. It has nothing to do with having the image of Triune God renewed in us that is already in God through the Son by the Spirit. Rather personal potential is understood in a sense of psychological satisfaction called "authenticity" or "meaning". The problem with these terms does not ever come to light. I keep trying to do inauthentic things, but I end up then being authentic in being inauthentic. And anytime I try to do something meaningless, I discover that it still has meaning!!

What happens is that holiness, love of God and neighbor, gets subtly perverted because love gets separated from God, and thus from truthfulness, goodness, and beauty. Thus what Benedict XVI has called the "tyranny of relativism" reigns -- moralistic condemning anyone who makes moral judgments based within the historical life of the church.

Interestingly -- and I will argue consistently -- this "relativistic moralism" is grounded in what people would call "conservative political and social systems" within American culture -- except for a few exceptions. For a good analysis of this within the conservative culture/politics of the US, see my friends Eric's analysis on epistemological relativism.

As we go on (w)ranting, we will have to discover how this moralism is a distortion, perversion of the ethics of the church, that has become very indistinguishable from the life of the church. It shows the difficulty that we must embrace to regain a language of holiness and sanctity that is much, much more true, beautiful, and good than the moralism described by Smith that dictates so much of my life.

Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

Posted by johnwright at 8:29 AM | Comments (17)

It is easy to read Acts as an idealized, impossible vision of the life of a congregation -- a story of origins that we in no way can and should live. Yet we've already seen that the messiness that sometimes is congregational life already has occured in Acts with Ananias and Saphhira, as well as the conflicts with the authorities in Jerusalem. No great strategy really emerges -- under the guidance of the Spirit, the church seems to just kind of make it up as they go along, embodying the kingdom of God in their witness to the messiah, the resurrected king, Jesus Christ. In Acts 6, however, we have an issue that arises in the church that threatens the unity of the church, as well as its witness to the kingdom of God.

A little background. Jerusalem was a linguistically diverse city. Life long local inhabitants spoke Aramaic with some Hebrew (called the Hebrews here). The elite, of course, would have spoken Greek as well. Yet there was a section of the population of the Jews, a minority, that spoke Greek as their first language. They most likely made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then had stayed, having grown up in the larger world under Greek influence. This group seemingly had believed in Jesus as the resurrected Messiah of Israel.

Perhaps it might be fun sharing stories, if you have them, of trying to live or travel in a setting where you did not speak or understand the majority language well or at all. What is it like? Did you miss anything? Did those who represented the majority language know that you missed anything? Why?

Read verse 1: why did some of the Hellenists Jewish believers, the Greek speakers, complain to the Hebrew Jewish believers? What does this presuppose that was part of the regular practice of the Jerusalem church? Why the special concern for widows? Also note here that the Temple daily distributed food as well. What is the church acting like? Why would "the Hebrews" "neglect" the Hellenistic widows?

Verse 2: Who makes the decision of what should be done? Why? What do the twelve not take direct responsibility for the daily distribution? What is their role?

Vv. 3-4: Do the twelve therefore not care about the issue? What solution do they offer? What are the qualifications that they look for from the seven? Why these qualifications? Why do the 12 not pick them themselves?

V. 5: Look at the names -- can you tell if tell if these names are Hebrew or Greek as far as the place of their birth? Notice that at least one is named after a character in The Lion King. Who have they chosen? Why?

V. 6: Why would they bring them before the Apostles? What is the function of the laying on of hands?

v. 7: What is the result of the adminstrative changes? What do you think it means that many priests "were obedient to the faith"? What does this suggest about "the faith"?

Perhaps a discussion is in order about dealing with administration of "programs" within the church, how to handle problems that arise, how to handle the complaints as they come in, and what to avoid, what to embrace, and what the function of organization and authority are. What is the relationship between "office" (i.e., the 12 and "expertise" (decision of which 7 should ensure the widows receive their allotments)? Why?

Enjoy!!

Posted by johnwright at 8:17 AM | Comments (0)

Soteriology is a big, fancy word for the doctrine of salvation -- how salvation is wrought for whom by whom. For Christians, salvation takes place by the Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through faith, sealed in baptism into the people of God, the church -- always a particular local congregation that is simultaneously one throughout the world. Yet this understanding of salvation is contested today through the soteriology of the modern nation-state. The state is willing to offer the church the realm of the salvation of souls, but its ideology articulates the responsibility for the salvation of its citizenry in the body. It takes on this responsibility through monopolizing coercion and violence in the bounded territory over which it claims authority. The most obvious example is the language that soldiers take the saving role of Jesus Christ in "sacrificing their lives so that we might live." The soteriology of the state is a parody of that provided by God through Christ by the power of Spirit that has engrafted us, Jew or Gentile, into the church.

The falseness of state soteriology has become very evident in the needless tragedy of New Orleans. The collapsing of FEMA into "Homeland Security", the redirecting of funds into a war of aggression in Iraq rather than the levies around New Orleans, the President speaking at Coronado Air Force Base about the war in Iraq while the disaster unfolded, all of these show that the soteriology of the state is based upon violence, not care for its citizenry. Indeed, the state began to get seriously involved only when the sovereignty of its ownership of the submerged land that used to be New Orleans was challenged by armed survivors. It was not the lives of the abandoned poor that provoked the response; it was the challenge to state sovereignty and the fear of loss of support for the war in Iraq and other agenda items that spurred the federal government to action.

That the issue has been state sovereignty, not the lives of the poor, is seen in the blockage of aid to the area by federal authorities. I noticed this first when the Homeland Security department blocked Red Cross aide from reaching New Orleans. However, this has been part of a wider policy to block aide from getting to the poor in New Orleans except that which the federal government itself brings -- which, of course, has been unconsciously slow in coming (see http://uruknet.info/?p=15411&hd=0&size=1&l=x).

What is interesting to me is that people actually believe this myth of state soteriology -- that the modern liberal nation-state is to "save our bodies from our enemies and natural disaster". Yet a political, legal system that absolutizes property rights over the human good can never embrace a genuine humanism that seeks the dignity and honor of every human being, especially the poor.

More seriously is that Christians have believed this myth, and therefore, have turned the authority for engaging in the works of mercy to the state. Don't get me wrong, it would be wonderful to have the modern state genuinely interested in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, overseeing the sick, welcoming the stranger, giving drink to the thirsty, burying the dead. By ascribing these actions to the state, we ourselves have lost the skills necessary to respond to such an emergency. In the process the church reflects the split of the propertied and the poor that plagues the United States today. The propertied, those who had the resources to share in the emergency, escaped, leaving those with no resources to fend for themselves. No clergy emerged to bury the bodies of the deceased with dignity and honor. By granting authority to the state to take care of the situation, the situation mirrored the concerns of the state, and the bodies of the poor, especially African American poor, bore the brunt of the tragedy.

Two stories remind me that this doesn't have to be so -- we don't have to grant authority to the state to engage in works of mercy; we can't let the state regulate what is appropriate for Christians to engage in for the works of mercy. I was reminded of a famous story from Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History. He writes of the fourth century, during the reign of Maximimum, plague and famine broke out because of the emperor's commitment to violence. Eusebius writes, "Some, shriveled like ghost of the departed, staggered about until they fell down, and as they lay in the middle of the streets they would beg for a small scrap of bread and, with their last gasp, cry out that they were hungry -- anything more than this anguished cry was beyond them. The wealthier classes, astonished at the mass of beggars they were helping, changed to a hard and merciless attitude, since they assumed that before long they would be no better off. In the middle of the city squares and narrow lanes, naked bodies lay scattered about unburied for days on end -- a most pitiful spectacle. Some were eaten by dogs, for which reason the living began killing dogs, for fear they might go mad and start devouring people. No less horrible was the plague that infected every house, especially those that had survived the famine because they were well stocked with food. The affluent, rulers, governors, and numerous officials, as if intentionally left by the famine for the plague, suffered a sudden, bitter death . . .
Such was the recompense for Maximim's arrogant boasting and the cities' petitions against us, while the zeal and piety of the Christians were obvious to all the heathen. In this awful adversity they alone gave practical proof of their sympathy and humanity. All day long some of them tended to the dying and to their burial, countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered tog