Kaz Trypuc

While leaving church the other day I was accosted by two individuals asking me to sign a petition to repeal “SB 777.” I’ve either been paying too little attention to state politics or it’s that every media outlet is spending 99% of its airtime on the 2008 presidential election because I had no idea what they were talking about. I looked at the makeshift display and saw in big, bold letters STOP HOMOSEXUAL BILL SB 777. From what I gathered over the next two minutes, as I was talked to in both ears by these chattering volunteers, was that Gov. Schwarzenegger had recently signed SB 777 into law and that once in effect it would alter the definition of gender to now include non-traditional sexual identities, not just the biological condition of being male or female.

The first of several doomsday scenarios offered to me was that boys could now shower with girls in locker rooms. Even worse, such a bill would mandate, in the name of non-discrimination, the teaching of “gay lifestyles and gay history.” Textbooks would be rewritten, I was told. In one final plea to stress the urgency of the matter, one volunteer told me that this would inevitably lead to a variety of other aspects of our society—beyond education—that would forever be altered by homosexuality’s mark. At the end of a long list I was told this included restaurants, though I am not sure what the volunteer meant by this. Will SB 777 require that I eat next to homosexuals in restaurants? That menus along with textbooks will have to be rewritten? Oh, the horror.

I didn’t sign the petition.

Instead, I read the bill itself. In it’s 33 page entirety. Twice.

The two most frightening conclusions drawn by opponents of SB 777—that boys can go into girl locker rooms and that textbooks will be rewritten to promote alternative lifestyles—are, in my estimation, completely unfounded.

Just because John and Jane Doe are fans of Will & Grace and listen to Elton John does not mean that they are irresponsible parents ready to toss their teenage daughters to the lions. Even the most “liberal” of voters I am sure is not suddenly thrilled with the idea of boys and girls showering together (gay or not). If the worst fears of these volunteers were true I am sure these people would be out signing petitions too. And yet they are not. It appears only conservatives and Christians are up in arms over the matter (a Google news search of “SB 777” yields hits from mostly Christian websites). Of course, the opponents of this bill also must not realize that students haven’t showered in school locker rooms after PE in decades. But that is neither here nor there.

In this editorial the staff for the state Senator who introduced the bill are quite clear that this does not mean boys can now shower with girls. For students who are uncomfortable following established “gender” norms alternative accommodations can (and are already) provided. In other words, a homosexual teen boy can now (un)dress in a separate bathroom away from other males, not amidst girls in their underwear on the other side of the building. Locker rooms are not suddenly going to be handed over to the sexual whims of 15-year-olds. Reason will prevail—much to the delight of parents and educators.

On the second matter, though the bill does have an impact on the use of textbooks with a “discriminatory bias,” this has nothing to do with mandating pro-homosexual education. There is no funding here for new programs, no mandates for new curricula, no new requirements for sexual education. The matter is merely relegated to the part of the California Education Code having to do with discrimination—something you’d think both sides would be against.

For the record, I am a Christian. I do not believe that homosexuality conforms to the sexual disciplines required by the Christian life, and neither is a fear of the Other (neighbor, enemy, friend, or stranger) in accordance with it. And though I keep abreast of the political landscape I do not vote. As such, I am moved neither by the bill nor by its opponents.

What I do find maddening, however, is how the political process (on both sides) plays to the fears and ignorance of the people. Using words like HOMOSEXUAL BILL on displays and making “homosexual history” out to be the second-coming of some flat earth approach to education are ways of preying upon the misplaced fears of a paranoid, stereotyping populace. Perhaps we Christians should be forced to eat at the same table as homosexuals so we can get some perspective.

Lastly, I find it frustrating that the Church has yielded so much ground to the State on matters such as this. That Christians are unable to imagine how to go on when the government does not move in lockstep with the Church is but an indication that we have confused what it means to be American (or Californian) with what it means to be Christian. The Church clearly has lost its voice, which is perhaps why it so often feels the need to shout so loud.

Since I do not vote I will not be taking a stand either way on SB 777. I will, however, continue to pray that Christians can be a people of charity. I will pray that the political witness of the Church remains just that, freeing us from having to arrest power for ourselves in the wider world as if the truth of the Gospel is dependant on our ability to defend it—with the pen or the sword.

"There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted." --Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour

"The distinguishing of the experience of the sublime from both the experience of beauty and the commitment to virtue raised for the first time in modernity a theme that helps to define it, namely, the claimed recognition of an aesthetic realm indifferent to the ethical--that garden of delights that nurtures the fleurs de mal." --John Milbank

"Taste Life." --Motto of the Food Network

To my delight, On the Media, a production of public radio WNYC in New York and one of my favorite NPR podcasts, recently offered a fascinating piece about the "pornography of the Food Network" (mp3 here, RealPlayer required).


Many of the similarities lie merely on the surface. There's the repetition and motion of this "kind of caressing camera going over the food, back and forth and up and down...the peach, and the camera going over those peaches again, then Giada, then the peach, then Giada, then the peach." The cheesy soundtracks and the sensual slurps, thumps, and crunches of the food being handled, "Let me just give my eggs a quick whisk [CLICKING, BEATING SOUNDS]. And then we're going to add some cheese [CLICKING SOUNDS]...Mmmm! Peaches are juicy, crunchy from the amaretti cookies. The sugar's caramelized, and it's creamy with the whipped cream."

Your taste buds are already salivating, desiring but the manipulation goes even further because you cannot recreate this recipe in your home no matter how hard you try. No matter how much the Food Network wants you to believe it, you cannot taste anything here, let alone "life." This is a manufactured experience, a choreographed ruse, a simulacrum. Nothing here is real. The 18-35 year old men tuning in still do not cook, but now they do have a beautiful woman in a virtual (but always very personal) kitchen providing this sensual, intimate cooking experience right in their living room. And now Tyler Florence serves the latent sexual and emotional desires of those "desperate housewives" out there by going into their homes and helping them cook before their husbands get home in Food 911. He's the proverbial pizza man or pool boy.


This all has to do with our guts and our genitals. Indeed, as cell biologist Michael Gershon of Columbia has written, there are 100 million neurons in our gut--more than the brain and spinal cord combined--and these control a great deal of our autonomic nervous responses. For food and sex, this all may be a no-brainer.

But of greater importance, is the way in which our detachment from these (fabricated) visual images is really a detachment from the actual (and thus from ourselves) by way of the instrumentalized mechanisms of physiological desire. This is why CNN reporters are exhorted to "get the emo[tion]" (always some gut reaction) and why the media as a whole (from the mainstream to YouTube) is moving us towards a "fascination for nothingness, which is a false fascination, always predatory on the reality it gradually erodes" (Milbank). If you haven't caught the latest synthesis between CNN and YouTube check out iReport.

In this "society of spectacle" (a phrase I believe Milbank borrows from Guy DeBord) our resignation to a mere passive reception of the drama presented to us, is ultimately a dimuniton of being where simulated violence, becomes actual violence. It is then truthful speech, and true love, for our poetics to be caught up not in a nihilistic telos of ending (as all spectacles must do--food, sex, war) but in the surrendering to the liturgy, whereby we are caught up into the Divine. So while we obsess over the satsisyfing of our virtual hunger, the orgasmic climax of sex, and the victory of war, we affirm the self-legitimating ends of our narcissistic gaze upon the scripts of our fantasies instead of being caught up into the Liturgy of the Divine Goodness where our bodies, in all their created goodness, perform without end to the glory of God.

Amid the running commentary friend, pastor, mentor, and teacher John Wright offered me this morning during the H. Orton Wiley Lectures in Theology at PLNU, we also had a a discussion about his writings over recent months in which he remarked how he has a large number of blog posts waiting to be published. Which reminded me of some I still had sitting in fragments on my hard drive. It takes on honest man to know when he's been defeated, especially by himself, so perhaps some day I will finish these thoughts, but for now, I offer mere fragments. Some notable theologians have gotten away with publishing such fragments of their own and while they may not allow for a systematic reading they are nonetheless interesting to ponder. So here they are:

From 11 Nov 2007 reflecting on Living the Sabbath by Norman Wirzba (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006):

We've all heard the saying, "I need a vacation after my vacation." Indeed the travel industry today does not specialize in what we might consider vacations or even "holidays" (I've always preferred the British English term), but in flighty escapism. These escapist outings all too often are either a) intruded upon by our constant need to remain "connected" through the likes of cell phones, internet, TiVo, and voicemail; or b) stress-inducing trips packed full of commitments to attractions, relatives, and time tables in an effort to "maximize" our time away. One doesn't want to "waste" their vacation, but of course, in one sense, isn't that what vacations are for? So Wendell Berry's quote in the foreword helps set the stage for understanding the Sabbath as not just a day in the week, but a mode of living that shapes our entire lives.

To rest, we are persuaded, we must "get away." But getting away involves us in the haste, speed, and noise, the auxiliary pandemonium, of escape. There is, by the prevailing definition, escape, but there is no escape from escape. Or there is none unless we adopt the paradoxical and radical expedient of just stopping (11).

Just stopping--I like that idea. When our dominant forms of escapism seem to be the internet, the television, and vacations characterized more by cell phone use and email than quality time with family, you know something is wrong with our concept of rest. So just stop. I confess it doesn't seem like much fun to me, but when I am constantly checking my work email on weekends, I have to admit I am not doing much better. Even when I think I've stopped, I've really just escaped into another place where I am anything but who I was created to be. Our lives seems so inhuman at times. But as Wirzba offers by way fo contrast, "Sabbath life is a truly human life."

For those who missed the opportunity (sadly!) to hear Gustavo Guttierez and Justo Gonzalez speak at USD back in October there is another great local lecture here in San Diego:



Dr. Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, the Krister Stendahl Professor of Divnity at Harvard Divinity School, will be speaking on the topic of "The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire" at UCSD, February 22 as part of the annual Burke Lectureship. The lecture will "explore not only how the power of empire has historically shaped Christian Scriptures but also how it continues to shape our self-understanding and public discourse in the present." Past Burke speakers have included Father Hesburgh, Stanley Hauerwas, Elie Wiesel, Elizabeth Johnson, Hans Kung, and Marjorie Suchocki among others. I was able to hear two of those in recent years and they did not disappoint.

The topic sounds very similar to the topic of discussion at the the Ekklesia Project summer gathering back in 2005: "No Other Gods: Keeping the Commandments in the Face of Empire." Charlie posted mp3s of Sylvia Keesmat's (author of Colossians Remixed) and AKM Adams' addresses dealing with Scripture and Empire, and the Decalogue respectively:

-Sylvia Keesmat, "The Bible and Empire" (right-click and save as)
-AKM Adams, "The Strong Right That Holds For Peace" (right-click and save as)

Fiorenza is a feminist theologian so it will be interesting to see what additional insight that perspective gives her. See you there!

Eric has tagged me, so here it goes...

Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most important works of theology of that last 25 years (in no particular order).

1. The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder--the book that got so many people rethinking Jesus. It lays the groundwork for so many of today's radical understandings of Jesus' life and ministry. I realize this does not fit into the above timeframe, but I don't care. This is all hypothetical anyway.

2. Theopolitical Imagination, William Cavanaugh--this book is short and by no means his best, but it brings together so many threads from so many different places that it's hard to overlook. Tying together sociology, theology, liturgics, political theology, Christian ethics, history, pre- and post-modern philosophy, and Biblical theology it does no less than provide a primer for Christians to reimagine the whole of space and time.

3. Paul Among the Postliberals, Douglas Harink--like Cavanaugh's this book draws from a wealth of resources. In collapsing theology, philosophy, ethics, sociology of religion, and Biblical studies into one (through the Apostle Paul) Harink relies on an all-star list: Barth, Berkhof, Cavanaugh, D'Costa, James D.G. Dunn, Stephen Fowl, Frei, Paul J. Griffiths, Hauerwas, Yoder, Milbank, Richard B. Hays, Kallenberg, Lohfink, Lindbeck, Placher, Stackhouse, Stendahl, Stout, Volf, Wink, NT Wright, and Yoder. No easy task but he succeeds admirably and brings Paul (and thus Jesus) into a whole new light.

I had the pleasure of witnessing a special gathering of theologians at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO this past weekend. It provided a good excuse to hang out with friends Charlie, Eric, and Rusty as well. I also had a chance to meet Dale of Theoblogical fame who made the trek out. Of course, the discussion facilitator was friend and pastor John Wright, who many of you know has blogged on matters relating to ecumenism and the French ressourcement movement.

Eric and others have each posted some thoughts and I have started a thread for discussion of the event over at the Ekklesia Project. Personally, the best thing I took from this conference was a new reading list, better informed by the histories of thought shared by these three men. Having read plenty of Hauerwas and some Lindbeck, hearing in their own words how they came to arrive at this point together was incredibly illuminatiing, as was Hauerwas' near flawless recitation of his grad school course work semester by semester, professor by professor. Aquinas, Wittgenstein, Lonergan, Congar, MacIntyre, McCabe, Weil, Preller, and others were all commonly mentioned.

So it's back to the basics for me. I am doing some reading out of Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles and hope to augment that with a robust treatment of Aquinas before (re)educating myself on other theologians. Ultimately I hope to end up back where I started (MacIntyre, Yoder, and Hauerwas are the big ones) but with a fuller understanding of how they got there. A tentative reading list for the next few months:

Aquinas
After Aquinas, Fergus Kerr
Truth in Aquinas, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock
Holy Teaching, Fredrick Bauerschmidt
Divine Science and the Science of God, Victor Preller
Culture and the Thomist tradition : after Vatican II, Tracey Rowland
Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life, Nicholas Healy

Augustine
City of God, St. Augustine
Confessions, St. Augustine
Cities of God, Graham Ward
Augustine and Modernity, Michael Hanby
Engaging Unbelief, Curtis Chang

Kierkegaard
Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard
Philosophical Fragments, Soren Kierkegaard
Practice in Christianity, Soren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love, Amy Laura Hall

I'll keep you all posted.

Some things of interest I heard on NPR podcasts of late:

Catholic Women Claim Ordination as Priests

Is claiming a "secret" authority really any authority at all? There's more meat to this story but I found the response of the RCC in the story to be more than adequate, regardless of my feelings (bad ones!) about institutional patriarchy.



While on the topic of authority, this year is the 350th anniversary (349th technically) of Baruch Spinoza's, "the renegade Jew who gave us modernity", excommunication from the Catholic Church. I heard this NPR story looking back at the legacy he left here.

Sadly, NPR's guest thinks he was just another pioneer, challenging the tyranny of authority using individual reason to find (inner) salvation (by which he means happiness). Accordinly, we have no need for the Church, which is just a "terror of illogical construction." Instead, we can take refuge in his pantheistic, deterministic philosophy and forget all about God, Jesus, and His Church. I suppose this is why Spinoza is not in need of sacraments--God is found outside the Church. Did I mention yet that Spinoza's "problem with authority" (which is probably grossly overstated by the commentator) still leaves room for his belief that rights are mediated by the State? Perhaps its a matter of the nature of that authority, the State being more rational than the Church. That is not the first time I've heard that argument, but it certainly explains how Locke ended up where he did. Locke was one of the inaugural members of the Somerset Spinoza Fan Club.

On a more serious note, John Milbank sums up the Spinoza philosophical legacy quite well in 'The Gospel of Affinity,' Ethical Perspectives 7/4 (2000):

Something of Spinoza's `intellectual love' or his deus sive natura persists in all this — there is to be a joyful reception and active contemplation of the immanent totality. For indeed, once oppression is surpassed, liberated nature-going-beyond-nature fully appears [...] This is the phenomenon of `new age religions'. These religions all stress that salvation is to be located in a higher self, above the social, temporal, remembered self. This self can put one in harmony with everything, with the whole cosmos. This seems unpostmodern, to the extent that it takes to an extreme modern individualism, and seems to advocate retreat within an absolutely private, interior space. But this position shares with the Spinozistic one an assumption of immanence — of a self-regulating cosmos. Moreover, its higher-self-merging-with-the-cosmos is really rather like the ironic remove of the Spinozistic subject from its own process in flux — it is akin also to the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, able to speak of what belongs to the subject as somehow standing impossibly outside the `all' of things that can be spoken of. There are also parallels to Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion’s tendency to demote the graspably visible world as the regime of totality, and to Michel Henry’s proclamation of a world counter to this totality, which consists in the pure, never visible interior of matter manifest as auto-affection.2 Thus in postmodernity, alongside the stress of fluid and permeable boundaries, we have a new affirmation of the sanctity of an empty mystical self able to transcend, identify with, and promote or else refuse the totality of process in the name of a truer ‘life’ which is invisible. It will be apparent that even organized religion gets infected today with this kind of `spirituality'.

I must give credit where credit is due. Thanks go out to the 17th Century Dutchman.

*Interesting Fact: Spinoza liked to watch spiders fight.

From Brian Volck at Ekklesia Project:

Hugh Thompson, the U.S. Army helicopter pilot who stopped the My Lai massacre, died earlier this month. It took years for his actions to be recognized as heroic, but forcing superior officers to cease killing civilians took great courage. Perhaps pacificts and advocates of just war can better appreciate their shared convictions by pausing to consider this man's witness.

Amen.

I just saw this article on my way to bed. Apparently the same person who brought a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of "under God" being in the Pledge of Allegiance (dismissed) has now challenged the constitutionality of having to say it altogether and has won.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

Interestingly enough I think it keeps school children "free from a coercive requirement to affirm" the State. Some might say it even goes beyond affirming the state and ends up idolizing it. Anyway, thanks for making it easier for Christians to resist your coercive formation of loyalty.

The Empire of the Empty Shrine
by William Cavanaugh
( Read more... )

My friend Charlie has done a much better (and shorter) job of recapping all this in a post on his site. He even includes an mp3 file of the lecture (right-click and save as)!

Book update: this 3-day gathering is good cause for me to fall behind in my goal. It looks like I'll hit just over 20; not a failure by any means.



The Ekklesia Project's Summer Gathering 2005 logged a successful first day here in Chicago, IL.

This year's theme is "No Other Gods," which focuses on "the opening commandments of the Decalogue (no other gods, no idols, no misuse of God's name), given to Israel and the church to constitute our life as a political body. How should citizens of God's commonwealth (Ephesians 2) understand and relate to the post-9/11 imperial designs and ambitions of American? When does respect for Caesar verge on having another god, committing idolatry, or taking the true God's name in vain? How does the church keep the commandments in the face of the New American Empire?" (EP website).

I arrived yesterday evening, after 8-hours of work and 5 of traveling, to the heat and humidity (which I forgot doesn't hit until you've thought "this isn't so bad" and then walked through the automatic double-doors to exit the airport). I ate what Chicagoans believe is real Mexican food--a burrito whose end is a soggy tortilla filled with carne asada juice, hot sauce, and...lettuce. That's not real Mexican food. I also ridiculously signed up for a frequent shopper card at the local grocery so that I could get a deal on the banana, bagel, and two plums that I purchased--$0.61 worth of savings no less. And as a San Diegan, even a trolley lover, I suffer from "El" envy.

This morning I saw many friends from last year and one of my best friends who I do not see often enough--Charlie Pardue. It's been good to have him and others to gather with in fellowship for enjoyment and for serious inquiry. Oh and we are co-blogging as we speak. And of course this is after I teased him about technology withdrawals (before we found out we could access the internet) and how he wouldn't talk to me in person unless I had an IM window around my face. Fortunately we had two periods this evening of directed face-to-face conversation before retiring to our nerdiness and our cyber-friendships. Wait, he's IMing me...

1. The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens, 186 pages, (July 1)

In this major theoretical statement, the author offers a new and provocative interpretation of the institutional transformations associated with modernity. We do not as yet, he argues, live in a post-modern world. Rather the distinctive characteristics of our major social institutions in the closing period of the twentieth century express the emergence of a period of 'high modernity,' in which prior trends are radicalised rather than undermined. A post-modern social universe may eventually come into being, but this as yet lies 'on the other side' of the forms of social and cultural organization which currently dominate world history.

In developing an account of the nature of modernity, Giddens concentrates upon analyzing the intersections between trust and risk, and security and danger, in the modern world. Both the trust mechanisms associated with modernity and the distinctive 'risk profile' it produces, he argues, are distinctively different from those characteristic of pre-modern social orders.

This book builds upon the author's previous theoretical writings, and will be of fundamental interest to anyone concerned with Gidden's overall project. However, the work covers issues which the author has not previously analyzed and extends the scope of his work into areas of pressing practical concern.

2. Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, Krister Stendahl, 133 pages, (July 2)

A challenge to traditional ways of understanding Paul is sounded here. Stendahl proposes new ways of exploring Paul's speech: Paul must be heard as one who speaks of his call rather than his conversion, of justification rather than forgiveness, of weakness rather than sin, of love rather than integrity, and in unique rather than universal language. The title essay is complemented by the paper, "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," and by two explorations called, "Judgment and Mercy," and "Glossolalia--The New Testament Evidence." The book concludes with Stendahl's pointed reply to Ernst Kasemann, who has taken issue with Stendahl's revolutionary interpretations. This book offers new ways for viewing Paul.

I followed chuckp3's lead and took my own "which theologian are you?" quiz--an attempt to make bookish theology-buffs feel good as they attempt to secure for themselves a place in the history of theology as a discipline. I wonder if Barth ever fantasized about which of his favorite theologians he was most like? Here are my suspect results:

You scored as Karl Barth. The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology. </td> Karl Barth 100% Anselm 73% John Calvin 73% Jürgen Moltmann 60% Augustine 53% Friedrich Schleiermacher 33% Paul Tillich 27% Martin Luther 20% Jonathan Edwards 13% Charles Finney 7% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

I have been too busy to invest in blogging as of late, but this post cannot just sit on my desktop as an unpublished word doc like all the others the past two weeks.

News: DEMOCRATS VOTED OUT OF CHURCH BECAUSE OF THEIR POLITICS MEMBERS SAY

Many reports have surfaced in recent days of a North Carolina Baptist minister who led the expulsion of 9 church members (including one deacon) who openly did not support Pres. Bush.

This is fundamentally counter to the life of the Church. Excommunication has always been used to defend the witness of the Church from false teachings, from doctrinal heretics to hot-button political players who defy the church's teachings. Even issues like abortion and birth-control are more fundamentally linked to Church teachings than are individual politicians. Regardless, those who deny the basic teachings of the Christian faith have been met with swift excommunication from the recognized Church Body. But George Bush is NOT Jesus Christ. To deny him is NOT to deny a basic Christian teaching. Furthermore, how is the Church to be a witness to the reconciling of the world to God in Jesus, if it is so divided itself? Not only were these members released of church membership, they were asked to not return in times of worship to gather with the rest of the Body.

Is no one welcome at the table of our Lord? Does Christ not bid anyone come and worship? Well, apparently grace and reconciliation apply to Jews and Greeks, but not Kerry supporters. What's next? Appointing George W. Bush as the Protestant Pope? Is the worthiness of a person to join in the life of God lived in the Church dependent upon their allegiance to one Texan? As Paul asks a divided church in Corinth, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?" Neither ought this church or any church owe any allegiance to the man George Bush. But of course, this is another fine example of how the American church has become ensnared by the State--are we serving God or men?

More sad is that both sides are now gathering together teams of lawyers. Does not Jesus have something to say about reconciling with your neighbor on the way to court (Matthew 5:21-26), and did not Paul say something about Christians not making enemies of one another so that our witness to the Gospel be pure in the eyes of the world (1 Corinthians 1:10-17)? The Church cannot hand over internal authority and power to the American legal system. Unity within the Church is brought about through Christ and Christ alone, not through the strokes of pen made by a judge. This only further incorporates the power struggle that is the politics of the world into the life of God's people. Reconciliation takes place at the Table, not in a courtroom. This battle may already be lost, as so much of this church's identity, all of ours even, has been compromised. The Church as a whole must answer with a resounding voice in the words of that popular worship song:

Father we come to you,
in spirit and truth with our heart and our mind
Father we want to keep,
the unity Of the spirit in the bond of peace

One body, one spirit One hope of our call
One faith and one baptism One Father of all
Who is above all, and through all, and in us all

Oh lord let forgiveness rain down
Let your unity resound in our hearts
Oh lord let us learn to forgive
Let your children learn to live as one Body
Oh lord let forgiveness rain down
Let your unity resound in our heart
Oh lord let us learn to forgive
Let your children learn to live as one Body

poserorprophet has an interesting post about CS Lewis' thoughts on the sacrificing of one's self for another's good. That is most often called "heroism" and usually involves someone risking (not intentionally losing) one's life to save another. However, as the post goes on to explain, in war it is really the taking of life that has value. One of America's most memorable generals, Gen. George S. Patton, made that very point: "now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

***
I think we need to think about that now when more than 8 times the number of civilians that died on 9-11 (3,000) have been killed by both sides in Iraq in the past two years (24,000). For the people who the US says it is "liberating" and "securing" I find it odd that the Western media marvels over the 1,500 dead Americans in Iraq who are supposedly there to lay down their lives. Either way this is too much bloodshed. Is there no limit to the loss of life that we will deem "acceptable?" Many often retort with "how many 9-11s must we watch happen before we do something?" To never appear soft, both the Left and the Right break out their calculators and formulas, each quoting the public a number describing what is acceptable. Where is this "culture of life" both sides are trying to uphold since Terry Schiavo? Well we all know there is a difference in many minds between that white American woman and the countless Iraqis who have died. When the numbers are qualified by descriptions like "American" and "Iraqi," or "combatant" and "civilian" we have already begun to both dehumanize our enemy and lose sight of the fact that in war everyone is a victim. There is a failure to truly see the imago dei in the other.

Those distinctions lead to decisions like dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese cities. Instead of allowing those who voluntarily joined the armed forces to give up their lives, as they so chose, on the beaches of Japan, we imposed death upon an unwilling population. Schools, churches, homes, factories burned in an instant. Entire cities--men, women, and children--were decimated. Weapons of mass destruction as we know are designed precisely to kill large numbers of a population and inflict widespread non-discriminatory damage. As MAD (mutually assured destruction) suggests, their impact then is primarily psychological. WMDs are meant to instill fear in your enemy of their use. No populace would allow their government to take any action that would lead to the existential destruction of an entire people, or so the logic goes. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were but proofs of the MAD hypothesis. The will of the Japanese leaders, and to some extent the Japanese people, to wage war was broken by fear of further mass destruction. The US and Britain used similar strategies in WWII to try and break the will of the German people. In those cases as well, we intentionally targeted civilians. Ironically, to this day, the people of Dresden refer to the fire bombings there as the "terror bombings."


(more pictures)
Tens of thousands of German civilians died in a single night of fire bombing. Some figures suggest there was one bomb dropped for every three people in the city. The second wave of attacks came hours after the first, as the survivors returned to the streets, killing even more. There were so many fires that the air became superheated and formed tornado-like winds that sucked people into the flames. The giant inferno that enveloped the whole city sucked up all the available oxygen so many people were "spared" the flames by suffocating first. Again, this action was viewed as preferable to the death of Allied soldiers on the battlefield, though even Churchill and others (including the RAF bombadiers) initially wondered if it could be justified.

Was that an "acceptable" loss? Well, as Gen. Tommy Franks has said, "we don't do body counts." No, "we" do "collateral damage." So now the names of dead Iraqi civilians, named in memoriam, should really just be converted "collateral damage" numbers and figures. Politicians in today's world, have made it nearly impossible for us to speak of war truthfully; truth has always been the first casualty of war. No longer do countries mourn the tragic realities of war, but instead they beat loudly the drums of war and wave their banners high in fits of "shock" and "awe." Until we recognize that we have sadly become killers, and exceedingly efficient ones at that, I am afraid we will not see that in the end we are victims, not heroes. Until we recognize that war is more about killing than it is about dying, I am afraid we will not be able to restrain our own violence in a world desperately seeking peace.

Two updates:

I recently blogged about American Catholics following the results of a poll after John Paul II's death that outlined the hope they had that the new Pope would stand for (as if he was an elected representative of the people, not Christ) what they stood for--what the Catholic Church has often labeled "liberal." These "liberal" values concern women in ministry, homosexuality, birth control, and stem cell research.


Well, the latest poll of that same group, suggests they are unhappy with the new Pope and will instead just follow their conscience. Conscience you say? The Vicar of Christ, moved by the Holy Spirit, is not a figure one can just shrug off because he holds different views than one would like. At least, if one is to disagree it is with reverence and with an eye to the continued challenging of faithfulness of the Church and oneself. But here you have American Catholics giving up on the Church as well as the Pope, and instead turning towards their individual consciences, as if they are suffiecent. Who needs the Pope? Who needs the Church? Well, I guess I'll just get up and walk out of the Church the next time I am challenged to assess my own faithfulness. I don't want to be challenged, I want someone to agree with me! Ridiculous! I am sympathetic to many of their issues with Rome but I think more is at stake than our own moral justification. This picking and choosing can only compromise the witness of the Roman Catholic Church to the world. Admittedly, I must give more credit to American Catholics than what the poll shows, but I the language is troubling, and I can only hope that the unity among Christians the Pope has already spoke of can sustain a more faithful witness for Christians from all denominations and continents.

In another post not too long ago I wrote about the newest bankruptcy legislation in Congress. Well, as of yesterday the White House signed it into law. America can sleep better at night knowing Visa and American Express have recouped more of their money this quarter. Phew.

There is a bill before the California Senate this week that seeks to limit the freedom of professors to engage in certain discussions of topics and ideas deemed outside the mainstream. The bill was crafted by Republican Sen. Bill Morrow, "who said he was intimidated by liberal professors in his college days." This bill relies on a poll of college professors in the UC and California State school systems that shows that 48% of professors describe themselves as "liberal" or "far-left," compared to only 18% who describe themselves as "conservative" or "far-right" and ultimately is seeking to provide more of a balanced representation of ideas than that figure suggests exists now. But do those figures not mean that the left qualifies as "mainstream?"

I would be remiss to leave the argument there, for the issue is much bigger than the partisan politics that will play out over it. Instead, I want to call into question Morrow's statement that "he wants to preserve academic freedom, not limit it." I think this statement, which reflects the overall intent of Morrow's bill, regardless of its actual effect, is problematic.

It lays out a pedagogical assumption that the material being taught can be reduced to mere agreed-upon normative statements and that instructors are, or at least ought to be, solely there for the dissemination of those truth-claims, only to sit back and allow the students, as independent moral agents, to make up their own minds. Colleges are where you go to become self-made, or so they say. But as the famed ethicist/theologian Stanley Hauerwas is oft-quoted as saying

I can think of no more conformist message in liberal societies than the idea that students should learn to think for themselves. What must be said is that most students in our society do not have minds well enough trained to think. A central pedagogical task is to tell students that their problem is that they do not have minds worth making up. That is why training is so important, because training involves the formation of the self through submission to authority that will provide people with the virtues necessary to make reasoned judgment.

Ironically, Hauerwas writes this in response to Dead Poet's Society--a film shown to every freshmen that attends my alma mater, Point Loma Nazarene Univeristy, in order to show them the value of creating your own "healthy" worldview. Point Loma is sure that is its task; as sure as Sen. Morrow believes that is the task of all universities. As such, the state must protect students from dangerous teachers who may inundate students with extremist views. Oddly enough, isn't the Right usually accusing the Left of being pluralistic or relativist while fighting for a staunch objective moralism? I could see the ACLU and the California Republican Party teaming up on this one actually.

This bill would prevent teacher's from fulfilling their primary task: to train young minds. What we'd end up with are automated lectures of board-approved texts. In such a paradigm, teachers would do a great disservice to those whom they would claim to be serving. Training and informing are not the same thing. If we are to truly talk about freedom in the university we cannot deny its application to both the university as a whole (in being free from state interference), and also the faculty. Freedom to teach goes hand in hand with the freedom to learn.


Conflicting Allegiances, edited by Michael Budde and John Wright, touches upon the ways in which the ecclesially-based university has given into the modes of the liberal society in which it finds itself. I believe the state university finds itself in much the same situation, although I am not sure that institution ever had an identity worth keeping, since the Leftist professors are just as committed to students making up their own minds as is Morrow. The substance of the lectures may be different, but the form is the same—let students make up their own minds. I worry however about how much of an indirect impact this will have on limiting the rights of teachers and universities in the private sector to form students as they so choose. Granted there is no funding relationship between the state and private universities, the same political mess gets played out within the halls of such institutions.

In chapter two, William Cavanaugh (tell me when I am referencing him too much) thoroughly examines the issue of where the focus of academic freedom is to lie: the student, the teacher, or the institution. He draws out the differences between the modern American university (both state and ecclesial) and the ages-old German system, where professors are freed from "administrative duties, from required subjects to be taught, from prescribed syllabi, from tutorial duties, [and] from common standards of grading." It is no wonder Germany has produced some of the best and brightest over the centuries. Later, Michael G. Cartwright goes on to examine this relationship between student and teacher, saying “Christian formation of students is more about apprenticeship than it is about knowledge acquisition, more about craft than technique, and more about cultivating wisdom than about career-training.” In Morrow’s view, students are there for mere knowledge acquisition about a pre-chosen area. Furthermore, Morrow bites the proverbial Enlightenment bait that says that we are all reasonable, intelligent human beings and are therefore capable of understanding for ourselves. Cavanaugh references MacIntyre on this very point, from After Virtue and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, by reminding us

reasoning can only proceed if one initially accepts the authority of a teacher who is able to point one toward relevant and truthful texts and is able to help one learn to read them. Acceptance of the authority of teacher and text at this stage is on the basis not of evidence but of testimony, that is, a prerational trust in the teacher by virtue of the office he or she holds. Only later does a person learn to evaluate reasons as good or bad.

In essence, there is a "moral formation" that takes place. It is under the instruction of these teachers that we gain slowly come to understand the world being opened to us. We are trained as moral agents within this field to discern and discriminate between texts and between stories, so that the world we seek to uphold is rendered all the more complete. But this requires the giving up of autonomy by the student in the classroom.

For many of you I am sure the idea of “moral formation” seems unrelated to classes on biochemistry or American literature or marketing, but that is not the case. See Robert Brimlow’s pamphlet “Paganism and the Professions”, posted at the the Ekklesia Project, for an understanding of “moral formation” as it takes place in all fields and industries, each one complete with sacred texts and rituals that make them into formative moral bodies.

In the end, California will do what California will do, but hopefully those of us involved in any way with institutions of higher learning, particularly ecclesially-based universities, will remain committed to the formation of students who have not yet received wisdom enough to make up their own minds.

Once again, at that fabulous resource for Christian poetry, prose, criticism, and cultural and religious analysis known as The Matthews House Project, I found this short piece titled "On Not Being Finessed by Carnival Barkers or Someone Else’s Talking Points" by David Dark, author of The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea. The block-quote at the end of the post is one of the more poignant characterizations of Christians' recent failure to claim a truly unique witnessing voice in a world in tumult.

Dark offers some reflections about the most recent elections and about how we sometimes are forced into a certain paradigm based on the agendas of others. "Learning to doubt wisely, discern shrewdly, and pray generously," he says, are some proscriptions for finding our own witnessing voice in a world full of sales-pitches (commercial and political), that are by definition untruthful, trying to hook us.

Christians were oft divided last November. We were hooked. Bush's message about his personal faith bought him unwavering support from evangelicals and Kerry was a softly-spoken Catholic who offered a "kinder, gentler" war on terror without the "good and evil" rhetoric, as well as promised a liberal social agenda. But did we all not fall victim to the divisiveness and quarreling warned against in Paul's first letter to Corinth? It is there that he admonishes those who fall victim to worldly wisdom and follow mere men, Paul included. Christians often forgot how to speak of Christ and His victory, and instead presumed to put the fate of the world in the outcome of an election. Dark, a non-partisan Christian patriot, goes on:

We dilate the significance of our witness when we allow our speech to play into a “moral values” market category or a pillar in the architecture of Karl Rove. Ancient wisdom has long notified that the powerful and the self-justifying, self-described righteous will barter in truthlessness with the best of intentions, forcing themselves and their listeners into limited identities. Students of the Bible know that false authorities have a way of multiplying and coopting all things human and humane. Doing as they will, principalities and powers makes us deaf to the possibility of confession. They numb us to the joys of finding out, daily, how we’ve come to view the world wrongly and how we’ve failed to view our neighbors and enemies as sacraments in themselves.

Whenever we’re viewed as objects rather than participants (poll numbers, target markets, collateral damage), we can begin to note that we’ve entered into the carefully constructed system of fetishes called a commercial. Learning to doubt wisely, discern shrewdly, and pray generously might seem like too much extra work in an already overblown day. It helps when two or more are nearby (or e-mailable) to assist in the work of communal discernment which is the life of a functioning church.

Well said. Although I was someone who did not vote, I was by no means apolitical, and I need to be reminded of my failures to truly discern wisdom as the knowledge of God in Christ. For who is it that I really serve but the Lord of Heaven and Earth?


Note: In the end of that passage Dark mentions "poll numbers, target markets, [and] collateral damage." This type of categorization of the world seems to be a common theme in my recent posts. To see the link between The Corporation (previous posts) and the Church I recommend Christianity Incorporated: How Big Business Is Buying the Church. Also, the topic of objectification, or commodification, of people (poll numbers, target markets, etc.) is touched upon in a hard-to-find documentary The Ad and the Ego, which shows how over the last 100 years, advertising has changed from informing the public about a product, to the systematic coercive selling of image and desire itself (see also the Cavanaugh material in the two most recent posts).

Lastly, a well-respected professor at PLNU, Karl Martin, delivered a chapel address in the spring of 2004, on the ways in which our world seeks to define us as consumers and citizens, and makes our Christianity subordinate to those. As I hope I have shown in many of my posts, we seem to be all too willing to give in to these categorizations. As a consumer, not only do we allow our desires to be shaped by Coke and Nike, but we transform ourselves into products--there are all too many people selling advertising space on their bodies or their naming rights on eBay--for consumption by others. This comes in several regular forms--the daily conforming our outwardly appearance to societal standards, pornography and the objectification of sex, and...reality TV, where the value of others comes from their ability to amuse us, often by engaging in destructive and humiliating behaviors. Martin says he doesn't want to watch any program that "encourages others to be bad." The conclusion he comes to is that we are now selling ourselves because we have so totally and completely been turned into consumers that we feel obliged to become consumable. A Christian ethic, Martin says, leads us to turn away from the offering of others in such an inhumane way--we must treat our neighbors better than they ought or ask to be treated. He then asks, "what does it mean to be a Christian first, and an American second?" We must love Christ more than we love any human attachment--even a nation. As people who are inevitably made consumers and citizens, how do we deal with the temptation to be merely those two things? We cannot cease to be either, but we can make those identities subordinate to our Christian identity. This is the address (RealPlayer required). Also, there is a :45 blank spot in the recording towards the end.

Sojourners features an article this week by none other than Bill Cavanaugh, entitled When Enough Is Enough: Why God's Abundant Life Won't Fit In A Shopping Cart, And Other Mysteries of Consumerism." Once again he brings into stark contrast the falsities of a world ruled by Amazon wish lists and the desire for desire itself, and the realities of the life lived in the abundance of God--the fullness of life found in the Bread and the Wine that cannot be bought at Costco.

In the final section of Bill Cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination he tackles the "myth of globalization as catholicity." Catholicity for you non-Christian, non-theological signifies a unified whole gathered around a center that assures its unity no matter the expanse it occupies, and in that way is preferable to the term universal, which suggest merely an expanse. The center of the true Catholica is the gift to the world of the Body and Blood of Christ. To help frame my comments on this film, I offer a lengthy series of quotes that may help locate the underriding cultural assumptions that make a phenomenon like the multi-national corporation possible.

Africans and New Yorkers commune on the Internet, and the world has shrunk into proportions measurable by the click of a mouse. A catholicity undreamed of by the original Catholica is now dawning[...]globalization is not properly characterized by mere fragmentation, but enacts a universal mapping of space typified by detachment from any particular localities[...]Globalism is a masternarrative, the consumption of which ironically produces fragmented subjects incapabale of telling a genuinely catholic story.

[...]money has become virtually stateless[...]Labour is hidden, and the sources of production are constantly shifting location[...]With the loss of geographical stability, family, Church, and the local community have also given way to global monoculture and 'virtual community.' In sum "'the new order eschews loyalty to workers, products, corporate structures, businesses, fatories, communities, even the nation[...]All such allegiances are viewed as expendable under the new rules. You cannot be emotionally bound to any particular asset.'" [Cavanaugh is quoting David Morris here, who in turn is quoting a NYT piece]

The speed with which information and people can travel across space has overcome spatial barriers and shrunk the dimensions of the world. The metaphor of the 'global village' is often invoked to elicit catholic sentiments of the world's people coming into communion with each other, overcoming the ethnic, tribal, and traditonal barriers which have produced so much bloodshed over the centuries. Global mapping appears to make all the people on earth contemporaries, sharing the same space and time. And indeed, a universal corporate culture increasingly penetrates local cultures worldwide. If one were parachuted into a shopping mall, it would take some investigation to discover whether one had touched down in Cambridge or Fort Worth, Memphis or Medicine Hat, Dar Es Salaam or Minsk. Examples of the universal--the 'McDonaldization of Society[...]--are too common to belabour. In corporate language, the vision is often presented as a benificent catholicity which produces peace through the overcoming of division. Utopia, says the president of Nabisco Corporation, is 'One world of homogeneous consumption...[I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latins and Scandinavians will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate.'

[...]the compression of space in the 'global village' has not only exacerbated but produced insecurity and conflict in the late twentieth century, since global mapping brings diverse localities into competetion with one another[...]Competition produces an apparent attachment to the local, for in an effort to lure capital, diverse places must emphasize what is unique and advantageous to their location (cheap wages, weak unions, good resources and infrastructure, lax regulation, attractive environment for management, etc.). Yet at the same time, competition paradoxically increases detachment from the local, for as localities compete for capital, the supposed uniqueness of each local place is increasingly tailored to attract development, modelled on those localities that have previously been successful[...]An ephemeral particularity is therefore merely the flipside of a dominant universality. Mexican food is popularized in places like Minnesota, but its dominant form is the fast-food chain Taco Bell, which serves up hot sauce that a native Minnesotan could mistake for ketchup. Nevertheless, just as the food must be universalized and made bland enough to appeal potentially to the taste of anyone anywhere, to compete there must be simultaneous emphasis on its unique qualities; advertised images must be rooted in a particular location, for example, the traditional Mexican culture of the abuelita before the clay oven, sipping pulque and shaping tortillas in the palm of her hand. Anyone who has stood in line at a Taco Bell counter and watched a surly white teenage inject burritos with a sour cream gun knows how absurd these images are, not just because Taco Bell does not conform to the Mexican reality, but because the abuelita herself is a manufactured image. Today's Mexican woman is far more likely wash down her tortillas with a can of Diet Coke, while sitting before dubbed reruns of 'Dynasty.' The more 'muy autentico' a place clamims to be, the more it exposes itself as a simulacrum, a copy for which there exists no original. Global mapping produces the illusion of diversity by the juxtaposition of all the varied products of the world's traditions and cultures in one space and time in the marketplace. Mexican food and tuna hotdish, mangoes and mayonnaise all meet the gaze of the consumer. For the consumer with money, the illusion is created that all the world's peoples are contemporaries occupying the same space-time. It is important that the other be 'different,' but it is equally important that they be 'merely different.' The production of the simulacrum, difference at the surface only, precludes engagement with the genuinely other. So the conceit is advanced that my consumption contributes to your well-being through mutually beneficial global trade; my eating slakes yur hunger. The consumption of the others' particularity absorbs them into a simulated catholicity while it simultaneously hides the way that space remains rigidly segmented between the Minnesotans who enjoy mangoes in the dead of winter and the Brazilian Indians who earn forty cents an hour picking them.

Local attachments are loosed by the centrifuge of ephemeral desire, which is fuelled by global capitalism's ever accelerating need for growth[...]Disposability, not simply of goods, but of relationships and particular attachments of any kind, is the hallmark of consumption in the new economy. The result is not merely the dominance of a few name brands; the search for demand mandates a proliferation of specialized and exotic products (for example, bottled water for dogs or gourmet coffee beans recovered from Sumatran luwak dung). The local and partiuclar are prized precisely because of their novelty. The ideal consumer, however, is detached from all particulars. Novelty wears off, and particulars become interchangeable; what is desired is desire itself. The global economy is characterized by the production of desire as its own object[...]In this economy images themselves have become commodities, and are prized as commodities precisely because of their ephemerality[...]As a result, the subject is radically decentred, cast adrift in a sea of disjointed and unrelated images. If identity is forged by unifying the past, present, and future into a coherent narrative sequence, the ephemerality and rapid change of images decontructs this ability. The late capitalist subject become 'schizophrenic'[...]and experiences only 'a series of pure and unrelated presents in time'[...]the subject created is the Nabisco executive's universal homogeneous consumer, whose 'catholic' tastes preclude him from attachment to any particular narratives.

Cavanugh suggests the Eucharist is what provides a truly catholic story that sees the other not as "merely different" but as wholly other. We are identified with one another in Christ, and made one through His body and blood. The Eucharist thus provides a story that has a past, present, and future, and we are no longer the schizophrenic consumer of global culture, but are made members of the global catholic community called Church.