(Ir)religiosity

To say that the economy has become the dominant political issue over the last several months would be to state the obvious.  But even still there wasn’t a single mention — at least not that I know of — of an ‘anniversary’ that came and past last week.  Six years ago this month the long, arduous and costly (both in lives and money) war in Iraq began.  While the media pretended to be infuriated over the AIG bonuses and the rest of us marked our NCAA brackets the United States’ occupation of Iraq entered it’s seventh year.  Not a mention on the 24 hour news channels.  Even the blogosphere was silent.  I hope we haven’t forgotten.  I hope we haven’t moved on to the next trendy justice issue or the next big government mishap and neglected that one of the biggest justice issues and the worst government mishaps in recent memory continues on our watch.

I have hope that under President Obama this will end.  We shall see, but I have hope nonetheless. And until then I will — I hope we all will — continue to push and pressure my government to sever the tentacles of imperialism and put to death the attitude of exceptionalism.

Last year I organized and participated in war protest/peace demonstration in Oklahoma City and gave one of the speeches.  I’m re-posting it unedited (some of the language and statistics are now inflated) today as way of remembering that even in the midst of our economic crisis the war continues. Read the rest of this entry »

“If someone finds that they are able to rationally affirm all the basic tenants of traditional Christianity I do not have a problem, I just think that the idea that one must do so in order to enter fully into the live of Christianity is a form of gnosticism.” (Link)

This raises the question of whether Christianity has, or is, a single worldview itself.  I tend to think the answer is no.  What do you think?

There is a lot of talk in the emergent/ing church — and postmodernism at large — about the project of deconstruction, mainly as a critique of modern models of “doing” church and theology, but also, though often not as popular, as offering a constructive response to those systems.  In even narrower conversations, there is talk of what can and cannot be deconstructed.  So for Derrida, “justice” is the undeconstructible nucleus (though he would surely object to that word) of the “law,” which seeks to be justice, but can always be deconstructed.  Likewise, Caputo speaks of the church as the deconstructable sign pointing toward the kingdom, which is undeconstructable.

I think these sort of conversations are very helpful.  We can’t stop deconstruction our own systems and ideas.  Sometimes I think part of my personality is naturally deconstructive.  Which is good…and bad.

What do I mean?

I’m wondering if sometimes, in our efforts to deconstruct “something else,” we miss the opportunity to let ourselves be deconstructed.

For example, for a long time now I have categorically rejected Augustine and his writings.  Original sin, latent — or not so latent — misogyny, sex as utility only, I could go on.  For all these reasons I simply wrote Augustine off completely.  Not that those aren’t good reasons.  I believe they are.  And I still disagree with Augustine about them.

But recently I’ve rediscovered Augustine’s mysticism and his ascent into himself in search of God who is beyond his comprehension.  And in doing so, I’ve been deconstructed.  I’ve allowed myself to be worked over by a tradition I had previously dismissed.

All this has to be done in moderation of course. Because we can just import Augustine uncritically into 2009.  But I wonder if sometimes we are too critical and miss the opportunity to have ourselves criticized?  I wonder if sometimes, under the auspices of deconstruction, I undermine the very heart of the deconstructive project.

That is not to say that I reject the deconstructing of historical figures or systems of thought.  Not at all.  I’m only suggesting that perhaps there is a tension between our deconstruction and our being deconstructed.  The key is learning to live and embody that tension well.

What to do you think?  Have you had similar experiences? Or am I just blowin’ smoke?

I’ve been out of the loop for a few weeks now.  My original “week” long break from blogging turned into two — and it’s been great.  I didn’t make as big of dent in my stack of books as I would have liked, but oh well.  Time off is good.

I’m sure it’s old news to most everyone now, but a piece by Michael Spencer (the Internet Monk) in the Christian Science Monitor titled “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” has made asizable splash in the blogosphere over the past few weeks.
His predictions are bleak (or encouraging, depending on your point of view.

In the opening paragraph alone he claims that a “major collapse” of evangelicalism will occur within 10 years that will “fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West” resulting in a new “anti-Christian chapter” of our history in which “intolerance to Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible.”

Why?  He lists seven reasons, chief among them the reality that evangelicalism has — rightly or wrongly — been close related to fundamentalism and the Christian Right resulting in politicization and a reputation for intolerance and anti-intellectualism. As Spencer succinclty observes, evangelicals “fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.” As we saw in last presidential election, the political power of the Christian Right is crumbling.  Combine that with the rising disenchantment of many “cradle evangelicals” with what they perceive to be the politicization and co-option of a vibrant and robust faith, and the outlook for evangelicalism as a cultural and religious monolith is not good. Read the rest of this entry »

…but some things are worth breaking the silence for.

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I’m on spring break this week.  I’ve decided to take a short blog sabbatical (about a week or so) so I can rest, relax and catch up on some non-required reading.  I’ve been sitting on these books for a while.  A hope to get into a few of them over the next week.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my writings page.  Mainly because I haven’t really written anything worthwhile or anything I thought someone would find interesting (not that I ever did anyway).  I put up two new files.  A short paper on Augustine and Postmodernism and a review of Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy.  Check ‘em out…if you’re into that.

I know. Provocative title. Disappointing video post. I just had to. I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since I saw the original trailer last summer. And now it opens on Friday. I can’t wait…

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This is becoming one of my favorite images lately.  I think it aptly encapsulates my thoughts on philsophy and theology that I mentioned last week.

And I think it’s very representative of the countless engimas with which we live and the various tensions within each of us.  The point is, of course, not necesarily resolution and final compromise or concession, but instead a coming to terms with the beauty of aporetic discourse — which, as Pete Rollins tells us, will always send us off-course — and engimatic contestation.  Truth (or something like it) lies somewhere within these many paradoxes and I find it much more useful to enter into the dance and movement of these mysterious paradoxes and savour the experience of be(come)ing in the process than to colonize or objectifiy that which lies beyond language and imagination.  That is not to say that language and imagination are not important tools with which to particpate in this project, only that they always, in the end, fall short of the excess that is beyond.