(Ir)religiosity

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Obama the theologian

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Regardless of your position on abortion and your opinion of Notre Dame’s controversial decision to allow President Obama to speak at their commencement, you have to admit that his speech was compelling.  I absolutely love this quotation:

“[R]emember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.” (ht)

This sort of epistemological humility is something I admire and a quality that is becoming for a President (especially given the last eight years).  Not only that, it is a quality that is inherent in Christianity regardless of the trajectory of Church history over the last 200 hundred years.  Faith, by its very nature, welcomes this sort of tension between belief and doubt and resides in a position beyond certainty and absolutes — a position that trusts in the absurdity and welcomes the impossible when it ruptures the predictable, mundane monotony of mere possibility.

Ok, I can’t help it:  Obama sounds very postmodern in that quotation, I daresay very emergent.  I know, that’s probably not a fair assessment but the sentiment is strikingly similar.  It jettisons the smug certainty endemic on both poles (call them whatever you want) and opts not for a via media — no that would be to play by the rules dictated by modernity, allowing the them to limit and colonize the imagination — but a supra media that transcends the old boring binaries and bifurcations, completely rethinking our conceptual framework altogether and continually pushing the creative envelope.  That is exciting to me.  And whether or not our current system allows him to completely succeed, I’m glad that Obama understands that and is willing to put it out there.

Although it doesn’t directly flow with everything else (or does it?) I can’t help but draw attention to a final quotation:

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth. (ht)

If there is anything that I can claim to be certain of it is that I have a divine mandate to love, to do justice, to hope, and to participate in a reality that is not merely my own, a reality that binds us all together as human beings and bearers of the divine image.  Beyond that, I live with inherent doubts.  I embrace them and find them beautiful because they remind me of my finitude and that I am part of something larger than myself.

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Written by Blake Huggins

May 18th, 2009 at 7:30 am

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  • http://carolynsinger.livejournal.com/ Carolyn

    I really like your ideal of moving past poles and positions into a new way of thinking that takes all points of view into account. But for me, when it comes to being the Church, I think that in many ways we emergents still have to act within the binary system. We can't just say, “Well, polar thinking and arguing are SO passe” and ignore the issues. What we have is a rift in the Church caused by modernism. And emergents must task ourselves with healing this rift if we're really serious about doing God's mission in the world.

  • http://blakehuggins.com Blake Huggins

    I get that. I definitely don't want to ignore important issues and turn a blind (and sometimes smug) eye to areas the need obvious healing and reconciliation. My only worry is that we will pander to the binaries too much and then wake up one day and realize we're no different from one of the poles. There's an inherent tension there. I think we always need to a vision cast ahead of us so we don't fall into that trap. But your point is a good one and one that we always need to be mindful of, I think.

  • http://www.expandingthelight.org/ Joe

    Excellent quote! I facebooked it on our Lakewood UMC page (North Little Rock, AR) and sent it to my pastor.

  • http://www.mikeoles3.wordpress.com/ MikeOles3

    I think Obama might be our greatest presidential theologian maybe since that other president who was a senator from Illinois. And I also think Lincoln would find a home in the emergent discussion…

    Not only does Obama get it theologically, he was also a great church member. Though the Jeramiah Wright smear campaign took down that relationship, Trinity UCC in chicago is a great cutting edge church that transformed its neighborhood and beyond.

  • http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/ Ted Seeber

    I suppose you'd call the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism very post-modern and emergent too.

    This sort of humility isn't just Christian and it isn't just postmodern- it's a huge part of human life.

  • http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/ Ted Seeber

    Cutting edge all right- if you like blatant racism.

  • http://blakehuggins.com Blake Huggins

    Agreed. I was drawing particular attention to the acceptance and celebration of doubt, that I think is characteristic of some of the postmodern, emergent sentiment a la Peter Rollins. I wouldn't deny that it's not an important of any other religion or human life. But the way in which it is couched is interesting to me.

  • http://blakehuggins.com Blake Huggins

    Not sure I follow with the blatant racism. If you are suggesting that black liberation theology is racist then I would beg to differ.

  • http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/ Ted Seeber

    This suddenly struck me that I've heard modernism condemned before. Then I remembered- Pope Pius IX, last secular Pope (he was the secular leader of a nation, it was during his term that the Papal States were lost to Italy- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pius_IX ) condemned modernism as being one of the forces that turned the Pope into “The Prisoner of the Vatican”.

  • http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/ Ted Seeber

    Black liberation theology is as racist as White liberation theology. The key to end racism is to stop seeing color or race.

  • http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/ Ted Seeber

    And I'm just saying the acceptance of doubt isn't anything new or postmodern- it's as premodern as St. John of the Cross in Christianity, or the wonderful Koans of Zen Buddhism. In fact, so much so that one good description of rational religion I heard recently is that it is the rational study of that which is too absurd for science.

  • http://blakehuggins.com Blake Huggins

    I agree, to a certain point. It's understanding something very old in a new light. Holding it and believing it in a different way. That's exactly the point John Captuo makes in his book, Philosophy and Theology. To over-simplify, it means returning to the pre-modern having gone through the Enlightenment and not allowing either the pre-modern or the modern to crust over into dogma.

  • http://blakehuggins.com Blake Huggins

    Not so. First, there is no such thing as a White liberation theology. It's kinda hard to liberate a group that, by and large, has held the power subjugated others (Blacks, women, and so on).

    Second, if you read the thinker carefully — I'm thinking mainly of James Cone here in God of the Oppressed — you will not find racism. Quite the contrary. You will find anger and indignation yes, but I believe that is warranted. The point is it advocate justice for those on the underside of power, that is what Jesus did. That is point of liberation theology in general and Black theology in particular, they side with the powerless — as Christians that is where we should always stand.

    Moreover, Cone does not use the terms “Black” and “White” to denote skin color only, in fact he emphasizes over and over again their ontological value (I believe this can be found in his early work A Black Theology of Liberation; that is, they are symbols of the oppressed and the oppressor, powerless and powerful, respectively. So yes, it has to do with race, but it is also larger than race dealing with the nature of power relations in general. In this sense — and I know this hits a lot of people the wrong way — Jesus was Black and as Christians we are Black. Our calling is to be an advocate for those who are and have been subjugated, that is out divine mandate and that is the ethos that Jesus modeled.

    I get what you are saying. This is not about racial favoritism. It's about asserting the humanity of those who are denied it, which given our history, necessarily involves racial component.

  • Joe White

    Blake wrote:

    “The point is it advocate justice for those on the underside of power, that is what Jesus did.”

    No, Jesus advocated doing justice IN THE EYES OF GOD.

    The Bible talks about bringing justice to 'the oppressed' (i.e. 'those that have been wronged'). This is not synonymous with 'the poor' or 'the out-of-power'

    If someone is poor, it does not follow that they are so because someone has wronged them.

    If someone is not powerful, it does not follow that they are so because someone has wronged them.

    Jesus was not a cosmic Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

    Political liberals like Obama use pseudoreligious talk to sell Christians on the idea that support for government social programs is the equivalent of Christian charity.

    Using government to take one man's goods and give them to another is not a fulfillment of the commands of Jesus.

    Blake, I've been poor most of my life. And I'm not powerful.

    But covetousness is not the answer.

    Desiring to strip someone else of their blessings is not God's will.

    Obama is a very skilled actor. He pretends to belong to neither the political left or the political right, while working hard to push the country far to the left economically and socially.

    When will Christians see thru this strong delusion?

    Let's quit pretending. Look at what he does, not what he says.

  • Joe White

    Blake wrote:

    “The point is it advocate justice for those on the underside of power, that is what Jesus did.”

    No, Jesus advocated doing justice IN THE EYES OF GOD.

    The Bible talks about bringing justice to 'the oppressed' (i.e. 'those that have been wronged'). This is not synonymous with 'the poor' or 'the out-of-power'

    If someone is poor, it does not follow that they are so because someone has wronged them.

    If someone is not powerful, it does not follow that they are so because someone has wronged them.

    Jesus was not a cosmic Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

    Political liberals like Obama use pseudoreligious talk to sell Christians on the idea that support for government social programs is the equivalent of Christian charity.

    Using government to take one man's goods and give them to another is not a fulfillment of the commands of Jesus.

    Blake, I've been poor most of my life. And I'm not powerful.

    But covetousness is not the answer.

    Desiring to strip someone else of their blessings is not God's will.

    Obama is a very skilled actor. He pretends to belong to neither the political left or the political right, while working hard to push the country far to the left economically and socially.

    When will Christians see thru this strong delusion?

    Let's quit pretending. Look at what he does, not what he says.