(Ir)religiosity

My last post generated quite a bit of feedback, both publicly and privately. It seems that I struck a nerve here and most of the folks I am hearing from resonated with much of what I said. I do, however, want to add a few clarifications.

Despite my tone — which is a little harsh in places and rightfully so I think — I am not suggesting that what some are calling “positive belief” simple be abandoned or dismissed. I am, after all, dealing with the Christian tradition in which I have been inculcated. I am a theologian and I use the symbolic framework and the social imaginary of this tradition. Better, I interpret these things as best I can and try to read and reread them in creative ways, hopefully in ways that have been for whatever reason silenced or glossed over by the dominant power discourse. All of this involves positive belief, argumentation, and responsibility for my thought ideas. On this point Derrida agrees with me. Though he is situated in a different tradition, I believe his body of work stands as a testament to detractors who would suggest otherwise.

For me, the problem is not with “positive belief” per se, but rather how said belief is used and wielded. The language and tone I hear around “reconstruction” suggests to me that belief may be given a new label but it is still built around a metaphysics of presence and given substantial recourse to some sort of big Other, what Derrida calls a transcendental signified, that ultimately secures things. For me this is untenable and representative of the attitude that deconstruction is merely a stage rather than an ongoing discursive strategy. As I said before it should alway infect theology, leaving the tension between religious desire and the belief structures that necessarily facilitate that desire forever open and haunted by that which that can never fully contain. If anything it is an argument for the proliferation of “positive belief” and a multiplicity of understandings within a tradition on the condition that these things are provisional, susceptible to reinterpretation, and open to fall under the judgment and analysis of rigorous scrutiny.

I am as much a critic as I am a theologian — the two are always closely intertwined for me — so when it comes to belief I tend to err on the side of deconstruction, hoping to bear witness to an event that even the most beautiful and persuasive positive belief structure can never fully contain (this is also why I have a deep love for the mystics and the apophatic tradition). I am alway unsaying what I have previously said so I can hopefully, maybe, say it a little better. That doesn’t mean I’m not interesting in saying anything. It just means I want to precise and open to being shown my blindspots, which is maybe another possible definition of deconstruction. I aim to be about the business of reframing and reinterpreting while at the same time taking responsibility for the Christian tradition by inhabiting its language, turning around in it, and showing that there is always some excess that never quite fits into the puzzle perfectly.

A theology infected by deconstruction is always looking over its shoulder, always oscillating between the known and the unknown, leaving the tension, the wound of divine desire, open and festering in order to say something, however feeble or inadequate, about the event by which it is animated. So in a sense, there is no reconstruction that needs to be done. It is all already there, the tradition is before us and ahead of us. We already have the constructions. Good theology is about negotiating how they function in discourse and life, asking whether they foster a posture of unmitigated hospitality toward heterogeneity and alterity, toward the divine itself, or whether they squelch it through misguided quests for ultimate grounds, bedrock foundations, and sedimented structures.

And that’s why I am not interested in leaving deconstruction behind for mere surface reconstruction — because for me deconstruction is, as friend of mine put it, a sustained spiritual practice, fostering a deep sense of awe and wonder at the world and incessantly reminding me that the divine always lies ahead of even my best theological ideas.

Related articles

• Misusing deconstruction: on belief and the emergent church (blakehuggins.com)
• Derrida and theology [video] (blakehuggins.com)

Recently I tweeted a truncated version of one of my biggest frustrations about the use of the word “deconstruction” in the emergent church. I got some responses suggesting that I clarify and elaborate. So here we go.

First, blame shouldn’t fall solely on emergent church folk. Philosophers and cultural theorists (who should know better!) have  also misused the word since it gained popularity in discourse. The fact that Jacques Derrida‘s (in)famous hermeneutic (if i can call it that) translates to a very common word in the English language doesn’t help much either. The word is already operative in our common vocabulary and it carries with it certain connotations that run completely counter to its theoretical function. So the inertia is against us before we get to the emergent church. I think Jack Caputo’s Deconstruction in Nutshell should be mandatory reading for anyone who uses or hopes to use the word deconstruction as a key concept (in the emergent church or otherwise).

Popular use notwithstanding, I do think that emergent church folk are particularly and especially culpable for their use and misuse of the word theoretically and theologically in large part because of their affinity toward postmodern philosophy and their use of key thinkers like Derrida. This makes things complicated and, if dissected closely, I think it shows that the emergent church — or at least some subgroup(s) within it — aren’t all that different from mainstream Christianity and certainly not as subversive as some had initially hoped.

My frustration stems from the tweets, Facebook statuses, and blog posts (and books) that I see from time to time where someone will in effect suggest that having a “deconstructive stage” was important for a while but now its time to “get serious” and start reconstructing things (faith, theology, etc.) toward some sort of “new” end. In essence, deconstruction is given a negative and overly critical connotation and is understood to be the initial step in a larger process. Doubt was good and cool for a time, criticizing and rejecting conventional religiosity was fun while it lasted, but the real work starts when you decided to start affirming and arguing core theological tenets anchored by a foundation. When I read and hear things like this I realize how unfortunate it is that the mystics and the via negativa don’t get more play in emergent church circles. Read the rest of this entry »

St. John’s Nottingham has a fantastic theological timeline available online. It is very detailed and includes in depth videos by some top-notch scholars on various figures and schools of thought. Something like this is a great resource for anyone interested in the history and development of theology. Unfortunately you have to jump through some hoops to see the whole thing (and for some reason it is no longer completely free) but you can view all the videos on the St. John’s youtube channel.

One of the more recent additions includes a video overview of Derrida and his impact on theology. The presenter is Steven Shakespeare of Liverpool Hope University. Shakespeare has written one the best introductory texts on Derrida and theology I’ve read in Continuum’s Philosophy and Theology series. The video is a bit long but it provides an excellent sketch of Derrida’s intellectual biography and context, drawing particular attention to some main themes and concepts that have significant theological import. Not exactly an easy task! Check out the video below.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend on both Facebook and Twitter over last several days in the wake of the horrific events that took place in Oslo, Norway on Friday. Despite numerous reports to the contrary, including his own 1,500 page “manifesto,” many Christians (including one in a NYT op-ed published today) have taken to denouncing Anders Behring Breivik’s religiosity. We see this all the time when some who appears to be even marginally Christian is guilty of acts of violence and terrorism. In an attempt to save face or perhaps preserve that Christian tradition from being (further) tarnished (which is more than a little ironic given its history) folks will claim that Breivik “wasn’t a true Christian,” that he is clearly a psychopath whose behavior is rooted in mental imbalance(s) rather than bedrock religious convictions, and that he is “only a cultural Christian” (which somehow gets you off the hook?). And so on.

While I can understand and certainly resonate with the sentiments that might lead one to denounce Breivik’s behavior as completely incompatible with Christianity (I am a theologian after all!) I am more than a little uncomfortable when persons try to downplay the fact Breivik’s actions might be religiously motivated or completely ignore his Christian affiliation at all (cultural or otherwise). Of course Christians should be outraged. Of course we should publicly denounce such terrorism as completely incongruent with the best exceptionalism of the Christian legacy. Of course we should. But passion for the best of what we have to offer should not — should never — lead us to simply ignore monstrosities perpetrated in our name nor should it give us license to turn a blind eye to the dark parts of our history. We hold those things within us. We have to own them.

Issues of religious identity and Christian definition aside (those are certainly at play here, though I think one should be suspicious of the intent behind the move to write off someone like Breivik as something other than Christian) the real problem here is that there is an insipid double-standard at play when it comes to identifying and condemning religiously motivated terrorism, one that leaves a long but unacknowledged tradition of Christian exceptionalism and racism perfectly enact.

To but it bluntly, when “a cultural Christian” is to blame, acts of terrorism have nothing to do with religion. When a Muslim is involved, however, it is quite the opposite. This is the framework operative in our collective imaginary (despite the fact that many Muslim terrorists appear to be motivated by anti-imperialist sentiments rather than religion alone). Muslims are terrorists, Christians are not. These categories have become so deeply engrained in our psyche that the knee-jerk reaction to any terrorist attack is to place blame upon Islam.

Immediately following the violence in Oslo the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal both jumped to xenophobic conclusions. Even a newspaper as “progressive” as the New York Times wasn’t immune to the sociological inertia. The same thing happened after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. In times of crisis and in response to heinous acts of violence our most foundational — and, by and large, dualistic, even Manichean — stereotypes come in to play. And it would seem that in the American imaginary, liberal, conservative or otherwise, the category of the Muslim is conflated with that of the terrorist. There is a deeply essentialist if not racist double-standard at play when it comes terrorist and religion. The common perception, even the default position, is that Christianity is the exception, while Islam is the rule.

Mark Juergensmeyer, who has written extensively on religion and terrorism, has a piece in Religious Dispatches today that get to the heart of the problem.

Is this a religious vision, and am I right in calling Breivik a Christian terrorist? It is true that Breivik—and McVeigh, for that matter—were much more concerned about politics, race and history than about scripture and religious belief, with Breivik even going so far as to write that “It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)).”

But much the same can be said about Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and many other Islamist activists. Bin Laden was a businessman and engineer, and Zawahiri was a medical doctor; neither were theologians or clergy. Their writings show that they were much more interested in Islamic history than theology or scripture, and imagined themselves as recreating glorious moments in Islamic history in their own imagined wars. Tellingly, Breivik writes of al Qaeda with admiration, as if he would love to create a Christian version of their religious cadre.

If bin Laden is a Muslim terrorist, Breivik and McVeigh are surely Christian ones. Breivik was fascinated with the Crusades and imagined himself to be a member of the Knights Templar, the crusader army of a thousand years ago. But in an imagined cosmic warfare time is suspended, and history is transcended as the activists imagine themselves to be acting out timeless roles in a sacred drama. The tragedy is that these religious fantasies are played out in real time, with real and cruel consequences.

The bottom line is we need to be more consistent. Either we create religious identities that are so pious and so pure that they apply to virtually to no one (which would likely cause more problems than solutions) or we own up to the fact the religion is always constituted within particular contexts and is always the result of some cross-pollination. This leads to some really beautiful things. It also leads to terrorists like bin Laden and Breivik both of whom may not have been motivated by religious convictions alone but were without a doubt influenced by them. Fundamentalism is fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Christian or something else. Until the legacy of Christian exceptionalism and xenophobia is properly dismantled and an equal standard applied to all religious traditions in the wake of acts of terrorism we will only create more create more Breiviks and bin Ladens.

“Guide us…to the end of time.”

I ran across this quote from the final paragraph of Italo Cavino’s Invisible Cities the other day.

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form be being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. the second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

If the title hasn’t already given it away, this is another post about The Tree of Life. After viewing the film a second time I am convinced that the field of theological aesthetics could stand to learn quite a bit from Terrence Malick.

In my first post I drew attention to Roger Ebert’s wonderful mediation on the film. There Ebert states that he believes the film ”stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people.” I think this is true although I would go a bit further and say that there are images, symbols and even names that evoke conventional theologies throughout the film. And, as far as a more generalized audience is concerned, I think the line between tacit conventional theologies and the sort of impressionist pastiche Malick has created is so fine it practically doesn’t exist. The ending is a perfect example, as Ebert points out. Given the breadth and scope of the film Malick all but sets himself up for failure. Virtually any ending seems inadequate for a film of this magnitude, but the one chosen does seem to fall into the comfortable arms of convention and familiarity.

Despite this, though, it still works. Just like the ostensibly conventional religious images and theological symbols work — and work wonderfully. This is because Malick is a master at couching the familiar differently, of subtlety wielding the conventional otherwise. More than any of his previous films The Tree of Life relies less on dialogue and more on pensive narration and, especially, breathtaking images of life and nature (The Thin Red Line is a close, close second). This is why the ending, while certainly flawed, still works within the context of the film — because by the time the ending comes the overall aesthetic and the symbolic frame have created an environment in which such an ending is wielded differently than it would otherwise, albeit in a very subtle and delicate manner. Read the rest of this entry »

I think it would be irresponsible for me to offer more thoughts, fuller thoughts, on The Tree of Life without having seen it at least once more. I saw it for the first time last Sunday and it has been bouncing around in my head since then. I’m planning to see it again tonight and will likely post more next week. In the meantime I have been reading a ton of reviews (the group of articles here and the posts here are certainly worth reading. This “deconstruction” is surprisingly good.) and I thought I would post a few thoughts thus far. Minor spoilers to follow.

In my previous post I alluded to the possibility that one of the film’s major leitmotifs is not so much the opposition between nature and grace but rather the implication of the one within the other, of their inherent and seemingly ambivalent contingency. The film certainly does this. It may not be as overt as some of the narration in The Thin Red Line but it practically oozes out of the production design. As one review puts it, it is not at all the idea of nature versus grace it is nature and grace, often positioned in a type of contradiction that is, for Malick, subject of awe and transcendence, revealing all things shining.

One of the most talked about parts of the film is the origins and evolution of life sequence. Reading this post and the comments that followed it struck me that Malick’s version of pre-history offers an interesting counterweight to that of Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Kubrick’s sequence it is clear that Darwinian predation and violence are the common denominator of life. Predation is present for Malick, but not without contestation and ambivalence.

The Tree of Life’s most radical detour (the film is itself, a radical, unthinkable collection of detours) is a drop-in on the Mesozoic era after a sequence of shots tracks the birth of life on Earth. A raptor-like creature emerges from the forest and wades into a stream. At the opposite bank lies a wounded herbivore. The predator scampers over cautiously and apprehends his prey’s immobility. And just as we expect carnage (thanks to conditioning from Jurassic Park and its sequels), Malick provides instead, grace. The raptor, who has pinned the injured creature with one clawed food, shares a moment of silent communion with the wounded dinosaur, releases his grip and then leaves. This may seem an unlikely moment in the animal kingdom, even less so in the kingdom we can only know through the fossil record. But does Malick exhibit hubris here by applying a naive anthropomorphism to the scene, or do those who criticize do so by suggesting he’s necessarily incorrect in his vision, tacitly implying grace to be the sole provenance of humanity? A frighteningly elegant shot of a comet devastating the planet, and the dinosaurs with it, reminds that we’ll likely never know for sure. (link)

Is Malick suggesting that this is perhaps the first act of compassion in history? An instance of incipient grace? Of a type of grace found within nature, not reserved as the crowning achievement of humanity alone?

When read within the context of the larger trajectory of the film (if it can even be said to have such a thing) and within the even larger context of Malick’s entire oeuvre, I think the charges of anthropocentrism miss the point. In fact, if we go with the notion that the film reveals how unfounded the distinction between nature and grace really is — that the two are, in fact, more porous than conventional theology allows — then criticisms of anthropocentrism are actually more insipid instantiations of the very thing they denounce.

Why must it be the case that grace inheres in humanity alone? Whatever else it may do, The Tree of Life not only suggests that grace inheres in all things, but that grace and nature are, in some sense, in separable as constitutive of life and its processes the vicissitudes of which are at the same time both beautiful and dangerous. It is precisely this sort of ambivalence that is cause for the deep sense of awe and wonder that is characteristic of Malick’s films. One could even say it is transcendence without the metaphysical baggage of most theologies.

I’ve been looking forward to the enigmatic and reclusive director’s latest work ever since I saw the trailer. Malick is known for his idiosyncratic style, the juxtaposition of images of nature with the evils of humanity, and especially the haunting voice-over narrations. The Tree of Life looks to be no different. In fact, if the trailer and the early reviews are any indication it may be the pinnacle of Malick’s style, which makes sense since it is the very film that sent Malick on his 20 year hiatus after Days of Heaven. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last week, winning the coveted Palme d’Or and opens today in limited release.

Malick’s films have always exuded a sort of poetic, quasi-philosophical, one might even say crypto-theological, quality. They explored the deep contingency and ambivalence of human nature, indeed of nature itself. A type of mystery that always leads back to the awe of existence, the wonder, the grace the inheres in all things and is, I think, the starting point of all theology. The opening narration in The Thin Red Line describes it well.

What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?

And later as the film closes.

The brother. The friend. Darkness from light. Strife from love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

The cinematic ground Malick treads is ripe for theological rumination. It shouldn’t be too surprising. Though Malick has made a career out of scrupulously keeping to himself it is no secret that he studied philosophy at Harvard under Stanley Cavell and later at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He eventually left Oxford without a degree after a disagreement with his advisor over his dissertation on Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein. So Malick turned to film. And he has created some real masterpieces.

But it looks like The Tree of Life — and the IMAX documentary companion piece The Voyage of Time that Malick hopes to make — may be more explicitly his than any other project. We’ll see. I can only hope.

For now what interests me is an interview with Brad Pitt, one of the stars of the film, conducted by Time Magazine. Near the end of the interview Pitt comments on the religious and theological themes of the film.

Terry has an embrace for Christianity, for all religions, but not in the textbook definition of Christianity. You’re looking at a man who loves science, and has an interpretation and a feeling for God. In America those two things usually don’t coincide. And yet he sees the two as one: he sees God in science and science in God. [...] I’d say that Tree of Life is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film. I was surprised, watching it last night, how powerfully it struck me. What the film was saying to me is that there is an unexplained power; there is this force. And maybe peace can be found, but not by trying to explain it with the religion. Maybe there’s peace to be found just in that acceptance of the unknown.

Aside from the fact that Pitt’s somewhat predictable remarks reinforce and are based upon the tired, “spiritual but not religious” cliché, they proffer an unimaginative, flat-footed reading of religion, specifically of Christianity. By dismissing what he calls ‘religion’ as something that impedes rather than facilitates a sense of mystery in the unknown Pitt ignores a robust theological legacy that does just that.

It’s probably because I am preparing a sermon based on Paul’s famous sermon at the Areopagus and I’m just coming off writing a thesis and making a short film of my own dealing with precisely these theme. Contingency, ambivalence, and unknown mystery are central to theology. They may not be the most noticeable motifs in the public sphere, but they are there. This is exactly what Roger Ebert picks up on in his reflections on Malick’s latest film.

Terrence Malick’s new film is a form of prayer. It created within me a spiritual awareness, and made me more alert to the awe of existence. I believe it stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people. It functions to pull us back from the distractions of the moment, and focus us on mystery and gratitude.

These conventional theologies are certainly operative but they are not representative of the entire discourse nor should they be taken as such. Theology is about “seeing through a glass darkly,” into the unknown enigma that is our ultimate concern. It seems to me that this is precisely what Malick’s film is about, indeed the narration in the trailer is almost a word for word reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12 (one of the few passages I prefer in the King James). I’m sure I will have more to say after viewing but it seems a safe bet to say that The Tree of Life may be the best type of theological film, the type of theological film we desperately need. It is an exploration of the mystery that we can never fully know but can never stop seeking.

Related articles

• Terrence Malick’s Mystical Tree of Life (pajamasmedia.com)
• Pick of the week: Malick’s gorgeous, crazy “Tree of Life” (salon.com)
• Watch 7 minutes of Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE (geektyrant.com)

This is the text of a sermon I will give later today in one of my classes. It is based on Ezekiel 37:1-14.

Do you believe in ghosts? I remember being asked this question often as a kid. My and my friends used to go on camping trips during the summer and we would stay up all night telling each other spooky stories. And when we finished we would sit for a while in silence around the campfire and inevitably someone would always ask, “So, do you believe in ghosts?” Then we would proceed to have this detailed, in depth metaphysical discussion — okay, so maybe we didn’t know it was metaphysical at the time — about whether or not ghosts existed, until someone would pop out of the woods and scare us half to death. It didn’t much matter if we actually believed in ghosts. What mattered was that we were able to be scared by something, to be disturbed by something even if it was just one of our friends with a bed-sheet over his head.

In this passage from Ezekiel we are confronted with a ghastly and disturbing scene. Ezekiel enters a valley that is littered with dry, brittle and bleached bones, the remains of bodies that were slaughtered in the Babylonian exile. As surprising as it may seem, scenes like this weren’t out of the ordinary for Ezekiel. Israel had been conquered by what was at the time the world’s largest superpower.[1] The Babylonians took them captive, sacked their cities and led them away from their homeland as slaves with chains around their necks. Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple razed, and the Davidic kingship lost. To say that this was period of oppression and tyranny is almost an understatement. Under this exile people were living at the extremity with no hope and no sense of the future. It seemed as if history had come to an end. Image the most vivid and graphic cataclysmic movie or novel you can think of and you may have a sense of Ezekiel’s context. This is as post-apocalyptic as it gets. For all intents and purposes the world had come to an end. It is within this context that Ezekiel was a prophet — a prophet to a people without hope, to a people experiencing a deep collective trauma in the loss and fragmentation of each other and their communal identity.[2] Read the rest of this entry »

VAST, GLOWING VAULT
with the swarm of
black stars pushing themselves
out and away:

onto a ram’s silicified forehead
I brand this image, between
the horns, in which,
in the song of the whorls, the
marrow of melted
heart-oceans swells.

In-
to what
does he not charge?

The world is gone, I must carry you.

-Paul Celan

As I am in the process of research and writing my thesis over post-ontotheological eschatology I find myself returning to some of Derrida‘s earlier writings. Doing so further confirms my growing suspicion that Derrida’s entire oeuvre, since his earliest work on Husserl and différance, is primarily concerned with a type of event-tive temporality, what I am unabashedly calling a vermiculate, non-teleological eschatology. For instance, this morning I ran across this passage early in Of Grammatology that I’ve always missed before.

Perhaps patient mediation and painstaking investigation on and around what is still provisionally called writing, far from falling short of a science of writing or of hastily dismissing it by some obsurcantist reaction, letting it rather develop its positivity as far as possible, are the wanderings of a way of thinking that is faithful and attentive to the ineluctable world of the future which proclaims itself at present, beyond the closure of knowledge. The future can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger. It is that which breaks absolutely with constituted normality and can only be proclaimed, presented, as a sort of monstrosity. For the future world and for that within it which will have put into question the values of sign, word, and writing, for that guides our future anterior, there is as yet not exergue (4-5).

So I think I am to the point where I am ready to argue that, whatever else it may be, deconstruction is a certain type of eschatology, i.e., it harbors a certain eschatology or maintains a crypto-eschatological tone even though Derrida himself was reticent to use that language. It is certainly there and it is interesting to me that theologians have yet to tease it out in a sustained manner. Even John Caputo’s theology of the event, which comes close to doing what I am imagining, fails to acknowledge itself as a type of eschatology. My inclination is that people like Caputo just aren’t interested in dealing with all the baggage of conventional theology and classical theism that comes with working on eschatology. Yet, one of the stated aims of The Weakness of God is to reveal the deconstruction at work in those traditional themes. It seems to me that the critique of ontotheology enables one to (re)think eschatology otherwise just as much as it allows the rehabilitation of theology in general.