(Ir)religiosity

I posted a comment yesterday on Callid Keefe-Perry’s latest vlog over at The Image of Fish that I think bears further reflection.  It relates to some of my latest thinking on some of the reading I’ve been doing in preparation for my thesis next year.  It’s a nascent idea and not at all developed, but I thought I would float it and see what sort of feedback it might get.

Callid is commenting in large part on some of the responses to Jason Derr’s excellent piece over at HuffPo Religion on the role of poetry in the religious imagination.  The aim of Derr’s article is to argue that theology ought not be couched primarily as a scientific enterprise (in the modern sense) mainly interested in cold hard facts and what can clearly be empirically observed in the world.  Instead, theology after modernity might look more like a mythopoetic enterprise, a discourse more akin to work of the poet in her exploration of the contours of human experience — our passions and desires — than the misguided quest for objectivity of epistemological certainty.  As Derr writes, “Poetry and metaphor are important as ways of doing theology. In a world so divided by absolute claims, using metaphor and poetry allows us to have room for flex.”  He even picks up on a metaphor I used in my last post in describing theology as a type of seeing-as which is not so much concerned about complete descriptions of reality as it is communicating reality through imagery and symbol, of exploring what is going on in reality phenomenologically.  For Derr (and others) this is the work of theopoetics.

Like I mentioned, Callid’s post is primarily a thoughtful response to some of the more negative, one might even say uncharitable, feedback Derr’s piece has received.  This seems to be part of a larger trend I’ve notice on some more popular sites like HuffPo that now have an active religion section.  I don’t have the time or the desire to wade through all the comments that posts like this illicit (frankly, most of them aren’t worth it), but I do try to gauge the overall response from time to time.  And usually the response tends to sway in favor of a sort of antagonistic, positivistic outlook toward religion, the likes of which the so-called “new” atheists are now infamous for advancing.

One of the points Callid takes up in the video is the age-old modern criticism that, in the final instance, religion isn’t really about reality it all, that ultimately the existence of a deity cannot be proved, that when you get right down to it “there is nothing there there.” One commenter on Derr’s piece cites a Thomas Paine quote which I think serves as a good, succint summation of this sort of criticism.  See the quote after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the unfortunate side effects of so-called “new” atheism (besides general intransigent arrogance and a lack of intellectual honesty) has been further (false) dichotomization of science and religion and rigid entrenchment into the reductionistic foxholes of scientism and religious fundamentalism.  Positivistic intellectuals like ‘Ditchkins’ and your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety Christianists like, say, Ken Ham or Carl Wieland are ready to hedge their bets on the misguided and myopic supposition that the discourses of science and religion fundamentally and foundationally incompatible.  The irony in all this is that both camps are both partially correct yet completely wrong in asserting complete epistemological superiority.  The similarities of the new atheists and religious fundamentalists has been well documented.  I don’t want to rehash that position except to take note of the core assertion:  that when it comes to matters of exclusivity, intolerance, and arrogance new atheism and religious fundamentalism more similar than they are different, functioning as mirror images of the core logic, shadow-boxers or ships passing in the night, one might say.  Which is why the vitriolic arguments are, at times, just as entertaining as they are tiresome.

This brings me to Jon Stewart’s great interview with Marilynne Robinson last night on The Daily Show promoting her new book Absence of Mind. See the video below after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

For a long time now Jim Wallis has denied that he or his organization comprises or wants anything to do with the so-called Religious Left.  In fact, in one of his more popular books he spends a great deal of time arguing that the should be neither a Religious Right nor a Religious Left.  Much of his rhetoric has suggested that faith communities and religious non-profits should strive to transcend the political polarities that always seem to dominated public discourse.

I agree.  I think that is exactly the route that should be taken.  And I think that Wallis and Sojourners have done a pretty good job of modeling that ethos.

But then yesterday a statement was released from the Sojourners press office with a noticeable change in language and tone.

I wanted to gauge your interest in the first big mobilization of the Religious Left in the Obama era — a signal of the shift in power dynamics. Sojourners is mobilizing over a thousand Christian activists and 70 religious and anti-poverty groups at a conference next week in DC to prepare a new poverty coalition for legislative battle this year. This is the Religious Left filling the hole created by the decline of the Religious Right but now we have the political power and ear of the White House — definitely a new trend and a “first” within this new political era. (ht)

Yikes.  I don’t like the sound of that at all. I’m all for a mass mobilization to fight poverty but I don’t see the need to brand it has the rise of new Religious Left.  We’ve seen what happened with the Religious Right.  Polarizing and divisive language should be expected of our politicians.  But I think it’s time for our faith communities to model a different way that transcends the false dichotomies of modernity.

What’s interesting is that this press release is the only statement (that I know of) that uses the new verbiage.  So it makes one wonder if Sojourners really is shifting or a deputy press secretary is just off message.  The official website for the conference makes no such mention of “mobilization of the Religious Left.”  But either way, it makes me very curious about insider talk.

What do you make us this?  Is it a careless mistake or indicative of a wider shift?

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