(Ir)religiosity

“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?

I’m taking an online class this semester called “The Way of Emergent Church and Ministry,” taught by the one and only Tony Jones.  This week we read John Caputo’s book/essay Philosophy and Theology.  It’s a great, short, and thought provoking read.  I imagine I’ll be rereading it and using it for reference often.  In less than 100 pages, Captuo provides a concise history of continental philosophy whilst suggesting the theology and philosophy need not be completely divorced as modernity has insisted.  On page 14 Caputo writes:

“Religion needs theology and theologians need philosophy if they are going to anything more than tell us that God told them so when pressed about their faith.”

Several pages prior he states the same thing in a different way:

“If we think of philosophical thinking and thoelogical thinking as two different acts or modes of thinking, as two different dimensions of a whole human life, then we can imagine the two acts cohabiting happily in the same head, yielding a person who would be a thinking believer, or a believing thinker, a person of learning and faith.”

The overall thrust of Caputo’s thesis is that orientation and turn toward the postmodern is opening up many new — or not so new if you look back prior to the Enlightenment, which he does – possibilities for the playful interaction between philosophy and theology.  The two are usually pitted against one another, a mistake Caputo credits to the overall modernization and fragmentation of disciplines.  But for him, the two overlap more than not.

What do you think of this idea?  How are philsophy and theology related?  And, for you, which one comes first?  That is, to which act or mode is your thinking fundamentally rooted?

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I heard Shane Claiborne speak at an event put on by the Boston Faith & Justice Network last Saturday.  It was a good event.  Shane gave a variation of his standard stump talk with some updated anedcotes that I don’t remember hearing the last time I saw him.

There was one quote, however, that is worth retelling.

At one point, Shane was talking about how Christians, and the church in general, tend to approach word and deed from a position of inflated self-righteousness.  To drive his point home he jokingly compared the church to the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem during his last week.  He made a few funny points about how the donkey was probably feeling pretty good about himself — watching the crowds and listening to them cheering — and pointed out that such an attitude is not unlike that of many Christians and many churches.  We like to take the credit for something we have no business boasting about.

All this culminated when Shane drove his point home by saying:

“We’re just the asses that get to bring Jesus!”

I love it!  And it’s so true.  We’re all just asses trying to do the best we can to be a humble conduit for the gospel.  Let us never forget that.

“A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.  As opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers whether or not he wants to accept the ramifications.  A curious person embraces the tension between his religion and something new, wrestles with it and through i, and then decides whether to embrace the new idea or reject it. Curious is the key word.  [It has] nothing to do with organized religion.  It has to do with a desire to understand, a desire to try, a desire to push whatever envelope is interesting. [...] What we’re seeing is that fundamentalism really has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with an outlook regardless what your religion is.”                                                                                                                                       — Seth Godin in Tribes, pg. 63-64

Really, really interesting.  Thoughts?

I’m blatantly stealing this idea from someone else, but this was just too cool to pass up.

From Andrew Sullivan, writing on the meaning of the incarnation:

I don’t think it’s possible for a reasoning Christian to take all the contradictory facts, myths and symbols of the various Christmas narratives as literally true. In fact, one test of how serious a Christian is, to my mind, is whether she does or not.

The point [of the incarnation] was merely to be with us; and by being with us, to show us better how to be human, how better to embrace our lives by accepting the divine around us and inside us. By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live – now, which is the only time that matters.

That, is pretty cool.

This is Peter Rollins at his best.  I love it:

In the ethic of Empire one looks out for ones friends (inside the circle) and punishes ones enemies (outside the circle). It is an ethic that looks out for those who look out for us and loves those who love us. It is an ethic of economy (where we mutually give to one another). It would appear however that Christ ruptures this by giving preference to the one outside our systems (the alien, the enemy, the exile) over and above those privileged within our systems. This counter-ethic shows how the Christ trajectory is one that pushes outside the circle to those beyond its borders. Privileging those on the outside over those on the inside and offering a radical, impossible hospitality.

In this way, every time we draw a circle of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ who we love and who we hate the Christ-action involves pushing away from those who are ‘in’ and identifying with and helping the outsiders, the scapegoat, the stranger, the monstrous other. If the Empire ethic is an ethic that seeks to draw people into the circle of exchange the Christ ethic privileges the exception. Always pushing out to those who are excluded, who live beyond the fortified boundary.

By refusing to expand ourselves and our theology we limit our capacity to create space for The Other, constructing self-imposed boudaries that menace that which unites us.  We simply draw our circle too small.  Or, maybe the real problem is that we insist on drawing a circle in the first place.

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Relations of power are not in themselves forms of repression. But what happens is that, in society, in most societies, organizations are created to freeze the relations of power, hold those relations in a state of asymmetry, so that a certain number of persons get an advantage, socially, economically, politically, institutionally, etc. And this totally freezes the situation. That’s what one calls power in the strict sense of the term: it’s a specific type of power relation that has been institutionalized, frozen, immobilized, to the profit of some and to the detriment of others. (ht)

– Michel Foucault

Very true.  And, I would add, very compatible with the Christian narrative, at least in my interpretation.  I do wonder about his initial claim relations and networks of power are not in themselves forms of repression.  If it is true, then I’m failing to come up with a historical example in which power did not lead to repression and oppression.  That is not to say there are not other creative possibilities, just that we haven’t had the audacity to experiment yet.  So, I think I can say with confidence that until now power, in it’s normative functions and applications, has usually led to destructive dominance.  Hopefully, we can change that.  Hopefully.

Interesting.

[Ht. Nick Fiedler]

I ran across this quote yesterday:

“As a virtue solidarity becomes a way of life.  It becomes the new way of living out ‘the love your neighbor as yourself’ that up to now has been interpreted as giving out of largesse. Given the network of oppressive structures in our world today that so control and dominate the vast majority of human beings, the only way we can continue to claim the centrality of love of neighbor for Christians is to redefine what it means and what it demands for us.  Solidarity, then, becomes the new way of understanding and living out this commandment of the gospel.”

–Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz in Mujerista Theology

Interesting.  I’ve often been troubled by the common practice of giving — like the rich religious leaders in the gospel — and showing solidarity out of one’s abundance and excess.  I just wonder what that means when there is no cost, no sacrifice, and no real personal change.  Naturally, my next thought is to ask whether the giving and the solidarity are really authentic or simply cheap gimmicks to appease a guilty conscience either individual or collective.

The irony here of course is that I am often feel that I am doing exactly that; and I then have to ask myself: do I really care for the well-being of the Other?  Am I genuinely invested in acknowledging the mark of the divine that rests in my neighbor?  That’s tough.

From The Prophetic Imagination:

“The alternative [prophetic] consciousness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness.  To the extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done, engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things.  On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith may move.  To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, it live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give”

“In thinking this way, the key word is alternative, and every prophetic minister and prophetic community must engage in a struggle with that notion….[The] urging is that every act of a minister who would be prophetic is part of a way of evoking, forming, and reforming an alternative community.”

“The functional qualifiers, Read the rest of this entry »