(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 »

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.