I have lots of new friends and followers recently so I want to let you know about a series I did 2 years ago about the moment that we live in and why it is only going to get worse.
My favorite philosopher (Zizek) says that the light at the end of the tunnel is probably another oncoming train and I agree.
I am a naturally optimistic person but the past 15 years have alerted me to the very real turmoil and fracturing in society. I want to assure you of two things:
You can go back and watch all 4 videos (or read all 4 posts) but I wanted to summarize it for those who are new what I am doing here.
The two basic things that you need to understand about our cultural moment is that
Everything you see – and all of the competing tribes, opinions, and agendas – are remnants of previous eras.
We have no agreed upon arena in which to settle these disagreements and disputes.
Ours is a fractured and fragmented society in which incompatible agendas and projects compete for thinner slices of the collective pie. They cannot be reconciled to one another because they all house (are embedded with) different programs (to use a computer analogy) and sometimes entirely different operating systems.
It is not just that they have different goals, agendas, and methods … they are different to each other not just in degree but often in type.
This is why there is cultural chaos. We are both fractured and fragmented but each of those competing camps speaks an internal language game that makes in nearly impossible to translate between them.
It is not just Chess & Checkers but (to use a sports analogy) it is like asking a Baseball player how many touchdowns he scored. It is just not how it works. This is not like the difference between Ford and Chevy in NASCAR or the difference between quilting, knitting, and crochet. This is like trying to feed a banana to cell phone. They are two entirely different things.
So whether it is Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative and libertarian, creation and evolution, traditional and progressive, religious and secular – we talk past each other and often can’t even hear what the other ‘side’ is saying.
Then you take that confusion and you turn up the volume to 11 (as they say) and our self-selected echo chambers start to distort and become feedback loops that are unintelligible.
So how can I say that this is a good thing? Because we are being given the opportunity to finally deal with remnants and remainders of our historical legacy and the roots of our various programs. If we are willing to look at the genealogy of how we got here and do some discourse analysis (this is why I love critical theory) then we do an autopsy on our failing and faltering institutions and organizations.
People like to say, “the more things change the more the stay the same” but I would like to submit to you that has never been less true than it is right now. I say that they more things change they more they will continue to change at faster and faster rates.
The words for our time is history are agitated and accelerated. Changes is constant and happens not incrementally anymore but exponentially and perpetually. This is why going back to the past will not save us. Our moment is begging for better answer but is asking us completely different kinds of questions.
This is why I do what I do. This is not a blip on the radar. What you are seeing in the news is not a fever that will pass. This is the world we live in now. It is not a season and ‘this too shall pass’. No, this our new reality. Covid, police protests, political dysfunction are not glitches or bugs in the system – they are now features of the system that need to be considered on their own merit.
So I will say it again: Everything you are seeing is a remnant of a previous project or program and we have no arena in which to settle the disputes. So there is no to think that things will naturally get better or that we will somehow find a middle-ground. That is the good news of this moment if you have ears to hear and eyes to see. Our public, political, economic, medical, and environmental crisis are not a sad side effect of an otherwise healthy system. They are the remnants and remainders of a pre-existing condition. They are the logical conclusion of a long history and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Like it or not, this is our new reality and sooner we wake up and realize that this is no nightmare the better we can do at dealing with the fractured and fragmented nature of our society and world.
I woke up to this 15 years ago And lots of people have said, “it’s only a matter of time before this all settles down can we get back to business as usual”. But there is no going back and whoever we elect this fall won’t fix it. They can’t fix it because it is embedded in the system – it is baked in the bread. So until we wake up and take a sober look at how we got here there is no reason to think things are going to get any better on their own.
Imagine that one group of people wanted to look at the layered and overlapping nature of racism in our country with issues of policing and economic realities, and another group of people used their platforms to warn their followers against this examination because of an obscure ancestor who’s nearly 200 year old political and economic theories were horribly misapplied a century ago to devastating consequences that enveloped the globe.
That is an actual scenario that is happening right now. There is a reckoning going on N. America about the legacy of racism and the ways that institutions and structures of power have been employed like overlapping gears in a machine to systemically (re)create and (re)enforce the layered injustice and inequality that has resulted from the legacy of settler colonialism and slavery. One node of this societal web is called Critical Race Theory (CRT) which examines interrelated issues, exposes hidden mechanisms of power, and advocates for change.[1]
Many evangelical leaders, however, are warning their people against CRT for the most obscure reason: Marxism.
I want to be clear that cynical slur is being used as a dog-whistle. It is being employed to scare people because of the guilty by association nature of fear: communism, Soviet Russia, enemy during the cold war, Lenin & Stalin, secret police & the gulag = millions dead.
But you can read lots and lots of CRT (and Critical Whiteness Study) without ever encountering any Marx. It is such an odd objection and if it were sincere, and being brought up in good faith, I would want to be generous and irenic in addressing why it is such a big concern right now. It is, however, not sincere or being employed in good faith and I will not be addressing it as a legitimate concern.
So what is this claim of ‘Cultural Marxism’ why does it work?
First I want to tell you why it is ridiculous and then I want to tell you why there might be some utility in it.
Why it is silly to keep bringing up Marxism: an analogy
It is the equivalent of me wanting to use a cell phones and you constantly referencing Alexander Bell. First, a lot has changed since the early days of telephones. Secondly, I don’t care about Bell, I want to USE a cell phone.
You keep taking it back to history and want to focus on the early design of the rotary phone with its receiver, and land line, and how the cord used to tangle about itself, and the operator … Now all of that might be really interesting but I am not wanting to talk about the history of the phone – I want to use a cell phone.
It would be like if wanted to get a burger at McDonald’s and you got upset because in 1954 Ray Kroc started a hamburger stand in San Bernadino California and ‘you know about California!’ I could say:
A lot has happened since then and McDonald’s is global now. Why do you keep bringing up California in the 50’s ?
There are a lot of concerns about McDonald’s like how they get their beef and how they treat their workers … why do you keep bringing up Ray Kroc?
I just want to eat a hamburger, I don’t have to know the history of hamburgers or the founder of the restaurant.
That is the equivalent of what is happening right now where those who want to employ (utilize) Critical Theory and specifically CRT and the evangelicals who are talking about Marxism and the Cold War. One group want to use a toolkit called CRT to address a real live situation presently happening in our moment and other group want to talk about origins and historic side effects of a remote influence on the field.
Like I have said before, this charge of Marxism is a cynical distraction technique that is not being employed in good faith. It is a scare tactic and a boogeyman.
Now having said that, “Is there any merit to addressing this?” and I think that there is.
So Marx influenced the Frankfurt School who popularized Critical Theory in the wake of WWII and this migrated and evolved over the next 40 years into Critical Race Theory which has in turn adapted and evolved greatly over the last 40 years including the integration of Foucault in the 80’s & 90’s and then eventually the insights related to intersectionality the multiple layers of overlapping and inter-acting levels of oppression and prejudice.
Here we have two important points to consider:
On one hand you have massive lineage of an entire field that has evolved and adapted over the past 80 years and so one might say ‘who cares about a guy who’s writing was influential on a bunch of guys who were influential in getting the ball rolling for a concept that eventually became this entirely different thing we are doing today?
BUT on the other hand – that language of oppression and alienation has a genealogy and legacy so maybe the origin is important because the DNA carries through the generations and influences and historical transformations, mutations, adjustments and counter-corrections. Maybe it is important how something gets started because your ancestors’ legacy lives through you today. Like it or not, you are product and a result of those who came before you. You have inherited their legacy and are a result of their actions and ideas, beliefs and decisions.
Let’s give this a little merit and see what aspects of Marx’s thoughts continue to influence or bear fruit in today’s Critical Race Theory.
If we can decouple the boogeyman of Marxism then we can see something that is really important. Cultural Marxism is a growing influence in N. America. (I would point you to several popular podcasts in Canada and the US) And
So I will openly say that Marx’s solutions were wrong. Their application was disastrous in totalitarian states. But that doesn’t mean that his diagnosis with the problems of industrialized capitalism were faulty. His critique still has teeth.
But that is, again, not the point. Because that is not the part of Marx that CRT is utilizing. Critical Race Theory employs the legacy of his concern about alienation, oppression, and disparity. It continues his concern for emancipation and liberation for working class people but has broadened that scope of concern advocate for the marginalized by exposing the mechanism and structures within the system that keep them the levers of power.
This, for me, is why it is so important to decouple CRT from the dog-whistle of Marxism because those who want to examine the structurated nature of race-relations in N. America and the intersectional aspects of race, gender, class, sexuality (and religion) are not utilizing the same part of Marx that led to communism, Soviet Russia, enemy during the cold war, Lenin & Stalin, secret police & the gulag = millions dead.
Now, admittedly, there are those who are currently employing Marx politically. No doubt. But that is why it is so important not let the specter of Marx be used as a scare tactic, dog-whistle, and boogeyman by evangelical leaders to scare people away from examining very real concerns about the structurated nature of race in this country.
Why are the evangelical leaders so concerned. Well I think that there is a lot of confusion within evangelicalism right now. There is a generational crisis with the loss of people like Billy Graham and the new attrition of their adult children.[2] There is a political crisis with white evangelicals supporting Trump at oddly disproportionate rates. There is a economic crisis with many of their colleges and seminaries unable to sustain financial viability. There is a cultural crisis where their century old created sub-cultured has siloed so profoundly that it has become insular and fearful. There is an eschatological crisis where the much anticipated 2nd Coming of Christ appears to be waning in popularity and is compounded by the rapid loss of that generation that saw the founding of the nation of Israel as a major cornerstone in Biblical prophecy.
With all of that going on: generational, political, economic, cultural, and doctrinal – you don’t also want to be dealing with issues of race and racial disparity. Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theologies are an unwelcomed intrusion into your already unstable house.
That is my theory anyway. I could be wrong – maybe they are genuinely intimidated and a little naïve about CRT and are thus justified in their concern and sincerely confused.
[1] I often call Critical Race Theory a ‘toolkit’ that does 3 things: examines (or interrogates), exposes, and advocates. Admittedly, it is not neutral – it has an agenda: emancipation, liberation, and empowerment.
[2] It used to be a mark of pride that evangelical youth groups held onto a higher percentage of its kids, as compared to Liberal or Mainline congregations) as the teens graduated into their college & career phases. In the past 15 years however, the same attrition rate has plagued the evangelicals as their Mainline counterparts so that over 80% of young people either leave the faith or just stop participating in church.
We need to be careful about this language of a war against the virus. In the last 30 years war has migrated in meaning it has become too easily appropriated for anything we are concerned about.
We could talk about varieties that have global implications like the war on terror, to more seasonal and trivial instances like the so-called war on Christmas, and everything in between. We could talk about the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on women, and so many other instances of war migrating in dangerous ways.
There are two primary reasons for concern:
First, whenever war is invoked emergency measures are implemented and we are in danger of losing our rights at citizens. I will talk about emergency politics below.
Second, because of global capitalism and our pervasive consumer society the victory in these wars is somehow always linked shopping.
You will remember the now famous exhortation by then President George W. Bush after the events of September 11 to not let the terrorists win by … going shopping.
A brilliant article came out this week about the impending call “return to normal”. We would be wise to pay attention to how that phrase is going to be used–not everyone means the same thing when they use the same words.
American politicians have become very comfortable invoking the war analogy but it really got my attention this past weekend when the Prime Minister of Canada used to the phrase. As a dual citizen between Canada and the US it always gets my attention when something that I had thought was unique to the American military mentality shows up north of the border.
Then yesterday during the extended media circus of a Covid 19 press conference, the current President of the United States repeatedly claimed that the powers of his office were total.
This is the danger of our exceptional times–exceptions get made that are nearly impossible to retract later. They get codified and instantiated, which sets the precedent, which then moves from being a fluid situation due to an emergency to a solidified expectation that is written in stone.
The problem is that we now live in a permanent state of emergency.
I write about Emergency Politics every so often. It is far more ominous than its news coverage. Here is a snippet for those who are new:
Bonnie Honig, in Emergency Politics, says “The state of exception is that paradoxical situation in which the law is legally suspended by sovereign power.”
September 11, 2001 ushered in a state of perpetual exception. This applies to racial profiling, police brutality, State surveillance of its citizenry in the NSA – to name only a few.
A population is more willing to view as exceptional the excessive tactics and escalation of violence precisely because we now live in a permanent state of exception (or emergency).
Gulli [in this article ] reports, “At the end of his critique of the state of exception, Giorgio Agamben addresses the question of contingency, which is very important in all of his work, when, with a reference to Benjamin, he speaks of “the urgency of the state of exception ‘in which we live’” (2005)
In his eighth thesis on the philosophy of history, Walter Benjamin says:
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency.” (1968)
I bring this up in the hopes that our current crisis might help to create a real sense of emergency that will call into question in the larger American conscience a question about the permanent state of exception that has crept in over the past decades.
We must question the exceptional State and its emergency politics that have become too normalized and quietly accepted in our society.
Several years ago I was part of a leadership development cohort of young people and on the final day before they sent us back to the places that we came from all over the globe the leader encourage us to stop working on our weaknesses.
It really caught my attention because up to that point I been under the impression that my primary job was to become a well-rounded person and leader into bring up my weakest areas so it would’ve matched everything else. He said “no, put almost all of your energy into you area of strength – the thing that makes you unique only work on your weakness to the degree that it would disqualify you from ministry or cripple your leadership take away your credibility”.
Don’t work on your weakness – put all your energy into your strength – only work on your weakness enough that it does not cripple you or disqualify you from leadership.
I’ve always thought that was an interesting idea and I logged it in the back of my head carrying around all of these years and once in a while I see something and I think this calls for that I was recently out of the news cycle in the political arena for several weeks due to illness and then work stuff and then caring for family and so I was out of the loop and coming back into it has been rough.
It has been really eye-opening and I’ve noticed that when people are cynical or critical that sometimes they have an internal message that the cynical suspicion is something negative to be resisted.
I want to consider today that it might actually be the perfect time to be cynical.
A couple of years ago my friend Tad DeLay wrote a book called “The Cynic and the Fool”and I was in conversation with him around that time. I’ve noticed that it is not healthy to define yourself by what you’re not! There’s no fruit in that. There’s nothing nourishing about defining yourself in contrast to somebody else or some other group
What I am saying is that because of how we participate in our society – especially in the media age (the Society of Spectacle is one of my favorite books) – that we are conditioned, trained, and well-practiced at being cynical. It helps us not be so vulnerable and susceptible to the stunts and lies that are constantly put in front of us.
Embrace the cynicism to the degree that it compels you toward action.
So that’s my encouragement for today that that maybe this isn’t something to be resisted and that maybe it’s entirely appropriate for our moment and that it’s not a negative thing.
Maybe a little cynicism isn’t the worst thing in the world – especially if Zizek is right and the light at the end of the tunnel is another oncoming train.
My plan is to pair the chapter in the book with a different book, school of thought, or historical movement. Some of these include The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen, The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas, and the Anabaptist tradition.
Here are the 7 conversations that I hope will come up in the next 3 months:
The church is supposed to be an alternative way of life – a prophetic and subversive witness to the world – that critiques the ways of the world and provides an alternative way of being in the world. She works best as a minority position within the larger culture and is not designed to be in charge or in control of culture.
Neither the Republican or Democratic party can fix the problem of society. The Democrat and Republican parties are two sides of the same flawed coin. They are not the solution to the problem – they are manifestations of the problem.
The church is not a middle way between these two camps (compromise) but it supposed to be a third way (alternative) to their ways. What we call ‘the church’ is so saturated with both Empire and consumerism that it is completely impotent to confront the ‘powers-that-be’ – which crucified the Prince of Peace (as a scapegoat) – and these powers continue to make life worse for most of humanity.
The American ‘church’ is in bed with the systems of this world that reinforce racism, sexism, poverty, and militarism – 3 of those 4 things Martin Luther King Jr. called the ‘triplets of evil’.
There is a way of living, which Jesus modeled for us and taught about, that leads out of the muck-and-mire we find ourselves in and opens up the hopes and potential of a different way of being in the world. That is the good news of the gospel (evangel).
The church has the potential (capacity) to be the most beautiful and profound vehicle (venue) for unleashing human flourishing and peace. She does this by resisting evil, acting in love, and advocating for those who are vulnerable or on the margins.
The kingdom (or kin-dom) of God is actually within reach but the church has compromised and been corrupted by being in alliance with Empire and the systems of this world. What we call ‘church’ is a shadow of what is supposed to be. Us vs. Them thinking is a symptom of that disease.
Here is a quick video (5 min) to introduce the topics:
Let me know your thoughts, questions, and concerns.
What inflames change all the more in our exponential times of cultural conflict are:
Globalization – Transnational reality as a legacy of colonialism
Technology – Internet, Social Media, etc.
Finances – capitalism in the 21st century
I write about Emergency Politics every so often. It is far more ominous than its news coverage. Here is a snippet for those who are new:
Bonnie Honig, in Emergency Politics, says “The state of exception is that paradoxical situation in which the law is legally suspended by sovereign power.”
The problem is that we now live in a permanent state of emergency.
September 11, 2001 ushered in a state of perpetual exception. This applies to racial profiling, police brutality, State surveillance of its citizenry in the NSA – to name only a few.
A population is more willing to view as exceptional the excessive tactics and escalation of violence precisely because we now live in a permanent state of exception (or emergency).
Gulli [in this article ] reports, “At the end of his critique of the state of exception, Giorgio Agamben addresses the question of contingency, which is very important in all of his work, when, with a reference to Benjamin, he speaks of “the urgency of the state of exception ‘in which we live’” (2005)
In his eighth thesis on the philosophy of history, Walter Benjamin says:
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency.” (1968)
I bring this up in the hopes that our current crisis might help to create a real sense of emergency that will call into question in the larger American conscience a question about the permanent state of exception that has crept in over the past decades. The supposed ‘war on terror’ and ‘war on drugs’ are but two examples of this.
We must question the exceptional violence and emergency politics that have become too normalized and quietly accepted in our society.
_______________________
* I capitalize ‘State’ to illustrate its elevated and exceptional status.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 