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Evangelical and Liberal

I have stumbled into the most fascinating conversation.

Background: I work at an evangelical institution. I recently worked at a liberal mainline church while attending a liberal mainline school. I was raised evangelical and am ordained as an evangelical. It was interesting being in a mainline context for 7 years and it is equally as interesting to return to an evangelical context now.

I was talking about this with a colleague two weeks ago because a group that I am a part of is planning to simply its name but it will no longer contain with word ‘evangelical’. This decision was made before the recent US election in which 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. The group is afraid that this decision will now appear to be a reactive move.

I find three unspoken things going on in this discussion. Unspoken things are concerning because the assumed is unexamined and is often a source of operative power at a secondary register which hides behind the primary concerns.

Here are my 3 concerns:

  • ‘Evangelical’ has become a floating or migrating signifier. It does not mean what it used to mean and most people who use the term cannot tell you what it means. (Personally, I use an expanded version of Bebbington’s fourfold definition.)
  • The dominant boogeyman for evangelicals is being ‘liberal’ – another term which most cannot define, which has caused it to become a code-word and a boundary-marker. Liberal, to evangelicals, seems to be a place-holder and a sort of dog-whistle for being open and accepting. Using the label this way has resulted in the word operating as a master signifier.
  • Evangelicalism in the Pacific NW (where I recently returned to) is a unique type of evangelicalism which is highly visible and influential but which functions on a narrative whereby they are a minority who get the short end of the stick socially, politically, and culturally.

I find this stuff fascinating. As someone who has lived all over N. America, who has evangelical cred (I went to the Billy Graham school of evangelism for crying out loud), who has worked and studied with liberal mainline folks, and who is a committed social constructivist … I feel like I am in the vortex of a cultural and historic moment. I have friends in both camps and am comfortable in both conversations, but this is an eye-opening moment for both.

 

I was doing some research last week on a different issue and stumbled into a conversation from 2008 that is growing increasingly relevant. It centers around the work of University of Washington professor James K. Wellman in “Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest”.

A review in the Seattle Times by Bob Simmons starts this way:

“The “evangelicals” of James K. Wellman Jr.’s new book know there’s only one way to God, and it’s their way. The “liberals” know there’s more than one way and are still questioning theirs. By numerical and other earthly measures, the evangelicals are winning big in the Pacific Northwest. The only question is your definition of winning.”

The research is amazing. It shows that evangelical churches are larger by a 10-1 margin and are growing at an incredible rate. However … they often feel marginalized politically, oppressed culturally, and even victimized by public policy.

This is exactly what I had been telling my colleague! I have never lived in a place that felt more christian-y with so many Christian radio stations, Christian book stores, and large churches surrounded by asphalt lakes/moats (which I call a island/castle mentality) … all the while feeling that they are losing the culture war!

It is sad because the evangelicals are doing a tremendous job in so many ways. They really should be enjoying this kind of success. As Wellman writes:

“Evangelicals have an ideology that is centered on growth, and is in relation to the self, to God, to the family, the church, and the mission of the religion. Evangelicals have accommodated styles of group work that appeal to northwesterners because they activate a sense of belonging and moral accountability.”

A different article points out that, “while liberals sermonize about the importance of building a religious community, the evangelicals are living out community”, supporting financially, relationally, and spiritually.

What I am finding in these conversations has been complex and multi-layered. It turns out that when liberals talk about evangelicals, they are often commenting on two aspects: worship style (happy clappy) and politics (by which they mean women in ministry and LGBT support). Evangelicals in a similar way, use the moniker ‘liberal’ as a kind of a double-code. The first layer is supporting/accepting the LGBT community – and here is where it gets tricky – which is actually a metonym for “biblical authority”. In this sense, neither group is exactly representing the focus of the other group accurately.

I have so many thoughts that I am sure that this will be an ongoing theme for me in 2017.

One final note – you may be aware that I have developed an interpretive scheme for a potential book on the church that looks at how N. American churches relate to the ‘system’ or the ways things are. Churches fall into 3 primary categories: Prophetic, Therapeutic, or Messianic.

  • Prophetic churches critique the ‘as is’ structures to confront the system. Prophetic churches look toward the marginalized and those being run over by the machine.
  • Therapeutic churches help folks exist within the system. ‘Chaplains to the Empire’ as we say. Therapeutic churches work within the ‘ways things are’ to help make you a better version of yourself.
  • Messianic churches focus on helping one survive until God delivers us from the system. This can be rapture, evacuation, eschatological, etc.  Messianic churches often have animosity toward culture’s slippery slope ‘slouch toward Gomorrah’ and view change as resistance. Anything else is just ‘rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic’.

I reference that quickly (there is a whole book chapter that fleshes it out) in order to say that I found an amazing quote in another review.

For liberals and evangelicals, Jesus is the central focus, “but in the case of liberals, Jesus is the focus that offers compassion and hospitality to the world; in the case of evangelicals, Jesus is a source that saves them from the world by creating a new one to come” (p. 268).

I would love to hear your thoughts, concerns, or questions.

1

Excess Isn’t The Problem

Working on two different presentations this weekend, I ran into a familiar theme: the ‘problem’ of excess.

This afternoon I am teaching a class on ‘Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition’. The students are at the end of their semester and so I wanted to present something to them that will give them a chance to apply what they have learned this semester to a contemporary situation.

I was also working on a church service for two weeks from now where I will be filling in for the pastor who will be at regional gathering with most of the worship team. I am planning a creative Christmas interactive sort of experience.

In both of these projects I kept running up against the theme of excess. What would someone like John Wesley think of the world if we could reach back three centuries and bring him to today?  The Methodist (who he helped to found) were a people of moderation and temperance. They prioritized simplicity and focus. Many times this semester I have tried to imagine what they would think of the world and the Methodist churches that I have been visiting.

I imagine them being a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things and options. We live in an age consumption in which manufactures compete to get consumers the variety and amount of whatever they desire.

At the same time, I am preparing for Christmas and trying to address the pervasive chorus I hear about the extravagance of what Christmas has become. This weekend I watched some football on TV, I had to go the mall to get a package, and I went to church to observe the second week of Advent. I get it … the season is a lot. I hear what people are complaining about and I 100% acknowledge that it can frazzle the nerves and trigger some soul-searching about the modern world.

I am haunted by a lingering suspicion and I want to put it out there for your consideration:

What if excess isn’t the problem? What it excess is the venue and virtue is the issue?

I think about trying to watch football on TV with John Wesley and how I would explain the commercial for 800 channels of cable to him. Why do we need 800 channels? We don’t. So what is the problem? I get why people complain about excess. I do.

I am just wondering: what if excess is the given and that how we handle it is the variable.

So I went to the store for cheese and there are literally 200 varieties. I don’t have to eat them all. In the same way,  I don’t have to watch every show on every channel of TV, flirt with every attractive person in a restaurant, or desire every item that is advertised to me.

We make choices. Those choices are born out of a character. That character is formed and informed by a virtue that I embody and which is enacted by the choices I make and how I behave.

I just wonder if we wouldn’t be better off to spend our energy talking about character-in-community instead of complaining about the ridiculous and excessive manifestation of modern consumer society. It feels like a golfer complaining about the presence of grass or a fish complaining about the presence of water. Excess is the venue of western society. We are not going to go back to the 4 kinds of cheese (Swiss, American, Cheddar and Velveeta) or the 3 network channels of my childhood (ABC, NBC, CBS). Costco isn’t the problem (per se).

Excess isn’t good – but neither is it the problem. Complaining about it, while legitimate and justified, may be an exercise in futility. We are not going back to a simpler time anytime soon.  In fact, pointing out the problems of excess may be a good diagnosis but still leave us with the lack of a cure. Even if excess is a problem, the lack of it is not a solution. We are still left with the absence of something deeper.

Spending this past semester studying Methodism has been good for me to think through this stuff. Going back to a simpler time isn’t the solution … and I’m arguing that living in an age of excess isn’t the problem. The absence of excess doesn’t result in the presence of character.

My growing conviction is that excess isn’t the problem, it is merely the venue and virtue is the issue.

 

2

Christianism: Dangers of Frankenstein Christianity

When Sarah Palin said that water-boarding was how we baptized terrorist, it was a turning point for my understanding of faith and the role it plays in our culture. I don’t know if I was more offended because of my hatred of torture (or ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’) or my love of baptism and what it represents as a central expression of the faith. Baptism is how we who believe demonstrate that we accept the death-to-self and enter into the life-of-Christ.

I had been asking this question ever since Rumsfeld/Cheney put Bible verses on the covers of their Iraq war briefings to President Bush. That is how I learned about things like ‘master signifiers’, which are symbols such as ‘Christianity’ that have become detached from the meaning that they were originally anchored to. They are un-tethered from the history that originally gave them meaning.

Christianism is disconnected from the faith and tradition that gave it birth. When you see or hear something under the banner of ‘Christian’ that does not seem to reflect the example of Jesus or the teaching of Christ … you may have wandered into the wilderness of Christianism. It uses all the same words that you know … but in foreign and contradictory ways.

Christianism is several degrees removed from the teaching and example of Jesus. It begins in the formation/formalizing of those things (one degree) – then it takes on an authoritarian/hierarchical structure (two degrees) – then, and this is the big one, it is married to power (government/military) so now we are three degrees from the origin. This new orientation becomes solidified/codified as a thing that has its own identity: “Christian” becomes a category by which you can know who is in and who is out – the saved and the lost (fourth degree). This is where bad things done by ‘good people’ can be justified as being beneficial to ‘the cause’ or ‘our side’.

The final stage is when ‘Christian’ is an identity that helps to distinguish us (in-group) from others, NOT depending on ones obedience to the central tenants, following the teachings of the founders, or even knowledge of the distinctions that signify identity to the group. At this point the signifier ‘Christian’ is no longer anchored to anything that it was originally grounded in and no longer connected to the very thing that gave it life and health. ‘Christian’ becomes a floating signifier and is un-tethered from its proverbial mooring (fifth degree).

 We are watching a ‘historical drift’. This is how Sarah Palin can say that water-boarding is how we baptize terrorist. This one statement has it all! We are the in-group. We do this to people with unilateral/coercive power. It is then connected to sacred/holy acts. And finally, we assume that we are doing God’s work when we do things that are opposite/counter to the example of what we say is the incarnation/revelation of our very God.

When something is this far (5 degrees) away from its original intent, folks can start to ask, “how is this connected to that?” The generous/gracious response is ‘loosely’. The concerned response is ‘they are not connected’. The critical response is ‘it is counter to the origin’.

When you add an ‘ism’ to anything it is in danger of becoming a Frankenstein creature that takes on a monstrous life of its own. Examples of this in the U.S. context involve:

  • Democrat-ism: When it is no longer about the democracy but has become about beating the ‘other side’.
  • Republican-ism: When it is no longer about the republic but had been reduced to gun ownership and ‘states rights’.
  • Methodism: When members of Methodist churches can no longer tell you what the ‘methods’ are.
  • Evangelicalism: When those who identify as such cannot tell you what the evangelion is or cannot articulate the ‘good news’ of Jesus’ message.
  • Pentecostalism: When the gift of tongues is no longer about proclamation to those who speak in foreign languages but is about an ‘unknown’ prayer language that edifies the speaker.

These have all become master signifiers that identify an in/out boundary but which no longer re-present the original meaning they once stood for. Our world is full of markers/groups/identities/labels that are so far from what they originally meant that they are not longer tied (tethered) to the thing that used to anchor them.

My concern is that ‘Christian’ no longer signifies one who follows Christ and has instead become an ‘ism’ that designates an us/them distinction that has nothing to do with the teachings or model of Jesus. I get why people are being inventive and using ‘Christ-follower’ or attempting to follow ‘the way of Jesus’. Cynics will mock all they want, but if these innovative monikers are an attempt to protest or defy the ‘ism’ of the dominant expression … I say we ask more questions instead of making snarky and dismissive comments.

They might be onto something.

 

 Interesting uses of Christianism started appearing between 2003-2005

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianism

 http://tcpc.blogs.com/better/2005/05/christianity_or.html

 

 

15

Modern Theology’s Opportunity (3/3) : Neither Barth Nor Schleiermacher

Christian theology has an opportunity moving into the future. In part 1 I outlined modern Christianity’s problem. I could say more about Christendom, Colonialism and Consumerism (the 3 C’s of modern Christianity) and will later this week.

In part 2 I looked at modern Christianity’s temptation to concede, attack or retreat: concede to the private/personal realm, attack in the public realm or retreat into silos of privileged speech in the religious realm.

In order to understand how deep the problem really is, it might seem helpful to use modern Christianity’s binary way of thinking (as I alluded to in the title of this post). The either/or, mutually exclusive way of conceptualizing and framing issues is to tempting: conservative/liberal, literal/figurative, Catholic/Protestant, white/ethnic, male/female, gay/straight, etc.church-300x199

This is not our way forward.

When thinking about just Protestants in N. America you have to account for everyone from fundamentalist to charismatics, evangelicals to liberal mainliners, Pentecostals, Quakers and emergent types.

Ours is an age of diversity, multiplicity and plurality. Our theological approach needs to reflect that.

We are cresting into some form of late, high, hyper or post Modernity. This is evidenced in the fractured cultural arena and an unprecedented awareness of pluralism.

 

There will never be one great theologian again. The days of the great single voice are over. When Moltmann and Cobb pass, we will see the end of an era.

Now we refer to Feminist theologians, Liberationists, Process thinkers, the Yale School and Emergent voices. The closest we might get is referencing someone as Barthian or a Hauwerwasian.

This move toward the collective is significant. It pales, however, in comparison to the real shift.

 

The more significant shift is away from abstract, speculative and universalizing brands of thinking.
The future is found in:

  • concrete
  • interdisciplinary
  • qualitative analysis (observation)

These are but three of the reason that I love my discipline of Practical Theology. It is concerned not only with the ideas but with the practice of faith. It is inter-disciplinary because no one field is adequate to fully investigate or represent what is going on in an area of concern. It utilizes qualitative methods (interview, ethnography and case study) to flesh out the phenomenon under review and to represent the real and lived experience of those living faith out on the ground.

 

The models used in the past are inadequate then, they are harmful. Linell E. Cady’s chapter in Theology at the End of Modernity holds a powerful explanation of the problem and opportunity. [1]

The problem with a liberal approach’s emphasis on experience is obvious. The past century has exposed the fatal flaw of this opportunistic brand of Christianity. The ‘Christian Century’ ended somewhere between Hiroshima and 9/11. We can talk a more about this at a later time.

The answer, however, is not retreat into fideistic models that protect religious or god-talk from outside review by setting up religious speech as a privileged and incommensurable realm. I have been critical of both post-Liberal and Radical Orthodox approaches for this very reason. Neither the authoritarian modes of , say, Reformed thought nor confessional schools like these are sustainable in the 21st century.

“Moving toward this vision of theology means abandoning the systematic, ahistorical, textually driven mode of theology for one that is far more contextual in its attention to embodied religion.” [2]

Cady goes on:

“All too often theologians have pursued an ahistorical engagement with the great theologians of the past, regarding their positions as perennial Christian options rather than as strategies peculiar to a specific place and time.” [3]

 

In closing I want to make a subtle distinction. There is a deep resonance with the concerns about non-contextual, speculative, universalizing and systematizing approaches to theology. It just so happens that Practical Theology provides a different approach. Cady explains:

“(This) model of theology suggests the need for more careful attention to the historical and cultural context within which theological reflection is located. Moving in this direction would align theology closely with the history of religions … (becoming) more attentive to the analysis and evaluation of embodied religion.

The skills of the sociologist and ethnographer would begin to shape theological expertise, providing important supplements to the prevailing exegetical and philosophical orientations.” [4]

 

Our age asks us to move from abstraction, speculation and systematics to a collective and inter-disciplinary approach to lived religion. [5]

 

________________________

 

[1] It is not that I am fascinated with Gordon Kaufman – but with those who are attempting to answer the questions that he raised. I hope to address them from within a Practical Theology approach.

[2] p. 93

[3] p. 97

[4] p. 82

[5] Please read my previous post on The Body and Embodied Religion

0

Modern Christianity’s Temptation (2/3)

In light of the massive shifts in culture, understanding and expectation that the last 300 years has seen, there seem to be three great temptations for the devout.

Last post we talked about the problems that Modernity brought to Christianity’s doorstep in the West. Science had moved into the driver’s seat and was none too kind to those who would not get on board.

The problem, of course, is that we are simply not left the option to go back to primitive Christianity. For Lent this year I read books about post-Nuclear theology and listened to lectures on the first twelve centuries of Church history. It has never been more apparent that the world has changed in drastic ways.

  • Christendom
  • The Scientific Age
  • Globalization

Are just 3 catalysts and results of this epic (and epoch) shift.

Tomorrow I will present what I see as the amazing opportunity. Today I want to comment on what seem to be the 3 biggest temptations for modern Christianity:

  1. to concede
  2. to attack
  3. to retreat.

 

Concede

Faith as a public matter has never been more challenging. The easiest response is to both personalize ones faith and then make it private. This is a two-step dance but either is dangerous on its own.

Personalizing faith is a natural response for an Enlightenment Individual. We major in ‘self’. We have cultivated the ability to think in ‘me’. This is a novel development in religion and some argue that it is against the very nature of religion! The purpose of religion is to bind us together in practice (re-ligio) or reconnect us as a belief-community.

The second step is to internalize ones personal faith. In liberal democracy, no one cares if you believe something – just keep it to yourself. Don’t put it on someone else. Your personal practice in there or over there is one thing … just don’t make too big of a deal about out here. Out here we have a civil expectation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If your religion helps as a means to those ends, fine. If not, it might become an issue of you infringe on someone else right. Go ahead and practice your ‘tradition’ on your own time but just keep it down when you’re out here in public.

The modern expression of Christianity has responded to this two-step dance in many little ways – my favorite of which is consumeristic-accessorization. The bumper sticker on my interal-combustion automobile and the fashionable yet ironic message T that imitates a popular ad campaign are just two examples. It allows me to allude to a Bible verse (I am not of the world after all) while participating in a capitalist system that goes unquestioned.

 

Attack

To counter the personal-and-internal compromise noted above, an aggressive and external coup has been attempted. The memory of Christendom has fueled a political response to take back power and ‘return to our roots’. The rise of the Religious Right (and Moral Majority) of the past four decades is perhaps the most high-profile example. It is, however, just the latest incarnation of this impulse.Facade of St. Vitus Cathedral

The fond (and white-washed) memories of days gone by and yesteryear fuel an anger at what is seen as a disintegrating culture and a slouching toward Gomorrah. The resulting Culture Wars and political animosity have a fundamental problem however:

Ever since the Constantinian compromise in the 4th century is has been difficult (if not impossible) to get the Bible to say what one needs it to say in order to justify a claim to power.

A religion founded on the teaching of a marginalized prophet and incubated in persecuted minority communities does not lend itself to being in charge. An incredible amount of selective editing, creative hermeneutics and mental gymnastics are required to make it fit. At some point a voice like Yoder comes along and points out that ‘this is untenable’.

 

Retreat

The above two responses are both simpler and more obvious (and thus more popular) than our last response. The retreat is more subtle and sophisticated. I will return to Theology at the End of Modernity from the first post.

Those who seek to answer the questions raised by the work of Gordon Kaufman (primarily Sheila Greeve Davaney and Linell E. Cady) have deep concern about a school of thought that seeks to move the Christian tradition toward an “autonomous and protected location”.

A seductive temptation is found in an attempt to preserve former (historic) expressions of the faith behind linguistic fences (insulated language games) and communities that become isolated silos. These “are really retreats into forms of fideism or ‘protective strategies’ that seek ways of interpreting theological discourse so as to preserve its unique status.”

The Post-Liberal work of Lindbeck and the Radical Orthodoxy camp of Milbank and MacIntyre are in danger of this.[1]

Those who follow this line of reasoning:

“contend that theology is not properly about ascertaining indubitable truth claims about God or reality, nor about fathoming the depths of human subjectivity; rather, the task is to analyze and explicate the fundamental claims about reality and human life that have emerged within a specific tradition, so that believers might more fully appropriate and live out of their tradition’s vision of reality.”

It becomes a:

“self-enclosed historical community; its method is interpretive, not critical; and its goal is to aid in the internalization of central claim, not the critique or reconstruction of that which we have inherited.” p. 6

You can see the attraction of the retreat! By privileging “revelation” or the “given-ness” of the tradition, one is afforded the space to preserve and defend an inherited system which immune for outside critique and thus preserved in its ‘as is’ status.

This romantic preservation and reclamation mistakenly – and perhaps intentionally – defends and protects manifestations and consequences that we not only need to move on from but we to which we can not possible return to.

 

In part 3 we will conclude this series with a challenge to make the Christian faith “pluralistic, public, and critical”.

 

[1] “by emphasizing an ahistorical human subjectivity, (they seem) to find an autonomous sphere protected from the challenge of other forms of inquiry, then the cost of such independence was the removal of both theology and religion from the public sphere.” p.5

2

Imitation, Simulation, and Repetition – How We Imagine Ourselves

Imitation, Simulation, and Repetition

Madan Surap’s Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World is the most expansive and impressive examination that I have encountered around the issues of societal conception and cultural identities. His basic assertion, which is expanded as the work progresses, is that “ identities are not entirely determined … we do not have homogenous identity but (instead) have several contradictory selves”.  By interacting with such historic figures as Lacan, Baudrillard, Foucault, Said, and Kristiva, Sarup provides a tour-de-force of elements contributing to a modern conception of self, identity, community, and culture.

Identity has a history. At one time it was taken for granted that a person had a ‘given’ identity. The debates round it today assume that identity is not an inherent quality of a person but that it arises in interaction with others and the focus is on the processes by which identity is constructed.[1]

The construction of someone’s identity involves a process of selection as to which elements will receive consideration and emphasis. “Social dynamics such as class, nation, ‘race’, ethnicity, gender and religion” are then organized into a narrative.

[2] This is the process by which a subject’s story emerges for both presentation (by them) and evaluation (by others).  Sarup utilizes a three themed approach for illustrating the transitional nature of one’s identity:

  • the meaning of home
  • the journey of the migrant and
  • the crossing of the border.

It is clear from the above three keys that Sarup is employing a moving motif. There is transition of movement built into the conception of self and community. By articulating this framework as one expecting migration, he provides an inherent instability and liquidity within the process of conceptualization. Identities within this expectation “do not remain static, but they change according to the strength of social forces, the dynamics of class, nation, religion, sex and gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity”. [3]

The reality that becomes available within this approach is that each of those contributing elements also is a moving target that can, at times, be as transitionary as the personal identities that are framed within it.

It is not difficult to isolate any one of the contributing elements and illustrate how that one category has undergone layers of adjustment, adaptation, evolution and challenge:

  • class (Marx, the Royals of England, modern India),
  • nation (from the French Revolution to post-colonial movements),
  • religion (historic drift of the Methodist from Wesley to today),
  • sex and gender (Foucault, Kinsey, and the feminist revolution),
  • race and ethnicity (see How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev).

The points on which the web of constructed identity are anchored seem themselves to be migrating and moving elements – albeit at a tortuous pace in comparison to personal identity markers.

In order to address the underlying influences and their contribution to the process of formation, Sarup asks a set of leading questions:

  1. How do frames of culture, for example, hold the individual personalities in place?
  2. How are places imagined and represented?
  3. How do they affect people’s identities?
  4. How do the worlds of imagination and representation come together?[4]

I find the questions as helpful at this point in the address as any polished explanations. It is precisely the presumed ‘giveness’ of both identity and community that has triggered my abandonment of former inherited constructions and a subsequent willingness to explore the nature of socially conditioned conceptions of oneself as well as constructivist theory of knowledge (which will be touched on at the conclusion).

Sarup’s three themes introduced earlier (the meaning of home, the journey of the migrant and the crossing of the border) provide a way forward in examining the frameworks associated with a mobile or transitory conception. To clarify, he is saying that “identity is to do not with being but with becoming”.[5]

  • While home is always a place, notions of home are not the same in every culture.
  • Immigrant communities may have home-land but essentially home is a place rooted into one’s family.
  • We are always born into relationships and those are always based in a place.
  • Frontiers are places of separation and articulation.
  • In contrast, boundaries are constitutively crossed or transgressed.
  • Strangers are both aware of their strangeness within and unclassifiable to those without. They are undecidables. The stranger blurs boundary lines.[6]
  • Many strangers attempt to erase this stigma by assimilating.
  • A foreigner is one who does not belong to the group, the other.

These markers and designations form the structure in which Sarup explores the evolving landscape of contemporary global communities and individual conceptions of self and belonging. Ultimately he concludes that:

Identity is a construction, a consequence of a process of interaction between people, institutions and practices and that, because the range of human behavior is so wide, groups maintain boundaries to limit the type of behavior within a defined cultural territory. Boundaries are an important point of reference for those participating in any system.[7]Boy at Cockflight_3

The transitory nature of the cultural boundaries and increasingly fluid conception of personal identities that are framed within them – or in contrast to them – make addressing either the stable elements that exist or the migrating ones difficult without a historic referent or a narrative frame. I am pleased that with a historic approach like social imaginaries/ imagined communities (Taylor and Anderson) and several narrative frames (like the one provided by Sarup) that some progress can be made in examining this issue of socially constructed notions of self, identity, belonging and community.

Sarup warns against several mistakes that those who try to address issues of identity often make:
– One danger is in focusing on an influence or social dynamic in isolation. By isolating only race, or nationality one overlooks the “multiplicity of factors”[8] that contribute to the construction of one’s identity.
– Another danger is found in over simplifying the view of social structures that frame an issue and not analyzing them as significantly complex issues. Among his other cautions, an important aspect to consider is negotiation of “the past-present relation and its reconciliation”.[9]

The past is important because it is though narrative that people represent themselves to themselves.

The representation of the past to oneself becomes vital especially in an American context. Baudrillard has a vicious critique of America’s lack of (perceived) history and how that lack creates an environment where everyone is expected (and has the opportunity) to re-create themselves everyday. He says that America has no ‘ancestral history’, no roots ‘except the future’, and that America is ‘weightless’.[10]

America, according to Baudrillard, is a realization of the hyper-real that is an idealized imagining of an anticipated reality.

In the next post we will begin to get religious. 

 

[1] Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, 14.

[2] Ibid., 15.

[3] Ibid., 171.

[4] Ibid., 6.

[5] Ibid.

[6] This is where Sarup interacts with the work of Julia Kristeva’s Strangers to Ourselves.

[7] Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, 11.

[8] Ibid., 39.

[9] Ibid., 40.

[10] Jean Baudrillard, “America After Utopia,” New Perspectives Quarterly, Fall 2009, 1.

0

How We Imagine Ourselves: Technology

I am fascinated by how we both image ourselves and imagine ourselves. The connection between them is significant and the implications are even more so.

In March I wrote about how conceptions of a ‘people’ and a ‘nation’ have come through historic transitions in the past 2 centuries. More recent authors extend that concern beyond just text to the escalated pervasiveness of electronic media.  Appiah frames it this way:

The worldwide web of information – radio, television, telephones, the Internet – means not only that we can affect lives everywhere but that we can learn about life anywhere, too. Each person you know about and can affect is someone to whom you have responsibilities: to say this is to just to affirm the very idea of morality. The challenge, then, is to take minds and hearts formed over long millennia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become.[1]

This radical re-formation of belonging, obligation and security holds major opportunities as well as obstacles to conceptualizing social identity and participating in imagine community for the 21st century globalized existence. [2] Arjun Appadurai pins media and migration as the two interconnected (and similar) effects that work on “the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity” because “they offer new resources and new disciplines for the constructed imagined selves and imagined worlds.” [3]

The rate of change provides a rupture – not merely a transition but an exponential increase in connectivity and complexity.complexity

The power of this new media, according to Appadurai, is not only as a direct source “of new images and scenarios for life possibilities” but in that fact that “imagination has now acquired a singular new power in social life.”[4] Think back to Taylor’s earlier assertion that those in previous centuries not only didn’t have the ability to conceptualize themselves with a life outside of immediate connections but that it probably would have never even dawned them to try.

The capacity to conceptualize or imagine oneself in a radically different place, group or life scenario has not only become possible but it the primary realm of constructing an imaginary.

This shift is facilitated by media technology and is “one of the principle shifts in the global cultural order”. [5]  

Technology is radically changing the way that we conceptualize (imagine) everything from identity, belonging and who we are connected to as well as in what way that happens.

In the next 3 posts I begin to flesh out what this change looks like.

 

[1] Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, xiii.

[2] It is worth noting that a walk down a large avenue in a major city would “have within sight more human beings that most of those prehistoric hunter-gatherers saw in a lifetime.” Even Greece at its heyday or Rome at its peak would have paled in comparison. Ibid., xii.

[3] Appadurai, Modernity At Large, 3.

[4] Ibid., 53.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 115.

[7] Ibid., 117.

[8] A similar case might be made for women who have been disgruntled based on the patriarchal remnants still influencing them and their sisters even though they are aware that they are 51% of the population as a whole. A great deal is made out of the number ‘51’ in juxtaposition to matters of access, equality and compensation. Much is made of that number. What if, one might ask, if that number was changed. Would the case be harder to make? What if only 42% of the population was women? Or what if it turned out that an error had been made and actually 64% of the population was women. Would that make the current inequalities and unjust practices more grotesque?

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Jihad v. McWorld (part 4)

A Second Shift

In the previous 3 parts we established that a significant shift took place in the late 19th and early 20th century. This initial shift in modernity has subsequently created the possibility of a second, more contemporary, move that I want to explore. Taylor provides the context of this potential when he says:

In earlier societies, this ability to imagine the self outside of a particular context extended to membership of that society in its essential order. That this is no longer so with us, that many of these … questions are not only conceivable but arise as burning practical issues … is the measure of our disembedding. Another fruit of this is our ability to entertain the abstract question even where we cannot make it imaginatively real.[6]

It is in this potential that citizens of the 21st century already have, or likely will, move beyond national identities to something more potentially abstract, disembodied, plural and wrapped in multiplicity. Issues of citizenship, sexuality, race, ethnicity and religion are increasingly complex in an inter-racial, cross-cultural and multi-national globalized context.

Tomorrow’s posts will explore works by Kwame Anthony Appaih, Arjun Appadurai, Umberto Eco and Madan Sarup. Then we will address thoughts by Jean Buildrillard and Saba Mahmood as they relate to imaginaries and conceptions of community, the physical body and spirituality. 

In a section entitled ‘Global Villages’, Appiah points out that,

“People who complain about the homogeneity produced by globalization often fail to notice that globalization is, equally, a threat to homogeneity.”[7]

This is the same tension that was developed in the earlier section between secular and religious thought. Each sees the other as both the problem and a threat to their program – not realizing that in another sense, they actually give rise to each other and propagate each other’s reach.

It is addressed again in such examinations as Jihad v. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World by Benjamin J. Barber.  Forces that seem to be in conflict with each other are, in reality, dependant on each other in a complex interplay. Barber explains:

McWorld cannot then do without Jihad: it needs cultural parochialism to feed its endless appetites. Yet neither can Jihad do without McWorld: for where would culture be without commercial producers who market it and the information and communication systems that make it known?[8]

The complexity of the combative nature of the symbiotic relationship is found in the evolving nature of the situation.  Barber’s pairing of the phrases ‘Jihad’ with it’s perceived nemesis with ‘McWorld’ is deliberate.Jihad v McWorld

What I have called the forces of Jihad may seem then to be a throwback to pre-modern times: an attempt to recapture a world that existed prior to cosmopolitan capitalism and was defined by religious mysteries, hierarchical communities, spellbinding traditions, and historical torpor… Jihad is not only McWorld’s adversary, it is its child. The two are then thus locked together in a kind of Freudian moment of the ongoing cultural struggle, neither willing to coexist with the other, neither complete without the other.[9]

This juxtaposition is even more precarious than a simple ‘clash’ or ‘combat’ language would seem to provide. There is obviously an adversarial component but without addressing how McWorld gave rise to Jihad – and how Western constructs of religion gave rise to secularism – there is a falsity that exist for those who participate in the inflammatory dualism on both sides (as if there were only two). Conceiving of one’s identity within this fictitious and fracturous is layered in complications related to the imaginary employed.

An outgrowth of this increasing complexity is, as Appiah describes it, a “distinctively cosmopolitan commitment to pluralism”.[10] Cosmopolitan people know that we are different than each other – this is apparent at every turn – and they recognize that we have much to learn from our differences.[11] One theme that emerges repeatedly in the work of these authors is the centrality and role of media. Benedict Anderson addressed it through the textual nature of transmission that united disconnected people in the imaginary.

What Anderson coined as ‘print capitalism’ created permanent change in the way people conceived of their personhood and selfhood. Its power was housed in the dual developments of mass literacy coupled with technological innovation that allowed for ‘large-scale production of projects’.  The result was release from the need for face-to-face communication or even indirect connection between people or groups.[12]

You can see how, in these 4 posts, we live in a very different world than the one we have inhereted in our religious traditions. This helps to explain the baffling disconnect that can occur between our ancient documents and their ongoing implementation in our contemporary religious expressions.

In part 5 we begin to explore the lived and embodied implications of religion in the modern-contemporary context.  

_______________

[6] Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2003), 55.

[7] Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 101.

[8] Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad Versus McWorld (Ballantine Books, 2001), 155.

[9] Ibid., 157.

[10] Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 144.

[11] Appiah earlier broke down the intertwined notion of cosmopolitanism into two threads: the first is that our obligation extends beyond ties of family and kind (even citizenship) to those outside our immediate reach. The second thread finds value not just in human lives generically but in particular human lives. This is the loci for enlightenment liberal individualism. Ibid., xv.

[12] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (U of Minnesota Press, 1996), 28.

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How We Imagine A ‘Nation’ part 3

In the shadow of the Sochi Olympics and the unfolding tension in the Ukraine, we are exploring the theme/thesis that:

  • ‘Nation’ is both sovereign and transcendent.
  • ‘Nation’ is both a social imaginary and an emergent reality.

[Trust me – I am going somewhere with this]

Benedict Anderson explains that the notion of imagined communities was revolutionary because:

“regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship”.[1]

Such an imaginary provides a new capacity for obligation and ultimate sacrifice. Appadurai, in a section entitled ‘Patriotism and Its Future’ interacts with Anderson (among others) and observes that:

Modern nationalisms involve communities of citizens in the territorially defined nation-state who share collective experience, not of face-to-face contact or common subordination to a royal person, but of reading texts together.[2]

There are significant implications to this development because much of the rhetorical energies of the ruling powers are used in order to urge “their subjects to give up … primordial loyalties – to family, tribe, caste, and region” for the “fragile abstractions” called nations which are often “multi-ethnic … tenuous collective projects”.[3] The ability to call for ultimate sacrifice out of loyalty to an abstract imaginary is a defining characteristic of the most recent centuries previously unknown.

Two implications that illustrate the power of imagined community can be found in the examples of:

  1. ‘the tomb of the unknown soldier’
  2. the modern conception of French identity in the past two centuries.

Only within the power of national imaginaries can one see the possibility of such a monument as a tomb left intentionally empty or holding the remains of an unidentified combatant. Anderson points out the absurdity of “a Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a cenotaph for fallen Liberals.”[4] There is no reserve of belonging that would justify such a display. It would hold little value outside the context of national identity. For what did one give his life? Neither a concept nor a conviction would suffice for such a cemented monument to loyalty and subsequent indebtedness. Only within the confines of a national imaginary does death qualify for such a combination of reverence and pageantry. These are the sole property of nation-ness. One can hardly imagine either the advantage or the desire to make the tomb of an unknown soldier outside that which is called for to preserve a conception such as ‘nation’.

A second illustration of the historic development can be found in France since the nineteenth century. Taylor, working off of Eugene Weber, states that it was only late in the nineteenth century when millions belonging to peasant communities were “inducted into France as a nation of 40 million individual citizens.”

My favorite historian, John Merriman of Yale University, when addressing the same phenomenon of changes in France leading up to WWI comments on the sheer number of dialects (or patois) that were subsumed when ‘citizens’ were conscribed to the French army in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Speakers of Walloon and Basque patois were thrust into defense of something that they barely conceived of themselves as belonging to and in defense of a unified imaginary they would have little reference for called ‘France’. Many (or most) would not have primarily spoken French and may not even have been able to understand their commanding officers.

Merriman often quips that the definition of a ‘nation’ is a dialect with an army.Pastor Holding Bible

One can see how powerful the recent development of conceptualizing the nation as a valid location of sovereignty has replaced both royalty and religion as an acceptable request for this kind of sacrifice. Whereas formerly this authority was reserved for a King or God, now it was conceptualized in a shared identity and responsibility worthy of such obligation. This also had deeply impactful ramifications on areas such as family, property, education and mobility.

Whereas in the past, family and family property were primary sources of security and survival, Nation now provided drastically different possibilities for citizens. Taylor comments that the new (modern) “modes of individualism seemed a luxury, a dangerous indulgence.” [5]

Indeed, to the previously established orders of royalty and religion, these are dangerous developments.

Come back for part 4 where we explore Jihad v. McWorld.

____________________________

[1] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 8.

[2] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, 1st ed. (Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1996), 161.

[3] Ibid., 162.

[4] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 10.

[5] Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 17.

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