Favorite Short Stories in 2010

As with almost all of these categories, it's tough to narrow down to just five favorites, but here goes:

5. Thomas Wolfe, "The Lost Boy," in The American Short Story, ed. Thomas K. Parkes. I've got a big soft spot for Thomas Wolfe, so it's difficult for me to be objective. This story presages the death of the older brother in Look Homeward, Angel and shows the flashes of energy and passion that characterize Wolfe's later corpus.

4. Alice Munro, "Corrie," New Yorker (October 11, 2010). A Saskatchewan affair, but with a Joyce-Carol-Oatesish twist at the end.

3. Jonathan Safran Foer, "How We Aren't, So Quickly," in the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" series. 2 pages of second-person, chronological fireworks on a marriage. Fabulous. Gave me new respect for Foer.

And I have to award a tie for the number 1 spot:

1. Carson McCullers, "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories. Here is one of the tiny treasures of American short fiction--a compressed little hymn to love, sort of Evelyn Waugh with a southern accent, but without his snobbishness or verbosity. What McCullers accomplishes here in about 1700 words took Walker Percy an entire novel. Consider just this little snippet as the old man begins to explain his "science" (starts to make Walker Percy look derivative, doesn't it?):

"It is this. And listen carefully. I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with?"

The boy's soft mouth was partly open and he did not answer.

"A woman," the old man said. "Without science, with nothing to go by, they undertake the most dangerous and sacred experience in God's earth. They fall in love with a woman. Is that correct, Son?"

"Yeah," the boy said faintly.

"They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love?"

The old man reached over and grasped the boy by the collar of his leather jacket. He gave him a gentle little shake and his green eyes gazed down unblinking and grave.

"Son, do you know how love should be begun?"

The boy sat small and listening and still. Slowly he shook his head. The old man leaned closer and whispered:

"A tree. A rock. A cloud."

It was still raining outside in the street: a mild, gray, endless rain. The mill whistle blew for the six o'clock shift and the three spinners paid and went away. There was no one in the café but Leo, the old man, and the little paper boy.

I dream of writing a story that could even be a shadow of McCuller's accomplishment.

1. David Foster Wallace, "Good Old Neon," in Oblivion. In.cred.i.ble. Not sure what else to say. It seems to me that this story is at the core of DFW's entire corpus and gets at some of the philosophical and literary problems that occupied Wallace over his entire writing career. Here we get the classic stream-of-consciousness reflections of a recent suicide--the proverbial "final thoughts" in which your life flashes before your eyes, but which now seem to come to us as a postmortem missive. Thus Wallace both appropriates and deconstructs the cliche--a common strategy throughout his work. So "Good Old Neon" is a story that is constantly aware of the seeming impossibility of telling one's story, what the narrator describes as a "paradox":

This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person's life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn't even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another-word English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one slit-second's flash of thoughts and connections, etc.--and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we're thinking and to find out what they're thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it's a charade and they're just going through the motions. What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

But maybe that's just enough.

Favorite Reads in 2010

As per my custom over the last several years, I'll spend the next week recounting some of my reading highlights from 2010. I used to do this over at What I'm Reading, but having effectively abandoned that blog, I'll incorporate the tradition here at Fors Clavigera.

I will choose five favorites from four different genres: short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and novels. Only a few of these will be works published in 2010; instead I'm focusing on some of the works that I read in 2010. Watch for them over the next few days.

Super Sad True Love Story

I've never tried posting a review from GoodReads, so thought I'd try a little experiment here:

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A quirky, prescient story set in the not-too-distant future. Comprised of the diary of Lenny Ambramov, interspersed with the "GlobalTeens" (aka Facebook?) communications of his girlfriend, Eunice Park, the book extrapolates from our current cultural trends to imagine the future dystopia of what will be left of the United States, or more specifically, New York City. It is a world where people are publicly identified by their Credit Ranking, where nation-states have been replaced by corporations (compare Atwood's Year of the Flood, and where the United States has become entirely enfolded into China (with sections parceled out to Norway).

Shteyngart's social commentary is oblique and allusive, again projecting from our current cultural habits into an imagined future. One might describe it as the ubiquitization of a Facebook sensibility, where everything is made public--our Credit Rankings are displayed on "credit poles" that line the street; our emotions and thoughts are made public on äppäräts dangling from our necks; and nothing is left to the imagination as all the young women are wearing transparent "onionskin" jeans.

The story also tackles the identity issues of the 1.5 immigrant generation: Lenny the child of Russian Jews but raised on Long Island; Eunice the daughter of Korean Christians, raised in southern California, transplanted to New Jersey. And in the midst of all of this, Lenny works for a company that is sorting out the science of immortality. Fertile soil for philosophical and theological reflection.

The novel combines strong narrative force with exquisite attention to detail. There are a couple of mechanical moves late in the book that I found lazy and a bit disappointing from a formal standpoint, but these don't obscure its strengths. I hope to write much more on the novel elsewhere.



View all my reviews

Answers to Questions about the New Calvinism

'Tis the season for JKAS videos, I guess. Some might recall that Brazos offered a little giveaway on their Facebook page, soliciting questions in connections with Letters to a Young Calvinist. We recorded short video responses to four questions, and the first two are now available.

Q from Ben Dodd: Are there 1 or 2 things you would like to see the New Calvinist movement in North America learn from the growing Pentecostal movement in the Non-western world? How might they influence one another for the better?



Q: from Rodney A. Thomas Jr.: In terms of ecclesiology, could you address the role that Calvinist theology, the New Calvinists and Neo-Calvinism can play in working to create a more racially inclusive church here in the United States?

The Politics of the (New) Unconscious

While I've been critical of Mark Lilla in the past, his article in last week's New York Times Magazine, "The President and the Passions," hits the nail on the head. In a way reminiscent of Charles Taylor's critique of "intellectualist" philosophies of action, Lilla notes that Obama's failures might stem from his over-estimation of the role of ideas and information. Commenting on Obama's diagnosis of the landslide defeat in November, which Obama chalked up to the inability of the populace to get their facts straight, Lilla suggests:

If this is the way the president and his party think about human psychology, it’s little wonder they’ve taken such a beating. Their assumption seems to be that we are basically rational creatures who, left to our own devices, have little trouble discerning what our interests are and how to serve them. It’s only when our passions get the better of us, when we are angry or fearful or exuberant, that we make bad decisions. That’s really what’s the matter with Kansas, and with the Tea Party activists. So the administration has to work harder to “get the message out” and “sell” its program; to calm people it needs to give them clearer, more complete and more attractively packaged information about how it is working in their interests. Bring in the pie charts, by all means, but print them on glossier paper.

Thus Lilla takes Obama to task for a misguided psychology or what we might call a mistaken philosophical anthropology. As Lilla continues,

The wisdom of [Obama's] approach depends on whether the underlying assumption about human nature is right. But is it? Not, at least, according to virtually every Western philosopher and theologian from antiquity to the 18th-century. From Plato to St. Augustine to Thomas Hobbes, the shared assumption was that human beings are fundamentally passionate creatures and that reason alone is too weak to contain our drives.

The proper response to this is not to lapse into the rationalist whine about people being governed by their passions and keep hoping they'll be be "rational" like us (we're not). Rather, the point is to harness, direct, and channel the passions. Indeed, if you just paint the passions as "irrational," you've already lost. Thus Lilla concludes: "The lesson to be drawn is that the art of politics must be the art of engaging the passions, first by exciting them, then by moderating and directing them to a worthy end, one that reason may reveal but cannot achieve."

Might the art of worship or the art of discipleship be the same?

Lilla closes with an elliptical little story:

George Plimpton used to tell the story of Muhammad Ali going to Harvard one year to give an address. At the end of his speech, someone called out to him, “Give us a poem!” He paused, stretched out his arms to the audience and delivered what Plimpton said was the shortest poem in the English language:

ME [pause]

WE!

The students would have followed him anywhere.

Video excerpts from U of Ottawa lecture

David Robinson, maestro behind The House, the Anglican campus ministry at the University of Ottawa, alerted me to a few clips from my recent lecture, "Beyond A/Theism: Postmodernity and the Future of Religion." A DVD of the entire lecture is available from their website.

Ethnography and Theology

"Practical theology," in our still-Schleiermacherian theological curricula, has always been a bit of a stepchild in the seminary--an appendix to the "serious" work of systematic theology and biblical studies, the place in the curriculum for a few tips and tricks about how to conduct a funeral or do hospital visits, the "touchy-feely" enclave down the hall.

Fortunately, this is changing. Indeed, I think "practical theology" is poised to become one of the most interesting and important fields in theology, precisely because the old divisions of labor are eroding. We are rightly beginning to realize (a) that all theology should be "practical" and that "systematic" theology is often a project well lost; and (b) that practical theology has its own rigor which is now beginning to flourish. In a similar way, liturgical theology is no longer just the baroque ornamentation of theology; instead, we are beginning to understand how and why it should be the center of the curriculum. There have been enough developments in this direction that we're already beginning to see backlash and critique, which I take to be a good sign.

One of the most interesting developments in practical theology over the last several years has been an emerging conversation between theology and ethnography--taking the engagement between theology and social science in new directions, with more finely tuned nuances. I think this is a necessary engagement particularly for those who would make a certain ecclesiology central to both the theological task and Christian formation. We simply can't shrink from the fact that, as theologians, we are also making empirical claims about the shape of communities and the effects of practices. That means we're also, in some sense, accountable for those claims--otherwise critics can justly charge us with a kind of idealism and abstraction of which we are sometimes guilty.

I was pressed in this direction by the work of Christian Scharen, first in his book, Public Worship and Public Work--a helpful critique of roughly "Hauerwasian" tendencies to make ecclesiological claims about formation without being accountable to whether those really show up on the ground. His suggestions for a necessary engagement between ecclesiology and ethnography also shows up in an important (appreciative) critique of Milbank, "'Judicious Narratives,' or Ecclesiology as Ethnography," (pdf) published a few years back in the Scottish Journal of Theology. This article is an excellent crystallization of the issues and the parameters of debate. One can also see this intersection of ecclesiology and ethnography in Mary McClintock Fulkerson's book, Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church.

I don't mean to suggest that we should just baptize ethnography; nor would I claim that this dialogue between ecclesiology and ethnography is without problems. It can still easily head in the direction of a kind of "Chicago school" (e.g., Don Browning) social-science-foundationalism. But it need not do so. Instead, I see it as a promising trajectory for research.

So I was glad to see that Practical Matters, the online journal in practical theology at Emory, has devoted an entire issue to "Ethnography & Theology"--a great way for newcomers to wade into this growing conversation.

Whence & Whither American Presbyterianism? On Hart and Muether's History

There's a lot at play just in the title of D.G. Hart and John R. Muether's Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism. The title itself is a double entendre. On the one hand, it is a backhanded critique of what they discern as a key failure of American Presbyterianism: its assimilation to American civil religion, making the Presbyterian church little more than a chaplain to either left or right wing versions of Americanism. "Presbyterian cultural warriors," as they summarize, "share the assumption that the role of the church is to maintain and defend American civil religion (of either a conservative or liberal expression)" (247). In short, the "country" that American Presbyterianism became devoted to is the United States of America, and that commitment entailed the dilution of the Reformed identity of the denomination(s).

In contrast, Hart and Muether extol a version of American Presbyterianism that eschews such a confusion of church and state, preserving a commitment to the "spirituality" of the church, and thus seeking that "better country" which is a heavenly city (Hebrews 11:16). Only some American Presbyterians, as the story goes, are really committed to the better "better country."

For this reason, I think the subtitle could have perhaps offered a little more truth in advertising. I can imagine at least a couple that would have clearly delineated the book's argument: "A 'Two Kingdoms' History of American Presbyterianism" captures it; or perhaps: "The Orthodox Presbyterian Church as the Faithful Remnant in American Presbyterianism." But I'm guessing that would have narrowed the audience just a bit.

That said, I came to the book with interest and quite a bit of sympathy for their concerns and critique, though I might not sign up for their implied prescriptions. The tone is decidedly not hagiographic (except for the portrayals of Machen and the OPC); indeed, by the end of the book the authors have told such a woeful tale that they have to look for "silver linings" to lighten the jeremiad with some shred of hope. In the course of the story, there are several themes that emerge that have significant contemporary relevance.

The Long March of Americanization. At the very opening, Hart and Muether set for themselves a puzzle: "why a Protestant communion with doctrinal tenets (i.e., Calvinism) running directly contrary to American ideals of freedom and self-sufficiency became attractive to so many successful Americans" (2). This is a constant thread in the story as they note the gradual and fervent assimilation of American Presbyterianism to "Americanism" and the ideals of political liberalism inherited from Locke. This assimilation takes on new intensity in the Revolutionary era, indicating "an unhealthy identification with and disproportionate allegiance to the United States that would haunt the Presbyterian Church, especially during the Civil War" (82). Akin to what sociologist Stephen Warner calls the "de facto congregationalism" of American Christianity, Hart & Muether note that "Presbyterians in the United States could not escape the anomalies inherent in a voluntary church" (88). Their analysis helps to understand what might be a counter-intuitive notion: that the liberalization of the PCUSA in the 1960s & 70s was actually an expression of the same assimilation (246-247).

Here is where I think their "two kingdom" (2K) sympathies provide a perspectival advantage: it enables them to see the long history of what we might have called American Presbyterianism's "Constantinianism" (before Peter Leithart went and complicated that short-hand use of the term!). Ironically, here 2Kers, Anabaptists, and "Reformed Hauerwasians" like me (believe me, it's a small club) share a similar diagnosis, with very different prescriptions. I think this "blend" can also be seen in many of James Davison Hunter's criticisms in To Change the World.

Liberalism and Evangelicalism Amount to the Same Thing. It's hard for Hart & Muether to cloak their disdain for American revivalism and "New School" Presbyterianism. The descriptions of Whitfield and Finney drip with revulsion. But to their credit, this is not just a matter of taste. Rather, I think one of the real cautionary tales of the book is the way in which "evangelical" ecumenism was just as responsible for the dilution of Reformed theology and identity as "modernism" and liberalism. This sort of analysis was broached earlier in Hart's excellent and under-appreciated book, Deconstructing Evangelicalism--a book that plays a big role in my own discomfort with "evangelicalism" as a descriptor for either a church or a theology. "Evangelicals" in mainline denominations often target the "liberals" or modernists in their midst as the threat to true faith, but then seek to retreat to a kind of pan-conservative, parachurch vagueness as the stand-in for orthodoxy. In Seeking a Better Country, Hart & Muether demonstrate, through historical episodes, how vague appeals to defend "conservative" positions entail losses on the same order as "liberal" agendas for "updating" the faith. Same dilution, different pile.

It's on this score that I think Seeking a Better Country would be instructive reading for those of us in the historically Continental (Dutch) stream of the Reformed tradition, particularly brothers and sisters in the CRC and RCA. Here, too, are heirs of the Reformation that are variously tugged between bland liberal Protestantism and parachurch evangelical pietism. Into this mix, Hart & Muether introduce an important distinction:

In coming to terms with this story, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between the pietists and confessional conservatives. Two groups were at odds in the Presbyterian controversy. The Presbyterians who were either uncomfortable with or opposed to the external forms that made Presbyterianism distinct included evangelicals such as Speer and Erdman, who stressed conversion over doctrine, and liberals such as Coffin, who emphasized religious experience over creeds and confessions (203-204).

Confessional conservatives, on this accounting, represent a third way that, from the perspective of the other parties, are easily confused with their nemeses.

The Challenges of Confessional Subscription. The fragmentation of American Presbyterianism, with the rise of "sectarian" denominations such as the OPC, later hinged on matters of confessional subscription and the status of the Westminster standards (217-218). This reflected earlier distinctions between "New School" and "Old School" Presbyterianisms. But by the end of the book, where OPC strict confessional subscription is implicitly endorsed, Hart & Muether seem to have forgotten a sobering lesson from earlier in the story. In the midst of the New/Old School controversies, the Old School party secured a strict confessional requirement for ordained ministers. But as the case of Samuel Hemphill demonstrated, confessional subscription on its own did not guarantee what it sought to secure, namely, confessional orthodoxy. "Despite unanimity on Hemphill's errors, the case did raise questions about the effectiveness of creedal subscription as a means of maintaining the purity of the church. After all, the wayward pastor had subscribed to the Westminster Standards when ordained in Northern Ireland. Then when admitted to the Synod of Philadelphia he reassured his future pastoral colleagues that he had no reservations about the Westminster Confession and Catechisms" (53). This is a sobering vignette for those of us in denominations and institutions that mean to take confessional subscription seriously; but it also seems to be a lesson lost in later in the book.

I have other quibbles and disagreements with the book. The most significant, and unsurprising, will be my skepticism about their valorizaton of "two kingdoms" theology and the constant talk of the "spirituality" of the church. We're not going to settle that here (it's a focus of some of my forthcoming publications). I would only register that Hart & Muether seem to assume a false dichotomy: that somehow concern for "cultural" witness entails aversion to concern for a "thick" ecclesiology and careful attention to liturgical form and theological specificity. I simply think this is a straw man, which explains why I am often very sympathetic to the 2K focus on the specifics of Reformed liturgical theology but demur from their notion that the church is therefore "spiritual" and a-political.

Related to this is a second concern with the book, namely its portrayal of Southern Presbyterianism. In this telling, Southern Presbyterians represent, for a long while at least, the Old School holdouts within American Presbyterianism. But that "orthodox" Presbyterianism was attended by defenses of slavery and segregation along the way. Hart & Muether's 2K sympathies lead them to constantly criticize "activist" versions of Presbyterianism, whether left or right. The result is a picture of the "spiritual" church that seems to be almost "neutral" with respect to the evils and injustices of "this world." Thus they can describe the "activism" that began to beset Southern Presbyterianism as once again a compromise of the "spirituality" of the church. But in doing so, it's hard to see how this doesn't come off as some kind of aversion to questions of slavery and, later, segregation. Thus Hart & Muether can comment:

A modified Calvinism meant a reexamination of the spirituality of the church. In 1935 the General Assembly redefined the doctrine to expand the church's social witness. The Assembly reasoned that the church could not fulfill its "spiritual function" unless it "deals with those actual evils in the individual life, and in the social order, which threaten man's moral and spiritual development." A socially active church in the South, in turn, could not ignore the problem of race (232).

But given that they have consistently criticized a "socially active church" (as compromising its "spiritual" calling), it's hard not to conclude that they would have thought it virtuous to "ignore" the problem of race. This, it seems to me, is one of the serious outcomes of 2K theologies: a big theological justification for the status quo. (What would a 2K approach have meant for apartheid in South Africa?)

Even with those concerns in mind, I commend the book, perhaps especially to non-Presbyterians. I especially think that my confreres in the CRC and RCA might find in this story a bit of a mirror, and thus a cautionary tale.

On Flash Mobs and Secular Liturgies

A number of folks have been sending me links to the various viral videos that document "flash mob" performances of Handel's Messiah in mall food courts and department stores. Here's a sample:



These are coming to me, I'm guessing, because Desiring the Kingdom opens with an extensive analysis of the "liturgy" of the mall--outlining how the visceral, affective rituals of the mall constitute the worship practices of the consumer gospel, training and forming our desires and longings, and thus actually shaping our identities.

I also criticize North American evangelicalism, particularly in many of its megachurch versions, for unwittingly reducing Jesus to one more commodity precisely because, in the name of "relevance," they've adopted a worship "style" that simply mimics the mall. Since I think the form/content distinction is specious, you can't simply take Gospel "content" and drop it into the "form" of the mall's worship because that form is already loaded and primed to another end or telos. This doesn't make the the church relevant; it reduces Jesus to a commodity.

So what to make of these irruptions of the Messiah in the food court? How should we think about these insertions of the church's music in the mall? Does this represent a little "redemption" of the mall, a reorientation of the mall's liturgies?

I don't think so. For at least a couple of reasons.

First, while we might associate this with "liturgical," high-churchy music, in these flash mob performances it only functions as an event. Liturgies are formative precisely because they are repetitive, shaping us over time within the context of the Christian story as it is "carried" in the practices of worship. Too much of North American evangelicalism already thinks of worship as merely an expressive event, and these flash mob events do nothing to displace that.

Second, these irruptive events do nothing to counter the formative effects and disordered telos of the mall's consumerism. Indeed if anything, they provide comfort to such practices--injecting a little dose of transcendence into the frantic pursuit for stuff, thus leaving the shoppers to happily continue on their way after the event.

The church's worship cannot be reduced to--and should not be confused with--a flash mob. (I'm tempted to make a jab at Barthian notions of revelation as an "event" here, but will resist.) If the liturgies of the mall are going to be countered, it will take the plodding, faithful presence of the Spirit in practices that will never be exciting enough to go viral on YouTube.

Letter to a Young Baptist

Dear Baptist Reviewer,

Thanks very much for your interest in Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition--and for taking the time to read my little tome of missives. I really appreciate that you're willing to engage the book. In many ways, it was written with you in mind. I know we don't cross paths all that often: I inhabit a Reformed world that doesn't tend to intersect with your corner of "Reformedom." I knew the book was a bit of a risk and a wager in that regard: an attempt to build bridges where they either don't exist, or at least strengthen collaboration where such bridges remain rather ramshackle, precarious rope-and-sticks connections.

So I really do appreciate your review, and I'm grateful for the positive things you have to say about the book, despite our obvious differences. I tried hard to write the book in a pastoral tone, with an intentional concern about pedagogy: that's why the letters are arranged in a way to bring the reader slowly through what constitutes a cumulative argument about the shape of the Reformed tradition.

And as you rightly note, there is an argument there: I am admittedly pushing back a bit on the so-called "resurgence of Reformed theology," pressing the issue of just what counts as "Reformed." But please note, I'm not doing so in order to call in the "truly Reformed" police force, but because I genuinely think there are aspects of the Reformed theological heritage that have been underappreciated by the young Baptist crowd enthusiastic about TULIP. Reformed theology is a many-splendored thing, and my goal is not to draw new boundaries and issue official "Reformed identity" cards. (Believe me, if the "truly Reformed" police get called in, you and I are both getting thrown in the paddy wagon.) Rather, my hope was that, by showing you new and unfamiliar sides of the Reformed tradition, you might find treasures that were buried still deeper than the TULIP bulbs.

As I said, this is the argument of the book. And if I had one wish, it would be that your review might have treated the book as an argument. As it stands, your review tends to simply treat this as a matter of taste, a matter of preference. So rather than criticizing the argument, you tend to simply point out where, "as a Baptist," you "disagree." Or you simply signal for your readers where I "cross the line," or where I diverge from what "counts" as Reformed in your orbit.

But let me just say, for the future, that what would be most helpful is not simply pointing out where you disagree--since that's no surprise and doesn't really advance the conversation. What would be interesting to hear is how and why you disagree--and, more importantly, how you would begin to refute the argument the book is trying to make. I would welcome that , not because I love polemics (well, I do a little bit, but I'm not proud of the fact. ;-) but because I think you'll better serve our readers--both of your review and my book--by engaging the argument rather than simply naming "positions."

My hope is that Letters to a Young Calvinist could be the beginning of a conversation, rather than a conversation stopper. And so I write with that goal in mind. I hope you'll receive this letter in that spirit.

Advent blessings, in hope,
Jamie

Win a copy of "Letters to a Young Calvinist"

The good folks at Brazos Press are hosting a little contest. Here's the deal:

1. Visit their Facebook page and "like" Brazos Press.

2. Submit a question that you'd like to ask me about the "new Calvinism" and the resurgence of Reformed theology amongst the young, restless, and Reformed crowd.

3. They'll then choose 3 questions for me to answer, I'll answer the questions in a little video next week, and those three "questioners" will receive a free copy of Letters to a Young Calvinist.

Let the games begin!