A New Kind of Politics? Or the Same Old "Religion?"

Barack Obama's acceptance speech was historic, forthright, even "specific" at points. And as expected, it exhibited his rhetorical gifts, echoing the cadences of MLK's preaching.

That said, what purports to be a "new kind of politics" sure sounds pretty familiar. In particular, the following stood out to me:

• Though Hillary didn't get the nomination, and despite all the blather that this is no longer the party of the Clintons, surely the fact that a big promise of tax cuts was central to his speech is a clear sign that this is a post-Clinton Democratic party which amounts to little more than Republican Lite. Coupled with a focus on family prosperity and an (albeit tempered) reliance on "the market," this continues to show that what passes for "the left" in this country is almost laughable.
• More significantly, despite all the talk of newness and change, the rhetoric and religion of Americanism still sounds the same from where I sit. In language that could have just as easily appeared in Bush's second inaugural or the National Security Strategy of the Bush administration, Obama promised to "restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace and who yearn for a better future." And immediately following this, he ramps it up a notch, associating America with the proverbial "ultimate sacrifice," spilling blood for the flag:
  

  I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.
  
  So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

  Ah, yes, that last point recalls something I noted two years ago in Obama's widely praised "Call to Renewal" speech: that Obama exhibits the same sort of politics as Jim Wallis who, at the end of the day, claims the religion must be "disciplined" by democracy. To put the question starkly: Can any Christian really say that they put their "country" first? Both Republican-speak and Democrat-speak remain committed to the god of Americanism.
• Finally, Obama's speech draws on the borrowed capital of Scripture in exactly the same way as the Religious Right: it invokes powerful, symbolic language of Scripture which refers to the church and transposes it to the United States of America. For instance: the speech closed with a veritable benediction: "Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess." The allusion is to Hebrews 10:23: "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised if faithful." The context makes it clear that this is the church's hope in Christ, but here Obama idolatrously transposes that to the "American promise." This is a "new kind of politics?" Sounds like the same old sort of civil religion we've heard from the Religious Right for years--the same (idolatrous) civil religion of Americanism.
  

Is "the American Dream" a Christian Dream?

I have been--and will remain--relatively quiet about the presidential campaign. (I can muster enthusiasm for municipal politics, and perhaps even state politics, but remain completely cynical about federal politics.) However, my patience for leftish evangelical infatuation with Obama is spilling over a bit this morning (almost equal to my cynicism for an evangelical right that could get behind McCain).

I'll just register one question, given the fact that even Stanley Hauerwas has said, "I'll probably vote for Obama." It seems that the thrust of this week's Democratic Convention--presaged in Michelle Obama's speech last night--will be to emphasize that Barack Obama is a "mainstream American" who has benefited from and lived out "the American dream."

But is the American dream a Christian dream?

The Orwell Diaries

The Orwell Trust, administrators of the Orwell Prize, have created a blog publication of George Orwell's diaries from 1938-1942. They describe the project:

The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.

Orwell’s ‘domestic’ diaries begin on 9th August 1938/2008; his ‘political’ diaries (which are further categorised as ‘Morocco’, ‘Pre-war’ and ‘Wartime’) begin on 7th September 1938/2008.

The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them. Where there are original spelling errors, they are indicated by a ° following the offending word.

An intriguing way into the mind of one of the century's best writers ("political" or otherwise).

On Evangelicalism at Immanent Frame

The Social Science Research Council's blog, The Immanent Frame, has become the arena for discussion of issues related to religion, civil society, and public life, with a particular focus on issues of (post)secularity. They are now hosting an ongoing conversation about evangelicals and evangelicalism, somewhat in light of the shifting political climate in this year of an American presidential election. They recently included a post from my colleague Joel Carpenter on the global complexion of evangelicalism, and today they've posted my own contribution, "Who's Afraid of Sociology?," which makes a theological case for affirming sociological definitions of "evangelical." The conversation will continue with posts from many others.

"Desiring the Kingdom" is Finished!

A big part of my blog silence over this summer stems from the fact that I've been holed up, hermit-like, trying to finish my next book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation. Today I'm rewarding myself with a day off because, thanks be to God, it's done! I submitted the manuscript to my patient and gracious editor this past week. I've been so mired in this for so long, my initial response was "good riddance!" But I hope that when I get the galleys back, I'll have gained sufficient critical distance to make some further improvements. I have an overwhelming sense of the inadequacies of the book; but at other times, when I've gotten feedback from others, I also have a bit of hope that it might be helpful. (This is the first volume of a trilogy, so I have two follow-up volumes to fill in some gaps. This first volume is meant to be an overview of the argument accessible to students and practitioners; the follow-up volumes will be more scholarly monographs.)

The animating impetus of the book is rethinking the shape and practices of Christian education, particularly in Christian colleges and universities in North America (I recognize that these are strange beasts to those in Europe and elsewhere). In particular, I'm pressing the limits, even distortions, that attend "worldview"-talk which tends to now dominate Christian higher education. Such worldviewism, I suggest, continues to reduce Christianity to an intellectual system that can be grapsed apart from the church and is then "taught" as information to be merely transferred from one head to another. In contrast, I argue that Christian discipleship is a matter of formation, not mere information--and that "Christian" education should be fundamentally a matter of shaping our love, our desire, to be oriented to the shape of the kingdom of God. And such formation happens not primarily via the heady, cognitive "lectures" (whether in our Protestant sermon factories or our Christian college classrooms) but through embodied practices that seep into our imagination and get hold of our gut, our heart, our kardia.

In short, I'm suggesting that before we can ever articulate a Christian "worldview," we are engaged in the practices of Christian worship. Drawing on Charles Taylor, I argue that the practices of Christian worship "carry" within them an "understanding" of the world that is better described as a "Christian social imaginary." Thus Christian education needs to be more integrally and intimately connected to the church and her worship then has generally been the case in North American Christian higher education.

There's also a correlate to this analysis: that cultural practices and institutions are not just venues for conveying "messages" or "abstract values;" rather, they constitute liturgies which function as pedagogies of desire bent on getting us to love rival kingdoms, visions of human flourishing that are antithetical to the biblical vision of shalom.

I paste here the Table of Contents which provides a bit of a map of the book, which should appear in the late spring of 2009 from Baker Academic:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Preface

Introduction
Beyond “Perspectives”: Faith and Learning Take Practice

Making the Familiar Strange: A Phenomenology of Cultural Liturgies
The End of Christian Education: From Worldview to Worship (and Back Again)
Picturing Education as Formation in Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier
Elements of a Theology of Culture: Pedagogy, Liturgy, and the Church

PART I. DESIRING, IMAGINATIVE ANIMALS: WE ARE WHAT WE LOVE

Chapter 1
Homo Liturgicus: The Human Person as Lover

From Thinking Things to Liturgical Animals
From Worldviews to Social Imaginaries
From Spheres to Aims: Liturgical Institutions

Chapter 2
Love Takes Practice: Liturgy, Formation, and Counter-Formation

Why Victoria’s In on the Secret: Picturing Discipleship at the Moulin Rouge
“Thick” and “Thin” Practices: Ritual Forces of Cultural Formation
Formation, Mis-Formation, and Counter-Formation: Liturgies Secular and Christian

Chapter 3
Lovers in a Dangerous Time: Cultural Exegesis of “Secular” Liturgies

“Reading” Culture Through the Lens of Worship
Consuming Transcendence: Worship at the Mall
Marketing (as) Evangelism: Picturing the Liturgy of Consumerism in The Persuaders
Sacrificial Violence: The “Military-Entertainment” Complex
Cathedrals of Learning: Liturgies of the University
Picturing the University’s Liturgies in Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons
Apologetic Excursus: The Persisting Witness of Idolatry
Picturing Resistance in 1984

PART II. DESIRING THE KINGDOM: THE PRACTICED SHAPE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Chapter 4
From Worship to Worldview: Christian Worship and the Formation of Desire

The Primacy of Worship to Worldview
The Sacramental Imagination: Resisting Naturalism and Supernaturalism
Picturing the Sacramental Imagination in Graham Greene and Anne Sexton
Excursus: The Shape of Christian Worship

Chapter 5
Practicing (for) the Kingdom: An Exegesis of the Social Imaginary Embedded in Christian Worship

Liturgical Time: Rhythms and Cadences of Hope
Call to Worship: An Invitation to Be Human
God’s Greeting: Hospitality, Community, and Graced Dependence
Baptism: Initiation into a Royal Priesthood/Constitution of a New People
Song: Hymning the Language of the Kingdom
Confession: Brokenness, Grace, Hope
Law: Order, Norms, and Freedom for the Good
The Creed: Situating Belief
Prayer: Vocalizing Desire
Scripture and Sermon: Re-narrating the World
Eucharist: Supper with the King
Offering: Kingdom Economics
Sending: The Great Commission as Cultural Mandate
Worship, Discipleship and Discipline: Practices Beyond Sunday

Chapter 6
A Christian University is for Lovers: The Education of Desire

A New Monasticism for the University: Why Christian Colleges Should Corrupt the Youth
Christian Education Takes Practice: Three Monastic Opportunities
Excursus: Christian Worship as Faculty Development: From Christian Scholars to “Ecclesial” Scholars

Azusa Street as Postmodern Revival @ Azusa Remixed

The Azusa Remixed collaborative blog is now up-and-running with some interesting first posts dealing with global issues, Alister McGrath's take on Pentecostalism, and postmodernism from a pastoral perspective. The blog will be a mix of popular and academic discourse, though all aimed at being thoughtful and reflective. I hope it will become a clearinghouse for engaged discussions of global pentecostalism.

My own initial contribution has just been posted: "Azusa Street as Postmodern Revival." This will be the first of two parts. The second will focus more specifically on pentecostal concerns.

Update: Part 2 is now available.

The Who, Augustine, and American Beauty

In my freshman philosophy course, right after we read Augustine's Confessions, we watch and dissect one of my favorite films of all time: American Beauty. Having read Augustine's Confessions as a proto-existentialist text (I've tried to make this case here [Part I]and here [Part II]), we then read the film as Lester Burnham's "Confessions" of a sort. I have found that if the Confessions remained fuzzy for students, after "reading" it through the lens of American Beauty it often "clicks."

One semester I had a student with hearing impairment, so we watched the film with its subtitles. This turned out to be a revelation since the subtitles also reproduced the lyrics of the eclectic soundtrack for the film, all of which is just bang on for the characters and scenes--and unappreciated if you don't listen closely.

Perhaps my favorite is the song that accompanies Lester Burnham on his final jog, "The Seeker," by the Who. Released in the year of my birth (1970), the song is a quasi-Augustinian anthem and I've found myself hooked on it of late. (OK, OK: Guitar Hero did bring it back to mind.) Here's a decent reproduction available for free on YouTube:

Salman Rushdie in The Guardian

One of our very favourite routines in England was heading out Saturday morning to get "the papers," and returning to curl up with a coffee and the Books section of the Saturday Guardian. Now back in the States, I'm reduced to reading it online (which is a pretty sorry substitute, but I'll take what I can get). A feature this week is an interview with Salman Rushdie. Commenting on fellow novelists like Martin Amis and Ian McEwan who, Hitchens-like, have been ranting about Islam, Rushdie protests:

"I thought the attack on Martin in the Guardian by Ronan Bennett [in an article published last November and condemned by McEwan] was out of order. To say he is racist because of that is wrong. I may not like the things you believe and, by the way, the fact that you believe them makes me think less of you as a person. I may despise you personally for what you believe, but I should be able to say it. Everybody needs to get thicker skins. There is this culture of offence, as though offending someone is the worst thing anyone can do. Again, there is an assumption that our first duty is to be respectful. But what would a respectful cartoon look like? Really boring! You wouldn't publish it. The nature of the form is irreverence and disrespect.

"What pleases me, though, is that at least in Britain there is still the possibility of literary people writing on current affairs. Here [in the US], that's much less true. Who wouldn't have wanted to read Joan Didion's take on Hillary Clinton, or Don DeLillo writing about the US election? In the past, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal could be public intellectuals, but there is much less scope for that now."

Farewell to Generous Orthodoxy's "Think Tank"

Though signs of its demise have been evident for about a year, I'm sad to say goodbye to one of the better blog experiments I've been part of: the Generous Orthodoxy "Think Tank." Launched by some bright and enterprising graduate students--Steve Bush, Keith Johnson, and Myles Werntz, as I recall--the goal of the blog was to encourage conversation amongst (progressive) evangelicals in theology and ministry. Though many of those who committed to be contributors never did so, those who did participate were thoughtful, creative, and forthright. I found the site to be home to some excellent theological conversations that were generally quite accessible to those outside the narrow realm of theological academe. When it was at its best, I thought Think Tank was a great example of how the blogosphere could really be a space for constructive theological debate that moved the conversation forward. I learned much from it and I'll miss it. Thanks, guys, for all your good work.

(While most readers of Generous Orthodoxy "Think Tank" will already know about it, I would highly recommend Ben Myers' "Faith and Theology" blog as an alternative. It is, hands-down, the best theology blog out there.)

While I'll no longer be able to post at Think Tank, I will be part of a new blog venture being launched by Brian LePort: "Azusa Remixed" will bring together a cadre of pentecostal scholars and practitioners to provide "a compendium of global pentecostal theology, praxis, and history." The site officially launches on July 14, 2008.

The End of Death's Reign? Morning Musings on Coldplay

I've been enjoying Coldplay's latest offering, Viva la Vida or Death and All of his Friends. But the lyrics of "Viva la Vida" have been a thorn in my side, mainly because I just haven't been able to determine the referent (not that I think there need to be ONE, ULTIMATE referent--indeed, I'm not entirely sure that Martin knows what the song is referring to). A quick internet skim seems to indicate that this has been a matter of discussion. Here are the lyrics (though they really need to be listened to, not just read):

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
"Now the old king is dead, long live the king"

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once you'd gone there was never
Never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world

It was a wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh, who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know St. Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Ohh...

Hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know St. Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

But then yesterday I had a bit of an interpretive inspiration from a sermon on the resurrection (focusing on the Creed's affirmation, "...the third day he rose again from the dead"). This took me to the end of 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul makes a confident, triumphant, albeit eschatological announcement about something "to come": "When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ' Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?'"

Paul notes that this victory is, in an important sense, still to come: when that transformation (resurrection) takes place, then we will almost be able to taunt death as he does here: "Where, O Death, is your victory now?" But given the resurrection of Christ, there is also a sense in which that eschatological reality--that reality to come--has already broken in upon the world. The first victory has been won. Death's reign has been deposed, though we live in a (horribly long) interim where death is a kind of lame duck king. Thus John Owen, the great Puritan divine, penned a masterful treatise on The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.

This got me thinking: could it be that the track "Viva la Vida" is an anthem in this tradition? That is, could it be that the subject or referent of the song is actually "Death and all of his friends?" Is death perhaps this deposed king who once ruled the world? Granted, it requires a radical faith to not think that death still rules the world. But could "Viva la Vida" be an eschatological hymn, sung in hope, with some intimation that death has been deposed? Indeed, could we hear Coldplay's catchy little tune as a popular, 21st-century rendition of John Donne's great metaphysical poem:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

I hope so. I hope as such.

Orwell: On the Invisible Underbelly of our Consumption

I'm currently finishing a book project in which I briefly discuss the way in which the liturgies of consumerism also feed off the invisible--vast networks of production and distribution which are almost entirely hidden from view, and about which we rarely ask. This brought to mind Orwell's straight-shooting analysis of Western (especially British) culture's dependence upon coal, which also seemed to "magically" appear in the grate of the homes of the middle class. Here are two exemplary passages from The Road to Wigan Pier:

Watching coal-miners at work, you realise momentarily what different universes different people inhabit. Down there where coal is dug it is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without ever hearing about. Probably a majority of people would even prefer not to hear about it. Yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above. Practically everything we do, from eating an ice to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly. For all the arts of peace coal is needed; if war breaks out it is needed all the more. In time of revolution the miner must go on working or the revolution must stop, for revolution as much as reaction needs coal. Whatever may be happening on the surface, the hacking and shovelling have got to continue without a pause, or at any rate without pausing for more than a few weeks at most. In order that Hitler may march the goose-step, that the Pope may denounce Bolshevism, that the cricket crowds may assemble at Lord’s, that the Nancy poets may scratch one another’s backs, coal has got to be forthcoming. But on the whole we are not aware of it; we all know that we ‘must have coal,’ but we seldom or never remember what coal-getting involves. Here am I, sitting writing in front of my comfortable coal fire. It is April but I still need a fire. Once a fortnight the coal cart drives up to the door and men in leather jerkins carry the coal indoors in stout sacks smelling of tar and shoot it clanking into the coal-hole under the stairs. It is only very rarely, when I make a definite mental effort, that I connect this coal with that far-off labour in the mines. [...] You could quite easily drive a car right across the north of England and never once remember that hundreds of feet below the road you are on the miners are hacking at the coal. Yet in a sense it is the miners who are diving your car forward (pp. 29-30).

In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Literary Sup., and the Nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comerade X, author of Marxism for Infants–all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel (pp. 30-31).

Teaching a Calvinist to Dance

Some folks might be interested in my recent article in Christianity Today, "Teaching a Calvinist to Dance," which has just been made available online. (I absolute love Polly Becker's art for the piece, which features a dancing Kuyper!) The gist of this short, non-scholarly little piece is to simply explore how being Reformed and being "pentecostal" are not as antithetical as one might think. In fact, I have always sensed that they can actually fuel one another.

I've already received a number of encouraging emails from folks who've been eager to share that I'm not alone in sensing this confluence. Good to know the tribe is larger than I might have thought!

Criticisms so far have tended to either fault the article for not providing a full dissertation on either the Reformed tradition or Pentecostalism (um...there's only so much you can do in 1500 words, folks), or they have assumed that I'm saying Reformed worship, by being "pentecostalized," should therefore be non-liturgical. Let me just clarify a couple of things:

1. In the space of the CT article, I simply use "Pentecostal" and "charismatic" synonymously since the focus was on the sort of embodied, spontaneous worship that characterizes them. This is not to say that these are simply the same theologically; indeed, I prefer to use the small-p "pentecostal" to describe what is shared by both, and save capital-P "Pentecostalism" for the theological distinctions of classical Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God. I work out this distinction in my "Thinking in Tongues" article in the April issue of First Things, but couldn't get that detailed in the CT piece.

2. Critics seem to work with a binary imagination which assumes that worship must be either rigid liturgical forms or ecstatic emotionalist chaos--and they then assume that I'm some sort of apologist for a worship free-for-all (an assumption hard to maintain for anyone who has read my last couple of books). So I politely refuse the dichotomy. For me, the kingdom of God looks like charismatic Catholic worship, where the Eucharist issues in protestation and ecstatic praise, where historic liturgy makes space for the surprising voice of prophecy, and where This is because I think pentecostal worship is, in its essence, sacramental. And I have long been suggesting that on just this point, the Reformed tradition would do well to remember it is Catholic. (For a high-powered argument along the same lines, see Todd Billings' important book, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift.)

3. Finally, I now realize that what we mean by "Reformed" at Calvin College is quite different than what is meant by the term when it's emphasized by alot of the "young, restless Reformed"-types of which Colin Hansen writes, who seem to me to have a very modernist fixation on doctrine, scholastic debates about TULIP, and a creeping pride about being "intellectuals." (And I gather that many of them are former charismatics who disdain the anti-intellecutalism of their former selves, which they see as inherent to the charismatic tradition. A false assumption.) The funny thing is that I think both the holism of the continental Reformed tradition (Kuyper, Dooyeweerd) and the holism of pentecostal/charismatic experience counter the false intellectualISM of such scholastic versions of being Reformed. But being anti-intellectualIST is not the same as being anti-intellectual.

These matters and more will be more fully developed in the book I'll complete this summer, Thinking in Tongues: Elements of a Pentecostal Worldview, which will appear next year from Eerdmans.

Remember Burma

If you are looking for a way to give to cyclone relief in Burma(Myanmar), I would encourage you to consider giving through the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, which has excellent local contacts in the country and neighboring Thailand. Monies are channeled to trusted local sources who then feed that money into local economies in order to purchase supplies. A trusted place to give. Just FYI.

Neoconservatives, New Conservatives, and Old Tories

David Brooks notes that last week's elections here in England--which included Tory Boris Johnson being elected as Mayor of London--signals a shift in global conservatism. Britain, he suggests, is home to a new breed of conservative which has left Thatcherite econo-centrism behind, while American neoconservatism keeps looking for another Reagan. As he puts it:

That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.” In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”

It's true that British Tories are "social" conservatives, without that spiralling into the narrow, single-issue politics it does in the States, fixated on abortion or gay marriage. But embedded here is an interesting point--which gets to the heart of what I think is wrong even with "new" conservatism, or at least what I think signals a fundamental tension for any Christian who would entertain conservativism. Listen to how Brooks continues:

This has led to a lot of talk about community, relationships, civic engagement and social responsibility. Danny Kruger, a special adviser to Cameron, wrote a much-discussed pamphlet, “On Fraternity.” These conservatives are not trying to improve the souls of citizens. They’re trying to use government to foster dense social bonds. (emphasis added)

These conservatives "are not trying to improve the souls of citizens." Why that proviso? Behind that qualification is the assumption that it would be problematic if they were trying to "improve souls." In other words, it sounds like not even these "new" conservatives will entertain a program of character formation. That would be anathema. Why? Because if you scratch even these new conservatives deep enough, you find a classical liberal underneath--an heir of Locke who thinks each of us is the master of our own fate, captain of our own souls, autonomous lords of our own realm of freedom--so anybody else better keep their hands off.

Or, to put it otherwise, neither neoconservatives nor Cameron's "new" conservatives are willing to be "Old Tories" of the sort Ruskin extolled, who were precisely concerned with the formation of character, the improvement of souls. Indeed, it's precisely what he decried in the industrialized wastelands of his own time, easily transposed to the commercialized wastelands of our own:

Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,--sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is—we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages ("The Nature of the Gothic," in Stones of Venice).

But then my discomfort is not with formation per se--that is, it's not that I have some liberal worry about others imposing on my autonomy. Rather, I admit that I'm not certain I want to trust the task of formation to the state. And thus, once again, the uneasy relationship of conservativism and Christianity.

An Evangelical Manifesto?

[I'm here just mirroring my original post at Generous Orthodoxy.]

So what do folks make of the recently unveiled "Evangelical Manifesto" (download the pdf)? On the one hand, I think it is in the spirit of a "generous" orthodoxy of the sort that motivated this blog from its inception. In general, I think it rightly criticizes trends on both left and right, and problems both internal to evangelicalism as well as external challenges (e.g., the public policy impact if the "new atheism" gained a foothold). Most of the time, I thought it sounds like David Wells or Don Carson--that is, sort of a grumpy Reformed take on evangelical "therapies" of various persuasions--but this certainly isn't the only voice.

On the other hand, I find it a strange document. Now, some of the steering committee and charter signatories include some of my friends, whom I respect a great deal. So I'm not registering any radical dissent. But I found myself struck by several things while reading it:

1. Well, there's that whole problem of knowing just what "evangelical" means (or, as they insist in the only footnote, Evangelical--as if evangelicalism has the weight of Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Orthodoxy). I have to confess that I find the term less and less helpful. And while this document demands that it be defined "theologically" (and not "sociologically"), I find the defintions offered here (e.g., believing in Jesus) a bit fuzzy. In short, I'm not sure why the authors are so convinced that "the term is important" (p. 2). For who? For what?

2. Related to (1), I always get a bit nervous when folks begin emphasizing evangelical "identity" (and this document explicitly takes up such identity politics, despite the "grave danger" [p. 4]). Why does the concern to assert "evangelical" (sorry, Evangelical) identity always feel like an exercise in boundary-drawing with an ominous sense that Catholic-bashing is just around the corner? Now, I'm not saying that this document does this--and many of these signatories are, in fact, involved in Catholic-evangelical dialogues. But you can see that this issue is always lurking around such projects when they assert, "Our purpose is not to attack or to exclude" (p. 5). Hmmm...methinks thou doth protest too much? I guess my question is: what does the term "Evangelical" get you that the term "Catholic" doesn't? When folks give me answers to that question, I find they either offer me something I don't want, or proffer some caricatured understanding of the Catholic tradition. Or, to put it otherwise, when they list the "distinctives" of evangelicalism (pp. 5-6), is there anything on there that Catholics wouldn't endorse? If someone says "sola Scriptura," then we've got other problems (see [3] below).

3. I guess what I was most surprised to see--given the theological heavyweights behind this--is what I can only describe as a rather naive hermeneutic. Take two examples: First, after affirming that "Evangelicals adhere fully to the Christian faith expressed in the historic creeds of the great ecumenical councils" (though--dirty little secret--vast swaths of evangelicals are rabidly anti-creedal), the Manifesto then asserts: "We have no supreme leader [why does this sound like some B-grade martian movie?], and neither creeds nor tradition are ultimately decisive for us. Jesus Christ and his written word, the Holy Scriptures, are our supreme authority" (p. 7). Seriously? Are we really entertaining a notion that Evangelicals are those Christians who have some sort of pristine, tradition-free access to "what Jesus really said"? I thought F.F. Bruce had debunked this sort of naive Scripture/tradition distinction for evangelicals years ago. As if there isn't a massive and complex evangelical tradition of reading Scripture (for more on this, see chapter 5 of my Fall of Interpretation). Second, in the same vein, the Manifesto claims that "Evangelicalism goes back directly to Jesus and the Scriptures." Really? C'mon.

4. I think the Manifesto is at its best when its critical finger points backwards at evangelicalism itself (pp. 11ff), for instance when it chides evangelicals who have "become cheerleaders for those in power and the naive sycophants of the powerful and the rich" (p. 13). So, too, when it points beyond single-platform politics of abortion or marriage and raises the issue of "conflict" (why not just say "war?"), racism, corruption, poverty," and more (p. 14). It is interesting to note what's not named in here though: e.g., militarism? capitalism? nationalism?

5. The document sort of goes "Greg Boyd" in a final section where it laments the error of "politicizing" faith, either on the right or the left. This, of course, sounds clear enough, until you start to ask just what "politicize" means--indeed, what does "politics" and "the political" refer to here? Just the machinations of the state? When they say that "Evangelicals see it as our duty to engage with politics" (p. 15--really, by the way? A duty? Of what sort? On what basis?), it seems to me that they mean evangelicals have a duty to participate in the machinations of the given state. Maybe. But I would just register that it's not quite that easy; that's not the only way to "be political." I always find evangelical discussions on these matters are quite content to let "politics" function as a black box. It seems to me that they might mean a "party-izing" of the faith. But I'm worried that lurking in there is actually some sense that "politics" is "outside" faith, and then we have to figure out how to get "faith" into connection with politics. And that would seem to assume that the faith is not "political" in itself, which I think would be another naive assumption.

6. Finally, when I got to the end, I kept hoping that I would figure out just why this Manifesto was released. Why now? What's the hook? On this point, I remain a bit befuddled.

Do we need an "Evangelical" Manifesto? Is it "important" to "keep the term?" I remain unconvinced, particularly if keeping the "distinctives" of "Evangelical" means buying into some rather simplistic hermeneutical moves. And at the end of the day, I would rather be part of a Manifesto that can be affirmed by "mere" Nicene Christians rather than "Evangelicals" alone.

Your turn.

Dreaming of Kings with Ruskin

I recently had the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin on Lake Coniston. It was a very moving experience, and as a keepsake, I bought a copy of the Everyman's Library edition of his autobiography, Praeterita. It opens with a fabulous meditation on just the sort of Toryism I've hinted at here (a conservativism never dreamed of by the nouveau riche neocons, and a Toryism that was socialist). Enjoy these snippets:

I am, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school; --Walter Scott's school, that is to say, and Homer's. I name these two out of the numberless great Tory writers, because they were my own two masters. [...] From my own chosen masters, then, Scott and Homer, I learned the Toryism which my best after-thought has only served to confirm. That is to say, a most sincere love of kings, and dislike of everybody who attempted to disobey them.

He then goes on to note the distance between the kings dreamed of by Scott, and what passes for kingship today (i.e., in his own day--how much more [or rather, less] today). Then this gem:

It was probably much happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle and having nothing to be astonished at; but, at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable, to pull Warwick Castle down. And at this day, though I have kind invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles.

He then confesses to dreams of restoration and resurrection:

As I grew wiser, the desire for sweet pippins instead of bitter ones, and Living Kings instead of dead ones, appeared to me rational as well as romantic; and gradually it has become the main purpose of my life to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see Kings...

...to which he appends this note:

The St. George's Company [a guild founded by Ruskin] was founded for the promotion of agricultural instead of town life: and my only hope of prosperity for England, or any other country, in whatever life they lead, is in their discovering and obeying men capable of Kinghood.

Medievalism Makes the New York Times

I once again find myself easily singing along with David Brooks in today's column in which he extols folks like C.S. Lewis and John Ruskin. In the face of the de-humanization of industrialization and its dis-enchantment of the world, they rejected chronological snobbery and looked back to the medieval imagination for hints of an antidote. As globalization and political cynicism continue to disenchant the world even further, Brooks remarks:

Writers like C. S. Lewis and John Ruskin seized on medieval culture as an antidote to industrialism — to mass manufacturing, secularization and urbanization. Without turning into an Arthurian cultist, it’s nice to look up from the latest YouTube campaign moment and imagine a sky populated with creatures, symbols and tales.

In fact, I make a similar case in my introduction to a new book, After Modernity? Secularity, Globalization, and the Re-enchantment of the World--though I draw on Tolkien's re-enchantment of the world that borders on a sort of paganism (which any robust theology of creation will flirt with). As Zizek once commented, only a Christian like Tolkien could have created such a wonderfully pagan world.

Night Visions from The Guardian

I'm worried that it's a tad voyeuristic, but I just love photographic features like The Guardian's series on "Writer's Rooms." And this past weekend they published a similar piece called "Night Visions" that provided a peek at some famous folks nighstands and bedside tables. Of course, one never knows how artificial these snapshots are, but intriguing nonetheless.

Comment Interview

Comment magazine has been posting a series of interviews with authors, artists, and activists--in the spirit of the Paris Review and Sports Illustrated. This includes a photo and commentary on the author/artist's workspace (akin to the Guardian's similar tradition on "Writer's Rooms"). Today Comment has posted a Q&A with me for those who might be interested. Here's a peek at my workspace:

Stark's "Creative" History

[I was asked to respond to a paper from the upcoming Society for Pentecostal Studies/Wesleyan Theological Society conference and thought I'd post an edited version here. The paper, by Thomas Bridges, engages Rodney Stark's book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.]

I’m sorry that I’m unable to be there in person to engage Thomas Bridges’ reading of Rodney Stark’s—shall we way—“creative” book. I suppose if I have a question for Bridges, it’s simply this: why waste your time on Stark’s ideological hack job of both Christianity and history?

That, however, does not make for much of a conversation. So let me unpack this a bit. I think Bridges is absolutely right to name Stark’s position for what it is: pure, unadulterated Pelagianism marshaled for the sake of the worship of Mammon, subservient to the ersatz pope of American civil religion—namely, the unquestioned “market” which seems to speak ex cathedra, and which—like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor—is not even going to let Jesus spoil the capitalist party. (“Sell all you have and give to the poor” be damned! According to Stark, Jesus was really interested in increasing our GDP—it just took 1500 years for so-called “Christians” to figure this out.)

Thus we get several gems of “creative” history that make Hayden White look like a conservative. For instance, we’re told that capitalism thrived in the Middle Ages. Indeed, not only did it flourish in medieval Christendom more generally, its most celebrated form is located, according to Stark, in the monasteries. Who needed The Wealth of Nations? Apparently the Rule of St. Benedict would have been enough, containing capitalism in nuce—except for those bothersome little bits about vows of poverty, having property in common, and the denouncement of avarice. But other than that…

Only a “creative” historian like Stark could claim that “[u]nlike Plato’s Republic, which focuses on the polis, and unlike other religions and societies, which focus on group identities, for Christianity ‘the individual citizen […] was the focus” (cited by Bridges, pp. 4-5). Indeed, Stark takes the Gospel to be asserting that “I am the master of my fate” (ibid.).

What kind of American, Baptist history is this? Is there something in the water down there in Texas? This is a truly remarkable eisegesis of the historical record, reading the American valorization of individual autonomy and libertarian freedom back into the pre-modern church in ways that almost boggle the imagination. Even quite apart from the clearly organic, communitarian construction of not only monasteries but feudal life more generally in medieval Christendom, one finds in Scripture itself a picture of the community as a body whose good trumps that of the individual (Phil. 2:1-11), generating an economic organization that subsumes private property to a common purse (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-5:10). And the monastic rules (whether of Benedict, Augustine, or others) were intent on curbing self-interest and “private” concern through devotion to a community that was very much modeled as a polis much more akin to Plato and Aristotle’s communitarian vision than the modern Enlightenment atomism that Stark seems to cherish.

But here we have neither time nor space to contest Stark’s history point by point. And Bridges has already made a start of that, and also rightly raised constructive theological problems with the account. I can’t add to his suggestions. Instead, I want to ask: in light of how ludicrous Stark’s reading is, how does he get away with this? Who on earth could see this as a remotely viable reading of Christian history before the Reformation? And why are some so prone to eat it up (cue some fawning appraisal from The National Review)?

Here I would suggest that this sort of Whiggish history finds an audience ready and waiting—like the work of Max Stackhouse—because it is ultimately comforting and shores up the status quo for American Christians. In addition, I think the picture of baptized capitalism that we get from folks like Stark, Stackhouse, Novak, and others, operates on the basis of a lack of nuance.

In particular, I think they fail to make a crucial distinction: between “economics” and “capitalism.” Or, to put it conversely, these accounts—which pride themselves on being “realistic”—assume an identification between economics and capitalism. So, for them, to be against capitalism is a bit like being against food, clothing, and shelter. Economic transactions are an essential and constitutive feature of human society; therefore, anyone who opposes capitalism is living in some ridiculous ivory tower of abstraction, unable to face up to the cold, hard reality of economic exchange. Simply collapsing capitalism with economics “as such” also means that whenever these folks see commerce and exchange happening, they think they’re seeing capitalism at work (which is the only possible way to make any sense of Stark’s claim that medieval monasteries were hotbeds of capitalism).

But why should we simply identify economics with capitalism? I think this shows a significant lack of imagination and a real failure of theoretical nuance. I think Stark and his ilk are absolutely right that economic exchange and commerce are an essential (and good!) aspect of human society. However, capitalism is one particular configuration of the economic, and the market is one particular configuration of commerce. I would argue that these configurations are quite antithetical to the Gospel (which is itself a renewal of the good order of creation). But I’m not thereby rejecting economics or exchange as such. Rather, it is a matter of imagining economics and commerce otherwise, which is exactly the sort of thing we see in the early church (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-5:10) and in the monastic communities. Stark’s creative, ideological history lacks just this distinction. Bridges has rightly pointed out the antithesis, and invites us to imagine a very different economy.