Permission to Write: Thanks to DFW

The book from my summer reading that probably most affected me was David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace. While Lipsky's voice is a bit irritating, and while the book feels like a sort of theft on Lipsky's part, the transcript of a 5-day of conversation with Wallace is riveting. I read this after working through a number of stories in Oblivion ("Good Old Neon" is incredible), as well as his non-fiction (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster) and I've now noticed this:

Reading DFW gives me a sense of permission to write in a way that sounds like the voice in my head.

I don't know if that's a good thing, objectively speaking. It won't make me any friends with James Wood & Co. But I have found this to be liberating, energizing, and just generally encouraging. I feel like Wallace has loosened my tongue in a way, and I'm grateful.

Sept. 30: "On the Very Idea of Pentecostal Philosophy"

The Eerdmans Bookstore here in Grand Rapids will be hosting an evening event to celebrate the publication of Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy:

"On the Very Idea of a Pentecostal Philosophy"

7:00pm, Eerdmans Bookstore, 2140 Oak Industrial Drive NE, Grand Rapids, MI

Q &A, refreshments and book signing to follow.

Hope to see you there!

Still Thinking About Grad School?

Keith DeRose has some alternative advice about going to grad school, contra the "Just-don't-go" school. Worth a read. See my comments there.

On the Facebook

Well, I've taken the plunge: I'm on Facebook. While my publisher has been encouraging me to do this for a while, what pushed me over the edge was closer to home: our oldest son has gone to college, and the low-grade mourning I've suffered in his absence was just enough to cloud my faculties and enable me to sign-up as an attempt to stay in touch with him.

I'm hoping the kids will give me some tutorials over the weekend, because right now I'm pretty much completely lost--roaming around clicking, sharing, liking, friending without direction or discretion. I suspect I'll always feel more comfortable in the more static, sequestered environs of the blogosphere.

Letters to a Young Calvinist

In a couple of weeks I expect to finally get my hands on a copy of my new book, Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition. My most "popular" book to date (nary a footnote to be found!), it's a little collection of epistles written to a young friend (and my younger self) who's caught a taste of the Reformed tradition through the "Calvinism" of the young, restless, and Reformed movement. And its an invitation to discover the wide, deep riches of the Reformed tradition--to appreciate that this is a big house with many rooms.

Brazos, as usual, has done a great job with the design, and I'm hopeful that this might find readers beyond academic environs. I'm working on a bit of a "book tour," hoping to take advantage of some engagements that will already put me in Seattle, Minneapolis, and Manhattan this coming year, along with an author event here in Grand Rapids. (If you think there might be interest in a reading/talk/signing in your area, let me know and we'll see what we could do.) I'm also hoping to develop a webpage of resources connected to the book, and even toying with the idea of joining Facebook (though I hope my "better angels" will win out on that one).

Here are some of the endorsements for the book:

"My friend Jamie Smith is never boring. Most of the time I cheered 'Amen!' as I read these letters, but even when I disagreed, I appreciated Jamie's model of charity and humility as well as conviction. In the midst of all the encouraging energy of the 'New Calvinism' movement, it is also important to say that being Reformed is more than TULIP. These are rewarding and creatively written letters for all of us."--Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology, Westminster Seminary California

"I wish there had been a Jamie Smith to write letters like these to me when I was a young Calvinist. But, hey, I'm glad to get them today! This is a wise and delightfully written portrayal of a robust Calvinism for the twenty-first century."--Richard J. Mouw, president and professor of Christian philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Although Letters to a Young Calvinist may not please everyone in the Reformed camp (it is a big and diverse family after all), Jamie Smith has done a fabulous job articulating a winsome and engaging account of the depth, splendor, and joy of the Reformed tradition. I found much of what I hold dear about Calvinism reaffirmed in these interesting letters and at the same time was delighted to learn new insights that got me excited about the tradition all over again. I hope this book introduces a whole new generation to the richness of the Reformed understanding of the faith."--Jim Belcher, author, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional

"James K. A. Smith winsomely steps into one of the most fascinating conversations in contemporary evangelicalism--the surprising resurgence of Calvinism among younger Christians. Letters to a Young Calvinist is thoughtful, nuanced, provocative, relational, and informed. No one will agree with everything here, but what I appreciated most was Smith's careful insistence that there's much more to being theologically Reformed than believing in the famous (and fabulous!) five points of Calvinism. He shows that the Reformed tradition is covenantal and cosmic in scope, big and bright in scale, doctrinal and devotional in spirit. A thoroughly engaging read!"--Tullian Tchividjian, pastor, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderdale, FL.; author, Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels

"Letters to a Young Calvinist is a splendid book that speaks to both head and heart, counseling the 'young, restless, and Reformed' toward growth into a wider and deeper Reformed tradition. . . . [T]he journey with Smith into the spacious and expansive Reformed tradition is well worth the ride. This wise and witty book is a delight to read!"--J. Todd Billings, associate professor of Reformed theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan

So You Want to Go to Grad School: Friends & Family

I should clarify one assumption: I assume that if you're writing to me, then you probably have some investment in being a Christian scholar--that in some way your sense of a calling to this vocation is bound up with your faith. That creates all sorts of unique challenges and opportunities, and there are, of course, a host of questions about the nature of "Christian scholarship." I'm not going to wade into those issues here.

Instead, I want to simply emphasize a very practical matter: If you are going to graduate school in order to pursue the vocation of a Christian scholar, there are some very simple but crucially important non-academic things you need to do.

First, you need to find a solid local congregation and commit to it. Resist the temptation to think you're "too busy" for church. Or "too smart" for church. You're not. And the sooner you learn that, the better. The academic life can easily become all-consuming, especially if it's laden with a sense of Christian vocation. It can too easily swallow up everything in its path and become an idol. It's way too easy to sequester yourself in a world that is, in many ways, weird and distorted. Your immersion in a local congregation will be its own sort of discipline: it will keep you tethered to the so-called "real world." And don't just be there as a cynical critic, looking down your nose at the ignoramuses around you. Despite all the knowledge you're acquiring, there are plumbers and school teachers and stay-at-home moms in that congregation that have wisdom you'll never have. Plus, if you're called to be a Christian scholar, in some sense you are called to be a servant. The local congregation is where you learn how to do that.

Second, maintain friendships outside the academy. This is especially true if you are married (and perhaps have children). While I was in my PhD program, our family was part of a small group (with folks who were not academics) that met every Friday night for a shared meal and Bible study, with little kids running around our apartment and young parents frazzled and exhausted, but all in this together. This group was, without question, an absolute lifeline for us during what can be a very difficult time. We also had dear friends who lived nearby and we fostered rituals that prevented us from spiraling inward. All of this was rooting; it took me out of myself; it regularly and persistently inserted me in a world where "my work" really wasn't all that important. And it was a godsend.

Third, if you are married, and especially if you have children, graduate education is going to be one of the single most powerful threats to your marriage. It tends to induce a degree of poverty, and economic issues are always sources of deep tension, especially in young marriages. Graduate education also has the possibility of becoming a mistress, a seductress (a mister? a seducer? if you're woman). You are going to be immersed in a world that is largely foreign and closed to your spouse--and that world will want all of you. And you need to resist--not in the typical evangelical fashion of thinking you'll just muster the willpower and wherewithal to say "no." No, what you need are systems and structures and rhythms that won't let that happen. That's what the first two points are aimed at. To them I would add one more exhortation: attach yourself to an older couple in your congregation who can be mentors, who don't operate with any myths about marriage, who know all the challenges of raising kids, and who are willing to listen. In a dream world, you might even find a Christian professor at your university who can model this, since they'll be familiar with the unique challenges of the academic life. But in any case, look for some folks who are a generation ahead of you and can be a source of wisdom and encouragement.

You are not a scholar first. (I'm talking to my younger self here.) You are called first to be a friend, a disciple, a spouse, a parent. The sooner you can learn to "situate" and relativize your scholarly vocation, the sooner you'll be able to receive it with gladness.

How (Not) to Change the World: On James Davison Hunter

The Other Journal has just published my longish review essay, "How (Not) to Change the World," on James Davison Hunter's important new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.

In a few days they'll follow up by publishing an interview I conducted with Hunter about his book and these issues.

So You Want to Go to Grad School: Money

Let's get down to the nitty-gritty: how are you going to pay for graduate school? Well, that's easy: you're not.

Seriously.

Here's the baseline advice I tell my students: do not go into debt for graduate study. At least not a doctoral program in philosophy, theology, or literature. There might be a calculus in which taking on debt makes sense for a law degree, an MBA, etc. But in the fields we're talking about, you should not be taking out loans to do a PhD.

In other words, if you do not get a "full ride" to a PhD program--that is, if you don't get full tuition remission plus an assistantship (stipend)--then the Lord is telling you something. I really mean that. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh or callous. But if you're trying to discern your future, and you're admitted to a program but don't receive funding (which probably only happens at lower tier schools anyway), that's the Spirit speaking to you loudly and clearly. I'm not saying that will be easy news to receive. But take a breath, step back, and hear it for what it is.

Now, if you do get accepted to multiple places with funding (congratulations!), then the next thing you have to think about is cost of living, especially if you're going to grad school with a family--which, by the way, is possible: Just for the record, we got married after my freshman year. (I'm not saying I recommend this--but we just celebrated our 20th anniversary last week.) We had our first child 2 years later while I was still an undergraduate. We had our second while I was doing my master's degree. And we had two children while I was in my PhD program. It wasn't easy, but it is possible.

Anyway, if you have the luxury of choosing between programs, you need to consider where you want to live, and how much it costs to live there (proximity to family support networks are also a legitimate concern when considering location). For example, imagine you get into Yale and Notre Dame; while the Eastern seaboard certainly has its attractions, a stipend goes a long way in South Bend, Indiana. Those are things to think about. Scholars are not immaterial minds: we, too, have bodies and need to consider material realities. While the academic life--especially grad school--requires a kind of vow of poverty, you can also make decisions to be the best possible steward of the resources provided.

Next time: Friends & family.

So You Want to Go to Grad School: Choosing Schools (2)

Last time I discussed choosing schools on the theological end of the spectrum. But the list would be different if we were talking about continental philosophy of religion, as opposed to philosophical theology. In that case, you'd want to work within a philosophy department so that your disciplinary formation was in the philosophical canon, and so that you'd emerge able to teach PHIL 101 rather than THEO 101. However, I should note a caution here: if you're interested in something like "continental philosophy of religion," that will have already put you outside of the pale of the dominant sensibility in North American philosophy ("analytic" philosophy). So that often means that programs which are hospitable to continental philosophy of religion are generally not going to be high-ranked programs according to the received criteria (i.e., The Leiter Report). Now, that's not a huge issue if you're hoping to teach at a smaller institution. But it does pose a bit of a challenge if you had aspirations of doing continental philosophy of religion in, say, Yale's philosophy department. That ain't gonna happen. But that's also not the end of the world.

If you're interested in pursuing continental philosophy of religion, I would advise you to consider two things: (1) Don't specialize in philosophy of religion. My colleagues in analytic philosophy of religion counsel the same thing. In the guild's parlance, you'd want philosophy of religion to be an AOC (area of competence) not an AOS (area of specialization). Even if it's your real passion, you need to prove your mettle and master some other subdiscipline like French phenomenology or ethics or hermeneutics. (2) Do your doctoral work in a "pluralist" program that also emphasizes the history of philosophy. That is, don't go to a program that has a continental axe to grind, constantly railing against analytic philosophy. This will only further sequester you from the mainstream in your discipline. Instead, look for programs that are hospitable to continental voices but also offer you an opportunity to receive training in the core of analytic philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics) and a solid foundation in the history of philosophy. And ideally it would also be a place that would give you training in pragmatism. I think the most exciting future of the discipline involves new, emerging conversations happening across old boundaries and divisions, between continental and analytic schools of thought. I think it's especially important for Christian philosophers to be building such bridges, and that requires a generous, well-rounded program. (I discuss some more issues of formation in my article, "Continental Philosophy of Religion: Prescriptions for a Healthy Subdiscipline."

With those concerns in mind, let me mention a few philosophy departments I'd recommend for consideration:

• Notre Dame: While this is a bastion of analytic philosophy of religion, it's also a place where you can receive solid training in continental sources along with excellent foundations in the history of philosophy, especially medieval thought. ND is also home to the Center for Philosophy of Religion under the energetic new leadership of Mike Rea.
• Fordham University: Longtime home to Merold Westphal, one of the doyens of continental philosophy of religion, Fordham is another one of those "pluralist" departments I spoke of.
• University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought: A fascinating program that could get you a job in a philosophy department (which would be harder to do with a degree from the div school). Plus, it's Chicago: one of the great American cities.
  
• Syracuse University: Syracuse's Philosophy Department was home to William Alston, a giant in analytic philosophy of religion, but it has also historically been home to some folks working on Kant, Heidegger, French thought, and feminism. John Caputo has had a cross-appointment in Religion and Philosophy, though he will be retiring at the end of this year, so folks should watch for who will be appointed to replace him. But Syracuse is worth a look. But do note that I'm suggesting that if you want to do philosophy of religion, then you should consider the Syracuse Philosophy Department and lean out into resources in the Religion department as you're able.
  
• Southern Illinois University Carbondale: Here's a little sleeper that I recommend to students if you're open to a "marginal" program--which is fine if your goal is to teach at a smaller college. I think this is a very interesting department, with excellent resources in pragmatism and phenomenology (including Anthony Steinbock, who I think is one of the most interesting scholars in English-speaking phenomenology).
• Philosophy Program, Baylor University: While this program is analytic at its heart, it's also a generous, pluralist place that can make room for philosophy of religion "with a continental twist" (I know a student who just completed a dissertation on Jean-Luc Marion). You will also find a pretty stellar cadre of scholars who are intentionally Christian. There are also solid resources in the Religion department at Baylor. This is a great place to consider especially if you feel your vocation is to a smaller, Christian liberal arts college.
  

I'm no doubt forgetting some, but there's a little sample to get you started.

Let me close with two other considerations about where to study:

First, British programs: obviously there are some very interesting places to study philosophical theology/continental philosophy of religion in the UK (Nottingham, Cambridge, University of Manchester, etc.). Just two concerns to keep in mind: (1) These programs are incredibly expensive and often don't have the funding support of North American programs [I'll talk about money in the next post]; (2) the nature of British postgraduate education encourages narrow and deep research, but doesn't always provide broad, disciplinary familiarity with the canon. So while UK PhDs can teach incredible upper-level seminars in their speciality, they're not always equipped to teach 101. They also don't tend to provide as many opportunities to teach while in graduate school, and thus UK doctoral students aren't developing a classroom repertoire. I think that becomes a handicap when interviewing at American colleges and universities.

Second, remember Canadian universities: you might consider some of the excellent resources north of the border, particularly at the University of Toronto (and the sprawling Toronto School of Theology), as well as McGill University in Montreal (for either continental philosophy or theology), McMaster University (continental philosophy), or the University of Guelph (for continental philosophy).

Next time: A Supplement on Choosing Schools in Philosophical Theology, then Money.

Choosing Schools (Philosophical Theology): Supplement

Several folks provided some helpful, extensive responses to my post on schools to consider for graduate study in philosophical theology. I thought I would post them here as a bit of a supplement (though please note: I'm not about to get into the Brian-Leiter-ranking business, and as I noted in the post, I'm not even attempting to be comprehensive):

From Sean Larsen, Duke:
You might want to mention the difference between PhD and ThD programs at Duke. The ThD program is housed in the divinity school. I think they admit 9 or 10 a year. The funding was last around 13,500 for 4 years. The PhD program is housed in the Graduate School. There is one admit a year for Theology and Ethics. All those currently active in the PhD program have gone to top tier master's programs (Yale, Chicago, Duke). The PhD program gives 5 years of funding (20,000 a year + health insurance) and often, if GRE scores are high enough to put them in the top 10% of PhD admits for the university, there's additional money. When I was applying, Duke and Yale relied most heavily on GRE scores of all the schools you listed. The ThD is currently attracting very high quality people and has room for a wide variety of intellectual projects. Some are approximating more traditional degrees (NT, OT, Theology, American Christianity, though technically there are no specified disciplinary boundaries), others more practical disciplines (Church Leadership, Evangelism, Missions), and some variations on more traditional topics (there is a theology and the arts group that works with Jeremy Begbie). The main formal difference between the programs besides the housing of the degree and the funding is that PhD students have an external minor requirement for exams and they have four comprehensive exams. ThD students, though they can and sometimes do have exam committee members from outside the divinity school, needn't, and they have three comprehensive exams. So far, the ThD students are being placed well (Baylor for Missions, Belmont for spirituality, and Fuller for NT).

Also, Duke and UNC function as a single institution in many ways. One can take up to half one's classes at the other school. This helps Duke because UNC has one of the best Phil. Depts around. UNC just hired Bob and Marilyn Adams, and I know that Marilyn is open to working with Duke theology students and fills an important gap in late medieval philosophy and theology that is open at Duke.

From Keith DeRose, Yale:

The main thing I'd point out about YDS is that they don't have a PhD program; just MA: they offer MDiv, mostly for those going on to do "churchy" work, and for the more academically inclined (& so more relevant to your post), Master of Arts in Religion (MAR). MAR students are mostly looking to move on to PhD programs. They can pick from a number of concentrations, listed on this page, which also has other info about the program: http://www.yale.edu/divinity/adm/MAR.shtml#philtheol I mostly encounter those in either "Philosophical Theology & Philosophy of Religion" or "Ethics". Many of the students I work with go on to PhD programs in philosophy, though YDS students (the ones I don't work with as much) go on to other programs, like in theology or religious studies. In philosophy (more than many other areas, I understand), the norm seems to be for students just having earned their undergrad degree to go straight into PhD programs. But some aren't ready -- perhaps because they weren't philosophy majors, or didn't have enough philosophy classes, or, in many cases that end up at the YDS program, because they went to a smallish Christian college that (unlike Calvin!) didn't have a very big, or very with-it philosophy program. Many of these use students use terminal MA programs as stepping stones to get into good PhD programs. Mostly those prospective philosophers from Christian colleges are interested in the program at YDS, and usually end up in the Philosophy of Religion or the Ethics concentration. In fact, I don't think the YDS program makes sense for those looking to go on philosophy PhD programs unless they do have a substantial interest in theology, because, although they may end up taking about half of their courses with us (the Yale Phil. dept.), half of their courses will also be non-phil., taken at YDS. Many (though certainly not all) the YDS students in my seminars are looking to go on mainly in analytic philosophy, but I think these programs also work well for those with more of a "continental twist," as you put it. But, again, this is all MA program stuff, mainly preparation to go to PhD programs.

Those looking for PhD programs at Yale in philosophical theology want to apply to the Yale Graduate School, in either philosophy [ http://www.yale.edu/philos/ ] or religious studies [
http://www.yale.edu/religiousstudies/ ]. These programs are pretty tough to get into, but, on the upside, give very good financial support to those who do get in. (Like most Masters programs, I don't think the programs at YDS given nearly as good financial aid). Here's what's on the phil. page [ http://www.yale.edu/philos/grad.html ], describing the financial support at the Yale Graduate School programs:

Financial Aid: Students are normally given at least five years of full support -- tuition, plus stipend, plus health care -- in the form of non-teaching fellowships for the first two years and the fifth (or sixth) year, and teaching fellowships for the third and fourth year. For 2008-09, the stipend is $25,500 for both teaching and non-teaching fellowships. In the past five years, the stipends have increased every year for both incoming and current students. This great mix of teaching and non-teaching fellowships allows students to get the teaching experience they need to prepare them for teaching careers, while also providing for much time where the student is not teaching, and so can devote herself more completely to her own research.

From Andy Rowell, Duke:

I'm a fourth year Th.D. student and I heartily agree Duke is a great place to study. I would just mention that the Th.D. program (in its 5th year) technically in the Duke Divinity School, is accepting about 9 people each year in the Christian disciplines and the Ph.D. program, technically in the Graduate Program in Religion, is accepting about 9 people each year with about 4 in Christian disciplines. Students should consider both. (See for example the attached lists of new students for the last couple of years). The programs are functionally equivalent programs--studying with the same people, in the same courses, with the same standards. People do philosophy and theology equally in the two programs.

I have given more details about the two programs as well as my best advice about the application process along with similar warnings about the perils of doctoral work that you mentioned in your first post (So You Want to Go to Grad School: Think Backwards) in a post that is perhaps slightly dated now (March 6, 2009) but still useful: Advice about Duke Th.D. and Ph.D programs in theology

Here at Duke we hear people talking about the programs you mention as well as Baylor, Princeton Theological Seminary, Emory and Notre Dame as other places worth considering--depends on the discipline.

Next: on Money.

So You Want to Go to Grad School: Choosing Schools (1)

OK, you've considered the sort of "rendition" of the scholarly life that appeals to you, and you've narrowed down the discipline in which you're going to be "apprenticed." The next step is to get more concrete and think about where you're going to apply. I am very hesitant to get into specifics here, but since the point is to save me from writing 75 emails over the next few months, let me wade into this a little further.

First, while some of my students (and perhaps readers) acquire a taste for literature, I really have no expertise to recommend specific programs in that area. So I have to punt on that score. I'm sure there are resources out there to help. For what it's worth, two of my favorite former students have studied English and literature at Northwestern and Yale and both seemed to have been very happy there.

Second, most students who write me tend to be interested in what we might call philosophical theology with a continental twist. That's one of those between-the-cracks areas, so you will have had to decide whether you want to range into the philosophical from a theology program or whether you'd prefer to lean out into the theological from a philosophy program. Again, you need to make this decision based on the sort of 101 course you could imagine yourself teaching. For what it's worth, I did the latter: my PhD is in philosophy, but I was in a program that allowed me to take a few graduate courses in the theology department and also permitted me to have a theologian on my dissertation committee. But that meant my "canonical" training was in philosophy, and that my teaching assistantship immersed me in teaching PHIL 101, as it were. I have no illusions that I could teach THEO 101.

So if you ask me about specific schools, I can cautiously offer a few suggestions since we're remaining at quite a "generic" level here. Nothing I say here pretends to be exhaustive or even comprehensive; and I'll no doubt want to come back and add/revise after I get a few angry emails. But, all that said, if you're interested in something in the ballpark of "philosophical theology," I tend to point students to the following programs. (In my next post, I'll discuss programs in "continental philosophy of religion.")

• Duke Divinity School: It's notoriously difficult to get into the PhD program here, but I tend to think that, right now, Duke is the most interesting place for theology in the English-speaking world. Despite what some might think, it is not "Hauerwas Divinity School." There is much more diversity there than most expect. I point students here because of people like Paul Griffiths, Reinhard Huetter, Norman Wirzba, Jeremy Begbie, and many others. This is top-tier.
• Religious Studies at the University of Virginia: The Religious Studies Department at UVa is a unique animal. Despite being housed at Thomas Jefferson's university, the department refuses a simplistic "secularist" approach to religious studies in favor of a "pluralist" approach that brings together what you might describe as a "confessional" cadre of scholars from various religious traditions. This department is packed with brilliant scholars: Jamie Ferreira, Peter Ochs, James Davison Hunter, Jennifer Geddes, Charles Matthewes, Kevin Hart, Paul Jones, Charles Marsh--and Nicholas Wolterstorff is there as a scholar in residence. Jeez.
  
• Theology at Marquette University: I hope my friends there won't think this a slight, but I sort of think of Marquette as "Duke North," but with the added bonus of a philosophy department in the neighborhood with excellent resources in phenomenology. A real up-and-comer that, at least for a few more years, is probably accessible to smart applicants who lack a pedigree.
  
• Religion Department at Princeton University: While not a place you'd do "theology," the department is also not allergic to theology. Home to something of the "pragmatist" school in philosophy of religion, and home to some of our most important voices: Jeffrey Stout, Cornel West, Leora Batnitzky, and Eric Gregory. And you've got Princeton Seminary across the street, as it were, if you have a hankering to talk to Barthians. Relations between the Religion Department and the Seminary have improved over the past several years so there is more and more cross-pollination there.
• The University of Chicago Divinity School: Once a bastion of American liberal theology, it's not quite as predictable as it used to be and is home to both some important senior scholars (like Jean-Luc Marion and Jean Bethke Elshtain) as well as some up-and-comers. Also a unique emphasis on religion and literature.
  
• Yale Divinity School: While this is a place for more analytically-inclined philosophical theology (along with Philosophy at Notre Dame), it remains one of the best programs of this sort, with John Hare, Denys Turner, Jennifer Herdt, and others--as well as excellent resources in the Philosophy Department at the university (Keith DeRose and others).
  

For the sake of time, I'm going to stop there. I fear I've neglected many, but this provides you with a start. (And perhaps I'll hone and revise this in the future.)

But also keep in mind what I said in my first post: The schools and programs I've noted above are the cream of the crop. They are incredibly difficult to get into, but a PhD from these places will open quite a few doors. However, if you don't have aspirations of teaching at an upper tier college or university, then you don't need to jump through hoops this high. That is, if you feel called to teach at a small Christian college or a small seminary, or a Bible college, or even a community college or local state university, then earning a PhD from places like Fordham University or Loyola University in Chicago are an adequate path. Or you could earn a PhD from a place like Calvin Theological Seminary or Fuller Theological Seminary.

To discern "where you can get to from here," you need to consider the placement record of the PhD program you're considering. Where have their graduates been hired? Are those the kinds of places you'd like to end up? How many of their graduates have been hired? That will give you a sense of the extent to which the school really works on behalf of students to get them placed. The best programs will provide this information. (If they don't, you should be suspicious.) Get a list of their graduates, find where they are now, and email a few of them. Ask them about their experiences. People are usually very happy to reply, especially if they appreciated their experience there.

Next time: Choosing schools (2): continental philosophy of religion.

Bacevich on American Militarism (Redux)

I can still recall reading Andrew Bacevich's 2005 article in the Wilson Quarterly, "The Real World War IV." (Indeed, it was the subject of one of my earliest posts at Fors Clavigera.) It was a significant turning point for me, and articulated a lot of my growing cynicism about what passes for democracy in the post-9/11 United States. Eisenhower's fears about the "military-industrial complex" have become so true we can't even see it; instead, it has become a monster driven by a complicit, fawning "military-entertainment complex" (as Michael Hanby describes it) that lines the pockets of not only the Rupert Murdochs of the world, but the Sulzbergers as well.

Now, five years later, Bacevich's wisdom still rings true for me, as glimpsed in the New York Review of Books review of his new book, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War. "Washington Rules" is a shorthand for the militarist ideology which has seeped into American consciousness; indeed, it is "so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness, as to have all but disappeared from view.” In other words, it simply parades itself as "the way things are." This is particularly biting coming from Bacevich who has credentials most hawks could only dream of. And Bacevich is no dove or pacifist. Nonetheless, I find his analyses important for Christians who are willing to take a step back from our immersion in the American machine. Gary Bass summarizes the heart of Bacevich's critique:

Bacevich has two main targets in his sights. The first are the commissars of the national security establishment, who perpetuate these “Washington rules” of global dominance. By Washington, he means not just the federal government, but also a host of satraps who gain power, cash or prestige from this perpetual state of emergency: defense contractors, corporations, big banks, interest groups, think tanks, universities, television networks and The New York Times. He complains that an unthinking Washington consensus on global belligerence is just as strong among mainstream Democrats as among mainstream Republicans. Those who step outside this monolithic view, like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, are quickly dismissed as crackpots, Bacevich says. This leaves no serious checks or balances against the overweening national security state.

Bacevich’s second target is the sleepwalking American public. He says that they notice foreign policy only in the depths of a disaster that, like Vietnam or Iraq, is too colossal to ignore. As he puts it, “The citizens of the United States have essentially forfeited any capacity to ask first-order questions about the fundamentals of national security policy.”

Bacevich is singularly withering on American public willingness to ignore those who do their fighting for them. He warns of “the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small praetorian guard shoulders the burden of waging perpetual war, while the great majority of citizens purport to revere its members, even as they ignore or profit from their service.” Here he has a particular right to be heard: on May 13, 2007, his son Andrew J. Bacevich Jr., an Army first lieutenant, was killed on combat patrol in Iraq. Bacevich does not discuss his tragic loss here, but wrote devastatingly about it at the time in The Washington Post: “Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life: I’ve been handed the check.”

It's also no mistake that Frank Rich cites Bacevich in his recent, stinging critique of Obama's presidency. All of those so-called "progressive" (or "red letter") Christians who so eagerly backed Obama need to own up to the extent of his complicity in the new American militarism. Commenting on Obama's recent speech about the Iraq war, Rich appeals to Bacevich:

Of all the commentators on the debacle, few speak with more eloquence or credibility than Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. Writing in The New Republic after Obama’s speech, he decimated many of the war’s lingering myths, starting with the fallacy, reignited by the hawks taking a preposterous victory lap last week, that “the surge” did anything other than stanch the bleeding from the catastrophic American blundering that preceded it. As Bacevich concluded: “The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.”

Bacevich also wrote that “common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment.” Americans’ common future demands it too. The war’s corrosive effect on the home front is no less egregious than its undermining of our image and national security interests abroad. As the Pentagon rebrands Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn — a “name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid,” Bacevich aptly writes — the whitewashing of our recent history is well under way. The price will be to keep repeating it.

We can’t afford to forget now that the single biggest legacy of the Iraq war at home was to codify the illusion that Americans can have it all at no cost. We willed ourselves to believe Paul Wolfowitz when he made the absurd prediction that Iraq’s oil wealth would foot America’s post-invasion bills. We were delighted to accept tax cuts, borrow other countries’ money, and run up the federal deficit long after the lure of a self-financing war was unmasked as a hoax. The cultural synergy between the heedless irresponsibility we practiced in Iraq and our economic collapse at home could not be more naked. The housing bubble, inflated by no-money-down mortgage holders on Main Street and high-risk gamblers on Wall Street, was fueled by the same greedy disregard for the laws of fiscal gravity that governed the fight-now-pay-later war.

So You Want to Go to Grad School: Choosing a Discipline

The students who write me for advice about going to grad school often have a unique challenge: they've already been infected with the "interdisciplinary" bug. My own work tends to range across disciplinary boundaries: from philosophy to theology to literature to social science. Those students who have a wide-ranging curiosity, and aren't easily content to simply burrow deep into one discipline or subdiscipline, often ask about "interdisciplinary" graduate programs. Indeed, many of my favorite students have struggles deciding whether to apply to doctoral programs in philosophy, theology, or literature.

But here's another "I-hate-to-break-it-to-you" reality: disciplines remain the gatekeepers of the academic world. While there's all sorts of interesting inter-, multi-, and cross-disciplinary work now happening in the academy, you earn the right to do that work by first proving your mettle within the rigors of a discipline. Training in a discipline is a discipline--an apprenticeship and a formation, an inculcation into a community of scholarship (this is actually described quite well in Kuhn's Structures of Scientific Revolutions). It is within a discipline that you learn to dot your i's and cross your t's. Even if ultimately your interests spill over the boundaries of a discipline, you need to take a sort of vow of chastity and restrain yourself from such experimentation in order to earn your stripes within a discipline. While there are a few "interdisciplinary" programs, it's too easy to emerge from them without this sort of discplined rigor--which is why it also tends to be difficult for graduates of such programs to find jobs. They fall between the cracks.

This is because of the other reason that disciplines remain academic gatekeepers: teaching. At the end of the day, you're going to be hired into a department. (There are a very few exceptions to this rule, but they're so few and far between that you should ignore them.) You're going to make your home in a disciplinary corner of the college or university, even if they might grant you license to roam from there a bit. While you might be permitted, even encouraged, to cross disciplinary boundaries in your research and writing, your "day job," so to speak, is going to be teaching. And the courses you teach are usually going to have a prefix: PHIL 200, THEO 101, ENGL 338, REL 100, etc.

So as you're contemplating which disciplinary portal you should pass through, ask yourself this question: Which 101 course would I be most happy teaching? While you're probably going to be dreaming about all the cool advanced seminars you'll be able to teach with majors, you need to keep in mind that your bread-and-butter is going to be teaching the introductory course in your discipline, the so-called "101" class. While you might find it hard to determine whether you're a philosopher, a theologian, or a literary critic, you do need to decide which introductory class you'd like to spend a lifetime teaching. Is it THEO 101 or PHIL 101 or ENGL 101? Those are very different sorts of courses. You've probably taken all of them. So ask yourself: which of those do I really want to teach? The answer will tell you which sort of graduate programs you should apply to.

Next time: Choosing schools (1): philosophical theology.

So You Want to Go to Grad School: Think Backwards

It seems like every week I get emails from undergraduates who've acquired a taste for academic exploration, or who sense a call to such a vocation, and thus ask for advice about going to graduate school. It occurred to me that I could save myself from writing the same email over and over if I wrote a post or two that summarized some of my thoughts on the matter. So over the next few days I'll try to distill some wisdom into a few posts that might be helpful to those considering this path--though there are always unique aspects of each person's story that will complicate the rather generic wisdom I offer here.

So you want to go to grad school... You've caught the bug. Your imagination has been captured. You feel like you finally know why you're here on planet earth. Reading Aristotle or Derrida or Barth makes your heart sing. You've been blessed with a professor or two who've modeled the "life of the mind" for you and it's captivated you as the very embodiment of the good life. You feel called to teach. You're in the groove when thinking through difficult issues and then trying to articulate a constructive way forward. You love to write. You're at home in the library. You were made for this. You were born to be a professor. And so you've reached the logical endpoint: you want to apply to graduate school.

Well, let me offer a few words of advice.

First: don't.

Second: Seriously. Don't even think about it.




OK, fine. You seem very persistent. Maybe you're the exception to the rule. When the time comes to find a job--the sort of tenured "leisure" you see your professors enjoying--don't blame me if they no longer exist. When you've spent 6-8 years honing your skills, mastering the canon, grinding out a dissertation, schlepping to umpteen different adjunct posts, playing the game on the conference circuit--when the reality begins to sink in that you might not be able to have what you glimpsed when you were a junior, I won't exactly say "I told you so," but I hope you might not be entirely surprised.

But then again, maybe you're one of the few who can emerge from this whole process and land where you hope. So with all of those qualifiers in place, let's think about how to approach the prospect of graduate school.

First, you need to think backwards. That is, in order to discern the path to take to your vocation of being a professor and scholar, you need to spend some time dreaming your future in order to try to picture where you want to land. There are many ways and places to carry out the vocation of a professor and scholar. And the path to each is different. Depending on where you want to end up, there are different hoops to jump through, different trajectories to follow. So in order to determine where to apply next year, you need to try to imagine where you want to be in 10 or 15 years. So: Where do you think you could be happy? What do you want?

Do you want to be an academic superstar, teaching at Harvard or Yale or at least Notre Dame? Do you want to be at the very pinnacle of your discipline? The go-to guy or gal that NPR calls for comment? Do you want to become moderately wealthy?

Well, then let's be clear: In some cases, you simply can't get there from here. If you're at a Bible college right now, or a little Christian college, or probably even just a local state university, I hate to break it to you, but that route's pretty much blocked for you. I know: it might not be fair. You might be brilliant. You might be smarter than some of those grad students who are going to get into Princeton and Stanford. It might be that you were the first person in your entire family to ever go to college. It might be that you just couldn't imagine these possibilities because of the little rural high school you attended--such a trajectory just wasn't in your imagination. Indeed, where you went to kindergarten was probably already loading the deck against you. Whatever the reasons, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but--contrary to the myth of the so-called "American dream"--you can't get to the Ivy League from there.

If you are at a place where that sort of path remains open to you: Congratulations! But I'm afraid I can't help you. That's not my world.

But: maybe that's not what you wanted anyway. Maybe you don't want to play the elite game. Maybe you can imagine yourself being happy as a teacher and scholar in all sorts of different settings. Perhaps you'd be quite happy teaching at a small Christian college that primarily emphasizes teaching and engagement with students. Maybe you don't care about publishing and research that much--you're just really jazzed by teaching, by being the kind of professor that got you thinking about this anyway. Maybe you'd be quite happy spending a lifetime at the local campus of your state university--at a place like Penn State Altoona or the University of Wisconsin Plattville. Perhaps you simply dream of returning to teach at your denomination's seminary, or the Bible college from which you've graduated. Indeed, maybe you could be pretty psyched teaching at the community college where you were first awakened to intellectual pursuits.

OK, then now we're getting somewhere. Because the paths to those sorts of jobs don't have to run through Berkeley or Cornell or Columbia. You can get there from here by pursuing graduate study at places like Loyola or DePaul or Boston College. You might be able to earn a doctorate at a solid seminary or divinity school and still achieve your goal. We can start talking about specifics later.

But right now you just need to take a few days, even a few weeks, and think backwards: what sort of life can you envision yourself living? In what sort of context can you imagine yourself being happy? If you can do some discernment about that, then we can work backwards to determine where you should go.

Next time: Choosing a discipline.

Summer Reading

The Immanent Frame is running their "Summer Reading" feature again this year as part of their "Off the Cuff" series. They poll an interdisciplinary array of scholars about their reading, including both non-fiction on religion, secularity, and public life as well as literature and fiction. You can see my sample here. (This is just a snippet, since we were limited to 300 words.)

At right is a related "action" shot: my wife and I reading alongside the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan.

In Memoriam: Donald Bloesch

How strange. Just last week, while remembering the influence of Clark Pinnock on my theological pilgrimage, I off-handedly remarked that "Donald Bloesch is another figure who actually plays a towering role in my early formation, though I don't think anybody could know that from the written record." And now, upon returning from vacation, I just got the sad news that Dr. Bloesch has also passed into his eternal rest in Christ, on August 24, 2010.

My memory of Dr. Bloesch is simply one of grace--warm, wise, hospitable grace. While attending Bible college in Dubuque, IA on the edge of the Mississippi river, I sometimes noted a guest at our "chapel" (a Plymouth Brethren assembly) on Sundays. Several of my professors would often be engaged in earnest conversation with this guest, and then one day my professors introduced me to him as Donald Bloesch ("Dr. Bloesch"). Though I was only an eager, anxious freshman, within a week, he had graciously invited me to attend one of his classes at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. And so I first dipped my toes into what would later be my vocation: philosophy of religion. I remember being spellbound as he lectured on William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, but it was our reading of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments that made an indelible impression on me. Indeed, I could honestly say I've been drinking from wells dug in that course for my entire career. The next semester I recall sitting in on his Christology class, encountering figures that were anathema at my Bible college (Barth, Forsyth, Tillich), but read through Bloesch's sympathetic, critical lens--and always with a view to "faith and practice," to what he so rightly called "piety," rescuing the word from its cultured despisers.

Unlike most instances in which we feel like we know someone from their books, in the case of Dr. Bloesch I knew the man before I knew his books. And so when I came to his books later on, they were suffused with his grace and warmth and pastoral concern. Here I was reading a theologian who had also welcomed me into his home, to meet his wife, to enjoy a meal with them.

So I knew it was this same care and concern that later motivated him to write me a rather stern, alarmed letter when Dr. Bloesch felt I was becoming captive to "postmodern" extremes (Bloesch was always the champion of the moderate middle way!). But we maintained a cordial correspondence, and I was both moved and blessed when he would graciously send me a copy of each new volume of his "Christian Foundations" systematics, which still have a prominent place on the shelves in my office. (Like Pinnock, I felt that Bloesch's evangelical pietism really hit its stride in the volume on pneumatology, signaled in that very first volume, A Theology of Word & Spirit.)

And so it is with sadness, but profound gratitude, that I remember the witness, testimony, and gracious piety of one of my teachers, Dr. Donald Bloesch. May he rest in peace.

Science and the Spirit now available

I recently received my copies of Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences, the book I co-edited with Amos Yong (published by Indiana University Press). Gathering an interdisciplinary range of scholars from the sciences and humanities, I hope the volume signals a new stage of maturity for Pentecostal scholarship, without that meaning that Pentecostals have simply learned to tack to the winds of dominant orthodoxies. There is both give and take in this engagement.

A peek at the Table of Contents provides a look inside:

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Science and the Spirit—Questions and Possibilities in the Pentecostal Engagement with Science / James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong

Part 1. What Hath Azusa Street to Do with MIT? The Big Questions

1. What Have the Galapagos to Do with Jerusalem? Scientific Knowledge in Theological Context / Telford Work

2. Is There Room for Surprise in the Natural World? Naturalism, the Supernatural, and Pentecostal Spirituality / James K. A. Smith

3. How Does God Do What God Does? Pentecostal-Charismatic Perspectives on Divine Action in Dialogue with Modern Science / Amos Yong

Part 2. The Spirit of Matter: Questions and Possibilities in the Natural Sciences

4. Does God Have a Place in the Physical Universe? Physics and the Quest for the Holy Spirit / Wolfgang Vondey

5. Does the Spirit Create through Evolutionary Processes? Pentecostals and Biological Evolution / Steve Badger and Mike Tenneson

6. Can Religious Experience Be Reduced to Brain Activity? The Place and Significance of Pentecostal Narrative / Frederick L. Ware

7. Serotonin and Spirit: Can There Be a Holistic Pentecostal Approach to Mental Illness? / Donald F. Calbreath

Part 3. The Human Spirit: Questions and Possibilities in the Social and Technological Sciences

8. Can Social Scientists Dance? Participating in Science, Spirit, and Social Reconstruction as an Anthropologist and Afropentecostal / Craig Scandrett-Leatherman

9. Is Integrating Spirit and Sociology Possible? A Postmodern Research Odyssey / Margaret M. Poloma

10. Is There Room for the Spirit in a World Dominated by Technology? Pentecostals and the Technological World / Dennis W. Cheek

Desiring the Kingdom App?

OK, this is probably the fruit of a humid Friday afternoon and too much coffee at The Sparrows. It's also probably completely obnoxious and delusional. But I just found myself sketching out the architecture and content for what could be an iPhone app related to Desiring the Kingdom. (I think I was inspired by Gary Shteyngart's app for Super Sad True Love Story.)

So I've got the idea, content, and structure in mind, but absolutely no ability or expertise to actually execute the idea. Any interested designer/programmer/developer out there? This would certainly not be a money-making venture, but if any collaborator happens to be interested, email me.

[By Monday I will probably have thought better of this and deleted this post, so you might want to respond soon. ;-) ]

Memoir, Testimony, and Writing Theology

As I noted earlier, I'm in a period of thinking through issues of genre and style in theological and philosophical writing, and thus I'm labeling my blog reflections on these matters "Notes toward a new genre." My first post generated more email responses than usual, so I'm encouraged that others are also thinking through these issues. It makes me hopeful that we can expect a next generation of theological writing to be more experimental in this respect.

While it's been writing How Worship Works (volume 2 of Cultural Liturgies) that has been the most recent catalyst for this, I might suggest that, on these matters, Thinking in Tongues is sort of a halfway point between Desiring the Kingdom and How Worship Works. In Thinking in Tongues, this arises when I try to take seriously the role of testimony in pentecostal worship and spirituality. It has been suggested that testimony is "the poetry of Pentecostal experience," and I wanted to try to have a philosophical and theological methodology that honored the importance and distinctiveness of testimony in pentecostal/charismatic spirituality. So in the "Introduction" to Thinking in Tongues (which you can read in an excerpt at the Eerdmans site), I argue that we need a genre along the lines of memoir in order to do justice to the irreducibility of testimony:

Thus one might suggest that memoir is the consummate pentecostal theological genre. Or at the very least, something like testimony is integral to even pentecostal theorizing, even if this is not properly “academic.” In fact, this is just one performative way that pentecostal theoretical practice evinces an aspect implicit in pentecostal spirituality: against the Enlightenment ideal of the impersonal, impartial, abstract “knower,” pentecostalism affirms an affective, involved, confessing knower who “knows that she knows that she knows” because of her story, because of a narrative, she can tell about a relationship with God (p. xxiii).

As some attempt to actually undertake this, the book includes both personal testimonies as well as "novel-ish" accounts of Pentecostal worship and spirituality. Here's a little sample from the opening of chapter 3 ("Storied Experience: A Pentecostal Epistemology"):

As she made her way to the altar, Denise carried herself in a way that indicated she already knew her story was “irrational.” Her steps were halting and timid, her eyes cast downward in a shaded look of mild embarrassment— as if the criteria for rational discourse were perched on her shoulder like little devils, mocking her and trying to dissuade her from testifying to such nonsense. Indeed, it wasn’t just the ethereal taunts of demonic dissuaders she was contending with; she could easily recall the flesh-and-blood skepticism of her father and sister as she had relayed the story to them earlier that week. Through a million little channels Denise had absorbed enough of the wider culture’s plausibility structures to “know” that this was crazy. And yet here she was, making her way forward in response to the pastor’s invitation for the congregation to share their “God sightings” for the past week — their stories and testimonies about where they saw the Spirit living and active in their day-to-day lives. Granted, this Sunday evening ritual could easily devolve into a parade of tales about divinely secured parking spaces or supernatural deliverance from failing to do one’s homework. But the “testimony service” was woven into the very warp and woof of discipleship at Cornerstone Vineyard Fellowship — these stories of faith were as important as any Sunday morning sermon.

Grasping the microphone handed to her by the pastor, Denise has to catch her breath and clear her throat.While a week ago she couldn’t imagine standing in front of 300 people and speaking in public, tonight she can’t imagine not doing it.

“Um, hi. I’m Denise,” she says just a little bit too loudly, the mic squealing mildly in response. Jolted, she holds the microphone away from her face and pauses again before continuing — the pastor nodding and smiling in encouragement, a hand on her shoulder.

“Uh, I’ve never done this before. But when Pastor invited us to share our ‘God sightings,’ the Spirit wouldn’t let me sit on my hands any longer. I just have to tell you — I have to tell someone, everyone.” Her words are met with various echoes of “Yes, Lord!” and “Amen!”

“As some of you know, Gary and I have been married for almost eight years. And maybe you noticed that we don’t have any children.” There is a crackle in her voice but she continues: “I’ve shared with some of the ladies at Bible study how much trouble we’ve had getting pregnant. It’s been so hard, and so long.” The cacophony of prayers and shouts settles down to a rapt silence as Denise continues her story.

“And I’ve gotta be honest with you: I’ve been pretty mad at God. There are all these women in the Bible who couldn’t have babies. But it seems like their stories always ended with a miracle. ‘Where’s my miracle?’ I kept asking God.” Her voice has fallen off, her face has dropped, and her shoulders are beginning to tremble. The pastor inches closer and wraps her arm around Denise in comfort and encouragement. The congregation’s attention is suspended in a bit of a netherworld, not sure where this story is going. Only rarely have “God sightings” been honest laments. But Denise takes a deep breath, wipes the mascara from her cheeks, and resumes her
story. Gary has joined her at her side.

“A few weeks ago at Bible study I had . . . well . . . a complete meltdown!” she announces in a tearful laugh. Others join in her mirth and some of the older ladies smile at one another knowingly. “I was just so frustrated and hopeless — and angry, to be honest. I was just so sad and so tired. But then sister Rose stopped everything and said, ‘We’ve gotta pray.’ And so all the ladies gathered round me, and laid their hands on me, and they prayed and prayed and prayed. It was as if they were lifting me on a blanket in their prayers and I fell back into them in the strangest feeling I’ve ever had. I heard sisters praying the names of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth and I so wanted their story to be my story. But I was too tired to believe it anymore — but I was also kinda too tired to not believe it. So I just let myself fall back into their prayers. I think I might have even fallen asleep!” Denise testifies with a sheepish grin. Gary smiles with her, his eyes fixed on the carpet, his hand trembling around her waist.

“When I woke up, I didn’t feel any different. A little embarrassed maybe. In fact, that’s why I didn’t come to church last Sunday. I was too embarrassed to see all those ladies again.” The ladies’ respond with puckered chins and frowns meant to be encouraging. “Anyway, I pretty much forgot about the whole thing. Or at least I tried to forget about the whole thing. It’s just so tiring to keep thinking about it.”

“But . . . ,” Denise begins, but her breath seems taken away. She resumes her story in a rapid, breathy falsetto, trying her best to get the words out: “Something was sorta wrong this past week—in a way that could be good, or really, really bad. Gary encouraged me to go to the doctor, so I had an appointment on Friday.” She’s now doubled over, shaking her head in disbelief, but then explodes up like a Jack-in-a-box and loudly proclaims, “I’m pregnant!” The words roll out of her in an ecstasy that tilts between joy and sorrow; she is overwhelmed and exhausted by the tale. Pastor and Gary have now enfolded her in an embrace, supporting her as the congregation erupts in shouts of praise and thanksgiving. But Denise has more to say.

“Some people didn’t believe me. When the doctor told me, I just had to tell him about the prayer meeting. He talked to me about hormone levels and stress. Even when I told my father and sister, they looked at me like I was a freak — like I didn’t know what I was talking about. But like
Brother Jack always says: ‘I know that I know that I know!’ I know that I know that I know that God was working my belly! And I don’t care what others think,” she adds, now falling back into the King James English of her upbringing. “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able!”

Clark Pinnock, 1937-2010

[Update: My apologies that the original feed listed the dates as 1950-2005; I inadvertently plugged in Grenz's dates.]

Many of us have intellectual debts that never surface, as it were. They are not the sorts of debts that one could track in the footnotes of our work. They are more submerged and subterranean than that. Such debts are often accumulated early on in one's formation; indeed, they are often catalytic influences that impacted us in a malleable, impressionable period when we were just beginning to think that theology or philosophy was our calling. And because we so often look on our younger selves with such "enlightened" disdain, we are--if we're honest with ourselves--often just a little embarrassed by these influences since we think we've "outgrown" them. And yet, without them, we wouldn't be who we are.

We are often awakened to such debts in tragic situations. When Stanley Grenz died so young (already five years ago?), I was reminded how much I owed to him, recalling the really pivotal experience of reading his little book, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, during my first year of graduate school. One would never guess from the footnotes of my books how much this little book set an agenda for my career. (This is partly why I was happy to endorse Steven Knowles' recent study, Beyond Evangelicalism: The Theological Methodology of Stanley J. Grenz, which begins to give Grenz his due.) Donald Bloesch is another figure who actually plays a towering role in my early formation, though I don't think anybody could know that from the written record.

The sad news of Clark Pinnock's death is a similar reminder and wake-up call to what I owe.

I first encountered Pinnock's work while at Bible college, specifically his early apologetic work in The Scripture Principle. I then recall a symposium on contemporary theology in Christianity Today, right around the same time, that featured him as a "progressive voice," and I found myself listening to him carefully. (I think the fact that he was Canadian also gave me a sense of implicit camaraderie.) While my professors were railing against him as a "liberal" (a charge that looks laughable from where I now sit!), I found in him a theologian willing to go where the truth led, rather than someone who felt compelled to think the same thing for 40 years. This spirit of faithful curiosity and disciplined exploration was captured marvelously in another book that impacted me more than I might want to admit: Barry Callen's intellectual biography, Clark Pinnock: Journey Toward Renewal. Callen painted a picture of a Christian thinker characterized by both humility and courage--a model that became iconic for me. Clark Pinnock was one of the saints.

I was especially encouraged that he was willing to follow the Spirit into foreign territory, and as I was making my pilgrimage to the pentecostal tradition, I remember hearing reports of Pinnock's visits to the renewal happening at Toronto's Airport Vineyard--a sure sign to other theologians that Pinnock had gone over the edge. But the fruit of his pilgrimage was Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit--a book that quite simply gave me hope.

While Pinnock and I would disagree on all sorts of matters, I'm grateful for his model of courageous, faithful curiosity in the service of Christ.

The Physiognomy of Poetry

In Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the bodily nature of our language, ultimately claiming, "Words have a physiognomy." I was reminded of this when I read Ian McGilchrist's recent reflection, "Four Walls," in the July/August 2010 issue of Poetry:

Poetry engraves itself in the brain: it doesn’t just slip smoothly over the cortex as language normally does. It has all the graininess of life, as it rips into being from deep within the limbic system, the ancient seat of awareness and affective meaning.

On Writing Ethics (and Theology)

As I'm working on volume 2 of "Cultural Liturgies," I am spending a lot of time and energy on considerations of genre and style, particularly given the argument in Desiring the Kingdom: that we are affective, liturgical animals who are moved and shaped more fundamentally by the imagination than the intellect. (Proust's Contre Saint-Beuve is helping me out with this.) Indeed, as I've noted before, I am more and more inclined to think it is a travesty that so much theology is so horribly written. Thus I'm trying to craft How Worship Works as a genre pitched somewhere between a treatise and a novel, though I can't quite imagine (yet) what that might be.

So I was interested in Mark D. Jordan's recent essay, "Missing Scenes," in the latest issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Arguing that "forgotten forms of teaching need to be restored to the writing of Christian ethics," Jordan rightly notes:

Whatever the causes, the loss of represented scenes of instruction in Christian ethics is the loss of significant power to describe or shape our lives. Since the Reformation especially, academic writers of Christian ethics seem to peel off one after another of their most powerful genres. We'll give this set of forms to the novel. We'll delegate the slow discipline of formation to spiritual writing, to religious education, to homiletics, to sacramental theology. This knowledge will go to a new science called psychology, and that set of practices to psychotherapy or counseling. And in case anyone should still be tempted to write ethics beautifully, we'll create a condescending category for the "merely literary" essay as catch-all. What forms are left then to ethics proper? Some syllogistic skeletons, a few maxims or intuitions, the drone of the monologue, and a little flotilla of lifeboat cases. This does indeed assure boredom--and uselessness.

"The Good News" According to Mad Men

It's surely not an accident that in the episode entitled, "The Good News," Anna utters this beautiful announcement to Don Draper:

"I know everything about you. And I still love you."

Who among us doesn't long to hear that from someone? And isn't that exactly what God whispers, quietly, persistently, in the depths of our dark nights of the soul?

Contra Critchley @ The Stone

Over at The Stone, Simon Critchley obliquely argues for the faith of the faithless under the rigors of love. In a rather Derridean fashion, he seems to suggest that somehow "traditional" believers have it easy, and that those who have faith but lack a transcendent object are somehow more faith-full, more radically trusting, because they lack "security" and "guarantee" for their (faithless, "nondenominational") faith.

But tell me again: how is it, exactly, that, say, the Christian's faith is "guaranteed" and "secured?" How does doctrinal specification take the heat off the undecidability of faith? Do you simply mean that they have hope? That seems quite a bit different than a secure guarantee. Even the hope for a "reward" (which, let's note for the record, is not generally the way Christians talk, despite what you might guess from journalistic sketches)--such a hope would be constantly subject to undecidability, even if it holds out hope for a kind of eschatological verification. But in the here-and-now, such verification is not forthcoming.

And it's not at all clear that doctrinal specification somehow lets faith off the hook of undecidability. It can, in fact, raise the stakes. Given the daily deluge of both horrendous, global evils and local, close-to-home heartbreak, faith that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself is a belief that requires a certain madness, Kierkegaard would say. I don't see how some generic faith in "love" is any more difficult.

Critchley's argument, while rightly noting that those without "denominational" faith are nonetheless believers, bites off more than it warrants when he attempts to then valorize "faithless" faith as somehow more faith-full. He continues to work with a tired dichotomy and straw man: the faithless are portrayed as more faithful because they're less secure, they take more risks. But nowhere is this claim warranted; and I think one could straightforwardly argue that the opposite is true.

James K.A. Smith @ GoodReads

I've been horribly delinquent about posting over at "What I'm Reading." I have a long shelf of books above my desk here that I've been meaning to blog about, but just haven't found the time--probably because I've lapsed into thinking each post needs to be a "review" rather than just an off-the-cuff take on what I've been reading.

As a way to get away from that, I've just signed up for a GoodReads account and will hope to post more regularly at www.goodreads.com/jkasmith. (This is as close as I'm going to get to anything like Facebook!)

I Love in order to Understand: Newman on Imagination and Intellect

While I was working on Desiring the Kingdom, I led our college's Semester in Britain program, teaching a course entitled "Victorian Britain and Postmodern Culture." The course included units on Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris, even Oscar Wilde. But the hinge of the course was a unit devoted to the Oxford Movement, with special focus on Cardinal Newman. The footnotes to Desiring the Kingdom don't do justice to the impact of this immersion on my thinking. But in Terry Eagleton's recent article on Newman in the London Review of Books, Eagleton highlights the overlap between my concerns and Newman's:

Militant atheists today regard religious faith as a question of subscribing to certain propositions about the world. Newman countered this theological ignorance, pervasive in his own time too, with the Romantic claim (and this from one of the towering intellects of the Victorian age) that ‘man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal … It is the concrete being that reasons.’ It is the imagination, he holds, which is primary in matters of faith. Yet this passionate subjectivity was never whimsical subjectivism. How could it be, in a Catholic thinker for whom faith and truth were communal and institutional rather than a matter of private intuition? Newman, like Kierkegaard, recognised that religious faith is a kind of love, and like love engages intellect, emotion, experience and imagination together. There is a ‘notional’ kind of knowledge, Newman argues in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, by which he means a knowledge of abstract ideas, and there is ‘real’ assent, which involves one’s whole personality.