In Praise of Popularizers

The Chronicle offers a brief review of Beth Luey's new book, Expanding the American Mind: Books and the Popularization of Knowledge (University of Massachusetts Press) which considers the successful "popularizing" ventures of scholars like Stephen Jay Gould, Elaine Pagels, and E.O. Wilson. (I might add, more recently in theology, Janet Soskice). Contesting the impression of a dichotomy, Luey notes the particular difficulties of writing for a wider audience rather than just the comfortable, jargon-laden familiarity of one's corner of the guild:

For Luey, popularizers are "academic philanthropists," echoing the Innumeracy author John Allen Paulos's remark that "mathematicians who don't deign to communicate their subject to a wider audience are a little like multimillionaires who don't contribute anything to charity."

But what is the cost of becoming a popularizer? Some have claimed that Carl Sagan's nomination to the National Academy of Sciences was scuttled by jealousy and derision over his best sellers. Luey says that there is no evidence that "academics are deterred from writing popularizations by anything except lack of interest or unwillingness to tackle a difficult writing task." Successful popularizers are usually successful scholars, she argues. "Because writing for nonspecialists is so challenging, it requires a mastery of the subject matter that is difficult to acquire without substantial scholarly achievement."

So what is Luey's advice for would-be popularizers? Many "focus first on avoiding or simplifying technical language, a necessary but insufficient step," she says. "In fact, language is the least of the writer's problems." Far more crucial is the need to find the right voice, the right structure, and a way of helping the reader relate to the subject.

Read the full article.

We're All Demographics Now

You haven't been able to buy any new music for months. Every single one of the 3000 songs on your iPod sounds flat and boring and you're languishing in the ennui of a tired playlist (57 channels and nothin' on). So you click on "Genius" in iTunes, or toodle over to Pandora, with the hopes of discovering something new and fresh. You plug in some of your favorites and then let the algorithms do their work, eager to see what the machine spits out for you to enjoy. You listen to a first unfamiliar song and instantly love it. The next one is great, too. The third song blows you away, and you click over to hear more from that CD. You're groovin' on almost everything generated by this machine-driven selection. Oh, Genius, how dost thou know me so well?

...

You score an Amazon gift card for your birthday and can hardly wait to spend it. You log in, start browsing. Amazon remembers everything you've bought and, almost like the friendly bookseller who's no longer in your neighborhood, starts making some personalized suggestions. "I know how much you liked Ian McEwan," Amazon almost says. "I bet you'd like Martin Amis' Pregnant Widow." Or "Since you subscribed to the New Yorker through Amazon," the site's algorithmic 'recommender' continues, "you would love Wells Tower's new collection. And don't miss Bill Clegg's new memoir. (That'll also jive with your little Oscar Wilde fetish.)" You act on all of these suggestions and take the stack with you to the cottage, and every single choice is right on the money. "I'm lovin' this Amis novel," you exclaim to your wife as the kids are splashing in the water. Thank you, omniscient Amazon recommender: thank you for knowing me, for taking an interest in me, for recognizing the singular individual that I am.

...

And then it hits you: Shit. I'm just another demographic, aren't I? I'm just another member of a market population, one more cookie-cutter citizen of some 35-44 demographic. Illusions of your singularity and autonomy are beginning to crumble around you. All around you are the predictable badges of your demographic: the Volvo wagon in the driveway with NPR set as "1" on the dial; the Sunday Times and New Yorker subscription; the reusable bags you take to the farmer's market; the microbrews in your fridge and the $12 wine in the rack; the Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver on your bookshelves; your algorithmically predictable playlists and Netflix cue...and all of your friends with their Volvos and Volkswagens and Subaru Outbacks who share your NPR listening habits and predilection for artsy films and folk music and being flummoxed by Fox News.

"Yes, yes," Genius says, "we know how different you are;" "Of course, of course," Amazon says, "we know how unique you are," as they add your ID to a tightly defined demographic that will, much to your chagrin, peg you every time.

On Sportianity: Whence Our Assimilation?

Last week I had the opportunity to respond to Shirl Hoffman, author of Good Game, when he gave a plenary presentation at the annual meeting of the Christian Society for Kinesiology and Leisure Studies. I've been extolling the virtues of Good Game to anyone who will listen, so it was a treat to meet Shirl and engage him in person. The result was a fascinating conversation, along with my colleague, Brian Bolt. Here's a selection from my response:

I would like to focus on just one theme from his book and his talk tonight: the overwhelming and disheartening extent of evangelicalism’s accommodation and assimilation to the athletic-commercial-entertainment complex that has captivated sport all the way down to Little League.

As Hoffman rightly notes, what we’ve got in the name of Christian “transformation” of sport is the transformation of Christianity, not sport—under the banner of transformation we’ve ended up with assimilation and accommodation. In this respect, sport is just one more sphere of culture where evangelicals have merely created a “Jesufied” version of the status quo. See esp. “sports evangelism.”

But why does this happen? Whence our assimilation? Here I might suggest that Hoffman’s toolbox doesn’t perhaps have all the requisite equipment to diagnose the problem. So let me come alongside with a bit of an “assist” and loan him some tools.

The problem, I’m afraid, might be evangelicalism per se. As I see it, the issue is the reductionistic, non-holistic understanding of salvation that is at the core of evangelical piety. If salvation is basically and ultimately about Jesus & me—about “my own personal relationship with Jesus”—then salvation is a kind of private commodity which (a) doesn’t really touch other spheres of life and practice and therefore (b) can also be accommodated to any other practice (Ultimate Fighting for Jesus!). In other words, this “Gospel” can instrumentalize all sorts of cultural practices without question as strategies to press for individual, private salvation. Most significantly, this yields a Christianity that is easily tethered to American civil religion—and, as Hoffman points out, I think, Sportianity is its own instantiation of American civil religion.

Now, why is this a problem? Primarily because it reduces and misconstrues the Gospel. This private, individualist conception of salvation misses the fact that the Gospel is a social vision. By that I don’t simply mean that the Gospel is concerned with social justice. Rather, I mean more strongly that God’s work of redemption in Christ is aimed at renewing creation by (re)constituting a people—a “peculiar” people who constitute a royal priesthood and a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). Such a “people” is peculiar precisely because their Gospel-ed way of life runs so counter to the ideals of the empire, so to speak. God calls out (ek-klesia) a peculiar people who are called to embody an ideal of human flourishing that resonates with what we’re made for—and is a foretaste of the coming kingdom. So this people (what the New Testament calls “the church” [ekklesia])will be a strange people who are not at home in the kingdoms of this world—not because they’re hoping to escape material reality and get to a disembodied heaven, but because they are a people who are called to embody a way of life for this world that runs counter to “the ways of the world.” So whereas the world is prone to violence and domination, this peculiar Gospel-ed people is called to peace, even if it means martyrdom. The human who modeled this way of life par excellence is the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, whose example of cultural engagement was cruciform. The church, as his body, is called to “walk” in the same way.

That’s the Gospel. And if that’s the Gospel, then it can’t be neatly and tidily tacked onto cultural practices and institutions that run counter to this way of life. If the Gospel is not just my get-out-of-hell free card, but is actually the “constitution” for a “holy nation” marked by different practices, then the church will be that peculiar people who are marked by a kingdom-shaped way of life. It will find its expression in a different economics and different politics. It will run counter to the nationalism and militarism and consumerism of our day. And it will change the way we play.

In sum, what I think evangelicalism lacks is precisely an ecclesiology, a robust understanding of the church as that community, that “nation,” that is called to embody a way of life and instantiate a vision of flourishing that runs counter to the disordered kingdoms of this world (and surely contemporary sport is one of those kingdoms). If I could supplement Hoffman’s analysis, I’d hook his critique to a more constructive understanding of the church as a unique polis—a “city” with its own games.

Blog Theology

I think we're seeing an interesting phenomenon in theology as a generation of "digital natives" begin to emerge in the theological academy. Most of us who have published in the field, and I would think the majority of tenured professors, are "digital immigrants": we've grown along with digital technologies, but we can still remember a world without it.

For example last night, one of my sons (who's a sophomore) was studying for a "Computer Apps" exam and asked me how to do a "mail merge." "I have no clue," was my reply. "What do you mean?," he asked. "You work on a computer all day long." "Yes," I responded, "but I only know how to do what I need to do--type." We then strolled down memory lane and I shared with him my recollections of a "computer class" where we filled out bubble-cards that we fed into some gargantuan machine in order to get it to say, "Hello" over and over again. I remember the emergence of Commodore PETs in our "computer room" at high school, and I vividly recall getting a Commodore Vic 20 in our basement, with its cassette-tape storage system. We later graduated to a Commodore 64.

But when I was in college, I still wrote my papers on a typewriter.

So I'm a digital immigrant, as are most of my peers and mentors. But the next generation of theologians are digital natives, and that reality is beginning to be felt in the theological guild--particularly in the role that the blogosphere plays in contemporary theological discourse. While there's all sorts of flippant, heart-on-sleeve religious blogging, there are also serious, rigorous theological conversations that are conducted in the blogosphere. Granted, I think digital natives perhaps overestimate the significance of the theological blogosphere: given its selectivity and less-than-representative participation, it's easy to confuse a "hot" topic or book in the theological blogosphere as if it were "hot" in the theological academy more widely. So the blogosphere is prone to a bit of myopia and over-estimation. However, that doesn't mean there aren't significant conversations happening in the theoblogical sphere, and I suspect we'll start to see this affect the shape of wider discourse in the guild. (No tweeting yet, thank heavens!)

For a recent example of what I'm talking about, consider the theological energy generated by the essay, "Kingdom-World-Church: Some Provisional Theses," co-authored by Nathan R. Kerr, Ry O. Siggelkow, and Halden Doerge. In addition to generating over 120 (mostly serious, thoughtful) comments, within just a few days it has also spawned responses at An und für sich, The Fire and the Rose, The Other Journal, and my own response at The Church and Postmodern Culture (along with another by Geoff Holsclaw). For the most part the tone has been constructive but forthright, illuminating and helpful. A good example of what the theological blogosphere could be.

Playing for What?

In Good Game, one of the things Shirl Hoffman emphasizes about "good" sport is that play is "autotelic": that is, it is its own reward, its own end. The joy is in the playing. But this is also one of the features that has been most distorted and forgotten in the athletic-entertainment complex which has instrumentalized sport for all sorts of misbegotten ends such as commerce, domination, self-aggrandizement, and usually all three combined.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this instrumentalization more powerfully than Nike's new World Cup ad in which the world's football great are shown to be motivated by either the quest for glory or the fear of shame. Rooney and Ronaldo are (probably correctly) portrayed as playing for the acquisition of women and wealth and worldwide adulation--goods external to the game itself. The commercial is a case study in everything Hoffman shows is wrong with sport.

DFW on Freedom

I've been seriously considering reworking my intro to philosophy course around the theme of freedom. News that David Foster Wallace's undergraduate thesis is going to be published might be just enough to push me to actually execute this idea. Appearing as Fate, Time and Language: David Foster Wallace’s Essay on Free Will from Columbia University Press, the book will also include Richard Taylor's essay on fatalism, as well as commentary from contemporary philosophers (along with a companion website).

I can imagine a marvelous course beginning with Aristotle, hinging on Augustine, through Descartes, engaging Jonathan Edwards, then culminating with Wallace's critique of Richard Taylor, perhaps with a string of stories from Oblivion woven throughout the course. Could be great fun.

Good Game: A Book Everyone Should be Talking About

Over the past decade there have been articulate critiques of the extent of American Christianity's assimilation to various aspects of American civil religion, particularly with respect to politics, militarism, consumerism, and celebrity. But surprisingly, one of our most ubiquitous cultural phenomena has been largely untouched: the realm of sport. Indeed, the case could be made that sport is one of the most pervasive cultural institutions in American life. It ties together the timid Little Leaguer and the brash Major Leaguer; the awkward, top-heavy foibles in Rocket Football and the bone-crushing gladiatorial spectacle of the NFL; the huddled masses of 6-year-olds playing Parks & Rec soccer and the global religion that is football in a World Cup year; it even incorporates the obese, completely unathletic, couch potatoes who never stray from ESPN and are devoted to Dale Jr. Sport is so inescapable precisely because its force as a cultural institution doesn't require that everyone play, only that they believe.

How strange, then, that such a cultural force has received scant attention from Christian cultural critics--particularly given the way that evangelical Christianity (as with so many other spheres of American civil religion) has eagerly hooked its wagon to this great behemoth (think Tim Tebow).

But finally we have a book that's beginning to change that: Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports by Shirl James Hoffman should be required reading for--well, pretty much everybody. Combining historical narrative (on Christianity and sport from the ancient era to the present), social scientific analysis, and philosophical reflection, Hoffman diagnoses and prophetically criticizes the overwhelming assimilation of American evangelicalism to the distorted culture of "sport" as its come to be (distinguished from the good impulse of "play," which he deeply affirms). By merely instrumentalizing sport in order to "share the Gospel," Christian athletes' evangelistic organizations are the pinnacle of this assimilation. The outcome is another Gospel which Hoffman, following Frank Deford, describes as "Sportianity" and merely serves "as public chaplain to the sports establishment." (With lines like that, one could argue that Hoffman's book is a kind of athletic rendition of the argument critique in Hauerwas and Willimon's Resident Aliens.)

I'm not saying this is the perfect book on the theme. For example, I wish that Hoffman was working with a more robust ecclesiology (its lack is a signal that this is still very much an "evangelical" book). But given the importance of its argument and the insightfulness of its critique, I won't fixate on my worries or criticisms. As it stands, this is the best we have: its very good, very important, and should be read widely.

Reflections on a Graduation

Last week our oldest son graduated from high school--one of the few remaining ritualized rites-of-passage in American culture. I have no profound insights to share, but the occasion has had me thinking about two things:

First, all the clichés are true: "They grow up so fast." "It seems like only yesterday that you were getting on the bus for kindergarten." "I still feel like a kid myself." &tc. I think this affirmation of cliché is one of the great themes in David Foster Wallace's corpus, especially in Infinite Jest, but also in the posthumous stories and essays that have appeared since his untimely death. We have a tendency to identify something as a cliché in order to dismiss it, whereas in fact clichés have the force they do precisely because they are the remnants of proverbs that stand up across generations of experience. In a way analogous to Kurt Cobain's famous quip, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you," so too: Just because it's cliché doesn't mean it's not true. We're still reeling from the experience of what generations of parents have discovered, uttering those phrases which have become our cliches.

Second, I have a new appreciation for our risk-taking God of love. As our oldest prepares to set out from the nest, so to speak, we have a profound sense of our limits and finitude (and a new appreciation for prayer!). And in what is probably a heretical analogy, I can't help thinking of that creational picture as an analogue: When God creates the world, he takes the risk of entrusting its care to humanity. He lets go. He made room for mistakes. He gave way and gave over his creation to imperfect creatures. He didn't abandon them, but neither did he keep them tethered to marionette-like strings of control (their fall was evidence of that). Love takes risks, love makes room, love gives way, love lets go--even when that means commissioning the beloved at the risk of failure. Our acquired penchant for control and safety does not sit well with such risk-taking. But such risk-taking is the flipside of trust, the flipside of faith. Thus even our love-endued risking cannot be unhooked from hope. And so even for fretting parents perched on an unfamiliar precipice, these three remain: faith, hope, love.

[I should say just one word about the cigar in the photo above! One of the traditions at our Christian high school is for the graduating seniors to emerge from the graduation ceremony, gather together, and enjoy a stogie--a little bit of ritualized transgression. In this photo Dad's just trying to show the lad how it's done.]

(Re)articulating Redemption

Anyone who has spent just a bit of time around the Reformed tradition will have encountered the encapsulation of a Reformed "worldview" in the conceptual triptych Creation-Fall-Redemption. This is meant to articulate a holistic understanding of salvation, rooted in an affirmative theology of creation and culture, coupled with a systemic understanding of sin and its effects, complemented by a cosmic understanding of redemption which reaches "far as the curse is found."

However, despite its potential as a heuristic that can break open the narrative arc of Scripture, the familiarity and ubiquity of the C-F-R formula in some circles can also dull its potential. So as a way to revitalize this vision, this past spring Comment magazine commissioned a project meant to re-articulate this vision. The hub of the project was Gideon Strauss' wonderful Manifesto that proclaimed the vision, not just in terms of creation-fall-redemption, but wonder, heartbreak, and hope.

They then commissioned three related essays: Albert Wolters on creation, David Naugle on the Fall, and yours truly on Redemption. All three essays are now available online.

I was particularly grateful to be able to contribute since Desiring the Kingdom might give the impression that I'm rejecting "worldview" approaches en toto. But I'm not, and I hope this contribution makes that clear. Here's a little sample from the conclusion of my essay:

But what does redemption look like? For the most part, you'll know it when you see it, because it looks like flourishing. It looks like a life well lived. It looks like the way things are supposed to be. It looks like a well-cultivated orchard laden with fruit produced by ancient roots. It looks like labour that builds the soul and brings delight. It looks like an aged husband and wife laughing uproariously with their great-grandchildren. It looks like a dancer stretching her body to its limit, embodying a stunning beauty in muscles and sinews rippling with devotion. It looks like the graduate student hunched over a microscope, exploring nooks and crannies of God's micro-creation, looking for ways to undo the curse. It looks like abundance for all.

Redemption sounds like the surprising cadences of a Bach concerto whose rhythm seems to expand the soul. It sounds like an office that hums with a sense of harmony in mission, punctuated by collaborative laughter. It sounds like the grunts and cries of a tennis player whose blistering serve and liquid forehand are enactments of things we couldn't have dreamed possible. It sounds like the questions of a third grader whose teacher loves her enough to elicit and make room for a sanctified curiosity about God's good world. It even sounds like the spirited argument of a young couple who are discerning just what it means for their marriage to be a friendship that pictures the community God desires (and is).

Redemption smells like the oaky tease of a Napa Chardonnay that births anticipation in our taste buds. It smells like soil under our nails after labouring over peonies and gerber daisies. It smells like the steamy winter kitchen of a family together preparing for supper. It smells like the ancient wisdom of a book inherited from a grandfather, or that "outside smell" of the family dog in November. It smells like riding your bike to work on a foggy spring morning. It even smells like the salty pungence of hard work and that singular bouquet of odors that bathes the birth of a child.

Redemption tastes like a fall harvest yielded though loving labour and attentive care for soil and plant. It tastes like a Thanksgiving turkey whose very "turkeyness" comes to life from its own animal delight on a free range. It tastes like the delightful hoppy bitterness of an IPA shared with friends at the neighbourhood pub. It even tastes like eating your broccoli because your mother loves you enough to want you to eat well.

So redemption looks like the bodily poetry of Rafael Nadal and the boyish grin of Brett Favre on a good night; it sounds like the amorous giggles of Julia and Paul Child and smells like her kitchen; it reverberates like the deep anthems of Yo-Yo Ma's cello; it feels like the trembling metre of Auden's poetry or the spry delight of Updike's light verse; it looks like the compassionate care of Paul Farmer and Mother Theresa. Redemption can be spectacular and fabulous and (almost) triumphant.

But for the most part, Spirit-empowered redemption looks like what Raymond Carver calls "a small, good thing." It looks like our everyday work done well, out of love, in resonance with God's desire for his creation—so long as our on-the-ground labour is nested as part of a contribution to systems and structures of flourishing. It looks like doing our homework, making the kids' lunches for school, building with quality and a craftsman's devotion, and crafting a municipal budget that discerns what really matters and contributes to the common good. Of course, redemption is the fall of apartheid, but it's also the once-impossible friendships forged in its aftermath. It's an open seat on the bus for everyone, but it's also getting to know my neighbours who differ from me. It's nothing short of trying to change the world, but it starts in our homes, our churches, our neighbourhoods and our schools.

It should not surprise us that redemption will not always look triumphant. If Jesus comes as the second Adam who models redemptive culture making, then in our broken world such cultural labour will look cruciform. But it will also look like hope that is hungry for joy and delight.

Read all of "Redemption."

Wrighting Rorty

Way back in 2007 I noted my discovery of Charles Wright, which has blossomed into a hungry devotion. So it was a treat to read David Skeel's recent interview with Wright in Books & Culture. I particularly enjoyed the snippet where they discuss Wright's one-time colleague at UVa, Richard Rorty. (I've read Wright's poem "Reading Rorty and Paul Celan One Early Morning in June" as an opening to my course in Philosophy of Language.) Almost as an aside, Wright describes a lovely picture of quiet presence:

Dick was a man of few words out loud. But he could write like a dream, and he obviously was one of the great philosophers of our time. I think I only stood next to him two times. My favorite Rorty moment was early on when both of us had younger children--they must have been 13 and 14. We went to a Fourth of July function at Jack Levinson's house, and the kids were playing out in the yard. I can't remember whether I was sitting on the steps and Dick came up and sat down next to me, or whether Dick as on the steps. But I said, Hi, and he said, Hi. And that was it for a half hour. For half an hour. And about halfway through--no, after about five minutes, I guess; you know, it's very uncomfortable not to speak--I suddenly understood that there are those of us who are happiest when we can sit next to somebody and not feel constrained to make small talk. Dick had very little small talk and a lot of large talk.

Lilla on Libertarians, Left & Right

Mark Lilla's essay, "The Tea Party Jacobins," might have started with a nod to "The Charge of the Light Brigade":

Libertarians to right of them,
Libertarians to left of them,
Libertarians behind them...

Lilla rightly diagnoses the extent to which the so-called conservatives of Tea Party inanity are just as much a product of the 1960s as Hillary Clinton and N.O.W. They're simply different ends of an American spectrum that is genetically libertarian. As he puts it,

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

Commenting on Bill Bishop's The Big Sort (which Mulder & I discuss here), Lilla observes that our real estate choices are both symptom and cause of this.

As the libertarian spirit drifted into American life, first from the left, then from the right, many began disinvesting in our political institutions and learning to work around them, as individuals. The simplest way to do that is to move. As the journalist Bill Bishop shows in his eye-opening demographic study The Big Sort, for decades we have been withdrawing into “communities of like-mindedness” where the gap between individual and collective closes. These are places where elective affinities are supplanting electoral politics. People with higher degrees who care about food and wine, support gay rights, and want few children but good Internet connections have been gravitating to urban centers on the two coasts, while churchgoing families that drive everywhere, socialize with relatives, and send their kids to state universities have been heading to the growing exurbs of the southern and mountain states. By voting with their feet, highly mobile Americans are finding representation in local communities where they share their neighbors’ general political outlook and where they can be sure that their voices will be echoed back to them. As Bishop points out, it is significant that at the county level American elections are increasingly being decided by landslides for either Democratic or Republican candidates.

Churches reflect the same ghettoization of ideologies, constructed of silos and echo chambers.

But I wonder if Lilla really appreciates that such libertarian prizing of autonomy does not just characterize the extremes and fringes: it's woven into the warp & woof of his genteel liberalism, too. This is a difference of degree, not kind. And it's precisely the problems with liberty so construed that also makes some of us less sanguine about democracy per se. That doesn't thereby mean we're tempted by fascism, but it does perhaps explain a certain aloofness about the project of liberal democracy.

Somebody's not tithing...

The Guardian notes some of the numbers on the Obamas' tax return this year:

• assets of $7.7 million,
  
• income of $5.5 million (largely from royalties),
  
• and charitable donations of...$329,000?

Seriously? That's it?

More disheartening evidence that Arthur Brooks is right.

Interview: On Christian Scholarship (and Teaching)

One of my students, Jasmine Wilson, is a program assistant for our "Honors Floor" here at Calvin College--a "living-learning" community in one of the dorms. I've known Jasmine since before she arrived at Calvin: we corresponded when she was a student at a classical high school in Oregon and was already reading my work and stuff by Stanley Hauerwas and others. So it was a treat to have Jasmine come to Calvin and to watch her develop. (She blogs a bit over at The Other Journal.)

As part of one of her courses on Christian scholarship, Jasmine interviewed me about the vocation of being a Christian scholar, which also morphed into a conversation about the overlap between scholarship and teaching. Some might be interested to read the interview.

Here's a snippet:

JW: Because you are so interdisciplinary in some ways, the big thing at the January Series was that your work is, “at the borderlands between philosophy and theology, ethics, aesthetics, science, and politics.”

Jamie Smith: Which, by the way, just kind of means I’m a dilettante. (laugh)

JW: So how do you think that affects your work? Do you see that as beneficial to be in so many different ponds in a way? [If I were to re-ask this question I don’t think I would use the term “beneficial”].

Jamie Smith: I think it’s necessary for somebody to be doing that. Whether it’s beneficial… well I am grateful that my scholarly formation was in a discipline. And it’s really in philosophy, although I think I could hang with about anybody who had a theology PhD as well to some degree. And actually my PhD program, I was able to do a little bit of cross disciplinary work, so I was able to take courses in the theology department and I had theologians on my dissertation committee. So I’m grateful that I did learn to dot my I’s and cross my T’s within a philosophical discipline.

And that it was philosophy is exactly what enabled me to be able to lean out and start to absorb what’s going on in other discourses. That will sound really snobby, but to be honest, I think because philosophers ask the most foundational questions they’re also able to discern the sort of foundational issues in other disciplines. I don’t think that necessarily works for other disciplines.

The problem with the multi-disciplinary stuff is there aren’t clear lines of accountability for your work anymore. So in philosophy you submit to peer review in the discipline. For this kind of work, who would be the peers that you would be reviewed by? So increasingly what happens is the arena of evaluation is how it’s received. And that makes me nervous a little bit. I think it especially makes specialists nervous. I view interdisciplinary work as a kind of necessary evil (chuckle). I think the nature of the sort of things we’re grappling with requires us to do that.

Well, You Knew This Was Coming

As expected, Brian Leiter is apoplectic that the New York Times would select a "hack" like Simon Critchley to coordinate it's new philosophy blog, "The Stone." Of course if the Times had any sense, the implication goes, they would have chosen...well, Brian Leiter.

I'm a bit torn here: on the one hand, I'm sympathetic to Leiter's critique of Critchley as a bit of a poser. As I've suggested before, I think he gets a lot of opportunities simply by being in Manhattan and running in certain circles of literary friends. On the other hand, what does Leiter want: a NYT online column written by analytic logic-choppers who specialize in talking to the six other people who care about their little fiefdom of specialization?

Notes for a Book I'll Never Write

A couple of years ago a publisher invited me to enter the fray of the "new atheism" debates. I was tempted for a very brief moment, largely because I would have enjoyed reading Hitchens against himself--reading Hitchens the earlier literary critic & independent political commentator against the later Hitchens as secular fundamentalist whose critiques of religion are about as nuanced and studied as Sarah Palin's foreign policy. But in the end I'm glad I passed.

Since then, of course, we've seen a spate of such Christian responses, ranging from sharp and brilliant (esp. those by Terry Eagleton and David Bentley Hart) to a larger subset that fail before they even begin, largely because they play the games according to the new atheists' rules. And since that's a loaded game, the house always wins. It's very hard to play evidentialist tit-for-tat with scientism and come out looking like a winner.

If I were to ever pen a volume in the ballpark of these debates (which I won't), I'd want to call into question the terms of the debate itself. That is, I'd want to try to put the secular fundamentalist (e.g., Dawkins, Hitchens) back on his heels by trying to show the extent of his own religion, the extent of his own deep faith commitments, his fundamental trust in a story about the world (whether that story be liberalism or naturalism or what have you). In short, the move would be to first call into question the very suggestion that there's a distinction between the religious and "the secular." The goal would be to push the secularist to the point of that Wittgensteinian bedrock at which his spade is turned and he has to confess, "This is simply what I do." Here we'd hit upon the secularist's prayer and confession: this is what I trust, this is what I believe--this is my confession, my religion.

Then the playing field is leveled: it's no longer a matter of the "rational," secular scientist pointing up the irrationalism of the "religious" believer. Rather, it's always already an inter-religious dialogue. The secular is religious.

That's not the end of it, of course: there's still much to be discussed once we've framed it in these terms. And there's nothing to say that his guarantees a "win" for the Christian. But we would have succeeded in shifting the terms of the debate by shifting the burden of proof and undercutting the supposed "upper hand" of the secularist. Then we'd be in a place for dueling stories.

More of the Same? Obama's CIA

It was the surreal Orwellian episodes of the Bush II administration that finally prompted me to launch Fors Clavigera. But over the years, I have also been (I hope) an equal-opportunity offender, also criticizing the left, including early criticisms of (then Senator) Barack Obama. But from 2006-2008, it was pretty hard to not seem like part of the wider liberal choir that found in the Bush administration much fodder for screeds and jeremiads.

I wonder if that same circle of bloggers will pick up on the news that the Obama administration has authorized the CIA to assassinate an American citizen. I can easily imagine the fomenting blogosphere if this was authorized by George W. Bush. Where's the discussion today?

A Reformed Spirit: Cognac

My friend, Mark, blessed me with a wonderful coffee table book that celebrates one of my passions (and guilty pleasures): cognac. Cognac: A Liquid History is a lush, glossy work by a collector and connoisseur, recounting the history of the spirit and providing an overview of 30 houses, along with vintage notes.

But it made my Reformed heart sing when I learned of the good Calvinist heritage of this, my favorite spirit. The trade, Calabrese notes,

was expanded by the Huguenots, supported by their Protestant contacts in Amsterdam, London, and even the cities of Copenhagen and Hamburg. The Edict of Nantes, in effect, helped to secure these deals. The main towns in the region, including Cognac, Jarnac, Segonzac and, nearer the coast, La Rochelle, were Calvinist strongholds, as were many of the families who developed the burgeoning trade, such as the Delamains and Hines of Jarnac, the Augiers and Martells of Cognac (p. 46).

Given that Scots Presbyterians also blessed us with single malt scotch, you might wonder whether there's something in Calvinism that drives one to drink!

Society of Vineyard Scholars

One of my speaking engagements that I'm particularly anticipating for next year is the 2nd annual meeting of the Society of Vineyard Scholars, February 3-5, 2011 in Seattle. The SVS is an exciting new development in a stream of charismatic Christianity that is seeking to encourage faithful, critical reflection for the sake of the kingdom. The folks I know associated with SVS are an emerging crew of young scholars engaged in unabashed theoretical reflection, but coupled with a deep passion for faithful discipleship and witness. So this conference will bring together my interests in philosophical reflection and charismatic spirituality (as embodied, I hope, in my new book, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to a Christian Philosophy).

And while I expect the conference will be a time of rich academic discussion, I'll be perfectly honest: I'm also looking forward to it as a time of renewal and restoration. It's the one engagement on my calendar that I'm anticipating as also being a time of retreat.

They're a generous, open group, so I encourage folks outside the Vineyard to also consider attending. The theme for 2011 is "By the Renewal of Your Mind: Imagining, Describing, and Enacting the Kingdom of God," and they've just issued a Call for Papers. Check it out.

Absence as a Window: On Franz Wright

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Franz Wright in passing, whose poetry has had a significant impact on me. A couple of years ago I published an essay ("Absence as a Window: On the Poetry of Franz Wright") in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin and was always a little disappointed that they never reproduced it online. The essay was republished, however, as chapter 23 in The Devil Reads Derrida--and this turns out to be one of the chapters available for preview in the Google Books preview.

Formation as the Mission of Public Schools

While E.D. Hirsch can sometimes come across as simply a curmudgeonly defender of a sort of Chicago "Great Books" tradition of cultural literacy, that doesn't mean he's not often right. I would commend his recent essay in the New York Review of Books ("How to Save the Schools") as important reading for educators at any level--or for anyone with children. Riffing on Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Hirsch has abundant opportunities to make his case for a nationalized, core curriculum of shared content, rather than the national bureaucracies of testing that are largely concerned only with strategy and "how-to" skills. Ravitch also gives him a chance to trot out his declension narrative, claiming that

by the 1930s, under the enduring influence of European Romanticism, educational leaders had begun to convert the community-centered school of the nineteenth century to the child- centered school of the twentieth—a process that was complete by 1950. The chief tenet of the child-centered school was that no bookish curriculum was to be set out in advance. Rather, learning was to arise naturally out of activities, projects, and daily experience.

While it's unfortunate that Hirsch seems to pit these as mutually exclusive competitors, I'm sympathetic to his concerns.

But perhaps most intriguing is his account of the mission of public education as envisioned in the early American republic:

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, thought American schools should offer a common curriculum designed to create “republican machines.” His sentiments were similar to the educational views of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the most important early schoolmaster of all, Noah Webster. The schools were to be institutions for inculcating democracy, designed to develop critical thinkers and able citizens in a setting of loyalty to the national common good. Early schoolbook authors began a long tradition of texts that aimed, in the words of one author,

to exhibit, in a strong light, the principles of political and religious freedom which our forefathers professed, and…to record the numerous examples of fortitude, courage, and patriotism, which have rendered them illustrious.

The reasons for this communitarian emphasis were obvious to American leaders in the nineteenth century. Loyalty to the Republic had to be developed, as well as adherence to Enlightenment ideals of liberty and toleration. For without universal indoctrination by the schools in such civic virtues, the United States might dissolve, as had all prior large republics of history, through internal dissension.

The aim of schooling was not just to Americanize the immigrants, but also to Americanize the Americans.

While "the great American school system" (in Ravitsch's words) has perhaps become "Romantically" child-centered, it's hard to argue that it's neglected this formative mission of Americanization. How sad, then, when so many of even our so-called "Christian" schools offer the same formation.

More Public, Less Intellectual?

I'm still decompressing from the work of organizing the Midwest Regional Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers here at Calvin College. It was a small, intimate conference that featured a range of scholars, from up-and-coming graduate students to seasoned scholars like William Hasker.

With the goal of breaking out of our focus (myopia?) on issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion, I selected a theme meant to press a consideration of philosophy as a way of life: "Thinking in Public: Christian Philosophers as Public Intellectuals." We had some sessions that did a nice job of engaging this theme, but it was especially the focus of the plenary sessions which featured two keynotes by Jean Bethke Elshtain (doing double-duty as this year's Jellema Lecturer), and one by my colleague Matt Halteman who spoke about his work at the intersection of Christian philosophy and "compassionate eating" (as seen in his booklet for the Humane Society, "Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation" [pdf]).

One of Elshtain's comments particularly stuck with me: while emphasizing the importance of "public" intellectual work--using scholarly resources to analyze situations of common concern, speaking to audiences beyond the academy--she also emphasized the importance of maintaining a rigorous scholarly agenda. Otherwise, she cautioned, the public intellectual ends up "more public than intellectual," flitting from speaking engagement to speaking engagement without continuing to dig new wells of scholarly knowledge and discovery. Wise words.

Out and About

"Out and about" is a Canadianism. Friends in the States inevitably tease us when we say it ("oot and aboot?," they ask). Yeah, it gets old... Anyway, here are a few of my recent essays, articles, and reviews from around the web that might be of interest:

• "Practice Overload? A Response to Willimon" at the Duke Divinity Call & Response blog--responding to Willimon's recent recantation of practice-talk.
  
• "Whose Rome? Which Catholicism?," a review of Francis Beckwith's Return to Rome, over at The Other Journal
• "Making Sense of Church," with my friend and sociology colleague Mark Mulder, in Perspectives (March 2010). This makes the case for a "Chalcedonian" approach to congregational studies, integrating theology and sociology to understand the church.
  
• My poem, "We Learn to Love," won 2nd place in the Comment magazine rondeau competition (focused on the theme of education) last fall, and is now available online.

Poetry and the End of Theology

Theology is not usually home to imagination and creativity. Indeed, the sober vocation of the theologian looks on creativity as a temptation, the lure of novelty as a dangerous seduction. The fuel of theology is not the imagination but the intellect. It traffics not in metaphors but propositions, those terse building blocks of arguments and outlines and doctrines. The republic of theology, like Plato’s city, is built on the exile of the poets whose “fictions” are a dangerous distraction.

But how did a discourse so uncreative become the deputized voice of the Creator? How did a genre so flat and sober and unimaginative become the official mouthpiece of a God who created platypuses and larkspur? Frankly, how did the boring disquisitions of “systematic” theology emerge as the authoritative voice for a people who follow a story-teller like Jesus?

Well, there’s a story to be told here. To make it short: theology picked up some very bad habits in modernity. In particular, and most disastrously, theology somehow became enamored with a rather Cartesian picture of human persons that reduced us to brains-on-a-stick—to cognitive processors temporarily (and regrettably) housed in bodies. On this account, we are essentially “thinking things”—and “systematic” theology bought such thinking-thing-ism hook, line, and thinker. The result was that the story of God’s wonder-working was boiled down and reduced to “beliefs” that could be formulated in propositions, lodged in syllogisms, and linked together in learned treatises. What’s worse, preaching became captive to the same thinking-thing-ism with the sermon reduced to a lecture for cognitive machines.

But what if we are not essentially “thinking things?” What if we are the sorts of animals who love before we think? What if we imagine the world before we perceive it? What if we are not just minds regrettably housed in these meaty frames but rather embodied creatures who make our way in the world through the gift of the senses?

Then wouldn’t images and metaphors be our most natural way of making sense of the world? Wouldn’t story be our first and most natural language—and the language of propositions and syllogisms an acquired, artificial habit? Indeed, wouldn’t fiction and poetry be closer to the truth?

These are the sorts of questions that haunt me as a philosopher and theologian—as someone who makes his living in a world where propositions are the coin of the realm. What if poetry is the end of theology? That is, what if poetry is the telos of theology—its goal and aim? What if the so-called truths of theology are just dimmed-down intimations of the rich truth that can be embodied in the imaginative worlds of poetry and fiction? Then wouldn’t Graham Greene and Franz Wright be more faithful good-news-tellers than most of our theologians? Wouldn’t the short story be our most faithful genre? Wouldn’t the novel be our most powerful explication of the human condition? Wouldn’t poetry be our most intense site of revelation? Could we imagine theology otherwise?

The Church, Christian Scholars, and "Little Miss Sunshine"

I'm not a digital native, as they say, so I'm always learning to catch up to technology: texting still gives me fits; I'm not on Facebook ("MyFace" in 30-Rock-speak); and I have no idea how Twitter works, or what it's for. But it was cool to discover that the opening chapter of The Devil Reads Derrida is available on Google Books, and that I could embed it here (I know, I know: "yawn" for most of you). Anyway, here's a snippet from the introductory essay that frames the work of Christian scholarship as "public intellectual" labor.

May Music Samplers

I'm looking forward to two new releases in May: Josh Ritter's next album, So Runs the World Away, will debut on May 4. And then The National, of Boxer fame, will release their new album High Violet on May 11.

But in a kind of already/not yet anticipation, right now you can listen to both albums in their entirety:

• NPR is streaming Ritter's So Runs the World Away until April 27. (You can also download a free single at the Ritter website.)
• And in connection with an excellent article on The National in Sunday's NYT Magazine by Nicholas Dawidoff (I'll be watching for more from him), the Times is streaming High Violet for a limited time.

Needless to say, both are the soundtrack for my Monday labors today.

For the Record, Cont'd

In Sunday's Grand Rapids Press, the editor Paul M. Keep responded to my earlier letter about their coverage of a tea party event. As you may recall, I called into question their grand claims about attendance at the event given the complete lack of any evidence to substantiate those claims. In response to my letter, Keep says the following:

We prefer journalism to illusions. It is a little hard for me to understand an argument that covering a tea party rally in our area amounts to poor journalism, but several readers have told me that. Tea party activities have made national news and are of interest to a lot of Press readers. I think this boils down to a situation where a reader disagrees with what the tea party stands for and is taking out that frustration on the messenger, The Press.

I'm not sure whether Keep is cynical or willfully ignorant (maybe both?). In any case, he seems in dire need of a liberal arts education that might teach him how to read a text or discern an "argument." There is not a single sentence in my letter which calls into question whether The Press should cover a tea party event. The issue is how it was covered. How one could miss that point baffles me, and is particularly disappointing when one considers that this person--who doesn't seem to be able to read--governs what news is read in West Michigan.

And to think that I, in a moment of weakness, had just re-subscribed to The Press after the fiasco of their John McCain endorsement...

For the Record

Somehow the Grand Rapids Press managed to completely garble my letter to the editor regarding their coverage of a recent "Tea Party" event. For the record, I here provide the my correct text of my letter, and have pasted the photo that appeared with the print version of the story in last Sunday's paper.

The Grand Rapids Press should perhaps change its format to a tabloid layout. That would be more appropriate for the kind of journalism featured on the front page of the Sunday paper. There a story headline proclaimed "Tea timers turn out in force." The article itself claimed that they "packed" Riverside Park for a rally on Saturday.

But curiously, the only picture we're offered is a cropped shot of two people. (A "packed" Riverside Park would be a site to behold. No picture available?) Furthermore, the article provides not a single estimate of the number attending the rally.

You can do better. Whether you want to is the question. Or would the Press, in league with talk radio, prefer to cynically foment an illusion?

Forthcoming: Thinking in Tongues

Eerdmans has just rolled out the announcement for a new venture: the "Pentecostal Manifestos" series which I'm co-editing with my good friend, Amos Yong. This will be a series of scholarly books from a pentecostal/charismatic perspective, speaking into wider conversations in theology and Christian scholarship. You can see a bit about the series here.

And I'm very excited that one of the first books in the series will be my own contribution, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to a Christian Philosophy. This should be available in late June; in fact, we're planning a bit of a launch event in conjunction with my lecture on the same theme at Regent College in Vancouver, June 30, 2010.

What I'm Listening To: Mumford & Sons

Every once in a while I become obsessed, infected with a CD. The most recent is one that my son, Coleson, put me onto: "Sigh No More" from Mumford & Sons, a West London band whose melancholic melodies just bore down into my soul (and my own melancholy). You can listen to a healthy dose of samples on their MySpace page.

It is now the official soundtrack of the "Cultural Liturgies" project! Maybe it's the mandolin, or the haunting sigh in the lead voice, or the hint of banjo every once in a while, but I have not been able to turn it off.

And on top of all its affective power are poetic lyrics that convey a certain earthly mysticism. Consider, for instance, the opening track, "Sigh No More":

Love that will not betray you,
dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
To be more like the man
you were made to be.
There is a design,
An alignment to cry,
At my heart you see,
The beauty of love
as it was made to be.

It doesn't get any more Augustinian than that! Or consider this snippet on love and embodiment from "Awake My Soul":

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die;
Where you invest your love, you invest your life.

That could pretty much read as an epigraph of Desiring the Kingdom. These selections don't do justice to the interplay between music and lyrics. Give them a listen.

The Other Journal Podcast

When I was out in Seattle last fall for the "Faith, Film, and Justice" conference, I sat down for an interview with Tom Ryan, host of The Other Journal Podcast, a new venture from our friends over at TOJ.

They've launched this venture with sources from the conference and, in addition to posting the audio of my lecture ("Fearless Speech, Courageous Eyes"), they've just posted a new interview with me about a range of themes, particularly around Desiring the Kingdom. Tom does a nice job of just giving me room to ramble, priming the pump in some provocative ways. Check it out.

Life from Death: Of Soil and Stones Rolled Away

Easter Sunday was a beautiful spring day here in Grand Rapids, so in the spirit of sabbath-keeping we actually set about laboring in our gardens. Such work is restorative in many ways: it's a labor of stewardship, but it's also get-your-hands-dirty work that is a welcome change from the cerebral labor of my week. Sometimes work is rest.

But this first day digging into the garden was particularly special this year. All last summer we were dumping the detritus of our eating and living into a vast compost at the back of the yard. Carrot peels and avocado skins, maple leaves and pea pods, all piled in hope and expectation that from this waste would come soil. For this process, the death-dealing of winter is actually a period of incubation.

And so we expectantly pried the pitchfork into the pile and cracked open the crust, peering beneath. To our delight and surprise, the gray layer gave way to a dark, rich humus teeming with big, juicy worms. "That's black gold!," my wife giddily observed. As we trucked loads of this new soil over to the garden, it was hard to resist the analogy: that here in our backyard was its own kind of resurrection--that from death was springing life that would now give abundant life to our parsnips and eggplant and zucchini.

The analogy has its dangers. I don't want to backhandedly naturalize Good Friday with a kind of biological necessity. But might it be that resurrection is kind of "natural?" That the creation called into being by our life-giving Creator has an impulsion to triumph over death? That the Son in whom this all holds together put on display the resurrecting impulse of his creation in an especially intense way?

In any case, it seems to me that we hit upon a new Easter tradition--that nothing could be more appropriate than rolling away the stones and getting our hands dirty in the gift of new soil, with hopes of life to come.

New Season of Deadliest Catch

[Yes, it's been a while since a post here at Fors Clavigera--not that I think anyone has missed it. I observed a blog fast for Lent, and have since been swamped with my real job. It was good for me to have been away from it, but hope to get back to my usual irregularity.]

This Tuesday is a big day: the season premier of Deadliest Catch. The trailer for this season is a work of art in itself (see below): a moving little slice of documentary affectively backgrounded by Eddie Vedder's "Rise." No doubt the emotional force of this is amplified for devotees who are also thinking about the death of Captain Phil during the filming of this season. I continue to find this a compelling family drama that will get me through til the new season of Mad Men.