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.

Mat Hoffman, BMX, and the Birth of Big Air

Before I became a Christian at 18 years old, my religion had been freestyle BMX. I lived and breathed to ride. (I remember a corny adaptation of a Harley-Davidson ad that I made the caption alongside my senior photo in the high school year book: "Some people ask me why I ride. For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who don't understand, no explanation is possible.") Even in the long, cold winters of southwestern Ontario, I rode all winter long in my basement, with U2's Joshua Tree as the primary soundtrack (with an eclectic mix of Metal Church and Slayer!). I remember a crew of us scarfing lumber and scrap from wherever we could, building ramps of every shape and size. I remember saving up to finally build my own 8 ft. quarterpipe in the backyard with plans from BMX Action magazine. The feel of riding is something that has seeped deep into my bodily memory. Some nights lying on the couch I can still transport myself into the fluid feel of riding a quarterpipe, can still relive the contortions of freestyle. It's as if my bike is a kind of phantom limb.

Magazines were an alternative universe for me: in a little village of 600 people I waited hungrily each month for the next BMX Plus! issue to arrive, then BMX Action, and later Freestylin'. I lived vicariously through all of those beautiful people who lived in exotic places like Redondo Beach and Torrance, CA! I had always dreaming of making a pilgrimage so I could ride on the Redondo Pier (many years later, I'd teach just up the road in Westchester and regularly spent time in Redondo and Torrance, sans bike). Eventually, back home I started my own 'zine devoted to skating and BMX, with photos, commentary, even poetry! Deep in the recesses of our basement is a milk crate with old issues of the 'zine, my first forays into writing and publishing.

So, as you might imagine, I'm a bit of an X-Games geek (downloaded the app on my iPod!). But nothing (re)captured my imagination like ESPN's recent documentary--one of the 30 on 30 docs--on Mat Hoffman, one of the real pioneers of vert. I still remember when this yokel from Oklahoma started emerging in the magazines--crazy, crazy air (=height!) coupled with tricks that were unthought of before his advent. In fact, I would later compete against Hoffman in a halfpipe contest in Grand Blanc, MI. I say "compete against" in a generous sense: all that means is that Hoffman was still an amateur (he would soon turn pro), and we were participants in the same competition. He finished first; I think I finished 31st. But I did see his first attempt at a 900 in competition.

The ESPN documentary, "The Birth of Big Air," is very well done--and for anyone with any memory of this era, quite moving. It tries to set the record straight by showing the extent to which X-Games hype owes much to Hoffman's insane, unheralded efforts on rickety ramps in Oklahoma. Indeed, the contrasts between Hoffman's backyard zaniness and current X-Games televised glamor is striking (and, to be honest, disheartening).

But I'm also quite excited: my youngest son has expressed an interest in learning to ride more seriously. So I'm looking forward to tuning up my old GT Pro Performer still out in the garage.

On the Poetry of Charles Wright

Comment magazine has just published my essay on Charles Wright's poetry, "Show Me the World." The piece focuses on Wright's most recent collection, Sestets, which I highly recommend, along with his earlier collections Negative Blue and Scar Tissue.

Here's a snippet from the opening of the article:

Of late, a stream of Christian cultural criticism has encouraged conservative evangelicals to "look for God" in contemporary culture. Exhorting us to overcome a rather Manichean dissection of the world into holy and profane, this mode of cultural engagement encourages us to "find God" in contemporary music, Hollywood movies, and various forms of popular culture.

I'm not convinced this is the best hermeneutic frame for appreciating the arts. It still tends to instrumentalize the arts as a conduit for a Gospel "message" or "theistic" propositions. The result is too often a fixation on God-language in cultural artifacts or—worse—belaboured allegorical readings which see "Christ figures" everywhere.

We should expect art to be more oblique. And instead of asking artists to show us God, we should want them to reveal the world—to expand the world, to make worlds that expand creation with their gifts of co- and sub-creative power. The calling of painters and poets, sculptors and songwriters is not always and only to hymn the Creator but to also and often be at play in the fields of the Lord, mired and mucking about in the gifted immanence that is creation. With that rich creational mandate, a Christian affirmation of the arts refuses the instrumentalist justification that we "find God" in our plays and poetry. In a way that is provocatively close to the aestheticism of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, such a creational framing of the arts grants license for art to be quite "useless" —to (almost) be art for its own sake, for the sake of delight and play, for the sheer wonder and mystery of creating. Some of our best artists show us corners of creation we wouldn't have seen otherwise—and often because they've just given birth to a possibility hitherto only latent in the womb of creation.

Unhooking the arts from a "theological" instrumentalism also grants space for the arts to reveal the brokenness of creation without being supervised by a banal moralism. A painting or a poem reveals the world with a harrowing attention that will sometimes bring us face-to-face with what we've managed to willfully ignore up to that point.

In sum, the arts can be a means of what we might call "horizontal" revelation without necessarily being connected to "vertical" revelation. Like the book of Esther, God might never show up. Nonetheless, the Creator might best be honoured when we face up to the puzzling, mysterious nuances of his creation.

This is why I have become a devotee of the poetry of Charles Wright—not because I "find God" in his poetry (though he does make some cameos, often in the second person, like in prayers), but because through his poetry I see the world again, the world that's been in front of me this whole time.

Read the rest of "Show Me the World."

Democrat Paradise

Though it appeared in May, I just had opportunity to read Jonathan Franzen's New Yorker story, "Agreeable." It seems to me that Franzen could be seen as something like the heir to Updike, not as a stylist, but in terms of his commentary on suburban, middle-class America. This story is a snapshot of Patty, a high school athlete from Westchester, NY who is basically exiled within her own family. And though she is violated, what's really disturbing in the story is how she is treated by her family, especially her mother. All of this is presaged within the first few paragraphs when Franzen pegs the mother concisely:

Patty's mother was a professional Democrat. She later became a state assemblywoman, the Honorable Joyce Emerson, known for her advocacy of open space, poor children, and the Arts.

The ambiguity of that final "of" is brilliant, as is the delectable capitalization of "Arts." But then he follows up with this zinger:

Paradise for Joyce was an open space where poor children could go and do Arts at state expense.

Hitchens' Faith

Amid the hype over Christopher Hitchens' 'memoir,' Hitch 22, I think Ian Buruma's review in the New York Review of Books nails it. Entitled "The Believer," Buruma's rightly notes the provincialism of Hitchens' supposedly contrarian and cosmopolitan perspective. But most importantly, he points out the fundamentalist irrationalism lurking behind Hitchens' black-and-white universe wherein anything "religious" is ipso facto evil. Thus Buruma concludes:

Several times in the book he expresses his loathing of fanaticism, especially religious fanaticism, which in his account is a tautology. As a typical example he cites the Japanese suicide pilots at the end of World War II. In fact, many were not so much fanatical as in despair about a corrupt society going under in a catastrophic war. But if modern Japanese history must serve as a guide to our own times, Hitchens might have mentioned a different category of misguided figures: the often Marxist or formerly Marxist intellectuals who sincerely believed that Japan was duty-bound to go to war to liberate Asia from wicked Western capitalism and imperialism. They saw 1941 as their finest hour, the moment when men were separated from boys, when principle had to be defended, when those who didn’t share their militancy were disloyal weaklings. These journalists, academics, politicians, and writers were not all emperor-worshipers or Shintoists, but they were believers nonetheless. The man who emerges from this memoir is a bit like them: clearly intelligent, often principled, and often deeply wrongheaded, but above all, a man of faith.

Wilde Theology

"In every sphere of life, form is the beginning of things. [...] Forms are the food of faith, cried Newman in one of those great moments of sincerity that made us admire and know the man. [...] The Creeds are believed, not because they are rational, but because they are repeated."

~Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist,"
in The Portable Oscar Wilde, p. 125

What I'm Listening To: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

I have to thank my brother-in-law, Luke, for putting me onto a new favorite: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, specifically "Up from Below" (get the deluxe version with bonus tracks and video if you can). What whimsical profundity; what lighthearted sobriety; what cheerful terror; what enchanting haunting! Their sound emerges from a delightful array of playful musicians: they sometimes have the expansive crisp brass sound of a big band; at other times it's the simple plunk of what sounds like a toy guitar. But it's the vocals of the male and female leads that are most captivating.

Their sound is complemented and enriched by lyrical content that should not be missed. Indeed, sometimes there is a tension or dissonance between the sound and lyrics such that the accessible pum-pum-pum of the instruments might trick you into ignoring what's being sung, as in "Up From Below" which opens with sheer vulnerability to the abyss:

I was only five when my dad told me I’d die
I cried as he said son, was nothing could be done
No all the fists I thrown just tryin to prove him wrong
After all the blood I spilled just tryin to get killed

Cuz I’ve already suffered I want you to know God
I’m ridin on hell’s hot flames comin up from below

There are also some wonderful tunes that can only be described as "love songs," for lack of a better word, including "Jade" but most especially, "Home"--a beautiful, playful paean to true love, with almost campy rhymes that can only be appreciated when you hear them sung in sheer joy:

Alabama Arkansas I do Love my Ma and Pa
But not as much as I do Love you
Holy Moly Me oh My your the apple of my eye
Girl aint never loved one like you
Man o Man your my best friend I scream it to the nothingness
that we got everything we need
Hot and Heavy pumpkin pie
Chocolate candy Jesus Christ
Aint nothin please me more than you

(Chorus)
Home, Let me come Home
Home is Whenever Im with you
Home, yes I am Home
Home is wherever Im with you

This also includes a "talking" interlude on the album which is reminiscent of some of Johnny & June's banter in songs like "Jackson."

But then the album also includes sorrowful songs like "Brother" in a mournful tune which is almost oppressive because the tune itself (a sort of calypso dirge) seems to be fighting to retain any shred of hope:

Somewhere over the earth
A song, a song
Somewhere I have heard
My brother is gone
Away, under the moon
Brother, brother
Away, gone so soon
Please singin his tune
Still singin his tune

And away he gone day
And away he gone night
And away he gone dark
And away he gone light
Up and away he gone away
But in a way he gonna stay
Oh brother of mine
We’ll be singing some day
Oh we’ll be singing someday
Undead audio, yes we’ll be singing someday

Some say I am to blame
Brother, brother
Some days I fell the same
And feelin that shame
Away under the moon
Brother brother
Away gone so soon
Please singing this tune
Still singing his tune

And away he gone dark
And away he gone light
And away he gone day
And away he gone night
Up and away he gone away
But in a way he gonna stay
Oh brother of mine
We’ll be singing some day
Oh we’ll be singing someday
Undead audio, yes we’ll be singing today

I border on being mesmerized by the band. If you really want to be hooked, watch them in the studios of Santa Monica's famous KCRW, performing "Home":

3 Returns to Daytona

A post from my alter ego:

Last night was a big night for the Nationwide Series--the little brother to NASCAR's Sprint Cup elite. Returning to Daytona's superspeedway for the summer race, Nationwide unveiled a new car for the series. What's most striking about these cars is the fact that they actually look like their namesakes, providing at least a hint of justification for the term "stock" car racing. Unlike the cookie-cutter cars in the Sprint series, the new cars in the Nationwide series have incorporated design elements from their on-the-street versions--at least on the front nose design. So the Mustang looks a bit like a Mustang, the Chevy Impala looks like an Impala (I still miss the Monte Carlo). And all those domesticated dads who find themselves behind the wheel of a Camry (remember the emasculating tone of the word "Camry" in American Beauty?) can at least take a little pleasure in seeing it now make its way around Daytona at almost 200 miles an hour.

My favorite design, however, is the Dodge Challenger (my current favorite candidate for "mid-life crisis car"). Check out Michigander Brad Keselowski's lean, mean machine:


But the unveiling of the new car was overwhelmed by a bigger story: as a way to honor Dale Earnhardt's induction into the new NASCAR Hall of Fame, Dale Jr. had agreed to do just one race in the famed, untouchable #3 car (no car has run #3 since Dale Sr. died in the 2001 Daytona 500). And while probably most of us would liked to have seen the #3 in the Intimidator's signature black "Goodwrench" paint scheme, Jr. drove a throwback car decked out in Dale Sr.'s early Wrangler colors. For anyone with even a remote connection to NASCAR nation, it was an emotional scenario. And when Jr.'s #3 car pushed into the lead on the 3rd lap, and the entire grandstand raised their hands with 3 fingers in tribute, well...you'll have to excuse me.

The script ended with what would be a clichéd ending, if it weren't so utterly remarkable: Dale Jr.--who hasn't won a race since 2008, and hasn't won a Nationwide race since 2006--stole the lead with 26 laps remaining. On a late caution, he stayed out when he probably should have got new tires. He was now a sitting duck at the front of the pack in a final, 4-lap drag race to the finish. And with driving skills that surely made Daddy proud, Jr. brought the fabled #3 to the checkered flag for the first time in over a decade.

Perhaps the most beautiful moment was Dale Jr.'s final promise in Victory Lane: "This is it. No more 3 for me."

Even snobby dismissers of NASCAR might enjoy watching the final laps:

Thinking in Tongues / Science and the Spirit

Well, I got to see my first, real live copy of Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy this week--in the bookstore at here Regent College in Vancouver. (I'm out here teaching a two-week course, which has been delightful.) As usual, Eerdmans has done a great job of design--I think it's really sharp. They've developed a nice logo for the "Pentecostal Manifestos" series which is quite distinctive.

I gave a public lecture on the book and was very encouraged by the response, especially from the large international population here in Vancouver and at Regent. I had wonderful conversations with folks from Korea, Brazil, Romania, New Zealand, and more. One of my real goals in trying to articulate the rather scandalous notion of a "pentecostal philosophy" is precisely in order to articulate the shape of a Christian philosophy that resonates with the charismatic Christianity that is "world Christianity." So this first little outing for the book was some confirmation in this regard.

The 4th chapter in Thinking in Tongues, which is focused on issues in ontology in dialogue with the sciences, will be complemented by another book coming out in a couple of months. With Amos Yong, I've edited Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences, forthcoming from Indiana University Press. This brings together scholars from across the disciplines (including theology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, chemistry, biology, and technology studies) who engage the sciences from a pentecostal standpoint. It's really the first of its kind and we hope it's only the beginning of what will be a growing conversation in the next generation. Should be out in late August or early September.

An Emergent Ecclesiology?

If I were "emergent" (if "emergent" still were), I'd hook my wagon to the much-discussed "Provisional Theses" of Kerr, Siggelkow, and Doerge as the (anti-)ecclesiology we've been waiting for. Because whereas Caputo's theology of the event comes with the cost of a low christology, the "apocalyptic" ecclesiology of Kerr et. al. gives you an anti-Catholic, anti-institutional theology of the "event," but with a high Christology. You get a rejection of "religion" and a theology of mission. This is everything Pete Rollins is looking for.

Granted, I'd probably be beset by a bit of a nagging worry, vexed by a bit of a theological thorn in my side which would keep prodding me: "But if it's all about the 'event' of Christ, how would you even know you want a high Christology? Indeed, how would you even know this event of Jesus was the Christ apart from the fruit of the church--the body of Christ--which yielded the Gospels and the Scriptures?" And I suppose it would be a little tricky for me to assert anything like a Nicene or Chalcedonian understanding of Jesus Christ given that such formulations were not part of that original or primitive "event" which was God in the flesh (though, again, I'm not sure how I'd know or be able to affirm that the crucified One was God-in-the-flesh apart from receiving the fruits of His body as authoritative in some way).

But I think I could wriggle out from under these worries with some sort of ontology/epistemology distinction--that the ontological "reality" of the "event" does not depend on our epistemological access to it (I'm pretty sure Barth could help me here). And voila! We'd finally have an "emergent" ecclesiology.

Oscar Wilde on Aspirations

Oscar Wilde "parodied his own love of limited editions by declaring his intention to bring out The Sphinx in an edition of just three copies: 'one for myself, one for the British Museum, and one for Heaven. I have some doubts,' he added, 'about the British Museum.'"

~Thomas Wright, Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde, p. 151

Why We Go to Church

Some hilarious cartoons in the New Yorker that just arrived, but this one also doubles as an exercise in critical ecclesiology:

A Reading Program for "Eccentric Existence"

Kelsey's Eccentric Existence is, I'll admit, quite daunting (weighing in at 1092 pages in two volumes). I fear that might discourage people from actually reading it. So in a footnote to the article I mentioned yesterday, I suggest the following reading program for those who might be intimidated:

If I were crafting a multiyear reading program for Eccentric Existence, I would recommend the following strategies to help non-theologians wade into its deep waters: On the first reading, I would suggest skipping (or merely skimming) those chapters set in smaller font. They are generally pursuing more technical questions and, at least on a first reading, can be treated as asides—though returning to them on a second reading will yield fruit for nontheologians, too. For an orientation, Introductions 1A, 2A, and 3A are necessary reading. The crucial chapter for understanding the architectonic of the book is chapter 3A. But I would also recommend that, relatively early (perhaps after reading 3A), readers skip to the final Coda (of three) at the end of the book: “Eccentric Existence as Imaging the Image of God” (pp. 1008-1051). This reads almost as an independent treatise (if one is familiar with chapter 3A) and does two important things: first, it explains how the three narratives of God relation’s to humanity are intertwined in Christ (as the image of God), and second, it explains why Kelsey does not use the imago Dei as the orienting image for his project. The latter is especially important given the prominence of appeals to “the image of God” in Christian scholarship.

On David Kelsey's "Eccentric Existence"

While I will have much more to say about this in an upcoming review essay in Christian Scholar's Review, my enthusiasm for David Kelsey's Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology requires a more immediate outlet. So here's a little snippet of praise from the forthcoming essay:

David Kelsey’s magnum opus, Eccentric Existence is a stunning work of profound wisdom, theoretical boldness, and architectonic beauty, hearkening back to the best of magisterial German “systematics” of the 20^th century (complete with long, technical sections in a smaller font)—though Kelsey’s approach is also marked by a deep engagement with Scripture rather than arid abstractions. The architectonic is governed by Trinitarian faith and the Scriptural narrative, not abstract philosophical systems. This is a systematics that resonates with recent developments in “the theological interpretation of Scripture” (developments not unrelated to some of Kelsey’s own earlier work). Indeed, once I began to appreciate the scope and craft of the book, I read with nothing short of critical awe. It is required reading for anyone working in theology. (The six chapters of the Introduction [!] constitute a careful treatise on theological method and might be taken as the most mature statement of “the Yale school.”)

But it deserves a much wider readership than that. As I have lived with the book over the past month, I have imagined a generation of Christian scholars, looking to deepen and “thicken” their understanding of Christian faith and human personhood, devoting themselves to absorbing this book. I can imagine a scholar reading then re-reading Eccentric Existence in order to mine its wisdom; but I also dream of interdisciplinary groups of Christian scholars from across the disciplines (especially in the social sciences) spending a few years meeting for lunchtime discussions, working together to absorb the theological insights and wisdom it contains. Such an investment would unquestionably deepen and mature the level of discourse in Christian scholarship. Eccentric Existence is a deep, deep well from which we could drink for a very long time.

I Miss John Updike

It's quite surprising to me how often I think of John Updike. Though he was not the writer of "my" generation, he became my cherished stylist--a bit of a guilty pleasure, I know, given how baroque, flowery, and lubricious his sentences can be (but then again, I also can't get over Thomas Wolfe). I should be more skeptical and distant toward the suburban environs of his novels, but his characters are so crisply drawn that you can't forget them. And I love every facet of his work: his short stories are exemplars of the genre; some of his poetry has stuck with me like a shard in my imagination; and his essays constitute a veritable school in criticism.

I think the reason I miss him so much is because we heard from him so regularly: with a metronomic regularity one could count on hearing from him in the New Yorker (usually a short story, sometimes some verse) and the New York Review of Books (usually a work of art criticism on an exhibit at MOMA, our only evidence that he'd emerged from Beverly Farm). One could count on his authoritative commentary on culture (with its acquired patrician-like gaze) and the steadiness of that voice gave a sense that things we're still holding together.

So Sam Tanenhaus's essay on Updike's archive is a welcome respite and salve for this absence in my life. It's also a wonderful glimpse of a writer at work--at the hard labor behind the image of his effortless prolificity. And how interesting to see in his correspondence that Updike's reception at Harvard was unlike Thomas Wolfe's! Tanenhaus's own writing is up to the task, and I'm grateful for this preview.

Imminent Arrival: Thinking in Tongues

Word on the street is that physical copies of Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy will be available in less than two weeks!

Copies will be available at a book signing following my public lecture at Regent College in Vancouver on June 30. (It's currently available to pre-order at Amazon.)

Those looking for a sample can download an excerpt at the Eerdmans site (which provides the "Introduction" to the book).

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.