Telling War Stories: The Civil War and the Meaning of Life

Posted on June 22, 2011 by djgrieser

Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University and eminent Civil War historian, has written a profound essay reflecting on our continuing fascination with the Civil War. She begins with the centennial commemoration, juxtaposing a reenactment of the First Battle of the Bull Run with MLK’s March on Washington, then she briefly outlines the intervening 50 years of historical reinterpretation of the war. But her real interest is with humanity’s fascination with war in general:

How is it that the human has become so entangled with the inhumane, and humanity’s highest creative aspirations of literature and imagination have been all but inseparable from its most terrible invention—the scourge of war? Most other creatures engage in violence, and some insects and animals with elaborate social structures reflect those systems in their modes of association and aggression. But humans are unique in their creation of an institution of war that is designed to organize violence, define its purposes, declare its onset, ratify its conclusion, and establish its rules. War, like literature, is a distinctively human product.

Among her conjectures:

The seductiveness of war derives in part from its location on this boundary of the human, the inhuman, and the superhuman. It requires us to confront the relationship among the noble, the horrible, and the infinite; the animal, the spiritual, and the divine. Its fascination lies in its ability at once to allure and to repel, in the paradox that thrives at its heart.

She discusses the “impossibility and necessity” of communicating war’s truths, for foot soldiers writing letters home, as well as for historians or novelists. Most importantly, she links war and narrative: “To rename violence as war is to give it teleology,” using the example of the invasion of Iraq to prove her point. The “war on terror” implies that “terrorism could be defeated, eliminated, that it need not be a permanent condition of modern life. We expect wars to come with endings.”

It’s well worth reading and pondering.

Food and Faith: Some links

Posted on June 21, 2011 by djgrieser

Scott Korb in Latham’s, on the moral ambiguity of eating, especially the question of meat-eating v. vegetarianism:

After spending time on a Virginia hog farm with Edna Lewis, it seems clear that deep and proper participation with plants and animals means raising them well and then living well by eating them. Plants and animals need us as much as we need plants and animals. Indeed, in this world dominated by industrial agriculture, the lives and needs of animals could not be more desperate.

Walter Brueggeman on the “food fight” in Scripture: A battle between “aggressive accumulation” exemplified by Pharaoh’s stockpiling in advance of famine and “grateful abundance” that includes the concepts of creation, doxology, and Sabbath.

An essay from The Other Journal on the church potluck:

That’s why I groan, finally, over the church potluck. If anyone is going to feed me, I want Jesus to do it. I want him to be my host. I want to be his guest. In the meantime, I have the casserole queen and the potprovidence elder and the brownie-mouthed children, all of us desperate for the same thing. We are doing, each of us, what we can to host each other and to be each other’s guests. At the church potluck, all distinctions between guest and host are gone. We are neither. We are both. We need more than we can say, more than we can give.

The Other Journal issue on “Food and Flourishing” begins with an interview with Norman Wirzba on his recent book Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating:

At the end of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan has this party scene where he, along with his friends, puts together a meal where everything has been either hunted or gathered. They’ve spent a lot of time preparing this big feast, and as they’re sitting around the table, he says that he was longing for a language that wasn’t at his disposal. It was the kind of language that he would call a religious sort of language, the sacred. And I think Pollan’s right in suggesting that this is the direction that you have to go if you’re going to talk about food in its real depth. I respect and have learned a lot from Pollan—I think he’s got a lot of very important things to teach us—but I think you have to go further, you have to go in the direction of theology, because you have to be able to deal with the fact that eating is a matter of life and death.

The 100 greatest non-fiction books–NYTimes Magazine edition

Posted on June 20, 2011 by djgrieser

The staff of the Times Magazine came up with their counterpart to the Guardian’s list. As Kevin Drum points out, only four of the 167 books mentioned were written before the twentieth century. Sad.

Believing Bullsh**

Posted on June 19, 2011 by djgrieser

Philosopher Stephen Law wrote the above-titled book. Its subtitle is: “How not to get sucked into an intellectual blackhole.” In an interview, he explains some of his ideas.

Here’s part of it:

What else should we watch out for?
You should be suspicious when people pile up anecdotes in favour of their pet theory, or when they practise the art of pseudo-profundity – uttering seemingly profound statements which are in fact trite or nonsensical. They often mix in references to scientific theory to sound authoritative.

Why does it matter if we believe absurd things?
It can cause no great harm. But the dangers are obvious when people join extreme cults or use alternative medicines to treat serious diseases. I am particularly concerned by psychological manipulation. For charlatans, the difficulty with using reason to persuade is that it’s a double-edged sword: your opponent may show you are the one who is mistaken. That’s a risk many so-called “educators” aren’t prepared to take. If you try using reason to persuade adults the Earth’s core is made of cheese, you will struggle. But take a group of kids, apply isolation, control, repetition, emotional manipulation – the tools of brainwashing – and there’s a good chance many will eventually accept what you say.

He has this to say about the appeal to “mystery.” It’s often used as an out when science can’t (yet) answer a question. Often the response is something like such a question is beyond the ability of science to decide. But the problem is “the more we rely on mystery to get us out of intellectual trouble, or the more we use it as a carpet under which to sweep inconvenient facts, the more vulnerable we are to deceit, by others and by ourselves.”

Mark Vernon uses Law’s ideas to reflect on the importance of discernment in spiritual matters and to reflect on the limits of reason. He appeals to the importance of apophatic theology (the idea that the only true statements one can make about God are negations–i.e., statements about what God is not.

But he goes further and talks about another way in which reason is limited. For Vernon, there is something pre-rational that is necessary before reason comes into play, experience for example, that it is from experience, intution, hunches, perhaps the way we approach the world, that we use reason to put that experience into context, and make it palatable both to ourselves, and perhaps to others.

What is Progressive Christianity

Posted on June 18, 2011 by djgrieser

Patheos, which has developed into a great site on matters religious, recently opened its “Progressive Christianity Portal.” They are hosting a symposium on “What is Progressive Christianity?” that includes input from Brian McLaren, Diana Butler Bass, Phyllis Tickle and other notables. Given the recent controversy over whether Jim Wallis and Sojourners belonged within the big tent of Progressive Christianity, it’s an important question.

I’ve never been comfortable with the label, any more than I was comfortable with the label “liberal.” Perhaps my dis-ease comes from the Eight Points of Progressive Christianity posted by progressivechristianity.org. There is, among these eight items, no reference to God, let alone the Trinity. Instead, appeal is made to the Sacred and Oneness of Life.

To be sure, many of those writing about “What is Progressive Christianity?” would have no problem with using Trinitarian or Christocentric language. Still, I agree with Fred Schmidt’s observation that:

Classically, for Christianity, sacred or divine mystery has been a term applied to the limits of what can be known about the ways of God as understood in the Christian tradition. But, true to the leading lights of Progressive Christianity, Ms. Astle describes the identity of God itself as the mystery.

We shall see how the conversation develops.

Update on the Anglican Covenant

Posted on June 18, 2011 by djgrieser

Well. Things seem to be getting interesting (if only behind the scenes in the Episcopal Church) ENS reports that Executive Council received a report from its Anglican Covenant Task Force. Among other things, it was said that they would not publicizea paper from the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons detailing the necessary changes to the Constitution and Canons in order to comply with the Covenant. This has raised more than a few eyebrows. The Episcopal Lead’s take is here. The ENS report is here.

Unlike our leadership, our friends to the north have released both their full document and an executive summary.

The Episcopal Church of Scotland has also begun its discussion of the Covenant. Thinking Anglicans reports. In his introduction to the conversation, the Primus of that Church, said:

What matters is whether we in this church – the heirs to those who consecrated Seabury – feel that the Anglican Covenant is a reasonable and proper step to safeguard and enrich the life of an ever more diverse Communion – or whether we feel that it makes less likely the very quality of Communion life which we seek.

Mark Harris has this to say.

Lionel Deimel comments on the developments in Canada and in our own Executive Council here. He also muses here and comments extensively on sections 1 and 2 here and here. No Anglican Covenant keeps track of developments and resources.

Like others, I find it worrisome that the report about the necessary constitutional and canonical changes has not been released. That suggests to me that adoption of the Anglican Covenant would require significant restructuring of the Episcopal Church. To make such changes is not simply a matter of organization, it gets to the heart of what we understand our Church to be, how we attempt to incarnate the Body of Christ as the Episcopal Church. It goes to the heart of our theology, faith and life together.

Blessed are the uncool

Posted on June 16, 2011 by djgrieser

Facebook friends shared the following link with me: http://rachelheldevans.com/blessed-are-the-uncool

Thanks for this link. Serendipity, I suppose. A (possibly homeless) man walked down the center aisle last Sunday during the service, came right down to the front pew, said something aloud to me, that I couldn’t quite understand. When he came in, muttering to himself, and then spoke aloud, I got into traffic cop mode, wondering why the ushers hadn’t bounced him from the service, annoyed at the disruption, worried about how visitors or members were reacting. Then he sat down, was quiet for the rest of the service, came to the altar rail and received communion in tears. His presence was a blessing to me, if to no one else.

At our midweek service yesterday, a young man attended who I suspect suffers from cerebral palsy. He had trouble finding pages in the prayerbook and speaking the responses. But we adapted to his pace and welcomed him. He’s visiting from out of town for a couple of weeks, had fallen in love with Episcopal liturgy as a college student and came to worship with us. It was a gift and a joy to have him present in our small congregation and remind us of just what Evans writes about: Blessed are the uncool.

Breaking up with God: I didn’t lose my faith I left it.

Posted on June 16, 2011 by djgrieser

An interview with Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking up with God: A Love Story.

The title seems to be a takeoff from Lauren Winner’s Girl meets God, but given my recent posts here and here, it probably deserves a mention.

For me, this is the money quote from the interview with Sentilles:

People assume I’m an atheist, but I’m not. I don’t know what I am, but if I had to choose a label I’d choose agnostic. When I say that people usually ask me if I think God exists, and I usually give them the answer that my teacher, Gordon Kaufman, used to give me: The question of God’s existence isn’t the right question because it won’t get you very far. It’s a question human beings can’t answer. If we take God’s mystery seriously, then we can never know. I think there are better questions that we can be answering: What does a particular vision of God do to those who submit to it and to those who won’t submit to it? What difference is my version of God making? Who is it harming? In one of his books, Kaufman writes, “The central question for theology… is a practical question. How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what causes give ourselves?” He argues that theology that does not contribute significantly to struggles against inhumanity and injustice has lost sight of its point of being.

Full disclosure: Gordon Kaufman was one of my professors, too. He was also a member and sometime pastor of the Mennonite Congregation of Boston, to which I belonged during the 1980s.

That ultimately God is mystery is not a radical or heretical notion. Going back to the early church (at least to the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus) the idea of negative theology, that the only true statements one could make about God were about what God is not, is a perfectly acceptable, if somewhat difficult to understand, methodology. Of course, Sentilles goes further in the interview, making clear that much of her problem is not about the notion of God, but about institutional religion. I am always saddened when people come to that point because for me the Incarnation is all about the messiness of the mystery of God being contained, experienced, and expressed in the ordinary, human, and accessible.

The 100 greatest non-fiction books (At least according to The Guardian

Posted on June 15, 2011 by djgrieser

Here’s the list.

Here’s the write-up.

One thing to point out: “after some debate we decided that religious texts were a little too, well, fictional.”

June 15 Evelyn Underhill