Ethics, 'Religion' and 'the Secular"

The question “How shall we live?” is, quite simply, a question that will not go away. Whatever our gains in scientific knowledge as we penetrate deeper into the structures of the natural world; whatever our advances in technical expertise as we attempt feats of impressive engineering and pioneer new modes of medical research; whatever our wealth amassed in business enterprise, we must return again and again to questions as ancient as recorded history: How can we co-exist with neighbours, with nations and with nature? And not merely co-exist but positively flourish together as communities of human beings? These are fundamental questions that have exercised the minds not only of the world’s great thinkers but concerned members of all societies, especially in times of crisis and social change. And, for the most part, these questions have been considered in relation to the ‘big questions’ of metaphysics, religion, and theology.

While these fundamental questions remain, undoubtedly the conditions within which they are asked have varied, as have the details of specific problems and aspirations as they have been shaped by specific cultures, natural environments, technological change and, in the last half-millennium, Western science. It is obvious that people of earlier times did not have to grapple with our complex economies and technologies, nor with the capacity of human beings to devastate the natural world to such a degree: so no suggestion of simple transposition of pre-modern norms is straightforward or sufficient. That is clear enough. What is less obvious to us—and even positively insulting to suggest to an ‘advanced’ post-industrial society—is that, overall, our capacity to negotiate our way through moral complexity is pitiable in contemporary liberal democratic capitalist society. In the face of the challenges that confront us, however, now is not a time for ‘chronological snobbery’ one way or the other but rather a reinvigorated conversation about the retrieval of ancient wisdom and its critical dialogue with particular modern and ‘postmodern’ insights.

However, as soon as we speak of “ancient wisdom”, a collection of issues often bundled up together under the vague label “religion” swings into view, immediately evoking a number of negative responses. In the deluge of media and ‘information’ we have to navigate our way through today, it is often difficult to distinguish between the responses worth a hearing and those, frankly, not. The cacophony of protest to almost anything resembling strong belief (except perhaps in ‘individual autonomy’ or sometimes nationalistic pride) inhibits the possibilities for conversations we need to have in a pluralistic society. So before we can even seek to make a case for something like a ‘religious’ basis for ethics, we have to clear away a number of preconceptions and unhelpful prejudices that have emerged and ossified in modern times.

It is important to recognise from the outset that there is no single, clear identifiable thing called ‘religion’. The various communities around our world with distinctive convictions, worldviews, practices, rituals, pieties and spiritualities are not all variations of one underlying common genus. When we use the word ‘religion’, we are using a term somewhat like the word ‘game’: and as Wittgenstein suggested, it is difficult to come up with a definition that can incorporate everything from chess, professional tennis, ‘catch’, hide and seek, solitaire and so on. So too, to organise Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other ‘religions’ under a rigid definitional scheme is highly problematic. And yet this mistake is commonplace. But its origins are in political arrangements and a cultural mythos rather than a metaphysical discovery. Something called ‘religion’ is widely held to be a private, individual matter not to be aired in public. Juxtaposed to this, something called ‘secular reason’ is lauded as the normal, natural language of public life. But this notion of the ‘secular’ and its positioning of ‘religion’ was not simply discovered as part of the nature of things but had to be invented and imagined. It is part of the modern social imaginary that emerged out of the breakup of the Medieval social order and the embattled creation of modern European nation states.

Despite its ubiquity, the word ‘secular’ is by no means self-evident in its meaning. Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of all has been the notion that in essence it means ‘non-religious’. Secularism would have us believe

“…that religious descriptions of reality are always a sort of varnish which can be scraped away to reveal a more basic ‘secular’ account which was always already there underneath. The sleight-of-hand lies in the assumption that the ‘secular’ version of reality is not simply an alternative to religious accounts, but their underlying presupposition. According to modern secularism, all of us agree (or should agree) on a fundamental secular description of the real, whatever religious elaborations we may lay over it...”

Originally, the saeculum or ‘secular’ was juxtaposed with the ‘eternal’ rather than the ‘religious’. In this sense, it is widely agreed that government should indeed realise its mere secularity, recognising its limitations and avoiding the hubris seen frequently in the post-Enlightenment era such as in the violence of European nationalism and colonialism or mass collectivist experiments like Communism. (It is no surprise that the ‘powers that be’ are frequently associated with idolatry in the biblical tradition.) Hence the provocative political philosopher John Gray can declare

“Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion. The greatest of the revolutionary upheavals that have shaped so much of the history of the past two centuries were episodes in the history of faith—moments in the long dissolution of Christianity and the rise of modern political religion. The world in which we find ourselves at the start of the new millennium is littered with the debris of utopian projects, which though they were framed in secular terms that denied the truth of religion were in fact vehicles for religious myths.”

This gives us pause to reconsider one of the founding myths of modernity that has been perpetuated by the ‘standard account’ of the so-called “religious wars” of Europe. Such an account tells a tale of extreme violence and disorder, goaded by ignorance, irrational belief and ‘religion’, being finally overcome by the rise of a more rational, secular order and its primary institution, the modern nation State.

The lesson to be learned from this period of history, it is said, is that a secular and reasonable solution to the problem of (inherent) religious intolerance is required. Yet when this modern mythos is set aside and the historical evidence is re-examined, the story simply does not stand up. Catholic theologian William Cavanaugh cites episodes of Protestants and Catholics fighting on the same sides of battles and all kinds of surprising alliances. Without excusing in any way the violence of Protestants and Catholics or their misuse of doctrinal conflicts for political ends, these wars are best understood as the violent birth of modern nation states out of the collapse of the medieval order rather than the inevitable outcome of strong religious belief—see St Francis for a contrary example of ‘strong belief’.

Most importantly for our purposes here, in the midst of this violent reordering of Europe, the category of ‘religion’ as we now understand it was itself invented. Under the pressures of the Enlightenment and the rise of modernity, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others have been expected to view their core convictions—especially those about ultimate reality and purpose—not as ‘public’ truth claims but as private opinions or elaborations of private experiences: an “energizing and consoling aura added to the business of a life shaped by factors other than faith” —or non-verifiable sectarian creeds. Under the broad category of ‘religion’, a diversity of histories, peoples and convictions have been lumped together as different instances of the same ‘thing’. We need to give an alternative account.

Lesslie Newbigin opens up a different way of conceiving of ‘religion’ in relation to culture that opens up the key questions of meaning and purpose:

By the word culture, we have to understand the sum total ways of living developed by a group of human beings and handed on from generation to generation. Central to culture is language. The language of a people provides the means by which they express their way of perceiving things and of coping with them. Around that center one would have to group their visual and musical arts, their technologies, their law, and their social and political organization.

And one must also include in culture, and as fundamental to any culture, a set of beliefs, experiences, and practices that seek to grasp and express the ultimate nature of things, that which gives shape and meaning to life, that which claims final loyalty. I am speaking, obviously, about religion. Religion—including the Christian religion--is thus part of culture.

If our society is to discover and discern a moral vision that can speak about human action in terms of vocation rather than self-projection, exemplary modelling of character rather than self-assertion, and persons-in-relation rather than autonomous ‘individuals’, the public contribution of ‘religious’ communities in our pluralistic society cannot be ignored.

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This post was drawn from parts of Ian Packer, "How Shall We Live? Probing Contemporary Ethics, Metaphysics and Religion", Viewpoint 2 (February-May 2010): 34-38, 47-48

Yoder, Constantinianism and the Church

Following on from Graham's post about Christendom, I thought I would post something on the related but not necessarily identical notion of 'Constantinianism'.

In “The Constantinian Sources of Western Social Ethics,” John Yoder elaborates on a problem that he sees as endemic to the ambiguities of Christian faithfulness and the widespread failure to take up the discipleship call of Jesus. It is a theme that pervades Yoder’s writing. The ‘Constantinian’ problem derives its name from the first ‘Christian’ emperor Constantine who encouraged and received close cooperation between the Church and the civil powers. It is not Constantine himself who is named as ‘culprit’ for this turn of events since the trend was in evidence earlier than his reign, yet he is seen as a kind of paradigmatic figure of this kind of relationship between Church and Rulers. There was an earlier ‘incipient Constantinianism’.

Yoder’s process of deconstructing this problem of addressing the whole of society as though they were Christians is enabled through the series of contrasts that he draws between the primitive Christian understanding and that which became entrenched after Constantine’s time. A new ecclesiology resulted when the visible minority of convinced believers was subsumed in the religiousness of the social whole and made invisible. A new eschatology resulted from locating God’s primary action in the world through the powers, the new ‘servant of the Lord’. A new universality appeared that dealt with “Everyman” as he or she happened to be. A new metaphysic developed to account for the practical dualisms that emerge from such political arrangements.

Yoder recounts how, all too often, the effect of such an approach (as a trade-off for having some civil power) was to create a two-tiered ‘Christian’ ethic. There is firstly the standard ‘lowered’ for the ordinary person, a ‘mere morality’ of ‘goodness’ that asks for honesty where ‘realistic’ and conscientious attention to one’s social standing or ‘vocation’. Typically, such an approach seeks justification, again, in terms of ‘wider wisdom’ such as ‘nature’ or ‘creation’. Whatever the appeal, the effect is typically the same: the radical intervention of Jesus is relativised and minimised.

Then there is the higher calling for the especially enthusiastic who have the leisure or opportunity to put aside the ‘realities’ of the everyday and pursue the perfectionist vision of Jesus. But, as Yoder always seeks to remind us, the vocation to discipleship is not an option and ought not to be thought justified by an analytical split, say between justification and sanctification. Christian ethics, properly understood, in Yoder’s view, means addressing first the community of disciples and not ruling out the ways that ‘Christian ethics’ can speak more widely.

According to Yoder, this ‘Constantinian’ problem persists even though it has metamorphosed through history. Yoder’s task was to unmask this distortion and then to revision church and world in the light of the New Testament.

In his Stone lectures at Princeton, Yoder consolidated a number of earlier themes in scattered occasional articles to articulate more systematically an authentically Christian social vision that centred around the ecclesial community rather than the society at large but which turned the tables on H. Richard Niebuhr by suggesting that the Anabaptist vision and ecclesial practices were the true transformers of culture. Beginning with a section from the Church Dogmatics IV/2, Yoder claims that Barth is perhaps the only mainline theologian “for millennia” to take seriously as the “starting point for ethics” the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord: a confession that the Christian community makes but which the ‘civil community’ does not. It is the “only necessary dualism” for social ethics.

Christian social ethics begins with the exemplarity of the ekklesia as foretaste/model/herald of the kingdom. The embodiment of the Christian social practices in the Christian community means the kingdom is more than promise and implication since it has already begun by grace. In Barth’s terms, it means that social ethics, practices and institutions as the world sees them, have ceased to be the “last word.” There are instead new possibilities: “not merely in heaven, but on earth, not merely one day, but already.”

The Christian community in its own ‘order’ sets forth toward providing an exemplary social practice, provisional as it may be. It does not constitute another realm from the wider society or ‘the State’. In Yoder’s words: “The people of God is called to be today what the world is called to be ultimately.” Both ekklesia and State are public, outward, bodily, and historical. Further, they both fall under the lordship of Christ.

“What believers are called to is no different from what all humanity is called to. That Jesus Christ is Lord is a statement not about my inner piety or my intellect or ideas but about the cosmos. Thus the fact that the rest of the world does not yet see or know or acknowledge that destiny to which it is called is not a reason for us to posit or to broker some wider or thinner vision, some lower common denominator or halfway meeting point, in order to make the world’s divine destination… more acceptable or more accessible. The challenge to the faith community should not be to dilute or filter or translate its witness, so that the ‘public’ community can handle it without believing, but so to purify and clarify and exemplify it that the world can perceive it to be good news without having to learn a foreign language.”

The old 'sectarian' charge cannot properly apply when  this is understood. In Yoder's words:

“This should suffice... to state the confessional and christological logic of the claim that the order of the faith community constitutes a public offer to the entire society.”

If we do not take the vocation of the Christian community seriously to be an alternative but parallel society, planted in the midst of the present order, our witness will be reduced to a vapid recommendation of 'values'.

The Christendom Legacy

I've been reading Stuary Murray's books 'Post-Christendom' and 'Church After Christendom', and have been pondering the claims he makes about the influence of Christendom on Christian theology. The first chapter of 'Post-Christendom' is here www.anabaptistnetwork.com/endofchristendom and the first chapter of 'Church After Christendom' is here www.anabaptistnetwork.com/node/260.

While Murray notes that there were worthwhile dimensions to Christendom, he goes on to suggest that "Christendom excluded or reinterpreted elements of New Testament teaching that had been important in pre-Christendom:

· There was no longer any significant distinction between ‘church’ and ‘world’.

· The general orientation of the church was now towards maintenance rather than mission, which was largely carried out by specialist agencies.

· Pastors and teachers were honoured, while apostles, prophets and evangelists were marginalised or regarded as obsolete.

· Mission within and beyond Christendom was accomplished by top-down methods, including coercion and offering inducements.

· Faith in Christ was no longer understood as the exercise of choice in a pluralistic environment where other choices are possible without penalty.

· The supranational vision of the new Christian nation, the corpus Christi, scattered through the nations was replaced by a vision of an earthly Christian empire.

· Discipleship was interpreted in terms of good citizenship, rather than commitment to the counter-cultural values and practices of the kingdom of God.

· Church services became performance-oriented as multi-voiced participation, the use of dialogue and the exercise of charismatic gifts declined.

· Clerical power and the disappearance of the ‘world’ beyond the church meant that church discipline became punitive, and often lethal, rather than an expression of pastoral care and mutual admonition.

· A preoccupation with the immortality of the soul replaced the expectation of the coming of the kingdom of God

· The church largely abandoned its prophetic role for a chaplaincy role, providing spiritual support for groups and individuals, sanctifying social occasions and state policies.

· The church became more concerned about maintaining social order than achieving social justice.

· Enemy-loving and peacemaking were replaced by the formation of a Christian army and the adoption of the ‘just war’ theory or ‘holy war’ ideology.

· The cross was less a reminder of the laying down of life than a symbol carried into battle by those who would take the lives of others."

Are these claims about the negative theological results of Christendom fair, or has Murray overstated the case or misinterpreted the historical and theological data? I'd be interested in your thoughts

"A Serrated Edge" - Book Review

I love satire...always have. My sense of humor resonates with irony and cynical, even sarcastic under-tones in both comedy and drama alike. I find satire to be incredibly clever, powerfully direct and a tool that portrays life with crystal clarity. Yet, I have been brought up in a church culture that believes the use of satire (particularly with a sarcastic bent) is socially unacceptable.

I know that sarcasm itself is often referred to as 'the lowest form of wit'...and perhaps it is. I must admit I've always teetered between the acidic destructiveness of sarcasm and it's cleverer cousin, irony.

But being a relatively cynical satirist has gotten me into all sorts of trouble within church circles. It's got me off-side with church leaders and members alike; has been the cause of many misunderstandings and accusations of arrogance; and at times has even lead to outrageous verbal attacks by some of the sweetest 'Christians' I knew. So ‘user be warned’ – appropriate satire with caution!

Therefore it's with little wonder my attention was instantly grabbed when I came across the book A Serrated Edge by Douglas Wilson (2003, Canon Press). Wilson puts forward an insightful case for the valid use of "biblical satire" and "Trinitarian skylarking". He asserts that when it came to commenting on our world, engaging 'the powers' and especially in communicating the gospel of the Kingdom, satire was one of Jesus’ most effective tools.

The book is a most entertaining read, if you like satire and have a fine-tuned sense of humour. But aside from it validating my own bias toward the love of satire, the book also presents a profound analysis of Scripture that justifies the biblical use of it in our conversations and commentary, as followers of Christ. Wilson defends biblical satire in the face of today's all-too-sanitised, sickly-sweet Christianity that is often present amongst large parts of western evangelicalism.

The book claims to provide a "godly pattern for giving offence". And that it does! Perhaps it’s a much-needed word to hear? Especially in times when over-censored political correctness has pervaded much of Christ's church; taking what is supposed to be salt, and turning it into “heavenly-washed sand”.

But there is a strong warning.

The Christian satirist will always be unpopular. As Wilson says, "In an age where folly reigns, the lot of a satirist is frequently very difficult." (p 41) However, for those who are tired of squeaky-clean, don't-rock-the-boat Christianity, I would thoroughly recommend getting a copy of this beauty and reading it.

Who knows? You may discover that perhaps people who enjoy satire have more in common with Jesus than what their Sunday School teachers could ever have imagined! So, if you're someone who has all but given up on their God-given gift of biblical prophecy, please don't. We need you...the church needs you. Take up your cross...and bear it!

For what it’s worth, both Wilson and I salute you...

‘In the World’ But ‘Not Of the World’: Holiness and ‘Headkickers’, Citizenship and Exile

To be ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’ is a well-known phrase drawn from the final discourse of Jesus in John 17. It captures most fittingly the tension that Christians experience between the call to discipleship and the norms and pressures of the day-to-day world in which that discipleship must be lived out.

Seeking to be ‘in sync’ with the ‘not of the world’ call of Jesus, Evangelicals of an era not-too-long ago were especially concerned with certain activities which were considered to betray ‘personal holiness’ such as smoking, drinking any alcohol, dancing, watching particular kinds of movies—or any movies—and, of course, sexual promiscuity. These prohibited activities ranged from those clearly proscribed by the Bible to those that to fellow Evangelicals seemed rather arbitrary. Be that as it may, the thing which linked all these was the concern with personal morality.

Those activities which were more controversial in their prohibition carried an air of being ‘out of the world’. Interestingly, when many Evangelicals ‘rediscovered’ that public life was a worthwhile site of engagement, their new enthusiasm for being ‘in the world’ was often not matched with the scruples concerning its ‘worldly’ character that they had displayed concerning personal holiness. Involvement of Christians in politics was, on a very important level, indistinguishable from the involvement of others.

Sure enough, Christians often represented stances on particular issues—notably on sexuality and bioethical issues—that were distinct in that they were out-of-step with where many in wider society were going. On the other hand, on some matters where, given a close reading of the Gospels, one might have expected a distinctive Christian voice, there was little to be heard. Is it any surprise that those matters were the exercise of power and questions of violence? After all, what is wrong with a bit of political headkicking when I can get a bill through to further ‘Christian interests’…? Hmmm…

There is no question that Christians have a part to play—actually, a range of parts—in public life. But do we naïvely assume that grasping the reins of power or voting in our preferred candidate is the ultimate political aspiration?

If we were to remove politics from the Bible, it would be a holey Bible indeed. The story of Israel and its covenant relationship with our Creator is nothing if not political. It is to that story we are often drawn (occasionally forgetting the Messiah may have something distinctive to say about ‘politics’). And furthermore, despite the warnings of God through the prophet Samuel, we are frequently attracted to the power politics of the monarchy for our political model. Yet the ‘height’ of Israel under Solomon, the son of David, is full of corruption and the ‘rot’ has set in. This is a story which is told from the point of view of exile. Power politics and the quest for military might is not a ‘success story’.

Neither is a story with which we may be more familiar, the rise and fading of Christendom. Along with many positive influences which came out of the infusing of the Bible in Western culture were many distortions of the gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly in relation to power, coercion and violence in order to further ‘Christian’ ends. No longer representing culture as a whole, no longer at the centre of power, Christians can rightly learn from the Jewish experience of Exile and Diaspora.

The prophet Jeremiah sent word to leaders, elders, prophets and priests, and all the people of God in exile to “build houses”, “plant gardens”, marry and multiply. As they did so, they were further told by God, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:1-7). ‘Welfare’ is shalom: peace, harmony, prosperity with justice. Exile is transformed by grace from a place of despair to a new site and base for mission. Indeed the New Testament celebrates both our ‘return from Exile’ in terms of our reconciliation to and participation in the promised kingdom of God and also our continuance in an ‘Exilic’ mode of existence and mission.

We can expect too much from the ‘seat of power’ and in doing so expect too little of ourselves until some hoped-for ‘day of power’ returns. What if that is not what we are to be hoping for? What if in fact the politics of exile, of being trained as an exemplary minority with an alternative politics of genuine servanthood (and not trendy ‘servant leadership’), is the order of the day? What if Christian community is meant to be a genuine witness to God’s purpose for the world? What if Christians scattered in workplaces and households and neighbourhoods, living our their vocation of discipleship critically and constructively through their roles are the real hope of politics.

Herbert McCabe once said, “The relevance of Christianity to human behaviour is primarily a matter of politics…” I think he could well be right. But what kind of politics? Thinking beyond ‘party politics’ or ‘power politics’, might our primary political focus include the following:

1. Christians as a gathered community—a city on a hill, a light to the world—must inculcate a culture among themselves particularly committed to the transforming initiatives of the Sermon on the Mount and “teaching everything [Jesus has] commanded” (see Matthew 28:18-20)

2. Christians need to be involved in forming or perpetuating non-government social movements and ‘ministries’ dedicated to implementing restorative justice practices.

3. Christians in their various social roles should look for opportunities to contribute to the transformation of their institutions through analysis, critique, imagination, example and advocacy.

There are inevitable tensions between citizenship and discipleship yet discipleship is a non-negotiable calling. Civic responsibility does not trump Christian faithfulness. Yet, as a Christian ‘social philosophy’, citizenship should be recognised as a relative good which may be able to further the cause of Christ-inspired restorative justice.

Be ‘in the world’ but ‘not of the world’.

I published this also in Engage Mail 09-11 (November 2009) Contact me to subscribe

What's behind this blog?

What is it? Where did it come from? Where is it going?
Frustrated by the lack of opportunity for grappling with issues of theology and culture in their local congregations, Simon Bibby, Murray Thornhill, Matt Malcolm, Ian Packer and Steve McAlpine started the Dead Apologists’ Society in 1999 as a reading group, regularly together to discuss issues of Christian faith in the context of contemporary Western culture. As ‘lay people’ we wanted to think through the implications of Christian faith in everyday life.

We Believe that Discipleship in the New Millennium

... Includes Loving God with Our.... Mind?!

We believe that Christian faith entails discipleship and that there is no sphere of life excluded from the call to follow Jesus. In this case, questions of contemporary thought, society, culture, art, technology, money, work, leisure, possessions and family come under the call of "whole life discipleship."

... Needs a Theology of God’s Kingdom and Creation
We affirm a non-dualistic view of Christian faith, holding that the whole of life comes under the kingdom rule of God; that while God’s salvation is deeply personal, it is not private but is corporate and cosmic, embracing all creation. Therefore the gospel must be expressed as ‘public truth’.

... Engages Western Culture and the Problem of (Post)Modernity
We understand that (post)modernity presents momentous challenges to those who would live as Jesus’ disciples. Further, despite historic Christian influence, our culture requires a genuinely missionary engagement. It is in this light that we seek to understand cultural trends. We also believe that Christ is the transformer of culture particularly through his people as a community gathered and as scattered throughout the ‘everyday world’.

... Seeks to Shape Christian Common Life
The Dead Apologists’ Society is not a ‘church’ but cares deeply about Christian community. We are concerned to seek reform and renewal in common life, and especially to foster and embody practices that witness to the presence of God’s kingdom. Following Jesus commits us to a live as an alternative counter-cultural community.

What Do We Read?
The ‘Dead Apologists’ have read and are reading such things as:

John Howard Yoder, Body Politics.
James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.
N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
Alan Kreider, The Change in Conversion and the Origin of Christendom.
Tom Sine, Mustard Seed vs McWorld.
Duane K. Friesen, Artists, Citizens, Philosophers: Seeking the Peace of the City: An Anabaptist Theology of Culture.
Marva Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down.
Mark Strom, Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace and Community.
Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People.
John Stackhouse, What Does It Mean to Be Saved?

We support networks and groups like...
Zadok Institute for Christianity and Society
Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand
The Ekklesia Project
Evangelical Alliance
TEAR Australia
Macquarie Christian Studies Institute

Interested?
For upcoming sessions of the Dead Apologists’ Society, meeting every 4 to 6 weeks on a weeknight:

IN SYDNEY:
Contact:
Ian Packer: here or here