Heckling in a Church

This is what it has come to in my sad Anglican Church.

The man being heckled is Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire around whom most of the controversy swells. He was not invited to the current Lambeth Conference as would have been in order given his episcopal status. The Conference has been boycotted by over 200 bishops mostly over the question of gays and lesbians. [Robinson is the first openly gay bishop in the Communion; I guarantee by no means the first one or only currently one--simply the only openly one].

Good stiff upper lip Brits just sing over the guy with a rousing old number (#4 in the English Hymn Book “Thine Be the Glory, Risen Conquering Son”).

I could use a stiff drink and a gun.

Antiphonal Praise

 

Today’s Antiphon from the Rite for Evening Prayer (Anglican Prayer):

Alleluia. The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

The Spirit of the Lord, blowing where it will, renews not only the face of the earth but the faces on the earth, the faces of the earth.  This is worthy of adoration. 

There is renewal of that which has been forgotten and should never have been.  Renewal of that which is held in oppression when the yoke is lifted and that which was enslaved returns to its pristine natural vigor.  There is renewal as new creation, re-newing everything that was prior to the truly new. 

Christian Ethics and the spiritual/religious path more broadly conceived should fundamentally be about renewal and re-creation.  It is too often about power, prestige, and place.  Far too often concerned not with renewal–which may mean letting things die a natural death so others can take its place–but rather with conservation (in the negative sense).   Holding on past time. 

But renewal without adoration becomes too easily the false idolatrous spirit of progressivism and worse revolutionary fervor and worse still violence.  Change for change’s sake, meeting the new boss whose the same as the old boss, is no answer, no virtue, religious or otherwise. 

It is the Spirit of that Lord that renews.  Not our self-centered limited-view initiatives.  Only our action guided by the Spirit, in concert with the Spirit, only that renews the face of the earth and the faces, the children of the earth. 

Else we begin to glorify/adore ourselves, our false masks and bent images. 

We shout Alleluia even before this confession that the Spirit renews because we see and feel it before the words arrive.  And afterwards out of thanks.  If the Spirit did not renew, there would be no hope.  No possibility for redemption, liberation, or sanctification. 

Come all of us, let us adore together. 

PZ Myers Update

Hat tip to my man C4, for pointing me to this response interview with PZ Myers (as C4 says in a comment to my earlier post, PZ still doesn’t get it).

Key piece (MnIndy=Minnesota Independent, the newspaper published/gave the interview)–my emphasis:

MnIndy: What about the stories of US military personnel urinating on and otherwise abusing copies of the Koran in Iraq? Were you outraged by that, or is that a different version of this for you?

Myers: There’s a subtle difference there — maybe an important difference. I don’t favor the idea of going to somebody’s home or to something they own and possess and consider very important, like a graveyard — going to a grave and desecrating that. That’s something completely different. Because what you’re doing is doing harm to something unique and something that is rightfully part of somebody else — it’s somebody else’s ownership. The cracker is completely different. This is something that’s freely handed out.

MnIndy: Do you see a parallel between this case and the furor in the Netherlands (and later the Islamic world at large) over cartoonists’ depictions of Mohammed? It seems unlikely that these Catholics would take kindly to being compared to Islamic extremists, but death threats over the fate of a host suggests it’s not an unfair characterization.

Myers: Of course! Both are demands that quirky sectarian peculiarities be given undue respect by those who don’t believe in them. Furthermore, the majority of the email I’m receiving is making it explicit: they are telling me that I should not abuse their sacred icon, but that I should instead go do something sacrilegious with the Koran.

As to the first question, the “cracker” in question is given out to baptized Roman Catholics and it is presumed that one is a member of the religious community (hence the fear of someone improperly taking it without valid standing in the community). Or in other denominations like mine, any baptized Christian. While it is not correct to say the Church “owns” the Eucharist, since in Catholic theology it is a bearer of the presence of God–and God can not be owned or controlled–it is true to say that the community has been entrusted with the ritual and has its own standards of helping to bring about good order and proper practice of the religion.

In other words, there is an implicit recognition of mutual responsibility on both sides. Those receiving communion are expected to be approaching the table in good faith. This is not consumerism and the idolization of the individual’s rights: nobody has a right to the “cracker” in question. It isn’t a consumer product that is there to fulfill my needs and nothing else. It’s not just “given out” like a free sample at the grocery store.

CJ Godcasting

This is my initial foray into podcasting, er godcasting.

This audio is a sermon I delivered in my home parish of Christ Church Cathedral at the main Sunday Eucharistic worship on January 27th of this year.

The Scriptural texts for the day upon which my sermon is based can be read here. I focused mostly on the Gospel passage, Matthew 4:12-23. The theme of the Sermon has to do with the then happening Liturgical Season of Epiphany, which follows the Christmas Season. The principal image for Epiphany is light, which is the basis for my reflection.

AMDG CJ

PS And shout out to my pal Erosophy for the tech support on finally getting this bad boy to play.

—

The audio can be listened to by simply clicking the link below (sermonccc).

sermonccc

involuntary servitude and unconscious self-contradiction

Jonah Goldberg today provides further proof of Jack Balkin’s thesis that all so-called constitutional originalists are de facto living constitutionalists.

Goldberg is writing against Obama (and to a lesser degree) McCain’s programs for national service. He argues this conflicts with the 13 Amendment which states:

“”Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime … shall exist within the United States.”

Now there are a good deal of legitimate arguments against national service, one of which Goldberg elsewhere (in a more sane rift) points out: namely the notion of forced volunteerism is an oxymoron and defeats the whole purpose of volunteer activity. There are legitimate concerns about the practicality, cost, and effectiveness of such programs.

[As a sidenote, that's why better than compulsory service, I think a very healthy package of inducements in terms of loan repayment, job opportunities post volunteer etc is a much better way to go.]

However if Goldberg et. al are going to make the argument against national service based on Amendment 13 then they have abandoned all pretense to original public meaning of the Amendment at its time of passage as the hermeneutical key to application of the statue.

Because I’m doubting that at the time of the Amendment’s passage (1865) that involuntary servitude meant teaching poor kids time tables, bringing lunch to folks in retirement facilities, or raking leaves in the local park.

This would be quite the case of “evolving standards” of interpretation and understanding no?

The Living Jesus

Apropos of the previous post, I’m reading Luke Timothy Johnson’s Living Jesus.

The central argument of which is that there is a choice with Jesus: either we approach him as a living person (the Resurrected Jesus Christ of faith) or as a dead person (the Historical Jesus).

The former involves membership in a church, the “learning” of Jesus as a being of truth, love, and power; the latter succumbing to the ideology of the world concerning what is and what must be truth. The New Testament was written by individuals testifying to the power they felt in their faith and hope in a Resurrection. In other words, there is no non-Resurrected Jesus in the Gospels. Even the Jesus who in the story is not yet resurrected (or crucified) already is in the mind of the author, already is for the reader who is part of the tradition.

The Scriptures are read then for the Christian as to the future not the past.

Jewish Messiahs Pre-Jesus?

Fascinating article this morning in the NyTimes (h/t Andrew Sullivan) describing a new archaeological find that has the scholarly world abuzz.

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

So far no one has argued against its authenticity/dating:  somewhere within the 1st century BCE it would appear.  There are however some debates over the meaning of the text.

The text is a visionary/apocalyptic text dictated by the Angel Gabriel similar in style to writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls and intertestamental period more generally (e.g. The Book of Enoch).

The rest of the article details the work of Israel Knohl whose earlier book The Messiah Before Jesus posited that the later themes of Christian messianism–suffering messiah, death and resurrection–were actually prefigured in the writings of the Dead Sea Scroll.  Knohl believes this finding further proves his thesis.

If true, this would argue against a long-held tradition (within both some Christian and Jewish exegesis) that the notions of a resurrection and dying messiah were Christian inventions.  It could interestingly I think be linked up with another scholar I’ve often recommended, Margaret Barker.  She has argued that the tradition of the Incarnation and the notion of the Trinity (or at least Binity of Father and Son of God) was actually an older strain of Judaism that Christianity revived rather than a move away from traditional monotheistic Judaism.

In other words, if the thesis of Knohl’s is even mostly correct, it returns to the notion (one I strongly support) that Christianity is really a variant form of Judaism.  The so-called New Testament was written by Jews and it makes no sense–and never has to me–how these Jews would see Jesus as anything other than Jewish and there movement as anything other than Jesus.  But it is a form of Judaism that is not primarily Rabbinic Reformed Judaism (the tree root of all three modern branches of Judaism).

This idea has much stronger textual weight than pathetic “Gnostic Jesus” mumbo jumbo (although it sells well)–i.e. that Jesus is just a cipher for Greek pagan myths.  This theory similarly assumes the non-Jewish roots of Christianity.

To return to Barker for a second, it is very intriguing that the figure in the newly discovered stone text is none other than Gabriel.   Gabriel recall is the angel who announces the pregnancy of Mary and is the transmitter to Muhammad of the Quran.  Barker repeatedly emphasizes that Enoch (sometimes equatable with Gabriel) could also be seen as God not simply as the Angel of God.  [Her book argues that the Angel of God is synonymous with the Son of God, what she calls The Second God].

In these visionary apocalyptic texts the Angelic figure can merge with human figures (and vice versa), the messiah, the receiver of the text.  They can all bleed into each other.

So I haven’t seen this text, but as a way out there speculative guess, it would be very interesting if the Angel Gabriel in a sense could interchange with the predicted messianic figure creating a parallel symmetry between the Angelic figure coming down and the Messianic Figure Rising Up (after himself going down into death).

Knohl then unfortunately heads into the vaporware of arguing for the Historical Jesus–that is for Knohl Jesus really did believe that he was the Messiah and was going to die and rise.  Long time readers of this blog will know my agnosticism and general lack of appreciation of the entire Historical Jesus Quest (see here) but even more so the dreaded debate on what Jesus Really Thought.

In legal hermeneutics, this is difference between original intent (i.e. what the Framers really were thinking) and original intended public meaning (what is originally meant as best as we can reconstruct in the public sphere).  In this case, it’s even worse as it is not just the original intent of the authors (of the Gospels) but the original consciousness of the person whom the Gospels portray.

It goes back to Frederick Schleiermacher and the 19th c. Romantic Germanic tradition (including Dilthey) who argued that understanding a text was about getting in a sympathetic/in touch mood with the individual personal consciousness of the author.  [Again in the case of Jesus even one more step removed as he wasn't the author].

In other words, even if Knohl’s thesis is correct, it still doesn’t get us to what Jesus himself did or didn’t think.   It gets us to the original tradition from which the texts were written and Jesus was not an author.  If Knohl is right, all this tell us is that the followers of Jesus saw him in this tradition–it could be that that is because that is how Jesus really taught/was or it could just be that was their tradition.  There is just no way to know in either direction.

Obama-Patriotism-Moving Center Memes

What Daniel Larison said contra our old pal Jonah Goldberg. 

I do however have to take (partial) exception to some of what Larison says in this post on Obama’s supposed moves to the center. 

On gun control, there are passages in Audacity of Hope that are consistent with the views he expressed post-Heller (a Bloomberg-like rational middle:  i.e. keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, stricter background checks, while the individual right is upheld).  No doubt Obama being earlier in local Chicago (read urban) politics emphasized the gun control side of the equation, but it was not out of line with what he is saying now. 

On NAFTA, I thought during the primary campaign he and his crew were accussed of giving the wink-wink nod nod to the Canadians showing that all of his criticisms of NAFTA were in fact political pandering (to the left) and now when he says more positive things about NAFTA he’s tacking right, thereby meaning his original anti-NAFTA were what he originally believed.  So which is it?  Or perhaps it’s the same guy who voted against CAFTA and thinks that what we are calling free trade (which is not free in absolute terms ever) pays insufficient attention to environmental, labor regulations, etc.  You may think that is good or bad policy, but doesn’t seem that inconsistent to me.  He thinks free trade (so-called) which is always government brokered in these nation-nation deals should emphasize other things than what it so far has.     

And even with public financing there are decent responses that would defend his basic consistency (no doubt with some politicking involved).  They would involve that he pledged to aggressively pursue a comprehensive deal with his opponent for a public financed system that would include 527s, RNC/DNC ads, and method of financing.  And arguably the system of small donors via the internet has in fact created a de facto new system, one I would think more conservatives (at least anti-McCain Feingold types) would support.   

FISA was weak–it hurt him that the new class of House Dems in swing districts voted overwhelmingly in favorite of the bill and Pelosi (Obama’s biggest suppoter among superdelegates) pushed the thing.  It’s still up in the air whether he works to revise the legislation again in the next cycle.  i.e. Pass the thing now because Bush will be constrained by some law and then reform it later.  Or he just wants the wiretapping to himself. 

And this welfare reform stuff is weak too (point Larison).  But the others I just don’t see this whole “moving to the center” thing.  Even with the new expanded Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Dept., that’s goes all the way back to his community organizer days/theory of governance as well as his 2006 speech calling Democrats to not be afraid to embrace faith issues.   

RIP: Henry Chadwick

(Photo stained glass, Canterbury Cathedral).

From the Globe and Mail:

The Rev. Henry Chadwick, a Church of England priest and renowned scholar of the early centuries of Christianity, has died at age 87.

Rev. Chadwick died Tuesday at a hospital in Oxford, his family said. The cause of death was not announced.

Much of Rev. Chadwick’s work involved controversies in the early church, which he sought to explain with sympathy for the individuals involved; the same attitude was evident in his work in Anglican ecumenical dialogues with Roman Catholics and the Orthodox church.

“He once proclaimed ecumenism ‘a good cause to die for,’ and was certainly deeply committed to finding consensus — not by coining a conveniently vague formula, but by a real excavation of common first principles,” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in an obituary written for The Guardian newspaper.

Early church controversies (theological, social, and political) was one of the core studies of my undergraduate degree. I spent many a night in college reading Henry Chadwick. He was a great, deep, humane, thoughtful. A man of great faith as well. God speed.

My favorite work of his is probably Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition.

Obama, Wright, Trinity Recap

Lost amidst traveling and other issues was Obama leaving Trinity United Church.  I wrote a great deal about that issue when it was raging, here and here as only a few examples.

I was hoping that Obama would stay at Trinity United, but I guess it was inevitable after Wright’s theatrics at the National Press Club.

But just as kind of summary of what I think was an important issue (though given the media and the blogsophere handled so poorly).

I define politics as the art of the possible.  My own personal political dream/philosophy is so far removed from what is ever going to take place that in the practical decisions I tend towards a moderate, reformist, pragmatism.  Ideology is fine for reading and thinking at home but does not govern well.

Religion is where we able and must dream.  At best politics gives us some better, some worse, mostly more of the same (Habermas’ dialectic of modernity).  But religion offers the possibility of opening a window to a different changed human response to life.

In that sense both Wright and Obama played their respective roles.  The tension I found endlessly fascinating and that more than anything is why I’m sad the relationship is ended.  I would have loved (from my religious side) to see Wright properly criticize the government with Obama in the crowd.  Making clear that his real issue was his theology not skin color.

Obama has no choice but to be a kind of liberal nationalist.  That is to be so effusive at the promise of America, to give himself and believe in totally  its founding myth of progress and opportunity, to the hilt.  Even in some ways more than McCain.  He opens the possibility politically of simply ending some of the race based politics of the 70s (white privilege a la Clinton and black demagogues a la the Sharpton school).  This is all politically (as what is possible) to the good ime (in my estimation).  Something like what Obama’s got is the only alternative to the McCain, Bush Republican corrupt machine (which simply has to be dismembered in the hope that another kind of Party might come probably to act as loyal opposition).

Redemption alternatively is not to be found in politics but rather in religion.  And by that I don’t mean redemption as individually feeling good or individually having esoteric experiences.  But there is a dimension of the vertical not to be found in politics and when politics becomes enforced visions of redemption, totalitarianism is at hand and bodies are about to pile up.

Only in the churches and religious houses of America is the founding myth of America allowed (and properly) to be challenged and deconstructed.  As a political reality it is one thing, to the degree it becomes an end in itself, a myth of transcendence, it is an idol, in violation of the First Commandment and rightly within the realm of religion to be savaged.

In that sense, there has to be a Wright like theology or figure on the scene.  Which is not a defense of the man or his own ego (which is enormous and often gets in the way of the gospel, something all clergy do) but simply the need for the theology he outlined.

Again not as a political roadmap per se but rather as a critique that stands of its own to open the mind beyond the political.  Obama’s, mine, yours, the creepy Obama is the Messiah follower types, Moral Majority Republicans who have equated Christianity with American Empire, all them and more.

Someone must remember slavery from the position of consciousness, from the sorrow of our ancestors and its continued effects today.  As much as a politician must remember and rightly proclaim that slavery is no more and a black man may be elected president.  You create new political possibilities from politics not full on reconciliation (which is why governments can prosecute discriminatory public acts not end racism).

That is the permanent (though partial) gift of the prophetic/black church/liberation theology tradition.  That is there will always of course be a place within churches for ceremonies of the life cycle, community building, care of souls, hopefully some introduction to the contemplative path, as well as feeding the poor.  But if the church (or fill in your own religious house of worship) does not ask why these people are hungry, then it is not following the divine mission.  The work for justice is integral to the proclamation of the gospel.  Full stop.  The Jesuits taught me that and they were/are right.

If you read the Hebrew Bible, as soon as the Kings of Israel emerge on the scene, so do the prophets to stand as a kind of loyal opposition, a critique that the rulers of the world must always here.  Which is not to say that the prophets never got themselves caught up in the politics and corrupted or were party to unethical action (read the text, they do) as did Wright (as have others), but their message (if not always the exact messengers) is necessary.

Hopefully Obama will go back to a church where he will properly be both embraced and stand under judgment.