Category Archives: politics/culture

Authority and “networked” societies (including the Church society)

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There is (or perhaps by this time was) a very interesting discussion on the changing aspect of authority as we move from a hierarchical construct to a networked construct of social relating.
Read it here.
I wonder, though, not with the fact that we are transitioning into a “networked” society, particularly among the younger folk, but whether the interpretation of what that means is significantly different between those who observe the phenomena (particularly Baby-Boomers, but also older GenX’ers) and those who are living it.
One commenter stated:

“I think that fitting into the equation today is credibility. For younger people, and, really, most of the western world, if one has no credibility, one has no authority. That goes for the church, too.” (James)

Most of Anglicanism takes upon itself the Catholic understanding of the office and ministry of bishop, but unlike other jurisdictions our bishops’ authority rests more with persuasion and positive influence (when it is positive) and not princely or dictatorial rule, as do, say, United Methodist or Roman Catholic bishops.

A Lover’s Lament over American Evangelicalism

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There is a review by Mark Galli, An Evangelical Lament, of a new book written by journalist Warren Cole Smith entitled, A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church. I’ve just finished reading Frank Schaeffer’s, Crazy for God, and his recounting of his and his father’s (Francis Schaeffer) influence on the rise of the Religious Right and his subsequent disillusionment with the movement. I’ve noticed more and more books that more negatively critique the current American religious landscape dominated by the politicized Religious Right of American-Evangelicalism, and now this book.
I think they are all right in the basic critique that something has gone terribly wrong with the expression of American Christianity. That is no surprise to anyone I talk to about this subject or to those who may have read this blog from time-to-time.
Part of my work in the development of the ImagoDei Society and the Red Hook Project is devoted to finding ways to regain once again the central mission of the Church – the Cure of Souls – and to simply call people to and help bring about reconciliation between God and people and between people, period. Mainline Christianity from the 1960’s through the mid-80’s lost that imperative with the rise of the Social Gospel when liberal sociopolitical ideology overwhelmed theology (liberal or otherwise) within the predominate mainline denominations. Evangelical Christianity lost that imperative from the mid- 80’s through the turn of the century with the rise of the Religious Right as neo-Conservative sociopolitical ideology has overwhelmed Evangelical Christianity in America. What, then, can we do to regain the central focus of the Church, God’s call to us for reconciliation of soul and life, without descending into yet another “liberal” or “conservative” trap? That is the challenge.
Here are a couple paragraphs from the review:

In writing about what he calls “the Christian-industrial complex,” Smith estimates that $50 million a year is collected and distributed to copyright holders of contemporary worship songs. And he notes that whereas in the past, theologians and trained church musicians determined what songs would go into hymnbooks, now it’s “what gets played on Christian radio [that] gets promoted to church musicians and church leaders.”
As Smith sums up, “As we pursue these industrial models of ministry, industry thrives, but ministry is weakened. One of the ironies we’re beginning to see is that … even the world wants the church to be the church. It is the church that doesn’t want to be the church. That’s the core problem.”

Here is a review by Gary Haywood in The Charlotte World. A couple paragraphs

Joel Osteen’s effervescent smile to the contrary, all is not well in American Evangelicalism. If you grew up evangelical, or spent all your Christian life in that domain, you might, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, not know how influenced by American culture modern American Evangelicalism is. Warren Cole Smith, veteran journalist and fellow evangelical traveler, is our guide to how accomodative and consumeristic we evangelicals are in relation to culture.

and

Evangelicals are also often guilty of a new provincialism. Provincialism usually means our outlook is narrowly determined by our small localized setting. For evangelicals, our narrowness is due to being stuck only in the “now.” Regarding seeker-friendly churches that are seeking earnestly to be relevant, Smith states,”Everything about these new churches reflects the rootless, existential, modernist condition of the world.” Smith says that such evangelicals are so into the “ever present now” that they are disconnected from the lessons of history, (what C. S. Lewis called the “clean sea breezes of the past.”) (I wonder – could this be the reason that some thoughtful evangelicals have been attracted to Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or even Roman Catholicism? It does bring to mind Joseph Sobran’s comment that he “had rather be in a church that is 500 years behind the times that one that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing, trying to catch up.”)

Boys

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I think the following quote from Frank Schaeffer sums up well a position regarding boys as boys and not products to secure, protect, or actualize to support parents’ or “advocates'” ideas of how to handle kids.
I grew up in a fairly self-contained neighborhood set within a huge woods with streams and lakes. All we did was play outside – we were boys being boys. We got hurt. We healed. Our parents’ did not freak out when something happened after boys being boys.
Anyway, this from Frank Schaeffer (Francis Schaeffer’s son) on his experience at an all-boys prep school in England.

“Of course, no one sued anyone when their child had an accident or sliced open his hand with a penknife. We all carried one. It would have been considered bad form to sue. How could a boy build a fort if he wasn’t allowed to climb trees? How could he cut saplings to make bows and arrows if he had no knife? Someone was always getting stitches. We were boys! [emphasis his]
Freedom from litigiousness meant that we were in young male heaven. Who could have ever learned to love life as we did if we had been stuck indoors playing ‘safely’ on video games, plugged in, wired up, and growing obese? Thank God there were no computers! We didn’t play games about reality, we were reality! We built things. We climbed things. We were never indoors if we could help it. There was no tree off limits, no pond too deep, no river too dangerous. Everyone had to learn to swim. And who didn’t know how to climb? And everything we did was dangerous, difficult, and challenging; otherwise, what was the point?
It was virtually impossible to be overweight, or restless, let alone suffer from attention deficit disorder in Great Walstead [School]. We were just too busy being happy, physically exhausted little boys in a secure and predictable environment.” [Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God, pp185-186]

Yes, I quite agree. We pamper and try to so govern the lives of our children that we disadvantage them developmentally, in my humble opinion. They are so terribly bored and increasingly lack vivid imaginations. They are becoming less ingenious and entrepreneurial. They may have great eye-hand coordination, but they are often hallow. We hamper their potential when we try to so manage their lives that they are never really able to expand their boundaries and stretch their abilities. Yet, Schaeffer’s last sentence is very important, “…in a secure and predictable environment.”

In defense of religion

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There is a new book: An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off with Religion Than Without It, by Bruce Sheiman. The author takes up the case for the positive aspects of religion within our society.
I came across the following article dealing with the book on Christianity Today’s website. The author stipulates that while the Christian religion may be a good thing, it is still a human endeavor. The New Testament is not primarily concerned with creating a new religion, but doing something very different with the hearts and mind of people and thus with society. Here is a quote that I particularly like:

But this sort of thing, religion, does not stand at the heart of the New Testament message. The gospel isn’t primarily about helping individuals to live the life they’ve always wanted; it tells people to die to their yearning for self-fulfillment. It is not about helping people feel good about themselves, but telling them that they are dying. It’s not about improving people, but killing the old self and creating them anew. It’s not about helping people make space for spirituality in their busy lives, but about a God who would obliterate all our private space. The gospel is not about getting people to cooperate with God in making the world a better place—to give it a fresh coat of paint, to remodel it; instead it announces God’s plan to raze the present world order and build something utterly new.
In short, religion is about making adjustments, making the best of things, inviting God to play a part in our lives and community, and the pursuit of spirituality! The gospel says our lives and our world are catastrophes, beyond tinkering, beyond remodeling. The gospel is about the Cross, which puts a nail in the coffin of religion as such. And the gospel is about resurrection — not an improvement nor an adjustment, but the breaking in of a completely new life because the old life has been obliterated.
[A Pretty Good Religion: Be wary of anyone who starts praising Christianity; by Mark Galli; posted 8/27/2009]

Being made into the image of God (the imago Dei) is not about tinkering, but about creating anew, completely.

More stories of our Government engaging in torture…

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The revelations continue to spill out, even if slowly, about how the government of the Bush & Cheney administration in a fundamentally significant way changed for the worse the American culture with regard to our concepts of and interaction with the torture and abuse of prisoners.
Andrew Sullivan, a conservative (although certainly not a neo-conservative) has written a piece about all this. Here is the link. Sullivan strongly urges that those who are responsible for the policies that claimed that the U.S. could ignore the Geneva Convention and that somehow it is justified to allow for torture against our enemies should be brought to justice, no matter how far up the chain of command culpability might go.
One of the strongest criticisms of the administration’s policies and allowances is the effect it has had on the American psyche and culture. This is a very important observation and the ramifications of the change will have even greater impact on our nation’s future than the actual doing of torture. What has happened to the culture is a shift to accepting torture and justifying in our own minds our ability to engage in culture while at the same time we condemn it in others. Our moral strength of the high-road on the world state has collapsed. We can no longer with a straight face demanded on the world stage that those who torture Americans must be brought to justice, because we do not hold ourselves accountable. All of this, accepted and justified by those who claim they are the true and faithful champions of Jesus Christ.
I continue to be dismayed, and I mean dismayed, by what I constantly hear from the politicized American Religious Right as they unquestioningly (seemingly so) support the policies of the Bush administration concerning the execution of the war in Iraq and even presenting justifications for the techniques we used in prosecuting that war – including clandestine prisons and torture. Where are their minds and their hearts? Heavenward? It doesn’t seem like it.
The Religious Right has lost it moorings to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They claim to represent American Evangelicals and Fundamentalists (or all religious people that support their positions – except Muslims, of course, because in their estimation Muslims are just evil, period). They claim to be the true expression of the Christian Faith in America as opposed to the mainline denominations or “Christians in name only” who support more liberal policies (like ones based on Jesus’ command that we love even our enemies). These organizations have become so consumed with the attainment and retention of political power that they have lost sight of what it means to be Christian. Their end goal, even if summed up in religious sounding language, justifies any means needed to achieve the goal of power. They have called evil good, and good evil. They have overwhelmed the Republican Party and instituted a neo-conservative politique that claims God’s complete support.
They changed the moral character of American Evangelicalism away from Jesus’ two great commands and to the corrupting power of secular politics. They have build a golden calf to which they turn, and that calf is the idolization of a nation-state and putting their trust not in God but in the power of the state. Ironic, isn’t it? They have abandoned the call of God to believe and behave according to a different standard than that of the corrupt world. They have ruined their witness to a confused world, because they themselves are profoundly confused about what it means to be a Christian, about what it means to be moral, and about what it means to be human.
I’m not a liberal and I am no secular-humanist, but I cannot and will not support the theory or tactics of the Religious Right. Their ideology is corrupting to the soul and counter to the call of God to redeem and restore the world. The historic and storied framework and beliefs of what was Evangelicalism in this country has been sacrificed on the alter of politics, and it is sad.

Michael Jackson, RIP

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You know, it is the strangest thing. It is going on a week now that Michael Jackson died. I am surprised by how hard his death has affected me. I am really saddened by his death, almost like something inside of me has died, too. This is honestly unexpected.
I’ve been watching, reading, and listening to everything that has been going on since the announcement. There is, of course, the reporting of his phenomenal talent, but the reaction of people world wide… I’ve heard people say that his music was constantly positive and encouraging and inspiring humanity to make a difference in the world for positive change. This is true. Perhaps, because so many entertainers (particularly in certain genres) are so negative and foul and present to the world the most banal stuff, yet there was Michael Jackson. A New York Times report quoted a industry person saying that they will never be another world-wide rock star with so much appeal and influence and talent as Michael Jackson.
Perhaps it is the tragedy of his life. A childhood that never was and his sometimes bizarre attempts to reclaim it. I can’t imagine what is was like or him – adults from the earliest years doing not much more than manipulating him (and his brothers), lying to him, cheating him, using him, and his father was one of the primary culprits. Perhaps, I am just so sad to see a lost soul with so much talent and so much pain. Perhaps, it is that he was always there during my life and became so significant in times of our lives. Perhaps, I did expect him to die while I’m still around. There are those who hated him.
He had problems, big problems, and he didn’t seem to understand why people did’nt understand him – or perhaps believe him. Whether he really did abuse the boys or whether their parents were just another bunch trying to bleed him dry I don’t know. My suspicion is that he was innocent, but he certainly kept putting himself in situations where people could easily make accusations and exploit his vulnerabilities. Then, all the revelations about is three children that are not really his after all. Not his biological children. The man was messed up, but why? I think, because, of us – people, the public, the exploiters.
So, I downloaded several of his videos. I wanted “Man in the Mirror,” but iTunes doesn’t have it, for some reason. “Cry.” “Scream.” I’m just honestly saddened by his tragic death more than I ever thought I would be.
I wonder whether his death simply brings to mind people that I have been very close to and who are now in terrible situations. Perhaps, his death reminds me that those friends for whom I care terribly could come to the same kind of end. I do fear for them, and wish horribly that they would take the steps needed to make healthy decisions for themselves. I pray for a particular friend constantly. I could see his innocent heart, exploited by others, making terrible decisions and now so messed up, I could see him come to such an end.
Life is so precious, but the “systems of our world” work so hard to destroy the simplicity, trust, faith, and innocence that we have when we are children. Jackson seemed to long desperately for those things. What is left when a culture no longer values them? What happens when we are complicit in their demise?
May his soul find the peace and tranquility he so long sought after. Lord, by your grace and mercy. May we learn something… even a little something.

“Love Between, not Among”

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Fr. Tobias Haller BSG responds in a post to the argument made by some who oppose same-sex marriages (or unions of any kind) when they ask a question such as, “Why shouldn’t three or more people be allowed to marry if they love each other?”
A paragraph:

A polyamorous or polygamous grouping of people may claim to (and perhaps actually) share a loving relationship among themselves. But “among” makes all the difference — it is not the same as between. Such a group or assembly may love one another, but they cannot love “each other” — that kind of reciprocal experience is limited to couples. A multiply partnered relationship cannot be “mutual” but must be “distributive.”

Read the whole post, Love Between, not Among.

Iranians and their desire

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From Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish:
What The Opposition Stood For
It’s worth recalling the campaign and its enormous energy as it continued. Here is a campaign ad for Karroubi. The resonances are quite obvious. The translation is below:

1 (Girl in street): Defending civil rights
2 (Boy next to old man): Counterbalancing poverty/deprivation
3 (Boy pushing away donation box): Nationalizing oil income
4 (Man standing on rooftop): Reducing tension in international affairs
5 (Boy sitting next to satellite dishes): Free access to information
6 (Girl sitting besides her mother): Supporting single mothers
7 (Girl with cast): Knock down violence against women
8 (Boy): Education for all
9 (Boy infront of man locking car): Increasing public safety
10 (Girl on rooftop): Ethnic and religious minority rights
11 (Man on rooftop): Supporting NGOs
12 (Girl in front of wall): Public involvement
13 (Boy and girl): We have come for change
14: Change for Iran

What we see in Iran…

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Freedom from oppression & democracy are realized through the people, not from imposition by an outside force. Iran is in the midst of it! I honestly believe that for a true freedom to take hold in any country (nation or state), it must come from within the desire of the people. It is the people that rise up against the oppressors (of whatever form and to whatever degree) when they long for freedom.
This is one reason why the struggle in places like Iraq is so difficult. U.S. policy went forward believing that we could impose (or establish) a democracy by an outside force simply because we wanted to and because we believed they would welcome it. Many did, but many more (if not most) were not ready and did not welcome the attempt. I suspect most all welcomed the removal of Saddam, but not in the way it all transpired. My hope is that the Iraqi people will be free, but they must first want freedom more than their fear of the oppressive/manipulative/self-centered authorities.
We saw a while ago in Pakistan people rise up against military/civil dictatorship, and even though the process is not finished in Pakistan it has come a long way. The battle now is between the desire for freedom and fear.
We see the goings on in Iran right now, and the people are demanding a different outcome than what certain officials set in motion. My hope and prayer is that it will remain peaceful, as much as it can. Freedom, honest freedom, will be realized when the people demand it, we did when the citizens of the 13 colonies rose up against the British.

Some Republicans from the loosing side of the last election are chastising President Obama for not being stronger in his support for the “revolutionaries” in Iran. I fear they still want another Iraq.