[351.1] A PASSION FOR THE UNCONTROLLABLE

Contemporary classics revisited. In The God Who May Be: The Hermeneutics of Religion (Indiana University Press series in the philosophy of religion, 2001), Richard Kearney proposes that instead of thinking of God as "actual," circumscribed by human notions of "being" and realised temporality, God might best be thought of as something like "the coming possibility of the impossible." Through refiguring narrative-biblical perceptions of God, and breaking with dominant metaphysical-speculative traditions of religious speech, Kearney draws on the work of Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Husserl, Lyotard, Caputo and many others. He evokes views of God as unforeseeable, unprogrammeable, and resistant to our 'rational' or 'religious' desires for certainty. Important themes such as the phenomenology of the persona, the meaning of the unity of God, performative truth, the divine and desire, notions of existence towards differance (Derrida), and fiduciary commitments in philosophy are taken up in a perceptive and stimulating book. It is part of a trilogy entitled 'Philosophy at the Limit' comprising three volumes. The others are On Stories (Routledge, 2002) and Strangers, Gods, and Monsters (Routledge, 2003). His other books include the extraordinary The Wake of Imagination: Ideas of Creativity in Western Culture (Hutchinson, Routledge, 1988). As a public intellectual in Ireland, Kearney was involved in drafting a number of proposals towards a Northern Irish peace agreement (in 1983, 1993 and 1995) and in speechwriting for the former Irish President, Mary Robinson, who went on to become the UN human rights commissioner.

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[350.1] CONDITIONS OF TRUTHFUL SPEECH

I have had occasion before to praise CrossCurrents, the journal of the Association for Religion & Intellectual Life. The latest issue (Fall 2006) is on the theme of Religious Language: Its Uses and Misuses [pictured]. Charles Henderson kindly gave permission for Ekklesia to reproduce a fine and challenging editorial by Catherine Madsen - which we've titled Learning to converse like grown-ups. This is where she ends up, but it is worth reading the whole piece - especially for those of us involved in contestations about theology and politics, faith and reason:

One of the few legitimate uses of religious language, surely, is to bring everyone along beyond the emotional age of fifteen. In the end, there are things you don't do even if you have been insulted; you don't do them because nothing is worth the kind of instability it would cause to your own equilibrium and to the world's. One of the marks of adult thinking is the recognition that things can get very much worse.

To grow up politically is to understand that there are other points of view, and that you cannot erase them; that there are no shortcuts to respect, and that one must earn one's dignity; that our obligation to our fellow humans is to make our own point of view not unassailable but intelligible. What do you want so badly that you have to develop an impenetrable and threatening rhetoric to talk about it, or blow yourself and the bystanders to bloody shreds rather than ask for it sanely?

[P]ainstaking thinkers of all cultures know each other intuitively across the boundaries of opposition. Totalitarians do not like them; indeed they are always at risk from the totalitarians in their own culture as well as those in the enemy's. In spite of this—or because of it—they are determined to construct a trustworthy language, a language dense and durable enough to resist the corruptions of politics. That language, if any, is religious. We will be lucky if it ever finds its way into prayer.

Subscription details for CrossCurrents are here, by the way. ARIL is a not-for-profit organization located at 475 Riverside Drive in New York City, USA.

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[19.48 GMT] Other ways of remembering. From The Ottawa Citizen. Jonathan Bartley responds to angry criticisms of Ekklesia's comments about Remembrance symbolism - and reality.

[349.1] WHAT WOULD ZIZEK DO?

There's a good review on In These Times of maverick philosopher Slavoj Zizek's latest offering, The Parallax View (Short Circuits). It's by Adam Kotsko of the University of Chicago, whose weblog is always worth a visit. Last Christmas, my friend Kevin Scully, rector of St Matthew's in Bethnal Green, gave me Zizek's The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge / MIT, 2003). "This is the kind of weird stuff Simon likes", he thought. Dead right. It's great stuff, leaving aside Zizek's odd determination to hang on to what is actually a rather outmoded philosophical materialism and give it a new kind of (much more interesting) dialectical twist. But, as with many atheist thinkers who don't just spit when it comes to anything to do with the bete noire of 'religion', Zizek has much more interesting and useful things to say about Christianity than most pedestrian theologians or apologists. He recognises that the Jesus-movement is about turning the world and its ruling assumptions upside-down, not instituting a different kind of command economy. When it's any good, anyway.

For Zizek, part of Christianity’s “subversive core” is the idea of Christian love: “the excessive care for the beloved, a ‘biased’ commitment which disturbs the balance” of normal reality. The space for this love is opened up by the believer’s act of “unplugging” from all social ties in order to be completely faithful to Christ. For Zizek, St Paul’s relativization of all social roles, indicating that the believer does not “belong” to the present order, is a subversive action of refusal. It explains Zizek’s interest in Christianity in the first place: This refusal to identify with the present order is a vital precursor to any attempt at revolutionary change.

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[348.1] A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRISTIANITY

Despite a daft headline (presumably it was meant as ironic), there's an interesting review by John Carlin of the new Archbishop Desmond Tutu biography, published in The Observer. The key point is, Tutu communicates an interest in others and a vibrancy for life not centred on himself, a 'religious in-group' or the church as institution. Rather, he invites us to experience the possibility of the Gospel as a generous, capacious, inviting and domination-free adventure which treats others with dignity and respect. This, not defensive whingeing about "loss of profile" at Christmas (Archbishop Sentamu, sadly) is what the churches badly need to re-focus on. Integrity rather than self-assertion is what they have to demonstrate, in deeds as well as words. Carlin writes:

I have talked to a number of friends who have spent time, as I have, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and they feel the same way. There's no one we know who rattles our non-belief as he does... Whether you are in private with him or part of a large crowd, whether the occasion is joyous or tragic, whether the issue is complex or straightforward, Tutu strikes the right chord. He is so unfailingly lucid, penetrating and inspired... John Allen's wonderfully humanising biography offers plenty of cheerful anecdote and serious insight. None more so, perhaps, than in Tutu's silent response to the news that he had been awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. Overjoyed as he was, he paused for a moment to read to himself Psalm 139. Two lines from it read: 'There is not a word on my tongue/But you Lord know it altogether.' Just so.

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[15.11 GMT] REFLECTING ON A WEEK-LONG MEDIA ARGUMENT... Giving peace a chance proves highly controversial - Simon Barrow asks what is really at stake once we stop simply 'reacting' to one another, as if everything has to be based on confrontation. Then again, there are real disagreements to negotiate.

[347.1] COMING TO TERMS WITH GOD-TALK

The explanatory comment below is slightly adapted from the end-notes to my recent article responding to Richard Dawkins' challenges (and starting with some recent natural and human tragedies). I have revised this piece again in the light of some interesting exchanges with correspondents who have either been seeking clarification or offering constructive criticism in response to my reflections. This at least demonstrates, I hope, that reflexive conversation about what is reasonably involved in 'God-talk' is both both possible and necessary, in spite of (and, indeed, because of) the way this kind of thing gets translated into acrimony in a hyped media environment. [Picture: Talk with God, from GFXartist.com All rights reserved by the photographer. ]

Those who appreciate what I am saying in noting that God is inherently 'beyond description' may wonder how the obviously human ('anthropomorphic') Gospel story can thereby be allowable. The brief answer is that narrative is not a pinning-down of what it refers to, but a signpost – one whose never-quite-finished character is (unlike totalizing theory) consistent with the unconditioned giving-ness God is necessarily held to be. Rightly understood for what it is, figurative language (biblical imagery, for instance) does not claim to 'grasp' its subject, but to recognise the ineluctable 'otherness' of God, even as it seeks to speak of the impact of that otherness on the pattern of our living, in relational (and therefore personalist) terms. Incidentally, abstract categories are just as anthropomorphic as figurative ones - albeit with a different kind of function - because they are produced within the nexus of human language. There is no 'other place' to speak from this side of eternity, even when we speak of what is other. If we do not appreciate the practical significance of this, our attempts at God-talk become hopelessly disordered, as in the case of Richard Dawkins' old-fashioned positivism, or the different - but parallel - kind of imprisoning objectification practiced by religious fundamentalism.

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[14.21 GMT] Think tank rejects misleading claims about its poppy stance (Ekklesia, 11/11/06)... pointing out that reflecting on alternatives to war might not dishonour those who died thinking they were ending it, and that asking Christians to try to consider matters more Christianly may have something going for it - as a couple of my humanist friends have agreed.

[346.1] BEYOND SACRED AND PROFANE

Giles Fraser wrote recently in The Church Times (in an article entitled Why do Evangelicals like purity?): "They want to build up the barriers between the sacred and the secular — contemporary equivalents of the holy and profane." What the purists, who come in many shapes and sizes, miss in this separating of the holy from the secular (gliding, as it is, on the word “profane”) is that from the beginning, the im-pure, the un-touchable was the Holy. The un-touchable was untouchable precisely because it was Holy, not because it wasn't pure. And yes, the great breach with tradition was [losing touch with the notion that] that the righteousness, the holiness of God is life, overflowing and transcending any categories of pure, sacred or profane. (Hat tip: Göran Koch-Swahne)

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[20.55 GMT] Father of dead Canadian soldier supports white poppy (Ekklesia). And kudos to CathNews Australia, who corrected the first paragraph of their story on the 'poppy saga' and have added a response from me at the end. By contrast, The Times have categorically declined to change their misleading account (which others followed, including some BBC reports), and have also refused to publish a letter about it. They used to be a 'paper of record'. But that was pre-Murdoch, it would appear.

[347.2] OFF THE RELIGIOUS RADAR

One of the things that struck me with renewed force from appearing on Vatican Radio and a couple of other 'Christian radio stations' about the 'poppy affair' [see below] yesterday is that it simply never occurs to many people of faith that the "Jesus justice and peacemaking stuff" (as someone put it to me) should ever impinge upon their understanding of religion, let alone the way they think and act generally. It's all about holding an abstract doctrine and/or upholding an institution that provides comfort or dogma, apparently. Plus God-and-national remembrance elide naturally together. So they quite literally had no clue what Ekklesia was "banging on about" (as someone else expressed it, in another media context).

This is a good reason for many people not to not bother with church, for reasons unconnected with either apathy or hostility. Indeed, an interesting sociological phenomenon in Western countries at the moment is the number of people - especially younger people - who consider themselves followers of Christ (rather than just nominally Christian) but don't go to church at all. Because they see the two things as having little to do with each other. It's not hard to see why. This is an interesting feature of what we are calling post-Christendom.

The other day someone wrote to me saying, "Ekklesia seems to want to bring the official church to its knees." I wrote back and said, inter alia, "er, yes, isn't that the point". Prayer being about how we might view the world as gift, rather than an occasion for control.

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[347.1] THE WHITE POPPY BLOODBATH

Well, not quite - but the idea that we might think about peacemaking and nonviolent symbols alongside war remembrance has been variously described to me (in a string of media interviews yesterday, from BBC to TalkSport to Vatican Radio) as 'unacceptable', 'barmy' and 'despicable'. But the notion that this means the assumptions of the existing set-up must therefore be at least implicitly pro-war does not really register. It is a huge blind-spot. But not unexpected.

Ekklesia's proposal (I quote from our news release) was that "Whether you are from a 'Just War', or a pacifist tradition, Christians believe that there is no redemption in war. Churches, who host so many services of remembrance, should at least give people the choice, and make white poppies more widely available, alongside red ones." Both The Times and the Express 'interpreted' that as a call to "dump" or displace the red poppy with a pacifist white one. And these are the people who read and write English for a living... Ah, well.

At least The Sun got it right! Ye, of little faith... The Google News feed on the coverage (a lot of it) is here. And yes, we have raised questions about whether the red poppy is really 'neutral'. The violence of the reaction would, ironically, undermine the case that it isn't. And the official Poppy Appeal site quotes Admiral Lord Nelson: "England expects every man will do his duty." That, in case you didn't know, was about forming conflict resolution teams. Ahem.

The material which will tell you what we are really saying is here, by the way: Proper debate about war 'honours those who have died' 9/11/06; Violent solutions not 'normal' but mythic, says theologian 09/11/06; Challenge to political correctness of the poppy 09/11/06; Canadian war veterans attack peace activists over white poppies 08/11/06; Controversy over sale of white poppies. More on the roots of the "myth of redemptive violence" here. Walter Wink is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, USA. His books may be purchased at Metanoia Books. To buy white poppies: http://www.whitepoppy.org/; British Legion appeal: http://www.poppy.org.uk/givemoney.cfm.

Meanwhile, here's a newspaper letter I was invited to send back to a correspondent who had got very much the wrong end of the stick, but also wanted to accuse us of being Hitler-appeasers.

Ekklesia has not called for red poppies to be"dumped". We have suggested that churches can make white ones available alongside them, to remind us that the dead are honoured when we commit ourselves to alternative ways of resolving conflict.

We cannot remake history, but we can learn from it. The Second World War defeated Hitler, but the First and its aftermath produced him. Latterly, largely nonviolent means overcame entrenched tyranny in Eastern Europe and South Africa. But war in Iraq, while removing Saddam, has resulted in worse bloodshed, not a 'solution'. Meanwhile the 'war on terror' is reinforcing what it fights.

TV culture constantly conveys the dominant assumption that killing solves problems. But it is might that wins wars, not right. Our point is that the the poppy and the Cross are symbols of death, but while the former implies that violence can deliver us, the latter declares the power of love to be non-violent sacrifice.

Ekklesia supports the difficult work of conflict transformation in war zones. We think this is where the priority should be right now (especially for the churches, who often seem more interested in-infighting). That is a fine way to honour those who died in the hope of an end to war, but whose dreams are not being answered by its perpetuation across the globe.

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[346.1] WINDS OF CHANGE IN NICARAGUA

It is hard for those of us who witnessed first-hand the attempt to build a new kind of society in Nicaragua in the 1980s not to feel deeply moved by the election of Daniel Ortega, even acknowledging the difficulties and failures of the FSLN. The Sandinistas, for all their faults, ended brutal dictatorship and brought literacy, democracy, the abolition of the death penalty, land reform and ground-up energy for development to a people trapped in despair. The US-backed insurgency helped destroy many of these gains, and ensured the state over-militarised in both attitude and economic terms. The 1990 post-defeat descent to corruption disillusioned radical Christian participants in the experiment, especially, and with the growth of conservative religious forces inside the country and continued US pressure from without, it will be interesting to see what Ortega can achieve. Activists say that grassroots initiatives and international solidarity campaigns to back better aid, fair trade and just debt and finance polices will play a not insignificant role in helping to moving a social justice agenda. The US Nicaragua Network has already pledged its support. The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign in Britain and equivalents in other parts of Europe will be doing likewise.

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[345.2] SYMBOLS OF HOPE AND CONFLICT

My colleague Jonathan Bartley will be on BBC Radio 4's Today programme tomorrow (around 06.50 a.m.), arguing the case for white as well as red poppies in remembering the war dead and victims of conflict. He is also being syndicated on IRN. In an article in tomorrow's Church Times, he writes: "The Christian tradition, and specifically the crucifix, have a great deal in common with the poppy. Both are linked to sacrifice. Both take a location of bloodshed and violence and make a statement about it. And both attempt to give us hope in the face of death. They imply that those who died did not do so in vain.

"But whilst apparently banned from wearing one symbol of hope (the cross), public figures in Britain are simultaneously urged, indeed in many cases, required, to wear another (the red poppy) – almost as an article of faith. There is a 'political correctness' about the red poppy, which often goes unnoticed.

"But there is a crucial difference between the red poppy and the crucifix. Whilst the red poppy implies redemption can come through war, the Christian story implies that redemption comes through nonviolent sacrifice. The white poppy is much more Christian, in that respect, than the red variety.

"The historical alignment of churches with Governments and the national interest has meant that churches have often giving their blessing to war. However as was seen over their widespread opposition to the invasion of Iraq, churches are increasingly willing to oppose military action, as churches become less aligned with both the state and British culture.

"Whether you are from a 'Just War', or a pacifist tradition, Christians believe that there is no redemption in war. Churches, who host so many services of remembrance, should at least give people the choice, and make white poppies more widely available, alongside red ones.

"The crucial question is not whether we should remember. The question is how we should remember. And how we answer this question affects not just the memory of those who died, but those who are still dying in wars around the world."

[06.06 AM] Haggard revelation exposes evangelical confusion about sexuality (a report and opinion piece).

[345.1] A TALENT TO DISTURB

Would Jesus demand privileged treatment? Colin M. Morris questions some current religious special pleading... Before moving on to work with the BBC, Morris was President of the Methodist Conference, and before that a "turbulent priest" involved as a missionary involved in Zambia's struggle for independence, justice and dignity. Out of that crucible came some radical and highly contextual theological reflections: provocations which certainly inspired me in my youth, trying to make the connection between faith and politics. I'm glad he hasn't lost his dissenting edge, unlike so many church figures who move from the margins to the corridors of power (or at least, the corridors that pass the offices of power).

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[344.1] BOTH YEARNING AND AFFIRMING

These days I'm constantly finding myself pointing out that as a generic descriptor, 'religion' is an ethnographic trope for a certain kind of anthropological instrumentalism - one that rapidly becomes meaningless to the point of disinformation when you stretch it to include both Theravāda Buddhism and Jerry Falwell, say. (Richard Dawkins, please take note). But as a word denoting a set of impulses towards the world, it begins to acquire meaning. As Dutch missiologist Bert Hoedemaker has suggested - 'religion' can be thought of, in these terms, as our primal response to the contigency and waywardness of life, while its partner 'rationality' is about how we order the world in workable ways. 'Faiths' are thus organised attempts to build bridges between these two, to construct - on the basis of observation and intuition - inhabitable negotiations between our simultaneous senses of displacement and placement. (We have these congruent and contradictory experiences of life whether we care to define ourselves as 'religious' or not, by the way.)

Of course religious impulses, as primal expressions of this kind, can be fearful or hopeful, life-giving or life-substitututing. They are not neutral. Nor are they all 'one type of thing'. Religiosity is plural and complex. Writing out of a radical Christian tradition, here is a positive construal of what it can mean from the late Dorothee Soelle, one of the important theological voices of the second half of the twentieth century. When I read it, it reminds me why I and others feel so 'unaccounted for' in a book as sadly simplistic as The God Delusion:

The religious need is the need for experienced meaning, the yearning for a truth that has been promised and that is becoming increasingly visible. Religion is the attempt to regard nothing in this world as alien, hostile to human beings, a matter of fate, without meaning. Religion is the attempt to change everything that is experienced and encountered in all of life and to integrate it totally into a humane world. Everything should be interpreted in such a way that it becomes something ‘for us’. Everything that is rigid should become flexible; everything that is change, necessary; everything that appears to be meaningless should be regarded and believed to be true and good. Religion is the attempt to tolerate no nihilism and to live an unending and unrefutable affirmation of life.

From Dorothee Soelle, The Inward Road and the Way Back, translated by David L. Scheidt (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979).

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[343.1] SECURITY AND SAFETY

"To live securely is to know no enemy can endanger our deepest values, but for physical safety there are no guarantees. For us to live in fear and anger might suit the agendas of some politicians, but it's hard to imagine that kind of life being labeled 'secure.' " (Johan Maurer)

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[342.3] BLAIR CONFUSED ON CREATIONISM

There's no problem, according to the PM. Which is one way of letting it burrow away until it becomes more of one. Gee, thanks Tony! My response on behalf of Ekklesia indicates why the issue of teaching deformed Bible study in science lessons is one we shouldn't ignore - better to get it sorted out, and move on. The parliamentary statement from the Schools Minister Jim Knight on 1 November 2006 was a step in the right direction, and we are in conversation with DfES too. There will be more in the Times Educational Supplement on Friday. Meanwhile, some background on recent developments can be found here. See also Rob Blackhurst's piece in the Financial Times Magazine (Who are you calling old?), tracking a creationist on his UK 'educational tour'. I'm quoted in it, and I also contributed some wider research.

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[342.2] THE THREAT OF CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE

Back in July 2006, my colleague Jonathan Bartley's book Faith and Politics After Christendom included an observation-cum-prediction that some extreme and reactive Christians, frustrated with the pace of Christendom's demise and their consequent disenfranchisement in the corridors of power, might end up considering or using violence to assert themselves, as elsewhere in the world (the bombing of abortion clinics, for instance). On Friday we published What are the chances of a holy war?, partly in response to the row about the BBC TV drama 'Spooks'. Then yesterday, The Sunday Telegraph included this piece by John Wynne-Jones: Christians ask if force is needed to protect their religious values.

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