[10.24 GMT] US Christians oppose violent fundamentalist video game (Ekklesia).
"[R]ather than seeking to close the gap between neighbours, as Jesus did in his ministry, the game's purpose is to drive a wedge between people, teaching teenagers that what God intends is for them to slaughter those who do not share their beliefs. Because of the predominance of Christian fundamentalists on television and radio in the past generation, the American people have been left with the false impression that this strange way of interpreting the Bible is what Christians have always believed and taught. We are here today to challenge that view and to name it for the error that it is.” On a related issue, see this by Jonathan Bartley - What are the chances of a holy war? Nov 4, 2006, and a very helpful piece on 'hard line' responses to violent Islamism by Robert P. Baird from Chicago.

A creative interpretation of an annual alternative tradition from Maggi Dawn.

[360.1] POLITICS AS ENGAGING THE OTHER

Rowan Williams in his recent lecture on St Benedict and the Future of Europe: "Borrowing a Hegelian insight refined by the late Gillian Rose in her political philosophy, we must say that every initial self-description of a person’s or a community’s interest is necessarily involved in error to the extent that it has not yet fully engaged with what is other to it, with the stranger whose presence may first be felt as a threat or a problem. Good governance and government is always about an engagement with the other, a developing relation that is neither static confrontation nor competition, but an interaction producing some sort of common language and vision, a common vision that could not have been defined in advance of the encounter."

About the last days of Gillian Rose, one of our finest philosophers. "[Two] years before her death, she was told she had cancer. It spread swiftly throughout her body, but her indomitable mind refused to accept the finality of life. She carried on thinking and one day, to everyones surprise, asked Simon Barrington-Ward [a close friend, and then Bishop of Coventry] if he would baptise and confirm her [into the Anglican Church] and give her her first communion. Characteristically she wanted to make a party of it. She invited some professional philosopher friends to her baptism - Jews, Christians and atheists alike, who were all coming to Warwick University for a conference she had long planned. But it was too happy an ending to conclude in that way. Just a few hours before the agreed time, the hospital 'phoned to tell the Bishop that Gillian was slipping into a last sleep. He rushed to her bedside and was just in time to baptise and confirm her. She could only make her responses with a squeeze of the hand ... But Gillian's party went ahead. The Bishop told of Gillian's baptism and her friends, believers and atheists alike, wept and rejoiced for a friend whose journey was over." [ACNS]

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[359.1] THE GRIEVOUS WOUNDS OF LOVE

The word "philosophy "means "love of wisdom," but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, leading postmetaphysical philosopher and Catholic thinker Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question about his own discipline, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins with a critique of Descartes' equation of the ego's ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists -"I think therefore I am" - arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter love, he says, when we first step forward as a lover: I love therefore I am, and my love (regard for the other) is the reason I care whether I exist or not. Marion then probes several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, he stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one's sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love in its various guises. {edited description}

Jean Luc Marion is currently the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is also in the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on Social Thought at the same university. His other books include the ground-breaking God Without Being (University of Chicago Press, 1991). Also Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology (Northwestern University Press, 1998); Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness (Stanford University Press, 2002); In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena (Fordham University Press, 2002) and Descartes' Grey Ontology: Cartesian Science and Aristotelian Thought in the Regulae (St Augustine's Press, 2006). See also on this blog.

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[358.1] CHRISTIANS GETTING CROSS DOESN'T HELP

The row over whether British Airways (BA) staff can wear religious costume jewellery trivialises the real issues highlighted by the Cross – turning it into a club badge rather than a symbol of liberation, claims a leading Christian commentator today. Giles Fraser – who is vicar of Putney, an Oxford philosophy lecturer and founder of Inclusive Church – said on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day slot this morning that “many Christians like me remain deeply uneasy that the way the cross is being defended by some is transforming it into a symbol of cultural identity.” Continued.

And this from a media statement: "It would be good if we could accept a diversity of symbolism in a plural society, but using political power to enforce the display of the Cross spectacularly misses what it is really about", says Ekklesia co-director Simon Barrow, who with Jonathan Bartley has co-edited a book about the subject called Consuming Passion.

Consuming Passion says that the Cross is an expression of non-coercive sacrifice confronting imperial religion – and that its misinterpretation in popular Christian thought is very relevant to issues of violence, oppression and social justice.

"Questions of free expression should not be discounted in this area either", says Ekklesia – which recently landed in hot water for suggesting that churches should make white poppies available as well as red ones to symbolise peaceful resemblance. But the think tank adds that "tactics which look too much like bullying for comfort" are no way for Christians to behave in such matters.

"In a culture which is now plural, Christians perhaps need to learn to get less cross", commented Jonathan Bartley."

"At the same time, we all have to learn that there are cultural anxieties in a changing society – and find ways of talking about them," adds Simon Barrow.

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[12.39 GMT] It's the narrative, stupid. Nov 23, 2006 (Ekklesia). Simon Barrow explores what gives meaning to modern, story-shaped politics.

[357.1] RELIGION CAN HAVE NO MONOPOLY

Jim Wallis: Religion Must Be Disciplined by Democracy. This week, The Washington Post and Newsweek launched a new feature – "On Faith" – an online discussion of religion and its impact. Wallis has joined more than 50 other religious leaders, scholars and activists from different faiths and different places on the political spectrum on a panel that includes Desmond Tutu, Karen Armstrong, Elie Wiesel, and many more. In the succeeding features, a question on a topic connected to religion or spirituality in the public sphere will be posed and panel members as well as readers will respond.

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[06.47 GMT] Dawkins anti-religion school crusade is met with scepticism (Ekklesia). With a comment from me.

[356.1] FALLING INTO THE SATIRE TRAP?

Not to put it too delicately, I've often wondered why so many Christians get knicker-wettingly uptight about comedy -- especially satire. It's as if some of us were born with a massive irony defecit. What prompts this thought is the lastest rehearsed outrage at the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Borat is, of course, deliberately intended to make us uncomfortable about how we and those around us see things and each other. Its main target is prejudice itself. Well, apart from making us belly laugh and feel a bit guilty for doing so at the same time. No bad thing. Comedy can be a good way of disarming both ourselves and the powers-that-be, refusing to take either too seriously, though it is rarely morally unambiguous (if it's any good).

But as with Jerry Springer The Opera, many apparently worried and defensive Christians just don't see the point, and seem to take an almost vicarious delight in "being offended". We urgently need to learn to be more mature readers of texts, whether films or our own founding documents. I do feel a bit sorry sorry for the Kazahks, though. For some this kind of thing is culturally alien (the style of comedy, not gratuitously racist insults). When the Borat character was created, it probably wasn't anticipated that it would go quite as global. Having said that, their president has now sensibly decided to laugh it off. Moreover, it's difficult not to see that the real joke is on Westerners who believe in, or play along to, these crass stereotypes. And that is why Borat is an important challenge, albeit one which evidently lacks a bit of potty training. I wouldn't justify all of it (and nor would Sacha Baron-Cohen if pushed, I suspect), but it is far from devoid of redemption. So go on, smile! Jesus won't hate you for it, and you might just learn to be a better person when you've looked into the comedic abyss a bit less fearfully.

(Incidentally there are some interesting comments by Baron-Cohen in The Times. And a good review by Stephen Tompkins in Third Way. I have written more on this general theme in 'The cross, salvation and the politics of satire', a chapter in Consuming Passion - DLT, 2005. And here is a piece on censorship and cultural freedom).

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[355.1] NEW GUARDIAN UNLIMITED COLUMN

Difference based on friendship - Simon Barrow (Nov 20 06, 05:28pm): The antagonism between organised religion and militant secularists is unproductive and excluding.

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[354.1] NEW GENERATION NETWORK LAUNCHES

New Generation Network is the name of a new think tank and discussion initiative which is being launched later today by the admirable Sunny Hundal [pictured] of Pickled Politics, an acclaimed webzine which focuses on British and international politics, media and society from a broad, mainly South Asian perspective. NGN's initial 'manifesto' is calling for an improved debate on race and faith - which at the moment is dominated by extreme sectional interests, the government's demonising of minority communities, and a self-selecting "great and good" approach to public consultation. The NGN founding statement raises important issues from an independent perspective, and I was pleased to sign it myself - Ekklesia is certainly supportive of this venture, but it is one forged by individuals rather than organisations and 'representatives'. Indeed the question of who really 'represents' whom in the fields of religion and race is one of the necessarily awkward questions it is raising. The 'manifesto' will be published on The Guardian’s Comment is Free pages today and is noted in a short news story. That will also serve as a starting point for a week of debates on CIF around the future of race and faith in the UK. The NGN will be on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 7:20am, Five Live at 8:35am (they are doing a big programme on Islam), and Asian Network at 11:15am. Possibly also Channel 4 TV. Ekklesia will be issuing a supporting press release, which will also be on our news brief and in the Daily Email Bulletin. Sunny Hundal's hard-hitting Guardian article is entitled: This system of self-appointed leaders can hurt those it should be protecting. "It is in all our interests to challenge those who wrongly claim to be speaking for Britain's minority communities."

Update: The full NGN statement on race and faith can now be read here. See also on Ekklesia, We need a better race and faith debate, says New Generation Network 20/11/06.

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[353.1] NOT QUITE NEMESIS, BUT...

Martin E. Marty on the recent US elections and religion: 'The Christian Right took shape in the 1980s with the motives of the "politics of resentment," its members having long felt, and been, disdained. In the years of the Reagan charm, they found it easy to gain power, so they moved to the "politics of will-to-power," still voicing resentment. Many sounded as if they should and maybe could "win it all" and "run the show." They have now begun to learn what mainline Protestants and mainline evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, and humanists know: No one is simply going to "run the show" in the American pluralist mix, as we watch shifting powers face off against other shifting powers, which is what happened again in the mid-term elections.'

See also the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The current Religion and Culture Web Forum features "Justification and Truth, Relativism and Pragmatism" by Daniel A. Arnold.

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[352.1] BEING LOCKED AWAY IN CHURCH

So much churchgoing is just religious practices and not godly living and godly exploring. Something seems to have gone very wrong. I believe that [through pluralism and secularity] God is bringing pressures to bear on us which could and should reawaken us to the immense God-possibilities which are around in the world and in people and in the church. We ought to be reawakened to the powerful resources and insights which are available in and through the biblical records and in and through the various Christian traditions—if only we will not shut them up in the practices of religion.

From David E. Jenkins, God, Jesus and Life in the Spirit (SCM Press, 1988).

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[12.01GMT] Time for fear to come out of the closet. Simon Barrow reflects on the fall of a US religious hero. A slightly revised (and, in a couple of places, expanded) version of my Ekklesia article on Ted Haggard and the politicized theology/ideology of sexuality among right-wing evangelicals.

[13.37 GMT] Threat to future of vital global Christian study centre in Edinburgh Ekklesia. This is a matter of great concern.

[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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