First, just a little history.
In the year 313 the Roman Emperor made Christianity a licensed religion. Constantine said licet, let it be permitted. For the first time in its history the movement of Christianity had official and final Roman approval, and it was already older then than the present U.S. Republic. Imagine that: 275 years without any secure government recognition, without having a king or an emperor at your back, without a sure place in society, without public symbols and celebrations to declare your right to exist. 275 years of civic contempt, mixed with oblique influence when people of status became Christian, then punctuated at other times by outbursts of lethal persecution.
When Constantine gave state permission to Christianity he had just won a decisive battle in which he had invoked the Christian god—a voice had spoken to him in a dream (in a later account it became a vision) telling him that he should emblazon the heavenly sign of Christ on the shields and helmets of his soldiers. He thus began the process of the militarization of Christian faith. True, there were already Christian soldiers in the Roman army, but they were there because they had been pressed into service, and seemed faithfully to adhere to the church’s absolute prohibition on killing--if not why was there no hint of a rebellion when Christian soldiers were subject of a harsh purge from the army under Diocletian about twenty years before? In other words they were there as a formal fill-up-the ranks presence, ready the moment the war was over to abandon the profession. Constantine realized somehow that it would be possible to enlist the support of this radical yet influential movement by calling a halt to the bitter persecution of his predecessors and then progressively according rights and privileges to the church, and at the same time creating the self-serving myth that the Christian god had spoken to him directly pledging his support. Christians of course had to want the end of persecution, and they probably shared a general desire for the peace of Roman society rent by continual civil war. Whatever the reasons the combination of Constantine’s moves got the Christian movement to accept the deal he offered and progressively they saw all this as the work of God. (There is at least one monumental image of Constantine’s vision adorning the walls of the Vatican.) A fateful hour had dawned, the seduction of Christianity by the state and its military apparatus. Within the space of one year the bishops were ordering Christians to remain in the army (Council of Arles, 314), within a decade there were religious wars with Christian orthodoxy on one side and heresy on the other, and within a century Augustine had formulated his doctrine of “just war”. The rest is history.
Or a kind of history.
When the emperor says licet Christianity is licensed. It’s allowed to exist by the say-so of the archaic human system built on the death of the victim. And then very quickly it appears that Christianity agrees reciprocally with the state’s mode of existence, with its violence. Christianity becomes franchised by the state, by a human system of violence. And in return Christianity franchises the state, its relentless natural violence. A separation-of-church-and-state motif does not overcome this, rather it effectively masks it. Within the separation lies a mutual collusion. And if biblical people invoke Romans 13 (submit to civil authority) as proof of apostolic support for this situation they conveniently overlook both the vastly different condition of Christianity at the time of Paul’s writing (a tiny apolitical group) and Paul’s more basic theological distinction between the Christian body and the wrath of this present world order.
As is obvious all this has been hashed out before. The discussion between the Christian peace tradition and the position of the mainline “just war” churches is old, bitter and unresolved. What I’m saying, however, wants to add something different. The franchising of Christianity by the state is breaking down from within. The crisis of violence in our 21st century world is of itself dissolving the implicit alliance of Christians and the state, instead opening up a new space where Christians are unfranchised, unlicensed, unofficial…unchained.
A new possibility is emerging, created by our contemporary historical crisis of elective wars that never end and the parallel systemic experience of destruction of the environment. The world system can be seen to be terminal and this puts people in a new situation, especially Christians who can recognize that this new situation is, in an amazing upside-down way, the transforming work of Christ. If Christians have colluded with the state and its just wars, Christ and the gospel of the forgiving and innocent victim never have. And so the more and more the world resorts to violence the more and more its violence is seen as...violence. The act of violence becomes implausible, inconclusive, inept, crazy. Our history is spinning into greater and greater chaos because of the refusal of the true answer--the forgiveness and compassion of Christ, which at the same time become the more evidently necessary the more they are refused. Thus Christ has opened up a new opportunity for his followers to return to their original unfranchised, unchained state, to find the gap in the world order where they can truly exist.
In this gap the gospel is free to speak itself in boundaryless transformative terms, without distinction of friend or foe, terrorist or freedom fighter, us and them, righteous and impure. I quote Scott Hutchinson, from his comment on the previous post. “The forgiveness at the heart of gospel life removes barriers, loosens bonds, unburdens, sets people free, leads to the mutuality of gifting and being gifted. Exhilarating, fulfilling, and terrifying! The source, of course, is God, whose radical self-giving transforms and endlessly offers life.” And progressively the actual space that Christians occupy is no longer demarcated by the built walls of their franchise but by this new open unmediated space that Christ has created in our time, dissolving the historical nexus of 313.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Gospel in a Time of Drones
Recent media comment on the Times Square bomb attempt (May 1st) underlines the background to this particular piece of terrorism is Taliban, not Al Qaeda, and a stand-out cause of radicalization of individuals in this context is the U.S. campaign of aerial bombing by drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Whether the confessed bomber, Faisal Shahzad, is giving a sincere account of his motives or not, he has presented this as the justification of his actions. The conclusion by a number of bloggers and opinion-makers: the aerial campaign has had as its consequence not the suppression of terrorism but the opening of a new seam. You don’t say!
Nothing enrages and radicalizes more than aerial bombardment. It had that effect in Britain. I remember the bomb sites when I was a child, still there in the late fifties. Aside from not having much money the British were in no hurry to clean them up because in their own stark way they were a monument to bitter resolve and victory. They said you may bomb us to the ground but we will never give in. Bombardment creates a Promethean will to defy whatever god comes from the sky to force us to submit. (You really have to kill everyone—or at least show you’re willing—to produce defeat from the air; hence the bumper-sticker logic “Nuke ‘em all!”.)
Bombardment from the air is one of those things that stops war being a gentleman’s game as it seems to have been viewed before, and gets everyone involved. This is a key part of Girard’s argument in Battling to the End—whole populations are mobilized psychically and physically in modern war so there is nowhere to escape bottomless rivalry between peoples. Thus we truly are battling to the end. But where is Christianity in all this?
In the same book Girard’s answer is that historical Christianity has failed. The gospel has removed sacrificial restraints but Christian churches have failed to persuade people to abandon rivalry in favor of forgiveness. I think this is the world-weariness of a thinker who has thought long into the night and is carried away on the tide of his own thoughts. Human logic cannot trump the gospel. Historical Christianity is historical Christianity. Contemporary Christianity is something else, and that is what is failing but it has not yet failed.
Contemporary Christianity is under a unique set of challenges, such that it really cannot look to the past for answers. Benedict XVI said recently that the most serious attacks on the church come from within and I think that is the most infallible thing he ever said. His words go way beyond the pedophile crisis and resonate with the accommodations that Christians have made with a world of violence. Christians look back to arguments of just war, of separation of church and state, of “spiritual” things being their concern and the world having a different set of rules. But a world that has been radically destbilized and deconstructed by Christianity cannot have its own rules. It can only survive with Christian “rules”, i.e. forgiveness, compassion, nonviolence. At the moment, however, formal Christianity seems to be the last to understand this. As a result Christianity today fails to come to the level of its own meaning in the world. In a world where the core cultural dynamic is the revelation of the victim the only future is to turn the other cheek. You would think that Christians who read the Sermon on the Mount would “get this,” but they are so filled up with the tortuous compromises that have defined the church since Augustine they cannot grasp the intense relevance and vitality of their own message.
But as Benedict hinted “the center cannot hold” and all those old formulations are failing. In their place something new is coming, a direct encounter of the ordinary average Christian with the text and spirit of the gospel in all its historical rawness, challenge, wonder and power. Small groups are springing up and they are engaged with the gospel in its full re-creative significance at the heart of the contemporary crisis. They are springing up everywhere and they alone are the way forward. As the drones pollute our skies with the rumor of total war the gentle wind of the Spirit speaks to the hearts of Christians the promise of new heavens and a new earth.
Nothing enrages and radicalizes more than aerial bombardment. It had that effect in Britain. I remember the bomb sites when I was a child, still there in the late fifties. Aside from not having much money the British were in no hurry to clean them up because in their own stark way they were a monument to bitter resolve and victory. They said you may bomb us to the ground but we will never give in. Bombardment creates a Promethean will to defy whatever god comes from the sky to force us to submit. (You really have to kill everyone—or at least show you’re willing—to produce defeat from the air; hence the bumper-sticker logic “Nuke ‘em all!”.)
Bombardment from the air is one of those things that stops war being a gentleman’s game as it seems to have been viewed before, and gets everyone involved. This is a key part of Girard’s argument in Battling to the End—whole populations are mobilized psychically and physically in modern war so there is nowhere to escape bottomless rivalry between peoples. Thus we truly are battling to the end. But where is Christianity in all this?
In the same book Girard’s answer is that historical Christianity has failed. The gospel has removed sacrificial restraints but Christian churches have failed to persuade people to abandon rivalry in favor of forgiveness. I think this is the world-weariness of a thinker who has thought long into the night and is carried away on the tide of his own thoughts. Human logic cannot trump the gospel. Historical Christianity is historical Christianity. Contemporary Christianity is something else, and that is what is failing but it has not yet failed.
Contemporary Christianity is under a unique set of challenges, such that it really cannot look to the past for answers. Benedict XVI said recently that the most serious attacks on the church come from within and I think that is the most infallible thing he ever said. His words go way beyond the pedophile crisis and resonate with the accommodations that Christians have made with a world of violence. Christians look back to arguments of just war, of separation of church and state, of “spiritual” things being their concern and the world having a different set of rules. But a world that has been radically destbilized and deconstructed by Christianity cannot have its own rules. It can only survive with Christian “rules”, i.e. forgiveness, compassion, nonviolence. At the moment, however, formal Christianity seems to be the last to understand this. As a result Christianity today fails to come to the level of its own meaning in the world. In a world where the core cultural dynamic is the revelation of the victim the only future is to turn the other cheek. You would think that Christians who read the Sermon on the Mount would “get this,” but they are so filled up with the tortuous compromises that have defined the church since Augustine they cannot grasp the intense relevance and vitality of their own message.
But as Benedict hinted “the center cannot hold” and all those old formulations are failing. In their place something new is coming, a direct encounter of the ordinary average Christian with the text and spirit of the gospel in all its historical rawness, challenge, wonder and power. Small groups are springing up and they are engaged with the gospel in its full re-creative significance at the heart of the contemporary crisis. They are springing up everywhere and they alone are the way forward. As the drones pollute our skies with the rumor of total war the gentle wind of the Spirit speaks to the hearts of Christians the promise of new heavens and a new earth.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Souls Not Stones
Where does a Christian pray?
In her soul. In the soul of her neighbor. In her dreams.
When I say soul I also mean body. I mean soul as the dense neural life of the body itself, not another entity. But I say soul because this dense life is also expansive and imitative and connects itself with all other beings. “Soul” captures this meaning while “body” sounds more individual. So it is the body/soul or soul/body which prays.
What then is the value of the physical space designated for prayer: a church, a shrine, a temple?
The only value of the physical space, it seems to me, is that it allows the soul to gather with her neighbor souls to do publically what she does all the time. Art and architecture may help, but they may also hinder. A physical space can carry the soul on pathways which other souls have imagined for her, along which she may glimpse things she never met before. But for the same reasons they can become confining, or, worse still, an end in themselves. We can begin to believe that only with the set of responses modeled by this place can a soul pray. Jesus said, “Believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…”
Thinking about architecture, what is the most vital human architecture today? Surely the internet, a vast cathedral where all souls meet! And its very indifference to all particular religious forms, to all local architectures, renders Jesus’ words more relevant than ever. The internet displaces human imagination from stones to the soul itself, to the endless medium of communication that is the very essence of human being.
A Christian prays in her soul, in the souls of her neighbors, in her dreams.
At the core of a Christian’s dreams is a yearning and a foretelling—of the time when the whole earth will be a universe of united souls.
Now is the time, therefore, when Christians search more and more deeply in their souls, in their neighbors’ souls, in their dreams, for the living connective tissue that will make that dream a reality.
Now is not the time, therefore, to put confidence in the stones of place, but rather in the meeting of souls, wherever that takes place. Now is the time even deliberately to abandon the stones of place in order to discover the meeting of souls.
To be free for the dream.
In her soul. In the soul of her neighbor. In her dreams.
When I say soul I also mean body. I mean soul as the dense neural life of the body itself, not another entity. But I say soul because this dense life is also expansive and imitative and connects itself with all other beings. “Soul” captures this meaning while “body” sounds more individual. So it is the body/soul or soul/body which prays.
What then is the value of the physical space designated for prayer: a church, a shrine, a temple?
The only value of the physical space, it seems to me, is that it allows the soul to gather with her neighbor souls to do publically what she does all the time. Art and architecture may help, but they may also hinder. A physical space can carry the soul on pathways which other souls have imagined for her, along which she may glimpse things she never met before. But for the same reasons they can become confining, or, worse still, an end in themselves. We can begin to believe that only with the set of responses modeled by this place can a soul pray. Jesus said, “Believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…”
Thinking about architecture, what is the most vital human architecture today? Surely the internet, a vast cathedral where all souls meet! And its very indifference to all particular religious forms, to all local architectures, renders Jesus’ words more relevant than ever. The internet displaces human imagination from stones to the soul itself, to the endless medium of communication that is the very essence of human being.
A Christian prays in her soul, in the souls of her neighbors, in her dreams.
At the core of a Christian’s dreams is a yearning and a foretelling—of the time when the whole earth will be a universe of united souls.
Now is the time, therefore, when Christians search more and more deeply in their souls, in their neighbors’ souls, in their dreams, for the living connective tissue that will make that dream a reality.
Now is not the time, therefore, to put confidence in the stones of place, but rather in the meeting of souls, wherever that takes place. Now is the time even deliberately to abandon the stones of place in order to discover the meeting of souls.
To be free for the dream.
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