Of orthodox heretics & pirates

There is a fascinating debate currently underway in the blogosphere on the use that Kester Brewin and Peter Rollins make of the metaphor of 'new heretics' in their attempt to shake the Church out of the bind in which it finds itself. Richard Sudworth initiated the debate at Distinctly Welcoming with the post here which led to comments from Kester Brewin and a substantive post from Peter Rollins on his blog. Richard Sudworth has then responded here and Rollins has made a further response here.

What interests me most in this debate is the dialectical basis of Brewin and Rollins' argument i.e. that transgressing the Law or Orthodoxy (as a criminal or heretic) may not simply be an exercise in law breaking for its own ends but may draw out how the Law or Orthodoxy itself is a transgression. Brewin and Rollins argue therefore for the existence of dual or shadow stories and their work on dialectics highlights this as a key but under-appreciated issue for our understanding of the Christian faith and our use of the Bible.

Slavoj Žižek, on whose work Rollins draws significantly, writes in The Monstrosity of Christ of all stories being dual and containing their own counter story whether told or untold. He cites Ernest Hemingway’s Killers as one example of this phenonemon. Killers is a short story which in ten terse pages details the arrival in town of two assassins and the resigned acquiescence of their target – the Swede – to his fate. As Žižek points out this story as told begs the untold tale
behind the enigma of the Swede’s calmness in the face of death. That story is not told by Hemingway, nevertheless we are aware that it must exist and are compelled to imagine what it might be.

When Rollins unpacks Brewin's suggestion that the Somali pirate’s activities may help us to rethink global geopolitics and articulate an alternative vision of where the real problems lie, he is making use of the same argument. He is arguing that there is more than one story at play in the situation surrounding the Somali pirates and that the Western Global Capitalist story:

"in which there is an ‘apolitical’ (conservative politics hidden as such) concentration on subjective violence (the violence done directly by the pirates – kidnapping, beatings, killings etc.) ... masks the political question that these Somali Pirates force us to ask. Yes they are often brutal and violent, but by stealing ships full of Tanks (bound for Kenya) and luxury goods (made often under horrific conditions) we need to go further and make the (non-symmetrical) connection between the subjective violence of the pirates (which should be condemned) and the objective violence of the system that they are directly attacking."

Rollins, through his use of the metaphor of the orthodox heretic, has applied this to the fundamentalist strand of the Church, for example in the post to be found here. Interestingly, it was within conservative Evangelical churches that I first observed this phenomenon, although at the time I would have lacked an explanation for what I was observing.

What I saw however was ministers imposing ethical requirements on members of their congregation in an absolutist fashion i.e. people were told, for example, that their relationships (boyfriend/girlfriend, new relationship following divorce etc.) were opposed to the witness of scripture and that they, therefore, were on the edge of rebelling against God and his word. These warnings were ostensibly given out of love for the individuals; the stated intent was to draw such people back into relationship with God. However, faced with the stark black and white choice between relationship with God and relationship with their chosen partner several of these people left the Church and as far as was known abandoned their faith. The minister's who had issued the warnings then justified their action in terms of the insincerity of the faith of those that had left.

These incidents were not simply about 'heavy shepherding' or hypocrisy on the part of either the ministers or congregation members involved rather they revealed that a dual narrative was in play when these incidents occurred. Actions that were intended to strengthen faith had the effect of undermining it and actions which were intended as loving were perceived by those receiving them as lacking in love. The publicly stated story of loving restoration also had a shadow story which was understood to be conform or leave. It was the shadow story which was understood or felt by those who left to be the real story, in contrast to the story as publicly stated.

The reality of dual narratives in our lives and practices is, it seems to me, something that we are often fearful of admitting within the Church. Instead we often speak and act as though there is only one story, one interpretation of scripture, and one 'pure' motivation for our actions and practices. Brewin and Rollins are among those challenging the naivity and, sometime, hypocrises of this position and, therefore, they receive flak from those with vested interests to defend.

However, there has been for some time an understanding and application of dialectics to biblical criticism and study. For me, the work of Walter Brueggemann stands out in this regard; in particular his suggestion that the Old Testament evidences both a core and counter testimony which are in dialogue with each other which the content and form of scripture. My posts on this and related issues can be found here.

Brueggemann's work is widely appreciated within Evangelicalism as well as elsewhere within the Church, yet it seems that while we can accept a theory of dialectics in relation to our reading of scripture we have yet to fully appreciate or engage with the implications for the way in which we understand ourselves and our ministries. It is on this ground that Brewin and Rollins challenge us and a key part of their challenge, which we often resist, is to acknowledge the existence of dual or shadow stories in our lives and ministries.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

16 Horsepower - Black Soul Choir.

The destiny of the city

I've been reading Kester Brewin's book The Complex Christ (SPCK, 2004) on the recommendation of my friend Huw. For me it has been one of those books which confirm a lot that you had already been thinking about but where someone else instead of you has actually gone and put it all together and said it better than you ever could have done. Plus there are some interesting synergies with Nicholas Mosley's writings including on the actual and metaphorical properties of slime mould!

Anyway, one of the passages that particularly struck me was this about our response to cities:

"Christ approached the city in order to become a part of it, to infect it, to plant some seed within it that he hoped would take root and grow, drawing the city toward its fulfilled state: that of the place of divine and human cohabitation. This is not where our cities are now, but it is where they are destined to go. And for this reason we must not give up on them. Difficult as it is going to be, we must not abandon our cities or barricade ourselves into sanitized parts of them. If we are not going to face their troubles and stay around to improve them, who is? We must learn to appreciate that the very fact that there is pain in our cities is why they are so vital. The city is the place where we are forced to meet with and journey with 'the other': the drunkard, the ayslum seeker, the lonely, the homeless; it is a multicultural melting pot - all of humanity is here. So we must stay and celebrate these things and try to make them work because this is what the destiny of the city is: to be a place where we can all live together."

It reminded me of a great song, on We'll Get Over by The Staple Singers, called The Challenge in which they challenge us to live in the ghetto, bridge the gap between us, and cure hearts of hate. I once wrote a children's story called The Clean-Up King that deals with similar ideas which I may well serialise over several blogs in future.

The sacred and the human

A post on the 'signs of emergence [the complex christ]' blog is well worth a read. Thanks to Huw for the link. The post summarises Roger Scruton's essay in this month's Prospect magazine which outlines arguments against Hitchens, Dawkins et al: 'the evangelical atheists, shouting from their pulpits'.

Most interestingly, Scruton uses the essay to highlight the work of Rene Girard in order to argue that "religion is not primarily about God but about the sacred, and that the experience of the sacred can be suppressed, ignored and even desecrated (the routine tribute paid to it in modern societies) but never destroyed."

Girard has some fascinating theories on the way in which Christianity is not the source of violence but the solution to it; as God, in Christ, becomes the ultimate victim of our human need to scapegoat others. Scruton's article provides a useful way into Girard's writings, which hold out hope for a way out of our propensity for scapegoating and violence.