On the Eve of the Day of Gluttony and Gladitorial Combat

Micheal over at Catholic Anarchy has a great post concerning this national holiday we call thanksgiving: “Are you pro-life? Resist or subvert Thanksgiving.” He starts with:

I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. – Theodore Roosevelt

[W]e shall destroy all of them. – Thomas Jefferson, referring to Native peoples

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? – Robert Jensen

and ends with:

Pro-life Christians who choose to be thoughtful about such things should be deeply troubled by the reality of Thanksgiving. Indeed, it is perhaps the holi-day par excellence of the culture of death. Of course, the best option for Christians would be simply not celebrating Thanksgiving at all. After all, Christians have their own thanksgiving, only we use its Greek name, eucharist. It is a celebration of liberation and resurrection, not invasion and extermination. It is a celebration that embodies new familial relationships not based on blood or nationality but our common life in Christ. It is a celebration whose purpose is not to say “thank you for all the stuff we have when others are not so fortunate,” but rather “thank you for inviting all of us to this table.” And of course, the one we thank is the Author of Life, the One who is not to be replaced by sentimentalism or the idols of state, of “freedom,” of “choice” and the like. No wonder Jesus made the eucharist a vegetarian feast, a true foretaste of the banquet of the Kingdom of God.

Of course, for most of us, myself included, not celebrating Thanksgiving is simply not realistic. With a one-year old child and having just moved back to the u.s. from Canada after over three years away from family and friends, I am not about to be so politically smug that I would simply refuse to participate in my own family’s traditions. On the other hand, I’m not sure that Thanksgiving can truly ever be redeemed unless it includes attention to the reality behind it, perhaps through the observance of a National Day of Atonement. A “let’s just look at the bright side” approach to Thanksgiving, an approach historically-conscious liberal american Christians tend to choose, simply will not cut it.

If anything, I am suggesting that Christians should bear the above realities in mind during this holi-day, and should, in some significant and deliberate way, make their celebration of american Thanksgiving different somehow this year, and every year. Christians, if they are to celebrate this dangerous holi-day, should in doing so make clear that they are citizens of a different empire, the Empire of God, and that this empire has its own story that exposes the lies of the earthly kingdoms’ mythologies, especially those of the united states of america. Exposing the lies of the american myth of Thanksgiving, in one way or another, must be a part of any serious pro-life celebration of the holi-day. Anything less would mean participation in an ideological cover-up which silences the historical and present-day victims of american empire. As “resident aliens” within the american empire, any eucharist that the People of God celebrates should look very different from the eucharist of the empire.

Go give the whole thing a read ’cause I couldn’t in good conscience quote the whole thing. It is worth it.

Questioning the Sovereignty of the State: An Argument Against the Death Penalty

I believe it quite easy to assert that in the modern nation-state’s quest to justify its existence, its power lies in the ability (or more to the point, a narrative claiming) to ensure safety and curb alternative forms of violence. The state, however, achieves control by subjecting all violence under its rule (I avoid the use of the term law here because it could to easily be read without the background of “the state of exception”). The state claims rigorous and jealous control over violence. In economics, we call this a monopoly. This monopoly on violence extends beyond simply war making or policing (if you must see a grand difference between the two). It is about determining who lives and who dies.

However, this command over life and (finding an enemy in) death is divine work. In the creator/created distinction, it is the creator that calls life into flourishing and has/will defeat death. The assertion that the state has the ability to banish someone into death is to claim a position above life and death, but to use death to maintain such privilege. This is a theological claim all too reminiscent of the Roman Imperial cult:

Roman power was inescapably religious: the state gods of Rome gave victory to the armies of Rome. So to witness to the kingdom of god as far as the edges of the earth, as Jesus commissioned his apostles to do, was to expose Rome’s aspiration to limitless dominion as blasphemous.

Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World, 107.

Like the Roman Empire, the modern nation-state makes a theological claim; an idolatrous claim by the modern nation-state — command over who lives and who dies — makes a claim of possessing the position of divine oversight while foregoing the content of the imperial cult. Here William Cavanaugh’s essay on the empty shrine comes to mind.

So what does this have to do with the death penalty? Quite simply, the state does not have the sovereignty, and therefore the authority, to execute people. Its self-asserted theological claim is questionable at best: it uses violence to wield power over others that it has marginalized. The divine work, however, maintains power in a different way: kenotic and cruciform. True divine work does not use death to maintain power over people, rather, the opposite is the case: divine work confronts death for the flourishing of life. The True theological work recognizes the christological form in a seeming precarious position and against death, rather than fall prey to the idolatrous simulacrum of authority and sovereignty ensuring safety and strength.

Mission, Gift, and the Missio Dei: Some Beginning Thoughts

I’m taking a missions and ecclesiology class this semester. Below is part of the first section titled “God in Action” for my paper. Thoughts?:

pt. 1: God is specifically present (i.e. incarnation, pneumatology) in human history (Abraham, Israel, David, Jesus).

pt. 2: This is understood as a gift.

pt. 3: This first gift, that continues in plenitude, enables us to give. The specific/particular instance of divine gift is meant for more than those who first receive.

pt. 4: This economy of giving allows us to exist/participate within the mission of God proceeding from the inner Trinitarian life.

In other words, the specific or particular in the incarnational way of God working in human history empowers humanity to respond to the cosmos in gift. And for those of you wondering about the upshot of this, there are many — one is that this is part of an answer for why, to put it bluntly, the Christ was a Jew 2,000 years ago, and another is that it is the proper, under girding logic for missions (as opposed to the neo-colonialism of neo-liberal economic theory and its globalization).

This Goes Out to You Kim Fabricius

For Fans of Paul Rowe and William Cavanaugh

Just so you know, in The Review of Politics (vol. 71, iss. 4), Paul Rowe and William Cavanaugh have a paper each. Rowe sets forth a critique titled “Render Unto Caesar… What? Reflections on the Work of William Cavanaugh” and Cavanaugh’s response is titled “If You Render Unto God What Is God’s, What is Left for Caesar?” Go give ‘em a look.

Jacob Taubes on Krister Stendahl and Paul

Jacob Taubes recounts an excellent anecdote about Stendahl for an even better point about Paul:

I want to tell you a story about this. I have a very good friend–now he’s a bishop in Stockholm, he used to be a professor at Harvard, where I knew him well — Krister Stendahl. And I remember (I’m telling you this as a personal story), he visited me once in New York, and we were standing in front of a very large fireplace. And Krister — he’s a real warrior type, you know, Goebbels would have envied him his figure — he says to me that his deepest worry is whether he belongs (we were speaking English) to the “commonwealth of Israel.” So I said to myself, Krister, you super-Aryan from Sweden, at the end of the world, as viewed from the Mediterranean, other worries you don’t have? No, he has no other worries! There I saw what Paul had done: that someone in the jungles of Sweden — as seen from where I’m standing — is worrying about whether he belongs to the “commonwealth of Israel,” that’s something that’s impossible without Paul. (I was able to reassure him: as far as I’m concerned he’s in.)

Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, Translated by Dana Hollander, 41.

On a jet plane…

AAR was again good this year. Conversations were had, people met, and pub time well spent.

The sessions on apocalyptic were good, and there certainly was promise in them for forming an apocalyptic group. I sure hope so, I’ve got a paper in mind to submit for next year. However, I am aghast at how many cuss words Ben worked into his paper. Halden swore up and down they were already in the text and he wasn’t adding the language that no one could ever take back. The Aussie, who knew?

The interview of James Cone by Cornel West was like I was back in class at Union. They seemed to have recorded it, but does anyone know if AAR has ever published such recordings?

I didn’t end up in one session I disliked, although the death of God one went on for a long time. I’m sure people can guess why — the format was a good idea, but really, you expect to do that complex of a format when Zizek has the mic? Still it was rather informative and I appreciated it.

Next year, Atlanta.

Memento Mori Transfigured: All Saints Day as a Christian Memorial Day

From the Ekklesia Project’s blog:

Where I live, remembering and honoring the dead is celebrated annually in May. Over Memorial Day weekend, families flock to cemeteries, flowers in hand, to decorate the graves of loved ones who have passed. In many cases out-of-town relatives come in for this ritual. It’s a pretty big deal.

The church remembers the dead at an entirely different time of year. In Protestant churches, on either November 1st or the first Sunday in November, we celebrate All Saints’ Day. In the churches I’ve served, we remember and name the members of the congregation who have died since All Saints’ Day the year before.

What prevents the Church’s practices on All Saints’ Day from turning into ancestor worship, and what makes those practices different from the practice of decorating graves?

… A Church which takes seriously its liturgical responsibility on All Saints’ Day provides a tremendous act of pastoral and congregational care to those who grieve. Let us offer something greater than putting flowers on a grave.

Go read the rest here.

Two AAR Sessions to be at

In case you’re unaware of Halden’s and Ben’s notices, there will be two excellent sessions on apocalypticism:

A Saturday session (6:30 pm-9:00 pm, FQE-Hochelaga 5) titled “Whither Apocalyptic? Critical Reflections in the Wake of Nathan R. Kerr’s Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission”; it features Douglas Harink, Travis Kroeker and Cyril O’Regan, with a response by Nate.

And a Sunday session (6:30 pm-9:00 pm, FQE-Hochelaga 5) on “The Apocalyptic Gospel: Theological Responses to the Work of J. Louis Martyn”. This is chaired by Douglas Harink, with papers by David Belcher, Walter Lowe, Ben Myers, and Philip G. Ziegler.

I for one eagerly look forward to both.

Hear ye, Hear ye, I have Found the Most Awesome-est Journal. Ever.

Andy, a fellow student at Marquette, has alerted me to the awesome-est journal ever. I am seriously considering developing a paper for submission. What journal is this, you might say? Why, it is GOLEM: Journal of Religion and Monsters.

Now, if you feel like this might be a hack enterprise, then you don’t understand the true impetus behind science fiction, fantasy, zombie movies, vampires, and the like. So :P you. Yeah, I’m mature, but at least I will be ready when the zombie apocalypse comes — the all knowing facebook has told me so. By the way, I call dibs on the shotgun.

The Cruciform God and the Civil god

In light of this first theological conclusion, we must affirm that the “normal” “civil” god of power and might is an idol, and it must be named as such. This god is not the Lord God revealed in Jesus Christ and narrated in the theopolitics of Phil 2:6-11. The “normal” god of civil religion combines patriotism and power; this is the god of many American leaders and of many Americans generally. (This god has, of course, had many other incarnations in human history.) Most especially idolatrous in light of our exegesis of Philippians 2 is the image of God (and/or of Christ) as military power incarnate, whether in the crusades or in Iraq or at Armageddon. As the Spanish historian-theologian Jaume Botey Vallès said about the political theology that underwrote the U.S. response to 9/11, including the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the god of George W. Bush (and, we might add, of many presidents, prime ministers, and kings) is a god of military might. That simply is not the God revealed by Jesus, Vallès rightly says. Neither is it the cruciform God of Paul. In other words, military power of the cross, and such misconstrued notions of divine power have nothing to do with the majesty or holiness of the triune God known in the weakness of the cross. The “civil” god, though perfectly “normal,” is not only unholy; it is an idol.

Michael J. Gorman, Inhabitating the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology, 34-35.

Williams Responding to the Catholic Move

Conclusion: We’ll see what’ll happen, but for now, it is business as usual.

This isn’t exactly out of the norm for Catholics. There is precedent for allowing Anglican clergy to convert and stay married. But it seems, by virtue of this new quantitative move — taking this from case by case basis to allowing an Anglican rite (seemingly similar to the Eastern rite) — there may inadvertently be a qualitative move — what will this mean for a whole slew of things: current Catholic priests, eccumenical dialogue, etc.

Still, I’m somewhat suspicious, if the news is true that the Vatican is doing this through the CDF and not the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

H/T: Ben

Why I am NOT an Evangelical

The attempt to provide an adequate definition for the word “evangelical” for the North American (aka USA) context may be impossible at best. Simply see the wide range for what constitutes “evangelical” in Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation if you doubt me.

However, in my own experience, I have found at least one common element: the role of the conversion experience. Now, do not consider this an argument against a notion of conversion, response to a call, or simply a radical paradigm shift with a supernatural bent. Rather, this questions the conversion experience construed as the arbiter for Christian existence. But what does this mean “the arbiter for Christian existence”? It means that your identity and story is one of conversion, and simply conversion — to give an account of faith is to give an account of one’s conversion from unbeliever to believer.

Simply put, in the evangelical church, you must have a conversion story because it has been made the locus of Christian identity. The testimony has not only developed its own genre, away from simply testifying, but is recited as the badge of membership. Now, while the missional character of testifying is fine if properly understood, I would argue that there occurs a profound brokenness in the Christian life that employs the conversion experience as the meta-category.

Think of the Christian life this way. You’re at a theme park. You’ve arrived and entered through the gates — you’ve had your conversion experience because you’ve now moved within the specific boundary of Christianity. However, no matter how may times go on a ride, eat the food, or play a game, imagine trying to frame everything as if the primary category for experiencing the theme park is the decision to go through the gate, rather than the enjoyment of the twirling ride (the christoform life one is supposed to lead now).

Or think of the Christian life in another way: a significant relationship, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, spouse, partner, whatever. How often does one talk about the beginning? Well, it isn’t unusual to do so, while it might be odd to do so a lot. However, “the arbiter for Christian existence” would be more than simply reflection on ‘getting together’, but that every decision of your relationship, or the everyday life the relationship, would be viewed through the decision to go beyond that first date.

This backward looking, as far as I see it right now, makes the Christian life flat. Some might call it a bare life. Much happens beyond the conversion, indeed, if one understands the Christian life as becoming more like Christ, then the true arbiter of Christian existence is Christ and those around you in the same pursuit. We should not let a broken sense of mission warp how we should understand our movement towards the divine telos. We cannot stay as babes on milk. The christoform life is not thin! The christoform life matures within divine plenitude.

Therefore, we should also not confuse the call to return to your first love with making the conversion experience the primary category for the Christian life. If anything, we are called to be like him, and if that occasionally requires a return or a first conversion, so be it.

If I am right that American evangelicals on the whole do have this conversion primacy implicit in their theology, I don’t want any of it. There is a reason why evangelical kids are growing up and out of the evangelical church that is so dependent on conversion stories as the locus of Christian life. You can only evangelize your already Christian flock so many times.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Zombieland was pretty good, but not amazing; nevertheless, it was still awesome. It reminded me at times of Shawn of the Dead, but thankfully it still stood on its own. Some of the social criticism was particularly delightful — I will never see trinket shops the same way again, particularly ones that abuse native culture in the name of making a buck. I may have giggled like a school girl at the destruction.

An Introduction to Neo-Liberal Economic Theory

If I were teaching a class on contemporary theology, particularly one that touched on economics and our current crisis, I would most certainly use this very well done introduction: