flying.farther

The Silent Torture of the Church by a Democracy

While torture, as Scarry states it, “aspires to the totality of pain,” torture does so with the specific aim for destruction of a human being. It is the literal beating down of a human being into nothing: “Torture is a condensation of the act of ‘overcoming’ the body present in benign forms of power.”1 Torture is the violent, systematic deconstruction of a human being by another human being. “Apart from its ineffectiveness and illegality, torture is one of the cruelest, and most dangerous things that the United Stats can be doing. The claim that torture should somehow be justified is really an attack on the very dignity of humanity. It sinks us all to an inhuman and uncivilized level. It debases the victim and the torturer. In the end, torture destroys everything we value as human beings.”2 The anthropology of torture is thoroughly counter to any conception of humanity by Christianity. In fact, to move Christians in America towards accepting a torturous of vision for humanity is an attack on the Christian story and the community that claims to be the body of Christ.

However, American Christianity seems to care so little about torture. Torture is meant to isolate and break down other human beings and it is done in an incredibly violent and/or coercive manner, as I have argued. Torture results in victims who “are scripted into a different socio-political drama, recreated as abused, bastard children of the regime” and yet comparatively, so little is said about torture.3 Some Christians have no answer when challenged, they are simply indifferent, while others are resolutely pro-torture.4 In my mind, this is a gigantic theological leap from the kerygma; to be indifferent of or for torture is not based on the Christological event of Jesus – the one who was tortured. So how might such a leap be made? What is it that makes these Christians the torturer?

This leap is not theologically acceptable, however, the justification for torture can find less opposition outside of Christianity and a positive perception of torture within society, especially within the powers behind the status quo – the state, with its raison d’état, and the capitalistic market.

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1. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain 57.
2. Ratner and Ray, Guantánamo: What the World Should Know, 35.
3. William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 42.
4. From a discussion with Randall Balmer. The subject of the discussion can also be found here: http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i42/42b00601.htm. “Following the revelations that the U.S. government exported prisoners to nations that have no scruples about the use of torture, I wrote to several prominent religious-right organizations. Please send me, I asked, a copy of your organization’s position on the administration’s use of torture. … Of the eight religious-right organizations I contacted, only two, the Family Research Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, answered my query. Both were eager to defend administration policies.”

I did a previous post on Prof. McGuckin’s op-ed for the New York Times. And, as good as the op-ed was, there is one thing I’ve learned here at Union - McGuckin is a great lecturer to which no short op-ed could do justice.

Last December he gave his Inaugural Lecture. I highly recommend it, one because it revisits (actually it anticipates) and broadens his op-ed on the capitalistic fakeness of the current Santa Claus and two, because it is a great little lecture.

As much as I am a “theologian” (whatever that means), I also have a love for history, especially good history that re-orients the church. Enter Prof. John Anthony McGuckin, who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on Santa. I highly encourage everyone to go give it a read. Heres the first paragraph:

ST. NICHOLAS was a super-saint with an immense cult for most of the Christian past. There may be more icons surviving for Nicholas alone than for all the other saints of Christendom put together. So what happened to him? Where’s the fourth-century Anatolian bishop who presided over gift-giving to poor children? And how did we get the new icon of mass consumerism in his place?

Prof. McGuckin is a Romanian Orthodox Priest, a scholar’s scholar and he not only understands capitalism parodying the church (much like Eugene McCarraher), but McGuckin touches on areas, even in this short op-ed piece, that are sometimes left to the margins in relation to the capitalistic aping of the church. To list the subjects off, he hits on: race; slavery (sexual); preferential option for the poor; uses “feminist history” (that is, focusing on the females in history, which is not limited to females of power, but generally the opposite because historically females in western history didn’t en-mass have much power); the corporation’s use of the church (turning from the poor to the rich); and infuses the entire text with “iconic” images - with “icon” functioning on two levels, one as the colloquial term for icon and a second as the ecclesial idea of icon; and he finally even brings in the idea of saints. He does all this in a very short time, and without the text becoming unwieldy. I think this might be too smart for the New York Times.

It was McGuckin’s subsumed thematic use of icons that struck me as the most interesting. It was no surprise to me that McGuckin used icons in this piece. In the one history class I did take from McGuckin, he made a point of continually coming back to the seventh ecumenical council, called Nicaea 2 (the council on aesthetics, specifically on icon use), and its over all importance, which the west has largely forgotten. (His wife also makes excellent icons and teaches students from time to time how to make them as well.)

Implied in the piece, I would venture to say, is that American capitalistic advertising is the bastardizing of ecclesial iconography (and the saints as well) - one of the highest forms of Christian art. The term simulacrum comes to mind. I’m also suspicious that the reason the west doesn’t see the conflict is because we have an aesthetic vacuum. Churches today (or at least the megachurch) are built to look like business parks or corporation complexes and the art that depicts Christian life is niche marketing, like Christian Camo or Truth Soul Armor, or the mundane Thomas Kinkaide marketed everywhere on everything. The west so very much needs a revival in Christian aesthetics and a theology of icons seems to be the place to start. Its been there for century upon century, just like the Christian calendar. We just have to pick it up.

One last interesting observation. Often Christianity is blamed for absorbing other religions, or at least pagan religious holidays; however, in this case, it was Coca-Cola that infused the now common conception of Santa with an Odin like figure - a patriarchal god of the dark sky. Hows that for a parting bit of information to chew on?

Good. Lord. A divorce fair??

From the BBC:

Austria holds first divorce fair

The fair will give advice on how to organise a post-married lifeAustria is to host the world’s first “divorce fair” this month, aimed at helping couples untie the knot as painlessly as possible.

The event, taking place in Vienna, then Linz and Graz, will allow would-be divorcees to consult lawyers about their rights and seek advice.

The divorce rate in Austria hit an all time high of 50% in 2006, with 66% of marriages in Vienna ending in divorce.

The two-day fair is being held under the motto “New beginning”.

The Vienna event takes place over 27-28 October, with Saturday reserved for men, and Sunday for women, so couples can avoid awkward encounters and retain a degree of anonymity.

Organiser Anton Barz says it is a world first and hopes it will become a twice-yearly event.

“Until now, I organised wedding fairs but while talking to associations and lawyers who told me about the difficulties of divorce, I had this idea,” he said.

Up to 20 exhibitors have registered so far, not only lawyers and mediators, but also estate agents, life-crisis experts, private detective firms and DNA laboratories offering paternity tests.

One company will offer therapeutic package holidays for newly divorced people.

There will also be a series of lectures on subjects like how divorce affects children and coping as a single parent.

Does this strike anyone as similar to the money changers in the temple?

I think Eugene McCarraher has something perfect to say on this:

The corporation parodies the ecclesia, and the trinkets of the market ape the delights of the heavenly city. The enchantments of capitalism pervert our longing for a sacramental way of being in the world. A fat, greasy, hoarding slob in ancient Babylonian lore, Mammon appears, in capitalists modernity, in a counterfeit angelic rainment.

I got a 25$ gift card for my birthday to Barnes and Noble. I was trying to figure out what to buy, scrolling through their “Christian theology” section and these are some of the books I find:

For Men Only: A Straightforward Map to the Inner Lives of Women
Jeff Feldhahn / Hardcover / WaterBrook Press / April 2006
Our Price: $11.99
You Save: 20%
Usually ships within 2-3 days

End of Days: Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return
Zecharia Sitchin / Hardcover / HarperCollins Publishers / April 2007
Our Price: $20.76
You Save: 20%
Usually ships within 24 hours

Now, admittedly, there are some good books to be found, but really… I think the closest title I (when I say I, I really mean Chris) could think of for “For Men Only: A Straightforward Map to the Inner Lives of Women” is “speculative theology.”