No, It Is Not Self-Referential

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Anglican, Archbishop of Canterbury, Benedict XVI, Canterbury, Caritas in Veritate, Catholic, Catholic social teaching, catholiclity, communion, critique, ecumenism, Evangelical, Evangelicalism, Friedrich Schonborn, Humanae Vitae, John XXIII, Judaica, Judith Butler, Justin Welby, labour rights, Leo XIII, love, Mater et Magistra, neo-evangelical, ontology, Paul VI, Pius XI, Pope Francis, Prophetic Critique, Quadrogesimo Anno, Rachel Helds Evans, Rerum novarum, socialism, Tim Challies, witness

Addressing an Anglican conference at Holy Trinity Brompton yesterday, Friedrich Cardinal Schörborn declared that the election of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio to the papacy as Pope Francis was due to certain strong, supernatural ‘signs’ before and during the conclave events. He then compared the appointment of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to the election of the pope, calling it a ‘little miracle’ and ‘a sign from the Lord’ for the churches to move to closer unity.

By now, readers of this blog will know that such a declaration is the sort of thing that makes me ecstatic, both in the emotional and charismatic sense. After all, I am an Anglican, but I self-identify as catholic, and I am often conflicted over calling myself ‘Anglo-Catholic’ because I am not an Englishman and harbour no desire to return to that odd, dominating construct we once called the British Empire. That is why, after all, I’ve styled myself a ‘Chinglican.’ For some, these ambivalences may read as falling precisely into what Pope Francis–then Cardinal Bergoglio–condemned prior to the conclave: the ‘self-referential’ Church as a sick, old, and dying Church because it fails to participate in the missio Dei.

Indeed, even when I was an evangelical–that is, when I thought like an evangelical, I spoke like an evangelical, I reasoned like an evangelical–I was accused of being un-missional because it was alleged that I was more interested in church politics, contemplative spirituality, and complex theological terminology than in making the faith accessible through attractive programming and simple language. One time, for example, I was in the home of an evangelical mentor when I pitched the idea of having a class on eschatology, as many people to whom I had spoken (both those in the church and not) expressed a curiosity about the Last Things. He raised his finger and pointed at me: ‘You,’ he said. ‘How dare you. People are lost, and all you want to do is to make things more complicated. Our job is to make things easier for people to understand so that more people can teach this stuff. Who do you think you are?’

He was, in short, calling me ‘self-referential,’ a traitor to the cause of the mission to expand the kingdom of Christ through evangelism and discipleship.

It has been years since this experience, but I finally have a reply. To make my response, I’d like to appropriate critical theorist Judith Butler’s reply to those who call her anti-Semitic for criticizing Israeli state policy: ‘No, it is not anti-Semitic,’ she says, because of the internal contestations within Judaic tradition about the state and because she is hanging on to a narrative of dispossession and precarity within Judaica. In the same way, my appeals to the Christian tradition, particularly a revisionist Anglican one with a deep desire for fuller catholicity, can be framed similarly.

No, I say. It is not self-referential. This is because of the inconvenient fact of Catholic social teaching.

After all, May 15 is the day that we celebrate the promulgation of decisive encyclicals in Catholic social teaching: Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum, Pius XI’s Quadrogesimo Anno, and John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra. Now, Catholic social teaching can often be confused with Catholic sexual teaching. After all, most of what people know about Catholic social teaching is drawn from Monty Python’s ‘Every Sperm Is Sacred’ in The Meaning of Life, a hysterically hilarious lampooning of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s encyclical condemning artificial birth control as contrary to the natural gift of children through the unitive and procreative sex act. It’s so funny, in fact, that you should see it yourself:

To be sure, this misconception is not altogether unjustified. It has in fact been highlighted in recent forays into public politics by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in their opposition to the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate to require religious organizations that do not only serve members of their own faith to insure their employees for artificial contraception, including medications deemed by the bishops to be abortifacient (like Plan B). In addition, it’s fairly well-known that the current Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, was the ‘godfather of Proposition 8‘ when he was bishop of Oakland, raising money to promote a grassroots initiative to write into the state constitution that California only recognizes marriage between one man and one woman. Most recently, Archbishop Allen Vigneron has also told Detroit Catholics who disagree with these socially and sexually conservative stances to refrain from taking communion, implying that opposition to contraception and alternative kinship structures is the definitive Catholic view on sexual and social relations.

Whatever your stance on sexuality issues and traditional family values, these bishops’ interpretation of Catholic social teaching isn’t necessarily wrong or even misguided (it is, however, a particular strand of Catholic sexual teaching emphasizing natural law that is debated among Catholics). Instead, what you can say about it is that it elevates a part of Catholic social teaching that’s actually fairly latent in the encyclicals I just named. It’s actually a bit of a derivative dogma, something that can be drawn out of the concerns of Catholic social teaching as articulated in Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum.

See, Catholic social teaching is best articulated as a Catholic response to current political economic conditions, namely, the threat of unfettered market fundamentalism, what sociologist Max Weber would call the ‘iron cage’ of industrial capitalism with its disenchanting bureaucratic logic permeating everything it touches in the world, what Leo XIII called the ‘new things,’ rerum novarum. While commending socialists for attempting to better labour conditions, Rerum novarum rejects a socialist ideology that places property ownership in the hands of the state and out of the hands of workers themselves. Proposing a Catholic alternative to socialism, Leo XIII emphasized human dignity, arguing that it is the state’s duty to protect the dignity of workers, even as workers themselves had the right to own property, pursue human development in the arts, and make personal time for family. That‘s where the family doctrine comes in: Leo XIII affirmed the family as a basic unit of social relations to which all workers had a right as a matter of basic human dignity. In other words, workers have a right not to be subjectified by the state or the market into cogs in their industrial machine; their human dignity with the basic need for creativity and sociality must be fully recognized.

That‘s Catholic social teaching in a nutshell, a key theme that carries through the encyclicals that the Church is in solidarity with workers as they contest state and market modes of subjectification for their right to basic human dignity.

Anglican though he is, Justin Welby has taken Catholic social teaching as a sort of guiding light in introducing a new social priority to the Church of England: going after the corrupt banks that got us into the global economic mess that we’re in. What is needed, Welby argues, is a whole different way of imagining and managing the financial system, where the banks are not self-serving, but instead see their institutions as serving people. This is very close to what Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Caritas in Veritate, where the Pope Emeritus notes that both justice and the common good both emanate from a will to love and that what is probably needed is a global financial regulator to keep markets from becoming unfettered.

This is why the healing of schism is so important. The Church’s role is not simply to speak words of love; it is to demonstrate it in action. Longing for the recovery of Christian tradition for the sake of healing schism is not self-referential because there is a distinct social priority at the heart of catholicity: bearing witness to the reality that there is another way of being in the world. Who knows what this will mean for Canterbury and Rome? If Bergoglio’s words to Anglican Southern Cone primate Greg Venables is any indication–he told Venables that there was no need for an Anglican Ordinariate because Anglican charisms were already a gift to the church catholic–might it be possible that the next few years might hold within it a full return to communion between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church? Might this in turn signal a new springtime for Catholic social teaching in which the Church will be seen as decisively on the side of the poor and fully oppositional to any sort of self-serving institution that neglects the common good?

Home reunion in turn might clarify some of the things that came to light in the tenure of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. I’ve often noted that both did a fantastic job at one key thing: managing to polarize their entire communions on the left and the right, even as an impulse to catholic reunion has sort of been latent among the faithful, slowly rising to the surface. The appointment of Justin Welby and the election of Pope Francis doesn’t signify a break with Williams and Ratzinger. It’s a sign, as Schönborn put it so eloquently, that the Church is coming into all the truth, that the Spirit is moving among the people of God to rebuild the witness we shattered through our schismatic actions. Indeed, as we saw in Welby’s ‘Journey in Prayer’ pilgrimage through rural and urban dioceses in the Church of England, as well as Pope Francis’s coming out onto the loggia and then into the midst of the people to the chagrin of his security detail, we saw two prophetic priests emerging in the power of the Spirit declaring to the people of God that the time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel, the Gospel not as an ideology, but as a whole new way of being that places love and forgiveness at the basis of human dignity, justice, and the common good. In short, in the faces of Justin Cantuar and Pope Francis, we are seeing Jesus and following him.

And yet, here is where those obsessed with developing distinctive theological identities will cry foul. Home reunion, it might be alleged, will soften distinctive points in Catholic and Anglican theology, riding roughshod over disagreements over papal primacy, the role of women, the place of LGBTIQ populations, the veneration of saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the scientific inerrancy of Scripture, and the alone in justification by faith. In fact, as Rachel Held Evans pointed out in a post yesterday, it seems that it is evangelicals who are becoming more and more obsessed with constructing a distinctive identity, one that is becoming narrower with each blog post. In the spirit of attempting to remain distinctively evangelical, for example, the latest denial of Christian catholicity comes from Tim Challies, who rejects ‘mysticism’ as a subjective experience that challenges the inerrant authority of Scripture. Evans takes Challies to task by showing him how much she has grown from reading widely in the Christian mystical tradition. She even goes as far to say that Scripture cannot be a mediator between humans and the divine because we have no need for a mediator.

Here is where I can offer Rachel a bit of a corrective, as well as a parable for those who might oppose any sort of catholic reunion for ideological purposes. Our faith is mediated, but not by the Scriptural text, yes. It is through the sanctorum communio, what Bonhoeffer noted in his doctoral dissertation was the social manifestation of Christ in the present. To that end, we might note that Justin Welby offers evangelicals a different way forward, one that calls evangelicals out of being ‘self-referential.’ Welby has quite the evangelical life story. After all, he came to faith through the Alpha Course through the evangelical Holy Trinity Brompton, a church that has also given evangelicals some of their cherished anthems like ‘Here I Am to Worship,’ ‘Everything,’ ‘Beautiful One,’ and ‘Consuming Fire.’ But unlike much of the anxiety among evangelicals over a distinctive evangelical identity, Justin Welby has no trouble taking on Catholic social teaching as a moral compass. Neither is he averse to conversation with Rome–one that will prove to be interesting in the Franciscan pontificate–nor is he unaware of the vast diversity of theologies, liturgies, and politics in the Anglican Communion. Justin Welby might thus serve as an example to evangelicals on how to be an evangelical. His story is also a parable to those who entrench themselves in ideologies that are inimical to catholicity. You see, evangelical identity is not achieved by being self-referential. It is by participating in the mission of God through the church that is becoming more catholic as the Spirit leads us into all truth. In the words of the Lord Jesus, it is to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow our crucified and risen Lord.

Co-crucifixion and the new sociality effected by the Resurrection are hardly self-referential.

Prophetic Awkwardness, The Common Riddle, and the Justification of the Academy

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academia, Academics, C.S. Lewis, Christ, Christian, Common good, God, Logres, PhD, Prophecy, Prophetic Critique, Socrates, That Hideous Strength, University

Chinglican is probably right in his response to my prior post; more or less, he took the conversation in the direction I alluded to and then left open when I said that these matters require a broader discussion of ends and means. And much of what he laid out is probably a good reason for doing academics. As he said of my research, it is most certainly not apolitical. And probably being prophetic and caring about the common good is a good idea. Indeed, had I been pressed, this probably would have been something of the direction I might have taken the conversation myself, and probably the way that many Christians would take the conversation. So why didn’t I do that in the first place?

To tell the truth, it is because I have to a certain degree become allergic to words and phrases like “the common good” and “prophetic critique.” What is meant at the root of them is surely important. But nowadays it seems like everyone and their dog is making “prophetic critiques” right, left, and centre; and I often feel that some who talk about the “common good” really mean something else, perhaps something more common than good. Put another way, Chinglican situates the university as a body independent of various institutions that can potentially abuse power, and therefore as a legitimate critic. The problem I have though is conceiving of a university context that is in fact independent; it is not after all as if the university structure hovers above the socioeconomic and religious reality like some worldly version of the church triumphant (as understood by Protestants), nor are those who run the university beyond the temptation of twisting power manipulatively. Universities may be watchmen, but who watches the watchmen?

So how would I put the matter differently? First off, I would say that, if we are using terms like “prophetic” and “common good,” the task for Christians (and any other well meaning people for that matter) is not simply to put them out there as justifications for the academy, but rather to live in such a way that they emerge from their quotation marks – that is, such that they actually become plausible options for believing in. Yes, it is true that my generation is cynical – indeed, very cynical – but I think it is a mistake to simply blame this on a fully deliberate choice or a pervasive nihilism. These things may indeed be there, but at the very bottom of cynicism is generally an experience of deep betrayal – indeed, I would suggest that, far from being the least hopeful of people, those who are cynical about things embody a very deep hope that has been crushed. Conversely, pragmatists are not those who are particularly optimistic about the world, but rather those not optimistic enough – they cannot be bothered to take a moment and mourn for what might have been. To talk plausibly about the “common good” and “prophetic critique” we will, I think, need to live in such a way that even the most cynical – to the degree that this cynicism is symptomatic and not chosen – can begin to believe that these words might have meaning.

Secondly, I suppose I would make a distinction between my vocation as an academic and what we might call the bodied effects of this – i. e. the job I have etc. A helpful way of looking at it perhaps is what C. S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength describes as the struggle between Logres and Britain that goes on throughout society. Here, we have not so much an independent body evaluating the behavior of other parts of society as much as we have a loose collective of people working – certainly for the common good – but in a very bodied, disparate, cross vocational, and often frustrating way. Indeed, in this book, the real prophetic critique and interest in the common good comes out of Logres, but the company most likely to use terms like these (and speak of independent knowledge) are their opponents – indeed, they have managed to produce a head independent of a body and other earthly props. This distinction allows me to both agree with Chinglican and what I said prior – I am not wedded to the academy, per se – but it may be the arena where I enact the thing that is in fact undeniably part of who I am, my vocation. The company of Logres exists regardless of where each member works.

So, given my pessimism about these words and phrases, what would I talk about instead of prophetic critique and the common good? I would talk about prophetic awkwardness and the common riddle. With regard to the former, it seems to me that the two greatest instances of what we might call “the prophetic voice” – Christ and Socrates – hardly garnered the kind of favor and “cool points” we think of when we think of radical and prophetic people. When you encounter a prophet, he or she may not make you feel like an oh-so-good-radical doing oh-so-good things for an oh-so-messed up world. Rather, encountering a prophet might make you distinctly uncomfortable. It may even make you feel murderous.

And what I mean by “the common riddle” is something like what Augustine means when he talks about the restlessness in our hearts. There is a tendency for people to approach the so-called common good in the so-called common square with ready-made solutions – we have seen the common problem and we have the common fix. But I would suggest that if we do not have some degree of uncertainty or tentativeness in our minds regarding this fix, it is probably in fact not one – it is rather a way of papering over problems we don’t want to see. What Augustine knew is that our hearts our restless until they find rest in God. And this means that restlessness and problems, rather than something to be covered over, are something to be pursued. I worry that too many people, in pursuit of the so-called common good, sacrifice common mystery, which is in fact this restlessness. And the irony of course is that in fact the only way to get a truly common good – a good for both city of God and city of man – is by following this restlessness to its proper end.

 

When the Desert is Not the Edgy Place of Radical Prophetic Witness You Thought It Was

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Ash Wednesday, Lent, prophet, Prophetic Critique, radical, radical christians

Thanks to Chinglican and Captain Thin for adding necessary clarification, insight, and nuance to my rather terse critique of Driscoll.  I wish they could be there to tell my students what I mean when I am lecturing.  Sometimes I am too aphoristic.

Today, I want to talk about Lent, particularly about the motif of desert asceticism usually associated with it.  I was at an Ash Wednesday service the other day, and the text was from Hebrews 3.  What was interesting about it was its focus on the desert as a negative place.  Among Christians of my generation, the desert has in a sense become crowded – we like the desert fathers’ radical critique of society, and we like the wildness it represents outside the walls of the staid established church etc.  But in Hebrews 3, we see not an instance of noble desert asceticism, but an act of rebellion; Anglicans will be familiar with it from the “Venite” section in Morning Prayer:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
⁸ do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
⁹ where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
¹⁰ That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

This led me to wonder what the difference might be between positive and negative desert experiences.  For Christ and for many of the Church Fathers, the desert brought them closer to God.  But the desert experience here only distances Israel from her God and the land he promised her.

Interestingly, the contrast between these experiences is something we also know from our own experience.  We can think of those whose faith has been greatly deepened by desert-like experiences of suffering; we can also think of those who have been hurt again and again and again until they collapsed under their wounds and lost their faith entirely.  We can probably empathize to a certain degree with both.  What I want to explore here is how we might take up our own suffering – our own desert experiences – in a way that is positive and faith building rather than negative and corrosive.

Particularly interesting to me are the verses following this passage in Hebrews 3; the author talks about the negative desert experience as being “hardened by sin’s deceitfulness,” and I think we all know what this means.  “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” says the old saying that so wonderfully sums up what such hardening is about.  Betrayal – deceit – makes one more careful and more guarded; sooner or later, it causes one to trust no one but oneself.  And I wonder if this is not what this verse is about, if Israel did not in the desert experience and enact the deceitfulness of sin so often that it trusted no one – including God.  One does not get up one day and decide to rebel against God; it gradually happens as we experience fallen-ness – the deceitfulness of sin – and guard our hearts so tightly against its effects that not even God can get in.

But what can we do about this?  We cannot pretend we are not sinners, and cannot pretend that we do not experience sin’s deceitfulness daily in its manifold manifestations in the world (I include here the experience of suffering).  And what is one to do except become hard?  How can we remain spiritually tender amidst the hardness of the desert?

My first thought is that we can’t – which is why Christ has done this for us and imparts this to us through his spirit.  Christ is the only one who can both set his face like flint toward Jerusalem and still have the tenderness to forgive his enemies and make plans for the future care of his mother while on a cross.  You see, the miracle of Christ is not simply that he endured excruciating pain – even Jack Bauer can do that.  No, the miracle is that he endured excruciating pain and remained fully human, open to God and others, without hardening his heart like a stone.  If I might put it this way, it takes One who is fully God to remain fully and openly human while one is suffering – and that One is Christ.

This of course is why the author of Hebrews encourages those in the church to encourage one another daily as a way of avoiding the hardening that comes from sin and suffering.  It takes great faith to believe that God – and not the suffering, evil, and sin we see around us – is in fact the Sovereign of the universe.  Yet it is precisely this faith that allows us to remain open, relational, and human when we undergo suffering.  If evil is indeed the last word in the universe, we might as well just hunker down and do our best to survive until we die; but if the last word in the universe is a God who exists in an eternal trinity of self-giving, we can have faith that, at the end of the day, He (rather than our own hard shells) will ensure our ultimate protection, even when that is not immediately evident and demonstrable.  Through faith in the Spirit of Christ, we face our suffering as humans capable of relationships with others and God rather than as stones.  And it is through the church – through encouraging each other daily – that we remind each other of this faith and the way it leads us to God rather than rebellion in the desert.