Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Miroslav Volf: For the Life of the World

In my mind I’ve juxtaposed an online article by Alan Roxburgh, and the latest publication by Miroslav Volf (co-written with Matthew Croasmun). The article is titled A Christian Counter-Movement to Neoliberalism?

Excerpt

“…The conversation caused me reflect again about the Christian response to this massive social and cultural unravelling too many of us are experiencing. I know Catholic thinkers who are engaged with these questions in their parishes, but what troubled me out of this back-deck conversation around a podcast was that the majority of Euro-tribal churches of which I am aware seem to be lost in entirely different kinds of questions about their own identities and survival. In the language of the German social theorist, Heinz Bude, the ‘mood’ of more and more people is that of confusion, anger and fear. He comments for example that ‘…outrage that the world as we know it has been allowed to self-destruct merely conceals fear about not knowing where to go next’ (page 2).  Meanwhile the mood of the Euro-tribal churches continues focused on how to fix and reform themselves out of their loss of identity and anxious fears about connecting with people…”

Read the whole article here. And, if you can get a copy of Bude’s book, it’s well worth a read. I’m still thinking about it, both when I reflect on my own life, but also as I engage with others, and the cultural milieu in which I live.

Volf and Croasmun’s book is titled For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (Brazos Press, January 2019). In their view so-called Academic Theology has lost its way. Or to put it differently. Academic theology is so inwardly focused, so focused on the minutiae that it is virtually disconnected from the everyday worlds we live in. It has little to say to the challenges of living within the complexities of the ordinary and everyday; from the challenges of living authentically and humanly.

Excerpt from a review of the book by Kelly M. Kapic

“…In real life, of course, an ethic of extreme self-determination never really produces a life of love, community, and purpose. Volf and Croasmun propose six theological pillars that can stand in a pluralistic world to help shape Christian vision of genuine flourishing. These, they believe, strike an appropriate balance between conviction and individual freedom, between Christian confidence and openness to alternative sources of truth. The pillars are (1) a commitment to Trinitarian monotheism; (2) a belief in a God of unconditional love (and not just unlimited power); (3) the centrality of Jesus to all theology; (4) maintaining a distinction between God’s rule and human rule, which allows for the possibility of flourishing in different cultures; (5) upholding the moral equality of all human beings, recognizing that all sin and fall short of God’s righteous standard; and (6) valuing religious freedom—including the freedom to reject religion—because faith by nature requires it.

In everything they propose, Volf and Croasmun maintain a balance between hope and realism, avoiding both an over- and under-realized eschatology. They reckon honestly with sinful conditions of this world while also expressing confidence in the power of Christ’s work for us, especially as that work manifests itself in the common life of God’s people.

Far too often we are tempted to pit God against his creation, either by advocating a retreat from life in the world or a triumph through some program of cultural conquest. But each extreme undermines the Christian affirmation that the God who has created and redeemed us is good and active, even amid the complexity of this fallen creation. This is why we must return, again and again, to the central image of the kingdom of God: It reminds us that the Christian vision of an abundant life must always include both God and the world…”

You can read the full review here, together with a written interview with Volf, here.

John Philip Newell – The Spirit, the Earth and the Soul

I’ve read and listened to John Phillip Newell a little over the years. I haven’t read his book The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings (pub. 2014), but the concept and framework out of which he writes fascinates me. I think of radical reorientation; new seeing; Ken Wilber’s principal of “include and transcend” (cf. his Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. Pub 2006. Or, more accessible, The Integral Vision. Pub. 2007); deeper discernment; mysticism (thinking here of a remark by Karl Rahner SJ: “…“the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.” (The Christian of the Future (1965). See also this very helpful Harvey D. Egan SJ essay, or Egan’s excellent book Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life). As I listened I thought too of philosopher Richard Kearney’s notion of “Anatheism” – returning to God after God. I thought too of the practice of midwifery and midwifery as a metaphor. So much was evoked as I listened.

“…Christianity in the West is collapsing. Poet, peacemaker and scholar John Philip Newell believes we can either deny it’s happening, try to shore up the foundations of the old thing, or we can radically reorientate our vision and ask what new thing is trying to be born. So we ask John Philip what this new thing is that is trying to emerge from deep within us and from deep within the collective soul of Christianity…”

You can listen to the Nomad conversation with Newell here. The conversation itself starts 5mins in. 

Excerpt from Rebirthing God:

One sign of rebirthing, not only within the Christian household but also in the lives of many in the Western world today who do not identify with any particular religious tradition, is a reconnecting with spiritual practice. In the last two decades there has been an enormous burst of interest in yoga and other practices from the East, based on ancient teachings and disciplines that combine physical rigor with spiritual awareness. Likewise, we have seen a resurgence of labyrinth building in our church and public parks, and a reclaiming of other simple contemplative tools that speak of the desire to recover practices from the past to promote the rebirthing of spiritual well-being today.

One of the stations of the Iona pilgrimage is the Hermit’s Cell. It sits at the heart of the island. No more than a circular ruin of stones, it is the remains of an ancient Celtic beehive hut. Legend has it that Columba and his brothers would retreat there in turn for periods of solitude and prayer as a balance to their life together in community. The Hermit’s Cell stands as a sign of the relationship between contemplation and action, silence and expression, solitude and relationship.

On pilgrimage to the Hermit’s Cell I was once asked how many monks used to live here – a question that reveals the disorientation among many moderns in approaching the ancient practices of solitude and stillness. An interesting feature of the Iona Hermit’s Cell is its location. It is hidden amid hills in the interior of the island, so people often get lost trying to find it. They become disoriented. Similarly, so much of our culture, including our religious inheritance, has felt lost when it comes to spiritual practice. But we are in the midst of a reawakening.

One of the things that we remember on pilgrimage as we approach the Hermit’s Cell in silence together is that reclaiming the relationship between stillness and action, or between solitude and relationship, is part of the desire to come back into relationship with the wisdom of nature’s rhythms. The earth knows its patterns of night followed by day, of winter barrenness succeeded by spring energy and summer fruiting, of long periods of infolding and dormancy followed by seasons of unfolding and the expression of seed-force.

We know that if we do not give ourselves over to the darkness and dreaming of nighttime, entering its intimate invitation to sleep and rest, we will be only half-awake to the demands and creativity of the day. Yet at other levels we forget the natural patterns that we are part of. Or we pretend that we can be deeply engaged and productive while pushing ourselves and others in ways that are antithetical to the essential rhythms of earth’s cycles and seasons…”

~ The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings. Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2014.

Stanley Hauerwas – Theological Existence Today

In March 2018, Dr. Stanley Hauerwas visited Regent College in Vancouver BC to deliver the 2018 Laing lectures, on the topic of "Theological Existence Today."

A: The Christian Message in the World Today 

After WWII, Karl Barth’s writings urged the European church to free itself from bondage to the societal and cultural status it had in the past. Rather than maintain its attachment to its own history, the church must root itself in the ultimate historical event—the incarnation of Christ. With Barth’s insights as a foundation, Hauerwas turns to the North American church, suggesting provocatively that perhaps we have not left Christendom behind so thoroughly as we might think—suggesting that we, like post-war Europeans, need to carefully consider where we may have mistaken devotion to nation for devotion to Christ.

B: The Christian Message and Humanism

In this lecture, Hauerwas turns his focus onto Karl Barth’s response to the “new humanism” of the late 1940s. At this time, many sought ways of re-establishing Enlightenment humanism in the face of the war’s worst atrocities. Barth would have none of it. It is not the return of a secular optimism toward humankind that we need, Barth argued, but rather the “humanism of God.” In contrast to the new humanism, Barth contended that all things human are to be regarded only from the cross. In today's context as in Barth's, only with anthropology planted firmly in Christ can the church find its lost theological voice amidst a fading Christendom.

C: The Church and Civil Society 

For Hauerwas, as for Karl Barth, the state is one of God’s redeemed creatures. Even a state that has rebelled against its divine calling can’t fully escape the reality of God’s purposes. And if the state is redeemed, then church must not wash its hands of it as it once washed its hands of Christ. Instead the church must learn to speak about Christ truthfully and boldly in the world. Hauerwas, grounded again in Barth, puts forward one method of how to do so: by anchoring our own political ideals not in this or that “ism,” but on what has been revealed to us of the workings of Christ’s Kingdom.

You’ll find details of the recordings of these lectures here, and a short video overview of Hauerwas’ visit to Regent here.

New from Walter Brueggemann

My favourite Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann has a new book out on March 30th 2018. The US-edition is published as a hardcover by Westminster John Knox Press (UK edition by Hodder and Stoughton) it comes in at 200 pages, and is a gathering together, a compilation, by Richard Floyd, of selections of Brueggemann’s words under (at least) 12 headings: Abundance and Generosity; Alternative Worlds; Anxiety and Freedom; God’s Fidelity and Ours; Jesus; Justice; Evangelical Identity; Neighborly Love; Newness and Hope; Public Witness and Responsibility; Relinquishment; and Faithful Practices. Brueggemann provides the Preface.

Described by the publisher in this way:

“Beloved and respected by scholars, preachers, and laity alike, Walter Brueggemann offers penetrating insights on Scripture and prophetic diagnoses of our culture. Instead of maintaining what is safe and routine, A Gospel of Hope encourages readers to embrace the audacity required to live out one’s faith. This must-have volume gathers Brueggemann’s wisdom on topics ranging from anxiety and abundance to partisanship and the role of faith in public life.”

You’ll find a (PDF) sample here, which will give you a flavour, and can (pre) order it here (UK here). For more on Brueggemann, and indeed a wide range of others, check out The Work of the People: Films for Discovery and Transformation here, and the ways in which you purchase short films by people like Brueggemann, Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr, Brené Brown and many many more interesting folk with real wisdom and insight to share.

Alfred Hitchcock, Hannah Arendt, and Margaret Wheatley in Conversation

I guess many of us are trying to make sense of these political and cultural times we live; we’re trying to understand how to become more fully human; how to be gospel-shaped; and how to respond in ways which are humanizing and life-giving. Certainly I’m trying to understand these things, and more besides, especially when so much is corrosive with respect to all that’s important to me. Today I want to juxtapose a few resources that have funded my thinking of late. This follows on from yesterday's post, which primarily brought Patrick J. Dineen and James K A. Smith into conversation, with a little input from Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre.

I want to add to that conversation Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Rear Window, a conversation about Hannah Arendt, and a conversation with Margaret Wheatley (who interestingly mentions Arendt in passing), and in particular Wheatley's focus on clear seeing, the importance of thinking, the critical need to act, and the importance, as she sees it, of "Islands of Sanity" (I’d have used the expression “Islands of humanity” committed to humanizing practices!

For me, some of the juxtapositions are:

• The importance of thinking in the midst of contemporary reality, i.e. not abstractly and at a distance.
• The importance of resourcing deep thinking and conversation (in this particular case, for me: Arendt, Roxburgh, Dineen, Smith, Alfred Hitchcock, and Margaret Wheatley; or: written texts, audio, and visual - all juxtaposed)
• The importance of moving from being a mere "observer" (passive watching) to active engagement and doing.
• The importance of nurturing hope (communities of hope)
• Imagining "Islands of Sanity" through the lenses of mission and nu-monasticism (local, Jesus-embodying, Spirit-empowered, enacting communities). Allowing the gospel to shape and form us as “missional outposts”.

Liberalism and the Church

Al Roxburgh directed me to a useful Los Angeles Review of Books review. In it, reviewer Brad East reflects upon the challenges and potential opportunities for the Church in the West and for mission in culture. He started out discussing Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, the former a long-term interlocutor for me; and someone who’s thinking still, in my opinion, has potency – indeed, perhaps his time has yet to come in terms of the applicability of his thinking in relation to the Western church.

East then goes on to bring two fascinating books into conversation: Patrick J. Dineen’s Why Liberalism Failed, and Jamie Smith’s trilogy concluding book Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology.

This review should be read in conjunction with Alan’s online article, which I featured here. This review and both books, plus Hauerwas' thinking, and the larger questions of mission in culture need to be conversations in every church. Al's books, and the work of Steve Taylor, here in New Zealand, need to be grappled with. We need to hear what the Spirit is saying. We need to be discerning and acting communities, distinct, but in culture. 

Alan Roxburgh: Some Thoughts on the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

Today I want to highlight an article, all too brief, by Alan Roxburgh. He titles it Books In Conversation: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy and the Book of Acts. Its helpful in the way its “bridges” the conversation on the future of liberal democracies, and the missiological conversation on the future of the Protestant Church in the West by making clear that we need a “different imagination”.

“…The challenge”, Alan writes, “confronting the West (and its churches) is that we remain inside the analyses”. As a consequence “the options [available] are already defined”, such that it therefore makes “…it impossible to address the crises with a different imagination…” As a further consequence we’re therefore left with only three options: “fix”, “reform” or “return”, options which leave us, in Alan’s words, “locked within he choices that shaped the twentieth century, but we no longer live in that world”.

At this point he then brings his lines of argument into conversation with the New Testament book of Acts appropriating some of the themes of a book that sounds fascinating, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (OUP, 2009).

There’s much to mull over and I recommend Al’s article as a good starting point. You’ll find it online here.

Peter Lineham: god in Godzone

“…Respected religious historian Peter Lineham has put together a book exploring how religion has shaped New Zealand. Called Sunday Best: How the church shaped New Zealand and New Zealand shaped the church, it sets out to see also how New Zealand also shaped the churches throughout time. He talks about the influence religion continues to have on our communities and wider society.”

You’ll find the 27 min conversation here. It aired on RNZ Sunday Morning last Sunday. 

William Stringfellow: White Christendom in America survives pathetically.

I must admit I haven’t taken down one of William Stringfellow’s books from my shelves for a long while, so am grateful to Jason Goroncy for this little reminder of how relevant and potent Stringfellow remains. It was very easy to replace “white Christendom” with [name of a Western Christian denomination] and broaden the potency.

“…The traditions and ethics of the inherited, white denominations – as their adherents sense privately, and everyone else acknowledges openly – are moribund, nostalgic for a legendary past, extravagantly irrelevant to virtually anything to which one might attempt to relate them. White Christendom’s institutions are truly secular, that is, utterly preoccupied with their own survival, and hence dissipated in anxiety. Their human constituency is being visibly depleted by dropouts, deaths, and other departures. The people of these churches have been stunned by the renunciation voiced by their own offspring, bewildered by the long overdue rejection of their paternalism by the blacks, and so traumatized by their guilt that their conscience has been both perverted and paralyzed. They have feted a doctrine of achievement in work and in charity that is bereft of biblical authority and that now turns out not even to have the illusion of efficacy. After seeking a justification that proved futile, they grow frantic and afraid, increasingly tempted to an anger that only a false righteousness can spawn.

The condition of white Christendom is pathological; it is, I suggest, the state designated in the Bible as “hardness of heart.”

The reason for this bitter ailment is that the white churches in America have long doubted the very existence, much less the vitality, of the Holy Spirit. In these denominations, on the whole, it has never been seriously granted that God has freedom and discretion in being present and active in this world; it has never been conceded that God is not dependent upon human beings and, specifically, upon the white, American bourgeois. It has been presumed instead that God needs these churches, that God’s integrity requires their effort, that God’s existence in history is verified by their prosperity, popularity, and power. Today, with the legitimacy of their wealth under challenge, their reputation the butt of ridicule, and their power ineffectual, it becomes clear that their god is indeed dead and, even more threatening, that their god is not and never was God’…”

Mr. [William] Stringfellow
St James’ Day, 1969
Block Island, Rhode Island.

Kierkegaard: The Monastery is Essential

I dipped into An Infinity of Little Hours by Nancy Klein Maguire yesterday. I’d been thinking about monasteries, so this statement by Soren Kierkegaard resonated:

“…Of this there is no doubt, our age and Protestantism in general may need the monastery again, or wish it were there. The “monastery” is an essential dialectical element in Christianity. We therefore need it out there like a navigation buoy at sea in order to see where we are, even though I myself would not enter it. But if there really is true Christianity in every generation there must also be individuals who have this need…”