Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

David Newheiser: Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith

I valued very much a recently aired conversation with David Newheiser, who is a Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University (ACU) in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. The conversation was titled: Politics and the Sacred and featured on the ABC show The Philosophers Zone (here).

His research addresses ethical and political questions in light of classic Christian thought and contemporary continental philosophy. He specializes in apophatic traditions of Christian thought and in Jacques Derrida's relation to religion.

His first book, title above (forthcoming, and I’m not exactly sure when, but maybe Nov. 2020 for the print edition, from Cambridge University Press), defends a hope that acknowledges its vulnerability but presses forward nonetheless. Where critics claim that hope pacifies political resistance by providing false comfort, I argue that it nourishes a restless dissatisfaction with the status quo. Drawing upon premodern negative theology and postmodern philosophy, I show that an uncertain hope is necessary to sustain commitment of any kind: interpersonal, political, or religious.

I’m looking forward to reading a copy of his book when it’s published. Meantime, you can find a list of his journal essays here, downloadable via Academia.

KQED – The Forum

With the advent of smart phones etc. there are now a staggering number of podcast options available. I subscribe to a good number of them, and across a wide range, from politics, philosophy, and psychology to science, business, and the arts.

One that I want to highlight is San Francisco’s public radio KQED, specifically Michael Krasny’s show, The Forum. While covering local California news, he also hosts conversations with a wide range of fascinating commentators and authors. If you subscribe to podcasts and this type of material interests you I highly recommend it.

Guests have included James Comey; historian Jon Meacham on the soul of America; Rick Hanson on rewiring your brain for resilience; Amy Chua on her book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations; Ben Rhodes on navigating the world as it is; Dan Pfeiffer reflecting on the Obama White House… Krista Tippett shares lessons learned for living wisely, and lots lots more. Krasny’s conversations are insightful, wide, well facilitated and I look forward to them.

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.

Cosmic Imagining, Civic Pondering

Maria Popova is the creator and editor of one of my regular visits, Brain Pickings. Natalie Batalha is an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and the project scientist for NASA's Kepler Mission. Together they join Krista Tippett for an unfolding conversation that is joyous, dynamic, and unexpectedly vulnerable — rich with cosmic imagining, civic pondering, and even some fresh definitions of the soul. I was surprised how much I enjoyed listening in.  

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript, but I have to say that in a similar way to listening to poetry, rather than reading it on the page, this conversation is richer for being heard.

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TIPPETT: You are both two people who are not religious in a traditional sense; 21st-century people. Maria, you said that you were atheist, and Natalie, that spirituality is something that you — it’s complex. And honestly — you’ve said we don’t have a definition. I think there are as many definitions as there are lives in a room, and that it’s never static. So it’s all, always, evolving.

And yet, both of you ponder and use the language of the soul. And I find that fascinating, and I just want to talk about what that is. What are we talking about? Maria, you actually spoke — you did a commencement address, was it last year?

POPOVA:I think, two years ago.

TIPPETT: At Penn, your alma mater, Annenberg School at Penn, and it was — the soul was the heart of it. What do you — here’s some language from that: “I mean ‘the soul’ simply as shorthand for the seismic core of personhood from which our beliefs, our values, and our actions radiate.” And you’ve also said that “The people most whole and most alive are always those unafraid and unashamed of the soul.” So what is that?

POPOVA: There are certain words that have been vacated of meaning by overuse and misuse. And we have the choice of either relinquishing them altogether or trying to reclaim them in some way. And “soul” is one of those words. I chose to go with trying to imbue it with the meaning that I live with in relation to it. It is, of course, related to the notion of the self. Now, I do not believe in a solid self, as I don’t believe in a soul that outlives the rest of the constellation of being, the physical being that is us. But, at the same time, it is where we spring from. The “us”-ness of us is rooted in this very complex interplay of values, beliefs, ideas, friends, places we’ve been, smells we’ve remembered. And it’s impossible to be a person without that. And because of that, it’s impossible to be a decent person without tending to it the way you would tend to a garden that you want to bloom beautifully.

TIPPETT: Maria, here’s something else you said in that speech, just extending that — you said, “Cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.”

POPOVA: I do think that cynicism is — it’s easy to judge it harshly, but really, it’s a defense mechanism, a maladaptive defense mechanism when we feel bereft of hope. And to live with hope in times that reward cynicism and, in many ways, call for cynicism, I think, is a tremendous act of courage and resistance…”

You’ll find the podcast here.

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. 

Simon Carey Holt – Discovering God in Everyday Life

Simon Carey Holt has a new book out. Published by Cascade it is titled Heaven All Around Us: Discovering God in Everyday Life.

“If living with a deep awareness of God in our lives is important, how do we do it without moving to a monastery? How do we discern and respond to God amidst the places, routines, and relationships of our everyday lives? In this book, we go in search of God’s presence in homes and neighborhoods, supermarkets and sporting arenas, workplaces and weekends. Along the way we look for practices that can lead us more deeply into the way of Jesus: activities like cooking and laundry, walking and sleeping, shopping and conversation with friends. Throughout, we want to better understand how to make God a central part of our lives, and to hear Jesus’ call to “follow me” more clearly in the world around us.”

If it’s as good as his two earlier books (and I’m assuming its not a US-edition of God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighborhood), I’m going to thoroughly enjoy it.

You’ll find more information about it here. Simon is a gifted writer, but if you haven’t read anything by Simon, you might enjoy this 1999 article: Domestic Spirituality: Finding God in the Ordinary, the Mundane, and the Immediate, or this sample from his Eating Heaven: Spirituality at the Table.

Renouncing Violence

"To get out of the cycle of violence we employ a counter motion that checks aggression and replaces unconscious reaction with discerned response.  In between the impulse and response is poise and endless possibilities.  ... When our way of life is renunciation then, it’s natural to renounce violence.  Renouncing is a poised, but an active way of living.  We pause and then lean into the right and good, rather than react from our default defenses."

~ Sr. Mary Margaret Funk, Renouncing Violence.

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.

Mark Lilla: The Once and Future Liberal

Books come to my attention through many means. This post illustrates that (see the photo - thanks Nick). The bookshops I most value are ones that are up to date with what’s being published, and have a broad selection across a good breadth of genre’s and subjects. They’re also books that people are talking about (e.g. author interviews – radio and podcast; or book reviews). They’re books that speak to and critique the times we live in. They’re books that broaden and deepen our understanding of what it means to be human, whether as individuals, or as community. They’re books that are good for the soul.

Back in January 2017, I referenced Thomas Frank’s March 2016 publication Listen Liberal: Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People. Today, I want to highlight a related title, Mark Lilla’s August 2017 publication The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, a title I’m unlikely to see in my local bookshop, but one I want to read, not because I’m particularly interested in American politics, but because, in general, I think we’re ill-served by our politicians and the ideologues and lobbyists that have their ears. I want to hear well thought out and researched alternative perspectives; perspectives that put community, the most disadvantaged, and a compelling vision of human thriving ahead of narrow self-interest. I want to hear voices (of sociologists, artists, poets, novelists, philosophers, psychologists, political activists, law professors, scientists, educators, theologians etc.) that help me imagine a fairer and more just world.

"Hostility toward identity politics-nurtured by Steve Bannon and others-helped propel the rise of Donald Trump. But that feeling is not only to be found on the right. The Columbia professor Mark Lilla says very much the same thing: that vocal opposition to racism and support for gay and transgender rights have been costing Democrats election after election, all over America. In a controversial new book, "The Once and Future Liberal," Lilla is highly critical of Black Lives Matter and goes out of his way to antagonize activists on the left, who, he says, are oblivious to electoral reality. But his position, he tells David Remnick, is in the service of effecting liberal change: "We cannot do anything for these groups we care about if we do not hold power-it is just talk. Our rhetoric in campaigning must be focussed on winning so we can help these people. An election is not about self-expression-it's a contest."…"

To get a good overview of the Lilla’s arguments have a listen to this short (under 15 mins) conversation between Lilla and the New Yorker’s David Remnick, which aired 28^th August 2017. Overview, above in bold text. For a longer conversation you could try Lilla talking with Sam Harris (aired 27 September 2017).