Rain and the Rhinoceros

Today is the International Day for Conscientious Objectors.

Let us give thanks for the witness of conscientious objectors to war and military participation. In my own life I am blessed and inspired by the witness of my wife, Marcia, who refused to cooperate with the standard process for gaining United States citizenship.

Because of her deep convictions, Marcia refused to say the US oath of allegiance in her citizenship ceremony and she became a conscientious objector to U.S. military service. She is a witness to the peace of Christ in the world.

From the folks who brought you the Project for the New American Century, check out The Foreign Policy Initiative.

What they promote across party lines:

The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is a newly formed, non-profit, non-partisan organization intending to qualify as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that promotes:

• continued U.S. engagement–diplomatic, economic, and military—in the world and rejection of policies that would lead us down the path to isolationism;
• robust support for America’s democratic allies and opposition to rogue regimes that threaten American interests;
• the human rights of those oppressed by their governments, and U.S. leadership in working to spread political and economic freedom;
• a strong military with the defense budget needed to ensure that America is ready to confront the threats of the 21st century;
• international economic engagement as a key element of U.S. foreign policy in this time of great economic dislocation.

And you voted for him because you thought his foreign policy was less hawkish than hers? Stupid.

Although the phenomenon commonly known as “liberation theology” is extremely diverse, there seems to be some common methodological threads running through the work of its proponents. What I want to highlight here is how self-proclaimed liberation theologians almost always identify experience as a highly appropriate methodological starting-point for theology. In particular, for many liberation theologians the experience of the poor, the suffering, the oppressed, is primary and methodologically fundamental. In much of the literature, the role of experience becomes such a priority that it is identified as the central criterion of adjudicating between good and bad theologies. If theology does not directly and explicitly address the plight of the poor and complicity of the rich in oppressive policies, than theology is seen as, ultimately, irrelevant to the poor, and irrelevant to politics. For much of liberation theology the emphasis is on the priority of praxis over theory. It does not assert that theory is unimportant, it is just simply accorded a secondary role. In the words of Jon Sobrino, “theology is a second act, within and in the presence of a reality.” Liberation theology is thus essentially reactive–it is a reaction, in the mode of reflection–on both the concrete experiences of an oppressed people and God’s revelation in Christ.

(Caveat: I am aware of the generalizations taking place in this post. Liberation theology is not univocal and I don’t want to treat it as such, but I’m trying to draw out some key elements that I’ve noticed in much of the literature).

Here’s my question: Doesn’t the role accorded to experience, as the primary theological category, appear deeply strange and problematic when liberation theologians watch it receive equally high status as it is employed to bolster the efforts of right-wing ideologues?

The debate, then, becomes centered on questions of experience–which quickly heads into who has the best evidence from the social sciences to prove, for instance, that collectivism works better than capitalism to relieve poverty, to create happiness and wealth, etc.

For those of us influenced by Barth, or more broadly what is some times referred to as “postliberalism” a la George Lindbeck, or for those influenced by MacIntyre or Milbank–even for those of us who have been influenced by Foucault and the geneaological tradition, we tend to find ourselves quite skeptical of appeals to experience to ground or frame theology. Interestingly, many of these thinkers also claim to stand firmly on the radical Left.

Let me be clear, when I say experience I do not mean to suggest that we really have a choice in the matter. I am not suggesting that we can somehow choose to not use experience in our theological reasoning. Of course, we are all shaped by and use our experience. It is totally absurd to think that we can reflect outside of our own particular history. What I am calling into question is something altogether different–it is the specific move made by much of liberation theology (a move which seems to me to owe more than a little to modern theological liberalism and therefore also to capitalism) that sees experience–or the natural–as more fundamental than revelation.

Again, I want to make clear that my concerns about liberation theology come from a very specific place. I am highly sympathetic to their concerns, but I am highly skeptical of their method at times. This became clear to me at this years AAR Consultation of Liberation Theology session. I’m not going to get into the details here, but I got the feeling that if this is the future of liberation theology it is doomed. If liberation theology works within a framework of modern theological liberalism it is finally a doomed enterprise. I say this because of my conviction that modern theological liberalism is disciplined by capitalist logic through and through, which is of course the very thing liberation theology seeks to resist.

Michael Novak, the Catholic neoconservative theologian comes to town on Wednesday, October 29 to deliver a lecture at 7:30 p.m. entitled, “Career or Calling? Business as a Vocation” at the Thornton Auditorium of Terrence Murphy Hall on St. Thomas’ downtown Minneapolis campus. It is free and open to the public.

Novak is one of the most painful theologians to read, and I’m sure it will be worse listening to him spout off on how capitalism and America are God’s gifts to the world. In his perspecitve, America is not quite the kingdom of God, but it is damn close. Novak has been a staunch supporter of U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and indeed all over the world, militarily and economically.

If you want to join me let me know! It will be great fun!

A couple interesting articles on the current financial crisis: “Welcome to the faith-based economy” by Arjun Appadurai and Slavoj Zizek’s “Don’t Just Do Something, Talk”

H/T Thomas

American politics is the hot topic right now and I’m finding it devastatingly boring to watch. Sure, it does stir up emotions for me, as I watch the American civil religion express itself–full blown–through the good-for-nothing corporate media. This is “convention time”–America’s holy days–the days when people gather together to worship around the flag and to celebrate and remember all the blood shed, all the blood sacrificed, for the nation. For the American tradition, convention time is the time when we do what we do best, prepare to compete and coerce. For those who think that American democracy, the rule of the majority over the minority, is free from coercion, should think again.

In a recent post, James K. A. Smith rightly points out that Barack Obama’s politics is neither new, left, nor Christian. Rather, as Smith notes, Obama’s politics looks to be little more than Republican lite and promotes the same old civil religion and Americanism Democratics and Republicans have always been about. Referring to Obama’s acceptance speech, Smith writes, “In language that could have just as easily appeared in Bush’s second inaugural or the National Security Strategy of the Bush administration, Obama promised to ‘restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace and who yearn for a better future.’”

For Obama the god who has elected America to be the savior of the world comes before the God who delivered Israel from Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead:

I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

Another interesting point Smith makes is that Obama invokes Scripture in a way that echoes the Religious Right. As Smith notes, scripture passages that refer to Israel or the church are transposed into a new context in order to refer to America.

Alluding to Hebrews 10:23 Obama states, “Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.” ["Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised if faithful." Heb 10:23]

To quote Smith again, “The context makes it clear that this is the church’s hope in Christ, but here Obama idolatrously transposes that to the ‘American promise.’ This is a ‘new kind of politics?’ Sounds like the same old sort of civil religion we’ve heard from the Religious Right for years–the same (idolatrous) civil religion of Americanism.”

Ever since I took a class with legendary peace activist Marv Davidov I’ve been following the “cluster bomb” debate. It seems a big step forward was made yesterday when the UK decided to not only ban cluster munitions from the military but also ban the US from storing stockpiles on UK soil. Read the story here.