Anglican Distress

Given my experience with the Anglican church and the fact that several good friends of mine identify as members, I am particularly saddened by the current difficulties it is going through  and I hope that they can work things out in a fashion amenable to everyone at the upcoming Lambeth Conference.

Unfortunately, I’m not terribly optimistic, especially given the following description of the new discussion format to be applied this year:

Unlike the previous thirteen meetings, this year’s Lambeth conference will not feature large sessions ordered toward producing resolutions. It will instead consist of small discussion groups (called indaba, a Zulu term for “gathering”) aimed toward the eventual production of a communal “Reflections” document.

Some have been skeptical of the intent and effect of the new design. There may well be sound reasons for the change; it can be difficult for all voices to be heard in enormous parliamentary sessions. But some are concerned that the new design will actually have the effect of preventing any outcomes such as the ones at the 1998 meeting, where the numerical strength of Global South bishops led to the passage of resolutions that were unpalatable to Northern liberals.

Perhaps I’m being too uncharitably cynical, but when compared to what I’ve seen in the RC neighborhood regarding innovations (very) allegedly dictated by Vatican II, I’m not surprised to see this kind of thing happen when you let the Lib…er, religious progressives get their foot in the door.

There’s a Guy I know who could help you…

Hmm…

Would it be too thickly ironic to suggest a plot to blow up Parliament if demands should not be met?

Brotherly love

For some reason I’ve been dinking around lately with some Coptic Gnostic Christianity texts and, in  particular, giving a cursory run-over to the contents of the Tchacos Codex (i.e., the one with the Gospel of Judas), and I found the following bit from the opening of 1st Apocalypse of James rather intriguing:

It is the Lord who spoke with me: “See now the completion of my redemption. I have given you a sign of these things, James, my brother. For not without reason have I called you my brother, although you are not my brother materially.”

The text goes on to outline all sorts of cool quasi-SF Gnostic hierarchies and gnomic utterances about the male and female elements and about where, when, and why whoever can be released from materiality will be etc.  Typical stuff– all this spirit-body/good-evil sort of dualism.

But…if one of the points of this text is to reinforce the belief that Jesus is actually some kind of primary spiritual emanation of God (”But it did not exist when I came forth, since I am an image of Him-who-is. But I have brought forth the image of him so that the sons of Him-who-is might know what things are theirs and what things are alien [to them].”), and if the ultimate goal for James is to leave behind his body in order to become spirit (”If you want to give them a number now, you will not be able to do so until you cast away from your blind thought, this bond of flesh which encircles you. And then you will reach Him-who-is. And you will no longer be James; rather you are the One-who-is.”), then what purpose does it serve for Jesus to specify that he is “not [his] brother materially”?

No, I don’t want to have the whole “no word for ‘cousin’ in Aramaic” debate, especially if it’s going to be compounded by issues of translation into/from Coptic and Greek.  I just thought it was an interesting point that appears to reflect an early belief (earlier, at least, than Eusebius) in Jesus’ and James’ different parentage.

There’s also the curious point that the Protoevangelium of James from around the same time appears to claim that James is Jesus’ stepbrother.   [Blunt spectulation!] But perhaps this otherwise meaningless initial aside about not being brothers “materially” is meant as a means to authorial authenticity by piggybacking off of the Jesus-James relationship of the other work, e.g. “although you are not my brother materially (Hint, Hint: I’m the real James writing this,  since I’m not making any crazy claims about Jesus being my actual brother.  So if you liked my protoevangelium, then you certainly shouldn’t find anything objectionable about what I say here)”.

Oy!

Recent experiences with last-minute computer printing have led me to consider the possibility of modernizing the story of Hanukkah to involve a beleaguered law office and a miraculous ink cartridge…

Tolerance

An interesting argument from Iranian ambassador to Spain:

“Our laws allow for the amputation of the hand that steals. This is not accepted by the West, but the field of human rights should take into account the customs, traditions, religion and economic development,” he said in comments reported by the newspaper El Mundo.

So…human rights should acknowledge exceptions to human rights. Right….

It reminds me of a quote by one Sir Charles Napier regarding the Indian practice of Suttee:

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Quite.

Salvation

And people claim Republicans are the religious crazies…

A Sermon I want to remember

This is just to jot down in order to remember, the basic idea of an intriguing sermon given by Rev. Jeremy Caddick at Emmanuel College chapel last year.  I can’t at the moment recall the reading, but the gist of it was familial.  Rev. Caddick began by noting that we commonly draw a distinction between our relationships with our family members on one hand, and with our friends on the other, the underlying rationale being that while we are given the former, we choose the latter.

He went on to point out, however, that in spite of the fact that we may freely associate with one person or another in our individual lives, the church we have is the church we are given, at least in terms of personal composition.

I think there’s a lot there to ponder.

Bumper Stickers (Rant/Counterrant)

I saw a particularly irritating bumper sticker today on my way to the hospital. It said, “God is too big for any one religion”. Now, the thing about me and bumper stickers is that I find them irritating not when I think they’re wrong, but rather when I think that they’re taking a reasonable basic principle and skewing it into a shallow, supercilious soundbite.

In this case, there are several assumptions and skewed principles. First, the assumption seems to be that we all know what we’re talking about when we say “God”. This is one of the more annoying by-products of living in a culture that is blissfully unaware of its monotheistic roots–everyone seems to think that its pretty obvious what God is like. Ironically, I’d lay fair money that the driver of that car would squirm at being called Eurocentric, even as s/he uncritically mouthed the platitude that “Muslims and Christians should get along because they all worship the same God”. In one sense, they do; in another, they don’t. There’s a world of difference betwixt.

…which brings me to the principle skewing: “Many religions contain some truth” gets conflated with one possible divine characteristic, namely, God’s incomprehensibility, to produce the grand conclusion that since no one really understands God, then no one religion can claim a monopoly over religious truth. Superficially convincing and probably worthy of being a bumper sticker ideology, but sorry, no dice.

In the first place, it’s a blatant contradiction. Suppose we define religion loosely as a set of convictions. The bumper sticker then translates to: God is too big for any one set of convictions. But the idea that “God is too big for any one set of convictions” is itself a conviction, which God is allegedly too big for. Uh-oh. Call St. Anselm; we have a problem…

In the second place, it’s circular. Suppose that this driver is a generous soul and believes that there is a grain of truth about God every religion (e.g., probably dislikes several tenets of the Catholic church, but nonetheless refuses to equate it with the spawn of Satan, whore of Babylon, or any other of a plethora of assorted apocalyptic beasts). That seems to be a fair principle that one can derive from reasonable assumptions about the function of religion in any given society. But the catch is that one must first define what truth is in order to ascertain whether or not a given religion contains a grain of it or not.

…which brings me to the third objection: It’s presumptuous. Say what you want about the many annoyingly ostentatious Christians in this country, at least they usually have the intellectual integrity to let you know up front that their fundamental claim is that Jesus is God, which at the very least provides a clear basis for disagreement with anything they say and points the way towards a rational discussion about the nature of God (this is, of course, not to say that such things will actually *guarantee* that a rational discussion ensue, but that’s another matter altogether). This guy, on the other hand, is driving around telling you that s/he pretty much knows who God is and has all other religions figured out…without so much as gesturing at the provenance of such certitude so that the idle passer-by may contemplate his sticker for a brief moment, conclude yea or nay, and proceed along his merry way having determined whether or not s/he would wish to follow up on the morsel of purported wisdom imparted by said sticker.

Now, enough ranting.

I guess you could say that, at the end of the day, I’m somewhat ambivalent about my judgment of these stickers. After all, part of their rationale is to get you to think about their topic–which I’ve clearly done, at least more so than I would have on that day had I not seen the sticker and been duly irritated to bang out a boilerplate blog post. But even further, there’s the general question of how much one ought to display personal views one ought to display in public . NB: I’m not inquiring after what or whether one ought to be *allowed* to do so; it’s not censorship I’m discussing here, but rather social conventions of extroversion, politeness, and the definition of reasonable topical reticence. In other words, at what point does push come to shove when dealing with what ticks one off? Shouldn’t one scale back from a specific incident to a general rule and then apply it in one’s life even-handedly? Or is culture in a pluralistic society bound ever to battle, or at least ever to step on toes?

Case in point: Nearby where I live is a relatively large community of Orthodox Jews. I often see them on the Sabbath walking to the Synagogue to pay obeisance to the God of their forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whole families, all dressed alike–Men, tall and gaunt or thick and stout, bearded, frequently bespectacled, peering out from under their broad-rimmed black hats; Women, wrapped in skirts and shawls, their hair hidden to all save their husbands, often holding children by the hand as they cross the busy North Chicago streets. I’m fascinated by them.

But if I’m getting so irritated by one lousy bumper sticker that doesn’t really say all that much and in fact slightly denigrates itself by its untoward placement on a rusty bumper, shouldn’t I get even more irritated by the silent, yet blunt and open statements made by these people for all to see as they eschew human technology and crawl across the broken Earth to praise their God?

Is tolerance just about keeping your mouth shut when something rubs you the wrong way, or is it about taking opportunities like these to force yourself to see in a different light those things that you instinctively dislike? Either way, it can be very difficult…

“the underlying primitivism of modernity”

I’m an avid reader of the First Things blog, so I thought I’d share with you this post and a few comments on it.

Although I largely agree with the idea that much of “modernity” (whatever that really may be) is blind to the fact that it’s not actually as novel as it likes to think it is, there nevertheless was a fair amount of conscious “primitivism” in the work of “modern” and/or “modernist” artists. Just look at Stravinsky and “The Rite of Spring”, for example, or Picasso’s remark upon viewing the prehistoric drawings in the Lascaux caves: “We have invented nothing”. One could also go down the route of philosophy and point out developments like Bergson’s Élan vital and remark further that a consequence of the Modernist era was the rise of sociological methods in which contemporary primitive societies were considered more favorable–more “pure”–than developed civilization.

In other words, instead of setting up a “new vs. old” dynamic as a definitional basis for Modernism, these days I’m toying more with the idea of “conscious vs. unconscious”. Pound may have cried out, “Make it new!”, but the even more fundamental assumption to that injunction is that one has become conscious of what the labels “old” and “new” mean and can therefore fashion objects accordingly.

But before I launch into another paragraph that completely undercuts everything I’ve just said…this seems like a good place to trail off…

UPDATE: Here’s a bit of of an elaboration.