Monthly Archives: November 2010

Women in Theology

Posted by on November 17, 2010 19 comments

While I’m a little bit late to the party, I want to make sure to direct folks to the excellent new blog, Women in Theology (WIT). Boasting nine different authors writing from various academic and disciplinary theological contexts, this blog helps to fill a  still-wide lacuna in the theological blogosphere. There are plenty of fascinating posts from the last couple months that merit attention, but please take special note of the most recent posts which properly point out some of the mind-numbing madness involved in Milbank’s latest post on sex. Thank you!

I look forward to more great posts from this important blog. Keep up the good work!

Bonhoeffer conference at Notre Dame

Posted by on November 17, 2010 Comments Off

CALL FOR PAPERS

New Conversations on Bonhoeffer’s Theology
A Graduate Student Conference at the University of Notre Dame
April 10-11, 2011

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) remains one of the most prominent and contested modern German theologians. His theology has been at the center of important discussions on pastoral theology, practical ethics, political responsibility, and the role of the Christian in the modern world. Bonhoeffer’s dramatic involvement in the assassination plot against Hitler, and consequent execution, has no doubt contributed to the widespread interest in his work. Today he is among the most widely read theologians in North America and Europe. Recent scholarship on Bonhoeffer’s theology, while attentive to these earlier discussions, has branched out in new directions. First, there has been increased interest in Bonhoeffer’s early and more academic works. Second, a number of recent studies have drawn Bonhoeffer into debates in continental philosophy and other disciplines. Third, there has been a renewed attentiveness to Bonhoeffer’s early twentieth-century theological and historical context. These developments indicate a growing interest in reading Bonhoeffer along systematic, philosophical and historical lines. Fourth, closer attention to Bonhoeffer’s engagement of Catholic interlocutors along these same lines has raised new prospects for Protestant-Catholic dialogue. The purpose of this conference is to draw together and further these developments.

New Conversations will feature papers by graduate students and senior scholars from North America and Europe, including:
Robin Lovin (Southern Methodist University)
Christiane Tietz (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz)
Bernd Wannenwetsch (Oxford University)

Gerald McKenny, Randall Zachman, Cyril O’Regan, Krista Duttenhaver and other Notre Dame faculty will chair graduate student paper sessions.

We cordially invite graduate students to submit a one page abstract by 1 December 2010 to NDBonhoeffer@gmail.com for a paper 25 minutes in length. Please also indicate full contact details and institutional affiliation. We especially encourage abstracts on Bonhoeffer’s theology in relation to the following:

Continental philosophy
Political theory
Early 20th century theology and history
Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist theology
Catholic theology
Karl Barth
Erich Przywara
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Ethics and moral theology
Narrative theology
Literature
Other topics

Enquiries may be directed to Adam Clark and Mike Mawson at NDBonhoeffer@gmail.com. New Conversations intends to provide accommodations for all student presenters and some travel costs for European students.

This event is sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Notre Dame Theology Department.

Campbell on racism

Posted by on November 15, 2010 9 comments

The always awesome Will Campbell has an article online about Elvis Presley as a redneck that provocatively explores the nature of racism in America:

America is a racist society to the core and we all know it.  Ah, we have dressed it up now.  We don’t need a Bilbo, a Pitchfork Ben Tillman to scream “nigger!” from the courthouse steps on election eve to keep poor whites voting right.  We have code words.  Is it not obvious that last year’s election had to do with race. When we heard talk of welfare abuse it meant welfare for black people, though statistics show more whites than blacks on welfare,  when we heard, “…get rid of affirmative action,” it was from those wanting to hang on to the piers of privilege being mildly threatened by enterprising and struggling minorities.  “Teen-­age pregnancies” meant black teenagers having babies. “Crime in the streets and let’s build more prisons” was a euphemism for incarcerating and executing more black people. Was that not obvious?  And is it not manifest already that the next presidential campaign will be waged on that same cunning and pernicious ground?  Perhaps not as brazen as the Willie Horton syndrome but the message will be loud and clear.

I think I can make a case that the poor, white, rural, working class, the redneck, is guilty of less true racism than any other group in white American society.  Not guilty of less prejudice, perhaps, but less racism.  There is a distinction that must be made between racism and prejudice. And between racism and racialism for that matter. (Racialism.  A concept that you might want to consider.)  I am not saying that all or any one of the poor, working class are without prejudice.  History would not bear me out.  We can be educated, or converted out of prejudice; sheer raw, naked bigotry.  But racism is a condition; the structures, the institutions in which we move and breathe and have our being that give white males the advantage.  That is what racism is.  Every one of us afflicted with this incurable skin disease called whiteness is a racist.  That does not mean we hate black people or wish them ill.  It simply means that our skin color has given us ascendance.  That is what racism is.  Prejudice is something else.  Something on a more conscious level.  The “redneck” is less racist because he operates from a base of considerably less power. It is not the poor, rural, laboring class that produces the rulers, the governors, the managers of this present age that harbors the racist cycle.

The article is from 1995, by the way, just to put the “last election” comments in their proper context.

The blasphemy of the “incarnational church”

Posted by on November 11, 2010 15 comments

David Guretzki has posted a quote, with his own reflections, on Karl Barth’s provocative — but correct! — claim that to call the church an “extension of the incarnation” is ultimately blasphemous:

Thus to speak of a continuation or extension of the incarnation in the Church is not only out of place but even blasphemous. Its distinction from the world is not the same as His; it is not that of the Creator from His creature. Its superiority to the world is not the same as His; it is not that of the Lord seated at the right hand of the Father. Hence it must guard as if from the plague against any posturing or acting as if in relation to world-occurrence it were an alter Chrisus [another Christ], or a vicarius Christi [vicar of Christ], or a corredemptrix [co-redemptress] , or a mediatrix omnium gratiarum [mediator of all graces], not only out of fear of God, but also because in any such behaviour, far from really exalting itself or discharging such functions, it can only betray, surrender, hazard and lose its true invisible being, and therefore its true distinction from the world and superiority to world-occurrence. (CD IV.3.2, 729)

Be sure to check out the rest of David’s post for his own reflections, which are, in my opinion, right on the money.

The new monasticism revisited

Posted by on November 11, 2010 27 comments

Over three years ago I posted about the then still somewhat new movement known as “the new monasticism.” At the time I was pretty enthusiastic about the helpfulness of both this label and movement. Nowadays I’m less enthused, not, perhaps about the actual work that many of these communities are doing (after all I’m still very much a part of a church that has been included under this rubric), but about the terminology and literature that’s been put out over the last few years.

Today I am less convinced that “monasticism” is a helpful descriptor for intentional forms of ecclesial life today. Monasticism, by its very nature, at least historically, has always been a sort of special dispensation, a unique and decidedly non-ordinary  and non-normative way of living within the church as a whole. I have never really understood the call to life together under the Gospel to be something like that. This is not to say that I think a faithful form of life together can only look one way (just the opposite, actually!), but only to say that I think it is important that movements that call the church to a mode of life together for the sake of the world should not allow themselves to be written off as some new sort of “monastics” who are off doing a special little thing of their own.

Interestingly, I think many of us who have been affiliated with “the new monasticism” have found much rhetorical juice from a quote from Bonhoeffer (which I quoted in my other post mentioned  above):

The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism which has in common with the old only the uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ. I believe it is now time to call people to this. (Letter to Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, January 14, 1935 in A Testament to Freedom, p. 424)

In the past I think we tended to zero in how awesome it surely was that Bonhoeffer is calling for “a sort of new monasticism.” But Bonhoeffer’s point is rather different, I think. For him the central point is that this new movement for the renewal of the church will have one thing, and one thing only, in common with monasticism, namely the “uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount.” In other words, what Bonhoeffer wanted people to be called to was not a specifically monasticish movement at all, but rather simply to an uncompromising style of messianic life in which all of our action as Christians is given over to the sort of radical love to which Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, calls us.

What is needed today is not so much a rediscovery of “monasticism,” as perhaps we had once thought. Rather what is needed is to return all the more strongly to the message of the Gospel of the crucified, which places its call upon all humankind. We perhaps need to die to the dream of cultivating and securing quasi-monastic communities for ourselves and learn, yet again, what it might mean for us to simply give our lives away in obedience to the call of the Crucified, who calls not simply a few to a special ascetic vocation, but rather calls all of us to be completely given over to the way of discipleship, which can only be a kenotic way of life in which the call to lay our lives down must be discerned afresh in whatever contingent circumstances we find ourselves.

Homophobiaphobia

Posted by on November 9, 2010 50 comments

There’s a lively discussion underway at Daniel Kirk’s blog in which he has called for a moratorium on the use of the word “homophobic” as a descriptor for folks whose theological and/or political positions on same-sex relationships is non-affirming. Now of course I’ll be the first to admit that I believe there are many who aren’t irrationally afraid of gay sex who have disagreements about the theological status of same-sex relationships. But the ensuing conversation around Daniel’s post brought some stuff back up for me that I think merits mention.

First, it seems incontrovertible to me that when the gay community calls certain positions or behavior from others “homophobic” they are stating something about the way in which they experience those ideas and behaviors. In other words, it is a relational term. What they experience from how these others relate to them is an experience of being reflexively feared and viewed as a source of revulsion. As such, I don’t see how it can be up to others to tell the gay community when and whether they can use the word to describe others. What they are describing is their experience of being treated a certain way by others. Now I suppose people could argue that they are wrong about all that, and they have, in fact, been being treated with love and dignity when they thought they were being treated with fear and revulsion, but it seems to me that that would have to be a pretty convincing argument. In my experience people tend to have pretty good sense of when others are afraid of them and find things about them repulsive.

Second, I’m really perplexed by why people are so desperate to avoid the term “homophobic” being applied to them. Now of course, no one wants to be accused of having an irrational fear, which is conjured up by the term “phobia.” But let us leave that aside, especially since it seems to me that the most common connotation of “homophobic” is not irrationality but simply revulsion. If same-sex activity and relationships are sins against God and nature, why would anyone shy away from despising those acts? If gay sex is just as wrong as pederasty or incest, why should we be so concerned to make sure we’re all polite about the one and not the other? Why all the fear of “homophobia” if that is, in fact, what taking sin seriously is supposed to mean?

I always find it interesting how the anti-gay sex position always wants to insist on a polite, measured, and properly ordered civil dialogue about the issue. They claim that to toss around terms like “homophobic” is to distract from the “real issues” and inhibit conversation. Honestly I’m pretty convinced that the real diversion from substantive dialogue is the insistence on keeping everything all tidy and polite. To try to sanitize everything in advance and make sure no one gets called any names sounds innocent enough, but it is hardly a neutral move. To insist that things never get heated and self-involving is to cast the argument, in advance, as one in which all participants are good, honest, basically forward thinking folk that just need to speak more clearly to each other. But its an open question whether that is in fact that case. The gay kid who got the shit kicked out of him all through high school, often by Christians, may not feel like he can extend that sort of open hand of politeness, and who are we to say that he has to?

Anyways, my main point is that the desire to sanitize this discussion is itself an ideological move. If we’re really talking about things as important as both sides think we are, there’s no reason to assume that this should be some sort of polite conversation. According to traditional Christian teaching, non-heterosexual sex is a sin against God and an nature, which, like all sins can send you to hell. That’s serious. According to the movement for same-sex rights today the traditional view of homosexuality is degrading, oppressive, and inhumane. That’s serious too. If we’re talking about things that really are that serious, lets let them be serious rather than trying to keep everything nice and contained for the sake of appearing polite and agreeable. To do that is simply to be dishonest about the nature and severity of the disagreement. And that serves no one, at least in terms of furthering discussion and understanding.

Switch to our mobile site