Is Michael Jackson the opium of the masses?

South Park episode #33, when it was still cool to make fun of Michael Jackson

I'm getting extremely sick of the hysteria that has been whipped up by the media over Michael Jackson's death. I mean, have we honestly fallen for this sick joke? Every idiot knows that the day before he died, MJ was for most people the butt of jokes about plastic surgery disasters, dangling babies over the balconies and paedophilia. Then suddenly the next thing we knew, the whole world was mourning as if their dog had just died when in fact, people were more concerned with the texture of their dog's runny poo than MJ. Now everyone's pretending like they've always been big fans (no... downloading his songs online the day after he died does not generally make one a long-time fan).

I wonder if this periodic public outpouring of grief is a way for people to externalise their crappy existence without actually changing anything.

You really want to celebrate the life of Michael Jackson? Why not smash the media that cashed off his misery all those years? Or at least stop buying their lies.

What is Christian Anarchism?

"Christian anarchism is based upon the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees, when He said that he without sin should be the first to cast the stone, and upon the Sermon on the Mount, which advises the return of good for evil and the turning of the other cheek. Therefore, when we take any part in government by voting for legislative, judicial, and executive officials, we make these men our arm by which we cast a stone and deny the Sermon on the Mount.

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world."

- at Catholic Worker web, from The Book of Ammon (Fortkamp/Rose Hill, 1994)

Verso's 'Revolution(s)' Series presents: Munzter's 'Sermon to the Princes'

I'm uber excited about this new release from VERSO:

“Omnia sunt communia — all things are common.” — Thomas Muntzer

"The Reformation was originally an attack on a corrupt Church, sparked by Martin Luther. Thomas Müntzer, originally Luther’s protégé, became increasingly convinced that the Reformation did not go far enough. In 1524 he became one of the leaders of the Peasants’ War, where the struggle against the Church exploded into a revolutionary attempt to realize the Kingdom of Heaven on earth." From VERSO website for the book

Excerpts from Muntzer's sermon (1524):

"It is true - I know it for a fact - that the spirit of God is revealing to many elect and pious men at this time the great need for a full and final reformation in the near future. This must be carried out. For despite all attempts to oppose it the prophecy of Daniel retains its full force... This text of Daniel, then is as clear as the bright sun, and the work of ending the fifth Empire of the world is now in full swing. The first Empire is explained by the golden knob - that was the Babylonian - the second by the silver breastplate and arm-piece - that was the Empire of the Medes and Persians. The third was the Greek Empire, resonant with human cleverness, indicated by the bronze; the fourth the Roman Empire, an Empire won by the sword, an Empire won by force. But the fifth is the one we see before us, which is also of iron and would like to use force, but it is patched with dung...that is, with the vain schemings of hypocrisy, which swarms and slithers over the face of the whole earth. ...What a pretty spectacle we have before us now - all the eels and snakes coupling together immorally in one great heap! The priests and all the evil clerics are the snakes, as John [the baptist]...called them...and the secular lords and rulers are the eels, symbolised by the fishes in Leviticus 11.

Therefore, my dearest, most revered rulers, learn true judgment from the mouth of God himself. Do not let yourself be seduced by your hypocritical priests into a restraint based on counterfeit clemency and kindness. ...Only seek without delay the righteousness of God and take up the cause of the gospel boldly. ...King Nebuchadnezzar wanted to kill his wise men because they were unable to expound the dream. It was no more than they deserved. ...Our clergy today are in the same position. I know this for a fact, that if the plight of the Christian people really came home to you and you put your mind to it properly then you would develop the same zeal as King Jehu showed, 2 Kings 9, 10, and as we find throughout the whole book of Revelation. And I know this for a fact that you would have the very greatest difficulty not to resort to the power of the sword. For the condition of the holy people of Christ has become so pitiable, that up to now not even the most eloquent tongue could do it justice. Therefore a new Daniel must arise and expound your dreams to you and...he must be in the vanguard, leading the way. He must bring about a reconciliation between the wrath of the princes and the rage of the people. For once you really grasp the plight of the Christian people as a result of the treachery of the false clergy and the abandoned criminals your rage against them will be boundless, beyond all imagining. ...For they have made such a fool of you that everyone swears by the saints that in their official capacity princes are just pagans, that all they have to do is to maintain civic order. Alas, my fine fellow, the great stone will come crashing down soon and smash such rational considerations to the ground, as Christ says in Matthew 10: 'I am not come to send peace, but he sword.' But what is one to do with the sword? Exactly this: sweep aside those evil men who obstruct the gospel! Take them out of circulation! Otherwise you will be devils,... Have no doubts that God will mash all your adversaries into little pieces... Now if you are to be true rulers, you must seize the very roots of government, following the command of Christ. Drive his enemies away from the elect; you are the instruments to do this. My friend, don't let us have any of these hackneyed posturings, about the power of God achieving everything without any resort to your sword; otherwise it may rust in its scabbard. ...Hence the sword, too, is necessary to eliminate the godless. To ensure, however, that this now proceeds in a fair and orderly manner, our revered fathers, the princes, who with us confess Christ, should carry it out. But if they do not carry it out the sword will be taken from them (Daniel 7), for then they would confess him in words but deny him in deeds. ...The tares have to be torn out of the vineyard of God at harvest-time.

...There is no doubt that many...will be similarly offended by this little book, because I say with Christ...and with the guidance of the whole divine law, that one should kill the godless rulers, and especially the monks and priests who denounce the holy gospel as heresy and yet count themselves the best Christians. ...For the godless have no right to live, unless by the sufferance of the elect... So be bold! He to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth is taking the government into his own hands."

Lenin & Critical Pedagogy 1

Inspired by Zizek and his Lenin Reloaded, I have been reading some of the works by the leader of the October Revolution.

I want to think about the applicability of some of his ideas to the formation of a revolutionary philosophy of teaching & learning within a Christian tradition in the context of financial/consumer capitalism.

Anyways, here's some of the goatee man himself:

"This struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity. The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn into the movement does not make the organisation of this struggleless necessary. On the contrary, it makes it more necessary."

Lenin, The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organization of the Revolutionaries (1901)

Who is right about the 'Economic Crisis'? I choose...

The guy on top.

(Obama, Rudd, Brown and others seem to have gone for the second geezer)

As Ali G once so cleverly pointed out, all the bad people in history have moustaches (Hitler, Stalin, Franco...etc) while all the good people have beards (Jesus, Moses, Lenin...etc).

See! It's even historically proven.

For all the saints who went before me

For Oscar Romero, Camillo Torres, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr. and the thousands of brothers and sisters who have suffered and died for others because they believed in the resurrection.

******************

Why? Well...

Sometimes we in the 'West' like to believe that it is right to do something only when we feel compelled. i.e. that truly "authentic" action is an expression of our inner desires.

For example, a common explanation for tattoos is that it "expresses something inside me... my inner self... etc". The 'inner self' works its way out.

Sadly, this is true of how many people see Christianity; you shouldn't feel like you MUST do something until you are convinced it is good.

As I watched the Israeli campaign in Gaza on TV, I felt sick. Having followed the apartheid and suffering in Gaza unfold over the last few years, this was another layer of death on top of the many who have already died in that part of the world. The Israelis near the Gaza border live in constant fear of rockets raining down on them; the Palestinians are alienated from the world and live in what is practically a giant refugee camp.

Oh how I longed for the kingdom of God, that both grace AND justice might heal that fractured place.

So I got inked.



I didn't do it because I am a person who naturally cares always about others; I didn't do it because I am always seeking the kingdom of God; I didn't do it because inside I always weep with the oppressed, get angry at brutality and, confident in my union with Christ, throw myself into those places where people are being crucified. I don't always desire these things.


I got inked because I want to be all those things.


(Saba Mahmood's book about the piety movement within Egyptian Islam taught me that much: that contrary to the 'West', these women understood that the outward act is done in the hope that the inner self will learn to conform to it)


I hope that this outward act will conform my inner self.


In a world that is still in exile, Camillo Torres puts it plainly:


I chose Christianity because I felt that in it I had found the best way of serving my neighbors. I was elected by Christ to be a priest forever, motivated by the desire to devote myself full-time to loving my fellow man.

I feel that the revolutionary struggle is a Christian and priestly struggle. Only through this, given the concrete circumstances of our country, can we fulfill the love that men should have for their neighbors...


"He who loves fulfills the law," says St. Paul. "Love and do what you will," says St. Augustine. The surest sign of predestination is love of neighbor. St. John tells us: "If someone says he loves God, whom he does not see, and does not love his neighbor whom he does see, he is a liar.


Those who hold power constitute an economic minority which dominates political, cultural, and military power, and, unfortunately, also ecclesiastical power in the countries in which the Church has temporal goods. This minority will not make decisions opposed to its own interests... The power must be taken for the majorities' part so that structural, economic, social, and political reforms benefiting these majorities may be realized. This is called revolution, and if it is necessary in order to fulfill love for one's neighbor, then it is necessary for a Christian to be revolutionary."

Not because we feel like it, but because we must.

My summer reading list

Okay, I've set myself the near-impossible task of getting the following books read over this summer:

• Moltmann, Jurgen On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics
• Moltmann, Jurgen God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology
• Yoder, John. H. The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism
• Yoder, John. H. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World
• Hauerwas, S. After Christendom: how the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian nation are bad ideas
• Kuyper, Abraham Lectures on Calvinism
• Long, D. Stephen Divine Economy: theology and the market
• Petrella, Ivan The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto
• Sung, Jung-Mo Desire, Market and Religion
• Dabashi, Hamid Islamic Liberation Theology
• Hefner, R.W. & Zaman, M.Q. Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education
• Asad, Talal Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity
• Carette, J. & King, R. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion
• Maddox, Marion God Under Howard: The rise of the religious right in Australian politics
• Boucher, G. & Sharpe, M. The Times Will Suit Them: Postmodern Conservatism in Australia
• George, J. & Hyunh The Culture Wars: Australian and American Politics in the 21st Century

Kicking Old Skool + New Skool in 2009!

Yep, I'll be back at Sydney University in 2009 [while still trying to hold down a job].

I will be beginning a Doctor of Social Sciences degree with the Department of Gender & Cultural Studies (School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, Faculty of Arts).

The present [vague-ish] research area is 'Neoliberal Discourses in Religious/Christian Schools'

In my research proposal, I thought it would be interesting to:

"examine the discourses of Christian Parent-Controlled Schools (CPCS)/ Christian Education National (CEN) network schools and the dominant neoliberal discourse of Australian society (Pusey, 1989). The principal interest is the localised effects produced by the hegemony of the latter over the former."

I hope to aid the cause of a liberatory+faithful "Christian education" in this research.

Fun Fun Fun!

PS: the picture above is of Maclaurin Hall; it's in most prospectuses, but I'll probably never end up there... except for exams... which would feel sucky in any case

14 Days in Sunny October: Holiday photo report

Everybody who teaches, has taught or is related to a teacher knows that the academic year is like consecutive sprints: 11 weeks of high intensity... 2 weeks to recover... 10 weeks of VERY high intensity... 2 weeks to recover... 10 weeks of drama and sleepless nights... 2 weeks to recover... 10 more weeks of pleasure and pain... Christmas holidays!

Normally, the tendency is to flop at home in the breaks and veg for two weeks, but it's always nice to have something on so that it feels like a holiday. Here's my past 14 days...

Coffee and book reviews...

Central Coast sun and surf...

BBQ with the local comunity under the tree in our concrete backyard...

Road trip to Bendigo, VIC with the Morrises for Aimee & Josh's wedding

Put to work pre-wedding...

Scrubbed up for the wedding itself on the farm

Playing with Satie at home

Tons of reading...

Sun, music and lunch at Ashfield's Festival of Cultures

It's been a good 14 days. And appropriate thanksgiving should be made:

Great Spirit!Piler-up of the rocks into towering mountains:When you stamp on the stone

The dust rises and fills the land,Hardness of the precipice;Waters of the pool that turnInto misty rain when stirred.Vessels overflowing with oil!

Father of who sews the heavens like cloth:May you knit together that which is below.

Caller-forth of the branching trees:You bring forth the shoots

That they stand erect.

You have filled the land with mankind,

The dust rises on high, O Lord!

Wonderful One, you live

In the midst of the sheltering rocks,

You give rain to mankind:We pray to you; hear us, Lord!

Show mercy when we beseech thee, Lord.

You are on high with the spirits of the great.

You raise the grass-covered hills

Above the earth, and create the rivers.

Gracious One!

(From the Shosa people of Zimbabwe, in SPCK's Prayers Encircling the World)

aaah yeees... is very niiiiiiice

Feeling sorry for Nelson

Exclusive pictures from behind the scenes of this morning's Liberal Party leadership spill!

8:50AM - Brendan Nelson in the change room just before the Liberal Party leadership decider

9:40AM - Malcolm Turnbull burns Brendan Nelson's leadership ticket

10:15AM - Shocked and dismayed by his own party's complicity in it all, Nelson heads home

Most of you who know me well would know that my sympathies don't always lie with the Liberal Party of Australia... to say the least. This is due to my opposition to neoliberalism, economic conservatism and reactionary nationalism, all of which have been the hallmarks of the LP in the last decade or so.

However, I must say that when Brendan Nelson got dumped from the leadership of the LP this morning, I felt a little sorry for the guy.

Maybe being sick with the flu has made me soft?


I don't think so; i just think it must feel awful to be betrayed by one's own. The feeling of loneliness must be agonising.



We don't agree on many things B. Nelson, but I think we agree that this sucks.



Here's hoping you can rise up and lay the smackdown on Turnbull.





PS: Hey... maybe you could join Labor again? I mean, there's not much difference nowadays anyway...

Sick with the flu @home... with Satie

There is only 1 cute creature in this photo...

I don't think most people understand how much I hate being sick and stuck @home. It must just be an extrovert thing; i need people to interact with, to try things out with, to bounce ideas off.

Being sick @home for me puts me ill at ease, the feeling of not interacting with people all day is a painful experience.

At least nowadays, I have our little kitten Satie to give me comfort :-)

She came over an slept on my chest this afternoon (as you can see) and for those moments, being sick @home felt OK.

and pithy again on Reproduction and Abortion

10 minutes after the first comment i submitted below @ the Socialist Alliance discussion board, I opened my big fat mouth again trying to help but probably making things worse, this time on the debate over women's right to choose re: reproduction and abortion.

I wrote:

"Don't the rhetorics of 'choice' and 'life' resound with the neoliberal worldview a little too much?

Many a good scholar have questioned the notion of 'free choice' by interrogating the social conditions that give rise to the choices people make. e.g. many pre-teen girls 'freely choose' to buy Bratz dolls and dress accordingly, or do they?

Shouldn't both [so-called] pro-life and pro-choice groups, instead of attacking the women at the vulnerable point of their decision on what to do, look at the social conditions + pressures that compel them to go either way? (in particular, the unjust income distribution in society and poor health care)

Perhaps an unlikely alliance may even be conceived."

Wow, I'm an opinionated bastard aren't I?

A pithy comment on Government funding of 'religious' schools

I recently submitted a comment on the Socialist Alliance website re: 'Defend Public Education!' discussion.

Trying to break from the typical boring dichotomies of religious versus non-religious, I wrote:

"Having been a teacher in a Christian school (and being a Christian+teacher myself) AND commited to radical [social] democracy, I take it that the government funding of these schools is not necessarily a 'good' thing for religious communities themselves.

Apart from the obvious issues of distributive justice vis-a-vis public schools (which is a very important issue itself), government funding also undermines the counter-hegemonic impulses in these schools/religions. Getting govt funding requires religious schools to sign up to a whole raft of 'requirements' to ensure that they are in fact "good" for Australia.
Does this then serve to underwrite the social order "as it is"; creating a syncretistic religious schooling system bereft of its 'prophetic' (social critique) function?

The catch 22 of govt funding of private religious schools is that they cease to be very religious in any substantive sense - e.g. when everyone has to gather around the flag to sing the national anthem - and what we might end up with are schools that are purportedly different only in label, and education becomes like the kind of agony one experiences in a supermarket over what brand of pet food to buy in an array of inane chices."

Anyone going to kick my head in for saying this? I expect so...

Local Council Elections

To my shame, I've only recently taken an interest in local council activities. Living in the Ashfield area now, one gets the sense that the council is pretty involved with the community.

However, as always, there is much to struggle for.

The local council elections are coming up around Sydney and on my radar are a couple of issues around the Ashfield area:

* The provision of low-income housing and aid for the homeless

* Traffic density and the proposed M4 extension, which will cut through Ashfield and futher clog up the streets

* Public spaces and parks, which are necessary for social interaction and community life.

* Pollution in all its forms: cars, rubbish, shopping trolleys... etc

* Just treatment of migrants, refugees and Indigenous peoples

So, I'm scratching my head about who to vote for... hmmmmm

What's up with my kitten and trees?

I thought this only happened in story books, but my kitten Satie is absolutely in love with climbing up tall trees and getting herself stuck in them.

First, she darts out of the door and smells the flowers, which we adore.

She then proceeds to scale the heights of the tree in the backyard, going up-up-up, never looking back to think "hmm, now that's not very clever is it now?".

After she's climbed up to a substantial height, she realises that she cannot get down. Here's when she starts to cling pitifully on a weak branch for dear life and cry.

So up we go to fetch her [meanwhile wondering how we ourselves are going to get down, especially holding a kitten in one arm].

After the whole traumatic experience, she does it again...

What a cutie... I'm a sucker for our little kitten :-)

Harbour bridge blues

On Monday morning, I spent 2.5 hours in traffic on the Habour Bridge due to a major accident [which, BTW, is insignificant considering the poor guy who was involved in the crash].

On Tuesday, while I was driving home from work, I managed to 'collect' a red bucket that had fallen off the back of a truck onto the road. It got stuck under my car and drubbed against the road all the way across the Harbour Bridge. At the queue for at the toll point, I had to get out and stick my head under my car in order to pry the bucket (or the bits left of it) out.

aaaah, I love the Harbour Bridge.

It's Wednesday today...

Listening to Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll is a prominent preacher from Seattle in the USA. He was in Sydney recently for a few speaking engagements and on Sunday, he turned up at our Petersham Baptist Church - PM gathering.

His topic for the night was "propitiation".

According to Driscoll, 'propitiation' is the fact that God is justly furious at us for our sins.

According to Driscoll, we can't separate the sin from the sinner. He attacked the idea that God can love the sinner, but hate the sin [attacking Ghandi's "hate the sin, love the sinner" mantra].

He puts the point strongly across like this (roughly):



"God hates a lot of people. God's wrath is mentioned more than 600 times in the Bible. More verses talk about the wrath of God than those which state that he loves us...


What happens with propitiation is that Jesus stands in our place and the wrath of the Father is poured out on the Son [Jesus]. He is dying by suffering the wrath of God. And the wrath of God is poured out on Jesus and is thereby propitiated, diverted, taken away, from sinners who are in Jesus Christ."


He then went on to deliver blow by blow details of the torture and crucifixion of Jesus, including the probably accurate physical trauma endured. Why? In order to demonstrate that Jesus takes away sin by dying on a cross as a substitute for sinful people.

I appreciated the content of the talk, and it was nice to hear someone with the rhetorical skills of Driscoll close up. But the talk sat uncomfortably with me, not because i disagreed with Driscoll by-and-large, but i found the focus narrow and unnuanced.

It came across to me like "salvation" was a once off existential event for the individual, siphoned off from a wider understanding of cosmic salvation and regeneration ("creation groans...").

I'm also not sure that we can't learn from Ghandi. Bonhoeffer did.

And, the over-emphasis on the physical pain of crucifixion belies the pain of his entire life seeing his people oppressed, betrayal by his friends and nation, and the alienation from God felt by the Christ.

But heck, maybe I'm being a little unfair. I don't mean to sound all negative. After all, it was a sermon on 'propitiation'. It was Mark Driscoll after all and many came to hear the man himself - possibly not so much what he had to say (who says the Catholics are the only ones who have the right to be suckers for 'personality'?!).

Driscoll seemed like an earnest, honest guy with a passion for the person + work of the Christ.

PS: Stanley Hauerwas offers some useful corrective to the protestant evangelical individualism and tendency to truncate the Cross. I've added some of his comments HERE

'The Sleeping Lazy Ass has Awoken': 3oA is dead, long live 3oA

The Death & Resurrection of Third Order Areopagus

As-Salāmu-Alaykum my friends and comrades, brothers and sisters,



for those of you who have browsed, read, suffered and responded to the posts on this blog [3oA] over the last 3 years or so, I just wanted to thank you all for your support. i know there's quite few readers out there, many who don't leave comments [for good reason, i must seem like a sociopath... hehe]



3oA started when I was at uni doing research into the philosophy of economics, sitting there by myself smashing book after book into my head. For fear of my mind turning in on itself, i started blogging as a way of mental excretion: "dumping" thoughts and ideas out of my head and off my chest.



much has happened since those days. i've been working as a geography/commerce/legal studies/biblical studies teacher for nearly 3 years now, as well as being presently halfway through a Master of Education in Christian ed (via the National Institute for Christian Ed, or as Borat would say, "iiiis NICE...") sponsored by my benevolent employer. [ps- that person on the right with the mankini is Borat Sagdiev, NOT me! honestly!]









despite all these blessings, my head is no less in danger of being full of poop, in fact more so, a symptom of my mental state rather than my surrounds... hehe




Since around April, through the inspiration of NICE, the intellectual provocations of my bosses Bill Rusin (@work) and Melinda (@home), the encouragement of my 'details-nazi' comandante and former GTA heavy-hitter Elizabeth Riley, and many good friends (like Andy Morris, who ruined my complacent life by giving me a Stanley Hauerwas book just when I started resting comfortably on my 'know-it-all-ness'), I have been reading, thinking and researching on the issue of 'The Cultural Politics of Religion' - a sexy way of asking "what is the relationship between religion and our culture?". In particular, what role do Christians have in the politics of our culture, and conversely, what role does our cultural context play in how Christians think of their Christianity.







This has sent me on a road back to the books, to research and to that ceaseless voice in my head that says "you know not what you do..."


In 2009, I am hoping for a year of teaching AND formal study/research. This may well see me stalking the lecture halls and libraries of tertiary institutions again... this time older and less mature.


Because of this new direction, I have decided to give this blog a bit of an "inward turn". As of this week, 3oA will journal and chart my personal life, inner thoughts, and escapades with my wonderful and intellectually superior wife.



Gone will be the "brain faeces", those endless esoteric and difficult to understand posts that were a form of therapy for me.



Instead, i hope to post glimpses of the life we are living, the context of what we do.




If you are a masochistic sucker for punishment and pain (like Jenni Syme, who despite having to do her HSC persists in sacrificing herself by reading my rants), or are a supporter of my study in some way, i have started another blog for my research - libera-nos-a-malo.blogspot.com - which will contain the more thinksy posts, politically incorrect quotes, and updates on my new academic growth pains.



I just want to thank all of you again for the past three years, for indulging me.




Keep fighting the good fight my dearly beloved, run the race, for as a young black preacher once taught us, "We Shall Overcome".

I covet your prayers and support on this scary and exciting prospect.

With love, Remy Low



And to kick us off on our new regime, here is a picture of our kitten - Satie.

(we picked her up when she was around 4 weeks old, someone had dumped her in a box)

Why Slavoj Zizek thinks that buddhists are capitalist compradors, pikers and pussies...

I'm currently reading some of Slavoj Zizek's work on religion (The Fragile Absolute, The Perverse Core of Christianity, and On Belief). He is an interesting mix of erudite+esoteric theory, comedian and psychopath.

Here's Zizek on the buddhism and the new age wave in Western capitalist societies:

Zizek: "... a wild donkey of a man"

"The ultimate postmodern irony is today’s strange exchange between the West and the East. At the very moment when, at the level of “economic infrastructure,” Western technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide, at the level of “ideological superstructure,” the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened in the West itself by the onslaught of New Age “Asiatic” thought. Such Eastern wisdom, from “Western Buddhism” to Taoism, is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. But while Western Buddhism presents itself as the remedy against the stress of capitalism’s dynamics—by allowing us to uncouple and retain some inner peace—it actually functions as the perfect ideological supplement.

The “Western Buddhist” meditative stance is arguably the most efficient way for us to fully participate in the capitalist economy while retaining the appearance of sanity. If Max Weber were alive today, he would definitely write a second, supplementary volume to his Protestant Ethic, titled The Taoist Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capitalism."

in The Revenge of Global Finance

i must confess...

I must confess being utterly smitten and taken by Elizabeth Bennet (as played by Jennifer Ehle in the BBC Pride and Prejudice).

Hauerwas between Martin and Malcolm

I'm reading through a bracing book by Stanley Hauerwas entitled Unleashing Scripture: Rescuing the Bible from Captivity to America.

His thesis is that the controversy between fundamentalist/literalist readings of the Bible and the liberal protestant historical-critical approach is a smokescreen veiling the root of it all: that both these tendencies are captive to American culture insofar as both presuppose that "common sense" of the individual is sufficient to get to the "true meaning" of the text (which does not exist as such outside the interpretative community of the Spirit).

In doing so, they both fall captive to the notion that Scripture is apolitical: thus falling into the trap of allowing the culture to insiduously condition their politics. This has the sum total effect of blinding us to the power of Scripture within our cultures and communities. Hauerwas insists, for example, that the Sermon on the Mount is unintelligable to a Church that is committed to war as a means of achieving objectives; or that Jesus' teachings on money defy "common sense" to a people formed by the disciplines of capitalism.

Rather, Hauerwas suggests that the formation of disciplines by the Church precedes the reading of Scriptures, i.e. the reading of Scripture vs the reading of Scripture as someone who has answered the call "follow me". This training in inculturation and contextual reading then allows us to articulate fresh scriptural force into our present situations.

It might seem like a leap of logic, but this book made me think a lot about a question I get asked [surprisingly] often by my students: "who do you think was right - Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X?" One was an integrationist; the other was a revolutionary seperatist.

My answer is both were right: King's radical Christian pursuit of justice and Nonviolence, as well as Malcolm X's critique of corrupt society and articulation of an alternative 'citizenry'. Both were relevant [to the Church] because of the unique experiences of Black Christians - and Hauerwas would argue that this would form a rich fabric from which to articulate the Scripture in a powerful way.

A good practitioner of this is James H. Cone. He puts it like this:

"Martin King’s philosophy is relevant because of his accent on justice, and on the need for people to organize, collectively, in order to transform this society. That is why I refer to Martin King as a political revolutionary. He transformed the political and social arrangement between black and white in America.

Malcolm X transformed the way black people think about themselves, and the way in which white people think about black people. Before Malcolm X, we were “negroes” and “coloreds,” and if you called black people “black” in the 1940s or 50s, we would have been upset. Malcolm X, however, helped people understand themselves as black, and to affirm that blackness as something of worth and dignity. So in that sense, Malcolm X was a cultural revolutionary.

King referred to himself as a Negro almost until the day he died. Malcolm X was black in the 50s, and he died making blackness and Africa crucial to African Americans’ identity. So, we today are black because Malcolm gave us the right to think about ourselves on our own terms and not how the white or dominant culture has forced us to think."

Chuck Hauerwas into a blender with Cone and... viola:

"As we examine what contemporary theologians are saying, we find that they are silent about the enslaved condition of black people. Evidently they see no relationship between black slavery and the Christian gospel. Consequently there has been no sharp confrontation of the gospel with white racism. There is, then, a desperate need for a black theology, a theology whose sole purpose is to apply the freeing power of the gospel to black people under white oppression."

These will be important reads as Australian Christians re-learn the Cross from the perspective of Aboriginal killings and the Stolen Generation.

Orthodoxy, Icons and/or Idolatry/ies: Where do the lines fall?

There has been an interesting conversation between Andrew Morris, John Smuts and myself over the growth of interest in [Eastern] Orthodoxy by protestants in England.

The original post is here: http://p-b-c-blog.blogspot.com/2008/08/are-you-orthodox-enough.html

The conversation has veered to range more broadly over the role of iconography, words and (performative) actions in Christian worship.

The points so far have centred on two good questions posed by John:

"1. doctrine of scripture - what difference should it make that God left us words as our primary referent to The Word?

2. To what degree is our job to communicate in more accessible ways to others? Or should we, like the Puritans, see our job to teach people how to learn through words?"

So where do the lines fall?

my sentiments exactly...

Against the backdrop of an uncanny skill of many writers/speakers to depict a "wanky" hippy Jesus who mouths spiritual truths, wears nighties and would rather be playing harps on clouds, Ben Myers has posted an excellent piece on taking the material edge off Jesus' parable.

see 'How (not) to preach the parables' at Faith and Theology blog

Read Bonhoeffer [+ Ben Myers' blog par excellence] and weep.

(gulp... I, myself, stand condemned)

The Politics of Education or the Education of Politics?: Milbank on 'paideia'

There's got to be more to education than merely:

1. A way to get some paper qualifications to get a job to get $$$ (whether for ourselves or for the "prosperity of our country"...etc)


2. A way of teaching obedience (how to be "good citizens")


3. A place to keep people off the streets ("what else would they do if they weren't here?")

Rather, the practice of educating is very important to the proper functioning of a just social order. Education should therefore be a process of (a) imparting a craft and (b) opening up possibilities for its use for the common good - all in anticipation of the Kingdom of God.

So the idea that education teaches discrete skills to individuals who then choose what they want to do with those skills is, in my mind, misleading. The dominant capitalist [meta]narrative exerts disproportionate power over "choices" and the people making them.

Critical pedagogy is thus an act of love formed by a vision of a community anchored in justice and peace - a place quite different from the current conceptions of 'Liberal Democracy' that we're bombing around the world. It's more like a "democracy to come", glimpses here and there but always still arriving (Derrida).

Milbank makes an excellent point:

"...democracy will collapse into sophistic manipulation as Plato taught, if it is not balanced by the element of ‘education in time’ which requires a certain constantly self-cancelling hierarchy.


The hierarchies of liberalism are in fact absolute spatial hierarchies of fixed power: one can climb up the ladder of power but only to displace someone else. The purpose of control here is simply utiltity and not the sharing of excellence.


By contrast, the genuine spiritual hierarchy is a hierarchy that for human spiritual beings is endemic to time: in which pupil may overtake master and yet there should be no jealousy by the hierarch of the potential of the temporarily subordinate, because excellence is intrinsically shareable.


Today, especially in Britain, all education is being subordinated to politics and economics. But a Catholic view should teach just the reverse: all politics and economics should be only for the sake of paideia."

John Milbank, 'Liberality and Liberalism'