Outward Journey / Inward Journey

First, I would like to note that due to my own sloth and lack of a computer (the latter situation being now rectified; the former, probably not so much) I haven’t blogged at all lately.  Sorry about that.  Furthermore, I have arrived at the conclusion that the general ‘theme’ of this blog suits me no more.  I originally set this up so I would have a place to post my writings and findings as I attempted to discern God’s vocation for me as I kibbitzed about the country.  Hence ‘Outward Journey, Inward Journey.’

However I have arrived at a point both inwardly and physically (wonderful dichotomy, that) where I feel that I have by God’s grace am better able to discern and live into what I feel He is calling me to over the next significant portion of my life.  I am no longer moving around the country, and my living situation now is such that I am able to start laying the groundwork for a new church development.  In short, I am now living in a radical community in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, and the ways in which a church plant will materialize are quickly being revealed to me.  This new life situation has prompted me to reconsider whether this blog now suits my needs, and my answer is ‘no.’  Soon, I will be launching another blog, probably entitled ‘Bushwick Street Theologian.’  I will post a link thereto when the time comes.

Secondly, I want to write about capitalism’s present crisis.  Clearly, it is possible to surmise that capitalist interests are the beneficiaries of economic precarity.  High unemployment causes lower labor costs and higher margins for the parasitic class of bosses, who, producing nothing, command and control the means of production. Furthermore the current crisis has been transparently a means through which capital has been redistributed upwards — while the banksters cut jobs and foreclose, they pay themselves billions of dollars in executive bonuses from federal monies.  The claims that Obama is promoting ’socialism’ are farcical, if by socialism we mean the redistribution of wealth to the working class.

Even though the Recession itself is being manipulated by capital to suit its own ends, nevertheless I am hopeful.  In fact with each new twist in the downturn, with each bank loss totaling billions of dollars, every time the stock market takes yet another significant plunge, I react with some glee. Why? Because it opens up the opportunity to the anti-capitalist movement to significantly escalate our tactics. Indeed, I believe that measured escalation must be the principal goal at the moment. Specifically I think that eviction and foreclosure resistance would be a particularly fruitful tactic right now. Falling city and state budgets will lead to decreases in police budgets, leaving them less able to enforce the will of banks and landlords, and rising public anger will make them less inclined to do so. We should be developing ad hoc direct action networks of people to turn up at a home slated for eviction, occupying the house, thereby protecting the family who would otherwise lose their home. The worse the economic crisis becomes, the more people will be subject to this fate, and the more angry and radicalized the public will become.

It is only a small step from eviction-resistance and widespread squatting to the occupation of workplaces in the same manner as the occupations of 1968 France (although we should not fall into the trap of making reformist demands that they did), in which 10 million workers, from students to astronomers, occupied their workplaces in solidarity with the student revolt in Paris. Eviction-resistance also, if widespread, could lead to the organization of armed neighborhood defense committees. The former would be a giant leap forward in seizing the means of production from the bosses for the producing workers. The latter would establish at least semi-permanent autonomous zones from which the power of the capitalism-propagating State would be excluded.

As I stated, I believe the Recession poses an opportunity which we may not see again in our lifetimes. The longer it lasts, the better, for it allows for us to purposefully organize, and the more prone to radicalization people will become. Likewise, the deeper the Recession gets, the more opportunity to radicalize entire sectors of the public.

There are also signs that the anti-capitalist movement may actually, contrary to all past expectations (!) be rising to meet the challenge. For instance the Left Forum here in New York actually seems successful in bringing together communists of various varieties, democratic socialists, and anarchists together to the same event. This is an accomplishment.

Further, I believe that a sustained attack on capitalism will be tremendously powerful if the Christian Church is able to come to terms with the fact that capitalism’s ills are the direct result of its flawed and inherently sinful foundation: ones of greed, pride, idolatry, oppression of the poor, and the failure to recognize the inherent dignity of every human person. It is irreformable because these dreadful vices are inherent to it: without them the entire intellectual and economic system tumbles. The Church has been held in bondage by the ideology that a humane capitalism is possible: the idea is contradictory because the moment the economic system begins to be truly humane (rather than making pantomimes of humanity), it ceases to be capitalism.

Let us strive on, demanding that our political and economic system strive toward the model of the eschatological Kingdom of God, which although we are unable to achieve and which will be the work of God, we can use as our example and inspiration. Organize, agitate, escalate. Organize, agitate, escalate.

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.

-Buenaventura Durriti

I have been reposting from other blog a lot lately, with little original content.  Sorry about that.  This is probably because I am preoccupied with learning Greek, memorizing the order of rulers of ancient Babylon, and still settling into our latter-day Babylon.  Hopefully this situation will improve.

This is from Out of Ur.  The more I read him, the more impressed with Scot McKnight I am.

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, Central Time, on November 4th, 2008, the eschatology of American evangelicals will become clear. If John McCain wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if Barack Obama wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented evangelical becomes depressed and hopeless because McCain wins, or if a Republican oriented evangelical becomes depressed or hopeless because Obama wins, those evangelicals are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

Where is our hope? To be sure, I hope our country solves its international conflicts and I hope we resolve poverty and dissolve our educational problems and racism. But where does my hope turn when I think of war or poverty or education or racism? Does it focus on November 4? Does it gain its energy from thinking that if we get the right candidate elected our problems will be dissolved? If so, I submit that our eschatology has become empire-shaped, Constantinian, and political. And it doesn’t matter to me if it is a right-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Republican wins, or a left-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Democrat wins. Each has a misguided eschatology.

Now before I take another step, it must be emphasized that I participate in the election; and I think it makes a difference which candidate wins; and I think from my own limited perspective one candidate is better than the other.

This is a repost.  Thx @ Mainstream Baptist.

One American political party has adopted “country first” as a campaign slogan. That same party is the party of political preference for the bulk of the evangelical community in our nation. I have been waiting for the significance of that statement to dawn on someone in the conservative evangelical community, but to date they seem to be blissfully unaware of the idolatrous overtones of their politics.

Christians are warned not to divide their loyalties. We put “God first” or else God is not God in our lives. Nothing in scripture authorizes God’s people to equate their loyalty to God with loyalty to their nation. There is much that forbids it. Jesus commands us to be singlemindedly devoted to God and his kingdom (Matt. 6:24-34). His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).

Christians should not even put “country second.” Discipleship requires that we share the same priorities as our Lord. If God so loved “the world” that he sent his only Son to die for it, and the Son was obedient unto death, then the good of the world as a whole deserves more concern from his disciples than the good of any single nation. At best, then, country only comes in third.

That’s not a message that most American evangelicals have ears to hear. They don’t have ears because they have no desire to pay attention to the genuine demands of discipleship. The thought of self-conscious self-sacrifice for the benefit of strangers is completely foreign to them. They’re looking for cheap grace. They only have ears for those who will tell them what they want to hear and who ask them to make sacrifices only for what is near and dear.

It would be hard for me to conceive of a more damning indictment of American evangelicalism if it weren’t for the research that indicates how widely evangelicals defend the government’s use of torture as an investigative technique.

This via catholicanarchy:

Yes, happy 4th of July! According to the calendar of the Church, July 4th’s real significance is that it is the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271-1336), a patron Saint of peacemakers.

The sad fact, however, is that if you were to attend Mass on this day, the chances of your priest mentioning this feast are slim to none. Instead, you are likely to participate in a Eucharist which has been transformed into a syncretistic ritual of american civil religion. Thank God that, despite the sectarian tendencies of the american Church, the transnational Church calls us Catholics to be a peculiar people who mark time differently than the rest of the world, and the rest of our nation.

St. Elizabeth, pray for us, that we american Catholics may truly take our place in the one, transnational Body of Christ that resists the dismemberment caused by our tendency to cling to national allegiances. And on the day that the rest of the united states celebrates its foundational myth of violence and the sacrifices of soldiering which parody the Cross, let us be ever more formed by the words of Jesus in the Gospel reading for July 4th: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

You know, you’d think that we Reformed folk would be somewhat innoculated from the nationalism-as-religion bug, what with our emphasis on God’s sovereignty, which makes American booyahism look like a sickly imitation of the real thing.  And yet, I saw last night that the (nominally RCA-affiliated) Chrystal Cathedral’s ‘Hour of Power’ program (don’t get me started on so-called ‘television churches’ — that’s a whole ‘nother post) is advertising that ‘the world’s largest indoor American flag’ being raised in their ’sanctuary’ during a ‘worship service’.  This makes me wonder what, exactly, is being worshipped.  How sad that people are being misled by the great civil religion lie.  St. Elizabeth, pray for us!

The Romanist collect for today:

Father of peace and love, you gave St. Elizabeth the gift of reconciling enemies. By the help of her prayers give us the courage to work for peace among men, that we may be called the sons of God. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Amen!

And what is the object of my love?  I asked the earth and it said: ‘It is not I.’  I asked all that is in it; they made the same confession.  I asked the sea, the deeps the living creatures that creep, and they responded: ‘We are not your God, look beyond us.’  I asked the breezes which blow and the entire air with its inhabitants said: ‘Anaximenes was mistaken; I am not God.’  I asked heaven, sun, moon, and stars; they said: ‘Nor are we the God whom you seek.’  And I said to all these things in my external environment: ‘Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him.’  And with a great voice they cried out: ‘He made us’.  My question was the attention I gave to them, and their response was their beauty.

-Augustine of Hippo (397) Confesssons, Book X, vi (9a).  Trans. by Henry Chadwick (1991).  Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 183.

With the mind and intellect which you have given them, they [philosophers] investigate these matters [measuring the constellations, tracing the paths of the stars].  They have found out much.  Many years beforehand they have predicted eclipses of sun and moon, foretelling the day, the hour, and whether total or partial.  And their calculation has not been wrong.  It has turned out just as they predicted.  They have put the rules which they discovered into books which are read to this day.  On this basis prediction can be made of the year, the month of the year, the day of the month, the hour of the day, and what proportion of light will be eclipsed in the case of either sun or moon; and it happens exactly as predicted.  People who have no understanding of these things are amazed and stupefied.  Those who know are exultant and are admired.  Their irreligious pride makes them withdraw from you and eclipse your great light from reaching themselves.  They can foresee a future eclipse of the sun, but do not perceive their own eclipse of the present.  For they do not in a religious spirit investigate the source of the intelligence with which they research into these matters.  Moreover, when they do discover that you are their Maker, they do not give themselves to you so that they may preserve what you have made.  They do not slay in sacrifice to you what they have made themselves to be.  They do not kill their own pride like high-flying birds, their curiosity like ‘fishes of the sea’ and their sexual indulgence like ‘the beasts of the field’, so that you, God, who are a devouring fire, may consume their mortal concerns and recreate them for immortality.

-Augustine of Hippo (397) Confesssons, Book V, i (4).  Trans. by Henry Chadwick (1991).  Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 74.

Another community course, taught by the same person who led the ‘Goddess pilgrimage’:

What would happen [...] if we esteemed her even half as much as our forebearers did?

I will venture an answer: we would be breaking covenant with the One True God shown to us in Jesus Christ?

I’ll wash your mouth out with soap,
get rid of all the dirty false-god names,
not so much as a whisper of those names again.
(from Hosea, Ch. 2, The Message).

That it may be so, Lord!

Again, click on the thumbnail for the full image.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land?  Maybe to the heartlands of the Reformation?  No, that would be far too orthodox.  From the United Theological Seminary, an apparently Christian seminary affiliated with the UCC: a ‘Pilgrimage to the Lands of the Goddess’, an event open to the community.  From the Spring 2008 issue of Lumen, the catalogue of community programs, your CUE donations hard at work (click for full-sized image):

Awhile ago, my seminary friend Luke and I had a conversation on this blog, and he implied that I was overly concerned with the opinions of dead white guys. I chose to discontinue the discussion because I was becoming needlessly cranky with it, but I have been mulling over the matter since. It came up again in my in-care meeting, when I talked about our fascination with novelty — a trend I think the Church has aquired from American culture. Look at Cleveland’s slogans on behalf of the UCC: ‘Our faith is over 2000 years old; our thinking is not.’ ‘Cutting edge theology.’ Ad nauseum. No thanks. I was given a hard time at that in-care meeting, and I can’t help but wonder if I would have had an easier ride if I had read less Antony the Great and more queer theology dreck. This thought gives me heartburn.

I am unrepentant. I think the best way of knowing where the church is today is to read the dead people. Incidently, they’re not all men. Or ‘white’, whatever that means in pre-modern contexts. What I am not advocating is that we adopt an uncritical, neophobic position when we read the Fathers, the Reformers, and others. What I do advocate is that we pay careful attention to them, their writings and teachings, their liturgies, and their lives. I have long thought that if a Martian visited the typical American Protestant church today, she might think that we believe God plopped us in the middle of the 20th century with no historical context whatsoever. We need to recover our sense of the historical, one, holy, catholic Church established by Jesus Christ, over which he is Lord and King, and which Protestants are a part of. The church is not a country club, nor is it a Political Action Committee, nor a social service agency, nor the amen corner for American triumphalist nationalism. It is the sacred community of believers to which Christ gave his grace-imparting sacraments. The more we recover and pay attention to the Fathers, the Reformers, and others, the more we can recover the Church as catholic and the Church as the mission through which God acts to reconcile all things to Himself.

Thx @ Tortoise of Dissent:

Are your books of any use?
Are they? Are they, Dr Seuss?
Rhymes divine, but logic flimsy:
aren’t your works mere idle whimsy?
Cat in Hat, Things One and Two -
do they speak of what is true?

True, my friend? You ask what’s true?
True is what’s revealed to you.
Logic is not here or there.
Logic won’t go anywhere.
Sometimes what you read won’t fit.
Sometimes that’s the point of it.

Look, here’s Karl. Now gather round:
he will show you what he’s found.
Word is spoken (can you guess?):
God’s big No and bigger Yes.
Yes, I like the Son of Man!
Yes, I choose him, says I Am.

Seuss and Barth and Barth and Seuss:
sauce for gander, sauce for goose.
Thus a simple children’s rhyme
holds a truth to last all time.
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.

Who’d have thought that Fox in Socks
might be neo-orthodox?

Magnificent.