From Hauerwas’ Performing the Faith, an insight from Milbank, Theology and Social Theory:
Becuase the various stoic-liberal-nihilist tendencies of secular reason are themselves finally a mythos, which means that they canot be refuted by argument but only out-narrated, if we can persuade people that Christianity offers a much better story, adopting an argumentative rather than a rhetorical mode is not only futile, but deeply compromising. Perhaps better thaat all arguments we have to make depend on the rhetorical force of the narrative that forms us.
This makes sense. It fits the often perplexing situation we perceive in the Church today, and how so many otherwise intelligent people can be so seemingly ouright hostile to “contary” notions. It is a mythos, and it seems that Rove and the Bush-spinners are quite adept at this; at this “mythos-spinning”. I was thinking about how The Church of the Saviour is a community where story is paramount, and that you rarely hear of public denunciations of the Bush administration coming from that community, regardless of how many areas there are where they work with and among the victims of this administration’s policies (or neglect). They follow an alternative story, and they don’t seem to be boged down and “paralyzed” by the frustration of this election’s results, as devastating as it will most probably be to their ongoing work. Gordon Cosby often speaks of an “alternate reality” under which they live and work. This seems like it is closely related to this idea of operational mythos.
This, as
This is one of the reasons I haven’t made any posts about the election in the few days before it and ever since then. The election is not salvific, nor was it something I placed my hope in. I may make a post about my observations of other Christians’ reactions later.
Eric,
Certainly I agree that it was not salvific, but there are numerous reasons why I am , on the one hand, a bit afraid that we may be in for a rough go in terms of the absence of peace (this administration has been the most hawkish, arrogant, and seemingly unable to listen to any contrary opinion. Also in terms of economic upheaval, to make matters worse, the slow bleeding of the economy away from the electorate as a whole going to the top, where seldom is heard a “trickle down” word. And to come close to home, the propects of a draft and my 15-year old son and what our family will be facing then…..and then all the frustration of having to listen to the inane and simplistic and untruthful rhetoric of these guys for another 4 years, plus all the conmtinued plundering of natural resources and environment , etc. etc.
Certainly it’s all in God’s hands, but it would have been a more hopful road ahead if we didn’t have to worry about the things like the Patriot Act II, and the attitudes of this administration toward dissent, and the unabashed speed at which they hand over the reigns to the good ol boysa in their network (the coprporate cronies).
I am not so naive as to think that Kerry woudldn’t have his own. Hell, Clinton was known as a Corporate Democrat. But the basic assumptions he works under, plus his (Kerry’s ) history with Vietnam protest and hesitancy to “jump in” to war (always hesitant to do so without exhausting other means, like with Iraq in Gulf War I), I suspect he may well have been much more antiwar than he ran on, which makes me at the same time kinda disappointed that he wasn’t more straightforward on that.
Anyway, I get your drift.
Thanks.