(I actually wrote this post yesterday, and just saw that I had yet to move it into Publish from Draft. Although I have taken what might seem to be great pains to press this point,and posted on simialr things just a while ago, I found this post to be reflective also of some different ways I have wanted to pose this. All of this has me “revved me up” for this RO/Wallis confrontation, which is a confrontation that I think for me is certainly good, and one in which I hope can end up showing a great deal more congruity of Wallis with RO than not. I WANT it to be so. That is probably apparent. But since RO draws on Hauerwas, and I love what I read from Hauerwas, and also feel like I owe a great deal of my own theological sensibilities to Sojourners and Jim Wallis, I want this to be a comfortable blend. I also want to remain a learner, especially where it concerns theology and the church, and so here I stand, ranting, refecting, and reacting. I hope it is useful.)

“Radical Orthodoxy, although it opposes the modern, also seeks to save it. It espouses, not the pre-modern, but an alternative vision of modernity” Milbank, The Programme of Radical Orthodoxy in Radical Orthodoxy? A Catholic Inquiry

Also, Smith says that

RO’s project is aimed at the aimed at unveiling the ultimately religious stature of this modern vision, thus alerting us to the ways in which these core values or doctrines of modern life are, in the end, competitors of the gospel of Christ.

As I said in my earlier post, challenging Smith’s crtique of Wallis as possibly representing a “Constaninanism of the Left” and seemingly concluding that Wallis has “ended up as a humanist”, I do not wish to call into question the legitimacy or importance of Smith’s deep investment in the RO position. As I have said many times, and am in fact indicating by my continued interest and reading in this topic, I am , so far, in complete agreement on most everything presented in IRO. IN fact, had I not known of the above mentioned article by Smith on his blog, I may never have noticed the challenges that this posed to my own agreement with RO and my sense of identification with the Sojourners narrative. Although it is a challenge, I am not convinced that there is nearly the amount of discongruity as Smith posits. MOst pointedly, I entirely disagree that Wallis is any sort of humanist, except that he is very “ecumenical” in his reaching across the aisle of modernity and bringing his “distinctively Christian worldview” to bear on the “public discourse”, in which he is advocating for a more prominent role for progressive Christians in the discussion about how politics and religion should and do interplay.

This assement of RO as “seeking to save modernity” rather than to be “pre-modern”, it wished to posit an “alternative vision of modernity”. I believe strongly that Wallis does the same.

Smith’s critique of Wallis saying “religion must be disciplined by democracy” is out of proportion to what I am reasonably certain Wallis meant when he said “religion”. First , Wallis would never say “Christianity must be disciplined by religion”, but can and did can say that “religion” must be. There is a definite distinction in what Wallis says about “religion” and what he believes about the specific distinctiveness of the Christian faith. It is very clear to me that here is is addressing, or proposing, a common set of “ecumenical ground rules” or “values” that can be shared across faith traditons, within the Christian faith, and across all other faiths. This “democracy” is NOT the American Democratic system, although it is also calling those whose “faith” might be more in a “civic” sensibility than a faith-based one, and yet they too (and perhaps especially they) can agree upon some of these “basic values of democracy”) These would be “honesty”, “integrity”, “refusing to compromise the public trust” ; the assumption that elected leaders will “work for the common good”. I believe that in the God’s Politics discussion he has been having over the past 5 months, that he is addressing a challenge to the Religious Right concerning their uncritical acceptance of a deceptive government and disingenuous leaders. He is also appealing to “people of good will” to “stand up to the abuses of government so blatantly abused by the Bush administration. It is calling for a “coalition”, not in a theological compromise, but simply for a “decent and effective democracy that simply makes a valiant effort to consider the needs of a broader range of persons OTHER than the extremely rich.

I hear Graham Ward, in True Religion saying similar things , such as:

RO’s radical critique of modernity, therefore, does not commit adherents to being intellectual luddites, nor does it require a rejection of the “fruits of modernity”, such as advances in science and medicine or the undoing of forms of insitutionalized repression

Graham Ward, True Religion

More stuff to chew on as I move on. Good stuff. I see here even more “fuel” for the ongoing debate I have dangled here, particularly the “relgious” natureof the so-called “secular” insititutions. It would seem even more apparent today, as the Bush administration has even used (misused) Biblical language (in a very un-Biblical way ) again, just as Wallis has written.

The goal of this chapter is to unpack RO’s, critique Of modernity, first more formally (in John Milbank), and the to more substantively (in Ward’s analysis of modern cities and William Cavanaugh’s and Daniel Bell’s accounts OF the modern state). All seek to foster a critical stance toward modernity and its fruits (epistemological and political autonomy, secularization, democratic liberalism, and capitalism). In particular, RO’s project is aimed at unveiling the ultimetely religious status of this modern vision, thus alerting us to the ways in which these core values or doctrines of modern life are, in the end, competitors of the gospel of Christ. As a result, the stance of the church and disciples of Christ in regard to these values should be one of critical distance rather than easy appropriation. Rather than being merely neutral political phenomena or the supposed political outworking of Christianity, the institutions of modernity are covert idols-rivals of a more radical understanding of the gospel. Without being alarmist, RO seeks to point out the fundamental antithesis’ between modernity and the Christian faith.

p.126 IRO

This is what I hope to see more of ahead as I read the final 3rd of IRO.