To borrow from Ronald Reagan’s famous quip: “There you go again”
James KA Smith has some kind of bone to pick with Sojourners. I hate to see it, since everything else Jamie says I seem to be in total agreement, and even become convinced of a few things. But in the following quote from an absolutely outstanding article, I wonder where he’s coming from.
RCA: Perspectives: As We See It: How to Get Your Hands Dirty
On the other hand, “progressive,” Sojourners-type activists disparage the ecclesial- centric politics of Stanley Hauerwas and others as “purist” and “quietist”–as if committing to the church as polis is a way of staying “clean.” On the matter of “dirty hands,” then, Sojourners’ Jim Wallis and National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard are on the same continuum: both think that getting one’s hands dirty means getting into bed with the state. (I promise not to run with the metaphor.)
I haven’t heard any of that, and if I did, why are they being classified as “Sojourners-types”? Actually, Sojourners has quite an extensive ecclesiology, one which sounds a lot like what Smith himself is involved with as he describes in his article on the “Emergent Church as bourgeios” to which I linked on Saturday.
And then, Smith says: “both [Jim Wallis and Ted Haggard] think that getting one’s hands dirty means getting into bed with the state.”
Once again, I don’t hear Wallis EVER advicating violence. The closes he ever comes is when he advocates a “police” approach to fighting terrorism (which is aslo what Hauerwas seems to suggest in his post 9/11 talks as well.) So, I say, “there you go again”.
(Smith’s blog post : Jim Wallis: Constaninian of the Left? is the background for this, from which I have challenged that accusation, or question, or “rhetorical” device; whatever it is, it seemed to me at the time to be a bit too biting for one who seems to believe in the types of works of mercy that with which Wallis and Sojourners have been involved and spearheaded and organized over the years. The worst tone of that article was his accusation “Wallis has ended up just a humanist”.
Just in case what I have in mind didn’t come through in my last couple of replies in these comments, let me say that it is absolutely a legitimate beef, in my view, if Wallis is going to trade in the “Faith Works” Jim Wallis for a “God’s Politics” Jim Wallis. But I’m also aware that when seeking to “build some bridges” (there’s that “third language” stuff), some time and effort is spent that COULD be given to “works of mercy”. But remember, the very same critique could even be leveled at Hauerwas, Smith, etc. for being too much “ivory tower” and spending too much time writing things that all too few will read , or much less, understand. I ‘ve been getting quite depressed over the fact that that seems to be all I’m doing over the past year, and I’m planning to take a trip to D.C. to find out where and how I might begin to gather a community that has that Journey Inward, Journey Outward balance, and knows that we do not receive call to mission except in community (unless you count the actual “seeking out of such a community a sort of “precursor to call”
I commented that I worry about ecumenism when we go so deep with our critique that we disparage the very people who have the ear of so many to open their eyes to the “works of mercy” side of God; that seems to make the communion much smaller and all the more daunting, and that concerns me. But as much as I agree with most of the critiques taken by themselves, the larger quesiton is HOW can we engage in this so that we can TEACH and SHAPE and engage in SPIRITUAL FORMATION if we seem to reject that communion with people whose hearts are clearly moving in the right direction (away from individualism and capitalism as salvific, and toward “A better hope”.
I will respond more completely later today….some issues at work I gotta get back on…..but to extrapolate from “what he’s doing as building a coalition” to “he’s not actually DOING anything anymore” is a bit presumptious. His entire aim in “rallying support” is building a stronger more critical force of dissent, and as tired as that has gotten (even with me, since I not only heard it two years ago before the book came out, but it’s basically been a message he’s preached for years, while all along they HAVE been VERY engaged in works of mercy, and have gotten people into churches that are doing such. I’d call this a big plus. Everybody isn’t going to sound like everybody else all the time, and for sure, people have to be allowed to grow and deepen their theology once they have experienced the joy of connecting with a community that shares concerns for Kingdom justice and mercy at work in the world, and now have discovered a place for them in the church, from which they once considered themselves strangers because of the Religious Right types.
It just seems to me that RO is a tad too impatient in terms of “bringing people along”. You yourself said that RO tends to be a bit academic, and we have to have some sort of dialogue with people in the churches right now, and also, I believe, with people like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn that dismiss the church for the most part.
I read Smith becuase of the way he desribes “what should be” and legitimate expressions of a Radically Orthodox theology. But his “evangelism” effort is going to ghard if he is going to be so judgemental and harsh on those most likely to resonate with his theology.
Dale
Actually, Smith wasn’t implying that Wallis advocates violence. Wallis has loudly proclaimed that he’s a pacifist, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Smith knows that. Any casual reading of Sojo.net or in reading Wallis’ books will quickly turn up that information.
Instead, Smith is talking very specifically about those who do not like what gets mislabeled as “sectarian” because then that would mean they would have to give up “doing something” like protesting in the streets and writing senators and stuff for shifting one’s focus to actually living like the church is polis. These are the Stanley Hauerwases, William Cavanaughs, Michael Buddes, Jamie Smiths, John Wrights, myself et. al. who not only are critical of the state (where they overlap with Wallis/Sojo) but don’t even believe that engaging with the state on the state’s terms is viable, let alone faithful to our calling as Christians.
What confuses me so about your defense of Wallis is your continued insistence that he is engaging in the works of mercy. I’m sure he does so, but that sure isn’t what he’s doing anymore, or at least he’s chosen to no longer talk about it. He’s going around the country trying to build bridges with others who define themselves by what they are against: the religious right. I’m sure he does good stuff, but why is it, especially in the latest Sojo e-mail in his featured article, always relegate the things he should be focused on as mere parenthetical statements. What was first and foremost was engaging the state and making sure the religious right didn’t have their “monologue” anymore. The dialogue has begun, etc.
I believe it’s the wrong conversation altogether, monologue or dialogue.
It’s the same thing I was talking about at the bottom of my Cavanaugh post: people get defensive at us because we aren’t being “secular” enough with them and standing on the stage of the nation state with them. I’m sorry, but we just see things differently. Hopefully, though, we’ll allow our differences to be transcended in Jesus Christ.
I would recommend finding a critique of liberation theology. I don’t know any offhand, nor would I be very good at explaining the critique except to say that it might be obvious by now that Wallis is very clearly a liberation theologian.
This isn’t exactly a specific critique, but it’s an awesome post by an LJ friend of mine:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/poserorprophet/47666.html
We aren’t called just to be counter to the state because we recognize the state is not the Kingdom of God; on the contrary, our new social body and politic needs to be something else entirely different. If we take time out of our day in being that body to try and engage the nation state, then I don’t really see how that is furthering that body that takes part in the body of Christ.