In the comments for this post, Movable Theoblogical: Third Language I see some clarification is needed. I broke into a parenthetical comment, and never finsished my original thought, that had begun with “Most people (including myself, blah blah )….what I think I remember about what I was starting to say is this:
Most people are not at all aware of the fine sociological analysis that RO and here, Smith, makes on the issue of “language that cedes ground to the state.” I mean, I consider myself to have been, prior to my reading Hauerwas and Smith, somewhat informed, and somewhat justified in my outrage. Whether or not the state is going to be “converted” or not, which I don’t think they are at all…..that still does not address what is also disturbing to me, which is the complicity of the churches. What “status” do they have in relation to the state in the eyes of those who see ourselves as advancing a notion of a “distinctively Christian” church that is called to live a life that is wholly other; so that , as Hauerwas says, “the world can know that it is the world?”
Realizing that I have just been introduced to these more radical (and yet so clear that it puzzles me why this has been so lost in the church today—well, not puzzling really, given that people have a tendency to “fall for it”—- and now I find that myself , and most of us in the “Progressive” brand have also been fooling ourselves. (later……a couple of days…..Friday night 8-5, 11pm est, I have no idea what I wrote there in this paragraph, re-reading it now… I think Imeant something like: Considering I have only relatively recently started reading Hauerwas and Radical Orthodoxy stuff, as well as Bonhoeffer — like over the past 9 months—–it is a little startling and unsettling to see so much of what I had been expressing was considered to be out of place for someone in the church; that this “outrage” and appeal to “the bare minimums of democratic expectation” was still beholden to a deeper underlying set of false assumptions about the legitimacy of such “democratic ideals” to which we attempted to hold the people in power; and seeking to reveal the failure of such to do so, all this is “distraction”. Maybe. Bonhoeffer intrigued me at this point, and so I began looking into what he lived into and out of in his life in a church that existed in a time such as that of the Third Reich. I’m into the heart of the Bonhoeffer Biography where he begins to bring church into sharper contrast with an increasing and radical facism that achieved a rabid nationalism amongst churchmen, theologicans, and clergy.)
Something else which bothers me here. I find myself feeling the need to be “careful” with what I write, fearing that I may be using the wrong language, accepting some additional unknown assumptions whenever I feel disgusted by something else that the Bush administration is doing. Of course, I realize that they are what they are; what gets me is the way in which church people are falling into line with all this. What is the status of these people in the eyes of the church? How are we to “engage” them? As if they were “tax collectors and sinners”? Are we to treat them with the same “they’ll bnever see the light” approach that Smith seems to suggest in the quote Eric used in the comments on the Third Language post when he quotes Smith:
I think it’s more a matter of showing the state what it can never be: a properly ordered community lovingly aimed at bearing the image of the Triune God. The notion of speaking “to” the state with the hope that the state will “get” it works from a misplaced confidence that this is even possible.
The Church is NOT called to engage in some kind of apologetic project to “convince” the state to do “the right thing” (which the state, per se, could never properly recognize). Rather, the Church is called to model the kingdom for world, showing the world what it cannot be apart from the regenerating power of the Spirit. The Church should model the in-breaking of the kingdom to the state, but not with the mis-guided hopes that the state could enact this in federal policy.
Smith seems to accept the notion that we should try to get the state to “stop killing children” ( I forget where that was, but we touched on that sometime in the past couple of months when all this discussion started). So “how bad” does the outrage have to be before we can “say soemthing”? I have felt hesitant to post things voicing my difficulties with the things that I think the church ought to be saying about what’s happening in our country, and most of all, what’s happening to the church as the only hope to live differently.
I just want it to be known that as much as I might believe that none of this will be finally solved short of the eschaton, I still think that we draw closer to the place where we can hear what God is calling us to do in contrast to the world if we are conscious of the “principalities” role the state will often play, since the results of the actions of those principalities are what creates the conditions to which we respond in mission to the world.
Eric,
Thanks for your efforts in trying to get at the”sticking points” here.
What you said here: “I think that we definitely should not abandon the people in the world to chaos, but as to the world’s structures like it’s modern liberal nation states, that is where I think Smith/RO/myself/my_pastor are trying to make the distinction.” is an accurate pinpointing of my struggle with this.
As a Sociologist-type person (thanks to some really good teachers in college, and people like Tony Campolo and other Socio-theologians since), the difficulty comes in separating people from structures. While there IS certainly some distinction, where that lies is often pretty fuzzy, just as our “theology” can’t be understood accurately apart from the stories which shaped it, or the socio-political context through which the story itself was formed.
I know that Wallis would deny that he places an “ultimate” hope in political structures. He insists (and I believe him) that he struggles with and admonishes and seeks political strategies to bring to the table key people who can help get the message across as to what’s actually going on “on the ground”. He has no illusions about this government (especialy this one, but ANY government of our liberal nation state types) being capable of responding or “working out” a “truly just” solution. But merely to alleviate , by Political pressures of showing where many of their constituents are on these matters (IOW, “twisting their arms until they yell uncle out of political self-survival.) Not the ideal , of course, but some “alleviation” is worth SOME amount of effort, IMHO).
I deeply appreciate and value what Smith and other “RO-ers” have brought to the theological table; but I can see a clear distinjction between means attempted toward ends that are shaped by Biblical notions of justice and love and peace, and those shaped by a blind allegiance to the consumeristic, prone-to-protect-by-violentce distortions. LIke I’ve said before, I was in an intellectual/spiritual position/awreness because of, in no small measure, Sojourners. The amount of people that their message has made aware and convinced of the deep rift between Biblical vsion and “liberal nation state’s version of that vision” is much greater because of the relentless drumming home of their message for the past 30 years. There are other closely related groups and theologians (like Tony Campolo, for instance) who can communicate at a level which is making the “difference” Christians make a much more life altering difference. Once one “learns” the “order of things” (ie. That nation states are manipulative , deceptive, and self-perpetuating through their system of indoctrination, then all bets are off as to where that might take the Christian’s stance toward the world, and the struggle hits home as the “light and darkness” that it is, and not just fancy “symbolic” language of religiosity.
Basically, this is , as you summed up, “where we need to be creative and work together”, which I think includes a better effort by all parties to avoid the kind of easy dismissal that I perceive Smith’s “jabs” at Wallis to be. Take it from someone who feels indebted and grateful for that ministry over the past 30 years, the “humanist” and “statist” accusations were received into my world as not exactly filled with an indication that they were seeking understanding. Having said that, I agree now more than at first with the assement of the distortions that are going on “theologically” in a lot of what Wallis has been saying. I just want to see some progress in an establishment of some real common goals.
Dale
the state to “stop killing children” ( I forget where that was…
That is actually right in that part you quoted, but when I quoted it, I left it out using the […] thing because it wasn’t vital to the point I was making.
I’ll make an attempt here at “active listening” to see if I can help pinpoint where we are struggling:
Where do we draw the line between witnessing to those involved in the state who are themselves Christians or not?
Maybe that’s not the best way of putting it, but what I think I’m intuiting thus far is that you feel that when we are trying to argue that we aren’t called to witness to the state, you might feel that we’re also saying not to witness to those particular people embedded within the state? I think there’s a distinction to be made there, because we are called to be present and among others, to be the salt and light, and I think we can still do that and witness to these people.
You’ve brought up Bonhoeffer’s “abandoning the world to chaos” quotation a few times in this conversation. I don’t know all the context of the original citing of that from Bonhoeffer, but I think that we definitely should not abandon the people in the world to chaos, but as to the world’s structures like it’s modern liberal nation states, that is where I think Smith/RO/myself/my_pastor are trying to make the distinction.
And this is where we need to be creative and work together by the Holy Spirit for this very end in God.
Does that help at all?