It has been recognized by many progressives with ecclesiological emphasis/dependence that it has been a failing of most activist Christians that they are lacking in the formative structures. They join en masse the “Progressve” movements and blog and watch the pundits, but live as proper citizens of the empire, and are thus totally unthreatening.
One of the first people who talked about this was Jim Wallis. The first I heard of this , before that, was The Church of the Saviour, and was the theme of Elizabeth O’Connnor’s second “history book” of the Church of the Saviour entitled Journey Inward, Journey Outward. The call of God comes to his people gathered. The call comes from God from within the fray; at the “edges” , where the Kingdom is deeply emmeshed in the activity of the world, and dipping into the resources which God is preparing in the church. So the people “cross back and forth” over that edge, and time is valuable on both sides. Not to set up a dualism, but to affirm the balance of formation and leaven; of action based in contemplation and prayer.
Wallis wrote of this in Revive Us Again, as well as many individual articles and speeches since. While I can understand and to some extent even share some concerns of other Christians regarding the language used by many progressives, I think we need to place a premium on the “faithful activists” who respond and sacrifice for the sake of their calling, and support those who are DOING the work. The formation of our language is an ongoing process. I myself have seen pass 27 years since I started Seminary, unaware of these finer distinctions identified by those in and into “Radical Orthodoxy”. I believe I owe it to those who were much like me over those years, unaware of the “issues” that have been identified by RO, to be thankful that those who idnetify themselves so intimately with the “Progressives” and the Christian “Chicago”/Social Gospel style/emphasis are so formed that they are able to hear the fine theological distinctives being affirmed by RO. Although language is certainly an important and often “unconscious” shaper of Christian response, those who participate in acts of mercy emanating from “social progressive” communities are , in my estimation, ahead in the game of any who are not so engaged.
This critique of critique, coming out of some of my concerns about the judgmental tendencies I have noticed in James KA Smith’s problems with Jim Wallis and Sojourners, is most painfully real in its confrontation with my own lack of involvement outside my narrow little sphere of family (although, like many, I often feel overwhelmed enough with feeling I am adequately caring for my own, in our own little household). I recognize that I need the church; a church to be there for me to give me the resources to extend beyond the one family to the larger family of God.
I feel a bit paralyzed in my awareness that I cannot do this part from the church. I have a sense that I am not totally “out of the church” to the extent that I do not , at present, have a church community, since I believe in some sense in the partial value of the community I have amongst my online friends, but also that this is not sufficient.
My online experience is a kind of “hint” that such personal sharing of stories is available and possible; and that I can expect to find such.
I probably won;t be awake to see further responses, as its 10:40 here, and I’m pooped. But I’ll be anxious about it, to be sure.
BTW, I just noticed that I took almost 2 hours to write and repond to all that…..with no breaks. I was really intent on getting at this. Just something that might indicate to you how important it is for me not to say things badly (even though I may have failed miserably on that count in various places as I let a few thoughts lead to others and unleash a rant on some of my “gut reactions” to what I consider the judgmental or haughty in RO….I have my haughty-ness too.
This gets tense at places, but bear with me. As I say at the end, I love you too, bro. Rememebr that. No way would I be so energetic about explaingng myself if I didn’t. (hope I got all the quotes enclosed in italiscs correctly… I believe i did )
it’s not about “results” — it’s about fruit and our faithfulness in the body of Christ. Guiding a conversation towards those particular fruits is exactly where we want to be. It’s not about a dialectic of “conversation vs. ‘results'” — it’s about being faithful.
That is actually closer to what I meant by “results”. The “result” I am referring to is not the reactions and what happens, but the “result” of actual activity with the purpose of easing and to the largest extent possible, eliminating or preventing suffering. It is the “telos” to which I refer. What the theological discourse RESULTS in… regardless of the reactions and eventual outcome; you are right: the obedience is what counts. And that is precisely what I am claiming that Smith IS NOT giving any signs of acknowledging. I disagree very much that he is under no obligation to “show” such signs. Whenever a Christian has a critique of another Christian who is REALLY and HONESTLY on the same side, however mistaken and misguided they may feel the other to be, the “obgligation in Christian fellowship is to acknowledge whatever “motives” in good conscience that the other is following. Their “telos”. I think it unmistakably obvious that Smith and Wallis by their own descriptions of what they envision when they think of what Biblical justice looks like are on the same team. I may not know him, but in the contexts where he characterizes Wallis as he does, he does not give one ounce of qualification or acknowledgment of what is worthy of encouragement. This is why I have brought up the matter of Hauerwas’ chapter on Rauschenbusch as an example of how to fairly and respectfully treat a brother in Christ with much sacrafice and service in works of mercy over several years. I think it is shameful to limit one’s remarks in a public forum such as a blog in as theological setting to such “potshots”, and I will insist that this is what they are unless he shows some willingness for “balance” and a little bit of charity.
And lastly and most importantly, I’m actually kind appalled at your use of “sectarian” here. That’s harsher than anything Smith has ever written toward Wallis,
you mean , for instance “He’s really ended up as a humanist”?. That’s actually denying Wallis is really a Christian. At least “sectarian” doesn’t make that claim or accusation. (at least in the sense that I intended it)
because it’s untrue, and by it’s very nature, creates a divisive distance.
again, a divisive distance like “he’s ended up a humanist”?
To begin with, “sectarian” is not a word that Christians use to talk about other Christians — it’s a word that the unbaptized use to talk about how they perceive Christians to be because they won’t take a part in their secularity.
So, I will ask you to kindly reconsider that word.
I can certainly do that, and want to after hearing how you perceive this word.
To explain my usage, I ‘ve heard it used quite widely in the church to describe various strains of dogmatism, and to describe those who set themselves apart and above other Christians dues to some sense of superior intellect or theology. And this is how Smith comes off to those who know Jim Wallis a heck of a lot better than Smith does.
It seriously has no place in this discussion. We don’t believe we’re being sectarian… and the idea is completely anathema to who we are as Christians.
My claim was that for Smith to be content to “leave it at that”, and he actually replied to our question about the humanist remark saying it was some sort of “rhetorical” thing doesn’t seem to be much of a reconsider or much of an attempt to be fair. It seems like an insistence that he is on some sort of neutral ground when he implies that Wallis is “really ended up a humansit”, that this should be taken lightly. I think I react to that in a similar and more serious way as you did to my use of “sectarian”.
The criteria is all wrong here (as in not Christian). Not only do our lives, our goals need to be Christian, but also the criteria for how we judge the fruits of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
And I strongly believe that Smith has crossed WAY over that precise line you just mentioned. I mean “Humanist?” and not only that “he’s really ended up a humanist”? That doesn’t sound much like a friendly jab. And none of Wallis’ friends take it as such. It gives them pause to ask the question of whehter or not this guy’s theology is worth much if it results in such a judgmental and intellectually snobbish sounding attitude. I know differently, since I see much there that I affirm, but this is what disappoints me so greatly. it deosn’t bother me much at all that Jerry Falwell doesn’t think much of Wallis.
If you were to re-read the section in Smith’s IRO about the critiques of RO, he points out that most of the critiques are doing exactly what you are doing here: chiding us for not “engaging the powers” of the secular stage of the nation stage enough. I’m sorry, but that’s what is going on here in your wild accusation, and I would kindly ask you to consider that.
Which “wild accusation”?
and “not “engaging the powers” of the secular stage of the nation stage enough.” is one of those things that I preceive as a kind of blindsiding of people in a movement among Christians that has a reason to be so offended. I’ve considered myself fairly educated and theologically “generous” and fairly articulate about my views of what Biblical shalom and the Kingdom of God is envisioning , and RO has come along and been questioning all this language and things, and it’s a fairly intricate and sophisticated analysis. And a good one, I concede. But it comes across as somewhat haughty when one considers that everybody in Christendom does not have
A. The access to such scholarly literature
B. Those who do have acccess haven’t happened across RO-type stuff amongst all the other stuff they’re trying to work through and learn about
C. the somewhat specialized and intricate study of philosophical history to arrive at what seems to be a set of “dogmas” about what words are part of the “public secular domain” and what words are “cleared” to use without being accused of “being in bed with the state”.
I must say that I feel a sense of offense when I realize that much of what I have been studying may well be dismissed as “uniwttingly being in bed with the state”, or that is it is so characterized. It seems unseemly harsh to accuse people who have had a heartfelt response to the social dimensions of the faith that have been so neglected by churches that mimic and support the culture more than they do Christ himself.
It’s like they don;t give this “Progressive Christian” outrage a chance to “learn what they already know” and therefore have to be talked to like children. “Oh, by the way, you’re ceding ground to the state.” I understand what is being said, and can see how just those sort of “asunmptions” can creep in on us, but it’s like everybody has to know all of it right away.
as he’s still conceding to the state.
What exactly is it that he’s “conceding”?
I’ll allow that he might have used to act as a witness to the works of mercy in the kingdom of God, but he’s choosing a different path now, and this is obvious.
How so? What “path”? This is crossing over into that same judgemntal territoty again, and really quite presumptioujs about what his deeper theological convictions are.
He’s letting the Democrats co-opt him for their ends so that they can “get religion.”
that sounds so “surface”. It totally doesn’t “get” what Wallis is about. It is like the trivilaization and “dumbing down” the news does on so many issues. He’s been sayihg “the left doesn’t get it” because they have unfounded fears about religion
Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t care at all about the secular powers who will never get “better” when my life is filled with a call to the works of mercy. I have no faith in trying to fix anything like that that will never get better anyways. The Republican and the Democratic party (and all the other parties) don’t give a care about our brothers and sisters who are suffering here where I am. The state has become the anti-Church, the parody of the Church itself. Even when the Democratic or Republican parties show “concern” for groups of people, it’s only for the ends of creating a wedge against the other, and for puffing themselves up in a kind of distorted “witness” of sorts.
NO argument at all.
I was watching something tonight where Noam Chomsky took issue with “speaking the truth to power”. He said that we speak the truth to the people and they demand change. There’s still much secular idealism in that but I think it still holds as far as the church is concerned. Wallis is attempting to appeal to various “redeemed” senses of words used in “public currency”, in order to awaken in a wider spectrum of the church in America a sense for what God has in mind with the Kingdom. It ‘s something that I see some value in doing (this attempt to “try to explain and broaden”, ALONGSIDE the works of mercy that must be engaged in and to which we answer the call to.
After all of the above, do you think I’m still being “sectarian”? Or for that matter, Jamie Smith? (As you implicate him in such false accusations, surely you implicate me as well as I support where he wants to go with this stuff.)
No, not you, Mr Smith (and in the way I intended, not how you defined it). I just think you’re as wrong as he is about Wallis. Do you really think what you have read and/or heard from Wallis really stacks up with my experience or “feel” for Wallis (20 years and 6 books and 20 years of Sojourners mag), and it feels to me that you just dismiss all of that when it comes to my own understanding of what constitutes Biblical justice, or church existence that rightly embodies what she is called to. Of course, one can be deceived over the years, but Smith shortchanges Wallis extremely unfairly and un-brotherly like. For two who agree on the SOURCE of truth and the TRUE meaning of Justice, I think it is a shame, and Smith ought to know better. DO YOU think he is being charitable? If not, then how can you defend that?
Why don’t you e-mail him about these questions you have concerning his language? There’s a possibility you might just have to start loving the guy
Yeah. Agreed. Maybe I will.
as opposed to bantering about false accusations behind his back.
What is “false” about saying he’s being too harsh? There’s nothing false about the way I feel attacked when he attacks someone I have had so much respect for , and feel I owe so much to in my journey thus far. What he is aying is offensive, and I have been saying he doesn’t show any signs of even wanting to identify any thing positive in Wallis. His exclusively negative “observations” which HURT, and divide, (to the exclusion of affirming the common commitments to Biblical justice and YES, church as the incubator and enabler (and yes, he also affirms that other faiths can be concerned for jsutice as well and have within their traditions prophetic traditions which also seem to indicate that God also works amnongst them as well)
And then to go and judge somebody and call them “sectarian” for things that never concerned Jesus?
Or to call someone “humamnist” for what seems to me to be very similar reasons?
Get to know him, seriously, if this pains you this much.
Actually, his attitude is a little intimidating, and he’s already shrugged off that question about “humanism”. Heck, he can read MY blog. I’ve been about as affirming (and genuinely so) about how much I appreciate and have learned from his work– as affirming as one could be expected toward one who has been so “unkindly” or “dismissive” of a lot of what I have been saying for years. Maybe I’ll work up the confidence. I should.
But think about the similarities between how he has been jsut a wee bit short and saracastic and demeaning toward Wallis (and it has come across as extremely haughty and puffy and proud, that he knows the world so much better than Wallis does. I think that HE should talk to Wallis, and find out how incomplete his preception is.
The only thing I am accusing you of here is a little bias toward a good theologian with some valuable insight, bias in that you overlook how harsh is is being toward one who has meant a great deal to me, and to amny others, and who feel that an unjust and errant charaterization has been done. Hauerwas treated Raschenbusch with respect he deserves. Why can’t Jamie do the same for Wallis?
I love you too, man, and I don’t want this to harm our friendship. I expect we will both affirmn that we won’t let it, but it scares me a little (not the issue of whos’ right or wrong, or that YOU are scarting me, but that this “division” has crept up. It makes me sad too. We also share too much that really matters in common to let this be so prevalent.
I don’t think their approach to “guiding the dialogue” is more important than the “results” of that theology. Smith shows no sign of recognizing that. And that’s sectarian, and harmful to the overall strength of a “confessing church”.
Firstly, you assume far too much here about Smith. You do not know him, as most people do not. Read the comment he just posted on my blog yesterday morning concerning RO & King. He doesn’t have to write about everything to show “signs” of anything– case in point: his commitment to those very issues of racial reconciliation he talks about in his comment.
Secondly, it’s not about “results” — it’s about fruit and our faithfulness in the body of Christ. Guiding a conversation towards those particular fruits is exactly where we want to be. It’s not about a dialectic of “conversation vs. ‘results'” — it’s about being faithful.
And lastly and most importantly, I’m actually kind appalled at your use of “sectarian” here. That’s harsher than anything Smith has ever written toward Wallis, because it’s untrue, and by it’s very nature, creates a divisive distance. To begin with, “sectarian” is not a word that Christians use to talk about other Christians — it’s a word that the unbaptized use to talk about how they perceive Christians to be because they won’t take a part in their secularity. So, I will ask you to kindly reconsider that word. It seriously has no place in this discussion. We don’t believe we’re being sectarian… and the idea is completely anathema to who we are as Christians. It’s as if I were to accuse my pastor of not being a good citizen for not voting. The criteria is all wrong here (as in not Christian). Not only do our lives, our goals need to be Christian, but also the criteria for how we judge the fruits of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
If you were to re-read the section in Smith’s IRO about the critiques of RO, he points out that most of the critiques are doing exactly what you are doing here: chiding us for not “engaging the powers” of the secular stage of the nation stage enough. I’m sorry, but that’s what is going on here in your wild accusation, and I would kindly ask you to consider that.
I haven’t brought it up yet in any of our discussions, but I’m sure you saw Wallis’ Op-Ed in the NY Times last week. It was a rather disappointing piece; he’s doing the same stuff we’ve been criticizing him for. Reading that piece gave me no hope in his vision, as he’s still conceding to the state. I’ll allow that he might have used to act as a witness to the works of mercy in the kingdom of God, but he’s choosing a different path now, and this is obvious. He’s letting the Democrats co-opt him for their ends so that they can “get religion.”
My friend Mike Patterson is dying. I just visited him with Tiana and a few other friends yesterday. The cancer is eating away at his body and he is about 2/3rds the body mass from when I last saw him a couple weeks ago. He’s barely able to hold conversation anymore, hooked to an oxygen machine, and his brain is now being attacked by the cancer. We also just found out that another brother in our congregation that I’ve taken care of in the last year from time to time was diagnosed with bone cancer, and probably won’t live for another year, I think. Our friend “Pops” who very poor is in his mid 70’s and had a blood sugar level of over 1000, which by all accounts, he should be dead (my brother is diabetic and so I know that even around the 300-400 level is near coma state). Another friend who lives half a block away from me named Larry, is also slowly dying of his alcoholism. He’s getting slightly better right now, but his legs are atrophied and he still can’t go a day without a lot of vodka or else his body shakes horribly due to the effects of the chemical addiction. Another man who sleeps in our parking lot at church has cellulitis in his legs and they’re getting bad again. Our friend Scott Harrison has been in jail for the last few months because of a rabid prosecution lawyer who wanted to try him again for a crime he didn’t commit — thankfully he was found not guilty on all charges last week. Every day there are hungry and thirsty and naked people here on the streets in San Diego.
Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t care at all about the secular powers who will never get “better” when my life is filled with a call to the works of mercy. I have no faith in trying to fix anything like that that will never get better anyways. The Republican and the Democratic party (and all the other parties) don’t give a care about our brothers and sisters who are suffering here where I am. The state has become the anti-Church, the parody of the Church itself. Even when the Democratic or Republican parties show “concern” for groups of people, it’s only for the ends of creating a wedge against the other, and for puffing themselves up in a kind of distorted “witness” of sorts.
After all of the above, do you think I’m still being “sectarian”? Or for that matter, Jamie Smith? (As you implicate him in such false accusations, surely you implicate me as well as I support where he wants to go with this stuff.) Why don’t you e-mail him about these questions you have concerning his language? There’s a possibility you might just have to start loving the guy as opposed to bantering about false accusations behind his back. Get to know him, seriously, if this pains you this much.
What’s the point of that word “sectarian” except to divide? 🙁
I love you bro. This deeply saddens and concerns me.
If I have to choose between making sure I don’t “abandon the world to chaos” or abandoning my sick, hungry, naked, and imprisoned friends, then the choice is obvious. Jesus did not tell us that we will be judged by how much we don’t “engage the powers”, but he did say that what we do unto the least of these that is how we will be judged. I might be wrong here, but I think it is the only place where Jesus tells us by what measures we will get judged is when he describes the works of mercy. And then to go and judge somebody and call them “sectarian” for things that never concerned Jesus?
This is me, trying to put things in perspective, bro.
peace,
eric
Eric,
I hate to keep repeating this, but my problem with Smith is not a critique of Wallis, but the manner in which he does it, which is extremely judgmental for the “level of trespass” IMHO. Would you or any of the “others” you mention say Wallis is “just a humanist”? Why can’t it be something more like “seems to place too much trust in the ‘statist’ process, or something to that end. To say that Wallis “gets into bed with the state” is like saying that in trying to convince a fundamantalist that war is wrong , that I am really supporting their idea of war since I am trying to get at the “deeper meaning” of their “statist” language.
I don’t think it is nearly deserving of Wallis’ aims that he be characterized as something that actually does HARM. It’s like saying that the path I myself have travelled is “frought with peril” and lends itself to “falling into line” with, ultimately, the Empire. Saying that language matters and we “ought to be vcareful due to A or B is one thing, but to actually place the “offending party” in the camp of the ideology they are seeking to combat and expose seems harshly judgmental.
I mean, look where you were a year ago (and me)…..I have observed during this little difference we have here that you seem to have moved CLOSER to a distinctive orthodoxy, not further. I myself have as well, but I don’t find it necessary to so sharply repudiate so much of what has so clearly shaped me— and also, I know Wallis better than those who have read so little of him. I mean, 20 years. I’ve been getting Sojo that long, and have read 5 of his books, and heard him speak in person a bunch. I never heard these kinds of critiques until Wallis got some press, and during a time when there are going to be MANY MANY more elaborate reactions and feelings to the questions of church and state, and the importance of recognizing that the church is more than just , well, whatever it usually is. It has to be a way of life. It has to be community. It has to “make a difference” in more ways than writing our congressman or signing a petition (I know, I’m preaching to the choir here) I just think it is behavior ill-befitting a theologican of Smith’s apparent caliber. Whyt can’t he be a little fairer on a guy who has awakened a more mature sense of the Kingdom of God in church people all over? (Smith’s recent article is a case in point, where he cedes the fact that “However, I must say that in wake of neocon idealism, a little dose of even realism is a welcome relief!”. I did a double take on this one. It seems like he is “ceding” quite a bit there.
I agree with what he says, but I have the distinct sense that he woule be all over Wallis if Wallis would suggest something similar (in fact, he often does)
That’s really the best “nutshell” description of Wallis’ message during all this. Something needs to be said from the mouths of Christians about “a better way” and say to the “American-ized Christians” that they are letting “American values” and “capitalism” usurp Biblical notions of shalom. Maybe he’s not the most eloquent and “theologically correct” (acc. to Smith or certain strains of RO) , but he most definitely has a wealth of “church tradition” behind him that I think is much more valuable and formative than Smith seems to be able to muster the due appreciation to say. I think that’s a problem for any theologian, especially when it comes to two like Smith and Wallis who share such similar visions of what all this theology looks like when implemented. I don’t think their approach to “guiding the dialogue” is more important than the “results” of that theology. Smith shows no sign of recognizing that. And that’s sectarian, and harmful to the overall strength of a “confessing church”.
Still and forever a bro’
Dale
save this one that I think is more a matter of some knee-jerk reaction to something (what, I don’t know)
Hate to break this to you, but my pastor, and most of the people I know who also read and engagin a whole lot of theology have much the same critique of Wallis, and none of them, save my pastor, have read Jamie Smith. And even then, Smith just echoed some of the stuff that my pastor already believed concerning Wallis.
Like I’ve said before, it’s more of a critique of liberation theology and theologians like Karl Rahner, as opposed to more of a ressourcement style like de Lubac or von Balthasar. Wallis isn’t exactly doing anything new here — he’s just putting himself in the tradition of others that they’ve already had a theological critique for.
peace,
eric
I think so , too, Jonathan. I’ve mentioned that very thing often in the last two months since I read Smith’s comments about Wallis. It seems to me that Wallis has just a bit more confidence in what lies beneath the “Progressive” passion. I think, and I feel that Wallis also thinks, that there is a connect between the passion for justice, expressed with language of “public currency” and the promises and vision of the Biblical notion of all these “public currency” concepts like freedom, justice, and peace. These are all very much, as you know, very Biblical concepts, and thus existed in the longings of Biblical people and God’s people long before they were adopted in liberal democratic states. I feel there may well be something very “Jungian” happening in this; that God can speak to the “secular saint” who is drawn to working for justice alongside people turned off to the ecclesiological concerns becuase of the inactivity and withdrawal of the churches from the needs which exist around them. In fact, the inactive churches are likely to be so because they exhibit and often ecen voice a support “across the board” for the “righteousness” of the state. How can we really blame these people for “turning against God”? I don’t think that’s what they’re really doing. But this is how Smith’s criticsms come across.
I intend to keep reading Jamie Smith’s stuff, since I tend to agree with him on every other count, save this one that I think is more a matter of some knee-jerk reaction to something (what, I don’t know), and just “pull for him” on the matter of my wanting him to place a higher premium on the faithful responses and intents and “telos” (goals) of the Sojourners movement ; at least a higher premium than he exhibits that makes it seem like how Wallis attempts to explain what he sees going on is more important than what “response” is called for. They are (Wallis and Smith) brothers in many ways in their response to oppressive social, political, and spiritual forces than they are. This seems to me to be much more important than his crossing of some line that Smith has drawn in the sand, and frankly, took me my surprise even though my own theological history has taken me through many techniques of critiquing the modern state and empire, and confronting of capitalism as a force that works against Biblical notions of community.
So yes, I certainly feel (and show this by continuing my support of Wallis, Hauerwas, Smith, etc.) by eagerly consuming and workign with (and blogging) all three readings.
Dale
I dunno how i feel on this. Jim Wallis has been a huge influence and powerful voice in my life. As I’ve read Hauerwas and some RO theologians I’ve really identified with what they are doing.
I wonder if both are closer than they realize to one another?
shalom,
jonathon