7/15/06: I orginally posted the below on Tuesday the 11th, but I made a huge blunder in doing so. My additional edits of 7/15 are in purple, and the original post is in the normal colors, with the addition of strike-throughs over the places where I should have posted a response of some clarity.

This is where online conversations, as much as I love them and hold them up as a great contribution of online technology to enhance community, can hamper us when we seek to zero in on areas where we have different impressions, or different reactions. I had originally put up a blog post that I had started, as I often do, with my highlighting some of your post and right-clicking and using WordPress’s “Just Blog It” to send the selected text to a new post. then I added several more selections from your post, and also from Jamie’s post that prompted this flurry of posts and comments. When I do this, I often write a little oneliner that is a note to myself of the way I reacted to that piece I’m quoting. I save this new post to a “Draft” (to the uninitiated, this saves the post but does not publish it). Then I go in and start composing my response.

I ended up writing some responses to the latter 3 quotes from Jamie Smith, and pretty much forgot about the remianing portions above it from both Jamie and Eric. I left untouched the pithy, biting remarks I had put there as “starters” for what I WANTED to say. Those initial barbs where just noting my first reactions (which were accompanied by rolling my eyes and recalling the Ronald Reagan line in his debates with Jimmy Carter : “There you go again”…..but more seriously, I thought, “we gotta get some better clarity on these things”…not just on Jamie’s and Eric’s part, but on mine, and my own reactions to what they’re trying to communicate. Thus far, it’s been frustrating on this score.

Eric rightfully was taken aback by what was in my initial post (because the included barbs were certainly rather ferocious and I was emabarassed to have “put them out there”. ) But I feel I owe an explanation, and a confession for the kind of reactions I was having that produced those wicked barbs, even though they were not intended for introduction AS IS into the conversation. But I have re-posted them, and in deference to a “blog-rule” (if there is such a thing), I am posting all this with “strike-throughs” applied on the offending passages (and if there are more, maybe these can be pointed out)

Original post in normal font colors, today’s additions and comments in purple:

Quite a post from Eric here, one which I can both strongly agree with, and also react quite strongly to some portion (here it comes again) :
Eric’s Tasty Morsels of Thought – Modernity attempts to subvert Christianity’s particularity

JKA: But what Obama can’t seem to imagine is that one might, in fact, pass on the state in order to hold the integrity of what one “knows” on the basis of “religious reasons.” I just can’t imagine the kind of bifurcated identity that Obama’s framework requires–a fractured identity in which, when there is conflict, it is the requirements of “universal” reason which must trump what one knows on the basis of religious faith.

I could easily imagine someone like Obama having these points about “natural reason” and recognizing their truth. A couple of years ago, I would have nothing but praise for them. And I have two theological masters degrees. I simply had not gone down the particular path of Radical Orthodoxy. Now, after treks down Radical Orthodoxy lane, I have many different perspectives. But Eric and I met as fellow “Christian Bush bashers”; even “Progressives”.

(Later note 7/15) I often use quotes around the word “Progressive” now, but not as an implied repudiation of what is identified as “Progressive”, but as a questioning of the label, since I have many common concerns and theological sensibilities that I share in common; and so, in many ways, I am “one of them“.
I look at things quite differently in a political sense now. I have a much more “church centered” (which also makes life difficult in a world of very few seriously “ecclesial” churches; where church is the CENTRAL community of a person’s life)

EL: From what I can gather, Obama is pro-choice precisely because he doesn’t think he can come up with a “universal,” rational argument against abortion. (I think it’s also because, like almost everyone–Democract and Republican–he’s a libertarian at heart.) And so, as a politician, he is pro-choice. If he’s going to play by the rules of the pluralist state, and stay within the bounds of the Constitution, he has to set aside his religious beliefs.

I don’t think he would be comfortable with this idea of “setting aside his religious beliefs”

EL: I might be able to use some of the language of democracy at times to get a point across, but even then, I wouldn’t be affirming that language, as I would be relativizing it to show that such distinctions within it are purely arbitrary in order to witness to Christ (which, by the way, I think is the real meaning of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

What I bolded there is the crux behind my hesitancy (7/15 : here I had originally published this post with no space between the last word of the strike through, “hesitancy” and the following quote that begins with EL:)

The “hesitancy” I refer to here is how to do just that: use some of the language of democracy at times to get a point across

My argument has been that this IS indeed often neccessary. When we “speak the truth to power”, there is an ELEMENT of “multi-lingual” skill that we need to communicate that “truth”. But I agree wholeheartedly that the “whole truth” is embedded in the particularities of the language of The Kingdom of God; God’s people; the narrative of our journey in that Kingdom. When we jump on Wallis, and then Obama, the moment they begin talking about faith and politics, this has the effect of setting our own agenda in a condescending light over and against the “naivete'” of the people who are “stuck in the deceptions of liberal democaritc thinking”. This is the IMPRESSION it communicates. I’m not saying that this is the INTENTION or the desired effect. This is, for me, what is to be expected when one communicates disagreement or caution in a way that does not first establish some sort of initial “permission” to engage critically by identifying some crucial points of agreement (this DOES get hard when it is fundamentalists that we are seeking to engage. But here, we’re talking Wallis and now Obama; both could readily and willingly engage in dialogue about these issues of assumptions behind the language of “democracy”. Like I’ve said before, I spent 25 years seeing no theological problems of this magnitude ; basically because the ideas had never been a part of my theological education (the ideas being that of the kind that Radical Orthodoxy. I know that this is a relatively new movment, but the “philosophical and theological roots” of it are plenty (at least as identified by the Radical Orthodoxy project …..ie. Jamie Smith’s book , Radical Orhtodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (still on my bookshelf, in the “stack” to be read)

EL:The truth is that there is no such thing as a ‘universal reason’ in the sense that modernity claims there is.

So we’re back to “abandoning the world to the chaos” eh? I really should have put a smiley at the end of this one. or a wink. I was laughing as I wrote it. It was a “wink” toward a previous debate we had been through on when the “opt out” strategy sounds too much like “resignation”. It’s not about “opting out” of LIFE or REALITY, but , as I understand, opting out of the participation of that particular political type; a “liberal democracy argument” that OFTEN ends up neglecting the call to ecclesia to BE that church rather than just “complain about it”. When it comes down to it, that’s really where I am hit hard. Since I am basically “churchless” right now, that’s really all I’m doing. But this is a reflection of where I am and what I hope for; I harbor the hope that someone who wishes to explore church (as in “authentic Church”) and is frustrated and “worn out” by the lack of the kind of community we envision and long for a more faithful expression and experience of community and its associated disciplines and accountability, then this may be a way to “hook up” in a local sense. A pastor of a church where our family has been attending (in a very sparodic sense) recently emailed me to tell me about a young man she had been talking to and gave here the impression that he was struggling with some of the same things. She asked if she could give him my contact info, so when I wrote back and said Yes, she was on vacation until this week, and I have yet to hear. But I am interested in what sort of “longing” this mystery person has, so we’ll see.

I brought up this “abandoning the world to chaos” issue because I sensed a level of “abandonment” of the inhabitants of the “public sqaure” conversation in the “no such thing as a ‘universal reason’ in the sense that modernity claims there is.” I don’t INSIST that I am hearing this correctly. I’m only asking it. Like “Doesn’t his TEND to communicate a sort of resignation?” Clarify this a bit more for me. I can’t quite get the understanding of how this seems to be hitting you; you seem to take offense at the very hint of this, and so I’m not sure how you’re taking this.

EL: it (the church) doesn’t demand anything, it merely asks for one’s own allegiance by submitting oneself to Christ and participating in Christ’s body called the Church

????? clarify this one

JKA: Here a Victorian, Christian socialist like F.D. Maurice makes Jim Wallis sound like a PR rep for Wal-Mart.

Hardly. Another of JKA’s many gross mischaracterizations. I know Wallis is not any manner of “gung-ho” capitalist

not quite fair

JKA: Unfortunately, however, in the bifurcated world we inhabit, if you’re not with us, you’re against us. So my critique of the Christian Left is too often immediately mistaken as an indicator that I’m a card-carrying member of the Religious Right, or my critique of the Religious Right is (mis)taken as evidence that I’m part of that motley crew which is the Religious Left. Neither is the case. But enough preliminaries…

Be careful that you don’t “sound like” them

Coming soon….I was here throwing back at Jamie something I had heard him say in an interview on NPR about how the “Progressives” seem to avoid any religious language that “sounds like” the Religious Right, or the political left avoiding “sounding like” the right on any issue.

JKA: Perhaps because I share so many of his (Wallis’s) concerns and criticisms (let that be noted for the record!), it becomes even more important to highlight the differences–because I think alot is at stake in the differences.

Gee, I don’t see much of that anywhere in what JKA has written. I could guess, but it seems to be the least loving that one could get to give a little effort to “build up”; ESPECIALLY if most of what one has to say is to be so rough

OK, here I was making the same point I have tried to clarify here, but obviously, in a very sarcastic manner (again, not intended to go up online…..I have so many “Draft” versions of posts in my database, of posts that have never gone up. Many times, these are posts I have created through the “Post this to a New Post” right-click (better known as “Blog This!”), where I send a snippet and perhaps a short quippy note to go with it to indicate what my reaction was.

Here, I was a little peeved at the notion that his differences with Wallis are perceived as more important than his shared concerns. He SEEMS to bear this out in practice by a borderline dismissive attitude. In making a “stab” at starting with the positive here, he seems to emphasize the crux of the problem I have with this: more elaborate treatment is deserving here. Quick , brief quips only exacerbate the problem. I would ask if Jamie would be so seemingly cavalier if he were talking to Jim in person? (Just as it was fair to ask me the same question about the questions I have about Jamie’s quips)

JKA: What’s most disheartening in this is the way that Democrats still consider “religion” instrumentally; that is, they instrumentalize religion insofar as they see it as a strategy for accomplishing a goal. ….

The concern is what will “work.” And religion is seen as a way of connecting with the electorate, not as the basis for justice.

I read that completely different. He was talking about what “worked” for SOME progressives and then he went on to basically suggest that we “acknowledge the power of faith” —seems to me he is opposing “using” people. It seems correct that people will be more reponsive if their “faith is taken seriously” That doesn’t mean that this recognition id driven by whether it will “work” or not. Reading WAY too much into that. I mean, do we hurl this accusation when churches are trying to discern what they need to do to let people know that their story matters, and that we want to share that with them? Is this being “instrumental”? Of course, it CAN happen like that. BUt then, who’s exempt from that accusation? Are we also not allowed to use the term “effective” in any context? Way, way too presumptiously judgmental.

In this same arena, as I re-read Jamie’s article today, I noticed this:

JKA: Even when he later suggests this is “not just rhetorical,” the direction of the point is still about how religious discourse will be “effective.” (I do agree with Obama’s point regarding the false requirements of “secularity.”)

So he gets the above point from this (below)?

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

when Jamie writes: “even when he later suggests this is not just rhetorical, the direction of the point is STILL……” seems to dismiss the “rhetorical” explanation…..This is similar to the sense I got when Jamie starts out by saying

Granted, Jim Wallis has tended to bear the brunt of my frustrations with the Christian Left–that stems, I suppose, from his visibility, and perhaps even from a kind of attitudinal proximity. Perhaps because I share so many of his concerns and criticisms (let that be noted for the record!), it becomes even more important to highlight the differences–because I think alot is at stake in the differences.

a recent “Call to Renewal” Conference (a Jim Wallis outfit that does alot of good work).

but Jamie agrees with what I agree with, which is the “false requirements of secularity”. On thispoint, I think Obama elaborates amazingly well:

More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical – if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.

This sounds to me, very much like what one might hear Jamie himself say. Obama seems to be SO much better than anyone I’ve heard in the political arena on these issues. WAY better. Not “salvation”, but a MUCH healthier change in direction away from the disastrous direction we’re headed with Bush and co..

JKA: treads on question of faith & reason that are out of his league, I think

Perhaps, and I might say the same about many of Bill Moyer’s guests on his “Faith and Reason” series. He said he intentionally went for a “fresh approach”, and so went with “non-theologians” in favor of “artists” of avrious stripes. But this has the somewhat negative connotation that theologians aren’t artful or have fresh ideas. Why not include “non-traditional” theologians?

IN terms of what’s in “the field” , however, Obama is certainly far ahead

JKA: Let’s take Obama’s framework: what this means is that while I might believe and know something to be wrong on the basis of “religious reasons,” unless I can find a “universal” reason to make the case for that in the “public” sphere, then I cannot expect to legislate the point. I can’ expect something to become policy by appealing only to religious reasons.

I can go with that. But is this where we draw perilously close to the “abandonment” thing, and is this where Jamie leaves us in his post? I’m truthfully ASKING this. Not positing any absolute analysis and psychoanalysis of Jamie’s intentions.

So this needs further clarity, even with what went before it

JKA: But what about another possibility? What about setting aside participation in a state and politics which requires such bifurcation? What about opting out of a democratic rationality which demands ultimate allegiance?

JKA: But the temptation of the fundamentalism of the left is to make justice an end in itself.

Is it not also a temptation to make a very esoteric, here we have to be careful (or I have to be careful)…..what I mean here by esoteric is not an accusation of “ivory tower snobbery” but being in a different philosophical mind-set, with consciousness of certain underlying philosophies that are simply not on the radar of many dedicated, faithful Christians.
Is it not also a temptation to make a very esoteric, philosophically-oriented theological framework an end in itself? This occurs to me as I see this great concern for language and avoiding all sorts of pitfalls of “accomodating to democracy” (which I DO believe can and does happen and is not IDEAL) and seemingly ignoring those “ends” which are supposedly justice and faithfulness, which it seems is the case when the criticism is leveled so harshly at language and accusations of “really just a humanist” and “Constanian of the Left” are levelled with nary a word about what the intended ends of such political activism and energy might be. Again, just how many people can even understand this argument, versus how many are getting a much wider, illuminating look at the WHOLE gospel (or at least a great deal more of that whole). Like I’ve said many many times on this issue, I was able to come to an awareness of these Radical Orthodoxy perspectives about democracy, the state, the church, and Constaninianism (and take them in and make a part of my outlook) because part of my story is impacted by the witness and message and example of Sojourners. I simply want there to be more of an “in common” appreciation; such that the “criticsms” can be explored in a context of koinonia; building each other up. What JKA appreciates about Sojourners can be MUCH better understood if it is not begun with what seems like such a judgment (regardless of the good points, which there ARE; and indeed, OBSCURES those good points from ever being heard.

In much the same fashion that Jamie points out, in Obama’s argument, how he “Even when he later suggests this is ‘not just rhetorical,’ the direction of the point is still about……” This is the way Jamie’s all too brief affirmations of Call to Renewal (“a Jim Wallis outfit that does alot of good work “) or shared concerns (ie “a kind of attitudinal proximity” ) strike me.

Granted, Jim Wallis has tended to bear the brunt of my frustrations with the Christian Left–that stems, I suppose, from his visibility, and perhaps even from a kind of attitudinal proximity. Perhaps because I share so many of his concerns and criticisms (let that be noted for the record!), it becomes even more important to highlight the differences–because I think alot is at stake in the differences.

So “it becomes even more important to highlight the differences–because I think alot is at stake in the differences.” seems to be out of balance. It’s not MORE important that the differences are highlighted, but maybe even AS important— to me, the issue of emphasis on the MISSING elements of the Chritian message in America is AS important —-even MORE, for me—- than the differences. But I see and mostly agree with what Jamie is highlighting here. I think he simply “moves on” too easily from the damage inflicted by his “humanist” assesment of Wallis. If there are “shared concerns and criticisms”, I think these are deserving of more than two lines. This may seem like damed if he does and damned if he doesn’t, but I think these “shared” items are worth more than just a mention in “passing” —-perhaps , as I said earlier, as a way of “getting permission” to lower the boom again —even though it’s Obama this time—-it’s the same criticism. I would like to know more of what constitutes what he refers to as “attitudinal proximity”. His silence on this CAN communicate the impression that he simply cares more about the dividing issues than the “proximities”, which seems a little abrasive and dividing to me. I know of the differences, and I can understand the passion with which Jamie communicates them, but I simply continue to be disturbed BECAUSE I resonate so deeply with most everything else he says. I enjoyed Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism immenesly.

JKA: But I’ll leave Jim Wallis alone here. Instead, I’ve been intrigued by the attention garnered by Senator Barack Obama’s address to a recent “Call to Renewal” Conference (a Jim Wallis outfit that does alot of good work). [For a summary of news comment, see here.]

JKA: What about setting aside participation in a state and politics which requires such bifurcation?

It depends on what is involved in “setting aside participation”. The “bifurcation” isn’t a given if what we are “contributing” doesn’t cede the ground that “loyalty” requires. This is related to that argument about “abandoning the world to the chaos”. Is there no “legitimately Christian” resistance to what’s happening to Iraqis. to the poor, to the earth, and the suicidal hubris of the wielding of nuclear power as a “deterrent” as we “threaten” to use them if someone else even sounds like they’re going to? And then if there IS a way to say this, who are talking to?

Jamie points to a rather interesting piece here that also includes a link to an article of Al MOhler who “rails on his blog against efforts ‘to replace the Christian faith with an empty “spiritual’ shell” and directly criticized Lerner for his idea of universal “spiritual yearnings” that make no “reference to some specific truth claim.” ‘

This is an important debate. Important points from JKA Smith and Eric. I hope I’ve added something of importance.

I can see how the above little paragraph (purple emphasis added just now) could seem totally sarcastic. But I was referring here to the last three non-purple comments to the non-purple JKA quotes (non-purple meaning they were in the original post….all of today’s “clarifications” were done in purple —-I put them in a style class of “explain”, which really means they were posted today as clarifying additions to hopefully get much closer to what I SHOULD have said.