Jamie Smith posted this a year and a half ago, as he began his blog. I was motivated to look up his early posts becuase of a comment he made in a recent post

Fors Clavigera: 2005.03
Today, at this moment, I can’t help having a deep sense that we are surrounded by the fascism of various empires: political, ecclesiastical, consumer, and media.

the grabber from the recent post:

Fors Clavigera was launched in an Orwellian spirit disappointed, frustrated, and at times frightened by a world too much like that of 1984. While posts along that line have subsided, the external realities have not.

Actually, I’d like to see more of those, but we’re talking blogs here, so let’s remain true to what makes blogs blogs, and give everybody the right to be themselves in their own blogs. IN fact, for quite some time, my own posts about the current political situation greatly subsided, and even though that curve has swung a little upward of late, I’m still keen on the task of exploring and learning about just what kinds of formative structures are needed to help us resist the addictions of culture, and what aims us at Life Together that breaks out of the culturally induced prison of indivualistic spirituality; the idea that we should be satisfied and “make do” with what we are able to derive from content and events pushed at us for us to consume.

But I do find it useful to read social commentary from the perspective of those who are ecclesia-centered, as a means of trying to get at some specifics as to what constitutes the church “being the church”. So often I find that “Naming” some of the stuff happening “in the world” (ala Walter Wink’s “Powers” series) is an indication of what needs challenging.