Christianity and Radical Democracy

This is a most amazing and rewarding book.

Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian By Stanley Hauerwas & Romand Coles Cascade Books, 2008

The title talks about conversations and the book really delivers - in a series of lectures, papers and letters in which Stanley Hauerwas, written off as sectarian by many mainstream theologians, engages in a probing exploration with Roman Coles, a political theorist, non-believer and community activist of the possible connections between a radical Christian faith and radical democracy.

This is a challenging exchange that demonstrates an open listening and honest exploration of points of connection and question between the traditions.

I learnt much from Coles sympathetic and open reading of texts from Rowan Williams and Jean Vanier and his sharp eye for the intrusion of Christendom assumptions and languages into our best efforts to get beyond a Christendom mentality. What do they have to do with organising for radical democracy? Go read.

This probing exchange reveals an emerging friendship that does not arrive at any easy synthesis or collapse the tension between the faith commitments of Hauerwas and the political commitments of Coles.

What is important is that they are both talking about a reimagining of politics and the practices that would sustain the practice of a radical politics and both questioning the contemporary shape of political imagination that is shaped by both the denial and the production of death.

Coming into view here are the practices of the early civil rights movement exemplified in the work of Bob Moses and Ella Baker, the local community organising of the Industrial Areas Foundation and the life and worship of the L'Arche communities. In the background is the work of John Howard Yoder, Mennonite theologian and his articulation of what Coles terms a "wild patience".

Why religion, and law and order are a problem - introducing the politics of Easter

Great quote in the readings for Lent:

... Jesus was not brought down by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force if necessary to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar. (Barbara Brown Taylor "Truth to Tell" Reading 16 in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, pp.89-90)

The politics of Easter are just as confronting, and nearly as frequently bypassed by "religious" people as are those of Christmas. More to come.

Witnessing a moment of history for more than just Australia

Cross posted from Ekklesia
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6754

A festival atmosphere was evident on the lawns outside Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Thousands of people celebrated outside in the wake of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations. That much was evident from the television broadcast and the reports from friends and family who made it to Parliament House and its immediate vicinity.

Aboriginal flags flew and Indigenous performers performed for the crowds, many of whom had travelled to the city from right across the country especially for the occasion. Crowds in the Great Hall and on the lawns outside Parliament wept, cheered and clapped after Mr Rudd said "sorry", in scenes that were repeated at gatherings across the country.

People jumped and whooped with the emotion of the occasion in celebrating a moment that many of them, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, believed would not come within their lifetime.

The celebration was only briefly interrupted by a strong negative response to the Opposition leader who in his speech in reply to that of the Prime Minister strayed into an ill-timed and insensitive defense of the previous Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.

Within the parliamentary chamber, the opening of the business of Parliament with the Lord’s Prayer, while it functions as a remnant of Christendom which some would want want to question, seemed on this occasion to be strangely, if momentarily appropriate. In the light of the first item of business …“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth .. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us…” It definitely caught the mood of the moment.

The recital of the words of apology by Mr Rudd took on an almost liturgical force. His speech in support of the motion was by turns emotionally direct in its recital of stories and experiences of people who had lived through the experience of separation from their family and community, and morally clear and intellectually clinical in the justification for the apology.

Kevin Rudd spoke in a register that made clear his personal engagement with his appeal to a shared humanity across a deep cultural and historical divide but also one that gave expression to his role and responsibility as the Prime Minister to speak on behalf of the Australian community and to give moral leadership in clearing the space for future action by speaking the truth about the past.

While it was a speech that drew on a presumed shared moral framework and language, the rhetoric was shaped by moments of almost unconscious biblical resonance and was powered by moral convictions deeply rooted in the Prime Minister’s faith commitments

Apology

The text of the apology, given as the first element of business by the new parliament, was tabled ahead of time.

The opening lines acknowledge the wider history of mistreatment that goes well beyond the specific matters that the apology is directed to.

The text, while it is directed specifically at the concerns of the stolen generations, is clear and unequivocal in its acknowledgement of the role of governments and lawmakers.

The challenge faced by the Rudd government will now be to deliver on its commitment to closing the gap in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity between indigenous Australians and the wider Australian community.

The strength of the wording may surprise skeptics. The response of the indigenous community in their passion to be present in Canberra for this event has similarly surprised the media who have dismissed this as a purely symbolic gesture.

The moral and emotional significance of this event for the indigenous community has yet again revealed the gap in understanding between the two communities as to the reality and pain of the history of violence and injustice that has been experienced by the original Australians.

For the full story see Ekklesia.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6747

Iraq as a Humanitarian Crisis

Much of the debate over the future of Iraq seems to be cast within a military frame of reference.

What receives only passing and occasional attention is the huge and ongoing humanitarian crisis. The Mennonite Central Committee reports that the Iraqi refugee population is the fastest growing refugee population and Iraqis are the third largest displaced population.

The United Nations has estimated the total number of displaced Iraqis to be more than 4.4 million people. About half of these are refugees who have fled Iraqi, while the other half is displaced within the borders of Iraq. The International Organization for Migration reports that there were 1.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq before the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing. Since then, another 1.2 million have become internally displaced.

Internal displacement in Iraq slowed in 2007, due to improved security in limited areas, but also due to the homogenization of communities, with fewer people forced out. While there are reports of Iraqis now returning to their homes, the situation remains dire. MCC staff on the ground state that it is too early to say whether the alleged improved security represents a sustainable trend but that the human casualty rate is still far too high. Many refugees return to Iraq only to be internally displaced. Conditions in Iraq remain inadequate: there is a lack of access to food, health care, housing and education, which, often times, is stressed by the influx of IDPs.
http://thirdway.com/wv/?Page=3920|A+Silent+Crisis:+Internally+Displaced+Iraqis.

Legacy of Ashes - questions about the value of intelligence

Tim Weiner's history of the CIA as an almost unrelieved saga of failure raised a number of questions for me, around issues of assessment.

On a purely pragmatic level Weiner's history suggests that a rational cost-benefit calculation of the impact of CIA activity on the national interest of the United States could end up heavily in the red. Put bluntly what has the United States gained from the investment of billions of dollars?

The calculation can't be done of course without making a range of normative assessments about how to assess and weigh up impact of CIA activity on those who have been subject to violence, torture, the support of the militarisation of societies and the corruption of the machinery of government in the cause of making the world safe for the United States.

How do we assess the claims of the victims against the claims of those who supposedly have benefited from CIA covert action?

It at least partly depends upon who the "we" in question is.

Christians may find themselves framing the "we" at several levels. At one level as members of a particular nation state - as resident aliens, seeking the good of the city in which we find ourselves and willing to join in the public debate over what forms of intelligence activity can be justified and on what grounds.

Christians have another "we" that should act as a frame of reference - our membership in the church, as followers of Jesus, the multi-ethnic body of Christ spread across the world.
This would change the moral calculus substantially. giving priority to the claims of the poor and the vulnerable.

Wendell Berry - novelist

Jayber Crow: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself by Wendell Berry
Counterpoint, 2000.

Wendell Berry is a wonderful story teller, is a sharp observer of the changes in a community and a real theologian to boot.

This is the first novel of his that I have read. I will be looking to get hold of others. I was moved and engaged by the story of Jayber Crow, orphan, barber and bachelor - a man who discovered he did not have the call to preach.

Berry's doubts about organised religion find voice in the life and spiritual struggles of Jonah Crow. After years of readig the Gospels Jayber observes that he has come to believe that ...
Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one.

Berry is also good in his critique of the spiritualisation of Christianity, that finds voice in the reflections of Jayber Crow on the importance of the body and the goodness of creation.

In a fine review of this novel Michael Wilt observes:

Taken to a church-run orphanage, young Jonah believes he hears the call to be a preacher and, when the time comes, enrolls in college on a scholarship in “pre-ministerial” studies. But it is not long before he finds himself in trouble.

If the soul and body really were divided, then it seemed to me that all the worst sins –- hatred and anger and self-righteousness and even greed and lust -- came from the soul. But these preachers I’m talking about all thought that the soul could do no wrong, but always had its face washed and its pants on and was in agony over having to associate with the flesh and the world. And yet these same people believed in the resurrection of the body.

Jonah comes to recognize that he is not called to preach. “I was a lost traveler wandering in the woods, needing to be on my way somewhere but not knowing where,” he says, echoing Dante. After some trial and error, that somewhere becomes Port William, the community in which he had been born but from which he had been absent since the age of ten. His journey to Port William, through the rising waters of several days of winter rain, evokes the biblical Jonah’s water-journey, but is most memorable for the hospitality he receives at its end. Having picked up the barbering trade in the orphanage and practiced it for a time to support himself, Jonah buys Port William’s vacant shop and opens for business. He is eventually re-christened Jayber by the locals, and can finally say, “I felt at home.”
http://www.nimblespirit.com/html/jayber_crow_review.htm