A Thinking Reed

Month: May 2008

  • John Milbank and “red toryism”

    This short piece from arch-Radical Orthodoxist John Milbank has generated a bit of buzz in the theologican blogosphere. Milbank seems to be calling for a socially conservative/economically leftist (or perhaps agrarian/distributist is a better description) “Red Toryism” to combat the hegemony of what he deems a failed neoliberalism (i.e. social liberalism plus relatively unregulated corporate capitalism or what Europeans call liberalism and Americans know as conservatism):

    Jackie Ashley (This fight really matters, May 19) reveals the bizarre bankruptcy of the current British left. By every traditional radical criterion New Labour has failed: it has presided over a large increase in economic inequality and an entrenchment of poverty, while it has actively promoted the destruction of civil rights, authoritarian interference in education and medicine, and an excessively punitive approach to crime. But never mind all that, says Jackie Ashley and her ilk: on what crucially matters – the extending of supposed biosexual freedom and the licensing of Faustian excesses of science – it is on the side of “progress”.

    Yet it is arguably just this construal of left versus right which is most novel and questionable. Is it really so obvious that permitting children to be born without fathers is progressive, or even liberal and feminist? Behind the media facade, more subtle debates over these sorts of issue do not necessarily follow obvious political or religious versus secular divides. The reality is that, after the sell-out to extreme capitalism, the left seeks ideological alibis in the shape of hostility to religion, to the family, to high culture and to the role of principled elites.

    An older left had more sense of the qualified goods of these things and the way they can work to allow a greater economic equality and the democratisation of excellence. Now many of us are beginning to realise that old socialists should talk with traditionalist Tories. In the face of the secret alliance of cultural with economic liberalism, we need now to invent a new sort of politics which links egalitarianism to the pursuit of objective values and virtues: a “traditionalist socialism” or a “red Toryism”. After all, what counts as radical is not the new, but the good.

    On the one hand, the article Milbank is responding to is virtually a shrill parody of go-go liberalism that allows for absolutely no limits on exploiting human embryos for scientific and medical purposes, and sees the dark specter of theocracy (especially Catholic) in any opposition to unbridled Brave New Worldism. Her article reads like a mirror version of some conservative writing you get over here: forget about war, poverty, the criminal justice system, etc. – it’s all about abortion!

    Still, Milbank’s “new sort of politics” strikes some odd notes. For instance, what is he referring to by “hostility to religion, to the family, to high culture and to the role of principled elites”? Sounds a bit like “traditional values” boilerplate we get a lot of from Bill Bennett types. Moreover, and granting that what I don’t know about British politics could fill a library, who is the constituency supposed to be for this rather odd amalgam of religious traditionalism, culutral elitism, and economic egalitarianism?

    I actually see some kind of social conservatism/economic liberalism combination having more promise here, but that’s partly because our version of social conservatism tends to be much more populist (see: Huckabee, Mike) and thus has a natural constituency. By contrast, an elitist, aristocratic conservatism combined with economic anti-capitalism has usually been the preserve of intellectuals (Coleridge comes to mind) and often seems to involve a rather dreamy picture of sturdy traditionalist yeoman farmers and artisans happily tending their fields and workshops. Appealing as that is in some ways, it’s hard to see it gathering much of a following on either side of the Atlantic.

    For what it’s worth, the one really interesting recent example of genuine Red Toryism that I can think of is the Canadian philosopher George Grant, who was a Christian Platonist, an economic egalitarian, a sometimes-anarchist, a staunch opponent of war and empire, and a Jacques Ellul-style technophobe. But again, not exactly the basis for a mass political movement. The American political thinker Christopher Lasch also has some affinities with this outlook. While I think both can make valuable contributions to a sound political perspective (especially when it comes to criticizing the excesses of liberalism), I’m not convinced they can provide the whole package.

  • The religion of animals

    Thanks to Jeremy for tipping me off to this very interesting article about animals and religion from the Martin Marty Center. One of the issues it raises is the upsurge of interest in the “religiosity” of animals:

    There are ancient precedents for the claim that nonhuman animals have a religious sensibility. Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) claimed that elephants, the animal “closest to man,” not only recognized the language of their homeland, obeyed orders, and remembered what they learned, but also had been seen “worshipping the sun and stars, and purifying [themselves] at the new moon, bathing in the river, and invoking the heavens.”

    Today, scholars such as Harvard’s Kimberley C. Patton provide theologically informed readings of many traditional claims about the religious awareness of other beings. Patton deals, for example, with “ways in which animals are believed to possess a unique awareness of holiness,” noting that “in many religious worlds…mutual intelligibility obtains between God and animals that exists outside of human perceptual ranges.” Assertions of a special relationship between animals and God are routinely dismissed in our human-centered world. But the increased attendance at Jigenen temple reflects that we are fascinated by our fellow creatures and the idea of their potential spirituality. In fact, “religion and animals” themes appear in a surprising number of places—one example is Peter Miller’s article “Jane Goodall” in the December 1995 National Geographic, in which he discusses Goodall’s belief that expressions of awe by chimpanzees at a waterfall site “may resemble the emotions that led early humans to religion.”

    The Bible certainly seems to suggest that animals have a relationship with God. It speaks repeatedly about the animals (along with the rest of creation) praising God, and God makes his covenant after the flood with human beings and animals. In fact, the biblical worldview in general seems to see human beings and animals as part of a single community, which is obviously closer to the view of modern science than to the Enlightenment-inspired view of human beings existing on one side of an unbridgeable gulf from “brute” creation. And just as we’ve come to see that most capacities once thought of as uniquely human have analogues and precedents in the animal kingdom, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find a religious sense among them. In fact, if, as Thomas Aquinas I think suggested, animals do by instinct what human beings have to freely choose to do, they may exist in a kind of pre-lapsarian state of grace and unity with God that we have divorced ourselves from.

  • The trouble with food

    Speaking of hippies, here’s a review of some recent books critiquing our industrial food system, including Paul Roberts’ disturbingly titled “The End of Food” (he also authored the equally cheery “The End of Oil”) and Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” (which I heartily recommend).

  • Hippie cons?

    Dan McCarthy writes that, along with Ron Paulites, post-industrial localist conservatives are a hopeful sign on the Right, and kindly mentions this blog as a small data point. Whether this adds up to a “movement” is anyone’s guess, but the blogosphere (ironically) has given me the opportunity to be exposed to people who take issues like localism, food, sustainability, and the environment seriously, but from a distinctly conservative point of view (often, but not always, rooted in a religious view of the world).

    I have in mind here folks like Russell Arben Fox, Patrick Deneen, John Schwenkler (who Dan also mentions), Rod Dreher, the Caelum et Terra bloggers, and the now defunct New Pantagruel webzine, among others. It remains to be seen, though, whether a) this impulse is confined to a few blogospheric eccentrics and malcontents (and I mean that with all affection!) and b) whether it’s properly seen as part of “the Right.” On the last point, I’m not terribly hopeful that American conservatism can or particularly wants to address the concerns that these folks are raising.

  • Doings among the Libertarians

    The Libertarian Party has nominated former Republican congressman (and Clinton impeachment manager) Bob Barr as its presidential candidate. Barr seems to be courting some of the same anti-war/small government conservative support as Ron Paul’s campaign (which is still going, incidentally).

    The natural conclusion to draw here is that this will hurt McCain, if anyone. Barr is the most mainstream figure the Libertarians have nominated in years and is likely to get decent and respectful media coverage. He also represents the obvious alternative for disaffected Republicans in the traditional limited government mold. (Rather than, say, Republicans who are disappointed that McCain isn’t pro-torture enough.)

  • Pray for peace

    I did not know this:

    Memorial Day is not actually a day to pray for U.S. troops who died in action but rather a day set aside by Congress to pray for peace. The 1950 Joint Resolution of Congress which created Memorial Day says: “Requesting the President to issue a proclamation designating May 30, Memorial Day, as a day for a Nation-wide prayer for peace.” (64 Stat.158).

    (Link via Gaius)

    Of course, there’s absolutely no reason not to pray for fallen soldiers and for peace!

    Also, this piece from the Post wondering why we don’t like to think about World War I is worth reading. The “Great War” doesn’t lend itself to being recounted as a morality play in quite the same way that the Civil War and World War II do. Instead, it tends to highlight the pointlessness of war.

  • Friday metal – ARSIS, “We Are the Nightmare”

    The triumphant return of Friday metal – after a hiatus of at least a few weeks, I think.

    Lately I’ve been majorly digging We Are the Nightmare, the new album from Virginia death metal outfit ARSIS. I’ve seen them referred to as “technical” death metal, which refers to the crazy-ass playing. But these guys don’t sacrifice songwriting–and even hooks–to technical wankery.

    Here’s the video for the title track:

  • Theology and piety

    Marvin echoes a call from Books & Culture‘s Jon Wilson for evangelicals (and, by extension, the rest of us) to get their eucharistic theology in order. Which is all to the good, but only half the battle, I think. Lutherans officially have a “high” eucharistic theology, but the practice at many churches hardly reinforces that. I had to learn most of my eucharistic piety from Anglicans.

  • Radical faith and creation

    As my previous post may have suggested, I’ve been dipping into the greatest hits of H. Richard Niebuhr (Reinhold’s younger brother and no mean theologian himself).

    Right now I’m finishing up his Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, which I had read as an undergrad, and I remember it making an impression on me at the time even though I was in a very different place, religiously speaking.

    Faith, for N., has two aspects, the trust aspect and the loyalty aspect. To have faith in something is to trust it as a source of our worth and well-being. But it is also to have loyalty to that thing, to ally ourselves with it and take it up as our cause.

    N. distinguishes “radical” monotheism from polytheism and henotheism. The latter term referred, originally, to the worship of one god, but a god who is recognized as one among several. This god might be a national or tribal deity, but isn’t identified with the universal lord and creator. It’s generally agreed, as far as I’m aware, that the OT scriptures exhibit a mix of henotheism and monotheism.

    But N. wants to use both polytheism and henotheism in a more extended sense to refer to the ways in which we invest our trust and loyalty. For instance, if my loyalties are divided among devotion to work, family, community, leisure, etc. without any unifying or ordering principle, then I am a functional polytheist.

    N. is more interested in modern forms of henotheism, however, both because forms of henotheism are more significant and because they often masquerade as monotheism. A classic case is when our ultimate loyalty is given to our country. Goodness as such is identified with what is good for the nation. And this is often draped in the clothing of civil religion. The cause of god is identified with the cause of our society. Henotheism always involves elevating the penultimate to the place of the ultimate.

    By contrast, radical monotheism identifies the ultimate principle of value with the ultimate principle of being. Giving our loyalty to God as understood by radical monotheism means recognizing God as the bestower of existence and of worth. It also involves making God’s cause our cause:

    For radical monotheism the value-center is neither closed society nor the principle of such a society but the principle of being itself; its reference is to no one reality among the many but to One beyond all the many, whence all the many derive their being, and by participation in which they exist. As faith, it is reliance on the source of all being for the significance of the self and of all that exists. It is the assurance that because I am, I am valued, and because you are, you are beloved, and because whatever is has being,therefore it is worthy of love. It is the confidence that whatever is, is good, because it exists as one thing among the many which all have their origin and their being in the One–the principle of being which is also the principle of value. In Him we live and move and have our being not only as existent but as worthy of existence and worthy in existence. It is not a relation to any finite, natural or supernatural, value-center that confers value on self and some of its companions in being, but it is the value relation to the One to whom all being is related. Monotheism is less than radical if it makes a distinction between the principle of being and the principle of value; so that while all being is acknowledged as absolutely dependent for existence on the One, only some beings are valued as having worth for it; or if, speaking in religious language, the Creator and the God of grace are not identified. (p. 32)

    God’s “cause” or project is nothing less than all being. N. strikes an impeccably Augustinian note when he says that, for the radical monotheist, being qua being is good. God calls all that is into existence and calls it good. And wills its flourishing.

    This is why radical monotheism qualifies all partial loyalties, at least when they threaten to displace the whole. Even putatively monotheistic faiths like Judaism and Christianity aren’t immune from henotheistic tendencies. A Christian tribalism that confines its concern to “the brethren” or an ecclesiasticism that comes close to identifying the church with God is a betrayal of the principle of radical monotheism:

    In church-centered faith the community of those who hold common beliefs, practice common rites, and submit to a common rule becomes the immediate object of trust and the cause of loyalty. The church is so relied upon as source of truth that what the church teaches is believed and to be believed because it is the church’s teaching; it is trusted as the judge of right and wrong and as the guarantor of salvation from meaninglessness and death. To have faith in God and to believe the church become one and the same thing. To be turned toward God and to be converted to the church become almost identical; the way to God is through the church. So the subtle change occurs from radical monotheism to henotheism. The community that pointed to the faithfulness of the One now points to itself as his representative, but God and church have become so identified that often the word “God” seems to mean the collective representation of the church. God is almost defined as the one who is encountered in the church or the one in whom the church believes. (p. 58 )

    The ethical implication of this radical faith, according to N., is to make the cause of all being our cause. Radical monotheism breaks down the barriers between the sacred and profane. Rather than there being “holy” places, objects, and classes of people are “secularized.” “When the principle of being is God–i.e., the object of trust and loyalty–then he alone is holy and ultimate [and] sacredness must be denied to any special being” and a “Puritan iconoclasm has ever accompanied the rise of radical faith” (p. 52). But the flip side of this iconoclasm is “the sanctification of all things”:

    Now every day is the day that the Lord has made; every nation is a holy people called by him into existence in its place and time and to his glory; every person is sacred, made in his image and likeness; every living thing, on earth, in the heavens, and in the waters is his creation and points in its existence toward him; the whole earth is filled with his glory; the infinity of space is his temple where all creation is summoned to silence before him. Here is the basis then not only of a transformed ethics, founded on the recognition that whatever is, is good, but of transformed piety or religion, founded on the realization that every being is holy. (pp. 52-3)

    One thing that struck me is how N. follows his own logic to its rather non-anthropocentric end; non-human creation has its own intrinsic non-utilitarian value:

    How difficult the monotheistic reorganization of the sense of the holy is, the history of Western organized religion makes plain. In it we encounter ever new efforts to draw some new line of division between the holy and profane. A holy church is separated from a secular world; a sacred priesthood from an unhallowed laity; a holy history of salvation from the unsanctified course of human events; the sacredness of human personality, or of life, is maintained along with the acceptance of a purely utilitiarian valuation of animal existence or nonliving being. (p.53)

    N.’s Augustinian outlook provides a foundation for a theocentric worldview. As Christopher has recently blogged, Christianity is still stuck much of the time in an anthropocentric perspective, seeing God’s concern aimed primarily at us. For N. this would just be another form of henotheism; God is being used to prop up the human project.

    However, what N. doesn’t provide (which is perhaps understandable given the brevity of this book) is a criterion for ranking the importance of the needs of different kinds of beings. Are we too embrace a flat egalitarianism where all existents have the same value? That doesn’t seem right. And yet, any hierarchical ordering threatens to bring anthropocentrism in through the back door.

    What I’m inclined to say is that ethics have to be grounded in the nature of different beings and the needs that arise from those natures, along with their relationships with other beings. What’s good for x is what x needs to flourish as the kind of being it is.

    For instance, it’s sometimes absurdly claimed that proponents of animal rights want animals to have the same rights as human beings. But a right to vote or to an education, say, isn’t going to do a pig much good. Rather, what a pig needs arises out of her nature: room to root around, be social, to nest, and nurture offspring. If we are depriving our fellow creatures of the opportunity to express their essential natures, then that’s a good sign that we’ve overstepped the bounds of what we truly need to flourish. To attend to all being, then, doesn’t require us to reduce everything to the same level, but it may require us to curtail our own desires when they threaten the essential needs of other creatures.

    The most appealing version of this vision that I’ve come across is Stephen R. L. Clark’s “cosmic democracy,” where each kind of creature is provided with sufficient space to thrive. But this presupposes a couple of things, first that the world is set up in such a way to permit this (which is, in part, a question about providence) and second, and more pressing, that human beings can learn to see themselves as one species among many.

  • Surprisingly relevant

    H. Richard Niebuhr on what Karl Barth called “culture Protestantism”:

    How often the Fundamentalist attack on so-called liberalism–by which cultural Protestantism is meant–is itself an expression of cultural loyalty, a number of Fundamentalist interests indicate. Not all though many of these antiliberals show a greater concern for conserving the cosmological and biological notions of older cultures than for the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The test of loyalty to him is found in the acceptance of old cultural ideas about the manner of creation and the earth’s destruction. More significant is the fact that the mores they associate with Christ have at least as little relation to the New Testament and as much connection with social custom as have those of their opponents. The movement that identifies obedience to Jesus Christ with the practices of prohibition, and with the maintenance of early American social organization, is a type of cultural Christianity; though the culture it seeks to conserve differs from that which its rivals honor. The same thing is true of the Marxian-Christian criticism of the “bourgeois Christianity” of democratic and individualistic liberalism. Again, Roman Catholic reaction against the Protestantism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seems often to be animated by a desire to return to the culture of the thirteenth; to the religious, economic, and political institutions and to the philosophical ideas of another civilization than ours. In so far as the contemporary attack on Culture-Protestantism is carried on in this way, it is a family quarrel between folk who are in essential agreement on the main point; namely, that Christ is the Christ of culture, and that man’s greatest task is to maintain his best culture. Nothing in the Christian movement is so similar to cultural Protestantism as is cultural Catholicism, nothing more akin to German Christianity than American Christianity, or more like a church of the middle class than a workers’ church. The terms differ, but the logic is always the same: Christ is identified with what men conceive to be their finest ideals, their noblest institutions, and their best philosophy. (Christ and Culture, pp. 102-3)

    It’s not hard to think of several contemporary parallels here: the fundamentalist yearning for a “Christian America,” the reduction of Christian distinctives to left-wing peace and justice sloganeering, or the reactionary Christian urge to defend “Western Civilization” at all costs (against immigrants, Muslims, etc.). Niebuhr would have no trouble spotting these as variants of the “Christ of culture” theme.