Author: Lee M.

Thanks to the Minuteman Library Network, I was able to get my hands on a copy of Bill Kauffman’s new book Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals. A sequel of sorts to his earlier work America First!, Look Homeward America is not so much a sustained political argument but a series of profiles of Kauffman’s beloved reactionary radicals: those independent types who dissent from the bipartisan consesus on corporate capitalism, big government, and globalist interventionism. To Kauffman, people like Dorothy Day, Wendell Berry, and Grant Wood represent the more authentic America: an America of quirky regionalists, agrarian pacifists, hippie militia members, and others who defy easy categorization as Left or Right.

LHA has been compared to Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons, which is apt in some ways. Both books make the case for a certain kind of localist traditionalism that seems endangered in an age of globalization and full spectrum dominance. But the thing I appreciate about Kauffman’s book is his willingness to tackle head on what he sees as a, if not the, main cause of our woes: the American empire. Kauffman is the American equivalent of a Little Englander; because he loves America he doesn’t want to see her dropping bombs on Baghdad or stationing troops on the Korean penninsula. To people who equate patriotism with supporting whatever war our leaders have decided to wage this will seem incomprehensible, but Kauffman wants to show that anti-militarism and suspicion of foreign wars is as American as apple pie.

Kauffman is a romantic and hardly advocates much of anything resembling a practical political program. His political ethos is a kind of leave-us-alone populism, seeing the common people, the real Americans, being constantly dragooned into pointless foreign wars and dead-end corporate jobs by the elite. I suspect he’d generally be in favor of a kind of devolution of power to the regional and local levels and has even written sympathetically about secession movements. His radicals are reactionary because they are attached to a particular place, people, and culture. And because of this particularity they cherish others’ particularity rather than being eager to spread their way of life via NATO or the IMF.

Now, as someone who has lived in four different states in the last six years, I’m not exactly in a position to commend localism and rootedness. And I do think Kauffman could have used a little more Benjamin Constant in his thinking; the tight-knit small town community can be stultifying and suffocating too. But Kauffman writes so lovingly about his eccentric radicals that it’s pretty hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasims. And for anyone who thinks patriotism might not only permit, but require, questioning preventive wars and the “unitary executive,” Kauffman has written a bracing reminder that America is larger (and more interesting) than the official specturm of opinion that runs from the Bushes to the Clintons might lead you to think.

I just finished Stephen Finlan’s book Problems with Atonement, a radical critique of traditional accounts of how the cross of Jesus saves us. I mean “radical” in the strict sense; Finlan, rather than trying to provide an atonement theory acceptable to moderns (or postmoderns), seeks to pull it up by the roots.

In Finlan’s account, the basic problem with almost all versions of atonement theory is that they picture salvation as a transaction wherein God needs to be bought off, or satisfied, before he can forgive sins and save people. But this, according to Finlan, is not only morally troubling but seems inconsistent with the kind of God preached by Jesus who freely forgives those who repent and wants to give all good things to his children.

The book includes two very informative chapters reviewing the rituals of sacrifice and atonement in the OT (helpfully distinguishing between sacrifice and scapegoat-type rituals) and discussing the atonement metaphors used by Paul. One problem with the history of atonement doctrines, according to Finlan, is that Paul heaps a number of different metaphors on top of one another in order to express something of the mystery of salvation (legal, penal, sacrificial, cultic, etc.), but later theologians have frequently taken one or more of these metaphors and used it as a literal account of how we are saved.

But Paul himself is not off the hook either. In Finlan’s view, Paul was not entirely consistent in talking about salvation. On the one hand, he says that salvation comes from God’s love and generosity; God love us, even though we’re sinners, and wants to reconcile us to himself. On the other hand, many of Paul’s atonement metaphors imply that the Father needs to be persuaded to be merciful to us and that Jesus’ death on the cross is the means of that persuasion. So it’s understandable that later theologians got mixed signals from Paul and constructed theories about a wrathful God being appeased by the innocent blood of his Son.

Fortunately, Finlan says, atonement can be jettisoned without losing anything essential to Christianity. Atonement is what he calls a “secondary doctrine,” while the primary and distinguishing doctrine of Christianity is incarnation. Finlan favors the Eastern and patristic notion of theosis as a better account of how God saves us through the incarnation of his Son. By becoming human, God enables us to participate in the divine life. Or, in Athanasius’ immortal formulation, “the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”

Promising as this sounds, Finlan unfortunately doesn’t spend much time spelling out how this is supposed to work. Some formulations of theosis seem to rely on the idea of a substantial human nature (in the manner of a Platonic form) which is “repaired” by the Incarnation. But this is surely a problematic notion for a variety of reasons. Are we then to think of theosis as imitation with Christ as our exemplar? This may be easier to comprehend, but doesn’t seem to do full justice to the unity and participation in Christ that Christians are said to enjoy. It seems a fuller account of our participation in Christ is needed to make sense of any idea of theosis. (Maybe pneumatology and a doctrine of the sacraments could help here?)

That said, this is a stimulating book. I like how Finlan cuts to the heart of what he sees as the problem – a transactional idea of salvation, which does, at least as frequently understood, seem to conflict with the idea of a God of abundant grace. And Finlan’s emphasis on theosis is a salutary reminder that salvation involves a change in us, freeing us from the power of sin, not just its consequences, as in some penal theories. Some readers may feel that some figures are rather cursorily dealt with (the chapters on the OT and Paul are outstanding, but the coverage of atonement theory after Paul doesn’t engage with figures like Anselm as much as some might like), but Finlan’s targeting of transactionalism and blood sacrifice is not simply a straw man argument.

Well worth reading.

The election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church continues to reverberate. Taken not only as a ratification of women priests and bishops, but as a ratification of the election of V. Gene Robinson, an openly non-celibate gay man, to the episcopacy, the election of Bishop Schori seems to have pushed the Anglican Communion to the tipping point.

Conservative parishes and dioceses in the U.S. are seeking “alternative oversight” from conservative African bishops, and liberal clergy in England are seeking oversight from liberal bishops in America.

And now, the Nigerian Anglican church, headed by Archbishop Peter Akinola, is drawing up plans for an alternative conference to the planned 2008 Lambeth Conference, (the meeting of the heads of the various national churches in the Anglican communion which represents the most authoritative organ of the communion as I understand it) to be organized and led by the churches of the Global South. This looks for all the world like an attempt to sideline the churches of the US, Canada, and England and to claim the Anglican “brand” for the churches of the Global South.

Is this the way all our denominations are going to go? A realignment along ideological, rather than national, lines?

Superman Returns. An enjoyable couple hours of escapism. I agree with some critics that it crosses the line in places between paying homage to the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner films and slavishly imitating them (right down to lifting dialogue and certain iconic scenes). Brandon Routh is eerily reminiscient of Christopher Reeve. Kate Bosworth is pretty forgettable as Lois Lane, but Kevin Spacey perfectly walks the line between sinister and crazy with his Lex Luthor. Some great action sequences and a lot of heart. Maybe a little too much angstiness from Superman, plus some pretty heavy-handed religious imagery, but there is a satisfying character arc involving Supes overcoming his alienation and lonliness to a certain degree. Also, I think the character of Clark Kent gets short shrift and his relationship with Lois is left almost completely undeveloped. But you can’t have everything and it was about a half hour too long already. But pretty good for all that.

Munich. Saw this on DVD and liked it a lot more than I expected to. Speilberg was criticized for falling into knee-jerk pacifism or the dread “moral equivalence” in making this movie, but I don’t think that’s right. There’s actually very little about the question of the respective merits of the Israeli and Palestinian positions. Except for a couple of scenes the viewer is pretty much encouraged throughout to identify with the Israeli Mossad agents tracking down those they believe were responsible for the kidnapping and ultimately the deaths of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. What it’s really about is the difference between revenge and self-defense and how far you can go in protecting yourself and those you love without compromising your soul. Oh, and also governments lie. But it also works just on the level of an action thriller. Pretty graphic violence though.

We went back to the Church of the Advent yesterday. Here is the sermon the rector preached. I thought it was a good one.

I’ve been reading Thomas P. Rausch’s introduction to Christology called Who Is Jesus? and enjoying it quite a bit. One of the points he emphasizes is the importance of keeping the historical Jesus in view when doing Christology. Any Christology worth its salt has to be connected to and rooted in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and this entails using (albeit not uncritically) what we can learn from historical research into who Jesus was.

Faith is not based on history, Rausch says. It’s based on an encounter with the living Christ who is the Lord of the Church. To that extent he is in full agreement with those like Luke Timothy Johnson who argue that the “real Jesus” is emphatically not the Jesus of historical reconstructions. And Rausch also agrees in calling into question the Enlightenement assumptions of many historians such as the rejection of the supernatural or treating religion as epiphenomenal on social or economic strutures and forces.

But, he says, we can’t dispense with the historical Jesus. If the Christ of faith is not continuous with the Jesus of history, then what we end up with is a “mythological or ideological construction” of some sort. Fundamentalists and biblical literalists do this by taking refuge in a theory of biblical inerrancy which supposedly guarantees that the words put in Jesus’ mouth in the gospels are identified with the very words he spoke when he was on earth, thus closing the gap between the Jesus of history and the Jesus as presented in the gospels. A more sophisticated version of this strategy is found in what we might call a “postmodern” or “cultural-linguistic” turn. The value of the gospels is located in narrating an identity which the church enters into and questions of historical veracity are, or can seem to be, bracketed or indefinitely deferred.

Rausch instead argues for what he calls a “dialectical Christology,” one which moves between two poles: the Church’s confession of Jesus as risen lord and savior as we find it in the NT, the Creeds, the tradition, and the experience of countless Christian people on the one hand, and, on the other, a firm grounding in “the earthly Jesus, the Jesus made accessible through historical research” (p. 8). This doesn’t mean that Christians should uncritically accept whatever secular scholars claim to have discovered (Rausch is quite critical for instance of the researchers associated with the Jesus Seminar), but that they have to take it seriously.

I think a lot of people are troubled by the idea that Christianity might, in principle, be falsifiable if certain historical facts turned out to be otherwise than we thought them to be. Hence the various attempts to reduce Christianity to a set of “eternal truths” that don’t depend on contingent historical facts or to in some other way put it beyond the reach of historical criticism. But isn’t the dependence on history just another aspect of the scandal of particularity that has dogged Christianity pretty much from the beginning? Presumably God was aware of the risk involved in revealing himself in the midst of human history in all its messy particularity, but still thought it was worth it.

For Christians it matters whether or not the man Jesus of Nazareth is substantially the same person as presented in the gospels. The Church has never been content with a merely mythological Christ-figure, though some forms of theology and devotion may have suggested it at times. If we’re going to be true to the Chalcedonian affirmation that Jesus is true God and true man, we can’t be indifferent to the particularities of the man he was (and is).

So says this guy. I do have to say that the Supremes’ ruling from the other day is one of the more heartening political events of recent memory.

P.S. Duke University law prof Walter Dellinger calls it “the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.”

American V: A Hundred Highways, the posthumous Johnny Cash album coming out on Tuesday is being streamed here (via Unqualified Offerings).

Also, attentive readers may have noticed that occasional contributor (and I do mean occasional) Abby has been removed from the sidebar. As a newly minted federal employee she is supposed to refrain from appearing to endorse political candidates and whatnot. Not that VI has a very long record of saying positive things about politicians. It’s a matter of the integrity of the judicial system (such as it is).

And speaking of the record of this humble blog, today is its second anniversary! When I started this it was mainly to organize my own thoughts about various things. I didn’t expect to interact with such smart and cool people as my co-bloggers and commenters, so it’s been a real pleasure, folks.

Slate Magazine has been running some interesting articles on religion and politics this week. On Monday Martin Edlund wrote about tensions on the religious left, contrasting the eccentric spiritual progressivism of Rabbi Michael Lerner witht the more moderate evangelicalism of Jim Wallis.

On Tuesday Russell Cobb reviewed Michelle Goldberg’s tract on impending theocracy in America and pointed out that the “religious right” is not nearly as monolithic nor as steeped in “Christian reconstructionism” as Goldberg would have it. Though he does concede that Goldberg’s “Christian nationalism” is a useful concept for understanding the union of conservative evangelicalism and ultra-patriotism that characterizes many members of the Christian right.

And yesterday there was a piece by John Dickerson on signs of a fallout between conservative Christians and the GOP. The Bush presidence may, Dickerson thinks, have been a high water mark for the influence (or perceived influence) of conservative evangelicals in the GOP. Future potential party leaders like John McCain or Mitt Romney are unlikely to have the same kind of relationship with the world of conservative evangelicalism that Bush has. Dickerson also points to signs of a certain disenchantment with electoral politics on the part of many Christian conservatives who are turning to a more apolitical style of social activism in the mold of Rick Warren’s efforts to fight AIDS in Africa.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

Read more here.

UPDATE (6/30): See here for a very helpful analysis of the meaning of this decision in the context of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. The upshot is that because Congress approved the UCMJ and it uses the Geneva Conventions as one of the standards for the treatment of detainees the President cannot simply disregard those standards.

See also the discussion here (via Elfin Ethicist), which emphasizes the implications of this decision for the humane treatment of prisoners.