My sources tell me these guys have a new album coming out this year. This one’s from the second-newest one, “Drawing Circles.”
Author: Lee M.
-
The things you find by the side of the road
In my neighborhood people frequently leave boxes of stuff they don’t want out on the sidewalk for any passerby to take, often including books. This morning I passed by such a box and snatched up what look like three pretty good finds: Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit by Elizabeth Johnson; The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould; and A Whale for the Killing by Canadian naturalist and activist Farley Mowat. (I knew nothing about Mowat prior to today; I grabbed the book based solely on the cover and description.)
-
Doing without Adam and Eve
One argument you sometimes hear for the necessity of a “historical” fall and a “historical” Adam and Eve goes like this: if there was no historical first couple and fall into sin, then we are in no need of a savior and therefore the entire gospel loses its raison d’etre.
This seems odd to me. That human beings need liberation from sin, guilt, anxiety, the threat of meaninglessness, the fear of death, and other forces that oppress and harass us–in short, our need for salvation in its most comprehensive sense–isn’t something we infer from the story of the Fall. It’s an evident fact about the world, one that we need only to look around us to discover.
I see the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall as a vivid portrait of the human condition: our alienation from God, from each other, and from the world in which we live. This is why “Adam” is such a potent symbol in Paul’s theology: it encapsulates everything that’s wrong with us–everything that God in Christ comes to save us from. (Whether or not Paul himself thought of Adam as a historical person, it seems undeniable to me that “Adam” still functions in a more-than-historical way in Paul’s theology.) How we got the way we are is a distinct issue from that we are the way we are.
I’m not saying anything here that others–like Reinhold Niebuhr–haven’t said better. And skepticism about the strictly factual-historical nature of the Genesis creation stories isn’t the only reason for rejecting this account of the Fall. Before Darwinism was even on the scene, a number of people had come to question the traditional interpretation. The idea that Adam’s sin and guilt was a quasi-physical substance that could be transmitted to all his descendents, or alternatively, that his guilt was somehow imputed to the rest of humanity down through the ages, had come to seem metaphysically fishy or morally objectionable. And it had consequences that even those committed to the traditional view found troubling, such as that unbaptized infants would be damned. This didn’t stop people from believing in the need for salvation though.
By insisting on a historical Adam and Eve (even a semi-“demythologized” version), Christians risk backing themselves into the corner of denying well-established findings of biological science and preaching a gospel that many people will find unintelligible.
-
Varieties of “humane”
From Grist, a run-down of the various schemes to label meat and other animal products as “humane” or its equivalent. Some key points:
– There are no legally enforced definitions of “humane” (the same holds for “all-natural,” “sustainable,” “cage-free,” etc.); only products labeled “organic” are legally required to meet certain standards.
– There are both industry-produced and independent schemes for determining if producers meet certain standards. Industry-led programs typically have no third-party audits to ensure compliance.
– Even the independent third-party standards (e.g., Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane) vary widely in the specific requirements they make. For instance, in the case of laying hens, whether access to outdoor space is required or debeaking is prohibited.
At times, I wonder if all this futzing around with labeling schemes is merely tinkering with the machinery of death (to borrow a phrase from Supreme Court justice Harry A. Blackmun) and whether the only sensible policy is strict vegetarianism. On the other hand, I’m as guilty as anyone: I buy “cage-free” eggs and feel better about myself, even though I really have no idea how the birds are treated. Either way, there are good reasons to be concerned with what the article calls “humane-washing” and, if we’re concerned about animal well-being, to make sure that these kinds of labeling programs have teeth.
-
Bultmann, modernity, mythology, and Pentecostalism
Here’s an interesting piece from sociologist of religion and lay theologian (I believe he’s Lutheran) Peter Berger on the relevance of Rudolf Bultmann for today. Berger notes that Bultmann was right that the worldview of the New Testament is thoroughly “mythological” in that it portrays a world suffused with and permeated by supernatural forces (God, angels, demons, etc.); moreover, this worldview is starkly at odds with the semi-official worldview of modernity, which posits a “closed” universe that operates entirely according to its own immanent causal laws.
Bultmann was wrong, however, in thinking that “modern” people couldn’t also maintain a mythological (or selectively mythological) worldview or that modernity necessarily requires Christians to abandon supernaturalism in favor of a “demythologized” gospel. As exhibit A, Berger points to the growing global pentecostal movement, for which immediate experiences of the spiritual realm are a living reality, but which is also increasingly sophisticated, both technologically and intellectually. Christianity’s center of gravity is largely shifting toward this more charismatic brand of faith and away from those traditions that have made some kind of truce with the worldview of modernity (e.g., liberal Protestantism). As these two forms of Christianity come face-to-face (Berger points out that churches in the “two-thirds” world are now sending missionaries to “re-evangelize” Europe and North America), “Bultmann can be seen again as posing a suddenly urgent question: Is the mythological worldview of the New Testament a necessary ingredient of the Christian faith?”
I always say that liberal, or mainline, Protestantism has a problem with the supernatural (or the transcendent, the numinous, whatever term you’d prefer). This is partly due to its accommodation to the intellectual culture of modernity, as Berger suggests, and partly a result of these churches’ emphasis on social activism and reform. The fruits of this, however, have often been spiritually desiccated communities that add little of distinction to the secular liberal agenda. Under those circumstances, it’s not always clear why one would join a church rather than, say, the ACLU or MoveOn. Sometimes social activism has been joined with a kind of individualistic, therapeutic spirituality, but one that too often lacks the orientation toward the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that, as Rudolf Otto maintained, is the beating heart of religion. Plus, as many theologians and philosophers have pointed out, the closed universe no longer enjoys quite the support from science that we once thought.
I don’t think we can–or should–go back to a premodern worldview. Or that we need to mimic the spirituality of Pentecostalism (though we could certainly stand to learn from pentecostal Christians). But I do think that mainline churches need to facilitate genuine encounters with the Mystery at the heart of our faith. We also need ways of articulating that Mystery intellectually that make sense with what science shows us about the world, but without embracing a reductionist understanding of reality.
-
Where’s the Left? (continued)
Here’s a much better-informed and thorough take on the “Where’s the left?” question I posted about here from a labor lawyer and blogger for the site Cogitamus.
-
“I was writing some songs that had fake Peter Buck riffs”
I thought this was funny, from the AV Club’s interview with Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy:
AVC: How did you meet Peter Buck [of R.E.M.] and decide to collaborate?
CM: He’s kind of a Pacific Northwesterner these days. I think he splits his time between Seattle and Portland. He’s in The Minus 5 with Scott McCaughey, who’s a local man about town who we rub elbows with. And he’s in Robyn Hitchcock’s band, The Venus 3, and they came out and did some dates with us on the Hazards Of Love tour. So we’ve crossed paths quite a bit. And each time we hang out with him, I don’t stop expressing my undying love for his guitar-playing. I mentioned that I was writing some songs that had fake Peter Buck riffs, and I thought maybe he would think it was funny to come and play them. And he did, and he was very kind.Um yeah:
Can you say “The One I Love”?
Hey, if you’re going to ape someone, you could do far worse than R.E.M.
(And yes, that’s Gillian Welch doing backing vocals.)
The album is really good, IMO.
-
Ralph Nader and Ron Paul team up?
Interesting interview with the progressive firebrand and the libertarian congressman (on Fox of all places), talking about the prospects for a left-right coalition:
A Thinking Reed 