Stanley Hauerwas -- US is More Secular than Britain

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 Stanley Hauerwas has an article in The Guardian this weekend where he addresses the professed atheism of Ed Millband, the leader of the Labour Party in Britain.  Some hold this up as an example of how much more secular Britain is than the US.  After all, people in the US can't imagine what it would look like to have a professed atheist running for office over here.  It's assumed that all of our leaders must be Christian or we'll end up going to hell in a handbasket. 

But, is that really true?  Because England has a atheist party leader does that make them more secular?  Perhaps a lot of that depends on how we view the faith one finds in the US.

Here's what Stanley Hauerwas has to say:

I am not convinced that the US is more religious than Britain. Even if more people go to church in America, I think the US is a much more secular country than Britain. In Britain, when someone says they do not believe in God, they stop going to church. In the US, many who may have doubts about Christian orthodoxy may continue to go to church. They do so because they assume that a vague god vaguely prayed to is the god that is needed to support family and nation.

Americans do not have to believe in God, because they believe that it is a good thing simply to believe: all they need is a general belief in belief.

And, I would argue, for our leaders, the more vague their belief, the better...

Why Blog?

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I'm amazed at the amount of things I've written about and the number of items (some of them more random than others) that I've posted over the last several months.  I'm enjoying this process and am trying to figure out what it is that I'm doing here.  With so many things on my to-do lists, what is the purpose of trying to take some time each day to make sure something goes up on this blog...something that I want to say to the church?  Some of it's personal.  Some of it impersonal.  Some I'm not so sure about.

And, frankly, there are so many other posts that sit as "drafts" in my head.  There are so many things that I've read and that have spoken to me in a particular way and I think they are worth sharing.  But there's no time for everything.

Why?

I confess to being no Stanley Hauerwas, ethicist at Duke Divinity School.   But, I was greatly influenced by him and his thought during those wonderfully rewarding years at seminary.  I found the following quotes of his over at Reclaiming the Mission, a blog by David Fitch.  Perhaps these get at some of the things that are going on in me through this blog...

“Writing is hard and difficult work because to write is to think. I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it. The expression is the idea. So I write because writing is the only way I know how to think.” 

“I write, moreover, because I have something to say.  That I have something to say is not a personal achievement. I have something to say because I am a Christian." 

I want to say that these ring true for myself as I reflect upon the meaning of what's taking place here.  Yet, I also want to say that I struggle with making sure this I don't think of this endeavor as more or less important than it really is.

I understand that this is a season in my life.  I don't have plans to have a blog around for the next ten years and I'm darned sure I'm going to find times that I can't be near this faithful in my updates.
But, for now this is what I'm doing.

Stanley Hauerwas, Greed, And Me

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Anyone who has been reading any of this stuff knows that, with Shane Claiborne, and thinking missionionally, and talks of immigration and politics, a lot of my own personal conviction has centered on how we are called to be faithful with our finances.  We live in a world that tells us that we can't have enough and I'm still very moved by Compassion International's comment that the opposite of poor is not rich but enough.

I can't say I've come up with a lot of answers or what this all means for my life, but I'm asking the questions.  I was very happy to find the following comments from Stanley Hauerwas, Christian ethicist, over on Richard Hall's blog, Connexions.  The comments are from Hauerwas' article, "Can Greed Be Good?" at the ABC Religion and Ethics Site -- a site I'll have to look around a bit more.

Greed presumes and perpetuates a world of scarcity and want - a world in which there is never “enough.” But a world shaped by scarcity is a world that cannot trust that God has given all that we need.

Greed, in other words, prohibits faith. But the inverse is also true. For it is in the Christian celebration of the Eucharist that we have the prismatic act that makes possible our recognition that God has given us everything we need.

The Eucharist not only is the proclamation of abundance, but it is the enactment of abundance. In the Eucharist we discover that we cannot use Christ up. In the Eucharist we discover that the more the body and blood of Christ is shared, the more there is to be shared.

The Eucharist, therefore, is the way the Christian Church learns to understand why generosity rather than greed can and must shape our economic relations.

As I've talked of the Eucharist, I have always said that it has bearings on economic justice...and how it is that we can share, intimately, in the body and blood of Jesus and then not share when it comes to things as "trivial" as money and goods.   I like Hauerwas' notion that "Greed...prohibits faith."  If one believes that we operate from a position of "scarcity" can one ever really believe that we have a God that gives us all that we need?

My problem with all of this is that I see myself operating from a perspective of "scarcity" in my own life...with my money, my goods, my belongings.  Then how can I fully trust in our God to provide for me.

Social Justice and Moral Language (with Glenn Beck & Stanley Hauerwas)

(Just a note from me:  I confess that this post has a little more theological and philosophical depth than I'm used to and I might be in over my congested head.  After finishing it, I feel a great need to post a funny music video or something.)


I'm sure there are two persons out there who are less likely to appear together in a blog post...but I can't think of them right now.

On one side, we have Glenn Beck -- conservative news show host, a pundit, tea party fan, and Fox News poster boy.  On the other side we have Stanley Hauerwas -- potty-mouthed Christian ethicist known for some politically explosive commentary which doesn't really fit in with conservatives (or liberals for that matter).  I've watched Beck on TV and I've listened to Hauerwas in ethics class.  I can't see them sitting down for one of Obama's "beer summits."

Regardless, John Schmalzbauer, a sociologist of religion over at Missouri State University brings the two of them together in an article that caught my attention and I've been sitting on it for a while.  It appears in the Duke Divinity Call and Response blog on Faith and Leadership.  The article, itself, is full of links to his references and I encourage you to check it out. 

The article was written shortly after Glenn Beck famously told his radio show listeners to run from those churches who preach "social justice."  ABC News has a pretty good summary (you can find lots of summaries out there):

On his radio and television shows, Beck suggested any church promoting "social justice" or "economic justice" merely was using code words for Nazism and communism.

"I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site," he said. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ... Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they're going to Jeremiah Wright's church, yes!

"If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish," he said. "Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place."

Later, Beck held up a picture of a swastika and one of a hammer and sickle, declaring again that "social justice" has the same philosophy as the Nazis and communists and that the phrase is a code word for both.

Now, when this first came out, I, along with many other Mainline Protestants or Catholics were taken aback....because we're part of churches that preach "social justice."  We use that terminology.  In fact, as Girdwood Chapel strives to fulfill its mission of "Love God. Love Others. Change the World." we strive to act with justice.  And a lot of Scripture seems to come to our defense here....not least of all Micah 6:8: "He has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the LORD require of you?   To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

However, Schmalzbauer claims that both of these figures, Beck and Hauerwas, can help us be more cautious about how we use the words "Social Justice" in our churches.  Years ago, in his book After Christendom, Hauerwas posits that the notion of justice, itself, is a bad idea because we've let the world define that word for us.  The church shouldn't be in the business of making the world more just.  The church should be in the business of being the church and keeping the world, well, the world.  In other words, the lines between church and world have gotten so muddy that we really need to focus on reclaiming who it is that we are.  Yet, in still OTHER words, when we talk of "justice" we need to be careful what it is that we're talking about because we may just be pushing the world's agenda, doing th world's work.

And, perhaps, Glenn Beck is really opposed to a particular understanding of justice...an understanding that presupposes a liberal church relying upon a government to do their charity work.  He's not opposed to helping people.   He's opposed to "social justice" if it means the government co-opting the church's role in society.

I'll let Schmalzbauer close us out here with what I think are his strongest points:

Concerning Hauerwas and his understanding of Justice:

Unlike Mr. Beck, Hauerwas thinks that “freedom” and “Christian America" are bad ideas. Like his interrogation of the J-word, his critique of these notions is rooted in the conviction that the Enlightenment assumptions of the modern state have corrupted Christian thinking. Like the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, he has challenged the provenance of such taken-for-granted concepts, questioning the influence of Kantian philosophy on contemporary ideas of justice. From this perspective, the key questions are, “Whose justice? Which rationality?” 

A little history on the use of the phrase across the political and social spectrum:

.

Since the nineteenth-century, social justice has meant different things to different people. Coined by the Italian Jesuit Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, it has been embraced by such diverse figures as Pope John  XIII, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Mother Teresa.  On occasion, it has been co-opted by bigots, including Father Charles E. Coughlin, a notorious anti-Semite. 

And a his final, final word:

As religious leaders rise to defend social justice, they should take care to explain what they mean.

Now I'm left to ponder what I mean when I use the phrase "social justice."  How can it all be a matter of the church just being the church, trying to follow in the example of Jesus?  One way to sneak around this, I think, is to truly focus energy on the local issues, that which the church can affect with their hands and feet.  In other words, making sure things such as the Health Bill famously passed this year is secondary to the work of the local church dealing with the plight of the poor and sick in their own neighborhoods.

Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the House, said "All politics is local."  And while I wouldn't want to downplay the work of the church with struggling persons across the world, perhaps "All religion is local" as well.  Or, maybe just most of us.

Watership Down: A Lesson in Storytelling

I have announced that we'll be starting a new sermon series next week on the parables and we're calling it, "The Stories Jesus Told."  I don't know many preachers who don't like the parables.  We all, I think, have our favorites.  My favorite is "The Parable of the Prodigal Son" from Luke.  It always has been.  I see myself in it as the younger son and the older son, and sometimes like the Father.  I think it's pretty much the Gospel in Parable form.

But, more than just liking the parables, part of the education I received had a focus on the narrative nature of our faith.  Stories define us.  They shape us.  They provide context.  Indeed, they form the basis of our communities.  We are who we are because we share certain stories about each other and about ourselves as a group. Think of how stories defined your own family...perhaps the stories that were told when you gathered for Thanksgiving dinner or a family wedding.  They are what we talk about and laugh about and tell over and over and over again.  And if we don't have those stories?  Well, then we just have awkward silences.

And so, for us Christians, the stories we tell define us.  They shape our ministries and provide a context for our discussions.

If we forget the stories, then, in a real sense, we forget who we are.

When thinking about all of this, I was reminded of an essay I read of Stanley Hauerwas way back when I was in undergraduate school.  Hauerwas is Christian theologian and ethicist.  And I took a class under him when I was in seminary at Duke.  Hauerwas wrote "A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down" back in 1981.  I must have read it about 1990 while I was in undergraduate school.  It's a good read.  And from this we get a clearer understanding of the importance of narrative in our communities.  If we forget to tell the stories or if we forget to take them seriously then we run the risk of losing our identities.


Donna Farley of A Spell for Refreshment of the Spirit has a nice summary of this work...all the way down to three paragraphs long.  The important things to know is that Hazel is our hero as he leads a band of rabbits around.  Hazel and the others have left their warren out of fear for their lives and are left to wander.  They meet other warrens, particularly "Cowslip's Warren" that have become highly individualized and have forgotten the stories that are meant to shape them into followers of El-ahrairah.

Stories of the rabbit hero El-ahrairah are embedded in the main narrative, each one recounted at a time when the rabbits need to be buoyed up by the particular lesson of a particular story. These tales are by turns inspiring, thrilling, humorous, or frightening; and they model such virtues as cleverness, courage, and teamwork.
In contrast to the love of Story shown by the band of rabbits led by Hazel, another group of rabbits in the story have forgotten, downplayed and despised the traditional stories, instead steeping themselves in depressing modernist poetry. This rabbit warren, know as Cowslip’s warren, is living in self-deceit. They train themselves to accept death—because death is the price they pay for comfort. Their warren is surrounded by snares set by the farmer who feeds them and keeps off the foxes. Whenever one of their number goes missing, they pretend to forget that rabbit’s existence.
It is a chilling portrait. But the rabbits of Hazel’s group are by contrast the kind of characters the reader finds himself wanting to emulate. Inspired by the daring and cunning of El-ahrairah and his faithful helper Rabscuttle, Hazel’s rabbits dare to make a journey to find a new home. They learn new skills, make friends of other rabbits and even non-rabbits, and hold together against the attack of the martial warren of Efrafa. When the story of Watership Down is over and the warren at peace, Hazel and his friends have become part of the story tradition that is being learned by new generations of rabbits. What a thing to aspire to—to be part of the great Story of life in such a way that we, even we ourselves, can become the heroes of our children and grandchildren!

So, what does this have to do with our Parables?  Everything!  The Parables of Jesus (along with the rest of the Bible) is, indeed, truth.  But it is truth in story-form and was meant to be shared and passed on to our children and our children's children so that they can continue to define us.   For, if we fail to do this, we may end up like the poor rabbits at Cowslip's warren, lost and story-less.

(This analogy takes on added weight in an environment where our native brothers and sisters have lost many of their stories over the last 70 years as "white" culture has taken over.  How important are the stories of our Alaskan Natives?)

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