summer reading wrap-up

My summer reading list was a cross-section of texts I've been anticipating for quite some time. Among the many false starts (failed attempts at reading Joyce's Ulysses, Jean-Luc Marion's God Without Being, and Ernst Bloch's Atheism in Christianity: texts which will no doubt be attempted again), I actually did finish reading a few books that were on my list.

For me, summer reading projects are always more successful when others readers are involved. I was part of reading group for Dante's Divine Comedy (something I've tried and failed at reading in the past), which led to a series of posts on the Inferno, Purgatorio, and some reflections on Milton.

I finally got around to reading Violence by Slavoj Zizek. Thoroughly enjoyable, not least for passages like this: "The characterization of Hitler which would have him as a bad guy, responsible for the dead of millions but nonetheless a man with balls who pursued his ends with an iron will, is not only ethically repulsive, it is also simply wrong: no, Hitler did not "have the balls" really to change things. All his actions were fundamentally reactions: he acted so that nothing would really change; he acted to prevent the communist threat of real change. His targeting of the Jews was ultimately an act of displacement in which he avoided the real enemy -- the core of capitalist social relations themselves. Hitler staged a spectacle of revolution so that the capitalist order could survive."

I did some proofreading at my previous job and was therefore given the opportunity to read through The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation, edited by Chris K. Huebner and Tripp York.

Finally, two days ago I finished Moby Dick, which is quickly climbing the list of my favourite novels. Today, by happy coincidence, Brad Johnson over at AUFS, posted a link to a PDF download of his dissertation entitled, The Characteristic Theology of Herman Melville: Aesthetics, Politics, Duplicity.

But now I must begin reading for my courses. To work!

New Book - The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation

Winnipeg, MB – CMU PRESS is pleased to announce the publication of The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation edited by Chris K. Huebner and Tripp York. The Gift of Difference is a collection of essays in which theologians such as Craig Hovey, Harry J. Huebner, and D. Stephen Long consider the strengths and weaknesses of Radical Orthodoxy in dialogue with the Radical Reformation tradition. Writers in this volume engage topics such as ecclesiology, martyrdom, worship, oath-taking, peace and violence.

In recent years, Radical Orthodoxy has become an important and influential movement in contemporary theology and philosophy. Spearheaded by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, Radical Orthodoxy enlists the resources of classical theology to engage the current strongholds of secular and religious thought.

Proponents of Radical Orthodoxy argue that the Enlightenment project to remove reason, ethics, politics and economics from a theological framework culminates in the nihilism of postmodern discourse. They suggest that much contemporary theology is idolatrous in nature because it takes the isolation of such disciplines for granted.

In the Foreword, John Milbank writes that “[modern Mennonites] see the Church itself as the true polity and (unlike most of the magisterial Reformation) they see the possibility of ‘living beyond the law’ in terms of a new sort of social and political practice.” What might this concrete expression of Christian discipleship have to suggest to a movement like Radical Orthodoxy? What gifts does Radical Orthodoxy offer academics, ministers and laypeople from Radical Reformation tradition?

“This book explores both common and divergent themes between Anabaptist/Mennonite theologians and their counterparts in the Radical Orthodoxy movement,” says co-editor Chris K. Huebner. “For example, while they jointly reject as false the dualisms characteristic of modernity, the manner in which questions of peace and justice get framed remains an ongoing debate.”

Chris K. Huebner is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Canadian Mennonite University. He is the author of A Precarious Peace: Yoderian Explorations on Theology, Knowledge, and Identity (Herald Press, 2006) and co-editor, with Peter Dula, of The New Yoder (Wipf & Stock, 2010).

Tripp York is an Instructor of Religious Studies at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He is the author of The Purple Crown: The Politics of Martyrdom (Herald Press, 2007) and Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century (Wipf & Stock, 2009).

queer theology

Same-sex relationships are often rejected based on their biological inability to produce children and their departure from the so-called “healthy” heterosexual family. But, in fact, the Christian church has no long-term interest in the nuclear family. As Gerard Loughlin suggests in Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology, the starting point for the church is not the procreating heterosexual couple, but "the theological space of Christ’s ever extending kin, the family of Christ’s friends.”

Furthermore, Loughlin writes, “the church is right to insist on sexual difference, and to mark, enhance and celebrate this difference, while resisting those tendencies in modernity which would deny sexual difference in the name of neuter or egalitarian sex, which is always finally a male sex." A Christian understanding of difference does not reduce identity to immanent markers like gender, ethnicity or sexuality. Counter to the logic of the market, our desires cannot be fulfilled through practices of consumption and domination; nor can we find fulfillment in biological reproduction and familial life. These points of fulfillment express a modern attempt to essentialize subjectivity and fix human desire.

Recently, Loughlin edited a collection of essays entitled Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body. In his introduction, he writes:

". . . even when theology was culturally dominant it was strange, for it sought the strange; it sought to know the unknowable in Christ, the mystery it was called to seek through following Jesus. And of course it has always been in danger of losing this strangeness by pretending that it has comprehended the mystery, that it can name that which is beyond all names. Indeed — and despite its own best schooling — it has often succumbed to this danger, which it names 'idolatry.'"

". . . queer theology is also queer because it finds — like queer theory — that gay sexuality is not marginal to Christian thought and culture, but oddly central. It finds it to be the dis­avowed but necessary condition for the Christian symbolic; and not simply as that which is rejected in order to sustain its opposite, but upfront on the surface of that opposite, playing in the movement of stories and images that constitutes the Christian imaginary. The most orthodox turns out to be the queerest of all. Moreover, queer theology — like queer theory — reprises the tradition of the church in order to discover the queer interests that were always already at play in the Spirit's movement, in the lives and devotions of saints and sinners, theologians and ecclesiastics. What could be queerer than the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, St John of the Cross or Hans Urs von Balthasar?"

who's in control?

The new issue of Stylus is out, which means I've got a few things currently in print: various reviews, an interview with Del Barber and a live review of Sunset Rubdown. And be sure not to miss an interview with The Other Brothers.

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What is going on in British politics? I don't pretend know, but I can't help being interested. After seeing mention of Radical Orthodoxy on Infinite Thought, I was led to a helpful (and timely) post at An Und Fur Sich, which led me to an article by Philip Blond in the Guardian (where he touts the new "progressive" conservatism, or "red Toryism," which purports to rescue the legacy of conservative Christian intellectuals like John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and G.K. Chesterton from the violent/embarrassing conservatism of Thatcherism). Those postmodern theologians sure have a thing for paradoxically titled movements. But I should mention that this pairing isn't a new idea, but has in fact been done to death. Canada too had (and our provincial government still has) a "Progressive Conservative" party, which finally relapsed and went back to being the Conservative party. Then again, that's just coincidence. Canadian politics is another matter entirely.

Eventually I landed up at the University of Nottingham's Centre for Theology and Philosophy, where the campaign seems to be in full swing. Even John Milbank has been showing his support, claiming that the vision of Radical Orthodoxy is taking hold, and public life is being reclaimed. This is "its entry upon the political stage." The idea, that we can avoid this political dichotomy between right and left, by returning to a premodern understanding of social life, where we'll bring about "a new radical communitarian ground against the liberalism of both left and right" sounds all too familiar and altogether simplistic. What John Milbank (who appears to be spending far too much time with Zizek) wants is another Christendom (but this time more fully global - which shouldn't be to hard thanks to the headway made by global capitalism) , and everyone else should too or else they've fallen into a series of necessary lapses: "modernity is liberalism, liberalism is capitalism...and capitalism is atheism and nihilism." That was quick wasn't it?

And then, to my astonishment, Milbank continues with this statement:

The “other religions” thing in the end won’t matter. The world as a whole is rapidly Christianizing, and even in Islamic countries like Bangladesh Muslims are finding their own specific and valuably Islamic way to Christ in notably increasing numbers. As Paul Claudel realised in Le Soulier de Satin, the meaning of globalisation is a shift to the primacy of the sea, la mer tout entière, and so figurally of baptism and personal relationship, however terrestrially sundered. The evil disasters of colonialism can only be redeemed when they are seen as perverse and yet providential ways to the further proclamation of Christian universalism.

Now, I have no problem believing this came from Milbank's mouth, and maybe I'm too conditioned by neoliberalism, but I find the arrogance and presumption of this statement troubling. The sort of authority Milbank is here touting seems Constantinian in all the wrong ways. I don't doubt Blond is far off. What a sorry mess this is going to be.