I can't remember the reference right now . But I could find it. I was doing some stuff on ethics which I had to teach endlessly in Australia! But there was some interesting papers on the naturalness of ethical, or 'other centred' well-meaning behaviour in humans towards others. The thesis was that humans were 'hardwired' to be ethical, that is, naturally empathic to others and to the natural world.
But perhaps this inbuilt tendency has been corrupted somehow. There might be some reasons for this.
My thinking was that my experience of the world roughly agreed with this interesting idea of natural empathy. That is when I lived in small country towns or knew the people who lived around me. But it is obvious that even if true, the sense of empathy does seem to fail even if it is an inbuilt genetic trait of humans. I always wondered if it the problem of the loss of empathy was due to the loss of of the small community living on the same patch of earth, and all depending on it together, for life itself. Relying on each other to survive. Solidarity with others and the group was necessary for survival. And this was the way people lived since forever, until just a thousand or so years ago. So perhaps we are genetically wired for just such a low key existence, close to others and the earth.
It is very easy not to be ethical if you are so powerful that no-one can touch you. Not governments, not anybody. That seems to be the position of the capitalist oligarchy that we live in today. The mega rich don't need to depend on others. And they behave accordingly. Power. And wealth as power, determine how they can live, if so inclined. There are no consequences for their actions. The results have been a bit disastrous. For the natural world and for people, i.e., the ordinary people.
And then there is the modernist philosophy of 'Libertarianism', of just 'me myself'. It fits capitalism perfectly. There is no longer any felt obligation to the 'other' despite how wretched the 'other' lives. This philosophy of radical individualism that developed alongside the rise of capitalism in the rapidly industrialising West is a disastrous conception of how to live with others.
Having to depend on a job money and that provides money for survival, is also a factor. It gives you the capacity to not to have to be dependent on others or see the natural world as important. This can be seen when living in a big city. It can reduce the sense of community and empathy for those strange familiar people who live around you but who you don't know. It is the modern experience of living. Working in a job, sitting all day in front of a computer working long hours that leave you with little time to be who you really are. All these factors alienate oneself from community, even from one's intimate family and ultimately oneself.
Maybe living with others in a small part of the world we share is the most fruitful context of moral behaviour. The way that Christ lived, as you have written, seems to me to be exactly how we should live, ideally. Small and local, with obligations to the others around us, and being able to live without having to work just for money, rather than produce from the land around us.
You say of MacIntyre that his lodestone was Aristotle, but might I mention that he found his final space in Roman Catholicism, ie the Thomist fusion of faith with the Aristotelean inheritance? One other thing, within the tradition, the Fall is understood to be healed by Christ, not just once and for all on the cross but also repeatedly through the liturgy, which takes on the role of healing creation (both symbolically and truly) that was previously carried out through Temple Ritual - see the work of Margaret Barker for more detail. Or, in my preferred summary: the eucharist heals the world. Looking forward to more instalments.
I agree, which is why to me it was so symbolic of the order we now live in that even here in nominally Catholic Ireland, the Eucharist was banned by the state for a year, with few murmurs. We are back to underground churches. But perhaps that's how it should be.
That's very interesting. I didnt know Macintyre became Catholic. That explains the tension I seemed to see in his book, which felt like it was reaching towards Christ but couldn't quite justify it to other philosophers, maybe ... perhaps Aristotle was a staging post.
I appreciate the point about the Eucharist. And I have now read your book! I will be emailing.
ooh! you've joined an exclusive club (grin). MacIntyre used AV and the subsequent two books in the trilogy (Whose Justice... and 3 Rival Versions...) to work out the nature of a tradition, and in doing so came to see that the things that he most valued were best expressed and cultivated through the Thomist tradition.
ha! the self-understanding of the Church of England is that it is the catholic church in England (Rowan said that, and I think it's true). I'm definitely a Thomist, but no Christian church is infallible since the great schism of 1054...
Glad we are setting off with MacIntyre and After Virtue. I valued his review of Jane Austen and Christian values: ' the telos of the human life implicit in its everday form'. Incidentally, he said his conversion to Catholicism occurred in his fifties as a "result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity." smile
Excellent post. I am in wholehearted agreement. Thank you.
I am currently reading Lewis Mumford's two-volume "The Myth of the Machine". I doubt Mumford was a Christian, but what he has to say is highly congruent with all that is said here. Here are two quotes to give some sense of his position (from the late '60s and early '70s):
"The beleaguered– even 'obsolete'–individual would be entirely de-skilled, reduced to a passive, inert, 'trivial accessory to the machine.' Technical surveillance and limitless data-collection—'an all-seeing eye' (Panopticon)—would monitor every 'individual on the planet. Ultimately, the totalitarian technocracy, centralizing and augmenting its 'power-complex,' ignoring the real needs and values of human life, might produce a world 'fit only for machines to live in'"
and, perhaps more hopefully:
"But for those of us who have thrown off the myth of the machine, the next move is ours: for the gates of the technocratic prison will open automatically, despite their rusty ancient hinges, as soon as we choose to walk out."
It may very well be that easy. I am, for one, unsure how to exit.
A short summary of The Myth of the Machine can be found here:
I just finished the first volume today. The second volume is on order. It was one of the most insightful books I have read in a good, long while. A beautiful read, even.
Western Christendom having long fallen; its pale replacement "Churchianity" having failed to find a "respectable" position within the Machine and currently crumbling to dust all around us; we are now in the position, perhaps, to find the wild, radical, uncontainable message Christ brought to us. Thank you, Paul, for helping to make this clear to me. The last, true rebellion indeed!
That's a great way of putting it. I am very struck with the early church and plan to read more about it. The early Christians worshipped in catacomb churches and lived at ninety degrees to the world. I think this has to be where we are heading. This piece is really interesting in that regard, if you've not seen it:
"The first, perhaps most crucial thing to understand about the earliest generations of Christians is that they were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. They were rabble. They lightly cast off all their prior loyalties and attachments: religion, empire, nation, tribe, even family. In fact, far from teaching “family values,” Christ was remarkably dismissive of the family. And decent civic order, like social respectability, was apparently of no importance to him. Not only did he not promise his followers worldly success (even success in making things better for others); he told them to hope for a Kingdom not of this world, and promised them that in this world they would win only rejection, persecution, tribulation, and failure. Yet he instructed them also to take no thought for the morrow."
What I love about Christ's early mission was that it was women and slaves who were first drawn to him. And Mary Magdalen was his first apostle. So un-patriarchal. Love it.
excellent piece! I also read the linked article on your conversion to Christianity. I wish to share another bit from my friend George MacDonald that I think you'll like.
“Those who cannot see how the human will should be free in dependence upon the will of God, have not realized that the will of God made the will of man; that, when most it pants for freedom, the will of man is the child of the will of God, and therefore that there can be no natural opposition or strife between them. Nay, more, the whole labour of God is that the will of man should be free as his will is free—in the same way that his will is free—by the perfect love of the man for that which is true, harmonious, lawful, creative. If a man say, “But might not the will of God make my will with the intent of over-riding and enslaving it?” I answer, such a Will could not create, could not be God, for it involves the false and contrarious. That would be to make a will in order that it might be no will. To create in order to uncreate is something else than divine. But a free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom indeed.”
Thank you for your thoughts. This is a wonderful essay. Your line, "Ultimately, without that higher purpose to bind it - without, in other words, a sacred order - society would fall into 'emotivism', relativism and ultimately disintegration." brought to mind Flannery O'Connor's warning; “If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” (Flannery O’Connor, Introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann). O'Connor too saw the direction of society and knew the danger ahead.
We are waiting for Benedict. You may want to read Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” and his recent “Live Not By Lies”. Rod tales as his starting point the last sentence of “After Virtue”
I wonder if we are instead waiting for another Anthony. Benedict came later, after all, and organised what was already happening under lone inspiration. Perhaps it is a time for new desert fathers, and mothers.
The 7th-century Irish saint, St. Manchán of Lemanaghan is associated with a poem that I think is relevant to the discussion. It may not be possible for most of us, but I propose the Manchán Option!
Near to where I live is a cave which housed another Celtic Saint, Colman Mac Duagh, who lived there for seven years as a hermit. I've slept in it myself.
In the 1980s, sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge wrote two monumental books, "A Theory of Religion" and "The Future of Religion", that postulated (and provided evidence for) the idea that common belief in the supernatural was an inevitable consequence of the human condition. These books have now been forgotten. Bainbridge did not get tenure, and Stark has moved on. But to me, raised Catholic but turned atheist by age 15 (I am now 65 and still find belief in the supernatural completely impossible), they explained thoroughly that which I could not understand: why religion, so obviously wrong, was so commonplace. Bainbridge wrote a short article summarizing their ideas in the humanist journal Free Inquiry that can be found here:
If Bainbridge and Stark are right, a religious revival is on its way, though it will take a long time to establish itself. Their most likely candidate (at the time of their writing) was Mormonism. This still seems likely to me.
That's an interesting read - though the predictions about political ideologies have not aged well! Interesting that they could not then imagine (understandably) the return of a fiery ideological politics to America. I can't imagine Mormonism conquering the world somehow - but regardless of their views on 'superstition', the observation that mainline faiths fading out will be matched by smaller or more radical ones growing seems apposite. I'm sure that is what is happening. Perhaps in both religion and politics.
Can I recommend Colossians Remixed - Subverting the Empire by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. They identify empire in four ways
1) Built on systemic centralizations of power
2) Secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control
3) Religiously legitimated by powerful myths
4) Sustained by a proliferation of images that captivate the imaginations of the population.
And they argue we are living in a time of global capitalist empire or as you call it Paul, the Machine. What is necessary is something that subverts, that quietly undermines the power and might of Caesar or to switch metaphor, stick a spanner into the cogs of the machine.
Anyway, thanks for the essay - it's got me really thinking.
This is a marvelous post with lots to chew on, thanks. But the comments are also of extremely high quality and such a needed refreshment after nearly perishing having wandered in the wastes of what passes for internet discourse recently.
I hope more good people with contributions and ideas continue to find this space.
"Eat the fruit, it's your right, you're worth it"....I am loving this essay. Yes, it's personal or it's nothing. It comes down to that. I am still reading... history, these essays, other things, but it's all straw if we turn the thoughts or the past into idols in our minds, isn't it? Walking in the ruins, this is what needs to be said - what you have said. And reading this I realise more fully how ruinous these ruins are. I'm picking through them for clues...which seems wise. But sometimes, when I am doing the washing up and focussing on what Jesus wants, and not on how to think my way to something or other, but just to serve, there comes this surge of joy (which feels like an ancient memory), like a fountain through the cracks. You can't make it come, but it comes with tremendous power. There is this new-every-morning thing, walking in the ruins. It is like the beautiful plants that grow where the pavement is broken.
"Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the LORD God is a sun and shield.."
Thank you, Paul. Much resonates here. I remember a recurring vision of children wandering in ruins in my late teens/early 20s (the early 90s). It was an image that kept appearing in my mind. That this was what life was for us: picking our way through wreckage. Cobbling together scraps. It's hard to know how to make camp in the ruins, where to find meaning -- and this shows up in much of the art and culture of Gen-X, I believe. There's a skepticism and an awareness of loss. A scrabbling make-do sensibility. Patchwork. Tent camps. Sometimes with world-weary cynicism, and sometimes with great love for fellow wanders, "Here, here is light spot in the dark. Come rest with us awhile." What else resonates is your circuitous approach to faith. I've made my own winding journey that has included dusty church, Rationalism, Nature, Zen --- and, like you, found that I wanted to adore God as beloved. It was a strange yearning, when it arrived. Buddhism allows for it, but not in the way the traditions are usually taught in the West. I also longed for something that felt....native to me. Culturally native. I wanted to come home - and in fact moved back to my hometown, only to find I was looking for a spiritual home, not a literal one. I ended up back in the dusty church of my youth for awhile, only to end up back on the road again. Thank you for giving voice to all of it. It's helpful to hear how you're walking it out. There is not much space in contemporary culture to discuss this - so I'm very grateful to find it here. I mean, there are the thundering voices of the American Mega Churches, but they hurt my heart. But that's another thread. I think one of the great difficulties of Christianity is that it is not one thing in its expression. It's true voice can be lost (the Mega Churches are very loud) - and people who need to hear it can't, because the message gets drowned out. I find most progressive/Liberal/Left friends have an intense bias against Christianity because of....well, the many ways in which Christianity has been and continues to be corrupted. But they think this is all the Christianity is. It can be confusing to try to talk about it.
This has got be the manifesto.
Beautiful essay. Sobering and yet, inspiring. Thank you.
I can't remember the reference right now . But I could find it. I was doing some stuff on ethics which I had to teach endlessly in Australia! But there was some interesting papers on the naturalness of ethical, or 'other centred' well-meaning behaviour in humans towards others. The thesis was that humans were 'hardwired' to be ethical, that is, naturally empathic to others and to the natural world.
But perhaps this inbuilt tendency has been corrupted somehow. There might be some reasons for this.
My thinking was that my experience of the world roughly agreed with this interesting idea of natural empathy. That is when I lived in small country towns or knew the people who lived around me. But it is obvious that even if true, the sense of empathy does seem to fail even if it is an inbuilt genetic trait of humans. I always wondered if it the problem of the loss of empathy was due to the loss of of the small community living on the same patch of earth, and all depending on it together, for life itself. Relying on each other to survive. Solidarity with others and the group was necessary for survival. And this was the way people lived since forever, until just a thousand or so years ago. So perhaps we are genetically wired for just such a low key existence, close to others and the earth.
It is very easy not to be ethical if you are so powerful that no-one can touch you. Not governments, not anybody. That seems to be the position of the capitalist oligarchy that we live in today. The mega rich don't need to depend on others. And they behave accordingly. Power. And wealth as power, determine how they can live, if so inclined. There are no consequences for their actions. The results have been a bit disastrous. For the natural world and for people, i.e., the ordinary people.
And then there is the modernist philosophy of 'Libertarianism', of just 'me myself'. It fits capitalism perfectly. There is no longer any felt obligation to the 'other' despite how wretched the 'other' lives. This philosophy of radical individualism that developed alongside the rise of capitalism in the rapidly industrialising West is a disastrous conception of how to live with others.
Having to depend on a job money and that provides money for survival, is also a factor. It gives you the capacity to not to have to be dependent on others or see the natural world as important. This can be seen when living in a big city. It can reduce the sense of community and empathy for those strange familiar people who live around you but who you don't know. It is the modern experience of living. Working in a job, sitting all day in front of a computer working long hours that leave you with little time to be who you really are. All these factors alienate oneself from community, even from one's intimate family and ultimately oneself.
Maybe living with others in a small part of the world we share is the most fruitful context of moral behaviour. The way that Christ lived, as you have written, seems to me to be exactly how we should live, ideally. Small and local, with obligations to the others around us, and being able to live without having to work just for money, rather than produce from the land around us.
Great stuff Paul. Wondered if you read Blair in the NS today - brazenly deifying The Machine which all must be oriented around....
No, and now that you have mentioned it I shall avoid it like the plague!
You say of MacIntyre that his lodestone was Aristotle, but might I mention that he found his final space in Roman Catholicism, ie the Thomist fusion of faith with the Aristotelean inheritance? One other thing, within the tradition, the Fall is understood to be healed by Christ, not just once and for all on the cross but also repeatedly through the liturgy, which takes on the role of healing creation (both symbolically and truly) that was previously carried out through Temple Ritual - see the work of Margaret Barker for more detail. Or, in my preferred summary: the eucharist heals the world. Looking forward to more instalments.
I agree, which is why to me it was so symbolic of the order we now live in that even here in nominally Catholic Ireland, the Eucharist was banned by the state for a year, with few murmurs. We are back to underground churches. But perhaps that's how it should be.
That's very interesting. I didnt know Macintyre became Catholic. That explains the tension I seemed to see in his book, which felt like it was reaching towards Christ but couldn't quite justify it to other philosophers, maybe ... perhaps Aristotle was a staging post.
I appreciate the point about the Eucharist. And I have now read your book! I will be emailing.
ooh! you've joined an exclusive club (grin). MacIntyre used AV and the subsequent two books in the trilogy (Whose Justice... and 3 Rival Versions...) to work out the nature of a tradition, and in doing so came to see that the things that he most valued were best expressed and cultivated through the Thomist tradition.
Careful Sam, you're sounding like a Catholic yourself ;-)
ha! the self-understanding of the Church of England is that it is the catholic church in England (Rowan said that, and I think it's true). I'm definitely a Thomist, but no Christian church is infallible since the great schism of 1054...
"That explains the tension I seemed to see in his book, which felt like it was reaching towards Christ"
I've had a similar feeling with several of your previous essays, especially "In The Black Chamber."
I think you were quite right too, though I didn't know back then where the quest was leading me.
Glad we are setting off with MacIntyre and After Virtue. I valued his review of Jane Austen and Christian values: ' the telos of the human life implicit in its everday form'. Incidentally, he said his conversion to Catholicism occurred in his fifties as a "result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity." smile
Excellent post. I am in wholehearted agreement. Thank you.
I am currently reading Lewis Mumford's two-volume "The Myth of the Machine". I doubt Mumford was a Christian, but what he has to say is highly congruent with all that is said here. Here are two quotes to give some sense of his position (from the late '60s and early '70s):
"The beleaguered– even 'obsolete'–individual would be entirely de-skilled, reduced to a passive, inert, 'trivial accessory to the machine.' Technical surveillance and limitless data-collection—'an all-seeing eye' (Panopticon)—would monitor every 'individual on the planet. Ultimately, the totalitarian technocracy, centralizing and augmenting its 'power-complex,' ignoring the real needs and values of human life, might produce a world 'fit only for machines to live in'"
and, perhaps more hopefully:
"But for those of us who have thrown off the myth of the machine, the next move is ours: for the gates of the technocratic prison will open automatically, despite their rusty ancient hinges, as soon as we choose to walk out."
It may very well be that easy. I am, for one, unsure how to exit.
A short summary of The Myth of the Machine can be found here:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/21/homo-technomorphis/
Thank you again for an excellent essay.
Funnily enough, Mumford's massive first volume is currently sitting on my table ...
I just finished the first volume today. The second volume is on order. It was one of the most insightful books I have read in a good, long while. A beautiful read, even.
Western Christendom having long fallen; its pale replacement "Churchianity" having failed to find a "respectable" position within the Machine and currently crumbling to dust all around us; we are now in the position, perhaps, to find the wild, radical, uncontainable message Christ brought to us. Thank you, Paul, for helping to make this clear to me. The last, true rebellion indeed!
That's a great way of putting it. I am very struck with the early church and plan to read more about it. The early Christians worshipped in catacomb churches and lived at ninety degrees to the world. I think this has to be where we are heading. This piece is really interesting in that regard, if you've not seen it:
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/christs-rabble
"The first, perhaps most crucial thing to understand about the earliest generations of Christians is that they were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. They were rabble. They lightly cast off all their prior loyalties and attachments: religion, empire, nation, tribe, even family. In fact, far from teaching “family values,” Christ was remarkably dismissive of the family. And decent civic order, like social respectability, was apparently of no importance to him. Not only did he not promise his followers worldly success (even success in making things better for others); he told them to hope for a Kingdom not of this world, and promised them that in this world they would win only rejection, persecution, tribulation, and failure. Yet he instructed them also to take no thought for the morrow."
What I love about Christ's early mission was that it was women and slaves who were first drawn to him. And Mary Magdalen was his first apostle. So un-patriarchal. Love it.
excellent piece! I also read the linked article on your conversion to Christianity. I wish to share another bit from my friend George MacDonald that I think you'll like.
“Those who cannot see how the human will should be free in dependence upon the will of God, have not realized that the will of God made the will of man; that, when most it pants for freedom, the will of man is the child of the will of God, and therefore that there can be no natural opposition or strife between them. Nay, more, the whole labour of God is that the will of man should be free as his will is free—in the same way that his will is free—by the perfect love of the man for that which is true, harmonious, lawful, creative. If a man say, “But might not the will of God make my will with the intent of over-riding and enslaving it?” I answer, such a Will could not create, could not be God, for it involves the false and contrarious. That would be to make a will in order that it might be no will. To create in order to uncreate is something else than divine. But a free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom indeed.”
– George MacDonald. From Miracles Of Our Lord.
Thank you for your thoughts. This is a wonderful essay. Your line, "Ultimately, without that higher purpose to bind it - without, in other words, a sacred order - society would fall into 'emotivism', relativism and ultimately disintegration." brought to mind Flannery O'Connor's warning; “If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” (Flannery O’Connor, Introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann). O'Connor too saw the direction of society and knew the danger ahead.
We are waiting for Benedict. You may want to read Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” and his recent “Live Not By Lies”. Rod tales as his starting point the last sentence of “After Virtue”
I wonder if we are instead waiting for another Anthony. Benedict came later, after all, and organised what was already happening under lone inspiration. Perhaps it is a time for new desert fathers, and mothers.
The 7th-century Irish saint, St. Manchán of Lemanaghan is associated with a poem that I think is relevant to the discussion. It may not be possible for most of us, but I propose the Manchán Option!
Grant me sweet Christ the grace to find—
Son of the Living God!—
A small hut in a lonesome spot
To make it my abode.
A little pool but very clear
(To stand beside the place)
Where all men’s sins are washed away
By sanctifying grace.
A pleasant woodland all about
To shield it from the wind
And make a home for singing birds
Before it and behind.
A southern aspect for the heat
A stream along its foot,
A smooth green lawn with rich topsoil
Propitious to all fruit.
My choice of men to live with me
And pray to God as well;
Quiet men of humble mind—
Their number I shall tell.
Four files of three or three of four
To give the psalter forth;
Six to pray by the south church wall
And six along the north.
Two by two my dozen friends—
To tell the number right—
Praying with me to move the King
Who gives the sun its light.
A lovely church, a home for God
Bedecked with linen fine,
Where over the white Gospel page
The Gospel candles shine.
A little house where all may dwell
And body’s care be sought,
Where none shows lust or arrogance,
None thinks an evil thought.
And all I ask for housekeeping
I get and pay no fees,
Leeks from the garden, poultry, game,
Salmon and trout and bees.
My share of clothing and of food,
From the King of fairest face,
And I to sit at times alone,
And pray in every place.
Sorry for the run-on formatting. I tried to format the poem appropriately, but hitting "post" undid it.
That's great. I'd not heard of him.
Near to where I live is a cave which housed another Celtic Saint, Colman Mac Duagh, who lived there for seven years as a hermit. I've slept in it myself.
http://www.stcolman.com/life_burren.html
These are the people we need to emulate now. Colman, Manchan, Francis ... maybe there's a book in that.
Thank you for sharing that lovely poem. I, too, have never heard of St Manchán.
Beautiful. This poem below is a favourite of mine, and written in the 8th or 9th century.
The forest's wall surrounds me,
sweet praise for the blackbird's song.
Above my copy book
the birds in chorus!
High above
the grey-headed cuckoo sings to me
God's promise...may He protect me
writing well beneath the wood.
You've had St. Sophrony in Essex up until recent times.
On the Island of Mull (Scotish Hebredes) there's an Orthodox Monastery. Father Seraphim there is a voice that we should try and hear more often.
Mary McG. Great essay thank you. Sent me in quest of a song ...check out Colum Sands 'Talking to the Wall' on YouTube. It will raise a smile!
In the 1980s, sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge wrote two monumental books, "A Theory of Religion" and "The Future of Religion", that postulated (and provided evidence for) the idea that common belief in the supernatural was an inevitable consequence of the human condition. These books have now been forgotten. Bainbridge did not get tenure, and Stark has moved on. But to me, raised Catholic but turned atheist by age 15 (I am now 65 and still find belief in the supernatural completely impossible), they explained thoroughly that which I could not understand: why religion, so obviously wrong, was so commonplace. Bainbridge wrote a short article summarizing their ideas in the humanist journal Free Inquiry that can be found here:
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/1988/04/22160944/p21.pdf
If Bainbridge and Stark are right, a religious revival is on its way, though it will take a long time to establish itself. Their most likely candidate (at the time of their writing) was Mormonism. This still seems likely to me.
That's an interesting read - though the predictions about political ideologies have not aged well! Interesting that they could not then imagine (understandably) the return of a fiery ideological politics to America. I can't imagine Mormonism conquering the world somehow - but regardless of their views on 'superstition', the observation that mainline faiths fading out will be matched by smaller or more radical ones growing seems apposite. I'm sure that is what is happening. Perhaps in both religion and politics.
Can I recommend Colossians Remixed - Subverting the Empire by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. They identify empire in four ways
1) Built on systemic centralizations of power
2) Secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control
3) Religiously legitimated by powerful myths
4) Sustained by a proliferation of images that captivate the imaginations of the population.
And they argue we are living in a time of global capitalist empire or as you call it Paul, the Machine. What is necessary is something that subverts, that quietly undermines the power and might of Caesar or to switch metaphor, stick a spanner into the cogs of the machine.
Anyway, thanks for the essay - it's got me really thinking.
This is a marvelous post with lots to chew on, thanks. But the comments are also of extremely high quality and such a needed refreshment after nearly perishing having wandered in the wastes of what passes for internet discourse recently.
I hope more good people with contributions and ideas continue to find this space.
Hear hear.
"Eat the fruit, it's your right, you're worth it"....I am loving this essay. Yes, it's personal or it's nothing. It comes down to that. I am still reading... history, these essays, other things, but it's all straw if we turn the thoughts or the past into idols in our minds, isn't it? Walking in the ruins, this is what needs to be said - what you have said. And reading this I realise more fully how ruinous these ruins are. I'm picking through them for clues...which seems wise. But sometimes, when I am doing the washing up and focussing on what Jesus wants, and not on how to think my way to something or other, but just to serve, there comes this surge of joy (which feels like an ancient memory), like a fountain through the cracks. You can't make it come, but it comes with tremendous power. There is this new-every-morning thing, walking in the ruins. It is like the beautiful plants that grow where the pavement is broken.
"Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the LORD God is a sun and shield.."
Thank you, Paul. Much resonates here. I remember a recurring vision of children wandering in ruins in my late teens/early 20s (the early 90s). It was an image that kept appearing in my mind. That this was what life was for us: picking our way through wreckage. Cobbling together scraps. It's hard to know how to make camp in the ruins, where to find meaning -- and this shows up in much of the art and culture of Gen-X, I believe. There's a skepticism and an awareness of loss. A scrabbling make-do sensibility. Patchwork. Tent camps. Sometimes with world-weary cynicism, and sometimes with great love for fellow wanders, "Here, here is light spot in the dark. Come rest with us awhile." What else resonates is your circuitous approach to faith. I've made my own winding journey that has included dusty church, Rationalism, Nature, Zen --- and, like you, found that I wanted to adore God as beloved. It was a strange yearning, when it arrived. Buddhism allows for it, but not in the way the traditions are usually taught in the West. I also longed for something that felt....native to me. Culturally native. I wanted to come home - and in fact moved back to my hometown, only to find I was looking for a spiritual home, not a literal one. I ended up back in the dusty church of my youth for awhile, only to end up back on the road again. Thank you for giving voice to all of it. It's helpful to hear how you're walking it out. There is not much space in contemporary culture to discuss this - so I'm very grateful to find it here. I mean, there are the thundering voices of the American Mega Churches, but they hurt my heart. But that's another thread. I think one of the great difficulties of Christianity is that it is not one thing in its expression. It's true voice can be lost (the Mega Churches are very loud) - and people who need to hear it can't, because the message gets drowned out. I find most progressive/Liberal/Left friends have an intense bias against Christianity because of....well, the many ways in which Christianity has been and continues to be corrupted. But they think this is all the Christianity is. It can be confusing to try to talk about it.