Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult

A fantastic quote from Michel Foucault, "Practicing Criticism."

A Critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest....

Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gesture difficult.

Woody Guthrie and Jesus Christ

Woody Guthrie said:

I wrote this song looking out of a rooming house window in New York City in the winter of Nineteen and Forty. I thought I had to put down on paper how I felt about the rich folks and the poor ones.

This was quoted the liner notes for "Bound For Glory: The Songs and Story of Woody Guthrie," FOLKWAYS , 1956, p. 8.

The song goes like this:

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land,
A hard working man and brave.
He said to the rich "Give your goods to the poor."
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand,
His followers true and brave,
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff,
He told them all the same,
"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,"
But they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what He did say,
The bankers and the preachers they nailed Him on a cross.
Then they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

The poor workin' people, they followed Him around,
They sung and they shouted gay,
The cops and the soldiers, they nailed Him in the air,
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

Well, the people held their breath when they heard about His death,
And everybody wondered why,
It was the landlord and the soldiers that he hired,
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky.

This song was written in New York City,
Of rich man, preacher and slave,
But if Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galilee,
They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave.

Notice how the relationship between the poor and the rich is the focus of this song and how this song emphasizes the economic and class aspects of Jesus' words and actions. Woody's mind wasn't on sexual purity, as many Evangelicals today.

What happened to the significance of this storyline? Why do so few speak of this aspect of Jesus' words and actions today? How did this storyline get overtaken by a far more dominant storyline that focuses on maintaining sexual purity and paternalism?

If at one time in American history there were different kinds of evangelical Christians voicing their interpretations, like Woody Guthrie and his song about Jesus Christ, what happened between then and now?

A while back I picked up The Concept of Dread by Soren Kierkegaard. I would like to share a bit taken from the final chapter. It is entitled: "Dread as a Saving Experience by Means of Faith."

To catch you up to pace with Kierkegaard's thinking, dread is not a result of an objective thing out there in the world. Rather, "man himself produces dread." "Dread," he says, "is the possibility of freedom." Dread and possibility go hand and hand. In relation to dread, however, there is "the smiling." This is faith, the "infinite" possibility beyond the rationally explicable.

Encountering dread one may "misunderstand the anguish of dread" and turn away from faith. He is thus "lost."

On the other hand, he who is educated by possibility remains with dread, does not allow himself to be deceived by its countless counterfeits, he recalls the past precisely; then at last the attacks of dread, though they are fearful, are not such that he flees from them. For him dread becomes a serviceable spirit which against its will leads him wither he would go. Then when it announces itself, when it craftily insinuates that it has invented a new instrument of torture far more terrible than anything employed before, he does not recoil, still less does he attempt to hold it off with clamor and noise, but he bids it welcome, he hails it solemnly, as Socrates solemnly flourished the poisoned goblet, he shuts himself up with it, he says, as a patient says to the surgeon when a painful operation is about to begin, "Now I am read." Then dread enters into his soul and searches it thoroughly, constraining out of him all the finite and the petty, and leading him hence whither he would go

It is this continual dance with dread and faith, the intertwining and mutual constitution that is so important here. To have faith, one must also dread, to have doubt about the existence of God, to not loose touch with the angst of finitude. To never doubt God, in other words, is to never really have faith. Turning toward faith in the constant face of dread, making that leap, that choice in everyday situations to affirm faith. In Kierkegaard's words: "Now the dread of possibility holds him as its prey until it can delver him saved int o the hands of faith."

True as in Scientifically or True as in Religiously

The following is a quote that I read last night. It is from the philosopher/theologian, John D. Caputo, in his book On Religion. For me, it is a very powerful and sensible statement. For others, I'm sure it will smack of heresy.

Any given religion is better off without the ideas that it is "the one true religion" and the others are not, as if the several religions were engaged in a zero sum contest for religious truth. They need to drop the idea of "the true religion," to stop running "negative ads" about everyone else's religion or lack of religion, and to kick the habit of claiming that their particular body of beliefs is a better fit with what is "out there," as if a religion were like a scientific hypothesis, which is the mistake of the Creationist "scientists." Unlike a scientific theory, there is not one reason on earth (or in heaven) why many different religious narratives cannot all be true. "The one true religion" in that sense makes no more sense than "the one true language" or the "one true poetry," "the one true story" or "the one true culture." While rejecting the modernist idea that science is the exclusive depository of truth, we should have learned something from modernity--post-modern means having passed through and learned a thing or two from modernity--namely, that religious truth is true with a truth that is of a different sort than scientific truth. Religious truth is tied up with being truly religious, truly loving God, loving God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and there are more ways to do that than are dreamt of the faithful in the traditional confessions. Loving God in spirit and in truth is not like having the right scientific theory that covers all the facts and makes all the alternative explanations look bad.

That last sentence is possibly the catch for some folks. For them, God needs to be provable if their faith is to be worth a damn. God is more like a hypothesis waiting to be tested, than a faith to be cherished and practiced religiously.

In the name of God, what are you doing?

Religion in a person's life can play out in a number of different ways. Some offer this distinction, a "true Christian" acts differently than a "nominal Christian." People use this distinction to symbolize the difference between those that call themselves "Christian," but then go about living an ungodly life, and those that call themselves "Christian" and go about living Christ-like. The idea is that a true Christian tries to act godly because their belief is deep and permeates their lives, while a nominal Christian is a Christian by name only. That is a nice distinction used by insiders to distinguish between the kinds of believers. It is a mode of internal differentiation that attempts to set apart one group of Christians from another group of Christians.

But my general point still stands, I think, religion plays out differently in peoples' lives and not always for the better.

In this blog I return to the Narrative of Frederick Douglass. I quoted him at length a while back. Here is another powerful quote:

In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bayside, Talbot country, and there experienced religion....It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversation, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slave-holding cruelty.

What do we do in the name of God? What kinds of actions, policies, views, do we justify in the name of God? The debate should not be over whether he was a nominal or a true Christian. The debate should be on what he is doing in the name of God--and should he be held accountable for what he is doing.

"They must see Americans as strange liberators."

On 4 April 1967, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. made the famous Riverside Church speech in New York City. It was entitled: "Beyond Vietnam--A Time to Break Silence." You can listen and/or read it here.

I first heard/read this speech about a year ago. It is powerful and moving. But more than that, the speech demonstrates that since MLK's death, he has been domesticated. By that I mean, MLK is often talked about as a more moderate personality than, say, Malcolm X. But MLK had some pretty "radical" ideas about what we (American citizens and poor people at the wrong end of US military might) should do to transform and challenge the situation. MLK says:

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

But the value and meaning of his words extend beyond the times and places that he spoke. Today they are relevant again. His speech is well worth the listen.

Speaking forcefully from the 'I'

I recently finished reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. Wow! It is quite the powerful book. One cannot help but respect and admire Douglass.

A quote stuck out that I would like to share:

This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.... He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me (pp 82-83).

Hear in Douglass' voice how the brawl with Mr. Covey impacted the course of his life. It was an event that enabled Douglass to bring to life a Self he had been crafting in secret for some time. Douglass physically drew a line and declared--I go no further. The result was a fight. Douglass refused to submit to the racial hierarchy that Mr. Covey presupposed and asserted. In this resistance, in this moment of struggle, Douglass affirmed a sense of self worth, individuality and responsibility with regards to Mr. Covey in particular and the white man in general. He affirmed his agency in concrete terms, which helped him visualize and enact an emancipatory project.