nevermind the bricolage

corpus mysticum: performing the body of christ

Today (Thursday) is the celebration of the Feast of the Ascension, acknowledgement of the final phase in the physicality of Jesus, from birth, growth, tranfiguration, breaking, crucifying, death, resurrecting, and finally, ascending. I have been thinking a lot about bodies lately-(I have been working on a book idea about technology and bodies)-I think many people in church life have been--not just around issues of gender and sexuality, but beyond that towards new thinking about things like materiality and subjectivity, make-up--body/soul/spirit etc, consciousness--you name it, it all seems up for grabs. So I have been giving particular thought to the body, both of Christ and 'us' in this post-Resurrection period.

The transformation or phases of Jesus' physicality are of interest. I mean, sure all God, all man--but his physicality always seems to be the site of fairly unusual activity and possibility throughout the gospels--walking on water, healing by word or touch, multiplication of resource--the list goes on, but once you get to the Tranfiguration things take an even deeper path-from that point, his walk towards death, and then life again, puts Jesus' body in the centre of the action--his body, his flesh, becomes the sight of some interesting exchanges which culminate in this final exchange--he ascends and then re-emerges, in us as the body of Christ. This is paul isn't it? We perform the body of Christ. I think what is coming to fruition in my thinking is a new valuation of the body--I think it has been generally undervalued in my particular church and theology experiences--it's a dangerous thing, the human body---it's subject to 'vile passions' and in a culture where the immaterial, subjective part of humans (spirit/soul) have dominated theological thinking and process, the body is all too easily dismissed, discounted etc. I realize that we hear lots of talk about the 'body of Christ'--the church, the community of faith, but I am scratching at something more than that--human physicality--the value of flesh--what are we doing with our bodies and why? The actions of our bodies connect us to the meaning of our bodies I think--sex, illness even, somehow these things point to the worth, the value, the beauty of embodiment, of physicality.

Graham Ward wrote about the gendered body of Christ overcoming and transcending its gendered and ethnic limitations, and posited this as a pathway to understading human sexuality or gender issues in a new light or way. I think there is a lot there, and I have spent a long time reflecting on that idea, but that kernel of an idea has morphed into wider areas and possibilities for me--anyway, its Ascension Day and I'm thinking about that in different ways today than I used to.

technology repeats theology

We had a very interesting class Monday. We were joined by some professors from Beijing--who are visiting the school. How they wound up in my class I dont know but they were a delight--there were some language issues, but thankfully one of them was able to translate for the others. They were from the religious studies department of Beijing University--the Dean, who teaches philosophy, a taoist philosopher, a marxist studies prof. and a professor of Christian studies, who recently translated some of Graham Ward's stuff into Chinese. The class topic was theology and the body and we began with a reflection on Catherine of Siena and then moved backwards and forwards considering the various ways in which the idea of 'body' has been understood throughout Christian history, and how we might think about it today. There was an interesting roadblock of sorts when it came down to the idea of the 'soul' between those who were very clear in their belief i its existence, but less clear in their ability to explain it in any meaningful way. I'm not a big 'soul' man, unless it's Marvin Gaye--I believe its simply language trying to get at something beyond words. 

I did raise a point made by John Caputo that "technology repeats theology," meaning that miracles in the Bible become medical and technological miracles today--opening up new space to think about the relation between the material and immaterial worlds.

I have been thinking through a book idea around this--techno-theology, exploring the relationship between technology and flesh-the organic and the mechanical, the material and the immaterial, stuff like that.

on premature death and pregnant vacuums

I have read a couple of things of late that seem to have some resonance with other conversations I hear in the various realms I inhabit connected to church futures etc. The ongoing debate over emerging church and the like, and particularly the continuing, although admittedly more muted lately, discussion over the demise of the emerging church. I tend to refrain form the immediacy of these flurries because I think they require a bit more reflection, at least they do for me personally in order to get to the heart of my thinking. But I wanted to wade in on that conversation a little bit because I think it points to an important point about how we deal with historicity. In Networks Without A Cause, which I am enjoying immensely, Lovink quotes McKenzie Wark, in connection with the future of media studies, but the comment seems to have some ramifications beyond that realm in my mind. Wark says,

"Having to always declare something over is connected to refusing to historicize. There are two ways of situating (media studies) historically. One way is to see new media as add-ons or extensions of old media. Start with cinema for example, and position the new as same-but-different within this space of thought and disciplinary organization. The other way starts with the phenomena before us - games, mobiles, internet - how do they call into being entirely new (long range) genealogies? How do they call us to reject or revise exisiting histories? It needs to be allied with three methodologies: the conceptual, the ethnographic and the experimental. The mere reading of "texts" does not serve us well at the moment."

Now, as I have already noted, there is a very specific context at work here, namely media studies, but nonetheless there are similarties at work within the church horizon in my mind. Not the least of which is to declare something over or dead, in order to get around dealing with the implications. I am not so much pitching in support of emerging church as I am seeking to address a tendency which I have noticed quite a lot in my few decade relation and involvement with church stuff. Wark offers two ways of dealing with an issue--and in my mind when it comes to new church paradigms, the former has governed the conversation but what if the second approach is taken. What if different questions are asked of the issue? What if the questions related to things like alternative/emerging whatever-the-fuck-name-they-pick-church are more probing of both the new arena and the old?

We have lived through the death of so many things--god, modernity, secualrism, sprituality, rock, hip-hop, on and on, but in virtually every case, those death-clarations are--well, wrong, especially if death is viewed as some kind of finality! None of those things has really 'died'--it's just laziness I think, and perhaps fear, fear of being eclipsed.

The second component is from an article by Slavoj Zizek in the Guardian about the next steps for the Occupy movement. Again, a couple of comments that seem to have resonance beyond their context. He speaks of the Occupy protesters as having created a vacuum in what he calls, the hegemonist ideology, but more importantly that "time is needed to fill this vacuum in in a proper way, since it is a pregnant vacuum, an opening for the truly New." The movement isn't new, it opens up space for the New and at present we are in a pregnant vacuum. I think the same may be true of the newer Christian movements like emerging/emergent/alternative etc.--they are not the new movement--they just made the space, the pregnant vacuum.

Something is waiting to be born. Now we can debate whether anything in this world can truly be New (guess it might depend on how one interprets Solomon and how we interpret what 'new' means), but something needs to change, that is the message of those rag-tag groups--change, not for changes sake, but because it is needed, desparately needed within religion in my mind. So let's not rush too quickly to declare things over--let's wait and be around to give birth to something.

Unplug from the god of religion?

Before I get into this particular post, it seems that a couple of posts I wrote went astray, not sure what happened, they seem to have disappeared completely, so my lack of posting this past week was not intentional--and they were really, really good posts, haha!!!

Anyway, back to this post, which I will post immediately after writing it to avoid whatever issue took the last one. I teach at a fairly conservative evangelical theological seminary, and I don't think I would be too far off base to suggest that my particular theological positions, such as they are, are not the norm by any stretch of the imagination, but there are perhaps a surprising number of students who do not fit the imagined student constituency, and I manage, by nature of the kinds of classes I teach, to interact with many of them. I have been engaged in a long-term book reading group with a number of students over the years whose progressive and imaginative theologizing has surprised and informed my own again and again. That said, there are any number of students who are way more conservative and rigid than I and I get to interact with them as well. All of that means that my classes can be quite wild journeys--lots of back and forth, lots of provocations and occasional upsets.

My latest class is Theology and Culture, a broad syllabus looking at the relationship between theology and culture, followed by some cultural engagements, designed to introduce ideas about enagaging theologically with the world around us---something that comes as revelatory to some, but more often than not, is something that many of the students simply haven't been equipped for thus far.

I am interested in intersections, the places where any number of things meet, connect and diffuse, and the past couple of weeks we have been exploring the intersections of four things: theology, church, religion and christianity. Part of the process is examining where we are and what might have brought us to this place. With these four topics there is a lot of overlap which is why I clumped them together. yesterday we had a pretty lengthy conversation about religion versus spirituality (cue eye-rolling? yes, but I actually think it is an under-evaluated continuum in terms of exegeting where people are at and going--lots of simplistic interpretations--like most things today it is complex), and we wound up discussing that viral video of the spoken word about hating religion and loving Jesus. There were any number of reactions in the room, ranging from non-plussed to excited. I have to admit that it was my responses that elicited the most reaction. I said that while I could acknowledge the frustratons and legitimate concerns voiced in the video, my real issue was that he had not broken free of his own conceptual horizons and the latter part of the video collapsed for me into a typical understanding of the cross/jesus/sin/god/etc. and that it wasn't religion per se that was his problem, it was his theological grid. This of course, led to discussions about the work of Jesus on the cross--the place of sin/forgiveness etc.

As you may know, I'm a bit of a death-of-god type, so for me the cross means something other than what it might mean for someone else. The conversation didnt get heated at all--it was just surprising to me, no it wasn't, it was affirming once again, that the real work that needs to be done is on the theological--we spend an inordinate amount of time examining forms--what works what doesn't--but theology? It's secondary, even tertiary at times it seems, when it comes to really thinking through that state of things.

It seems to me that we are witnessing the disintegration of the concept of religion in the West, and it is morphing and transforming beneath our feet. The response I think is stronger theological self-definition, a rigorous examination of all aspects of our 'believing' and the avoidance of what Graham Ward names as fetishization--which can only be accomplished by some serious theological reflection and reaction I think. The problem for me with that viral video is that he is unplugging from the wrong thing, or maybe only unplugging from half of the story--it's not just the structures of religion in and of themselves, its the god of those structures-what Bonhoeffer called deus ex machina. Our viral poet still seems lowering that god down into world and until that changes...

bonhoeffer

Today marks the anniversary of the death (by hanging, courtesy of the Nazis) of renowned German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His imprisonment and subsequent execution, were the result of his involvement in a plot to get rid of Hitler. The plot failed and thus, close to the end of the war, Bonhoeffer lost his life. He remains a theologian of importance for many.

I have been re-reading Jeffrey Pugh's book, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Troubled Times, which I find to be an insightful and compelling look at one of Bonhoeffer's least realized but perhaps most enticing ideas--that the future of Christianity is 'religionless.' This concept was only briefly mentioned in one of his letters, but it has generated loads of thoughtful explorations as to what he might have meant.

"we must finally get away from the notion that the gospel is concerned with the salvation of the soul of the individual or with showing the way from despair of the sinner to the sinner's blessedness." DB.

theology and fashion

It may well be that Jesus looks like DH--could be a lot worse. A couple of years ago, Popular Mechanics, touting the advances in forensic scientific research, led with a cover story presenting an image of 'Jesus' based on forensic exploration of people from the time and place Jesus was purported to have lived. I doubt that it fulfilled anyones expectancy of what Jesus really might have looked like, especially as we live in the era of the beautiful Jesus (Rembrandt, long-haired, blond, blue-eyed--Salman etc.). I prefer Debbie Harry as an image of JC. Of course the shirt is probably not meant to be connected so literally with Debbie Harry's physical appearance, and I only bring it up because I caught an interview with Harry and her Blondie bandmates recently and was reminded of how she lit up the telly during my youth with her sexy Top of the Pops appearances.

I've been thinking a lot about appearances lately--the way we make so many determinations based on what we see before us and how those determinations are shaped by so many factors--from family to society and all points in-between.

Bacon

The Art, Cinema and Theology class I've been teaching this term is winding up/down. We have one more week of class. Yesterday, we talked about Francis Bacon and viewed a chunk of Love is the Devil, a made-for-television BBC film, written and directed by John Maybury. I think it is one of the better portrayals of an artist in visual media. Not only does it tell Bacon's story with a callous and pithy edginess that seems to fit with how Bacon is presented in pretty much all reports, the film is shot utilising Bacon's techniques of blurring and contorting faces and bodies and combines that with the somewhat threatening and yet tender atmosphere lent to the film by Ryuichi Sakamoto's score--which in many ways reminds me of Johnny Greenwoods score for There Will Be Blood. All of this makes the film intense and compelling.

Bacon can be a difficult painter to come to terms with, particularly without much background. But he remains one of the few major artists of the 20th century to feature crucifixion as an artistic device--something that he thought enabled him to hang all kinds of human feelings and sensations upon in unique ways. We explored some of his crucifixion triptych's and looked at his Pope Innocent series, examining the ways in which Bacon explored his own harshness and, more importantly perhaps, humanity's inhumanity--the brutal way we can treat each other. Personally, I love Bacon's work, I think it conveys an agitation and pain that is perhaps unparalleled in contemporary art--his attempt at shock, is not simple for shock's sake, his goal is to make us feel the electricity of our own brutality, as well as our capacity for great tenderness. His homosexuality is featured heavily in the film, which probably made it challenging for some of the more conservative students, but it cannot be avoided either, as it features in his work. Some say that he is responsible for reclaiming the erotic for men in painting.

Next week the discussion will be more about the ways in which we can develop theological responses to both art and cinema--moving beyond moral prescriptives and personal judgments to something a little deeper and more reflective. Should be fun.

dont f@*k with god

Am leading a three week course on the Bible: Holy Scripture or Holy Mess? I think tonight will be the weird verses from the scripture night and will journey from there to how we read and interpret texts. No, surprisingly I am not a literalist! The above image is a take on one of those weird verses, of which there are many.

Monsters

"There are monsters on the prowl whose form change with the history of knowledge." Michel Foucault.

In honour of Halloween we explored monsters in media yesterday. Zombies, vampires, aliens invaders--the monstrous makes it appearance in our world in any number of ways. What does our fascination with these creatures mean? Why do we enjoy being scared out of our wits? These and other questions were part of our class exploration. It's been said that monsters have their 'tentacles wrapped around the foundations of history', every age and culture seems to have them--the Middle Ages was fascinated with bestial humans, the Renaissance era with wolf-people and conjoined humans, the early modern world with Frankenstein and Dracula, on and on throughout our histories, these monsters and strangers appear again and again.

There are Biblical monsters and biblical roots for our western monsters--Leviathan and Behemoth--the Great Dragon--the Devil--an amalgam of any number of biblical images coalesced into that figure which is at the root of much of our monstrous imagination.

I talked a bit from Richard Kearney's remarkable book, Strangers, Gods and Monsters. He argues that these three figures are the backbone of our self-narration. Strangers operate as a limit experience for us as we try and identify ourselves over and against others--Greeks and their Barbarians, the Europeans their 'savages' etc. Gods are those figures whose power and mystery exceeds our grasp and monsters signal borderline experiences reminding us that we are never wholly sovereign. All of these ideas play out in our cultural imagination and story-telling. These creatures defy the accepted norms of identification and invite us to consider again and again what it means to be human. They are the expression of our fears and concerns, as well as our hopes and aspirations--they say the unsayable, says Kearney.

I quoted John Sallis--What if the truth were monstrous? But nobody really bit on that one, so I didn't explore it too far. I really like the Foucault quote--that the monsters change with the history of knowledge--you can trace their expansion and multiplicity as our world becomes more and more inter-connected and over-loaded---monsters and strangers multiply in our story-telling---a tale of Vampires coming out (True Blood) becomes a pluralized world of vampires, witches, shape-shifters, fairies, more and more strange creatures echoing and voicing our fears and challenges in the 21st century. As our understanding of the universe expands it is no longer just the Martians attacking, it is alien civilizations of all kinds (District 9, Alien etc, etc.) and even technology and technological aberrations (Bladerunner, I Robot etc) become part of our monstrous exploration of human self-understanding.

soularize

I was in San Diego all week for Soularize--the last one actually. Soularize architect, and all-round fine fellow, Spencer Burke and I have been friends for years and have collaborated on a number of things, including the penultimate Soularize event in Nassau. This was bittersweet-the end of an era, but also a wiping of the slate and a fresh beginning. The conference was loose and scrappy as always, small but mighty, with some wonderful people--not the least of which was Jack Caputo--a masterful philosopher/theologian, but also a wonderful human being. "God doesn't exist, God insists," was just one of his many pithy remarks, as he explored the future of God in his talk entitled, Perhaps... That's how Jack rolls, unafraid to challenge widely accepted preconceptions and theories. Pete Rollins, Rita Nakashima Brock, plus the usual emerging church suspects--all combined to make the week an invitation to ee things a little differently, then act accordingly. I would write more, but I am knackered and have too many guests to sort out.