Whose Catholic Revolution?

An alluring title made me eager to engage Andrew Greeley's The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council (University of California, 2004). Hoping for some behind-the-scenes insight into the impact of de Lubac, Congar, and the nouvelle theologie, it was disappointing to see that Greeley's "Catholic" church doesn't seem to exist outside of Euro-America, and that the extent of the "revolution" was that American Catholics started using birth control. One will find a more revolutionary vision (though not "all the way down," so to speak), in Pope John Paul II's Memory and Identity (Rizzoli, 2005).

The Sound of Words: A Poem by Coleson

Reading something a little different tonight: a collection of poems by my son, Coleson (10). I was particularly impressed by his "onomatopoeia" poem which tries to find words for sounds, conveying a mood and ambiance. With much pride, I'm happy to share the fruits of his artistic labors:

The deep moo of the cow in his pen
The annoying creak of the barn door as the farmer enters and exits
The light swish of the windmill on top of the barn
The stomp of animals walking around their pen
The loud vurrm of the tractor
The rude "eew" of people smelling the barn
The quiet chomp of the animals as they're eating
That's a farm yard

Coleson Smith, 2005

America's Founding: Another Story

I just finished the first volume in Gore Vidal's "American Chronicle" series--a set of historical novels which tracks the history of America from the revolution up to the 1980s, largely through the variegated and bastardized legacy of America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Thus the first novel, Burr, tracks the revolutionary emergence of the Republic through the adventures of Aaron Burr, Edwards' grandson and most famous for the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton. (Edwards appears in the story through the figure of Mrs. Townsend, the moralist proprietor of a brothel who is an avid reader of Edwards, particularly on the so-called Freedom of the Will. But the Reformed tradition of the great Edwards does not fare well with his wayward grandson. En route to what would be his final home, accompanied by the Reverend P.J. Van Pelt, Colonel Burr confides to Charlie Schuyler: "If you should hear that I have died in the bosom of the Dutch Reformed Church, you will know that either a noble mind was entirely overturned at the end or a man of the cloth has committed perjury.")

As I was reading this, my oldest son was getting his first dose of the "canonical" account of America's historical mythology from his junior high history book. Being a Canadian, I didn't receive this "orthodox" indoctrination, so I wasn't in much of a position to judge Vidal's slant, but a historian colleague of mine assured me that my son would be better served by Vidal.

Having now read Burr, I can now see that Vidal's Inventing a Nation was a non-fiction (?) return to old haunts in a new context. In Burr, Vidal offers an entertaining, iconoclastic account of the invention of a nation which, for a long time, had ambiguous relations with imperial, monarchic dreams. The "heroes" of American faith--Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton--are cast in less than flattering terms, while the villains of the canonical story (Jackson, even Benedict Arnold) are given a chance to tell their side of the story--particularly in Burr, who variously suffered as the murderer of Hamilton, a traitor to the union, and a would-be emperor of Mexico. But it's hard not to love him.

One of the most fascinating subtexts here is the early republic's continued flirting with monarchy (Washington was addressed as "His Excellency" and held court in Philadelphia) and empire (Bonaparte was admired far and wide, and many of the key players here spent time in France). It is undoubtedly the contemporaneity of these themes which brought back these figures with such force in Vidal's more recent Inventing a Nation. In an age of Newspeak and Thought Police, Vidal's fiction might be the best place to get at "the truth." So I'm looking forward to diving into Lincoln.

Empire for Dummies

I wish I could spend more time with this book but it is WAY overdue from the public library (paying fines is my little way of donating to public services). Arundhati Roy's An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire is a collection of stinging yet witty editorials which is happy to take aim not only at the American imperial project, but also the lingering British version of this in India. As she puts it, "Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its new war cry" (47). Or better, "Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism" (56).

Her concerns range from corporate control of the so-called "free press" (see my Fors Clavigera post on this), to the "poverty draft" that fills our military ranks (though increasingly not even that is enough).

One of her more witty tropes is the suggestion of Saddam Hussein's remarkable restraint: "If the Saddam Hussein regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation" (35). With all those threatening WMD in Iraq, you'd think he might have pulled the trigger as American forces bore down on Baghdad.

Hitchens on the Clintons: No One Left to Lie To

As I've indicated before, I secretly want to be Christopher Hitchens (or Bernard-Henri Levy). This was further confirmed this past weekend as I enjoyed one of Hitchens' earlier book, No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. As you might imagine, Hitchens' take on Bubba is somewhat different than the version we heard in Clinton's My Life (which we listened to last summer when we drove home from L.A.).

First published in 1999, Hitchens ruthlessly documents the underside of the teflon-Clinton, including everything from his very intentional pandering to the Right by a method of "triangulation" (and his transformation of the Democratic party as a right of center machine), his unabashed opportunism, his wag-the-dog war crimes, and a serious investigation (and substantiation) of rape charges against Clinton. A very sobering book that we'd expect from Hitchens the contrarian, who was almost alone in unmasking the Clinton menace during a time when even Gore Vidal was coming to William Jefferson's aid.

My only disappointment is that I fear Hitchens--whose contrarian tendencies have now made him a defender of Bush's war in Iraq, and even an endorser of Tony Blair in the upcoming election--might never write such a book on George W. Indeed, it is striking to read this book now, 5 years later, as he seems to let Bush off on matters for which he castigated Clinton (especially on the death penalty). Even if his experience seeing the sufferings of the Kurds at the hands of Saddam Husserin has made Hitchens deeply sympathetic to the campaign in Iraq, I hope Hitchens' biting wit, sharp analysis, independence, and rigorous journalism will at some point be turned on the purchased presidency of Bush the Lesser.

Highlights from Harper's

You'll start to see here and over on Fors Clavigera that I have a new favorite monthly: Harper's magazine. The magazine is part sampler, part essays, with decent selections of art and literature. Lewis Lapham's opening editorials (like "Democracyland") are always incisive and entertaining, and the Harper's Index--curious compilations of culturally-revealing stats--are always a treat. (E.g.: Percentage of born-again U.S. Christians who have been divorced: 35. Percentage of Americans who have been: 35. Chances that the divorce of a born-again Christian happened after he or she accepted Christ: 9 in 10.)

The March 2005 issue included an illuminating essay on desertion ("AWOL in America") and a hilarious account of a leftist journalist who posed as a Bush supporter and worked on grassroots campaigning in Florida ("Bird-Dogging the Bush Vote"). To top it off, the same issue included a surrealist little piece of literature which clearly takes aim at America's reality-TVish culture ("Brad Carrigan, American"), and then a review by Terry Eagleton on accounts of the Enlightenment ("The Enlightenment is Dead! Long Live the Enlightenment!").

All in all, great stuff and well worth your attention. The June issue should be arriving any day now.

French-American War Revisited

An interesting little book I happened upon: Dangerous De-Liaisons (Melville House, 2004) documents several dialogues between two leading editorial figures--Walter Wells (The International Herald Tribune, European outlet of the New York Times) and Jean-Marie Colombani (of Le Monde). While a bit rambling, the book provides interesting insights into what has almost always been a tortured relationship of love and hate (or perhaps better, a passive-aggressive relationship of superficial love and deeper hate). What emerges from the conversation is a sense that, in the days after 9/11, there was a new opportunity for solidarity ("Today, we are all Americans," Chirac announced). When W. asserted an American unilateralism, that possibility was destroyed. But this wasn't something new; it was really just a lapse into old ways. The conversation provides an illuminating account of how different two democracies can be.

Virtuous America?

While I was reading Vidal's Inventing a Nation, I also picked up an interesting book by Claes G. Ryn, America the Virtuous: THe Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (Transaction, 2003). I have a hunch that if I knew better, I would see that there's something of Voeglin behind this, but that's a vague guess right now. At the very least, Ryn seems more comfortable with Adams' vision of America.

Just two quick pieces of interest:

(1) Ryn helpfully reminds us that a commitment to "democracy" can be expressed in quite different forms, and does not require the propogation of "plebiscitary" democracy that we get from the neocons. The problem with that version of democracy, he says, is that it "does not entertain any deep-seated suspicions regarding the popular desires of the moment" (p. 52). For some reason, this reminded me of Vidal's extolling of a more Jeffersonian Republicanism as checks and balances on the "will of the people." But I might be getting this all confused. (Hey, I'm only a Canadian!)

(2) Ryn describes the neocons of the PNAC-variety as "the new Jacobins." This provides an interesting historical analogue that repays further consideration.

The White House, Political Fundamentalism, and the "Echoing" Press

In the treasures of the new arrivals shelf at the GRPL I found another little gem I've been trying to digest: David Domke's God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press (Pluto Press, 2004). Domke, a communications scholar at the University of Washington, undertakes a systematic, quantitative analysis of Bush rhetoric since September 11, with a special focus on the way the current administration has "converted" political agendas into religious missions through a very intentional lexicon. The result is what Domke calls a "worldview" (and he seriously engages relevant literature on the notion of worldview, including Naugle, and others in the Reformational tradition); more specifically, he labels the worldview "political fundamentalism"--which, I think, is a rough equivalent of what we often call "Constantinianism."

[It is interesting that Domke notes: "It is unfortunately the case that there will be a desire by some to dismiss this book as the product of an anti-religious, anti-conservative mindset. The reality couldn't be further from the truth. My worldview, and that of a number of the individuals who assisted me on this project or offered insightful suggestions, has been and continues to be substantially shaped by the Christian faith" (p. xi).]

This internal critique of White House rhetoric is only part of the book; the other major piece of the research looks at the way that the mainstream media--and not just Fox News, but also the networks and major newspapers--uncritically bought into this rhetoric. Thus, despite, say, the NYT's persistent critique of Bush, their adoption of the same lexicon to describe the "war on terror" actually mitigates their ability to engage in critique.

This is an important book and repays careful attention (why aren't communications scholars at my college talking about this book?--well, I think I know why...). But it's now overdue, so this is a note to self to check this out again later.

Another Evangelical Scandal

It’s now over a decade ago that Mark Noll documented what he described as The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The scandal, of course, was that there wasn’t one: “evangelicals” had devoted themselves largely to “saving souls,” not creating research universities or redeeming that arts. (For Noll’s recent retrospective, a decade after Scandal, see “The Evangelical Mind Today” in First Things

In _The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience_ (Baker, 2004) Ronald Sider now offers an account of another evangelical scandal: the problem isn’t that evangelicals don’t think, for him; rather, the problem is that they don’t practice what they preach. Or, as the subtitle puts it, “Why are Christians living just like the rest of the world?” The first chapter of this book is a litany of statistics which show that despite the religious veneer of the American populace, the practices of American Christians are not really different from their non-Christian counterparts: both are beholden to a market fundamentalism that baptizes invidualism and hedonism.

Overall, I found Sider’s book underwhelming. It certainly doesn’t compare to Noll’s account concerning the evangelical “mind” (admittedly, Sider’s isn’t an “academic” book). Whereas Noll very patiently tries to discern the causes of the scandal, Sider seems content to recite statistics and never really gets to thinking about the root cause for evangelicalism’s assimilation to a consumer culture. I suspect this is because in the end, even Sider’s version of Christianity still adheres to the same root cause, viz., majoritarian democracy coupled with the valorization of free-market economies. In short, I think this book confirms what I’ve always thought about Sider: at the end of the day, he isn’t really prophetic. He is a reformer, at best. While he tries admirably to get evangelicals to appreciate the structural character of sin, he stops short of recognizing that capitalism and the version of “democracy” pushed by the current administration are at the heart of the problem. Sider wants to create charitable, compassionate, property-owning agents of a chastened free market; he’s not willing to call into question that entire system. (He even makes a point of trying to say that the early church retained notions of private property. Acts 2:44 seems to clearly indicate they held “all things in common.”) But rabid capitalism is quite happy to encourage charity, tithing, and the like: none of it really challenges the dominant model for distributing goods and wealth.

Perhaps what is particularly sad is that even a model as anemic as Sider’s still needs to be articulated with what he takes to be a prophetic edge (though most of the time I find his so-called “prophetic” tone to be just downright moralistic!). The depth of the Babylonian/American captivity of the church means that Sider’s book still needs to be heard—but only as a starting point.

All that said, there are a few themes I really appreciated in Sider’s stance:

(1) I completely agree with his call for a recovery of church discipline. Only when we begin to reassert boundaries for the church and consequences for transgression will we be able to live out a sense of countercultural antithesis vis-à-vis the broader culture.

(2) However, re-asserting church discipline will also mean calling into question the ideal of “autonomy” not just for individuals, but for church’s. Here is where Sider the Baptist is at his most un-Baptist best: he rightly discerns that non-denominationalism and notions of congregational autonomy amongst Protestants really just creates a network of places for Laodicean disciples to bounce around without consequence—still naming the name of Christ but all the while baking cakes for the queen of heaven (Jer. 7). I have long thought that non-denominationalism is the height of evangelicalism’s modernism.

(3) Sider also emphasizes the role of small groups as a site for abstract notions of “community” to hit the ground. Our own experience attests to his intuitions here.

Much more could be said, and the book deserves to be read, at least to get the conversation going. In the end, though, I wonder if the book is a bit of a missed opportunity.

Vidal's Founding Fathers: Inventing a Nation

In _Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson_, Gore Vidal returns to the infancy of the republic with one eye clearly fixed on the present. Rather than documenting the "official" history of the birth of the nation, Vidal takes us behind the curtain to the machinations at work, noting especially the tensions between Hamilton and Jefferson, and Washington's stately presence above the fray, even if he leaned for the federalist cause. What I found most striking is just how much was "up in the air" with the American experiment. For instance, after the Revolution, it wasn't simply self-evident what form of government would work for the newly liberated colonies. Indeed, there were hints that a new monarchy wasn't out of the question.

Or consider Vidal's observation that "democracy" is "a word that appears nowhere in the American Constitution" (p. 135)--which is why it is so curious that today, in the name of the "American ideal" that the US sees fits to export by force, we get simply the festish of free elections. As Vidal puts it, "Current publicists for the American Empire have convinced themselves that if other nations, living as they do in utter darkness, would only hold numerous elections at enormous cost to their polity's plutocracy (or to the benign empire back of these exercises), perfect government would henceforward obtain as The People had Been Heard." But "no one would wish an uneducated, minsinformed majority to launch a war, much less do something meaninful like balance the budget of Orange County, California" (p. 136).

Vidal doesn't miss the change to compare Adams' support of the Alien-Sedition Acts with our contemporary "Patriot Act": "Is is simply coincidence that Adams, after years of relative obscurity in the shadowy corridors of the American pantheon, has, of late, been found to be a figure of great character and intellectual interest as, indeed, he was an is? But one wonders whether those who would now place him on high might be indeed be otherwise enthralled by the fact that, ignoring the Bill of Rights, he approved the Alien-Sedition Acts not only in time of war but even in the face of a dangerous possibility of...well, danger, some time or other in the days to come" (p. 153).

Perhaps what is most curious is that both Vidal and Bush & Co. look to Jefferson as the paragon of "American" politics. For Vidal, Jefferson is the consummate republican, suspicious of the federalist machinations of Hamilton and Washington. Indeed, he enlists such a Jeffersonian ideal in order to criticize the centralizing tendencies of the current administration (which, ironically, are decided anti-republican, despite the fact that they are the work of Republicans). What is it that Bush, Wolfowitz, and Rummy see in Jefferson? The Jacobin penchant for expansionist idealism. [More on the latter in another post concerning the "new Jacobinism" because neoconservative imperialism.]

Vidal closes with a consideration of the "case that made the court": Marbury v. Madision. Here Vidal's interest is in showing the early expansion of the Supreme Court's power under Marshall, which he then bemoans as the same institution which gave us George W. as president. So once again, this curious bivalency: the leftist Vidal and the neoconservatives both lament the "activism" of the courts, though obviously for different reasons. Doesn't this suggest that so-called "liberals" and neocons are cousins of the same continuum?

[For a helpful overview of Marbury v. Madison, see Micahel J. Glennon, "The Case That Made The Court," Wilson Quarterly 27.3 (Summer 2003): 20-28.]

Curiosity and the Duty of Reading

Once again, a question from a student got me thinking about books and reading. This stemmed from a bit of an ugly incident: one day in class I became completely exasperated with my students' lack of curiosity. We were reading fascinating texts (it was an essay by Milbank) that opened all kinds of doors into contemporary thought and the halls of the tradition. But my students seemed satisfy to scan the piece and not dig deeper. So, admittedly, I laid into them a bit, and I still don't entirely regret it. Afterward, one of my favorite students asked for some direction. I was actually a bit daunted by the scope of the question, so it took me a _long_ time to reply. Here's it is:

Dear B__,

Well, you must be thinking the apocalypse is near, as I'm finally answering your email! I would apologize for the delay, but it's been so long now, an apology might just embarrass both of us. So let's pretend you just asked!

I still recall the class that occasioned your email: I had become frustrated, perhaps unjustly, with what I perceived as a lack of initiative among your compatriots when it came to engaging serious ideas in difficult texts (we were reading a doozy from Milbank, as I recall). Looking back, I probably over-reacted, but if it was an occasion for you and I to have this exchange, then I don't regret a minute of it. At the time, my "outburst" came from a sense of both sadness and frustration. And in some ways, this stems from a kind of jealousy. As I think you know, I don't have anything that even resembles a "pedigree": I come from stock with dark blue collars and was the first person in my entire extended family to attend college and earn a degree. Even at that, I went to a little "hick" Bible college in Iowa! So when I see the riches of a liberal arts education that is on offer for you guys at Calvin, I am deeply envious, and often wish that I could dive into the wells that Calvin students are daily "required" to swim.

What I find so maddening is that despite this "embarrassment of riches," too many Calvin students--including our philosophy majors--tend to aim so low, try to figure the minimum that's needed to pass (or even worse, the minimum to secure the glorified commodity of the educational "market"--the "A"). They won't even complete the assigned reading, let alone dig around in the wealth of literature related to the "required" reading.

And what I find saddening, I guess, is that this seems to be such a flippant refusal of a wealth of gifts. Or, perhaps I should say that I just don't understand this attitude. I'm not trying to set myself as a model (and, of course, when someone says that, you know they're going to do exactly that! :-), but when I finally got to college, I wanted to devour everything I could get my hands on (I had been converted to Christian faith just 10 months before, and finally cared about reading). I spent hours upon hours in the library, diving into one book, seeing in it directions to another, tracking it down, and swimming into its waters. If my professors assigned some lame reading in Charles Ryrie or Lewis Sperry Chafer, I would follow up their critiques of "process theology" by getting ahold of Whitehead's Process and Reality. When one of my professor's bibliography's listed W.G.T. Shedd's Dogmatic Theology as a classic, I began to read it cover to cover as my own course in systematics. When, in his discussion of the Trinity, Shedd opened my eyes to the philosophers, I began to read Plato, Aquinas, and others. Every footnote I saw as an invitation into whole new worlds. If there is one thing that I love about my "job" (there are many things), it's the fact that I get to spend a lifetime exploring new worlds. And it's never stopped. Even just in the past 6 months, to give just a couple of examples, two vast new vistas have opened up for me, and I'm busying trying to acquaint myself with the terrain: (1) the fascinating nexus of John Ruskin, William Morris, and others who thought long about the relationship between architecture and Christian socialism; and (2) quite by chance, the writings of 19th-century novelist and playrwright Oscar Wilde.

Perhaps what I mean to say is that I think curiosity is one of the most important Christian virtues. Curiosity is the desire to explore every nook and cranny of the gift God has given us in the world of thought and culture (as well as the natural environment). Curiosity takes seriously God's gifts in the cultural unfoldings of those he has gifted. (I often pray with Coleson, who loves reading Tolkien, etc., thanking God for gifting authors who open up the world for us in ways we could never on our own.) The "world" of culture (theoretical culture such as philosophy and theology, but also literary culture) is like a river system. As Christians, especially Christian thinkers and theologians, we have an obligation to explore the depths of the Christian tradition and its literature (but as St. John says, this is the kind of obligation that is not a burden, but a gift) This tradition is like a wide, deep, river, which seems slow and plodding, but once you get close, and dip a foot in its current, you find it is powerful and rushing with energy. What an absolute privilege to be able to swim in these depths. But more than that, we should seek to explore every tributary back to its source, and take the time to hike the paths that lead off from the river's edge.

So what I would want to communicate is not so much a reading list as a reading program, or even better, a reading passion. A kind of disciplined curiosity--curiosity as a discipline. This is a discipline that requires never saying no to a footnote. Now, obviously, one can't read everything. But one should get in the habit of selectively following up leads beyond what is "required," letting curiosity set a program of exploration. In addition, one should make note of those paths that can't be explored now, but might come back again later. So, for instance, I've kept bumping into John Ruskin's name for the last several years. Finally, my curiosity reached a critical mass, and converged with certain fortuitous events that gave me the opportunity to finally explore the "Ruskin" tributary of the river of Christian thought more thoroughly. To be a good reader requires a good memory.

I'm not sure if this is what you were hoping for. Perhaps you were hoping for more of a "bibliography" of 'essential Christian reading.' I feel almost completely un-equipped to do something like that. In lieu of that, let me make just a few broad suggestions:

(1) As I think you've already been doing, let your formation in Christian tradition range across denominational and traditional boundaries. Any good Christian thinking will be "catholic" and should reflect an engagement with the streams of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. An important way to absorb this is by drinking deeply from the Church fathers. As you know, I think Augustine is a world to himself, and you could live a lifetime on his corpus. (Confessions would be my "desert island book.") But spend time in the Eastern fathers as well (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianus, Basil the Great). There is a rich medieval canon: Bonaventure, Anselm, Aquinas, and more. I nice way to start is still Anton Pegis' selection of Aquinas' writings. Calvin's Institutes is a must-read for a good Presbyterian like yourself, but also consider some of Luther's works. [I'm going to break off the reference to specifics here because I won't be able to do justice to things. So many books, so little time! We could talk more about 20th-century classics, etc.]

(2) Never, ever, ever settle for second-hand accounts. Don't ever settle for somebody else's reading of Barth; read Barth for yourself. Etc.

(3) To determine the shape of a must-read list, listen carefully to those you respect. Who influenced them most? What books were most formative for them? What are they reading now? Spend time with people who are readers, and when you choose your friends, choose people who read books.

(4) Read some decent monthlies (like the Altantic, New York Review of Books, and Books & Culture) to get a sense of what's out there and what people are saying about it. This will require you to make some good habits and make an effort to do this. I do this when we take the kids to the public library each week.

Well, B__, much more remains to be said, but this is at least a start. Thanks for asking the question, for your patience, and just for being "B__." Your persistence in asking bodes well for a curious heart.

Blessings on your reading, with love,
Jamie

Slouching toward the blogosphere

My apologies to the (2!) people who read this for being so lax in posting. While we were on sabbatical in Cambridge [ http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/cambridge.htm ] I was able to do tons of reading, but couldn't find the time for making informal notes of this sort. In particular, my work was absorbed by two spheres that are more related than you might think: I read almost the entire corpus of Oscar Wilde's works, and dove into the literature and painting of the Pre-Raphaelites. I'll try to post on these matters shortly, and catch up on some other reading.

Note to Self: Empire, Terror, and Politics

I just picked up a few interesting books on the New Arrivals shelf at GRPL, but unfortunately I can't hold on to them, because we leave for Cambridge tomorrow. So this is more of a "note to self" to remind me to pick these up again later.

Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (Columbia UP): I saw this book in its earlier French version when we were in Lyons a couple of summers ago. It's not your typical "anti-American" piece, since its critique is expressed with a sense of disappointment. Todd's thesis is that America's unilateral military action against puny, ill-equipped nations is an attempt to create a militaristic smokescreen that will hide the fact that the American empire is in decline. This repays further thought.

Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton UP): As you'd guess, Ignatieff is looking for a justification of democracy's participation in violence in order to prevent/avoid further, graver violence. He states the rudiments of the problem, as he sees it up front: "When democracies firght terrorism,they are defending the proposition that their political life should be free of violence. But defeating terror requires violence. [...] How can democracies resort to these means without destroying the values for which they stand?" (p. vii). But what if one rejected the premises here? What if one did not assume a "right" to violence-free existence? And what if one asserted, more imaginatively, that terrorism could be defeated by non-violent means? Who is willing to entertain that proposition?

Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (Simon & Schuster): Following a few years after his important, though contested, Clash of Civilizations, Huntington is worried about American identity. But what, from first glance, he seems to suggest is so startling to me, I might have to buy this one at the airport. From what I can gather, Huntington variously suggests that (1) 9/11 could be seen as a good thing since it was a catalyst for re-solidifying "American identity" as a primary identity; (2) the "Hispanicization" is the biggest threat to American identity, and (3) the best thing we could do is recover a dominant "Anglo-Protestant culture." Wow. At least he has courage. But as Michael Baxter and Stanley Hauerwas are wont to point out: just who does he mean by "we?"

Who is the "multitude?"

Those who read Hardt & Negri's Empire (Harvard UP) will recall their invocation of the "multitude"--led by St. Francis, as it were--as the transnational network of resistance. Well, I just got ahold of what amounts to the sequel to Empire: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin). I'm taking it along with me to Cambridge, but it looks fascinating. And ripe for theological engagement. I wonder if what Hardt & Negri are looking for from "the multitude" might be precisely what one would hope to find in the ekklesia? I would highly recommend reading this book alongside Daniel Bell's outstanding work, Liberation Theology After the End of History, in the Radical Orthodoxy series (Routledge).

So Many Books, So Few Blogs

Mea culpa! It has been over two months since my last blog. I hope I can plead absence--as well as the absorption of summer. We spent most of the month of August in Los Angeles, and for June and July I was directing the Seminars in Christian Scholarship at Calvin.

And alas, the best I can do here is a promissory note. For any who might be interested, watch for some thoughts on some of my summer reading, which has included: David Harvey's New Imperialism, Paxton's Anatonomy of Fascism, Melville's Moby Dick (finally!), Clinton's My Life (on audio through Kansas and Missouri), Stephen Schwartz's From West to East (on the development of radical thought in California), some more Franz Wright poetry in The Beforelife, Christopher Hitchens' Letters to a Young Contrarian, and my favorite summer discoveries: John Ruskin's Fors Clavigera (pointed to it by Francis O'Gorman's little book Ruskin) and William Morris' News from Nowhere.

But perhaps instead of a blog about these books (though I won't be able to resist in the future), I should--in the spirit of Anne Sexton's "Welcome Morning" (a must read poem!)--stop right here, take a moment, and give thanks for a life and vocation where I can spend a summer reading great books. I am blessed to have been called to a vocation and ministry which baptizes my curiosity and creates the space for me to explore the nooks and crannies of God's world. For that, I am grateful. Thanks be to the God of the Book, who gifts great authors, and grants the time and respite to explore His world with them.

Sontag, Images, and Abu Ghraib

The proliferation of affordable digital cameras has made them staples of everything from Superbowl celebrations to Abu Ghraib prison and video footages of the beheadings of Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson, posted on the web. The disturbing images that made their way out of Abu Ghraib raise again questions about the role of images of suffering. (For the record, I have a hard time believing that these Abu Ghraib images weren't already cycling through an intra-soldier fraternity as probably badges of honor in some sense.)

In Regarding the Pain of Others, cultural critic Susan Sontag takes up the history of war photography from its beginnings to the current Iraq war (though publication pre-dates the Abu Ghraib revelations). She grapples with the challenge for a kind of photography that hovers between voyeurism and journalism, and the deep ambiguity of photographs. In particular, she tracks the way in which the macabre and horrifying can be enlisted for both pacifist and militarist ends: on the one hand, such images are intended to show us the horrors of war (albeit still in a mediated form); on the other hand, the same images can be enlisted to motivate militaristic passions against "the enemy" who would cause such carnage. Thus the same images of children killed in the recent Balkan wars were circulated among both Serbs and Croats, to very different ends (p. 10). (So Bush capitalizes on images of recent beheadings as a way to further animalize and demonize "the evil ones;" this can happen only because we are systematically shielded from the equally (?) horrifying images of American "collateral damage.")

In the end, Sontag's little essay is an extended meditation on the hermeneutics of images, especially photography. On this score I was interested by two persistent themes:

1. Sontag clearly dismantles any notion of pictures, even photographs, being "realistic" or "objective" (the history of civil war photography is an interesting bit of demythologizing). At the same time, there is a certain indexical feature to photographs. So she suggests that "this sleight of hand allows photographs to be both a faithful copy or transcription of an actual moment of reality and an interpretation of that reality" (p. 26). Photographs are both record and testimony.

But for precisely this reason, the "meaning" of photographs cannot be completely governed by the photographer: "The photographer's intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it" (p. 39). This is just to translate Derrida's account of "decontextualization" or "undecidability" to images.

2. But almost in order to guard us against the previous point, Sontag seems to lapse into an almost 'Protestant' or Puritan reasseration of the word as governor of the image (I hear rumbling of Neal Postman here). Thus she places persistent emphasis on the role of "captions" in images (pp. 10, 45): "all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions" (10). [Recall the role of Lenny's notes on his Polaroids in Memento.] But this seems to naively invoke a notion of text/caption which ignores precisely the point above about undecidability. In other words, Sontag seems to think that images are ambiguous, but texts/captions are not. But undecidability goes all the way down.

There's much more here than just this (e.g., an interesting critique of Baudrillard and Debord, pp. 109-111), but I was particularly prompted by her hermeneutics of the image.

And one fun fact: the Plymouth Brethren make a cameo appearance (p. 48)!

The Catholic Difference

George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic (Basic Books, 2004) is a little treasure I found on the New Arrivals shelf at GRPL downtown. Watch for my full review of it in Perspectives journal. For now, let me just say that this book is almost a "must read"--it is certainly a book I would put in the hands of any thoughtful person who is "seeking" and wants a solid account of what Christian faith and practice is all about. It could also be a wonderful introduction for a new believer. At the least, I'd love to put it on the syllabus for freshmen at Calvin.

For my fellow Protestans, don't be spooked by the "Catholic" bit: to quote a sermon of Augustine, "Remember, you are catholic..." What Weigel sketches here is the core of the catholic Christian vision, what he describes as an "optic" through which we see the world and engage it. Anyone who is comfortable reciting the creed ("I believe in the holy catholic church") will find their faith being described here.

Pulitzer Poetry as Covert Theology

A couple of nights ago I holed up in a corner of Schuler's (a great bookstore here in Grand Rapids) and devoured Franz Wright's Pulitzer-prize-winning collection of poems, Walking to Martha's Vineyard (Knopf, 2003). Amazing stuff: somewhat like the films of Coppola or Scorcese, Wright has an almost myopic account of the brokenness of a fallen world--but precisely because of that, shards of redemptive light seem to be that more dazzling when they break through. And they do in these poems, in oblique but powerful ways. While written in and through the experiences of addiction, abandonment, and emptiness bordering on the abyss, one finds in the poems deep longings for--and hopeful affirmations of--revelation, resurrection, and loving friendship (see "5:00 Mass").

Several of the most powerful poems--to me, at least--are those written to a father that abandoned Wright when he was just 8. Here we see this dialectical tension between desparate longing and persistent hope. And one gets a sense that this is a letter to more than one father--a father on earth, to be sure, but perhaps also a Father in heaven. (Note the ambiguity: "At ten I turned you into a religion" in "Flight.")

Much more to be said: but no substitute for reading this art first hand. (Find a [probably illegal] sampling of Wright at http://www.bishink.org/bishink/billy/poems.html.)

Barber: McEmpire

Benjamin Barber (of _Jihad vs. McWorld_) offers an interesting read in _Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy_ (Norton, 2003). The core of his thesis is that violence begets violence in a kind of vicious circle--and that the White House's commodification of fear plays right into the hands of the Al Quaeda terrorist network by mitigating democracy. (I'm not a huge fan of Barber's formalist, procedural, a-teleological democracy, but that aside...) In other words, both America and Al Quaeda are colonies of "fear's empire."

Barber critiques the current administration for clinging to visions of independence in a world of "interdependence" (where the market eats away at traditional notions of sovereignty). He also echoes the assertions of Simon and Benjamin in _The Age of Sacred Terror_ (Random House, 2003): that one simply cannot defeat radical Islam with military violence. American military actions in the Gulf (and continued support of Israel) only fuels the ideology of groups such as Al Quaeda. Undertaking strategies of "shock-and-awe" is like trying to drown a fire with gasoline.