tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84164292024-03-07T03:54:31.155+00:00Gower StreetTheology, History, Anglican Communion doings, Food, Urban Design and Architecture, &c.:
Ever seeking to prove that half is rather a lot of wit.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.comBlogger497125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-84397289590291727792009-04-24T00:00:00.005+01:002009-04-24T00:07:53.429+01:00Not dead yet......although you would certainly be pardoned for thinking otherwise!<br /><br />I am just now in the midst of trying to finish writing up my dissertation, hoping to submit in the summer. This autumn, I'm to begin a new teaching post, so I'm starting to prepare lectures and curriculum. We're getting ready for a transatlantic move. Oh, and did I mention we've just had our second child?<br /><br />We've just had our second child.<br /><br />She's Samantha Brigid Danielle; although she was a little over a month premature, she's flourishing and growing and doing well. But it does make for a bit more on the to do list.<br /><br />So, I assure you, I'll be back some time in the future with witty observations, stentorian pronouncements and the occasional anguished soul searching - or whatever it is I do here, I haven't quite figured it out myself. Keep your bookmarks!<br /><br />Also - Gower Street may undergo a slight format change, too: there's a possibility it might become a team blog. So (as they say): <span style="font-style: italic;">watch this space</span>.<br /><br /><br />(BTW, I'm also over at Facebook, and I sometimes do something like blogging within the parameters of their format - so if you use Facebook as well, look me up!)Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-29526958384602599082008-10-03T22:46:00.005+01:002008-10-03T23:12:26.358+01:00On worshiping the 'Big Jesus'<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Driscoll">Mark Driscoll</a> is an evangelical and missional sort of Christian, and one of the founders of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He is outspoken and brash in much of what he says; he isn't afraid of making hasty generalisations and seems particularly fond of false dischotomies. His rhetoric is sharp and he's not afraid of making enemies. Some have said that he has made a difference in their lives, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, but I'm not a fan of his and disagree sharply with him on a number of issues.<br /><br />Last year, in the magazine 'Relevant', he was part of a seven-person panel of church leaders asked about where they see the church headed. One of the questions was as follows:<span class="featuremaintext"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"><br /><br />What do you see as the greatest challenge for young Christians in the next 10 years?<o:p></o:p></span></b></span> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span class="featuremaintext"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;">Mark Driscoll:</span></b></span><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"> There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText">[From:<span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"><a href="http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7418">7 Big Questions; Seven Leaders on where the church is headed</a>. 8/28/2007]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;">I think this has massive, serious problems with it. First, this shows a troubling tendency towards simplistic black-and-white thinking: either Jesus is a ‘limp-wrist hippie in a dress’ or ‘a pride fighter’. There is no sense that Jesus, whom we confess as being ‘fully God and fully man’ might be strong enough to genuinely elude our own neat and tidy categories. Moreover, Driscoll’s characterisation of Jesus, taken from Revelation 19, betrays a great selectivity. True, in this one passage in Revelation (although Jesus is not named, his identity seems clear from context) he is presented as wielding a sword ‘to strike down the nations’ (9.15). The sword is metaphorical – it comes ‘out of his mouth’ – but the author of Revelation thought it a fit metaphor for the act of God in Christ. This cannot be explained away and needs to be, somehow, incorporated into our language about Jesus – although in a manner that reflects this as one <span style="font-style: italic;">minor</span> element in his overall character, since most of Scripture presents Christ otherwise.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>The odd selectivity of Driscoll’s judgement can be shown in two ways. First, although he states that he can worship someone who is committed to ‘making someone bleed’ and ‘cannot worship a guy I can beat up’, he seems unaware that Revelation more often presents Jesus as the Lamb who was slain. This is purely a passive image, not that of a warrior or fighter, and relativises presenting Jesus as a warrior without reserve.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>Moreover, and perhaps even more troubling to Driscoll, in the same chapter which presents Jesus as killing with a sword, presents the church, the saints, as the ‘bride’ of the lamb, who has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (19.7,8) The text makes clear that this language is just as metaphorical as Jesus as a warrior or a lamb, explaining that the linen represents the ‘righteous acts of the saints’ (19.8) Nevertheless, Driscoll and those like him who want to emphasise the (stereotypically) masculine characteristics of Jesus must explain why they pass over other images of Jesus (as slain lamb, for example).They also need to explain why they see Jesus’ stereotypically masculine characteristics as underwriting their embracing of the same, rather than, in the light of their identity as the saints of God, embracing (stereotypically) feminine characteristics. Otherwise, one seems justified in suspecting that Driscoll has simply co-opted Jesus into a project which he has arrived at by other means- to put it bluntly, idolatry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;">There is also, just as troublingly, no sense that there might be a problem with allowing who one can ‘beat up’ to be a sure guide to who one may worship. It seems to me rather that (to borrow Driscoll’s polemical terms, which I do not accept) the power of the decaf-drinking ‘limp-wrist hippie’ is that he can change us, quite despite ourselves, into someone who no longer needs to worship only someone he can’t beat up, but is willing to worship God – who is both infinitely ‘bigger’ than us, yet can also, because he wants to, embrace radical vulnerability and contingency in the incarnation and cross. A God who loves the creation enough to act for its salvation, even though it is entirely his creation and has no being of its own apart from him. A God who is wrathful at our disobedience, sin and injustice, yet who has repented of and foresworn violence. A God whose power is not the simple power of force. A God who can take the humiliation of a cross and turn it into life for the world. A God whose ‘extraordinary power’ is entrusted to ‘clay jars’ such as us so that it is ‘made clear’ that the power isn’t our own. (2 Cor. 4.7) This is a gracious God whose glory and honour works itself out through honouring sinners such as ourselves with new life, making those who were his enemies adopted sons and daughters, and brothers of his only son, whom we killed. (Rom. 5) This is a God who graciously reveals himself, but loves us enough not to let us control him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;">Despite all this, there is <i>something</i> right in what Driscoll says, although perhaps not in the way he intends: despite our best efforts otherwise, Jesus is not safe. That’s not to say that he is a violent hothead liable to be out looking to ‘make someone bleed’. It’s to say he cannot be captured and used to our purposes; he can’t be domesticated by our own expectations, whether of the ‘pithy Zen’ or the ‘big Jesus’ variety. And to the extent we insist that only one of those two varieties – or any one of the vast number of other varieties – and exclude anything else, we’ve missed out on the real Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;">More than that, he isn’t safe because he isn’t content to leave us alone and unchanged, either. If we dare to come to this Jesus, the real Jesus, then perhaps in the bargain we might be changed into someone who doesn’t need to beat up another but can allow the power of God to transform us into someone new – someone who, for his sake and by his word, might even be willing to suffer for the truth, or give his life on behalf of another.</span></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="featuremaintext"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Cambria;">(Just so that you know - and so that <span style="font-style: italic;">he </span>knows that I know - Halden over at <a href="http://inhabitatiodei.wordpress.com/">Inhabitatio Dei</a> has also <a href="http://inhabitatiodei.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/who-can-mark-driscoll-worship/">written on this</a>, with much that I would endorse, but I felt the need to elaborate my own thoughts on the matter.)<br /></span></span></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-75450014364583802672008-09-27T21:55:00.003+01:002008-09-27T22:07:19.549+01:00Ricoeur Conference on Poetics and ReligionIt is <span style="font-style: italic;">killing me</span> that I cannot go, but I felt I ought to mention here that there is <a href="http://theo.kuleuven.be/page/poetics_and_religion/">an upcoming conference at Leuven</a> on Paul Ricoeur with the theme poetics and religion. I would love to go, but simply cannot. Here is a description of the conference, pulled in its entirety from their website:<br /><br /><p><span style="font-size:130%;color:#000080;"><strong>Theme</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;color:#000080;">Paul Ricoeur’s investigations into the hermeneutics of text and human being, the poetic force of symbol, metaphor, and narrative are a continuous source of reflection. The hermeneutical paradigm of text and interpretation in From Text to Action, the ‘little ethics’ in Oneself as Another, the incomplete ontology with its vehemence to be completed, the recurring themes of liberty, hope, poetics, attestation, recognition… are challenging issues for theologians as well as philosophers, revealing numerous fruitful trajectories between philosophy, ethics and theology.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;color:#000080;">The international conference ‘Paul Ricoeur: Poetics and Religion’ wants to contribute to the course of interpretation that Ricoeur’s oeuvre has instigated. The conference will be dedicated to aspects of the intersection between motivation and argumentation, between conviction and critique. Our purpose is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy and its interaction with various theological disciplines.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;color:#000080;">The conference is organised around five general themes: the fundamental relation between theology and philosophy; textual, biblical and theological hermeneutics; metaphysics; ethics and morality; and practical theology.</span></p>No mention of a dealine, so I imagine there is still time to register.<br /><br />If you go, tell me how it was - and if you like Ricoeur and good theology, spread the word. (<a href="http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/">Ben</a>?)Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-56762805197887981612008-09-25T09:52:00.005+01:002008-09-25T10:15:19.201+01:00on economics 2I've mentioned elsewhere the tendency to think of economics as more-or-less a set of natural laws (e.g. the free market), and this correlates with its being taught (usually) as more-or-less a science. Yet it is also, <span style="font-style: italic;">intrinsically</span>, an arena of human activity - and so it is always also open to moral analysis. This isn't as clearly the case about other sciences such as physics. This leads us to a dilemma of how to characterise economics, and what the human response to it should be.<br /><br />Is economics primarily to do with science, a matter of nature? If so, then because it is a realm of human endeavour, it needs restraints and regulations placed on it from outside.<br /><br />Is economics primarily to do with the human, a human construction, and hence a matter of history rather than nature? Then there are presumably resources within economics - human, moral resources - which can place checks and balances on economic activity.<br /><br />Or is economics (as I suspect) some third thing, incorporating both? Economics thus may be seen as a human, social construction, one with a history* and as any contingency, may be otherwise, and yet which also includes regularities about which general and mathematical observations may be made. In this case, as above, economics - whether the teaching of economics and its statistical analysis, or even the actual acts of trading and business-keeping - are not free from moral analysis and constraint, but ought to be expected to serve humanity (broadly construed).<br /><br />There is certainly more to be said here, but this is another modest foray into thinking through a topic which is turning into an ongoing project for me.<br /><br />* The specific economic arrangements- whether tending towards modern socialism or towards modern capitalism - are virtually unthinkable 200 years ago, and literally impossible 1000 years ago. There is nothing more necessary or self-evident or 'natural' about our current arrangements than there is about our driving automobiles.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-30509421706424294622008-09-25T09:30:00.003+01:002008-09-25T09:52:06.887+01:00Rowan Williams on Capitalism<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNxCkX1J-SefsV3uugJip2u9lxmjUKTnSy0GKhnWd8mUcMv_zboozrOdRWuCGLyioGQsxKbO9DRet89ddFMbBYY5NDF3fCZO0biBeWRDTnEEGW-8Abkspkpbm_BwZOCTQY2K0k/s1600-h/Archbishop-at-Cross-in-Jerusalem.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNxCkX1J-SefsV3uugJip2u9lxmjUKTnSy0GKhnWd8mUcMv_zboozrOdRWuCGLyioGQsxKbO9DRet89ddFMbBYY5NDF3fCZO0biBeWRDTnEEGW-8Abkspkpbm_BwZOCTQY2K0k/s200/Archbishop-at-Cross-in-Jerusalem.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249878927741788994" border="0" /></a>Yesterday <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/2172131/face-it-marx-was-partly-right-about-capitalism.thtml">an essay by the Archbishop of Canterbury</a> was published by The Spectator.<br /><br />It is a great essay, filled with human concern about the mythology which surrounds the market and the real damage it can do to people. A couple of quotations:<br /><br /><blockquote>'We find ourselves talking about capital or the market almost as if they were individuals, with purposes and strategies, making choices, deliberating reasonably about how to achieve aims. We lose sight of the fact that they are things that we make. They are sets of practices, habits, agreements which have arisen through a mixture of choice and chance. Once we get used to speaking about any of them as if they had a life independent of actual human practices and relations, we fall into any number of destructive errors. We expect an abstraction called ‘the market’ to produce the common good or to regulate its potential excesses by a sort of natural innate prudence, like a physical organism or ecosystem. We appeal to ‘business’ to acquire public responsibility and moral vision. And so we lose sight of the fact that the market is not like a huge individual consciousness, that business is a practice carried on by persons who have to make decisions about priorities — not a machine governed by inexorable laws.'</blockquote>...<br /><blockquote>'...ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase. The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens. We need to be reacquainted with our own capacity to choose — which means acquiring some skills in discerning true faith from false, and re-learning some of the inescapable face-to-face dimensions of human trust.'</blockquote>Read it all <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/2172131/face-it-marx-was-partly-right-about-capitalism.thtml">here</a>.<br /><br />But somewhat troubling is that the essay itself is entitled "Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism". Now, I am assuming that, as with newspapers, the headline was not composed by the author but added in later by someone else. (I suspect but do not know - I am not a regular reader of the Spectator - that the deliberately provocative 'Face it:' is a regular feature, and that the specific headline follows the colon.) But the headline, whilst attention-getting, is not apposite to the essay. He does indeed mention Marx near the end, in a by-the-way fashion, but this is not his overarching concern, not the theme of the essay. As it stands, it might sound like a full-court-press defense of Karl Marx and Marxism, but this is far from the intent. In fact, he says of Marx, in the <span style="font-style: italic;">only mention</span> of him in the essay:'Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else.' Hardly a ringing endorsement. And hardly a suitable headline for a passionate, thoughtful, and irenic essay.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-91744724779290560742008-09-24T20:50:00.003+01:002008-09-24T21:05:10.351+01:00plus ça change...I ran across the following recently in a discussion of political policy in one <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/against-stupidity/">corner of the internet</a>:<br /><br />” … to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man …”<br /><br />Was this a trenchant summary of America's recent foreign policy? Nope.<br />A retrospective indictment of American involvement in Viet Nam? No.<br />A historical condemnation of the conditions in Europe which led to World War I? Still, no.<br />A denunciation of Victorian hubris or Napoleonic vainglory? Again, no.<br /><br />It could easily have stood in for these and much else of relatively recent vintage, but the fact is it is a quotation from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides">Thucydides</a>' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War">History of the Peloponnesian War</a>, a fourth century BC account of a late fifth century war.<br /><br />plus ça change...<br />...plus la même.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-64648709808094594292008-09-16T14:08:00.003+01:002008-09-16T14:19:03.908+01:00Life, giving and tragedyAn incredible, haunting, unsettling story from the Chicago Tribune today. Near Chesterton, Indiana, a 10 year old child fell into a surging river and was pulled into a metal drainage ditch (about 3 feet in diameter). His next door neighbor, Mark Thanos, a high school teacher and coach, jumped in to try to save him. After Mark began struggling, his father John jumped in to help.<br /><br />In the event, the ten year old was pulled clear by the current, but the other two men died. The entire story is <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-chesterton-drownings-16-sep16,0,7854355.story">here</a>.<br /><br /><span class="story_comment_back_quote">In this one event, the selfless giving of one to save another costs him his life, and the selfless act of another seems to have been in vain. My thinking is not resolved on this - as I mentioned above, I find this haunting - but I think haunting is one of the things the Spirit does, so I'm not worried, just not through.<br /><br />I think one intuition about this is that, in God, this is not lost. Yes, it can be allowed to be tragic - this is no eschatological quick fix to make everything alright - but maybe not finally or ultimately tragic.<br /><br />Something else is that in these selfless but tragic acts, two families' lives, and the lives of three people not normally or necessarily connected, are now inextricably intertwined for the rest of their lives. Looked at in one way, how can the young boy who survived now live knowing what these other men gave him without his asking? How can that not haunt him every day?<br /><br />Looked at in another way, how is this different - except perhaps in degree - from the whole of life as each of us knows it? And how can we be so blythe and dismissive?</span>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-81235904050166029432008-09-15T21:42:00.003+01:002008-09-15T21:49:14.689+01:00Donald MacKinnon on John Hick (plus a bonus quotation)Professor David F. Ford, back in his early days as (I believe) an undergraduate was in a supervision at Cambridge with Professor Donald MacKinnon. Ford had been discussing John Hick and the sort of conceptual clarity that he brought to his work; MacKinnon was silent a moment and epigrammatically responded to Ford:<br /><br />'Some thinkers strive for clarity at all costs, while others wrestle with reality at its darkest points.'<br /><br /><br />To that I would like to add a MacKinnon quotation on apologetics, cribbed shamelessly from Ben over at <a href="http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/">Faith and Theology</a>:<br /><br />“The philosopher is <i>not</i> an apologist; apologetic concern, as Karl Barth (the one living theologian of unquestionable genius) has rightly insisted, is the death of serious theologizing, and I would add, equally of serious work in the philosophy of religion.”<br /><br />—Donald M. MacKinnon, <i>The Borderlands of Theology: An Inaugural Lecture</i> (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1961), 28.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-58147972396236214062008-09-08T22:02:00.003+01:002008-09-08T22:12:44.575+01:00Unpromising SignsMy wife recently conveyed to me a couple of nuggets that she heard from a particularly smug and windy pastor. He said that, as pastor and leader, he makes decisions and if anyone doesn't like them they can leave. Further on in the conversation, he rather pompously declared that in his sermons all he does is exegesis and historical background - no stories, no illustrations, no leading out the readings into life.<br /><br />My only thought in response to this gasbag is that it is wonderful that one can be a preacher and not preach, and be a leader and be free of introspection - and think that the people you lead are optional and disposable. What's next? Let's see...<br /><br />A pastor who refuses to provide pastoral care;<br />A trustee who can't be trusted;<br />A disciple who won't follow;<br />A Biblical scholar or theologian who doesn't pray or worship;<br /><br />(Send in your own on a postcard, in care of this blog...)<br /><br />How long, O Lord, will we be beset by this plague of idiots?<br /><br />The only positive use I can find for such a 'pastor' is this: like the plagues in the Old Testament, he is a sign of God's judgement upon us, the church.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-64042653270463469622008-09-08T21:59:00.001+01:002008-09-08T22:01:57.863+01:00Back?I am shocked to realise it has been nearly two and a half months since I last posted...it seemed much longer than that.<br /><br />I've been busy, and am likely to be much busier for the near future, but don't give up on old Gower Street, and I'll try to do the same.<br /><br />(By the way, for those of you keeping score at home: <span style="font-weight: bold;">This is post #501</span>.)Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-42640656338536450232008-06-27T14:58:00.003+01:002008-06-27T15:17:19.220+01:00on economicsThere are some who insist that supply and demand are equivalent to (or, indeed, <i>are</i>) laws of nature*, and if we try to function apart from them or work against them we invite disaster.<br /><br />Which seems to me rather like saying that it is a crime against nature to keep my computer and books on my desk because it works against gravity.<br /><br />My desk certainly <i>accounts for</i> gravity, but that is different than saying that gravity is an inviolable force, the full force of which I resist at my peril.<br /><br />It seems to me that even if supply and demand are 'natural' - bearing in mind that supply and demand do not necessarily imply a free market, and a free market does not imply capitalism - it still describes an arena of human activity (and in that way less 'natural' than gravity) and hence subject to moral/ethical analysis. There might well be some things which, for the sake of humanity, we decide cannot be left to the vagaries of supply and demand: labour cost, for example, as in fair trade. <br /><br />To make supply and demand - and more broadly, the market - out of the realm of moral/ethical analysis allows for a huge segment of human activity to be bracketed from thinking, which seems dangerous and irresponsible to me. Among other things, it allows profits, and the means of gaining them, to be considered amoral.<br /><br />It is also interesting, by the way, that for most things, demand is a controllable variable (not, presumably, for the utter basics such as food, water, shelter - but that is a small percentage of overall production).<br /><br /><br />* Part of what this points out is the vacuity of (most) talk of the 'natural'.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-42957663375794461872008-06-17T15:51:00.004+01:002008-06-17T15:58:52.326+01:00On Sin 4<i><span>Thanks to CR for raising the matter of the seven deadly sins in her comment. The 'Seven Deadlies' were not my primary concern in On Sin 3, but rather a characterisation or thematisation of sin as a whole (which, then, the seven deadly sins would seem to instantiate in various ways). Nevertheless, it got me thinking...</span></i><i><br /><br /></i>It is fascinating - and outrageous - that in numerous identifiable ways <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins">the seven deadly sins</a> are now no longer considered sins as such, but rather are actually relied upon and positively encouraged as the basis of much of our society and (especially) economics, and in that sense has become the basis of our supposed security.<br /><br />If we did not have envy, for example, we could not have fashion - the planned 'obsolescence' of otherwise serviceable clothing - and could not then have an industry and its resultant profits surrounding it. (Not that it is only envy, but it is at least that.)<br /><br />One of the dilemmas of capitalism, historically, is how to create demand in order to sustain production. Recourse to (at least some of) the seven deadly sins has been one of the solutions.<br /><br />Naturally, for Christians at least, any structure which relies on - rather than merely accounting for - the seven deadly sins must be held in some suspicion.<br /><br />But turning to the seven deadly sins themselves, I wonder if there isn't actually a polarity or dualism within them? (I haven't done much work on these, so this is probably a banal observation.) That is to say, it seems relatively easy to get locked into an orientation which reacts against (say) lust, and assumes the opposite (say, anhedonia) to be the virtuous position. But to take this position - reacting against lust - actually incorporates lust into virtue, as virtue becomes a reaction against it, a rejection of it, rather than something which has gone beyond it. Getting beyond these dualisms seems increasingly important to me.<br /><br />If we instead think of virtue as - well, not merely a mean between extremes, but rather something escaping or transcending the dualism, then we seem to get closer to what we are called to by God as humans.<i><br /></i>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-71246263781468024802008-06-17T15:46:00.001+01:002008-06-17T15:48:39.288+01:00Streetwise: Rowan Williams on the church's authority and obedience‘Theologically speaking, an appeal to the Church’s charter of foundation in the saving act of God, rooted in the eternal act of God, can never be made without the deepest moral ambiguities, unless it involves an awareness of the mode of that saving act as intrinsic to its authoritative quality and as requiring its own kind of obedience. That is to say, the God who works in disponibilité, vulnerability and mortality is not to be ‘obeyed’ by the exercise or the acceptance of an ecclesial authority that pretends to overcome these limits.’<br /><br />Rowan Williams, <u>Arius: Heresy and Tradition</u>, p. 239Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-15853142973442449262008-06-11T17:12:00.001+01:002008-06-11T17:13:50.877+01:00A bad sign; an awful trendFrom today's Guardian:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jun/11/socialexclusion.children">Up. Up. Up. Child poverty, pensioner poverty, inequality<br />Gap between richest and poorest families wider despite government efforts</a>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-60935376675334920602008-06-03T15:58:00.005+01:002008-06-05T16:40:27.477+01:00On Sin 3If sin may be primarily thematised under 'pride' - as it has been for millennia - then the appropriate response must be 'humility and obedience'.<br /><br />But despite its seemingly strong pedigree, this also raises all sorts of questions.<br /><br />One question which Matt Jenson raises in his book <i>The Gravity of Sin</i>*is, does this thematisation do justice to the actual experience of sin - does <i>everyone</i> suffer from simple pride, or might, say, women, or others, have a different wrestling with this? He responds that, yes, people actually do have different characteristic experiences of sin, that sin takes different shapes for them. Drawing on the work of Augustine, Luther, and Barth, Jenson paints an alternative picture of sin as <i>homo incurvatus in se</i>, using the Latin, or 'humanity curved in on itself', and therefore not able to be open to God or neighbour. I agree that this far better thematises the broad category of sin than simply 'pride'.<br /><br />This also suggests - quite helpfully - that the 'solution' to sin is not force. If sin is primarily pride, with the appropriate stance being simply humility and obedience, then this implies that the problem is having a will - having a self - and one ought to get in line and do as one is told. It is a military-style solution intended to create identical repetition. It also - at least in effect - discourages thinking. Obedience in this sense is not to be considered, not to be interrogated; imagination has seemingly no role in such obedience; it is simply to be enacted.<br /><br />There is a deep and disturbing finitude to this which seems not to do justice to the excessiveness of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Put another way, it is hard not to see legalism as the 'solution'** to sin as pride; and legalism and its attendent self-righteousness are, it must be said, godless foolishness.<br /><br />But if sin - which might well be pride, yes, but is much broader than that - is more a matter of 'one being curved in on oneself', then the response is more a matter of 'opening oneself up', or 'being opened up'. One is opened up to who one is in God and in light of the neighbour; the problem is not one's will or self <i>in themselves</i>. These are themselves gifts of God, and for God's creation to be its fullest we must participate in it, rather than shrinking back from them, or using them for our own ends over others. We need to be healed, redeemed, reconciled, certainly: we should use these gifts appropriately rather than using them abusively, or failing to use them.<br /><br />If our selves are brought into play in this way, then, it also means that we are also free to think. We are not to shelve ourselves and cease thinking: rather we are to embrace thinking - and acting - in their fullest ways. As I like to say, the life of faithfulness requires thinking and thinking about thinking. That is to say, when we hear - in Barth's terms - the command of God come to us, that command is itself always mediated through the human, whether ourselves or others. Since it is always mediated through the human, it is always already involved in thinking - language, judgement, and so on - and so it is only appropriate that we engage in thinking about thinking. We are not to be formed into a military-like obedience (sorry, Ignatius of Loyola), but rather a thinking faithfulness which is consonant with creativity, yet which is also able to self-interrogate.<br /><br />I call this a 'light' hermeneutics (or, thinking about thinking) of suspicion. (I need a better expression!) With it, one is open to possibilities in God, perhaps surprising possibilities, for nonidentical yet faithful repetition of Christlikeness in our lives. But one is also open to the possibility of self-deception and ideology. This is meant to instill a vigilance as well as an eagerness to hear. And part of this vigilance is a vigilance against our own perfectionism - 'I must know everything before I can act' - as well as being able to interrogate our own interrogation - 'Am I suspicious of this just because I don't like it?' It is, in philosophical terms, a non-foundational hermeneutic; I mean it to be an <i>ad hoc</i> and ongoing practice rather than some sort of all-encompassing theory of understanding.<br /><br />And so, in this way, perhaps we might see that the revelation of God to sinful humanity - to quote Rowan Williams, drawing on Paul Ricoeur - 'is addressed not so much to a will called upon to submit as to an imagination called upon to "open itself".' (from 'Trinity and Revelation' in <i>On Christian Theology</i>, p. 147.)<br /><br /><br /><br />* I reviewed this work - mostly favourably - in International Journal of Systematic Theology. I am not sure if you will be able to access the review, but the link is <a href="http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2400.2008.00316.x">here</a>.<br /><br />** How I despise thinking there is a 'solution' to sin! To say there is a solution to it implies that it is essentially something isolable to be managed, simply to be controlled. It not only seems not to do justice to the reality and scope of sin, it also seems to (even more!) domesticate grace, as perhaps some sort of 'strategy for living', an idea which can be plucked out of nowhere and adapted to whatever we're doing, rather than something elemental and awe-inspiring, which cannot be adapted to whatever we're doing, but transforms us in the deepest ways.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-82926887180034472012008-06-03T15:49:00.005+01:002008-06-05T16:56:08.293+01:00Theology in tight places...I had the pleasure and privilege of hearing Jürgen Moltmann speak in the faculty last Thursday on the topic of German theology since 1908. I was enlightening and exciting, not least because one of the greater figures in the last century of German theology was present giving the lecture.<br /><br />As those familiar with Moltmann's theology will know, he was captured as a prisoner of war in World War II, and <s>interred</s> interned by the British for quite some time. At one point he was given the option of transferring to a prisoner of war camp near Nottingham, at which he could study the Bible and theology. It was that formative and moving experience which launched him into the field of theology, and both he and theology were never the same again.<br /><br />It was at this point in the lecture where someone leaned over and said: 'A prison camp where you could study theology? It sounds like my old seminary!'Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-36585033860570180142008-05-31T12:10:00.003+01:002008-06-03T17:00:37.087+01:00On Sin 2<i>Crimson Rambler helped expand on the sense of what I was up to in On Sin, and it prompted the following thoughts, which I calculated as being worth a post of their own, even though they end up circling around the theme of the first post.</i><br /><br />Since we are established by and in grace, we are also able to claim our sin as our own, even while we are confident in God that this is not the final word on who we are. So there is a sense in which, because of grace, we are freed to be blameworthy, to take responsibility for ourselves - and yet also because of grace, we are able to view ourselves as more than simply a problem to be solved or denied*, but established in and by God in the deepest love so that we may be both discontented and patient with sin: both our own and others'.<br /><br /><br />* 'Blame' can sound like scapegoating or a reduction of the mystery and extent of sin to something managed and finite: I'd want to avoid that.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-47169009746589387042008-05-25T15:09:00.005+01:002008-06-03T17:01:07.128+01:00On SinWe ought never to be <em>content</em> with our sin, for this denies the justice and righteousness of God and - what's more - the power of God to overcome our sin,to bring reconciliation, new life and transformation.<br /><br />But we also ought not to be <em>impatient</em> with our sin, for this denies God's grace and decision that we are acceptable in Christ, substituting for it a notion of needing to 'make ourselves acceptable', which is to say, self-righteousness and legalism. It is only a short step from that to the autonomous 'self-made man'.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-64169416590511068312008-05-24T20:25:00.003+01:002008-06-03T17:03:09.989+01:00On learningIf learning is genuinely a lifelong process, then the notion that we first receive an education and then when that is finished begin practicing is blown apart. In my own profession, ministry, there are some for whom that might be a surprise; we've too long been satisfied with the idea that one goes to seminary/theological college, 'receives' an education, then goes out to become a practitioner, to 'use' that education.<br /><br />We are (properly) always learning and practicing; indeed, it seems that they are not actually discrete moments at all but merely different perspectives on the same moment. This suggests in part that the best formal education will be a matter of learning to learn (and being open to curiosity and wonder) rather than simply conveyance of information: it will encourage lifelong learning and sharing of that learning.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-52237943753960597462008-05-21T16:49:00.004+01:002008-05-21T17:23:02.167+01:00Streetwise: Paul Ricoeur on modernity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyxBHOp6EEIYHjJzo3dGEqNBegOuPHg6tgKG683utJ2p_rvtEbMXPGkBbNKe47ZhGy9zGXpRvDH1zUoki4fsNKXg8bVrkV1jtFsYaRVs2NBig5xVPu8uWg4OxF-CdTP5jynUe/s1600-h/paul+ricoeur.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202867308198419378" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyxBHOp6EEIYHjJzo3dGEqNBegOuPHg6tgKG683utJ2p_rvtEbMXPGkBbNKe47ZhGy9zGXpRvDH1zUoki4fsNKXg8bVrkV1jtFsYaRVs2NBig5xVPu8uWg4OxF-CdTP5jynUe/s200/paul+ricoeur.JPG" border="0" /></a>"[Science and technology may serve and ideological function, rather than simply eclipsing the sacred.] That scientific ideal that earlier had served as an absolute measure <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMuoQ0BYjvU-wspueZyQi2dNHWVauDPZxWyBvMunACTrLOQvEMni0aUk7FTgRuYg0ebL9pFPn9VxXvj_TnM9tyQjmFU5HMWcBM6w4fw95FvAwRMxc3fmsGIDp4HY0BnN2Dt9wI/s1600-h/paul+ricoeur.JPG"></a>for evaluating the overall progress of modernity has itself become problematic.<br /><br />"We might cite as an example the arguments advanced by [Jurgen] Habermas that seek to tie empirical knowledge and the exploitation of nature to one limited interest, the interest in theoretically and practically controlling the human environment. Modernity then appears as the inordinate inflation of one interest at the expense of all others, especially of our interests for communication and emancipation. This leveling of the hierarchy of interests, and the one-dimensional person that results from it, are ideological phenomena to the extent that they serve to make every social agent accept the autonomous, devouring, and cancerous functioning of the industrial system given over to growth without limit or end beyond itself. Here is a consideration that may chill the zealots of modernity. And this same consideration ought to lead us to call into question the judgement modernity passes on what it makes appear as an archaism [i.e. 'the sacred']. This judgement in its turns has already begun to be judged itself. Modernity is neither a fact nor our destiny. It is henceforth an open question."<br /><br />Paul Ricoeur, "Manifestation and Proclamation", in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. p. 63Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-29699179116229096912008-05-20T16:17:00.006+01:002008-06-03T17:02:27.328+01:00On EnemiesThere has been a little talk about enemies going around recently, with President Bush raising questions about the value of diplomatic strategies - 'talking' - with America's 'enemies', likening this to appeasement, and invoking the (rather over-invoked) spectre of Chamberlain, Germany, and the Sudetenland.<br /><br />But it seems worth asking just what an enemy is? Or more specifically, what makes someone an enemy? We live in a world of cause and effect, in which we can generally enquire as to why something or other might have happened or might be the case. Why is it that someone might set themselves to oppose us?* It seems that there are four general causes. I'll mention the first three first:<br /><br /><strong>Ignorance</strong>: the other might simply not know the reasons for one's actions or understand the stance one has taken in the world. In this case, it would seem that informing the other of the genuine nature of things would alleviate the situation.<br /><br /><strong>Insanity</strong>: the other might not be capable of knowing the genuine nature of things due to some defect of function.<br /><br /><strong>Wickedness</strong>: the other might oppose one because he or she is wicked, perverted in such a way that he or she willfully refuses to acknowledge the genuine nature of things.<br /><br />I'll be blunt: these three are rarely wholly and objectively the case with 'the other'. Moreover, it is easy to see how invoking them would serve ideological ends; that is, that they would be a way of lying to ourselves to avoid the truth of the matter.<br /><br />The other cause is this:<br /><br /><strong>Reasons</strong>: the other might oppose one because he or she has genuine reasons for doing so, reasons which might be more-or-less well formed or articulated but nevertheless represent the other's interests and person.<br /><br />It is worth mentioning that, in the case of a dispute between parties, to call someone an enemy for one of the first three reasons locates the cause of their 'enemyhood' in the other; by implication, this allows oneself to escape scrutiny. The reason there is a dispute is because the other has bumbled into it (ignorance), isn't capable of anything better (insanity), or has deliberately and perversely chosen it (wickedness). The reason the other is opposing one is simply because of something within him or herself; any consideration of oneself as involved in the making of the dispute is out of bounds and improper.<br /><br />But the fourth possible cause - because the enemy has a <em>reason</em> - brings one into a relationship, opening up the possibility of self-reflection, of exchange, of debate, of talk: also the possibility of repentence and conversion.<br /><br />Because the enemy might have a reason - more-or-less well reasoned or articulated, correct or incorrect - allows the other to be seen as human. Yet the possibility of self-reflection, for considering how we are implicated in the other's 'enemy-ness' does not unmake the enemy, nor does it explain away or justify the more-or-less well reasoned or articulated, correct or incorrect reasons one has for considering <em>the other</em> an enemy.<br /><br />Parties to a dispute, enemies, are involved in history - maybe for thousands of years - and there may well be reasons of various sorts over the span of time. Yet to acknowledge that there are reasons <em>between</em> the parties rather than simply <em>within</em> the other party is to open up a horizon within which a conversation (of some sort) might open.<br /><br />This is not meant to be sunny or pollyanna-ish, just the opposite. To take a sober look at a situation, and allow ourselves to be a party in it - rather than simply a victim of the other - is at least to escape a dangerous and sinful delusion; or, to look at it from the other side, it is to come <em>more fully</em> to grasp the truth of the matter. It is seeing oneself only as an innocent victim and the other only as wicked perpetrator which is sunnily optimistic and out of touch with reality.<br /><br />Rather, to see the relationship of enemies as <em>mutually constituting </em>constituted by various reasons is to allow both oneself and the other to be genuinely human, <em>both</em> implicated in the other's 'enemy-ness', <em>both</em> caught up in sin - which in various ways partially resembles ignorance, inanity and wickedness - and yet <em>both</em> presented with the possibility of repentance and reconciliation in the Spirit, through Christ.<br /><br />As we are implicated in - and constituted by - our neighbour, so also are we by our enemy. It is in this way that we can begin to see some of the depth and wisdom in Christ's counsel to love one's enemy. (Mt 5.44)<br /><br /><br /><strong>[aphoristic addenda</strong> 20/05/08 21.30<strong>]</strong><br />What I am trying to do, in part, is think a social/relational economy which is shaped by the gospel, recognises the mutual constitution of persons, and can do justice to enemies, sin and grace within this economy. This is intended to recognise the humanity of the other, and not to take his or her sin with greater seriousness than our own - and to recognise how we are ourselves implicated in his or her sin, while he or she is implicated in ours.<br /><br />If we are mutually constituted as persons by others (and we constitute them) then we are constituted by both sin and grace. But the grace is prior, and elemental; at bottom, we are constituted by God's grace.<br /><br />Sin is not (ultimately) subject to explanation, at least not in the sense of 'explaining away', as if it were merely a matter of information and not perversity. Barth was right that sin is the 'impossible impossibility'. Yet this perversity must never be allowed to allow sin to be self-evident or 'natural', and must never dampen thinking, attempts to trace and understand (if not explain) it.<br /><br />This 'mutually constituting' is burden, responsibility, opportunity and delight. But it is not a task <em>per se</em>.<br /><br />It is commonly enough the case that bad reasons may be offered for 'enemy-ship'. One common situation would be that x constitutes y as an enemy when the real grievance is with z. Yet the proper response would not be for y to respond to x by colouring him in the ways described above. (Actually, ignorance wouldn't be too far off the truth.) But this situation gives the opportunity for x and y and (hopefully) z to talk.<br /><br /><br />*Taking 'us' and 'them' in the most general terms possible: individual, social, national, and so forth.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-13742378819208824902008-05-17T12:08:00.002+01:002008-05-17T12:36:40.850+01:00Disasters in Burma and China, and human responseThe airwaves over the last two weeks have been beset by sights and sounds from the wreckage left by Cyclone Nargis in Burma and the earthquake in China. The destruction has been massive and widespread, and the suffering that this has led to has been profound. In both cases, the scale of the disaster has made rescue efforts incredibly difficult, complex and involved. In Burma, the political situation and the closed nature of the government have made relief efforts much harder, and have transformed a natural disaster into a human tragedy.<br /><br />Last weekend, the Young(ish) Adults group from St. Mark's, Newnham, collected money to help with relief efforts in Burma. (We gave through <a href="http://www.dec.org.uk/">dec.org.uk</a>; I discovered them through an appeal on BBC Radio 4.) In all, we collected around £45: not a lot, but I know that people gave generously, and one feels rather like the 'widow' giving her mite as a foreign student on a student budget. We hope and trust that it will, in time, go to alleviate some of the suffering and help in the rebuilding in whatever small way it can. Thankfully, aid from foreign sources does seem to be slowly getting through at last.<br /><br />Last night, whilst in a local pub having dinner, we saw some of the scenes of destruction from cities in China affected by the earthquake. According to the BBC, there are roughly 22,000 confirmed dead and many thousands missing or unaccounted for, so that figure is likely to skyrocket; there are also 4.5 million people homeless - 4.5 million! Of course, the most moving and haunting scenes were those of people being rescued from collapsed buildings, particularly children. You see such scenes and think of your own child. You can really identify with the loss and anxiety of parents, and this is a way of empathising (by analogy) with the broader situation of loss and suffering.<br /><br />When confronted in this way, one wants to do something and not be simply a voyeur to suffering, not simply a romantic emotional parasite, turned in on oneself and not responding outwardly. In this day of the television, and even more of the internet, it is easy not only to be confronted with the images, but to respond in some way - primarily through giving money. This seems to me to be a really salutary effect of the internet and the ways we can be connected with it - not that it is everything, or gives us genuine knowledge of the other such as can be gained in a personal relationship, or that it overcomes the process of objectifying the other, not even that it might not be deeply ambiguous in some ways (it can certainly be used by emotional parasites or worse). But it does also open up other salutary opportunities which would not be had so easily otherwise.<br /><br />Interestingly, I looked into donating to the relief efforts in China as well, and dec.org.uk mentioned that they are not collecting for them because the Chinese government has many resources at hand, and are responding in a competant and admirable (and open! this is somewhat new!) manner. (This is not to say that other reputable agencies are not also collecting for work in China: see, for example, <a href="http://www.oxfam.org.uk/">Oxfam</a>, <a href="http://www.redcross.org.uk/news.asp?id=81083">British Red Cross </a>or your local Red Cross agency.)<br /><br />These are just some ruminations on the recent disasters and the opportunities we have at this particular historical moment, which we have not had in past and which will no doubt be transformed in unexpected ways in future.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-64623940267354586652008-05-16T23:05:00.003+01:002008-05-17T00:18:46.512+01:00Remembering the Soixante-huitards<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQuofYHXBJ_6tyZjR0Q6X-nU0DeDYf-q-yPmNSKqHac9lcCIG_2c-YaoGh0yZjlT94bS_DOTm7cg0UyTEZVR3IeUwxAV7Cr3TuTmthOxu13p9a3Chf7GMiyh4efHHsEsVgfym/s1600-h/mai-68-1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201118938681367442" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQuofYHXBJ_6tyZjR0Q6X-nU0DeDYf-q-yPmNSKqHac9lcCIG_2c-YaoGh0yZjlT94bS_DOTm7cg0UyTEZVR3IeUwxAV7Cr3TuTmthOxu13p9a3Chf7GMiyh4efHHsEsVgfym/s200/mai-68-1.jpg" border="0" /></a>It just struck me today that we are this month marking the 40th anniversary of the 1968 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France">student protests and general strike </a>which took place in Paris (and subsequently throughout France) in Mai 1968. At one point, 10 million workers had joined together in the strike - <em>10 million! </em>That's 2/3 of the entire workforce at the time.<br /><br />On the one hand, the protests and the shocks they brought to the nation ushered in some notable changes at the time, not least substantial increases in wages. It was also a major shift in socio-moral attitudes, along the lines of the changes in America and elsewhere in the West at the time. Mai 68 (soixante huit) is still considered a major turning point in France.<br /><br />On the other hand, as was the case with many student protests and much of the left wing activism in America at the time as well, the movement seemed to founder and sputter, in many cases quickly, and as the decades have worn on, the concerns which gave rise to protests have been set aside for more materialist and self-centred goals. If the 1960s were one sort of watershed, the 1980s were another -and I am more qualified to make that judgement of America than France.<br /><br />It's rather striking how little genuine activism there is now as compared with then. One might suggest it is because everything is fine now, but I suspect we all know better than that. So what is it? Part of it, at least here in the UK, was the strategy adopted in the 1980s by the ascendent Tories of dividing and conquering labour. Labour was either domesticated or disenfranchised, in either case taking what little power there was out of the hands of the workers. But it is also more complex as nations have seen their manufacturing bases shift to third world nations, places where - mostly - workers don't have the right to organise and bargain collectively. And while wages might be higher than what was available before, and workers even grateful for the opportunity (there is all kinds of ambiguity here - the issues are complex), nevertheless it is also an exporting of labour from the West, with detrimental effects on the no-longer-employed. It will be fascinating to see in a generation or two what we are doing to find suitable cheap labour as workers become organised and/or better educated and can start demanding better wages; add this to the coming energy crisis, and it will be a markedly changed world.<br /><br />It is also interesting right now to reflect on the student protests of the soixante-huitards and compare it with current-day street conflict. Last night there was <a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080516/tuk-cup-riot-policeman-thanks-saviour-6323e80.html">widespread violence and rioting in Manchester</a> in the wake of the UEFA cup football match. (<a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080516/video/vuk-officer-tells-of-football-violence-49bfa63.html">video here</a>, thanks to ubiquitous CCTV.) People were observed drinking as early as 7 in the morning in preparing for the match. This serves as quite a contrast with the Mai 1968 protests. Not that there was no drinking or thuggishness in 1968, but that the entire protest was undertaken for better conditions for students and workers. Manchester, on the other hand, was just stupid drunken football hooliganism.* We've come a long way, baby.<br /><br />Now, in memory of the 68 protests, a couple of videos documenting different aspects of it. The first one is quite interesting, presenting some of the protest art which came out of the movement. Do watch it all the way through, to see the statement at the end. It is all the work of the Atelier Populaire, and although (with the music in the video, especially) it can seem almost whimsical, it is also deadly serious.<br /><br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nmylN5f2f74&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nmylN5f2f74&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />There also seem to be a lot of punk music videos set to pictures of the 68 protests, plus a four part series (en Francais) documenting the entire thing. (Begin the latter series here.) But here is one video - in French, I looked but couldn't find a decent English language one, sorry - that gives a little (photographic) overview, which is also an ad for a French company which makes available historical documentation of such things.<br /><br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kmv-eYlV1D4&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kmv-eYlV1D4&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />There is a fair amount more on YouTube and elsewhere giving a sense of what May 1968 was all about, but I thought I might at least offer a few little starting points, as well as point out some of the historical ironies - and sigh a bit that more isn't being done now.<br /><br />*It probably should go without saying that the vast majority of the fans, whether supporters of St. Petersburg or Glasgow, were peaceful and funloving.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-28399377327421986502008-05-13T15:39:00.003+01:002008-05-13T16:00:32.568+01:00Say It Ain't Tso!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhULSss0UiwL1rj0yaB88Zz6bHOVeSkg3JiD0rWEVzMzoYbGd6hccdZWINmv_I1TDNOlwGdITbmhwZmcprdrTDdUn4yIbL6TpX7xFyFxfgzrT4xjFN6A8Pjc1pGus4kf_DpdS_R/s1600-h/General_Tso's_Chicken.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199877010233023362" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhULSss0UiwL1rj0yaB88Zz6bHOVeSkg3JiD0rWEVzMzoYbGd6hccdZWINmv_I1TDNOlwGdITbmhwZmcprdrTDdUn4yIbL6TpX7xFyFxfgzrT4xjFN6A8Pjc1pGus4kf_DpdS_R/s200/General_Tso's_Chicken.jpg" border="0" /></a>I can't believe it - my favourite Chinese dish isn't Chinese at all.<br /><br />Turns out General Tso's Chicken is <em>American</em>, not Chinese.<br /><br />(I must admit, I was always curious when I called the local Chinese restaurant here in Cambridge and they didn't know what I was talking about.)<br /><br />Although this is (apparently) common knowledge to all but me, Jennifer 8 Lee, author of <u><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=K_nXHAAACAAJ&dq=fortune+cookie+chronicles">The Fortune Cookie Chronicles</a></u>, went a step further and <a href="http://www.fortunecookiechronicles.com/blog/2008/02/20/welcome-to-general-tsos-hometown-xiying-hunan/">dug up some historical information </a>about the actual General Tso - or, better, General Zuo.<br /><br />My favourite quotation from the article, which includes a picture of the man himself, is this:<br /><div><blockquote><p>What I discovered. In America, General Tso, like Colonel Sanders, is known for chicken and not war. In China, he is know for war and not chicken. </p></blockquote>Oh, well. I still love General Tso, whether he cooked or not.</div><br /><div></div><div>At least I've still got the genuine Italian goodness of Pizza Hut pizza. Oh, wait...</div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416429.post-5620859061022956662008-05-12T16:36:00.003+01:002008-05-12T16:43:47.288+01:00Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Suffering and God-Talk'The resolution of the sheer resistant particularity of suffering, past and present, into comfortable teleological patterns is bound to blunt the edge of particularity, and so to lie; and this lying resolution contains that kind of failure in attention that is itself a moral deficiency, a fearful self-protection. It is just this that fuels the fantasy that we can choose how the world and myself shall be.’<br /><br />'The world is such - <em>is</em>, independently of our choice and our fabrication - that we cannot think away particulars into comprehensive explanatory systems; the world is such that attention to particularity is demanded of us. If we are to speak of God, can we do so in a way that does not amount to another evsion of the world? There is a way of talking about God that simply projects on to him what we cannot achieve - a systematic vision of the world as a necessarily inter-related whole. Trust in such a God is merely deferred confridence in the possibility of exhaustive explanation and justification; and deferred confidence of this sort is open to exactly the same moral and logical objection as any other confidence in systemic necessity of this kind in the world. A God who essential function is to negate the 'otherness' and discontinuity of historical experience, and so to provide for us an ideal <em>locus standi</em>, a perspective transcending or reconciling discontinuity into system, is clearly an idol, and an incoherent one at that...'<br /><br />Rowan Williams, 'Trinity and Ontology', <em>On Christian Theology</em>, p. 155,6Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293060522916880547noreply@blogger.com0