#dminglp

[garrickroegner-blog]

Liquid Modernity

Alright, so I am in the process of banging out a dissertation about Spain, missional communities and pilgrimage and probably some other stuff.  Sounds fun, huh?

I want to keep blogging, so instead of coming up with totally new content, I will be blogging some of my material for the dissertation.  

First off, a bit of a conversation with Zygmunt Bauman about liquid modernity, or how he sees our current postmodern situation.

The current sociological situation in the West and Europe is complex and characterized by three shifts to postmodernism, post-Christendom, and globalization.  In order to find a central and encompassing metaphor for the mood of the West, this research proposes using Zygmunt Bauman’s explanation of “liquid modernity” as the confluence of postmodernism, secularization, and globalization. For Bauman this means a “growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty,” caused by the modern capacity of “melting the solids.”[1]  Solids are the institutions, bonds, and cultural norms that held societies together giving them meaning, direction, limits, safety, and community.  When the solids, seen as limiting to individual freedom, of the modern era failed to produce the progress and accomplishments they promised, combined with the triumph of deregulated, flexible, consumerist, and liberal world economy, humanity was thrown into a precarious situation.  On one hand, humans are left alone in the world to sort out their own individual meaning and success.  On the other hand, this forces a hyper individualization from the rebellion against the solids, for utter human freedom.  Thus, the twin forces worked to melt all solids that stood in the way of individuality, choice, and total human freedom.  Individuality and choice have thus become the benchmarks of the liquid world.  Anything that gets in their way must either flex or melt. Shared meaning, significance, moral order and expectation, and other social imaginaries which hold society and community together have given way to pluralism and the fragmentation of meaning.[2]

            The melting of the solids into liquid modernity has come with a high price.  The solids which guided and directed life, labor, and happiness, have not been replaced in the true sense.  They have simply been replaced by infinite choice, amusement, false emancipation, insecurity, fragmented community, and identity crisis.  Moreover, choice and individuality in all things and at all times have meant that society is “thrown into an unstoppable hunt for novelty” in search of the next identity, brand, experience; thus, existentially and physically constantly on the move.[3] Bauman sees this “hunt for novelty” at all expenses manifested in the meaninglessness and emptiness of a hyper consumerist society, which replaces desire for relationship and community with the ever unfulfilled desire for the powerful but ephemeral experience.[4]

What is more Bauman sees that “unlike our ancestors, we don’t have a clear image of a ‘destination’ towards which we seem to be moving… the goal is nothing, the movement is everything”[5]  People now accrue and discard experience and identity at rapid pace.  Community is only that which one chooses to enter into, it too can be discarded when it no longer serves its purpose.  Society become more and more liquid, dislocated, and fragmented as “non-places” protect polite society from having to accept and deal with the strangeness of others, collapsing onto themselves into a mode of “disengagement, elusiveness, facile escape and hopeless chase.”[6]  As such, “’the individual’ has already been granted all the freedom he might have dreamed of…so that the communitarian dream of ‘re-embedding the disembedded’, nothing may change the fact that they are but motel beds, sleeping bags and analysts couches available for re-embedding, and that from now on the communities- more postulated than ‘imagined’- may be only ephemeral artifacts of the ongoing individuality play.”[7]

            Bauman makes the assertion that in the liquefied world all “to one extent or another, in body or thought, here and now or in the anticipated future, willingly or unwillingly- on the move.”[8]  This is primarily because “the hub of postmodern life strategy is not making identity stand- but the avoidance of being fixed,” thusly “mobility is the name of the game.”[9]  Here Bauman introduces a typology of postmodern identity postulated in the figures of the “tourist” and the “vagabond.”[10]  The tourist is the truly free in liquid society, with the ability to pay for and choose his mobility.  He flits about from one experience to another, the ultimate consumer.  The tourist is physically close, yet spiritual remote, in a sense aloof, exempt from “all non-contractual duties having been paid for in advance…[i]deally with the moral conscience having been fed a sure fire dose of sleeping pills.”[11] Vagabonds are the dregs of liquid society, the alter ego of the nomadic elite tourist.  Vagabonds “are the waste of the world” and are on the move because they have “no other choice.”[12]  They are dislocated from time and space, forced to move on, but never accepted and satisfied.   

            For Bauman, the rise of the tourist and the vagabond, and the immense spatial and moral gap between them is a blow to community, and subsequently ethics.  Tidball explicates Bauman’s point: “we can either have the security of community life with the rigidity that goes with it, or we can reject that because we do not want to be fixed and face the uncertainty and self-imposed exile of being uprooted.”[13]  Postmodern society is thus ever on the move, restless and wandering ironically locked in full rejection of any value, narrative, community, or institution which could offer stability.

  [1] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012), Kindle, loc 75, loc 333.

  [2] Bauman lays out his explanation of liquid modernity in a number of texts analyzing the sociological imaginaries of the time from a number of perspectives. Culture in a Liquid Modern World trans. Lydia Bauman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), Kindle. Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), Kindle. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press,  2007), Kindle.

  [3] Bauman, Liquid Modernity, loc 139.

[4] Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), Kindle.

  [5] Bauman, Liquid Modernity, loc 56, loc 130.

  [6] Ibid., loc 2146, loc 2479.

  [7] Ibid., loc 665.

  [8] Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity and Its Discontents (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 93.

  [9] Ibid., 89-90.

  [10] Derek Tidball, “The Pilgrim and the Tourist: Zygmunt Bauman and Postmodern Identity,” in Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage, eds. Craig Bartholomew and Fred Hughes (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 187.

  [11] Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1993), 243.

  [12] Bauman, Postmodernity and Its Discontents, 92-93.

  [13] Tidball, “The Pilgrim and the Tourist,” 187.

[dminlgp]

Surrogates and god-shaped holes

Most storms are not produced by pressure, but more by de-pressure, a vacuum that draws and pumps masses of air. It’s not always the pushing force that produces a shift and motion, but sometimes also the lack or deficit.

Some think, we live in times, were religion is more and more marginalized, up to a point of insignificance. Empty churches, forgotten tradition, lost hope and an absent God. Believers of various religions try to answer this situation: driven by a –howsoever-natured - missional emphasis, they tend to fill those holes. They use much effort, force and pressure to satisfy the vacuum.

Substitutes

In his book “Culture and the Death of God” Terry Eagleton tries to look at these holes and also at the way we fill them. He takes the reader on a journey though the past 400 years with a focus on the relationship of society and their idea of God. Starting with the enlightenment, the intellectual battlefields of Europe,

Lessing, Kant, Hamann, Herder and the rest of the 18th century, Eagleton illustrates their ambition to substitute reason for God.

He looks at the Romantics and eventually Nitzsche, who famously defined the hole, by proclaimed the death of God to end with modernity and finally post-modernity – an era of extreme relativism.

Eagleton portraits one western intellectual movement after the other, who are all unified by denying the existence of God and pursuing to search for the divine somewhere else.

    The substitutes to fill the god-shaped holes they used: philosophy, reason, religion, art culture, materialism and consumerism.

Imbalance

Eagleton defines our current era of post-modernity as the realization of Nietzsches “God is dead”- concept. He refers to materialism, individualism, aversion to moral absolutes and dismissal of strongly-held convictions.

And in the midst of this atheistic and materialist society, which tends to fill the gaps with individual truth and consumerism, some try to fill the gaps differently.

In some parts of the world, religion is becoming more important. Fanatic forms, Christian, Islamic or other are growing. Looking beyond one’s own nose and leaving a the western perspective, especially rapidly emerging radical Islamic movements come to mind.

Are they growing out of a pressure and force or out of a vaccum?

Eagleton states, that atomizing, individualistic Western capitalism has inevitably thrown up a mighty counter-force. In this group a variety of individuals and entire societies are united, which see a godless world of endless choice as a threat. Those fundamental forces seem aggressive, but Eagleton insists, that they are rooted in a deep cultural anxiety.

It seems that this forceful and aggressive appearing movement is not driven by pressure, but moved by a lack and vacuum (produced by the West).

Ultimately, Eagleton seems pessimistic about the human chances to find a satisfying alternative to fill the hole. He remains sympathetic to religion as a basically decent expression of core human dilemmas and values, corrupted as religion, the churches or other religious institutions may be.

  Enlightenment – bringing on the light

Eagleton’s journey through time introduces to different pseudo-religious methods of filling the god-shaped hole and also to different “materials” to use. My question is not so much about the method or the material, but more about the craftsmen (and –women, of course). Who are the new alternative gap-fillers, the “enlighters with the light of the world” and “aufklärer with a missional drive” of the new enlightenment? After post-enlightenment and post-modernity and post-post-modernity.

Religion has gone viral. Things are fluid and moving.

Who are the people, who are smart to use the currents?

Who are the people, to wisely use pressure and vacuum?

Who are those who separate from fanatic religious groups but also from skepticism, secularism and consumerism?

Who are those, who debunk pseudo religions and crooked God-substitutes with decent alternatives?

[garrickroegner-blog]

Of Zograscopes, Facebook, and the Internet

Zygmunt Bauman has posited that contemporary (or postmodern) society is characterized by “the growing conviction that change is the only permanence and uncertainty the only certainty (Liquid Modernity, loc 75).”  We live in thus a liquid time, where structures and societal solids must be flexible, changeable, and ultimately liquid.  Furthermore for Bauman this all is “triggered by the horrifying signs and prospects of durable things falling apart, and of a whirlwind of transient ephemera filling the vacancy” leading to modernity’s “unstoppable hunt for novelty (loc 136).”

Nowhere is this liquid sensation more apparent than in the constant change and alterations that consume our technological hunger and our love affair with new media.  Some ten years ago, no one even knew about Facebook.  Today they are a global power that has changed the way people think and communicate, globally.  Indeed, during the globalization of the technological, postmodern (liquid?) world the rise of new media has played a drastic and radical role in reshaping nations, governments, and cultures.  One tweet can ignite a revolution.  Or, one Facebook post can incite a hoax affecting millions.  Recently the President of Turkey pledged to eradicate Twitter in his nation.  At the same time, we are all immediately aware of the transience of new media.  That in fact we are all waiting for the next big thing.  Facebook is particularly aware of this reality as they rapidly buy up and subjugate potential new medias with their billions.

Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree edit a history of new media that is surprising in its historical, cultural, and sociological perspective.  New Media, 1740-1915 reminds us that “new media” is not so new, and show us a litany of media innovations that have changed and at times not changed the world, but have created the same kinds of conversations in the past that we are also having today.  We must remember that the Catholic Church once fought against the translating (out of Latin) and mass producing the Bible and other religious texts.  It was in fact Luther’s “tweet” attached to the doors of a church that instigated one of the greatest cultural shifts and religious reformations of all time.  What we see from Gitelman and Pingree, is that words and communication are important.  Point of view and perspective can be altered, and as such cultures and people shudder, or sense great liberation.  The advent of the zograscope in the mid 18th century seemed to shift a radical way in which people could perceive the world.  In a sense, it was the first pass at virtual reality.  The zograscope came to be a defining new media of certain parts of English society for a short time, and then passed into obscurity.  What is more, Erin C. Blake points out that while it is tempting to herald the zograscope as some kind of media breakthrough that altered European society, in fact: “did not provide a new dominant model of seeing; it provided a different way for a limited group of people, the men and women who considered themselves of polite society, to visualize public space (4).”

These observations of the “newness” and historical depth of new media help to ask deeper questions of our technological digital age.  Are our Iphones, tablets, and relentless internet usage really a major shift in seeing and understanding, or just a social marker.  Still millions have limited or no access to these forms of new media.  What is more, in my own context of Andalucia, Spain, one can observe that an Iphone is marker of status and wealth.  Do these forms of media divide us more than they unite us?

Twitter and Facebook, and in general the blogospherical internet ignite firestorms of controversy and rancor at the drop of the hat.  Sure we no longer crucify people at the city gates, instead we digitally stone them.  Hoaxes, half-truths, and polemics abound. Much of the internet is an echo box… people with lots of strong political or religious points of view (but very little actual experience or expertise) lead online movements, often always emotionally shooting from the hip. One wonders if this is all more for entertainment and self-satisfaction than actual communication, reflection, and societal betterment.  Dialog seems to be missing, as a trip to the comments sections shows almost always overwhelming approval of the posts in some cases, with dissent being quashed.  While in others, it is simply a Darwinian battle for who can be the meanest.

This is particularly the case amongst the Christian blogging community, where disaffected progressives square off against curmudgeonly traditionalists, conservative vs. liberals, Reformed vs. non-Reformed, and on and on.  In the end I feel a lot more echo boxing is going on, as opposed to any real theological or cultural dialog.  Never mind the complete lack of anything resembling scholarly thinking or research.  Some have also pointed out that many who actually pastor, lead, serve, and are in any way proactively caught up in the work of expanding the kingdom of God day to day in people’s lives, probably don’t have that much time for this type of thing.  I wonder how much of the internet is to build followings to sell books to.

Still, I am not that much of pessimist to write it all off.  Great things do happen with the new media that is intimately connected with the internet.  Communication and discovery occur.  Relationships are created, and there is some genuine debate and dialog.  It is a world of opportunities.

The internet isn’t going anywhere, but we should not be surprised if Twitter, Facebook, and Blogging go the way of the zograscope.  Perhaps we should view our interactions with these forms of new media loosely and lightly.

What do you think?

[garrickroegner-blog]

Leaders Think and Thinkers Lead

In 2005 we moved to Spain with our 1 year old daughter and a team of 4 Americans, 1 Mexican, and 1 Spaniard to do campus ministry.  We were sent as Short Term Internationals, even though we were planning on staying long term.  The idea was to go for two years as short termers, try out life and ministry in Spain, and then return as long term missionaries.  In Cru, short term teams are sent out to get things done, and do as much as they can within a year or two time frame, hoping to get ministry and movements up and running in a rapid period of time.  This strategy has actually worked well in certain contexts and normally with young singles carrying the load.  Unfortunately for us, Spain is not a good context for this strategy, nor was it a good situation for us a family leading a multi-cultural, multi-generational team.  Three weeks after we touched down in Spain, and having not yet even moved into an apartment, we were expected to start ministry.  Our first year in Spain was a spiritual, mental, marital, and team nightmare.  We kept up a peripatetic pace trying to engage with students, maintain our team, learn language and culture, and set a strategic course for accomplishing our ministry goals. 

Daniel Patrick Forrester in his excellent tome on pausing to think, Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organization, speaks of the human proclivity towards “action bias.”  Action bias is basically a tendency to do and act, rather than sit back and reflect or think through a problem.  Evangelicalism typically has a strong action bias. We have been doers, and through the Protestant work ethic, and a typically fearful stance towards more contemplative (read Catholic) spirituality (echoes of Taylor and Weber here), we tend to attack problems and challenges by stepping out in faith, rolling up our sleeves, and taking action.  This isn’t always bad, and probably has led to some tremendous movements, growth, and societal change.  Action bias isn’t always wrong.  However, Forrester points out that action that is always separated from solid thinking that understanding of context and meaning can be destructive.  Moreover, living in a global, connected, technological world of rapid pace and speed where emails and messages should be answered in just minutes, “action bias now manifests itself in impulsive and instantaneous responsiveness to every request… the trade-off is easy to make: we gain speed, immediate connection, and reactions while giving up richer contexts that emerge only when we take time to think (loc 337).”

This can be seen in our short term experience in Spain.  We didn’t have time to reflect or think about the culture, about what would work best to communicate the gospel, or even how to best live incarnationally… we just had to do.  Most missions organizations want new missionaries to go through a period of adaptation, learning language and culture and spending adequate time thinking about their future ministry in this context.  Actually, once we became long-term we were afforded this time to process, and we are allowed to sit back and learn from the first two years of working in Spain.  This allowed us the time to think through with ourselves and other long term staff, strategies and tools for connecting with the culture, and even process in real time, instead of running around trying whatever.  Moreover, we have seen the productivity and fruitfulness of ministry grow over time as we have had the time to learn and think through how best to do life and ministry in Spain.  Now we are at a pace where we can actually work faster, more competently, and focused on many tasks.  But, all of this took time to think through and process, maybe even more so because it is a cross-cultural experience.

Forrester explains that as leaders mired in a connected world of constantly having too much to do, and constant media distraction, to avoid organizational and personal disaster it is imperative that we take formal, structured time to think and reflect.  Otherwise, we can become so consumed by action bias that we will miss the key changes, decisions, and innovations that will truly grow an organization.  In a sense, “in our culture of immediacy, we can easily solve the wrong problems with great speed (loc 554).”  This is how my first two years in Spain felt: “Coupled with our culture’s bias towards action and exacerbated by constant distraction, it can be nearly impossible for today’s leaders to consistently pose and then answer the right questions while employing sound judgment (loc 801).”  It was only when we had time to gather the big picture of Spain and ministry there, that we could process it and begin to move forward with confidence tackling the correct issues before us.

Forrester thus encourages leaders to make time to think and reflect, even in hectic and overly busy schedules.  The mind needs time alone, its own space, to focus completely un-distracted on the issues, challenges, and opportunities before the leader.  Otherwise, the leader will simply make knee-jerk decisions that may or may not be helpful.  Moreover, Forrester explains that thinking time must be reflective in that it must be able to question perceived data, the status quo, and group think.  In a sense, good leaders schedule time to think!  And they do serious, heavy lifting thinking.  This means closing down email and setting the phone on silent, and engaging in serious focused thinking.  Forrester also encourages leaders to create time for everyone in the organization to think, and to create a “reflective culture.”  That is a culture “that makes it possible for people to constantly challenge things without fear of retaliation (loc 1511).”  This allows for ideas, innovations, and checks of bad decisions or practice to arise within the organization.  Issues like group think and terminal niceness (saying yes to bad ideas) are thus avoided.  Forrester points out that many successful companies like Google insist that their employees have time to think and also reflectively challenge company assumptions. 

Returning to my experience in Cru, I believe that as Christians we need to find a good balance between thinking and action.  Too much thinking can become negative and paralyzing, but action without attention to thinking can lead to waste and even disaster.  So it is essential that we build in structured time within our organizations for thinking and reflection.  As my responsibilities and roles in Spain continue to ramp up, I need to make a more and more concerted effort to spend time alone, just thinking.

In short, if you want to be a good leader, make time to think, and help others also think and express their ideas. 

[dminlgp]

Career Transition and Isolation: A Blessing or a Curse

The statistics are out and the news is not good. The Wall Street Journal says the average worker will have approximately 7 careers in one lifetime and the average American worker changes employers every 4 years. I have been fortunate to have been in my job for 15 years but that came after I made a career change from working as a Church Pastor to moving into the Senior Living Housing Industry.

Changing careers and jobs can be chaotic in a person’s life and can be a lonely experience. Shelly Trebesch in her book Isolation; a place of transformation in the life of a leader has a healthy approach to address various aspects of isolation sometimes caused by a career change. She approaches isolation from a spiritual perspective and says isolation is a fourfold process: striping, wrestling with God, increased intimacy with God and a looking forward to the future (Trebesch 1997, 35).

After reflecting on her principles and my career change in the past, I could relate to the four fold process as I experienced much of these phases. In the 1980s I had a positive experience starting a church in California with the support of two sister churches. My wife and I decided to leverage that experience to start a new church in Seattle but without the support of churches close by. After a couple of years, funds were dwindling and I decided to go bi-vocational and start a second career. The second career lead to become a Nursing Home Administrator with the goal to become an Executive Director of a faith based Continuing Care Retirement Community.

The decision led to a time of isolation and experiencing the 4 phases Trebesch talks about. Stripping was felt as I had a Masters of Divinity and was trained to lead people in a church environment. I knew very little about healthcare and geriatrics which led me on a journey of having my pay cut in half while I interned in a State sponsored Administrator in Training program. This took a year to learn and obtain my license.

The wrestling with God came about through prayer and reflection about working through an unsuccessful church planting effort and deciding to move into another career. Much was learned through a period of months of wrestling and seeking God’s direction in a real life crisis.

Increased intimacy grew over time as I saw God faithful walking along this career transition. He never left me and I found comfort in reading scripture (especially Psalms) and praying through the day to day experience. The lapsing of time and consistent spiritual disciplines helped to take away the pain as my new career became the new normal in my life.

Finally, the looking forward stage was feeling a release that it was ok to pursue another career as a lay pastor and not a professional pastor. This stage took a few years to be released to lean into my new career.

Changing careers can be a lonely and isolating experience and Trebesch’s work was encouraging to read and reflect over some of the isolating experience my journey has taken me. How about you? Tell me about a career change you experienced. Did you also experience the fourfold process? Was your experience a blessing or a curse?

Trebesch, Shelley. Isolation: A Place of Transformation in the Life of A Leader. Altadena, California: Barnabas Publishers, 1997.

[dminlgp]

Calling

One of the things my ministry in partnership with the local churches in Ethiopia has been doing over the years is training local evangelists, church leaders, and young people in the church to become self-supported ministers. My ministry adapted the concept of “tentmaking initiatives” based on the apostle Paul’s mission strategy. Our tentmaking strategy benefits the church ministry in three areas. First, it increases the number of professional ministers in the church who support themselves, which will alleviate the financial burden from the church. Second, it broadens the horizons of these mission-committed believers who will make Jesus known both at work and other places. Above all, in our context, it legitimizes their presence, especially in the areas where people are not open to receive the good news. Third, it provides a natural and sustainable approach since their support will not depend on the church. These church leaders and evangelists realize the increasing level of poverty in the church, which in return has been affecting both the ministries of the church and the lives of their evangelists, whose income depends on the support they receive from the church. However, they could not comprehend how a person who is called by God to sing or preach the gospel can do other jobs. Some also were afraid that doing other jobs besides ministry might affect their evangelistic work. But on the other side, I know many solo singers who have plenty of time during the week to farm, study or do other businesses, but instead sit around until they receive their next invitation to sing.  They have convinced themselves that their calling in life is only to sing for Jesus, ignoring their responsibility to find others ways to support their family.

I do not really know when and how the Protestants in my country developed the concept of calling to ministry as a lifetime occupation, but it is clear that the religious connotation behind the phrase calling is deeply ingrained in the minds of our leaders and believers that they will not consider other approaches. As I write this blog, I realize that since I have never been appointed by the church as an evangelist or pastor, I do not really understand how difficult it might be for some to put those traditional religious titles aside and become a teacher or a nurse or whatever skill their ministry context requires to share Jesus both in words and deeds. One thing is clear though, church ministers in Ethiopia are not alone in their understanding about calling. As Max Weber depicted in the second chapter of his book, The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, early church reformers such as Martin Luther at first "thought of the activity in the world as a thing of the flesh, even though willed by God” (p.80). Weber tells us that Luther’s view on calling evolvedlater with his development of “the conception of sola fide in all its consequences, and its logical result, the increasingly sharp emphasis against the Catholic consilia evangelica of the monks as dictates of the devil, the calling grew in importance.” For Luther, Weber adds, “… labour in a calling appears to him as the outward expression of brotherly love” (p.81).  What is so interesting about Luther, Calvin and other reformers is not their different theologies, but how they carefully craft their views against each other and the Catholic Church. They all picked the Bible verse suited to their doctrines and interpreted them the ways they wanted. Now, centuries later, Christians demonize each other over their doctrinal differences.

Yesterday, I received a facebook notification that someone added me to a group called “Heresies of Orthodox Christianity.” I clicked on the page and all I saw were young Protestants and Orthodox Christians who have the money and time to be on Facebook criticizing one another using Bible verses. In fact, this has been the common approach among Ethiopian Christians. I know it is partially because of the Protestant Christians’ insensitive approach toward Orthodox Christianity that we face hatred, although the Orthodox Christians see Protestants as second-class citizens. But I have come to believe that shaming someone’s religion is not only a wrong approach, but it generates antagonism, which eventually leads to religious war. I do not thing anyone want this to happen in Ethiopia. But who will help us find a common ground? The bigger issue for us (Protestants) is how do we understand our calling when relating to our brothers and sisters of other faith. I wonder what Luther and other great reformers would say today about all the different thoughts we have on their theologies. We know what Jesus commanded us, to love one another as he has loved us. We know what Paul said and how he lived. He said, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). My hope and prayer is for our churches is that we return to the teachings and examples of Jesus and Paul which would help us overcome cultural and religious differences and realize the things we have in common.

[dminlgp]

Review of Taylor

Taylor, in his book on modern social imaginary, explores the development and human understanding of morality in a political societal context. The author does not focus on the theory itself, but the imaginary that surrounds the theory. Taylor begins by explaining the Grotius’s theory on how a political society is formed. His theory is that a political society is formed when groups of people come together with common pre-existing notions of morality based on the natural rights of every individual. This theory stresses the importance that individuals have a moral obligation to protect and respect the rights of others. It also establishes the moral authority of a society’s right to form a political form of government, and that government only exists because the people grant it the authority to do so. 

A phrase that the author uses throughout his book is “social imaginary”, which he defines as, “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.”[1] Taylor focuses on the common people within a society, and draws his views from “images, stories, and legends.”[2] The reason for this is that the author believes that looking at social imaginary, through a theoretical context, would represent only a small minority of the population. Looking at the society, as a whole, is a truer picture of how people perceive the society in which they live. Taylor says that social imaginary “incorporates a sense of the normal expectations we have of each other, the kind of common understanding that enables us to carry out the collective practices that make up our social life.”[3] 

In chapter 5, Taylor explains that there are three areas that help a society to understand the how they view themselves. These three areas are:  “economy, the public sphere, and the practices and outlooks of democratic self-rule.”[4]  I believe the author is trying to say that using these three factors does not consider God’s original intent or plan for the society.  Taylor states that, “The notion that God governs the world according to a benign plan is ancient, even pre-Christian, with roots in Judaism as well as Stoicism. What is new is the way of conceiving of his benevolent scheme. ”[5]

I believe the author did a good job outlining the growth and development of morality in society, and explaining how society views itself.  However, it did seem that the book became repetitive, and after the first couple of chapters, offered little new insight outside of an overview on Grotius’ theory.   It would be helpful to further explore this theory in a biblical context, and also to investigate older societies dating back to periods prior to the 17th century.  Taylor provides us with a lens in which we can evaluate society’s morals as we encounter cultural change or foreign cultures.  However, broadening the scope to explore a wider historical context of societal growth and additional viewpoints would seem beneficial.

[1] Excerpt From: Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/SWC5B.l 

[2] Excerpt From: Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/SWC5B.l

[3] Excerpt From: Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/SWC5B.l

[4] Excerpt From: Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/SWC5B.l

  [5] Excerpt From: Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/SWC5B.l

[dminlgp]

We Have All Been Here Before

Certain narratives flow through our world defining and explaining where we have come, where we stand, and possibly where we are going. The television series Lost was a perfect postmodern tale.  A mixture of genres colliding into a huge question of existence, reality, and meaning, played through characters with the names of famous philosophers, scientists and thinkers.  Certain characters represented certain narratives of how human’s deal with reality and meaning.  Furthermore, the Gilligan’s Island plot centered on a group of people “lost” on an island, all having the same déjà vu experience of having been on the island before.  There is a creeping mystery of a bunch of lost people sensing that they are meant for more, and that the mysterious force of the island has something for them.

What is often amazing is that in a postmodern world, where meta-narratives no longer hold sway, so much of the world still ascribes to one or the other.  This is of course ironic in and of itself, as postmodernism is an explanative narrative.  What Charles Taylor enthusiastically jumps into in his A Secular Age is helping us to see how modern man understands history and time differently, so that we now perceive of ourselves as progressing through history.  Taylor exhaustively chronicles Western society’s slow slide into secularism, or a time when believing is an option.  As such Taylor thrashes the simplicity of secularization theory, that humanity through wit and reason has arrived at an enlightened state, banishing religion to the wayside for the betterment of the entire world.  As a Christian, this often feels like tiresome elitist stuff… accusing believers as being bounded by cultural and epistemological prisons.  Taylor turns the argument, taking us on a tour of the emergence of modern thought from the rise of Christian Reform movements which in attempting to raise all out of the medieval Catholic stratified nominalist mindset, essentially democratized church and society.  This reform minded bent, when combined with the shifts to Deism (to better explain the scientific world) and the failures of Western society and church, called for a process of civilization of the world, which led to a radical shifts in elevating people out of a pre-modern mindset. Taylor calls it a “rage for order” against the disorder and magic of the pre-modern world (63).   In turn, this necessity led to the disenchantment of the world, and the rise of humanism, which has come to roost in the sense of invulnerability of man, that he lacks nothing, and needs no God.  Taylor hits the nail on the head by seeing the bigger shift in human epistemology here, and not in grand subtraction stories.  Secular society finds it ultimate expression and reason for leaving belief in “authenticity, or expressive individualism, in which people are encourage to find their own way, discover their own fulfillment, ‘do their own thing (299).’”   What emerges is that atheists and unbelievers are just as constrained and conditioned by the radical shifts in thinking.  If we can get here, through iterations of human philosophical shifts, to a growing acceptance and idealism in humanism, then we can certainly get back, or get to another place.   We are not fixed in deterministic time.  We have been here before.

If anything, the Reformation and Protestantism opened up Christianity to new possibilities, and the shattering of homogeneity and corruption of power.  He rightly asserts that gradual slide in Protestant countries, while highlighting the violent conflict in Protestantism which broke down the formal artificial walls between mystery, monks, professional priests of the true spiritual depth, with the nominalism of the average citizen.  Unfortunately, its first steps went too far and not far enough all at the same time.  They did not usher in Taylor’s network of agape, and banished mystery (setting the stage for Western disenchantment), but still opened the door to change, and democracy and equality.  But, this is probably the church in its essence, always reforming, always seeking to be a network of agape, yet falling short, geriatric waiting for the next iteration.  We see this soon after the Reformation with the Wesleyans and the rise of Evangelicalism, and now with Pentecostalism.  What will be next?  We have been here before.

Thus, for Taylor, secular modern society is that which finds human flourishing involving “no relation to anything higher (151).” It is important to note, that Taylor doesn’t see the society as totally lost.  For him, secularity is not a full out rejection of faith, but the need for competition between the many, and the end of naiveté in belief.  It cannot be taken for granted anymore.  This is an important point, where many lament the loss of privilege in Christendom, or on the more Anabaptist side, revel in the ashes.  But, neither is a proper response, and both are knee jerk reactions, that fail to grapple with their own approbation of victimization.  As Taylor laments the dark side of modernism in hyper individualism, personal rights, which find it’s ultimate break from the stale bonds of the pre-modern in meaning in full sexual gratification and expression.  Our society is drenched in this, and in the individualism to buy, be, to express one’s self for one’s own satisfaction and happiness.  This is modern human flourishing.  It is not found in loving God and loving neighbor.  But, can it continue to be good and just?  To express limits, or hesitations, is to offend (and to be pre-modern), which is now the highest order of oppression.  In a society more concerned with battling housewives than wars and suffering, has exclusive humanism now begun to swing towards an inevitable collapse of meaning? Everyone is now a victim of someone else’s oppressive opinion, while real people suffer and die in places like Syria.  As such, modern society finds very little outside of itself to believe in, to guide it, to give it actual meaning.  It is fragmented, and lonely, chasing after nothingness.  Hollow men indeed.

Taylor makes a keen observation here, in that Christianity has not had its full impact in Western culture as “what we got was not a network of agape, but rather a disciplined society in which categorical relations have primacy, and therefore norms (158).”  God’s in breaking of radical love has not fully saturated the society and church.  But, this is not to say that it hasn’t at times and even today.  Taylor doesn’t lose hope here; instead he believes that modern society is effectually doomed by its lack of mystery, meaning and ultimate transcendence.  Like the searching heroes of Lost mankind is still looking for ultimate meaning and purpose.  Just this last week, brilliant writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote of his conversion back to Christianity by finding ultimate meaning, mystery, purpose, and agape power in God:  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/books/how-i-rediscovered-faith

This secular age, can and probably will pass.  We can get back to where we were before, and if our churches and lives exhibit agape love, then all the more better to establish again societies where human flourishing in God can happen.