D01 1 Theology and the Physical Sciences

D01 2 Until early modern times the relations between theology and D01 3 science were as harmonious as between theology and philosophy. D01 4 Indeed, no sharp line of demarcation existed between philosophy and D01 5 the natural sciences. As we have seen in the last chapter, D01 6 systematic theology has retained, even to the present day, very D01 7 close links with philosophy. The relations between theology and D01 8 science have, however, been strained by a number of crises such as D01 9 the Galileo affair in the early seventeenth century and the D01 10 controversies about human evolution in the mid-nineteenth century. D01 11 In our own century battles have continued to rage between D01 12 fundamentalist Christians and scientists, as the Scopes 'monkey D01 13 trial' of 1925 and the court cases about 'creation science' in the D01 14 early 1980s bear witness. These conflicts direct our attention to D01 15 the question of systematic theology's relation to the physical D01 16 sciences.

D01 17 Blondel on Faith and Science

D01 18 Vatican I, without speaking directly of the physical sciences, D01 19 laid down some general principles in its teaching on faith and D01 20 reason. It affirmed that the two types of cognition can never be at D01 21 odds and that they mutually support each other. Reason can assist D01 22 faith by enabling it to construct apologetic arguments and D01 23 theological systems. Faith assists reason by extending reason's D01 24 sphere into the realm of supernatural mysteries and by delivering D01 25 reason from errors, thanks to the surer light of revelation. Within D01 26 its own proper sphere, the council declared, scientific reason D01 27 enjoys a proper autonomy. Deriving from God, "the lord of D01 28 the sciences," reason can, with the help of grace, lead D01 29 people to God.

D01 30 A generation after Vatican I, the French philosopher Maurice D01 31 Blondel attempted to apply the teaching of the council to the D01 32 academic situation of his own day. In the last two parts of a D01 33 four-part article on faith, first published in 1906, he took up the D01 34 linkage between faith and science. The relationship can be D01 35 variously conceived, he said, in correspondence with different D01 36 conceptions of science. According to the classical concept of D01 37 science, taken over by Thomas Aquinas from the ancient Greeks, the D01 38 concepts and theories of science are controlled by their objects D01 39 and are intended to reproduce the structures of external reality. D01 40 In that case science could directly confirm, or directly collide D01 41 with, philosophy and faith.

D01 42 According to a second view, held by some of Blondel's D01 43 contemporaries such as Pierre Duhem, science was a system of D01 44 symbols or notations devised for the purpose of accomplishing D01 45 certain practical tasks. Science in that case would make no D01 46 metaphysical claims. The only criterion would be its fruitfulness. D01 47 In that case science and faith could coexist in mutual D01 48 indifference.

D01 49 Blondel was dissatisfied with both theories. The first, D01 50 demanding concordism, failed to give science its proper autonomy. D01 51 The second theory, by divorcing science from the real, would D01 52 eliminate the possibility of any interaction between science and D01 53 faith. In Blondel's estimation, science was autonomous to the D01 54 extent that it was concerned with formal coherence, logical force, D01 55 and inner consistency. But insofar as science aims to serve the D01 56 needs of human life, it must insert itself into the real order. D01 57 Even though scientific discovery does not have directly D01 58 metaphysical significance, it does refer to the real order. Its D01 59 notations are not merely arbitrary or conventional. It yields an D01 60 authentic, though limited, grasp of truth. Moral and religious D01 61 thinkers must take account of certitudes acquired through science: D01 62 for example, that the firmament is not a solid vault; that there D01 63 are antipodes.

D01 64 According to Vatican I, Blondel notes, science and faith must D01 65 cooperate, even while following their distinct methods. Conflict D01 66 can arise, as the council stated, either from a misunderstanding of D01 67 faith or from false conclusions of reason. Faith gives rise to D01 68 confusion when it is falsely reduced to exterior formulations or D01 69 when people look for literal agreement with scientific statements, D01 70 overlooking the different modes of discourse. Science can be D01 71 responsible for conflicts when it usurps the competence of D01 72 faith.

D01 73 A measure of friction between science and faith, said Blondel, D01 74 is inevitable. Such friction can lead to advances. When science D01 75 operates rightly in its own proper sphere, its findings can help D01 76 believers over-come their unconscious narrowness. By D01 77 adjusting to the progress of geology, archaeology, and other D01 78 sciences, faith gains in solidity. For the same God, as Vatican I D01 79 declared, is the lord of science and of theology. God never D01 80 contradicts himself.

D01 81 Vatican II, in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the D01 82 Modern World, extended the teaching of Vatican I along lines that D01 83 Blondel would have welcomed. After affirming with Vatican I that D01 84 the sciences have legitimate autonomy within their proper spheres D01 85 of competence (GS 60), the Pastoral Constitution went on to D01 86 admonish theologians to cooperate with experts in the various D01 87 sciences and to propose the Church's teaching on God, humanity, and D01 88 the world in ways that take advantage of recent scientific advances D01 89 (GS 62).

D01 90 Message of John Paul II

D01 91 John Paul II, even before becoming pope, had a keen interest in D01 92 the sciences; as pope he has maintained close relationships with D01 93 leading scientists through instrumentalities such as the Pontifical D01 94 Academy of Sciences. In 1983, at the 350th anniversary of the D01 95 publication of Galileo's Dialogues Concerning Two New D01 96 Sciences, John Paul II remarked that the Church's experience D01 97 during and after the Galileo affair "has led to a more D01 98 mature attitude and a more accurate grasp of the authority proper D01 99 to her." He added: "It is only through humble and D01 100 assiduous study that she learns to dissociate the essentials of D01 101 faith from the scientific systems of a given age, especially when a D01 102 culturally influenced reading of the Bible seemed to be linked to D01 103 an obligatory cosmogony." Already in 1979 the pope had D01 104 established a commission to make a careful examination of the D01 105 Galileo question. A member of the commission has interpreted the D01 106 condemnations of 1616 and 1633 as having merely disciplinary, D01 107 rather than doctrinal, force.

D01 108 A new phase in the development of the Catholic understanding of D01 109 the relationship between religion and science was inaugurated by D01 110 the Vatican-sponsored study week held at Castelgandolfo on D01 111 September 21-26, 1987, to mark the 300th anniversary of the D01 112 publication of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis principia D01 113 mathematica. In a message of June 1, 1988, reflecting on this D01 114 conference, Pope John Paul II presented a very open, confident, and D01 115 encouraging assessment of the relations between religion and D01 116 science. Ernan McMullin, an expert in the field, calls this message D01 117 "without a doubt the most important and most specific papal D01 118 statement on the relations between religion and science in recent D01 119 times." Without preempting the prerogatives of working D01 120 theologians, philosophers, and scientists to make their own D01 121 applications, the Holy Father proposes a program that appears to be D01 122 feasible, valuable, and even necessary for the good of all D01 123 concerned.

D01 124 The general position taken by John Paul II may be indicated by D01 125 reference to the standard typology of the relationships between D01 126 religion and the sciences: conflict, separation, fusion, dialogue, D01 127 and the like.

D01 128 Very clearly the pope rejects the position of conflict, in D01 129 which it would be necessary to choose either science or religion to D01 130 the exclusion of the other. This rejection can take either of two D01 131 forms. One form is a 'scientism' such as that of Thomas Henry D01 132 Huxley, who asserted in a sermon in 1866: "There is but one D01 133 kind of knowledge, and but one method of acquiring it," D01 134 namely, science. By the universal application of scientific method, D01 135 positivists believed, it would be possible to dispel the dark D01 136 clouds of dogma and inaugurate a bright new era of free assent to D01 137 universally acknowledged truth. This triumphalist variety of D01 138 scientism is not yet dead. The periodical Free Inquiry, D01 139 for example, promotes science and reason as opposed to faith and D01 140 religion. The 'scientistic' program tends to reduce quality to D01 141 quantity and to emphasize the technological aspects of life. But it D01 142 also makes room for a certain mystical exaltation of science, to D01 143 the point where it becomes a pseudoreligion, involving what the D01 144 pope in his message calls an "unconscious theology" D01 145 (M 14). Jacques Monod and Carl Sagan are sometimes cited, though D01 146 not by the pope, as examples of scientists who tend to extrapolate D01 147 beyond the proper limits of their own discipline.

D01 148 On the other hand, the pope no less firmly rejects the D01 149 alternative possibility - the religionism of those who oppose D01 150 science in the name of faith. In this framework theology becomes, D01 151 as the pope warns, a pseudoscience (M 14). This may be judged to D01 152 have occurred in the case of the 'creation science' taught by some D01 153 American fundamentalists. The 'creationist' position, as Langdon D01 154 Gilkey and others have shown, is in fact antiscientific. According D01 155 to the sounder view, held by the pope in his message, faith cannot D01 156 do the work of science, nor can the Bible function as a textbook of D01 157 astronomy or biology.

D01 158 The second major position that the pope rejects may be called D01 159 separationism. Some thoughtful Christians solve the problem by D01 160 relegating religion and science to separate spheres. This kind of D01 161 separation has become almost axiomatic in Protestant theology since D01 162 Immanuel Kant, who confined the competence of theoretical reason to D01 163 the order of phenomena and regarded religious beliefs as D01 164 deliverances of practical reason. Not only liberal theologians, D01 165 such as Albrecht Ritschl and Adolf Harnack, but neo-orthodox D01 166 thinkers such as Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Tillich D01 167 accepted this division into two spheres. In an extreme reaction D01 168 against the excesses of Galileo's judges Tillich writes:

D01 169 Knowledge of revelation cannot interfere with ordinary D01 170 knowledge. Likewise, ordinary knowledge cannot interfere with D01 171 knowledge of revelation. There is no scientific theory which is D01 172 more favorable to the truth of revelation than any other theory. It D01 173 is disastrous for theology if theologians prefer one scientific D01 174 view to others on theological grounds. And it was humiliating for D01 175 theology when theologians were afraid of new theories for religious D01 176 reasons, trying to resist them as long as possible, and finally D01 177 giving in when resistance had become impossible. This ill-conceived D01 178 resistance of theologians from the time of Galileo to the time of D01 179 Darwin was one of the causes of the split between religion and D01 180 secular culture in the past centuries.

D01 181 McMullin, in a recent article, notes that

D01 182 at the height of the 'creation-science' dispute in the D01 183 U.S. some years ago, the National Academy of Sciences issued a D01 184 declaration maintaining that religion and science are, in D01 185 principle, entirely separate domains, one pertaining to faith and D01 186 the other to reason, and hence of no possible relevance to one D01 187 another. The new papal message takes issue with this convenient and D01 188 popular way of avoiding the risks of conflict.

D01 189 In our own day philosophers and theologians influenced by D01 190 Ludwig Wittgenstein frequently assert, as does Richard Braithwaite, D01 191 that religious language is not intended to communicate cognitive D01 192 truth but to recommend a way of life and to evoke a set of D01 193 attitudes. In a somewhat similar vein, George Lindbeck maintains D01 194 that doctrinal statements are "communally authoritative D01 195 rules of discourse, attitude, and action." In all these D01 196 theories the dogmas of the Church, even though they may seem to D01 197 describe objective realities, are reinterpreted as symbolic D01 198 expressions either describing the inner experience of the speaker D01 199 or regulating the conduct of the worshiping community.

D01 200 Some philosophers of science regard science as directly D01 201 informative about the real order. But others, as we have noted in D01 202 our discussion of Blondel, hold that science has a purely pragmatic D01 203 aim, and thus that it cannot deny any claims of revealed religion D01 204 about objective reality. Thus they rule out the possibility of D01 205 conflict from the side of science.

D01 206 Peace between religion and science is achieved in these D01 207 systems, but only at the price of depriving religion or science of D01 208 its capacity to say anything true about the world of ordinary D01 209 experience. Wisely in my judgment, John Paul II takes a position D01 210 akin to that of Blondel. He refuses to settle for a world divided D01 211 into two cultures, literary and scientific, as described by C.P. D01 212 Snow in his classic essay. Interaction, according to the pope, is D01 213 necessary for the proper functioning of both religion and science. D02 1 CHAPTER FIVE

D02 2 RECONSTRUCTING CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE ETHICS

D02 3 ETHICAL PARADOX AFTER AUSCHWITZ

D02 4 Despite the case I have made for the influence of Luther's D02 5 two-kingdom ethic on the formation of the demonic double among the D02 6 Nazi doctors, I would argue that the failure of Christian ethics D02 7 during the Shoah can be thought of as a failure to maintain its D02 8 two-kingdom ethic. Although Christianity began as a holy community, D02 9 a separated community embodying an anthropological ethic of being D02 10 in but not of the world, from the time of Constantine its ethic D02 11 largely collapsed into a cosmological ethic of sacred cosmic order. D02 12 Luther's Reformation theology, which significantly shaped the ethos D02 13 of Germany, attempted to reinstitute a two-kingdom ethic. Opting D02 14 for a paradoxical relation between the church and the world, he D02 15 separated the realms of the sacred and the secular, which he D02 16 believed had been dangerously fused together in the medieval D02 17 hierarchical order of Christendom. The way in which he separated D02 18 the two realms of church and state, however, permitted the D02 19 paradoxical relation between them to collapse once again into a D02 20 cosmological ethic and prepared the way for the eventual formation D02 21 of the Deutsch Christian gospel of the Aryan Jesus.

D02 22 The collapse of Luther's two-kingdom ethic is primarily the D02 23 result of his privatization of religious experience. As the D02 24 secularization of public order expanded during the Renaissance and D02 25 Reformation, the public dimension of religious experience D02 26 contracted. For Luther, the language of religion is the language of D02 27 the inner person, and the language of the secular public order (of D02 28 politics, science, etc.) belongs to the outer person. Because the D02 29 kingdom of God is restricted to the inner and the kingdom of this D02 30 world to the outer, the relation between the two ethical orders is D02 31 rendered complementary rather than dialectical. The essential D02 32 element of dialectical tension between the two ethical orders is D02 33 eliminated. As a result the two kingdoms fit together too D02 34 comfortably. The ethical tension between the cosmological and D02 35 anthropological orders collapses into a sacral ethic of D02 36 unquestioning obedience. The result is a pseudo-two-kingdom D02 37 ethic.

D02 38 Luther's instincts were right in attempting to recover a D02 39 two-kingdom ethic, but his own version failed to alter D02 40 substantially the Constantinian model of church-state relations. D02 41 After Auschwitz, Luther's paradoxical two-kingdom ethic D02 42 must undergo a fundamental revision. What is at stake here is more D02 43 than restructuring Protestant ethics. As I suggested in the D02 44 introduction, a two-realm or two-kingdom ethic is an essential D02 45 feature of every anthropological tradition (e.g., Jewish, D02 46 Christian, Buddhist, Socratic) and essential to the critique of D02 47 culture. Therefore, understanding what went wrong with two-kingdom D02 48 ethics in the Christian tradition can point the way to a viable D02 49 reconstruction that is of value to all holy communities.

D02 50 Jacques Ellul offers a reconstruction of two-kingdom ethics D02 51 which directly addresses the weakness of Luther's ethic. Ellul, a D02 52 sociologist as well as a theologian in the Barthian tradition, has D02 53 written over forty books on the social and ethical aspects of our D02 54 technological civilization. As a sociologist, Ellul took on the D02 55 task of identifying, analyzing, and articulating the D02 56 "cosmological ethic" of our technological D02 57 civilization. But as a theologian, Ellul then responded to that D02 58 ethic by developing his own desacralizing "anthropological D02 59 ethic." Like Richard Rubenstein and Arthur Cohen, Ellul D02 60 sees the cold and calculating technobureaucratic structure of D02 61 modern civilization as demonic and dehumanizing. The technicist D02 62 ideal of efficiency subverts all other values, for once a society D02 63 has opted for the most efficient solution in every area of human D02 64 activity (his definition of a technicist society), human beings D02 65 must conform to technical requirements, no matter how dehumanizing, D02 66 for less efficient solutions simply cannot compete. Ellul's D02 67 sociological work seems to suggest that human existence is D02 68 determined by and conformed to technical and social forces, but D02 69 that remains true only within the horizon of a cosmological ethic. D02 70 Within the horizon of an anthropological ethic of transcendence, D02 71 individuals may yet find it possible to exercise the freedom to D02 72 call society into question and initiate a social transformation - D02 73 one that brings the Is under the judgment of the Ought. This D02 74 possibility occurs, Ellul insists, not when a cosmological ethic is D02 75 replaced by an anthropological ethic but, as Eric Voegelin would D02 76 agree, when one embraces both in a paradoxical relationship.

D02 77 This paradox is expressed in Ellul's contrast of the sacred and D02 78 the holy, which parallels Voegelin's distinction between D02 79 cosmological and anthropological ethics (distinctions that I have D02 80 adopted as foundational for my own work). Ellul departs from D02 81 ordinary usage here by treating the terms sacred and holy D02 82 as antonyms rather than as synonyms. The sacred performs the D02 83 sociological function of integration and legitimation. Its positive D02 84 function is to create a sense of order within which human life can D02 85 be carried on. But its demonic propensity is to create an absolute D02 86 or "closed" order (in which Is = Ought) that prevents the D02 87 continuing transformation of self and society. Without such a D02 88 self-transcending openness to the future, life ceases to be either D02 89 human or free.

D02 90 Thus for human life to be creative, Ellul argues, the claims of D02 91 the social order to be sacred and unalterable must be relativized D02 92 by that which is its opposite - the holy. The holy is that which is D02 93 Wholly Other than society. Where the sacred demands integration and D02 94 closure, the holy (as the Hebrew word qadosh indicates) D02 95 demands separation and openness to transformation. A consciousness D02 96 of the holy creates a feeling of tension and separateness between D02 97 self and society. That tension prevents the social order from D02 98 becoming absolute because it prevents the total integration of the D02 99 self into society. This, in turn, forces the institutional D02 100 structures of society to remain fluid and open to further D02 101 development.

D02 102 The paradox of freedom is that it is always an act of revolt D02 103 against a limit. But the real limit, for Ellul, is a D02 104 "combination of what is actually impassable and the D02 105 inviolably sacred." Our sense of sacral awe makes us accept D02 106 the limits of a given social order as absolute and also makes us D02 107 seek to conform to these limits. Only our consciousness of the holy D02 108 can enable us to desacralize and rehabilitate the sacred so as to D02 109 open a social order to further development in the name of the D02 110 infinite. The possibility of ethical freedom depends on the D02 111 possibility of having a hope in something radically other than our D02 112 technological civilization and its promises of fulfillment. For the D02 113 hopes promoted by the mass media of our civilization serve only to D02 114 integrate us into the collective social order as a sacred status D02 115 quo. By contrast, a radically other hope would individuate persons, D02 116 set them apart from the collectivizing influences of mass media, D02 117 and give them the critical autonomy that belongs to an D02 118 anthropological ethic.

D02 119 Ellul's designation for this unique hope is D02 120 "apocalyptic hope." When he speaks of apocalypse, D02 121 however, he is not speaking of it in the literal and popular sense. D02 122 On the contrary, "hope ... can be situated only in an D02 123 apocalyptic line of thought, not that there is hope because one has D02 124 an apocalyptic concept of history, but rather, that there is D02 125 apocalypse because one lives in hope." Hope is apocalyptic D02 126 not because it expresses a literal expectation of the end of the D02 127 world but because the hope expressed in the book of Revelation D02 128 breaks radically with the present order of things in order to D02 129 inaugurate a new creation. An apocalyptic hope is a hope in the one D02 130 who is both Wholly Other and the end (telos) of all things. D02 131 Every person who is moved to embrace such a hope participates in D02 132 the transcending freedom of God and inserts that freedom into D02 133 society as a limit on its claims to absoluteness. Such a hope D02 134 ruptures one's psychological dependence on 'this (technological) D02 135 world' and permits one to break free and engage in acts that D02 136 violate the sacral status of efficient technique, the ideological D02 137 or mythological hopes of consumerism, and the political illusions D02 138 that dominate our technical civilization.

D02 139 When Ellul speaks about this kind of hope, he takes Judaism to D02 140 be the model and argues that Christians must also learn to live a D02 141 diaspora style of existence as a holy community. "Israel is D02 142 a people centered entirely on hope, living by that alone .... As D02 143 the one hoping people of the world, it is Israel which provides us D02 144 with the model for this age ... an example of the incognito [i.e., D02 145 its hidden presence as a holy community within the larger society]. D02 146 In this age ... I think that Christians ... should take that as a D02 147 model." Indeed, "if history is looked at closely, D02 148 and without the usual Christian prejudice, it turns out to have D02 149 been forged at least as much by the Jewish incognito as by D02 150 Christian activism." "There is only one political D02 151 endeavor on which world history now depends; that is the union of D02 152 the Church and Israel. ... These two communities ... must join D02 153 forces so that, in effect, this Word of God might finally be D02 154 written. ... It would be written in counterpoint to the D02 155 technological history of these times." Ellul is speaking D02 156 not of an institutional merger but of a conversion of the church to D02 157 share the same hope so as to support Israel "in its long D02 158 march through the same night and toward the same Kingdom." D02 159 The Christian community is the wild olive branch that has been D02 160 grafted onto the cultivated olive tree of Judaism precisely to D02 161 share in this hope.

D02 162 Ellul's importance for post-Shoah Christian theology and ethics D02 163 is linked to the fact that he is one of those rare Christian D02 164 theologians who takes the Jewish experience of faith seriously in D02 165 its own right. The essence of apocalyptic hope is embodied, for D02 166 Ellul, in the Jewish tradition of chutzpah or wrestling with God. D02 167 In an age of God's silence and abandonment, hope assaults God and D02 168 wrestles with God. Prayer, which Ellul calls "the ultimate D02 169 act of hope," is the "demand that God not keep D02 170 silence. ... [It is] a striving with God, of whom one makes D02 171 demands, whom one importunes, whom one attacks constantly, whose D02 172 silence and absence one would penetrate at all costs. It is a D02 173 combat to oblige God to respond, to reveal himself anew." D02 174 It is motivated by a "commitment on behalf of man [that] is D02 175 decisively bound to the commitment with God," from which D02 176 "all further radicalism, of behavior, of style of life and D02 177 of action" comes.

D02 178 For Ellul, a Christian ethic emerges out of this shared D02 179 paradoxical hope against hope. The only force that is a match for D02 180 the integrating power of the fascination and hope inspired by the D02 181 sacred is an apocalyptic hope inspired by the holy. Herein lies the D02 182 ethical power of the dualistic symbolism of anthropological ethics. D02 183 Only one whose hope is not in this world would even dare to D02 184 contravene the present sacred order. Every act of inefficiency in D02 185 the name of human dignity, every act of intelligent compromise in a D02 186 world of politically absolute positions, is an audacious act that D02 187 serves to delegitimate the present order and introduce new D02 188 possibilities of ethical freedom.

D02 189 Apocalyptic hope gives birth to an ethic of holiness, that is, D02 190 of separation from the world. But unlike the sectarian, Ellul is D02 191 not speaking of physical separation but of psychological and D02 192 spiritual separation - that is, a change of hopes, from the claims D02 193 for hope and meaning mediated by mass media to a hope in the Wholly D02 194 Other. It is "separation ... only for the sake of mission. D02 195 The break has to come first, but it implies rediscovery of the D02 196 world, society, and one's neighbor in a new type of D02 197 relationship."

D02 198 Ellul's intellectual roots are in the work of the D02 199 twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth and the nineteenth-century D02 200 philosopher S<*_>o-slash<*/>ren Kierkegaard. But his fundamental D02 201 stance on Christian ethics goes back even further, to the D02 202 theologies of the Reformation and especially to Martin Luther's D02 203 two-kingdom ethic. According to H.R. Niebuhr, Christians have D02 204 historically responded to the problem of the two kingdoms in one of D02 205 five different ways. At one extreme, Christians have preached a D02 206 'Christ against culture.' This is the sectarian option that sees D02 207 the world as totally evil and seeks to withdraw from the larger D02 208 culture into its own separate world. D03 1 Toward a Postliberal Religious Education

D03 2 BY OWEN F. CUMMINGS

D03 3 Cummings argues the need for a postliberal religious education D03 4 that immerses the learner in Christian culture.

D03 5 There is a considerable degree of division and confusion in D03 6 Catholic circles about the nature, role, and function of religious D03 7 education. At the international level, for example, there is the D03 8 debate surrounding the proposed Catechism for the Universal D03 9 Church. At a national level, in England, there is a degree of D03 10 interdiocesan controversy over the recent religions syllabus for D03 11 high school, Weaving the Web. Questions are asked: Is it D03 12 too experiential? Is there enough Christian doctrine in it? Is the D03 13 method too phenomenological? Something of this unease lay behind D03 14 the contributions of Padraic O'Hare and Francis D. Kelly in D03 15 The Living Light in 1984.

D03 16 The purpose of this essay is to address that unease through a D03 17 critical application of George Lindbeck's The Nature of D03 18 Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. This D03 19 book has given rise to wide-ranging analysis and criticism since D03 20 its publication, and has been described by Walter Kasper as the D03 21 "... most noteworthy advance on the level of systematic D03 22 theology" on discussions of foundational theology, and by D03 23 David Ford as "a proposed 'paradigm shift' for conceiving D03 24 the nature of religion, doctrine, and theology."

D03 25 What Is Postliberal Theology?

D03 26 The term 'postliberal' is ambiguous. It seems to connote D03 27 conservatism in the pejorative sense of the word, insularity, and D03 28 even fundamentalism. Nothing could be further from Lindbeck's D03 29 intention and position. Described by David Tracy as "... D03 30 the major theological contributor to genuine ecumenical D03 31 dialogue among the major confessions," the core of D03 32 Lindbeck's postliberalism is best outlined in his own words:

D03 33 The four centuries of modernity are coming to an end. D03 34 <}_><-|>the <+|>The<}/> individualistic foundationalism D03 35 rationalism, always wavering between skeptical relativism and D03 36 totalitarian absolutism, is being replaced ... by an understanding D03 37 of knowledge and belief as socially and linguistically constituted. D03 38 Ideologies rooted in Enlightenment rationalism are D03 39 collapsing.

D03 40 The liberalism to which Lindbeck is opposed is D03 41 "individualistic foundational rationalism," the D03 42 child of the Enlightenment. 'Postliberalism' is probably best D03 43 understood as a heuristic term, representing a more nuanced D03 44 approach to knowledge and belief as socially rather than D03 45 individually rooted.

D03 46 While Lindbeck has coined the term 'postliberal theology,' and D03 47 is its best known representative, it is a way of doing theology D03 48 that is shared by others, for example, the late Hans Frei, David D03 49 Kelsey, Ronald Theimann, and Brevard Childs, all having some D03 50 connection with Yale. At the same time, it is not a school in the D03 51 usual sense of that word. These theologians (and others) share a D03 52 methodological family resemblance in refusing to allow the modern, D03 53 'enlightened' secular world as such to determine the agenda for D03 54 theology or for the church. To plot a more detailed profile of D03 55 postliberal theology, the best way to proceed is to attend to D03 56 Lindbeck's own categories for theology as presented in The D03 57 Nature of Doctrine.

D03 58 Models of Doctrine

D03 59 Lindbeck describes three types or theories of doctrine: D03 60 cognitivist-propositional, experiential-expressivist, and D03 61 cultural-linguistic. One of the most articulate commentators on D03 62 postliberal theology, William Placher, advocates a somewhat simpler D03 63 nomenclature. Placher speaks of the cognitive model, the D03 64 revisionist model (= experiential-expressive), and the postliberal D03 65 model (= cultural-linguistic). For the sake of simplicity I shall D03 66 rely for the most part on Placher's terminology.

D03 67 The cognitive model of doctrine insists that doctrines make D03 68 truth claims about objective states of affairs. There is little or D03 69 no historical awareness or perspective for the doctrinal D03 70 cognitivist: "For a propositionalist, if a doctrine is once D03 71 true, it is always true, and if it is once false, it is always D03 72 false." The lack of informed historical perspective often D03 73 has the effect of making doctrine extrinsic to the believing D03 74 community, impedes a sensitive perception of the evolution of D03 75 doctrine, and is ecumenically sterile.

D03 76 The revisionist model of doctrine posits that doctrines express D03 77 experiences and attitudes of the believing subject. They are D03 78 noninformative symbols of inner feelings, attitudes, existential D03 79 orientations. Theologians from Schleiermacher through Rahner and D03 80 Lonergan to David Tracy exemplify this approach, according to D03 81 Lindbeck. This approach sits ill with the cognitive approach D03 82 because it underplays the objective status of doctrines. There is a D03 83 common assumption among revisionists that we have experience and D03 84 then search for a suitable language in which to express the meaning D03 85 of the experience. Christian doctrines are the expression of the D03 86 prelinguistic experience of Christian people. Presumably, for D03 87 revisionists, the same would hold true of Buddhist doctrines or D03 88 Muslim doctrines.

D03 89 Lindbeck articulates a third model of doctrine, the postliberal D03 90 or cultural-linguistic model, which he judges to be the most D03 91 appropriate. In this model, doctrines specify rules for Christian D03 92 speech and action. Taking his cue from the philosophy of language D03 93 of the latter Wittgenstein, Lindbeck insists that language does not D03 94 express an experience that precedes it. On the contrary, language D03 95 makes experience possible. Doctrines, whatever else they may be, D03 96 are language. And so, Walter Kasper can comment that D03 97 "dogmas or theological doctrines do not have an expressive D03 98 meaning, but primarily a regulative and performative D03 99 meaning." This regulative character of doctrine insists D03 100 that the primary function of church doctrines "is their use D03 101 ... as communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitude, and D03 102 action." Whereas in the revisionist or experiential model D03 103 the movement is from internal experience to external expression; in D03 104 the postliberal model it is the reverse. We "internalize D03 105 through stories, symbols, rituals, behavior, and many other D03 106 influences, the 'language' through which we experience D03 107 reality."

D03 108 Some Criticisms of Lindbeck

D03 109 Lindbeck's work has met with criticism, the clearest sign that D03 110 he is being taken seriously by the "public of the D03 111 academy," to use a prominent revisionist phrase! Kasper has D03 112 made the point that labeling Lindbeck as neo-orthodox or D03 113 neo-conservative advances nothing: "Such strategies of D03 114 labeling and dismissing contribute nothing ... to true D03 115 understanding and to progress in constructive discussion of the D03 116 issues that we are, after all, faced with." Kasper's point D03 117 is well taken, but, of course, it applies with equal force to D03 118 Lindbeck's labeling of others.

D03 119 Perhaps the major criticism of Lindbeck has to do with the D03 120 a priori difficulty of representing the irreducible D03 121 particularity and complexity of anyone's thought in clear-cut D03 122 categories such as cognitivist-propositionalism or D03 123 experiential-expressivism. Commentators of different theological D03 124 persuasions have lodged versions of this critique. Colman O'Neill, D03 125 a Thomist, believes that any Thomist "will have a basic D03 126 sympathy for the cultural-linguistic analysis." At the same D03 127 time, O'Neill is doubtful whether "any theory of religion D03 128 or doctrine exists, at least within Christianity, which corresponds D03 129 to the description given of cognitivism ...." A D03 130 propositionalist account of faith and doctrine is sometimes D03 131 considered a major characteristic of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. D03 132 This may be true of some of the manualists, but even there caution D03 133 is required because of Catholicism's heightened emphasis on D03 134 symbolism, not least in sacramental theology.

D03 135 At the other end of the theological spectrum, the position of D03 136 revisionism, David Tracy considers that thinkers in the tradition D03 137 have moved on in at least the last fifteen years to an explicitly D03 138 hermeneutical position, providing a more nuanced view of experience D03 139 and language than Lindbeck allows for. Tracy notes that in the text D03 140 of The Nature of Doctrine, for example, that Hans-Georg D03 141 Gadamer is not mentioned at all and that Paul Ricouer is referred D03 142 to only once, and yet the more significant revisionists have D03 143 engaged the thought of such hermeneutical thinkers and have moved D03 144 on from earlier views. Tracy himself is the best example of this D03 145 shift, and his Plurality and Ambiguity securely D03 146 establishes him as a hermeneutical theologian.

D03 147 Kasper contrasts Tracy and Lindbeck in the following way:

D03 148 The real difference between Tracy's and Lindbeck's view D03 149 ... does not lie so much in the inversion of the internal and the D03 150 external word, of experience and language. It lies rather in the D03 151 fact that, for the sake of universal intelligibility, hermeneutical D03 152 and political theology interpret the texts within a modern, largely D03 153 secular horizon of understanding, while Lindbeck trusts their D03 154 performative power, that is, their self-evidence and internal D03 155 plausibility.

D03 156 Tracy trusts the texts of the Christian tradition to mediate D03 157 meaning to contemporary people. Lindbeck trusts the performative D03 158 power of these texts in the Church to proclaim a clear message. D03 159 Both trust the texts. Therefore, the relationship between at least D03 160 these two representatives of revisionism and postliberalism does D03 161 not seem to be polarized in an absolute sense.

D03 162 Some may wonder whether Lindbeck's postliberal theology does D03 163 justice to the truth claims of Christian doctrine. Wittgensteinian D03 164 philosophy has led to a certain relativism with respect to D03 165 questions of religious truth. A stress on the 'use' of statements D03 166 rather than on their 'meaning' may allow that Christian doctrines D03 167 have a use without conceding that they have a cognitive meaning, D03 168 that is, that they describe or give information about the real D03 169 world. Would this be a consequence of Lindbeck's use of D03 170 Wittgenstein in postliberal theology? I think not.

D03 171 Truth and Action

D03 172 Lindbeck distinguishes "intrasystematic" truth from D03 173 ontological truth. Intrasystematic truth is the truth of coherence; D03 174 ontological truth is correspondence to reality. Christian doctrines D03 175 are intrasystematically true when they cohere with the total D03 176 relevant context, include the correlative forms of life. They are D03 177 ontologically true, that is, they correspond to reality, when they D03 178 intend and enable a conformity of the self to God. Or, one might D03 179 say, Christian doctrines are ontologically true when they are D03 180 performed:

D03 181 ... a religious utterance ... acquires the D03 182 propositional truth of ontological correspondence only in so far as D03 183 it is a performance, an act or deed, which helps create that D03 184 correspondence.

D03 185 The only way to assert a Christian doctrine as ontologically D03 186 true "is to do something about it, i.e., to commit oneself D03 187 to a way of life ..."

D03 188 This is no sophisticated version of doctrinal reductionism. D03 189 Rather, it is the acknowledgement that there can be no neutral D03 190 judgment in matters of religious truth. To profess belief in the D03 191 Trinity is not in the first place to make an objective theistic D03 192 statement; it is to commit oneself to living life and to D03 193 understanding reality in the light of the Trinity. Finally, not D03 194 only Lindbeck, but Frei, Kelsey, Thiemann, and other postliberal D03 195 thinkers are theologically committed to the absolute priority of D03 196 God. This Barthian emphasis stands as a corrective, if such be D03 197 needed, to the methodological influences of Wittgenstein.

D03 198 Immersion in Tradition

D03 199 As far as I am aware, no postliberal theologian as such has D03 200 turned toward articulating a postliberal religious education. There D03 201 are ad hoc remarks here and there, but a profile of D03 202 postliberal religious education as such has yet to emerge. A D03 203 passage from E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy -and, D03 204 indeed, a paradigmatic expression of his entire project of cultural D03 205 literacy -provides a point of entry for seeing some of the D03 206 implications of postliberal theology for religious education:

D03 207 Believing that a few direct experiences would suffice D03 208 to develop the skills that children require, Dewey assumed that D03 209 early education need not be tied to specific content. He mistook a D03 210 half-truth for the whole. He placed too much faith in children's D03 211 ability to learn general skills from a few typical experiences, and D03 212 too hastily rejected "the piling up of D03 213 information." Only by piling up specific D03 214 community-based information can children learn to D03 215 participate in complex co-operative activities with other members D03 216 of their community.

D03 217 Whether it is exclusively or even principally to be associated D03 218 with Dewey, there can be little doubt that a close engagement with D03 219 many contemporary educational texts and philosophies reveals a D03 220 deep-rooted skepticism about the "piling up of D03 221 information."

D03 222 Society at large is frequently being told that knowledge is D03 223 exploding so fast that it is more important to teach a student D03 224 how to learn, to gain knowledge, than to teach them 'facts' as D03 225 such. The theologian/religious educator will see here the helpful D03 226 and truthful traditional distinction between fides qua D03 227 and fides quae. An emphasis on one at the expense of the D03 228 other makes a nonsense of fides. It is epistemologically D03 229 impossible, in fact, it is something of a performative D03 230 contradiction, to divorce the one from the other. Or, in a word, D03 231 people do not simply learn; they learn something.

D03 232 One result of this rampant skepticism is a widespread D03 233 illiteracy with regard to the humanities. D04 1 <#FROWN:D04\>INTERIOR MONOLOGUE AS A NARRATIVE DEVICE IN D04 2 THE PARABLES OF LUKE

D04 3 PHILIP SELLEW

D04 4 University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

D04 5 Six of the parables told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke use a D04 6 narrative device that is otherwise rarely if ever employed in the D04 7 gospel tradition. When faced with a moment of decision, usually in D04 8 a moral crisis, the central characters in each of these little D04 9 stories address themselves through the use of the literary D04 10 technique of 'interior monologue.' The Rich Farmer, the Unfaithful D04 11 Servant, the Prodigal Son, the Crafty Steward, the Unjust Judge, D04 12 and the Owner of the Vineyard all think out their plans and D04 13 strategies in private moments that are nonetheless simultaneously D04 14 displayed for other characters in Luke's story to see and hear. The D04 15 motivations and personal viewpoints of these actors in the parables D04 16 are laid bare to give the reader direct access to their unspoken D04 17 thoughts. The use of this device grants privileged insight into the D04 18 human dilemma in a fashion not ordinarily available.

D04 19 I. Interior Monologue in Narrative

D04 20 Luke has characters in Jesus' parables voice their inner D04 21 thoughts as a way to dramatize their private interior debate. The D04 22 'soul' disputes with itself, but its arguments are broadcast D04 23 through Jesus' special insight. The true feelings and inner D04 24 workings of the characters within these stories are made D04 25 transparent, not only to the reader but to Luke's other characters D04 26 as well, who act as the parables' audience within the larger story. D04 27 This and similar techniques of self-address had long been employed D04 28 in Greek mimetic or dramatic literature, especially in epic poetry, D04 29 tragedy, and the Hellenistic novels, as well as in some of the D04 30 biblical tradition, as a means for an author to paint more vivid D04 31 and poignant portraits. But the use of such a device in writings of D04 32 a more historical, philosophical, or rhetorical flavor is rare. D04 33 When a Thucydides or a Xenophon (or the Luke of the NT Acts) D04 34 composes a public speech by an individual character, this is very D04 35 different in intent and effect from presenting the private thoughts D04 36 of a Pericles or a Paul, even when we realize that the speeches are D04 37 the creation of the historian rather than of the presumptive D04 38 orator.

D04 39 When a narrator renders his or her characters' thoughts and D04 40 decision-making processes so directly, the reader or D04 41 dramatic audience is able to grasp their self-understanding and D04 42 moral dilemmas with increased psychological depth and empathy. D04 43 Awareness of this technique and its effects is not just a modern D04 44 event. The distinction between a distanced or 'plain' narration D04 45 (translitGwapl<*_>e-macron<*/> di<*_>e-acute<*/>gesistranslitG/) D04 46 and imitative narration (translitGm<*_>i-acute<*/>mesis), where the D04 47 narrator speaks in the person of a character, was already a matter D04 48 of interest for Plato. The philosopher was primarily concerned with D04 49 the moral effects of imitation of unworthy persons, emotions, or D04 50 forms of behavior. His chief example was Homeric epic. Heroes in D04 51 the Iliad will at times speak inner monologues to express D04 52 their deepest emotions, especially fear. The Homeric characters are D04 53 pictured as "disputing with their hearts" D04 54 (translitGvall<*_>a-grave<*/> t<*_>i-acute<*/>e moi D04 55 ta<*_>u-tilde<*/>ta f<*_>i-acute<*/>los diel<*_>e-acute<*/>xato D04 56 thum<*_>o-acute<*/>stranslitG/), a phrase that has its echo in some D04 57 of Luke's portrayals. Achilles, a man of wrath rather than of fear, D04 58 will question in his heart about his unburied friend Patroclus D04 59 (Il. 22.385). The interior monologues of the Iliad show D04 60 how the heroes struggle from unworthy emotions to worthy D04 61 actions.

D04 62 Hellenistic epic and romance preferred to reserve the interior D04 63 monologue for desperate lovers at moments of crisis. All of our D04 64 known examples are from women. Medea in Apollonius's D04 65 Argonautica attempts to resolve her dilemma of torn loyalties D04 66 between her lover, Jason, and her father, King Aeetes, in a lengthy D04 67 interior monologue (3.772-801). There is a similar scene in D04 68 Vergil's Aeneid: when Dido is confronted with conflicting D04 69 demands, she considers her difficulties in interior monologue D04 70 before ultimately choosing suicide as her only escape (4.534-52). D04 71 Ovid and the novelists Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus use the same D04 72 technique.

D04 73 Narrative in the Hebrew Bible is typically more laconic (or D04 74 'reticent') and more hesitant to provide direct access to its D04 75 characters' thoughts, but self-address is sometimes used in D04 76 interesting ways. The deteriorating relationship between David and D04 77 Saul as portrayed in 1 Samuel 18, for example, and especially their D04 78 negotiations about Saul's daughters Merab and Michal, is described D04 79 for the most part using the techniques of distanced, external D04 80 narration (techniques that will be discussed below). The exception D04 81 is when the narrator begins to use the device of the interior D04 82 self-address to expose the deceitful thoughts and strategies of D04 83 King Saul (18:17b, 21a). Saul expects that David will fall in D04 84 battle against the Philistines while displaying his valor for his D04 85 prospective royal father-in-law. The reader is told precisely what D04 86 is so crucially left unsaid to the other characters in the D04 87 story.

D04 88 Though this focus on the inner workings of an unheroic D04 89 character will also find echoes in Luke's parables, the technique D04 90 for the most part remains alien to gospel narration. Luke is the D04 91 exception, and indeed only a partial exception: his Jesus will D04 92 occasionally employ the device of inner speech when one of his D04 93 characters is at a point of crisis or decision, but these are only D04 94 very brief 'conversations,' running but a sentence or two in D04 95 length, like Saul's in 1 Samuel 18, unlike the often very lengthy D04 96 soliloquies or inner debates of classical mimetic literature. D04 97 Luke's descriptive narrative is broken only briefly, within a few D04 98 parables, a break made possible perhaps by the parables' more D04 99 dramatic or fictive mode of presentation as contrasted with their D04 100 surrounding, more matter-of-fact narration.

D04 101 One of the few writers to take much notice of the use of this D04 102 literary convention in Luke's parables has been John R. Donahue: D04 103 "For Luke, the human condition is a stage on which appear D04 104 memorable characters.... Luke invites us into this world by D04 105 frequent use of soliloquy ... where we are made privy to the inner D04 106 musings of the characters. Luke eschews allegory and expresses D04 107 realistic sympathy for the dilemmas of ordinary human D04 108 existence." This is very well put, but I cannot agree with D04 109 how Donahue then continues: "His memorable characters offer D04 110 paradigms of discipleship for ordinary Christian D04 111 existence." This may well be true for some of the parables D04 112 in Luke, but is generally not the case for those in which interior D04 113 monologue is employed, including those classically labeled 'example D04 114 stories.' What great difficulties the leading characters of D04 115 precisely these stories have long posed for those seeking exemplary D04 116 Christian heroes -including the gospel writer! None of the D04 117 personalities whose thoughts are described is particularly D04 118 commendable; indeed they tend to embody anything but noble D04 119 characteristics. The self-satisfied, amoral, or even D04 120 immoral individuals who star in these portrayals, who are looking D04 121 out for their own interests above all, sometimes encounter D04 122 unexpected divine intervention or retribution (the Farmer, perhaps D04 123 also the Owner of the Vineyard), but more often they seem able to D04 124 use their craftiness or amoral reasoning to escape punishment (the D04 125 Prodigal, the Steward, and the Judge).

D04 126 II. Techniques of Characterization in Descriptive D04 127 Narration

D04 128 The Gospel of Luke, together with its companion literature both D04 129 within and outside of the New Testament, has ordinarily only two D04 130 means of letting its readers learn of its characters' thoughts, D04 131 intentions, or motivations. (1) The characters can speak their D04 132 minds aloud or act in a decisive manner that will itself clarify D04 133 their feelings and intent; or else (2) the narrator can inform the D04 134 reader of the characters' moods or motivations through third-person D04 135 description. These are the techniques commonly employed by the D04 136 ancient historians and biographers, practitioners of the literary D04 137 art of translitGdi<*_>e-acute<*/>gesis, the ancient term for D04 138 'narrative description' (Luke 1:1). The intentions and opinions of D04 139 characters in third-person narration are made clear only D04 140 externally.

D04 141 Contemporary literary analysis speaks of variations in depth of D04 142 characterization in narrative texts, ranging from the D04 143 two-dimensional cardboard figures found in stock folk tales to the D04 144 fully realized psychological portraiture expected in the modern D04 145 novel. "Characterization in the Gospels tends toward the D04 146 'flat' and 'static' end of the spectrum." Third-person D04 147 description tells us about a character; first-person speech or D04 148 thought shows us a character's inner life. Accordingly, as we D04 149 read Luke's story of Jesus, the narrator will frequently provide a D04 150 general statement about individuals who "wonder," D04 151 "ponder," or become "amazed" or D04 152 "astonished," but the specific content or wording of those D04 153 thoughts or emotions is revealed only by having the characters D04 154 utter them aloud or take some illustrative action. In contemporary D04 155 terms, Luke tells us about his characters.

D04 156 Luke's use of this common narrative technique can be briefly D04 157 illustrated by surveying the infancy stories. In the opening scene D04 158 of the Gospel, we learn of Zechariah's terror at the appearance of D04 159 the angel through the narrator's description (1:12). The people's D04 160 wonder outside the Temple is related in similar fashion (1:21-22). D04 161 Elizabeth's understanding of her conception at an old age is D04 162 expressed through her voiced opinion (1:25), even though the D04 163 narrator does not mention any other character to whom she might be D04 164 speaking. Her voicing of a statement out loud is the customary way D04 165 in which the Gospel writers can allow a character to express D04 166 internal judgments. Mary's perplexity at Gabriel's announcement is D04 167 expressed indirectly by the narrator (1:29) and then voiced aloud D04 168 through the question she puts to the angel (1:34). In the later D04 169 scene of the naming of Zechariah's and Elizabeth's son, the wonder D04 170 of those who heard the temporarily mute father now speak is D04 171 expressed not as thought but as speech: "All who heard them D04 172 pondered them and said, 'What then will this child D04 173 become?'" (1:66).

D04 174 In chapter 2, we learn by means of the narrator's descriptions D04 175 of the shepherds' fright before the angels (2:9), the amazement of D04 176 Jesus' parents at their report (2:18) and at the prophecy of Simeon D04 177 (2:33), and the wonder of the crowds listening to the adolescent D04 178 Jesus in dialogue with the teachers at the Temple (2:47). Other D04 179 thoughts are expressed through direct speech. We learn of his D04 180 parents' worry at losing track of their son Jesus in Jerusalem from D04 181 Mary's words of consternation in 2:48. And twice in this section we D04 182 read of Mary "keeping and pondering" events in her D04 183 heart (2:19, 51b), but tellingly the specific content of her D04 184 thoughts is neither described by the narrator nor voiced by the D04 185 character. The narrator knows that Mary is thinking, and D04 186 probably what she is thinking too; but we are left in the D04 187 dark.

D04 188 III. Lucan Parables That Employ Interior Monologue

D04 189 The external descriptive technique just described is employed D04 190 throughout the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles and D04 191 needs no further discussion here. I shall now turn instead to the D04 192 more interesting topic of how and why at a few specific moments the D04 193 Lucan narrator has Jesus the Parabolist move beyond third-person D04 194 narration to employ the more direct mimetic device of giving voice D04 195 to his characters' inner debates. Our understanding and D04 196 appreciation of Luke's literary artistry can be deepened by doing D04 197 some comparative and historical analysis. Luke did not invent the D04 198 device of self-address, of course, but a few comparisons will show D04 199 that this author has at places emphasized or elaborated his D04 200 characters' internal monologues to good effect. Our ability to see D04 201 Luke's technique at work will be enhanced by starting with a D04 202 parable that is also attested in an independent source. The other D04 203 three full examples are known to us only from this Gospel.

D04 204 The Foolish Farmer (Luke 12:16-20)

D04 205 In Luke 12 we encounter our first example of how a character in D04 206 one of Luke's parables thinks out his strategy of action when faced D04 207 with a dilemma: the story of the rich farmer who foolishly expects D04 208 to be able to live to store and enjoy his wealth. Luke includes the D04 209 parable in the context of a discussion about proper attitudes D04 210 toward possessions, daily sustenance, indeed toward threats of D04 211 bodily harm or even death. After an exchange with "someone D04 212 from the crowd," in which Jesus refuses to act as mediator D04 213 in a dispute over inheritance (12:13-15), he addresses the parable D04 214 "to them," meaning either his "friends" the D04 215 disciples (present for the remarks about fear in 12:4-7 and then in D04 216 12:22-31 for the words on anxiety), or the crowd, or both.

D05 1 <#FROWN:D05\>Love, Religion, and Sexual Revolution

D05 2 Stephen G. Post / Case Western Reserve Medical School

D05 3 Philip Rieff comments that, "in the classical Christian D05 4 culture of commitment, one renunciatory mode of control referred to D05 5 the sexual opportunism of individuals." While we should D05 6 avoid prejudice against the human body per se, I contend that the D05 7 modern cultural assumption that happiness is achieved as a matter D05 8 of course through liberation from sexual control has proved D05 9 unfounded. Moreover, as Max Scheler wrote, the relaxation of D05 10 restraint can hinder the realization of sacred values and lead to a D05 11 culture that "envisages man the external phenomenon, his D05 12 sensual well-being. And increasingly it envisages this well-being D05 13 in isolation from the objective hierarchy of real and spiritual D05 14 goods."

D05 15 Since Scheler's four modalities of value underlie the present D05 16 analysis, I shall state them at the outset. According to his D05 17 schema, pleasure values pertain to the individual seeking what is D05 18 physically agreeable; welfare values to the promotion of health and D05 19 social well-being; spiritual values to justice and truth; and D05 20 sacred values to holiness, or love for God. In a holy person, D05 21 sacred values occupy the highest level. The fundamental problem of D05 22 human existence is the inversion of the correct ordo D05 23 amoris within the person, so that the objective order of D05 24 values toward which human beings are ontologically structured is D05 25 violated. In short, "Loving can be characterized as correct D05 26 or false only because a man's actual inclinations and acts of love D05 27 can be in harmony with or oppose the rank-ordering of what is D05 28 worthy of love." Scheler argues that "God and only D05 29 God can be the apex of the graduated pyramid of the realm of that D05 30 which is worthy of love, at once the source and the goal of the D05 31 whole."

D05 32 Modernity, Scheler contends, not only suffers from a disorder D05 33 of values, but has deliberately chosen the inverse of the proper D05 34 value hierarchy. This note of deliberate inversion goes beyond the D05 35 less severe charge that most persons "will acknowledge no D05 36 hierarchy of values" and "will live for the moment D05 37 in a chaos of pure sensation." Granted that sexual D05 38 restraint and the culture of control can be unduly morbid and D05 39 dualistic, it is not mere frivolity that the likes of Saint Paul D05 40 and Augustine, as well as the Buddha and Socrates, all asserted D05 41 that unrestrained sexual desires can intoxicate the whole D05 42 personality to the exclusion of spiritual values and interests. D05 43 Walter Lippmann puts the point simply: "Religious teachers D05 44 knew long ago what modern psychologists excitedly rediscovered: D05 45 that there is a very intimate connection between the sexual life D05 46 and the religious life." Around sexual desire, he D05 47 continues, the churches have "built up a ritual, to D05 48 dominate it lest they be dominated by it."

D05 49 In this article, I propose a broadly applicable D05 50 theological-ethical argument in favor of sexual restraint as an D05 51 aspect of the human good, though my immediate focus lies within D05 52 Christian ethics. As my aims are constructive rather than D05 53 expository, I do not intend a full-scale interpretation of the D05 54 thinkers referred to, including Kierkegaard and Tolstoy. My D05 55 intention is to elaborate a criticism of the assumption that sexual D05 56 desires are "so quintessentially, immediately, and D05 57 irresistibly natural that it is as futile to deny, suppress, or D05 58 sublimate them as it would be the contractions of the heart D05 59 muscle." The argument moves from an appraisal of sexual D05 60 control as viewed by modern culture and recent religious ethics to D05 61 a recovery of the sexual interpretation of the Fall narrative.

D05 62 Our culture can be described as manifesting a mass flight from D05 63 beneficial sexual restraint. Although such flight is not new, its D05 64 ubiquity in modernity may be. While Saint Paul proclaimed the human D05 65 body as the temple of God, the flight from sexual restraint D05 66 proclaims it as sportive. Sexual intimacy, which manifests a rich D05 67 and beautiful significance when sought within the proper hierarchy D05 68 of values, is debased by a culture gone awry.

D05 69 FLIGHT FROM SEXUAL RESTRAINT: A CULTURAL APPRAISAL

D05 70 Traditions of sexual discipline and control indicate a D05 71 widespread understanding that sexual desire can impede spiritual D05 72 values. The Pauline notion of a conflict between the law of one's D05 73 members and the pursuit of sacred values is veridical, as common D05 74 experience attests. Bodily desires can easily muscle aside D05 75 spiritual ones.

D05 76 In addition to the tension between unrestraint and the D05 77 realization of sacred values, sexual desire often reduces its D05 78 objects to mere means. Kant commented at length on how morally D05 79 problematic the "appetite for another human being" D05 80 can be and added that "there is no way in which a human D05 81 being can be made an object of indulgence for another except D05 82 through sexual impulse." It is a simple fact, Kant D05 83 contends, that through sexual appetite one human being often D05 84 plunges another into "the depths of misery," D05 85 casting him or her aside "as one casts away a lemon which D05 86 has been sucked dry." The analogy is powerful and D05 87 fitting.

D05 88 Beyond the de-emphasis on spiritual values and the exploitation D05 89 of the sexually oppressed, the modern sexual revolution is D05 90 responsible for increased disease, as psychiatrist Willard Gaylin D05 91 describes:

D05 92 While the final score is not yet in, the results so far D05 93 of this so-called 'sexual revolution' are less than reassuring. The D05 94 Freudian view of human behavior laid the positive groundwork for D05 95 the liberation of the sexual aspirations of women from both an D05 96 oppressive personal sense of guilt and the shame and humiliation of D05 97 social stigmatization. But the only empirical results of that D05 98 illegitimate offspring of Freudian philosophy, the sexual D05 99 revolution, seem to be the spread of two sexually transmitted D05 100 diseases, genital herpes and AIDS; an extraordinary rise in the D05 101 incidence of cancer of the cervix; and a disastrous epidemic of D05 102 teenage pregnancies.

D05 103 The extent to which Freud was responsible for the revolution D05 104 may be exaggerated, but the prevalence of the diseases on Gaylin's D05 105 list is beyond doubt.

D05 106 A final result of the sexual revolution is emotional despair D05 107 and a sense of meaninglessness. Psychiatrist and theologian Paul R. D05 108 Fleischman writes that if sexual repression dominated the D05 109 psychological landscape in Freud's Vienna, the current problem is D05 110 quite the reverse: "Among the hurt and pained in need of D05 111 help, who may suffer from broken marriages, fluctuating or fallen D05 112 self-esteem, obsessive constrictions, panicky attachments to D05 113 parents, bewildering isolation, uncontrolled rages, and haunting D05 114 depressions, the common denominator is an inability to transcend D05 115 themselves with care and delight, to reach over and touch another D05 116 heart." Fleischman's patients report that they suffer D05 117 emotionally because they have assumed that genuine love requires D05 118 sexual intimacy. They then pursue such relations, even when D05 119 inappropriate, and suffer the consequences. Their experience may be D05 120 summed up thus: "The binding together, the touch of person D05 121 to person, is sought concretely, rather than spiritually, and D05 122 dyadically rather than communally. The substitution of sexuality D05 123 for religious life constitutes one of the most prominent and D05 124 pervasive elements of cultural pathology that a psychotherapist D05 125 encounters." Many people seek to touch physically for the D05 126 sake of sexual intimacy alone, failing to see physical touch as at D05 127 all expressive of a deeper spiritual meaning. They make sexual D05 128 intimacy rather than spiritual values the center of their lives.

D05 129 The toll of unrestraint on physical and emotional well-being D05 130 has already been lamented. C. S. Lewis, for one, writing in the D05 131 early 1950s, warned against the loss of any serious moral caution D05 132 regarding sexual intimacy: "Poster after poster, film after D05 133 film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence D05 134 with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good D05 135 humour. Now this association is a lie." It is a lie, wrote D05 136 Lewis, because sexual indulgence without commitment and steadfast D05 137 love has always been associated with disease, deception, D05 138 jealousies, and emotional pain. Lewis claimed that our society has D05 139 lost sight of definitions of love that do not place sexual intimacy D05 140 at their center, that it has illusory expectations of this D05 141 intimacy, and the result is oppressive. He rejected the practice of D05 142 sexual union when it is isolated "from all the other kinds D05 143 of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the D05 144 total union." He complained against the D05 145 "contemporary propaganda for lust" that makes it D05 146 appear perverse to resist sexual union out of respect for a lasting D05 147 and total union.

D05 148 Criticism of unrestraint is neither irrational nor peculiar to D05 149 Christian thought, for as Michel Foucault has emphasized, this D05 150 suspicion was in place in Greco-Roman culture by the second century D05 151 A.D. and was intertwined with Christian belief. Foucault D05 152 writes, "A whole corpus of moral reflection on sexual D05 153 activity and its pleasures seems to mark, in the first centuries of D05 154 our era, a certain strengthening of austerity themes. Physicians D05 155 worry about the effects of sexual practice, unhesitatingly D05 156 recommend abstention, and declare a preference for virginity over D05 157 the use of pleasure. Philosophers condemn any sexual relation that D05 158 might take place outside marriage and prescribe a strict fidelity D05 159 between spouses, admitting no exceptions." Numerous D05 160 thinkers, including Plutarch, virtually all the Stoics, and the D05 161 Physicians, also articulated a growing skepticism of unrestrained D05 162 sexual activity and its consequences for the individual and for D05 163 society.

D05 164 Pride, the desire to dominate others, self-assertion, and D05 165 egocentrism - all radically inconsistent with love - animate the D05 166 sexual preoccupations that destroy love. Our culture of flight from D05 167 restraint disguises these grim realities in order to reject sacred D05 168 values, though it does not seem to recognize that voluntary D05 169 restraint is not exclusively a religious practice. Religion may D05 170 function as a motive for restraint, but it need not be the sole or D05 171 even principle justification of it.

D05 172 The aim of restraint, as Kierkegaard argued, is the affirmation D05 173 of good rather than the prohibition of evil. The task is to bring D05 174 sexuality "under the qualification of the spirit (here lies D05 175 all the moral problems of the erotic)." The sexual D05 176 revolution rejects all such qualification; its roots lie partially D05 177 in nineteenth-century materialism and a view of the psychic life of D05 178 human beings as the manifestation of processes in the physical D05 179 organism. Eros, this materialism claimed, always aims at D05 180 genital pleasure, the model of all human happiness; in the process, D05 181 Plato's "heavenly eros" lost its classical D05 182 ground. Historians John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman have shown D05 183 that by the mid-1910s assumptions were commonplace that the sexual D05 184 instinct demands constant expression, that restraint is harmful, D05 185 and that gratification is a more worthy ideal than self-control. D05 186 Thus, "the shift from a philosophy of continence to one D05 187 that encouraged indulgence was but one aspect of a larger D05 188 reorientation that was investing sexuality with a profoundly new D05 189 importance." Sin was redefined as not expressing D05 190 libido, and all restraint was construed as negative and repressive. D05 191 The possibility of arguing for sexual restraint without diminishing D05 192 the glory of sexual eros was not contemplated.

D05 193 To be seriously religious, one must constantly ask the D05 194 question, 'What is the source of happiness?' When one has D05 195 determined that the true human good rests in God, one must demand D05 196 much of oneself to achieve that good. Augustine was right to D05 197 acknowledge God as the ultimate source of lasting happiness. He D05 198 would agree with Freud that human beings show by their behavior D05 199 that they strive after happiness that gives purpose to their lives. D05 200 Augustine and Freud would disagree, of course, about the source of D05 201 that happiness. Augustine believed we should seek our happiness in D05 202 God: "For our good, about which philosophers have so keenly D05 203 contended, is nothing else than to be united to God." D05 204 Freud, by contrast, held that sexual love affords human beings the D05 205 central experience of happiness, that it constitutes the D05 206 "prototype of all happiness," and is the D05 207 "central point" of life. A materialistic philosophy D05 208 of the self, conjoined with atheism and the 'pleasure principle,' D05 209 made sexual intimacy the highest good of Freudian theory. D05 210 Augustinian thought, which established the Christian view of the D05 211 self as ontologically structured toward God, the Highest Good, lost D05 212 its cultural force. But if 're-ligio' or 're-binding' of human D05 213 beings to God constitutes the essential path of the restoration of D05 214 right order (ordo amoris) in our lives, then D05 215 the assumption that sex is the highest good must be rejected.

D05 216 Licentious sexual expression is ultimately the mainfestation of D05 217 a meta-physical problem, that is, materialism, which D05 218 presumes that there is no transcendent reality and no transcendent D05 219 dimension in our being. D06 1 A Prayer That Availeth Much

D06 2 Jeremiah 20:7-13

D06 3 Psalm 10:12-18.

D06 4 Hebrews 12:1-2,12-17.

D06 5 Walter Brueggemann

D06 6 THESE SEVEN verses from Psalm 10 plunge us into the midst of D06 7 the prayer of a "poor person," who speaks for D06 8 "the oppressed," "the helpless," D06 9 "the orphan" and "the meek" - D06 10 perhaps all the same person or the same class of persons. The D06 11 prayer sounds the faith cadences of the marginated who are without D06 12 hope in the normal arrangements of social power.

D06 13 According to the partisan rhetoric of this poor petitioner, the D06 14 "wicked" who are greedy and powerful have already had their D06 15 say. The petitioner imagines the wicked being arrogant, autonomous D06 16 and untamed in their use of exploitative power. Their arrogant D06 17 autonomy denies and disregards God and abuses the poor. That is, D06 18 "without God, everything is possible" against the D06 19 neighbor. In this view of "the wicked," there is D06 20 only "I" and "them," and "I" will surely D06 21 prevail over "them." There are only two parties to social D06 22 reality, and there is never any doubt who will prevail in such a D06 23 simple scheme.

D06 24 In verse 12, however, the poor person does not accept this D06 25 two-party scheme, and everything depends upon the petitioner's D06 26 courage to resist it. Indeed, if he or she accepted the definition D06 27 of social reality given by the wicked, there would be no prayer and D06 28 no Psalm. The very act of uttering verses 12-18 is itself a D06 29 courageous and subversive way of redefining social reality. The D06 30 prayer of the poor person insists that there are three players in D06 31 social relations, not two. In addition to the abusive wicked and D06 32 the oppressed poor, there is Yahweh, a joker in the deck who D06 33 destabilizes and reorders the relation between the other two D06 34 parties. The immediate problem, however, is that the third party D06 35 has been absent, silent, indifferent and dormant. The poor person D06 36 hopes to arouse and mobilize Yahweh, to alter drastically the D06 37 relation of the other two.

D06 38 The beginning of the prayer in verse 12 is daring and abrupt; D06 39 the God of the Exodus is summoned, the one who is D06 40 characteristically evoked by the cries of the wretched, by those D06 41 who have no hope in the world. Every time it is sounded this D06 42 Psalm-prayer reconvenes the drama of the Exodus in which the God of D06 43 liberation is mobilized by and for the oppressed against the D06 44 oppressor. This glorious name is matched by the enormous D06 45 imperative: "Rise up" - to power, sovereignty, D06 46 vitality. The term is and Easter word, echoed in Christian talk of D06 47 resurrection, in which God's power for new life overcomes all the D06 48 pretensions of death. The very sovereignty of God is evoked by the D06 49 daring courage of the poor and weak who utter the name that will D06 50 reshape social reality.

D06 51 In the verses that follow, the speaker maintains initiative D06 52 over against God. It is as though the speaker must line out in D06 53 great detail for Yahweh exactly who Yahweh is and what Yahweh does. D06 54 On the one hand, God is reminded of a characteristic past: D06 55 "You have helped the orphan." On the other hand, D06 56 God is summoned to a characteristic future: "You will do D06 57 justice to the orphan and the oppressed." Both God's past D06 58 and God's future are marked by this 'preferential option,' for that D06 59 is who Yahweh is. Without this petition and its pressure, however, D06 60 that 'option' might have been neglected, the dismissal of God by D06 61 the powerful might have prevailed. The past and the future of D06 62 transformation are focused on a present moment of "trouble D06 63 and grief," wherein the wicked must be harshly overcome, so D06 64 that the poor and meek may prosper.

D06 65 SUCH IS the innocent, simple prayer of this petition. In its D06 66 innocence and simplicity, however, the prayer is an act of enormous D06 67 daring and resolve. The prayer refuses to accept the way the world D06 68 seems to be and is said to be. An act of evangelical imagination, D06 69 it refuses to let visible power drive out the trusted reality of D06 70 God.

D06 71 But who could pray that way against assured social reality? D06 72 Many of us are 'children of Feuerbach,' who have come to accept D06 73 that such primitive 'God-talk' is empty talk. Indeed, it has been D06 74 suggested recently that such prayers are in fact only theater, D06 75 designed to be 'overheard' by the powerful. An address to God is D06 76 only a rhetorical device. Such assumptions about prayer follow from D06 77 our intellectual sophistication that is in turn a function of our D06 78 economic affluence. In a hospital room of the affluent, prayer is D06 79 more likely a matter of casual indifference. For the D06 80 unsophisticated (poor), such prayer is a matter of life and death. D06 81 For the latter, everything hangs upon this daring redefinition of D06 82 reality that refuses to accept apparent power relations.

D06 83 Those of us who are more affluent and more sophisticated talk D06 84 sometimes of "solidarity with the poor." This D06 85 prayer suggests to me that there will be no serious solidarity with D06 86 the poor until there is liturgical solidarity, until we are able to D06 87 move through and under our intellectual sophistication and imagine D06 88 that such a prayer is real speech, addressed to a real listener who D06 89 is summoned as a live third force in social reality. Of such D06 90 prayer, Harold Fisch has written:

D06 91 The Psalms are not monologues but insistently and at D06 92 all times dialogue poems ... The Psalms are not exercises in D06 93 existential philosophy ... The 'Thou' answers the plea of the D06 94 'I' and that answer signals a change in the opening situation. The D06 95 Psalms are in this sense dynamic, they involve action, D06 96 purpose.

D06 97 And Karl Barth asserts that God "is not deaf, he D06 98 listens; more than that he acts. He does not act in the same way D06 99 whether we pray or not. Prayer exerts an influence upon God's D06 100 actions, even upon his existence. This is what the word 'answer' D06 101 means."

D06 102 We do not choose such prayer; we are drawn toward it when we D06 103 finally notice that our usual pattern of prayer and powerlessness D06 104 is killing, and when, in the exercise of our passion, we dare to D06 105 anticipate a decisive agent. In such prayer we join the company of D06 106 hopers and resisters who, like Jeremiah, rage (Jer. 20:7-10), trust D06 107 (vv.11-12) and finally praise (v.13). Such prayer may indeed be the D06 108 end of drooping hands, weak knees and lame joints (Heb. D06 109 12:12-13).

D06 110 D06 111 A Choice Amid Doxologies

D06 112 Joel 2:22-30

D06 113 Psalm 107:1

D06 114 1 Timothy 6:6-19

D06 115 Luke 16:19-31

D06 116 Walter Brueggemann

D06 117 THE READING in 1 Timothy asserts a stringent either-or about D06 118 gospel faith. It is, however, an either-or that seems to mix D06 119 categories badly. The premise of verse seven is that we bring D06 120 nothing, we possess nothing, we depart with nothing; it is all a D06 121 gift and therefore we should not seek contentment in our things. D06 122 The tempting, rejected choice is wanting to be rich, which plunges D06 123 one into "ruin and destruction" and pierces D06 124 "with many pains."

D06 125 Whatever the original crisis and context of this text, we have D06 126 no difficulty hearing it amid our consumerism and preoccupation D06 127 with commodities. We have no trouble noticing the poignancy of the D06 128 text in a society that is more and more affluent for some (while D06 129 others drop out), in a church where old luxuries become urgent D06 130 necessities, where church conversations are desperately about D06 131 budgets, salaries and benefits, where 'media Christians' embarrass D06 132 the rest of us while our world of deprivation groans.

D06 133 We have no trouble with the text touching us in heavy ways. D06 134 This old text, however, is as powerless as we feel we are in an D06 135 economy where our feeble efforts at an alternative are outflanked D06 136 by the pressures, demands and desires in which we are full and D06 137 often willing participants. The writer thinks the problem is not D06 138 terribly complex. The alternative to "wanting to be D06 139 rich" is a series of unadorned imperatives: "Shun D06 140 all this, pursue [and then follows a catalog of covenantal acts and D06 141 attitudes], fight for faith, take hold of the eternal life you have D06 142 already confessed, keep the commandments."

D06 143 The alternative to the destructive service of mammon is an act D06 144 of disciplined will whereby the gospel-confessed are fully D06 145 disengaged from the temptation. The writer dares to imagine and D06 146 confess that while believers may be timid imitators of a covetous D06 147 society, they have in fact started from a different premise. The D06 148 apples of economic greed are countered by the oranges of a clear D06 149 theological intentionality. That odd choice, which has always vexed D06 150 the church, is now staring us in the face. The church has recently D06 151 given much attention to issues of sexuality, but the writer of 1 D06 152 Timothy knows that the key issues of life and faith are fought in D06 153 the economic realm. We face the same old deal and same old choice D06 154 about God, mammon and anxiety.

D06 155 So far only didacticism. So far only a kind of unbothered, D06 156 oversimplified Pelagianism. The options are not new to us, and we D06 157 wonder if the text offers anything more than good advice and urgent D06 158 imperative. Then in verses 15 and 16 the writer breaks out of a D06 159 tight, instructional either-or into a lyrical doxology about D06 160 "the only sovereign, the king of kings and Lord of D06 161 lords" - immortal, unapproachable. The doxology is geared D06 162 to an eschatological hope, with a high, extravagant affirmation of D06 163 God, who, when inserted into the either-or of love of money or D06 164 fighting the good fight, makes a decisive difference.

D06 165 I don't want to focus on an eschatological claim, however, nor D06 166 on the decisive difference made by God's sovereignty (albeit in D06 167 male imagery), for I find such cognitive, substantive affirmations D06 168 are less than decisive in this difficult struggle against D06 169 commodity. I suggest rather that it is the bodily act of D06 170 doxology, the sheer lyrical, unembarrassed yielding of an D06 171 unguarded self to a prerational claim that matters most in taking D06 172 the 'or' of faith rather than the 'either' of love of money. The D06 173 very concrete, physical act of doxology is a social, personal, D06 174 public ceding of self over to realities that the world D06 175 will not honor and that I, in my fearful calculation, strident D06 176 morality and settled creedalism, often find silly and trivial.

D06 177 Think what it requires to utter a genuine doxology. This ceding D06 178 over of self in an irrational act of singing praise I also find, D06 179 sometimes, to be silly and trivial, because I don't want to commit D06 180 an overt, nonrational act and I don't want to lose control of self, D06 181 or give up the reasonableness of my calculated economics or my D06 182 rather sure morality. But if I cannot yield even in this lyrical D06 183 act, it is likely that I will always choose the love of money over D06 184 a good confession. I am increasingly convinced that for myself and D06 185 my church, it is only a doxological mode of discourse that will D06 186 break the power of commodity - even as I know that doxology is also D06 187 readily co-opted to become a commercial jingle for D06 188 commoditization.

D06 189 Daniel Hardy and K.L. Ford argue in Praising and Knowing D06 190 God that praise is difficult in a technological society. D06 191 Indeed, the more affluent and less generous a church is, the more D06 192 muted its congregation's praise, because the very act of praise is D06 193 itself an act of relinquishment. We end up with only paid soloists D06 194 to render our praise for us, to whom we listen with respect and D06 195 appreciation, but without foot-tapping, hand-clapping, bodily D06 196 movement or bodily relinquishment. Maybe "white men can't D06 197 jump," and maybe rich people (or those of us who wish we D06 198 were) cannot sing praise with any abandonment of self, body or D06 199 money.

D06 200 The doxology acknowledges a character other than those of us D06 201 who can be trusted. Psalm 107 recites the specificity of the D06 202 "Lord of Lords" in whom Israel invests mightily. D06 203 The Joel reading is a promissory (I do not say eschatological) D06 204 assertion inviting gladness and joy for the God who has given rain, D06 205 who will "act wondrously," and who will eventually D06 206 "pour out my spirit" - give the power of God's own D06 207 self to the world. Measured rationally and economically, doxology D06 208 is a feeble, futile gesture. Whenever the church has had missional D06 209 vitality, however, it has chosen the irrationality of doxology over D06 210 the rationality of commodity. D07 1 Summary

D07 2 Understanding conversion was a hermeneutic project in the D07 3 twelfth century as it is in our own day. One purpose of this work D07 4 has been to recover the broad outlines of that project as it was D07 5 grasped in that distant era. I have regained part, at least, of D07 6 what was read into St. Jerome's sentence "Christians are D07 7 made, not born" (ep. 107,1). From beginning to end the D07 8 hermeneutic project was a task in metaphorical analysis. In the D07 9 languages of philosophy and theology, 'conversion' was a metaphor D07 10 taken over from arts and crafts, especially from those employed in D07 11 transforming raw materials into works of art or achieving some such D07 12 alteration of metals as occurs in the production of bronze.

D07 13 I found that those engaged in spiritual conversion employed a D07 14 parable of Jesus to describe their task as recovering a treasure D07 15 buried in another's field. The Apostle Paul provided an alternate D07 16 metaphor when he wrote: "Now we see through a glass, D07 17 darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I D07 18 know even as also I am known" (1Cor. 13:12). Paul added D07 19 what was taken to be a crucial gloss on this text when he wrote D07 20 that each person must think according to the measure of faith dealt D07 21 out by God (Rom. 12:3). Thus, spiritual enlightenment depended upon D07 22 grace, not on human traditions, laws, or actions. And inegalitarian D07 23 grace, bestowed in arbitrary proportions by God's hidden judgment, D07 24 established serried ranks of greater and lesser lights. In fact, D07 25 Paul's metaphor, expanded with this gloss, epitomized the entire D07 26 hermeneutic project.

D07 27 What conclusions can be proposed? Three seem obvious. Perhaps D07 28 too self-evident is that the word conversion is not a D07 29 reliable tool of analysis. Far from being (so to speak) clinically D07 30 sterile, it comes laden with connotations rooted in Christian D07 31 history that transmit their coloration on contact to materials D07 32 under investigation. There is reason to assume that the word has no D07 33 equivalent in major languages outside Europe. The question is D07 34 certainly worth considering whether applying the word D07 35 conversion can impose Western conceptions on non-Western D07 36 experiences and ideas.

D07 37 Further, what is called 'conversion' is defined by contexts of D07 38 time and place. Consequently, it is important to determine what is D07 39 called conversion, by whom it is so called, and the language used D07 40 to analyze it.

D07 41 I have discovered that ideas about conversion in D07 42 twelfth-century Europe had two senses. In the first, conversion was D07 43 obvious. It occurred within the confines of human nature, expressed D07 44 by the ideas and words and shaped by the capacities and D07 45 institutions that grew out of human nature. Sociologists, D07 46 anthropologists, and historians recognize this kind of conversion, D07 47 as manifested, for example, in acceptance of Christianity and D07 48 submission to the Church or in a change of affiliation or D07 49 discipline within the ecclesiastical order. However, these D07 50 inquiries have established that eleventh- and twelfth-century D07 51 writers recognized this variety as conversion only in a formal D07 52 sense.

D07 53 For them, authentic conversion was not formal but supernatural D07 54 and empathetic. The heart turned not to Christianity or Church but D07 55 to Christ; by mystic union, it turned into Christ. Indeed, it was D07 56 turned by grace, rather than by any logical deductions or emotional D07 57 discoveries of its own. Indemonstrable and mysterious, this mystic D07 58 turning of the heart into something else was not bound to formal, D07 59 institutional obedience, nor could its outcome, hidden in God's D07 60 foreknowledge, be predicted. To the contrary, reversing human D07 61 expectations, it frequently proved subversive of formal obedience D07 62 and customs.

D07 63 Thus, a second outcome of the work at hand has been to define D07 64 these twinned but entirely separable ideas of conversion and, D07 65 moreover, to identify them as historical artifacts, souvenirs of D07 66 the ascetic wing of a military, literary, and ascetic male D07 67 aristocracy in western Europe.

D07 68 The implications of insisting that the hermeneutics of D07 69 conversion is a historical artifact are wide, but they are quite D07 70 the same as some disclosed by the historical criticism of the Bible D07 71 and the 'quest for the historical Jesus.' They can only entail D07 72 asking whether the objects of faith, too, were historical fictions. D07 73 This is my third conclusion.

D07 74 Polemical experience with philosophical skepticism and the D07 75 critical demands of Christianity itself prompted the Church Fathers D07 76 to anticipate this query when they glorified in the great D07 77 improbabilities: that God revealed the truth needed by all to an D07 78 obscure and despised people in a remote corner of the world; that D07 79 God became man and submitted to death; that God long withheld D07 80 revealing the way of salvation, leaving whole nations to live and D07 81 die in their sins; and that, condemned by lying witnesses and D07 82 wicked priests and executed by a cowardly ruler and ignorant D07 83 soldiers, the crucified God would bring about universal redemption D07 84 through the crime of those who mocked and slew him. Given the first D07 85 two conclusions, I should stress that the Fathers addressed such D07 86 doubts not on the level of what could be demonstrated by natural D07 87 logic but on the indemonstrable grounds of supernatural revelation D07 88 and grace.

D07 89 Let me recapitulate how this point was reached. I first D07 90 distinguished the phenomenon (what was called 'conversion'), the D07 91 name ('conversion'), and the process by which the phenomenon came D07 92 to be called by the name. What began in esthetics, the realm of D07 93 inexpressible feeling and intuition, was transposed into that of D07 94 poetics, the realm of representation. It has been important to D07 95 realize that conversion is a metaphor-word and, as such, a D07 96 historical artifact. Thus, whatever may be said about the D07 97 experience of conversion, the word conversion and the D07 98 vernaculars used to define and express its meanings were by no D07 99 means universal. I assumed that like other works of art, the name D07 100 'conversion' contained elements of the process by which it was made D07 101 and that they could be unpacked by analyzing the artifact.

D07 102 As a technical word in the language of manufacture, D07 103 conversion denoted a variety of processes. Correspondingly, as D07 104 a metaphor, it contained not one meaning but a large repertory of D07 105 them, each with its own history and paradigm of change. The D07 106 experience of the word in the world left its marks, especially D07 107 during persecutions suffered by the early Church. One result of D07 108 persecution was that for the survival of the institutional Church, D07 109 devices were invented that enabled believers who succumbed to D07 110 temptation, even to the point of denying their faith, to return to D07 111 the fold and that in time permitted the cycle of confession, lapse, D07 112 penitence, and reconciliation to be repeated throughout life. D07 113 Monasticism was the great institutional form of conversion as a D07 114 penitential way of life. Thus, in the repertory of paradigms, those D07 115 became dominant that represented conversion as a process of D07 116 transformation, full of perplexities and dangers, rather than a D07 117 sudden, decisive peripety. However, they were supplemented and D07 118 melded, in a highly eclectic way, with other patterns.

D07 119 I have not argued that understanding the metaphor-word D07 120 conversion was, or is, a matter of playing with words, or D07 121 entirely a rhetorical exercise. Yet it seems inescapably true that D07 122 access to that understanding comes through texts, which are D07 123 written, historical documents, and that the ideas informing those D07 124 texts are set forth in words and syntax that are likewise bound by D07 125 time and place. I had to ask at the beginning whether Olav D07 126 Tryggvessön's words to Sigrid the Strong-minded - "Why D07 127 should I wed you, you heathen bitch?" - and his sharp blow D07 128 to her face were really part of the confrontation between D07 129 Christianity and paganism in tenth-century Scandinavia or a D07 130 reconstruction tailored to suit expectations in a D07 131 thirteenth-century Christian society.

D07 132 It seems indisputable, moreover, that the language in the text, D07 133 and the thoughts in the language, and the perceptions in the D07 134 thoughts are also creatures of time and place and, consequently, D07 135 that they have antecedents, possibly also consequences, that, being D07 136 historical, are not universal.

D07 137 This emphasis has had one further effect. To speak of language D07 138 as historical evidence is to ask whose language it was. By whom, D07 139 for whom, with whom did it signify, especially in concealed, D07 140 metaphorical senses? The vernaculars of conversion were used in D07 141 discourse. I have found correlations between the ways in which they D07 142 were used and the identities of those who controlled discourse and D07 143 its rituals and who, as a result, received, interpreted, enacted, D07 144 and conveyed tradition. Hermeneutic circles are made by social D07 145 circles.

D07 146 I have also been acutely aware that all of these qualifications D07 147 apply to me, seeking to understand how others understood conversion D07 148 and thus working within a two-tiered hermeneutic structure that D07 149 from some perspectives of hermeneutic circularity may resemble a D07 150 gallery of mirrors.

D07 151 Another object of these investigations has been to recover D07 152 guiding ideas. Here the real point of departure was the D07 153 proposition, inherited in different forms from Hebraic and Hellenic D07 154 traditions, that human nature was made for happiness but lived in D07 155 misery: What was called conversion was a way to survive and escape D07 156 the wretchedness of this world and achieve happiness. And yet D07 157 'conversion' stood at the juncture of imperative and impossibility. D07 158 Thus, understanding conversion was not susceptible to direct, D07 159 logical demonstration; true to the nature of metaphors, it required D07 160 poetic imagination - that is, fiction, built up by a strategy of D07 161 criticism. Universal myths (including that of the noble origins of D07 162 a people, its exile through catastrophe, and eventual return to a D07 163 land of milk and honey) were brought to bear. Faith was accepted as D07 164 a mode of knowledge, by no means opposed to reason. But among the D07 165 varieties of faith - such as intellectual assent, common sense, and D07 166 trust - only one was adequate to empathetic conversion. 'Believing D07 167 in' through love produced the union of believer with the object of D07 168 belief and therefore the transcendence of the believer's self and D07 169 circumstances. This was, specifically, the kind of faith granted by D07 170 God according to measure. In its poetics empathetic conversion was D07 171 of the heart, not the mind. Emotions were dominant; mind served D07 172 heart, each according to its own measure of faith.

D07 173 Because it was understood as a gradual process of formation, D07 174 rather than as an instant, irreversible event, what was called D07 175 conversion entailed pathology. Fear of error and apostasy among D07 176 professed believers demanded relentless, life-long D07 177 vigilance, for since carnal desires could not be plucked out by the D07 178 roots, one could only repeatedly shave off the wicked deeds that D07 179 kept growing out from them.

D07 180 Institutionalizing conversion in monastic order had two effects D07 181 on understanding. The first was to establish ritualized methods of D07 182 spiritual discipline (such as reading and prayer), each of which D07 183 hinged on kinesthetic pain. The second enlarged the sphere of D07 184 ambivalence created by the mysterious and ungovernable D07 185 proportionalities of faith. For, devoted to imitation of Christ D07 186 crucified, monastic discipline focused understanding on ironies.

D07 187 Overarching all the ironies that I have examined were those of D07 188 theodicy. Empathetic conversion was an essay on the existence, D07 189 power, and goodness of God. If there were a God, how could there be D07 190 evil? If there were no God, how could there be good? Why were those D07 191 who served and obeyed God in purity of heart afflicted with D07 192 temptation and physical pain, while the manifestly evil, the D07 193 hypocrite, and the unbeliever prospered? Why did virtuosos in D07 194 ascetic disciplines and eminent theologians experience spiritual D07 195 aridity and dejection? One key to these queries was the ironic D07 196 distance between appearance accessible to human minds and divine D07 197 reality, as in that between Christ the victim on the Cross and D07 198 Christ the universal Ruler and Judge. Not far behind came the D07 199 ironic distance between Christ, as perfect archetype, and the human D07 200 soul as his flawed image. Thus, understanding the metaphor-word D07 201 conversion presupposed the inversion of values that the D07 202 Apostle Paul had constructed in his theology of the Cross: what was D07 203 to the world pain was to believers pleasure; the world's ignorance D07 204 was God's wisdom; its degradation, his honor; its servitude, his D07 205 freedom; its weakness, his power; its death, his life. Irony became D07 206 the dominant trope for understanding conversion and its subversive D07 207 effects.

D07 208 Reflections on conscience underscored this irony. For, given D07 209 the hiddenness and incommunicability of conscience, the spiritual D07 210 condition of the soul was hidden even to the soul itself. The D07 211 soul's capacity for self-deception meant that the great need of D07 212 conscience was for purity, which could only be proportionate, and D07 213 not for certitude, which could at least pretend to be absolute. D08 1 <#FROWN:D08\>William M. Bodiford

D08 2 ZEN IN THE ART OF FUNERALS: RITUAL SALVATION IN JAPANESE D08 3 BUDDHISM

D08 4 Funeral rituals, even ones with an artistic aura, rarely appear D08 5 in descriptions of Zen art or Zen practice. Although little D08 6 commented on, the art of Buddhist funerals in Japan is very Zen. In D08 7 order to understand the Zen of Japanese funerals, first one must D08 8 leave behind preconceptions based on religiously inspired images of D08 9 what Zen should be and, instead, examine how Zen functions as a D08 10 religion in Japanese society. One of the most important social D08 11 roles of Zen, as in other religions, is to guide the living through D08 12 the experience of death. Buddhist scholars, who should know better, D08 13 not uncommonly disparage funerals as mere ritualism peripheral to D08 14 fundamental Zen insights. Yet for lay people suffering the loss of D08 15 a loved one few occasions are charged with more emotional power and D08 16 religious meaning. Zen funerals, furthermore, like their D08 17 counterparts in medieval European Christianity, historically D08 18 constituted one of the more significant regular meeting points D08 19 between the closed religious world located within monastic D08 20 institutions and the larger secular community they served. The D08 21 exploration of Zen funerals thus can aid our understanding of how D08 22 the religious worldview of monks attained expression in the world D08 23 actually lived by lay people as well as how monastic institutions, D08 24 by giving new meaning to the process of death, were able to claim D08 25 privileged social and economic roles among the living. This article D08 26 presents a brief overview of the historical development of key D08 27 elements of Zen funerals in the S<*_>o-stroke<*/>t<*_>o-stroke<*/> D08 28 Zen tradition to show how Zen monks manipulated the symbols of Zen D08 29 enlightenment to provide spiritual solace to the living and D08 30 religious salvation to the dead. An examination of these practices D08 31 will demonstrate the limitations of the usual academic answers to D08 32 the question, What is Zen?

D08 33 Most descriptions of Zen fall into two camps, sometimes placed D08 34 in opposition, which could be called (in the words of Alan Watts) D08 35 "beat Zen" and "square Zen." The D08 36 first refers to the widespread belief in an intrinsic spiritual D08 37 link between Zen and artistic endeavors. This view, now commonly D08 38 associated with Watts himself and D. T. Suzuki, asserts that Zen D08 39 represents the sublime achievement in personal, artistic D08 40 self-expression. The association between Zen and artistic skill has D08 41 become such a clich<*_>e-acute<*/> that most books published today D08 42 with the word 'Zen' in their titles actually concern topics D08 43 unrelated to Buddhism or religion. In contrast to this popular D08 44 image, Buddhist scholars have stressed the earnest character of Zen D08 45 as it appears in its traditional Buddhist setting: the Zen D08 46 monastery. Instead of artistic pursuits, Zen monasteries house a D08 47 tightly disciplined community of monks engaged wholeheartedly in D08 48 re-creating an ancient life-style based on the legacy of the D08 49 Buddhist patriarchs. Typically, the day's activities begin at four D08 50 o'clock in the morning with the first of four daily periods of Zen D08 51 meditation (zazen). During these meditation periods the D08 52 monks sit cross-legged, lined up together in the meditation D08 53 hall for about two hours of silent contemplation. When the monks D08 54 are not engaged in communal meditation, they occupy themselves with D08 55 an endless variety of religious rituals and monastic chores. Not a D08 56 single idle minute is tolerated. These monastic monks have no time D08 57 for art. They single-mindedly pursue the soteriological goal of Zen D08 58 enlightenment. According to the scholars who direct our attention D08 59 to this monastic pursuit, the essence of Zen lies in a life of D08 60 meditation and enlightenment.

D08 61 Yet these two descriptions of Zen Buddhism share a key D08 62 similarity. Critics of Zen would assert that both types - the D08 63 artistic Zen as well as the Zen in the monastery - constitute D08 64 self-centered, basically selfish pursuits. This might well be the D08 65 reason for some of the popularity of Zen in America. Whether D08 66 focused on artistic self-expression or focused on the realization D08 67 of self-enlightenment, both images of Zen seem designed to appeal D08 68 to traditional American sentiments of rugged self-reliance, D08 69 individualism, and freedom. This special Zen self-reliance, D08 70 however, can be obtained only by years of effort and strict D08 71 training, either in meditation or in art. Aspiring Zen artists and D08 72 Zen monks both set forth on a rigorous quest for a transcendental, D08 73 superhuman experience - an experience of insight or enlightenment - D08 74 that will guide their art and their religion.

D08 75 To many observers, this superhuman experience appears beyond D08 76 the grasp of the average person. Anyone who has attempted either D08 77 Zen art, such as the Tea Ceremony, or even a single session of Zen D08 78 meditation knows how difficult it can be. Few people can take the D08 79 necessary time away from families and jobs to devote years to harsh D08 80 training in the pursuit of a narrow, personal goal. Zen advocates D08 81 typically assert that to know Zen one must experience it directly. D08 82 Yet if one cannot thus personally pursue the path of Zen, then what D08 83 spiritual benefits can Zen offer? Indeed, however appealing some D08 84 descriptions of the attainments of the accomplished Zen masters D08 85 might seem, for many would-be converts Zen practice is too D08 86 impractical. This very criticism of Zen, in fact, was common in D08 87 medieval Japan. The famous Buddhist saint My<*_>o-stroke<*/>e D08 88 (1173-1232, a.k.a. K<*_>o-stroke<*/>ben), for example, expressed D08 89 great interest in Zen and became an accomplished meditator. Yet D08 90 My<*_>o-stroke<*/>e wrote that the Zen school had nothing to offer D08 91 laymen.

D08 92 This exclusivity is especially associated with the style of Zen D08 93 taught by D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen (1200-53), the founder of the D08 94 Japanese S<*_>o-stroke<*/>t<*_>o-stroke<*/> tradition. D08 95 D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen stands out for his uncompromising insistence D08 96 on strict, monastic Zen. Although he lived at a time of religious D08 97 ferment when many popular religious movements in Japan competed for D08 98 new converts, D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen did not attract a large D08 99 following. Instead he devoted his energies to the cultivation of a D08 100 few dedicated monks. He founded only a single, small, isolated D08 101 monastery in the rural mountains of northeastern Japan. There he D08 102 taught that single-minded sitting in Zen meditation embodies the D08 103 essence of Buddhist enlightenment. According to D08 104 D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen, this enlightenment must be realized in D08 105 meditation and expressed in accordance to strict ritual forms. D08 106 D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen wrote detailed commentaries on the monastic D08 107 codes, in which he described how every action, from cooking to use D08 108 of the toilet, must be performed as an expression of living D08 109 enlightenment. In his more extreme writings D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen D08 110 even went so far as to assert that people living outside the D08 111 monastery cannot attain enlightenment. The severity of this D08 112 assertion is clear when we remember that in a Buddhist context D08 113 enlightenment implies salvation. In this instance, therefore, D08 114 D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen denied that laymen and laywomen could attain D08 115 salvation.

D08 116 Contrary to the descriptions summarized above, neither the D08 117 artistic approach to Zen nor the monastic approach accurately D08 118 depicts the Zen Buddhism found in Japan. This is not to say that D08 119 Zen-inspired artists do not exist or that Zen monasteries do not D08 120 train monks in meditation. Zen artists and Zen monks can be found D08 121 in limited numbers. But at the vast majority of Zen temples - and D08 122 there are about twenty thousand Zen temples versus only seventy-two D08 123 monasteries - no one practices art, no one meditates, and no one D08 124 actively pursues the experience of enlightenment. The popular image D08 125 of Zen known in the West and the image promoted by scholars both D08 126 fail to reflect this reality. Neither tells us what religious D08 127 functions truly occur at Zen temples. Surveys of Zen priests reveal D08 128 that most monks stop practicing meditation as soon as they leave D08 129 the monasteries at which they receive their basic training. Once D08 130 monks return to their local village temple, lay-oriented D08 131 ceremonies, especially funeral services, occupy their energies to D08 132 the total exclusion of either Zen art or Zen meditation. Statistics D08 133 published by the S<*_>o-stroke<*/>t<*_>o-stroke<*/> school state D08 134 that about 77 percent of S<*_>o-stroke<*/>t<*_>o-stroke<*/> laymen D08 135 would visit their temples only for reasons connected with funerals D08 136 and death. A mere 7 percent would do so for what they termed D08 137 spiritual reasons. Less than 2 percent would go to a Zen priest at D08 138 a time of personal trouble or crisis.

D08 139 These statistics, of course, are not at all unusual in modern D08 140 Japanese Buddhism. For various historical reasons funeral rituals D08 141 have come to represent the main source of financial income at most D08 142 Buddhist temples in Japan, not just those affiliated with one of D08 143 the Zen schools. Yet most people would judge the preponderance of D08 144 funeral services at Zen temples simply as evidence showing the D08 145 decline of 'real Zen' in modern Japan. In this view, the Zen D08 146 temples still exist, but the practice of Zen has all but D08 147 disappeared. Presumably some distinction can be made between 'Zen D08 148 in itself' and the so-called non-Zen practices commonly found D08 149 within the Zen school.

D08 150 This distinction, however, is not clear-cut. Historically, Zen D08 151 monks first popularized the widespread practice of Buddhist D08 152 funerals in Japan. Prior to the emergence of independent Zen sects D08 153 in Japan, only the wealthy nobility sought to supplement D08 154 traditional Japanese funeral rites with special Buddhist services. D08 155 The majority of Japanese people, in contrast, generally lacked D08 156 access to the Buddhist clergy and economic prosperity required for D08 157 elaborate Buddhist funeral rites. It was Zen monks who first D08 158 introduced and popularized affordable funeral rites that appealed D08 159 to the religious sentiments of the common people. These Zen rites D08 160 came to define the standard funeral format that was emulated by D08 161 most other Japanese Buddhist schools. In other words, Buddhist D08 162 funerals are not external to traditional Zen practice. The D08 163 image of Zen as a religion of artistic insight and enlightenment is D08 164 incomplete. In Japan, Zen monks always have used their powers of D08 165 insight and enlightenment to serve the more immediate worldly needs D08 166 of their patrons. The realm of Zen enlightenment extended beyond D08 167 the monastery walls into the homes of laymen.

D08 168 ZEN FUNERALS

D08 169 To find the origin of Zen funerals, one must look first to the D08 170 Chinese monastic codes followed by Japanese Zen monks. As mentioned D08 171 earlier, D<*_>o-stroke<*/>gen (the founder of the Japanese D08 172 S<*_>o-stroke<*/>t<*_>o-stroke<*/> tradition) had stressed the D08 173 spiritual importance of monastic regulations because they codify D08 174 ritually meaningful expressions of enlightened activity. The D08 175 activities described in these codes include funeral rites. Buddhist D08 176 funeral rites were developed by Chinese Buddhists relatively late, D08 177 in order to adapt Buddhism to traditional Chinese sensibilities. D08 178 The first detailed account of Chinese Buddhist funeral rites is D08 179 found in an eleventh-century Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia. It D08 180 contains twenty-six entries on funeral rituals, most of which are D08 181 explained by means of quotations from the Confucian classics, such D08 182 as the Book of Rites (Liji), the Book of Documents D08 183 (Shujing), and the Book of Odes (Shijing). In D08 184 fact, all the funeral ceremonies referred to by this encyclopedia, D08 185 except cremation and the chanting of Buddhist scriptures, parallel D08 186 earlier non-Buddhist Chinese rites. This same pattern is found in D08 187 the earliest Zen monastic code, the Chanyuan D08 188 quinggui compiled in 1103. The description of the funeral D08 189 for a Zen abbot in this text prescribes a sequence of ceremonies D08 190 modeled on the traditional Chinese Confucian rites for deceased D08 191 parents, with the abbot seen as the symbolic parent of his D08 192 disciples. On the abbot's death, his direct disciples would wear D08 193 robes of mourning and retire from their normal duties, while the D08 194 other monks in the monastery would be assigned the functions of D08 195 praising the abbot's accomplishments and of consoling his D08 196 disciples. The deceased abbot's corpse would be washed, shaved, D08 197 dressed in new robes, and placed inside a round coffin in an D08 198 upright, seated position, as if engaged in meditation.

D08 199 The subsequent funeral ceremonies then would take several days. D08 200 A special altar would be prepared on which to display a portrait of D08 201 the abbot as well as his prized possessions - his sleeping mat, fly D08 202 whisk, staff, meditation mat, razor, robes, and so forth. The altar D08 203 and coffin would be decorated with flowers. Decorative banners D08 204 would be placed on both sides of the coffin. Other banners that D08 205 proclaim Buddhist doctrines, such as a verse on impermanence, would D08 206 adorn the room. The abbot's final words or death poem would also be D08 207 prominently displayed. The hall containing the altar would be lined D08 208 with white curtains, while additional lanterns, incense burners, D08 209 white flowers, and daily offerings would be set out. On the day of D08 210 the actual burial or cremation, an elaborate procession consisting D08 211 of resident monks, lay patrons, and local government officials D08 212 would carry not just the coffin, but also the altar, the abbot's D08 213 portrait, and the special banners to the grave site. D09 1 The Christian Right in the United States

D09 2 MATTHEW C. MOEN

D09 3 In the late 1970s, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in D09 4 the United States began organizing to contend in the political D09 5 arena. They did so out of a concern that traditional American D09 6 values were waning, and out of a conviction that a secularized D09 7 government was partly to blame. Reverend Pat Robertson spoke for D09 8 many conservative Christians at the time: "We used to think D09 9 that if we stayed home and prayed it would be enough. Well, we are D09 10 fed up. We think it is time to put God back in government." D09 11 Toward that end, millions of evangelicals and fundamentalists D09 12 joined a number of organizations that collectively were labeled the D09 13 Christian Right. Throughout the 1980s, the Christian Right D09 14 earnestly challenged both governmental policies and secular D09 15 principles.

D09 16 This chapter documents the transformation of the Christian D09 17 Right during the 1980s, as it proffered a challenge to the state, D09 18 and focuses specifically on changes in the Christian Right's D09 19 organizational structure, political strategy, and rhetoric. Elite D09 20 leaders consciously drove changes in these areas in an attempt to D09 21 maximize their political influence.

D09 22 Threaded through the chapter is the argument that the Christian D09 23 Right's leaders grew more politically sophisticated over time. Many D09 24 of the movement's early leaders gained political experience and D09 25 savvy, and some of the less capable people were replaced by those D09 26 more politically astute. Joseph Conn of Americans United for the D09 27 Separation of Church and State focused on the latter point in an D09 28 interview: "Over time, the old guard of the movement has D09 29 mostly disappeared from the scene. Those early people were strongly D09 30 motivated by fundamentalist religion, but were not particularly D09 31 sophisticated in politics .... They gradually dropped out or were D09 32 moved to the sidelines, leaving the political arena to the somewhat D09 33 less narrowly sectarian, but more sophisticated people." D09 34 Not surprisingly, Christian Right leaders agreed with the notion of D09 35 increased sophistication. Gary Jarmin of the American Freedom D09 36 Coalition flatly asserted that "the sophistication in the D09 37 Christian Right has clearly increased." Although self D09 38 serving, Jarmin's statement was also true, which becomes apparent D09 39 as the sophistication theme is re-visited.

D09 40 Before proceeding further, though, one caveat should be added: D09 41 the improved political skills manifested in the leadership did not D09 42 automatically result in a more powerful movement. In fact, evidence D09 43 suggests that the Christian Right was a less formidable force at D09 44 the end of the 1980s than it was at the beginning. Simply put, the D09 45 movement was better led by the end of the decade, not necessarily a D09 46 more influential political factor.

D09 47 This inquiry into changes in the Christian Right is warranted D09 48 on two counts. First, scholars have failed to examine its changes D09 49 very thoroughly or systematically. They have focused on the D09 50 Christian Right's influence in politics through studies of its D09 51 political action committees, electoral clout, and lobbying D09 52 activities. With the exception of Lienesch's article, which applies D09 53 theories of social movements to the Christian Right, there has been D09 54 virtually no focus on the other side of the causal equation: how D09 55 has political activism shaped and influenced the Christian Right? D09 56 It is an equally pertinent and important question.

D09 57 Second, the inquiry into changes is timely, in the wake of a D09 58 decade of activity, Rev. Pat Robertson's unsuccessful bid for the D09 59 1988 Republican presidential nomination, and the termination of the D09 60 Moral Majority. The Robertson candidacy and the closure of the D09 61 Moral Majority, in particular, were substantive and symbolic D09 62 benchmarks for the Christian Right; before a second full decade of D09 63 activism is well underway, it is worth pausing to consider the D09 64 changes that transpired in the first full decade.

D09 65 Organizational Structure

D09 66 The Christian Right's structure changed considerably in the D09 67 1980s. Ten easily identified national organizations were located in D09 68 the nation's capital and were active during the decade. Those D09 69 organizations, along with their major leader(s) and their lifespan, D09 70 are listed in Table 4.1.

D09 71 omit_table

D09 72 An overview of those organizations, and a discussion of the D09 73 multitude of groups, follows.

D09 74 The National Christian Action Coalition (NCAC) was launched by D09 75 Robert Billings, a fundamentalist educator from Indiana. In the D09 76 late 1970s, he spearheaded opposition to Internal Revenue Service D09 77 regulations aimed at revoking the tax-exempt status of racially D09 78 discriminatory schools. The NCAC was designed to be the 'eyes and D09 79 ears' of the conservative Christian school network, informing D09 80 schools of bureaucratic regulations that would affect their D09 81 operations. Billings bequeathed the NCAC to his son Bill, after the D09 82 former accepted a position in the 1980 Reagan campaign. Bill D09 83 subsequently enlarged the NCAC's role by producing materials that D09 84 taught conservative Christians how to participate effectively in D09 85 politics, testifying on Capitol Hill for tuition tax credits for D09 86 private schools, and compiling indexes on the conservatism of D09 87 members of Congress. All of that activity did not prevent the NCAC D09 88 from being overshadowed, though, by a budding Moral Majority.

D09 89 Bill Billings acknowledged that "they [Moral Majority] D09 90 went up front and we kind of went into the background." By D09 91 1985, the position of the NCAC was untenable, and it was D09 92 terminated.

D09 93 The Religious Roundtable was formed in 1979 by Ed McAteer, a D09 94 fundamentalist layperson with deep roots in the Southern Baptist D09 95 Convention (SBC). He used the roundtable as a forum for training D09 96 previously apolitical ministers in the art of politics, hoping that D09 97 they would foment opposition to Carter's 1980 reelection bid. Prior D09 98 to the election, the roundtable conducted training sessions for an D09 99 estimated twenty thousand ministers. It also organized the National D09 100 Affairs Briefing, a forum for Reagan to solicit the support of D09 101 conservative Christian elites. The Religious Roundtable was D09 102 disbanded after the 1980 election, other than to serve as a D09 103 platform for McAteer's political pronouncements. Its headquarters D09 104 was moved from Washington, D.C. , to McAteer's hometown of Memphis, D09 105 Tennessee. The roundtable is still in existence, but for all D09 106 practical purposes it is nothing more than a letterhead D09 107 organization.

D09 108 Christian Voice was started by Rev. Robert Grant as a D09 109 California-based, anti-gay rights organization. It received D09 110 early publicity from Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting D09 111 Network and from its 'moral report cards' on members of Congress. D09 112 The report cards caught the attention of the national media, partly D09 113 because they distilled the Christian Right's agenda and partly D09 114 because they came out so skewed. For example, a Catholic priest in D09 115 Congress at the time received a zero 'moral approval rating,' in D09 116 part because he supported the creation of the Education Department D09 117 and opposed a balanced-budget amendment. Christian Voice consisted D09 118 of a lobbying arm, headed by Gary Jarmin; a tax-exempt educational D09 119 wing, responsible for disseminating information about political D09 120 candidates; and a political action committee, called the 'Moral D09 121 Government Fund.' During Reagan's first term, the lobbying arm was D09 122 active on behalf of antiabortion and school-prayer legislation, D09 123 while the tax-exempt wing continued churning out report cards on D09 124 members of Congress. Near the end of that period, however, the D09 125 organization's activity waned. A 1984 interviewee noted that the D09 126 "Christian Voice is largely a letterhead organization these D09 127 days. They still send out their mailings to raise money, but they D09 128 do not do much else."

D09 129 As Reagan's second term opened, Christian Voice's brain trust D09 130 restructured its operation and channeled its resources away from D09 131 Capitol Hill, toward the grass roots. It continued to distribute D09 132 updated report cards, but it effectively suspended its lobbying D09 133 operation. The moribundity of Christian Voice was evident in June D09 134 1989. The organization shared a suite in the Heritage Foundation D09 135 building with a consulting firm, and the literature was a year old. D09 136 Gary Jarmin confirmed the dormancy of Christian Voice in an D09 137 interview, noting that it would only "serve as a door D09 138 opener to churches" in the future. It was no longer the D09 139 vehicle outside the church for Christian Voice's leadership. That D09 140 task was assumed by the American Freedom Coalition (AFC).

D09 141 According to Jarmin, "Following the 1986 election, D09 142 Christian Voice had a poll conducted nationwide. We filtered out a D09 143 group that was conservative, religious, and registered to vote. D09 144 About 9% of that group was black. We asked them extensive questions D09 145 about issues and politics." Rev. Robert Grant and Jarmin D09 146 used that information in 1987 to launch the AFC, which they D09 147 envisioned as a grass-roots organization. In November 1988, it held D09 148 its first annual board of governors meeting; today, its leaders are D09 149 trying to erect 'precinct councils' across the United States.

D09 150 Another organization with connections to Christian Voice was D09 151 the American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV). It was headed D09 152 by the Reverend Tim LaHaye, a one-time executive officer in the D09 153 Moral Majority and a member of the executive board of the Christian D09 154 Voice. ACTV was constructed to register voters for Reagan in 1984, D09 155 much like the roundtable did in 1980. The quid pro quo for LaHaye's D09 156 work was an administration promise to appoint religious D09 157 conservatives to administration positions. According to a 1984 D09 158 interviewee with intimate knowledge of the organization,

D09 159 ACTV began after some discussions among many of the D09 160 leading television evangelists across the country about the need to D09 161 set up an organization that would register Christian voters. Of the D09 162 thirty-two individuals who consented to their involvement D09 163 in setting up an organization, ten actually contributed their D09 164 mailing lists. On the basis of those mailing lists, a phone bank D09 165 was set up that contacted 110,000 evangelical and fundamentalist D09 166 churches.

D09 167 ACTV's leaders sought to register two million religious D09 168 conservatives. Following Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984, D09 169 ACTV was gradually wound down by Rev. Tim LaHaye, and then D09 170 terminated in December 1986.

D09 171 In the same year that LaHaye accepted the vice-presidency of D09 172 the Moral Majority (1979), his wife, Beverly, created Concerned D09 173 Women for America (CWA). According to Laurie Tryfiates, CWA's field D09 174 director, "CWA started as a response to the stereotype of D09 175 women brought by the [feminist] National Organization of Women. It D09 176 really began as a handful of women brought together in neighborhood D09 177 meetings. ... From there, the organization mushroomed." For D09 178 six years CWA was head-quartered in San Diego, and then in D09 179 1985 it moved to Washington, D.C., "in order to have a D09 180 greater impact preserving, protecting, and promoting traditional D09 181 and Judeo-Christian values." It since has lobbied Congress, D09 182 organized at the grass roots, and marshaled test cases in the D09 183 courts. Its annual convention was visited by President Reagan in D09 184 1987; its current literature contains words from President Bush. D09 185 Hertzke reports that its membership may exceed the combined total D09 186 of the three largest feminist groups in America.

D09 187 The Moral Majority was the most salient and perhaps the most D09 188 successful Christian Right organization in the 1980s. Initially, it D09 189 consisted of four divisions: the lobbying and direct-mail D09 190 operation, called the Moral Majority; the litigation arm, called D09 191 the Moral Majority Legal Defense Fund; the tax-exempt education D09 192 division, known as the Moral Majority Foundation; and the political D09 193 action committee, known as the Moral Majority PAC. Of those D09 194 divisions, the Moral Majority proper was easily the most important. D09 195 According to Roy Jones, its legislative director in the mid-1980s, D09 196 Moral Majority had 250,000 members its first year; that figure D09 197 doubled the next year, quadrupled the following year, and again D09 198 doubled, so that Moral Majority had 4,000,000 members by 1983 -a D09 199 figure within the calculations of one scholar. In 1986, Moral D09 200 Majority was collapsed into the Liberty Federation, ostensibly to D09 201 facilitate attention to international issues. In reality, its D09 202 merger with another organization was recognition of the fact that D09 203 it carried "high negatives" in public opinion D09 204 polls. Gary Bauer offered an explanation: "The Moral D09 205 Majority was one of the first groups of what has come to be called D09 206 the Christian Right. Since it was one of the first groups, it D09 207 suffered accordingly as people opposed to its agenda attacked it. D09 208 ... [Falwell] took the lead to sound the alarm. Having done so, he D09 209 was the focus of considerable attack. To put it simply, Falwell D09 210 became damaged goods." Michael Schwartz, of the Free D09 211 Congress Foundation, echoed that thought, in saying that Falwell D09 212 was a "lightning rod" for criticism and D09 213 "humble and intelligent enough" to retreat from D09 214 politics once he was no longer in a position to advance the D09 215 Christian Right's agenda. Moral Majority persisted for several more D09 216 years under new leadership, until Falwell officially nixed it in D09 217 June 1989.

D09 218 The Liberty Federation had a vaguely defined purpose and a D09 219 tenuous existence, attracting very limited attention in 1986 when D09 220 it engulfed Moral Majority, and virtually none thereafter. D10 1 <#FROWN:D10\>'SYNCRETISTIC RELIGIOSITY':

D10 2 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS TAUTOLOGY

D10 3 Jeffrey Carlson

D10 4 PRECIS

D10 5 This article develops the thesis that religious identity D10 6 is always/already a selective reconstruction from among many D10 7 possibilities - one undeniably relative but utterly necessary D10 8 product of a process of 'encampment,' a creative synthesis in which D10 9 we dwell and from which we venture forth. From this perspective, D10 10 even for those in 'mainstream' traditions, 'syncretistic D10 11 religiosity' is tautological. The thesis will be developed through D10 12 an analysis of correlational Christian theology and will begin to D10 13 explore some of the implications of construing religious identity D10 14 in terms of a 'syncretic self.' What happens when the pool of D10 15 possibilities from which one draws in comprising one's 'list' of D10 16 'what matters most' is extended beyond prior boundaries, even when D10 17 such boundaries have impressive names such as 'scripture' and D10 18 'tradition'? When religious identity is inevitably syncretic, what D10 19 happens to boundaries between 'the religions'? Finally, might a D10 20 recognition of the syncretic self become one contribution toward D10 21 ethical reflection in this age of 'man-made mass death'?

D10 22 I. On Correlational Theology

D10 23 Correlational theologians have argued that the task of theology D10 24 requires explicit attention to two major concerns, usually named D10 25 something like 'the Christian message' and 'the contemporary D10 26 situation.' According to Paul Tillich, one of the leading modern D10 27 Christian representatives of this approach, theology must satisfy D10 28 two basic needs: "the statement of the truth of the D10 29 Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every D10 30 new generation." It is thus concerned with both the D10 31 "eternal foundation and the temporal situation in D10 32 which the eternal truth must be received." Similarly, Karl D10 33 Rahner stated that his Foundations of Christian Faith was D10 34 written to allow his readers "to reach a renewed D10 35 understanding of [the Christian] message" and to D10 36 "try as far as possible to situate Christianity within the D10 37 intellectual horizon of people today."

D10 38 This would seem to be such a felicitous method, relating D10 39 message with situation, reading the signs of the time in the light D10 40 of the gospel, perhaps even, in the words of Rudolf Bultmann, D10 41 "[making] clear the call of the Word of God." D10 42 However, as Augustine discovered when he probed the meaning of that D10 43 so-simple reality of 'time,' theologians, when they face up to D10 44 plurality, may find themselves admitting that they know well enough D10 45 what Christian theology is, provided no one asks them to explain. D10 46 Let us ask.

D10 47 Schubert Ogden has written that "to be assessed as D10 48 adequate, a theological statement must meet the two criteria of D10 49 appropriateness and credibility ... in the given D10 50 situation." His point is that since theology must both D10 51 represent the Christian message and relate it to the present D10 52 situation, it seems eminently helpful to require explicitly that D10 53 one's own theological formulations be 'appropriate' to that message D10 54 and 'credible' in that situation.

D10 55 'Appropriateness' means a fidelity to the Christian 'message.' D10 56 This would seem simple enough, but then, like Augustine, we are D10 57 asked to explain. What is that message, and what is the nature D10 58 of our fidelity to it? Two clusters of questions are raised: First, D10 59 what precisely is the 'referent' of the theological criterion D10 60 of appropriateness? To what must adequate theological formulations D10 61 be appropriate? To which model or image of Jesus D10 62 developed through the centuries (and there have been so many!) D10 63 should one attend, and why? This first question is clearly related D10 64 to a second and even more basic issue concerning one's religious D10 65 identity: Why am I 'a Christian' in the first place? Whence D10 66 comes my religious identity? What are the implications of my D10 67 answers?

D10 68 II. Locating the Referent of Appropriateness

D10 69 Ogden has argued that the norm or referent of theological D10 70 appropriateness is what he called "the earliest D10 71 apostolic witness to Jesus Christ." Where does one D10 72 find this earliest witness, according to Ogden? In the findings of D10 73 this century's "new quest" for the historical D10 74 Jesus. Precisely what the new-questers are able to detect, he D10 75 maintained, is the earliest stratum of Christian witness - the D10 76 very norm of theological appropriateness. Arguing that the true D10 77 canon is not the New Testament per se, Odgen wrote that D10 78 the "real, indeed crucial, theological importance of the D10 79 so-called new quest of the historical Jesus" lies in its D10 80 "identification and interpretation of the Jesus-kerygma of D10 81 the earliest church," which is "'the canon within D10 82 the canon' to which all theological assertions must be D10 83 appropriate." The new quest, it seems, is the 'good luck' D10 84 of Christian theology!

D10 85 Another correlational theologian, David Tracy, has construed D10 86 'appropriateness' rather differently than Odgen has. Tracy has D10 87 written that the theologian must "take into account all the D10 88 classic christological images, symbols, doctrines, witnesses and D10 89 actions of the entire tradition." All the images. The D10 90 entire tradition. For Tracy, it seems, one ought not to detect D10 91 and isolate an essential and singular kernel from among all that D10 92 plurality of witness but, rather, attempt to encounter something of D10 93 its richness, power, and vitality. One would be led, according to D10 94 Tracy, to "an abandonment of a search for 'a canon within D10 95 the canon' in favor of the full diversity of the New Testament D10 96 witness." To concentrate only on the 'Jesus-kerygma' as, in D10 97 Tracy's estimation, "the expression 'canon within the D10 98 canon' seems to suggest," actually "... risks D10 99 losing the enriching diversity of the whole scriptural (and, in D10 100 principle, postscriptural) witness and thereby risks losing the D10 101 full reality of 'tradition' for the contemporary theological D10 102 horizon."

D10 103 Tracy is certainly more open to what he would call D10 104 "inner Christian plurality" than Odgen is. However, D10 105 in affirming and even celebrating the diversity of "the D10 106 whole scriptural ... and ... postscriptural" witness, Tracy D10 107 passed over a point I wish to accentuate: A decision was D10 108 inevitable and has, in fact, been made, overtly or covertly, D10 109 consciously or not. It was and is a decision to select from D10 110 among the many. Even the whole of the Bible is still but a D10 111 part. The canon, so diverse, is nevertheless still a circumscribed D10 112 reality, one among the many other would-be witnesses to God or to D10 113 Jesus. It is one product, achieved centuries ago, of D10 114 an ongoing process of selective reconstruction, of daring to D10 115 name a reality, to locate a religious identity in D10 116 these texts (and, indeed, in these particular manuscript D10 117 versions). It is an act of 'encampment.'

D10 118 III. Plurality and Religious Identity

D10 119 Think about it. If one is Christian, in which 'Jesus' does one D10 120 believe? Does not one select, as well as inherit others' D10 121 selections, from among many possible interpretations? What, for D10 122 instance, were the last words of Jesus before his death? How does D10 123 the Jesus in whom a Christian believes meet his end? With serene D10 124 confidence that he is in the hands of his Father ("Father, D10 125 into your hands I commend my spirit")? This is indeed the D10 126 Jesus of Luke, but not the Jesus of Matthew or Mark, for whom Jesus D10 127 cries, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" D10 128 Then he dies, abandoned.

D10 129 Such different images! Are these plural 'portraits' and diverse D10 130 'memories' a weakness or a strength? Why not simply have one D10 131 Gospel, one that 'got the story straight'? Or, is there in fact a D10 132 'surplus and excess of meaning' generated by every 'classic'? D10 133 Perhaps Odgen's quest for the 'singular' is itself D10 134 inappropriate. Perhaps the 'real' Christ is precisely the D10 135 evoker of a plurality of witnesses.

D10 136 One can ask questions about the canonical Gospels. Was Jesus D10 137 born in a manger? Yes, but only in Luke. Were there wise men D10 138 following a star? Yes, but only in Matthew. John and Mark tell D10 139 nothing whatsoever of Jesus' birth. Peter the 'rock of the church'? D10 140 Pilate washing his hands? Guards at Jesus' tomb? Yes, but only in D10 141 Matthew. Only there, as well, are the onlookers, interpreted by D10 142 much of subsequent Christian tradition to be 'the Jews,' made to D10 143 cry out, at Jesus' trial, "His blood be on us and on our D10 144 children!" When Christians select items from among the many D10 145 images of Jesus and elements of his story, I hope they will exclude D10 146 that one, as well as other blatantly violent texts that D10 147 discriminate on the basis of gender, class, or ethnicity. This D10 148 raises the question of criteria once more but here in terms of D10 149 ethics. A nuanced argument for ethical criteria is beyond the scope D10 150 of this essay. For the moment, it can simply be suggested that D10 151 decisions should be guided by a hope for creation rather than D10 152 destruction, liberation rather than oppression, conversation rather D10 153 than deprivation of speech.

D10 154 I am not calling for the abandonment of the New Testament D10 155 canon, still less for a single, fixed canon within the canon. D10 156 Instead, I am calling for an honest recognition of what the canon D10 157 exemplifies: the need to risk a reconstruction, to wager a creative D10 158 act in which, as Alfred North Whitehead put it, "The many D10 159 become one, and are increased by one," which involves D10 160 "... the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating D10 161 a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The D10 162 novel entity is at once the togetherness of the 'many' which it D10 163 finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive 'many' which it D10 164 leaves." Reality, here understood, is a veritable flood of D10 165 images and possibilities, but some of it 'sticks' to us; some of it D10 166 matters. Our identities are shaped by what has stuck. We D10 167 simply cannot attend to all of it. Who knows what we do not D10 168 perceive, on this side of absolute elsewhere, where only some D10 169 of the many become one in us?

D10 170 We are narrow in perspective, partial in grasp. To be D10 171 'Christian' is to be this particular assemblage of diverse D10 172 elements, brought together out of freedom and amid a certain D10 173 destiny, an array of influencing factors we cannot control D10 174 completely. Our religious identities are shaped by the 'list' D10 175 of 'ultimate' things, drawn from many pools with many names, some D10 176 'non-Christian' and even 'secular.' We are this syncretic amalgam, D10 177 this selective reconstruction of elements.

D10 178 Thus, an act of reconstruction, of encampment, is an D10 179 articulation of one's religious 'identity,' and it is, I believe, D10 180 an utterly necessary activity. As Mircea Eliade saw so clearly, D10 181 humans need to be somewhere, to have a symbolic dwelling, a D10 182 spiritual center, a true home. But, as he also knew, and as the D10 183 Oglala Sioux Black Elk reportedly observed, "anywhere is D10 184 the center of the world." We need to know both of these D10 185 'two truths' about our religious identities: concerning the D10 186 particular and the universal, the relative and the absolute.

D10 187 So why am I in this particular place? Why this center, these D10 188 texts, that Jesus, that creed? Why, indeed? Not because assent is D10 189 mandated from any external authority but because certain persons, D10 190 places, texts, events, even objects, so disclose that which is D10 191 deemed 'really real' that those affected cannot but wish to dwell D10 192 there. Hierophanies (Eliade), classics (Tracy), historical D10 193 mediations of transcendentality (Rahner) - these exist. They touch D10 194 us in ways that range, in Tracy's words, "all the way from D10 195 a radical identification with the claim to truth ... to some D10 196 tentative, even hesitant, resonance with its otherness." D10 197 Given that range, the specificity of one's own response to a D10 198 particular 'classic,' coupled with one's own current and specific D10 199 'list' of classics, constitutes one's present religious D10 200 identity.

D10 201 What moves you? Which persons, places, texts, events, objects, D10 202 constitute the truth that is true for you? That matter for you? So D10 203 much of life is superficial. What speaks to you from the depths? D10 204 When you think of your 'list' of deep things, from whence do you D10 205 draw its items, and would you presume to circumscribe the D10 206 boundaries within which deep items might be found? How, in all D10 207 seriousness, would you dare do that? If the truth be told, would D10 208 your list of 'what matters most' contain only items that have been D10 209 stamped with ecclesiastical approval? If the truth be told, does D10 210 not your real list include items that have not been so D10 211 stamped, and does not your real list omit items that have D10 212 been so stamped? Is not the stamping process itself D10 213 always/already another reconstruction, another selection from among D10 214 the many, another example of encampment?

D10 215 Kierkegaard wrote: "Frequently, when one is most D10 216 convinced that he understands himself, he is assaulted by the D10 217 uneasy feeling that he has really only learned someone else's life D10 218 by rote." D11 1 2. Sexual Ethics in the Roman Catholic D11 2 Tradition

D11 3 The Roman Catholic tradition in sexual ethics and sexual D11 4 understanding has had a long history and has exerted a great D11 5 influence on people and their attitudes both within and outside the D11 6 Roman Catholic church down to the present day. At the present time, D11 7 however, the Catholic tradition and teaching are being questioned D11 8 not only by non-Catholics but also by many Catholics themselves.

D11 9 The general outlines of the official Catholic teaching on D11 10 sexuality are well known. Genital sexuality can be fully expressed D11 11 only within the context of an indissoluble and permanent marriage D11 12 of male and female and every sexual act must be open to procreation D11 13 and expressive of love union. The natural law theory that supports D11 14 such an understanding results in an absolute prohibition of D11 15 artificial contraception, artificial insemination even with the D11 16 husband's seed, divorce, masturbation, homosexual genital D11 17 relations, and all premarital and extramarital sexual D11 18 relationships. Virginity and celibacy are looked upon as higher D11 19 states of life than marriage. Women are not allowed to be priests D11 20 or to exercise full jurisdiction within the church.

D11 21 Dissatisfaction with official Catholic sexual teaching came to D11 22 a boil when Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae D11 23 of 1968 condemned the use of artificial contraception for Catholic D11 24 spouses. Before late 1963, no Catholic theologian had ever publicly D11 25 disagreed with the Catholic teaching that banned artificial D11 26 contraception. But events in the church (especially Vatican Council D11 27 II, 1962-1965) and in the world at large very quickly created a D11 28 climate in which many Catholic married couples and theologians D11 29 called openly for change in the official teaching. Nevertheless, D11 30 after much consultation and hesitation, Pope Paul VI in 1968 D11 31 reiterated the condemnation. His encyclical occasioned widespread D11 32 public theological dissent from the papal teaching.

D11 33 Many Catholic couples disagreed with the teaching in practice. D11 34 According to the statistics of the National Opinion Research Center D11 35 in 1963, 45 percent of American Catholics approved of the use of D11 36 artificial contraception for married couples, whereas in 1974, 83 D11 37 percent of American Catholics approved. Archbishop John Quinn of D11 38 San Francisco, at the 1980 synod of bishops in Rome, gave the D11 39 statistics that 76.5 percent of American Catholic married women of D11 40 childbearing age use some form of contraception and 94 percent of D11 41 these women were employing means that had been condemned by the D11 42 pope. Andrew Greely concluded that the issuing of Humanae D11 43 Vitae "seems to have been the occasion for massive D11 44 apostasy and for a notable decline in religious devotion and D11 45 belief"; he attributes the great decline in Catholic D11 46 practice in the United States during the decade 1963-1973 to the D11 47 teaching of this encyclical.

D11 48 Dissatisfaction with official Catholic teaching on sexual D11 49 meaning and morality has been raised both in theory and in practice D11 50 with regard to masturbation, divorce, and homosexuality. And many D11 51 Catholic women have become disenchanted with the Catholic church D11 52 because of its attitudes and practices concerning the role of women D11 53 in the church, whose patriarchal reality is quite evident. Abortion D11 54 has recently become a very heated topic in Catholic circles; one D11 55 important aspect of the discussion centers on law and public D11 56 policy, but the moral issue of abortion has also been raised. D11 57 Although most Catholic theologians and ethicists remain in general D11 58 continuity with the traditional Catholic teaching on abortion, some D11 59 have strongly objected to this teaching.

D11 60 And so a widespread dissatisfaction with hierarchical Catholic D11 61 sexual teaching exists within Roman Catholicism today. In general, D11 62 I share that dissatisfaction, but my position does not involve D11 63 accepting the impersonal, individualistic, and relativistic D11 64 understanding of sexuality that is too often proposed in our D11 65 society today. The purpose of my study is not to deal with all of D11 66 the specific issues mentioned above or with any one of them in D11 67 particular or in depth. This chapter will try, rather, to explain D11 68 the negative elements in the Catholic tradition that have D11 69 influenced the existing teaching, and I shall then appeal to other, D11 70 positive aspects of the tradition that help formulate what I would D11 71 judge to be a more adequate sexual ethic and teaching.

D11 72 Negative Elements in the Roman Catholic Tradition

D11 73 This section will briefly discuss five aspects of the Roman D11 74 Catholic tradition in sexual ethics which in my judgment have had a D11 75 negative effect on the church's official teaching - negative D11 76 dualisms in the tradition, patriarchal approaches, D11 77 over-riding legal considerations, authoritarian D11 78 interventions by the teaching office, and the natural law method D11 79 justification.

D11 80 Negative Dualisms

D11 81 The Catholic tradition in sexuality has suffered from negative D11 82 philosophical and theological dualisms. Platonic and D11 83 Neo-platonic philosophy, which helped to shape the thought D11 84 of the early church, looked upon matter and corporeality in general D11 85 and sexuality in particular as inferior to spirit and soul. D11 86 Theological dualisms often associated the bodily and especially the D11 87 sexual with evil and sin. A habit of thought in the early church D11 88 these dualisms influenced the first stage of sexual teaching in the D11 89 West. Such spiritualistic tendencies, however, have always been D11 90 present in the church. Many contemporary Catholic dualistic D11 91 attitudes about sexuality and about all aspects of spirituality D11 92 have been influenced by the rigoristic Jansenism that reached its D11 93 zenith in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but Jansenism's D11 94 influence has continued especially on a popular level.

D11 95 Blaming Augustine for most of the negativity about sexuality in D11 96 western Christendom is a commonplace. Before him, however, Ambrose D11 97 and Jerome were even more censorious. Ambrose's thinking emphasized D11 98 a series of antitheses that should not be mixed - Christian and D11 99 pagan; Catholic and heretic; church and world; soul and body. D11 100 Ambrose was a person of action and so his dualism viewed the body D11 101 as a perilous mudslick on which the firm tread of the soul's D11 102 resolve might slip and tumble at any time. Through conversion and D11 103 baptism the Christian was caught up in Christ whose sexless birth D11 104 and unstained body mediated between the fallen state of the human D11 105 body and its glorious transformation in the future. According to D11 106 Ambrose Christ's body was unscarred by the double taint of sexual D11 107 origin and sexual desires or impulses. In such a context, virginity D11 108 was truly the ideal. For Christian married people to avoid adultery D11 109 and to abstain from intercourse at certain liturgical times and D11 110 under certain conditions (e.g., menstruation, lactation) was not D11 111 enough; the couple must also strive to minimize the ever-present D11 112 possibility of unchastity connected with all sexual pleasure D11 113 itself. Peter Brown, whose analysis I follow closely here, points D11 114 out the important relationship of the sexual understanding to the D11 115 social context of the time. The church itself, like Mary the D11 116 perpetual virgin and like other virgins, is to keep herself D11 117 undefiled from the saeculum (world) around her. The D11 118 sexual and the social were closely related for Ambrose.

D11 119 Jerome stands out as the authority most fearful of sexuality in D11 120 the early Christian West. His castigation of Jovinian for having D11 121 placed married couples on the same plane as virgins contains some D11 122 of his most vituperative language on sexuality. Even first D11 123 marriages were regrettable, if pardonable, capitulations to the D11 124 flesh; second marriages led one step away from the brothel. Jerome D11 125 also left us the unfortunate legacy of understanding St. Paul's D11 126 concept of the flesh as equivalent with sexuality. The spirit-flesh D11 127 dualism was thus understood as the struggle against sexuality by D11 128 Jerome, the most militant of the writers of the early church in his D11 129 emphasis on female virginity, clerical celibacy, and the D11 130 temptations and dangers of sexuality.

D11 131 According to Peter Brown, Augustine avoided somewhat the D11 132 antitheses and dichotomies of Ambrose and Jerome. For Augustine, D11 133 marriage and intercourse, on the one hand, and human authority and D11 134 human society, on the other, were not to be equated with sin, for D11 135 they existed even in paradise. Martyrdom, not virginity, was the D11 136 pinnacle of the Christian life. Augustine understood the fall of D11 137 our first parents as a matter of obedience and the will. Before the D11 138 fall, Adam's and Eve's sexuality was in perfect accord and harmony D11 139 with the divine will. Uncontrollable sexual urges, like death D11 140 itself, came about through the fall. Augustine contrasted to Eve D11 141 Mary, the exemplar of perfect obedience rather than the defender of D11 142 a sacred inner space against the pollution of the world.

D11 143 The fall brought about in all of the children of Adam and Eve D11 144 concupiscence of the flesh, which originated in a lasting D11 145 distortion of the soul. As a result of their active disobedience, D11 146 Adam and Eve were estranged from God and from each other and from D11 147 their own conscious selves. Concupiscence affected everything and D11 148 embraced more than sexual feelings, but uncontrolled sexual D11 149 feelings (based on the text of Genesis that Adam's and Eve's eyes D11 150 were opened and they knew they were naked) illustrated the fact D11 151 that the body could no longer be controlled by the will. The sharp D11 152 ecstasy of orgasm was an abiding sign of the limits of the human D11 153 will because of original sin; had there been no fall, intercourse D11 154 would have taken place at the command of the will solely for the D11 155 purpose of procreation, not pleasure. As shown in the disobedience D11 156 of the genital organs to reason and the will, concupiscence was the D11 157 punishment of original sin that all the descendants of Adam and Eve D11 158 would carry with them until their death.

D11 159 Augustine formulated his very influential teaching on marriage D11 160 in the light of this understanding, and he built on what had D11 161 already been developing in the early Christian church. In turn, D11 162 early Christian teaching on sexuality borrowed heavily from Greek D11 163 stoic philosophy's belief in the laws of nature and duty, and saw D11 164 itself as a response to other ethical positions that were based in D11 165 gnosticism, such as the claim that marriage was evil, or that D11 166 sexual intercourse had such a high value that it must be freed from D11 167 the burden of procreation. In the face of these more extreme D11 168 positions, the early church came to the conclusion that sexuality D11 169 had to be reserved for marriage and used only for the purpose of D11 170 procreation, which was nature's intention. The motive for sexual D11 171 intercourse in marriage had to be procreation and could not be D11 172 anything other, especially pleasure. D11 173 Augustine developed his teaching on marriage in the light of D11 174 his own experience and on the basis of his differences with the D11 175 Manichaeans and the Pelagians. For Augustine intercourse can be D11 176 without sin only in the context of marriage, and marital D11 177 intercourse is sinless only if it is motivated by the desire of D11 178 conceiving a child and if no consent is given to any pleasure other D11 179 than that coming from the anticipation of conceiving a child. The D11 180 realistic Augustine recognized that not even a devout Christian D11 181 could consistently confine her or his motive for intercourse only D11 182 to procreation. Thus venial sin is usually associated with sexual D11 183 relations even within marriage.

D11 184 Our purpose here is not to summarize the whole historical D11 185 tradition or even Augustine's total position. However, we should D11 186 note that Augustine's description of the three goods of marriage - D11 187 proles (offspring), fides (fidelity), and D11 188 sacramentum (the permanence of marriage) - became very D11 189 influential in the Catholic tradition; further, they could excuse D11 190 sexual expression within marriage. Augustine found two additional D11 191 meanings in marriage that were taken over by a later tradition and D11 192 were part of Catholic canon law until very recently - the mutual D11 193 help or support of the spouses and what was called the remedy of D11 194 concupiscence. Marriage allows an outlet for passion that protects D11 195 a person from fornication and adultery. For spouses, even sexual D11 196 relations simply to satisfy libido constitutes only a venial sin, D11 197 which thus helps partners in the struggle against concupiscence.

D11 198 The early church's teaching on sexuality was influenced by D11 199 several different dualisms, all of which downplayed the corporeal D11 200 and bodily aspects of sexuality and the pleasure connected with D11 201 sexual expression. The impact of this early development on D11 202 subsequent Catholic tradition and teaching cannot be denied. Until D11 203 the Second Vatican Council, Catholic teaching proposed that D11 204 procreation and the education of offspring were the primary ends of D11 205 marriage. The secondary ends of marriage are the mutual help of the D11 206 spouses and the remedy of concupiscence basically as they were D11 207 discussed by Augustine. In the 1930 encyclical, Casti D11 208 Connubii, Pope Pius XI also recognized the secondary end of D11 209 conjugal love and gave more importance to personalist values of D11 210 marriage. D12 1 <#FROWN:D12\>WHICH THEISMS FACE AN EVIDENTIAL PROBLEM OF D12 2 EVIL?

D12 3 Terry Christlieb

D12 4 Many philosophers simply assume that evil is evidence D12 5 against a generic form of theism. Others have tried to offer D12 6 an argument to show that this is so. I will argue in Part I D12 7 that the most promising attempt to develop an argument of that sort D12 8 fails. It will become apparent that generic theism is just too D12 9 generic to permit anyone to show that known evils provide evidence D12 10 against it.

D12 11 Given the above results I will then in Part II examine the D12 12 question of whether some other kind of evidential argument might D12 13 still be possible. Perhaps an evidential argument from evil could D12 14 be developed against a properly elaborated theism, that is, D12 15 one more precise and detailed in its claims relevant to the D12 16 relation of God to evil. But I will argue that it is doubtful that D12 17 such can be shown against the really important forms of elaborated D12 18 theism, namely those forms to which actual theistic religions are D12 19 committed. I will point out a number of grave obstacles to the D12 20 development of an argument of that sort. The conclusion will be D12 21 that there is no adequate basis for the common assumption that evil D12 22 is evidence against theistic religions.

D12 23 I D12 24 For purposes of explaining and illustrating my position it will D12 25 be useful to examine a particular presentation of the evidential D12 26 argument against generic theism. I believe that the best D12 27 development of an argument of this sort is William L. Rowe's so I D12 28 will begin by briefly explaining his argument. I will then show why D12 29 his argument in particular and this kind of argument in general D12 30 cannot succeed.

D12 31 Rowe's Fawn

D12 32 Rowe has produced a series of articles in which he attempts to D12 33 formulate and defend an 'empirical' argument from evil. The D12 34 argument is aimed at what we might call 'generic' theism. The D12 35 generic theist believes that a unique, omniscient, omnipotent, and D12 36 omnibenevolent being exists and created the universe in which we D12 37 find ourselves. We will refer to that being as 'God.'

D12 38 The evils on which Rowe's argument focuses are, roughly, cases D12 39 of intense suffering which have no readily apparent 'point' or D12 40 'purpose.' We may believe that we see why God has allowed some D12 41 evils, but Rowe wants to call attention to cases for which the D12 42 purpose is not known.

D12 43 As an example Rowe constructs the case of a badly burned fawn. D12 44 The evil of interest is the suffering that the fawn undergoes over D12 45 a period of several days before it dies. A number of features of D12 46 the case are included in order to block efforts to specify a D12 47 purpose for this suffering. At the same time, the goal is to choose D12 48 a kind of incident which happens, perhaps even on a regular basis, D12 49 on our planet.

D12 50 The fawn's burns result from a forest fire started by D12 51 lightning. Hence the suffering is not the result of a free decision D12 52 of any created being, but instead has natural causes. Thus, one D12 53 cannot appeal to the free will defense with respect to the origin D12 54 of the suffering. Second, the suffering transpires without any D12 55 creaturely moral agent - or perhaps without any other creature at D12 56 all - knowing of it. Hence no one's character is developed by the D12 57 suffering, no one has an opportunity to do a good act in response D12 58 to the suffering, and no one learns about evil from the suffering. D12 59 Neither will the fawn profit from the suffering. For the fawn will D12 60 never recover, so it cannot have improved itself by, say, having D12 61 learned to flee at the first hint of smoke. And fawns presumably do D12 62 not repent of sins, so the evil could not have been allowed in D12 63 order to give the fawn a chance of doing that.

D12 64 Rowe says of the fawn case:

D12 65 So far as we can see, the fawn's intense suffering is D12 66 pointless. For there does not appear to be any greater good such D12 67 that the prevention of the fawn's suffering would require either D12 68 the loss of that good or the occurrence of an evil equally bad or D12 69 worse. Nor does there seem to be any equally bad or worse evil so D12 70 connected to the fawn's suffering that it would have had to occur D12 71 had the fawn's suffering been prevented.

D12 72 Later, in 'Evil and Theodicy,' Rowe adds another case for D12 73 consideration. The new case is an actual case of the sort one finds D12 74 with disturbing frequency in the news, a case in which a child was D12 75 tortured and then killed. The new case provides an alternative for D12 76 those unimpressed by the fawn case. The argument does not stand or D12 77 fall on the fawn case (or the other one). Instead, those cases are D12 78 offered to help the reader to focus on the kind of case that he D12 79 ought to think about, those cases of evil for which, try as he may, D12 80 the reader cannot find a purpose. The reader can choose his own D12 81 particular example. As Rowe says in 'The Empirical Argument from D12 82 Evil,' the point is that there exists intense suffering in vast D12 83 quantities for which we can see no purpose at all, let alone any D12 84 purpose obtainable by omnipotence without that suffering.

D12 85 It seems clear that Rowe is developing the case in the way that D12 86 it must be developed if it is to succeed. If there is evidence from D12 87 evil against theism then surely those cases of evil which we have D12 88 thought through carefully and yet have found unexplainable must be D12 89 part of that evidence. Focusing on those cases bypasses debate D12 90 about whether the theist may know the purpose of the evil. The D12 91 theist is challenged to begin with the difficult case, the one for D12 92 which she agrees that the purpose of the evil is unknown. So we can D12 93 agree with Rowe's claim that his is the strongest sort of D12 94 evidential argument, the sort that has the best chance of success. D12 95 If these cases of evil are not evidence against theism, then none D12 96 are.

D12 97 Here is a summary of Rowe's argument. Let 'E' be used to refer D12 98 to a case of evil for which no purpose is known. The fawn or the D12 99 child torture case might be it, or, if the reader knows of a case D12 100 <}_><-|>Of<+|>of<}/>evil for which the purpose is even less D12 101 apparent than for the ones mentioned, let 'E' stand for that case. D12 102 Let 'J' be used to refer to whatever property a particular good D12 103 state of affairs would have just in case obtaining that good would D12 104 (morally) justify an omnipotent, omniscient being in permitting E. D12 105 Let me also note that here and elsewhere 'good' or 'goods' should D12 106 be understood as good token(s) rather than type(s) unless otherwise D12 107 specified. Then,

D12 108 1. We have evidence that all the good states of affairs we D12 109 know of lack J

D12 110 2. So, we have evidence that every good state of affairs lacks D12 111 J.

D12 112 3. E is a case of a kind found in our world.

D12 113 4. Therefore, we have evidence that evils exist which God would D12 114 not permit to exist.

D12 115 5. Therefore, we have evidence that God does not exist.

D12 116 The claim is that evil with a certain characteristic - namely D12 117 the conjunction of the characteristics of the case supplied for E - D12 118 is actual and constitutes evidence that God does not exist. Rowe D12 119 does not specify how much evidence there is. Let us assume, at D12 120 least initially, that only the weakest claim is in view, so that D12 121 the argument is only intendeded to show us some evidence that D12 122 God does not exist.

D12 123 Now clearly there are instances of intense suffering in our D12 124 world. So far theist and atheist are agreed. But we must still D12 125 exercise some caution in our description of such cases in order to D12 126 avoid question begging. We cannot describe such cases as cases of D12 127 'pointless evil' or 'apparently pointless evil,' for that is D12 128 certainly not how the cases have seemed to the theist. The theist, D12 129 at least before hearing Rowe's argument or one like it, has been D12 130 thinking of the cases (if at all) as cases which do have a D12 131 purpose or at least as cases of evil which have a purpose of which D12 132 humans are unaware.

D12 133 So if there is to be common ground there must first be an D12 134 acceptable description of the case, a sufficiently 'clinical' D12 135 description of, say, the fawn or the child, the injuries, the D12 136 physical pain, the psychological pain, any pain caused to others, D12 137 etc. At a minimum the description must not be in terms of the D12 138 actual purposefulness or purposelessness of the evil. Consistent D12 139 with this requirement Rowe has focused our attention on the D12 140 descriptions of the fawn and the child, descriptions which seem D12 141 sufficiently 'neutral' in the way indicated.

D12 142 The Failure of Rowe's Argument

D12 143 Can the theist show that the cases mentioned are not D12 144 evidence against God's existence? Let us decide by examining the D12 145 kinds of responses that the theist might offer. For convenience I D12 146 will follow Rowe's division of the possible responses into three D12 147 groups.

D12 148 Option 1 - Outweigh the Evidence

D12 149 First, the theist might simply acknowledge that the argument D12 150 does provide some evidence against the claim that God exists, D12 151 but then resist the claim that God does not exist by piling up D12 152 other evidence in favor of God's existence. This other evidence D12 153 would be such that it 'outweighs' the evidence from evil.

D12 154 Obviously, if the theist takes this option she has accepted the D12 155 weak claim that evil is some evidence against God's existence, D12 156 and so has accepted the soundness of Rowe's argument as we D12 157 initially read it. In 'The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of D12 158 Atheism' Rowe also suggested that this is the theist's best D12 159 response to the evidential problem. But even if she did not possess D12 160 favorable evidence the theist would not be without an adequate D12 161 response to the evidential problem of evil, as we shall see. So D12 162 having noted that this response is one of the theist's options we D12 163 now set it aside, since an investigation of everything which might D12 164 be thought of as evidence for or against God's existence is beyond D12 165 the scope of this article.

D12 166 Option 2 - Show that the Reasoning Is Unacceptable

D12 167 The second sort of response is to try to show that somehow the D12 168 reasoning goes wrong, that there is an unsupported premise or an D12 169 illegitimate inference. In Rowe's opinion this response is a D12 170 failure, but it seems to me that he has overlooked some D12 171 considerations which show his assessment to be unwarrantedly D12 172 pessimistic.

D12 173 Before explaining these considerations I want to introduce a D12 174 proposition to which Rowe might appeal for support of premise 1. D12 175 Although this approach to supporting premise 1 has not appeared in D12 176 Rowe's published works to date, he did utilize it as means of D12 177 defending premise 1 in recent correspondence. I will call this D12 178 proposition premise 'L.'

D12 179 L. All the goods we know of and which are such that we can D12 180 tell whether they have J, lack J.

D12 181 Here Rowe countenances the possibility that we may not be able D12 182 to tell whether some known goods have J or not. But L also tells us D12 183 that whenever we can tell, we always find that they lack J. D12 184 This offers a reason, he suggests, for accepting 1. So, besides D12 185 taking account of what Rowe offers in support of 1 in his published D12 186 works, we will also consider this strategy of deriving 1 from a D12 187 general principle like L.

D12 188 We are now prepared to evaluate Option 2 in detail, beginning D12 189 with premise L. What does Rowe offer in support of the claim that D12 190 of all the goods we know of, either they clearly lack J or we D12 191 cannot tell whether they have J or not? Rowe explains that a good D12 192 that we 'know of' is roughly a good that we conceive of and D12 193 which we recognize as being intrinsically good. Goods we don't know D12 194 of are ones that "include states that are enormously D12 195 complex, so complex as to tax our powers of comprehension," D12 196 or states that contain "simple properties we have never D12 197 thought of ... whose presence ... might render that state a great D12 198 intrinsic good." D13 1 Chapter 11

D13 2 An Update on Neopagan Witchcraft in America

D13 3 Aidan A. Kelly

D13 4 The Neopagan movement in America and other English-speaking D13 5 nations parallels the New Age movement in some ways, differs D13 6 sharply from it in others, and overlaps it in some minor ways. D13 7 Comparing and contrasting these two movements, which are roughly D13 8 the same size, will help clarify the nature of the New Age movement D13 9 as such.

D13 10 The Neopagan Witchcraft movement in America is a new religion D13 11 that, like almost all new religions, claims to be an old religion. D13 12 It does, as one might expect, emphasize the reality and D13 13 learnability of magic (or at least parapsychology) as one of its D13 14 central concepts; but in almost every other way it is a surprise to D13 15 anyone who comes from the study of 'witchcraft' in some other D13 16 context. I have demonstrated from the available evidence, which is D13 17 copious, that the religion actually began in September 1939 on the D13 18 south coast of England, as an attempt to reconstruct the medieval D13 19 Witchcraft religion described by Margaret Murray. The founding D13 20 members included a retired British civil servant, Gerald Brosseau D13 21 Gardner; a locally prominent homeowner and socialite, Dorothy D13 22 Clutterbuck Fordham; probably Dolores North, later known for her D13 23 regular column in a British occult magazine similar to Fate; D13 24 the occult novelist Louis Wilkinson; and probably others in the D13 25 occult circles of London and southern England.

D13 26 Gardner took over leadership of the group, perhaps by default, D13 27 around the end of World War II, and began developing it in a D13 28 direction that would better meet his own sexual needs. At this D13 29 point the religion began to take on characteristics typical of many D13 30 libertarian movements of the past, especially a focus on sexuality D13 31 as sacramental, which it has retained ever since. (In fairness to D13 32 all I must stress, however, that this emphasis on sexuality remains D13 33 theoretical and inspirational, not something expressed in D13 34 practice.)

D13 35 Gardner began writing and publishing in the late 1940s and D13 36 1950s, and his books have been primary documents of the movement D13 37 ever since. After Doreen Valiente was initiated in 1953, she threw D13 38 her excellent writing skills into the service of the movement and D13 39 produced the text of the Book of Shadows (in practice, D13 40 the liturgical manual) that is essentially the one now used by the D13 41 movement throughout the world. She has described her contributions D13 42 modestly but accurately in her recent The Rebirth of D13 43 Witchcraft. During this period, the Craft began to assimilate D13 44 the White Goddess theology of Robert Graves, who revived D13 45 many theories about a matriarchal period in European prehistory, D13 46 theories that had long ago been discarded by scholars as inadequate D13 47 to deal with the known facts.

D13 48 The Craft continued to grow steadily in England. Gardner D13 49 initiated a great many new priestesses from 1957 until his death in D13 50 1964, and these carried on the Craft enthusiastically. Raymond D13 51 Buckland, after a long correspondence with Gardner, was initiated D13 52 in 1963 in Perth, Scotland, by Monique Wilson (Lady Olwen), from D13 53 whom much of the Craft in America descends, since Buckland brought D13 54 the Craft back to the USA and, with his wife Rosemary as High D13 55 Priestess, founded the New York coven in Bayside, Long Island. D13 56 Almost all the 'official' Gardnerians in America are descendants of D13 57 that coven.

D13 58 However, these 'official' Gardnerians are now a very small D13 59 fraction of the whole movement, largely because they operate D13 60 according to a fairly strict interpretation of the rules that were D13 61 gradually established by the New York coven in its steadily D13 62 expanding text of the Book of Shadows. Most American D13 63 Witches, being spiritually akin to anarchists, libertarians, and D13 64 other proponents of radical theories, regard the Gardnerian concept D13 65 of 'orthodox Witchcraft' as an oxymoron and practice the Craft much D13 66 more flexibly, using whatever they like from the Gardnerian D13 67 repertoire and creating whatever else they need from whatever looks D13 68 useful in past or present religions. Many of these claim to descend D13 69 from some other 'tradition' of Witchcraft independent of Gardner, D13 70 but such claims are almost entirely historically specious. The rare D13 71 exceptions are the few individuals, such as Victor Anderson (from D13 72 whom Starhawk derived most of her information), who had practiced a D13 73 pre-Gardnerian, folk-magic type of Witchcraft, but that was so D13 74 different from Gardnerianism, in both practice and theology, that D13 75 they can be considered to be the same religion only by a great D13 76 stretch of the imagination.

D13 77 Since the late 1960s, enough information on the theory and D13 78 praxis of Gardnerian-style Witchcraft has been available in books D13 79 that any small group who wanted to could train themselves as a D13 80 coven. Those who did so could be, and were, recognized as members D13 81 of the same religion when they later met other Witches; and more D13 82 and more covens began this way as more and more books D13 83 <}_><-|>because<+|>became<}/> available in the 1970s and 1980s. We have now D13 84 reached a stage where an attempt to diagram the proliferation of D13 85 Craft covens and traditions resembles a jungle.

D13 86 The Neopagan and New Age movements share so many D13 87 characteristics that one might expect their members to feel a D13 88 certain amount of kinship, but in fact they do not. Both, for D13 89 example, are extremely interested in developing personal psychic D13 90 abilities as much as possible. However, New Agers eschew the terms D13 91 'magic' and 'witchcraft.' New Age bookstores almost never have D13 92 sections labeled 'Magic' or 'Witchcraft.' Instead, books on magic D13 93 are shelved with works on spiritual disciplines, such as Yoga; and D13 94 books on Neopagan Witchcraft are shelved with books on 'Women's D13 95 Studies.'

D13 96 Second, many typical New Age assumptions about religion are D13 97 generally rejected by Neopagans. Many New Agers assume, for D13 98 example, that all religions are ultimately the same; that D13 99 spirituality is best learned by sitting at the feet of a master D13 100 teacher or guru, preferably from one of the Eastern religions; and D13 101 that a new world teacher or messiah will appear to usher in the New D13 102 Age. Neopagans, in contrast, like the Craft specifically because it D13 103 is so different from the Puritanical, world-hating Christianity D13 104 that continues to be prominent in American culture. Most Neopagans D13 105 believe in karma and reincarnation; but they reject the dualism of D13 106 the Eastern traditions, and consider the guarantee of rebirth to be D13 107 the reward for their spiritual practices. They generally D13 108 believe that they are practicing an ancient folk religion, whether D13 109 as a survival or a revival; and, being focused on the pagan D13 110 religions of the past, they are not particularly interested in a D13 111 New Age in the future.

D13 112 They also generally believe that many religions are radically D13 113 and irreconcilably different from each other; that the 'reformed' D13 114 religions (especially the monotheistic ones) established by Moses, D13 115 Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, and similar figures were NOT an D13 116 improvement over the folk religions that they replaced; and that if D13 117 there were a single worldwide religion in the future, it might very D13 118 well repress human freedom even more than the Roman Catholic Church D13 119 did in Europe during the 'Burning Times.' Hence, Neopagans are not D13 120 at all receptive to teachers and teachings from the monotheistic D13 121 religions nor to any from the East, with the possible exception of D13 122 Hinduism, which is seen (whether accurately or not) as an D13 123 'unreformed' polytheism similar to that of the Greco-Roman world; D13 124 Neopagans tend to be especially interested in Tantric traditions, D13 125 since these can easily be seen as a type of magic parallel to that D13 126 developed in <}_><-|>he<+|>the<}/> Western occult tradition.

D13 127 Neopagans also generally tend to be extremely antiauthoritarian D13 128 (whatever the reasons in personal backgrounds might be), and so are D13 129 not at all inclined to accept the personal authority of any guru. D13 130 The authoritarian structure of the official Gardnerian Witches in D13 131 America might then seem to be anomalous, but it alone is a reason D13 132 why there are at least ten times as many Gardnerian-imitating D13 133 Witches as official Gardnerians in the Neopagan movement.

D13 134 Neopagan Witches also operate with an ethic that forbids them D13 135 to accept money for initiating anyone or for training anyone in the D13 136 essential practices of the Craft as a religion. Neopagan festivals D13 137 have grown into national gatherings, often of several thousand D13 138 people, during the last decade, but they have remained quite D13 139 inexpensive, since no one is attempting to make profit from them. D13 140 As a result of this ethic, Neopagans look upon the 'Psychic Fairs' D13 141 and 'New Age Expos' with open contempt and tend to consider most D13 142 New Age gurus to be money-hungry frauds who are exploiting the D13 143 public by charging exorbitant fees for spiritual practices that can D13 144 be learned for free within a Neopagan coven. This attitude does D13 145 not, of course, encourage New Agers to look kindly upon D13 146 Neopagans.

D13 147 There are, nevertheless, a minority among the Neopagan Witches D13 148 who consider themselves to be members of the New Age movement as D13 149 well. This minority tends to consist of the Witches who understand D13 150 fairly clearly not only that the Gardnerian Witchcraft movement is D13 151 a new religion, but also that this newness makes it the potential D13 152 equal of every other religion in the world, since every religion D13 153 begins as a new religion at some time and place. If the Craft is a D13 154 new religion, then it can be understood as contributing to the D13 155 spiritual growth in the modern world that is leading up to the New D13 156 Age, whenever and however that might begin.

D13 157 For scholars, the Craft is even more difficult to study than D13 158 most new religions are because of its custom of 'secrecy' D13 159 (actually, privacy): there are no central registries for covens, D13 160 and many covens still do not let their existence be known to anyone D13 161 except their own members. Nevertheless, by dint of diligence and D13 162 ingenuity, one can get a fairly reliable assessment of the nature D13 163 and size of the movement. For the sake of manageability, I take as D13 164 my starting point the data presented by Margot Adler in the second D13 165 edition of her Drawing Down the Moon, which is the only D13 166 competent journalistic investigation of the movement to date.

D13 167 Size of the Movement

D13 168 How large is the Neopagan movement now? We can estimate its D13 169 size by four independent methods.

D13 170 First, because almost all members of the movement are avid D13 171 readers (see later discussion), we can estimate the movement's size D13 172 from the sales of certain key books. For example, extrapolating D13 173 from the sales of the Llewellyn reprint of Israel Regardie's D13 174 The Golden Dawn, Gordon Melton arrived at a figure of D13 175 40,000 serious adherents (essentially, members of covens) in the D13 176 early 1980s. Similarly, Adler's Drawing Down the Moon and D13 177 Starhawk's The Spiral Dance had each sold about 50,000 D13 178 copies by the end of 1985.

D13 179 Second, we can extrapolate from festival attendance. Even D13 180 limiting the category of festivals to those that last two days or D13 181 more (in contrast to local Sabbats - the 'traditional' Witch D13 182 gatherings on the solstices, equinoxes, and Celtic cross-quarter D13 183 days - which tend to be one-day affairs), there were 44 such annual D13 184 festivals in 1986, and are closer to 100 now. Attendance can differ D13 185 widely, but all reports estimate average attendance at between 100 D13 186 and 200. Adler reports that the responses to her 1985 questionnaire D13 187 showed that less than 10 percent of American Witches attend D13 188 festivals at all. Harvest magazine learned from a survey of D13 189 several hundred of its readers in 1986 that, of the readers who D13 190 attended festivals: they attended an average of two festivals a D13 191 year; a third of them belonged to covens; a third were solitary D13 192 Witches; and a third were Neopagans, but not Witches (i.e., did not D13 193 consider themselves to be initiated or 'ordained'). We can D13 194 therefore carry out some rough calculations, as follows: Total D13 195 annual attendance at festivals: 5,000 to 20,000; divided by average D13 196 attendance of two festivals: 2,500 to 10,000; only a third are D13 197 members of covens: 833 to 3,333.

D13 198 Only 10 percent of all Witches go to festivals, but covens D13 199 probably average ten members; so the number of covens would also D13 200 range from 833 to 3,333, and the number of individuals who consider D13 201 themselves to be Witches would range from 8,330 to 33,330, plus D13 202 perhaps another 10 percent for the solitaries, giving roughly 9,000 D13 203 to 36,000.

D13 204 Around each coven there tends to be a circle of other people D13 205 who are somewhat less involved: friends who come to Sabbats, D13 206 students in study groups, and other noninitiates who are following D13 207 Neopaganism as their primary spiritual path. D14 1 <#FROWN:D14\>Inquisitors into Missionaries:

D14 2 The Holy Office in Cuenca, 1547-1600

D14 3 Since 1510 the Spanish Inquisition had been a court in search D14 4 of a mission. The institution's original purpose, to punish D14 5 Judaizers, had run its course, and fewer cases of judaizing came to D14 6 its attention every year. Luther's split from the church in 1520 D14 7 gave the Inquisition a new focus, the destruction of Protestant D14 8 ideas. Even this, however, proved to be an elusive goal, as there D14 9 were virtually no Lutherans in Spain during the 1520s. The D14 10 inquisitors settled for discrediting the numerous followers of D14 11 Erasmus and his ideas, which were perceived as having inspired D14 12 Luther, destroying the tiny cells of mystics known as D14 13 alumbrados, and going after the moriscos. These D14 14 campaigns were quickly executed, and once again, after 1532 the D14 15 Inquisition's level of activity fell. In fact, the tribunals, which D14 16 relied primarily on court fines to pay their expenses, were D14 17 perpetually in a state of financial crisis. Given what was to D14 18 follow, the appointment in 1547 of Fernando de Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s D14 19 as inquisitor-general might almost be viewed as an act of divine D14 20 providence.

D14 21 The Asturian Fernando de Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's long career in D14 22 the church began in 1517, when he entered the household of Cardinal D14 23 Cisneros. Although unlike his patron in that he bore a lifelong D14 24 animadversion to Erasmian ideas, Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s shared with D14 25 Cisneros his passion for administrative reform. He is an excellent D14 26 example of the skilled administrator turned inquisitor. Prior to D14 27 his appointment as inquisitor-general, Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s had D14 28 been in succession bishop of Oviedo, bishop of D14 29 Sig<*_>u-umlaut<*/>enza, and archbishop of Seville. His D14 30 episcopacies were characterized by the zealous administration of D14 31 church affairs that was to become one of the hallmarks of the D14 32 Catholic Reformation.

D14 33 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s brought to the Holy Office his D14 34 administrative genius and an obsessive fear of Protestantism. He D14 35 was convinced that it was just a matter of time before Protestant D14 36 ideas infiltrated Spain. Accordingly, he quietly prepared for that D14 37 crisis by completely overhauling the middle-aged, bankrupt D14 38 institution. Nothing was left untouched - not court procedure, D14 39 finances, personnel, nor administration. Two areas in which D14 40 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's influence was critical were visitations and D14 41 nonsalaried officials such as the familiars and commissioners. D14 42 Together, the visitation and the comisario gave the D14 43 Inquisition its major advantages over other courts in the sixteenth D14 44 century.

D14 45 The visitation was a means of taking the court to the people, D14 46 announcing its intentions, and swiftly bringing the accused to D14 47 justice. Since 1517, inquisitors had been under orders to go on D14 48 circuit in their districts four times each year, but the record D14 49 suggests that this order had been ignored. Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s D14 50 changed the requirement to four months of visitations each year by D14 51 one of the tribunal's two inquisitors. The Inquisition of Cuenca at D14 52 least partially fulfilled Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's orders. In the D14 53 eleven-year period 1565-75, which encompasses the final years of D14 54 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's generalship and those of Espinosa and D14 55 Quiroga, inquisitors from Cuenca visited some part of their D14 56 district at least once a year, if not more frequently. The D14 57 officials made a point of covering the entire large district by D14 58 visiting Sig<*_>u-umlaut<*/>enza one year, La Mancha the next, the D14 59 city of Cuenca another, and so on.

D14 60 The use of nonsalaried officials, the familiars and D14 61 comisarios, complemented the visitations. Through such D14 62 auxiliary officials, the Inquisition's presence could be extended D14 63 year-round into the countryside. Familiars were Old Christian D14 64 laymen who performed certain duties in exchange for privileges such D14 65 as the right to bear arms and exemption from royal taxation and D14 66 justice. They were supposed to denounce religious crimes, carry D14 67 messages, escort prisoners, and in other ways assist the D14 68 inquisitors with their work.

D14 69 Familiars had existed long before Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s became D14 70 inquisitor-general, but at the time of his appointment they were D14 71 gaining rapidly in numbers and in notoriety for their freewheeling D14 72 ways. To be an effective aid to the Inquisition, and not an D14 73 embarrassment to it, the office had to be rehabilitated. D14 74 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s issued two important circulars in 1553 and D14 75 1555 that initiated the process of reforming the familiars by D14 76 setting new standards of behavior and limits on the number of D14 77 officials each tribunal could commission. In 1552 the D14 78 conquense inquisitors began to keep records of all the D14 79 familiars and other persons who held commissions from the Holy D14 80 Office. If the tribunal followed the Suprema's guidelines as set D14 81 forth above, at any given time in the sixteenth century the D14 82 bishopric of Cuenca supported a network of about two hundred D14 83 familiars.

D14 84 The familiars' sinister image calls for a clarification of the D14 85 real function of this official. The Inquisition never intended the D14 86 familiars to serve as an omnipresent 'secret police,' an image of D14 87 them that still persists in the popular imagination. Since their D14 88 identity was not secret, they hardly could 'spy' on anyone. They D14 89 could not even report the rumors that circulated about their D14 90 neighbors because the tribunal would not accept hearsay as D14 91 evidence. Familiars rarely appeared as witnesses in the hundreds of D14 92 trials that the inquisitors prosecuted. In reality, the inquisitors D14 93 of Cuenca used familiars to create an inexpensive network of D14 94 officials who, when needed, could be trusted to carry out the D14 95 Inquisition's confidential errands in the countryside. Modest as D14 96 this function seems to the twentieth-century observer, it was a D14 97 disturbing innovation to a population that rarely saw any D14 98 representatives of the authorities who ruled them.

D14 99 The lesser-known comisarios were quite different in D14 100 nature from the familiars, and far more crucial to the success of D14 101 the Inquisition's activities. While familiars merely ran errands, D14 102 comisarios served as representatives of the inquisitors D14 103 themselves. The comisario was a local priest who was D14 104 empowered to publish the Inquisition's edicts, take denunciations D14 105 and depositions, and ratify witnesses. When there seemed to be a D14 106 probable case against an offender in his parish, it was the D14 107 comisario who sent a denunciation, together with D14 108 supporting testimony, to the inquisitors in Cuenca. Like the D14 109 familiar, the comisario served without pay, apparently D14 110 for the prestige and privileges of his post.

D14 111 In Cuenca, the comisario's influence was greatly D14 112 enhanced by the fact that the position was often awarded to village D14 113 curas. The Inquisition relied on curas D14 114 primarily because the comisario's legal duties required a D14 115 high degree of education, which was not found in many priests other D14 116 than curas. Nonetheless, there were added benefits to D14 117 preferring parish priests over other well-educated priests for the D14 118 position of comisario. The cura could draw upon D14 119 his hired lieutenant priests and his other contacts in the area to D14 120 aid him in gathering information about offenders. By using the D14 121 cura, the Inquisition effectively latched onto an D14 122 existing network of secular priests to extend its own presence D14 123 outside the city of Cuenca.

D14 124 The first comisario in Cuenca was one Dr. Gonzalo D14 125 L<*_>o-acute<*/>pez, a theologian who was appointed in 1559 to D14 126 serve in his parish of Tebar. The conquense inquisitors D14 127 appointed comisarios at a steady rate, one to a town, D14 128 until by 1600 sixty to sixty-five localities in the district could D14 129 be expected to support the official. As in the case of the D14 130 familiars, the comisarios were appointed only in the more D14 131 important and more distant towns of the district. As the D14 132 comisarios grew in number, the Inquisition came to rely D14 133 on them to take over the legwork of the tribunal. Indeed, with D14 134 responsible comisarios, the inquisitors had no need to D14 135 visit their district on a regular basis. As a result, the D14 136 traditional visita became less common in the seventeenth D14 137 century.

D14 138 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's institutional reforms worked in Cuenca. D14 139 Beginning in the 1550s, the increased number of visitations and of D14 140 local officials led to far more trial activity than usual. The D14 141 tribunal's annual case load rose from a pre-Vald<*/>e-acute<*/>sian D14 142 average of about thirty trials to nearly sixty. In fact, the D14 143 networks functioned so well that in 1568 the tribunal had to work D14 144 overtime to keep up with its docket. More trials, however, was not D14 145 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's sole objective. In keeping with the D14 146 inquisitor-general's policies, the kinds of offenses tried by the D14 147 conquense Inquisition changed as well.

D14 148 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s attempted to head off the spread of D14 149 Protestant ideas by controlling the flow of possibly dangerous D14 150 information into Spain and restricting access to the Scriptures in D14 151 the vernacular. Late in 1551 the tribunal in Cuenca received D14 152 Vald<*_>e-acute<*/>s's announcement that the Inquisition would D14 153 publish a catalog of prohibited books, the famous Index, which D14 154 was based on a list prepared by the University of Louvain. Cuenca D14 155 was ordered to cooperate in collecting all Bibles, missals, and D14 156 diurnals in the Spanish language, in addition to specific books D14 157 mentioned by title. In the summer of 1552 the inquisitors wrote D14 158 that they had found some diurnals and asked for further D14 159 instructions concerning book collection. Censorship became more D14 160 organized in the 1560s, when the Suprema began to send out notices D14 161 to Cuenca of new works as they were added to the Index. D14 162 Occasionally, the inquisitors inspected the district's bookshops D14 163 for prohibited works. They also enlisted the booksellers' aid to D14 164 control the circulation of broadsheets, primers, and playing cards, D14 165 popular literature that sometimes contained scandalous or heretical D14 166 material. Once, someone turned in some playing cards he had picked D14 167 up from some sailors in Alicante, showing the pope with a woman. On D14 168 another occasion, a French print warning against prostitution was D14 169 mistaken for an ecce homo and was cause for argument and D14 170 scandal in a local shop.

D14 171 In addition to heretical literature, inquisitors in Cuenca were D14 172 on the lookout for heretics themselves. Trials for heresy were a D14 173 direct consequence of the growing fear of the spread of Protestant D14 174 ideas to Cuenca from abroad or other parts of Spain. Foreigners, D14 175 primarily French, Flemings, and Italians, passing through or D14 176 residing in Cuenca suddenly were liable to face the tribunal on D14 177 charges of 'Lutheranism.' Inquisitors inspecting the countryside D14 178 uncovered conquenses who read prohibited books or spoke D14 179 ill of the church, its officials, and its doctrine. These were D14 180 difficult years for priests and friars, who discovered that their D14 181 colleagues and parishioners were scrutinizing their casual D14 182 statements or poorly written sermons for echoes of Protestant D14 183 thought.

D14 184 The Inquisition classified most suspicious statements as cases D14 185 of either palabras escandalosas (scandalous D14 186 words) or proposiciones (propositions), the latter D14 187 usually being the more serious of the two charges. While there was D14 188 enormous variety in the statements heard by the Inquisition, most D14 189 fell within certain patterns. Some were popular sayings about D14 190 religion that openly contradicted the church's dogma. Others, D14 191 especially comments about specific practices of the church, may D14 192 have been inspired by Christian humanism or Protestantism. Still D14 193 others were simply incredulous or crudely speculative remarks.

D14 194 Very common among the popular sayings were "In this D14 195 world you won't see me have a bad time, because in the next one I D14 196 won't suffer," and "There's nothing more [to life] D14 197 than being born, living, and dying" (today's D14 198 "Life's a bitch and then you die"). The D14 199 sixteenth-century cases heard in Cuenca, rather than being defiant D14 200 challenges to Catholic doctrine, seem to have been said in the D14 201 context of justifying reckless living. Other people liked to say, D14 202 "Each man is saved according to his own religion," D14 203 a provocative statement that grew out of Spain's still D14 204 multi-religious society but contradicted the church's D14 205 teaching that there was no salvation outside the Christian D14 206 faith.

D14 207 Over the years, the inquisitors in Cuenca tried several cases D14 208 reminiscent of Christian humanist or Protestant thought. Every D14 209 year, someone would voice the opinion that masses and offerings for D14 210 the souls in purgatory obtained no advantages for the dead. The D14 211 eighty-year-old farmer Mart<*_>i-acute<*/>n Garc<*_>i-acute<*/>a D14 212 turned himself in for saying that "the things people do D14 213 here so that the dead will go to glory don't do any good." D14 214 On more than one occasion, the tribunal encountered the sentiment D14 215 that processions to shrines, because of their merrymaking, did less D14 216 good than pious prayer at home, or similarly, that praying to a D14 217 "stick of wood" was less efficacious than directing D14 218 one's prayers to the saint in heaven. Others found some aspects of D14 219 Christian dogma hard to believe, particularly the doctrine of the D14 220 virgin birth and the resurrection of the dead. Twenty-one-year-old D14 221 Mar<*_>i-acute<*/>a de Cardenas, the daughter of a shepherd in D14 222 Villanueva de Alcardete, in 1568 maintained that "God did D14 223 it to Our Lady like her father [did] to her mother" and D14 224 "persisted in believing that God had known Our Lady D14 225 carnally." D15 1 Four

D15 2 Jewish Ethnography and the Question of the Book

D15 3 Beyond the valorization of native knowledge, beyond even the D15 4 lesson that anthropology, too, is a cultural system, there is more D15 5 to be articulated about the relation between the cultural practice D15 6 of anthropology and the cultures that anthropologists practice on. D15 7 The comparison of the treatment of certain themes in anthropology D15 8 with those by people in cultural settings widely removed from the D15 9 origins of modern anthropology is one way to investigate this D15 10 relation (Borofsky 1987). My approach here is rather different. I D15 11 attempt a critique of certain unspoken fundamentals in professional D15 12 anthropology through references to the Jewish textual tradition - a D15 13 tradition that is intimately related to the Christian textual D15 14 tradition out of which ethnography more immediately arises - and to D15 15 the situation of Jews who have lived in or near the centers of D15 16 world power within which anthropology has been produced. This D15 17 Jewish tradition has resurfaced, albeit greatly transformed, within D15 18 postmodern theory. Making explicit its critical potential D15 19 vis-<*_>a-grave<*/>-vis the assumptions of ethnographic practice D15 20 might, therefore, help to de-mystify and invigorate the D15 21 contemporary practice of anthropology by revealing a particular D15 22 manifestation of the link between knowledge and power. It should D15 23 also help to explain why Jews have until quite recently been D15 24 marginal as subjects of ethnographic study.

D15 25 I will launch the essay with a fragmentary discussion of D15 26 Stephen Tyler's book The Unspeakable. Tyler himself is D15 27 adept at the postmodern techniques of close, multiple, and playful D15 28 reading, and therefore I do no violence by relying on strong D15 29 readings of selected brief fragments from his work. The book is D15 30 first of all relevant as an ambitious account of textuality and D15 31 orality in anthropology. Tyler's understandings of the written and D15 32 the spoken are unselfconscioulsy grounded in the Christian D15 33 tradition, thus enabling me to show more clearly what happens when D15 34 we bring the Jewish voice in. Furthermore, Tyler articulates a D15 35 nexus between orality and textuality on one hand, and time and D15 36 space on the other, that is extremely relevant to my concerns. He D15 37 writes:

D15 38 It is a commonplace though many-named fact that there D15 39 are two modes of integration, one a metaphor of space, the other a D15 40 metaphor of time. The former is a static image of simultaneously D15 41 coordinated parts, an objectlike structure, while the latter is a D15 42 dynamic sequential relation of parts. Since Plato, at least, these D15 43 modes of integration have been correlated with different modes of D15 44 discourse, the sequential with narration and the simultaneous with D15 45 argument or exposition. Plato's distinction between rhetoric and D15 46 dialectic reflects this correlation, for dialectic in D15 47 discriminating genera and species creates a taxonomy, a static and D15 48 spatial image of reason which the syllogism merely recapitulates. D15 49 In modern discourse analysis we have a similar contrast between the D15 50 sequential and temporal formalisms of Propp and the simultaneous D15 51 and spatial formalisms of L<*_>e-acute<*/>vi-Strauss. D15 52 Significantly, both Plato and L<*_>e-acute<*/>vi-Strauss D15 53 subordinate sequence to simultaneity. The indices of time - D15 54 sequence, cause, consequence, and result are dominated by images of D15 55 space - inclusion, exclusion, hyponymy, and the syllogism. D15 56 (1987:80)

D15 57 It is hard for me to know what Tyler would say about this D15 58 passage. Is he iterating a truth or unveiling a misconception? The D15 59 former interpretation can gain support from linking his term D15 60 commonplace to his prefatory plea in favor of a repressed D15 61 "commonsense world" (xi: emphasis mine) D15 62 and from his binary assignment of time to Propp, space to D15 63 L<*_>e-acute<*/>vi-Strauss (and to Derrida; see p.42). The latter D15 64 reading, on the other hand, can also draw support from his D15 65 antispatialist dissection of Derrida, for if the fact he is D15 66 referring to is commonplace, presumably he would find D15 67 something in it that needs to be demystified.

D15 68 My general concern here is with the sentence fragment D15 69 "fact that there are two modes of integration." D15 70 These two modes do not exist simply; they are constructed and D15 71 naturalized, and I want to see them as such. I will begin, then, by D15 72 discussing a spatializing discourse to which I am hostile but whose D15 73 beneficent intent I am making some modest effort to comprehend - D15 74 that of academic area studies. I will end by discussing a D15 75 temporalizing discourse to which I am drawn, but whose mystifying D15 76 silences need to be made audible - a reading of the Jewish Bible D15 77 that privileges textual identity to the virtual exclusion of the D15 78 necessary dimension of everyday life and collective D15 79 identification.

D15 80 My specifiable interests here are threefold. The first is my D15 81 academic future as a Jewish anthropologist and an anthropologist of D15 82 Judaism; I articulate this viewpoint in order to create a choice D15 83 beyond what seem to be the existing options either of representing D15 84 myself as being a specialist in an 'area' that is not recognized as D15 85 such and that indeed is properly not an area, or of abandoning my D15 86 professional relation to a particular group of people in favor of a D15 87 focus on 'pure theory.' The second concern is the general status of D15 88 Jewish ideas in elite intellectual discourse; they should be D15 89 neither ignored nor patronized. The third is the well-being of the D15 90 Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab peoples. A critical approach D15 91 toward the spatial and temporal grounds of ethnic identity is D15 92 highly relevant to a better understanding of the construction of D15 93 those two nations and of the conflict between them.

D15 94 The index to Tyler's book confirms the gap between these D15 95 concerns and the current theoretical/critical discourse in D15 96 anthropology. There are no references there to Jews, Hebrew, D15 97 Israel, or midrash, that genre of rabbinic interpretive literature D15 98 that works largely by interweaving fragments of the biblical text D15 99 and that has recently attracted considerable scholarly attention D15 100 (see D. Boyarin 1990; Hartman and Budick 1986; Handelman 1982). The D15 101 Kabbalah is mentioned in the text (p.180), but it is not indexed, D15 102 nor is the Zoroastrianism to which it is coupled. The one reference D15 103 in the index to "Bible (postmodern ethnography D15 104 and)" directs us to Tyler's statement that

D15 105 the hermeneutic process is not restricted to the D15 106 reader's relationship to the text, but includes as well the D15 107 interpretive practices of the parties to the originating dialogue. D15 108 In this respect, the model of postmodern ethnography is not the D15 109 newspaper but that original ethnography - the Bible (cf. Kelber D15 110 1983). (ibid.: 204)

D15 111 The book Tyler refers to - Werner H. Kelber's The Oral and D15 112 the Written Gospel - is a painstaking and insightful account D15 113 of the transition from oral traditions to written texts in the D15 114 Christian accounts of Jesus' sayings and life (see also Kelber D15 115 1989). But the Gospels are not what I usually have in mind when I D15 116 think of the Bible, and it is not obvious that the same relation D15 117 between orality and textuality obtains in the canonical Jewish D15 118 books and in the Gospel. That Tyler himself identifies 'Bible' and D15 119 'Gospel' is further suggested by his Pauline paraphrase D15 120 "the letter of ethnography killeth" (1987:99). It D15 121 is easy to understand why this phrase is a powerful one for Tyler, D15 122 since the ethnographic situation in which the oral dialogic of D15 123 fieldwork is transformed into a monologic ethnography is so often D15 124 roughly concomitant with the actual disappearance, the 'death,' of D15 125 indigenous oral cultures. And yet we need to beware of this D15 126 antigraphic prejudice, which Tyler shares with Paul: "If D15 127 the apostle's thought is perceived as a theology of language, D15 128 affirmation of the oral power of words and aversion to written D15 129 objectification lie at its core" (Kelber 1983:184). Kelber D15 130 does indeed say that "an oral language deconstructed by D15 131 textuality undergoes a kind of death" (ibid.:185). But he D15 132 has also taken care not to evaluate the former as superior to the D15 133 latter (16), does not believe in an evolutionary progression from D15 134 one to the other (184), and cautions against the very search for D15 135 origins (xv). The Bible I will be writing about here in its D15 136 relation - critical or potential, but not original - to D15 137 ethnography is other than the Gospel and, in fundamental ways, that D15 138 which the Gospel constructs as its Other.

D15 139 Note that Tyler is doubly validating the Gospel-Bible, both as D15 140 the original of ethnography tout court and as the proper D15 141 model for post-modern ethnography. Tyler's Bible is both D15 142 the way ethnography was 'originally' done and the way ethnography D15 143 should be done. The indexing of the Gospel as Bible and as D15 144 model postmodern ethnography, along with the absence of any Jewish D15 145 references, suggest that for Tyler the relevant D15 146 textual-interpretive sources of ethnography are generally D15 147 Christian. The intimate link between missionary accounts and early D15 148 ethnographic reports certainly reinforces this suggestion. On the D15 149 other hand, there is the natural objection that so many modern D15 150 pioneers in cultural anthropology (Mauss, Boas, Durkheim, D15 151 L<*_>e-acute<*/>vi-Strauss) were Jews. The issue, of course, is D15 152 more one of social motivations and implicit frameworks of D15 153 understanding than of the overt ethnic or religious affiliation of D15 154 any particular scholar. Two observations can be made about the D15 155 apparent contradiction between the Jewish personal origins of these D15 156 pioneers and the Christian hermeneutic origins of anthropology as a D15 157 whole.

D15 158 First, all these Jewish scholars stand, as 'assimilating' Jews, D15 159 in an apologetic relation to the modern nation-state that is D15 160 curiously analogous to the relation of the early Christians to the D15 161 Roman Empire. Jews in post-Enlightenment Western Europe felt D15 162 obliged to prove their loyalty to the new nation-states, and many D15 163 of the secular scholars among them (Durkheim perhaps most notably D15 164 here) did so by helping to elaborate the legitimating ground of D15 165 liberal state structures. The record of the church fathers' D15 166 relations with imperial Rome demonstrates a similar concern for D15 167 compatibility between Christian loyalty and loyalty to empire and a D15 168 corresponding dissociation from the particularist and rebellious D15 169 Jews (Greer 1986:121-22). The analogy is even more poignantly D15 170 ironic when we consider that these secularist, modern, Western D15 171 European Jewish scholars were, like the early Christians, D15 172 "free to exploit the universalist aims of the religion from D15 173 which they had sprung" (ibid.).

D15 174 Secondly, identifying ethnography as profoundly (not D15 175 essentially) Christian does not mean that its history is unrelated D15 176 to Judaism. In fact, as I will discuss more fully later on, a major D15 177 source of ethnography's logic of Othering is the early Christian D15 178 encounter with Judaism. What came to be normative, orthodox D15 179 Christianity did not simply reject the Hebrew Scripture in the way D15 180 the Gnostics did. Instead Christian hermeneutics were largely bent D15 181 toward "the transformation of the Hebrew Scriptures so that D15 182 they may become a witness to Christ" (ibid.:111), a task D15 183 made infinitely more difficult by most Jews' rejection of that D15 184 "witness" (120). Here - as in the case of Marx's essays on D15 185 the Jewish question or Lenin's confrontation with the Jewish D15 186 Workers' Bund in 1903 - the Jews stand as the test case for D15 187 universalizing theory, which fails to deal adequately with a D15 188 stubbornly distinctive group. But equally interesting, we are D15 189 talking about a process of Othering that is simultaneously D15 190 inter-'ethnic' and intertextual. Thus in a historical and not only D15 191 metaphorical sense, the history of Othering is a history of D15 192 reading; a crucial early moment in ethnography is the hermeneutic, D15 193 intertextual encounter between the Christian Bible and the Jewish D15 194 Torah.

D15 195 I am hardly an authority on Christianity, although I am D15 196 doubtless shaped by its cultural heritage more thoroughly than I D15 197 could possibly be aware. Indeed it is impossible to imagine D15 198 ourselves without the superethnic, individualized universalism D15 199 elaborated in Christianity. Here, however, I am attempting to D15 200 identify some of the mystifications inevitably entailed by the D15 201 institutionalization of that universalizing thrust. One D15 202 mystification perhaps linked to the early Christian ideal of a D15 203 community whose members are linked not by history but D15 204 primarily by faith is the idea of an abstract, undefined, yet D15 205 nevertheless universally human common sense. Here Tyler, for D15 206 instance, becomes wonderfully polyvalent. On one hand he generally D15 207 valorizes common sense as one in a series of repressed, presumably D15 208 liberating values, decrying "the triumph of logic over D15 209 rhetoric, of representation over communication, of science over D15 210 common sense, of the visual over the verbal" (1987:170). D15 211 Immediately afterward, however, he historicizes common sense, and D15 212 undoes his own claims for its universal value: "These D15 213 visual arts ... are ... historical emergents within a structure of D15 214 common sense, and being thus relative to a cultural tradition D15 215 cannot function as universals capable of constituting a fusion of D15 216 all cultural horizons into a single integrated whole" D15 217 (ibid.).

D16 1 Bishops Meet at Notre Dame

D16 2 By THOMAS J. REESE

D16 3 BEFORE THE U.S. bishops even met for their spring meeting at D16 4 the University of Notre Dame, storm clouds gathered over the D16 5 university. The storm was both literal and figurative. Many bishops D16 6 got stranded in Chicago and Detroit on the way to the meeting as D16 7 high winds, rain and tornado warnings closed one airport after D16 8 another.

D16 9 Another storm raged over the decision of Notre Dame to award D16 10 its Laetare Medal to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.). D16 11 Although arguably the most academically qualified member of D16 12 Congress and a supporter of social justice programs, Senator D16 13 Moynihan was criticized by the bishops' conference president, D16 14 Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, for espousing D16 15 "the position that people should have the right to kill D16 16 their unborn children."

D16 17 Cardinal John J. O'Connor of New York and other bishops felt so D16 18 strongly about the issue that they refused to set foot on the D16 19 campus. Although he met with the bishops' pro-life committee in a D16 20 hotel in South Bend, the Cardinal boycotted the spring meeting of D16 21 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (N.C.C.B.). Of the 286 D16 22 voting members of the conference, about 200 attended the meeting. D16 23 How many refused to come because of the Moynihan flap is uncertain, D16 24 since attendance at the spring meetings is always less than at the D16 25 November meetings of the bishops.

D16 26 Controversy continued to plague the bishops as they gathered in D16 27 South Bend. Even before approving the agenda, Archbishop William J. D16 28 Levada of Portland, Ore., moved to conduct the discussion of the D16 29 pastoral letter on women's concerns in closed session. Archbishop D16 30 Levada and Bishop Alfred C. Hughes of Boston, both members of the D16 31 committee drafting the pastoral, argued that the bishops could be D16 32 more honest and free talking behind closed doors. They were D16 33 supported by Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston but opposed by D16 34 Archbishop John R. Roach of St. Paul, Bishop Raymond A. Lucker of D16 35 New Ulm, Minn., as well as Bishop Joseph L. Imesch of Joliet, Ill., D16 36 who chairs the drafting committee. The bishops voted to keep the D16 37 discussion in the open.

D16 38 Bishop Imesch had come to Notre Dame fearing the worst for his D16 39 pastoral and that was exactly what he got. The draft letter was D16 40 attacked from the right and the left. Auxiliary Bishop John R. D16 41 Sheets, S.J., of Fort Wayne-South Bend, said that the document D16 42 should include a condemnation of any radical feminist theology that D16 43 threatens church unity by rejecting traditional Christology because D16 44 Jesus was male, by seeing the church as a patriarchal institution D16 45 that suppresses the feminine dimension and by refusing to D16 46 participate in Eucharists celebrated by male priests.

D16 47 Bishop Elden F. Curtiss of Helena, Mont., agreed with Bishop D16 48 Sheets. He noted that the letter says sexism is a sin; it should D16 49 also say radical feminism is a sin.

D16 50 During the debate it became clear that the drafting committee D16 51 itself is so divided that Archbishop Levada and Bishop Hughes D16 52 prepared a minority report. Although the report was not made D16 53 public, Bishop Hughes's criticisms of the draft were telling. He D16 54 called for strengthening and expanding the Christian anthropology D16 55 of the first chapter. Although he did not go into detail, this D16 56 probably means reflecting more closely the Pope's theology of the D16 57 human person, especially his views on the complementarity of the D16 58 sexes.

D16 59 Second, Bishop Hughes wanted the letter to analyze modern views D16 60 of the individual, family and freedom rooted in Enlightenment. D16 61 Finally, he wanted a more positive presentation of the church and D16 62 the church's position opposing the ordination of women.

D16 63 THE PASTORAL LETTER was also attacked from the other side. D16 64 Bishop Lucker argued that the process was more important than the D16 65 letter and recommended dropping the document while continuing the D16 66 dialogue with women. He noted that the bishops have a difficult D16 67 time applying their teaching about the equality of women to the D16 68 daily life of the church and that the draft has lots of suggestions D16 69 for society but not for the church.

D16 70 Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., of Milwaukee also D16 71 called for dropping the letter because it does not have anything to D16 72 say beyond what has already been said in papal and Vatican D16 73 documents. He said it is not up to the standards of other D16 74 conference letters and that it would be embarrassing to put it out D16 75 in its present form. Furthermore, it would neither heal the wounds D16 76 suffered by women nor bring people together.

D16 77 Archbishop Roach spoke for the middle, who hope that the letter D16 78 can be saved and approved after the normal amending process in D16 79 November. "We need the document to focus the D16 80 dialogue," he argued. "This document will be D16 81 helpful for discussion on the local level."

D16 82 Cardinal Jospeh L. Bernadin of Chicago also supported pursuing D16 83 the document through the normal conference process. "It D16 84 would be a serious mistake to walk away from the letter after all D16 85 the work that was done, including the consultations," he D16 86 said. He acknowledged that ordination is the neuralgic issue. The D16 87 bishops would have to enrich the section dealing with ordination D16 88 and explain the church's teaching. But to attempt to say the last D16 89 word on Christian anthropology and feminism would in effect kill D16 90 the letter, he said.

D16 91 IN ORDER to give the drafting committee some direction, D16 92 Archbishop Pilarczyk held a straw vote to see if the bishops wanted D16 93 to use the current draft as a basis for debate and amendments in D16 94 November. The committee had told the bishops that, after almost D16 95 nine years of work, they were finished and would not attempt D16 96 another draft. A standing vote indicated that a majority of the D16 97 bishops wanted to go forward with the letter. But the vote also D16 98 showed that the letter was in serious trouble: Fewer than D16 99 two-thirds of the bishops wanted to go forward, and it will take a D16 100 two-thirds vote to pass the letter.

D16 101 The results of the vote were further muddied since some bishops D16 102 thought that the committee could revise the text in light of the D16 103 discussion. Others hoped the letter could be issued by the D16 104 committee rather than by the full conference and thus have weaker D16 105 authority.

D16 106 "I don't see how it is possible to satisfy the concerns D16 107 expressed by the bishops," said Bishop Imesch. "We D16 108 will try, but that would be a miracle."

D16 109 Bishops who support the ordination of women believe that they D16 110 only have about 30 votes in the conference. Revisions in the letter D16 111 will most likely reflect the views of those opposed to the D16 112 ordination of women and to feminist theology.

D16 113 While the bishops debated the draft, groups favoring the D16 114 ordination of women and of married men released the results of a D16 115 Gallup poll showing that U.S. Catholics favor both. Sixty-seven D16 116 percent agree that "it would be a good thing if women were D16 117 allowed to be ordained as priests," up from 47 percent in D16 118 1985 and 29 percent in 1974. An even higher percentage (75 percent) D16 119 support a married priesthood. Since younger Catholics support these D16 120 positions more strongly than older Catholics do, future polls will D16 121 probably show a continued trend toward even greater support for the D16 122 ordination of women and for married priests.

D16 123 The poll showed disagreement with the bishops on other issues. D16 124 Eighty-seven percent say couples should make their own decisions on D16 125 birth control, and 75 percent think divorced and remarried D16 126 Catholics without annulments should be able to receive Communion. D16 127 Two-thirds of the Catholics also disagree with the bishops' D16 128 opposition to capital punishment, showing that the sample was not D16 129 limited to liberal Catholics. Despite disagreements with the Pope D16 130 on these issues, 84 percent of the U.S. Catholics think John Paul D16 131 II is "doing a good job leading the church."

D16 132 The bishops also received reports on proselytism and D16 133 evangelization. Proselytism is the attempt to recruit people away D16 134 from another church through undue pressure and promises of material D16 135 rewards. The bishops are especially concerned about the loss of D16 136 Hispanics through proselytism.

D16 137 The bishops will consider a statement on evangelization at D16 138 their November meeting. The three goals of evangelization, D16 139 according to the draft, are to increase enthusiasm for the faith D16 140 among Catholics, to invite all people to hear the message of the D16 141 faith and to foster Gospel values in American culture.

D16 142 THERE ARE 15 million inactive Catholics and 80 million D16 143 unchurched in the United States who will be the focus of the D16 144 evangelization effort. Many bishops said that Catholic parishes D16 145 need to be more hospitable to new-comers and strangers. A D16 146 number of bishops indicated that Renew, a parish renewal program D16 147 begun in Newark, N.J., is the best instrument of evangelization in D16 148 the American church.

D16 149 Another report by Bishop Edward I. Hughes of Metuchen, N.J., D16 150 described preparations to receive and implement The Catechism D16 151 of the Catholic Church, which will be approved by the Pope on D16 152 June 25. Bishop Hughes chairs a conference subcommittee to develop D16 153 a favorable climate for the reception of the catechism. An ad hoc D16 154 committee of the conference severely criticized the first draft of D16 155 the catechism, which was then called Catechism of the D16 156 Universal Church (see AM. 3/3/90). The bishops are now being D16 157 asked to embrace enthusiastically a revised catechism they have not D16 158 yet seen. The English translation of the catechism is expected in D16 159 January.

D16 160 One surprise at the meeting came from Archbishop Agostino D16 161 Cacciavillan, the Pope's representative to the United States, who D16 162 said that the Vatican is concerned about the Christology and D16 163 Trinitarian theology expressed in the new translation of the D16 164 sacramentary being developed by the International Committee on D16 165 English in the Liturgy (I.C.E.L.). While he did not explain the D16 166 concerns, one member of the bishops' liturgy committee felt that D16 167 I.C.E.L. was going too far in trying to avoid using traditional D16 168 Trinitarian language in referring to the Father and Son. He felt D16 169 that if the draft came to the conference as it stood, D16 170 "there would be a blood bath on the floor." There D16 171 may be some hope for the I.C.E.L. sacramentary, however, since D16 172 without much controversy the bishops did approve a new translation D16 173 of the lectionary that uses inclusive language in dealing with the D16 174 non-divine. This revised lectionary took eight years of D16 175 consultation and work with bishops and scholars.

D16 176 The bishops also met in executive session behind closed doors. D16 177 Cardinal James A. Hickey of Washington, D.C., reported that he had D16 178 gotten the Pope to approve a second conference of religious women D16 179 in the United States to represent those who believe that the D16 180 Leadership Conference of Women Religious (L.C.W.R.) is too liberal. D16 181 The L.C.W.R. has been under attack by conservative nuns whom some D16 182 bishops consider more loyal to papal teaching. Also, Archbishop D16 183 Pilarczyk indicated that there may be some Vatican movement on the D16 184 issue of altar girls but warned against raising false hopes.

D16 185 But the major topic of the executive session was sexual abuse D16 186 of children by priests. The bishops heard from a panel of experts D16 187 and bishops. In a statement at the conclusion of the meeting, D16 188 Archbishop Pilarczyk, as N.C.C.B. president, addressed the problem D16 189 with more directness and candor than had ever been heard on the D16 190 national level. He called sexual abuse of a child D16 191 "reprehensible conduct directed at a most vulnerable member D16 192 of our society." He noted that research indicates that one D16 193 out of every four girls and one out of every 10 boys is sexually D16 194 abused before they reach their 18th birthday.

D16 195 "Sexual abuse is caused by a disorder (in some cases, D16 196 an addiction) for which treatment is essential," he said. D16 197 "Sometimes the therapy may be successful; sometimes it is D16 198 not." He refused to rule out the possibility of a priest D16 199 returning to ministry after treatment, but "We realize we D16 200 must seek sound medical advice as we make responsible pastoral D16 201 judgments," he said. "The protection of the child D16 202 is and will continue to be our first concern."

D16 203 He admitted that mistakes had been made in the past when people D16 204 treated sexual abuse as a moral fault for which repentance and a D16 205 change of scene, so it was thought, would result in a change of D16 206 behavior. "Far more aggressive steps are needed to protect D16 207 the innocent, treat the perpetrator, and safeguard our children. D17 1 <#FROWN:D17\>Fruit for eternity

D17 2 A testimony of God's sustaining love

D17 3 by Stephanie Smedley

D17 4 At some point in a Christian's life, he or she may face what I D17 5 term 'the Judas Issue': How far are you willing to go for Christ? D17 6 What will purchase your betrayal?

D17 7 It may come through disappointment or a situation so shattering D17 8 that the cost of following Jesus is sharply held in focus. I have D17 9 faced such a challenge; I have lost a child.

D17 10 Christopher Ryan, my second son with silvery-blue eyes and D17 11 white-gold hair, departed this earth. He was perfect in form, D17 12 beautiful to see, cuddly, sweet, and good. He called me D17 13 "Amma," and I loved him - and love him still. He lived with D17 14 us for seven months, then returned to the one who gave him life, a D17 15 sweet and precious memory.

D17 16 "You're a pastor's wife. You've walked with the Lord D17 17 for years and witnessed countless miracles. Why would God, if he's D17 18 so good, let this happen?" Such reactions, along with D17 19 judgments of "not enough faith" or "having D17 20 concealed sin" came from those who looked on, unable to D17 21 perceive God's objectives in my life.

D17 22 But throughout the ordeal, I never doubted God's goodness or D17 23 God's love. God's purposes are higher than mine, more lasting, more D17 24 enduring. I recognize God's right to do as God wills. As Job so D17 25 widely said, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not D17 26 accept adversity?" (Job 2:10, NAS).

D17 27 I had to face the questions, What will be the price of my D17 28 denial? Do I love God because God blesses? Do I serve the Lord for D17 29 some reward? Will I remain loyal through difficulty or hardship?

D17 30 This present life is full of trials. God entrusted my family D17 31 with a massive test, one that has buckled others. The good news is D17 32 that though we were shaken severely, God's stalwart love sustained D17 33 us. God's grace truly is sufficient.

D17 34 I relate to the sword piercing the soul as spoken of in Luke D17 35 2:35. I understand the physical ache, the yearning to hold and D17 36 possess, the missing and horrible emptiness. I have faced the D17 37 declaration that death is final.

D17 38 But death is not final for the Christian. It is only the D17 39 exchange of that which is frail for that which is indestructible. D17 40 Yes, the pain of separation is great; there isn't a day I don't D17 41 think of Chris. But I have this reassuring hope: I will see him D17 42 again.

D17 43 The power of Christ's grace brought me through what I could D17 44 never endure on my own. I am not bitter, nor am I resentful. In D17 45 fact, I am humbled to think Christ trusted me with such a test. I D17 46 love my Lord.

D17 47 At the time of Christopher's death, God spoke to our hearts: D17 48 "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it D17 49 remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John D17 50 12:24).

D17 51 Life on earth is brief, just a blip on history's graph. I pray D17 52 that we people of God will shift our focus from what is temporary D17 53 to that which never ends. May we spend our lives with this goal in D17 54 mind: to bear fruit for eternity.

D17 55 D17 56 What our children see

D17 57 Suggestions for setting a good example

D17 58 by Deborah Christensen

D17 59 Linda sat propped up in bed reading her Bible. She enjoyed D17 60 these moments to herself. The children were sleeping. She had read D17 61 a Bible story to them and prayed with them before putting them to D17 62 bed. The house was quiet. This was the first chance she had to D17 63 spend quiet time with the Lord.

D17 64 "What are you doing, Mommy?"

D17 65 Linda looked up to see five-year-old Diane peeking into the D17 66 room. She smiled and motioned for Diane to come in. "I'm D17 67 having my devotions."

D17 68 "Devotions? What's that?"

D17 69 "That's reading the Bible to learn about Jesus, then D17 70 praying to him - just as we do before you go to bed." Linda D17 71 read aloud the passage she had been studying.

D17 72 "I learned some songs about the Bible in Sunday D17 73 school," Diane said. "Do you want to hear D17 74 them?"

D17 75 "Sure."

D17 76 Diane started singing 'The B-I-B-L-E' and 'Zacchaeus.' Linda D17 77 joined in. When they finished, Linda kissed Diane good night and D17 78 sent her back to bed.

D17 79 Have you noticed how children see everything we do, even when D17 80 we don't know they are watching? Whether we like it or not, we set D17 81 an example every day. What we do sticks with them. We decide if we D17 82 set a good or bad example. How can we ensure that it is a good D17 83 example? Following are a few suggestions that might help.

D17 84 Weave your spiritual life into daily living. Read D17 85 Bible stories to your children at bedtime, go to church, and pray D17 86 before meals. But don't stop there. Allow the children to see you D17 87 growing in your own spiritual journey.

D17 88 In First We Have Coffee, Margaret Jensen talks about D17 89 her mother's complete dependence on God. Every day she went to her D17 90 room by herself and prayed on her knees. The children knew not to D17 91 disturb her because she was talking to God, and it was a special D17 92 time. She didn't hide it from them. They also watched miracles D17 93 happen because of her faithfulness.

D17 94 Deuteronomy 6:6-9 instructs us to teach the Lord's commands to D17 95 our children in all circumstances. Our children learn about our D17 96 values by watching us.

D17 97 Be consistent. It's not a matter of 'do what I say, D17 98 not what I do.' If what we say and what we do are different, we D17 99 send confusing messages to our children.

D17 100 Discipline is essential. Standards set in the home, however, D17 101 apply to all family members, including parents. We are not above D17 102 the rules. Pretending we are puts a wedge in our relationship with D17 103 our children. They see the discrepancies between our actions and D17 104 our words.

D17 105 Children imitate us. When they see us doing something, even if D17 106 we have told them not to, they feel they have permission to do it. D17 107 Or they stop respecting us. They will probably sneak around behind D17 108 our backs.

D17 109 Recognize and acknowledge failures. We are not D17 110 perfect. Our children already know that. They see every mistake we D17 111 make. Admitting our mistakes and failures opens the lines of D17 112 communication. It also lets our children know that failure is not D17 113 the end of the world. It may teach them how to be open about their D17 114 mistakes. Many people believe this undermines our authority. In D17 115 fact, the opposite occurs.

D17 116 Get involved in ministry as a family. Serve God D17 117 together. Find something you can all do as a family. Let your D17 118 children see you reaching outward to other people.

D17 119 After church every Sunday, Bill and his father drove out to the D17 120 local mental health facility. His father conducted services for the D17 121 mentally handicapped patients. Bill watched as his father spent D17 122 time with each person and treated her or him with dignity, showing D17 123 love to each.

D17 124 That image impressed Bill for the rest of his life. He cites D17 125 his father's example as the catalyst that sent him into ministry. D17 126 Bill now pastors a large congregation in the midwest. His church D17 127 focuses on reaching people for Christ - no matter who they are. His D17 128 theme is 'You matter to God.'

D17 129 "Train up a child in the way he should go" D17 130 (Prov. 22:6) means more than discipline or just talking about it. D17 131 It means living it.

D17 132 D17 133 Putting back the thanks

D17 134 Ten suggestions for a more thankful Thanksgiving

D17 135 by Kathleen Buehler and Jennifer Veldman

D17 136 Much has been said about the commercialization of Christmas D17 137 that takes away from the real meaning of advent. But what about D17 138 Thanksgiving? Has Thanksgiving become just a day to stuff ourselves D17 139 with food and lie around watching parades and football games?

D17 140 You may feel the need to put back into the holiday some of the D17 141 gratitude to God that is the reason for the day. Following are some D17 142 ideas that may spark your own new Thanksgiving traditions.

D17 143 1. Weeks or days ahead of Thanksgiving, brainstorm as a family D17 144 those persons who have meant a great deal to your family. Buy or D17 145 make thank-you cards or write notes to send to these D17 146 persons, expressing your gratitude to them. On Thanksgiving Day, D17 147 make them part of your prayer time.

D17 148 2. You could 'add' to your family. Invite persons who do not D17 149 have a place to go on Thanksgiving to your celebration and include D17 150 them in your holiday tradition. If there is a college near you, D17 151 remember that some students may not be able to go home for the D17 152 holiday, especially if they live far away, and may be spending the D17 153 day alone.

D17 154 3. Learn portions of the psalms that speak of Thanksgiving and D17 155 praise. Recite these together on that special day.

D17 156 4. Rewrite portions of Psalm 136 to fit the blessings of your D17 157 family. Read your version as a litany on Thanksgiving Day.

D17 158 5. Allow children, perhaps directed by an adult, to practice D17 159 and present a skit or puppet show for the adults expressing the D17 160 meaning of Thanksgiving or family togetherness.

D17 161 6. At each person's place at the table, put a piece of paper D17 162 with that person's name at the top. As the meal is being prepared, D17 163 ask the various family members and guests to write on each of the D17 164 other papers one characteristic or action that they appreciate D17 165 about the person whose name is at the top. Then as persons gather D17 166 at the table for dinner, each will find a list of reasons why he or D17 167 she is appreciated.

D17 168 7. Before digging into the dinner, spend a few moments looking D17 169 back over the last year. Let each one express one person or event D17 170 that has been a blessing.

D17 171 8. As part of your prayer/worship time before you begin your D17 172 meal, hold hands around the table and sing a familiar hymn or D17 173 chorus of thanksgiving to God.

D17 174 9. If someone at your Thanksgiving celebration is not a D17 175 Christian, a specific testimony about what God has done in your D17 176 life and how you are thankful to God may be a good way to share D17 177 your faith.

D17 178 10. If there is a shut-in or nursing home resident that you D17 179 know, arrange to pack up a portion of your dinner to bring D17 180 Thanksgiving to that individual after you have finished your D17 181 meal.

D17 182 D17 183 Ministers of constant prayer

D17 184 An unequaled opportunity for outreach

D17 185 by John Eyberg

D17 186 Even as the old are getting older, they are being joined in D17 187 quantity by an aging, younger group. With a dramatic decline in D17 188 birthrate, aging of the general population has skyrocketed. At the D17 189 beginning of this century, an estimated one of every twenty-five D17 190 persons was sixty-five or older; during the past decade the ratio D17 191 was one in nine; and thirty years into the next century it is D17 192 projected to be one in five - twenty percent of America's total D17 193 population.

D17 194 The graying of our country has ignited a national debate D17 195 focused on building an economy that will sustain the aging D17 196 population. What has yet to be ignited is a level of interest D17 197 within the church community in what to do about an aging D17 198 constituency. Mostly, the church has been satisfied with programs D17 199 designed to entertain the elderly and with nursing home visitation. D17 200 The result is an underutilized resource and a burial ground of D17 201 unused talent.

D17 202 Responsible stewardship is to be a hallmark of the church. To D17 203 the church, God has entrusted gifts of great value, and God's D17 204 expectation is for their return to him 'with interest' (Matt. D17 205 25:27). A church that violates that trust by burying talents D17 206 embodied in aging vessels may one day hear, "You wicked and D17 207 slothful servant!" (v.26).

D17 208 As we grow older, we learn that aging is built into the system D17 209 and happens at the same pace for everyone. Of course, we enter the D17 210 human race at different times; therefore, we do not cross the D17 211 finish line together.

D17 212 Generation gaps can be the result, but an atmosphere of freedom D17 213 can help fill the gaps. In the concluding chapter of her life, D17 214 Hannah Whitall Smith wrote, "Advice we who are older may D17 215 give, and the fruits of our experience, but we must be perfectly D17 216 content to have our advice rejected by the younger generation, and D17 217 our experience ignored ....