Category / Christianity

by crmayes

Sheep as the settlers’ totem: Lamb of God, sheep of the field

In working on the manuscript for my book, I have been reading and thinking about sheep and their role in settler-colonialism and the frontier wars.

Robert Kenny’s, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming, is fascinating on many levels. I particularly liked this reflection:

‘It is important to appreciate here that the connection between the religious symbolism of the Lamb and the white things wandering around the paddocks was lost to the settlers, but not to the local people. Having been brought up a Christian, it never occurred to me until I came to write this book that Jesus as Lamb of God, or myself as Lost Sheep found, had any connection to the dumb, fluffy animals that dot the countryside. Of course, I would recognise “the Lamb” as a lamb, but I would not look at a lamb in a field and think of Jesus. Or a sheep that had wandered alone onto a road and think of an apostate Christian. Since I was a small child, the separation of the symbolic Lamb from the wool-bearing sheep has been granted, the result of centuries of separation. But if I had come across the Christian symbolism of the Lamb at the same time as the novel presence of sheep, this separation would not be – and it would certainly not be if I understood the spiritual and physical worlds as unseparated.’ – Robert Kenny, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming, Melb., Scribe: 2010.

Also, it is disturbing how much of the frontier violence revolved around sheep and agriculture. This map makes the impact of colonial expansion on Indigenous life obvious.

Sheep & Wheat copy

 

by crmayes

Whose home is this? Hiding violence in the background

Last Saturday I helped setup some of the artwork for the Creative Conversations exhibition (click the link for details).* The exhibition has a number of diverse works exploring themes relating to asylum-seekers, climate change, migration and borders. I was particularly struck by a work using the medium of wallpaper – Whose home is this? by Lauren Fraser

IMG_0193-0From a distance the wallpaper looks like a series of imprecise rectangular clusters separated by irregular terracotta coloured strips. As I got closer, however, the imprecise clusters became tiny faces and bodies held tightly together by a labyrinth of fences and walls. The wallpaper sits behind, yet is framed by, domestic items of a lamp, couch and cushions.

Reflecting on themes of asylum and the temporality of life, Fraser says that this ‘settled setting juxtaposes with the restless, relentless backdrop’ of human faces in holding cells. This is pertinent in Australia where we are told that our borders, our way of life and our homely comforts must be protected.

Yet, in the background of these domestic comforts are the faces of those whose lives’ are disposable victims of crimes committed by unidentifiable perpetrators, or at least perpetrators are unwilling to accept they are complicit.

Fraser’s work reminded me of Ursula Le Guin’s short-story – The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Le Guin describes an idyllic town, Omelas, where there is peace and the citizens experience unbelievable happiness. Yet, the peaceful and harmonious existence of the citizens of Omelas comes at a cost. Not to them, but to a child kept in a dark cellar under the town.

The child is unloved, naked and unfed. A kind word can never be spoken to the child. That is the bargain that makes Omelas such a pleasant town for the citizens.IMG_0194-0

As Le Guin notes, while some of the adolescents are uncomfortable with the arrangement,

they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.

Like the child under Omelas, a mass of human beings live miserable lives while we experience peace and stability and the occasional #firstworldproblem. This is the bargain of the sweat-shop, the bargain of fossil fuel exports, the bargain of de-radicalization laws targeting racial and religious minorities, and the bargain of free trade policies that are freer for some and than for others. This is the violence hidden in the background that makes our normal life run smoothly and peacefully.

It is significant that this work is hung on the wall of Newtown Mission, a 150+ year old Methodist Church. This location heightens the moral, political and historical tension of the work.

The Church in Australia has been a beneficiary of colonial violence that dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their lands and their culture. It has enabled that violence to be hidden in the background as an unfortunate part of a wider moral project of “civilizing” and “Christianizing”.

Yet unlike the utilitarian calculus of pleasure for many and pain for some that determines the bargain set by the citizens of Omelas, aspects of the Church have sought a counter-history that identifies with those who Jesus called the “least of these“. That is, those who the powers of the day discard as disposable waste, yet are described by Jesus as possessing a value that is more than the wealth of the world can afford.

Or in a more secular register, these are people who cannot be reduced to a footnote on a policy document. As the philosopher Michel Foucault says, suffering must never be ‘the silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power.’

Those of us in Omelas, Australia, or wherever must reconsider our own material interests of domestic peace in the foreground and become aware not only of the wallpaper in the background, but the floor boards that hide the stolen land under our feet.

Sitting on the couch next to Fraser’s work is discomforting and unsettling. As it should be.

*The exhibition is being held at Newtown Mission (king St, opposite the Dendy Theatre) from 1 – 8th November.

by crmayes

Ivan Illich and the Idol of Lifestyle

Ivan Illlich, the Austrian philosopher, Catholic priest and iconoclast, was asked to give a lecture to a group of American Lutheran pastors on the topic of life. Rather outlining a philosophy of life, Illich called life an idol.

Illich said the pastors were dismayed by his characterisation. After all Jesus is the ‘bread of life’, ‘the way, the truth and the life’, and promises abundant life.

"Ivan Illich" by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_Illich.jpg#/media/File:Ivan_Illich.jpg

“Ivan Illich” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_Illich.jpg#/media/File:Ivan_Illich.jpg

What could it mean to call life an idol?

For Illich, life is an idol worshiped and used by marketers, theologians, politicians, scientists, journalists, and activist to motivate, reveal and hide all sorts of responses, actions and emotions. Yet, there is never any attempt to provide an adequate definition.

In his acerbic style Illich says ‘when I used the word life today, I could just as well just cough or clear my throat or say “shit”’.

For Illich, life becomes an idol because it is an empty signifier that can be filled with whatever meaning an authoritative and persuasive speaker gives. In his terms, life is an amoeba word. A word that when thrown into a conversation ‘makes waves, but it doesn’t hit anything. It has all these connotations, but it does not designate anything precisely’.

Other amoeba words could be freedom, family, democracy, race, secular, or gender. Illich was not suggesting that the things these words signify or represent are necessarily unimportant or shit. Rather they tend to hide or assume what is at stake.

Amoeba words are imprecise yet produce deep cultural and emotional resonance. Perhaps the more important a topic is the more amoeba words appear.

The use of lifestyle is a case in point. Despite its banal appearance it is a divisive word. It divides lives as “in” and part of “us” from those that are “out” and part of “them”. Sure, lifestyle is used to market insurance or sell funeral packages, but it is also used to identify what is valued and can be disregarded.

The idol of lifestyle is used to justify the careful inclusion of some lives and in the same movement violent exclusion of others.

George H.W. Bush infamously told the 1992 Rio Earth Summit that the American way of life was not negotiable. The rest of the world may burn, but the American lifestyle has such a high value that it will not be compromised.

Tony Abbott’s recent comments about lifestyle choices and remote Aboriginal communities reveal the divisive nature of the term.

“What we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have”

There are lifestyles that ‘fully participate in the life of our country’ and there are lifestyles that are outside of “our country”. Being “inside” grants security, celebration and flourishing, while being “outside” leads to abandonment and exposure. Of course, to be outside is a choice and therefore removes responsibility for care from the “inside”.

Screenshot 2015-03-11 18.26.22

Like Illich’s observations, the idol of life and amoeba words continue to abound in political and popular discourse. Perhaps coughing or saying shit in their stead may interrupt the pronouncements of false prophets and disrupt the flow of worshiping these false gods.

See – Cayley, David. 1992. Ivan Illich in conversation. Concord, Ontario: House Of Anansi

by crmayes

Obama and Springsteen on Solidarity, Love and Justice

Bruce Springsteen’s 2002 album, The Rising, reflects on the impact of the 9/11 attacks on the New York city landscape, national consciousness, and the lives of ordinary people performing sacrificial acts.

The album in its entirety provides an important window into the emotion and sense of solidarity felt among New Yorkers (and the rest of the world with America) in the days following the attacks. In a similar vein President Obama’s speech announcing the assassination of Osama Bin Laden recalls the solidarity of the time.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

Amplifying this solidarity and sacrifice is Springsteen’s song “Into the Fire”. Drawing heavily on 1 Corinthians 13 “Into the Fire” entwines the sacrificial heroism of the fire fighters with the redemptive love of Christ. In a repeated refrain Springsteen sings of the fire fighter leaving loved ones, as ‘love and beauty called you someplace higher, somewhere up the stairs, into the fire.’ Through sacrificial love the darkness of the terrorist act is overcome. Springsteen underscores the sacrificial act with ‘you gave your love to me, lay your young body down.’

The hope placed in the fire fighter’s sacrifice is that it will transform grief, anger and hate. That death and hate will give birth to life and love. The chorus cites the three ‘theological virtues’ of faith, hope and love, proclaiming: ‘May your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love give us love.’

However, listening to this song post-5/2 the sentiment of “Into the Fire” and incantation of these ‘virtues’ undergoes a hollowing transformation. Rather than demonstrating faith, hope or love – the non-virtue of Springsteen’s quartet was expressed.

Rather than the solidarity, sacrifice and love of “Into the Fire” it is Springsteen’s “Empty Sky” that most resonates in President Obama’s speech and the assassination of Bin Laden.

Evoking the grief and pain felt at the time President Obama describes the horror of the plane’s tearing into the towers yet acknowledges ‘that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table.’ Taking a pained and angered turn from “Into the Fire” Springsteen brought the ‘unseen’ emptiness to view in “Empty Sky”.

From the perspective of someone suffering the loss of a loved one Springsteen gives voice to the hurt and fury: ‘Just an empty impression in the bed where you use to be. I want a kiss from your lips I want an eye for an eye. I woke up this morning to an empty sky.’ The sacrificial love of the fire-fighter/Christ figure is transfigured into Old Testament rage wanting ‘an eye for an eye’.

Having staged two wars and an unknown number of extralegal raids, attacks and assassinations it appears that the US could not and did not follow ‘love and beauty…someplace higher’, but rather the desire of an eye for an eye has dictated the response from 9/12 through to the present.

by crmayes

Hyper Obedience – NYC Cycling

In Security, Territory, Population Foucault provides an analysis of a number of themes of counter-conduct in relation to the Christian pastorate in the Middle Ages that “redistribute, reverse, nullify, and partially or totally discredit pastoral power in the systems of salvation, obedience, and truth”.

Foucault suggests that as a pastoral counter-conduct asceticism functions as an “exaggerated and exorbitant element” of obedience. Rather than disobedience against an authority, asceticism is an intimate work of the self on the self that excludes the pastor; “a sort of close combat of the individual with himself in which the authority, presence, and gaze of someone else is, if not impossible, at least unnecessary.” Through a hyper-obedience the ascetic is able to counter the conduct affected by the pastor. Ascetic produces a different conduct that “stifles obedience through the excess of prescriptions and challenges that the individual addresses to himself.”

see Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France 1977-78. Translated by Graham Burchell. Edited by Arnold I. Davidson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. (p. 200 – 201)

Here is a contemporary example:

by crmayes

Politics is Evil and Poisons Everything

‘I maintain only that to speak of the evil of religion or to desire its abolition is, again, as simpleminded as condemning and wanting to abolish politics. [Daniel] Dennett, for example, on several occasion in Breaking the Spell proclaims his devotion to democracy, a devotion that one can assume remains largely undiminished by the knowledge that democratic governments – often in the name of protecting or promoting democracy – have waged unjust wars, incinerated villages or cities full of noncombatants, abridged civil liberties, tolerated corruption and racial inequality, lied to their citizens, aided despotic foreign regimes, or given power to evil men’.
– David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, Yale University Press (2009), p. 13-14.

Through the rhetoric of the “New Atheists” in which distinctions are blurred and particularities made universal, Christians are called on to defend the purity of “religion” in the abstract. This, of course, is a trap. No one is loyal to “religion”, just as no one is loyal to “politics”.

The Christian is loyal to Christ, as Dennet is loyal to democracy. The former does not need to defend “religion” against the charge of violence, just as the latter isn’t require to do the same for “politics”. Furthermore, just as Dennet sees no inconsistency with remaining loyal to democracy despite the horrors it has produced; there is no inconsistency in the Christian remaining loyal to Christ while denouncing the Spanish Inquisition.

Of course, “if the analogy fails in any respect, it is only that Christianity expressly forbids the various evils that have been done by Christians, whereas democracy, in principle, forbids nothing (exception, of course, the defeat of the majorities will).”

by crmayes

Kierkegaard and Sickness

The physician knows that just as there can be merely imagined illness, so too is there merely imagined health. For the latter, therefore, he takes the first measures that will bring the illness to view.
– Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (53)

In SUD Kierkegaard outlines various sicknesses or states of despair that affect the spirit. According to Kierkegaard no one is free from despair, not even one. Yet there are different kinds of despair. The most horrific form that despair takes is that which is hidden, ‘so concealed in a person that he himself is not aware of it!’ (57) This person lives their life unaware of their ‘spiritual’ state and looks on their existence as a series of particular moments or actions, but not with a ‘conception of an infinite consistency in themselves.’ (140) That is they have no understanding of their spiritless existence of their being but only consider the external. So they live with either ‘child-like naivety, or with empty mindedness’ (140) weighing up ‘particular good deeds’ against ‘particular sins’. For this person the scales will always tip toward the former and they will then be at ease. But our sins of action are to the state of our spiritual health what the puffs of smoke coming from a locomotive are to the engine.

In SUD and The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard (or Anti-Climacus and Haufniensis) is trying to remind his apathetic and nominally Christian contemporaries of their sinfulness so that they are motivated to be saved. If you don’t think you sin then you won’t think you need to be saved. Kierkegaard as physician is trying to tell the sick man who claims to be healthy that he is in fact ill and in need of attention.