One of the things that struck me as I was watching the Canadian English-language leaders debate this past Thursday was the amount of attention given to environmental issues. Although this was encouraging (and producing of condescending smirks towards our southerly neighbours), I was also uneasy about the particular focus on the oil sands in Alberta and Saskatchewan, despite its probably accurate depiction as the most destructive project on earth.
Helping me to see why is Wendell Berry (who I have a sizable writer crush on), from an essay called “Conservation is Good Work” in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, Berry helps me to understand my discomfort:
Because we are living in an area of ecological crisis, it is understandable that much of our attention, anxiety, and energy is focused on exceptional cases, the outrages and extreme abuses of the industrial economy: global warming, the global assault on the last remnants of wilderness, the extinction of species, oil spills, chemical spills, Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, the burning oil fields of Kuwait. But a conservation effort that concentrates only on the extremes of industrial abuse tends to suggest that the only abuses are the extreme ones when, in fact, the earth is probably suffering more from many small abuses than from a few large ones. By treating the spectacular abuses as exceptional, the powers that be would like to keep us from seeing that the industrial system (capitalist or communist or socialist) is in itself and by necessity of all of its assumptions extremely dangerous and damaging and that it exists to support an extremely dangerous and damaging way of life. The large abuses exist within a pattern of smaller abuses.
Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, 29-30.
I’m currently reading Chris K. Huebner’s A Precarious Peace: Yoderian Explorations on Theology, Knowledge, And Identity. In an essay called “Mennonites and Narrative Theology,” he provides an excellent summary of what Yoder did — and did not — mean by Constantinianism. Since I think that thinking through Constantinianism is one of the key tasks of the church today, I thought that I would post it:
Perhaps the most recurring theme in Yoder’s theology is his depiction and critique of “Constantinianism.” In short, Yoder argues that the history of Christianity must be read in light of a deep and lasting, though often subtle, shift that took place with respect to the relationship between church and world, and which he claims is best associated with the reign of Constantine. Whereas pre-Constantinian Christianity was that of a minority church existing in a world that was largely hostile toward it, Yoder claims that the Constantinian shift resulted in an alignment of the church with the ruling political regime of the day. In other words, Constantinianism represents a fusion of church and state, clergy and and emperor, Bible and sword, God and civil authorities, or the general continuity of Christianity with the wider world. As Yoder himself describes it, the structure of Constantinianism is rooted in the “basic axiom” that “the true meaning of history, the true locus of salvation, is in the cosmos and not in the church. What God is really doing is being done primarily through the framework of society as a whole and not in the Christian community.
It is important to recognize the sense in which Yoder identifies the Constantinian temptation as existing even in a supposedly post-Constantinian context, in which the church is officially separate from the state. Shrot of the actual institutional alignment of church and state, Yoder claims that Constantinianism continues where there is merely a formal identification of the church with the prevailing political establishment, as in American public discourse. It is equally present when the church is enlisted in support of a program of desecularization, as in the “people’s democracies” of Eastern Europe and one hears echoes of Constantinianism where eschatological hope is construed in terms of the triumph of some future regime, as in certain Latin American neo-Marxist revolutionaries.
What is characteristic of all these strategies is that they compromise the lordship of Christ by identifying God’s cause in some way with the powers of the political establishment. Accordingly, Yoder calls for the church to resist such a Constantinian temptation by embodying the counter-establishment character and corresponding critical stance called for by the “politics of Jesus.” He maintains that it is only through its concrete presence as an alternative community that the church can truly serve as a witness to the world.
Huebner, A Precarious Peace (57-8)
Richard Florida’s work on the connection between good urbanism, creativity and economics is interesting, convincing and timely. He has given an excellent overview of the historical and cultural causes of the current financial crisis that I have seen at the Globe and Mail. If you need a quote before you read it, here’s one:
The real reason is that the roots of the current crisis are tied to the fundamental nature of the postwar model of economic development called “Fordism.” That model drew a tight connection between assembly-line mass production and mass consumption - ultimately fuelled by massive suburbanization.
…While Fordism looks stable on the surface, it suffers from a fatal flaw: It’s impossible for consumption to keep up with the ever-growing pace and efficiency of production.
Individual identity vs. the financial crisis - globeandmail.com
Last weekend we watched “The Fellowship of the Ring” with our neighbors. Watching how much Gandalf behaves as a “normal” person is curious for those of us who have read a lot of scifi/fantasy novels. The magic doesn’t play a central role in the story, and no magic “system” is evident. Magic is used rarely, reluctantly, and never particularly explained.
Conversely, most modern fantasy revels in making a system out of magic, turning it into a science in keeping with the modernistic fetish for explanations. The irony of all of this is, of course, that any magic worth the name is inexplicable. Indeed, one of the attractions of fantasy novels for modern peoples is the ability to inhabit a world that is still enchanted, but we still feel the need to disenchant it by making magic a “system!”
Oh, irony.
If there’s one thing that the doctrine of the incarnation makes abundantly clear, it’s that location matters.
This past Sunday, I was at a meeting with some homegroup leaders in our church where each of us spoke about notions we had for the coming year. When it came time for me to talk about our little group of West End folk, I talked about wanting to center our group in the practices of vulnerability, prayer, and communion. Why I chose these (or rather had them chosen for us) is another story for another time.
Also on the agenda was talk of whether or not to “promote” these groups within our broader church body, so I closed my monologue by saying that we didn’t really want to advertise our group because we only wanted people involved who live within walking distance. I said that “community is pretty much impossible without geographical proximity.”
Well, there was some shifting in the chairs, some nervous glances, as I know that this made us the odd ones out. (I’m getting increasingly used to that.) This is an idea that we don’t often think about in our hyper-mobile culture. Normally I would want to talk about these issues in depth, but I’m going to take a concise approach for a change, with the following reasons why I believe that geographical proximity is crucial for discipleship:
This one should be a no-brainer: it is impossible to have neighbors to love when you’re always on the go to destinations outside your neighborhood. It allows for organic connections outside of weekly meetings. A weekly meeting trying to serve for all of the functions of community is inherently dysfunctional. It allows us to care for our neighbors as a group rather than feeling the burden of “going it alone.” I would not be surprised if that perceived burden is what so often keeps us from following our conscience and helping our neighbors. It cuts our dependency on oil products for community building. This is a good thing, because oil usage is problematic for reasons of sustainability, environmental care, and sheer economic realities. It keeps us more available to one another. It promotes stability in resistance to our hyper-mobile, community-destroying culture.
I could probably come up with more, but that’s a good collection.
In yet another sign — for those who have eyes to see — that the world is about to crash down around our ears, daycares are providing surveillance cameras. From their own lips:
It is natural for you to wonder about your child after they have been dropped off at day care. How many times have you wanted to be a fly on the wall to get a peek at what they were doing? Now you can, thanks to Peekaboo’s Video Over the Internet (VOI) system. You can now stay in touch with your child visually any time of the day, anywhere you have access to a computer. From your office, your home, or even while traveling you have the opportunity to see your child at play.
How much fear and mistrust do you have to be filled with to need to monitor your child every moment like this? What hope is there for a society not able to muster the basic trust necessary to not need to monitor and control everything?
A society filled with this much fear and mistrust could be called a lot of things. Dysfunctional. Irrational. Alienated.
And definitely doomed.
