May 22, 2006

spiritual but not religious

I am trying to articulate a connection between a couple of different posts/articles I stumbled upon this morning. There is a thread of connection that I cannot quite grasp, but it has something to do with prevailing religious attitudes in our culture(s). Now, I am probably speaking in sweeping generalizations and from a place of ignorance, but this is the freedom of blogging. This is my forum to test ideas and to make an idiot of myself. So, be ye warned.

Dave Weinberger points to a post by Rageboy about racism and New Age spirituality. Rageboy can be a bit salty, so you may want to wait to read the whole post until you are away from your work computer. But this is the point from the post that interested me most.

In part, the spiritual-but-not-religious dogma-less dogma of the New Age has sought to end-run complicity in the modern horror show -- little realizing that disorganized religion is no guarantee of absolution. And then come the disclaimers. "Why, some of my best friends are African Americans. Some of my best friends are Jews!" Uh-huh.

But racism isn't about Jews or blacks or browns or pinko Reds. It's about the Other. The dark and dangerous unknown. Terra incognita.

There is, according to RB, an underlying cultural assumption that we can will ouselves away from the sins (my word) of our history. If RB (and Geoff) is talking about how we engage "otherness," any one of us can list any number of sins and cultural blind spots. If we believe that we are not racist, if we believe that we can remove ourselves from an institution and create something clean and, dare we say, utopian, then we will heal ourselves, our souls and our nation. This is a wonderful desire, the desire to heal. This is a tightrope, however, and is also where all that Calvin rears its ugly head in my thinking. This is exactly why Calvin tries his mightiest to rid Christian theology of free-will...because it leads to these extremes. We cannot will ourselves out of our own sins. We cannot will our mistakes away. Only God can redeem such matter as our foibles and sinfulness.

Of course, there are mediating theologies, and Calvin's doctrine is not so lopsided to suggest that all we can do is wallow in our nastiness and wonder if God will redeem it. No. We can "act as if." We can imagine the Kingdom, if you will, and find ourselves in it. The desert mystics would say "If you will, you can be as very flame." There is a way we participate in our salvation...individually and communally. But Rageboy and Calvin may be on to something about us that needs careful attention. We have to make sure that our cultural/historical compass is working before we go willing a whole heck of a lot. We need to be more honest about who and what we are.

And this is where the thread connects somehow. Help me out here, gang. Flesh out the connection. We all have our own assumptions. Da Vinci demonstrates our existing ideas about faith and institutional religion. Brown is not introducing a new idea, but is instead playing with existsing ideas and attitudes. Get Religion wonders who Dan Brown thinks Jesus is. I am not trying to make Dan Brown my whipping boy. I have nothing against him and I actually enjoyed the book. It is a fun yarn. But he has become a kind of cultural barometer for us...well, for some of us. Sorry, rambling...I wonder more and more if we have not forgotten who we are as a culture. I wonder more and more if we really understand our own history. I wonder if we know our own cultural genesis. Perhaps it is impossible to know this kind of thing about ourselves. It is simply too close. It is simply easier to rush around in the midst of our desires, our acting as if, and make our decisions there. But doing so is risky business.

If we wish to not recreate the mistakes of the past, if we wish to not recreate the institutions that hurt us, we may actually have no choice but to realize that we are inexorably entangled in that history. History is more than a list of facts...dates and statistics. It is the recollection of relationships and decisions made by real people who were as entangled as we find ourselves. We are in relationship with one another in the present, past and the future...with people we will never meet. To try to remove ourselves from those relationships is impossible. To get back into Calvin, it is not possible to remove ourselves from the sins of others much less oursleves...no matter how much we may want to.

Though Rageboy may not follow me down this road, I would say that only God will be able to do this work. The best we can do is to try to live Godly lives...discerning the Spirit as best as we are able knowing that the Kingdom is not fully present...not fully revealed in this world. The sin has not gone away.

I am not trying to enter into some Christian Cynicism here. I am simply trying to wrestle with what it means to be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove without tipping too many windmills.

That's all.

*BTW - Thomas is talking about something similar and calls it tradition. He's a poet and begins his thinking with some ideas around poetry. It is worth the read.

technorati linkage: Dan Brown, New Age, Rageboy, Dave Weinberger, John Calvin

Posted by tripp at May 22, 2006 08:03 AM
Comments

1. Who do you mean by WE?

2. I admit I have some trouble following your thinking. And it tickles me that you touch on utopian efforts just at the moment when I'm spending two weeks at a play development conference situated in a town that was founded as a utopian community. :-)

But from what I can tell from this post, you object to people founding utopian communities (for example) because you believe that action signifies a belief on the founders' parts that they can separate themselves from the sins of their culture.

However, you encourage people to imagine the Kingdom and act as if they're in it... which can lead right back to utopian communities, now can't it?

Is it the thought, the intention, that bothers you? It's okay to think or intend to behave as if one is in the Kingdom (i.e., free from sin) but it's not okay to actually believe one can be free from sin? Is tht the distinction you're making?

Posted by: Megan at May 22, 2006 10:58 AM

I have this line from Bill Cosby running through my head now..."What do you mean by we, Kimosabe?"

It is true that people often understand the Kingdom of heaven as a utopian vision. I think that this is a mistake...a common one in the west since Moore, but what can you do?

I think there is a wisdom in recognizing sin.

We...plural nominative (sp) pronoun. I, you he (she it)...we, you, they. Not trying to be flip. But this is what I meant. We. Everyone. All us'ns. Me. You. Englebert Humperdink.

Posted by: Tripp at May 22, 2006 11:10 AM

That presumes that you and I (and Englebert) have cultural experiences that are related enough to make up a meaningful We. And I am not at all convinced that that is so.

From what I can tell, and please feel free to correct me, I have identified your objection accurately. Which kind of makes you the thought police, doesn't it?

Posted by: Megan at May 22, 2006 11:16 AM

Thought police? How so? I am not folowing you.

Posted by: Tripp at May 22, 2006 11:18 AM

I asked in my first comment whether the distinction you were drawing was between:

Acting As If one were in the Kingdom/free from sin (which seems to be okay with you),

and

Actually Believing that one could be free from sin (which seems to be not okay with you).

Is that an accurate illumination of what you were saying in your post? If not, please explain what distinction you ARE drawing.

If what I wrote here IS an accurate illumination of your point, then what you're endorsing or objecting to are people's thoughts. Hence, "thought police."

Posted by: Megan at May 22, 2006 11:27 AM

Ah...um...I think I am getting it.

In the end, there are no thought police...only communities...relationships...with God and with one another. One does not have to be the thought police to see sin at work in the world. It is unnecessary.

The acting as if is only useful when one recognizes that sin is something that we cannot escape on our own. Acting as if only takes us so far. At its best it can only open us up to the Kingdom. Otherwise it is simply pretending.

So, I am okay with it to a point.

Posted by: Tripp at May 22, 2006 11:30 AM

So basically, one would have to agree with you about the inescapability of sin in order to agree with you about the subject of today's post. Since I don't agree with you about sin, I think we will have to agree to disagree about today's subject matter as well.

Posted by: Megan at May 22, 2006 11:35 AM

Yes. And it would seem so.

But tell me, how do you think sin is escapable? Is that all sin or some sins?

Posted by: Tripp at May 22, 2006 11:39 AM

Sweetie, I'm not certain I believe in sin in the first place. I've mentioned that before.

Can't get too far into it now, though -- work calls. Another time?

Posted by: Megan at May 22, 2006 11:41 AM

Ah, that is true. You have mentioned this. Sorry for the lapse.

Another time would be grand. Perhaps at your blog?

;-)

Posted by: Tripp at May 22, 2006 12:01 PM

Dessert mystics: looking ever into the holy mysteries of turtle cheesecake........

Posted by: kate at May 22, 2006 12:08 PM

Ooops!

lol

Thanks...I made the edit. But dessert mystics are a good idea.

Posted by: Tripp at May 22, 2006 12:11 PM

I've been hearing "spiritual but not religious" for a good 14-15 years now, and I'll admit: when I hear the phrase, I immediately think, "The interesting part of this conversation, if there was one, is now over."

Part of my impatience with it is that, I just don't buy that "religion is the root of all violence" business. Religion makes a great emotional handle, and a great way of divvying up the populace into Good (us) and Evil (ripe for destruction), but there are plenty of others: any identity marker with charged symbols will do, especially in combinations.

Spiritual-but-not-religious does sound to me like, "Don't hate me because I'm religious; and, by the way, don't expect me to share in corporate responsibility for the sins done under the justification of religious zeal." Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but that's what I get from the phrase.

Posted by: Baruch Grazr at May 23, 2006 07:35 AM

I agree with Baruch that that this is often the end of the conversation. Perhaps that is because the phrase conveys a preconcieved set of beliefs (ie, "Jesus, if he existed was only a nice guy", "the church is a bunch of hypocrites", etc). Maybe a follow-up question, asked in good faith, should be "Why?"

I've often thought of the "spiritual-not-religious" arguement as a difference between browsing and shopping. Its a difference of commitment. "Spiritual" people can have a personal faith relationship without committing to the formalities of membership and perhaps, tacitly approving of church rules or practices. Perhaps its their way of saying that they are not regular attenders or members. Maybe they have been wounded by their church. Or maybe it is simply too confrontational to say "I don't believe".

Posted by: Kate at May 23, 2006 01:37 PM

Confrontation is an interesting choice in words there, Kate. I think that maybe, within reason, confrontation is just what we need. I sometimes feel that we (liberals? W.A.S.P.'s?) avoid confrontation about belief and faith because the only model we have of this kind of discourse is found on TV. And it is ugly.

What if we confronted like Christ did? "Woman, you have five husbands..." Or like even like Paul in his words to those who worshiped the unknown God. There is honesty, respect and compassion in those confrontations. Confrontation does not have to mean "trench warfare." To share a front, a shared perspective perhaps, is where we need to reestablish dialogue.

Posted by: Tripp at May 24, 2006 08:22 AM