Neighborliness And Courage As Death Blows Against Oligarchic Totalism

Well, you want to know where to find a different set of leaders for the real left I've been talking about.  I don't know so much about "leaders" but this year I'm impressed by the fact that the most radical current voice I can think of is that of a Reformed minister, theologian and great scholar of the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann.   For his identification of what he calls "the totalism" the all usurping, all controlling, all consuming system which is set up by the elites and which coopt and compromise those it consumes, gulling them to join in their own control and destruction, for his identification of that influence even within himself and his church, even as he, correctly, points out that the only real force against that totalism is in religion he is far more radical than most of the alleged radicalism as found among the official, elite opposition.

That such a powerful voice of radicalism comes from a son of a minister from Tilden, Nebraska, who has largely operated outside of the big, official coastal institutions is not a shock, certainly not if you accept his analysis of what the totalism that oppresses and destroys consists of.  It isn't a surprise that such a powerful, perhaps prophetic voice would not come from them.  Union Theological was only one of the sources of his academic credentials but when you hear what he has said, no merely academic system could have produced his vast and profound thinking on the prophets of the Hebrew people and how much of our condition they not only anticipated but understood.   Listen to what he has to say about the book of Amos in this exchange and consider what he has to say about their understanding that when people break the covenant with God that they will destroy even the natural world.  And that's just as small part of what he has learned from his intensive and serious study of those much maligned texts.

In listening to a number of his lectures, interviews and discussions I've come to the conclusion that you would probably have to listen to any one of them, over and over again to come to a real understanding of what he is talking about, consulting the texts he introduces into his case.  I'll listen to this one more times, knowing that what he said on this one occasion could probably produce a book, certainly many blog posts.  As instructive as that is his practice of what he calls one of the great acts of opposition to the oligarchic totalism, neighborliness.  Some of those he is dicussing this with disagree with some of his point, at one point I would say any sense of comity was in danger but Breuggemann brought it back, pointing out that they agreed on more than the other guy seemed to think.  When you see a scholar of his renown doing what he did at that time, you know he really believes what he is saying.  For the life of me, I couldn't help but think of another Reform tradition minister and his years of prophetically addressing neighborliness to far younger audience, Fred Rogers.  They both have a similar authenticity and sincerity that real belief brings.   There is also a sense of confident humility in it, Breuggemann's confession that he wasn't brave enough to be considered a real prophet at one point only added to that authenticity.

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The other day a typical atheist and I got into it at Religion Dispatches, he brought up pretty much the entire range of popular atheist invective against religion, Chritianity being the most fashionable. target he brought that up.   He hauled out the old lie that Nazism is a product of Christianity when it was and is, in fact, a total rejection of and negation of Christianity.

It happened to fall on March, 30,  the feast day of the Blessed Restituta Kafka, a nun who worked as a surgical anesthesiologist in Vienna.  She was an opponent to the Nazis and was arrested after a Nazi doctor informed on her, her great crime was putting crucifixes in the rooms at the hospital - it shouldn't be forgotten that the removal of Christianity from public life was one of the foremost goals of the Nazis, on way to its total destruction.   They also accused her of copying down the words of an anti-Nazi song.  She was beheaded on that day in 1943 by the Nazi version of that French Enlightenment engine of totalistic control, the guillotine.   The vehemently anti-Christian, certainly anti-Jewish atheist and Hitler's second in command, Martin Bormann said that he hoped her dramatic execution would terrorize other Catholics and Christians into submission.  He said that he hoped it would be "effective intimidation". I don't have the slightest doubt that that level of prophetic witness will be exacted by our oligarchic totalists and that it is, in fact, being exacted now.  It will take courage of that kind to oppose them.  Running a show candidate in an election won't signify much, in the long run.