Second is this illness that is slowly receeding but which has really taken any ginger out of me.
Third there is the general torpor of exhaustion from the fight against Trumpian fascism, especially now that corporate media, Disney, Sinclair, the friggin' NYT are in the process of normalizing fascism and thus defeating any nascent resistance. But we were warned about this by the estimable Gil Scott Heron nearly a half a century ago. Only the revolution is not going to be anything like anyone imagined. If that is going to come it won't be a revolution, revolutions are notorious for failing. At least that kind of revolution. The revolution if it is going to be anything is going to be a real alternative and if that doesn't come . . . well, I'll save Hosea for a while. If this turns into a series, I haven't planned it.
This was motivated by my looking at some of the blogs I used to go to in my early days of blog hopping online and seeing that the ones that are still operating are mostly tired old lefties in competitive snarking saying the same old things they were saying on Easter ten, twelve, fourteen years ago. EXACTLY the same things. And, let me remind you because they will almost as regularly as this product promised, they're the smarties.
I know this passage from Walter Brueggemann's book, The Prophetic Imagination is intended to evoke thought on the part of people who preach but its critique of "liberals" and "conservatives" is what I thought of when I saw the tired old lefties of secularism over the weekend and I think, especially, its critique of liberals is spot on for secular politics as well.
The hypothesis I will explore here in this: The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated. It may be, of course, that this enduring crisis manifests itself in any given time around concrete issues, but it concerns the enduring crisis that runs from concrete issue to concrete issue. That point is particularly important to ad hoc liberals who run from issue to issue without discerning the enduring domestication of vision in all of them.
Let me break in right there because if that's a legitimate criticism for religious liberals, it is ever so much more true for secular liberalism which not only isn't looking for a real alternative to the domestication that comes from what Brueggemann elsewhere called "The Modern-Industrial-Scientific Model." Secular liberalism, certainly since the rise of CSICOP in 1976 and its successful bullying of the imagination of such people especially in academia and the media, is as afraid of making any fundamental criticism of the common, basic assumptions of that as conservatives generally feel disinclined to challenge it in any real way. Liberals are even afraid of imagining or articulating any critique of it for fear of being labeled as superstitious, perhaps an apostate of science and the mental straight jacket that such people call "reason". That's exactly what got me labeled as having the cooties by the kew-el kids when I realized that their ideological basis was not only a hindrance but poisonous to any liberalism that would make any kind of change. It's not for nothing that so many "skeptics," atheists, really are libertarians, market capitalists, scientific racists and sexists and pretty conservative.
The alternative consciousness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness. To that extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done, engage in a rejection and deligitimizing of the present order of things. On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith may move. To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, to live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.
In thinking this way, the key word is alternative, and every prophetic minister and prophetic community must engage in a struggle with that notion. Thus, alternative to what? In what ways alternative? How radically alternative? Finally, is there a thinkable alternative that will avoid domestication?
How radically alternative, indeed. How immune to domestication. I don't think it's exactly what Brueggemann was thinking of but it is remarkable how much of the time of the bored, tired, jaded, would-be left of the kind I'm talking about spends on "life-style" issues, snobbery in music, fashion, even food choices. I remember being suspicious of the turn to what became called "life-style" in the 1970s was part of a campaign to diminish the likelihood of any continued progress through the promotion of snobbery - it came with a boom in nostalgia entertainment fare and disco.
And, quite concretely, how does one present and act out alternatives in a community of faith which on the whole does not understand that there are any alternatives, or is not prepared to embrace such if they come along? Thus it is a practice of ministry for which there is little readiness, indeed, not even among its would be practitioners. So, my programmatic urging is that every act of a minister who would be prophetic is part of a way of evoking, forming, and reforming an alternative community. And this applies to every facet and every practice of ministry. It is a measure of our enculturation that the various acts of ministry (for example, counseling, administration, even liturgy) have taken on lives and functions of their own rather than being seen as elements of the one prophetic ministry of formation and reformation of alternative community.
The functional qualifiers, critical and energizing, are important. I suggest that the dominant culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism ,and will go to great lengths to stop it. Conversely, the dominant culture is a wearied culture, nearly unable to be seriously energized to new promises from God.
I will remind you that in his The Bible Makes Sense, Brueggemann identified that dominant culture as The Modern-Industrial-Scientific Model. I would add materialistic, in both vulgar and elite forms and scientistic-secular to that description. And it is and has been the basic ideological basis of the atheist, would-be left, since the 18th century. Even any vestiges of the traditional American liberalism based in the justice of the Hebrew tradition and the Christian ethic of love, found among such secularists, tends to erode into torpor and cynicism and just general lassitude - go look at any long-standing would-be lefty blogging community to see the evidence of that, if they didn't give up years ago, already.
We, know, of course, that none of us relishes criticism, but we may also recognize that none of us much relishes energizing either, for that would demand something of us. The task of prophetic ministry is to hold together criticism and energizing, for I should urge that either by itself is not faithful to our best tradition. Our faith tradition understands that it is precisely the dialect of criticizing and energizing which can let us be seriously faithful to God. And we may even suggest that to choose between criticizing and energizing is the temptation, respectively, of liberalism and conservatism. Liberals are good at criticism but often have no word of promise to speak; conservatives tend to future well and invite to alternative visions, but a germane criticism by the prophet is often not forthcoming. For those of us personally charged with this ministry, we may observe that to be called where this dialectic is maintained is an awesome call. And each of us is likely to fall to one side or the other.
Which reminds me of nothing so much as this little ditty from one of the great heroes of atheist-leftism.
The solution of revolutionary violence, and romanticism of gangsterism as found in Brecht leads me to be ever more amazed that anyone ever saw that as being in any way a contribution to any revolution that wouldn't turn into a blood bath. Either in his adored Stalinism or the German "Democratic" Republic to which he fled and under which he worked in his last years, an honored hero of the revolution. And this was in one of his more upbeat pieces, Let me remind you of his just gawddawful "Mother". Not to be confused with the still gawddawful depressing Mother Courage and Her Children, but at least it's not as bad as he could get.
That list I started with, it was those visits to those old blogs that really got me down. Enough of that. It's not worth spending time on.
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