A couple of interesting articles this week about what is happening with christianity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-christians.html
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/the-allure-and-danger-of-anti-modern-religion.html
Comments? Where do you think Christianity is headed?
I have no idea.
I think some people are into "boutique religion" that satisfies their particular aesthetic taste. I don't see it as ever being more than a niche thing. But if they find God there, more power to them. However don't drag me into it. I am so tired of Rod Dreher.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question honestly, I don't know. But I do believe Christians are at an inflection point. (Talking about inflection points is a sign of serious scholarship.)
ReplyDeleteI read the "weird Christian" thing Sunday. It sounded like faith in specific aesthetics. I prefer Van Gogh to Botticelli, and Mahler to Bach, but that has nothing to do with my idea of God. I wouldn't make a religion of it. Weird Christians, or their spokesperson, seem to me to do that. So I agree with almost everything (maybe not even "almost") Ed Kilgore said about them (thanks!). Especially:
"For every Latin Mass fancier who looks to precapitalist Christianity as an inspiration for left-wing solidarity with workers and immigrants, there’s someone who just as authentically finds refuge in pre-Enlightenment attitudes toward women, homosexuality, class privilege, and the fate of lesser breeds. Some Weird Christians may be Christian Socialists, but others are undoubtedly protofascists — both viewing capitalism as the work of the devil."
Bringing up Rod Dreher, as the weird Christian did, or putting him down (Kilgore), is like discussing Dick and Jane when the book of the month is by Dostoyevsky. Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael) knew more about monasteries, and made them more appealing, than Dreher does.
In the face of fierce pushback, Pope Francis is trying to make the Church less monarchical and more collegial, less clerical and more sheep-smelling. At the moment, I am re-reading "Autopsy on an Empire," a wonderfully detailed study of the end of the Soviet Union by Jack Matlock, who was the U.S. Ambassador at the time. Gorbachev's problems were worse than Francis'; Archbishop Vigano and Cardinal Burke are no KGB. Gorbachev did not get what he sought, but by trying to get it he reduced the Soviet Union to Russia and changed Russia forever. So: Some earth is moving in the Church. How it will turn out, knows God.
I never read all of the Cadfael series. Might be good escape reading right now.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he could find an herbal cure for Covid in the monastery gardens.
Probably was some great stuff there, but the developers' bulldozers made them extinct.
DeleteJamie Manson weighs in at NCRonline.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/grace-margins/are-weird-christians-really-punk-or-just-elitist
The NY Times article is pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteI understand the emptiness of contemporary life, and I understand (to a point) the aesthetic attraction of traditional architecture and chant. And I understand the desire for something that is radical, transformative and very demanding.
I don't really have a problem with any of that.
I've read a few articles by Leah Libresco. I've really liked what I've read. If her spirituality is what this is about, then I'd feel pretty good about it.
Although the author of the NY Times piece doesn't go to great lengths to make the distinction, I take it that this is different in some ways from the Latin Mass adherents whom most of us have known (and in my case, have been vexed by) during our lifetimes. Weird Christianity doesn't seem to have the trappings of political archconservatism and anti-Vatican_II that the Ecclesia Dei, Society of Pius X crowd has (had? Are those folks still around?). I am sure they and the Weird Christianity folks are bedfellows in some way, but to me it feels like the issues that animated the older crowd are receding in importance and newer issues are taking their place. Good.
I am not sure what to make of their self-description as "punk". Punk rockers, as I understand them, are iconoclastic and nihilistic. This movement seems anything but. But maybe the icons they want to smash are not those in the church but those of financial inequality and secularism. As I say, not sure what to think of that aspect of it.
I didn't see anything about popes, bishops, dioceses, parishes (just Twitter), catechisms, Thomas Aquinas, moral theology, the communion of saints, retreat masters and/or spiritual directors... or anything else that an "iconic and nihilistic" person would find off-putting.
DeleteAbout "punk", it sounds to me like they have more in common with "steampunk". I read an interesting definition of that; steampunk is what the past might have looked like if the future had come earlier.
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ReplyDeleteI would guess I am the Weird Christian in my parish of rule-bound Republicans over 50, mostly antivaxxers and Trump voters. I showed a Commonweal article about the Prodigal Son to a Church Lady who told me I needed to different reading material, and she explained as if I were an idiot about the nihil obstat and imprimatur.
ReplyDeleteI have no power or desire to control how Our Young People will synthesize Christian ideas to guide their lives. If special outfits and geegaws take them into the Mystery, good deal. I wish them well.
Wow. I haven't seen a nihil obstate or imprimatur in 50 years. Your church lady must have raised re-reading to an art form.
DeleteHonestly, I don't think they read anything themselves, having inculcated the faith through snacks with a ruler administered by the Sisters of Severity in 1952.
DeleteThere were a bunch of musty books on a shelf loosely called the parish library that had been selected by a long-dead former priest for their non-objectionableness that they recommended to those who felt the dangerous need to read anything of a religious nature.
I used to have a subscription to Magnificat that I enjoyed. I would take back issues of that to put on the library shelf. Those seemed to be OK.
There were some treacly children's books there that we were supposed to use for squirmy youngsters.
Yes. Magnificat would be OK. It prefers Botticelli and Bach. It is not like the competition from Liturgical Press (hiss, boo!) that even profiles non-Catholics on its daily "Blessed Among Us" page. Tomorrow it's Unita Zelma Blackwell (Can you imagine!). And sometimes the daily meditation starter is by he likes of Barbara Bradford Taylor. Well, I never. It is called Give Us This Day. (In English!)
DeleteMagnificat had nice art in it, but the essays to go with were a little shallow. I'm pretty sure Weird Christians would find decoding iconographical symbols interesting. I don't care for Bach. Maybe to a trained ear his music isn't as bad as it sounds (to quote Mark Twain re Wagner).
DeleteFor that type of publication I like "The Word Among Us".
DeleteI like Bach but find unaccompanied chant off putting. It's not bad with soft keyboard or string chords, but the purists don't do it that way. And the purists always tell us that we have the timing wrong. I'll leave that to the monks or the cathedral schola.
Among the aspects of Weird Christianity that interests (and even appeals to me) is that these adherents are rejecting the conventional party and ideological divisions that characterize our society.
ReplyDeleteBack in the pre-coronavirus days of January, which feels like a different decade now, I had posted a blog about some of the different pro-life-advocacy groups I had encountered at a March for Life event in Chicago. That post included this observation:
"I also picked up some literature from the American Solidarity Party. Their principles seem to span the conventional ideological divide, including, in addition to the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, commitment to universal affordable health care, justice for workers in pay and stewardship of the environment."
The Solidarity Party was one of several organizations I wrote about that day whose booths in the exhibit hall were manned by young Catholics, and who were pretty explicit about seeking to integrate the totality of Catholic social teaching, or at least those aspects of it which touch on major contemporary issues. It is unusual, to say the least, to encounter someone whose political program embraces church teaching on say, abortion, immigration, worker rights and religious freedom.
This Weird Christianity movement seems to be similar in its attempt to embrace a broader swath of social teaching than either mainstream American party tries to encompass. To be sure, the Solidarity Party (which also was mentioned in the Weird Christianity article) is pretty marginal right now, as are the organizations I surveyed in my January blog post. But most efforts start out as marginal; some of them grow into more mainstream and even influential positions in society.
I see these attempts to cut across our current divisions as good news.
I see what you mean, Jim, but ...
DeleteI think in times past it was taught that Christians had an obligation to perform the corporal acts of mercy. Ideally, parishes would take this up in a communitarian spirit, regardless of political affiliation.
The minute you form a political party, you've forced people to take a side and embrace a narrower ideology than "love God.with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself."
I'm also not sure how a party formed on Christian principles can also embrace the constitutional separation of church and state, as the Solidarity Party claims to do. I don't doubt their sincerity, just seems a little ideologically muddled to me.
Jean, right. Any religious person or party who participates in the public square needs to be able to identify the intersections between religious belief and civic politics, and articulate their principles in a way that is appropriate to American civic politics.
DeleteCatholicism in previous eras/centuries supported the notion of Christendom. It doesn't anymore (although it does still strongly believe in international cooperation for achieving peace, addressing climate change, combatting the coronavirus, and so on).
Yes, I suppose I hang onto some tenuous affiliation with the Church because it asks us to rise above nationalism and class interests and embrace our common humanity. I don't see a lot of evidence in the local parish that anyone's buying it, but I have my own shortcomings to deal with.
DeleteJim, Charles Camosy has a column at the Religion News Service site called "Purple Catholicism". He has joined the American Solidarity Party. Sadly, it is unlikely that this group will ever be more than a small party without the slightest influence on those who actually make policy in this country.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if anybody is still watching this thread but what the heck. The original question, lost in the shuffle, was: "Where do you think Christianity is headed?"
ReplyDeleteWay up above, as part of my response I mentioned that I was seeing parallels between what Gorbachev did in Russia and what Francis is trying to do with the Roman Catholic Church. Having reached the end of Jack Matlock's book, I see the parallels more clearly. (Hey, it's 740 pages, and I was rereading Greene on the side.)
Here is the ambassador's last word on Gorbachev, after listing all of his faults and errors: "I am convinced Russia will eventually regard Mikhail Gorbachev as the man who led it out of bondage. The fact that he was unable to reach the Promised Land is secondary."
In an epilogue covering the period 1992-95, Matlock conceded that there were important people in Russia who want their empire back, but he says they can't get it. Britain and France couldn't afford empires in this day and age, and it's been a long time since Russia could. Matlock finished too soon to account for Vladimir Putin. But I would say there is not enough communism left in Russia for Putin to rule as a successor to Stalin, and he has none of the legitimacy that attached to the tsars, whoever they were. Putin is one of scores of strong-man rulers, and strong men without movements can't replicate themselves. Putin may plunge Russia back into a dark age temporarily, but the arc of its history still bends toward freedom.
Returning to the parallels, Francis may be followed by a wannabe reincarnation of Pius IX, but he is leaving a papacy too open for that to work. No new autocrat could recover the power or pretensions of the 19th century popes. Not to say there can't be a period of reaction. In fact, it might even be healthy if the reactionaries try to take over because the Church has become too much for them, and what must die would die faster at their hands as they clumsily try to save it than it will under a progressive. Trouble is, I won't be around long enough to see that play out.