Dan Barber on Marxism and Christianity

Our own Dan Barber has a piece up at The Other Journal on the relationship between Marxism and Christianity, entitled “The Actuality of Liberation’s Problem.” It is part of his ongoing work on conversion. Here’s the first paragraph:

There is a tendency, when approaching the relation between Christianity and Marxism, to try to identify some element that would be common to both. This element becomes a third thing that allows us to give sense to the relation between the two initially given things of Christianity and Marxism. Such an approach, naming an element common to both Christianity and Marxism—liberation, for instance—allows us to adjudicate their relation. In fact, this third thing provides a site of adjudication to which each side is already implicitly committed. After all, if both Christianity and Marxism avow liberation, how could either object to being evaluated in terms of its capacity to bring about such liberation?

I think we all realize it’s not going to be that simple, though — and so we should read the whole thing.

A Synthetic Manifesto: A Review of Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism

Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins are no strangers to readers of this blog. Both are well established figures within the fields of theology, philosophy and the liminal space between them that sometimes goes by the name secular theology and sometimes Continental philosophy of religion. Both are graduates of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University and Crockett now teaches as an associate professor of Religion at the University of Central Arkansas while Robbins is a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College. While their friendship has long been know, expressed in the academic realm through their co-editorship of the Insurrections series with ColumbiaUP, Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism is their first co-written book. The book, published in the new Radical Theologies series published by Palgrave Macmillan, is quite consciously written as a kind of manifesto for the practice and future of radical theology. Now, what this means is dependent of course on the figures who develop it, but by radical theology it is clear that people thinking with religious material outside of a confessional duty as well as those who are more explicitly confessional but still attempting to radicalize their confessional thought beyond any capture by that tradition’s authorities. That is, radical theology cuts a wide-swath and it may be the only form of theology that is truly “big tent” in terms of its actions and not just as a propaganda move. However much such a movement might benefit from a manifesto, the disparate directions and materials with which various radical theologians engage with makes creating such a manifesto difficult and risks sedimenting their works and cutting off these radical theologians from the true, creative source of their power. At times it feels that Crockett and Robbins risk such sedimentation. However, what ultimately saves them from this temptation is their very synthetic approach. This is a book constructed not in the name of Crockett and Robbins, but through a multiplicity of names that are brought together in varying ways and with various levels of success under the standard “The New Materialism”.

On the Culture of Fear in Theology: More on Gender and Theology

As the discussion about Theology and Gender continues to play out over multiple blogs, Facebook, and emails, I have noticed something that I find deeply troubling and I believe to be specific to the field of theology as such. To summarize how I have seen the discussion play out so far: Tony Baker puts forward an essentially unchanged, unsophisticated version of nuptial theology in response to a question about gender, the Theology Studio’s meeting regarding “the future of systematic theology”, and his own work. This is then responded to by a number of women, foremost amongst those are Brandy’s from last week. Their responses are across the board described as charitable and a model of grace, while any criticisms of their positions from TS insiders are pushed on to men who are putting forth essentially the same criticisms as Brandy. There is something deeply creepy to me about how the women are being treated in this conversation, sometimes a token woman will be held up as an example of someone who shares their views, or a woman who has acted with supreme patience (a patience I don’t have or have to have… but more on that below) is complimented for her ladylike behavior but her criticisms are ignored.

Forsaking Futurity and a Call for Feminist Theologies: A Response to Gender & the Studio, Part Three

Abstract: Rather than delve into the potential theo-logic of a Butlerian “constructivist” account of gender, this blog post proposes that we pause, and instead question the discursive operations undergirding the very idea of “the future of systematic theology.” The effort to secure the existence of systematic theology, I suggest, is idolatrous—rather, systematic theology needs to lose its own life in order to potentially save it, and can begin to move in that direction by attending to the concrete, historic, material, discursive realities of people’s lives, especially those on the underside. This “losing” is both practical and apophatic, in that it acknowledges that the task demands constant attention to the material realities of people’s lives and the discursive regimes that produce those realities, and that we cannot seek to grasp or claim or secure a telos or overarching discourse. I end, then, by turning briefly to the potentialities within a constructivist frame, and offering some suggestions for possibilities for Christian feminist theologies.

 

Part Two: Bodies Matter (A Response to Tony Baker’s “Gender and the Studio”)

Part Two: Bodies Matter (as do the ways they are configured in and through power relations)

 Baker argues that theological studies need not be a “masculine form” and that one of the ways it can instead function within/as “the redeemed form of Mary,” is through a focus on “receptivity”—which he identifies, at least in part, as close readings of texts and engagement with Biblical, historical, and literary material—as opposed to “mostly creative construction in the realms of logic and metaphysics.”

While I have a number of theoretical and theological concerns with the association between receptivity and femininity, which I’ll address in the next, and final, post on this topic, on some level, I can get behind, or at least understand, this. Different strands and iterations of feminist theory and politics have named masculine modes and forms of discourse as problematic and have called for the embodiment of alternate, feminine forms—most notably, the “French feminists:” Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous, Clement… One might also look to some of the U.S. “second-wave” feminists: Carol Gilligan, Catherine Mackinnon, Andrea Dworkin…

What Baker’s analysis lacks in this regard, however, is an attention to the discursive and material realities that engender these dynamics—something that is central to the work of the aforementioned “sexual difference” and “second wave” feminists. Baker calls for a greater focus on “receptivity” without contending with, or even acknowledging, the ways in which bodies and/in power function.

Gender and Theology (and the Theological Academy): A Response to Tony Baker’s ‘Gender and the Studio’- Part One

Part One: The Pink Penis on my Desk (A Lengthy Introduction)

In addition to the random smattering of papers, books, and other odd objects that are strewn across my desk at various points, there are a few items that are consistent adornments—there  are the practical things: the external hard-drive , the file folder, the stapler; and the sentimental things—a stained glass cross I was given upon graduating from div school, a wine cork that reminds me of a particularly happy time in my life, and a bedazzled pink penis.

Often, people don’t comment on the pink penis, probably because they’re embarrassed, or think I’ll be embarrassed. But occasionally, the bold ones will ask,

“Why do you have a pink dildo on your desk?”

I explain to them that, actually, it is not a dildo, but rather, a water gun. When this answer proves unsatisfactory or incomplete, as is often the case, I tell them a version of this story….

A preferential option against Christian apologists

I should have known better. Over the years, this blog has drifted away from its initial primary focus on theology, and I thought we had finally reached a point where it might be possible to discuss abortion without being mobbed by Christians. I was wrong, and the resulting discussion was a great example of the ways that typical Christian argumentative tactics clog and ultimately shut down any genuine conversation. (Disclaimer: not every individual who identifies as a Christian is guilty of all this, etc., etc., etc.)

The two key moves are, first, to presuppose some established orthodoxy and, second, to attempt to make people feel guilty for not adhering to it.

The devil’s opus operatum

In the Agamben book I’m currently working on translating, Opus Dei: An Archeology of Office, he points out a fun fact: the term opus operatum, familiar from sacramental theology, was actually coined in the context of a discussion of the devil’s role in God’s providential plan. The text comes from the Sententiae of Peter Poitiers (book 1, chapter 16, available in PL 211), which I provide in Latin and in my own translation “below the fold.”

Ada Marìa Isasi-Díaz: RIP

I’m traveling right now so not on top of all of the news but just learned that Ada Marìa Isasi-Díaz, influential Drew theologian, has passed away.  Here’s the announcement from her blog.  And here is the obituary:

Dr. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz died on May 13, 2012 at age 69 after having received the Holy Sacraments.

What is atonement theory?

Recently I’ve had the occasion to tell a few different people who were not theologically educated what my dissertation was about. “Atonement theory” is not a very intuitive term, obviously, and people are often taken by surprise that arguably the central question of Christianity — why was Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection the necessary means of salvation? — has never received the same kind of “official” answer that questions about Christ’s precise relationship to God have. Thus telling someone about the topic in a more casual setting can easily lead to more detailed explanation than is appropriate.

Thinking it through over the last few days, however, I believe I have finally come up with an elegant and economical way to introduce the topic to a generally educated audience: “As you may be able to tell, Jesus has always been something of a solution in search of a problem…”