Russian writers & the Archbishop of Canterbury

I interviewed Lesley Chamberlain not so long ago, when two of her major works on Russian intellectual history were about to be published in the United States.

Now, Chamberlain has interviewed Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, about the work of Russian novelist Dostoevsky.

Here is a key excerpt from Williams' comments:

Dostoevsky famously said: "If there’s no God, then everything is permitted." It’s a view the west might consider more often. Dostoevsky’s not saying that if there’s no God then no one’s watching us and we can do what we like. He’s really asking: what’s the rationale for living this way and not otherwise? If there’s no God, then there’s no shape to our lives. Our behaviour needs to be in tune with something. If there’s no divine tune, how do you know where to go, what to do? To believe in God is not a business of rewards, but an ability to make sense of things.

God, Hugh Laurie, and 'House, MD'

A new article has me thinking more about the religious content of my favorite show on television: House, MD on Fox, starring Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House.

I don't like to record it because I don't like to wait for it. My world stops for the start of a new episode.

My affection is against the rules.

I am a theist -- frustrated, searching, liturgically minded, often-doubting, usually more philosophical than theological, yet ultimately a Christian of some sort.

Laurie and his TV character House are both strident, stringent atheists. The actor and the character ridicule all stripes of believers with ease and regularity.

Oddly enough, series creator and executive producer David Shore has twin brothers who are Orthodox rabbis, according to an article in the Spring 2008 edition of Religion in the News (which just arrived in my mailbox today, in late July).

The brother of rabbis creating and guiding a show about an atheist? Maybe that's why I find the religious content of House, MD to be remarkably well-informed and true to the state of religious thought in our time. (I'm not totally ignorant of the subject, either -- hey, I won a Medal of Distinction in the Battleground God game at The Philosopher's Magazine Web site!)

"To ignore issues of faith is to ignore a pretty fundamental part of all people's lives when they're in the hospital, facing death," Shore said in an NPR interview last year. "I'm not saying all people find God, but they certainly do ask those questions."

I'll never forget the episode (can't remember the title or season) in which Dr. Robert Chase, played by Jesse Spencer, spends time talking with a nun who has (what else?) an undiagnosed illness. We learn that Dr. Chase had once been a seminary student, and the way his lingering knowledge of the Christian faith -- and his apparent desire but inability to believe -- are brought to the surface rings true. Kudos to both the acting and the writing.

Here's an example of the program's religious content, from Christine McCarthy McMorris's article "Playing Godless" in Religion in the News:

In "House vs. God" (Season 2), a teenaged faith healer is brought to the hospital, where House sets up a scoreboard for both him and God to win points. Although he discovers that the young healer has contracted a sexually transmitted disease that he is hiding from his father, exposure to the boy's virus seems to (miraculously) shrink the tumor of a cancer patient at the hospital. Although House remains unconvinced ("I fear for the human race. A teenager claims to be the voice of God, and people with advanced degrees are listening,"), by the end of the program the score is even.

But some people have to latch onto the most simplistic, surface-level interpretations, rather than identifying the messiness of life and faith and doubt, and rather than understanding that television programs, like many creative works, are at their best when they jump into ambiguities and uncertainties, following William Shakespeare's genius as explained by John Keats: "I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Uninspired by such an approach would be The Parents Television Council, the leadership of which called Fox "the most anti-religious network" and accused House, MD of "consistently mocking religion and people of faith."

Indeed, Dr. House's ridicule of religious people has included not only Christians, but also Mormons and Orthodox Jews. But the program's story lines don't actually allow a cut-and-dried verdict on complex topics. Maybe that's why I find it so rewarding to watch.

--Colin Foote Burch, member, Society of Professional Journalists, and affiliate member, Religion Newswriters Association

Lutherans promote cremation

Pentecostalism and the evaluation of personal experience

In the current edition of Books & Culture, Arlene M. Sanchez Walsh reflects on an afternoon tour she took of Angelus Temple, where the late Pentecostal hero Aimee Semple McPherson ministered. Sanchez, herself a licensed minister in the Pentecostal denomination called International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, writes that "the Pentecostal cult of personality tells us more about who Pentecostals are than it does about the leaders they hold in such high esteem."

The personality cults abound in Pentecostal and charismatic versions of Christianity. Right now, in Lakeland, Fla., some of my friends and family members are visiting an "outpouring" that is being presided-over by one of the latest personalities to gather a cult following: Todd Bentley, who can be seen on numerous YouTube videos leading crowds into near-hysterical frenzies.

The problem, these days, in our mass culture, is that charismatic personalities (using charismatic in the broadest sense of the term) and intense experiences are considered indications of reality or truth or God's presence. No one seems to think that senses and perceptions could be manipulated -- wittingly or unwittingly -- by a leader or by a crowd, in politics as well as religion.

"When a leader has the quality of charisma, he is able to arouse an extraordinary level of trust and devotion from his followers," wrote Wendy Duncan in her book I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult. "The charismatic leader attracts people to his ideas and causes them to desire to be in his presence."

What follows that initial devotion, though, is a movement from one personality to the next, from one "move of God" to the next, from one "outpouring" to the next, from one "revival" to the next. Len Oakes, in his book Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse University Press, 1997), wrote, "The followers surrender not to the person of the leader but to the power manifest in him, and they will desert him if his power fails. The followers attain freedom from routine and the commonplace by surrendering to the leader and -- through him -- to their own emotional depths."

Following Oakes, it seems to me, based on my own 20 growing-up years in neo-Pentecostal/charismatic churches, that the promise of a new personality, as well as the alleged new move of God that comes with him, is never delivered and eventually fades away, so one is always eagerly looking for that next fix, whether it is a fix that will finally bring healing or guidance, or a fix that will bring a new experience of "emotional depths."

Consider again Oakes' phrase "freedom from routine and the commonplace." It is interesting that a common accusation against institutional churches is that their rituals and their orderliness smack of spiritual deadness. To be sure, as Jaroslav Pelikan said, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." But what are the accusers of institutional churches seeking from the charismatic leader and the latest outpouring, the latest revival? Not truth. Instead, they seek experiences. The accusers of institutional churches never seem to consider that rituals and orderliness might be structured in such a way so that truth could be handed down to generation after generation.

But if a guy has been brought up with television and rock 'n' roll, how is he going to see the value in quietness and orderliness and the repetition of old texts unless he has the help of a little teaching or training? He wants sensation. Sensations dictate to him whether or not truth is being communicated. If the sensations come with Jesus' name attached, then they must be from God, never mind all affronts to historical doctrine and theology, never mind the atmosphere created by music and the mantra-like repetition of phrases.

Perhaps he should consider that church and worship are not about his personal experiences.

The fact that he does not consider such thoughts is evidence enough that Sanchez was right: "the Pentecostal cult of personality tells us more about who Pentecostals are than it does about the leaders they hold in such high esteem." All they want, as Oakes said, is "freedom from routine and the commonplace" and the resulting experience of "emotional depths."

-Colin Foote Burch

This church sign needs a caption; please provide one in the comments section

Seen just off an I-95 exit in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., June 23, 2008:

Keep your freedom: how spiritual seekers avoid traps

Almost all cult leaders and Christians who manipulate place a high emphasis on being "led by the Lord."... In the first century those who thought that personal revelation was an authority above Scriptures were called Gnostics.... We must ever guard ourselves against the words and pet phrases that hint of superior spirituality.... When we divide life into snug "spiritual" and "nonspiritual" compartments, we are thinking heretically and may blindly accept a cultic view of life.

-- Harold Bussell, in his book By Hook or By Crook: How Cults Lure Christians

Who really speaks the truth

"Only mystics, clowns and artists, in my experience, speak the truth..."
- Malcolm Muggeridge




Macolm Muggeridge as a gargoyle, from The Gargoyle: The Journal of the Malcolm Muggeridge Society

Gonna make God talk

I found this on the Web site of a prophetic ministry. Check out the wild assumptions and general nuttiness within this promotional note for an upcoming conference.

There seems to be a remarkable new spiritual energy being released in our conferences. Everyone on our staff, as well as many who have been attending our conferences for years, seem to all think that our recent Harvest and Worship & Warfare Conferences were the best we've ever had. Overall, I think so too, but there was also a great spiritual momentum that I have honestly not felt anything like in over a decade. Already you can feel the spiritual energy building for our New Year's Conference in which we seek the Lord for prophetic words for the coming year. In the past, we have received some that were remarkable. These are obviously crucial times, and we are going to need to have increasingly clear and accurate guidance for them. There is also a great spiritual momentum building, and if you are planning to join us for this conference, please register and reserve your rooms at Heritage as soon as possible, as space is limited and we are expecting this conference to fill up quickly.

Problems with the above promo:

1. How frequently did Biblical prophets hold conferences so they could hear from the God? And, conversely, how frequently did God decide to talk to prophets at times the prophets had not previously scheduled? The suggestion is that we, or at least the right sages, can make God talk.

2. How does God's work depend on "spiritual momentum?" Does God need a running start to accomplish certain things? God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. No build-up required. No straining involved.

3. "Already you can feel the spiritual energy building for our New Year's Conference in which we seek the Lord for prophetic words for the coming year." First, see No. 2 above. Second, since when does God operate on the calendar year?

4. "There is also a great spiritual momentum building, and if you are planning to join us for this conference, please register and reserve your rooms…as soon as possible." The word "and" sticks out here. Being a conjunction, the word "and" tends to connect related ideas. Perhaps, then, one could conclude that the "spiritual momentum" announced in the first part of this compound sentence is intended to encourage the registrations and reservations requested in the second part. Following the above italicized excerpt, a link to the confence Web site notes that registration for the conference is $50 each for adults and children. The price is a gamble on the possibility that "some" of the prophecy this year will be "remarkable."

Like too many ministries that claim special supernatural giftings, this ministry depends on its followers accepting the assumption that critical thinking will hinder the work of God. Thus, the followers open themselves to nebulous beliefs merely because those beliefs are presented with conviction, spiritual language, and a kickin' sound system. Yet the mind, like the heart, was created for humans to use.

-Colin Foote Burch

Evangelicals don't know much about theology

Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University, recently told the 2007 Religion Newswriters Assocition Annual Conference about his study of evangelicals. Lindsay has interviewed evangelicals across the United States and written a book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford, 2007).

While Lindsay's work has done a lot to bust media stereotypes of evangelicals, one thing he told the RNA conference is sadly not surprising: Evangelicals don't know much about theological teachings; they have very little formal theological education.

This recalls the famous statement by the evangelist Billy Sunday: "Theology? I didn't know I had any."

However, some of Lindsay's other findings are more flattering of evangelicals:

MYTH: Evangelicals derive their power mainly in the political field.
REALITY: Most identify themselves with culture and the arts (especially Hollywood), where they feel they can make a greater difference.

MYTH: Evangelicals are mainly in white suburban communities in between the U.S. coasts.
REALITY: One of the largest evangelical churches is a Hispanic congregation in Houston. Another, in New York, serves Ivy League professionals.

MYTH: Domestic issues like gay marriage and abortion are most important to evangelicals.
REALITY: Evangelical groups are more involved on the global front, with issues like HIV/AIDS and hunger.

Read more of RNA's summary of Lindsay's presentation at http://www.rna.org/action071102.php#evangelical.

Creativity: Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007

It has only been within the last two weeks that I finished reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. When I heard about her death on Thursday, I choked up and whispered a “thank you” to her. Walking on Water is one of the most life-affirming, creativity-affirming, and art-affirming books I have read.

Only my two-year-old was with me, sitting at the kitchen table on which I had my computer, which I used to view the news stories and the Wikipedia entry about L’Engle. Although I never met L’Engle, I think I said something like, “One of daddy’s friends died,” and my face briefly contorted toward a cry, but little Sadie laughed, thinking I was clowning. Childlike laughter might be the best way to remember L’Engle.

She proved that childlikeness can be intelligent and broad-minded. Like comedians, children’s writers are often overlooked in the intellectual realm, yet they have both serious and playful minds. Here are some of the passages I underlined in Walking on Water.

Our work should be our play. If we watch a child at play for a few minutes, “seriously” at play, we see that all his energies are concentrated on it. He is working very hard at it. And that is how the artist works, although the artist may be conscious of discipline while the child simply experiences it.

Also:

When I am working, I move into an area of faith which is beyond the conscious control of my intellect. I do not mean that I discard my intellect, that I am an anti-intellectual, gung-ho for intuition and intuition only. Like it or not, I am an intellectual. The challenge is to let my intellect work for the creative act, not against it. And this means, first of all, that I must have more faith in the work than I have in myself.

And:

…I try to take time to let go, to listen, in much the same way that I listen when I am writing. This is praying time, and the act of listening in prayer is the same act as listening in writing.

And this fragment, which could be a life goal:

…accepting the discipline of listening, or training the ability to recognize something when it is offered.

I did not recognize what was offered soon enough. I began Walking on Water years ago and put it down, distracted by the parts of life that do not involve being quiet and listening.

Now that I have recently finished it, I want to read her children’s books, none of which, I am ashamed to say, I have read. I eventually recognized Walking on Water after it had been offered for a long time, and now that I have read it, I am eternally grateful to L’Engle. May light perpetual shine upon you.

Christian Humanism: Some Helpful Explanations

In the current edition of Image, the impeccable quarterly of art, faith, and mystery, editor and publisher Gregory Wolfe suggests that Christians reconsider the value of the Renaissance. In the process, he makes valuable elucidations of central ideas within Christian Humanism. Here are excerpts from Wolfe’s essay:

[I]t has been shown that many of the greatest Renaissance thinkers and artists were already at work trying to find a new synthesis of self and cosmos and bring healing to modern consciousness. The conditions they faced were strikingly like our own.

The rediscovery of pagan culture involved the question of how to approach the dialogue between secular and sacred. As the Christian humanists argued for the importance of learning from pagan culture, they deepened the theology of the Incarnation, attacking the sort of dualism that compartmentalizes experience and denies the unity of truth. “For Erasmus wisdom does not consist in despoiling a humiliated paganism, but in collaborating pedagogically with its highest expression,” writes [Marjorie O’Rourke] Boyle.

The age of exploration began the process of globalization, and while the record of western engagement with other cultures has been checkered at best, the greatest religious order to emerge out of the Renaissance — the Jesuits — offered some of the most humane forms of intercultural exchange on record, including the mission to the Guarani’ in South America, recounted in the film The Mission. The Jesuit missionaries to China dressed as Mandarins and learned both the language and Confucianism before breathing a word about Jesus….

At the risk of some anachronism, I think it can be argued that the struggle between hell-for-leather Reformers and reactionary Catholics during this period can be seen in the light of what have recently been dubbed the “culture wars.” Eventually, these conflicts would erupt into shooting wars that would engulf Europe in an orgy of division and destruction for over a century. What gets lost in dwelling on this conflagration are the achievements of the humanists on both sides of theological divide: the emergence of biblical criticism and philology, the first stirrings of the discipline of history, pleas for tolerance and understanding of Jews, and programs for the education of women.

For more information about Image, visit http://www.imagejournal.org.

Meanwhile, we have updated our homepage. Please visit http://www.liturgicalcredo.com.

A Thought About God

"God does not cease to be a mystery in the event of revelation. The self-revealing God never becoms a controllable object or a manipulable possession."
From Daniel Migliore's Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

Islam, beauty, and dialogue

In the most recent edition of Image, Gregory Wolfe's essay "East and West in Miniature" addresses the novel My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Thematically, the essay is about the tradition of beauty in Islam and the opportunity it provides for dialogue between the Islamic world and the West. Here are some excerpts:

“The recent controversy over Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg lecture – which touched on the nature of human reason, but which also questioned, in passing, the relationship between faith and reason in Islam – may turn out to be more productive than was at first thought. Among other things, it generated a substantive open letter to the pope signed by thirty-eight respected Muslim clerics – a document that itself is carefully reasoned and gracious. At a time when the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism is being met by increasing fear and stereotyping in the West, any form of dialogue is cause for hope.

“In his insightful essay ‘The Dialogue with Islam,’ Stratford Caldecott points out that the classic western concern about Islam is that it seems to stress the absolute will of Allah without a corresponding emphasis on how that will manifests a reasonable, ordered universe. A religion founded on mere will, of course, would make dialogue irrelevant and provide endless fuel supply for violent conflict. What makes Caldecott’s essay so fresh and provocative is not the evidence he provides for an Islamic tradition of reason (though he does believe it exists), but the suggestion that a more fruitful avenue for dialogue with Islam would be the investigation not of reason but of beauty.

“Over the centuries, as Caldecott notes, one of the central strands of Islam has been what is known as the ‘ihsani tradition.’ The Arabic word ihsan derives from the noun hasana, which means to be beautiful, good, lovely. As a verb, ihsani means to ‘make beautiful or good.’ According to scholar Joseph Lumbard, God himself is the first to make beautiful…. Lumbard argues that the process by which one becomes beautiful is less a rationalistic or legalistic thing that it is the cultivation of a craft or art form. The great Sufi scholars, poets, and mystics stressed that ihsan involved the cultivation of inner discipline.

“….In times of conflict, pragmatism and Puritanism, however opposed to one another, combine to put an end to art….

“In the Koran, God is known under ninety-nine names, one of which is Beauty. That may be the best place for dialogue between cultures and religions to begin.”

Info about Image is availabe at www.imagejournal.org .

-Colin Burch

Human Genome Project leader defends his Christian faith and the theory of evolution

This past summer, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, speak at the C.S. Lewis Foundation's Summer Institute at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

Collins' lecture was controversial because he explained why he believes in the theory of evolution, as opposed to creationism and intelligent design, while also explaining how he came to faith through the work of C.S. Lewis.

A crew from the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly filmed the lecture and included excerpts of it in a feature on him. You can watch the entire eight-minute feature if you have Real Player or Windows Media Player at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week947/profile.html .

Also, the outstanding Richard Ostling, religion writer for the Associated Press, wrote a column about Collins back in July that is still relevant insofar as it can give some context to Collins' difficult relationship with his own community of believers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/21/AR2006072100927.html

Collins' book on the genetic code and his Christian faith, The Language of God, is very good; you can buy it at Amazon.com at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/0743286391/sr=1-1/qid=1169612411/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6205581-1610448?ie=UTF8&s=books

Questioning the Bible

Christianity is conceptually difficult because it presupposes that a person can think the right things and know the right things to do, but he will still either fail to act perfectly or fail to act consistently, due to a fallen nature. Nobody gets to perfection in this life, even if some believers claim to have outlined the perfect system of belief, worship, doctrine and practice.

Most of Christian practice and worship, to some extent, is based on revelation. Revelation is tricky, because it assumes that God has spoken to humankind and humans wrote down what He said, and that the recorded revelation is to be valued more highly than the human faculty of reasoning. The clincher, however, is that believers use their reasoning to interpret and apply revelation, which seems to give credence to the point of view that humankind’s reason was not totally warped and completely marred by the Fall. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is supposed to enhance the Christians’ faculties of reasoning regarding interpretation of Scripture, yet many of those who claim to have that indwelling just happen to disagree with one another on their interpretations of doctrinal and theological issues that intersect with the Bible.

However, none of that challenges the Bible’s value. I once heard someone say (I cannot remember who) that plenty of intellectually inclined people spend their time questioning everything, but don't allow anything to question them. The Bible, at very least, is one of those books that questions its readers. The questioning is not always in the form of a question; sometimes the questioning occurs in the context of assumptions made in the texts. Jacques Ellul, the French Protestant thinker, said in the book In Season, Out of Season: “[T]he Bible is not a recipe book or an answer book, but the opposite: it is a book of questions God asks us.”

The anguished question bears witness that you know

I’ve spent some time reading reputable authors who have made space for religious experience to be valid, and space for our hearts to be organs of understanding as much as our minds.

This is important because I use my mind, not my experiences or feelings, to understand these writers – and yet, the point of my understanding has been to make intellectual space for religion. I grew up mostly in ecstatic faith, where powerful feelings, speaking in tongues and all varieties of allegedly supernatural experience happened.

Why use the mind to make space for the non-rational? Most people have probably heard Blaise Pascal’s saying: “The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know. We feel it in a thousand ways.” Pascal, a French philosopher, said that in the 1600s, yet some people still see that perspective as valid. In the early 1900s, Hungarian chemist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote, “We know more than we can tell and we can know nothing without relying upon those things which we may not be able to tell.”

Polanyi’s present-day advocates point out that our ability to pedal a bicycle down the street is not dependent on our ability to academically describe the physics, mechanics and physiology of what’s happening. Some theologians have speculated that Polanyi’s defense of “personal knowledge” and “tacit knowing” could explain something of how the heart perceives God.

The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner, once chosen for to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures, put an existentialist spin on our ability to know something about God. Brunner said if you sincerely, desperately seek to know if God is there, “the anguished question bears witness that you know.”

So maybe there is something intellectually solid about considering the experiences others have, or one’s own experience, with God. Yet any confidence I have of this today comes from reading the intellectual cases for it all in books. I have books, and what they teach me, to focus on – not ecstatic experience. Books and sound thoughts protect me from wild, unreliable perceptions and intuitions.

I like Rudolf Otto’s explanation of the human sense of mysterium tremendum – of the ineffable, unapproachable, awe-inspiring, sometimes terrifying Other – as long as I’m just reading about it. Otto’s book The Idea of the Holy was one of ten favorite books of C.S. Lewis, who also wrote about mysterium tremendum. I might have a flicker of that sense once in a while, when I’m looking up at a million unexplainable, glimmering stars. Pascal wrote, “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things beyond it.” Well said, but I don’t want to go to a church where everyone is trying to conjure up mysterium tremendum with dancing, shouting, speaking in tongues, and feelings that God is leading them to speak. Books and rituals for me.

Mysterium Tremendum

Have you read The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto? I like Otto’s explication of the human sense of mysterium tremendum – of the ineffable, unapproachable, awe-inspiring, sometimes terrifying Other. Some would describe it as the sense that God is near.

The Idea of the Holy was one of C.S. Lewis' ten favorite books; he also wrote about mysterium tremendum.

Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, in recent books, are doing serious work to reduce religious phenomena to natural causes. They are brilliant men. Still, for me, the reductiveness still leaves something to be desired: our imagination, both intellectual and fantastical, moves not from the great things to the small things, but from the small things to the great things, as if we know there's something meaningful beyond us. Isn't imagination itself meaningful, just the fact that imagination is possible?

It was way back in the 1600s when the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, but still, something about his take on reason makes intuitive sense. Pascal argued, “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things beyond it.”

When we sense something of the infinite number of things beyond reason, we call it mystery.

Hearts & philosophies

The philosopher Charles S. Peirce wrote, "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his Nobel Lecture on Literature, wrote, "It is in vain to affirm that which the heart does not confirm."

So what do we make of our hearts?

Blaise Pascal so famously said the following, it's almost cliche to bring it up: "The heart has reasons that Reason cannot know."

The evangelical apologist Ravi Zacharias wants to reverse Pascal's flow: "What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind," Zacharias once said.

The problem here might just be the idea of a flow between heart and mind. What if the human being was intended to be an integrated whole, not an assembly of competing parts?