Is Bad Organizing Biblical?
(Or: What Would Jesus Do With Democracy?
Or: Next Step for Christian Big Thinkers, Part 3.
Or: Review of Jesus for President, Part 4.)
May 16, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri , trackback
I’ve been watching this rising movement of Christian radicals for a few years with nothing but complete awe and admiration. But I’ve finally worked up the nerve to ask a few questions—to pose a challenge even.
I think the movement is making an idol out of smallness and slowness. Small and slow can be beautiful, but making an idol of them is wrong because big and fast can be just as beautiful and just as central to living as a follower of Jesus. By ruling out big, unified, global political organizing, the movement is tragically limiting the Christian imagination at a time of great opportunity. Jesus didn’t limit himself to the small or slow, and I can’t find anything in the Bible to make me think he’s calling us to limit ourselves now.
But maybe I’m missing something. So I’m going to ask you guys in the movement a bunch of questions here. I’ll treat Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw as the movement’s spokespeople on this small+slow+local dogma through their new book Jesus for President.
I’ll tell you where I’m going with this up front: I think what’s happened to the rising Christian radical movement is that we’ve applied deep-down, empire-bred instincts to our politics…and to the gospel. It’s the same kind of thing that happened so often to Roman citizens who converted to Christianity. It wasn’t long before they were ruling by the sword in Jesus’ name, because ruling by the sward was all they knew. Our empire doesn’t rule over (white, middle-class, Christian) people with violence. It rules over us with a different kind of idea. This idea shapes our every thought, but we are barely aware of it. It was the same for the Romans: if you asked them, “Does Rome rule by the sword?” they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.
Our empire enforces hopelessness by raising us to believe that humanity is unfit to work collectively, on a large scale, to redeem creation. It says the only way to change the world is through decentralized efforts by individuals and private groups. And then it does everything in its power to make sure those efforts never add up to anything that can threaten empire. That idea is vital for the survival of empire today because modern empire has been forced by centuries of resistance and subversion (mostly by Christians) to put down the sword in governing most citizens. We citizens of empire are now free to dismantle empire non-violently (I realize that’s a big case to make; I’ll try to make it below). That’s why so many young Christians who want to be martyrs have to go across the world to Iraq or Sudan. I don’t want to demean those efforts, but that is theater at the margins of the empire. Empire today has learned that, when it kills its “own” people as martyrs, they spring up one thousandfold. And so it won’t dare touch us. It will instead bog us down in absolutely unglamorous political machinations. Most of us mock that work as being futile, just as revolutionaries in Jesus’ day rejected his work on the cross as futile. But that is the cross that we have to bear in our time. We have to bear it like Jesus: not as a messy, self-serving compromise; but as a messy, beautiful, selfless triumph over death.
OK…so I’ve written about 50 pages in an attempt to get the rest of this post right over the last week…and then I realized that this is just a blog. So I’m just going to put it up in little, very imperfect pieces. Stay tuned.
Tags: Chris Haw, Shane Claiborne
Comments»
Hi Zack:
I think this post clarifies where you’re coming from quite a bit, and I agree with much of it. just a couple of comments and questions:
1) “It says the only way to change the world is through decentralized efforts by individuals and private groups. And then it does everything in its power to make sure those efforts never add up to anything that can threaten empire.” I complain relentlessly about the state of protest in the U.S. In many ways it apes the big “sexy” pieces of civil rights and anti-war movements from generations past, going through the motions of “March! Occupy a random office! Get arrested! Self-congratulate!” without going deeper into the movement mentality or strategic planning. For example, of Christian Peace Witness for Iraq actually negotiated with the Capitol Police ahead of time about their civil disobedience, allowing the Capitol Police to plan ahead to absorb the disruption. That is not an action intended to actually disrupt or (gasp!) stop the war. That is theater, and I think, like you say, wastes of energy like this happen because somewhere we’ve internalized the idea that we are not going to be able to change anything, so we satisfy ourselves with symbolic gestures.
“… That’s why so many young Christians who want to be martyrs have to go across the world to Iraq or Sudan.” Disagree totally. As an example, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g3MfVrZ4jA. This isn’t a specifically Christian protest, and it’s a fair example of what I wrote above, but watch it from beginning to end. Watch the crowd dynamics. I think you can actually see, if you’re paying attention, a Power of the type Walter Wink warns about in “Engaging the Powers” emerge and attack the protestors. Imagine if there hadn’t been a (n admittedly lame and lacksidasical) police presence. Imagine they had been protesting as Christians and challenging the faithfulness, and not just the war stance, of the people around them. You don’t have to go very far to end up getting hurt when you get in the empire’s face.
Looking forward to the rest.
Thanks for the response!
I don’t get what your point is about the code pink video though… That’s just people getting into a fight with each other….not challenging empire. In fact, as you say, “empire” steps in to protect those who believe they’re challenging it.
Zack, I’ve been reading the books you suggested since our last conversation, and I think I’m seeing where you’re heading. Several thoughtful people have criticized the president for asking for so little from the american people after Sept. 11- it was a chance to say look, we’ve got to reform our energy dependence, and our military presence abroad, and so many other things, and here’s our chance… But we missed it.
You’re giving the same warning to revolutionary Christians: don’t think too small. So how will this movement strike the small match to ignite the big fire?
I’m sorry Zack, but this blog is pretty incoherent. As far as I can see you don’t actually talk about anything that you say you will talk about in the title. What would Jesus do with democracy? Well, you don’t say. I can’t seem to find any review of Jesus for President in the post. And I’ll be damned if I can find the next big step for Christian big thinkers. And I also don’t know if bad organizing is biblical because nowhere in the blog did you describe some bad organizing, provide criteria for what good organizing looks like or reflect on the whole notion of ‘organizing’ biblically.
Now if it is true that our empire “says the only way to change the world is through decentralized efforts by individuals and private groups” then how would we name that empire? If it is anything akin to global capitalism, then it sure isn’t about “decentralized efforts by individuals and private groups, but a rather centralized exercise of political, military, economic and symbolic power. Indeed, I’d argue that centralized power is at the heart of all empire.
But what I find most unconvincing about your post is that you suggest that those who emphasize the small, slow and local are somehow aping the empire. Which empire would this be? As far as I can see empires, or at least the empire in which we live, is the death of the local for the sake of the global, the death of that which is slow for the speed of efficiency, and the death of all locality in the face of a homogenizing consumer hegemony.
By your terms someone like Wendell Berry is aping the empire. And that is something that would take an awful lot more argument and clarity than you have offered in this post.
So my friend, I wonder whether you are hanging on to your earlier liberal notions of democracy, movement and organizing without reflecting deeply enough on the nature of the shift that we are seeing in the Jesus revolution.
I don’t generally respond to blogs like this, but I’d like to see if I can push you a little on where you seem to be heading.
To answer about the Code Pink video:
Wink deals a lot with the language of “powers and principalities” in the New Testament. He asserts that the writers are pointing to a spiritual aspect of human institutions and groups - emergent properties, basically, that can’t be reduced to the sum of their parts. All that was tangental, though… the point I was making was that if you get in the face of the prevailing paradigm you can find yourself surrounded by a large group of people intent on hurting you. The empire was just as much in the people self-policing the prevailing opinions about war and such as it was in the police officers doing pretty much nothing while a few mild cases of assault happened in front of them.
But overall I do agree with almost all of your other insights in the above post. Most of the time the empire gets yields just a bit to avoid allowing the confrontation to come to a point, or bogs us down as you say.
Can I ask for a clarification? Just to see if I was misunderstanding you in some of your previous posts…are you confining political power to power obtained by elections, or do you use a broader definition?
Brian -
It’s an honor to have your response on the blog. I’m sorry that I only posted an intro… I was having a lot of trouble making my arguments… so I just posted a little bit, and will follow up later with more. It will be one long point made over several posts. Maybe that’s why it seemed so incoherent.
I’m not saying that folks are aping the empire…I’m saying that a certain aspect of their preaching is totally consistent with and determined by empire. I’m making an analogy to the kind of confusion that Roman Imperial converts like Augustine (do I have my history right?) suffered. No, you’re right: empire doesn’t rule by this ethic. But it rules by getting us to accept this ethic. We limit ourselves to small+local like modern empire teaches us, meanwhile modern empire organizes on a large+global scale.
My point is that empire rules today by enforcing a lack of confidence in big, long-term, collective politics. And that the “ordinary radicals” have absorbed and glorified that ethic.
PS: It has become a Christian love story…akin to the myth of redemptive violence…to enjoy the idea of the small triumphing over the big. But what if that is just a story. What if Christians are called to something big? What if it’s not Big vs. Small—but selfless vs. selfish and long term vs. short term and beautiful vs. broken? And therefore, what if Big is just as important as Small??
Zack,
I think Brian’s post made some good points, but mostly it was written in ignorance of what you’ve been doing on this blog for some time now. That’s excusable, but his impatience is unwarranted.
Your response to Brian is right on target, but could be stated with greater clarity: Empire marginalizes the local and has no patience for patience, but it loves when dissident movements take up the local as their M.O. Not only does it fail to threaten sufficiently the broader structures of empire, local community building programs actually have the effect of making the empire look more benevolent.
The issue on our side is not local versus global, little versus big, slow versus fast, but whether we are capable of navigating a coordinated, global, big and fast attack on prevailing imperial structures in order once again to put patience and the local at the center of our economy.
Zack:
You might be interested in this “NPR Speaking of Faith” interview with Shane Claiborne, Greg Boyd and Chuck Colson. They debate for an hour or so on exactly the issues you’re concerned about (I think so, anyway.)
[immature comment:]
Jesus for President is awesome!
Great article. Oddly open-minded for as leftist that is. Whatever liberals and progressives are seeing when they look into Christian life, is not going to be changed into their liberal and secular version of political and social change. The Gospel life contradicts the liberal life on too many issues. There are too many issues that are incompatible with “progressive” ideals and Christian truth. Sooner or later, the Liberal, will get frustrated with trying to change a Christian into a “progressive.” The anger that lies just beneath all things liberal/progressive will come out when they are rejected by Christians. That was tried two-thousand years ago by others that called themselves by something else, and it will always fail. Christians are led by God and nothing else. Not even TV preachers. The Apostles wrote the guidelines for Christian culture and community, and that has been the mainline ever since. You can’t blame others for your sins and sinning. That is completely incompatible with liberalism and progressivesism incesseant need to excuse away sin. The beauty of Christian community is that excuses don’t work and working on your own sins does. It’s great that people see something decent within the Christian community because, that is the foundation of the Church since its inception. But Christians are never going to be used to usher in the goals of progressive culture because the Gospel and Secularism exist on different planes of truth. If the desire for progressives, is that Christians should join them in spreading progressive ideology, then, they are in for a big disappointment. Christians are in the world and not of it. And that is by personal free choice. Thanks for the compliments, but the Gospel is not going to be altered for politics and secular socialism when all is said and done. If you can live with that, so can we Christians.
Ha! Brian Walsh just posted on this blog, and I finished his book a few months ago. It’s called Colossians Remixed and I recommend if anyone wishes to go a little deeper with this stuff to read it. Also read Walter Wink’s “The Powers that Be” Brian Mclaren’s “Everything Must Change” Jesus and Empire… and yeah. That should get your brains working.
What I keep running into though, is most of the Christians I know are not even aware there was even a call to “pull out” of the present system or that our minds and imaginations may be held captive by another dream that is the complete opposite of God’s. So that puts me in a tricky position. I mean lets face it people… we are in the minority when it comes to believing and living out the liberating message of the Kingdom of God… (which might I add is at hand and alive in the world!!!) I have been looking for people to move in with and live this teaching out in community with for over a year and a half… and I can’t find people.
Seriously.
We need a way to be in touch. A way to connect with people who are wrestling with these questions so we can connect and live it out. There could be someone a mile away asking the same questions I am and I would never know it. This message has to work it’s way through our hands and feet and eyes. So lets pray that it comes today. Lets pray that the Kingdom comes tomorrow. And the next day… and the day after that. I think it is great to talk about this stuff but the problem I have is that is what most of what blogs and discussions and group meetings turn out to be.
talk.
Now I know growing and learning and discussing is wonderful and it should be done… but I guess the most profound questions are in regards to living. I don’t say that in a condescending manner… I am not bashing the blog at all… I say that with hopes of someone reading this and us working on ways to hook up with each other and living this liberating truth.
Any thoughts?
Randomly ran across this blog via an atheist’s link someone clicked on in my own blog. Interesting premise. I’m really 1) apathetic 2) cynical when it comes to politics, and don’t really believe that political policies will change people’s hearts or minds. I further don’t understand “progressives,” but that’s another issue.
Matt,
Just curious…since I resonate a lot with your comment…what part of the country do you live in? Would love to talk more about the practical aspects…over coffee?
Jason Winton
www.waysofresistance.com