Make a Decision! How?

Every day I wake up and say, “today is the first day of a writing and posting on the blog on a regular basis.” Every day I say this, my wife tells me to be quiet and my children ask me, “what is a blog?” Well maybe today is the first day. Probably not.

I’ve recently read the article, “Restricting the Scope of the Ethics of Belief: Haack’s Alternative to Clifford and James,” by Rose Ann Christian from the AAR (Sept. 2009, vol. 77, no. 3, pp. 461-493). It has a very sexy and eye-catching title!

The article looks at Susan Haack’s work, “The Ethics of Belief Reconsidered,” which offers a critique of W.K. Clifford’s “morally demanding” ethical position and William James’ “epistemically over permissive” ethical position. (Wondering what epistemology is? Me to). I am not an ethicist, so this area is not something I have specifically studied, but I do understand the general concepts. We have two sides of ethics: Clifford’s which is data based and James which is experientially and intuitively based. With Clifford one makes a decision based on what would do the least amount of empirically discernable harm. Facts and research are highly valued in this area. With James, decisions are made based on the faith/moral stance of the individual. What one believes is important. Granted, this is a simplistic summary, but hopefully gets the point across.

Christian (the author) and Haack are claiming that an good ethical decision should take into account both sides. One should look for the basic empirical data and at the same time one should be aware of one’s religious beliefs which would inform one’s beliefs. Christian considered the debate of Intelligent Design and Jerry Falwell’s outrageous comments after 9/11 as examples.

Here is one small thing I have gathered from this article: a third way…. sorta. This is a trend I have encountered in the past. Lindbeck tries to carve a middle way (cultural-linguistic) between the cognitive and the experiential-expressivity. Murphy tries to offer a third way in theology, following to a degree, Lindbeck’s path and focusing on language.

One’s beliefs will always be tied to one’s reality. The empirical data is not objective, nor are one’s moral foundations. The two will always be intertwined and this is something we need to be honest about. The view that one must earn money to survive in the world is based on a belief that a capitalist economic system exists, that one is deciding to participate in that system and that such a system can offer a good. One could go into the wild and live in a different system.

Before judging someone’s actions and decisions, we need to consider how the individual views reality and what religious/moral system influences such a system. This is a little rough, but I think gets something of a point across.

Afterthought: it may boil down to this - what you know and what you believe are both very important. So remember what your mother told you:

"You should know better!"
"That isn't the way I raised you!"

I’ve been working on a couple of things. First and foremost is the dissertation which is moving along. I’ve finished the rough draft of chapter 4 as I mentioned. Only one more chapter to go! In-between dissertation work I have been boning up on the idea of the Incarnation, focusing on P.T. Forsyth’s Person and Place of Jesus Christ (see previous post) for the Rhode Island Theological Circle, I have been looking into the nature and implication of relationality in light of poverty as well as the complexity of political involvement for the Rhode Island Council of Churches Faith and Order Committee statement on poverty. In addition to that I have been thinking about the issue of human trafficking to help write a statement of concern for the American Baptist Churches of Rhode Island. For such a small state, there are a lot of statements out there.
For some time I have wrestled with my own call as a minister, specifically with activism. I have gone to the rallies, marches and other events. I have lobbied politicians, written letters and have canvassed neighborhoods. This isn’t my thing. I don’t get excited about yelling, arguing and getting angry. Yet I have been enjoying the theological statement writing. I enjoy taking time to consider the role of Scripture and the theological foundations for action. I suppose some would argue that I am wasting all of my time in the ivory tower, but as one person said, good theology leads to good practice. In my mind, such statements are places where theology begins to be practical and real. It is where we look at how our understanding of the trinity directly effects our response to poverty. Not everyone is called to write such statements nor is everyone called to political activism, yet both are important. For the first time I think I have found my place in progressing the Kingdom of God and it feels good.

Down with Church Autonomy!

I have been writing. Obviously I haven’t been writing for this blog, but I have been writing. I have been mostly working on my Dissertation, which is a good thing. I’m on chapter 4, the social-historical section. So I haven’t been reading much or doing much else – this is the life of a doctoral student, wah, wah, wah.

As I have said before, I have been working on Baptist ordination. I have found an important piece of information in my research: the presence of the denomination (broadly construed) is important. Us freedom loving, independent minded, creedal denying, Bible holding, and autonomous curmudgeonly Baptists would like to say again and again that it is the local church that ordains. We would like to say that all we need is the affirmation of the local congregation and that person is ordained. Yet since 1720 (circa), in the Baptist movement nationally (as best as one could be national in the 1720s) and locally (i.e. FBC Swansea) a council of local ministers was required to affirm the desires of the denomination for ordination. As time continued there was a clear tension in the literature between the authority of the local church and the credentialing power of the ordaining council. So, is it up to the local church? Ultimately, yes. The local church recommends someone and would be the ones who ultimately ordain someone. Yet the council is a gatekeeper. The council is a body that would affirm the individual as someone who would be fitting for other Baptist churches beyond the one ordaining the individual. This brings into question the role and nature of church autonomy. While an Association does not tell a church who to hire (in most cases) it does play a big part in ordination. Perhaps we can’t do it all on our own. Perhaps we don’t want to.


Unrelated Afterthought: While writing this I have been listening to the All Songs Considered Blog list of the most influential songs of the last decade. As an example of the impact American Idol had on the decade they posted a Taylor Hicks song (Do I make you Proud). It is a great example of how a good voice does not make a good artist. It is really an awful, sappy, nauseating, painful and depressing song. No, Hicks, you don't make me proud.

Take your time during the day

I have been bothered into writing a new post (darin), so here it is. In truth, I really should be posting more so the guilt was just what I needed. I'm in the middle of working on a couple of things - chapter 4 of the f**kin dissertation, O'Neil's Long Day's Journey into Night, Incarnation and preaching. This is all in addition to my church work and my endless quest to unpack and clean and organize the house. No wonder I haven't posted in a while.

Right now (Friday, 10-16, 11:45am) I am taking a short break from Chapter four. I have finally started to write chapter four which is good, but it takes a lot of mental energy of which I have little.

So for this short break I thought I would reflect on A Long Day's Journey into Night. Harold Bloom claims that this is the greatest American play written in the 20th century, and I'm not one to argue with Harold Bloom so he must be right. If he said it on NPR than it would be right beyond all certainty, but I'll take what I can get. It is a good play, kinda dark, but good for many reasons. One of the aspects of the play that I enjoy is the tempo of the speech. When the characters are speaking truth and honesty, no matter how difficult to acknowledge, they tend to speak in a slow, cautious way. For example when Jamie (the older son) is talking to his father about his younger brother Edmund's illness he says:

JamieSlowly.
He thinks it's consumption, doesn't he, Papa?

Tyrone
Reluctantly.
He Said it might be.

There is a caution to this speech as it points to the horror of reality that they all may face. Yet when truth is avoided there is a lightness and a quickness to the speech. For example when Mary (the mother) is speaking to Jamie and Tyrone, trying to break the tension between he and his father:

Mary
To Jamie, forcing a smile.
Did I actually hear you suggesting work on the front hedge, Jamie? Wonders will never cease! You must want pocket money badly.

Jamie
Kiddingly.
When don't I?
He winks at her, with a derisive glance at his father.
I expect a salary of at least one large iron man at the end of the week - to carouse on!

Now I said this was a short break, so I need to make my point (do I have a point?). There is something about being slow and careful and honest. So often we rush and cover and ignore the wounds that are very real. O'Neil is capturing this human trait in his play, we do it every day. Yet when we take time with our speech and our thought we tend to open up the wounds of our lives in an honest way. Granted, this is more painful, but it is real. The long journey into night (or at least one view of it) is a long journey of denial as the hurts and pains continue to thrive, grow and overshadow and hope. The fog of suffering rolls in as we try to avoid it. The night of our wounds blankets any false and fast speech we can offer.

Isn't that a nice and happy ending?

digging in the past

It has been a while – but I haven’t heard any complaints. For the last couple of weeks I have been focusing on chapter 4 of my dissertation – the social-historical chapter. For this chapter I have been looking at the history of the pastors of First Baptist, Swansea MA from 1720 to the present (give or take a few). It has been interesting. I have found one issue with Samuel Maxwell, pastor from 1734-1739. All of the history books, and the church records from that time claim that Maxwell was or became a Seventh Day Christian – i.e. he advocated worship on Saturday. Gasp. In the short work, “The Case and Complaint of Mr. Samuel Maxwell” written by the good Rev. Maxwell, he claims that the issue was over his acceptance of infant baptism. Hmmm….. Either one is going to be a problem for a Baptist church in the 18th century, but why the difference in stories? Is it worse to be a Seventh Day Christian than an infant baptizing Christian? Either way, the congregation decided that Maxwell’s change in beliefs was not acceptable and looked to have him removed. Guess I should stay quiet about my beliefs.

Chautauqua 3 - Of Hopes and Dreams

A little late, but with all the conversation over my last post, I don’t think I needed to say much. Yesterday (I took today off from lectures) I heard two lectures – Benjamin Friedman and William Niskanen. I’ll be focusing on Niskanen (former director of the CATO institute).

Niskanen offered a number of ideas about capitalism, relationship, the role of government, greed and self-interest. Of the three types of human interaction (caring, exchange, and threat), caring can only happen with close relations. In other words, only those who are close and known can be cared for by others. This is because according to John Stuart Mill (via Niskanen) the principle soul end of the human is self-interest, making the individual sovereign. So all caring is local.

Capitalism occurs on the exchange level of interaction and is bi-lateral, consensual exchange. That tidbit is just for fun.

Here is the issue with caring. It can only occur on the local level. Niskanen even criticized Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical Caritas in veritate, claiming that a global level of charity (caring) would put the wealth of others at risk and thus be irresponsible. It is to demanding on the human spirit, Niskanen claims. I think he was quoting someone else when he said, “reality cannot compete with dreams, at least not fairly.”

The market, on the global level, should be kept clean of any human emotion so that the bi-lateral, consensual exchange can occur.

Where is the room for hope?

Wordsworth’s great poem, “The Ruined Cottage” paints a picture of a lovely young woman wasting away because she is grasping onto a dream that never becomes a reality. Hope is tragic and dangerous.

Yet Christianity is based on hope. Christianity is based on the idea that we can make some kind of a difference. I would like to think that grace brings us beyond the self-interest that Mill describes to a “other-interest.” The church needs to continue to push and advocate a hope that does go against the reality of the world. We need our

Chautauqua 2 - Goods and Values

Now to business. Today we had the inaugural lecture on “The Ethics of Capitalism,” starring Michael Sandel. But first….

Worship. Wallis again took the pulpit (he is preaching all week) and focused on the story of Lazarus and the rich man. In his interpretation of the story, Wallis considered the lack of relationship between the rich man and Lazarus (the poor man) as a major sin in the story. He read a lengthy quote from Levinas which is always good. Overall, his point was good but kind of basic.

Sandel made a number of interesting points. Before anything, I suppose I should mention his teaching style. Sandel tends to lecture for a while and then engage people in the audience by offering an ethical situation and asking people to comment for or against. He had people with mikes walking around so everyone could hear. It was very well done.

Some basic points that Sandel made:
From the 1980s there was a basic feeling of Market Triumphalism leading to the idea that government was the problem to the issues of the world and the market was the solution. This held to the idea that the market was the primary instrument of the common good (whoops!)

Here is a scary thought: The biggest change in the past twenty or so years was the expansion of the market and the values of the market into areas that are normally governed by other values – i.e. schools, hospitals, prisons, security, etc…. The danger in this shift is that certain values and norms that are higher than market values are lost, i.e. helping a child to score higher in tests because it is the result of the child learning and comprehending information vs. helping a child to score higher in tests because it will result in a monetary bonus. Sandel suggested that perhaps the incentive of the market undermines the values of humanity (the intrinsic good). When goods are bought and sold then they become commodities.

Hold those thoughts…..

The other speaker I heard was E. J. Dionne who suggested that capitalism works only when the wealth is distributed in a fair and just way. Thus the government must regulate in order to keep the market honest and fair to all involved. He didn’t seem to offer much more than some flowery language.

So…… there are goods that are above the goods of economics, and capitalism can help to encourage those goods when regulated. And relationships are important. So what is the church to do? Perhaps start with encouraging relationships. Then the church (broadly construed) should articulate the “goods” that are a part of humanity, higher than the goods of the market and act as a watch-dog on the local level to protect those goods. From there, I’m still thinking…

Chautauqua 1 - Worship

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! It is Sunday which means lots and lots of worship. Hooray! The day started with worship at the Baptist house. I always enjoy worshipping with my Baptist peeps because they are earnest and honest and the hymns are pretty darn good. Once again the Baptist did not disappoint. The sermon was weak (a grade of C to C-) but the overall worship was good.

Almost immediately after the Baptist worship was the big everyone gets involved worship. Here Jim Wallis was the preacher, who did not do a bad job but was still missing a certain poetic depth to his sermon (B to B+). The service was a kind of watered down Episcopalian worship time with well written and wordy prayers and very high church hymns.

One of the things that Wallis mentioned was Gandhi’s Seven Social Sins (From Gandhi’s “Young India,” 1925). They are as follows:

Politics without principles
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

Some good things to think about.