We treat a claim as addressed to us, in our capacity as members of a social practice governed by shared norms.

• Scientists [plural] are required to test their claims through experiments and are expected to give up a hypothesis in the face of conflicting evidence;
• judges decide cases based on case law and precedent;
• poker players take the pot depending on who has the best hand

In all cases, the decisions of communities of inquiry constitute the last word. “Empiricism’s appeal to experience is as inefficacious as appeals to the Word of God unless backed up with a predisposition on the part of a community to take such appeals seriously.” (Rorty, 2007:11)

- Bacon, Pragmatism: An Introduction loc. 2132

Abstract Equality

A while back we talked about the Sexualization of Men in media and popular discourse. David Arinder, in the comments, expressed concern over the uptick of the objectification of men in media and wanted to not loose sight of this while we talked about the much more common objectification of women in our media.

A Sense of the Grand Picture

While I wanted to grant David’s concerns, prima facie, the genealogy of the power relations between the sexes gave me pause. Given that I only have a sensitivity towards these issues and not expertise in their analysis, I didn’t have much to say other than a call for awareness towards the drastic imbalance of objectification of the sexes in media and popular discourse.

Concrete Analysis

Today, I came across a fantastic analysis of two objectifying scenes from Star Trek: Into Darkness by Rachael Kelly that shows how the male body is not subjected to the Gaze in the same manner as the female body.

Homoerotics, Heteroperformance, and the Gaze in Star Trek Into Darkness: Why the Abrams Defense Doesn’t Work

Here are some choice quotes to sketch out her argument. Be sure to head over to Rachael’s site and read the article closely, especially if you disagree with what I say she is arguing.

Traditionally, the woman has functioned at two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.” This is precisely the function of Marcus’ bodily display in this sequence: she is erotic object for both the audience and for Kirk.

…

Male bodily display, however, is more complex. That the Gaze is gendered male (or at least masculine) is a cornerstone of film and gender theory, and it is borne out by a consideration of those generic forms that display the male body to the Gaze.

If the Gaze is male/masculine and hegemonic masculinity is, per Donaldson (1993: 646) exclusively heterosexual, then the fetishisation of the body connoted by the gaze can be seen to engender a homoerotic anxiety that must be denied. “In a heterosexual and patriarchal society,” explains Steve Neale, “the male body cannot be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look: that look must be motivated in some other way, its erotic component repressed” (1983: 13).

…

Kirk’s “balancing” shirtless scene, therefore – setting aside, for the moment, the fact that he is accompanied on screen by two women in a similar state of undress – is not only informed by a dialogical construct that does not appeal to the same power/non-power discourse, it is also informed by a mechanism that actively seeks to disavow the feminising (disempowering) gaze, through “re-masculinising” him via a consensual sexual encounter.

Two consensual sexual encounters, in fact. At the same time.

It is, therefore, vastly unequal, in terms of power dynamics, to Marcus’ scene, in which she stands, half-naked and displayed for the camera’s objectifying eye, and in which her instruction not to look is violated not only by Kirk, but by the audience as well.

Rachael goes on to describe how Harrison’s cut shower scene would not have had a mechanism to protect against the threat of the Gaze and was therefore cut.

Final thoughts

What I love about Rachael’s analysis, beyond her immediate argument, is how she makes explicit how patriarchal media protects against the threat of the Gaze when it is turned towards the male bodily form.

It goes hand in hand with the best unmasking of the hetro-male’s revulsion at the mention of homosexuality I’ve ever come across (and I came across it recently):

Homophobia explained. From Big Ole’s Google+ post

This totally explains the reaction of seemingly irrational concern and disgust that I’ve seen displayed in heterosexual males at the mention of acceptance of homosexuality. It does not seem to be an explicit logic, but an implicit one.

Two Views of Community:

We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning. All of our activity goes on in relationships, groups, associations, and communities ordered by institutional structures and interpreted by cultural patterns of meaning

We are part of a larger whole that we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a high price.

If we are not to have a self that hangs in the void, slowly twisting in the wind, these are issues we cannot ignore.

- Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. P. 84

We often stress the the need for community in our religion. I want to spend a little time discussing what this community might look like.

A Brief Excursus on Individualism

One can speak of contemporary Western society as heir to two traditions, the liberal individualist and the communitarian, each of which brings along with it a distinctive set of values. More than anywhere else in the Western world, the American Psyche has been forged in the fires of liberal individualism but tempered with a keen awareness of the importance of community.

We see American Individualism run amok in the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. When it is scaled back from egoism, the individualist tradition elevates the human person above everything and sees the contract as the basis of all social interactions. This tradition promotes such values as personal freedom, self-improvement, privacy, achievement, independence, detachment, and self-interest. Living these values may put people into contact with one another, the central focus is not upon these others, or upon the group as a whole, but upon the rights and needs of the individual separate from their relationship with those others.

There is much more we can say about individualism and more specifically, American Individualism, but our purposes lie elsewhere.

Community

In good communities the members ask not, "What is the minimum my contract requires?" but “What will make this group good?”

The notion of community strongly contrasts with the notion of individualism because its emphasis is upon the social nature of humanity. The self, communitarians say, is formed by its relationships, roles, attachments within traditions and institutions. Accordingly, communitarians elevate the group instead of the human individual as the center of society. Its core values are intimacy, benevolence, fellowship, belonging, dependence, social involvement, and the public good.[1]

So, how do we see, how do we describe this community? It is most helpful to talk about two types of community, Gemeinshaft and Gesellschaft as they are constructed by Ferdinand Toennies in Community and Society. At first the use of two very similar German words might throw you off, but just think of them as containers for ways of speaking about community.

Gemeinschaft refers to social groups that involve:

relationships encompassing human beings as full personalities rather than single aspects of human beings. These are relationships characterized by high degrees of cohesion, communality, and duration in time. What is essential is the quality of strong cohesiveness of persons to one another and the quality of rooted, persisting collective identity.[2]

Gesellschaft refers to social groups that

engages the individual in only one of the aspects or parts of his or her total being, or at most, only a few aspects. From the individual’s point of view his relationship with other in Gesellschaft is more tenuous, loose, and less deeply rooted in his allegiances or commitments. Gesellschaft is commonly founded around a few specific interests or purposes, whether religious, economic, recreational, or political.[3]

You can think of Gemeinshaft as a tight-knit family whereas Gesellschaft is more akin to working in a factory.

The Community vs. the Individual

One of the classic arguments running through American political and ethical thought is the supposed war of the interests of the individual against those of the community. Working from a post-Enlightenment liberalism, we (as a historical people) have worked hard to protect the interests of the individual (or sub-communities) from the demands of the community. We see this thread running all throughout our laws. We see the dangers of not guarding against this in the pain the Jim-Crow laws inflicted upon the Ante-Bellum Black community. The situation (at least legally) was finally remedied through the Civil Rights movement.

When addressing the tension between individualism and communitarianism, it is helpful to note that in Gesellschaft communities, the individual exists and is important only insofar as the individual is useful to the group. However, in Gemeinschaft communities, on the other hand, a group focus does not necessarily mean that the individual is subsumed underneath the group and that a uniformity of through and practice is necessary. Robert Bellah describes the argumentative nature of good Gemeinschaft communities:

A good community is one in which there is argument, even conflict, about the meaning of shared values and goals, and certainly about how they will be actualized in everyday life.[4]

We may draw a parallel with ancient Rome. Being Roman is not necessarily the wholesale adoption of Roman Reinkultur, or pure culture, which may or may not have actually existed, as much as it was entering into a debate about what Roman Reinkultur consisted.

This is why “Roman identity remained so attractive to those within the empire, yet failed to enchant those beyond it.”[5] Additionally, Romanization did not consist of an adoption of one ideal type, as if there was only one idea and way of being Roman. Rather, there were so many kinds of Romans to become that becoming Roman meant “acquiring a position in the complex of structured differences in which Roman power resided” instead of “becoming more [like] the other inhabitants of the empire.”[6] It is likewise with good community.

Likewise, when we join good communities, our selves don’t melt-away, Borg-style; instead, we become something like the X-men, where we bring our whole selves to the game and we only succeed through contested teamwork.

Conclusion: Intentional Community is needed and Messy, but that’s OK

In sum, while some communities are tyrants lording over their members and must therefore be protected against, not all communities are thus constructed.

In good communities the members ask not, “What is the minimum my contract requires?” but “What will make this group a good group?” The Masses ask not “How can we gain more power?” but “What is good for all of us?”

What are some good communities you’ve been a part of?  What aspects have made them such?

[1] Fergusson, Community, Liberalism, and Christian Ethics,p. 139.

[2] Nisbet and Perrin, Social Bond, 98-99

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bellah, Habits of the Heart. P. 333.

[5] Woolf, Becoming Roman, 98-105.

[6] Ibid., 245 and 242.

I don’t have the time right now to update the guide, but I highly recommend using a french press with coarse grind to mix and filter the grounds-water solution. That way you don’t strip out all of the oils that make the coffee so good. (Never use a paper filter).

When I think of enthusiasm and food, I always go to Randy “the Machoman” Savage and his heartfelt enthusiasm for Slim Jims. I share Randy’s enthusiasm for food products, but I direct mine towards coffee, not salted animal purée, as you can see ( –>)

Yesterday I rediscovered instructions for making Iced Cold Press Coffee and decided to make some.  I love the stuff that Dunn Bros makes, but I don’t wanna pay $3.30 for a glass or $10 for a gallon.

The instructions that I found were kinda sparse (but more than adequate).  So, here is what I did with as many pictures as possible.

Step 1: Measure out the Coffee and Water

The recipe I read called for 1 cup of beans for 4.5 cups of water.  That will kill a horse.  I went with (and loved) 1 cup of beans for 6 cups of water.

Step 2: Mix’em

Grind up ‘dem beans (Note: coarse grind) and drop ‘em in the pitcher

Combine it with the water and you will get a whole heaping of horrid:

(Above: what I got when I googled “Twilight + Misogyny”)

Step 3: Chill for 12 hours

This is often the hardest part.  Most of the food I make is made on the fly and made because I get a hanker’n for it.  The idea of waiting 12 hours to get 6 cups of wonderfulness?  Now that is difficult.  But so is saying cool drinking coffee in the summer.

Step 4: Packaging

Ok, so maybe this is the hardest part.  You can, like I initially did, just strain it a cup at a time. (->)  But, I wanted to go a step further and package it up all nice like.

The folks at Dunn Bros have their Cold Press Ice Coffee all bottled up and fancy looking.  So, I got to looking around and came across some old Heartland Milk jugs. 

I grabbed a tall glass and a strainer and strained the coffee cup by cup.  This took a while, but my little boy is sick, so I just alternated holding him and straining the coffee.

The outcome was pretty snazzy:

Step 5: Enjoy

Once all of the above was done, I took Reed outside and enjoyed the fruits of my labor while reading a good book:

But, after 5 minutes, I noticed it was well above 90 degrees and it was still “the morning,” so Reed and I went inside where sitting was not sweating.

OH my gosh I know @johnpiper did NOT just tweet Job 1:19. I cannot believe that. What the hell. Are we sure this isn’t @fakepiper? #sigh

— Emily Joy (@softlysoaring) May 21, 2013

The abusive theology of “deserved” tragedy… – John Piper has a problem, he can’t seem to stop tweeting horrible things whenever a natural disaster strikes. Rachel looks at why this might be the case. Excellent read.

Is God Out to Get You or Forgive You? Retributive Violence and the Gospel/ – Peter Enns, one of my favorite OT scholars, begins to problematize the nature of God in the Old Testament as it is contrasted with the nature of Jesus. Suggested hashtag? #MarcionWasRight. Just kidding. However, he ends his post with some excellent

How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled – This piece is a fascinating look at the macro-economics of Europe and America’s response to the global economic crisises of the last decade and how two severely flawed economic papers justified incredibly damaging austerity policies. As the cultural theorists say, all knowledge is political.

The Gospel of Tolerance and the Gospel of Tolerance Part II – Lana writes about her journey with the fundamentalist reaction against tolerance and challenges us to think hard and clearly about how we engage with the truth-claims of the Religious Other (which is really the Religious We).

Cartoon created by David Hayward :: theology as a ball and chain.

For more reflection on the topic, see James McGrath’s post, Kept Apart by Theology, where he broadens theology to ideology.

The Triumph of Suburbia Suburbia gets a bum rap, but ultimately people choose to live there more often than not. This article looks at the naysayers and the data.

Elizabeth Smart and the Psychology of the Christian Purity Culture Turns out (as nearly anyone who has grown up in it can tell you) Christian Purity Culture is actually pretty damaging and degrading to women (and to men). This article explores the ins and outs of it. If you want more on this topic, check out Elizabeth Esther’s discussions on the topic of Christian Purity Culture.

Neil Gaiman gives Doctor Who’s Cybermen what they need: a new legend The Cybermen haven’t been all that terrifying lately (esp. vs how terrifying they were in the 60′s version of the show). Gaiman fixes all of that in Nightmare in Silver while doing great work with the other characters.

We’re Really Puzzled Newt Gingrich honestly does not know what to call a smartphone, asks the internet for suggestions. Youtube commenters troll hard for great justice while purveyors of Gingrich Productions honestly and earnestly try really hard to figure out a new name.

Iron Man 3 or: Tony Stark Grows Up My man JR Forasteros gives a great analysis of Tony Stark’s hero’s journey and looks at how he’s now gone through an ever-widening hero’s journey that concludes with Iron Man 3.

1. Iron Man how to be a individual hero in his personal sphere of influence
2. Avengers how to be a hero among heroes [that introduces a wider, wilder sphere]
3. Iron Man 3 how to be a limited but healthy hero who in a “world with aliens and gods”

JR shows how Iron Man’s Phase 1 and first movie of Phase 2 have been one long origin story for Tony Stark (not Iron Man). Check it out.

Keith Ward, in chapter 6 of Is Religion Dangerous?, deals with the issue of morality and the Bible.  He addresses the charge that religious morality is based on an unthinking acceptance of old religious laws.  As his example, he brings up one of the most notorious of religious injunctions – Deuteronomy 20:15-18.

“But these instructions apply only to distant towns, not to the towns of the nations in the land you will enter. 16 In those towns that the Lord your God is giving you as a special possession, destroy every living thing. You must completely destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, just as the Lord your God has commanded you.  This will prevent the people of the land from teaching you to imitate their detestable customs in the worship of their gods, which would cause you to sin deeply against the Lord your God.

Geno-what did you say?  Isn’t that the very piece of evidence that we use to indict the Nazi’s, their attempted genocide of the Jews?  If we are to be morally consistent, shouldn’t we reject this piece of the Old Testament and anything/anyone that relies on this passage/the book/the collection of books that uses it.  Any religion that accepts this as part of their canon (read: Jews and Christians) are guilty of blindly basing their morality on old and outdated religious laws. 

Concerning this, Greg Boyd says that

What intensifies this problem even more is that it’s not like Psalms 137 is an isolated case of celebrated violence in the Old Testament.

It’s found all over the place!

The worst episodes happened when the Israelites enter the promised land. As they approached certain cities, the Israelites were commanded — by God — to slaughter men, women, children and even the animals! Yahweh is aiming at complete genocide of the Canaanite people. Could anything be more antithetical to what we learn about God in Jesus Christ?

Honestly (we’ve got to be honest here, even if it hurts) doesn’t this depiction of God look more like the God of Osama Bin Laden than the Father of Jesus Christ?

In my opinion, this is the most challenging objection to the Christian faith and most difficult theological question of the Christian faith.

There are three ways that Ward says Christian and Jewish adherents have approached this problem. I’ll add another that I’ve heard. Please add your own in the comments or talk about which of the ways you favor (and why).

Approach One : The Morally Primitive Imagining History

This approach looks at the historical record first.  They notice that the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites keep popping back up in the narrative and the archeological record.  As such, the ban was not actually implemented.  Secondarily, they note that the text itself was “written”¹ around 700BCE, but are describing events that are much, much older.  Taking these two points in tandem, they hypothesize that scribes and priests wrote into the narrative God commanding the slaughter of “present day” rival groups to de-legitimize any territorial claims they might have.  This moral tradition (that it is ok to slaughter your opponents wholesale for the protection of your group) is morally primitive and is later corrected by the Prophets.²

Pros:

• The Genocide did not happen historically
• God is not a mass murderer

Cons:

• The Text is a pack of lies
• The authors of our text are a bunch of evil liars

Approach Two: A Unique Situation

This next approach bites the bullet(s).  They say – our text says that God gave the command.  However, this is a unique situation and not universally applicable.  God only intended it for the Israelites in this particular situation, which was necessary for the perpetuation of the Israelites.  We see that it is unique because of all of the other moral injunctions in the Hebrew Bible contradict “the Ban.”  This allows us to maintain the integrity of the text while cutting off this law from the others that we can abstract moral principles from.  It was said and it happened³ but it was only for one situation and one time.

Pros:

• Maintains the integrity of the text and its authors
• The Ban was a one-time affair and not repeatable nor abstractable.

Cons:

• God is evil and bipolar
• We have mass murderers in our religious tradition.

Option Two point Five: A developing God

Ward does not mention this, but it is possible that God is developing along with his creation.  In order for him to know how and what to be and act, he must have something to act and be contrasted against.  After all, how can I know what red is if I have never seen it?  Likewise, how can God know what wrong is unless he has done it?  This is a Hegelian view of God.  Under this view, God had not fully developed his morals yet.  The narrative reflects God’s moral at that point in time.  Later on his morals developed and he understood that all life had value and that it was wrong of him to order the genocides.

Pros:

• God was not evil – only immature and is now mature through his interaction with his creation
• Maintains the integrity of the text

Cons:

• God is a developing being and is not always right and moral

Approach Three: Morally Primitive People Acting on a Self-Correcting Partial Understanding of God

This third approach tries to address the weaknesses of the other two.  It suggests that we have a roughly accurate reporting of what these people think was happening.  That is to say, the ancient Israelites thought that God wanted them to purge all peoples who threatened their identity.  After all, surviving and maintaining your identity was an incredibly difficult thing to do in the ancient world – something we cannot fully grasp in this blessed age of comfort and inconvenience.  They had part of God figured out – that she wants total devotion, but they also had part of him wrong – that he has deemed all human lives of worth and the wholesale slaughter of peoples is wrong.  In time, they would discover more and more about God and come to understand this, but at this time in their development, they had not reached this understanding.   There is some perception of the divine will, but a limited one.  Under this interpretive model, the Bible contains humanity’s developing understanding of God.

Pros:

• God is not evil
• Maintains the integrity of the text and the developing moral understanding of its authors
• The Ban was based on a partial but flawed understanding of God

Cons:

• The Bible is something to be wrestled with, not a direct perfect view of God and its interaction with history (can’t take it at face value)

My Take

Out of these three⁴ views that Ward presents, I lean the most towards Option Three.  It is still complicated, given my history and position with several theological-cultural streams.

My history within traditions that maintain a biblicist reading of scripture creates problems for me here.  Based upon that history of such reading strategies and the desire to maintain abstract attributes of Scripture, Option Two seems the most viable.

However, I also maintain that God is morally consistent and always has been.  This forces me to at least consider option three.  If I am forced to choose, this is the option I am going with right now, even though I am uncomfortable with how this view forces me to hold the Bible. [Author's note: I've become much more comfortable with this over the last four years. 5/12]

As Ward notes on page 138, “Believers have no magical route to moral certainty, nothing that undercuts the hard process of moral analysis and reflection.”  But it is the same for nonbelievers.  They have to give an account of how life can have meaning in the face of nothingness – or at least fleetingness.  If my flame flickers and then is snuffed out – does it really matter what it burned while it was here?  I am not saying atheists cannot give such an account⁵ – only noting that it too is a path forged through analysis and reflection and is not self-evident.

What about you? How do you deal with such issues in our shared sacred text?

1. that is, the “final” version was edited together around this time – not that these traditions were invented at this time. the traditions behind the text are much, much older
2. see Ezekiel 18:20
3. or at least was attempted
4. four, if you add 2.5, the one that I added
5. even though I freely admit that I ultimately reject their account

What’s in a Remix?

One of the lost arts in the West is the remix. To explain the cultural significance of the remix, listen to Once Upon a Past by Wax Tailor:

Note, the important discussion about "remix" are at the start and end of the song.

Taking the idea that the remix is a localization of cultural creation and negotiation, we turn to the competing Muslim and Christian ideas of Jesus.

Isa and Yeshua

Christianity sees Jesus of Nazareth as God in human flesh, one of the members of the Trinity¹ He is the savior of humanity and the Cosmos itself and the Bible says that all things are being reconciled to him.

Islam, on the other hand, sees the Christian scriptures as things corrupted by the meddling of humans. From the Muslim point of view, Christians have taken an authentic prophet of God, Jesus, and made him into something he was not and corrupted his teachings.

Islam sees Jesus as a mere man, a forerunner of Muḥammad, prophet of God. It is blasphemy to say that Jesus was somehow God as Islam holds a strict monotheism (instead of the “soft” monotheism of Christianity).

Kanye West – Jesus Walks

And back to Kanye West. While not a poster boy for Orthodox Christianity by any stretch of the imagination, in 2004 released Jesus Walks. The song itself is a remix and sampling of several other overtly Christian songs.

This is the radio edit – you can search around if you want the album version.

The song’s been used in a myriad of ways by nonChristian and Christian alike and according to internet lore it is the most requested song’s of Kanye’s at his concerts. One of the more interesting takes on the song is by the young Muslim rapper Lupe Fiasco.

Lupe Fiasco – Jesus Walks

Lupe Fiasco (wiki bio) is a sometimes controversial Muslim rapper who often raps on themes of peace and social justice. In 2006 Lupe Fiasco released Fahrenheit 1/15 which contained an earlier mix-tape remix of Kanye West’s Jesus Walks.

Lupe’s “Jesus Walks” is a powerful way of positioning himself as a young, Muslim rapper in the middle of “worldly” rap scene in the middle of an unofficial Christian nation. He is able to build upon and modify the work of others in such a way to negotiate his particular cultural space.

In what ways do you create or participate in remixes?

What examples of remixing have you found particularly powerful or interesting?

1. Father, Logos, and Paraclete