Brian Walsh and Polemics

Brian Walsh has a lot of good things to say. That said, Brian Walsh enjoys playing the role of the gad-fly which bites, draws blood and considers that a great victory. Like a gad-fly, I find him annoying. His contemporary lectures and talks have a useful role to play, but they serve, at best, as food to other, higher, creatures and at worst to spread pestilence. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I have very little use for people who -- even in rhetoric -- equate hell with Scripture. I consider the words themselves sacred after all.

Subversion of the empire is not what Paul writes about; it is what Brian Walsh loves to talk about with considerable bravado and as one who has the luxury of never having to deal with the hard choices that those of us in the real world have to make. It is certainly not good pastoral leadership to say to someone about to enter the public service, or who is considering running for public office to say "to hell with Romans 13". Should Namaan say "to hell with the Empire?" Or should he, as Elisha counsels him, "go in peace" even though he knows he will have to kneel before idols? Paul is writing about living as embodiments of kingdom of God, which is a very different thing than subverting the empire. There might be overlap between the two, but Paul does not write with the goal of subverting the empire. That's an anachronism and someone of his considerable intellect should recognize that. And to those who would say "it's just rhetoric" I would reply: it's not even good rhetoric. It's sloganeering mixed with a sneer.

Now, what I'm really interested in not so much to debate the usefulness of empire in discussions about the proper Christian response (Though I think we could have a good discussions about that here on this blog) but whether or not it's appropriate to respond with such fervor to such pieces of writing. Is it better to go the route of Yoda, or is there a place for polemics?

Australian Bushfires, Cormac McCarthy, and Job

I've spent the last few days working on a seminar paper that is a reading of Cormac McCarthy's The Road in light of the Book of Job. The task involved reading a very dark and depressing novel as well as a troubling biblical text. I finished it today at the school and thought, Well at the least the world is not as dark as McCarthy or Job seem to think; reading their struggles in the cold and dark make the world look brighter.

Then I came home to find that a my wife had been on the phone with a friend who had lost a baby and with another friend living in Australia where bushfires have killed over a 100 people, destroyed over 1ooo homes, and completely wiped out several towns and villages.

Margaret Avison, in her poem "Confrontation and Resolution, in Job," writes:

Hard-won are the words
we need to truly
converse with someone close
and yet mysterious to us.
(Avison 126)

I thought these words while I sat with my wife, unable to say them as comfort. I thought of all the words I put together carefully in my seminar. I thought afterwards of the ariel shots of the bushfires I looked up online. I read a section from McCarthy's novel again:

The days sloughed past uncounted and uncalendared. Along the interstate in the distance long lines of charred and rusting cars. The raw rims of the wheels sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber, in blackened rings of wire. The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts. They went on. Treading the dead world under like rats on a wheel. The night dead still and deader black. So cold. They talked hardly at all. He coughed all the time and the boy watched him spitting blood. Slumping along. Filthy, ragged, hopeless. He’d stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and then stop and look back and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle." (McCarthy 273)

And, here, now, I don't want to be too dark or gloomy but I think I have to go back and rework my seminar. Because Job and McCarthy aren't just there to show us, by stark constrast, how different our world is from theirs, but how their world is our world - and that there is an incarnate presence of grace herein. McCarthy's protagonist, in the midst of a burned highway (that very well could be a description of highways in Australia), looks up at his son and sees something holy in his child. Job cried out from an ash heap, screaming "I know my Redeemer lives!" Even though his world had been destroyed.

And, curiously, I just received Comment magazine in the mail: the Signs of Hope issue. And I read the bit by Cal Seerveld: "My own hope is a plodding, quiet, steady awareness of God's providing enduring grace through thick and thin en route during my life" (25). And I'm not quite sure what to make of all this coming in a whirlwind all in a day but it has.

I think I will feel Job's gravity more tomorrow when I deliver the seminar... and, I hope, God's grace. Right now my prayers are with a grieving family close by and with those in Australia who are beyond grief.

Top Mags: The IR Edition

In response to Viator, I want to add what I think are the top magazines/journals that thinking Christians should be reading about global politics. These are not academic journals, and you don't have to be in the discipline to discern "what the hell these people are talking about." They are top opinion repositories, and while there are plenty that could merit attention I will mention my favourite three that I read cover to cover:

Unquestionably Foreign Affairs is the leading journal of ideas and opinion in IR. It's articles are written by people from across the spectrum, in both academic and political positions of influence. While the non-specialist might have difficulty reading each issue cover to cover, the broad range and contemporary relevance of topics will undoubtedly satisfy almost any reader. It's balance and weight make it the logical first stop.

Foreign Policy, while a far more popular and glossy magazine, is like the Time or Macleans magazine of the foreign policy world. It has no pretensions of being academic, no desire to pump its issues with 'big names' and IR pop stars, but succeeds at being accessible, relatively balanced, mainstream and providing stories with a very broad range of interest. It's trademark indexes are always a good time, and it's designed to make global politics interesting to the non-specialist. For this reason it's a bit of a guilty pleasure to folks in IR academia, but that's only if those folks are too impressed with their substantial intellectual girth to realize that its mediums like this that actually capture popular imagination. For that reason, I include Foreign Policy in my list.

The Review for Faith and International Affairs, put out by the Institute for Global Engagement, is one of the best resources I have ever come across for thinking about religion and global politics. Written in public language, and intended to appeal to a broad audience, the initial impression is that the journal is more academic. However, browsing through the reader will find that the writing is accessible, and while some pieces may be more narrowly specialist, most of the content is for broad interest. Not only does this Review position the topic of religion and international politics on the radar, but it regularly addresses core questions of religion, pluralism and politics generally. The last issue dedicated to Islam and pluralism is an absolute must read for Christian thinkers. The Review succeeds where many fail: it creates a genuine dialogue with different religious perspectives on international politics, in a public space, while pursuing an integrated and fundamentally Christian view of justice: no small achievement.

A Little Taste of Monasticism

I have begun a practice, along with several others, of doing this sort of thing during Advent and Lent. I thought some of us would be interested to see it covered in the BBC. Last we were down there was talk of attending Vocation Weeks, in which young men consider their potential calling to the community. Perhaps they'll make monks of us all yet.

Recommendations, anyone?

A few posts back, Adunare recommended reading the Chronicle for Higher Education. Duly noted. What do others think it is important to be reading? Which journals, periodicals, magazines, blogs, etc., are must-reads for Christians who want to think deeply about God, faith, and public life?

Sphere Sovereignty?

In response to the Donatists, with whom he had a variety of theological disagreements, Augustine developed his 'just war' theory and his understanding of the role of civil government. I found the following quote in one of Augustine's letters to Boniface (Letter 185):

But as to the enactment of those men who are unwilling that their impious deeds should be checked by the enactment of righteous laws, when they say that the apostles never sought such measures from the kings of the earth, they do not consider the different character of that age, and that everything comes in its own season. For what emperor had as yet believed in Christ, so as to serve Him in the cause of piety by enacting laws against impiety...?

How then are kings to serve the Lord with fear, except by preventing and chastising with religious severity all those acts which are done in opposition to the commandments of the Lord? For man serves God in one way in that he is man, in another way that he is also king. In that he is man, he serves Him by living faithfully; but in that he is also king, he serves Him by enforcing with suitable rigor such laws as ordain what is righteous, and punish what is the reverse.

The Academic Underclass

At least a few of us may find of interest this piece, coming out of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, pushed in the Calgary Herald and National Post: Universities with higher part-time profs lead to lower graduation rates.

Picking up off the York strike, the article argues that the battle lines - while drawn around typical issues of salaries and benefits - were also drawn along the new classes of the academic world: namely the so called permatemp profs.

The idea is basically that in an effort to save money, university admin watch tenured (re: expensive) baby boom faculty retire, and replace their course load with cheaper, temporary profs. From the article, "sometimes likened to WalMart workers, these PhDs, part-time lecturers, and teaching assistants often perform tasks that tenured professors do not - or will not. But in recent years, the tension around this underclass is coming to a boil."

And therein lies the spiral. Many Canadian Uni's require substantive publications, postdocs or research grants - all of which are difficult if not impossible to attain without institutional support; a support that is less and less forthcoming.

I'm not quite sure how to move on an issue like this. The article argues that these academic conditions are leading to lower graduation rates, and poorer education - which seems it could well be. What are next steps to restoring the academic and pedagogical grandeur of the Canadian university?