Comments for The Critical Religion Association

Comment on Some (Mainly) Very Appreciative Comments on Brent Nongbri’s “Before Religion” by Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:00:29 +0000

I agree with you Naomi. It is not hard to appreciate the value of Brent Nongbri’s work in yet again demonstrating the absence of the modern concept of religion in ancient sources and in showing how the insertion of the word misrepresents authorial intentions. For my money it is not possible to put too many nails in the coffin which now houses this conventional notion that the word ‘religion’ refers to a recognizable and timeless phenomenon. As I see it this misbegotten idea was historically put about by the great religions in order to make it possible for religious people to justify their own beliefs by somehow distinguishing them from common-or-garden superstition which, by general consent, had to be avoided.
However, all of this is surely beginning to become somewhat old hat which I now take for granted. It has for me become the door which opens out onto a whole new world where the important question is no longer whether religion, as we now know it, is a recognisable timeless phenomenon but rather how and why religion, as we now know it, arose.
My own answer to this second and more important question is that religion is a function of language … of mythological language to be precise. It is all too easy to make the mistake of seeing mythology as a language for conversing about religious matters when in fact it was clearly at the outset a representational language designed for talking about all the powers which humans experienced in the universe. Its development was a fantastic boon, however, it had one great drawback: it was all too easy to misunderstand what was being said by taking the representations at face value. I call this the superstition trap and for my money it provides the beginning of the explanation I am looking for.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Michael Marten

Michael Marten — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:31:56 +0000

Kat, Andrew: as the editor of the blog, I feel it is perhaps appropriate to step in here.
This is an interesting discussion, but my sense is that it is about to reach a stage where it won’t really go much further given the limitations of blog comment facilities. There are some fundamental differences in the ways that the two of you see core issues, and I’m not sure what more would be gained by either of you continuing at this stage. The disputes over what is and what is not ideological, cover, it seems to me, very different views, and short of sitting down over coffee and chocolate cake and talking through the presumptions underpinning them, I don’t see either of you reaching much agreement here! Kat’s original point, about the possibility/practicality/desirability of employing liturgy as a methodological tool, picking up on Cornehl (“In its multidimensional engagement, liturgy can be understood to intersect with every aspect of Christian living, inside and outside strictly ecclesial spaces…”), has become somewhat lost in the discussion, and so pending said coffee and cake, I would suggest it be left for now.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:26:54 +0000

Yes it is almost certainly the case that we are perusing different arguments. My problem, however, is that I have never really been certain I have properly understood yours! I had initially thought you were suggesting that liturgy somehow offers a privileged perspective of the ideological workings of a Christian movement or organisation but now, getting rid of all the long words, it seems all you are saying is that one can use liturgy – or presumably any other product of a Christian movement or organisation (its sermonising, art or story-telling for example) – as a second-hand way of examining the ideology driving the movement or organisation itself. If that is the case then certainly what you say is true.
Just a few points:
• I do not seek to be delivered from the hand of ideology since an ideology is a political perspective from which one views the world and one can’t make sense of anything in the world without having such a perspective.
• My suggestion that theology is just ideology using mythological terms of expression is not a teleologically driven interpretation. It is an analysis which begs verification or falsification.
• It’s not helpful to introduce a new definition of superstition into our conversation when I make it perfectly clear what I mean by the word: foolishly taking mythological language at face value (As far as I’m concerned the Protestant versus Catholic debate is beside the point).
• What you call a theological/ideological binary is of untold significance if I am right in thinking that a person’s political ideology inevitably colours all of their thinking. For it means that one can only understand a text, ancient or modern, if one is conversant with the ideological perspective of the writer. The problem for biblical scholars is that though they have identified the ideological perspective of the conservative, revisionist writers in the Bible (which is easy since all the writings from the ancient world are fundamentally conservative) they have not yet identified the ideological perspective of the revolutionary biblical writers who give the biblical writings their importance. This means that their understanding of what the biblical texts are getting at quite inevitably skewed hence their inability to make much sense of them.
• Ideology/politics/ethics are properly distinguished … whether this is clear cut depending on who is using the terms! They are all facets of the same reality which is to say the way in which the fundamental perspective from which we view the world ‘colours’ our understanding of how human power should and should not be used and so of the value (or lack of it) which we give to certain types of human behaviour. Seems obvious to me.
• Of course most things are non-ideological/non-political/non-ethical since what is ideological/political/ethical about them is the colour we impose on them as a result of our ‘chosen’ perspective.
• Much relieved to learn you were arguing against the reification of Christianity and not against the reification of Christian ideology.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Kat Neumann

Kat Neumann — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:24:19 +0000

It seems you are posing a very different argument from the one I am pursuing. I do not think that this delivers you from the hands of ideology; in my view it simply positions you differently towards the category under investigation: “religion”.

Your first point about “popular fallacy” is itself a teleologically driven interpretation, which itself therefore evokes a particular ideology. Historically, of course, superstition is a term that Protestants used of Catholics immediately after the Reformation in order to caricature Catholic belief as not being of sound doctrine. I do not see how following this up by creating a theology-ideology binary is likely to yield helpful insights.

The terms you use are no less problematic by posing theology as authoritative discourse – before or after the Enlightenment. Whilst ideology/politics/ethics etc. are often distinguished, we fool ourselves if we are thinking that they are clear cut terms. It’s certainly too simplistic to say they are just different ways of expressing the same reality; after all, does that mean certain things are non-ideological/non-political/non-ethical?

I’m not suggesting liturgy as a priviliged way forward, but I consider it worth examining because (as I said in my blog-posting): “conceptualising liturgy … allows for a critical assessment from outside the institution that it perpetuates, and invigorates”. In other words: liturgy serves as a methodological context.

Finally, I did not say that (your reply): “the ideology of religious studies is never an ‘it’” (I was referring to a booktitle!), I was making a point about the reification of Christianity in discourse; Christianity is not an ‘it’. Reifying “Christianity” (or “religion” more broadly) seems to me to be succumbing to precisely the kind of mythologising you seek to avoid.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:34:00 +0000

If you are not trying to reaffirm a disciplinary hierarchy that’s a great pity for I am! For my money the fact that historically theology had pride of place among the disciplines was not so much dictated by a different conception of the world at large. That’s a popular fallacy. It was dictated much more by the fact that, prior to the enlightenment and the rise of science in Christendom, scholars had very little political and psychological vocabulary at their disposition making it necessary for them to conduct political/ideological debate using mythological vocabulary: as theology rather than as ideology. This, of course, had one great drawback because the use of mythology was an open door to superstition for those foolish enough to take the language of the debate itself at face value. What the enlightenment did was to make it possible for the first time for people to talk about political and ideological matters in unproblematic terms, obviously a great gain. That said this advance has done nothing whatsoever to upset the very proper disciplinary hierarchy that had been established in which ideology/politics/ethics – just different words used for expressing the same reality – was seen to predominate.
It seems to me that you are kidding yourself if you believe that now liturgy offers a privileged way forward. Like the study of religious art the study of liturgy is simply a second-hand way of dealing with the fundamental issue which for Jews and Christians has always been to determine what is the ideology driving the Bible. You tell me that the ideology of religious studies is never an ‘it’ but that only tells me that you, like so many others, have yet to properly free yourself from the shackles of the mythological language.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Kat Neumann

Kat Neumann — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:04:26 +0000

Thank you for the effort of reading through my blog nonetheless.
I am not trying to reaffirm a disciplinary hierarchy. The fact that theology historically had pride of place among the disciplines was dictated by a different conception of the world at large. In the course of modernisation disciplines underwent a stringent differentiation which disregards the supremacy of the theological faculty within the institution of the university. Here the call for scientific measures and objectives came to be pivotal. The point I am raising with regards to religious studies is that by not sticking to a prescribed disciplinarity, by offering an interdisciplinary approach, it undermines the “easy” and “clean-cut” separation of discourses as “theological”, “political”, “philosophical”, “ethical”… you name it. Because of its interdisciplinarity, religious studies is permanently under pressure to evaluate its own approach – and here ethical concerns are dominant as well as critiquing ideologies.
What becomes problematic then, in view of working with a subject matter that is intrinsic to a perceived socio-cultural and political make-up of both institutions and their shared history with Christianity/Christianities, is the question of institutional affiliation. Because there is much research on alternative forms of “religiosity” (still a term whose conception is founded on a Christian model), dealing with aspects of mainstream Christian worship practice has largely been left to theological disciplines. The suggestion I make here is to reflect on the ways liturgy intersects with various aspects of life, not only from a faith perspective, but from a broad cultural understanding of what faith expressions do in “culture”. As I see it, this will serve a crucial and critical function within and outwith the institutional embeddedness of the university as well as the church. Current faith practices are still largely perceived as a “private” affair (again, one of the false binaries by which we construct and order our living), which a critical conception of liturgy can help to deconstruct as well as identify deregulated faith practices that cut across institutional boundaries. In this sense, a religious studies approach serves to do some critical groundwork in evaluating and revaluating societal implications arising from so-called privatised faith-practices, without therefore going for a classic criticism of church hierarchy and political influence on the level of institutional authorities. Instead it brings the personal dimension within faith communities into stronger relief over against societal involvements.
And to briefly comment on your final question, one very much central to much of the work in critical religion here at Stirling (see for example Timothy Fitzgerald’s: The Ideology of Religious Studies, 2000): Christianity, or Christian religion(s), is never an “it”. The category of religion offers a discursive and investigative horizon to the study of Christianity. Renegotiating conceptual and other means by which to express our interrelationships to this performative reality comes part and parcel with a self-reflexive ideological critique needed in any discipline. Hopefully, to continue critical faith praxis, in criticism and observance, can bring to light that “religion”, too, is still on the way.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by ජමියතුල් උලමා මාධ්‍ය සාකච්චා

ජමියතුල් උලමා මාධ්‍ය සාකච්චා — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:04:53 +0000

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:46:12 +0000

Since I find your language almost impenetrable it is difficult to be sure I have correctly grasped what you are driving at. However, as far as I do understand, you seem to be saying that researchers in the field of religious studies, in their attempt to free themselves from Theology so as to become more critical, competitive and scientific, have naturally found themselves using a multitude of methods drawn from other secular disciplines. However the problem with these methods is that, by their very nature, they tend to deconstruct the subject matter under research. This means that researchers using these methods far from being enabled to identify the inherent ideological nature of this subject matter instead find themselves inadvertently imposing on the subject matter current liberal and capitalist preconceptions, which is a real bind, especially when it come to the study of ecclesiology.
If I have correctly understood you (a big if) I have to say that up to this point I find myself largely in agreement though I would want to add that there is no more justification for the way in which researchers in the field of religious/biblical studies currently regularly falsify the record by imposing on it the prevalent liberal/capitalist ideology of our day than there was in the past for the same sort of people falsifying the record by imposing on it the conservative/feudal ideology of their day.
What perplexes me, however, is your apparent conviction that a study of liturgy – which you say is an invitation to shift disciplinary emphases – can help overcome this problem since I cannot for the life of me see how ‘shifting disciplinary emphases’ can help. Indeed it seems to be just one more liberal illusion to add to a growing list. I remain convinced we will never get anywhere till we manage to isolate the ideology driving the revolutionary biblical writers who produced what we now like loosely to speak about as the Christian religion. It was certainly not conservatism, liberalism or socialism for that matter so what was it?
Andrew Parker

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Kat Neumann

Kat Neumann — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:56:52 +0000

I certainly did not intend to give the impression that liturgy and ethics were to be understood in binary opposition. On the contrary, I very strongly feel that liturgy is misunderstood where it comes under the auspices of a functional analysis that “facilitates” ethical behaviour. Liturgy, to my mind, doesn’t “point” towards ethics, liturgy is at its core ethicising. Differentiating a cognitivising ethical concern from embodied action is counter-intuitive: liturgy implicates the body in its relational set-up and, despite some ecclesial rhetoric, is precisely not set apart from its ethical connection with the world. Much of the symbolic of liturgical acts has come under fire as ethically untenable, not least in Feminist theology, I agree. But I maintain that as a frame for investigation, liturgy diversifies our perspectives and goes against the pull of normativising discourses.

Comment on Approaching contemporary Christian faith in the Western academy by Richard H. Roberts

Richard H. Roberts — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:09:05 +0000

This digs deep but what do we find at the bottom of the excavation? Does the binary of ethics and liturgy fulfil or displace yet further into alienation that yearning for an emobodied self-awareness after which Katherine Mansfield appears to yearn?