Superficial Church: The Loss of Real Church

In trying to get a grasp of Jean Baudrillard’s writing I have been struck at his notion of the ‘superficial’ and how it might form a diagnosis of the plight of the many discussions of what is ‘authentic’ mission and church. Also his thoughts might give us cause for concern about how post-modern culture subsumes and neuters our best attempts at translating our hopes for emerging into reality. Also it has convinced me further of the need for ‘Deep Church’ as a response to the enculturation of emerging and modern church, but I’ll come to that in a later post.

Hyper-reality
At it simplest level Baudrillard suggests that in our image saturated world images (of TV, cinema, internet, computer games, mobile phones, CCTV, Web Cams, digital cameras etc), representation has saturated reality so much that experience takes place a distance from the things we are viewing. For example, it’s hard to go to New York without bringing the experience of the New York of the movies and TV with you to that ‘real’ encounter. I know I felt like I was in a movie when I went to NY for the first time.

Or the person who spends hours making amazing iMovie recordings and shows of his life and family, whilst in the ‘real’ world his marriage isn’t great and his spiritual life needs attending to. The computer-edited version of the world is more ‘real’ than the real world.

Baudrillard calls this experience ‘hyper-reality’.

Simulations of reality
Baudrillard also uses the notion of ‘simulation’. The link between the signs we create, the simulations of reality are often completely disconnected from each other. The representation of something, anything is not seen as a way to connect to the reality behind it, rather it becomes a reality in itself. Again in other words we become obsessed with the image itself, how cool it is, rather than the truth of what it is about. So we pay large sums of money not for trainers that are the best for running, but for the experience of the image attached to the trainers, which has little to do with running at all.

This causes us to be focused on the intensity of am image rather any need for real meaning, depth is replaced with surface, and the ‘phantasm of authenticity which always ends up just short of reality’ (The Revenge of the Crystal, 1990).

Simulations make reality
Yet whilst simulations are separated from reference to reality, they become my reality. For instance movies make me cry and connect to ‘real’ feelings, a beer advert makes me thirsty, watching the Asian Tsunami on the news shakes my faith. There is an implosion of surface simulation into reality. Images don’t just shape reality, they have become the thing that preceded reality! They absorb, shape, consume, and produce what we see as reality.

When we watch ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, are these people being ‘real’ at all as D list professional fakers, who are aware the cameras are watching them, in a fake home cut off from the real world for the time they are in the ‘reality show’. Big Brother is real in that it makes it’s own reality.

Style Attachments
Baudrillard asks if we ever buy something because of what it does and not because it is attached to a style, or lifestyle? Are we really more than the fulfillment of images of an aesthetic and image of reality.

If I buy tools for the car, are they the best or do I buy into the colours and shiny adverts they show them as a the tool for the cool tool guy. Does my computer work better or does it make me feel like part of the ‘cool’ that goes with using it (apple any one?). All our food seems attached to a style, ‘Aunt Bessie’s’ yorkshire puddings, Tesco’s ‘Finest’ etc.

And how do we try to escape the tyranny of this simulation? Baudrillard suggest we do so by producing events, activities, images and objects, which assure us that we have the new and better reality! In other words we manufacture our escape from the false reality we find ourselves in, we have created fetish of the authentic, to escape false authenticity.

This is the realm of the hyper-real, or more-real- than real. We binges on reality experiences of traveling every weekend we can to somewhere more ‘real’ for experiences, we use interactive TV, instant messaging, blogging to be more ‘real’, watch reality TV shows on plastic surgery, make CD’s that have the sounds of vinyl record scratches, have huge video screens at live sports events and music concerts.

We replace the loss of the real with nostalgia. Yet these attempts to provide an alternative to the loss of the ‘real’ as even more unreal! Maybe we need Big Brother to feel like our reality and our life really exists, to give us the impression that whilst these ‘reality’ TV people are false we are ‘real’.

What Does This Mean for our developing Church Ecclesiologies?
If Baudrillard is correct in any measure, I’m sure you can see some of the connections begging to be attached to the condition of discussions about church. Here are a few that I can discern. Remember these are suggestions based on Baudrillard being correct, and I am not critique him here, just summarising his thoughts. (I am by inclination a critical realist, rather than a postmodernist like baudrillard and I’ll come to that in another post)

1. Hyper-real Church:
How much of the emerging church discussion, movement is caught up with hyper-real images of church. We’d rather blog, podcast, write about the image of a better and more authentic church than actually be involved in ‘real’ church. Emerging church can function as the pastiche, edited iMovie of church, that has not correlation to reality.

We are trapped in trying to incarnate church to our culture, by the pursuit of the superficial and hyper-real. What if real church doesn’t look like the idealized images we are endlessly portraying about church.

2. Simulation Church:
Our conceptions of church, the practices of the new forms of church we make, or maybe our existing forms are mere phantasms, surface images with no depth or substance. We are ‘faking it’ to ‘make it’. We will give our money and time to re-editing the image, finding conjecture and suggestions of what church might, could and should be, but never engage in doing ‘real’ church. The fantasy church is much more real than the real thing. And our false images become so real we think they are ‘real’ church. We measure everything by surface realities, and our discussions of what is ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ form more superficial, and yet more ‘real’ forms of church.

We become endlessly self referential with our false reality more ‘real because it isn’t the reality we escape from (usually the false image of the evil modern church).

3. Fetish Church:
And how do we try to escape this problem? By more re-branding, more image management. We call ourselves missionaries in a post Christian context, we buy the missional church books, we postulate the new and even more ‘real’ church, and avoid the reality of doing and being church even more.

Emerging church becomes a fetish, and fashion lifestyle we buy into, or we trade in for a different version. The aesthetic of church becomes the message. The space of engagement with the aesthetics of our culture, become pastiche fetishes, that end up being consumed, and we eventually leave them for something more real. We become the very thing that we despise and pathologically move on to a new fake hopeful and yet even more artificial constriction of church.

We pride ourselves on exposing the shallow com-modification of the modern church with is worship band heroes, of people obsessed with style over substance, and end up just as shallow and superficial by that measure with our endless ‘re-imagining’s’.

4. Pastiche & Nostlagia Church:
Pastiche church is the temptation to take the aesthetics of other church traditions, of those of our culture, and to patch them together in a superficial manner. We might get nostalgic for the ancient church and grab some liturgies and use them but never know the depths of what they really signify. Or we engage in kitsch and pastiche of images from culture, without really knowing why we use them other than they seem real in their own right. In other words we use images at random, project them over some music and see it as an experience, or we make aesthetical art spaces, that degenerate into consumer therapy, self justified with the user experience, as ‘authentic’. Our worship experiences becomig self authenticating.

Conclusion
I haven’t offered a critique of Baudrillard, just a summary of some of his main thoughts and how they might relate to emerging church, or any form of church. But some quick thoughts for now.

1. Tendencies: Abstract into Real: recognise that every-time we re-imagine church we are in the west a people who will struggle to translate that into any reality, and are bent, distorted towards finding the re-imagining to be real itself. Maybe this is the ‘sin’ (inherent missing the mark) of our current culture.

2. Trapped in Consumption: And at the heart of our bent towards the hyper-real, and fetish of church, is our entrenchment in capitalism and the market place. We need to really understand how capitalism has captured our understanding of what it means to be real, and find some ways out of it into non-commodified forms of church, to find the spaces between the doing of church and the consumption of church that will enable a liberating and ‘real’ change.

3. Evaluate our Ecclesiologies:
Then use that understanding of our tendencies and the snares of consumerism to assess our current and suggested future forms of church.

Do you see any of these interplay’s in church, and any ways out?

Jason Clark
www.jasonclark.ws

Comments

[Jonathan Erdman]

My thinking on Baudrillard really came home to roost this past Christmas. I was enjoying the holliday with my family, but at one point I realized that everybody (myself included) was so interested in "capturing the moment" via video recorders and digital cameras that it seemed as though we were all almost creating the memory for the sake of capturing it. This scenario gets so ridiculous that our preoccupation with "capturing the moment" becomes the moment itself, and the authentic experience of family and closeness gets squeezed out of the picture (pardon the pun).

The lines between "the moment"/"capturing the moment"/"creating the moment" all kind of blur together so that one cannot even make a genuine distinction.

Jason Clark said:
We call ourselves missionaries in a post Christian context, we buy the missional church books, we postulate the new and even more ‘real’ church, and avoid the reality of doing and being church even more.

As I understand it, the missional and E/emergent folks are writing books based on the "doing" and "being" of church, and that much of the e-discussion surfaces from an actual engagement with culture. To this end I respect their project, and I will be interested on hearing what some responses will be to the suggestions and thoughts of this post.

I imagine that the whole E/emergent and missional church idea has now become, in many ways, a movement and a mass-marketing scheme. Even the fact that Baker books put up this website is an ironic statement in itself to the fact that E/emergent and missional theories have turned themselves into fads and trends in many circles. For example, how many traditional pastors at traditional churches are now buying the "latest" books on E/emergent and missional churches to find out "what's the latest thing." They are just completing their 40 days of purpose sessions and need to look for the next wave of churching that will come down the publisher's pipeline.

Honestly, I don't think that there is any real escape from the culture of which we are a part. But, then again, we are necessarily culturally contextualized creatures, so being bound to a culutre is part of the deal.

[Jonathan Erdman]

I would like to recommend a nice post by John Doyle from last fall:

The Desert of the Real Itself touches on Baudrillard in a way germane to the current discussion.

[Jason Hesiak]

Here's what I don't understand. For the sake of ease, lets assume we're Christians talking to a Christian audience. What is the crux of the issue? Did Baudrillard not believe in McLuhan's global village because of his epistemology, or because he didn't believe that an icon pointed to a reality in the first place (because he wasn't Christian, didn't believe in the same God, however you want to say it)? On the flip side, did McLuhan assert a global village in a "visually acoustic" space (rather than a simulacra of images) BECAUSE he was basically a scholastic, or simply because he had faith? Both McLuhan and Baudrillard are Idealists, in that both think in terms of representation.

Maybe I'm jumping ahead to Jason's later posts on realisms critique of Baudrillard? If so sorry, but here lies my curiosity. Is it even a critique based on a philosophical stance, or simply on faith? Or does what I've asked/written even have anything to do with realism's critique of Baudrillard?

Thanks,

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

Also, maybe more relevant to this specific post...if we're going to listen to Baudrillard at all, do we use a microphone in church - at the pulpit, for example? Or is that the ultimate absurdity (and yet what we take to be the one thing NOT in question...maybe this just gives us all away as pragmatists...or as fools for the simulacrum?)?

Also, where's the line between Baudrillard and Gnosticism? Or is Baudrillard giving rational voice to an old myth? Is "The Matrix" a simulacra or Gnostic? As John Doyle pointed out in his blog link provided by Johnathan Erdman, Morpheus actually quotes Baudrillard in the film. And yet I had taken the film to be quite perfectly Gnostic before I read that blog post.

[Jason Hesiak]

And I have another question. From the comments to Johnathan Erdman's link to John Doyle's post: "The map makers dilemma is how closely they want to represent reality on their map. To have a perfect representation of reality requires one to have an exact replica. However, an exact replica would be impractical and unusable. In fact, they might as well not use the exact replica - reality, itself, would do just as well. Hence the countryside itself becomes its own map. Fascinating."

In other words, my question is back to the crux of the issue...what on earth IS the crux? What exactly IS it that's in question? Is it a philosophical stance? Is it faith (or a lack thereof)? Or a man's will...how much does a man's proper navigation through reality and representation depend simply upon his will? The mapmaker doesn't have a delimma until he is stupid enough to WANT to make a map at the scale of one to one. But making a map at the scale of one to one is itself a whole philosophical/scientific persuit, no...?

Argh.

[Jason Clark]

Jonathan, thanks for the christmas example you gave.

I don't think there has ever been a pure un-enculturated version of Christianity. Consumerism and commodification fetish might one the particular challenges we face now, yet there have been many before then, i.e nationalism, colonialism, feudalism etc.

I'm not sure we can escape it, but maybe we can work to understand it better, and the problems if causes.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

jonathan,
you said, "Honestly, I don't think that there is any real escape from the culture of which we are a part. But, then again, we are necessarily culturally contextualized creatures, so being bound to a culutre is part of the deal."

I think you are right in saying that we can never escape cultural contextualization. But I wonder if "consumer culture" is really a culture in the sense of "the culture of which we are a part." I see it as more of a hyper-culture. Advertizing, marketing, movies, TV show, the symbolic value of the commodites we consume, these are artifically contrived and mass produced. Much of the Western Consumer Culture is totally fabricated and shouldn't be compared to say an African indigenous culture, an agrarian culture, or even a minority culture in the West.

I feel the Emerging Church is not so much in danger of over/under-contextualization, but rather in danger of self-consumption b/c we live in a situation that is lost in images (and all the re-imaging created therein).

Jason, thank you for this helpful post.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Jason,
You comment on 4 forms of the superficial church:  1) Hyper-real Church: we would rather talk about the ideal image of the Church than participate in an actual church.  2) Simulation Church: we measure our actual churches by some fantasy-ideal church.  3) Fetish Church: we consumer the church and its products.  It becomes a lifestyle and a fashion; lost in some re-imagining of church.  4) Pastiche Church: grab bag of church tradition thrown together as if the gestalt were self-authenticating. 

What about a fifth iteration: the Critique Church. 
A church (or more likely a leader) stuck in a self-depricating critique of the consuming church; constantly referencing the superficiality/impossibility/paradox of having someone 'leading' or 'preaching' or 'curating'.  This type of church revels in revealing the hidden secrets of congregation life, and is self-consciously transgressive in its practices.  Nevertheless, this revelary of unmasking illusions is so caught up  in the game of illusions that it can only act critically and ironically, instead of constructively and authentically.  This type of church hopes for 'authenticity' but is  lost in the hall of mirrors, not really wanting to leave it. 

[Jason Clark]

Geoff sounds like like the 'detournement' church (Guy Debord) with it the notion of cultural jamming (ala adbusters). Destined to be pathologically re-consumed, or as you say lost in the hall of mirrors.

Much of the post-church movement in europe seems to have fallen under this spell of this notion.

[Jonathan Erdman]

Geoff,

I have a question on your comments. Is there any culture that is not "artificial" or synthetic? Are not all cultures wo/man-made? Do we not as a collective whole produce social norms, community expectations, societal rules and regulations, languages, patterns of behavior that are deemed "good" or "bad"?

You said:
But I wonder if "consumer culture" is really a culture in the sense of "the culture of which we are a part." I see it as more of a hyper-culture. Advertizing, marketing, movies, TV show, the symbolic value of the commodites we consume, these are artifically contrived and mass produced. Much of the Western Consumer Culture is totally fabricated and shouldn't be compared to say an African indigenous culture, an agrarian culture, or even a minority culture in the West.

Just because our consumer culture is market driven and consumer oriented does that make it more "artificial"? The hyper-culture is "hyper" because it is based upon technology: instant communication mechanisms, image technology, internet, etc. These all provide the basis for our western culture. But our culture is merely the collective forces that have reacted to technology. Perhaps agrarian or African indigenous cultures do not have technology. Are they less artificial? Are they not still the result of their collective reactions to non-technology? They must build their lives around survival. To eek out their lives providing for their basic needs of food and shelter and protection from enemies. This produces a society and culture that perhaps seems more "pure", but are we merely being nostalgic and naive? Is this a form of reverse elitism to claim that a technological culture is inferior? Or to say that our culture is more "artificial"? I think it might be misleading to think of a culture as "more primitive" or even as "pure". Communities just seem to respond to their environment and each other - this becomes their "culture."

I think that we are bound to culture because we are forced to react to it. Even those who are counter-cultural are still simply reacting to their culture. The very term "counter-cultural" betrays the fact that these individuals/communities are building their lives and being in a negative reaction to the way everybody else is doing things. So, even in the very act of rejecting culture we are still reacting to it and as such prove our finitude and the fact that we are culturally bound.

In the States we have Christian groups and thinkers who reject their culture's obsession with market-driven consumerism. They develop great ideas on how to localize and develop more pure Christian communities that do not succumb to this "hyper-culture." In fact, their ideas are so good that the marketing powers-that-be want to mass market their ideas in best-selling books! Put them on tv and radio! Podcast them and set up really cool websites! And who can resist such a "calling"? In the ultimate irony those great thinkers put their great ideas out for mass distribution and become the very thing they were reacting against. An irony of the Baudrillardean variety, I think.

[Andy]

Jason,

I genuinely enjoyed this post - although I think I would replace most references to the emerging church to the western church in general - as I see some of the tendencies you describe in rather modern churches as well. That said - you raise good - and very important - questions about the state of the emerging church.

I've often wondered where the cost of being a member of the western church is...beyond the 10% tithe. It's interesting that when we actually begin to serve the poor, the widows, the orphans - our false images of reality are shattered by real reality. Life is not so neat. We find that people are both worse of than we expected - while being simultaneously capable of noble acts of good. Tragedy spares noone.

Perhaps it's naivete - or some form of survival mechanism - but the tendency to create our own realities is not a problem solely found in the emerging church, but in the western church - perhaps all people for that matter.

My attraction to the emerging church is exactly the opposite of what you describe. Rather than finding a false reality - I found people searching for a real reality, a real faith. Like any movement, it can be hijacked...but there are those of us out there who still believe in finding the maturity of real living, suffering and dying for the sake of Christ. Unfortunately, as you astutely described, I usually don't live up to my rhetoric...but I strive to nonetheless.

[Jason Clark]

Andy, thanks for the feedback. My attraction to emerging church was similar to yours, but despite our aspirations we seem to repeat our consumption of idealized versions of church, secure in the knowledge that they are different to the real ones we have moved away from. At least that has been my limited experience.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

jonathan,

you make some really good points.  all of which i agree with.

I think i'm coming at the question of culture from the angle of "what should we do with it?"  This comes across concerning missiology.  My concern is that the Emerging Church might be misapplying missiological principles gained else where (and I say not as a critique of the EC, but one fully vested within it, as is Jason Clark).  I constantly hear people talking about being missional just like the missionaries oversees, "Let's meet the POMOs where they are."

There are two reasons I think this is a bad idea (the idea of being missional is not a bad idea, just that we can learn how to do it from oversees missionaries).  The first is that the Western Church has been within Christendom for a long time, and now has a hangover.  While I think the 2/3rds church has a ton to teach us in the West, they can't teach us how to live beyond our Christendom hangover.  But secondly, and more germane to this conversation, the 2/3rds church is not nearly as enmeshed in an auto-reflective, hyper-marketing, society of the spectacle (although this type of society is being spread throughout the world).  Our culture has lost almost all ability to PRODUCE what it needs, and now CONSUMES mostly what it doesn't need. 

So my point is not a nostalgic one that it would be great to return to an agrarian culture (although, many time I really do think that, but for non-sentimental reason).  My point is that what missiologist have learned do not directly apply here in the West because what missiologist were learning in the field, American advertisers were already doing here. 

Capitalism is the best Contextualizer there has ever been.  If this is our culture, then how do we proceed?

[Geoff Holsclaw]

if I could offer an example. 

If we turn to the hermeneutics of suspicion (Marx for instance), the tale used to go: 1) look at society, culture, politics, and find what it is hiding, what it wants to forget about, what it disavows (this is deconstruction), 2) then, reveal the secret, expose the hypocrisy, taking off the veil that was blinding us to our true situation.  This is the typical procedure for culture.

But what about hyper-culture?  If we set about step #1, looking at consumer culture, presidential politics, our technological society, what do we find?  We find that step #2 is already laid out for us in advance.  Our political discourse already acknowledges that it is image based; culture and media already parody themselves; society already knows that all it does is consumer. 

Last years there was a volkswagon commercial parodied the fact that cars are used to display status (this is what Baudrillard calls the symbolic exchange).  the tagline what something like: VW = Low-ego emissions. The are basically saying, "if you buy our car people will know how reasonable and sensible you are."  They are still selling an image, just not the sports car image. 

My point is that the means by which we critique the culture we live in need to change because we live in hyper-reality instead of merely reality because as others have already pointed out, the difference between being counter-cultural and mainstream is almost negligible these day, invisibly reversing from one to the other.

[Jonathan Erdman]

Geoff says....My point is that the means by which we critique the culture we live in need to change because we live in hyper-reality instead of merely reality because as others have already pointed out, the difference between being counter-cultural and mainstream is almost negligible these day, invisibly reversing from one to the other.

Good point.

Maybe a way of thinking about this is the marketing niche. Whatever we do and whatever we say relates to making a niche for ourselves. We are "counter-cultural" in reaction to mainstream in order to appear more authentic and original. When everybody gets tired of the mainstream (which takes about 15 minutes these days making the phrase "everybody gets 15 minutes of fame" a descriptive phrase rather than an exaggeration) they look to the person who has been bucking the trend. This guy has been creating his niche in the corner, and now that we're board with "mainstream" we supplant it with the counter-cultural.

Is it now all about niche? Maybe it has always been that way and our culture is the only one to really just realize what is going on?

Distinguish yourself from anyone else. Even as I write these comments I am responding to what everyone else writes and I'm trying to one-up them or add something original or make myself look kind of clever in some way. It's honestly kind of maddening to think about it that way, but this is reality - or perhaps hyper-reality.

"What should we do with it?"

I'm not sure. I think the reason that our Marketing Niche culture drives us batty is because everything moves so fast. There are so many niches being created that we can consume anything we want. For me it has made me want to present a non-Consumable Jesus. A Jesus without a niche. A Jesus who isn't going to make your life better, he's going to make it worse!

A non-niche God is one who really isn't there for you, but can throw curve balls at humanity and demand the unreasonable. Hence, I am attracted to the Job passages where God is so completely unreasonable as to not address Job the God-Seeker and instead beats him down by appearing in the whirlwind and rather than answering Job's question God has the audasity to put Job in the dock! And Job's the only guy who has really wrestled with God and hung on to his last threads of faith!

Of course as I ramble on and develop this further I've just created another niche - the newest marketing slogan for Western Christianity: The Non-Consumable God! "Tired of a God who meets your needs. We've got the only God you can't consume!" Imagine it! We can market the non-marketable God, and maybe people can consume the Non-Conumable God. This will be the next non-movement movement.

It's very bizarre to think about...but then again maybe I've got the goods for a book deal with Baker.....This non-consumable God thing might be my meal ticket!

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Instead of us consuming God. Maybe He consumes us. (but if we think of the Eucharist/Communion them maybe we do consume God...but that is for another discussion).

Maybe another way of saying this is that God is useless (outside of human utility) and worthless (outside of human valuations).

Jonathan, you make a joke about having a publishing deal with Baker to promote you "the non-consumable God", but this is the temptation we must think through. You could as a student/pastor/church member live into the REALITY of the non-consumable God, or you could enter into a HYPER-REALTY of using this non-consumable god as a product for others to consume.

i think what jason was getting at is not so much that we should hate internet technologies, new/old publishing, or our image based culture, but that we need to be aware and wise in what we are becoming as ecclesial bodies.

[Jonathan Erdman]

Instead of us consuming God. Maybe He consumes us.

This is certainly the ideal. I pray that it is true for myself and those I worship with.

Nonetheless, for God to "consume" seems to be an action of God, does it not? Something only God can do?

[Jason Clark]

Geoff, that is certainly my suggestion. I didn't mention it in the post, but I think the way ahead is to not avoid the consumer agency that occurs (it's impossible), but to encourage it to go deeper, than the superficial level it usual does.

How do we encourage consumer agency to look below the surface of everything?

[Jason Hesiak]

I was having this conversation recently with a friend. We were asking almost the same question: "How do we encourage consumer agency to look below the surface of everything?" I think, though, that in our conversation we were assuming that this is not possible for a "consumer agency", but that to help human beings in a consumer culture to "[get] below the surface" [if we encourage "looking" we will probably end up on super-surfaces], it simply takes the presence of what makes us human...sympathy, love, friendship, things like that. A "consumer agency" cannot have sympathy. But what drives a "consumer agency" is what it is that we are feeling/have in us when we "have sympathy". Along these line, I think...if what we must do is BECOME human [beings], and we are made in the image of God...I don't think God consumes. We are living sacrafices, but God forms and orders...is "the God of the living".

This is, sort of, production...but not, I don't think, the way we think of production within a production/consumption model. More like "making", or "speaking", or "being" than "producing", I think. But the thought of ceilingless consumption as a sign of the Cross is intriguing (Geoff). Consumption, though, is different...nothing really dies. Nothing is produced by the machine, and nothing is consumed. That's the problem. There can be no making. The Cross, though, was a re-ordering...a re-forming. Not so hauntingly silent without the silence.

........?

Jason (Hesiak)

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Jason,

while this might seems silly, there really is a difference between productive/consumptive/hyper-reality and what happens in creation and procreation. If you read Wendell Berry it becomes clear as day. The earth, the soil, natural systems recycle, or even better, resurrect through the cycles of live and death, death and live. It is not proper to say that an ecosystem consumes itself, or that anything in it consumes something else. It is the natural cycle.

So while many say the Church needs to be Organic (usually referring to some sort of dispersed leadership structure or to criticize programs), we should say that Church is organic because it follows the cycles of life and death, or as others say, it follows the cycle of Gift.

Consumption is a sum zero game. But Nature and Gift are always producing a surplus that Capitalism can never control.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

as an example of one use of 'organic' see joe myers' new organic community which challenges "key leaders to become environmentalists—people who create or shape environments. Outlining nine organizational tools for creating a healthy environment, Myers shows readers how to diagnose their current situation and implement patterns that will develop possibilities for healthy communities."

now i consider joe a friend and really love what he brings to the table.  But I would also like to claim the word 'organic' to talk about our physical interaction with the earth as well as our understanding of economic realities.  If we as the church (and as the emerging church) could bring this to the fore ground, then I believe issue of 'superficiality' and hyper-reality would enter into crisp relief. 

[Jason Hesiak]

Geoff,

We just said the same thing, except you used correct technical language. I had all this in mind when I said that your following thoughts were intriguing: "Instead of us consuming God. Maybe He consumes us. (but if we think of the Eucharist/Communion them maybe we do consume God...but that is for another discussion)."

I think you meant, partially, by extension, that...if there is a difference between hyper-production-of-Nothing and the natural cycles of birth and death...if Consumption is a sum zero game, then simulation in not an extension of the gift of nature/gift of God (not that gift of nature and gift of God are the same)...then with consumption there is no more giving.

But if we consume God with the Eucharist (or, rather, if we are going to use the language of the term "consumption" there), in the context of this conversation...that notion seems to point to the possibility that this loss of the gift is a sacraficial act of God, or can become so. I'm saying I don't know about that, BECAUSE there really is a difference between hyper-reality and the simple cycles of life and death.

Like Baudrillard says, "there is no last jugdgement, becuase there's no ultimate judgement of true from false...no distinction between real and representation...there is no resurrection because everything is already dead and risen in advance."

.....?

[Jason Hesiak]

Geoff...I missed the second comment the first time around. I think we were commenting at the same time. Anwyay...consumption and giving are already in crisp relief for me (sort of...see next post on Deleuze about the face - foreground and background)...but I'm still not exactly at east about the situation.

BTW the way I see it...you can't separate this question of "organic community" from the question of economy. if there is a NEED to "claim the use of the term oranic...to talk about our economic realities"...then we have a problem. and thats the problem.

this is why above I was asking if this NEED arises from one's epistemology (simply a metaphysical question or problem of representation and one's philosophical stance, really...witness the differnece between McLuhan and Baudrillard...what Baudrillard calls simulacra McLuhan calls a global village...many would attribute this to their differing philosphical/epistemological stances)...

...or if the NEED (to claim "organic" for our economic relations) arises from one's WILL (to like God create out of Nothing... [to create everything, without limit - "zero sum game over which Capitalism has no control" - Zarathustra speaks for everyone and no one]...in which case "you will die").

:)

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

Let me explain a bit more what I mean by my question...if the NEED arises to claim the term "organic" (in reference to the cycles of nature...oohhh! surrealism :) in reference to economics...is this a question whose need arises essentially because of the will of man or essentially because of one's epistemology...or is it a need that arises out of a lack of faith (I will elaborate)?

I mean, I certainly see the need. In other words, Baudrillard is all-too-familiar to me, even though I haven't read that much of his work. I just spent the weekend in Las Vegas. There there is NO LINE between reality and representation; and it is deeply disturbing. And this is pretty much just an observation.

However, does our disturbance really mean such a "need"? As mentioned, what Baudrillard called "simulacra" McLuhan (philosophically more of a "realist", but certainly not overly modern) called a "global village". They were talking about the same thing, though. This was due to the fact that McLuhan and Baudrillard view representation quite differently - they themselves represent reality quite differently; or they represent quite different realities. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, in this difference you can detect a difference in faiths.

“It is we who must follow the most deterritorialized line, the line of the scapegoat, but we will change its sign, we will turn it into the positive line of our subjectivity, our Passion, our proceeding or grievance. We will be our own scapegoat. We will be the lamb: 'The God who, like a lion, was given blood sacrifice must be shoved into the background, and the sacrificed god must occupy the foreground.... God became the animal that was slain, instead of the animal that does the slaying.'”

So, in other words, yes, there really is a difference between reality and hyper-reality; but what would cause McLuhan to view that difference differently from Baudrillard (and speak of it on different terms)? There seems to be an obvious element of faith; the Incarnation (believed in, of course) reconciles what wants to conflict between representation and reality. But there also seems to be an obvious element of a simple philosophical or epistemological position, of course.

At this point too I get to wondering if its not so much that faith possibly determines McLuhans terms and frame of reference, but if a lack of faith makes Baudrillard's position possible in the first place. I mean, I hear Baudrillard say "there can be no last judgement, because in the end there can be no true and false...there is no resurrection because everything is already dead and raised to life in advance"; and not only do I know what he means, but I want to laugh and cry with him in the same instant.

But then I am conflicted in my soul. I think, "Wait a second: you can't UNDO the Incarnation, no matter how much it APPEARS to be undone, even in a totalizing fashion!" I mean, what is the essence of undoing the harmonious relationship between representation and reality besides sin itself!? At which point, of course, this whole thing becomes as well a question of the will of man.

Baudrillard appears to me as a very good Greek dramatist. But I still don't know if the crux of the matter is epistemology, faith, or the will of man. Of course I believe (that the will of man is involved)...

I realized all of that probably sounded WAY overly metaphysical to many of you...but that's why I pointed out particularly that McLuhan is basically a scholastic (and not a moder, really, I don't think; at least not so much). I have chosen him as my example, my hinge, I think because he makes it easier for me to ask my question.

.....?

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

Practical example of why I'm asking the question:

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=488

We start talking about all this stuff...questions of simulation and reality are inevibably connected to questions of subjection and poltics. You end up philosophically with a split between "universality" and "undecidability" (Everyone and No One, everything and Nothing). Ktismatics - on Geoff's post HERE that spoke about V. for Vendetta and the subject - suggested a Baudrillardian interpretation of V.

Obviously, though, these estrangements are intimately interwoven with God's fabric of creation. "Universality" appears to Lacan as simply untrue. But as a man of faith it can appear to me as a "reach" (very similar to the reach for the apple). "Undecidability" (or, maybe, everything's being gobbled by the simula-monster) appears to more of a "realist" as simply untrue. But as a man of faith it can appear to me as hopeless, and as demonstrating a lack of faith in the truth of the Incarnation.

And as moderns we attempted to circumscribe the cosmos into a universe. This was the "reach". But the prophets tend to want to come along (seemingly, starting with Kierkegaard) and remind us of the mystery, the gaps (between the constituents of the multitude, for example).

As a man of faith, though...I am reminded of my creation story. The tree of knowledge was at the center of the garden. Eat from that tree, and the garden becomes a closed system with no entrances and no openings...at its periphery. All circles (reminiscent to me of the circumscription of the universe into a system) hinge on a known center. Replace God at the center with man, though, and it becomes man's system. Of course this is a question of the will...and of course it causes all kinds of problems...like man's being "subjectified" or "objectified". OF COURSE his is subjectified and/or objectified. He made himself into a subject by standing in the center and taking in that shiny-fruity object.

OF COURSE, too, the knowledge/philosophy-split happens along the lines of God's fabric of creation. God created "everything out of nothing". Christ, God Incarnate, became nothing and redeemed everything. But men seem content to argue between everything and nothing. But I am not trying to criticize the arguement. I invest in it, to a degree. I am simply asking what the "real" crux of the argement happens to be.

Jason

[Geoff Holsclaw]

jason,
wow. I resonate with and I am intrigued by so much of what you said.

to just jump in on one of your thoughts: you mention that difference and yet connection of reality and representation. in our postmodern milieu we can't say there is a direct correspondence, but nor do we (at least I don't) want to collapse the distinction so that representation becomes all we know of reality (b/c this would leave no room for revelation).

I would say that we fall into the pit of hyper-reality when we deny any access to a transcendent reality. That is, if all we have is this plane of immanence then we end up spinning between reality and its representation, centering on a narcissistic gaze. Hyper-reality is produced when all we have is THIS reality.

But IF there is another reality superimposed on this reality, making clandestine encounters with this reality, giving us a beyond to this reality, then even if we cannot represent this other reality, it still bears down on us, separating out reality from representation. Transcendence anchors reality and representation, keeping them honest and free.

Finally, to bring up themes from other talks, this is the danger I see in too much deconstructive theology. For all its talk of dethroning idols, deconstructive theology can never speak of icons, the window into heaven. this perspective calls all speech of icons idolatry. But this is to give up the game too soon and settles for immanence and hyper-reality all in the name of casting down idols.

[Jason Hesiak]

Geoff,

As for the correspondence between reality and representation...I think there is something to be said in that tribal Africans don't want you taking their photograph. For them its a question of what you might do with it; but I'm no voodoo artist. So for me its just interesting that there is that connection between their photograph and their soul. But for them too its not at all an issue that they may confuse the photo for their soul. Because either they haven't extended themselves too far out in technologies that can create or destroy entire worlds and lives, or because they haven't made maps of their own territory at a scale of one to one.

As for transcendence, immanence and the narcissistic gaze...interestingly in the Greek myth Narcissus falls in love with Echo, who speaks from the limit of the system. The story doesn't even bother to harp on its being HIS echo. I'm not sure, though, how that fact touches on transendence and immanence.

Also, you said: "IF there is another reality superimposed on this reality, making clandestine encounters with this reality, giving us a beyond to this reality, then even if we cannot represent this other reality, it still bears down on us, separating out reality from representation." I'm confused a bit by the "even if we cannot represent...". I think you mean in a totalizing and systematizing fashion, no? Because in the next paragraph you talk about icons.

Also...I think I see what you mean...but I'd say that reality and representation participate in transcendence; but that its the Incarnation that ANCHORS them. What do you think about that? I mean, I see...obviously if MEN let go of transcendence, or claim its death...therin lies the problem. I think that was your point.

As for giving up the game too soon...interestingly Chesterton talks about how the Medieval idea of the kingdom of God was given up upon all too soon, before it even had time to fail.

And finally...so then...the CRUX of the matter IS faith (and will) rather than one's philosophical or epistemological position? I suppose its obvious that we must first view our own philosophical speech in light of our faith before our philosophical speech can inform our faith. This is probably something that is talked about in very complex fashion by the experts. But contemporary realists would probably shutter at such a notion...or at least squirm a bit and be at least tempted to, in turrets-like fashion, shout "FIEDISM!"

Jason

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Jason,
yes when I said transcendence can't be represent I did indeed mean in a totalizing, complete system. And Yes I also think the incarnation is the key between reality and representation, and immanence and transcendence.

[Jason Hesiak]

Geoff,

Sweet, thanks...

As for the faith thing...I remembered AFTER I posted that comment that I had just recently read an encyclical by Jean Paul II on Faith and Reason. He talks about how in Scholastic theology the relationship was developed between the two. Essentially that reason, although it has to be autonmous, has to be guided by Revelation. Whole differnt topic though if it goes too far. I was just trying to ask about representation, Baudrillard, and faith's role in that discussion.

God bless :)

Jason

[James K.A. Smith]

In light of Jason's post, readers might be interested to note that Jean Baudrillard has died. See Le Monde's obituary at http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3382,36-879957@51-879918,0.html

[Dan Wilt]

Just to say, I'm loving the discussion, though for the moment just as a reader.

The incarnation does root us in blood and bone, and this is vital for any conclusions to which we come.

[Bluepez]

I think an obsession with an idealized image of the Church is a problem particularly within grassroots movements in Western Christianity. Partly I think it has been an intrinsic to the Protestant heritage. It seems more often then not when we disagree about things its easier to start something new in knee-jerk reaction. I think all of us are aware of entire denominations that are representative of that sort of mindset. What I appreciate about the perspective offered here is that it shows an awareness of our tendency to value a reimagined (or whatever we're calling it now) church to the detriment of the one that actually exists. If I may be a bit deconstructive; this is evidenced by how we attack an amorphous modern church and accuse ‘them’ or ‘they’ of neutering Christianity while implying that we are more. . . . . whatever. But when it really comes down to it ‘them’ or ‘they’ are people like us and the ‘institution’ is nothing more than a group of people trying to survive like the rest of us. It would seem much more appropriate that if we have a beef with ‘them’ then we should go to whoever ‘they’ actually are and dialogue with them. It easy to attack a strawman, its much harder to engage another human being in a critical discussion, especially one in which we do not automatically assume they are in the wrong because we perceive they are from a “modern” mindset.

Although I don’t agree with everything Bonhoeffer ever said I think there is an awareness of the ideas presenter here we he says:
He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. – Dietrich Bonhoffer, Life Together

I think the other side to this, also, from a pastoral perspective is that human beings get fatigued with constant change. It is not a coincidence that human beings that experience constant change (i.e. children in foster care, people in war) have a hard time learning to adjust. How much more if we are constantly changing not just the form of church but our ecclesiology and expecting everyone else to as well. At some point it becomes a matter of a few pontificating their dream while everyone else is struggling to subsist in an already fragmented social existence. Might as well rack up Christian community as another thing that is constantly restructuring.
All that to say, I don’t think instituting change and reform automatically collapses into Marxism nor is it inherently evil (although it is inherently troublesome), I for one have had enough experiences having not been a Christian and now being one to know that a good many things about our churches do in fact need to change. But the caution offered here I think is one we should listen to. Let us dream but let us love the community that actually exists even if they are those pesky moderns.

[Jason Hesiak]

I read something rather interesting today during lunch which pertains:

"I never came into the Church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying, they need truths; that's all. You don't come into the Church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the Church; they quit praying.

Actively relating to the Church's prayer and sacrametns is not done through ideas. Any Catholic today who has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church: that's meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution."

-Marchall McLuhan, p. 64, The Medium and Light

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Jason, that's a great quote. I'm going to clip that for future use. thanks.

[Jason Hesiak]

You're welcome Geoff :) I liked it too, ha ha.