"On Religion": Chapter 3 & 4

In preparation for the 2007 Theological Conversation, here is the third of several accessible summaries and reflections on the various reading for the theological conference.

On Religion : Chapters 3 & 4 : The Force Be With You, and Impossible People
Reflections by Scott Berkhimer, a recent graduate of Biblical Seminary, husband, dad, and occasional blogger.

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"Today, at this point that I describe as post-secular or post-modern, the religious sense of life turns on what I am calling the hyper-real, by which I mean a reality beyond the real, the impossible that eludes modernity's narrow-minded idea of what is possible. The impossible disturbs the reality of the present from within and leaves us hanging on by a prayer." (p. 91)

This brief passage seems to capture the essence of Caputo's argument in chapters three and four of On Religion. Religion trades in the impossible; modernity is all about what can be defined, explained, and controlled - the possible, or at least the rational and understandable. Caputo argues in these chapters that modernity has gotten somewhat ahead of itself; indeed, it has created its own demise by blurring the lines of the possible and the impossible.

In the previous chapter, Caputo discussed how the critique of religion that modernity offered served instead to ironically undermine its own suppositions. Now, he demonstrates that the tools of modernity - the technology that represents the pinnacle of accomplishment in modernity - serves instead to enable religion to flourish. Caputo's showcase illustration is the rise of the virtual as embodied in high tech communication, such as the internet and modern media. The internet, by creating a reality that is virtual and that thus occupies the space between the real and the not-real, has become a playground for religious thought and discourse. Contrary to expectations, modernity through technology has created a space where religion not just survives but actually thrives:

"We have begun, God help us, to tamper with the our sense of what is real. But is that not what every religious figure from the Jewish prophet to the televangelist has dreamed of doing? To break the grip of material actuality and open our eyes to being otherwise, to a dimension beyond reality that lifts the limits imposed upon us by presence and actuality - is that not something that classical religion has tried to do ever since Moses took a hammer to Aaron's golden calf, which tried to contract the transcendence of God to a physical object?" (p.68)

The reason that religion thrives in this new world is that the possible has begun to give way to the impossible - and that is the stuff of religion.

Religion, for Caputo, offers a window into the impossible. However, it also belongs to impossible people, people who themselves are uncertain about this strange new world where the real and the not-real blend together to form the hyper-real. And, Caputo argues, this uncertainty has given rise to a new fundamentalism as a way of coping with the uncertainty.

"Fundamentalism is an attempt to shrink the love of God down to a determinate set of beliefs and practices, to make an idol of something woven from the cloth of contingency, to treat with ahistorical validity something made in time, one more case of Aaron and the golden calf, one more confusion of the raft with the ocean." (p. 107)

Fundamentalism is, in short, the confusion of interpretation with revelation. It is the failure to recognize that there is always a space between what God has said and what we have heard that God has said. It is the contraction of the experience of the Real with the Real itself. And, in some sense, it is a natural reaction to a world where the boundaries of the real appear tenuous at best. How do we know what is real? This is real, by God, and we will defend it - that is fundamentalism, as Caputo explains it.

Caputo grapples with something that few of the detractors of postmodernity seem to tackle: how does our technology shape the way in which we think, the way in which we view the world? For good or ill, technology has changed us, shaped us as we have shaped it. We are symbiotes, really - we have created something that has now become a part of the fabric of our existence. And in unleashing the virtual we have forever changed the way in which we think about what is real. Who is the real me - the person who I am in my everyday, flesh-and-blood existence, or the person I become when I place my fingers to the keyboard and plunge under the waters of cyberspace? Are they the same person? And how would I know the difference? On a more practical level, the internet has changed the way in which we conduct business, the way in which we connect with others, the way in which we receive our news and organize our day and pay our taxes. We think differently and act differently as a result - we are virtual people, living with one foot in the real and one in the hyper-real. We are networkers and content creators and browsers and linkers and downloaders. So much of who I am is nothing more than bits and bytes stored in some repository somewhere that, if tomorrow the world were plunged into a new dark age, I would have lost something of my very identity.

This is a scary existence, when I pause to consider its implications. In some sense, fundamentalism is an understandable reaction - when everything seems so uncertain, so virtual, of what can I be sure? What can I trust; what can I find that will remain stable, the same tomorrow as it is today? There is something that is fearful at the heart of the fundamentalist impulse - a fear of losing oneself, of losing identity or purpose or the story that makes sense of one's existence. And, to mirror Caputo's reflection on the religion of Star Wars: "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." Fundamentalism is built on an irony and a contradiction: the irony is that, while the conditions are more favorable towards religion in western societies than they have been in some time, this is itself a cause for concern for the fundamentalist. The contradiction is that fundamentalism has adapted itself well to this virtual world, indeed, has become dependent on it even as it finds in it much to fear. For where would fundamentalism be without the technology that enables its message to be spread?

"The situation is quite impossible. Religious people are the people of the impossible, God love them, and impossible people, God help us. Both these things under the same roof, both in the name of God. Like anything else that is worth its salt, religion is at odds with itself, and our job is not to sweep that tension under the rug but to keep it out in the open and allow this tension to be productive." (p. 94)

If the failure of fundamentalism is in sweeping this tension under the rug, then a successful theology, a successful approach towards religion, will be one that can live within this tension honestly and humbly.

Comments

[Tim McGee]

To play the critic yet again:

One wonders whether this focus and fascination with fundamentalism is another example of a familiar pattern, call it a "dialectical construction of idenity." In sum, it is the necessity of opposing an outside "other" in order to articulate / construct one's own self-identity.

This dialetics of identity (focusing on fundamentalism) merges with another problem: the problem of particularity. Fundamentalism is, on Caputo's terms, the attempt to remove the disturbing unknowability of a transcendent God by bringing this God down to the level of particulars: particular doctrines, objects, liturgies, etc. Besides being another example of his return to Kant, Caputo's attempt to preserve God's transcedence creates two other problems (also observable in Kant):

1) it completely undermines the story of Israel and Christ's place within that story. Caputo's understanding of religion cannot accept Israel's identity as a people formed in response to God's particular election, and hence it also cannot make space for (and is inhospitable to) the Incarnation. Thus, instead of being a hospitible "neutral" ground, Caputo's "religion" is hostile to orthodox Christian and Jewish self-identity.

2) it masks the way western / white culture becomes the concrete particular capable of bearing the universal. The transcendent God--God beyond religion--is accessible to all people only if these people are capable of finding their place in Caputo's western, postmodern story, a story about the failed expansion of white culture and the creation of a new tactic to continue it. I spoke about this some in my response to the summary of chapter 5, but let me explain a bit more.

Caputo's project is the attempt to re-articulate a quasi-religious identity in the wake of the rise and collapse of modernity. If modernity was essentially the task of articulating, defending, and spreading a peculiar view of western european self-identity, then Caputo's project might be read as the attempt to map out this failure (the end of modernity) and provide a response. Unfortunately, Caputo remains embedded within this story, and continues to read this story as THE human story. Caputo's descriptive response to this particular story is given as a universal call to all peoples. Those who refuse to find their place within Caputo's destabilized post-modern white world are fundamentalists, a term implying a failure to appreciate and live within THE human condition. Thus, his story of the rise and fall of a modern construal of (white) idenity is spoken as if it were THE story of humanity (a universal story). His response to this story, which undoubtedly is an attempt to move away from the colonialist expansion of whiteness, nevertheless remains stuck within that story: it still keeps a particular construction of human identity (whiteness) as THE essence of humanity. Thus, only those who can find their place within the story of whiteness can live authentic religious lives. In short, one must convert out of one's particular historical dogmatic exclusivist religion and be baptized into the epistemic uncertainty that characterizes the postmodern retreival of the Kantian white world; one must do this in order to live an authentic human life.

As I have said, these are my reactions and fears, and I am hoping someone with better knowledge of Caputo will help clarify how I am mistaken, but the sheer weight of these fears forces me to bring these concerns to light.

[Tim McGee]

To make some of my abstract comments a bit more concrete, let me modify a few points.

Caputo's rhetoric against fundamentalism is in hopes of securing a peaceful co-existence. He takes epistemic uncertainty coupled with passion as the way to produce harmony (remember his vision of us all holding hands in our uncertainty over who we are--chapter 1). Unfortunately, this program for peace is not as neutral and hospitible as Caputo imagines. As I said, Israel's self-identity is one that must be abandoned and reconfigured in order to enter Caputo's world. This is enough to show that Caputo's position is neither universal nor neutral. It makes the universal claim that particularized identies must be shed so we can all unite around one single identity (those who know that our identity comes from not knowing who we are). This one single identity is, once again, not an abstract universal, but is in fact quite concrete and particular. It is particular to a certain segment of the western world, and something I dubbed "whiteness." By "whiteness" I mean to suggest that it is connected to--a restatement of--the way in which identity was conceived and bodies organized in modernity. It advocates the security of a western form of life by advancing and spreading this very form of life (as if this form of life were THE authentic way for humans to live).

I imagine that it is at this last point where people feel I went to far. I might have--I am reading Caputo's book to see. But let me justify it as a problem that we must investigate:

All ideas have impact; philosophy and theology are never just abstract discussions: they always construct identies and order bodies. Caputo's work tries to justify a particular form of identity, and we must interrogate it concretely, to see whose identity is being justified, what ordering of bodies is being produced, and who is excluded, or at what cost to themselves are invited in. Since racism is embedded within the very core of modernity, any attempt to move beyond modernity that fails to concretely address the problem of race is quite likely to redeploy the modern ordering of bodies and identity. Caputo's work seems to offer very little help at overcoming the problem of race, and thus I suspect it continues working within this problem (whiteness becomes reconfigured, masked, and yet redeployed).

I was hoping that my comments--even if a bit hasty and clumsy--would start some conversation.

[Jason Hesiak]

Tim...I'm with you about philosophy's relationship to bodies. I just don't know about the particularity of race. I suppose it comes with the territory...which is why I'm drawn to the ideas that you present here. I just haven't looked into it enough. Living in L.A., too...I am especially drawn to your ideas. Anyone seen the film "Crash"? Typically folk who don't live in L.A. aren't as easily swayed by the power of that film, from what I've noticed.

[ScottB]

Tim - I've been mulling your comment over for a few days wanting to give an appropriate response. I was also looking for something I read recently that discussed how Caputo's aim is, in a sense, to continue modernity's project but in nonfoundationalist terms - I remember thinking the observation interesting but I can't find it. (If someone links to an article on this site now, I'm going to be embarrassed...)

At any rate, I'm not certain that Caputo's quibble with fundamentalism is exactly as you've stated. I think it's less a concern with an attempt to articulate particulars, and more with the attempt to place such particulars beyond the reach of further questioning. A minor point but one that I think frames the discussion differently. I agree in large part with your critique in how Caputo addresses those particulars - the effect becomes, I think, the sort of quasi-religious impulse that you mention. I think he gives away too much - but I find much that I can also appreciate.

I'm still considering your other thoughts - I initially didn't agree with your critique that he's essentially arguing for a universal human condition, but I can see your point. Now I'm undecided. I'm not certain I'd frame it in terms of race, however, but I'd like to hear more on that.

[Tim McGee]

Thanks for your responses; I'll respond briefly to both of you (I have to go!).

Jason,
Thanks for the honesty. I would encourage you to start delving into the issues of race, especially if you are working through some of the issues surrounding (post) modernity. Black theology is not an irrelevant project to the white church. Far from it. My response to Scott will explain a bit more.

Scott,
I think Caputo does in fact (at least in On Religion) make universal claims about many things, particularly human nature (we are those who don't know).

The problem with carrying on modernity's project is that the modern project had much more about it than just epistemology: it's about justifying and spreading a certain form of the (global) nation, and securing peace for this form of life (Kant's anthropological, political, and religious writings testify to this). Race as a category develops within this project, as a way of justifying this project, and thus, to continue the project without addressing the racist underpinnings of it, it is to fall prey to redescribing and redeploying the racist structures. Thus, race is at the very heart of modernity (Foucault sees this in his Society Must Be Defended).

Sorry to be so brief. I can most more later if it will help.

[Jason Hesiak]

So Tim,

Just to be clear...Kant was basically a Nazi? OK, that was a bit extreme...but...? Because that would kinda' change the picture, in my mind. I definitely know more about the epistemology...and much less about the other stuff. Some about the political and some about the religious stuff. But race...?

Speaking, however of "securing peace for this form of life"...at the time I felt like I was the only one who caught the phrase "they will not and cannot take our freedom and a way of life" in Bush's justification for our current war way back when it first started, or even before that...maybe like RIGHT after 9/11...in some big speech he gave..one of them that I acutally decided to pay attention to and not get too pissed off.

Jason

[Tim McGee]

Kant developed a very clear--and very racist--anthropology, and is in fact one of the thinkers who really gave structure to racialized ways of viewing the world (as I mentioned in another post, one sees Hegel continuing this, as well as Heidegger). But even outside of his lectures and writings specifically on anthropology, one can find it in works like "What is Enlightenment?" where the Germans are the ones who are able to usher in Enlightenment (which is the goal and task of human life).

The remark about Nazism, even though meant to be tongue-in-cheek, is actually significant. For both Kant and Caputo, there is something amiss about Jewish self-identity, something that excludes them from participating in the Enlightenment project (unless they allow the Enlightenment to mediate their identity and view themselves not as God's chosen people but as a....racial group).

Your point on Bush is to the point--unfortunately, one sees this concern haunting Caputo's text as well (the whole last two chapters continual refer to the problem of "religious violence" and "extremism" that threaten to harm our [whose?] peace).

[Jason Hesiak]

Thanks Tim. That's definitely interesting. I look foward to following the rest of the chapter reviews, then...

[Tim McGee]

Actually, I suspect there won't be anymore reviews (there are only five chapters). However, I am more than willing to continue this discussion, and I hope others will join in.

[Jason Hesiak]

No more chapters. Interesting. Well...anyway...I'll just continue with what I was going to say then:

Seems like every time I go to lunch and read Marshall McLuhan lately, I read something relevant to the current or semi-current topic at hand on this blog:

"These issues were all raised at the First Council in the quarrel between Paul and Peter. Paul was a cultivated Greco-Roman who wanted Christianity for the whole world. Peter thought that it had to be filtered through Judaic culture in order to be valid. Today all these ancient issues are alive again. One of the amazing things about electric technology is that it retrieves the most primal, the most ancient forms of awareness as contemporary. There is no more 'past' under electric culture: every 'past' is now. And there is no future: it is already here. You cannot any longer speak geographically or ideologically in one simple time or place. Now, today, we are dealing with universal forms of experience. So the fact that Christianity began in Greco-Roman culture really is of enormous significance. I don’t think theologians have especially heeded this matter.

The effect of TV on the young today is to scrub their private identities. The problem of private identity vs. tribal involvement has become one of the crosses of our time. It was the big clash between Peter and Paul; I don’t think it was ever more alive as a problem than right now.”

The Medium and Light, p. 80, 81.

[Jason Hesiak]

I had another thought about the whole race and universal Thing-bob issue this morning. Geoff a while ago did a post on Caputo and "symbolic exchange" of identity. I thoroughly enjoyed the post, as well as the ideas presented. It seemed to present a fairly contextualized version of truth, self, being, whatever. What I liked about it was that it presented a "decentered" self. In hindsight, with this race issue in mind...this notion of "symbolic exchange" could easily play into a projection of white values, life and metaphysics onto the rest of the globe.

[ScottB]

Tim - are you using race as synonymous with ethnicity or cultural identity? Perhaps that's where I'm not tracking. When I read talk of "white" identity and values, it seems to obscure the issue as it's too general to be a descriptive category. There are many ethnic or cultural groups with their own distinctive identities that could be thought of as "white". Just trying to clarify.

[Tim McGee]

Scott,
You are right: race is a really broad, and really slippery term, especially since it is a social construct and so it can alter its meaning and still maintain its "currency" as a descriptive term. What I am trying to draw out is that modernity was a way of organizing the social body--a politics--and this politics was articulated and structured within racist ideology: racial thinking was central to the rise of the modern nation. Thus, "the dark side" of western expansion (colonialism, slavery, etc) was actually the revelation of the internal structures of this new way of life. Hence, when people try to move beyond the modern project and reject the colonialist fantasies of domination, they must find ways to explicity address, challenge, and move beyond modernity's internal racist logic. If they fail to do so--and this is what I was saying happens with Caputo--whiteness (as the term identifying both the ones that benefit from this politics as well as naming the politics) gets reinstated: it still functions as the universal horizon that all humanity stretches out towards, and the path towards this goal is still through the western nations. But with a difference. Now, instead of being hostile to other "races," whiteness has morphed so as to allow the other races to join in: at heart, everyone is white (or capable of becoming white). That is what multiculturalism does--relativize cultural differences (through a discourse of "appreciating the differences") so that we can show, at heart, everyone is already part of, or capable of joining, our western project.

I'm not sure if that helps--part of the problem is that I am still trying to figure all of this out.

[Tim McGee]

Jason,
I just read the quote about Caputo continuing modernity by other means: it's from his short book, Philosophy and Theology.

I didn't read Geoff's post, but I do think this issue of race (and whiteness as the masked universal) shows up more frequently than alot of people realize.