Zizek and Evangelicals in America: A Proposal, by David Fitch

I have been working on a book project entitled These Kinds of People: Evangelical Fundamentalism and the Moral Life. The book starts off by noticing the bad public image evangelicals have acquired in recent years via the explosion of negative literature and mass media aimed squarely at the evangelical right. This image often displays evangelical Christians as arrogant, coercive and violent in regards to politics, strangely dispassionate towards social justice, and morally duplicitous in our personal lives. Since I am doing theology from within an evangelical context, and I write as an evangelical, I am concerned to say the least. In the book, I ask whether we evangelicals are these people we are accused of being. I seek to examine whether our doctrine and church practice gives us reason to believe we indeed produce this kind of character in our people. The book combines a broad analysis of culture with theological methods informed by the theology of character and virtue (as developed by Hauerwas and friends). The book aims to push evangelicals towards reform in becoming a people worthy of the label "disciples of Christ."

One of the riskier moves in the book is to propose four public figures as symbols of who evangelicals have become in the American culture of the first decade (early part of the decade) of the new millennium. They are George Bush, Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay of WorldCom/Enron debacles (both evangelical Sunday School teachers), and Jessica Simpson, daughter of an evangelical youth pastor. Admittedly there are a host of objections with these choices, which I hopefully engage in the setting forth of this thesis (so please don’t hammer me on this at least for right now). I also outline several ways these four figures can function as sites for cultural analysis of evangelicals and their place in America. One of the ways I examine these figures in culture is as symptoms of what drives evangelicalism itself. Here, I use "symptom" in a way influenced by philosopher/cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek. I offer the following take on Zizek’s symptom and how it might be applied to understand the place evangelicals find themselves in within American culture today.

For Zizek a "symptom" goes beyond the popular psychological notion of an external sign which points to a disturbance below the surface of one’s psyche. For Zizek, a Symptom (I’ll now capitalize symptom whenever I am using it in terms of Zizek’s theory) can work within a culture to expose an unfulfilled drive, the unspoken void around which that culture (its Symbolic order or even ideology) has been formed. An image, an explosion of media activity surrounding an event, a popular movie, a flurry of publishing can expose something hidden and unspoken that drives a culture’s meaning system. What we see and hear on the surface may be compensations for what the culture itself lacks at its core. The good news here is that exposing these kinds of Zizekian symptoms in cultures like America and/or evangelicalism opens them up for change and transformation.

For Zizek, cultural symbolic orders exist to advocate certain purposes and legitimizations for being. They are in one sense ideologies. These meaning systems "mask the Real of" an absense which no one wants to face up to (Sublime Object p. 45). For instance, the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing and invasion of Iraq in order to "bring democracy and freedom to Iraq," might mask the fear of the U.S.: that if it really does allow every one to be free, it will not have enough oil. The irruption of the bombing "in order to bring freedom" reveals how little we do believe in freedom. And so every cultural system (the Symbolic Order) is prone to "irruptions of the Real" which reflect back to its participants the Real that is hidden within the ongoing system of meaning. These irruptions are cultural events that will not fit within the current explanation of things. These irruptions are cultural symptoms of something much deeper being exposed.

I propose, following Zizek, that Bush, Ebbers/Lay and Jessica are all symptoms of an evangelicalism that will not fit neatly within its system yet exposes something much deeper about ourselves as evangelicals. I suggest that indeed these figures may be irruptions which we should pay attention to because they expose the lack behind our own beliefs and practices as evangelical Christians. Some might see Bush, or Ebbers/Lay and especially Jessica Simpson as exceptions to evangelicalism. In other words, these figures are not symptoms of anything evangelical, they are merely tragic examples of those who failed at being good evangelical Christians (i.e. backsliders). Zizek’s approach to the Symptom in culture cautions us against the easy answer that labels these people as backsliders, failed evangelical Christians. Instead Zizek implores us to see these figures as not just exceptions to the rule that need to be dealt with according to the existing system of meaning (bring them to repentance and reconciliation within the evangelical church). Rather these are irruptions within the evangelical order that reveal the lack which drives the system’s existence in the first place (on this see The Plague of the Fantasies, p.127). In other words, Bush, Ebbers/Lay and Jessica Simpson are symptoms of something deeply lacking in our evangelical way of life, our culture of what we believe and how we practice it.

To give another example of how a cultural Symptom works for Zizek, a cultural Symptom is something like the homeless populations amidst capitalist societies. The homeless reveal the immanent logic of how the politic of capitalism works, the underbelly which drives it (see here again Plague of Fantasies , p.127). Capitalist ideology may say that its goal is to rid humanity of all poverty and scarcity of resources as evidenced in this homeless person in the street. According to capitalism, this homeless person just needs more capitalism and then he/she wouldn’t be homeless. Zizek however would suggest that the homeless person reveals the true drive behind capitalism, the way it plays upon the fear of poverty and the fear that we all might become this homeless person if we don’t work harder. Zizek would see the homeless person as a part of the immanent logic of capitalism, the way capitalism works. He sees in the homeless person a Symptom of capitalism as an exploitive system that could not exist without him or her (the homeless person). In fact, capitalism needs the poor to justify its existence. Without scarcity and the fear of poverty, the struggle for more wealth inherent in the system would die. The homeless man therefore is a Symptom that points to the Real beneath the system of capitalism.

I contend in a similar way that Bush, Ebbers/Lay and Simpson are symptoms which reveal the underlying logic that drives evangelicalism. They represent what evangelicals fear yet what we have become. They reveal the lack within that drives us to be the kinds of persons we have become. Each one of these figures irrupts onto the stage of American culture and evangelicals react. Sometimes evangelicals embrace them to the point of supporting them with a national uprising (as in George Bush), sometimes they support them via their local church (Ebbers/Lay) and then sometimes evangelicals distance themselves claiming they have been unfaithful to their cause (Jessica Simpson). But in each case, there is a struggle to make sense of each figure as an evangelical Christian. Yet they cannot finally be assimilated. In this very moment, I contend, Bush, Ebbers/Lay and Simpson represent an irruption revealing "what we are not" despite what we claim to be.

For Zizek, it is exactly at the point when the irruption of the Real happens, when the Symptom cannot be assimilated by the given Symbolic order that a "surplus" appears. As a way of explaining "surplus," think of how many of us evangelical fundamentalists have been told not to drink, smoke or have premarital sex. These are the famous "holiness codes" of the Southern Baptists and holiness denominations. This is part of the symbolic order of our evangelical culture. We notice however that obesity abounds everywhere in the most heinous of ways, especially among our pastors. Yet evangelical officials remain strangely silent about it while they tell us not to drink or smoke. We cannot explain how the fundamentalist pastor who tells us not to drink or smoke is terribly obese in the terms we are given by the "holiness codes." We must instead ignore it or look the other way. Yet it is in the manfestation of this surplus that the lack in the System is revealed. The holiness codes simply do not address our appetites! There is a surplus uncontained by the holiness codes! The obese fundamentalist pastor is an irruption of the Symptom!

How do we explain the symbol of the obese Southern Baptist preacher? Zizek advocates that the surplus that cannot be contained by the symbolic order has to be displaced (in Freudian-Lacanian terms) towards another object and in so doing this object (object petit a) reveals the truth of the Real behind the drive. It is in this manifestation of the surplus that the lack in the System is revealed. The surplus which the symbolic system (holiness codes) could not contain irrupts in the over enjoyment (jousiannce in Lacan’s terms) of food by the Southern Baptists. In so doing, the irruption and the fixation on the object reveals the lack which lies at the heart of the person formed out of this culture. What does the obese pastor reveal about the truth of our lives together in evangelical orthodoxy? Is it that we really do prefer alcohol and tobacco to Jesus? Is it that the Christian life is really plain unattractive when put next to the attractions of American hedonism? Is then Jerry Falwell’s obesity the Symptom of what is missing in the authoritarian rules concerning abstinence of alcohol, tobacco, dancing and movies for all Southern Baptist clergy and students who go to Falwell’s Liberty University.

In the same way, I want to consider how the figures of Bush, Ebbers/Lay and Jessica, and the events surrounding their lives, are symptoms irrupting that reveal the lack within our evangelical belief and practice. I will consider a.) the moment of satisfaction (jousiannce) for Bush aboard the USS Lincoln in 2003 announcing "Mission Accomplished!" in the execution of the war in Iraq, b.) the self righteous acclaim to capitalist success according to all the rules for Ebbers and Lay, and the delight Jessica shows in her own sexualization in the media as "acts" (in Zizekian terms) which reveal the lack behind what drives the Symbolic Order that is evangelicalism. In so doing the characters of these figures is revealed. In so doing, the true and tragic "subjectivities" are revealed that have been formed in some way from evangelical doctrine and practice. Something very Real is exposed about their character as evangelicals in their respective failures and the extreme justifications mounted around them in the media. They become more than personal biographies. They become symbols of the kinds of people evangelicals have become in American culture. And with this cultural material, we can ask if evangelical doctrine and practice has anything to do with these kinds of people? Is this what evangelical doctrine and practice produces? are we these kinds of people?

More to come in the coming months.

Comments

[Jason Hesiak]

Good post. But...uummm...I don't think most of us are as pretty as Ms. Jessica. Although I have been called "pretty boy", I'm fairly certain (philosophically) that the description is more deserved when given to Jessica.
:)

And more seriously...like I said, I like the post. But...which text forms how we think of Jessica, Bush and Lay (or evangelical culture in general)? The holy one or Zizek's? I propose, following Zizek, that... More liberalism? That's probably too easy of a target with too easy of an answer. But then again...I mean...I don't think we necessarily would have to disagree with the post in order for not be engaging in more protestant liberalism...but which words do we choose to speak into the world? Whose "logos" are we "folowing after" (as Talmid's)? Is this a relevant or important question here??

Jason

[Trent]

The part of this post that continues to resonate with me is the part about how the holiness codes do not adequately deal with human appetite, and because of this the obedient pastor's appetite flairs up not in sex, at least not overtly, nor in alcoholism, but rather in gluttony.

Moving on though, I do agree that these personalities are part of the lens through which most of the world looks at evangelicals. I also agree that there is something about what we do as evangelicals that has allowed this to happen.

Just thinking out loud here, but I think that each one of these personalities may show our belief, which in my opinion cannot be supported in scripture, that evangelicalism must win. We must be right, and if God won't make victory happen, then "By God" we will make victory happen. It seems that each one of these may show our insecurity in our faith in some way. By that I mean that we show such exuberance for our faith, yet we are not completely prepared to let God be the God that we believe Him to be.

[Mike Knott]

Regarding Jerry Falwell's fatness: it may in fact be that our holiness codes do not deal adequately with our sensual appetites and I think there's something there.
And you're probably going to go deeper with this in the book than you can in a post, but isn't so much of our sensual appetites simply a desire by pastors to self-medicate? We're all stressed out because we're not surviving in the "culture of success" created by the emphasis on leadership we've bought into.
So many of us are trying to be what we are not, namely Leaders, as American corporate culture defines them, and it's killing us.
And we die twisted, gospel-less, graceless, self-medicated lives because we are not formed to find satisfaction in Christ, we are formed to find success in business models of church growth.
So we attempt to chocolate our pain and misery into submission (fried chicken in the case of the Baptist Preacher) instead of hearing what that pain has to say about the vacuousness of our faith.

Well, that's what I think anyway.

[kevin]

I like this idea a lot and I'd definitely read the book. As an aside, whenever someone mentions Jessica Simpson now I always think of Arcade Fire's "Antichrist Television Blues," a disturbing song originally titled "Joe Simpson" and basically written from his perspective.

[Tim McGee]

Interesting. Right now, I'm reading a small article by J. Kameron Carter, on evangelical theology and the black church. I'm curious if you plan to deal with the challenge that the black church brings (historically and presently) to white, american evangelicalism. I ask because all of the people are white (and three from the south), and yet you claim that they represent the lack in "our" evangelical beliefs and practices. I'm curious whether you think the black evangelical churches are included in the "lack" you identify, and, if not, whether you think the lack you identify has any connections at all to the history of the white, evangelical church (in relation to black bodies).

[Jason Hesiak]

for the record...the guy who calls me "pretty boy"...for an idea of who exactly it is who is calling me "pretty"...i call him "ghetto fabulous" :) but he's more gq than any of us...maybe even more pretty than jessica :) but he's not an evangelical, so its slightly irrelevant...

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Tim,
I think the question about black evangelicals is very important. I know that here in chicago, many black churches don't consider themselves 'evangelical' even though they hold identical beliefs as white churches (i.e. inerrancy, divinity of Jesus, imminent second coming, substitutionary atonement, etc.)

[Makeesha Fisher]

Tim - that *IS* a very good point.

A little off topic but can your recommend any progressive/emerging evangelical black authors (books or articles)? I'm currently very isolated in a very white world (my church experience and my locale - my town is almost 90% Caucasian)and wouldn't even know where to begin. (sadly)

And on topic, very thought provoking ideas David. I have an honest question for you - do you intentionally write for academics and theologians exclusively?

[Tim McGee]

Makeesha,
Your best bet is probably to start with some of the older texts, especially James Cone (God of the Oppressed is quite provocative). You could also try Cornel West's Prophecy Deliverance. I'm sure you can find some articles online by them.

J. Kameron Carter has a forthcoming book, but also has a couple articles online (Redeeming Whiteness is one, on findarticles.com). He wrote an essay specifically on race and the evangelical church for the Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology. There's also an article on Black Liberation Theology (by Edward Antonio) in the Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology.

[Makeesha Fisher]

thank you Tim :)

[David Fitch]

Tim, ,my experience too, is the black church rarely considers themselves "evangelical." Especially if the conversation is an in-house conversation. Teaching at a school that claims the label evangelical, and has over 40% African American students, the theological issues that are historically labeled evangelical (i.e.by Noll, Bebbington etc.) are not typically the same for the Black church. The evangelicals of USA that elected Geroge Bush etc are basically white.

This of course in itself is revealing, and I know it is being addressed. yet the trditional theoilogical concerns of the evangelical institutions hold very little currency in the Black church. And that says much about what evangelicalism has become.

I hope to speak to what makes evangelicalism a strangely white church that resists diversity even when translated into other ethnic groups.

As far as Black authors who speak to the emerging issues my first choice would be Cornel West ... I think he speaks to the cultural issues facing the Black church much better than Cone, who admittedly 35 years ago was speaking out a Tillichian framework ...

[Tim McGee]

I'm curious as to why you think the evangelical is so oddly white. (not a criticism, I just want to know what your take on it is).

It's your argument, so you can set the scope of the terms as wide (or narrow) as you think. The question of the rise of evangelicism in America (and putting that question in relation to the plight of black people in America) allows one to see whether what the white evangelical church has "become" is connected to its origins (and thus the present failures are examples of a much larger one).

Sidenote: it's funny that you highlighted Cone's Tillichian framework, for I suggested reading him and West together because West (I think) brings out (by contrast) the Barthian influence in Cone.

[Drew]

What is interesting here is the use of the term "surplus" for the way that it becomes instantiated (in the obese pastor discussing holiness codes that would forbid gluttony) in is a very visceral hypocrisy.

While we may spin the event in postmodern psychoanalytical language, what is clearly missing here is a more nuanced view of what is happening psychologically with the social effects of establishing social boundaries that condition those psychological events.

That is to say, the very codes that are used to distinguish the group that follows them are designed primarily for two reasons - separation of the group from wider social norms (hence the term holiness); and as a means of union with God. Without grasping something of the psycho-social complex here, the employment of surplus seems rather to dodge the analysis of what is really going on in terms of the group effect on the individual. For this we would do well to review studies of sectarian behavior to situate the analysis.

However, I do think the notion of Symptom is fructuous. To tease this out more I would recommend a broader analysis of evangelicalism's use of media to deliver the image for public consumption. In this way Zizek's concept begins to look strikingly more like Baudrillard's simulacrum.

The transmission of the Symbol and its consumption through the structure of capitalism and the flow of currency and goods does a few things of note: collapses (or Implodes) the Real (even the the very union with God) into a commodity and a related symbol of production; forms an irreducible matrix where the Symbol is simply representative of other symbols thus dissolving the Real; forming an image complex around what we speak of God so that that our very language of God is delimited by the symbolic structure of the Image which is less like the Symbol acting as Iconic of God and more then as an Idol.

Thus, it seems to me that when we employ Zizek's Symptom in this context we come out with a very nuanced understanding of how idolatry and hypocrisy are intimately related in a massive construction of the hyper-real driven by the production of capital. At least this is how I am reading your reading of Zizek in this context ;-)

...And I look forward to more!

[James K.A. Smith]

Just FYI, Zizek has a piece in the most recent issue of the London Review of Books, "Resistance is Surrender," at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/print/zize01_.html .

[James K.A. Smith]

Most interesting in the Zizek LRB piece is his critique of "resistance" movements that might sound alot like rather Yoderian or Ekklesia-Project-kinds of talk. Zizek suggests:

"The response of some critics on the postmodern Left to this predicament is to call for a new politics of resistance. Those who still insist on fighting state power, let alone seizing it, are accused of remaining stuck within the ‘old paradigm’: the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left."

He goes on to criticize Critchley, et. al.'s Levinasian politics of "infinite demand," as if hyperbole were somehow a stand-in for reflection. Zizek charges that "These words simply demonstrate that today’s liberal-democratic state and the dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’ anarchic politics exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism: anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the state does the work of running and regulating society. Critchley’s anarchic ethico-political agent acts like a superego, comfortably bombarding the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles."

I'm not saying Zizek is right; but it is the sort of critique that we (and by "we" I guess I mean those of us who are inclined to "alternative-polis"-talk) need to go _through_.

[len]

This is a fascinating turn of the dial for me.. after a lengthy conversation arguing that a pastor's moral failure was not really that at all but a symptom of something systemically wrong.. hmmm..

[paul]

Sounds like a very interesting read. I especially think it was a great choice to use Jessica Simpson:

http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2005/01/11/ashlee_simpsons_career_comes_courtesy_of_daddy_dearest?pg=full
http://whatwouldjb.blogspot.com/2006/04/open-letter-to-joe-simpson.html

[Jason Hesiak]

Hey D.F. - from what I can gather you are here basically saying that...Zizek says that...there is a fundamental lack at or near the core of evangelicaldom that actually is a kind of mover of the whole structure, order and set of activities of...evangelicadom. and that it somehow relates to the Simbolyk and stuff or something of the sort in ways that I'm not exactly following the historical nuances of how it is or is not related to Lacan, Freud, Derrida ect. But nonetheless, I have a question. I recently started reading Rene Girard's Violence and the Sacred, and something he said made me think of your post. Towards the beginning of the book, Girard is discussing sacrafice through the story of Cain and Abel. He says: Cain's 'jealousy' of his brother is only another term for his one characteristic trait: his lack of a sacraficial outlet. Now, obviously you and Zizek aren't talking about sacrafice, but you are talking about a lack that actually sort of dictates what happens in the world, much like how Girand here frames the story of Cain and Abel in relation religious sacrafice. So I have a question: would you say there is a connection between what you are saying in this post and Girand's body of thought? If so, what is it? I ask particularly because Girand locates the urge toward sacrafice in us humans...its not only an urge toward violence that needs a victim (or a Symbol or whatever), but it is an immanent event that needs a ritualistic/religious victim or outlet (which I guess could be thought of in terms of symbolism...although Girand warns against it in the first couple of pages...I'm not sure what all is going on there...I think he and Zizek mean "symbol" in a different way there...). And the reason I ask about this question of immanence...is because something like a question of where all these symbols and realities and (inter)mediatiations reside was bouncing around in my head when I first read your post...but it...lol...didn't really have an "outlet"...until I read Girard tonight...???

[Jason Hesiak]

Oh I forgot to note...after reading Girand and reflecting on your post...I came to the thoguht that...in Girard's framework, we might sort of be able to regard Simpson - and even Lay - as a kind of (sacred) victim!! Sort of pushed (or pulled by something partially in themselves) out there on the public altar as an outlet for some various. if we can't put ourselves out there on that altar of fame, then by golly we're going to identify with...whoever...IS up/"out" there. and who exactly they are will be determined...by golly...by US (not them). argh (that's the sound of an identity pirate celebrating a treasure find (with one blind eye, of course :)