I do not enjoy Facebook — I find it cloying and impossible — but I am there every day. Last year I watched a friend struggle through breast cancer treatment in front of hundreds of friends. She broadcast her news with caution, training her crowd in how to react: no drama, please; good vibes; videos with puppies or kittens welcomed. I watched two men grieve for lost children — one man I've only met online, whose daughter choked to death; one an old friend, whose infant son and daughter, and his wife and mother-in-law, died in an auto accident.

I watched in real time as these people reconstructed themselves in the wake of events — altering their avatars, committing to new causes, liking and linking, boiling over in anger at dumb comments, eventually posting jokes again, or uploading new photos. Learning to take the measure of the world with new eyes. No other medium has shown me this in the same way. Even the most personal literary memoir has more distance, more compression, than these status updates.

via NYMag.

Thought-provoking read.

Terry Eagleton, reviewing "The Joy of Secularism", George Levine (ed.):

Societies become truly secular not when they dispense with religion but when they are no longer greatly agitated by it. It is when religious faith ceases to be a vital part of the public sphere, not just when church attendance drops or Roman Catholics mysteriously become childless, that secularisation proper sets in. Like art and sexuality, religion is taken out of public ownership and gradually privatised. It dwindles to a kind of personal pastime, like breeding gerbils or collecting porcelain. As the cynic remarked, it is when religion starts to interfere with your everyday life that it is time to give it up. In this respect, it has a curious affinity with alcohol: it, too, can drive you mad.

Most recent defences of secularism, not least those produced by "Ditchkins" (Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens), have been irate, polemical affairs, powered by a crude species of off-the-peg, reach-me-down Enlightenment. It is scarcely a caricature of Dawkins's work to suggest we are all getting nicer and nicer and that if it wasn't for religious illusion, we would collectively outdo Kenneth Clark in sheer civility. (I refer to the deceased patrician art critic, not the living, beer-bellied politician.) One might call it the view from north Oxford.

This present collection of essays, by contrast, is a much less fiercely contentious affair. Here, there is no callow and triumphalist rationalism, which in any case is simply the flip side of evangelical fervour. Indeed, the blandness of some of the book's contributions could benefit from a judicious dose of Hitchens-like was­pishness. In customary American style, the editor, George Levine, couches his acknowledgements in a language soggy with superlatives and sentimental clichés. One can already hear the sound of the Hitch sharpening his darkly satirical daggers.

Not many of the contributors seem aware of the copious body of literature about secularisation, which ponders, among other things, the question of whether it actually happened.

After all, eroding the distinction between sacred and secular can be traced back to the Christian gospel. Salvation is a matter of feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, not in the first place a question of cult and ritual. There will be no temple in the New Jerusalem, we are told, as all that religious paraphernalia is finally washed up and superannuated.

via New Statesman.

Secularisation is a lot harder than people tend to imagine. The history of modernity is, among other things, the history of substitutes for God. Art, culture, nation, Geist, humanity, society: all these, along with a clutch of other hopeful aspirants, have been tried from time to time. The most successful candidate currently on offer is sport, which, short of providing funeral rites for its spectators, fulfils almost every religious function in the book.

Finally,

No sooner had the postmodernists and end-of-history merchants concluded that faith was as antiquated as the typewriter than it broke out in blind fury where it had been least expected - in the wrathful, humiliated world of radical Islam. The globe was now divided down the middle between those who believed too much and those who believed too little, as dark-skinned fundamentalists confronted lightly tanned CEOs. And if that were not irony enough, the fact is that these two camps are not simply antagonists. They are also sides of the same coin.

Brilliant. Lucid & clear-headed stuff.

Barth, CD I/2, p.693:

All other forms of Church government are, therefore, false. In some cases the rule of Jesus Christ may assume merely the role of a decorative flower of speech, while in truth real control is exercised by the spurious, horizonless faith of men joined together in the Church. Or in other cases the rule of Jesus Christ may be seriously acknowledged in form, but it is represented as a direct leadership of the Spirit, and it is only a secondary question whether the point at which the leadership of the Spirit touches and seizes the Church is supposed to be an infallible Pope or Council, or the office of an authoritarian bishop, or that of an hypostatised pastor, or a free leadership or inspired individuals in the community, or finally the whole community as such. The false thing in all these types of Church government is the ambiguity with which the rule of Jesus Christ is (perhaps very seriously) asserted, but Scripture is ignored as though it were not the normative form of this government for this intervening period. If we speak of a purely heavenly lordship of Jesus Christ, and then of one of these earthly manifestations of His sovereignty, we may speak "enthusiastically," but in the last resort we are still speaking of the autonomy of human faith, and therefore not of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Barth, CD I/2, p.691:

From a human standpoint the preservation of the Church depends, therefore, on the fact that Scripture is read, assimilated, expounded and applied in the Church, that this happens tirelessly and repeatedly, that the whole way of the Church consists in its striving to hear this concrete witness. As a rule the step aside which means a step into the abyss of death, the fatal lack of this self-forgetful attention, will scarcely betray itself as such at once. It will normally take the form of great fidelity (to what the Church has said) and great zeal (for what the Church believes that it must itself say). In this way it will apparently bear the seal of divine justification and necessity. Whenever life is exchanged for death, or death for life, in the Church, this fidelity and zeal are usually operative: much good will, much serious piety, wide vision, deep movements, and in it all the sincere conviction of not being in any way self-willed but rather obedient to the Word of God. What is not noted is that this so-called Word of God is only a conception of the Word of God. It may be created freely. More probably and frequently it will take the shape of an old (no longer newly tested), or new (not yet seriously examined) interpretation of Scripture itself, but not the Word of God as it actually lets itself be heard in Scripture. As such, conceptions of the Word of God may be very good, as also, for example, recognised dogmas and confessions, luminous and helpful theological systems, deep, bold and stimulating insights into biblical truth. But in themselves these things are not the Word of God itself and cannot sustain the life of the Church.

So much wisdom here. Barth asserts that it's not passion, faithfulness and zeal - nor vision, creativity and enthusiasm - that breathe life into the Church. What is so needed is the Word of God "read, assimilated, expounded and applied... tirelessly and repeatedly".

1 Peter 1: 22-25 (ESV)

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

"All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever."

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

Barth, CD I/2, p. 644-646:

If a confession is to stand, everything depends on whether the temptation produced by this counter-pressure (indirectly therefore by its own pressure) is recognised and overcome as such. The temptation naturally consists in the possibility of abandoning the confession. And the basic form of this abandonment is always to deny to ourselves and others the character of the confession as a challenge, question and attack on the world around. Its proclamation is renounced. It is regarded once again only as a theory and collection of propositions. With all the loyalty we might still show it in this immanent character, with all our zeal for the integrity of the theory and statements as such, there is now linked another zeal, to spare our environment the collision on the transcendent character of the confession. And it is this second zeal which - although the confession remains "untouched" - now determines our practical attitude in word and action, in our own initiative and our response to the initiative of our environment. In this practical relationship the confessors no longer stand where they must stand if it really were their confession, that is, in the venture and responsibility of its transcendent character.

Seriously feisty stuff.

Now that they have experienced what it means for its pressure to create counter-pressure, they no longer desire publicity. But this simply means that the confessors have in fact accepted the standpoint of the enemies of the confession. Confession without the desire for publicity, confession without the practical attitude which corresponds to it, is already a confutation of the confession, however "untouched" this may be as a theory and statement, however great may still be their zeal for the maintaining of its immanent character. For what is the meaning and purpose of the hostility and conflict in relation to the confession? As a theory and statement it will not have to suffer attack, whatever may be its content and however definitely it may be maintained and affirmed. As a theory it does not exert any pressure. As a theory it is quite harmless, indeed it is comforting even to those who do not agree with it... But the confession itself has become so much paper. That it is not is the basis of all hostility to the confession, and that it should be is the purpose of the whole attack upon it. We help this attack, we participate most actively in it, when we think that we can retreat in this way. That there is no venture for the confessors means that there is a venture - on the part of the confessors - against the confession. It involves treachery against the confession - pure treachery... It is a great gain, therefore, if this... is soberly recognised for the treachery it is: not merely as surrender, but as agreement and co-operation with the enemy. It is a great gain if to justify it we no longer appeal to humility before the mysteries of God, to which no confession can do justice, or to the love with which we have to spare and carry the weak, or the necessary maintenance of the Church in its existing state, but openly and honestly - and this makes everything else superfluous - to fear of the unexpected or already present counter-pressure. This fear is in fact the temptation which is inevitably bound up with the publicity of a confession.

In essence, Barth distinguishes theological conversation from theological confession, and argues with passion that to reduce a confession to a conversation is theological treachery and results in a confutation of the confession.

I must confess I cannot agree, but would have truly enjoyed a conversation with him on the distinction. I believe that reducing a confession to a conversation might well result in a subsequent confession involving both confessor and opposer in genuine agreement, strengthened further from its original version to include the wisdom that results from honest conversation. Strengthened, not weakened, mind you. I'm not advocating for thin ecumenical gruel masquerading as true confessional substance.

The intensity he calls for in confession is clearly necessary at certain points of our faith, but it's become far too common to make that intensity the norm for all theological debate (and of course, in reaction, to reject that intensity from any theological debate). There are far too many of us declaring "Here I stand, I can do no other" on all sorts of issues that don't matter as much as we imply, or that we really don't understand, or concerning which we haven't really listened to other perspectives. And there are far too many of us staying out of all-in confessional declarations on matters that count, after the respectful and humble listening that Barth advocates.

It seems to me that eventually and at certain points a Barthian confession is absolutely necessary, but provoking hostility with outrageous words ("Farewell...") to self-justify one's position seems silly, and we've seen far too much of that lately.

A beautiful & brilliant account of why & how to confess our faith in public, with confidence & humility. Barth, CD I/2, p.588-589:

...the Church is constituted as the Church by a common hearing and receiving of the Word of God... The life of the Church is the life of the members of a body. Where there is any attempt to break loose from the community of hearing and receiving necessarily involved, any attempt to hear and receive the Word of God in isolation - even the Word of God in the form of Holy Scripture - there is no Church, and no real hearing and receiving of the Word of God; for the Word of God is not spoken to individuals, but to the Church of God and to individuals only in the Church. The Word of God itself, therefore, demands this community of hearing and receiving. Those who really hear and receive it do so in this community. They would not hear and receive it if they tried to withdraw from this community.

But this common action is made concrete in the Church's confession. We will take the concept first in its most general sense. Confession in the most general sense is the accounting and responding which in the Church we owe one another and have to receive from one another in relation to the hearing and receiving of the Word of God. Confessing is the confirmation of that common action. I have not heard and received alone and for myself, but as a member of the one body of the Church. In confessing, I make known in the Church the faith I have received by and from the Word of God. I declare that my faith cannot be kept to myself as though it were a private matter. I acknowledge the general and public character of my faith by laying it before the generality, the public of the Church. I do not do this to force it on the Church in the peculiar form in which I necessarily hold it, as though I were presuming either to want or be able to rule in the Church with my faith as it is mine. On the contrary, I do it to submit it to the verdict of the Church, to enter into debate with the rest of the Church about the common faith of the Church, a debate in which I may have to be guided, or even opposed and certainly corrected, i.e., an open debate in which I do not set my word on the same footing as the Word of God, but regard it as a question for general consideration according to the Word of God commonly given to the Church. But because my confession is limited in this way, I cannot refrain from confessing, I cannot bury my talent. Irrespective of what may come of it or whether it may be shown that I have received ten talents or only one - I owe it to the Church not to withhold from it my faith, which can be a true faith only in community with its own, just as conversely it cannot be too small a thing for the Church, in order to assure itself afresh of a true faith in the community of faith, in order not to miss anything in its encounter with the Word of God, to take account even of my confession of faith and to enter into a debate which is open on its side as well.

But it is obvious that before I myself make a confession I must myself have heard the confession of the Church, i.e., the confession of the rest of the Church. In my hearing and receiving of the Word of God I cannot separate myself from the Church to which it is addressed. I cannot thrust myself into the debate about a right faith which goes on in the Church without first having listened... If my confession is to have weight in the Church, it must first be weighted with the fact that I have heard the church. If I have not heard the Church, I cannot speak to it... If I am to confess my faith generally with the whole Church and in that confession be certain that my faith is the right faith, then I must begin with the community of faith and therefore hear the Church's confession of faith as it comes to me from other members of the Church. And for that very reason I recognise an authority, a superiority in the Church: namely, that the confession of others who were before me in the Church and are beside me in the Church is superior to my confession if this really is an accounting and responding in relation to my hearing and receiving.

Barth, CD 1/2 p.278

But where the Word of God is master by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there enters in an interest or concern which does not allow any rivals, for the simple reason that in the Word of God it is always a matter of our own interest and concern. But it is our own interest and concern not as seen from our standpoint, but as seen from the opposite but beneficent standpoint of the wisdom of God, as judged by the righteousness of God, as adopted by the goodness of God.  That is the work of God: the work of God upon us: for us and therefore against us: the work of the kindness which we cannot grasp, which we have outraged, which does good to us, as to those who always do evil.  Where it is heard as such, there is still an active will to assert and help ourselves, to maintain and justify and advertise ourselves, but it has been fundamentally broken and its vital power destroyed... If that means humiliation, it also means comfort. If it means Law, it also means Gospel.  It is a great affliction when our right to have our own desires and to pursue them is so radically questioned and finally taken away. But, of course, it is an even greater help, when the common necessity of worrying about our own situation is so radically relativised and in fact basically set aside.

"For us, and therefore against us" - so much wisdom in six words.