I do believe you are asking the right questions--from the
belly of the postmodern Leviathan.
My sense is that "the war to
root out terrorism" is the last battle between the Modern (Fundamentalist
Islam) and the PM world, led, oddly, by the USA--oddly, because only recently America used to be a "Christian" nation. The invocations in the mass prayer services
were clearly: " Gods, bless America." We are now hedging our bets, as Israel was tempted to do, and are praying to all the gods,
for maximum protection—to the gods of Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed and Krishna--democracy oblige. For
ultimately, our help comes from the God, Demos. Being at war is,
nevertheless, an uncomfortable position for the USA and the West, because wars are definitely modern or
pre-modern phenomena.
For different reasons, this is becoming an
uncomfortable position for Christian orthodoxy. How do we navigate in
this most treacherous of mine-fields, with attacks external and internal, as
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson quickly
discovered? My prediction is that the
Western PM world will win, thanks to the massive fire-power of the U.S. arsenal, however much it is caught up in this
unfortunate inconsistency of having to divide the world into black and
white--though we are told, most appropriately for our PM times, that this will
not be a "conventional war." We must respond, and justice must
be done, but what then? The successful
end of the "war" will doubtless be the beginning of
planetary PM pagan syncretism (including the moderate Islamic world),
which may turn out to be one of the most difficult times for Christian
witness in the entire history of the Church.
Already Jerry Falwell is branded "the
American Taliban." I do not agree with his ill-placed and illegitimate
comments, but the treatment he got is more interesting, more prophetic, than
his ill-conceived remarks. We are now beginning to see how Tacitus
could describe the early Christians as "haters of
humanity." Though the most pacific of people, who prayed for the
emperor, Christians nevertheless disturbed the social/syncretistic peace
of the Empire, and thus "threatened" pagan humanity at its core. Do we face a future where anyone making truth
claims for a religious metanarrative will be
dismissed as talibanesque, and silenced--for the sake
of humanity, under the banner: "WTC
Terror: Never Again!"? What discourse must the Church adopt in the coming days which avoids both Interfaith syncretism and this
worldly fundamentalistic terror? Now is the time to think about the answer.
We heartily agree. Do any of you have
a response?
FROM THE FISH’S MOUTH
The fat hit the fan this past Monday (10/15/01)! Sooner or later PM like Stanley Fish had to
publicly defend himself. The venerable New
York Times provided the forum.
For readers that may not know, Stanley Fish is Dean at University
of Illinois
(formerly at Duke
U.),
and is a leading spokesperson for PM, and in particular, the deconstruction
movement in literature (for more info on deconstruction, see our briefing paper
#52). The big $64,000 question, as noted by Peter
Jones above, is: How in a PM world can we
go to war, or seek to even win such a war?
Who would risk death on the battlefield for something they believe is
merely an idea that is morally equivalent? The underlying premise has to be
that some ideas or cultures, i.e., civilizations, are better than others. So, Professor Fish, “Was the attack on
the WTC, where 6000 people lost their lives a bad thing?” Note the professor’s careful choice of
words: “Postmodernism maintains
only that there can be no independent
standard (mine) for determining which
of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one.”
Is this an absolute? If it is, I guess we shouldn’t believe him! He goes on:
“The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of
justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be
persuasive to everyone, including our enemies.
Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause
wouldn’t be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the
same language. …Instead, we can
and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the
institutions we cherish and wish
(emphasis ours) to defend.”
That’s about as close as he comes.
He wishes it hadn’t
happened. For Fish “there can be
no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of
an event is the true one.” This brings to mind Camus’
conundrum in his novel, The Plague. If there is no evil how can you fight against
it? Fish’s OpEd
article is entitled: Condemnation Without Absolutes
The terrorist attack, of course, was a great evil,
however, what is heartening is the intense national discussion that is
occurring about important issues. My
prayer is that Christians will contribute to this national debate. The Times published another provocative article
the day before the one by Fish. This one
will make those who claim Christ as Lord to become a little red of face. Some of what he says is true, but because we
believe as he charges, that there are two classes of people: Believers and Non-believers, we are no better
than Bin Laden. We can expect to be talibanized, however our
response is what’s important. We
do believe in a metanarrative; we can’t deny
it, but we have to respond as Peter instructs us: do this
with gentleness and respect keeping a clear conscience (IPet.
3:15,16). Tolerance must
be one of our greatest values, but this is a tolerance that does not admit to
relativism. It doesn’t mean we
accept all views; it means we respect those with whom we disagree, and we
readily defend their freedom to do so.
It’s important that when we engage PM in discussion that we
inquire what they mean by “intolerance.” True intolerance does not exist if God does
not exist. If there are no absolutes
then we must be firm and deny the relativists even this absolute of tolerance. Copan
writes: “If tolerance is a value, it isn’t obvious from nature; so
if there is no God and we are just hulks of protoplasmic guck, how could
tolerance be an objective value at all?” (“True
For You, But Not For Me”, p. 36). The article by Alan Wolfe is hot, by all
means read it! The God
of a Diverse People
Some other articles on the subject of relativism:
Cultural
Relativism Leaves Some Blind To Evil by John
Leo
Faced With Evil on a Grand Scale,
Nothing is Relative by William J. Bennett (Fee)
Revenge
and the Fruit of Multiculturalism by Tammy Bruce
Homeland
Insecurity by Carol Iannnone
To criticize diversity is risky because it
seems like you are abandoning the moral high ground. Christians should be interested in diversity
and the Body of Christ must have this characteristic. It is only when we abandon our
presuppositions that we face a moral and spiritual crisis. The Church, while a diverse body of
individuals is unified by a core of eternal verities. There are boundaries! Note what the author (Iannone)
says:
How did it happen? How did the United States of America, bastion
of exceptionalism, exempt from the curse of history,
blessedly free of atavistic hatreds of the old world—how did it become
the scene of one of the most hideously bedeviled conflicts of all time?
Quite simple, it happened because America lost its grasp of its own historic character, and
embraced “diversity” as a national goal. In the name of equality and nondiscrimination
we invited mass immigration from every part of the globe, and made not demands
on the newcomers to become American. In
fact, we declared all cultures equal. We
invited the new groups to celebrate themselves while we cravenly permitted
libelous denigration of our own past.
Like fools we prated that diversity is our strength, when common sense
and all history tell us that strength comes from unity.
Any civilization or sustaining culture must have a consensus about some
basic values or worldview. For almost
200 years this country had a consensus of values with a dissenting minority
that had the freedom to co-exist as long as it gave consent to live within the
basic values expressed in the constitution.
Somewhere in the late ‘60’s this consensus evaporated. Robert Bork’s excellent, and
unparalleled book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, documents
this monumental event. Equality and nondiscrimination should be the values of
all believers. We should seek to engage
other cultural traditions. There is much
we can and have already learned from the numerous cultures which make up the
patches in the quilt we call America. The point, I believe in this article, is that
we can and should discriminate at the level of truth claims. We tolerate, but when we decide to live
together in relative peace there must be agreement on core values. In the previous issue I hinted that the bombing
of the WTC might become a metaphor for the 21st Century. But as some of you may have noticed, I
didn’t say what of. May I suggest
(grab your rotten tomatoes) that the bombing the WTC, in retrospect, might
become a metaphor for this failed experiment in diversity. Now, throw!
For
Christ and His Kingdom
cim@fni.com
www.fni.com/cim
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