DanSheffield

Charles Taylor on Democratic Exclusions

Charles Taylor is one of the sane-ist people living on this planet... here is a very recent article, which addresses, implicitly, a lot of the polarization going on, on multiple fronts these days, from Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter & LGBTQ, Take a Knee, Vilifying Jordan Peterson, Niqabs in Quebec, Rachel Harder's ostracization, to Muslims taking over the World.

Democratic Exclusions: Political Identity and the Problem of Secularism

(a couple excerpts)

Modern democracy as we know it - unlike ancient democracy - is universalist. We believe that citizen rights should apply to the whole population, without exclusion on grounds of gender, property, origin and race.

But, in a paradoxical way, democracy can also generate exclusion, and regularly does. This means that our really existing democracies have to be continually vigilant, and ready to combat this thrust towards exclusion whenever it arises.

How does this tendency towards exclusion come about? It comes from another feature of democracies, both ancient and modern.

...

Here we have a classic case of democracy turning against itself. We might say, its "immune system," which should be detecting betrayals of its ethic, is turned against potentially "friendly" cells. So that democracy generates exclusion when its "immune system" turns against itself. This is what we are witnessing today...

Beauty, history and reconciliation - Canada @ 150

Last week my wife and I visited the National Gallery of Canada to wander through the new display, Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967. I'm always inspired to stand or sit in front of Tom Thomson's Jack Pine or something by Emily Carr. This time I saw Yvonne McKague Housser's Rossport, Lake Superior. I've seen it before but I was startled again by how significant that sight is -- of this little village overlooking the lake, just down the road from where I was born. Aside from the early Modernist colour scheme, that's pretty much my "impression" from the early 1960s.

They also had a couple of Norval Morrisseau's pieces among many other indigenous artists that have been given a higher profile in the Gallery in preparation for the Canada 150 business. I have several Morriseau prints because I have been intrigued by his work since I was a kid. In the 1960s Morriseau lived not far from where I was born. Shortly after the kerfuffle with his work at Expo '67 he got a lot of press and certainly became a household name in my family. My father visited in his home around that same time period. 

This morning as I was driving I listened to a podcast of Roberta Jamieson on CBC's Ideas program. Ms Jamieson is from the Six Nations of the Grand River, just outside Hamilton, where I live. She was recounting the history of indigenous and settler populations in Canada. I am continually amazed by how much of the history of colonial engagement and deception is unknown to large swathes of the Canadian population. [I think there is something about each generation needing to be retold the story, to give perspective on the present]

She also began recounting the steps that have taken place over the past 50 years to begin telling a different story. She mentioned that despite the perspectives of others, she would be celebrating Canada 150, because she sees reconciliation emerging in new and hopeful ways that haven't been there before. She feels the "Canadian" values of inclusion and welcome (although indigenous people have felt like outsiders for so long) are actually indigenous values that were demonstrated, practically, centuries ago, at first contacts with traders and settlers.

I would highly recommend listening to her talk, for history, reality and generosity of spirit.   https://podcast-a.akamaihd.net/mp3/podcasts/ideas_20170630_64034.mp3 

One of her thoughts was that we need to move beyond apologies and neo-liberal/progressive hand-wringing (she gives a throw-away 'tsk, tsk' to the whole "cultural appropriation" debate from this spring), to concrete action. She says don't come with your ideas on "how to help us;" just come and listen and explore together the way ahead.

On that note, I want to share this link to another podcast talking to my friend Darryl (a school teacher in Saskatoon) about his walk through the Truth & Reconciliation Commission summary, and his own neighbourhood to listen, explore and learn to adjust and create new things together. 

https://www.newleafnetwork.ca/podcast/ep-40-song-built-bridge-darryl-dozlaw/

grace-radiating life at Smokey Mountain

In January 1998 I spent a week in Manila, The Philippines. This was in the midst of the time that Kathy and I were living in South Africa planting a church and developing community-based missional responses. For us that included developing an affordable housing company (managing 50 units) and an emergency shelter for domestic violence victims. The visit to Manila was to participate in a round table learning encounter with other urban ministry practitioners from around the world (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, England, USA) sponsored by Food for the Hungry, World Vision and the Fieldstead Institute. One of the products of that work was a book published by MARC, entitled Serving with the Urban Poor, edited by Ted Yamamori, Bryant Myers and Ken Luscombe. Kathy and I contributed a chapter on the work we were connected with in South Africa.

Among the many other learnings from that rich time was the opportunity to learn from Fr Ben Beltran, a Divine Word missionary working at Smokey Mountain, at the time the largest garbage dump in The Philippines. In the sessions, Father Ben shared his own experience of living and ministering on/in Smokey Mountain as an incarnational activity. He described the life of the church community (in a building built from scavenged garbage) as grace-radiating substance. That is, a faith community celebrating the Eucharist and reading & applying Scripture, in that setting, was both a physical and spiritual manifestation of the presence of God. That was a new thought for me at the time. That just to live, minister and "be" the presence of Christ in that space was witness. That God would give the resources to live that kind of life was, in fact, "good news." Interestingly, Ben also helped us reflect on a theology of holistic ministry by employing a motif from Philipino worldview -- the notion of human being as defined by relationship to others; "to be" is "to be in relation." Rejecting a dualistic western understanding of sacred and profane. Relationship with God, with others and the created earth is, "of a kind," not separate things. 

[recent writings on the idea of "place" in Christian ministry: Where Mortals Dwell, No Home Like Place, The Space Between, The New Parish. Good thoughts here from the late Richard Twiss, on an indigenous theology of place.]

As I returned to our ministry in South Africa, this led me to work toward deepening our practice regarding our location as a city centre, multicultural faith community that was expressing itself in the provision of affordable safe housing and care for those impacted by domestic oppression and violence. Those were issues "of" our place. This amplified insights from my study with Alan Roxburgh a few years earlier, who asked us, "what are the themes that emerge from your social context? what does the gospel/good news look like in relation to those themes?"

In the midst of our affordable housing development we received a major grant from the South African government's Dept of Housing. We decided to have a "thanksgiving service" (a very African thing to do) right on the building site, on a major traffic route through the city. So amidst the building rubble of demolished older buildings with new sections going up, we had an open-air worship service with full band and sound system, we had some traditional dancing and choirs, obligatory speeches and we celebrated the Lord's Supper as servers tried not to stumble over bricks and puddles of water. Grace seemed very tangible that day.

Today, in Canada, I am convinced more than ever that issues of place and context need to impact our practice and our communication. The incarnation of Jesus (local communities of the Body of Christ) in place and time must reflect good news to those who see and hear us.

remembering South Africa and Christian responses

In 1989, Kathy and I moved to South Africa, when Apartheid was still in full swing. Up to that point, I would have said I had limited knowledge of issues in South Africa beyond reading The Covenant by James Michener and general knowledge from media coverage through the 70s and 80s. 

Shortly after arriving, I heard this spoken word performance by one of the students in the seminary where I was teaching. I would say that I was profoundly moved and affected by this in a way that books and scholarly articles could never do. The author/performer was Tshokolo Marra. It was shortly after hearing this that Nelson Mandela was released from prison in early 1990. (I was going through file boxes the other day and found this -- which prompted this reflection)

By the Rivers of Apartheid

By the rivers of Apartheid we sit and weep

When we at the flow of blood look

There on the fast-growing stubbornness of government

The violence arises

And the blood of martyrs of peace and justice

is daily shed... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

For there our rulers declared the state of emergency

Our oppressors quoted Scripture

And said: "Be subject to the authority,

For authority is established by God" ... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

How can we be subject to government by minority

Which makes Christian fight Christian

Africans betray Africans

Whites distrust Africans

And live in constant fear and anxiety? ... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

If we keep quiet Christians

Better for us not to have been saved

Than to be saved and sit and wait

For the coming kingdom

While our families, relatives and friends

Are destroyed... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

If we do not announce the Good News

To the blind, the poor, oppressed, prisoners

And if we do not denounce Evil

(Evil done in the name of Law and Order)

Who else will do it? ... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

Remember, O Christians, remember

The Sharpeville Massacre

Where peaceful demonstrators met with resistance of SADF

Which killed and murdered people... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

Remember, O Christians, remember

Nineteen Fifty Three

The establishment of Bantu Education

Education for the poor and oppressed

Which makes them suffer from inferiority complex... by the rivers of Apartheid

 

Christians, please remember

Nineteen Seventy Six in Soweto

Thousand of school children were arrested

Many were killed, others fled the country

But the mystery remains

Where are the others? ...by the rivers of Apartheid

 

Saints, look, think and speak

You are ambassadors of Christ

To stop the ever-flowing river

Which breeds violence, disorder and exploitation

...by the rivers of Apartheid.

 

things fall apart

Terror, Brexit and U.S. election have made 2016 the year of Yeats’s ‘Second Coming’ https://t.co/JLmOMCCJRD via @WSJ

A poem written by W B Yeats in 1919, just after WW 1.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

New book on John Wesley Haley

John Wesley Haley (1878-1951) was/is a relatively unknown Canadian Free Methodist missionary who served as a church-planter and pastor in Saskatchewan and Ontario as well as in Mozambique and South Africa (1902-1934), finally initiating new ministry in Burundi and Rwanda (1935-1946).

A new book, John Wesley Haley and Building the Indigenous Church, has recently been published edited by John McCready, Haley's grandson. McCready came across a manuscript that Haley was writing at the time of his death in 1951. He decided to bring the manuscript to life with some fresh reflection on Haley's life and ministry.

Haley has intrigued me for decades because of the attention he paid to the work of mission strategist Roland Allen. McCready knew of my interest and asked me to write a chapter for the book reflecting on Haley's influences and the significance of his work in light of present missiological thinking.

My chapter is, "The Mission Temporary, The Church Permanent," from a phrase Haley wrote emphasizing that the role of the missionary is only temporary, for proclamation and initial catechism, giving free reign for the Holy Spirit to direct the development of indigenous methods and structures, while the missionary moves on to a new, unreached, location. 

When Haley wrote or taught about his approach in the 1930s and 40s he was seen as unusual, but respected. This manuscript may have been prompted by his invitation to speak at the EFMA/NAE conference in 1949 about his method in light of colonial tensions at the time particularly in East Asia, with the removal of all missionaries from China in the wake of Mao's revolution.

Dr Howard A Snyder writes a foreword where he states that Haley "is timely and prophetic today because of the way he conjoined theory and practice in pioneering deep church planting in Central Africa -- and reflected on this in his writings."

Pentecost, language and recognition

This Sunday is Pentecost when Christians reflect on the coming of the Holy Spirit and what some refer to as the birth of the church. Often what is discussed is the phenomenon of wind, fire, sound and speaking in other tongues. I've always been interested in the response of the crowd who observed all this. Acts 2 says the crowd was composed of Jews and Jewish converts with backgrounds from Rome to Parthia (Turkmenistan) and Pontus (northern Turkey) to Arabia. The text says "each one heard their own language being spoken" and they were "utterly amazed." The reason they were amazed was because of the group of Galileans (fishermen and country bumpkins) who were speaking in these languages. 

One of my favourite screen moments is in the movie, Miracle on 34th Street, when a Dutch orphan girl meets the Kris Kringle character...

 

What we find here is the deeply emotional response to the recognition of language -- the language of this young girl's formation. Her identity is so wrapped up in her first language, learned at her mother's breast. It's like she is being seen, heard and understood in a manner she didn't imagine possible in this big metropolis of New York. 

I think this is a part of the Pentecost story that we need to pay attention to -- that the languages spoken via the Holy Spirit are a picture of God's profound recognition of language, culture and identity. God acknowledges who we are, speaks our "language," and then invites us into relationship based on that recognition. 

Learning language takes us into the worldview of people; we begin to see the world through another's lens. In communities where our voices are not being heard, it's quite possible that we haven't entered into the language and culture of those with whom we wish to communicate. So we speak our own language and just shout, thinking that might help. It probably doesn't :). 

reductive seduction of other people's problems

A couple months ago I was working with the leadership community of a local church who were thinking about their place(s) of engagement in the wider world. We had some great dialogue about our desire to solve other people's problems -- often without really listening to understand whose problem it was, really -- theirs or ours. Nathan sent me this link to an excellent article by Courtney Martin discussing this challenge. She describes this challenge as "the reductive seduction of other people's problems." Martin suggests that this reductive seduction is not malicious (i.e., people's motives are in the right place), but it may be reckless.

"First, it’s dangerous for the people whose problems you’ve mistakenly diagnosed as easily solvable. There is real fallout when well-intentioned people attempt to solve problems without acknowledging the underlying complexity."

"Second, the reductive seduction of other people’s problems is dangerous for the people whose problems you’ve avoided. While thousands of the country’s best and brightest flock to far-flung places to ease unfamiliar suffering and tackle foreign dysfunction, we’ve got plenty of domestic need."

She says lots of other really good things, then concludes with:

There’s a better way. For all of us. Resist the reductive seduction of other people’s problems and, instead, fall in love with the longer-term prospect of staying home and facing systemic complexity head on. Or go if you must, but stay long enough, listen hard enough so that “other people” become real people. But, be warned, they may not seem so easy to “save.”

refugee crisis -- adding complexity

The current refugee crisis -- as portrayed in the media -- is all about the thousands of refugees showing up in Europe, and now here in Canada. What has surprised me the most is the absolute vitriol showing up in social media from people opposed to settling the Syrian refugees -- many of them claiming to be Christians. On the other hand, these are a couple memes that I have appreciated.

Yesterday I spent the day with a group of Christian leaders who are deeply involved in refugee settlement and sponsorship processes, from across the country, talking about responses to the current environment. This was organized by the Refugee Highway Partnership, an ad-hoc working group of practitioners from around the world. We heard Christine MacMillan speak about her work with WEA as an advocate to the UN on refugee concerns and human trafficking. We heard from a refugee settlement worker in Malta, via skype. And we got a perspective on where the real crisis is -- and its not in Europe or Canada. Click here to see a map of where the greatest concentrations of refugees can be found. We also watched this video clip. 

It seems quite obvious to me that one of the best things we can do in this crisis is help organizations working with the millions living in deplorable camp conditions, still in the Middle East, just waiting to return home. They don't want to migrate to Canada, but they do want to survive this winter. This is a clip from one of the organizations that I have consistently recommended over many years.

 

And a last little social media jibe...  from Kyle D Hastings"

"I made this map to give people perspective on the Syrian refugees. The purple country is Turkey, they took in over 2,000,000 Syrian refugees and spent as estimated 4.5 billion USD, the green country is Jordan, They took in an estimated 1,400,000 Syrian refugees. Last but not least, That tiny red dot, that's Lebanon; Lebanon is the smallest country in continental Asia. Lebanon took in over 1,100,000 Syrian refugees. People want to ban Syrian refugees from Canada, saying 10,500,000 dollars is too much and 25,000 people is too much. We have a population of 35,160,000 people, in 2014-2015 we had a surplus of 1,900,000,000 dollars. Our government has yearly expenditures in the 270,000,000,000 range. Keep telling yourself we can't help. People are letting fear of ISIS try to stop us from helping people. In this world you can never be 100% safe, but the moment we stop looking after each other is the moment we give up on humanity. Let's continue to be a diverse country that accepts and helps people."

on periphery of culture - EFC research

Rick Hiemstra, a researcher, from EFC recently had some comments on evangelical congregations in our Canadian context.

Essentially, we're increasingly finding ourselves on the periphery of culture. That is because there is a fairly aggressive civil religion emerging - WYRA (who you really are). The central notion is not that humans are separated from God, but that we lack knowledge of our true identity. Our culture proclaims that when we discover who we really are, we will discover a superhero or someone who has all the pieces put together. The orthodox Christian story is that who we really are is broken, warped people who need to meet Jesus and through transformative grace and healing come to look more and more like him. This is the heart of the conflict we are experiencing with our culture, differing views of our essential character and identity. 

Questions about where we root justice and what's right and wrong are answered with: "right or wrong is based mostly on what I feel." So this emerging civil religion is built around personal subjectivity.

Christians need to find means for inserting an alternative story to this dominant motif. That God created good things, which we broke through our self-centred search for identity within ourselves. Restoration calls for re-orienting our lives around Jesus and a focus on God's kingdom concerns, rather than our own. And this is the foundation of social justice not rooted in personal subjectivity.