Ekklesia Project - Day One
It's the end of day one at the 2005 Ekklesia Project Conference here at DePaul University in Chicago. It's been a great time of meeting like-minded people and making new friends. They have a nice section of books here that is NOT helping me with that whole trying to live simply or not coveting stuff, not that I was doing that great, but 50% off Brazos books... good Lord! So I limited myself to just two books, I picked up Brent Laytham's book God is Not as well as Rodney Clapp's Tortured Wonders.
To begin with we heard from Rev. Lillian Daniel who brought us the word from Exodus and helped us to see Moses' smashing of the 10 commandments as itself disobedience to the 1st commandment. She also spoke on the importance of reclaiming our Christian language, as trained "idoaltry-finders" we should point out when our culture steals our divine language and use it to deify its own consumerist ideologies. She brought a pastoral tone to our gathering and was quite funny in doing so.
Our first session was done by William Cavanaugh, it was titled "The Empire of the Empty Shrine." He started by illustrating the uniqueness of the American political system as one that said, we refuse to have a God on our throne, our throne will be empty and this promises to be a good thing because countries that have had state churches, etc. often resort to violence. This empty throne of course is not empty, but instead of having one God is available to almost any, especially ourselves. At one point Cavanaugh said that our freedom to choose any God has become our God. So freedom (or in capitalist language, choice) becomes the God we worship, and because we have created this God, we essentially worship our own "virtue" of being the most universal people in the world.
He also spent some significant time at the begining speaking about the myth of a "Reluctant Empire." Most Americans today don't think that our global dominance came from an agenda to do so, instead believing the myth that we reluctantly fought facism in Germany and then Communism not because we sought these things out but because we have a responsibility to others to do this. After the fall of Communism the ideology of "openness" that apparently sets us apart from the world (in that it makes us the world's savior) didn't bring world peace, and that's because (we're told) that our very openness and rationality actually make us vulnerable to attack by our fragmented enemies such as Al Queda. It is much eaiser for a few dozen terrorists to cross a border than for a nation to do so, etc. And so when these "religous fanatics" come here and commit acts of violence (which shows their lack of openness and rationality) we see that peace isn't here yet, but can be achieved if we expand our military power further and wider and if we bomb the radicals into a higher rationality.
Finally Cavanaugh explored the use of battle in the OT and showed the corelation of God's blessing on the battlefield to military weakness. Craig Carter in The Politics of the Cross also addresses that the OT battles that God blesses and causes Israel to triumph are just that, battles that God won, not the might of the military. I mean one battle was won by banging on pots for Pete's sake! And when Israel begins to turn away from God to their own military might the Prophets rise up against such Idolatry, and when it is ignored Israel is defeated on the battlefield and eventually conqurered. But trusting in God doesn't seem to make for a good National Security policy to a lot of Christians... but trusting in the CIA and Militarism is most definitely idolatry.
Well that's just a short list of the highlights of what was a great presentation by William Cavanaugh. If you'd like the whole thing check it out here... I'll be recording all of the sessions, so that you poor Left Behind folk can join us here if only audibly.
The Empire of the Empty Shrine.mp3 (1:14 - 25 MB)
Other EP homies currently blogging the Conference: Kaz and Akma
posted by Charlie at 11:50 PM
6 Comments:
Huh! FREEDOM (some nebulous sense of what that might mean and the fuzzy firework-reminiscent feelings it evokes) has become America's idol (and here I thought it was Kelly Clarkson!)? Wow--I would N-E-V-E-R have guessed by listening to the rabid "freedom"-turrets infused propaganda from the current US administration [sarcasm doesn't always compute in typing ... so if you missed it ... don't miss it ...]. It's as if that buzz word is a free pass to justify whatever sort of behavior one might seek to rationalize (killing foreign civilians, ethnic/racial-profiling, restructuring other governments, etc.).
We have exchanged our Prince of Peace for a President of Professed-Freedom.
I acknowledge that your comments deserve more than what I've responded, an "American Christians are messed up" rant. Such good stuff!
BLOG ON, oh wise Charlie. You're doing welllllllllllll.
Did you record Lillian Daniel's sermon? I would actually like to hear the discussion about language. If you have a chance to expand that would be nice.
I am very jealous. Grab a beer and some pizza for me...I miss Chicago.
50% off Brazos books! haha!
I am indeed very jealous as well. Maybe I'll be there next year with y'all :P
I don't really have a comment, but I think I will start calling Brent "Brenty" just for fun.
(what do you want from me, I was an English major in my past life, I look for typos)
Did I call him Brenty in here?
Hey Charlie, good summary of Cavanaugh's talk. Sorry I didn't get to meet you at the EP conference. I usually blog here -- www.catholicanarchy.org -- but I am new to WordPress and something messed up so I have to set it up all over again. Oops. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on your blog from now on. Take care,
Michael
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