Harvey Cox's latest book is in part an autobiographical account of Cox's own journey of faith seen in an historical context as a product of the movement of his faith development. In large part it is a continuation of his previous work that looked at the place of the church within an evolving secular society. What he sees now in The Future of Faith is a Christianity that has indeed evolved from it's pre-modern state into something that can be said to be quite wholly modern.

The church is, and is becoming a self-critical entity that has understood the folly of it's essential doctrines to become something more organically in tune with the world and the movement of the Spirit of God rather than the strictures of human social and religious structures. It is a return to something more ancient, but is its own instance of the nascent and pre-pubescent stages of the followers of Christ before it was something normative, authoritative, and establishmentarian. What I want to touch on here is his previous work to put The Future of Faith in a better context that runs seamlessly with his previous work.

In The Secular City looks at secularization with a profound sense of optimism as an opportunity to reconstruct the place and purpose of the church in a secular and urban society.  He does not bemoan the accommodation of churches to the technical, scientific, and planned urban environments of modernization. Cox rests quite comfortably in the notion that, “Secularization simply bypasses and undercuts religion and goes on to other things.  It has relativized religious world views and thus rendered them innocuous.  Religion has been privatized.  It has been accepted as the peculiar prerogative and point of view of a particular person or group…Secularization rolls on, and if we are to understand and communicate with our present age we must learn to love it in its unremitting secularity” (Cox, 1966, p. 2-3).

Rather than decry the force of secularization, he consents to it as something inevitable or at least irreversible and seeks to glean from it those qualities which are helpful to religion rather than those which are harmful to it.  It is “the liberation of man from his religious and metaphysical tutelage” (p. 15) and is thus, clearly echoing Weber a way to focus on the human condition and to unify truth “by bringing it to bear on specific human problems.  The truth is unified pragmatically” (p. 57-58).  Finally, more than this view looking at the secularization thesis as something to change, Cox makes his resignation quite clear throughout the book, especially with regard to the emergence of the secular university.  “(T)he current cleavage between (university and church) is wider and more impassable than ever, precisely because we now stand at the end of the epoch of the church’s dominance in Western culture” (Cox, 1966, p. 192, emphasis added).

From this stage of secularization theory, we can discern several common threads. 1) In the continued and progressive legitimation of scientific rationality, religion will move to the periphery of society and see its relevant functions continue to decline.  2) Secularization is a stable, progressive, and evenly distributed process that is both predictable and irreversible since modernization is itself irreversible.  3) The church must adapt to these processes or it will effectually resign any social legitimation and social capital that it currently has.  4) Religious practice no longer has a public or objective quality to it and has been removed to a private and subjective phenomenon that serves different purposes for different persons and social groups.

The primary thesis for Cox is that Christianity began as a faith-oriented and rather pragmatic way of life that was not encumbered by sectarianism yet and was rooted in following Jesus who was something of an insurgent figure in the Jewish and Roman systems of belief and politics. Primarily through the creation of an establishment through Constantine, the Church of Christ entered into a stage where the normative political establishment of the day fused with the Lordship of Christ where people now represented that Lordship rather than co-followers of one Way. This has continued up until the modern age where these establishment systems of belief and politics have been challenged. The American and French Revolutions certainly were fused with revolts against established religion as two pivotal Western examples. The former was a rebellion rooted in the freedom of conscience to believe while the latter was a liberty from established beliefs that were set in a fusion between the Papacy and political Absolutism. What Cox saw in 1965 is something that he in large part now sees coming to fruition. As the establishment of Christian Protestantism continues to dissolve, a more organic kind of faith is rising in its place.

To that we will turn next in order to see how this book resolves some of the issues regarding secularization that Cox along with others observed in the 1960's through the 1990's. Perhaps secularization is freedom from the establishment to a faith more organically rooted in a different set of assumptions only now coming to fruition since the American Revolution.

——————————————–

Thanks again to Philip Clayton, director of the Transforming Theology Project and professor of theology at Claremont School of Theology, and collaborator Tripp Fuller — of Homebrewed Christianity fame — for the book and the opportunity to read these other blogs in concert with the promotion:

Joseph Weethee , Jonathan Bartlett, The Church Geek, Jacob’s Cafe, Reverend Mommy, Steve Knight, Todd Littleton, Christina Accornero, John David Ryan, LeAnn Gunter Johns, Chase Andre, Matt Moorman, Gideon Addington, Ryan Dueck, Rachel Marszalek, Amy Moffitt, Josh Wallace, Jonathan Dodson, Stephen Barkley, Monty Galloway, Colin McEnroe, Tad DeLay, David Mullens, Kimberly Roth, Tripp Hudgins, Tripp Fuller, Greg Horton, Andrew Tatum, Drew Tatusko, Sam Andress, Susan Barnes, Jared Enyart, Jake Bouma, Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, Blake Huggins, Lance Green, Scott Lenger, Dan Rose, Thomas Turner, Les Chatwin, Joseph Carson, Brian Brandsmeier, J. D. Allen, Greg Bolt, Tim Snyder, Matthew L. Kelley, Carl McLendon, Carter McNeese, David R. Gillespie, Arthur Stewart, Tim Thompson, Joe Bumbulis, Bob Cornwall

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2. books i have read in 2009
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In the middle of the 20th century Harvey Cox brought the secularization debate that was all the rage in the sociology of religion to a popular audience with his classic The Secular City. Since then, many of the assumptions on which his book were based have been debunked by overwhelming evidence that secularization is not what we once thought it was. So what would Cox say about it now? In his new book The Future of Faith we get to find out what he now thinks about religion in the world and where he thinks it is headed. As any reader of this blog knows, secularization is an area that I have been studying and so, thanks to Tripp Fuller shooting me a copy, I will get to engage the book with many others!

Philip Clayton also has a new book out and he and Cox are taking them out on tour. One of the blog tour stops will be here, but as you can see below they will be making their rounds over the next month until they wrap things up in Montreal at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting. There they will be joined by an illustrious panel including Eric Gregory, Bruce Sanguin, Serene Jones, Frank Tupper, and Andrew Sung Park to share a 'Big Idea' for the future of the Church. These 'Big Ideas' will be video tapped and shared, so be on the look out for live footage from the last night of the tour.

Philip's new book is Transforming Christian Theology for Church & Society and Harvey's is The Future of Faith. Both are worth checking out at one of the many tour stops. If you can't wait you can listen to them interview each other. Meanwhile, stay tuned to my blog and check out my fellow theobloggers below.

Joseph Weethee , Jonathan Bartlett, The Church Geek, Jacob’s Cafe, Reverend Mommy, Steve Knight, Todd Littleton, Christina Accornero, John David Ryan, LeAnn Gunter Johns, Chase Andre, Matt Moorman, Gideon Addington, Ryan Dueck, Rachel Marszalek, Amy Moffitt, Josh Wallace, Jonathan Dodson, Stephen Barkley, Monty Galloway, Colin McEnroe, Tad DeLay, David Mullens, Kimberly Roth, Tripp Hudgins, Tripp Fuller, Greg Horton, Andrew Tatum, Drew Tatusko, Sam Andress, Susan Barnes, Jared Enyart, Jake Bouma, Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, Blake Huggins, Lance Green, Scott Lenger, Dan Rose, Thomas Turner, Les Chatwin, Joseph Carson, Brian Brandsmeier, J. D. Allen, Greg Bolt, Tim Snyder, Matthew L. Kelley, Carl McLendon, Carter McNeese, David R. Gillespie, Arthur Stewart, Tim Thompson, Joe Bumbulis, Bob Cornwall

This Tour is Sponsored by Transforming Theology DOT org!

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A little bibliographical widget (I despise the term "meme") has been shooting around. I think my list of influential texts explains a lot about my theological perspective. These five books, in no order of priority, have been the most influential for how I think my theology is constructed today:

• Simone Weil – Waiting for God. In particular is her essay "The Love of God and Affliction." If you have not read it, do so. Rest your mind for a good while and read it again. Repeat this process until you grasp it and you will be blessed. I do it yearly.
• Mary Douglas – Purity and Danger. To understand why we create the theologies we do, one must understand what the distinctions of purity and profanity are and why those distinctions are there.
• Calvin O. Schrag – The Resources of Rationality. With this text I dropped a three year love affair with all things postmodern and became a pragmatist with a good dose of critical theory. It really was that dramatic and the light went on pretty bright.
• Peter Berger – The Sacred Canopy. It has some flaws today, especially with the proposal for secularization as something quite inevitable in Western cultures. But the idea of the social construction of religion is stilll very powerful and explains a lot of behaviors in the worlds of religions.
• H. Richard Niebuhr – The Meaning of Revelation. A small book that moved my view of revelation from something static to be understood only through orthodox propositions rooted in a reading of Scripture to a more fluid and progressive understanding of revelation as something living and continually evolving through human history and societies.

Interesting that the most influential books to my theology and even the way I read the bible are from a philosophical theologian, an anthropologist, a pragmatist philosopher, a sociologist, and a pragmatist theologian. Guess the subtitle of my blog makes a lot of sense…

So how about you? What five books have been the most influential for how your theological worldview is constructed today?

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Steve Bruce argues in his book God is Dead: Secularization in the West secularization develops from social egalitarianism which must exist in order to mediate democracy. Religious diversity that is protected by the secular state produces an inevitable loss of authority for religion. Finally, such a loss of authority, and this is where Bruce makes his strongest claim, results in a loss of plausibility and hence interest of religion for the public. Thus, religious homogenization is what produces a stronger public interest and authority for religion to arbitrate social structures and knowledge. Bruce refers to Iran in which a forced secular culture was usurped by the Ayatollah in 1979 with a religious revolution. This was only possible the religious belief of the citizenship was very homogenous. Such a revolution to make religion the center of society would not be possible in the West which has built its societies on the notion of pluralism and equal regard for all religous belief. While secularization is not a theory that predicts the ultimate demise of religion, it does predict the loss of importance of religion for public discourse and eventually the implausibility of religion and the overall loss of interest in religion in the public.

Rodney Stark et. al. has argued the opposite case. From a market based supply-side theory of rational choice, Stark argues that religion not only develops, but progresses and increases in popularity the more diverse and unregulated the situation is.  Therefore, heterogeneity produces a stronger and more vital kinds of religious expression and religious legitimacy in any society. For Stark, the United States is not the exception, but the rule. Religion has been a vital component to civil discourse since the beginning and has not only retained its social significance, but has become more vital in many spheres.

Bruce's work is more or less a direct rejoinder to Stark et. al. (and other scholars such as Martin, Berger (ironically), and Wuthnow tend to side more with Stark on the matter). Yet his evidential bases seem to be limited mostly to the UK and Europe. His theory works well in that local context, but as I read, I am wondering where the evidence is to support his rather strong causal claims between egalitarianism and secularization not only there, but in other geo-political regions. After all Peter Berger, on whose theory Bruce is heavily reliant, has also said in no uncertain terms that his initial theorizing on secularization was wrong. It is a strange kind of rheoric for Bruce to rely so heavily on the theory of someone who has now found his own theory inconclusive with regard to secularization. At this point, the evidence that Bruce needs to provide to make his claim seem plausible beyond Europe and the UK (the latter being undoubtedly the most secular nation in the world) is in want.

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1. books i have read in 2009
2. us religion: post-secular, more secular, post-christian?

I have done my fair share of reading in the sociology of religion and in social research in general. Yesterday I tried to read through the first chapter of John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. In large part he frames the work as an apologetic for theology as a foundational discourse for understanding micro and macro social behavior and social structures. He frames this incredibly weighty and sophisticated argument contra secular social theory which he asserts is essentially anemic and limited to relative surface issues in the way it makes sense of society. The problem is the very differentiation of theology from other sources of rational discourse. Well and good.

My question with such lenghty and weighty discourses is what overall purpose it serves. I cannot see this work being very influential to sociologists who are quite comfortable in focusing on the causes and effects of different social structures and behaviors. Certainly the work of Berger, Stark, Smith, Bellah and others (Milbank does critique all of these thinkers) and certainly David Martin who is also a trained theologian forcus on more than the surface structures of social behavior, but attempt to dig to deeper levels of abstraction in order to ground their theoretical frameworks in a more rigorous manner.

My problem is that Milbank is so abstract in his arguments contra social theory, that I find is completely useless in the process of social theorizing itself. It is, without reserve, the most unhelpful text I have encountered thus far. Many may take issue that I am limiting Milbank's text to utility. To this assertion I say that it does not grasp the fundamental ground of social theory which is that it is fundamentally pragmatic.

This is where I find Milbank's work anemic (and for some that statement may seem like absurd apostasy in the presence of genius). It seems to lack any pragmatic sense of the world in which non-academic elites live. It appears to be academic discourse for its own sake and to drive the interests of a relative few who will smoke pipes and sip brandy discussing such abstractions while sociologists are actually working to find out what makes the rest of the world behave as it does. This latter project gives people the tools to make the world womething that it is currently not. Perhaps for Milbank that is the very midguided problem with social theory. I find it, and the social research community at large finds it, the source of its very liberation from the constraints of academic irrelevancy and indeed not symbolic of a discipline that has lost its way.

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Most of the literature on secularization tends to focus on its character as an assumed and necessary effect of modernization. What is particularly intriguing is that very little in the way of substantiating this claim is ever presented in the literature. It is a theoretical hypothesis that intuitive experience appears to confirm if we look at the level of normative influence religion now has on social norms in politics and social life compared with the nineteenth century, for one.

However, it does not seem clear that (1) secularization was ever all that effective and thus not a necessary outcome of modernization; (2) secularization is simply not a necessary outcome of modernization and the idea of the causal relationship between the two is mistaken; or (3) secularization was never necessary, but consciously intended.

This last is the thesis of a book edited by sociologist Christian Smith called The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life. What Smith presents is that secularization was a revolutionary event in social structures. Although more subtle than the way we would normally think of "revolution" with guns, gangs, mobs, and proletariat uprisings to bring down the bourgeoisie, this revolution carries the more important features of a radical overtaking of social thinking and behavior in social structures from the bottom all the way to the top. His novel thesis is as follows:

"In sum, macrosocial secularization was revolutionary in that (1) it fundamentally concerned questions of power and authority; (2) an identifiable network of insurgents intentionally and successfully struggled to displace an established power, largely against its will; and (3) the triumphant regime fundamentally transformed in many areas the cultural and institutional structures that governed the public life of the nation" (p. 2).

In light of work by Peter Berger, Rodney Stark, and others that persuasively argues that the secularization thesios was either totally wrong, or at least misleading, I am wondering if Smith will come out to suggest that the revolution, in large part, was a failure.

This is the angle I think that the various assertions of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris need to address to be persuasive.They are built on the same ground that secularization in all forms of life is a good thing for everyone and moreover, that it is an inevitable by-product of a good society which is secular. If this is the good, then religion, secularization's counter-part or enemy in this view, is bad and should therefore be rooted out.

Surely the brand of hostile atheism that these writers promote is a very vociferous element in this revolution if Smith's characterization is accurate. But I have to ask if they are so dismally upset at the state of religion in the world simply due to (1) the fact that is it still here so long after Darwin; and (2) the revolution of hypothetical reasoning in science based in evidence has not rooted it out from culture once and for all. Perhaps all of their angst is due simply because their brand of secularism is a failed project that in fact lacks evidence to support any thesis that it will bear the success they ultimately desire? A failed revolution indeed.

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I have already posted my top 15 albums of the year here. Here are a few other random favorites.

BOOKS

• Fiction – The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• Social Theory – The Sacred Canopy by Peter Berger
• Social History – The Age of Abundance by Brink Lindsey
• Education – The Decline of the Secular University by C. John Somerville
• Sociology – Soul Searching by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton

What amazes me about this list is that I did not read a single work of biblical theology or systematic/dogmatic theology. In part it is because of what I have needed to read for my dissertation. The other part is that I have lost much interest in theology due to its inherent lack of practical application to human need. It is an aesthetic venture for me anymore. It is interesting, but greatly irrelevant to do or to spend too much time consuming due to the very practical needs and responsibilities expressed in the Gospel. This may be more of a topic for discussion in the coming year.

BLOGS

Two stand out this year.

The Immanent Frame and Cato @ Liberty. The former hosts simply the best thinking in the sociology of religion and the latter contains the best political thought on the web.

MOVIES

I did not see many movies released this year, but Iron Man was very good. THX1138 and Brazil were the best I saw this year.

TELEVISION

The only two shows with any real redeeming values are The Biggest Loser and Little People, Big World. The former only results in amazing outcomes for people who are in serious physiological and psychological needs and both are met at the same time. The latter is perhaps the only family in the media that is not over-exposed and not dysfunctional. The Roloffs are great to watch not because they are little people, but because they are healthy people with a healthy family.

One more thought on "best of lists". They are evidence of abundance and relative affluence. One who needs to find food or evade injustice has not the time nor energy to consume such artifacts of leisure – including irrelevant posts on the web such as this.

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Why is The Shack so bloody popular right now and why in the world did Eugene Peterson compare it to the classic allegory The Pilgrim's Progress?  Why is it that whatever Oprah picks up it suddenly becomes gold and true, filled with inspiration and truth?  I have read some of the books in her book club and a lot of them frankly suck.

So I picked this one up like moth to flame and read the first chapter.  The prose of the narrative is unbearably amateurish and the premise is at first promising, then quickly trite.  It's not even close to the masterpiece that John Bunyan wrote.  It's not the same kind of narrative, it was written not with the same purpose (clearly), it is structurally different, and the prose is radically different.  It's apples to oranges.

Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower or Thomas Disch's The Word of God: or, Holy Writ Rewritten both seem to be more promising and enjoyable to read.

So why is The Shack so popular?  Is it all media hype and people suckling from the nectar of Oprah's media megastore of popularity?

I just don't get it.

No related posts.

I was in suspended animation having my teeth cleaned. Pricked and scrubbed with the forceful persistence of sterile steel tools and empathy from an hygenist who understood how miserable the whole experience could be.

The Pentagon already compromised.

The suction tool in my mouth. Vacuuming out the refuse of my teeth. The report came over the radio in these exact words:

"The second tower has come down. (2 long seconds) It's gone." After about 10 seconds of silence on the morning radio in New York, which is about 10 minutes in NYC time… "I don't know what to say. Could cry."

Fire, smoke, dust. Papers of careers hat no longer matter.

I went home and watched the news. I did not call in to work that day. I assumed the world was halted. All machineries of progress were stopped. The sound of F16 jets overhead.

Silence.

What just happened.

Is this reality or some bad Tom Clancy novel?

Surreal.

A plane down near Pittsburgh.

Why are they attacking every place I have ever called home? Can't they leave my home alone?

Don DeLillo captures the surreal strangeness of 9/11 in Falling Man. I am about 70 pages into it and I can take only about 5 to 10 pages in each sitting. He nailed it. As a New Yorker he knows what we were thinking at the time in such an intimate manner that it is continually mind numbing all over again.

No-one but those in NYC and those in the NYC metro area have the same sense of what occurred that day. We still are numb by it. We try to cover it with consumerism. But the memory is haunting and jarring. The city became a chapel. It was a sanctuary of mourning. It became holy in that moment. Candles burning for the memories of the lost and missing we knew were no longer going to add to our consciousness in the same way.

I have problems reading this book because no other format has revealed what that day means and what we experienced. I still see the smoke over my home. Trailing southward. Looking for a home that it will not find.

As painful as this novel is to read, I want to thank Don DeLillo. He has given us both the gift of death, and the gift of hope. I could cry with each page. Visceral memories trapped in nothingness. A hurt we need to remember each day of our God gifted lives. I don't want to finish it, but I feel like I have to. Like a faithful Catholic holding the blessed host of Christ in his hands.

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Benjamin Barber's primary thesis in Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole is that marketing that reinforces adolescent behavior in adults and seeks to make children more usable consumers.  This marketing is continually reinforced by a privatized capitalist system that undermines civil liberty and citizenship at the expense of consumer behaviors.  It is, in the end, a system that causes people to become non-citizens of a commonwealth, but consumers who are at the whim of the corporate sector in society.

I share with many (who note errors that have clearly been corrected if they existed in the first printing) that Barber could have condensed his argument and made it more transparent.  He certainly lacks concision where it would be helpful in many spots.  But that after a relatively quick read over 10 days (it's not loaded with the scholarly aplomb and density that some reviewers have ruled in its disfavor) I was able to get the point and it remains a rather visceral and salient one.  Starting with Weber's argument and then drawing lines to where the value foundations of capitalism have strayed is instructive and pragmatic.

What I like is that he finds common strands in much of the literature regarding consumerism and globalization that have been very popular, e.g. Friedman, Schor, Klein, Barry, Lasch, etc.  But he does this by couching it in very important political terms in order to examine the effect of private capital on his notion of "strong democracy".  to this degree, it reads almost like an updated "Culture of Narcissism".

He does have several errors he or at least his editor should have picked up before it went to paperback.  He calls Terrell Owens a running back, Michael Stipe a producer, etc.  But who cares about these points other than pedantic reviewers who would rather trivialize the argument.  Moreover, the solution proposed at the end of a global society founded by global citizens does not seem plausible.  He fails to account for the tribalistic tendencies that react against forces of globalization that authors such as Malcolm Waters have noted.  So the end is as flat as Friedman's thesis of globalization which Barber largely argues against.

Much of the material is very well trodden in the literature.  However, Barber's analytical skill is quite incisive and he is able to gather new syntheses of previous material to suggest that this is far more of an important issue for our social makeup than a diatribe against gluttony or material envy could muster.  And to this end, I say well done and worth a read!

Be sure to check out Benjamin Barber's blog here.  There you can find some of his thoughts in often nascent stages.

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