Church, Empire & Divine Violence to Ungodly Systems

'Distressing': Reverend reveals what

evangelicals say privately about Trump

Reverend Rob Schenck, a former evangelical activist, discusses

President Trump's photo-op after police forcibly moved protesters

and what evangelicals are now saying about Trump.

​Donald Trump’s Photo-Op and

the Essence of Christianity

by Hunter Bragg

​The problem with Trump’s publicity stunt is not that

it is unfaithful to the essence of Christianity; it’s that

it too perfectly encapsulates that essence.

While Donald Trump’s photo-op outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. on June 1 has been criticized by Christians on the right and on the left for its infidelity to Christianity and its sacred scriptures, the problem with this publicity stunt is not that it is unfaithful to the essence of Christianity; it’s that it too perfectly encapsulates that essence.

Trump’s photo--taken after police forcefully cleared Lafayette Square in front St. John’s of peaceful protestors—was condemned by church leaders across the theological spectrum. The progressive Disciples of Christ minister  Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II wrote in a Washington Post op-ed with the author Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove that what is most outrageous about the image is that “Trump and the religious extremists he appeals to have turned Christian faith against itself.”

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopalian Church, Michael Curry, echoed a similar sentiment in a Tweet, suggesting that the meaning of the Bible is antithetical to Trump’s symbolic use of it: “The bible the President held up and the church that he stood in front of represent the values of love, of justice, of compassion, and of a way to heal our hurts.”

The conservative religious position, at least the position of those not blindly beholden to the president, was likewise concerned with what it deemed an inappropriate use of the biblical text. The Southern Baptist seminary president Al Mohler claims the Bible’s sacred status means that it should remain above political theater. He writes,

“…Christians have to be particularly clear that the Word of God, the Bible is not an instrument of political symbolism. It’s far more than that…And Christians must be concerned when the Bible becomes an issue of political controversy…”

To be clear: I’m a Christian who thinks that the combination of religion and violent force made manifest in the photo is appalling and contradictory to the message inside the book Trump so awkwardly held up. I’m concerned, though, that the immediate denunciations of the image by Christian leaders across the political and theological spectrum are actually harmful to the hopes of many Christians that a more just society will emerge out of the political unrest of the present. By distancing themselves and the faith(s) they represent from Trump’s use of the Bible, Christians fail to account for the ways that Trump’s photo-op is Christianity.

Here’s what I mean: Denunciations of Trump’s Bible photo are premised on the notion that there’s a true essence to Christian faith and to the biblical message. Such claims presuppose that Christianity in its truest form exists independently of its historical and material formations. It’s this idea—that the true Christianity exists outside of its historicity—that gives me pause and that seems so unhelpful in this present moment. To be sure, Barber and Curry would disagree vehemently with Mohler about what the Christian essence is. Yet, whatever the essence they believe to be normative, they all agree that Trump’s stunt doesn’t measure up.

Let me focus on Barber’s and Curry’s statements, since my views are closer to theirs than to Mohler’s. For Barber, Trump’s use of the Bible is squarely opposed to the actual and true meaning of Christian faith and practice. Jesus and the Hebrew prophets before him cast a “moral vision of love, justice, and truth” while Trump uses the book that contains this vision to, well, trump up his base. For Curry, what the Bible “represents” is love, justice, compassion and healing, rather than the hatred, injustice and bodily harm that Trump, in his person and in his administrative policies, embodies. From Curry’s perspective, Trump is militantly misusing a text that really stands for justice and peace.

While I’m sympathetic to these logics, I must ask: is Christianity really anything more than its historical and material realities? Beyond the fact that the Bible is not straightforwardly a peaceful text and that the biblical witness to divine justice seemingly requires the execution of an innocent man by the Roman Empire, we might note that since at least the 4th century CE, Christianity has been bound up with political power.

Eusebius of Caesarea

The 4th century Roman emperor Constantine’s famous (and probably mythical) vision and his subsequent post-conversion military victory under the banner of the Chi-Rho bound Christian faith and military might. His house-theologian Eusebius makes Trump’s resident evangelical theologians look tame, cleanly merging the emperor with Christ such that the rise of Constantine, in all his military power, was the advent of the Kingdom of God (See, Eusebius, “The Oration of Eusebius Pamphili In Praise of the Emperor Constantine”).

References

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/15CRUSAD.htm

https://cmsmcgregor.weebly.com/the-crusades.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

Medieval Christendom likewise utilized Christian theology to motivate the crusades that unified Christians in their opposition to Muslims. Modernity was no better. Christianity was crucial to the legal formation and subsequent enslavement of the very black life that we now insist, many of us on Christian grounds, matters (see, for instance, Willie James Jennings’s The Christian Imagination). In early 20th century Germany, the Christian doctrine of divine sovereignty played a crucial legitimating role in the rise of Hitler to power in Germany (see Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology). And let us not forget that America, according to some, is a Christian nation. Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan thought of itself as a Christian organization.

Amazon Link

Amazon Link

Now, to be sure, Barber explicitly acknowledges the deep complicity of the Christian heritage in the racist and militarized history of Europe and America. However, he and his co-author do so only by maintaining an ideal form of Christianity not equivalent to any of its historical instantiations. They juxtapose, in Frederick Douglass’s words, “The Christianity of [the United States] and the Christianity of Christ” between which is “the widest possible difference.”

I want to suggest to you that Christianity is no more than what it has been historically. Christianity is the Constantinian nexus of faith and power; it is the Crusades; it is settler colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK and the police force that cleared the way for Trump and his Bible.

I admit that I want quickly to add, “but that’s not all it is…” There’s a sense in which Curry and Barber and Douglass are correct. Indeed, Christianity is a multi-faceted movement that encompasses numerous organizations and individuals with irreconcilable commitments. If slavery is Christian, so too is John Brown. If the KKK is a Christian organization, so too are the innumerable black churches worshipping a black Christ.

But, this mode is precisely the one I’m resisting: of course there are other Christianities, other modes of engaging Christian symbols, of doing Christian practice, and of forming Christian community. However, these alternative formations don’t have any greater claim to being the ‘true’ form of Christianity than do Trump and the Christian right. In fact, given the constant intertwining of Christianity and power throughout Christian history, I’m making a case that, if anything, Trump’s version may be the ‘truer’ one.

This doesn’t mean that this is all Christianity can be. Christian symbols, like all symbols, exceed our ability to grasp and control and so can take on new meanings and give rise to new possibilities for human and nonhuman life. We—we Christians, we American Christians, we white American Christians—need the outcries of Christian leaders like Curry and Barber pointing us to a different, though still not normative, form of Christianity.

The material and discursive witness of minority and oppressed communities, like those informed, for instance, by womanism and black feminism, who have shaped their individual and communal spaces in defiance of the dominant white Christian model, gives hope that Christianity can be something other than what it has been and what it remains to this day (see, for instance, Kelly Brown Douglas’s What’s Faith Got to Do With It?: Black Bodies/Christian Souls or Katherine McKittrick’s Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle). Likewise, the vibrancy and creativity on display in LGBTQ-affirming churches suggest to us that Christianity’s resources for forming lively Christian community are not exhausted.

Even still, these possibilities won’t come to prominence apart from the death of Christianity as it is. This would entail Christianity’s rejection of its alliances with political power, with military might, and with extractive empire. As we’re seeing in the weeks following George Floyd’s murder, this rejection, this death, will not be a peaceful one. Like it’s life, Christianity’s death will be violent.

The Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, in his famous “Critique of Violence,” envisions a divine violence that negates and destroys all law-making and law-preserving violence, including and especially that of the police. Unlike Trump’s police, divine violence strikes at systems, not at individuals, for its violence is “for the sake of the living” (297). It destroys these systems, but it doesn’t create the inevitably violent foundations for another system that would take its place.

Might it be that Christianity itself—in its historical formations and material concretions—is precisely that system that needs to be exposed to divine violence? And indeed, if Christianity is the interlocking systems of injustice that are on display in June 2020, then are not the protestors whom the police removed from Lafayette Square, not to mention the scores across the country confronting police violence, participating in a divine violence of this sort? Benjamin, if he were here, would not tell us for sure, for he warns that divine violence is never clearly identifiable as such. I’ll take his advice and refrain from drawing the connection between divine violence and the protests too strongly, but not without noting the possibility.

In any case, a negation of Christianity in the name of Christianity. Perhaps surprisingly, this would not be new. Negative theology—the practice of unsaying and unlearning what one says and knows about God—has a long history dating back to interpretations of the cloud that descended upon Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 20). The 13th century mystic theologian Meister Eckhart enjoins his listeners to “pray to God that we may be free of ‘God’” (200). Getting free of “God”—God, as we have conceived and named ‘him,’ God, as we have used ‘him’ to legitimize all sorts of ungodly powers—is perhaps the work of the present, of this present.

Like Benjamin’s divine violence, the negation of Christianity and its God offers no concrete system, no positive conception of God to take God’s place. However, the process theologian Catherine Keller reminds us that a de(con)struction of the kind I’m envisioning does not limit the possibilities for who or what God might be; it infinitely expands them. Indeed, negative theology [sic, post-structural theology - res] destroys what we think we know to be ‘true’ and ‘essential’ only to open the way for other, ever mysterious, life-giving possibilities. For Keller, this entails the awakening of what she calls, drawing from William Connolly and Chantal Mouffe, an “amorous agonism” that ties us all—human and nonhuman—together in relations of cooperativity and solidarity (155).

Let me affirm Keller’s negation. And let me add that in this this particular moment, “keep[ing] faith” with Christianity’s failures, as Keller puts it, requires those of us who come from majority white Christian traditions to keep a literal silence as well. This silence is not an apathetic disconnection, but a pathos-filled connection both to the pathetic failure of Christianity and to the immensely creative black and indigenous formations of theology and politics that have arisen from its margins. It’s a silence that allows the voices most necessary for the present to come in loud and clear.

The divine violence is one in which Christian claims (even, I admit, my own) about what Christianity is are negated—destroyed. Such a negation opens us to listen to others for guidance on a new possibility of life and politics. But first, Christians must own up to the reality of what Christianity has been. Trump’s photo-op lays this bare for us. So, before we Christians distance ourselves from Trump’s photo, perhaps we ought to recognize that it’s a photo of ourselves. 

*  Hunter Bragg is a Ph.D. student at Drew University in Madison, NJ. He works in the discourse of political theology and explores its intersection with American criminal justice. He currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

** res - Addition by R.E. Slater

 

When It Comes to Racism What Is Our Perception vs. Our Perceiving?

Perception vs. Perceiving

by R.E. Slater

Perception is all we know and it is happening in our consciousness. Perceived is therefore the same as perception for we can never ever be sure about the objective reality of the perceived.... Consciousness that does the perceiving is the only reality that we can ever know or be sure of. - Quora


When we perceive something, we become aware of or notice it. Sometimes we perceive things by using our senses of sight, hearing, and smell. Or we can use our mind to perceive things, which means that we are able to recognize or understand them. - Urban Dictionary

Today's post-truth societies writes its own narratives based upon its own agendas. Jesus said to love one another. If our beliefs are not humane, or humanely enacted, then we are not loving one another.

I've been thinking a lot about things over the years which is also why I've written so much. Except for today. I couldn't focus. The news continues to be exceptionally bad for a nation broken too many times. Without getting into anything, here is something I had worked on back in July of 2017....

"When writing, the best I can do is to expand people's ingrained perceptions knowing that for many, their perception is their reality.

"The term 'interprefacts' may be apt here when claiming perceptual 'truth-claims' as 'fact'. The point is, all claimed 'facts' are someone’s interpretation of reality, including 'belief-claims" in politics, religion, or the bible.

Whether we know it or not, we promote our own narratives at the expense of who we are. As Kurt Vonnegut once said, 'Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be.'

In another sense, 'Our beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals.' I think this is a wise observation. What this means is that outcome matters. What we believe produces good or bad outcomes.

Thus the necessity to examine one's beliefs that they error on the side of humanity. The tools we have at hand are always available - compassion, wellbeing, and care for the other. In Jesus' words, if our outcomes are less than humane than our beliefs must be adjusted 'ere we fall into blinded darkness.

R.E. Slater

May 27, 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Clue: front "half" view or distorted
side view looking to the left?

The Power of Perception:

You ARE what others PERCEIVE!

http://minds2xcel.com/knowledge/2016/11/28/the-power-of-perception-you-are-what-you-are-perceive/

by the Knowledge Center

Perception is an amazing thing. A double-edged sword that can help you cut through the maze of social dynamics; or one that can cut you down to size. Forming a perception about someone or something comes naturally to us, and we do it subconsciously, whether you want to or not; or even when you tell yourself it is not the right thing to do. Let’s not deny this instinctive nature of ours, as it does help us make sense of our social environment, and of the person whom we are interacting with.

It takes just a few seconds to create an initial perception of someone. In quick time, this perception will become a “judgement”. Sometimes there are already preconceived perception biases existing even before the events happen. On this, I will share a little more on the research that I am conducting on perception bias.

Whether you are perceived positively or unfavourably, will suggest the level of difficulty for you “the perceived” to validate yourself subsequently. That is, if you are perceived positively in the beginning, it is easier for you to continue to reinforce that preception to create a favourable subsequent judgment.

Basically, how you come across to someone is defined through your ‘Presence’; how you ‘Behave’; and how you ‘Communicate’. I call this the “PBC”. This sums up a “persona” that you want others to see of you. Instead of an elaborate explanation, let me share a story to showcase what I mean:

I was posted to an overseas assignment several years back. During a visit from my family friends and hosting them to a sumptuous dinner and a night out to the city, our guests were immersed in the sights and sounds of the weekend city-life of the place. There were great scenery and beautiful people dressing to the nines for the weekend. In particular, we saw two exceptionally well-dressed ladies in the crowd. As our friends were appreciating and commenting on how good they look (there you are – our perception), we were drawn to witness a commotion between these 2 ladies in no time. They were hurling verbal insults at each other. We were obviously shocked. The way they behaved and communicated did not carry their Presence. All the ‘positives’ we perceived of them earlier on just disappeared. This disconnect in the persons’ “PBC” is obvious!

- KC (2016)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Disappearing Difference between Rhetoric and Argument

Patheos Link

by Roger Olson

July 10, 2017

Recently (during and since the 2016 U.S. presidential election) there has been a lot of “chatter” about “facts.” Someone publicly labeled a public truth claim an “alternative fact.” This neologism created a great deal of consternation, controversy, and more than a little tittering.

This event, or series of events, provoked me to think about truth claims, “facts,” and reality. Long before someone uttered the phrase “alternative fact” someone else said that “perception is reality.” I’ve uttered that myself in certain contexts. Some years ago the “sociology of knowledge” became interpreted by many intellectuals and academics as the “social construction of reality.” Others cautioned that the sociology of knowledge should be interpreted only as the “social construal of reality.”

For quite a long time now European and North American intellectuals (and please don’t think you’re not affected by what they think and say, something I’ll explain later here) adopted “anti-realism” or its softer version “critical realism.” The “social construction of reality” expresses anti-realism; the “social construal of reality” expresses critical realism. Both points of view accept the sociology of knowledge but with different degrees.

I long ago gave up any thought that “facts” (truth claims) match reality perfectly—as it actually is. I adopted a critical realism posture toward truth claims. All truth claims construe reality from within some narrative, some story about what is real and important, some perspective on “the world,” some point of view. As some thinker said, there is no view from nowhere.

I worry, however, that many people in the Western world (Europe, North America, places influenced by their intellectual trends) either 1) Don’t know or accept the inescapable social construal of reality or 2) Embrace the anti-realist social construction of reality view.

Some readers may know that much of what I am talking about here comes, at least partially, from American sociologist Peter Berger who died very recently. I was privileged, over the past two-to-three years to call him my friend. He initiated the friendship and I was simply “blown away,” to use an American colloquialism, by that. We met over lunch a few times, corresponded a few times, and he invited me to respond in a public colloquium or symposium to one of his last books. And he suggested to the editor of a volume of essays responding to that book that I write a chapter. By “friend” I don’t mean we were “chums” or “buddies” or anything like that; we knew each other and had some friendly social as well as professional interactions.

Through my friendly acquaintance and interactions with Berger, widely considered one of the “fathers” of the sociology of knowledge, I discovered that he was not, as many have assumed, an anti-realist. He believed, he told me directly, that there are methods of research, in sociology itself, that filter out bias, subjectivity and perspective. This felt a bit inconsistent to me—at least with many people’s interpretation of Berger’s sociology of knowledge epistemology.

It was not Berger, however, from whom I first learned about critical realism and the role that narrative, perspective, and social location play in everyone’s construal of reality. I first learned that, something I already suspected, from…(drumroll)…Wheaton College philosophy professor Arthur Holmes. In some of his writings (e.g., Contours of a Worldview) he used the term “interprefacts” for all truth claims. The point is that all “facts” are someone’s interpretation of reality. Holmes, an evangelical Christian philosopher who influenced two or three generations of Wheaton College students, and through his writings many others, was a critical realist. (I’m not claiming that he was always consistently that; I’m only saying that some of his writings seemed to me to assume that posture toward epistemology.)

Of course, as everyone who has studied these matters knows, a breakthrough classic of critical realism, if not anti-realism, was Thomas Kuhn whose book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) fell like a bombshell on the playground of the philosophers and scientists. Kuhn argued that, even in the “hard sciences,” there is no pure objectivity, no “view from nowhere.” Kuhn used the term “paradigms” for what sociologists of knowledge meant by terms like “perspective” and “social location.” All this is modern intellectual history.

Here’s the point and the “rub.” My own experience and observation of my culture—North American academia—leads me to believe that many people with tremendous influence—even where their names are never heard or known outside of academia—have adopted the belief that because of the sociology of knowledge, critical realism or even anti-realism (belief that “knowledge” never even comes close to matching reality-as-it-is if such even exists), because of the “social construction of reality,” all that’s left to us is rhetoric. The traditional ideas of “facts” and “arguments” are simply “old school thinking.” Since that is the case, many movers and shakers of culture believe, there is really no “line” between argument and rhetoric. All arguments (about what is the case) are actually only rhetoric and therefore….

Yes, what follows the “therefore?” Bear with me as I give an example in order to answer that question. A few years ago I met and had lunch with a man who is an executive of a major American “news” corporation that owns numerous “news” outlets spread out all over the United States and even the world. If I mentioned its name every reader would recognize it (or at least one or more of its news outlets—print or broadcast). This executive told me what I already suspected. A high executive of the corporation publicly stated to the people working under him that the purpose of the corporation, other than earning a profit, is to “promote our narrative.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I admire and respect that news organization executive for at least admitting the truth. But this is why I have largely given up reading, listening to, or watching news outlets. Most, if not all, are driven by some “narrative” which means, some perspective on reality that is tied to a particular group’s overall social location and agenda.

Now, some of you, my dear readers, might be thinking, and preparing to say that this has always been the case so why now stop reading, listening to, and watching the news? I believe there was a time in my life—long ago—when at least some journalists actually tried to deliver news objectively—without his/her delivery being driven by a narrative or agenda. Of course, I don’t believe there ever was a time when news was delivered in a purely objective manner such that the words being spoken matched reality perfectly without any distortion and without any perspective playing a role in how it was gathered and stated. But I think there was a time, even during my own lifetime, when most journalists and academics believed the “pursuit of truth” was worthwhile and that there was a real difference between rhetoric and arguments, between information and manipulation. Now, however, it seems to me that all news delivery includes blatant manipulation. If nothing else, the manipulation lies in delivering “news” that people want to hear or read and ignoring “news” that will harm ratings or readership. But I believe I detect also in it a not-very-well-hidden agenda to persuade readers and viewers toward a certain perspective on reality. In other words, much, if not all, “news” is really social engineering. Once your “eyes” are opened to it, you can’t miss it. It’s everywhere. We all know it’s part of contemporary advertising, but many people still dream that somewhere there is a news outlet that is dedicated to facts separated from any narrative.

So, do I blame the journalists? No. In fact, when I do watch television news (which is rare) I actually have feelings of sympathy for the talking heads, most of who probably know that what they are communicating under the guise of “facts” is really part of some nameless, invisible group’s social agenda rooted in a narrative about how reality is or should be.

Oh, I could give hundreds of examples. One very obvious one is how little we read or hear in American news about events taking place in Africa—unless it affects “American interests.” Do you want to know something about Africa? Watch Anthony Bourdain’s CNN series “Places Unknown.” It doesn’t even pretend to be news, but many of his episodes take place in Africa—from Libya to Senegal to Ethiopia to Zaire. From them you will at least realize what earth-shaking things are happening in Africa that you will never read about in or hear about on American news.

So, some of you will want to say “Watch the news on BBC!” and “Read The Economist.” I have; I’ve stopped. In my opinion, both are also driven by narratives and agendas and by people “at the top” who expect them to promote those narratives and agendas.

Some of you, at least, will think I am being “Chicken Little,” but I don’t think so. In fact, I will go further than Chicken Little and say that the sky has fallen already; it’s too late even to hope for a return to real concern with “the facts” separated from someone’s narrative and agenda. In my opinion, relying on memory and on things I have read about him, Walter Cronkite at least cared about the facts, about attempting to tell us Americans about the realities of world events.

Today, as I see it, the lines between argument and rhetoric, fact and persuasion, news and social engineering (and entertainment), have largely been erased both in academia (professional societies are driven by narratives and agendas that determine what is appropriate to think and say and what is inappropriate to think and say) and in journalism. Which means both are dead in any traditional sense.

If you want to watch a fascinating documentary that well illustrates the implicit anti-realism I am talking about, please get your hands on and watch the final episode of the series The Day the Universe Changed: A Personal View by journalist James Burke (1985). It is entitled “Worlds without End: Changing Knowledge, Changing Reality.”

Roger Olson - The Disappearing Difference between Rhetoric and Argument

Perception vs. Perceiving

by R.E. Slater

Perception is all we know and it is happening in our consciousness. Perceived is therefore the same as perception for we can never ever be sure about the objective reality of the perceived.... Consciousness that does the perceiving is the only reality that we can ever know or be sure of. - Quora


When we perceive something, we become aware of or notice it. Sometimes we perceive things by using our senses of sight, hearing, and smell. Or we can use our mind to perceive things, which means that we are able to recognize or understand them. - Urban Dictionary

Today's post-truth societies writes its own narratives based upon its own agendas. Jesus said to love one another. If our beliefs are not humane, or humanely enacted, then we are not loving one another.

I've been thinking a lot about things over the years which is also why I've written so much. Except for today. I couldn't focus. The news continues to be exceptionally bad for a nation broken too many times. Without getting into anything, here is something I had worked on back in July of 2017....

"When writing, the best I can do is to expand people's ingrained perceptions knowing that for many, their perception is their reality.

"The term 'interprefacts' may be apt here when claiming perceptual 'truth-claims' as 'fact'. The point is, all claimed 'facts' are someone’s interpretation of reality, including 'belief-claims" in politics, religion, or the bible.

Whether we know it or not, we promote our own narratives at the expense of who we are. As Kurt Vonnegut once said, 'Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be.'

In another sense, 'Our beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals.' I think this is a wise observation. What this means is that outcome matters. What we believe produces good or bad outcomes.

Thus the necessity to examine one's beliefs that they error on the side of humanity. The tools we have at hand are always available - compassion, wellbeing, and care for the other. In Jesus' words, if our outcomes are less than humane than our beliefs must be adjusted 'er we fall into blinded darkness.

R.E. Slater

May 27, 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Clue: front "half" view or distorted
side view looking to the left?

The Power of Perception:

You ARE what others PERCEIVE!

http://minds2xcel.com/knowledge/2016/11/28/the-power-of-perception-you-are-what-you-are-perceive/

by the Knowledge Center

Perception is an amazing thing. A double-edged sword that can help you cut through the maze of social dynamics; or one that can cut you down to size. Forming a perception about someone or something comes naturally to us, and we do it subconsciously, whether you want to or not; or even when you tell yourself it is not the right thing to do. Let’s not deny this instinctive nature of ours, as it does help us make sense of our social environment, and of the person whom we are interacting with.

It takes just a few seconds to create an initial perception of someone. In quick time, this perception will become a “judgement”. Sometimes there are already preconceived perception biases existing even before the events happen. On this, I will share a little more on the research that I am conducting on perception bias.

Whether you are perceived positively or unfavourably, will suggest the level of difficulty for you “the perceived” to validate yourself subsequently. That is, if you are perceived positively in the beginning, it is easier for you to continue to reinforce that preception to create a favourable subsequent judgment.

Basically, how you come across to someone is defined through your ‘Presence’; how you ‘Behave’; and how you ‘Communicate’. I call this the “PBC”. This sums up a “persona” that you want others to see of you. Instead of an elaborate explanation, let me share a story to showcase what I mean:

I was posted to an overseas assignment several years back. During a visit from my family friends and hosting them to a sumptuous dinner and a night out to the city, our guests were immersed in the sights and sounds of the weekend city-life of the place. There were great scenery and beautiful people dressing to the nines for the weekend. In particular, we saw two exceptionally well-dressed ladies in the crowd. As our friends were appreciating and commenting on how good they look (there you are – our perception), we were drawn to witness a commotion between these 2 ladies in no time. They were hurling verbal insults at each other. We were obviously shocked. The way they behaved and communicated did not carry their Presence. All the ‘positives’ we perceived of them earlier on just disappeared. This disconnect in the persons’ “PBC” is obvious!

- KC (2016)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Disappearing Difference between Rhetoric and Argument

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2017/07/disappearing-difference-rhetoric-argument/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=BRSS&utm_campaign=Evangelical&utm_content=259

by Roger Olson

July 10, 2017

Recently (during and since the 2016 U.S. presidential election) there has been a lot of “chatter” about “facts.” Someone publicly labeled a public truth claim an “alternative fact.” This neologism created a great deal of consternation, controversy, and more than a little tittering.

This event, or series of events, provoked me to think about truth claims, “facts,” and reality. Long before someone uttered the phrase “alternative fact” someone else said that “perception is reality.” I’ve uttered that myself in certain contexts. Some years ago the “sociology of knowledge” became interpreted by many intellectuals and academics as the “social construction of reality.” Others cautioned that the sociology of knowledge should be interpreted only as the “social construal of reality.”

For quite a long time now European and North American intellectuals (and please don’t think you’re not affected by what they think and say, something I’ll explain later here) adopted “anti-realism” or its softer version “critical realism.” The “social construction of reality” expresses anti-realism; the “social construal of reality” expresses critical realism. Both points of view accept the sociology of knowledge but with different degrees.

I long ago gave up any thought that “facts” (truth claims) match reality perfectly—as it actually is. I adopted a critical realism posture toward truth claims. All truth claims construe reality from within some narrative, some story about what is real and important, some perspective on “the world,” some point of view. As some thinker said, there is no view from nowhere.

I worry, however, that many people in the Western world (Europe, North America, places influenced by their intellectual trends) either 1) Don’t know or accept the inescapable social construal of reality or 2) Embrace the anti-realist social construction of reality view.

Some readers may know that much of what I am talking about here comes, at least partially, from American sociologist Peter Berger who died very recently. I was privileged, over the past two-to-three years to call him my friend. He initiated the friendship and I was simply “blown away,” to use an American colloquialism, by that. We met over lunch a few times, corresponded a few times, and he invited me to respond in a public colloquium or symposium to one of his last books. And he suggested to the editor of a volume of essays responding to that book that I write a chapter. By “friend” I don’t mean we were “chums” or “buddies” or anything like that; we knew each other and had some friendly social as well as professional interactions.

Through my friendly acquaintance and interactions with Berger, widely considered one of the “fathers” of the sociology of knowledge, I discovered that he was not, as many have assumed, an anti-realist. He believed, he told me directly, that there are methods of research, in sociology itself, that filter out bias, subjectivity and perspective. This felt a bit inconsistent to me—at least with many people’s interpretation of Berger’s sociology of knowledge epistemology.

It was not Berger, however, from whom I first learned about critical realism and the role that narrative, perspective, and social location play in everyone’s construal of reality. I first learned that, something I already suspected, from…(drumroll)…Wheaton College philosophy professor Arthur Holmes. In some of his writings (e.g., Contours of a Worldview) he used the term “interprefacts” for all truth claims. The point is that all “facts” are someone’s interpretation of reality. Holmes, an evangelical Christian philosopher who influenced two or three generations of Wheaton College students, and through his writings many others, was a critical realist. (I’m not claiming that he was always consistently that; I’m only saying that some of his writings seemed to me to assume that posture toward epistemology.)

Of course, as everyone who has studied these matters knows, a breakthrough classic of critical realism, if not anti-realism, was Thomas Kuhn whose book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) fell like a bombshell on the playground of the philosophers and scientists. Kuhn argued that, even in the “hard sciences,” there is no pure objectivity, no “view from nowhere.” Kuhn used the term “paradigms” for what sociologists of knowledge meant by terms like “perspective” and “social location.” All this is modern intellectual history.

Here’s the point and the “rub.” My own experience and observation of my culture—North American academia—leads me to believe that many people with tremendous influence—even where their names are never heard or known outside of academia—have adopted the belief that because of the sociology of knowledge, critical realism or even anti-realism (belief that “knowledge” never even comes close to matching reality-as-it-is if such even exists), because of the “social construction of reality,” all that’s left to us is rhetoric. The traditional ideas of “facts” and “arguments” are simply “old school thinking.” Since that is the case, many movers and shakers of culture believe, there is really no “line” between argument and rhetoric. All arguments (about what is the case) are actually only rhetoric and therefore….

Yes, what follows the “therefore?” Bear with me as I give an example in order to answer that question. A few years ago I met and had lunch with a man who is an executive of a major American “news” corporation that owns numerous “news” outlets spread out all over the United States and even the world. If I mentioned its name every reader would recognize it (or at least one or more of its news outlets—print or broadcast). This executive told me what I already suspected. A high executive of the corporation publicly stated to the people working under him that the purpose of the corporation, other than earning a profit, is to “promote our narrative.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I admire and respect that news organization executive for at least admitting the truth. But this is why I have largely given up reading, listening to, or watching news outlets. Most, if not all, are driven by some “narrative” which means, some perspective on reality that is tied to a particular group’s overall social location and agenda.

Now, some of you, my dear readers, might be thinking, and preparing to say that this has always been the case so why now stop reading, listening to, and watching the news? I believe there was a time in my life—long ago—when at least some journalists actually tried to deliver news objectively—without his/her delivery being driven by a narrative or agenda. Of course, I don’t believe there ever was a time when news was delivered in a purely objective manner such that the words being spoken matched reality perfectly without any distortion and without any perspective playing a role in how it was gathered and stated. But I think there was a time, even during my own lifetime, when most journalists and academics believed the “pursuit of truth” was worthwhile and that there was a real difference between rhetoric and arguments, between information and manipulation. Now, however, it seems to me that all news delivery includes blatant manipulation. If nothing else, the manipulation lies in delivering “news” that people want to hear or read and ignoring “news” that will harm ratings or readership. But I believe I detect also in it a not-very-well-hidden agenda to persuade readers and viewers toward a certain perspective on reality. In other words, much, if not all, “news” is really social engineering. Once your “eyes” are opened to it, you can’t miss it. It’s everywhere. We all know it’s part of contemporary advertising, but many people still dream that somewhere there is a news outlet that is dedicated to facts separated from any narrative.

So, do I blame the journalists? No. In fact, when I do watch television news (which is rare) I actually have feelings of sympathy for the talking heads, most of who probably know that what they are communicating under the guise of “facts” is really part of some nameless, invisible group’s social agenda rooted in a narrative about how reality is or should be.

Oh, I could give hundreds of examples. One very obvious one is how little we read or hear in American news about events taking place in Africa—unless it affects “American interests.” Do you want to know something about Africa? Watch Anthony Bourdain’s CNN series “Places Unknown.” It doesn’t even pretend to be news, but many of his episodes take place in Africa—from Libya to Senegal to Ethiopia to Zaire. From them you will at least realize what earth-shaking things are happening in Africa that you will never read about in or hear about on American news.

So, some of you will want to say “Watch the news on BBC!” and “Read The Economist.” I have; I’ve stopped. In my opinion, both are also driven by narratives and agendas and by people “at the top” who expect them to promote those narratives and agendas.

Some of you, at least, will think I am being “Chicken Little,” but I don’t think so. In fact, I will go further than Chicken Little and say that the sky has fallen already; it’s too late even to hope for a return to real concern with “the facts” separated from someone’s narrative and agenda. In my opinion, relying on memory and on things I have read about him, Walter Cronkite at least cared about the facts, about attempting to tell us Americans about the realities of world events.

Today, as I see it, the lines between argument and rhetoric, fact and persuasion, news and social engineering (and entertainment), have largely been erased both in academia (professional societies are driven by narratives and agendas that determine what is appropriate to think and say and what is inappropriate to think and say) and in journalism. Which means both are dead in any traditional sense.

If you want to watch a fascinating documentary that well illustrates the implicit anti-realism I am talking about, please get your hands on and watch the final episode of the series The Day the Universe Changed: A Personal View by journalist James Burke (1985). It is entitled “Worlds without End: Changing Knowledge, Changing Reality.”

Shorts - What Does a Post-Christian Church Look Like?

Sunday Morning Thoughts

"What would a Post-Christian gospel look like? What would a Post-Christian church be formed around? And what would be its Post-Christian mission?"

In the old days this might be known as the subversive gospel. But of course enlightenment has come with Holy Spirit event and change. For myself, as for many others, it will be a welcomed relief from the past several decades of misdirection into unchurchlike activities, behaviors, and societal rants. The short of it is it'll be the same but the long of it is it'll be contemporarily different.

So then, here's what a post-Christian church might look like for starters...

Firstly, it'll be full of sinners saved by grace and deeply devoted to equality of fellowship with one another and to the world reading a bible more gracious than judgmental.

Next, as the church reformats and repents, a more authentic, more selfless church will emerge to serve, share, embrace, and welcome all of humanity without codes, conducys, and qualifications.

Too, the gatherings will become less about itself and more about Jesus and the world he loves.

In the future church, being right will be less important than doing right. Sure, that involves social justice and meeting physical needs, but it also involves treating people with kindness, compassion in every day life, and attending to their spiritual well being.

It is also the kind of outward focus that drove the rapid expansion of the first century church.

And the post-Christian church will be all about adaptive mission and innovative model. Not building programs. Not fund raising. And not divisive political speeches centered around ungodly capitalist values.

This is the hope of the redeemed and the glory of God undefeated by evil or by false prophets believing their own "interpretive take" on the gospel as the true word of God.

R.E. Slater

January 31, 2016

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10 predictions about the future Church and shifting attendance patterns

http://www.christianweek.org/10-predictions-future-church-shifting-attendance-patterns/

by CAREY NIEUWHOF, ChristianWeek Columnist

January 25, 2016

Every generation experiences change.

But sometimes you sense you’re in the midst of truly radical change, the kind that happens only every few centuries. Increasingly, I think we’re in such a moment now.

Those of us in in Western culture who are over age 30 were born into a culture that could conceivably still be called Christian. Now, as David Kinnaman at the Barna Group has shown, even in America, people who are churchless (having no church affiliation) will soon eclipse the churched.

In addition, 48% of Millennials (born between 1984-2002) can be called post-Christian in their beliefs, thinking and worldview.

I think the change we’re seeing around us might one day be viewed on the same level as what happened to the church after Constantine’s conversion or after the invention of the printing press. Whatever the change looks like when it’s done, it will register as a seismic shift from what we’ve known.

So what will the future church be like? And how should you and I respond?

Predictions…Really?

Okay, before we get going, a few things.

I realize making predictions can be a dangerous thing. Maybe even a bit ridiculous . But I want to offer a few thoughts because I’m passionate about the mission of the church.

So, borne out of a love for the gathered church, I offer a few thoughts. Consider it thinking in pencil, not ink.

While no one’s really sure of what’s ahead, talking about it at least allows us to position our churches for impact in a changing world.

10 Predictions About the Future Church

So what’s likely for the future church? Here are 10 things I see.

1. The potential to gain is still greater than the potential to lose

Every time there is a change in history, there’s potential to gain and potential to lose.

I believe the potential to gain is greater than the potential to lose. Why?

As despairing or as cynical as some might be (sometimes understandably) over the church’s future, we have to remind ourselves that the church was Jesus’ idea, not ours.

The reports of the church’s death are greatly exaggerated

It will survive our missteps and whatever cultural trends happen around us. We certainly don’t always get things right, but Christ has an incredible history of pulling together Christians in every generation to share his love for a broken world.

As a result, the reports of the church’s death are greatly exaggerated.

2. Churches that love their model more than the mission will die

That said, many individual congregations and some entire denominations won’t make it. The difference will be between those who cling to the mission and those who cling to the model.

When the car was invented, it quick took over from the horse and buggy. Horse and buggy manufacturers were relegated to boutique status and many went under, but human transportation actually exploded. Suddenly average people could travel at a level they never could before.

The mission is travel. The model is a buggy, or car, or motorcycle, or jet.

Look at the changes in the publishing, music and even photography industry in the last few years.

See a trend? The mission is reading. It’s music. It’s photography. The model always shifts….moving from things like 8 tracks, cassettes and CDs to MP3s and now streaming audio and video.

In the future, churches that love their model

more than their mission will die.

Companies that show innovation around the mission (Apple, Samsung) will always beat companies that remain devoted to the method (Kodak).

Churches need to stay focused on the mission (leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus) and be exceptionally innovative in our model.

3. The gathered church is here to stay

Read the comments on this blog or any other church leader blog and you would think that some Christians believe the best thing to do is to give up on Christian gatherings of any kind.

This is naive.

While some will leave, it does not change the fact that the church has always gathered because the church is inherently communal. Additionally, what we can do gathered together far surpasses what we can do alone. Which is why there will always be an organized church of some form.

The church will always gather. What Christians can do together

far surpasses what we can do alone.

So while our gatherings might shift and look different than they do today, Christians will always gather together to do more than we ever could on our own.

4. Consumer Christianity will die and a more selfless discipleship will emerge

Consumer Christianity asks What can I get from God? It asks, What’s in it for me?

That leads us to evaluate our church, our faith, our experience and each other according to our preferences and whims. In many respects, even many critics of the church who have left have done so under the pull of consumer Christianity because ‘nothing’ meets their needs.

All of this is antithetical to the Gospel, which calls us to die to ourselves—to lose ourselves for the sake of Christ.

As the church reformats and repents,

a more authentic, more selfless church will emerge.

As the church reformats and repents, a more authentic, more selfless church will emerge. Sure, we will still have to make decisions about music, gathering times and even some distinctions about what we believe, but the tone will be different. When you’re no longer focused on yourself and your viewpoint, a new tone emerges.

5. Sundays will become more about what we give than what we get

The death of consumer Christianity will change our gatherings.

Our gatherings will become less about us and more about Jesus and the world he loves. Rather than a gathering of the already-convinced, the churches that remain will be decidedly outsider-focused. And word will be supplemented with deeds.

In the future church, being right will be less important than doing right. Sure, that involves social justice and meeting physical needs, but it also involves treating people with kindness, compassion in every day life and attending to their spiritual well being.

This is the kind of outward focus that drove the rapid expansion of the first century church.

In the future church, being right will be less important than doing right.

That’s why I’m very excited to be part of a group of churches that has, at its heart, the desire to create churches unchurched people love to attend. While the expression of what that looks like may change, the intent will not.

6. Attendance will no longer drive engagement; engagement will drive attendance

Currently, many churches try to get people to attend, hoping it drives engagement.

In the future, that will flip. The engaged will attend, in large measure because only the engaged will remain.

If you really think about this…engagement driving attendance is exactly what has fuelled the church at its best moments throughout history. It’s an exciting shift.

7. Simplified ministries will complement people’s lives, not compete with people’s lives

For years, the assumption has been that the more a church grew, the more activity it would offer.

The challenge, of course, is that church can easily end up burning people out. In some cases, people end up with no life except church life. Some churches offer so many programs for families that families don’t even have a chance to be families.

Simplified churches will complement people’s witness,

not compete with people’s witness.

The church at its best has always equipped people to live out their faith in the world. But you have to be in the world to influence the world.

Churches that focus their energies on the few things the church can uniquely do best will emerge as the most effective churches moving forward. Simplified churches will complement people’s witness, not compete with people’s witness.

8. Online church will supplement the journey but not become the journey

There’s a big discussion right now around online church. I think in certain niches online church might become the church for some who simply have no other access to church.

But there is something about human relationship that requires presence. Because the church at its fullest will always gather, online church will supplement the journey. I believe that online relationships are real relationships, but they are not the greatest relationships people can have.

Think of it like meeting someone online. You can have a fantastic relationship. But if you fall in love, you ultimately want to meet and spend your life together.

So it is with Jesus, people and the church.

9. Online church will become more of a front door than a back door

There’s no question that today online church has become a back door for Christians who are done with attending church.

While online church is an amazing supplement for people who can’t get to a service, it’s still an off ramp for Christian whose commitment to faith is perhaps less than it might have been at an earlier point.

Online church has the potential to become a front door

for the curious and the unconvinced.

Within a few years, the dust will settle and a new role for online church and online ministry will emerge. Online church has the potential to become a massive front door for the curious, the unconvinced and for those who want to know what Christianity is all about.

In the same way you purchase almost nothing without reading online reviews or rarely visit a restaurant without checking it out online first, a church’s online presence will be a first home for people which for many, will lead to a personal connection with Christ and ultimately the gathered church.

10. Gatherings will be smaller and larger at the same time

While many might think the mega-church is dead, it’s not. And while others think mega-churches are awful, there’s nothing inherently bad about them. Size is somewhat irrelevant to a church’s effectiveness.

There are bad mega-churches and bad small churches. And there are wonderfully effective mega-churches and wonderfully effective small churches.

We will likely see large churches get larger. Multisite will continue to explode, as churches that are effective expand their mission.

The future church will become bigger and smaller at the same time.

At the same time, churches will also establish smaller, more intimate gatherings as millennials and others seek tighter connections and groups. Paradoxically, future large churches will likely become large not because they necessarily gather thousands in one space, but because they gather thousands through dozens of smaller gatherings under some form of shared leadership. Some of those gatherings might be as simple as coffee shop and even home venues under a simple structure.

We will see the emergence of bigger churches and smaller churches at the same time as the gathered church continues to change.

What Do You See?

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About the author: CAREY NIEUWHOF, ChristianWeek Columnist

Carey Nieuwhof is founding pastor of Connexus Church north of Toronto and is author of several books, including his latest #1 best-selling work, Lasting Impact: 7 Powerful Conversations That Will Help Your Church Grow. Carey speaks to church leaders around the world about leadership, change and personal growth. He writes one of today’s most widely read church leadership blogs at CAREYNIEUWHOF.COM and hosts the top-rated Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast where he interviews some of today’s best leaders.