What is a Liberal Christian? Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

Why I Am Not a “Liberal Christian”

PART 1

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/02/why-i-am-not-a-liberal-christian/

 

by Roger Olson

February 7, 2013

Comments

Anyone who comes here regularly or has read any of my books knows I’m no fundamentalist. In fact, I struggle to get along with fundamentalists and pray for God’s grace to do it. I’m not proud of that fact, but I admit it. I’ve been burned by fundamentalism and seen the damage it does to individuals, churches and society.

 

Recently a friend asked me to look at some web sites of Christians who proclaim themselves “progressive”—sometimes using the label “un-fundamentalist.” Labels alone don’t really tell me very much about a group. I look beneath and behind the labels for ideas—convictions, presuppositions, commitments, attitudes.

 

Many people who call themselves “moderate to progressive” theologically are really just asserting their non-fundamentalism. Like me, they have rejected extreme biblical literalism, hostility to science and philosophy, separatism and legalism, extreme dogmatism. Yet, there are others who use labels like “moderate to progressive” who are out-and-out liberals theologically.

 

What makes the difference? When and how does one cross from non-fundamentalist evangelical, broadly conservative, into out-and-out theological liberalism? Ah, there’s no litmus test. Discernment of that is complicated and must be done cautiously.

 

A while ago I argued that “evangelical” is defined partly, at least, by prototypes—individuals and documents and events of the past (and perhaps the present) that stand out as epitomes of the “ideal type.” With evangelicals, at least since World War 2, there’s a fairly easy prototype to go by—Billy Graham. Not that all evangelicals are thrilled with everything about him, but he represents, in a general way, that “type” of Christian faith and life we call “evangelical.”

 

So it is with “liberal.” It’s a type of Christian faith and life defined at least in part by prototypes. Who are its prototypes? Friedrich Schleiermacher and Marcus Borg—to name historical-theological “bookends.” Sure, they don’t agree on everything, but they both, in their own ways, represent an approach to Christian faith that is fairly called “liberal.”

 

Historical theologian Claude Welch, author of a magisterial two volume history of nineteenth century theology, boiled it (viz., “liberal Christianity”) down to a phrase: “maximal acknowledgment of the claims of modernity” in theology. Gary Dorrien, professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary and author of a magisterial three volume history of liberal theology in America, defines liberal religion as rejection of any authority outside the self. However, when I read his three volume history of liberal theology in America I discern that all these theologians have one thing in common—recognition of the authority of “modern thought” alongside or above Scripture and tradition.

 

Liberal theologian Delwin Brown describes the essence of liberal Christianity as granting authority to “the best of contemporary thought” in his dialogue/debate with Clark Pinnock entitled Theological Crossfire. Ironically, fundamentalists and many “conservative evangelicals” accused Pinnock of being “liberal” theologically. But in that book Pinnock comes across as almost a fundamentalist—compared with Brown (a former evangelical). They agree that the “bottom line” difference between evangelicals and liberals is authority.

 

I find myself in broad agreement with some liberal Christians on some issues—especially over against fundamentalism. On the other hand, I agree with some fundamentalists more than with liberals on some other issues.

 

What do I look for in trying to discern whether a person or group is really theologically liberal?

 

First, I look at their overall view of reality. Do they think the universe is open to God’s special activity in what might be called, however infelicitously, “miracles?” Do they believe in supernatural acts of God including especially the bodily resurrection of Jesus including the empty tomb? If not, I tend to think they are liberal theologically.

 

Second, I look at their approach to “doing theology.” How do they approach knowing God? Do they begin with and recognize the authority of special revelation? Or do they begin with and give norming authority to human experience, culture, science, philosophy, “the best of contemporary thought?” That is, do they “do” theology “from above” or “from below?” Insofar as they do theology “from below” I tend to think they are liberal theologically.

 

Third, I look at their Christology. Do they think Jesus was different from other “great souls” among us in kind or only in degree? Is their Christology truly incarnational, affirming the preexistence of the Word who become human as Jesus Christ, or is it functional only, affirming only that Jesus Christ represented God, was God’s “deputy and advocate” among men and women? Insofar as their Chistology is functional and not ontologically incarnational, trinitarian, I tend to think they are theologically liberal.

 

Fourth, I look at their view of Scripture. Do they believe the Bible is “inspired insofar as it is inspiring,” a wisdom-filled source of religious illumination and record of our “spiritual ancestors’” experiences of God? Or do they believe the Bible is supernaturally inspired such that in some sense God is its author—not necessarily meaning God dictated it or even verbally inspired it? Another way of putting that “test” is similar to the Christological one above: Is the Bible different only in degree from other great books of spiritual wisdom or in kind from them? Insofar as they view the Bible as different only in degree, I tend to think they are liberal theologically.

 

Fifth, I look at their view of salvation. Do they believe salvation is forgiveness and reconciliation with God as well as being made whole and holy by God’s grace alone or do they believe salvation is only a realization of human potential—individual or social—by spiritual enlightenment and moral endeavor? Insofar as they think the latter, I tend to think they are theologically liberal.

 

Sixth, I look at their view of the future. Do they believe in a real return of Jesus Christ, however conceived, to bring about a new world of righteousness? Or do they believe the “return of Christ” is a myth that expresses an existential experience and/or social transformation only? Insofar as they believe it is only a symbol, myth or metaphor, I tend to think they are liberal theologically.

 

The problem is that discerning whether someone is theologically liberal is not a black-and-white process. It’s not an “either-or.” Many people and groups are some kind of mixture, hybrid of conservative and liberal. But, in my book, anyway, a true liberal is one who for the most part leans toward the views I have labeled “liberal” above.

 

So what’s wrong with being liberal theologically in that way? I find it thin, ephemeral, light, profoundly unsatisfying. It seems to me barely different from being secular humanist. Sure, theological liberals (in the sense I have defined that type above) can be profoundly “spiritual,” but I don’t think they are profoundly Christian. Their commitment is greater to modern culture, the Zeitgeist of the Enlightenment, than to Christian sources. Their “Christianity” is barely recognizable if recognizable at all—compared with anything that was called “Christian” before the Enlightenment. Ultimately, I believe, theological liberalism robs Christianity of its distinctiveness, the “scandal of particularity,” its prophetic edge and makes it easy, respectable and dull.

 

I have come to the conclusion over the years that most people who are theologically liberal grew up fundamentalist and are simply in deep reaction to it—throwing the baby out with the bathwater of an overly legalistic and literalistic Christianity.

 

I have no problem with Christians who struggle with traditional belief; my problem is with those who “reinterpret it” so radically that it isn’t recognizable anymore. They say, for example, that they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but when pressed to explain it, what they really believe is that the disciples came to a realization of the continuing relevance of the message of Jesus or Jesus’ ongoing “spiritual presence” among them and us. They don’t mean that the tomb was empty and that Jesus’ dead body was transformed to a new mode of eschatological life.

 

If I ever wake up and find that I think like a true theological liberal, I hope I will be honest enough to stop calling myself “Christian.”

 

Now, having said that, harsh as it sounds, believe me when I say I am not judging liberals’ salvation. Their salvation is up to God, not me or any other human being. Can a person be truly liberal theologically, as I have defined it above, and be saved? I honestly don’t know. I hope so. But it would be in spite of their beliefs, not because of them.

 

 

 

What is a Liberal anyway?

PART 2

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/02/11/what-is-a-liberal-anyway/

 

by Scott McKnight

Feb 11, 2013 @ 0:05

Comments

 

Roger [Olson] lists paradigmatic theological liberals as Schleiermacher and Marcus Borg, I’d add Harvey Cox as another example.

 

One observation: over the years I’ve seen lots of evangelicals “drift” into liberalism. Quite often they refuse to admit they are liberals. What happens is that they absorb evangelicalism’s denunciation of liberals as non-Christians while simultaneously both embracing liberalism and thinking (and knowing) they have not left the Christian faith. Evangelicals have successfully made “liberal” a pejorative term. So today many liberals call themselves “progressives.” Is there any difference?

 

 

 

What is a Progressive?

PART 3

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/02/18/what-is-a-progressive-anyway/

 

by Scot McKnight

Feb 18, 2013 @ 5:06

Comments

 

This post is by Bo Sanders [from Homebrewed Christianity], a self-confessed progressive who will sketch how he distinguishes progressive from liberal:

 

Questions: Who are the progressives? Who are the liberals? Do liberals see themselves as progressives?

 

Roger Olson caused some ripples last week when he posted “Why I am not a Liberal Christian”. Then Scot McKnight went and took it even farther with “What is a Liberal Anyway” and said: “Evangelicals have successfully made “liberal” a pejorative term. So today many liberals call themselves “progressives.”

 

My contention is that saying progressives are really just liberals who don’t like the ‘L’ word is like saying that athletes and baseball players are really just the same thing. While baseball players are athletes, not all athletes play baseball. It’s an inexact statement. They aren’t exactly the same thing.

 

There is as big a difference between liberal and progressive as there is between evangelical and emergent. There may be some overlap, but to equate the two is unhelpful.

 

Here is the most basic definition I can provide – it comes from John Cobb, the greatest living American theologian:

• Liberal simply means that one’s experience is a valid location for doing theology.
 
• Progressives are liberal folks who have learned from Feminist, Liberation and Post-Colonial critiques. *

 

We all read Roger Olson’s 6 point definition last week, but when it comes to liberals there is something more categorical that would be helpful for our current distinction. Liberal is simply a constellation of positions and answers to questions that were established in the Enlightenment. Liberal is a settled matter. It has accepted the basic inherited framework to be the as-is structure and conceded the basic ground-rules as given.

 

Progressive on the other hand is to question, to wrestle, and to push. Progressives don’t necessarily think that all progress is good and certainly don’t think that history is inevitable.

 

Liberals are predictable - because the matter is settled. If one takes the basic considerations handed down from enlightenment concerns, liberals are just the other side of the coin from conservatives. Take any issue – miracles, Biblical authorship, other religions, etc. – you know exactly what you are going to get from both conservatives and liberals.

 

They have been doing this dance with each other for a long time. One takes the high road and the other takes the low. One makes a move right. The other secures the left. This is why they are both easy to pigeon hole and caricature.

 

Maybe an example would be helpful. Let’s take economics.

 

Capitalism is the default economic theory of the Western (liberal) society. While conservative and liberal Christians would believe different things within a capitalistic framework (tax brackets, incentives, government programs, and social involvement) what is not in question is capitalism itself. The system is both beneficial and unquestioned to both teams. Like Yankees and RedSox fans stress how much they dislike each other and the opposing team’s tactics, what is never in question is the goodness of baseball in the first place. That is assumed.

 

Progressives call the system into question and call out a different set of concerns. Issues of globalization, free trade, deregulation and disparity come in.

 

Liberals want a slightly nicer, kinder, more equitable, more accessible version of capitalism than conservatives do. Progressives question the whole enterprise and may go so far as to say that the ethical teachings of Jesus about how we are to treat other humans are incompatible with the workings of the capitalist machine.

 

We could do this with any number of issues. My only point is that progressives are not liberals shying away from the ‘L’ word because it has been made a pejorative. [Rather they embrace it and run with it - res]

 

So even if you just want to say that progressives are aggressive liberals, that would be more accurate. Liberals concede the rules of game, they just want to pick the better of the provided options. Progressives question the as-is possibilities of the given structures. This causes progressive to engage in critical examination and to re-evaluate both the road ahead and the road that delivered us here.

 

* He said this during a Homebrewed Christianity interview for episode 101.

 

*res - r.e. slater

 

 

 

Can An Evangelical Be Progressive?

PART 4

 

by R.E. Slater

February 18, 2013

 

What if an evangelical were to call themselves a progressive evangelical? Are we to then infer that that person is a liberal, or more rather, a progressive liberal?

 

Or, is the usage of the term progressive a descriptively different term than its noun-form?

 

But rather than imply that a progressive Evangelical is liberal it might imply that that evangelical wishes to move to the left of the conservative elements within his religious affiliation.... By embacing social issues; by questioning existing religious structures, conventions and practices; by mitigating harsher words of judgmental Christianity for kindlier words of grace and peace; and for any number of other reasons.

 

An evangelical may thus wish to move left of a perceived hardline mentality fraught within their own evangelicalism. And we might describe an evangelical as one who might be conservative, moderate, progressive, or even leftist. But still, that description hangs as to what how an evangelical interacts with his/her own evangelicalism.

 

So too may a liberal be conservative, progressive, or leftist, in relationship to their liberalism. To use the adverbial form of the term "progressive" is meaningless without its context.

 

Ironically, this same situation also occurred within Fundamentalist Christianity birthing its more liberal, or progressive, twin - that of Evangelicalism. But one would not consider Evangelicalism as liberal much less than Fundamentalism as being non-Christian. However, each Christian group has their own distinctives, creeds, religious formulas, practices, and ministerial themes.

 

So then, to use the term liberal, or progressive, must be to use the terms intelligently, or coherently, within their greater context of literary meaning, and not as simply pejorative labels.

 

To be a progressive evangelical then is unlike being a progressive liberal. They are two different belief structures (or, world-and-life philosophies). The former holds to some form of Roger Olson's 6-point outline, the latter to some form of its opposite. They are unlike each other even though each uses the same label of progressive.

 

Furthermore, an Emergent Christian is one that has moved to the left of Evangelicalism, for the same reasons that an Evangelical had moved to the left of Fundamentalism. Moreover, an Emergent Christian may be the same as a progressive Evanglical, but it is hoped that the term Evangelical is dropped for the more positive description of Emergent (or Emerging) Christianity.

As example, both Roger Olson and Scott McKnight would describe themselves as postconservative Evangelicals (which means that they are progressive Evangelicals as I understand it). A confounding term to say the least. But, based upon their careers, and school affiliations, wisely used in these days and times of firings and public slanderings. Bo Sanders, on the other hand is an Emergent Christian, as am I.

So then, just what is an Emergent / Emerging Christian? It is the one we have been writing about for these past two years here at Relevancy22. And just what is an Emergent / Emerging Theology? It too is in various stages of development and expression and can likewise be found here at Relevancy22.

 

In terms of Christian labeling, an Emergent Christian is one that has left Evangelicalism or, has moved to the right from Mainline Denominationalism's progressive liberalism. However, an Emergent may also be a former traditional Catholic wishing to contemporize their Catholic faith by following the reforms of Vatican II that have become stillborn by its more conservative constituents and theologs. Or, perhaps an Emergent is one that was either liberal, or without any religious affiliation, wishing to re-express their atheism, hedonism, natural theology, and so on, to that of a biblical theology that is both postmodern and contemporary.

 

But to any Christian wishing to remain Christian, or biblically theological, Roger's 6-points are good qualifiers for a Christianity that is always orthodox, regardless of its religious expression down through the ages. Whether it was that of an early Jewish Christianity, or that of an Hellenistic extract, or pre-Medieval, Medieval, Reformational, Enlightened, Modern, or Postmodern.

 

Regardless, Orthodox Christianity will observe all 6 points - to which I'm sure we could add a few more.... Throughout all, God will be God, and a God who has not left us to our own selves. Who actively pursues us in all endeavors despite sin, this lost world, or our lost souls. Who wishes to redeem us and bring us into active fellowship with Himself. And His will, as it expands outwards throughout His creation, as a greater spiritual Kingdom unstoppable and unrelenting.

 

1. A God who is Creator-Redeemer
2. A Special Revelation that is supernatural in origin
3. A Christology that is Incarnational and Trinitarian
4. Scriptures that are Inspirational and Authoritative
5. A lost humanity requiring God's salvation
6. A future that looks to Jesus Christ's return

 

 

 

Psalm 27 - A Choral Arrangement Sung by the Cambridge Singers

 

The Lord is my light and my salvation (John Rutter)

 

 

Words from Psalm 27
Cambridge Singers, conducted by John Rutter
from the CD "Te Deum" Collegium Records

 

 

 

Psalm 27

English Standard Version (ESV)

 

The Lord Is My Light and My Salvation

 

Of David.

 

 

27 The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold^[a] of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

² When evildoers assail me
to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes,
it is they who stumble and fall.

³ Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
yet^[b] I will be confident.

⁴ One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire^[c] in his temple.

⁵ For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will lift me high upon a rock.

⁶ And now my head shall be lifted up
above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

⁷ Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!
⁸ You have said, “Seek^[d] my face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, Lord, do I seek.”^[e]
9 Hide not your face from me.
Turn not your servant away in anger,
O you who have been my help.
Cast me not off; forsake me not,
O God of my salvation!
¹⁰ For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the Lord will take me in.

¹¹ Teach me your way, O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
¹² Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they breathe out violence.

¹³ I believe^[f] that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
¹⁴ Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

 

 

Footnotes:

1. Psalm 27:1 Or refuge
2. Psalm 27:3 Or in this
3. Psalm 27:4 Or meditate
4. Psalm 27:8 The command (seek) is addressed to more than one person
5. Psalm 27:8 The meaning of the Hebrew verse is uncertain
6. Psalm 27:13 Other Hebrew manuscripts Oh! Had I not believed

 

The State of the Catholic Church, circa 2013

 

 

February 12, 2013

 

The Disastrous Influence of Pope Benedict XVI

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/02/good-riddance-to-pope-benedict-he-was-a-disaster.html?mbid=nl_Daily%20(179)

 

Posted by John Cassidy

 

Spare me any more reverential coverage about Pope Benedict XVI and his decision to give up his office. On a personal level, I wish him well. At the age of eighty-five and increasingly infirm, he surely deserves a rest. But as far as his record goes, he can’t leave office a moment too soon. His lengthy tenure at the Vatican, which included more than twenty years as the Catholic Church’s chief theological enforcer before he became Pope, in 2005, has been little short of disastrous. By setting its face against the modern world in general, and by dragging its feet in response to one of the worst scandals since the Reformation, Benedict’s Vatican has called the Church’s future into question, needlessly alienating countless people around the world who were brought up in its teachings.

 

Not that it matters much, but you can count me among them. When I was a boy, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the nuns at Sacred Heart Primary School taught my classmates and me the New Testament from slim paperbacks with embossed navy-blue covers. We each got four of them: “The Good News According to Luke,” The Good News According to Matthew,” “The Good News According to Mark,” and “The Good News According to John.” Of the four gospels, the most thumbed, by far, were those of Luke, which contains many of Jesus’s parables, and Matthew, which features the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…”

 

It was the early seventies, an era of hope and optimism for many Catholics. Following the lengthy Second Vatican Council, called by Pope John XXIII in 1959, the Church had made a determined effort to modernize some of its doctrines and practices. Masses, which for many centuries had been confined to Latin, were now celebrated in other languages. Priests, who traditionally faced the altar during services, had been instructed to face their congregations and invite them to participate. In place of a stultifying focus on ancient dogmas and ceremonies, there was a return to the actual teachings of Jesus, which were being interpreted in increasingly liberal and egalitarian ways, as evidenced by the words of a popular folk hymn we used to sing, a few lines of which I recount from memory:

He sent me to give the Good News to the poor.
Tell prisoners that they are prisoners no more.
Tell blind people that they can see,
And set the downtrodden free.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the church’s concern with bread-and-butter issues had been expressed from the top. In 1967, Pope Paul VI, John XXIII’s successor, issued “Populorum Progressio,” an encyclical on “the development of peoples,” which asserted that the global economy should serve the many, not just the few. Updating the Church’s teachings to take account of widespread poverty and inequality, the Pontiff recognized the right to a just wage, security of employment, and decent working conditions. He even recognized the right to join a union.

 

Not everybody shared the vision of Catholicism as an urgent and uplifting force for social justice, though many people in South America and other developing areas of the world did. (In some places, it became known as “liberation theology,” a phrase coined by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez.) Many older priests, including the venerable Canon Flynn, who oversaw my local church, Our Lady of Lourdes, had little time for innovations. They were content to celebrate the sacraments as they always had, saying Mass every day, issuing the last rites to stricken parishioners, and doling out “three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” to penitents, such as my young self, who came to confess their sins. But the energy and the future of the church appeared to rest with the modernizers.

 

This was despite the fact that Paul VI also reaffirmed many of the Vatican’s traditional teachings on social issues, such as extramarital sex, birth control, homosexuality, and enforced celibacy for priests and nuns. Paul was hardly a revolutionary. He wasn’t willing to challenge the harsh, self-denying ordinances that a series of Roman popes had foisted on Christianity during the Middle Ages. But in calling for peace and social justice, in reaching out to other faiths, in traveling extensively—he was known as “the Pilgrim Pope”—and in making some reforms at the Vatican, such as surrendering his tiara (the papal crown) and barring cardinals over the age of eighty from voting in papal elections, he seemed interested in reconciling the Church to modern reality.

 

With the arrival of Pope John Paul II, in 1979, all that started to change. In many ways, Karol Wojtyla was an admirable man: a part of the Polish resistance against the Nazis; a vocal opponent of wars and militarism (in 2003, he criticized the invasion of Iraq); a supporter of canceling debts in the developing world; and a massively charismatic leader. In theological and practical terms, though, he was a dreadful throwback. With the Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, at his side, as the Vatican’s chief theologian, he set about unmaking much of the modernization project of the previous twenty years. He issued lengthy and emphatic rulings condemning abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. He dismissed calls for the relaxation of the celibacy rules for priests, and for the ordination of women. He criticized liberation theology and surrounded himself with dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Ratzinger. Within the hierarchy of the Church, questioning traditional teachings, even gently, became a potential career-ender.

 

After John Paul died, in 2005, and Ratzinger took over, the conservative counter-offensive continued. Indeed, it intensified. The Vatican eased restrictions on the Latin Mass and invited back into the Church some excommunicated members of the Society of Saint Pius X, an ultra-conservative group dedicated to reversing the Second Vatican Council. (One member of the group, an English bishop called Richard Williamson, turned out to be a Holocaust denier. Last year, belatedly, the Society expelled him.) In criticizing the “culture of relativism” in modern societies, and “the anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom,” Benedict made clear that he saw his primary mission not as extending and enlarging the Catholic Church but as purifying it, by which he didn’t just mean dealing with the child-abuse scandal. He meant casting off extraneous growths and getting the Church back to what he saw as its proper roots. If this process alienated some current and former members of the faith, so be it. Benedict said numerous times that the Church might well be healthier if it was smaller.

 

In a 2011 interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Hans Küng, a dissident Swiss theologian who knew Pope Benedict when they were both young priests in Germany, made a telling comparison between him and Vladimir Putin, pointing out that the two leaders had inherited a series of democratic reforms they set out to reverse. Putin and Benedict both “placed their former associates in key positions and sidelined those they didn’t like,” Küng said. He added:

One could draw other parallels: the disempowerment of the Russian parliament and the Vatican Synod of Bishops, the degradation of Russian provincial governors and of Catholic bishops to make them nothing but recipients of orders; a conformist ‘nomenclature’; and a resistance to real reforms.… Under the German pope, a small, primarily Italian clique of yes-men, people with no sympathy for the calls to reform, were allowed to come into power. They are partly responsible for the stagnation that stifles every attempt at modernization of the church system.

The strategy of circling the wagons and seeking to defy the world was displayed, to terrible effect, in the Church’s reaction to the child-abuse scandal. As the Vatican official that John Paul II asked to deal with the crisis when it broke, Benedict was presented with extensive evidence that sexual abuse was widespread and tolerated by church authorities. But it wasn’t until many years later, when tremendous damage had already been done and many further crimes had been committed, that Benedict, as Pope, apologized for the acts of pedophiles in cassocks, adopted a zero-tolerance policy for the Church, and met with some of the victims. Even then, though, say some critics, he and his colleagues in the Vatican resisted efforts to find and punish the perpetrators.

 

“His record was terrible,” David Clohessy, executive director of the twelve-thousand-strong Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, told The Guardian. “He knows more about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups than anyone else in the Church, yet he has done precious little to protect children.” From Ireland, where investigations are continuing into extensive abuse at church-run orphanages and schools, John Kelly, one of the founders of the country’s Survivors of Child Abuse group, said, “I’m afraid to say Pope Benedict won’t be missed, as the Vatican continued to block proper investigations into the abuse scandals during his term in office.… For us, he broke his word.”

 

As a result of the sex scandals and the Vatican’s futile attempt to turn back the clock, Pope Benedict’s Church is in increasingly perilous shape. Throughout much of the developed world, the number of people attending services is declining steadily, and yet there is a tremendous shortage of priests. In places like Ireland and Benedict’s own Germany, young people are deserting the Church in droves. Even in developing countries like Brazil, the Church is facing challenges from other creeds.

 

Of course, in a religion of more than a billion, there are some bright spots and some inspiring individuals. When I went home to Leeds not so long ago, I found that an enthusiastic young Polish priest had taken over my childhood church and was trying to save it from closure. To do some good, and raise some money, he was planning to turn the rectory into a halfway house for young offenders. Listening to him celebrating Mass like a man possessed, I was reminded of the Catholicism of the Sermon on the Mount and of St. Francis of Assisi—the Catholicism that the nuns had tried to drill into me decades before.

 

In Rome, however, the conservative theologians and placeholders are still running the show. Sadly, that is likely to continue. “During [Benedict’s] time in office,” Küng noted, “he has ordained so many conservative cardinals, that amongst them is hardly a single person to be found who could lead the Church out of its multifaceted crisis.”

 

Photograph: Stefano Dal Pozzolo/Getty.

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

 

Addendum

 

 

 

Victims' complaint to the international criminal court accuses Pope Benedict and three others of failing to prevent abusers

 

Pope accused of crimes against humanity by victims of sex abuse

 

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011 07.01 EDT

 

 

Pope Benedict XVI, who has been cited in a complaint to the international criminal court.

Photograph: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have accused the pope, the Vatican secretary of state and two other high-ranking Holy See officials of crimes against humanity, in a formal complaint to the international criminal court (ICC).

 

The submission, lodged at The Hague on Tuesday, accuses the four men not only of failing to prevent or punish perpetrators of rape and sexual violence but also of engaging in the "systematic and widespread" practice of concealing sexual crimes around the world.

 

It includes individual cases of abuse where letters and documents between Vatican officials and others show a refusal to co-operate with law enforcement agencies seeking to pursue suspects, according to the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based organisation that represents the claimants.

 

Pam Spees, human rights attorney with CCR, said: "The point of this is to look at it from a higher altitude. You zoom out and the practices are identical: whistleblowers are punished, the refusal of the Vatican to co-operate with law enforcement agencies. You see the protection of priests and leaving them in the ministry and because of these decisions other children are raped and sexually assaulted."

She said: "It's not only the facts of the abuse but the way that the church deepened the harm in sometimes irreparable ways."

 

According to the document filed by CCR, the pope, as head of the Catholic church, is ultimately responsible for the sexual abuse of children by priests and for the cover-ups of that abuse. The group argues that he and others have "direct and superior responsibility" for the crimes of those ranked below them, similar to a military chain of command.

 

The others named in the complaint are Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and former Vatican secretary of state; Cardinal Tarcissio Bertone, now secretary of state, who previously served at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the organisation tasked with handling sexual abuse cases under the pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger; and Cardinal William Lavada, head of the CDF, whose handling of previous sexual abuse cases has been criticised in the past.

 

Megan Petersen, from Minnesota, is one of two named US victims whose cases have been included in the complaint to the ICC. Petersen was awarded $750,000 (£500,000) last week in a civil claim against Crookston diocese, in which she alleged that a priest, Joseph Jeyapaul, had raped her repeatedly as a child.

 

Speaking at The Hague, where the complaint was being launched, Petersen said of Jeyapaul: "He was a man of God and I was very devout. I wanted to be a nun. I trusted him.

 

"Part of why I'm here is to protect kids. My perpetrator is still serving among kids and vulnerable adults, despite there being criminal charges against him. Ratzinger is the head of this organisation and these are his sheep, his flock. I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen to another child." Jeyapaul has denied the abuse from India, where he is serving as a priest.

 

Amnesty International's latest annual human rights report, which cited the Holy See for the first time, concluded there was widespread evidence of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy over past decades, and an "enduring failure" of the Catholic church to seek redress.

 

 

 

On NOT Judging Rob Bell - "What We Talk About When We Talk About God"

On the Count of 3, “Let’s All Pre-Judge Rob Bell”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/02/on-the-count-of-3-lets-all-pre-judge-rob-bell/

 

by Peter Enns

February 15, 2013

Comments

 

Rob Bell has a new book coming out in March 12, What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Today is February 15. March 12 hasn’t happened yet, because it’s in the future. That means the book hasn’t come out yet.

 

Still, based on a 2:55 teaser video, some have already gotten ahead of the rush and offered their opinions.

 

Here is the video.

 

 

Here is what I saw.

 

(1) 0:00 to 0:31–Many people today have trouble with traditional organized religion, yet they also sense some transcendence in the universe.

 

(2) 0:32-2:29 –Rob talks about his process of writing the book, which includes jotting down ideas and phrases on 3×5 cards over many years, how hard it is sometimes to write daily, writing primarily because you need to get it down on paper rather than how people will receive it.

 

(3) 2:30-2:45–A brief summary of the book: ”The book is essentially, God is not behind us dragging us backwards into some primitive regressive state. God has always been ahead of us pulling us forward into greater and greater peace, integration, wholeness and love.”

 

(4) 2:46-2:55–Image of the book cover, release date, where to buy.

 

If you saw something different, let me know.

 

Based on this, I have a general idea what the book is about: introducing God to an unchurched–and for whatever reason unlikely to be churched–population. Other than that I know nothing about what Bell is going to say in substance. I did learn some information on how the book came to be and that Bell likes using index cards to organize his thoughts, neither of which I found terribly interesting or informative about the book itself, and certainly not enough upon which to form a sound basis for judgment.

 

Based on this video, however, some are offering pre-publication opinions, e.g., Bell isn’t relevant anymore, his book will prove to be “bullsgeschichtlich [sic] Abfall… its own refutation,,, laughable, self-important gibberish,” or more yet another ode to Bell’s penchant for “non-truth…error…confusion.”

 

Please hear what I am saying. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but a book should be judged by a fair reading of what it says and to whom it is trying to say it, not on a 3 minute pre-publication video that is largely devoid of content read through already formed opinions of past books and strong negative feelings toward Rob Bell.

 

What I would rather hear his pre-publication critics say is,

 

I realize that judging a book before I have read it isn’t fair or rational–since I would not want someone to review my own work in this way–but I feel so strongly about Rob Bell’s insidious influence on the gospel that I can’t help myself but get ahead of the game and shoot first and read later. I hated his last book, where he called into question whether hell is real, and that got me so mad and worried me so much that I can’t bear to see him write another book that might be just like it.

 

A post like that would be fine, and it has the added benefit of being accurate: it tells us about the reviewer rather than an un-read book.

 

Let’s hold off opinions until the book is read. Even on the internet, Christians shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

 

 

 

Social Science, Empathic Civilizations, and Biosphere Economics in the Third Industrial Age

Social Science, Empathy, and Empathic Civilizations

Biosphere Economics in a Third Industrial Age

Jeremy Rifkin creates a fast-paced RSA panel animation around the several topics of human development and common cause - and in this case, the common cause of saving the biosphere in order to achieve a Third Industrial Age. An Age which will require the collective effort of many dissimilar peoples working closely with one another. Who can collaborate together, live together, and get along together peaceably, hopefully, and helpfully. The foundation for Rifkin's analysis is based upon his observation of the social trait "empathy" within the human civilization which pretty much tosses out the old evolutionary understanding of self-interest and self-propagation for the newer neo-Darwinian understanding of eusociality which we have talked about here before on several occasions. A theory that says that individuals and regional groups will sacrifice themselves for one another if to achieve the further propagation and extension of that civilization's self-interest. In recent movies we've seen a lot of these types of themes - 2012, The Battle for L.A., The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and even a few zombie and super-spy flicks to boot.

Overall, I'm attracted here to Rifkin's premise of social empathy (as an extension of eusociality) and its relevancy to various strong biblical themes of love, justice, well being, doing good, not lying, not killing, working together in common cause, and etc. Our tribalisms today have changed from a regional / religious bias to one that is attempting to be more broad-minded - even towards that of the Muslim nations in their hostility towards Western civilization (with, and without, due cause I might add). A Muslim world that is feeling the pinch of being left out to the fast pace challenges of this world's re-energized industrial revolutions underway in all parts of the globe. For "Who doesn't want a TV, a cell phone, a computer, and a drawing tablet all-in-one-kind-of-ipad and available at a low cost to families and friends!?!?" And if you were to have this type of technology then you'll also need roads, bridges, airports, electricity, water, sewage disposable, retail and food infrastructures, governmental stability, income and debt management. Consequently, being at war with one another (and each other) only prevents (regional) communities from having the goods and services being experienced by other 21st century economies. So maybe its time to begin working together and learning to sort out one's differences? At least that's my practical theory to why the Third Industrial Age may happen against the grimmer aspects of a nuclear holocaust, endemic pandemics, starvation, gang brutality and warfare, and the purposeless drive of hedonistic living and global despair.

... As a personal aside - and my plug for Christian evolution - when the RSA panel animation arrives to its discussion of Adam and Eve I'd like to note that I suspect Rifkin of pandering to the literalistic Christian crowd when mentioning Adam and Eve as two individuals, rather than as a representative group of genomic homo sapiens.... Which is all well-and-good because I accept the idea of a biblical creation by the hand of God - but from an evolutionary standpoint known as "Evolutionary Creationism." As such, the Genesis Story should be viewed as a comparative story and not as a literal story as is commonly understood by many Christians today. Thus, Adam and Eve were not actual, historic, human beings, but a representation of a small, surviving, grouping of early modern day homo sapiens. We can say this because Adam and Eve could be no less than a genetic population of between 10,000 - 15,000 homo sapiens in order to achieve today's genetic diversity and largeness of population. It could not be achieved with far fewer numbers, let alone two individuals - which would make it impossible. Hence, the species of homo sapiens came into its own as a population, and not as two individuals. Furthermore, the chromosomal structure of the modern day homo sapien female species occurred 100,000 years earlier than did man's (150,000 BC vs. 50,000 BC). So that Eve is known as the Mitochondrial Mother of All Living, and Adam as the first y-chromosome man. Even though homo sapiens, as a species, occurred much earlier, somewhere between 600,000 - 800,000 BC, during the time of the Neanderthals which eventually died out as a species around 130,000 BC. The references I've linked above will go into more detail of these genetic facts and migrations, including that of the Neanderthals. For more general information please refer to the sidebar under "Science - Human Origins"... where each of the earlier articles build a foundation in which to discuss the newer, more recent articles on this blog site. When I have time I should probably create a searchable index to make it easier for the reader who is new to Relevancy22. But at present there is no index available for the several topics of evolution except my cosmological index of past articles.

... Overall, I find the idea of social empathy constructive for the re-visioning of Christianity away from its party lines of denominational differences unto the unifying lines of common cause and purpose. Something I've been describing as a gospel of human solidarity which views the atonement of Christ from the viewpoint of its universal application to humanity when linked to faith and the idea of God's Kingdom interacting with mankind today through the church (even though, eschatologically, there will be a "second half" to God's Kingdom becoming realised in man's societies, one brought on by Jesus' return to rule in order to put away sin and death). For those interested, I've provided a brief postscript below telling of six prominent atonement theories - as well as additional articles provided under the sidebar "God's Solidarity with Humanity" that may be referenced.

Generally, it has been one of the purposes of Relevancy22 to describe a newer type of Christianity - one that is both "postmodern" and "post-evangelic" (formerly here described as an "Emergent" or "Emerging" form of Christianity). A Christian faith that is being borne within the midst of our postmodernal societies that is relevant and ecologically minded. Consequently, I've been steadily working towards what a post-evangelic theology might look like as opposed to older theologies that have shown themselves to be less expansive; holding to more restrictive boundary sets; and showing a greater resistance to newer ideas - as one might expect to find in older evangelical or denominational assemblies. Here, I am more particularly interested in what a post-evangelical faith might look like as it expands the older, more historic definitions of orthodoxy. Or more rather, an orthodox faith that might lift itself upwards towards a broader, more synthesizing plane of theological postmodernism while holding to the historic core of its Christian orthodoxies.

But do not read into this the idea of theological ecumenicalism. For though this kind of post-evangelic (formerly emergent) Christianity is necessarily broader and more eclectic, it must also hold to the following criterion in order to remain historically orthodox: It must be a Christian faith that declares (i) Jesus as incarnate God, Savior, and Lord; to a (ii) Bible that is spiritually authoritative and inspirationally infallible with regards to all matters of divine salvation and regenerative life (but not necessarily inerrant as presumed in the more recent 1980s evangelical creeds); and to the important social concept that (iii) it takes a divine village - or, renewing Christian fellowship - to build a world. A divine village committed to the idea of "social empathy" as centered around the human elements of sacrificial love, service, and justice as displayed in Jesus' gospel - and enabled by His Holy Spirit - to the unempowered, overlooked, and forsaken communities of mankind. Which will require the social re-engineering of our business and governmental models towards the postmodern institutional models of social collaboration, global sharing, societal good will, integrity, openness, and the many virtues of biblical love - in order to succeed to its goals of renewing this old world in which we live in by divine fiat and decree.

Thus, God's solidarity with humanity is divinely centered through Jesus, and His invite to all who are hungry and thirsty to come to Him, and there find in Christ Jesus eternal bread and life-giving waters. Generally, this is what is meant by an atonement theory that embraces the aspect of human solidarity. That God's love is meant for all, not just some, but all. That it is effective to all. And that it does not turn away anyone who wishes to come. However, it is not forced nor coerced. And while wishing to avoiding any controversy of universalism, this doctrine would imply that God came to save not just individuals, but all of humanity. That Christ's atonement will eventually re-write the history of the world so that there will be a New Heavens and a New Earth encompassing one Kingdom of God. It is universal in scope and affectiveness. And is like the tiny mustard seed that grows monstrously large; or like new wine bursting the old wineskins and requiring new wineskins; or like the yeast in bread affecting all (sic, leavening all). God will not be denied.

Consequently, Emergent Christian theology affects many parts of the Christian story, church dogma and doctrine, practice and observation. And thus the effort to describing it here at this blogsite has been one of sharing all its many moving parts as it interweaves from one doctrinal thread to another creating a larger tapestry unappreciated until fully completed. Moreover, we should not expect past Christian ages to foretell the church's future history, unless of course, we wish to review the church in its many failures of living out God's love to the world and to each other at large. Certainly ecclesiastical hatreds and wars may continue, but it is hoped that the church is learning to be more Christlike, more sheeplike, more loving, kind, and wise. To bury the sword and restrike the ploughshare, to put on the breastplate of righteousness, with feet fitted with the gospel of peace (Eph. 6.14-15). That is the message of Emergent Christianity.

And with that, let us turn to the RSA animation along with several related articles to the topic at hand pertaining to global economics, the rescue of planet Earth, and the need to cooperate with one another. This is a very postmodern endeavor, do you not think?

R.E. Slater
February 15, 2013

*I have more recently been redescribing "Emergent Christianity" or "Emergent Theology" with the less kitschy title of "post-evangelical" as the former term of the 1990s has been falling away into general ecclesiastical disuse or evangelical abuse. [res, 4/2014]


Postscript -
*I chose "God's Solidarity with Humanity" as an example of Jurgen's Moltmann's Atonement Theory, which is one of six popular views of atonement theology. As such, I attempted to write with this redemptive theme in mind. Other popular atonement theories would be the penal subtitutionary atonement view popular among many Evangelical and Reformed churches, the union with God atonement theory, the ransom captive, moral exemplar, and Christus Victor atonement theologies. Tellingly, the latter is the more widely acclaimed orthodox view because of its vision of the Kingdom of God to come.

And if left to chose between either of the six atonement theologies I would not. For I do not find it necessary to chose one theology over the other as each brings something necessary to the burgeoning table of Christian theology. As such, it behooves us to live in tension with each aspiring claimant while keeping our hearts and minds open to the larger mosaic of God's fermenting redemption as it expands to fill all the world with His promise of renewal and reclamation.

RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

RSA Home - http://www.thersa.org/

The Huffington Post

re "The Third Industrial Age"

... Social scientists, in turn, are beginning to reexamine human history from an empathic lens and, in the process, discovering previously hidden strands of the human narrative which suggests that human evolution is measured not only by the expansion of power over nature, but also by the intensification and extension of empathy to more diverse others across broader temporal and spatial domains. The growing scientific evidence that we are a fundamentally empathic species has profound and far-reaching consequences for society, and may well determine our fate as a species....

... The new biosphere politics transcends traditional right/left distinctions so characteristic of the geopolitics of the modern market economy and nation-state era. The new divide is generational and contrasts the traditional top-down model of structuring family life, education, commerce, and governance with a younger generation whose thinking is more relational and distributed, whose nature is more collaborative and cosmopolitan, and whose work and social spaces favor open-source commons. For the Internet generation, "quality of life" becomes as important as individual opportunity in fashioning a new dream for the 21st century.

The transition to biosphere consciousness has already begun. All over the world, a younger generation is beginning to realize that one's daily consumption of energy and other resources ultimately affects the lives of every other human being and every other creature that inhabits the Earth.

The Empathic Civilization is emerging. A younger generation is fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth. But our rush to universal empathic connectivity is running up against a rapidly accelerating entropic juggernaut in the form of climate change. Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?

  

Wikipedia

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis is a 2010 non-fiction book written by Jeremy Rifkin. It connects the evolution of communication and energy development in civilizations with psychological and economic development in humans. Rifkin considers the latest phase of communication and energy regimes—that of electronic telecommunications and fossil fuel extraction—as bringing people together on the nation-state level based on democratic capitalism, but at the same time creating global problems, like climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. Rifkin extrapolates the observed trend into the future, predicting that Internet and mobile technology along with small-scale renewable energy commercialization will create an era of distributed capitalism necessary to manage the new energy regime and a heightened global empathy that can help solve global problems.

The book was published by Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. as a hardcover in January 2010. It was noted as being well-researched and covering a significant breadth of academic fields. However, reviews were mixed; several reviewers found that while Rifkin provided a convincing overview of the development of empathy, he did not provide sufficient proof that increased empathy would necessarily bring people together to co-operatively solve global problems.

The Empathic Civilization

by Jeremy Rifkin

Review by Andrew

February 16th, 2011

Something intriguing is going on when an economist writes a book making a case for the importance of empathy in our lives. Jeremy Rifkin teaches at the Wharton Business School in America and leads the Foundation for Economic Trends. He teaches CEOs how to be better CEOs and has over 15 books to his name, including The Empathic Civilization.

Now, to further explore my current theme of Dissemination, I have four options for you nudging readers. Compare what you know of Rifkin’s message if you:

1. Judge the book by its title. (instantaneous)

2. Read the book. (the effort of finding the book and going through the 600+ pages)

3. Watch this video. (about 10 minutes)

4. Read the book review below from a hack. (that’s me)

Technical Bits

The scope of this book is enormous. In just over 600 pages, Rifkin tracks the course of human progress by describing a kind of map for the changes in our consciousness, our energy consumption and our communication revolutions. We are currently at a point where the level of trust between individuals needs to be so high that we require a system in place that will allow global consciousness to flourish, energy use to be less damaging, and access to information to be universal.

I’m a little jealous of this writer. He employed a phenomenal research team to compile, compress and check all the resources that were examined for this book (25 pages of tiny endnotes and a Bibliography boasting nearly 300 titles). But with the resources available to him, and the goal of explaining what we have all been doing here on planet Earth, he better be thorough in his work. I’m probably not qualified to evaluate the even-handedness or quality of the sources, but I would imagine some deep scrutiny would suggest there are opposing sources not suitably rebutted and rallying sources overused. Such is the nature of publishing…

 

Rifkin’s main point in this book is this:

At the very core of the human story is the paradoxical relationship between empathy and entropy. Throughout history new energy regimes have converged with new communication revolutions, creating ever more complex societies. More technologically advanced civilizations, in turn, have brought more diverse people together, heightened empathic sensitivity, and expanded human consciousness. But these increasingly more complicated milieus require more extensive energy use and speed us towards resource depletion.

The irony is that our growing empathic awareness has been made possible by an ever-greater consumption of the Earth’s energy and other resources, resulting in a dramatic deterioration of the health of the planet.

The book is separated into three parts, each with five chapters. There is a straightforward and concrete style to Rifkin’s writing. He isn’t trying to exaggerate his vocabulary or impress his reader with convoluted acrobatics. He wants the weight of the ideas to drive the message, I think. However, a lot of the sentences are long and strung together with many ‘and’s and ‘or’s. He puts lists and qualifications and histories together all in one thought. Maybe that’s the compromise that comes with his scope.

Part 1 is about rethinking what it means to be human, and Rifkin explores the different ideas that we have used through history to describe our ‘nature’. Also, he gives a detailed explanation of the history of psychology, showing how the narrative within that one discipline has changed so radically. Rifkin drops Latin descriptions of human beings throughout these chapters as a kind of teasing theme. He goes from homo erectus (the upright small-brain creature, to homo homini lupus (the savage beast to his fellows), to homo ludens (the playful character-actor) to what Rifkin refers to as homo empathicus (the emotionally literate, sharing collaborator).

The following chart is my attempt to summarize Rifkin’s breakdown of history:

He explains the relationships between the three as follows:

The convergence of energy and communications revolutions not only reconfigure society and social roles and relationships but also human consciousness itself. Communications revolutions change the temporal and spatial orientation of human beings and, by doing so, change the way the human brain comprehends reality. Oral cultures are steeped in mythological consciousness. Script cultures give rise to theological consciousness. Print cultures are accompanied by ideological consciousness, while early electricity cultures spawn psychological consciousness.

Each more sophisticated communication revolution brings together more diverse people in increasingly more expansive and dense social networks. By extending the central nervous system of each individual and the society as a whole, communications revolutions provide an ever more inclusive playing field for empathy to mature and consciousness to expand.

Rifkin is not trying to say there is some sort of ‘invisible hand’ at play here. Each of the listed types of consciousness, for example, can be found simultaneously in cultures throughout the world. He goes into great length on how the collapse of Rome created a long history of separate populations in Europe and stagnant technological growth. As well, very early on he discusses the importance of keeping in mind the universal law of entropy. What he is saying is that when the convergence happens, there is a shift in how we represent ourselves, how we understand ourselves, how much we come to trust others, and how we shape the direction of our ‘progress’.

Part 2 is about civilization. There are some brilliant micro-histories plotted out in this section — the shift from ‘we’ tribal identities to ‘I’ individual and citizen identities; the birth of recognizing individuals before the law instead of by familial ties; the history of relationships towards deities; slavery from Rome to Europe to America and its end; property and ownership from physical items to intellectual works; the introduction of privacy in personal lives; the birth of the chair in European furniture; the creation of childhood; how affection and romance entered and became an expectation in married life; the formation of nations and subsequent conscious construction of official languages for those nations; the rise of romance novels; the effects of radio and television on our consciousness, and more. And each time, Rifkin traces back to his main point, that our consumption of energy rises and our communication technologies become more sophisticated and our collective consciousness extends so that barriers between self and other and world dissolve and need re-interpretation. Rifkin also focuses on the writings of specific historical figures like St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to illustrate the changing nature of consciousness and self-identity.

I had to wonder if Rifkin was having some fun in this section. At one point he makes mention of the “nature of human nature”. When discussing the changes in consciousness of the late 1800s, he says it was the artists of the period that had the biggest impact on changing the “perspective on perspective.” If I ever meet Jeremy Rifkin at a social function or informal gathering, I would be tempted to ask him for his opinion on why academics feel the need to generate abstractions of… well… abstractions.

Part 3 is about today and tomorrow. Rifkin uses his research team’s collected statistics in great mass in this section. A lot is known numerically about today, after all. These chapters are written with a balance of caution and possibility. He spends a lot of time discussing the Millennial Generation (the population growing up never knowing a world without the Internet), and how they seem to be caught in a curious dialectic. They are the most sharing-oriented, socially conscious, and globally aware generation, while at the same time the most possession-driven, narcissistic, and self-consumed.

Rifkin seems to see these two directions playing out in the energy industries of the world as well. He uses his economics background in this section to describe just how much the world depends on fossil fuels, but his explanations come from the voice of a matter-of-fact teacher using general language and simple examples. He also mentions at length the emerging ‘intergrid’. Companies are using the Internet as a model for energy production, decentralized distribution and collaborative, non-hierarchical management.

Commentary

Another one of Rifkin’s playful themes in the book can be seen in the derivations he finds for Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. This phrase is often translated as “I think therefore I am.” Thought, ergo some kind of existence. However, our psychological consciousness has brought us to a point where involvement becomes the key to our being. I participate, therefore I am. And in the present consciousness the individual expects rights of access and the free flow of information. The idea of embodied cognition and its growing application is important for Rifkin. With such interaction comes the idea that we change as much as we change the world also. I am involved, therefore I exist. Rifkin puts together philosophical tradition with psychological examination and emerging modern concepts over and over again in this book. And by doing so he paints a detailed picture of our very fluid, changing ‘natures’, but also our potential global direction.

In some ways, there is very little new in Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization. But, he does bring it together with a new vision. And he brings a lot of it together. But as we all should know by now, a 600-page cinder block of a book does not always disseminate well. The vision can get lost, the anchor can be brought up, and the message can become so distorted that it cannot help but to look inconsistent or self-refuting.

Full disclosure: Yea, I’m a convert. I’m very tempted to use this one book for the rest of the year and devote the blog to spreading Rifkin’s ideas. There are so many specific things in this book that I want to chew on, so many directions to move in, but the constraints of a blog post are too limiting (I’m already 800 words over my self-imposed guideline for post-length).

Usually, if I agree too much with what I’m being told, that’s a sign for me to look deeper, find something. I haven’t found that yet in this book, except for some worries about the level of trust that is needed to achieve such a brave, bright, new empathic world. The book is somewhat too focused on European and American history. This may suggest a blind spot in his information – Asia might not want to play a part in the empathic game he has laid out. But then again, Asia’s progress may still fit in terms of energy use, communication technologies, and the debut of dramaturgical consciousness. After all, it was Asia that gave us the gift of karaoke…

For all the build-up, the end of Rifkin’s book didn’t deliver complete satisfaction for me. I was left with the sense that maybe we could pull ourselves into some global balance and fight off the jabberwocky of entropy for a while longer, but the amount of change necessary is tremendous. He’s banking on the malleability of human nature. As a result, this book is an amazing thought experiment on how we can be, how we can look at our history and what direction we can take. But that still leaves the door wide open for how we actually respond to living in the world.

I do want to trust everyone. I really really do. I want to believe in technology. I really do think it can save us, or at least make us aware enough to change. I do think understanding empathy is important and can heal the darker sides of our consciousness. The world Jeremy Rifkin sees possible is better than the world we have now, and the route he outlines might get us there.

But, I don’t know if we’re ready.