Thursday, August 03, 2006
Report from ‘Liturgy and Politics: Is the Church a Polis?’ Seminar
Report from Liturgy and Politics: Is the Church a Polis? Seminar by participant John Roth, at the Seminars banquet:
It would have been much more appropriate, of course, for Bill Cavanaugh to be offering this glimpse into the work of our seminar over the past four weeks, but he unfortunately was not able to be here this evening.
On the other hand, his absence gives me an opportunity to honor him in a way that wouldn’t have happened if he were giving this summary:
In 1998 Bill published a book called Torture and Eucharist that recounted the story of the Church’s resistance to the practice of torture in Pinochet’s Chile, and especially the powerful, public witness of the Eucharist in that setting as a proclamation of the gospel – as a “political” way of being in the world that exploded the standard categories of politics and resistance
That book served as a sort of backdrop for our seminar “Liturgy and Politics: Is the Church a Polis?”
If you only knew Bill through that text, you would have a sense of his remarkable erudition, his graceful writing and his deep concern for connecting life of the church with all of God’s creation
But over the past three weeks we also came to appreciate Bill’s gifts as a teacher and mentor.
1. One mark of a good teacher is a thoughtful syllabus: Bill assembled a fascinating series of texts that pulled us into conversation with each other though a conversation with a deep and rich theological tradition.
We began by comparing a variety of “creation accounts”—Hobbes, Locke, Augustine, and Genesis, then moved to some close readings of I Corinthians and Revelation, followed by some sustained reflections on Catholic ecclesial and eucharistic theology, especially in the work of de Lubac, Tellard and Rafael Avila, brought into conversation with a rather different understanding of the church’s place in the world, often associated with the writings of Stanley Hauerwas. Those texts unfolded in such a way that questions raised at the end of almost every session were invariably addressed by the texts of the next session--testimony to a carefully prepared syllabus.
2. Our group was by no means homogenous in terms of academic discipline, religious background or personality. Yet—following Bill’s lead—the intense conversations in the classroom and around the lunch table were punctuated with good humor, a genuine eagerness to understand each other, and a kind of autobiographical vulnerability that reminded us that the abstractions of our debate were connected to real Christians living and serving in real congregations. These conversations – sometimes disagreements – mattered so much, in part at least, because we were becoming friends. With his patience, perceptive questions, wonderful sense of humor Bill modeled that spirit in an exemplary way.
3. What did we actually talk about? This will not be exhaustive – I’m sure you will be relieved to hear – but a very small sampling might be of interest:
- We began with a deep awareness of way in which the assumptions of modernity have woven themselves into the vocabulary, practices and worldview of all of our traditions. The challenges facing the Christian church have made ecumenists of us all!
- We avoided (maybe evaded?) a narrow definition of liturgy, which meant that we moved from an expansive sense (those liturgies of capitalism or nationalism that order desire and define the “real”) to a fairly narrow focus on the Eucharist.
- Along the way we noted differing/overlapping understanding of liturgical practices within Catholic, Anglican, Reformed and Mennonite settings.
- How is “Liturgy related to Politics”? Here we struggled to know how to bring together two rather different convictions:
a) On the one hand, we recognized the dangers of reducing liturgy (or worship) to some social or ethical “function.”
b) At the same time, however, we were troubled (or at least I was troubled!) by the haunting awareness that simply getting the liturgy “right” (or having doctrinal clarity on questions of Authority) has not necessarily resulted in churches capable of resisting the blandishments of modernity, or the claims of the state and market over our lives.
c) More than once we returned to the synthesis of worship, work and study in the institution of monasticism.
d) And we also have asked repeatedly what it means to think of theology as a task of, for and in the church.
During the course of the seminar, the question “Is the Church a Polis” shifted more to a conversation along the lines of “what kind of space is the church”--reflecting, I think, a concern that the term polis can easily sound bounded and restrictive as opposed to more dynamic language about those practices of worship and life that make the church a “worship-centered way of life” or a “stream in the desert.”
This past week we were blessed with visits from two prominent scholars: Sam Wells, Anglican parish priest who has written widely on the theme of worship and ethics – currently dean of the chapel at Duke University—and, more recently, we spent two enjoyable days with Bernd Wannenwetsch, German Lutheran theologian, teaching at Oxford, in conversation about his book: Political Worship
I didn’t take notes at the time, but I recall that at very first session Jamie described the goals of the program as something like:
- scholarship in the context of a commitment to Christian faith;
- “baptized curiosity”
- embodied the Christian ideals of hospitality and friendship
I think all of that happened in our time together. We are grateful to Bill Cavanaugh, to Jamie Smith, to Marilyn, Alyissha and the entire Seminar staff for helping to make this possible!
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