Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography III
June 26, 2010
The third and final of Ward’s books dealing with the contemporary City is The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens. This book was released in The Church and Postmodern Culture Series put out by Baker Academic and edited by James K. A. Smith. I reviewed Smith’s contribution and am soon to review also John Caputo’s.
In it, Ward returns again to an interpretive description of contemporary urban cultural imaginaries, this time spending his time on the ‘Postdemocratic condition,’ ‘Globalization,’ especially economic globalization and ‘Postsecularity,’ the new visibility of religion in the West. These topics constitute the first part of the book under the heading “The World.” The second part focuses on “The Church” and examines the struggle for the ‘soul of the City;’ lays out a metaphysics of the ‘Body;’ and finishes with ‘The politics of election and of Following,’ all with reference to an eschatology which introduces this second part.
Perhaps it is the intended audience, perhaps it is the experience of extended reflection (nearly 10 years having passed since Cities of God), whatever the cause, this book reads much easier than Cities even though it deals with many of the same topics. The arguments are tighter, the descriptions less obscure (no ‘angelologies’ this time) and because it is perhaps a bit less ambitious there is not the same feeling of new and many ‘rabbit holes’ opening up by unanswered questions.
If I could do it over again, I would read this book before I read Cities of God; it seems to me that doing this would better prepare one to understand in advance a bit more of the purposes contained in it. In fact, returning to Cities for discussions of Desire and various Bodies was very fruitful for me. The two books do indeed compliment each other and combined are filled with rich description that could potentially spark the imagination of pastors and ministering lay-people in cities, especially with new ideas about how to do evangelism and outreach.
The book is also important because of the creative ways that Ward utilizes Scripture. His training as philologist and literary critic plays a large role in his exegesis.
Also, for a nearly exhaustive review of the book, check out the multi-part review by one of our readers Josh Rowley (scroll down and on the right you’ll see links for it). Also see these posts on the Church and Pomo site, here, here and here
*** ON THE WHOLE SERIES ***
There are a few criticisms of this book trilogy that I want to note:
- Considering the special attention Bodies receive in these works, and especially the valuation of embodiment and concerns with gender, I find it rather odd that when the time came in Cities to paint a picture of a Christian anthropology, Ward utilized and modified Barth to create a theological account of the body which explicitly marginalized the hard realities of biology. Not, mind you, that some ‘scientific’ or ‘natural’ description of biological functions suffices to provide a foundation for a theology of the body by itself, but by abstracting an anthropology by means of a “theological” description with no recourse to bodies as we have them, Ward strangely seems to me to ignore physical bodies and so embodiment.
- I understand that much of gender and sexuality is culturally produced and so alternative Christian descriptions can reinscribe bodies with a more Christological center; and I understand that Ward is attempting to argue in favor of gay marriage; but if bodies matter, as Ward emphatically says they do, then there cannot be a fully appropriate theology of the body that ignores the limitations of bodies.
- This ties into my next point: There is, of course, only so much one person and one project can do…and it is a classic mistake to criticize a work for not doing what it never set out to do; nevertheless, as Ward knows, how one goes about a project, which topics receive attention and which don’t, what strategies are utilized in creating a work; all of these can at least indicate what an author felt was more and less important. And so it seems to me to be an oversight that Ward did not incorporate ecology into this project.
- I cannot theorize why Ward made this choice but it only further indicates that the inseparable connection between urban centers and their rural food (and so LIFE) sources is completely disappearing in the critical reflection on our common life. In reality, rural life is progressively disintegrating as more and more artificial and impersonal machines and systems are used to manufacture our food.
- In fact, as Anthony Paul Smith has noted, serious Christian reflection on ecology is barely done at all.
- A working theory of mine is that the collapse of a nutura pura, and concerns with weaknesses ‘natural theology’ as it has been practiced in Christian scholasticism has led to a fear of serious reflection on nature because it is assumed that all such descriptions are too culturally relative to yield the desired fruit.
- A Christian ecology could greatly enhance Ward’s work. The unbreakable reciprocal relationship between urban and rural, because fewer and fewer of us (including myself!) have any direct connection to not only our food but even the people who produce it, needs to be critically thought about.
reed
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
June 27, 2010 at 9:58
The kind of engagement or reflection that you call for (making rural life central?) has been done by Christian theologians. I think that’s a kind of agrarianism that isn’t ecologically sustainable and that sort of thing isn’t the whole of ecology at all. Part of my point was that theologians confuse certain “environmentalisms” (like localism, agrarianism, etc.) with ecology as such. I’m skeptical of the suggestion regarding pure nature/natural theology, but that may be because I mainly engage with them, rather than, I don’t know, a “Barthian eco-theology”. Wendell Berry might fight there some, I don’t know, I think his thought ends in holocaust to be honest (not intentional, but just massive human death).
June 27, 2010 at 10:50
This just goes to show my own ignorance of the topic. I didn’t really mean a sort of romantic ruralism so much as a critical reflection on the indissoluble relationship between cities and their supply of food and energy, and the current ‘blindness’ to those sources, be it the assumption of unlimited consumption or of unlimited machination.
June 27, 2010 at 12:23
I’d be interested to hear more about your theory regarding pure nature though.
June 27, 2010 at 12:58
Oh it’s really just a thought. But I’ve just noticed that most of the contemporary theologians I’ve read take seriously that much of what we have taken to be “natural” in theology/philosophy and even science cannot be counted on to build societies because it often leads to oppression under the guise of rationality. Hardly anyone (I’ve read) but traditionalist catholics and wannabe protestants really take a view that there is a ‘pure nature’ that we can base ‘law’ on.
I assume that in the wake of this, talking about society and sex and gender or whatever with reference to that which is ‘natural’ simply isn’t done much. Or at the very least those discussions almost always take a ‘textual’ approach more concerned with hermeneutics than with agriculture.
I don’t know how, for instance, Wendell Berry’s work would play out if practiced on a larger scale; you seem to think it is not feasible. But at least he considers the connection is what I’m getting at. His essay “The Body and the Earth” is really good at connecting bodies, sex, culture and agriculture i ways I’m not normally accustomed to seeing them connected.
Are there any particularly good books you would recommend on this topic?
June 27, 2010 at 16:51
I’m often asked that question and I always am surprised that I don’t. What I mean by that is that it really seems like very few people are thinking about this very seriously, at least in the literature I’ve read. I do like Boff’s two books on ecology, they tend to shy away from the anti-urban narrative, but still with the emphasis on connecting these things. Guattari’s The Three Ecologies is good for that as well, though you may be less interested in it since it’s not from a theological perspective. Both, though, are very provisional and I would have liked to see larger research projects grow out of them (I understand, but haven’t yet read it, that Tim Morton’s new book builds off of Guattari and Bateson). I think one can read out of Philip Goodchild’s first book an argument for the unconscious ordering according to ecology, rather than the kind of Heideggerian/Christian emphasis on something like authenticity, which can become kind of hand wringing. But, yeah, it’s a really important field where not enough work is being down alongside of ecological science. For the most part the science, for humanities intellectuals, just tells us how fucked we are.
June 27, 2010 at 16:54
Oh, by the way, I agree in part with you about the “nature” thing. The ontological commitment to various ideas of nature often has a very determinate effect on the ethics that comes out of it. You might be interested in a paper I gave at the AAR called “Nature is not…: Apophatic Ontologies of Nature”. It’s a sort of Aquinas/Spinoza mashup and there is an MP3 on my CV page at AUFS. Apologies for the self-promotion.
June 28, 2010 at 11:40
“For the most part the science, for humanities intellectuals, just tells us how fucked we are.”
In the interests of avoiding nihilism, I would like to note that science also offers more than a few solutions to our ecological problems. Unfortunately we (the US, that is) lack the political will to make use of them. The oil spill seems to have changed that, though, so maybe we’re not fucked just yet.
Tony, have you read Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded? I know it may not be a “theological” book, but it is exactly about “the indissoluble relationship between cities and their supply of food and energy.” It’s also a fast and easy read.
I would also like to ask about the urban/agrarian dichotomy. Mainly, does there need to be one? Cities can provide their own energy (they just have to be willing to properly invest in the appropriate technologies), and even food can be grown within urban environments. There are plenty of books on “urban agrarianism” to be found in bookstore’s House & Home sections these days.
June 28, 2010 at 13:16
I gave your talk a listen Anthony. In the vernacular that I’m used to you seemed to defend (via Aquinas and Spinoza) a view of nature that seems consonant with emergentism rather than reductionism – though I doesn’t seem like you were expressing your view in terms of properties and substance so that may be a mis-characterization.
I’m not sure a theist (like myself) could ever completely leave behind the immanent/transcendent coordinates in a philosophy of nature because the theist (one like me anyway) will always want to maintain the distinction and talk about the relation.
June 28, 2010 at 13:39
Anthony,
I don’t mind the promotion. Neither do I mind recommendations that aren’t ‘theological;’ I couldn’t imagine only reading theology.
Jordan,
I’ve not read that. Indeed I’ve read very little ecology at all. My suggestion is only that it seems very important and so Ward’s work could stand to be supplemented by it.
That being the case, anything I could say about an urban/agrarian dichotomy would be shots in the dark. I’m not sure that cities are capable of sustaining themselves completely by their own means but that is mere conjecture I suppose.
June 28, 2010 at 14:35
Jordan,
Right, I agree. My point is that those in the humanities need to start taking that seriously in their ecological/environmentalist work. I also agree completely about the urban/agrarian distinction. Cities are ecosystems that can be viable as such and it may even be the best way for our massive human population to live in a way that fosters resilience and biodiversity in the rest of the biosphere
Mikeo
I suppose there isn’t a question there, but my main response to the theist is concerning the problem of selection. I don’t think they can answer it and recourse to relation doesn’t help. If it ultimately ends with a spontaneous theological position, like bees, then I think it takes itself out of dialogue. One need not be a theist to reject certain forms of reductionism (though I find the positivist-scientistic boogeyman to be more of a cultural and philosophical problem than something inherent to science itself).
June 28, 2010 at 19:49
Hmmm… I’m not sure that having 1 longer book out of 5 (so far) constitutes “general confusion.” It’s one anomaly, and there are mitigating factors I won’t go into. The other goal of the series is accessibility, and I’m glad that you found the style/pitch of this book an improvement over Cities of God.
June 28, 2010 at 22:29
Consider it amended Dr. Smith. Nonetheless I feel that Caputo’s book was much less pedagogical than yours was and represented more a popular version of his “Poetics of the Kingdom” and so was in that sense more of a ‘project’ than yours was. After it I didn’t feel that I knew more about deconstruction as a discipline so much as how Caputo uses deconstruction.
I suppose it is more my own fault for assuming that future books would look more like “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?” only with reference to different conversations.
After the first four (the only ones I’ve read yet), I haven’t felt there is a consistent presentation that’s all. It’s the opinions of an undergrad who reads theology so take it for what it’s worth!
June 28, 2010 at 23:52
I just ran across this post by Byron Smith, quoting Bonhoeffer on our relation to the earth as bodies. He certainly didn’t marginalize biology.
June 29, 2010 at 9:33
Thanks for plugging my review of this book, A.D.
As I recall, I thought the strength of the book was its “thick” description of globalization (Ward helpfully names its ills), and I thought the weakness was its discussion of secularization (Ward argues simultaneously that the secularization thesis was false, that secularity is an enemy, and that we are entering post-secularity–the problem being that if the secularization theory was false, then why would secularity be a problem and what sense would it make to speak of post-secularity?).
Ward offers a nice take on prayer near the end of the book–one that I ended up using in my dissertation.
June 29, 2010 at 14:24
That’s fair enough, Anthony. I didn’t mean to suggest there isn’t room for criticism. I think you’re right that each book has been different. If they weren’t, we’d probably be accused of being “formulaic.” But if the formula works…
I’m starting to work on a sort of sequel to Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? that will be titled Who’s Afraid of Relativism? Taking Wittgenstein, Rorty, and Brandom to Church. So as you can see, I’m shameless about being formulaic!
June 29, 2010 at 15:47
For what it’s worth I’ve really enjoyed every book in the series so far. Alright, I didn’t like Caputo’s, but that’s only because I disagree with nearly everything he says!
After your comment I looked in the preface to the books and series and realized that I let Who’s Afraid… set my expectations more so than the actual goals of the series.