As part of an on-going series on Christianity and psychoanalysis, I turn next to a recent collection edited by Earl Bland and Brad Strawn, Christianity and Psychoanalysis: a New Conversation. After more than a century of psychoanalytic thought and practice, and after endless, and frequently incorrect or at least exaggerated, portrayals of Freudian hostility to "religion" (cf. my comments on reading the Freud-Pfister correspondence), there seems to have developed in the last decade or two a willingness on both sides to offer fresh re-consideration of faith in psychoanalysis and faith in God. That is to be welcomed, and this book purports to continue such re-considerations, especially among evangelical Christians--though, curiously, one article, with the very promising title of "Ecumenical Spirituality, Catholic Theology, and Object Relations Theory" shows no serious engagement with Catholic theology at all, the author being herself a peripatetic Protestant who seems slyly to suggest that her having once attended a Catholic church (in which her parents had her baptized) is sufficient to qualify her to write about these matters. The article is a disappointment.
So, alas, is the rest of the book. It is of course well known to me, as an editor of scholarly collections and scholarly journals, that collections of articles often make for wildly uneven reading. The best parts of the book--that is, those having some substantial engagement of worthy matters, and written in the best style--are the introduction and conclusion by the editors. That, as I well know, is often the way with such collections, for only those parts are under an editor's direct control. Between one's own beginning and ending of a book one must contend with many other writers of uneven skill and reliability. There is only so much editing one can do to bad writers without turning their entire contribution into a "typewriter job" (Midge Decter) which is more yours than theirs. (Editors must, at some point, possess and exercise a degree of askesis in which they mortify their very understandable urge to completely re-write someone else's article to make it what the editor would have written himself.)
This collection is written by and directed towards evangelical Christians. The intellectual impoverishments of evangelical Christianity are many, and have been much commented upon by others, so I will not retail those here. (Flannery O'Connor once memorably wrote that the besetting sin of a Catholic is snobbery, and I confess to having a hard time keeping mine in check when confronted with evangelicalism.) But they do bedevil this book in many ways. Given on-going and ever-deepening evangelical interest in patristics and the wider Christian tradition, the lack of engagement with those traditions by the authors in this book makes the sum of their efforts rather arid. A little more engagement with, inter alia, such Fathers as Evagrius, could make any "new conversation" between Christianity and psychoanalysis much deeper and richer.
The same could be said for renewals in Trinitarian theology and especially theological anthropology. But one cannot review a book that was not written, nor fault writers for not writing the book that reviewers think they should have written. One must, rather, review the book that was written. So let me do that here, briefly showing the better parts.
The editors rightly note in the first chapter that "psychoanalysis, in the right context, can be used as a primary tool for psychological and spiritual formation" (29). That remains, however, a desideratum, surely, for the people and places where this happens are, it seems to me, vanishingly few. Many seminaries in the Catholic world have psychologists either on call or on the faculty, but I know of almost none who are practicing psychoanalysts. One searches in vain on such sites as Catholictherapists.com for full-fledged analysts, which is a pity because, as I noted earlier this year, there is an expanding body of evidence showing the superiority of analysis to other therapeutic methods in some crucial areas.
In their conclusion, the editors seem to set out some future lines of inquiry, all of which have the welcome and happy effect of refusing to hew to the strict "orthodoxies" of some in the (especially American) psychoanalytic community, which has long been recognized as at odds with Freud in some ways, including his openness to lay analysis (that is, to analysts who were not medically trained, as indeed Freud's own daughter Anna was not). More recently, there have been debates about analytic technique, and the editors commendably show themselves flexible and willing to consider that "the external trappings, such as the use of a couch or number of sessions per week" need not unduly define nor too narrowly restrict what constitutes psychoanalysis. Short-term, once-a-week encounters in the consulting room can indeed be psychoanalysis, just as sessions over the phone or Skype are now increasingly being used by psychoanalysts.
Their concluding words are very much worth pondering, and set forth a gracious and open vision of engagement: "Psychoanalytic treatment is a participation in 'God's ongoing work of caring,'...involving love as a fundamental way of knowing" (259). Moreover, "for the Christian in psychoanalytic treatment, something much deeper is occurring. Both therapist and patient are participating eschatologically in the redemptive and reconciling work of Christ" (262). I very much wished for much more robustly developed reflection along these lines in this book, and hope that perhaps the editors, singly or together, might in the future expand these trajectories of thought into a more deeply challenging work, perhaps without the ballast of other contributors weighing down their commendable, necessary, and welcome labors.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Monday, May 16, 2016
Smiting the Saracens
As I noted earlier in the month, CUA Press continues to enrich the world of patristics scholarship with their regular offerings in the Fathers of the Church series, including this one set for release in June: Peter the Venerable, Writings Against the Saracens, trans. Irven M Resnick (CUA Press, 2016), 192pp.
About this book the publisher tells us:
Robert of Arbrissel (d. 1117) once named Cluny among the chief holy places of Christendom―just after Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Rome. When Peter the Venerable (d. 1156) became the ninth abbot of Cluny in 1122, Cluny had thousands of monks in the mother abbey and her daughter cells, along with hundreds of affiliated houses and dependencies in England, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Holy Land. As a fierce advocate for Cluny against its detractors (which included the redoubtable Bernard of Clairvaux), Peter defended his Order at the same time that he reformed its customs.
Peter the Venerable's extensive literary legacy includes poems, a large epistolary collection, and polemical treatises. The first of his four major polemics targeted a Christian heresy, the Petrobrussians (Against the Petrobrusians); the rest took aim at Jews and Saracens. Catholic University of America Press has published his Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews. This present volume will make available in their entirety Peter the Venerable's twin polemics against Islam―A Summary of the entire heresy of the Saracens and Against the sect of the Saracens―as well as related correspondence. These works resulted from a sustained engagement with Islam begun during Peter's journey to Spain in 1142–43. There the abbot commissioned a translation of sources from the Arabic, the so-called Toledan Collection, that include the Letter of a Saracen with a Christian Response (from the Apology of [Ps.] Al-Kindi); Fables of the Saracens (a potpourri of Islamic hadith traditions); and Robert of Ketton's first Latin translation of the whole of the Qur'an. Thanks to Peter's efforts, from the second half of the twelfth century Christians could acquire a far better understanding of the teachings of Islam, and Peter may rightly be viewed as the initiator of Islamic studies in the West.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: a Brief Note on Donald Spence
I have been offering some ad hoc comments on here as I make my way through a number of new and other books that are helping me to think through what is going on when people continue ritualistically to invoke certain historical memories the details of which are either legitimately in dispute or even wholly and demonstrably disproven. Here I think, e.g., of groups such as ISIS and their absolutely endless and manifestly absurd invocations of "the Crusades."
One such book that has proven of some limited use has been out for a while, but I only had a chance to read it this spring: Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis (W.W. Norton, 1982).
Freud, Spence notes, was a master synthesizer, who took disparate parts of a patient's life and wove them into a compelling narrative whole via his celebrated case histories, which have "masterful control of style and content" (22). Indeed, Freud as stylist has long been commented upon, and in English his style was even said by some to have been improved by James Strachey's translations and editing of the official authorized English opera omnia.
The problem with Freud, which can also bedevil other analysts and indeed those writing the history of controverted traumatic events--e.g., the Fourth Crusade--is that the impulse to control the narrative, to write it into a tidy or polished whole, especially for the benefit of others, can itself be distorting: "Both analyst and patient may collude in an attempt to prematurely streamline a chaotic life" (23) and this danger must be guarded against. It is not easy to resist such an impulse towards premature streamlining or tidying up because, as Spence recognizes, psychoanalysts (and also historians some of the time) are in a situation of conflict as writers of the "final" narrative, as it were, but also as keepers of the messier clinical (or other) records and archives. That conflict can become extremely acute if an analysis, or a cultural history (especially in the hands of apologists or ideological commentators whose consciences do not scruple over facts), ends up splitting off into two parts: a narrative truth within the context of the consulting room (or national or ecclesial "mythology," say), and then the historical truth or record so far as it may be fairly known and demonstrated.
Spence notes, and seems almost to condone at least in certain clinical settings, the splitting off of the two: the relationship of narrative truth to actual events of the past "may be of far less significance than creating a coherent and consistent account of a particular set of events" (28). In other words, sometimes the story an analysand tells the analyst may be only very loosely connected to the historical record, so far as it may be known, but that story may be helpful in allowing the analysand to come to some kind of coherence and perhaps even healing. Still, this does seem to invite rather troubling implications, which have been detailed by Jeffrey Prager in his fascinating and valuable study, Presenting the Past: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering.
Spence notes something else that is not often understood, at least in more "popular" attempts at portraying psychoanalysis: there is no such thing as fully "free association," and that is a good thing. For free association is not, and cannot be, like the passenger on the train describing everything seen out the window to a blind analyst. If this were so, it would be just a word salad--barely coherent, if at all. Thus the urge in both patient and analyst, in various forms and times, is to supply missing information to make a coherent whole--to move from writer to editor, as it were. That is inevitable, but it must be undertaken with great caution because of the aforementioned risk of introducing fresh distortions, tendentious deletions, or other problems. These are important cautions not only for clinicians, but also for historians and Christians telling our often dolorous, and sometimes traumatic, stories of past conflicts with and division from each other.
One such book that has proven of some limited use has been out for a while, but I only had a chance to read it this spring: Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis (W.W. Norton, 1982).
Freud, Spence notes, was a master synthesizer, who took disparate parts of a patient's life and wove them into a compelling narrative whole via his celebrated case histories, which have "masterful control of style and content" (22). Indeed, Freud as stylist has long been commented upon, and in English his style was even said by some to have been improved by James Strachey's translations and editing of the official authorized English opera omnia.
The problem with Freud, which can also bedevil other analysts and indeed those writing the history of controverted traumatic events--e.g., the Fourth Crusade--is that the impulse to control the narrative, to write it into a tidy or polished whole, especially for the benefit of others, can itself be distorting: "Both analyst and patient may collude in an attempt to prematurely streamline a chaotic life" (23) and this danger must be guarded against. It is not easy to resist such an impulse towards premature streamlining or tidying up because, as Spence recognizes, psychoanalysts (and also historians some of the time) are in a situation of conflict as writers of the "final" narrative, as it were, but also as keepers of the messier clinical (or other) records and archives. That conflict can become extremely acute if an analysis, or a cultural history (especially in the hands of apologists or ideological commentators whose consciences do not scruple over facts), ends up splitting off into two parts: a narrative truth within the context of the consulting room (or national or ecclesial "mythology," say), and then the historical truth or record so far as it may be fairly known and demonstrated.
Spence notes, and seems almost to condone at least in certain clinical settings, the splitting off of the two: the relationship of narrative truth to actual events of the past "may be of far less significance than creating a coherent and consistent account of a particular set of events" (28). In other words, sometimes the story an analysand tells the analyst may be only very loosely connected to the historical record, so far as it may be known, but that story may be helpful in allowing the analysand to come to some kind of coherence and perhaps even healing. Still, this does seem to invite rather troubling implications, which have been detailed by Jeffrey Prager in his fascinating and valuable study, Presenting the Past: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Essential Orthodox Texts
As I noted only last week in my interview with Amir Azarvan, we live in a time when, happily, introductions to Eastern Christianity are appearing in greater numbers and more diverse forms. Later this month, another such collection is set to appear: Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts (Yale UP, May 2016, 488pp).
The book is edited by Bryn Geffert and Theofanis Stavrou. Geffert's earlier book, Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism is, as I noted here, a deeply fascinating and well written study. Stavrou is an historian and author, inter alia, of such works as Russian Travelers to the Christian East from the 12th to the 20th Century.
About this newest book, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts, the publisher tells us:
The book is edited by Bryn Geffert and Theofanis Stavrou. Geffert's earlier book, Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism is, as I noted here, a deeply fascinating and well written study. Stavrou is an historian and author, inter alia, of such works as Russian Travelers to the Christian East from the 12th to the 20th Century.
About this newest book, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts, the publisher tells us:
Two leading academic scholars offer the first comprehensive source reader on the Eastern Orthodox church for the English-speaking world. Designed specifically for students and accessible to readers with little or no previous knowledge of theology or religious history, this essential, one-of-a-kind work frames, explores, and interprets Eastern Orthodoxy through the use of primary sources and documents. Lively introductions and short narratives that touch on anthropology, art, law, literature, music, politics, women’s studies, and a host of other areas are woven together to provide a coherent and fascinating history of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Can a Blind Man Read Genesis?
Catholic University of America Press continues to enrich us all with the on-going publications appearing in their Fathers of the Church series, including this latest work: Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis, trans. Robert C. Hill (CUA Press, 2016), 248pp.
About this book the publisher tells us:
About this book the publisher tells us:
Blind since early childhood, the Egyptian theologian and monk Didymus (ca. 313–398) wielded a masterful knowledge of Scripture, philosophy, and previous biblical interpretation, earning the esteem of his contemporaries Athanasius, Antony of Egypt, Jerome, Rufinus, and Palladius, as well as of the historians Socrates and Theodoret in the decades following his death. He was, however, anathematized by the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 because of his utilization and defense of the works of Origen, and this condemnation may be responsible for the loss of many of Didymus's writings. Jerome and Palladius mentioned that Didymus had written commentaries on Old Testament books; these commentaries were assumed to be no longer extant until the discovery in 1941 in Tura, Egypt, of papyri containing commentaries on Genesis, Zechariah, Job, Ecclesiastes, and some of the Psalms.
Certain features of the Genesis commentary, unfortunately not preserved in its entirety, seem to indicate that it may have been Didymus's earliest work. In addition to his silence regarding his other works, remarks on specific heresies as well as Christological interpretations occur much less frequently here than in his Zechariah commentary (previously published in Fathers of the Church Vol. 111). Moreover, the heavier reliance on Philo and Origen may indicate relative inexperience.
Whereas Didymus specifically names Philo in this commentary, he never identifies Origen as one of his sources even when quoting the latter verbatim. Like Origen, he rejects anthropomorphic interpretations and proceeds to an allegorical approach when the literal meaning repels him. He does not, however, neglect the literal-historical level; see, for example, his examination of the story of the Flood. All three of Origen's levels of interpretation―literal, moral, and allegorical―are mobilized here. This previously untranslated text is crucial for studies of the fourth century and of the monumental influence of Origen.
Friday, May 6, 2016
Amir Azarvan on Re-Introducing Eastern Christianity
As I have noted on here several times, we live in a happy moment when introductions to Eastern Christianity abound in English, from the simple and inexpensive overviews aimed at those with no background, to more detailed scholarly "handbooks," dictionaries, encyclopedias, and "companions."
Even given this emerging array of books, which has helped to begin overcoming the longstanding ignorance of the Christian East, there is still plenty of room for creativity and diverse approaches depending on author and audience alike. Thus I greeted with interest a new collection that does indeed take a singular approach to the genre of introductory texts: Amir Azarvan, ed., Re-Introducing Christianity: An Eastern Apologia for a Western Audience (Wipf and Stock, 2016), 210pp.
The book is divided into seven sections, covering such topics as theosis, the communion of saints, the process of salvation, icons, sacraments, the reality of the resurrection, women in the Orthodox Church, and much else besides. I asked the editor, Amir Azarvan, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Gwinnett College, for his thoughts on the book. Here they are.
AD:Tell us about your background
I was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. I come from an Iranian-Muslim family. I began calling myself a Christian around the turn of the century, and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2007.
AD: What led you to putting together this collection, Re-Introducing Christianity?
It occurred to me that contemporary critiques of Christianity center mostly on the beliefs of an unrepresentative sample of Christians. These beliefs often relate to such questions as: How is one saved? How should the Bible be interpreted? Are the Scriptures a scientific textbook? Who “goes to” heaven? Who doesn’t?
Therefore, a growing number of people are drawing conclusions about Christianity from a relatively small (not to mention new) subset of it. Thus, I wanted to introduce religious skeptics and believers in the West to a more authentic expression of Christianity. Judging by the growth of Eastern Orthodoxy in certain parts of the West--including here in the US--I think many people in our rapidly secularizing society might find this version more appealing.
AD: As you no doubt are aware, we have seen a considerable number of introductions to or handbooks of Orthodoxy in English over the last decade. What led you to produce this one with its unique focus?
With religious belief on the decline, and Christian faith becoming increasingly de-spiritualized and thus vulnerable to abandonment, I saw the need for a book that addresses a more exhaustive list of religiously significant issues; a book that could guide the reader from atheism or agnosticism to theism, from acceptance of a vague conception of a deity to belief in the specific God of Christianity, and finally, from small “o” to big “o” orthodoxy. I decided to enlist the help of others as I quickly realized that I was in no position to embark on such an ambitious project alone.
AD: Whom did you have in mind as the audience for this book?
This book is aimed at two audiences: religious skeptics and “modern Christians” (the latter category cuts across denominational lines).
AD: Your introduction notes that you want to focus not on the continuities between traditions, but on Orthodoxy's capacity to meet the "universal desire for lasting happiness." What led you to take such a focus?
Although we’re accumulating more and more stuff, anxiety and depression seem to be on the rise in the West. We all want to be happy, but the curious thing about the current era is that we appear to be pursuing it in very counter-productive ways. Faith can play an important role in enhancing happiness, and there’s quite a lot of empirical research supporting this claim.
AD: You end your introduction by noting that neither you nor any of the other contributors are writing from a triumphalistic stance, but want to offer an honest and non-adversarial appreciation of Orthodoxy. Isn't such a focus too often missing today, especially in on-line discussions?
Absolutely. The Internet can bring out the worst in people (it’s called the “online disinhibition effect”). While many of us are great at speaking the truth, few heed St. Paul’s call to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Fidelity to one’s faith doesn’t require treating others with contempt, and I’m honestly shocked that this very simple point is lost on so many people.
AD: Each of the chapters is quite short, and written in a "conversational" style. Was that intentional?
I explicitly instructed contributors to keep their chapters “concise and readable”. It was intended to be a sort of reference book that is accessible to a large audience.
AD: Having finished Re-Introducing Christianity: An Eastern Apologia for a Western Audience, what are you on now? What future projects and publications do you have in the works?
I’ve begun working on a book on Islam that draws on political science, Christian theology, and personal experience. It’s tentatively titled “What the Left and Right Get Wrong about Islam.” I’ll take it as a sign of success if my book irks Christians on both ends of the spectrum!
Even given this emerging array of books, which has helped to begin overcoming the longstanding ignorance of the Christian East, there is still plenty of room for creativity and diverse approaches depending on author and audience alike. Thus I greeted with interest a new collection that does indeed take a singular approach to the genre of introductory texts: Amir Azarvan, ed., Re-Introducing Christianity: An Eastern Apologia for a Western Audience (Wipf and Stock, 2016), 210pp.
The book is divided into seven sections, covering such topics as theosis, the communion of saints, the process of salvation, icons, sacraments, the reality of the resurrection, women in the Orthodox Church, and much else besides. I asked the editor, Amir Azarvan, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Gwinnett College, for his thoughts on the book. Here they are.
AD:Tell us about your background
I was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. I come from an Iranian-Muslim family. I began calling myself a Christian around the turn of the century, and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2007.
AD: What led you to putting together this collection, Re-Introducing Christianity?
It occurred to me that contemporary critiques of Christianity center mostly on the beliefs of an unrepresentative sample of Christians. These beliefs often relate to such questions as: How is one saved? How should the Bible be interpreted? Are the Scriptures a scientific textbook? Who “goes to” heaven? Who doesn’t?
Therefore, a growing number of people are drawing conclusions about Christianity from a relatively small (not to mention new) subset of it. Thus, I wanted to introduce religious skeptics and believers in the West to a more authentic expression of Christianity. Judging by the growth of Eastern Orthodoxy in certain parts of the West--including here in the US--I think many people in our rapidly secularizing society might find this version more appealing.
AD: As you no doubt are aware, we have seen a considerable number of introductions to or handbooks of Orthodoxy in English over the last decade. What led you to produce this one with its unique focus?
With religious belief on the decline, and Christian faith becoming increasingly de-spiritualized and thus vulnerable to abandonment, I saw the need for a book that addresses a more exhaustive list of religiously significant issues; a book that could guide the reader from atheism or agnosticism to theism, from acceptance of a vague conception of a deity to belief in the specific God of Christianity, and finally, from small “o” to big “o” orthodoxy. I decided to enlist the help of others as I quickly realized that I was in no position to embark on such an ambitious project alone.
AD: Whom did you have in mind as the audience for this book?
This book is aimed at two audiences: religious skeptics and “modern Christians” (the latter category cuts across denominational lines).
AD: Your introduction notes that you want to focus not on the continuities between traditions, but on Orthodoxy's capacity to meet the "universal desire for lasting happiness." What led you to take such a focus?
Although we’re accumulating more and more stuff, anxiety and depression seem to be on the rise in the West. We all want to be happy, but the curious thing about the current era is that we appear to be pursuing it in very counter-productive ways. Faith can play an important role in enhancing happiness, and there’s quite a lot of empirical research supporting this claim.
AD: You end your introduction by noting that neither you nor any of the other contributors are writing from a triumphalistic stance, but want to offer an honest and non-adversarial appreciation of Orthodoxy. Isn't such a focus too often missing today, especially in on-line discussions?
Absolutely. The Internet can bring out the worst in people (it’s called the “online disinhibition effect”). While many of us are great at speaking the truth, few heed St. Paul’s call to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Fidelity to one’s faith doesn’t require treating others with contempt, and I’m honestly shocked that this very simple point is lost on so many people.
AD: Each of the chapters is quite short, and written in a "conversational" style. Was that intentional?
I explicitly instructed contributors to keep their chapters “concise and readable”. It was intended to be a sort of reference book that is accessible to a large audience.
AD: Having finished Re-Introducing Christianity: An Eastern Apologia for a Western Audience, what are you on now? What future projects and publications do you have in the works?
I’ve begun working on a book on Islam that draws on political science, Christian theology, and personal experience. It’s tentatively titled “What the Left and Right Get Wrong about Islam.” I’ll take it as a sign of success if my book irks Christians on both ends of the spectrum!
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Foreign Faiths in Tsarist Russia
I drew attention to the hardcover edition when it appeared two years ago, so it is time to note the appearance of a very affordable paperback version next month of Paul W. Werth's The Tsar's Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (Oxford UP, 2016), 304pp.
Part of OUP's Studies in Modern European History series, this book, the publisher tells us, treats
Part of OUP's Studies in Modern European History series, this book, the publisher tells us, treats
The Russian Empire, which presented itself to its subjects and the world as an Orthodox state, a patron and defender of Eastern Christianity. Yet the tsarist regime also lauded itself for granting religious freedoms to its many heterodox subjects, making 'religious toleration' a core attribute of the state's identity. The Tsar's Foreign Faiths shows that the resulting tensions between the autocracy's commitments to Orthodoxy and its claims to toleration became a defining feature of the empire's religious order.
In this panoramic account, Paul W. Werth explores the scope and character of religious freedom for Russia's diverse non-Orthodox religions, from Lutheranism and Catholicism to Islam and Buddhism. Considering both rhetoric and practice, he examines discourses of religious toleration and the role of confessional institutions in the empire's governance. He reveals the paradoxical status of Russia's heterodox faiths as both established and 'foreign', and explains the dynamics that shaped the fate of newer conceptions of religious liberty after the mid-nineteenth century. If intellectual change and the shifting character of religious life in Russia gradually pushed the regime towards the acceptance of freedom of conscience, then statesmen's nationalist sentiments and their fears of 'politicized' religion impeded this development. Russia's religious order thus remained beset by contradiction on the eve of the Great War. Based on archival research in five countries and a vast scholarly literature, The Tsar's Foreign Faiths represents a major contribution to the history of empire and religion in Russia, and to the study of toleration and religious diversity in Europe.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free
Focused on a crucial set of questions, and with a slew of top-drawer scholars--Robert Louis Wilken, Rémi Brague, John Rist, inter alia--and a chapter by Elizabeth Prodromou devoted to "Orthodox Christian contributions to freedom: historical foundations, contemporary problematics," this forthcoming collection, set for release at the end of May, is surely not to be missed: Christianity and Freedom, Volume 1. Historical Perspectives, eds.Timothy Samuel Shah and Allen D. Hertzke (Cambridge UP, 2016), 416pp.
About this book--part of CUP's Law and Christianity series--the publisher tells us:
About this book--part of CUP's Law and Christianity series--the publisher tells us:
In Volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom, leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of basic human rights and freedoms from antiquity through today. These include radical notions of dignity and equality, religious freedom, liberty of conscience, limited government, consent of the governed, economic liberty, autonomous civil society, and church-state separation, as well as more recent advances in democracy, human rights, and human development. Acknowledging that the record is mixed, scholars document how the seeds of freedom in Christianity antedate and ultimately undermine later Christian justifications and practices of persecution. Drawing from history, political science, and sociology, this volume will become a standard reference work for historians, political scientists, theologians, students, journalists, business leaders, opinion shapers, and policy makers.<br /> me>
Church-State Relations in Finland and Russia
With chapters on two countries with large Orthodox Churches--Russia and Finland--as well as numerous other interesting chapter, this forthcoming collection The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity: National Contexts, Global Issues edited by Andrew Dawson will enrich every library devoted to the increasingly prevalent, and maddeningly complicated, relationship between "religion" and today's politics.
About this book the publisher tells us:
About this book the publisher tells us:
The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity engages with one of the most characteristic features of modern society. An increasingly prominent and potentially contentious phenomenon, religious diversity is intimately associated with contemporary issues such as migration, human rights, social cohesion, socio-cultural pluralisation, political jurisdiction, globalisation, and reactionary belief systems.
This edited collection of specially-commissioned chapters provides an unrivalled geographical coverage and multidisciplinary treatment of the socio-political processes and institutional practices provoked by, and associated with, religious diversity. Alongside chapters treating religious diversity in the ‘BRIC’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, are contributions which discuss Australia, Finland, Mexico, South Africa, the UK, and the United States.
This book provides an accessible, distinctive and timely treatment of a topic which is inextricably linked with modern society’s progressively diverse and global trajectory. Written and structured as an accessible volume for the student reader, this book is of immediate interest to both academics and laypersons working in mainstream and political sociology, sociology of religion, human geography, politics, area studies, migration studies and religious studies.
Monday, May 2, 2016
Freud for Historians, Theologians, and the Rest of Us
In the early 1990s, when I was a psychology student, I read a very great deal of Freud, Jung, Coltart, D.W. Winnicott, and other psychoanalytic thinkers. Along the way I found Freud: A Life for Our Time, the biography by Peter Gay, an outstanding study. It has long been a best-seller, and in my modest estimation deservedly so. Whether you like Freud or not, whether you think him right or wrong, you cannot deny that his influence on the past century has been absolutely massive. As I noted recently, biography is a tricky thing to do well, and with a figure such as Freud, exceptionally easy to do badly, as all too many examples show; but Gay's biography avoids the two obvious traps of biography--viz., hagiography or a hatchet job.
More recently, as I have found myself returning to psychoanalytic thought for several reasons, including some research on the uses and abuses of "memory" by Eastern Christians and Muslims alike, I have been reading a short but lovely study, also by the Yale historian Gay, Freud for Historians. It seems, in some ways, to be part of an historiographical trilogy by Gay as he notes in the introduction, picking up issues he was unable to address in his earlier book-length essays Art and Act: on Causes in History: Manet, Gropius, Mondrian (1976) and Style in History (1974). One of the biggest, and still most controverted, issues among historians, then and since, has been the question of causation. Christian history and Christian historians are by no means exempt from these debates.
Gay gave no little thought to it in the first two books, and then in his 1985 Freud for Historians returned to the question, asking what not just Freud but the later psychoanalytic tradition had to say about the matter of causes, motivations, and other putative explanations of behavior. He begins by noting what a hash most psychohistorians have made of their would-be discipline, and by noting the consequent deepening of already considerable hostile suspicion between historians and psychoanalysts. So Gay has his work cut out for him in this book, about which the publisher tells us:
More recently, as I have found myself returning to psychoanalytic thought for several reasons, including some research on the uses and abuses of "memory" by Eastern Christians and Muslims alike, I have been reading a short but lovely study, also by the Yale historian Gay, Freud for Historians. It seems, in some ways, to be part of an historiographical trilogy by Gay as he notes in the introduction, picking up issues he was unable to address in his earlier book-length essays Art and Act: on Causes in History: Manet, Gropius, Mondrian (1976) and Style in History (1974). One of the biggest, and still most controverted, issues among historians, then and since, has been the question of causation. Christian history and Christian historians are by no means exempt from these debates.
Gay gave no little thought to it in the first two books, and then in his 1985 Freud for Historians returned to the question, asking what not just Freud but the later psychoanalytic tradition had to say about the matter of causes, motivations, and other putative explanations of behavior. He begins by noting what a hash most psychohistorians have made of their would-be discipline, and by noting the consequent deepening of already considerable hostile suspicion between historians and psychoanalysts. So Gay has his work cut out for him in this book, about which the publisher tells us:
Is psychoanalysis a legitimate tool for helping us understand the past? Many traditional historians have answered with an emphatic no, greeting the introduction of Freud into historical study with responses ranging from condescending skepticism to outrage. Now Peter Gay, one of America's leading historians, builds an eloquent case for "history informed by psychoanalysis" and offers an impressive rebuttal to the charges of the profession's anti-Freudians. In this book, Gay takes on the opposition's arguments, defending psychoanalysis as a discipline that can enhance social, economic, and literary studies. No mere polemic, Freud for Historians is a thoughtful and detailed contribution to a major intellectual debate.I will say that Gay does not just call for "style in history" but gives wonderful evidence of it himself: Freud for Historians is an essay of great elegance, and reading it is a delight, showing a master craftsman at work in his prose and a master scholar in his judicious weighing of the evidence. There is much here that Christians, still struggling with suspicion of Freud and the analytic tradition, could learn from.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Nicholas Denysenko on Liturgical Reform
It has been my happy--and frequent!--duty on here to note the many recent publications of my friend, Nicholas Denysenko, a deacon in the Orthodox Church of America and a prolific liturgical scholar at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he also heads the Huffington Ecumenical Institute. Previously on here I have interviewed him about his two most recent books, Chrismation, and The Blessing of Waters and Epiphany.
Now it is my pleasure to interview him about his latest book published at the end of last year by Fortress Press, Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: The Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy.
AD: For readers new to your work, give us again a bit of your background.
I am a first-generation American, grandson of an Orthodox priest of Ukrainian descent. Like many other people in clerical families, I spent my child and adolescent years serving at the altar and singing in the parish choir. My first full-time job after receiving my business degree at the University of Minnesota was music director at St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral (OCA) in Minneapolis.
I sensed that God was calling me to presbyteral ordination, so I enrolled at St. Vladimir’s Seminary and graduated in 2000. After a few years working in Minneapolis and getting married, we moved to the Washington, DC area in 2003, and I received my Ph.D. in liturgical studies and sacramental theology from The Catholic University of America in 2008.
I began teaching at Loyola Marymount University in 2008 and am now associate professor and director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute here. I have also been a deacon since 2003, ordained and serving OCA parishes. For me, all teaching and writing is giving blood to the Church (to paraphrase Fathers Meyendorff and Hopko of blessed memory).
AD: Tell us the origins or genesis of Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: the Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy and how you came to write it.
ND: I did not plan on writing this book. I was and remain intrigued by liturgical ecclesiology and in writing my book on Chrismation was quite intrigued by the twentieth-century retrieval of patristic and liturgical testimonies to anointing and the imparting of the Christic offices of priest, prophet, and king to each person, the priestly foundation of the order of the laity. It was an ecumenical endeavor and the retrieval transcended the boundaries separating Catholics and Orthodox.
For many years, I attempted to digest Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s complex response to Sacrosanctum concilium; on the one hand, he celebrated the eucharistic revival in Orthodoxy and lauded the principles of the liturgical movement. On the other hand, he was sharply critical of the Roman reception of Sacrosanctum concilium and he stated that Orthodoxy needs a theological rationale for liturgical reform. I was and remain painfully aware of the liturgy wars afflicting all the churches, including the Orthodox. The project was born after I presented a paper at a symposium on the fiftieth anniversary of Sacrosanctum concilium at Catholic University in 2013. I was determined to make sense of liturgical reform in Orthodoxy and its sources in the milieu of Vatican II, and the book delivers on the promise.
AD: As you know, the very prospect of liturgical reform is a neuralgic issue for just about all Christians, East and West, raising all kinds of fears and feelings. Did you have any dread about diving into such choppy waters?
ND: Yes, I was concerned about the tendency for discussions on liturgy to devolve into a subjective exchange of opinions on this or that musical style, or the permeation of political agendas into the fabric of the liturgy. In fact, this happened in the last few days when a popular Orthodox writer reflected on the section I have on women in the Church, with social media and other blogs re-posting his assessment of my opinion. The problem with his essay is that it ignored the entire trajectory of my study and instead illuminated one of the potential outcomes of reform, an increase of women’s exercise of liturgical ministries.
Many theologians have written on the history of the order of the deaconess or have offered theological rationales for and against the ordination of women. My book is about the liturgy as a whole and the theological rationale for reform; I am not advocating for a particular political agenda, but for the orders of the Church to exercise their Spirit-laden ministries – especially the first order of the laity. In my view, this particular essay subverted the discourse to take on a polarizing political issue. As you know, when we teach, we try to form students to adopt habits of responsible engagement of authors and their ideas, and this example violates the principle of engagement.
I am supremely confident that the people of our Churches have the intelligence and the integrity to consider how liturgical structures and components might manifest the theological rationale for liturgical reform. If we are successful in swinging the pendulum away from passionate arguments about style and towards a serious discussion of how liturgical participation discloses God as the lover of humankind and capacitates faithful to become christbearers for the life of the world, the liturgy itself will evolve into forms that are lifegiving. Experts in comparative liturgy are already offering much for our consideration; I felt I had a duty to attempt to address the question of a theological rationale for reform. And by reform, I mean a clarification of what we mean when we talk about organic liturgical development.
AD: As one who has been through liturgical wars in Anglican, RC, and Byzantine Catholic parishes, I greatly cheered your first paragraph on p.1 that discussions about liturgy are not the exclusive domain of academics but "internal Church discourse involves ordinary people and their experiences of the liturgy." Does such a perspective place you in a minority among liturgists?
Liturgical studies is essentially a product of classical patristics. I have made modest contributions to the field of comparative liturgy with my book on the blessing of waters along with several articles. As I read the initial assessments of liturgical reform, I was struck by the hegemony of referring to texts and their interpretation by experts as “liturgical theology.” Giants like Aidan Kavanagh, Robert Taft, and Nathan Mitchell have reminded us that Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Ivanova, and the grandmother explaining Mass to the grandchild on her lap are also models for liturgical theology.
But when we explain the meaning of a particular rite or office, how often do we consider how the people respond to that rite? Our fidelity to text has caused us to ignore the perspective of the people in the pew. Liturgy is not the sum of texts and ritual performance. Liturgy is an encounter with a community and the living God. We’ll have a much more robust understanding of the liturgy when we begin paying attention to how people respond (or adjust) to liturgical participation. Certainly, there are select people in the field of liturgical ritual studies who are doing groundbreaking work in this area, but yes, I think this group is a minority in the sea of liturgical historians.
AD: Give us a brief understanding of how you arrived at the four models of liturgical reform you focus on
I was determined to begin with Fr. Schmemann. As I read Schmemann and became convinced that he was continuing the work done in preparation for the Moscow Council, I was struck by the divergent responses to proposals for liturgical renewal within the Russian Orthodox community. Thus I decided to write next about ROCOR because of ROCOR’s steadfast fidelity to observing the Typikon, and also for their superlative patronage of the liturgical arts. I learned a great deal from ROCOR’s preference for the canonical singing promoted by the Moscow Synodal Choir, and the existence of a school devoted to the Petersburg style within ROCOR was abundantly informative.
Then I decided to profile the Church of Greece because of the unique symposia they hold which are devoted to liturgical rebirth.
Finally, New Skete fascinates me. It might seem that their creativity attracted me, but I was much more interested in their reconstruction of cathedral rites to create a liturgical order for a contemporary monastery. I found common threads underpinning the models, but also found tensions between them, and these findings permitted me to tell a fascinating story.
AD: I flipped to your chapter on New Skete first, not least because their origins as Byzantine Franciscans have fascinated me since I had a grad student who wrote his thesis on the Byz. Franciscans of Hazleton, PA. Do you think New Skete, with such a "reforming impulse" in the decade of Vatican II, would have been possible had they started out in Orthodoxy originally? Or were their Catholic roots essential to the work they have done?
ND: I think their Catholic roots gave them the courage, the freedom to discover an ordo that worked for them. I would caution readers to beware of assuming that New Skete's ordo is an innovation without reference to tradition: New Skete created a liturgical order drawing abundantly from tradition that coalesces with the rhythms and needs of their community life. I most certainly think that a reform would have been possible for New Skete had they started in Orthodoxy if they had a bishop-patron to bless their freedom in translating careful academic research into a liturgical order based on traditional structures.
That said, contemporary Orthodoxy views liturgy as unchanged and unchangeable, a perspective partially attributable to the memory of Russian renovationists whose liturgical reforms appeared to be inseparable from their attempt to subvert the patriarchate during the early years of the revolution. Some Orthodox view New Skete as a community of innovators whose adoption of a reconstructed ordo is actually a violation of Orthodoxy. In my view, New Skete epitomizes the objective of liturgical studies: to show us what is possible. The Churches of East and West have much to learn from New Skete.
AD: Sum up what your hopes were for Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: the Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy. and who should read it.
ND: My initial hope is that this book might catalyze the approach we adopt towards liturgical celebration and move us away from the liturgical wars. If we are all Christ’s concelebrants in the liturgy, what does this mean for our rituals, our texts, and our daily lives? Should we assess liturgical traditions that are difficult to interpret and comprehend?
Take, for example, the preponderance of Holy Week hymns on Judas and the Jews. Do we continue to chant these texts to honor tradition even if we have to explain that Holy Week is about the crucified Christ (and not the impious Judas) or that we are not anti-Semitic? My hope is that this book will help us to adopt a mindset that always focuses Christ’s priesthood at the center of a liturgy, eternally offered to God and received as a gift for the life of the world. As for the ultimate objectives of my project, my hope is that we will begin to view the liturgy as the source of our transformation into God’s body. What does that look like in tangible terms? I refer you to pages 371-373 of the book. I wrote this book for students and clergy.
AD: Tell us what you are at work on next.
ND: I’m working on two projects. First and foremost is the sequel to this study: The People’s Faith: The Liturgy of the Faithful in Orthodoxy. I’ll be spending much of the next year analyzing survey results and meeting with small groups of people in Orthodox parishes to hear their descriptions of the impact of liturgy on their daily lives.
I’m also continuing to work hard on a manuscript devoted to making sense of the divisions within the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The contemporary literature on this matter tends to be reactionary and lacks grounding in history, so my objective is to lay out the facts of the movement and disclose its complexities. Essentially, the world knows the history of Ukraine and her Churches through Russian historians. I value the contributions of Russian historians, but we need narratives that present the Ukrainian perspective, and I think the results of the study will prove to be both surprising and rewarding.
Now it is my pleasure to interview him about his latest book published at the end of last year by Fortress Press, Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: The Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy.
AD: For readers new to your work, give us again a bit of your background.
I am a first-generation American, grandson of an Orthodox priest of Ukrainian descent. Like many other people in clerical families, I spent my child and adolescent years serving at the altar and singing in the parish choir. My first full-time job after receiving my business degree at the University of Minnesota was music director at St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral (OCA) in Minneapolis.
I sensed that God was calling me to presbyteral ordination, so I enrolled at St. Vladimir’s Seminary and graduated in 2000. After a few years working in Minneapolis and getting married, we moved to the Washington, DC area in 2003, and I received my Ph.D. in liturgical studies and sacramental theology from The Catholic University of America in 2008.
I began teaching at Loyola Marymount University in 2008 and am now associate professor and director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute here. I have also been a deacon since 2003, ordained and serving OCA parishes. For me, all teaching and writing is giving blood to the Church (to paraphrase Fathers Meyendorff and Hopko of blessed memory).
AD: Tell us the origins or genesis of Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: the Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy and how you came to write it.
ND: I did not plan on writing this book. I was and remain intrigued by liturgical ecclesiology and in writing my book on Chrismation was quite intrigued by the twentieth-century retrieval of patristic and liturgical testimonies to anointing and the imparting of the Christic offices of priest, prophet, and king to each person, the priestly foundation of the order of the laity. It was an ecumenical endeavor and the retrieval transcended the boundaries separating Catholics and Orthodox.
For many years, I attempted to digest Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s complex response to Sacrosanctum concilium; on the one hand, he celebrated the eucharistic revival in Orthodoxy and lauded the principles of the liturgical movement. On the other hand, he was sharply critical of the Roman reception of Sacrosanctum concilium and he stated that Orthodoxy needs a theological rationale for liturgical reform. I was and remain painfully aware of the liturgy wars afflicting all the churches, including the Orthodox. The project was born after I presented a paper at a symposium on the fiftieth anniversary of Sacrosanctum concilium at Catholic University in 2013. I was determined to make sense of liturgical reform in Orthodoxy and its sources in the milieu of Vatican II, and the book delivers on the promise.
AD: As you know, the very prospect of liturgical reform is a neuralgic issue for just about all Christians, East and West, raising all kinds of fears and feelings. Did you have any dread about diving into such choppy waters?
ND: Yes, I was concerned about the tendency for discussions on liturgy to devolve into a subjective exchange of opinions on this or that musical style, or the permeation of political agendas into the fabric of the liturgy. In fact, this happened in the last few days when a popular Orthodox writer reflected on the section I have on women in the Church, with social media and other blogs re-posting his assessment of my opinion. The problem with his essay is that it ignored the entire trajectory of my study and instead illuminated one of the potential outcomes of reform, an increase of women’s exercise of liturgical ministries.
Many theologians have written on the history of the order of the deaconess or have offered theological rationales for and against the ordination of women. My book is about the liturgy as a whole and the theological rationale for reform; I am not advocating for a particular political agenda, but for the orders of the Church to exercise their Spirit-laden ministries – especially the first order of the laity. In my view, this particular essay subverted the discourse to take on a polarizing political issue. As you know, when we teach, we try to form students to adopt habits of responsible engagement of authors and their ideas, and this example violates the principle of engagement.
I am supremely confident that the people of our Churches have the intelligence and the integrity to consider how liturgical structures and components might manifest the theological rationale for liturgical reform. If we are successful in swinging the pendulum away from passionate arguments about style and towards a serious discussion of how liturgical participation discloses God as the lover of humankind and capacitates faithful to become christbearers for the life of the world, the liturgy itself will evolve into forms that are lifegiving. Experts in comparative liturgy are already offering much for our consideration; I felt I had a duty to attempt to address the question of a theological rationale for reform. And by reform, I mean a clarification of what we mean when we talk about organic liturgical development.
AD: As one who has been through liturgical wars in Anglican, RC, and Byzantine Catholic parishes, I greatly cheered your first paragraph on p.1 that discussions about liturgy are not the exclusive domain of academics but "internal Church discourse involves ordinary people and their experiences of the liturgy." Does such a perspective place you in a minority among liturgists?
Liturgical studies is essentially a product of classical patristics. I have made modest contributions to the field of comparative liturgy with my book on the blessing of waters along with several articles. As I read the initial assessments of liturgical reform, I was struck by the hegemony of referring to texts and their interpretation by experts as “liturgical theology.” Giants like Aidan Kavanagh, Robert Taft, and Nathan Mitchell have reminded us that Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Ivanova, and the grandmother explaining Mass to the grandchild on her lap are also models for liturgical theology.
But when we explain the meaning of a particular rite or office, how often do we consider how the people respond to that rite? Our fidelity to text has caused us to ignore the perspective of the people in the pew. Liturgy is not the sum of texts and ritual performance. Liturgy is an encounter with a community and the living God. We’ll have a much more robust understanding of the liturgy when we begin paying attention to how people respond (or adjust) to liturgical participation. Certainly, there are select people in the field of liturgical ritual studies who are doing groundbreaking work in this area, but yes, I think this group is a minority in the sea of liturgical historians.
AD: Give us a brief understanding of how you arrived at the four models of liturgical reform you focus on
I was determined to begin with Fr. Schmemann. As I read Schmemann and became convinced that he was continuing the work done in preparation for the Moscow Council, I was struck by the divergent responses to proposals for liturgical renewal within the Russian Orthodox community. Thus I decided to write next about ROCOR because of ROCOR’s steadfast fidelity to observing the Typikon, and also for their superlative patronage of the liturgical arts. I learned a great deal from ROCOR’s preference for the canonical singing promoted by the Moscow Synodal Choir, and the existence of a school devoted to the Petersburg style within ROCOR was abundantly informative.
Then I decided to profile the Church of Greece because of the unique symposia they hold which are devoted to liturgical rebirth.
Finally, New Skete fascinates me. It might seem that their creativity attracted me, but I was much more interested in their reconstruction of cathedral rites to create a liturgical order for a contemporary monastery. I found common threads underpinning the models, but also found tensions between them, and these findings permitted me to tell a fascinating story.
AD: I flipped to your chapter on New Skete first, not least because their origins as Byzantine Franciscans have fascinated me since I had a grad student who wrote his thesis on the Byz. Franciscans of Hazleton, PA. Do you think New Skete, with such a "reforming impulse" in the decade of Vatican II, would have been possible had they started out in Orthodoxy originally? Or were their Catholic roots essential to the work they have done?
ND: I think their Catholic roots gave them the courage, the freedom to discover an ordo that worked for them. I would caution readers to beware of assuming that New Skete's ordo is an innovation without reference to tradition: New Skete created a liturgical order drawing abundantly from tradition that coalesces with the rhythms and needs of their community life. I most certainly think that a reform would have been possible for New Skete had they started in Orthodoxy if they had a bishop-patron to bless their freedom in translating careful academic research into a liturgical order based on traditional structures.
That said, contemporary Orthodoxy views liturgy as unchanged and unchangeable, a perspective partially attributable to the memory of Russian renovationists whose liturgical reforms appeared to be inseparable from their attempt to subvert the patriarchate during the early years of the revolution. Some Orthodox view New Skete as a community of innovators whose adoption of a reconstructed ordo is actually a violation of Orthodoxy. In my view, New Skete epitomizes the objective of liturgical studies: to show us what is possible. The Churches of East and West have much to learn from New Skete.
AD: Sum up what your hopes were for Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: the Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy. and who should read it.
ND: My initial hope is that this book might catalyze the approach we adopt towards liturgical celebration and move us away from the liturgical wars. If we are all Christ’s concelebrants in the liturgy, what does this mean for our rituals, our texts, and our daily lives? Should we assess liturgical traditions that are difficult to interpret and comprehend?
Take, for example, the preponderance of Holy Week hymns on Judas and the Jews. Do we continue to chant these texts to honor tradition even if we have to explain that Holy Week is about the crucified Christ (and not the impious Judas) or that we are not anti-Semitic? My hope is that this book will help us to adopt a mindset that always focuses Christ’s priesthood at the center of a liturgy, eternally offered to God and received as a gift for the life of the world. As for the ultimate objectives of my project, my hope is that we will begin to view the liturgy as the source of our transformation into God’s body. What does that look like in tangible terms? I refer you to pages 371-373 of the book. I wrote this book for students and clergy.
AD: Tell us what you are at work on next.
ND: I’m working on two projects. First and foremost is the sequel to this study: The People’s Faith: The Liturgy of the Faithful in Orthodoxy. I’ll be spending much of the next year analyzing survey results and meeting with small groups of people in Orthodox parishes to hear their descriptions of the impact of liturgy on their daily lives.
I’m also continuing to work hard on a manuscript devoted to making sense of the divisions within the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The contemporary literature on this matter tends to be reactionary and lacks grounding in history, so my objective is to lay out the facts of the movement and disclose its complexities. Essentially, the world knows the history of Ukraine and her Churches through Russian historians. I value the contributions of Russian historians, but we need narratives that present the Ukrainian perspective, and I think the results of the study will prove to be both surprising and rewarding.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Last Supper for Middle Eastern Christians?
For well over a decade, some of us have watched the mass exodus of Eastern Christians--Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Iraq, Catholics and Orthodox in Syria, inter alia--from the Middle East and marveled at the stupidity, complicity, and mendacity of Western governments who bear very considerable responsibility for the destruction and flight of Christian communities, some of which have been there for nearly 2000 years. Only in the past few months does the plight of Christians seem to have attracted a little more than passing interest, though I for one expect that absolutely nothing will be done. Western governmental inaction when it comes to Christian persecution in the region goes back more than a century, and is one long shameful record of doing damn all. When it comes to Western statesmen protecting Middle Eastern Christian minorities, the psalmist's counsel is superfluous, for no sensible person would put any trust in these treacherous princes.Forthcoming early next month is a welcome study giving us more details: Klaus Wivel, The Last Supper: the Plight of Christian in Arab Lands, trans. Mark Kline (New Vessel Press, 2016), 220pp.
About this book the publisher tells us:
In 2013, alarmed by scant attention paid to the hardships endured by the 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories on a quest to learn more about their fate. He found an oppressed minority, constantly under threat of death and humiliation, increasingly desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope that their situation will improve, or anyone will come to their aid. Wivel spoke with priests whose churches have been burned, citizens who feel like strangers in their own countries, and entire communities whose only hope for survival may be fleeing into exile. With the increase of religious violence in the past few years, this book is a prescient and unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group living, so it seems, on borrowed time. Wivel asks, why have we not done more to protect these people?And among many commendatory blurbs, we find this:
"More than any other recent book, this work sets out with absolute clarity and sometimes uncomfortable honesty the intolerable reality of life for Christians in the Middle East today ... a deeply intelligent picture of the situation, without cheap polemic or axe-grinding, this is a very important survey indeed."—Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University
Monday, April 25, 2016
Biographies and Biographers
When I'm not reading military or martial history at bedtime, I am as often as not reading a biography. Lately those have included a few biographical studies of Churchill that have hitherto escaped my attention; and then re-reading at least two of the biographies of Evelyn Waugh. On my bedside table, soon to be read, is Robert Speaight's The Life of Hilaire Belloc.
I've read enough biographies over the years to know that writing them is a tricky business, and in unskilled hands a badly done biography is scarcely worth reading. Shortly after he died earlier this year, I decided I should read another biography of Antonin Scalia, and picked up B.A. Murphy's Antonin Scalia: A Life of One. It's gruesome. Almost from the first page the author's clumsy tendentiousness clubs one over the head, making this an unreadable tome. (Joan Biskupic's American Original is a much less obnoxious study of Scalia.) I have no patience for impatient authors who cannot let the story of their subject unfold at its own pace and in its own terms without rushing to tell us how we ought to think about this person; I never read a biography about anybody in the hopes of discovering what the biographer thinks. Biographers should be like John the Baptist: decreasing in focus so that the subject comes ever more sharply into focus insofar as this is possible.
Having read more than a few biographies, I have fondly--perhaps foolishly--entertained for years the idea that one day I will have the time to sit down and write a full-scale biography of some worthy and deserving subject whose life I can treat at length after luxuriously solitary spells in archives, in reading diaries, in conversing with his or her contemporaries (if they are still alive). The one biography I have long wanted to do is that of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who has by any stretch led a fascinating life as one of the most influential moral philosophers of the last half-century. But philosophers, especially modern philosophers, do not often seem to merit as much biographical attention as their ancient counterparts; this is true a fortiori of modern theologians and religious scholars, though there are of course some exceptions, especially in the modern West with figures like Paul Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Richard John Neuhaus, Henri de Lubac, etc.
In the realm of biographies in the Christian East, I have read Andrew Blane's rather uneven biography, Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual & Orthodox Churchman.
More recently, one simply must read Paul Gavrilyuk's Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance which I discuss in detail here.
We have seen biography-like collections, including Turning East: Contemporary Philosophers and the Ancient Christian Faith, edited by Rico Vitz.
Scott Kenworthy has given us an updated version of Chosen for His People: A Biography of Patriarch Tikhon.
And of course just this year, as I recently noted, we have a full biography of Alexander Men.
But what about full-scale biographies of such figures as Alexander Schmemann, or John Meyendorff? Both have had any number of studies written on their theology and other aspects of their work but neither has been treated to a serious, comprehensive, full-length scholarly biography that I know of. Part of that, of course, has to do with protecting reputations both personal and institutional. (Otherwise we'd have all of Schmemann's journals published, not just select excerpts.) But let us hope that such concerns do not permanently prevent serious biographies of both men from emerging.
But what constitutes a 'serious scholarly biography'? And is it the biographer's job to 'protect reputations' or to 'tell it like it is, warts and all'? In treating, say, a theologian or churchman, must one be theologically literate to write a good biography--must one, perforce, be a part of the same Christian tradition as the subject of the biography? Will a Protestant make a hash of trying to write the life of Zizioulas? Can a Catholic fully understand and correctly portray the life of Staniloae? Is the temptation of the biographer to indulge in some armchair psychoanalysis always a bad one? In raising just a few such questions I have in mind to differentiate a biography from what is often conventionally called 'hagiography.' But there are many further additional and serious questions that go into the writing of a biography, and Rana Tekcan brings them to our attention in her recent book, Too Far for Comfort: A Study on Biographical Distance (Ibidem Press, 2015), 186pp.
About this book the publisher tells us:
I've read enough biographies over the years to know that writing them is a tricky business, and in unskilled hands a badly done biography is scarcely worth reading. Shortly after he died earlier this year, I decided I should read another biography of Antonin Scalia, and picked up B.A. Murphy's Antonin Scalia: A Life of One. It's gruesome. Almost from the first page the author's clumsy tendentiousness clubs one over the head, making this an unreadable tome. (Joan Biskupic's American Original is a much less obnoxious study of Scalia.) I have no patience for impatient authors who cannot let the story of their subject unfold at its own pace and in its own terms without rushing to tell us how we ought to think about this person; I never read a biography about anybody in the hopes of discovering what the biographer thinks. Biographers should be like John the Baptist: decreasing in focus so that the subject comes ever more sharply into focus insofar as this is possible.
Having read more than a few biographies, I have fondly--perhaps foolishly--entertained for years the idea that one day I will have the time to sit down and write a full-scale biography of some worthy and deserving subject whose life I can treat at length after luxuriously solitary spells in archives, in reading diaries, in conversing with his or her contemporaries (if they are still alive). The one biography I have long wanted to do is that of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who has by any stretch led a fascinating life as one of the most influential moral philosophers of the last half-century. But philosophers, especially modern philosophers, do not often seem to merit as much biographical attention as their ancient counterparts; this is true a fortiori of modern theologians and religious scholars, though there are of course some exceptions, especially in the modern West with figures like Paul Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Richard John Neuhaus, Henri de Lubac, etc.
In the realm of biographies in the Christian East, I have read Andrew Blane's rather uneven biography, Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual & Orthodox Churchman.
More recently, one simply must read Paul Gavrilyuk's Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance which I discuss in detail here.
We have seen biography-like collections, including Turning East: Contemporary Philosophers and the Ancient Christian Faith, edited by Rico Vitz.
Scott Kenworthy has given us an updated version of Chosen for His People: A Biography of Patriarch Tikhon.
And of course just this year, as I recently noted, we have a full biography of Alexander Men.
But what about full-scale biographies of such figures as Alexander Schmemann, or John Meyendorff? Both have had any number of studies written on their theology and other aspects of their work but neither has been treated to a serious, comprehensive, full-length scholarly biography that I know of. Part of that, of course, has to do with protecting reputations both personal and institutional. (Otherwise we'd have all of Schmemann's journals published, not just select excerpts.) But let us hope that such concerns do not permanently prevent serious biographies of both men from emerging.
But what constitutes a 'serious scholarly biography'? And is it the biographer's job to 'protect reputations' or to 'tell it like it is, warts and all'? In treating, say, a theologian or churchman, must one be theologically literate to write a good biography--must one, perforce, be a part of the same Christian tradition as the subject of the biography? Will a Protestant make a hash of trying to write the life of Zizioulas? Can a Catholic fully understand and correctly portray the life of Staniloae? Is the temptation of the biographer to indulge in some armchair psychoanalysis always a bad one? In raising just a few such questions I have in mind to differentiate a biography from what is often conventionally called 'hagiography.' But there are many further additional and serious questions that go into the writing of a biography, and Rana Tekcan brings them to our attention in her recent book, Too Far for Comfort: A Study on Biographical Distance (Ibidem Press, 2015), 186pp.
About this book the publisher tells us:
The dynamic between the biographer and the subject is one of the most fascinating aspects of biography as a genre. How does the biographer stage the illusion that is the narrative life, the illusion that the subject assumes a living form through words? In contrast to purely fictional forms, biography writing does not allow total freedom to the biographer in this creative act. Ideally, a biography's backbone is structured by accurate historical facts. But its spirit lies elsewhere. Rana Tekcan explores how some of the most accomplished biographers manage to recreate "life" across time and space. She looks at their illusionary art through the narrative strategies in Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, Michael Holroyd's Lytton Strachey, Park Honan's Jane Austen, and Andrew Motion's Keats. She notes three types of distance in biographical narrative: First, where the biographer and the subject personally know one another; second, where the biographer is a near contemporary of the subject; and third, where biographer and subject are distinctly separated, in some cases, by hundreds of years.
Friday, April 22, 2016
The Mind of Christ and a Psychoanalytic Mind (II)
Continuing with some further thoughts (begun here) on the relationship between a Christian and a psychoanalytic mind, I return to Fred Busch's book, Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind: A Psychoanalytic Method and Theory.
As he recounts in the introduction to this book, Busch is something of a pioneer in psychoanalytic technique and training, being one of the first clinical psychologists to be admitted in the 1970s to psychoanalytic training at an American institute. American institutes, unlike those in Canada, the UK, and parts of Europe and elsewhere, generally have been extremely reluctant to admit any but psychiatrists or those with medical degrees. In this, they take a different tack from what Freud recommended in The Question of Lay Analysis.
Here I want to lie down on Busch's couch, as it were, and speculate a bit with him on some early passages from Busch as part of an exercise asking whether his understanding of the psychoanalytic process does not in fact lend itself rather well to what confessors and spiritual directors (and indeed all of us) may be trying to do with their penitents and with the task before all of us to "put on the mind of Christ."
Busch understands analysis to consist of three phases:
1) The first phase is when the patient comes to be familiar with his own inhibitions and restrictions that keep him from living: until the patient can wonder about his lack of wondering, wondering is not possible. This phase, later in the book, is called one of self-observation.
2) The middle phase of an analysis is the creation of a "psychoanalytic mind," that is, learning to observe one's own mind and its sequence of free associations. Such a psychoanalytic mind is necessary if the analysis is to bear long-term sustainable fruits in one's life. It is necessary, that is, if the patient is to be freed from the "slavery of repetition compulsion" and instead freed to "think about thinking." Later in the book Busch calls this phase one of self-reflection.
3) The terminal phase of an analysis consists of a deeper psychoanalytic mind more completely free from deceptions in understanding one's associations with greater veracity. Here the analysand can "play, muse, reflect, and interpret her own associations." This phase Busch later calls self-inquiry.
Busch says that part of his practice consists in seeing patients for a second analysis. They have benefited from their first analysis, but from that largely derived only knowledge of their unconscious--an "object," as it were, rather than a process. And for Bush, "the process of knowing is as important as what is known." Here Busch pioneers a different goal for analysis which, classically, has held up the importance of a state of knowing rather than a process of knowing. In the former, we come to know consciously what was previously unconscious. In the latter, the patient gains an understanding of how his mind works and how it affects him. Both offer freedom, albeit of a different degree and type, but Busch suggests the freedom of a psychoanalytic mind, with a process of knowing in addition to what is known, may be of greater long-term benefit.
Cast this in Christian terms, as between a penitent and his confessor or spiritual daughter and her spiritual mother, and consider the following, beginning with the distinction between a state of knowing and a process of knowing. In the former, I may well possess knowledge of my sins and weaknesses; but with the development of the latter, I may come to understand how and why it is I always fall prone to certain sins or temptations--I may, that is, come to understand a bit more about how my mind and soul work. Could such a process also unfold in a three-fold manner, as Busch suggests?
1) In the first phase, one comes to the director or confessor aware, perhaps vaguely, that something is holding him or her back from advancing in the Christian life--a besetting sin, perhaps, a stubborn habit, or a certain tristitia de bono spirituali. One is aware, or others have made him aware, that he has not yet come close to putting on the full stature of Christ, and he needs help to do this.
2) In the middle phase of the work, what is less important is discovering the underlying causes of one's sinful habits or lukewarm spiritual life; what is less important is acquiring here some insight into "cause" or some doctrinal insight which one must master and be "convicted" by or "convinced" of. Rather, one needs instead to develop a way of thinking with the Church (sentire cum Ecclesia), which is thinking with Christ. By thinking with Him and in Him, we come to a fuller understanding of ourselves, and to seeing ourselves as He sees us. In the famous words of Gaudium et Spes (no.22), "Christ, ...by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself."
3) In the third, and perhaps terminal, phase, the patient penitent has acquired enough insight into how his own mind and soul operate that he knows how to remain free from the (to switch to Evagrian terminology) logismoi, from his previous disordered thoughts and tendencies, and to be able to "let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus." Here the penitent comes to see thoughts as "mental events" as Busch calls them--with, again I would suggest, clear Evagrian overtones. And with the help of divine grace, those events can all be directed towards the glory of God. They need not, in other words, be events which take us away from God or cause terror in us, but can be used, as all things can be used, to work for the good of those who love God.
Anyway, I am neither a clinician nor a spiritual director (Deo gratias), so perhaps I have overstepped, but in reading Fred Busch's interesting Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind, these thoughts did occur.
As he recounts in the introduction to this book, Busch is something of a pioneer in psychoanalytic technique and training, being one of the first clinical psychologists to be admitted in the 1970s to psychoanalytic training at an American institute. American institutes, unlike those in Canada, the UK, and parts of Europe and elsewhere, generally have been extremely reluctant to admit any but psychiatrists or those with medical degrees. In this, they take a different tack from what Freud recommended in The Question of Lay Analysis.
Here I want to lie down on Busch's couch, as it were, and speculate a bit with him on some early passages from Busch as part of an exercise asking whether his understanding of the psychoanalytic process does not in fact lend itself rather well to what confessors and spiritual directors (and indeed all of us) may be trying to do with their penitents and with the task before all of us to "put on the mind of Christ."
1) The first phase is when the patient comes to be familiar with his own inhibitions and restrictions that keep him from living: until the patient can wonder about his lack of wondering, wondering is not possible. This phase, later in the book, is called one of self-observation.
2) The middle phase of an analysis is the creation of a "psychoanalytic mind," that is, learning to observe one's own mind and its sequence of free associations. Such a psychoanalytic mind is necessary if the analysis is to bear long-term sustainable fruits in one's life. It is necessary, that is, if the patient is to be freed from the "slavery of repetition compulsion" and instead freed to "think about thinking." Later in the book Busch calls this phase one of self-reflection.
3) The terminal phase of an analysis consists of a deeper psychoanalytic mind more completely free from deceptions in understanding one's associations with greater veracity. Here the analysand can "play, muse, reflect, and interpret her own associations." This phase Busch later calls self-inquiry.
Busch says that part of his practice consists in seeing patients for a second analysis. They have benefited from their first analysis, but from that largely derived only knowledge of their unconscious--an "object," as it were, rather than a process. And for Bush, "the process of knowing is as important as what is known." Here Busch pioneers a different goal for analysis which, classically, has held up the importance of a state of knowing rather than a process of knowing. In the former, we come to know consciously what was previously unconscious. In the latter, the patient gains an understanding of how his mind works and how it affects him. Both offer freedom, albeit of a different degree and type, but Busch suggests the freedom of a psychoanalytic mind, with a process of knowing in addition to what is known, may be of greater long-term benefit.
Cast this in Christian terms, as between a penitent and his confessor or spiritual daughter and her spiritual mother, and consider the following, beginning with the distinction between a state of knowing and a process of knowing. In the former, I may well possess knowledge of my sins and weaknesses; but with the development of the latter, I may come to understand how and why it is I always fall prone to certain sins or temptations--I may, that is, come to understand a bit more about how my mind and soul work. Could such a process also unfold in a three-fold manner, as Busch suggests?
1) In the first phase, one comes to the director or confessor aware, perhaps vaguely, that something is holding him or her back from advancing in the Christian life--a besetting sin, perhaps, a stubborn habit, or a certain tristitia de bono spirituali. One is aware, or others have made him aware, that he has not yet come close to putting on the full stature of Christ, and he needs help to do this.
2) In the middle phase of the work, what is less important is discovering the underlying causes of one's sinful habits or lukewarm spiritual life; what is less important is acquiring here some insight into "cause" or some doctrinal insight which one must master and be "convicted" by or "convinced" of. Rather, one needs instead to develop a way of thinking with the Church (sentire cum Ecclesia), which is thinking with Christ. By thinking with Him and in Him, we come to a fuller understanding of ourselves, and to seeing ourselves as He sees us. In the famous words of Gaudium et Spes (no.22), "Christ, ...by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself."
3) In the third, and perhaps terminal, phase, the patient penitent has acquired enough insight into how his own mind and soul operate that he knows how to remain free from the (to switch to Evagrian terminology) logismoi, from his previous disordered thoughts and tendencies, and to be able to "let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus." Here the penitent comes to see thoughts as "mental events" as Busch calls them--with, again I would suggest, clear Evagrian overtones. And with the help of divine grace, those events can all be directed towards the glory of God. They need not, in other words, be events which take us away from God or cause terror in us, but can be used, as all things can be used, to work for the good of those who love God.
Anyway, I am neither a clinician nor a spiritual director (Deo gratias), so perhaps I have overstepped, but in reading Fred Busch's interesting Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind, these thoughts did occur.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
The New Monasticism?
As a convinced MacIntyrean, I am of course skeptical of the modern urge to think "I'm from nowhere in particular so I can pick traditions from anywhere" sorts of movements that seek to construct an identity or community in a bricolage fashion that does nothing more than covertly reproduce the assumptions of modern liberal societies and their wickedly effective capacity for commodifying just about everything and rendering it an individual 'choice.' Still, for all that I bring to your attention The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living (Orbis, 2015), 256pp.
This book, the publisher tells us, seeks to draw on Eastern and Western monasticism. Further, we are told:
This book, the publisher tells us, seeks to draw on Eastern and Western monasticism. Further, we are told:
Young leaders of the new monastic movement introduce their vision for contemplative life- one that draws from the long traditions of East and West but also seeks an interreligious and 'interspiritual' dimension to intentional living in our time. With a preface by Mirabai Starr, a foreword by Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, and an afterword by Fr. Thomas Keating.
The New Monasticism is an introduction to the "new monastic movement," offering the authors' intellectual and spiritual reflections on what contemplative life could look like in the 21st century. With chapters focusing on spiritual practice, vocation, contemplation and activism, dialogical dialogue, the relationship with traditional religious paths, contemplative psychology and the building of intentional communities, the authors seek to "cut across the boundaries of religious traditions, of contemplation and action, and endeavor to create intergenerational alliances between those immersed in the depths of our traditional religious frameworks and those who are being called to contemplative and prophetic life outside of those frameworks."
While drawing on the work of Raimon Panikkar, St. Teresa of Avila, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ewert Cousins, Fr. Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, Brother Wayne Teasdale, St. John of the Cross and the Russian sophianic tradition, among others, the book also incorporates some popular modern day academic, cultural, and contemplative theorists, such as Ken Wilber and Fr. Thomas Keating, who speak to young people about creating a more sacred and just world while providing them with sophisticated tools for psychological analysis and integrated action. It also offers specific practices for a disciplined contemplative life and inspired social justice activism.
Monday, April 18, 2016
City of Demons
The University of California Press has put into my hands a new book City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity, written by Dayna S. Kalleres and published last fall. Comprising 392 pages, with helpful maps at the outset of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Milan, this book, the publisher tells us, looks at an overlooked area in the burgeoning studies on episcopal roles and authority in antiquity:
Although it would appear in studies of late antique ecclesiastical authority and power that scholars have covered everything, an important aspect of the urban bishop has long been neglected: his role as demonologist and exorcist. When the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the realm, bishops and priests everywhere struggled to “Christianize” the urban spaces still dominated by Greco-Roman monuments and festivals. During this period of upheaval, when congregants seemingly attended everything but their own “orthodox” church, many ecclesiastical leaders began simultaneously to promote aggressive and insidious depictions of the demonic. In City of Demons, Dayna S. Kalleres investigates this developing discourse and the church-sponsored rituals that went along with it, showing how shifting ecclesiastical demonologies and evolving practices of exorcism profoundly shaped Christian life in the fourth century.The first section treats of St. John Chrysostom and Antioch, while the second treats Cyril of Jerusalem; and the third Ambrose of Milan.
Friday, April 15, 2016
The People You Run into in the Desert
There's no telling whom you'll run into while on a stroll through the Egyptian deserts of the mid-fourth century. A recently translated book about the monk Palladius tells us that he was not lolling about his cell but instead lead a very peripatetic life: John Wortley, ed. and trans., Palladius of Aspuna: the Lausiac History (Cistercian, 2015), 176pp.
About this book the publisher tell us:
About this book the publisher tell us:
Born in Galatia in the 360s, Palladius enrolled as a monk on the Mount of Olives in his early twenties. As a monk, he traveled to Alexandria, the desert of Nitria, the Cells, Palestine, Rome, and the Thebaid. During his travels he encountered Rufinus of Aquileia, Melania the Elder, the hermit Dorotheos, Macarius of Alexandria, Evagrius of Pontus, Jerome of Bethlehem, and John Chrysostom. He wrote this elegant account of his visits to various monastic sites in Egypt toward the end of the fourth century AD for the imperial chamberlain Lausus. It is both the most sophisticated and the most informative of the few documents illustrating the earliest chapter in the history of Christian monasticism. Palladius’s work is the only one of the major monastic writings not written for fellow monks to inspire them with models for their emulation but rather for a man very much of the world, with the explicit intention of exerting not only religious but also political influence.
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