Showing posts with label ISIS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISIS. Show all posts
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Is Paris Burning?
It has been only a few short months since this blog discussed sacramental violence offered in the name of religion.
Paris, again, has become the stage on which a vampiric ISIS once again slakes its thirst with the blood of innocents. This deranged version of Islam seeks to execute an ideology of blood. This ideology, feckless in the light and dancing in the dark, knows itself only through the blood of the other. Like the Germanic monster, Grendel, it recoils at joy, and its heart laughs in the broken bones and blood of misery.
The joy and laughter of ISIS at the blood burning the streets of Paris is the joy and laughter of the Zizekian pervert. This misbegotten child infatuated with its image in the mirror continues to engage in a horrific oedipal struggle for the will of the infidel.
Such an ideology, hiding behind, or living between the raindrops of religion, only wants more blood. Che vuoi? A reduplicating 'more of the same,' more lust for sameness, more gluttony for blood. Jouissance of the pervert is the fantasy that sameness is safe, and the other is malleable.
ISIS is the ideology of the blood of the other: it drinks for everlasting life as its fangs etch its signature of violence into anything human. Like all perverts seeking to become the object of desire of its big other, it ultimately seeks self-annihilation.
Monday, March 23, 2015
ἐν τούτῳ νίκα
In this [sign], conquer.
Latinized to in hoc signo vinces by Christian writers after Lactantius and Eusebius, the sign refers to the Chi-Rho, the digraph depicting the crossier-like shepherd's staff (Gk. letter Rho) with a superimposed "X" (Gk. letter Chi). Though he did not understand the meaning of the symbol, Constantine later interpreted it as a omen of victory in battle, and had the Chi-Rho incorporated into the labarum, the standard raised in the vanguard of the soon to be victorious Roman troops.
While the Chi-Rho certainly evokes Christ (chi-rho are the first two letters of the word) and the Cross, it was no crucifix. It is rather a sanitized evocation of what would later become an image depicting the body of Christ nailed to a cross. For Constantine the symbol was all idol. Some say Christianity takes a detour in the early 4th century and goes off on a tangent whose trajectory persists today (though some others limit that observation to the Roman Catholic Church).
So let me dispense right now with one of my pet peeves, namely that the "IHS" of the Jesuit symbol does not stand for 'in hoc signo vinces' but simply the 1st 3 letters of the name, "Jesus" in much the same way and the Chi-Rho spells "Christ." Sometimes there are just too many initials in the alphabet soup we call communication.
I mention all of this because Robert Barron's latest video, "ISIS and the Cross," presents the Cross as a provocation, a poke at the supremacy of authority, political power, the State. Barron states that when Paul preaches the crucified Christ, he deliberately subverts the norm, the political 'way things are.' Of course, in Paul's time there was no iconography of the Cross (which does not emerge in the history of the Church until the 3rd century); Paul asserts stauros to conjure the image of the cross and crucifixion, and that would have been enough to disgust, frighten and generally repulse anyone listening to him. His was a stroke of rhetorical genius, not iconographic genius.
The theme of subversion within early Christianity captures the modern imagination. Its popularity gains traction from time to time, but I was a bit taken aback by its appearance in Barron's video. Certainly, there can be no reduction of the Christ-event to a political movement or strategy in Catholicism, but both Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels do indeed introduce an angst into what was passing for religion and politics in those days and even today.
Does the crucifix today have any rapport with the Chi Rho that launched the Christian West? Are all those Catholic school kids wearing their Communion and Confirmation crosses subverting their world? Does ISIS add to the rolls of the martyrology, and if so where is the victory over the sting of death? What is being seeded in the sacramental murders of these Christian martyrs?
The West has abandoned the Crusade and for good reason. It is interested in its advance and future accomplishments, and tearing its fabric along religious seams can only mean destruction of its project. Indeed, when the West is besieged by religious forces, as it is at this moment, its instincts move it to secularize the agency of its attackers. The political reduction is certainly an expeditious approach, but it distracts from marshaling those religious seams to aid in achieving a broader understand of just what phenomenon is invading and exercising religious violence.
The Chi-Rho is gone, and there is no longer a single Milvian Bridge, despite a West that sometimes appears to be divided against itself. But the earth receives the blood of the martyrs as it waits to insist for the justice-to-come; and brothers' blood cries unto the God-to-come, insisting to exist.
Latinized to in hoc signo vinces by Christian writers after Lactantius and Eusebius, the sign refers to the Chi-Rho, the digraph depicting the crossier-like shepherd's staff (Gk. letter Rho) with a superimposed "X" (Gk. letter Chi). Though he did not understand the meaning of the symbol, Constantine later interpreted it as a omen of victory in battle, and had the Chi-Rho incorporated into the labarum, the standard raised in the vanguard of the soon to be victorious Roman troops.
While the Chi-Rho certainly evokes Christ (chi-rho are the first two letters of the word) and the Cross, it was no crucifix. It is rather a sanitized evocation of what would later become an image depicting the body of Christ nailed to a cross. For Constantine the symbol was all idol. Some say Christianity takes a detour in the early 4th century and goes off on a tangent whose trajectory persists today (though some others limit that observation to the Roman Catholic Church).
So let me dispense right now with one of my pet peeves, namely that the "IHS" of the Jesuit symbol does not stand for 'in hoc signo vinces' but simply the 1st 3 letters of the name, "Jesus" in much the same way and the Chi-Rho spells "Christ." Sometimes there are just too many initials in the alphabet soup we call communication.
I mention all of this because Robert Barron's latest video, "ISIS and the Cross," presents the Cross as a provocation, a poke at the supremacy of authority, political power, the State. Barron states that when Paul preaches the crucified Christ, he deliberately subverts the norm, the political 'way things are.' Of course, in Paul's time there was no iconography of the Cross (which does not emerge in the history of the Church until the 3rd century); Paul asserts stauros to conjure the image of the cross and crucifixion, and that would have been enough to disgust, frighten and generally repulse anyone listening to him. His was a stroke of rhetorical genius, not iconographic genius.
The theme of subversion within early Christianity captures the modern imagination. Its popularity gains traction from time to time, but I was a bit taken aback by its appearance in Barron's video. Certainly, there can be no reduction of the Christ-event to a political movement or strategy in Catholicism, but both Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels do indeed introduce an angst into what was passing for religion and politics in those days and even today.
Does the crucifix today have any rapport with the Chi Rho that launched the Christian West? Are all those Catholic school kids wearing their Communion and Confirmation crosses subverting their world? Does ISIS add to the rolls of the martyrology, and if so where is the victory over the sting of death? What is being seeded in the sacramental murders of these Christian martyrs?
The West has abandoned the Crusade and for good reason. It is interested in its advance and future accomplishments, and tearing its fabric along religious seams can only mean destruction of its project. Indeed, when the West is besieged by religious forces, as it is at this moment, its instincts move it to secularize the agency of its attackers. The political reduction is certainly an expeditious approach, but it distracts from marshaling those religious seams to aid in achieving a broader understand of just what phenomenon is invading and exercising religious violence.
The Chi-Rho is gone, and there is no longer a single Milvian Bridge, despite a West that sometimes appears to be divided against itself. But the earth receives the blood of the martyrs as it waits to insist for the justice-to-come; and brothers' blood cries unto the God-to-come, insisting to exist.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
The Theological Moment: Lex Orandi Lex Credendi
A sage once said that we shall know the tree by its fruits; perhaps, in matters of religion, fruits and trees problematize beliefs and prayers. In my previous blog entry, I suggested an intimate relationship between authority and authenticity, and further, that the Marcan Jesus interrogated these religious attitudes by interrogating the priests, scribes and elders who challenged the foundation for Jesus' actions. Though the Jesus in Mark 11 does not state so explicitly, he seems to locate the discernment of authority within the human conscience. In the context of the New Testament themes of 'hardness of heart'(sklerokardia) and a 'change of heart'(metanoia), a heart open to the call, God's insistence, perhaps, we can think of the former as a poorly formed conscience, and the latter as a properly formed conscience. The elders response of feigned ignorance comes from sklerokardia, a closing off of the event. In the case at hand, the event of authentication is a matter of conscience.
Today the world finds itself in a theological moment. Depending on the degree of its dogmatism, its openness to the event is a smaller or larger aperture. Depending on the intensity of its secularism, its openness to the call, to the insistence of Joycean 'chaosmos,' is a smaller or larger moment. The world is more or less deaf to the call, depending on its conscience. The world might not even know that a theological moment is upon it, because it might not even know the language of the call.
In the news today we learn that ISIS holds for ransom 2 Japanese journalists. They are already wearing the orange vestments, kneeling in desert sands at the feet of the high priest of the black vestments. Another celebration of the liturgy of murder lurks on the altar of the internet; another sacrament of ISIS is before the world in a moment of very public prayer. The law of prayer is the law of belief. See how yet another pair of journalists are made to kneel, to genuflect to this god of violence. See how the 'word' suffers before the prayers in the desert. See how freedom is bound from behind and paraded before the world.
U.S. president, Barack Obama, has recently adopted a public strategy (foreign policy?) that denies religious status to extremists who murder in the name of God. Is this because U.S. policy has determined that ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram are not religious in nature? Have U.S. policy makers done some theological homework, and concluded that these groups are no longer recognizably Islamic or religious at all? If so, the American people should know how their representatives have interpreted for them the theological moment the world faces today. If not, perhaps these policy makers have recreated these groups in their own militantly secular image, reducing self-proclaimed religious zealots to terms it understands.
Violence is a self-replicating event. It comes from hardness of heart raised to action, action grounded in poorly formed consciences. Its victims are the innocent. See how the high priests, scribes and elders of secularism and religion hurl us into the deep gashes of faith. The more things change, the more they stay the same. More of the same: radical secularism and radical religion do the same thing: they reduce each other to the simplest terms they collectively understand, and divide by blood and death.
The intersections of religion, faith, secularism, politics, realism and theology are dangerous places indeed. I am distinctly uncomfortable commenting on 'the news' and the digests of the 'talking heads.' It is my conviction, though, that great and self-serving misunderstanding is being perpetuated under the names of religion, secularism, God and justice, resulting in the visitation of violence and slaughter upon the innocents. I do not believe, as some would have it, that there are no innocents. There are innocents. To declare them complicit in the rage and assault on the world is an ugly and evil strategem whose only hope is to make violence 'acceptable' tender in the commerce of beliefs.
Violence will not hold. This is my hope, prayer and belief.
Today the world finds itself in a theological moment. Depending on the degree of its dogmatism, its openness to the event is a smaller or larger aperture. Depending on the intensity of its secularism, its openness to the call, to the insistence of Joycean 'chaosmos,' is a smaller or larger moment. The world is more or less deaf to the call, depending on its conscience. The world might not even know that a theological moment is upon it, because it might not even know the language of the call.
In the news today we learn that ISIS holds for ransom 2 Japanese journalists. They are already wearing the orange vestments, kneeling in desert sands at the feet of the high priest of the black vestments. Another celebration of the liturgy of murder lurks on the altar of the internet; another sacrament of ISIS is before the world in a moment of very public prayer. The law of prayer is the law of belief. See how yet another pair of journalists are made to kneel, to genuflect to this god of violence. See how the 'word' suffers before the prayers in the desert. See how freedom is bound from behind and paraded before the world.
U.S. president, Barack Obama, has recently adopted a public strategy (foreign policy?) that denies religious status to extremists who murder in the name of God. Is this because U.S. policy has determined that ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram are not religious in nature? Have U.S. policy makers done some theological homework, and concluded that these groups are no longer recognizably Islamic or religious at all? If so, the American people should know how their representatives have interpreted for them the theological moment the world faces today. If not, perhaps these policy makers have recreated these groups in their own militantly secular image, reducing self-proclaimed religious zealots to terms it understands.
Violence is a self-replicating event. It comes from hardness of heart raised to action, action grounded in poorly formed consciences. Its victims are the innocent. See how the high priests, scribes and elders of secularism and religion hurl us into the deep gashes of faith. The more things change, the more they stay the same. More of the same: radical secularism and radical religion do the same thing: they reduce each other to the simplest terms they collectively understand, and divide by blood and death.
The intersections of religion, faith, secularism, politics, realism and theology are dangerous places indeed. I am distinctly uncomfortable commenting on 'the news' and the digests of the 'talking heads.' It is my conviction, though, that great and self-serving misunderstanding is being perpetuated under the names of religion, secularism, God and justice, resulting in the visitation of violence and slaughter upon the innocents. I do not believe, as some would have it, that there are no innocents. There are innocents. To declare them complicit in the rage and assault on the world is an ugly and evil strategem whose only hope is to make violence 'acceptable' tender in the commerce of beliefs.
Violence will not hold. This is my hope, prayer and belief.
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