Monday, February 13, 2006
Review: The End of Religion
As promised in earlier posts (#1, #2), I'm finally getting around to a review of Bruxy Cavey's book, The End of Religion: An introduction to the subversive spirituality of Jesus. Oakville, ON: Agora Imprints, 2005. (Can only be ordered directly from the author at www.theendofreligion.org).
Discussions on the irreligious nature of the Christian faith are not new, but The End of Religion provides a fresh look at the theme in a short book that is accessible to virtually any reader. This is neither an academic treatise or "fluff" writing. Bruxy Cavey's down-to-earth communication style makes it a book that spiritual followers, seekers and skeptics will all find a valuable read.
Making the distinction between religion and the spirituality of Jesus is no abstract construct for Cavey. He begins his case by illustrating that the Bible itself points out that Jesus came to put an end to religion and to lead people to the ideal nature of spirituality intended at creation. Jesus was against religion, and "never commanded his followers to embrace creeds or codes of conduct, and he never instructed his followers to participate in exhaustive religious rituals. In fact, ... his life's work was about undoing the knots that bound people to ritual and empty tradition" (p. 22). According to Cavey we do not have to look far to see the negative effects of religion. History is full of examples which confirm the problems it has created.
A large section of the book is devoted to demonstrating how Jesus' scandalous life took on the religious establishment of his day. Specifically, Jesus challenged five of the most central aspects of Israel's faith: Torah, tradition, tribalism, territory and temple. Aside from the mnemonic alliteration, Cavey provides an insightful discussion that clearly relates Jesus' message to its historical context.
The issue I was waiting to see addressed finally came in Part Three of the book. It's one thing to say that Jesus opposed religion, but what then did Jesus offer in its stead? What are the implications of this subversive spirituality? Cavey reiterated a common argument, distinguishing between religion and relationships, with the latter expressing the nature by which we should be relating to God. He states that "our connection with God should be a lot more like our relationships with other people - intimate, unscripted, authentic." (p. 94). Ultimately this trusting relationship expresses itself "in practical loving action". (p. 116)
Cavey's arguments are sound and insightful, especially for those who see Christianity as nothing more than a religion. I am not convinced, however, that he succeeded in his last section in mapping out in more concrete ways what an irreligious faith looks like. There is some vaguness in the discussion. Certainly, formulazing Jesus' subversive spirituality could be just another religious form, something Cavey is wanting us to avoid. But, but the challenge still remains to help people understand what this looks like.
To be fair, Cavey has just signed a two-book deal with a major publisher. Not only will his writings be easier to obtain, but it sounds like he will be building and expanding upon what he has started here in The End of Religion. Currently, at his church (www.themeetinghouse.ca), he is preaching a series entitled "The Irreligious Life" which probes more deeply into these issues. I look forward to seeing his thoughts develop and the impact that these new books will have on a wider audience.
In the meantime, The End of Religion is worth reading and discussing (discussion questions are included). Bruxy Cavey has made an important contribution that should encourage people to discover anew the message of Jesus.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the end of religion
A few days ago (February 4th) marked 100 years since the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the most significant theologians and followers of Jesus Christ of the 20th century. As a leader in the Confessing Church which opposed German Nazism, Bonhoeffer not had strong beliefs but lived them. Hopefully, you were able to catch the PBS documentary (see www.bonhoeffer.com) on his life this past weekend (I found out about it after the fact, but I will keep my eyes open for a re-run broadcast).
I have posted on Bonhoeffer before ("VE-Day", "More on Bonhoeffer", and "Otherworldly religion"), but I think it is appropriate in light of the recent attention given him, to quote from some of his profound letters that were written in prison. Unfortunately, he was executed by the Germans before being able to fully develop and flesh out these provocative thoughts. Bonhoeffer's musings have influenced many people (myself included), and even today force us to examine our faith and it's Christian expressions.
Excerpts from Letters and Papers from Prison (ed. Eberhard Bethge), New York: Macmillan, pp. 278-281:What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience - and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious’.Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the ‘religious a priori’ of mankind. ‘Christianity’ has always been a form - perhaps the true form - of ‘religion’. But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless - and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any ‘religious’ reaction?) - what does that mean for ‘Christianity’? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our ‘Christianity’, and that there remain only a few ‘last survivors of the age of chivalry’, or a few intellectually dishonest people, on whom we can descend as ‘religious’. Are they to be the chosen few? Is it on this dubious group of people that we are to pounce in fervour, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them our goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them? If we don't want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity - and even this garment has looked very different at different times - then what is a religionless Christianity?...The questions to be answered would surely be: What do a church a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God - without religion, i.e. without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even speak as we used to) in a ‘secular’ way about ‘God’? In what way are we ‘religionless-secular’ Christians, in what way are the ‘ekklesia’, those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favoured, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation? Does the secret discipline, or alternatively the difference (which I have suggested to you before) between penultimate and ultimate, take on a new importance here?...The Pauline question whether [circumcision] is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from [circumcision] is also freedom from religion. I often ask myself why a 'Christian instinct' often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, by which I don't in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, 'in brotherhood'. While I'm often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people - because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it's particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable) - to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course. Religious people speak of God when human knowledge (perhaps simply because they are too lazy to think) has come to an end, or when human resources fail - in fact it is always the deus ex machina that they bring on to the scene, either for the apparent solution of insoluble problems, or as strength in human failure - always, that is to say, exploiting human weakness or human boundaries. Of necessity, that can go on only till people can by their own strength push these boundaries somewhat further out, so that God becomes superfluous as a deus ex machina. I've come to be doubtful of talking about any human boundaries (is even death, which people now hardly fear, and is sin, which they now hardly understand, still a genuine boundary today?). It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man's life and goodness. As to the boundaries, it seems to me better to be silent and leave the insoluble unsolved. Belief in the resurrection is not the 'solution' of the problem of death. God's 'beyond' is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties. The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village. That is how it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little in the light of the Old. How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I'm thinking about a great deal, and I shall be writing to you again about it soon.
