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Nick the Nevermet

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Everything posted by Nick the Nevermet

  1. Indeed. Labels can be useful sometimes and problems others.
  2. Hello. I was around here years ago. I'm poking my nose back in now. Hope you're all well. As for a little about me, I think the labels of progressive and Presbyterian both apply to me. And yes, I believe that progressive Christianity is compatible with the tradition of the Reformed, Presbyterian, or "Calvinist". Which makes me fun at parties
  3. Two Friars and a Fool did thing a few years back, 95 theses against Hell. In short, they couldn't bring themselves, on Christian principles, to accept the idea of eternal conscious torment as a punishment a just god would inflict on anyone, let alone someone who is merely a nonbeliever. Here's a link There are lots of different ideas about the afterlife that have come from mainstream sources within Christianity. Universalism is one. Karl Barth, one of the greatest Reformed theologians of the 20th Century, promoted it, and the Orthodox had apocatastasis, which is effectively the same thing for most intents and purposes. There's also annihilationism, or the idea that there is no afterlife (possibly for anyone, or just for unsaved). My point in bringing all this up is that the tradition of Christianity is so much more than a single doctrine. Don't get fooled otherwise.
  4. taking time off from this forum for Thanksgiving and getting caught up on work and wow... this thread has grown substantially since then.
  5. Yeah, there is a whole mess of other factors at play in these situations, and I'd look sideways at anyone who claimed to have made an effective predictive model. Also, to be clear about something: I like tolerance. I support religious diversity in our society, multicultural concerns in the classroom, etc. I don't want anyone to take my empirical statement that diversity is challenging as a moral claim that diversity is somehow wrong.
  6. Good post, Jennell. Toleration and inclusiveness does not necessarily mean a weakening of community.
  7. ok, I'm in between festive activities with family, so I can type To answer the first question, I can rely on three scholars: Robert Putnam, Morris Fiorina, and Rodney Stark. In different works, all three come to a similar conclusion: increased diversity involving distinct groups does not necessarily lead to toleration and acceptance. Stark wrote a book about American religiosity where he argues that America experienced a higher level of religiosity precisely because we had countless denominations (and no established church) competing with one another for members. As a general rule, this competition lead to sharper dividing lines and a stronger religious identity than it did in Europe. Multiplicity of faiths may mean the lack of domination by one, but Stark suggests it may make people dig their heels in a bit more. (You'd like this book; his data is amazing) Morris Fiorina wrote a chapter for an edited volume where he partly questions the standard (and generally true) story that the more people are civically engaged (vote, volunteer, join clubs, etc.) the better off both individuals and society seem to be. The problem is that this isn't a perfectly good story. He points out that getting involved in politics may create stronger divisions in society as people become opposing activists. So, if there is an active pluralism (as opposed to a pluralistic society full of sloths?), there is a possibility of stronger division & conflict. He uses anecdotal evidence to illustrate the point, but it's not the most empirical article ever. In Bowling Alone, Putnam makes the argument that democratic society (at least the American version) runs of civic engagement. Civic engagement creates non-work based "social capital", the amount of connectedness in a society. More connectedness is useful, as it not only gives you more specific contacts, but societies with high levels of social capital tend to have higher levels of trust, and that's useful for a lot of things. So far, so good. One thing he doesn't emphasize that much in Bowling Alone is the difference between bridging and bonding social capital. In short, bonding social capital creates a unified community, and bridging capital connects disparate communities together. This means one can envision situations where there is high bonding but low bridging, societies where there are strong communities, but a deep distrust of non-members. Diversity, by itself, does not seem to necessarily create bridging capital. In American Grace, he apparently explores this theme more, and worries that as diversity increases, society needs to actively try and establish more and more bridging capital, or else people will simply retreat to their one neighborhood and only trust "their own kind", whatever that is. None of this is about pluralism exactly, but it is about diversity. And I suppose pluralism = diversity + sufficient bridging capital, which would mean that tolerance is also a product, rather than a causal variable. This of course begs the question what in our society creates bridging capital, and I'm not sure, though I assume a pessimistic stance is safer.
  8. I'll writ more later, but quickly: 1) No, but I have for diversity as a negative 2) IMO, yes, but only as tokenism or exitcicism
  9. Off the top of my head, no. I mean, if I tried, I could probably find something, but I'm willing to agree with you it's a generally true thing. I could probably dig up in a day or two a substantial list of descriptors on how all urban social spaces are not created equal, which was really all I meant. Urban space in areas of major cities are actively disciplined into making sure interactions don't take place. Geographer Mike Davis writes a lot about this (see City of Quartz - another informative & relatively accessible read). If one wants to go old school (i.e. enjoys reading dense stuff). Again, I agree with you: it is harder to hate the guy you buy fish from every week. It gets even harder when you know his name, when you see him outside of work, etc. Or, to put it in a personal anecdote, realizing that a guy was a conservative evangelical after I had spent 4 years practicing aikido with him made me more willing to see him as a person than a crazy.
  10. I basically agree. Social capital has been shown to create all types of interesting effects, including generalized trust in a society. Even just having bowling leagues or bridge games helps create a network in society that increases care for one's common man. The central book about this is Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, which isn't perfect (there's some huge problems with race & gender in his analysis), but is nevertheless brilliant. A key question for me is how much contact do people have with people who aren't exactly like them, and what kind of contact is it? If one has very 'thin' interactions with a group, it is very easy to maintain superficial stereotypes. As such, I think urbanism may help, but can't be relied on by itself as the central independent variable.
  11. Pluralism is good when done right. And just like all potentially good things, it can be done wrong. If a path isn't distinctive enough to be meaningful, then there's an issue, though it could be a lot of different things. At the same time, tribalism and hard boundaries are at least as problematic. Negotiations are tricky, messy, and inevitably ad hoc. Speaking pragmatically, the trick is to find a bargain where the things that matter to you embraced. This could be a certain ethic (social gospel), a set of beliefs (Lutheran), or a community (a church can be defined by its neighborhood and be better for it). If you go somewhere that's made the wrong bargain for you, then there's a problem. In terms of what I think is the right way to do it... I dunno. One of my horrible confessions is I still cannot bring myself to attend a church on a consistent basis. Going into that would be a personal stories thread, but it limits what I'm willing to give as an opinion on the right (effective or moral) way of doing things.
  12. Excellent point. We have a nasty habit of breaking history into modern / pre-modern (or whatever other dichotomy we want to use), which often deforms analysis as much as anything else. Thinking that tolerance got invented by the Founding Fathers helps nobody. I also agree with Neon that relativism needs an adjective. We're talking about something very different if we're talking about what is truth (epistemological relativism), what we believe is good (moral relativism), or something else. I suppose one could accuse me of methodological relativism. Sociology doesn't really have an equivalent to positive psychology, since "what makes a society awesome" ended up being a path to nasty things (ethnocentrism, naturalization of gender roles, etc). I'm not saying it had to go that way, but it did, and as a result, those type of questions are something we shy away from.
  13. George, As I said, it's really an accusatory term. I know some academics who come close, but nobody really is a relativist as the anti-postmodern crowd thinks about the term (well, maybe some 1st year grad students who just got done with theory, but we try not to count them ).
  14. ok, avoiding dictionaries... Pluralism is the acceptance that those who differ from you have a right to their difference, even if you disagree. Passionate disagreement is not a sufficient reason for someone to be seen as illegitimate. Even if they are in my eyes demonstrably wrong, they have a right to their wrongness, and there should be a limit to how much their wrongness is punished by society. Pluralism always implies certain beliefs, practices, and groups are illegitimate. Relativism is pluralism without ground rules. It is also a negative term that I've never seen used in a positive light outside of academia (and in academia only with some specific qualifiers). Relativism also seems to go two very different ways, depending on whether people are talking about individuals or communities. Individually,relativism is when difference becomes as meaningful as fashion. Individuals can float between different propositions, beliefs, and practices, and this is perfectly acceptable because those beliefs and practices don't really matter. Communally, relativism means the rules change depending on your membership card. Women of a certain religion must behave a certain way because that's what tradition says, and who are you to judge? The two look closely related to the person who feels morally threatened by relativism, and they therefore use the same term, but they are very different beasts.
  15. Another I'd recommend is Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Link) He's a sociologist of religion, who is also a Catholic, but started off as an Evangelical (he has other books on how that transition occurred). This book is why the ideal of biblical literalism is empirically not possible. The Bible does not have a singular, unifying meaning that all can understand unproblematically and without interpretation. It's just not possible. The first half explains that argument, and then he turns to what he thinks might work instead, which from what I hear involves a value for Christian community and the need to admit churches are interpretive communities with a way of reading and interpreting the Bible. I haven't read it, but I hear it's good and accessible.
  16. Just hit the max number of postings per day for the first time. Huh.

  17. As do I. When I have a chance to breath, I'm probably going to post a review of DeHart's book. I've become strongly drawn to "postliberal" theology, which seems to be what happens when theologians take the whole "post-critical naivete" idea very, very seriously.
  18. “[F]or theological interpretation of the Christ-event, description and not explanation remains the operative ideal... The attempt to describe in other words and concepts the Christ-event is a necessary task if it is to be grasped at all, but let such attempts proliferate, let them be held lightly, and let no exclusive claims be made for them." Paul DeHart, Trial of the Witness, describing the hermeneutics of theologian Hans Frei
  19. One of the things that always strikes me when I read this forum is just how few truly traumatic and horrible interactions I've had with rigid, conservative Christians (aka fundamentalists, bible-thumpers, etc.). About the worst experiences I've had were being told I wasn't a real Christian once, being told repeatedly when I was a kid that Dungeons & Dragons was satanic, and a nextdoor neighbor complaining my research design for a project didn't allow for the Holy Ghost to have causal influence (sociologists generally fail to operationalize the third person of the Trinity...). But my point is I have none of the personal experiences that seem central to many people here. I guess this means I'm lucky, as who wants to experience stuff like that? I mention it again, because this thread reminds me again I have different (but certainly not better) axes to grind. If anything, I'm coming to progressive Christianity from the other side: overly rational intellectualism breaking from the postmodern turn, bringing concerns about religion back into the foreground of my mind and my identity. EDIT: I should mention that this is definitely educational for me, and since posting here, I've refined my opinions about New Atheism, and toned down some of my less than fair comments regarding that topic.
  20. I'm similar to Joseph regarding this issue. Progressive Christianity, for me, is a point of intersection between the fields politics and religion. I think that it is a relatively loose term that defies rigid and stable definition, but that is precisely its point: to be a flexible boundary object. Or, more accurately, a boundary public, a place where diverse people can come together to talk about matters of common concern, and we don't want that agenda narrowed too far.
  21. We were very lucky here, though people not a half hour away have things a bit rough. lots of flooding, though I dont think there's any loss of life near me. ...also, its not particularly important, but I just made a new avatar out of the stained glass window of the church I was married in a few months back. ...i'm a fan, but I'm biased
  22. Faith begins with an exclamation: “What the #%&* was that?!”- Kim Fabricus
  23. "Test Everything. Hold on to the Good." - Paul
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