Love and Democracy (2): case studies

This post is the second in a series inspired by Luke Bretherton’s recent book Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019. https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7640/christ-and-the-common-life.aspx

Those familiar with my work will know that for several years now I have been researching and writing on the subject of new post-secular political space. (See for example my editorial for the last edition of Global Discourse Journal, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23269995.2018.1530037 also available on my academia site https://www.academia.edu/38080618/Cultivating_New_Post-secular_Political_Space). My motivation for this is simple, namely that in the Western world in general and the UK and USA in particular, we have entered this kind of space and that it is both an opportunity and a necessity for us to cultivate it for future human flourishing. I contend that we have entered this space because of the subsumption of originary Christianity by empire and that the negative consequences of this have brought about the current epochal crisis, yet radical aspects of the Christian story remain a key resource with which to cultivate this resultant space for the common good. This presents us with a conundrum that we need to find a way through urgently; aspects of Christianity are both the cause and the cure of the Western political crisis. (See my book The Fall of the Church. Wipf & Stock, 2013. https://wordery.com/search?term=Roger+Haydon+Mitchell%3A+The+Fall+of+the+Church)

In the first section of his book, Luke Bretherton offers five highly significant case studies: Humanitarianism, Black Power, Pentecostalism, Catholic and Anglican Social Teaching. By beginning his case studies with humanitarianism, to which secularisation tends to confine the Christian contribution, Luke enables us to appreciate its strengths while exposing its weaknesses. By then presenting Black Power as a positive source of political intervention he is able to proceed to introduce Pentecostalism with a recognition of its radical origins in black culture. This positions it politically in a way that opens us more easily to the more mainstream but often neglected resources of Catholic and Anglican Social Teaching. My constant concern is to remythologise contemporary political thought and practice with just this kind of material. The problem is its displacement from contemporary political discussion by its association with the subsumed Christianity of Christendom. While Bretherton’s contribution, does not, in my view, sufficiently disassociate from this subsumption, this is still a vital exposition of key components from the Christian imaginary for the contemporary political discussion and not simply for the seminary or the surviving departments of theology and religious studies in our secular universities. We really need this now.

Simply and briefly put, some of the key insights that develop progressively from the first two case studies are as follows.

The challenge of humanitarianism is how to respond to the poor when one finds oneself with privilege, power and wealth. As Bretherton emphasises, the problem lies with its position as the work of benefactors rooted in the legitimating structure of wealth and power stemming from the patron-client relations of the Roman Empire. Poverty is seen as “a glitch in the system rather than a product of the system, and almost never as a structural location that challenges privileged forms of life.” So while the extraordinary compassion and sacrifice of many involved in humanitarian efforts is not to be underestimated, the enterprise as a whole lacks a level of engagement that moves beyond simply doing good to those in need. Luke notes that in contrast, within the incarnational kenosis of the Christian tradition, there is the possibility of forging deeply identifying relationships and renouncing the unjust ties to “property, kinship, comfort and status” necessary to penetrate the structures of economic and political exclusion.

Black Power on the other hand penetrated to the heart of the system. It recognised that the system itself was “creolised” and that white America had to be dismantled. Black Power’s distinctive approach was to affirm black identity as a nation within a nation and configure poverty as part of this identity in order to challenge and overcome white middle class domination. The formation of this internal nation could do what humanitarianism cannot do: “it unveils the self-negating ways in which the United States – despite its constitutional commitments – is under the dominion of its very lust for domination.'” Luke then identifies the need and capacity of the ecclesia to learn from Black Power to be be such a nation within a nation, not simply out of love for its own but rather as a gift to the whole. This recognition of the kenotic role of an intentional loving movement within the world for the world is indicative of the prophetic direction in which this hugely important book takes us.

I will look at further insights from the following three case studies in the next post.

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