As we all know very well, the trend in post war philosophy, especially in Europe and to some extent in the USA, has been towards the individual as the sole actor in their own drama and the final arbiter of their fate. True, they are caught up in forces more powerful than themselves and find themselves vast desires, but they are always somehow alone.

In the way these trends have emerged into culture there is a great danger of the entirely false idea prevailing that for most of us we are essentially autonomous human actors, protected by markets, rational economic actors, who have the right to live without all but the most essential restraints on what we make of ourselves. That understanding of life is not by any means entirely new but has reached a certain level of predominant thinking in everything from culture wars, through economics to the politics of sexuality. We are more and more individualist.

At the same time, as The Times of London has commented so continually this week, Christian and all religious faith has declined dramatically.

I should be clear that this is not all bad, for Churches are ruined when wealth and power lead them to self-reliance. I rejoice in less of a bossy attitude, and of the church stepping back from telling everybody what to do, here and elsewhere. Except in the House of Lords! It is not the biblical pattern of Jesus who made himself a servant, washed His disciples’ feet, lived a holy life and by His death and resurrection lifted the weary, the outcast and the failure into hope.

Read it all.

"Churches are ruined when wealth and power lead them to self-reliance. I rejoice in less of a bossy attitude, and of the Church stepping back from telling everybody what to do, here and elsewhere. Except in the House of Lords!" – Archbishop of Canterbury https://t.co/3IMVMymLIg

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) September 12, 2023

What if, instead, we followed Certeau in insisting that “the plural is the manifestation of the Christian meaning,” that the truth of Christianity is not a fragile artifact to be clung to and defended but something waiting to be made? Certeau reveals the will to self-preservation as a betrayal of Jesus’ call. “The response which it allows cannot remain moored, tied to a delimited space of the call, nor can it be confined to a (social or historical) site of the event. . . . It always has to take risks further on, always uncertain and fragmentary.” Self-styled defenders of Christendom take themselves to be protecting tradition, but in Certeau’s cutting words, they reduce tradition to “a (perhaps beautiful) museum, a (perhaps glorious) cemetery.”

To cling so tightly to the beloved and familiar is to be like Peter on Mount Tabor, striving in vain to nail down the ephemeral. Instead, Certeau urges us to be like Jacob at Bethel:

Always on the move, in practices of reading which are increasingly heterogeneous and distant from any ecclesial orthodoxy, [Jesus’ call] announced the disappearance of the site. Having passed that way, it left, as at Bethel, only the trace of stones erected into stelae and consecrated with oil—with our gratitude—before departing without return.

For the foreseeable future, Christians will be tempted on all sides by jeremiads on the disappearance of “our way of life.” Right-wing nationalists will warn that all the traditional arrangements of family, culture, property, and faith are fading away, transforming into something new and strange. Progressive and mainline leaders will warn that their denominations will die out if they are not made to accommodate the appetites and prejudices of the market. This chorus may well be right. Christianity—at least Christianity as we in the West have known it—may very well be in its last days. But Christians should reject the temptation to rage against the dying of the light, whether by weaponizing state power against those bringing change or by cozying up to the rich and powerful and well-connected. Permanence was never our calling.

In a late work, Certeau describes the Christian mystic as one “who cannot stop walking and, with the certainty of what is lacking, knows of every place and object that it is not that; one cannot stay there nor be content with that. Desire creates an excess. Places are exceeded, passed, lost behind it. It makes one go further, elsewhere.” The loss of the traditional and familiar is certainly a cause for mourning, as the death of anything cries out to be mourned. But—having consecrated these passable forms with our gratitude—we must allow our mourning to pull us forward, elsewhere, on toward the unknown. We as Christians are called to have faith that while our wanderings will bring risk and danger, we might also find grace in being altered by what comes, in listening with attention to the incomprehensible words of the strangest stranger as perhaps the word we have been listening for.

Read it all.

I have a new essay up at @ChristianCent. It’s on the rightwing (and mainline) anxiety over the decline of the “Christian West,” and a theological argument for why we should actually embrace its impermanence. https://t.co/3z9McQxyws

— mac loftin (@mac_lof) September 13, 2023

Read it all.

Anglican Diocese of #SouthCarolina Moving to Purchase Land for Camp and Retreat Center https://t.co/DldUEvojnd #faith #parishministry #anglican #religion #retreatcenters #realestate [Diocesan picture] pic.twitter.com/9KTEUErDPO

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) September 15, 2023

Inflation, interest rates, and GDP growth might be valuable historical economic statistics, but they don’t capture the voice of the American consumer in real time. This was the motivation for the Suffolk University Sawyer Business School/USA TODAY national survey of adults on kitchen table issues.

We opened the survey by asking respondents to summarize in a word the state of the economy today. A total of 22% used words like “excellent,” “good,” “growing,” “improving,” “getting better,” “fair,” “average,” and “fine.” That’s more than 1 in 5 feeling pretty good about the economy.

However, nearly 3 in 4 (72%) used words like “horrible,” “terrible,” awful,” “bad,” “poor,” “weak,” “sad,” “dismal,” “crashing,” “struggling,” “disastrous,” “shambles,” “chaotic,” “messy,” “confusing,” “unequal,” “expensive,” “inflation,” “unstable,” “volatile,” “unpredictable,” “anxiety,” “worried,” and “scary.” Those are their words, not ours, and they come from a wide range of demographics, including people at all income levels.

Read it all.

From food costs to holiday spending: Americans say they're being pummeled by the economy in dire new poll https://t.co/kEAhkK2YCy via @Yahoo

— Marlene T. Diaz (@academicknight) September 15, 2023

Gracious God, reveal to thy church the depths of thy love; that, like thy servant Catherine of Genoa, we might give ourselves in loving service, knowing that we have been perfectly loved by thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

15 Sept: Feast of Catherine of Genoa, mystic, daily communicant, d. 1510 (but not a nun). She was treated at one stage by Henry VII's doctor #otd

(Denys3200: by Denys Savchenko. St. Catherine Church, Genoa) pic.twitter.com/DNLo0Xwety

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) September 15, 2023

Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Bonjour 😊
Merveilleux havre de paix, les Îles, Sion 💙💛💚 pic.twitter.com/LjvsfZOwYn

— Délèze Dominique (@DelezeD) September 15, 2023

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

–Philippians 3:7-11

Anticrepuscular rays over Baldoyle and Clongriffin from a misty sunrise earlier this month. #dublin #ireland pic.twitter.com/nPUeZSG7MW

— Sryan Bruen Photography (@sryanbruenphoto) September 15, 2023