Incarnations of Christ

In last week's reading Morgan and Elizondo discuss the way in which culturally appropriate expressions/mediations of the divine are a gateway for religious conversion. This week, inspired by Deacy and Harvey's article on cinematic and American constructions of Jesus, I have collected a few of my favourite incarnations of Jesus that have been used to appeal to different kinds of American religiosity.  

Pic Credit:
http://jewmanist.com/2011/10/04/obama-is-not-a-brown-
skinned-anti-war-socialist-who-gives-away-free-healthcare/

Liberal-Leftie-Social-Activist-Guy 

This Jesus is emphatic about all issues of justice and equality, including but not limited to: healing the earth, ending poverty, ending homelessness, saving the rainforests, women's rights, civil rights, cutting military spending, cutting the military altogether, fair trade, ethically made products, peaceful protests, ending human trafficking, equal-love-equal-rights, equal distribution of wealth, democracy, community, taxing the rich, world peace.

Who's holding a placard at the picket line with Jesus?

Probably Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren and Dave Andrews

More about liberal Jesus:
In the news, on Facebook, or here 

Pic Credit:http://outsideperception.wordpress.com/

Ass-kicking-man's-man

He's a little like the Darius Cobb image discussed by Morgan: beardy, brawny, with lots of primal energy. He's an adventurer, an outdoorsman, a hunter-gatherer type who can take care of himself and his tribe under the most trying conditions. At heart, he's a lover not a fighter, but if the fight is righteous he'll take up arms to triumph over evil, because a God-man's got to do what a God-man's go to do. 

Who kicks ass with Jesus?
Probably Mark Driscoll, Bear Grylls, Paul Coughlin and of course Chuck Norris.



More about macho Jesus:

In the news, again and again. Brass knuckle rosaries sold separately.

Pic Credit http://www.zazzle.com/jesus_is_my_valentine_shirt-
235871026576489002

Ultimate-Husband-Boyfriend-Type 

Sold only to women. This Jesus is the ultimate lover/boyfriend/husband/ male partner He will never leave you heartbroken, he'll always listen, he'll take you on romantic dates, he'll talk about his feelings, he'll never pressure you to have sex, he'll make you feel special, he'll love you no matter what. He'll always think you're beautiful, he'll always tell you you're beautiful. He'll never tell you you're fat. He is handsome, wise, and he'd be a great father. Your total happiness and emotional well-being are are the first and only priority of boyfriend Jesus.

Who's doing dinner and a movie with Jesus?
Not this lady, but probably Sheri Rose Shepherds, Kathy Troccoli and Shannon Ethridge

More about boyfriend Jesus
He might not be that into you according to DIvinity schools, christian bloggers and everyone at Jezebel.

Pic Credit: http://www.dobi.nu/yourscenesucks/indiejesus/

Sensitive-Misunderstood-Artist-Thinker

A friend of Liberal-Leftie-Social-Acitivist-Guy: shares his concerns, but spends less time trying to save the world and more time talking about its problems and turning them into art. Tells a lot of great stories and has compelling ideas but he's unlikely to push any one idea too hard because although he's spiritual, he's not religious. Lives a kind of bohemian life, hangs with a diverse range of people but still doesn't quite belong anywhere. He remains forever an enigma, a mystery, not of this world.

Who's has a room at Jesus' artist commune?

Probably Rob Bell, Lauren Winner, and the team at Relevant. Occasionally Bono might drop in.

More about Jesus the Hipster:

Where else but Tumblr and Twitter? 

A Personal Reflection on Weibel and Graham

"Writing is the ideal medium for practicing transcendence and yearning for it. If religious is a technique of transcendence, then writing, as a medium of transcendence, is the ideal medium for it." (Weibel 2011, 33)

In the final year of my creative writing degree I completed a project about writing and reading. There were two parts. The first was a creative work, a diary of my adventures in reading over nine months; the second, an exegesis, examined methods for writing about literature beyond traditional critical approaches. It mined the possibilities of diary/memoir as forms suited to personal and critical analysis of literature, and took the creative work I produced as an example. As a thesis/exegesis, the document was not terribly successful. Its logic was circular, its terminology unclear, its purpose ill-defined: it was hastily thrown together. 

Writing the creative piece was an experience of the kind described by Weibel: it was transcendent. It very difficult to step aside from the practice of, and yearning for transcendence that was the experience of writing and rewriting the diary to examine it as a text for the purpose of the exegesis. Thus the circular logic, the lack of precision, boundaries, definitions. It wasn't that the text had become a holy scripture, but rather the process of creating seemed of itself sacred, inviolable.

In the diary I wrote, I used the novels I was reading just as  Graham explains: "as ways of rehearsing and examining questions of belief, meaning and spirituality" (2007, 68). And so the piece I wrote was as much a reflection on the content of the novels and the process of reading and writing,  as it was a deeply personal self-reflection; a literary embodiment. Borrowing form Graham's vernacular I might say that I used he resources of culture to examine questions of ultimate personal/existential importance, and then turned the process of examination into a new material source. But that doesn't seem to capture the sanctity of the experience in the same way as it does if I borrow Weibel's language. 

Here is my attempt: In the novel there was the stored-up spoken word captured from the body of some other human that I will never know face-to-face. I have been able to meet him across barriers of time and space and take his word, incorporate it into my body, allow it to travel through me, examine me and pass out of me into my own words, onto my own page. I participated in this process of flesh becoming word, becoming flesh becoming word. It had all the power of a religious experience, and one's own religious experience is very hard to examine with anything approximating objectivity. Which made writing my exegesis very difficult indeed. 

References

Graham, E. 2007. '"What We Make of the World": The Turn to Culture in Theology and the Study of Religion'. In G. Lynch, Ed. Between Sacred and Profane: Researching Religion and Popular Culture. London and New York: I.B. Taurus &Co. Ebook.

Weibel, P. 2011. 'Religion as a Medium - the Media of Religion'. In B Groys and P Weibel, Eds. Medium Religion: Faith, Geopolitics, Art. 30 - 43. Koln: Verlag der Buchhandlung, Walher Konig. 

Reflections on Meyer and Ong

"The sensational form evolving around the icon was to be replaced by a new sensational form evolving around the book" (Meyer 2012, 163)

From Meyer's writing on the evolution of religious sensations, I am following the suggestion that the dominant form of media for mediating the transcendent evolves alongside technology. Where there was no printing press, and no literacy, image (rather than text) was the sacred form that made the transcendental "available to the senses." (ibid, 162) 

Television becomes an ubiquitous media and thus is "called upon to authorise religious sensations as true…the power of God has to appear on TV" (ibid, 164) I follow Meyer in so much as I agree that television (and also the internet, or social media more generally) is a authoritative form for the mediation of religious sensations. But where her article led me was to wonder whether it has become the dominant form -- has it replaced the book? 

Ong claims that "writing was deeply interiorized by print." (97) Has television and computerised media been interiorized in the same way? Have these forms, as Ong claims of writing, "transformed human consciousness" (78)? I would argue not. As important as these technologies have become, and as ubiquitous as they are becoming, they have not existed long enough: they are still highly visible as technologies, they are still exterior. Thus, while they have begun to alter religious practices and the experience of religious sensations, they have not the vatic quality of writing because we are aware of their 'createdness' - their humanness. 

While the book maintains it's dominance, Meyer is right the presence of God on television, or on the internet, authorises religious sensations as true. I would view it as a supplementary authority. A necessary development, a source of supporting evidence. 

But perhaps the speed at which these technologies are interiorized will occur more rapidly than writing. I can not know what it is like to be child in a world where the Ipad/Iphone/laptop computer/personal television has always existed. To me these things still seem a bit like intrusions. But no doubt the process of transforming consciousness has already begun.

References

Meyer, B. 2012. Religious Sensations: Media, Aesthetics, and the Study of Contemporary Religion. In G. Lynch and J. Mitchell with A Strhan. Eds., Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader. Londong and New York: Routledge. Chapter 14: 159 - 170.

Ong, W.J. 1982. Writing Restructures Consciousness. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Methuen. Chapter 4: 78 - 116

The Childhood of Jesus

Since my virgin reading of Coetzee (it was Boyhood in 2008, the first chapter was set reading for a course on memoir) I have approached him with a kind of fundamentalist reverence and intensity. (Not unlike this guy).

So, I thought it appropriate that my first post on a blog created to chronicle my wandering thoughts on writing and spirituality consider the publication of his new novel, the Childhood of Jesus. 

The premise of the novel is this: a man, Simon, has arrived in a new country as a refugee. He has a boy, David, in his care.  Not a son or a relative of any kind, merely a child he came across on the ship ride to the new country. They are trying to get on with the business of living in this new country, Simon is also trying to find the David's mother.

The most intriguing aspect of the novel so far is the nature of the new country. There is free healthcare, free transport, work for the willing, the people are pleasant (but not overly friendly, not passionate) "full of goodwill," Simon says. Physical needs are met, but for Simon it is an arid emotional landscape. A place with very little feeling. Feeling, we are lead to believe, is a remnant of the old world to be un-learned if one is to get along in the new country.

This is not something that Simon is willing to accept (at least not yet). Simon finds a woman he feels, intuitively knows, to be David's mother. He gives David over to her. Simon's neighbour, Elena, questions this method of decision-making:

"'You followed an intuition?'

'More than that. A conviction.'

"'A conviction, an intuition, a delusion -- what is the difference when it cannot be questioned? Has it occurred to you that if we all lived by intuitions the world would fall into chaos'

'I don't see why that follows. And what is wrong with a little chaos now and again if good follows from it?'" (102)

Perhaps I am drawing a long bow, but this could be taken as an example of the conflict between an essentially religious perspective and an essentially rationalist perspective. While Simon has not appealed to a supernatural force as the locus of his intuition, I would describe the absolute faith in his conviction as representing a religious perspective. Simon has invested ultimate trust in his conviction/intuition and acts accordingly. Elena argues that where reason can not intervene, feelings/intuitions/convictions are tantamount to delusions and lead only to chaos. While Simon does not dispute the potential for chaos in a universe of intuition, but he does dispute that chaos is invariably bad. 

What I'm most interested in here is the connection that can be made between the extreme rational perspective, and the emotional vacancy, the passionlessness of the new world. Elena is a fully adjusted new-world citizen and places little value on intuitions or sensation. (After she and Simon have sex, she says to him, "See, it does not advance us."). Simon has all the longings for the feelings of the old world, where one experiences feelings, and these feelings are a valid locus for the direction one takes in life. The source of his feelings is not attributed to a higher power (and therefore the consequent action not authorized by a superior being) but if I accept Simon's position as essentially religious, I must be willing to consider that from a religious perspective, an extreme rational-secular society may be full of goodwill, but it may also be lacking in feeling, lacking in passion, lacking in colour.

References  

Coetzee, J.M. 2013. The Childhood of Jesus. Melbourne: Text Publishing

Posting Plan for Reflections on Writing Spirituality

This blog will chronicle two of my adventures in Writing Spirituality.

The first being my journey through the readings and other course material in WRIT2011. 

The second is my journey through books (novels, in the main) which I read as reflecting on the spiritual and on religion. While I'm interested in the intersection between religion and other forms of popular media (music, films, newspapers, online activity), its novels which have had the greatest influence on my ideas about religion and spirituality and so I'm going to use this as a space to analyse that. Therefore I'll try to draw more examples from other media as I work through the course material.