The Myth of Mutual-Exclusivity.

For one reason or another I have been doing a bit of reading lately. It has been mostly good fun, but has left me a little confused. It has however made me think, which is always a good thing. (Though there are many who would disagree !!)

At this point I need to make a couple of disclaimers. Firstly to the good friend who was the catalyst for this process. Thank you, and sorry in advance if I am taking this in a direction you had not intended. Secondly, this will not be a sound critical piece as I am currently ensconced in Singapore, sans notes and references. Hence the knowledge I presume to have comes mostly from memory.

There have been three terms that have been used repeatedly in some of the reading I have done, and yet I am still no closer to understanding what is being intended by their use. I was left with three options.. I could take a valium and just hope the dilemma would go away.. Much the preferred option, however I decided to take the high ground for a change! Alternatively I could be wooed by the apparent eruditeness of the claims and accept their validity without question. Those who know me know that was not likely to happen. So finally I was left with only one road forward. To try and explore what was being claimed by the use of these terms, and perhaps shed some light for others, who are marginalised because they are not part of the ‘elite’ who understand what they mean.

The terms are ‘new paradigm,’ post-modern and post-christian. These terms are bandied about as if they hold all the answers to the problems of universe, in this particular context, the church. There is something about this that just seemed dodgy to me, so being a dedicated semiotician and the queen of deconstruction, I decided to explore further. For the sake of structural clarity I am going to deal with each of the three separately and sequentially.

‘New Paradigm’

The problem with anything being declared as ‘new’ is that there is the real possibility that it is simply being intended to replace the ‘old’ without dealing with the possibility that the two may not be mutually exclusive. Or indeed that the new may not be fundamentally any better. When the Communist regime took power in Russia it did not take long for them to discover that they had simply replaced one totalitarian regime with another. The ‘new’ regime were no more able to deal with alternative views than the old one. So this ‘new’ paradigm for government was simply the same old paradigm with different people driving the train.

According to The American Heritage dictionary a paradigm is a type of pattern:

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

Note the use of the singular. It is one way of viewing reality. Thus a ‘new’ paradigm is simply another ‘one’ way of viewing reality. My question is.. Why can we only have one way? What is wrong with having a variety of ways of viewing reality. All equally valid and co-existing. I am particularly reminded of an incident that occurred when I was at Whitley Theological College in Melbourne. There was a young man in several of my classes who was an avowed feminist. He was sincere and intense in his beliefs. Whenever there was a biblical issue relating to women he would passionately champion the women’s cause. Finally in third year we were doing the book of Revelation and he and I found ourselves on different sides of this issue. After a prolonged discussion he claimed in frustration.. ‘We just have to accept that I am a feminist and you are not! To which I replied, “Possibly, but sometimes even feminists have to try and see things from a woman’s point of view.’ For the life of him he could not see that him, a man, telling me, a woman, how and what I should think was the very definition of chauvinism. His new feminist paradigm was no different from the old chauvinist one that women had been fighting for decades.

When the Rev. Tim Costello was being inducted at Collin’s Street Baptist Church in Melbourne, Rev. Dr. Denham Grierson delivered the message. In his message Denham asked what had happened to the true Baptists. He pointed out that the founding principles of the Baptist Movement were very specific about spelling out the validity of a variety of belief paradigms. They believed that every man (and woman) was answerable to his/her conscience in matters of faith and belief. And this was not just for Christians either. They specifically claim freedom of conscience in matters of faith for other religions as well. Great stuff.

I think this freedom of conscience issue is far more important than we allow. And it touches on the idea of the ‘incarnational’ That is to say, what we believe and how we live it out. And it allows for a far richer and more diverse ‘church’ experience than we have been accustomed to. What if we do not need one ‘new’ paradigm, but several ‘alternative’ ones? What if we were to make incarnational authenticity the measure of success rather than a set of defined parameters such as church attendance and membership numbers?

Let me explain what I mean. Many years ago I had, and still do have, a passion for Urban Mission. I love the city. I am a single mother, always have been, and at that time my boys were about 6 years old. So, I packed up my boys and myself and we left the safety and security of a community in the outer suburb of Box Hill and moved to the inner city suburb of South Melbourne so we could be involved intimately in the Urban Mission Unit at Collins Street Baptist Church.. Now we were in public housing, being asset poor, and I was studying at Whitley at the time. The three weeks when we had to move coincided with final exams in one unit and a mission intensive of two weeks. Anyone with small children knows what that means. What really pissed me off, was that in many of the discussions during the intensive, I was often made to feel like a right-wing fascist because my views differed from the younger members of the group. Idealistic young people, (and that is not a bad thing..)

mostly from the Eastern Suburbs who talked a lot about mission to the marginalised, and who dabbled in it but did not actually have to live it. They were also critical of the established churches, including Collins Street Baptist. Yet it was the established churches that allowed them to do what they were doing. It was the established churches that underwrote their experiences.

Do not get me wrong. I am not claiming that I made any kind of sacrifice. On the contrary, I was as happy as a pig in mud!!! What a time that was. I had the privilege of listening often to the extraordinary preaching of Rev. James Barr, and if you have never heard him, do yourself a favour, go to Canberra and experience that. We were able to forge the most wonderfully deep and lasting friendships and relationships as we all worked together in whatever way we could. I have two amazing sons who, at the age of twenty are committed to God and to living a Christ centred life, largely due to the influences and experiences of those people and those years. We were broke, but I was happy and fulfilled and at peace most of the time. Conversely, we left there and moved to country Queensland when the boys were due to enter high school. I needed somewhere where I could work and keep an eye on them as well. This was very safe. We did not need to look out for syringes when we left our house. There were no suspicious loud noises in the middle of the night or any of the other dangers of city living. And we even owned a house for the first time. Yet, while it was good for the boys, it was during this time that I temporarily lost my battle for sanity. I was dying inside, because I was living a life that was inconsistent with the faith I believed in.

So what if we were to look at it this way? If you believe in the prosperity gospel and you are living the prosperity gospel – fantastic. If you believe in a charismatic approach to faith and you are happy in a huge Pentecostal church – also fantastic. If you believe in a traditional expression of faith and you worship at a small traditional church – again fantastic. And if you believe in a gospel for the poor, the marginalised and the disenfranchised and you live that faith, then fantastic. Is it possible that we could see ALL of these expressions of faith as equally valid and authentic? That we could learn to live side by side in harmony and mutual respect. When we were at Collins Street Baptist, we went to every service. On Sunday mornings it was traditional worship, and there was a great sense of peace that I got sitting in that beautiful historic place where so many of the faithful had sat before. (The boys used the pews as a racing circuit.. but you get that..) In the evenings we went to services which offered an alternative worship style. Both were good and fed us in different ways. Most importantly both offered different sets of relationships and experiences. And I was reminded constantly that it was the traditional congregation and structure which allowed everything else to take place.

The next sections, you will be pleased to read, will be shorter.

Post-Modernism.

The term post-modernism was coined by Terry Eagleton in the late 60’s I think, as “the contemporary movement of thought which rejects … the possibility of objective knowledge” and is therefore “skeptical of truth, unity, and progress.” Hmm. Well wonders whether one actually wants it?? I have heard ministers and others criticised for being ‘modernist’ and I really don’t get that. I wish there were more. Modernism as a movement arose in the late 19thC and early 20thC as a revolt against the traditional social structures that had been in place for such a very long time. Marxism was the major modernist theory coming out of Eastern Europe. Modernism by its very definition is anti-traditional, and this is regardless of which tradition it is being anti. A friend reminded me that Eliade wrote that the modernists had come along and torn down all the structures, and now the post-modernists were wandering about pounding on the rubble.

It is a lot like Borg’s discussion on the ‘subversive’ wisdom of Jesus. If one looks at it in the Feminist context. Had Jesus been a woman, he would not have worked as a ‘subversive’ wisdom figure for the Feminist movement. For a woman to say the things he said and do the things he did would have been fairly ‘conventional,’ not subversive at all. The ‘subversiveness’ came from him being male. Likewise, many ‘new’ paradigms, as in the communist example above, simply become the new dominant view of reality and are no longer subversive.

Those who know me know that I was born with a twisted psyche. I am committedly anti-authoritarian and un-conventional. Pretty much regardless of the authority or the convention. My poor father will attest to this. It did not take long for him to realise that the daughter he had was not the one he had dreamed of. I am not sure why I am like that, but I have come to realise that I am simply unable to be happy unless I am actively involved in the struggle at the margins. A friend in Warwick, the rural Queensland town we lived in, said that it was odd, all the things that most people crave like safety and security, are the things that I run away from.

Post-modernism’s strength, I believe, is in its rejection of a single dominant view. Its rejection of objective truth. I think that if we follow through we would see that the acceptance of a variety of ways of viewing reality, a range of ‘alternative paradigms’ is the most logically post-modern. There is no room for either/or, it must be both/and. It is not the traditional or something else, but the traditional and several somethings else. On the other hand, some of the subtleties are not explored deeply enough. For instance, there is a difference between saying that there is no objective truth, to saying that one cannot have an objective truth.

Post-Christian.

Most of you will have noted by now, if you are still reading, that I have not really said anything new. This is most apparent in the reference to the term post-christian. I am still not sure what people mean when they say that. I remember when we were doing our church history courses, being involved in discussions around the idea that Australia was itself, the first post-christian country. That is to say, it was the first country, definitely in the west, to be established with no dominant state religion. The British had tried, with Anglicanism, but given that 80% of the convicts that were sent here were Irish Catholics, (and that is a whole other area of injustice, but not for right now) it clearly was not working. I believe it was a guy called Richard Bourke, (or something like that) who convinced the authorities in England that if they wanted to have any hope of peace in the colony they needed to allow Catholic Nuns and Priests to come in. And this was over 200 years ago.

I have an American friend here in Singapore and she tells me that it is still quite normal and the accepted thing for people in The States to go to church. In fact there has been quite a lot of discussion about which church the Obama’s will chose as their spiritual home in Washington. Can you imagine that in Australia? Can you imagine the Australian or the Age running a continuing story about which church in Canberra the Rudds would chose to attend? When Rev. Dr. David Millikan made his television series ‘The Sunburnt Soul’ for the Australian Broadcast Commission in the late 70’s it was this issue, of non-church traditions in Australia that was being investigated. And that was 40 Years ago!!

So no, none of this is new and …..actually I have just had a thought. In the context of Australian tradition, a truly ‘new’ paradigm would involve everyone going to church !!!! Hmm. More questions.

The other problem with the term post-christian is that it has a very specific cultural context. After all, there are large parts of the planet which have never been Christian.

You see it just goes round in continual circles. Especially if we try to make things mutually exclusive. So maybe, in order to move forward we need to think of dumping the myth of mutual exclusivity.

Carolyn Newall