Obama, McCain and Warren

I was just able to watch the forum on faith and politics at Saddleback this morning (I had to record it as I was away Saturday evening). The thing that struck me the most was how focused on politics and how little faith played a role in the discussion. A much better example of how something like this should have been conducted would be to revisit the discussion at Messiah College earlier this year during the Democratic Primary. Anyway, here are a few thoughts I had.

Let me start with Obama. I resonate with a lot of what Obama says because you can tell he struggles through it - he thinks about things in a methodical way (this came across in the first question he answered, where he said that he would have to have multiple influencing him on multiple fronts in different areas of his administration). He also is very gracious, as was seen when he described the time he worked across party lines with John McCain on Campaign Finance Reform (something that earned neither any friends in Congress) and when he praised President Bush's AIDS initiatives in Africa. I also liked the fact that Obama kept coming back to the idea that faith was about helping the "least of these" - he quoted the verse in Matthew.

Now, I think Obama failed when it came to the problem of abortion. And, the main reason was that he would not say whether or not a human life begins at conception. This is much a bigger question than can be answered in the two minutes he's given, but he didn't come close. And, as a person of faith, this is semi-troublesome to me. What gives me hope on his view of abortion is that he wants to eliminate the reasons for people having abortions, like poverty and no health insurance. He also talked about how hard it is for the woman to make this choice - a choice that cannot be easy at all on her. I find that semi-redeeming.

Next, let's talk about McCain. I really find McCain difficult at many times and my main difficulty with his complete inability in this election to step out on his own, or to think for himself. When watching this, we got "Sunday School" (or, better, Republican Sunday School) answers from him. Which is fine, if that is what he thinks (I have good friends who are conservatives that I find to make compelling and sound arguments for their position). The thing about McCain, though, is that it didn't show any struggle or depth to his thinking or his life. I think it also showed how out-of-touch McCain is. An example: he talked about giving every working, American family a tax cut of $5000 to buy any health insurance they would like. When living in Chicago, my wife left a job where we had health insurance and took a job where we did not, which meant we had to get health insurance (she was pregnant at the time). So, we got health insurance to cover us which cost us over $6000 a year. When my son came, that price jumped to $8000 (luckily we were able to pull through by cutting a few corners, mainly not having to fuel a car). The point being that the McCain tax cut would not have paid for our health insurance.

Also, on the McCain end, I thought that he really overplayed the "war card." Nearly every answer he gave came back to his views on war or his experience in Vietnam (something he has continually said that he wants to leave out of the race). As a question, during a question on evil, he lauched into a discussion on how we must destroy Al-Qaeda. It just seemed that for McCain, war was the only issue he was comfortable talking about or reviewing and he consistently came back to this point (as a person in academia, I see this a lot as people are so specialized that they can only talk about or discuss one thing - a person I know always brings the discussion to Barth and Bonhoeffer because this is what he has read and knows).

Between the two candidates, I think that McCain probably "won" the debate (although, I'm not sure how you "win" something like this). And, the reason he won is he said the "right" things as he did not stray from party lines and he also did not say anything to upset the people in the room (which meant they cheered for him). Obama, on the other hand, said some stuff that would have been harder to handle in the room (like saying that a household making $250,000 would be rich - he's talking to suburbanites living in Silicon Valley). Also, his stance on abortion would have been quite unfavorable to many in the audience.

Now, though, onto Pastor Warren. I must say, I have been a critique of his for awhile. However, I had started to think that he was doing better with much of his ongoing work in Rwanda (which I do and continue to applaud - he didn't need to do that to solidify himself in evangelicalism). But, last night showed that the critiques were levelled rightly. The questions did not have anything to do with faith and politics, but only with politics. There was one or two questions about faith and only one explicitly mentioning Jesus. He also limited the discussion to issues that were "evangelical strongholds" like abortion and gay marriage - in these, evangelicals generally agree. However, he did not bring up, or even broach, the morality of taking care of the poor and oppressed, he did not talk about the morality of war, he did not talk about the commandment of God to be stewars of the earth and what this means in relation to climate change, or the fact that as professing Christians, both of these men hold to a higher power than the United States of America and are ultimately citizens of something more. Rather, he kept it tried and true to the old evangelical standard of making it easy on the Republican, asking questions that don't require too much stray from the conservative agenda. And, in that, Rick Warren misrepresented the diversity in evangelicalism and failed to address the questions that would really transform our world.

Thinking About Prayer....

I am constantly busy and it is usually my own doing. I'm currently writing my dissertation (trying to get a proposal approved at the moment). I'm also teaching at Loyola University of Chicago and presenting two papers at conferences this semester. So, my blog will probably be used as a sounding board for ideas dealing with and issues coming from my research for these different projects.

Anyway, the first project I am delving into at the moment is a paper I am writing for a conference in Rome presented by the Centre for Philosophy and Theology (called the Grandeur of Reason). My paper proposal sketched out the way that I saw prayer as a political practice in both Christianity and Islam. This is what I am trying to flesh out.

Before beginning, though, I have a few issues with the word "political." I'm not sure it is the right for what I am getting at as it tends to evoke simply ideas of government or political systems. Rather, I want to use it in a way that calls to mind the idea of prayer orienting us toward the "polis," defined in both Christianity and Islam as all people everywhere (think here of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan -- all are our neighbor).

Back to my main point though, I want to say that prayer is a practice that orients us toward the other in both Christianity and Islam. In order to show this, I will use Derrida's notion of hopsitality as a way of thinking about how it is that prayer orients both the Christian and the Muslim in such a way as to be for the other.

In both Christianity and Islam, prayer begins with an invocation of God/ Allah (I know that Allah is strictly the Arabic word for "God", but it helps keep in mind the difference in the two religions). This invocation of God/ Allah is an invocation of the Other. It is an asking of the Other to come, of a desire to encounter the Other. This encounter can only occur, though, if the one praying is open to the Other and that the Other can be encountered. The one praying cannot try to do the encountering, but must be passive and allow the Other to encounter him or her in the prayer. The invocation, then, is first an asking of God to encounter us in the prayer and to allow this God to encounter us.

In doing this, though, the one praying does not seek to dominate the encounter or articulate the one the encounter takes place. There is not an active part to the encounter on the part of the one praying; simply, the one allows oneself to be encountered by God. However, the active part of this on the one praying is the passivity - there is an active passivity. The one praying must fight the urge to manipulate or articulate how this encounter takes place so that one dictates how the encounter will take place. Rather, there is an act of simply being open, of listening, of being passive before the Other so that the Other may encounter us.

With this account of how it is that we encounter God in the prayer, we must now ask the question of what this teaches the one praying about encountering the Other? For both Islam and Christianity, the goal of the religions is love - love of God and love of neighbor. Prayer to God should teach both of these (part of the Islamic mode of interpretation is the extension of Divine Mercy to humanity and that this mercy must be extended from the Muslim to the other). It is my contention that the invocation of God in prayer teaches both the Christian and Muslim how to then go about encountering one's neighbor.

As I said, the practice of praying teaches us how to then go about encountering the other as neighbor. This comes primarily in the act of being open to the other in all that the other is or does. If we think about it, we often are open to the other only as the other benefits us or acts how we think he or she should act. Often, we ask for something from the other in order to encounter the other. Rather than just being open to the other and allowing the other to encounter us and being hospitable to this other, we place stipulations upon this encounter and do not allow it to occur purely.

As we invoke God/ Allah in prayer, it also becomes necessary to invoke the other as our neighbor. In order for this to take place, the other as neighbor must be encountered as other. This means that we must be open to our neighbor (i.e., all people) as they are without any stipulations for them to become something that they may not be. Rather, we are open to them, listen to them, offer them hospitality purely as someone other than me. Now, this is never perfect, but the practice that we inherit from prayer is that we strive to make this as perfect and pure as possible.

Part of this stems from the nature of what it means to love. We must think of love and strive to love as pure gift. This means that there is no expectation of return when we love. If we love the other as other, we expect nothing from them. This really makes sense to me when I think about it in terms of my family - if I love my wife because she has sex with me or does my laundry or whatever else, then I am not really loving her; rather I have set up an economy. Similarly, if I love my son for something that he will give me, like the idea that he will take care of me when I am old, then I have purely set up an economy of exchange. I have not really loved either. Rather, I must love them as they are - I must love my wife even when she does not want to have sex or do the dishes or laundry or whatever and I must love my son even though he may not take care of me. I must love them simply because I love them. The impetus is the same with the neighbor. I cannot love someone in order for them to come to church or become a Christian or stop drinking or doing drugs. Rather, the framework becomes one of love simply because of love, knowing that the love will hurt or be harmful or that I will be taken advantage of. If I stop loving because of any of these, then I have not really loved - I've only looked for something in exchange for my affection.

Anyway, I kind of got off on a tangent with the love aspect. This might only be a footnote in the paper. But, I'd love to get thoughts on my thesis that prayer to God teaches how we are to encounter the other as our neighbor. I'd also love some good critiques.

RADIOHEAD IN CONCERT

So, I haven't posted in awhile because I am consumed by a dissertation proposal, two conference papers and getting a class together. But, I still carved a little time to go to Noblesville, IN and see RADIOHEAD in concert. It was fantastic.

Let me just say a few things - Radiohead is and has been one of my favorite bands for about ten years now. I fell in love with them after hearing OK Computer! the first time. And, as a consequence, I have been trying to see them in concert for about ten years and never had the chance. But, I finally got tickets, went with some good friends and really, really enjoyed it.

I had a large concern as to how their music would translate from an album to a live setting -- especially their post Kid A material. The translation, though, was phenomenal. They pulled it off incredibly well, doing things with guitars one should not be able to do (and some stuff that no one does better). Just to reinforce this, Idioteque was the best song of the night. It is a song that is really effects ridden and it just rocked the place. Incredible.

Other highlights were National Anthem, Karma Police and Everything in its Right Place. There were no lowlights (even the opening band sounded good).

I have one last, quick note -- they had an unbelievable light/ stage show. I can't even describe it. But, they did have screens so that those of us in the proletariat could get a better glimpse of what was going on onstage (although, we got to see the entire show with all of the lights and effects). Of course, they needed to use cameras for this, but instead of having cameramen run around the stage taping them, they had stationary cameras positioned so that they would capture the musicians without being in the way. It was fantastic (and made for one very funny moment with Thom Yorke).

All in all, it was a ten and rivaled the U2 show that I saw in Indianapolis on Bono's birthday. In fact, the more I think about it, this show may have surpassed it. (Idioteque is now the best song I have ever experienced live).