Abstract and Transcendental The topic of the twelfth Mozaik is black and white thinking. Indeed, most of our thinking is dominated by dualistic concepts: black and white, good and evil, female and male, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and disempowered, centre and peripheries. In our ecumenical journal we explore these dualisms. Our sharing shows us that we often think dualistically, even if we are not aware of it. We hope to overcome an “usthem” way of thinking about important human issues. This issue is also about hermeneutics, the methods of understanding and interpretation: how to formulate and ask open questions that do not necessarily lead to a simplistic yes/no answer. Issues are raised about how our thought processes and our society interact and affect each other; this includes power structures, mental structures and all kinds of relationships. This is a challenge to us all, to look critically at how we think, at where we want to change or reaffirm our way of thinking, and thus at how we approach the world. Our topic was dealt with in the WSCF conference in Saint Cheron, Paris in November 2003: Stripping Culture and Religion of Black and White Thinking: Unveiling the Impact of Dualistic Thinking on Structures and Relationships. This was the most widely representative meeting of WSCF Europe in her recent history, having participants from more than half of the European countries. We also had our European Regional Assembly (ERA), in Åland, Finland, in October 2003. Our Policy Paper approved there sheds a light on our vision and mission as Christian students in coping with the dualisms of our world. We are grateful to receive inputs from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the United States of America. The contributors come from the United Church of Christ, the Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, colouring our rainbow. The journal consists of three sections. In the first (Structural), we search for solidarity across boundaries of gender, culture and ethnicity. Identity is the core and systematizing principle in our search for integration and integrity. In the second (Methodological) section, we explore opportunities where to keep and where to transcend dualisms within the Church and Christianity. The last (Artistic) third of the journal is about culture, art and literature, especially about Joanne K. ROWLING, William BLAKE and abstract painting and sculpture in the Church. Bible studies are a long tradition within WSCF and the Student Christian Movements (SCM). A psalm of David, number 51, inspired Arvo PÄRT and Daniel PASTIRCˇ ÁK to connect music, meditation and painting. As always, we encourage our readers and supporters to write-in with responses to the essays contained in this issue of Mozaik. Please send all comments, feedback, questions and further ideas on our ecumenical journal to our email address (wscfmozaik@yahoo.co.uk). We are also looking for volunteer editors, illustrators and section editors, who could participate in making Mozaik more colourful, challenging and interesting. We also have the pleasure to introduce our new copy editor in this issue. Sarah OTTO received a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Psychology from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York in 2003. She is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She belongs to the United Church of Christ and was first introduced to the CECSM and WSCF organizations through the Celebrate! conference that took place in December 2002. Her primary interests within the study of religion are ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, and she hopes both will play a role in her future vocation. Finally, we are proud to introduce our illustrator, Ioana Irina ZAUS (1980), a member of the Romanian SCM (ASCOR Ias¸i). She graduated from the University of Fine Arts and Design and is specialized on graphic arts. She participated in many art exhibitions and now she is very interested in studying photography and making installations and video works. Her illustrations make us wonder what separates the things in two, why they always should be a good part and a bad one. We start to wonder, whether one part outweighs the other, or whether there is equilibrium in one’s own life.
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Daniela Lucia R A P I S A R D A
Facing the Dualism of Religion and Culture: Unveiling the Impact of Dualism on Power Structures The symbol of yin and yang, originally a representation of the yearly cycle of the sun, is a circle, half black and half white, with a double-curved line in the middle that at the same time separates and connects the black and the white fields. The curved line depicts the relationship between yin and yang as dynamic: yin flows into yang and yang into yin. A white dot in the black field and a black dot in the white field indicate that all phenomena have within them the seed of their opposite. According to the Chinese Han philosophy, yin and yang represent all the opposite principles of the universe: yang represents maleness, the sun, creation, heat, light, heaven and dominance. Yin represents femaleness, the moon, completion, cold, darkness, material forms and submission. Although yang represents dominance and yin submission, each of these opposites produces the other cyclically and constantly, so that no principle continually dominates the other or determines the other. The balance of yin and yang is needed to realise harmony in the universe and health in the human body. We could define the relation of yin and yang as complementary, dynamic, non-hierarchical dualism.
I. CLARITY In Western Europe, the dualistic understanding of the human being appears clearly for the first time in the works of PLATO, who considers the soul as a principle of diverse nature from the body, allied to the world of ideas, pre-existing the body and immortal. PLATO affirms the clear distinction between intelligible world, the world of ideas, and sensible world, the material world, as well as the superiority of the intelligible over the sensible: the sensible has to be overcome through a process that is at the same time knowledge and moral uplifting. Reality is ordained in an above and a below, and the human being reflects in the hierarchical relation of soul over body the hierarchical structure of reality. The same dualistic anthropology we find in PLATO, mediated by elements of Stoic and Neo-Platonic thinking will be adopted by the majority of the Fathers of the Church, especially by AUGUSTINE who defines the soul substance endowed, equipped with reason, intended to rule the body. The soul is substance independent from the body and outlives it. For AUGUSTINE, as for PLATO, philosophy is the uplifting of the soul to the realm of ideas. Nature, on the contrary, keeps men away from contemplation of truth and therefore needs to be subjugated and dominated. From the Greek philosophy through the works of the Fathers of the Church, Christian theology and anthropology inherited a dualistic interpretation of reality and of the human being. On the model of the relation of intelligible over sensible, of ideas over matter, of God over nature, of soul over body, several other pairs positioned hierarchically, with the element associated or associating itself with the intelligible and the spiritual placed or placing itself in a position of power “over” those elements associated with matter: human over nature, man over woman, clergy over laity, master over slave.
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The hierarchical dualism of reality and anthropology becomes a solid ground for hierarchical relations and power structures in the early Church, legitimising the prominence and dominance of exclusively male clergy over lay people and women. But early Christian theology and ecclesiology do not derive their dualism only from Greek philosophy through the works of the Fathers of the Church. Elements of dualistic thinking are found in several ancient Middle-Eastern philosophical and religious streams. Zoroasterism and Manichaeism have in common the belief in two co-eternal divinities constantly fighting with each other: good against evil, or light against darkness. The dualism of good and evil, or light and darkness is found also in philosophical and religious streams such as Hellenistic Judaism and Gnosticism which, related as they were to monotheistic religions and at the same time influenced by Greek philosophy, felt urged to affirm the supremacy of one principle over the other: the principle of goodness (God) over that of evil, of light over darkness, of spirit over matter, of soul over body. Hellenistic Judaism and pre-Gnosticism are particularly relevant to our discourse because they influenced the language and thought of early Christianity and of early Christian writings such as the Gospel of John. From those philosophical and religious streams, among others, the Gospel of John inherits its dualistic language and understanding of reality as distinct in “from above” and “from below” and its antithetic and hierarchically ordained pairs of light and darkness, spirit and matter, logos and sarx. We can therefore identify different sources of dualistic elements in Christian theology and early Christian writings. Hellenistic Judaism, pre-Gnosticism, Iranian religions, mixed with elements of Platonism, neo-Platonism and Stoicism, to mention some, influenced to different extents the writers of Biblical texts, first Christian theologians and early ecclesiologies or models of relations and power within the early Church.
II. CRITIQUE Hierarchical dualism rooted in Christian theology and in Western culture continues to this very day to determine our hermeneutics, our interpretation of reality, of structures, of relations and of power relations. Most of our thinking continues to be dominated by binary concepts: black and white, good and evil, truth and error, God and nature, spirit and matter, soul and body, female and male, rich and poor, powerful and disempowered, centre and peripheries. We do not only think in terms of binary concepts, but we also think in terms of couples hierarchically ordained: spirit over matter, God over nature, soul over body, human over nature, man over woman, white over black, rich over poor, powerful over disempowered, centre over peripheries. Hierarchical dualism inherited from Greek philosophy and Christian theology, deeply rooted in Western culture and in the theory, language, texts, praxis and structures of
Structural the Church legitimises and supports a concept of power exerted “over” and therefore oppressive structures and oppressive power relations. We need to question the legitimacy of those oppressive structures and power relations, and we need to unmask and question theories, theologies and ideologies that legitimise the superiority of one gender over the other, of one social group over the other, of one race over the other, of human over nature and so forth. We opened this reflection describing the symbol of yin and yang as a model of dualism that is complementary, dynamic and non-permanently hierarchical. The symbol of yin and yang shows us that not all dualism is necessarily hierarchical. It also shows us, by comparison, that Western and Christian dualism has in fact been permanently hierarchical and static, fixed as it is in vertical relations of above and below, and of power exerted “over”. We said that yin and yang flow into each other, determine each other and contain a seed of the opposite. Quite differently is described the dualism of genders in Christian texts and theology as well as in Western patriarchal culture: Eve in one of the two narratives of creation is made out of one rib of Adam. Female derives from male, male does not derive from female. Some might rightly argue that this theory compensates the fact that all other men derive from women. In the anthropology the Fathers of the Church inherit from Greek philosophy, the woman is understood as a deficient being, lacking fully developed soul. This theory of the woman as a not fully developed being, as a being lacking qualities fully present in man is not unfortunately an obsolete one, it continues to this very day to justify the
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exclusion of women from ordination and from priesthood in many Christian traditions. Not all dualism is hierarchical and oppressive. On the other hand, not all structures and ideologies of oppression are simply dualistic. Dominion gets incarnate in very diverse theories, ideologies, structures and practices. Even if in this text we are dealing with the oppressive character of Western dualism, we do not mean in any way to confine oppressive potential to dualistic theories and structures. Since our hermeneutical key in reading and trying to understand reality and in evaluating cultural and religious processes and phenomena is the respect of the dignity and integrity of every human being and of the whole creation, a dualistic and hierarchical understanding of reality needs to be unmasked and seriously questioned. In other words, the liberation of oppressed groups and the affirmation of the dignity and integrity of every human being and of the whole of creation need to deal with the radical questioning of models of interpretation of reality hierarchically constructed and oppressive. And if Western dualism is hierarchical and oppressive, then it has to be seriously questioned. And if Western dualism is rooted in dualistic and oppressive cultural, philosophical and religious theories, then we need to unveil the oppressive character of these theories and question them. The comparison of the yin and yang model and of the dualistic categories Christianity inherits from Greek philosophy also shows how powerful is the tool of interpretation: who has decided that yang represents maleness, the sun, creation, heat, light, heaven and dominance while Yin represents femaleness, the moon, completion, cold,
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darkness, material forms and submission? Who has decided that God, man, spirit, soul and intellect belong together while women, matter, body and nature are to enjoy good company in the same inferior box? Who has detained the power to interpret the Bible? Who has detained the power to choose among a range of available anthropologies, models of communities and power relations and has decided which models deserved to be normative for the entire Church? Women, blacks, indigenous people, poor and other marginalised groups have been excluded from hermeneutical processes. Theories chosen by white, Western men have been given priority and normative value. We need to go back to the Bible and rediscover alternative anthropologies, models of relations and of power neglected so far, we need to regain from the Bible the courage to challenge oppressive structures and to develop inclusive, participatory models of power and authority.
III. ALTERNATIVES 1. DUALITY AND EQUITY Questioning hierarchical dualism does not mean that we should refuse to acknowledge the duality of woman and man, or black and white. Diversity is not denied, it should never be dissolved in an omni-comprehensive concept of oneness. Diversity is to be acknowledged and maintained, maintaining at the same time the equal value of the two principles. The difference of “equality” and “equity” can help us in clarifying this point. Equality means that A is the same as A. Equity means that although A is different from B, nevertheless A and B are recognised having an equal value and are treated with “equity”. Women and men are different, black and white are different, people of different sexual orientations are different among themselves and remain different. Questioning hierarchical dualism has nothing to do with denying difference or attributing a pejorative meaning to difference. 2. FROM DUALITY TO PLURALITY As useful as it can be in describing reality, duality is not the whole of reality. Questioning dualism means not only maintaining the two elements of each couple and assigning to each of them equal value. Questioning dualism means also affirming that reality is more than two, is wider than two. Dualism is overcome not in suppressing the “two” but in enlarging the range of available options from two to many, from duality to plurality. 3. WHEN DUALISM IS TO BE DENIED We also need to say that not all dualisms are to be kept. The difference of woman and man is undeniable, but the dualism of rich and poor has to be questioned and also eliminated. That the poor, for example, have always been there is not a sufficient reason to withdraw from engagement against poverty as if the dualism of rich and poor is a given and unquestionable datum.
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Structural 4. ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF POWER Questioning hierarchical structures and power hierarchically exerted “over”, requires a reinterpretation and redefinition of power. Classical definitions define power as “one actor’s ability to make another do what the latter would not otherwise do” (R. DAHL) or “the probability that one actor in a social relationship will carry out one’s own will against the resistance of others” (Max WEBER). Steven LUKES defines power as “the notion that A in some way affects B.” This could be an entry in rethinking power from coercitive force to energy and ability to affect “B” positively and constructively. Power could then be understood as liberating power, as power to empower. 5. ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF COMMUNITIES Reinterpretation of power should go together with the redefinition of power structures and communities. Power could be rethought as socialised, shared, participatory, inclusive authority within democratic, participatory, inclusive communities, where power to decide, to interpret and to choose belong to the whole community. Non-hierarchical models of power challenge us to elaborate non-hierarchical forms of communities where empowerment is mutual. Daniela Lucia RAPISARDA is an Italian Protestant. She has trained in Music (in Catania, Palermo and Roma) and in Theology (in Roma and Edinburgh). She has been active for several years in FGEI (Italian SCM) and in the Young Women’s Network of the World Council of Churches (WCC). Since August 2000 she works as Regional Secretary of WSCF Europe. Her email address is regionaloffice@wscf-europe.org.
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Eva-Sibylle V O G E L - M F A T O
Racism as a Violent Structure which Shapes Everyday Life: How do we Continually Cope? With the experience of increased violence against Muslims and people of colour in the U.S., after Sept. 11, 2001, a young man from Northern Africa wrote to me asking for advice on immigration to Europe. Originally, he and his American wife had planned to move to the US, but now they are feeling insecure, fearing racist and xenophobic attacks. My answer resembled that of a letter of pastoral counselling, encouraging him to stand up and confront the situation. He would find racism in Europe as well and I could tell a long story of my own experiences, having shared my life with my AfroGerman husband for 20 years. BLACK GERMANS When we moved from my German village parish to the multicultural city of Geneva, we were relieved from a burden we have suffered from for a long time. I recognized we had been living with an overall feeling of fear in our own home country. Fear had crept underneath our skin. It began when my husband had a job in a large city and was only able to come home on weekends. On a Friday afternoon, while sitting in a packed full tram on his way to the train station, he was attacked and beaten by a drunken man. The other passengers only reacted when my husband proved stronger and had knocked his attacker down to the floor. He was still shivering from shock when he reached home. Not much later, through the media, we became witnesses to the deadly burning of asylum seekers’ and foreign citizens’ homes. The reactions from the German onlookers: foreigners, go home. Germany for Germans. During this time, we seriously considered buying a rope ladder to get out of the house just in case someone would set it on fire. Moreover, once a year, in our village, the youth would commit jokes in the village. But it was not a joke when someone painted Nazi crosses in front of the asylum seekers’ buildings. No one reacted and I was looked at with wonder when, with a young man, I was seen on the street with a bucket of grey paint, painting over the crosses and the xenophobic words and symbols. After finishing their studies, black Germans see their fellow students readily begin their first jobs, whereas they would write over 150 job applications in vain. An AfroGerman worked for a short time in a development agency of the churches and was constantly challenged by the personnel, because he was African, that his employment was against their principles and ideology of how to better the world. Most of them had belonged to the 1968 student generation. They accused him of having been so stupid as to marry a white German whom he could not take back to Africa. It was there where he belonged after having studied at a German university. Staying in Germany meant to be guilty of brain drain. “Development work means handling money,” someone said to him, “and money you give
only to your own people.” Finally, he changed to a sales job. His new boss trusted him but had to fight against others who feared that a black salesman would create a loss of clients. Another frequent experience in Germany is to be verbally harassed on the street by people with hostile and degrading remarks. You constantly attract looks of contempt and hate. My husband finally bought his own car and would not use public transportation any longer. MYTH OF WHITE SUPREMACY This year in Barcelona, I listened to a lecture titled Körperpolitik – feministisch-antirassistische Reflexionen zu Weissein als Mythos und Terror (Body Policy – FeministAntiracist Reflections on Being White as a Myth and Terror) by Eske WOLLRAD, a German-Dutch theologian. She named the structural violence behind such experiences of racism: constant feeling of danger, of being menaced, violation of a person’s integrity and dignity. The quantity of violent acts adds up and reveals behind them violent structures which “shape every day life, mark our thinking and influence our acting.” “From childhood onward, we learn what is to be seen as ‘normal’ and what not. We learn to differentiate between the ‘ones’ and the ‘special-inferior-others’. This separation often happens within a split second, by a gaze onto that which, supposedly, hosts all narratives and reasoning: the body.” Racism is a structure of violence assuming that there are biological differences between groups of humans. WOLLRAD speaks of the “myth of white supremacy” as cementing a racist anthropology into eternal, universal and undestroyable truths. “Myths are not abstract ideas or the simple expression of individual outlooks – they shape the whole society, they attack physically, they write themselves into bodies. The fairy tale of being white corresponds to a powerful reality: white terror.” Part of this myth is also the notion that Europe has always been white. Thus, black Germans cannot be accepted as Germans. They are constantly asked when they will return where they come from. They are refused the right of being Germans, of participating responsibly in society and consequently having a share of its wealth. This, too, is violence. On the other hand, there is an aggressive attitude against foreigners assuming they do not want to integrate into German society: they do not make enough efforts to learn the language and to adopt “German values”. But, what do we expect of people who are confronted with such a racist attitude? In our society, over the past 20 years of growing economic and social insecurity, racist or ethnic purism has been revived. In a European Diaconal Forum consultation in 2001 in Järvenpää, Finland, Tony ADDY stated: “It is easy to put all the blame for such insecurity on the alleged defence of a ‘white community identity’ against foreigners and people
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of colour. It is not unusual in political discussions to find the ‘war against crime’ mixed into a discussion about migration. It is only a short step to infer a two faced threat of a foreign influx and rising crime.” COLONIAL HISTORY One of the roots for degrading and mistrusting people of a different origin is in colonial history. During the “discovery” of other continents, Europeans refused to accept that so differently looking and living people belonged to the same human family and were created in God’s image. WOLLRAD remembers: “Since the early times of colonialism, white human beings have set themselves at the top of humanity. They spoke of freedom, equality and brotherhood, and, at the same time, they have caught millions of human beings – women, children and men – and have enslaved and killed them. Racism served to justify this violence. This heritage of oppression and mass murder is a heritage of Europe – it is (we may want it or not) our heritage, too.” During the 1996 World Mission Conference in Salvador/Bahia in Brazil, we celebrated a memorial worship on the dock where, for over 200 years, millions of slaves from West Africa were disembarked. We stood in front of the warehouses where they were kept; we looked up to the church tower from which buckets of water were
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Structural poured down to baptize them before they were sold like cattle. We learned about their history of struggle. Finally the abolition of slavery left the coming generations at the margins of society, with gravely wounded identities, in extreme poverty. Deeply touched, we had before us the youngest generation: girls and boys of the percussion band “Olodum”. I looked into their faces, so open and awake, curious and longing for a sustainable life, self-confident of their blossoming energy as they beat their drums. The powerful rhythms, speaking of the power of hope and decisiveness, filled the air and resonated in our own bodies. Then I attended a local service. In front of me was a small parish band. A little boy, maybe two years old, stood with his toy guitar beside his father and accompanied the band. Watching him, I thought of my own two little sons who had just begun to explore life and long suppressed feelings came bursting out. I was in floods of tears and could not stop them throughout the service. I was crying out all the misery which racist discrimination was imposing on my own small family, the denial of life by others, the struggles, trying to keep one’s head held high with dignity, despairing and raising up again in resistance. Maybe it was here at this moment that I got a real feeling for the empowering spirit of the American Negro Spirituals and their spirituality, which gave slaves their dignity in God and the strength to resist and to survive. After the service a Brazilian woman smiled to me, stunned at my wet face, and she said: “And I always thought that you white Europeans don’t have feelings!” My tears took away the distance she felt in front of white people: my tears created community! LAMENTATION This again gave me pause to think. I myself had been ashamed in this situation. In my white Western culture it is not seen as appropriate to show feelings of suffering and despair, let alone tears. There is a German expression given as a model to “maintain one’s face” or “to remain collected”. With this attitude, people often remain alone with their suffering. And, if they dare to speak out, they might be met with too simple forms of consolation, or their problems may even be belittled. Germans not directly affected by racism tend to say: “But it has become much better in the meantime.” “Your fears do not correspond with reality.” “There has never been any incident in our place.” Such reactions make people affected by violent racism even more vulnerable and lonely. They are denied the compassion and the solidarity of the community, which they so desperately need. The Swiss theologian Lytta BASSET in the book Moi, je ne juge personne (I do not Judge Anyone), brings such experience of denial to the point: “the falsification of human words does menace us daily in our identity as speaking subjects.” It creates the loss of contact with oneself in the annihilation of one’s own experiences and authenticity. “The authenticity of human words and God’s Word are the solid rock on which one can ground one’s existence.” When persons meet in authentic communication, there is God with the Word in their midst, affirming their lives and supporting them in love. Also, the encounter through the shed tears can lead into community with the God of life. In a conference in Strasbourg in 2003, the Austrian Roman Catholic theologian, Veronika PRÜLLERJAGENTEUFEL in her lecture Verantwortung der Frauen im Leben Europas. Oder: Vom Begehren, sich selbst und die
Structural Welt zu bewegen (The Responsibility of Women in the Life of Europe. Or: On the Desire to Move Oneself and the World) shared a story from a committed American Christian, Dorothy DAY, who throughout her life worked for workers and for migrants of different groups at the margins of society. She also had been a peace activist and was imprisoned even when she was an old woman. From time to time, she withdrew from active life into times of loneliness and she wept much over this world. What an encouragement for us to stand up for our feelings of suffering! “To preserve one’s face” often leads to inner despair and may have paralysing effects, whereas tears carry a liberating, empowering energy, as PRÜLLER-JAGENTEUFEL says: “When we want to withstand despair which can sometimes sneak in where we feel responsibility, then this being able to weep over the world seems to me really a good way. Tears cleanse the heart. And they can be a prayer in the very old form of lamentation in which, already in biblical times, human beings brought in front of God the wrong and their despair over it. Who weeps over the world instead of despairing over it remains in the love for the world, shares God’s love for this world and maybe also God’s tears over this world.” BUILDING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES Weeping over wrongs leads into communion with God’s passion and compassion; and to renewed community with our fellow human beings. It is in community that we gain our authenticity and the truth of our lives. And this is the ground on which we can join together and commit ourselves to overcoming injustice, violence, white terror, and discrimination within our societies and churches. Churches have the advantage of reaching out to the grass roots of society. Consciousness raising, repentance and renewal must start there. ADDY said: “The local is important.
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It is the place where we see the values of the society in operation, where we can also test the commitment to an inclusive society.” Ina KOEMAN, pastor in Antwerp (Belgium), says in her contribution to the European Diaconal Forum in 2001 on Building Sustainable Communities: “White people must listen very well to the painful racist experiences of black people in our society. Black people can help white people to find ways to join in the struggle against racism. The building up of sustainable communities starts with people’s needs, strengths, and beliefs, and with public discussion. The place to hold these may not be the church itself, but there where people are who know about suffering and getting up again! To build such communities we need all the gifts and qualities that people and traditions have. We need old people because of their long-suffering patience, children because of their cheerfulness, migrants because of their solidarity and hospitality, refugees and outlaws because of the strong survival systems they have developed. We need to learn conviviality, living together where people are. Then we shall find together the solidarity that we need for sustainable communities, in which we can resist difficulties, fight against injustice and racism, and experience a really inclusive, diverse society. And I believe that this will bring a lot of joy and thankfulness back into our European churches.” Let us hope and pray for the young couple I mentioned in the beginning – and many others like them – that they may find such a sustainable community, wherever they have decided to live, be it in the United States or in Europe.
Rev. Dr. Eva-Sibylle VOGEL-MFATO is Executive Secretary of the Interchurch Service and the Women’s Desk of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) in Geneva, Switzerland. Before her appointment to CEC, she served a Protestant parish in a rural area in Northern Germany. Her email address is evm@cec-kek.org.
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Gyrid G U N N E S
In Defence of Dualisms: In Search of a Theology of Political and Social Awareness This autumn, I have lived in South Africa, studying theology at the University of Natal in KwaZulu Natal, on the East coast of South Africa. One would guess that living in a country where apartheid is still vividly present would create an urgent need to literally “strip culture of black and white thinking” and “unveil the impact of dualistic thinking”. Politically, culturally and socially, I will always argue in defence of oneness and against any form of dualism, be it in terms of gender, ethnicity or nationality. But theologically? This is what I will explore here. ESTABLISHED DUALISM The long history of formalised segregation and separation of different ethnic groups in South Africa left scars that will take centuries to heal. If anywhere, this should be the place where transcendence of dualisms is needed. “Us-them way of thinking” nourished and made apartheid possible. Indeed, living in South Africa taught me what can happen when human value and dignity is distributed along lines of colour. It showed me how apartheid was legalised for fifty years and how the colour code penetrated every aspect of life: the job market, the political arena, the educational system and the sexual relationships. Believing in the universality of humanity (what the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is an example of) is a powerful way of overcoming and challenging dichotomies of white and black, human and subhuman. Human dignity, the right to education, the right to vote and the right to marry disregarding colour belong to everybody. FROM PARTICULARITY TO UNIVERSALITY – OR THE OTHER WAY AROUND? The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was a powerful way of ending centuries of dualistic thinking within the political discourse. It established the equality of all human beings. In theory, it makes imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, apartheid and the holocaust morally impossible to justify or defend. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is revolutionary because it is a move from particularity to universality. Normatively, there is no longer any dualism that separate people. To promote transcendence and abolition of dualisms within the theological discourse is valid if the theological situation is parallel to the political situation. In other words, it is valid only if it implies the same movement from particularity to universality. But is this the case? Is lack of universality really the problem in theology? Does promotion of a “universal” theology imply the same giant step as for the political discourse? Or is it the other way around? My argument goes as follows: theology does not need to be trained in transcending dualisms like “female and male, young and old, powerful and disempowered”. Christian theology has mostly been about transcending dualisms like these and pointing to oneness in Christ. It is not the particularity that is the
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problem for theology, but rather its claim to speak universally. The problem for theology is that theologians, church Fathers, popes and saints, starting from Paul, have universalised their own particular situation, need or tradition. My context, my questions, has been mistaken for the context, the questions of everybody. Their theology was not done in a vacuum of economic or political power. It is not the domestic servants, the beggars and the lepers who had the power both to universalise their own contexts. The universalised contexts are the contexts of Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Ignatius Loyola, and Karl Barth. Many of the theology done until the middle of the twentieth century is what I would call self-claimed non-contextual, non-politically aware theology. This theology was done within a framework that denied the political realities of “black and white, rich and poor, young and old, female and male, powerful and disempowered”. This way of doing theology that claimed to be not dominated by dualistic thinking. This theology was meant to be valid for everybody, at all times, in all places and situations. Traditional Christian theology in its Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox clothes suffers from a chronic lack of will to consciously make the context theologically relevant. Western European missionaries thought they were bringing Christianity to Africa. Instead they brought Christianity as it was perceived in their own political and social context even though it was not recognised as such. The Orthodox tradition believes that God is revealed in the divine liturgical tradition, without recognising that this tradition is closely connected to a hierarchal and patriarchal perception of God. Moreover, how many nonItalian, non-white or non-male popes have we had in the universal Catholic Church in its two thousand years of existence? POLITICAL REALITIES ARE THEOLOGICAL REALITIES Living in South Africa taught me that, like it or not, our theology is firmly rooted in our social, political and economic context. There is no such thing as a universal noncontextual theology, liturgy or tradition. The dualisms that penetrate our life on every level are also reflected on the theological level. Even if I want to think, write and act non-contextually, it is impossible to transcend dualism. As soon as I open my mouth, write a letter, say a world, I am entangled in dualisms, in dichotomies and in hierarchies. I can write this article because I know English. I have access to a computer. I have the time and the resources to sit down and think about these issues. Millions of people do not speak or write English, do not have access to a computer, and do not have the luxury of sitting down to write. The dualisms of access to language, access to material goods like computer, access to non-profitable time are dualisms that are political, economic and social realties. Therefore they are also theological realities.
Structural Theology does not need in any way to be trained in transcending dualisms. We need to be trained in acknowledging the dualisms that exist in the world as theologically relevant. Some of us are females and some of us are males. This is a theologically relevant dichotomy. As long as society constructs roles along the lines of the shape of our genitals, theology done by and for women will look different than theology done by and for men. As long as there are people who claim that God cannot be liturgically addressed as mother, feminist and womanist theology is highly needed. Some of us are black or brown and some of us are white. As long as racism is a reality and as long as Christ is perceived and pictured almost exclusively in white terms, Black and Dalit (the untouchables in the Indian caste system) theology is of vital importance. Some of us have Schengen passports. Some of us do not. As long as this is a political reality, theology done by someone who can freely travel in Western (and Central) Europe and have access to the labour market in the EU will look different than the theology done by someone who does not have access to these privileges. The prayer “give us today our daily bread” has a different meaning to the community who is sick due to lack of bread compared to the community who is sick because of too much bread. Some of us are HIV+ and some are HIV–. As long as HIV+ are discriminated against (and as the blood of Christ is never explored as HIV+), there is indeed a need to point at the dualism of HIV status that segregates us. The fact that all of these dualisms are not considered theologically relevant in mainstream theology shows that Christian theology does not need to move from particularity to universality, but from universalism to particularity. A credible, ethically responsible theology for the twenty-first century is a theology that seeks to highlight the political reality of the context theology is done in. The curtail question is how Jesus Christ responded to people in the different political, social and economical realities that he encountered. And we all know the answers: the rich young man was met with a demand to sell his possessions (Luke 12,13–21; 16,19–31; 18,18–27) and the blind beggar was given unconditional healing (Mark 10,46–52).
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Unfortunately, Paul did not manage to have the same bold analysis when it came to gender and economic hierarchies. How can one say that we are all one, but women cannot speak in the congregations (1Cor 11,4) and slaves must remain with their masters (1Cor 7,20)? It is just not credible that a person, who as a man is a non-woman and as a free is a non-slave, claims that we are all one. Oneness in Christ must firstly imply a readiness to include women and slaves in the theological discourse. Women and slaves did not participate in the process of defining what this oneness was about. Secondly, Paul did not see that religious oneness must have a social and political counterpart. Oneness in Christ must mean oneness in social status and equal political rights. Parallel to this situation, a theologian who has never experienced hunger cannot claim that Christianity does not have anything to do with economical and political liberation. A male theologian cannot claim that God and theology does not have a gender. A white theologian cannot say that the colour of God is unimportant. Because our lives are entangled in colour, gender and social status, the colour, gender and social status of God is not unimportant. Only the people on the bottom of the hierarchies – the marginalized part of the dichotomies of gender, colour and economy – can define oneness. DUALISMS THEOLOGICALLY RELEVANT – REDEFINING ECUMENISM Ecumenism means dealing with and maybe overcome the divisions that separate Christians. To tell it with other words: ecumenism is an attempt to transcend the dichotomies that the two thousand year old tradition of theological debates has produced. A theology that seeks to be critically, politically and socially aware, questions if these dichotomies are really the dichotomies that we should be spending our time debating. Why should the conflicts of the eleventh or the sixteenth centuries be the conflicts of the twenty-first century? And more importantly: are we not giving in to and prolonging the legitimacy of a self-centred theological discourse that is blind to the political and economic realities of ordinary people, baptised and non-baptised? Living in South Africa, where people beg for money or
DETECTING DUALISMS IN ONENESS The tradition of self-claimed non-contextuality follows nicely the footsteps of Paul. “There is no longer Jew nor Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female; for you are one in Christ.” (Galatians 3,28) But how was the meaning of oneness defined? And who had the power to define it? Paul used his vision of oneness to transcend the cultural and social difference of circumcision. As a circumcised Jew, he recognised that the religious discourse of circumcision made it impossible to socially include uncircumcised as full members of the Christian community. Galatians 3,28 is a powerful way of making social reality a concern for theology.
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work when I go to the shop, has made me question the relevance of coming to agreements on traditional theological differences. As long as there are people who come to the Eucharist table with hungry stomachs, do I really care if Christ is present before, during and after the celebration, or if he is only present during the celebration itself? As long as there are people dying of AIDS because medication is not available for either ideological or economical reasons, the true nature of the Holy Spirit is of lesser importance. As long as there are women who are enslaved and disempowered, I am not interested in whether we are justified by faith or by works. If ecumenism is to have any moral credibility, it has to abandon the post-Auschwitz liberal democracies or the comfortable armchairs and clerical conferences as the theologically relevant contexts. It has to actively seek to make the Auschwitzes of this world, the violence of Soweto, the slum camps of São Paulo, the enslaving brothels of Amsterdam, the drug addicts living with HIV in Kaliningrad as the relevant theological contexts. This means a turn to ethical questions, not away form theology, but a return to assess ethics and social justice as the core and epitome of theology. Ecumenism enhances a powerful vision to refuse to be segregated by the sins of our fathers, and redefine Christian unity as all people who are concerned with making the world a better place for the “least of my sisters and brothers” (Matt 25,40). A CRITICALLY AWARE THEOLOGY Living as a white, HIV–, Western European in a ‘twothirds world’ country together with people who know very well what hunger is, has taught me that I cannot any longer deny that the privileges of being a citizen of a rich
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Structural Schengen county do not shape my theology and the way I read the Bible. My structural privileges alienate me from the epistemological starting point of most people in this word, and from the context that Christ initially became incarnated into. My life is further away from him because of the political and economical realities of this world than the refugees, the sick and the politically persecuted. As a consequence of this insight, I have argued in defence of a critically politically aware theology. This kind of theology, which I find expressed for example in Liberation theology, Feminist-Womanist theology, Black theology and Dalit theology, does not fall into the trap of a self-claimed universal tradition theology. These theologies do not deny the dualisms that our lives are soaked in, but highlights them and makes them methodically important. I believe that only a critically aware theology is sensitive to the particular political realties that we are part of. Only by seeking to change the dualisms of the political and social world, is it morally justifiable to seek transcendence of the very same dualisms in the theological realm.
Suggested Reading WEST Gerald, The Academy of the Poor – towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible. Pietermarizburg, 2003. SOBRINO Jon, Jesus the Liberato, Burns and Oates. England, 1994. TRIBLE Phylis, Texts of Terror, SCM Press, London, 1992. BOESAK Allen, Black Theology – Black Power. London, 1976. Gyrid GUNNES (25) is a Norwegian Lutheran theology student. She presently studies theology at the University of Natal, in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Her email address is gyridgunnes@hotmail.com.
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Torsten M O R I T Z
Identity and Integration: Overcoming Dualistic Thinking in Dealing with the “Other” A man who had not seen Mr K. for a very long time, greeted Mr K with the words: “You have not changed at all.” “Oh,” said Mr. K and turned very pale. (Berthold BRECHT: Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner)
In important areas of debate, the socio-political discussions in Europe reproduce and circle around two concepts, which are mainly applied in a dualistic logic: the concept of identity (particularly the preservation and defence of it or the loss of it) and integration. Let me take first two examples of my everyday work experience in the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME), which illustrate and underline this aspect. ENLARGEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION The process of European political integration will be taking another step forward with the enlargement of the European Union in May 2004. At that time, ten countries, mostly from the former Communist block, will join the EU. It was and still is one of the central reference points of this process to underline that all countries will be allowed to maintain their own cultural, national and linguistic identities in the process. One of the most striking examples of this high respect for diversity is the linguistic question. From May 2004 onwards every official EU event will require translation into the then twenty-one official languages of the Union. Some of these languages are spoken by less than a million people in a Union of 450 million inhabitants. However, it was never seriously questioned that maintaining this linguistic diversity, as the most visible expression of cultural diversity, was a central aspect of a successful European integration. At the same time, in negotiating access to the EU, candidate countries were required to fulfil a number of political and economic criteria and accept a whole range of regulations, laws and provision in force in the EU member states. This included measures which would improve the legal and social conditions of national and ethnic minorities in these countries. These measures should enable national or ethnic minorities in these countries to maintain their identities. MIGRATION IN EUROPE The area of migration and the question of how to deal with migrants is another central area of debate in most countries of Europe today. The question of integration is one of the most controversial topics in this debate. The exact lines of debate are very different from country to country. However, certain arguments appear in most countries of Europe. Migrants are generally expected to “integrate” into their host society, by learning the basics of the language of the country as well as acquiring a certain level of knowledge about the social, political system and history of their host country. There is a trend to oblige migrants to follow “integration courses”; in a growing number of countries this is the pre-
condition for receiving financial or other forms of state support. Irrespective of the success or failure of these measures, there is a widespread discourse which claims that “integration has failed”, especially because there are “parallel societies” of migrants – eg. migrants are concentrated in certain parts of a town, run newspapers in their own language, have specialised shops etc. The fact that communities maintain their own identity in this case is seen as a failure of integration, a threat to the community at large. IDENTITY AND INTEGRATION: A CONTRADICTION? In both cases we are speaking about identity and integration. In both cases we see one common aspect: “newcomers” are expected to meet certain requirements and in return acquire certain rights. The logic of these two examples, however, is very different if it comes to the question of identity. Whereas the preservation of cultural, linguistic, and national identity is in the case of EU enlargement seen as a key indicator of a successful process of integration, the fact that a particular national or ethnic group is maintaining its own identity is in the case of migration perceived as the clear indication that integration has failed. These examples illustrate that an approach which operates with dualistic understandings of identity (keep it or lose it) and integration (someone is integrated or not integrated) and even sees identity as opposed to integration is too simple to make us understand social processes around identity and integration. RECONCILIATION OF IDENTITY AND INTEGRATION: UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES … Neither the concept of identity nor the concept of integration is clearly defined. Indeed, if we look around in “our” generation (people in their twenties and thirties), we see how different the concepts of identity are. In the countries of Western and Northern Europe an individual approach probably plays a very important role: belonging to a certain group or subculture. (As with any general descriptions, it is clear that it cannot do justice to the many different tendencies.) The job which someone performs, or even the fact that one is unemployed, very strongly shapes one’s identity. Max WEBER argued that this is stronger in countries, where the Reformation shaped the culture. National identity plays a role in most countries. In my perception, the feeling of a national and cultural identity, however, is stronger in those countries and regions which were or felt oppressed by other countries and regions in the past: we will certainly think of the former communist block, but certain regions in Belgium or Spain are also striking examples. In a number of countries, belonging to a certain social class shapes one’s identity. Gender identity is something very strongly felt by many of us, others have a strong reli-
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gious identity. This explanation about identity raises the question if the idea of maintaining or losing one’s identity (as a dualistic either-or option) can explain how individual and collective identity is constituted. … DISTINGUISHING IDENTITY AND STEREOTYPES … If we question the notion of one static and unchangeable national or cultural identity, it is quite evident that we also have to reconsider a certain notion of integration, one which describes integration as assimilation: a process of an individual or a group integrating into a certain culture or country which remains unchanged during this process, by exactly reproducing the (supposed) identity of this culture or country. Anecdotes about migrants who tried to integrate through assimilation underline this: the Hindu refugee who upon arrival in Denmark asked to be baptised into the Christian
Church, the Indian migrant who upon arrival in England invited his working-class neighbours to attend elaborate tea drinking ceremonies, which he administered with greatest pride, or the African exchange student who on the first day in a German university turned up in leather trousers. Similar cases can be reported about Europeans who established themselves to live in other continents. All these incidents by way of being a caricature illustrate that assimilation does not mean real integration. They also hint at the fact that the self-concept of a culture and country or the perception of this culture or country will often have little to do with reality. I for example find it hugely ironic that most often Christian conservatives, who most strongly denounce the feminist movement in the churches, underline that the role of women in Islam is the aspect which blocks the integration of Muslims into European societies.
WSCF Europe Activities in 2004 5–11 July 2004 CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN OUR INNER LIFE AND IN COMMUNITY CESR Summer Seminar Pápa, Hungary
August 2004 GLOBALISATION, HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY Agape Political Camp Agape Ecumenical Centre, Prali, Italy
June to September 2004 LINGUA FRANCA SUMMER COURSES Various locations in Central and Eastern Europe
18–24 July 2004 CIVIL SOCIETY AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ACTIVITIES IN EUROPE ESG International Ecumenical Student Meeting Waldsieversdorf, Berlin, Germany
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26 January – 2 February 2004 ERC MEETING Sväty´ Jur, Slovakia 4–8 February 2004 GROWING EU: HOPES AND FEARS OF MEMBERS AND CANDIDATES Central European Subregion (CESR) Winter Seminar Linz, Austria 20–22 February 2004 NORDIC WINTER MEETING Copenhagen, Denmark
24 April 2004 SEMINAR ON GLOBALISATION The Netherlands April 2004 YOUNG PEOPLE AS AGENTS OF CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM INTERCULTURAL AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE Consultation in view of the Thematic Conference Brussels, Belgium
7–13 June 2004 WINDOW ON THE WORLD: ECONOMIC, CULTURAL, AND POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA WSCF Europe Thematic Conference Agape Ecumenical Centre, Prali, Italy
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August 2004 TRAINING EVENT JOINTLY ORGANISED BY LINGUA FRANCA AND THE CESR Czech Republic
2–7 of August 2004 CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGIES IN EUROPE Nordic Summer Meeting Finland 18–25 July 2004 THEOLOGY AND GENDER Agape Theological Camp Agape Ecumenical Centre, Prali, Italy
5–14 August 2004 TALITHA CUM: ARISING TO LIFE IN ABUNDANCE WSCF General Assembly Chiang Mai, Thailand
September 2004 EUROPEAN STAFF MEETING Budapest, Hungary September 2004 YOUNG PEOPLE AS AGENTS OF INTERCULTURAL AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE WSCF Europe Thematic Conference Oslo, Norway
October 2004 INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUE TEAMS (Through Ecumenical Action More Sharing) Consortium Workshop
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… ACCEPTING CHANGE AS NATURAL In my view, both identity and integration can only be described in a meaningful way as something in a concrete moment and a concrete situation. Both the person the group wants to integrate as well as the culture and country into which integration happens undergo constant changes of their identity. Along with other elements, integration will be something which changes and needs to involve both sides, the integrating person and group as well as the country and culture of the integration. In this context, it is important to see how much cultures in most of Europe have changed over the last decades. The stories of countries with huge national minorities abroad (as people who previously migrated and settled, or who were cut from their homelands because of the changing of the borders) illustrate this: it is a common feature that ethnic groups in a minority situation preserve a culture which in the “homeland” might not exist any longer. Very often this leads to a culture shock and massive social problems when the groups go “home”. They have not been part of the change in the selfconcept of a culture or country and feel left out. THE NEED FOR SPACE, BALANCE AND CONFIDENCE IN ADDRESSING IDENTITY AND INTEGRATION Thus, the challenge in dealing with identity and integration lies in balancing integration and mutual reconstruction of identity. But is there a clear definition of what we could in this context see as a successful process? As frustrating as this might be, the definition of what exactly constitutes a successful integration, through which individuals, countries or cultures reconstruct their identities, is something which we cannot draw up before a process, but only afterwards. If we cannot give a standard definition of a successful process of integration and reconstruction of identity, can we at least have favourable preconditions? As outlined above, accepting that the integration IRISH SCHOOL and reconstruction of identity is a two-way process OF ECUMENICS seems helpful. Another aspect is illustrated by something, which Trinity College Dublin an Estonian friend once told me: “In Estonia over the last five hundred years we always had to Ph.D. & M.Phil. Programmes defend our identity against occupation in order to survive. That feeling still prevails. People are very Ecumenical Studies (Dublin) Email: ecumsec@tcd.ie conservative. In Germany, you do not need to have Ecumenical Studies enables students to engage with three dimensions of the conthat – with 82 million, you know you will always be temporary ecumenical movement: interchurch dialogue, interfaith dialogue, and the there!” global pursuit of justice and peace within an international student body for an intellectually challenging academic and rich personal experience. M.Phil. students can This rather typical remark underlines another study full-time for 12 months or part-time for 24 months. important precondition: none of the partners particInternational Peace Studies (Dublin) Email: peacesec@tcd.ie ipating in the integration and reconstructing of International Peace Studies examines the sources of war and armed conflict, and identity should have a reason to fear what will hapways of addressing, alleviating and eliminating them through dealing with issues of pen, which means that we need space to develop global justice, human rights and the equitable distribution of power. This programme and time to digest change. So the conclusion is that pursues these concerns in all aspects of its work. M.Phil. students can study full-time for 12 months or part-time for 24 months. there is not one conclusion. If we want to overcome dualistic thinking, we must live with the realities Reconciliation Studies (Belfast) Email: reconsec@tcd.ie The Belfast-based M.Phil. in Reconciliation Studies is a recently established and that some important certainties in our lives are innovative degree, at the forefront of current debates on conflict and political reconcalled into question, without other certainties takciliation including the role of religion in such conflicts. It addresses the challenge of ing their place. developing a systematic understanding of reconciliation through engaged academic study. M.Phil. students can study full-time for 12 months or part-time for 24 months. Suggested Reading ASMUS Sören, I is an Other – Dialouge as First Theology, Emanuel Levinas and Henning Luther as Sources for Ecumenical Theology. Dublin, 1996. Danish Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs, Cultural Diversity in European Cities. Hague, 2003. Commission of the European Communities, Communication to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on Immigration, Integration and Employment (COM 336). Brussels, 2003. MORAES Claude, Report on COM 336. www.europarl.eu.int. Torsten MORITZ (1969) is a (United) Protestant from Germany. He is doctor of political sciences and served as the Vice-Chairperson of WSCF Europe from 1995 to 1997. He lives in Brussels where he works for the Churches‘ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME) and worships in the St. Andrew’s Church of Scotland. His email is moritzt@yahoo.com.
For an application form, please contact your programme of interest: Irish School of Ecumenics (Trinity College Dublin), Bea House, Milltown Park, Republic of Ireland. Tel: +353-1-260 1144 Fax: +353-1-260 1158 web: www.tcd.ie/ise 683 Antrim Road, Belfast BT15 4EG, Northern Ireland Tel: +44-28-9077 0087 Fax: +44-28-9037 3986 web: www.tcd.ise For information about the Conflict and Dispute Resolution Studies Diploma programme, please visit us at: www.tcd.ie/ise/degree_diploma/cadrs/index.html
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Sören A S M U S
I am More than you Think: Fragments and Diversity within Oneself In order to approach the notion of identity and to overcome the idea of a dualistic either/or thinking in this regard, it might be useful to confront patterns of thinking with the reality in which we find ourselves. In the last decades some developments in the areas of theology and sociology might help to think of identity in a different manner. Thus, I will try to deal with two strong images of identity, which I call the seed model and the core model, confronting them with insights from theologians Dietrich BONHOEFFER and Henning LUTHER, the sociology of Anthony GIDDENS and the works of Amin MAALOUF. LIFE – A FRAGMENT? “Besides, our generation cannot now lay claim to such a life as was possible in yours – a life that can find its full scope in professional and personal activities, and achieve balance and fulfilment. That is perhaps the greatest sacrifice that we, younger people, with the example of your life still before our eyes, are called on and compelled to make, and it makes us particularly aware of the fragmentary and incomplete nature of our own.” “The important thing today is that we should be able to discern from the fragment of our life how the whole was arranged and planned, and what material it consists of.” (Letters to the Parents, 20th and 23rd February, 1944) Dietrich BONHOEFFER wrote these sentences in prison. His resistance against the Nazi ideology within the Confessing church and the liberal resistance made him realise that he – as many of his generation – would most likely not be able to achieve what they were aiming for. In a German upper class family of his time, it was the main achievement to develop and fulfil one’s own possibilities and thereby allow the individual to regard her or his own identity as something like a seed which grows, is nurtured and challenged, and step by step tends towards fulfilment and perfection. His notion of the “Fragments of Life”, of the challenge to interpret the little we see in the sense of the potential and options which are hinted at in our lives, even though we will not be able to reach it, all this for him was a loss. It was a painful realisation, but at the same time, his life and his works tended to prove his idea right: His Life was a fragment, but out of what he left us, many Christians afterwards were able to develop new insights and new ways of thinking. IDENTITY AS FRAGMENTS Some fifty years later, Henning LUTHER, who died from HIV/AIDS, picked up this notion of “Fragments of Life” in his works on identity. In his rather postmodern aesthetical
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theology he described our identity as fragmented. Death – as the open wound of nothingness – makes our life a fragment in three ways: 1. As a fragment from the past, because we always carry with us the ruins of our history, the unfulfilled dreams and hopes, the unused opportunities of life, the missed chances. There are our failures, violations, losses. All of them lead to the pain of the fragment. Each part of our life is generally not only growing and a benefit, becoming an increasingly mature personality; it is as well a breach and a loss of unrealised hopes and dreams of the past. 2. As a fragment of the future, because we always have the hope of further development. There is a longing to go beyond the present state of being. The difference between the fragment and its possible perfection is not only negative; it also points towards something new, something that might be or may be. At each stage of our life we are also drafts for the future. We are like building-sites of which we do not know whether or how they will be built for the future. We only know that it is not completed yet. Against any form of stagnation there is longing, an ever new movement of beginning of transcending one’s own state of being. 3. As a fragment of our relations to other people, more precisely the limitation of the possibility to meet other people. In each step of our personal development, we are challenged and questioned by others. Each encounter with the other poses the question: “Who am I?” We are only ourselves if we are open to and vulnerable to others. It is the encounter with the Other which makes us unique: only when being addressed or called by the Other we become unmistakably unique, because in this situation it is only me, who is called to answer the request. The encounter with the other always contains the experience
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of suffering, where we encounter the limited, needing, vulnerable, and alienated other. SORROW AND SUFFERING In this sense, although the being as a fragment contains sorrow and suffering, it also allows for hope and the longing for transcendence. The idea of perfection however, the platonic aim of finding oneself and the perfect fitting other in one’s life, would only be possible if we gave up the possibility of sorrow, of hope and suffering, thereby making ourselves into something like the stones in a river bed: being polished and formed by the running waters, but without individual shape and softness. In looking at the Cross, LUTHER argues, Christ in His suffering is also the image of the fragmented, not the perfect. So if the Cross is the symbol of our salvation, it is not the perfection but the fragment, which brings us to Christ. Henning LUTHER realises, that to live a life of perfection and wholeness – although we still might be brought up with the longing for such a life – would only be possible if we could give up the ability to feel sorrow, to have hope and to love, just as isolated existences. The realisation of life as a fragment is the true human form of being and having an identity. This insight, however, does not liberate us from the question of how we should be able to hold these fragments together as a single identity. Since the notion of the identity-seed growing and developing allowed us to depict ourselves as the “present state” of this development, it gave the impression that in each step of our development we would be the “same” and therefore to be recognised in our uniqueness in what we did, said and were at any time of our life. If, however, the notion of fragment is the more adequate, then how are we recognisable, and how then do we hold all these fragments of our life together, if they are not “broken branches” but the basic elements of our identity? THINK OF WHO YOU ARE In the “high- or late-modern” times we find ourselves in – the British Sociologist, Anthony GIDDENS argues – the Self, the way I am able to perceive my identity has become a reflexive project, as well as the whole of modernity. It is up to the combination of the ability to develop trust, to relate to others and to find a meaningful approach to the things I am doing, while still being in the need to reshape the way I am interacting with the surrounding world. The choices of “lifestyle” are necessary for the individual, as there is no longer a given pattern within “tradition,” “manner,” or “class” that allows the individual to refer to as a legitimising argument for her or his actions. GIDDENS explains: “In the
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post-traditional order of modernity, and against the backdrop of new forms of mediated experience, self-identity becomes a reflexively organised endeavour. The reflexive project of the self, which consists of sustaining coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives, takes place in the context of multiple choices as filtered through abstract systems. In modern social life, the notion of lifestyle takes on particular significance. Reflexively organised life-planning, which normally presumes consideration of risks as filtered through contact with expert knowledge, becomes a central feature of the structuring of self-identity.”
THE WAY WE TELL OUR STORY In this sense, we develop our identity through the way we tell our story. The changing circumstances, new insights or objectives we choose – or feel forced to choose – and our experiences and media-transmitted ideas constantly make us rethink our identity, reshape it by new choices and tell new stories, depicting our life as we are perceiving it now. This ability to tell our story in a coherent biographical manner includes the realisation of our fragmentedness, as new choices shape new life-perspectives, in which we leave behind other previously existing options. The way we tell our story is dependent on storytelling patterns we find around us. Here another problem arises, especially in those situations where the normal pattern of storytelling is no longer valid or requested. In the case of refugees in Germany the need to tell the complete story of violation, conflict and all, including especially all details of shameful aggression at the first interview with a German immigration officer does usually not fit to the cultural reality the refugees were used to before. You do not tell stories of abuse and humiliation in the first instance to a complete stranger – but German law does not ask for the cultural or personal limits; it wants a statement which includes “all relevant facts” of the life of the person, regarding relevant only those which could serve as a cause to apply for political asylum. Here we realise that it is very often the challenge from outside which seems to force us not to reflect (Pannonhalma, Hungary) upon all that is us, but to reduce ourselves to such Established in 2001 by Archabbot features which seem to be V ÁRSZEGI Asztrik OSB, of relevance for us, or for the way we are perceived this Benedictine Institute is a place to pray and work for our “identity”. for the unity of the Church
Békés Gellért Ecumenical Insitute
by means of conferences, workshops, lectures and publications. Our young theologians are involved in the ecumenical movement internationally and in Hungary. If you wish to know more about us, contact N AGYPÁL Szabolcs: bgoi@chello.hu
I AM MORE THAN YOU THINK In the book In the Name of Identity – Violence and the Need to Belong the FrenchLebanese author Amin MAALOUF describes two useless questions he experiences when being asked
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about his identity. The first is whether he feels more French or more Lebanese, and he has to answer: both, as he was brought up in Lebanon in a French-speaking school, now living and writing in France but reflecting upon the culture of both Europe and the Arab world. In his books he quite often depicts characters which cross the cultural and religious boundaries of their times, and which sometimes form the only element of coherence of the stories told. Thus the either/or question does not do justice to the lives of many people, while still it seems to be the first question to ask when faced with difference. The other “false question” is the one of the “core belief”: when having explained the different elements that form his identity, people demand to reduce the complexity of life: “But deep down inside how do you feel, more this or more that?” This reduction of the multitude of elements, forcing someone to reduce her- or himself to just one element, is at the basis of violence and hatred among people struggling for defining their place in different societies. MULTITUDE AND RICHNESS Instead of trying to reduce oneself to be “only” a Muslim, “only” a scientist, or “only” an Italian, thereby cutting off all that is not comparable, MAALOUF encourages the readers of his books to sit and meditate and cherish all the different elements that form oneself, to be proud of the multitude and richness of experiences, memories, and beliefs which make one unique in the way she or he has and will develop. The alternatives he points out are clearly the ones between violence, which develops by being reduced to a single feature, which is neither doing justice to her or his inner richness nor to reality. When reducing ourselves, however, we already apply violence towards ourselves, in order to suppress all other elements of our identity and therefore long for the “reward,” which is the belonging to a community and achieving a place to be. If this “reward” is not granted, this violence and pain we have applied towards ourselves is turned to those we perceive as either hindering us from becoming part of what we suffered for, or those we perceive as the reason for our reduced identity to be challenged. In order to avoid this aggressive reaction, he argues for the view on identity, which is basically all this, which is not comparable, as it is the combination of all we are, which makes us, who we really are. Instead of giving false answers to false questions, we have to confront us and others with a richness which is more than others think we are. IDENTITIES OF PILGRIM PEOPLE I was brought up with the dreams of the seed and the core. They have proven to be quite successful. It was thanks to the experiences in WSCF, at the university in Germany and Ireland and to some losses in my own private life, that I had to realise how little these images are able to explain. Instead, they have long proven to add to the pain of loss, frustration, and the feeling of not being able to tell who I am. Trying to understand the
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Structural images of the fragments and the reflexive way to tell my identity, holding together most of the multitude of elements which make me unique, life has become a little less frustrating. The Christian faith holds in its midst the idea that it is not really clear what we are: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1Cor 13,12) In this sense it seems to me that the idea of the fragment and of the richness is more compatible to this faith. As we are called to live our lives as being on our way to an aim which we will not fulfil, but which is promised to us, we might as well learn to develop the identity of a pilgrim people: the awareness that we do not “hold an identity”, but we are called to become what we are not yet. The theologian, pedagogue and reformer, Jan Amos KOMENSKY´ (COMENIUS), being a migrant for most of his life, expressed this attitude: “I thank my God, Who has wanted that I shall be a man of longing for all my life. I praise Thee, my saviour, that You have given me on Earth no native country and no home. Thereby You saved me from the folly to mistake the accidental for the substantial, the way for the aim, the striving for the peace, the shelter for the home, the wandering for the native country.” Suggested Reading ASMUS Sören, I is an Other – Dialogue as First Theology, Emanuel Levinas and Henning Luther as Sources for Ecumenical Theology. Dublin, 1996. (A copy is available via email, if requested.) BONHOEFFER Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prison. The Enlarged Edition. London, 1971. GIDDENS Anthony, Modernity and Self-Identity – Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge – Oxford, 1994. LUTHER Henning, Religion und Alltag – Bausteine zu einer Praktischen Theologie des Subjekts. Stuttgart, 1992. MAALOUF Amin, In the Name of Identity – Violence and the Need to Belong. London–New York, 2003. Sören ASMUS is a United Protestant from Germany. He graduated at the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) in Dublin, and is minister in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of the Rhineland, working at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal (Barmen School of Theology) for the department of Ecumenism, Mission and the Science of Religion. He was on the WSCF European Regional Committee and a member of the Programmatic Working Group. His email address is: soae@gmx.de.
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N A G Y P Á L Szabolcs
Is Ecumenism all about Grey? Dynamics and Methods in the Ecumenical Movement It seems that the main divisions of the Church (451, 1054, 1517) follow each other in five hundred year terms. It seems, on the other hand, that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries bring about a move to the opposite direction: a tendency for the unity of the Church. In this century of ecumenism, a widespread consensus appears to ripen, that Jesus Christ wants that all may be one, and that this process is led by the Holy Spirit. The question now is not any more whether to be engaged in the ecumenical movement, but rather how to do it according to the will of God. And the question for those who are taken up by this energising wave remains whether this really is a meaningful purpose to strive for and to dream about, or whether it is all about creating grey from the colours, or from black and white. THE SCANDAL OF DISUNITY In the divine feast, the Church is nothing less (and nothing more) than the foretaste of God’s purpose to reconcile all things in Jesus Christ. From an eschatological perspective, the Church is a dynamic sign of ‘already’ and ‘not yet’. We are already one, but not yet fully and totally, and not yet in a visible way. Among the many phenomena of human disorder, the silhouette of God’s design faintly occurs. In enlisting the four characteristics of the Church (one, holy, catholic and apostolic), the sin against catholicity (universality) is denominationalism, localism and parochia- lism. Holiness requires the conversion of the churches, a diversity creatively integrated and transformed. The ecumenical movement addresses most of all the forth, the oneness of the Church. Historically it has been doing so through three main branches, Mission (bringing the good news to all), Life and Work (answering to human need), and Faith and Order (questions of truth). Let us have a look at the methodology of this third focus: is it creating grey by mixing the colourful opinions into a kind of consensus, or is it about something more elegant and dignified?
contrary, there is certainly a hierarchy of truths, a legitimate variety in the theological expressions of doctrine. The divine message revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is that the truth understood in a Christian way is not propositional in the first place (it is not about statements), but relational (being in a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ) and dialogical (standing in the divine dialogue of the Holy Trinity), understood and lived out in a community, the Church. The question in case of truth understood as propositional would be: ‘how can we build a sufficient consensus needed for unity?’ The question of truth imagined as dialogical is: ‘how can we build sufficient trust to live with more difference?’ Thus, the ecumenical approach to the Church and also to each other is not about finding the lowest common denominator, compromising the (absolute) truth entrusted to us, but about progressing together towards a fuller understanding of truth, in community.
TRUTH: UNITY AND DIVERSITY In questions of truth, the first two commandments should guide us: ‘you shall have no other gods before me’; ‘you shall not make for yourself a graven image’. We, individually and in community, often commit the sin of idolatry in this respect, having other gods than the one God of dialogue and love. Also, we often make graven images of traditions, usages and culturally conditioned understandings, by universalising our particular experiences and opinions about less than ultimate things. On the
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EMPTY-HANDED It is not our claim on the truth which is absolute, but the claim of the truth on us, says Jürgen MOLTMANN. We do not possess the truth, but the truth possesses us: the radical mentality and attitude is not about trying to grasp it and then about clinging on to it, but the way of kenosis or emptying-out, as a state and as a method. The Logos has to become incarnated, Jesus Christ has to be forsaken on the cross, and the grain of events has to die to bring new life. “Under the cross we all stand empty-handed” (Jürgen MOLTMANN). Our church mothers and church fathers imparted to us the golden rule of the approach to truth and community: in essentials unity, in others diversity, and in everything love. The matrix of agreement and care helps us to systematize our commitments and opinions: first, there are the things in which we agree and we care, and this is the basis for our unity. Secondly, there are the things in which we agree but we do not care, and thirdly, there are the things where we do not agree, but – fortunately – we do not care either. These things are called adiaphora in theology, the loci for nontheological, cultural and contextual factors. Finally, there are things where we do not agree, although we do care. This is the area of our ecumenical investigation and action. LOVE: DIFFERENT EMPHASES We are not yet the ones who affirm each other in front of God, but we are called to be the ones who acknowledge each other to be affirmed by God. It is not philia which we are called for (a love towards something beautiful and similar), but agape (the creative love of the alien and different). Dreaming about the united Church of the (as near as possible) future is one of the most exciting engagements
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Methodological a responsible theologian can be occupied with. Some imagine it as a spiritual harmony, but the ecumenical movement affirmed that our unity should be visible for the world and for ourselves. Others emphasize that it is the Gospel rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered which constitute a basis for feeling ourselves belonging to the same Christian community. Again others put a stress on the episcopal structure of the Church, blossoming in an apostolic succession. Connected to this is the underlined importance of our participation in the living tradition. The Life and Work movement witnessed to the slogan: doctrine divides – service unites. Another paradigm can be the restoration of the New Testament Church. MODELS OF COMMUNITY There are other clarified vectors than these six mentioned. The resultants of their forces point to three main directions: organic unity, conciliar fellowship, and the community of communities. Organic unity was the model endorsed by the New Delhi Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1961: “a fully committed fellowship of all God’s people in each place, united with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages.” The WCC Nairobi Assembly in 1975 further developed this concept, and offered a partly parallel solution: “a conciliar fellowship of local churches which are themselves truly united.” The united and uniting churches are the pioneers of this model. The Roman Catholic Church offered the model of the community of communities for consideration, where we find a plurality of types of communities. It is important to emphasize that basically everyone in the ecumenical movement thinks about unification in stages, where unity grows before and after each step.
Methodological DIALOGUE: AN ECUMENICAL GRAMMAR It might sound strange to mention linguistic and stylistic issues in this context, but according to William LAZARETH, a leading Faith and Order theologian, the object of the ecumenical movement is to improve our grammar. The improvement of our grammar is also a process, being unfolded in steps and stages. An important point of a paradigm shift was when we started to understand and interpret the problems and stumbling blocks as challenges. For those happy languages where this expression exists, it means ‘a difficult, demanding, stimulating and inspiring task’; or ‘an invitation or call to take part in a game’. Which task can be more inspiring (also for our humour and playfulness) than to take part in the divine and human game of recovering the unity in the body of Christ? The kairos, the time proper and apt, is here for that. Another grammatical development is the penetration of dialogue in the theological discourse. In the beginning of the ecumenical movement we thought that dialogue is the means and unity is the goal. Now the recognition is getting more and more acceptance that it is rather the other way around: unity is the means, and dialogue is the goal, the authentic way of existence for the Church, as an icon of the flow of dialogue within the Triune God. A whole ethics of dialogue is getting its shape during this development. Its cornerstone is the golden rule of dialogue, the hermeneutics of goodwill: we should always listen to the best intentions of the others, receive and interpret them at their best. The most deeply prepared, most widely spread and most thoroughly commented ecumenical document, the Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM), published in 1982 is a paramount example of a common new language appearing in the Church discourse. The maturing of consensus, the inspired shaping of the text and its assisted reception make it the common masterpiece of the branches and denominations of Christianity. SPIRITUALITY: SEEKING FOR METAPHORS We talked about the scandal of disunity, ‘truthing in love’ and emptying-out, the models and methods of unity. But the longing and working for unity is also a spiritual path, not only a dogmatic or ecclesiological one. We should first meditate on the stigma of division, trying to discern the human disorder and to decipher God’s design, and interiorise the scandal of disunity. This scandal will lead us on our path in finding our common ways; this scandal will be our engine to reconcile all things in Christ. Secondly, we should meditate on the incarnation and abandonment of Jesus Christ, all of us standing under the cross empty-handed. As a fruit, this will give us the methodology to engage in dialogue in a kenotic way with our co-members of the body of Christ, helping to identify ourselves with them. The ecumenical adventure, however, is not only about models, paradigms, methods and grammars, but about something more poetic as well: metaphors. Metaphor is a key word in the present-day literary theory, something similar to what we, Christians, understand as icons: win-
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dows to the transcendental, to the divine. The third and forth spiritual step is earmarked by two metaphors. The body of Christ is a Biblical metaphor for the Church, something to meditate on as maybe the most useful circumscription of our community for the ecumenical endeavour. As members of the same body (the only body, in fact), we are intended for mutual nurturing and correction through empathy and compassion. THE LIGHT AND THE RAINBOW Finally, we take the other metaphor from the world of physics, notably from optics. Isaac NEWTON made an experiment with the light and two prisms, which can give a possible direction in answering our original question, whether ecumenism is all about grey. White light is composed of a continuous band of colours (spectrum), which appears in the same pattern as the seven colours of a rainbow. White light becomes the spectrum by refraction as it passes through a prism. Isaac NEWTON let a beam of sunlight pass through a glass prism and observed the white light spectrum. Then he took another identical glass prism and let the white light spectrum (rainbow) pass through it again, and he received the beam of white light again. In conclusion, the white light contains all the colours of the rainbow, and if at least one is missing, it is impossible to receive the pure white light again. Furthermore, the white as a colour is only visible if it can contain all the colours of the rainbow. This metaphor of light and rainbow is the fourth one to meditate on in our spiritual path. The foremothers and forefathers of the ecumenical movement made the claim of ‘the evangelisation of the world in this generation’. Why should we aim at a lesser goal than the unity of the Church in this generation, to see the radiating light again, not just the rainbow?
Suggested Literature KINNAMON Michael, Truth and Community. Diversity and its Limits in the Ecumenical Movement. Grand Rapids, 1988. RAISER Konrad, Ecumenism in Transition. A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? Geneva, 1991. RAISER Konrad, To Be the Church. Challenges and Hopes for the New Millennium. Geneva, 1997. REUVER Marc – SOLMS Friedhelm – HUIZER Gerrit, The Ecumenical Movement Tomorrow. Suggestions for Approaches and Alternatives. Kampen, 1993. THOROGOOD Bernard, One Wind, Many Flames. Church Unity and the Diversity of the Churches. Geneva, 1991.
NAGYPÁL Szabolcs (1974) is a graduate in law, literature and ecumenical theology. He is Roman Catholic, a theologian in the Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI) in Pannonhalma, Hungary. He is a former chairperson of KÖD (Magyar SCM), and is currently a member of WSCF European Regional Committee (ERC) and global Executive Committee (ExCo). He is the editor-in-chief of Student World and Mozaik.
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Methodological
Henrik Lindberg H A N S E N
Dualism as the Productive Basis of Christianity The choices we have to make as humans are almost never ‘black and white’. There is always an angle or a point of view for the open-minded, which can change focus radically to the opposite. What is wondrous about the world is also what makes life uncertain. The multitude of choices and points of view derives ultimately from the eternity of creation. We can never be sure that we have taken each and every angle into account, and thus we can never be sure that we in fact hold the truth. Any claim to a truth must in this point of view be ‘black and white’ thinking. COGNITION AND BLACK-AND-WHITE THINKING The world is an immense and wondrous place. And we perceive it as such because we cannot encompass it in its magnitude. As we try to perceive it, it constantly slips out of the grasp of our cognition. If we zoom out, we can continue so far that not even our imagination can keep the pace; neither can we count the times we can imagine dividing something material. Both in the whole and in the tiny part of the world our imagination, our ability of cognition is bordered only by the concept of eternity. And what defines eternity is that we cannot understand it, we cannot grasp it – it is the term used for anything that eludes our cognition. This is what makes the world a wondrous place. Living in the unpredictable – and more than that; living out the unpredictable. Being a Christian constitutes the foundation of living, as the love of God in which we continually are created gives meaning to each and every act of human. But it does not provide us with ready answers that would deprive us of the responsibility of living. We are responsible for what we think, say and do – and even more so as Christians, as we are responsible in accordance with the love in which we are continually created and nurtured. Thus being a Christian does not strip the world of its mysterious magnitude. DISCERNING IN ORDER TO CHOOSE Christians or not, we have to make choices. Even though we know that we make our choices on uncertain grounds, we have to make decisions to live. We have to decide whether to walk this way or the other. We have to decide what to eat (which is a big question considering the structures of the economy of the world). We have to decide what education we want – if we can afford one at all. We have to decide whether or not to have children. And each time we make a decision, we define our view on the world – and we define our view on ourselves in the world. As we cannot grasp the world as a whole, we have to categorize and simplify the world
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to an understanding, which can be the basis for our choices. In life we embark on the impossible task of deciphering the world into something we can grasp, but in doing so we always simplify, because it is the only way we can get close to an understanding we can use as the base of our actions. We cannot understand everything, so we have to simplify the world to a degree that we can understand. When we see a person, we categorize him or her according to continents, countries, cities; we categorize in education, income, work, fitness, etc. It is a big world and none of us can grasp it in its whole. We have to make up categories to separate groups from groups. This is the only way even to get closer to an understanding of our surroundings as a whole. This is not a problem; it is a necessity. The problem arises when this tool of understanding stands in the way of perceiving people and situations as they are. This tool of categorizing the world in order to understand it should know its limits. When we move into a problem or get to know a person, these are usually more detailed than any pre-made categories. If we do not set aside the categories to understand the problem or meet the person, then the ‘black and white’ thinking starts. DUALISMS OF CHRISTIANITY The Bible in numerous places refers to God as good. If anything, this is essential to Christianity, because it is so essential to a human’s understanding of oneself. God defines what good is, and this legitimizes our lives – it legitimizes life itself. We were made in the image of God; this is very important in the Christian self-understanding. We are good. We are accepted as the creations derived from the Creator. But as much as God is good, there is something, which is evil. There is something we can do, with which we turn our backs to the good God. God created human and God saw that it was good, but then something happened, human failed and evil entered the world. In my view on Christianity there is no doubt as to whether or not it is dualistic. There would be no meaning in the word good if it was not for something being evil, as there would be no meaning in the word God if God was not good. This means of course that it is not God Who is dualistic in God’s being; it is the way we live out God in the world which constitutes a dualism. We were created as Imago Dei, in the image of God. As humans we are invested with the power of God from creation. This automatically establishes the God-given purpose of life. The purpose of human is to live out this God-like power. This is good. To purposely avoid doing so constitutes evil. What then is the power of God and how can this not be ‘black and white’ thinking?
Methodological THE DYNAMIC LIBERATING LOVE OF GOD The Bible can be used as a well-established, welldefined moral code. We can sit down as we encounter the dilemmas of the world and read in the Bible to find similar situations and apply these to our lives today. This would in my opinion constitute ‘black and white’ thinking as it does not embrace the dynamics of the organic concept of the love of God. The laws and moral codes of the New Testament are not based on themselves. They are not stagnant principles, which can be applied to our lives without consideration. This is obvious when we turn our attention to Mark 2:27, where the disciples were accused of breaking the Sabbath: ‘The Sabbath was made for human and not human for the Sabbath’. The prohibitions do not live apart from human – they do not live a life on their own. The moral code varies – the world is a changing place, and the moral code must change with it. The good in Christianity is not once and for all determined; it will change from time to time and from situation to situation, and so it does because it has its roots in something we cannot grasp, as little as we can grasp life. It has its roots in the love of God. The love of God determines our actions not once and for all but in each and every situation. LIVING MORALS AND THE LOVE OF GOD Paul reasons in 1 Corinthians 8:13 for a prohibition by saying: ‘Therefore, if food makes my sister or brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my sister or brother stumble’. Paul argues that we can do as we like, as long as it does not harm our fellow Christians – or any one else, I dare add. The moral code in the New Testament is not static, because it is a code built on a living thing. It is the power of creation. It is life breaking through. It is the Love of God. There is no ‘black and white’ in the preaching of Christ. He did not condemn the whore. He lives his life among thieves and beggars. And so he does because his preaching is in his actions, and his bidding is (John 13:34b): ‘that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another’. These are the God-like powers of human given in the creation. The power, the life, the love of God. This we can live out. And we will realize that in living out the love we live out God. It is explicit in Matthew 25:34–46: ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ In living out love, we live out God. 1 John 4, 8: ‘One who does not love does not know God, for God is love.’
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for all, but we feel it in each and every situation. The love lived out is the purpose of our God-given lives. Love misused is a tragedy to God as it is a rejection of God. When we redirect our love away from the creation of God and direct it solely towards our self or towards our smaller community – towards our part of the world, then we reject God, as we corrupt God’s love. When laws stand in the ways of inter-human prosperity, then these laws do not reflect the love of God, and the love of God will highlight them as an abomination to God. When pre-made definitions of the person in front of us cloud our view of this person as a creation of the loving God, then the love of God will open our eyes to this person if we are open to this love. UNDERSTANDING IS BEING HUMBLE There is something in Christianity, which is good, and something which is evil. But that does not make Christian thinking ‘black and white’, even though ‘black and white’ thinking is dualistic. Christianity as a dualism between good and evil – between what we are created for, and what we are not created for seeks out the inequities by separating the two. And it shatters any ‘black and white’ thinking by drawing each person up close in the love of God. We avoid ‘black and white’ thinking by being humble in the meeting with the immense and wondrous creation. In our cognition each and every one of us try to grasp the world, and we do so in many ways, and thus we do not have the right to lay claim to any ultimate truth. Our approach to the truth is much more practical. What we can do is walking through life with the love of God as our guideline – and enjoy the breathtaking marvels of a creation created in the love of God.
Henrik Lindberg HANSEN was born in 1974 in Denmark. He lives in Copenhagen, where he is working for the ecumenical youth of Denmark, after finishing his theological studies. He attends mass at the Danish Lutheran Church. His email address is LindbergHansen@hotmail.com.
DUALISTIC PRODUCTIVITY This love, the life, the power of God can be misused by humans. And through that dualism emerges. Paul underlines the dualism in Romans 7:15b: ‘For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do’. Paul knows what is good, as we all do. We also know, what is wrong, because we know what is good. We do not know it once and
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Bogdan P O P E S C U
The Dualistic Thought of Augustine of Hippo: A Step towards the Contemporary Thought The contemporary dualistic thought does not represent a new way of understanding. The actual problems have roots in the history. At the beginning of the fifth century, the bishop of Hippo, AUGUSTINE followed an old pattern and changed the entire perception of the contemporaries. Instead of speaking about a holy empire and an official Church, he promoted the idea of the two separate worlds: the city of earth and the city of heaven. TWO CITIZENSHIPS Influenced by ARISTOTLE and PLATO, AUGUSTINE considered Christians to be aliens, pilgrims on the Earth, living in ephemeral earthly states and travelling to their real destination: the Kingdom of God. In his book, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), he developed a philosophy of history, on two opposite worlds, which coexisted from the beginning of the creation. The dramatic split began with the fall of the bad angels who formed two different groups. On earth, the two cities have two ancient fathers: Cain and Abel. Belonging to this world, Cain established a city, founded on a fratricide and self-love. Abel, as an alien sojourner within an enemy territory, did not found a city, because he knew that his citizenship was in heaven. In book XV, AUGUSTINE speaks already about the two cities, “one consisting of those who live according to human, the other of those who live according to God. One is predestined to reign eternally with God and the other to
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suffer eternal punishment with the devil.” He divided human history, presenting in parallel the citizens of heaven and “massa perditionis” (crowd of lost people). All the events succeed in an antithetical way. Isaac, born from a free woman, was a child of grace; Ishmael, the son of Hagar, was born according to the flesh. The children of humans built the tower of Babylon; Noah, Shem, Jacob, Judah and Moses were citizens of heaven. The earthly Jerusalem was just a shadow of the heavenly city and the temple of Solomon, a type for the Christian Church. The children of the world established their cities. At the time of the Exodus, they instituted the games of Delphi, and Hercules was honoured in Tyre. When the Judges ruled the Israelites, they invented fables and legends, about Minotaur, Centaurs, Gorgon, Pegasus, Dedalus and Icarus. At the time of the Jewish captivity in Babylon, the natural philosophers, ANAXIMANDER, ANAXIMENES and XENOPHANES lived. Earthly kingdoms rose and fell in Assyria and Argos. The Roman Empire is just another state of this world: it is not a surprise that another Cain founded a city, which was destined to reign over many nations, to be the ruler of the earthly city. REAL JUSTICE AND TRUE LOVE AUGUSTINE considers that a first mark of a fallen society is the absence of true justice. He makes a clear distinction between the eternal law, identified with the will and wisdom of God, and the imperfect human law. The eternal
Methodological law does not suffer any change, but the temporal one has to be adapted to the changes of the society and its efficacy is related to the need of earthly goods. They constitute a basis for two different cities, but while the former leads the people to the true Kingdom, the latter is just a concession to the human weakness, a deformed image of the true justice. The temporal law does not help the citizens to become virtuous but takes care of the body and its external needs. AUGUSTINE believes that injustice is an unavoidable part of civil life: in human trials, corrupted judges often condemn the innocent and guilty persons live a happy life. No state could be called just, since his inhabitants are not just. For this reason, AUGUSTINE rejects CICERO’s definition of the republic: the will of the people which forms an assembly associated by a common acknowledgement of right and by a community of interests. We cannot speak on earth about a true justice and where there is no justice, there is no right. So, there cannot be a common acknowledgement of right and therefore there is no people (populus) who can form a republic. AUGUSTINE maintains that people are not united by law but by the common objects of their love. In order to discover the character of any people we only have to observe what they love. In fact, “civitas Dei” is governed by the love of God and “civitas terrena” is governed by self-love. The heavenly city is bound by a love that transcends time, race, nationality or institutions and the citizens do not need other laws except the law of love. They are governed by the principle “love and do whatever you want”. The people of the earthly kingdom are possessed by love for material goods, which they do not want to share with others. A person who followed the same principle founded Rome: Romulus never knew that love does not divide but multiply possession. Guided by this false love, the children of sæculum try to obtain the earthly values through egoistic ways. Injustice proceeds from disordered love. The love of the earth is blind while the heavenly one is conscious: “Rome made its founder Romulus a god because it loved him but the Church loved Christ because it believed Him to be God”, said AUGUSTINE. CHRISTIANS AND THE STATE For AUGUSTINE, the state is just a necessary evil that maintains an external peace and overcomes violence. Its purpose is not to promote a moral order but to force its citizens to avoid violent acts. The state is a non-natural institution. The law, the private property and the army are just marks of the sin and do not belong to the original plan of creation. AUGUSTINE compares the earthly kingdoms to bands of robbers. The only difference is that nobody can punish an emperor. The state has to be considered, according to AUGUSTINE, a remedial instrument, which prevents greater evils. While EUSEBIUS adopted the assumption that the Christian Roman Empire could embrace the standards of the Gospel, AUGUSTINE stresses that the two cities cannot be united in a perfect Christian state. The real city does not need all the earthly institutions and it leads to the end of all the political structures.
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The question could be raised about what attitude should be adopted by Christians, regarding the secular coercive instruments. Should they fight against them, try to transform it or better refuse any cooperation with it? The bishop of Hippo is convinced that Christians should not behave like the Donatists, who ran away from society in order to preserve their holiness. They have to coexist with the sinners as the wheat does with the tares and wait for the harvest. The world is the space where Christians and nonChristians have to meet. The children of heaven, aliens on this earth, must respect the secular institution, considering them non-natural but necessary to overcome violence. The leaderships can be unjust but God positions them with a special purpose, according to the divine economy. The heavenly people should not fight against them. It is impossible to change a fallen society and this is not a mission of Christians who have their own society. They have a heavenly life on earth, even though they respect the rules of the sæculum. They are humble before the rulers of this world not by fear or by conviction, but because God allowed these leaders to exist. The secular state can have an educative role for the Christians in a negative way. Disgusted by the evils of the society they understand better how important the achievement of the real citizenship is. The state can also play a positive role by persecuting the heretics and helping the Christians to keep the true faith, as it happened with the Donatists. Here AUGUSTINE accepts an intervention of the secular power, but considers it an exception in order to eliminate the “dry branches”. AUGUSTINE considers that Christians can be officials of the state but that they should not forget their real citizenship and use their power for the sake of the people. The heavenly virtue and the political power can coexist occasionally in the person of a Christian emperor, without being mixed together. There have been examples of citizens of heaven ruling the earthly states. These emperors must take care of the material problems of the state but they should not forget their real kingdom and its requirements. Christian emperors continue to be pilgrims in a foreign and sinful society. Rejecting Byzantine nationalism, AUGUSTINE thinks that Christians do not belong to a certain state, but rather transcend all temporary institutions: “This heavenly city while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that, however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of the earthly peace.” Another problem raised is whether the Christian Church should be identified with the city of God. It is obvious in De Civitate Dei that the Church as visible earthly institution cannot be identified with the city of God. Only the Church as a gathering of all just persons from all the ages and places can be called “Civitas Dei”. Even this is not the final, perfect and everlasting kingdom; it contains the seeds and foretaste of this reality and is the bride of Christ, a “Queen City”.
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THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS DOMINATION Another feature that differentiates the citizens of the two cities is the desire for domination. Losing the contact with the very God, the children of flesh try to compensate this by dominating their fellows and the material goods. This is a false domination because in fact they become slaves of earthly goods. Adam wanted to rule without God, considering himself as a centre of earthly values. The children of heaven replace this lust of domination with love, by using material goods because they are necessary for this life and are reminders of the Creator. They live with their fellow human beings in harmony and mutual love. For this reason “civitas terrena” has a history of wars and “civitas Dei” is a foretaste of the eternal peace. AUGUSTINE rejects the idea of domination but accepts the hierarchy of the state as a necessary evil, which keeps under control the “libido dominandi”, the sinister shadow on the love of God. By contrary, in the heavenly kingdom, the exercise of authority must be conceived as service. The dominion over fellows is considered non-natural, a regrettable consequence of the fall. The children of earth love the lust of power but the children of heaven consider God their power. As long as we are not able to dominate the passions, we cannot claim complete self-determination and cannot lead the others. First we must be our own masters, then we can relate to our neighbours, not like masters, but like components of one body. Christians should act as organs of a body, by having different functions without dominating the others: “In the blessed city there shall be this great blessing, that no inferior shall envy any superior, as now the archangels are not envied by the angels…as in the body the finger does not seek to be the eye, though both members are harmoniously included in the complete structure of the body.” For the same reason, slavery is a non-natural institution, a sign of the fall. Possessed by the “libido dominandi”, the sons of this world have been from the beginning kings and warriors, exercising their power by conquering and subduing. Sinners do not like to share and live in harmony like the redeemed, and for this reason the city of earth is divided into fragments that fight continuously. Therefore, the source of war is nothing less than perverted will and misdirected passion. One of the main features of “civitas Dei” is the gift of peace as a foretaste of the everlasting heavenly peace. Christians should not use force or start wars even when they are persecuted. In contrast, the children of flesh break the external peace because they do not have peace
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Methodological in their souls and cannot resolve the tension between spirit and flesh. Still, in a fallen condition they keep the idea of peace as a value: they do not start wars to provoke everlasting conflicts but to attain a favourable peace, a perverted peace, imposed by force. The heavenly peace of communion and mutual love is important. This peace is not imposed but arises as a natural consequence. It is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment in God and of one another in God. Even “Pax Romana” will not last, as it is unnatural and imposed by force. An empire founded on a fratricide cannot find its peace. The Romans, ignoring real harmony, tried to establish their own harmony, based on self-control, military discipline and well-organized political institutions. THE CONTEMPORARY AUGUSTINE Under the influence of Platonic philosophy, the relationship between Church and state lost the characteristics of the Byzantine symphony. The bishop of Hippo rejects the assumption of EUSEBIUS that the Roman Empire can become holy, embracing Christianity. The two “cities” are two distinct realities and the only common denominator is the short period, while the citizens of heaven are pilgrims on earth. All the institutions of the state are considered non-natural, but necessary to overcome greater conflicts. This conception changed the entire history of Western Europe, and its echoes stood at the basis of the modern Western society. This dualistic thought is still present in our age. Many Christians consider the institutions of the state dangerous traps for their spiritual life and refuse to be involved in these structures. Some Christians leave the crowded cities to live in peaceful places isolated from the “sinful” world. The Platonic perception, adopted by AUGUSTINE, is still alive. Maybe we live in a sinful world and there is a gap between our real goal and the earthly issues. The history of the Byzantine Empire proved that it could be dangerous to mix “civitas Dei” and “civitas terrena”. Still I believe that the two worlds could be complementary. Good Christians have to live in the world and they have to influence it. Rejection is not a solution, because we received from God the important task to reshape and transform this world. We must be the good dough, involved in the secular state. Of course, we cannot make the state a Christian institution, but the citizens could become better Christians in their ways towards the everlasting kingdom.
Bogdan POPESCU (1976) graduated in the Orthodox Theological Seminary of Bucharest (1996) and in the Faculty of Theology, University of Bucharest (2000). He has a Master’s Degree in Ecumenical Studies (Bossey, 2002). Currently he is a PhD student of Patristics in Sibiu. He is also an assistant lecturer of History in the Orthodox Theological Seminary of Bucharest. His email address is bogdanpopescu76@hotmail.com.
Artistic
MOZAIK
2003/2
Peter C I A C C I O
Harry Potter and the Black-and-White Thinking Some Christians believe that the works of Joanne K. ROWLING are anti-Christian because they deal with magic and magic is somehow alternative or dangerous for Christian faith. These censors forget that children’s books have certain characteristics and, as the Italian philosopher and writer, Umberto ECO said, maybe they are afraid of magic because they are the only ones to believe magic is real. CHILDREN BOOKS DESCRIBE REALITY Unlike these extremists, children unconsciously perceive the difference between fiction and reality surprisingly well and they know that magic does not exist. Fairy tales and children’s books explain the real world to the little ones who need to understand it in their own language. Thus, many unpleasant realities are told to children in a metaphoric way. For example, no child would ever think to find a wolf disguised as her or his grandmother: the wolf in Little Red Hiding Hood is a clear metaphor of violence and murder of children, as the witch in Hansel and Gretel. On the other hand, ways of escaping the “villains” are told in children’s books: Cinderella teaches humbleness and telling the truth means the end of Pinocchio’s problems. Jesus followed the same narrative pattern when teaching by parables. What is the Kingdom of God like? We could not understand a “scientific” description of it. Jesus answers in a way that we may understand: the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, a shepherd searching for the lost sheep, a master inviting to a banquet, and so on. The mustard seed, the shepherd, and the master are fictional characters. This does not mean that the parables are false, because they truly talk of the Kingdom, which is real. The Harry Potter story is very complete. One can find in it most of the patterns of children’s literature, as it is the magic story of a noble orphan at college. It is a universal story, where everyone can find something for oneself, like in a rainbow. Can we decipher a specific relationship between ROWLING’s works and black-andwhite thinking? Let us examine how the author presents a few pairs of opposites in the story of Harry Potter.
bedroom, but lives worse than an animal in a storeroom under the stairs. They are ashamed of their forced relationship with the weird son of the disgraceful Lily. On the other side, there are “pure-blood” witches and wizards who dislike non-magicians (the word “Muggle” reminds of “muggins”, a synonymous for stupid) and hate the socalled “Mudbloods”, ie. non-pure-blood magicians. As a consequence of this dualism, at the time of Harry’s birth, the Death Eaters, a secret fellowship of hooded magicians (remember the Ku Klux Klan?), starts to kill as many Muggles and Mudbloods as possible, together with the magicians who tried to stop them. Their leader, the Dark Lord Voldemort, killed Harry’s parents, James and Lily; Lily died protecting baby Harry with her body. Then, he tried to kill Harry, but his death curse turned against himself. As a result, Voldemort lost all his powers and the Death Eaters disappeared, while little Harry only got a thunderbolt-shape scar on his forehead and became famous all over the magicians’ world. Eleven years later, Harry starts to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There, he meets the children of the Death Eaters, who insult his friend Hermione and his mother’s memory, because they are Mudblood. RICH VS. POOR Another classical dualism is based on wealth. Harry’s rival at school is Draco Malfoy, a spoiled son of a rich pure-blood (and former Death Eater) family. Malfoy continuously bullies Harry’s friend, Ron Weasley, not because of his blood (the Weasleys are an old family of magicians), but for their poor economic condition. The insults the Weasleys (red-haired and six-children-family) receive from the Malfoys (blond and one child) particularly
WITCHES AND WIZARDS VS. MUGGLES This is a crucial pair of opposites. Muggle is one of the many words invented by ROWLING to describe something related to the parallel magic world. Muggle means non-magician. Harry lives with a terrible Muggle family, the Dursleys: Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley. Petunia is the sister of Harry’s mother, Lily, who did not belong to a magicians’ family, but had the skills to become a witch. This is a breach in the dualistic organisation of two parallel societies: it is impossible to divide humans in two pure categories. Yet, many people on both sides like this dualism. In fact, the Dursleys affirm it by spoiling Dudley and bullying Harry, who does not have a
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remind of the racist remarks of some English people towards the Irish, and generally other similar racist dualistic behaviour. Harry Potter overcomes this pattern, because, even if he has inherited a fortune from his parents, he respects the Weasleys and is very careful not to offend Ron’s pride by offering him money as to a beggar. Harry’s wealth brings us to a possible Biblical parallel. He is extremely rich in the magicians’ society, while when he is home at the Dursleys, he does not even have a decent dress and he is underfed. In fact, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are eager to demonstrate how little value Harry has. It reminds us of Jesus’ words “you will have a treasure in heaven” (Mark 10:21). In fact, Harry’s situation is apparently dualistic in itself. The Dursleys dress him as a slave and treat him worse than a pet. On the other hand, when Harry is at school, he is the school champion, the hero who saved the world from Voldemort: he is socially, spiritually and economically rich. His relationship with the magicians’ society is eschatological: it is the place where he gets his reward. This reminds us of a Christian who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. Still, Harry’s behaviour overcomes dualism, since he does not use his new wealth in order to get to the “other side”. He does not accept this unjust order and rebels: he does not take revenge on the Dursleys and he refuses the Malfoys’ behaviour towards the Weasleys. This sounds as a very Christian behaviour towards eschatology. GOOD VS. EVIL In such a plot, the relationship between good and evil is crucial. From Harry’s point of view, the bad guys killed his parents, who were the good guys. This is a typical “involuntary” black-and-white thinking: it is a quite understandable and reasonable reaction. This mental pattern is then projected to the rest of Harry’s relationships. His friends are the good guys and his enemies are the bad guys. This is the dualistic pattern that Harry has more difficulty to overcome, due to the dramatic way he became an orphan. The inadequacy of such a “good guys vs. bad guys” scheme is evident for a very interesting character: Professor Severus Snape. He is slippery, he finds joy in punishing Harry and his friends and in awarding his enemies, he is the head of the students’ house rival of Harry’s, he is frustrated because he teaches “Potions” instead of his favourite subject “Defence from the Dark Arts”; if it was not enough, he is dressed in black and his name reminds of a severe snake. Well, every time the school is in danger or Voldemort tries to come back and to kill Harry, the boy accuses Snape. Still, the headmaster, professor Albus Dumbledore (albus in Latin means “white”!), who protected Harry since his birth and who is considered the greatest wizard of all times, says that Snape is trustful. Even so, the boy points his finger at Snape. Surely Snape is an obscure character. Once he was among Voldemort’s followers; yet, he betrayed the Dark Lord and his fellow Death Eaters. All the same, in every book (till now, at least), Snape is not only innocent, but he also saves Harry from any efforts to kill him. It is difficult for Harry to admit that people who do not like him are not automatically bad. When shadows on the myth of James Potter arise little by little, it is even more difficult for Harry to overcome his black-and-white thinking. Still, ROWLING wants the reader to make this distinction.
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It is easier to live in a world divided between good guys and bad guys. Moreover, it is easier to reach power and consensus by pointing one’s finger on the bad guys, who are not automatically bad people: they are just the “others”. For example, Adolf HITLER indicated the “Jews” and Josif STALIN the “Enemies of the People”. Black-and-white thinking is often “successful” in human history. Let us just remember that Dietrich BONHOEFFER in his Ethics warned that success it is not automatically a characteristic of good. SERIOUSLY OVERCOMING DUALISM Even if Muggles have the same rights as witches and wizards, even if rich people should respectfully relate to poor people, even if nasty people cannot automatically be considered bad people and nice people cannot automatically be considered good people, there must be a way to distinguish people. Overcoming dualism does not mean erasing differences. Overcoming dualism is not a trivial task. In fact, the story of Harry Potter does not consider all the characters at the same level. In the fourth book, in his end-of-the-year speech, professor Dumbledore explains the violent death of a student: “He was a person who exemplified many of the qualities which distinguish his student’s house: he was a good and loyal friend, a hard worker, he valued fair play. I think that you have the right to know exactly how it came about. He was murdered by Lord Voldemort. The Ministry of Magic does not wish me to tell you this. It is my belief, however, that the truth is preferable to lies and that any attempt to pretend that he died as the result of an accident, or some sort of blunder of his own, is an insult to his memory. Remember him. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right, and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember his name.” So, there are no rigid criteria but a clear methodology. As the first point, one should remember; memory without revenge, keeping history in mind can help overcoming dualistic patterns. The second point is justice: if a good, kind and brave boy is intentionally killed, the murderer is not to be followed, because there are evident limits that should not be crossed. As a third point, it is better and more respectful to be sincere. Quoting a book on the history of WSCF, it seems to me that the way suggested by ROWLING to overcome black-and-white thinking is by “seeking and serving the truth”, remembering that the seeking moment is no less important than the serving moment. Finally a question to Christian censors, who are afraid of Harry Potter: is this not a Christian message?
Suggested Reading ROWLING Joanne K., Harry ROWLING Joanne K., Harry ROWLING Joanne K., Harry ROWLING Joanne K., Harry ROWLING Joanne K., Harry
Potter Potter Potter Potter Potter
and and and and and
the the the the the
Philosopher’s Stone. London, 1997. Chamber of Secrets. London, 1998. Prisoner of Azkaban. London, 1999. Goblet of Fire. London, 2000. Order of the Phoenix. London, 2003.
Peter CIACCIO was born in Belfast in 1975. He is a Methodist student at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome. He is a member of FGEI, the Italian SCM. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as vice-chairperson in the European Regional Committee (ERC) of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). His email address is peterciaccio@yahoo.com.
Artistic
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2003/2
Z u z a n a Sˇ I C K O V Á - M E Sˇ K O V Á
Abstract Art in the Church The present-day Church is subject to influences coming from the modern art-scene as well as from our more local cultural backgrounds. The human society as well as individuals is often unable to make a clear distinction between spiritual and cultural impetuses that are behind the visible products of our world. Thus, more and more often abstraction is used as a tool not only in our considerations but also in artistic representation in the newly built churches. Can we claim that the presence of abstract art in the Church is something good, and helps the believers in their search for God? What is behind the abstract art in the Church? THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ABSTRACTION In the dictionary of art we find that the word ‘abstraction’ refers to a common process of acquiring knowledge and its result where its individual elements become connected in a conception. Abstraction helps to understand objective reality more deeply, penetrates its substance and processuality. In art, abstraction is understood as the deviation of the image from the reality which can be grasped through a common experience. This deviation concerns a whole system of forms and shapes and is one of the most fundamental conditions of an artistic reflection of reality, as well as of empirical, rational and emotional perception and consideration. The transformation of the world may try to come closer, to approach reality or may try to lead to a bigger distance from it. Examples of expressing human experience of the world in a way which attempts to bring reality closer to the humans are offered to us by realism, verism or trompe l’oeil. On the other hand, the example of distance from reality can be ornamentation or abstract art. But abstraction, as a distance from reality, does not mean a lack of connection or a less truthful representation of reality. Abstract art is just not concrete, not object-oriented, non-figurative or not “pure” art. When people start to speak about modern art, they frequently think of art which breaks the connection with the artistic traditions of the past. In all church buildings, art is omnipresent. Even if we imagine an utterly modern church with a plain and white decoration, we soon realize that art is included in it. Art in the church can be hidden in the shape of the altar,
in the shape of the windows, in the features of the pews or in the objects used during Eucharistic ceremony. The main problem of the new churches is a disharmonic perception between the possibilities and functions of art and the requirements of the Church. ABSTRACT ART IN SACRAL SURROUNDINGS Some of the topics adopted from the Bible by the Christian culture as a constant motif for artists could be shown or be adapted to new circumstances. These can cause shock if they offer us a new perspective of a view. In the year 1962, for example, the artist who really had the courage to play with such a sensitive motif as the “Three Studies of Crucifixion of Christ” was the non-religious British artist Francis BACON. The abstract way of thinking about art of Francis BACON projects ruthless brutality and aggression. He connected art and the topics of Christianity in an uncommon way. The person in his depiction is deformed to an amorphous bunch of flesh. There abstraction was a means of representation of the ideas of the artist, not the destination of his creative process. The main idea of his work, which used to be crucifixion, was substituted by a representation of the subjective emotions and trauma of a person that is about to die. Abstraction here was the only means of language to express the artist’s idea. Another example depicting a confrontation of the Church with modern art can be the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Vogeze, LE CORBUSIER’s functional architectural construction (1955). This chapel inspired and influenced the construction of many other modern ecclesial buildings. Another type of abstraction is the expressionist decoration of churches in the period after the Second World War. During these times, however, abstract art was used as a way of decoration, not as a way of shocking religious public. French artist Alfred MANESSIER helped the abstract art to find its way into the artistic enviroment of the Church. Inspired by the medieval windowpanes, he created a poetic work full of formal features which suggested some relations to concrete subjects. The abstract element in this was the form of the transmission of the topic.
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ABSTRACT ART AND SPIRITUALITY Today, modern art and religion are domains which often lead separate lives and are even disconnected from each other. The tendency is to view them as two completely different spheres of meditation and action. The commonplace point of view is that modern art and religion cannot be connected at all, nor can they become united in a final product. People who are little familiar with potential interaction of modern art and religion often claim that these two spheres of human expression should be put into entirely different categories (anti-position), since their spiritual message is completely different or that they even can mediate opposite messages. Our contemporary culture and society look at the modern art through the “glasses with a too profane filter”, through which the spirituality of modern art appears to have a lesser value compared to the profound spiritual tradition of the historical Church. As a consequence, collaboration between contemporary art with its abstract forms and elements on one hand and the spiritual message of the Christian Church on the other seems to be impossible to these people. The problem in this way of viewing reality is the perception of quality. In this setting the role of abstract art in today’s Church is getting more and more marginalized. But, as a matter of fact, abstract art can mediate and call for a strong and high-level spirituality. FEARS AND DECORATION There is yet another problem with abstract art and its function in the Church. We can describe it as a certain “fear” of using abstract art in the Church. There are many questions coming to mind connected to this. Many of them are linked with the disputed adequacy (or inadequacy) of abstract art as a medium of decoration of the stories on which Christianity is based and which are regarded as necessary sources of inspiration for a Christian artist. Will abstract art thus be able to follow and embody the Biblical message of the Church? The historical tradition has strong rules. There is a certain kind of routine in the perception of art in the Church. An application of figurative art in the Church refers to a certain kind of iconography, which has become a secondhand approach in the XXI century. With its featers and patterns it might not be able to speak to the believers of the post-modern age in the same way as it did in the preceding centuries. Even in cases where the tendency to implement abstract art in the Church can be felt, its function remains only as a medium of distance from reality, visible in decoration. When viewing and perceiving abstract art in a religious setting of today one usually looks for the messages of the old iconography to which we are accustomed. If one is unable to find familiar messages, motives and
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Artistic forms of representation, one has problems understanding what is behind the abstract representation. The fear of the unknown comes into the game. Thus, behind the refusal of abstract art, there often can be a hidden fear of accepting something new. MYSTERY, HARMONY AND ATMOSPHERE Accepting new things and phenomena calls the viewer to be more active in perception, to look for an internal mirror which could provoke yet another concern: are we active enough in our perception of the world? Can we represent ideas or topics rooted in a religious tradition in an abstract form and at the same time make them understandable? Can abstract art illustrate or symbolize a religious story? Abstract art, just like the stories of Christian spirituality, has the ability to talk through allegory. It is often maintained that it is necessary to find a new language of art in the Church which would be based on contemporary conditions, on the present state of the world and the humankind with all its complexity. Reflecting the needs of the actual world and rooting itself in the signs of the times abstract art adopted by the Church could talk to the human of our age. It could and can be a mediator of the Christian message like any other kind of art with a typical iconographical program. Beyond the shapes of an abstract artefact produced for/in the Church, we should be able to discover and explore such fundamental imperatives of religious life as dialogue, proclamation, concretisation, mystery, harmony and atmosphere. The perception of abstraction is like the perception of music - an invisible river of allegory and message in one. It may take some time until abstract art as one of the main characteristics of our age will find its way into a fruitful and more harmonious collaboration with the Church of our age, which is characterized by certain setting of priorities, structures, hopes and fears. Similarly it might prove to be an at times uneasy process for the Church to open up for artistic challenges which emerge from environments which might be for one reason or another alienated from the Church to some extent. Nevertheless the Church learns as it goes and it makes her proclamation up-to-date if she proves to be able to discern the signs of the times with their inspiration and freshness. Then even silence can become more authentic, dialogue more intensive and message more comprehensive.
Zuzana Sˇ ICKOVÁ-MESKOVÁ ˇ was born in 1977 in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. She is Roman Catholic, an assistant of French language at the Comenius University, Bratislava. She studied art education and French in Bratislava, and art history at the Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Her individual exhibitions include CROUS in Clermont-Ferrand (June 2002) and Con-Tiki in Bratislava (December 2002). Her email address is zuzkamesko@hotmail.com.
Artistic
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Maria S T A M P A
Caterpillar – Chrysalis – Butterfly The Terrestrial and Celestial Struggles of Opposites in William Blake’s Poems and Paintings William BLAKE’S poems and paintings are rich in singular topics and colours. His sensitivity toward the marginalized, the forgotten and the weak on one hand is combined with a penetrative attention pointed at the great, the mighty and the transcendent on the other hand. This broadness of interests predestines him to be more than a ‘centric’ artist – theocentric, anthropocentric or zoocentric. BLAKE is neither a mystic nor a realist. He is the bridge(s) between the three worlds. He has ears that can hear, he has eyes that can see and he has instincts that he can rely on. These abilities make him capable of calling the lapsed soul and the turned away earth to return to the starry floor and the watery shore that is given them till the break of day. He is the Bard. He leads our steps with his songs. TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT Not only tigers are burning bright in William BLAKE’s colourful imagery. In his understanding a robin red breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage and a dog starved at his master’s gate predicts the ruin of the state. A forgotten suffering of an animal reaches the great Beyond in ways unknown to humans. BLAKE’s animals play their stage roles in a silent way – one is a good omen, one a nemesis, one walks proudly in display of its power, one cries hidden in a corner. Silent, silent, burning bright... But BLAKE sees the pendulum of power swing in both directions. The fire burns in silence and spreads unnoticed accross the sleeping country. A mute beast makes empires decay and cries j’accuse in the Council of Angels. And the heavens are compassionate... “A Skylark wounded in the wing a Cherubim does cease to sing.” The heavens do not hesitate to prove the human wrong. Haughty and wrong. And so it is at times the human’s silent friend who brings the reconciliatory message of the celestial spheres and becomes the sign of the times – “the Lamb misus’d breeds public strife and yet forgives the Butcher’s Knife.” A wronged lamb turns its dying eye onto the butcher, and its silent mouth leaves the cry in the soul. It cannot remain unheard. BLAKE might want to keep it in between the lines, but it resounds from his words anyway: An animal is not just an animal. It is a messenger. Just like in ancient myths animals are turned into angels sent by the Providence to the human with a reproach for cruelty, an impetus for creativity and a word of consolation in sadness and anxiety. A tongueless fish talks into the ears of those who are able to hear its voice. The life of animals is an indicator for the present and a prophecy for the future. The animals, however, do not play this role alone; they are together with the children and the infants. They need to be listened to, respected and taken the utmost seriously. They play an essential role in the very revelation of the transcendence, since “we are
led to Believe a Lie when we see not Thro’ the Eye”. They still carry in themselves the inborn knowledge and image of Transcendence that we lost on our way of reaching adulthood. A HUMAN RED BREAST IN A CAGE A human gets trapped. A powerless human sees the world through the bars of her or his cage. Like the robin red breast tied with shackles to the ground. “A Harlot’s cry from Street to Street shall weave old England’s winding Sheet.” But in a dark side street of a metropolis the unimportant suddenly becomes important. And William BLAKE looks hard to catch these moments that evaporate so fast. The deserted becomes decisive. A lonely harlot, a hungry chimney sweeper, a slaughtered lamb, a hunted hare and a wounded lark are in the spotlight of BLAKE’s visionary poems. Mothers and fathers, who do not get tired of walking and weeping day and night looking for their lost little girl, are set as examples of how to read and live with the signs of the time. How to live a life of mercy, pity, peace and love in a human dress. When it comes to the “crème de la crème” of the human power pyramid, BLAKE proves to be a person with an unscrupulous conscience and a sword-like tongue. He decides deliberately not to pay the “due” respect to selfdeclared and self-imposed authorities. The ephemeral worldly power can become an octopus that sows the seeds of unrest and suffering in the world. “The Strongest Poison ever known came from Caesar’s Laurel Crown.” A human red breast gets trapped in a cage made by another human’s hand. In the fiery furnace of a smith instruments of pain are forged. “Nought can deform the Human Race like the Armour’s iron brace.” William BLAKE exclaims in a verse that the armour of the deformed human is made of cruelty, jealousy, terror, secrecy and selfish-love. Having gained and developed these “adult” skills one points one’s high-powered attention at what gives power: gold, gems, weapons and the doubt about the Transcendence’s omnipresence. In the sharp light of BLAKE’s burning vision this mighty human is dressed in forged iron, her or his form appears as a fiery forge, her or his face a furnace sealed and her or his heart a hungry gorge. This human, this forged iron tree bears the fruit of deceit, the fruit of her or his own sealed brain. The way you set your bed determines the way you rest, the ancient Phoenicians said. THE GREAT RED DRAGON AND THE WOMAN CLOTHED IN THE SUN The deformed human becomes a superhuman in her or his sealed brain. A dragon. This dragon is depicted by BLAKE in his Biblical illustration of the apocalyptic antiposition of the Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun. The armoured human is dressed in this painting in the musculous body of the Dragon. The Dragon
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faces the onlooker with his back – he does not seem to be able to come closer. His face is indeterminable. It looks like a face of an infernal being in part, but one is unable to see the Dragon’s entire countenance. His mighty tail symbolises his degenerated and tyrannical masculinity, and his whole appearance radiates power and dominance. He is in a combat position, ready to fight, ready to subdue. The composition of the painting, however, leaves the observer with the impression that a substantial part of the story of the Dragon is not included in the image. The painting itself depicts the Dragon in a position that conceals rather than reveals. It looks as if the Dragon was hiding something crucial through the way he appears to the eye of the observer. As if his heart was outside the painting. Fear and shame are present in the colours of the Dragon’s fluidum in an encrypted way. They envelop him silently. They are intrinsically mingled with the colours of power, determination and superiority. They are part of the Dragon’s nature. In spite of being frightening, the Dragon remains frightened himself. Afraid to show the whole of his being. Much rather, he turns the attention away from himself and aims it at the Woman, whom he is trying to subjugate. William BLAKE suggests the shift from introspection to violence. The Dragon, shying away from the possibility of shedding light on his own wounded inside, ashamed of himself, bursts out in violence in the hope of attaining the missing part of himself. The Woman Clothed in the Sun is neither a loser nor a winner at the present stage. It would be too early to determine the result of this celestial fight. Stars are sporadically depicted around them leading the eyes of the observer beyond the scene to realize that nothing can avoid the attention and presence of the Creator of all. Whether they realise it or not both the Dragon and the Woman remain contingent beings, dependent on the Beyond of the image. The Woman is Clothed in the Sun. Her fighting style is singular. Strategically she is in defence, but her sun dress embodies her mighty weakness. She has learnt the art of warfare from the pigeon, from the red robin, from the lamb and from the wild deer. She can be captured, subjugated, ridiculed for some time, but she knows the two principles of life that make her capable of going through the world and through her days safely. The first one being that human was made for joy and woe and these two are woven fine for one’s soul. These are the necessary materials for every truly human dress. Be it the dress of a woman or of a dragon. The
second is that God appears and God is light to those poor souls who dwell in the night. The woman keeps one eye on the starry floor and the other one on the Sun that she is clothed in. Her power is that she is in the battlefield without doubts. She fights, she escapes, and she defends herself according to the necessity, according to the signs of the times. She is pictured in the painting not only as the female symbol but also as a symbol of the divine soul that is deep inside everyone who comes in touch with the painting. William BLAKE takes a side and expresses his faith that everyone is given the divine image and it is in a very special way present amongst the innocent ones, who need a safe shelter against the dragon of power – the animals, the infants, the weak, the outcasts and the poor. BLAKE shouts into our partially deaf ears that often can hear only the sweet and frightening cry of the Red Dragon after having chosen adulthood, the timeless song of the Bard – turn away no more from the starry floor that is given you till the break of day. EACH OUTCRY OF THE HUNTED HARE A FIBRE FROM THE BRAIN DOES TEAR It is in one’s brain that one forges the armour of the dragon. And it is again in the fiery furnace of the brain that one can melt the very same armour. Brain as the instrument of torture and brain as the instrument of mercy and pity. Every human brain carries in itself the encoded potentialities of the Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun, of the laurel crown and the starry night. The child’s faith and the adult’s doubt. Becoming is a common human vocation. The first step is the consideration of options, the second the taking of sides. BLAKE depicted the mighty signs and the mighty fights to learn from them. He brought together the whole animal world and the human world with the Apocalypse to stop our breathing and make us wonder about the divine images we carry in our mind, blood and skin. And in our self-made real world. William BLAKE is standing on a bridge like a minstrel playing a song about the Great Divine Image that has a human form. And let us not be misled too often by our preconcepts. Why should the human form not be embodied most perfectly in children and in all those who are ready to lose in order to gain, who are ready to die and sacrifice in order to save? Becoming can in fact mean returning. Finding the source, the bridge and the other dimension that is in and beyond everything. Then the caterpillar can peacefully become a chrysalis, which in its due time shows the world its true beauty that for so long has been left unnoticed. The Caterpillar on the Leaf Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief. Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly, For the Last Judgement draweth nigh. (William BLAKE: Auguries of Innocence) Suggested Reading BLAKE William, Songs of Innocence (1789). BLAKE William, Songs of Experience (1794). BLAKE William, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun (1809). Watercolour, 34.3 x 42 cm., Brooklyn Museum, New York. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/red-dragon-william-blake.html. Maria STAMPA was born in Porto, Portugal. She received her BA in History of Arts in her home town. Afterwards she moved to Barcelona, Catalunya to study literature and she graduated in 2003. Her Master Thesis focused on female images in the XVIIIth century mystical poetry. Recently she has been working as a free-lance illustrator. Her email address is maria_stampa@yahoo.com.
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D a n i e l P A S T I R Cˇ A K
Miserere: Meditations on Psalm 51 King David slept with Uriah’s wife. She got pregnant. David had then him murdered. After some time he realised what he did; he laid on the cold floor of the Temple for one night and, in the morning, he wrote Psalm 51 (Miserere). I wrote my meditations while listening to Arvo PÄRT’S monumental Miserere. I was inspired not only by the music, but also by the ancient liturgical text. Miserere is also an old Christian text on resurrection and last judgement. MISERERE MEI, DEUS, SECUNDUM MAGNAM MISERICORDIAM TUAM A voice emerges almost unnoticed from silence. The lone elements of heaven flow without touch over the lonely voice of a man. Darkness, illuminated by gloomy streaks of light. Guilt and purity, emptiness. The horizontal peace of sea surface. Shapes from the amorphous to the objective, from the unclear to the specific. The potential for death, the potential for resurrection. The eggshell must break so that the bird inside can be resurrected. Singing: recitative in a single tone. Instruments: clarinet, oboe – a subtle light structure of two short tones. Empty space of silence, gentle feathers, short lines. Details lost in space. In the meeting of vocal and instrumental music, amidst the silence of long pauses, the earthly and heavenly elements come into a dialogue.
of tomorrow’s morning. Under the law we are closed in a motionless finish. For mercy I move towards a goal in a dance of creation in which I am formed. In law I am abandoned, completed by the hand of the Creator, and exposed on a little pedestal to the ruthless gaze of critics. To be a person means to be free and helpless at the same time. Free to make a decision and powerless to carry it out. The wind of hope blows between that freedom and powerlessness. The hope can drive us onto treacherous rocks, or drown us in hostile regions, but it can also blow us into the harbour of home. Only in the midst of Miserere, only snug in Mercy, can one be on the way home. AMPLIUS LAVA ME AB INIQUITATE MEA Colour: Ashy background; purple tones of the clarinet; halftones; shades; warm ochre of the vocals; crimson, pink, orange, lemon-coloured, white: pastel colours. Clear silver of the oboe, golden reflections. Coal earth-like black colour of the bass clarinet; earth-like brown clay spread over the smooth empty background; metallic colours of the organ – steel, bronze, turquoise blue.
ET SECUNDUM MULTITUDINEM MISERATIONUM TUARUM, DELE INIQUITATEM MEAM The wide, warm, deep tone of a bass clarinet moves up from the bottom, as a stretch of land on the horizon, as a depth full of shadows. The voice of the bass clarinet is lengthy, steady, unchanged; only occasionally interrupted by an intake of breath. Like a horizon in front of which a story, lit by footlights, unfolds. The tune develops slowly, almost indiscernibly, like leaf after leaf of a bud exposed to the light of a full moon. A human voice shines in it as worn-out gold in a probe under grey rough plaster, as if it was an icon in the ruins of a temple. GOD, BE MERCIFUL TO ME ACCORDING TO YOUR MERCY God, do not treat me according to myself. You are Mercy: Be to me according to Yourself. May You not be the mirror of myself! May my pride not fall onto me so that I am not despicable in Your eyes! May my ignorance not descend on me in Your silence! What are you asking for, David, when you call on God’s mercy? Without Mercy the “Self” is only a link in the chain of causes and consequences. Only if God surpasses the mechanics of causality, can the Absolute have the quality of Person. Only if God is personal, can one become a person. God, You approach me in mercy, as to someone whom I can become, not as to the one whom I have been so far. Blind law knows only what has happened, but it does not know that which could come to be. It spreads over the fossils of yesterday. But mercy opens the gate
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THOROUGHLY CLEANSE ME FROM MY GUILT If the evil with which I have identified is only forgiven, I have no hope that I could be changed. I need the inexorable truth to be changed. An author, when writing a text, always judges it and grants it mercy at the same time. The author is the first critic of the work, relentlessly scratching out parts of the text that must go. The text is granted mercy when new material is added to replace the cancelled lines; balance and unity return to the text. The pen in the author’s hand is the cross. The cross is a sign of judgement – profound erasure. The cross is a sign of mercy – new creation. QUONIAM INIQUITATEM MEAM EGO COGNOSCO Vocals ascend from depth. They grow stronger, overlap, and turn around in a whirl, like leaves driven by autumn wind. In the background, the drumbeat intensifies threateningly, peaking with the bang of a gong. Colour? Greyish black on dark grey, unspecified shapes. Fragments of fog. Shadows of bats come into the form from the bottom. A sharp golden light pierces down from above. The gong bangs, the golden meets the black in a sharp contrast. YET I KNOW ABOUT MY TRANSGRESSIONS, MY SIN IS ALWAYS IN MY MIND It is not feelings of guilt that I know, but the knowledge of guilt; the knowledge of the reality of evil that I have caused. It is the knowledge of who I am through the experiences of those who have been hit by my evil, the knowledge of how guilt is related. Does my guilt tie me to someone? To a person whom I have hurt? Have I betrayed a goodness in me – God’s image in the depth of my being – the goal of my existence? Have I betrayed the higher, real Self, which I should really become? Compassion is the relation of guilt towards a person whom I have hurt. Conscience is the relation of guilt towards myself whom I have betrayed. Sin is the relation of guilt towards God whom I have denied. Freedom, freedom, freedom! Only when my guilt finds the relation to
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Artistic You, God, can the path to freedom be opened, because in You there is the gate of mercy, which is the only way to the future. Only in God is my story eternally opened. God is the Father of existence, the source of change and growth. God carries all my seeds in God’s mind. DIES IRÆ, DIES ILLA Eight parts: Eight repetitions of a chorale from beyond. The dismay of death mixes here with the glory of eternity, the pain of finality with the longing for immortality, and the world of space and time. The phenomenal world of colours, sounds and shapes, falls apart. It is crushed under the sudden dart of eternity. Eight monumental forms, eight staircases crowded with calling multitudes, are elevated through a crimson span towards the gates of dawn. Dies (1): soft bells ring; the whole chorus sings; brass instruments blow in the distance. ”When the Earth dissolves like ashes…” Quantus (2): bass vocals come to the front. Tuba (3): male vocals grow less strong, female vocals increase along with high-pitched brass tones.” The voice of the trumpet will sound over graves in every land.” Mors (4): ringing bell increases in its intensity. The tower, lost in the distance before, suddenly appears right in front of you. “Death stands aghast in astonishment.” Liber (5): the rhythmical and melodic pattern slows down, as if we observed the act again, close-up and in slow motion. Iudex (6): a blow of timpani. “All hidden things will be disclosed.” Quid (7): a long golden tone of a trumpet, high up over the calling of the vocals, like a lone ray piercing through the wall of clouds from the other side of being. Quem (8): the climax – the fabric of resurrected bodies is taken by the whirlwind of the spirit off into the distance. The thunder-like ramble of the drums and the ringing bell fade away in a deep sigh of the gong. “Tibi soli peccavi.” Bass organ pedal; bass brass instruments; bass vocals – grey in grey on a greyish background. The singing develops. Darkness is tangled with light: Do not be afraid: “I am.” Instrumental interlude: A funeral march in a grave-
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yard at dusk over which the sound of an oboe flies like a sudden passage of an angel. The vocals double: light – shade, icons of human figures, ink, pastel and gold. Bass tones – interlude. A rhythmical pattern. Gradation.
is ready to accept new seed. My spirit is an empty field. Your Spirit is the seed. Come to me, strike roots in me, pierce me, re-create me, blossom in me and bring sweet fruit.
HIDE YOUR FACE AWAY FROM MY SINS AND WIPE OUT ALL MY GUILT! Everything in space and time exists eternally in God’s mind. Only if my trespasses are obliterated from Your mind, God, can they be erased forever. How can You, Almighty God, hide Your face? How should the One Who sees everything not see? David, you ask God for the inconceivable! You ask God to sacrifice the Omniscience! You ask God to sacrifice the Omnipresence! You ask God to cease having been there where sin was conceived, cultivated, and completed! “Yet only things that are known and seen by You exist”. Is what you ask for, David, the death of God? All that I have thought, wanted, and done makes an inseparable part of that which I am. Only if God wipes me out, can God erase my sin. The death of God and the death of the person meet in a single arm movement that hides God’s face and wipes out the guilt of the person. The omnipresent altar is the Cross. On it the mystery of salvation is completed. The relationship of God with a human being, through the death of God – Man in Christ. The seed of a new birth, the seed of resurrection. Only in a world that is created are death and resurrection possible. That which has been created can also be changed. If, however, the world were identical with God, it would be unchangeable. It would exist from eternity to eternity. Salvation would be based on the rearrangement of what exists (which cannot be changed) to a conflicting constellation. In this case death would not exist. It would be only a rearrangement of the same cards in the hand of the sole player. A type of desperation belongs to the world in which there exists nothing but death – where everything is mortal. Another type of despair belongs to the world, where everything is immortal. There is hope only for a world where both death and immortality are possible. Organ interlude: Rich and crystal-like. The fragile tones of pipes, like drops of dew. Swaying bass, wide space, like an ocean illuminated by the evening sun. The theme grows, multiplies and intensifies. A dancing oboe joins the organ, decorating the swinging waves with a slim thread of light. Woodwind instruments are accompanied by brass. The space of music spreads from high-pitched to low-pitched tones. The bass tones deepen the depth of swaying. The tune descends, but simultaneously ascends towards the surface, and higher than the surface, even higher than the level of all surfaces. The triangles and tambourines sparkle like drops of foam scattered over the crest of a wave. After a short pause bronze fanfares shine on top like the sun poking out from behind a cloud.
QUONIAM SI VOLUISSES SACRIFICIUM The pirouette of vocals is absorbed by a whirlwind into silence. Red, golden, black, purple: fragments of a fresco in the cupola of a dilapidated chapel. The voices of the organ pipes sink into immeasurable depths, like the cargo of a sunken ship. From time to time their metallic lights – golden, silver and bronze – glitter in the depths. Space is full of glaring flames: the fireworks of the universe light a fire without an end.
CREATE A PURE HEART IN ME, OH GOD! If my deception, my pride, my ill will are at the core of my Self, what is then going to be left when I take off all the roles, all the masks, and all the false attributes of my dignity? Nothing will remain. But not completely: nothing shall be left with intention, nothing with the potential of a new creation. Emptiness before the beginning, full of hope. When I root out weeds in my garden, what remains is naked soil that
REX Transparent bodies fly through a pellucid uncovered distance. Reverse movement; the Dies Iræ tune moves backwards. The end returns to its beginning. The bells, chorales, oboe, heaven, gold, peace, distance, fragility, silent height. “You Who give salvation as a gift to those who are saved, the source of Mercy, save me.” A bass pedal of the organ, the bell, the end, peace, peace, shalom. ARTISTIC APPROACH The word drafts gradually yielded artistic ideas. The symbol of an egg with the potential for death and resurrection: the eggshell must break so that the bird inside can fly. The egg as eggshell; the egg as light, the seed of a bird, of a heavenly being. I attempted to take three different approaches, which are linked only by the experience of the same music. The images may represent only drafts on their way towards a better solution. The first one was conceptual. Out of an empty area, like probes in plaster in the walls of a chapel, fragments of images emerge like quotations of various artefacts of early Christianity: hands of praying devotees from the Priscilla catacombs, a motif, eternity beyond the frontiers of the created world, from the maze in the Tapestry of Creation in Gerona Cathedral, Adam, Eve, the angel, trees of Eden, the serpent from the whole page illumination of Carolline Codexes, lambs from Ravenna’s Sant’Apollinare in Classe, and peacocks as symbols of eternal life from the catacombs in Kallixt. The second approach was abstract. Although this composition of PÄRT is mainly choral, some parts are instrumental. In the abstract approach I attempted to reflect the instrumental sections of the composition. I based it on the motif of graves dug out into the walls of catacombs. The third approach was intuitive. I let myself be led by the theme of death, its irrevocability and dreadfulness, as well as by the theme of desire for immortality and resurrection with the aim to link both in an artistically intensified tension between the finite and the infinite, between the mortal and immortal.
Daniel PASTIRCˇ ÁK (1959) is a poet, prose-writer and essayist. He graduated in Protestant theology in Bratislava, Slovakia and works as a preacher of the Free Evangelical church (Bratská cirkev). His book “Damian’s river” (1993) was on the List of Honor of Inter-national Board of Books for Youth and he is also engaged in art and exhibited in galleries in Slovakia and abroad. His email address is pastirco@isternet.sk.
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World Student Christian Federation – Europe Region
Policy Paper for the Years 2003–2005 (As Approved by the European Regional Assembly, Åland, Finland, October 2003) The following policy document constitutes the basis for the future vision, programmes and activities of WSCF Europe. This policy is to be implemented under the mandate of the European Regional Committee (ERC) elected at the European Regional Assembly (ERA) in Åland 2003.
I. THEOLOGY WSCF Europe will work in the next two years on the issues of a theological nature, through the Theology Interest Group (ThIG). 1.
The ThIG will organise a conference on the theme of Muslim–Christian Interreligious Dialogue, to be held in Norway in autumn 2004. The event will involve European Muslim student organisations and will explore: the opportunities and challenges of sharing our faith; the issues of racism, human rights, women’s rights and equality, ethics, political participation and democracy. 2. When choosing key topics for other events organised by the ThIG, the interest group will give preference to the following three themes: European contextual theologies; European institutions and churches; liturgy and prayer. 3. A workshop on ecumenism shall be included in the programme of every conference organised by WSCF-E. 4. A worship songbook in electronic form is to be created by the ThIG. 5. Important theological developments in the ecumenical world shall be monitored by the ThIG, which will make concise information about these available on the WSCFE website.
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II. CULTURE AND HIGHER
III. SOLIDARITY
EDUCATION Culture and arts as methods and topics are already present in many of our WSCF Europe events. A strong need is felt, however, to offer more space for sharing our diverse but often undiscovered cultural heritages and traditions with each other as members of our SCMs. The three interest groups within the previous regional structure do not cover an important field of Christian presence in the society and in the university. Therefore, the ERC, following the suggestion of several SCMs, recommended establishing a new interest group, focusing on the issues of culture and higher education. WSCF-E, at the ERA, therefore established a Culture and Higher Education Interest Group (CHEIG).
WSCF Europe will work in the next two years on issues concerning human integrity, through the Solidarity Interest Group (SIG).
1.
Questions connected with culture and identity are behind many of our current discussions on theology, solidarity and gender issues. The CHEIG should facilitate mutual enrichment in intercultural dialogue; help to spread knowledge about each other as nations, countries and regions in Europe. By opening this new area of interest, WSCF Europe can attract new and creative ways of thinking, which can contribute to the discussions on the cultural mosaic of our region. 2. In its introductory first term, the CHEIG, taking into account different interest fields and interpretations of culture, will focus on the theme Global and Local: Cultural Identities in Europe; other forms of events such as festivals, consultations and exchanges; exploring the possibility of a film festival; promoting educational aspects and cultural expressions in all conferences arranged by WSCF-E. 3. The CHEIG will connect WSCF-E to the ongoing dialogue about higher education within Europe; in other regions of the Federation; through maintaining and establishing contacts with cultural and educational institutions and organisations (eg. UNESCO).
1.
The SIG will raise awareness on the following areas: child labour; human rights, such as trafficking of women, men and children; minority issues. Awareness will be raised through the development of the Solidarity section of the website, to act as a means of exchange on solidarity issues. This section will contain contributions from member movements about their activities and experiences, including SCMs from WSCF Europe and also worldwide, through representatives of other WSCF regions. 2. The SIG will organise a bi-regional conference with the Latin American – Caribbean Region in June 2004 in the Agape Ecumenical Centre, Italy. The aim of the event will be to examine how globalisation affects the everyday life of young people in Latin America and Europe, and also to strengthen the connection between the European and Latin American regions. 3. The SIG will also suggest and facilitate bilateral partnerships of solidarity between the SCMs in Europe and worldwide. The partners will support and empower each other through mutual sharing of news, ideas, activities and visions. 4. As a follow up to the conference Roma and Gadje: The Challenge of Being Different that took place in Brasov, Romania in May 2003, the SIG will create a database on organisations working on Roma issues in Europe (both religious and nonreligious), which will be made accessible to the SCMs. The SIG will continue to send information to the participants and others interested in Roma issues. The SIG will also maintain contact with the Roma village that
Policy Paper was visited during the Brasov conference, in order to explore ways of contributing to a project there. This project seeks to further the educational development of the village children. 5. The Europe Region will propose to the WSCF General Assembly in 2004 that resources (such as Bible studies, guidelines and case studies) on overcoming violence on a global level be created.
IV. GENDER The group formerly entitled “Gender and Education”, will work in the next two years on issues related to gender and will now be called the Gender Interest Group (GIG). 1.
Gender issues shall be integrated into all WSCF-E events. A serious effort should be made to share tasks and responsibilities in an equal way between women and men. 2. A conference to take place in 2005 on the theme of Respecting Human Integrity and Dignity will look into the issues of sexual harassment, sexual abuse and trafficking of women; taking into account the perspectives of equality, power structures, global/local structures, solidarity, authority and transparency. 3. The updated WSCF-E guidelines (Respecting Human Dignity and Integrity: Sexual Harassment Guidelines of WSCF Europe, in both the longer and shorter versions) should be fully incorporated into the life of WSCF-E through their distribution and promotion.
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nators of their responsibility for keeping members of their interest groups updated on their area of work. Clear tasks should be assigned. 4. To discuss the layout of Mozaik with the Editorial Board. Such a consultation should decide whether Mozaik can include the Newsletter information about National SCMs in order to strengthen links between Movements and make their work more visible on a global level. 5. The ERC will define the relationship between the communications co-ordinator and Mozaik’s editor-inchief and make this known to all concerned.
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6.
The ERC will update the basicinformation-booklet for preparatory committees on How to Organise a Conference.
LINGUA FRANCA AND MOVEMENT BUILDING The Lingua Franca Language and Leadership Training Project will shift its focus to Eastern and South Eastern Europe, while still maintaining some courses in Central Europe. The CESR will help in fundraising and organising courses and leadership training events in Central Europe. The Europe Region, through the ERC, will search for new partnerships and contact movements in the Mediterranean area and enable the development of strategies for empowerment within the existing Movements in this part of Europe.
V. COMMUNICATIONS The role of the Communications Interest Group (CIG) will be the following:
1. To update the website on a regular basis, which shall include: providing a calendar of the upcoming events, offering information well ahead of time; creating a photo gallery, which could serve as a future basis for a photo archive of WSCF events history. 2. To maintain the (e-)mailing list of the SCMs and send a short e- and postal mailing on a regular basis containing news from SCMs and WSCF activities, provided by the interest group coordinators. 3. To remind interest groups coordi-
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GLOBAL VISIONS FOR WSCF Through its representation on the Executive Committee (ExCo), the European region of WSCF will seek to ensure that WSCF focuses on meaningful programmes and constructive visions for the future of the Federation.
1. The Europe region will promote the need for publications such as Student World as a forum of dialogue, spiritual and intellectual exchange for the global Federation, in WSCF regions and in national SCMs, as well as raising awareness of WSCF to partners and outside organisations.
2. Acknowledging that WSCF is a federation of national movements, WSCF-E will seek to ensure that the regions, while fully taking part in the life and work of the global federation, are autonomous in the majority of their own decision-making and programmes. The priority for WSCF as a whole should be regional and subregional events, which are the most effective ways of movement building. At the same time, WSCF-E will encourage efforts to bind the regions together such as: internships fostering co-operation between regions, along the lines of the Frontier Internship in Mission (FIM) programme and the Deborah Project; and mutual invitations to conferences. WSCF-E will continue and extend its practice of inviting participants to its events from other WSCF regions; focused thematic co-operation on a global level, such as the inter-regional work on HIV/AIDS in this quadrennium.
3. The WSCF-E ExCo members will recommend that ExCo meetings be held in conjunction with a larger conference. Such conferences would involve the ExCo in the life of the regions and inspire greater regional involvement in WSCF. These events would involve as many WSCF members from the host region as possible, giving a global dimension to their thematic and programmatic work and their leadership training.
4. WSCF-E will encourage the whole Federation to strengthen the connection with the churches and ecumenical organisations at all levels, from the global to the local. This will be of mutual benefit to WSCF, the churches and the ecumenical organisations.
“ESCAPING
FORWARD”
Instead of constantly cutting our programmatic and structural work, and thus placing the Federation in danger of disappearing within some years, we suggest the mentality and spirituality of “escaping forward” which would mean a renewed engagement in creative projects and programmes that aim to reach a broader constituency of students, donors and partners. 38