A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #167

[April 2003 journal entry]

Dietrich invested in the Confessing Church as a non-violent civil disobedience strategy and was deeply disappointed when the strategy failed. The credibility of such a resistance strategy depends on two key assumptions/anticipations – i.e., the expectation that the enemy/aggressor will be caused to pause (eventually responding to the strategy) and the ability of the resistors to remain resolute when injuries, deprivations, deaths begin to occur. By 1939 Dietrich saw that the strategy had failed on both counts. Unlike the British in India, the Nazis were in their homeland and had a deep/dark core. The ranks of the Pastors’ Emergency League broke in 1937 when the Nazis brutally confronted the Confessing Church after the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #166

[April 2003 journal entry]

I have pondered for some time how young Confessing Church pastors trained by Bonhoeffer at Finkenwalde would have conducted confirmation instruction for the youth in their congregations during the Nazi years. What would have been Bonhoeffer’s counsel if/when students asked for guidance? I suspect a spectrum existed among Confessing Church pastors – i.e., with an approach that would have blurred the distinctions with the confirmation experience of ‘German Christian’ youth at one end of the spectrum and with close/clear transposition of Cost of Discipleship instruction for Confessing Church youth at the opposite end of the spectrum.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #165

[February 2003 journal entry]

At least since the mid-1990s, photography has contributed substantively to my ‘non-religious’ experience of and approach to spirituality and ethics. (Music, elective reading, and most recently sketching have somewhat similar importance.) Beyond being a source of relief, photography refreshes (recalibrates, refocuses, replenishes) my attentiveness to the details in everyday situations and my instinct to anticipate (look for) composition in everyday situations. Photography quickens my ability and readiness to be truly/fully present.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #164

[January 2003 journal entry]

Virtually all who strive to live life deeply/genuinely respectful of others (esp., those who live in life’s darkest shadows) are eventually ‘leaven’ – i.e., they are hardly noticed influences on temporal realities and on history. The number of individuals who know about their leavening and the radius within which notice occurs are both limited. The ‘religious’ T/O paradigm offers divine notice and ultimate/eternal reward, thus anticipating an eventual separating of the ‘leaven’ from ‘the bread’. A ‘non-religious’ approach to spirituality and ethics is content with the incognito of ‘leaven’ and does not yearn for an eventual separating of the ‘leaven’ from ‘the bread’.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #163

[January 2003 journal entry]

The Matthew 25:31-46 story has been pivotal for my decision to align with ‘the second commandment’ (i.e., love your neighbor as yourself) as I wrestle with the complexities/limitations I find inseparable from understanding or experiencing ‘the first commandment’ (i.e., love ‘God’ with all your . . .). The Matthew 25:31-46 story supports this reverse ordering of these two ‘commandments’. The story can easily (and ironically, I think) be read through the perspective of the ‘goats’ in the story – i.e., with the readers/interpreters concluding, “Let us, therefore, serve ‘the least of these’ because in doing so we are serving ‘God’.” The ‘goats’ in the story beg for a second chance to do just that. The ‘sheep’ in the story are commended because their motive for caring for ‘the least of these’ is free from such self-serving, from such self-promoting, from such ‘means to the end of strengthening my case in judgment’ objectives. The ‘sheep’ in the story care for ‘the least of these’ in a pure and unconditional sense. If I had stayed on the ‘religious’ path of having to settle ‘the first commandment’ issues as a prerequisite for participating in ‘the second commandment’ ethic, I would either have given up the further inquiry re ‘the first commandment’ I already knew had to be pursued to maintain intellectual integrity or I would have neglected my responsibilities as a spouse, as a parent, as a neighbor. Stepping instead directly into ‘the second commandment’ responsibilities actually liberated and energized my continued inquiry into ‘the first commandment’ questions. Doing so also necessitated a ‘scrapheap’ or ‘non-religious’ rationale for seeking to be the sort of person who sees and cares deeply for ‘the least of these’.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #162

[December 2002 journal entry]

I spoke recently with a Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor/friend about Countee Cullen’s poem The Incident –

The Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger’.

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December,
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

Countee Cullen (1903-46) was raised in New York City by his grandmother and then by F. A. Cullen, the pastor of the largest African-American Methodist Church in the city. Cullen was raised in privilege re both culture and education (including New York University and Harvard). Cullen sought recognition for his poetry beyond his being considered a leading African-American poet. He turned down numerous professorships at the peak of his reputation in the 1920s. He subsequently taught in the New York City public schools.

My pastor/friend was preparing to facilitate a discussion of the poem with his congregation. I encouraged him to imagine the church experiences the three characters in the poem might have had – i.e., (1) the child harshly labeled, (2) the ‘Baltimorean’ child, and (3) a child sitting near enough to have observed and overheard this incident. What is ‘the gospel’ in each child’s church? I suggested that the word ‘religion’ should be approached as one of those words for which a dictionary lists several meanings in a descending order. I would make the nuances Bonhoeffer gave ‘religion’ and the nuances I have added to his in these journal entries the first/common meanings in the list of meanings.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #161

[November 2002 journal entry]

Being radically (i.e., without restriction or discrimination) open to ‘from below’ inquiry and to ‘from below’ consciousness of the depth/breadth of human suffering is essential to a ‘non-religious’ path re spirituality and ethics. Most expressions of Christianity in the United States are located toward the fundamentalist/evangelical end of the spectrum and, therefore, are separate from as well as antagonistic toward these ‘from below’ positions/perspectives. Fundamentalist traditions/groups are sealed/airtight against radical inquiry and radical consciousness of human suffering. Evangelical traditions/groups are closed but not sealed/airtight, careful to stop short of either radical inquiry or radical consciousness of human suffering that would threaten the evangelical theological paradigm. The remaining expressions of Christianity in the United States are located toward the liberal end of the spectrum. Liberal traditions/groups are open optimistically to radical inquiry, but do not strain to be radically conscious of the depth/breadth of human suffering. The authentic expressions of Christianity in the United States I have found re these ‘from below’ perspectives/positions are among the Quakers and among isolated/marginalized individuals within liberal traditions/groups.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #160

[September 2002 journal entry]

During a conversation with Renate Bethge (Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s niece), she asked about an observation in one of my letters to her – i.e., that “I am a historian first, a theologian second”. I began my explanation with a 1974 exchange with a fellow graduate student re how to approach and handle research into the critical scholarship about Jewish scripture and Christian scripture. The student said he intended to take seriously only research results that supported his already established and uncritical view of Jewish scripture and Christian scripture as ‘inspired’. I said my approach would be the reverse. I have never knowingly veered from the approach with which I aligned myself in that conversation. I explained to Renate that in time I concluded I could not maintain ‘a historian first, a theologian second’ approach within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm/sphere. We then spent most of our time associating the ‘historian first, theologian second’ position with my subsequent interaction with the beginnings of a ‘non-religious’ approach to spirituality and ethics in Dietrich’s prison letters.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #159

[August 2002 journal entry]

A ‘non-religious’ interpretation of a text gives special attention to characters who are criticized, who are not affirmed.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #158

[August 2002 journal entry]

Paradox – To be aligned by choice ‘from below’ with the marginalized and disenfranchised is often to be distant from those who are sensitive to language’s limitations and who are articulate re a scientific worldview.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #157

[May 2002 journal entry]

I was recently asked how – in 1973? in 1979? in 1987? in 1992? – I would have read my journal entries. The question made me wonder. Given my response to Bonhoeffer’s prison letters when I first read them in 1975/76 and my response to a widening exposure to the history of ideas during the years in question, I think I would have responded with considerable interest and openness.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #156

[March 2002 journal entry]

The ‘non-religious’ approach to ‘community’ I am experiencing is descriptive of my sorting and prioritizing relationships as the following experiences unfolded in a simultaneous and interweaved manner during the 1970s/80s – (1) being with my first wife over the course of her disease and death (d. 1987), (2) struggling with tensions in my association – as a historian and as a theologian – within the theologically and socially/politically conservative Christian denomination into which I was born, (3) stepping into a steadily widening range of opportunities within the medical education/practice sphere. Until several years into my thirteen-year tenure as a history and theology professor (1979-1992), I continued to look for vitality in a ‘religious’ understanding of ‘community’. Analogous to the decision to withdraw artificial/intensive life-support technologies, I eventually concluded that the effort was futile, given my irreversible and no longer negotiable decisions (1) to engage in unrestricted historical inquiry, (2) to be as closely aligned as possible with victims of the broad and deep realities of innocent suffering without regard to my existential and theological costs, (3) to be as fully present as possible within the medical education/practice sphere with health care professionals who are committed to the same alignment without my having prior knowledge of their religious or philosophical convictions. I realized that my experience of ‘community’ within the ‘religious’ sphere had been dying for some time. Analogous to a boat crushed in a storm, my experience of ‘community’ within the ‘religious’ sphere had proved to lack integrity as I moved further and further into face to face (rather than ‘religiously’ filtered) engagement with the world’s ‘marketplaces’ and ‘wildernesses’. In this ‘non-religious’ approach to ‘community’, the first-order and primary experience of ‘community’ is the resolve to initiate ‘community’ in every encounter, with particular attention to encounters with victims of the broad and deep realities of innocent suffering. All other experiences of ‘community’ are valued as secondary means to sustain the first-order and primary experience of ‘community’. I do not know of ‘religious’ congregations that have in their origin and as their reason for existing this unconditional alignment with victims of the broad and deep realities of innocent suffering. One reason I persist in testing my thought in these journal entries – far beyond the expectation of anyone with whom I have been or am associated – is the desire to be consistent in my conversations that occur across the primary and secondary experiences of ‘community’.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #155

[February 2002 journal entry]

I continue to think about the correlations on the one hand of ‘religion’ and the ‘God’ language characteristic of the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm and on the other hand the ‘Santa’ traditions/experience – e.g., (1) the naïve, simple, and innocent ‘Santa’ belief of a six-year-old, (2) a confident 2^nd-grader who defends ‘Santa’ belief in reaction to the suspicions of another student, (3) the first serious questions about the illogic of the ‘Santa’ story, (5) a 3^rd-grader’s more frantic and haunted attempts to defend ‘Santa’ belief.

A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #154

[February 2002 journal entry]

Bonhoeffer’s prediction that ‘religion’ in European countries generally and in Germany specifically would die and/or become increasingly irrelevant/marginalized proved true. Reasons a similar diminishment did not occur re ‘religion’ in the United States would include – (1) the evolution of ‘religion’ into a business with a sustainable market (e.g., church construction, profitable publishing, the mega-church phenomenon, the ‘Christian music’ industry, TV evangelists, . . .), (2) accredited private and independent ‘religious’ colleges, (3) no recent tragedies on United States soil on the magnitude of the Civil War, the world wars, and the Nazi holocaust, (4) the economic and educational legacy of slavery, (5) widespread indifference toward rigorous examination of ideas, (6) . . . .

Fragment -- #214

[April 2003 journal entry]

Being conscious, aware, engaged, present in an open and concrete manner is not a given, a once for all. I must fight for it every day, every hour. There is much resistance. There are many distractions.

Fragment -- #213

[February 2003 journal entry]

It seems that radical (i.e., to the root) cultural/global change now occurs so rapidly that what one person (generation?) settles on, after vigorous/careful examination/testing, as firm existential footing for decision-making is by that point already too out of date to be quickly/easily relevant to the new ‘present’ being faced.

Fragment -- #212

[February 2003 journal entry]

Christian congregations across the spectrum from fundamentalist to liberal expect sermons, regardless of the starting point or line of reasoning, to conclude with an affirmation of some theological variation consistent with the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm.

Fragment -- #211

[January 2003 journal entry]

To ‘counter’ culture, one must first and persistently ‘encounter’ culture.

Fragment -- #210

[December 2002 journal entry]

If ‘sin’ is missing the mark/target, then the identity of the mark/target is of utmost importance.

Fragment -- #209

[October 2002 journal entry]

We recently enjoyed having my artist friend Dean as our houseguest for a few days. In one conversation, Dean asked why western cultures appear to have drifted/declined into decadence (as he considered an audio-book at Borders that argued this thesis). I responded, “Information overload.” We had a very stimulating conversation about the consequences of having too much information to be able effectively to organize information into a construct or paradigm. Since that conversation, I have been considering the association of ‘cadence’ with ‘decadence’.

Fragment -- #208

[July 2002 journal entry]

A Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor/friend asked what place ‘resurrection’ has in my ‘non-religious’ approach to ethics and spirituality. I began with -- “‘Resurrection’ is not weight-bearing.” I told him I am open to ‘resurrection’, but do not know of a way to conceive of or meditate on ‘resurrection’ that does not slip into literal language. He then asked what place ‘myth’ has. I admitted considerable reservation due to the widespread literal use of such, meaning that what he was calling ‘myth’ is rarely treated as ‘myth’ (even in liberal churches where the word ‘myth’ is permitted). Were ‘myths’ conceived/transmitted in pre-modern/pre-scientific settings understood then to be ‘myths’? Given the widespread understanding of such as literally true within the ‘religious’ sphere (with corresponding opposition to considering such as ‘myth’) in our modern/scientific time, it seems unlikely.

Fragment -- #207

[July 2002 journal entry]

From It’s a Wonderful Life – “Is he sick?” “No. Much worse. He is discouraged.”

Fragment -- #206

[July 2002 journal entry]

Today I happened to catch a segment of a Discovery Channel program about Bobby, a dog whose master had died and been buried at Grey Friars in England in 1858. Bobby walked in the funeral procession and kept vigil at the grave for the next fourteen years (fed by neighbors) before he died.

Fragment -- #205

[July 2002 journal entry]

Today I watched a Robin trying to make a companion Robin lying in the middle of Hillsboro Road move after it had been hit by a car.

Fragment -- #204

[June 2002 journal entry]

I am beginning to notice times when I feel tired, old, passed by.

Fragment -- #203

[May 2002 journal entry]

While reading again Martin Buber’s autobiographical fragments titled Meetings, I began making a list of ‘meetings’ in my experience that similarly endure in my memory – for instance,

• Swiping grapes (and eventually being caught by my mother) as a young boy from the A&P grocery store (managed by my parent’s close friend and my close friend’s father) (early 1960s)
• Ralph Constantine and ‘Showboat’ – my first black-skinned friends growing up (1960s)
• When I as a child would hang my head out the back window of the car to make clear my disgust with the odor of a lady we would pick up for church services (a haunting failure to ‘meet’) (early 1960s)
• The day in Latin I class when tears flowed down my cheeks as I accepted silently the reality that childhood naïveté/innocence was behind me (1964)
• Seeing a speaker I admired pinned against the foyer wall by adversaries after having given a presentation on loving those with whom we disagree (1970)
• Listening to two faculty members at a religiously fundamentalist college supported by my tradition of birth reassure a hostile crowd of constituents that after completing their doctoral programs to satisfy accrediting standards they would think/teach exactly as they did when they began their doctoral programs (1973)
• The exchange with a fellow graduate student re what to do with the results of research into critical historical scholarship (1974)
• The return from the parking lot to a place to sit on the southern edge of the Grand Canyon -- after a hurried late afternoon of picture-taking -- for the purpose of experiencing the Grand Canyon, of being there, and then noticing several other individuals silently coming one by one to sit together in ‘community’ (mid-1975)
• My first plane ride (single engine plane to Chicago in a wintry ice storm) (1974)
• Walking into what remains of Dachau Concentration Camp alone (1976)
• My first meeting and subsequent friendship with my doctoral supervisor Glenn Hinson (1976)
• Writing tutorials for Father Cyprian Davis (St. Meinrad Monastery/Seminary) (1977-78)
• Writing tutorials for Professor Barrington White at Oxford University (1978-79)
• Meeting with the Quaker community in Oxford (1979)
• My first meeting with the multiple sclerosis support group in Memphis (1980)
• Visiting a Memphis friend who was a hemophiliac dying of AIDS (early 1980s)
• The conversation my first wife and I agreed to consider our last conversation -- a conversation just a few weeks before multiple sclerosis so compromised her clarity of thought for the remainder of her life (d. 1987) that I was uncertain if she knew any longer who I was (1984)
• My first meeting and subsequent friendship/collaboration with each of the circle of physicians with whom it has been my privilege to collaborate in the promotion of a humane practice of medicine with a resolute social conscience (1980 forward)
• When the Ob/Gyn Department chair at the University of Michigan and editorial board member for Obstetrics and Gynecology covered in red ink and then routed back to us via the department secretaries a manuscript Dr. Elkins and I had prepared for publication, insuring that his critical review was known and that the thickness of our skin would be tested (1989)
• Hearing Eli Wiesel speak at Temple Israel in Memphis (late 1980s)
• Monthly meetings with UT Memphis medical students (1990-92)
• Pierre Materne and family on the train from Paris to Brugge (1993)
• The initial meeting and subsequent friendship with the Eberhard and Renate Bethge (1993)
• Walking through ‘Dirt City’ in Miami (cardboard boxes and shanties under an interstate where desperately poor individuals/families lived) (1993-97)
• Weekly discussions with the abused kids being sheltered at K-Bar-B Youth Ranch (1995-97)
• Meetings at O’Reilly’s with the LSU Ob/Gyn faculty members re “Who cares?” (1995-97)
• Our family’s ‘Table Round’ conversations (1995-2000)
• Conversations in Jellico with an early-60s engineer dying of cancer and struggling with disappointment and humiliation re he had lived his life (1998)
• The first meeting and subsequent friendship with my artist friend Dean (2000)
• Seeing poverty-stricken little children in Athens selling bananas at traffic lights . . . seeing hundreds of fugitive men in Athens crowding into a room for a free dinner (2001)

As I read Buber’s Meetings, I recalled our daughters’ humorous but insightful response – “He meets” – when they are asked, “What does your dad do?”

What is the etymology of ‘meet’? What constitutes a ‘meeting’? What criteria should be used?

Fragment -- #202

[May 2002 journal entry]

For the past several weeks, I have substituted for a Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor/friend in facilitating a discussion group he has been leading on ‘Being Presbyterian (USA) in the Bible-Belt’. The participants represent a wide variety of denominational experiences. I have introduced the following interpretations for discussion:

The TULIP acronym. The participants’ first guesses re this acronym included such ideas as Love, Tolerance, Unity, . . . I had to identify and explain each letter/concept – i.e., Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints. I traced the history of this theological ‘line in the sand’ to the Synod of Dort (1618-19) and the Westminster Assembly (1643-48) (from which came the Westminster Confession). I then related the adoption of TULIP theology to the history/interests of the Presbyterian tradition, explaining that the underlying assumptions of TULIP theology include (1) a pre-modern/pre-scientific worldview and (2) absolute/comprehensive divine sovereignty. We discussed such consequences of TULIP theology as (1) a desperately low view of human nature, (2) a deep suspicion of human inquiry/questioning, (3) an indifference to and devaluing of the present, (4) a preoccupation with an otherworldly existence, (5) . . . . Using the ‘seeds’ metaphor and filling in a timeline of seminal thinkers/events beginning in the 1100s, I pointed the participants to the revolutionary ideas that took root in education, politics, economics, history, art, literature, science, philosophy, theology. I proposed that the Synod of Dort and the Westminster Assembly represented attempts by the dominant voices at those meetings to (from their perspective) weed the garden before losing the garden to the weeds. I pointed out that other Protestant traditions as well as the Roman Catholic tradition acted in similarly obstructionist ways. As we continued to fill out the timeline to the present, the participants saw clearly that they live (and, to varying degrees, think) in tension/conflict with the stances taken at Synod of Dort and the Westminster Assembly. I then turned the participants’ attention to a core challenge to the TULIP theological paradigm that surfaced in the aftermath of the Synod of Dort and the Westminster Assembly – i.e., the concept/problem of ‘innocent’ suffering (noting that the realities of human suffering were not new but the ‘innocent’ interpretation of such suffering was new).

Fragment -- #201

[April 2002 journal entry]

I have been reshaped by crossing several thresholds – e.g., (1) from my rural upbringing’s pre-modern way of seeing ‘the world’ and human experience to a modern/scientific way of seeing ‘the world’ and human experience, (2) from a 200-mile radius around home to a global scope re my awareness of ‘the world’, (3) from manual typewriting to word processing, (4) from an uninformed and unexamined colonizing view of United Stated foreign policy toward Africa, South America, Asia to a ‘liberation theology’ critique of United States foreign policy, (5) from segregation to non-segregation, (6) from blue collar to white collar, (7) from the era of two superpowers to the era of one superpower, (8) from pre-Vietnam to post-Vietnam, (9) from pre-Watergate to post-Watergate, (10) from pre-‘9 11’ to post-‘9 11’, (11) . . . .

Fragment -- #200

[March 2002 journal entry]

While watching Ken Burns’ History of Jazz documentary, jazz legend Artie Shaw’s comments gave me a fresh way to think about the risks associated with being welcomed, being considered ‘successful’, being celebrated within societal spheres (including but not limited to the ‘religious’ sphere) --

“Glenn Miller? He had what you would call a Republican band. Very straight-laced and middle-of-the-road. And Miller was that kind of guy. He was a businessman. He was sort of the Lawrence Welk of jazz. That’s one of the reasons he was so big. People could identify with what he did. They could perceive what he was doing. But the biggest problem with his band was that it never made a mistake. And that’s one of the things that’s wrong. Because if you never make a mistake, you’re not trying. You’re not playing at the edge of your ability. You’re playing safely, within limits. You know what you can do. And after a while, it sounds extremely boring. . . . Success is a very big problem, bigger than failure. You can deal with failure. It’s tough. It’s hard. You fight like hell to get it going. But success is an opiate. And you get very confused. Things happen that you have no preparation for. Money comes in. And popularity. People throw themselves at you. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

Fragment -- #199

[May 2006 journal entry]

(1) The need/challenge -- beyond realizing the grim realities ‘under the sun’ -- to feel the angst Koheleth expresses for such grim realities (e.g., the ‘grievously wrong’, ‘crooked’, ‘tragic’, . . . references in Ecclesiastes) is most important. In other words, something analogous to Kierkegaard’s appeal to being dizzy or, even more profound, to being nauseated by the grim realities ‘under the sun’ must be felt. Reaching this level of agreement/resonance with Koheleth is all but impossible in a conference/seminar room with a group of individuals who do not know each other very intimately, knowing most of them probably do not yet feel so deeply about the grim realities ‘under the sun’, knowing they cannot simply be told to feel this angst. (2) The distinguishable nuances/meanings for ‘joy’ found/experienced across the continuum from being unaware of to denying to remembering the grim realities ‘under the sun’ need to be clearly developed. This again is a very daunting objective in the context of a conference/seminar room, in large part because doing so presupposes the depth of angst referenced above. (3) For me, the ‘God’ language in Ecclesiastes must be rigorously critiqued. I think the author remains very pre-scientific and pre-modern re ‘God’ language. In other words, I would propose that the author of Ecclesiastes effectively exposes some serious flaws in the prevailing theological paradigm in his/her society, but does not dig far enough into the language problem from which such idolatry continues to develop in ‘religion’.