Books In Brief
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Evocations of Ordinary Death
A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories.
Nancy Mairs.
Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2001.
240 pp., $23 (Hardcover).
In one of the scenes of dying that
frames this book, Nancy Mairs's family
has decided, on the basis of her step-father's
living will, not to intubate him
when he becomes semicomatose. His
death, however, is not expected to be
imminent, and various family members
get on with their lives.
Exhausted, Sally headed back to Green
Valley for water exercise she needs in
managing a ruptured disk, and George
went home to take a shower. "I just sit
anyway," I said. "I might as well sit
here." So I bought a detective novel in
the hospital gift shop and parked my
chair within reach of Dad's hand, still
elegant in old age, with long, slender
fingers and shapely nails.
Such detail does not enter medical
charts or bioethics case descriptions,
which is the first reason medicine and
bioethics need Mairs's writing.
In her brief description, Mairs first
shows us how, for people living through
the death of a family member, crisis mixes
with the mundane. A loved one is dying,
but people still need to exercise their bad
backs and take showers. They still pass
the time with detective novels. Mairs also
shows us something crucial about herself.
Her "chair" is a wheelchair, because
Mairs is disabled with deteriorating multiple
sclerosis. Her statement, "I just sit
anyway," is not self-deprecation but an
expression of the life she evoked in her
previous book Waist-High in the World.
Moreover, in Mairs's spiritually attuned
world, to "just sit" carries connotations of
meditative sitting. That she "might as
well sit here" is not an indifference to
where "here" is. Rather the phrase
expresses her almost mystical capacity to
see life anywhere and everywhere.
Mairs is one of our greatest prose
poets of the everyday. Part of what we
are shown in the details about Sally
going for her exercise and George taking
a shower is that life never stops for
anything; death is part of a larger flow.
In this flow, everything counts. Like
most genuine insights, this one sounds
thin when stated abstractly. Mairs's
genius is not to tell us such things, but
to lead us to experience them with her.
The "troubled guest" of Mairs's
title—an allusion to a poem by Goethe—
is not death itself, but those who live
their lives without an awareness that they
will die. This awareness is central to
Mairs's Christianity (the focus of an earlier
book, Ordinary Time). Several of the
essays that form A Troubled Guest end
with brief meditations on familiar parables
and sayings of Jesus. Mairs's point is
not to make a point, but to allow the
gospel to open the situation we find ourselves
in with her. "I have embraced a
faith with crucifixion at its heart," she
writes; in consequence of this, "I do not
consider suffering an aberration or an
outrage to be eliminated at any cost, even
the cost of my life. It strikes me as an element
intrinsic to the human condition. I
don't like it. I'm not asked to like it. I
must simply endure in order to learn
from it." Death also is not an outrage to
be eliminated, but an intrinsic element of
the human condition. That this simple
point no longer goes without saying is a
significant commentary on our culture.
In my ideal curriculum on the
ethics and care of the dying, professionals-
in-training would begin with this
book. Until we had worked through
whatever impatience we may feel with its
details and apparent digressions (on pets,
for example), we too would be troubled
guests of life, unable to be at home in our
mortality and thus unable to offer hospitality
to those whose lives are ending.
—Arthur W. Frank
Spiritual Knowing Through
the Body, Heart, Will, and
Mind
American Spiritualities: A Reader.
Catherine L. Albanese, editor.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001. 552 pp. $65 (Softcover).
The plural form in the title, "spiritualities,"
gives the reader an
immediate clue that variety is a major
characteristic of this reader, edited by
Catherine L. Albanese, a wellknown
historian of American religion at the
University of California at Santa Barbara.
The essays were initially put
together for an undergraduate course,
but this volume is not just for beginning
students of American religion. This collection
will be provocative for readers
coming from many different entry
points, in part because of Albanese's
sophisticated general introduction and
her introductions to each of the four
sections, but also because selections are
written by authors from a variety of traditions
using both popular and academic
approaches.
In the introduction Albanese offers
some reasons why spirituality and religion
have become separated from each
other in recent years. In the process she
traces the history of spirituality's emergence
from an institutional, mostly devotional
Catholic grounding through the
1940s to the changes that have made it
a cultural buzzword with multiple and
sometimes contradictory meanings at
present. The twenty-seven essaysby
authors ranging from Thoreau and
Thomas Merton to Dhyani Ywahoo and
Shirley MacLaine—help Albanese make
her case that no matter how farflung
their approaches, these offerings can be
understood in terms of a definitional
principle like the following: "Spirituality
will emerge as a kind of quality of
'knowledge,' with knowledge standing
for lived encounters that involve people
as whole human beings, often to deeply
transformative ends." Although many of
the authors would insist that they are
free of religion, careful attention reveals
that often "the spiritual-but-not-religious
[are] heavily engaged in what any
scholar of religion would call religious
acts and [are] predicating them on what
would equally be called religious beliefs."
Albanese's approach, though, is not
argumentative. She is not out to prove
these authors wrong about themselves,
but to provide what she calls markers for
a widespread cultural phenomenon that
appears to many to be more diffuse and
chaotic than comprehensible.
Albanese uses the concept of
knowledge as the organizing concept for
this volume. The four sections—knowing
through the body, knowing through the
heart, knowing through the will, and
knowing through the mind—are not arbitrarily
imposed but correlate to
Albanese's understanding of dominant
patterns in American religion, or, as she
puts it, "what has transpired spiritually on
these shores." The first essay in each section
is by a scholar who gives a general
sense of the territory, even if from a particular
perspective, and after that multiple
voices are heard. "Body knowledge"
encompasses ritual, usually publicly
enacted, and the essays in this section
range from Puritan worship and Jewish
life to the Sun Dance. "Heart knowledge"
points to a spirituality in which
strongly felt emotion is primary, from
nineteenth-century evangelicalism to the
story of a late twentieth-century convert
to Hare Krishna. "Will knowledge" is
the province of prophets and social
reformers, among them Carrie Nation,
Emma Goldman, and Martin Luther
King Jr. Finally, "mind knowledge," the
arena of metaphysics and a large population
of the spiritual-but-not-religious,
puts Thomas Merton in company with
Ralph Waldo Trine and Annie Dillard
with yoga teacher B. K. Iyengar.
Traveling through this reader
could be a wild ride without the sure
guidance of Catherine Albanese. Her
categories of spiritual knowledge offer
more than signposts and reassurance.
They stir up adventure and generate
unlikely conversation partners. Early in
the book Albanese declares that her
goal is not to answer all or most questions
about American spiritualities. It is
to inspire the reader to stay on the trail
of these various experiential forms of
knowledge, to seek out the differences
and distinctions among them, and to
resist too-easy definitions. She achieves
that goal with aplomb.
—Mary Farrell Bednarowski
Men's Voices, Men's Choices
What Men Owe to Women: Men's Voices
from World Religions.
John C. Raines and Daniel C. Maguire, eds.
Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2001. 303 pp. $59.50 (Hardcover).
Identifying patriarchy in religious traditions
is not new. Nor is the combing
of sacred texts and traditions for
resources affirmative of women's equality.
What is remarkable is a group of
men doing these things together as selfstyled
advocates of gender justice. Under
the rubric of the Religious Consultation
on Population, Reproductive Health,
and Ethics, ten scholars address eight
religious traditions: Christianity and
Islam (each has two representatives),
Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism,
and African and Native North
American traditions. These ten chapters
are accompanied by introductory and
concluding essays by John Raines and
Daniel Maguire, respectively.
The focal question here is "How
can our Scriptures, how can our founding
Prophets, how can our ancestors be
used today to further justice in relations
between the genders?" Beyond a
promise of critical analyses, these
authors declare, "As authors, we intend
to be advocates. We intend to pursue
gender justice." Foundation monies
enabled the writers to meet with feminist
scholars of religion to discuss their
works in progress. More on this unusual
process follows.
Steeped as each author is in a particular
religious tradition, the chapters
vary in focus, scope, depth, and audience,
as well as in type and degree of
critical analysis and advocacy. All
authors discern specific textual passages
and ideals they understand to support
gender justice. Several authors
exempt certain sacred texts from critique
and locate patriarchy in culture or
theology, while others subject all texts—
and contexts such as global capitalism—
to criticism. Some suggest concrete
actions for religious adherents in the
name of gender justice while a few specify
men's work. All ten chapters are
instructive and accessible. Those by
Marvin M. Ellison and Mutombo Nkulu-N'Sengha
are especially illuminating in
their reach beyond conventional critical/
constructive analyses to grapple with
the effects of sexism on men, male privilege
and dis/empowerment, and the
need for men to work together.
Choices, or perhaps non-choices,
about the project's overarching framework
limit the collective strength of
these men's voices. Key concepts are
not critically analyzed: "gender" and
"gender justice" are typically synonymous
with women and women's justice,
women are treated as a homogeneous
group, and justice remains underexamined.
Moreover, the volume offers precious
little dialogue between the authors.
While the individual chapters surely
benefited from the authors' conversations,
readers are not made privy to the
insights accumulated from, and about,
such an association. Ultimately we hear
twelve men's voices in serial monologue.
"What men owe to women," as stated
at the book's outset, is "not more
paternalism but more honesty, and based
upon that honesty active collaboration
with women in culturally specific struggles
for gender justice." Thus it is especially
salient to notice the gender relations integral
to the book's production. Four
women feminist scholars of religion representing
four religious traditions
reviewed and critiqued ten men's work in
eight religious traditions. Thus half the
religious traditions did not receive the
benefit of critical feminist scholarship
from within their traditions. No explanation
for this partial collaboration is
offered. Also, not so subtle hints about the
tenor of the conversations between the
authors and feminists that occurred surface
in the editors' defensive, even combative, words regarding male authorship
and other issues: for example, "We invite
you as our readers to pick a fight with us.
That is what we've done with each other.
A good argument is . . . the only thing that
can knock us off balance and make us
take the next step." And in the book's final
paragraph, a female scholar of religion is
quoted criticizing feminist (ostensibly
female) scholars of religion for excluding
men. The editor follows, "Gynocentrism
is no better than androcentrism. Macha is
not superior to macho. The goal is dialogue,
not conquest." The important question
is whether this volume's dialogue
displays "more honesty and based upon
that honesty active collaboration with
women in culturally specific struggles for
gender justice."
One explicitly acknowledged contribution
of these feminist women was
their insistence on the contextualization
of the authors. Unfortunately, the
effort made in the text largely defeats this
aim: A litany of ten personal narratives
told mostly in the third person constitutes
much of the introduction, separate
from the authors' chapters. Adding
misplacement to displacement, their stories
are not "presented in the order in
which the authors appear in the text."
In sum, these ten individual chapters
are dense and useful resources for
addressing gender justice within eight
religious traditions. While a group of
male scholars of religion working together
on behalf of gender justice certainly
can be a worthy endeavor, more honest
collective attention to how men work
together and in solidarity with women is
needed to discern truly "what men owe
to women."
—Charlene A. Galarneau
God, the Brain, and the
Question of the Real
Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science
and the Biology of Belief.
Andrew Newberg, Eugene G. D'Aquili,
and Vince Rause.
New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.
320 pp., $24.95 (Hardcover).
In the 1990s, radiologist Andrew Newberg
and (now deceased) psychiatrist
Eugene D'Aquili collaborated on novel
brain imaging studies at the University of
Pennsylvania. Practicing Tibetan Buddhists
and Franciscan nuns were asked
to meditate or pray intensively and then
single photon emission computed
tomography (SPECT) was used to create
an image of localized metabolic changes
in their brains. The researchers found
that most, though not all, of the subjects
showed increased activity in the prefrontal
areas of their brains and
decreased activity in the inferior parietal
lobes when compared to baseline.
What could this mean? Evidence
from clinical neurology has long suggested
that the inferior parietal lobe area
plays a major role in integrating visual,
tactile, and proprioceptive information
in a way that allows us to orient ourselves
in physical space. People suffering damage
to the parietal lobes may be unable to
dress themselves, may experience distortions
of their body image, lose the ability
to draw or recognize the same object from
different angles, and even lose all capacity
to perceive physical objects in one
half of their visual field. The prefrontal
lobes of the brain are importantly
involved with "executive" functions
involving attention, including the inhibition
of extraneous sensory inputs from
conscious awareness, so a person can
concentrate on a selected task.
Against the background of these
kinds of understandings, Newberg and
D'Aquili asked: Is it possible that the
spiritual practice of meditation and
prayer cultivates such a state of focused
attention as to inhibit sensory inputs to
the parietal regions of the brain that
normally generate an ongoing awareness
of the self in physical space? If so, could
this be a neurological explanation for
the characteristic sense of timelessness
and infinity, of oneness with all reality
and with the divine, variously described
by the meditators and nuns?
So far, so good. It is a bold interpretation,
but brain imaging research
has been more frequently criticized for
being insufficiently bold and experimentally
imaginative in the ways it
employs its powerful technologies. Newberg
and D'Aquili, in contrast, used
those technologies to develop an
intriguing model of an important human
experience, one that their colleagues
could then challenge, engage with, and
further test.
In the end, however, Newberg and
D'Aquili went still further. Their book
Why God Won't Go Away, which they
wrote with the assistance of science journalist
Vincent Rause, is an exploration of
mystical experience and belief in God
that begins in the SPECT laboratory and
concludes with the assertion that "neurology
can reconcile the rift between science
and religion by showing them to be
powerful but incomplete pathways to the
same ultimate reality." Along the way,
the book draws on evolutionary theory,
epistemology, the relationship between
religiosity and mental and physical
health, the anthropology of myth and
ritual, and the origins of religion.
The end product is richly affirming
of the value of spiritual practice and
experience, but in a way that is not
enough to rescue the book from logical
murkiness at critical junctures. The
following is what, as I understand it,
the authors intend to say.
God will not go away because "the
wiring of the human brain continues to
provide believers with a range of unitary
experiences that are often interpreted as
assurances that God exists." Contrary to
widespread prejudice, those experiences
are not "delusions" or effects of stress or
neuroses, or products of "any pathological
state at all." They are instead a result of
"sound, healthy minds coherently reacting
to perceptions that in neurobiological
terms are absolutely real" (italics added).
Indeed, the authors suggest that people
who have regular experiences of transcendence
may well be healthier, mentally
and physically, than other people.
But that is not all. People who have
transcendent experiences find that the
experiences feel very real, and philosophy
tells us, according to the authors,
"that what's real simply feels more real
than what's not. This may seem an unsatisfyingly
soft standard, but it is the best
guidance that the greatest minds and
experts have produced. In most cases, it
works quite well, and all other approaches
to this problem are ultimately reduced
to this assertion."
Because people who have experienced
advanced states of mystical unity
insist that these states feel more vividly
real, even, than everyday reality, this
could mean that they really are real—
that is, that they reveal something real
about the universe. The fact that, from
the perspective of material reality, these
experiences seem to have their source
wholly in an unusual brain state does not
affect the claim. "All perceptions exist in
the mind . . . If you were to dismiss spiritual
experience as 'mere' neurological
activities, you would also have to distrust
all of your own brain's perceptions of the
material world. On the other hand, if we
do trust our perceptions of the physical
world, we have no rational reason to
declare that spiritual experience is a fiction
that is 'only' in the mind."
This is the argument. Leaving
aside any questions we might have
about its empirical details, it is important
to notice that its logical structure as
a whole depends on slippage between at
least three meanings of the word "real."
Mystical experiences are "real" in the
sense that they are not "delusions," and
they are not delusions because they are
produced by a signature neurobiology.
Our knowledge of this neurobiology can
help us at least partly make sense of the
experience itself.
Mystical experiences are "real" in the
sense that they feel very real to the people
that have them.
Mystical experiences are "real" in the
sense that they tell us something about
the "real" nature of the universe.
The assertions, taken together, just
do not add up. To begin, we judge an
experience "deluded," not on the basis of
whether or not we can understand it in
terms of brain function, but by reference
to some external benchmark we have of
objective reality. Our ability to point to
the "neurobiological realness" of an
experience is no substitute for such a
benchmark; the neurobiology underlying
drug-induced hallucinations presumably
is just as "real" as the neurobiology
underlying mystical experience, but we
would still likely judge such drug-induced
hallucinations to be delusional.
Attempting to bootstrap ourselves
out of this problem by distinguishing
between "healthy" and "pathological"
kinds of neurobiological functioning is
no solution either, as William James
pointed out a century ago in his The
Varieties of Religious Experience:
Let us play fair in this whole matter, and
be quite candid with ourselves and with
the facts ...When we speak disparagingly
of "feverish fancies," surely the
fever-process as such is not the ground
of our disesteem—for aught we know to
the contrary, 103 degrees or 104
degrees Fahrenheit might be a much
more favorable temperature for truths
to germinate and sprout in, than the
more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98
degrees . . . In the natural sciences and
industrial arts it never occurs to anyone
to try to refute opinions by showing up
their author's neurotic constitution.
Opinions here are invariably tested by
logic and by experiment, no matter
what may be their author's neurological
type. It should be no otherwise with
religious opinions . . . Saint Teresa
might have had the nervous system of
the placidest cow, and it would not now
save her theology, if the trial of the
theology by these other tests should
show it to be contemptible. And conversely
if her theology can stand these
other tests, it will make no difference
how hysterical or nervously off her balance
Saint Teresa may have been when
she was with us here below.1
Similarly, we can perhaps accept
an argument for putting the vividness of
mystical experience at the top of a subjective
hierarchy of increasingly "real-feeling"
immediate experiences. This
does not mean, however—and I believe
that the phenomenological philosophers
referred to by the authors did not ever
intend it to mean—that the higher up we
go on such a subjective hierarchy, the
closer we approach "real" knowledge of
the universe, with "real" being used
now—again—as an external benchmark
that scientists typically use interchangeably
with words like "objective."
Dreams may seem real, especially while
they are happening, but they are not
necessarily accurate renderings of external
events. An immediate everyday
experience of a sunset may feel very
real, but that does not mean that the
other evidence suggesting the earth
actually rotates is disproved thereby.
None of this is to deny that mystical
experience has been part of larger
human experience from time immemorial,
and is worthy of more serious attention
than it generally has been given.
Newberg and D'Aquili clearly have been
serious students of this phenomenon,
and, with their SPECT work, have made
an imaginative and potentially important
contribution to its elucidation. Neither
am I denying here the possibility of
a fruitful conversation between scientists
and mystics about the truth status of
mystically derived understandings of
the universe, and their relationship to
the truth-claims of the objectivist sciences—
one that proceeded, perhaps, on
some basis other than subjective vividness
or the health-enhancing effects
associated with exercising one's
"machinery of transcendence." All I am
saying is that there are dangers in tying
together these different projects and
possibilities with a single cord that one
calls "the real." Almost inevitably, some
people are going to find themselves getting
tangled up in the logic.
—Anne Harrington
NOTE
1. William James, The Varieties of Religious
Experience (Reprint, New York: Penguin,
1982), 15.
Pushing God Around the
Globe
God and Globalization. Vol. 1: Religion
and the Powers of the Common Life.
Max Stackhouse with Peter Paris, eds.
Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press
International, 2000. 288 pp. $40
(Hardcover).
God and Globalization. Vol. 2: The Spirit
and the Modern Authorities.
Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press
International, 2001. 244 pp. $35
(Hardcover).
In its very title, God and Globalization
suggests that it will fill an important
gap in the literature and debates about
globalization. This four-volume series
(three volumes of which are now in print)
argues that globalization cannot be left to
the economists and that theological
ethics has something to offer those who
wish to make descriptive and normative
sense of globalization. The series provides
its target audience—"churches, seminaries,
colleges and universities, other com-munities
of faith, and . . . the morally and
spiritually committed leaders of the
emerging international civil society"—
with an intricate and biblically evocative
framework—including powers, principalities,
authorities, dominions, spheres,
and regencies—for thinking through the
ethics and structural interrelationships of
globalization. The essays that comprise
the first two volumes are from luminary
thinkers writing out of a diversity of disciplines
and perspectives, though regrettably
only one of thirteen is female. While
all of the essayists believe that "public
theology" has something important to
contribute to the development of ethical
globalization, their analyses imply a range
of understandings, even of this key term.
In Religion and the Powers of the
Common Life (vol. 1) contributors consider
those "principalities" deemed
most germane to globalization (Mammon,
Mars, Eros, and the Muses), translating
this consideration into theological
ethical analyses of modern arenas, such
as transnational corporations, violence,
the family, traditional religion, and the
media. The Spirit and the Modern
Authorities (vol. 2), in turn, analyzes
the classic professions, technology,
"nature," and moral exemplars or
heroes as bearers of moral frameworks
and therefore sources of authority in
the present age.
The essays stand on their own as
critical reflections from key thinkers in
each area, such as Roland Robertson on
sociology of religion and John Witte Jr. on
religion and human rights, but they lack
real interaction with Max Stackhouse's
framing introductions to each volume
and to the series. And yet this lack of
interaction is a strength, saving the essays
from collusion with an oppressive vision
of posturing among the religions (Christianity
not least) for dominance over an
emerging global "super-ethos."
To be sure, many of Stackhouse's
questions about globalization are vitally
important ones and some of his
descriptions of the present moment are
on point as well. For example, the Seattle
protests are for him a kind of parable,
revealing the lack not only of consensus,
but of a teleology to frame the normative
issues of right and good. "What ought
we support and what ought we protest?"
he asks. And, he queries further, given
the violent and inarticulate nature of
protests against supranational structures
like the World Trade Organization
(WTO), how are we to envision authority?
For Stackhouse, new power structures
are asserting themselves, and we
need tools with which to evaluate them.
What is problematic in Stack-house's
framework is not his application
of a theological ethical analysis to the
issues of globalization. Ethically and
theologically thoughtful considerations
of globalization are rare in a field
drenched in the language, assumptions,
and worldview of free-trade economics.
Rather, Stackhouse adopts a near-Hegelian
vision of global integration on
the one hand, and optimistically propounds
a "God-based framework"
(indeed, Christ-based) for "discernment,
evaluation, and transformation" of the
new global civilization on the other. In
other words, his framework for globalization
involves both descriptive and
normative errors.
Stackhouse's vision is "near-Hegelian"
insofar as he describes glob-alization
as a process that is laying the
groundwork not just for integrations and
compressions but for a "new superethos,
a worldwide set of operating values and
norms that will influence most, if not all
peoples, cultures, and societies." This
eschatological intensification of more
mildly formulated optimisms about the
"international community" or "international
civil society" is made more problematic
by being left underdeveloped:
How will such norms and values be institutionalized?
How contested? What
mechanisms will be in place for their
implementation (or will they require
none)? Despite many positive post–Cold
War signs of cross-cultural dialogue and
consensus-building—including significant
multilateral consensus on matters
of governance, environment, and
population—we are astronomically far
from any meaningful sense of global participation
or citizenship or any concrete
notion of global public goods. To characterize
globalization as a process moving
toward a single global civilization is to flat-en
globalization's complexities, fragmentations,
and inequalities profoundly.
Unlike the global ethic developed
by Hans Küng, in which teachings
shared by the world's religions are
abstracted for a universal, elementary
ethical consensus, Stackhouse's vision
appears to be one of a super-ethos and
global civilization dominated by one
religion which will rise above the others.
The real question for him then
becomes: Which one?
Since no enduring civilization . . . has
developed without a dominant reli-gion
at its core, and it is unlikely that a
globalized civilization . . . can develop
creative directions without one either,
it makes a great difference which reli-gion
becomes dominant, how it does
so, and how it treats other traditions.
Stackhouse concedes that his theological
ethical framework must be
questioned within the context of inter-eligious
dialogue, but his point of departure
suggests which religion he favors for
global dominion and perhaps also for the
terms of consensus: "Our question [to
the followers of Krishna, Confucius,
Buddha, and the Prophet Muhammad]"
he avers, "will be whether Christ is, and
can be, and should become Lord over all
the powers, principalities, authorities,
and regencies in a global civilization." In
other words, well beyond an inquiry into
Christianity's distinctive historical role in
global processes, Stackhouse queries
whether Christ himself will have an
exclusive normative role in the new
global order. While a Christian believer
might reflect theologically on such a
question, one might well wonder how
successful an interreligious dialogue
about global civilization would be with
such a Constantinian opening.
Beyond the tensions Stackhouse's
approach seems to imply for interreligious
dialogue, I question equally the
basic metaphors of his framework. As
biblically evocative as the metaphors
may be, why describe globalization in
terms of powers, regencies, or dominions
for the victor to lord over—imagery
which, beyond the biblical, may well
evoke the colonial conquests of the
bipolar Cold War era, perhaps especially
for those entering the dialogue on
globalization from the developing world.
Wouldn't friendship, good neighborliness,
the golden rule, and partnership
be equally evocative of Christian and
other scriptures, as well as useful
hermeneutically in evaluating globalization
from a theological ethical
approach? Indeed, why not relate religions
to globalization using a tenet they
all seem to share, namely, that earthly
power is an illusion. Rather than vying
for lordship, perhaps religions can contribute
to ethical globalization to the
degree that they eschew earthly power
games and witness to the power of inclusion,
access, and participation.
Stackhouse's optimism is not limited
to the emergence of a global superethos;
he is equally sanguine about
religion's ability to discern and ultimately
offer prescriptive guidance for
such a global ethos and the civilization
it is supposed to rudder. Because not
every religious insight is equally valid,
Stackhouse explains, theological ethics
must engage in comparative analyses
and must consider "the relative validity
of various religious claims about how we
should live." But what criteria are used
in evaluating the "validity" of these
claims? And how will theological ethics
stand far enough apart from each particular
religious insight to judge its
respective validity? Finally, why are the
religions set apart as the source of normative
prescription?
Stackhouse reasons that religious
leaders, missionaries, and reformers are
specially oriented toward reform—and,
presumably, normative prescription—
because they have the "discerning ethical
framework" that reveals those
things in need of reform. "A sense of
holiness illuminates the depths of corruption,"
Stackhouse explains. And
because of this, he continues, religious
actors have more often been opponents
of imperial impulses of domination than
supporters. While holiness itself does
indeed illuminate, our human sense of
holiness often only collides with humility
and clouds the truth, and that is the
real danger of a "God-based framework"
for globalization. As a Christian I
am indeed thoughtful about what sense
God makes of our world and where we
are taking it. But when I think of a
framework that prescribes on those
grounds (WWGD?), my thoughts turn to
at least two other God-based frameworks:
the theological and scriptural
justifications of South Africa's apartheid
regime and the religiously patrolling
Taliban regime.
—Mieke Holkeboer
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Second Opinion #10
Publisher: Park Ridge Center, Chicago
Date: April, 2002.
ISSN: 0890-1570
112 pages.
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