(Re)inventing the Sacred

I must preface this series of posts with the statement that what is to come is a work in progress. I have submitted this paper (for better or worse) for evaluation in my course entitled The Church and the Christian Life with Dr. Steven R. Harmon. Harmon is the professor of theology at the Campbell University Divinity School. He is also the Vice Chair of the Doctrine and Interchurch Cooperation Commission of the Baptist World Alliance (of which Dr. Paul Fiddes is the chair). I am awaiting his critiques and constructive comments regarding this research. As this is my academic work, I ask that anyone who happens to read it would be respectfully critical and please let me know where it could use some work. The paper has been turned in for final evaluation, so what you’re reading is the final form. I will submit this as a series of blogs for thoughtful consideration by anyone who has a mind to read it. Here goes nothing…

Part 1 - Introducing the Scene

Alienation. When reading this word, we may think of an argument between friends or an individual who has lost their sense of identity through a tragic turn of events. We may recall how it felt to be excluded from a game or neglected as a child when parents were too selfish to provide enough nurture. Whatever the image or recollection, anyone familiar with this word has likely experienced its force in life today. Thomas N. Finger wrote Self, Earth & Society: Alienation and Trinitarian Transformation as a response to this phenomenon.

A Mennonite, Thomas Finger does theology from a thoroughly multi-disciplinary perspective by engaging psychology, sociology, philosophy, and popular culture in addition to engagement of common theological themes. Through this interaction, he attempts to offer a constructive response to the problem of alienation, multifaceted as it is, from a distinctively Anabaptist Christian perspective. That he writes from an Anabaptist perspective is important because this essay’s focus is that of Free Church theology. By this is meant theology that, in one way or another, is connected to those ecclesiastical traditions that affirm a reduced or local church government and who are intentionally disassociated with church groups that would be considered “state ecclesiastical bodies.” This does not mean that “free churches” refuse to interact in an ecumenical way with church groupings that have more encumbered ecclesial structures (or even those that are connected with a state). But it does mean that the style of government and relation to the state is particularly distinctive. There are other aspects that would make a theologian a Free Church theologian and these will be addressed with regard to Finger as this research progresses. All this is to say that the guiding assumption behind this essay is that, because he is a Mennonite, Finger’s approach to theology will be shaped by his formation within that tradition, a tradition that, historically, is squarely within the “bounds” of what is considered a Free Church body.

Therefore, this essay has two primary purposes. The first is an investigation of the roots of contemporary alienation and the second is an examination of Finger’s view of the Christian community as a possible corrective to this phenomenon. Throughout our examination of the second purpose, we will gain an understanding of the extent to which Finger’s understanding of the community as corrective to alienation is indeed distinctive to his formation as a Christian in the Free Church tradition. The primary works that will be used to confront these issues are Self, Earth, & Society as mentioned above and A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology. Before these issues may be addressed, however, we must move to speak about what Finger means when he uses the term, “alienation,” in the first place.

Gaining our Footing: What is Alienation?

In this section, we will address the cultural/philosophical movements that he believes helped contemporary modes of alienation come into being. Finger has outlined three main types of alienation that are linked respectively to the terms in the title of his book, Self, Earth, & Society. For our purposes, a list and brief explanation of each of these types will suffice. Unfortunately the space needed to explore the particularities of each of these types will have to wait for another time with more paper space. Nevertheless, the major types of alienation that Finger identifies are as follows: Psychological alienation is “alienation of oneself from one’s deepest self.” Ecological alienation refers to “alienation of technological civilization from its nonhuman environment.” And social alienation refers to “alienation of individuals and groups from one another, from social institutions, and from their social potential.” Each of these comes together to form a large part of the context for human relations. Finger believes that psychology, ecology and sociology are not only to be addressed individually but also as a collective whole because together they comprise the three major divisions of observable human life. That they must be addressed collectively reflects the historic Anabaptist emphasis on the Christian life as a holistic living out of certain disciplines within a community of fellow travelers in Christ. Once again, the particular modes will be addressed as each one presents itself as relevant to the overall treatment of alienation but a fuller discussion of the particularities will have to wait for a separate investigation. For Finger, alienation refers to

a general condition in which elements that belong together, which should be supporting and sustaining each other and which ultimately cannot survive apart, are profoundly estranged and hostile. Alienation occurs when deeply moving experiences are repressed from consciousness, when rains pouring off eroded hillsides wash away life-sustaining crops, when ethnic groups that should enrich each other go at each other’s throats…Alienation indicates that the dividing action is somehow internal to the reality which is divided.

Thus we see that alienation is the state in which many of us live, at least on some occasion. This definition encompasses each of the three particular modes of alienation mentioned above. We are, Finger argues, estranged from and hostile toward our true selves, the environment, each other. This estrangement is at the heart of alienation in contemporary culture.

What is the extent of this estrangement? How far have we gone away from that “true and proper” state of being? “The whole is not simply split into two parts, of which one might be more truly the whole than others. Alienation, nonetheless, is a sense of rupture so irretrievable that it leads many people to…despair.” Thus the extent of alienation often seems to be too deep for any significant healing. This seems particularly true with aspects of psychological alienation as interpreted by Freud. For Freud, the alienation of a person from one’s truest self will always be in conflict with repressed memories and modes of being within time and space. Thus, “for psychoanalysis, coping with alienation will involve finding a way to work within it rather than seeking a way out.” At any rate, Finger believes that alienation is the root of despair, loneliness, and fear in our contemporary society. Where did this condition of rupture originate? Why do so many people today find that alienation, rather than health, synergy, and community, is the normative feature of human life? Finger believes that it all has something to do with the enlightenment.

More to come in the next post….