Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

"BY WATER: The Felix Manz Story" - A Graphic Novel - Review by Bradley Jersak

"In a city astir with dangerous new ideas, the son of a Catholic priest becomes a leader of a nonviolent revolution." –back cover

Five hundred years ago, Europe was set ablaze by the violence and wars of the Catholic-Protestant schism, where priests and reformers alike aligned with the magisterial powers to attain political and religious dominance over the continent. Reformers such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli hived away from the authority of the spiritual corruption of the Pope and his armies, only to employ their own forms of violence and coercion to take control.  

While theological debates over grace vs. works offered a doctrinal smokescreen for church-state powerplays, one had to wonder where, if anywhere, the peaceable kingdom of Christ, described in the Sermon on the Mount, was to be found.  

Enter the "Radicals" (aka the Anabaptists), a third way that proclaimed the prophetic vision of peace, sharing, and freedom. They took the "Jesus Way" of nonviolent revolution of real discipleship as a life-and-death matter, and that great Anabaptist history, The Martyr's Mirror, describe the many thousands who perished by water, fire, or sword at the cruel hands of both Catholic and Reformed "Christian" inquisitors. The blood of these martyrs, who perished without retaliation, became the seed of great networks of communal enclaves and mass movements, many of which survive today (e.g., Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and as though born out of time, the Bruderhof). Trying to snuff them out proved as useless as taking a hammer to mercury.

But how did it all begin? By Water: The Felix Manz Story is the gripping adventure of the first generation of Anabaptists and their first martyr, Felix Manz. This is the true story of a conflict between a young man and his own spiritual father, Ulrich Zwingli, wrestling with new ideas that finally cross into bold acts of faith and defiance... beginning with a baptismal pledge to follow Jesus, even unto death. Ultimately, Manz's mentor will ironically have him drowned, and church history will never be the same. As Christ said, in this order, "Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called children of God," which then leads Manz and his company to be among those "Blessed ... who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God... for so they treated the prophets who came before you."

I have found the current era of politicized religion, from Russia to America, so disheartening that one wonders where The New Radicals will arise with a revolution that doesn't involve the right to bear arms or the religious lust for state-sanctioned power. We desparately need to hear these inspiring stories of peaceable courage, histories that move us and call us to a real heart-change like what we see in Manz.

Plough Publishing, one of the great gifts of the Bruderhof Communities, has produced this stunning story in the form of a graphic art non-fiction, By Water, created by Jason Landsel, Sankha Banerjee, and Richard Mommsen. The script, the art, the colors, and layout represent Plough's typical over-the-top quality in 141 gorgeous pages. The price seems unreasonably low for its exquisite quality, but I'm not surprised given the Bruderhof's track record of high-end generosity. I like leaving my copy where guests will stumble on it and become hooked in short order, engrossed in the storyline, the visuals, and the conversation to follow. Even the most cynical will surely consider Manz's interpretation of Christian faith and its demands compelling.

P.S. This is first of three volumes. Next to come, By Fire.

With gratitude,

Bradley Jersak 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carl Truman: Sic et Non - Ron Dart

Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, Wheaton: 2020).

Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Crossway, Wheaton: 2022).

Sic et Non (Yes and No)

Carl Trueman has emerged, in the last few years, as a rather popular thinker and commentator on our late modern and postmodern versions of the ideology of liberalism. A couple of his early books (The Creedal Imperative & Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom) kept him safely confined in a more insulated religious ethos, but with the publishing of the more demanding The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020) and the more readable version of the larger tome, Strange New World (2022), Trueman has positioned himself well as an interpreter of our contemporary ills and the roots and genealogy of such a cultural disease. How should Trueman’s read of our present malaise be engaged, and how should his read of its origins be accepted or questioned?

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is divided into 5 Parts: 1) Architecture of the Revolution, 2) Foundations of the Revolution, 3) Sexualization of the Revolution, 4) Triumphs of the Revolution, and 5) Concluding Unscientific Prologue. Rod Dreher wrote the “Foreword,” and each Part has a handy “Epilogue”. There can be no doubt that the notion of the “self” (and its protean-like meanings and interpretations) has been a focus in the West for the past 500 years (not as Trueman seems to think since Rousseau and tribe forward). Trueman does draw from Taylor’s comprehensive Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989) in his approach to the topic, but Trueman lacks the comprehensive breadth and depth of Taylor. There is no doubting the fact, though, that there is, from a certain perspective, a definite and decided inward turn to the subject and inner self within the West as a part of the quest for meaning and the search for a meaningful identity—such is the journey of identity politics. Taylor recognizes in such a turn, there can be an indulgent and narcissistic view of the self, but there are, in such a turn, possibilities for a more authentic self to emerge—how is the difference to be discerned?

"The Devil... from the Arché" - Bradley Jersak

Brooke Quist, a new friend of mine through Open Table Conference, blew my mind. He was asking for my thoughts on who or what Satan (the satan) or the devil is. After sharing a few of the thoughts I’ve gleaned from René Girard, Michael Hardin, Brian Zahnd, and especially my son Dominic Jersak, Brooke was eventually able to get a word in edgewise with his own discoveries.

He told me how he had been praying for illumination on two texts from the Johannine corpus (John's Gospel and first epistle):

John 8:44  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

1 John 3:8  The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.  

I’ve spent a fair bit of time on these texts, pondering how the New Testament regularly describes all people as God’s children—most overtly in Ephesians 3:15 and Acts 17:28, but also assumed in the parable of the prodigal sons (Luke 15). How, then, do John and Jesus himself, think of Christ's opponents as children of the devil? Elsewhere, I’ve concluded that they’re referring simply to children-by-imitation, rather than by nature.  

But what jumped out at Brooke was in a different register. In the Gospel passage, Jesus describes the devil as “a murderer from the beginning.” And in 1 John, the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

As Brian Zahnd has pointed out, John 8 is reflecting on the first murder at the foundation of human civilization—Cain’s fratricide in Genesis 4. And he was there in humanity’s foundational sin: “through one man (Adam), sin entered the world” (Romans 5:12).

But wait. The devil has been this way for how long? A murderer and sinner since when? From the beginning—ap’ archē (ἀπ’ἀρχῆς). That word, arché, is the same “beginning” as in Genesis 1:1 (Greek Septuagint — In the beginning, God created…) and John 1:1 (John 1:1 — In the beginning was the Word). It’s a far fuller expression than from the start (protos). It’s more like from the very foundations or from the ground up.        

And suddenly, I saw the implications for Christianity’s dominant “Satan origin story.” By way of review:

We believed that the Devil or Satan began as Lucifer, God’s principal archangel and worship leader, but through jealousy and rebellion, fell from heaven with a third of the angels, who became demons. But the truth is that the biblical basis for that storyline is extremely thin and often requires dubious leaps. The tradition is funded more by intertestamental Jewish literature (especially Enoch) and Babylonian mythology, amplified in medieval Christianity, perfected in William Blake's Paradise Lost, to where we inherited and assumed their demonology as dogmatic truth.

But contra that narrative, Jesus tells us the devil has always been a murderer from the beginning, the arché. Further, Jesus says, the devil’s native language (literally, “he speaks out of his own” — ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων λαλεῖ), and his first tongue is lying.     

In other words, these texts suggest the devil did not pre-exist in the beginning as God’s highest archangel. Lucifer was not a holy angelic leader who rebelled and fell into the archdemon existence as Satan. The devil, satan, has always been a murderer and liar from the beginning. So says Jesus.

This discovery creates new questions that require fresh wrestling on the following points:

1. This beginning cannot be the same beginning as the foundational arche of the cosmos, because Genesis 1 and John 1 agree that God-through-Christ-by-the Spirit created ALL things and that God declared the whole of creation “Good.”

That’s partly why the Lucifer mythology seemed necessary. God created all things and did not create anything evil, so if the devil is an evil creature, then it must have first been good and then become evil. So we developed a war in heaven / angelic fall narrative to squeeze between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. And it works until you read John 8 carefully.

2. But we’ve already seen where Jesus, John, and Paul identity the devil’s arché. The foundational act or moment ascribed to the devil is in the first lie (“you shall not surely die”), the first sin (turning from the Light of God), and the first murder (Cain killing Abel).

From this perspective, Satan has been evil from the beginning, and that beginning is founded on human sin. In that sense, the devil or satan or evil is not so much a sentient creature of whom God once said, “Let there be…and it was good,” but rather, the monstrous personification of human sin.

As the early church said, evil has no being as such, but is a privation of or turning away from the Good. As Dominic Jersak once said, “...created by people out of the ashes of war, tears of those who are afraid, and the stuff that people want that doesn’t belong to them—and takes on a ‘life’ of its own, turns on us, and torments us.” Or, as Brian Zahnd has so helpfully said,

The satan is more than a metaphor but less than a person; by that, I mean the satan, though a very real and dangerous phenomenon, does not actually possess ontological being. The satan, like evil itself, is parasitic in nature. It cannot exist independently because it is not created by God. The satan can only exist by colonizing a host. If there is no host for the satan, the satan ceases to exist at all. Indeed, the devil is presented in Revelation as having “great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.” Though the satanic is properly a phenomenon and not a person, the satanic phenomenon is so real, so powerful, so deadly, so destructive, that we cannot help but personify the satanic as Satan.

Brian thinks that personifying Satan is probably necessary and helpful. Certainly, the Bible talks about it that way, especially in the fall narrative, the prologue of Job, and the temptations of Jesus, Peter, and Judas.

Allow me an illustration of why this is so. I interviewed a counselor who works with children who molest other children and asked her, “Does anything work?” She described one approach that can help, which experts call “externalization.” She helps molesters identify their experience of an overwhelming impulse to assault other children—an impulse from within that arises from factors such as genetic dispositions, previous traumas, and/or broken propensities. And while the children are held accountable for their own acts, they are also seemingly powerless to resist those impulses.

So the effective counselor will begin by externalizing and personifying the impulse by asking,

“Can you feel it coming toward you before it happens?”

Yes.

“If you could imagine it coming toward you, what would it look like?”

e.g., A dark angel. An ugly monster. 

“And if you gave that monster a name, what would you call it?”

e.g., The devil. Freddy.

“And if we could see it coming, what ‘weapons’ would you need to resist it?”

e.g., a shield, a sword, angelic warriors, an unbeatable Champion.

My counselor friend was describing the basics of “spiritual warfare” that we’ve learned in Ephesians 6—but now discovered through therapeutic practice outside the Christian worldview!

The balance here is that, on one hand, the child doesn’t get to say, “The devil made me do it,” and absolve themselves. But it also distinguishes the heart of the child from the evil impulses themselves. This creates a breakthrough because it both empowers the child’s agency (you can resist the devil and it will flee from you). But it also begins to wash away the shame that comes by identifying themselves with (and empowers) the impulse.  

To me, that’s a powerful reason to personify the satanic forces at work in this world, while also owning humanity's role in generating them. And while I’ve thought through much of this for years, Quist’s prayerful exegesis of Jesus’ view of “the devil from the beginning” feels like a clincher to be taken seriously.

Some humble caveats: (1) these are speculations about mysteries, insufficient to be regarded as doctrine; (2) these are not the only relevant texts in Scripture or interpretations in the tradition; (3) this is one perspective on the demonic, which does not exclude other phenomena, including the diverse realities or experiences of angels, righteous or fallen, actual or symbolic.

Review of Beckett and Ellsberg's "Dearest Sister Wendy" - by Ron Dart

Review of Sister Wendy Beckett and Robert Ellsberg, Dearest Sister Wendy: A Surprising Story of Faith and Friendship (Orbis Books, 2022). Review by Ron Dart.

I have, sitting on my desk before me, Sister Wendy Beckett’s classic visual and textual beauty and must-read of a tome, Sister Wendy’s 1000 Masterpieces (1999). Sister Wendy certainly established herself as one of the most significant art historians (both on BBC and in publishing) in the latter half of the 20^th century and into the early years of the 21^st century. Robert Ellsberg and Orbis Books have established a unique and needful place in the publishing world in the genre of prophetic theology. It is rare that a much-respected nun and art historian and writer engaged in the rigorous field of public theology would dialogue in a meaningful and intimate correspondence, but such is the evocative and compelling mother lode of Dearest Sister Wendy. 

Sister Wendy Beckett was in the late autumn season of her all too earthy journey when the intensive and extensive correspondence began with Robert Ellsberg, the most compact phase from 2016-2018, Sister Wendy crossed the river on December 26, 2018. There is a tender and sensitive combination of letters between Robert Ellsberg and Sister Wendy that, insightfully so, is divided into three historic sections: “The Art of Seeing,” “The Art of Loving” and “The Art of Letting Go”.

The general momentum of the letters has a certain direction, Sister Wendy encourages (she being a contemplative) Robert to slow down and ease up on all his frantic busyness, Robert kindly encourages Sister Wendy to be more honest, transparent, and confessional about herself and her life journey.

The Road to Theocratic Authoritarianism - Lazar Puhalo

We are in a transitional stage in which much of the popular certainty of the postwar era is slowly fading. In such an era, and when politics is no longer an elitist enterprise but a more populist one, the politician who can rouse the passions of the crowd will gain a larger following than the politician who appeals to reason. Once a person becomes a member of the crowd which is being mesmerized by a populist politician, that person ceases to think completely for himself and absorbs the passion of the mesmerized crowd. Cognitive dissonance easily becomes epidemic.

Mussolini

This was certainly true of Mussolini, the father of fascism. It was an example that every dictator, no matter how immoral and irrational he may be, has followed with some success. In such a transitional era, reason is easily abandoned to the passion of the moment.

In many ways, Mussolini was an idiot, but one who understood crowd mentality and how to manipulate a crowd through its fear and passions and the abandonment of reason and even deeply cherished ideals. This can also happen in the politics of religion, and religion is easily contorted into a fear-based moralistic political ideology. This has happened in our midst in the most recent time.
Once such a populist dictator gains power, it is almost impossible to remove him without assassination. A populist dictator is narcissistic and sociopathic. He can be concerned only with his own power and can thrive on crowd-power as long as he can keep a substantial portion of the populace mesmerized by fear and immune to reason and reality. He will instinctively manipulate the sense of abandonment that traumatises a significant segment of the population in social/cultural transition periods.

Psalm 91, the Holy Land & Broken Bones - Peri Zahnd

I’ve been in the Holy Land the last two weeks, in Israel and in Palestine, co-leading a women’s pilgrimage with my friend Mercy Aiken. On Monday we walked the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, retracing the steps of Jesus as he approached his crucifixion, culminating in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Just that morning I thanked God that no one had fallen as we had traversed uneven steps and paths everywhere. So it was a surprise when I did, missing a step right in front of the tomb of Jesus, landing with a thud on the hard stones, first with my knees and then with my hand. It is amazing how many thoughts can fly through your head as something like that happens, seeming to take forever.

I heard a collective gasp from those around me, cringing with embarrassment even as I fell through the air in slow motion. Immediately two men, one on either side of me, tried to pull me up. I was grateful for their help, but it hurt so badly I really needed to sit there a minute, and pleaded with them to give me time.  I then took a breath and with their help was lifted to my feet. I heard voices asking me what I needed and I said I just needed to sit for another minute. A space was made for me on a nearby bench, and I was led there by my helpers as I fought a feeling of fainting, my vision fading to black in and out. 

Next to me was a nun sitting as straight as could be, clothed from head to toe in black, with only a pretty profile exposed. There was something very regal about her. She very quietly began to speak kind words, offering to go find ice as I supported my left hand with the other, exhorting me that I needed to see a doctor. Her voice and words were calming, and I sensed the peace of God emanating from her. 

I had a strong hunch that my wrist was broken. A huge bump had appeared on the outside, and a weird little one on the inside.  My knees still hurt plenty but the pain in my wrist quickly began to emerge as the most serious issue. The man on my left also uttered a few quiet kind words in the semi-dark church. Those words felt like prayers.