Chapter Four - Domination and Political Theology - Section Eight

Religious Action, Political Action, and the Critique of Domination

Religious language and political language intersect when political language starts making open­ended Îutopian1 claims for liberation as the goal of human progress and evolution, or makes Îimpossible demands1 for reconciliation between humanity and nature, and between human beings. Habermas asserted in his inaugural Frankfurt lecture in 1965, 3What raises us out of nature is the only thing we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus2 (Habermas, 1971: 314). From this assertion, he developed, firstly, his theory of communicative competence, and then his theory of communicative action. One of the central threads running through these theories is a concern, not only with specific speech acts as such, but with discourse, and action. For Habermas, 3... the goal of critical theory ­ a form of life free from unnecessary domination in all its forms ­ is inherent in the notion of truth; it is anticipated in every act of communication2 (McCarthy, 1978: 273). McCarthy1s view of domination as Habermas understands it reiterates a point made by Marcuse in the first of his Five Lectures and cited in the last chapter to the effect that domination cannot ever wholly be removed, but it can be reduced 3... to a rational division of labor and experience2 (Marcuse, 1970: 2). Attention to religious language, and language itself, in the context of a discussion of emancipation and domination, also leads to a recognition of the domination inherent in an exclusively masculine conception of God. Notice how this entire chapter, and indeed this entire thesis, has specifically avoided using gender specific language except when male or female pronouns and nouns were specifically required. While indicating sensitivity to the exclusion of women implied by gender­specific language, it also focuses attention on one important aspect of language and associated symbols in the context of domination and liberation. It also indicates that, while no specific mention is made of them here, I am well aware of various contemporary feminist and feminist­political theologies which add to many of the political theologies a distinctive feminist perspective which, at the very least, serves as a corrective to unconsciously masculine conceptions of God, and all that flow from them theologically, sociologically, and practically (e.g., Davis, 1980: 10 ­ 11; Kee, 1986: 1 ­ 29; Russell, 1975). For Weber and the critical theorists, a constant theme was the failure of earlier, religiously­informed, worldviews, and their replacement by allegedly rational, non­transcendent, non­metaphysical, supposedly scientific criteria for human action and interaction in, with, and on the world. As the young Horkheimer wrote, while still very much influenced by Marx's criticisms of religion and Christianity: Mankind loses religion as it moves through history, but the loss leaves its mark behind... In a really free mind the concept of infinity [formerly the preserve of religion] is preserved in an awareness of the finality of human life and of the inalterable aloneness of men... (Horkheimer, 1972: 131). While acknowledging religion's role as protest against that which is and pointing to that which could be, Horkheimer argues that because 3Christianity [has] lost its function of expressing the ideal, to the extent that it became the bed­fellow of the state2 (Horkheimer, 1972: 129), the ideal of perfect justice proposed by Christianity becomes an illusion. If the Church started to take its ideal of justice seriously, it would immediately realise that its complicity with the domination­laden status quo had to end. The demands for justice, which were part of the Church's original mission, are being made by forces which reject religion and thence the Church. What is left ... is the understanding of the limits set on the fulfilment of theology's ideal of justice (Horkheimer, 1972: 130). Horkheimer here is not so much rejecting religion and Christianity as such but expressing a profound sense of pessimism about the possibilities for justice and liberation which he correctly interpreted as a central tenet of the biblical message. He also seems to be lamenting the absence of the Church in the vanguard of the struggle against domination rather than arguing that intrinsic to Christianity is an eager and fundamentally necessary accommodation between Church and domination manifesting in the status quo. Horkheimer, to be sure, overlooks the many instances of Christian resistance to domination throughout history, and even contemporary with the Frankfurt School as it faced the rise of Nazism. The Confessing Church in Nazi Germany was just one important example of Christian resistance to the state and evil regimes. Yet, theology, for Horkheimer near the end of his life, ... is the consciousness that the world is appearance, that it is not the absolute truth, the ultimate. More concretely, theology is the hope that injustice does not have the last word, the longing that the murderer may not triumph over his victim (Davis, 1980: 136 ­ 137, paraphrasing Horkheimer, 1975: 61 ­ 2; Küng, 1978: 491). Horkheimer's rejection of the traditional conception of God was really a stumbling over the tormenting problem of theodicy. If God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, then why do domination and evil exist and persist apparently without respite? In attempting to address this very question the Yahwist inserted Genesis 3 into the Torah manuscript, eventually giving rise to the Church's traditional doctrines of the Fall, allowing for a wholly just and omnipotent God over against almost irredeemably evil humanity, making sin and evil all humanity's fault. Specifically, as for Adorno as well ­ recall his aphorism that 3To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric2 (in Jay, 1984: 19) ­ the revelations of the horrors perpetrated by Stalinism and Nazism, coupled with the ascendancy of post­war instrumental reason, contributed much to Horkheimer's pessimism and indeed his theoretical despair, reflected in the progressive distancing of Adorno and Horkheimer's critical theory from any conception of practice. As Charles Davis summarises Horkheimer's position: If God is wholly unknown or wholly incomprehensible, there is no reason to connect him with hope rather than despair. It is also difficult to see how hope without an affirmation of a real alternative to injustice can check the triumphant march of positivism ­ that it cannot is shown by Horkheimer's final despair (Davis, 1980: 138). From a modern theologian's point of view, theodicy raises other problems, notably that it requires the application of reason to a problem which defies such an application. Theology which cannot address this question, and in general which cannot account for hope and the possibility of liberation in the midst of the present, is no longer theology. If God does not exist, or is seen as eternally indifferent to human concerns, then there appears no reason to infer God's partiality for either hope or despair. Without hope, there can be little left except hopelessness and, finally, nothing but nihilistic despair. This is why consolation should be an element in a critical theory because, in the midst of oppression, failure, and betrayal, explanations for the darker sides of human experience need to be offered, otherwise suffering, struggle, and pain are finally meaningless. Authenticity in this context must mean capitulation to domination, the precise trap which finally caught Max Weber because he could not conceive of any extra­historical sources of ethical or religious guidance for human action which did not require the repudiation of his standards of substantive rationality. From a theological view, especially that of a modern political theologian such as Jürgen Moltmann, theology, particularly in its eschatological moments which embrace indefatigable hope for the future, provides both a criticism of the present and a looking­forward to the future to come: In practical opposition to things as they are, and in creative reshaping of them, Christian hope calls them in question and thus serves the things that are to come. With its face towards the expected new situation, it leaves the existing situation behind and seeks for opportunities of bringing history into even better correspondence to the promised future (Moltmann, 1967: 330). Habermas starts out from a similar perspective to that of Horkheimer and Adorno in their most atheistic moments, arguing in Legitimation Crisis that the traditional, religion­influenced world­views have had their persuasive power and influence removed for all practical purposes by rationalization and its consequences for legitimation of the status quo through recourse to non­normative, non­communicative categories. Traditional religious explanations of many parts of the cosmos have been discredited in the light of current scientific knowledge (Habermas, 1976: 75 ­ 92). Humanity has to Îlive disconsolately1 with the realities of the current human condition which are 3... irremovably attached to the bodily and moral constitution of the individual2 (Habermas, 1976: 120). Habermas can be read as seeking to incorporate the allegedly superseded libratory trends in religion into his theory of communication free from domination. But, doing what Habermas attempts to do must result in historical amnesia with respect to past struggles and injustices, unless he leaves his lofty theoretical position and attempts to ground his theory in the world. At least Horkheimer recognised that, even if a better society were to develop, 3... there will be no compensation for the wretchedness of past ages ...2 which would necessarily limit the institution of some ideal of justice (Horkheimer, 1972: 130). To deny, or at least deprecate, past injustices is to negate the human capacity for individual and historical memory, and all that flows from them. Habermas seems not even to allow for remembrance of the death of a loved individual. During life, an individual's relationship with the loved one has been mutually satisfying and enriching, communicative action at its most intimate and potent. A death denies the possibility of continuation and confronts the grieving individual with a permanent cosmic mystery which has baffled humans for as long as there have been conscious humans. Habermas also seems to neglect the psychological benefits of proper grief and grieving. The only explanation able to go beyond Habermas's essential disconsolate denial of, or capitulation to, death is to argue for the existence of God: Death destroys the solidarity created by communicative action, on which we depend for our identity and growth. To affirm communicative action as an irreducible and indispensable element of human existence without evading the fact of death or falling into self­contradiction is to affirm the presence of a reality that saves from death and thus discloses itself in human solidarity. In brief, it is to affirm God as the Judaeo­Christian tradition presents him (Davis, 1980: 148). In one important sense, Rudolf Siebert's The Critical Theory of Religion is also a grappling with the problem of theodicy at one of its most potent, intimate, and personally painful levels. Throughout the book, Siebert returns to the death of his wife from cancer, and weaves this personal tragedy into the narrative as a most moving grounding for the otherwise highly technical theological narrative he develops. Clearly, writing the book, parts of which he readily acknowledges arose from discussions with his wife, was part of Siebert's personal grieving process as he came to terms with his loss, and also in coming to terms with his loss, he attempted to make theological sense of it. At the end of the book, after describing his wife's death, Siebert writes: We can continue to love after the death of the innocent other, since the victim herself has done so to the bitter end. Non­possessive devotion and the liquidation of death is the highest in critical theory and political theology. In any case, the one who survives must forget nothing: neither the most cruel abandonment nor the hopeful and loving trust of the innocent victim. It is possible that the abandonment shall destroy the trust. That is nihilism! It is the great temptation of people living in the dialectic of the late civil society. But there is also the possibility that the trust will conquer the abandonment: the possibility of the fulfilled life, the good state, the free humanity and the messianic redemption in God's Kingdom (Siebert, 1985: 502). Siebert's conclusion, echoing Horkheimer's final assertion that theology is the resolute belief that the murderer will not triumph over their victim, is to propose both a theory of religion and a radical political theology, the former embracing a recognition of how and why domination distorts human potentialities and proposing praxes which might overcome these distortions even in the face of paradoxes of unconditionality and annihilation, and the latter rooted in what Horkheimer's metaphor indicates a yearning for, the Judaeo­Christian prophetic and messianic agonising for absolute justice. The murderers and victims have to be recognised for who they are, and a clear line of recognition established between them in history and in contemporary situations. Not only that, the radical political theology Siebert proposes requires a radical engagement in history: Out of the consciousness of the participation in the historical process and the entanglement in social crisis, the new theory of religion stands under the challenge to throw light on our present action situation in its most extreme boundary dimensions and to help work out the transforming steps of learning to acquire that kind of praxis which makes possible, under conditions of more and more sharpening experiences of contingency, and existence in universal solidarity (Siebert, 1985: 398 ­ 399). Johannes Baptist Metz's discussion of remembrance is important here because Metz emphasises the energising power of genuine remembrance by often quoting a passage from Marcuse's One­Dimensional Man in his theological writings: Remembrance of the past can allow dangerous perceptions to dawn upon us. The social establishment seems to fear the subversive content of such recollections. Remembrance is a way of detaching oneself from the given situation, a kind of Îintervention1, which for an instant interrupts the omnipotence of the given situation. Remembrance recalls past misery as well as past hope (Marcuse, 1964: 98; quoted by Davis, 1980: 149). At this point in One­Dimensional Man, Marcuse is arguing that one of the effects of instrumental rationality is to require the selective manipulation of society's, and thence individual, remembrances. Remove those memories, and individuals begin to feel less tormented by possibilities of being and doing which are denied by their society. Freedom ceases to become the whole point of the West (c.f., Ellul, 1978), and freedom, and the memory of freedom in many dimensions as a possibility, is suppressed along with the histories of struggles for freedom which could serve to inform the present. A society that ignores or suppresses these dimensions pays for this through the growing loss of its sensitivity to freedom itself. The eschaton of such a society is boredom (Metz, 1974: 206). But such a society would not be boring. Outside of the sphere of the workplace, technologized leisure would be available to ensure that citizens are not bored, but neither would they be tormented by their memories of freedom once sought­for but now reduced to freedom to choose only between manufactured, processed, managed alternatives. Christianity becomes a crucial part of the West's memory, a way of remembering that the one­dimensional present need not triumph. On a personal level, Faith comes to us as the personal appropriation of the collective remembrance of a community, a remembrance that has accumulated a long historical experience, together with many attempts at its expression (Davis, 1980: 151). On a social level, Metz argues that the Church's memory of Christ's utter partiality for the oppressed ought to make Christians dangerous because theirs is a memory which ought not be contained by the powers of any given age but which looks to a radically different eschatology and ontology than that of the current age: This memory breaks through the structures of the dominant consciousness of our age, a one­dimensional way of looking at things which hides the fact of oppression and injustice from us. It mobilizes tradition as a dangerous tradition and thus as a critical and liberating power opposed to the security of those 3whose hour is always here2 (Jn. 7:6) (Metz, 1974: 204). It should also be recalled that a political theological understanding of suffering also grapples with this problem of theodicy. Indeed, this issue is central to the political theology of Peukert, Lamb, and Siebert because all emphasise the acute solidarity with the victims of history evidenced by Jesus. While Siebert grieves for his wife and uses her innocent suffering and death as a springboard for a deeper theological understanding of communicative action, Peukert, as we have seen, argues that Christian suffering can only make sense when the existence of God is assumed (Peukert, 1986: 234 ­ 236). Assuming this is necessarily to remember the Judaeo­Christian tradition from whence much of the basis of the West's original understanding of freedom derives. What Peukert proposes is a Îfundamental theology1. In contrast to the crude fundamentalism popularly associated with so­called Îfundamentalists1, who assert their fundamentalism through claims to having uncovered the foundational meanings of Biblical texts unmediated through any exegetical, historical, or even theological scholarship, Peukert's fundamentalism is fundamental because he claims, in line with Habermas's claims, that basic to human interaction are norms which presuppose human interests in freedom and truth. Incidentally, all political and Liberation theologians are first and foremost biblical exegetes, rooting their theology directly and firmly in scriptural exegesis; they are seeking to be true to their texts. At the same time, many are social activists, seeking to live out the implications of their theologies. Among the Liberation theologians, José Miranda is the most rigorous exegete. In this sense, the political and Liberation theologians are truly fundamental. Linking Metz's conception of the role of memory with his thesis on suffering cited earlier leads Peukert to a fundamental theology of communicative action: Such a conception of theology can be considered fundamental, insofar as in it are clarified the access to [the reality of God] from the performance of communicative action, the original determination and identification and thus the linguistic nameability of the reality of God, and consequently the possible reaching of an understanding about this reality in linguistic communicative action (Peukert, 1986: 240). In line with general theoretical requirements of universal applicability, and intersubjective verifiability, Peukert does not neglect the relationship between his fundamental theology as theology, and fundamental theology as also embracing a theory of society, which is also, to be sure, the central point of Habermas's theory of communicative action. As Habermas points out, the antithesis of communicative action, which can be succinctly described as instrumental or strategic action (Habermas, 1984: 273 ­ 337), violates the assumed human interests in free and undistorted communication, and thence, through processes of socialisation and rationalization, insinuates itself into the social and individual life­worlds where it circumscribes human recollection of, possibilities for, and experiences of, freedom from domination. Necessarily, as Weber, Horkheimer, and many other commentators have argued from their widely differing perspectives, this is death to a properly understood Christian theology, so laden with immanent, proleptic, prophetic, eschatological, and critical components. In proposing a fundamental theology rooted in categories of communicative action, Peukert argues that: Theology would remain abstract if it were not to attend to the social repression of freedom and the destruction of possibilities of identity for subjects. Inasmuch as political decisions ultimately decide the basic structures of the processes of social constitution, a theology that is a theory of this process cannot be confronted with the false alternative of developing it as either a theory of the subject or a theory of society. The starting point of a fundamental theology in a theory of communicative action proves to be fundamental and fruitful in that it makes the interdependence of these dimensions so apparent that they can no longer be played off against each other. Thus the fundamental theology developed here must be understood as a 3political theology2 (Peukert, 1986: 243). Clearly, the relevance of political theologies for contemporary critiques of domination lies in their absolute refusal to be contained within exclusively secular discourses on what constitutes communicative action, and their discussions of what amount to critical methodologies of doing and justifying freedom, and not just thinking about it. But there is still more to this debate between political theologians and critical theorists. Important to the creation and nurturing of the Îalternative memory1 of the Christian community is the role of narrative discourse, or story, in a renewed political Christian theology. Narrative discourse can be understood as a paradigm of what Habermas is developing with his communicative competence theory. The traditional role of the storyteller was to be the keeper of a society's memory, traditions, and history, relating them to each generation in the form of parables, tales, myths, and oral traditions so that they would not be lost, and with them the identity of the society. Embedded within traditional storytelling was the core tradition which a given story illustrated, provided the audience was able to disinter or properly interpret the central meaning of the story hidden in the details. If the audience misunderstood the story, or was not culturally equipped to interpret the story properly, then it became merely entertaining. Looked at from a modern angle, many so­called Îfairy tales1 loved by children are only entertainment. But if read from the perspective of the original hearers of the tales when they were a vital part of a society's oral tradition, many turn out to be profoundly radical critiques of society. Many stories are revolutionary messages circulated underground to politically educate the people and highlight social contradictions which could be overthrown once enough people realised, to cite just one of these tales, the Emperor had no clothes and that even a child could see it because the child could see what the adults could not or refused to see. More formally, the partially socialised child's consciousness was not occluded by internalised beliefs or ideologies. Storytelling often had a religious component to it, especially if the story or parable was describing a mystery such as death. The parables of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels invariably contain at least three components. They begin with a situation which any first century Christian or Hebrew would have known well, meeting a tax collector, a prostitute, a priest, or death, sickness, or mental illness. Then Jesus shatters the routineness using some device or other, opening the way to interpretation leading to either dismissing the deeper message or greater understanding of the mystery to which the story points. Those who could hear what Jesus was saying could understand the core message in the parable. The immediate sense and reference, though eclipsed, are not entirely destroyed. They remain to serve as in varying degrees as symbolic elements, helping indirectly to express the directly inexpressible mystery (Davis, 1980: 154). Then, by connecting narrative and story with wider concerns in politics, Jesus leads us towards seeing some, but by no means all, stories as ways of keeping traditions and commitments alive as ethically informed Îliberated spaces1 embedded in contemporary society in which statements are made about ends over against means, possibilities over against drab actualities, and, as was stated in Chapter Three, a way of pitting alternative epistemologies, ontologies, and teleologies against those of the established society, not only as places where faith may be nurtured, but where action in the world can be prepared for, initiated, and reflected upon. It should not be surprising that there are clear links between the early Church as reported in Acts, periodic attempts at revolutionary communality in certain monastic and lay movements, and Marxist visions of communes and communal ownership and control of property, all interpretable as attempts by participants to challenge prevailing ways of organising human society. Within these Îliberated spaces1, experiments are conducted into other ways of thinking and talking about human purposes and potentials. Moltmann makes an explicit parallel between Habermas' earlier notions of communication free from domination and the potential inherent in considering a Christian community as a Îliberated zone1 or a Îderestricted area1 though this notion of Îfraternity1, of itself, would not go far enough: In a society without Îliberty1 and Îequality1, fraternity cannot be presented all by itself. This is true even of the Christian fellowship itself, so that even there brotherhood is achieved not through the idea of freedom from restriction but in the first instance only through the removal of the privileges enjoyed by one person beyond another, and by one group beyond another... The idea of the Îderestricted area1 is no more, but also no less, than the specific idea of a goal which ought to be realized as far as possible (Moltmann, 1977: 107). Religious language adds a transcendent component to Habermas' communicative competence theory. In one sense, to be sure, even nuclear strategic literature can be described as using religious language because it grapples with eschatology, at least in historical terms, in that actualised nuclear strategy would represent the Îend times1 or Îlast things1 for millions of people. Religious words, such as Îapocalypse,1 which means divine revelation, are often used in the same context as nuclear warfare is discussed, though clearly not with their authentic meanings. When the utopian element is banished, when in public life there is a fear of the imagination and a refusal to consider truly new possibilities because of their incalculability, then politicians become just front­men for experts and social technology replaces politics as the ordering element in society (Davis, 1980: 156 ­ 157). Drawing some of the themes in this section together, it can be argued that while critical theoretical attempts at uncovering emancipatory truths, beginning with language and moving towards communicative action contain important insights, certain dimensions of human experience, especially suffering, death, and the memory of these experiences, appear to slip through the theory. Either people have to live without consolation in the light of past injustice, and experiences such as loneliness sickness, and death (Habermas, 1976: 120), or, through radical engagement, dialogue, and solidarity with, and for, others engaged in action for freedom, develop a communicative, genuinely fundamental, and political theory and theology which allows for these areas of human experience and offers explanations and consolation (e.g., Myers, 1988: 454 ­ 457).