Glocal Christianity

Story, Symbol and Spirituality

One of the reasons I value interfaith dialogue is that it helps me to see my own faith in new ways.

For example, in conversing with the esoteric community over the years one of the things that has been highlighted for me is how distinctive Christianity is in terms of its emphasis on story. Esotericists place much emphasis on symbolic correspondances. Christians, in contrast, place much more emphasis on story correspondances.

So, where esotericists draw extensively from various symbol systems, such as the major arcana of the tarot, the sephirot of the qabalah, the elements of alchemy, etc, etc, Christians draw much more extensively from story collections, not only in terms of the New and Old Testament collections, but also in terms of hagiography and testimony. This is not to say esotericists are indifferent to story or Christians are indifferent to symbol; what I'm saying is, the emphasis differs. It really differs.

Nowhere is this more important in how we understand deity. In my experience esotericists relate to their deities primarily through their symbol systems and only secondarily through their stories, their mythologies. Indeed, for some esotericists their deities are symbols. This can be vary difficult for Christians to understand, particularly Christians from more iconoclastic traditions.

Why do I mention this? Because of its implications for alternative worship, for contextualized ritual. Because, if we're committed to being in the world but not of the world, if we're committed to engaging our culture without loosing our Christian distinctiveness, then we have to learn to use symbol more effectively without story become subordinate. But I'm afraid, from what I've seen and heard, that, this has not always been the case.

So engagement with the esoteric community has given me a deeper appreciation for story and its significance for Christian spirituality. I have learnt I need to learn more about stories. How does story work? How does story relate to drama, to sacred reenactment, to crisis ritual, to life as we experience it? In the New Testament stories for instance, there can often be multiple characters involved. Disciples like Peter, Thomas, Mary. Opponents like the Pharisees, Herod, Pilate. Ambiguous characters like Judas and Nicodemus. Others like the tax collecters and the crowds. And, overarching them all, God. How do their struggles touch our struggles? How am I sometimes a Judas? A Nicodemus? How can I engage with the story on the level of symbol? Is this story something I find myself in? When I pray, how do these stories inform me? In this visual, interactive, multimedia age of ours, its important that Christians, evangelicals in particular, relearn how to relate story and symbol in ways that are distinctively Christian.

Tolkien on Rings mythology

Mythology meets theology in the stories of Tolkien

Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey

I though I would use the above video, Harmony: The Quest For Companionship, as a vehicle for kicking off some discussion on comparative mythology, the collective unconscious and the writings of Joseph Campbell.

Why is Joseph Campbell important? For those of you not familiar with him, Joseph Campbell was an American mythology professor, writer, and speaker, best known for his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The journey of the hero, what he called the monomyth, figured prominantly in Campbell's comparative studies, and his writings on the hero's journey have influenced such films as The Matrix and Star Wars. He has also, as a popularizer of Carl Jung, exerted a noteworthy influence on popular spirituality, particularly with the Pagan and Gnostic revivals.

Heroes were important to Campbell because, to him, they conveyed universal truths about our own journeys of self-discovery and the means through which societies are renewed.

The personal side. My own interest in Joseph Campbell took off a number of years ago through conversations with Pagan friends who were heavily influenced by him. Indeed I was invited to a Joseph Campbell study group one evening. It dove tailed with my previous interests in Jung, the collective consciousness, alternative spirituality, liminal ritual and the films mentioned above. It also presented me with interesting apologetic challenges, for the story of Jesus was very much interpreted by Campbell through a monomythic lens. In essence, for him, all religions are just masks which obscure the transcendent realities behind myth.

Christian considerations. I have found it interesting, therefore, to explore how Campbell's thinking squares with the thinking of two Christian mythologists that I am sure you are familiar with, C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien. Drew Trotter writes:

C. S. Lewis’s view of myth and its relation to his stories is complex, and would find some agreement with Campbell’s, but fundamentally he disagrees on a number of crucial points ... Eventually, Lewis came to believe in a Christianity that held onto both myth and history and incorporated them both into a belief that Christianity is a myth, but more than a myth because it actually tells of real history and a God who, in space and time, became Incarnate, a word so important to him, he almost always capitalizes it.

For more on this see my previous post on Inklings on Myth.

As you might imagine, my thinking is more in line with the Inklings, both in terms of having some fundamental disagreements with Campbell, yet still agreeing in many other ways.

But, despite some criticisms, I believe Campbell has some important insights for us on the power of story, on journeys into liminality, and what this means for the study of spirituality and society. He has particularly influenced how I view and craft alternative worship - in that I consider story far more important than style. And, as you may gather from the name of this blog, I very much see incarnational living as a journey of self discovery and social renewal as well.

Related sites

• Monomyth
• The Power of Myth: Lessons from Joseph Campbell
• Joseph Campbell's monomyth
• Joseph Campbell Foundation

Myths about Christianity

One of my pet hates is when people say to me, you Christians all believe this, or you all do that. Not only are such generalizations usually overgeneralizations, often they may not be true of Christians at all. So I thought I’d do a bit of myth busting today and out some of the myths I love to hate the most. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Christians worship three gods who are somehow one (no, Christians worship one god who is triune, if you don’t know the difference then maybe you should listen before speaking)
2. Christians are all controlled by the Vatican (no, that would just be Catholics, and even that’s stretching it. In either case, Protestants and Orthodox are completely independent of the Vatican)
3. Christians hate Mary Magdalene (no, Mary Magdalene is honored by Christians as the first eyewitness to the resurrection)
4. Christians all believe in six day creationism (no, that would just be Six Day Creationists)
5. Christians all believe in an end times rapture (no, that would just be Dispensationalists; just because they are a noisy bunch doesn’t mean they speak for us all)
6. Christian theology is responsible for the environmental crisis (so, I suppose Hindu, Buddhist and Atheist countries are green paradises then?)
7. Christianity demands you have blind faith (no, many Christians prefer a more informed faith actually)
8. Christianity is all about following rules and regulations (no, Christianity is all about following Christ, who heavily criticized legalistic religion in fact)
9. Christians think we are better than everyone else (no, Christians teach everyone is equally imperfect)
10. Christians deny the humanity of Jesus (no, Christians affirm his humanity and divinity equally; we disagree with those who deny is humanity every bit as vigorously as with those who deny his divinity; check our history)

Can you think of others? Myths about the Bible maybe?

Epiphanies in the Horrific

Following on from the recent discussions between Douglas Cowan and John Morehead on Sacred Terror both here and at TheoFantastique I thought I would throw this video loop into the fray. It features Pinhead from Hellraiser engaging in some very overt iconographic inversion. I note Doug's comment:

So many horror films start from the premise of the supernatural that to suggest they have nothing to do with religion is absurd.

Could it be any more obvious in this scene? [A warning to the sensitive though - don't watch this if you are easily grossed out or offended by blasphemy, gore or language].

Also if you want to see the loop of the specific bit from Hellraise IV that Doug mentions in his article see here.

Faith as an Alien Realm

Interesting interview going on with Douglas Cowan on Sacred Terror at TheoFantastique (see part I and II).

That gives me a wonderful pretext for posting this beauty entitled "Jesus is a Fucking Alien." Not a sentiment I share with the artist obviously but certainly a raw comment on how many experience Christianity, Christ and Christians.

What I find interesting is the path Cowan offers us, to explore the sacred through the horrific and alien in movies and other media. What do our fears and terrors reveal about us? How does exploring them help us to get under our skins? [click to enlarge]

TheoFantastique

My mate John Morehead has launched a new blog called TheoFantastique.

In his words it's "a blog devoted to the enjoyment and exploration of myth and archetypes expressed in the pop culture genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and their connection to religion."

With all my recent blogging on heroes and stories it shouldn't take too much quesswork to figure out this is a favourite subject of mine too. I exprect I'll be a regular!

Changing The Story

There is an interesting discussion going on at The Forgotten Ways about Changing The Story.

I was asked by one commenter, “My question is how do you perceive yourself, or how do you expect listeners to see themselves, as you tell the story of the exilic hero? How do you see the function of the exilic hero in the process of change?” I thought I would reproduce my response here as these are some pretty core issues for me.

Some time ago I wrote a piece called The Hybrid as Chosen One, noting that many of the heroes of ancient mythology, modern cinema and real life are ‘hybrids’ of one sort of another – people who stand between worlds – of neither one nor the other, yet strangely of both. They are people who stand in the gaps as few others dare, acting as catalysts for transformation.

Jesus was the ultimate example of this – both God and Human – and calls us to a live life his way, to be in this world but not of this world. I trust you can see where I am going with this.

Exiles are likewise, called to stand between worlds. They cannot call home where they are or where they have come from, they can only forge a new way ahead. I see myself in this vein. I am spiritually Christian but culturally New Age. That’s the hand I have been dealt and my calling. I teach others living between worlds that we are called to worship Christ in our own cultural context, not convert to an insular Christianese subculture. I hope that eventually the tentative networks we are forging across Australia and the world can birth into something more substantial. I draw inspiration from heroes who did the same, like the Apostle Paul, like Saint Patricius. People cannot be told how to live like this, they have to see it for themselves; they have to take the red pill, not just try to imagine it. I find it’s most effective to just invite others to travel with me for a while and tell stories along the way so that they can slowly orientate to all of this.

We cannot expect ALL Christians in the West to take the path of the exile, of the change agent, of the Western missionary. We must remember that Paul considered both Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity as legitimate paths. But for us NeoGentile Christians who find the village atmosphere too reified and need to strike out in new directions, well, we need these exile heroes and their exile stories. They feed our imaginations and our memories as scholarly essays and expositional preaching never can. And it’s in these exile stories that we begin to discover the exilic threads in the Christian metastory.

It’s this commitment to living between worlds that inspired me to rename my blog Journeys In Between to tell you the truth. I think those of us who wish to catalyze new kinds of Christianity are called to journey in between worlds and tell stories of cultural gestalt, to tell stories of world-bridging heroes both ancient and not so ancient.

The original comment I made that provoked these questions was this:

I think James had an excellent point when he talked about how the ‘heros we hold up’ have a powerful shaping effect.

Heros are an important element of any story and in talking about alternative stories I think we need to give serious consideration to invoking alternative heros and alternative ways of looking at established heros.

It is my observation that a Christendom focus and a Jerusalem focus tend to go hand in hand. Many who still dream of revival (as opposed to mission) and speak of our Christian nation (as if that still had a shed of plausibility) wax lyrical of the glory days of David, offer shrill warnings in the manner of Elijah, and pepper their songs with references drawn from the temple focussed psalms. As more of an exile type myself such stories and symbols often fail to connect at as deep a level as alternative stories.

I prefer to tell stories of the heros of exile, of Daniel amongst the Magi, of Joseph and of Esther, of the dreams of Ezekial with the Shekinah of God leaving the temple and heading east into Pagan territory. When I speak of Paul, I am fascinated by his journeys amongst the people of Athens and Lystra more than his troubles amongst the Jews. When I speak of Peter, I am fascinated by his trance visions that led him to Cornelius’ house. When I meditate of the life of Jesus, I am continually drawn back to his experiences amonst the Samaritans - the woman by the well, the healed lepar and his story of the good samaritan.

Moving into more contemporary times - are your heros the revivalist American preachers or the missinal Chinese matyrs? Do you speak of Spurgeon more than Desmond Tutu? What stories do you tell others? Christians? Non-Christians? I recently blogged on an early church father called Mathetes. A very missional bloke. How many have even heard of him? Is he a forgotten hero?

What is your BIG story? A tale of escape from earth to heaven, of cosmic escape? Or a tale of heaven inbraking on earth, of cosmic exorcism? Are your heros disembodied forever or awaiting resurrection in the wake of Jesus’ return? How do you think of them when your guard is down?

I find that the stories I embrace can have a profound effect on how I act out the Christian life, how I read the Bible, how I approach organisation.

Inklings on Myth

One of my current fascinations is mythology, particularly as it relates to the thoughts of Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, Jung and Joseph Campbell as well as apocalyptic lit. and narrative theology.

Anyway I came across this comment about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings that I thought some of you may find interesting:

Reading and Reflecting

I got my copy of Nevill Drury's "The History of Magic in the Modern Age" from Amazon the other day. Add that to Joseph Campbell's "Transformations of Myth Through Time" which I picked up at Megalong Books the other week and you can see I'm busy reading up on transformational stories and rituals in post-modern culture. More on that later.

Mythology, Aussie Style

In his article "Junkies, thieves, idiots and depressives" David Dale explores what makes Australian culture and mythology distinctive, and what make foreign imports unpalatable.

Apparently the film-makers of Australia have taken to heart the theme song of Mad Max 3: "We don't need another hero; We don't need to know the way home." They seem to agree with the Hollywood screenwriter Christopher Vogler that Australia is a "hero-phobic society". And with the actor-director Steve Vidler that we suck at triumphalist movies because we have the wrong founding myth.

Last week this column celebrated the 20th birthday of Crocodile Dundee by asking why Australia doesn't make hit movies of that kind any more. We got impassioned responses from 87 readers.

Part of the answer may lie in the theories of Christopher Vogler. He became hugely influential from the mid-80s after he wrote a memo to his bosses at the Disney studio claiming that all successful stories -- even the silliest comedies -- involve a classic plot structure he calls "The Hero's Journey". He says human beings are genetically programmed to respond to certain characters (archetypes) and to this progression of events: a person is summoned on a quest, meets a mentor and new friends along the road, overcomes obstacles, enters the inmost cave and confronts the ultimate evil, goes through a form of death and resurrection, and returns home with "the elixir" -- an idea that saves his tribe, or love, or self-knowledge. The most obvious example of this structure is the original Star Wars.

But in the second edition of his book, The Writer's Journey, Vogler wonders if his outline might be a tool of American imperialism: "My Australian teachers helped me see that such elements might make good stories for the world market but may not reflect the views of all cultures ... The Australians distrust appeals to heroic virtue because such concepts have been used to lure generations of young Australian males into fighting Britain's battles.

"Australians have their heroes, of course, but they tend to be unassuming and self-effacing, and will remain reluctant for much longer than heroes in other cultures. In Australian culture it's unseemly to seek out leadership or the limelight, and anyone who does is a 'tall poppy', quickly cut down. The most admirable hero is one who denies his heroic role as long as possible and who, like Mad Max, avoids acepting responsibility for anyone but himself." [see here for more]

Like all broad brush stroke generalizations I am sure this can be picked apart - the Australian psyche is becoming a lot more complex in the face of  multicultualism - but as a broad brush stroke look at Australian culture and mythology I believe there is a strong grain of truth here, and consequently, some important things for Christians to take on board if they would contextualize Christianity for post-modern Australians.

Post-modernity, if anything, seems reinforce our mistrust of heroic mythologies (read: metanarratives), particularly those which transparently serve foreign interests. Witness Aussie cynicism to Axis of Evil language, even amongst those Aussies who are strong supporters of John Howard and the War in Iraq. Any suggestion that John Howard should adopt such language is generally greated by laughter  or worse. And the suggestion that Aussies should make an Australian version of the movie "Airforce One" usually has people rolling in the aisles. "Honest" John says'"G G Get off my plane!" LOL

So consider more closely this statement:

"Sometimes we try to appropriate the American myth for our stories. And a strange thing happens. Mostly Australian audiences will not believe it."

The article focusses on myths of a cinematic variety but what about metanarratives of the more religious variety? What about the stories we live in as Christians and the stories those in the Emerging Church conversation tell about themselves and the society we live in? How believable are the global conversations to ordinary Australians? Many aren't believable even to me.

Sacred Imagination

In a post entitled "The Deeper Magic" Rich writes:

Christians have always had a difficult time with the imagination. Our suspicion of this God-given faculty causes us to either suppress it or condemn it. We fail to realize that the same dangers that lurk behind the use of the imagination also haunt the use of our reason. Rationality – just like imagination – can be corrupted and distorted. In other words, rationality can be used for destructive and inhuman purposes in much the same way that the imagination can.

Well I wouldn't say we've 'always' had a difficult time with imagination but I know what he means.

When Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment he answered "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." Now there is lots of wisdom in this statement but I particularly note we are called to love with all our minds. Not just the rational part. All includes loving with our imagination. Our imaginations are God given so lets use them for God's glory.

Journeys through the Netherworlds

It has belatedly occurred to me that there are a few other works I should mention in connection with the world tree and axial mountain archetypes and germanic mythology.

First up: The Divine Comedy by Dante. Written back in the fourteenth century, The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice. The mountain of Purgatorio forms a central motif connecting the upper and lower realms. Whilst quite problematic from a biblical perspective (purgatory is a theological construct that has no real foundation in the Bible) it is well worth noting from a phenomenological perspective as there are some obvious parallels here to the Mount Meru myth of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. After climbing the mountain of Purgatorio Dante enters paradise where he experiences ecstatic visions he confesses he is unable to describe.

Secondly, The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien. Since Andii mentioned C S Lewis I should also mention his mate J R R Tolkien, writer of Lord of the Rings and the man credited with introducing Lewis to Christianity. Both of these guys liked to explore spiritual themes using mythological devices and Tolkien in particular drew heavily from Germanic mythology. What is less well known however is that they also had an interest in Jungian archetypes.

In Tolkien: Archetype and Word, Patrick Grant notes: "The Lord of the Rings can be read, with surprising consistency, as an interior journey through the psyche as Jung describes it." In particular, I draw attention to the character of Golem in Lord of the Rings who in many ways operates as the shadow of Frodo.

So a thread I am interested in exploring is in whether in some sense these works may be viewed as literary meditations on the interior journey and how in turn this may also enrich the visionary pathworkings of open minded spiritual seekers.

Historic ~ Mythic

More thoughts on archetypes and the stories we live by. Exoteric religion emphasises the historic. Esoteric spirituality emphasises the mythic. But in Jesus the historic and mythic find integration and union.

The Hybrid as Chosen One

Just a few stray thoughts: Have you even noticed how many mythological messiahs are hybrids?

I’m not just thinking of the demigods of ancient mythology like Hercules, Orpheus and Achilles. What I’m primarily focusing on are the half-humans and bi-cultural heroes from contemporary mythology. Here are a few of my favorites:

There are the science fiction hybrids

• Terminator – The hero of the second movie is a cyborg who saves the future savior
• The Dune series – The Messiah, Paul Maud’Dib, is a water world boy who comes as desert savior. The God-Emperor, Leto, is a half-sandworm who leads humanity down the Golden Path.
• The Hyperion cantos – The savior of humanity, Aenea, is the child of human and AI parents
• Superman - An alien raised by human foster parents
• Stranger in a Strange Land – The human hero was raised by Martians
• Taken – In this new TV series the child of promise, Allie, is a half-alien human

Then there are the fantasy hybrids

• Lord of the Rings - Aragorn, the coming king, is an Elf-friend steeped in Elf culture
• Harry Potter – The hero is a half-blood wizard

Then there are the horror hybrids

• Blade – The hero is a half-vampire
• Hell Boy (not really a favorite but I’ll mention anyway) - The hero is a demon raised by humans
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer – The heroine’s lover and sometimes savior, Angel, is a redeemed vampire with a human soul

And to take a more historical angle, think of bi-cultural heros such as Laurence of Arabia and Ghandi. Remember Ghandi spent time being educated in England before he led India to independence from England.

As archetypes go, hybrid heroes are the ones who stand between worlds and offer hope of uniting them, or alternately, defeating the alien other.

Obviously the Blade character is the one that prompted these thoughts last night given where I was. Here I was, sitting eating dinner in Enmore and thinking over my previous post on Pop Culture and New Religions when this Goth guy walked in dressed full on like Blade, chest armor and all!

Further reflection: the hybrid hero is often the tortured hero.

Much of the street theatrics at last night's Blue Moon Festival seemed to have an element hero-worship to me. Idolization of tortured icons. Think about it. There’s an obvious link to Jesus in all this. But is Christian community as we experience it more like a torturing community than tortured community? If you are one who stands between worlds and the community is locked into one world it can sometimes feel that way. But the resurrected Christ stood between worlds.

If we are the body of Christ should that not be true of us also? If Christianity is ever to regain heroic status in popular consciousness (as it once had) we must relearn (as a community) to stand between worlds: to live as hybrids.

I’ll leave you with a quote:

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

Joseph Campbell,

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949