Christendom/Post Christendom - the marginalized
Earlier this week I started to post some images of Post-Christendom Church. Here is the next one.
CHRISTENDOM: A religious structure within which the marginalized are subjects without voice.
POST-CHRISTENDOM: New forms of ecclesial life in which the marginalized become mentors for the whole church.
Charles mentions how Gustavo Gutierrez describes the marginalized as “the non-persons of the world who have no names”. Gutierrez illustrates this with a story of the day Oscar Romero was assassinated.
While everyone knows the name of that fallen Bishop, few realize that on the same day in the same city seven others were assassinated. What where their names? Nobody remembers. They were just seven. To be a non-person is to have no name. Non-persons are not named, they are only counted.
Gulp…
How many Iraqis died in the recent war and are only just counted?
Do deaths in the western world mean more than the deaths in the third world?
How do we move beyond scapegoating and labels to describe people?
How do we reclaim Jesus’ ability to sit with a Samaritan woman and see her as a person - not a Samaritan and not a woman?
As Charles Bayer writes: “If indeed the church is again to stand on the margins of society, it had best listen carefully to those who are familiar with that terrain”
To be continued….
May 29th, 2003 at 12:38 pm
It is only the independant thinkers in the west that do not regard the lives of Iraqis as less than ours. That is one of the primary foci of the propaganda campaign run by the military. (just as the Iraqi military wanted the western soldiers depersonalised.) It is what the military do.
We are living “Star Wars”. Everyone is either good or evil, no grey here folks. Storm trooper lives are worth nothing because they belong to the evil side. Storm troopers don’t have wives or children or parents who will mourn them.
I could get carried away here. But needless to say, once again, religion is right in the thick of this mess. Everyone has god on their side.
May 29th, 2003 at 12:57 pm
Could get carried away, Chris. I’d say you passed could when you got past “independent thinkers.”
You know your history better than that. “Star Wars” - really. People throughout history have been depersonalizing the enemy. And there have always been partitions between “good” and “evil.” Do you not remember as recently as the Cold War, or World War II, or World War I, or the American Revolution?
And for your information, I would put the number of civilian dead in the Iraqi War up against the numbers of civilian dead in any week of world war 2, or against the entire reign of Saddam Hussein any day. Does that mean these civilian deaths are less important? No. Does that mean people who supported the war don’t realize their loss? No, unless you are a thoughtless “independent thinker” who cartoon caricatures those who disagree with you.
I could get carried away here, and I think I am. Just to get you stirred up a little more Chris, here’s a quote from George Bush aboard the Abraham Lincoln. Note the quote from Isaiah at the end:
” Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this Earth was to fight a great evil and bring liberty to others. All of you — all in this generation of our military — have taken up the highest calling of history. You’re defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope — a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “To the captives, ‘come out,’ — and to those in darkness, ‘be free.’”
May 29th, 2003 at 2:29 pm
Bryan,
You view them as evil, they veiw you as evil. Their foot soldiers are no more evil than yours are. They were fighting the great fight because that is what they are told their god expected of them.
Whether you accept it or not. The Iraqi soldiers had wives and children and parents who are now grieving for them.
The reason “Star Wars” is a good metaphore is because it is old. It is the same story that has been told since the early greek times. It reflects some basic components of what the human psyche is about.
May 30th, 2003 at 1:11 am
But you make my point for me. I don’t view them as evil. And neither do most Americans who supported the war effort. You see, there’s this thing called nuance, which means seeing depth to a situation. Whether you give people credit for understanding nuance seems to be the issue here. Whether you accept it or not, people who disagree about the war also understand human complexity.
For such “independent thinkers,” it’s funny how you arrive at the same caricature responses that most of the anti-war left have come up with (we’re bloodthirsty, imperialistic, anglocentric right-wing neo-fascist fundamentalists).
As for evil, yes, there was evil involved. Are you saying that Saddam, Usay and Qusay Hussein were not evil?
I would dare you to even go through the archives and find where U.S. military personnel called the Iraqi footsoldiers “evil.” I bet you won’t find such assertions anywhere. Why? Because it’s a simplification, and a weak one at that.
And BTW, I don’t know of anyone who would characterize the Iraqi war effort as “the great fight.” It was really sort of pathetic, really.
Let me make sure I’m being clear (so you understand my nuance): You can disagree with the war all you want, and say how much you disagree with it, and how it hurt the Iraqi people, etc., etc., ad nauseum. I have no problem with that. I can see why you would believe that way.
But don’t caricature people who disagree with you about the war as simplistic sheep (not “independent thinkers”) who are all taken in by military propaganda and could care less about Iraqi lives.
May 30th, 2003 at 8:03 am
“I would dare you to even go through the archives and find where U.S. military personnel called the Iraqi footsoldiers “evil.” I bet you won’t find such assertions anywhere.”
I stand corrected. The quote, was I think, “We shoot them down like the morons that they are.”
If you refer to my original post Bryan I was talking about valuing Iraqi lives as less than US lives. It takes a degree of independant thought to resist the hype and propaganda that promotes this notion. I wonder why you have so much problem with people thinking independantly and making their own moral judgements.
May 30th, 2003 at 9:58 am
Actually, I don’t have any problem with people thinking independently. It doesn’t take *any* independent thought to parrot leftist-liberal propaganda (that term flies both ways). And it takes even less independent thought to apply that faulty reasoning to entire groups of people.
As for your quote, I am interested in seeing where that quote comes from. Was it from an official spokesperson for the army? or was it from an individual soldier?
If it was from an individual soldier, then I wonder if you would apply the same standards to other areas of life? For instance, should we view all of Christianity as holding the view that women should not be employed outside the household? Because I can find some Christians who will say exactly that. I think it’s called hasty generalization.
And if you will follow your train of thought in your original post, you might find that you could arrive at a different conclusion: namely that the U.S. values at least *some* Iraqi lives higher than some U.S. lives, because U.S. soldiers died in the war as well so that other Iraqis would not continue to live under Hussein’s regime.
It takes a degree of independent thought to follow through on your assertion to its logical conclusion.
May 30th, 2003 at 12:31 pm
It was Brigadier-General John Kelly. I believe he is/was assistant commander 1st Marine Division.
Bryan, I think of you as an independant thinker (please don’t be offended I mean it as a compliment) It does not imply either a left or right bias.
You assume I was anti this war, as Phil our kind host undoubtly is. I am less clear. My current opinion is that it may have been the right thing to do even if we did it for all the wrong reasons.
My point originally was that while it is in the military’s interest to depersonalise and devalue the lives of the Iraqi soldiers, I choose not to take that view. When a person dies is conflict whether they are civilian or military, Iraqi or US it saddens me. The Iraqi’s are human beings and their lives have value too.
It behoves us all not to just accept what authority tells us but to look our own values to decide for ourselves what we think.
May 30th, 2003 at 2:55 pm
Ah. Now I know the quote you are talking about. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/08/1049567681482.html . From the looks of it, Kelly isn’t referring to Iraqi army regulars at all, but non-Iraqis who came to Iraq to “defend” Saddam’s regime.
Just so we’re clear, that is not evidence that the troops viewed iraqi footsoldiers as evil or even as morons. As for those who came from outside Iraq to harrass the opposition, well, I’ll let you judge their capacity on your own.
“When a person dies is conflict whether they are civilian or military, Iraqi or US it saddens me. The Iraqi’s are human beings and their lives have value too.
It behoves us all not to just accept what authority tells us but to look our own values to decide for ourselves what we think.”
Indeed.
June 1st, 2003 at 8:17 pm
But, isn’t that the point. That we need to look past categories, names and labels and see people.
I am not sure that because they came from another country, it makes it ok to “shoot them down like the Morons that they are”.
Do they too not have families?
Are they still not people?
Are they more than numers?
February 1st, 2005 at 10:32 pm
This comment is very late - but I would like to point out that the Iraqi civilians are not counted at all. It is against US military policy to count bodies except their own. In Fallujah at this last offensive the first thing the military did was to shut down the hospitals because if you can get to a hospital you can be counted as a casualty. War is wrong. It makes animals of us all. I read of the mother of a soldier who killed at Me Lai in Vietnam. She said, ” I gave them a good boy and they gave me back a murderer.’