13AR18-24

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Apologia Report 18:24 (1,160)

June 26, 2013

Subject: Grace, suffering, and death

In this issue:

DEATH - a poet's rediscovery of Jesus impresses the New York Times

ISLAM - "a judicious, well-grounded plea for complexity in the depiction and analysis of Islamist movements"

SCIENCE - an argument opposing the influence of "Creationist households (and/or schools)" on children

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Surprised to see AR again so soon? It is a surprise for us too. Pam and I planned to enjoy the time off in another part of Colorado, but the road between here and there was closed due to forest fires. - RP

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DEATH

My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, by Christian Wiman [1] -- Who would have thought? Faithful to the author's intent, reviewer (and noted Benedictine oblate) Kathleen Norris, actually ends up effectively conveying the Christian conversion experience in the New York Times Book Review (May 26, p16).

"This is a daring and urgent book, written after the author [a poet] learned he had a rare, incurable and unpredictable cancer. ... More than any other contemporary book I know, 'My Bright Abyss' reveals what it can mean to experience St. Benedict's admonition to keep death daily before your eyes. ...

"In his desire to 'speak more clearly what it is that I believe,' he recounts how, after long wandering, he sought to reclaim his religious faith. He understands that he is not recapturing the faith he had as a child, noting that 'if you believe at 50 what you believed at 15, then you have not lived — or have denied the reality of your life.' ...

"Drawing on his position as someone facing a diminished life span, Wiman mounts a welcome, insightful and bracing assault on both the complacent pieties of many Christians and the thoughtless bigotry of intellectuals who regard Christian faith as suitable only for idiots or fools. ... He comments: 'To admit that there may be some psychological need informing your return to faith does not preclude or diminish the spiritual imperative, any more than acknowledging the chemical aspects of sexual attraction lessens the mystery of enduring human love.' ...

"Like many artists, after shedding his early religious faith, he transferred 'that entire searching intensity' into his work. But eventually Wiman sensed that all those hours of reading, thinking and writing were leading him back into faith. He began to feel that 'human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us.'"

The poet's craft comes through in this "rich encounter with literature." Wiman finds that "the integrity of a poem ... is similar to that of a God who lives 'not outside of reality but in it, of it, though in ways it takes patience and imagination to perceive.' ... Christ's repeated use of metaphor and story, Wiman asserts, is an effective way of asking people to 'stake their lives on a story, because existence is not a puzzle to be solved but a narrative to be inherited and undergone and transformed person by person.'

"And there is the rub, the necessity of a personal commitment to a particular faith, with its own specific language, rituals and traditions. 'You can't really know a religion from the outside,' Wiman writes, and no matter how much you learn about it, it remains 'mere information, so long as your own soul is not at risk.' ... 'You can't spend your whole life questioning whether language can represent reality,' he writes. 'At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them.'

"Christianity scandalized the ancient world because it was for common people, open to anyone, rich or poor, slave or free. It offered no secret, specialized knowledge that could be acquired by a select few. Some contemporary readers may be scandalized by Wiman's opting to be a common Christian, relinquishing the elite status of the artist in Western culture. ...

"In reflecting on the meaning of Christ's passion for his own life, Wiman finds that it reveals that 'the absolutely solitary and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion.' It is the resolutely incarnational nature of the religion that draws him in. 'I am, such as I am, a Christian,' he writes, 'because I can feel God only through physical existence, can feel his love only in the love of other people.' ... And here the poet comes to the fore, insisting on the right to embrace contradiction without shame. 'I believe in absolute truth and absolute contingency, at the same time. And I believe that Christ is the seam soldering together these wholes that our half vision — and our entire clock-bound, logic-locked way of life — shapes as polarities.'

"This pithy and passionate book is not easy, but it is rewarding." Wiman observes that "the sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else's suffering flaring in your own nerves. Pity is a projection of, a lament for, the self."

Norris concludes that this book "is a testament to the human ability to respond to grace, even at times of great suffering, and to resolve to live and love more fully even as death draws near." <www.ow.ly/milbe>

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ISLAM

The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement, by Carrie Rosefsky Wickham [2] -- "This timely publication emerges from Emory University political scientist Wickham's ... long-term research into the institutional and ideological nuances of 'movement change' within the Muslim Brotherhood - the Sunni revivalist organization that was the leading opponent of the Mubarak regime in Egypt before the popular uprising of January 2011. After the fall of Mubarak, the Brotherhood's political party won a plurality of seats in the Egyptian parliament.

The Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, in opposition to foreign domination and the expansion of Western cultural values and practices there. While emphasizing reformist currents and the complicated interplay of shifting ideological commitments, Wickham's analysis highlights inherent contradictions in the movement. The picture of Egypt's Brotherhood, divided from the beginning by opposing gradualist and extremist tendencies, benefits from Wickham's astute analysis of related movements in Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco. A chapter on the Brotherhood's role in the 2011 uprising and its subsequent transformation offers detailed insights that will interest general readers and academics alike. This admirable study (based on hundreds of interviews) is a judicious, well-grounded plea for complexity in the depiction and analysis of Islamist movements."

Publishers Weekly, Jun '13 #1.

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SCIENCE

The Way of Science: Finding Truth and Meaning in a Scientific Worldview, by Dennis R. Trumble [3] -- "A biomedical engineer takes aim at the poor state of science education in this impassioned diatribe. Taking a cue [ironically] from St. Francis Xavier (who once said, 'Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterward'), Trumble - a gentler version of Richard Dawkins - argues that children raised in Creationist households (and/or schools) are being burdened with strings of unsubstantiated facts and are not supplied with the critical faculties necessary to assess the veracity of said claims. The consequences of such scientific illiteracy, he argues, extend far into adulthood: a populace ignorant of widely agreed-upon scientific truths is a poorly informed voting populace, and overzealous adherence to religious dogma can lead, in extreme cases, to terrorism. He goes on to argue that religions, far from being bastions of moral guidance, in fact fail to curb immoral behavior and frequently entail 'unrealistic expectations' and disappointment when reality fails to jive with doctrine. In lieu of what he perceives to be fanciful explanations of phenomena once inexplicable but now within the 'purview' of scientific understanding, Trumble offers this well-articulated, fact-based worldview, all in clear, accessible language." Publishers Weekly, Jun '13 #1.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, by Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, hardcover, 192 pages) <www.http://ow.ly/milsF>

2 - The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement, by Carrie Rosefsky Wickham (Princeton Univ Prs, 2013, hardcover, 352 pages) <www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691149402/apologiareport>

3 - The Way of Science: Finding Truth and Meaning in a Scientific Worldview, by Dennis R. Trumble (Prometheus, 2013, paperback, 375 pages) <www.ow.ly/mjbps>

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