Yesterday I wrote that the church is a political structure. Today I'd like to dwell on that idea a bit more in conversation with another writer, William Stringfellow, a lawyer and theologian working in America in the mid 20th C.

In an essay titled, The Orthodoxy of Radical Involvement, he writes,

"There is no such thing as neutrality about any public issue... Every citizen and every institution is involved in one way or another, either by intention or default. Those who suppose they can withdraw only deceive themselves, because deliberate abstinence or asserted neutrality are themselves forms of involvement in politics."

The Church, as a part of society, has a responsibility to confront the social issues of its day. Attempts to stay out of them are still, as Stringfellow notes, a form of involvement. This why there is no such thing as being apolitical.

In another essay, Poverty, Property, and People, he writes,

“The beginning of conscience, in a Christian sense, is realizing that every action or omission, even those which seem routine and trivial, is consequentially related to the lives of all other human beings on the face of the earth.”

Politics gets at this interconnection of all things and what it means to try and form a shared life together. As an institution, the church is gathering people and forming them with values and purpose that will play a role in forging their relationship to the world around them. These things have political consequences—whether we recognize it or not.

A Good Friday reflection.

It's been a while since I've attended a church service. Usually this isn't something that I think about but today it weighs a bit more heavily. My reasons for distancing myself from the structural church are complicated. They're also not special. I respect those who stay in it as much as I understand those who leave and I don't think either choice makes someone better or worse. My feelings about it are my own and I also don't claim any sort of finality to them.

What I can say is that my convictions and my faith have tended to lead me on the path of societal progressive change. I try to follow that, wherever it leads—and for the moment that has led me outside the church(†). Christianity has always rung most true for me as a socio-economic and political project working in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. And I guess this is the thing for me. The church is a political structure and it's naive to suggest it isn't. Attempts to try and frame it as a-political or somehow existing outside of that are lazy at best and disingenuous at worst, perpetuating the suffering we should be working against. What I see in the church (at least in much of the current North American expression of it) has been a commitment to a politic I simply do not find resonance with.

So today, as the Church gathers to remember and reflect upon the death of Jesus, I call to mind the writing of Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lanken priest and theologian who struggled deeply with the role of the church in relation to the suffering of people.

"The Eucharist is spiritual food insofar as it leads to greater love, self-unity, and communion among persons and groups. Today this requires love among persons and effective action for justice. The Eucharist must also lead us to a response to the suffering of the masses, often caused by people who take a prominent part in the Eucharist. Unless there is this twofold dimension of personal love and societal action, the Eucharist can be a sacrilege."

(from the Eucharist and Human Liberation)

† I am talking about being outside the structural or institutional church as opposed to the traditions and community.

Postman makes an interesting observation around the way political consciousness changed with the tv.

“In the television age, political judgement is transformed from an intellectual assessment of propositions to an intuitive and emotional response to the totality of an image. In the television age, people do not so much as agree or disagree with politicians as like or dislike them.”

He then makes this suggestion that the democratic system was built around the idea that political judgement was something that was learned over time. This is why voting was restricted to a certain age. Political engagement also existed in the world of print—in newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Then tv came and flattened it and then everyone had access to the same political process and in doing so our judgement of political figures was reduced to image.

It's a bit of a cynical take, and perhaps a bit idealistic in its conception of the past, but I think it fits. I remember talking to a former MPP turned campaign manager on the political process and they more or less confirmed that voting comes down how likeable people feel the candidates are. And with tv, the likeability of politicians became the main point.

Of course, I'm always fascinated to consider how this trajectory has continued into the digital age.

In The Disappearance of Childhood, Postman discusses the emergence of childhood as a legally protected class in England in the late 18th C and into the 19th. He notes that up until 1780, children could still be prosecuted for over 200 crimes where the punishment was a public hanging, including stealing a coat and participating in a riot. Laws were soon passed that prohibited such extreme offences against children as well as protecting them from crimes committed against them. For example, in 1814 a law was passed that made it a criminal offence to steal a child. For the first time.

The idea here is that up until this point, there was no government protection on kids. They were left to the responsibility of whatever adult they were in the care of. As capitalism and industrialization emerged, kids being raised in lower classes were basically just cheap labour. However, as the government began to step in, the rights of children began to matter. Postman writes,

"In the 18th C, the idea that the state had the right to act as a protector of children was both novel and radical. Nonetheless, gradually the total authority of parents was humanely modified so that all social classes were forced into partnership with government in taking responsibility for child nurturing."

Here's what I find interesting. Today there is a growing sentiment, particularly among more conservative families, that the government should be hands off when it comes to the raising of kids. And this is why a broader view of history matters. When kids were left to the sole protection of parents and caregivers, they were frequently exploited, abused, and generally seen as property for them to do with as they pleased.

It's just important to remember that the things we often think of as constant, the rights of children for example, are not as immutable as might think.

Reading Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood and part of his argument is how the invention of the printing press created a new form of adulthood, one that had to be earned through learning and engagement with printed words. He quotes Lewis Mumford in talking about how print shifted people's focus away from what was right in front of them,

"More than any other device, the printed book released people from the domination of the immediate and the local… print made a greater impression than actual events… To exist was to exist in print: the rest of the world tended gradually to become more shadowy.

I find it interesting how when you compare this with today, obviously the digital world now dominates our focus. The immediate is what is happening online. It's become a new social existence that has pulled people's attention away from both deeper learning through written material and local things. We have become less engaged with what's going on right around us and the needs of our own community.

I assume the overall point of this book is going to be about establishing how the distinction between childhood and adulthood that was created with the advent of the printed word has disappeared as a result of new media (TV in this case). It's worth noting that childhood, in this understanding, would have been hyper-local. Kids were somewhat forced to be in place and interact with what was immediately happening around them. Now, the digital world has coopted that and we are seeing the negative effects playing out all over the world.