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Hymns Ancient & Modern - Marika Rose

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85 pages

English

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It feels like the world is ending. In the midst of apocalyptic times it’s tempting to cling on tightly to what we still have. But what if our desire to save the world is part of the problem? Theology for the End of the World suggests that in responding to the deeply entwined systems of capitalism, racism and patriarchy we should stop trying to unearth a ‘good version’ of Christianity which stands opposed to these forms of violence and seek instead to reckon with the role that Christianity has played in making the world we now inhabit. How has Christianity shaped the histories of marriage and the family? How did Christianity invent race and give birth to capitalism? Grappling with the ambivalent inheritance of Christianity, a tradition passed down by enslaved people and enslavers; by violent husbands, resourceful wives and courageous sex workers; by rich people and the dispossessed, the book suggests Christians should give up on trying to redeem the world – a social order founded on violence and exploitation – and seek instead to end it.

Sujets

Religion

Christianisme

Christian Theology

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Hymns Ancient & Modern
Date de parution	31 juillet 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780334060680
Langue	English

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Extrait

Theology for the End of the World
Marika Rose

© Marika Rose 2023
Published in 2023 by SCM Press
Editorial office
3rd Floor, Invicta House,
108–114 Golden Lane,
London EC1Y 0TG, UK
www.scmpress.co.uk
SCM Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (a registered charity)

Hymns Ancient & Modern® is a registered trademark of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd
13A Hellesdon Park Road, Norwich,
Norfolk NR6 5DR, UK
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.
Marika Rose asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-334-06066-6
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

Contents
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The End of the World

1. The World Doesn’t Need Saving, But Destroying
2. Theology Can’t Be Saved
3. The Holy Family
4. ‘We Have To Talk …’: Family Breakdown
5. How Christianity Invented Race
6. Mammon
7. God is Useless
8. Enslaved by Freedom

Conclusion: Theology for the End of the World

Bibliography

Acknowledgements
It’s impossible to know, let alone to measure, all the ways that what I’ve written here depends on others. I can no more repay what I owe than I can reckon up where my thoughts end and others’ begin. This is not an accounting of debt, then, so much as a poor attempt to express my gratitude to a very incomplete list of the people who made the thinking and writing that went into making this book joyful, despite it all.
The book wouldn’t have existed without Greenbelt and the friendships, connections, opportunities and encouragement I’ve enjoyed over a decade or so of involvement with the festival. I’m grateful to everyone at Greenbelt who has supported, encouraged and advocated for me, and especially to Paul Northup, Martin Wroe, Andy Turner, Mary Acland, Kate Bottley, Ruth Amos and Molly Boot. Much of the book has existed as Greenbelt talks at some point, and it would not take the shape that it does without the questions and challenges of various Greenbelt audiences over the years, not to mention those who kept me company late into the night in the Jesus Arms.
I’ve hashed out much of the thinking here in conversations with others. Anthony Paul Smith’s care and apocalyptic piety are woven through everything I’ve written in this book. I’m also grateful to Sami and Ellie Namih and Janet and Pete Overfield in Hull; Kate Tomas, Hannah Boast and Tom Hunt in Birmingham; and to Alison and Tom Merritt Smith, James and Claire Lewis, David Forrest, Sam Morris, Wayne Maughan and Alex Ross in Newcastle. I couldn’t have been kicked out of church in better company. I’m grateful for Jim Higginson’s support, wisdom and encouragement across both years and geography. I began writing the book during the pandemic and would have entirely lost my mind if it weren’t for Rose Holyoak, Flis Pitman, Christine Landry, Ben Martin, Neil Ewen and Shelley Cobb. Thanks also to Joey Jones, October Books and everyone else who made Southampton Radical Reading Group possible and joyful. Thanks to Jack Upton and Laurel Dean for much accumulated anarchist wisdom, beef and books, and Sami Çapulcu for practical and fantastical reading suggestions. The university is all too much a part of the world but I’m grateful to Adam Kotsko, Anthony Paul Smith, Dan Barber, Beatrice Marovich, Eric Daryl Meyer, Timothy Snediker, Sean Capener, Amaryah Armstrong, Tapji Garba, Alex Dubilet, Thomas Lynch and Steven Shakespeare for helping me figure out how to think within and against it.
I’m very grateful to my editor, David Shervington, both for inviting me to write this book and for helping to shape it. Thanks to Hannah Ward for meticulous copy-editing. Kelly Filreis helped with getting the book’s cover right. James Lewis and Bec Wilkinson read through several chapters and gave very helpful feedback; ‘God is Useless’ is much clearer thanks to Andrew Grenfell’s comments. Alex Dubilet, Adam Kotsko and Anthony Paul Smith read complete drafts and gave very helpful feedback. The book would not be what it is without them.

Introduction: The End of the World
Begin what?

The only thing in the world
worth beginning:
The End of the world of course. 1

I can imagine as an apocalyptic – let it go down. I have no spiritual investment in the world as it is. 2
When I first sat down to write this book, Australia was burning. Over the summer of 2019–20, 17 million hectares burned; over 3,000 houses were destroyed, 33 people died, and over a billion animals and hundreds of billions of insects were killed. 3 The loss was vast and incomprehensible; at some point I found myself looking away when updates appeared on my social media timelines. A few months later, rumours of a new illness gradually turned into a global pandemic and then riots and protests erupted around the world in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. Another police killing of a young woman named Sarah Everard prompted protests in the UK, and I watched as police first beat protestors and then began to drag them through the courts. Over the last few years, the news of terrible disasters caused by unprecedented weather events has unfolded alongside the rise of far-right acts of violence and increasingly grim and repressive legislation across the western world designed to make political protest all but impossible, targeting pregnant and trans people, and fortifying national borders.
It has become fashionable to say that we live in apocalyptic times, but that’s not quite right. The word ‘apocalypse’ comes from the Greek word apokalupsis , which means ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling’. In the apocalyptic literature of the Jewish and Christian traditions, from which we primarily get our understanding of apocalypse, this moment of revelation or unveiling doesn’t simply help us to see the world more clearly – it is (as the Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes argues) revolutionary . 4 What apocalyptic literature tends to suggest is that this moment of revealing – of seeing the world as it actually is – is radically transformative. Things cannot continue as they are. But what’s perhaps most awful about this particular historical moment is that the opposite seems to be true. However much we come to see the real nature of the world we inhabit, the structures of violence on which our lives are built – the wilful commitment to ecological destruction which drives our most powerful corporations, the corruption of our governments, the instability and injustice of financial markets, the foundational role of slavery in our laws and institutions, the stupidity of an economic system that relies on forcing people back to workplaces in the middle of a deadly pandemic – no revelation, however stark or horrible, seems enough to effect real change in the world we inhabit. Surely, we keep thinking, things can’t carry on like this, getting worse and worse for ever; surely something has to change. Yet here we still are. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this period of history not as apocalyptic but as a time of crisis, a time in which – as Antonio Gramsci wrote of his own times – ‘the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.’ 5
But this is also the time of superheroes. As the oceans rise, the ice caps melt, and incomprehensible violence is unleashed every day at borders, detention centres, protest marches and in war zones, our collective cultural attention has focused increasingly on stories of people endowed with superhuman powers, struggling to hold off the end of the world. It seems as though our entire culture is gradually being sucked into a single extended superhero universe, remakes piled upon remakes. What does this narrowing of creative imagination tell us about the world we inhabit and its impending end?
The Nazi jurist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt once described the role of the state in terms taken from the letter to the Thessalonians. In the letter, the author (traditionally understood to be Paul), writing in an apocalyptic tone, says that ‘the day of the Lord’ is not yet here, and will not arrive until ‘the lawless one is revealed’. Although currently present in the world, the author says, this lawless one is currently being held in check by ‘the one who withholds’ – in Greek, the katechōn . 6 For Schmitt, this role of holding back the end reveals the proper role of the state: not to create a perfect society but to hold back the chaos of lawlessness, which later Christian tradition came to identify with the Antichrist. 7 As Adam Kotsko argues, something like this idea has shaped western thinking about the role of politics since at least as far back as Augustine who – against contemporary readings of Thessalonians which saw the Roman Empire as the Antichrist – argued instead that the Roman Empire should be understood as the katechōn , the restrainer, holding back the forces of chaos and lawlessness, and so holding off the end of the world. It shows up again in the more recent, far-right idea of the police as