Terry Eagleton: Reason, Faith and Revolution

Terry Eagleton's latest book is a stinging attack on all things Dawkins and Hitchens, or 'Ditchkins' as he calls them.

In amongst the ridicule he rightly heaps on them, there is some fantastic prose about the essence of Christianity. Not surprisingly, this bit caught my eye:

The most radical form of self-denial is to give up not cigarettes or whiskey but one's own body, an act which is traditionally known as martyrdom. The martyr yields up his or her most precious possession, but would prefer not to; the suicide, by contrast, is glad to be rid of a life that has become an unbearable burden. If Jesus wanted to die, then he was just another suicide, and his death was as worthless and futile as a suicide bomber's messy finale. Martyrs, as opposed to suicides, are those who place their deaths at the service of others. Even their dying is an act of love. Their deaths are such that they can bear fruit in the lives of others. (p. 26)

Eagleton, a socialist from way back, can see the radicalism of the New Testament in clear focus: 'The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do.' Quite... And here's more:

The Christian way of indicating that faith is in the end a question of choice is the notion of choice. Like the world itself from a Christian point of view, faith is a gift. This means among other things that Christians are not in conscious possession of all the reasons why they believe in God... (p. 138)

Intriguingly, Eagleton has also noticed that some of the most vigorous intellectual discussion taking place in the West is being done by theologians (to the great surprise of Ditchkins)

...theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialised world - one whose subject is nothing les than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life. These are not questions one can easily raise in analytic philosophy or political science.

Eagleton describes Christianity as a kind of 'tragic humanism', a type of thinking that holds that only 'by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own'. (p. 169). By George, I think he's got it...

The Centre for Public Christianity

These guys are good, very good.

Jerry Springer the Opera

This story about an evangelical Christian group who have sought to prosecute the director of the BBC on the basis of blasphemy laws in the United Kingdom got right up my nose for a couple of reasons.

One is that Christians have to stop taking offence on behalf of Jesus. Taking offence is exactly what secular liberals expect religious people to do - to respond irrationally and emotionally to the negative or irreverent depiction of religious subject matter. It is what Islamic groups do. To then seek protection from the law is entirely counter-productive, as was demonstrated in this case. Challenged to act on the blasphemy laws, the court actually said that broadcasts and theatrical performances were exempt from them. So, the result is a huge net loss for the Christian cause: whereas previously performers might have restrained themselves, they now have a legal ruling that they can say and show what they like vis a vis Christianity. Good job, Christian Voice!

But, having said that: the liberal or humanist voices that jump up to defend the likes of Jerry Springer the Opera as an important work of art or what have you are having a laugh. JStO - I viewed part of it on the BBC - is a deliberately offensive and crass piece of undergraduate drama that has been given far too much publicity. It is a shame that in our society the BBC (for example) couldn't make the free decision to respect the beliefs of many of its licence-paying subscribers and not show it because it trampled underfoot something they hold precious. Why does it have to see something like this as 'cutting edge television'?

Further, the court ruled that because there were no negative effects - no riots, no marches, no mass civil disobedience, (actually, there were some very civilised protest marches) - that blasphemy could not be upheld. These were the words of the ruling:
The play had been performed regularly in major theatres in London for a period of nearly two years without any sign of it undermining society or occasioning civil strife or unrest...
Since when was strife the yardstick for blasphemy? And in order to receive protection from the blasphemy laws, do Christians have to act like some Muslims did - that is, disgracefully - when the Danish cartoon fiasco occurred?

As I said, Jesus's name will be honoured without the help of blasphemy laws: and it is to the loss of those involved in the Jerry Springer production if they don't see it yet. It is a matter for weeping, not protesting.