Thoughts on a Local Christianity

For a while now, I’ve been wrestling with the concept of a “local” theology – a theology that is hyper-contextual – where context and environment play a larger role than doctrinal creeds, traditions, etc. What follows are some thoughts on the potential for a local theology, Christianity, and God in response to the work of Derrick Jensen, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Daniel Quinn. Also, the majority of what follows was taken from an earlier email to a colleague so my apologies if some of that slips in.

The self is not separate from the place it inhabits.

Any civilized religion, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, and so on, is a religion of occupation. A religion is supposed to teach us how to live, which if we're to live sustainably, means it must teach us how to live in place. But people will live differently in different places, which means religions must be different in different places, and must emerge from the land itself, and not abstract themselves from it...(A) transposable religion means that it could not have emerged from the particularities of the landscape. A religion is also supposed to teach us how to connect to the divine. Yet it a religion is transposed over space, it won't - can't - be so quick to speak to the divine in that particular place. The bottom line is that civilized religions lead people away from their intimate connection to the divinity in the land that is their own home and toward the abstract principles of this distant religion. - Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization, p 186.

Meaning comes out of place/context. Deity will likewise spring out of place; a god of a single place and single people. A local Christianity would make no claim to universals. If a faith is based in a locale, its claims should be valid only for its adherents - the local inhabitants. The beliefs, stories, rites, and ceremonies of a tribal Christianity should be specific to location. A ritual should be based upon what is most present. Why should we care about or carry on liturgies, stories, etc., about the Jordan River when we have the White or Wabash Rivers in our own backyards? What care should we have for holy sites of Palestine? Do we have no holy or sacred sties around us? Perhaps we need to find/create them? We hear every Sunday stories of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and Jesus. Do we have no holy women or men among us whose stories are more relevant to our needs?

We face the crises of environmental destruction, globalization, and consumption. Part of the remedy is to ground people in their own locales creating relationship between who they are and where they are. From this commitment to place will hopefully come a culture created not by hierarchical systems or by those in power or the corporations, but by the people themselves.

Religious actions should be understood (and thus constructed or created) as performing, reminding, reinforcing connection between the community and the local (what is nearby). There are no obstacles to overcome (no Fall, no Redemption). Religious activities should be seen as an integral part of a cycle - rather than a recreation of an historic event. We do this not for salvation, but because it is a recognition of mystery - of our being a part of the movement of the universe. It is a sense of duty. We do it because it keeps us grounded in the cycle and web of belonging.

To do then:
- Focus on specific, precise practices (non-transferable)
-Screw the Great Commission; we have no duty other than to the place we are.
- Bless and pray for the local environment - the streams, rivers, animals, people, and trees; incorporate what is local into our sacred stories.
- Un-deify Christ. The emphasis should be placed on his teachings and example, not his person.
- Start from where you are - physically, not mentally. What are the stories of where you live? What are the stories of your family? What is the story of the land you inhabit?
- Awareness (such an overused term; maybe attentiveness is better?) - get lost observing something living near or with you. Just watch it/them/whatever for at least ten minutes. Don't think about anything, just watch - like you would television. Let the sauntering of a ladybug be your sitcom.
- Do not see events or other things primarily or initially with concern to their significance to you. The thing is significant in itself. To paraphrase Jung - that this thing is extraordinary in and of itself - not because it is extraordinary to yourself.
- Who are your neighbors? What trees live near you? What streams, creeks, rivers, waterways flow nearby? What are the names of the physical landscape features near you? What animals, birds, bugs, live alongside you?
- Meditate upon what rights you do not have (ex: I do not have the right to seek or create pleasure at the expense of others, whether human or non-human).
- Let's be honest...we need new scriptures. The Bible - already a text that combines different messages from different contexts - may or may not contain stories or advice of import today. What we say and do should be a thousand times more important than anything Christ may or may not have done or said.

Primitive (sic) peoples do not differentiate their world of experience into two realms that oppose or complement each other. They seem to maintain a consistent understanding of the unity of all experience. "Among the primitives," according to Joachim Wach, "there is no clear distinction between the notions of spiritual and material, psychical and physical." Rather than seek underlying causes or substances, primitives report the nature and intensity of their experience. Carl Jung clarified this approach to experience somewhat when he wrote, "Thanks to our one-sided emphasis on so-called natural causes, we have learned to differentiate what is subjective and psychic from what is objective and 'natural.' For primitive man, on the contrary, the psychic and the objective coalesce in the external world. In the face of something extraordinary it is not he who is astonished, but rather the thing that is astonishing." – Vine Deloria, Jr., "Tribal Religious Realities" in Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. Reader, pp 354-355

Now on to sacred places -

Deloria puts sacred spaces/places into three different classifications:

1) Places where the impetus is on the actions of persons. Peoples actions make the location sacred. "In this classification the site is all important, but it is sanctified each time ceremonies are held and prayer offered." (Deloria, 328)

2) Places where the "holy" was made manifest - something of spiritual significance happened. This could be a teaching, a revelation, a message, an insight or an understanding. "(T)he essence of the event is that the sacred has become a part of our experience...There is immense particularity in the sacred, and it is not a blanket category to be applied indiscriminately...(The sacredness of the sites) does not depend on human occupancy, but on the stories that describe the revelation (i.e. the lesson, the message) that enabled human beings to experience the holiness there." (Deloria, 329)

3) Objectively holy sites - a place where the holy is sensed regardless of actions. Perhaps this might be comparable to "thin places" as those places in classification #1 would be comparable to making places thin through action or construction. "The third kind of sacred lands are places of overwhelming holiness where the Higher Powers, on their own initiative, have revealed themselves to human beings...places of unquestionable, inherent sacredness on this earth, sites that are holy in and of themselves...These holy places are locations where people have always gone to communicate and commune with higher spiritual powers." (Deloria, 332)

So far, I've avoided engaging the touchy subject of terminology, in particular, "sacred," "holy," etc. There are two things I sense when thinking about this. 1) Human action - whether it be via ritual or liturgy, or mindfulness or awareness - is important. 2) There must be some sort of acquiescence to the power of the other, so different from a worldview shaped by scientific reductionism. Let me say before proceeding further that I believe the two, though divided here for practical reasons, are nevertheless inseparable and cannot be manipulated or engaged thoroughly on an individual basis.

Referring to human action - humans have unique abilities; unique not in the sense that they are in some way superior to the abilities of other creatures, but unique in the sense that they are particular to our species. The best description I can come to so far is used both by Carl Sagan and Deloria - the cosmos becoming aware of itself.

Referring to the power of the other- This second section is the more difficult, as it relies upon objective activity. I wish to stat that (and this may be obvious) the objective activity does not preclude individual or group awareness. We might say that some or part of the power by which the objective activity is possible is indeed possible at least in part by the presence of that unique activity of humans - cosmic self awareness. But what is it that distinguishes this second experience (the objective divine) from the former, subjective divine? It could be that it is a matter of scale - or that the awareness comes from without - that it in effect is so powerful that there is no action required on the part of the individual or group.

On the nature of the objectively holy - There is a dilemma: do we say that the holy/divine is something separate in essence or substance from the created order? In some ways, referring to places as areas where the sacred exists objectively would seem to require this. What I would like to argue is this: that existence is mysterious creativity (drawing from Gordon Kaufman) and that his mysterious creativity is the movement, the force, the power dwelling within the universe. It is not separate from it. It is not different in essence. Indeed creation or existence = creative movement, force, mystery. The two are one and the same and we cannot nor should not expect to be able to, through any ritualistic means, obtain or wrangle with a creative force that is divorced from existence in essence or substance.

This creative force/existence is prior to us and continues with or without us. In this sense alone, there is an objective nature to the creative mystery of existence. Returning thought to the action of the individual or group as the cosmos aware of itself, we possess that capacity to look or gaze upon this mystery, if only in part - nonetheless we can get some sense of it. This is our gift, our evolutionary niche. Through some methods we can scrape away - thinning out places through ritual, through teaching to illuminate this aspect of ourselves and the cosmos as a whole. At the same time, because of our capability of realizing, of sensing this out, it is possible to be overcome by the presence of the sacred or holy (the creative mystery that is existence or some other feeling) and it is this overwhelming which relates the power of this mystery to us. This still leaves a question in my mind - does this not make creative mystery, especially in this objective sense, dependent then upon our recognition or sensation of it? It is here that I will have to take a leap and live in a faith that the universe, the cosmos is much grander than I or any person, and this cosmos which brought about our species, is capable (though not in a sentient, intentional way - these are, after all, human attributes) of welling up in spatial places without our participation.

The presence of creative mystery is everywhere. It could not be otherwise because it is existence. Its presence is there regardless of our presence. Humans (but perhaps not only humans) can be aware of this creative mystery. We can a) scrape away to "thin things out" if you will, through ritual, action, meditation, etc. - in other words, our actions have meaning and significance, and b) become aware of the overpowering presence of creative mystery - this is passivity in the presence of the objective creative mystery.