Narcissism in the Church

Dave and Joel discuss the doubt that can creep up on (or consume) a Christian. Dave considers how doubt can mean the unravelling of a person’s entire world. What are the sources of the Christian’s doubt? They discuss epistemic individualism, hyperstimulation and the loss of the sublime, and ego-driven clergy. Each of these point to the failure to cultivate a culture – and character – that gives Christianity its intelligibility. It’s fun-times easy-summer listening from the Eucatastrophe.

Joel and Dave discuss Pope Francis’s encyclical, ‘Fratelli Tutti’. Francis turns over a bunch of tables – selfish egoistic consumption, financial speculation, nationalism, war, the death penalty, ‘parallel monologues’ of digital culture, despotism that robs traditions, mockery of the good, and the privileging of property. In their place, Francis argues for fraternity amongst all people. It’s Christian populism, for social ends. Needless to say, Joel and Dave quite like it and thank the Pope for listening to the Eucatastrophe.

Dave and Joel ponder 2020. Increasing consumption, watering-down industrial relations protections, rising poverty, and diminishing concern for the most vulnerable. What does it really mean to ‘build back better’ (shudder)? Doing so may mean infusing politics with a religious sense of personhood, love, or fraternity. But the pandemic has also pointed to another question: whether the paramount good of religious community, or the Church, is incomprehensible in an economy-driven society. Part dramatic-sigh, part-unwarranted hopefulness.

Dave and Joel discuss Simone Weil’s brilliant work of political philosophy, ‘The Need for Roots’. They look at the first chapter, ‘The Needs of the Soul’, where Weil paints a picture of the ways in which a just political order provides spiritual nourishment for its subjects. How is beauty related to justice? What is the relationship between rights and obligations? Should authors be sent to the gulag for factual errors? It’s a pedant’s paradise in Simone’s republic!

Dave poses the hard questions in part 2 on Joel’s book, ‘Post-Liberal Religious Liberty: Forming Communities of Charity’. What does the ‘spiritualising of subjectivity’ mean? What is ‘the ecclesiological account’ of religious liberty? What’s with this Augustine love-fest? Joel contrasts his account and liberal pluralist arguments offered by other Christian authors. He argues that religious liberty must be grounded not in secular neutrality, but in the political community’s commitment to religion, integral to the common good. Dave wonders whether this involves swimming pools.

Dave interrogates Joel about his recent book, ‘Post-Liberal Religious Liberty: Forming Communities of Charity’ (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which offers an answer to the question: why does religious liberty matter? In part 1 of a two-part descent into Joel’s brain, the claim that religious liberty protects the quest for true religion is discussed, along with the (perhaps dominant) liberal egalitarian account of religious liberty, which sees political authority as supporting ethical individualism or individual authenticity. Joel suggests that this account while purporting to be secular, is in fact shaped by theological claims. Dave finally gets to talk about the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Dave and Joel discuss narcissism as a dominant force within the Church and wider society. Narcissism is characterised by an obsession with one’s public persona, coupled with a radical lack of empathy. Within the narcissist lies, not an intense love of self, but an emptiness that demands constant recognition from others in order to be filled. How might current Church practices be fertile ground for the image-obsessed? How might liberal forms of community rob individuals of space necessary for the cultivation of genuine interiority? Are we living in a culture of narcissism?

Dave and Joel discuss life as a student and how the church can fail to support it. In the Australian context, where theology and the pursuits of the university have largely been separated, universities have become easy for Christians to instrumentalise. They are places unrelated to the church’s ends, and so simply places where bodies happen to be. Against this, Dave and Joel consider what it means to take seriously the student's vocation. It may involve swords.

Joel and Dave discuss why theology is central to the purpose of the university.  John Henry Newman argues pursuing knowledge demands theology – it ‘enters into every order’, he writes.  Spit-balling on this theme, Joel and Dave consider how theological claims are always present in the university, even when theology is consciously excluded.  Why then is Jerusalem integral to Athens? And why is Athens integral to Jerusalem?  Will Dave ever be absolved of his Calvinist sins? Short answer: no.

Dave and Joel mull over what the university is for. The Australian Government has insisted funding for universities should be aligned with ‘job ready graduates’.  In the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman railed against such ‘utility’.  For him, the university exists to cultivate knowledge. Dave and Joel discuss the problems with subordinating the university to the demands of state and market, but also whether knowledge as Newman discussed it is too narrow or even solipsistic. It’s the usual defence of cultural Marxism that has become Dave’s gift to the world.