When I was five, my dad sat me down in front of an Ouija board and told me to ask it some questions. Whatever I wanted. Anything at all. My dad was a good church-going soul and the son of a theologian, but a five-year-old doesn’t care about apparent inconsistencies. I set my fingers on the planchette, closed my eyes, and tried to think of a question. I was supposed to give the question to It. I had no idea who or what It was. Wafting around inside my head was a vague notion of a numinous realm inhabited by ghosts and spirit-beings, maybe angels, maybe the old relations, long dead, that my parents sometimes talked about at the dinner table. In my mind, It was the sum of all that spirit-stuff. I couldn’t think of a decent question to ask, so resorted to something mundane: are we going to grandma and grandpa’s next weekend? I felt an energy quivering in my fingertips. The planchette began to move. By some mystical force, it circled the board, drifting first to the word “No” and then settling on the word “Yes.” I looked up at my dad and he broke into a grin. I figured it out. He had been moving the planchette all along. What I didn’t understand was that my dad was a reading consultant for what is now the Toronto District School Board. Part of his job involved developing strategies to promote literacy and I was his guinea pig. If he could use an Ouija board to entice a kid like me to read, why not? And how was that not magical?
When I learned to read, my universe expanded and shrank all at once. My universe expanded because literacy gave me access to worlds of information, and to new ways of thinking and being. My universe shrank because my dad’s peculiar Ouija board method taught me that there is no It, no ghosts and spirit-beings. It was me and my dad spending time together and playing a game.
In her second book, Amen, Gretta Vosper documents a similar expansion and contraction. In the 21st century, with instantaneous access to information and the dwindling authority of those who keep that information, ordinary people with a spiritual sense of things, what Vosper calls “adherents on the street”, can develop a spiritual literacy as never before. However, as with my Ouija board literacy, this new spiritual literacy shrinks one universe as it reveals another. It has been all too easy for spiritual people to focus upon the losses and then to despair. If there is no It, if there is no God as a being separate from myself who lives out there, then why bother with religion of any sort? Vosper’s Amen continues her effort to shift our focus to the spiritual universe which is expanding and to the opportunities such an expansion affords.
Before I go further, I must offer a couple caveats:
1. Bigger Than A Book
It is dangerous for a writer to review a friend’s book. There is the obvious concern that if I get too contentious, I might alienate a friend. But my concern has more to do with the word “book”. The book arises from an ongoing exploration. Books must have an end. But when the book concerns an ongoing exploration, the end seems artificial—as does the act of reviewing the book. It might be better to think of Amen as a travelogue. Rather than a review, think of what I write here as comments dropped by a fellow traveller as he tries to follow the same sign posts.
2. Audience
I do not belong to Vosper’s audience. She is quite clear about who this book is for. She writes as the pastor of a North American middle-class suburban congregation of a mainline Protestant denomination. She tells a particular narrative of the liberal church, one in which there is a gap nearly three generations wide between academic theologians who teach in seminaries and the average person sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning. Modern scholarship has unseated our traditional sources of authority—Biblical and institutional—while ordinary worshippers continue to think about and practice their faith as if they lived a hundred years ago. The church has committed a betrayal and Vosper lays the blame at the feet of clergy who should have the guts to communicate what they’ve learned at seminary. Vosper feels duty-bound to undertake that task. As a result, her book is conversational in tone. Although she is careful to cite sources, Amen is not an academic work. It is addressed to ordinary people, and most especially to those who feel that sense of betrayal. However, I have a theological education and so must take care not to use that as an excuse to distance myself from the need her work addresses. I invite other readers and reviewers who do not belong to Vosper’s audience to take similar care. Complaining that it isn’t academic enough or theological enough is a bit like buying tickets to Wicked and complaining about the lead singer’s coloratura. Amen deserves to be read on its own terms.
And so on to my comments:
1. Theological non-realism
This is about as technical as Vosper gets. She identifies herself as a theological non-realist i.e. somebody who does not believe in a god named God who exists out there in the great blue yonder as a separate entity from us. This was the subject matter of her previous book, With Or Without God. Amen answers an obvious question arising from the previous book: if there is no god named God out there, then who are we addressing when we pray? Although Amen could be considered a sequel, it stands on its own. Vosper offers enough background that we don’t have to return to her previous book to understand what she’s talking about.
2. The Straw Man
Vosper answers a criticism that has been leveled at her elsewhere and continues to haunt her: that much of her work is directed at a straw man. For example, every Tuesday morning, she participates in the radio show, The Culture War, squaring off against Charles McVety, a straw man if ever there was one. His pompous Christian fundamentalism is a parody of religion and it produces a straw man god convenient for all occasions. Vosper devotes a good deal of energy keeping fundamental nonsense at bay, and continues to do so in Amen. And yet, say the critics, it would be more fruitful for her to seek out the best expressions of realist theology. It would improve the quality of the conversation. Vosper responds by surveying a number of liberal theologians on their conceptions of god (aka God) and analyzing the language they use. She finds that, while they offer expansive notions of god, once the metaphors and poetry are stripped away, they “find themselves trussed by the language.” What remains is still a theistic account. God is external to the self and, for that reason, indistinguishable from the straw god of the fundamentalist crackpots. It is time for liberal theologians to set aside the fancy language and to be honest (both with themselves and with those whom they serve) about what they mean when they speak of god.
3. An Untrussed Language
Vosper wants to rescue prayer from religion. At the outset of Amen, she reveals how she conceptualizes of prayer as it is traditionally practiced. There is an essential component to prayer, something beneficial, like the sap inside a tree. But there are detrimental elements as well and these need to be stripped from the practice of prayer. Vosper’s is a universalizing narrative: “The model we create of [prayer] or put in its place could unite us—all of us—because it would be devoid of any particular doctrine, dogma, ritual, or formula. It would exclude no one. It would move us beyond the beliefs that divide into vital, dynamic community.” Her proposal for prayer is a logical extension of her proposal for religious language generally. As with prayer, so with metaphor. Underneath everything we say and write, there is a bare unmediated (essential) language which allows us to say exactly what we mean. Metaphor and other linguistic tropes are accidental features which arise from the particularity of the context in which they are spoken. Strip them away and it is possible to speak of universal things.
Intentionally or otherwise, Vosper adopts a literalist theory of language that has powerful proponents, most notably Noam Chomsky. However, as linguistic anthropologist, Marcel Danesi, points out, it is a debatable account of how words convey meaning. But Vosper isn’t having any of it. Words must yield no ambiguity. They must be deployed in ways that cause no confusion. And putting her money where her mouth is, she goes so far as to define good and evil. She takes her cue from Sam Harris when she observes that “[l]ike prayer, philosophical exercises and scientific experiments that do not move toward or positively affect the experience of well-being by sentient life are just so much academic masturbation, and we have little time for that. We need to develop solid definitions of good and solid definitions of evil, and then bring each of our decisions down squarely upon one or the other … ” I leave you to read the book yourself for the definitions. Clear demarcations. Absolutist terms. The sheer ballsiness of the endeavor leaves my jaw on the floor.
Vosper states: “I want nothing less than a language that honours the reality of the quest for security and doesn’t cover it up with theological constructs that soothe our anxieties but do not call us to the greatness of our own humanity. … Language that reinforces a system of belief that can drive someone back down to his knees, remove his dignity, hold him to a standard he can never meet, and silence his objection to the way things are with the promise of something no one has the right to promise unless she also has the power to bring it about is repugnant. It is especially so if we argue it’s fine for us [liberals] because we’ve revisioned it, reclaimed it, rebeautified it. Face it: if the language you use, whether in prayer, in song, or in simple conversation, is language that forces even one person to his knees, it is wrong.”
And yet it may be the case that the language to which Vosper aspires, along with its precise definitions, is impossible. As proponents of Conceptual Metaphor Theory like Danesi suggest, human brains may not be able to think without the kind of language Vosper condemns. It remains a debatable point, but Vosper should take care not to paint herself into a corner.
A related manoeuvre is to look to the “intention behind the ritual.” This manoeuvre is familiar to lawyers in matters of statutory interpretation. When a statute is ambiguous, one way to figure out what the words really mean is to ask: what was the intention of the legislators at the time they passed the law? Critics view this approach as nonsensical. It forces judges to reify a legislative mind, which is as fictitious as a reified god. Vosper envisions a future without the word “prayer” where its core intention persists, but stripped of its detrimental elements. Legal theorists have never been able to make the manoeuvre work; I’d be surprised if spiritual writers can manage it either.
4. Positivism
Although Vosper does not use the word positivism, nevertheless it is a fair description of how she encounters reality. She relies on her senses and science to position herself in the world she inhabits, and she relies on reason and logic to learn from the data they provide. A thing is a thing and we have a methodology (science) to verify a thing’s existence. If somebody posits a thing and the methodology cannot verify it’s existence, that is because it does not exist. Since no methodology can verify a supernatural deity’s existence, it is reasonable to suppose that no such supernatural deity exists.
Vosper treats prayer as a phenomenon which we can study with our positivist methodology. We can use science to determine its efficacy (it has none) and its benefits (it has many: psychological, social and—yes—spiritual). There is a certain something about prayer which is worth keeping in our daily routine.
The positivist perspective is of a piece with theological non-realism, a literalist approach to meaning, and the universal application of values. All assume that we can encounter reality in a pared-down essential state, providing us with an experience which is the same across cultures. One might say that the source of all evil in our world is some variation of a single theme: attempts to interfere with our access to that pared-down essential state.
There are many Biblical stories that reinforce this idea—for example the Tower of Babel story (Gen. 11:1-9). But it would be risky to use such a story. Somebody might misinterpret it and then they wouldn’t understand the point I’m trying to make. Best not to tell the story. Instead, I should simply say what I mean.
5. Empact
After surveying prayer in a variety of (mostly Protestant) traditions, and after considering its various functions (ACTS—adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication) within those traditions, Vosper takes us beyond the traditions to a place where prayer is no longer tied to its supernatural moorings. Prayer becomes a matter of personal and communal responsibility. We no longer pray that a reified being somewhere out there help us with our problems. Instead, we use prayer to promote personal well-being and, to the extent that we pray in community, to promote well-being in those around us. But for Vosper the whole point of prayer, as with spiritual living in general, is its ethical dimension. We choose to live as spiritual people, and to engage in spiritual practices like prayer, because we are motivated to make the world a better place. Vosper calls this empact: “the ability to empathically impact others.”
6. Global Wisdom
In at least one respect, Gretta Vosper makes me uneasy. She believes in the potential for a global community that overcomes conflict by scraping away the particularity of its differences and revealing underneath a core of shared values. It is a sandpaper theology that aims to smooth belief to a common sheen. Could this be merely a recasting of the Christian colonialism which sought to evangelize the world? We are already experiencing a kind of cultural erasure at the hands of a global economic ideology. Why add spirituality (even if it is a non-theistic spirituality) to the globalizing pot?
I suppose it depends upon one’s perception of religion’s role in various conflicts around the world. One perception is to suppose that religion is either a cause of conflict or at least throws gasoline on the fire. But another perception is to suppose that religious conflict is a symptom of, or an act of resistance to, colonizing forces. In the latter view, religion is an extension of local culture and a marker of local identity. It is more than simply a set of propositions about the nature of reality and belief in the presence (or absence) of supernatural entities. A sandpaper theology would rid the world of fine-grained distinctions but, as a consequence, might do violence to local culture.
My personal sense of things is to take the opposite tack. Why not an approach to religious difference that embraces it? Instead of demanding of others a moratorium on words like “god” and “prayer”, why not demand of ourselves a moratorium of the impulse to take offense at the particularity of local usages? Yes, I agree with Vosper that the virulent proselytism of fundamentalist believers needs to be curtailed, but her answer to that problem runs the risk of being more a mirror than a solution. Perhaps the problem here is that, at the very end of Amen, the dream of a global wisdom pushes the book’s application beyond its original audience. Perhaps the book serves best to the extent that it addresses its own distinctive local culture.