An interesting way to expose the difference between two things is to take out the subject of great quote and replace it with something else to see if it still works.
If your replacement X cannot work in place of the initial Y then you are forced to ask ‘why is this the case?’
Let me give you an example:
(The Church) was there to remind the (society) of what it had flouted: art, pleasure, gender, power, sexuality, language, madness, desire, spirituality, the family, the body, the ecosystem, the unconscious, ethnicity, life-style, hegemony. This, on any estimate, was a sizable slice of human existence.
When I find a great quote or list, I try to plug-in ‘the church’ and see if could be true historically.
I would love to be able to say that the church has been about these things:
- art
- pleasure
- gender
- power
- sexuality
- language
- madness
- desire
- spirituality
- the family
- the body
- the ecosystem
- the unconscious
- ethnicity
- life-style
- hegemony
If that has not been the case, then, I have to ask “why not?” and it is often that search which is telling.
If the church has not, or is not, about promoting those things then what has it represented? It is that search which is illuminating.
What is keeping that sentence from being true of the church?
Here is a second set of examples. All of these quotes are from the same chapter:
(The Church) refuses to identify freedom with any institutional arrangement or fixed system of thought. It questions the hidden assumptions and purposes of competing theories and existing forms of practice. It has little use for what is known as ‘perennial philosophy’. (The Church) insists that thought must respond to new problems and the new possibilities for liberation that arise from changing historical circumstances.
I want the above quote to be true! If it is not, then what is keeping it from being so?
They investigated the ways in which thinking was being reduced to mechanical notions of what is operative and profitable, ethical reflection was tending to vanish and aesthetic enjoyment was becoming more standardized. (The Church) noted with alarm how interpreting modern society was becoming even more difficult. Alienation and reification [turning people into things] were thus analyzed in terms of how they … robbed the world of meaning and purpose, and turned the individual into a cog in the machine.
The above quote is challenging because it is almost possible.
The next one is just for fun.
(The Church) lost its ability to offer an integrated critique of society, conceptualize a meaningful politics, and project new ideas of liberation. Textual exegesis, cultural preoccupations, and metaphysical disputations increasingly turned (the church) into a victim of its own success. The result has been an enduring identity crisis.
Any guesses as to who this was actually referring ?
- Textual exegesis
- cultural preoccupations
- and metaphysical disputations
- victim of its own success
- enduring identity crisis
These 3 quotes are from chapter 1 in Critical Theory a very short introduction. The first quote was from Terry Eagleton. After Theory (Kindle Locations 325-327) in reference to Cultural Theory and the traditional Left.
Why am I attracted to both Cultural and Critical Theory? Maybe it is because they are often about the things I desperately wish being a pastor was about …
I find this experiment helpful in attempting to crack assumptions about what the church is and has been.
I will never tire of reminding people that there is a gap between what many think the church is and what the church can be.
What do you think? Does the experiment work? Is it helpful?
Any quotes that you love we could try it with?