The liturgical/praying animal in Paradise Lost

In Book VII of Paradise Lost, Milton has the angel Raphael recount to Adam the six days of creation, and this is what he says concerning humanity:

There wanted yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done—a creature who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends; thither with heart, and voice, and eyes
Directed in devotion, to adore
And worship God Supreme, who made him chief
Of all his works.

What is striking about this account is the way in which the rationality ascribed to humanity, unique among all creatures, is specified and given content. Initially it seems quite in line with classical accounts: humans are distinct by virtue of their reason. But what sort of reason, and to what end?

According to Milton, men and women are rational inasmuch as, and so that, they "correspond with Heaven," thanking God for his manifold gifts and worshiping him as the source of all, including their own, being and goodness. Which is to say, human rationality is at once the condition and the means of prayer, which is reason's telos. What sets apart human beings from other animals is that they use words to talk to and about God in thanks and praise. As Robert Jenson has it, human beings are "praying animals." Or in Jamie Smith's words, homo sapiens is homo liturgicus.

Rationality, for Milton, as for Jenson and Smith, isn't the cold logic of unbiased inquiry or instrumental reason. It is the devotion of a heart on fire for the Creator, manifested in the speech of adoration and love, awe and thanksgiving. Rationality is correspondence with heaven.

Webster on Barth's engagement with philosophy

"Barth's insistence on speaking [with philosophy/non-Christian disciplines] on his own terms is not to be interpreted as obstinate reluctance to come out of his lair and talk to the rest of the world; quite the contrary: in writing, as in life, Barth showed remarkable openness to all manner of ideas, provided he is allowed to exercise Christian nonconformity."

—John Webster, Barth, 2nd ed. (New York: T&T Clark, 2000, 2004), p. 174

P. D. James on the sameness, the joylessness of lust

"Dalgliesh walked through Soho to the Cortez Club. With his mind still freshened by the clean emptiness of Suffolk he found these canyoned streets, even in their afternoon doldrums, more than usually depressing. It was difficult to believe that he had once enjoyed walking through this shoddy gulch. Now even a month's absence made the return less tolerable. It was largely a matter of mood, no doubt, for the district is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds. Passing the strip clubs, the grubby basement stairs, the silhouettes of bored girls against the upstairs window blinds, Dalgliesh thought that a daily walk through these ugly streets could drive any man into a monastery, less from sexual disgust than from an intolerable ennui with the sameness, the joylessness of lust."

—P. D. James, Unnatural Causes, p. 173

The best American crime novelists of the last century, or: a way into the genre

Four and a half years ago I decided I wanted to try out the genre of crime fiction. I was about to take a semester off from my doctoral studies for paternity leave, and I knew my academic reading would be on the wane, at least while I was caring for my newborn son during the day. I needed something punchy, new, and different that would grab and hold my attention during downtime, long walks, and seemingly endless Baby Bjorn–pacing.

So I ordered a few books: The 39 Steps by John Buchan, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins, The Hunter by Donald Westlake, Killing Floor by Lee Child, and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré. An odd, eclectic sampling, obviously made by an outsider. In any case, the experiment worked.

Turns out I love crime fiction.

From there, I wanted to get my hands on the best stuff out there. But the way my mind works, I wanted to do this in a particular way. First, I wanted to get a sense of the genre as a whole, particularly in its development and in the order of influences. I wouldn't read chronologically, but if I read Ross Macdonald, I wanted to know and not be ignorant of the fact that he had read and was influenced by Hammett and Chandler. Second, I wanted to read the masters, not their second-rate imitators. And third, if the author had a series featuring a long-standing character—and they nearly always do—I wanted to read that series and preferably the first entry. I knew that that would mean I might not read an author's best, or best-read-first, work, but that was fine by me. I wanted to see the genesis of their art; and should they draw me in, I wanted to read the series from beginning to end, not start in the middle.

Long story short, here's my list. (I'm an inveterate list-maker. It's a compulsive habit.) I've yet to find a comparable one online: when I do, it invariably includes British authors (e.g., P. D. James, Agatha Christie), expands the genre to include spy fiction (e.g., John le Carré, Len Deighton), does not limit itself to one book per author (e.g., Hammett and Chandler get multiple entries), and includes mysteries from every time period (e.g., Poe, Dickens).

My list's rules: only Americans, beginning with Hammett in the 1920s (so the last 88 years—but close enough to say "the last century"), only crime fiction (broadly defined, but excluding spy and similar novels), and focusing especially on the first entry in the author's most beloved or well-known series.

I've put an asterisk by the ones I've yet to read. I'm only about halfway done, so this is far from an authoritative list. To state the obvious, I'll feel comfortable ranking either the authors or their works only once I've actually read them all. I'll add that falling in love with le Carré and P. D. James along the way hasn't helped in finishing the list.

But in any case, here it is. I welcome suggestions of every kind: corrections, amendments, additions, subtractions, and more.

1. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1929)
2. Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933)
3. James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
4. Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance (1934)
5. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
6. Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black (1940)
7. Vera Caspary, Laura (1942)
8. Helen Eustis, The Horizontal Man (1946)
9. David Goodis, Dark Passage (1946)
10. Mickey Spillane, I, The Jury (1947)
11. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, The Blank Wall (1947)
12. Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1947)
13. Kenneth Millar (as Ross Macdonald), The Moving Target (1949)
14. Charlotte Armstrong, Mischief (1950)
15. Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me (1952)
16. Margaret Millar, Beast in View (1955)
17. Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
18. Evan Hunter (as Ed McBain), Cop Hater (1956)
19. Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem (=For Love of Imabelle) (1957)
20. Dolores Hitchens, Fools' Gold (1958)
21. Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark), The Hunter (1962)
22. John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)
23. George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970)
24. Robert B. Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)
25. Donald Goines, Crime Partners (1974)
26. Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys (1975)
27. Lawrence Block, The Sins of the Fathers (1976)
28. James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)
29. Ross Thomas, Chinaman’s Chance (1978)
30. Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park (1981)
31. Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only (1982)
32. Newton Thornburg, Dreamland (1983)
33. Charles Willeford, Miami Blues (1984)
34. Robert Crais, The Monkey’s Raincoat (1987)
35. James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain (1987)
36. Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty (1990)
37. Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
38. James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential (1990)
39. Michael Connelly, The Black Echo (1992)
40. James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly (1992)
41. Richard Price, Clockers (1992)
42. George Pelecanos, The Sweet Forever (1995)
43. Laura Lippman, Baltimore Blues (1997)
44. Ace Atkins, Crossroad Blues (1998)
45. Craig Johnson, Cold Dish (2004)
46. Megan Abbott, Die A Little (2005)
47. Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog (2005)
48. Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone (2006)
49. Benjamin Whitmer, Pike (2010)
50. Dennis Lehane, Live by Night (2012) 
51. Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground (2012)
52. Reed Farrel Coleman, Where It Hurts (2016)

**Update #1: Added Highsmith, Hughes, and Millar on Megan Abbott's recommendation.
**Update #2: Added Lippman, Stout, Sallis, Holding, Goodis, Thompson, and Woolrich on Topher Lundell's recommendation.
**Update #3: Added Hitchens, Eustis, Armstrong, and Caspary on Sarah Weinman's (editorial) recommendation.
**Update #4: I've dropped the asterisks on the books I haven't read—with 15 new additions, the disproportion of unread to read was getting out of hand!
**Update #5: Added Coleman, whose first Gus Murphy book, out last year, I had forgotten to include. 
**Update #6: Added Johnson, Woodrell, and Whitmer on Kester Smith's recommendation.

Four writing tips for seminarians

In the spring of 2016 I served as a teaching assistant for a course at Yale Divinity School on theological interpretation of the New Testament (co-taught by Dale Martin and Kathryn Tanner. I know!). After the first month of class, the students began submitting one 3-page theological exegesis of a NT text on a weekly basis until the end of the semester, for a total of eight mini-papers. The goal—quite successful, as a matter of fact—was to offer detailed feedback on each student's writing in order to see a much improved paper #8 compared to paper #1. It was a lovely thing to see how much improvement could come in just two months.

At the beginning, however, there were a lot of problems to work out. After finding patterns across a number of students' papers, I wrote up a list of writing tips, and I thought I'd share them here. They probably lean in the direction of liberal seminarians, or at least seminarians at a liberal school—though my sense is that even the most conservative context is full of students whose self-understanding is one of liberation or progression or expansion from former, supposedly more parochial, less open-minded ways. I share my suggestions here because I think they capture a specific set of proclivities—as much intellectual as writerly—that are worth identifying and exorcising as soon as possible, being consistently damaging to rigorous and charitable theological thought.

Here they are:

1. Avoid referring to what "modern people/believers/Christians" or some anonymous collective "we" think, assume, or believe. E.g., "modern believers find the subordination of women in the NT problematic." This is an empirical claim that is not true: some modern believers (the world over, but including in the U.S.) disagree with the claim that the NT subordinates women; others think that it does, and that that is God's will. Either, minimally, specify the group in question (e.g., "many mainline Christians in the U.S. are troubled by...") or, preferably, just state, and support, your own position on the matter (e.g., "this text/claim is troubling because...").
2. Avoid fundie-bashing, that is, using conservative evangelicalism and/or fundamentalism as foils in your argument. This, because it is either too easy or too complicated: too easy, because there is always a seemingly stupid fundamentalist position available to caricature, but which is immaterial to your argument; or too complicated, because in fact many conservative theologians have sophisticated theories about theological questions, but by dismissing them rhetorically, your own argument is weakened by acting as if their arguments and positions do not exist or do not require thoughtful consideration.
3. Avoid contrastive argumentation, that is, only stating your own position by way of contrasting it with some other (often 'very very bad') position. Not only is this usually unnecessary, but it also invites the question, 'Why aren't these two claims/positions compatible?' For example, 'instead of a divinely authored document, the Bible is a collection of disparate texts from different time periods' is an instance of bad contrastive argumentation, because the Bible very well could meet both descriptions, yet the claim assumes, without demonstrating, their mutual exclusivity. Best to avoid the contrast, and simply state your own claim, followed by support.
4. Stay modest in your rhetoric and your claims for what your argument accomplishes. Try to be measured in how you represent your conclusions. Assume that if such-and-such theological question has been controversial for centuries, your own paper has not resolved it for all time. At best, you may have resolved some specific issue, or taken a strongly supported position on one side or the other, or pointed out the problems inherent in the side you opposed, etc.

Freud's historical-critical methods

"When I use Biblical tradition here in such an autocratic and arbitrary way, draw on it for confirmation whenever it is convenient, and dismiss its evidence without scruple when it contradicts my conclusions, I know full well that I am exposing myself to severe criticism concerning my method and that I weaken the force of my proofs. But this is the only way in which to treat material whose trustworthiness—as we know for certain—was seriously damaged by the influence of distorting tendencies. Some justification will be forthcoming later, it is hoped, when we have unearthed those secret motives. Certainty is not to be gained in any case, and, moreover, we may say that all other authors have acted likewise."

—Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage Books, 1939), 30n.1

Barth on what matters in the Gospel narratives

"In the editing and composition of the Evangelical narratives the interest and art and rules of the historian do not matter. What matters is His living existence in the community and therefore in the world. What matters is His history as it has indeed happened but as it is present and not past. What matters is His speaking and acting and suffering and dying today as well as yesterday. What matters is the "good news" of His history as it speaks and rings out hic et nunc. It is not a question of digging out and preserving Himself and His history in order to have them before us and study them. It is a matter of living with Him the living One, and therefore of participating in His history . . . . It is quite right that the voice and form of Jesus cannot in practice be distinguished with any finality in the Gospels from the community founded by Him and sharing His life. The historian may find this disconcerting and suspicious (or even provocatively interesting). It is further evidence of that submission to the divine verdict without which the Gospels could never have taken shape as Gospels."

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 320

Figural christology in children's Bibles

The two Bibles my wife and I read to our children are The Jesus Storybook Bible, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago, and the Jesus Calling Bible Storybook, by Sarah Young. Their favorite story by far is "the Moses story" (a title I required instead of their original "the Pharaoh story"), which they quickly came to know like the back of their hand.

One night, when I persuaded them to let me read them something other than the Moses story, we read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. To my delight, when we got to the part where the three were thrown into the fiery furnace, and "a fourth figure" was there with them, and none of them were burned by the fire, the text and illustration both delivered on the christological implications of the episode and drew the figural connection implicit within it.

First, my children recognized the fourth figure as Jesus, for the simple reason that he is depicted exactly as he is later in the same Bible. And second, when I began to say, "And because Jesus was with them, the fire didn't burn them up..." I was able to continue, without skipping a beat, "...just like the burning bush. What happened to the leaves on that bush?" To which my children answered, "They didn't burn up!"

And so we had ourselves a little family figural reflection on God's presence when it comes near: both its fearsome power and its power to save. A reflection rooted in and oriented to christology, stretching across salvation history and the scriptures of Israel and the church. At a 4-year old level.

Give me these Storybook Bibles over historical criticism every day of the week.

Zechariah as the sixth evangelist

Isaiah was famously heralded by the church fathers (originally Jerome?) as "the fifth Evangelist." If there's room for another at the table, I propose we give the honor to Zechariah. Having never read the book start-to-finish before, in doing so the last couple of weeks I was repeatedly struck by how deeply interwoven it is into the canonical Gospels; along with Second Isaiah and the Psalms, it is an ineliminable feature of the Evangelists' depiction of Jesus's person, teachings, ministry, actions, and passion. Tug on that thread, and the texts unravel. Given its importance, I wonder—because I don't know—whether and to what extent the fathers and medievals read and commented on Zechariah, or whether, for whatever reason, it slipped by the wayside. Given its non-linear and non-systematic character, its apocalyptic and sometimes violent imagery, and its simultaneous emphasis on contemporaneous political events as well as the coming eschatological future, perhaps it was less immediately conducive to the sort of readings they would have been interested in undertaking.

But, wow, it is a powerhouse of figural christological exegesis. It's basically necessary pretext, historically, literarily, and theologically, for understanding the Gospels' presentation of Jesus. It's all there: Jerusalem (1:14-17; 8:3), exile (passim), YHWH's return (1:16; 8:3; 9:14), Israel's renewed election (2:12), the divine presence at the temple (2:5; 8:3; 9:8), a second exodus (14:16-19), the forgiveness of sins (3:9; 13:1), the Lord's rebuke of Satan (3:2), the eschatological gathering of all nations (passim), a priest-king named Joshua (6:11-13), the capstone (4:10), the anointed (4:14), the blood of the covenant (9:11), the Spirit's power and outpouring (4:6; 7:12; 12:10), grabbing a Jew by the hem of his robe (8:23), Israel's salvation (9:16), Israel's king at once human (9:9) and divine (14:9), 30 pieces of silver (11:12), the house of David (12:8), a cleansing fountain in Jerusalem (13:1), Jerusalem looking on him whom they have pierced (12:10), the shepherd struck and the sheep scattering (13:7), YHWH's feet standing on the Mount of Olives (14:4), the coming of YHWH with his saints (14:5), the day of darkness that is the first evening of the new creation (14:6-7), the singular sovereignty of the name of YHWH (14:9), the nations coming to worship this self-same king (14:16)—and so on.

I realize I'm not the first one to note this. (I'm vaguely aware that Wright, whose corpus I am making my way through as we speak, has made Zechariah central to his proposal about the historical Jesus's self-understanding.) But it's incredible nonetheless, both at a literary-historical level and, especially, in its implications for Christian theological interpretation of the Evangelists proper and of this unique proto-Evangelist.

Marilynne Robinson on biblical scholarship

A lovely little missive from outside the theological academy, directed right at the heart of biblical scholarship. Amen and amen:

"Perhaps I should say here that when I say 'Matthew,' 'Mark,' or 'Luke' I mean the text that goes by that name. I adapt the sola scriptura to my own purposes, assuming nothing beyond the meaningfulness of forms, recurrences, and coherences within and among the Gospels, at the same time acknowledging that different passions and temperaments distinguish one text from another. I have solemnly forbidden myself all the forms of evidence tampering and deck stacking otherwise known as the identification of interpolations, omissions, doublets, scribal errors, et alia, on the grounds that they are speculation at best, and distract the credulous, including their practitioners, with the trappings and flourishes of esotericism. I hope my own inevitable speculations are clearly identified as such."

—Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2015), pp. 241-242

Thomas Aquinas on the Trinity in Genesis 1

"[One reason] why the knowledge of the divine persons [that is, that God is triune] was necessary for us . . . [is that i]t was necessary for the right idea of creation. The fact of saying that God made all things by His Word excludes the error of those who say that God produced things by necessity. When we say that in Him there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not because He needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness. So Moses, when he had said, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, he subjoined, God said, Let there be light, to manifest the divine Word; and then said, God saw the light that it was good, to show the proof of the divine love [that is, the Holy Spirit]. The same is also found in the other works of creation."

—Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Q32 a1 ad3

Augustine on multiple interpretations of Scripture

"There are doubtless other ways of understanding our Lord's words, Why ask me about the good? No one is good but the one God (Matt 19:17). Provided however they do not favor belief that the Son's substance, by which he is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3), is of a lesser goodness than the Father's, and are not otherwise at odds with sound doctrine, we may cheerfully use not merely one interpretation but as many as can be found. For the more ways we open up of avoiding the traps of heretics, the more effectively can they be convinced of their errors."

—Augustine, De Trinitate I.31

Brevard Childs as John Rawls

In the coming days I'm going to be intermittently re-posting pieces here, on the new blog, that originally appeared on my previous blog. I wrote the following post in February 2015.

Reading the work of Brevard Childs, in tandem with its critical reception, it strikes me that he is the John Rawls of late 20th century biblical scholarship. Enormously talented, undeniably brilliant, hugely influential, an intellectual pillar at an elite Ivy League institution—and yet, the "big idea" that animated his thought throughout his career never stopped evolving, never quite reached clarity in presentation, and by the time retirement came it had, as it were, reached the point of exhaustion, becoming a disciplinary touchstone that basically nobody was persuaded by anymore. Reviews and summaries tend to treat both men's thought similarly: we "must" talk about them; they "changed" the field; and, today, we are "beyond" them. One's feeling in reading the magnum opus of each is at once a solemn respect for their achievement and an overriding sense that, alas, it just doesn't work.

A possible exception to this overall picture is the good will Childs had and continues to have in the theological academy, presumably due, at least in part, to the many significant scholars who studied under him at Yale. (I can't speak for Rawls.) But apart from Christopher Seitz, who has taken up the mantle of Childs's "canonical" proposal and continues undeterred, the field seems empty of (implicitly or explicitly) "Childsian" bibliology and theological hermeneutics. Which makes me wonder how, decades from now, this period in theological proposals about Scripture will be recounted. Will Childs be a transitional figure? Will he be a footnote? Will he stage a comeback? As with Rawls in political theory, it will be interesting to see.

“About This Blog"

I've created an "About This Blog" page here (along with a page for my CV here). Here's what you'll find there:

My name is Brad East, and I am a theologian, professor, and writer. As of fall 2017 I will be Assistant Professor of Theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University. I will walk in December with my PhD in Theology from Yale University, having earned my Master's of Divinity from Emory University in 2011 and my Bachelor's from Abilene Christian in 2007. For more academic credentials, see my CV.

I've been blogging on and off since summer 2006. I began to blog in earnest when I entered my Master's studies in Atlanta in 2008, a practice that continued through my course work in New Haven, but tailed off after that.

Why pick it up now? And what do I want this blog to be?

I'm one of the lucky ones in the academy, getting a great job offer right out of doctoral studies. My blogging had decreased to almost nil in the meantime not only because of increased demands on my time, not only because I was beginning to publish in scholarly outlets, but also because, well, the kind of "writing in public" that blogging is—brainstorming, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, more transparent, less professional—did not recommend itself to an applicant on the academic job market. And I simply did not want to be an unemployed blogger not yet "officially" in the field. That's not a knock on those who fit that description, only to say that it wasn't for me.

But now that this new chapter is upon me, it seemed like a good time to re-enter this part of my life, and this part of the internet. Using a blog to spitball, share thoughts, respond to pieces online (appreciatively as well as critically), create contacts, mark down ideas for later—so on and so forth—is both ideal for my intellectual temperament and useful for my writing habits. My new job is going to take over my academic publishing for a while, and I don't want my writerly muscles to atrophy in the process.

So what is this blog about? What will it be? The dumping ground for my thoughts about theology, the academy, literature, politics, pop culture, the NBA, and much more besides. The blogs I most admire and read most often are those—like Alan Jacob's, Richard Beck's, Peter Leithart's, Derek Rishmawy's, Ben Myers's, Freddie deBoer's, Timothy Burke's—that are intellectually curious, even promiscuous; willing to hazard a half-baked idea in the service of a helpful connection or new idea; value breadth and depth in equal measure; avoid polemic as much as possible, and even in the briefest of posts say something of substance; stay breast of current events and commentary without becoming beholden to it, much less gripped by chronological snobbery; are conversant with pop culture without falling for the notion either that it is more substantive than it is or that it is the unifying theory of everything for our society today; etc.

That's what I aspire to. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

About This Blog

My name is Brad East, and I am a theologian, professor, and writer. As of fall 2017 I will be Assistant Professor of Theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University. I will walk in December with my PhD in Theology from Yale University, having earned my Master's of Divinity from Emory University in 2011 and my Bachelor's from Abilene Christian in 2007. For more academic credentials, see my CV.

I've been blogging on and off since summer 2006. I began to blog in earnest when I entered my Master's studies in Atlanta in 2008, a practice that continued through my course work in New Haven, but tailed off after that.

Why pick it up now? And what do I want this blog to be?

I'm one of the lucky ones in the academy, getting a great job offer right out of doctoral studies. My blogging had decreased to almost nil in the meantime not only because of increased demands on my time, not only because I was beginning to publish in scholarly outlets, but also because, well, the kind of "writing in public" that blogging is—brainstorming, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, more transparent, less professional—did not recommend itself to an applicant on the academic job market. And I simply did not want to be an unemployed blogger not yet "officially" in the field. That's not a knock on those who fit that description, only to say that it wasn't for me.

But now that this new chapter is upon me, it seemed like a good time to re-enter this part of my life, and this part of the internet. Using a blog to spitball, share thoughts, respond to pieces online (appreciatively as well as critically), create contacts, mark down ideas for later—so on and so forth—is both ideal for my intellectual temperament and useful for my writing habits. My new job is going to take over my academic publishing for a while, and I don't want my writerly muscles to atrophy in the process.

So what is this blog about? What will it be? The dumping ground for my thoughts about theology, the academy, literature, politics, pop culture, the NBA, and much more besides. The blogs I most admire and read most often are those—like Alan Jacob's, Richard Beck's, Peter Leithart's, Derek Rishmawy's, Ben Myers's, Freddie deBoer's, Timothy Burke's—that are intellectually curious, even promiscuous; willing to hazard a half-baked idea in the service of a helpful connection or new idea; value breadth and depth in equal measure; avoid polemic as much as possible, and even in the briefest of posts say something of substance; stay breast of current events and commentary without becoming beholden to it, much less gripped by chronological snobbery; are conversant with pop culture without falling for the notion either that it is more substantive than it is or that it is the unifying theory of everything for our society today; etc.

That's what I aspire to. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

More on “everyone," and the market

Two more thoughts on my last post regarding the use of "everyone" in political and pop-culture punditry.

First, "everyone" is commonly used to refer to either TV viewership or movie audience numbers. So that "everyone" saw Summer Blockbuster X or "everyone" watches Game of Thrones (or Big Little Liars or The People vs. O. J. Simpson). Or even "everyone" on Twitter.

Part of the problem, which is generally admitted, is that the so-called "monoculture" is a thing of the past: gone are the days when nearly half of all American adults watched an important or popular primetime TV episode. But critics and commentators yearn for the relevance of the art they write about, so if either a show generates a lot of content online or if it is legitimately popular by today's standards, the old dependable trope of "everyone" gets tossed about with liberality.

But just consider Game of Thrones, perhaps the most popular show on TV. It gets somewhere between 10 and 25 million viewers on its best night (combining recordings and non-live viewings online). That is between 4 and 10% of the adult population in the U.S. Now the closer to 1-out-of-10 that number gets, the more impressive. But even if it is that high, what that means is that out of every 10 adults in this country, nine do not watch the show in question. In which case, it is fair to say that most everyone does not watch the show. It just "feels that way" to people who write about it, who spend a lot of time in the pop-culture corners of the internet, and who hang out with others who have similar TV viewing habits.

A final thought.

"Everyone" is also used in a justificatory way, that is, to talk about "what matters," because "everyone" is watching/talking about X or Y. The popularity of a pop-culture artifact warrants its discussion even and especially by those who harbor little affection for it.

The thing about this "everyone" is that it is weighted heavily toward the newest, latest thing, as evidenced by its popularity with the newest, youngest adults. Critics deceive themselves into thinking that what they are valuing is creativity or originality, but what they are in fact doing is ratifying the dominance of the market over popular art. Why, in other words, is what "everyone" is talking about the latest fashion or playtoy of twentysomethings? Because 18- to 35-year olds are the target demo for advertisers. Which means that this kind of breathless up-to-date cultural commentary is nothing but capitulation to the market, usually by people who should know better.

What sets the terms for what "matters," then, is not what is most innovative or interesting but what 25-year olds with expendable income and a lifetime of potential brand loyalty there for the taking find most relieves their boredom, at least for the moment. And that is a far cry from artistic merit or cultural cache, however defined.

The thing about “everyone"

Both political pundits and pop-culture commentators have the exceptionally bad habit of referring to "everyone" when what they mean is either (a) an extraordinarily small slice of the population or (b) themselves, their friends, and those like them.

Two examples.

Last November, while discussing the new Marvel film Doctor Strange on The Watch podcast, Andy Greenwald said, "I think that people are battered and beaten down by comic book movies and the Marvel movies." In context, the conversation was about how "everyone" feels—e.g., "people"—regarding the cultural phenomenon of comic book movies.

But note how silly and easily falsified this comment is (coming from an otherwise lovely and thoughtful writer and podcaster). People keep going to see these movies. Not only that, but by all accounts, not least self-report, many to most people who keep going to see these movies appear to like them, even like them very much. That is my own anecdotal experience, at the very least.

Why is it that Greenwald, standing in for the pundit/commentator generally, feels the need to assign to "people" or "everyone" what he himself and/or his friend group feels? Why not say, "It bums me out that there are so many people who lap this stuff up; speaking only for myself, I'm exhausted by it and ready for something different"? Cultural commentary is at its very worst when it becomes self-extrapolation and projection onto the wider culture of one's own and one's circle's thoughts and feelings.

The second example is Trump. And this is simple. Anti-Trumpers feel exhausted, harried, and scared by "the age of Trump." But instead of learning the lesson—a pretty straightforward one, I'd submit—from the election that anti-Trumpers do not exhaust the national population, they extend their feelings of exhaustion and fear to "everyone." So that one can say, offhandedly, "Like everyone else, I'm feeling burdened and worn down by this week's news about Trump." There may be eminently good reasons to feel such a way (indeed I think there are). But that doesn't mean "everyone" does. It means you, the speaker, do, and probably many of your friends. Just say that instead. It's an easy thing to do.

Among others, two risks of this kind of generalization stand out. First, you erase those who are different from you, who feel and think differently than you. And second, you implicitly suggest a righteous inner circle, from which are excluded those who differ from you. Whether this be the pop culture inner circle whose taste in art is the only one that matters or the politics inner circle whose opinion is the only option for decent people, the result is the same. My sense is that, more often than not, this implicit erasure/exclusion is unintended. Pundits and critics would be well served in such cases by simply speaking for themselves, and not for anyone else.

Reboot

From August 2008 through this past spring—nearly nine years—I blogged regularly then semi-regularly then off-and-on then almost never on a blog called Resident Theology, which I created the month I began my MDiv studies at Emory University. I posted 60 times in 2008, 193 in 2009, 156 in 2010, 100 in 2011, 88 in 2012, then a total of 61 in the last four and a half years. The downturn coincided with the beginning of my doctoral work at Yale in fall 2011, and as comps and dissertating and bona fide publishing began to take over my time, blogging fell by the wayside.

Well, the dissertation is completed and submitted, and this fall I begin a new chapter in my vocation as a theologian and academic: Assistant Professor of Theology at Abilene Christian University. To mark the occasion, I am officially concluding the run of Resident Theology and starting up a new blog, very cleverly titled Resident Theologian. I plan on developing a much more rigorous posting schedule, hopefully 2-4 times a week, sometimes of normal-ish blog post size (whatever that is), sometimes quite small. I made countless connections and acquaintances and actual friendships through my former blogging life, and I want to re-enter that world beyond the occasional Twitter thread. I also want to form good writing habits through the discipline of short but common writing stints, and blogging serves that well.

So that's the idea. I'm in the middle of a move at the moment, so the posts may be a bit delayed, but I wanted to go ahead and get the blog up and going, so that it's here when fancy strikes. Looking forward to this new venture. Until next time.