Religious Liturgy and the Wholly Other

In the Zhuangzi, how can Zhuangzi possibly know that the fish are happy? To know what it is like to be a bat, a person must be a bat. This is not to say that we disagree with bats. Sonar represents the “sheer otherness” of a bat. In Christianity, how does eternal joy and bliss differ from happiness? Happiness is not a theological concept. There are different kinds of experience, and it follows that they have different kinds of truth-claims. To treat every such claim as the same kind of thing is premised on conflating domains of human experience that are qualitatively different. I contend that the domain of religion is both distinct and unique. Our ordinary ways of describing the world and even ourselves are not well-suited to our endeavors in the domain of religion.

Pseudo-Dionysius, a Christian theologian, made the point that God goes beyond—is sourced, as it were—inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion. According to Montaigne, humans cannot provide truly convincing arguments on any topic, especially theology. “Human reason goes astray everywhere, but especially” in theology. Augustine stressed that revelation must make it way to us as though sunshine making its way through a smoked, stain-glass church window. Hume argues in The Natural History of Religion that the human mind has a great deal of difficulty grasping the notion of divine simplicity for long, and so the mind inevitably starts hanging artifacts on pure divinity that, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche, are human, all too human. God is angry. God is pleased. God is benevolent. God is just. God even has a human form. God has a mother.

I submit that what any of us think we know about what God does and even what divinity is goes beyond what creatures can possibly know. That faith is premised on belief rather than knowledge is all too often forgotten as claims about God are treated as if they were facts of reason. Religion within the limits of reason turns out to be human, all too human. So too, efforts to reduce religion to psychology, and emotional needs in particular, miss the qualitatively different nature of religion as transcendent in reference to a wholly other. All too often, the legitimate instinctual yearning to transcend beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility becomes conflated with knowledge of divine attributes.

In terms of liturgical worship, all too often services can be consumed by speeches by religious functionaries who know so much about God at the expense of time spent by a congregation in transcendence as experiential yearning of the wholly other. This is not to say that it is metaphysical or ontological; not even presence in a religious sense need be conflated with those fields of philosophy. Rather, the yearning itself, as in for example being prefaced by a ritualized ingestion of the divine, goes beyond knowledge and description. Worship, in other words, is inherently experiential, rather than analytical and descriptive. Focusing on a sermon, or even on a ritualized way of getting to an experience of wholly-other-directed transcendent yearning, misses the point of why people gather to worship. All too often, religious services are programmed to a stultifying death by humans who are too interested to leave their imprint. Stepping out of the way to let the divine be present in people’s distinctly religious experience does not come naturally to programmers.

This is not to say that ritual and preaching cannot play a useful role as prep for religious experience; rather, the problem lies in confounding the means with the ensuing experience that can be facilitated by them. Ritual and preaching in the context of sacred space and time, set apart from ordinary life even by stained-glass windows, have great value as means, which should know when to step out of the way and even point to what comes next as more important. In the ritual of the Christian Eucharist, for example, priests could encourage congregants to stay in the pews after receiving Communion because the point of the ritual is arguably merely to prepare for the interior yearning experience of the divine once ingested. This inward experience, back in the pews, rather than the consecration, is the high point of the Eucharistic liturgy. To treat the high point as a short time to reflect while the “dishes” on the “table” are washed demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding on the role of ritual in terms of worship experience that goes beyond the limits of symbol and ritual.

An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church

Mixing religion and politics can be a dangerous business, especially if done from the pulpit and backed up by fully-weaponized police poised in a worship space at the laity in the pews, and from the front so the congregants know they are being intensely watched even as the words, “Peace on earth” are shown on the big screen directly above one of the uniformed police employees. To my utter astonishment, I encountered just this scenario when I visited a large Presbyterian church in the U.S. early in 2026. A Christian who has read the Gospels might look askance at the weaponized, uniformed police in the sanctuary who were facing the people from near the front, and the television cameramen who were standing on the stage even very close to the altar, and think of Jesus castigating the money-changers and sacrifice-animal sellers operating inside the temple.

During the piano prelude, a cameraman hangs out near the altar.

The modern equivalent to the greedy businessmen in the temple is the power-tripping, weaponized police officer staring down congregants in a sanctuary even while the people are worshipping God. To see people worshipping the prince of peace while a fully-weaponized policewoman looks directly at the worshippers from just left of the stage in front—staring at the people—is surreal. True Christianity cannot thrive in such a hostile environment. Lest any members of that Presbyterian church might consider complaining about the obvious hypocrisy, the pastor’s sermon could easily be interpreted as a warning against complaining, not just about the church, but also, and even more troubling, the government.

Just one day before my visit to the large church in a Trump-friendly state in the U.S., Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Kamenei denounced rioters, saying that they “must be put in their place.”[1] Such a sentiment is hardly surprising because Iran’s “democracy” is severely constrained to include only approved candidates for office. So, it does come as a surprise that Iran’s supreme leader went on to say, “We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them.”[2] It may also come as a surprise that the pastor of the Presbyterian church would not agree with Iran’s leader on talking with protesters, for that pastor said in his lengthy sermon that Christians should not complain about government. To do so is to “rebel against God’s sovereignty.” Anyone who complains has an overblown, selfish sense of oneself. The pastor also urged his congregation to contact the White House’s office of religion about a public prayer for the U.S. coming up.

Because it is unclear how a democracy can endure without complaints being made about elected officials, government policy, and even laws, I contend that the pastor was advocating a proto-fascist, anti-democracy message as a religious sermon. That he lapsed in overreaching from the domain of religion to that of politics and government—a category mistake—was dangerous because he had stationed fully-uniformed, and fully-weaponized local police not only at the periphery of the building outside, but also inside the sanctuary and in front, facing the people—staring at them as they (presumably) worshipped amid the blatant show of force. 

I intentionally made transparent the latent hostility by pivoting in the pew in the direction of the policewomen because she was staring in my direction throughout the entire service, except during the sermon, when she faced the pastor. Her loyalty was clear, and this means that the pastor’s demand that the laity not complain, even though in the Gospels Jesus complains about the money-changers, is dangerous. Were he to have seen me holding my phone/camera at my chest in the direction of his hired gun and told her to harass me, she would not have hesitated to do so, and with manufactured anger directed at me. In short, the pastor’s autocratic mentality plus the blatant, literally “in your face” presence of a fully-weaponized police officer is so toxic to Jesus’ message in the Gospels that the pastor could hardly be trusted to wield such power as he did.

The policewoman was even staring in my direction through a gap between the cameraman and the camera. She probably took my sustained stance toward the screen above her as a provocation, as she was well accustomed with passive aggression. So much overt hostility in a Christian church belies its raison d'etre. 

The environment inside and outside of the church was so toxic to worship that the pastor actually did his congregation a favor by talking through almost all of the service, lest the people be put in the uncomfortable position of closing their eyes in engaging in transcendent religious experience. Outside of the building, before the service, at least two uniformed, near riot-gear police employees roamed around the perimeter while security guards were also present. It was a sight, ironically, of excess, and thus bad judgment. As I sat in a pew inside the sanctuary, I noticed two cameramen standing near the main table/altar even though the only activity was that of a piano-player, who was very good. The Christmas lights were still up, and the sight was beautiful, but unfortunately false (which is what Aristotle wrote of Plato’s theory of the forms). After a hymn was sung, just before the Creed was said, the pastor warned his congregation, “If you don’t believe in the Apostles’ Creed, you aren’t getting into the kingdom of God.” Apparently that minister had never read Paul’s dictum that without the love of compassion, even, and I would like to add, especially for one’s enemies and even rude and dislikeable people, even faith that can move mountains is for naught. Love is not primarily about belief, though that it part of it, as I discovered ironically as I was walking from the pews.

The pastor went from reciting the Creed to making a bunch of announcements of upcoming church social-events. Any sense of transcendence that the laity may have felt arising in them from reciting the Creed was instantly wiped out by the profane announcements, which were essentially advertisements. The profane turn was made complete when he urged people to contact the White House’s office of religious affairs regarding an upcoming public prayer for the United States, which was then aiding and abetting Israel’s committing of what the UN and the International Criminal Court have both determined to be a genocide. “Praying for the country” would not include praying that the United States hold the guilty accountable and extend compassion to the million of homeless, starving civilians in Gaza.

Empty pipes even during the sermon.

The pastor’s sermon came after a reading not of the Gospels, but of one of Paul’s letters to a congregation. Philippians 2:12-6 was the reading. Interestingly, it includes the expression made popular by Soren Kierkegaard, fear and trembling. These words rightly apply to a human’s reaction to the presence of God, rather than to that of a uniformed, weaponized police officer confronting a congregation inside a sanctuary. Not surprisingly, the pastor referenced his recent sermon on fear and trembling. Fittingly, in the current sermon, the minister claimed, “Paul is almost like a sergeant.” Not. Then the pastor turned to his personal dislike of people who complain. “Remember God hates complaining,” he said without any scriptural justification. Furthermore, “complaining is a type of unbelief,” by which he probably meant atheism. Then he overreached onto the domain of government—something that Jesus refuses to do in the Gospel stories. “Complaining about the government is really complaining about the sovereignty of God.” Only self-centered people who think too much of themselves complain. Of course, democracy requires criticism of government officials, their policies, and even laws. In fact, in strenuously opposing people who criticize their respective governments, the minister was advocating autocracy because under that form of government, political criticism is prohibited. 

How do you suppose the elderly couple felt about a heavily-weaponized, uniformed "off duty" police employee of the city looking in their direction at such close range? That the couple was effectively barred from complaining even about such an overt wrong goes without saying. Forget about worshipping; transcendent experience, had there been any during that service, would have been utterly untenable in the face of such a blatant show of force. Such palpable distrust of people who could be regular members evicerates the conditions that are necessary for worship.  

Consistent with his heavy-handed political ideology, which also manifested in there being weaponized police in the sanctuary, the minister's theology of grace had little room for credit going to free-will, which is why complaining can only be rooted in arrogant selfishness. His draconian theology can be likened to that of the Jansenists, who were extreme Augustinians—extreme because they believed that the Fall is so devastating on human nature that even free-will is severely warped. Redemption by the Cross is by grace alone. The use of free-will to extend humane compassion to one’s detractors and even enemies is instead totally by grace—the person deserves no credit for making the choice to help. 

As I was thinking about the pastor's theology in the church that I hated so much as I was walking in a line past pews at the end of the service, I saw a cell phone fall on the carpet ahead. Immediately, I picked up the phone and another person helped me locate the man who had just dropped it. As I returned it to him, I said to just a few—now I wish I had had the guts to really speak up as Jesus does to the money-changers in the Gospels—“I am really opposed to your church, but, here, this is real Christianity—I am intentionally returning this phone to this man to show humane compassion even when it is not convenient. I really oppose your congregation.” The few people who heard this nodded in agreement that what I was intentionally illustrating was indeed what Jesus stands for in the Gospels, and that my complaint against the brazen police presence was valid. Even though credit is deserved for my use of my free-will to pick up and return the phone—this was not solely due to God’s grace, though I did wonder about how fortuitous the phone being dropped such that I saw it first was. It was as if a supremely intelligent being sourced beyond our realm—including our domain of politics—was testing me to see if my anger at the violations in a house of worship was in line with authentic Christianity, and thus akin to Jesus’s anger at the money-changers in the temple. As in the Gospel of Mark, the word immediately came into my mind as I saw the phone on the carpet. I knew it would have to be a split-decision whether to ignore the phone out of spite for the minister and the policewoman who had been staring at me, or to be compassionate in such an environment in which I was so angered. I would even state that it is precisely in making the choice to be compassionate when being so is inconvenient at the very least that the image of God is in us, and that the proverbial Fall does not diminish that image in us. Even Augustine argued that a person’s self-love of that in oneself that is in the image of God is theologically laudable, whereas selfish self-love is a sin.

During my first master’s degree (and Ph.D. minor-field) program in religion, my advisor used to take his graduate students to a variety of religious places on weekends so we could observe religious rituals along the lines set out as a methodology by Geertz. We were to bracket our respective religious backgrounds and perspectives to focus on knowing “the other of the other.” We did so at Hindu and Sikh temples, Greek Orthodox churches, Protestant churches, and Roman Catholic churches. I’ve continued this practice off and on through the rest of my life. In visiting the anti-democratic police-state Presbyterian church at the beginning of 2026, however, Geertz’s methodology of bracketing one’s own religious view went out the window; I couldn’t get away from that church fast enough, though I did get a glimpse of real Christianity as I paused to pick up a phone on the way out.  

By chance, I was wearing blue and the man I helped wore red. I had come from a very "blue" state, and he lived in a red state. The phone returned, nonetheless, from one hand back to the rightful owner. That he was still holding his phone when the photo was taken may suggest that having his phone back meant a lot to him. That humane compassion can seep through the cracks in such a hostile environment as a proto-fascist church is a testament to the value of the principle itself. Without valuing it and willing it into praxis, belief in the Creed is for naught. 

 

---

1. The Associated Press, “Rioters ‘Must Be Put in Their Place’ Following Week Long Protests, Iran’s Khamenei Says,” Euronews.com, 3 January, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Educating Scholarly Priests: The Cult at Yale

Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline). To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics), and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people, but also by the scholars themselves.  

To be sure, a scholar’s study of a religion, especially one’s own but also another religion, can enrich the person’s own religious faith and religiosity. The process can be referred to as faith seeking understanding. As a student at Yale Divinity School, I quickly became well-versed in faith seeking understanding because the school was self-consciously producing what could be called scholarly priests. This is not to say that reasoning or cognition lies at the core of a religious faith. Especially in a religion in which God is held to be a kind of theological love, emotion, as in Augustine’s Confessions, can be said to be more relevant than anything in religion within the limits of reason alone can reach, even though religious faith, and thus love, is theological rather than psychological in genre.

I didn’t grasp a more serious downside to Yale’s focus on (Christian) faith seeking understanding until decades later when I was a visiting research scholar at Harvard. More than one divinity student there asked me if it was true that Yale’s divinity school was a kind of a cult. At first, the question shocked me, but as I reflected on the observation and my own experience of Yale’s divinity school, I was astonished that students at Harvard, the other school, could be so insightful about Yale from a distance. I remembered the Christian professor’s uneasy emotional reaction in a seminar on the Gospel of Mark when I had asked a question that implied that the orthodox interpretation of a passage could be wrong. In thinking up to the question, I had been following the way of reasoning rather than allowing any external contours to circumscribe where logical reasoning was taking me. Along the lines of Clifford Geertz, I was bracketing, or epoché, my own religious beliefs in academic context, but clearly the professor was not.

During another semester, I was glad when the evangelical-Christian professor of Christian environmental ethics enthusiastically embraced by offer to set up a dialogue between him and the Archdruid of North America in the Common Room at the divinity school, but I was dismayed when most of the Episcopalian students quickly bolted from the room at the outset and then a few weeks later when that very professor told me, “It takes having a certain character to get a Yale diploma.” Invited a Druid leader had, unknown to me, crossed a line. Decades later, when I was back at Yale to audit a seminar as an alumnus on Jonathan Edwards, I was impressed that the divinity school had established a Hebrew Bible masters degree and yet not at all surprised when more than one Jewish student confided to me that even then Jewish students didn’t feel comfortable in the school that could still be characterized as a Christian cult having Calvinist “elect” overtones regarding insiders and outsiders. Even though I was hardly a neopagan, my use of reason beyond the confines of the Nicene Creed in what I took to be a school in an academic institution had flagged me early on at Yale as an outsider at Yale’s divinity school, and thus was still the case decades later when I returned to study Christian theology again. That the insiders are actually outsiders from a true Christian perspective of humility and inclusion was lost on the faculty and especially the dean of Yale’s institutionally-encased cult as late as 2025.

The staying power of a cult’s organizational culture, including such vehemently-held and wielded passive-aggression against insiders who are deemed as outsiders, astounded me as I left Yale for the last time on May Day, 2025.  That culture, I submit, resonates with that of Yale itself, for after Jonathan Edwards, an alumnus, taught there, found himself the butt of not one but two pamphets by Yale’s president Clap, who was critical of what he mistook as Edward’s lauding of George Whitefield’s revivalist movement in the First Great Awakening.

As described in detail later by Timothy Dwight’s grandson, “Mr. Clap, in reply to this, in a letter to Mr. Edwards, dated April 1, 1745, enters seriously upon the task of showing that Mr. Edwards’ assertion—‘that Mr. Whitehead told him, that he intended to bring over a number of young men, to be ordained by Messrs. Tennents, in New-Jersey,’—connected with the assertion –that Mr. Edwards himself supposed, that Mr. Whitefield was formerly of the opinion, that unconverted ministers ought not to be continued in the ministry, and that Mr. Edwards himself supposed that Mr. Whitefield endeavoured to propagate this opinion, and a practice agreeable to it:--was equivalent to Mr. Edwards’ saying, that Mr. Whitefield told him, ‘that he had the design of turning out of their places the greater part of the clergy of New-England, and of supplying their places with ministers from England, Scotland and Ireland.’ Mr. Edwards, in a letter to Mr. Clap, of May 20, 1745, after exposing in a few words, the desperate absurdity of this attempt, enters on the discussion of the question—Whether he ever made such a statement to Mr. Clap?—with as much calmness as he afterwards exhibited, in examining the question of a self-determining power; and with such logical precision of argument, that probably no one of his readers ever had a doubt left upon his mind, with regard to it:--no, not even his antagonist himself; for he never thought proper to attempt a reply.”[1] That even such a Yalie as Jonathan Edwards—indeed, one of Yale College’s residential colleges is named after Edwards—would have as an antagonist a president of Yale testifies to Yale’s culture, which I found centuries later to be just as vindictive.

In 2025, after I had suggested to the secretary of the head librarian of Sterling Library that the security guards who walked though the main reading room every 20 minutes or so could keep the undergraduates from talking especially in the aisles, I received an angry email from a manager in that library’s security department, threatening me that if I didn’t cease from making “frivolous complaints” about the library’s security department, she would have me blocked from using the library even though I was officially auditing a course as an alumni. Indicative of systemic corruption and a negative view of alumni among Yale’s non-academic employees, the head librarian wrote to me in support of her subordinate. I had showed the security manager’s angry email to a Yale police employee, who was concerned enough to want to have a word with the woman. So, it is significant that the head librarian supported that manager. It is also very significant that the security manager, whom I had never met, did not heed the involvement of Yale’s police on my behalf, for she sent me another such email after I had left Yale and thus could not have been making any further complaints. I suspect that higher Yale officials, perhaps including even the dean of the divinity school, were behind that manager’s attempt to expunge me from campus. At the very least, throwing alumni, who return for a semester to learn more, under the bus does not bode well for alumni donations, but Yale’s Development Office’s director and the director of the Yale Alumni Association could care less when I brought this problem to their attention in 2025. Perhaps Yale had grown too wealthy and thus could afford its non-academic employees’ hostile disrespect towards alumni who return to campus. You had your chance seems to be the attitude.

Between the respective times of Edwards and myself, Yale’s then-seminary was so off-putting in the 1830s to a twice-escaped slave that not only racism but also a culture of vindictiveness towards certain guests being deemed outsiders can be attributed to Yale. Although a local law forbid the enrollment of Black students from other states to any college or university in New Haven, Yale’s “Christian” seminary—later the divinity school—allowed the ex-slave to audit courses so he could go on to be a minister with some knowledge of theology, but with the unnecessary stipulations that he could not check out library books and could not even talk in the classes. The dean of Yale’s “seminary” at the time could not claim that he was just following the law. Instead, he perpetuated the organizational culture of treating some insiders as outsiders, and doing so with spite. So, a pattern is clear from looking across the centuries with regard to the incredible staying-power of an anti-Christian organizational culture at Yale. Jonathan Edwards had had enough that he never returned after Clap’s public criticism; I’ve had enough that I will never return to Yale, and I wonder if the escaped slave who audited two-years of Yale seminary courses ever returned to thank the school for having muzzled him in the classes and not trusted him with library books. By mid-2025, enough of Yale’s faculty, faculty-administrators, and non-academic employees had mastered passive-aggression so well that courses should perhaps be offered on it there even in the “Christian” divinity school.  That most of those who are first are last, and the last, first, seems to have been utterly lost on those institutional perpetuators of Yale’s cult.

“The foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom, they trust to nothing but a shadow.”[2]

---

1.  S. E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill: 1830), 210.
2. Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” The Works of President Edwards, Vol. 4 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1864), pp. 313-321, p. 316.

Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not!

Nietzsche, late nineteenth-century European philosopher, theorized that the weak seek to beguile the strong by pressuring the latter to be ashamed of being strong, which includes being self-confident rather than resentful. Whereas the strong designate the weak merely as bad, the weak, who resort even to cruelty as a desperate means of feeling the pleasure of power, the weak label the strong as evil. The asymmetry here leaps off the page! Such seething loathing of the strong is itself an indication of the deplorable weak constitution of the weak, especially those who are too weak to master their intractable urge to dominate. The strong are strong enough to master their most intractable instinctual urge, so any resentment toward the herd animals is mastered such that they are merely bad, rather than evil. With such internal mastery, the strong can bathe in their self-confidence, out of which generosity naturally flows. Even in regarding the resentful weak as merely bad rather than as evil, the strong can be viewed as being generous, for the attitude of the weak toward the strong is indeed sordid and even toxic. Therefore, Nietzsche suggests that the strong maintain a pathos of distance, which can be interpreted both as social distance and emotional distance, from the ill herd lest the strong too become sick. The shift to “happy holiday” instead of “Merry Christmas” had by 2024 become so ubiquitous in public without any official mandate that a herd mentality can be inferred.

It is not enough for the resentful weak to refuse to celebrate a national holiday, such as Christmas or even Thanksgiving (who doesn’t like food?); the weak who seek to dominate the strong, in spite of the obvious point of being weaker both in terms of external and inner power, actively attempt to beguile the strong into being ashamed even for saying the word Christmas in public! The American retail sector has been acting as an enabler for the weak by tacitly refusing to recognize Christmas even though stores are almost all closed on Christmas Day. The retail executives and middle managers who espouse passive-aggression by directing employees not to say, “Merry Christmas” even on the day before Christmas; instead, customers buying Christmas presents are accosted with the inherently passive aggressive, “Enjoy your holiday” as a looping recording blasted out throughout the store, “This holiday, . . .” A national holiday is by definition not your holiday, as the holiday is officially recognized within the territory of the nation.

As if turning on a dime, every year on December 26^th, public discourse suddenly reverts back to being able to say the name of the next holiday, New Year’s Day, without any hint of the previous month of “Happy Holiday” and “Enjoy your holiday.” Making this switch it itself a passive aggressive slap on Santa’s rosy cheeks. As an experiment one year, I turned to “Enjoy your holiday” after Christmas whenever a stranger (including retail employees!) said, “Happy New Year.” More than once, the other person was offended. Imagine if I were to say, “Enjoy your holiday,” to a Black American on Martin Luther King Day in January. Naturally, the person would take offense, as the explicit implication would be that the holiday is only valid for Black people even though it is a national holiday. Were I to apply the phrase to July 4^th, which is Independence Day in the U.S., I would be implying that I am against that nation. Were I to say, “Enjoy your holiday” on Thanksgiving and even go so far in passive aggression to insist that the holiday be called a day of mourning (even though the holiday is based on a peaceful feast in 1620 attended both by American Indians and European settlers in Massachusetts), my resentment would (or should) be quite evident to other people. Were I to inform people in public places, including stores, not only that they cannot say Thanksgiving, but also that they must refer to the holiday as the Day of Mourning, the hearers could legitimately call me out for not only stubbornly refusing to admit that Thanksgiving is a national holiday, but also imposing my own ideology as if everyone else must speak in line with it. One year at a “Holiday Party” at my alma mater, Yale, an employee replied to me, “We can’t say that,” after I had quietly observed that it was really a Christmas party. We can’t? Was a law passed in Connecticut prohibiting people from using the words, “Christmas Party” even at a private university? It is precisely the default of can’t as if its pronouncement were a jurisprudential fact of reason that I wish to expose and eviscerate as not only sordid, but enabling too.

There is a qualitative difference between personal and public holidays. To unilaterally, whether as an individual of a member of a group, implicitly castigate people even for saying the name of a public holiday as if it were a personal holiday, whether of an individual (e.g., a birthday) or a group (e.g., the Solstices, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Hanukkah, Devali, and Quanza) is to conflate two different categories. In fact, a third category exists: holidays that are not official national holidays and yet are not limited to a group and thus are de facto (rather than de jure) public in nature (e.g., Halloween and Valentine’s Day, and perhaps St. Patrick’s Day, as drinking green beer is hardly limited to Americans under 40 of Irish ancestry). Were there no difference between private and national (and even de facto public) holidays, then governments would hardly go to the trouble of proclaiming national holidays, which of course are explicitly valid officially valid throughout a country. I turn now to some implications.  

Firstly, that everyone does not celebrate a national (or de facto public) holiday does not nullify that holiday. In fact, it is ridiculous for a person to claim that because one does not like or do anything on a given national holiday, it is therefore not really even a legal holiday. 

Secondly, that a number of private, group-only holidays occur in the same month as a national (and even a public) holiday does not mean that people should not refer in public to the national holiday by name. In the U.S., there is only one national (and public) holiday in the month of December; Americans don’t say “happy holidays” leading up to Halloween even though Veterans Day is not far behind in November.

Thirdly, the fact that a group relishes a certain national (or otherwise public) holiday does not render that holiday only private, and thus devoid of any broader meaning or significance. If the group is religious in nature, this does not necessarily mean that the public holiday is religious. For other religious groups to stubbornly suppose so in utter resentment and jealousy ignores the separation of “church and state” in the U.S. Constitution, which bars Congress from establishing a religion and thus proclaiming a religious interpretation or origin of a public holiday. A secular holiday can be proclaimed as such and thus clear the bar of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution even if a religious group celebrates the holiday in a non-secular way and even if the holiday itself had a distinctly religious origin. Halloween, for example, which admittedly is not a U.S. national holiday but it generally observed nonetheless (rather than being a group holiday) had by the twenty-first century become almost completely secular in America even though it is on the eve of All Saints Day in Christianity. The latter does not negate or nullify the secular holiday of Halloween; children need not accept the Nicene Creed in order to put on costumes and go trick-or-treating for candy. As for Christmas, the distinctly Christian feast of it is not theologically significant as neither the Incarnation or the Resurrection are celebrated on December 25th, for the Incarnation is celebrated on March 25^th—nine months before December 25^th, and the Resurrection is celebrated on Easter in March or April. It is a blunder, therefore, to assume not only that there is no secular holiday (e.g., gift-giving, Santa, and even Frosty the Snowman), but also that that even the religious holiday marks anything distinctly theological (qua  supernatural)!  Jealousy and resentment can indeed be blinding, or at the very least have a distorting effect on a person’s emotions, cognitions and perception.

For an advocate of a group-limited private holiday not only to refuse to admit that a public holiday is such a holiday, but also to insist that other people cannot acknowledge and even say the name of such a holiday in public simply goes too far. Resentful selfishness that resorts to passive aggression is indeed evil, for to insist that other people abide by a social reality that is a projection of the selfish self denies that none of us are deities. That is, self-love over love directed to God is the root sin behind the over-reach here. To counter such evil, I recommend that people in the U.S. say “Happy Holiday” and “Enjoy your holiday” for every holiday except Christmas, even to retail clerks. Even though most people might be confused, others—the more insightful—will get the passive-aggressive message that it is unfair to single out a certain national holiday as non grata and even as forbidden in public discourse. The main point is of course that passive aggression should be rendered transparent so that its beguiling and hateful spite can be weakened, as befitting the weak who tacitly, yet intentionally nonetheless, weaponize the phenomenon of holidays.

That the American retail sector enables this weaponization renders companies as de facto accomplices, and thus hardly as neutral parties. To the extent that American culture reflects the retail culture, including its nomenclature and mannerisms, the responsibility of business not to perpetuate and enforce a specific passive-aggressive ideology whose source is exogenous to business is all the greater. By interiorizing such an ideology, a store (i.e., its employees, including store managers) becomes passive aggressive and thus deserves push-back from resentful customers. The irony is that the store managers and even their executives at company headquarters intend precisely to avoid offending customers. Including the name of all national holidays, rather than substituting this holiday or happy holidays for one such holiday both in the stores and in advertisements, is a legitimate and fair alternative marketing (retail) strategy. That some customers might be offended just by the name of a specific public holiday is no reason for the dog to be led by its tail. Being led by oversensitive ideologically-driven customers is not socially responsible, as it is not fair to all of the strong, self-confident customers who are willing to generously spend in the midst of celebrating a national holiday. For a national, public holiday is a statement that a certain holiday is legitimate and thus valid in a country, even though not every resident necessarily does anything to mark the holiday and some residents, even citizens, may be personally opposed. To be sure, the latter have a protected political right to oppose something based on an ideology, but they do not have the authority to impose that ideology to limit the free speech of other people, not to mention to unilaterally cancel a national holiday. Such a holiday is valid whether its opponents like it or not, and the latter do not have the right to cancel the free-speech of other people who wish to specify even just the specific name of such a holiday. Arrogance looking down on the rest of us from the stilts of false-entitlement is indeed unbecoming of anyone. 

Love as God Loves Us: Embodying Inconvenient Compassion

I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.

Roughly speaking, God may look down at us from heaven similar to how a parent perceives one’s child, but here as a small creature doing the best that a small yet selfish created being can.  Augustine warns that applying the relation between a human father and son should not be thought to apply to the relation between the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity. Specifically, Augustine wrote that human weakness “can only think of what it has been accustomed to do or hear.”[1] Augustine urges that “no carnal thought creep up” in thinking of Jesus’ phrase, “As the Father has taught me,” like how a human father teaches his son.[2] Thinking of the relationship in the Trinity as being akin to a human relationship would be to “fashion idols.”[3] Human weakness might prompt us to reduce God’s perception of us to seeing our weaknesses, but God’s perspective on Creation, including the created beings within it, would more likely be to see us as functioning as well as we can in our little corners of this created realm. Not even a parent looks at one’s very young child, or toddler, as being weak in trying to walk for the first time, or even the second or third time. Rather, from this analogy, I submit that God sees even human adults as small, circumscibed  beings fiddling with ourselves without situating ourselves in the wider context of Creation, and beyond. Such a divine perspective is subtle and wholistic and yet penetrating and specific. The good news is that we can assume that perspective to an extent sufficient to change our negative attitudes and emotions regarding another person, whether we deem that person to be ugly, pathetic, strange, or crazy, to genuine compassion as though a friendly demeanor were a natural end in itself.

One morning while on a local transit system’s bus, I watched with a visceral feeling of distaste as a particularly ugly woman aged about 60 years boarded, sat down, and proceeded to keep her miuth open while touching her tongue with one and then another of her fingers longer than to lick off something edible. The sight of the person was itself revolting to me and yet I couldn’t help myself in staring in disgust (though not showing my reaction). Writing in retrospect, I feel ashamed of myself. It was not that she gave the impression of being a bad person, and not yet of being mentally ill. At the time, I thought about how God manifested as the Father in Christianity might look on human beings specifically as finite, imperfect creatures (meaning in Creation), doing the best that we can. Looking at a living person from outside the created realm would change how we observe other people. This shift in perspective is difficult to describe.

In allowing myself to assume such a stance, though without presuming myself to be divine and thus superior to the woman, my attitude toward her instantly changed to one in which I saw her not as weak or pathetic. Instead, I saw her creatureliness as she tended to herself as best she could.

We all can be pitied in spite of our nasty selfish pettyiness because from God’s perspective, we look like little children rather than self-sufficient adults. Our existence is radically of fundamentally contingent rather than solid and complete. By intentionally assuming that perspective to some degree, and thus without presuming ourselves  to be like God in that respect, my anger and disgust suddenly dissipated. I did not yet feel compassion for her, but I did notice that my attitude toward the woman was then much different that that of a well-dressed Caucasian man who was eyeing the poor Black man who had just dropped his bag and was standing in the aisle close in front of the other man, who was seated. I could understand and even identify with the distaste that comes when someone enters my personal space too closely, but I was more taken with how much my attitude toward the ugly woman had changed from that of the seated man looking up at the Black man who was hiding his face in a hood.

The woman and I disembarked at the same bus stop; she used the front door while I used the back door. So I couldn’t miss seeing her walking in front of me in a way that intimated that she was suffering from a mental illness.  I would have felt ashamed for myself had I not used my free will to try to adopt God’s perspective on us. I walked faster, and thus I walked by her.  She looked at me, and, when I was in front of her, I looked back and saw that she was wearing a sweat shirt that had cartoon characters from the “Peanuts” comic and television shows that feature Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy.  “I like your shirt,” I said in a friendly tone that was genuine.  It was not that I thought I might get some heavenly reward; rather, the compassion seemed to arise quite naturally from me having assumed a perspective that has been attributed to God.

Thinking about how God looks down at us and then trying to adopt such a posture as much as we can as finite, hardly omniscient entities, and then staying in that posture for some time while watching another person (or persons) is not only done by grace. Our free-will in deciding to do this is necessary too, as it is for then deciding to approach rather than avoid the other person even if one is noxious, mentally ill, or just plain creepy. It is astonishing how quickly and dramatically anger, disgust, and the will to avoid such a person can change to kindness and compassion. If we are indeed made in God’s image, perhaps the esoteric meaning in it is that we are the only species that can self-consciously that can adopt a perspective and attitude as if we were looking in on creatures who are in Creation. That we can do so even while knowing that we too are creatures within Creation is itself astonishing, and this point is perhaps why we can assume such a posture only to some extent, yet even that is sufficient for the Kingdom of God to manifest within us, if only episode by episode, and then perhaps enough that habit kicks in and the Kingdom can gain some traction.

 

---

1. Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

Immediately after finishing a short essay on Robert DeNero’s Catholic-priest character in the film, True Confessions (1981), I felt an urge to go to an outdoors Easter Vigil at a nearby Episcopal Church. Actually the first half of the lengthy liturgy—that which corresponds to before the resurrection—was outdoors behind the church. Watching the Easter candle being lit, I was surprised—and impressed—that the priest put the top-end of the candle in the fire. That candle was getting a baptism by fire! From that candle, the flame was carried candle by candle until all of our candles were lit. But it was moderately windy—enough that we had to cup a hand or use the thick program booklet to protect the small flames. Even so, they went off, and we came to each other’s aid in the seating area when a candle was snuffed out. After lighting mine thrice, I gave up, and shortly thereafter the four other people in the same row did too. So as the Old Testament readings were read—Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, and Daniel—I noticed that an old woman with the aid of her friend to her right took extraordinary care to keep her tiny flame alive. At first, I thought, why is keeping a small individual candle lit such a big deal? Then the symbolism sunk in: she was nurturing a flickering light in the midst of the darkness (and chillness) of night, like a person might keep an unsteady faith in God from being extinguished from the adversity in a world that can be unduly harsh. A person’s faith depends on the human will, which is subject to instinctual urges and even sheer whim. It dawned on me that the fortitude of the old woman should not be kept under cover, but, rather, should be highlighted to the rest of the congregation and even the clergy.

Light versus darkness is the paradigmatic leitmotif of the Easter Vigil. Theologically, the world is dark until the resurrection of Christ, which can be interpreted figuratively as the vindication of living by the spirit in a material world. In other words, meekness and even (and especially) coming to the aid (and even befriending) detractors (without incurring abuse or giving up on a point) turn out in the end to be a kind of strength that surpasses even moral conduct, including the virtues extolled by Aristotle. It can be distracting to mischaracterize the Gospels as historical accounts, for they were not written as such, and to focus on or even reduce the resurrection as a historical and even a metaphysical event. I submit that the religious domain is unique, or sui generis, even from related domains, such as history, metaphysics, the natural sciences, and even morality. Therefore, I strongly recommend looking for distinctly religious meaning in religious teachings and faith narratives that does not lean on another domain for legitimacy. In short, Jesus’ resurrection may have “really” happened, but we can’t get this historical fact out of a faith narrative. Distinct (and most likely subtle) religious truths, or meaning, apart from questions of history and metaphysics are also “really” of value, and I submit even more so since no exogenous crutches are used for legitimacy; such truths, likely erudite for religious adults rather than children who cling to facts even in religion, are self-validating and thus are of higher value than is religion as history, metaphysics, morality, astronomy, and biology. Self-validating religious meaning is like faith in that neither is subject to gravity.

Therefore, even great yet subtle religious meaning in a story (i.e., a faith narrative) held to be sacred can be eclipsed by category mistakes. As the Mary Magdalene character tells Peter in the film, Mary Magdalene (1918), the Kingdom of God begins with us, transforming our own hearts, in coming to the aid of our enemies rather than waiting for a metaphysical Second Coming to vanquish them. Peter and the rest of the disciples put their faith in the immanent return of Jesus—an immanent eschatology—to take on the horribly oppressive Romans, whereas Mary, who is closest (not romantically) to Jesus claims that he preached that the Kingdom of God begins with transforming one’s own heart. That message is too much for the other disciples, who are offended that oppressed (rather than just the Roman oppressors) need to transform themselves (and as a starting point no less!).

Outside the Episcopal church during the first half of the Easter Vigil liturgy, watching the old woman being so intent on keeping her small flame going, I thought she would have the inner spiritual strength not only to keep her faith alive, but also to use it to transform her heart into doing what is most difficult and inconvenient—even possibly contrary to human nature itself. For such a sordid nature to rise from itself may be the best definition of Christian resurrection that exists. As I was watching her from behind—behind more than merely literally—I noticed that the tall Easter Candle had gone out. Soon the priest had an assistant bring that illustrious symbol to the fire as he stuck his small candle into it, but with no luck. At that point, I felt a sense of inner weakness as I knew that someone should stand up, walk up to the old lady and light his candle from hers and use that light to light the Easter Candle. In the Gospels, it must take a lot of guts for Jesus to volunteer to read from Isaiah in a synagogue, and even more to say, “This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” I feared being refused by the priest’s assistant, which would have led me to feel that I would have no emotional choice but to calmly but defiantly walk away.

In terms of the letter of the ritual, the Easter Candle is to be lit from the fire itself, and this ritual was followed initially, so I contend that some discretion for the priest (or others there) would not be out of line. In other words, the priest could have been aware of the old woman, for all of the other candles around her had blown out. Going to her to light his candle, which in turn he would have used to light the Easter candle, would have had much more specifically Christian meaning than lighting his small candle directly from the fire in the pit. In retrospect, that pit seems very close to earth, whereas the old woman’s faith was not on the ground. Whereas the fire in the pit could not rise very much, the woman’s faith could indeed rise, and the priest could have brought the ritual alive by symbolically incorporating her faith as that which fuels the light of the Easter candle.

I was only vaguely aware of what I had been perhaps called to witness and testify to until I was walking back home from the church. While walking around the city block with the religious procession that marked the half-way point in the night’s ritual, I spoke to the old woman. “I noticed that you took incredible effort to keep your candle lit,” I said. “I didn’t think anyone noticed,” she replied. “I did, and I wish others had, including your priest; were he a good one, he would have noticed you too and acted on it by coming to you in relighting the Easter candle,” I said. She admitted that she too had wondered why the priest had not used her candle, as she was sitting in the front row and thus close to that candle and the fire. “He is a good priest,” she naturally said, so I qualified my statement. He would have been a better priest.

How rare, unfortunately, it must be for priests to observe the laity during a ritual, and even rarer to use some discretion to highlight a specifically Christian truth (or value) being manifest by one or more people present. If a ritual is like a wall made of wood, then sealing cracks so the spirit, which is alive, cannot get through is counterproductive, or at least short-sighted. In other words, doing a ritual for the sake of the ritual treats even the humans present as a means rather than as temples capable of nourishing the flickering Holy Spirit. I wish I had said all this to the old woman as we walked in the procession. Instead, I conveyed most of it, and, as the procession turned a corner, I kept walking straight ahead to my apartment. Discerning a fundamental difference between my own understanding of the core of Christianity and that of that congregation, I felt that something would not quite be right were I to go back to take part in the lit portion of the ritual, for in my view it would only be outwardly lit.  

I wish I had said to the old woman just before I left, “I have conveyed to you what you stand for symbolically by being so determined and successful in keeping your candle lit, and how neither your priest nor I had the inner strength to uncover your lantern for all to see. The world easily overlooks your quiet yet observable faith in keeping the Easter flame alive through ritual in your small yet large way, but your priest should have noticed and called attention to your faith symbolically evident. I would even say that this is why we are gathered here tonight. Faith in terms of how Jesus describes it is like a mustard seed, found not in the high and mighty, but in the unflinching fortitude of an old lady outwardly easily relegated as insignificant. All eyes were on your priest, even though he is blind and thus presided over dead ritual rather than living ritual. I take this to be distinctly Christian: God manifests in seemingly small places, or like the breeze that passes by Ezekiel on the mountain, rather than in momentous signs such as a mighty earthquake. Now it is up to you to spread this message to others in your congregation—that your faith has indeed been noticed and how it manifested tonight via symbol and ritual. Perhaps I’m just here support your gut feeling that your priest should have used your flame to light the Easter candle. My job here is done; good night.” Perhaps to be in such a role is why I was prompted in the first place to attend the ritual that night, or at least that I have the propensity to play such a liturgical role (or that of a messenger of an unpopular truth). I did a meager job, though almost as an afterthought I did something that I think in retrospect was of even greater religious value. As we were walking, after I had just told her that I recognized the religious significance of her effort to keep her small flame from the wind, I leaned toward her with my small candle as a request for her to light it, which she did, with a nod. With that, I was satiated and felt no further urge to continue with the procession for the in-church, distinctly Christian half of the liturgy. The old woman’s faith lit me inwardly, so I had no need for the outwardly lit church. Although the liturgy had been in the dark, and I walked home in the dark, to outward appearances not entering into the lit portion of the liturgy inside the church, the woman had lit me within.

Some people might say that God had called me to go to that church to convey a message, but it was all so vague to me and I was not very aware of what I was onto even while I spoke with the woman during the procession. Even though being lit within is arguably more important than delivering a message to a congregation, which may have lost its way, I felt weak because I had not stood up during the outdoor liturgy to light my candle from the woman’s and give my candle to the priest when he was trying to relight the Easter candle from the fire using his own candle, for I was afraid. Perhaps that I was afraid means that my hunch was right that the priest or his assistant would have dismissed my intentionally visible effort. Although I am relatively sure that my religious reading of the old woman’s faith through her symbolic efforts was correct, I cannot say that my urge to intervene in order to make the woman’s faith transparent by my acting ritually and thus symbolically had the legitimacy of being called forth by God, for God could do much better with someone else who is less afraid. In this regard, I can relate to the pope in the film, Habamus Papam (We Have a Pope) (2011). It takes guts to speak truth to power. 

Yale Divinity School

On February 21-23, 2024, Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a series of lectures on the topic of solidarity in moral theology. In my own research, I relate that field to ethics and historical economic thought. Williams’ theory of solidarity goes beyond what he calls “the vague feeling of empathy” that is emphasized in the moral writings of David Hume and Adam Smith. Williams has solidarity, unlike mere "fellow-feeling," reach a person’s identity and even one’s soul through a shared experience of existential fragility. Solidary pertains to interpersonal relations and is thus relevant to neighbor-love, which includes being willing to attend to the human needs even of one’s detractors and enemies, as well as just plain rude people. I contend that the upper echelon at Yale Divinity School is at two-degrees of separation from this sort of solidarity, especially as it is wholistic rather than partisan in nature. It is no accident, by the way, that the self-love that characterizes the school's culture has manifested in some courses being almost entirely oriented to advocating very narrow ideological partisan positions, politically, economically, and on social issues at the expense of sheer fairness to students, wholeness, theology, and academic standards. At the time, the school was accepting 50% of studen applicants. I leave these ideological and academic matters to the side here so I can focus on the astonishing distance between the school's dean and the sort of solidarity that he heard of in the lectures and that could lead to Christian leadership for Yale's Christian divinity school, which includes two seminaries. 

Decades after having studied at Yale in its divinity school and Yale College, I returned to do research because I could finally intellectually integrate two very different areas of my formal studies at Yale and elsewhere. I was stunned upon my return to find so much meanness by employees, who insisted that alumni in residence are not “members of the Yale community,” by a security guard who profiled me with intimidation, by faculty who rudely dismissed Yale’s policy that alumni can audit courses, and by faculty administrators whose skill in passive aggression surpasses all understanding. In such an organizational culture, a Christian divinity school may seem like an oxymoron. A Christian school within a university that is known “inside the beltway” for having a nasty organizational culture is likely to display hypocrisy.

Christian hypocrisy (and downright meanness) applies to even the highest level of Yale’s divinity school. For example, I walked up to the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at the reception just after his final lecture at Yale's divinity school. The dean didn't want me talking with him. In fact, the dean had refused to speak to me since I had returned on the preceding Labor Day. I had introduced myself, but he just walked away. At the reception, the dean of a "Christian" divinity school was perpetually stationed near the archbishop, watching him like a hawk. As soon as the dean, Greg Sterling, saw me beginning to talk to Rowan Williams, I knew it was only a matter of time—that I would not be talking long to the archbishop, who, by the way, was very interested in my biological relation to a previous archbishop of Canterbury. Unfortunately, the paranoid, controlling dean who does not tolerate criticism of Yale quickly turned the archbishop around as I was midway through my second sentence in order to prevent me from talking further with the archbishop.  Nice, huh? Very Christian.

Ironically, Williams had just given the last of three lectures on solidarity with one's neighbors. In even deeper irony, the dean had publicly praised the lecture and the topic during the Q&A session, which the dean, rather than the archbishop controlled (although the latter tried twice). Just a FYI to the "Christian" upper echelon at Yale's de facto seminary: Holding a grudge is antipodal to empathy, solidarity, and helping even one's detractors. To be sure, as I had been marginalized at that divinity school even while I was a student (for raising theological questions), and again during the 2023-2024 academic year, when I was back to do research, even by the school’s director of Alumni Engagement, I had written short essays critical of the sheer meanness at Yale (https://lnkd.in/gpRptb6A and https://lnkd.in/enej8PEa). Even so, to intentionally prevent me from talking with another scholar of moral theology and philosophy at a reception really says something about vengeance and abject hypocrisy.

In The Godfather III, a cardinal in the Vatican tells Michael Corleone that even though Christianity had been in Europe for centuries, little of the religion has seeped in. The cardinal takes and cracks open a small rock from a fountain in a beautiful courtyard, and likens the dry inside as akin to Europe immersed in Christianity, yet little has penetrated. Caring for one’s detractors, and even enemies, is not something in the Godfather’s playbook. Neither, I submit, is it in that of Greg Sterling, dean of Yale’s “Christian” divinity school and even a pastor in the United Church of Christ denomination, or sect, of Christianity. Perhaps, as he appeared during my stay to be desiccated inside in spite of the baptismal waters of Christianity, he might benefit from my booklet on Christianized leadership. Although the booklet is geared to business leaders, presumably Christian leadership can also be applied at Yale’s divinity school.

Williams’ three lectures over three evenings were on solidarity, which in turn can lead to communion. Although this includes with the non-human world, the archbishop’s focus was on going beyond a “vague feeling” of empathy to share in one another’s fragile and dependent nature as living creatures. To recognize another person’s dignity and depravity, and thus one’s need to be recognized in discourse and caring is the essence of William’s theory of solidarity. Communion goes on to a greater unity and in explicit relation of all as finite creatures to God. Solidarity takes work; as it extends to a person’s detractors and enemies, that work is not always easy, but it is mandatory. I would add that religious experience, whether in prayer or meditation, or inner, concentrated yearning for communion with that which transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion (sorry, Augustine), can heighten a person’s sensitivity to other people once one is back in the world. By analogy, it is like walking outside of a theatre during the day after watching a movie for several hours in the dark. Existential sensitivity is on a physiological, emotional, and spiritual level, and is inherently oriented to William’s conception of solidarity. Put another way, regular religious or spiritual experience can heighten a person’s instinctual urge to connect with the dignity and radical dependence of other people as well as oneself. Being more aware of another’s inner pain or existential hardship is another way of putting this. The sharing of this condition, which naturally occasions fear that can be detected outwardly, is the foundation of solidarity, and from this foundation the actual work in caring even for one’s enemies can begin. It is in valuing such work that a person is religious; it transcends creed and even cognition or belief, as if religion were mostly cognitive rather than of the human heart.

It is from that perspective that I want to shed translucent light on the shadows and proffer my advice even to a detractor on Christian leadership, for it is self-less rather than vengeful, caring rather than mean, and thus of a power distinct from that of the world. In talking truth to power in the upper echelons of the Danish Church, Kierkegaard emphasized subjectivity over empty shells in Christianity. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre in the decadent twentieth century, I think it is foolish and unnecessary to base everything on subjectivity. Although Nietzsche’s dictum that God is dead was meant to address a logical contradiction in a conception of the deity by humans, and the philosopher proffered good insight on the will of the priests (and pastors) to power as controlling others, he missed the power that lies in helping even one’s detractors, or at least not acting on a vengeful instinctual urge. Such an urge Nietzsche claims runs wild in the weak, even and especially in a Christian priest (and dean) from whom hypocrisy condenses and drips from a dry core. False humility as a means to invisibly extract vengeance is the hallmark of self-love and is antipodal to neighbor-love seu benevolentia universalis rather than just as amicitia.

Judging from how self-identifying Christians typically treat their respective detractors, and even people who are simply downright rude, I submit that the kingdom of which Jesus speaks in the New Testament is still woefully not of this world even though it could be. All it takes is some hard work in being caring rather than retaliatory where it is least convenient. I know I have work to do, but I’ve also made the difficult choices to help my detractors and the spiritual dynamic between the two people when that takes place can indeed by said to turn the world on its head in a spirit of wonder—even expanding human nature. It is very difficult, but possible, and it has been done.

For example, at the reception for Rowan Williams, I put a retired chaplain of Battel Chapel, which is on Yale’s main campus, in touch with Jerry Street, who had been Yale’s main chaplain and was still working in some capacity at the divinity school at the time of the reception. When I had been a student, I interviewed him for my radio show on WYBC at Yale; he had been furious after the interview, declaring, “I will not be edited!” The station’s chief explained to him that it was dreadfully unfair to demand no editing. In spite of Street’s anger and unfairness to me, I greeted him warmly at the fall convocation in 2023, and I gave him and the retired chaplain of Battel a gift, as she put it later, in reuniting the two of them at the reception. I wish I was not so distracted that I could have felt the joy of giving to a former detractor; I really wanted to speak on research with Williams. Had the dean fallen or dropped something at the reception, I would have helped him up or picked something up for him. It gets easier if you have put in work in establishing a habit even if it falters from time to time when the emotions are too strong. The spiritual dynamic of peace that is felt between former detractors as one helps the other on a human level is that which Jesus describes in the New Testament as the peace in God’s kingdom. Such peace is possible in this world. Maybe the dean will become a Christian leader as a result of reading my booklet.