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THE DRAMA OF THE HOLY
CHAPTER EIGHT
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control; against such there is no law.
Gal. 6:22
INTRODUCTION Postmodern theology centers around an understanding of the social nature of the Drama of the Holy. In any era, a goodly part of the poetic genius of human beings is dedicated to a definition and realization of the god concept. Each of the thousands of cultures in human history have used differing pathways to that task. The point and purpose of this essay is to review and to honor the pathways to knowledge invented and used to constitute the drama of the Holy in societies around the world. If we appreciate the variety and the extent to which such activities have contributed to the sanctification of nature and society, we may add to our understanding of that which is needed to engage the Drama of the Holy in these days.
The structure of the argument made here is that each society invents and protects some set of symbols, practices, artifacts, and psychogens with which to achieve a state of bliss. These sacred supplies, used together, create extra-ordinary psychological states in which one's genius and imagination are freed from everyday worries and problems to ponder and to solve the larger problematics of life that arise in ever-new concatenation. The fact that insight, vision, and solution emerge from such states of bliss is interpreted, in premodern understanding, as proof presumptive that one has engaged the realm of the Holy. Postmodern understanding honors that interpretation as entirely a cultural fact but, at the same time, acknowledges that with such evidence and with such interpretation, the realm of the sacred is realized.
That evidence is solid and that interpretation is appropriate to the human process in both premodern and postmodern sensibility; only in the modern scientific modality of understanding is it discarded as myth, magic or make-believe. However such pathways to the Holy are neither strange, supernatural, magical or metaphysical. They are sanctifications, reifications and vivifications processes nowise different in kind from all other cultural products including the construction of kinship groupings, the organization of political systems or the playing of a game. All are equally wonderful and all are equally human activities.
The remarkable thing about the Drama of the Holy is that it takes advantage of the capacity of human thought, human language, human purpose and human activity to achieve non-linear dynamics. It is the degree of non-linearity and the cultural importance of the solutions to life's exigencies that make the Drama of the Holy central to all human societies. Bushmen in South Africa, Christians in Mexico, Hindus in Bombay and Muslims in Penang all face the same problematics; all seek answers from the Holy spirit of their tribe (here called its poetic genius in honor of William Blake); all use sacred supplies and all find answers that, as the preacher in Ecclesiastes put it, Maketh a man's face to shine.
Use of sacred supplies and sacred artifacts and sacred practices outside of the Drama of the Holy by nonpersons is usually forbidden upon pain of death or exile. Patriarchal societies usually forbid women from entering sacred space, from touching holy artifacts or performing sacred rituals. All persons are forbidden to use sacred supplies outside of the Drama of the Holy; the non- social use of such supplies is treated as taboo and the offender treated as unclean. Sacred supplies used in other religious traditions in the quest for spiritual enlightenment are defined as unholy. All of these efforts come together in the last part of this essay to constitute a theory of corruption. But the theory is incidental to the larger purpose of the essay; to help build a postmodern knowledge process that, once again, sanctifies nature and society in a way that encourage a theology of infinite variety and of surpassing beauty.
I will begin by reviewing the missions of the knowledge process in each of the three epochs that organize and inform the analyses in this work. The idea of a value-free knowledge process is, in postmodern understanding, a nonsense notion. The center piece of the essay is a review of the use of sacred supplies that take one out of the profane realm of everyday life and into the sacred realm wherein one finds answers to spiritual questions. Finally, I will offer the elements of a special theory of corruption that facilitates the larger Drama of the Holy in postmodern theology. I can help the reader anticipate the case I make by saying that the sanctification of nature and society as well as the realization of the god process requires a comprehensive and enabling practice of social justice at all scales of human being. The knowledge process in all its various embodiments either speak to or speak against the quest for social justice and thus to the possibility of a Universal We.
MISSIONS OF THE KNOWLEDGE PROCESS As I have noted in other essays in the series, the missions and methods of each of the three epochs of human understanding are dramatically different. Premodern knowledge processes were and are oriented to the definition, reification, vivification and deification of the god concept in the pursuit of divine knowledge. Modern scientific knowledge process are pointed to the building of grand unified theory which subsumes all of the dynamics of society and nature. Postmodern efforts at understanding attempt to locate the knowledge processes of each epoch including its own self knowledge, in the larger cultural and social context in which each are found.
Briefly then, the missions of the knowledge processes in each epoch are:
Premodern: Revelation of Divine Plan/Will of God; escape from
this world of sorrow and danger; preparation for passage
to the spirit world; achievement of Bliss; quest for
divine intervention into natural and social processes.
Modern: Mastery of the present world; discovery of Universal
Law; development of technology with which to control
nature and society. Perfection of each paradigm in each
scientific discipline.
Postmodern: Location of the knowledge process in its social
and economic context; examination (deconstruction) of
subjective and intersubjective aspects of the reality
process. Calling forth of new paradigms to deal with new
problematics in its more emancipatory modalities.
Premodern Missions It is the missions and methods of premodern knowledge processes with which we are most concerned here. If we drop down a level of generality, the premodern quest becomes a search for answers to fundamental questions of existence. These questions include:
A. Where do we come from? This is the identity
question.
The answer is usually couched in terms of a miracle
or heroic feat that sets one people apart from and
superior to all other peoples. Such answers
legitimate the social practices of a society to its
members; enlist the loyalty of its young; justify
predation of other societies; displace guilt and
shame to its critics; inspire its warriors to
courage and dedication and unite the future with
the past.
B. How do we relate to other human beings? This is
the morality question. Answers usually center
around such spiritual values as:
*Compassion rather than envy
*Caritas rather than lust
*mercy rather than legality
*belief rather than cynicism
*faith rather than nihilism
*trust rather than opportunism
*hope rather than despair
*generosity rather than avarice
*acceptance rather than exclusion
*grace rather than anger
Answers to such questions smooth the rough edges off of
interpersonal relationships; help constitute a
particularized We; set the standards for allocation of
scarce rewards and for application of sanctions; bond
people together beyond words, beyond thought and beyond
doubt. This is the heart and soul of religion in all its
manifold forms.
C. What will happen in the future? This is the destiny
question: it speaks to the common need for
inspiration in a time of troubles. It gives
answers to questions heretofore unmet and
unanswered in its norms, laws, institutions and
cultural themes. It helps a peoples decide how to
enter the future: Shall we, as a people, change or
stay the same?
Answers to this question usually suggest new ways of
achieving ancient goals. Creativity, surprise and
innovation inform the knowledge process in this modality.
Fundamental transitions to entirely new ways are rare but
do occur in response to prophecy. Conversions,
migrations, and chiliastic visions of a new age are,
sometimes produced when inspired by bliss; sometimes
adopted by a people in times of great troubles.
D. What do we do about the personal tragedies of life?
This is the existential question: What sustains us
in times of trouble or need? How do we carry on
when we are tired, hurt, or profoundly depressed.
Answers to this kind of question point one toward the
liturgy of good work; have faith, labor in the service of
God and all will come right. Such answers provide a
person with the inner strength to do that which is very
difficult to do.
E. How do we know what is good and what is right?
This is the ethical question. When existing
moralities and values clash, how does one
prioritize and justify behavior.
All peoples need generic rules for sorting out that which
is right from that which is wrong. Life is far too
complex to rely entirely on the simple-minded compliance
to existing mor‚s however sacred they are. Rabbis,
monks, Sufis, shaman, ayatollahs, priests, and preachers
interpret and apply spiritual values to each historically
located problem in terms of 'transcendent' ethical
guidelines.
Reunifying the Knowledge Process Modern science claims that things of the spirit: faith, hope, generosity and compassion are outside its purview. Modern science from the time of Socrates tended to argue that such questions were political and needed to be settled apart from answers about impersonal laws of nature and society. Modern science, in its propensity for analysis, tends to focus on the concrete and the present rather than the whole and the possible. Modern science, for its own self protection, needed to distance itself from premodern understandings which disputed its findings.
Postmodern thought, on the other hand, views the knowledge process in science and theology as shaped and pre-shaped, equally and everywhere, by human interest and human desire. Things of the spirit do inform research questions in the larger political economy of science. Many of the spiritual elements of that political economy do not fit well within religious traditions--warfare, colonialism, racism, gender privilege, impersonal and unequal market dynamics, massified public institutions as well as privatized consumer impulses are equally spiritual but unbecoming to the authentic self knowledge of a society. Still these most human needs have shaped the knowledge process before, during and after the time of Newton.
By separating the knowledge process, falsely into the natural sciences and the human sciences, bright men and women were able to pursue their trade free of fear of inquisition and in the same moment free of guilt, shame and onus even as the fruits of their enquiry came back to privilege and empower those who partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Today as in yesterday, those with wealth and power have a decided advantage in setting the agenda for scientific enquiry and a head start in using it. All major innovations mediated by class or national status tend to reinforce that status. Metallurgy, navigation, transport, communications, electronics and space science all empowered some classes and nations in their conflict with other classes and nations--even in the face of loud and sincere claims of value-free science.
One must praise modern science for the emancipatory knowledge it does, in fact, produce. There is much in the physical and natural sciences which does speak to the spiritual values above. In agricultural sciences, in the medical sciences, in the engineering sciences, there is much which benefits all classes, races, and nations. However modern science cannot be exculpated from the knowledge it fails to produce which might speak to social concerns any more than it can be exculpated from contributing to the weapons of death and the tools of elitist control.
More to the point for this essay, on their own terms, postmodern science respects and receives the answers provided by any and all pathways to emancipatory knowledge including those oriented to the drama of the Holy. Since these journeys to the realm of the Holy are well within human capacity and experience, there is no good reason to deny the answers they provide as we work toward a theology that serves the human project in the 21st century. All three embodiments of the knowledge process can complement and supplement each other; there is no natural conflict between science and theology in their postmodern expressions.
METHODS IN THE KNOWLEDGE PROCESS Each of the three modalities of understanding in the history of the knowledge process have differing methods by which to achieve its missions. In the discussion which follows, it might be helpful to keep the etymological derivation of the concept of method in mind. The word, method, is a combination of the root words, meta, meaning 'from or after,' and hodas, meaning 'journey.' The word, method, is thus a journey to and from the source of knowledge. In modern science it is a journey to and from empiric experience toward sure and certain knowledge. In theology, it is a journey to and from the spirit world toward sure and certain knowledge about questions of the sort mentioned above.
Premodern Its method of discovery is through Ecstacy. In
order to know the will of the gods, one must depart
this world and enter into the spirit world. Any
act or aid which will alter the five senses and the
psychological obstacles to knowledge are adjunct to
the knowledge process.
Modern The method of knowledge in modern science is the
method of successive approximations involving
hypothesis, testing, and reformulation of theory.
In this journey toward knowledge, anything which
sharpens and augments the five senses and helps
clarify consciousness are adjunct to the knowledge
process.
Postmodern The method of the postmodern is deconstruction;
i.e., to revisit the historical moment in which
an idea, a theory or other social product was produced,
reconstruct the social economy of the time
and, using comparative research, document the
personal and social issues which gave honor,
respect and esteem to one such social product;
theory or one novel, over all others.
Ancient pathways to knowledge include intuition, revelation, divination by casting sticks, by interpreting cataclysmic events, by reading cards, by listening to inner voices, or by reference to holy texts. Modern scientific pathways to knowledge include quantification, statistical analysis of distribution, concentration and variation from assumed normal distributions of social practices. The use of careful research designs by which causal relationships can be identified, measured and retested help one on the journey to Grand Unified Theory.
Postmodern pathways to knowledge presume active participation in the reality/creative process by human beings. Norms, roles, statuses, institutions and whole social formations have no prior, objective reality; in the speaking and acting come the facts of social reality. The logic of the postmodern, seeing the human hand in every truth statement and in every test of human knowledge, in the construction of all social realities, implies the need for intersubjective methodologies. Such methods are intersubjective on a number of dimensions: in the first instance, human knowledge helps create the universe it studies. In the second instance, human politics shape the knowledge process about that intersubjectively created universe. In the third place, all knowledge requires intersubjective understanding; words, ideas, theories, and social life worlds cannot exist separately in the minds of human beings. Knowing, speaking, thinking and communicating is a collective, not an individual activity.
Transferring the logic of the knowledge process in its postmodern mode to postmodern theology, intersubjective methodology requires a far reaching democratic theogeny in which a particularized other transforms into a Universal We. In that effort, premodern methods of knowing are still important to the human project. While such methods produced knowledge systems which were labelled primitive, pre-modern and viewed as superstition, myth, magic or mysticism by modern science and while many postmodern analysts tend to reject both modern and pre-modern ways of understanding still, in a multi-dimensional knowledge process, itself congenial to the postmodern spirit, one would see premodern methods as prior to but complementary of the scientific method rather than primitive precursor or mystic competitor to it.
The very irrationality of premodern thought is most helpful to the knowledge process. With irrationality comes imagination, creativity, possibility beyond the possible, discontinuity of social causality, reversibility of social causality, transcendence of social causality to entirely new dynamics. This transcendent rationality is recaptured in much of what is called New Age religion. With hope, faith, trust, belief and inspiration come the ability to transcend that which seems fixed, eternal and protected by an armory of control tactics and entrenched privilege. As Max Weber might have put it, faith in the charisma of the Holy can undo nations and can overthrow despots. Belief in the transcendent goodness of the human condition can help fulfill the very prophecy it proclaims as possible. Trust in the possible helps realize it in the actual lived experience of human beings. Nothing in these processes conflict with the insights and sensibilities of the postmodern. With imagination and understanding of such dynamics, it is possible to build social life worlds which do not exist in nature apart from the active and continuing building. One of the possibilities is a sanctification process which constitutes the realm of the sacred.
THE REALM OF THE SACRED Every human being has the potential to live in three realms of activity. For most of human history, most people have for more or less of their lives so lived. There is first the ordinary physical world in which one must eat, defecate, bath, sleep and generally attend to the demands of the physical animal that all we are. This is the profane world of nature: biological needs and physiological functions are performed without thought or prayer. In this world of being, we go about our business without creating shared symbolic worlds...without using drama as a device to create the realm of the sacred.
We are doing profane work when we clear the land or carve rock from the quarry. We are in the profane world when we tend crops or when we herd animals. It is a profane even if necessary thing we do when we draw water or collect firewood. The weaving of cloth and the building of shelter is, even when in the service of others, profane labor. In the factories, shops and offices around the world, making things, counting things, crating and shipping things is profane work not directly connected to the quest for enlightenment, redemption or salvation.
The methods by which social realities are produced are, thus, folk methods which come to us from the earliest times. These same methods in the same moment provide the most profound knowledge of those social realities since the persons who construct them best, know them best. It is the heart of the postmodern theology here that the keepers of such knowledge are the people who produce; those of us who are merely social scientists may be honored by being allowed to study and to report upon it but we are not given a license by our various doctoral committees to deny or to transfer such knowledges to differing paradigms of understanding. If we are to be true to the knowledge process, we must accept the dramas of the Holy in both the definition and the interpretation of those who so define and so interpret. Postmodern social psychology returns to the human hand that which they create; either in its most holy forms or in its most profane forms.
Situated Dramas of the Holy Dramas of the Holy are used to constitute the ordinary social life world created by humans themselves; roles, role-sets, situated social occasions, institutions and whole social formations. This world does not exist, ontologically, in and of itself. It is created through social activity by believing, trusting, thinking, speaking, feeling human beings. It is a symbolic environment created by symbolic interaction. It is none the less real. Such a world has the same material facticity as do atoms, molecules, planets and galaxies...as long as people interact to create themselves and others as social agents and objects. The reality quotient of such fabricated realities is to be found in patterns of behavior; patterns which are no more or less real than the patterned activity which we call quanta, leptons, atoms, molecules, physiological systems or biological entities. All are equally patterned activity of parts given meaning and form by the larger whole.
A wide variety of sanctification processes located in various Dramas of the Holy are used to create the second world and having once created it, view it to be an ordinary part of nature. There are four generic uses of the Drama of the Holy in the construction of social reality. All four uses require nonlinear transformations and are predicated upon definition, belief, hope, and faith. The first use; that of transformation, is called a rite of passage. In baptisms, a squealing, squalling, leaking blob of protoplasm is converted into a son or a daughter in such a rite of passage. In weddings, a male is converted into a husband and a female into a wife by virtue of such rites. In other rites of passage, young men are converted into first lieutenants; young women into doctors; both genders into citizens in rites of passage. After such conversions, the individuals in question cease acting as nonpersons and begin to act as social person...with more or less success.
The second kind of holy drama involves the renewal of the collective. In festivals, parties, holy-days, dinners, feasts, church services, or patriotic occasions, resources are combined to produce a drama that is far removed from the ordinary, commonplace social actions. By assembling the elements of the Holy in one place; at one time; with every eligible member present, a sort of social magic occurs in which each person present is given to understand that a superorganic entity exists; that the life of that entity takes precedence over purely personal concerns and that each one present is part of the superorganic entity.
The third kind of holy endeavor involves faith healing; preparation for war; ceremonies of survival after death, drought, disease, or other natural calamity. In this recourse to the Holy, the entire collective...to its outermost is called to work together to achieve that which is impossible for individuals to do each pursuing their own separate concerns. In the face of such calamity, taken one at a time, we all are small. Collectively, we are greatly enlarged; more than the sum of the parts and might survive. The mystery and majesty of the Holy helps bind us together in that brother/sisterhood with which the impossible becomes manageable.
A fourth kind of holy activity is a reversal of the rites of passage. The social power of the collective, vested in the person of the holy woman or holy man, is used to dissolve the holy bonds of marriage; the web of group affiliation; the integrity of family membership. It is used to desanctify agents entrusted with healing or in judging who have used that sacred power for profane purpose; including their own personal privatized gain. In such ceremonies, doctors are transformed back into mere persons; priests are stripped of their office; wives and husbands are put aside to be as strangers to each other. Sons are disinherited and made unwelcome; daughters are disowned and made to leave the safety of the household.
These are the major social uses to which people put their
remarkable capacity to create the realm of the Holy.
Drama is thus used to mark off the realm of gods and miracles from the world of mechanistic cause and effect. In the realm of the sacred, social magic runs its full force. Healings, ontological breaks, birth and death of social forms are made. For those who enter the realm of the sacred, and most do so easily enough, miracles are possible.
When we take on a social role; merge in a social group; act in a social institution or function in a tribe, clan, nation or class, we dwell in a social life world. When we vote or play or send a letter to a friend, we are creating and embodying social reality. When we hire a worker or found a business, we do so a part of the second world of human experience. The profane things we do in such a world are kept in the background; are defined as not there in social terms: belches, blinks, and other bodily functions are treated as non-events from the point of view of social endeavor. The felling of trees, the building of dams, the laying of sewer pipe may begin with a sacred ceremony to locate their meaning in a larger social activity but, for the most part, they are prelude to social practice.
A social life world is sacred in so far as it binds us off from the realm of nature on the one hand and connects us to others in cooperative endeavor on the other. It is closely connected to the realm of the sacred, however the social life world in which we live out our lives is created and renewed constantly without the special drama of the Holy.
Then there is the realm of the sacred in which ordinary, everyday persons in their natural, biological aspect are transformed into social actors: wives, sons, presidents or players of sport. In this world, drama is an essential tool with which to reify and empower that which-once-was-not into that which-now-is. The components of the dramatic which create the Holy are varied indeed.
Extensive Dramas of the Holy The drama of the Holy varies widely from society to society; differing pathways are taken with which to reach the holy state. The subject of the Holy varies as well. Sometimes the Holy is limited to a small group as when, discussed above, during a baptism ritual it is comprised of the two parents, the infant child, and the agent who speaks in the name of all that is holy. Sometimes the realm of the Holy reaches out to encompass every member of the society; in which every member of society plays a special role in generating the drama of the Holy. Sometimes the Holy is stretched to include all of nature and extends deep into the dimensions of time. At every scale and in every niche of human endeavor, a drama of the Holy is possible. It is the larger, deep structures of society which are the most problematic in a time of global connectedness.
The task of postmodern theology is to find a way to organize the many dramas of the Holy which work so effectively for face to face encounters and for communal purpose to work for a more varied and much more remote social process.
The origins, dimensions and social location of the Holy
is an interesting story; perhaps the most interesting
story that can be told within the scientific enterprize.
Social Magic The short version of this story is that human beings are able to construct the realm of the Holy with a form of magic which I call social magic. When the realm of the Holy is constructed, it is every bit as real as is any other social fact...it is this point which makes it possible for everyone and anyone to be religious and to act on their religious impulse apart from their views about the nature of God. Even the most devout atheist can accept without injury to integrity, a belief in the Holy and can participate in the holy quest for peace and social justice in company with those whose belief in God and the Holy extends beyond the social component of that construction.
If and when we create God; if and when we honor the Holy,
these human constructs exist; they have the same
ontological status as any other human artifact...they are
real; as real as any other social fact: Detroit, the Dodgers,
Monday Night Football, CNN or the American Sociological
Association. The same social processes are seen: Definition
of the Situation, Reification, Sanctification, Rites of Passage,
Degradation Routines, Disengagments, Hierarchy and Rebellion.
I have offered a postmodern understanding of social magic in a companion essay but, for the present, I want to say that, in principle, there is no fundamental obstacle to the use of social magic to sanctify all of nature and society--even a globalized drama of the Holy is possible. It is within the human grasp to reinvent the god process in such a way that the many grand narratives presently and separately fulfill the drama of the Holy in local and parochial modalities, can join together to create a Universal We which encompasses but does not obliterate each such narrative. The regions of phase-space are empty enough to accommodate many more and many larger solitons than now dwell there.
Most people believe that one must be a theist in its premodern expression in order to participate in the drama of the Holy. Postmodern missions and methods suggest that, in principle, one is theist when one embarks upon the various pathways to the Holy whether one consciously apprehends that fact or not. In point of fact, each of us, in every act in which we acknowledge another human being are doing religious work; we are binding ourselves in holy union to another when we listen carefully, when we speak truthfully, when we respond helpfully and when we honor another's need. As the poet Blake said, mercy has a human hand and love, a human face. There is no love nor mercy unless some human being somewhere loves and is merciful. Such is the pathway to knowledge about the Holy.
PATHWAYS TO THE HOLY There are many pathways to inspiration and thus salvation in most theologies: faith earns one salvation and an escape from the bitter imperfections of life. Meditation, the putting away of things of the flesh and things of the world, takes one toward pure being. Good works earn one merit in the eyes of their god. A pure and faultless life in which one walks humbly and follows the way of the word brings hope of eternal life. But it is the active journey to a state of bliss which societies around the world employ to seek enlightenment and to hear the word of God.
A wide variety of psychogens are used to achieve bliss; to take one out of the ordinary...out of the static and into the extraordinary; into the ecstatic. In this ecstatic moment, one experiences and knows of the Holy. Dance, drugs, song, chants, alcoholic, sex, pain, isolation and risk can all help one achieve those extraordinary body states that are prelude to realm of the Holy.
Sacred Supplies Drugs, alcohol, violence, gambling and sex create extraordinary states of mind and body. These extraordinary states are defined in a given culture as proof demonstrative of the presence of the Holy. Such definition is always a normal, natural process...there is no magic to it at all; but it is magical in its consequence. As W. I. Thomas might have put it, Things defined as holy become holy in the consequent.
Hashish and marijuana, beer, wine, peyote, mushrooms and tobacco, opium, coca leaves are among several hundred substances throughout the world are used in combination with other supplies and practices to that end.
In Peru, coca leaves have been used for centuries as a pathway to the divine. Most of the time the leaves are chewed whole as a mild anesthetic. Once or twice a year, the coca leaves are roasted, mixed with ash and used to create a sense of the Holy. Only during the religious ceremony do men use large doses of coca leaves. The intense pleasure derived from taking the mixture is interpreted as union with the gods. The ceremony is made in order to improve harvests, to gain forgiveness or to know the will of the gods.
Sometimes dance, chanting, danger, gaming or violence is used to generate an ecstatic state. Sometimes extraordinary amounts of food, specially prepared food, very rare or very expensive foods are used to create the realm of the sacred. In Roman celebrations of a solidarity, people gorged themselves with food...and then disgorged themselves in order to continue.
Among Columbian Indians, cigars are smoked by brujos and brujas to call forth healing spirits or to exorcise evil spirits. American Indian males used tobacco in male councils to help make connection with the Holy in making decisions to move, to fight, to plant or to deal with new and strange situations. Smoking a pipe with an intermediary by a disputant was an important system for the resolution of disputes and the restoration of social peace among Indian tribes of North America.
Pain is used as a psychogen among the Flagellants of New Mexico, the Blackfoot Indians and many others. The Hispanic men who flagellated themselves at Easter are said to be sanctified. Those who endured the pain of Blackfoot initiation rites were said to be men...after they tore themselves loose from a thong inserted under the chest muscles.
Danger is used as a psychogen in many places. In New Guinea, males dive headfirst from platforms with ropes tied to their ankles. The point is to gauge the dive so one's head barely touches the ground. The adrenalin serves as a psychogen for all those assembled and helped create the fact of the Holy.
Among American Indians, young men were sent to fast and to inhale fumes of various plants in order to discover their special connection to name and be thus be named. If one saw a bear or an eagle in such a euphoric state, one took the name of that animal.
Among the Mayan, a form of basketball was used to create solidarity. The captain of the winning team was beheaded as a way to mark his achievement. Spectators were euphoric.
The Ainu in Northern Japan sacrifice a bear and eat the body parts in order to become part of the bear spirit...and to thank the spirit of the bear clan for its contribution to the group. Many societies extend the idea of the Holy to all of nature. Christians label this idea primitive.
In Algeria, the male solidarity is called the isawa. Muslims do not use alcohol as a sacred supply. It is created by solemn prayer. The reading of the first chapter of the Koran and the chanting of prayer alters body chemistry. This altered state is interpreted as proof demonstrative of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
In contemporary North America, young males engage in controlled violence in many sports activities daily, weekly or in season, accompanied by music, song, dancing maidens, alcohol and the use of many sacred words. Such an activity is then defined as a 'good time.' The participants are then defined as 'good friends.' This may seem excessive but given all the sources of conflict: jobs, ethnic, gender, age and class conflicts...strong doses of religion may be necessary.
The usage of the psychogens above are, for the most part, oriented to a quest for particular knowledge; knowledge of the Will of God, knowledge of the future, knowledge of the sources of travail, knowledge of the solutions to emergent problems. The psychogens are used as well to gain the favor of the gods; to solicit intervention, to placate anger, to forestall the natural consequences of flood, quake or drought, to counter the anger of other gods. Such usage of psychogens produce solve the problems of solidarity between persons and groups who would otherwise be in a conflict relationship as they compete for scarce supplies of food, shelter, game, grazing land, water and other profane supplies. M
SEX AND THE HOLY Sex is a favorite and effective sacred supply. Everywhere there is the use of sex to bind people together in holy wedlock. The sacred nature of human sexuality can be seen in the restrictions and the demands made on the sexuality of couples. It can be seen in the license given to young people in many places to act on their sexuality freely until a social union has been made. It can be seen in the suspension of sexual restrictions during holy days.
*Communities in Germany, Tibet, Polynesia, and South America
change the rules of sexual access to include all adults during
a variety of sacred ceremonies.
*In Mardi Gras, a combination of psychogens is used to create
the realm of the sacred. Sexual license, alcohol, dancing and
music all converge to create communal solidarity in a holy
ceremony.
*In New Guinea, young men are initiated into manhood by a
complex ritual which includes a first sexual experience and
cannibalism of one couple by the rest of the initiates.
Sacred Prostitutes The argument that prostitution is the oldest profession...and thus, cannot be repressed is based upon a superficial understanding of the use of sex in the temple to achieve the Holy. The religious use of the sexuality of young, prepartum females is for divine purpose. She is respected and for a time, part of the unity of the sacred. The use of female sexuality as commodity is superimposed by modern capitalist understandings of market and profit rather than the traditional understandings of sex in societies around the world as a pathway to the gods.
In tantric hinduism, the tantric must worship the goddess of bliss daily. In so doing so, the male unites with the Holy via the person of the female. The female does take gifts, does provide sexual services and is not, can not, be considered part of a social pair. Neither is she a prostitute who sells sexual favors to anonymous others as a market commodity.
In such tantric Hinduism, the male worshipper makes an offering of five such sacred supplies: meat, fish, mudra (parched grain), alcohol and sexual intercourse. He draws a mandala of circles, triangles and squares using vermilion paste, salutes the diagram as symbolic of Sakti, the cosmic source, and chants mantras. He toasts the goddess of bliss with the alcohol. He uses the various foods to purify and counteract the effects of the alcohol. Drinking alcohol without the foods is considered sinful and pointless. Tantrics who have not yet reached a high level of spiritual competence are not allowed to get drunk.
The foods and alcohol are offered to a young and healthy woman who takes the place of Sakti in sexual union. The woman is present in physical and in symbolic terms but is not there as a whole person with social status. Ritual drinking with the woman is a vital part of the ceremony but the point of the ceremony is to bring the male and the male alone into communion with the gods. In this case, solitary drinking is approved as a pathway to the gods.
There is a political economy behind both the religious and the commodity use of female sexuality. In agricultural societies with male inheritance, surplus girls were given or sold to the temple. In capitalist societies with a population surplus to the capitalist class, young women and young men alike prostitute themselves to the alienated sexuality of those who view sex as a market commodity. The meaning of such prostitution is far different in each social formation as is the meaning of pornography.
PORNOGRAPHY The word pornography means, literally, the writing
(graphos) of prostitutes (pornos). Pornography is
part of the ancient ceremonies of solidarity in which males of an
age group or an occupational group visit a temple to create
themselves as part of the realm of the sacred. Food, alcohol,
song, stories, and sex are used in combination to obliterate
hostilities, animosities, conflicts and troubles between males.
From England to Germany to Persia and Burma, pornography is used as erotic supplement to other solidarity supplies. The temple prostitutes in Rome and Greece are well known to modern scholars. The sculptures on the temples at Khajuraho in Northern India are visited by thousands of tourists each year. The ruins of Pompei include erotic art. Erotic art is found in Mayan, Incan and Aztec culture.
Erotic art... as a solidarity supply...is used in Japan and China to establish the pair bond. Newly married couples are given 'pillow books' to teach them how to give each other pleasure.
GAMES OF CHANCE AND THE HOLY Many societies use chance as a pathway to knowledge. The thought is that since it is the Will of God which determines everything, one can discover the Will of God through the fall of a bone, stone, stick or card. Senior men or women, entrusted with the task of determining the will of the gods with regard to the fate of a person during illness or tragedy--or the fate of an entire society during a time of famine, flood or drought, have cast stones, studied entrails, dropped sticks, read tea leavings or turned cards throughout recorded history in the effort to learn the will of the gods.
Gaming is probably an outgrowth of the use of bones and stones for divination. The Gesar epic is known in Tibet, China, Turkey, and Mongolia. It is over a thousand years old. One of its main themes is Mo, or divination with dice, prayer beads, or sacred rope knots. It is still practiced among exiled Tibetan monks.
In the Korean game of Yut, four sticks are thrown to determine the fortune of individuals and families. Yut was played on the last and first day of the lunar year. It is now played year round. The Chinese play several card and bone games for bet which developed out of the quest for sure and certain knowledge about how events would turn out.
In Gotland and in Scotland, the caber is tossed for prize. Park is a game in which teams of seven take territory from each other. Varpa, or playing stones, came from the throwing of limestone rocks at invaders.
As with most such castings, readings, and turnings, chance played a great part. However things fell, a person of some sensitivity; a person with insight into the wisdom of the tribe; a person of great creative genius would look at the pattern in which the sticks or bones or tea leaves fell and interpret their meaning in terms of that great wisdom. The nature of language and the fractal character of truth itself allows much leeway in the judgment of such interpretations. Much as present day readings of the horoscope are broad enough and open enough to encompass the sources of evil of everyone; much as they are focussed enough and wise enough to give advice which, if followed, is beneficent, the interpretation of entrails, of bone patterns, of tea leaf scatterings suffice in the healing and in the explaining of a hurt.
At the same time, there are so many escape clauses available to shaman, curanderos, witch-doctors, healers, sorcerers and fortune tellers that, even if diagnosis fails and therapeutic regimes disappoint, still the structure of divination and soothsaying can be sustained; if a person is wise enough and trusted enough, s/he will have enough success to warrant further trust.
The transition of such into games of chance as a solution to personal problems an easy and natural one. Males, usually males, would cast bones or stones or sticks to determine who was favored of God. When a gambler is lucky, there is the feeling that one is in perfect connection with the forces of nature...one feels that one can't lose. In the case of dice, the numbering of each side and the setting of rules gave visible and immediate proof of the favor of the gods...especially if there were wagers on the throw of the dice.
Today, the workings of the lottery or of some other game of pure random draw are often interpreted by the lucky winner as a favor of god. Pecuniary theology interprets the good fortune of those who give money to a ministry as a reward from God for such gift. Many in teleministry use such beliefs to reap considerable return on the chance blessings of their god.
Divination through Cards Playing cards began as a way of knowledge about the Will of God. The use of Tarot cards for divination of the future began in the 13th century. Tarot cards embodied pictographs of legends and myths going back thousands of years. The cards derived from the book of Thoth, an ancient Egyptian god and embodied the mystic knowledge of time and of the cycle of seasons. In Greek mythology, Thoth was given the name Hermes, from which hermeneutical knowledge derived. Hermes was the messenger of the Gods who brought a knowledge of the future as ordained by the gods down to those mortals who were qualified to know the gods.
Sjoo and Mor, in their work on matriarchy (1987), argues that mystical ways to knowledge were defined as evil or superstition and male gods began to replace the female gods. The male world, dominated by logic thought and concerns with control, repressed the feminine ways of knowledge by canon law and later, by common law and then by statutory law. Feminine ways of knowing were said to be unnatural and therefore the work of the devil. Women who used these ways were labelled witches and burned at the stake.
This way of knowledge competes with other ways of knowledge of the future plans of God. Many religions teach that the future is known only to God and that only religious functionaries can conduct the drama of the Holy. For people to turn to other sources for such knowledge presumes disbelief in the gods at least...and pretensions of godlike capacity at worse. Priestly functionaries repressed such knowledge systems as an offense to their God.
Along with palmistry, astrology, phrenology and alchemy, playing cards became defined as evil, corrupt, sinful and blasphemy in many Christian societies. People who used them challenged the gods, as did Prometheus, and must be punished. Part of the Drama of the Holy is, thus, the Drama of Taboo, sin and corruption.
Patriarchy and Access to the Gods Most societies permit the use of economic risk in gambling occasions within senior male religious solidarities. One may wonder why male solidarities require these special privileges. The short answer seems to be that under most conditions in which males find themselves, men have to compete with other males for scarce resources. The larger answer has to do with the origins of patriarchy and male privilege.
Origins are difficult questions and controversial in the extreme. Many believe that there are biological and physiological reasons for patriarchy. Many believe that there are in fact, remote gods whose plan for human beings privilege males. Some believe that society must have a division of labor in which men do one set of tasks and women another. A minority believe that there are economic reasons why males are privileged; beliefs having to do with, first reward for conquest and second, transfer of property through unambiguous male lineage.
The sexuality of women is used to solve such problems. Young men are permitted to rape women in the course of predatory raids while the booty goes back to be shared out among a kinship group. First born sons inherit in order to keep the land intact and avoid the subdivision of property below the level needed to support a family. Women are secluded by norms in order to validate such lineage claims--and forestall competing claims for power and property since, were a woman sexually accessible to outside men, her children could be claimed by them; and assigned property rights as well. Virginity, fidelity, chastity and seclusion fall upon women rather than men for quite practical reasons in societies whose political economy is precarious. In those areas where the political economy is adequate to the needs of a family or tribe, sexual norms are much less restrictive and patriarchy much less practiced.
In patriarchal societies, male heads of family group must compete with other similarly situated males for land, game, water, women, status, wealth and followers. Competition and the tension it brings argues for special attention to the generation and preservation of solidarity among males. In societies without such competition or without such scarcity, there is less structural reason for special gambling rights for males--and one might add, less reason for patriarchy.
Patriarchy, whether in feudalism, slavery, capitalism and bureaucratic socialism require that the knowledge process and its use for control and command be male-centered. Senior males in such societies claim a monopoly over religion in order to use the Will of God to legitimate such power relations. If anyone is to use cards, sticks, guts, stones or bones to know the will of God, it was to be males...dominate males.
Gambling by women, children, slaves, workers, and foreigners were and are defined as corrupt and repressed by law and custom in many lands. Gambling for non-religious, therefore nonsocial reasons was, and is, defined as sinful. Gambling for personal pleasure...e.g., standing alone for hours in front of a slot machine carried no social, hence religious meaning therefore was repressed as immoral and illegal. It certainly was immoral in the sense that such gambling violated the mores of a patriarchy when women or children attempt it.
Gambling, drinking, sports events, and night life in general was repressed as wage labor emerged. Capitalists wanted their workers to be fresh and ready at the break of day to work. Staying out late to gamble or play was defined as immoral and the power of the state was used to suppress play and gaming by the working class. The wastage of wages on drink or gambling was, likewise, repressed since owners would have to pay higher wages to permit it.
In American society, males often get together for small-stake poker games, for football pools, for racing events, and for a wide variety of other shared risky activities. The limited risk of friendly bets on poker or sports outcome all create ecstatic body states which are interpreted by the participants as "good times." The stakes are usually well within the means of the players and the rules are often changed to keep people 'in the game."
Under these circumstances, gaming is a solidarity device
and supportive of cherished social relationships.
POSTMODERN UNDERSTANDINGS OF SIN AND CORRUPTION Premodern understandings of sin and corruption center around the belief in another world and the necessity of making connection with it. The task of making connection is seen to be difficult; the consequences of not making contact are seen to be monumental. Everywhere, pathways to the sacred are guarded; the Drama of the Holy is protected and the supplies essential to the achievement of bliss are reserved for and only for the drama of the Holy.
Privatized use of the symbols, supplies, activities used in the Drama of the Holy as well as privatized use of knowledge obtained from inspiration, meditation or revelation are defined as sinful, corrupt, evil, profane or the work of the Devil in many societies. Terrible penalties are exacted for the profanation of elements in the Drama of the Holy.
Words used to invoke the Holy are not to be used lightly in the realm of the profane or in ordinary social interaction. Clothing used to signal the gods or define the Sabbath is not to be worn during non-religious endeavor. Supplies used to achieve bliss are never to be used for purely private purpose. Holy men and women are to be protected and cherished in ways above and beyond that accorded ordinary persons or nonpersons. The use of rituals for private gain or against members of a religious community is defined as blasphemy, witchcraft or corruption.
Everywhere there are rules, sanctions, warnings and taboos which protect the Drama of the Holy. The section below offers a special, historically variable theory of corruption. Such an explanation focuses upon specific acts which transgress and blur the lines between the realm of the Holy and the other two realms of action. I reserve the term, 'desanctification' to refer to the more impersonal and historically framed process by which all three frames are stripped of their sacred content.
THE RULES OF SACRED SUPPLIES All societies develop and use
different combinations of
psychogenic substances, sacred words and enabling activities to
create extraordinary physiological and psychological states. When
these body states are achieved, they are interpreted within the
structure of meaning in a society as proof demonstrative that one
has entered the realm of the sacred. Since the gods are powerful,
one must be very careful how and when one approaches them. Since
the whole tribe or kin grouping is thought to be at risk of the
anger of the gods, trivial or inappropriate solicitation of the
gods is a serious matter.
In a postmodern understanding of corruption, the drama of the Holy confers moral power upon those who are defined as members of the sacred order. They have the right to invoke the name of their god in injunction of even the mighty among them. The use of sacred supplies work to make holy those rites of passage which transform a nonperson into a person in the sight of their gods, i.e., in the sight of others defined as persons, generally. Such rites of passage bestow social power upon those so blessed. Given social power, one can expect and receive the material goods and the services by which they can reproduce the cultural forms in that society. Social power causes others to listen, to hear, and to respond in ways compatible with the spoken word when such words are in the service of social norms.
Thus the drama of the Holy depends, in many societies, upon the ways in which sacred supplies are produced and distributed. A whole set of rules have developed to govern the use of sacred supplies and thus to regulate the place, the time and the geometry of the Universal We. Postmodern theology, if it is to help support a polycentric drama of the Holy in the emerging world order will have to revise the rules governing access to the use of sacred supplies. The rules themselves are fairly clear: societies regulate the use of some supplies and activities to ensure the efficacy of the Drama of the Holy.
Access and the SuperOrganic The use of sacred supplies is usually limited to those assemblies in which solidarity relations exist or are in the process of being expanded or redefined. As a Durkheim would point out, it is in the assemblage of the whole society in which the power and the mystery of the gods is most easily experienced.
It is in the presence of the entire society assembled that the Holy is most directly felt. Durkheim (1961) put it this way:
'...[that] which is the universal and eternal objective cause
of these sensations sui generis out of which religious
experience is made, is society.'
And,
'If religion has given birth to all that is essential in
society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of
religion.'
and,
'...we have seen if collective life awakens religious thought
on reaching a certain degree of intensity, it is because it
brings about a state of effervescence which changes the
conditions of psychic activity. Vital energies are excited,
passions more active, sensations stronger; there are even some
which are produced only at this moment.'
Single persons are permitted to and even required to seek out and to appeal to the gods under some conditions but it is always on behalf of the welfare of the entire society--or that portion of society which is defined as having full standing as a human. The use of words, beverages, songs, costumes, make-up, or other accouterment of the sacred ceremony at nonsocial times or for nonsocial purposes is strictly forbidden.
Psychogens are used within and only within the boundaries
of 'society-assembled' in special sacred occasions.
The first rule of religion is, then, that the Holy is created only when society as a whole is assembled...meaning those occasions when the Drama of the Holy is enacted by members of the social order. Persons permitted to use sacred supplies and participate in the Drama of the Holy in such situated dramas are not permitted to participate, to observe or to use the sacred supply before or after the Drama of the Holy upon pain of death.
The use of sex, tobacco, alcohol, or other sacred supply is thus forbidden at times when the drama of the Holy is not enacted. The rule means that only people who are actively engaged in cherished social relations may use the sacred supply in everyday life. Those who are not may not. Married adults may engage in sexual relations but unmarried children may not in those societies which use human sexuality as a way to celebrate the holy state of wedlock.
Profanation and Privatization of the Sacred The private use of any sacred supply is condemned as a profanation of the Holy. Societies have pejorative terms to use upon discovery of the private, nonsocial use of sacred supplies. Alcoholism, drug addiction, gluttony, madness, compulsive, mania, perversion and other derisive terms are used when persons are found to be using alcohol, drugs, sex or other psychogens for personal reason. The use of sacred symbols outside of the Drama of the Holy is called profanity.
When such supplies are used in the service of the Drama of the Holy, use is permitted even demanded. It is not the amount of alcohol consumed that makes one an alcoholic or the frequency of sexual activity which makes one a pervert; it is the private use of sexuality outside of the celebration of society and the norms which define it. When one uses violence on behalf of a society, it is defined as an honorable and courageous thing to do. The same physical courage in the violation of social norms is less than honorable.
Invoking the power of the gods for private use in a secret ceremony is called witchcraft. Appeal to gods foreign to a society is called Devil worship. Baal was worshipped by the Moabites but was deemed Satan by the leaders of the Israelites. Today, those who worship other gods are called pagans, savages, or idolaters. Social sanctions are deployed to punish those who are tempted by the devil, healing rituals are used to cast out devils, prisons are built to hold and to mortify the flesh of those in whom the devil has taken residence and asylums are established to deal with the madness and badness attributed to those who profane sacred supplies and activities.
In both modern and postmodern analysis, there are no devils as such; the devils that are, are the collective representations of other societies in their norms, folkways, and mor‚s as well as their pathways to the holy.
Exceptions There are some exceptions granted for the solitary (not private) use sacred supplies. Some societies require a young man to go into the mountains and enter into communion with the spirit world in order to receive a name and a destiny. In these societies the solitary use of psychogenic substances is permitted. When a women is about to enter into a sacred role, she is permitted to partake of the sacred potions alone.
When a woman is engaged in the healing of a member of the tribe, she may use holy words and holy things. When a holy man is to prepare himself to receive the advice of his gods on behalf of the community, he alone is permitted to use sacred supplies. While the person is alone in physical terms, s/he remains embedded and loyal to the social organization of the society in its totality.
Unholy Supplies A third rule is that the sacred supplies used by other peoples are forbidden since they make invoke other gods or dilute the efficacy of approved supplies. If a culture approves of alcohol, it may define the use of marijuana or coca leaves as corrupt. If a society meditates, it may define dancing as corrupt. If a society uses food, it may define song or chant as the devil's work. Whatever set of psychogens a society uses, it protects them by declaring competing psychogens as sinful.
The same rule applies to other elements of the drama of the Holy. Clothing, body decoration, words and rites from other societies are seen to be accouterments of devil worship, witchcraft, or blasphemy.
Pathways to sacred knowledge and sacred status are thus protected by a complicated and interlaced set of norms which enable members of a society to embody the drama of the Holy on the one side and to defend against profanation on the other hand. The rules of exclusion thus define when the use of a sacred supply is corrupt and when it is required. The familiarity of gender- structured restrictions on the use of sacred supplies warrants a brief section in order to make a theory of corruption more visible and immediate.
Nonpersons and Access to the Holy Another rule for postmodern understandings of corruption is that only members of a solidarity may use sacred supplies. Members have access to other necessities of life as a matter of status regardless of merit, money, or physical power. It is important in those societies to prevent the 'wrong' persons, i.e., nonpersons; strangers, outsiders, low status or degraded persons are prevented from the partaking of sacred supplies in order to control access to moral power. Those who haven't prepared themselves properly, who have offended the gods, those who are unclean by virtue of their status or those who worship other gods are excluded and exiled from the Drama of the Holy.
In patriarchal societies, the use of sacred supplies is restricted to those times and places when adult males are seeking access to the Holy--or the times when young men are being transformed into adults through sacred rites. In such societies, women and children are forbidden to participate; often forbidden to watch or to draw near. In terms of the analysis made here, only those who are part of a generalized and significant other are permitted the blessing of the gods.
This rule also prescribes that only pre-qualified members are to be transformed into social persons by the use of sacred supplies. One must be connected to the religious community in some known and accepted manner else one is not fit to be made a member of a solidarity and thus have the right to participate in the drama of the Holy. Lineages are usually defined following some rule of descent as a precondition for sanctification. Sometimes a people will permit adoption; sometimes a form of temporary adoption is used. Whatever the case if a child were born outside of a sanctioned relationship or from two persons for whom such a 'social' relationship were impossible in local terms, that child was defined as a bastard, as illegitimate, or took the caste of the mother. Such children could not be accorded roles in the drama of the Holy.
When any person is prequalified to membership in a sacred rite
of passage, they are accorded, by virtue of that drama, the social
power to request and to get the necessities of social life. This
rule gives control over the gateways to social space to the society
assembled.
In sexist societies and in slave societies, women
and slaves are excluded for partaking of the Holy.
When age-grade are used as pre-tests for access to the holy, young people may not use sacred supplies; may not smoke, drink, make love, or use certain words. When class or caste grading is used, those in the lower echelons of the class are thought to be presumptuous or pretentious in their aspirations to the drama of the Holy. When racial categories are invented and enforced, persons from other 'races' are denied access to the drama of the Holy. These conventions often extend to all uses of social power and social access; schooling, voting, speaking, or working.
In order to protect the Drama of the Holy from persons defined as unclean or unqualified huts, caves, tents, meadows, clearings or other sites are defined as sacred and reserved for qualified persons. Unclean persons are forbidden to wear the scars, badges, or dress of such drama. They are forbidden to touch the instruments of the drama; weapons, tools or musical instruments. In order to protect the ritual activities, communicants with the gods are sworn to secrecy.
Male Solidarities We can see the way in which corruption as
a social control tactic arises in patriarchal societies. In these
societies, the sexuality of women are subordinated to population
control, property transfer and/or predatory economics. In such
societies, male solidarities use alcohol and other psychogens.
In societies with real (or socially imposed) shortages of
essential goods or services, solidarity problems arise. When males
are taught to compete for and to dominate in the acquisition and
distribution of basic goods, solidarity becomes a special problem.
Strong measures are taken to guarantee solidarity in the midst of
so much conflict. Young men are taught to drink together to
excess, to use violence in groups, and to share the sexuality of
women in order to create a sense of brotherhood.
In societies with such alienated gender relations, males claim a monopoly over the use of all such sacred supplies including weapons, musical instruments, sports equipment, gaming equipment and other holy artifacts. In some societies, women can be beaten and raped for simply touching such sacred supplies.
Male solidarities use a combination of such supplies to create the extraordinary physical and psychological states which are, then, defined as evidence that the group or individual has entered the realm of the sacred. One can see some of the thousand different ways the ancestors of Americans used and still use sacred supplies to bond males together in solidarity...and thus transcend the special interests of any given male for scarce resources.
CONCLUSION If we understand that great effort is given over to create the sense and the fact of the Holy in order to bind people into a society; to bind them into social roles; to bind the partners of a social status-set together for all time, then we can begin to appreciate the social nature of religion...and the sacred nature of some practices and social goods. This is, in both premodern and postmodern theology, a sanctification process.
These goods and services, defined as sacred and reserved to effect the drama of the Holy, contribute to the generation of sacred knowledge. In the use of alcohol or other psychogens, a state of intense awareness is possible. In such states, one puts away everyday concerns and seeks guidance to questions the nature of which affects the fate of the society or some cherished portion of it. The quest for an insight and a wisdom, oriented to the health and well being of the entire society sanctifies both the society and the knowledge process.
One can see from the etymological origins of the words; sacred, drama, work and holy, that the use of sacred supplies in the drama of the Holy is a holy use. Deep in the prehistory of the human race there came a time when it was recognized that the essential work of human beings was to create the Holy; to make it possible for human beings to live whole with themselves; with others; and with the natural realm upon which all things depend.
It is a healthy thing to create the Holy; anyone with a human face and human heart can do so. To do so, one dramatizes; one sets aside the profane labor of physical survival and enters into the Holy work of forging a compact with others which we call religion...from the Latin, religio, I bind, I bind back.
One must, therefore, be very careful about definition in law and in theology which control the use of sacred supplies. There are some sacred supplies most harmful to the body and being of those who use them in whatever dosage. Some harm the liver; some harm the lungs; some harm the genetic structure of newborn babes. Some are additive and thus by pass the self system as mediator of behavior; thus reduce the efficacy of social control tactics. Some practices degrade others in order to uplift the few; pornography and temple prostitution may contribute to male solidarity but do little more than demean women and men who so prostitute themselves.
Yet the pathway to the Holy is an essential part of the Drama of the Holy. Song, food, chant, music, sexual joy and gaming can be organized in ways that do not carry with it a price which, in the end, desanctifies and demeans. In postmodern theology, such degradation is truly and actually, the death of God.
Postmodern theology accepts and honors these pathways to the Holy since they provide for the kind of knowledge that modern science cannot or will not. Inspiration, revelation, and wisdom are hard to come by. Even scientists benefit from such subliminal cerebral activity. The operative question for any method of knowing is not so much the truth value of its product but rather the use value in terms of a conditioned transcendent which binds us together in the near future while it heals the ancient wounds of class and class, of race and gender, of poverty and privilege.
Postmodern Understandings of God I want to make two points about and the Drama of the Holy God and perfection that emerge from a postmodern understanding of the Drama of the Holy. I want to use these the analyses and explanations above to help build a postmodern theology which serves the human condition without the exclusivity and meanness of spirit that are found in some premodern understandings of the god concept. I will come back again and again to these points in companion essays:
1. Neither salvation nor perfection are the goal of post
modern religion...but rather praxis. Postmodern gods are
not, in the first instance, all knowing or all powerful.
In the first instance, they try to expand mercy, justice,
and joyful life by means of situated and extended drama
of the Holy.
2. The reach and role of praxis must extend to all of nature
and society in a global political economy. Exploitation
and privilege are inimical to the drama of the Holy.
3. God may exist in bodily form if and only if human beings
embody the teachings of their God. That God cannot and
does not exist as pure spirit apart from the belief, the
faith, and the practice of the religion of that God.
That which binds extends the god concept; that which
divides and demeans, destroys it.
4. Most of the teachings of the god concept in any one of
the many grand narratives are congenial to the human
project; some are not. Sanctification of a family or a
society by means of the desanctification of other
families or societies is an unholy drama which engineers,
in postmodern theology, the death of god.
5. Wisdom and caution must be used in the critique and
transformation of any given grand narrative. Some kind
of statement about universal human rights matched with
universal human obligations are helpful to such critique.
6. Each grand narrative claiming to embody the god process
must be subject to a postmodern knowledge process which
enlightens and illuminates the dramas of the Holy at
every scale of social organization. Premodern pathways
joined to and complementary of modern scientific methods
of knowing are necessary.
This is such a radical view of God that one might want to go other essays in this volume in order to more fully understand the context in which it might make sense to speak of an imperfect and partial God existing only in the flesh. It is possible to believe and to have faith in such a god concept and to participate joyously and innocently in such a Drama of the Holy. From a distinctly postmodern perspective which sees the human hand in every cultural product from art, history, science or theology, it may be the only way it makes sense to engage in God-talk.
The idea that God is a human process and a human artifact is an old idea. But the assertion that comes along with the modern idea that humans make God in their own image, is an assertion that God doesn't really exist...He is simply a product of a more innocent time...an anthropomorphic fiction. The sure and certain answer to this in postmodern understanding is that sometimes God is a fiction but sometimes, God really exists. In this reading of the god concept, the reality quotient of the god process depends upon social justice practices since, in empowering and enabling people, one sanctifies them. And since all social forms require a material base, sanctification of all of nature is part of the postmodern understanding of the god process. The dimensions and qualities of the god process are sensitively dependent upon the way we do justice.
St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas are given credit for the premodern understanding of God as an Active Watching Principle. Schliermacher and Hegel are given credit for disembodying Him and making him pure and rational spirit and, in the same moment, little more than a matterless abstraction of universal laws of matter and society. A more accommodating postmodern viewpoint sees the god concept as a human product with the same facticity and efficacy as any other such product; an army, a corporation, a social role or a social identity. All these emerge as real in the act of defining and interpreting and most of all, embodying them as real. One cannot exclude the God concept from the reach of empiric science since it has the capacity to motivate, to organize, to transcend and to sanctify ordinary physical realities into something very special.
It is the healing power of the spiritual dimension of the Holy that sustains and brings us from the depths in a time of troubles. It is the compassion, the mercy, the support we get from others and give to others which draws us, inescapably toward the realm of the Holy when we hurt or sense the existential hurt of others. We do respond to the touch and to the voice of another person who tells us with love that it matters that we live; that we survive this latest tragedy which befalls us. In so doing, we benefit from the drama of the Holy.
Religion is much to important to the human project to leave to dogmatic fundamentalists or to hardcore atheists. The realm of the Holy; things of the spirit; distinctly human values are central to the human project whatever one's understanding of God and the supernatural. As spiritual values become awkward to the needs and purpose of the rich or the powerful, religion in its human/humane form gets distorted or put aside or used for quite irreligious purpose...more to manage and to distance the rich and the powerful from those they hurt rather than to bind us all together in a common journey of life. When this happens, God dies a slow and painful death. The death of God is the subject of the next essay. It is a consequence of a vast desanctification process that has expanded with the coming of modern science.
Let us now consider the death of god in postmodern theology.