The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 2 -- continued from Part 1.
The first thing that struck me when I began to read The Many Faces of Christianism was the use of the word imaginaries. It appeared in the first paragraph, and about seven times in the first chapter (more if you include footnotes, none of which explained it).
Here is one of the sections in which the word appears in context:
In all of this, the bulwarks of present-day anti-liberalism, such as the notions of Holy Rus’ or the Russian World, nationalist and populist movements in Europe, as well as the Make America Great Again-campaign feature major political imaginaries: they assert a timeless connection between certain territories, certain people, and cultural or civilizational exceptionalism. All of these build on a connection of these political imaginaries with (selected aspects) of religious tradition.
One might conclude, therefore, that "imaginaries" are things that assert timeless connections between certain territories and people on the one hand, and cultural and civilizational exceptionalism on the other -- but it's still a rather nebulous concept.
I recalled, however that I had seen the term used a couple of years earlier in a book I had been editing. It popped up in Chapter 12, and I was unable to edit the sentences in which it appeared, because I had no idea what they meant. I asked the author, and suggested that he include a definition of it and a couple of other terms (like "hybridity") somewhere in the first chapter so that readers who encountered them later in the book could see what he was talking about.
He said the term had been suggested to him by a mutual friend and former colleague of mine in the Missiology Department at the University of South Africa (Unisa), Klippies Kritzinger, so I asked him what the term meant. I thought I had made a note of his reply, but I had mislaid it. I did a web search, which said it has something to do with the square root of -1. It took me some time to find Klippies Kritzinger's reply, and when I eventually did find it, it said:
I used the term 'imaginary' more or less in the sense that the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor does. He coined the term 'social imaginary', which is not the same as a theory. I use the term ecclesial imaginaries, which I first called the 'functional ecclesiologies' by which members view and experience the church. These are imaginaries such as: church as stokvel (you don't get buried from church building if you are owing on your 'dues'; church as theatre (it is mainly about entertainment: vibrant music and motivational speeches); church as school (mainly about teaching and learning); church as business (minister as CEO, flashy marketing and huge building); and so on... The wonderful biblical images of Body of Christ, people of God, group of disciples, bride of Christ, and so on are perhaps affirmed intellectually, but the actual praxis (theory-practice-theory-practice) is driven by these imaginaries. And I told Stephan that many URCSA members and students do church in these ways, which I find problematic and disappointing. I hope this helps a bit....
That did help in the case of the book I was editing two years ago, but it doesn't help much in the case of this book, which has "imaginaries" scattered throughout, but they seem to mean something other than popular erroneous conceptions of the Church.
It does, however, seems to have become the Western theological buzzword of the 2020s, as "relevant" was in the 1960s, "contextual" in the 1970s, and "holistic" in the 1980s. It's one of those words that lots of people seem to use, but no one is quite sure what it means.
Since retiring, however, I seem to have got out of touch with most Western theology, and I realised that I'd kept in touch with most of it while I was working through gossip in the Unisa cafeteria and editing theology study guides, but, since losing access to the Unisa library ten years ago, I've been pretty much out of touch with it.
But reading The Many Faces of Christianism I begin to suspect that many Western theologians are as out of touch with Orthodox theology as I am with Western theology and view it mainly through Western Protestant/secular/political spectacles, and perhaps even primarily through the spectacles of the CIA.
In trying to get a handle on "imaginaries" I also asked on an English usage internet forum, some of whose members had access to more resources than I do, and it appears that it is not in the Oxford English Dictionary, but suggested it may have been imported from French, and was possibly connected with the French philosopher Lacan. And yes, that seems a promising path to follow, except that I learn that, like Lacan's other contributions to psychoanalytic theory, it was subject to a continual reformulation throughout his work. It appears to mean an image external to oneself, like a child observing its reflection in a mirror. I'll have to think about that some more, and see if there are any clues further on in the book.
Holy Rus' is mentioned as one of the "imaginaries", but if an "imaginary" in the Lacanian sense, bears the relation of the image of a child in a mirror to the child itself (as Kritzinger's distorted ecclesiologies in relation to the Body of Christ suggest), then surely in a serious work of theology they should also be discussing the child, rather than just the imaginary? But the authors of this book, in effect, live in the world through the looking glass.
There are other terms that pop up without clear definitions, for example "anti-liberalism" in the passage quoted above, and "liberal democracy" elsewhere. My initial impression (which may change when I've read more, though I doubt it) is that for the editors and most of the authors, "liberal democracy" is characteristic of the countries of Western Europe and North America, and "anti-liberalism" characteristic of Christian Nationalists. I'm sure that the second part of that is right, but I'm not sure of the first part. Britain's terrorism laws, for example, which treat opposition to genocide as terrorism, are far more draconian than South Africa's 1967 Terrorism Act, passed at the height of its Christian Nationalism phase.
Continued in Part 3.
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