| Homiletic theory (scroll down) 1. Christian Congregations as Fields of Mnemonic Practice. 2. The Aldi Bag Syndrome: Preaching as shamed consumption in a commodified social world. |
Christian Congregations as Fields of Mnemonic Practice We walk by faith not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). If in this present time we were living by sight, we should have nothing to wait for: there would be neither yesterday not tomorrow. But we live by faith, that is to say, we come from Christ and are going to Christ. Peace and joy abound on either hand, but on this journey we go from riches to destitution and from destitution to new riches. The preacher must show the real nature of this journey in faith … … (Barth, 1963: 17) In my last paper I suggested that the preacher rehearses the tradition in order that interpretation can be shared and meanings made operative in the lives of Christians. Fairly non-contentious I think. So, for example, it echoes Elizabeth Castelli's emphasis on 'meaning-making' in her work on Christian martyrdom, she writes that '… memory is a social construction, the product of the individual's interaction with his or her group.'(p 11) Through the process of being retold, preserved, and ritualized, collective memories provide 'the conceptual and cognitive constraints that render past experience meaningful in and for present contexts.'(p 12) That is a straightforward application of the presentist understanding of collective memory from its origins in the work of Maurice Halbwachs. I then went on to suggest that Halbwachs and those who follow him closely over-emphasise the rationality and reasoning involved in collective memory. Using Clifford Geertz's development of 'thick description', I drew attention to what I call the performative aspects of collective memory, the network of significant symbols that are expressive of the 'really real' in Geertzian terms. These things are performative in my understanding because they are communicatively salient whether or not they bear meanings. In this I was using Pascal Boyer's notion of traditions as purposeful in themselves rather than as carriers of meanings. I think it fair to say that in this area what I said had a rather rougher ride! The criticisms voiced came from two related directions: Stanley Hauerwas's notion of the church as 'a story formed community' and the associated idea that the Godly narrative of the Hebrew people and their struggles and its culmination in the story of Jesus is inextricably linked to dissectible meanings. Commonplace ideas I think, so just one example of narrative linked to memory: Allen Verhey's Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture and the Moral Life published in 2002:- In the New Testament memory is not simply a mental process of recollection, not just disinterested remembrance of objective historical data; memory is to own a particular history as one's own, to own a past and to own it as constitutive of identity and determinative for discernment. In the New Testament and in the church there is no identity apart from memory, and now no community apart from common memory. (p 24) In preaching and prayer and hymn and sacrament the people remembered Jesus and owned his story as their story, his life as their life, the 'mind of Christ' as their mind. (p 26) … all the particular histories of persons in the church must be submissive to the story of Jesus, which gives the church identity and makes the church a community. All of our little certainties and all of our little virtues must be not only assimilated but also made submissive to Jesus, whose memory stills fills the church with knowledge and goodness. (p 44) Here collective memory isn't a dispassionate recollection of some past events; rather it is the vital core of the church's existence in which is found its very constitution as an identifiable community. The story of Jesus becomes the believing community's window on the world - it frames, it illuminates, it reflects and interprets; but this is more than narrative theory because the story isn't just a good story it’s a memory. That's why Verhey can assert so strongly: no memory, no church. I find this a very attractive notion, but there are two questions I want to raise: Do the mechanisms of collective memory work like that? and Who is remembering? I only have time for the first question today, I'll just mention the second as a parting shot later! The concept of collective memory is much used in the study of social trauma, and I want to use one particular study as it clearly delineates some of the issues: On 23rd March 1944, during the Nazi occupation of
During the afternoon of March 23, 1944 criminal
elements carried out an attack, by throwing bombs at a German Police column
which was passing along the via Rasella. In consequence of this attack. 32
German policemen were killed and several wounded. This vile ambush was carried
out by Badoglio-Communist elements. Investigation is still being carried out to
clarify up to which point this criminal act is to be attributed to
Anglo-American incitement. The German Command
is firmly determined to put an end to the activity of these heartless bandits.
No one shall sabotage unpunished the renewed Italo-German cooperation. The
German Command, therefore, has given orders that for every German killed, ten
Badoglio-Communist criminals will be shot. This order has already been carried
out. In the retaliation 335 men were killed in an abandoned quarry on the via Ardeatina. The shootings took most of the day to complete. I don't need to detail the gruesome particulars save to say that the cruelty used, the randomness with which the victims were chosen, and the hiding of the bodies means that the Fosse Ardeatine has become a principal symbol of the various massacres carried out during the Nazi occupation of Rome. My research concerns the sermon in contemporary Christian practice analysed through the lens of the Halbwach's concept of collective memory. Concerns you might imagine to be a million miles from a World War Two atrocity. I use the Fosse Ardeatine, however, because how that symbol has been, and continues to be used, discloses some generalisations about collective memory that are pertinent to my study. On the 25th March 1944 Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the "When facing
such events, any honest soul is deeply pained in the name of humanity and of
Christian sentiments. On one hand, thirty-two victims; on the other,
three hundred and twenty persons sacrificed for the culprits who have
escaped arrest [. . .] Standing apart from and above the contention [. . .] we
invoke from these irresponsible parties the respect for human life,
which they have no right ever to sacrifice; and the respect for
innocence, which is fatally the victim; from those in positions of
responsibility, we ask that they be conscious of their responsibility toward
themselves, toward the lives they are to safeguard, and toward history and
civilization." It is widely believed that the Germans asked the partisans to surrender themselves as responsible and only after that the partisans failed to do did they proceed with the retaliatory killings. This version still circulates despite the fact there never was any call to the partisans to turn themselves in; there is no evidence of it anywhere, and the German commanders admitted at their post-war trials that the killings were carried out within 24 hours and only announced after the event. This version of the memory is simply untrue - a court case in the 1950s established the partisans weren't responsible for the retaliation, and the Supreme Court came to the same verdict in 1999, and yet the untrue version remains a potent memory. Why? First, there are broadly political reasons. All kinds of social forces and ideological commitments come into play: how far modern democratic Italy finds its origins in the wartime Resistance movement; the nature of the anti-Fascist struggle; the development of current political parties and how they are related to past experience; the meaning of Italy's own recent history and how individuals and communities position themselves in relation to it. Specific and located in place and time - seems bounded - but in fact it isn't because its ramifications are such it is remembered as significant now. Terdiman describes memory as 'the present past,' paradoxically when it isn't present it easily ceases to be. It simply falls out of mind. Fosse Ardeatine is in no danger of that. It is about what matters now, rather than what mattered in 1944. Second, there are more closely individual reasons that relate to feelings and indeed bodily expression. The commonsense belief that revenge would not be taken on 335 innocents without first seeking the perpetrators has come to dominate the narrative. The beginnings of this distortion are already there in the newspaper of 25th March: German police=victims; partisans= irresponsible culprits; the innocents killed=sacrifice or atonement after a crime. There is the beginning of the shift of guilt from the Nazi executioners towards the irresponsible partisans. You might say that also is a political/ideological bias given its source, but it is more than that. There is an emotional and physical charge to these things that goes beyond what is known or knowable. Third, there is the process of making sense of things personally. Alessandro Portelli's study of the awareness of the incident makes the point that even well educated, left-leaning activists assume the distorted memory is the truth. It has a 'fit' about it, it makes the unacceptable somehow acceptable, the horrifically absurd more understandable, even reasonable. Indeed he admits that although he cognitively knows from years of research that the distorted memory is absolutely untrue, yet still he feels himself influenced by it. Sometimes memories that in reality cannot possibly be memories are incredibly tenacious as memories. He also cites what he calls 'mythic tales' where stories are told of family members involved in the debate as to whether the partisans should give themselves up, and people may be absolutely convinced that they, or an elderly relative, remembers these heated discussions. The personal power of these mythic tales is that they make those who recount them feel they or their families are closely involved in significant historical moments. This is part of 'my' history, 'my' family's experience, 'my' inherited take on the world. It is personal, it 'weighs' heavy, it is hard to cast aside. The memory of the Fosse Ardeatine discloses several things that are generalisable about collective memory that are pertinent: It is presentist - as Halbwachs asserted it serves the needs of now. If it ceases to be present concern it is forgotten. In preaching this presentism has often been thought of in terms of relevance - what is relevant to this congregation now? How to own the past as one's own, how to make that past in some sense operative now. It is contentious - debate, struggle, conflict often figures. Fosse Ardeatine so clearly related to Italian political concerns - sustained as a memory by the conscious efforts of groups. Collective memory isn't a metaphor according to Halbwachs, it is a social reality. It is created and maintained by the communication that takes place within a group. It is a core part of group identity, supports group boundaries , frames group behaviours. The immense variation in what a sermon is should not be allowed to obscure the fact that content, style, and form all disclose identity characteristics that are markers of difference, conflict (muted or open), and struggle between varying claims of what it is to be Christian. I don't think it an exaggeration to say that preaching is a site of contestation, not simply between the ways of God and the ways of the world but also between ways of seeing/understanding Christian faith. It is variable and positional - it changes for all sorts of reasons related to understandings, context and physical space. In preaching physical space is often about more than simply being seen and heard, and style, structure and language may vary enormously, as may the content. Indeed the variability is such that on occasions what is declared to be sermonic may be seen by others as not being. Commonsense understandings may
influence it profoundly. Without memory
holders having to think about it terminology is used that 'fits' with the
memory. Halbwachs distinguished
autobiographical memory (personal experience), historical memory (the past
known only through historical records), and collective memory which is the past
present in shaping our identities and sense of belonging. No one, I think, would now claim that those
distinctions are as clear as he thought.
As collective memory is so closely associated with identity, what the
actor ordinarily understands about the ordinary world is related to it. In terms of preaching, the social memories
invoked relate the commonsensical and the 'other worldly' (for want of a better
term) in a complex and often taken for granted manner. The preacher speaks of eternity but in ways
that connect to the everyday. There is
an unvoiced contract at work, and generally it is held to. The incomprehensible is made comprehensible,
but the preacher doesn't have to constantly rehearse issues of metaphor and
comprehension. [Body of Christ language,
but not the Feelings and bodily expression weigh very heavily. An individual's relationships to time highly subjective and particular, but also profoundly social. Memories shared enable people to live events they haven't actually lived - vicarious memories. And these may go beyond an individual lifespan. Because memories are connected with emotions, we also create memories of things not actually experienced. Such distortions also shaped by social norms, expectations, cultural patterns, and interactions. Reminiscence and narration allows an individual to shape life to fit present concerns and needs. And this isn't just language and the things that go with it; it is also about bodily practice for we associate memories with things done, with sensory apprehensions of movement and action. There is both reassurance and challenge in this for the preacher. Yes, emotionally charged sermons will be remembered, but veracity may too easily be overturned by this tactic. Yes, what the preacher does matters, but a preoccupation with presentation techniques can reinforce a wariness of manipulation. It can be incredibly difficult to
challenge or change. Portelli surprised
himself when he realised that the untrue version of Fosse Ardeatine remained
powerful to him personally even though he is the foremost researcher in the
exposure of its falsity. According to
Halbwachs one of the significant mechanisms of collective memory is its
relationship to epochs in a person's life.
So childhood, for example, is an epoch where memories are fixed through
the relationships and communications experienced as particularly
significant. Neighbourhood communities
and families in war-torn It is personally empowering - this is 'mine' as well as 'ours.' This is something that is repeated rehearsed so that it continues to be mine and so that belonging is reinforced. This mechanism is, of course, used powerfully in therapeutic work, eg repeated stories of recovery from alcoholism are used in AA programmes so that the past is kept as current reality in order to discourage lapses, reinforce an intense awareness of the addict's actual circumstances, and maintain the sense of mutual support and belonging in a group where others face the issues. It is not the details that really matter but rather the shared narrative. The preacher similarly shares the narrative and in doing so strives to incorporate not only his or herself but the whole community that shares in the sermonic enterprise. Position, in the sense of it being within some sort of liturgical event, again works to reinforce mutual endeavour. So I agree with Verhey (and by extrapolation with Hauerwas) that the story of Jesus is the believing community's window on the world, but how that memory is operationalised is I think rather more problematic than I understand them to suggest. Collective memory is shaped by a host of things - politics, economics, social circumstances, feelings, resistance, conflict, values, norms, etc. etc. - it malleable yet tenacious, it is certain yet contested, it is suppressible yet recoverable, sometimes hard to define yet recognisable. According to Hervieu-Leger in contemporary society symbols are interchangeable so religion is always a composite. It is the preacher's burden to maintain the authentic memories in the face of constant contestation and diversion. In this the preacher is but a representative of the struggles of the whole church. _________________________ The Aldi bag syndrome: Preaching as shamed consumption in a
commodified social world.
We who think of ourselves as more mature, all too easily dismiss
my daughter’s reaction as the foibles of an over peer-group sensitive
adolescent. I suspect there isn’t a
person in this room who isn’t susceptible to the pressures the Aldi bag
syndrome represents! I find Anthony
Giddens’ account of the self as a ‘reflexive project’ a convincing analysis of
individual identity creation and the social relationships that stem from it in
what he calls late modern society. We
each of us weave/create our own ongoing autobiographical narrative in a way
quite different from the predetermined and predictable life-courses so familiar
to even our recent forebears. In this
reflexive project the things of commodities and consumption play a prominent
role. The place of exchange, the label,
the price I pay, the style of the product, the social location of the product,
the credibility of the commodity in terms of fashion and ownership – all those
factors and more are parts of the social process of shopping and what I as
shopper am achieving for myself as I shop.
No one in Europe or All this is a common enough theme in contemporary cultural
studies, but I intend to extend that discussion into the practice of so-called
mainstream Christian religion using preaching as the focus. The shopping self, to use that term as a kind
of shorthand, is the same self that sits through a sermon week by week. The mental frameworks and categories that the
shopping self uses in commodity discernment, purchase, and deployment and in recreation
are applied with like vigour to worship and other aspects of Christian
practice. In other words, that Christian
activity is not outside (as it were) the dominating consumptive culture, but
embedded within it. This is Jolyon Mitchell in a much appreciated book examining
preaching in the light of the development of radio – Preaching then is facing a series of crises,
which raise serious challenges for those seeking to invite their listeners to
participate in the Christian story. First, the preacher is faced with the
challenge of speaking to an easily distracted audience, many of whom are no
longer accustomed to listening to a single speaker for a long period of time.
Secondly, when so many other powerful forms of electronic communication are
competing for their listeners' imaginations, the preacher can understandably
lose confidence in preaching as an effective form of communication. Thirdly, as
a communicator probably nurtured in a literary culture, the preacher needs to
face the recent transformations in orality, such as those exemplified by the
evolving discursive practices employed on television and radio. [1990:24] Jolyon Mitchell, Visually
Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching (Edinburgh, T & T
Clarke, 1999) [But] people listen and hear differently in this
world of television. When we preachers understand the dynamics of this new
world, then the gospel can ring with new vigour and life in our preaching.
[1994:10] He continues, While visiting many congregations I am constantly
astonished to hear how much complaining there is about preaching. Faithful
churchgoers find themselves wondering, "What's happened to good
preaching?" "Where have all the good preachers gone?" Preaching has fallen on hard times. There are several reasons for this malaise. Some
pastors don't work very hard on their sermons. Some are out of touch with their
congregations. Others are ineffective public speakers. Much preaching is
theological fluff. Another part of the problem is that people in the pews have
such a wide range of expectations from the sermon that it is impossible to
satisfy everybody. Yet the truth is that many pastors work hard at
their preaching, but sense it is not effective, and they cannot put their
finger on the reasons why. A fundamental reason for this situation is that
we live in the midst of a massive communications revolution, which we have only
begun to understand. This revolution inevitably affects the way people listen
to sermons, and if we fail to take this into account in preaching we will not
reach our audience. [11] Michael Rogness, Preaching
to a TV Generation (Lima, CSS Publishing 1994)
They are treated as part of the main flow of a
broad naturalistic view of the planet, its wild life, scenic vistas, exotic
architecture and richly diverse human types. The camera has both rationalised
and romanticised the life of the temple, mosque and shrine. So Christians in the pew find themselves at the
impact point of a clash of symbolism, trying to reconcile television's highly
stylised version of the world's religions with the response offered by various
theologies of mission, also highly stylised. I need not labour the point. Not only the
Church's understanding of mission but most aspects of its life suffer the
impact of this clash of symbols offering different explanations of the same
reality. It's a perennial problem for preachers required to mine the raw
material of sermons from whatever vein of experience preoccupies the
congregation. For years they have had to take account of the televisually
mediated account of the world. [1984:202] (Colin Morris, God in a Box, ( Our symbols are no longer our own, if indeed they ever were. Bibliography: Cameron, Deborah 2000 Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture. 2003 Globalizing Communication in Aitchison, Jean and Lewis, Diana M, 2003 New Media Language. n/d Good to Talk? The Cultural Politics of ‘Communication.’ Research paper, [www.ioe.ac.uk/lie/files/dctalk.html] Giddens, Anthony 1991 Self
Identity and Late Modernity. Miller, Vincent J 2004 Consuming
Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. Mitchell, Jolyon P 1999 Visually
Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of
Preaching. Morris, Colin 1984 God-in-a-Box.
Christian Strategy in the Television Age.
Hodder and 1996 Raising the Dead: The Art of the Preacher as Public Performer. Rogness, Michael 1994 Preaching to a TV
Generation. Tanner, Kathryn 1997 Theories of
Culture. A New Agenda for Theology. Fortress Press. Under construction |