Radical Orthodoxy in a Pluralistic World: Desire, Beauty, and the Divine

219 Pages·2018·0.919 MB·English

by  Angus M. Slater

Radical Orthodoxy
in a Pluralistic World
Radical Orthodoxy remains an important movement within Christian
theology, but does it relate effectively with an increasingly pluralist and
secular Western society? Can it authentically communicate the beauty and
desire of the divine to such a diverse collection of theological accounts of
meaning?
This book re-assesses the viability of the social model given by John
Milbank, before attempting an out-narration of this vision with a more
convincing account of the link between the example of the Trinitarian
divine and the created world. It also touches on areas such as interreligious
dialogue, particularly between Christianity and Islam, as well as social
issues such as marginalisation, integration, and community relations in
order to chart a practical way forward for the living of a Christian life
within contemporary plurality.
This is a vital resource for any Theology academic with an interest in
Radical Orthodoxy and conservative post-modern Christian theology.
It will also appeal to scholars involved in Islamic Studies and studying
inter-religious dialogues.
Angus M. Slater is currently a Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies
at the University of Wales Trinity St David, having previously worked at
Lancaster University, University of Cumbria, and Keele University. His
main research areas include philosophical approaches to dialogue, Christian
Theology, Islamic Studies, and aspects of popular culture and religions.
Within these areas, particular interests include themes of identity, authority,
narrative, and power.
Routledge Studies in Religion
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
53 Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion
Adam J. Powell with Original Essays by Hans Mol
54 Buddhist Modernities
Re-inventing Tradition in the Globalizing Modern World
Edited by Hanna Havnevik, Ute Hüsken, Mark Teeuwen, Vladimir
Tikhonov and Koen Wellens
55 New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam
Edited by Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg
56 Christian and Islamic Theology of Religions
A Critical Appraisal
Esra Akay Dag
57 From Presumption to Prudence in Just-War Rationality
Kevin Carnahan
58 Religion, Culture and Spirituality in Africa and the African Diaspora
Edited by William Ackah, Jualynne E. Dodson and R. Drew Smith
59 Theology and Civil Society
Charles Pemberton
60 Neoliberalism and the Biblical Voice
Owning and Consuming
Paul Babie and Michael Trainor
61 European Muslims Transforming the Public Sphere
Religious Participation in the Arts, Media and Civil Society
Asmaa Soliman
62 Radical Orthodoxy in a Pluralistic World
Desire, Beauty, and the Divine
Angus M. Slater
Radical Orthodoxy
in a Pluralistic World
Desire, Beauty, and the Divine
Angus M. Slater
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 Angus M. Slater
The right of Angus M. Slater to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Slater, Angus M., author.
Title: Radical orthodoxy in a pluralistic world : desire, beauty, and
the divine / Angus M. Slater.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies
in religion ; 62 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017042247 | ISBN 9780415788663 (hardback :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315223216 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophical theology. | Radicalism—Religious
aspects—Christianity. | Postmodern theology. | Pluralism.
Classification: LCC BT40. S59 2017 | DDC 230/.046—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042247
ISBN: 978-0-415-78866-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-22321-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Narrative 22
2 God 64
3 Desire 111
4 Beauty 157
5 Conclusion 196
Index 210

Introduction
In our contemporary world, we tend to take for granted the bewildering
array of diversity and difference that creates each aspect of our social exist-
ence. From the political and philosophical realm, to the more mundane mat-
ters of food and leisure activities, we take for granted not only the existence
of a plurality of options, but also our ability to freely choose between them.
Walk down any road, in any town, in much of the modern West and one
will come across a fusion of cultural, religious, and social traditions that
together form a tapestry of difference, whether that difference is minor, in
the form of a restaurant selling food originally from half the world away,
or more major, in the form of a religious building of an unfamiliar faith.
Symbols, beliefs, practices, and cultures form a swirling tapestry of inter-
connection which, when placed together and imbued with the Brownian
motion of individual lives lived within it, becomes a self-sustaining organ-
ism of social, historical, and religious exchange. Take my own locale, where
historical overtones of Christian monastic orders seep into more recent his-
tory of Christian non-conformists, shaping and moulding the relationship
between the civic town and the University. Where two small mosques sit
divided by a theological rivalry imported from a different continent, divid-
ing the community in worship but not in practice. Where a modern faith
from Latin America conflicts with secular drug legislation and meets in
private – r etelling anew the same story of persecution that breathed life into
the early Christian Church, into the story of Judaism in medieval Europe,
into the story of Chinese house churches today. Where an individual’s faith,
and the courage and steadfastness born from it, leads him to be an outcast
from his country, exiled abroad yet sharing food and faith with strangers.
Where the very land owes its identity to the mystical union between the
Crown, the divine, and the country, steeped in the blood of those judged
as sinners on behalf of God centuries ago. This combination of history,
religion, and symbolism imbues our contemporary society and its diversity
and difference with profound meaning – yet another stage in the unfolding
of the story of the inter-relationship between the individual, the divine, and
the people around them.
2 Introduction
Regardless of the extent of this difference, its presence and easy acceptance
within our societies represent a significant change in the way that we think
about our communities, the way we think about ourselves, and the way we
choose to try and live our lives. It is to this question that this book responds –
given the characteristics of modern contemporary life in the West, how best
might the Christian engage with and respond to such variety? It is tempting
to dismiss the contemporary flourishing of diversity and difference as either
a passing phase, one that will decline and fade away if only the Christian
community can outlast it, or as something inimically hostile to the Christian
community, something to be shunned and rejected as contradictory to the liv-
ing of a truly Christian life. Yet, while this temptation is comforting, it fails
to understand the extent to which this diversity has reshaped the totality of
our social lives and denies central aspects of the calling to the Christian life.
Our societies, as they are structured now, are formed by unfeeling patterns of
change, whether those such as globalisation which interconnects geographi-
cally separate communities and allows for the mingling of diverse and dif-
ferent cultures, those broader trends of modernisation, both technological
and sociological, or the smaller-scale patterns of migration and immigration
which bring our established communities into contact with new traditions
and cultures. These flows of change, whether they result in a wholesale relo-
cation of our notion of national identity, or whether they merely herald the
appearance of a new culturally different form of cuisine on our highstreets,
shape not only societies, but also the way in which we construct our notion
of ourselves and our everyday interactions with the other.
As our societies experience and live through this constant flux of exchange
and difference, our religious traditions, situated and embodied by communi-
ties of believers, do so too. The close connection between individuals, faith
communities, and the established historically and doctrinally defined tradi-
tions of faiths cannot be denied; as such, the effects of diversity and differ-
ence experienced by the individual lead to profound effects on the tradition
of the individual’s faith.1 We can see this clearly in the reaction of religious
traditions and communities to changing patterns of social structuring, hav-
ing an impact on every part of the tradition and its embodied communities –
from patterns of mission activity changing from a focus on the developing
world to efforts to re-Christianise the secular West,2 attempts by some
churches to rethink their approaches to changing understandings of human
sexuality and the sociological and cultural changes driven by them,3 or to a
flourishing of engagement between differing religious groups in small-scale,
community-level, practical projects to improve communities together.4 This
is not simply a matter of changing culture changing religious traditions,
but the impact of changes in experience on the interpretation and narration
of the religious stories that instil those traditions with life. The experience
of the individual, living amongst a super-diverse community, informs and
has been changing the reaction of the community level Church to aspects of
difference, and in turn, changing the reaction to and conceptualisation of
Introduction 3
the other in the dogmatic thought of the wider tradition.5 This connection
only serves to reinforce the necessity of thinking through what the charac-
teristic qualities of our contemporary societies mean for the Christian tradi-
tion, how the Christian tradition and its communities might respond, and
how the individual might come to live their life in a more Christian manner
towards neighbours who, except their shared humanity, share little cultural,
religious, or social markers of identity.
As is clear, given the preceding paragraphs, it is this facet of plurality that
characterises a shift in our contemporary societies from those that went
before. That is not to say that previous social forms did not contain within
them forms of plurality or different accounts of the world, but rather that
the emergence, acceptance, and extent of the pluralities to be found in our
contemporary societies represents a qualitative and quantitative change
from those that went before.6 It is not the aim of this book to provide an
account of the full gamut of plurality to be found within the societies of
the contemporary West, nor to provide a taxonomy of the difference now
apparent within our communities. However, the pluralities we now live with
are apparent across the whole of society, and have gone onto shape our
interaction with our societies on a variety of different levels. This includes
religious plurality, the presence of multiple religious faiths in one society,
as seen in the relatively recent presence of significant numbers of believ-
ers of non-Christian traditions within what was known as Christendom,
that heartland of the Christian faith. Within contemporary society in the
United Kingdom, even in those geographic areas somewhat left behind by
the processes of modernisation and globalisation, large communities of dif-
fering religious faith can be found, stemming either from flows of refugees,
as in the historic case of East African Hindu’s or the more recent cases of
Yazidi, Druze, Alawite, and other Syrian refugee groups, historic patterns of
migration related to the structure of empire and conquest such as the strong
presence of Sikhism and Islam in some British towns, the increasingly nor-
malised movement of people due to globalisation bringing forms of alterna-
tive evangelical and charismatic Christianity into increased prominence in
areas of the capital, or just the pattern of the individual, exposed to variety
and difference, exploring religiously in ways not apparent or even possible
previously. Of course, intimately connected with this plurality of religious
belief to be found in nearly every town, is a concomitant plurality of ethnic
and cultural background. Society has seen some decline in the correlation
between ethnic and cultural background and religious faith, a strong marker
of identity for many,7 and rather than undermining the plurality of religious
belief expressed, it seems that this decline in correspondence can better be
assigned to the increasing choice that this religious, and non-religious, plu-
rality offers. Indeed, it would be remiss to discuss the prevalence of religious
plurality within our contemporary societies without also pointing to the
presence, and inner diversity, of non-religious world views, varying from the
strictly atheistic to the uncaring agnostic.8