Journal of Ecumenical Studies
Contents of Volume 57 (2022)
Fall 2022 Vol. 57.4
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ARTICLES
The Gift of Power in Methodism: Learning from Women’s Experiences of Working in Diverse Churches in England through Receptive Ecumenism
Gabrielle Thomas
Global attention to receptive ecumenism has grown in recent years, prompting ecumenical theologians to ask, “What do we need to learn from another Christian tradition to help us address some of the wounds and weaknesses in our own?” Hitherto, much of the published work on receptive ecumenism has focused on its place in the formal ecumenical movement with little attention directed toward the grassroots. This contribution is a case study that identifies possible ecclesial learning by using receptive ecumenism to explore women’s experiences of working in diverse churches in England. It focuses on a particular example emerging from the broader research, during which Baptist women identified how the distribution of power in their churches can inhibit women’s flourishing, particularly in ministerial roles. Following the way of receptive ecumenism, after outlining the research context, I examine gifts shared by Methodist participants who spoke of positive structures of power. These, I argue, critique current practices, not only in the Baptist tradition but across diverse Christian traditions in England, providing the potential for churches to transform the way that power is distributed, especially with respect to women’s flourishing in leadership roles.
“Is Christ Divided?”: On the Nature and Possibility of Ecclesial Schism
John A. Monaco
In discussing the relationship between the Catholic and Orthodox communions, the term “schism” is often used as a way of explaining their separation and breaking of communion. While there is no doubting this estrangement, how can we simultaneously affirm the unity of the Una Sancta while viewing churches as separate entities? In this essay, I engage the thought of three twentieth-century Orthodox theologians—Nicholas Afanasiev, Georges Florovsky, and Philip Sherrard—and explore their understanding of schism. Ultimately, I argue that ecclesial schism is ontologically impossible and suggest that an eschatological approach to the Una Sancta helps solve this paradox.
The Legacy of The Fundamentals in the Historiography of American Ecumenism
Josiah Baker
The historical narrative of American ecumenism’s origins in the early twentieth century has not been revisited for generations. When future scholars revisit it, they should study the period for the sake of supporting the future work of ecumenism. Part of this work is the expansion of ecumenical bodies to include churches not currently engaged. I propose that the early pamphlet series, The Fundamentals, offers a good place to start. The pamphlets predate modernist schisms and do not reflect the sectarian posture of later groups. Editors of the text appealed to a broad Christian identity among American Protestants to promote cooperation in society. The included essays espouse a common confession while allowing for divergences on numerous doctrinal issues. Though many contributing authors would later become Fundamentalist leaders, others are remembered for their work to unite churches. The text is a product of the same unitive impulses that gave rise to ecumenical structures. I revisit the historical narrative of American ecumenism to discern how The Fundamentals offers insight into the doctrinal discourse of the period among churches, and I argue that the exclusion of the text from ecumenical historiography thus far reveals a modernist bias in American ecumenism.
Martin Luther’s Personalist Spirituality: Faith, Sacraments, and the Song of Songs
Christopher M. O’Brien
Without attempting to associate Martin Luther historically with the many complexities and implications of the twentieth-century philosophical school of personalism, this essay aims to trace the development of “personalist” tendencies in Luther’s works, particularly with regard to his treatments of faith and the sacraments. “Personalist” refers to Luther’s emphasis on Christ’s intimate and personal relationship with each individual Christian. This essay traces the personalist elements of his spirituality chronologically by dividing his works into three sections: early (1509–17), middle (1517–21), and late (1522 onward). Between the sections on Luther’s middle and late work, a brief excursus is taken to explore Luther’s understanding of the Song of Songs to highlight the development of his spirituality. The essay concludes by summarizing the trajectory of Luther’s spirituality and reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the theology that comes out of it. Positively, Luther’s spirituality highlights the personal and relational aspects of the Christian life and guards against overly mechanistic or impersonal understandings of grace. Negatively, Luther’s framework fails to incorporate an ecclesiological component adequately. Further work remains to be done to integrate his personalist theology into a “personalist ecclesiology,” in which Christ the bridegroom unites himself mystically not only to the individual Christian soul, but to the entire church, his bride, especially through the sacramental encounter.
Alterity and Religious Violence in Nigeria: Toward an Interfaith Theology of Recognition
SimonMary Aihiokhai
Depending upon the diametrically opposed views of interpreting the sacred text, religion, which is an increasingly vital and shaping force in both personal and public life, can promote either global peace or pervasive conflict. Therefore, peace among nations cannot be achieved without peace among religions. The Sword Verse in the Qur’ān (9:5) is assumed to have abrogated numerous verses that advocate peaceful coexistence and religious freedom. Accordingly, Muslim extremists take this verse as the foundation on which to interact with people of other faiths. Adopting the contextual approach, this essay explores how the verse is understood by analyzing its historical circumstance and linguistic settings and compares its correct meaning with other verses of religious freedom and dialogue. It concludes that the above verse, when appropriately read within its circumstantial boundaries, never condones coercive conversion or militancy. Turning a blind eye to the context as a guiding methodological tool is an error that at times has serious implications for intrahuman relations, such as the case in point.
Rethinking the Sword Verse and Interfaith Dialogue: A Contextual Analysis
Bachar Bakour
After sixty years of independence, Nigeria still struggles to find a unifying identity. Hyper religiosity and rigid tribal consciousness radically continue to define the national psyche. Colonialism operates with the intent to erase the other who falls victim to its sway. Thus, a society that suffers from the trauma of colonialism is a society that is always struggling with the fears of erasure, and Nigeria is no exemption. As Christians and Muslims seek to legitimize themselves in the country, they end up erasing each other from national life as though they have a monopoly over the nation. To address these colonial pathologies defining the national psyche, an interfaith theology of recognition ought to be embraced. This is a theology that is intentionally inclusive and grounded in the prophetic with the intent to affirm the flourishing of all lives both within and outside of one’s own religious tradition.
BOOK REVIEWS
Enabling Dialogue about the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians ed. by Phillip A. Cunningham, Ruth Langer, and Jesper Svartvik (review)
Eugene Korn
The Trials of Rasmea Odeh: How a Palestinian Guerrilla Gained and Lost U.S. Citizenship by Steven Lubet (review)
Angela Berliner
Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein (review)
Christoffer H. Grundmann
Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue by Terrance L. Johnson and Jacques Berlinerblau (review)
David M. Krueger
Summer 2022 Vol. 57.3
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North American Academy of Ecumenists 2021 Annual Meeting, Online
Introduction: Dangerous Ecumenism for a Divided World
Elizabeth Anderson
Our contention was that ecumenism becomes stale when it becomes too safe—when it chooses to ponder the mechanics of institutional joinery between ecclesial bodies whose differences are nonthreatening rather than addressing the critical issues that often bitterly divide Christians today. Mainstream ecumenical work has moved from being a dangerous crossing of heated division and has become a tame, nonthreatening branch of theological and ecclesial practice—a means of achieving institutional proximity with Christians whom we basically already trust and recognize. If ecumenism becomes merely about working out corporate mergers or affiliations between different ecclesial entities that are themselves still undergoing bitter schisms, then it loses credibility.
The Gospel in a Polarized Society: Newbigin and Roberts on Ephesian Protest
Russell P. Johnson
Political polarization is a phenomenon in which people with a variety of commitments cluster into two opposing camps whose animosity against one another is often disproportionate to their actual disagreements. Polarization is not simply a social atmosphere that makes Christian activism and ecumenism difficult; it also runs contrary to the vision of intergroup reconciliation outlined in Ephesians. After describing how polarization is a theological problem, this essay engages with the work of Lesslie Newbigin and J. Deotis Roberts to imagine how Christians can resist polarization in their own imaginations and in their societies without advocating for a negative peace that ignores injustice for the sake of superficial harmony.
Recognition and Ecumenical Interdependence: Relationship beyond Division
Kathryn L. Reinhard
This essay is a direct response to the theme of the 2021 Annual Conference of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, in that it seeks to answer the question, "What is dangerous about ecumenism?" Understanding the nature of this danger, and how professional ecumenists came to face and live with this danger in the past century, can prove instructive for addressing the ecumenical hazards of our present moment, so that Christians can learn to disagree "humanely and productively about public challenges with high stakes and real dangers." Specifically, it proposes intersubjective recognition as a tool that can help us better understand both the past of our ecumenical work and the present and future challenges of the ecumenical movement to come.
Re-discerning the Body: Ecumenism in an Apocalyptic Age
Jakob Karl Rinderknecht
What the modern ecumenical goal of "full, visible unity" means has been redefined over time. Some early ecumenists believed that reconciliation between church officials would lead to a single unified church structure. Later, ecumenists proposed that diversity in unity might look like networks or communions of churches. Today, we cannot ignore the real divisions that exist among Christians within our traditional ecclesiastical boundaries. This essay argues that the achievements of the magisterial ecumenical movement and the lessons of receptive ecumenism must be used to foster a new phase of ecumenical reconciliation that directly attends to the real wounds existing within and across communions, prioritizing the places where the church has failed to "discern the body" within its midst.
ARTICLES
Paul M. van Buren's A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality
Ellen T. Charry
Paul M. van Buren was the first Christian theologian to argue that the Jewish No to Jesus is a Yes to God. He offered Christians and Jews fresh ways of understanding both themselves and the other. His trilogy, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, begins by honoring God's enduring covenant with the Jews and then proceeds to identify false turns both traditions have taken in their walks with God. He called both to critical self-reflection in theological conversation with the other's identity and missteps. He turned the church from being against the Jews to being alongside them and called Jews to return to God's covenant with them in order that Christian rethinking not be theologically empty.
Challenging the Idea of Divine Omnipotence: Jewish Voices and a Christian Response
John C. Merkle
It is a widespread assumption that among Jews, as also among Christians and Muslims, omnipotence is considered one of God's essential attributes. Many people also assume that the idea of divine suffering is a non-Jewish idea, but many Jews, including prominent philosophers and theologians, have challenged the idea of divine omnipotence, and many have spoken of God's suffering along with God's creatures and of needing help to redeem creation. In the first part of this essay, I focus on four Jewish religious thinkers—Abraham Joshua Heschel, Hans Jonas, Edward Feld, and Melissa Raphael—for whom the idea of divine omnipotence is problematic, three of whom espouse the idea of divine suffering, and each of whom speaks of redemption as a collaborative task between God and human beings. In the second part of the essay, I begin by noting that many Christians are surprised to hear that Jews speak of the suffering of God, assuming that this is more of a Christian thing to do because of the suffering of Christ whom they believe to be God incarnate. I suggest that many Christians would likely agree with renowned Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann that "we can only talk about God's suffering in trinitarian terms" or they assume that talk about God's suffering must be related to the doctrine of the Incarnation. After pointing out that classical Christian theology actually rejects the idea of divine suffering and arguing that taking the Incarnation seriously should compel us to be open to insights about God that are not tied to Christian doctrines, I offer my own appreciation of the previously summarized insights of Heschel, Jonas, Feld, and Raphael. In the process, I suggest how their insights about God's limited power, God's suffering, and God's need of human help in redeeming the world, which at first may seem to conflict with traditional Christian views, can have a positive effect on Christian ways of relating to God and in formulating more realistic and thus more tenable views of God.
Enlightened Ecclesia: Engaging de Lubac on Buddhism
John D. Dadosky
This essay explores Henri de Lubac's encounter with Buddhism as a pioneering exercise in comparative theology. It has been established that his interest in Japanese Buddhism was influenced by his interest in grace. After an overview of de Lubac's lifelong interest in Buddhism and the influence of his interest in grace on his Buddhist studies, the essay identifies the Buddhist themes and parallels in de Lubac's "temptations of the church." Whether he was explicitly influenced by Buddhism in his reflections on the church cannot be determined, but it offers a fruitful exercise in comparative theology.
Explorations and Responses
A Review-Reflection
Leonard Swidler
Book Reviews
The Annotated Passover Haggadah ed. by Zev Garber and Kenneth Hanson (review)
Richard Libowitz
Spring 2022 Vol. 57.2
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Introduction to This Issue
David M. Krueger
ARTICLES
Creating Space for Piety and Dialogue: North American Sufi Devotionalism
Kashshaf Ghani
The following essay studies the early history of Islamic devotional tradition in the U.S. particularly through the rise of the Sufi movements. I intend to approach this study primarily from the vantage point of historical origins and development of Sufi groups in the U.S. from the late-20th century. This approach will be grounded on the perspective of Sufism as a minority faith practice and its various manifestations in the U.S – spiritual practices, devotional exercises, artistic expression, and cross-cultural dialogue.
Sufism being one such manifestation, its career in the U.S. can be identified along multiple positions of ideology and practice – drawing from normative Islamic teaching and morals, following an eclectic and universalist approach, and transplantation of Sufi practices from parent societies, like South Asia and Africa. The essay will conclude by focusing on the dimension of transnationalism through the career of a South Asian Sufi master in Philadelphia – Bawa Muhaiyadeen.
Veil as Religious Expression: A Sociological Study of University Students in Bangladesh
Fouzia Mannan
Currently, within feminist discourse, two major debates surrounding veiling or purdah take precedence; with one sect of feminist scholars identifying veils as oppressive and the other heralding it as a source of agency as well as a freedom of choice. However, this dichotomy is not relevant to the Bangladeshi context, and has given rise to a discrepancy between theoretical knowledge and real practice; urging further critical analysis of the changing role of veiling in the Global South generally and Bangladesh specifically, particularly among the youth and adolescent populations. Thus, this paper, based on the experience of teaching sociology in class and interviewed university students who wear a veil. Increasing numbers of women, especially young women, can be seen wearing veils in Bangladesh, a drastic shift away from the decades following the nation's independence in 1971. Therefore, this essay will aim to both explore and discuss reasons that incentivize young women, especially those who are studying and critique societal structures and phenomena (including religious behavior and gendered norms) to a different form of social attire. Thus, the research conducted, in this case, was qualitative in nature and the sample consisted of a select group of university students (using purposive sampling). On the basis of 30 in-depth interviews, case studies and 02 focus group discussions have been conducted. Last but not least, I note the ways in which patriarchy, capitalism, and globalization converge in the urban metropolitan setting of Dhaka, to encourage women across age and class divides, to embrace religion as their dominant social identity over ethnic and national identities. It was concluded that the role of veiling in the context of Bangladesh, is a complex and multi- dimensional phenomenon; that is to say, it is not only an expression of religious piety but also deeply intertwined with issues of globalization, patriarchy, class, and feminine sexuality.
In recent decades, we have seen a pronounced crisis of personal parishes in the United States serving European ethnic communities, which many have been forced to close or merge, usually due to lack of clergy, declining Mass attendance and financial reasons. This issue of American Catholicism is the focus of the paper dealing with a particular case of parishioners' resistance against the closure of the Croatian-Slovenian parish of the Nativity of Our Lord in 1994 and its reopening two years later. That was a period of empowerment for Catholic Slovenian and Croatian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area, a significant achievement for "traditional" immigrant organizations slowly losing the focal role they played in the past with much more numerous first-generation immigrants. However, the rebuilding of the religious community, now shared among three ethnic groups and administered by the Polish pastor, has been afflicted with challenges inherent to establishment of interethnic cohabitation and finding a permanent solution to some old issues.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world": Anthroposophy, Sustainability, and Money among Middle-Class Argentines
María Eugenia Funes
The purpose of this essay is to show that the impact of spiritual ideas on economic subjectivities in Latin America is present among middle classes, historically characterized as a model of modernity and, therefore, secularism. I aim to achieve this purpose by showing the impact of spiritual disciplines and practices in the building of economic subjectivities among Argentina´s middle classes. I will illustrate my argument by analyzing the diffusion of anthroposophy among a part of Buenos Aires' middle classes that get in touch with this discipline in Waldorf schools where they educate their children. I will organize my exposition in three moments. In the first part, I will describe Rudolf Steiner's Social Threefolding Theory, which synthesizes anthroposophy's suggestions for the organization of society, with a special emphasis on economics. Then, I will analyze the diffusion of this theory in workshops and reading groups, organized locally by men and women involved with Waldorf schools. Here, I will show not only the ideas proposed by organizers about the right ways of orienting economic practices, but also the comments, memories, and tensions mentioned by participants. Finally, I will describe some alternative economic organizations, created among these societies, that aim to achieve a "better world" by applying these theories to Argentine society. By means of this analysis, I will argue that, even if suggesting intimate and, in Max Weber's terms, mystical models of spirituality, these contemporary versions of anthroposophy encourage people to change their worldly actions as a way to "change the world," thus developing a world-oriented model of spirituality.
Dialogue in the Educational Process: Building Community
Luiz Síveres
Understanding the dialogue from the perspective of fraternity, in the current context, requires a perception of reality that is revealed, with a marked tendency, by personal egocentrism, social inequality, and religious proselytism. This can be perceived by different experiences that reveal, in part, an individual encapsulation, a political polarization and a religious division, aspects that express the need to promote dialogue between people, social groups, and religious denominations. For this reason, it is proposed to return to the concept and practice of dialogue based on a relational dynamic, guided by the proposal of Martin Buber (1878-1965); and, to illuminate social reality, the theory of Jürgen Habermas (1929-) will be revisited; and, to deepen the disposition of the dialogue, with the purpose of building a communal project, the suggestion of Hans Küng (1928-2021) will be accepted. Such assumptions are recognized, among others, as elements of an educational project, in which dialogue should be exercised as a lifestyle, a way of living and a possibility to transcend, either through experience of significant relationships, promotion of social equality or universal communal experience.
Civil Society Values as a Uniting Factor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Community
Nataliia Ishchuk, Hennadii Khrystokin
The essay is devoted to the analysis of the values in relation to church, state, and civic society in Ukraine. It considers that civil values could become unifying, reconciling, and integrating factors for state, society, and church cooperation. The church paradigm as a community does not contradict the model of civil society. It should espouse and advance civic values no less than religious ones. The church must be interested in the development of civil liberty values, pluralism, social and public liability, and personal human dignity. Even that interest, however, can vary according to historical influences. The Intra-Orthodox dialogue in Ukraine constitutes an ecumenical dialogue between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate as enacted in Ukraine. This dialogue then contributes to a better ecumenical relationship of the Orthodox with other religious communities.
The Abraham Accords: Can Interculturalism Solve Grave Conflicts of the Middle East?
İbrahim Karataş, Nasuh Uslu
The Abraham Accords are intended to end the still-unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. Introduced also as an intercultural project to ensure peace among hostile countries of the Middle East, the Accords have been welcomed by some Arab states. This study analyzes the Abraham Accords and contends that, though their intercultural aspect is weak, they can still provide an opportunity for perpetual peace between Muslim Arabs and Jewish Israelis. If used as leverage, the Accords can also help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but, if the Palestinian question is ignored, they may cause more radicalization among Palestinians. Further, the Accords have the potential to spark an intracultural conflict among Muslim countries unless they are not turned into a strong alliance that is also welcomed by Arabic public opinion.
BOOK REVIEWS
The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies ed. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth (review)
Eugene J. Fisher
Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity by John Thatamanil (review)
Mark Banas
Canadian Pentecostal Reader: The First Generation of Pentecostal Voices in Canada (1907–1925) ed. by Martin W. Mittelstadt and Caleb Howard Courtney (review)
David A. Reed
Healing the Schism: Karl Barth, Franz Rosenzweig, and the New Jewish-Christian Encounter by Jennifer M. Rosner (review)
Eugene J. Fisher
The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents by James Rudin (review)
Eugene J. Fisher
Spring 2022 Vol. 57.1
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INTRODUCTION:
Introduction: The Centrality of Weak Messianism to the Achievement of Middle East Peace
Aryeh Botwinick
ARTICLES
The Resort to Geistpolitik: Two of Buber’s Early Theological-Political Debates
Cedric Cohen-Skalli
This essay aims to shed new light on major features of the early Zionist construction of a Jewish political space. Revisiting two early debates of Martin Buber (1878–1965) with Max Nordau (1849–1923) and Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), the essay points at the limitation of the Zionist political construction for a later articulation of the Jewish and Palestinian complexity in a shared or divided land. Theodor Herzl’s understanding of Zionism as a strictly political and economic apparatus was brought to a historical and ideological debate at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 between the young Buber and the faithful associate of Herzl, Nordau. Against Nordau’s prioritization of the productivization of Jews, Buber developed in his famous speech on “Jewish Art” the necessity of a cultural and spiritual elevation of Jews. In 1916, in the middle of World War I, Buber’s cultural notion of Jewish national regeneration in Eretz Israel set the backdrop for another debate and clash, this time with the German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen.
The “Israel Experience” and the Origins of Latin American Identity: Enrique Dussel in the Wake of Martin Buber’s “Semitic-Bedouin” Indigeneity
Silvana Kandel Lamdan
One of the key concepts of the liberationist project for Latin America that Enrique Dussel articulated during the 1960’s was the retrieval of the Hebrew-Semitic sources of Christianity. This idea was fueled by at least two significant sources: Martin Buber’s appeal to an Orientalist indigeneity and the two years (1959–60) the young Dussel spent between Christians and Jews in the State of Israel. Consequently, Dussel saw in the ancient Hebrew sources a key to understand the Latin American identity.
The Political Theology of Binationalism: Judah Leib Magnes and Martin Buber
David Barak-Gorodetsky
Judah Leib Magnes and Martin Buber collaborated to promote the binational cause in Palestine, driven by their religious worldviews. Buber was committed to a prophetic-moral solution to the conflict in Palestine, which coincided with his understanding of Zionism as the political realization of the covenant among God, the land, and the people. He perceived the “Arab Question” as the moral acid test of Zionism, yet there was an apparent lack of conviction in his relation to the binational cause. For Magnes, the binational program was a political-theological platform. It was the outcome of an American belief in the power of political structures and covenants to enforce political equality and the centrality of Reform ethical monotheism in his religious worldview.
Machiavelli’s Theorizing of Power Juxtaposed to the Negative Theological Conceptualization of God: Implications for Mideast Peace
Aryeh Botwinick
I begin this essay with a mini-genealogy of Maimonides’s negative theology (which declares that we can only endlessly say what God is not, but not what God is), which traces it to a specific and recurring talmudic source. I then argue that Machiavelli, one of the great theorists of power in the Western intellectual tradition, structured his argument about power in a manner that was directly analogous to Maimonides’s argument about God. I will draw the practical implications of this association throughout the essay. My starting point for the development of this argument is arbitrary. One can trace the argument of negative theology to numerous Greek, Islamic, and rabbinic sources. However, the vein of interpretation that I am mining here is relatively under-developed, so I think that it deserves special attention.
Zionism, Monotheism, and the Self: Abba Gordin’s Religioanarchist Reading of the Scriptures
Lilian Türk
The essay explores the writings of Abba Gordin, who utilized classical Jewish texts to establish a theory of inter-individualism in order to show that the anarchist divinization of the individual, based on the writings of Max Stirner, is deeply rooted in foundational Jewish literature. In the first part, we look at how Gordin combined a selection of biblical and rabbinic sources with German idealistic and neo-Kantian philosophy and appropriated the study of Torah as the spiritual study of the Self. In the second part, we look at the implications of a theory that centered the Self and its separateness and its consequences for Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and community-building. The preservation of separateness from political means was, in Gordin’s view, religious practice that aimed at a potential inter-individual society.
Gustav Landauer’s Judaism: Exile, Anarchy, and His Influence on the Early Jewish Settlements in Mandatory Palestine
Libera Pisano
This essay examines Gustav Landauer’s original conception of Judaism, his redemptive conception of community, his theory of revolution, and the influence of his writings on the voluntary organizing of settlements in the pre-state community of Mandatory Palestine—all of which are relevant in accounting for the impact of Landauer’s work upon German Jewry in the 1920’s, as well as upon the Yishuv, the emerging body of Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine in the decade 1920–30. How his thought was received by his contemporaries has not been analyzed from a scholarly perspective. Though he became aware of his Jewish identity only gradually, Judaism played a central role in his political thought. Landauer interpreted the term “diaspora” as an implicitly anarchistic category. To see oneself as living in a diaspora means that one is perceived as not investing full legitimacy and credence in the actual state that one inhabits. In terms of his view of diaspora, Landauer transformed into a virtue what others saw as a flaw in Jewish exile existence. For him, diaspora Judaism potentially constituted a vanguard movement for overcoming the state.
Gustav Landauer’s Blueprints for a Revolutionary Transition, 1918–19, and His Difficulties with the Transformation of Souls
Sara Botwinick
Gustav Landauer’s work evoked enthusiastic interest among early Jewish settlers of Mandatory Palestine who probed it for guidelines on how to build a new, just society in conjunction with setting up kibbutzim. The Jewish Yishuv (Jewish settlements in Mandatory Palestine) would have been the type of society that Landauer envisioned, one not needing to be held together by a state. He had the opportunity to be decisively involved in the attempt to carry out a revolutionary transformation of Bavarian society in its revolution of 1918–19. When this revolutionary experiment was crushed, Landauer was murdered on May 2, 1919, by counter-revolutionary Freikorps soldiers, who had been requested of the national government in Berlin by the Bavarian government that had fled to the city of Bamberg, Bavaria. This essay looks at various blueprints that Landauer devised to channel these revolutionary events into a productive direction in accord with his vision. It seeks to track down his efforts in some detail to get a sense why, after his death, Landauer became such an inspiration for some of the early settlers in what later became the State of Israel and other revolutionaries.
This essay proposes a paradigm for the resolution of conflict and thereby the attainment of lasting peace among factions with competing narratives. The model is predicated upon lessons drawn from the biblical account of the Tower of Babel. Recognizing the tension between individualist and collectivist approaches to organizational structure and communal harmony, a hybrid, expansive notion of the “individual” is suggested, and, conjoint with it, individualism is favored over collectivism. Conflict resolution becomes possible when factions—each considered viewed as an individual that is freshly understood—find points of mutual interest with other factions, thus removing the focus from reluctant compromise to purposive confluence. The Tower of Babel narrative in the Hebrew Scriptures also suggests a basis for extending the primacy of reconciliation to competing societal narratives, as is the case in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
POSTSCRIPT:
Just as in the case of monotheism, the very application of its doctrine construed negatively theologically (that we can only say what God is not, but not what God is) leading to a de-literalizing of God’s attributes constitutes a contradiction—applying the doctrine is already to violate it and to reduce it to incoherence because then God ceases to be unique and singular and becomes knowable to the extent that God is deprived of literal attributes—so, too, a consistent application of skepticism leads to an immobilizing of the whole doctrine. If one skeptically interrogates skepticism, this would conjure up the prospect that the external targets that skepticism had been invoked to question could be rehabilitated or sustained in their pristine form.
BOOK REVIEWS:
Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy by Anna Bonta Moreland (review)
Alfons H. Teipen
Separated Siblings: An Evangelical Understanding of Jews and Judaism by John E. Phelan, Jr (review)
Zev Garber
Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith by Marvin R. Wilson (review)
Paul Mojzes
The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics by Janet R. Jakobsen (review)
Lauren Barbato
