Theologian Thursday: Karl Barth (1886-1968)

 (image from here)
Karl Barth was born in Switzerland and studied theology at the University of Bern, Tübingen University, and the University of Marburg. He learned from some of the greatest liberal theologians of the time. But as he returned to Switzerland to be a minister in a small church, and studied thoroughly the Institutes of Calvin, his perspective shifted, and he became one of the most outspoken challengers of the romantic, Schleiermachian Christianity. This change was also influenced by the first World War. Many of his German teachers supported the war, but he refused to do so and ultimately rejected their teaching after seeing their personal ethics in this light.

Barth was also one of the founding members of the Confessing Church--those Christians who stood against that Nazi party and their brand of supposed Christianity. In fact, he was forced to resign from his position as a professor at the University of Bonn because he would not swear allegiance to Hitler.

One of the main ideas in Barth's theology is that Jesus is the Word of God--not the Bible. This has important implications for resisting fundamentalist bibliolotry.

Another interesting thing about Barth is that he was a reformed theologian who subscribed to Calvin's teaching, but his understanding of predestination was that God did not "elect" and "damn" certain individuals, but that as Jesus Christ became human, he became both the elect and the reprobrate, and then was raised--implying that all people essentially are saved. This is what some call "soft universalism."

What You Should Read:
  • Church Dogmatics (Just kidding. It's 13 volumes and 8,000 pages and is sitting in my office and I've hardly made a dent. But really. Seminal work of the 20th century.)
  • The Humanity of God (Short, accessible, good)
Ratings:
(To read more about my rating system, click HERE.)
Gender Equality:
Despite his ambivalence toward biblical inerrancy, Barth's study of Paul and his views on hierarchy lead me to believe he did not have a high view of women. Plus he had some kind of suspicious relationship with his female secretary (who apparently lived with him and his wife...?), which makes me think respecting women might not have been very important to him.
Environmental Sensibility:
Barth focuses much on the transcendence of God and God's "infinite qualitative difference" from the world. Additionally, his focus is generally on humanity's response to God and soteriology, with little interest in the arena in which this takes place, and how people might thus respond to God's creation. Plus he hated natural theology.
Heretical Tendencies:
Many consider Barth to be the father of the neo-orthodox movement, which, in a sense, brought Protestantism back from its romantic roots and refocused it on the Reformation ideals.
General Badassery:
I think anyone in the Confessing Church automatically gets a bunch of stars. And Church Dogmatics is just so crazy thorough and intense and awesome.

Lastly, a quote:
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."
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On Book Reviews

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I've toyed with the idea of posting book reviews, especially this summer since I'm flying through books and I like to share what I'm reading.

But I'm really, really bad at writing them.
And I hate it.

I think this is because I feel uneasy about making value statements about people's work. Whatever the book is, someone worked hard on it and got it published and I'm sure someone in the world will find it useful and enjoyable, so it's not my place to say it's a "good" or "bad" book.

Additionally, I like pretty much every book I read.

Seriously. Check out my GoodReads profile. Basically every single book has received three or four stars ("liked it" or "really liked it"). My favorite books get five stars. And Catcher in the Rye got one. Because it's stupid.

But every time I try to actually write a review, I feel unqualified and give up.

I guess this makes me a disappointment of a librarian. Aren't we supposed to be good at this?

Do you write book reviews? Have any tips? Would you read my pathetic attempts if I posted them here? Let me know in the comments.

Things I've learned from my first year of library school

It's officially been "summer" for a week now, and I've been reflecting a bit on my library experience so far.

I've learned a few things.
  • I don't have to read every word of every reading. I can get the gist and participate in discussion without killing myself with thoroughness.
  • It's good to have something productive to do. I like completing assignments.
  • It's OK to refuse to do homework on the weekends. Life's too short.
  • I don't have to be the best. Good enough is good enough.
  • I avoid other people's stress at all costs. I'd like to commiserate, but I don't want to hear it!
Overall, I'm pretty sure I still want to be a librarian. So I guess that's good. However, I know that realistically, no matter how much "instruction" I receive and how many projects I complete, I'm still going to experience a steep learning curve and training time wherever I end up. So really, I feel like at this point I'm just being exposed to the ins and outs of the field. Even after three years of this, I don't think I'll be a library expert or anything. And that's OK.

Also, I think my focus is more narrow than many of my colleagues'. I already work in a library; I more or less know what I want to do and where I'm headed; and really, I think each person's journey is different, regardless of academic training. So where I end up probably isn't dependent on this program.

The honest truth is I kind of just want to be done. Sure, I've learned some stuff. It's been kind of interesting. But my heart definitely isn't in it as much as it was/is when I study theology. But then again, reading the Church Fathers isn't going to pay the bills. So.

Two more years.
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Theologian Thursday: Dorothy Day (1897-1980)

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 I'm not sure if I would typically classify Dorothy Day as a theologian, but she did a lot of awesome work and wrote some pretty good stuff, and since I've been pretty fascinated with her this week I thought she'd make a good profile for this week's post.

Dorothy Day was a major player in the Catholic Worker Movement, which was founded by Peter Maurin. She advocated for social justice and equality for the poor and otherwise disenfranchised through nonviolent means.

One thing I find interesting is that she didn't convert to Catholicism until her daughter was born (despite the urging of her partner, Forster Batterham, to abort the pregnancy), and she decided to give her the spiritual upbringing she never experienced. Subsequently, she found in the Catholic Church a positive outlet for her longing to do good in the world.

She worked creating "houses of hospitality" to serve the poor and homeless. She organized farming communes to give people work to do and provide food to eat during the Great Depression. She practiced "voluntary poverty," as modeled by St. Francis of Assisi, in order to respond to the call of Jesus Christ on her life.


What you should read:
Ratings:
(To read more about my rating system, click HERE.)
Gender Equality:
She believed all people had a role in caring for the poor, and served right alongside Peter Maurin in his work. (I do wish she used gender inclusive language in her writing...  but I know that's just a symptom of the time period in which she lived.)
Environmental Sensibility:  
The local agricultural focus of  her work illustrates the value she saw in caring for creation. I think her love for the environment also comes out in her disdain of violence and the atomic bomb.
Heretical Tendencies:
Though many of her views were politically radical, I think for the most part her spiritual beliefs were on par with Catholic orthodoxy. She was catechized as an adult, was baptized (apparently conditionally because of her previous baptism in the Episcopal church), gave confession, and took communion. Her cause for canonization is currently open, and she is considered a "Servant of God."
General Badassery:
The fact that she was an outspoken anarchist and a subscriber to a Christian form of communism during the Red Scare is pretty badass.

“What a confusion we have gotten into when Christian prelates sprinkle holy water on scrap metal to be used for obliteration bombing, and name bombers for the Holy Innocents, for Our Lady of Mercy; who bless a man about to press a button which releases death on fifty thousand human beings, including little babies, children, the sick, the aged, the innocent as well as the guilty.”
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Mutuality as Miscellaneous: Feminist Theology-Library Science Crossover!

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Since it's finally summer, and coursework for the year is over, I'm getting to some "fun" reading... which turns out to still be related to my Organization of Information and Resources class (so much so that I think it should have been required reading).

The book is called Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, and I'm only halfway through, but I highly recommend it--and not just to librarian-types. It's definitely everyone-accessible.

But the interesting thing is not the book itself.

What's interesting is that I'm reading it through the context of feminism and all the feminist theology I've been reading lately (including Rachel Held Evans's "Week of Mutuality" #mutuality2012).

Weinberger explains that there are three types of order:
  1. The order of physical things themselves--where things go, like books on shelves.
  2. The order of information about the things of the first order--a directory of where things go, like a catalog.
  3. The order of digital "things" which take up no space--the removal of the first and second orders' limitations
Weinberger talks about how, historically, people have been bound to ideas of "natural order" or "heavenly order" that, when analyzed critically, turn out to still be established rather arbitrarily. For example, planets are real things that exist in nature, but to classify an entity as a planet, it has to meet certain criteria, and this criteria is just a definition established by astronomers, and the astronomers don't even agree on the definition. Further, some think that the whole concept of a class of "planets" is totally cultural to begin with, and doesn't even translate globally. Weinberger says that "Maintaining a category of planets says less about the nature of our universe than about our need to imagine walking on speres other than our own blue one" (39).

He goes on to show how Aristotelian categorization has prevailed as the organizational structure of choice for millennia, with its hierarchical trees and nesting of smaller categories into larger.

Truly, the Aristotelian system is useful in many ways (if only because its engrained in our collective psyche). But with the rise of the digital age and postmodernity, its cracks are beginning to leak.

I see that this is also true in the patriarchal hierarchy of the church.

Weinberger says that "Classification is a power struggle--it is political--because the first two orders of order require that there be a winner. The third order takes the territory subjugated by classification and liberates it. Instead of forcing it into categories, it tags it" (91-92).

I refuse to believe that this is not as relevant to me as a woman in the church as it is to me as a librarian in a digital context.

There no longer has to be a winner. Men and women (and everyone in between) can live and serve and minister as miscellaneous persons, "tagging" themselves as they are called and doing what they are meant to do.

The first two orders are no longer sufficient for organizing information or society. We are in a new time--historically and in light of the incarnation and resurrection--and we should be liberated by the ability to be miscellaneous, be what we are, without trying to force our new wine into old wineskins. This new wine will burst the old wineskins. Let's allow it to spill out.