Desire and the Imagination of the Kingdom

In the recent book, Dreams: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, Stephen Duncombe reminds us of Ron Suskind's New York Times Magazine story from 2004, "Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush." In the article Suskind recalls a conversation he had with one of the president’s senior advisers:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That’s not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create reality. And while you are studying that reality-judiciously as you will-we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'" (Duncombe, 2007: 2-3).

What was seemingly a blatant disregard for reality was picked up by by progressive radio talk-shows, editorials across the country, listservs, websites, etc. Bloggers had a field day. Everyone on the left believed that finally, now, Bush would lose the election. How insulting and revealing could one administration be?

But we know the rest of the story, while there may have been a dismissal of "reality-based community," the Bush administration got another four years to create more of the reality they hoped to see in the world. Whether or not we agree with their goals, or whether they succeeded really is not the issue here. Rather, what I want to consider is what's behind the idea of "creating reality."

Follow up:

The Dreams of Reality

For Duncombe the "ideological goldmine" Suskind shares is a key to uncovering progressive politics in our current culture. On the one hand we have a group who takes something concrete and makes it an abstraction, while on the other hand we have the complete reversal. The question of reality is one big problem between the left and the right.

“Progressives believe in it, Bush’s people believe in creating it. The left and the right have switched roles - the right taking on the mantle of radicalism and progressives waving the flag of conservatism. The political progeny of the protesters who proclaimed, ‘Take your desires for reality’ in May of 1968, were now counseling the reversal: take reality for your desires. Republicans were the ones proclaiming, ‘I have a dream.’” (Duncombe, 3)

What we have here is an appeal to desire over and above realism or desire as a means to reality. King's famous words were certainly underpinned by reasonable beliefs but the way it was communicated was through appealing to desire, the desire of a new and equal world. The reality King and other Civil Rights activists hoped for was not yet in place, but they believed enough in their desire to see it come to fruition that they sought to live (and protest) as if that reality had already come. King's message not only tapped the "irrational" (think about how "foolish" their nonviolence was understood by the masses), but also mined the stories of ancestors and the biblical narratives in a way that helped to envision the world as a different place. King was able to help motivate a critical mass of people who dissented from the status quo. Duncombe puts it in political terms:

"Progressives should have learned to build a politics that embraces the dreams of people and fashions spectacles which give these fantasies form - a politics that understands desire and speaks to the irrational; a politics that employs symbols and associations; a politics that tells good stories. In brief, we should have learned to manufacture dissent” (9).

Duncombe's point about dissent reverses what is known as "manufacturing of consent," he takes the consensual tactics and flip them on their head. This style of politics connects with everyday people because it builds on material that's already there, it resonates with people's desires and dreams. As I see it, (at least some of) the church can be guilty of becoming too "reality-based." Much of it has become heavily propositional, too abstract and disembodied to form real apprentices of the kingdom. Often our worship involves passivity more than participation, our sermons tend to share the same thematic structures week after week, the same punchlines, and perpetuate a reliance on rational arguments to make points. We take the concrete words of Scripture and abstract them in a way that requires intellectual assent more than existential demand. I think we can also be guilty of draining people of kingdom imaginations. In what ways does our faith communities unknowingly manufacture consent with the world as opposed to a dissent for the kingdom?

Drawing on the imagination and dreams of people is nothing new to Judeo-Christian history: the Bible, the life of Jesus, and our many ancestors in the Radical Reformation just a few grand examples of "manufacturing dissent" because of dreams of a new world. Don't get me wrong, this is not a dissent can is simply for or against a particular political party, nor is it dissent as an end in itself, rather it's against the powers and principalities of this world, it sees the world as having set itself up as its own religion against God. It is a means to an end which finds its fulfillment in the reconciliation. of humanity to Christ. Therefore the stories we share ought to reflect the desires of the peoplehood of God, and the dreams we share with Jesus in seeing the Kingdom of God come here and now.

Desire and the Imagination of the Kingdom

Let me give some examples of what I'm talking about from Christian history. Take for instance Abraham and Sarah, they desired an impossible gift: a son despite the absence of fertility. At first they gave into temptation, realism has its ways of creeping in and leading us to make concessions and compromises. But the second son, the son of the gift, was the result of retrieving their earlier desires through faith and stuck with them. It was Abraham's faith that held onto his irrational desire of having a son late in life, if he would have given that up, he would not be known as the father of faith. As Kierkegaard says in Fear and Trembling:

"He would not have been forgotten, he would have saved many by his example, yet he would not have become the father of faith; for it is great to give up one's desire, but greater to stick to it after having given it up; it is great to grasp hold of the eternal but greater to stick to the temporal after having given it up...But Abraham believed, and therefore he was young; for he who always hopes for the best becomes old, deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst becomes old prematurely; but he who has faith, retains eternal youth."

And think about the ministry of Jesus and the many paintings and pictures he assembled through the careful use of dialect and storytelling. He grabbed (and grabs) the attention of his hearers, sparked the imagination, and inspired those around him. Jesus didn't teach through doctrinal points, well reasoned outlines, deep philosophical, rationalistic or scientific treatise. While his points do make sense he got his point across through colorful and unconventional stories, that is how he evoked the desires of people for a world different than the one we inhabit:

““Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth...” (Matthew 5:3-5)

Jumping ahead a couple of years, the First Friends were a rowdy bunch of theologians, writers, mystics, activists and prophets. Women and men alike joined together to proclaim the end of Christendom, "Christ is come to teach his people," and re-envision a world where the Kingdom of God was a reality from the highest positions of power to the :least of these." For them, "the new creation is here!" Fox's quoting Isaiah's: “...they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4), made the radical point that in Christ all occasions for war had come to an end. And consider, if you'll give me some playful liberty, James Nayler's "performance" on the back of a Donkey. Nayler performed a kind of anti-triumphal ride into Bristol as an attempt to re-imagine the way things could if Christians challenged the status quo of 17th century England. It was a heated protest against the powers of his day but revealed his own deep-seated desire to see Christ come again. And finally, what about Gospel Order? The entire practice is wrapped up in desire, it's a fantasy-like re-structuring of how personal and communal relationships operate within the church that is rooted in the already arrived, on its way Kingdom. A community based in Gospel Order is the clearest case for early Quakers seeking to "create a reality" through their faith in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

And how about imagination today? Communities like The Simple Way (and Shane Claiborne) and Australian "eco-evangelist" Jarrod McKenna and the emerging peace church he's a part of, The Peace Tree, have been up to similar antics for God's kingdom. McKenna's group has been know for "liturgical actions" where they create sacred spaces for worship outside prisons for asylum seekers, to "peace and pizza"gatherings for their neighborhood friends in response to gang violence as a means to pray for peace and make space for dialogue and community support. Celebrating their love for creation they've also participated in guerrilla gardening, where people join together to take deserted spaces in our cities and fill them with beauty. These aren't the impossible demands of radicals but rather the mission of God being lived out in concrete, yet inspiring, playful and dramatic ways. Tom Sine describes the group like this:

Jarrod, often a spokesperson for the Peace Tree Community, describes the “mob” he is a part of as “a support group of ‘sinners anonymous’ and ‘recovering consumers’ who pray to embody God’s grace by transforming vacant blocks into permaculture gardens, dumpster bins into delicious feasts for the hungry, and by providing hospitality for the homeless and refugees.” Why? Well, they are all very quick to answer when they are asked about their life, “The Kingdom of God. Living God’s future now!” (Tom Sine - From Mustard Seed Associates)

All of these examples take the abstract and make it concrete, as opposed to making the concrete abstract. What Duncombe later calls an "ethical spectacle," I'm calling the imagination of the kingdom. We as the people of Christ are called to not give in to the powers and principalities of the world, but rather dream dreams about the new world to come. Dreams that lay in the gap between fantasy and reality. The church as a prophetic people "dissent" from the temptations to give into the rhetoric and lies of fear, war, greed and power, rather we live out a different reality, one where faith is enough to envision a new world, one rooted in the reality of the dreams of the kingdom.

What has been your experience with the church embodying this sense of the fantastic? Can you name some examples that inspire you?