While staying with a friend in Basel once I visited the home of the late Protestant theologian Karl Barth. In the basement, where his personal library is kept, I looked through his marked-up copy of Mein Kampf and other significant books – Barth had been deprived of his university chair by Hitler and had then left Germany. The warden then handed me a box in which I found the original draft manuscript of what is considered to be one of the twentieth century’s most important political documents: the Barmen Declaration. It led to Christian opposition to the Nazis by asserting theological principles.
Together, a number of theologians found the courage to challenge dominant assumptions about power, human value and the meaning of it all. Many of them suffered from the consequences of their decision that order needs to be brought out of chaos and that this can only come at personal cost.
In a different context, the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka speaks of “the solidarity of the shaken”.* In other words, the experience of a common challenge brings with it the courage to stand up and stand out. The “solidarity of the shaken” is, I think, a phrase pertinent to today’s world.
What both Barmen and Patočka hold to is the conviction that faith is not a spiritualised escape from the demands of a challenging material world. Those who complain when religious leaders get involved in politics often assume that faith takes us out, rather than commits us to, the real world. But, it is impossible to see Christianity, for example, as a merely spiritual creed when at the heart of every Christian narrative is incarnation – God committing himself to the world in all its chances and contingencies and not opting out of the inconvenient consequences of materiality. The word Jesus says it all.
The current uncertainties of the world have blown a hole in western assumptions about control – of life, the environment and progress – and have shaken individuals and entire societies to their roots. The big themes, so easily hidden while we (in Neil Postman’s words) amuse ourselves to death, are now resurgent: mortality, fear, love, hope, faith, and so on. And through it all there is the possibility of a solidarity of the shaken – as we recognise the fragility of life and the common need for human interdependence.
It has been said that a crisis does not create character; it reveals it. Actually, both are true. But, as we navigate uncharted waters in the months ahead, it is the solidarity of humility that must trump the sham of hubris.
*Quoted in Night of the Confessor by Tomáš Halík
October 13, 2020 at 10:13 am
I like how you worked the words humility and trump into the same sentence.
October 13, 2020 at 10:22 am
Reblogged this on Andrew James.
October 13, 2020 at 10:31 am
The word hubris in your blog here immediately reminded me of words from Bruce Cockburn’s “Each One Lost”.
“Some would have us bow
In bondage to their dreams
Of little gods who lay down laws to live by.
But all these inventions
Arise from fear of love
And openhearted tolerance and trust.
Well screw the rule of law
We want the rule of love
Enough to fight and die to keep it coming
If that sounds like confusion
Brother think again
We know exactly what we chose“
I think Cockburn in the words above embraces the idea of the solidarity of the shaken and humble. I doubt if there is anything from that song that Cadet Bonespurs would understand and internalise.
October 13, 2020 at 10:39 am
October 13, 2020 at 8:11 pm
An excellent piece of writing.
October 13, 2020 at 9:55 pm
Listened to this on Radio 4 – really helpful and thoughtful – thanks- will be using that phrase ‘solidarity of the shaken’ a lot!!
October 14, 2020 at 7:44 am
The private drama of my sin – my penitence – my absolution – my state of grace doesn’t begin to touch the sinful structures of economic injustice, war and environmental abuse into which we step at birth – and into which God in Christ stepped at the incarnation.