Technique, especially in the form of managerialism, is everywhere, even in the churches. This hinders Christian resistance to the regime. But what are we to do about it?
People have to go through a lot to come eventually back to the Catholic Church...
it's never been a model, but just literally pretty much having its "source and summit" as the the Eucharist, of Jesus Christ himself, his body and blood. That's it. Everything just surrounds that, from the Church buildings, to the hierarchy, it's all surrounding Jesus himself and "do this in memory of me". Plain and simple. Welcome home, it's calling.
It makes sense because the Catholic Church existed before governments, before media, before many things. So it only makes sense that it will outlive all these things, even managerialism.
But the system of Roman Catholicism is the original counterfeit "managerial Christianity" of yesteryear. The original giga-church. A million people in St. Mark's square. "Follow this carefully marked out system of rituals we've prepared for you and you'll have salvation." It is like functional atheism before Darwin gave it the modern language of "science" (really scientism) to bring it into the modern era. I acknowledge the validity of your view that it's purer to be only about the body and blood and in no way am minimizing the power of that remembrance: But κρυφά point about Christ being "beyond mere words" would also put Him beyond mere ritual. That meta-point would have to apply to the catholic Church (catholic in the sense of universal, Apostle's Creed) and capital "C" Church, not the Catholic church of Rome.
There was no doubt that the church hierarchy of that day was corrupt, but it worked fundamentally differently than administrative systems work today. Each bishop would oversee their bishopric in largely their own way and were supposed to be held directly and personally responsible for this. If people are not being held accountable, it grows corrupt quickly.
With managerialism, it is the system that dictates control and policy, not so much the person. If something goes wrong, the person is generally not held personally responsible. What typically happens is that there is a focus on fixing the system so that these errors won't happen again.
Your response here provoked a great deal of thought over the last few weeks and I have concluded that it does NOT make sense, in that it seems inconsistent with the incisive critique of your other positions. I understand and sympathize with the reactive movement toward older instantiations of competence hierarchy, community, structure, and authority of our counter-cultural moment. It is only natural after seeing the moral and cultural wasteland seemingly created by the super-empowered idolatry of the individual and it's association with squishy protestantism. But a corrupt system is one that causes otherwise good men to act corruptly, which any system centered around anything other than Jehovah Himself will eventually become since the curse of Babel. We have 95 good reasons why the Romanism of the 16th century qualifies as such a system, regardless of it's structural differences from modern managerialism. What is system except groups of individuals acting in concert? I do not dismiss the need to reform hierarchy and authority in the Western World, but the loose protestant consensus that founded the representative republic of the United States of America is the ideal, as a structure that represents the natural outworking of a properly ordered, Christ-centered worldview, in the same way the various collectivist governmental disasters from 1789 to 1918 are the natural form of the pagan worldview. We should be looking to reform, not to regress. πάντα μεταρρυθμίζοντας.
We are not in a position to go back to the older forms as we have largely dispensed with the way of looking at the world which maintains it. There is a process wherein a society embraces complexity at some point and begins building the architecture of an external system. Even in Roman times, though, where they did try to fix the system somewhat, the whole thing was dependent upon persons doing or not doing the tasks of their offices. Towards the end, they were having a hard time recruiting people to fill offices because of the burdens it placed on the nobles who took the offices. Each governor would run things in their appointment the way they saw fit as long as they were getting their instructions from on high implemented.
Even the way you frame it as shifting to a more person centered way of doing things as a "regression" comes from the mindset of "progress." Granted, it will be less efficient and resist scale, but that is the point.
That Protestant consensus you mention is cultural, a remarkable achievement at the scale with which it operated. The kind of loose authority, self-directed, low structure way of doing things is dependent upon that culture. It would be the kind of thing, if you were trying to self-consciously trying to sustain it would have to be inculcated almost like at boot camp, training camp or a rigorous discipling process. As the society became more managerial and externalized and abstracted what was held culturally into externalized, abstract systems to harness their power, the culture withered. There is probably some ideal inflection point for the maximum you can externalize and make abstract without adversely affecting culture, but we are long past that point. and it would be a society that is a lot less efficient and powerful as the systems based one we have. This is why we adopted them, after all.
But you are thinking about the right problem in the right way , I think.
That point about almost needing a boot camp mentality is accurate. The family used to be that! It was a group of people, with whom one was not necessarily naturally compatible, which one was required to learn to Agape in a way only possible empowered by God the Spirit, and as a means of sanctification. It makes sense such an environment of refining fire would eventually sanctify people to the kind of virtue able to form and sustain that consensus. Just like that fire in the bottle feeling of my first startup company, could we now reproduce it deliberately, intentionally? BUD/S, Q Course, A&S, etc. are based on long lines of carefully curated experience, research, training, implement, repeat, passed down from one generation of warriors to another. Maybe the family is God's version of boot camp.
Good post. Been thinking about this a lot recently after finishing Burnham last week. It’s interesting that Burnham lays out four groups of people in a managerial org—c-suite execs, board, functional managers, and shareholders. It’s not hard to see that in typical churches with pastoral staff, elder boards, ministry staff, and congregants. “This is water.” It’s also interesting that technical societies in their globalizing tendency eviscerate local history and tradition. The rise of mega churches have also come with a massive ignorance of church history and theological traditions. Thanks again for the post.
Can you or anyone else recommend a "primer" (for the sake of brevity) on "mimetic desire"? I know, I know: "It's all in Girard, man." Anyone got a primer on Girard, or on that concept?
I enjoyed listening to this post, as it helps me to consider how my own journey, leaving the small anabaptist sect in which I was raised in pursuit of a more faithful and rationally coherent reformed tradition, has not blossomed as smoothly or hopefully as I initially expected.
I had a friend who introduced me to more Reformed thought who stayed in the anabaptist tradition in which we were raised, and I some time think back and envy the community he kept, despite the drawbacks that still block me from considering a return. The sect arose among Mennonites rallying around emphasis on new birth and sentiments of the German pietist movement of the 19th century, and the way the leaders envisioned unity involved commitments like submitting to a single elected elder who had total disciplinary power for each congregation and forbidding members from marrying outside of the sect, among other traditions that stick out as regressive and irrational in the American society.
I had all sorts of texts from Scripture when I left and tried to choose a path forward in a direction more faithful to sola scriptura that I was sure would lead to satisfaction and joys. I have heard better preaching since I left, and enjoyed church structure that just feels more appropriate, but I have never felt the same warmth of familiarity or unity the 12 years since I left the anabaptist tradition. I didn't realize how much I would miss it, and perhaps it is the managerialism shaping so many of the evangelical places that makes that joy difficult to find.
Yes. There is no perfect church. In many ways, this is why I stay with the Reformed church in which I grew up. It is the people and the relationships. For all its imperfections, and even the managerialism that has been embraced, the culture and the people are still there and has not been erased. I will pray for you, brother, that you can find that kind of home again. And let us all pray for the church that this kind of community becomes the norm.
The Church feeds off that which destroys everything
Struggling to put this into words but speaking from a very different context - a small mainline denomination - I see the same
I notice this especially at funerals where in terms with which non-Christians are completely comfortable with, the deceased’s resumē is set forth, with a nod to their faith as ‘the icing on the cake’
The Absolutising of This Life reduces God to chaplain and the Church and her anxious ministers make themselves useful by providing Chaplaincy services
I can’t get Matthew 7:22-3 out of my head
My apologies if I’ve missed this in one of your previous posts, but one of Ellul’s lesser known works, ‘The subversion of Christianity’ points in this direction (although perhaps with a few misdirected blows)
Can’t escape the sense that in the Apocalypse, The Modern Church, having swept the house clean’, is revealed as a demon infested parody of The Bride of Christ
That said, the senior cleric in our denomination when asked for a word in season recently, replied ‘Repent’. So the door remains open a crack . . .
I get your general feeling like something is wrong. People say all the right things it seems, but what grounds their talk, their actions? I have not read “Subversion of Christianity” but came to these conclusions reading many of his other works. Time to rustle up a copy I think.
Part of my thinking is rooted in a long engaged with the work of Iain McGilchrist on brain hemisphere difference, and ‘how’,to paraphrase a massive thesis, ‘our significant over reliance on rationalist systems (rooted in the prejudices of the Left Hemisphere of the brain, for Power) have created a World (we might say Kosmos) which entraps us in a hall of mirrors’
The Devil is of course, an angel of light. Technique etc. seems, in the ‘light of reason’ to be the Obvious [sic] Way, broad and easy and of course though obstacles might arise, these can be dealt with
People have to go through a lot to come eventually back to the Catholic Church...
it's never been a model, but just literally pretty much having its "source and summit" as the the Eucharist, of Jesus Christ himself, his body and blood. That's it. Everything just surrounds that, from the Church buildings, to the hierarchy, it's all surrounding Jesus himself and "do this in memory of me". Plain and simple. Welcome home, it's calling.
It makes sense because the Catholic Church existed before governments, before media, before many things. So it only makes sense that it will outlive all these things, even managerialism.
But the system of Roman Catholicism is the original counterfeit "managerial Christianity" of yesteryear. The original giga-church. A million people in St. Mark's square. "Follow this carefully marked out system of rituals we've prepared for you and you'll have salvation." It is like functional atheism before Darwin gave it the modern language of "science" (really scientism) to bring it into the modern era. I acknowledge the validity of your view that it's purer to be only about the body and blood and in no way am minimizing the power of that remembrance: But κρυφά point about Christ being "beyond mere words" would also put Him beyond mere ritual. That meta-point would have to apply to the catholic Church (catholic in the sense of universal, Apostle's Creed) and capital "C" Church, not the Catholic church of Rome.
There was no doubt that the church hierarchy of that day was corrupt, but it worked fundamentally differently than administrative systems work today. Each bishop would oversee their bishopric in largely their own way and were supposed to be held directly and personally responsible for this. If people are not being held accountable, it grows corrupt quickly.
With managerialism, it is the system that dictates control and policy, not so much the person. If something goes wrong, the person is generally not held personally responsible. What typically happens is that there is a focus on fixing the system so that these errors won't happen again.
Does that make sense?
Your response here provoked a great deal of thought over the last few weeks and I have concluded that it does NOT make sense, in that it seems inconsistent with the incisive critique of your other positions. I understand and sympathize with the reactive movement toward older instantiations of competence hierarchy, community, structure, and authority of our counter-cultural moment. It is only natural after seeing the moral and cultural wasteland seemingly created by the super-empowered idolatry of the individual and it's association with squishy protestantism. But a corrupt system is one that causes otherwise good men to act corruptly, which any system centered around anything other than Jehovah Himself will eventually become since the curse of Babel. We have 95 good reasons why the Romanism of the 16th century qualifies as such a system, regardless of it's structural differences from modern managerialism. What is system except groups of individuals acting in concert? I do not dismiss the need to reform hierarchy and authority in the Western World, but the loose protestant consensus that founded the representative republic of the United States of America is the ideal, as a structure that represents the natural outworking of a properly ordered, Christ-centered worldview, in the same way the various collectivist governmental disasters from 1789 to 1918 are the natural form of the pagan worldview. We should be looking to reform, not to regress. πάντα μεταρρυθμίζοντας.
We are not in a position to go back to the older forms as we have largely dispensed with the way of looking at the world which maintains it. There is a process wherein a society embraces complexity at some point and begins building the architecture of an external system. Even in Roman times, though, where they did try to fix the system somewhat, the whole thing was dependent upon persons doing or not doing the tasks of their offices. Towards the end, they were having a hard time recruiting people to fill offices because of the burdens it placed on the nobles who took the offices. Each governor would run things in their appointment the way they saw fit as long as they were getting their instructions from on high implemented.
Even the way you frame it as shifting to a more person centered way of doing things as a "regression" comes from the mindset of "progress." Granted, it will be less efficient and resist scale, but that is the point.
That Protestant consensus you mention is cultural, a remarkable achievement at the scale with which it operated. The kind of loose authority, self-directed, low structure way of doing things is dependent upon that culture. It would be the kind of thing, if you were trying to self-consciously trying to sustain it would have to be inculcated almost like at boot camp, training camp or a rigorous discipling process. As the society became more managerial and externalized and abstracted what was held culturally into externalized, abstract systems to harness their power, the culture withered. There is probably some ideal inflection point for the maximum you can externalize and make abstract without adversely affecting culture, but we are long past that point. and it would be a society that is a lot less efficient and powerful as the systems based one we have. This is why we adopted them, after all.
But you are thinking about the right problem in the right way , I think.
That point about almost needing a boot camp mentality is accurate. The family used to be that! It was a group of people, with whom one was not necessarily naturally compatible, which one was required to learn to Agape in a way only possible empowered by God the Spirit, and as a means of sanctification. It makes sense such an environment of refining fire would eventually sanctify people to the kind of virtue able to form and sustain that consensus. Just like that fire in the bottle feeling of my first startup company, could we now reproduce it deliberately, intentionally? BUD/S, Q Course, A&S, etc. are based on long lines of carefully curated experience, research, training, implement, repeat, passed down from one generation of warriors to another. Maybe the family is God's version of boot camp.
Another place where it can be found sometimes is in healthy well functioning monasteries.
Good post. Been thinking about this a lot recently after finishing Burnham last week. It’s interesting that Burnham lays out four groups of people in a managerial org—c-suite execs, board, functional managers, and shareholders. It’s not hard to see that in typical churches with pastoral staff, elder boards, ministry staff, and congregants. “This is water.” It’s also interesting that technical societies in their globalizing tendency eviscerate local history and tradition. The rise of mega churches have also come with a massive ignorance of church history and theological traditions. Thanks again for the post.
You are welcome. Glad it resonated.
Thank you for this article. Well put.
Can you or anyone else recommend a "primer" (for the sake of brevity) on "mimetic desire"? I know, I know: "It's all in Girard, man." Anyone got a primer on Girard, or on that concept?
I just read Girard. His work is actually quite accessible.
I enjoyed listening to this post, as it helps me to consider how my own journey, leaving the small anabaptist sect in which I was raised in pursuit of a more faithful and rationally coherent reformed tradition, has not blossomed as smoothly or hopefully as I initially expected.
I had a friend who introduced me to more Reformed thought who stayed in the anabaptist tradition in which we were raised, and I some time think back and envy the community he kept, despite the drawbacks that still block me from considering a return. The sect arose among Mennonites rallying around emphasis on new birth and sentiments of the German pietist movement of the 19th century, and the way the leaders envisioned unity involved commitments like submitting to a single elected elder who had total disciplinary power for each congregation and forbidding members from marrying outside of the sect, among other traditions that stick out as regressive and irrational in the American society.
I had all sorts of texts from Scripture when I left and tried to choose a path forward in a direction more faithful to sola scriptura that I was sure would lead to satisfaction and joys. I have heard better preaching since I left, and enjoyed church structure that just feels more appropriate, but I have never felt the same warmth of familiarity or unity the 12 years since I left the anabaptist tradition. I didn't realize how much I would miss it, and perhaps it is the managerialism shaping so many of the evangelical places that makes that joy difficult to find.
Yes. There is no perfect church. In many ways, this is why I stay with the Reformed church in which I grew up. It is the people and the relationships. For all its imperfections, and even the managerialism that has been embraced, the culture and the people are still there and has not been erased. I will pray for you, brother, that you can find that kind of home again. And let us all pray for the church that this kind of community becomes the norm.
The Church feeds off that which destroys everything
Struggling to put this into words but speaking from a very different context - a small mainline denomination - I see the same
I notice this especially at funerals where in terms with which non-Christians are completely comfortable with, the deceased’s resumē is set forth, with a nod to their faith as ‘the icing on the cake’
The Absolutising of This Life reduces God to chaplain and the Church and her anxious ministers make themselves useful by providing Chaplaincy services
I can’t get Matthew 7:22-3 out of my head
My apologies if I’ve missed this in one of your previous posts, but one of Ellul’s lesser known works, ‘The subversion of Christianity’ points in this direction (although perhaps with a few misdirected blows)
Can’t escape the sense that in the Apocalypse, The Modern Church, having swept the house clean’, is revealed as a demon infested parody of The Bride of Christ
That said, the senior cleric in our denomination when asked for a word in season recently, replied ‘Repent’. So the door remains open a crack . . .
I get your general feeling like something is wrong. People say all the right things it seems, but what grounds their talk, their actions? I have not read “Subversion of Christianity” but came to these conclusions reading many of his other works. Time to rustle up a copy I think.
Part of my thinking is rooted in a long engaged with the work of Iain McGilchrist on brain hemisphere difference, and ‘how’,to paraphrase a massive thesis, ‘our significant over reliance on rationalist systems (rooted in the prejudices of the Left Hemisphere of the brain, for Power) have created a World (we might say Kosmos) which entraps us in a hall of mirrors’
The Devil is of course, an angel of light. Technique etc. seems, in the ‘light of reason’ to be the Obvious [sic] Way, broad and easy and of course though obstacles might arise, these can be dealt with
Yes, there is a lot of value in McGilchrist's writings and I agree with much of what he has written.
‘Engagement’ - phones are not great writing tools!! :)