A lil #thread, to hopefully spur more conversation.

The thesis ? of the course was, “Each of these groups see patterns and experience mandates that others do not see. Are there metrics we can develop to understand the differences between their claims in the public sphere?” 1/

https://twitter.com/daultradio/status/1776580589283373136

For the “Madness” unit, we looked at Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, and the work of R.D. Laing and others in the “anti-psychiatry” movements of the 70s and 80s.

They hold that “madness” is a construct about control, not an objective state of medical description. 2/

Look. I’m not saying I’m *right.* I’m saying I have a *position.*

It’s a position that I have landed on after a lot of thinking—like, hours a day, for months at a stretch, usually—and after being in intense conversations with folks who were thinking similar things. 1/ My position isn’t “I’ve arrived at truth”; it’s “after a lot of work and considering a lot of objections and options, this is the best answer I have right now.”

It’s the gateway to a continuing conversation. It’s not designed to shut that conversation down. 2/

I often use the phrase:

"There is a Christian practice that aims at incarceration, and a Christian practice that aims at liberation. Everything else is just public relations."

But I don't often explain what I mean.

So here's a #thread. 1/n What I mean by "incarceration," or "carcerality," can be summed up in a pretty simple paradigm:

Some people deserve to be in cages.

It's that simple. There is a Christian position that holds that some humans deserve to be in cages. Full stop.

2/n

So @Bothand2022 and @drew_deacon asked me to write about this, so here it is in the form of a #thread:

Imagine the Church not as a community constituted by settled agreement but rather as a community constituted by ongoing active consent. 1/ Commentators on Pope Benedict XVI (particularly traditionalists) paraphrase him as seeking a “smaller, more devout” Church. This is what I am here calling a Church of “settled agreements.” There is a gate, and there are gatekeepers. The insiders are insiders through agreement. 2/

"Carceral Catholicism" is a habit of mind that leads to repetitive and eventually reinforced material behaviors and structures.

This habit of mind can be characterized first by a series of assumptions: 1/ Carceral Catholicism assumes
- the Church and the world can be quickly and clearly divided into two groups: the innocent and the criminal; this assumption is both social and metaphysical
- social care is best distributed *after* the implementation of strict social controls 2/

When I was a kid, I was an atheist. In the South.

For a whole bunch of people, I was their mission field.

And a whole bunch of people worked hard, over many years, working at trying to get me to be a believer.

Acquaintances. Friends. YoungLife leaders. Random strangers.
1/ And hey! Great news! I became a believer!

But almost immediately, folks started saying, “No, not like that.”

See, they didn’t actually want me to be a believer.

They didn’t care if I was in love with Jesus.

They didn’t care is the Spirit was speaking.

2/

I slept on Professor Dark’s question, but didn’t sleep on it, if you follow my meaning. Here’s a lil thread 🧵

https://twitter.com/daviddark/status/1672227012625199105

I have recently begun to say things like, “violence is organized isolation.”

I didn’t invent the phrase. I get it from the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who uses the phrase “organized abandonment” for policing, and I add in William Cavanaugh, the theologian 2/

A #thread 🧵

There is a Catholic practice whose goal is incarceration, and a Catholic practice whose goal is liberation. Everything else is just public relations. 1/ By "Catholic practice" we mean something geographic: not simply the reproduction of liturgical space within the architecture of worship, but the creation of human spaces and human relationships with material effects throughout society. 2/

To move from the desire for a Catholic public sphere, where a certain carceral authority constrains all discourse, to a catholic public sphere, where principles of humility and hospitality manifest as synodality, first, and later grow to subsidiarity and solidarity. An aspect of [[carceral Catholicism]] is the perpetual suspension of agency within the laity. It is as if the [[hierarchy]] held an unstated but ever-active desire to keep the laity in a state of perpetuated [[adolescence]]:

I’ve been thinking about this, as I drink my coffee this morning.

William Cavanaugh wrote “Torture and Eucharist,” and the thesis was that, when the death squads in Central America were dividing the Church with terror, the remedy was public communion. 1/

https://twitter.com/preston_shipp/status/1665723201677062144

I think Cavanaugh's analysis and solution are correct: when the threat to the People of God is external, the Church has tools of solidarity to build a visible politics of resistance and to revitalize the public sphere.

In that situation, Eucharist was the answer. 2/

For most of my life, I have had the regular experience of saying something in a vibrant conversation and having that conversation suddenly … stop.

This is not intentional. I’m not trying to do it. I just seem to think in a way that is often inaccessible to other people. 1/ After lectures I have stood waiting to talk to the guest, watching those ahead of me in line get into conversations that sometimes last a dozen minutes. When I get a chance to ask my question, it is answered quickly, and there is an awkward moment before I thank them & leave 2/

So I’ve been thinking about Harlan Crow, and his collection of Nazi shit.

Some folks of questionable moral seriousness are defending him. Others (like the folks below) are genuinely confused as to why anyone would collect this stuff, and put it on display. 1/ Something occurred to me this morning.

Years ago, I watched a documentary called “Blood in the Face.” Michael Moore is the interviewer. The film crew goes to a Michigan farm to witness a neo-nazi gathering of various white power organizations.

Like a lot of folks, I have been a fan of Steve Martin for a long time. I haven't loved all his projects, but when they are good, they're great. My favorite is probably an old film called Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. Great stuff. Martin was a hugely successful stand-up comedian before he got into making films. His "bridge" from stand-up to movies was "The Jerk," directed by Carl Reiner in 1979.

Not my favorite Martin film, but worth note because it was his first. /2

Last night, @kiradault and I tag-teamed care for our near-13yo neurodivergent child. When I got tagged in, they were sitting in the bathroom, in the dark, in the tub, sobbing their eyes out. 1/ Context: This fall, they started at a new school, which is an academically-accelerated program. They are doing fine with the work, and grades are fine.

But they are dealing with a constant anxiety that they have to do everything, and do it perfectly. 2/

Somewhere, this weekend, in a forgotten corner of your city, Mary and Joseph have just arrived in town. They are hungry, and exhausted, and they're looking desperately for a place to sleep. If you have money in your pockets this Christmas, congratulations. You are one of the Magi.

If you have a spare room to offer, congratulations. You are the Innkeeper.

If you have nothing but a kind word to speak, congratulations. You are a heralding angel.

It occurs to me I should say more about this term, ‘catastrophic love’

https://twitter.com/daultradio/status/1456596604300009474

In 1987, I was in a summer philosophy seminar at Duke taught by Rick Roderick. He walked us through the history of western philosophy, but toward the end he started to turn to the future. He was a marxist, and his position was the tensions of our present age would bring change 2/

A thought experiment, that gestures toward the problems of biblical interpretation (or at least, why we need to be cautious).

A few years ago, Michael Jackson gave us a text:

"I'm bad. I'm bad. I'm really, really bad."

1/ Now, the "plain sense" of the text (what we would assert, at least grammatically, the text is "saying") is that Michael Jackson is a bad person, a harmful individual - and that Michael himself is aware of this as a fact.

As in, "I'm really, really bad."

2/

You should read the entire exchange between @LauraRbnsn and this guy. But I wanted to lift up this one moment and dig into “no one believes the cross was *humanly* just.”

The Jews of the day *absolutely* did. I do not mean that as a condemnation. Follow me here 1/

https://twitter.com/neilshenvi/status/1212738274109935616

Key Jews (not all of them, but the most zealous and literate) had been exiled to Babylon. Finally, in 537BCE, King Cyrus allows them to return to Israel (cf the end of II Chronicles, where the TaNaKH ends) 2/

If I may, a short #thread.

I was raised an atheist. As a young adult, I fell in love with the Easter story and with Jesus, and I came to faith. I am now a Catholic.

I have two MAs and a PhD in theology and religion

and I am a socialist 1/

https://twitter.com/conservmillen/status/1126975533449977857

In one of the graduate programs where I teach, I do a semester course on the Old Testament, and a semester on course the New Testament.

The students who take them end up reading around 90% of the entire Bible, and I re-read it along with them.

So here I will give you a full-throated endorsement of Kate Moore’s amazing book, The Radium Girls, to answer horse shit like this. #Thread

https://twitter.com/bobsachemano/status/1023218506957897728

(First of all, H/T to @Stonekettle for the original exchange that brought the comment to my attention)