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Welcome to our feature interview for Insights, the faculty journal of Austin Seminary. I am William Greenway, editor of Insights and professor of philosophical theology at Austin Seminary. The author of our lead essay for the Spring 2024 issue of Insights is the Reverend Dr. Jose Irizarry, President and Professor of Practical Theology at Austin Seminary.

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Professor Irizarry is an established scholar and leader in higher education. He received his BA from the University of Puerto Rico, his MDiv from McCormick Theological Seminary, and his PhD in Practical Theology from Northwestern University. President Irizarry taught at Villanova University and has held teaching or administrative positions at Cambridge University, Lutheran School of Theology, the Pacific School of Religion, and McCormick Theological Seminary. From 2007 to 2011, he held the Lamardo Chair in Practical Theology at the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico and also served as academic dean and acting president.

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As a bilingual educator, he directed Cambridge College's campus in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from 2011 to 2015. From 2016 until his arrival at Austin in June of 2022, he served as Vice President of Education at the Board of Pensions of the PC USA. He has also served as president of the Religious Education Association in the United States and Canada, on the board of directors of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, on the PCUSA's Committee on Theological Education, and as a trustee at the Columbia Theological Seminary. Now, let me note before I continue that an abbreviated written version of this discussion will appear in this spring 2024 issue of Insights.

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President Irizarry decided to dedicate this issue of insights to the 75th anniversary of H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture lectures at Austin Seminaries, which were later turned into the very influential and well-known book Christ and Culture. The title of Professor Irizarry's essay, which we will discuss today, is Christendom and Hyperculture. Welcome, President Irizarry.

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We are looking forward to hearing your insights on Christendom and hyperculture. Well, thank you, Professor Greenway, and thank you for the invitation to have this conversation, but also to contribute to this faculty journal. Now, at the beginning of your essay, you addressed a concern shared by Christians like the Niebuhr brothers and secular theorists like the influential University of Chicago philosopher John Dewey, a concern of the time. The importance of cultivating a shared sense of a national identity in a nation encompassing diverse peoples and cultures, e pluribus unum, that is, out of many unity.

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the idea illustrated in the old metaphor of the United States as a melting pot. You refer to this as an attempt to portray American culture as a totalizing body of ideas and values. And I take it that with that totalizing, you are joining in the strong criticism of the melting pot ideal, which we have heard, all heard over the last half century, in favor of what you call, along with many others, a multicultural consciousness. I have a three-part question.

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First, could you unpack in more detail the objections that arose to the melting pot ideal and the strengths of a multicultural consciousness? Yes, thank you for the question. Well, as you know, cultural theories have for decades challenged the narrative of America as a melting pot society. And I think that today, whatever remains of this ideal is in the mind of popular culture.

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Some people continue to use the concept of melting pot. But the metaphor, as you know, has lost, and as you mentioned, has lost its merits in academic circles. And I think the main objection is that the melting pot ideal is founded in this old framework of colonization. that require individuals to both assimilate and integrate to the dominant society or the dominant culture.

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So whatever is melted in the pot, if we use the metaphor, disappears as a unique and distinctive element of culture or as a contributor of culture, if we can say. And then that uniqueness is fused into a single understanding of culture that always resembles the majority culture. So a multicultural consciousness, I would say then, recognizes that cultural particularities enrich social life. So therefore, they don't have to be diluted for the sake of social unity.

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In many who have been critical of the melting pot ideal and affirmed multicultural consciousness are beginning to worry that after 15 years of moving away from it, we may be tilting too far in the opposite direction towards all pluribus and no unum. Unum, how do you say that? No desire for unity. That is, towards sectarian politics, all division, no unity, and no desire for

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for unity. Is that a legitimate concern? Well, in terms of being legitimate, I think it is. But while that perception may carry some objective truth, I would say that we cannot assume that the assimilationist approach of making everyone conform to the mold of the majority or the dominant culture protect us from the same challenges.

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of trying to be radically diverse and divided. In fact, the way in which cultural assimilation is often experienced is as oppression, and many times as violence. So it erases the possibility of having the same effects of sectarianism and polarization, as we have seen in many struggles for cultural affirmation. So I think that's why the multicultural consciousness, it's really a generator of a particular openness to consider the value of other cultures.

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But it's not the practical goal. I would say that once people are recognized, once people have their identity valued by others, The question is always, what's next? So my approach to a multicultural consciousness is a consciousness that is always evolving.

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And multiculturalism can be the first phase of conversation. But today, for example, people are not using anymore the language of multiculturalism, which was in the '80s, was used in every single work. because it was emphasizing the politics of identity and representation. Today, we're using more the language of intercultural, interculturality and what we are trying to see.

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So it's another stage in the development of multicultural consciousness where we ask ourselves, how do we interact with each other in ways not only that recognize the other, but in ways that influence each other? where there's some mutual influencing of people from different ideas, different backgrounds, different perspective. Because not every relationship needs to be appropriative, meaning when we relate to the people, we don't have to just consume them and appropriate them to be accepted, meaning they don't have to be like us. They don't have to think like us.

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They don't have to have our same perspectives in order to be accepted as part of the, to be a part of a relationship. And this is, you know, this is not a new idea. I think Saint Augustine, when he was talking about the levels of love, the degrees of love, he spoke about love as appetitus. And I have always been intrigued by that concept as appetite.

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As we trying to consume the other person. And by consuming the other person, the person become us. As we consume, as we eat food, and the food becomes us organically, so the other person. But that's not the kind of relationship that the intercultural-- I would say the intercultural consciousness is looking for.

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Melody is such a powerful metaphor, right? So that when you come up with a good metaphor like that, it really carries a lot of influence in our culture. Do you have a another a metaphor that could replace it that would capture this dynamic of a of an of a what was the word you used? Not multicultural, but intercultural consciousness.

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Intercultural consciousness in terms of. that would capture what you're trying to say in terms of both plurality and unity. Yeah, I'm responding with a smile because I'm being critical. We are being critical of a metaphor.

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And then we ask for another metaphor. And metaphors always run the risk of being incomplete, especially when those metaphors are seen as prescriptive rather than suggestive. But I will take the risk and say that one metaphor that we can use to describe.

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This is the metaphor of the kaleidoscope. You know, where every piece that you look into a coladioscope is recognized, its color, its form, but it's malleable. It allows itself to be moved around. And at the same time, with each interaction of the pieces, we can continue to recognize the pieces, but with a recombination.

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There are new shapes, new combinations, new interactions, and each one looks different. That's interesting. And here I'm a philosopher trying to be very practical. Yeah, I know, I know.

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For a new metaphor. And so I mean, so that just, I mean, I'm trying, I was trying here. And the thing about metaphors is in popular culture, they're extremely powerful. So if you can get one out there that works and interpret it, and I haven't heard one that has sort of the resonance out there as Melting Pot had, and that's why I was wondering.

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But that's an interesting, I think, kaleidoscope suggestion. Let me move on then to-- you talked about Harvard anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn. Am I saying his name correctly? Kluckhohn.

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Criticism of the monolithic ideal of a single nation calling the shots and his call for a diversity among nations or cultures. And here, we're again-- And he says he's worried about world uniformity and culture. This is kind of a familiar thing because it will mean aesthetic and moral monotony.

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So with the aesthetic, I'm great, right? Who wants aesthetic monotony? Who just wants everything to be Beethoven with no the who or, you know, other things like that. But when it comes to moral monotony and when it comes to, you know, what is, what are going to be the limits of the kaleidoscope, whether within or without the culture,

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I mean, there are cultures which are highly egalitarian and groups within our culture, which are highly egalitarian in relation to politics, gender identity, and freedom of sexual expression and others. Others which are, to put it mildly, totalitarian, patriarchal, and hostile to non-binary relationships and identities. So here it seems to me we just aren't celebrating Potentially, I mean, from my opinion, it becomes much more difficult at that point simply to be celebrating diversity and letting every voice go.

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So that's where it seems to me it gets, the rubber hits the road in the shift. And I think it's the root of the concern of whether we've gone too far. And how, when do you say no? And is that then simply, you know, an ethnocentrism or what are the ideas?

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Hey, we're back to that unity plurality question. now with a bit more of the, I think, significant part of it at play. I think that's a very appropriate concern. And sometimes, I think authors must be read within the limited scope of their thesis, and in this case, referring to Clothon, especially when scholars like us make this overarching claims.

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They sound good, but once you start analyzing them, You have to say, what is the scope? What are the limitations of this thesis? Now, as a social anthropologist, not as an ethicist, Pluckhunt may not be addressing the issue of moral monotony from the point of view of an ethicist who needs to determine the standards for ethical discernment and moral clarity.

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In fact, Clark Hunt critiqued the cultural relativism that you're mentioning of some of his colleagues. For example, he was very critical of the work of Ruth Benedict because she seemed to propose that kind of cultural relativism. Renato Rosaldo has written a great deal of ethical discussing ethical relativism in anthropology. But the basic principle in Clarkholm social anthropology is that when you study cultures, you can see the level of plasticity-- let's call it like that-- plasticity of individuals in the way they achieve moral judgment and the way they reflect discern about moral judgment.

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There's more variety. And that helps the community. In the case of anthropologists, it helps the tribe come to better decisions for the whole. So model diversity does not imply that every model decision is right.

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Some are wrong, some are right, or some are in between. But what it implies is that the community has more than one option to consider. So I would say that that contrary to moral monotony, because the problem with moral monotony is that it may allow some critical normalization of, let's say, some controlling ideologies, because there's only one way of doing things right, and nobody hears anything beside that.

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And usually, that moral authority is the one defining the voice, that monotonous voice of of what is right and what is wrong. Nazism, for example, comes out of moral monotony. It's this idea that the authority will tell you how to act, what is right, what is wrong, and you act that way.

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Having more diversity allows us to have more frameworks of interpretation. But that doesn't mean all of them are right. Hopefully, it will trigger more questioning about universals. But let me say, Klochon, just to clarify, was not a relativist.

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And he actually argued that the variety of human moral standards contains always a universal. But that universal have to be discovered within the context of a community. Okay. And I find that woolly, right?

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that reference to one moral monotony. Once you frame the universal, it seems to me that those two be intention and also universal, I would be interested to know how he or others, I mean, it's not clear to me that we have a clear answer to this anywhere yet. Here others are going to reference that universal. So that would be, and if you have a hunch on that, or how you think about it, and let me ask you in this context, because you talk about Puerto Rico later, are there, are there insights from Puerto Rico or your formation, your teaching, your work there, that influence the vision you have, and how you would think about how to draw what is, in terms of the ethical

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what is universal in comparison to the diversity and how the two interact in a way that's constructive and not simply oppressive. And of course, that reference to oppression itself has in the background an appeal to some sort of an ethical standard which is transcending the diversity. Yes, that's correct. Well,

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I am not sure I can represent the Puerto Rican culture as a model of unity in diversity. Yeah, I'm not asking for that. I'm wondering just for how, where you are from. I'm not asking you to represent the whole culture or how, in terms of your formation.

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This is where the end of the interview is about, you know, delving into your thought and influences. Okay, that's good because you always fall into the trap of ethnocentrism. Because we love our countries, you know, we love the people we live with, and we always try to see ourselves as having better models of everything. And with all the pride that I hold for my country and my upbringing in the country, let's let's remember that we have a history of colonial ties to the United States.

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And in so many ways what we have done is to amplify rather than have alternatives to the models, cultural models of the United States. We are a very consumerist society. Yes, there is racism in Puerto Rico. It has always been present lately more analyzed in in the basis of colorism.

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But the difference is because we have a. a unique history that is separated from the United States. Racial diversity has been recognized as essential to understanding cultural identity and unity. So that means that in my upbringing, the whole issue of cultural diversity was taught to us as being the basis of who we were.

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our identity. There's a phrase in Spanish-- well, actually, Spanish and some African concepts. It's called ,, which means-- it cannot be translated. But it means that every person who is a Puerto Rican, his or her cultural makeup is hybrid.

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And racial diversity is a given not only in small groups and communities, but it's a given within single families. families, new color families, when you have racial diversity, ethnic diversity, because of the hybrid sort of constitution of the Puerto Rican person. And what happens is that such proximity does not allow the exercise of segregationist practices. Yes, even if there's a racist discourse in that society,

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that discourse really does not surface in day-to-day interactions because people live together um there's so much you just said that I want to follow up on you know what makes a Puerto Rican Puerto Rican there's your unity uh and uh discourse of an inability to have segregation because you're all together, which was at the root of the arguments for integration back in the 60s and 70s. So that is, everything you just said is just so full of potential for further discussion. I want to keep moving here to get to the topics in your interview, but that is a really fascinating way in which this gives us a picture that informs you.

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With reference to Niebuhr's Christian culture, you make a criticism of his use of Christ instead of church. Do you want to kind of unpack what you have in mind there, what your concern is? I know this is not a wholesale rejection, inebriate anything like that, just a concern that makes you go in a different direction.

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But what's your concern that led you to want to speak differently? First of all, I think I'm not the first one to make this argument. People who have read Niebuhr have also mentioned this. Here, what I'm making is the decision between Christ as a theological category, as the subject of Christological pronouncements, as an object of our faith, and Christ used as a metaphor for cultural analysis.

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If Niebuhr was writing a treatise or an essay about the church, and its theological meaning in the world, the fusion of Christ and church was not only possible, but it was essential because the church is the body of Christ in the world. That's clear. But once the church, as a subject of study, is engaged in ways in which institutionalized traditions define its constitution and identity, a demarcation between Christ and

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and and Christ's gospel and the church as a functional component of society needs to be need made more evident. So I'm not implying a separation of Christ and church, but a distinction, particularly for this work. which is doing some basically cultural analysis. And this should not be a surprise.

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Barth, a car Barth, for example, was clear about this. He was very Christocentric in his discourse. But when he spoke about culture the few times he did, he was very careful not to confuse the Christocentric understanding of the church and culture. And later, as you know, Paul Tillich, when he wrote

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the theology of culture, he also was very clear about that distinction. And the concern there is what? I mean, what's the threat of not making that distinction? I think that's in the background of what you're saying.

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That then you allow yourself to look at the church as not only as a theological category, but a sociological one that you can enter into a very deep critique of. so that it allows us to really separate, because it's difficult as Christians to go into a deeper critique of the object of our faith, which is Jesus Christ and his message. And that's why it has to be separated so that the church can be analyzed in itself as a particular functional institution of society. So the danger isn't a too quick identification of the church with Christ, which shields it from the sort of critique it needs.

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And think about what will that mean in today's world, where even secular people are making that connection, and then they're rejecting faith and spirituality, and even exercising some sort of relationship with Christ, because they do not think the church represents, well, that relationship. When I'm saying the church, it's the most vitriolic component of the church, the ones who are out there speaking on behalf of Christ and saying all the right and wrong things about Christ. in the world.

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Yeah. Which means church can be criticized not only from sociological perspective, but also from a theological. Oh, it can. Biblical perspective.

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So it's just the importance of keeping that category separate for all of them was to make sure that we didn't have that too easy identification. And that makes it vital. Yes. How should Christians think about the relationship between their churches and Christendom?

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We define what you mean by Christendom there. Yeah. Well, by Christendom I mean the discourse of Christianity's the discourse of Christianity's influence in Western cultures. And how that has affected the the or or have informed

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the values, ideals, organizational forms, and even the metaphors and religious, the religious imagination we use in Western cultures. Even when we live in secular, or let's say, relatively secular environments, pluralistic environments. And we accept that. It is important to recognize that the weight of the Christian message on the way the West have developed its values and ideals.

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So I use Christendom, and I'm very clear. I'm trying to use lowercase because it's not an establishment religion. It is more of a sort of a cultural consciousness that is informed by the long history of Christianity and Christian discourse.

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And we have to recognize that. What I challenge here, really, it's the idea of fundamental secularism, where because we live in a pluralistic society, there's no religion informing the way we make decisions about the body, about politics, about law. Because once we say that, again, we make Christianity invisible or the Christian discourse invisible to the point that, again, it cannot be an object of critique because we think it doesn't exist. It does exist.

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It just takes some research to see how the things that we do, as in the West, especially in this country, how the things we do are informed. by this Christian tradition. Okay. And then in combination with Christendom, of course, you focus upon hyperculture.

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Could you briefly define hyperculture and explain why, you know, of all the aspects of culture you know and could consider, that was the aspect you decided to focus upon? Yeah, well, I think hyperculture is a shorthand for today's conversations from the perspective of many disciplines regarding the matter of what I call life acceleration. The fact that culture is moving at a pace that challenges what I will call the, if not the normal, the traditional evolution of societies and individuals.

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I think we cannot dispute that we live a heroic life because this type of life is what is highly valued. in neoliberal economies and cultures. We're always moving. We're always progressing.

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We are pushing that progress to the point in which it has to be accelerated, trying to achieve whatever goal we're trying to achieve. And I decided to focus on this because I can see how this acceleration has affected so many people, regardless of age. and how that acceleration that was made actually evident during the pandemic, where everyone had to catch up with technology in order to make a living, in order to study, in order to do many things. That was just, I would say, an example of how acceleration really, I would say, shakes us in more way than once.

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But especially, I was concerned by, to be honest, by some of my close friends, pastors, church leaders, who suddenly show increased levels of anxiety and burnout because they were trying to run at a different pace they were not used to. And you talk in terms of that, in particular about the technology pervading our everyday lives and the power of the now. So could you unpack that and relate it to these, you know, is one concrete way in which this hyperculture is manifesting and a threat?

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Well, first of all, technology is here to stay and we must be intelligent users to maximize its potential to serve the common good. I'm not a Luddite. I know technology is important.

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I think especially for work and to support work is a tool. But what, as with every relationship, the way that we relate to a technology requires some major attention. So my concern with the nowness that is prompted by technology, that everything has to be given to us now, even information, is that We continue to devalue the importance of two important components of temporality that humanize us.

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One is memory, very important. And the other one is hope. Memory, because this connects us to a past, a history that needs to be recovered, and hope because it projects us to the future. Nowness takes from that.

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sort of consciousness, temporal consciousness, and tries to push us into this century. Now. that that that consumes all our time and energies. So we need to use technology as a tool and avoid the possibility of being used by the tool itself.

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In the essay, you connect this to a consumerism and almost an insatiability with a now, you get it now and it's a constant of vanishing. So then there's always the move to which kind of feeds this dynamic of acceleration, hyper acceleration, and then creates dynamics of never being fulfilled, always needing the next thing, which provokes that anxiety. In what ways do you think that churches are threatened by the hyperculture?

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And let me combine this with another question that goes with it. And in what ways are churches attempts to adapt to the hyperculture? In what ways when they try to meet these needs, are they actually undercut by its dynamics so that it compromises their witness and ministry? Yeah.

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Let me focus first on leaders, because I told you was one of my concerns. Pastors lead church leaders. They have been impacted by the pressures of time to the point in which I used to work with the Board of Pensions, as you said at the beginning. And in that work, I was in constant conversation with young pastors and, you know,

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how they were doing in church. And one of the things we wanted to incentivize was the practice of Sabbath and how to be creative in constructing this time, this space where, again, memory and hope can be cultivated away from this nowness, this sort of productive mentality that I have to be just always doing something. And one common response was, well, we don't have any time. Although this is a component of faith, like any other component of faith, like the preaching, the sacramental life, there was no time for Sabbath.

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So time here predominated the conversation of faith. And I think for me, leaders were impacted heavily because churches find value not only on their worshipful life, but in their mission. when they fulfill the needs of those who are more vulnerable. So that means that churches find their value in doing mission for others.

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But when they're fulfilling the needs of others, and those needs are constantly changing, then you feel always like you're behind, that you are not doing the work you're supposed to do. And that creates some sort of dissatisfaction even for the work that you're doing. The other way this affects churches is that when referring to the church, we are talking about people from whom community should not be an anomaly, meaning we are a community. We are one of the few, I will say, volunteer, let's call it like that, although theologically it's not, but let's say volunteer associations where community is at the center.

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But many find difficult to join this community because their time is occupied with incremental, what I call products of satisfaction that that are available for them. So this also goes against community formation. Okay.

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So and I will say that because hyperculture seeks to satisfy needs, As as you mentioned before, it's always manufacturing new and improved products for us to consume. And when I'm saying products, I'm not talking only about a concrete things to buy, but also ideas. It's always producing something new we have to grasp and take for ourselves.

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TikTok springs to mind, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. The one image generates the need for the next one. You're never just satisfied looking.

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In fact, it's designed not to give that satisfaction. It wants to keep you moving. Yes. And actually, I think the church is affected because for what you have said, because the spiritual needs of people have also changed.

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When you speak about spiritual needs in religion, we always spoke about the spirit seeking some connection with something transcendent. But right now, I don't think that this is the basis of the spiritual need, that connection with the transcendent being. But it's more about feeling of the gap, that gap left by disenchantment and dissatisfaction.

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And those are two different ways of looking at spiritual formation. When you speak of pastors not taking the time or others who are doing work helping others, not taking time to rest, what sprang to mind was the image of Jesus with all those needy people saying, no, go away. I need to rest. But maybe we need also then to unpack Sabbath a bit so it doesn't become another thing to do.

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What is exactly Sabbath and church as a Sabbath community? What would be the essential elements of that you think we should take care so we don't get caught up in another You know, we don't get taken up again by the hyperculture. Yeah, but but again, because Sabbath cannot be understood.

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And here Hedgel has done a great work in defining what a Sabbath is. It's the creation of that space of respite. That that comes with your own relationship with time. Which that I mean, you cannot really plan Sabbath in a way that is more work.

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You have to see. You have to be attentive to your, I would say, your daily patterns of life, and then maximize those opportunities you have to be with yourself, to be with God, and to be in relationships that are intentional. So that it's not adding to, it's just an awareness of. And that's what I, in the article, for example, I give the example of driving and being

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at a certain speed when we walk, when we drive, it is like everything around us disappear because we don't stop to pay attention. Things are happening. Sabbath is actually there. And that's why the argument, well, I don't find time, is because we're seeing it as an addition to our now busy time rather than, no, it's a moment that is already there, but we occupied that time with the now

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because we didn't stop. We continue the same acceleration forward without stopping to maximize that opportunity given to us. I for years have used the analogy when I did my creation spirituality of the cars. You remind me of this, but I would use that and say, you know, spirituality has a pace.

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And it's not fast, which means everything in modernity is an enemy of spirituality. And it's always, it was, I loved seeing this, that unpacked in this really detailed, informed way here, that sort of hunch. That makes sense. Another thing that's interesting is in your essay is that you're suggesting that even secular scholars who on the whole are typically hostile towards the church and religious institutions are seeing the church as incompatible with the cultural acceleration of hyperculture.

00:41:03.200 - 00:41:26.160

And that for them is actually a good thing. And so you suggest that secular scholars are beginning to see religious institutions as an important bulwark, guard against harmful aspects of the hyperculture, calling them, and I'm quoting you here, models of social coherence and solidarity. And so is that true?

00:41:26.160 - 00:41:47.360

Is that actually taking hold where the church actually is looking like, because you said this before in an answer to a question, we're not just another intentional community. There's something discreet about how we do things. And one of the things that is discreet is this notion of Sabbath, which is linked to a way of engaging time and spirit.

00:41:48.240 - 00:42:11.080

And so are they seeing churches, and I assume that they're not just thinking of Christian churches, but mosques and temples and all the rest, but religious institutions as actually carrying an important resource for contemporary culture, which the culture itself doesn't otherwise really have good resources to address. Is that happening in the secular sphere? Well, this is interesting.

00:42:11.120 - 00:42:52.920

The way that these writings have caught my attention has been because you always have the theologian trying to, especially those who are working with new ecclesiologies, to try to redefine the church in a way that is more constructive in a way that is more positive as we analyze this thing we call the church. But aside from that, within the church, there are high levels of pessimism. And I don't know if you agree with that, but when I have conversations with people, people who are really doing the work of the church, again, because they're not seeing

00:42:53.840 - 00:43:33.920

They may be disenchanted by the pace of the mission, the things that they can, they're not fulfilling the needs by the whole discourse of Christianity in society. So there's this sense of the decline of the church's membership, this sort of pessimism. So to see people who are not Christians or theologians just mentioning the importance of the church and other religious communities, it should bring your attention to them. And I have seen that in the last two years doing some of this reading in hyperculture where they mention we have to pay attention again to the value of religious institutions.

00:43:33.920 - 00:43:58.520

Now, these are sociologists and cultural theories. So these scholars are trying to identify these few intentional communities that remain in today's society where people volunteer to belong to, where a common mission is pursued. And again, you said for Christians, it's a spiritual mission. So there's some particularity to it, but it's a common mission from their perspective.

00:43:58.640 - 00:44:25.760

That's what they. to to emphasize in not in the spirituality, but how they can come together and pursue something in common, even when they are a diverse community. So therefore, what they do is that they point to what I call the potential of those communities without making it an analysis. If the condition of the church is such that that potential can be

00:44:26.240 - 00:44:39.200

in actuality manifested. So they don't make that argument. And that's why I added in the article the caveat that we can do this work if we are genuine communities. Now, that brings another question.

00:44:39.200 - 00:44:56.720

What does it mean to be a genuine community? And I can see that in your face coming up. But what I'm saying, genuine is a community where we can explore the formation of this intentional spaces of belonging, acceptance and participation.

00:44:57.600 - 00:45:36.080

Not assume they happen, but we are deliberate in creating those spaces within the community. So that's what I think these sociologists are referring to. And this goes back to your point about the importance of thinking of Christendom, not just of church, because Christendom invites you to access these other discourses and analyses and use them for church to make those connections. And, you know, sometimes as you gesture towards, sometimes it's folks outside of your community who can see things in your community that are invisible to you that are important.

00:45:36.800 - 00:46:10.040

I suggest too that, you know, of course they, engage in secular rationality, which is a particular form tradition, which is, I would suggest, afflicted by a systemic distortion, which leads them unable to articulate or address the spiritual sphere, which is real. So that we would be a basis there for, and I think there already is, interesting conversation on both sides. So you're running up about places, well, I'm not quite sure what to do here, but these are the very edges of thought for all of us, right, trying to figure out what's going on.

00:46:10.160 - 00:46:46.240

and we get to these edges, no one has a neat definition because it's an area to probe, which is what I find so interesting in what you're doing here. Now, you, in addressing all of this in terms of making your concrete moves to address it, you turn to Ivan Elich, a Catholic priest, maybe I'll let you say who he is and why you found him significant and what he has to offer in response to all of this conversation and concern. Well, thank you.

00:46:47.480 - 00:47:05.520

A couple of things. I think that one of the things that scholars do very often is that they randomly select people they want to talk about. They find a couple of ideas or books interesting, and they go forward with it. With Elig, this is interesting.

00:47:05.600 - 00:47:28.560

I found initially some sort of what I will call biographical coincidences. First of all, he is he was a priest that came after the nation from Vienna and wanted to actually from Rome. He studied in Rome. He was from Vienna, but studied in Rome.

00:47:29.280 - 00:48:07.760

And and then he decided for his first ministry context to be New York City. because he heard that a group of new immigrants or migrants, not immigrants, migrants were coming from Puerto Rico during the fifties, where there was a financial crisis and people were moving to the new industries in New York. And he thought that because they were Catholic and And I'm saying that in a way that it's a cultural understanding of the Puerto Rican, that the Puerto Rican is Catholic.

00:48:08.400 - 00:48:27.520

He thought it was important for the new migrants not to be assimilated. So in some way, he was against this sort of melting pot idea, but in relationship to the Catholic Church. No, the Catholic Church, It's, you know, which is interesting.

00:48:27.520 - 00:48:48.800

Catholic is a hole, but it doesn't have to be a fuse hole, meaning it can be different groups bringing the gifts of their cultures and communities. And he wanted to do that. So he came to New York. He was a priest at a church that my grandmother used to go with because she was also part of that migration.

00:48:49.760 - 00:49:11.120

So she had met Mr. Elick. And then he moved to Puerto Rico, to Ponce, which is the area where I also grew up in the south coastal part of Puerto Rico. At that point, of course, I didn't know, well, I wasn't there in the '50s, but when I was a little kid, I didn't know he was living there.

00:49:11.280 - 00:49:32.640

And he moved to Mexico City, I'm sorry, to Cuernavaca to continue his work. But then years later, in the '90s, when I was in seminary, I saw this very thin man walking around with the president at that time, David Ramish. And I asked, who is the guy? And they said, well, that's Ivan Elick.

00:49:32.800 - 00:49:53.680

And he's proposing-- he was moving to Chicago for-- because he taught in different places. He just came from Bremen University. And he wanted to teach a course for two years at McCormick. but I was graduating, but it was interesting that, you know, those coincidences brought him to my attention.

00:49:53.680 - 00:50:28.080

So let me read more about this guy. And then the more I read it, I became interested because he was doing cultural analysis from the perspective of the, Christendom, which is-- he didn't use the word, but from the perspective of the church's understanding of culture. And he tried to basically describe how the Christian message and the Christian tradition affected every single system in the Western culture.

00:50:28.400 - 00:51:00.960

And from there, he moved into a critique of those systems, schooling, health, and so on. Now, to make it short, what I think is important is although his work Remember he's writing on the time where we are talking about in the United States about the program of progress for Latin America, for the whole world and United States being at the center of that progress. He was seen as a very radical thinker and saying like, well, he's just one of these radical thinkers that

00:51:02.080 - 00:51:30.880

He's against every kind of progress. And so in the '70s, his ideas wane a little bit, and then it disappeared, the interest. But today, a lot of his concepts, a lot of his work has come to prominence. The whole language of conviviality that is used in a lot of post-colonial theory today, post-growth, there's a whole

00:51:32.560 - 00:52:14.560

group of people who are studying what they call post-growth in relation to how we can continue to live in this world by decelerating, you know, production and consumption and so on. The whole discussion about cybernetics and the body and cybernetics, he already started discussing that, how the body will be affected by technology, transhumanism. So although those things that he was discussing during the '60s and the '70s are today becoming important.

00:52:14.560 - 00:52:31.840

So in some way, he was prophetic. Of course, there's a lot of things he said that need to be corrected from the perspective of today's analysis of those issues. But I think it's a good place to go to start a conversation.

00:52:33.760 - 00:53:18.000

And you call conviviality an intrinsic ethical value which connects us apart from accelerated time, reductive outcomes, and self-gratification. In other words, that you posed his notion of conviviality as precisely the notion that would oppose these and also potentially a notion that could inform the unity that holds the plurality together that we started the conversation with. But at any rate, as you just gestured towards, a very productive and central notion. Could you unpack it a bit more for us what precisely is conviviality and how it works?

00:53:19.520 - 00:54:32.080

Yeah. Well, as I say before, although this was an important concept for Illig, this concept has been recaptured by the work of postcolonial theories, perhaps to sort of contrast it with the whole idea of cosmopolitanism, this idea that, you know, we come together as a whole global uh entity and we find ways to become one through the markets through um neoliberal economies and and the focus here is about particular groups that live together that's why the word come reality is so strong because it's not about this General macro politics where everyone become one but about specific communities who who, because they live together, they share life together in one way or the other, have to find ways to organize themselves so that they can, even in difference, they can come together and work and have a good life and enjoy well-being.

00:54:32.840 - 00:54:54.640

What I will call some micro politics, you know, doing this unity in diversity from the bottom up rather than you know, creating a theory that is overarching. So, but Elig, I would say the etymology of this concept, and that's why he used it. He was a medievalist, really.

00:54:54.960 - 00:55:16.960

When he studied the church, he always started to study the church in medieval, what is called the medieval times, because he thought that's where a lot of the Christian message started to corrupt itself. And so that's where he starts the conversation. And and and this this this word was used.

00:55:17.280 - 00:55:57.040

It was because he spoke Spanish very well and he knew this was used the concept of convivencia and it's a concept that. originally described the living together of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval Spain and the ways they form a pluri-confessional society. That doesn't mean that we're living fully in peace, but there was a principle that a country or a culture can be pluri-confessional. In postcolonial studies, the term is used as a method

00:55:58.480 - 00:56:38.880

as a method, as an analytical tool to explore ways and under what conditions people create these forms of togetherness. But as an ethical construct, because I mentioned, as you asked me, the ethical dimension of this, it considers the value of this underlying interconnectedness and dependency between individuals and individuals and their environments. So for the sake, as I say before, of sharing a life with actual real people, it's not theoretical.

00:56:38.880 - 00:56:52.880

It's just sharing a real life with people. What Hannah Arendt called the common world. And every group has its own common world. And so that's what community is, when people recognize

00:56:54.160 - 00:57:41.680

that they live together, and by living together, they affect each other. And the ethical values then that inform that are the ethical values of equity of humans, the common good, and also reason and individuality, respect for who you are and how you think. As you say all that, I couldn't help but think that so much of it seems, and this almost goes back to what you said about Puerto Rico, where you have racism, you have these other, at a theoretical level, prejudices. but they're not realized in community because you're all living together.

00:57:42.160 - 00:58:18.960

And so those prejudices, in a way, fall before the power of mutual presence living together, interact with each other on a basis. It makes me think that the enemy then of conviviality is not just hyperculture in terms of time, but also in terms of space. Because our interconnectedness, and this would go to the cosmopolitanism you spoke to, which for those I don't know is a major ethical theory of great influence about how to relate the global community, but it's essentially A neoliberal understanding of connection.

00:58:18.960 - 00:59:02.280

So that's true economically. every other person in the world is my neighbor in terms of us being related in significant ways. But in terms of me being a part of a mutual community where I know them and reality becomes powerful in a real sense, that is more local by definition almost. So another obstacle becomes not just the temporal acceleration, but the contrast between space, which has been eliminated at this level of our economic lives, but which our ability to see one another, to live with one another, to know in another way, which awakens and conviviality is compromised.

00:59:02.480 - 00:59:20.160

Does that make sense? What I'm thinking a little... Yes, to use the language of a friend of yours, Emmanuel Levinas, to recognize the face of the other. See, I resisted using that language throughout my entire question.

00:59:21.680 - 00:59:33.040

But it's actually recognizing the other in his or her face. And so that requires proximity. And one of the challenges of technology is also the eradication of that face.

00:59:33.120 - 00:59:55.760

It is it is like there's something there between the other face and myself. Even when we use social media and people use other names, or they change their faces to look different, or they use icons, whatever that is, it is that That proximity sometimes is not guaranteed. Now, I will say that certainly space will be, yes, acceleration of time is this article.

00:59:55.760 - 01:00:27.440

Space may be a second article. But also, I think it's important to see how both space and time are integrated. Because one of the things that also we can say about hyperculture is that acceleration creates a sort of a constraint of space. For example, let's go again, driving, you know, the space become shorter, smaller, with more acceleration, you know, you go from one place A to B.

01:00:27.680 - 01:00:43.040

So in a faster way. So the space is, it's smaller that you cover. It's conceived like that. Or, for example, when we are trying to have a conversation with communities through social media, that's our space.

01:00:43.040 - 01:01:08.560

It's a very limited space. space where we can speak to as many people as we can at the same time. But again, the space is constrained. So I will not-- again, this is something I have to think more about, but I will not-- I would like to make the distinction, but also find the interconnection of this hyperculture and the effects of the hyperculture in space.

01:01:09.120 - 01:01:42.080

In conception, and also the two-fold character that the technologies is just this way the technology can overcome that distance, because suddenly, I mean, we think of let's go to some distance, but apply currently back in Vietnam when images came to the States. Suddenly those folks are immediately present in a way they never would have been just through words. So the proximity in that sense can be fostered by technology as well.

01:01:42.080 - 01:02:06.400

So it brings both the, you know, and again, we're getting, we're not going to, we're not going to change, you know, we're going to keep moving forward with the culture. The thing is to figure out how to use it in ways that enhance conviviality and the community and not the others. So let me, let's see, our time is getting short.

01:02:06.400 - 01:02:26.320

It's been a great interview. Let me just take a look at my notes and make sure. I just want to, your sense of the times, maybe. And just real quick before we get to our closing questions, we talk about Gramsci's work on the interregnum, which is a period in which traditional things have fallen away.

01:02:26.880 - 01:02:53.520

No new meta-narratives have come to take their place. In a way, the absence of a new metaphor not coming to mind is a sign of this. And the threat Gramsci thought of this period of interregnum was that it resulted in political fragility and social polarization, which sounds pretty prophetic as well.

01:02:54.480 - 01:03:13.360

So how is that, is that your sense of the times and the ways in which this is an attempt in the church is an institution which could be a part of helping to address them? Is that kind of where that came in? in your thinking? Yeah.

01:03:13.520 - 01:03:45.440

Well, I think part of it is, I think the interregnum liquidity, which is the word used by Sigmund Bartman, those are metaphors that actually supplement this current idea that we live in the in-between times. And you hear that even from pulpits today, where people are saying something new will emerge. Even the church, you know, we are in the in-between times. We don't know what's going to emerge, but we are hopeful about it.

01:03:46.560 - 01:04:26.080

The favorite word that is used to conceive this time is the liminal. A lot of people use, we are in a liminal space. But I like the interregnum metaphor proposed by Gramsci because it signifies that the crisis we're facing is ultimately, it's not like a religious crisis fundamentally, like when we speak about liminality, but it's actually a crisis of authority where there is no longer an institution or a system that can claim

01:04:28.240 - 01:05:03.520

that they have this centering authority where people have to gravitate towards that institution, whether it's government, the church, social organizations, schools. So that institution-- there's no institution that can claim the authority to center society in a common purpose. And that's what we're seeing this polarization today or part of the reasons we see this polarization. But the interesting thing is the image is not a clamor to return to monarchy.

01:05:03.760 - 01:05:25.200

Of course not. Please, no. Although for some time in the history of Israel, that was a desire in the interregnum to come back to the king that can have this authority to center the community. So it's not a return to monarchy, but to explore how to manage the time we are in.

01:05:25.920 - 01:05:50.400

That's a uniquely constituted period that while we are living this in-betweenness is not an anomaly. The main question we have to be asking ourselves, it's a different question. That's the only thing. And it's how do we live together preserving society and civility, I mean, social fragility and social polarization.

01:05:51.520 - 01:06:15.920

That's the context in which conviviality becomes so powerful. Exactly. So yes, because conviviality becomes both the principles. and strategy for institutions and systems, something-- and it takes to build a community of proximity, to build a community of people who can negotiate ways of living together.

01:06:16.160 - 01:06:28.360

That takes time. That takes intention. That takes, I would say, sustained efforts. And this is something that cannot be afforded

01:06:29.120 - 01:07:04.800

with an hyper culture because we're moving too fast so you can see that the challenge here of the interregnum yes we want to emerge as something different but but the president is pushing us backwards we cannot move towards that um because once you find the solutions they become obsolete you know now we have to look for a different and also Sabbath then I mean this gives us some content for Sabbath where it's yes it's regular So you're not deciding to do it. It's a creation of space within time. It's communal.

01:07:04.800 - 01:07:24.280

So you're seeing each other face to face and experiencing the power of that. So the conviviality can be fostered. That's, it seems like in a way, that's how that comes together as a concept, which is a concrete effort to combat this. In some ways, it also strikes me.

01:07:24.280 - 01:07:42.920

I mean, we take, you know, seven days a week, a Sabbath for granted, but it's interesting. suggesting that it seems like most cultures in the world have something like a day of rest. It's almost like the cultures that didn't, I mean, let's think in evolutionary terms, the cultures that didn't have a day of rest aren't around anymore. The ones that survived all have it.

01:07:42.920 - 01:08:04.000

And so we might be speaking to something very deep here in terms of what rest is, not just something else to do, but something that's necessary in all these ways. Let me, maybe that was too much privilege for me to take there to decide. Thank you. Sparking these creative ideas to think about these things that I'm finding very generative.

01:08:04.800 - 01:08:26.240

So to kind of close out here, are there any questions or question I've not asked you, which now you think, boy, I wish you would ask me this. And I'll give you three, I'll give you two or three or once. What major thought or idea would you hope readers would take away from your reflection? So the questions, or if not that, the reflection, they might be related.

01:08:27.560 - 01:09:23.680

Well, you just mentioned in your commentary this idea of the creation of spaces where this can be at least explored, this kind of conviviality can be explored. So I think the message that I want, your thought or idea I want the readers of the reflection to take with them is that we may need to create deliberate spaces in our communities of engagement, including the church, where we can redeem time, as God's time, you know, by encouraging the memory of the past in those spaces, but also by imagining the future with hope. And in order to do those two things, we need to allow people to actually

01:09:24.800 - 01:10:04.880

I would say, feel that they belong to the conversation and that they have something to bring, although that can be negotiated or it has to be negotiated, meaning what you believe, what you think, because now you're entering into this convivial community. So I think important, let's continue as a church to, and we have the tradition to do that. Theologically, I'm not talking now like the sociologist will talk, but theologically, Our tradition has the elements to start building these convivial spaces because we like to focus in the Christian tradition, we like to focus on memory.

01:10:06.080 - 01:10:43.120

And we are also based our expectations about what the world can be, even within this interregnum, with our vision, a scatological vision towards a redeemed world that God is going to bring about. Which is expanding the time that you're saying is contracted because suddenly in the now in the church it's full of this memory and it lives in anticipation of future and maybe dreams of certain futures. So it expands that now. It's funny in a way you're it's like you're saying that the what

01:10:44.600 - 01:11:10.720

modern philosophers and sociologists and anthropologists are finding is that the contemporary culture is creating a massive problem. And it turns out the church is part of the answer to that problem already. And so that because of the way in which we try to open space in community on a regular rhythm in which we're convivial with each other and doing these things. And but

01:11:13.920 - 01:11:41.880

I I lost. Yes, go go. Yes, the answer is yes, but the answer is yes, but I emphasize those 2 concepts, deliberate and awareness, meaning it does happens in the church. But I don't think we are aware that it's happening, or it can happen, and we are not as deliberate to use those resources of our tradition to actually assist

01:11:42.400 - 01:12:12.120

society to move into a more convivial space. And that's the sense in which even the ways in which many churches are trying to do this. So actually already taken up by the dynamics of the hyperculture and undo themselves, I think, as part of your analysis, which means, I mean, to take one, for instance, this whole rhetoric of decline, it's easy to see that as a problem for the church. But from this perspective, what we see is it's a problem for everyone.

01:12:12.960 - 01:12:37.160

because it's the loss of a vital institution. And maybe in some ways the institution's doing it to itself because it doesn't have clarity on the issues. And that's what you're trying to do is to make sure we're clear on these issues so we can be church and other communities can be, and again, when I say church here, I don't just mean the Christian church. I mean, these sorts of communities in a way that is not captured by it.

01:12:37.400 - 01:12:48.760

Anyway, that strikes me as is that kind of a why you think this is so significant, why you think be such a contribution to get this right, it sounds like. Is that right? Yeah, I think it is.

01:12:48.880 - 01:13:23.080

And I think that, as you mentioned, sometimes this sort of pessimism that sometimes we communicate as a church, the pessimism not only about decline, but about we even use the language of dying, you know, this is a dying church, that's in itself, even the the proclamation of that idea is time constricting because it's saying there's no eternity, there's no future. This will end in the now. Yeah.

01:13:23.280 - 01:13:46.600

So the framing itself is the problem. That sets up the final question is, what is the biggest concrete difference you hope your essay might make? Wow. Well, as an author of an article, just a few pages, you have to be modest when you answer to this question because it's not going to change probably the world.

01:13:47.360 - 01:14:13.680

But at least what I would try to do is provoke new ways of thinking for people of the church. In this case, I hope this article starts a conversation about people of faith. about the ways we can respond to today's culture. Not by feeding within a typology, not by looking at, you know, neighbor's typology and saying, this is who we are.

01:14:14.480 - 01:14:37.720

But always be asking, you know, how do we respond to today's culture, a culture that is changing expediently? And to do that creatively, seeking to be betters of God's message of good news, in a rapid world where time is of essence. Yeah.

01:14:40.000 - 01:15:08.640

Well, thank you very much. I mean, it seems to me that, you know, who knows what any essay will do. We all do our little bit, but that this is a way of reframing and understanding the challenges we have and ways to address them that is incredibly insightful and productive and full of concrete potential. And the conversation has been very generative and interesting.

01:15:08.640 - 01:15:12.240

So I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I hope you've had a good time. Well, thank you. I did.

01:15:12.400 - 01:15:24.320

I did. It took, again, it took a lot of time, but yes, it did. I enjoyed it. Well, thank you so much for writing the essay for Insights and for doing this interview.

01:15:24.320 - 01:15:33.120

And we'll hope that people can use it in constructive ways. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Bill. I will see you around.