Editorials
Contents Volume CXI, Number 2 I l l l O l l l . I I . _ . - - .;. I I I . _9 .~ ' _9 n e e -'DUNliN - ' - ' . , . . ' . - i i l l i ';:'. :.?'-",;"-' v *, ~ . 2 ~ ' t ' , ' 6 v , _9 . ' . '...
...Hence, he or she "is left no choice but to vitalize this negative experience and to confront [the] feeling of God's absence" -which may, with wit, put one on the path of the Cloud of Unknowing and Meister Eckhart...
...And yet I harbor doubts...
...Jackson has been free to tell black audiences what many white liberals were afraid to say: That in the face of racism, discrimination, and injustice, individuals remain free moral agents...
...FANTASY, THEOLOGY, & MYSTICISM I S THE "DISGODDING" of nature Wordsworth once lamented currently in reverse gear...
...Jackson's supporters, the best thing about the Jackson campaign is that it will give focus to the black political mobilization...
...ETC...
...Moreover, many conservatives have tried to blame blacks for their own powerlessness...
...Myth and mysticism are enjoying a comeback...
...It is always frustrating as well...
...All this is bitterly true...
...To be sure, everyone must rejoice when someone is released from captivity...
...Jackson knows what he is doing, and that the last thing he wants to do is see black America slouch away from the polls...
...It seems Mr...
...Over the years, he has moved black -- and white -- audiences all over America to chant 'I am somebody.' His frequent emphasis on black self-reliance has been a welcome antidote to some of the worst tendencies in both liberal and conservative thought...
...So despite a great many doubts, I wish Mr...
...Jesse Jackson says he opposes the rules because they discriminate against blacks...
...Single copy, $1.25...
...It might appear so and where better to take note of it than in this Contemporary Theology issue...
...The current unbidden irruption of fantasy and mythicizing is, as Ms...
...This liberal mistake is often based on a genuine insight: that poverty breeds despair, lawlessness, and failure...
...They have the vote but lhey don't turn out,' has been the conservative refrain...
...it might be called the return of enchantment...
...As for organized labor, Mr...
...An&they contend that if liberals believe what they claim to believe, the last thing they should do is begrudge the candidacy of a man who is trying to prove that black aspirations do not have to be expressed through white politicians...
...Jackson's supporters -- sometimes subtly, sometimes not -- argue that the question itself is racist...
...Just whom or what is Ms...
...Even Mr...
...Nonetheless, when Jesse Jackson scored his big success on the road to Damascus, Amelia was provoked into writing down her reactions...
...According to Mr...
...Those lacking cultural roots, community bonds, and usable skills will be especially susceptible to demagogic political and religious leaders offering "simplistic, fairy-tale views.'" As Milan Kundera put it, at such a time many are lured by utopian voices into a paradise "only to find, when the doors slam shut behind them, that they are in hell...
...Mysticism, she blithely asserts, "evades the riddle of good and evil, aspiring to offer a coherent world view by blurring the hard edges of reality with vague notions of oneness...
...Agena's jeremiad directed against...
...But so are "hard" scientists: subatomic accelerators and interstellar space probes give rise to cosmological theory that reads like Alice in Wonderland...
...Yet Mr...
...Which brings me to the broader question about Jesse Jackson: what does he hope to get out of his campaign, other than a lot of attention...
...Why not ask the same of Gary Hart or Reubin Askew or Fritz Hollings, all of whom are running behind Jackson in the polls...
...27 January 1084:37...
...Some cultural observers are not amused...
...But too often, compassion turns into pity, pity into condescension and disrespect...
...In her dismay one can almost hear Freud exhorting Jung to adhere to psychoanalytic dogma" against the black tide of occultism" (by which he meant, according to Jung, "virtually everything that philosophy and religion, i n c l u d i n g . . , contemporary parapsychology, had learned about the psyche")_9 Admittedly, the contemporary hunger for wonders deserves a dose of skeptical salt, and nothing merits closer scrutiny than the state of the nation's imagination...
...Here I have many doubts, and so do many of America's leading black political figures, including Andrew Young and Coretta King...
...As a black, Mr...
...Jackson did more than criticize Israel: at a very sensitive time, his ill-considered gesture managed to drive a wedge between blacks and Jews -- providing fodder, I might add, to those elements in the Jewish community most eager to see blacks and Jews estranged...
...In the past, Mr...
...Agena is sure that such archaism, which she fastens without qualification on the European Middle Ages, is bound to be socially and politically regressive...
...foreign, $53...
...the term"medieval" stands for obscurantist darkness, a fixed social hierarchy, and authoritarianism...
...49 Meeting the New Testament Pheme Perkins 50 Books Faith and Ideologies: Cornel West 53 American Catholic Social Ethics/Forced Options: Raymond A. Schroth 57 Discerning the Mystery: NeU Gifford 60 Staff Editor: James O'Gara Executive Editor: Peter Steinfels Assistant Editor: David Toolan Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Desmond Fisher (Dublin...
...Agena has one good thing to say for myth: it distinguishes between good and evil...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...One of the most pernicious ideas fostered by at least some liberals is that a person who grows up in circumstances of deprivation should automatically be absolved of responsibility for his or her sins...
...Beyond that, he has called the bluff of many conservatives who contend that support for the welfare state, for 'programs for the poor,' is inconsistent with a belief in individual responsibility...
...it is quite another for Ms.Agena to indiscriminately zap the noncombatant tin robots and androids into which, paradoxically, we have poured soulful virtue and heart...
...But it just may be a time for wishful contemplation, and there's a difference...
...Alain Woodrow (Paris...
...The whole undifferentiated lot, Ms...
...The new Democratic rules strike me as fundamentally sensible...
...But if ever there was a time when the unions needed support from friends of the poor and opponents of injustice, this is it...
...What was once the arduous route traveled only by a religious elite is now, in many instances, the only one still open . . . it is a desert that in prayerful attention may be converted into the solitude of contemplafion -- a solitude that Thomas Merton wrote of as not something outside us, not an absence of men or of sound, but an abyss opening up in the center of the soul, an abyss created by a hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire...
...Once again, Ronald Reagan proved himself an adept politician -- and perhaps even someone with an occasional flare for statesmanship...
...Agena notes, the compensatory side of the West's cultural crisis, that is, a search for alternatives to the mythically proportioned "givens" of modernity now in a state of collapse: a mechanical cosmology, the almighty self, and the myth of Progress...
...They insist that Mr...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...A culture's wealth consists, after all, of its stock of mythical stories, which, as the Renaissance demonstrated, prime our creative juices just when apocalypse impends...
...And somewhat disingenuously, Carl Sagan brings us myth under cover of extraterrestrial intelligence...
...On the other hand, mysticism appeals in a period like this because its traditions offer a discipline and a rich critical literature of experimental wisdom for charting one's way through the void -- to new worlds.As Louis Dupr~ argued in Daedalus a year ago, the believer today "shares in fact, if not in principle, the practical atheism of his entire culture...
...Poetry: Rosemary Deen, Marie Ponsot Correspondents: Brian Wicker (Great Britain...
...In a thin time, rather, it may represent the search for vertical depth, vital spirit, self-transcendence...
...Jackson has shown himself to be quite ready to do whatever would bring him attention, regardless of the consequences...
...President Reagan chose to react by welcoming Mr...
...Still I'm optimistic, perhaps more than this sounds...
...46 Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...foreign, $29...
...Amelia -- and that is not her real name -- works for a corporation that has extensive interactions with the government, and company protocol strongly discourages employees from putting their personal political opinions in print...
...Even though I may be on welfare, I am somebody,' Jesse Jackson would shout to his crowds, and they would shout back...
...And it is this cultural vacancy which draws parallels from historians to the fourteenth century and the late Roman empire, out-of-joint, fluid periods in which, of course, mysticism flourished...
...The choice is not between a sterile, bureaucratic reason (with unquestioned goals) and myth...
...Jackson is a fine preacher...
...Jackson luck in doing good by doing well...
...This will come as news to John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and not less so to their modem counterparts, Buber, Hammarskjold, and Merton...
...27) New York Times Magazine...
...Jackson is certainly right in pointing to past discriminatory practices...
...inoperative.' By his very candidacy, Jackson has given many young black Americans new reason to shout, 'I am somebody!' "All this to his credit...
...The reason is contained in the question itself: Hart, Askew, and Hollings are all ambitious politicians who make no special claims other than that they would be good presidents...
...The action may even have created new opportunities for peace in the region...
...After what Harold Washington and Wilson Goode and Mel King -- and Jesse Jackson -- have done to combat black feelings of powerlessness, this would represent a grave disservice to black America...
...Jackson is a self-confessed crusader, and he should he judged by how his management of the crusade will affect the people on whom his legitimacy rests...
...All this said, Mr...
...Jesse Jackson has fought against that tendency in liberalism, and I, for one, am grateful...
...It is a choice of which goalsetting myths we choose to live by -- since, whatever the case, live or perish by them we do...
...Many black leaders worry, and I do too, that Mr...
...One can hardly tell...
...If the Democratic party in 1968 was too closed to outside challenges, the Democratic party by 1976 was an organization so open to manipulation that an inexperienced outsider could seize the nomination, even while losing many late primaries...
...Jackson's mission and S~ria's action...
...It is the disintegration of this mythic complex so long taken for "reity" that, consciously or not, leaves so many feeling unanchored, adrift in a void...
...He has a grave responsibility to millions of Americans who want to shout 'I am somebody,' and mean it...
...they find the trend ominous...
...Instead of trying to heal the breach between blacks and Jews -- two groups that particularly know the meaning of suffering -- Mr...
...For as every card-bearing Enlightenment liberal knows (and scholars of a twelfth-century Renaissance apparently do not), real history began only in the seventeenth century...
...10016...
...Jackson himself holds the key to whether or not his crusade will serve the people for whom he claims to speak: black Americans in particular, the dispossessed more generally...
...Jackson will so personalize his cause that when he loses the Democratic nomination, as is likely, he will encourage many blacks -- particularly the young -- to lose heart and slip away from politics...
...Without question, Mr...
...v *, ~ . 2 ~ ' t ' , ' 6 v , _9 . ' . ' . IIBP" Correspondence 34 Editorials 35 The primary question: Jeremiah Baruch 38 What's needed in Lebanon: J. Bryan Hehir 41 Dying with Christian dignity: Hans K~ng 42 A new pastoral method of theology: James Tunstead Burtchaell 44 Verse: Le Roy Smith, Jr...
...Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome but cannot be considered or returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Jackson's bold triumph in winning the release of the prisoner of war Robert Goodman raises questions about just what Jackson the man and the candidate is up to...
...Look at the literary scene...
...Jackson flew off to embrace Yassir Arafat...
...Special two-year rate: U.S., $43...
...Canada, $47...
...Indeed, such a vacuum is perilous...
...I also wonder about Mr...
...And the notion that an individual can accomplish someCommonweal: 36 thing that a government cannot has much appeal, especially to a country as individualist as ours...
...Take, for sample, Kathieen Agena, a contributing editor of Partisan Review, writing in a recent (Nov...
...Our desire for fantasy and science fiction," went the magazine's introductory caption," . . . is scary...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $24...
...The Reverend Jackson has made clear that believing we are responsible for ourselves does not preclude being responsible for each other...
...bank...
...She sent us the following: "Jesse Jackson has, in a very short time, made himself the most interesting person -- and issue -- in the 1984 presidential election...
...Ours is not a time for wishful thinking grounded in shopworn assumptions...
...His performance during the conflict between blacks and Jews following Andrew Young's resignation as UN ambassador was certainly no example of responsibility...
...Jackson's readiness to attack the rules of the Democratic party and to criticize the leaders of organized labor...
...Agena brands with suspicion...
...But the Democrats have been right in trying to give more influence to elected political leaders -- those regularly accountable to the people -- and in giving a premium to better-known and more tested candidates...
...America's policy in the Middle East has many shortcomings, but surely our government's desire to have the Syrian regime withdraw its troops from Lebanon is not one of them...
...I will give him this: Mr...
...even Norman Mailer, with Egyptian Evenings, is on to it...
...For over a decade now, a cultural trend has been abroad in the land...
...Yet the re-enchantment of the cosmos cannot be dismissed by the hackneyed dogma that an appreciation of myth or the mystic path is evidence of moral weakness or a refusal to grow up...
...Agena probably objects to...
...The fact is that for all these jay-walkers of hard edges, the figure of an angel with blazing sword barred a return to the kind of primordial unity Ms...
...Jesse Jackson, on the other hand, has: never held public office and has been explicit in saying that his candidacy has been propelled by the welcome and extraordinary rise in black political participation...
...Individuals are responsible for their own actions: they make their own history, even if they do so within circumstances not of their own choosing...
...Jackson -- and many, many workaday black politicians -- have been working hard to make that conservative canard (dare I use a Nixonian term...
...Her examples of the trend range across the cultural landscape: space-age fairy tales like Star Wars, the Tolkien trilogy, Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels, Doris Lessing's science fiction and Joyce Carol Oates's romances, the so-called NeoRomantic movement in music and the representational style of Neo-ffxpressionism in painting, finally ending up with the tendency of even mainline religion to reemphasize biblical imagery and story...
...The "Dune" books are filled with wonders, but the wonders are those of dualistic 27 January 1984:35 consciousness's run-away paranoia...
...Jackson has allowed himself to be used by the Syrian government -- or worse, tried to use a foreign power to pursue his own interests in American politics...
...I suspect his real reason for opposing them is that they make Jesse Jackson's life more difficult...
...Jackson is not an ideologue opposed to unions on principle...
...Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky, Sheila Tanksley Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Jackson is one of those people desfined to arouse strong feelings, and I confess to having such feelings -- in both directions...
...he is a presidential candidate angry at the unions for supporting Walter Mondale...
...Jackson seemed ready to play Syria's game, to make Syrian President Assad -a man responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of his own citizens -- look like a humanitarian...
...It is one thing to fear that Han Solo's macho theatrics and Luke Skywalker's plastic naivet~ disguise the Manicheanism that currently governs Washington's relations with Moscow...
...Under the new rules, the primaries remain paramount...
...Canada, $26...
...Talking politics with our friend Amelia is always bracing...
Vol. 111 • January 1984 • No. 2
