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MOVING AHEAD TO SPIRITUAL HEALTH: DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS FOR TRIAGE, RECOVERY, AND RECONCILIATION OF DYSFUNCTIONAL CONGREGATIONS
Get PDFThis project set out to identify a process of triage, recovery, and reconciliation for congregations that have experienced dysfunctional behavior by either the clerical leadership of a church or members of the congregation, or both. The process was gleaned from tools that helped me as rector of the Church of the Ascension, which had experienced the dysfunctional behavior of sexual impropriety by the previous rector and the church secretary. I also bring to bear evaluation tools that were developed during my time on the Diocese of Central Florida’s Congregational Development Commission during a period from 2007 until 2011.
These tools include the use of family systems theory, an awareness of conflict theory as it pertains to broken trust, and the impact that shame and contempt have on relationships, especially relationships within a faith community. It also includes a congregational development readiness survey that I devised. This survey evaluates topics such as: church finance, worship attendance, fellowship practices, leadership training, children and youth participation, social outreach, and staffing. These tools help reveal a trajectory of decisions and actions that eventually lead to breakdown within the community. This evaluation process begins to paint a picture that shows who in that community was affected and the spiritual and emotional consequences that have occurred. Once this history has been revealed, a pathway toward reconciliation can be plotted. Nevertheless, any reconciliation depends on the willingness of those involved to own their part in what occurred, and to be willing to repent and be reconciled to one another and to God. Churches that experience the consequences of dysfunctional behavior lose sight of the missio Dei. With this loss of focus, resources that could be used for the spreading of the gospel, for caring for the poor, and for other helpful opportunities are diverted or wasted.
A section of this project shares a list of traits from an Alban Institute study of congregations that have been through congregational dysfunction, have successfully navigated their issues, and have been able to move to healing. It is my hope that this list of traits can also be used in preventive care for congregations that might be heading toward dysfunction. If leaders, both clergy and lay, can become aware of these possible pitfalls, then the impact of these behaviors can be minimized and the church can put more energy toward the missio Dei.
In this project I present three case studies, which represent different types of behavioral dysfunction. It is my hope that these can be helpful examples to those who are in leadership. As leaders become aware of the spiritual, relational, and emotional traps that can affect any faith community, perhaps they can avoid these dangers
QOHELET: POSTCOLONIAL SOLOMON
No full textWithout question, the book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most unusual books in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Noted for its skepticism about life, knowledge, wisdom, and a host of other topics, Ecclesiastes has been examined particularly in scholarship on account of the voices in the text. The voice of the main speaker, Qohelet, and the editors/writers of Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 have been the subject of a great deal of the scholarship. This thesis argues that the book of Ecclesiastes, written in the third century BCE in Ptolemaic Judah, assumes the voice of Solomon, one of Israel’s legendary monarchs. The book itself is a critique of Solomon and the nature of kingship, and the unusual feature of the text is that it draws imaginatively on this master figure of wisdom. Qohelet, the speaker in the text, purposefully invites us to consider the legendary figure of wisdom speaking to a third-century BCE audience in Judah. In that way, Solomon/Qohelet speaks to a new age—an age where the Ptolemies have established a kind of control in Judah and are working through local officials to enforce their policies, collect their taxes, and hold the power of rule. Writing in the Second Temple period, Qohelet takes one of Israel’s most intriguing figures: Solomon. In one sense, Qohelet becomes a mimic—a particular designation of postcolonial criticism—of the kind of ruler that Judah is currently facing.
The historical Solomon’s intriguing qualities had been noted by the Deuteronomistic Historian and Chronicler as one whose own colonial practices in the building of the Temple and empire upon the backs of the people are a situation similar to slavery. Qohelet revalues the work of that legendary Solomon through mimic of the voice as leading to הבל (vanity or futility). In that way the Solomon of the past not only has a reconfigured heritage, but in the mouth of Qohelet, Solomon can provide suggestions for survival, self-monitoring, and quiet resistance that will promote the well-being of those in third-century Ptolemaic Judah.
The introduction to this thesis not only sets forth the assertion about the role of Qoheletian discourse, but also suggests how postcolonial criticism can provide a vital new understanding of this text. Qohelet himself is a kind of proto-postcolonial writer. He does provide suggestions for survival in this world. This thesis suggests that Qohelet provides the whispers toward a postcolonial future that remains unrealized in the text. Much of that activity would have to wait until additional force from outside was applied during the second century BCE under Seleucid control.
Chapters one, two, and three examine sections of the book and trace those whispers of postcolonial understanding. Central to those efforts are understanding time and choice in action. Perhaps even more central are the ideas of feasting and the enjoyment of labor as resistance against colonial oppression. The enjoyment of labor and the insistence upon feasting suggest that the postcolonial age begins as a whisper in the mind long before it could become a reality after revolutionary activity. The conclusion reasserts the key points of the thesis and finds a global text synthesis of the ideas presented by Qohelet and the other two voices in the text.
In this thesis, pessimism is thus understood less as a loss of faith than as a coming to terms with the reality of the day. Qohelet through his refashioned Solomon provides the kind of wisdom for living necessary in a later time. Life will be uncertain, but he finds the strength to suggest the vital components for survival in the world of Ptolemaic Judah
Film Narratives in Preaching
Get PDFThis project challenges the assertion that sermon illustrations should be pared down to the shortest length possible. In a controlled study of 100 sermon listeners, film narratives that ranged between two to five minutes in length within a sermon text, were confirmed to be very effective in working to deepen an individual’s understanding of a selected scripture passage. This project demonstrated that short and long versions of the same narrative were both effective in working to communicate the meaning of the sermon. For this ser-mon project four distinct narrative sermons were composed. Each sermon deployed scenes from fairly well known mainstream movies. The following films: Dead Poets So-ciety, The Shawshank Redemption, Shadowlands, and A River Runs Through It, were each paired with a specific scripture text. Illustrations from film were purposely selected for their capacity to connect with listeners at a deep emotional level. Each of the four sermons was edited to produce two versions—one that deployed a short version of the film narrative (2-3 minutes in length) with the other utilizing a longer version (3-5 minutes in length) of the film narrative. In this way, the project was able to compare the reaction of listeners to sermons that were identical except for the illustration length. The eight narrative sermons used in this project ranged in length from about nine to thirteen minutes. For consistency, the project relied on sermons that were videotaped and then shown to viewing groups in in controlled setting. Each group watched a total of four sermons and answered a standardized set of questions after each sermon. Several questions ventured to quantify aspects of the listeners experience. In two of the four sermons, the shorter narrative was slightly more effective in “leading to a deepened understanding of the scripture or gospel passage.” In one case, the shorter narrative was significantly more effective that the longer version; and for one of the sermons the longer version was judged to be more effective. In the case where the longer sermon illustration was judged to be the most effective, the narrative material comprised almost 50% of the sermon length. This project clearly demonstrates that narrative sermons which utilize scenes from film can be very effective in assisting to communicate the meaning of the sermon. This was true even in instances where the film illustration was unfamiliar to the listener. By extension this projects demonstrates that narrative material from other sources including literature and journalism might be profitably used to advance homiletical purposes.Dr. Bill Brosen
From Piety to Reflection: The Purpose of Primers in Late Tudor England
Get PDFThe story of the 16th century was one of major changes for the English nation. On a national level, English government changed and yielded a more centralized and controlling state. On a cultural level, English society began to change as more and more people began to read and have the economic ability to buy reading material produced by printing presses. On a religious level, the English church, through many twists and turns, transformed from a Medieval Catholic institution with loyalty to Rome to a Protestant entity responsible to its monarch. But what did these changes mean for the English men and women who populated the towns and villages in
this still predominantly agricultural society? It is hard to answer this question because this segment of the population left few written records.
This thesis will consider a rare window into the lives of the insignificant laity by examining the change in primers, or Books of Hours. While it is true that not all of the English population could read these books, they were still produced on a mass scale to appeal to a broad audience. The first segment of this paper shall look at a group of primers produced in the reign of Mary Tudor. This section will show that while Mary’s regime sought to reestablish Roman Catholicism in England, the religion actually practiced through the use of these primers was not Medieval in nature nor was it like the Catholicism practiced on the continent in the 1550’s. The second segment of this paper will proceed to chart the disappearance of the primer tradition in Elizabeth’s reign. By the 1570’s English religion had changed to the point that the purpose and method of prayer had completely transformed. By examining Richard Daye’s A Booke of Christian Prayers and comparing it with the primer produced during Elizabeth’s first year as queen, it will be evident that the English church had completely changed and the English people had more or less accepted this
Being Good Stewards in Every Aspect of our Community
No full textI think that much work needs to be done in the area of complete stewardship. That is to think of Stewardship besides just in the financial aspect. I have found the very word stewardship is still very uncomfortable for many Christians, especially Episcopalians. We do not like to talk about money. If Stewardship is only viewed from a financial lens then naturally the word will take time getting used to hearing and embracing with a broader view, thus moving beyond only a money context. Yet data, including money, reveals an indication of any progress being made by a congregation in “Being Good Stewards in Every Aspect of Our Community.” This project integrates over the year, a broader understanding of stewardship in a parish.
I have spent the past year implementing a year round Stewardship program in my current church. The progress of the project has been steady. We have completed seven months to cover Stewardship through seven commission areas. During each month the congregation was exposed through teaching moments from both the leadership of the Vestry and a sermon by me. In addition, special events were often held to help further enhance the definition of what it means to be a good steward in one commission area at a time. Our church is organized with seven umbrella areas of ministry referred to as commissions. The seven commissions are: Service (Outreach), Worship, Evangelism, Education, Pastoral Care, Administration and Structures.
The first five commissions of Service, Worship, Evangelism, Education, and Pastoral Care, tie us closely to our Baptismal Covenant, thus holding us accountable, both individually and collectively, to living out those faithful vows we routinely make to God and each other. The last two commissions, Administration and Structure, focus on the realities of being an actual church, thus ensuring that the first five commissions are supported through the effective and responsible management of time, personnel, structures and money of the church. This S.W.E.E.P. model of Service, Worship, Evangelism, Education, and Pastoral Care is commonly used in churches.
The first section of this project will cover my strategy. The second section reflects the research of theological views of stewardship as a way to discern further what stewardship means through written resources of scholarship. This will be a chance to reflect even further on a broader view of stewardship to be developed in a parish. The third section will be examples of each month’s commission area offering and summary. I’ll provide excerpts from my sermons, Vestry members’ teaching blurbs in the monthly meetings, Vestry newsletter articles, and when relevant, a description of a corresponding special event. In the fourth section, I will describe my congregational context and a chance to examine the data to see if there is a change in actual sharing one’s gifts from one pledge campaign to the next and results from a survey following this project’s work. In the fifth and final section, I will analyze the project as presented in a broader definition to the congregation and how I plan to continue to use this concept in our future ministry.Dr. Bill Brosen
New Monasticism and the Parish: An Examination of the Intersection of Intentional Christian Communities and Congregations
Get PDFIn the early 1970s, the Rev. John Smith was called as rector of a small Episcopal parish in coastal Rhode Island, St. Peter’s by-the-Sea. St. Peter’s was a fairly typical mainline church at that time, with a handsome English-gothic building and pipe organ fostering a traditional worship and congregational life. The surrounding population consisted largely of middle class families, and the economy still relied heavily on the fishing industry. Decades later, after the fishing industry disappeared, this area would undergo a transition to a more upper-middle class populace, but members of St. Peter’s in this era were still, by-and-large, working class, plainspoken “Swamp Yankees.”
Fr. Smith had a personal interest in the charismatic movement that swept through American Christianity in the 1960s. He had been deeply formed by the Church of the Redeemer in Houston, which functioned as a hub for the charismatic movement within the Episcopal Church in that era, and he relocated to Rhode Island to help the movement’s efforts to expand. In 1971 he was called as Rector of St. Peter’s and began introducing some of the hallmarks of the charismatic movement to the life of the church, starting with changes to the worship customs, and soon extending to the formation of “households.” The idea behind these households flowed from the popularity of communal living in the decade preceding, much of which was not necessarily rooted in religious practice or tradition. The “household” movement popularized first at Redeemer and then practiced at churches like St. Peter’s was enormously attractive to a young generation that sought deeper, more meaningful, and committed lives. One of the household members, David Terry, describes the first time he witnessed one of the households, where he saw “lives that were visibly transformed by…a meaningful church community experience similar to the life of the early church as described in the Acts of the Apostles.” Other participants described wanting to go further in their spiritual life than standard, traditional worship practices allowed, and to “feel” more connected to God as much during the week as on Sundays. Intentional communal living with fellow Christians seemed to them a natural way to address their spiritual hunger.
The basic pattern of the households at St. Peter’s consisted of a married couple with young children who owned a home and who welcomed several single men or women, usually in young adulthood, to live with them. One of the households was formed in the former rectory adjacent to the church, and several more existed within a few miles of the church in the surrounding neighborhood. Fr. Smith and his wife led one household, and another consisted entirely of a transplanted household of six parishioners from Church of the Redeemer in Houston. At first the single residents came mostly from the nearby University of Rhode Island, though word-of-mouth quickly contributed to the addition of several more residents from around New England. David Terry reminisces,
Some were students or former students from local and other colleges. Others were recent college graduates, and some were trades people. Several people learned about the St. Peter’s community through contacts with community members and some through the network of prayer meetings and charismatic communities in Rhode Island and nearby Connecticut. A few were even hitchhikers picked up by community members.
At its height, there were six households, with most accommodating about ten residents and one being exclusively for single people. An appointed group of five men, led by the Rector, served as “elders” for the church and the households. They made assignments of individuals to specific households, functioned as arbiters in disputes, and provided overall leadership to the effort. Notably, the Vestry of St. Peter’s lacked formal authority or involvement, although they eventually became deeply involved, as will be seen.
Households were communal, in the sense that all things were held in common, but not explicitly monastic. There was no formalized Rule of Life, and the homeowners, who functioned as household leaders, had much leeway to make decisions and guide day-to-day life. “The guiding principle was obedience to the Lord,” reflects former household resident David Teschner, and beyond that simple principle there were no written rules. This spirit of flexibility and openness was grounded in the charismatic principles of the leadership, with its focus on the free movement of the Holy Spirit. As a result, some households created daily Bible study at mealtimes, while some gathered for lengthy, weekly prayer meetings. Some incorporated music, owing to the gifts of the residents, while others did not. Some households allotted all authority to the owners of the house to make decisions regarding chores, meals, and finances, though one house was eventually established exclusively for single people who had bristled at not being more equal participants in decision-making.
Importantly, all residents were a part of St. Peter’s, and this served as the strongest unifying element to the households. David Terry reflects,
These were not stand-alone communities or cells but were an integral part of the ministry at St. Peter’s. Members of households taught Sunday School, conducted youth group activities, and ran church summer day camp programs. Some household members were engaged in pastoral care ministries and conducted visits to the sick and dying.
Householders were expected to attend worship on Friday nights and Sunday mornings. They pledged sacrificially, leading to a substantial boost in the church’s finances, and a few of them were elected to the Vestry. This particular development was intended to deepen the connections between the households and the broader congregation, but it had the unintended effect of growing a sense of division within the church. There were those within the wider congregation who were not enthusiastic about the influx of new people, and resisted the stylistic changes in worship and spiritual practice. Meanwhile, there were some within the households who viewed themselves and their fellow residents as being truer, more complete Christians than the non-household members of St. Peter’s. “We saw ourselves as being the true church and…suffered from ‘spiritual pride’ in regard to the larger church,” David Teschner remembers. So it was that even as householders worked harder to support the ministry life of St. Peter’s, others felt that their church was being “taken away” from them. Perhaps inevitably, the Vestry became a place where those lines were drawn, and divisions between householders and non-householders expressed in voting and representation. The Rector’s support of the households ensured their presence, but resentment and mistrust simmered below the surface.
Eventually three factors led to the rapid decline and dissolution of the experiment with households at St. Peter’s. First, personal decisions by household members led to a few of the houses being closed. For example, a number of young adult residents decided to move out owing to job or educational relocation, a desire for more independence, as a result of getting married, or for some, simply a feeling that their spiritual needs were not being met. Likewise, a few of the homeowners also chose to end their sponsorship of households when they had additional children or tired of having several extra people in their home. The lure of “normal living” was compelling and eventually irresistible to many.
Second, the community became burdened by a lack of mission beyond the stability and spiritual lives of its own members. David Binns, who arrived at St. Peter’s late in the household era, writes, “St. Peter’s community died of a lack of mission. A lack of focus beyond ourselves and our faith. In other words a universal, ‘Why are we doing this?’ arose across the board, and the answer seemed to come from God: ‘I don’t know.’” Combined with a lack of core, guiding principles or rules, the absence of a clear mission meant that residents lacked structure or purpose. Entropy set in. When reflecting on lessons learned from the experience, David Terry suggests, “The mission or objective should be specifically spelled out. Unless the group is creating a monastic order or a contemplative prayer community, the household should have a specific outreach mission.”
Third, and perhaps most importantly, accusations of sexual impropriety by the rector, Fr. Smith, greatly damaged trust within the households. David Teschner remembers,
After the Rector was caught and our spiritual leader was found out to be doing things that were clearly not allowed, everyone lost confidence in him and the whole project collapsed. Most of us didn’t know the details except that something had gone horribly wrong. He stayed for two more years as nearly all the single people left and the households ceased to exist.
The effect of such accusations on congregations, whether confirmed or not, is well documented, and were expressed in the life of St. Peter’s over the subsequent two decades. The Vestry became further factionalized, as some knew the details of the accusation, while others only heard rumors and innuendo. Eventually Fr. Smith resigned, but not before the church began to crumble. In addition to the closure of all of the households, dozens of families left St. Peter’s in the succeeding few years, such that the church dwindled to a mere shadow of its former existence. Attendance and giving dried up, and St. Peter’s struggled to maintain operation. It reverted to mission status just a few years after, and did not attain parish status again in its diocese until the mid-1990s.
I was called as Rector of St. Peter’s in 2006, with no foreknowledge of this chapter in the history of the church. No information about it was presented in the parish profile, and no members of the search committee spoke about this aspect of the church’s history in our conversations together. This likely was not an intentionally malicious omission, as no former household residents remained in the church at the time of my call as rector, and the small handful of remaining parishioners who had been members during that that era did not volunteer any information about their experiences. It was not until I had served the church for over a year that a few stories began to trickle out, and I slowly became aware of this important period in St. Peter’s history. At first, it helped my understanding of the dynamics of the church, and at least partly explained my perception of a persistent distrust of my pastoral leadership and authority. The focus of this project is not related to family systems’ theory, or the writing of Edwin Friedman or Murray Bowen. However, from a family systems’ perspective the experiment with households, and more particularly, the way it ended, left a lasting legacy in the church’s “system.” I inherited a church that was suspicious of its rectors, with good reason.
Beyond the implications for my pastoral leadership of the parish, learning the story of the households connected with my personal interest in the new monastic movement. I have long been interested in intentional Christian communities, which are also commonly referred to as “new monastic” communities. I am a member of the Fellowship of St. John (an oblate of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Massachusetts), and I helped establish an Episcopal Service Corps house in Rhode Island during my time there. I have visited many intentional communities around the country, and read widely on the subject, even before beginning work on this project.
Yet the experience at St. Peter’s offered more than another example of intentional community; it crystallized the delicate and complicated nature of the intersection of intentional communities and traditional congregations. The experiment with households at St. Peter’s is a striking, if tragic, example of this intersection. Members of the households were members of the parish church, and sought to regularly impact its life and ministry in positive ways. The residents’ spiritual and common lives were largely grounded in the life of the households, yet they chose to remain formally connected to a church that was larger and broader than simply a conglomeration of the households. The nature of that relationship – how intentional Christian communities and congregations coexist – is the focus of this project.
In the first chapter, “The Roots of New Monasticism,” I will review three 20th century communities that serve as foundations of the current movement, and whose experiences inform my consideration of new monasticism’s intersection with congregational life. This history begins with Finkenwalde, Germany, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer briefly led a seminary of the Confessing Church that served as a sort of prototype community for the subsequent new monastic movement. Finkenwalde is the genesis of a definitive era, and despite its brief existence served as a creative inspiration for dozens upon dozens of others, including contemporaries such as George MacLeod in Iona, Scotland, and Roger Schütz at Taizé, France, each of which will also be considered in this chapter.
The examination of the communities of Finkenwalde, Iona, and Taizé will highlight their status as early adopters of the vision of new monasticism, but it will also explore the desire of these communities to serve as far more than cloistered centers of spiritual well-being for residents. To varying degrees, each of these three ancestors of the contemporary new monastic movement, two of which are still very much in existence today, anticipated and sought out relationship with the wider church. They were reinterpretations of ancient monastic patterns and practices, and one of the ways they embodied a fresh expression of traditional monasticism was to intentionally interact with, inform, and renew the life of the broader church. While none were formally in relationship with traditional congregations, nevertheless, their founders seemed to anticipate the development of such relationships in the way they created, wrote about, and spoke of their communities. Therefore, their stories inform the scope and aims of this project and provide helpful background to new, contemporary experiments where congregations and communities are much more explicitly connected.
After exploring those three foundational examples, in the second chapter, “The Rise of New Monasticism,” the project will pivot to an examination of the contemporary surge in popularity of intentional Christian communities. In the past 15-20 years, many communities have been planted around the country that seek to build upon the wisdom and experiences of Bonhoeffer at Finkenwalde, and offer a new generation of Christians an opportunity to cultivate deeper faith within a particularly intentional context. This movement has been well chronicled, and a number of its leaders have written articles and books reflecting on their experiences and offering insight into what they understand their communities to be about. Particular attention will be given to the leaders associated with a 2004 gathering of new monasticism, including Jonathan R. Wilson, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Shane Claiborne, whose writing and personal witness has made them into spokespeople for the modern movement. That gathering produced a document summarizing what they believe to be the “12 marks of a new monasticism,” which articulate the hallmarks of these contemporary communities, including the nature of the relationship with the wider, historic Church.
In the third chapter, “The Reality of New Monasticism,” I will examine three contemporary expressions of intentional Christian community.
• Community of Jesus (Cape Cod, Massachusetts) – an ecumenical Benedictine community of monks, nuns, and vowed “household members” including individuals and married couples. Founded in the late 1960s, today the community includes roughly 275 people, including many children.
• 77 Wachusett (Boston, Massachusetts) – an intentional Christian community created by members of The Crossing, an emergent Episcopal church in Boston. The house currently hosts six residents.
• Epworth Project (Dallas, Texas) – a collection of eight intentional Christian household communities around Dallas. The founders of Epworth are United Methodist Church (UMC) elders, and several of the houses are yoked to UMC churches.
Each of these three communities is quite distinct from the others in terms of setting, church affiliation, structure, and governance. Yet the witness of each contributes to a broader understanding of how churches and intentional communities coexist, and how they can (or could) organize their lives in ways that sustainably inform and inspire each other. For example, the Community of Jesus was founded by members of a local Episcopal church in the 1960s, but soon thereafter the community chose to become ecclesiastically independent. Yet today, several local neighbors of the community who are not vowed members choose to participate and support the life of the community, and it functions as their local church. Meanwhile, residents of 77 Wachusett, while comprised exclusively of members of a mission church of the Diocese of Massachusetts called The Crossing, have intentionally created a rule and manner of life that distinguishes the two entities in an effort to preserve autonomy and independence; and the communities of the Epworth Project are organized with a formally articulated, multi-faceted relationship to their churches next door. The intricacies and repercussions of these differing relationships with the churches of their founding will be further explored in later sections.
The final chapter will address the underlying questions regarding whether and how relationships between intentional communities and congregations can exist in a sustainable and mutually enriching way. In the case of St. Peter’s, the lifespan of the households was barely five years, but the goal of nearly all modern communities planted near, by, or with congregations is to endure far longer. But how? Large and important questions exist whenever this relationship is established, questions that do not exist when a community or a church exist independently of one another. For example:
• How do the two entities align their mission?
• Which should come first? Should the community be born out of the congregation, or the congregation born out of the community? Does the ordering of the origins of each even matter?
• How do members of the community participate in the life of the church, and vice versa? Are the authority structures for each connected, and if so, how do they overlap with each other?
• How can the community be prevented from becoming a “clique” or “faction” of the church, as occurred at St. Peter’s when some household members believed themselves to be the “true church,” and instead serve as a type of leaven for the broader congregation’s life, mission, and ministry?
• How do the church and community arrange their finances? How much does the church support the community?
These and other questions are extremely important to the sustainability of such a relationship. In this final section, I will offer reflections on these questions that grow out of the longer history of the movement and are grounded in the lived experience of modern communities. I will draw upon the writing of Bonhoeffer himself, who did his own reflecting on the nature of Christian community in Life Together, as well as numerous modern writers who are also critically engaging the existence and future of new monasticism, including how new monastic communities interact with the broader church. This concluding section will focus on the lessons and wisdom I have gleaned from the case studies, extensive reading on the subject, and personal reflection, though it comes with the full awareness of the limits of my knowledge: I have not lived this experience myself. I have no personal history of living in a new monastic community, be it healthy or not, and thus all my commentary and analysis is from the perspective of an admiring, curious outsider. Nevertheless, from that critical distance, I will offer my own voice to the broader conversation and suggest answers to the questions I posed above
Introduction: Quentin Tarantino and the Commodiofication of Independent Cinema
Get PDFIn 1992, the debut film of a little known writer/director out of Manhattan Beach rocked the Sundance film festival, quickly becoming the most talked about independent film of the year despite relatively modest success at the box office. That film was Reservoir Dogs and the man behind it (writing, acting, directing and producing the picture from scratch) was Quentin Tarantino. The film was the first in what would become an iconic canon, and in a growing field of talented indie filmmakers, Tarantino himself emerged as an exceptional but prototypical figure in a new wave of Hollywood production.
In the 1990s, American cinema took opposing elements of something film historians call ‘New Hollywood’2 productions and combined them to create a stylistic trend unique in the history of U.S. film. Instead of creating big budget, high concept movies and low budget, independent films separately, studios began to hire successful indie film artists for larger projects that could be marketed and sold on the same scale as a standard blockbuster. Through this, a commercial marriage was arranged between the more critically acclaimed alternative filmmaking and the more profitable style of high concept blockbusters.
By the early 1990s a shift in so called independent production became evident whether you argue that independent studios were assimilated by major media corporations as Justin Wyatt does in The Formation of ‘Major Independent’, or whether you argue that independent cinema fractured across a spectrum of large studio involvement and cannot be readily defined as King et al. argue in American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood and beyond. The production quality and methods noticeably changed for independent filmmakers in between the late 1980s and the year 2000, but what was responsible for this shift? Was it independent film festivals’ successful recruitment of great directors, or the work of of the auteurs themselves? Was it the product of clever marketing strategies from wannabe OldGuard studio execs or a result of technological innovations that allowed Americans to watch movies at home without ever having to set foot in a theater?
Much like Wyatt, I would argue that the main factors that affected the commodification of contemporary independent film can be found in the actions of studios both large and small. While film festivals’ rising prominence boosted critical reception for smaller budget movies and shifting technologies prompted a shift in ancillary markets (making box office earnings just part of the total profit a film could earn), both changes were relevant only through the deliberate involvement of businessminded studio executives.
However, unlike Wyatt, who explored the phenomenon through the tempestuous rise and fall of large independent studios such as Carolco and Orion in the 1980s, I would like to focus on how the career of an individual director working within the 1990s reflected the trends in contemporary independent cinema. Seeing as Quentin Tarantino’s was a seminal success story within the independent film explosion, I believe much can be explained by looking through his work, in examining how studio efforts guided his films into the public eye and in gauging the quality of their reception in both box offices and more critically by audiences.
To be sure, if film holds any significance for cultural or literary study, then it is my view that emergence and the hybrid successes of bigindie film producers like Tarantino deserve some carefully concerted scrutiny. It is through this firebrand lens that I hope to engage the major questions of contemporary American cinema as it turned the corner of a new millennium. But before we can understand this period of ‘indie’ Hollywood film we need to understand its context, which requires a foray into the history of independent film itself
Components of Transformation: Exploring Memory, Humility, and Sacrament To Find Resolution in the Novels of Walker Percy
Get PDFThe aim of this study is to investigate the nature of protagonistic transformation in the six novels of Walker Percy. Because Percy’s works of fiction are so notedly open-ended, and because the final spiritual, emotional, and existential condition of the main character so often eludes easy categorization, the task is a tall one, and this perhaps explains why Percy scholars who touch on the subject tend to do so peripherally as a component of a broader analysis. But Percy’s writings, both fiction and non-fiction, pointedly confront “the fate of the individual,” and thus a closer examination of the topic is overdue. Moreover, by exploring the transformations of
Percy’s protagonists, we cultivate a greater understanding of these novels’ enigmatic endings and a deeper sense of their meanings as a whole.
During my research, it became evident that temporal and thematic frameworks guide each of Percy’s main characters in their transformations. The temporal contains three distinct phases for the protagonist. The first is a kind of oblivious existence in which he merely goes through the motions of his life unaware of the possibility of finding import beyond the superficial or material. Next, after being unexpectedly jolted out of his existential languor, the protagonist confronts an unsustainable but critical period of seeking or wandering, a search for meaning which results in the collection of knowledge and experience. The final phase marks the transition into a new life of spiritual awareness, and even if this change is inchoate and hardly perceptible by the final page, it completes the transformation of the character within the confines of the text.
The thematic framework is tripartite as well—although the components occur in no particular sequence in the novels. One component is memory: the protagonist must confront a troubling or even previously unknown element of his past in order to move beyond its limitations into a new life absent the crippling burden of his personal history. Another is humility, namely in the sense that he must learn to put others or God before himself; he must abandon the solipsistic outlook that has characterized his existence heretofore. The final element is sacrament, which performs its greatest role at the end of the novel, serving to seal the transformation of the protagonist into a new understanding of his life and the world around him.
In the chapters that follow, I apply the temporal and thematic frameworks to each of Percy’s novels chronologically, proceeding in this order: The Moviegoer (1961), The Last Gentleman
(1966), Love in the Ruins (1971), Lancelot (1977), The Second Coming (1980), and The
Thanatos Syndrome (1987).
What we ultimately discover about Binx Bolling, Will Barrett, Tom More, and Lancelot Lamar is that they are more dynamic characters than is often presumed and, further, that these novels are more resolved than they are generally given credit for being. (Percy’s two sequels account for there being only four total protagonists.) Of course, endings are only beginnings in
Percy’s fiction, but while we leave these characters at a point of uncertainty at the end of each text, they are undoubtedly better equipped to lead fulfilling, purposeful, spiritual lives, as will be shown. Transformation occurs in these novels, even if ambiguously on the surface, and this capacity for change renders the prevailing sentiment of the books undeniably optimistic, at least in this reader’s eyes. And if we look closely enough, we may at least approach the mystery at the heart of Percy’s fiction that, as his characters also discover, remains necessarily just beyond our reach
The Franco-Prussian War: Its Impact on France and Germany, 1870-1914
Get PDFHistorian Niall Ferguson introduced his seminal work on the twentieth century by posing the question “Megalomaniacs may order men to invade Russia, but why do the men obey?” He then sought to answer this question over the course of the text. Unfortunately, his analysis focused on too late a period. In reality, the cultural and political conditions that fostered unparalleled levels of bloodshed in the twentieth century began before 1900. The 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the years that surrounded it were the more pertinent catalyst. This event initiated the environment and experiences that catapulted Europe into the previously unimaginable events of the twentieth century. Individuals obey orders, despite the dictates of reason or personal well-being, because personal experiences unite them into a group of unconscious or emotionally motivated actors. The Franco-Prussian War is an example of how places, events, and sentiments can create a unique sense of collective identity that drives seemingly irrational behavior. It happened in both France and Germany. These identities would become the cultural and political foundations that changed the world in the tumultuous twentieth century.
The political and cultural development of Europe is complex and highly interconnected, making helpful insights into specific events difficult. It is hard to distinguish where one era of history begins or ends. It is a challenge to separate the inherently complicated systems of national and ethnic identities defined by blood, borders, and collective experience. Despite these difficulties, historians have often sought to gain insight into how and why European nations and identities developed as they did. Any answers gained can offer unique insight into how nation-states, cultural loyalties, and historical conflicts alter international stability. It may seem as though the political and military conflicts of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe have been examined with a fine-tooth comb; however, modern trends in evaluating this time period have obscured important antecedents.
In recent years, the study of World War One and World War Two has been viewed as a single twentieth century conflict defined by causes dating to the turn of the century. A genuine understanding of twentieth century events cannot be obtained though if the era is isolated from the actions and events which preceded it. This perspective limits genuine comprehension. It misses how far earlier military events, cultural ideologies, and expressions of nationalism drove the instigators of both world wars. In particular, the acute animosity between France and Germany originated in the modern era with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Each nation created ideals of national superiority that conflicted with the other’s, dwelt on a cultural desire for retaliation known as Revanchism, and established patterns of nationalistic expansionism through unilateral military action. All of these habits defined the culture of both countries well before 1914 and motivated their belligerence in the twentieth century.Dr. Harold Goldber