Abstract
This article posits that the dire realities associated with the Anthropocene Era will increase the presence of indecent societies that humiliate Others while securing the well-being of privileged groups. Within the society, humiliation, which is carried out by various political, social, and economic apparatuses, leads to civic carelessness and perfidy that accompanies both the foreclosure of the space of appearances, wherein people speak and act together, and the diminution of Others’ self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect. It is argued that indecent societies depend on sick souls who seek to retain social, political, and economic privileges that depend on the illusions of their superiority and the inferiority of humiliated Others. At the same time, humiliated Others, who believe in and accept their inferiority, are understood as sick souls. Healthy souls vis-à-vis the looming realities of the Anthropocene and indecent societies are depicted in terms of inoperativity or the weak messianic force of God, wherein healthy individuals and groups are not captive to and do not operate out of the illusions of superiority and inferiority, but instead recognize the unfathomableness of Others (human and otherwise). This means that Others are recognized in their suchness, which attends mutual self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence that are necessary for speaking and acting together vis-à-vis the space of appearances. This slight adjustment renders the beliefs of indecent societies inoperative, making possible both human agency that cares for human beings in their suchness and ecological agency that cares for the habitat and all its creatures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
It is neither possible nor necessary to summarize the discourse about care here. That said, let me rush to provide Daniel Engster’s (2007) definition of care (see also Hamington 2004; Noddings 1984; Robinson 1999, 2011; Tronto 1993, 2013), before offering an emended version that considers pastoral perspectives. Engster, after surveying care theory literature, offers his own definition: care is “everything we do to help individuals meet their vital biological needs, develop or maintain their basic capabilities, and avoid or alleviate unnecessary or unwanted pain and suffering, so that they can survive, develop, and function in society” (p. 28). The strengths and limitations of Engster’s view have been addressed elsewhere (LaMothe 2017), but let’s push ahead to a modified definition that includes core pastoral theological principles. Care is everything we do to help individuals, families, communities, and societies to (1) meet vital biological, psychosocial, and existential or spiritual needs of individuals, families, and communities, (2) develop or maintain basic capabilities with the aim of human flourishing, (3) facilitate participation in the polis, and (4) maintain a habitable environment for all (LaMothe 2018, p. 8). The foundation of caring attitudes and behaviors is personal recognition that is theologically grounded in the notions of imago dei and ecclesia, which means that personal recognition is initially rooted in familial/communal relations. I add that both care and pastoral care are political concepts, which necessarily involve shared critical and constructive reflection on how the structures (and their accompanying narratives and practices) of the state, governing authorities, and non-state organizations (e.g., businesses, labor unions, religious and secular communities, etc.) and actors meet or fail to meet the four features of this definition of care.
I say these are illusions for two reasons. First, there is nothing in nature that confirms human superiority or the superiority of particular human groups. The belief in superiority is intrinsic and not extrinsic, which means it is entirely a human construction. Second, because it is a belief it requires ongoing institutional and narrative support to have the “sense” of reality. The illusions must be continually manufactured to take on the aura of fact.
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_112918/. Accessed 6 June 2019.
Carl Schmitt, a noted 20th-century political jurist, argued that the sovereign is “he who decides on the exception” (in Brown 2014, p. 83). As a threshold figure, the sovereign “is both the sign of the rule and the jurisdiction of law, and supervenes the law” (Brown 2014, p. 59). What is interesting and important here is that the sovereign possesses the supreme (legal) authority to set aside laws, because s/he is given the legal power to decide on the exception. Add to this the idea that the state of exception is at play in the very creation of the law itself. Put another way, the establishment of the law already reveals the state of exception. I stress here that the state of exception does not mean the law is invalid, but rather that in the exception, the law simply is not applicable. The law remains in effect, but is set aside (p. 83). That is, “it is the sovereign who, insofar as he decides on the state of exception, has the power to decide which life may be killed without the commission of homicide” (Agamben 1998, p. 142). Slaves would be included in this category of exception.
Agamben, Prozorov (2014) claims, does not “affirm inertia, inactivity or apraxia…but a form of praxis that is devoid of any telos or task, does not realize any essence and does not correspond to any nature” (p.33). God emptying Godself is an action of infinite and indeterminate care. To amend Prozorov’s comment, inoperativity vis-à-vis the incarnation or God emptying Godself is indeterminate care (like Adorno’s tenderness), wherein telos or purpose are secondary.
References
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life, D. Heller-Roazen (Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, G. (2013). The coming community. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow. New York: The New Press.
Anderson, C. (2016). White rage. New York: Bloomsbury.
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baldwin, J. (1984). Notes of a native son. Boston, MA: Beacon.
Baldwin, J. (1990/1963). The fire next time. New York, NY: The Dial Press.
Baptist, E. (2014). The half has never been told: Slavery and the making of American capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
Benjamin, W. (1968). Illuminations. New York, NY: Schocken Books.
Bouston, L., Yanguas, M, Kahn, M. & Rhode, P. (2017). Natural disasters by location: Rich leave and poor get poorer. Scientific America, 2 July, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/natural-disasters-by-location-rich-leave-and-poor-get-poorer/.
Brown, W. (2014). Walled states, waning sovereignty. New York: Zone Books.
Coates, T. (2015). Between the world and me. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau.
Colebrook, C., & Maxwell, J. (2016). Agamben. New York, NY: Polity Press.
Crossan, J. (1995). Jesus: A revolutionary biography. New York: HarperOne.
Crossan, J. (2007). God and empire. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Davenport, C. (2014). Pentagon signals security risks of climate change. New York Times, October 13, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/pentagon-says-global-warming-presents-immediate-security-threat.html?_r=1. Accessed 24 June 2019.
Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted. New York: Crown Publishers.
Engster, D. (2007). The heart of justice: Care ethics and political theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition?. New York: Verso Books.
Fraser, N., & Jaeggi, R. (2018). Capitalism: A conversation in critical theory. New York, NY: Polity Press.
Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
Harman, C. (2017). A people’s history of the world. New York: Verso.
Hedges, C., & Sacco, J. (2012). Days of destruction, days of revolt. New York: Nations Books.
Honneth, A. (1995). The struggle for recognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horsley, R. (2003). Jesus and empire. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Kolbert, E. (2014). The sixth extinction: An unnatural history. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Krajicek, D. (2016). 7 toxic assaults on communities of color besides Flint. Alternet, https://www.alternet.org/2016/01/7-toxic-assaults-communities-color-besides-flint-dirty-racial-politics-pollution/. Accessed 12 Sept 2019.
LaMothe, R. (2003). Cultural contributions to pride: The vicissitudes of identification, Valuation, and the refusal to surrender. Free Associations, 10(3), 331–351.
LaMothe, R. (2007). Sloth and pastoral counseling. The Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 9(2), 2–26.
LaMothe, R. (2017). Care of souls, care of polis: Toward a political pastoral theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
LaMothe, R. (2018). Pastoral reflections on global citizenship: Framing the political in terms of care, faith, and community. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Macmurray, J. (1991/1961). Person in relation. London: Humanities Press International.
Margalit, A. (1996). The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moore, J. (2016). Name the system! Anthropocene & the capitalocene alternative. https://jasonwmoore.wordpress.com/tag/capitalocene/. Accessed 25 June 2019.
Niebuhr, H. R. (1941). The meaning of revelation. New York: Collier Books.
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Northcott, M. (2014). A political theology of climate change. London, UK: SPCK.
Parenti, C. (2011). Tropic of chaos: Climate change and the new geography of violence. New York: Nation Books.
Plessner, H. (2018/1931). Political anthropology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Prozorov, S. (2014). Agamben and politics. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Robinson, F. (1999). Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory, and international relations. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Robinson, F. (2011). The ethics of care: A feminist approach to human security. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Soss, J., Fording, R., & Sanford, S. (2011). Disciplining the poor: Neoliberal paternalism and the persistent power of race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Taylor, M. (2015). The executed God: The way of the cross in lockdown America. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge Press.
Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Ugilt, R. (2014). Giorgi Agamben: Political philosophy. Tirril Hall, CA: Humanities E-books.
Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wright, R. (1991). Black boy. New York, NY: Library of America.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
LaMothe, R. An Indecent Society, Sick Souls, and the Weak Messianic Force of God: A Reflection on Religious Health in the Anthropocene Era. J Relig Health 59, 3037–3054 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01080-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01080-x