{"id":1276,"date":"2013-04-10T09:42:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T13:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1276"},"modified":"2013-04-10T09:44:43","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T13:44:43","slug":"london-calling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1276","title":{"rendered":"London Calling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"the_clash\"<\/a>

There will (probably) be no guitar-smashing in “War and the Christian Tradition,” but I encourage DDS students to sign up for it anyway.<\/p><\/div>\n

The English talking heads are dignifiedly divided on the legacy of Lady Iron. \u00a0I skipped the big movie about her, choosing instead to replay favorite scenes from other movies (Billy Elliot, Brassed Off, The Full Monty) and to hula hoop to The Clash\u2019s \u201cLondon Calling.\u201d \u00a0I recommend this intricate scene<\/a>\u00a0from Billy Elliot, set to \u201cLondon Calling,\u201d which draws me like a bee to blackstrap molasses to listen always again to \u201cClampdown.\u201d \u00a0(A writer for Mother Jones posted this related gem<\/a>.) Steve Nallon, a Thatcher impersonator from the popular English show \u00a0“Spitting Image<\/a>\u201d said on this morning\u2019s BBC that she was fun to mimic because she was so straight forward . \u00a0She was brutally direct about the destruction going on under her name.<\/p>\n

A line from The Clash\u2019s \u201cClampdown\u201d inspires me as I slog through my reading list for a class on war (next fall). \u00a0\u201cWe will teach our twisted speech, to the young believers. \u00a0We will train our blue-eyed men to be young believers \u00a0. . .\u201d \u00a0Stanley Hauerwas has graciously passed me his baton, and I\u2019ve decided to affix what had become his class to a conceptual guide he gave me the first time we met, around about 1993. \u00a0I visited a seminar he was teaching on language, I believe, and he said something along the lines of \u201cthe best Christian theologians can hope for is to expose the lies of political speech.\u201d \u00a0So, this class is not going to be an analytic back and forth on just war and pacifism. \u00a0It is going to be a class on war, twisted speech, and young believers. \u00a0I want to think through the ways that blue-eyed and brown-eyed men and women in the U.S. have been trained to live always already in the ways of war. \u00a0War is a LIE through which we live, and move, and have our being. \u00a0If you think this is just a right-leaning problem, see dear old \u201cMother Jones\u201d herself publishing this crap<\/a>, normalizing drone strikes as just another topic for amiable conversation.<\/p>\n

The ancient, anchoring text for the course is Augustine\u2019s On Lying<\/a>,\u00a0and the requisite inkling touchstone is \u201cThe Inner Ring<\/a>,\u201d by C.S. Lewis. \u00a0Thanks to Isaac Villegas (thanks, Isaac!) I chose Chris Huebner\u2019s A Precarious Peace<\/a>\u00a0and Paul Virilio\u2019s Pure War<\/a> \u00a0(which inspired that Acts\/liturgical twist above). \u00a0\u00a0Thanks to wonderful Stan Goff, we will read Sex and War, alongside his posts on Holy Week<\/a>. \u00a0In memory of my paternal grandfather, who barely survived the Pacific War, we will read John Dower\u2019s meticulous coverage of race, propaganda, and war in War Without Mercy<\/a>, and, in honor of a contemporary, beloved family member, who gave me the i-tunes copy of this for my birthday, we will read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man<\/a>. \u00a0We will also read On Killing<\/a>, a classic by Dave Grossman, and Chris Hedges’\u00a0War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning<\/a>. \u00a0(I love that I just had to watch a jell-o PB and J cupcake advertisement to see that video . . . \u00a0Meanwhile, why haven\u2019t we had Chris Hedges come to speak at Duke Divinity yet?)<\/p>\n

Augustine teaches in that short essay that lying matters, the little lies and the BIG LIES. \u00a0But many young Christians in the U.S. have been taught to respect authority to the point of obeisance, and ignorance. \u00a0I have suggested in the past that you can divide Duke students by asking who has cleaned their own toilet, who has cleaned someone else\u2019s toilet, and who has never cleaned a toilet. \u00a0(No, not divide them like sheep and goats. \u00a0Some of my favorite people on the planet were once children for whom I was a nanny on the Gold Coast, darn it. \u00a0I just mean divide them in terms of their perspective on various things not obviously related to toilets.) \u00a0Wikileaks is a new dividing line, as young adults sort through what they think of Bradley Manning<\/a>, whose trial SHOULD be on the front page at your local grocery line, instead of images of a Kardashian booty . \u00a0(So much wrong with that, don\u2019t know where to start \u2013 lay off her happily pregnant big booty, pay attention to his torture and silencing, might be a beginning.) \u00a0At his best, Stanley Hauerwas taught me that it is a work of love to speak the truth to someone. \u00a0For two brief favorites, see him here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>. \u00a0It is my prayer that I can begin to teach \u201cHauerwas\u2019s\u201d war class in a way that encourages truth-tellers, whether they be gentle, or loud, mischievous or mathematical.<\/p>\n

Which takes me back to London. \u00a0I would suggest that the most faithful way to honor the death of Lady Iron is to join Desmond Tutu, who honors Jesus by telling another British Prime Minister to embrace his own truth regarding war, and to do it today, while he is still alive<\/a>. \u00a0And if you don\u2019t go in for the whole Jesus thing, do it for Joe Strummer (obm).<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The English talking heads are dignifiedly divided on the legacy of Lady Iron. \u00a0I skipped the big movie about her, choosing instead to replay favorite scenes from other movies (Billy Elliot, Brassed Off, The Full Monty) and to hula hoop to The Clash\u2019s \u201cLondon Calling.\u201d \u00a0I recommend this intricate scene\u00a0from Billy Elliot, set to \u201cLondon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,101],"tags":[131,129,127,132,130,128],"class_list":["post-1276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-theology-2","tag-courses","tag-duke-divinity-school","tag-margaret-thatcher","tag-nonviolence","tag-stanley-hauerwas","tag-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-kA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1276"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1283,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions\/1283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}