Zizek on Christianity

[Russell Grinker]

In this regard I recommend Mark Ryan's article "Neither god nor man" in the
current issue of LM.  Ryan argues that the established church has
capitulated to new age ideas in a vain attempt to increase its popularity.
The consequence of this is a "downgrading of humanity" removing even the
traditionally qualified concept of free will (I assume this is what Zizek is
talking about) of traditional church doctrine.  Ryan claims: "If
Christianity puts a limit on man's moral nature, however, New Age religion
dispenses with it altogether.  To the extent that there is a question of
man, it is a purely practical one of waste disposal, of how to minimise the
polluting impact of man on his environment - how to respect the Earth...The
New Age is a slave religion in which the only obligation on man is to adapt
to his environment.  Man cannot have a moral dimension because he does not
exist as a moral subject independently of his environment."

Ryan concludes that while generations of atheists and free thinkers assumed
that Christianity "would eventually collapse under the pressures of reason
and freedom..." it is a shocking sign of the times we live in that
"...instead it is metamorphosing into a form so primitive as to make its
earlier contributions to man's spiritual life look rich and profound".

LM's website is: www.informinc.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Date: Sunday, January 09, 2000 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: Zizek on Christianity


>Doug:
>>>Zizek apparently thinks that he can fight obscurantism with more
>>>obscurantism....
>>
>>Just so happened that I met up with Zizek, and had a chance to ask
>>him about the book. He vigorously denied that it's an apology for
>>obscurantism. He characterizes it as his "most Leninist book yet."
>>What he finds valuable in Christianity is its break from other
>>religions - those that emphasize fate, one's rightful position in a
>>great hierarchical chain - and its emphasis on rebirth, which to
>>secularists, means the possibility of revolution. He also advised you
>>to be on the lookout for his essay on Stalin appearing in the
>>forthcoming NLR.
>
>I didn't grow up with any religion, so neither fate nor rebirth resonates
>with me.  I have never been a right-winger in my life, unlike you and Lou,
>so the idea of being "born again" doesn't have a personal meaning for me
>either.
>
>Yoshie
>
>