Of Margins and Mangers, Continued
August 17th, 2006
Okay, you know how I said in my last posts that Esther de Waal quotes tend to crystallize whatever I’m thinking, writing, and talking about? I found yet more connections to her “margins” quote when reading Victor and Edith Turner’s 1978 classic Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture.
The Turners discuss how, in the later Middle Ages, the Church began to centralize control over pilgrimages, even making pilgrimages to Rome obligatory for archbishops and diocesan bishops. As the Turners describe it, “Structure, not communitas, is made central to this pilgrimage obligation.” However, they note, “one result of structuring the center is that communitas breaks out, like solar coronas, all over the peripheries, in spontaneously engendered pilgrimages, crackling with charisms [manifestations of grace].”
That not only makes me think of the de Waal quote, but of Browncoats vs. the Alliance in “Firefly”/Serenity as well–there’s certainly a strong sense of communitas on board Serenity.
Entry Filed under: Books, Uncategorized
5 Comments Add your own
1. K | August 17th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
hey, otter! can i beg you to bring some of your book list along on our upcoming pilgrimage? i need to read the turners for my exams this fall anyway…
on a random side note (not really), there were otters gamboling in one of my dreams last night.
cheers
2. Possum | August 17th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
I’m totally unfamiliar with these texts, though they sound really cool. But since I’m unfamiliar and don’t have access to the whole point, I’m just wondering, are the Turners understanding “structure” as an antonym to “communitas”? Why does the word “structure” seem to have such a negative connotation in the sentence you quoted? And how can you have community without some kind of structure? (A home, for instance, is a structure.)
3. theotter | August 17th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Yeah, I don’t think they’re opposing “structure” to “communitas,” and I wouldn’t say that “structure” has a thoroughly negative connotation for them either. I’ve only skimmed the book, but they mention several times that they’re devout Catholics and say that this has affected their work (they’re anthropologists), so they’re certainly not opposed to the structure they mention here (the Church).
Even the spontaneous kind of communitas they describe depends on the structure of the pilgrimage to bring folks together.
K, my fellow pilgrim, of course I’ll bring my book list! I ain’t dragging along many books, though. I’m so happy that you dreamed about otters. Gambol, gambol.
4. Pop Otter | August 18th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
The comments on structure and communitas remind me of a related discussion.
It was once popular in modernist academic Bible study to contrast early charismatic spontaneity and later institutional structure. This was done in the imagined developmental histories of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The distinction does not hold up in either case. For instance, 1 and 2 Chronicles is among the later and more institutional of Old Testament writings, and the place for charismatic spontaneity is evident frequently within its accounts. Likewise, Acts is considered among the more institutional of the New Testament writings, but again one cannot find greater biblical testimony to the ongoing role of charismatic spontaneity than in this book. The writings attributed to John are among the latest New Testament writings, and they also reserve a strong role for immediate prophetic inspiration alongside whatever traces of institutional structure one may find in them.
Neither the biblical data nor the history of religious development in general will support this distinction between early spontaneity and later structure as a general rule. To be sure, some kinds of spontaneity and some kinds of structure do at times come into tension, and sometimes structures accumulate to the point that they inhibit spontaneity, but charismatic spontaneity and institutional structure are not necessarily at opposite ends of some continuum, nor is one more primitive and the other more advanced. They exist side-by-side in the beginning, at the high point, and in the decline of religious movements. Sometimes they are complementary. Indeed, structure can provide the boundaries within which spontaneity can thrive.
After the charismatic movement had its effect among Roman Catholics in the 1960’s through 1980’s, I heard one non-charismatic Protestant complain that it was getting so that you could hardly tell the Catholics from the Pentecostals.
It was apparently confusing the stereotypes by which he distinguished himself from each movement.
5. theotter | August 18th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Pop Otter, you used an emoticon! I’m so proud of you!
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