McGrath, Gramsci, and the Future of Christianity
In his work entitled The Future of Christianity1 Alister E. McGrath focuses on the major paths and trends of Christianity in the twentieth century as a background for determining what may lay in store for the church, globally considered, in the near future. His analysis deals with the effects of Enlightenment thought on theology and lays out a method of appropriate reaction. For this he draws from the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. This proposal has appealing aspects and yet sounds suspicious for drawing upon the Marxist theorist. In this essay, I hope to show you some of the worthy features while pointing to a better role model from Church history.
McGrath’s plan involves a call to return to the organic relationship between Christianity theology and everyday Christian life. McGrath’s strategy exhibits close parallels to the work of Gregory the Great which led to the massive pagan conversions of the sixth century, and thus the Gramscism proves very similar to Gregorism. What was once very traditional, comes across now as quite revolutionary. The great expansion of Christianity into Third World countries has created a vast population of Christians looking to the West for theological resources. For McGrath, Western theology will have to undergo a Gramscian—and Gregorian—“revolution” in order to minister to that growing portion of worldwide Christianity.
The Failure of Traditional Academia
Central to McGrath’s analysis is the idea that academic theology in the western world has failed. In its desire to become respectable, academic theology has allied itself more with the intellectual background of the Enlightenment and with logical positivism.2 Gorky wrote,
Every quotation of a believer is easily countered with dozens of theological quotations which contradict it. We cannot do without an edition of the Bible with critical commentaries of the Tübingen school and books on criticism of the biblical texts, which could bring a very useful confusion into the minds of believers.3
McGrath argues that this process has taken place in general (though not by Soviet conspiracy) throughout modern academia. The reliance upon enlightenment methods and ideas has produced confusion indeed: confusion among intellectuals as to the real place of theology, and confusion among the laity as to the probability that academia has anything worthwhile to offer.
This situation creates many problems for theology. McGrath notes two that are the most central and most troublesome:
1 Theology becomes so concerned with intellectual intricacies that it loses sight of the relational aspects of the Christian faith.
2 The western academic demand that scholarship should be detached and disinterested leads to a weakening of the link between theology and prayer.4
The import of both of these problems is that, “The academic study of theology has forced an artificial division between theology and spirituality.”5 This, McGrath argues, represents a stark departure from the pursuit of theology prior to the eighteenth century. Theologians such as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Bellarmine, Calvin to name a few, all “saw no tension between the intellectual exploration of the Christian faith and its practical outworking in spirituality, preaching, ministry and pastoral care.”6 Theologians of this era “were passionately committed to a holistic vision of Christian life, embracing heart and mind, imaginations and emotions.”7 Today, however, is a different story. Theology is now a professionalized academic discipline,8 far removed from the life of the everyday believer; the ivory tower has stolen the study of God from the cathedral. This is because, “The Enlightenment held that any form of religious commitment was an obstacle to objectivity, and thus cultivated the idea of religious neutrality in theology.”9
This Enlightenment paradigm, McGrath argues, is outdated and often discredited, but still has vestiges in modern academia. It has also had a devastating effect on many churches, most particularly those of mainline Protestantism.10 The radical independence of the academy from the church would not be so bad were it not for the corruption in academia, which then flows into the discipline of theology. McGrath says of such independence, “This would be fine if the standards of the academy were scholarly excellence. But it is rather more complicated and convoluted than that, as anyone who has worked in modern academia will realize.”11 Historian and social critic Herbert Schlossberg noted the same problem, referring to the novels of C. P. Snow as an illustration of “the rapacity, hatred, and back-stabbing that are endemic in academic and bureaucratic settings.”12
In light of the failure of Enlightenment thought in both the academy and the Church, it is time, McGrath argues, for a change in the approach to theological studies—a change that will bridge the gulfs between academy and church, theology and spirituality, leader and layman.
The Organic Theologian
McGrath’s proposal for change is based upon the work of Antonio Gramsci who provided a critique and a modification to Marxist theory. Marx had argued that the way in which humans respond to their materialistic needs determines everything else in society—all of human religion, ideology, beliefs, etc.13 Thus religion and philosophy are nothing more than products of material society. The latter Marx called “infrastructure” and the former “superstructure.” In Marxist analysis, superstructure is nearly ethereal and varies depending upon the infrastructure below it. Thus, “events in the material world bring about corresponding changes in the intellectual world.”14
Gramsci altered this understanding by allowing for a much greater role to be played by ideology. Gramsci argued that the relationship between material life and philosophical life is more symbiotic than Marx had said, and that the world of ideas could stimulate thought and beliefs in and of itself. With this understanding he drew a distinction between the direct coercion of a society through material changes (“domination”) and the indirect control of a society through manipulation of its ideas and consent (“hegemony”).15 McGrath assesses,
For Gramsci, it was possible to manipulate the ideas of a society in such a way that the culture, ideas and morality of its dominant groups come to appear as the natural order of things, despite the fact that these values have been created in order to justify the interests of the dominant groups.16
This means that all of the institutions of superstructure play an important role in the development of society—all forms of media and journalism, education, religion and socialization become collaborative and prescriptive for the consciousness of society. It also means—and this is the important point for McGrath—that intellectuals can take the forefront in creating a “counter-hegemony” to oppose the prevailing and dominant notions of a given society.
Central to Gramsci’s “counter-hegemony” is his two categories of intellectuals: traditional and organic. Traditional intellectuals regard themselves as independent from and transcendent above society. In this model academia becomes isolated and academics “collude with the ethos of the academic establishment.”17 Traditional academia is an elitist model. Over against this Gramsci presents the organic intellectual. This type arises from society itself, is a product of society and represents the ideas, desires and ethos of that people. The organic intellectual fills the “critical social role of being their thinking and organizing element.”18 They, “emerge within that community and give intellectual rigor and substance to its basic beliefs and values.”19 In was in this regard that Gramscism contrasted with Marxism—change was not to be brought about through a revolution in material conditions (which often entailed violence), but through consensus gained by the development and communication of a new worldview.20
Gramsci derived his idea of the organic intellectual from what may seem an unlikely source for a revolutionary and humanistic appraiser of Marxism. That source was none other than Martin Luther. “Gramsci’s assertion that ‘all people are intellectuals, but not all people have the function of intellectuals in society’ directly parallels Martin Luther’s emphatic insistence that ‘all believers are priests, but not all believers have the function (Amt) of priests in the church.’”21 The organic intellectual is therefore an outgrowth of Luther’s priesthood of all believers.
In the light of this, McGrath sees an analogy from Gramsci’s intellectual back to the theologian from which it originally came. What we need is a modern organic theologian to match the model of the organic intellectual. Whereas “much of academic theology is incapable of exercising a genuinely prophetic role, precisely because it is too closely dependent upon the support of academic culture,”22 the production of pastoral-oriented theology which respects and draws from the grassroots of society—an organic theology—can bypass or even begin to break down the barrier that has been erected by the failing academic establishment to date. This has two implications: first, that theology needs to return to its intended purpose of being a work of the church, and secondly, that theologians need to be more in touch with the pew and popular culture in order to relate their work to the body of Christ.
Efforts aiming at these goals should extend beyond the boundaries of the traditional discipline of academic theology. They should reach to every corner of theology and culture to understand and touch the thought of the community. McGrath sees organic theologians standing among both the historic tradition of the Church as well as the local tradition of their community. Being a product of their community they must be able to touch every aspect of it with their message, and this means art and literature as much as science, philosophy and theology. Thus McGrath asks, “Where have all the Christian novelists and journalists gone? We need them now, perhaps as never before.”23
Organic Theology as Neo-Gregorism
The proposal of McGrath for organic theology shares two important qualities with the successful reforms and mission of Pope Gregory the Great during the sixth century. First, the culture and popular folklore of local tribes should be tolerated and assimilated where possible. Second, the aim of the missionary should be at the head of that culture or society in order to most effectively begin change. The two taken together essentially show McGrath’s Gramscian theory to be a version of Gregorism for modern times. Let us look at the two ideas.
First, just as Gramsci and McGrath propose for today, the reforms and conquest of Gregory the Great and his missions leader St. Benedict accepted and involved themselves in the peculiarities of local culture and society. When they arrived, “Western culture was a chaotic mixture of barbarian and Roman elements which as yet possessed no spiritual unity and no internal principle of social order.”24 Motivated by Augustine’s City of God and an evangelical spirit they set out to convert souls, with little or no focus on establishing a civil-social order.25 They faced a decision on how to approach the pagan tribes. Being outside of the cities their focus became agrarian and they emphasized the nature of Christ’s parables and imagery. This provided a winnable situation for Benedict, whose order had already cut itself off from the city and clung to a rural and simple life.26 These monks soon assimilated their education with the local way of life to produce a unique expression of the Christian faith and witness. “There arose a new vernacular literature inspired in part by Christian influence but founded in part on native pagan traditions.”27 This came from the organic nature of the relationship of the missionaries to their culture. Dawson relates, “The monasteries were closely connected with the tribal society, for it was the prevailing if not the universal custom for the abbot to be chosen from the clan to which the founder belonged.”28 Gradually the Christian presence made its impact: “the presence of the colonies of black-robed ascetics must have impressed the peasant mind with a sense of new power that was stronger than the nature spirits of the old peasant religion.”29 It was to these organic theologians, rather than to any bureaucratic or administrative impulse left over from Roman civilization, that can be credited with the conversion of the pagans. Dawson concludes,
They stood so near to the peasant culture that they were able to infuse it with the spirit of the new religion. It was through them that the cultus that had been paid to the spirits of nature was transferred to the Saints. The sacred wells, the sacred trees and the sacred stones retained the devotion of the people, but they were consecrated to new powers, and acquired new associations.30
Thus popular religion, in this case even paganism, is not to be feared, but can be transformed and become a powerful tool in bringing change to society. In fact, “it is just in those regions where the external survivals of pagan customs are most noticeable . . . that the Christian ethos has affected the life of the peasant most deeply.”31 The key is in associating with culture on the part of the minister.
The reforms and conquest of Gregory the Great and his missions leader St. Benedict can also be described as “Convert the head, convert the tribe.” This relates to the second idea mentioned above and corresponds to the Gramscian ideal of controlling all the important mouthpieces of culture in order to influence popular consent. Dawson relates that tribal leaders and local rulers had been the targets of evangelistic effort since the time of Augustine in England. Controlling the head was seen as important to securing the following of the body: “However small was the political power of the king, he was the keystone of the social structure, and his conversion to Christianity was the symbol and pledge of the conversion of his people.”32 After his conversion, the power conveyed between the king and the Church was reciprocal. The people followed their leader to the Church and the Church reinforced the leader’s position as an acceptable leader. Dawson concludes that “from the beginning the new monarchy was associated with the Church and was regarded as the divinely appointed organ of Christendom.”33 Thus the Church relied upon the position and influence of the local ruler in order to affect and influence the people. We can draw two observations from this symbiotic relationship. First, the Church relied upon the ruler’s established authority to give her initial freedom and some authority among the people. Secondly, the Church adapted to the mentality of the culture in order to further her goal—that culture being one which adored and revered the person of the monarch so fully that all the people would follow his religious changes without question.
Thus the conversion of pagan tribes following the papacy of Gregory I and the establishment of the Benedictine Order can be seen as a confirmation of Gramsci’s theories, coming long before those theories, of course. Likewise, Gramscism, and therefore McGrath’s proposal, can be seen as a Neo-Gregorism. Perhaps in the distant future our postmodern era will be seen as the second barbarian conversion.
Critique
Among the few critiques that I would offer at this time is that McGrath may have overstated the case of the separation of theology and spirituality in modern academic theology, though the critique may be only one of perspective. Is it true that modern academics have divorced the two? Or does the separation that we see reflect the spirituality of its promoters? It could very well be that the flight from traditional spirituality and from the pursuit of nearness to God which former theologians saw as integral to theology is actually just the outworking of modern theology itself. It may have disastrous consequences for the church in the eyes of traditional theologians, but the destruction of the traditional church is what many modern academic and liberal theologians long to see. The separation between theology and spirituality is an artificial separation. You can never truly separate the two. The real separation is between modern theology and traditional spirituality, as McGrath himself notes,34 and this separation is nothing more than modern theology coming of age. Enlightenment thought and logical positivism are both holistic visions of life, just as Christianity was for Aquinas, Calvin, etc. Those systems are all-encompassing worldviews, and their adherents in modern academia will see them developed into every corner of life—theological and spiritual.
Another critique of McGrath’s Future flows from the first. If the separation we see developing today between the spiritual life is the outworking of Enlightenment and materialistic thought, then we should be quite wary of adopting a member of that tradition—Gramsci—as the model for cultural and theological renewal. Granted, McGrath’s use of Grascism is not unprincipled, but when we adopt the strategy of “Fight fire with fire,” we have to realize that it is still fire that we are playing with. In the light of that kind of caution, it would be helpful to see McGrath provide a critique of Gramscism, showing the dangers which that system of thought can be prone to.
The question must also be asked, “Why Gramsci?” The only possible answer I can see is that McGrath is practicing what he preaches. Since Gramsci based his critique of Marx on what he learned from Luther, McGrath could easily begin with Luther and skip Gramsci altogether, though with slightly less modern vocabulary at his disposal. But in order to approach those he most often criticizes, and those he seems to want to address prophetically—academic theologians—he has adopted the language and ideas of one of their own.
A third critique can be leveled against McGrath. His proposal for organic theology and principle of charity indicates no boundaries or limitations for the degree of assimilation or tolerance. Surely this is a wide area of dialogue and the author could not be expected to solve such a murky riddle in the space of his brief books, but if we are going to put forth a principle of mingling with pagan culture, we ought also at least hint at those standards which we will not compromise. Perhaps, in his defense, he was assuming that our confessional traditions already provide these for us and can go unstated. But then he should address how it was that past efforts of “tolerance” and “charity” in dealing with pagan thought led directly to the drawing of academy and church alike past those boundary markers into paganism. It was not so long ago Enlightenment thought was seen as something to be approached with a principle of “charity.” Yet now McGrath has to write about how such thought has lead to the failure of academic theology. What will keep the Future of Christianity from taking the same turn once we step into Gramsci’s hegemony?
Conclusion
McGrath has done the Church a great service in reminding her of the organic nature between theology and spirituality, academy and church. This is nothing less than the ancient idea that the law of prayer is the law of belief. A change in one very likely means change in the other. McGrath has noticed such change in academic theology and has urged that it is beyond repair on its own: theology must be reclaimed by the church and must be redirected towards the church. In McGrath’s eyes a suitable method for doing so is found in the work of Antonio Gramsci, advocating the close connection between theologians and their local culture as well as the control over institutions of culture by which to communicate en masse. Although developed through the analysis of Gramsci, these ideas nevertheless have roots in Reformation theology—in particular Martin Luther—and are very similar to the techniques employed by Gregory the Great and St. Benedict in the sixth century. Thus McGrath’s organic theologian does not differ much from very traditional forms of Christian witness and can be seen as a prelude to a new barbarian conversion.
Finally, not only is the technique not unique or revolutionary, but the idea of Christianity as an organic religion has been around for quite some time. The Roman Catholic historian and medievalist Christopher Dawson gave a very similar analysis nearly five decades ago:
For twelve centuries Christianity has been the religion of a culture—that is to say, it has had an organic relation with the social and moral structure of one particular society of peoples.… It has been the creed of Western man; it has moulded his institutions, ruled his education and either created or influenced his moral values and spiritual ideals. During the last two centuries the bonds of this organic union have been loosened and modern civilization has been progressively detached from its religious roots. Yet at the same time this has not involved the disappearance of Christianity as a living religion—on the contrary, these centuries have witnessed remarkable expansion . . .35
McGrath seems very closely to echo these same sentiments, and thus his Future can be seen as a desire to recover the organic nature of theology and Christian life that has been the heart of Christianity all these centuries. I can heartily join the attempt to return this emphasis to academia and church alike.
Notes
McGrath, Alister E. The Future of Christianity (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 2002). The following essay is based upon Chapter 6, “The Two Nations: The Disillusionment with Academic Theology,” pp. 120-55. Language and ideas from this work are employed and summarized in this paper even where not explicitly quoted. [↩]
Ibid., p. 122.) This process has led gradually to the distancing of theological and Biblical studies from their pastoral and practical roots, thus causing a great gulf between the academy and the church. Laymen, and increasingly pastors, tend to look at what higher learning produces with a shrug, having learned—especially since the blitzkrieg of nineteenth century German scholarship—that there is a lot of bias and world-view prejudice written into academic work. As an illustration of the effects that humanism has had on academic theology McGrath cites a case from the once Soviet leader Maxim Gorky. As a measure of demeaning, confusing and destroying the faith of believers among the populace, Gorky advised Stalin “that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ought to print Bibles with the ideas of the Tübingen school of radical Biblical criticism prominently displayed.” ((Ibid., p. 134. [↩]
Quoted in Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 136. [↩]
Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 137. [↩]
Ibid., p. 135. [↩]
Ibid., p. 145. [↩]
Ibid., p. 137. [↩]
Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 145. [↩]
Schlossberg, Herbert. Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society. (Washington, D. C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990) p. 134. The novels in Snow’s famous series Strangers and Brothers, “Have the ring of truth because [Snow] spent his whole adult life in the bureaucracies of academia, the civil service establishment, and Parliament, and he knew how they functioned.” Ibid., p. 203. [↩]
See the summary of Marxism given in DeGeorge, Richard and Fernande (eds.). The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. xii-xvi. For McGrath’s own summary of Marxism see McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction, First Edition (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1994) pp. 89-92. [↩]
McGrath, Christian Theology. p. 91. [↩]
McGrath, Future, p. 147. [↩]
Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 148. [↩]
Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 149. [↩]
Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 146. [↩]
Ibid., p. 150. [↩]
McGrath, Future, p. 152. [↩]
Dawson, Christopher. The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity. (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1965) p. 169. [↩]
Ibid., p. 171. [↩]
Ibid., p. 174. [↩]
Ibid., p. 176. [↩]
Idem. [↩]
Ibid., p. 178. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 178-9. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 179-80. [↩]
Dawson, Christopher. Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. (New York: Doubleday, 1957) p. 73. [↩]
Ibid., p. 76. [↩]
McGrath, Future, p. 135. [↩]
, Christopher. The Movement of World Revolution. (New York: Sheed & Ward, Inc., 1959) p. 69. [↩]