{"id":5931,"date":"2016-10-05T20:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T03:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=5931"},"modified":"2016-10-07T14:48:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T21:48:14","slug":"yet-another-definition-of-postchristian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2016\/10\/yet-another-definition-of-postchristian\/","title":{"rendered":"Yet another definition of “postchristian”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Geez<\/em> magazine, a Canadian periodical aimed at leftist and progressive Christian young adults:<\/p>\n

“Postchristian,<\/em> in my view, describes someone who is inspired by the life of Jesus — a prophetic challenge to the rich and powerful, sacrificial love of neighbour and enemy, communal ethic that demotes private property, and compassion upon all people (oh wait, that’s the Buddha, but I think they all blend together at some mystical point before language has a chance to separate us) — but sees the Christendom thing — institutional, bureaucratic, patriarchal, capitalistic, and with professional clergy approved by degree-granting institutions with huge foundations from the most problematic corporations in our midst — as straying from the path.”<\/p>\n

I can quibble with some aspects of this definition. Most importantly, for me Christendom has little to do with the minor bureaucracies of individual denominations, and a whole lot to do with how religion has been co-opted and used by corporations and nations to oppress and dominate others. And I feel my definition of Christendom is important because corporations are now increasingly turning to the co-optation of Buddhism to control their workers through mindfulness training meant to anesthetize and pacify and turn human beings into meat robots; a process which provides an additional benefit in marketing, because right now Buddhism is seen as hip and cool and helps to market products and strengthen consumer capitalism.<\/p>\n

But aside from a few minor quibbles,— yeah. Challenging the rich and powerful. Sacrificial love and communal ethic (which are actually more challenges to the rich and powerful). I can work with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Geez magazine, a Canadian periodical aimed at leftist and progressive Christian young adults: “Postchristian, in my view, describes someone who is inspired by the life of Jesus — a prophetic challenge to the rich and powerful, sacrificial love of neighbour and enemy, communal ethic that demotes private property, and compassion upon all people (oh … Continue reading “Yet another definition of “postchristian””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[658],"class_list":["post-5931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditations","tag-postchristian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5932,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions\/5932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}