Radical Religion

James' inspired letter to the "twelve tribes of the diaspora," as a New Testament analogue to the most fervent of jeremiads among the OT prophets, is remarkable among the so-called "catholic epistles." In this concise work, James unleashes a thorough and devastating critique of the mockery of vain religion - Jewish or Christian. His argumentation is theologically grounded (e.g., locating the unity of the law in the oneness of the Lawgiver), psychologically insightful (e.g., a frank recognition of our seditious lusts), and morally profound.

Religion is understood, in various ways, as fundamentally conservative. This is undeniable. For all religion is constituted by its sacred traditions, embodied in holy oracles, and ritual practices and paraphernalia. As the sacral objectifications of authority and truth, one does not progress beyond these. Rather, we must constantly look backwards to these traditions in order to move forward.

According to Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, using the taxonomy of Hegel, "the people's religion" (Volksreligion) is "intrinsically bound up with a particular people, its life and customs. It required no special reflexive act of faith: it was simply accepted," (The Puppet and the Dwarf, 2003, Slavoj Zizek, p.4). But Judaism and Christianity is distinguished from this form as "positive religion," which consists of abstract, outwardly imposed rules and rites. In other words, Judaism and Christianity begin to peel religion from the formative culture’s Naturwuchsigkeit. Thus a tension is introduced between "true religion" and "culture." What is then produced is a new sort of conservatism - a culturally subversive conservatism. It is conservative because it locates its epistemic and ethical norm within a fixed, religious tradition. It is subversive, however, because it comprehends the dominant culture as distinguished and divergent from that tradition. Here, in failing to practically differentiate these, Christendom went astray according to critics like Kierkegaard and the Anabaptists of the "radical reformation.”

However, even given this distinction between volksreligion and positive religion, there is something else, something strikingly progressive or radical about the religion James discusses. It is not simply that true religion is to be distinguished from the dominant culture. It is the persistent call to even the religion's practitioners to change.

In his classic book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, Walter Kauffman writes:

Every great philosophic work says, like Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo": "You must change your life." The critic who does not realize this is a Philistine - or possibly a positivist: he has a very inadequate notion of philosophy," (1990, p.19)

This can be said, not only of philosophy, of course, but of religion and art in general, as Kauffman goes on to state. But why does Kauffman conclude this? Why the universal imperative to "change your life"? Is it not because we are all haunted by a pervasive anxiety and dread of judgment, an undeniable shame before the Other(1), betraying the disavowed knowledge that, despite our best rationalizations, the way we're living stands condemned? The Scriptures univocally pronounce us guilty before God, and above the choir of voices declaring that “you must change your life," cries out in earnest: "Repent!" Change indeed. But in the teachings of Christ, how great is the change demanded!

Nicodemus, the Jewish official and Pharisee, comes to Jesus under the cover of night and asks the mysterious rabbi one question: "Rabbi, we know you are from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him." Where's the question? He's saving face, of course. By stating the obvious fact that Jesus is his religious/spiritual superior, he's ingratiating himself to Jesus, gesturing a kind of submission to the Galilean's instruction. What have you to teach me, Rabboni? What is your secret wisdom and knowledge? Jesus' response is famous:

Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus went to Jesus no doubt expecting a new insight into the prophets, or an ingenious integration of biblical law. What he got instead had to be surprising, even disorienting. A radical change of behavior, belief and allegiance is what John the Baptist demanded on the Jordan. Jesus demands more. It is not enough that we change. We must be entirely reconstituted. We, who are flesh, must be born of water and the Spirit. This is, of course, absurd, humanly speaking. What Jesus requires is quite impossible for us to perform. He might as well ask the leopard to change its spots. Be that as it may, it is not therefore impossible or ridiculous.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

Nicodemus is understandably perplexed by this, and likely incredulous. But Jesus rebukes the expert of the law for his confusion: "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?" This very thing was anticipated in the Torah as the eschatological fulfillment of the covenants (e.g., Dt.4:29-31; 30:1-10; Ez.36:22-36; 37:1-14). Is this not what Moses and the Prophets had pointed to as the hope of the nation?

James also speaks of this new birth:

Of his own will [God] brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures (1:18).

New birth by the Spirit of God through the Word of God (cf. 1Pe.1:23-25) is not the termination point, but rather the beginning of this radical religion. In specifying this birth as 'spiritual', it should be noted, we must not think along the typical Western, dichotomist lines - abstracting the world of the spirit from the body on earth. The effect, and thus surest evidence, of such rebirth is a practical (that is, embodied) morality (cf. 1Jn.3:9). For life in the Spirit is nothing other than submission to “the perfect law of liberty,” according to the power and grace which the Spirit provides (cf. Gal.5:13-6:10). It is only this Spirit-filled life, lived in obedience to God that properly constitutes "religion God our Father accepts as pure and undefiled." Anything else is self-deception.

The worth of our religion, then, is measured by our morality. That is to say, our religion, in terms of our belief and practice, is only as good as it makes us. (James will not allow us to hide our moral culpability in the freedom of God).

Having begun in the Spirit, we must, to paraphrase Paul, continue in the Spirit. And what does this mean but, having been changed in rebirth, we must yet change! And change again, and again, and again... For to the very ones whom James affirms as being born of God, he addresses these warnings against religious self-deception. It is those who have received "the implanted word" who must put away all filth and rampant wickedness (1:21) in ardent repentance:

Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

As Martin Luther declared in the first of his famous 95 theses: “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” For James, then, it would appear that there are two kinds of religious people: the self-critical, who repent, and the self-deceived.

Self-critical because, as James admits, “we all stumble in many ways,” (3:2). As a result, not only does the broader, dominant culture need searching critique, but, as we stated above, so does the faithful community itself. But if all stumble, such that all are equally under the obligation to change, always (this side of heaven), doesn't the unrelenting call to repent become overwhelming and, so, unsustainable? Or does this jarring din in the religious machinery, by its sheer constancy, inevitably fade into the background noise of "business as usual"? And doesn’t the prophetic function always tend toward institutionalization, either narrowing to the domain of certain rituals and forms of ‘orthopraxy’ (as in traditional religion), or broadening indiscriminately into insipid, hollow platitudes ("you just gotta have faith")?

Indeed, it does. And provoking us, who slumber in the dangerous sleep of our religion, is the living Word of God - of which James' critique is a vital part.

There is one statement in particular that I find especially striking. James writes,

If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is worthless.

Why, of all things, does James choose to highlight the control of our tongues? Why this particular issue? Why not rather, in context, address social action (“care for widows and orphans in distress,” 1:27) or anger (which “does not work the righteousness of God,” 1:20)?

The answer, I think, is to be drawn from the context, more widely considered. In 3:2, James writes, “For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.” In other words, James considers the tongue as the most difficult of all our members to properly ‘rein in’. Only a flawless person could achieve it. Hence, the uncontrolled tongue (a "world of evil," 3:6) typifies our total depravity. But more than that, the reference to our diabolical member here functions not only literally and synecdochically, epitomizing our whole condition as those who “stumble in many ways,” but as presenting the most sensitive criterion in convicting us of our need to change. If there is any way in which we will stumble, it will be evident in our speech (cf. Mt.12:33-35). And, as Jesus warned: “men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.” What an unyielding standard! What awful consequences for such an apparently small thing: a single, careless word, inadvertently falling from the lips…

James, in citing here our careless speech as the criterion for determining the authenticity and value of our religion exposes all our empty religious talk on the one hand (as a 'deceived heart'), and our flippant cursing of our neighbors (3:9-10; 4:11-12), on the other. This is both piercing in its precision, and pervasive in its scope. James levels all with the accuracy of a sharpshooter. What then is there left for us to do - we whose language constantly betrays us - but use our tongues rightly, and confess to God the humbling truth.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.


(1) Perhaps this shame, which, being undeniably experienced in the presence of another, was used brilliantly by Sartre to argue for the self-evident existence of other persons, could also be employed to argue for the self-evidence of God's presence. For who hasn't known in their shame, whether experienced in the exposing gaze of the other, or the intolerable silence of solitude, the watching eye of Omniscience? Moreover, this shame (and guilt) is irreducibly moral in character, over against amoral theories of a socially constructed superego, on the one hand, and Heideggerian ontological guilt, on the other.