Religion in Culture Lecture

At 3:30 p.m. on February 23, 2006, Prof. William "Bill" Arnal--of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada)--delivered the second Religion in Culture Lecture of the Spring 2006 semester in the Henry Jacobs Reading Area at Gorgas Library. (For more on his previous day's Religion in Culture Lunchtime Discussion, please visit this page.)

Using the work of the late French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), Arnal argued that, contrary to popular scholarly representations of Paul, he might better be understood as a heretic. His lecture, entitled, "Heresy as an Analytic Category: The Case of the Apostle Paul," began by considering how Bourdieu employs the term doxa to name the "taken for granted" or unquestioned conditions that are required if social life is to be possible. As Bourdieu wrote in 1992: "The social world doesn't work in terms of consciousness, it works in terms of practices, mechanisms and so forth... By using doxa we accept many things without knowing them, and that is what is called ideology...."

Because they are taken for granted, the ideological features of social life cannot be articulated, discussed, much less criticized or defended--they are virtually invisible and therefore "go without saying" (as the French scholar of signs/symbolism, Roland Barthes, might have phrased it). Only once these conditions become apparent--a process that can happen for any number of reasons, but likely requires some form of disaffection or alienation--can they be called into question, let alone defended against attack. With such defenses in mind we can therefore say that charging someone with heresy and prosecuting heretics constitutes evidence that the "taken for granted status" of some social institution has fallen on hard times. For, had it not, then its criticism, let alone defense, would have been quite unthinkable--in the strictest sense of the word.

With all this in mind, Arnal turned to Paul's letters to argue that they can be read not as a criticism of ancient Jewishness--as many today read them--but, instead, as intent on making what Arnal termed "artificial Jews"--that is, with extending what this ancient writer thought to be God's promise to those who share some, but not all, of the characteristics that, in his day, were commonly thought to belong exclusively to those people identified as "Jews." Pressing beyond merely defining this identity as ethnically-based, Paul's criticism of such practices as circumcision could therefore be understood to be addressed at distancing this social identity from the sort of markers that led one to conceive of it as a biological, physical, or ethnic identity. Instead, those passages in Paul's letters that collapse "male and female," "free man and slave," and "Jew and Gentile" could be read as part of Paul's undoubtedly ambitious effort to create a new, universal social identity based on non-material (or, as Paul might have phrased it, "spiritual") markers, thereby greatly extending the membership within the community known as "Jew," so as to include a host of new, previously excluded members--that is, "artificial Jews": those whose membership is not premised on their sharing certain physical or biological traits.

Returning to Bourdieu's work on doxa, Arnal concluded that, if his re-reading of Paul's project is persuasive, then Paul's reconceptualized, and thus universalized, notion of ancient Jewish identity was a direct threat to the ancient Roman imperial state for this state-identity was, at the time, acknowledged to be the only universal identity capable of containing the various fragmented sub-identities of that diverse region/time. Therefore, far from a critique of ancient Jewish identity (as so many today read him), Paul's letters can instead be read as a direct challenge to Roman imperial identity--a doxa that, prior to Paul, might have gone without question, so long as members of marginal groups understood their varying social identities to be but components of the universal Roman state. (For example, today, despite being African-American, Italian-American, or Mexican-American, all such social actors are unquestionably "American," so long as none of their local identities claim to operate on the same level as their so-called national identity). Paul's reworked, universalized sense of the promise of the God of Abraham therefore offered a direct competitor to Roman universalism, thereby making apparent what had previously gone without saying, enabling attacks on Paul's position, which in turn makes of Paul a heretic--both from the Roman point of view and from the viewpoint of those members of sub-groups content with their stable, though marginal, position within the imperium.

Although a specialized scholar of Christian origins, Prof. Arnal's lecture provided an excellent example of how useful social theory can be when applied to the data of the study of religion.

Interested in reading some of Pierre Bourdieu's work?

Try here as well?

Interested in reading something by Roland Barthes?

Our thanks to Betty Dickey and to Donna Martin for all of their work to plan Department events. Thanks also to Samantha Sastre for taking photos of this event.

Prior to his lecture, Prof. Arnal speaks with Darlene Juschka, who delivered a public lecture of her own the previous day, and Prof. Russell McCutcheon, who introduced both of their lectures.

Although all Departments have ingenious ways to persuade their own students to attend such public events, it is always gratifying to find other members of the local and university community attending as well; left to right: Celeste Burnum, Claire Oaks, and John Oneal, a Professor of Political Science, specializing in International Relations.

As always, a small reception was set up for the event. Pictured above are REL students (far right) Geoffrey Davidson, (middle), Daniel O'Rear, and (far left) Justin Dearborn, a student in New College.

Once again, Gorgas Library's Henry Jacobs Reading Area (on the second floor) provided an ideal setting for the lecture, pictured here prior to its start.

Luckily, sufficient quantities of coffee were on hand to fuel the lively talk.

Prof. Arnal's lecture was followed by a number of well informed questions concerning everything from queries about the dating and authenticity of various letters attributed to Paul to how the textual evidence in these letters does or does not support his argument concerning understanding Paul as a heretical figure.