Advent Hope

A response by John Webster

To Sally Haslanger

How to hope?

Prof. Haslanger invites us to ask the hard question together: If societies are complex systems that reproduce injustice, and are self-regulating in the face of reform, then how do we hope for justice?

I'd like to respond in that same mode of humble questioning. As humans in the world right now, it is hard to hope well. That is: in ways that cultivate wise and loving action towards radical change.

I propose that we explore the "Advent Hope" as a long-term, passionate, flawed, and precious case study. Perhaps this can help us, and others, think and feel our ways forward.

2

Advent Hope: a theme song

“We Have This Hope”

General Conference 1962, 1966, 1975, 1995, 2000

​

​

We have this hope that burns within our hearts,

Hope in the coming of the Lord.

We have this faith that Christ alone imparts,

Faith in the promise of His Word.

We believe the time is here,

When the nations far and near

Shall awake, and shout and sing

Hallelujah! Christ is King!

3

The heart of my suggestion

• Can we consider the Advent as the coming of a qualitatively and essentially different social being -- a radically other complex system, animated by love, freedom and justice?
• Then to have this hope in the Advent is not primarily a cognitive experience, asserting truth-values regarding claims of future events [Haslanger, slide 29].
• Rather it’s the choice, experience, & the symptom of participating in that new complex system (we say the proleptic Kingdom of God), already here and now. "God with us."
• This participation is surely incomplete. We are still in the dominion of evil, of what some call "Empire". But do we taste that other world already, and recognize it as a different life?
• This gives our hope for systemic change its dual character. From within the ideology of Empire, it is irrational. "There Is No Alternative." But as participants in the body of Christ, it is second nature. [Haslanger, slide17]
• Is this a way to answer the question? We can hope, through participating in the shared practices already of a not-yet-realized new complex system.

4

Humility

But this hope can be distorted! Over 180 years, Advent hope in our community has been beset by:

• Escapism
• Apocalyptic Sensationalism
• Political Quietism
• Individualism

(See paper for details.)

​

The grave danger (that Adventists in particular should be attuned to!) is being co-opted by the Empire.

5

Empire

• Empires in general are complex systems that conquer and rule many peoples under the sovereign power of a ruling elite. There have been many around the world, through time.
• "The Empire" as I use it here, borrowing from many others, refers to the now-globe-spanning specific system that emerged through the European colonization of the Americas, the slave trade, capitalism, and military-industrial-driven "growth". Racism & Patriarchy (systemic & Structural)
• This Empire has important roots in Christendom's poisoned marriage with Rome.
• Early Christianity, and early Adventism, both arose as utterly against and aspirationally other than this Empire.
• Empire's sin: masquerading one specific complex system (ie. society), and its rulers/rules, as the ‘One True Way’. Forced conversion/conquest/assimilation.
• "Come out of her my people."

6

The Body of Christ

• To leave the Empire is a communal process. We die to one social being, born to another. Adoption.
• It's not primarily an intellectual process, but a material one -- of our practices. [Haslanger 8, 15-16]
• E.g. Eucharist, Sabbath, footwashing. (Singing!)
• Also economic, political, reproductive. A "people" among peoples.
• Not dependent on Empire. Autonomy ↔ horizontality. (Adventist parallel infrastructure.)

7

Pluralism...

So: how do we build resistance to being co-opted (again) into Empire?

​

• Theology: God is beyond any of our social forms! Relativizes us.
• Philosophy: Action for the "common good" need not require a universal "common ground"
• "Common ground" usually defaults to the dominant hegemony. We are lost without it! (See both left and right responses in the US to fading of elite liberal consensus.)
• And finding a "lowest common denominator" may not inspire the deepest alignment
• Action: Rather, perhaps we should seek to encounter others in as much fullness of their otherness as possible.

​

8

… in Practice

We might have very different grounds for working for common goods; but we can still do so by forming ad hoc alignments, held together by nothing other than the pragmatic pursuit of those goods themselves.

• "We" as movements of engagement [Haslanger: Resisting Reality]
• Ad hoc alliances
• Solidarity in action, not theory. (One "no" many "yeses")

This may seem "weak" to those weaned on the Empire's centralized versions of power; but "blessed are the meek". And many ecologies, neural nets, and other complex systems are deeply resilient because of their "weak" links between nodes!

9

We have this Hope...

Sounds good. Let’s do an exercise!

​

​

[Singing]

​

​

How did that feel?

10

How did that feel?

Probably many different reactions:

• Awkward in academic setting
• Familiar and warm
• Layered meanings
• 'Cross-pressured'

What is your reaction, Prof. Haslanger?

This song means different things to us, as Adventists. Witnessing it must mean even more different things, for non-Adventists.

11

Witnessing hope!

Is it possible that witnessing, even participating in an expression of hope in a very different communal frame, can still inspire and evoke our own hope?

Our challenge is for those differences to become a source of alignment, not assimilation; of solidarity, not sameness.

The spirit moves through us, in mysterious ways.

It's not up to us! But it matters what we do. (Adventist tradition that we prepare the way for the Second Coming -- hope is a call to action! [Haslanger 27])

May we have hope, and thus faith, in love.

12

13