Heretics–part one
December 26, 2008 • Comments on Culture •
I have been doing alot of thinking about heretics lately. Heretics are the necessary leaders of the future. Heretics, challenging the status quo, create new movements.
Marketing guru Seth Godin writes in Tribes: “Heretics are engaged, passionate and more powerful and happier than everyone else…. Challenging the status quo requires a commitment, both public and private. It involves reaching out to others and putting your ideas on the line…. Heretics must believe. More than anyone else in the organization, it’s the person who’s challenging the status quo, the one who is daring to be great, who is truly present and not just punching the clock who must have the confidence of her beliefs” (p. 49). Heretics face fear and refuse to back down. Heretics are curious, ready to venture down new paths. Heretics seek something that is remarkable (p. 35).
Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak writes about one amazing heretic: Rosa Parks. Palmer sees Rosa Parks as one example of a person who decides that they can no longer “act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themsleves that they hold deeply on the inside” (p. 32).
On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks in Montgomery Alabama decided to sit down at the front of bus, in seats reserved from whites only. Some years later a grad student asked Rosa Parks: “Why did you sit down that the front of the bus that day?” Her answer was: “I sat down because I was tired.”
Rosa Parks did not mean that her feet were tired, rather she meant that “her soul was tired, her heart was tired, her whole being was tired of playing by racist rules, of denying her soul’s claim to selfhood” (Palmer 32-33).
Rosa Parks was a heretic—we need more like her. Maybe this is a good New Year’s Resolution. Not to simply accept what is, but to see what is contrary to the way this world should be and say–enough; no more; I am tired.
May the ranks of the heretics increase! More on heretics to come.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Chuckles
I can’t help but see this post as an attempt to romanticise the idea or status of the heretic. Maybe there is some semantic argument that there is a certain character to heretics that we should aspire, or we can label people like Rosa Parks who’s bold action challenged the status quo and claim them as heretical exemplars, but perhaps it also blinds us to the reason why the idea of heresy bears such a malevolent sense in the first place, and also provides false worldly pictures of how we are to form our own theology.
You argue for the virtue of heretics as bold visionaries looking past the status quo to embrace the future of ideas, but what future do they look to? The beauty of the Christian message is it’s proleptic nature as proposed by Moltmann. While the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ are events rooted in history, it is by looking backwards we also look onwards to the future, his return that ends our suffering and resurrecting everyone. And so any true design for the future is centred upon reflection upon this past event. If we look forward without this anchor the only reference point we bring forward are our own preconceptions or desires. We will begin to argue for the future we desire, rather than the future that is immanently approaching. So I feel that your point here is heavily flawed as it draws solely upon secular (I might even argue faulty) examples. Perhaps for a better vision of the future of the Church and Christianity, we need a spirit of prophecy and not one of heresy!
Dec 26th, 2008
John Smulo
I really appreciate your thoughts. There have been many “heretics”, such as Martin Luther, as you mention, Rosa Parks, and most significantly, Jesus, who have changed the world for good because they didn’t accept the status quo was good enough.
It seems to me that the church today celebrates many who were thought of as “heretics” earlier in church history. Sadly, those who try to make a difference today often get responses like this post did in the comment above.
Jan 3rd, 2009
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