Faith as Peripatetics

This is a follow-up elaboration on “Existential Inventions.”

I understand existential theology to be a form of theological peripatetics; an adventure of sightseeing, journeying, pilgriming, and departing. Such theology is nomadic in style, a form of “Abrahamic voyage” certain about the destination but unclear about the true path. It is inquisitive and never quite certain (except about a few “grounding” facts), yet aims at bringing everything, perceptually and constructively, into the domain of God. It resonates with de Certeau’s image of walking the city, of inhabiting that urban body of interlaced texturology (Michael de Certeau’s wonderful neologism referring to the “texture” of city life, in turn, functioning as a metaphor for the culture at large). As such, it is interested in backside alleys, museums, centers of, commerce, tenement halls, subway stations, and soup kitchens. In other words, in all the comings and goings of humanity. The homeless woman on the street, shopping centers as shrines of affluence and style, theaters and the politics of art, sirens of emergency vehicles, Chicago Streetwise vendors, the ant-like traffic of uniformed merchants and corporate hagglers—all these afford not just different perceptual objects but also states of consciousness, civilizational aspirations and failures, an intermingling of utopian dreams and dystopian premonitions. Here the intertext of sign and story rises to the level of voice and image that peripatetic or existential theology both inhabits and departs, critiques and elaborates on. Such a theology is not just prophetic, but also voyeuristic and inquisitive. It questions and discovers, it proclaims and connects, it denounces and repents.

What I have in mind, therefore, is a discursive idiom, a way of thinking that recognizes the importance of strangeness, liminality, foreigners, and marginality, all of which, without resorting to needless self-victimization, explains certain autobiographical elements of my life. From my early experiences of growing up in Germany as a child of immigrants, to coming to age in a fatherless home, to the experienced animus against religion in socialist society, to the war in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkanization of identity, to being a foreigner in South Africa and the US—these and other factors have shaped me in profound ways...

Predrag Matvejević in his The Other Venice explores the famed city from "below", as it were, instead of from the perspective of the usual tourist attractions such as the Doge’s Palace or the Rialto Bridge. In the book he dwells on Venice’s graveyards, abandoned monasteries, neglected gardens, and back alleys, and examines them for the historical and symbolic significance, I like that approach because I too find myself scouring for the hidden or unappreciated shreds of underground Christianity, things that we have much fun parodying and debunking. I do so because I think that one of the tasks of faith and theology is to unearth these scraps from their over- and underuse, to imaginatively and critically resharpen them, to create a platform for cultural criticism and cultural engagement.