{"id":23,"date":"2012-08-03T14:19:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T14:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/?p=23"},"modified":"2021-03-18T19:19:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T19:19:54","slug":"what-happened-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/03\/what-happened-in-london\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened in London?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public liturgy may not, as Giorgio Agamben has claimed, be the foundation of public power. But public liturgies do, nonetheless, say something important about the shared assumptions of those who exercise power, and they help to shape as well as to express the teleological ordering of the civilizations which undertake them.\u00a0 This is true even when, as was no doubt the case with the Opening Ceremonies<\/em> of the Thirtieth Olympiad of the Modern Era<\/em>, the organizers are almost certainly something less than fully aware of what they are saying.<\/p>\n

Following Beijing and other recent Olympic Opening Ceremonies, the basic structure of the liturgy was that of a \u2013very selective\u2014 reading of British history. The pastoral landscape of premodern England, represented by Glastonbury Tor, is literally ripped up by the forces of the Industrial Revolution, led by a group of top-hatted bankers. The fire-pit of modern industry, in turn, gives way to a digital era love story. There are only passing references to the Celtic heritage, no Anglo Saxon invasion, no Norman invasion, no Magna Carta, no Reformation or English Revolution, no labor movement, no colonialism or anticolonial struggles, and no heroic war against fascism. The Irish Question, without which the title Isles of Wonder<\/em> (in the plural) makes no sense, was invisible.<\/p>\n

It is, of course, not unusual for Olympic host countries to present an edited version of their own history. China, after all, left out not only the Cultural Revolution but the whole of its modern revolutionary history. The Salt Lake Olympics, while gesturing towards Native American history, did so in a way which avoided dwelling on the realities of conquest and genocide. We expect the host country to focus attention on its contributions to the human civilizational project, and not on its failures. The question is which contributions it chooses to highlight. The English (and was clearly their<\/em> liturgy, not that of the many peoples of the modern United Kingdom) chose to highlight its role as the pioneer of the Industrial and Information Revolutions.<\/p>\n

Or did it? Like every liturgy, the London ceremonies contain their own hermeneutic key.\u00a0 In this case the key is H. Hubert Parry\u2019s setting of William Blake\u2019s Jerusalem, <\/em>which was sung by a children\u2019s choir during the early part of the ceremony.<\/p>\n

And did those feet in ancient time.<\/em>
\n Walk upon England\u2019s mountains green:<\/em>
\n And was the holy Lamb of God,<\/em>
\n On England\u2019s pleasant pastures seen!<\/em><\/p>\n

And did the Countenance Divine,<\/em>
\n Shine forth upon our clouded hills?<\/em>
\n And was Jerusalem builded here,<\/em>
\n Among these dark Satanic Mills?<\/em><\/p>\n

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;<\/em>
\n Bring me my Arrows of desire:<\/em>
\n Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!<\/em>
\n Bring me my Chariot of fire!<\/em><\/p>\n

I will not cease from Mental Fight,<\/em>
\n Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:<\/em>
\n Till we have built Jerusalem,<\/em>
\n In England\u2019s green & pleasant Land.<\/em><\/p>\n

The poem itself, of course , is at once patriotic and deeply self-critical \u00a0\u2013even revolutionary\u2014 in intent, calling to account a society which claimed for itself the heritage of Christendom only to have instead built Satanic mills in which the accumulated organic and social capacity of millions was sacrificed on the altar of \u201cprogress.\u201d\u00a0 But in the context of the London ceremonies, the poem a different\u00a0 function. It serves to mark clearly the significance of the sacred place in which the liturgy unfolds: Glastonbury Tor.<\/p>\n

Glastonbury is, for those who are not steeped in Arthurian lore, the legendary site of the Isle of Avalon and thus the final resting place of King Arthur. There is a long tradition, invoked by Blake\u2019s poem, which says that Jesus visited there as young man along with Joseph of Arimathea and that the later eventually returned bearing the chalice which became known as the Holy Grail. Glastonbury is, in other words, the symbolic center of English claims to anchor Christendom.<\/p>\n

It is with this in mind that we must turn to the conclusion of the ceremony: the parade of nations, during which athletes from every participating country came and planted their flag on the soil of Glastonbury, only to be ultimately surmounted not only by the Olympic Flag but by an even more prominent Union Jack (which, we must remember, is a flag of three unequally displayed crosses: those of St Patrick and St. Andrew with that of St. George superimposed over them).<\/p>\n

What is the significance of the nations planting their flags, below that of the United Kingdom, on Glastonbury Tor? We are reminded of another hill to which the nations are supposed to stream.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/sup>In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious \u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/sup>He will raise a banner for the nations<\/em>
\n and gather the exiles of Israel;<\/em>
\n he will assemble the scattered people of Judah<\/em>
\n from the four quarters of the earth. (Isaiah 12)<\/em>
\n \u00a0<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

Glastonbury, legendary site of the Grail, is<\/em> Jerusalem and England, as the post-reformation seat of the true<\/em> Christendom, is the true Israel to which \u2013the brutality of industrialization and empire notwithstanding\u2014 the peoples nonetheless still stream, setting their banners below hers.<\/p>\n

All this puts in a very different light the refusal of the Olympic Committee to allow a moment of silence at the ceremonies in recognition of those who died at Munich 40 years ago.\u00a0 It is not a question of such a somber moment being \u201cinappropriate\u201d in the context of the Olympic Celebration. Nor should it be allowed to pass on the grounds that the Palestinians (and countless other peoples) have also suffered, which they certainly have. It is, rather, that honoring the real, historical Israel would have undercut the imperial subtext of the liturgy and the enduring imperial reality which it founds.<\/p>\n

There is, of course, a way to make this all seem much more palatable. Blake\u2019s poem is<\/em> social criticism. And there are ways in which the nations have<\/em> streamed to London of which London and the United Kingdom should be proud. London is a great world city and the UK far more immigrant friendly than many places in Europe.<\/p>\n

But this is not what the ceremonies were celebrating. Careful observers will have noted that among the cultural artifacts implicitly claimed for the UK by the ceremonies, more than a few were actually from the US.\u00a0 From the vantage point of the British \u2013from the vantage point of the imperium<\/em> founded and refounded by the London Ceremonies\u2014it is all one empire. The potestas<\/em> may be exercised by the United States, but the auctoritas<\/em> and gloria<\/em> remain English.\u00a0 Washington governs but London still reigns.<\/p>\n

What difference does this make? Can\u2019t the English be allowed to indulge in a bit of patriotic fancy? Of course they can. Certainly the US and Canada and China and every other recent host has done the same. \u00a0And did the (ethnically Irish Catholic) Danny Boyle and the other architects of the ceremonies intend<\/em> anything like the message which I have found inscribed in their work? Almost certainly not.\u00a0 But public liturgies at once reflect and found deeply rooted spiritual and civilizational realities. That is why even secular republics have Inaugurations and Civil Religion. It is the absence of such Civil Religion surrounding the United Nations (which has only a Secretary General, and not a Head of State) which reminds us just how far it is from being an effective international political authority. And the Olympic movement is one of the few places where such civil liturgies take place on an authentically international stage. Indeed, the Baron de Coubertin wrote that\u00a0 \u201cThe first essential characteristic of the Olympics, both ancient as well as modern, is to be a religion … above and outside the churches.\u201d The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are a kind of ongoing conversation which marks the global but still multicivilizational character of human society.\u00a0 They are what we have instead<\/em> of a global civil religion and point towards what we might be building beyond a global market and instead of a World State . What is said there matters. <\/em>Spirit matters<\/em>. And what England has said is troubling. I, for one, would like some clarification and invite it especially from partisans of the specifically English and Imperial Christianity the ceremonies invoked as the United Kingdom\u2019s contribution to our quadrennial liturgical deliberation regarding the human civilizational project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public liturgy may not, as Giorgio Agamben has claimed, be the foundation of public power. But public liturgies do, nonetheless, say something important about the shared assumptions of those who exercise power, and they help to shape as well as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-theological-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29,"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seekingwisdom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}