Time for Solidarity: Liturgical Time in Disaster Capitalism

Mark Roosien

doi:10.3390/rel12050332

Abstract

This article identifies the upheaval of many people’s experience of time during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a larger phenomenon of the 24/7 temporality that can be seen to contribute to the environmental destruction and social fragmentation typical of disaster capitalism. It then proposes liturgical temporality as an alternative to 24/7 temporality, framing it as a fitting context for the cultivation of solidarity between human beings and between human beings and the natural world. It argues that modern Jewish and Christian theologies of Sabbath-keeping as a mode of liturgical and ethical praxis have articulated a liberative vision for shared liturgical temporality but have not paid sufficient attention to concrete, collective modes of liturgical time keeping that could contend with the all-encompassing reality of 24/7 life. It concludes by discussing three ways that a more robust spirituality and praxis of liturgical time could support the cultivation of solidarity: a sense of the present that is mindful of the past and future, the invitation of practitioners into a shared story, and meaningful repetition toward the appropriation of a vision of redemption and liberation for human and non-human life.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the everyday experience of time for many people living in modernized, Western societies
Pandemic time was not so much an interruption of a previous, “normal” time as it was an acceleration of what media theorist Jonathan Crary has called the 24/7 time of late capitalism, a temporal regime in which market forces seek to extract maximum profit value from each moment, whether one is on or off the clock (Crary 2013)
Philosopher Christina Gschwandtner’s recent book Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy gives an account of how liturgical temporality can work in the Orthodox Christian tradition, a tradition with an especially robust and vigorous tradition of liturgical time keeping throughout days, weeks, seasons, and years

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the everyday experience of time for many people living in modernized, Western societies. Since the mid-twentieth century, Jewish and Christian theologians have framed the keeping of the Sabbath as an antidote to the frantic speed of modern life The accounts of these theologians are worth exploring as a point of departure for religious communities seeking a liberative spirituality in which to “be contemporaneous together” in solidarity. Two recent theologians have framed Sabbath-keeping as a mode of collective response to the 24/7 demands of late capitalism more explicitly than the authors previously mentioned In his 2014 book, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Walter Brueggemann frames a Sabbath spirituality of time as “an alternative to the endless demands of economic reality, the demands of market ideology.”. An articulation of a more robust praxis of liturgical time is needed, one that preserves and extends a liberative spirituality of the Sabbath

Beyond the Sabbath

Conclusions