Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality by Richard Beck

Author:Richard Beck [Beck, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Theology, Ethics, Meditations, Psychology of Religion, Religion
ISBN: 9781621890102
Publisher: Cascade Books
Published: 2011-03-04T08:00:00+00:00

1. Gilmore, Monsters, 14.

2. Ibid., ix.

3. Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, 43–44.

4. Levi-Strauss, Race and History, 21.

5. Demoulin et al., “Infrahumanization,” 153–71.

6. Leyens et al., “Psychological Essentialism,” 395–411

7. Demoulin et al., “Infrahumanization,” 153–71.

7

Contempt and Heresy

You did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.

—Galatians 4:14

In this chapter I want to continue to explore everyday experiences with sociomoral disgust by examining a closely related emotion—contempt. An exploration of contempt will prove fruitful for three reasons. First, we will observe how contempt, in a manner similar to disgust, functions as a boundary psychology. These observations will reinforce and complement our analysis in Chapter 5 regarding the reciprocal nature of disgust and love. Second, while sociomoral disgust may be a relatively rare experience for many of us, the emotions of disdain, superiority, and contempt are fairly common. Who can avoid feeling smug around certain sorts of people? Thus, the contempt/disgust link will allow us to extend our analysis even deeper into everyday existence. And I am very keen to get this point across. My fear is, given the strength of the disgust response, that people will conclude that sociomoral disgust is symptomatic only of very extreme behavior, the purview of racists and bigots. But as I tried to show toward the end of the last chapter (and hope to show in this one), the dynamics of disgust are everyday affairs. Finally, our focus on contempt will allow us to examine another failure of table fellowship in the New Testament. Specifically, we will trace the emotions of disgust and contempt through the book of 1 Corinthians, observing how these emotions were creating social fractures within the Corinthian church. Surprisingly, these fractures were manifesting themselves in the very ritual—the Lord’s Supper—that functioned as a reenactment of Jesus’ ministry of table fellowship.

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