Have you ever seen an ad that made you wish you were anywhere but here? Ever thought about what that might have to do with the Christian life? 

In this presentation, Dr. Matthew Tan of #CampionCollegeAustralia will explore this link by reference to the advertising, TV shows, Lady Gaga, and the Church Fathers.

Dr. Matthew Tan: Take Me With You - A Theology Of Running Away

A presentation as part of an interfaith panel "Why Choose Life?", organised by the DePaul University Prolife Students Association in Chicago, IL.

Dr. Matthew Tan: Abortion.  Despair. Sacrifice. Hope.

This paper will focus on one element of the pushback against the massive influx of immigrants taken in for humanitarian purposes, namely an identity-based chauvinism which uses identity as the point of resistance to the perceived dilution of that identity, brought about by the transformation of culture induced by the incorporation of a foreign other. The solution to this perceived dilution is a simultaneous defence of that culture and a demand for a conformity to it. While those in the critical tradition have encouraged a counter-position of revolutionary transformation by the other through ethics, dialogue or the multitude, such a transformation is arguably impeded by what is ultimately a repetition of the metaphysics of conformity.

Drawing on the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and the Eucharistic theology of Aaron Riches, this paper submits an alternative identity politics that completes the revolutionary impulse. Identity here is not the flashpoint of a self-serving conflict, but the launch-point of a politics of self-emptying, whose hallmarks include on the one hand a never-ending reception of transformation by the other, and on the other an anchoring in the Body of Christ that is at once ever-changing and never-changing.

Dr Matthew Tan - Towards A Kenotic Identity Politics: Migration, Transformation & the Eucharist

In this paper I will put forward a partial response to the derision of “Cultural Marxism” occurring in, often Catholic,commentary. I argue that, despite the clear limitations of the Frankfurt School, Cultural Marxism in its technical usage has been a salient mode of interrogating the material foundations of what we now call postmodern culture, providing in particular an unusually insightful descriptor for contemporary forms of consumer behaviour, including the consumption of images. More importantly I argue that some aspects of cultural critique describe consumer behaviour as a form of soulcraft, thus providing a useful complement to a distinctly theological critique of postmodern culture as the normalisation of idolatry. This becomes a particularly salient path of critique of what Jean Baudrillard called “The Age of the Simulacra”, where simulation is now the primary reality by which consumers engage with an evaluate the world around them, the hallmarks of which include the rise of the phenomena of “fake news” and “alternative facts”.

To establish my case, I will outline the salient thread of Kulturkritik dealing with simulation, with particular reference to the work of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. I will highlight how this thread of Kulturkritik not only provides a compelling description of a person’s relationship to simulation, but also how simulations have significance in fusing divinity with history, a fusion that ends up dissolving the real for the sake of the simulation.

Before concluding, I will also look at the limitations of this Kulturkritik which should temper theology’s full partnership with this thread of the Frankfurt School, in spite of the useful evangelical inroads for the former carved out by the latter.

Christ In Hyperreality: Cultural Marxism, Kulturkritik and Fake News

God in the Gaze: Theology, Anthropology & Pornography

The Heart That Sees: Purity, Desire & Discernment

Matthew Tan is the Felice and Margredel Zaccari Lecturer in Theology and Philosophy at Campion College Australia, and is Sessional Lecturer in Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. He is also editor of the theological blog "The Divine Wedgie"

Matthew John Paul Tan