New Orleans Voodoo Museum in NY Times, and in Scholarly Perspective

Paul Harvey

Edward Rothstein reviews the New Orleans Voodoo Museum today in the NY Times, and makes a brief reference to Carolyn Morrow Long's biography of Marie Laveau (one of several competing biographies of this part historical/part mythical figure). Rothstein writes of the tiny museum:

It’s voodoo that these gravesite relics reflect. They are called gris-gris: items associated with seekers who wish to change something about their lives or the lives of others. My guide, Jerry Gandolfo, runs the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum in the nearby French Quarter. (His brother began it in 1972.) It is less a museum than two rooms, one consisting mainly of gris-gris along with altars used by contemporary practitioners. It is like an old curiosity shop, dusty, not terribly well cared for, almost startlingly haphazard.

The museum really needs the kind of curatorial intelligence that only emerges when Mr. Gandolfo, smartly stocked with information, associations and anecdotes, begins to speak. But the museum still gets something across about the powers of spirits (“vodu” in the Fon religion of West Africa) and their ability to make use of the lowliest of objects. No gilded artifacts or high-falutin’ pomp here: this is a folk religion in which power seems to flow from the trivial, or the horrifying.

A cool little slide show is here.

Time for me to pay another visit when the Southern Historical Association meets in New Orleans, 2nd weekend in October this year.

Here' the program, and apropos of the topic at hand, I'll paste in here a session on the scholarly study of this subject, scheduled in the Sunday morning slot when many participants will have left perhaps, but surely of interest to many. It features Carolyn Long and the younger scholar Jeffrey Anderson, author of a recent and very helpful study Conjure in African American Society, which I reviewed in the American Historical Review (subscription or J-STOR access required). My review, in brief summary:

Jeffrey E. Anderson provides a solid summation and overview of magical and religio-pharmacological traditions—captured in the single multivalent word "conjure"—in African American history. Conjure, he writes, was a "form of utilitarian, pragmatic spirituality" (p. 79), a composite of beliefs, suspicions, and actions with roots in African, Native American, and Western European cultures. Anderson's coverage of the African roots and European parallels to African American conjure are familiar from other recent works in the field, most notably Yvonne Chireau's Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003). By contrast, his stress on Native American influences—including animals from the Underworld and the use of "diviners chiefly concerned ... with foretelling the course of individual lives, finding lost or stolen articles, and most important, diagnosing illness" (p. 66)—is a fresh analysis. As well, Anderson's emphasis of Afro-Latin and Afro-Caribbean influences on the later evolution of conjuring traditions in the United States distinguishes this work.

Here's the session -- ya'll come. And for god's sake, join the SHA already.

Sunday, October 12: 9:00-11:00 A.M. (Sheraton New Orleans)

56. BEYOND THE VOODOO DOLL

PRESIDING: Charles Joyner, Coastal Carolina University

The Perils of Hoodoo: Scholarly Pitfalls in the Study of African American Supernaturalism
Jeffrey E. Anderson, University of Louisiana, Monroe

Superstition and Supernaturalism in White and Black Southern Folk Culture
Philip Gibbs, Middle Georgia College

Supernaturalism in the Body: Black Pentecostalism in the U.S.
Clarence Hardy, Dartmouth College

The Commercialization of Voodoo and Hoodoo
Carolyn Morrow Long, Smithsonian Institution

Motives and Meanings of Black Christianization in the Colonial and Antebellum Eras
Randolph Ferguson Scully, George Mason University

Voodoo, Women’s Religion, and Social Suffering in New Orleans: New Research on Old Spiritualities
Martha C. Ward, University of New Orleans

Spirits in the Night

Paul Harvey

Today's Weekend Edition Sunday features an interview with Jeffrey Symynkywicz, the author of The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Redemption from Asbury Park to Magic. No "Spirit in the Night" in the interview, but here's his exegesis on "Jungleland":

In an interview, host Liane Hansen takes Symynkywicz through a few choice Springsteen songs, including the last song on Born to Run, "Jungle Land." Symynkywicz says it's an ethics song about perceived powers and the powers that be. Ultimately, he says, "Jungle Land" gives the sense that the bad guys have won — until that famous last scream from Springsteen.

"That scream is the exhaustion and the pain of living life in this world," Symynkywicz says. "In that scream is a defiance that it's not going to be the last word."

And yes, it's a middle-aged white guy thing, so shut up already. I'm counting on the youngsters here, especially you Ed and Katie and Randall and Luke, to resurrect our hipness quotient after this brief excursion to the heart of middle America.

In what should be, with any sense, one of my few stabs at quasi-hipness in the field of book reviewing, I once compared Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Mind of the Master Class to a recent Springsteen recording:

I rather feel about it [the book Mind of the Master Class] as I did listening to Bruce Springsteen's Devils and Dust--the critics praised it, eminent music-listening friends loved it, and I admired it in parts, but I could not help feeling that the talents of the artist were constrained by the form, that something was being held back, and that I was denied the impassioned masterpiece that I wanted to hear/read. Yes, this is an aesthetic rather than an intellectual critique, but there you have it. Oh, for the days of The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle--Springsteen's flawed, sprawling, but ultimately grand equivalent, I believe, to Eugene Genovese's problematic but still matchlessly interesting work Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974). By contrast, Mind of the Master Class . . . somehow lacks the majestic narrative that carried forward the earlier classic.

I'm going on 50, what can I say? But Bruce is about as religious a songwriter as you'll ever find. As he constantly reminds us, we're all hiding on the backstreets, tying faith between our teeth.

Humanae Vitae at 40

Paul Harvey

In today's New York Times, Peter Steinfels surveys the 40-year anniversary history of Humanae Vitae, which has been seen variously as a prophetic statement of the Church's Truth about sexuality, or as one of those encyclicals which fail the test of being "received" throughout the Church. Steinfels explains:

Most Catholics have neither read “Humanae Vitae” nor followed these debates. What they know is that the church authorities condemn contraception and that this condemnation is somehow the linchpin of Catholicism’s sexual wisdom.

That is another dividing line between Catholic supporters and critics of the encyclical.

Like most people, both factions are quite willing to recognize a dark side to the contemporary sexual revolution. The supporters believe that contraception has been the battleground on which Catholic sexual morality must stand or fall — especially if it is to have any impact on that revolution.

The critics believe that this focus has been a tragic error and that it has exiled the church to the sidelines in the culture’s current struggles over sexuality.

And now, Monty Python's irresistibly disrespectul parody will be going through my head: Every sperm is sacred . . . well, you know the rest.

Addendum: John Fea graciously has ignored that last little sophomoric interlude to add the following helpful reference: For an interesting conservative defense of "Humanae Vitae" check out this essay in *First Things*: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262

"It's Just the Way It Is":Of Spiritual Salad Bars, Spiritual Bazaars, Spiritual Shopping, and Spiritual Seeking

By Phillip Luke Sinitiere

As many readers are no doubt already aware, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released the second report of its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Part one dealt with religious affiliation, and part two covers beliefs, practices, social, and political views.

Part of the second report's summary reads as follows:

A major survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. This openness to a range of religious viewpoints is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States, as documented in a survey of more than 35,000 Americans that comprehensively examines the country’s religious landscape.



This is not to suggest that Americans do not take religion seriously. The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey also shows that more than half of Americans rank the importance of religion very highly in their lives, attend religious services regularly and pray daily. Furthermore, a plurality of adults who are affiliated with a religion want their religion to preserve its traditional beliefs and practices rather than either adjust to new circumstances or adopt modern beliefs and practices. Moreover, significant minorities across nearly all religious traditions see a conflict between being a devout person and living in a modern society.

The Landscape Survey confirms the close link between Americans' religious affiliation, beliefs and practices, on the one hand, and their social and political attitudes, on the other. Indeed, the survey demonstrates that the social and political fault lines in American society run through, as well as alongside, religious traditions. The relationship between politics and religion in the United States is particularly strong with respect to political ideology and views on social issues such as abortion and homosexuality, with the more religiously committed adherents across several religious traditions expressing more conservative political views. On other issues included in the survey, such as environmental protection, foreign affairs, and the proper size and role of government, differences based on religion tend to be smaller.

One of my hometown newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, ran a story on the Pew Report, observing, "Texas appears to be more religious than the nation as a whole, according to the survey, with 47 percent of Texans saying they attend church once a week, compared to 39 percent of Americans. Moreover, 77 percent of Texans say they have an absolutely certain belief in God, compared to 71 percent of people nationwide."

As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas.

On a more serious note, the point of this post is to highlight the early impressions, observations, and interpretations of the data. I find it interesting that in response to both reports commentators and analysts find evidence of and for a religious economy. (See Kelly Baker's previous post on the report, as well as thoughts offered by Luke Harlow and Randall Stephens.)



Writing about the first report, Susan Jacoby calls the U.S. a spiritual bazaar, while Chester Gillis prefers to write about seekers and shoppers, as does Martin Marty.

Kelly Baker's blogpost cited above quotes the Jacoby and Gillis analyses so I won't post those here. However, Marty's thoughts, originally part of a Sightings piece, correspond nicely to those offered by Jacoby and Gillis.

According to Marty:

Shopping and switching accelerate long term trends. Centuries ago, evangelists in staid New England lured established Congregationalists into becoming ecstatic Baptists; advertising, luring, and changing has long gone on since. Here is Emerging Trends, June, 1980: "LESS THAN HALF REMAIN IN SAME DENOMINATION. Princeton, N.J. Fewer than half of U.S. adults [43 percent] say they have always been a member of their present religion, or denomination, as determined by a recent Gallup survey.

Is that good or bad? It's certainly inevitable. Mobility, the tangle of mass university experience, inter-marriage, advertising, competition, perhaps a dose of pick-and-choose egocentrism, "fulfilling…boutique church-going desires" (Wall Street Journal, March 1), valid or superficial judgments on the religious affiliation one is leaving, and profound spiritual searches all go into the "switching" and "changing" mix. Together they assure that those who cover American religious life will not run out of puzzling and exciting subject matter, as they switch subjects and change attitudes themselves.

Most, I presume, will agree that a religious economy exists in America, or at least consider using the marketplace metaphor to help explain the dynamics of religion in the U.S. It is not the only interpretive grid of course, and there are other meaningful metaphors to use. Nevertheless, as I read responses to and interpretations of the report it struck me that many used economic terms and ideas to explain religious affiliation and non-affiliation. Religious economy, or at least some configuration of the marketplace approach, apparently has staying power.



I end with the observation of Rice sociologist Michael Lindsay about the second report, quoted in the Houston Chronicle article: "Religion in American is like a spiritual salad bar. Americans pick and choose their beliefs and religious practices in a custom-designed faith system. I don't have a judgment call on whether it's good or bad. It's just the way it is."


[More religion humor found here.]

Doubtful Serenity, An Occupational Hazard

Paul Harvey

Who wrote the Serenity Prayer? Reinhold Niebuhr, right? Yes, maybe, but then again, perhaps it's more of a pastiche? “He is a preacher. He is coming into contact with things and blending them,” Professor [Gary] Dorrien said, adding that for preachers, “it’s an occupational hazard.”

A Teachable Moment: Sally Quinn's Communion Snafu

Kelly Baker

Just last week, I passed out guidelines for ethnographic projects to my students. This project is basically a field visit to a religious site of which they are unfamiliar, and because of this unfamiliarity, I spend much time on etiquette. Channeling my best imitation of an authoritative and slightly parental voice, I emphatically command, "You all are guests, and I expect you to be on your best behavior." This is followed by threats about how I don't want future students banned from particular religious sites because of the behavior of my current students. Despite my best efforts, some of my students still manage to do inappropriate things, but usually these actions are not traumatic for the students or the religious community.

This is why I was so surprised by the Sally Quinn's decision to take communion at Tim Russert's funeral. Russert was Catholic, and Quinn is not. Quinn is the co-founder of the "On Faith" blog co-hosted by the Washington Post and Newsweek, and frankly, I would think she should know better. The controversy over her decision has been more about her reaction to the experience. She wrote:

Last Wednesday at Tim's funeral mass at Trinity Church in Georgetown... communion was offered. I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started "On Faith" and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I'm so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him. And it was worth it just to imagine how he would have loved it. After I began "On Faith," Tim started calling me "Sister Sal" instead of "Miss Sal. (For the full text, click here.)

At Slate, Melinda Henneberger, a Catholic, wrote about that Quinn's description:

This reads a little too much like a restaurant review for my comfort; Christ Almighty: Tangy Yet Nauseating? And good as he was, we don't really take Communion to feel closer to Tim Russert.

Not surprisingly, the Catholic League, headed by William Donohue, reacted quite vehemently to Quinn's commentary about being "nauseated." After being lambasted for her choice, Quinn used a "WWJD?" defense by suggesting inclusion should be more important than formal rules about ritual. She, additionally, claimed to pluralist in her response to various religions.

What proved fascinating to me about the whole ordeal is Quinn's lack of understanding of Catholic communion. Supporter of pluralism or not, she overlooked (perhaps, ignored) that for Catholics communion contains the actual presence of Christ. At America, James Martin, S.J., noted the importance of this ritual for Catholics as well as incredulity at Quinn's lack of knowledge:

Catholics believe in the "real presence," the actual presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist: the bread and the wine. It is a central element of our faith, and reception of Communion is something that a Catholic does not do lightly. Which is something of an understatement. "First Holy Communion" is an important passage to adulthood; and even afterwards adults are asked to approach Communion reverently and without being conscious of any grave sin. Catholics also know that the very word "Communion" means that you are in "communion" with the rest of the Catholic church, and accept its beliefs.

Therefore, it is probably not too much to expect that the co-founder of a prestigious online blog about religion run by two of the nation's premier journals, would understand something about the most basic practices of the Catholic church. Most intelligent people know a few facts about the Catholic church: this is one of them. And even if one doesn't know this, one would know to act with great care when in the midst of a worshiping community not your own. (For example, I am always exceedingly careful not to offend anyone's sensibilities when in a synagogue, a mosque or a Christian church or meeting place not affiliated with the Catholic church.) An essential element of respect for another religious tradition is approaching their holy places, people and ceremonies with sense of reverence, even awe.

That's why the words "transubstantiation notwithstanding" are difficult to hear. If one knows enough about Catholicism to mention "transubstantiation" then one should also know that the word "notwithstanding" makes little sense in that context.

Martin's uplifting of respect for religious spaces and peoples is not only necessary to prevent offense, but it is also about good manners. My students laugh at my focus on etiquette for their projects. I regale them with tales of past students and their snafus, but I also make it quite clear that sacred space should be approached thoughtfully and carefully. So hopefully, they leave my classroom prepared for encounters with those who are religiously different and with a sense that they should be on their best behavior because these are sacred spaces. I am still scratching my head at Quinn's actions, and in my next class, her actions will be a prime example of how not to interact with other religious peoples.

Fruitcake Toss

Paul Harvey

Peter Montgomery, "Attacking Obama's Beliefs," discusses the campaign (one not confined to James Dobson's latest bile about Obama's "fruitcake" views) to slander Barack Obama. The negative response from many evangelicals (see this site, for example, which usefully contrasts Dobson's tendentious hyperbole -- i.e. lies -- with Obama's own plain statements) likely suggests that this attack will backfire. Montgomery writes:

The frantic and blustery attacks on Obama’s faith by Dobson, Tony Perkins, and other Religious Right leaders comes across as an increasingly desperate effort to prevent the ongoing shift of evangelical Christians away from the narrow abortion-and-gays focus that Religious Right leaders have demanded be the dominant priority for Christian engagement in the public arena. There has been plenty of evidence for the past couple of years that most Christians, including most evangelicals, don’t share Dobson and Perkins’ political priorities. And now, as those leaders rant and rave about the supposed deficiencies in Barack Obama’s orthodoxy, Pew has made clear that they can’t even stake a claim to faithfully representing the Christianity of most American evangelicals.

True, although Dobson, Richard Land, and other evangelicals of that stripe have decried the decline of faith even among evangelicals, part of their "persecuted minority" rhetoric, so I doubt the Pew survey will faze them. Its findings are woven already into their declension narrative.

Our local paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, covers Dobson and this latest controversy in its story, "Evangelism [the paper means, conservative evangelicalism] May Be Losing Its Sway.

Radio Religion

Kelly Baker

This American Life is my favorite NPR show. Since I am currently in a lull (no more writing or editing the dissertation just waiting for the defense), I find myself listening to the show more and more often via podcast and audiobook. So, I thought I would promote my favorite episodes on religion, people figuring out religion, and the American religious landscape. (The podcast is free to listen to from the website.) These could also be excerpted quite well for classes. I have started using some of This American Life's podcasts for my gender and religion class, and I will incorporate them into my Religion in the U.S. class for Spring 2009.

Devil on My Shoulder

How does the Devil work? We hear stories from five different people who say they found themselves inexplicably doing something random and bad, something which made no sense to them at all. Host Ira Glass explains why this might be, cadging a bit from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. (This episode discusses Hell House and the Amish rite of rumspringa).

Godless America

At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a "Biblical world view" in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place. (A fascinating look at advocates for a "Christian" amendment to the Constitution, perspectives on the "wall of separation," and an interview with Isaac Kramnick, the co-author of The Godless Constitution.)

Heretics

Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell.

Shouting Across the Divide

A Muslim woman persuades her husband that their family would be happier if they left the West Bank and moved to America. They do, and things are good...until September 11. After that, the elementary school their daughter goes to begins using a textbook that says Muslims want to kill Christians. This and other stories of what happens when Muslims and non-Muslims try to communicate, and misfire.

Happy listening!

Obama and the Gospel of Cal Thomas

By Art Remillard

When Cal Thomas had this picture taken, he must have told the photographer, “OK, I want something that just screams, ‘I am a self-righteous [fill in the blank].’’” Think I’m wrong? Then read his recent article, “Barack Obama is Not a Christian.” No, Thomas doesn’t run with the “Obama is a Muslim” canard. Rather, he references a 2004 interview Obama gave with Chicago Sun-Times columnist “God Girl” Cathleen Falsani (read the entire interview here). After his set-up, Thomas mentions an exchange on salvation...

Falsani correctly brings up John 14:6 (and how many journalists would know such a verse, much less ask a question based on it?) in which Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That sounds pretty exclusive, but Obama says it depends on how this verse is heard. According to Falsani, Obama thinks that “all people of faith — Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone — know the same God.” (her words)

If that is so, Jesus wasted his time coming to Earth and he certainly did not have to suffer the pain of rejection and crucifixion if there are ways to God other than through Himself.

Perhaps I have a different interview, but I couldn’t locate where, exactly, Obama said this. But I suspect Thomas was pointing to where Obama reasoned...

I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.

The Horor! Indeed, depicting a companionate God sounds pretty darn scandalous. This led Thomas to conclude…

Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian. Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called a “false prophet.”

I hope some national journalist or commentator with knowledge of such things asks Obama about this and doesn’t let him get away with re-writing Scripture to suit his political ends.

TAKE THAT LIBERAL MEDIA!!!! But wait, I’m confused? Why does the esteemed columnist Thomas only want “the media” (boooo) to press Obama? Why not John McCain? Imagine this question in a press conference: “Senator McCain, do you find it unfortunate that your potential running mate, Governor Romney, will be burning in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity after he dies?” I mean, fair is fair, right?

Barack and Aimee

Barack as Faith-Healer?
Matt Sutton

The Washington Times ran an obnoxious, provocative editorial this morning dubbing Barack Obama a modern faith-healer. While I vehemently disagree with much of the article, the issue of Obama as a Messiah-figure is worth thinking about. And, most importantly, anyone who links Obama to Aimee Semple McPherson can’t be all bad, right??

West Coast Paradise? Review of Contemporary Jewish Museum

Paul Harvey

Edward Rothstein provides a searching review of the new Contemporary Jewish Museum, located in downtown San Francisco (736 Mission Street), the latest Daniel Libeskind angular and geometrically challenging architectural production. It's on my visit list for the next trip to San Francisco. Rothstein writes:

Like so many other new museums, the Contemporary Jewish Museum is dedicated to a hyphenated American identity, in this case one that has flourished in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a Jewish population of 200,000 that ranks third among United States metropolitan regions. Jews lived in San Francisco from at least its early boom days, when they streamed in with other settlers during the Gold Rush. . . . .

In this atmosphere a particular style of American Judaism developed. It is highly assimilated, with many interfaith families; Judaism is treated more as a culture than a religion. History becomes less important than the issues of the present; and Jewish culture is closely associated with leftish political leanings.

He concludes with some fundamental questions that religious historians face all the time, as should contemporary celebrants of pluralism:

How can multiple perspectives and open-mindedness and diverse backgrounds be celebrated without a grounding in knowledge, without history, detail, object and belief? Can a museum serve its community without leading it into the unknown past as well as into speculative realms? Can the Jewish thrive without Judaism? . . . . for all the institution’s considerable appeal, Judaism’s fundamental, literal meanings — texts and laws and beliefs and history — are left outside the gates of paradise.

Jesus Made Me (and McCain) Puke

Paul Harvey

While the media obsesses over religious figures vaguely linked to Obama, the story of McCain's alternate courting of and then distancing from some of the more bizarre figures on the religious right's lunatic fringe remains relatively underplayed.

Here are a couple of good places to start. First, Matt Taibbi's amusing "Jesus Made Me Puke: Undcover with the Religious Right," tells his story of going native at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Never fear, Jesus will cast out those ACLU liberals.

More seriously, and ominously, our contributing editor Matt Sutton's "McCain's Ministers of Doom," drawn in part from his excellent ongoing work in the history of Christian evangelical apocalypticism through the twentieth century, explains the perils of McCain's alternate flirtations with and then public denunciations of these current-day eschatological theorists. Sutton concludes:

The firestorm that the candidate’s embrace of Hagee and Parsley incited was inevitable. That McCain didn’t see it coming reveals what terrible advice he is getting and how truly out-of-touch he is with religious conservatives. In picking some of the most extreme agents of intolerance to buddy up to in an effort to mend fences with the Religious Right, and then having to publicly denounce them, McCain has done the unthinkable—he has simultaneously lost face with the moderates who liked his independent streak and the religious conservatives that he so badly needs.

After these warning signs, time for a more cheery piece, so check out "Taking Their Faith, But Not Their Politics, to the People," from the NY Times, which reports this of "The Journey," described as a "megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals" in St. Louis:

They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.

Doubtless the recent gay marriage decision in California will re-energize the culture wars, so it will be interesting to see what these younger green evangelicals will do, and how successfully the older warriors of the religious right will be in mobilizing the anti-"gay agenda" vote as was so brilliantly executed in Ohio in 2004.

Meanwhile, all those San Antonians getting their demons excised should be required to watch Samuel Jackson's quoting from the book of Ezekiel in Pulp Fiction; I don't recall him reading anything in there about the ACLU.

Political Primaries, C.S. Lewis, and Remembering the Sun

Art Remillard

As I drove through my small western Pennsylvania town this morning, the campaign signs reminded me that six weeks of political frenzy have mercifully come to an end. To be sure, the election battles will continue, not only through November but into future elections as well. At times, I find myself hoping for the next election day to come, to put an end to the endless predictions and speculation. But at the same time, I lament this impulse to speed through life and risk overlooking every day's hidden treasures.

So I read with great interest this morning an editorial from New York Times columnist David Brooks. He reminds me that sometimes, as folk singer Pieta Brown said, I just need to “remember the sun.”

Below is an excerpt. If you're a C.S. Lewis fan, you'll appreciate both this and the reference to Michael Ward's essay in Books & Culture.

Over the past 15 months, I’ve been writing pretty regularly about the presidential campaign, which has meant thinking a lot about attack ads, tracking polls and which campaign is renouncing which over-the-line comment from a surrogate that particular day. But on my desk for much of this period I have kept a short essay, which I stare at longingly from time to time. It’s an essay about how people in the Middle Ages viewed the night sky, and it’s about a mentality so totally removed from the campaign mentality that it’s like a refreshing dip in a cool and cleansing pool.

The essay, which appeared in Books & Culture, is called “C. S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem,” by Michael Ward, a chaplain at Peterhouse College at Cambridge. It points out that while we moderns see space as a black, cold, mostly empty vastness, with planets and stars propelled by gravitational and other forces, Europeans in the Middle Ages saw a more intimate and magical place...

There’s something about obsessing about a campaign — or probably a legal case or a business deal — that doesn’t exactly arouse the imaginative faculties. Campaigns are all about message management, polls and tactics. The communication is swift, Blackberry-sized and prosaic. As you cover it, you feel yourself enclosed in its tunnel. Entire mental faculties go unused. Ward’s essay has been a constant reminder of that other mental universe.

Happy Earth Day! (And the Count Down to the Eco-Apocalypse)

Kelly Baker

With local radio stations handing out saplings for Albuquerqueans to plant, various emails on list-serves this morning proclaiming how to reduce my carbon footprint, and my terribly guilty conscience over driving a small SUV, I feel like Earth Day has hit me full force this year. One of the campuses where I teach has started a film series on the environment, and another has started a huge recycling campaign on campus. What has proved most interesting for the start of the Earth Day was a great article by Rebecca Onion at Slate on what she aptly calls "Envirogeddon." Onion explores the fascination of many environmentalist writers about Armageddon, eco-style, which would require the surviving humans to be kinder to the planet and her resources. The beauty of Onion's piece is that she traces this "wish" for an apocalypse back to eco-literature from the 1970s until today to show this continuing vein of thought. She takes on James Howard Kunstler's new novel, World Made by Hand, which examines the lives of survivors of calamitous events and their attempts to live in a ravaged world. Onion writes:

World Made By Hand takes place a couple of decades in the future, after a series of rolling catastrophes has left people without electricity, communications, or transportation infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of others have died of the "Mexican flu." Despite their burdens, the men and women of this imaginary world seem to have pretty good lives. Robert has lost his wife and children, but now he lives in an Arts and Crafts bungalow and makes his living as a carpenter—having been rescued, by the apocalypse, from an emasculating job as a software-marketing guy. The townspeople replace the suburban infrastructure with ever-more creative and beautiful houses and hold lively square dances. A beautiful and much younger widow, needing protection, falls into Robert's bed and makes him chicken stew with new potatoes and peas for dinner. (Kunstler's post-apocalyptic women have given up trying to be involved in government for their true roles as cooks and sex partners.) Even the occasional bouts of violence are cleansing, putting hair on Robert's sunken chest. In short, thanks to the world's upheaval, Robert becomes a true man while the people around him become a true community.

Onion renders these apocalyptic tales as an attempt a new frontier story, in which the humans start over in various, earth-friendly endeavors. She opines:

This equation of emptiness with rebirth and human freedom was a new kind of frontier story—predicated not on distance from civilization but on the wholesale death of civilization itself. As such, it also forms the basis for Kunstler and Weisman's utopian visions. While the enviros of the 1970s worried about population, we worry about climate change, but the possibilities for post-crisis humanity remain rosy. Kunstler's glorious images of ripped-up strip malls and catamounts in empty houses echo Weisman's regenerating landscapes, and both recall the new eco-orders of Abbey and Wiley. In the perfect green apocalypse, population reduction leaves a world in which everybody wins—birds, bees, and people.


Her concern is that in many of these tales, the "green apocalypse" can only occur with annihilation of humans to recover the damage. The haunting visions of a planet stripped of humanity and the stunning comeback of nature brings to mind the film, I am Legend. The main character played by Will Smith is the sole survivor of epidemic that kills most humans and turn some into light-sensitive zombies. Alone with only his dog, Sam, in New York City, he hunts for deer in an overgrown Times Square and fishes in the remnants of a reflection pool. A city, once densely populated, appears eerily quite in the day, but of course, the zombie-like beings hunt for humans to dine on at night. The movie's premise is that the population has been almost decimated by a vaccine, which proved to have disastrous results. The "green apocalypse" echoes religious visions of the end, but also provides a damning critique of human relationship with the environment. The film gives a glimpse of how the world might appear after such an event. (In an effort of full disclosure, the film proved to be quite disturbing to me, so I am not quite sure I can recommend it. My spouse liked it, but the isolation and despair of the film proved haunting.) The film provides visual impact to the words of various Envirogeddon writers.

If any of blog readers have come across scholarship on environmental visions of the Armageddon (and comparisons with other apocalyptic groups), please post the references in the comments section. This topic proves to be a fascinating distraction from grading and other work. Happy Earth Day!

Texas Polygamy Case

Paul Harvey

[Bad-mood-in-the-morning post this morning: Commentors here were annoyed at the lack of discussion of the case in Texas regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Memo to those in the comments section: this isn't a newspaper, we make no pretense of "covering" anything beyond what strikes our professional and sometimes personal interests in religion in American history, and perhaps most importantly, I'm busy grading a bottomless pile of student papers. I haven't followed this case and don't have anything of interest to say about it. The media's fascination strikes me as voyeurism.]

Update: this is what happens when you hit "post" before taking a deep breath. The commentors were just asking for insightful commentary here, so let me apologize to them for the little bit of pissiness this morning as evidenced above. And read above for the kind of commentary requested here.

And for those interested: Seth Perry has an excellent piece on the case; thanks to the commentor who provided the URL.

All Pope, All the Time

Paul Harvey


The New York Times rounds up Pope-in-America coverage here. The Pope will find students at the Catholic University of America to live a Catholicism that's not "in your face." As one student puts it, “It is as religious or as Catholic as you want it to be . . . It’s not really in your face.”

The article nicely fits the "transformation of American religion" thesis outlined by Alan Wolfe in his book of that title. Interestingly, in my class where we used that book, students split evenly on whether they thought Wolfe provided a fair outsider's assessment of the state of American religion, or whether he "patronized" his subjects--with the more religious students seeing the latter (partially because of Wolfe's icy words about content-free and vapid "praise music"and the Prayer of Jabez, compared to which, he says, Prosperity Theology is positively intellectually rigorous and demanding). I'm not sure if anyone else has had any experience going over that book with students; would be interested to hear of it here.

Masterful Pentecostals

Paul Harvey

Our blog contributing editor's work The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South is featured in the May 2008 Atlantic Monthly, with this appropriate and accurate assessment:

"Stephens's masterful account of how the South nurtured and altered a once-marginalized religious movement-- and how that religion influenced the region-- is the most fluent and authoritative synthesis of a complex and controversial subject." The Critics, Atlantic Monthly, May 2008, p. 102

Congratulations, Randall!

More to come soon on Ed Blum's latest airplane reading, and his thoughts about the Democrats and Donkey Kong.

Ed Blum's Interview in Newsweek

Our contributing editor Ed Blum appears in Newsweek online, in a feature interview. He explains his take on Barack Obama, "the speech," and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A brief excerpt -- but make sure to click above and read it as a whole:

[Newsweek Questioner]: So you're saying something good may have come out of Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory remarks?

[Ed]: His rhetoric is certainly problematic and troubling, but prophets, whether it be Wright or W.E.B. Du Bois, are necessary. They dream dreams, they cast visions, they challenge the world as it is. In 1904 Du Bois said that God is made of one blood, and that all men are brothers. That was absolutely treasonous talk in 1904. But of course you look back now and say his vision was right.

Liberating the Founders

PAUL HARVEY

This week's Speaking of Faith features Krista Tippett's interview with Steven Waldman, who discusses at length Founding Faith.

From the Speaking of Faith newsletter, with more on the program:

Liberating the Founders

We liberate the founders from conservative and liberal captivity, by revisiting the real, messy history of religious history in early America with journalist Steven Waldman. We explore how this history might shake and reshape Americans' sense of what is at stake in current debates about the relationship between government and religion. Also, how a falsely harmonious sense of the American experience with religious liberty undermines the wisdom American history holds for developing democracies around the world.

Disspelling the Myth of Uninterrupted Triumph and Goodness

. . . Waldman reminds us that the genius of the U.S. founders was not in getting everything right from the outset, but in learning from their mistakes, with an eye out for the missteps of their own time. The first 150 years of colonial history, as he retraces it, involved a cascade of failed experiments with official state religions. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both became champions of the separation of religion and state — albeit with very different emphases — in part through their revulsion at the intolerance and violence that marked these experiments. . . .

[Waldman] dwells with some insistence — for our collective edification — on the dark side of this early history. . . . The facts, as he tells them, are shocking. At the same time, he finds a way to forgive our confusion, and our gloss on history. We come by them honestly — as a direct inheritance from the founders themselves, who were equally confused, and imprecise, and muddied by the politics of their moment in time.

. . . . A self-righteous sense of U.S. history as an unbroken arc of triumph and goodness does not serve us well as citizens and leaders in the 21st-century world. More positively stated: an active, self-aware memory of the difficulty and struggle, the violence and mistakes, that accompanied the birth of American democracy — and that only gradually and fitfully led to the virtue we now prize of separation of church and state — could be a great gift and resource in helping young democracies around the world. Our own history seen in the light of fact, and removed from the distorting divides of our time, could be a source of our greatest wisdom and reason precisely towards what is difficult and dangerous in the contemporary world.

More on Steven Waldman, Founding Faith

PAUL HARVEY

John Fea gave our blog an extensive and thoughtful review of STeven Waldman's Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America here (or just scroll down).

Terry Gross's interview on Fresh Air with Waldman is linked here. An introductory blurb:

Fresh Air from WHYY, March 11, 2008 · Was America meant to be a Christian nation? Author Steven Waldman attempts to answer this and other questions related to America's religious history in his new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.

Waldman is the co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a website devoted to spirituality and faith issues. In tandem with his book, Beliefnet has opened an online archive of historical documents related to the separation of church and state, and religious freedom in America.

There's also a short excerpt from the volume linked to the Fresh Air site.